Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let
Speaker 1: you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode
Speaker 1: of the week that just happened is here in one
Speaker 1: convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to
Speaker 1: listen to in a long stretch if you want. If
Speaker 1: you've been listening to the episodes every day this week,
Speaker 1: there's got to be nothing new here for you. But
Speaker 1: you can make your own decisions. It's it could happen here.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's it's it could happen here a podcast
Speaker 1: that it is. It's happening to you here right now.
Speaker 1: Bad things, good things, all sorts of things, because today
Speaker 1: we are talking about the ultimate and bad good things,
Speaker 1: Donald Trump's indictment and very brief arrest. Garrison Davis, James Stout.
Speaker 1: How are we all doing today? How we all feeling
Speaker 1: this week?
Speaker 2: We did it, Joe, the mission accomplished.
Speaker 3: Time to pack up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Dark Brandon has come for Trump finally, So I
Speaker 1: figured we would wait until, you know, a few days
Speaker 1: had gone by. There were a lot of when the
Speaker 1: initial indictment was announced, we didn't even actually know what
Speaker 1: all the charges were. There was a pretty long period
Speaker 1: of time that we didn't know like what the actual
Speaker 1: crime at the center of this was, but most of
Speaker 1: that has now is now relatively clear, as are kind
Speaker 1: of the earliest stages of the fallout to the Trump indictment.
Speaker 1: So I feel like now is a reasonably good time
Speaker 1: to talk about it. More may have, you know, occur
Speaker 1: since we occurred, since we recorded this. But broadly speaking,
Speaker 1: the thing that Trump got indicted by, as according to
Speaker 1: the thirteen page court filing outlining the case against him
Speaker 1: by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, was what's called a
Speaker 1: catch and kill scheme in which Trump and you know,
Speaker 1: his his Trump bets, would basically bribe people to not
Speaker 1: write bad stories about him. You know, it's a hush
Speaker 1: money thing. My assumption is that basically everybody at that
Speaker 1: level of wealth and prominence does versions of the same thing,
Speaker 1: and these, in fact, are not crimes on their own.
Speaker 1: You can bribe somebody not to say a bad talk
Speaker 1: about a bad thing you did to the press. Where
Speaker 1: things get illegal is that Trump, you know, made a
Speaker 1: series of payments, primarily these one hundred and thirty one
Speaker 1: thousand dollars in payments to Stormy Daniels, to buy her quiet,
Speaker 1: and then he had to falsify company records or his
Speaker 1: people falsified company records to disguise the payments as legal fees.
Speaker 1: Bragg is arguing that not only is this a crime,
Speaker 1: but it's a felony crime because he did this, He
Speaker 1: falsified these records to these disguise these payments in order
Speaker 1: to further additional violations of the laws. And those additional
Speaker 1: violations of the laws, the actual like core crime here
Speaker 1: is that disguising under New York law, disguising these kind
Speaker 1: of payments in corporate records is a crime. It's typically
Speaker 1: a misdemeanor, but it's a felony if the business records
Speaker 1: were intended to obscure a second crime. And in this case,
Speaker 1: the second crime appears to be the use of funds
Speaker 1: to advance his like presidential campaign, which was in violation
Speaker 1: of campaign finance laws. So the core crime that makes
Speaker 1: the misdemeanor a felony is the fact that he was
Speaker 1: doing this in order to advance his presidential campaign, and
Speaker 1: thus like the payments that he was making were basically
Speaker 1: counted as part of the limited amount of money you
Speaker 1: can spend, you know, financing your campaign and he violated
Speaker 1: that right. That's that's the gist of it, as I understand,
Speaker 1: like what's actually being argued here.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that seems to be about the sides of it.
Speaker 4: Just for people who aren't familiar. Brag is Alvin Bragg?
Speaker 3: What the yeah?
Speaker 4: You da Manhattan da Okay?
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: What's really concerning about this is that if they can
Speaker 2: arrest Trump, that means they can arrest to any one
Speaker 2: of us.
Speaker 4: That's right.
Speaker 1: All the money that I've paid for people to hush
Speaker 1: up stories about it, including Stormy Daniels, you know. No,
Speaker 1: it's like people, there's a lot of talk about like
Speaker 1: is this a weak case or a strong case? None
Speaker 1: of us are lawyers, my my, I go kind of
Speaker 1: both ways about this. One of them is that Alvin
Speaker 1: Bragg is a guy who, you know, whatever he believes
Speaker 1: about this case, is also a prosecutor. That is a
Speaker 1: political position. Prosecuting someone and failing to get your man
Speaker 1: is bad for your career, and if that man is
Speaker 1: the president who you indict for the first time in
Speaker 1: living memory, that would be really bad for your So
Speaker 1: my assumption is that Brag at least believes he's got
Speaker 1: a really strong case otherwise he because this is a
Speaker 1: tremendous risk for him right now. Obviously, can Trump wriggle
Speaker 1: his way out of it, well, Trump is extremely good
Speaker 1: at wriggling his way out of things, and he has
Speaker 1: all of the money in the world for lawyers. So
Speaker 1: I think it would be foolish to say it's a
Speaker 1: slam dunk either way. People who are saying that, like,
Speaker 1: this is a weird thing to prosecute him for, I guess,
Speaker 1: but you know it does. I can see the logic
Speaker 1: that this guy that Bragg is kind of going with,
Speaker 1: and it's do I think this should be a felony?
Speaker 4: I guess.
Speaker 1: I don't care, as long as it does some damage
Speaker 1: to the man and causes him some like consternation, which
Speaker 1: is like the question, right, is this actually gonna harm him?
Speaker 4: But yeah, like that is the more debatable question, right,
Speaker 4: Like it's just gonna harm them or help him.
Speaker 1: There's there's a lot of talk about is this a
Speaker 1: political prosecution? And my general response to that is, well,
Speaker 1: like nearly all prosecutions are political, right, Like, even something
Speaker 1: that wouldn't seem like like a decision to go after
Speaker 1: a rapist, well, most rapists are not actually ever charged
Speaker 1: or brought through the justice system. So if you're a
Speaker 1: prosecutor choosing to do that in a specific case, there's
Speaker 1: a degree of politics factoring into your decision, even if
Speaker 1: it's just as as simple as like, if I take
Speaker 1: on this case and I lose it, it could harm
Speaker 1: my ability to move forward in the ways that I
Speaker 1: want to in my career. So the fact that now
Speaker 1: this is political perhaps a grander sense. I have no
Speaker 1: doubt that the fact that this is Donald fucking Trump
Speaker 1: and everything that's happened since twenty twenty has happened that
Speaker 1: he has been a party, and I have no doubt
Speaker 1: that that all factors into this. But I just don't
Speaker 1: see that as being like the fact that finally a
Speaker 1: prosecutor is making sort of a political prosecution of a
Speaker 1: man at the top of the hierarchy is not something
Speaker 1: that concerns me terribly.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I didn't think, Like, I'm more concerned that this
Speaker 4: seems to have propelled him to the front of the
Speaker 4: Republican race and that he's getting a bunch of donations
Speaker 4: off it than I am about any potential consequences. Like all, Yeah,
Speaker 4: actual indictment.
Speaker 2: It is certainly an interesting political move for dissentis to
Speaker 2: back Trump on this and not not like comply with extradition,
Speaker 2: not that it would ever get to that point, but
Speaker 2: that is still a move that dissent is made on purpose,
Speaker 2: which is an interesting point of a move considering a
Speaker 2: future candidacy, and it.
Speaker 1: Is let's talk about that a second, because obviously thirty
Speaker 1: four felony counts sounds like a lot. That is in
Speaker 1: fact quite a few felonies. But the at least the
Speaker 1: coverage I'm reading is like it's basically unheard of for
Speaker 1: someone to actually do jail time for this as a
Speaker 1: first defense, which I don't know, whatever, it's absolutely breathtaking.
Speaker 4: He doesn't have a single crime on him, giving me
Speaker 4: he's essentially a career criminal.
Speaker 1: Well, there there are continuing like there's like the potential
Speaker 1: for prosecution still from like that call he had with
Speaker 1: the Secretary of State of Georgia, which we'll talk about
Speaker 1: a little bit.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think there are a few sort of more
Speaker 4: serious there's a number of things that, Yeah, this may
Speaker 4: not be the last Trump criminal indictment that we see.
Speaker 2: Oh god, we can we can only hope.
Speaker 4: We can only hope because because.
Speaker 2: It only gets more funny from here, and that's the
Speaker 2: only reason to hope.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, well unless it doesn't.
Speaker 1: I'm seeing a lot of like panic from some people,
Speaker 1: certain certain folks in the progressive and kind of center
Speaker 1: left media sphere who are like, this is just handed
Speaker 1: Trump the nomination. This might have just handed Trump the election.
Speaker 1: From what I'm looking at and from the polling I'm
Speaker 1: looking at, I mean, I think there's a good chance
Speaker 1: this helps I mean, I think the certainly supports the
Speaker 1: argument that this will help him cinch the nomination. I
Speaker 1: don't really think that was super in doubt before, although
Speaker 1: he has definitely gained on Desantas since all of this,
Speaker 1: this whole process started, there is evidence I'm looking at
Speaker 1: a five thirty eight article right now, Trump's indictment might
Speaker 1: be making him more popular among Republicans. But kind of
Speaker 1: the point that's actually made is that the group that's
Speaker 1: that's getting more likely to back him is his base.
Speaker 1: Like maybe it's people who were softer on him because
Speaker 1: he didn't back you know, the j sixth people. Maybe
Speaker 1: some of them are just folks who kind of drifted
Speaker 1: away because you know, it's the years in between a
Speaker 1: presidential election and that's a natural thing. So it may
Speaker 1: have galvanized his base. He's certainly he's raised four or
Speaker 1: five million dollars.
Speaker 4: He's seven.
Speaker 1: Now he's claiming seven. I mean that seems real possible.
Speaker 1: He is saying that a significant chunk of it. I
Speaker 1: think like twenty percent might be more than that. Now
Speaker 1: we're like first time donations. That is what his people
Speaker 1: are claiming. That is not I have no way of
Speaker 1: knowing if those numbers are legitimate. What we can say
Speaker 1: is that the polling that we're seeing nationally does not
Speaker 1: back the idea that this is causing a sea change
Speaker 1: in the likelihood of Americans to support Donald Trump. About
Speaker 1: sixty nine percent of Americans, according to a very nice
Speaker 1: according to an economist you Go poll, say that in general,
Speaker 1: failing to report having spent campaign money on payments in
Speaker 1: order to keep someone silent about an issue to effect
Speaker 1: and affect the outcome of an election is a crime.
Speaker 1: About ninety percent Biden voters back this, while about fifty
Speaker 1: four percent of those who voted for Trump in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty said the same, Which is interesting. Now, that doesn't
Speaker 1: mean they also think that this is what Trump did, right,
Speaker 1: They're just saying they think that that is a crime.
Speaker 1: About fifty seven percent of Republicans according to that same
Speaker 1: or according to a Yahoo News yugav poll, about fifty
Speaker 1: seven percent of Republicans and Republican leaners said they would
Speaker 1: support Trump and a head to head against Ron DeSantis,
Speaker 1: who received thirty one percent. That's an increase in support
Speaker 1: for the president by about ten percent, but DeSantis has
Speaker 1: only gone down by like eight percent, so you can
Speaker 1: see like he basically what's happening is that this is
Speaker 1: causing people to flock from DeSantis to him, which is
Speaker 1: not kind of evidence that we're seeing like a broader
Speaker 1: national sweep. Quinnipiac University, n PR, PBS News Hour Marist
Speaker 1: Pole kind of broadly supported the idea that investigations into
Speaker 1: Trump are popular among Americans, more popular than not. At
Speaker 1: least about fifty six percent of Americans say the investigations
Speaker 1: into Trump are fair, about forty one percent say they're
Speaker 1: a witch hunt. In dependants are pretty split on the issue,
Speaker 1: but obviously like Democrats, wildly supportive Republicans very much against.
Speaker 1: Most college educated adults come down on this being fair,
Speaker 1: as do most gin Z and millennial people. Adults without
Speaker 1: a college education, White evangelicals and those in small towns
Speaker 1: are most likely to call it a witch hunt. An NPR,
Speaker 1: PBS News Hour Marist poll shows a plurality of Americans.
Speaker 1: Forty six percent believe Trump has done something illegal related
Speaker 1: to those investigations. Another twenty nine percent say Trump has
Speaker 1: done something unethical but not illegal, while only twenty three
Speaker 1: percent say he's done nothing wrong. Overall, fifty seven percent
Speaker 1: of Americans say that criminal charges filed against Trump should
Speaker 1: disqualify him from a presidential bid. Thirty eight percent say
Speaker 1: it should not. That would be an area where I
Speaker 1: actually agree with the Republicans. I don't think that having
Speaker 1: charges against you should disqualify you from running for president.
Speaker 1: But man, I think if you are a fucking murderer,
Speaker 1: you should be able to run for president. People have
Speaker 1: the right to run for and vote for whoever the
Speaker 1: fuck they want, and I think that that is a
Speaker 1: strong core belief of mine. Not going to vote for Trump,
Speaker 1: but I think the fact that he's getting charged with
Speaker 1: a bunch of felonies should not. If he was in jail,
Speaker 1: he should be able to run as people have in
Speaker 1: the past.
Speaker 4: In my opinion, Yeah, Eugene Debs famous Trump President, and
Speaker 4: I'm kind of more interested actually in I think the
Speaker 4: Republican response is fairly predictable, Like all of this we
Speaker 4: could have called that, you know, the moment they said
Speaker 4: they were indicting him the Democrats, Like, I'm look, I
Speaker 4: don't think the Democrats are ever going to do anything
Speaker 4: useful that will really change material conditions or make things
Speaker 4: much better for working people in this country. But the
Speaker 4: fact that it gives them the option to pivot back
Speaker 4: to like Orange Man bad as their only campaign, as
Speaker 4: their only promise, as their only sort of principle, which
Speaker 4: like they put forward as a reason to vote for them,
Speaker 4: is still bad. I think like it prevents even the
Speaker 4: mudicum of accountability that we have for all the shit
Speaker 4: that the Democrats have done and all the shit that
Speaker 4: they haven't done in the past what like three two,
Speaker 4: two and a half years since the election.
Speaker 1: I think that's so much broader of a problem than
Speaker 1: just dealing with this set of charges.
Speaker 4: I am.
Speaker 1: I am sympathetic to the idea if you just kind
Speaker 1: of look at history that you can't let people do
Speaker 1: the kind of shit Trump did and not try to
Speaker 1: fucking go after them and not hammer the sons of bitches, right,
Speaker 1: and this is this is not you know they went
Speaker 1: after after the Beer Hall putch, Hitler was jailed for
Speaker 1: like a year, So it doesn't mean that, like slaps
Speaker 1: on the wrist don't necessarily have much of a protective effect.
Speaker 4: But I don't know.
Speaker 1: I am so torn on this. I mean, obviously it's
Speaker 1: really funny. I think it if this is kind of
Speaker 1: the start of a series of prosecutions that's going to
Speaker 1: make this guy's life hell, and that might actually even
Speaker 1: force some consequences for him, then I think that's broadly speaking,
Speaker 1: a good thing, as long as it doesn't like disqualify
Speaker 1: him from the presidency, which I think would be a
Speaker 1: bad precedent.
Speaker 4: But I don't know.
Speaker 1: I'm broadly on team yeah, man, fuck him up, like
Speaker 1: we know this guy would have, and in fact has
Speaker 1: promised to if he gets into power again, use the state,
Speaker 1: use the Justice Department, remake it in his own image,
Speaker 1: and destroy his enemies. So I'm not against the idea that,
Speaker 1: like well, the dims, I tend to agree with you
Speaker 1: on most things, James, Like I don't believe the Democratic
Speaker 1: Party deserves to have an easy election right now, because
Speaker 1: they've failed. I mean, this is the week where we're
Speaker 1: getting the announcement from Biden that he's essentially taking kind
Speaker 1: of the soft answer to the GOP attack on trans
Speaker 1: people participating in sporting events. We were also about a
Speaker 1: week out from his most recent announcement on or maybe
Speaker 1: actually it's been more like a couple of weeks. On
Speaker 1: the border shit, we just had that horrible fire over
Speaker 1: in Juarez like a week or so ago. Like, the
Speaker 1: Biden administration has let a lot of people down in
Speaker 1: a number of ways. There's you know, some of the
Speaker 1: drilling shit that's about to start up again in Alaska
Speaker 1: is really unsettling to me. So I agree with you.
Speaker 1: I don't like the idea that they can make this
Speaker 1: be an Orange Man bad election again. And I'm hopeful
Speaker 1: that some of what we've seen, you know, particularly like
Speaker 1: the most recent election in Chicago, you know, maybe maybe
Speaker 1: there's kind of at least room at the state level
Speaker 1: for a lot more progressive to edge out kind of
Speaker 1: centrist dims and force some consequences that way. But I
Speaker 1: also am worried about, you know, this authoritarian who threatened
Speaker 1: to jail and murder a bunch of people. I care
Speaker 1: about and like I want, I want him to spend
Speaker 1: the rest of his life tangled up in that shit.
Speaker 4: I don't know that that's what this is going to be.
Speaker 1: You know, maybe they'll they'll fail miserably here, but I
Speaker 1: don't know. I do think the kind of panic that
Speaker 1: you're getting from some people that like this handed them
Speaker 1: the election, I'm not seeing evidence that that's the case.
Speaker 1: I think that maybe if this had happened in like
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen or even twenty twenty, sure you might get
Speaker 1: something like that. But at the point where at now,
Speaker 1: I just don't think new people are coming to Trump
Speaker 1: in numbers.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it very much makes sense for the liberal
Speaker 2: state apparatus to try to defend itself from what it
Speaker 2: sees as like an insurgent, reactionary factor, right, Like that
Speaker 2: that is how they view Trump and Trump's political power,
Speaker 2: so it makes sense they will use their own powers
Speaker 2: to try to resist that from gaining control. Again, whether
Speaker 2: or not you believe the state apparatus should exist at all,
Speaker 2: or how valid you view its existence, it makes sense
Speaker 2: what they're doing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm not I am.
Speaker 1: I mean, honestly, I am surprised they committed to it
Speaker 1: because there is in part because this is a tremendous
Speaker 1: risk for Brag and the people around him. Right if
Speaker 1: if this fails, which it very well might, you know,
Speaker 1: obviously that would have could have consequences for everybody, but
Speaker 1: you know, it could have really serious career consequences for
Speaker 1: this guy. And I am surprised that you've you've got
Speaker 1: someone willing to kind of throw the dice here, and
Speaker 1: I'm hopeful that maybe that inspires especially since this case,
Speaker 1: by the way, since I'm sure people are curious. No
Speaker 1: one I've looked at who knows more about the law
Speaker 1: than me expects this to hit trial quickly. Again, Trump
Speaker 1: has all of the money in the world, and this
Speaker 1: is like probably going to be a pretty winding process
Speaker 1: outside of just the normal problems of like a rich
Speaker 1: man is being accused of a series of crimes and
Speaker 1: has many lawyers. The Secret Service has a lot to
Speaker 1: say and when and how the actual trial part of
Speaker 1: this commences, and that has a chance of extending it.
Speaker 1: So my hope is that as this kind of winds on,
Speaker 1: maybe the fact that Bragg was willing to kind of
Speaker 1: take a shot in the dark here, so to speak,
Speaker 1: inspires some of these other prosecutors who have been, you know,
Speaker 1: poking at Trump to take a swing, and maybe with
Speaker 1: enough swings, you know, it'll be like that guy we
Speaker 1: had on Troy Hurtebes and his bear armor suit. You know,
Speaker 1: you get a bunch of bikers to surround him with
Speaker 1: two by fours and just swing.
Speaker 4: Until they're all broken and he's on the ground.
Speaker 2: It'll be like that scene from a Vengers Endgame, and
Speaker 2: all of the George Soros DA's are just.
Speaker 4: Garrison, absolutely not led by George.
Speaker 1: Sorry, I've never been angrier at you right now than
Speaker 1: bringing up that fucking Avenger scene.
Speaker 4: Yeah. So, did y'all watch Trump's video response.
Speaker 2: Oh, the one that played on all of the news
Speaker 2: stations except for MSNBC.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, we should talk. I actually did not watch it. Now.
Speaker 4: I attempted to avoid that as well.
Speaker 1: Actually, well I watched it yourself to that for us, Robert,
Speaker 1: I sure did, and I have a summary of the
Speaker 1: most salient parts. First off, I think that MSNBC made
Speaker 1: the right call. They kind of summarized what was going on,
Speaker 1: but like didn't just let him speak, you know, uninterrupted,
Speaker 1: for it was like fifteen minutes, something like twenty minutes.
Speaker 4: I've interrupted, Robert, would you like to be interrupted by
Speaker 4: some plugs for goods and services?
Speaker 1: Absolutely? You and buddy, Donald Trump is a master spokesman
Speaker 1: and these are master products.
Speaker 4: Get your goal. We're back.
Speaker 6: Uh.
Speaker 1: It's been such a glorious, glorious time. Everyone's everybody's really
Speaker 1: feeling powerful today, mighty anyway, Trump. So, I don't know,
Speaker 1: I watched this fucking thing. I guess my overall sentiment
Speaker 1: would be kind of boring, right, This is not the
Speaker 1: level of energy or the degree of kind of like
Speaker 1: manic violent undercurrents that like his American Carnage speech had,
Speaker 1: or even that like some of his more recent speeches
Speaker 1: in front of crowds have had. I don't see. There's
Speaker 1: so many people I've watched have takes on this who
Speaker 1: are like and that. One of the joys of Twitter
Speaker 1: is you'll see some guy who's I don't know, an
Speaker 1: analyst at some newspaper be like, wow, Trump was really
Speaker 1: low energy. He seems frightened. You know, I'm telling you,
Speaker 1: this is a scared man. He's worried about these charges.
Speaker 1: And then like someone else with almost the same CV
Speaker 1: at a different place will be like wow, Trump seems angry.
Speaker 1: You know, he's about to he's about to lash back.
Speaker 1: Everybody better be ready for his counter strike. And honestly,
Speaker 1: I just thought it was like kind of perfunctory. It
Speaker 1: didn't see he certainly didn't seem low energy, but he
Speaker 1: didn't seem like he had He didn't seem like he
Speaker 1: had much to say other than kind of meander over
Speaker 1: some of his some talking points that are at this
Speaker 1: point mostly pretty lukewarm. He kind of runs through at
Speaker 1: the start of this a laundry list of right wing
Speaker 1: talking points that like the Democrats spied on his campaign
Speaker 1: in twenty sixteen, that he was subjected to fraudulent investigations
Speaker 1: from the Russia and Ukraine stuff to the impeachments to
Speaker 1: the raid on mar A Lago. And then he broadens
Speaker 1: it by talking about how the FBI and the DOJ
Speaker 1: relentlessly pursue Republicans. And I was kind of expecting him
Speaker 1: to lean more into the I am your vengeance shit
Speaker 1: that he's been doing lately. He doesn't really as much
Speaker 1: as I had expected him to in this Like you can,
Speaker 1: he kind of like dips his toes into it, But
Speaker 1: I think he's so focused on what's happening to him
Speaker 1: that he doesn't he doesn't like push that as much
Speaker 1: as I was kind of expecting. So this is what
Speaker 1: comes after him like ranting about the DOJ and the
Speaker 1: FBI relentlessly pursuing Republicans. He then kind of like goes
Speaker 1: into the election fraud claimed stuff again. He gives a
Speaker 1: bunch of lies there about the election, then about there
Speaker 1: being like ballot stuffed and all that kind of shit.
Speaker 1: Then he like pivots straight from that to talking about
Speaker 1: how Twitter purportedly worked with the Biden family to hide
Speaker 1: information about Hunter Biden. This is like debunked Twitter file shit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: update on Twitter files. Matt to Beebe has just left
Speaker 1: Twitter because post substances subseec. We do know obviously like
Speaker 1: they did stuff like say hey, please remove this video
Speaker 1: that shows Hunter Biden's penis, but also like that's not
Speaker 1: number one is not supposed to be stuff that's on Twitter.
Speaker 1: That's kind of like crossing the revenge porn line. And
Speaker 1: you know, both sides made requests that things be removed.
Speaker 1: Trump claims, and I'm not sure where he says that.
Speaker 1: There's like like somebody calculated this, but I haven't been
Speaker 1: able to find who made this calculation that if Twitter
Speaker 1: hadn't intervened against him, he would have won the national
Speaker 1: election by seventeen points. And then he's like, and that's
Speaker 1: I didn't even need that many. You know, you could
Speaker 1: have dropped that by sixteen point eight and I still
Speaker 1: would have won, which is not true. Really again, it's
Speaker 1: all just lies.
Speaker 4: It goes on.
Speaker 1: He compares the United States to a third world country
Speaker 1: because of the twenty twenty election. He calls Alvin Bragg
Speaker 1: a Soros backed prosecutor, which he does a lot. It's
Speaker 1: not true, but brag. You know, people are using Soros
Speaker 1: backed as like at least a lot of the Nazis
Speaker 1: are are really leaping on that one.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they've gone back to Soros, Like yeah, they did
Speaker 4: the three parentheses for a while, like the Santis mentioned
Speaker 4: stories at least twice in his place. Yeah. Yeah, it's
Speaker 4: a big, big one for them. I mean, I think
Speaker 4: it is.
Speaker 2: It is it is a good move on their part
Speaker 2: to frame this prosecution as election interference like that is
Speaker 2: that is a smart move for them to get to
Speaker 2: funnel all of this via that narrative.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it helps keep the election fraud, all lies, lies, going.
Speaker 1: It also helps because there's been a number of like,
Speaker 1: you know, Chessa Buden who got booted in San Francisco
Speaker 1: recently is one example.
Speaker 4: But we've seen a number of like progressive.
Speaker 1: Prosecutors get elected by kind of dim and you know,
Speaker 1: center left coalitions, and that allows them to kind of
Speaker 1: connect this to one of the more successful talking points
Speaker 1: was is the purported like horrible violence in the streets
Speaker 1: of cities like San Francisco and whatnot, the like surgeon
Speaker 1: crime and liberal you know, cities with liberal prosecutors. Again,
Speaker 1: it's all bullshit, but it's not a bad tactic for
Speaker 1: tying into like, well, let's make a link between this
Speaker 1: thing Trump is claiming that's hurting him and this thing
Speaker 1: that people see every night on like Fox News that
Speaker 1: has been a pretty durable talking point for the right
Speaker 1: for several years.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 1: Trump makes it. There's a weird line in here where
Speaker 1: he says that like even the Rhinos and the Democrats
Speaker 1: agree that the case against him is bad.
Speaker 4: I'm not sure.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, I suspect he's just kind of
Speaker 1: like looking at Twitter chaff there. He then kind of
Speaker 1: derails a bit by talking about Afghanistan and all of
Speaker 1: the military equipment and lives lost in the same breath,
Speaker 1: and then from that he kind of one of the
Speaker 1: things that comes up over and over in this is
Speaker 1: him talking about how embarrassing this time is for our country,
Speaker 1: how all of our enemies are laughing at us, et cetera.
Speaker 1: Like that is a I mean, he's been making that
Speaker 1: point for a long time, but it definitely it's one
Speaker 1: of those things I think is a little bit of
Speaker 1: a window into the man's thought process, because he clearly
Speaker 1: thinks and perhaps I mean it must have a degree
Speaker 1: of resonance with his base, but the idea that like
Speaker 1: America has been embarrassed because he's facing charges and because
Speaker 1: of you know, Biden's failures as he sees it over
Speaker 1: in Afghanistan and elsewhere, Like, embarrassment is a big thing
Speaker 1: he tries to get across in this that like, you know,
Speaker 1: Lady Liberty's been caught with their fucking skirt up or
Speaker 1: something like that. It's a I don't know, it's interesting
Speaker 1: to me that that's such a focus for him. There's
Speaker 1: a couple of fun lines in the part about the military.
Speaker 1: He talks about how it's woke at the top, but
Speaker 1: under him, it was able to defeat Isis in four weeks, which, man,
Speaker 1: it took years, Like we know it took years.
Speaker 4: I was there for some of it. It was a
Speaker 4: large part of that was not Americans at all.
Speaker 1: But no, no, in a large part of it was
Speaker 1: not Americans at all. There's a weird moment where he
Speaker 1: talks about the investigation over his call with Selenski and
Speaker 1: then that call where he tried to force Georgia's Secretary
Speaker 1: of State to discard votes that he's being investigated for,
Speaker 1: where he's like, this is one of like the most
Speaker 1: beautiful Trump moments of the whole speech, because he's like,
Speaker 1: you know, that perfect call I had with Selensky, I
Speaker 1: told you all was a perfect call. Where my call
Speaker 1: with Georgia's secretary of state was even more perfect. It
Speaker 1: was the best call anybody's ever had. Nobody had a
Speaker 1: problem with it. Lots of guys were listening in and
Speaker 1: they all thought it was great.
Speaker 4: It's just.
Speaker 1: He can be such a funny man. It's not even insane.
Speaker 1: It's just like, I don't know, nobody else talks like that.
Speaker 1: Nobody else describes a phone call as perfect, right, like
Speaker 1: a normal And this is maybe there's a degree of
Speaker 1: Trump's success you can see in this, But like, no
Speaker 1: normal person being accused of like having attempted to interfere
Speaker 1: with an election during a phone call would describe the
Speaker 1: call as perfect. You know, a normal call politician would
Speaker 1: refute the claims against them, would say, you know, I
Speaker 1: never did this, I never did that. You know this
Speaker 1: is taken out of context or whatever. Trump's just like
Speaker 1: it was perfect. But you don't remember the last perfect
Speaker 1: call I told you about that people thought might have
Speaker 1: been a crime. Even more perfect. This is the most
Speaker 1: perfect phone call anyone's ever had. Yeah, then we get
Speaker 1: along derailment about the Biden, like, you know, the classified
Speaker 1: document shit that got him rated. He talks about how
Speaker 1: Biden's possession of classified documents was like the worst that
Speaker 1: anyone's ever done and was criminal because he was just
Speaker 1: the vice president. But the president's allowed to do it,
Speaker 1: but everybody does it, but the way Biden did is
Speaker 1: the worst that anybody did it. Yeah, it's like, I
Speaker 1: don't know, it's there. It's not like it's not an
Speaker 1: interesting Trump speech. I don't think he's like panicked or anything.
Speaker 1: I just kind of I don't know, maybe he's just
Speaker 1: sort of like checking off a thing on the to
Speaker 1: do box. But it's not it's not one of the
Speaker 1: it's not one for the speech books, right or for
Speaker 1: the history books. I don't know the speech books. That's
Speaker 1: not a that's not a thing. That's not a thing
Speaker 1: at all. There is a really fun moment where he's
Speaker 1: like kind of late in the speech, in between him
Speaker 1: complaining about Letitia James, he like points to his sons
Speaker 1: and he's like, I got two great sons, sons both
Speaker 1: doing really great. And then he's like and bear, and
Speaker 1: then as an afterthought, he's like, Baron's gonna do a
Speaker 1: great job too, someday.
Speaker 4: He's tall, an amazing father talking of told did you
Speaker 4: see that they do? Also, they faked a mugshot of
Speaker 4: him and made him six foot five? Who faked the
Speaker 4: mug shot? The Trump campaign faked a mug shot of
Speaker 4: him to sell much that just added like several inches
Speaker 4: to his A man with no insecurities.
Speaker 1: Trump a legalist arc. I'm not saying there's nothing to
Speaker 1: be concerned about in the right wing reaction here. It
Speaker 1: is worth kind of looking at the response that has
Speaker 1: occurred has largely been fucking nonsense circus shit. Right, At
Speaker 1: most of the big rallies, particularly in New York that
Speaker 1: have happened as a result of this, there have been
Speaker 1: more press on the ground than anyone on either side
Speaker 1: of things. Yeah, it's not it's just so far not
Speaker 1: pulling people out, you know. Do I think there's a
Speaker 1: chance of you know, isolated terrorist attacks as you know,
Speaker 1: by people who see themselves as defending Trump or democracy
Speaker 1: or whatever. Certainly not a zero percent chance. But in
Speaker 1: terms of like things that I think are likely to
Speaker 1: have a mass to stabilizing effect, I'm not seeing it yet.
Speaker 1: And I think a lot of that's due just to
Speaker 1: the fact that the Trump supporters who are kind of
Speaker 1: have the highest potential of being convinced to do that shit,
Speaker 1: are all scared as hell, both of the FEDS and
Speaker 1: of each other. The sheer number of them that have
Speaker 1: like turned not each other during the j sixth investigations
Speaker 1: like has means that whenever there's talk about doing another
Speaker 1: big series of rallies, it devolves in a lot of
Speaker 1: these online places into like, well, you know, this is
Speaker 1: probably being set up by the Feds. This is probably
Speaker 1: a honeypot to trap us, which is I don't know,
Speaker 1: it's not a situation. I would say you should rely
Speaker 1: on lasting forever, but that does kind of seem to
Speaker 1: be where we are right now.
Speaker 2: One other aspect of the right wing response that I
Speaker 2: think is worth mentioning is they have is some of
Speaker 2: some of their like propagandists and political people have made
Speaker 2: the promise that since since now, since that now there's
Speaker 2: been a precedent set for indicting for former presidents. Now
Speaker 2: now they finally are able to go after Democratic politicians
Speaker 2: whenever they want. And yeah, I just I just am
Speaker 2: worried that they're going to threaten us with a good time.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, And it's it's also like it's not just
Speaker 1: threatening us with a good time, because we have seen
Speaker 1: in Tennessee right now they're forcing two Democratic legislators out
Speaker 1: for their support of gun control and like you know.
Speaker 4: Black Democratic yeah too, black Democratic legislators.
Speaker 1: I'm not, you know, in line with most of the
Speaker 1: Democratic Party on gun control. But what is happening here
Speaker 1: is anti democratic bullshit like that is it is authoritarian.
Speaker 1: It is completely fucking unacceptable, and people ought to be
Speaker 1: out in this like a lot more ought to be done,
Speaker 1: and I think probably a lot more Like I don't
Speaker 1: this that's one of the thorny questions that actually does
Speaker 1: concern me, Like what do you do in a situation
Speaker 1: like this? What do the what kind of leverage do
Speaker 1: the Feds even potentially have? It certainly doesn't look like
Speaker 1: they're in the mood to do anything now, because I
Speaker 1: think that's the kind of that's the kind of thing
Speaker 1: we're going to see a lot more of in red
Speaker 1: states in order that what little resistance at listen, and
Speaker 1: that's concerning.
Speaker 2: They're not gonna go after someone like Obama, which frankly somebody,
Speaker 2: somebody should for the amount of that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, there should be charges against the man.
Speaker 1: There should be charges against Bush. Uh, you know, the doves,
Speaker 1: there should be some charges against Clinton. Fuck it, go
Speaker 1: after them, all right, yeah yeah, yeah, you dig up
Speaker 1: George H. W.
Speaker 4: Bush put them on trial as a corpse like that one.
Speaker 4: Pope Like, I'm on board.
Speaker 2: But no, they're gonna they're gonna end up going after
Speaker 2: there's like small like minority politicians who are like yeah,
Speaker 2: fighting for like reasonable things, you know.
Speaker 1: And who are doing things to actually jam up the
Speaker 1: works of kind of the march of far right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: authoritarian laws Red States exactly. And you know, I am
Speaker 1: sure that as that picks up pace, they will point
Speaker 1: out what's being done to Trumps a justification, But like
Speaker 1: people should be aware that it's not why they're doing it.
Speaker 1: They're doing it because it looks like it's going to
Speaker 1: work for them in Tennessee. And they did it in
Speaker 1: Tennessee for the reasons that had nothing to do with
Speaker 1: fucking Trump.
Speaker 4: Yeah, right, Yeah. If you want to talk about like
Speaker 4: what fascism makes a big part of it, is that
Speaker 4: weaponizing of the state apparatus, right, yes, against a position
Speaker 4: against you, whatever your escapegoat group, And like that does
Speaker 4: concern me for people living in Red State.
Speaker 1: Absolutely absolutely. I'm not saying there's nothing to be worried
Speaker 1: about from the right. I'm just saying, at the moment,
Speaker 1: when I'm looking at like the way I kind of
Speaker 1: conceive of a threat matrix, I don't see us in
Speaker 1: a more dangerous position as a result of Trump getting charged.
Speaker 1: And I think an argument could be made that it's
Speaker 1: a positive move.
Speaker 4: I really hope we get another nail gun guy. Oh man.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that fucking dude who tried who tried to solo
Speaker 1: the FBI with a nail gun.
Speaker 4: Maybe a net girl come in with like a jigsaw
Speaker 4: or a.
Speaker 1: Yeah no, no, no, no, I think I think ladders.
Speaker 1: I think it's it's it's time for like a ladder
Speaker 1: mob that that's that's what I'm excited to see. Ladders
Speaker 1: and like simple pulleys.
Speaker 4: It's getting pinned to a building with someone twenty feet
Speaker 4: away with a ladder. Make a make a tributchet judge,
Speaker 4: it's the Gorne has been thrown down.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's let's let's have a continuing series of competitions
Speaker 1: to see who can build like the most effective medieval
Speaker 1: siege equipment. I want to see some fucking scorpions up
Speaker 1: on the hill.
Speaker 4: You know I'm going to do? Is it Greek fire?
Speaker 4: Turkish fire?
Speaker 1: When you put yeah, I mean that really that's a boy.
Speaker 1: That's like the Hums debate. James, you don't.
Speaker 4: It's Cypress fire and we can be fine.
Speaker 1: I don't know where where you guys get any of
Speaker 1: their thoughts on the Trump arraignment, indictment, arrest et No.
Speaker 4: It's very funny. I did enjoy seeing that guy fall
Speaker 4: off his tour bike. That was a highlight of the
Speaker 4: week for me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there was a good video from the New York
Speaker 1: Protest of a guy falling off a tall bike.
Speaker 4: Yeah, shout out to skateboard.
Speaker 2: I will, I will, let's see, I will send send
Speaker 2: a few things to the chat. This is the signal
Speaker 2: chat that I feel like people are worth seeing. This
Speaker 2: is what I spent this is what I spent most
Speaker 2: of my day doing, is sending people these memes. I
Speaker 2: think it's important that.
Speaker 1: That is that is that Ruth bader Ginsburg with a
Speaker 1: biggie crown saying, tell Donald, I want him to know
Speaker 1: it was me, Garrison.
Speaker 4: Yes, that is No, you're joking. I if I if
Speaker 4: I actually see Ruth bend again for Funck's sake, Rakai
Speaker 4: with a pussy hat. Oh god, looks like brunches back
Speaker 4: on the menu. Boys. That one I do appreciate.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there was there was a good one that was
Speaker 2: like it was like the jailer dropping off Trump in
Speaker 2: Epstein's cell, all all of all of all of the
Speaker 2: lights go off, and then from the corner, a man
Speaker 2: in a dark cloak says Brandonson's his regard.
Speaker 4: What a wonderful time for memes.
Speaker 1: Well, everybody, that's our that's our episode on the Trump arrest,
Speaker 1: we figured we should we should talk about that to
Speaker 1: answer the question that so many people ask me, are
Speaker 1: we closeer to having a civil war? I don't know, man,
Speaker 1: it doesn't. It doesn't feel like this. This has moved
Speaker 1: the needle on that at all.
Speaker 2: The national divorce is happening any day now, any day now,
Speaker 2: I swear like.
Speaker 1: I think the thing that's worrying right now is, you know,
Speaker 1: not just kind of the low level series of exchanges
Speaker 1: of terror attacks and shootings and murders and stuff and
Speaker 1: just street violence that I do think is going to
Speaker 1: kind of continue to be a problem up through twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four, but also just like what we've been talking
Speaker 1: about in terms of Red states pushing for these increasingly
Speaker 1: really violent laws aimed at doing direct physical harm to
Speaker 1: small groups of people that they consider to be their
Speaker 1: enemies for whatever reason of identity. That is, like the
Speaker 1: increasing criminalization of groups of people in Red States, the
Speaker 1: flight of folks from those states, the fact that you
Speaker 1: are kind of seeing the country settle into two blocks
Speaker 1: that have wildly different legal systems that are often opposed
Speaker 1: to each other. That's a conflict that is absolutely happening.
Speaker 1: There's no denying that it's occurring. This is not a
Speaker 1: debatable thing, and I don't see the FEDS having any
Speaker 1: idea of how to fix this at the moment. We'll
Speaker 1: see where the elections go in twenty twenty four. The
Speaker 1: fact that Wisconsin that their Supreme Court election went well.
Speaker 4: Means a lot.
Speaker 1: It means that that's one st where the process that
Speaker 1: we're seeing happening in places like Florida and Tennessee. That
Speaker 1: is a significant amount of people protected from that. And
Speaker 1: it also means a lot for the twenty twenty four election.
Speaker 1: But it's we are in a really rough place still.
Speaker 1: I'm not like thinking we're in at the edge of
Speaker 1: seventeen seventy six point two or whatever the fuck the
Speaker 1: right way these day, Yeah, eighteen sixty.
Speaker 4: Five or whatever. Robert Evans is going to personally be
Speaker 4: the next John Brown, Yeah, I hopefully not, But I am.
Speaker 7: I am.
Speaker 1: I think I'd be really good at a being a
Speaker 1: terrible farmer.
Speaker 4: As you read, Yeah, ehh yeah, that picture of John
Speaker 4: Brown like leading the troops will remain one of my
Speaker 4: favorite pieces.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, no, no, he's got he's got a hell
Speaker 1: of a beard in that one. Yeah, I don't know,
Speaker 1: I think the threat, you know, contain in use. But
Speaker 1: broadly speaking, what's happened to Trump is either good or neutral,
Speaker 1: but certainly funny. And that's I think a good point
Speaker 1: to end on for the day.
Speaker 8: Agreed, Brandon sends his regards, Okay, everything's recording.
Speaker 9: My cat is grooming herself.
Speaker 4: So when I was the time, very great, but she
Speaker 4: just used that.
Speaker 9: As Okay, I mean, I'm fine with that.
Speaker 4: Whatever, Okay, let's do it. That's very true, is grooming herself,
Speaker 4: and that means that this is it could happen here.
Speaker 4: And I am James Stout and I'm joined by Sharen
Speaker 4: units yes, and not not her cat.
Speaker 9: She's just she's just rowdy and I have to really
Speaker 9: sometimes plan recording times around her schedule. And it's that's
Speaker 9: just the way my life is now, and that's yeah,
Speaker 9: that's the attention she deserves. None of this is important. Yeah,
Speaker 9: you're care but it's a bit of a serious one, sadly.
Speaker 9: So I want to talk more again about the border,
Speaker 9: something we've spoken about a little bit and something I
Speaker 9: kind of want to keep coming back to because things
Speaker 9: haven't really got any better. In fact, they've potentially got worse.
Speaker 9: So where I want to start is last month and
Speaker 9: we're recording this and what the fourth of April, so
Speaker 9: just over a week ago, I think a fire and
Speaker 9: a detation the twenty eighth it okay, yeah, what's that?
Speaker 4: Three? Yeah? A week ago? A week ago today, a
Speaker 4: fire in a detention center in Suda, Juada's killed forty
Speaker 4: one migrants being detained. There were than two dozen other
Speaker 4: people were seriously injured, and every single one of the
Speaker 4: about one hundred people detained in the migrant detention center
Speaker 4: was hurt in the fire. The reason that every single
Speaker 4: person was hurt became clear and a video obtained by
Speaker 4: Texas Public Radio and later confirmed by the government in Mexico.
Speaker 4: It shows two people dressed as guards rush into the
Speaker 4: camera frame. You can see people in the cells just
Speaker 4: really pulling and kicking and beating on the bars. The
Speaker 4: guards sort of run up to the doors, but they
Speaker 4: don't really appear to make any effort to open them
Speaker 4: or to let the people out of the cells. Instead,
Speaker 4: they hurry away as clouds of smoke begin to fill
Speaker 4: the corners of the cells. Gradually, the smoke fills up
Speaker 4: the whole screen until you can't see anything else. Than
Speaker 4: the men in the cells are left to die.
Speaker 9: It's horrifying.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's one of the worst deaths that's available to
Speaker 4: a human being. And the fact that people who are
Speaker 4: already incredibly desperate and have taken huge risks to get
Speaker 4: there and died like literally yards from the United States
Speaker 4: border is just it's almost kind of unfathomably cruel. But
Speaker 4: what is in a way crueler is this statement made
Speaker 4: by the US Ambassador to Mexico, Ken Salazar. He said
Speaker 4: the tragedy illustrated the dangerous grifts in traveling north, and
Speaker 4: he cited the loss of life in two recent smuggling
Speaker 4: incidents in San Antonio in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas.
Speaker 4: These cases, he said, are a reminder of the risks
Speaker 4: of irregular migration. But what we're talking about here is
Speaker 4: in a consequence of irregular migration, really right, because these
Speaker 4: people weren't in the hands of criminals or coyotes or cartels,
Speaker 4: that they were in the hands of the Mexican government
Speaker 4: when they died. And for him to blame this on
Speaker 4: irregular migration, I think is very indicative of the way
Speaker 4: the bad aministration has approached migration. Policy, which is to
Speaker 4: try and always obfuscate and shirk the responsibility for the
Speaker 4: cruel things that it's doing, for the consequences of its
Speaker 4: policies and its actions, which I want to get into more.
Speaker 4: I don't want to linger on this fire too much
Speaker 4: because a it's onfathomably awful and like I don't think
Speaker 4: it I don't. I think we need to spend hours
Speaker 4: and hours like going over something for people to know
Speaker 4: that there is no situation in which the government should
Speaker 4: burn fucking forty people alive that like it's inexcusable. We
Speaker 4: know that, like it was. The shelter was set up
Speaker 4: in twenty nineteen, and I want to get into why
Speaker 4: this shelter, which seems to have been a pretty terrible
Speaker 4: condition to begin with, was set up in twenty nineteen,
Speaker 4: Why people who claim to the United States to try
Speaker 4: and have a better life for safe for life, ended
Speaker 4: up in a shelter in Mexico, and how we've created
Speaker 4: a system where people keep dying at our southern border. Right,
Speaker 4: some of this will be stuff we've covered before. If
Speaker 4: people have listened to the other stuff I've done on
Speaker 4: the border, if people have listened to the Butterfly Sanctuary episodes.
Speaker 4: They'll be familiar with some of Biden's border policies, but
Speaker 4: I wanted to address these.
Speaker 9: Did you see that they lowered the death toll from
Speaker 9: forty to thirty eight? I guess after hospital visits, Like
Speaker 9: that's the one part that I've read that is nice
Speaker 9: so far as.
Speaker 4: That's yeah, that's good. I've seen thirty eight, thirty nine,
Speaker 4: and forty one. It wasn't sure what the exactly, so
Speaker 4: thirty eight is the news.
Speaker 9: Right now, I'm reading thirty eight after it was it
Speaker 9: was forty and it was lowered to thirty eight.
Speaker 4: Okay, well two people were re animated.
Speaker 9: Yeah, I mean it's I mean, it's just like they're
Speaker 9: probably a terrible condition they're having, like life changing if
Speaker 9: not like all, like it's just terrible now.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And like access to care for those people, I
Speaker 4: mean those people may have access to care, right because
Speaker 4: what happened was high profile with the news, but like
Speaker 4: generally access to care for people like I have seen
Speaker 4: I've seen a person die because they don't have access
Speaker 4: to their medicines that are very cheap or very easily available.
Speaker 4: Like again, like we are talking feet, like I could
Speaker 4: throw a tennis ball into the United States and where
Speaker 4: it was stilling. And that's because the system treats people
Speaker 4: like numbers, not people.
Speaker 9: Yeah, migration center is like a jail, you know what
Speaker 9: I mean.
Speaker 4: It doesn't even Yeah, it's like an old timey fucking
Speaker 4: Western jail with people crammed into cells with you know,
Speaker 4: like legit bars on the walls. So shelter conditions in
Speaker 4: Mexican detention are often very poor, and those conditions have
Speaker 4: been exacerbated by something called Title forty two. People have
Speaker 4: probably heard about Title forty two a lot. There's a
Speaker 4: lot to say about Title forty two, but very briefly,
Speaker 4: it's a trumpier of public health policy that invokes a
Speaker 4: public health rule to push asylum seekers out the US
Speaker 4: and into Mexico, regardless of whether or not they might
Speaker 4: legally qualify for asylum. This shelter was stood up as
Speaker 4: a consequence of something called the Migrant Protection Protocol. People
Speaker 4: call it the Migrant Persecution Protocol because that's more accurate.
Speaker 9: But I was going to say, like, Wow, doing a
Speaker 9: great job with that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Like people enjoy being wrong about George or well,
Speaker 4: but this shit is perfectly or welly in Oh yeah,
Speaker 4: to call that policy which kills little fucking children. The
Speaker 4: migroant protectional policy is is dark they called. It's often
Speaker 4: called remain in Mexico as well, which is what it does.
Speaker 4: It requires people to remain in Mexico while their asylum
Speaker 4: claim is processed, despite the fact that this might not
Speaker 4: be a safe country for them, and that this might
Speaker 4: violate various international laws and conventions on asylum, but the
Speaker 4: US doesn't subscribe to all of those. As we're going
Speaker 4: to find out now. Title forty two has been through
Speaker 4: some legal ping pong recently, right with Biden's sort of
Speaker 4: trying to get rid of it, also defind of getting
Speaker 4: caught a bunch of conservative states suing to keep it.
Speaker 4: So it's explained a little bit of where we're at
Speaker 4: with Title forty two right now. It's actually set to
Speaker 4: expire on May the eleventh. The Biden administration is rolling
Speaker 4: out plans that will continue to restrict migrant access after
Speaker 4: May the eleventh, because they're concerned about like a large
Speaker 4: influx of migrants, which I just want to point out
Speaker 4: was always going to fucking happen when you like push
Speaker 4: people just the other side of your fictional line in
Speaker 4: the sand, and at some point you're going to have
Speaker 4: to start, because at some point, Mexico is already the
Speaker 4: third most popular country in the world for asylum, and
Speaker 4: you can't force this all on them. So since it
Speaker 4: was first implemented in twenty twenty, the government has used
Speaker 4: Title forty two to expel migrants from the US Mexico
Speaker 4: border nearly two point seven million times. That doesn't mean
Speaker 4: you will see these statistics quoted constantly, credulously by people
Speaker 4: who don't understand what the fuck they're talking about, and
Speaker 4: it really makes me angry. That doesn't mean two point
Speaker 4: seven million people, right, Because Title forty two makes people
Speaker 4: cross more than once. It creates this kind of loop
Speaker 4: where DHS right normally CBP or a border patrol sorry,
Speaker 4: picks people up and dumps them back in Mexico without
Speaker 4: processing them. And those people are now in a place
Speaker 4: they don't know, they don't have any family, that have
Speaker 4: any hope, they don't have any money, and all they
Speaker 4: do is is kick their heels until they can find
Speaker 4: a way to cross again, or someone to cross them again.
Speaker 4: And sometimes people who are facilitating those crossings will offer
Speaker 4: them unlimited crossings, so they they'll pay someone to smuggle
Speaker 4: them across, right, and that person will say, well, you
Speaker 4: get unlimited crossings.
Speaker 9: Like I didn't even realize. I didn't know it was
Speaker 9: so like standard. They're like, Okay, this is gonna happen.
Speaker 9: You're gonna get a limited crossing, you know what I mean.
Speaker 9: Like there's like they're expecting it to be this like
Speaker 9: perpetual loop.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean they a few years ago, maybe they
Speaker 4: wouldn't have done. But another way that this is sometimes
Speaker 4: termed a catch and release, which they're not fucking fish.
Speaker 4: You shouldn't do that to fish either. It's not really
Speaker 4: nice to fish.
Speaker 9: But it's humanizing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's extremely fucking dehumanizing, right, And what it does
Speaker 4: and what I've seen, what I'm not it's not like
Speaker 4: a unique insight of mine, is that it forces people
Speaker 4: to cross in more and more dangerous areas. Like you
Speaker 4: combine that with a wall and the fact that like
Speaker 4: it's very well documented that the Trump administration and wanted
Speaker 4: to maximize the amount of miles of wall that built.
Speaker 4: If you remember, in one of the presidential debates, he
Speaker 4: made a claim about a certain number of miles of
Speaker 4: a new wall he built. Yeah, he was just speaking
Speaker 4: out of his ass I foied it like the next day,
Speaker 4: and they were like they provided a number of different
Speaker 4: numbers or many of which relied heavily on repairing existing
Speaker 4: border fence, but they just went like hammer and Tong
Speaker 4: was trying to build new sections of wall to include
Speaker 4: skipping areas where it was harder to build valleys, mountains,
Speaker 4: that kind of thing. Right, So what this wall does
Speaker 4: is it forces people through the areas where it's hardest
Speaker 4: to cross, and those are the areas where it's easiest
Speaker 4: to die. And so these people are now forced to
Speaker 4: make risky and risky of crossings to try and avoid
Speaker 4: getting caught, or to wait in Mexico where they are
Speaker 4: at a very high risk of abduction or sexual assault,
Speaker 4: extortion or violence. Right, And will come on to maybe
Speaker 4: a couple of those stories later, just from people I've
Speaker 4: talked to. The result of this policy is that border
Speaker 4: cities in Mexico are flooded with migrants, and often with
Speaker 4: soldiers sent there to supposedly keep the peace. Last month,
Speaker 4: the Mexican National Guard and the immigration authorities raided a
Speaker 4: hotel full of Venezuelan migrants in Hualez. Local news applets
Speaker 4: reported that the migrants there'stly young men threw stones at
Speaker 4: the officials and there broad ensued and eventually they called
Speaker 4: off the raid. In another incident, authorities raided the church
Speaker 4: and dragged off a number of Venezuelan migrants who have
Speaker 4: been given sanctuary there. Some were beaten, and one advocate
Speaker 4: said they were essentially tortured. This prompted, yeah, this is horrific, right,
Speaker 4: like a lot of so a lot of the young
Speaker 4: men in the it was all men in the detention
Speaker 4: center that caught fire, and most of them were from Venezuela,
Speaker 4: place where I've lived in Venezuela. I have a lot
Speaker 4: of sympathy for those people.
Speaker 9: And yeah, she actually I found like a breakdown. I
Speaker 9: guess if there is thirteen Hundurians, twelve Soans, twelve Venezuelans
Speaker 9: are Colombian and an Ecuadorian, So I mean even that's crazy,
Speaker 9: like there's so many people from all of those countries.
Speaker 9: It's I don't know.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we'll see a bit later that there are certain pathways,
Speaker 4: like for Venice Whalen people, there are some pathways that
Speaker 4: don't exist through other people that they're not insufficient and
Speaker 4: they're there. How do I say this unfair? But sort
Speaker 4: of they exist. But yeah, those people from from those countries.
Speaker 4: We see a lot of Haitian people at the border
Speaker 4: here too, but yeah, that's a pretty common kind of
Speaker 4: like border mix up, right of folks. Unfortunately, often you
Speaker 4: won't see Haitian folks that there are sort of segregations
Speaker 4: even within the migrant community, and often Haitian folks is
Speaker 4: kind of segregated out, which is which.
Speaker 9: Is unfortunately, Like I thought the horror as well as
Speaker 9: kind of that the population breakdown, Like wouldn't the Haitian
Speaker 9: border crossing be like somewhere else?
Speaker 4: I don't think to say it's it's not dumb at all.
Speaker 4: I don't know what the breakdown. I know there are
Speaker 4: Haitian people in Juaes. I know there are the Cuban
Speaker 4: folks in Juila's too, and they've kind of some of
Speaker 4: them have stayed in Juarez and established kind of their
Speaker 4: own communities and that's had some sort of some negative
Speaker 4: results for antimagrant feeling and Juadas. From what I've heard,
Speaker 4: I know there are a lot of Haitian folks in Tijuana.
Speaker 4: A lot of the Haitian people come via Brazil where
Speaker 4: they've spent time like preparing for the Olympics that were
Speaker 4: there and building stadium and stuff. So a lot of
Speaker 4: them tell me they've come up from Brazil. And then
Speaker 4: obviously with like increased violence in Haiti, now you'll see
Speaker 4: more Haitian people. Again, there's a decent Haitian community that
Speaker 4: also is established in Tijuana and has it's that is
Speaker 4: their home now, right, Like I.
Speaker 9: Had no idea to be honest, so now I know,
Speaker 9: I'll accept being a little bit dumb.
Speaker 4: So everyone not at all, not at all. It's not
Speaker 4: very well reported on, and I think it's honestly people
Speaker 4: have stopped reporting on it since twenty twenty as well,
Speaker 4: like since like Orange Man bad stop being like the
Speaker 4: prevailing like mass media message, no one gives a fuck
Speaker 4: about microsof anymore, Like there's a pronounced drop off when
Speaker 4: a cross of people and I don't know, there are
Speaker 4: some very good reporters, of course, you know, we've spoken
Speaker 4: to some of them in Tijuana and in San Diego.
Speaker 4: But yeah, you just there was a lot of parachute
Speaker 4: reporting on migration in the Trump era, some of it
Speaker 4: very bad, some of it by people who didn't have
Speaker 4: the language skills to be working there and didn't understand
Speaker 4: what was respectful and what wasn't and things like that.
Speaker 4: So I have strong feelings about how the migrant caravan
Speaker 4: in twenty eighteen was reported on, for instance. But yeah,
Speaker 4: you'll definitely see a ton of Haitian people and that
Speaker 4: Biden has gone exceptionally hard. I'll I'll include a link
Speaker 4: at the bottom of like a piece I wrote for
Speaker 4: NBC about Biden's anty Haitian bullshit but like exceptionally hard,
Speaker 4: specifically against the Haitian. So so you can find a
Speaker 4: tweet from the Haitia the United States Embassy in Haiti,
Speaker 4: where it's just got a picture of Biden, and I
Speaker 4: think it says, don't come I'm paraphrasing. Yeah, yeah, no,
Speaker 4: it's wild, Like you don't see this in other countries either,
Speaker 4: even you know they've made like they've made there's a
Speaker 4: ton of special exemptions for people from Ukraine. Right, it's
Speaker 4: hard not to see.
Speaker 9: That, of course, yeah, of course it's Ukraine.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, right, because it's also.
Speaker 9: Great, but also you have to look at the like
Speaker 9: why did that happen?
Speaker 4: Right, And if we can't like express like Russian bombs
Speaker 4: kill kids in the m R two. Russian bombs kill
Speaker 4: kids all over fucking Africa, and if we can't have
Speaker 4: solidarity with them, or we can with Ukrainian people, then
Speaker 4: it's hard for me not to see that as to
Speaker 4: do with their skin color. Yeah, then that is bullshit,
Speaker 4: and so yeah, Title forty two were end in May
Speaker 4: when the COVID Public Health Emergency Order expires. Biden said
Speaker 4: earlier on that he would end Title forty two. He
Speaker 4: then faced these lawsuits from conservative states, but at the
Speaker 4: same time that by the administration fiercely defended Title forty
Speaker 4: two litigation brought by the ACLU and other groups challenging
Speaker 4: the policy. Even the CDC right the CDC Center for
Speaker 4: the Dida's Control was like, now the shit isn't necessary
Speaker 4: and it's cool, we should stop. The government has argued
Speaker 4: the public health concerns letting migrants into the country due
Speaker 4: to continued threat of COVID nineteen outweigh the possible harms
Speaker 4: done to migrants who return to cities like nogals Ijuana,
Speaker 4: Like you don't even need a COVID test to fly
Speaker 4: into this country now, I don't think right, Like if
Speaker 4: my family come visit me, so the end of the
Speaker 4: emergency kind of makes that a moot point, right, Like
Speaker 4: you can't have a public health order to protect us
Speaker 4: from it, which you're saying isn't a problem anymore. But
Speaker 4: the damage that this has done will take years to rectify,
Speaker 4: and the backlog that it's created is already being used
Speaker 4: as an excuse to do more cruel and inhumane things
Speaker 4: to people who are just looking for a fair crack
Speaker 4: at life. Srean, do you know what won't build a
Speaker 4: wall around itself forced people to risk their life to
Speaker 4: get here?
Speaker 9: You tell me, James, what is it?
Speaker 4: It is these silver coins that have Ronald Reagan on them,
Speaker 4: who probably outflanks our current immigration policy. Guy, yep, Uncle
Speaker 4: ron Okay, we're back, Thank you, Ronald Reagan. Or maybe
Speaker 4: it was a gold advert. I hope it was a
Speaker 4: gold eavic so I know that everyone enjoys so so much.
Speaker 4: Please don't message Sophie about the fucking gold things.
Speaker 9: We know, yeah, we know, we know, trust us, we know.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: It's also it's just funny. It's funny to me that
Speaker 4: someone is buying gold adverts, and presumably none of our
Speaker 4: listeners are buying gold, and yet I have healthcare now.
Speaker 9: I mean it must be working somewhere, like you know
Speaker 9: what I mean, why how else would they afford to
Speaker 9: keep advertising. I don't know, someone's doing something.
Speaker 3: It's one guy.
Speaker 4: If you are that steadfast listener who buys everything we advertise,
Speaker 4: like so much for our projects. We salute your dedication.
Speaker 4: So Biden hasn't really come up with a distinctive immigration
Speaker 4: policy of his own yet. Mostly he's just kind of
Speaker 4: failed to undo the damage Trump is done created a
Speaker 4: two TiO system in which white Ukrainians get to slip
Speaker 4: the line while back and brown migrants weight terrible conditions,
Speaker 4: And for some reason, he's gone as hard as fuck
Speaker 4: as he can to stop patients coming here, which the
Speaker 4: reason might be pretty obvious to some of you. Oh
Speaker 4: and we're still building the wall, but we're calling it
Speaker 4: a barrier now of course. Yeah, it's totally different brand,
Speaker 4: yeah bread, Yeah, it doesn't have a little plate on
Speaker 4: the top. It's a slightly different shape. You can, like,
Speaker 4: if you scroll back far enough on my Twitter, you
Speaker 4: can find comparison pictures of the Biden barrier and the
Speaker 4: Trump Wall.
Speaker 9: But it's like literally just like a glow up, like
Speaker 9: like a terrible horrifying glow up.
Speaker 4: Yes, yeah, the walls having its a little it's a
Speaker 4: freedom wall now or something. But if you don't follow
Speaker 4: the Butterfly Sanctuary as well, high value Twitter account sometimes
Speaker 4: stealing automatic rifles, not stealing, i should say, but National
Speaker 4: Guard leaving automatic rifles on our property that she takes
Speaker 4: care of. But yeah, you can listen to our batter
Speaker 4: Fly Sanctuary episodes for more on like the Biden barrier.
Speaker 4: But we're more than halfway through Biden's term now, and
Speaker 4: we're beginning to see him take aim at something resembling
Speaker 4: a border policy on his own at the same time,
Speaker 4: because we're more than halfway through his term, or perhaps
Speaker 4: just because he never intended to fulfill his campaign policies
Speaker 4: about being kind to migrants, he's tried to move towards
Speaker 4: the center, and the center of US politics is like
Speaker 4: somewhere to the right of Attila the Hund these days.
Speaker 4: So he's been hit pretty hard by the Republicans on immigration,
Speaker 4: and it's worth pointing out that he's been hit pretty
Speaker 4: hard on largely on just shit that's made up or
Speaker 4: misunderstandings of this. The number of interactions that border patrol
Speaker 4: has or wilful or on wilful, I don't know, but
Speaker 4: many of the cretiques are in pretty bad faith. But nonetheless,
Speaker 4: like it's been an area where they've criticized him, right,
Speaker 4: And so he's trying to move towards the quote unquote
Speaker 4: center on that with these new policies. So he's proposed
Speaker 4: that his administration has proposed something called a transit band,
Speaker 4: So transit band, people might remember, And the initial kind
Speaker 4: of proposal of this was made by Stephen Miller due
Speaker 4: to looks like a lollipop and also like a white nationalist.
Speaker 9: That's a great.
Speaker 4: His head is too big for his neck, he's shiny. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: that's not the only thing that's wrong with him. So
Speaker 4: this proposal would render migrants ineligible for US asylum if
Speaker 4: they crossed a sudden border illegally after failing to ask
Speaker 4: for humanitarian refuge in another country they traveled through, such
Speaker 4: as Mexico. Right, So unless you somehow come straight to
Speaker 4: the US, which you can't do because you can't get
Speaker 4: on a flight to the US without the correct travel documents,
Speaker 4: then you'd have to travel through another country. Right, And
Speaker 4: they're saying that you should apply for asylum there In practice,
Speaker 4: this would bar most Nonxican asylum seekers unless he took
Speaker 4: advantage to one of the programs that Biden has proposed
Speaker 4: to allow people in Nicaragua, Cuba, Haiti, and Venezuela with
Speaker 4: a US sponsor under a humanitarian parole program where they
Speaker 4: apply from their home country and then get to credentials
Speaker 4: to travel, so they'd stay in Cuba or whatever. This
Speaker 4: might not be safe for some people to do in
Speaker 4: those countries, but they have a means to get here
Speaker 4: and it's metered I think at thirty thousand a month.
Speaker 4: Those people from those same countries and during the same conditions,
Speaker 4: if they came here on their own and then applied
Speaker 4: to asylum as is, they're right under US law once
Speaker 4: they entered the country right. And it's worth noting that
Speaker 4: like most people coming in that wanted to apply for asylum,
Speaker 4: so they wanted to turn them That might have changed
Speaker 4: it law with Title forty two, but previously people were
Speaker 4: seeking to turn themselves in right and say hey, I'm
Speaker 4: here to apply for asylum. They can now be expelled
Speaker 4: under this legislation.
Speaker 10: Right.
Speaker 4: So if they don't use this or they don't have
Speaker 4: a US sponsor, which kind of creates. You shouldn't have
Speaker 4: to know someone in America right to come here and
Speaker 4: avail yourself the basic human rights.
Speaker 9: Yeah, it's just it's it's purposely like getting people out
Speaker 9: of the group that can go in, you know what
Speaker 9: I mean, Like it's excluding people.
Speaker 4: But yeah, just like yeah, right, thousands of people. Yeah,
Speaker 4: and this legislation now allows them for them to be
Speaker 4: for explanited processing and expelsion. If people do want to
Speaker 4: apply for asylum at the Southern border, they need to
Speaker 4: use an app which is called CBP one.
Speaker 9: That's just the craziest thing I've heard in a while.
Speaker 4: So yeah, it is.
Speaker 9: Like I'm on another planet, like what what I don't know.
Speaker 4: It is incredibly powerful, like Libraine to be like, don't worry,
Speaker 4: We've made the app. We've got you. Like it assumes
Speaker 4: that people have the app. It's not available in all
Speaker 4: the languages that people speaking, like of course, not like
Speaker 4: last time I was at the border, like I had
Speaker 4: I worked with a colleague who spoke a Romo. I
Speaker 4: speak French his Spocationian Creole, Spanish, Russian, Ukrainian, right, like,
Speaker 4: like those are people I interviewed in in an afternoon,
Speaker 4: you know, there are dozens of languages, so the app
Speaker 4: isn't available in those languages. The app is a giant cluster. Fuck,
Speaker 4: it doesn't work. It crashes all the time. Like you
Speaker 4: can find like little kids, little kids who come up
Speaker 4: from Tijuana to go to school, who like can tell
Speaker 4: you ten things that are wrong about this app. But
Speaker 4: you can also find people who make six figure salaries
Speaker 4: in Washington.
Speaker 9: You think it's great, right, regardless, it's a fucking app
Speaker 9: on a fucking device that is like, like, I don't know,
Speaker 9: I think it's just so.
Speaker 4: Lazy.
Speaker 9: It's lazy and stupid.
Speaker 4: I don't like it. Yes, it is both of those things,
Speaker 4: and assumes people have a cell phone, which is.
Speaker 9: Yes, very elitist, Yes exactly.
Speaker 4: Yeah, like it maybe your phone could get stolen being
Speaker 4: fucking someone can book all these train games, like there's
Speaker 4: a million ways. It assumes you've got fucking broadband collector liberty,
Speaker 4: you know, Wi Fi, all these things. It's yeah, it's
Speaker 4: just insane, Like it's amazing how detached one can be
Speaker 4: from reality and still be the person in charge. Yeah,
Speaker 4: what if no people in charge? So migrants crossing the
Speaker 4: border without documents can be subjected to explicited removal, as
Speaker 4: it said, the proposed regulations indicate the migrants from Cuba, Nicaraguo,
Speaker 4: and Venezuela, who generally cannot be deported due to strain
Speaker 4: relations with the governments there, would face deportation to Mexico instead,
Speaker 4: which fucking just again makes someone else's problem, right. A
Speaker 4: dozen Senate Democrats called the proposed asylum restrictions unlawful and counterproductive.
Speaker 4: They joined thousands of migrant advocates and organizations, including the
Speaker 4: United Nations Refugee Agency, in employing the administration to immediately
Speaker 4: withdraw the regulation. So there's a period of public comment,
Speaker 4: which is what's happening at the moment. Right, So he's
Speaker 4: found a policy which no one likes, both from the
Speaker 4: right end from the people are allowed to live with dignity.
Speaker 4: So that's hard to do.
Speaker 9: That's hard to do.
Speaker 4: Well, you're never he's never gonna have fucking like, I
Speaker 4: don't know what they're like tramplicants want, but like it's
Speaker 4: some version of machine guns on top of a wall
Speaker 4: killing little children. And you could just be a decent person,
Speaker 4: or you could try and plicate fucking psychopathic Fox News people.
Speaker 4: So Mexico is already the third most popular destination for
Speaker 4: people seeking asylum in the world after United States in Germany.
Speaker 4: In Mexico, asylum seekers have to stay in the state
Speaker 4: where they apply, and that's resulted in large numbers people
Speaker 4: being concentrated in uh placed like Tapatula on the southern
Speaker 4: border with Guatemala, and that creates like an infrastructure issue there, right,
Speaker 4: which it's also worth I'm sure people are well aware that.
Speaker 4: I wonder why all these countries have been fucking destabilized, right,
Speaker 4: I wonder if there was a country which helped do
Speaker 4: that for deca their home, Like why can't they go
Speaker 4: back home?
Speaker 9: Like?
Speaker 4: Yeah, what I mean there? Yeah, if only the clash
Speaker 4: had written a song about its understand better. So Mexico
Speaker 4: granted sixty one percent of asylum requests from January through
Speaker 4: November last year, compared to forty six percent in the
Speaker 4: USA for fiscal year twenty twenty two. That is an
Speaker 4: increase of a low of twenty seven percent under Trump,
Speaker 4: but it's still suggested more than half the people get
Speaker 4: sent back right where the fact that they get sent
Speaker 4: back to if they can't reliably go back to their
Speaker 4: home country safely. Mexico abides by something called the Katahena Declaration,
Speaker 4: which promises a safe haven twenty one's threatened by generalized violence,
Speaker 4: foreign aggression, internal conflicts, massive violation of human rights, or
Speaker 4: other circumstances which have seriously disturbed public order. The US
Speaker 4: currently observes a narrow definition that requires a person to
Speaker 4: have been individually targeted. That's a distinct thing. Right for
Speaker 4: limited reasons are spelled out in the UN Refugee Convention.
Speaker 4: But it appears that the bad administration has plans to
Speaker 4: retrain DHS agents, and they're currently telling them, or they
Speaker 4: seem to be proposing to tell them. I should say,
Speaker 4: to let migrants enter the US to pursue protection only
Speaker 4: if they qualify under the International Convention against Torture, which
Speaker 4: is an absurdly.
Speaker 11: High yeah, like against torture. Wow, yeah, I thought you
Speaker 11: were going to say after all that. Yeah, it's it's
Speaker 11: a ridiculously high bar. Like there are very real things
Speaker 11: you could be afraid of. Like I've spoken to people
Speaker 11: who've have escaped like forced sex work, right, who've had
Speaker 11: members of their family killed, threats made to their own lives.
Speaker 4: None of those. Maybe the forced sex work is torture
Speaker 4: but maybe some of those things wouldn't meet that bar.
Speaker 4: But I think any reasonable human being, right, if you
Speaker 4: met someone in the street and they said, hey, you know,
Speaker 4: someone so killed my daughter and my father and my uncle,
Speaker 4: and they said they're going to kill me, you'd say, like,
Speaker 4: come into my house, I'll look after you. But there's
Speaker 4: a country we're saying, fuck you, You're on your own,
Speaker 4: And yeah, that's that's not how you be a good neighbor.
Speaker 4: It's also on the inside of the administration. Recently has
Speaker 4: reported that the Biden administration is considering reviving the practice
Speaker 4: of detaining migrant families caught crossing the US Mexico border illegally.
Speaker 4: So this is this is the thing that that all
Speaker 4: the people were very upset about. It the normal kids
Speaker 4: in cages thing, mm hmm. But we fucking do that
Speaker 4: again as well. I guess they likely won't do like
Speaker 4: separation of minders, which which is what they did before, right,
Speaker 4: they took the kids away from their parents entertained them separately,
Speaker 4: which is just fucking like I cannot imagine. It's still just.
Speaker 9: Yeah, it's just unspeakable trauma and like just like for
Speaker 9: both for everybody involved. Uh, I mean like same with
Speaker 9: the wall though, like it's just the same thing. The
Speaker 9: same thing is happening. It's just like marketed differently. It's
Speaker 9: just like packaged in a different way, and it's still
Speaker 9: fucking terrible.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Like, I just I don't know what you expect
Speaker 4: these fucking people to do, Like, and I don't know
Speaker 4: how you how you expect someone like even if you're
Speaker 4: purely self interested and you're just concerned about like US
Speaker 4: security and like you know, making America great again or whatever,
Speaker 4: Like if you lock little children up, like they're going
Speaker 4: to fucking hate you and you can't blame them, like,
Speaker 4: it's it's it's inhumane, it's it's what dictators do. It's
Speaker 4: it's fucking unfathomable.
Speaker 9: But it also like drives me, like it's just insane
Speaker 9: to think about people that are actually there in the
Speaker 9: flesh like that that see people like the children crying
Speaker 9: or something, and like just there's so much terrible things
Speaker 9: going on and no one does there's not enough. I
Speaker 9: don't know. I just I can't imagine doing that. It'll
Speaker 9: just be like, Okay, my job is this and I'm
Speaker 9: gonna continue.
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 9: I don't like it.
Speaker 4: I don't like it. No, I don't like it. Idea
Speaker 4: like this, Of all the things I've reported on, and
Speaker 4: like I've reported on some dark shit and like being
Speaker 4: to some dangerous places, et cetera, nothing has been harder
Speaker 4: for me to get over than little kids at the border. Like,
Speaker 4: I have hundreds of stories about it, but I can
Speaker 4: remember one little girl. This shit makes me want to cry.
Speaker 4: I rememb there's one little girl who she had left
Speaker 4: her teddy bear behind. She wanted a teddy bear, And
Speaker 4: like this, little girls are cleaving in a fucking tent.
Speaker 7: Right.
Speaker 4: This is in twenty eighteen, when when like the mid
Speaker 4: terms were happening. So they were holding a large group
Speaker 4: of people right next to the border, right they were
Speaker 4: staying in a baseball stadium, and myself and some friends
Speaker 4: had gone to help. And this little girl was just
Speaker 4: like the sweetest little kid that she came up. She
Speaker 4: was holding my hand and then I asked if she
Speaker 4: wanted to go on my shoulders. She wanted to go
Speaker 4: on my shoulders, you know. And at this point, the
Speaker 4: way that they were getting people to leave that area
Speaker 4: and go to another area was by cutting off their
Speaker 4: access to water. Oh my god, so like we were
Speaker 4: able to get some water, and we were able to
Speaker 4: give them like as much water as we coabin credit cards.
Speaker 4: And I asked her like what she wanted. She said
Speaker 4: she had to leave her teddy bear behind. It just
Speaker 4: fucking broke my heart, like without like you know, going
Speaker 4: into too much personal trauma. Details like that shit kept
Speaker 4: me from sleeping for weeks. Uh, and I found it
Speaker 4: so hard to come back. It was like twenty eighteen,
Speaker 4: around November, I guess, and like go to like a
Speaker 4: I remember someone's having some Thanksgiving thing and just I
Speaker 4: just wanted to fucking shout at everyone and be like
Speaker 4: what the fuck is wrong with you? Anyway? So when
Speaker 4: bought her.
Speaker 9: Devastating especially from a from a child, you know, like
Speaker 9: their their experience and their perspective is just like just
Speaker 9: I don't know, you see how rad is?
Speaker 4: Yeah, Like I know, no, children shouldn't be treated about
Speaker 4: that full stop, Like we shouldn't be standing in the
Speaker 4: parking lot of a fucking Tommy Hill Figure discount store
Speaker 4: in San Diego launching tear gas a little children in
Speaker 4: Mexico is one of the like the image wh of
Speaker 4: like what America does to people that will stick with
Speaker 4: me forever. It's yeah, it's.
Speaker 9: I'm glad you were down there helping, though, like, especially
Speaker 9: according their access off to water is like the most
Speaker 9: like one of the most inhumane things, but then against
Speaker 9: sold very inhumane.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and that time was difficult for everyone involved. That
Speaker 4: was also one of the most impressive. This is one
Speaker 4: of the times when large NGOs weren't allowed to operate
Speaker 4: because of various concerns and legal things. So the entirety
Speaker 4: of the aid effort for those people was done through
Speaker 4: mutual aid, right through completely ad hoc mechanisms. There were
Speaker 4: church people, people from various migrant advocacy groups in San Diego,
Speaker 4: people from Altolado who we've spoken to on the podcast.
Speaker 4: That's how I met them for the first time. Number
Speaker 4: of those people actually were surveilled by border patrol, as
Speaker 4: we found out two years later, and had warrant on them, etc.
Speaker 4: But everyone who came came like not because it was
Speaker 4: their job, because it was the right thing to do,
Speaker 4: and like, there wasn't a day I was down there
Speaker 4: that there weren't people turning up with trucks full of stuff.
Speaker 4: This is my friend and I. Someone managed to get
Speaker 4: us a projector from their workplace and how they got
Speaker 4: a projector from their workplace, I didn't care, and a
Speaker 4: bunch of DVDs. My friend used to be an electrician.
Speaker 4: And they moved everyone to a nightclub. It was a
Speaker 4: nightclub and another part of Tijuana at our old nightclub,
Speaker 4: the old and massive thousands of people were in this
Speaker 4: big kind of opening nightclub situation. It was very strange.
Speaker 4: They had the women and the young children in one
Speaker 4: area that like very clearly had been a pole dance room,
Speaker 4: so like anyway, and they had like these bars ort
Speaker 4: of like you know, like a balcony area. So we
Speaker 4: went up to the balcony area, and then me and
Speaker 4: a couple of these older kids who with the migrant
Speaker 4: group were able to get like climb across the room,
Speaker 4: find some wires connected projector and do a little make
Speaker 4: a little movie theater for the children. And they remember
Speaker 4: they were watching like Beverly Hills, Chihuahua when I left,
Speaker 4: and yeah, they were having like just.
Speaker 9: A little gestures are so important though.
Speaker 4: Like yeah, I mean, it doesn't fucking fax anything, but
Speaker 4: if they can have two hours of watching a film
Speaker 4: about a dog or whatever like not that, yeah exactly, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: they deserve that. They deserve a lot more than that.
Speaker 4: But yeah, it was those little nice things that made
Speaker 4: it bearable. I guess yeah, there was. I still have
Speaker 4: like fairly disturbing recollections of lots of things asking on
Speaker 4: the border. So let's just do a quote from Joe Biden,
Speaker 4: because we do do love a bit of Joe Biden.
Speaker 4: My message is this, if you're trying to leave Coolba,
Speaker 4: Nicaragua or Haiti have agreed to begin a journey to America,
Speaker 4: do not do not Just shut up at the border,
Speaker 4: stay where you are and apply legally starting today. If
Speaker 4: you don't apply through the legal process, you will not
Speaker 4: be eligible for this new parole program. Anyway, Joe Biden
Speaker 4: can go fuck himself. But I think that I hope
Speaker 4: that obviously lots of little anecdotes have helped. But we
Speaker 4: shouldn't see these people as statistics or numbers, and we
Speaker 4: should see them as people. So I've got a couple
Speaker 4: of interviews I've done, and to just one as I
Speaker 4: went back to some notes and found so I was
Speaker 4: just going to read them out, so I won't give
Speaker 4: their names just for their own security. But sometimes I've
Speaker 4: used pseudonyms on the publicies. Sometimes I have used the
Speaker 4: names when they're willing to use their names, like it's
Speaker 4: their choice, right, but it should always be their choice.
Speaker 4: If you're a fucking reporter and you're filming children without
Speaker 4: their consent or their parents consent.
Speaker 9: And the rest camp they're not just a spectacle for
Speaker 9: your story.
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly. You can jog on and I hope someone
Speaker 4: throws your camera in a river. So here's one. I
Speaker 4: have three daughters, aged thirteen, ten and six. I've always
Speaker 4: had my own business selling food, and I paid what
Speaker 4: we would call extortion money, but with the pandemic, I
Speaker 4: couldn't pay well. I go over three or four months.
Speaker 4: They said that I didn't pay, they were burned down
Speaker 4: my shop and me and my daughters would be raped
Speaker 4: and killed. With what little I had left, I left
Speaker 4: with my daughters. It's hard to get work here. That's
Speaker 4: an immigrant. There are some jobs, but not the sort
Speaker 4: that are for me. I have to try and be
Speaker 4: an example to my kids. One day I was juggling
Speaker 4: by the traffic lights and some guys tried to pick
Speaker 4: me up. They said they knew where I lived and
Speaker 4: they would hurt me and my daughters, who I didn't
Speaker 4: work for them. They made me work in a bar.
Speaker 4: I escaped, but that's how I broke my hand. I
Speaker 4: didn't want to go to the US, but I need
Speaker 4: to leave this country now for the same reason I
Speaker 4: left my own. Well, then I'll read one more. We
Speaker 4: came from one daughters to flee the violence. We have
Speaker 4: come to this camp in the last few days, but
Speaker 4: it's scary here. We don't feel safe. There are people
Speaker 4: coming or taking photos of the children of the women.
Speaker 4: Men of for the women here money to go with them.
Speaker 4: They tried to get them to sleep with them. It's
Speaker 4: a woman here filming us as well. We found out
Speaker 4: she's a big activist for Donald Trump. This was in
Speaker 4: twenty twenty one. Some people came to snatch a child here.
Speaker 4: Between the group, we're working to make a security committee
Speaker 4: to protect the children because there are people who would
Speaker 4: take the children here. We aren't a caravan. We're just
Speaker 4: people from all over the world who have come here
Speaker 4: for a better future. We're asking Biden. We know it's
Speaker 4: complicated and he has a lot to sort out, and
Speaker 4: we have patients. We know he has to make compromises,
Speaker 4: but please think of us here. We're in danger. Please
Speaker 4: give us a solution.
Speaker 9: It fucking heartbreaking.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it is heartbreaking. Shit. I wish there was like
Speaker 4: some kind of happy ending I can put on this,
Speaker 4: or like, I don't know. There are great things you
Speaker 4: can do with mutual a groups. There's a group that
Speaker 4: I'm hoping to interview next week called Bordlands Relief Collective
Speaker 4: in San Diego who do kind of a lot to
Speaker 4: help people crossing the border. There are groups like Altolalo
Speaker 4: you can donate to the public. Comment is still available
Speaker 4: for the Biden to propose new restrictions, so I guess
Speaker 4: you can come out of that if you think that
Speaker 4: will help. I guess this is an area sometimes where
Speaker 4: talking to politicians might help, because they make the laws
Speaker 4: that affects people's right to kind of live with basic dignity.
Speaker 4: But yeah, I don't have a great solution to this,
Speaker 4: especially like if people aren't in a place where they
Speaker 4: know people here are struggling to get by. I understand
Speaker 4: that not everyone can afford to donate, of course. Yeah,
Speaker 4: but yeah, this is pretty bleak. And just because it's
Speaker 4: not like being beamed into your living rooms anymore, because
Speaker 4: orange Man bad doesn't mean that lick it's still not
Speaker 4: impossibly cruel.
Speaker 9: Yeah, it's I mean, just because another old guy took
Speaker 9: over doesn't mean like the same things are already there.
Speaker 9: It's not like they just poofed into thin air like
Speaker 9: all the terrible things that are already happening. That's what
Speaker 9: I don't understand, is like people just assume. I don't
Speaker 9: know what they assume. I'm not going to amble on
Speaker 9: like that. But it's heartbreaking, and you should donate if
Speaker 9: you can.
Speaker 4: Uh, yeah, donate, do you stuff, shout at people, do
Speaker 4: whatever you think. We'll make a difference, because it's pretty bad.
Speaker 12: Welcome to it could happen here a podcast coming live,
Speaker 12: not live, really not. I need to come up with
Speaker 12: a better bit than coming to you live, but coming
Speaker 12: coming to you from from from now Fallen apparently on
Speaker 12: fire destroyed Chicago, so so so say the media, oracles,
Speaker 12: soothsayers and cops who live in the city who are
Speaker 12: now absolutely convinced that the city is going to descend
Speaker 12: into crime and chaos, etcetera, et cetera.
Speaker 3: After the cop candidate got absolutely blown the.
Speaker 12: Fuck out in the last elections, and yeah, with me
Speaker 12: to talk about this election and a couple of other
Speaker 12: elections that happened on the same day that were very
Speaker 12: funny and where the worst people in the world got
Speaker 12: absolutely destroyed. Is Ali, who is one of my friends
Speaker 12: and is an election analyst. Yeah, welcome to the show.
Speaker 3: How are you doing. I'm doing well. Thank you for
Speaker 3: having Mima. Nice to be nice to be here. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I'm very excited. Yeah, because this is just very funny.
Speaker 3: It's extremely funny. I personally was really enjoying getting to
Speaker 3: read the Twitter tea leaves. You could tell kind of
Speaker 3: which aldermen were having meltdowns on election night.
Speaker 12: Yeah, So I guess I guess we could start with
Speaker 12: the stuff that happened in Chicago, which is that Paul Vallas,
Speaker 12: the butcher of the public education system, running dog of
Speaker 12: a cops, the hero of J six people. I was
Speaker 12: just kind of slacked in an election by Brandon Johnson,
Speaker 12: the sort of progressive candidate who I'm very excited I
Speaker 12: no longer have to pretend that I like particularly much.
Speaker 3: Yes, now, as as Mia, says Paul Vallas. Resident Dino
Speaker 3: from Palos Heights, a southwest suburb of Chicago, who conveniently
Speaker 3: bought an apartment in Chicago exactly a year before the election,
Speaker 3: which is how long you have to live in Chicago
Speaker 3: to be the mayor. Lost the runoff to Brandon Johnson,
Speaker 3: a black progressive who was on the Cook County board.
Speaker 3: About when all the results are done coming in in
Speaker 3: a couple of weeks, it'll be about fifty two percent
Speaker 3: for Johnson and forty eight percent for Vallus. As Mia says,
Speaker 3: this lets to a lot of people on the left
Speaker 3: no longer have to keep up the charade of, oh,
Speaker 3: Johnson's the best thing that has happened to us in
Speaker 3: slice bread. For if you are like more of a
Speaker 3: like Democratic Party loyal progressive voter, this is a very
Speaker 3: very good thing in your eyes.
Speaker 12: Yeah, And I think, you know, I think it's something
Speaker 12: very interesting and kind of fitting about this, which is that, Yeah,
Speaker 12: one of the you've talked about is that, yeah, like
Speaker 12: Brendon Johnson is the first like progressive TM mayor Travers
Speaker 12: had since like I mean literally since Harold Washington, who
Speaker 12: was the first black mayor in the eighties. And it's
Speaker 12: very interesting also because a bunch of the reforms that
Speaker 12: Harold Washington did were specifically overturned by Paul Vallis. Yeah,
Speaker 12: like he's the guy you did a bunch of educational
Speaker 12: reforms that fucking sucked, that destroyed Washington stuff.
Speaker 3: It's no, it's it's really wild. How like Chicago politics
Speaker 3: is analogous to go really out there for a second.
Speaker 3: Is analogous to the state of Hawaii in the sense
Speaker 3: that people never die. Have the same people are going
Speaker 3: to be on your ballot for fifty years and you
Speaker 3: just kind of have to suck it up and deal
Speaker 3: with it. But every so often someone good comes along,
Speaker 3: or at least someone better, And if you get them
Speaker 3: into office the first time, and if you get them
Speaker 3: to survive their first reelection campaign, then they get to
Speaker 3: be one of the people who's on the ballot forever
Speaker 3: and who never dies. And slowly but surely you can
Speaker 3: make Chicago politics less shitty. But yeah, as Mia said,
Speaker 3: this is going to be the first progressive Chicago mayoral
Speaker 3: administration since Harold Washington. And Johnson won the same way
Speaker 3: as Harold Washington did. On Yeah, the backbone of Johnson's coalition,
Speaker 3: just as with Harold Washington's, was black voters. Johnson got
Speaker 3: about eighty percent of the black vote. Because in Chicago
Speaker 3: elections are usually more about race than anything else. But
Speaker 3: in addition to the black vote, Johnson won with progressives
Speaker 3: in white and non black communities of color, as well
Speaker 3: as LGBTQ voters, and finally fulfilling the dreams of the
Speaker 3: Here's how Bernie can still win people from twenty fifteen.
Speaker 3: A actual turnout surge of millennial and Gen Z voters
Speaker 3: the Chicago Board of Elections is. I don't think that
Speaker 3: anyone would call them great, but they do produce some
Speaker 3: nice live statistics on election day as the votes are tallied,
Speaker 3: and voters under forty five had a turnout surge of
Speaker 3: I think it was about twenty percent, whereas voters older
Speaker 3: than sixty, the raw number of their votes actually went down.
Speaker 3: And this likely does almost entirely account for Johnson's margin
Speaker 3: of victory, that he was able to turn out young
Speaker 3: voters and that old people just like stayed home.
Speaker 12: Yeah, I think it's also you know, we talked about
Speaker 12: this in the episode we did about Paul Vallis, But
Speaker 12: one of the things about the initial election was that
Speaker 12: like the fact that Johnson made it out of the
Speaker 12: primaries at all with a genuinely nightmarorish like age like
Speaker 12: bracket of turnout in the first round is sort of
Speaker 12: a miracle, but you know, it got a lot better
Speaker 12: for him in this one, and that genuinely seems to
Speaker 12: have like I don't know, like I know a lot
Speaker 12: of people who spent a lot of time like canvassing
Speaker 12: their assets off and it actually seems to have worked.
Speaker 12: And I don't know, I mean, you know, it has
Speaker 12: to be seen the extent to which this was about,
Speaker 12: like the fact that Vallas is like probably would have
Speaker 12: been the worst mayor of Chicago in like.
Speaker 3: We don't have to go we don't have to go
Speaker 3: back that far. Daily was mayor of Chicago as recently
Speaker 3: as twenty eleven. That's true, but I I don't know Daily.
Speaker 12: Yeah, I mean it's not like Chago has good mayors,
Speaker 12: but I think he would have been Okay, here's I
Speaker 12: think he would have been the most politically far right
Speaker 12: mayor Chicago has had in a long time. Oh yeah,
Speaker 12: Like he's just a Republican, like like a pretty like yeah,
Speaker 12: and you know that fucking sucks, but he got Clawbard.
Speaker 12: There's also there's a really funny result I want to
Speaker 12: talk about, which.
Speaker 3: Is that Okay, so.
Speaker 12: The part of Chicago, the neighborhood of in Chicago where
Speaker 12: the Cubs Stadium is is right next to Boystown, which
Speaker 12: is the fucking gay district. And if you if you
Speaker 12: go in and look at like, well I say, I say,
Speaker 12: it's the gay district, like a lot a lot of it's.
Speaker 12: It's it's it's now the rich gay part of Chicago
Speaker 12: because I think it's got priced out.
Speaker 3: Well it kind of is. It's not Market Park is
Speaker 3: the rich gay part of Chicago.
Speaker 4: That's true.
Speaker 3: Okay, it's more of.
Speaker 12: A rich kay part Chicago than it was like forty
Speaker 12: years ago, fety years ago. Yeah, but like like literally
Speaker 12: exactly split. You can like you can like see in
Speaker 12: the data exactly split down line, the gays voted for
Speaker 12: Brandon Johnson and all the people and all the Cubs
Speaker 12: fans voted for Vallas.
Speaker 3: It's so funny, it is. It is extremely funny. And
Speaker 3: I will give a quick shout out here to the
Speaker 3: Chicago Urbanist Twitter account who made what I personally think
Speaker 3: is the funniest meme to have come out of the election,
Speaker 3: which is a bunch of like stick figures and just
Speaker 3: like black and white labeled Vallas voters running from a
Speaker 3: like steamroller, a pink steamroller with a rainbow like wheel
Speaker 3: being driven by a bunch of gay people, and the
Speaker 3: steamroller is labeled boys Down.
Speaker 12: It's really good, like they I don't know, like there
Speaker 12: is this sort of like this is sort of like
Speaker 12: this is the coalition that well, I mean again, we
Speaker 12: talked about it like this, this is the hair washing coalition, Like,
Speaker 12: this is the coalition that if you're an elect electoral list,
Speaker 12: like you need to produce something that looks like this
Speaker 12: if you want to have any serious chance of winning.
Speaker 3: And yes, yeah, and the fact that it actually worked
Speaker 3: is sort of Oh, it's a goddamn miracle. Yeah, this
Speaker 3: shit never works. People have been trying to do this
Speaker 3: for like forty fucking years and it never works. I mean,
Speaker 3: you've been trying to do this for forty plus years.
Speaker 3: But it's also like this is really the first election
Speaker 3: that I can think of anywhere since Barack Obama's reelection
Speaker 3: in twenty twelve, where like, this is the coalition that
Speaker 3: actually puts someone in like an office that got a
Speaker 3: lot of national attention and that mattered. That's not to
Speaker 3: say that it like literally hasn't happened anywhere else. I'm
Speaker 3: just saying I can't think of any off the top
Speaker 3: of my head. But like, in twenty twelve, Barack Obama
Speaker 3: became the first person to be elected president of the
Speaker 3: United States with less than forty percent of the white vote,
Speaker 3: a feat that has never since been repeated. Clinton got
Speaker 3: less than that and lost. Trump obviously won, and Biden
Speaker 3: won because white voters swung left in twenty twenty. So like,
Speaker 3: this is a turnout and coalitional puzzle that most people
Speaker 3: fail to put together and that Brandon Johnson miraculously pulled off. Yeah,
Speaker 3: And I think, on the.
Speaker 12: One hand, okay, this is legitimately kind of because the
Speaker 12: result is not the thing that normally happens. It is
Speaker 12: legitimately an interesting question as to why this happened, and
Speaker 12: like a sort of like legitimately kind of difficult like
Speaker 12: political science question. On the other hand, most of the
Speaker 12: people attempting to answer it have just all my fuck God,
Speaker 12: Like if I if I have to read another New
Speaker 12: York Times article writing about this that's like like just
Speaker 12: clearly cobbled together from three Wikipedia articles, Like I'm gonna
Speaker 12: literally go insane.
Speaker 3: I think you, me and every other person in Chicago,
Speaker 3: you know, no matter if you were a Johnson voter
Speaker 3: or a value voter, or someone who stayed home. We
Speaker 3: can all come together in our hatred of that five
Speaker 3: thirty eight piece that was strong on the morning of
Speaker 3: election day. If you don't know what I'm talking about,
Speaker 3: you're lucky, and I'm not going to tell you.
Speaker 12: If you really want to, I'll give you a very
Speaker 12: brief summary of it, which is that five.
Speaker 3: No, no, we don't know. They did. They did. They
Speaker 3: did a racism.
Speaker 12: They did.
Speaker 3: That's what I'll leave it at. They did a racism
Speaker 3: and they were very wrong. They basically did the four races, white, Black, Latino,
Speaker 3: and leftist. Yeah, which is very funny. But hopefully, I
Speaker 3: hopeful I'll take a stab at explaining what happened, and
Speaker 3: hopefully it's better than most people's explanation. But I think
Speaker 3: part of it is that, as I mentioned earlier, historically
Speaker 3: Chicago elections have been about race, and like this was
Speaker 3: no exception. This was much more of an ideological break.
Speaker 3: Like the ideological lines were a lot clearer in this
Speaker 3: election than previous mayoral races. But the foundation of Brandon
Speaker 3: Johnson's electoral victory was the eighty percent of the vote
Speaker 3: that he got in black majority neighborhoods. Black voters in
Speaker 3: Chicago selected the black candidate because they looked at the
Speaker 3: white guy and said, oh, we think you're going to
Speaker 3: be a massive dipshit. And beyond that, you have a
Speaker 3: couple of other things working in Johnson's favor, So like one,
Speaker 3: when it comes to the youth vote, I cannot really
Speaker 3: believe I'm saying this because I when this was announced.
Speaker 3: It's not that I thought it wouldn't help. It's just
Speaker 3: that I wasn't sure that it would help enough. But
Speaker 3: Johnson got a lot of national progressive figures to endorse him,
Speaker 3: including Bernie Sanders, and his campaign literally flew Bernie in
Speaker 3: for a rally on a college campus here in Chicago.
Speaker 3: And I think that genuinely did actually get a lot
Speaker 3: of young people to realize that there was an election
Speaker 3: that they should pay attention to, which is well because like.
Speaker 12: Like like this happened, Like people fly in Bernie a
Speaker 12: lot and it never matters, but it like it mattered here,
Speaker 12: which is sort of amazing. Absolutely, like just a lot
Speaker 12: of this election was wild. I think the other thing
Speaker 12: that really helped Johnson was that a like Chicago is
Speaker 12: a lot less white than it used to be, which
Speaker 12: is not something that usually gets said in this day
Speaker 12: and age, because Chicago is becoming white than it was
Speaker 12: like ten fifteen years ago. But Chicago was a lot
Speaker 12: less white.
Speaker 3: Than it was in the eighties when Harold Washington was elected,
Speaker 3: and so like there was more of a ceiling on
Speaker 3: Paul Vallas's vote than Harold Washington's opponents had, which meant
Speaker 3: that Vallas had to be able to appeal to not
Speaker 3: just white voters who reflexively were against any black candidate,
Speaker 3: but he also had to make inroads in Hispanic Asian
Speaker 3: as well as Black communities and trying to get the
Speaker 3: black conservative vote, and he didn't. Vallas didn't do a
Speaker 3: terrible job here, but he just didn't do a job
Speaker 3: that was good enough. He actually probably won the Latino vote,
Speaker 3: it would. It wasn't like a huge win, but it
Speaker 3: was a win. But the problem is that turnout in
Speaker 3: on the Southwest side of Chicago, which is where the
Speaker 3: majority of Chicago's Mexican American residents live, was just super low,
Speaker 3: just like really really atrociously in the tank, like to
Speaker 3: the extent like this is the kind of turnout that
Speaker 3: fires the online jokes about how no one ever bothers
Speaker 3: to vote level bad turnout on the Southwest Side, So
Speaker 3: if Hispanic turnout had been on the same level as
Speaker 3: white and black turnout, the race probably would have been
Speaker 3: a lot closer. Vallas also won Chinatown, which is something
Speaker 3: that got a fair amount of attention on social media.
Speaker 3: But Johnson was able to win the two other Asian
Speaker 3: ethnic enclaves in Chicago, which are the Vietnamese neighborhood in
Speaker 3: Uptown called Asian Argyle, as well as the Deci neighborhood
Speaker 3: on the far North Side. And I don't think we
Speaker 3: can really say how Asian voters overall voted definitively because
Speaker 3: Asian voters in Chicago are pretty well diffused through the city.
Speaker 3: But it's very clear that Vallas did not get the
Speaker 3: runaway win with Asian voters that Eric Adams, for example
Speaker 3: did in New York City.
Speaker 12: Yeah, and I specifically want to talk about Argyle for
Speaker 12: a bit, because the fact that Johnson won Argyle is
Speaker 12: fucking insane.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, these are like, like, this is a community
Speaker 3: of Vietnam War refugees, Like these people are hardline anti communists,
Speaker 3: Like you go into these restaurants and they all have
Speaker 3: Fox News on, so like, yeah, Johnson winning these voters
Speaker 3: is incredible.
Speaker 12: Yeah, I mean like like one of the most famous
Speaker 12: noodle shops, there was a guy who was at January sixth,
Speaker 12: like this is this is a like a stereotypically unbelievably
Speaker 12: dog shit place for Johnson. And yeah, and I want
Speaker 12: to say this about Chinatown and this is something like
Speaker 12: I mean you just you can know this something like
Speaker 12: I've been tracking for a while, I mean just by
Speaker 12: like walking through it Chinatown during the pandemic and kind
Speaker 12: of after it, and it was having a bit before
Speaker 12: has gotten just notably more fascist, Like oh yeah, there
Speaker 12: is a lot of stuff there. I mean, the anti
Speaker 12: homelessess stuff is really really really intense. They've been going
Speaker 12: really hard on the d And that's the thing that
Speaker 12: kind of makes sense, right, like this this is a
Speaker 12: thing that you would kind of expect out of like yeah,
Speaker 12: of course small business owners are going to like go
Speaker 12: right like that's like that's that's you know, that that's
Speaker 12: the you can you can you can find Marx writing
Speaker 12: about this phenomenon in like eighteen forty eight, right like
Speaker 12: this this has been a thing since the beginning of time.
Speaker 12: But I don't know, it's gotten, it's gotten legitimately kind
Speaker 12: of scary down there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and like a lot of it also, I think
Speaker 3: was you know, there's been a divergence between how the
Speaker 3: North Side Asian enclaves like the Dusty Neighborhood and the
Speaker 3: Vietnamese neighborhood have responded to this kind of stuff versus Chinatown,
Speaker 3: especially on the other big social change that happened during
Speaker 3: the pandemic, which was the twenty twenty Black Lives Matter protests.
Speaker 3: I think from what I saw, like the reaction on
Speaker 3: the North Side among these Asian enclaves was pretty overall
Speaker 3: supportive of the protests, whereas down in Chinatown as well
Speaker 3: as in McKinley Park, which is a Hispanic majority neighborhood
Speaker 3: but has a pretty significant Asian population, those neighborhoods had
Speaker 3: this really really big like surge of anti black racism
Speaker 3: in response to the protests. Like there were quote unquote
Speaker 3: neighborhood watch groups that got formed.
Speaker 4: And it was just it was bad.
Speaker 3: And you know, the Vietnamese voters on argyle, even though
Speaker 3: they're very like you know, they have Fox News on
Speaker 3: like I said, and they're really anti socialist ante communists,
Speaker 3: there was a state rep. I am probably going to
Speaker 3: butcher his name, for which I apologize, but I'm pretty
Speaker 3: sure his name is pronounced han when who is Vietnamese himself,
Speaker 3: and he won the seat last year in twenty twenty two,
Speaker 3: and like he's very progressive. So there has been this
Speaker 3: very sharp divergence in how the Asian neighborhoods in Chicago
Speaker 3: have responded to some of the social events of the
Speaker 3: last few years.
Speaker 12: Once again by people, the Great Nation of China has
Speaker 12: followed into social imperialism.
Speaker 3: I think the last thing that really should be talked
Speaker 3: about in the context of Johnson's electoral win, and when
Speaker 3: we come back we can talk about the City Council
Speaker 3: because that's also pretty interesting. Is that something that if
Speaker 3: you want to watch elections, especially if you want to
Speaker 3: watch Chicago elections, something you should understand is that the
Speaker 3: capital m machine in Chicago is pretty much gone now
Speaker 3: and Brandon Johnson's win pretty much seals this. And it's
Speaker 3: not that the people are gone or that like the
Speaker 3: you know, the logistical operations of the machine are completely dead.
Speaker 3: But the machine has now lost two elections in a row.
Speaker 3: Because as much as Laurie as much as Lauri Lightfoot sucked,
Speaker 3: and she sucked so much. She also was an anti
Speaker 3: machine candidate, like she was like capital a anti machine
Speaker 3: when she ran. And Brandon Johnson is not anti machine
Speaker 3: in the way that Laurie was, but he definitely was
Speaker 3: not the candidate of like the machine. So like they
Speaker 3: lost two elections in a row. Mike Madigan has now
Speaker 3: been like indicted and he's probably going to prison for
Speaker 3: a very long time.
Speaker 12: You should explain who Mike Madigan is because Okay, if
Speaker 12: you live in Illinois, like you know who Mike Madigan is.
Speaker 12: If you don't live in Illinois, Mike Madigan, for my
Speaker 12: entire life, for like the lives of people who are
Speaker 12: much older than me, has been like the most the
Speaker 12: single most powerful political figure in all of Illinois.
Speaker 3: Like he runs everything.
Speaker 12: Yeah, like he has like an iron grip over everything
Speaker 12: that has happened in this state for like forty years.
Speaker 3: Yes, And he finally got indicted on some federal like
Speaker 3: charges of like I don't even remember what the charges were,
Speaker 3: but it was very like al Capone esque of like, yeah,
Speaker 3: we finally found something to nail you on, so we're
Speaker 3: going to And so he got indicted last year, and
Speaker 3: it is actually pretty impressive, Like how quickly his machine
Speaker 3: fell apart. Yeah, like he just he didn't have an
Speaker 3: air ready to take control. And so it's not that
Speaker 3: like machine politics has gone from Chicago. It's more that
Speaker 3: instead of a machine, there are now going to be
Speaker 3: a bunch of smaller machines, which is going to make
Speaker 3: it easier for like normal everyday people to actually have
Speaker 3: some saying the political process, which is a good thing.
Speaker 12: Yeah, and like the the chocolate machine fucking sucks ass.
Speaker 12: I mean, like we talked about val like I mean,
Speaker 12: Vallas was a machine guy, right, yes, absolutely, and you know,
Speaker 12: and it is like the thing, the the the machine
Speaker 12: has two values and it's corruption and neoliberalism.
Speaker 3: And honestly, like not even neoliberalism so much anymore. It's
Speaker 3: mostly just corruption.
Speaker 12: Yeah, I mean, they they've kind of I would say,
Speaker 12: I think they've gotten less ideological over the last twenty years.
Speaker 12: M hm, Like well, like I think the last decade
Speaker 12: and a half. But they yeah, they really they really
Speaker 12: fucked it, like Chicago was like the political machine, and
Speaker 12: you know, like I mean like they're in large part
Speaker 12: responsible for the creation of Obama's career and they've parlayed
Speaker 12: that into losing to like the least popular mayor in
Speaker 12: like a generation, and then losing again branded like somehow
Speaker 12: to Brandon Johnson, and it's I don't know, they've they've
Speaker 12: they've failed spectacularly and fuck them, they're awful.
Speaker 3: And I yeah, yes, absolutely they Yeah. Fuck these guys.
Speaker 12: They've they've robbed, they've they've rubbed the working class for
Speaker 12: too fucking long.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, fuck these guys, good riddance. The world will
Speaker 3: be better when they're dead. Yeah. Do you know what
Speaker 3: else the world would be better than? If you know? Okay,
Speaker 3: that that was that was That was not my that
Speaker 3: was not my best effort. I apologize.
Speaker 12: But the world's question mark. Maybe better place if you
Speaker 12: buy these products and services question mark. I don't know
Speaker 12: if I'm legally allowed to say that.
Speaker 3: We'll see. Anyways, here's some bads and we are back.
Speaker 12: Yeah, we should talk about what Johnson actually wants to do. Well,
Speaker 12: do you want to get into that? Would you want
Speaker 12: to talk about the city council first?
Speaker 3: I think they actually overlapped pretty well, So like we can,
Speaker 3: let's let's run through what Johnson says he wants to
Speaker 3: do and we can then talk about how much of
Speaker 3: that might happen. So Johnson, like we were talking about,
Speaker 3: is definitely going to be the most progressive mayor in
Speaker 3: Chicago's history in terms of what he campaigned on. At
Speaker 3: least this was a crime election, Like the dominant issue
Speaker 3: was crime, and Johnson did not say the words defund
Speaker 3: the police. In fact, he actually explicitly said that he
Speaker 3: would not cut the police budget. But aside from like
Speaker 3: those literal words, he very much is in line with
Speaker 3: the progressive priorities of de emphasizing like using people with
Speaker 3: guns to go through like six weeks of training or whatever.
Speaker 3: So he wants to pass a bill called Treatment Not Trauma,
Speaker 3: which is replacing cops with mental health responders for nine
Speaker 3: to one one calls about mental health crises. He wants
Speaker 3: to pass another bill called the Peacebook Ordinance, which would
Speaker 3: expand restorative justice and violence intervention like projects and programs
Speaker 3: in the city. And he also wants to pass an
Speaker 3: ordinance to put somegnificant restrictions on police department raids and
Speaker 3: like the police department's just actual ability to do raids altogether.
Speaker 3: There is a very infamous contract here in Chicago called
Speaker 3: the Shop Spotter Contract, which is this dumb software that
Speaker 3: is supposed to be able to like tell police when
Speaker 3: a gun goes off, and like, as far as I
Speaker 3: can tell, doesn't And it's just like straight up doesn't work.
Speaker 3: So Johnson wants to get rid of that. He also
Speaker 3: wants to eliminate the Gang Database, which, if you are
Speaker 3: from Chicago you probably know what we're talking about. Is
Speaker 3: this very infamous list of about one hundred and twenty
Speaker 3: thousand people, ninety five percent of whom are either black
Speaker 3: or Latino. And they are on this list called the
Speaker 3: Gang Database, more or less because one day some random
Speaker 3: Chicago police officers decided to put them on the list.
Speaker 3: It's very dumb, it's very racist, it's very blatantly unconstitutional,
Speaker 3: and hopefully Brandon Johnson is able to get rid of it.
Speaker 12: Yeah, and these are and these are all things like
Speaker 12: you know, as much as we can talk about the
Speaker 12: extent to which like is you know, as most as
Speaker 12: we can we can talk about the sort of the
Speaker 12: complicity of like mental health responders and the police system
Speaker 12: wherever the fuck, Like these things would all like make
Speaker 12: a lot of people's lives better and making the police weaker,
Speaker 12: and you know. I mean, one of the things about
Speaker 12: this election, right is that the people who are actually
Speaker 12: affected by crime vote for Johnson.
Speaker 3: The people who are not affected by crime at all
Speaker 3: all voted for Vallice.
Speaker 4: Yep.
Speaker 12: And part of the reason for that is that, like, Okay,
Speaker 12: if you're in a place like in Chicago that has
Speaker 12: a bunch of crime, you were dealing with, like you're
Speaker 12: dealing with the crime, you're dealing with a lot of
Speaker 12: people getting shot, which is fucking shit. Then you're also
Speaker 12: dealing with the CPD, who are like function most of
Speaker 12: the time, are functionally a cartel about every like we're
Speaker 12: kind of due for another set of like prosecutions for them,
Speaker 12: Like roughly every like seven or eight years, there's a
Speaker 12: massive series of IRA by the FBI or like the
Speaker 12: fence come in and like discover that there's like a
Speaker 12: giant there's a giant artelle operating out of the CPD.
Speaker 3: We've talked about this discover and discover in air quotes
Speaker 3: because everyone knows, oh yeah, everyone knows.
Speaker 12: And then you know, the Chicago police in particular are
Speaker 12: very famous for the Code of Silence, which is that
Speaker 12: every single person, if a cop commits a crime, every
Speaker 12: single other cop will cover for them, going right up
Speaker 12: to the like the top of the ladder of the
Speaker 12: police chiefs and all the way down to like dipshit
Speaker 12: like like beat cop, and you know, and so you know,
Speaker 12: like if you're a person who has to deal with
Speaker 12: these people, and oh, it sucks. It fucking sucks. And
Speaker 12: like the Chicago is kind of in many ways not
Speaker 12: the ground zero, but like a ground zero for a
Speaker 12: phenomenon where you have these poor neighborhoods of color. Who
Speaker 12: you know, the people who live in these neighborhoods, they
Speaker 12: are simultaneously over policed and under police because the police
Speaker 12: don't bother to show up half the time when like
Speaker 12: they're theoretically needed, right like someone gets shot, you call
Speaker 12: nine one one, and the cops don't bother showing up
Speaker 12: for hours if they bother showing up at all. And
Speaker 12: at the same time, when they do show up that
Speaker 12: you often cause more problems than they solve. Like Chicago
Speaker 12: has really truly horrific clearance rates of violent crime. And
Speaker 12: this is mostly because CPD just insists on maintaining this
Speaker 12: really awful balance. You know, if you do believe in police,
Speaker 12: you want there to be a pretty healthy balance between
Speaker 12: beat cops and detectives. Right.
Speaker 3: Well, this Chicago Police Department, there almost are no detectives left,
Speaker 3: Like it's almost all beat cops, and so there's not
Speaker 3: many resources that go into actually investigating crimes that can't
Speaker 3: be solved by someone just walking around or driving around
Speaker 3: in a patrol car. So these neighborhoods, like you know,
Speaker 3: you go down to the South Side or the West Side,
Speaker 3: a lot of these A lot of the residents in
Speaker 3: these neighborhoods would tell you, because they're not leftists, right,
Speaker 3: so they would tell you that they want more police officers,
Speaker 3: but they don't want more beat cops necessarily, like they
Speaker 3: want more detectives, and they want officers who are actually
Speaker 3: going to care about them as people. Unfortunately, the Chicago
Speaker 3: Police Department is made up of fascists. So like, ugh,
Speaker 3: you know, low chances on that front. But it's like
Speaker 3: that is the problem these neighborhoods are facing, is that
Speaker 3: like the police don't bother to care, and when they
Speaker 3: bother to show up, they often make things worse.
Speaker 12: Yeah, and I think, you know, but I think everything
Speaker 12: that's sort of important here, right is like you get
Speaker 12: a lot of you know, like it's very easy for
Speaker 12: people to be like, oh hey, look, actually these people
Speaker 12: want more police.
Speaker 3: But it's like, you know, when you look at what
Speaker 3: there was a somebody taken.
Speaker 12: Right before the election that was talking about voters like
Speaker 12: what their preference is on like what their sort of
Speaker 12: opinions on crime are. Oh yeah, yeah, I know, yeah
Speaker 12: you're talking about I think it was like only eighteen
Speaker 12: percent of the people who said that crime was important
Speaker 12: to them one in war cops and almost everyone. We know.
Speaker 12: Part of part of it was like they like one
Speaker 12: of their big consernives was legal guns. And then the
Speaker 12: other big conserve was just like the fact that there's
Speaker 12: these places are really poor and there's no opportunities for.
Speaker 3: People because it's like there's there there aren't economic opportunities.
Speaker 3: There are so many guns just on, you know, just
Speaker 3: lying around in these communities, and obviously that's a problem
Speaker 3: throughout the country, but it's especially bad in low income
Speaker 3: neighborhoods in Chicago. And the other thing was mental health,
Speaker 3: like you know, and that's one of the other things
Speaker 3: that Johnson wants to do is he wants to reopen
Speaker 3: the mental health clinics that got closed down by rom
Speaker 3: or rom Emmanuel, who is a previous mayor of Chicago,
Speaker 3: who is currently being inflicted upon the people of Japan
Speaker 3: as the US ambassador, and you know they deserve it.
Speaker 12: This is this is this is what you get for
Speaker 12: siding with the CIA, You fucking fucking dipshits. Man. Like,
Speaker 12: if label Democratic Party didn't want to have to get
Speaker 12: to deal with Rob Emanuel, they shouldn't have taken all
Speaker 12: that CIA money.
Speaker 3: But yeah, like Johnson wants to you know, reopen these
Speaker 3: mental health clinics. He wants to increase funding for public schools,
Speaker 3: which have very much not gotten the funding that they
Speaker 3: need in Chicago for the past several decades at this point.
Speaker 3: He also wants to expand public transportation in Chicago. Like
Speaker 3: there are a lot of proposals flying around for expanding
Speaker 3: the train lines and bus lines and bike rid There
Speaker 3: are also, as me and I were talking about before
Speaker 3: we started recording, there are a lot of lead pipes
Speaker 3: like water pipes in Chicago. Yes, and and like Chicago
Speaker 3: is like supposed to be replacing them, it's proceeding very slowly.
Speaker 3: Johnson wants to speed that up. There's like just very
Speaker 3: genuinely a lot of research on the books directly linking
Speaker 3: lead poison into a lot of social problems, and so
Speaker 3: it's very much one of these things where it's like,
Speaker 3: you know, if you replace the lead pipes, crime will
Speaker 3: go down.
Speaker 12: Yeah, I want to talk a little bit about the
Speaker 12: infrastructure stuff for a second, because like I okay, in
Speaker 12: the in the last three years, Chicago's public transit system
Speaker 12: has just been fucking imploding.
Speaker 3: Oh there are it's so bad.
Speaker 12: There are. There are reasons for this, some of which
Speaker 12: I can talk about, some of which I can't. Like,
Speaker 12: partially was depend Partially there's the pandemic and that like
Speaker 12: a bunch of the people who supposedly running the system
Speaker 12: fucking died because you know, they got forced to work
Speaker 12: during the pandemic. But like you know, you'll like trains
Speaker 12: just won't show up. There are buses that are basically
Speaker 12: unusable because it's it's like you're basically sitting there trying
Speaker 12: to roll double ones as to whether the bus will
Speaker 12: fucking show up at all. The wait times are enormous,
Speaker 12: Like it's a real shit show, and like it's it's
Speaker 12: substantively way worse than it was when I was in
Speaker 12: this and like fifteen nineteen. Yeah, it's really really bad
Speaker 12: and it's it's atrocious.
Speaker 7: Yes.
Speaker 3: The other factor that's to be talked about there is that, like,
Speaker 3: so the Chicago public transit system is not free like
Speaker 3: most systems, Like it is funded by writer fairs. Like
Speaker 3: it's very Yeah, it costs a lot to get on Comparatively,
Speaker 3: it costs a lot to get on the train, are
Speaker 3: going on a bus. And one of the kind of
Speaker 3: like self reinforcing cycles has been playing out the last
Speaker 3: few years is that Chicago also has a really bad
Speaker 3: homelessness problem. And this is directly linked to the fact
Speaker 3: that the city just does not want to give people housing.
Speaker 3: And so what ends up happening is that a lot
Speaker 3: of Chicago's homeless residents, especially in the colder winter months,
Speaker 3: they end up on the trains, especially the two lines
Speaker 3: that run twenty four hours a day. And you know,
Speaker 3: these are people who are really you know, they're living
Speaker 3: in really really terrible conditions, Like they don't have regular
Speaker 3: access to clean food and water, let alone like clean
Speaker 3: access to like like regular access to like hygienic facilities.
Speaker 3: And so ridership really plummeted on the lines where homeless
Speaker 3: people started to like just go on in order to
Speaker 3: stay warm, and so you get the hit because rider
Speaker 3: fares are now down because people don't want to deal
Speaker 3: with being on the same train line as homeless people
Speaker 3: who you know, frankly just don't smell that good or
Speaker 3: have mental health problems. And the city doesn't want to
Speaker 3: give these homeless people housing, let alone like even like
Speaker 3: smaller things like like access to bathing facilities or healthcare
Speaker 3: or anything like that. And so it becomes a self
Speaker 3: reinforcement cycle of now fares are down, so there's less investment,
Speaker 3: so more people abandon the system, and it is the
Speaker 3: same were like this will this would get solved if
Speaker 3: Chicago committed to giving homeless people housing, but that's just
Speaker 3: not where the city has unfortunately been.
Speaker 12: Yeah, and I mean, you know, and what what's happening
Speaker 12: instead is like, you know, increasing anti homeless architecture. Like
Speaker 12: Chicago train stations fucking suck ass because they're all designs
Speaker 12: so that's impossible to sit on anything.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, there are only two benches in each station.
Speaker 12: It sucks some man, these stations like it's so bad,
Speaker 12: like it's just awful. Like one of the things that
Speaker 12: Chicago has is they have these, like you know, it
Speaker 12: gets really really culture in the winter, so they have
Speaker 12: these like warming stations so that when it's like fucking
Speaker 12: negative twenty out, you can be in the warming things,
Speaker 12: but there's no They intentionally make it so there's no
Speaker 12: benches in them, so you can't sit in them. Yeah,
Speaker 12: it sucks, like it's it's you know, it's they have
Speaker 12: this really just like the hatred of homeless people is
Speaker 12: turned basically into a war against all society waged the city,
Speaker 12: and yes, it's atrocious.
Speaker 3: The good news is that Brandon Johnson wants to pass
Speaker 3: an ordinance called Bring Chicago Home, which would put a
Speaker 3: tax on property transfers for like I think it's like
Speaker 3: homes that are worth over a million dollars that and
Speaker 3: the money from that tax would go entirely to funding
Speaker 3: programs for the city's homeless residents all the way up
Speaker 3: to and including permanent shelter or like permanent housing solutions.
Speaker 3: So you know, you know, fingers crossed on that one,
Speaker 3: because that, I think, along with the public safety measures,
Speaker 3: is really the thing that the city needs the most.
Speaker 3: And Johnson also on the housing front, he wants to
Speaker 3: liberalize zoning laws, which I know is a very big
Speaker 3: debate on the left at the moment about, you know,
Speaker 3: how we go about approaching building more housing. Johnson very
Speaker 3: much is on like the probe development end of things.
Speaker 3: He wants to liberalize zoning laws and make it so
Speaker 3: that it's easier to build multi family housing and previously
Speaker 3: like single family housing zoned areas. He does also want
Speaker 3: to pass just cause for eviction, so like your landlord
Speaker 3: would not be able to throw you out just because,
Speaker 3: which is a good thing. Chicago's landlords are really shit.
Speaker 3: They're terrible. I have seen across the born terrible.
Speaker 12: Yeah, like I God, like, I have seen ship doing
Speaker 12: tenant organizing that is like like things that make me
Speaker 12: like have to control my reflex to vomit just remembering them,
Speaker 12: yes truly.
Speaker 3: But yeah. The other thing, and that's something that will
Speaker 3: matter to you if you are living in Chicago very much,
Speaker 3: is that Johnson wants to cap property taxes. So one
Speaker 3: of the things that has been driving a lot of
Speaker 3: reactuctionary politics in Chicago is that property taxes here are
Speaker 3: linked to inflation, which means that if you are a
Speaker 3: property owner in Chicago in the last couple of years,
Speaker 3: your property taxes went up by like fifteen plus percent,
Speaker 3: which understandably made a lot of people mad because you know,
Speaker 3: if your taxes go up by that much that fast,
Speaker 3: you at least wanted to be going to do something
Speaker 3: good and under our previous well soon to be previous
Speaker 3: mayor Lord Lightfoot, that absolutely was not happening. Yeah, cop
Speaker 3: over time or some shit like Yes, So Johnson is
Speaker 3: he campaigned on decoupling property taxes from inflation so they
Speaker 3: would no longer just automatically go up, which would bring
Speaker 3: a lot of financial relief to a lot of Chicago families.
Speaker 3: And also he would basically like wants to pass a
Speaker 3: lot of taxes focused on wealthier residents as well as
Speaker 3: big businesses to help fund some of the programs which
Speaker 3: brings us to the City Council. And how much of
Speaker 3: a chance he hasn't getting this past, which is better
Speaker 3: than you might think if you are familiar with Chicago politics.
Speaker 3: Something that surprises people who don't live in the city
Speaker 3: is that Chicago is not run by progressives. There has
Speaker 3: actually pretty much never been a progressive majority on the
Speaker 3: City Council, and there isn't there will not be a
Speaker 3: progressive majority on the new one. That comes in with Johnson.
Speaker 3: He is going to be presiding over a minority government
Speaker 3: in parliamentary terms, which I think we should use more
Speaker 3: often because I'm a nerd and I find it fun.
Speaker 3: But basically, there are fifty members of the Chicago City Council.
Speaker 3: They are called aldermen because we insist on having a
Speaker 3: city council that is the size of a state legislature here,
Speaker 3: and about twenty two of them are going to be
Speaker 3: aligned with Johnson mo less, so he's going to be
Speaker 3: three votes short on a lot of things. At least
Speaker 3: from the beginning. He is going to be negotiating with
Speaker 3: the black political establishment here in Chicago, which is one
Speaker 3: of the smaller machines that is left in the aftermath
Speaker 3: of Madigan's indictment. And we are going to see how
Speaker 3: this goes. Some of those black aldermen are friendlier to
Speaker 3: Johnson from the get go, partially because of ideology and
Speaker 3: partially because a lot of them just like personally know
Speaker 3: him and like him. Some of them are very against
Speaker 3: him for similar reasons, like they either ideologically don't line
Speaker 3: up or they just dislike him on a personal basis.
Speaker 12: Like we should talk, we should say a little bit
Speaker 12: about Johnson's not like some kind of like political political outsider.
Speaker 3: No, He's been around. He's kind of.
Speaker 12: He has like interesting relations with the old sort of
Speaker 12: like prep Winkle like labor machine.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's definitely like Johnson is definitely part of a machine.
Speaker 3: His relationship with like the old machine was very bad,
Speaker 3: but he is definitely part of a machine that is
Speaker 3: tied up and like the institutional labor unions that have
Speaker 3: a lot of sway and democratic politics here, including the
Speaker 3: Chicago Teachers Union, which, like you know, Vallas's whole stick
Speaker 3: during the run off was that Johnson would be a
Speaker 3: stooge for the teachers Union, and the teachers Union really
Speaker 3: just like the teacher This is actually kind of funny
Speaker 3: because like the Teachers' Union really just swept the board here,
Speaker 3: not just with Johnson, but with like a lot of
Speaker 3: the city council races where they weighed in. So if
Speaker 3: you are a member of the Chicago Teachers Union who
Speaker 3: does not approve of their leadership, buckle up, because the
Speaker 3: next several years they are going they are almost certainly
Speaker 3: going balls to the wall of like, well, if we
Speaker 3: can get a mayor, we can get a lot of
Speaker 3: other people too.
Speaker 12: Yeah, and we should mention here that so a lot
Speaker 12: of the other unions in Chicago like are kind of
Speaker 12: ah yeah, they range an ad to shit. Chicago Teachers'
Speaker 12: Union got taken over by this group called Core, who
Speaker 12: are like a sort of rank and file like left
Speaker 12: e Like I think I think a good way to
Speaker 12: understand Core is that like with the caveat that, like
Speaker 12: teachers in Chicago really don't make that much money in
Speaker 12: the grand scheme of things, so like income wise, this
Speaker 12: is not line up. But these people are very much
Speaker 12: like kind of resistance liberals on steroids. Like they're not
Speaker 12: going to be like frontliners and a socialist revolutionary time soon,
Speaker 12: but like they are definitely on the far left of
Speaker 12: the Democratic Party coalition.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, and we should like they're not like.
Speaker 12: Like they are. They are like I don't know, I
Speaker 12: have complicated feelings on them from the sort of anegicates perspective.
Speaker 12: They're like they're they're as good of a thing of
Speaker 12: like union people as like you currently have. Again, we've
Speaker 12: talked about this, this could change within and you very quickly.
Speaker 12: But yeah, they've they've been responsible for pushing a lot
Speaker 12: of things that are very good. Yes, and they've they've
Speaker 12: they've turned the union into like I mean, well it's okay,
Speaker 12: so like one thing to talk about. Like they actually
Speaker 12: do go on strike, which is the thing that a
Speaker 12: lot of unions struck don't like.
Speaker 3: They go on strike.
Speaker 12: They do. They do political things that are usually pretty good.
Speaker 12: And they are an actual sort of like they're an
Speaker 12: actual class base for things getting better.
Speaker 3: Yes they are. The Chicago Teachers Union is definitely like
Speaker 3: a net good force in city politics and something that also,
Speaker 3: like CTU, gets a lot of negative attention even on
Speaker 3: a national level. And so something that surprises people who
Speaker 3: don't live in Chicago, if they know about the Teachers
Speaker 3: Union at all, is that the CTU is actually very
Speaker 3: popular among the cities or residents like most like people
Speaker 3: love the Chicago Teachers Union. Like when the teachers last
Speaker 3: one on strike, the public was over overwhelmingly on their side,
Speaker 3: which is why they won. And c TOU also like
Speaker 3: their twenty nineteen strike against Lory Liefoot was very much
Speaker 3: like the inspiration that touched off a lot of the
Speaker 3: teacher strikes that happened in red states over the next
Speaker 3: several months, Like they very much kind of led the
Speaker 3: way in some in some areas, like so they are
Speaker 3: like like Mia, I have complicated feelings about the CTU,
Speaker 3: but overall they're a good thing for city politics and
Speaker 3: like they make Chicago a more progressive place.
Speaker 12: Yeah, and this has been true for like a while too,
Speaker 12: like like to the extent that when like I think
Speaker 12: back in twenty twelve, Core was like, like, oh sweet,
Speaker 12: what did you But back back when Court sort of
Speaker 12: first taking home was first doing their strikes, like even
Speaker 12: the CTU people were surprised about the extent to which
Speaker 12: like when they went out, like the streets turned into
Speaker 12: a party, Like people actually really do like them.
Speaker 3: Like I mean the cops don't but like fuck them, Like.
Speaker 5: People know the.
Speaker 3: Cops don't like them, and to see to use credit,
Speaker 3: most Chicago teachers dislike the cops.
Speaker 12: Yeah, they've they've been they've been trying to get cops
Speaker 12: out of schools, which is good because yes, cops and
Speaker 12: schools are especially in Chicago, it's really bad.
Speaker 3: The last thing I think we should mention about the
Speaker 3: City Council before we move on to some of the
Speaker 3: other elections we need to talk about is one of
Speaker 3: the things that gets criticized about the left as an
Speaker 3: electoral force in places like New York or Los Angeles,
Speaker 3: especially those two places, is that's very dominated by white people.
Speaker 3: And I do want to provide the context for those
Speaker 3: of you who are not from the Chicago area, Like,
Speaker 3: that's not true. In Chicago. The progressive movement and the left,
Speaker 3: like the leftist movement, on an electoral level in Chicago
Speaker 3: is very much driven by people of color. And you
Speaker 3: saw this in the City Council election results. Almost every
Speaker 3: single seat that progressives flipped on the City Council was
Speaker 3: in a black or brown ward, and even the two wards,
Speaker 3: like the two white majority wards where they flip seats,
Speaker 3: the new aldermen or Alder women in both cases are
Speaker 3: people of color. So, like, this is just like context
Speaker 3: for those of you who are not from Chicago. This
Speaker 3: is not a case of like white leftist gone wild.
Speaker 3: Like this very much is a rainbow coalition, not just
Speaker 3: in the sense that Brandon Johnson won the election off
Speaker 3: of rainbow coalition, but in the sense of the electoral
Speaker 3: left in Chicago is very very much a rainbow coalition
Speaker 3: and has been very effective because of that.
Speaker 12: Yeah, and it's very funny too, because you see people
Speaker 12: like those sort of right wiggers in Chicago, like constantly
Speaker 12: screening about like Lake Front liberals, and you look at
Speaker 12: like the actual base of like the policy shit, it's like, okay,
Speaker 12: like this is this is this is simply not what
Speaker 12: was actually happening here.
Speaker 3: Yes, the honest like the thing about like race and
Speaker 3: its relationship with progressive politics in Chicago is that the
Speaker 3: most progressive neighborhoods Chicago, based on their voting patterns, are
Speaker 3: almost always the most racially integrated. And that's not to
Speaker 3: say that like all of the racially integrated neighborhoods are progressive,
Speaker 3: because that's not true. There are some pretty integrated neighborhoods
Speaker 3: on the Southwest Side that are like very conservative because
Speaker 3: a bunch of cops live there. But most of the
Speaker 3: racially integrated neighborhoods of Chicago are also the most progressive neighborhoods,
Speaker 3: and that like really just flies in the face of
Speaker 3: the whole like white lake Front liberal narrative and is
Speaker 3: something to pay more attention to.
Speaker 12: Okay, again, it cannot be emphasized enough. Brandon Johnson, the
Speaker 12: progressive candidate is black. He's running against a white guy.
Speaker 12: There was a very large attempt to paint like Brandon
Speaker 12: Johnson is like an out of touch, like white liberal,
Speaker 12: which is really funny. Yeah, I think like they just
Speaker 12: have I don't know. I mean, it's just the sort
Speaker 12: of like ideological bankruptcy of like like the sort of
Speaker 12: like capitalist establishment is like they have nothing right they're
Speaker 12: they're like the only thing they have left is like
Speaker 12: calling a black guy white.
Speaker 3: It's just like shut the fuck up, like he believes
Speaker 3: the shit anymore. Like And on that note, it might
Speaker 3: be time for some ads.
Speaker 12: Yeah we are, we are back from our I hope
Speaker 12: you have enjoyed the destruction of the entire world.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, so there.
Speaker 12: We have talked about Chicago for a long time because
Speaker 12: you're both fum Chicago. It's very funny and it's very interesting.
Speaker 12: But oh actually, okay, I'm realizing this. There's one more
Speaker 12: thing I do. The two more things I do specifically
Speaker 12: want to mention about Brandon Johnson than I forgot earlier.
Speaker 3: One is that he.
Speaker 12: You know, it's genuinely unclear to me whether this is
Speaker 12: a real ideological belief he has or whether this is
Speaker 12: the thing that he said to not get called Natie
Speaker 12: semi because it was electorally expedient, but he released a
Speaker 12: really really shitty statement on like what got investment and
Speaker 12: sanctions of Israel.
Speaker 3: That was like Herbert, Oh, yeah, it was terrible.
Speaker 12: It was really terrible.
Speaker 3: But Like, based on what I saw from the aftermath
Speaker 3: of that, I'm inclined to believe that this was more
Speaker 3: something he was told to say. And the reason for
Speaker 3: that is because the reaction that got with the crowd
Speaker 3: he was in front of was like he was speaking
Speaker 3: with a Jewish organization. Like the reaction was very like okay, dude,
Speaker 3: but that's not what we asked you about. Like it
Speaker 3: was a response to a question about like, oh, you know,
Speaker 3: how do you handle anti Semitism? And I think there
Speaker 3: are just unfortunately a lot of really dipshit consultants in
Speaker 3: the Democratic Party who hear the words anti Semitism and
Speaker 3: think you have to talk about Israel, which is really
Speaker 3: truly an ironically anti semitic of them to think, like, yeah,
Speaker 3: I think he was probably told to say that I'm
Speaker 3: not going to go out on a limon. I guess
Speaker 3: what his actual beliefs on Israel Houstine are, but I'm
Speaker 3: pretty confident that that was his consultants being dumb.
Speaker 12: Yeah, but like I like the but the actual consequich
Speaker 12: is like he was equitting, like he was quitting the
Speaker 12: SNETI Semitism. He like, go, you should try to go
Speaker 12: find the clip somewhere because it's genuine, winey, bizarre and shit.
Speaker 12: And this is this is the part of the episode
Speaker 12: where I want to remind people that like when when
Speaker 12: when these kinds of people get into power, it is
Speaker 12: not as good as people think it's going to be.
Speaker 3: Like another thing.
Speaker 12: He very like he almost immediately like right after he
Speaker 12: got elected, started trying to convince Biden to have the
Speaker 12: Democratic National Convention in Chicago, which would be a fucking
Speaker 12: shit show. Yeah, this is me from the future here.
Speaker 12: Two days after we recorded this, the Democratic Party announced
Speaker 12: that the twenty twenty four Democratic National Convention will indeed
Speaker 12: be held in Chicago. So yeah, it's gonna suck. That
Speaker 12: effort predates him, like that's in the world. Like he
Speaker 12: definitely immediately came out and said like, yes, I'm in
Speaker 12: support of this, yeah, which is like some people don't
Speaker 12: understand why. Okay, So, like the thing that happens when
Speaker 12: when when national convention comes to your city is that
Speaker 12: your city is occupied by the cops and then like
Speaker 12: wherever the convention is happening based we turned into a
Speaker 12: war zone because anyone who comes out to trying to
Speaker 12: protest them just gets like the ship beaten out of them.
Speaker 3: Yes, and there's also usually a lot of anti homeless
Speaker 3: policies they get rolled down in advance. We actually, we
Speaker 3: would would this is It's not as.
Speaker 12: Bad as the stuff we talked about with Lula in
Speaker 12: terms of the World Cup, but it's a similar kind
Speaker 12: of thing that you get with these kinds of candidates
Speaker 12: where they do these sort of like giant they do
Speaker 12: these sort of like mega project developmentalism shit because they
Speaker 12: want the status that comes from it, and the result
Speaker 12: is stuff that sucks and that you know, nominally like
Speaker 12: like at least in theory, like contradicts the rest of
Speaker 12: his platform, right like this this is going to be
Speaker 12: a thing that brings a lot of cops into the
Speaker 12: fucking city he's in theory supposed to be trying to
Speaker 12: have policing done by like people who are cops. That's
Speaker 12: gonna suck if it works.
Speaker 3: Yes, And that is that is your reminder for if
Speaker 3: you do live in Chicago, like me and I that
Speaker 3: just because Brandon Johnson got elected does not mean that
Speaker 3: you could to sit home. Like if you are involved
Speaker 3: or invested in Chicago progressive politics, just because you have
Speaker 3: a progressive mayor doesn't mean you get to sit back
Speaker 3: and relax. You have to do a lot of work
Speaker 3: to hold these people's feet to the fire.
Speaker 12: Yeah, Like you're like, you're you're gonna end up fighting
Speaker 12: these people and it's gonna suck, and you're going to
Speaker 12: have to do it.
Speaker 3: Like if you if you believe.
Speaker 12: In the things that you that you claim to believe to,
Speaker 12: when are not sort of just acting out of like
Speaker 12: you know, either you're not just purely acting on a
Speaker 12: sort of candidate loyalty you were you were going to
Speaker 12: have to fight people that you helped get elected, and
Speaker 12: you're going to have.
Speaker 3: To pay for that. Start the five stages of grief.
Speaker 12: Now, okay, move moving, moving moving on from that ship, moving.
Speaker 3: On, we need to talk about Wisconsin. The other big
Speaker 3: election that happened on Tuesday night was an election that
Speaker 3: flipped the Supreme Court of the State of wiscon And
Speaker 3: from a conservative majority, and not just like lowercase C conservative,
Speaker 3: but like batshit and sane Christian nationalists conservative from a
Speaker 3: majority of those people to a liberal majority. That is
Speaker 3: hopefully going to make life better for the people of Wisconsin.
Speaker 3: So for those of you who are not paying attention
Speaker 3: to this, which is likely even more than the people
Speaker 3: who were not paying attention to Chicago, because state Supreme
Speaker 3: Court races, most people if you tell them about those,
Speaker 3: react with that's a thing. Yeah, and I mean to
Speaker 3: be fair.
Speaker 12: To be fair, this is probably the most nationally prominent
Speaker 12: state street court election of my lifetime. That means that
Speaker 12: maybe four people know about it instead of one.
Speaker 7: Yes.
Speaker 3: So on Tuesday night, Janet Protis Saywit, who was the
Speaker 3: Democratic aligned candidate, beat the Republican aligned candidate Daniel Kelly,
Speaker 3: who was himself a former member of the Wisconsin Supreme
Speaker 3: Court eleven points, which is a really big deal because
Speaker 3: Wisconsin voted for Joe Biden by zero point six points.
Speaker 3: So this is very much like landslide level territory for
Speaker 3: wiscon for Wisconsin Democrats, it was very much a perfect storm.
Speaker 3: Like the areas of the state that have been trending
Speaker 3: towards Republicans experienced massive reversion back towards Producewits and the
Speaker 3: areas of the state that have historically been a Republican
Speaker 3: also really shifted left. And the reason this happened, the
Speaker 3: single reason it happened, is because of the Dobbs ruling
Speaker 3: that overturned Roe v. Wade and brought American gender dynamics
Speaker 3: back by a solid seventy five years. Pro to Saywits
Speaker 3: successfully turned the campaign into a referendum on abortion rights,
Speaker 3: which is why she won by the margin she did.
Speaker 3: There was huge turnout in Madison, Milwaukee and college campuses.
Speaker 3: There were multiple college campuses, I think where there were
Speaker 3: more votes cast in this state Supreme Court election than
Speaker 3: there were in the midterms last November. So this really
Speaker 3: was like every single thing that possibly could have gone
Speaker 3: right electorally for the Democrats in Wisconsin did obviously with
Speaker 3: very very like grim background context of the overturning of Row,
Speaker 3: but a good sign for the future of the abortion
Speaker 3: rights movement that you know, people voters did not forget
Speaker 3: about Dobbs after the midterms, like this is still an
Speaker 3: active force in national politics that is pushing people to
Speaker 3: the left.
Speaker 12: Yeah, and I want to specific we talk about this
Speaker 12: for a little bit too, because, like I think the
Speaker 12: media has kind of has really I think fallen down
Speaker 12: on the fucking job here, which is that like these
Speaker 12: people are like because there's like all all the people
Speaker 12: in the fucking media class are either like themselves are
Speaker 12: like hardline anti abortion rules or there people who this
Speaker 12: doesn't affect and you know, so they just stop giving
Speaker 12: a ship after like a couple of months because it's
Speaker 12: like whatever, who cares.
Speaker 13: But like.
Speaker 12: This is a if you are living under this, like
Speaker 12: this is this is like you can't fucking ignore this, no,
Speaker 12: like it is it is a it is an immense
Speaker 12: engine of death and human suffering that you know, it's
Speaker 12: it's it's this is the US, right we live under
Speaker 12: a normally like we live under a lot of immense
Speaker 12: sort of engines of death and human suffering.
Speaker 3: But this is this is a kind of engine that
Speaker 3: just sweeps through.
Speaker 12: It sweeps across the sort of note what you think
Speaker 12: of as like the quote unquote like like traditional.
Speaker 3: Sort of.
Speaker 12: Like I don't know, you like class liizes the right thing,
Speaker 12: But this is the thing that kind of sweeps across
Speaker 12: the urban world divide in a lot of ways, like
Speaker 12: it sweeps au across a lot of the certain normal
Speaker 12: political divisions because the Republicans have been like there there
Speaker 12: there lying on abortion has been hijacked by what I say, hijack, right,
Speaker 12: this is what this is, what this is what these
Speaker 12: people always wanted, but it's it's been it's being set
Speaker 12: by a bunch of just deranged Christian nationalists whose opinion
Speaker 12: reflect maybe tour like thirty percent of the country max.
Speaker 3: Not even that. Like the like the ruling of the
Speaker 3: judge down in Texas on I'm going to mess up
Speaker 3: how to pronounce this, and I apologize, But if a
Speaker 3: priss stone, which is like a pill that, among other things,
Speaker 3: can induce abortions, Uh, there was like a Republican judge
Speaker 3: down in northern Texas who attempted, who like, attempted to
Speaker 3: overturn the FDA's approval of the drug. The FDA proved
Speaker 3: this drug in the nineties, and his ruling very much
Speaker 3: was insane, like on top of just like the superficial
Speaker 3: insanity of trying to do this. His reasoning was that,
Speaker 3: you know, this man wrote a ruling saying that the
Speaker 3: Constitution guarantees fetal personhood, which is a which we you
Speaker 3: know would result in a complete and total ban on
Speaker 3: abortion nationwide under all circumstances, and that's a viewpoint that
Speaker 3: is shared by less than ten percent of Americans. So like,
Speaker 3: it's just, you know, the Republican Party has gone off
Speaker 3: the cliff after they went off the cliff here. Yeah,
Speaker 3: And you know, I don't know, I think this whole
Speaker 3: I think.
Speaker 12: There's a lot of ways in which this entire sort
Speaker 12: of election, the lection dynamics of this are really grim
Speaker 12: because the Democrats are the people who let the shit
Speaker 12: fucking happen, right like for years and years and years
Speaker 12: in years, they just you know, they used abortion as
Speaker 12: an electoral thing and then did fucking nothing to actually
Speaker 12: make sure that abortion would be that you know, would
Speaker 12: be saved, and they finally lost it. And now it's like,
Speaker 12: you know, it's the thing that's like, it's it's it's
Speaker 12: it's the electoral issue that's coming to bail them out
Speaker 12: of their like.
Speaker 3: Electoral woes, and that fucking sucks in a lot of ways.
Speaker 3: But it also means, I.
Speaker 12: Don't know, like it's it's it's it's beating some of
Speaker 12: the worst people in the fucking world. If we want
Speaker 12: to actually make sure that people have the ability to
Speaker 12: have safe abortions on demand, we are going to have
Speaker 12: to do a lot of fighting that is not just
Speaker 12: showing up to these elections.
Speaker 3: Yes, absolutely, but it is yeah, no, like like Mia said,
Speaker 3: it is really just like heinous that so many of
Speaker 3: the Democratic Party big wigs who presided over the fifty
Speaker 3: years of Republicans saying they were going to do this
Speaker 3: and not taking Republicans seriously, are never going to feel
Speaker 3: accountable for this. Yeah, and I don't think I need
Speaker 3: to be you needs to be putting out with this too.
Speaker 12: Was like the Republicans the entire time, we're in every
Speaker 12: single way they possibly could like outlawing abortion without literally
Speaker 12: outlawing it, and people just stood that like the party
Speaker 12: which is like we don't give a shit, like we're
Speaker 12: not We're not going to like actually like fight this
Speaker 12: except for occasionally to run a losing candidate, right, like.
Speaker 3: I don't know, Yeah, no, it's it's insane, And like
Speaker 3: there are there are people in the Democratic Party who
Speaker 3: were trying to raise the alarm. Those people were generally ignored.
Speaker 3: But the you know, now that abortion rights are gone
Speaker 3: on a national level, we are seeing this electoral backlash
Speaker 3: and it is having the impact of like you know,
Speaker 3: Republicans have been unable to effectively make the national conversation
Speaker 3: about inflation, or about crime, or about trans athletes, which
Speaker 3: is also a losing issue for them, but god knows,
Speaker 3: they keep trying, but they have been unable to make
Speaker 3: the national conversation about those topics because voters are now
Speaker 3: looking at them like, but you're the freaks that took
Speaker 3: our abortion rights away? What's wrong with you? And in
Speaker 3: terms of Wisconsin, pro to say, which being on the
Speaker 3: Wisconsin Supreme Court is almost certainly she doesn't take office
Speaker 3: until August, which is a really weird amount of time
Speaker 3: for her to have to wait, Like I don't know
Speaker 3: why Wisconsin is like that, but it is. But once
Speaker 3: she is in office, Wisconsin should have restored abortion access,
Speaker 3: I would say almost immediately, basically, like as soon as
Speaker 3: someone can file a lawsuit over it, because right now,
Speaker 3: abortion is currently illegal in Wisconsin under a law from
Speaker 3: eighteen forty nine that the only exception to the law
Speaker 3: is to save the life of the mother, which, like.
Speaker 4: I think.
Speaker 3: People who are not personally impacted by the possibility of
Speaker 3: pregnancy or the possibility of childbirth, I think really don't
Speaker 3: emotionally internalize what the language around some of these exceptions means,
Speaker 3: and it's like, if you are hearing the words like
Speaker 3: the only exception is life of the mother, that's really
Speaker 3: terrifying because it means like if you're going to be
Speaker 3: permanently injured as someone who's pregnant, but you're not literally
Speaker 3: going to die. Abortion is not an option for you.
Speaker 3: If the fetus that you are carrying, you know, whether
Speaker 3: you wanted an abortion or not, if that fetus has
Speaker 3: some kind of fatal defect, that is going to mean
Speaker 3: that your baby dies within hours or days after being
Speaker 3: born and is going to be and pain the whole time.
Speaker 3: Abortion is not an option for you. If you are
Speaker 3: pregnant because of sexual violence or because of incest, abortion
Speaker 3: is not an option for you. And it's it's like,
Speaker 3: you know, I am a cisgender man, so like I
Speaker 3: can't personally understand, but like I can only guess how
Speaker 3: terrifying of a reality that is. And the you know,
Speaker 3: the only good news out of this is that once
Speaker 3: prodi Saywans is in office, that law is probably going
Speaker 3: to go away as quickly as possible, which is a
Speaker 3: much needed victory for the people of Wisconsin and hopefully
Speaker 3: is you know, carries the momentum forward for like post
Speaker 3: twenty twenty four, hopefully we have a democratic trifecta again
Speaker 3: that can legislate abortion rights nationally and take it out
Speaker 3: of the ability to take away the ability for courts.
Speaker 5: To strike it down.
Speaker 3: There are some other ramifications for the state of Wisconsin
Speaker 3: that should also be mentioned. For those of you who
Speaker 3: live in Wisconsin. If I say the words public sector
Speaker 3: union law, you know what I'm talking about, the very
Speaker 3: infamous law that was passed by Scott Walker back in
Speaker 3: twenty ten, twenty eleven. I think that really restricted the
Speaker 3: collective bargaining rights of public sector unions, and like this
Speaker 3: sparked a recall campaign against Walker, which failed and proto
Speaker 3: Sawitz has said on record she said it in a
Speaker 3: campaign appearance because this race really just discarded all pretensions
Speaker 3: of like judicial impartiality. But she said in a campaign
Speaker 3: appearance that she wanted to get rid of that law.
Speaker 3: So that law is probably going away, or hopefully we'll
Speaker 3: be going away. Wisconsin also has very gerrymandered state legislative
Speaker 3: maps that are almost certainly going to be struck down.
Speaker 3: Same thing with its congressional maps, which means that Democrats
Speaker 3: can probably count on two more seats in the House
Speaker 3: post twenty twenty four, and also on a basic like
Speaker 3: do we live in a democracy or not?
Speaker 4: Level?
Speaker 3: In twenty twenty, when the Trump campaign was filing all
Speaker 3: of its really idiotic lawsuits alleging voter fraud, the Supreme
Speaker 3: Court of Wisconsin was the court that came the closest
Speaker 3: to taking those allegations seriously. They voted by one vote
Speaker 3: to dismiss the case because one of the conservatives broke
Speaker 3: ranks and he has been hounded by the far right
Speaker 3: in Wisconsin ever since. Wisconsin was one vote away from
Speaker 3: just three throwing out the popular election results, like the
Speaker 3: popular vote results, so there, you know, pro to say
Speaker 3: what's winning is literally an insurance policy for continuing to
Speaker 3: have the state of Wisconsin be a democracy. Yeah, which
Speaker 3: is good, Like I don't know that.
Speaker 12: Having a state that is effectively ruled by a dictatorship
Speaker 12: that was about to attempt to install like a dictator's
Speaker 12: president is good, Like I don't know. This is my
Speaker 12: lib take on this is in fact not good when
Speaker 12: a bunch of people are ruled by just an open dictatorship.
Speaker 3: So, which is essentially what Wisconsin you know, has been
Speaker 3: barring Tony eversus Whens as governor in twenty eighteen and
Speaker 3: twenty twenty two, like until he was in office, like
Speaker 3: Scott Walker presided over a single party dictatorship and wassconsin
Speaker 3: and so like, you know, which is part of also
Speaker 3: why pro to States was able to win by the
Speaker 3: margins that she did, because you know, Wisconsin is a
Speaker 3: swing state. It is reliably going to be close to
Speaker 3: fifty to fifty, but especially on social issues, it has
Speaker 3: a liberal majority, and a lot of people paid attention
Speaker 3: to this race and they saw correctly the opportunity to
Speaker 3: dismantle the dictatorship that effectively has had control of Wisconsin
Speaker 3: for the last decade plus.
Speaker 12: Yeah, and I mean, you know, the other thing, like
Speaker 12: part of what we're what's happening here is that if
Speaker 12: conservatives are actually allowed to do uncontested rule in a
Speaker 12: place that's even like kind of not just like a
Speaker 12: one hundred percent like conservative district, the results that they, like,
Speaker 12: the actual policies they put in place are fucking horrifying. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Bad, it's like obviously bad, but like you get, I mean,
Speaker 3: you get you get stuff like what happened in Tennessee
Speaker 3: in the last week where they you know, the state
Speaker 3: legislature expelled Democratic lawmakers for like engaging in the mildest
Speaker 3: of protests against like an open carry bill, and you know,
Speaker 3: just in a real cherry on top moment, the Tennessee
Speaker 3: State Legislature only expelled the black legislators who protested, and
Speaker 3: the white legislator who joined them survived her expulsion vote,
Speaker 3: because you know, we don't want to be like the
Speaker 3: days of the Republican Party not wanting to be two
Speaker 3: on the nose about the racism are long gone. But yes, so,
Speaker 3: But overall, good things happened in Wisconsin on Tuesday, and
Speaker 3: some some of the really terrible things that were put
Speaker 3: into law in that state in the last decade are
Speaker 3: hopefully about to go away. Yeah, there were some other places,
Speaker 3: mostly in the Midwest because once again the coastal regions
Speaker 3: of the country let us down. But there were some
Speaker 3: other places where liberals or progressives did well on Tuesday.
Speaker 3: Saint Louis, Missouri, has had a progressive city council, and
Speaker 3: there was a very strong kind of law and order
Speaker 3: challenge to that progressive majority based in the city's white majority.
Speaker 3: Wards and after Tuesday night, it's pretty clear that progressives
Speaker 3: will continue to have a majority on the city council.
Speaker 3: In Kansas City, on the other end of the state
Speaker 3: of Missouri, we are probably going to get the most
Speaker 3: progressive city council that the city has ever had. The
Speaker 3: main left wing group got all of its candidates through
Speaker 3: to the general election which is on June twentieth, and
Speaker 3: the main right wing tough on crime group seems like
Speaker 3: it's going to be capped at winning two seats. So
Speaker 3: you know, once again, the Midwest is the engine of
Speaker 3: American progressivism and the West coast can suck it. Yeah,
Speaker 3: there is one more piece of good news, which is
Speaker 3: that in Illinois there was a set of far right
Speaker 3: groups that ran a bunch of school board candidates on
Speaker 3: the like anti critical race theory, anti queer, anti trans platforms,
Speaker 3: and actually I'll just say the names of the groups
Speaker 3: because people should know. These groups are Awake Illinois, Moms
Speaker 3: for Liberty, and the seventeen seventy six Project. Basically, these
Speaker 3: groups are you know, if you went to the South
Speaker 3: in the nineteen seventies, you had the Klan and then
Speaker 3: you had the White Citizens Council, which was the supposedly
Speaker 3: more respectable face of white nationalism in the South in
Speaker 3: the sixties and seventies, and groups like Moms or Liberty
Speaker 3: and Awake Illinois are kind of the equivalent to groups
Speaker 3: like the Proud Boys and very you know, fittingly with
Speaker 3: the analogy here, these groups are primarily run and staffed
Speaker 3: by conservative women, just like white citizens councils were down
Speaker 3: South about fifty years ago, and thankfully, these candidates almost
Speaker 3: all went down in flames. I think there is a
Speaker 3: school board election in me and I's hometown, which is
Speaker 3: very notoriously conservative for people in the area, and even
Speaker 3: in that in our hometown, they've lost. And like these
Speaker 3: losses extended into downstate Illinois too, and like there's a
Speaker 3: small city called Quincy in western Illinois where it's like,
Speaker 3: this is a place that votes Republican routinely by like
Speaker 3: thirty points, like a sixty five percent majority, and these
Speaker 3: far right school board candidates lost in Quincy, Illinois. So
Speaker 3: thankfully people saw through the bullshit and were like, actually,
Speaker 3: you people are weirdos, and we're not going to hand
Speaker 3: you power.
Speaker 12: Yeah. Another thing that was very funny is Carbondale, which
Speaker 12: is like a very like this is like, I like,
Speaker 12: this is this is this is a Carbondale is a
Speaker 12: southern Illinois ass town is like not quite as far
Speaker 12: south tacnically speaking as you can.
Speaker 3: Go in Illinois, but like it's close.
Speaker 12: Yeah, I unlike did their first transperson to serve in
Speaker 12: a city council anywhere in Illinois. So like they're they're
Speaker 12: getting cloudborated fucking Carbondale, like they had a really fucking
Speaker 12: just destroyed. And I'm very happy about this because you know,
Speaker 12: a lot of kids are going to grow up in
Speaker 12: schools that are way less shitty than they were. Like
Speaker 12: even when I was there were like God help, the
Speaker 12: generation before us was just like sve and like would
Speaker 12: have killed like me and most of the people.
Speaker 3: I know, like yeah, yeah, no, the schools that me
Speaker 3: and I grew up in were not a great place
Speaker 3: to be queerer trans of any variety. But I mean
Speaker 3: this is also going to help because of I have.
Speaker 3: I still don't know what the Biden administration was thinking
Speaker 3: about this, but like the new like rule that they're
Speaker 3: rolling out around trans participation in K through twelve sports
Speaker 3: through the Department of Education. This got a lot of
Speaker 3: attention on Twitter in the last couple of days because
Speaker 3: I'm going to be as charitable as I can here
Speaker 3: to all of the people involved. But there was a
Speaker 3: panic on in progressive circles on social media, especially queer
Speaker 3: in trans circles, because the Washington Post decided to frame
Speaker 3: this rule in like the most like hyperbolic way possible.
Speaker 3: And this is not me saying that the rule is good,
Speaker 3: because the rule could definitely still be bad. But the
Speaker 3: Biden administration is essentially, from what I can tell, trying
Speaker 3: to include trans kids in Title nine protections. The proposed
Speaker 3: wording of their rule is not great and definitely needs
Speaker 3: to be improved, But the outcome here can be good
Speaker 3: in the sense that it would ban blanket prohibitions on
Speaker 3: trans kids in K through twelve sports, and it would
Speaker 3: require exceptions to like It would require like any exceptions
Speaker 3: to pretty much be like, you know, you have to
Speaker 3: prove that there is a danger to like fair competition here,
Speaker 3: which is the standard that Title nine uses for sports
Speaker 3: for cisgender men and or cisgender boys and cisgender girls.
Speaker 3: So like can be good? Will you know if you
Speaker 3: are invested in this. The public comment period on that
Speaker 3: rule is about to open. It's definitely a place where
Speaker 3: you should speak up and say, like, hey, the wording
Speaker 3: of this is a little shit, Like, let's be clearer
Speaker 3: here that the presumption should be that trans kids should
Speaker 3: be allowed to participate in on teams that align with
Speaker 3: the gender they identify as. And thankfully, because a lot
Speaker 3: of these dipshit school board candidates lost, hopefully some of
Speaker 3: these school boards will be taking the right side of
Speaker 3: history here.
Speaker 5: Yeah, go go go.
Speaker 12: Okay, So I'm slightly more angry about this than than
Speaker 12: you are, because I.
Speaker 3: Don't know.
Speaker 12: I think there's a pretty glaring hole in this that
Speaker 12: let's asphob just be like, well obviously.
Speaker 3: Like yeah, I guess yeah. I think the affording is
Speaker 3: vague and it should be made a lot less vague.
Speaker 3: I think it's bad. I don't know.
Speaker 12: I I I think I think that the backlash to
Speaker 12: the backlash about that went too far, and now there's
Speaker 12: a bunch of people insisting that this is in fact
Speaker 12: a really good rule and like no, like if if
Speaker 12: it's if it's if it's executed as is, it is
Speaker 12: going to let a lot of people do a lot
Speaker 12: of friend phobic ship.
Speaker 3: Yes, as is it is bad. If they change the
Speaker 3: wording of it. It can be better. Yeah, so go
Speaker 3: yell at Biden until he makes it less shit.
Speaker 12: Absolutely, you have to do this. Yeah, if you see him,
Speaker 12: if you see him walking down the street, yell at him.
Speaker 12: If you see him in a restaurant, yell at him.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, very very genuinely, like a It's always a
Speaker 3: good idea to yell at the Biden administration about anything,
Speaker 3: but be especially go yell at them about this. This
Speaker 3: can be done multiple ways. You can and reach out
Speaker 3: to your congressional representatives and tell them that you want
Speaker 3: the rule already made better. You can go there should
Speaker 3: be soon a direct form you can fill out on
Speaker 3: the Department of Education website where you can provide your
Speaker 3: own personal opinion on the rule. But basically, go yell
Speaker 3: at the Biden administration and tell them to insert language
Speaker 3: into the rule that makes very clear that the legal
Speaker 3: presumption that must be overcome should be that trans kids
Speaker 3: get to compete on the teams of the gender they
Speaker 3: identify with.
Speaker 12: Yeah. So yeah, having now yelled about that for a bit, yeah,
Speaker 12: we should, I think start wrapping up the last sort
Speaker 12: of bits of electoral news.
Speaker 3: Yes, okay, so the last thing I think we should
Speaker 3: talk about is probably Denver, Denver for those of you
Speaker 3: who do not know me and I, which is probably
Speaker 3: almost I would hope almost everyone who listens to this,
Speaker 3: I will die on the hill that Denver is a
Speaker 3: West Coast city, is not physically on the ocean, but
Speaker 3: the vibes rancid, and like the rest of the West Coast,
Speaker 3: Denver let us down. On Tuesday night, the mayor's election
Speaker 3: is going to a runoff between two candidates who both
Speaker 3: have pretty awful platforms on homelessness, and there is one
Speaker 3: that is worse. So if you are looking for the
Speaker 3: candidates to hold your nose and vote for, right now,
Speaker 3: you know see how it goes. But right now I
Speaker 3: would say that is Mike Johnson, not because he has
Speaker 3: anything good to say, he doesn't, but because his opponent,
Speaker 3: Kelly Brow says that she would have homeless people arrested
Speaker 3: if they refuse to leave camps in public parks. So
Speaker 3: she just fucking blows and she should be, you know,
Speaker 3: never be allowed anywhere in your power. The other bit
Speaker 3: of Denver news I think we should talk about is
Speaker 3: there was a housing referendum where the proposal was to
Speaker 3: turn an old golf course that is not currently being
Speaker 3: used into a housing development that would have I think
Speaker 3: twenty five percent affordable units, and it would part of
Speaker 3: it would also be turned into a park. And truly,
Speaker 3: what I thought was the dumbest thing that happened on
Speaker 3: Tuesday night. The proposal lost, and the Denver branch of
Speaker 3: DSA was campaigning against this housing development on the premise
Speaker 3: that building more housing is bad if someone profits off
Speaker 3: of it. And I definitely understand that. Listen, Like profiting
Speaker 3: off of housing is bad. We also need more housing,
Speaker 3: and Denver especially desperately needs more housing. And somehow we
Speaker 3: got this incredibly stupid coalition of nimbi's and like green
Speaker 3: space environmentalists and the Denver DSA that all came together
Speaker 3: to stop the housing development. And Miah, I'm sure you
Speaker 3: probably think a little differently about this than I do,
Speaker 3: but I saw this and I was like, what the hell, man?
Speaker 12: I mean? Okay, So here's why I know very little
Speaker 12: about this. My take is that if you have the
Speaker 12: opportunity to destroy a golf course and you vote, know
Speaker 12: you are like, as long as you're not literally building
Speaker 12: a prison camp like reactionary dogs the bourgeoisie destroy every
Speaker 12: golf course.
Speaker 3: Always a good you know, that's actually that's pretty good.
Speaker 3: That's that's a pretty good line. I should start saying
Speaker 3: it to more people. Destroy every golf course you can.
Speaker 3: But yeah, no, this it was I think the most
Speaker 3: frustrating thing that I saw happen on Tuesday night, and
Speaker 3: I think it is one of those questions that the
Speaker 3: Left is going to have to deal with in the
Speaker 3: next couple of years. Is like, all right, we have
Speaker 3: a lot of cities that desperately need a lot more housing.
Speaker 3: So how do we get it done, if you, you know,
Speaker 3: without just turning it over to the real estate lobby,
Speaker 3: because obviously that would also be really shitty. But the
Speaker 3: answer cannot be don't build more housing.
Speaker 12: Yeah, I mean, the thing I will say about this
Speaker 12: also is that another answer is, like, you know, we've
Speaker 12: recovered this on the show to like the other part
Speaker 12: of this. If you don't want a city that's just
Speaker 12: like absolutely horrific, you need to have a strong tennis movement,
Speaker 12: and you need to you need to have a tennis
Speaker 12: movement that's willing to move beyond things like rank control
Speaker 12: and move towards like actively like fighting to seize buildings
Speaker 12: from like from developers, and that's the thing that's happening,
Speaker 12: that there are places where people are doing this.
Speaker 3: It can be done.
Speaker 12: Yeah, so.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like that, I don't know, like I feel like,
Speaker 3: I don't know. I'm not going to go into my.
Speaker 12: Entire thing on the sort of bimbi debate other than
Speaker 12: saying that, like, increasing the power of tenants will give
Speaker 12: you a bet, will give you the best options.
Speaker 3: Yes, very very much. Tenant unions are good. Yelling at
Speaker 3: the Biden administration is good, Destroying golf courses is good,
Speaker 3: and abortion rights are good.
Speaker 12: Yeah, and go fight for these things and things that
Speaker 12: aren't elections, because every once in a while, an election
Speaker 12: will give your result, which is the worst person on
Speaker 12: earth has been replaced by a slightly better person. And
Speaker 12: you know, I do like to not be ruled by
Speaker 12: the worst person on earth. But the ideal political situation
Speaker 12: is the one we're not. We're like people cease to
Speaker 12: rule over us.
Speaker 3: So yes, no, you gotta you gotta do the non
Speaker 3: electoral work alongside the electoral work. You can't just be
Speaker 3: relying on elections to make things better. You got to
Speaker 3: be pushing for it all the time.
Speaker 12: Yeah, well, I say, yeah, I am much softer on
Speaker 12: electoral work.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, no, no, Mia would rather MEA would rather
Speaker 3: than everyone doing electoral work start doing better things with
Speaker 3: their time and her eyes. Yeah, but if if you are.
Speaker 12: Going to be a person who does electoral stuff like
Speaker 12: it doesn't it doesn't matter what electoral victories you win,
Speaker 12: if you are just not doing anything that isn't electoral,
Speaker 12: because the actual sort of political the actual composition of
Speaker 12: political power in the city, and the sort of the
Speaker 12: city's class composition, the balance of forces between sort of
Speaker 12: like yeah, I mean things like between unions and employers,
Speaker 12: right like directly between workers and.
Speaker 3: Between the employers.
Speaker 12: There are lots of lots and lots of things that
Speaker 12: are very very important even if you are an electoralist,
Speaker 12: that are mostly decided outside of almost almost entirely decided
Speaker 12: outside of the ballot box. And if you don't take
Speaker 12: that into account and you try to just run like
Speaker 12: the most well engineered political campaign, you're going to end
Speaker 12: up like the two thousand years.
Speaker 3: Going to get sixteen Democrats. Democrats. Yeah, yeah, now everything
Speaker 3: that Mia just said, and yeah.
Speaker 12: Yeah, I hope you've enjoyed the longest amount of time
Speaker 12: I will ever be caught talking about an election that
Speaker 12: doesn't involve a coup.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this happened here. Yeah, thanks thanks again for having me.
Speaker 12: Yeah, thanks for coming on and all of you go
Speaker 12: happen to someone.
Speaker 4: My chicken has just come to me. You you don't
Speaker 4: catch them.
Speaker 10: Them?
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's love, not coercion. That is how you catch
Speaker 4: a chicken, which is not what this podcast is about,
Speaker 4: is it, Robert, No, it's not. No un fortunate. We're
Speaker 4: doing the Catching Chickens episode next week. But today we
Speaker 4: are joined by three guests. We have Ava, Mo and
Speaker 4: Wode and they're going to be talking to us about
Speaker 4: solidarity with anarchist prisoners and how you can do that
Speaker 4: and why you should do that and why people have
Speaker 4: been doing that for a long time. So would you
Speaker 4: guys like to introduce yourselves and just tell us your
Speaker 4: names and any relevant affiliations in your pronouns.
Speaker 14: I'm Ava she Her. I've been working with June eleventh
Speaker 14: for about a handful of years now and been doing
Speaker 14: prisoners support for almost ten years now.
Speaker 13: I'm more a melterz crow and everyone calls me Mo.
Speaker 13: My pronouns are they or Mo, and I'm an attorney
Speaker 13: and I do a lot of work with political prisoners,
Speaker 13: people facing politically motivated prosecutions, and incarcerated people who need
Speaker 13: gender affirming care.
Speaker 4: Excellent, Yeah, it's very important stuff.
Speaker 7: Hey, my name is wod you see him pronouns. I've
Speaker 7: been involved in prisoner support for twenty five plus years,
Speaker 7: enjoying anarchists related activities for longer than that.
Speaker 4: So I think if we start off with perhaps explaining
Speaker 4: what June eleventh is and sort of the history of it,
Speaker 4: why this is a day that people can show the
Speaker 4: solidarity with anarchist prisoners, that would be great, and just
Speaker 4: what if you want to talk about that.
Speaker 14: Yeah, So June eleventh started as a day of solidarity
Speaker 14: with Jeff Wors when he was serving like a twenty
Speaker 14: two year sentence for torching some SUVs. But eventually he
Speaker 14: was able to get his sentence shortened and he got out.
Speaker 14: And at that point, Marius May and Eric McDavid were
Speaker 14: in prison with twenty year sentences for eco sabotage activity
Speaker 14: or in Eric's case, being entrapped for such and so
Speaker 14: it eventually changed to be about Marius and Eric after
Speaker 14: Jeff was released, and then Eric McDavid also got out
Speaker 14: of prison, and since then it expanded to all long
Speaker 14: term anarchist prisoners.
Speaker 4: I wonder, like, obviously we're in like eight point ouns.
Speaker 4: People have a few months before June eleventh, and they
Speaker 4: might be interested in doing this. They might not know
Speaker 4: any people directly they're incarcerated, or they might not have
Speaker 4: had an experience with that sort of in their close circles.
Speaker 4: So if we start with like how people can show
Speaker 4: solidarity like to incarcerated people, I think that would be great.
Speaker 4: So are there like things that people can do How
Speaker 4: can they do that, like so that people I guess
Speaker 4: people who are incarcerated can hear them or hear from them.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I mean read letters is kind of the classic
Speaker 7: go to. There's also ways to communicate digitally or over
Speaker 7: the phone with people locked up. You know, putting money
Speaker 7: on someone's books goes a long way. Everything is extremely
Speaker 7: overpriced in prison and and monopolized by the corporations that
Speaker 7: provide that those services. But I mean, if if you're
Speaker 7: looking for people, you have stuff in coming with they're
Speaker 7: particularly political things kind of carrying on the struggle and
Speaker 7: including their name in those activities as part of that.
Speaker 7: And and if you are in communication with them, talking
Speaker 7: to them about those things. Getting their input and helping
Speaker 7: them feel included in those struggles goes possibly the longest way.
Speaker 13: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think that's such an important point because, like when
Speaker 1: you're talking about someone, for example, who's been like entrapped
Speaker 1: by by the FEDS or whatever law enforcement agency was
Speaker 1: responsible for it, like you're you're talking about a a
Speaker 1: strategic pattern that the state uses to clamp down on resistance,
Speaker 1: and the efficacy of that strategy is entirely determined by
Speaker 1: their ability to kind of break people and to break
Speaker 1: movements by both making people suspicious of each other and
Speaker 1: by you know, locking up and damaging the people who
Speaker 1: are kind of most prone to action. And I think
Speaker 1: doing stuff like this like not only helps kind of
Speaker 1: heal those the distrust that is inherently planted by the
Speaker 1: state when they do stuff like this, but also helps
Speaker 1: the people who are kind of most targeted and who
Speaker 1: have suffered the most for the cause not feel like
Speaker 1: they're swinging in the wind, you know.
Speaker 14: Yeah, I think it helps mitigate the fear of repression
Speaker 14: and arrests and especially things like terrorism enhancements. When people
Speaker 14: know that they're not going to be alone when they're
Speaker 14: in prison, even if it is for decades, like there's
Speaker 14: going to be people supporting them and writing them and
Speaker 14: fundraising for them and like including them in their projects
Speaker 14: like the entire time.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I would say too that meantime a movement or
Speaker 7: something becomes more effective, they become the focus of the
Speaker 7: state tends to sharpen on them.
Speaker 3: And and.
Speaker 7: A lot of the prisoners that have been supported around
Speaker 7: the junior levels they have solidarity, were involved in environmental
Speaker 7: analytes activities that were particularly effective and particularly destructive in
Speaker 7: a positive sense, particularly like the alf and eof actions
Speaker 7: of the nineties. But on this very intense repression in
Speaker 7: the early two thousands that came to be called the
Speaker 7: Green Scare.
Speaker 14: Yeah, kind of our our theme for this year is
Speaker 14: that that repression like doesn't work. All these like movements
Speaker 14: and struggles and activities continue even despite that kind of repression.
Speaker 14: There's still activity in defense of the earth and animals
Speaker 14: and land defense, and there's still really militant queer self defense,
Speaker 14: and there's still a lot of like a ton of
Speaker 14: activity against police and against racist police violence and murder,
Speaker 14: and like as much of those as much as those
Speaker 14: things are repressed, like, it doesn't stop them, and they
Speaker 14: just keep getting stronger.
Speaker 13: I think the only thing I would add to that
Speaker 13: is one of the most important things about doing political
Speaker 13: prisoner support or prisoner support in general, is that the
Speaker 13: state really does work to criminalize politically motivated behavior and
Speaker 13: politically motivated beliefs, which functions pretty effectively to distract from
Speaker 13: the central message of social movements, whatever social movement it
Speaker 13: may be. And providing prisoner support and continuing to keep
Speaker 13: people who are in prison apprized of those struggles, continuing
Speaker 13: to engage in those struggles can really function to refocus
Speaker 13: on that central message, even despite the fact that state
Speaker 13: repression is a very effective drain on movement resources and
Speaker 13: a very effective distraction from movement messaging.
Speaker 4: That is super important. Like if we look at like
Speaker 4: the movement for Black Lives or the George Floyd uprising,
Speaker 4: how we want to kind of phrase it, like the
Speaker 4: speed and like severity with which the state kind of
Speaker 4: cracked down on that and attempts to infiltrate it, attempted
Speaker 4: to create suspicion, attempted to create fear was Like I
Speaker 4: think most people listening might be familiar with that, even
Speaker 4: if they're not familiar with the Green Scare or like
Speaker 4: previous incidents. And it's not just like I know we
Speaker 4: have people listening in other countries. This is not just
Speaker 4: a America thing, right, Like British cops literally fucking married
Speaker 4: people in the like in the early two thousands. It's
Speaker 4: part of their undercover a situation. And one of them
Speaker 4: also went to clown school, which is funny. That is
Speaker 4: a charming story. Yeah, well, thank you not to refer to.
Speaker 13: The police academy that way.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I guess they all went to clown school in
Speaker 4: the sense. Yeah, so yeah, we'll do We'll do a
Speaker 4: long promised clown block episode one day.
Speaker 12: No.
Speaker 4: I know you have some insight into Mariu's case as
Speaker 4: his lawyer, right, so could you explain a little bit
Speaker 4: about about that case if people can understand how a
Speaker 4: politically motivated prosecution works in the exupposed justice system that
Speaker 4: we have.
Speaker 13: So, just to clarify, I represent Marius now and I
Speaker 13: do advocacy for him. Well, he is confined. I was
Speaker 13: not his criminal defense attorney. So Marius was active in
Speaker 13: the very late nineties in early two thousands, and the
Speaker 13: investigations that were going on at that time in the
Speaker 13: state repression that was focused on the movements against environmental
Speaker 13: degradation was deep and concerted and went on for many,
Speaker 13: many years. And that's sort of what we refer to
Speaker 13: as the green scare, right, the criminalizing of environmental movements.
Speaker 13: And I talk about criminalized behavior and criminalized identity a lot,
Speaker 13: so I'm actually just going to take a second and.
Speaker 4: Explain what I mean by that, yes, please, So.
Speaker 13: The criminalization of identity refers to where law enforcement and
Speaker 13: the state are monitoring, targeting identity rather than unlawful conduct.
Speaker 13: And the criminalization of belief. Similarly, it refers to the
Speaker 13: state targeting people on the basis of their beliefs rather
Speaker 13: than on the basis of unlawful conduct. So movements, social movements.
Speaker 13: There's a very long and well documented history of social
Speaker 13: movements being criminalized by the state, even in the absence
Speaker 13: of any unlawful behavior. So the movements against environmental degradation
Speaker 13: were heavily policed, targeted, infiltrated, and many federal grand juries
Speaker 13: and setups and entrapments and successful prosecutions stemmed from that
Speaker 13: criminalizing of environmental movements, and Marius's case was among those. Basically,
Speaker 13: the state managed to turn Marius's former partner into an
Speaker 13: asset and effectively charged him, prosecuted him for several acts
Speaker 13: of politically motivated destruction of property, all of which were
Speaker 13: calculated not to harm human beings. He pled guilty and
Speaker 13: was sentenced in two thousand and nine. Had the offenses
Speaker 13: to which he pled guilty not been perceived as politically motivated,
Speaker 13: he would have probably gotten about seven years because the
Speaker 13: prosecution argued that his behavior was politically motivated, which I
Speaker 13: mean I think is true. He was hit with a
Speaker 13: terrorism enhancement which increased the severity of his punishment on
Speaker 13: the basis of house serious an offender he was then
Speaker 13: deemed to be. The prosecution asked for twenty years. The
Speaker 13: judge imposed twenty two. So here's an example of how
Speaker 13: beliefs are criminalized. At his sentencing, the judge and the
Speaker 13: prosecution both invoked and referred to what I think most
Speaker 13: of us would view as really unremarkable political behavior in
Speaker 13: ways that really cast it as very sinister. And so
Speaker 13: Marius's contact with people who were on his support committee,
Speaker 13: who were engaged in various kinds of civil disobedience about
Speaker 13: which Marius likely knew nothing was cast as Marius being
Speaker 13: in continued contact with people engaged in crimes as a
Speaker 13: violation or would have been a violation of his bond conditions.
Speaker 13: And on the basis of that claim that Marius was
Speaker 13: violating his bond conditions by being in touch with these
Speaker 13: people who again were engaged in what I think most
Speaker 13: of us would see as completely unremarkable civil disobedience constitutionally
Speaker 13: protected political behavior. This was one of the bases on
Speaker 13: which the judge imposed this sentence that was even longer
Speaker 13: than the prosecution had asked for. And there's a number
Speaker 13: of other examples of this kind of criminalization of routine
Speaker 13: political behavior, one of which is very significant, which is
Speaker 13: that when Marius finally went to prison, he started a
Speaker 13: reading group, and based on the content of the books
Speaker 13: that they were reading, he was transferred from a lower
Speaker 13: security facility pretty close to his family, to facility, and
Speaker 13: not just a facility, but a particular wing of a facility,
Speaker 13: which was the administrative segregation unit at FMC Carswell in Texas,
Speaker 13: which was much much farther from his family and was
Speaker 13: involved all kinds of extremely stringent conditions that I would
Speaker 13: argue were First Amendment violations, So you know, we see
Speaker 13: not only the really intense surveillance and targeting of social movements,
Speaker 13: but the really disproportionate punishments and sort of retaliatory behaviors
Speaker 13: all the way down, all the way from investigation to
Speaker 13: through to incarceration and conditions of confinement.
Speaker 4: That's trotious obviously, So I wonder like when he received those, like,
Speaker 4: maybe perhaps you should first explain what a terrorism enhancement
Speaker 4: is in case people aren't familiar.
Speaker 13: It is what's called a sentencing in hand, and it allows,
Speaker 13: it authorizes, or in some cases requires a judge to
Speaker 13: impose a harsher sentence for a behavior that's intended to
Speaker 13: I don't remember what the exact language is, but it's
Speaker 13: it imposes a harsher sentence for unlawful acts that are
Speaker 13: intended to intimidate or coerce the public or public institutions.
Speaker 4: Okay, so that's what increased like nitty triple that sentence
Speaker 4: in that case. Yeah, and with that specifically, like because
Speaker 4: he'd express anarchist ideas or just because it was like
Speaker 4: his actions were in sort of further into that liberation
Speaker 4: front kind of goals.
Speaker 13: I think it was explicitly because it was an ELF
Speaker 13: associated action.
Speaker 1: Yeah, right, yeah, it was part of this crackdown on
Speaker 1: environmental movements. It's similar to what we're saying in Atlanta
Speaker 1: right now, like right down to the terrorism enhancements.
Speaker 13: What we're seeing in Atlanta right now is actually a
Speaker 13: little bit more astonishing just in terms of first of all,
Speaker 13: we're not really seeing it necessarily a terrorism enhancement. There
Speaker 13: is a statute that criminalizes what they are calling domestic terrorism.
Speaker 13: It operates similarly, right, there's a predicate act and then
Speaker 13: if it's politically motivated, you know, so you could, for example,
Speaker 13: potentially have something like politically motivated trespass right or politically
Speaker 13: motivated graffiti, and they could charge it as domestic terrorism.
Speaker 13: The enhancement is a sentencing mechanism, but it certainly is
Speaker 13: not new. What we're seeing in Atlanta, I would say,
Speaker 13: is it is remarkable, but it is a continuation of
Speaker 13: the same kind of targeted policing, efforts to chill social
Speaker 13: mod movements, efforts to disrupt social movements, to isolate people
Speaker 13: to fractionate movements. It's the same kind of thing that
Speaker 13: we have seen really since the beginning of policing in
Speaker 13: this country, and.
Speaker 4: That makes a lot of sense when you consider like
Speaker 4: the role of the police within the state and the
Speaker 4: goals of some of these social movements, right, which we're
Speaker 4: pretty to have to explain that in detail for people
Speaker 4: to understand what's going on. So like with these people
Speaker 4: facing you mentioned a couple of the other people who
Speaker 4: would face political persecutions and were incarcerated and then had
Speaker 4: their sentences reduced, and maybe we could explain like how
Speaker 4: that was able to happen, right, because that's obviously like
Speaker 4: a desirable outcome.
Speaker 14: I don't know the like the legal things that happened
Speaker 14: for that, but it was like.
Speaker 9: It was like in the coret room kind of a solution.
Speaker 1: Okay, Yeah, I'm curious, just kind of engener role since
Speaker 1: you've all had more contact with these folks who are
Speaker 1: incarcerated and have been kind of the victims of this
Speaker 1: state violence when they talk about like what is kind
Speaker 1: of meaningful to them in terms of outside connections, in
Speaker 1: terms of like, you know what we're talking about here,
Speaker 1: what kind of stuff do they bring up is like
Speaker 1: having a positive impact on their mental health, on their
Speaker 1: kind of ability to endure they're what they're going through.
Speaker 14: First, I would say that communication is a big thing,
Speaker 14: like being able to talk to people, to write with people,
Speaker 14: and you know, a long term like regular correspondence is great.
Speaker 14: But even just like little messages of solidarity can be
Speaker 14: really meaningful. Material support is always huge, Like that's going
Speaker 14: to make somebody sound a little bit better if they
Speaker 14: can get stuff off a commissary, you know, buy enough stamps,
Speaker 14: all those things. But the thing that I hear a
Speaker 14: lot is like people want to see the projects and
Speaker 14: the struggles that they're involved in continue. So if that's
Speaker 14: like defense of the earth, if that's against the police
Speaker 14: or or whatever it is, like people like to see
Speaker 14: that because it's you know, it's not just about their
Speaker 14: own case, but yeah, about those movements that they come
Speaker 14: from and or somebody's you know, radicalized inside these things
Speaker 14: that they have committed to and been written from participating
Speaker 14: in a huge way, not entirely, but you know, people
Speaker 14: like to see to see that continue and see see victories,
Speaker 14: see like creative attempts and things like that.
Speaker 4: That makes a lot of sense, I think, so for
Speaker 4: people like I know, like I'll sort that right to
Speaker 4: incarcerate to people for the various things. And it can
Speaker 4: be quite difficult to like to work out the process
Speaker 4: of doing that, and it can be especially difficult. It
Speaker 4: was especially difficult during during like the worst of the
Speaker 4: COVID kind of lockdowns and search and like you couldn't.
Speaker 4: I was trying to write to a guy in one
Speaker 4: federal in tear hote and they wouldn't let the person
Speaker 4: email me because they claimed that the keyboard was like
Speaker 4: a high touch surface and this yeah, right, like and
Speaker 4: which people were getting COVID in this facility all the time.
Speaker 4: But how would folks go about, like, let's say they
Speaker 4: wanted to to write to Marius and just say, like,
Speaker 4: you know, we wanted to express the solidarity and say
Speaker 4: sucks that this is happening to you or whatever. How
Speaker 4: would they go about doing that.
Speaker 9: There's a couple of.
Speaker 13: Things that are specific with Marius that I will want
Speaker 13: to tell you, but you can go to if you
Speaker 13: google inmate locator bop, you can search Marius's name or
Speaker 13: the name of any other prisoner and you'll basically end
Speaker 13: up with it'll show you their information, including where they
Speaker 13: are confined, and you can usually click on the name
Speaker 13: of the facility and it will take you to the
Speaker 13: website for that facility and show you how to send
Speaker 13: mail to the prisoner. There's also if you go to
Speaker 13: NYCABC dot WordPress dot com or any of the other
Speaker 13: Anarchist Black Cross websites. NYC ABC is my home chapter,
Speaker 13: so that's the one I'm familiar with. But if you
Speaker 13: go to the Anarchist Black Cross websites, there are zines
Speaker 13: and I think a whole list that is pretty well
Speaker 13: updated of all of the anarchists political prisoners and instructions
Speaker 13: on how to write to them. One of the things
Speaker 13: that is on those websites that I would highly encourage
Speaker 13: you to take seriously our instructions about how to responsibly
Speaker 13: write to people who are under increased monitoring and surveillance
Speaker 13: while they are being confined. Because retaliation against prisoners, even
Speaker 13: for things that the prisoners themselves have not done, is
Speaker 13: very commonplace. And so if somebody while we very much
Speaker 13: want to make sure we keep in touch with people
Speaker 13: and give them news of the outside world, including news
Speaker 13: about their social movements, one thing that can happen is
Speaker 13: that those letters simply will not be delivered. And another
Speaker 13: thing that might happen is that the prisoner themselves may
Speaker 13: face disciplinary consequences, formally or informally just as a result
Speaker 13: of having been the intended recipient of that news. So
Speaker 13: you know, I would say, as I often say, discretion
Speaker 13: is the better part of valor.
Speaker 4: In this instance, I think you have to have.
Speaker 1: A kind of a first do no harm attitude about this,
Speaker 1: where like, at the end of the day, regardless of
Speaker 1: like your anger or your desire to talk about, you know,
Speaker 1: certain things, your primary concern here has to be not
Speaker 1: making things worse for somebody who's already in a terrible situation.
Speaker 13: Yes, and I would also like to point out that
Speaker 13: prisoner mail is monitored, and so among other things, you
Speaker 13: might be making things worse for yourself, so I would
Speaker 13: be cautious and circumspect about what you write to people
Speaker 13: whose mail is being read. The other thing is with
Speaker 13: respect to Marius in particular. Unfortunately, in order to get
Speaker 13: mail to him, you still have to dead name him.
Speaker 13: And if you want to hear more about that particular
Speaker 13: set of struggles, I'm happy to talk about it. But
Speaker 13: suffice it to say for now that if you go
Speaker 13: to support Mariusmason dot org, there should be some instructions
Speaker 13: about how to write to him, and I'll make sure
Speaker 13: that the support group puts up clear instructions, but unfortunately
Speaker 13: you do have to put his dead name on that
Speaker 13: envelope or it will.
Speaker 5: Not get to him.
Speaker 4: It's extremely frustrating, but yeah, it could be really annoying,
Speaker 4: sespecially if you're trying to look for somebody. I'm using
Speaker 4: the locator and it has a gender note fire and
Speaker 4: it's not the correct gender notifier, and yeah, that can
Speaker 4: be difficult, but like, yeah, it's an effort worth making, right,
Speaker 4: and it really can help someone who's going through a
Speaker 4: difficult time.
Speaker 13: Yeah, and people do have really specific interests apart from
Speaker 13: movement work as well. And you know Marius paints. He
Speaker 13: sent me this incredible He sent me a number of
Speaker 13: paintings over the years. I have one actually that I
Speaker 13: think I shared with you earlier Sacho and Vanzetti that
Speaker 13: he made. He sent me a really great portrait of
Speaker 13: Jimmy Page once. He also recently sent me a beautiful
Speaker 13: scarf that he had knitted or crocheted. I guess people
Speaker 13: have hobbies, people have interests, and they're happy to talk about.
Speaker 3: Those things as well.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's what makes us like a whole person, right,
Speaker 4: And I think having a little bit of that helps
Speaker 4: you to keep that little part of yourself in what
Speaker 4: could be a difficult place. So yeah, hope people can
Speaker 4: send crochet letters. I'm sure we have some keen croche listeners.
Speaker 4: This is probably the part of the podcast where we
Speaker 4: stop and make ourselves amenable to capitalism by doing an
Speaker 4: ad break. I wonder what can people do on June eleventh,
Speaker 4: right right? Obviously, like people should keep on this ongoing correspondence.
Speaker 4: I think that's really important. And I would speaking to
Speaker 4: someone from their Leonard Peltier free lended peltya group the
Speaker 4: other day, and I know a lot of people write
Speaker 4: to lend A Peltier and like, I know that that's
Speaker 4: a great source of like strength for him, especially as
Speaker 4: he's like aging in prison. I was wondering what people
Speaker 4: could do on June eleventh to sort of further discourse,
Speaker 4: spread the word take actions to solidarity kind of things
Speaker 4: to people.
Speaker 7: Do Juna elevens activities. You know, actions and solidarity really
Speaker 7: run the gambit. You know, It's been very popular to
Speaker 7: have like a barbecue or a benefit show things to
Speaker 7: raise money, and then there's actions that more have more
Speaker 7: in common with why some of these people were incarcerated. Uh,
Speaker 7: and like if you check the website June eleven dot org.
Speaker 7: There's a list of previous actions that people have taken
Speaker 7: and the whole uh gambit of activities that you know,
Speaker 7: people have participated in. I know, with the revitalization of
Speaker 7: of this as like an international base of solidarity, there
Speaker 7: was an interest in trying to think outside the box more.
Speaker 7: You know, it's it's difficult to like, no one's going
Speaker 7: to reinvent the wheel, or you know, maybe they that's
Speaker 7: as much as they're doing. But but there is a
Speaker 7: variety different activities. In last year's theme was sort of
Speaker 7: like doing something different than you might normally do, just
Speaker 7: diversify what is happening.
Speaker 14: One of my dreams for John eleventh is for it
Speaker 14: to be an opportunity for you know, our movement prisoners
Speaker 14: to be integrated into other things. So it's you know,
Speaker 14: it doesn't have to just be oh, this is like
Speaker 14: the prisoner support to activity, or like we're just going
Speaker 14: to write letters. But you know, people do things like
Speaker 14: art shows like mo mentioned like a lot of people paint,
Speaker 14: a lot of people write poetry, and to integrate that
Speaker 14: into like maybe already have like you know, a community
Speaker 14: around poetry readings, or something like that, and just to
Speaker 14: bring that into into whatever like little corner of the
Speaker 14: world or whatever kind of activities that were already involved
Speaker 14: in for these things to like reference each other, right
Speaker 14: like we reference our prisoners and they can reference these
Speaker 14: things that are happening outside that are like integrating them.
Speaker 13: One of the things that since I've been involved, a
Speaker 13: lot of times we try to illicit or solicit statements
Speaker 13: from the people we represent. I have been to a
Speaker 13: number of really wonderful June eleventh activities that have included
Speaker 13: an art show, a number of punk shows in various
Speaker 13: people's basements. And I think as just an individual, I mean,
Speaker 13: first of all, I think it's a great opportunity to
Speaker 13: do community building, to do letter writing. But I think
Speaker 13: it's also something that even if you are, you know,
Speaker 13: relatively isolated, you know, you can just make a commitment today,
Speaker 13: I'm gonna send five bucks to somebody's commissary.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 9: I think.
Speaker 13: I was looking back at one of Marius's previous June
Speaker 13: eleventh statements and one of the things he referred to
Speaker 13: was a civil rights attorney that he'd worked with was asked,
Speaker 13: you know, what does the movement need most and he responded,
Speaker 13: everything is everything, meaning you know, anything, any advocacy that
Speaker 13: you do in one area will redound to the benefit
Speaker 13: of all of the rest of us and all of
Speaker 13: the other areas.
Speaker 4: And I have found that to be.
Speaker 13: True, and I have found that specifically to be true
Speaker 13: even in terms of the legal effects of doing advocacy
Speaker 13: for Marius has had really huge benefits for other trans
Speaker 13: folks who are in prison who I've represented, and then
Speaker 13: doing advocacy for those folks has had really incredible benefits
Speaker 13: for Marius. So I mean, I think it is materially
Speaker 13: the case that you know, you struggle where you are,
Speaker 13: you do what you can on June eleventh or any
Speaker 13: other day.
Speaker 3: And you know, you move the needle.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's very well see absolutely, you.
Speaker 14: Know, Dune eleventh the specific for people who have long sentences,
Speaker 14: and that's really about like the increased risk of just
Speaker 14: kind of like falling to the back burner as there's
Speaker 14: new like waves of struggle and you know, new emergencies
Speaker 14: and crises all the time. This is an opportunity to
Speaker 14: like really take a moment, to to really focus on
Speaker 14: that memory. And so I hope with June eleventh we
Speaker 14: can like kind of build bridges like generationally, you know,
Speaker 14: like I wasn't really around with Marius, you know, during
Speaker 14: the Green Scare and Marius got arrested, and it's something
Speaker 14: that I learned about and got involved in later. And
Speaker 14: I hope that, you know, with new people that we
Speaker 14: meet and new people who like we share projects with,
Speaker 14: we can tell them about our prisoners. And also you
Speaker 14: know where I happened to live. There's occasional I meet
Speaker 14: somebody who used to know Marius from you know, twenty
Speaker 14: years ago, and so kind of in both directions like
Speaker 14: into the past and into into the future, like, yeah,
Speaker 14: just trying to spread awareness about these people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think's yeah, I think it's it's so important
Speaker 1: to look at this as part of a long struggle.
Speaker 1: And that's you know what you and Moyer are both
Speaker 1: talking about in terms of it's it's building connections. It's
Speaker 1: it's kind of this like the sedimentary layer, uh, that
Speaker 1: that creates the actual foundation for for positive change. And
Speaker 1: you know, we have there's this kind of Hollywood brain
Speaker 1: thing I think we all have where where we get
Speaker 1: bent out of shape when when change doesn't kind of
Speaker 1: come and in the form of these kind of calamitous
Speaker 1: moments and and kind of culminations of struggles and stuff.
Speaker 1: But it's it's, you know, the the process of winning
Speaker 1: is the process of like part of it is the
Speaker 1: process of showing up for the people who are uh casualties,
Speaker 1: you know, who are being.
Speaker 4: Who are being.
Speaker 1: Who are suffering the most for it, And part of
Speaker 1: it is kind of the way in which that allows
Speaker 1: you to kind of build networks of solidarity that are
Speaker 1: the necessary foundation for continuing the struggle.
Speaker 13: Absolutely, I would say that in the years that I've
Speaker 13: been doing this work, one of the most important parts
Speaker 13: of it is being really consistent in showing up for
Speaker 13: the people who are being horrendously punished, because that's the
Speaker 13: only way that everybody understands that they will be taken
Speaker 13: care of. Right. But speaking of winning, I do have
Speaker 13: an update if you have a second on another June
Speaker 13: eleventh prisoner, Eric King. Yeah, from my beloved colleague Sandy Freeman,
Speaker 13: who represented him successfully recently and got a not guilty
Speaker 13: verdict for him after he was charged with assaulting a
Speaker 13: corrections officer, which is, I mean, if you know anything
Speaker 13: about federal indictments, a magnificent coup. So Eric currently has
Speaker 13: a Clan Act conspiracy in Bivens lawsuit pending against more
Speaker 13: than forty state defendants. His team is trying to achieve
Speaker 13: release from the ADX by a writ of habeas corpus.
Speaker 13: He's not currently getting access to communications, visits, or programming,
Speaker 13: but he is still strong and resilient, and his recent
Speaker 13: victories are an object lesson in the fact that we
Speaker 13: really can fight back and win. Please donate to his
Speaker 13: support fund and please uplift what is happening, because this
Speaker 13: is the future for anti fascists in the Bureau of Prisons. Nevertheless,
Speaker 13: we do continue to struggle and sometimes even to win,
Speaker 13: and I think our stories of triumph are not frequently
Speaker 13: enough told, and so one thing that we could do
Speaker 13: this June eleventh is try to gather all of those
Speaker 13: stories and make sure that those stories do get told.
Speaker 4: I think it's really important, like you said, to see
Speaker 4: these little victories and like not to see it as
Speaker 4: distinct from a broader struggle, Like if we want to
Speaker 4: do anarchism and build ways of taking care of each
Speaker 4: other outside of the state, then we need to take
Speaker 4: care of people who are victimized by the state, And
Speaker 4: like this is part of doing that, we're proving we
Speaker 4: can do it by doing it right. And like Robert said,
Speaker 4: like we're not going to storm the Winter Palace necessarily. Yeah,
Speaker 4: we can build up our in different ways, and this
Speaker 4: is a way of doing that. I'm thinking of like
Speaker 4: more international like cases. I know, for instance that where
Speaker 4: I come from, the British government fucking loves to put
Speaker 4: people who volunteered to fight for the YPG in prison
Speaker 4: or their parents if they send them money for food,
Speaker 4: which yes, great country, But I know that like all
Speaker 4: over the world in Spain and Catalonia where I've lived,
Speaker 4: like this is a thing too. So are there any
Speaker 4: other like international cases that you want to sort of
Speaker 4: draw attention to?
Speaker 7: Currently right now, Alfredo Caspito in Italy is has been
Speaker 7: on hunger strike since October against the particularly isolating and
Speaker 7: particularly repressive forty one, the prison what he calls a
Speaker 7: non life in there so a prison that was primarily
Speaker 7: used against Masia bosses. But you know, in the classic
Speaker 7: state misinterpreting anarchism has considered Alfredo a leader and particularly
Speaker 7: and so locked him away without access to almost any
Speaker 7: means of communication, and uh, and so he's he's had
Speaker 7: a lot of health problems as a result of this.
Speaker 7: You know, he was originally locked in for shooting a
Speaker 7: nuclear executive in the knee, uh, after some particular couss
Speaker 7: remarks from him following the Fukushima disaster. And that nuclear
Speaker 7: company has ties with like the you know, the larger
Speaker 7: war machine, the manufacturing of of weapons for war and uh,
Speaker 7: you know he's he's caught other charges while being in
Speaker 7: prison for previously alleged activities, including just being an anarchist
Speaker 7: essentially kind of what you talked about, the straight criminalizing
Speaker 7: political sensibilities. You know, Italy has been doing that. Chile
Speaker 7: has been doing that previously against people like Monica Caballero
Speaker 7: and Francisco Solar, who have been in and out of
Speaker 7: prison for years now in a curly facing more charges
Speaker 7: for allegedly sending bombs to police training facilities and such
Speaker 7: down in Chile and in your own England. Toby shown
Speaker 7: is someone who got out recently after being receiving terrorists
Speaker 7: charges for allegedly being involved in the anarchist website called
Speaker 7: three two five and financing terrorism through like accepting donations
Speaker 7: for their work and things like that. But he did
Speaker 7: not get convicted of that he usually got convicted of
Speaker 7: some minor drug charges and so he's been released to
Speaker 7: kind of a halfway house now, but they continue to
Speaker 7: try to mess with his terms of release because of
Speaker 7: his politics, because he's an anarchist and unrepentant, they continue
Speaker 7: to try to mess with him.
Speaker 4: Essentially.
Speaker 14: On the website j eleven dot org, there's a page
Speaker 14: where information about a lot of prisoners, both in the
Speaker 14: US and internationally. You know a little bit about them.
Speaker 14: Most of them has their address. If there's a support
Speaker 14: site with more information that's linked to it as well.
Speaker 4: Okay, that's a good paid place foreople to look. Anything
Speaker 4: else you guys wanted to get to to discuss issues
Speaker 4: for incosce rated anarchists people, I guess other ways to
Speaker 4: support incost rate to people.
Speaker 13: Yes, I would like to remind your listeners that all
Speaker 13: prosecutions are political, and that people who are locked away
Speaker 13: in you know, the cages that are the federal facilities
Speaker 13: and the state and local and county facilities are all
Speaker 13: dealing with the same kinds of isolation and deprivations, and
Speaker 13: a lot of them have even less support than some
Speaker 13: of our long term anarchist political prisoners.
Speaker 4: And so you know, I.
Speaker 13: Understand this is a program about June eleventh, and of
Speaker 13: course I want to uplift June eleventh, But I would
Speaker 13: also like to suggest that to whatever extent you can
Speaker 13: get involved in just prisoner support. I think that more
Speaker 13: support for more prisoners is always a good thing.
Speaker 7: Yeah, be in the streets in whatever, by whatever means.
Speaker 7: Fighting the society that makes prison and necessity is the
Speaker 7: longer game, right, Yeah.
Speaker 14: You know, related to what Ma was saying, I wanted
Speaker 14: to mention another long termanicist prisoner, Michael Kimball, who is
Speaker 14: in Alabama, and just thinking about like how supporting him
Speaker 14: has resonated to like so many other people in prison
Speaker 14: in Alabama, Like the way that he has been able
Speaker 14: through the support of you know, some of his friends
Speaker 14: on the outside, then support like so many other queer
Speaker 14: people that he's with in Alabama and been able to
Speaker 14: like collectively organize and like share radical history, Like you know,
Speaker 14: they have a have a role in it too, and
Speaker 14: our support for them can like resonate far beyond just
Speaker 14: an individual.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I think that's a great point.
Speaker 14: Yeah, And other things to mention, we are we have
Speaker 14: a fundraising goal for Marius this year twenty five hundred dollars.
Speaker 14: We're trying to get some bookstores on board to you know,
Speaker 14: have some June eleven stickers donate a little bit of money,
Speaker 14: so go to your local bookstore and potshop, red Space,
Speaker 14: et cetera.
Speaker 4: Nice. Is there any any other like resources you guys
Speaker 4: wanted to plug? Social media is or anything that people
Speaker 4: can follow to find out.
Speaker 13: You can follow Marius's support on Twitter at at support Marius.
Speaker 13: There's also an instagram that I think is at support
Speaker 13: Marius Mason. I would also like to plug the concept
Speaker 13: of not talking to cops.
Speaker 7: Smart June eleven. Also some social media presence. There's really
Speaker 7: only regularly active on the master don account and it's
Speaker 7: just at June one to one at June eleven.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that was fantastic. Thank you very much. Guys, really
Speaker 4: appreciate your time. Hello podcast fans, it's just me today,
Speaker 4: It's just James and we're doing another episode about the border.
Speaker 4: I'm joined today by Emmett and David from the Borderlands
Speaker 4: Relief Collective and we're going to talk a little bit
Speaker 4: about people doing mutual aid on the border, the situation
Speaker 4: on the border, and for those of you who live
Speaker 4: a long way away from it, and a sort of
Speaker 4: pretty shitty thing that border patrol did to some supplies
Speaker 4: which were left out on the border earlier this month.
Speaker 4: So yeah, David, if you'd like to sort of introduce
Speaker 4: yourselves and expend a little bit about the roles you play,
Speaker 4: that would be great either.
Speaker 10: I'm happy to be here. My name is Emmett.
Speaker 6: I am splitting my time between being a geochemist at
Speaker 6: Descriptions Station Oceanography in a PhD student and trying to
Speaker 6: reconcile what it means to be living in this border
Speaker 6: lands and being a part of a community that is
Speaker 6: partially criminalized depending on who you are, where you come from,
Speaker 6: and also what it means for you to seek safety
Speaker 6: and freedom in your life. So I work in several
Speaker 6: organizing spaces trying to shut down different detention centers as
Speaker 6: well as supporting folks just make ends meet in San
Speaker 6: Diego and also supporting people keeping their lives and staying
Speaker 6: alive in this extreme border border lands that we on.
Speaker 5: Hey, my name is David. My job I work as
Speaker 5: a surgeon. I've been living in San Diego for about
Speaker 5: ten years and I've been doing humanitarian volunteer work in
Speaker 5: the Borderlands, which we call doing water drops for something
Speaker 5: like six years, got started with Border Angels and also
Speaker 5: did volunteer work with Order Kindness highly recommend that organization,
Speaker 5: and more recently have been doing water drops in a
Speaker 5: mountainous area between San Diego and TJ with friends and
Speaker 5: we just recently found a name for our group and
Speaker 5: it's Orderlands Relief Collective.
Speaker 13: Great.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And I think maybe I think if people think
Speaker 4: of San Diego, they think of like the zoo and
Speaker 4: maybe SeaWorld and the beach, you know, that kind of shit.
Speaker 4: So like, can you explain what it's like. I've spent
Speaker 4: a lot of time in the area where you guys
Speaker 4: do water drops. Can you explain what it's like and
Speaker 4: why it's such a difficult area to pass through for
Speaker 4: people who are trying to move north.
Speaker 5: Well, yeah, San Diego. As you said, people think of
Speaker 5: the beach. But actually I think someone told me that
Speaker 5: San Diego County has some of the most diverse kind
Speaker 5: of ecosystems of any county in the so called USA.
Speaker 5: We have high mountains where it snows when it gets
Speaker 5: called out. We have low deserts where routinely exceeds one
Speaker 5: hundred degrees fahrenheit in the summertime, I mean one hundred
Speaker 5: and twenty degrees fahrenheit in the summertime. And as far
Speaker 5: as the geography of migration, it really goes back to
Speaker 5: you know, it's a direct consequence of federal border policy.
Speaker 5: I think many people will be familiar with the term
Speaker 5: prevention through deterrence, which is sometimes elaborated as prevention of
Speaker 5: migration through environmental deterrence, and the whole concept is going
Speaker 5: way back to Clinton administration. The areas of the border
Speaker 5: near cities like San Diego were increasingly militarized with high
Speaker 5: border fence, intense patrol by armed officers, and increasingly recently
Speaker 5: electronic surveys, with the idea of relying on the extremely
Speaker 5: harsh terrain of the deserts and mountains to form a
Speaker 5: kind of a natural But they quickly found out within
Speaker 5: within you know, basically the first year or so of
Speaker 5: that federal policy that numbers of people crossing the border
Speaker 5: did not decrease. However, deaths skyrocketed. And that's something we understood,
Speaker 5: you know, people in Washington, d C. Understood many many
Speaker 5: years ago. But the policy persists. So the bottom line
Speaker 5: is people who are crossing the border from Mexico to
Speaker 5: the USA often resort to crossing in the most remote
Speaker 5: and dangerous areas of the border. So the area that
Speaker 5: we're going to be talking about, this mountainous region between
Speaker 5: San Diego and Tijuana. Literally folks are going up and
Speaker 5: over the tallest mountain in the area, literally up and
Speaker 5: over the mountain, extremely arduous walk. When we do these
Speaker 5: water drops, we're well rested. We hike all day and
Speaker 5: we come home exhausted, and we look at our Gaya
Speaker 5: apps and find that we've only hiked a very small
Speaker 5: portion of the actual total journey, and we're always humbled
Speaker 5: by just the resilience and determination of people who do
Speaker 5: this crossing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, another thing I think people don't realize is that
Speaker 4: the amount of physical just difficulty that people have to
Speaker 4: enjoy coming here is immense. And of course, the reason
Speaker 4: that people are willing to take those risk is because
Speaker 4: it's not like they come from a place of safety,
Speaker 4: right and it's not it's not that, you know, the
Speaker 4: reason they're willing to take risks is because it's a risk.
Speaker 4: Being where they were is a risk. I think a
Speaker 4: lot of people will maybe have become more engaged with
Speaker 4: border policy during the Trump heira certainly like the legacy
Speaker 4: media narrative focused on the border very briefly, Like maybe
Speaker 4: it peaked around the midterms in twenty eighteen, I think,
Speaker 4: and then people have lost a lot of interest since then.
Speaker 4: So for those of us who live on the border,
Speaker 4: it's remarkable how little has changed. I think maybe it's
Speaker 4: not particularly remarkable because I don't think we're really expected to,
Speaker 4: but like, can you explain what if anything has changed
Speaker 4: since twenty twenty one and how things have sort of
Speaker 4: remained the same in many ways?
Speaker 10: Yeah, I think it's a really good question, and it
Speaker 10: brings up a lot of.
Speaker 6: The political nature or kind of skewed ideaity based conversations that.
Speaker 10: Exist in migration.
Speaker 6: And obviously there's a lot of rhetoric that is quite
Speaker 6: hyperbolic around.
Speaker 10: The so called morality of people who are.
Speaker 6: Migrants in general, and then kind of categorizing certain people
Speaker 6: as worthy or not worthy of entrance into the so
Speaker 6: called nation, and kind of furthermore, what does it mean
Speaker 6: for people to believe any of those narratives and then
Speaker 6: support them at a federal political level, And as you're saying,
Speaker 6: during Trump era, there was a lot of conversation in
Speaker 6: response to very very hateful rhetoric from Trump and administration
Speaker 6: targeted at certain people, but not from a deep place
Speaker 6: of really understanding or characterizing the conversation in general, or
Speaker 6: speaking by the fact that in San Diego or in
Speaker 6: California at large, more than half of the farm workers
Speaker 6: who kind of create this city that we are or
Speaker 6: the state that we are, and support the very backbone
Speaker 6: of the fact that we're all still having our hearts
Speaker 6: beat our migrants, and that our economy at large, as
Speaker 6: well as just the fabric of our nation is based
Speaker 6: on migrants in immigration. So for us to pick and
Speaker 6: choose what that looks like is not only missing the
Speaker 6: majority of the point, but is using as a talking piece,
Speaker 6: is really as a talking piece for certain identities to
Speaker 6: feel vindicated to spend money and support certain for profit
Speaker 6: corporations like for example, cour Civic, one of the largest
Speaker 6: prison corporations prison corporations.
Speaker 10: In the country.
Speaker 6: I've got one point nine billion dollars the previous year
Speaker 6: from the federal government, and therefore, like you think about
Speaker 6: the connection between these enterprises and stories about immigration are
Speaker 6: quite linked. So I don't have all the statistics in
Speaker 6: front of me about how the specific number of crossings
Speaker 6: has changed or the population has changed.
Speaker 10: But on the whole, nothing has really changed as far
Speaker 10: as the need goes.
Speaker 6: So, thinking about four years ago, what were the specific
Speaker 6: crises that were occurring that were causing people to seek
Speaker 6: seek safety United States?
Speaker 10: Maybe some specific positions of change and others have arisen.
Speaker 6: And as more and more people are come to United
Speaker 6: States fleeing from climate related disasters as well as ongoing stability,
Speaker 6: it's not as if the US has engaged in any
Speaker 6: real project to support people to begin with or understand
Speaker 6: the underlying causes. So from that standpoint, nothing meaningfully has
Speaker 6: happened from either administration to really understand or create policies
Speaker 6: that would support anyone seeking safety or from making decisions
Speaker 6: that are quote unquote aligned with US best interests. It's
Speaker 6: never been a part of the conversation. It's more to
Speaker 6: basically capitalize off of people in their suffering, whether wuther
Speaker 6: that be to the you know, to be a storyline
Speaker 6: that US is is helping people, or is a savior
Speaker 6: of others, or is trying to crack down on armed
Speaker 6: bandits or or criminals who are cross crossing this borderland.
Speaker 4: I think it is worth like the cusific examples really
Speaker 4: interesting because Biden made a big thing of like talking
Speaker 4: about shutting down like quote unquote private prisons, but it's
Speaker 4: still very much like funding the same things when they're
Speaker 4: not for people who are citizens of this country or.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and for those of those who aren't fully reversed
Speaker 6: in kind of the basic relationship between private prisons and immigration,
Speaker 6: there are is a relationship that between customs and Border
Speaker 6: protection and different prison corporations to basically put people who
Speaker 6: are apprehended who are not initially deported under Title forty
Speaker 6: two in detention while their cases are ongoing and investigated
Speaker 6: or asylum or a refugee status. And so these prisons
Speaker 6: make a profit and can basically demand a certain.
Speaker 10: Money amount of money from the government.
Speaker 6: Per person who is within one of their facilities, and
Speaker 6: there's also a minimum that they will continually get money
Speaker 6: from the government regardless of whether the beds are filled,
Speaker 6: but they have an incentive to keep beds filled. So
Speaker 6: there is an economic relationship between these corporations and the
Speaker 6: government to basically put more people in detention. So that's
Speaker 6: a huge underpinning of this whole conversation is who is
Speaker 6: getting money and how does it kind of further the
Speaker 6: certain aims of corporations, but also agencies that basically get
Speaker 6: a larger amount of federal funding through apprehension of people.
Speaker 7: Right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, like Biden has funded DHS more than Trump did,
Speaker 4: and like DHS's budget does Department of homelown security, of
Speaker 4: which Customs and Border Protection is a part and border
Speaker 4: patrol is a part of Customs and Border protection. It's
Speaker 4: a giant pyramid of people putting people in prison, and
Speaker 4: it's also worth like reinforcing I think for people that
Speaker 4: these people have done nothing wrong at the point which
Speaker 4: they are incarcerated, right, Like they have a bayed or
Speaker 4: relevant laws and are in conditions which we've decided are
Speaker 4: not befitting prisoners in the United States, but are okay
Speaker 4: for these people. Not that anyone should be incarcerated, but yeah,
Speaker 4: there's still a two tier system. So can you explain
Speaker 4: a little bit about your efforts to do mutual aid
Speaker 4: and to like do a little bit of kindness on
Speaker 4: the border and make things a little bit better out
Speaker 4: there for people who are coming north.
Speaker 5: Yeah, what we do again just is in collaboration with
Speaker 5: other organizations that have been around a long time, a
Speaker 5: lot longer than we have Border Angels, Order Kindness in California,
Speaker 5: UH No more deaths in Arizona, many other organizations, and
Speaker 5: it really, you know, boils down to we don't want
Speaker 5: people to die on you know, the trails UH crossing
Speaker 5: through the borderlands, and that actually informs where we drop Unfortunately,
Speaker 5: you know, all of our our recent new routes that
Speaker 5: we supply there directly because we know that people have
Speaker 5: died UH in those locations or required rescue. We work
Speaker 5: in very close relationship with other volunteer organizations that focus
Speaker 5: on search and rescue and search and recovery, search and
Speaker 5: recovery meaning recovering human remains of people who have died.
Speaker 5: So there's a number of outstanding organizations that operate in California, Arizona, Texas.
Speaker 5: These include Eagles of the Desert, Armadillos, many other organizations.
Speaker 5: Most of these are actually made up of volunteers who
Speaker 5: are first generation immigrants, mostly from Mexico, and so when
Speaker 5: people die or require rescue, we do find out from
Speaker 5: our friends and comrades in these SAR organizations and we
Speaker 5: build water drop roots directly around that knowledge. So yeah,
Speaker 5: it really boils down to, yeah, we don't want more
Speaker 5: people to die making making this, uh, this journey. And
Speaker 5: so as far as what kind of supplies we leave,
Speaker 5: it's what we think may make a difference. We leave
Speaker 5: bottles of water, energy, drinks like electrolyte, gatorade and so on.
Speaker 5: Cans of food with pop tops, all kinds of cans
Speaker 5: of fruit, beans, you know, chili, you know, whatever we
Speaker 5: think people may need. Of course, we tailor it based
Speaker 5: on the time of year. In the mountains, in the
Speaker 5: winter gets freezing cold, lots and lots of rain, so
Speaker 5: we've been leaving waterproof ponchos, warm clothing. And the summer,
Speaker 5: of course, it gets scorching hot. In the desert. People
Speaker 5: die of hyperthermia. They literally cook to death. That's where
Speaker 5: electrolytes come in here and the sun hats, bandanas, baseball hats,
Speaker 5: first aid kits. We we leave kids full of medical supplies. Uh,
Speaker 5: and more recently, you know, just observing the kind of
Speaker 5: used items that we find on the trail. Uh, kids stuff, diapers, pacifiers, Uh,
Speaker 5: you know, we leave you know, tampons, you know that
Speaker 5: kind of stuff. Uh, containers of infant formula. So it's
Speaker 5: a it's a it's kind of an iterative process, just
Speaker 5: leaving what we think people need and yeah, that's that's
Speaker 5: kind of what we do.
Speaker 4: And just so folks are super clear, this is all
Speaker 4: like an initiative among you and your comrades, right, right,
Speaker 4: then you're not supported by any like government entity. That's
Speaker 4: the government entity is kind of doing quite the opposite
Speaker 4: of what you're doing.
Speaker 5: Yeah. Correct, We are all volunteers in the sense that
Speaker 5: nobody is paid. We don't have any formal affiliations with
Speaker 5: any other NGOs, much less governmental organizations.
Speaker 4: Right, So maybe people are wondering. They might have been
Speaker 4: familiar with the court case in Arizona, or they might
Speaker 4: not be, like if what you're doing is considered to
Speaker 4: be like legal humanitarian aid or not you comfortable talking
Speaker 4: about that.
Speaker 6: Yeah, So I think that's definitely a gray area that
Speaker 6: we find ourselves really occupying. And I think that's a
Speaker 6: bit of this kind of propaganda machine. Is what does
Speaker 6: it mean to engage with somebody who is seeking safety
Speaker 6: and fleeing for their lives. There's a certain place where
Speaker 6: that's how it to be a wonderful thing. If you're
Speaker 6: Catholic charities and are providing beds, And for example, I
Speaker 6: wanted to make that distinction.
Speaker 10: Between several kind of charity organizations who.
Speaker 6: Do receive federal money to be engaged in this conversation
Speaker 6: versus grass fruits, mutual aid networks, and communities who are
Speaker 6: doing this because it feels like it's part of their
Speaker 6: communities mission, their families mission, or it means it's part
Speaker 6: of them being true to themselves and true to what
Speaker 6: feels just in.
Speaker 10: The very confusing world.
Speaker 6: So what we're doing is very explicitly leaving humanitarian aids
Speaker 6: supplies that are potentially life saving in areas where we
Speaker 6: know people need them. We are not having any specific
Speaker 6: or hands on or person to person engagement with anybody.
Speaker 6: So they're in Arizona, Nomas Motes became part of a
Speaker 6: conversation about providing critical medical support, and that was a
Speaker 6: court case that really tested the limits of what it
Speaker 6: means to be in this great area and what was
Speaker 6: really important and the nuances in that conversation were what
Speaker 6: constitutes aiding in a betting or so called aiding in
Speaker 6: a bedding of legal immigration, which is basically again a
Speaker 6: very large gray area between are you, are you enticing
Speaker 6: people to cross? Are you being paid as a smuggler
Speaker 6: to cross? Are you doing something which is encouraging people
Speaker 6: to cross? None of which was activity that was engaged
Speaker 6: with the most modes or us, but in their case
Speaker 6: specifically providing medical aid across the boundary, and they were
Speaker 6: raided their their their their camp and their impromptu field
Speaker 6: uh tents where they were providing life saving medical support
Speaker 6: where it was raided.
Speaker 10: And the kind of the finer points of that were that.
Speaker 6: The outset being that the First Amendment protects humans in
Speaker 6: their religious freedom to practice whatever that furthers their religious
Speaker 6: beliefs in a faith, and a very large point of
Speaker 6: their work was their affiliation and dedication to preserving human life, which,
Speaker 6: as we can imagine for many folks listening to this
Speaker 6: or in general, that is very core to their belief system.
Speaker 6: And so there are very clear protections in the First
Speaker 6: Amendment of preserving people's right to practice their religion. So
Speaker 6: that was a case that kind of established a lot
Speaker 6: of what we're working under is these basic protections to
Speaker 6: be humanitarian aid workers following basic belief systems. What we're
Speaker 6: doing specifically is leaving supplies, so leaving supplies. The most
Speaker 6: egregious thing you can basically say about that is that
Speaker 6: we're littering, or that we're abandoning property. And so again
Speaker 6: Nomas Martes, and in this, in this larger conversation, was
Speaker 6: established in the court that leaving humanitarian aid supplies that
Speaker 6: were with the intent of saving lives is not litter.
Speaker 10: So that was also a very big point.
Speaker 6: Which is saying, no, we are not just kind of
Speaker 6: going walking down the street and throwing out your bottle
Speaker 6: in the back of your truck.
Speaker 10: This is specifically with the intent of saving lives.
Speaker 6: And the third place is that we are abandoning something
Speaker 6: in this in this area that would be constituted abandoned property.
Speaker 10: And as we'll speak.
Speaker 6: About maybere in the future, our supplies are consumed quite rapidly,
Speaker 6: and there is a statute in this in this state
Speaker 6: of it is it abandoned property has to be it
Speaker 6: has to be left for more than ten days to
Speaker 6: be considered abandoned property. So even if we are leaving
Speaker 6: things in these regions, it is not considered abandoned property
Speaker 6: it's been less than ten days. So basically I guess
Speaker 6: just to say that nothing we're doing is illegal from
Speaker 6: any standpoint, and also the case in Arizona kind of
Speaker 6: helped make a distinguishing, make some distinctions between whether our
Speaker 6: activity is is also frowned upon in public land, which
Speaker 6: it is not, because it is constituting humanitarian aid in
Speaker 6: a place that is desperately needed.
Speaker 4: Right. And I think if folks go out to like
Speaker 4: I mean, most people aren't going out to the Valley
Speaker 4: of the Moon or what have you, but like, if
Speaker 4: you want to look for abandoned stuff there, it's not
Speaker 4: hard to find. And it's not you guys doing that
Speaker 4: like shooting barrels or whatever that Like someone was shooting
Speaker 4: a barrel last time I was out there. Let's talk
Speaker 4: about how quickly those supplies are consumed, because I think
Speaker 4: again that will be like news to some people, right,
Speaker 4: Like you guys are out there every week, and like
Speaker 4: how much stuff you're dropping and how quick does it go?
Speaker 5: Yeah, to tell you the truth, we're still we're still
Speaker 5: of finding out ourselves because every time we think we
Speaker 5: know the answer, we're surprised by how fast it's being consumed.
Speaker 5: The bottom line is it's being consumed as fast as
Speaker 5: we can leave this supply. So emmine and I and
Speaker 5: many other of the members of our organization, Borderlands Relief Collective,
Speaker 5: we also are active in border kindness and in the
Speaker 5: past with border Angels, and so we're used to a
Speaker 5: certain rhythm of doing a water drop, circling back usually
Speaker 5: a month later, and we're happy if maybe half of
Speaker 5: the supplies have been consumed, that's a good day. When
Speaker 5: we started doing water drops in this mountainous region, first
Speaker 5: of all, we were just blown away by the evidence
Speaker 5: of heavy foot travel. I mean, these are even though
Speaker 5: you'll never find a hiker, a recreational hiker on these trails,
Speaker 5: they look like established trails. They're worn in trails. And
Speaker 5: when we started doing these water drops, there's just a
Speaker 5: river of discarded water bottles, clothing, food wrappers, and just
Speaker 5: things that we have never seen before, that that amount
Speaker 5: of human activity, literally on the top of a mountain
Speaker 5: where you never would think why would someone cross over
Speaker 5: a top of a mountain to get from point eight
Speaker 5: to point B. So, like I said, we're still learning
Speaker 5: what the proper interval is. Some of these locations that
Speaker 5: we drop, we come back a week later and they're
Speaker 5: pretty much one hundred percent consumed. So yeah, we really
Speaker 5: it's become apparent. We have been having a lot of
Speaker 5: discussions that we're very eager in trying to expand our
Speaker 5: number of volunteers because the more we do this in
Speaker 5: this mountainous region, the more we learn how pressing need is.
Speaker 5: So we're having a hard time just supplying essentially one
Speaker 5: path that goes up and over the mountain, and we
Speaker 5: know that this is just one of many paths that
Speaker 5: are used by people in this region. So really we're
Speaker 5: finding one hundred percent consumption every week or two at
Speaker 5: most of our drop spots.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so if people did want to we could just
Speaker 4: get out in here. Now, if people did want to
Speaker 4: help you and they're in the region, would they be
Speaker 4: able to serve where they could reach out?
Speaker 5: Yeah? Sure. We just like I said, we just came
Speaker 5: up with our name after a fun communal decision making process,
Speaker 5: and we just a couple of days ago did our
Speaker 5: first post on social media. So if anybody's on Instagram,
Speaker 5: just search for Borderlands Relief Collective and click on you know,
Speaker 5: the email and send us a d get in touch.
Speaker 5: If you're anywhere near the San Diego we'd love to
Speaker 5: talk to you, and I definitely would like to expand
Speaker 5: the number of volunteers.
Speaker 4: So you spoke a little bit about like that, we
Speaker 4: spoke about this Arizona case right where people got raided.
Speaker 4: I know, you guys have also had some less than
Speaker 4: stellar interactions with CBP Border Patrol specifically, and as they
Speaker 4: get really mad if I call it customs of Border
Speaker 4: Patrol because it is custom border protection. So you guys
Speaker 4: had a thing I live it last month. Now in March,
Speaker 4: do you want to explain a little bit about what
Speaker 4: happened to the insitant?
Speaker 6: First of all, Yeah, So as part of our so
Speaker 6: I think, as we already talked about, we go out
Speaker 6: every weekend.
Speaker 10: And that's again we're all busy laves.
Speaker 6: Davia's literally a surgeon, and we're basically trying to find
Speaker 6: a time that we can.
Speaker 10: Get people together to go out there.
Speaker 6: So we picked the weekend and we have a you know,
Speaker 6: changing number of people who are able to be out
Speaker 6: there with us. So, as one of our normal water
Speaker 6: drop weekends, a route that starts basically at a road
Speaker 6: that that has been along the ridge of O Tai Mountain.
Speaker 6: We start hiking down on the south side towards towards
Speaker 6: the towards the border, and I've established multiple routes along
Speaker 6: that path, and this one particularly is so slow going.
Speaker 10: You only go a couple of miles and it takes.
Speaker 6: You most of your Saturday because of how steep it is,
Speaker 6: the how thick though the brush is, and also kind of,
Speaker 6: as they were saying earlier, even in the middle of
Speaker 6: day daytime, with hiking boots, it's really treacherous. And we've
Speaker 6: we spend a lot of time making sure that we're
Speaker 6: safe in the process of of going to ourselves. So
Speaker 6: as we we left our first drop and then a
Speaker 6: second and went down to our final drop and turned
Speaker 6: back and started going back up the mountain, and we
Speaker 6: came to our second drop site, and as we arrived
Speaker 6: we found something that was kind.
Speaker 10: Of really hard to process at first for us, which
Speaker 10: was that.
Speaker 6: Every single item that we had purposefully put inside of
Speaker 6: a crate and we had counted and we had a
Speaker 6: left as we do, was scattered and littered across the ground.
Speaker 6: We had left more than twenty liters of water, and
Speaker 6: every single bottle of water was opened and dumped out
Speaker 6: and thrown indiscriminately around this site. We had left again
Speaker 6: something like twenty hands of food beans, tuna, condensed milk, fruit,
Speaker 6: and every single can had been opened and had been
Speaker 6: its contents thrown around the area. We had left bags
Speaker 6: of socks and hats and those were covered in beans
Speaker 6: and fruit and again thrown into bushes.
Speaker 10: They can not be used. We had handwarmers.
Speaker 6: Because it's very cold and handwarmers are essential to kind
Speaker 6: of just keep mobility. And every single one was diligently opened,
Speaker 6: as if someone had really enjoyed taking time opening it
Speaker 6: and thrusting into the dirt. And that was something that
Speaker 6: was like so painful and just confusing, very demoralizing, as
Speaker 6: you can imagine after just hiking that far, but more
Speaker 6: so it's felt so deliberate and hurtful.
Speaker 10: And initially were of course wondering what had happened. We've
Speaker 10: done this for.
Speaker 6: Several years years and never had we seen something like
Speaker 6: this before. And it became very apparent that someone had
Speaker 6: deliberately destroyed our crate. Even the crate itself. This milk
Speaker 6: carton was smashed in half. The bottom of it was
Speaker 6: torn out, and that is something that's very hard to achieve.
Speaker 6: Milk cartons are not very light, thin plastic. This was
Speaker 6: someone had actively put a lot of force into smashing
Speaker 6: a milk cart so that nothing was left behind.
Speaker 10: We on the way down.
Speaker 6: One thing that I didn't say a second ago was
Speaker 6: that we had seen an agent on the trail, which
Speaker 6: was unique for us because normally they're just in their
Speaker 6: cars with binoculars looking from the road. So we had
Speaker 6: seen someone near the trail but lost track of them earlier,
Speaker 6: and we had kind of put it out of our minds.
Speaker 6: So after it happened, we had kind of put two
Speaker 6: together and were wondering if this agent had followed us
Speaker 6: down the trail to the site, and then while we
Speaker 6: had left, stayed behind and destroyed the goods.
Speaker 10: It seemed like the beans were still drying and the fruit.
Speaker 6: Was still drying in the sunlight, so it hadn't have
Speaker 6: been too too far from the time that we had
Speaker 6: dropped initially. And this is at a moment that there
Speaker 6: was five of us and trying to figure out what
Speaker 6: it meant for us to deal with this.
Speaker 10: Several two of us.
Speaker 6: Including myself, raised ahead to try to get interact with
Speaker 6: whoever has up the trail, knowing that they couldn't have
Speaker 6: been too far away, not with any specific plan other
Speaker 6: than just ask.
Speaker 10: Them what did they do and why did they do that?
Speaker 6: Just in the sense of outrage, that the sense of
Speaker 6: just like moral corruption that someone would destroy this in
Speaker 6: a time that the CBP as well as we know
Speaker 6: that people are losing their lives because of lack of
Speaker 6: access to these very goods that were destroyed.
Speaker 10: Yeah, so we race raced back as fast as we could.
Speaker 6: It was about a forty five minute hiked back up,
Speaker 6: and we were really breathless and almost as the kind
Speaker 6: of wind of feeling sick to our stomachs because we
Speaker 6: were both outraged and also hikes faster than we should have.
Speaker 10: And just as we'd gotten back to our cars, kind
Speaker 10: of giving up hope.
Speaker 6: That we'd interactt with them, we saw two agents in
Speaker 6: their cars kind of pull away, uh, and we flagged
Speaker 6: them down and got in front of them and kind
Speaker 6: of motion for them to come back so we could
Speaker 6: speak to them. And I'm not saying we're the most
Speaker 6: savvy people, but we basically ran up to them and said,
Speaker 6: did you destroy these are our supplies, to which they
Speaker 6: acknowledged that they did. And only afterwards were we able
Speaker 6: to get our wits together to start recording them.
Speaker 10: And as both here in the audio.
Speaker 6: They acknowledged the fact that they knew where our site was,
Speaker 6: and they acknowledged the fact that they regularly destroy goods,
Speaker 6: and for us, the entire interaction was just so sickening
Speaker 6: first of it. After a while there was five of
Speaker 6: them with their guns and they're large guns out as
Speaker 6: well as their basic intention to use intimidation, their sheer numbers,
Speaker 6: as well as this kind of perverse authority they have
Speaker 6: as the soul of agents in charge of this public land,
Speaker 6: this is wilderness and BLM land, which they have no
Speaker 6: authority over us, yet use this sense of just power
Speaker 6: and ability to cause harm to minimize anybody else being able.
Speaker 10: To advocate for themselves.
Speaker 6: So we tried to stop them from doing that, and
Speaker 6: it kept asking them did you destroy our water?
Speaker 10: And why did you do that? And is that within
Speaker 10: your job description?
Speaker 6: Because there was something very clear to them to us
Speaker 6: that they didn't even know what their legality was. They
Speaker 6: kept trying to deflect it the conversations saying, oh, migrants
Speaker 6: are leaving trash all the time, and referring to people
Speaker 6: as illegal aliens with this kind of larger Rhetorica is
Speaker 6: saying that like they're they're trashing the mountain side like
Speaker 6: it's it's their fault. And as we repeatedly asked them,
Speaker 6: did you destroy our water? And they repeatedly said, well
Speaker 6: have you seen have you seen what they do and
Speaker 6: then kind of also saying well, yeah, we we try
Speaker 6: to clean things up, we try to pick them up.
Speaker 6: But but but that specific site was too far, so
Speaker 6: we just left it. We just destroyed it and left it.
Speaker 6: Which as on the on the piggybacking on their conversation
Speaker 6: about this trash and that we're littering and they're accusing
Speaker 6: us of aiding and abetting illegal immigration, they basically have
Speaker 6: nothing left to say about what their actions meant and
Speaker 6: without their their purview, their mandate of their jobs, and
Speaker 6: it was an act you could tell they were uncomfortable
Speaker 6: with because they were not within their job description. And
Speaker 6: we asked for their supervisor. They said they're going to
Speaker 6: on the phone supervisor. The supervisor never materialized, and we
Speaker 6: can only assume that they had a conversation with somebody,
Speaker 6: uh in a superior saying back down, what you're doing
Speaker 6: is is not correct and don't engage further. And since
Speaker 6: then we've had a conversation with with their superiors and
Speaker 6: with with CVP offices to the effect of saying that
Speaker 6: this was not within their job description, and this they
Speaker 6: did not condone this activity.
Speaker 10: So kind of looking into that further, they were very.
Speaker 6: Much acting as individuals, but individuals within a culture of
Speaker 6: abuse and within a culture of of sabotaging humans access
Speaker 6: to life saving supplies. And that was nothing new to them,
Speaker 6: that they that they had nothing. They had never encountered
Speaker 6: somebody trying to oppose them for doing that.
Speaker 7: Mere water and all that was that yours, that water,
Speaker 7: it was at yours too.
Speaker 10: So it is your property exactly and.
Speaker 12: You and you slashed it.
Speaker 10: And I'm wondering why you're just that your property be high.
Speaker 10: You did not your prop by you were going on
Speaker 10: a hip while we were on a fad slash.
Speaker 2: So you guys.
Speaker 9: In your job description to slash water and open cans.
Speaker 13: And damn wood all over the profect plant and live
Speaker 13: in this area.
Speaker 10: To abandon property.
Speaker 4: And to your mind, it's a long hike.
Speaker 1: How I would I do that?
Speaker 10: Get?
Speaker 9: You know, I'm like serious, It's okay for you to
Speaker 9: recap you have converstion and.
Speaker 4: Patrol within twenty five miles of quarter.
Speaker 3: Had one hundred to do what and and look for
Speaker 3: pot probably.
Speaker 4: Bandon property, the property legal person and what do you
Speaker 4: do with it? What would you destroy it?
Speaker 5: We try to clean it up, because they.
Speaker 9: Know that that's cleaning it up.
Speaker 10: That's one of the things that not cleaning about it.
Speaker 12: And you know we're trying to clean it up.
Speaker 9: That was too far from us. We decided to just
Speaker 9: trash the whole area.
Speaker 4: Like when they're funded and equipped and transported and armed
Speaker 4: by the state, and like, it's not the same as individuals,
Speaker 4: just because we've seen that in Arizona, right, like people
Speaker 4: who are militias or what have you going out and
Speaker 4: sabotaging life saving supplies as well. But it's still a
Speaker 4: little different when you know, we have to pay taxes
Speaker 4: for them to go destroy water caches.
Speaker 6: And these are people who regularly, as we've seen on
Speaker 6: multiple occasions, use helicopters to try to flush people out
Speaker 6: of under a tree that they fly within thirty feet
Speaker 6: of the ground and use the force of the roadors
Speaker 6: to force people out and upper hillside to waiting cars.
Speaker 6: So their use of money and the use of force
Speaker 6: is definitely central to the tactics.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, or he'se helicopters to fire to I guess
Speaker 4: into Mexico and it did a few years ago. But yeah,
Speaker 4: it's certainly, And that intimidation is like if I think
Speaker 4: people again who don't live here might not be familiar
Speaker 4: with it. Like I've been out in down by the
Speaker 4: border with KUMIAI people doing religious ceremony and had bortat
Speaker 4: guys dressed like you know, like Navy seals hanging out
Speaker 4: with air fifteens and plate carriers. Well, people like burn
Speaker 4: stage and prey. It's yeah, I mean the militarization if
Speaker 4: you somehow can't conceive the care of people dying in
Speaker 4: the desert, the militarization of the border still affects everyone
Speaker 4: here and it makes our lives left safe. There's a
Speaker 4: crime crime thinks logan that I always like to like
Speaker 4: use in these things, which is the border doesn't protect you,
Speaker 4: it controls you, which I think is kind of apt
Speaker 4: for this. So now that they've trashed your supplies, right
Speaker 4: and you found ot they weren't supposed to, I'm interested
Speaker 4: like how going forward, does that mean that you can't
Speaker 4: use that rout, you can't drop stuff there? Anymore because
Speaker 4: you're worried about happening again, or because you're worried about
Speaker 4: them hanging out there to intercept people who are using
Speaker 4: your like supply cash.
Speaker 5: On the contrary, we've learned from the examples of other
Speaker 5: people who have been doing this work. Em had already
Speaker 5: mentioned Nomas Mertes no more deaths in Arizona, Doctor Scott Warren.
Speaker 5: We've learned so much from their example where you know,
Speaker 5: they were hauled into federal court.
Speaker 4: And one uh.
Speaker 5: And so we've learned from from their examples of how
Speaker 5: to how to do this as well as within here
Speaker 5: in California. The history of border angels so back a
Speaker 5: few years ago, Border Patrol was slashing gallons of water
Speaker 5: in the deserts of eastern San Diego County as well
Speaker 5: as Imperial County. On one particular day, the border in
Speaker 5: those volunteers found about fifty gallons of water slashed in
Speaker 5: the most violent way, and they knew it was Border patrol.
Speaker 5: And so the way border angels responded was number one,
Speaker 5: to change their tactics to start dropping supplies a deeper
Speaker 5: in the back country where the border patrol agents. You know,
Speaker 5: it's rare to find a BP agent that's motivated enough
Speaker 5: to really hike, hike for too far away from their
Speaker 5: air conditioned vehicles in the summertime. So number one, they
Speaker 5: were going farther away from the roads and highways to
Speaker 5: the actual routes that people are are walking. Number Two,
Speaker 5: they punched back hard in public using social media. Back
Speaker 5: then it was Facebook. You know this is going to
Speaker 5: be you know, right when Instagram was getting but just
Speaker 5: you know, getting the word out. And Border Angels is
Speaker 5: an organization that's been around for decades. They have a
Speaker 5: big following, the word spread and just like many bullies,
Speaker 5: you know, they kind of back down if you get
Speaker 5: in their face sometimes. So that was our experience with
Speaker 5: this practice of Border patrols slashing gallons in the desert
Speaker 5: with Border Angels. So when this this crime occurred on
Speaker 5: March eighteenth in the mountains, we knew we could not
Speaker 5: back down. So we met back a few days later.
Speaker 5: That's when, as Emmett mentioned, we witnessed Border Patrol helicopter
Speaker 5: for about an hour flying about. You know, it seemed like,
Speaker 5: you know, ten fifteen feet off the ground, really really low,
Speaker 5: using the rotor wash to flush of flush human beings
Speaker 5: out of the brush as if they were hunting animals.
Speaker 5: And then we were back, you know, the next seven
Speaker 5: days later, after they destroyed the supplies, we went back
Speaker 5: with a good group number one to clean up this
Speaker 5: shameful mess these two border patrol goons left. We cleaned
Speaker 5: up all of all of that stuff, and we left
Speaker 5: probably what three times the amount of original supplies, and
Speaker 5: on our milk rates, we actually left laminated signs that
Speaker 5: addressed one by one all of the accusations that these
Speaker 5: border patrol agents tried to make against us. So the
Speaker 5: signs say, do not destroy, do not remove. This is
Speaker 5: not garbage, we are not littering, and this is not
Speaker 5: abandoned property. Is these are humanitarian aid supplies protected by
Speaker 5: federal case law, the nineteen ninety four Protection of Religious
Speaker 5: Freedom Act, and so on and so forth. So we
Speaker 5: put those signs just prominently on the milk rates, uh,
Speaker 5: you know, just to send a message that no, we're
Speaker 5: not going to back down. We are going to leave supplies.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 5: It is within our rights and it is in support
Speaker 5: of human rights to do this. So of course we
Speaker 5: have to be strategic about this. I mean, there is
Speaker 5: the danger, you know, we're always going back to the
Speaker 5: same place. You know, we're kind of you know, blowing
Speaker 5: up the spot as it were. You know, we're bringing
Speaker 5: heat to a route that's that's needed by people making
Speaker 5: a crossing, and so we are we are mindful of that,
Speaker 5: you know, we don't we We try to go to
Speaker 5: different places on different weekends, uh, and not try to
Speaker 5: bring too much attention to these paths.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And I wonder
Speaker 4: like if people are I was just thinking for people
Speaker 4: to visualize the area if they are place, so I
Speaker 4: could look up on like googless so they could see
Speaker 4: like where this kind of stuff is happening. If you comfortable,
Speaker 4: you don't have to give like an exact location obviously.
Speaker 5: But yeah, actually, I mean, speaking of Google Earth, you
Speaker 5: mentioned a valley of the Moon. I mean, Google Earth
Speaker 5: is impressive enough. Anybody can just use Google Earth and
Speaker 5: zoom in all the way and just follow along the
Speaker 5: border and you'll find thousands of footpaths. So yeah, it
Speaker 5: doesn't take yeah, like much detective work to actually visually
Speaker 5: see these footpaths. But yeah, it's real steep terrain. As
Speaker 5: Emmett mentioned, the last couple times we've gone back to
Speaker 5: this spot, where the two agents destroyed the supplies. Emmett
Speaker 5: has actually brought a mountain climbing rope just to make
Speaker 5: certain sections easier where we're kind of repelling down this
Speaker 5: dry waterfall, so really really steep, very loose trails, very
Speaker 5: easy to break an ankle, and it just in that context,
Speaker 5: it really it really hits you. We see so many
Speaker 5: shoes and boots along the path and just have to
Speaker 5: kind of just pause and think, well, this person lost
Speaker 5: their shoe, if the if they're the sole of their
Speaker 5: boot melted off in their hours away from the nearest road,
Speaker 5: what does it mean? How did they complete the journey?
Speaker 5: Did they complete their journey? So yeah, a little bit
Speaker 5: hard to describe, but I guess any yeah, anybody who's
Speaker 5: I guess kind of familiar with with the southern California steep,
Speaker 5: steep mountains, loose terrain kind of get the picture.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, they can make out value the main
Speaker 4: there's plenty of pictures of the very intimidating boarder fence
Speaker 4: that they have there, like three foot I and rusty.
Speaker 4: Is there anything else that you guys wanted to address
Speaker 4: that you feel like maybe people don't the people should
Speaker 4: know about the board that they don't about the work
Speaker 4: you do that maybe is misunderstood.
Speaker 10: Yeah, I guess I want to maybe bring up.
Speaker 6: Some of what it I think is hard to convey
Speaker 6: to people who aren't there and I know aren't connected
Speaker 6: to a community who is suffering because of this, or
Speaker 6: who aren't maybe thinking along the lines of what it
Speaker 6: means to be a human in this space and actually
Speaker 6: be risking your life and coming up against helicopters and
Speaker 6: a federally backed militia who is actively seeking to harm you.
Speaker 6: None of us in our group are claiming any anything
Speaker 6: more than just witnessing what it means to be out there.
Speaker 6: But I guess what's been true for me and in
Speaker 6: kind of my conversations with my community as over the
Speaker 6: last couple of years, just trying to share this. There
Speaker 6: is so much pain that is being inflicted upon this landscape,
Speaker 6: and there is so much harm that is.
Speaker 10: Actively supported by our nation.
Speaker 6: While people are in some of the most intimate and
Speaker 6: painful moments of their lives.
Speaker 10: Leaving your home, whether it be in.
Speaker 6: Another continent where you need to take a flight a
Speaker 6: flight over to make this crossing, or whether it be
Speaker 6: hiking through Central America starting in South America for months
Speaker 6: before reaching this moment, or leaving your your your family,
Speaker 6: in your in.
Speaker 10: Your community closer to the to the to the border.
Speaker 6: This these are moments that anyone who is alive could
Speaker 6: feel the pain of and the misery of having to
Speaker 6: abandoned all that you know and put yourself at the
Speaker 6: mercy of of the desert. And CBPS overly aggressive and
Speaker 6: and and had harmful tactics. So beyond all of the
Speaker 6: cases and the politics, I just I I oftentimes, as
Speaker 6: we're walking, just try to put myself in the position
Speaker 6: of someone who is who is making these decisions. And
Speaker 6: as Dave was saying, we're coming across people's clothing, food, underwear,
Speaker 6: places they've slept, and the amount of the poignancy of
Speaker 6: human desire to be safe, to to come to a
Speaker 6: place where they feel like their lives can be.
Speaker 10: Protected, or that that choice.
Speaker 6: Is worthwhile is something that is so lost in the numbers,
Speaker 6: in the amount of people who die or what happens
Speaker 6: after it. And so for us, I think making it
Speaker 6: not about your political beliefs or the asylum process, but
Speaker 6: just the actual choices people are are half having to
Speaker 6: make very human decisions that is something that is kind
Speaker 6: of haunts us, and the feeling that all we can
Speaker 6: do is leave water in a place that it might
Speaker 6: make the difference between someone in that position surviving or not.
Speaker 6: And furthermore, just living in a community where you know,
Speaker 6: from the top of the mountain we can see downtown
Speaker 6: San Diego and all of the luxury of this military town,
Speaker 6: all of the universities and all of this opportunity that
Speaker 6: we enjoy, and just a couple miles away, the lack
Speaker 6: of access to just water. The feeling how similar humans
Speaker 6: are to each other in our basic needs and how
Speaker 6: that's being taken from people is really is really harmful,
Speaker 6: And particularly as you were saying, these are areas held
Speaker 6: sacred by the Kumii people and have been places of
Speaker 6: migration for at least ten thousand years. These are places
Speaker 6: that were difficult to travel and that people did for
Speaker 6: similar reasons to survive, to be safe, and there is
Speaker 6: a legacy of oyas of clay pots buried in the
Speaker 6: sand for travelers that has been ongoing for thousands of years.
Speaker 6: And for our current administration and government to create this
Speaker 6: wall in this place of so much pain is just
Speaker 6: testament to just the insanity of our desire to protect
Speaker 6: border against something else, actually the borders against something that
Speaker 6: we feel is harmful to us. Meanwhile, this migration is
Speaker 6: fundamentally how we survive and how we respond to these
Speaker 6: moments of change in humanity, and criminalizing that and closing
Speaker 6: hard with that is just barbaric.
Speaker 5: I'll let you collect your thoughts and you can come
Speaker 5: back and make that statement, because I think you do
Speaker 5: it very eloquently, But I want to jump on there
Speaker 5: and just kind of echo and elaborate on what you said. Yeah,
Speaker 5: we find lots and lots of physical items, but we
Speaker 5: also meet people on the trails, and that's a new thing.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 5: I've been doing these water drops for some time now.
Speaker 5: But you know, when you say what has changed under Biden,
Speaker 5: not much. There's more people crossing the border than ever.
Speaker 5: There are more people dying than ever. As far as
Speaker 5: as a volunteer who spends most weekends out in the borderlands,
Speaker 5: the only thing I noticed is they stopped building Trump's
Speaker 5: thirty foot high fence and they started pouring all that
Speaker 5: money into electronic surveillance, where every single month we see
Speaker 5: more towers popping up all along the border with all
Speaker 5: kinds of very very fancy, military grade surveillance equipment and
Speaker 5: as well as aerial surveillance. Lots of airplanes, helicopters. I'm
Speaker 5: not sure if they're using drones, but we certainly there's
Speaker 5: a lot of aerial surveillance. But what we see as
Speaker 5: far as the human dimension is in the old days,
Speaker 5: you know, we see footprints, We see shoe covers, you know,
Speaker 5: which people wear on their feet to hide their footprints
Speaker 5: from border patrol. We see the empty water bottles and
Speaker 5: discarded clothing. But now we're encountering people pretty much every
Speaker 5: time we do a water drop because the number of
Speaker 5: people crossing is so high. People are crossing in the daytime,
Speaker 5: whereas in the past usually they would cross at night.
Speaker 5: So wouldn't you say, emmittt like pretty much it's it's
Speaker 5: pretty much every time we go out, at least one
Speaker 5: of our volunteers, if not the whole group, sees or
Speaker 5: even interacts with a migrant on the paths. And you know,
Speaker 5: and of course we respect, we respect their autonomy, their privacy.
Speaker 5: We don't engage with them if they don't want to
Speaker 5: engage with us. But the thing that I'll never forget
Speaker 5: is about a month ago, we were out in this
Speaker 5: exact same area, supplying the same path, and it was
Speaker 5: a rainy day, cold, we were wearing our gortex insulated clothing.
Speaker 5: We'd done a water drop. While we were doing the
Speaker 5: water drop, we can see on the next mountain peak
Speaker 5: Border Patrol helicopter landing to pick up somebody who required rescue.
Speaker 5: And this is a case that we had been getting
Speaker 5: updates all night with Armadillos, one of the search groups,
Speaker 5: and thankfully this person was found alive and Border Patrol
Speaker 5: was so called rescuing him another word for arresting him.
Speaker 5: And after we witnessed that, we hiked back to our vehicles,
Speaker 5: and just as we were getting to the trailhead, the
Speaker 5: exact same location where on March eighteenth, Emmett and other
Speaker 5: volunteers had this interaction with the two Border Patrol agents
Speaker 5: who destroyed the humanitarian aid supplies, the exact same parking spot.
Speaker 5: We pop out and start walking toward our vehicles and
Speaker 5: it starts snowing, and two individuals come out of the
Speaker 5: mist and approach us and start talking to us in
Speaker 5: Spanish and talking to the these two people, these two men,
Speaker 5: one one young, one middle aged in the course of
Speaker 5: the conversation. You know, sorry, I kind of choke up
Speaker 5: when I talk about this stuff.
Speaker 4: Yes it's okay, but yeah.
Speaker 5: So this is the younger of the two. I was
Speaker 5: sixteen years old and the older dude was his father.
Speaker 5: We encountered them as it was snowing, so of course,
Speaker 5: first thing we did is got them in our vehicles.
Speaker 5: One of our volunteers, avid hiker, had his backpacking stove
Speaker 5: with him and cooked up some tea and some you know,
Speaker 5: gave them food and you know, let them warm up.
Speaker 5: We gave them literally the you know Gorte's winter coats
Speaker 5: offer backs to warm up and once you know, the
Speaker 5: dad was shivering violently, really really showing signs of clinical hypothermia.
Speaker 5: And talking to the younger man, who was in better
Speaker 5: physical shape, he was explaining that the two of them
Speaker 5: were hiking through the mountains because his mother was already
Speaker 5: living in the USA. They were trying to reunite with
Speaker 5: her and they had been in this mountainous region for
Speaker 5: the past two days. And looking at them, they're wearing hoodies,
Speaker 5: you know, like you know, sweatshirts, sweatpants and sneakers in
Speaker 5: this and anybody who lives down here in southern California.
Speaker 5: You know, we've had a very unusual winter, lots and
Speaker 5: lots of rain, so it had been raining heavily over
Speaker 5: the past two days and nighttime temperatures in the thirties,
Speaker 5: and these two men had been out there for two
Speaker 5: days soaked to the bone, and that's why they approached us,
Speaker 5: because they were in trouble and were asking for help.
Speaker 5: So after they warmed up, we discussed the options. Of course,
Speaker 5: you know, we we we respect their autonomy. You know,
Speaker 5: they have the option to try to continue going on
Speaker 5: their way with with supplies or if they felt it
Speaker 5: was unsafe to do so we were ready to help them.
Speaker 5: The heartbreaking thing is, you know they did ask us
Speaker 5: could we let them ride in our vehicles off the mountain,
Speaker 5: and we had to explain that, you know, we're we're
Speaker 5: pretty much guaranteed to encounter Order patrol agents on that
Speaker 5: road and that really it's not something that we could
Speaker 5: do because you know that that that you know, we
Speaker 5: we could be arrested and charged, you know, for federal
Speaker 5: felony crimes. But we said, look, you know, if you
Speaker 5: really feel you can't continue, we will help you. Contact
Speaker 5: you know, call nine to one one that we explained
Speaker 5: that's that's one hundred percent going to result in border
Speaker 5: patrol coming because as folks may know, you know, you know,
Speaker 5: in the USA along the border, you know, emergency medical response,
Speaker 5: search and rescue is unfortunately considered in the domain of
Speaker 5: law enforcement. So if you are a US citizen, or
Speaker 5: if you are someone from another country that happened to
Speaker 5: come here and have a visa or just be considered
Speaker 5: the good type of foreigner, you know, you're going to
Speaker 5: have a very impressive response with sheriffs, Sheriff's Department, search
Speaker 5: and rescue, volunteer organizations. If there's any hint that you
Speaker 5: may be a so called undocumented person, you immediately get
Speaker 5: sent to border patrol and you have you know, boor
Speaker 5: Star respond the Border Patrols Search and Rescue group, which
Speaker 5: is a far cry from the civilian search and rescue folks.
Speaker 5: So we explain to them if we call nine one one,
Speaker 5: you're going to be apprehended, You're going to be arrested
Speaker 5: by border patrol. And after thinking about it and discussing,
Speaker 5: they said, yeah, we you know, we cannot continue where
Speaker 5: you know, this is too dangerous. So we did call
Speaker 5: nine one one, and border patrol did come and frisked
Speaker 5: them and cuff them and uh, yeah, yeah I did
Speaker 5: arrest them. And yeah, that's not not the only time
Speaker 5: too often we have witnessed human beings being arrested by
Speaker 5: border patrol.
Speaker 4: Yeah, thank you for sharing that. I think I think
Speaker 4: it's really important to give like put like faces and
Speaker 4: names to these things, rather than the border patrol will
Speaker 4: constantly talk about a million whatever encounters, right, they like
Speaker 4: to fucking inflate the numbers. It's often the same people,
Speaker 4: but it each one of those is a tragedy every
Speaker 4: time someone has to make a choice between risking their
Speaker 4: life in one place or risking their life coming to
Speaker 4: another place just so their kids can have a crack
Speaker 4: at growing up safely, or so they can be safe,
Speaker 4: so they can experience like one tenth of the things
Speaker 4: that we take for granted every day, Like, that's an
Speaker 4: incredible human tragedy. And yeah, they happen every single day,
Speaker 4: every hour of every day at our border because of
Speaker 4: the things that our government does there. And yeah, it's
Speaker 4: important to feel that stuff because I think that's it
Speaker 4: should provoke in all of us a very strong reaction
Speaker 4: it's pretty messed up that it's almost universal bipartisan agreement
Speaker 4: that it's fine and okay by people who have never
Speaker 4: been hearing and don't understand.
Speaker 5: One other thing I want to add and and emt
Speaker 5: you may have other things. One thing I wanted to
Speaker 5: really center is something we've referenced several times. Cumye you
Speaker 5: know this is this is Cumiate Land. These are the
Speaker 5: indigenous people who have lived here since the beginning of time.
Speaker 5: The archaeological record goes back ten thousand years, but we
Speaker 5: know people have been here since the beginning of human time. Really,
Speaker 5: and look at the map, the so called border cuts
Speaker 5: in half traditional Cuma territory. When we do these water
Speaker 5: drops out in the desert or in the mountains, you know,
Speaker 5: these these paths that that people are using to migrate
Speaker 5: are often or in many many cases traditional Cumi paths.
Speaker 5: And we see evidence of that every time we, you know,
Speaker 5: do a water drop, especially out out in the desert
Speaker 5: area where it's a rare water drop, that we will
Speaker 5: not find pottery sharp lying lying in the sand, or
Speaker 5: come across rock shelters, uh, some with pictographs and uh
Speaker 5: the you know, it's just uh, you know, very poignant
Speaker 5: juxtaposition of of Kumai cultural artifacts with modern day you know,
Speaker 5: shoe covers, discarded water bottles, and of course many people
Speaker 5: who do migrate are indigenous uh them themselves. So yeah, personally,
Speaker 5: you know, I view all of these border issues through
Speaker 5: the lens of history culture, with with the core truth
Speaker 5: that this is indigenous land, this is Cumi land, and
Speaker 5: it has always been and uh, the modern so called
Speaker 5: border is a very recent, uh political creation, you know that,
Speaker 5: you know, mid nineteeth century. You know, before that this
Speaker 5: was Mexico and now now where we call it the USA.
Speaker 5: But this is all recent and from my perspective, unless
Speaker 5: you are a Kumie, I really don't know how anybody
Speaker 5: could can really get on their high horse and really
Speaker 5: speak with any authority about who belongs here, who belongs here,
Speaker 5: who doesn't belong here, Because the rest of us, we
Speaker 5: are all guests on Kumie ied land. That includes every
Speaker 5: single border patrol agent. And that's that's something I always
Speaker 5: like to remember.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, the border is very much like colonialism in action,
Speaker 4: and it see even we're going to have some Cumi folks,
Speaker 4: hopefully in the next couple of weeks to talk about
Speaker 4: the desecration of Kumii Burial site by the border wall,
Speaker 4: which is an ongoing thing, Like I haven't stopped when
Speaker 4: the just I can't tell stories about it like I
Speaker 4: could in twenty twenty, because you know, Orange Man Bad
Speaker 4: isn't a thing anymore. But yeah, they're all across the border, right,
Speaker 4: not just here that the Yaki, the all across the
Speaker 4: border is native. The whole of the circle the United
Speaker 4: States is Native land, and it's not Indigenous folks out
Speaker 4: there trying to kill people in the desert. Is there
Speaker 4: anything that you wanted to add?
Speaker 10: Yeah, I just want to say this.
Speaker 6: Well, I don't know we're able forever, so we'll start
Speaker 6: rambling a second. But I guess I really want to say,
Speaker 6: and this is coming from a very skewed white males perspective,
Speaker 6: but I just feel like so much of these power
Speaker 6: structures that we're engaged with, and us as a nasan
Speaker 6: trying to find our identity, it's so hypocritical, particularly in
Speaker 6: this moment where the climate and social instability is at
Speaker 6: its height. I mean in my lifetime and I think
Speaker 6: in many of our lifetimes, we see this is a
Speaker 6: really precarious moment. It just feels so so hypocritical to
Speaker 6: police people's sovereign tees to find safety and to be
Speaker 6: in safety. You know, we we have all of these
Speaker 6: ideals in our country around respecting each other's freedoms, and
Speaker 6: also as we are importing and exporting so many goods
Speaker 6: and also so much culture and so fundamentally intertwined with
Speaker 6: the lives of people from all over the world. For
Speaker 6: us to say what is wrong and what is right
Speaker 6: in this moment, and for us to have this this
Speaker 6: moral authority to to put people in prison just for
Speaker 6: for for seeking safety for many years, and of course
Speaker 6: I have many people I know and live with who
Speaker 6: have been in in who we're in attention for for
Speaker 6: several years, for seeking that the amount of just how
Speaker 6: twisted it is that we are comfortable spending our lives
Speaker 6: as Americans never considering or never really critically engaging.
Speaker 5: With this active.
Speaker 6: Pursuit, these actions to to limit people's ability to survive.
Speaker 6: It feels like it really needs to be centered in
Speaker 6: this conversation. And again this is coming from my skewed perspective,
Speaker 6: but I just I really want to make the point clear.
Speaker 10: This is not about this is not about these these
Speaker 10: lofty ideals of what a country could be or who
Speaker 10: and who is not justified or useful.
Speaker 6: In our country, we make these arbitrary assessments of what's
Speaker 6: justified or what's legal and not legal, and very often
Speaker 6: those are just continuing the legacy of exploitation of black
Speaker 6: and brown people, the exploitation of landscapes, the expectation of labor,
Speaker 6: the exploitation of people whose voices are not heard, and politically,
Speaker 6: economically and continuing a conversation of an O time Masage center,
Speaker 6: the people who are attained are are are cleaning their
Speaker 6: own cells, and they're their their their labor is actually
Speaker 6: being exploited as well. You can't distinguish the fact that
Speaker 6: there is the history of policing in our country, in
Speaker 6: the history of prisons is specifically a project to continue
Speaker 6: white supremacy. And you can see particularly the differential policing
Speaker 6: of immigration currently and the differential way that certain people
Speaker 6: from certain countries are or are not valid UH to
Speaker 6: UH to enter this country and and at.
Speaker 10: The very least.
Speaker 6: Be treated with respect and dignity in their process. And
Speaker 6: that's what we see CBP every single day, violating people's
Speaker 6: basic access to human dignity and acts to life, which
Speaker 6: are protected by all nations in writing and very often
Speaker 6: not in practice.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, and as well said like it's a very
Speaker 4: basic human thing. It doesn't need to be like shrouded
Speaker 4: in constitutional law. And like you also said, the capital
Speaker 4: flows very freely across across the border, but people aren't
Speaker 4: allowed to and yeah, it's pretty messed up. Guys. Where
Speaker 4: can people if they want to support, if they want
Speaker 4: to just send a kind word? Where can people find
Speaker 4: you on the internet?
Speaker 5: Another best way probably is on Instagram. We have an
Speaker 5: account Borderlands Relief Collective reach out to us and I
Speaker 5: do want to give a shout out to our sister organizations,
Speaker 5: border Kindness. Their water Drop program, led by Jacqueline and James,
Speaker 5: has been doing tremendous work for years. Border Angels, which
Speaker 5: is kind of the parent organization of water Drop volunteer
Speaker 5: group in California, are our comrades who do search and
Speaker 5: rescue as well as recovery of those who have died,
Speaker 5: including Armadillos and Aggi las Egos of the Desert. Very
Speaker 5: very proud to be in this community of people who
Speaker 5: are trying to help people in the borderlands.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, Thank you very much, guys, it's pretty great.
Speaker 1: Hey. We'll be back Monday with more episodes every week
Speaker 1: from now until the heat death of the universe.
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