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Speaker 1: or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, everybody, Robert Evans
Speaker 1: here and I wanted to let you know. This is
Speaker 1: a completion episode. So every episode of the week that
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Speaker 1: It's Oregon. You don't get to consent. I'll tell you.
Speaker 1: Open up the podcast. That's right, baby, look up one
Speaker 1: party consent laws for recording recording. Um, this is it
Speaker 1: could happen here a podcast about when you can legally
Speaker 1: record people without their consent. Hint. Always in the state
Speaker 1: of Oregon. Um, I'm Robert Evans. We're talking about bad things,
Speaker 1: good things, things that are good and bad all that stuff. Woo,
Speaker 1: what do we you know what? You know what we
Speaker 1: should talk about? You know what no one has talked
Speaker 1: about ever on the internet lately. Josephine Robinette Rogan. Oh,
Speaker 1: I've never heard of him. What does he do? Well?
Speaker 1: He has a podcast. If you heard a podcast, Garrison,
Speaker 1: I'm unfamiliar, but just I'll just go with it. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: it's like the radio, but easier to spread disinformation. Um
Speaker 1: and also sexier for reasons that are hard to explain. Uh.
Speaker 1: And Joe Rogan gets on his podcast and he says
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff that people think is bad, and
Speaker 1: then everybody gets angry at him, and then he makes
Speaker 1: more money. And today we're going to talk about how
Speaker 1: maybe we could handle this problem differently. Maybe we cannot
Speaker 1: do the same thing over and over and it's quite
Speaker 1: a different result. Yeah, And upfront, obviously we're talking about him.
Speaker 1: We're trying to talk less about specifically what he's said
Speaker 1: and more about kind of the problem he represents in
Speaker 1: the ways in which the responses people have aren't having
Speaker 1: the results they desire. We're gonna avoid using his name
Speaker 1: in the title of the episode or the description, because
Speaker 1: that doesn't feed into the algorithm kind of in the
Speaker 1: same way. But yeah, Garrison, you want to kick us
Speaker 1: off here. Yeah, I've been watching the Rogan thing online
Speaker 1: be getting kind of frustrated because of the way the
Speaker 1: discourse is going, and it's just repeating the same loops
Speaker 1: that we see every few months and nothing really changes
Speaker 1: and regain just gets more popular. So earlier this month
Speaker 1: or like the middle of I guess it was closer
Speaker 1: to like January. UM, there was like a group of
Speaker 1: like two d seventy doctors, healthcare workers, UM, and scientists
Speaker 1: who are campaigning for Spotify to adopt a missuformation policy. UM.
Speaker 1: This was prompted by a few episodes of the Joe
Speaker 1: Rogan podcast that we've already actually talked about, UM about
Speaker 1: Dr Robert Malone and someone else who said some stupid
Speaker 1: things about the pandemic. UM. So I write when when
Speaker 1: I when we talked about these episodes this last time,
Speaker 1: I tried to actually talk about what these doctors were doing,
Speaker 1: and let not focus on Rogan himself, but specifically what
Speaker 1: these doctors were doing and their ideology, because I didn't
Speaker 1: want to add to the whole Rogan side of the discourse. UM.
Speaker 1: And you know, for for this, for this, like a
Speaker 1: letter that that these doctors sent to Spotify, if they
Speaker 1: were not really advocating for Rogan to be removed from
Speaker 1: the platform, um or even for episodes to be removed,
Speaker 1: just to have Spotify clarify their guidelines regard medical misinformation,
Speaker 1: because you know, and it's important to note that Joe
Speaker 1: Rogan has a exclusivity contract with Spotify. He does not
Speaker 1: work for them, but Rogan gets paid a lot of
Speaker 1: money to get his podcast only published on Spotify's feed.
Speaker 1: So it's it's not it's it's it's it's like a
Speaker 1: it's a it's a weird kind of set up, and
Speaker 1: it can give a lot of like gray area for
Speaker 1: like does Spotify count that's a publisher or not. You're like, well,
Speaker 1: not really, because they could he could also just end
Speaker 1: that contract and post his podcast everywhere. Um, I mean
Speaker 1: I think it would take there. There's probably some sort
Speaker 1: of exclusive time limit on the exclusivity agreement, etcetera. Um,
Speaker 1: because it it is, it is mixed, because they did recently,
Speaker 1: when it came out that he said the inn word
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of times, Spotify removed those episodes. So
Speaker 1: there's a degree to which they they have acted as
Speaker 1: a publisher. Yeah, there's a whole lot of stuff to
Speaker 1: kind of talk about this on the So the letter
Speaker 1: gent kind of viral and it prompted this whole kind
Speaker 1: of thing in the middle of January. But like deleting
Speaker 1: your Spotify subscription, and then we had musicians, most uh,
Speaker 1: most popularly Neil Young decides to remove all their music
Speaker 1: from the Spotify platform, um as like a performative thing,
Speaker 1: being like, Okay, if Spotify is gonna host all this
Speaker 1: medical misinformation, we're going to remove this as protest now.
Speaker 1: Of course, Neil Young then just sign an exclusivity deal
Speaker 1: with Amazon. So oh great cool. We yes, Amazon, the
Speaker 1: bastion of moral purity. Yeah, and they're not. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think they are probably pay a better rate because
Speaker 1: Spotify is pretty much at the bottom to musicians, but
Speaker 1: I don't think it's good. Um, I think Napster actually
Speaker 1: has the best rate, doesn't the best rate. I mean also,
Speaker 1: if you want to be actually moral, just just just
Speaker 1: use band camp. But I mean I use Spotify because
Speaker 1: it's really easy. And that's why Spotify works. It's because
Speaker 1: it's super good. It is a well made product. That
Speaker 1: does not mean it's an ethical product, but it does.
Speaker 1: It does the thing that it's supposed to do quite well.
Speaker 1: So so yeah, it basically we've had a list discourse
Speaker 1: since then about Joe Rogan about Spotify is the platform,
Speaker 1: talking about how bad Spotify is, which yes, it is bad,
Speaker 1: talking about how you know how bad Joe Rogan is,
Speaker 1: and you know, the thing is, Joe Rogan already had
Speaker 1: the most popular podcast in the world his exclusivity deal
Speaker 1: with Spotify, and he's currently estimated to bring in eleven
Speaker 1: million listeners per episode of his podcast. Yeah. For for
Speaker 1: some reference, um, Behind the Bastards is one of the
Speaker 1: largest podcasts out there. Um, and he's on average something
Speaker 1: like ten times our traffic. Uh. Like it's and it's not.
Speaker 1: He's not. He's not just the most popular podcast. He
Speaker 1: helped invent what podcasting podcast? He was one of the first,
Speaker 1: and like he had a foundational role in how the
Speaker 1: entire industry works. Since this letter and since he's episodes,
Speaker 1: there's been a whole lot of discourse around if Spotify
Speaker 1: should remove Joe Rogan from the platform, um, if they
Speaker 1: should cancel his deal. You know, a lot of people
Speaker 1: calling on Spotify to do that. A lot of people
Speaker 1: are calling on Spotify to remove certain episodes, and Spotify
Speaker 1: has not been team too so like. But let's and
Speaker 1: I know Jo Rogan himself did actually authorize the removal
Speaker 1: of a certain amount of episodes, which for reasons we'll
Speaker 1: talk about later. Um. But what's all this discourse and
Speaker 1: outrage and articles and tweets actually doing to Spotify into Rogan? Okay?
Speaker 1: In my opinion, kind of the end result is actually
Speaker 1: very similar to all of the free advertising that companies
Speaker 1: get whenever they make awoke statement that infuriate, that infuriates
Speaker 1: the actionary right, you know, resulting in throwing your kel
Speaker 1: Ag out your window, flushing your Gillette blade down the toilet,
Speaker 1: and burning your nikes. Um. And it's even widely speculated
Speaker 1: and kind of like a known fact that companies will
Speaker 1: use progressive statements and policies to drum up this outrage um,
Speaker 1: to give their company and product tons of free advertising
Speaker 1: and just to get the brain name itself inside consumers heads.
Speaker 1: And this is definitely happening. Was was Roken and Spotify
Speaker 1: in terms of outrage being used as advertising. It may
Speaker 1: not be intentional, but that is what the result is yeah,
Speaker 1: and I mean it's very It's it's both sides like
Speaker 1: to make fun of the other for doing this, like
Speaker 1: folks on the left like to make fun of their
Speaker 1: right when they're when they're breaking their carrigs or whatever. Um.
Speaker 1: But you know, it happens. It's equally profitable for both sides.
Speaker 1: You just do the opposite. You know, you have someone
Speaker 1: come on and talk about how they're a truth teller
Speaker 1: being canceled, and they get a bunch of attention, money,
Speaker 1: and and it works equally well both ways. Pretty much. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So with Spotify and Rogan in the news every day
Speaker 1: for the past like three weeks, the the the end
Speaker 1: is that like the fact that it's just that people
Speaker 1: are hearing these names in their head more often, and
Speaker 1: they're probably subconsciously gonna use Spotify more often because you know,
Speaker 1: despite a few people that might cancel their subscriptions, the
Speaker 1: net effect will be more listeners who seem to Spotify
Speaker 1: because there because the name is in my subconscious it's
Speaker 1: it's it's in there. And all the effect that's going
Speaker 1: to have on Rogan is giving him a way more
Speaker 1: publicity to attract new listeners and and it's listeners who
Speaker 1: themselves are like attracted to unconventional ideas outside the mainstream,
Speaker 1: and his more passive listeners are gonna like double down
Speaker 1: on him because there's gonna be like the backfire effect,
Speaker 1: so they will like feel defensive and then become more
Speaker 1: of a fan of his because he's seen as a
Speaker 1: cultural outsider, even though he's not an outsider. He is
Speaker 1: the mainstream. He's the biggest podcaster in the world, but
Speaker 1: he's seen as a cultural outsider. So you know, he
Speaker 1: like brings on guests who say things that they're not
Speaker 1: supposed to say. You know, So, who's actually going to
Speaker 1: be convinced by all this outrage to not listen to
Speaker 1: Rogan via pointing out all the wrong things he's said
Speaker 1: and all the slurs he's used, Like, is that really
Speaker 1: going to stop fans from listening to Joe Rogan. It's
Speaker 1: the same time really pointing out that Donald Trump illegally
Speaker 1: took classified documents. It's like, yeah, I mean that's fucked
Speaker 1: up and ship, but like he's never going to get
Speaker 1: charged with crimes, and none of his supporters care. You're
Speaker 1: the only people who are angry about this, and it
Speaker 1: doesn't matter because the people you vote for aren't going
Speaker 1: to punish him, so like just yeah, you know, chill
Speaker 1: out a little bit. It's like all of the outrage
Speaker 1: is simply inflating the importance of Joe Rogan on like
Speaker 1: an entire cultural level. It's that he's becoming He's becoming
Speaker 1: more important to his fans, more important to his haters,
Speaker 1: and more important to himself and Spotify as an asset
Speaker 1: because he generates a lot of exclusive listeners and news
Speaker 1: coverage and buzz around the Spotify brand. And it's important
Speaker 1: to talk about Like, so you have, broadly speaking within
Speaker 1: the field of entertainment, like digital entertainment in particular, you
Speaker 1: have like two ways that you can grow your audience.
Speaker 1: One of them is organic growth, which is, you know,
Speaker 1: I listened to Garrison's podcast. I like it. I tell
Speaker 1: a friend about Garrison's podcast. They like it. They tell
Speaker 1: a friend about Garrett that that's like organic, you know,
Speaker 1: it's very natural. That's purely the kind of quality of
Speaker 1: the content UM reaching people. And then there is in
Speaker 1: organic growth, which is can be the result of like
Speaker 1: ad campaigns can be the result of UM an algorithm.
Speaker 1: Often in today we're talking about like oh, Twitter or
Speaker 1: Facebook prioritizes this kind of content, So like something article
Speaker 1: on bright bared about black on white crime that would
Speaker 1: have been read ten thousand times ten years ago gets
Speaker 1: read a million times because it spreads well on this
Speaker 1: platform for reasons that aren't organic. Um. And with Joe Rogan,
Speaker 1: one of the reasons why because we can talk about
Speaker 1: like d platforming. If you want to talk about like
Speaker 1: Alex Jones for example, or Meloiannopolis, good case that D
Speaker 1: platforming really reduced both of their reaches. Now, Milo uh
Speaker 1: pretty much wiped out as a person who mattered in
Speaker 1: terms of the dispoce, thank christ. Alex Jones less so. Um,
Speaker 1: it definitely hurt his business and it reduced his reach.
Speaker 1: But by the time Facebook and Twitter and whatnot started
Speaker 1: throttling him, he'd he had already inorganically increased his reach
Speaker 1: enough that like he's able to, he had he had
Speaker 1: a large a large enough audience to say somewhat relevant
Speaker 1: and keep going. The thing about Joe Rogan is he
Speaker 1: did not get famous and popular and organically. I'm sure
Speaker 1: there was some degree of that on like social media,
Speaker 1: but most of his growth before that, like people like him,
Speaker 1: like whatever you think of him. He's a good broadcaster.
Speaker 1: That's the thing. Even the like, you know, for all
Speaker 1: this research, I don't like him. He says horrible things,
Speaker 1: but you know, I was watching I watched all of
Speaker 1: like Rogan's like, um, like Instagram videos he made like
Speaker 1: a few ten minute things talking about the outrage, and
Speaker 1: it's it sucks because when you listen to him, he's
Speaker 1: like a really good talker. He's very good at what
Speaker 1: he does. He's very good at like generating sympathy and
Speaker 1: generating like good card Like It's it sucks because, yeah,
Speaker 1: I wanted to like hate this person, but I'm like
Speaker 1: listening to him talking about this issue, like oh wow, yeah,
Speaker 1: like you actually have a decent grasp on what's going
Speaker 1: on here. UM, And that's that's horrible. He is not
Speaker 1: part of He gets some of his money from playing
Speaker 1: like a dumb, chill stoner dude, but he's not dumb.
Speaker 1: He's definitely a stoner. He's not a dumb man. He's
Speaker 1: very intell. He's very good at what he does. Um.
Speaker 1: One of the things we don't kind of talk about
Speaker 1: enough when we talk about media that I think is
Speaker 1: important to note is that UM being likable in a
Speaker 1: professional sense, is a skill, and it's a skill like
Speaker 1: any technical skill. It's like knowing how to how to
Speaker 1: how to farm or weld. Um. It is a thing
Speaker 1: that you build on over time. It is a thing
Speaker 1: that um takes a lot of trial and error and
Speaker 1: a lot of education to get right. Uh. It is
Speaker 1: a thing that Joe Rogan has been doing for longer
Speaker 1: than a significant chunk of the people on this show,
Speaker 1: including Garrison, have been alive. Uh. It's like like I've
Speaker 1: been like this is this is more or less been
Speaker 1: my job for like thirteen or fourteen years. And it
Speaker 1: is like a skill that you build. And the thing
Speaker 1: that he is really good at is making people want
Speaker 1: to listen to him. And so if you were to say,
Speaker 1: kick him out of Spotify tomorrow, it's it's entirely possible
Speaker 1: that his that that would increase the number of people
Speaker 1: who who listen to podcast. There's there's a case to
Speaker 1: be made that Spotify has limited his maximum audience, limiting
Speaker 1: him to Spotify as opposed to if he was just
Speaker 1: any app he wanted to be on, maybe it'd be
Speaker 1: twenty million you know, listening to every exactly. Yes, Like
Speaker 1: even if did even the Spotify did drop him because
Speaker 1: of all these you know, outrage you know, and all
Speaker 1: the tweets and they're all all of the petitions. Even
Speaker 1: if they did drop him, he would probably not only
Speaker 1: gain more listeners due to the outrage porn and and
Speaker 1: free speech advocates, but also with his exclusivity ending help
Speaker 1: his podcast will just be available in more platforms and
Speaker 1: more people who will to listen to him, like really easily.
Speaker 1: So yeah, he's only going to grow if people get
Speaker 1: what they want. And like that makes you think, like this,
Speaker 1: this outrage isn't actually meant to get the Joe Rogan
Speaker 1: Joe Rogan problem taken care of, Like it's this, This
Speaker 1: actually isn't about stopping misinformation. It's this, this isn't actually
Speaker 1: about having they're being less fans of Joe Rogan. All
Speaker 1: those outrages about making you feel better because you feel
Speaker 1: like you're doing something right, Like bad thing is happening
Speaker 1: in the world, and it's easier to pretend like your
Speaker 1: actions are hurting it than it is to accept that,
Speaker 1: like maybe there's nothing I can do about this right now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it would be a really nice world if the Arrogan
Speaker 1: problem could be solved so easily by Spotify dropping his
Speaker 1: exclusivity deal, right, that would that would be great, But
Speaker 1: that's not the world we live in. And tricking yourself
Speaker 1: into thinking that is just kind of delusional. Um, and
Speaker 1: like yeah, it makes you feel better, but like that's
Speaker 1: not actually helping because like, yeah, we can obviously compare
Speaker 1: this to other like D platform and campaigns with people,
Speaker 1: for like Alex Jones, but you know, Jones was way
Speaker 1: more niche and way more extreme around the time of
Speaker 1: his like D platforming campaign, and his campaign wasn't about
Speaker 1: ending exclusivity deals. It was about getting him off of
Speaker 1: popular platforms altogether. And that's not happening with Joe Rogan
Speaker 1: because Joe Rogan isn't saying the things that are going
Speaker 1: to get him booted from platforms. He's smart, he knows
Speaker 1: what he can and cannot say. He's not He's not
Speaker 1: dumb enough to get banned from these platforms, right and also,
Speaker 1: you know he's a giant financial asset, so they wouldn't
Speaker 1: bend him anyway. But like he's he's what he's doing
Speaker 1: is bringing on people who say horrible things to continue
Speaker 1: a cultural conversation, which gets him in the headlines. And
Speaker 1: gives a platform like Spotify a whole bunch of room
Speaker 1: to cry free speech and get away with it. Removing
Speaker 1: Alex Jones could be seen as like a monetary decision
Speaker 1: in and of itself, because it is actually removing liability.
Speaker 1: But this is this isn't really the case for Rogan, yeah,
Speaker 1: and he's um, yeah, it's just not. One of the
Speaker 1: problems is that this kind of does fly in the
Speaker 1: face of a lot of what people want to think.
Speaker 1: And I don't want to be making the case that
Speaker 1: it's as black and white as it is, because, for example,
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that it was bad for someone to
Speaker 1: go through the effort of finding and pointing out, hey,
Speaker 1: there's like seventy episodes where Joe Rogan drops the inn
Speaker 1: word um and getting those pulled. I don't think that
Speaker 1: I think that that was broadly speaking, a productive thing.
Speaker 1: But keeping Joe Rogan at the forefront of the outrage
Speaker 1: cycle is doing nothing but printing money for the guy.
Speaker 1: And that's that's not an easy thing to deal with
Speaker 1: because it's like, do you want me to just like
Speaker 1: stay quiet in the face of injustice? And it's like, no,
Speaker 1: that's not what I want you to do. But I
Speaker 1: do want you to recognize that there are times in
Speaker 1: ways of speaking up that are just putting putting gasoline
Speaker 1: on an injustice fire. It's it's important to remember that
Speaker 1: d platform ng is just a tactic and and single
Speaker 1: tactics aren't always effective in every situation. That's what makes
Speaker 1: them a tactic, right, Like, in order for a tactic
Speaker 1: to work, you need to understand the scenario that's applying
Speaker 1: the tactic to and seeing if that tactic achieves the goal.
Speaker 1: And if it doesn't, great, but if it doesn't, you
Speaker 1: need to choose other tactic and stop doing the same
Speaker 1: thing over and over again and expecting a new result.
Speaker 1: And this is one of those situations where like when
Speaker 1: you bring up, hey, maybe nothing might be the best thing,
Speaker 1: at least for for most people specifically to do. Like
Speaker 1: the thing that gets brought up is like, well do
Speaker 1: you not want me to uh? Or like, well, what
Speaker 1: do you suggest I do? Like you know you're saying
Speaker 1: I shouldn't do this, but you're not telling me what
Speaker 1: to do. And it's like, well, it's like if somebody
Speaker 1: gets shot in the leg and one person has a
Speaker 1: tourniquet and the other person has a bunch of razor
Speaker 1: blades that they want to throw in their eyes, and
Speaker 1: it's like, well, what do you want me to do?
Speaker 1: All I have is these razor blades. This is the
Speaker 1: only other thing I can do? Then just stand by
Speaker 1: and do nothing. And it's like, well, in this case,
Speaker 1: doing nothing is the best thing to do, because it's
Speaker 1: it's not that's not going to help the problems. Boycotts
Speaker 1: of this scale kind of only tend to benefit brands
Speaker 1: and businesses right like, because if if if the brand
Speaker 1: of business is a person is smaller in more niche
Speaker 1: like and say like Alex Jones or Richard Spencer, right
Speaker 1: then yes, these tactics about boycotts can really work to
Speaker 1: push things out of the cultural like market and also
Speaker 1: in some cases in terms of businesses like the literal market.
Speaker 1: But when you're dealing with things like Target, Nike, and
Speaker 1: Joe Rogan, that's not the case because those brands are
Speaker 1: way too big. Any any you know, any conservative boycott
Speaker 1: against Target isn't going to have that effect. It will
Speaker 1: probably make weird liberals be like, oh, I'm gonna go
Speaker 1: to Target now because the conservatives don't want me to.
Speaker 1: It's so like it's it. I don't it's not. It's
Speaker 1: it's like, it's the problem is. It's like Joe Rogan
Speaker 1: himself isn't really the problem either. You know, a lot
Speaker 1: of the problem can be seen more as like content
Speaker 1: algorithms that boost and reward misinformation and disinformation and conspiracism,
Speaker 1: and that's more of like an actual issue at hand here.
Speaker 1: Joe Rogan is just a business. That's how he hears
Speaker 1: about a lot of these people. Yeah, they go viral
Speaker 1: somewhere else, and in a lot of cases it's an
Speaker 1: inorganic thing that brings them in front of them. It's
Speaker 1: some fucking algorithm that and and that is a case
Speaker 1: where you can target and work on deep exact forming
Speaker 1: and it can be more productive that that. That was,
Speaker 1: That was what that was what I was getting again,
Speaker 1: It's like Joe Joe Rogan himself was just a visible
Speaker 1: outgrowth of the core problem. And the core problem is
Speaker 1: these things getting onto his show in the first place. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: we can't stop his show, but maybe we should do
Speaker 1: more work to prevent to like figure out ways to do,
Speaker 1: you know, start using these tactics to prevent algorithms from
Speaker 1: boosting these things. So that Joe Roken sees them and
Speaker 1: then and then invites them on and yeah, that's a
Speaker 1: lot more work than just being angry at Spotify. And yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe it'll actually do something. And one thing that can
Speaker 1: do something is with spot and it won't work if
Speaker 1: it's just Spotify. But I am one of those people
Speaker 1: who thinks that maybe it's not the worst thing if
Speaker 1: things like Spotify are seen as publishers and thus when
Speaker 1: they spread missing information that leads to disastrous health consequences, um,
Speaker 1: they can be held liable. Right. Uh, that's not the
Speaker 1: worst possible change, although it is a problematic one. I
Speaker 1: don't want to like boil that down to a simple question,
Speaker 1: but I think that's an avenue that should be explored
Speaker 1: because I don't see that there's a lot of difference
Speaker 1: in Spotify choosing to let something go to air or
Speaker 1: the New York Times printing misinformation. Um. And in fact,
Speaker 1: Spotify is going to reach more people because nobody cares
Speaker 1: what the New York Times says anymore. Yeah, so Spotify.
Speaker 1: The Spotify CEO did kind of address the ongoing controversy
Speaker 1: around the you know, internal publishing stuff and how they
Speaker 1: view medical misinformation. UM. They did adopt a clarified policy
Speaker 1: that prohibits content that promotes dangerous, false, or dangerous deceptive
Speaker 1: medical information which may cause offline harm or pose a
Speaker 1: direct threat of public health. UM. And then the Post
Speaker 1: also announced that a Spotify would add content advisories to
Speaker 1: any content related to COVID on platform and Instagram. Have No,
Speaker 1: it's not, it's not. But but if you have the operation,
Speaker 1: if you can again, if there is like an actual
Speaker 1: dollar consequence to companies that air massive disinformation, UM, then
Speaker 1: you're not without sort of making Joe Rogan the focus.
Speaker 1: You can make it so that the people that he
Speaker 1: actually is accountable to, which is the people who make
Speaker 1: him give him the money that he gets, UH, have
Speaker 1: a vested interest in tamping down on the worst excesses
Speaker 1: that he's responsible for. Like that might have an impact.
Speaker 1: I don't know, Like part of the problem is that.
Speaker 1: And one thing we should acknowledge here when we're talking
Speaker 1: about like what would work better than what's being done,
Speaker 1: This is a pretty new problem. Versions of it have
Speaker 1: existed before, but without the Internet and without podcasts being
Speaker 1: what they are, this is a pretty new thing to
Speaker 1: be dealing with. And I'm not I don't. I'm not
Speaker 1: saying like this is here's the obvious solution to this,
Speaker 1: but I think we are trying to point out like
Speaker 1: what folks are doing doesn't work. The tactics being applied
Speaker 1: are not effective, and we should be exploring other opportunities
Speaker 1: to mitigate this harm that are not well. I guess
Speaker 1: it's time to delete another app and post about it
Speaker 1: on Twitter. Yeah. I think I think this is especially
Speaker 1: a thing with like it's like one of the other
Speaker 1: things that that's been popping up as broken's like weapons
Speaker 1: grade transphobia. Yes, oh yeah, jesus, Yeah, and that's that
Speaker 1: Stuffs is horrifying. Like the racism is also like really bad.
Speaker 1: He's extremely sexist, but it's like I think, misogynist racist.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of money and being that dude. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: and I think this is sort of you know this,
Speaker 1: this is you know, this is an inherent problem for
Speaker 1: the left because fighting it like this this kind of
Speaker 1: sort of like shock jockey information stuff works better like
Speaker 1: that that rage economy works better for the right, that
Speaker 1: does for the left. And I think in some way
Speaker 1: that means like you have to fight them in other spaces,
Speaker 1: you like, you know, you you. You can't just like
Speaker 1: keep throwing yourself. It's the same thing with like so
Speaker 1: why why why you don't have just like one line
Speaker 1: where you just run into a bunch of cops over
Speaker 1: and over again in one spot, right, like, but we try. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like college, the old college. Yeah, like you know,
Speaker 1: like in some in some sense, yeah, like it's it's
Speaker 1: it's it's it's hard to be too hard on these
Speaker 1: on people who doing this. And it's like if I
Speaker 1: think they're doing the right thing, but it's like you
Speaker 1: have to you have to pick your battles. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: if if you're taking a fight that's fair, like that's
Speaker 1: a that's a bad fight. That is a bad fight
Speaker 1: for you. You you you need you need to be
Speaker 1: fighting them in different spheres. You need to be you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, working for example, on stuff like tech regulation
Speaker 1: like you you like, working on you know, unionizing these places,
Speaker 1: right like fighting purely finding them in information space, we
Speaker 1: will lose every time. The advantage that we have is
Speaker 1: that we also do other things. And it's it's you know,
Speaker 1: we're we're going to keep losing hearing if you know,
Speaker 1: if we keep fighting them in exactly the same way here,
Speaker 1: We're going to keep losing. So we have to you know,
Speaker 1: like we we we we have to fight in other places.
Speaker 1: And that's hard and it sucks because you know, this
Speaker 1: is such a misspart of just what reality is now
Speaker 1: is you know, yelling at people online. But like you
Speaker 1: have to stop doing that because it's not the problem
Speaker 1: is that we've all gotten fucking caught for quite some
Speaker 1: time in this escalating culture war, and it's not It's
Speaker 1: not a battle ground that can be entirely ignored because
Speaker 1: when you kind of seed ground them, they create conspiracy
Speaker 1: theories about trans people attacking kids that lead to them
Speaker 1: murdering people in the streets, or they spread conspiracy theories
Speaker 1: about masks that lead to them occupying Ottawa. Um. So
Speaker 1: it can't the culture war battleground cannot be ignored. But
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, what we should rather
Speaker 1: than just like seeking new ways to engage with it,
Speaker 1: because the more you engage with it, and it is
Speaker 1: sometimes necessary to engage with but the more you engage
Speaker 1: with it, the stronger you make this whole thing, and
Speaker 1: the heavier it lies on all of us like a cloud.
Speaker 1: And in the only real way to actually win in
Speaker 1: the long run is to find a way to get
Speaker 1: off of that, to get out of this like this
Speaker 1: fucking treadmill of bullshit that has become everything all consuming,
Speaker 1: and it's it's in a lot of people's best interest
Speaker 1: for it to stay all consuming. Um, and I there's
Speaker 1: a there's a lot that's going on here because it's
Speaker 1: not I think sometimes when you criticize people for the
Speaker 1: actions they take in situations like this, they kind of
Speaker 1: interpreted as you saying, well, like you're stupid and you
Speaker 1: fucked up and never should have like done this, and
Speaker 1: and the way I think of it is more like
Speaker 1: this is a we have found ourselves trapped in a
Speaker 1: really messy situation and no one has figured out how
Speaker 1: to get out. So it's not a situation of like
Speaker 1: people are are dumb for having done something that's not effective.
Speaker 1: It's a situation of we are all trying to figure
Speaker 1: out what works in this new world we have kind
Speaker 1: of somewhat accidentally, somewhat purposefully built for ourselves, and it
Speaker 1: is important to have humility and be willing to accept it, like,
Speaker 1: you know what, that's not working, and we have to
Speaker 1: stop doing the thing that's not working. Rather than you know,
Speaker 1: treat it as if it's sort of a moral failing
Speaker 1: that something we we we tried was not effective. The
Speaker 1: last thing is it's like, really it's it's not just
Speaker 1: the non effectiveness, but also the the idea that the
Speaker 1: fact that this outrage is that just a constant is
Speaker 1: just a constant free bannerad for Spotify every everywhere online
Speaker 1: is like also not great. So it's not it's not
Speaker 1: even not not even just not effective, but you're just
Speaker 1: giving a corporation tons of free press. And maybe we
Speaker 1: can reframe the way we approach these things so that
Speaker 1: we don't do that, because in the end, that's just
Speaker 1: kind of adding to promoting the misinformation that's kind of
Speaker 1: that's all that's kind of really doing. And it's not
Speaker 1: that's not nearly as you know, impactful as you know,
Speaker 1: just Rogan doing it himself, but it still is, it
Speaker 1: still is a contributing factor and and and it does
Speaker 1: contribute to the backfire effect of people who listen to
Speaker 1: his podcast. Maybe people who like don't even but they're
Speaker 1: still gonna get defensive over him because they're seeing this
Speaker 1: attack on him. And even though he's even though he
Speaker 1: is a huge figure he's seen as an outsider, so
Speaker 1: that that really does contribute to that back backfire effect
Speaker 1: thing of getting people more and more vested in him
Speaker 1: as a content creator. But yeah, it's really dumb. But
Speaker 1: the thing we need to deal with it, it's it's
Speaker 1: a version of the lesson people still didn't learn with Trump,
Speaker 1: which is that like, you can't you can't beat these
Speaker 1: people by dunking on them. It doesn't matter that Joe
Speaker 1: Rogan said something dumb. It doesn't matter that Joe Rogan
Speaker 1: is inconsistent, It doesn't matter that like Joe Rogan has
Speaker 1: tells lies or whatever. That's not going to change anybody's
Speaker 1: mind find about the dude, because it's not about Joe Rogan.
Speaker 1: They don't support him because they love They support him
Speaker 1: as much as anything. The people who are at least engaging,
Speaker 1: primarily online about it, most of his fans are just
Speaker 1: don't think about any of this because they're not as
Speaker 1: online as the rest of us. But the people who
Speaker 1: are kind of engaging with this and helping to fuel
Speaker 1: the culture war side of this thing, they don't care.
Speaker 1: There this This isn't about his inherent characteristics. This is
Speaker 1: about it's a chance to dunk on the enemy. Um so,
Speaker 1: like you, you're not going to convince them of anything. Ever,
Speaker 1: That's all I had to say on this. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't know. Yeah, because again, I really I really resisted
Speaker 1: writing this episode for a long time because I didn't
Speaker 1: want to add to the Rogan discourse. But after a while,
Speaker 1: the Rogan discourse itself became worth talking about. How we
Speaker 1: talk so because it is more of a meta angle, like, okay,
Speaker 1: that is actually worth talking about. But yeah, I am
Speaker 1: so tired of hearing, watching, and seeing the words too Rogan. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm exhausted by it. I hate that. Like it's a
Speaker 1: bigger story in the United States than the gigantic war
Speaker 1: that might break out in Eastern Europe. Um, it's it's
Speaker 1: just just a very frustrating time and the only way
Speaker 1: to win this particular game is not to play. Um.
Speaker 1: So that's that's why we're doing this. We're not going
Speaker 1: to stick his name in the description or the episode title.
Speaker 1: Um yeah it is. You know, the title we were
Speaker 1: working with this under that we're not going to use
Speaker 1: so as to not feed the algorithm was Joe Rogan
Speaker 1: the Egregor And that is really how I think about it.
Speaker 1: If you if you haven't listened to our episode on
Speaker 1: the book about the Flat Earth, book on Behind the
Speaker 1: Bastards that talks about as um and eggs. It's basically
Speaker 1: a god that is made up by the kind of
Speaker 1: directed thoughts of a population of people. It's like a
Speaker 1: costalt deity that exists like this thought form that if
Speaker 1: people put energy into it, it almost gains its own
Speaker 1: it's it's own like um um independence from the people
Speaker 1: that that like burst it, even though it is just
Speaker 1: like a thought form and it because it was just
Speaker 1: an idea or presence and now it basically is its
Speaker 1: own god that's self sustaining and it can impact the world. Yeah,
Speaker 1: global capital is an egregor And and the more that
Speaker 1: people kind of feed into the discourse around Joe Rogan,
Speaker 1: the more he turns into one kind of outside of
Speaker 1: his own actions, he this idea of him has an
Speaker 1: influence on everything around us. And boy, we don't need that,
Speaker 1: do we certainly did not just said we just put
Speaker 1: that one down, right, Try something else. Yeah, let's throw
Speaker 1: a brick at your sheriff instead. This will go better
Speaker 1: for you, I mean sure, sure, Chris, Yeah, Chris, Chris
Speaker 1: said it not me. Yeah, I mean obviously in Minecraft.
Speaker 1: He said, It's fine, Robert, Robert, Robert Robert, it's not
Speaker 1: Minecraft anymore. It's the roadblocks the feds cracked and Minecraft. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're right. It's going to take weeks for them for
Speaker 1: them to their computers to realize what roadblocks is there.
Speaker 1: Look was a story I think I saw on Twitter
Speaker 1: about like like some yeah, so some some kids who
Speaker 1: actually legitimately got arrested in Brushford, like blowing up a
Speaker 1: building in Minecraft, so like like literally in the so
Speaker 1: uh yeah, and instead again again, it's roadblocks where nothing
Speaker 1: bad happens, nothing bad happens, all right, everybody get on roadblocks, um,
Speaker 1: and don't talk about Joe, and don't talk about Joe Rogan.
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Speaker 1: Forest Service and the ad Council. Hundreds of truckers continued
Speaker 1: to roll east and with war joing the movement. With
Speaker 1: each passing city, links towards vaccine mandates have heightened. I
Speaker 1: advocate civil war. If people don't want to stand up,
Speaker 1: we got guns, will stand up and we'll bring them on.
Speaker 1: Sucking a guys, let's get pumped for this. Let's go
Speaker 1: to fucking Ottawa. Let's I want to see one of
Speaker 1: those truckers. I wouldn't prize, not not, not our guys obviously,
Speaker 1: but I would like to see our own January six event.
Speaker 1: See some of those truckers plow right through that sixteen
Speaker 1: football Welcome to It could happen here, or in this case,
Speaker 1: it did happen here, slashes still happening here, and uh
Speaker 1: the here in this case being Canada. In recent weeks,
Speaker 1: the idea of only a few thousand people totally choking
Speaker 1: a major city, holding it hostage to bargain for political demands,
Speaker 1: while overwhelming and getting a foot up on law enforcement,
Speaker 1: taking over and shutting down a sizeable portion of a
Speaker 1: popular metropolitan area and simultaneously blocking off supply lines, trade routes,
Speaker 1: and multiple international border crossings is exactly the kind of
Speaker 1: thing this podcast has been talking about for years as
Speaker 1: a potential anti government resistance tactic that could become more
Speaker 1: common as political tensions rise in North America. Specifically, a
Speaker 1: few weeks ago, when the so called Trucker Convoy was
Speaker 1: still in its planning stages, I wasn't super eager to
Speaker 1: cover it on the pod. Actually, I assumed it would
Speaker 1: be a flop and just another dumb anti COVID protest
Speaker 1: in a long line of anti COVID protests happening in Canada.
Speaker 1: Flash forward to me at the end of January, and
Speaker 1: it became apparent that I was sorely mistaken and this
Speaker 1: thing was shaping up to be a significant factor in
Speaker 1: Canada's political ecosystem going forward. In my haste to catch
Speaker 1: up to the moment, I recorded two episodes with the
Speaker 1: wonderful journalist Dan Cullen, explaining the situation as it was
Speaker 1: at the prospective times of recording. But as the tensions
Speaker 1: and Ottawa and all across Canada arose and the situation
Speaker 1: gained more and more complexity, I decided that the convoy
Speaker 1: and subsequent blockades required a more researched and scripted deep dive.
Speaker 1: The more I dug into the situation, the more it
Speaker 1: seems to embody the exact thing I was warning about
Speaker 1: in my two previous scripted episodes about Canada and the
Speaker 1: far right, titled Canadian Fascism A. The apologies for the title,
Speaker 1: but you can find those of you scroll through. It
Speaker 1: could happen here. Feed don't think they came out around
Speaker 1: like November ish. What I wanted to get across in
Speaker 1: those episodes is that Canada is often seen as an
Speaker 1: escape from the more divisive, violent, and fascist elements of
Speaker 1: US politics and culture. But just like climate change, capitalism,
Speaker 1: or any other enveloping force cough cough, hyper objects cough cough,
Speaker 1: fascism and the slide towards it can never be truly escaped. Right.
Speaker 1: There is no other, there is no away, and it's
Speaker 1: especially hard to see it when it's growing on the
Speaker 1: back of your own head, primarily through Islamophobia. Far right
Speaker 1: ethno nationalist tendencies have been bubbling under the surface of
Speaker 1: Canada for a long while, and since Trudeau has taken
Speaker 1: office in twenty fifteen, there has been a perfect politically
Speaker 1: allowed boogeyman to blame every problem onto That can include
Speaker 1: everything from Trudeau is taking away our oil and gas jobs,
Speaker 1: or Trudeau is bringing in Muslim terrorists to Canada, or
Speaker 1: Trudeau is starving your children through health man dates. Canadian
Speaker 1: right wing protests has been steadily growing the past five years.
Speaker 1: There's been multiple flare ups of far right rhetoric with
Speaker 1: the Canadian Yellow Vests, the Westerns that produced we Exit
Speaker 1: or Western Exit movement, and the pseudo fascist People's Party
Speaker 1: of Canada. The incorporation of pandemic conspiracies and anti vaccine
Speaker 1: sentiments into the already disaffected rural Canadian right wingers. Starting
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty and continuing to the present, has accelerated
Speaker 1: not only the conspiratorial fall right rhetoric among conservative voters,
Speaker 1: but also what is seen as a valid political action
Speaker 1: in those people's eyes. But before we get into how
Speaker 1: the convoy started with anger concerning COVID nineteen health man
Speaker 1: dates and misinformation concerning empty store shelves, we have to
Speaker 1: first go back in time to even before the COVID
Speaker 1: nineteen virus was a blip on anyone's radar. In February
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen, the Canadian Yellowsts organized something called the United
Speaker 1: We Roll Convoy. The result was around a hundred and
Speaker 1: seventy trucks driving cross country through the more liberal East
Speaker 1: to Ottawa. The result was around a hundred seventy trucks
Speaker 1: driving from the West cross country to the more liberal
Speaker 1: East and eventually to Ottawa. The goal was to represent
Speaker 1: the concerns of disenfranchised oil and gas workers in the
Speaker 1: Western provinces and their opposition to propose environmental and new
Speaker 1: energy policies. Yellow Vests Canada was largely founded by individuals
Speaker 1: already associated with Canada's far right, which at the time
Speaker 1: was primarily united through anti Muslim racism and Islamophobia. Inspired
Speaker 1: by the French Heelovest movement, they copied their aesthetics and
Speaker 1: adopted new grievances and reactionary matoric and we get them
Speaker 1: a much larger audience. By the time United We Roll
Speaker 1: arrived in Ottawa, the media started to catch on to
Speaker 1: the more problematic elements about their organization. Neo Nazi faith
Speaker 1: goal Eat spoke on a stage. Many members of hate
Speaker 1: groups responded in attendance, and with the numbers so low,
Speaker 1: it made their more extreme participants stick out. Instead of
Speaker 1: focusing the message on oil and gas, as they claimed
Speaker 1: to represent Western alienation from a distant liberal Ottawa, some
Speaker 1: of its participants seemed more interested in protesting Ottawa's immigration
Speaker 1: policies than arguing for specific fixes for Alberta's oil patch. Plus,
Speaker 1: if you peeked inside any Canadian yellow vest Facebook group,
Speaker 1: you would be letted with hundreds of examples of explicit
Speaker 1: anti Muslim racism and calls for a Prime Minister Justin
Speaker 1: Trudeau's arrest and execution, a theme that remains common among
Speaker 1: COVID conspiracy demonstrations today, but at the end of it,
Speaker 1: United We Rule was widely considered a bust, with only
Speaker 1: a few hundred participants in Ottawa, and despite raising almost
Speaker 1: a hundred and fifty thousand dollars, the organizers failed to
Speaker 1: exclose how much of that money was actually spent on
Speaker 1: convoy expenses like gas and food. Afterwards, the Yellows Canada
Speaker 1: movement started to kind of die out, though some holdouts
Speaker 1: kept smaller demonstrations going for months, particularly in the conservative
Speaker 1: oil province of Alberta. But to us now, United We
Speaker 1: Rule can be seen as a small test run for
Speaker 1: the current situation in in fact, it shares many of
Speaker 1: the same organizers and even the same promotional materials, except
Speaker 1: this time they have the added weight of many more
Speaker 1: people radicalized into conspiracism throughout the pandemic and much more funding.
Speaker 1: So with that in mind, let's dive into the components
Speaker 1: of the initial organizing effort. On January four, two go
Speaker 1: fund me account was set up for a so called
Speaker 1: trucker convoy ahead of the January fifteenth adoption of the
Speaker 1: mandate requiring all cross border transportation drivers to be fully
Speaker 1: vaccinated against COVID nineteen. Vaccine mandates in Canada have been
Speaker 1: in effect since October for ship crews, railways and airline workers,
Speaker 1: but effective January fifteenth, the federal government expanded the requirement
Speaker 1: to truck drivers returning from the States, and those who
Speaker 1: will remain unvaccinated will not be able to enter Canada
Speaker 1: without quarantine. One week later, a reciprocal policy went into
Speaker 1: effect in the United States for Canadian truckers crossing into
Speaker 1: their border, which means going forward, you cannot really cross
Speaker 1: the border at all, well remaining unvaccinated. At this point
Speaker 1: in mid January, a majority of Canadians still broadly supported
Speaker 1: health mandates aimed at limiting the spread of COVID, but
Speaker 1: a big part of the early propaganda push for the
Speaker 1: convoy was photos alleged to have been from current Canadian
Speaker 1: grocery stores which they were not, with barren empty shelves.
Speaker 1: The idea was that COVID restrictions were already severely impacting
Speaker 1: the supply line, and any additional mandates would begin to
Speaker 1: start with the population and effectively shut down international trade.
Speaker 1: Put a note in this idea, by the way, it
Speaker 1: will come up later. Ideas for another truck Convoy like
Speaker 1: United we Roll, have been tossed around for a while online,
Speaker 1: and with this new mandate on truckers and vaccines, a
Speaker 1: time presented itself to give the convoy idea another go.
Speaker 1: In the early Truck Convoy organizing, they were primarily four
Speaker 1: familiar far right faces who working together to set things up,
Speaker 1: none of whom are truck drivers. By the way, the
Speaker 1: originally listed organizers on the go fund me page were
Speaker 1: Tomorrow Litch and b J. Ditcher, Both have notable experience
Speaker 1: with far right organizing. Tomorrow Litch was born in my
Speaker 1: home province of Saskatchewan, but now Hey alls from the
Speaker 1: town of Medicine Hat, Alberta, where she served as an
Speaker 1: organizer for Yellow Vests Canada, a regional coordinator for the
Speaker 1: separatist Western Exit or Wexit movement in Alberta, and now
Speaker 1: the secretary for the Maverick Party, another far right extreme
Speaker 1: acceeparatist movement and fringe political party. Let's started attending and
Speaker 1: boosting Yellow Vest events starting in and her social media
Speaker 1: posts from around the time show in one moment calling
Speaker 1: out some hateful rhetoric from within the movement, while also
Speaker 1: posting islamophobic articles of her own and conspiracies about the
Speaker 1: Muslim brotherhood operating in Canada. A few days after the
Speaker 1: go fund me was created, Benjamin B. J. Ditcher, one
Speaker 1: time Conservative Party of Canada candidate, People's Party of Canada
Speaker 1: booster and co founder of a Canadian far right podcast network,
Speaker 1: appeared as a cool organizer on the go fund me page.
Speaker 1: Twenty nineteen. He claimed that Islamist entryism is rotting away
Speaker 1: our society like syphilis. Benjamin it Sure was also one
Speaker 1: of the first people to give a speech at the
Speaker 1: first proto fascist People's Party of Canada conference in Quebec,
Speaker 1: saying that the Conservative Party of Canada is suffering from
Speaker 1: the stench of cultural relativism and political Islam and a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of stuff you know in that general vein.
Speaker 1: James Botter was another one of the four key organizers
Speaker 1: of the Trucker convoy to Ottawa. Botter is an admitted
Speaker 1: conspiracy theorist who has endorsed Q and on and called
Speaker 1: COVID the biggest political scam in history. He's also a
Speaker 1: former activist with the Yellow Vests Canada and United we Role.
Speaker 1: Barter's main project, however, is running the Canada Unity website,
Speaker 1: which is one of the original nexus points for organizing
Speaker 1: and spreading word about this convoy. The group contends that
Speaker 1: vaccine mandates and passports are illegal under Canada's constitution, the
Speaker 1: Nuremberg Code, and a host of other international conventions. Boter
Speaker 1: has long been a fringe figure, but his movements started
Speaker 1: picking up steam and support as announcements and continuations of
Speaker 1: restrictions aimed at curbing COVID nineteen spread have continued. The
Speaker 1: supposed plight of the Trucker's proved to be a stympathetic
Speaker 1: cause on Facebook and attracted an array of fellow travelers.
Speaker 1: The last big major player is Patrick King, another former
Speaker 1: Yellow Vest one time major figure in the Wexit movement
Speaker 1: as well as United we Roll. On January two, pet
Speaker 1: King hosted a live stream for James Potter to promote
Speaker 1: the Canada Unity website and to announce it as the
Speaker 1: official page for the Freedom Trucker Convoy, or as they
Speaker 1: called it, Operation Bear. Hug. King is a conspiracy theorist
Speaker 1: and popular streamer that attracts the audience farther right than
Speaker 1: Canada's usual conservatives. Kings made headlines for drumming up fear
Speaker 1: and then following through with his supporters with violence at
Speaker 1: rally's put on by BLM and Antifa. Kings also known
Speaker 1: for spreading what are basically neo Nazi talking points, and
Speaker 1: I'm just a quote from an article by the Canadian
Speaker 1: Anti Hate Network here because they did a great job
Speaker 1: tracking his past extremism quote. In the past, King has
Speaker 1: gone on record about his feelings on the Anglo Saxon
Speaker 1: replacement that plans to quote flood Canada with refugees and
Speaker 1: subvert the education system, which is a thin rebranding of
Speaker 1: the Great Replacement theory touted by ethno nationalists. At other points,
Speaker 1: the King is expressed overtly racist and anti Semitic statements.
Speaker 1: In the twenty nineteen stream about the then upcoming federal election,
Speaker 1: King complained that he had to leave the movement due
Speaker 1: to their lack of success, saying, quote the election mote
Speaker 1: matter unless you want to change your national language to
Speaker 1: Chinese or Mandarin or Hebrew. He then went on to
Speaker 1: compare Chinese names to the sound of change falling downstairs.
Speaker 1: He is publicly distorted facts, but the Holocaust of form
Speaker 1: of Holocaust denial, saying I do know that the Holocaust
Speaker 1: was reduced to one point five million and not the
Speaker 1: six million that it was said to be. He then
Speaker 1: invoked the anti Semitic conspiracy theory that Jewish people are
Speaker 1: secretly in control of world governance, media, and finances, saying,
Speaker 1: quote the questions that have been asked several times to
Speaker 1: the A d L and to the Jewish government and communities,
Speaker 1: we have Jewish world bankers who are dictating our government
Speaker 1: policies and controlling our politicians unquote. So yeah. Considering King's
Speaker 1: history of saying blatantly fascist things, some organizers and Convoy
Speaker 1: supporters tried to distance King from the Freedom Convoy movement
Speaker 1: to not damage the initial fundraising effort. The controversy around
Speaker 1: King resulted in a statement being released onto the fundraising
Speaker 1: page saying King is not and has never been affiliate
Speaker 1: with our movement, nor has he been a part of
Speaker 1: our great team of volunteers. The update was afterwards deleted,
Speaker 1: and then King claimed in a video that the statement
Speaker 1: was a public relations move because he was being attacked online.
Speaker 1: For a while, King was still listed as the Northern
Speaker 1: Alberta contact for a western portion of the convoy. So
Speaker 1: those are the four people that laid the organizing groundwork
Speaker 1: that spawned this entire thing and put it into motion.
Speaker 1: But what made this convoy different from United We rule
Speaker 1: one point, oh is the almost two years of COVID isolation,
Speaker 1: which has given ample time for groups like the Yellow
Speaker 1: Vests and extreme far right groups to completely fold into
Speaker 1: the rapidly growing anti vax and COVID conspiracy movement in Canada,
Speaker 1: and along with that, using people's seething hatred of Justin
Speaker 1: Trudeau to radicalize thousands of thousands of people online to
Speaker 1: getting them more comfortable with the idea of participating in
Speaker 1: political protest. It's really important to mention that the protests
Speaker 1: are not organized by Canadian trucking unions or really Canadian truckers.
Speaker 1: The largest trucking unions have come out against the protests
Speaker 1: and they do not appear to reflect the values of
Speaker 1: most Canadians or most Canadian truckers. More than of the
Speaker 1: Canadian public is vaccinated, including almost of truckers, according to
Speaker 1: Canada's Minister of Transport. The Canadian Trucking Alliance issued a
Speaker 1: statement saying it does not support and strongly disapproves of
Speaker 1: any protests on public roads, highways or bridges. The Canadian
Speaker 1: Trucking Alliance President set in the joint statement with the
Speaker 1: Ministers of Labor and Transport that the Government of Canada
Speaker 1: and the Canadian Trucking Alliance both agree that vaccination used
Speaker 1: in combination with preventative health measures, is the most effective
Speaker 1: tool to reduce the risk of COVID nineteen for Canadians
Speaker 1: and to protect public health. According to the Canadian Trucking Alliance,
Speaker 1: the mandate could impact around twelve to sixteen thousand Canadian
Speaker 1: commercial drivers, which is just about ten to fifteen percent
Speaker 1: of the industry's cross border drivers during the pandemic. Repeated
Speaker 1: polls have shown that a majority of Canadians support public
Speaker 1: health measures to contain the pandemic, but the number of
Speaker 1: Canadians who would like to see restrictions end has risen
Speaker 1: in recent weeks. With owner crown cases on the decline,
Speaker 1: some provinces are starting to remove restrictions and requirements, the
Speaker 1: public sentiment appears to be moving the direction of opening
Speaker 1: up communities. Throughout the last two weeks of January, the
Speaker 1: number of Canadians saying that they would like to see
Speaker 1: restrictions and has risen by fifteen percentage points to a
Speaker 1: majority of fifty percent, demonstrations have found a way to
Speaker 1: tap into pandemic fatigue among conservatives across the country. After
Speaker 1: months of lockdown, more than two thirds of Canadians have
Speaker 1: said they have very little in common with how the
Speaker 1: Ottawa protesters see things, but say that they have a
Speaker 1: lot in common, according to a recent survey connected by
Speaker 1: a Canadian research firm. Though the idea of vaccine mandates
Speaker 1: for Canadian truckers kind of prompted what turned into this convoy,
Speaker 1: very quickly became a general battle cry against pandemic restrictions
Speaker 1: as a whole, and the leadership of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
Speaker 1: Unlike United we Roll, the Freedom Convoy against health mandates
Speaker 1: was able to successfully capitalize on Western feelings of neglect
Speaker 1: and isolation from the ruling liberal elite in the East
Speaker 1: and in the capital of Ottawa. The right in Meadians
Speaker 1: at the right time flung the Trucker Freedom Convoy into
Speaker 1: the conservative zeitgeist. The original and girl fund me page,
Speaker 1: set up on January fourteenth to financially support convoy participants,
Speaker 1: was able to raise ten million dollars in just under
Speaker 1: three weeks. As the truck Convoy idea picked up steam.
Speaker 1: The first expected wave of attendees were planned to arrive
Speaker 1: in Ottawa on Saturday, January twenty ninth. Vehicles started rolling
Speaker 1: in a few days prior, throughout Thursday and the Friday
Speaker 1: night before the big day on the twenty nine, and
Speaker 1: as Saturday the twenty nine came, the numbers of trucks
Speaker 1: and protest participants greatly exceeded the initial expected numbers that
Speaker 1: I and many other people had figured, while obviously falling
Speaker 1: short of the heavily mocked fifty thousand truckers prediction made
Speaker 1: by some convoy supporters. While writing these episodes, I talked
Speaker 1: with Paul, a citizen of Ottawa who's been living inside
Speaker 1: the occupied zone since the twenty ninth of January, and
Speaker 1: this is what he had to say about expectations leading
Speaker 1: up to the convoys arrival. There was at least a
Speaker 1: week of lead up where we it was about all
Speaker 1: we heard about. So from when they sort of declared
Speaker 1: their intention to come down to when they started rallying
Speaker 1: and b C. And you know in the west and
Speaker 1: coming across Um, there was an anticipation that something was
Speaker 1: going to happen. And you know, people around here because
Speaker 1: like where I'm sitting right now is less than a
Speaker 1: kilometer from Parliament Hill and directly in between two of
Speaker 1: the streets that they've blocked off, sort of on the
Speaker 1: way into town. You know, we we were nervous, but
Speaker 1: we kind of were just sort of assuming it was
Speaker 1: going to be a one day affair. It was gonna
Speaker 1: be small at first, but then you heard I mean,
Speaker 1: nobody believed the fifty trucks and that like that was it.
Speaker 1: I mean, to put in perspective, the numbers that they
Speaker 1: were claiming were on their way here, um are larger
Speaker 1: than the entire population of the city by like a
Speaker 1: couple hundred thousand people, so that that didn't seem likely.
Speaker 1: But you know, when we were hearing that already forty thousand,
Speaker 1: when we heard about multiple convoys with you know, a
Speaker 1: hundred to two hundred trucks like that was when it
Speaker 1: was like, Okay, this isn't gonna be great. So people
Speaker 1: started arriving on what Friday, Saturday. The first group started
Speaker 1: rolling to town on Thursday night. Um, they were they
Speaker 1: were small in numbers. They didn't really start blocking anything
Speaker 1: off because they just weren't enough of them. So but
Speaker 1: you could hear the horns starting on Thursday night UM,
Speaker 1: and I think a lot of some of them were
Speaker 1: going into hotels. UM. They were smaller groups too, mostly
Speaker 1: from sort of local groups UM. And then around ten
Speaker 1: or eleven in the morning on Friday, UM, we started
Speaker 1: hearing reports at Kingston, which is about an hour issue away,
Speaker 1: an hour and a half UM that there was a
Speaker 1: group moving out of there. So around one o'clock in
Speaker 1: the afternoon Friday, the first group started to arrive and
Speaker 1: started to congregate downtown. And one of the things about
Speaker 1: Ottawa is UM it's a lot like a lot of
Speaker 1: big downtowns, it's out of one way streets. So the
Speaker 1: moment you get the trucks starting to get into intersections
Speaker 1: or near intersections, you're blocking off all passage in certain directions.
Speaker 1: So they started blocking off the northbound really quickly, just
Speaker 1: because that's where how they were coming in. UM. And
Speaker 1: there's only like three gas stations downtown as well, which
Speaker 1: is it kind of plays a big factor in the
Speaker 1: route that they took. So they all passed by, especially
Speaker 1: the passenger cars that were running mow UM passed by
Speaker 1: and through that way, and yeah, by about two or
Speaker 1: three o'clock in the afternoon. Everything south of Somerset, which
Speaker 1: is about a kilometer and a half from Parliament, was
Speaker 1: pretty much jammed at that point. As Saturday nights came,
Speaker 1: much of the group supporters and truckers alike spent that
Speaker 1: time partying late into the night as heavily backed up
Speaker 1: traffic continued to effectively shut down roads and large areas
Speaker 1: of the city around Parliament Throughout the weekend. Businesses in
Speaker 1: the surrounding areas that did not close ahead of the
Speaker 1: protest were swarmed by customers, many refusing to wear masks.
Speaker 1: A local Homa shelter and soup kitchen was harassed by
Speaker 1: convoy participants who were turned away from restaurants after refusing
Speaker 1: to wear a mask. A large number of the convoy
Speaker 1: attendees surrounded the shelter, demanding to be fed by the
Speaker 1: facility staff. According to the shelters president, convoy participants assaulted
Speaker 1: a client of the shelter and her old racial slurs
Speaker 1: at a security guard who attempted to intervene. Workers and
Speaker 1: volunteers at the shelter noted that parked vehicles blocked the shelter,
Speaker 1: making it difficult for ambliances to reach the facility and
Speaker 1: for staff to assist community members in need. A home
Speaker 1: in the downtown area was pelted with rocks and snow,
Speaker 1: as well as vandalized with human feces, all for showing
Speaker 1: a Pride flag in their window. The operations commander for
Speaker 1: the Ottawa Paramedic Service said that an ambiliance was pelted
Speaker 1: with rocks and paramedics checking the damage were called racial
Speaker 1: slurs by convoy participants. Ottawa Paramedics have since requested police escorts,
Speaker 1: citing safety concerns. More public backlash was prompted after reports
Speaker 1: surface of a monument dedicated to commemorating Terry Fox being
Speaker 1: covered in protests lines and being stage to hold an
Speaker 1: upside down Canadian flag. No restroom main Saturday night related
Speaker 1: to the convoy, but as the convoy stuck around even
Speaker 1: past the weekend, there was this growing feeling of downtown
Speaker 1: residents that they've been abandoned by the city and law enforcement,
Speaker 1: but the whole situation in response to the situation making
Speaker 1: them afraid to leave their homes. I asked Paul what
Speaker 1: his experience on the first weekend of the occupation was
Speaker 1: and the general feeling in the area of downtown Ottawa
Speaker 1: and you're living like right in the middle of this.
Speaker 1: How much has this affected like your day to day
Speaker 1: life and all like your neighbors and stuff like what
Speaker 1: what what are you able to do and not do
Speaker 1: at this point? Well, it's the weekend was was especially bad,
Speaker 1: and we're all kind of bracing for what this weekend
Speaker 1: is going to be because that's when you had just
Speaker 1: you know, there were between somewhere between ten and fifteen
Speaker 1: eighteen thousand people as the estimates have heard, um, all
Speaker 1: crowding downtown in the streets. So at that point, I
Speaker 1: mean that was when the police we're telling people not
Speaker 1: to wear a mask out um because you know, you're
Speaker 1: kind of putting yourself at risk, uh, because it'll be
Speaker 1: targeted for violence. Yeah. So I mean I was like
Speaker 1: basically anytime I've left the house. So we have a
Speaker 1: mask mandate still in effect in Ottawa, so you have
Speaker 1: to wear them indoors pretty much everywhere. Um, So I
Speaker 1: have to wear my building, I have to wear at
Speaker 1: the convenience store. If I'm gonna go go buy, say,
Speaker 1: you know, a pack of cigarettes, I'm not going to
Speaker 1: take it off. It's a thirty second walk and so
Speaker 1: that with that, the harassment around that started on Friday. UM,
Speaker 1: and then it just became anyone who was out and
Speaker 1: about that didn't look like they were part of it,
Speaker 1: UM started getting hassled. UM. Other people I know who
Speaker 1: live in the area, especially women, UM, have been targeted
Speaker 1: a great deal. UM. Anyone who's part of you know,
Speaker 1: the LGBTQ community has been It's it's not really just
Speaker 1: it's just not safe to be out on the streets
Speaker 1: and it's not really safe to show that you don't
Speaker 1: support what they're doing. At points since the convoy started
Speaker 1: arriving in Ottawa, the extreme elements of the protest have
Speaker 1: been pretty visible. Among the thousands of attendees were recognizable
Speaker 1: members of white nationalists, hate groups Neo not seeing Confederate
Speaker 1: flags were seen flying too and on. Logos were emblazoned
Speaker 1: on trucks and sides, and stickers were pasted on telephone
Speaker 1: polls around the occupied area baring Trudeau's face reading wanted
Speaker 1: for crimes against humanity, the official line from original convoy
Speaker 1: organizers minus Pat King, of course, however, has tried to
Speaker 1: remain focused. In a Facebook live broadcast, James Boder of
Speaker 1: Canada Unity instructed his supporters to stop talking about the
Speaker 1: vaccine and instead stick the messages of freedom. The goal
Speaker 1: of adopting a more restricted and relatable protest cause is
Speaker 1: to hopefully jump up more widespread support and validity, and
Speaker 1: it initially worked in some ways and not in others.
Speaker 1: Numerous members of the Conservative Party have come out to
Speaker 1: meet protesters, especially throughout the first few days now. Former
Speaker 1: Conservative Party leader Erin O'Toole met with convoy participants, albeit
Speaker 1: away from the main protest site. Both People's Party of
Speaker 1: Canada leader Maxie and Bernair and Ontario Member of Provincial
Speaker 1: Parliament and leader of the de facto Ontario arm of
Speaker 1: the PPC, Randy Healer, who has made many recent and
Speaker 1: semitic comments, both gave speeches on Saturday the twenty nine
Speaker 1: in front of the Parliament building. People like Elon Musk
Speaker 1: and Donald Trump have both endorsed the convoy, and Fox
Speaker 1: News has been endlessly broadcasting glowing updates of the convoy
Speaker 1: since its arrival in Ottawa. According to the convoy participants
Speaker 1: and organizers, they are vowing to camp out in front
Speaker 1: of the Parliament until their demands of dropping all COVID
Speaker 1: nineteen health measures are met wild stated grievances can be
Speaker 1: broader and more vast on the ground. The current Memorandum
Speaker 1: of Understanding, posted on the Canada Unity website, which collected
Speaker 1: over thirty thousand signatures, served as a sort of bargaining
Speaker 1: pitch between the convoy and the Canadian government. The Memorandum
Speaker 1: of Understanding, or the m o U, calls on Canada's
Speaker 1: appointed senators and Canada's governor role the representative of Queen
Speaker 1: Elizabeth the second in Canada's constitutional monarchy, to abolish all
Speaker 1: COVID nineteen related restrictions and to allow all unvaccinated workers
Speaker 1: whose employment was terminated because of vaccine mandates to get
Speaker 1: their jobs back. James Potter, the guy who runs Canada Unity,
Speaker 1: insisted to his followers that the m o U would
Speaker 1: force the government's hand and possibly even trigger fresh elections
Speaker 1: if enough people signed. Another Canada Unity organizer went further,
Speaker 1: saying it would require the Senate to go after the
Speaker 1: Prime Minister for corruption and fascism, which, of course, there's
Speaker 1: no legal basis for any of these claims around the
Speaker 1: m o you, but you know that doesn't really matter
Speaker 1: in the end, because people still believe it. So it's
Speaker 1: going to have an impact on what they do. The
Speaker 1: more controversial Pat King laid out an alternative, however, a
Speaker 1: more direct plan of action to the occupiers. In a
Speaker 1: January Facebook livestream, King said that what we want to
Speaker 1: focus on is our politicians, their houses, their locations. If
Speaker 1: political pressure doesn't blocking major supply chains will be later on,
Speaker 1: so more more on that idea later. After the first
Speaker 1: weekend of protests kind of turned occupations, go fund me
Speaker 1: released a reported one million dollars of the total ten
Speaker 1: million raised for the convoy. As the end of the
Speaker 1: weekend approached, many convoy participants who rolled into the nation's
Speaker 1: capital began heading home, and the highways on Sunday night
Speaker 1: saw no shortage of vehicles heading away from Ottawa with
Speaker 1: their approtest signs and flags still in tow, but plenty
Speaker 1: of people stuck around to continue the fight. Thousands and
Speaker 1: thousands of people and hundreds of vehicles, including a fleet
Speaker 1: of semitrucks, commercial vehicles, r V campers, and regular cars
Speaker 1: were more than enough to keep the roads in a
Speaker 1: large portion of Ottawa around Parliament effectively shut down. I
Speaker 1: can't help but draw comparisons to the fear mongering narrative
Speaker 1: of bust fuls of Antifa, you know, protesters coming from
Speaker 1: out of town into places they don't live, terrorizing locals,
Speaker 1: shutting down cities. You know. The other comparison is to
Speaker 1: like the chop where the chas in Seattle was taking
Speaker 1: over a large portion of the city and how that
Speaker 1: was so vilified. Except, you know, this is so much
Speaker 1: bigger and impactful than anything so called Antifa or the
Speaker 1: Black Lives Matter protests have ever done, especially in Canada,
Speaker 1: in terms of actually impacting the functionality of a city
Speaker 1: and restricting the local, national, and international capitalist trade. The
Speaker 1: Freedom Convoy has done everything and more its proponents warned
Speaker 1: that Antifa was going to do to Canada. Obviously, part
Speaker 1: of the reason the Convoy protest was able to get
Speaker 1: to this point is not just because of its large size,
Speaker 1: but also the initial hands off approach by police that
Speaker 1: allowed the Convoy participants the opportunity to get a strong
Speaker 1: foothold within the city. The difference in initial law enforcement
Speaker 1: reaction to the protest Convoy made up of largely you know, conservative,
Speaker 1: middle class white Canadians, compared to other protests, like you know,
Speaker 1: the Black Lives Matter protests, or say the rcmps typical
Speaker 1: response to First Nations protests and blockings defending their land.
Speaker 1: The comparisons cannot be over analyzed. You know. The latter
Speaker 1: two forms of protest I mentioned actually do challenge societal
Speaker 1: power structures that prop up White Canada, while as this
Speaker 1: convoy protest does not and instead plays into those very
Speaker 1: power structures. That dynamic played a major role into how
Speaker 1: the police handled or didn't handle the first few days
Speaker 1: of the protest, in which during those early days the
Speaker 1: convoy attendees were free to build infrastructure that resulted in
Speaker 1: the protest escalating into a full scale occupation. The Monday
Speaker 1: after the first initial weekend, the city's mayor, Jim Watson,
Speaker 1: declared a state of emergency, but at that point Autawa
Speaker 1: Police thought it was already too late for the protest
Speaker 1: to be ended by sheer force without vastly increasing the
Speaker 1: likelihood of severe damage and life threatening outcomes to the
Speaker 1: convoy participants, police officers, and regular citizens of Ottawa. On
Speaker 1: February twod Ottawa Police East Chief Peter Slowly explicitly said
Speaker 1: that there may not be a police solution to ending
Speaker 1: the convoy and occupation. There are similar demonstrations taking place
Speaker 1: in many other parts of this country, indeed many other
Speaker 1: parts around this continent in the world. What happens here
Speaker 1: affects there. What happens there affects here. We have seen
Speaker 1: in the last twenty four hours attempts by other police
Speaker 1: and other jurisdictions to do just what you have suggested.
Speaker 1: They were not effective, and they created additional safety issues,
Speaker 1: potential life threatening safety issues. I have great compassion for
Speaker 1: those that have been significantly affected, if not traumatized, and
Speaker 1: we know criminally victimized. We will do everything we can
Speaker 1: to hold those who have done that to account. Will
Speaker 1: continue arresting and charging people as we have been. But
Speaker 1: any action taken without understanding the totality of the context
Speaker 1: that took, value the risk, it would be irresponsible. You're
Speaker 1: trying to be responsible, lawful, ethical, and measured. My last
Speaker 1: comment when I wrapped up, I'll share again now. The
Speaker 1: longer this goes on, the more I'm convinced there may
Speaker 1: not be a police solution to this demonstration. There are
Speaker 1: police chiefs commissioners across this country that are dealing with
Speaker 1: demonstrations that are starting underway and significantly advanced. This is
Speaker 1: a national issue not an Attawa issue. From the start.
Speaker 1: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has been playing down the notion
Speaker 1: of a military response to the ongoing Ottawa protest. During
Speaker 1: the first week, he said that sending in troops is
Speaker 1: not in the cards right now. On the February second,
Speaker 1: the Automa police chiefs said that all options are on
Speaker 1: the table, including eventually calling in the military, but one
Speaker 1: must be very very cautious about deploying troops in Canadian
Speaker 1: soil in such cases. Trudeau said that a news conference
Speaker 1: in the February that it's not something that anyone should
Speaker 1: enter into lightly, with police basically leaving the Ottawa residents
Speaker 1: who live near and within the Convoy occupation to fend
Speaker 1: for themselves. I was curious what sorts of things the
Speaker 1: local community might be doing to live around this massive,
Speaker 1: conspiracy filled group of reactionary out of town campers. What
Speaker 1: sort of things have the has the community been doing
Speaker 1: to kind of help survive this this Like has there
Speaker 1: been like mutual aid projects in the neighborhood to help
Speaker 1: support other neighbors, you know that that sort of thing
Speaker 1: there have Um, it's actually been kind of wonderful the
Speaker 1: way the community has been coming together, especially after two
Speaker 1: years of pandemic where we've all been kind of like
Speaker 1: Ottawa and Ontario have been one of the more restricted
Speaker 1: jurisdictions in North America. UM. I mean, and I say
Speaker 1: this as a restaurant manager, like in my opinion rightly so,
Speaker 1: like it's about keeping people safe, and we've done a
Speaker 1: fairly good job of that by and large. But the
Speaker 1: thing is that, you know, our community hasn't felt a
Speaker 1: lot like a community in a while. And this week,
Speaker 1: I mean, one of the few positives has been UM
Speaker 1: both individuals and organizations, so I mean, ROWS and some
Speaker 1: of the other organizations that we mentioned on Friday have
Speaker 1: done a great job. There's also been some really really
Speaker 1: great organic organizing coming out of UM, some activists as
Speaker 1: well as just people in the community. So there's a
Speaker 1: a few discord servers set up right now. So there's
Speaker 1: been a huge issue with people, people with disabilities and
Speaker 1: the elderly getting groceries because deliveries aren't possible downtown UM.
Speaker 1: So it started on Twitter, UM, but there's been an
Speaker 1: organization set up to help people get those groceries, whether
Speaker 1: it's a cost issue or just a physical delivery issue.
Speaker 1: We're ensured. People are ensuring that that's happening. Um as
Speaker 1: of today, UM, there's gonna be a safe Walks program. Um,
Speaker 1: there's well, there's two. There's one on discord where it's
Speaker 1: people offering to you know, make sure you can get
Speaker 1: through the space safe. Today though, Um, in a positive
Speaker 1: and more passive sense, we kind of started taking the
Speaker 1: streets back. So UM, we had about four or five
Speaker 1: groups of people ranging from town in the fifty just
Speaker 1: just walking the streets and not not confronting anybody, not
Speaker 1: getting getting into any direct engagement, just going out to
Speaker 1: show that we can still walk on our streets and
Speaker 1: letting our you know, our our neighbors know that we
Speaker 1: can actually be together and you know, stand up just
Speaker 1: to be together, which is something that I think a
Speaker 1: lot of people have lost over the last week. I mean,
Speaker 1: like the fact that that's even a big step is
Speaker 1: showing how tired the situation is. The fact that just
Speaker 1: getting to that point we're walking around in a group
Speaker 1: where you feel safe is like a big thing. That. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's like a really interesting and horrible indicator of what
Speaker 1: the mood has been like there for people like living
Speaker 1: in this area. That is yeah, that is a big
Speaker 1: part of it. And it's something that was actually talked
Speaker 1: about a lot today, which was how refreshing it was
Speaker 1: to be able to do it, but also that it
Speaker 1: shouldn't feel radical to take a safe walk in your community,
Speaker 1: but it somehow did um and it speaks a lot
Speaker 1: to this feel things, the lack of safety, of the
Speaker 1: loss of you know, safety in this community and has
Speaker 1: been pretty immense. I should mention that another community led
Speaker 1: effort to deal with the occupation is the ram Ranch Resistance,
Speaker 1: a loose the organized counter movement to the Chuck Our
Speaker 1: Convoy that started with people joining the convoys online communications
Speaker 1: channels and blasting the home of erotic country song ram Ranch.
Speaker 1: The song is by a Canadian artist and features some
Speaker 1: flawless lyrics like eighteen naked cowboys wanting to be fucked,
Speaker 1: cowboys in the showers at ram Ranch on their knees
Speaker 1: wanting to suck cowboy cox. Ram Ranch really rocks. The
Speaker 1: result is not only making the convoy folks uncomfortable because gay,
Speaker 1: but also it is hijacking and making their online communications
Speaker 1: channels kind of useless for any non cowboy cock sucking
Speaker 1: political organizing efforts disruptive resistance to the convoys online communications
Speaker 1: is not just limited to the ram Ranch song, however,
Speaker 1: Other vulgar songs have also been introduced into the chats
Speaker 1: as well. I'm gonna just kind of give you a
Speaker 1: brief look at what it's like inside these chats, right Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna. I'm gonna, I'm gonna role play it. The
Speaker 1: ram Ranch guys are finally gone. It's about freaking time.
Speaker 1: I've had to shut that stuff off. One person has
Speaker 1: heard saying and a clip from a chat immediately followed
Speaker 1: by a robotic voice saying, welcome to the come zone.
Speaker 1: Only come inside anime girls, quivering clip, double jointed pussy
Speaker 1: fresh balls. Since then, the movement has taken on as
Speaker 1: something of a life of its own. The ram Ranch
Speaker 1: Resistance hashtag has been used as a way for people
Speaker 1: to share information regarding the convoy, and welcome to the
Speaker 1: ram Ranch signs have been popping up at convoy counter
Speaker 1: protests around the country. Another ram rancher created the website
Speaker 1: ram Ranch dot c, a linking to downtown organizations that
Speaker 1: have been impacted by the trucker convoy, as well as
Speaker 1: charities aiding indigenous people's as the convoy settled in, it
Speaker 1: appeared that the demonstrators and the government had reached a
Speaker 1: sort of stalemate. Currently, there are more than four hundred
Speaker 1: trucks parked downtown and Ottawa Police say that they can't
Speaker 1: move them because the two operators with city contracts are
Speaker 1: refusing to help, making matters only more difficult. Police say
Speaker 1: that families with children are sleeping in approximately a quarter
Speaker 1: of those trucks. To get an idea of what some
Speaker 1: Autawa residents who live within the occupied zone see in
Speaker 1: terms of a potential end in sight, I posed Paul
Speaker 1: this question, how do you even see the situation resolving
Speaker 1: at this point? Like do you do you think they're
Speaker 1: like the truckers and the people who are in the
Speaker 1: city are gonna are gonna back down and leave eventually,
Speaker 1: or like or do you think they have to be
Speaker 1: forced out? Like what do you see kind of an
Speaker 1: end to this at this point? Well, it's at this point.
Speaker 1: Probably one of the hardest things to admit is that
Speaker 1: I don't um the hardest core that are here committed.
Speaker 1: They have a significant amount of funding behind them. And
Speaker 1: the thing is that you know, with an OCCU patient protests,
Speaker 1: they if you don't nip it in the bud. It's
Speaker 1: snowballs and gathers momentum for a while, um, and I
Speaker 1: mean eventually they either peter out or they have to
Speaker 1: be removed. And this one is still snowballing. Um. We've
Speaker 1: seen some more extreme elements coming into the city this week. Um.
Speaker 1: Yesterday Romana did dulo the human on Queen of Canada
Speaker 1: arrived in birth Brent the Canadian flag on Parliament Hill,
Speaker 1: which whatever you think about the Canadian flag, and it's
Speaker 1: simple as a simpler propression. Um, you know, that's not
Speaker 1: a great look for them. But the other side of
Speaker 1: it is is that this is a woman with seventy
Speaker 1: thou followers who you know, has called for the mass
Speaker 1: execution of her enemies, and you know is currently parked
Speaker 1: in or Winnebago two and a half blocks from my
Speaker 1: house right now, um so and with a bunch of
Speaker 1: her followers down with her. And so they're committed. They
Speaker 1: know they don't know that I did occupy a lot
Speaker 1: of years ago. And the question that people asked us,
Speaker 1: and sometimes it was the police, was what gets you
Speaker 1: out of the park. And in a weird way, there's
Speaker 1: a parallel here which is that the hardest answer with
Speaker 1: occupy was always kind of like, everything is kind of fucked,
Speaker 1: so how do we fix everything? That's the discussion we
Speaker 1: should be having. So in this case, to these people,
Speaker 1: in their worldview, everything is kind of fucked, and there's
Speaker 1: no answer that you can give those kind of people
Speaker 1: in negotiations. The police right now are not looking at
Speaker 1: removal as a serious option, I don't think, or if
Speaker 1: they are, they haven't figured out how to get to
Speaker 1: that place yet. And one of the weird things about
Speaker 1: Ottawa is is that technically in various spaces because the
Speaker 1: way it's designated, there's a whole mishmash of jurisdictions between
Speaker 1: the various police agencies. So like again with occupy, that
Speaker 1: we picked the park, like the park that was occupied
Speaker 1: was partially picked because it was on like this weird
Speaker 1: jurisdictional hole where it was hard to figure out who
Speaker 1: the cops were at, who should police it were, um so,
Speaker 1: and they've ended up in the same park where they
Speaker 1: now have like fifty five cylinders appropane sitting about five
Speaker 1: yards from the Department of National Defense. So it's a
Speaker 1: it's tricky to figure out how you how you get
Speaker 1: get out of that, because all it's going to take
Speaker 1: is one of them with something in their cab and
Speaker 1: it's done. Yep. Ye. Well, do you have any hope
Speaker 1: for anything? Do you have any like indicators for how
Speaker 1: it can turn out? Well, I mean in terms of
Speaker 1: the occupation, I mean, we'll see how it goes. Um,
Speaker 1: maybe there can become some kind of motors vivendi between
Speaker 1: them and the rest of the city. I don't know
Speaker 1: how that happens, but maybe there can be, but I
Speaker 1: don't know. It's the only silver lining I see right
Speaker 1: now is you know, the walk that I was on
Speaker 1: earlier today and the chat that I was having with
Speaker 1: other people in the community and the discord server and
Speaker 1: everywhere else, like, this is a really strong community that
Speaker 1: cares a great about itself and sometimes needed to be
Speaker 1: needs to be reminded of that. And uh, I think
Speaker 1: this is an opportunity for that to happen. Then I
Speaker 1: think that that's the positive that can come out, is
Speaker 1: that we will take care of ourselves and we'll take
Speaker 1: care of each other. And that's uh. You know what,
Speaker 1: what more can you ask? Where I guess out of this?
Speaker 1: Reports of assaults perpetrated by members of the Convoy protest
Speaker 1: have been steadily ruling in the past few weeks, not
Speaker 1: to mention the seemingly constant presence of honking in the
Speaker 1: downtown area that's been affecting residents every day and even
Speaker 1: into the night. I will offer you this short sample
Speaker 1: to help complete the picture of what it's like, both
Speaker 1: indoors and outdoors in downtown Ottawa. So apologies about that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was pretty bad and as annoying and frustrating as
Speaker 1: it may be. Before I close out part one, I'm
Speaker 1: going to play some audio from one of the truckers
Speaker 1: or you know, just Convoy participants as he addresses fellow
Speaker 1: convoy ors on why it's good and in fact revolutionary
Speaker 1: to hunk horns late into the night. I think it
Speaker 1: gives you some valuable insight into how these people frame
Speaker 1: their actions in their own heads, and you know, it'll
Speaker 1: give you an opportunity to hear some of these Convoy
Speaker 1: people directly. So here we go. Yeah, what's going on?
Speaker 1: There was quiet when I got here, but now they're
Speaker 1: starting to be They're starting to make some noise. Now
Speaker 1: I get it. I saw some proments saying that you
Speaker 1: want to go from nine to five, and you want
Speaker 1: to turn your horns off, and you want to you know,
Speaker 1: be respectful and play the optics war. And you've done
Speaker 1: You've done all the map man, I get it. I
Speaker 1: We've done everything. Every piece of garbage has been picked up. Statistically,
Speaker 1: there is no crime. And when I mean statistically, if
Speaker 1: you have some drunk guy acted, you know, silly on
Speaker 1: one street quickly gets you know, talk to and then
Speaker 1: the Patriots taken back to his car and maybe there
Speaker 1: was something incident of mission. I've heard reports of Antima
Speaker 1: rowing rocks and trucks, tag and stuff. They're the ones
Speaker 1: committing the crime. But other than that, this has been
Speaker 1: the most well behave revolution on earth. And now the
Speaker 1: big complaint is can you get them to only blow
Speaker 1: their horns between nine and five? I'm sorry, what has
Speaker 1: compliant got you guys so far? What is just little
Speaker 1: by little? Oh? Just do this? Yeah, just just don't
Speaker 1: peep your horns between nine and five, That's all we're
Speaker 1: gonna ask. Then were two masks, then just go right
Speaker 1: back to square one. How about you put your blame
Speaker 1: right where it belongs, right in the eye of Sauron,
Speaker 1: And that's who we handle this with and every mandate.
Speaker 1: We're not allowed to exist in society. I'm not allowed
Speaker 1: to go to a movie. I'm not allowed to go
Speaker 1: to a restaurant. I'm not allowed to leave the country.
Speaker 1: You can't even leave, you can't travel on planes, you
Speaker 1: can't do anything that Trudeau can get his fingers on
Speaker 1: to discriminate against us in society. Meanwhile, he'll blame us
Speaker 1: for side effects of his guinea pigs. It's an insane world.
Speaker 1: And you've complied long enough, eyes and the madness in
Speaker 1: the horns stop. But I am in no place to
Speaker 1: go tell these guys, oh excuse me? Can you turn
Speaker 1: your horn off? Can you get used to complying again?
Speaker 1: We want freedom. We're not asking for anything unreasonable, and
Speaker 1: we're doing it on your behalf. The least you can
Speaker 1: do is turn off your televisions and stop letting their
Speaker 1: horrible objections to this revolution, and they're horrible false flags
Speaker 1: and whatever else they bring. I'm sorry about the noise complaints.
Speaker 1: Now are you sorry about banishing me from society and
Speaker 1: treating me like I'm some sort of lemm because I
Speaker 1: want to keep my immune system intech. Sorry, guys, the
Speaker 1: horns a stand stuff it up your ass. Anyone that
Speaker 1: has a problem with loud noises, we have a problem
Speaker 1: being banished from society. Apologies for that. But now I
Speaker 1: hope you have a better understanding of the type of
Speaker 1: conspiratorial thinking among the people in this convoy and the
Speaker 1: importance this whole thing means to them. So with this,
Speaker 1: that wraps up my part one of my deep dive
Speaker 1: into the Canadian Freedom Convoy. In the next episode, we'll
Speaker 1: get into the border blockades both in Alberta and the
Speaker 1: Ambassador Bridge, which is preventing some international trade. We'll get
Speaker 1: into some of the smaller protests and attempted occupations in
Speaker 1: other cities across Canada, and how the situation is evolving
Speaker 1: in Ottawa and what types of long term political ramifications
Speaker 1: this protest and any attempt to suppress it will have.
Speaker 1: So with that, see you on the other side. If
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Speaker 1: the ad Council. Welcome to it could happen here And
Speaker 1: the second part of my little mini series going into
Speaker 1: the occupation and blockade protests all across Canada that's been
Speaker 1: happening the past three weeks. For part two, will be
Speaker 1: starting off with a change of scenery. Instead of the loud,
Speaker 1: cramped streets of Datown, Ottawa and the castle like Parliament building,
Speaker 1: We'll be taking a detour to the snow covered prairies
Speaker 1: and oil fields of rural Alberta. As the convoy officially
Speaker 1: arrived in Ottawa on January nine, smaller protests against health
Speaker 1: mandates were also happening across the entire country. One of
Speaker 1: these mini protests was happening in the small city of
Speaker 1: Lethbridge in southern Alberta, but unlike the majority of other
Speaker 1: non Ottawa protests, The one based around lefth Bridge didn't
Speaker 1: turn out to be a simple weekend of fair. With
Speaker 1: hundreds of vehicles, including some semi trucks, r vs and
Speaker 1: farm tractors all gathered together. It was decided to take
Speaker 1: part in a little mini convoy of their own, but
Speaker 1: instead of going to a capital building, they rolled towards
Speaker 1: the international border crossing used by truckers in the area.
Speaker 1: I was able to interview gen a left Bridge local
Speaker 1: who also happens to work near the area of the
Speaker 1: Alberta border block gade. They kind of gathered in left
Speaker 1: Bridge here and took off about four thirty in the morning,
Speaker 1: and so they made it down to the village of Coots, Um,
Speaker 1: which is essentially right on the borders, the last stop
Speaker 1: before you hit the border at um Coots, Alberta, sweet Grass, Montana.
Speaker 1: And they blocked off the highway completely um heading both
Speaker 1: northbound and southbound, and they've been camped out since. So
Speaker 1: it's my understanding that at that point in time, throughout
Speaker 1: you know, day one, two and three of their protest um,
Speaker 1: there was no getting in or out out of the
Speaker 1: village of Coots, which is it is a small village
Speaker 1: about two hundred and fifty residents UM and it was
Speaker 1: so bad that not even emergency services could get through
Speaker 1: uh um again blocking both lanes of the highway in
Speaker 1: either direction in the ditches UM and just weren't letting up.
Speaker 1: And so are they even driving anywhere? Or is it
Speaker 1: are they just like camped there, just camped out there,
Speaker 1: parked um. And of course you know there's people that
Speaker 1: will drive down to the border and participate for a
Speaker 1: couple of hours and you know, turn around and go
Speaker 1: home kind of thing. But there is that core group UM,
Speaker 1: the majority of which are actually farmers bringing down like
Speaker 1: their tractors, and of course there is some semitruck drivers
Speaker 1: who are all a part of it and just not
Speaker 1: allowing anyone to get through on either side, so you know,
Speaker 1: holding up a lot of a lot of our supplies,
Speaker 1: a lot of our UM food and things like that.
Speaker 1: At first, local police and RCMP just waited out the blockade,
Speaker 1: I guess, hoping to see if the people would just
Speaker 1: get tired of camping out in the cold and then
Speaker 1: you know, go home. But after a few days that
Speaker 1: possibility seemed less and less likely. Then when the RCMP
Speaker 1: did start to get more actively involved with kind of
Speaker 1: managing the blockade, albeit you know, with a very gentle
Speaker 1: hand and extremely start contrast to how RCMP handles blockades,
Speaker 1: you know, defending indigenous land. But at that point it
Speaker 1: was already kind of too late and the pacified police
Speaker 1: action only spread the protests efforts. On day four of
Speaker 1: the blockade at the border UM, the RCMP had kind
Speaker 1: of moved in a little bit and tried to break
Speaker 1: it up. So some of the protesters had kind of
Speaker 1: broken off and decided to blockade's mother areas. So there
Speaker 1: was a blockade that happened on Highway three just outside
Speaker 1: of the town of Fort McLoud, on the way to
Speaker 1: the town of Brockett, which would be on the Blood
Speaker 1: Reserve here in Alberta. UM. They blockaded the highway and
Speaker 1: wouldn't let anyone through, and then they set up another
Speaker 1: blockade UM on Highway twenty three, which of course would
Speaker 1: be the the next north south route, given that Highway
Speaker 1: three was now blocked off. The Highway three going to
Speaker 1: Highway two. UM. So they've blocked off Highway twenty three. UM.
Speaker 1: At there's a traffic circle or a roundabout kind of
Speaker 1: in the middle of nowhere in the highway at the
Speaker 1: village of Nobleford, sorry, town of Nobleford, and they set
Speaker 1: up a blockade at the roundabout as well. Wouldn't let
Speaker 1: anyone come in north south east west, didn't matter. Um,
Speaker 1: So that was Tuesday, Tuesday to uh four and three, Yeah,
Speaker 1: effectively shutting down any kind of like travel for like
Speaker 1: food and supplies for like all four directions pretty much exactly. Yeah. Like,
Speaker 1: there was a lot of chatter on social media. Um,
Speaker 1: we have a local Facebook group for road conditions, and
Speaker 1: there was a lot of chatter, you know, where do
Speaker 1: we go, how do we get around this? What back roads?
Speaker 1: Should I take? Secondary highways? That sort of thing. And thankfully,
Speaker 1: you know, there was still I suppose some ways to
Speaker 1: get around it. The RCMP we're kind of setting up
Speaker 1: detours and things like that. But those main routes were blockaded,
Speaker 1: um on Tuesday, which would have been I guess what
Speaker 1: days that February one. The static highway blockades preventing traffic
Speaker 1: in all four directions were mostly a one day affair.
Speaker 1: The next Wednesday morning, more effort was put back into
Speaker 1: the main blockade at the border near Coots with some
Speaker 1: folks still participating in the rolling blockades of sorts, you know,
Speaker 1: on the surrounding highways. So instead of just blocking the
Speaker 1: roads by staying parked people in vehicles, kept a slow
Speaker 1: loop of traffic moving through the highway system to clog
Speaker 1: up travel. And then like the contingent at closer to
Speaker 1: the border has been more consistent, you would say, yeah,
Speaker 1: definitely the contingent at the border on highway for like
Speaker 1: I said at Coots, Alberta, they've been set up all
Speaker 1: the way through since the twenty nine UM. There has
Speaker 1: been days where the tensions are definitely very high where
Speaker 1: those protesters are saying we will not leave until UM,
Speaker 1: or we won't even come to the negotiating table until
Speaker 1: these restrictions are gone, like we won't even attempt And
Speaker 1: so the RCMP have been kind of in negotiations with
Speaker 1: them over the last few days. There's been a couple
Speaker 1: of times where they thought they had resolution to open
Speaker 1: up lanes of travel to get some of these trucks
Speaker 1: with goods through UM. And of course there's been people
Speaker 1: stuck in their cars as well for quite a few
Speaker 1: days without food. At that point, UM the protesters originally
Speaker 1: had come to an agreement with the r CDP to
Speaker 1: let some people through and then turn around and decided, well,
Speaker 1: we don't really want to. So that was kind of
Speaker 1: ongoing from I'm going to suggest up until about second UM.
Speaker 1: On the second the RCMP had set up a roadblock
Speaker 1: at the town of Milk River too, I guess, dissuade
Speaker 1: the the locals from coming out and adding to the
Speaker 1: congestion and adding to the problems. And at one point
Speaker 1: UM there was a group of people and videos are
Speaker 1: on TikTok, they're on Facebook, they're on Twitter where people
Speaker 1: are blasting through the barricades, going through the ditch, going
Speaker 1: through the median, just bypassing it completely to get down
Speaker 1: to the convoy protest. As I record this, the border
Speaker 1: crossing port of entry near the town of Coots has
Speaker 1: been largely impassable for over two weeks. It's a major
Speaker 1: trade hub where millions of dollars worth of agricultural products
Speaker 1: like meat and feed trade hands each day. The first
Speaker 1: day had hundreds of vehicles participating in blocking access to
Speaker 1: the trade route along highway for but after a week
Speaker 1: of blockading the Alberta, Montana border crossing, around eighty big
Speaker 1: rigs continued to remain along the highway for a majority
Speaker 1: of the time. Since the twenty ninth of January, vehicle
Speaker 1: access has been either completely stopped to and from the
Speaker 1: border or at least substantially slowed down. The occasional day
Speaker 1: where vehicles are being let through on one lane of
Speaker 1: traffic has an estimated seven hours of stall time order
Speaker 1: to get through just that tiny area of road. The
Speaker 1: blockade of that international port of entry at Coots and
Speaker 1: the only seven commercial land crossing in Alberta is a
Speaker 1: direct threat to the economic well being of growers, producers, manufacturers,
Speaker 1: and many other businesses that rely on the movement of
Speaker 1: both raw materials and finished goods in and out along
Speaker 1: the can m X corridor end quote. Lewington has warned
Speaker 1: that manufacturing plants in the region will be forced to
Speaker 1: either reduce or canceled production as their supplies run out
Speaker 1: and they're unable to get their goods to international markets.
Speaker 1: This is something farmers and food producers are dealing with
Speaker 1: as well as agricultural experts are one of the region's
Speaker 1: main economic drivers. In the Left Bridge metropolitan area exported
Speaker 1: nearly one point eight billion dollars worth of goods around
Speaker 1: eighty percent of which went to the United States. A
Speaker 1: vast majority of these exports went through this Coots border crossing.
Speaker 1: That means for the city of lefth Bridge alone, they're
Speaker 1: facing a roughly three million dollar a day impact on
Speaker 1: the economic damage based on the road and rail travel
Speaker 1: that must move through that port of entry. The impact
Speaker 1: is of course four or five times larger than if
Speaker 1: you consider the movement of other Alberta goods in and
Speaker 1: out of that same North South corridor. It's only more
Speaker 1: ironic and frustrating considering that the idea of shutting down
Speaker 1: international capitalist trade, you know, costing millions dollars in losses
Speaker 1: each and every day, is exactly the sort of thing
Speaker 1: that these same conservatives would complain that BLM or Antifa
Speaker 1: would do, you know, like, in terms of anti capitalist action,
Speaker 1: this is actually more successful in causing damage to capital
Speaker 1: than really anything I've seen the Canadian left do in
Speaker 1: recent memory. Now, obviously police response to a left wing protest,
Speaker 1: you know, doing similar tactics would probably greatly differ, you know.
Speaker 1: Plus the fact that these people are participating in these
Speaker 1: blockades are the same types of people that talk about
Speaker 1: their desire to run down protesters in trucks, you know,
Speaker 1: whenever there's marching in the street or an indigenous road
Speaker 1: blockade to a new oil pipeline. Nevertheless, on top of
Speaker 1: the police inability, whether by choice or imagination, to handle
Speaker 1: the situation, and considering both the conspiracy fueled political issues
Speaker 1: around masks of vaccines and health man dates and the
Speaker 1: growing economic problems the blockade is causing, it's not super
Speaker 1: surprising that the Conservative government of Alberta again the process
Speaker 1: of removing health mandates as the protests striked on, and
Speaker 1: unfortunately it seems like the province is listening and they're
Speaker 1: taking it seriously. I know. Um last night our premier
Speaker 1: had gone on Facebook Live and had an ounce that
Speaker 1: come Monday, the caucus will vote as to whether or
Speaker 1: not to scrap it um, which would mean that, like
Speaker 1: I said, now there's no longer that requirement to access
Speaker 1: some of these these services from private businesses, and then
Speaker 1: ultimately that would lead us back into our letter rip
Speaker 1: model that we had last summer. The Monday vote came
Speaker 1: in the next day, February. Alberta premiere and premiers are
Speaker 1: like the you know, equivalent of governors for the states,
Speaker 1: but Alberta Premier Jason Kenney announced that the provinces so
Speaker 1: called COVID nineteen vaccine passport program would end immediately, explaining
Speaker 1: that the restruction program had service purpose, but it's no
Speaker 1: longer needed since Alberta has passed the peak of omner
Speaker 1: con infections about three weeks ago. Capacity limits were also
Speaker 1: next Tuesday night for venues with capacity limits under five
Speaker 1: hundred and fluding libraries and places of worship. An effect
Speaker 1: of this past Sunday, February, the province will also no
Speaker 1: longer require masking for children and youth in schools and
Speaker 1: for any Alberton's aged twelve and under in any setting.
Speaker 1: There is a second phase for Alberta's COVID restriction and
Speaker 1: removal plan. On March one, the province is set to
Speaker 1: remove any remaining restrictions, including the indoor mask mandate, work
Speaker 1: from home requirements, any remaining caracity limits, and limits on
Speaker 1: social gatherings and screenings for youth activities. Jason Kenny did
Speaker 1: deny that the move has anything to do with the
Speaker 1: protests from those you know demanding the repeal of vaccine
Speaker 1: mandates of all types across the country, including the blockade
Speaker 1: that the government had condemned illegal at the Coots border crossing, saying, quote,
Speaker 1: none of that has anything to do with a few
Speaker 1: trucks participating at the Coots border crossing. Um, who added
Speaker 1: that keeping previous rules in place would invite widespread non
Speaker 1: compliance for no purpose, saying why keep this going on
Speaker 1: for a few days when we know that in many
Speaker 1: areas as we're already having non compliance problems. So yeah, Um,
Speaker 1: of course, the demonstrations have continued despite Alberta dropping multiple
Speaker 1: health measures and agreeing to a demand made by a
Speaker 1: lot of the anti mandate protesters, which implies that this
Speaker 1: protest is about much more than simple COVID health measures. Right.
Speaker 1: It points to the movement being more about taking political
Speaker 1: power and forcing everyone to comply with their own conspiratorial
Speaker 1: and alienated understanding of the world. As someone who's like
Speaker 1: living in Alberta, which is, you know, one of the
Speaker 1: more conservative provinces of Canada, Um, how much do you
Speaker 1: see this kind of this kind of you know, spontaneous
Speaker 1: revolt and resistance to be actually tied to the health mandates,
Speaker 1: And how much do you see it? It's more like
Speaker 1: a revolt around like Trudeau and Canada's like Canada's like
Speaker 1: um veneer of liberalism, like like like how like how
Speaker 1: much do you did you see? It's more like a
Speaker 1: urban rule divide thing that's now just getting pushed into
Speaker 1: the spotlight because of covid um or do you think
Speaker 1: it really is way more about COVID itself? Um. I
Speaker 1: think that the pandemic has definitely had a role to
Speaker 1: play in sparking a lot of this this fearer and
Speaker 1: this uh, this disconnect. But the seeds have been sown
Speaker 1: for many years, through many successive provincial governments and and
Speaker 1: much rhetoric that um, the West has always been ignored
Speaker 1: by the East, by our political institutions in the East,
Speaker 1: namely Otto our federal government, the seat of our federal
Speaker 1: government in favor of you know, Ontario and Quebec and
Speaker 1: what they want to Alberton's have always seen themselves with
Speaker 1: a bit of a martyr complex where we are the
Speaker 1: economic powerhouse of the country, but we are the ugly
Speaker 1: stepchild and we are ignored in favor of the wonderful
Speaker 1: children in the East. And so that that disconnect and
Speaker 1: that divide has always been there, and the pandemic has
Speaker 1: been the catalyst um and of course, you know, whenever
Speaker 1: there is a federal liberal party that's in in power,
Speaker 1: the conservatives feel the Conservatives in Alberta and in the
Speaker 1: West they feel even more disenfranchised. They feel that this
Speaker 1: this government doesn't hear them, they don't listen to them,
Speaker 1: they don't you know, follow the whims of you know,
Speaker 1: the died in the world conservatives. And so that rhetoric
Speaker 1: has built and built and built over the years, um
Speaker 1: and it's all tied into other things as well. It's
Speaker 1: tied into the economic policies and the policies of the
Speaker 1: liberal government with in regards to climate change and carbon
Speaker 1: tax and how how that's been hitting um Albertan's you know,
Speaker 1: they our province is very heavily depend and in upon
Speaker 1: the oil and gas sector, and it always has been
Speaker 1: for the last I'm gonna suggest fifty six years. And
Speaker 1: so when they see things like in Autumna, where they're
Speaker 1: talking about climate change and they're talking about you know,
Speaker 1: green energy, it makes these conservatives angry because this has
Speaker 1: been our bread and butter for years. This is what's
Speaker 1: fed our families. They don't recognize that, you know, this
Speaker 1: is this is the path forward all they hear is
Speaker 1: we don't want you, we don't want your jobs, we
Speaker 1: don't want your products, and they're angry, and this has
Speaker 1: been the catalyst now where they're just fed up. They're
Speaker 1: set up with with not being heard. Unfortunately, all that
Speaker 1: built up anger and resentment towards the government and its
Speaker 1: leadership is ending up being taken out against just any
Speaker 1: symbol of liberalism, not really the government directly. You know.
Speaker 1: Within this worldview, homophobic attacks can be then thought up
Speaker 1: as this weird form of punching up because gainness is
Speaker 1: associated with liberalism, so it's seen as almost this system
Speaker 1: of power, even though it's that's obviously backwards. It's this
Speaker 1: kind of weird backwards thing where you can view like
Speaker 1: attacking progressive things as an attack on the system. So
Speaker 1: that means like being racist or being homophobic, is this
Speaker 1: rebellion against you know, the system itself, even though it
Speaker 1: just ties into all those same systemic issues. Just the
Speaker 1: other day in Edmonton, there was a business owner, uh,
Speaker 1: a hair salon owner who's been very outspoken about this
Speaker 1: Freedom Convoy and about how she doesn't agree with their
Speaker 1: messaging and and their their ideas, and she was actually
Speaker 1: hunted down on social media, UM hunted down in person.
Speaker 1: They found her, someone found her her business, went to
Speaker 1: her business and confronted her and a altered her UM
Speaker 1: at her business all because she uh does not support
Speaker 1: the convoy and apparently this individual did. UM. You know,
Speaker 1: we definitely, we definitely see here that UM. The feeling
Speaker 1: is is that if you are a liberal in Alberta,
Speaker 1: this is not the place for you. UM. You know,
Speaker 1: if you if you believe in you know, equal rights
Speaker 1: for everyone, this is not the place for you. If
Speaker 1: you believe in the rights of marginalized and minority communities,
Speaker 1: this is not the place for you. And we I've
Speaker 1: seen that, you know, and taking part in various protests
Speaker 1: I suppose that could be branded as liberal protests, like
Speaker 1: the Black Lives Matter protests and um, the protests and
Speaker 1: rallies that were held in support of the indigenous communities
Speaker 1: last summer upon you know, the news kind of shook
Speaker 1: the world regarding UM graves at residential schools, and you know,
Speaker 1: you see it with the indigenous communities that protest pipelines
Speaker 1: on their traditional lands and they block you know, railways,
Speaker 1: and the same people that are screaming for jail time
Speaker 1: and for violence and and police intervention on these various
Speaker 1: protests are the same people that are taking part in
Speaker 1: a convoy. Protesters at the Cootes border crossing will now
Speaker 1: be charged or find according to the province and the RCMP.
Speaker 1: R CMP Deputy Chief Curtis is a blockie said in
Speaker 1: a news conference during the start out the second week
Speaker 1: of the Alberta border blockade that police are actually working
Speaker 1: to diffuse situation at the most important border crossing in Alberta,
Speaker 1: but are trying to do so peacefully, saying, make no mistake,
Speaker 1: there are criminal activities taking place at these process sites
Speaker 1: that violate both criminal code and provincial laws. We've seen
Speaker 1: activities that are both dangerous and reckless and are having
Speaker 1: a very negative effect on Alberton's who live in the area.
Speaker 1: He then pointed to you know, dwindling numbers involving the
Speaker 1: blockade from a high of around two fifty vehicles to
Speaker 1: begin with two around fifty vehicles last Tuesday afternoon as
Speaker 1: a success of their efforts to this point. But you
Speaker 1: know this isn't convinced everyone since the blockade is still happening.
Speaker 1: So Acting Justice Minister and Solicitor General Sonia Savage called
Speaker 1: the blockade intolerable and said that those taking part in
Speaker 1: the demonstration can be charged under several different federal and
Speaker 1: provincial laws, including the Federal Criminal Code, the Provincial Traffic
Speaker 1: Safety Act, and the new Critical Infrastructure Defense Act, which
Speaker 1: was enacted right in the middle of during the international
Speaker 1: George Floyd uprising and the certain rail blockades in Canada.
Speaker 1: I'm going to go into many tangent here just because
Speaker 1: of how terrible this bill is. The bill gives law
Speaker 1: enforcement and the judicial system extra power to dish out
Speaker 1: significant monetary refinds an extra jail time for actions deemed
Speaker 1: to interfere with so called essential infrastructure quote unquote. The
Speaker 1: stated goal of the bill is harsher penalties and charges
Speaker 1: for quote damage or interference caused by blockades, protests, or
Speaker 1: similar activities who can cause significant public safety, social, economic,
Speaker 1: and environmental consequences. The Act bills on existing trespassing laws
Speaker 1: to create offenses for trespassing on destroying, damaging, and obstructing
Speaker 1: the use or operation of any essential infrastructure, also under
Speaker 1: the banner of essential infrastructure that includes public and private property.
Speaker 1: By the way, the bill was obviously aimed at left
Speaker 1: wing protests and specifically equal defense and environmental protests and
Speaker 1: or sabotage as the first two things defined as essential
Speaker 1: infrastructure in the bill are quote, pipelines and related infrastructure
Speaker 1: and oil and gas production and refinery sites. So yeah.
Speaker 1: There's also been pressure from government officials to include forfiture
Speaker 1: property in the commission of crime through the Civil Forfeiture Act.
Speaker 1: Our CMP Deputy chiefs the blocks the charges will be
Speaker 1: coming for those taking part in the protest and could
Speaker 1: be as simple as the way they are illegally parked
Speaker 1: on the highway. He didn't note that the RCMP has
Speaker 1: attempted to hire local towing companies to move the trucks
Speaker 1: and other equipment off the road, but have been unable
Speaker 1: to do so, with the companies sitting concerns over damaged
Speaker 1: their business long term or just safety issues in general.
Speaker 1: This has also been a huge factor in attempts to
Speaker 1: deal with the Ottawa occupation. Zablocki said that there are
Speaker 1: concerns over safety and violence in response to the more
Speaker 1: aggressive approaches to breaking up the blockade. So far, the
Speaker 1: main action law enforcement has taken to dissuay people from
Speaker 1: blocking the border is just giving out tickets and fines
Speaker 1: for illegal parking. Premier Jason Kenny say that he is
Speaker 1: supportive of our CMP handling this as they see fit
Speaker 1: through the means that they already have, and has been
Speaker 1: supportive of using the you know, pretty horrible the authoritarian
Speaker 1: Critical Infrastructure Defense Act, saying quote, last year we passed
Speaker 1: the Defense of Critical Infrastructure Act, which gives police enormous
Speaker 1: powers and various defines the penalties, including the power of imprisonment.
Speaker 1: We have made it clear to the RCMP, who is
Speaker 1: our provincial policing service, that they can and should use
Speaker 1: all of these powers. They're dealing with a very fluid situation,
Speaker 1: and I have respect for their judgment. Prime Minister Justin
Speaker 1: Trudeau addressed the ongoing blockades and protests across the country
Speaker 1: this past Friday, encouraging demonstrators to leave, while also passing
Speaker 1: the buck on any blame, saying quote, I want to
Speaker 1: remind everybody that politicians don't direct police departments to enforce
Speaker 1: the law. Instead, Trudeau made vague threats around revoking licenses
Speaker 1: and criminal records for those continuing to protest, saying everything
Speaker 1: is on the table because this unlawful blockade has to
Speaker 1: end and will end. The blockade at the Coots border
Speaker 1: crossing is not the only convoy aligned test in Alberta.
Speaker 1: There have been many demonstrations in basically every major city
Speaker 1: in Calgary, The Alberta Union of Provincial Employees says that
Speaker 1: frontline healthcare workers, patients and people living around the Sheldon
Speaker 1: Came Health Center have dealt with protests for weeks, but
Speaker 1: things have only gotten worse since the truck convoy hit
Speaker 1: the news. The vice president of the Alberta Union for
Speaker 1: Provincial Employees said that protesters have blocked the ambulance bain,
Speaker 1: they have harassed workers and patients as they come to
Speaker 1: and from the center. They've banged on the windows of
Speaker 1: the facility and upset people inside, and they have blocked
Speaker 1: the roads around the center. Moving on to the province
Speaker 1: of British Columbia. As the second weekend of protest was
Speaker 1: set to descend on Vancouver the weekend of February five.
Speaker 1: In preparation fearing attacks would be carried out against healthcare
Speaker 1: workers like they have in the past, Vancouver's to health
Speaker 1: authorities issued internal ms telling health workers to hide indoors
Speaker 1: as the convoy pass through the city and to quote
Speaker 1: refrain from wearing scrubs and or your ID badge outside
Speaker 1: the hospital during the demonstration. If you do encounter any protesters,
Speaker 1: please do not engage with them or respond to their questions,
Speaker 1: and please do not ask protesters to put on a
Speaker 1: face mask. Similarly, ahead of a protest in Toronto, the
Speaker 1: Toronto Police sent letters to hospitals advising their workers to
Speaker 1: not wear any clothing or markings that identified them as
Speaker 1: working in healthcare, fearing attacks by protesters. As the second
Speaker 1: wave of the convoy arrived during the second weekend of
Speaker 1: the occupation in Ottawa, some of the on the ground
Speaker 1: organizational structure started to morphin of vols. The police estimated
Speaker 1: around this time that five thousand people were still protesting
Speaker 1: in Ottawa and around one thousand vehicles were clogging the
Speaker 1: streets during the second week of protests. In an effort
Speaker 1: to improve optics, considering the four original organizers explicit connections
Speaker 1: to the far right, a new lead, organizational, public relations,
Speaker 1: and bargaining team was assembled for the group, calling themselves
Speaker 1: the Freedom Convoy. The new pseudo leadership team consists of
Speaker 1: Daniel Bulford, a former RCMP officer who was on the
Speaker 1: Prime Minister's security detail. He quit last year after refusing
Speaker 1: to get the vaccine and is now the convoy's head
Speaker 1: of security. Tom Quicken, former military intelligence officer who also
Speaker 1: worked with the RCMP and was considered one of the
Speaker 1: country's top counter terrorism experts. And Tom Marazo, an ex
Speaker 1: military officer who, according to his linked in profile, served
Speaker 1: in the Canadian Armed Forces for twenty years and ours
Speaker 1: as a freelance software developer. And just side note in
Speaker 1: terms of you know, police and former military participating in
Speaker 1: the protests, there was an organization full of retired police
Speaker 1: that endorsed the convoy a few weeks ago and said
Speaker 1: that they have people on the ground there and just
Speaker 1: got announced as as I'm recording this, that two members
Speaker 1: of Canada Military counter Terrorism Unit is under investigation for
Speaker 1: allegedly taking part in the Ottawa Convoy protests. So yeah,
Speaker 1: that's fun. The occupation has been getting more and more
Speaker 1: organized on the ground the past two weeks and has
Speaker 1: been able to keep one step ahead of any action
Speaker 1: taken against police against the occupation. Even just what the
Speaker 1: convoy participants have physically built is impressive. But less than
Speaker 1: a week after the convoy arrived, he started to see
Speaker 1: Wooden structures being built around the roads and a growing
Speaker 1: stockpile of propane and diesel fuel. There is an impressive
Speaker 1: amount of tents and wooden structures used for kitchens that
Speaker 1: local organizers have set up, and a whole supply chain
Speaker 1: has sprung up across the city to keep these people fed,
Speaker 1: working and protesting. I'm now going to quote a good
Speaker 1: article in the CBC by Judy Trent. Quote. The group
Speaker 1: is set up not only near the Parliament in Ottawa,
Speaker 1: but they have also built two encampment areas where they
Speaker 1: carry out logistical and supply work. Recent reporting has painted
Speaker 1: a picture that these areas are far more organized than
Speaker 1: widely thought. The group is also trying out new tactics,
Speaker 1: such as attempting to clog up traffic at the Ottawa Airport.
Speaker 1: Other tactics like swatting have been reported as well. Ottawa
Speaker 1: Police say they're aware of a concerted effort to flood
Speaker 1: our one and non emergency police reporting lines, tweeting that
Speaker 1: this endangers lives and is completely unacceptable. Determined to not
Speaker 1: be outdone by their fellow protesters in the West. After
Speaker 1: the second wave arrived, the members of the Ottawa Convoy
Speaker 1: organized away for the convoy occupation to stay, but also
Speaker 1: put up a border crossing blockade of their own. Starting Sunday,
Speaker 1: February six, scores of truckers blocked the Ambassador Bridge connecting Windsor, Ontario,
Speaker 1: to Detroit, Michigan, disrupting the flow of auto parts and
Speaker 1: other products between the two countries. While this protest has
Speaker 1: been conducted more by pickup trucks than big rigs has
Speaker 1: been holding up the lanes. The bridge is the busiest
Speaker 1: US Canada border crossing and the key cog in both
Speaker 1: the US and Canadian economies, as it carries around twenty
Speaker 1: five percent of trade between the two countries. The effects
Speaker 1: of the blockade there were felt rapidly. The bridge regularly
Speaker 1: carries around three hundred sixty million dollars a day in
Speaker 1: two way cargoes, but traffic is limited by its nineteen
Speaker 1: nine physical footprint. There's just two lanes each way with
Speaker 1: no shoulders and antiquated customers boots, with the northern side
Speaker 1: just emptying out into the city streets. The bumper to
Speaker 1: bumper demonstration forced auto plants on both sides the border
Speaker 1: to shut down or scale back production. The halting of
Speaker 1: trade has bottlenecked automaker Ford's ability to get parts from
Speaker 1: the US to its Canadian plants in Windsor and Oaksville.
Speaker 1: Ford to shut down the doors of its Windsor plan
Speaker 1: and reduced the work schedule in Oakville. Ford set in
Speaker 1: a statement the eruption on the Detroit Windsor Bridge hurts customers, autoworkers, suppliers, communities,
Speaker 1: and companies on both sides of the border. We hope
Speaker 1: the situation is resolved quickly because it could have widespread
Speaker 1: impact on all automakers in the US and Canada. Automaker
Speaker 1: Toyota said that it's three D plants in Ontario closed
Speaker 1: for the rest of the week because of parts shortages,
Speaker 1: and production has also been curtailed in Georgetown, Kentucky. More
Speaker 1: on the U s side of things, GM, Jeep, and
Speaker 1: Honda all had hours cut and assembly lines shut down
Speaker 1: at their factories across Michigan and Ohio. Michigan Governor Gretchen
Speaker 1: Whittemore urged Canadian authorities to quickly resolve the stand off,
Speaker 1: saying it's hitting paychecks and production lines and that is unacceptable.
Speaker 1: The Federal Public Safety Minister has said that the Royal
Speaker 1: Canadian Mounted Police reinforcements are being sent to Windsor, Ottawa
Speaker 1: and to Coots, Alberta, where the other border blockade is happening.
Speaker 1: With political and economic pressure mounting, Windsor Mayor Rude Dilkins
Speaker 1: announced that the city would seek a court injunction to
Speaker 1: end the occupation, saying that the economic harm is just
Speaker 1: not sustainable and it must come to an end. On Thursday,
Speaker 1: February tenth, the Biden administration urged Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's
Speaker 1: government on Thursday to use its federal powers to end
Speaker 1: the truck blockade at the other side of the Detroit border.
Speaker 1: Hundreds of millions of dollars worth of products have been
Speaker 1: held back for days as fifty to sixty vehicles and
Speaker 1: around a hundred anti mandate protesters camp out on the
Speaker 1: main road that leads on and off the bridge. And yes,
Speaker 1: it is ironic that the same people who are trying
Speaker 1: to sell Canadians fake stories about failing supply lines and
Speaker 1: empty shelves are now causing those supply lines to fail
Speaker 1: and causing those shelves to go empty. The irony is
Speaker 1: not lost on me, but it may be lost on
Speaker 1: the convoy participants throughout running these episodes, I was fortunate
Speaker 1: enough to get to talk to multiple people who have
Speaker 1: been on the ground in downtown Ottawa. One such of
Speaker 1: these people's is p dur Smith, an investigative journalist for
Speaker 1: the Canadian Anti Hate Network. We recorded our conversation and
Speaker 1: I'm going to include some audio clips throughout the rest
Speaker 1: of the episode. We started off by discussing what made
Speaker 1: this protest movement pop off in this specific time and place.
Speaker 1: I do think it was maybe capitalizing on a moment,
Speaker 1: but also a fair amount of luck. You know, since
Speaker 1: two thousand nine, the same organizers have attempted to put
Speaker 1: together other convoys, you know, generally never rising to the
Speaker 1: amount of attention that they had in two thousand nine. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, this convoy was also planned long before they
Speaker 1: specifically started focusing on truckers, and then it was It
Speaker 1: was a galvanizing issue. It resonated with people who are
Speaker 1: frustrated with the Trudeau government, um and just they're they're
Speaker 1: handling of of health measures as well as just became
Speaker 1: a like a vehicle for expressing their general dissatisfaction with
Speaker 1: their own problemses Like most of our health mandates are provincial,
Speaker 1: like the Alberta government is handing down what's happening in Alberta. UM,
Speaker 1: so it's it's not just it's not just a federal issue,
Speaker 1: but coming down here and occupying the streets of Ottawa
Speaker 1: and that now we're seeing occupying most of our major cities. UM.
Speaker 1: You know, ones like Winnipeg gets significantly less attention, but
Speaker 1: are incredibly disruptive locally, um and in some cases more
Speaker 1: kind of inceniary than the one that we have out here,
Speaker 1: where you know, participants and organizers are desperately trying to
Speaker 1: clamp down on on any individuals who's engaging in harassment
Speaker 1: or yuh well, or is more common blaming it on
Speaker 1: liberal plants. Um. Yeah, it just it became this kind
Speaker 1: of expression of all of the frustration and very quickly
Speaker 1: drew attention even from people who've been dismissive of it
Speaker 1: very early on because of some of the organizers. Um.
Speaker 1: Once it really started to galvin it galvanized attention and
Speaker 1: of course money. Uh, people couldn't couldn't stay away. I
Speaker 1: mean to the point that we even have mainstream conservative
Speaker 1: politicians now getting on board with it, including the man
Speaker 1: who is very likely to be the future leader of
Speaker 1: the Conservative Party here. I mean, we're in a very
Speaker 1: unique moment um, you know, are our far right and
Speaker 1: kind of conspiracy culture in Canada has also been getting
Speaker 1: better at organizing over the course of the pandemic. Wants
Speaker 1: to get like all major cities have and many small
Speaker 1: towns continue to have anti mandate um anti lockdown protests.
Speaker 1: We usually refer to them as the COVID conspiracy movement
Speaker 1: just because of how and heavily heavily informed it is
Speaker 1: by conspiratorial thinking. Um. So it's it's like you had
Speaker 1: a large amount of people kind of spending the past
Speaker 1: two years and like a on the ground boot camp
Speaker 1: of how to organize within these cities and how to
Speaker 1: get people's attention. And of course, like like a lot
Speaker 1: of the are right here, it fragmented, there was a
Speaker 1: lot of infighting, um and then you know, once there
Speaker 1: became a central point that was was galvanizing a lot
Speaker 1: of attention, it started receiving international attention. You know, There's
Speaker 1: been some questions about the source of some of the money,
Speaker 1: but certainly the initial totals seemed to be organically Canadian. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: it just became too big to fall apart. Essentially at
Speaker 1: least at this point. Um. There has been some spats
Speaker 1: of infighting, but mostly you know, the most polarizing figures
Speaker 1: are either just keeping their head down or in some
Speaker 1: cases even choosing to stay away from the main events
Speaker 1: so as not to be a distraction. Um. There's a
Speaker 1: lot One of the lines I see a lot is like,
Speaker 1: this is the moment, this is for all the marvels. Um.
Speaker 1: So there's a huge amount of importance being placed on that.
Speaker 1: What actually happens, like whether they're able to paint what
Speaker 1: we've the like the actual rolling back command adates that
Speaker 1: we were already starting to see before the convoy began,
Speaker 1: um as some type of victory for them, um or
Speaker 1: if this leads to further disillusionment. You know, we don't
Speaker 1: really know at this point, but I think this moment
Speaker 1: is going to be a propaganda tool, um and kind
Speaker 1: of a a point of I think it's gonna be
Speaker 1: a propaganda tool and uh like a point of motivation
Speaker 1: for a long time from your like both on the
Speaker 1: ground stuff and just from monitoring stuff online. What do
Speaker 1: you think, like the actual actionable intention was once they
Speaker 1: arrived in Ottawa, Like, do you think they had a
Speaker 1: clear plan of what to do, or was it more
Speaker 1: like let's go here and then we'll figure things out. Well,
Speaker 1: initially there there was a manium. Initially there was a
Speaker 1: memorandum of understanding which laid out kind of the points
Speaker 1: of what the initial organizers were hoping to accomplish, something
Speaker 1: they call the Operation may Or hug Um, which includes
Speaker 1: having the Governor General and our Senate, both of whom
Speaker 1: are unelected UH dissolved parliament and reform the government immediately
Speaker 1: after we had a federal election. UM. Since then, the
Speaker 1: message has evolved like they're trying to stay very very
Speaker 1: like on script with this just being about freedom, um,
Speaker 1: this just being about mandates. You know, initially there was
Speaker 1: a lot of attempts to even get people to to
Speaker 1: stop mentioning the vaccine, though those seemed to kind of
Speaker 1: fallen by the wayside, especially when you start looking at
Speaker 1: the speakers. It is interesting to kind of wonder what
Speaker 1: the actual goal is there. They've started meeting with public officials,
Speaker 1: you know, there is some type of negotiation going on. UM. Obstensively,
Speaker 1: the goal is just to have these border restrictions lifted
Speaker 1: on people on truckers who are unvaccinated return from the US.
Speaker 1: You know, the obvious thing is the point out that
Speaker 1: the US still has a very similar policy in reversinggain
Speaker 1: here would have no impact um on their ability to
Speaker 1: to avoid this quarantine. But um it seems like the
Speaker 1: goals are fairly murky, and that's almost deliberate because then
Speaker 1: they can declare victory kind of when it suits them.
Speaker 1: Ambiguity around protest goals, demands, and purpose itself can be
Speaker 1: a useful tactic. The Crime Think zine slash article titled
Speaker 1: why we Don't make Demands makes such a case. I
Speaker 1: don't have time to summarize it here, but I recommend
Speaker 1: you give the article a look if you're interested in
Speaker 1: this train of thought as an intentional tactic. But on
Speaker 1: the flip side, you know, vague and direction lest protest
Speaker 1: without much of a focus on a specific goal can
Speaker 1: also cause protests to peter out without having any lasting
Speaker 1: impact on the world. A discussion worth having is how
Speaker 1: the individual people that make up the convay participants have
Speaker 1: been convinced to take part in an occupation protest and
Speaker 1: how what is considered valid political action has broadened in
Speaker 1: their own heads. If they're the ones doing the action,
Speaker 1: of course, because from their point of view, since they
Speaker 1: are doing it, the cause must be valid and therefore
Speaker 1: the action is justified. In we have the wetsuin rail blockades, um,
Speaker 1: that was put on by various members of our first nations,
Speaker 1: and then people who supported them, you know, the same
Speaker 1: politicians they're meeting with the truckers, embracing them, um, saying
Speaker 1: that our current prime ministers demonizing them by kind of
Speaker 1: casting them as under desirables. We're you know, we're actively
Speaker 1: calling people sitting on train tracks as terrorists who are
Speaker 1: disrupting our economy. Um. Obviously, in the context of the
Speaker 1: pandemic pandemic, that's very different because there has been kind
Speaker 1: of mass disruption too to our economy. But this kind
Speaker 1: of picking and choosing, of of suiting the narrative to
Speaker 1: court far eve voters seems to be popular. You know how,
Speaker 1: Conservatives typically aren't seen as the protesting type. Right, Conservatives
Speaker 1: are supposed to be the type of people who drive
Speaker 1: by the protest and yell get a job. They're not
Speaker 1: the ones who are out in the streets picketing. But
Speaker 1: first of all, that's not really true historically, in just
Speaker 1: the past one years, there's always been conservative protests for
Speaker 1: you know, regressive and reactionary goals. Also, conservatives have been
Speaker 1: much better at organizing off the street for their political policies,
Speaker 1: specifically around like abortion or Christian dominionism, anti queer legislation,
Speaker 1: or recent stuff around anti CRT and just the mainstream
Speaker 1: racism denial that's been propagated through media. But even if
Speaker 1: there is historical precedent for conservative protest, bridging the gap
Speaker 1: of what is seen as valid political action in the
Speaker 1: minds of these convoy attendees did still take place over
Speaker 1: just the past few years years, just the past two years, specifically,
Speaker 1: there's been so much conservative protests around COVID. A whole
Speaker 1: bunch of the people at the Ottawa protest probably five
Speaker 1: years ago would have never seen themselves going to protest
Speaker 1: in the Canadian capital, Right Like, if you told them
Speaker 1: a few years ago that you're gonna drive all these
Speaker 1: kilometers to the Parliament to camp out in the cold
Speaker 1: for weeks to protest against the government and its rules
Speaker 1: for helping not spread the deadliest pandemic in a century,
Speaker 1: they would have probably laughed out of the room. So
Speaker 1: what is the logical progression of conservative people who generally,
Speaker 1: you know, look down on any type of protest, especially
Speaker 1: occupy style protests, to the point where they are driving
Speaker 1: all the way to the capital to camp outside the
Speaker 1: building to honk Korn's day and night. A lot of
Speaker 1: that political change the past few years correlates to the pandemic,
Speaker 1: to the social isolation and the great opportunity for the
Speaker 1: fast spread of conspiratorial politics that it offered. Over the
Speaker 1: course of the pandemic, there's been this huge blending of
Speaker 1: rhetoric on line and especially in Canada, this kind of
Speaker 1: villainization of the other side. Increasingly less and less criticism
Speaker 1: against the current government is less based on its policy
Speaker 1: and more based on its figurehead and the image of
Speaker 1: Trudeau as a globalist politics as opposition to whatever Trudeaux
Speaker 1: and the Liberals are doing. The result of that is
Speaker 1: just a whole bunch of escalation, because you have to
Speaker 1: keep always being antagonistic and always being contrarian no matter
Speaker 1: what the opposition actually does. The thing is a lot
Speaker 1: of people who used to just be kind of more
Speaker 1: general conservatives, as they get radicalized online and get caught
Speaker 1: up with farther right extreme most elements, most of them
Speaker 1: still view themselves as like the norm. They don't think
Speaker 1: they've politically changed the past five years, but if you
Speaker 1: look at their rhetoric and actions, they definitely have kind
Speaker 1: of substantially, But they still view themselves the same way
Speaker 1: they would when they were voting forced to even harper.
Speaker 1: Unless you're a self described extremist, you typically view everything
Speaker 1: that you do and say as normal and reasonable. Like you,
Speaker 1: you are the actual normal. Everyone else is shifted either
Speaker 1: way relative to you. During our talk, I asked investigative
Speaker 1: journalist Peter Smith on his opinions about what sorts of
Speaker 1: political and social factors have allowed the occupation and blockades
Speaker 1: to have enough numbers to last and continue on so long. Um.
Speaker 1: Kind of having spent a lot of time on the
Speaker 1: ground at the Ottawa convoy just talking to people as
Speaker 1: like as a normal guy without my press hat on. Um,
Speaker 1: it does seem like when there's a lot of owner
Speaker 1: operators there, like when it comes to the trucks themselves. Um,
Speaker 1: these people are the business owners um or like very
Speaker 1: close like they're kind of independent contractors exactly. UM. I
Speaker 1: think there was a report that came out showing a
Speaker 1: survey that done that like roughly half of the people
Speaker 1: there were unemployed. UM. So like the financial promise of
Speaker 1: all the money raised may have been a big drawlic
Speaker 1: not to say that these people don't legitimately believe the
Speaker 1: reasons absolutely, um, but it created an incentive. Um. But
Speaker 1: then having roughly half of them, you know, still having jobs.
Speaker 1: You know, it comes down to a little bit more
Speaker 1: than just money. Like it's about actual belief, actual ideology. UM.
Speaker 1: But it is interesting for a large amount of people
Speaker 1: who are extremely worried about supply lines, about people having
Speaker 1: enough food initially um to kind of creating this self
Speaker 1: fulfilling prophecy where where that seems to be the main
Speaker 1: tactic is just to grind as much to a halt
Speaker 1: as they can, using as much as many people as
Speaker 1: they can muster. And then just the kind of general
Speaker 1: hands off approach that law enforcement is taking with them,
Speaker 1: um has allowed them to organize better, to evolve their
Speaker 1: tactics to be more effective. UM. Like, I certainly don't
Speaker 1: think a policing solution is is what's going to solve this,
Speaker 1: and you know, there's a lot of calls for that,
Speaker 1: which is I think just gonna result in a lot
Speaker 1: of people getting hurt in the street. Um. But but yeah,
Speaker 1: like it is interesting that how it kind of it
Speaker 1: came from the West mostly and then landed in Ottawa
Speaker 1: and then kind of spread out from there once people
Speaker 1: realized it was effective, once people realized, you know, there
Speaker 1: was there was safety in these numbers. Um, it's it's drawn,
Speaker 1: it's drawn so many people to it. It's it's honestly shocked.
Speaker 1: It's it has been shocking, truly how quickly it is
Speaker 1: spread and how effective it has been. It's not January
Speaker 1: six in the sense that like people are running around
Speaker 1: Parliament and like trying to find you know, every liberal politician,
Speaker 1: but in the sense that it's a large amount of
Speaker 1: people motivated by conspiracy. Yeah, that's where I view the parallel.
Speaker 1: And because they and honestly, the the actual sincerity of
Speaker 1: it poses more of a political threat than the animosity
Speaker 1: of January six. Um, in terms of like long term
Speaker 1: like actual social change and using this type of like
Speaker 1: occupation as a tactic. The more sincere you are, the
Speaker 1: more of an actual political threat you can be in
Speaker 1: the long term, because yeah, if they start, if they
Speaker 1: store in Parliament, then I'll get shut down in a
Speaker 1: day and then they will be demonized and then then
Speaker 1: the problem is over, um at least at least in
Speaker 1: the short term. Right. Um. But if you actually like
Speaker 1: do this sincerely and actually get people to buckle under pressure,
Speaker 1: then that's like actual successful politics. Like that is you're
Speaker 1: you're actually doing politics objectively. Well, um, and that's more
Speaker 1: interesting to point out. The problem isn't protesting, Like protesting
Speaker 1: as a concept isn't the issue. The problem isn't even
Speaker 1: blockade Like, No, the problem is not blockades either. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all these things are just tactics, and tactics are value neutral. Um.
Speaker 1: Usually you know, it's until you get take a genocide
Speaker 1: when it's usually that's a kind of kind of kind
Speaker 1: of a downer generally. Um. But in generally I kind
Speaker 1: of you put protoce tactics as more value neutral. It's
Speaker 1: about kind of what the underlying cultural motivation is and
Speaker 1: what they want the results to be. And even still
Speaker 1: you know, some of the some of the points they
Speaker 1: have are not completely invalid um. But once it gets
Speaker 1: caught up in a cultural war kind of mindset, it's
Speaker 1: like you have to oppose it to just because they're
Speaker 1: on the other side. Um. So I kind of want
Speaker 1: to talk about like the reasons why they are actually
Speaker 1: kind of bad, like like for like on like a
Speaker 1: very sincere way, but then also kind of point out
Speaker 1: some things that are like yeah, maybe in the scene,
Speaker 1: these are things we should consider and it shouldn't take
Speaker 1: this type of occupation to have us reconsider some of
Speaker 1: these rules and regulations. Yeah, like completely, Like I think
Speaker 1: there's no issue with having being uncomfortable with mandates, um, like,
Speaker 1: even if you feel they're necessary, like being uncomfortable with
Speaker 1: the amount of state power that is being accumulated. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, in Canada, you know, there have been sweeping
Speaker 1: changes to the way that we live our life, Like
Speaker 1: I know that that's been universal. Um but there there
Speaker 1: is not a province that hasn't really suffered, like hasn't
Speaker 1: really impacted people's lives dealing with covid um. And you
Speaker 1: know this is this is one of the biggest issues
Speaker 1: when trying to point out disparate responses in policing. Um, Well,
Speaker 1: it's like, oh, it's like, so we should treat the
Speaker 1: convoy participants like they treated everybody else. And it's it's
Speaker 1: like no, like like you know, the the police chief
Speaker 1: of Ottawa got a lot of ship for saying he
Speaker 1: doesn't think there's a policing solution, and it's like, I
Speaker 1: do agree with the criticism of him because he has
Speaker 1: attempted to kick responsibility to just about every other level
Speaker 1: of government available. Um. But dragging people out, like towing
Speaker 1: their vehicles and taking away their livelihood and dragging a
Speaker 1: lot of people out into the street and then into
Speaker 1: jail is not gonna resolve these issues, no, um. And
Speaker 1: if anything, it could could bring more support. Like again,
Speaker 1: there was another report today that I think it's of
Speaker 1: people who have camped out have children with them, Like,
Speaker 1: you know, this is gonna be an incredibly traumatic experience.
Speaker 1: It's gonna help radicalize more people, and it's gonna lend
Speaker 1: credence to their cause if they just go in and
Speaker 1: bust heads. And it's like if the main focus of
Speaker 1: this convoy had been in Toronto, where we have an
Speaker 1: incredibly aggressive police force when it comes to like homeless
Speaker 1: encampments for instance, Um, you know, I think the result
Speaker 1: could have been very different. Yeah. And then because a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff around the question of governments and stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: It's it's the type of things I can agree with with,
Speaker 1: Like right wing libertarians is Yeah, you do have a
Speaker 1: lot of points I can simple hazed with around the
Speaker 1: state and around control, but the way you address them
Speaker 1: don't actually address the underlying power structures which give the
Speaker 1: state legitimacy in the first place. Yeah. Absolutely, And the
Speaker 1: world that you kind of want in the end is
Speaker 1: still a world full of hierarchies, just hierarchies that make
Speaker 1: your life easier, sw and skew and your favor just
Speaker 1: like asking for two unelected bodies to reoplate replace your
Speaker 1: democratically elected government. It's like we had ten years of
Speaker 1: Stephen Harper, like um, people were unhappy and extremely critical
Speaker 1: of that government from the center and from the left,
Speaker 1: but you know, there wasn't this kind of broad support
Speaker 1: for the idea that that government was illegitimate, which is
Speaker 1: I think what we see mostly today, which is the
Speaker 1: most disturbing and kind of anti democratic part of the
Speaker 1: whole pot. Yeah, and that's the kind of what the
Speaker 1: last thing I want to talk about is, like, what
Speaker 1: do you see Like eventually people will go home, either
Speaker 1: out of exhaustion, it'll maybe fizzle away, like like the
Speaker 1: protests in Portland did. Maybe they'll eventually police will kind
Speaker 1: of clear out small sections of like who who knows,
Speaker 1: but like this is not going knock ye one here,
Speaker 1: but this this isn't gonna last like a year, right,
Speaker 1: It's not. It's not gonna like they're I don't think
Speaker 1: they're gonna have thousands of people camp out in front
Speaker 1: of the government forever. Um. So what but what are
Speaker 1: the actual loum term political ramifications of this, Because we
Speaker 1: already saw the leader of the Conservative Party step down, um,
Speaker 1: So like I want to talk about, like specifically with
Speaker 1: the guy who's probably more most likely to take his place,
Speaker 1: how this just does kind of play into the more
Speaker 1: negative aspects of the convoy, is like how they're going
Speaker 1: to use this as a political symbol and a political
Speaker 1: tool to push for policies and forms the government and
Speaker 1: actions that will end up hurting a lot of um
Speaker 1: and well up hurting a lot of people, um in
Speaker 1: terms of you know, how how it's going to be
Speaker 1: used in propaganda and rhetoric. Yeah, Well, certainly if we
Speaker 1: have um, you know, strong legal ramifications put in place
Speaker 1: that make it easier for provinces, the federal government whatever
Speaker 1: to crackdown on on protests in general, which I think
Speaker 1: is something that might be very attractive to our carent government. Um,
Speaker 1: you know that's going to have obviously very far reaching effects.
Speaker 1: You know, one of our opposition parties, which is you know,
Speaker 1: generally further to the left then than the Liberals, the
Speaker 1: n DP, UM, their leader was proposing ways to stop
Speaker 1: foreign funding from coming in to supplied to the protests. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, once again, we we had protests a couple
Speaker 1: of years ago by indigenous people and people who support
Speaker 1: indigenous movements. Um. You know that that raised money using
Speaker 1: the same platforms and the same methods. You know, So
Speaker 1: I worry about like one of the legal ramifications like
Speaker 1: to just this this idea, like if the government does
Speaker 1: crack down very hard, this idea of real grievance and
Speaker 1: alienation that the West has already been struggling with. Like
Speaker 1: we've had a real renewed separatist movement, not from Quebec
Speaker 1: um where it's generally been the most successful, but from
Speaker 1: the Western provinces, you know, not not really getting close
Speaker 1: to obtaining any real political power, but you know, kind
Speaker 1: of steadily gaining support, pulling a showing that you know,
Speaker 1: there is a real feeling of Western alienation that they
Speaker 1: don't feel represented and you know, a lot of the
Speaker 1: ways our government are set up actually makes that true. Um. Yeah. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: as people I think become more and more disenfranchised, UM,
Speaker 1: when government action begins to kind of justify imagined ideas
Speaker 1: of oppression, UM, you're gonna have a real hardening. And
Speaker 1: since the government in power is a progressive one is
Speaker 1: or at least one that espouses you know, tries tries
Speaker 1: to each for progressive values, you know, there's a good
Speaker 1: chance that those issues are gonna get caught up with
Speaker 1: what is just like a quote unquote leftist agenda, Whereas
Speaker 1: up until probably a decade ago, those things were very
Speaker 1: much seen as kind of inherent Canadian values that were
Speaker 1: embraced by both sides. UM. The current candidate for leadership,
Speaker 1: he hasn't been he hasn't won the seat in the
Speaker 1: the Conservative Party yet. But Pierre Pouliver has kind of
Speaker 1: always flirted to some degree with UM far right talking
Speaker 1: points like I don't I I specialize in hey groups,
Speaker 1: I don't want to make too many pronouncements about mainstream conservatism. Um.
Speaker 1: But even by kind of members of the very far
Speaker 1: right who often have turned against the Conservative Party over
Speaker 1: the course of the pandemic. He's often referred to as
Speaker 1: the adult in the room. Um, and while still a politician,
Speaker 1: kind of their best bet for getting someone in office
Speaker 1: that they would actually like to see in power. Um,
Speaker 1: which could I mean could be interesting to see how
Speaker 1: they if they will be continued support for the PPC
Speaker 1: and two to four years. Um. But yeah, I just
Speaker 1: think there there is a real hardening of the right.
Speaker 1: And it's not like the Overton window is shifting. It's
Speaker 1: just like it's getting wider, like more and more is
Speaker 1: being incorporated as opposed to be just going in one
Speaker 1: direction or another. That disenfranchisement is a driving factor. Like
Speaker 1: they view this populist kind of uprising or up swelling
Speaker 1: um that they're seeing now as a function of democracy
Speaker 1: or like part of how democracy is supposed to function.
Speaker 1: So again, like if if you talk to them, they
Speaker 1: will quite earnestly say many of them anyway, we'll quite
Speaker 1: earnestly say it like this is about freedom, is about
Speaker 1: having my voice heard. Yeah, but without a lot of
Speaker 1: thought about how that will actually functioned in a broader scale.
Speaker 1: I mean that just plays into like alienation as like
Speaker 1: a general concept, right, Like we're so disconnected from everything
Speaker 1: about our lives, disconnected from you know, the way we work,
Speaker 1: disconnected from our interactions with other people, between disconnected from
Speaker 1: like you know, money or food, you know, it's all
Speaker 1: the stuff, and like disconnected from politics. Is that the
Speaker 1: only way that you can actually something that feels real,
Speaker 1: the only thing that actually feels like reality, is going
Speaker 1: to do this thing in person because everything else is
Speaker 1: so disjointed. Um it's there is so much of that
Speaker 1: space in between the phenomenon and the actual thing that is.
Speaker 1: It leaves you wanting something which you don't know quite what.
Speaker 1: So yeah, you're going to drive to Ottawa because that
Speaker 1: feels so much more real. That feels like actual politics,
Speaker 1: and the kind of it is like that's like, that's
Speaker 1: that's that's always when it feels like when you're when
Speaker 1: you're like when you're when you're protesting, it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm actually doing politics now, because that's how everything gets
Speaker 1: set up is by that type of like you know,
Speaker 1: getting people on the ground, and it's such a more
Speaker 1: personal way to engage than you know, putting a no
Speaker 1: into a box every two to four years. Like yeah,
Speaker 1: I I imagine it does feel substantive. And then I mean,
Speaker 1: voting power is centered in our urban centers as well,
Speaker 1: so there is there is a real disconnect with the
Speaker 1: representation that that rural people again Western the Western provinces received.
Speaker 1: I now want to specifically talk about police response and
Speaker 1: the way needs this occupation and blockades being handled will
Speaker 1: affect the political organizing in the future. I think initially
Speaker 1: the majority of police concerns and what they were actually
Speaker 1: focused on responding to was fears around the convoy storming
Speaker 1: Parliament or if the convoys were going to do something
Speaker 1: exceedingly violent, which I don't think was necessarily the convoys
Speaker 1: actionable objective from the beginning, if you listen to what
Speaker 1: they were actually saying, it will it was more about
Speaker 1: choking out the city and applying pressure on government officials.
Speaker 1: But the initial non violence, coupled with the shield of
Speaker 1: being conservative, white and middle class whom you know the
Speaker 1: police are less likely to react as brutally to allowed
Speaker 1: time for the infrastructure to rise that let the protest
Speaker 1: turn into a full scale occupation of a North American city.
Speaker 1: The first real action police took against the occupation was
Speaker 1: on the evening of Sunday, February six, Demonstrators were gathering
Speaker 1: for dinner than dozens of officers and riot gear carrying
Speaker 1: munitions launchers raided a camp after footage of stockpiles and
Speaker 1: gas cans went viral days previous, in an attempt to
Speaker 1: cut the supply route. Police say they seized around three
Speaker 1: thousand and seven liters of fuel and two vehicles, including
Speaker 1: a diesel tank, but within hours of the raid, protesters
Speaker 1: from the camp broadcast reassurance to their supporters and continue
Speaker 1: to organize just goodalizing smarter tactics. The day after the
Speaker 1: police raid, protesters continued to deliver fuel to downtown truckers
Speaker 1: as they executed a coordinated effort to exhaust police resources.
Speaker 1: Hundreds of demonstrators carried fuel cans, some empty, some not,
Speaker 1: just right past officers, who mostly stood watched as hundreds
Speaker 1: of people trolled them with decoy cans, while others smuggled
Speaker 1: in more fuel within the safety of the large crowd
Speaker 1: right in the middle of the day. Ottawa Police Deputy
Speaker 1: Chief Steve Bell said the demonstrators were filling cast cans
Speaker 1: with water to distract officers attempting to subvert their efforts,
Speaker 1: and that one officer was swarmed by the crowd while
Speaker 1: trying to confiscate fuel. To date, police have made around
Speaker 1: thirty arrests and issued thousands of tickets, launched more than
Speaker 1: eighty criminal investigations, and four hundred plus hate incidents are
Speaker 1: also being investigated. Earlier this week, Peter slowly said that
Speaker 1: the force would turn up the heat as the police
Speaker 1: started to crack down on anyone bringing material aid such
Speaker 1: as fuel too protesters. Police dismantled a protest camp near
Speaker 1: the Readieu Canal downtown and a fuel operation on the
Speaker 1: Coventry Road east of the Core, but some trucks and
Speaker 1: demonstrators continued to occupy downtown streets and the staging area
Speaker 1: on Coventry. Police say that they need an additional eighteen
Speaker 1: hundred more reinforcements from federal and provincial governments to help
Speaker 1: end the crisis. The entire Ottawa Police force numbers only
Speaker 1: twelve hundred, but it's been supplemented with several hundred officers
Speaker 1: from the Ontario Provisional Police and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police,
Speaker 1: as well as local police forces elsewhere in Ontario over
Speaker 1: the past few weeks. Near the end of the second
Speaker 1: week of occupation, dug Ford, the Premier of Ontario declared
Speaker 1: a state of emergency for the entire province, warning protesters
Speaker 1: demanding an end to pandemic restrictions that if they do
Speaker 1: not disband, there will be consequences and they will be severe.
Speaker 1: He said that those who continue to impede the movement
Speaker 1: of people and goods could face fines and up to
Speaker 1: one hundred thousand Canadian dollars, up to a year in prison,
Speaker 1: and the vocation of their driver's license. During the cold
Speaker 1: morning of Sunday, February, police largely cleared the portion of
Speaker 1: the self styled freedom of Convoy blocking the Ambassador Bridge
Speaker 1: US Canada border crossing on the road between Windsor, Ontario,
Speaker 1: and Detroit. The clearing marked a week since the border
Speaker 1: blockade had begun. Police made several arrests and towed vehicles
Speaker 1: in connection to the demonstration that had disrupted traffic and
Speaker 1: the flow of goods. After law enforcement enforced the injunction
Speaker 1: enacted two days prior, ordering truckers and our supporters to leave,
Speaker 1: and ticketed and towed vehicles. A defined core of some
Speaker 1: two dozen protesters had remained on foot as temperatures dropped
Speaker 1: below freezing, but around nine thirty local time, police had
Speaker 1: mostly cleared the street to the bridge and were deployed
Speaker 1: around the area. It was unclear, however, how large police
Speaker 1: presidents would remain to prevent vehicles and demonstrators from returning there. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: in the capital of Ottawa, police grappled with an in
Speaker 1: flux of anti government and anti vaccine mandate demonstrators for
Speaker 1: a third straight weekend. Despite both local and provincial officials
Speaker 1: declaring states of emergency, law enforcement appeared to be unsuccessful
Speaker 1: in attempts to get the Freedom Convoy protesters to leave
Speaker 1: by threatening them with fines, prison time, and loss of
Speaker 1: their licenses. Police have not made any large effort to
Speaker 1: asrupt to the convoys in Ottawa, similar to what they
Speaker 1: did on Sunday in Windsor, Ontario. Otto Police say that
Speaker 1: over four thousand demonstrators were in this city throughout the day. However,
Speaker 1: on Monday, February fourteenth, police action was taken against the
Speaker 1: blockade at the Coots border crossing that had shut down
Speaker 1: cross border travel for almost three weeks. The RCNP said
Speaker 1: in a press release early Monday morning that they became
Speaker 1: aware of a small organized group within the larger protest
Speaker 1: at Coots, which led to eleven arrests. They say that
Speaker 1: they had information that the group had access to a
Speaker 1: cash of firearms and ammunition in three trailers. During the raid,
Speaker 1: officers seized long guns, handguns, multiple sets of body armor,
Speaker 1: a machete, and a large commantity of ammunition and some
Speaker 1: high capacity magazines. Later that day, to other arrests were
Speaker 1: made in connection to the blockade. Following the police raid
Speaker 1: and the thirteen arrests, some other organizers of the protest
Speaker 1: said a decision was reached voluntarily to leave the Coots area.
Speaker 1: Around Tuesday morning. The organizers made a statement saying, quote,
Speaker 1: we were infiltrated by an extreme element. Our objective was
Speaker 1: to be here peacefully to keep that message going. We
Speaker 1: wanted to peacefully leave Coots and return to our families.
Speaker 1: As of Tuesday, both the border crossing at the Ambassador
Speaker 1: Bridge to Detroit and the Coot Sport of entry to
Speaker 1: Montana are open once again. As the border opened back
Speaker 1: up in Coots the previous blockade, protesters and police embraced
Speaker 1: each other with hugs and handshakes. Meanwhile, on Monday, prim
Speaker 1: As Our Justin Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act for the
Speaker 1: first time in Canadian history to give the federal government
Speaker 1: and police extra powers to handle the ongoing blockades and
Speaker 1: protests against pandemic restrictions. Here's how the measures were taking
Speaker 1: today will help get the situation under control. The police
Speaker 1: will be given more tools to restore order in places
Speaker 1: where public assemblies can constitute illegal and dangerous activities, such
Speaker 1: as blockades and occupations as seen in Ottawa, the Ambassador
Speaker 1: Bridge and elsewhere. These tools include strengthening their ability to
Speaker 1: impose fines or imprisonment. The government will designate secure and
Speaker 1: protect places and infrastructure that are critical to our economy
Speaker 1: and people's jobs, including border crossings and airports. We cannot
Speaker 1: and will not allow illegal and dangerous activities to continue.
Speaker 1: The Emergencies Act will also allow the government to make
Speaker 1: sure essential services are rendered, for example, in order to
Speaker 1: tow vehicles blocking roads. In addition, financial institutions will be
Speaker 1: authorized or directed to render essential services to help address
Speaker 1: the situation, including by regulating and prohibiting the use of
Speaker 1: property to fund or support illegal blockades. Finally, will enable
Speaker 1: the r c MP to enforce municipal by laws and
Speaker 1: provincial offenses where required. This is what the Emergencies Act
Speaker 1: does The Emergencies Act, which replaced the War Measures Act
Speaker 1: in the nineteen eighties, defines a national emergency as a temporary,
Speaker 1: urgent and critical situation that is seriously endangers the line,
Speaker 1: health or safety of Canadians and is of such proportions
Speaker 1: or nature as to extend the capacity of authority of
Speaker 1: a province to deal with it. The unprecedented deployment of
Speaker 1: the Emergency's Act gives police quote more tools to restore
Speaker 1: order in places where public assembly is constitute illegal and
Speaker 1: dangerous activities, such as blockades and occupations. According to Trudeau,
Speaker 1: but the thing is police already had all the tools
Speaker 1: they needed. The illegal occupations and blockades were already illegal,
Speaker 1: they just didn't want to enforce it. You can look
Speaker 1: at how the coots, protesters and the police are hugging, right.
Speaker 1: This isn't a matter of having not enough tools. All
Speaker 1: this does is set a terrible precedent for using this
Speaker 1: type of extra power in the future to respond to protests,
Speaker 1: because the cops are still going to take a very
Speaker 1: gentle approach if they ever are forced to take physical
Speaker 1: action against the Ottawa occupation. While using the extra powers
Speaker 1: of the Emergencies Act. The Finance Minister of Hanada also
Speaker 1: announced on Monday a broadening of the laws regarding financing
Speaker 1: of crime and terrorism to now include crowdfunding and also
Speaker 1: extra surveillance measures against people who donate and use crowd
Speaker 1: funds for criminal acts, including illegal protests. As part of
Speaker 1: invoking the Emergencies Act, we are announcing the following immediate actions. First,
Speaker 1: we are broadening the scope of Canada's anti money lauder
Speaker 1: laundering and terrorist financing rules so that they cover crowdfunding
Speaker 1: platforms and the payment service providers they use. These changes
Speaker 1: cover all forms of transactions, including digital assets such as cryptocurrencies.
Speaker 1: The illegal blockades have highlighted the fact that crowdfunding platforms
Speaker 1: and some of the payment service providers they use are
Speaker 1: not fully captured under Proceeds of Crime and Terrorist Financing Act.
Speaker 1: Our banks and financial institutions are already obligated to report
Speaker 1: to the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Center of Canada
Speaker 1: or FINTRACK. As of today, all crowdfunding platforms and the
Speaker 1: payment service providers they use must register with fintrack and
Speaker 1: they must report large and suspicious transactions to fintrack. This
Speaker 1: will help mitigate the risk that these platforms receive illicit funds,
Speaker 1: increase the quality and quantity of intelligence received by fintrack,
Speaker 1: and make more information available to support investigations by law
Speaker 1: enforcement into these illegal blockades. That's kind of all the
Speaker 1: information I have at the time of recording. So now
Speaker 1: I'm going to talk more about the potential political effects
Speaker 1: that this protest could have, not just on Canada, but
Speaker 1: also in how we view protest in general. So the
Speaker 1: actual result of liberal media framing this type of protest
Speaker 1: as scary terrorism is laying the groundwork for brutal police
Speaker 1: actions against massive, mostly non violent, and tactically smart protests
Speaker 1: to be more normalized across Canada, and extremely brutal police
Speaker 1: response and harsh charges are unlikely to be leveled against
Speaker 1: a protest made up of these conservatives, but will absolutely
Speaker 1: happen to any future progressive social justice cause, especially if
Speaker 1: they use occupy style tactics. The more powers police obtain
Speaker 1: and the legal precedents that are set will have long
Speaker 1: lasting implications, with legal consequences that will always come down
Speaker 1: harder on the left than they do on the right.
Speaker 1: Police will do a bare minimum to resolve this conservative
Speaker 1: so called freedom protest, but then will you it as
Speaker 1: a justification to grab greater resources and power and use
Speaker 1: this movement to justify severe preventative protest suppression in the future.
Speaker 1: If liberals can widely celebrate and thirst for harsh crackdowns
Speaker 1: of a protest made up of white conservatives and their families,
Speaker 1: calling the entire movement a criminal enterprise, and cheering on
Speaker 1: as police steal property of the protesters despite what the
Speaker 1: majority of these protesters are doing, just being kind of
Speaker 1: camping onside of a street. Think of all of the
Speaker 1: ways that consent can be manufactured to clamp down on
Speaker 1: any future large scale protest, especially when the movement isn't
Speaker 1: made up of a bunch of regular white people and
Speaker 1: their kids, and instead of actually challenges the underlying power
Speaker 1: structures that prop up white Canada, instead of just reinforcing
Speaker 1: it like the Convoy does. I have a similar issue
Speaker 1: around all of the hubbub around the fundraisers right. Restricting
Speaker 1: where crowdfunded resources can come from will only result in
Speaker 1: future political social us as causes to be negatively impacted,
Speaker 1: whether that be bail funds or supporting indigenous blockades from
Speaker 1: out of country. On February ten, the Canadian federal government
Speaker 1: effectively shut down the Freedom Convoys gives end go fundraiser,
Speaker 1: making it illegal for the funds to be used in
Speaker 1: any way. Governments setting the precedent for shutting down protest
Speaker 1: crowdfunding is not a good thing now. Any future of
Speaker 1: protest bail funds and crowdfunding for the set In blockade
Speaker 1: will always be in jeopardy, and by no means saying
Speaker 1: that action against a generally hateful, anti democratic, and dangerously
Speaker 1: conspiratorial protest isn't justified, but just when governments start using
Speaker 1: it as reasons for more power and creating new precedents
Speaker 1: for years in jail and hundreds of thousands of dollars
Speaker 1: and fines for an occupation. Protest like that shouldn't be
Speaker 1: cheered on because those things will only come back to
Speaker 1: bite progressive causes a lot harder than they will be
Speaker 1: used against the conservative con lawyers. There has increasingly been
Speaker 1: attempts at counter protesting the Ottawa Convoy and the various
Speaker 1: Convoy inspired protests around the country, many of which faced
Speaker 1: harsher police response than any of the convert protests have
Speaker 1: up until this point, but those community led counterprotesting efforts
Speaker 1: are vital. The RAM Ranch resistance actions are still ongoing.
Speaker 1: On Sunday night, the u r L for the Gifts
Speaker 1: End Go fundraiser was hacked by activists who redirected the
Speaker 1: page to a video of the frozen song Let It Go,
Speaker 1: accompanying a manifesto condemning the fundraiser and the Convoy. And
Speaker 1: that's great, and that is wonderful counter protesting. That is
Speaker 1: very in terms of effective ways to shut down fundraising
Speaker 1: efforts for basically pseudo fascist you know, anti anti democratic,
Speaker 1: conspiracy led movement. That's great, right. And this was hours
Speaker 1: after it was officially confirmed via data leaks that around
Speaker 1: fifty scent of gives End Go donations for the Convoy
Speaker 1: came from the United States, around came from Canada, and
Speaker 1: then two percent came from the UK. Although I think
Speaker 1: it's worth mentioning that for the initial ten million dollar
Speaker 1: go fund me, we only have confirmation that around thirty
Speaker 1: three thou dollars came from the United States. To understand
Speaker 1: how the Convoy flash blockade is working, it's useful to
Speaker 1: get away from painting all of the participants themselves as extremists,
Speaker 1: because the fact that regular Canadian right wingers are what's
Speaker 1: making this possible, has a whole bunch of other implications
Speaker 1: that people aren't really talking about. I'm seeing a lot
Speaker 1: of Canadians who are just really upset about how the
Speaker 1: convoys affecting cities and the country as a whole, which,
Speaker 1: you know, reasonable, I am, it is a thing to
Speaker 1: be upset about. But then just jumping to insist that
Speaker 1: it must be inorganic, I think is kind of faulty
Speaker 1: focusing instead on theories around foreign influences and ashtar organizing,
Speaker 1: elements of which have been present, sure, but also the
Speaker 1: impact in which is I think kind of an overblown
Speaker 1: But even if those things are completely true and major factors,
Speaker 1: that still overlooks the fact that there are thousands of
Speaker 1: real Canadians from around the country camped up in Ottawa,
Speaker 1: and the majority of those Canadians sitting in the streets
Speaker 1: are not Nazis right or really even extremists, and most
Speaker 1: of those people are not receiving personal funding from dark
Speaker 1: money billionaires. They consider themselves regular, working class, freedom loving Canadians.
Speaker 1: It's much harder to reconcile a homegrown movement full of
Speaker 1: participants that have slid further to the right over the
Speaker 1: past two years due to rampant online misinformation coupled with
Speaker 1: ineffectual government support during the pandemic. It's easy to point
Speaker 1: to so called organizers who are definitely more fashion, large
Speaker 1: scale sketchy donations, and far right media figures who are
Speaker 1: trying to jump support for the Convoy. But those things
Speaker 1: alone don't get many of thousands and thousands of people
Speaker 1: and their kids to drive across country for a cause
Speaker 1: that they earnestly believe in the years of political alienation
Speaker 1: and disenfrantisement that caused that to happen is a lot
Speaker 1: harder to solve than just cracking down on organizers and donations.
Speaker 1: Watching homegrown reactionary street politics that one day can grow
Speaker 1: into an actual far right, populist and fascist movement is
Speaker 1: a lot more frightening than the idea of overseased astroturft organizing.
Speaker 1: Not that those things are mutually exclusive always, but I'm
Speaker 1: just trying to make a good point here. Despite cries
Speaker 1: to make this Canada's January six, in a way, the
Speaker 1: Convoy is more effective the January six in terms of
Speaker 1: the evolution of valid political action. It's pushed the boundary
Speaker 1: on what is deemed as acceptable and even possible for
Speaker 1: large scale occupations and supply line blockades in the major
Speaker 1: North American urban setting. People who would never consider themselves
Speaker 1: militant are now involved in multiple border crossing blockades. That's
Speaker 1: cost hundreds of millions of dollars and to get to
Speaker 1: this point, So how many things need to happen? COVID
Speaker 1: isolation offered fertile ground for people's politics to unknowing these slide.
Speaker 1: More to the extreme, the many in person connections that
Speaker 1: help prevent people from falling prey to conspiratorial thinking ceased
Speaker 1: to exist. General frustration at Trudeau and the perceived notion
Speaker 1: of liberalism and elitism has been steadily growing since, and
Speaker 1: all that mounted up frustration is now being released and
Speaker 1: as a result, the invisible Overton window of acceptable political
Speaker 1: action has shifted right in regular conservatives minds, and a
Speaker 1: movement like this is hard to dissolve. Police actions have
Speaker 1: the chance of escalating the situation and elongating people's willingness
Speaker 1: to protest, and even if more mandates get removed, that
Speaker 1: doesn't mean the protests will stop either. Removing the Alberta
Speaker 1: mandates didn't stop the Coots border blockade, for instance, because
Speaker 1: you know, even if all the mandates in Canada get rescinded,
Speaker 1: which which they won't and whish they shouldn't. But even
Speaker 1: if they did, that would still leave the US's Vaccine
Speaker 1: Board requirements which are preventing vaccinated truckers from entering the
Speaker 1: States anyway. Similar tactics and protests inspired by the Canadian
Speaker 1: convoy have broken out overseas in recent weeks. The convoy
Speaker 1: and blocking inspired protests in New Zealand have led to
Speaker 1: frequent clashes with police outside New Zealand's Parliament building. For
Speaker 1: the past two weeks. French protesters formed their own Freedom
Speaker 1: Convoy against the government's vaccine mandates. The convoy converged on
Speaker 1: the Shan's Aliza in Paris on February second, where protesters
Speaker 1: were met by seven thousand police members and tear gas.
Speaker 1: Unlike Canada, where the government failed to stop a blockade
Speaker 1: at the U S border, French authorities got way ahead
Speaker 1: of this protest by stopping at least five hundred vehicles
Speaker 1: before they even got to Paris. Only a few dicent
Speaker 1: cars made it to the Seans Aliz, and the police
Speaker 1: ticketed three hundred protesters who were present at the demonstration.
Speaker 1: Protests against government coronavirus restrictions have cut on in Europe
Speaker 1: and other parts of the world in recent days, but
Speaker 1: they remained more subdued than the Canadian demonstrations. A convoy
Speaker 1: of about five hundred vehicles, mostly from France who are
Speaker 1: borrowed from entering Brussels of just a few days ago,
Speaker 1: leaving several hundred protesters to gather on foot at a
Speaker 1: city square instead. Another convoy of several hundred vehicles blocked
Speaker 1: access to the seat of the Netherlands government in the
Speaker 1: Hague on February twelve, And of course many political figures
Speaker 1: in the US are really trying to get a convoy
Speaker 1: esque protest kicked off here in the United States, Tucker
Speaker 1: Carlson and Fox News in general has covered the convoy
Speaker 1: non stop, giving it tons and tons of support. Tucker
Speaker 1: has said that the Canadian trucker convoy is the single
Speaker 1: most successful human rights protest in a generation. Senator Ran
Speaker 1: Paul So that he hopes the truckers come to America
Speaker 1: and specifically to clog up cities. At least nine members
Speaker 1: of Congress, all Republicans, have all publicized their support for
Speaker 1: the convoy. Participants on Twitter. Self appointed organizers for a
Speaker 1: US based convoy have found quick support from conservative outlets.
Speaker 1: US convoy organizer Brian Brace has been making the rounds
Speaker 1: on Fox News, sitting down with Carlson, as well as
Speaker 1: the networks Fox and Friends Morning Show. Brace says that
Speaker 1: he hoped to organize a cross country convoy from California
Speaker 1: to Washington, d C starting around March fourth. Routes to
Speaker 1: converge on d C from across the country are being planned,
Speaker 1: while the group's telegram channel is actively soliciting volunteers and
Speaker 1: donations of items like tents, generators, and p A systems.
Speaker 1: I kind of hope people on the left can look
Speaker 1: at the tactics being used in Canada, some that have
Speaker 1: worked and some that have faltered. But in terms of
Speaker 1: like anti capitalist action, you can't do much better than
Speaker 1: causing hundreds and millions of dollars and losses to international
Speaker 1: trade between two of the biggest countries in the world.
Speaker 1: Right now, no protest movement can be replicated it any
Speaker 1: movement can be analyzed, and that can inform how folks
Speaker 1: approach future movements as they spontaneously arise, and I at
Speaker 1: the very least help you have a better idea now
Speaker 1: of how only a few thousand people can totally choke
Speaker 1: out a major city, because we've talked about this possibility before.
Speaker 1: You know, a group of people overwhelming local law enforcement
Speaker 1: and taking over and shutting down a sizable portion of
Speaker 1: a popular metropolitan area, not to mention simultaneously blocking off
Speaker 1: supply lines, trade routes, and international border crossings. The evolution
Speaker 1: of these medium scale anti government resistance tactics is something
Speaker 1: we all should be paying attention to as the political
Speaker 1: tensions continue to rise right outside our doorstep, because it's
Speaker 1: always too late when you realize the calls coming from
Speaker 1: inside the house. Hey there, I'm Scott Rank, host of
Speaker 1: the podcast History Unplugged. And if you're dreaming of being
Speaker 1: a full time podcaster someday, you and I have a
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Speaker 1: the world's most inspiring minds to uncover what makes them tick,
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Speaker 1: You'll even hear me break bread with some of the
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Speaker 1: I can't wait to share all of this and more
Speaker 1: with you. Listen to do Relie but at your service
Speaker 1: on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you get your podcasts. Words incapable of being racist people
Speaker 1: joking about Canadians. Can't do it to Canada. Can't do
Speaker 1: it to Canada or the fuss it could happen here
Speaker 1: the French. We can be racist against the French. It's true. Yeah,
Speaker 1: speaking of speaking that makes Quebec angrier, but like speaking
Speaker 1: of racism, Chris, what's our topic today? Yeah, today's episode
Speaker 1: is about why I hate the cops. Yeah, specifically it
Speaker 1: is about is about Chicago Police Department and the many, many, many,
Speaker 1: many many crimes they have committed. Uh, we're gonna talk
Speaker 1: about well, Okay. To lead us in to explain what
Speaker 1: we're doing here today, I'm going to read a quote
Speaker 1: from from the late anthropologist David Graber from this book
Speaker 1: The Democracy Project. For my own part, I find what
Speaker 1: I call the rape torture and Murder test very useful.
Speaker 1: It's quite simple when presented with the political entity of
Speaker 1: some kind or another, whether a government, a social movement,
Speaker 1: a guerilla army, or really any other organized group, and
Speaker 1: trying to decide whether they deserve condemnation or support. First
Speaker 1: ask do they commit or do they order others to
Speaker 1: commit acts of rape, torture or murder. It seems a
Speaker 1: self evident question. But again it's surprising how rarely, or better,
Speaker 1: how selectively it is applied. Or perhaps it might seem
Speaker 1: surprising until one starts applying it and discovers conventional wisdom
Speaker 1: of many will political issues instantly turned upside down. In
Speaker 1: two thousand six, for example, most people in the United
Speaker 1: States read about the Mexican governments sending federal troops to
Speaker 1: quell a popular revolt initiated by a teachers union against
Speaker 1: notoriously corrupt governor in the southern state of Wahaka. In
Speaker 1: the US media, this was universally presented as a good thing,
Speaker 1: a restoration of order. The rebels, after all, were violent,
Speaker 1: having thrown rocks and molotov cocktails, even if they only
Speaker 1: threw them at heavily armed police, causing no serious injuries.
Speaker 1: No one, to my knowledge, has ever suggested that the
Speaker 1: rebels raped, tortured, or murdered anyone. Neither, as anyone who
Speaker 1: knows anything about the events and questions seriously contested the
Speaker 1: fact that forces loyal to the Mexican government had raped, tortured,
Speaker 1: and murdered quite a number of people in suppressing the rebellion.
Speaker 1: Yet somehow such acts, unlike the rebels stone throwing, cannot
Speaker 1: be described as violent at all, let alone as rape, torture,
Speaker 1: or murder, but only appear, if at all, as accusations
Speaker 1: of human rights violations, or in some similarly bloodless legalistic language. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and that that's the framework that I want to
Speaker 1: take the Chicago Police Department so people can understand why
Speaker 1: and how and just just sort of get people can
Speaker 1: get a taste of the sheer horror that anti police
Speaker 1: organizers and just like regular people in Chicago are fighting
Speaker 1: every day because Chicago Police Department fails the rape torture
Speaker 1: murder test again and again and again and again. And
Speaker 1: so we are going to tell four stories of torture, rape,
Speaker 1: and murder by the Chicago Police Department. That seems fun.
Speaker 1: It's gonna be great. Happy pants on, kids, go for
Speaker 1: a cruise, you know, take the top down. Um, it's
Speaker 1: it's time for a good old fest. So our our
Speaker 1: first story of torture, rape and murder by the CPD
Speaker 1: is the story of Chicago's infamous torture ring, led by
Speaker 1: a man named John Burch. Yeah. Now, John Bird has
Speaker 1: been a military police sergeant working at a poduble you
Speaker 1: camp in Vietnam. So so immediately you have a guy
Speaker 1: who's not only a troop cop, but he's he's he's
Speaker 1: a troop cop while he was a troop and then
Speaker 1: he becomes a cop and you know, nothing, nothing good
Speaker 1: can possibly come from that. And the other thing and
Speaker 1: nothing good can possibly come from, is the fact that
Speaker 1: while Burge was in Vietnam, the US was doing some
Speaker 1: just really six ships to Vietnamese prisoners, including rape, gang rape,
Speaker 1: rape with hard objects, and rape followed by murder. UH.
Speaker 1: The electric shock called the bell telephone hour rendered by
Speaker 1: attaching wires to the genitals and keep your keep that
Speaker 1: one in mind. We have not seen the last of
Speaker 1: that UH and rape using eels and snakes, as we
Speaker 1: have talked about on bastards of it before. Um. They're
Speaker 1: also like they're also a huge water boarding fans. So this,
Speaker 1: this is, this is the environment that Burge is sort
Speaker 1: of you know, being trained as a copy in right,
Speaker 1: He's he's one of those these these p W camps
Speaker 1: and he gets the purple heart for his service. Now
Speaker 1: when when he comes back to the US and he
Speaker 1: becomes a cop, and within about three years Burge and
Speaker 1: his white cock buddy start just absolutely beating the crap
Speaker 1: out of black suspects. UM. One of these prisoners, a
Speaker 1: man named Anthony Holmes, was repeatedly tortured with electric shocks
Speaker 1: and almost suffocated a death of a bag put over
Speaker 1: his head. Holmes was tortured so badly he literally thought
Speaker 1: he was going to die, so he confessed to a
Speaker 1: crime he didn't commit and spent thirty years in prison. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I actually interviewed one of the people tortured by Burge
Speaker 1: who was had his testicles electrocut. Didn't. Yeah, yeah, we're
Speaker 1: gonna get into that. But yeah, it's it's it's horrible.
Speaker 1: It's it's pretty the worst things I've ever read. Uh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and Holmes, this case is particularly grim because so he
Speaker 1: tells his lawyers that he's been tortured, and his lawyers
Speaker 1: don't believe him, and so you know, he, yeah, he
Speaker 1: went to spending thirty years in prison that he didn't do.
Speaker 1: Um those shocks. Yeah yeah, So okay, So that they
Speaker 1: have this box, right, it's his box as a handcrate generator.
Speaker 1: Birge calls at the N word box. Uh. And he
Speaker 1: just attaches people's like it's just attached it to people.
Speaker 1: I wonder what, Oh yeah, no, it's he's all of
Speaker 1: these people are so indescribably racist. It's like, yeah, he
Speaker 1: he just like he keeps this box like on his
Speaker 1: desk at the Chicago Police Department. Like it's just on
Speaker 1: his desk at work. Um. Now. The other thing is
Speaker 1: notable about this is that he he and the people
Speaker 1: around him would call just electrocuting people by touching alligator
Speaker 1: lamps to them and putting nine thousand, two undred vaults
Speaker 1: into them. They called it the Vietnamese treatment because I
Speaker 1: guess what he learned this in Vietnam. Um Now, Birch
Speaker 1: is so called Midnight Crew had had an incredibly high
Speaker 1: rate of solving crimes, and he has an incredibly high
Speaker 1: rate of quote unquote solving crimes because he's just torturing
Speaker 1: random black people until they confess um and you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's not like people don't know he's doing this.
Speaker 1: There's there's detective from the seventies who like walks in
Speaker 1: on Burde torturing a guy, and he goes through superiors
Speaker 1: and it's like Burgess Burgess torturing the people, and that
Speaker 1: detective gets reprimanded and were reprimanded for like reporting the
Speaker 1: torture and transferred to another area. So Burge gets promoted
Speaker 1: to sergeant in nineteen seventy seven and then again to
Speaker 1: lieutenant in nineteen eighty, and he gets he gets put
Speaker 1: in charge of the newly formed Violent Crimes Unit. And
Speaker 1: from from from this position, his rate of terror intensifies.
Speaker 1: And so so in nineteen eight two, someone shoots two
Speaker 1: white cops. And you know, this is one of one
Speaker 1: of the sort of classic police things. Anytime a cop
Speaker 1: dies the the the police department just goes fucking ballistic.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah. And and in this case, with with with
Speaker 1: Burge in charge, he basically turns the entire South Side
Speaker 1: into what can only be described as a fascist police state. Um,
Speaker 1: here's this is. This is from the Chicago police torture scandal,
Speaker 1: illegal and political history. In in Cuney's Law Review, police
Speaker 1: kicked down doors and terrorized scores of African Americans. And
Speaker 1: what Jesse Jackson of Operation Push Push and Raynald Robinson
Speaker 1: if the Afro American police lead condemned as quote martial
Speaker 1: law that smacked of Nazi Germany. Thirteen witnesses were smothered
Speaker 1: with bags and threatened with bolt cutters and bursion as
Speaker 1: detectives took several young men who they wrongly suspected to
Speaker 1: be the killers to police headqure horders and tortured them.
Speaker 1: And I mean they're just like you know that they're
Speaker 1: buzzing down people's doors or dragging people away out in
Speaker 1: the middle of the night. They do this for about
Speaker 1: five days before they arrest two brothers and who again
Speaker 1: had nothing to do with this. They just decided that
Speaker 1: these two were the guys and tortured just the absolute
Speaker 1: shit out of him. Um. One of the brothers, Andrew Wilson.
Speaker 1: But before birds even gets there, because this is the
Speaker 1: everything about birds. It's not just birds, right, like everyone
Speaker 1: he's like around him, he is also a torturer. It's
Speaker 1: just birds sort of, you know, but birds the guy
Speaker 1: like directing a lot of it. So even before he
Speaker 1: gets there, Yeah, like Wilson gets like he's burned with
Speaker 1: a cigarette lighter. He gets strangled with the bag over
Speaker 1: his head again and then just like beat him a
Speaker 1: bunch of times, and then it gets even worse. Um
Speaker 1: birds like you know, but birds. That's the thing where
Speaker 1: where he likes he straps him to the to the
Speaker 1: electric box, right, but he also straps him against the radiator.
Speaker 1: And you know these are like old Chicago steam radiators. Right,
Speaker 1: if you touch, if you like touch them even briefly,
Speaker 1: you get burned. And so yeah, he straps into a
Speaker 1: radiator and every time he like gets shocked. He jerks
Speaker 1: back into the radiator, it gets burned. Yeah. I have
Speaker 1: a friend who get a second degree burned dripped from
Speaker 1: like briefly touching one of those things. Yeah. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean it's basically it's basically tying someone to an oven.
Speaker 1: It's turns. Yeah, I mean it's it is breasttaking in
Speaker 1: humanity on a scale that is yeah, um pop esque. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's it's real. It's real cops shit. Um,
Speaker 1: it's for sure, real cop shit. Yeah. So he here's
Speaker 1: an interview, uh with Wilson. There's there's an excerpt of
Speaker 1: one from from the book Writings from the World of Policing.
Speaker 1: Wilson said that Burg cranked the generator, sending nine thousand,
Speaker 1: two hundred volts of electricity into his body. He put
Speaker 1: it on my fingers, Wilson explained, one of the clamps
Speaker 1: on one finger and one of the other finger, and
Speaker 1: then he kept cranking it and cranking it. And I
Speaker 1: was hollering and screaming. I was calling for help. My
Speaker 1: teeth was grinding, flickering in my head. Pain. It hurts,
Speaker 1: Wilson continued, But it stays in your head Okay, it
Speaker 1: stays in your head and it grinds your teeth. It
Speaker 1: grinds constantly, grinds constantly. The pain just stays in your
Speaker 1: head and your teeth cut constantly. Grinds and grinds and
Speaker 1: grinds and grinds and grinds and grinds. Now Wilson, they
Speaker 1: do this to Wilson for like a day, and she
Speaker 1: doesn't confess. He he refuses to confess because he didn't
Speaker 1: do it, and so he goes to like they bring
Speaker 1: him in front of a family prosecutor, and Wilson tells
Speaker 1: the prosecutor that he's being tortured, and you know, it's
Speaker 1: incredibly obviously being tortured, like there's just there's marks a
Speaker 1: lover's body, like his his face is destroyed, and the
Speaker 1: prosecutor sends him back to Burge, who tortures him more.
Speaker 1: And but by the time Burge is done with him,
Speaker 1: Wilson is so visibly fucked up that the police lock
Speaker 1: up keeper like takes a look at it, like takes
Speaker 1: one look at him and goes, I'm not going to
Speaker 1: be a part of this and refuses to put him
Speaker 1: in lock up. Uh Cook Cook County Jails like Director
Speaker 1: of Medical Services um sends a letter going like, this
Speaker 1: man was tortured to the police. We found a human being. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: well you know, and it's like every one, once, every like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, maybe like a hundred pages of reading
Speaker 1: about this, you find one person who is a normal
Speaker 1: human being. Unfortunately, the state's attorney, instead of prosecuting Burge
Speaker 1: for again attaching attaching a man's balls to a hand
Speaker 1: create generator and then electrocuting him. Uh, the state prosecutor
Speaker 1: and the police superintendent both publicly congratulate Birds for his work. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and Andrew Wilson me WI died in prison in two
Speaker 1: seven because this world is just the worst. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: you might be asking yourself, how does he get away
Speaker 1: with this? And the answer is that the CPD is
Speaker 1: complicit in burges torture at literally every level. Every attempt
Speaker 1: to stop Burge is derailed directly by the departments. And
Speaker 1: not only is he not stopped, he's repeatedly praised and
Speaker 1: promoted for his actions. And yeah, I mean that's that's
Speaker 1: how it goes. Yep. It's it's great, it's it's it's
Speaker 1: an institutionalized system of torture, rape, and murder that yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like that we have us a little abo grade,
Speaker 1: but yeah, I don't worry. We will well, I guess
Speaker 1: we won't actually get tob with grades specifically, but I
Speaker 1: can I can do, I can I can do an
Speaker 1: up grave tie in at the end of this part. So,
Speaker 1: the CPD has something they call the Code of Silence,
Speaker 1: And we'll talk about this more later, but basically, the
Speaker 1: core of the Code of Silence is that just no
Speaker 1: matter what crimes, what atrocities, what just inhuman pig horrors
Speaker 1: you see cops committing, you stay silent. Now. This code
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's it's a code that everyone sort
Speaker 1: of knows right in the police, but it's also directly
Speaker 1: enforced um and and it's enforced by the stuff Burge
Speaker 1: would you do, like just to other cops, Like he
Speaker 1: he would do things like if there was a cop
Speaker 1: who was like unhappy with him, he would like walk
Speaker 1: up behind them when they're opening a file cabinet and
Speaker 1: point a gun at their head and then go like
Speaker 1: bang and then do this like a thing that I
Speaker 1: can really only describe as a supervillain monologue about how
Speaker 1: like the projects are a dangerous place. Maybe you're gonna
Speaker 1: turn up dead. It's he also he has these street
Speaker 1: files that he keeps on like other cops families, so
Speaker 1: that if another cop like goes after him, he can
Speaker 1: have their family arrested and then plant evidence on them.
Speaker 1: Yeah that makes sense. Yeah, it's it's like, you know,
Speaker 1: like in a certain like he's doing this to their cops,
Speaker 1: and it's like, well, okay, like you know what, like
Speaker 1: what what possible? Like system of of of accountability quote
Speaker 1: on court or police reform is like ever going to
Speaker 1: do anything to a guy who will just do this
Speaker 1: two cops like and you know with the CPD actively
Speaker 1: backing hup there, there's there's nothing that can stop Burge.
Speaker 1: And I should mention here that there's persistent rumors that
Speaker 1: Burge as a klansmen um I I couldn't find like
Speaker 1: firm confirmation of it. He's he's certainly racist enough, but
Speaker 1: but I think, yeah, but like why would he why
Speaker 1: would he spend like That's that feels like almost he
Speaker 1: would be like why would I waste my time doing that,
Speaker 1: like talking about being racist when I can go out
Speaker 1: and torture people because I'm a racist every day, Like
Speaker 1: the clan already got it going on. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: think it's sometimes like, yeah, the question is immaterial. He
Speaker 1: is a member of the Chicago Police Department and organization
Speaker 1: is systematic racial terror, the likes of which the modern
Speaker 1: Clan can only dream of. Yeah whatever, Yeah, Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: like who cares he's he's he's jumped. Honestly, if he
Speaker 1: were spending time at clanmatings, at least he wouldn't be
Speaker 1: torturing people during time. Yeah, it's yeah, well, love love
Speaker 1: your police. When if he was a klansman that might
Speaker 1: have been slightly better. That's the big thing with like
Speaker 1: this type of like liberal response to the type of extremism.
Speaker 1: It's like they only view it as a problem if
Speaker 1: you're like explicitly part of this, you know, Like it's
Speaker 1: like very obvious to everyone white nationalist group. Right, they
Speaker 1: can watch a cop do all these horrible things. It's
Speaker 1: fine because that's just a cop. But if he's a
Speaker 1: clan member, then that's a problem. Like they can excuse
Speaker 1: all this horrible torture and not really be concerned about it.
Speaker 1: But if but if he had a robe in his closet,
Speaker 1: then it's suddenly this big issue. It's like no, like
Speaker 1: the issues that he was doing all this torture anyway,
Speaker 1: and he doesn't like this. You don't need to focus
Speaker 1: on like just the like just that identity, like that
Speaker 1: weird identity aspect of it. You. Yeah, the clan is
Speaker 1: old enough, and where's a uniform that is distinct enough
Speaker 1: that everybody recognizes is it as racist? Even though the
Speaker 1: Chicago Police Department is actually much more of a threat
Speaker 1: in terms of racism than the clan today, uh and
Speaker 1: was at that point in time. But you know, they're
Speaker 1: the cops, and if you're a suburban white liberal, they're
Speaker 1: there too, you know, help help keep your lawn safe
Speaker 1: or whatever. Um, So you don't you don't see them
Speaker 1: as the same inherently racial organization exactly, even though they are. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and even though I mean they're dragging people out of
Speaker 1: their homes and like just electrocuting them, like this is
Speaker 1: you know, this is this something also that I was
Speaker 1: very annoyed about when I was reading this was like
Speaker 1: you you read a lot of this stuff and then
Speaker 1: and you'll you'll get descriptions of it that are like, ah,
Speaker 1: this is something that like only happens in the pressure regimes,
Speaker 1: like Kazakhstan, and it's like, have you read anything about
Speaker 1: picture of the US Like this is like yeah, like
Speaker 1: we have officers over to other countries that often teach
Speaker 1: their police to do ship like this. That happens. But
Speaker 1: like when you were describing a whole bunch of stuff
Speaker 1: in the past, like you know, twenty minutes, I was
Speaker 1: thinking in my head and like, oh, yeah, this is
Speaker 1: just like stormtrooper ship. But the thing is it isn't
Speaker 1: like this just is copshit, and like, like the thing
Speaker 1: like the fact that like elevating it in my brain
Speaker 1: to it being like something other than cops is incorrect.
Speaker 1: You know, like this just is police stuff. It's not
Speaker 1: it's not necessarily stormtrooper ship. It's just is police ship.
Speaker 1: And the fact that those things are so synonymous that
Speaker 1: should be the part that's actually like upsetting is that yeah,
Speaker 1: it's actually there is really no difference and you shouldn't
Speaker 1: necessarily resort to calling it stormtrooper stuff because it is
Speaker 1: just what the police do all the time. There's this
Speaker 1: whole model you see people talking about it where they
Speaker 1: talk about like like the police are using unnecessary force
Speaker 1: and like they're there there there's like a certain threshold
Speaker 1: where if you go past it, like you know, sort
Speaker 1: of like like even you know, like I'm Gonna'm gonna
Speaker 1: read like that Birch has a lot of like when
Speaker 1: he winds up in court, like the judges look at
Speaker 1: this and are like, oh my god, this is unacceptable.
Speaker 1: How could this have happened? And you know, you get
Speaker 1: some good descriptions of it. I'm gonna this is a
Speaker 1: district judge court describing what Birds was doing. In the
Speaker 1: early eighties, there existed, in two in the City of
Speaker 1: Chicago a de facto policy practice and or custom of
Speaker 1: Chicago police officers exacting unconstitutional revenge and punishment against persons
Speaker 1: who they alleged had killed or injured a fellow officer.
Speaker 1: This revenge and punishment included beating, kicking, torturing, shooting, and
Speaker 1: or executing such a person for the purpose of inflicting pain,
Speaker 1: to injury and punishment on that person, and also for
Speaker 1: the purpose of forcing that person to make it. Coupled
Speaker 1: tory statements exculpatory yeah, sculptor yeah, or inculpatory yeah yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: You know, and you you get stuff like there's there's
Speaker 1: there's an FBI report than from the chagol tepe you're
Speaker 1: not going to read because it's he left one bullet
Speaker 1: in the center and the cylinder and spun it. A
Speaker 1: report quoted the inmate is saying about burg in the
Speaker 1: nineteen incident. He then said, you talk, will blow your
Speaker 1: black expert presumably the N word brains out. Bergs then
Speaker 1: got up from his desk, walked over to the inmate,
Speaker 1: put the muzzle of the revolver against the center of
Speaker 1: the inmate's forehead and pulled the trigger. He spun the
Speaker 1: cylinder and placed it back against his forehead and pulled
Speaker 1: the trigger again. So yeah, he's just playing Russian Roulette
Speaker 1: with people, Like he's playing and I don't, I don't yeh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well he's pulling up one in the sixth chance of
Speaker 1: murdering them. They are in terror. Uh. There's also a
Speaker 1: lot of like he does like you sexually abuses people.
Speaker 1: He like after testicles. Yeah, he he like he electrocuted
Speaker 1: like well, I mean he's also like is like like
Speaker 1: basically like raping people. Um, he like electrocut is a
Speaker 1: thirteen year old child. And you know this is like
Speaker 1: it's it's it's just so bleak that like I mean
Speaker 1: there's so there's a very famous article about this by
Speaker 1: Chicago journalist's called the House of Screams. But you know,
Speaker 1: like like Burge isn't the only guy doing this, Like
Speaker 1: one of his loyalists is is lieutenant like is a
Speaker 1: guy named Byron. He's like in charge of the midnight
Speaker 1: shift at at the area True violent Crimes. And they
Speaker 1: become known internally as burgess ask kickers at the A
Speaker 1: team because this is just who these people are culturally.
Speaker 1: And yeah, sure sure, but yeah, um, these guys start
Speaker 1: uh like putting like guns and prisoners mouths, but they
Speaker 1: have one thing where they stick a shotgun in a
Speaker 1: guy's mouth and they pull the trigger and it's not loaded,
Speaker 1: but they just like they keep doing this thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's that is by the way, illegal in international law,
Speaker 1: Like internationally, that is a war crime if you're military
Speaker 1: to specifically, fake executions are type of torture and a
Speaker 1: war crime under international law based on treaties the United
Speaker 1: States has signed. Yeah, and and Byron also, so he
Speaker 1: does that a lot. And then that same guy, the
Speaker 1: same guy the shotgun thing too, he apparently didn't have
Speaker 1: the box, so he stripped the dude and shocked his
Speaker 1: balls with a cattle prod And this is the guy
Speaker 1: who lorried Lightfoot sent her number two lawyer to defend
Speaker 1: in court by arguing the torture it never happens. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's that's that's ability. Yep, that's the mayor of
Speaker 1: my city now life Lightfoot. Light Foot is on the
Speaker 1: record as saying that birds tortured over a hundred people.
Speaker 1: But once it came to you know, actually putting up
Speaker 1: or shutting up, she just goes to back for the cops.
Speaker 1: And and this happens in Chicago like so many times
Speaker 1: with people who used to be like who you know
Speaker 1: who who In the moment you're like, oh, Birge did torture.
Speaker 1: We need to reform the police. And as you know,
Speaker 1: the women they get into power, they do this stuff.
Speaker 1: I mean there there's there's a bunch of like incredibly
Speaker 1: weird stuff that happens here. Like so that the Seventh
Speaker 1: Circuit Court of Appeals at one point, so soul A,
Speaker 1: like they saw a case over whether a one thousand
Speaker 1: dollar settlement with a torture victim was fair and christ Yeah,
Speaker 1: in court it's like you read the transcas and it's
Speaker 1: like it's it's the most brutal demolishing of like a
Speaker 1: state's argument I've ever seen. Like they're they're, they're just
Speaker 1: like in court asking them like okay, like we're we're,
Speaker 1: we're this person's judges supposed to have like known in
Speaker 1: court that he was also torturing other people. And like
Speaker 1: it's you know, the courts just like you know, they're
Speaker 1: turning him apart. And then when it comes time to
Speaker 1: decide the case, uh, the court tosses the case out
Speaker 1: inside with the state. Wow. Yeah, I don't know what's
Speaker 1: going on there. It's awful. Yep, this this topic. I
Speaker 1: mean that that is the thing about the way the
Speaker 1: whole system works, which is that, you know, the police
Speaker 1: do horrific things. In Chicago, they torture, in Los Angeles,
Speaker 1: they have Nazi gangs. You know, there's a bunch of
Speaker 1: different horrible ship the police do. And then at some
Speaker 1: point the FBI and the Justice Department come in and
Speaker 1: they provide incredibly They send in very talented investigators who
Speaker 1: produced incredibly detailed lists of all of the things that
Speaker 1: are being done. And then the court says, well, but
Speaker 1: nobody's gonna get punished or maybe this one guy will
Speaker 1: get punished and then we'll go on back to doing things,
Speaker 1: and that's the system is supposed to work. Although we're
Speaker 1: we're going to read a story about the FBI not
Speaker 1: doing that in the next episode. So yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: they don't know. We don't always get a report. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I just I have become increased, Like it's very frustrating
Speaker 1: because having these FBI reports on police abuses um is
Speaker 1: useful again for talking to liberals because they tend to
Speaker 1: trust the FBI. But it's also like, boy, I've read
Speaker 1: a lot of detailed FBI reports about how bad police
Speaker 1: departments are, and it seems like nothing ever gets done.
Speaker 1: Like it seems like they just write a thing saying yeah,
Speaker 1: it's bad, and then everything continues forever and it's you know,
Speaker 1: this this case. Like so the reason we even know
Speaker 1: any of this is through what I like, what what
Speaker 1: I will say, like the a genuinely heroic, decades long
Speaker 1: campaign run by the People's Law Office on behalf of
Speaker 1: birde victims and these people, like they say people's lives
Speaker 1: like that there are people who birdge tortured, who ended
Speaker 1: up on death row for it, and you know, like
Speaker 1: this stuff is so bad that when it comes out,
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court does a ruling on it and it
Speaker 1: like establishes new precedents for like how people can prove
Speaker 1: they've been tortured. Like you know, it's so bad that
Speaker 1: like Illinois stops running the death pet like we had
Speaker 1: the death penalty and like we still tend to get
Speaker 1: ethic have it, but like we just stopped doing it,
Speaker 1: Like we stopped we stopped executing people because like a
Speaker 1: Republican governor, like on air, gave a giant thing about
Speaker 1: how this system was broken and like this is this
Speaker 1: is John Ryan, right, like this is a man who
Speaker 1: like he he is like this is a man who
Speaker 1: was corrupted by the standards of of of an Illinois politician.
Speaker 1: And even he like on the air, is like yeah,
Speaker 1: this is like you know that this is this is broken.
Speaker 1: He he pardons some Burge victims, and in nine three,
Speaker 1: faced with just irrefutable evidence of torture and ruling multiple
Speaker 1: higher ports higher courts, the Police Board finally released a report,
Speaker 1: although the report also doesn't call it torture and is
Speaker 1: a disaster that they finally have Burge fired and some
Speaker 1: of his colleagues who were also torturing people get suspended
Speaker 1: for fifteen months, but Burge isn't prosecuted for, you know,
Speaker 1: the crimes that we have multiple reports of him doing
Speaker 1: until two after the victims literally go to the United
Speaker 1: Nations with a campaign and go in front of the
Speaker 1: United Nations and talk about how they are being systemically
Speaker 1: tortured by the Chicago Police Department. But of course by
Speaker 1: two the statute of limitations on his crimes had run out,
Speaker 1: so uh, he winds up going to jail for three
Speaker 1: limitations on torture. Yeah, that's definitely one of the ones
Speaker 1: we should have a cap Yeah, definitely. It's great. It's
Speaker 1: it's it's the great system. Um. I'm going to read
Speaker 1: something from the Chocolate Tribune that was a description of
Speaker 1: of this. Uh quote. While the jury was out, Burge,
Speaker 1: still unrepentant, allegedly asked the courtroom reserve or whether you
Speaker 1: thought the jury would quote believe a bunch of n words.
Speaker 1: Wow day, Yeah, it's amazing Burge Bridge tortured at least
Speaker 1: a hundred and twenty five people. That's almost certainly an
Speaker 1: under account. Undred twenty five is the number of people
Speaker 1: who we have who have come forward. A lot of
Speaker 1: those people probably have like people he tortured have probably
Speaker 1: died by now. Um, yeah, I mean yeah, you'll never
Speaker 1: will never get an accurate account of all the people
Speaker 1: who were Yeah, and and Burge died a freeman and
Speaker 1: has never served a day for his actual crimes. Now,
Speaker 1: Burge and his crew are the most famous of the
Speaker 1: eighties and seventies and eighties torturers, but they're by no
Speaker 1: means the the only one. And we're gonna talk about
Speaker 1: one more in this torture section. Uh if you do
Speaker 1: you know Richard Zuli? Mm hmm okay, so yeah, Zulie's
Speaker 1: Zulie is the one that people tell not to know.
Speaker 1: M Zuli was also a Vietnam War vet. He becomes
Speaker 1: a detective in nine. Um, what's he thinking about him?
Speaker 1: Zuli is never part of Burgess Cadre. Right, Burgess Cadres
Speaker 1: working out Verrea two. They're on the south side. They're
Speaker 1: in an overwhelmingly black part of the south Side. Zuli
Speaker 1: works in areas three and six on the north side.
Speaker 1: You know what, what what I want need to mention
Speaker 1: off the bat is that Zuli is no less racist
Speaker 1: than Burge is. He wants to rested a black dude
Speaker 1: for just like having a car and wearing a watch
Speaker 1: and like like those are both felonies in the city
Speaker 1: of Chicago. Right, Well, if you famously never know what
Speaker 1: time it is because you're a law abiding citizen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well law abiding cit isn't And also don't be black
Speaker 1: while doing this because yeah, he throws him in a cell. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well it gets it gets you. Zuli screaming no end
Speaker 1: word is supposed to live like this? Oh boy, oh boy,
Speaker 1: it's you know we we people like talk about cops
Speaker 1: doing stuff for that reason. It's it's you know, they're
Speaker 1: so racist. Just get a direct quote. Ye, yeah, Like
Speaker 1: I can't emphasize it, Like they're just they're so racist.
Speaker 1: It's like ingrained into the d like the cop d NA. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're just saying the loud part loud. Yeah, like they're
Speaker 1: just scribby like that. We're going to do with One
Speaker 1: of the things in the next episode is the cops
Speaker 1: will just drive around like blasting the end. We're out
Speaker 1: of their out of their like cops stereos. Because yeah,
Speaker 1: now Zuli in a lot of ways is a more
Speaker 1: modern torture than birdges. You know, Birch is very big
Speaker 1: on your like overt physical violence. Right, you're beating your
Speaker 1: execution is suffocation. The problem with these techniques from a
Speaker 1: torture of perspectives that they leave incredibly obvious marks. And
Speaker 1: you know, this is how birde goes down, right, It's
Speaker 1: it's it's too obvious what he's doing. There are people
Speaker 1: who can just like show up to a court and
Speaker 1: be like, hey, look at my neck, like here are
Speaker 1: all these burns. Zuli is much smarter about it. Um,
Speaker 1: you know she I mean, she does some beatings because
Speaker 1: cops are literally animals and are incapable of resisting the
Speaker 1: urge to beat the living shout of anyone who falls
Speaker 1: into their ground up. But you know, mostly what he
Speaker 1: does is he does things like he'll just shackle someone
Speaker 1: to a wall for twenty four hours and you know,
Speaker 1: and he'll be like, okay, like I'm gonna shock you
Speaker 1: to this wall and until you sign this confession, I
Speaker 1: won't let you leave. And also you can't talk to anyone.
Speaker 1: You can't talk to you lawyer, you can't talk to uh, like,
Speaker 1: you can't talk to your family. And in the next
Speaker 1: episode we're gonnay this. This This is how modern CPD torture works,
Speaker 1: except zuli Is doing this in like the eighties. Now,
Speaker 1: zuli Is is a naval intelligence officer who's he's so
Speaker 1: he's still technically in the reserves when he joins the cops.
Speaker 1: And that meant when the CIA's torture is like au
Speaker 1: Tontomo Base stalled out, they needed a hero and that
Speaker 1: hero was zuli Um zuli Is was the most active.
Speaker 1: Like that. The thing is the most active in is
Speaker 1: the torture of Muhammad O Old Sali, who is famously
Speaker 1: known as the most tortured Banic Gutanamo. Um he's yeah,
Speaker 1: at least he gotten a guinness Yeah, he yeah. They
Speaker 1: do sleep deprivation. I mean they some of it's like
Speaker 1: the standards sort of like get most stuff, which is
Speaker 1: like they don't let you sleep. They blast like sounds
Speaker 1: until you sell all the time. They like beat you.
Speaker 1: There's molestations and but there's also stuff that's like like
Speaker 1: you know, the sort of attack my dogs. But like
Speaker 1: the wh'll do things like like he'll like soap people
Speaker 1: like get soaked in ice water or like they stuffed
Speaker 1: him in this like straight jacket thing that didn't let
Speaker 1: him breathe properly. And then stuffed it full of ice.
Speaker 1: And then Zuli also, yeah, yeah, it's it's it's bad.
Speaker 1: And he also like threatens to kidnap his mother and
Speaker 1: have resent to Guantanamo to be raped because these people
Speaker 1: are again jizz monsters. And yeah, Zuli is still alive
Speaker 1: today and romes the streets as a freeman, having received
Speaker 1: literally no consequences whatsoever for being a torturer. So good
Speaker 1: in the CPD that the CIA was like, We're gonna
Speaker 1: bring this guy into the torture. That's great, it's great.
Speaker 1: It's yep yep ah. And and that that that brings
Speaker 1: us to our first interlude, which is every year Chicago
Speaker 1: police officers go to the grave of the deputy chairman
Speaker 1: of the Black Panther Party, Fred Hampton's, who they assassinated
Speaker 1: in a police rate after drug in um. They go
Speaker 1: to his grave to shoot his fucking tombstone. They do
Speaker 1: this literally every year. The families they keep getting you tombstones,
Speaker 1: they shoot them every They shoot them every year. It
Speaker 1: just doesn't matter. Uh, the CPD just keeps shooting it.
Speaker 1: And there's a quote from the Great Trinity Daddy and
Speaker 1: marchis historian C. L. R. James, and I think about
Speaker 1: a lot that goes when history is written as it
Speaker 1: ought to be written. It is the moderation and long
Speaker 1: patience of the masses at which people will will wonder,
Speaker 1: not their ferocity. Yep. I really hope there's a moment
Speaker 1: of people doing things to cops that makes generations in
Speaker 1: the future marvel at their ferocity. Yeah. I think I
Speaker 1: can say that without it legally being incitement. Yes. I'll
Speaker 1: make one other fun note, which is that five Chicago
Speaker 1: police officers died last year from COVID. So that's good. Yeah,
Speaker 1: only five. Huh, let's make it fifty officer, Dad. Look,
Speaker 1: they're working on it. They don't they won't wear masks.
Speaker 1: Vacinated critical support to the Chicago police who don't wear masks. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're they're, they're, they're they're they're they're having their police
Speaker 1: Academy exams in person. Now. Oh that's good. That's good.
Speaker 1: You know what critical support? Yeah, spent more time indoors
Speaker 1: together without masks. Guys, avoid those vaxes. Yeah, yeah, I'll
Speaker 1: be great. Will happen. Okay, So story two, which is
Speaker 1: a shorter one but no less bleak. I think on
Speaker 1: October fourteen, officer Jason van Dyke fired sixteen shots at
Speaker 1: Lakwon McDonald, who had turned around and was walking away
Speaker 1: from him. Here's from the people of the state of Illinois.
Speaker 1: Walking away aggressively, Chris, Yeah, oh boy, violently exiting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I walking away while black, which I guess in the
Speaker 1: minds of like half of the United States is the
Speaker 1: same someone A court defended legal right to shoot people
Speaker 1: in the back who are trying to in a way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's yeah, great country, We're nailing it. From from the
Speaker 1: Chicago Tribune and analysis of the video. This is this
Speaker 1: is from the court case, but in the childbuien. An
Speaker 1: analysis of the video establishes that fourteen to fifteen seconds
Speaker 1: passed from the time the defendant Van Dyke fired his
Speaker 1: first shot to clear visual confirmation of the final shot.
Speaker 1: For approximately thirteen of those seconds, McDonald is lying on
Speaker 1: the ground, so he he fires literally every bullet in
Speaker 1: he's gone at a man who is, by those like
Speaker 1: second shot lying dead, like well it's not quite dead yet,
Speaker 1: but like lying on the ground. It's just Yeah, from
Speaker 1: the cops perspective, like why not like that? That's like
Speaker 1: that's like like they have the ability to do that
Speaker 1: if they get the chance, oh I get to kill
Speaker 1: a black person and it doesn't matter, then why, like
Speaker 1: you know, that's like if you if you you have
Speaker 1: to you have to think through like what they're actually
Speaker 1: processing this as. And they don't see them as like
Speaker 1: a they don't see them as like an equivalent human life.
Speaker 1: So it doesn't like it's it's they don't. It doesn't
Speaker 1: you can't like apply the same rules of civility that
Speaker 1: like we should all kind of agree upon because cops
Speaker 1: have such a higher hierarchical viewpoint that with them at
Speaker 1: the top, that they can never actually exist within any
Speaker 1: kind of humane society. That's why again unspeakable ferocity of
Speaker 1: the masses fingers crossed one day. Yeah, yeah, well you know,
Speaker 1: and I think that the thing, you know, Okay, so look,
Speaker 1: if this is the price of liberal democracy, right if
Speaker 1: if if you're going to if you're going to live
Speaker 1: in a society that has like you know that that
Speaker 1: where laws are enforced by the police, the police are
Speaker 1: going to murder people like that's that that that's what
Speaker 1: you're signing on for. And I think that I think
Speaker 1: that's an absolutely unexecutable price. And but we shouldn't do this.
Speaker 1: Um Now. The other aspect of this is because you
Speaker 1: have to keep all of these just absolutely like just
Speaker 1: bloodthirsty burderers on the leash, and because also all the
Speaker 1: people who are actually in the government are just genuinely
Speaker 1: the asplicable human beings. Uh. Immediately after I mean like
Speaker 1: really before the shots have stopped firing, like, there's a
Speaker 1: cougher up that stretches from like includes everyone from the
Speaker 1: officers on the scene all the way up to may
Speaker 1: raw Emmanuel. So for example, mysteriously none of the multiple
Speaker 1: dashboard cameras on the scene we're recording audio for reasons
Speaker 1: only the discerning listener can guess at yep, Like everyone
Speaker 1: across the entire chain of command again going right up
Speaker 1: to the mayor's office immediately goes we we cannot let
Speaker 1: this video get out because it's it's so bad that
Speaker 1: even the CPD s like this is gonna look bad
Speaker 1: for us, because the thing gets out, then people will
Speaker 1: want to do bad things to cops and they can't
Speaker 1: have that. And you know, so this this, this, this
Speaker 1: this tape is concealed for over a year until the
Speaker 1: journalist Brandon Smith like literally gets a like su sues
Speaker 1: them and literally gets the judge to like order the
Speaker 1: state to release it. And while this is going on,
Speaker 1: that the cops are doing this massive pr blitz featuring
Speaker 1: this just like incredible pack of racist lies, including that
Speaker 1: McDonald had lunge for it yet Van Dyke with a knife. No,
Speaker 1: he didn't, he was literally walking away from them. That
Speaker 1: McDonald had a gun, which is initially one because not
Speaker 1: only like they didn't even have time to like plant
Speaker 1: like they killed him so fast, they didn't have time
Speaker 1: to plant a gun on him, like there's no gun.
Speaker 1: But the multiple officers will are are like you can
Speaker 1: you can find news things of them talking about how
Speaker 1: this guy, oh he had a gun. It's like there's
Speaker 1: no gun. Um. Yeah. The classic one is that like
Speaker 1: van Dyke feared for his life and uh no he didn't.
Speaker 1: He probably should now, but he does not. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: should never. He should never live awaking or sleeping moments
Speaker 1: where he's not in constant fear of someone cutting his
Speaker 1: head off. Just as like in terms of the horror
Speaker 1: that should be imbued inside people who do these things,
Speaker 1: they should never like they shouldn't have been able to
Speaker 1: like sit down and be comfortable the closest we've ever
Speaker 1: gotten to justice for one of these guys is when
Speaker 1: that mob surrounded uh, Derek Chauvin's house, and it would
Speaker 1: have been actual justice if they had gotten through the door. Yep, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's yeah. So you know all and you ever like
Speaker 1: so there's all there's there's a huge coterie of cops.
Speaker 1: We're all just lying about this. They're lying in the press.
Speaker 1: They're lying just there lying. They they start they lie
Speaker 1: like on the stand, um and you know, the strategy
Speaker 1: works for a while because this country is just the
Speaker 1: racist tellhole until the court forces him to release the video.
Speaker 1: And when it becomes clear of the video is going
Speaker 1: to come out, the state immediately charges him, like they
Speaker 1: charge him, and then later that day they released a video. Now,
Speaker 1: now keep this in mind, they had this video for
Speaker 1: a fucking year. It's all what are he done? It's
Speaker 1: all it's all fake and you know, yeah, and they
Speaker 1: only charged him with the alternative was literally being run
Speaker 1: into the sea by an entire mob of the literally
Speaker 1: the entire population of Chicago. Um. So Van Dyke is
Speaker 1: suspended without pay, right, but he immediately gets hired by
Speaker 1: the by the police union. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, and
Speaker 1: and van Dyke van Dyke Eventually, I mean, he goes down.
Speaker 1: Eventually he gets convicted of you know, second green murder
Speaker 1: and sixteen counts of amated battery. But you know, there's
Speaker 1: a there's a later report that describes the involvement of
Speaker 1: sixteen other officers in the cover up. Uh. Four officers
Speaker 1: were eventually fired for lying about the case, three were
Speaker 1: trying for the cover up and acquitted, and four officers
Speaker 1: were given a one week suspension for the mysterious lack
Speaker 1: of camera audio. Honestly, more that more than usually happens. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I mean this is like this video is so bad
Speaker 1: that like this video is so I mean, rab Emmanuel
Speaker 1: doesn't really mean that the consequence he suffers is that
Speaker 1: he decides not to run again because it will be
Speaker 1: bad for him. But Raw Emanuel is currently now that
Speaker 1: his his consequence is that he's the American ambassadors of
Speaker 1: Japan and death. You know, I I will also say this,
Speaker 1: the people of Japan do not deserve Rammanual. The Liberal
Speaker 1: Democratic Party, on the other hand, are maybe the only
Speaker 1: people on earth who actually deserve him. Like, if you
Speaker 1: didn't want us to palm Raw Emmanuel off on you.
Speaker 1: You shouldn't have taken all that CIA money in the
Speaker 1: fifties and sixtees and let them run your political campaigns.
Speaker 1: So Liberal Democratic Party lie down with dogs, get fleas um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, Jason Van Dyke was released from prison two
Speaker 1: weeks ago after serving less than half a sentence. Mcwa
Speaker 1: McDonald's remains dead. Yeah. I mean the really depressing part
Speaker 1: is that that is more consequences than usually ever happens,
Speaker 1: and that that only happened because of, you know, like
Speaker 1: an incredible amount of organization. And like I think of
Speaker 1: all of the times where there is no video, Think
Speaker 1: of all the times where there's nothing and things just happened,
Speaker 1: no one watches it, and then deads get kicked into
Speaker 1: a ditch yum. And that's way more common than anything
Speaker 1: where there's a type of like recordings or even where
Speaker 1: there needs to be cover ups. You know, you you
Speaker 1: both are probably too young for this movie. But in
Speaker 1: one of the Transformers movies, after they beat all the
Speaker 1: bad Transformers, okay, where the Navy lifts them all up
Speaker 1: and drops them into the sea. Yes, what if we
Speaker 1: did that with the Chicago Police Department, Just drop him
Speaker 1: in the sea, Big old big them up, drop him
Speaker 1: in the sea. Now we put them in a bag.
Speaker 1: There's no swimming. Okay, that's fair. Look, look they one one,
Speaker 1: they get one bag individual. Each individual gets one bag
Speaker 1: for each bag they put over someone's head and strangled
Speaker 1: them with I think that's fair and then right into
Speaker 1: the sea and solves all problems. Like I do, I
Speaker 1: do genuinely want to say, is that like if if
Speaker 1: you read the story over and over and over and
Speaker 1: over again, you get people who are like you get
Speaker 1: the governor going like the system is fundamentally broken to
Speaker 1: must reformat. You get the courts saying the system is
Speaker 1: fundamentally broken and bush reformat and it never changes. They
Speaker 1: just keep killing people, They keep inslaving people, they keep
Speaker 1: doing like, they keep troaturing people, they keep murdering people,
Speaker 1: they keep raving people, and this will not end until
Speaker 1: you abolish the police. Like there is no alternative. If
Speaker 1: you if your car is fun is broken on a
Speaker 1: fundamental level, you can't you can't reform your car to
Speaker 1: make it better. There's a certain point where it's total
Speaker 1: and you're like, well, I guess that kind of It's
Speaker 1: like Asian block is shattered and you're like we fixes
Speaker 1: the tires, so it ought to go now. No, it's
Speaker 1: like if it's broken on the fundamental level, you can't
Speaker 1: reform it. Those words like those words don't go together,
Speaker 1: like throw out, throw out your car and build a train.
Speaker 1: That's that's what you have to do. Walk to get
Speaker 1: a bicycle, honestly. Yeah, I stuck a bottle onto the
Speaker 1: rail of my a R fifteen, So it's not a
Speaker 1: gun anymore. Like no, it's it's still a gun. Yea Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is really really sad um and it's good stuff.
Speaker 1: Pretty depressing. Um. Anyway, I'm gonna go watch Two Eights
Speaker 1: the Dark Night and feel feel great about myself. Yeah
Speaker 1: all right, well that's gonna do it for us, and
Speaker 1: it could happen here today until next time. Uh. I
Speaker 1: hope that more Chicago police officers get COVID. There there
Speaker 1: is that there's that fun scene in the Dark Night
Speaker 1: where the joker goes into the Chicago Police building and
Speaker 1: blows up the prison block with all those cops inside.
Speaker 1: That is that is a fun scene. Yeah. Anyway, Um,
Speaker 1: hello and welcome to our show. I'm Zoe de Chanelle
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Speaker 1: and cast mates Hannah Simone and Lamar and Morris to
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Speaker 1: waiting for the and there they go, almost on time.
Speaker 1: This morning, Mom is coming out the front door, strong
Speaker 1: with a double arm kid carry. Looks like Dad has
Speaker 1: the bags. Daughter is bringing up the rear. Oh but
Speaker 1: the diaper bag wasn't closed. Diapers and toys are everywhere.
Speaker 1: Oh but mom has just nailed the perfect car seat
Speaker 1: buckle for the toddler. And now the eldest daughter, who
Speaker 1: looks to be about nine or ten, has secured herself
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Speaker 1: they're off. But looks like Mom doesn't realize her coffee
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Speaker 1: there it goes. Oh that's a shame that mug was
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Speaker 1: the big stuff, like making sure your kids are buckled
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Speaker 1: it's could happen here all right. Well that's the introduction.
Speaker 1: I'm Robert Evans and my work's done for today. Chris, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's me, it's Christopher. We are We are back with
Speaker 1: two more stories of rape, torture, and murder from the
Speaker 1: Chicago Police Department show we have Yeah, well you know, okay,
Speaker 1: this one, this, this one will be more fun than
Speaker 1: last time because okay, so basically, since since I started
Speaker 1: showing up on this show, I have made a case.
Speaker 1: I have been dropping references to the fact that Chicago
Speaker 1: Police Department is literally a cartel, And today I am
Speaker 1: finally telling the story of how this is a little unfair.
Speaker 1: But yeah, also, also I didn't mention this before we
Speaker 1: go win. There's also a bonus cartel because while I
Speaker 1: was doing research on one of the cartels, I realized
Speaker 1: that I couldn't actually talk about it without talking about
Speaker 1: the other cartel. So there's two. There are two completely
Speaker 1: un related CPD cartels that will show up in this story.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, it's great. So all right, this is the
Speaker 1: story of Ronald Watts. Now Ronerd Wats joined the CPD
Speaker 1: in n after serving in the army, making him yet
Speaker 1: another example of the fabled troop cop combination that produces
Speaker 1: the worst people on earth. Um what Wats was assigned
Speaker 1: to patrol Chicago's old public housing like projects. Now wants
Speaker 1: is from housing himself. Um, there's okay. So some of
Speaker 1: the people who knew him before he went into the
Speaker 1: police claimed that, like he was just always like a
Speaker 1: drug delar and that he went into the police too,
Speaker 1: like drug deal more. I don't know if that's true,
Speaker 1: because I mean, he's also in the army for a while,
Speaker 1: so I I don't know, it's sort of unclear. But
Speaker 1: you know, he's for the projects. He he knows that
Speaker 1: to reign well, and that's why he was an extremely
Speaker 1: effective agent of terror in a place where officers would
Speaker 1: regularly drive by asking the N word and other racial
Speaker 1: slurs out of their cop car speakers. Uh yeah, here here,
Speaker 1: here's the intercept describing what like Chicago cops are just
Speaker 1: doing at the projects. They were officers who found it
Speaker 1: amusing to toy with those under their power, arranging the
Speaker 1: foot race of heroin addics determined who would go to jail,
Speaker 1: for example, or forcing a woman they had searched on
Speaker 1: the street to walk home naked from the waist down.
Speaker 1: It's yeah, people who find joint exerting their power over
Speaker 1: other people and they think it's funny. Yeah, why they
Speaker 1: become cops. Yep. Well, and you know, and the other
Speaker 1: reason to become a cop. Is is the the second
Speaker 1: thing that they do constantly, which is they just walk
Speaker 1: into the lobbies of these buildings just start taking everyone's money.
Speaker 1: And like they literally call the lobbies of the public
Speaker 1: housing buildings like quote their ATM machine. So they're just
Speaker 1: doing this constantly. There's also cops and this is not
Speaker 1: every cop that they're specific cops you do this who
Speaker 1: would show up on the first and the fifteenth of
Speaker 1: the month, wait for everyone to catch their paychecks and
Speaker 1: then rob them. And you know, the thing I think
Speaker 1: is a one about this is that Okay, so like
Speaker 1: WATTS and like the specific cartels do this, but this
Speaker 1: isn't just WATS. This is like this is everyone who's
Speaker 1: working at these projects is just walking up like to
Speaker 1: like the poorest people in Chicago and just robbing them constantly.
Speaker 1: Um yeah, like this is this is you know this,
Speaker 1: this is just how regular policing works. And the elite
Speaker 1: units are even worse. So Cartel number one or I guess,
Speaker 1: I guess you're trying about choose since we've introduced WATS.
Speaker 1: But so there used to be an elite unit in
Speaker 1: the Chicago Police Force called the Special Operations Section or
Speaker 1: s OS, and these guys, these guys are different because
Speaker 1: they you know, they're they're they're not attached to like
Speaker 1: an area or certific you know, they're they're just completely
Speaker 1: their own thing. They're just like they're the Special Response Team.
Speaker 1: And s OS would just go into projects and just
Speaker 1: ransacked the entire building, like they would go room by
Speaker 1: room like taking people stuff and just looting it and
Speaker 1: then just like walking out. And you know, it's not
Speaker 1: even like there's not just that they're taking cash, like
Speaker 1: they're taking TVs. And I mean the thing that the thing,
Speaker 1: the thing you if when you when you read interview
Speaker 1: and people who lived through this, like they're not just
Speaker 1: taking like stuff that's like you know, let's use that
Speaker 1: are expensive there, they'll take people's like lamps, like they'll
Speaker 1: just walk out with anything, like literally anything they can
Speaker 1: sell um. And you know again like these are these
Speaker 1: are the people living in these projects are like huge,
Speaker 1: like a lot a lot of these postures literally like
Speaker 1: segregation era, right, and so they're they're almost entirely black
Speaker 1: and they're just taking like they're just getting robbed, but
Speaker 1: constantly by both regular cops, a special Operations section, and
Speaker 1: there's not even like you know, like cops nowadays have
Speaker 1: like they have like civil asset forfature where there's this
Speaker 1: like pseudo legal framework and no, no no, no, there's like
Speaker 1: they're not even this is the nights, They're not even
Speaker 1: doing that. They're just literally walking in and robbing these
Speaker 1: people at gunpoint. Um. S OS like they eventually get
Speaker 1: shut down sales in seven after so there's a series
Speaker 1: of scangles about them. They they steal like hundreds of
Speaker 1: thousands of dollars and people, they do shakedowns with drug dealers,
Speaker 1: they start kidnapping people. Um. At one point in s OS,
Speaker 1: dude like tried to hire his coworker to do a
Speaker 1: hit on someone who was like going to report them
Speaker 1: to the Feds. And yeah, but s OS isn't the
Speaker 1: main story today because Watts is writing is running an
Speaker 1: even larger version of this operation. Um. And you know, well,
Speaker 1: I was probays researching this. I had the realization that, like,
Speaker 1: so I've talked to people in Chicago about like the
Speaker 1: CPD Cartel's right, And I had the realization that there
Speaker 1: are conversations that I've had people where we've been we've
Speaker 1: both been talking about different ones and we both we
Speaker 1: both thought we were talking about this. Like I've had
Speaker 1: people walking backwards like, oh they were talking about the West.
Speaker 1: I was like, no, no no, I met the Watts one.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's great. It's love love our institutionalized just
Speaker 1: robbery system. Yeah. So the other thing I want to
Speaker 1: mention because so the intercepted like really good, like four
Speaker 1: like huge four part series on on the Watts. H
Speaker 1: like cartel. But I think it's worth mentioning that, Like
Speaker 1: even you know that there's like two quote unquote good
Speaker 1: cops who like go after Watts and for years and
Speaker 1: they've actually bring him down. But like even those cops
Speaker 1: are doing things that are objectively horrifying. Like most of
Speaker 1: the actual cop work in this story is done by
Speaker 1: is literally just the good cops. Like they know a
Speaker 1: homeless guy they called Chewbaka who they paid to be
Speaker 1: an informant in like blankets, sleeping bags and food and
Speaker 1: like it's like it should be fair. Cheebaka like genuinely
Speaker 1: like likes the two of them, But Chiubaca is the
Speaker 1: guy who does all of the work here, like what
Speaker 1: Wastz gets like like he's the guy who's like wearing
Speaker 1: the wire he's the guy who knows everything the cops.
Speaker 1: The cops don't know anything, and Chibaca has known that
Speaker 1: everything that was going on from the beginning. They just
Speaker 1: don't ask him for years. But like in Chiubaca like
Speaker 1: goes to prison at one point because Wats Okay, so
Speaker 1: what Watson Wats is just like a drug dealer, right, um,
Speaker 1: so wats and so so Chebacca would like, you know,
Speaker 1: he he was like he was like a sort of
Speaker 1: low level like runner. Right, you'd get a bag, he'd
Speaker 1: like move it sometimes and one time it waltsaw these
Speaker 1: new for informations. At one time, like Watts was like
Speaker 1: trying to get information on where a drug stash was
Speaker 1: we could rob it and then like well down so
Speaker 1: he could do a police raid on it and then
Speaker 1: take the drugs and sell them. And Chebaca just like
Speaker 1: didn't know. So what's just like through be in prison
Speaker 1: for two years and it's just like you know this
Speaker 1: this stuff this time don't happens constantly. That there are
Speaker 1: so many people who are just you know, like people
Speaker 1: try to survive in the city and then oh, hey,
Speaker 1: you don't have the exact specific information that this cop
Speaker 1: wants on this drug thing, so we're just gonna send
Speaker 1: you to prison for two years. And Chebacca, who like
Speaker 1: risks his life wearing a wire and brings down one
Speaker 1: of the biggest cartels in the CPD, as best I
Speaker 1: can tell, is still living on the street because the
Speaker 1: society is just broken in ways that like are difficult
Speaker 1: to comprehend and incredibly bleak. Yeah mm hmm. Yeah. So okay,
Speaker 1: back to Watch this operation. Watts has this thing called
Speaker 1: the Watch Tax, and the Watch tex is if you
Speaker 1: run drugs, you pay the tax to Watts, and this
Speaker 1: this tax gives you protection from the police if you
Speaker 1: don't pay the Watch tax, the cop show up, they
Speaker 1: put you in prison, they take all your cash, they
Speaker 1: raid your drugs, and then Watch resolves your drugs that
Speaker 1: are profit I mean that is like objectively, that is
Speaker 1: a decent grift, Like in terms of it's pretty good
Speaker 1: logistical plans, like yeah, okay, I can I can see
Speaker 1: how how this would actually be very profitable. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: genius and like and and and the other thing about
Speaker 1: these taxes, like these taxes are enormous amounts of money.
Speaker 1: Like if if so if if if you're running a
Speaker 1: drug that's like, okay, so you have a drug that
Speaker 1: you move and the drugs I've I've ran drugs for
Speaker 1: thirty years, I know. Yeah, so the tax for the
Speaker 1: for that single drug can be as high as fifty
Speaker 1: dollars a week. So he is he is making a
Speaker 1: lot of money, so much money, like just an incomprehensible
Speaker 1: amount of money off of this. After I guess, I
Speaker 1: guess you would have to become cops. I have an
Speaker 1: idea for a pivot. Do it in the cartel pivot.
Speaker 1: This is how we give this is how we get
Speaker 1: funded by this in a lower cartel. And we've always
Speaker 1: been a cartel, but that's well, when we moved from
Speaker 1: podcasting into drugs, we can partner with our friends at
Speaker 1: the scene a lower cartel, yea would be great. Eventually,
Speaker 1: there's a guy named Big Shorty who's another like player
Speaker 1: in the scene. And yeah, all the people in this
Speaker 1: name of falling great names. Yeah it's great. So Big
Speaker 1: Shorty is like, I'm not paying like fifty k a
Speaker 1: week per drug to do this anymore. I'm gonna go
Speaker 1: to the Feds and so so be short Like he
Speaker 1: threatens to go to the feest and he goes to
Speaker 1: the d A and then like a couple of days later,
Speaker 1: she's gunned down the street by yeah you never yeah no,
Speaker 1: like yeah, well if you do, you have to make
Speaker 1: sure they like disappear you because you never threaten it,
Speaker 1: like that's the yeah, yeah, yeah you don't. These worlds
Speaker 1: you mentioned like cops and going to in any combination,
Speaker 1: and everyone around you just like, all right, well, this
Speaker 1: person's got to be dead. That's just how that's gotta go. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's not it's not the best move I've ever seen.
Speaker 1: It's yeah, so you know, And and this is when
Speaker 1: this is when the cops, the two cops are gonna
Speaker 1: bring Watch down, like actually started to take notice because
Speaker 1: literally for years, I mean they're they're all sorry about this,
Speaker 1: like people they'd be locking people up and people would
Speaker 1: say things like why are you going after me for
Speaker 1: two bags? And Watts is running the dope and just
Speaker 1: no one believes them, Like the cops are being told
Speaker 1: constantly for years like that the cops who aren't in
Speaker 1: on the on the intel I being told literally for
Speaker 1: years that that this whole thing is you know that
Speaker 1: that oh yeah, well, why why are you bothering me
Speaker 1: Watts is running this operation. They don't believe them, and
Speaker 1: they don't they don't believe them basically until Big Shorty
Speaker 1: gets shot. Because when when Big Shorty goes down like
Speaker 1: another they get another guy who's like pretty big in
Speaker 1: the scene, the guy's like, oh, yeah, no, he got
Speaker 1: shot by Watts, and they're like wait, hold on now,
Speaker 1: the cops go to the FBI, and the FBI, it
Speaker 1: turns out, has been trying and failing to put again
Speaker 1: put together a case against Watts for so long that
Speaker 1: like they're on there like second like agent who they've
Speaker 1: had in charge of the case because the first guy,
Speaker 1: like I just could do it and laugh. And so
Speaker 1: they had another guy and almost immediately after this, uh,
Speaker 1: there's there's another guy. There's another dealer named Fears, who
Speaker 1: he has this Fierce has this great grift, which is
Speaker 1: like all of his people wear Obama shirts just like
Speaker 1: you just let you doesn't eate but doesn't know don't
Speaker 1: seven or something. But yeah, so like that, all all
Speaker 1: the people doing this thing, they wear Obama shirts and
Speaker 1: they call the drugs like Obama and so what everyone
Speaker 1: they have their lines called Hope. So and like this
Speaker 1: this this actually works on the FBI. Like the FBI
Speaker 1: doesn't understand that they're running drugs because they think that
Speaker 1: they're that Like all the Messa references of Obama are
Speaker 1: just like they're talking about like Obama. It's like there's
Speaker 1: there's so many, there's so many great like FBI weird
Speaker 1: incompetences to the story like that. There's one point where
Speaker 1: the cops are going through the documents and they see
Speaker 1: the word they see Lou, and it's just a lose
Speaker 1: a short for lieutenant, right, But the FBI thinks that
Speaker 1: Lou is like a name, and so they kind of
Speaker 1: tracked down this guy named Lou, which is just it's
Speaker 1: it's ah, just baffling, incredible, and coms never thrilled when
Speaker 1: they have to investigate cops. Yeah, yeah, even though it
Speaker 1: is literally their job. Yep. But hey, I hate doing
Speaker 1: my job too, so please continue, Chris. So, so if
Speaker 1: that fears guy who choose doing the Obama thing, like
Speaker 1: take seventeen rounds to the chest, and so the FBI
Speaker 1: number rounds to take to the chest, Yeah, that's a lot.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's it's an interesting number two right, because
Speaker 1: like like it does have a cult significance. Guess yeah.
Speaker 1: What would also like like is did they like reload, Like,
Speaker 1: do they have a gun that has round? Man? Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's yeah, there's that's not that's not is it? Is
Speaker 1: it like a handgun or is it a rifle? I
Speaker 1: think it's a handgun. Yeah, or like Baltimo people with
Speaker 1: handguns block seventeens have seventeen round magazines. That makes sense. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So so after this, the FBI investigation intensifies, and so
Speaker 1: the FBI goes to the Internal Affairs Division or i
Speaker 1: a D, who are like the most hated cops of
Speaker 1: all cops by other cops, because there're people who a
Speaker 1: supposed investigate the police and you know, so so they
Speaker 1: tell that you guys who are going after watch, they're
Speaker 1: going to be protected. And this works for like a year,
Speaker 1: and then the head of a I D changes and
Speaker 1: it's like a cop cop guy instead of so they
Speaker 1: had this like they brought an FBI guy who had
Speaker 1: been had of a D and that he gets kicked
Speaker 1: out and they bring in like a cop and that
Speaker 1: cop just immediately tells literally everyone that that the two
Speaker 1: cops are running an investigation. It gives watts and so
Speaker 1: uh do they die with the next few months or
Speaker 1: studdingly no. I as best I can tell, Watts seemed
Speaker 1: to have thought that like they wouldn't just wouldn't be
Speaker 1: able to get him because an too much protection, which
Speaker 1: worked for a while. Um yeah, it's yeah, he has
Speaker 1: a lot of power. Yeah. Well and also, I mean
Speaker 1: the other thing about this is she just like his stuff,
Speaker 1: starts getting wilder. So he goes after this guy. He
Speaker 1: tries to go after the drugs of this guy named Monk,
Speaker 1: and like Muk is carrying a bunch of drugs, he's
Speaker 1: trying to He's trying to rob bunk Um from the
Speaker 1: intercept a wild car chase and suit on the Dan
Speaker 1: Ryan Expressway like Sure Drive and ultimately into the Hyde
Speaker 1: Park neighborhood, where Monk lost control of the car and
Speaker 1: crashed in a park. He fled on foot. Watson his
Speaker 1: team seized the dope in cash. They didn't even check
Speaker 1: on the condition of the women and infant who remained
Speaker 1: in the car, which is great. And also that's that's standard.
Speaker 1: That that's that that's like standard CPD procedure. I have
Speaker 1: literally seen this happen like in Hyde Park, like I
Speaker 1: have there when I was in college, I almost got
Speaker 1: run over in his seat and like the CPD almost
Speaker 1: ran me over in this like car chase that went
Speaker 1: bad and this giant multi car crash and like there's
Speaker 1: like sixteen cops, right, they all just run past the
Speaker 1: car crash after you guys are chasing and like I
Speaker 1: have to go make sure no one died. And I
Speaker 1: was like, I, this is great. You have just almost
Speaker 1: murdered me. And then also you're not checking on all
Speaker 1: of these people in this car even in the wreck.
Speaker 1: I Oh, I hate a CPD. I hate them a lot.
Speaker 1: Took the sound this sound nice? Yeah, it's great there there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this just happens like all the time, like often enough
Speaker 1: that like literally in the same place, which like all
Speaker 1: of these big because you've got like a few really big, shitty,
Speaker 1: big city police departments. You've got your l A p D,
Speaker 1: You're n Y p D, You've got your Chicago Police Department.
Speaker 1: By god, you've got St. Louis cops. And they're all
Speaker 1: they're all shitty and simultaneously the same in different ways.
Speaker 1: Like there there, it's the same basic idea. It's brutality,
Speaker 1: it's violence, it's robbery. Um, but they they find unique
Speaker 1: as to do those shitty things, which is fascinating. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like I've always had like like the n y p DS,
Speaker 1: like they're big thing is if you get a large
Speaker 1: number of people together, the NYPD is just going to
Speaker 1: annihilate you. Like l A p D has like the
Speaker 1: Nazi gangs. CPD thing, CPDS thing just seems to be crime.
Speaker 1: CPD torture. It's torture. And yeah St. Louis Police Department
Speaker 1: will attack you with dogs if you're not a white person. Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: they've all got they've they've they've they've chosen their cops subclass. Yeah. Now, okay,
Speaker 1: so but back in the investigation, the two cops in
Speaker 1: investigating Watts are like even so basically all the researchers
Speaker 1: get cut off. It's literally just them to watch. Note
Speaker 1: like basically knows that he's they're coming from them, and
Speaker 1: they almost get him anyways, because cops are just not
Speaker 1: very smart. Um, and you know they're about to get
Speaker 1: him on a sting for drug running. And then right
Speaker 1: before like I think it's like the day of that
Speaker 1: they're running the sting, they suddenly get like transferred to
Speaker 1: the police academy and they basically just like get detained
Speaker 1: in this police academy for like weeks and it's it's
Speaker 1: purely weird. And eventually, like and you know, this is
Speaker 1: when like everything just completely comes apart with the liaison
Speaker 1: between the CPD and the FBI literally tells them they
Speaker 1: can't move on the case because if they move on
Speaker 1: the case, it's going to reveal that Watts murdered a dude,
Speaker 1: because well they so they don't have good evidence some
Speaker 1: big shorty, but they have they have evidence that they
Speaker 1: have good evidence that he killed Fears and uh, and
Speaker 1: the head of Internal affairs basically tells them like, yeah,
Speaker 1: like I won't do anything about Watts because it comes
Speaker 1: out that another CPD unit had gone rogue after s OS,
Speaker 1: I'll be done for so I'm just gonna cover for them.
Speaker 1: The second cartel is too much, actually gone to only
Speaker 1: one cartels. It's great, Um, I can excuse one cartel,
Speaker 1: but I try the line too. But once you hit
Speaker 1: four cartels, were back two good, which is why I
Speaker 1: am such a big fan of the Los Angeles Police Department.
Speaker 1: It's great, Look you got it, you got you got
Speaker 1: you just you just gotta get over the cortel hump
Speaker 1: and once you're over, Yeah, you got. It's like it's
Speaker 1: like growing out your your hair. Right, there's gonna be
Speaker 1: that period where it looks really awkward. That's when. That's
Speaker 1: when you've got two cartels, and then you get hot
Speaker 1: at four cartels. Then you're fuckable again. Yeah, it's great.
Speaker 1: So there's an interesting description from one of the two
Speaker 1: cops that don't want to read because it gets out
Speaker 1: how the code of Silence works. Um from the intercept
Speaker 1: he had, she said, this is about the the A
Speaker 1: I D. Guy he had, She said, made too many deals,
Speaker 1: there by neutralizing his ability to act. Attributing your understanding
Speaker 1: of this dynamic largely two conversations with Rivera himself, conversations
Speaker 1: she denied ever occurred. She described him as ensnared in
Speaker 1: a web of mutual blackmail at which bosses have leverage
Speaker 1: over one another by virtue of their shared knowledge of
Speaker 1: the deals they've made. She gave an example, I'll make
Speaker 1: the cr get your guy go away if you promote
Speaker 1: my guy within your unit. The code of silence and
Speaker 1: cloud or thus in twine Rivera, she recalled, once remarked
Speaker 1: to her that the bosses quote trade crs for favors
Speaker 1: like baseball cards. So yeah, this is this is what
Speaker 1: the code of silence is. It's it's it's an informal
Speaker 1: code sort of. That's also called the thin blue line,
Speaker 1: which is great, uh yeah, but basically it says that costs,
Speaker 1: you know, it's that cops will protect the road. But
Speaker 1: but it's more than that. If if if you if
Speaker 1: you cross the name blue line and you break the
Speaker 1: code of silence, you will be formally retaliated against by
Speaker 1: your commanders. And but when when when I say breaking
Speaker 1: the code of silence, what that means literally is if
Speaker 1: you take any action against another cop, Like it literally
Speaker 1: doesn't like they can be torturing people, they could be
Speaker 1: literally running a cartel. It doesn't matter. If you say
Speaker 1: anything about them, you will be like formally retaliated against
Speaker 1: by every other cop. And so the two cops who
Speaker 1: are investigating wats like, they get arrested by internal affairs.
Speaker 1: Internal affairs like tries to like basically make a fake
Speaker 1: case against them, and they eventually get out, but they're
Speaker 1: you know, they're rears are over right because they you know,
Speaker 1: attempted to like do the thing sort of that cops
Speaker 1: are nominally supposed to do and they just immediately get arrested. Um,
Speaker 1: and you know, and they have a lot of other
Speaker 1: stuff happened to them. Like one of the two cops
Speaker 1: comes home to a bell box literally full of ship,
Speaker 1: with a note that says, since you like ship so much,
Speaker 1: thought you'd enjoy this amazing. Yeah you know what I mean, Like,
Speaker 1: that's fun. That's fun. That should happen more offten just
Speaker 1: that should happen a lot more off other other scenarios. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it sucks that these are the cops that this
Speaker 1: is happening. Like, of all of the this is like
Speaker 1: the only time I like do not approve of like
Speaker 1: sending cops ship just like this is this is the
Speaker 1: wrong reason for the wrong reason to sender. You're gone.
Speaker 1: That's true. They have probably done stuff. They have done stuff.
Speaker 1: I will make sure it's better. It can be safer
Speaker 1: if it's if dogs should is the DNA is harder
Speaker 1: to track anyone, you know what the safest ship of
Speaker 1: all to use. No, I don't ship, panther ship. Panther ship.
Speaker 1: See I can. Yeah, I think I p I is
Speaker 1: never going to figure that one out. Yeah, I get
Speaker 1: the technology, get right on. I'll get right on that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're gonna go to go collect panther Ship'll be gone
Speaker 1: for a month. It could be their unibomber for like
Speaker 1: fifteen years. They're trying to track down what kind of
Speaker 1: ship is getting put in people's mailboxes until your brother
Speaker 1: sends them a letter saying I know someone who has
Speaker 1: access to a lot of Panther Ship and grudge tragic
Speaker 1: tail at time. And then you can get uh an
Speaker 1: HBO miniseries where they make you like look slightly like
Speaker 1: you're in a boy band, only slightly. It's like you
Speaker 1: were in a boy band but aged out. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you were in. So the coat of silence also extends
Speaker 1: a friendly politicians. Here's some the Interset report. Soon after
Speaker 1: he came to the confidential section, he was given the
Speaker 1: assignment of investigating a deputy superintendent. The allegation was at
Speaker 1: the officer. The official lived outside the city. Mills worked
Speaker 1: on the case for months and concluded the allegation was true.
Speaker 1: He produced a thick file. Take months. I'm sorry, I
Speaker 1: don't have to take months. There cops allowances for the
Speaker 1: caper of where does this guy who works here? Yeah,
Speaker 1: very funny. The next day the file came back to him.
Speaker 1: It was mart There was a yellow post with a
Speaker 1: handwritten message and make it unfounded. So that's fun, awesome, amazing, Yeah,
Speaker 1: make it fun. Cops are cops are a breed of
Speaker 1: their own poetic pot. Yeah. So actually, there there's a
Speaker 1: long history of like, yeah, politicians do something cops all
Speaker 1: the time, Like remember the story, right, like Rama, Manuel's
Speaker 1: like nephew or something killed a guy in a car
Speaker 1: crash and the CPD he got, Manuel got the CPD
Speaker 1: to just like that, never investigated it. They just were like, oh,
Speaker 1: someone died in the car crash and it just went away.
Speaker 1: It's it's real fun. Um. Yeah. So so eventually shortly
Speaker 1: after this sort of those two cops get like detained
Speaker 1: at the police academy, the FBI and the in the
Speaker 1: CPT move on Watts and his partner Mohammed and no
Speaker 1: one else. Interestingly, because again, if you think about this
Speaker 1: for about five seconds, they were an enormous number of
Speaker 1: people who either know about this operation or are actively
Speaker 1: involved in running a fucking drug cartel that is one
Speaker 1: of the biggest players on the South Side, who are
Speaker 1: still just cops and like the CPD goes after exactly
Speaker 1: two people. There are like dozens of people who were
Speaker 1: actively involved in this who are still cops um and
Speaker 1: and you know, and the only real trafficition to this
Speaker 1: is that the FBI and the CPD are complicit, which
Speaker 1: is that you know, I mean, so parts of the
Speaker 1: CPD want to keep doing keep keep running the cartel.
Speaker 1: The FBI is like, both the FBI and the CBD
Speaker 1: also have an interest in keeping this covered up because
Speaker 1: they don't want like, you know, oh hey, look at
Speaker 1: the look at the loss of trust in in in
Speaker 1: law enforcement. It comes out that there were actually two
Speaker 1: cartels running in the same place at the same time,
Speaker 1: parallel to each other, and then we didn't catch them.
Speaker 1: Like it's yeah, but it's great because literally nothing happens
Speaker 1: to these people. They're still out there, they're still doing
Speaker 1: cops shit. Uh yeah, only two people went down for that,
Speaker 1: and yes, so the cartel is just still there. It's
Speaker 1: that's good, it's still well. It proves that if you
Speaker 1: put in the work, you can really build something that lasts.
Speaker 1: And I think that's a lesson we all should be
Speaker 1: inspired by. Pulled yourself up by your uh jack bootstraps
Speaker 1: and wow, yeah that's good stuff. Okay, So so interlude
Speaker 1: number two. On May four six, someone threw a stick
Speaker 1: of dynamite at some cops and Haymarket Square in Chicago,
Speaker 1: tree a general strike for the eight hour work day
Speaker 1: they started. The cops fired wildly into the crowd, and
Speaker 1: the state rounded up a bunch of completely random anarchists who,
Speaker 1: by their own admission, had nothing to do with it,
Speaker 1: and had them executed. Now, the cops, for their part,
Speaker 1: built a statue for the cops at Haymarket. Now. The
Speaker 1: first of these statues were destroyed on May fourth by
Speaker 1: a guy who just right, so he he had he
Speaker 1: was like, he's a street car driver, right, and he
Speaker 1: had to like every single day he had to go
Speaker 1: past the statue of the Hammarkert cop. And one day
Speaker 1: he was just like no, and he he ran his
Speaker 1: street car off of the st on rails, right, He
Speaker 1: random off of the rails and rammed it into the statue.
Speaker 1: This guy rules you, dope. So the costs build another statue,
Speaker 1: and that second statue was blown up by the weather
Speaker 1: underground in October nineteen nine. Uh, the costs make another statue.
Speaker 1: The third statue is also blown up by the weather
Speaker 1: underground in October ninety. It was like that was less
Speaker 1: than a year later. Yep, yeah, and so the continue
Speaker 1: they originally they rebuilt it again, right, and originally they
Speaker 1: have it under like a twenty four hour armed guard
Speaker 1: Jesus and then and then and then. But you know,
Speaker 1: even then they were like, okay, we can't protect it.
Speaker 1: So they moved it into an enclosed courtyard in the
Speaker 1: middle of the of Chicago Police Academy because they're too
Speaker 1: cowardly to show it in public. Awesome, that's good. That's
Speaker 1: a win. That's a win everyone so much that they
Speaker 1: have to hide the statue to the assholes who got killed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's great. One day, one day, that fourth statue will
Speaker 1: follow the first three one day, one day by the
Speaker 1: mere cosmic forces the universe, by entropy. The force of
Speaker 1: nentropy will one day destroy the statute. Yes, okay, So
Speaker 1: onto story number four. Story number four is the Chicago
Speaker 1: Police Department's black site. So the Chicago the Police Department
Speaker 1: has a black site called Home and Square. Um. So,
Speaker 1: so normally, you know, you go to a police station
Speaker 1: and you get booked, right, they book you, They put
Speaker 1: you into the system. And you know, because you're in
Speaker 1: the system, like you know where um like people people
Speaker 1: can find you, right because you can just look someone up.
Speaker 1: You can look someone up in the system. Uh. At
Speaker 1: Home and Square, they don't book people if you just
Speaker 1: if you go there, you just disappear. There's no record
Speaker 1: of you. Uh, there's no there's no way to contact
Speaker 1: a lawyer if you're in there. Uh, your lawyer doesn't
Speaker 1: know where you are because again there's no records of
Speaker 1: where you are. You've just been grabbed off the street
Speaker 1: and taken to a building. Um. Yeah, And and this
Speaker 1: is a so store storage people there tends to be
Speaker 1: pretty short. They don't tend to hold people longer than
Speaker 1: a couple of days. But what it's therefore is this
Speaker 1: is this is a confession machine. This is the way
Speaker 1: to force confessions out of people, um by just you know,
Speaker 1: literally disappearing them, uh and denying them access to lawyers
Speaker 1: or literally anyone knowing where they are. And they're just
Speaker 1: holding them until they confess. Uh. And also yesh so
Speaker 1: so at Home and Square, prisoners are routinely shackled for
Speaker 1: for hours, like like tens of hours, sometimes twenty four hours,
Speaker 1: beaten denied phone calls and robbed constantly. This is this
Speaker 1: is another fun sepety tradition is yeah, they'll just take
Speaker 1: you to this black site and then rob you and
Speaker 1: then maybe they'll release you, but you know they've still
Speaker 1: robbed you. And yes, you know they do these beatings,
Speaker 1: and these beatings are incredibly intense, Like you know that
Speaker 1: they're punching people. They're doing like knee strikes and doing
Speaker 1: elbow strikes. You're hitting people with batons. Sometimes they're tassering people. Uh.
Speaker 1: We we have a report that that the cops filed
Speaker 1: of listening listened as a cop being assaulted and the
Speaker 1: thing that they're listening as a non it was like
Speaker 1: like non like fist a salt. Was the guy spat blood? Yeah,
Speaker 1: well and they listened that as an assaults. Yeah, it's great,
Speaker 1: it's yeah. They also do things like they put like
Speaker 1: flex cuffs around people's necks. Torture. Yeah, yeah, they Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a way for someone to die. But it's almost
Speaker 1: like that's maybe part of the intention is that someone
Speaker 1: will quote accidentally die or we'll get to that. Okay,
Speaker 1: well so not great, Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's it's not
Speaker 1: it's it's bad. There's another guy who Okay, so the
Speaker 1: cops are completely convinced this guy who was completely innocent. Well, okay,
Speaker 1: I do want to say, like I'm gonna say a
Speaker 1: lot of people are innocent because they are. But also like,
Speaker 1: even if you're guilty, you no one deserves this, Like
Speaker 1: maybe the cops doing it deserve it. But even then
Speaker 1: it's I don't even think they do, Like yeah, you don't, yeah, people, yeah,
Speaker 1: like so this guy, you might knock down a statue
Speaker 1: or three, but yeah, like you know, like it's yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's really grim like yeah. So they hold this
Speaker 1: guy's mouth open with a pen, right, and then they
Speaker 1: keep elbowing him in the stomach until he throws up. Um.
Speaker 1: And so she tries to get medical attention because he
Speaker 1: keeps throwing up because he has asthma, I mean also
Speaker 1: because she just got elbowed in the stomach repe his
Speaker 1: mouth yeah um. And instead of giving him medical treatment
Speaker 1: even though he like easily could have died, the cops
Speaker 1: just beat him up for asking. There's another guy who
Speaker 1: gets uh sexually abused with the barrel of a gun,
Speaker 1: and when he starts screaming, the guard the gun goes
Speaker 1: on a ranch about how he needs to be careful
Speaker 1: or he might accidentally pull the trigger. Oh boy, it's
Speaker 1: it's bad. Um. This this is all within that specific Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is this is this is this is all just
Speaker 1: in homeland square. Um. He claims that like the cell
Speaker 1: he's being held in, he doesn't get any food, doesn't
Speaker 1: get any water. They keep him there for hours and
Speaker 1: the like the cell just smells like blood and like feces,
Speaker 1: because yeah, they don't people go to the bathroom to
Speaker 1: other individuals. Uh. Stephanie Martinez and Calvin Coffy described relieving
Speaker 1: themselves well shackled in a Home and Square and interrogation room. Martinez,
Speaker 1: locked up with two thousand six, was told by a
Speaker 1: guard that she did not have the key to Martinez
Speaker 1: has handcuffs and could not take her to the bathroom. Kofe,
Speaker 1: taken to Home and Square on the sixth of February
Speaker 1: two thou fifteen on suspicion of narcotic activity, defecated on
Speaker 1: the floor after two hours, fruitlessly requesting for the bathroom.
Speaker 1: A police officer made Calvin clean it up with his
Speaker 1: skull cap. The lawsuit alleges it's these people are sick there,
Speaker 1: it's it's yeah, yeah, yeah, they hate that. It's like yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know, things that they're holding children in here,
Speaker 1: like they have people as young as fifteen who are
Speaker 1: being literally they never everything about this is that when
Speaker 1: so sometimes sometimes you get sort of like arrested normally,
Speaker 1: although again I should mention that the Constitution does not
Speaker 1: exist like it's it's a it's a lie. No one
Speaker 1: ever gets sucking read the miranda rights. It doesn't matter
Speaker 1: because the constitution doesn't exist if you're poor. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: sort of exists if you're not, but I will guarantee
Speaker 1: you they're reading their miranda rights to people who look
Speaker 1: like they got yeah yeah, yeah, no, these people there's
Speaker 1: actually a story of these two point rieking guys who
Speaker 1: got brought in and they like the cops are like
Speaker 1: trying to get them, give us something, and they just
Speaker 1: like they start name dropping like civil rights lawyers, and
Speaker 1: the cops are like, okay, okay, uh, we're good. We'll
Speaker 1: we'll we'll drive you back. If you don't talk, we'll
Speaker 1: we'll drive we'll drive you back to like where you
Speaker 1: came from. Yeah, it's yeah, it's it's extremely grim. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they just want to funk with people who can't defend themselves. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know, and the way they do this right,
Speaker 1: Like they they do these raids where like everyone's they're
Speaker 1: they're they're they're not wearing badges. Everyone's just like wearing
Speaker 1: matt like like black armor and like black masks. And
Speaker 1: so people describe getting like dragged out of their house
Speaker 1: and they don't know if they're getting robbed or like
Speaker 1: if they're being kidnapped. And then they are being kidnapped
Speaker 1: by just being kidnapped like by the cops, and they
Speaker 1: get dragged and then again they're they're dragging like fifteen
Speaker 1: year olds into the into this thing. I there, there's
Speaker 1: one guy who gets found unresponsive in an interrogation room. Um,
Speaker 1: now the police say that they died from heroin overdose.
Speaker 1: But this makes literally no sense. So the first reason
Speaker 1: why it doesn't make any sense is that the cops
Speaker 1: initially lie about where he about where he like had
Speaker 1: the overdose and died because they don't want to reveal
Speaker 1: that he, uh you know, was in their secret black site,
Speaker 1: so they like lied and that he was another he
Speaker 1: was at another site. Now the other thing you know
Speaker 1: that that contradicts the claimed that this guy was had
Speaker 1: a heroin overdose. Is that the hospital when he when
Speaker 1: when the hospital saw him, they wrote that he was sober.
Speaker 1: So I mean he could have he could have had
Speaker 1: a heroin overdose in terms of the cops injecting full
Speaker 1: of yeah, like yeah, that's the most likely thing. Like
Speaker 1: there's nothing part of this. So so this guy was
Speaker 1: selling cocaine right, um, but again he's selling cocaine, not heroin.
Speaker 1: And the other and you know, his his partner, like
Speaker 1: there was another guy he was he was selling cocaine
Speaker 1: with like his partner, when everyone who knew him was
Speaker 1: completely insistant that you know he does he doesn't do drugs, right,
Speaker 1: he sells them because you know, do you sell drugs?
Speaker 1: But yeah, and and the cops and you know there
Speaker 1: are things that the cops do. The comp thing where
Speaker 1: they they changed their story twice. So originally they said
Speaker 1: that he like committed suicide by heroin overdosing, and then
Speaker 1: they changed their story too. He died by accidents. Um.
Speaker 1: The The other thing that that indicates that he probably
Speaker 1: did not in fact die from heroin overdose is that
Speaker 1: there's bruises all over his face. He has a busted lip,
Speaker 1: his neck is super red, and none of that shows
Speaker 1: up in the in the police autopsy. And yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and this all reads just like a standard Burge error interrogation,
Speaker 1: so that like they beat him, they put a bag
Speaker 1: over said to suffocate him, and then you plant heroin
Speaker 1: on him and you know, you you call him Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the day's work. Yeah yeah, and you know, and
Speaker 1: there's there's another thing that that that I should mention
Speaker 1: here about the story, which is that, Okay, so this
Speaker 1: guy is in a Chicago Police Department black site, right,
Speaker 1: how did he get hair a win in? Like everyone
Speaker 1: in his black side is literally shackled to a wall,
Speaker 1: Like there's no the old the old place the hare
Speaker 1: we could possibly have come from is the cops. So
Speaker 1: it's like, you know, and independent autopsy says he dies
Speaker 1: of asphyxiation. Uh so yeah, I'm gonna read something from
Speaker 1: the Guardian about the guy who uh, the guy's partner
Speaker 1: who was in the next cell over. The other partner
Speaker 1: who requested to be cited as John Doewell. He rebuilds
Speaker 1: his life post conviction, was in a Home and Square
Speaker 1: interrogation room near Galvin's while Dobe was unable to see inside.
Speaker 1: He told The Guardian he heard a lot of commotion,
Speaker 1: then booming and banging, and then a gagging sound coming
Speaker 1: from his friend's cell. His partner. Yeah, so this this guy,
Speaker 1: uh like his partner, like he's that guy's also like
Speaker 1: chained to a wall for like twelve hours. Um here
Speaker 1: here's he he's both them today. I heard a holler,
Speaker 1: I heard officers talking to him. After that, I just
Speaker 1: heard a lot of commotion like boom boom boom boom
Speaker 1: and banging boom boom, boom, boom boom, And then I
Speaker 1: didn't hear nothing after that. My door was kind of
Speaker 1: cracked and then they shut it. After that, they shut
Speaker 1: my door all the way. Before the police shut the
Speaker 1: door dozed, I heard a gagging sound like he makes
Speaker 1: a choking noise, like choking, like somebody was choking after
Speaker 1: the commotion, like choking. I yeah, oh yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: very it's very obvious from the get go. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like they tortured this guy to death and yeah, it's yeah.
Speaker 1: And and the other fun part about Homeo squares Homeles
Speaker 1: square is also used to torture political prisoners. All right,
Speaker 1: So Brian Brian Jacob Church is a member of the
Speaker 1: NATO three, which is a group of anti NATO protesters
Speaker 1: and twelve who got set up by an incredibly elaborate
Speaker 1: government entrapment scheme and arrested for it. Um and he
Speaker 1: was taken immediately to Homemod Square. He's never read his
Speaker 1: branda rights, He's cuffed to a bench for seventeen hours
Speaker 1: um and he he asked to call his lawyer because
Speaker 1: like a good leftist, he has the National Lawyers Fuield
Speaker 1: number written on his arm. And you know, this is
Speaker 1: something that's important. So the Guardian talked to like dozens
Speaker 1: of people who were held year right, um. Exactly two
Speaker 1: of them were able to contact a lawyer and they
Speaker 1: were both white and Church Church is one of them.
Speaker 1: And this is actually how uh part of how Home
Speaker 1: and Score goes public because Brian Jacob Church like talks
Speaker 1: to the press about it and Spencer Ackerman it's a
Speaker 1: great journalist, does a bunch of incredible reporting and like
Speaker 1: brings the black site to light. And so there's there's
Speaker 1: seven thousand, one and eighty five people we can prove
Speaker 1: we're taken to Home and Square. Uh, six thousand of
Speaker 1: those people are black. Less than one per cent of
Speaker 1: those people had their rest logged, which means the cops
Speaker 1: just vanished them. Uh, it's almost certainly more people. Now,
Speaker 1: I'm going to read something about this from from the
Speaker 1: book Writings from the World of Policing. This Home and
Speaker 1: Score revelation seems to me to be an institutionalization of
Speaker 1: practices that date back more than forty years, said Flint Taylor,
Speaker 1: the civil rights lawyer and most associated with pursuing Area
Speaker 1: to Commander John Burge. Back when I first started working
Speaker 1: on torture cases started representing criminal defense in the early
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies, Taylor continued, My clients often told me they've
Speaker 1: been taken from one police station to another before ending
Speaker 1: up an area to where they were tortured. That way,
Speaker 1: the police prevent their families and lawyers from seeing them
Speaker 1: until they could coerci the torture or other means confession
Speaker 1: from them. So, yeah, that that's our fucking police reform.
Speaker 1: Instead of having a instead of taking the police station
Speaker 1: to police station, the police have now been reformed so
Speaker 1: that they have one institutionalized black site instead of multiple ones.
Speaker 1: Home and Square is still open to this day that
Speaker 1: this came out. There have been like over half a
Speaker 1: decade of protest against it um. So supposedly the rules
Speaker 1: have changed and if you get a rested they have
Speaker 1: to put you in the system. But square is still open.
Speaker 1: There's probably another one like somewhere that they've just they've
Speaker 1: they've they've they've switched which side they're doing their black
Speaker 1: sites on, and yeah, well, yeah, I have I have
Speaker 1: a have a closing statement. It is it is an
Speaker 1: inhuman crime that a single one of these fucking demons
Speaker 1: is allowed to roam our streets with the badge and
Speaker 1: the authority to rape, torture and murder us, and the
Speaker 1: certainty that the system will beat us into a pulp
Speaker 1: if we attempt, even in the smallest way both symbolic
Speaker 1: way possible, to resist them. The police must be abolished.
Speaker 1: There is no alternative. For the sake of our survival,
Speaker 1: for the survival of children, and for the sake of
Speaker 1: every generation that is bore its horrors before us. We
Speaker 1: could only abolish the police, salt the earth upon which
Speaker 1: it stands, and drive the very concept of policing into
Speaker 1: a space of such infamy and terror that even the
Speaker 1: worst among us would not dare to even propose bringing
Speaker 1: it back. Also, get rid of that last statue, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that one destroyed. Let's knock that one out of there too. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, I feel like everyone who's ever been to
Speaker 1: that site has should have the the the like universal
Speaker 1: right to take a hammer and maybe you know, maybe
Speaker 1: maybe an RPG and just like do whatever they want
Speaker 1: to that building. Yeah. I think the men who continued
Speaker 1: to like in women who continued to work in CPD,
Speaker 1: like anyone who was ever arrested by them or or
Speaker 1: otherwise brutalize them should just forever have the right to
Speaker 1: just give him like a solid shot to the balls,
Speaker 1: you know, like just just like they get to wear
Speaker 1: a little sign around their neck and it's like, oh
Speaker 1: that guy used to that guy was you know, it
Speaker 1: was one of Burgess dudes. So anybody who sees them
Speaker 1: can just give him, give him a little haymaker right
Speaker 1: in the right in the bread basket. That is a proposal,
Speaker 1: that is I'm running from the mayor of Chicago. I mean,
Speaker 1: i I'd look, our bears all suck, So you know,
Speaker 1: move move over here, and we we we we can
Speaker 1: propose a solution to this problem. That is so unbelievably
Speaker 1: not proportionately violence to what the police have been doing.
Speaker 1: That it boggles belief. And I'm pretty sure I can
Speaker 1: still manage to be corrupt. Yeah, yeah, I mean it's Chicago.
Speaker 1: You can't not. I mean, I guess. I mean life
Speaker 1: was sort of corrupt. Life's less corrupt than normal. She's
Speaker 1: just bad. But yeah, it's Chicago. You'll you'll find corrupt,
Speaker 1: corruption will be foisted upon you. I'm actually fine with that. Well,
Speaker 1: another another uplifting episode, if it could happen. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: will say this like Garrison named it last yet earlier today, Hi,
Speaker 1: here's a problem by you know, and I will say
Speaker 1: any any time, any time someone tells you that like, no,
Speaker 1: it's fine, we're going to reform the police, just like
Speaker 1: remind them that reforming the Chicago Police Department went was
Speaker 1: that the reform was that we don't have black sites.
Speaker 1: We now have. We now have consolidated the black We
Speaker 1: went from multiple black sites to one black site. And
Speaker 1: also they probably moved it again. Just you just have
Speaker 1: to get rid of that is the essence of police report. Anyway, Yep,
Speaker 1: there's a problem. Okay, bye bye, Hey, We'll be back
Speaker 1: Monday with more episodes every week from now until the
Speaker 1: heat death of the universe. It Could Happen Here is
Speaker 1: a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from
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Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can
Speaker 1: find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated monthly at
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Speaker 1: made entrepreneurs, influencers, and celebrities over a meal they once
Speaker 1: ate when they were broke. Today I have the lovely
Speaker 1: aj Crimson, the official Princess of Compton, Asia Kidding and Asia.
Speaker 1: This is the professor. We're here on Eating While Broke
Speaker 1: and today I'm gonna break down my meal that got
Speaker 1: me through a time when I was broken. Listen to
Speaker 1: Eating Wall Broke on the I Heart Radio app, on
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.