Speaker 1: All right, welcome to It could Happen here, a podcast
Speaker 1: about things falling apart and also sometimes about how things
Speaker 1: have been falling apart for a while now, and today
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about how things were also bad
Speaker 1: in falling apart in the two thousands, which a profoundly
Speaker 1: cursed time period. And specifically we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: I think a part of the anti war movement that
Speaker 1: does not get much attention, which is the port militarization
Speaker 1: resistance that happens sort of two thousand and six, two
Speaker 1: thousand and seven. And with us today to talk about
Speaker 1: this is two people who were part of this movement.
Speaker 1: We have Juliana Neuhauser Hello, Hello, and Brendan Maslawska's done. Yeah,
Speaker 1: both of them were organizers and activists while this was
Speaker 1: going on. Yeah, thank you, thank you both for being here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thanks for having us so.
Speaker 1: Yeah, as I was saying a bit in the intro,
Speaker 1: I think that this is a part of the anti
Speaker 1: war movement that is not very well known. I think
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people know about the initial
Speaker 1: stuff that happened in two thousand and three, and people
Speaker 1: might know about some of the stuff that was happening
Speaker 1: against the war in Afghanistan, like right when it started,
Speaker 1: but I don't think most people know that it like
Speaker 1: you know, even after two thousand and three stort doesn't work,
Speaker 1: that it continues, and it continues sort of informs.
Speaker 3: That are that are very interesting.
Speaker 1: And so I guess I want you to to start out,
Speaker 1: I want to ask how we sort of got from
Speaker 1: the early part of the anti war movement into this,
Speaker 1: and how you got involved.
Speaker 4: I would say that there's this narrative about the women
Speaker 4: against the word Iraq, that there is the largest protests
Speaker 4: in human history, at least at that point. I don't
Speaker 4: know if it's still true against the invasion, and then
Speaker 4: it didn't work and everyone kind of went home and
Speaker 4: ended there, and to a certain extent that's true. But
Speaker 4: like you said, the people that didn't go home went
Speaker 4: in interesting directions, and so at the time there were
Speaker 4: direct action was not as acceptable as it is now.
Speaker 4: The this movement was largely dominated either by big liberal
Speaker 4: coalitions or PSL front groups that were basically indistinguishable in
Speaker 4: what they actually did, which was basically nothing and in
Speaker 4: the best of cases and then the worst of cases, counterinsurgency.
Speaker 4: But then there were small groups of people that when
Speaker 4: we saw that it didn't work, and we saw that
Speaker 4: these giant, peaceful marches from one part of town to another,
Speaker 4: or voting for job Carrie or whatever the work, that
Speaker 4: we started to look for other options.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know, I got involved, you know, i'd
Speaker 2: say with the anti war movement. That idea of how
Speaker 2: war is unjust was really taught to me from a
Speaker 2: very young age. I mean, my parents were you know,
Speaker 2: children of the sixties, and they had family members fighting
Speaker 2: in Vietnam and you know, friends dying in Vietnam, and
Speaker 2: we're against the protests back then. So I grew up
Speaker 2: hearing these stories and of course stories from family members,
Speaker 2: particularly one of my grandfathers, both of them who were
Speaker 2: veterans in World War Two. One of them was a
Speaker 2: marine in the you know, in the Pacific Theater, and
Speaker 2: still into his seventies, eighties and nineties until his final days,
Speaker 2: was just dealing with horrific PTSD and had always taught
Speaker 2: me from young age never to get involved. So I,
Speaker 2: you know, and I remember when when the very clearly,
Speaker 2: you know, I'm sure it's on everyone's minds now, and
Speaker 2: when the invasion of Afghanistan started, when the invasion of
Speaker 2: a Rock started. I was at that that massive demonstration
Speaker 2: in Washington, d C. That Juliana just mentioned, and I
Speaker 2: ended up. I'm from Utica, New York. I went to
Speaker 2: a rural high school just outside of of Utica, you know,
Speaker 2: russ Bell generally speaking, impoverished and also very conservative area
Speaker 2: of New York. And you know, I had the recruiters
Speaker 2: bothering me, military recruiters in high school, recruiting my friends,
Speaker 2: and they were just everywhere in the hallways. So it
Speaker 2: was very present with me when I was younger. I
Speaker 2: moved out to Olympia, Washington, two thousand and six, and
Speaker 2: that's when a new student activist group, Students for Democratic Society,
Speaker 2: was launched. That's how Juliana and I first met. We
Speaker 2: were both in separate chapters of that new organization in
Speaker 2: the Pacific Northwest. And the protests started just a few
Speaker 2: months after I moved out there in Olympia in two
Speaker 2: thousand and six.
Speaker 1: So wait declared for this or second because I've never
Speaker 1: quite been clear in this history. So there was a
Speaker 1: second SD like Students for Democratic Society that was like
Speaker 1: unrelated to the first one.
Speaker 4: They're born briefly at the end of the Budshet Master.
Speaker 1: That explains a lot of things that it's very baffling.
Speaker 2: We're not that old. Yeah, we were definitely in the
Speaker 2: in the second you know, the rebirth of it. So
Speaker 2: you know, I think it took on some things in spirit,
Speaker 2: you know, but also was i'd say different in many ways,
Speaker 2: and it was very active. To me at least, it
Speaker 2: was very exciting to be a member of the New
Speaker 2: STS because they're over a dozen chapters in the Pacific
Speaker 2: Northwest and it was a great way to connect with
Speaker 2: young activists all over the US.
Speaker 1: So STS is emerging in this time period. One of
Speaker 1: the other things I was interested about is something something
Speaker 1: you were talking about in the early part of this,
Speaker 1: which has to do with the way that these giant
Speaker 1: both the sort of answer Coalition PSL, Frank Group, and
Speaker 1: I guess the ISO was still around back then coalitions
Speaker 1: work versus how like anything else worked on. So was
Speaker 1: was SDS sort of like consciously set up and in
Speaker 1: opposition to those groups?
Speaker 4: I don't think it was conscious, but there was just
Speaker 4: like I mean these days, I mean, like there's a
Speaker 4: lot of controversy around PSL with like anarchists versus tanky politics.
Speaker 4: None of that mattered at that time, Like, none of
Speaker 4: that mattered. The only thing that mattered was the answer,
Speaker 4: which was the PSL Front group was completely fucking useless.
Speaker 4: Like they completely indistinguishable from any peace police liberal democratic
Speaker 4: front group. There was literally no difference, just in terms
Speaker 4: of their aesthetics maybe like is there a donkey or
Speaker 4: a hammer and sickle on something. That's the only difference
Speaker 4: we saw. So I don't I don't think there was.
Speaker 4: It wasn't There wasn't like a conscious like political opposite
Speaker 4: attention to it. It was just like they're not doing anything,
Speaker 4: and so we had to look in another direction.
Speaker 2: Actually, you know, it's hard to keep track of the
Speaker 2: alphabet soup of authilitary and communist groups at times, but
Speaker 2: this was actually answer for those who don't recall it
Speaker 2: was a front group for the Workers World Party the
Speaker 2: W which, yeah, I mean it's it's hard to keep track, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's the same thing, like I think, so okay,
Speaker 1: So for people who are sort of unaware of this,
Speaker 1: there's a network of connected but sometimes feuding like weird stalness.
Speaker 3: Cults that kind of that kind of like they hold.
Speaker 1: On through like this the eighties and nineties and they
Speaker 1: start sort of rebuilding again around the anti war movements
Speaker 1: in that period. That that's the PSL's of a DUP's answer, like,
Speaker 1: and I think that's like most like modern anti war
Speaker 1: groups are also still these people, which is incredibly depressing
Speaker 1: something I want to talk a bit about it towards
Speaker 1: the end of this, but yeah, just for people who
Speaker 1: have not spent the last half decade in the in
Speaker 1: the trenches of extremely weird anti war politics. So yeah,
Speaker 1: so I think we should get into how the sort
Speaker 1: of the first action starts in Olympia.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So, and there were actually a couple actions that
Speaker 2: happened in the year proceeding that, you know, before I
Speaker 2: moved out to Olympia in two thousand and six, it
Speaker 2: was not yet under the banner of PMR port Militarization Resistance.
Speaker 2: That was a name that was officially coined in you know,
Speaker 2: in in May and June of two thousand and six.
Speaker 2: And so, just to give you an idea, Olympias it's
Speaker 2: a college town, or at the Evergreen State College is there.
Speaker 2: It's also the capital Washington State, so you have that
Speaker 2: going on. It's also a military town. It's a little
Speaker 2: over twenty miles south of what we called Fort Lewis.
Speaker 2: It's now called JBLM j BLUM or Joint Base Lewis McCord.
Speaker 2: It's an Army and Air Force base. Now it's one base.
Speaker 2: So ye had all these you know, different kind of
Speaker 2: elements in you know, in tandem in that town and
Speaker 2: the public port. The Port of Olympia is one of
Speaker 2: about seventy or so public ports in the state of Washington,
Speaker 2: some of which are I mean, they're used for all
Speaker 2: kinds of things, you know, for our commercial, private industry,
Speaker 2: but also the military and the US government. So, you know,
Speaker 2: I heard from someone I don't even remember who that
Speaker 2: the military was sending a ship to the Port of
Speaker 2: Olympia in late May of two thousand and six. And
Speaker 2: this happened for ten or so days, and it was
Speaker 2: just kind of a natural instinct for a whole bunch
Speaker 2: of us to go down to the Port of Olympia.
Speaker 2: It was the war machine in our backyard, and the
Speaker 2: idea was to just block the vehicles. It started out
Speaker 2: with just like less than ten people, a number of
Speaker 2: folks getting arrested, and that very rapidly culminated into larger
Speaker 2: protests every single day, an act of blockades people those
Speaker 2: of us like Julian and myself and other folks using
Speaker 2: civil disobedience or what we preferred to call civil resistance
Speaker 2: to try and stop or at the very least slow
Speaker 2: down these striker vehicles and to give folks an idea
Speaker 2: of what a striker vehicle is. You can look it
Speaker 2: up online, but it's kind of halfway between, you know,
Speaker 2: a tank and a hum vy. It doesn't have slats,
Speaker 2: you know that a tank would have. It's you know,
Speaker 2: and they were being used in both Iraq and Afghanistan
Speaker 2: for for raids of residential areas. They were really on
Speaker 2: the front lines of the war in both those countries,
Speaker 2: and that's what we were trying to stop.
Speaker 4: I only got involved later because I wasn't living in
Speaker 4: Olympia at the time. I was in another STS chapter.
Speaker 4: But my roommate was from Olympia and he had been
Speaker 4: involved in that first round of protests in Olympia before
Speaker 4: moving up to Balingham. And so like, hearing his story
Speaker 4: has got me very excited because it's like finally someone's
Speaker 4: someone's doing something like someone's they're not just like it's
Speaker 4: like everything else was just so liberal, like whether it's
Speaker 4: marching from one place to another or writing to your
Speaker 4: congress people or occupying their office. It was like asking
Speaker 4: someone else to do something you knew from the beginning
Speaker 4: they were never going to do. Yeah, and finally this
Speaker 4: was finally someone was like actually getting into it. I
Speaker 4: think the first one of the things that happened here
Speaker 4: was that they started to avoid there's it was kind
Speaker 4: of a geographical thing that I think for people who
Speaker 4: either don't know Wash Washington or because they're normal people
Speaker 4: don't know like the port areas of these cities very
Speaker 4: well because it's like like unless you're a longshoreman, like
Speaker 4: why would you go down to like the port of Tacoma. Yeah,
Speaker 4: there's nothing there.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: But they kept moving it around because Olympia is also
Speaker 4: not very big and so it's there's really only two
Speaker 4: roads into the port, which is very small, and so
Speaker 4: it was it's very easy to block it. And so
Speaker 4: then I think the first time that I got involved
Speaker 4: was in two thousands seven when they had moved it
Speaker 4: because they kept moving it around to try and switch
Speaker 4: things up and.
Speaker 1: Wait before they're the ship around.
Speaker 4: Is no it's like they had to make a military shipment,
Speaker 4: they would It's like like once the ship wasn't the port,
Speaker 4: they would just have to go through with it. But then,
Speaker 4: you know, it's like every every six months or so,
Speaker 4: they had to make another military shipment and they would
Speaker 4: change the port usually each time to try and let
Speaker 4: basically to avoid us. It doesn't seem like this is
Speaker 4: like normal craft. Yeah. The first time I had gone
Speaker 4: down was in Dacoma, which is a much much, much
Speaker 4: more industrialized port than Olympia. It's you know, it's a
Speaker 4: big port, more normal port, I guess, And that one
Speaker 4: was honestly pretty crazy because you're just trapped into a
Speaker 4: giant industrial maize basically at the mercy of the riot cops.
Speaker 4: The best success we had was definitely at the port
Speaker 4: of Olympia. I think the in two thousand and seven
Speaker 4: and Olympia was definitely And it's like the glory moment,
Speaker 4: which was when people were able to on and off
Speaker 4: like actually hold the port and control it in as
Speaker 4: an exits.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I want to, you know, just emphasize that,
Speaker 2: like the one the military changing their approach right to
Speaker 2: avoid us, so jumping from port to port with these
Speaker 2: different shipments. They actually went so far because we were
Speaker 2: so successful as a movement in the Pacific Northwest to
Speaker 2: ship striker vehicles by rail out of the Pacific Northwest
Speaker 2: and even going so far as to ports in Texas.
Speaker 2: But you know, one thing that we did is that
Speaker 2: we built up contacts with other activists with long shore
Speaker 2: workers all up and down the West coast in California.
Speaker 2: There are other activists we were connected with in Texas, Hawaii,
Speaker 2: New Jersey, and New York. There is a desire in
Speaker 2: the anti war movement, and you know, in some extent
Speaker 2: maybe it's like it was small, but with some folks
Speaker 2: in the labor movement, especially in Oakland where the ISLWU,
Speaker 2: the longshore Workers Union, it's a lot more militant than
Speaker 2: say in a place like Olympia. But yeah, I mean
Speaker 2: people wanted to replicate this model because, as Julianna said,
Speaker 2: we wore successful. In two thousand and seven, we shut
Speaker 2: down the port of Olympia for a total of it
Speaker 2: was essentially two days. They were not they're not shipping
Speaker 2: anything in or out. We set up blockades, we're willing
Speaker 2: to throw down with the police in the street.
Speaker 4: And one of the things that was cool about that
Speaker 4: blockade is that one of the there's two entrances, like
Speaker 4: I said, and one was completely blockaded, and then the
Speaker 4: other one we had like a moving I don't really
Speaker 4: know what it was, but something with wheels that we
Speaker 4: could move in and out to open it up, and
Speaker 4: so then we could allow like civilian cargo to move
Speaker 4: in and out, but then like we would feel it
Speaker 4: back in place to block military shipments.
Speaker 1: So we were you able to actually like stop them
Speaker 1: from like wet while in that one in to come
Speaker 1: we actually like stopped them from moving this stuff altogether.
Speaker 1: Or do you actually cleared up by the police and
Speaker 1: they moved it.
Speaker 4: We would eventually get cleared out by the police. It's
Speaker 4: like we were never able to It's like we were
Speaker 4: we we held it for two days. That those protests
Speaker 4: took place over a series of two weeks or more
Speaker 4: or less. We were only able to fully hold it
Speaker 4: for two days before eventually they would clear us out.
Speaker 4: But one of the things is that this does it
Speaker 4: did create problems for the army because when you work
Speaker 4: with a port, you know, it's like you've got like
Speaker 4: a certain time frame that you've contracted with the port
Speaker 4: to do whatever it is is you're going to do,
Speaker 4: and it's not too happy if you take longer than
Speaker 4: you said.
Speaker 2: You would or Yeah. And the other thing I want
Speaker 2: to add is, you know, I think the other really
Speaker 2: important element with this whole movement going on is the
Speaker 2: Pacific Northwest was it is specifically western Washington, where the
Speaker 2: two of us were living. It was, you know, the
Speaker 2: center in a sense, it was the heart of the
Speaker 2: anti war movement in the country at that time. One
Speaker 2: because of this militant direct action that we were you know,
Speaker 2: we were building up in the streets and trying to
Speaker 2: throw wrench in the gears of the war machine to
Speaker 2: at the very least slow it down, which in some
Speaker 2: ways we did, but you know, we were up against
Speaker 2: so much. But the other added element, of course, is
Speaker 2: the GI resistance and the soldiers who are resisting i've
Speaker 2: all also known as Iraq veterans against the war was
Speaker 2: very active there. They set up a GI coffeehouse across
Speaker 2: you know, literally across the street, you know, the the
Speaker 2: gates for one of the entrances for Fort Lewis. There
Speaker 2: are a whole bunch of soldiers that were going a wall.
Speaker 2: We had friends who were active duty soldiers who had
Speaker 2: fought in you know, Iraq and Afghanistan that were a
Speaker 2: wall and they were hiding, you know, refusing to go
Speaker 2: back into these striker brigades that joined us in port
Speaker 2: militarization resistance. There are a whole, you know, long list
Speaker 2: of soldiers that were very publicly saying, you know, I'm
Speaker 2: refusing to fight in Iraq or Afghanistan for you know,
Speaker 2: various reasons. And so we are very much connected with
Speaker 2: this movement too, and I think the higher ups in
Speaker 2: the military they're they're hyper aware of that. They studied
Speaker 2: us very well, you know, to the point of actually
Speaker 2: spying on us. So that's like a whole other element
Speaker 2: of the story too.
Speaker 1: One of the things that I've heard from talking to
Speaker 1: other people who were involved in this was that like wow,
Speaker 1: like during these protests, like the level of police militarization
Speaker 1: just like skyrocketed. And like I remember, I was, like
Speaker 1: you said about this, those like you know, if if
Speaker 1: you go back and look at like old system of
Speaker 1: a down videos, you know, they'll have these things. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you'll see these you see these riot police and like
Speaker 1: you look at them and it's like these people they
Speaker 1: look so much less armored than like the people that
Speaker 1: we have now. And one of the of things I
Speaker 1: thought was interesting about this was that like this is
Speaker 1: I think one of the points where you start getting
Speaker 1: the modern riot police showing up that are just like,
Speaker 1: you know, completely concased in like armor. And yeah, I
Speaker 1: want to talk about just like the police response to this,
Speaker 1: because I think that's That's another thing I think. I
Speaker 1: think there's there's a kind of a tendency to sort
Speaker 1: of project back what the police looked like in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty one, just onto the whole history of police, and
Speaker 1: I think it's like it's it's it's gotten worse even
Speaker 1: in the last twenty years.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, so I lived downtown in Olympia and
Speaker 2: probably just like a six minute walk away from the
Speaker 2: Port of Olympia and also very conveniently just a few
Speaker 2: blocks away from the police station. So so lucky. Yuh
Speaker 2: So we actually saw, you know, we could see from
Speaker 2: the front of down on the road, down on the
Speaker 2: sidewalk from the front of our house, some of the
Speaker 2: military shipments going by, and we we did see that absolutely,
Speaker 2: and at at times it was it was terrifying. I mean,
Speaker 2: I lived in an activist house we jokingly called HQ
Speaker 2: because that's just you know, where it because of its
Speaker 2: proximity to the port. That's where a number of us
Speaker 2: were having meetings, you know, around these protests early on
Speaker 2: in two thousand and six. And yeah, I mean we
Speaker 2: like they looked like RoboCop and it's something I had
Speaker 2: I you know, I hadn't like I had been to
Speaker 2: like mass marches and demonstrations like the RNC protests and
Speaker 2: DNC protests in Boston, New York and like in Washington,
Speaker 2: d c uh and so I would see these like
Speaker 2: riot cops, but they were I mean ubiquitous in these
Speaker 2: port protests. It was like a whole army of them
Speaker 2: that was sent out. I mean when Juliana said that
Speaker 2: things got kind of crazy at the Port of Tacoma protests,
Speaker 2: I mean there was like a police riot, you know,
Speaker 2: like the cops went absolutely nuts there, shooting people with
Speaker 2: tear gas and pepper balls and brutalizing people. I had
Speaker 2: never before witnessed anything like that. And it got to
Speaker 2: the point in you know, in Olympia where we kind
Speaker 2: of knew early on that we were being traced by
Speaker 2: the police to the extent where you know, one friend
Speaker 2: of ours was followed from our house to the bus
Speaker 2: station to take a bus to school by the police
Speaker 2: and then was stopped and essentially assaulted by them on
Speaker 2: the street. And we had another fellow activists and you know,
Speaker 2: a roommate of mine who was going out to driving
Speaker 2: out with a few friends, a few fellow activists from
Speaker 2: Olympia to Aberdeen, about an hour's drive. So Aberdeen, there's
Speaker 2: a port of grays Harbor there, pretty conservative small town.
Speaker 2: It's where Kirk Cobain is from.
Speaker 4: Home of the famous Kurt Cobain teamed McDonald's.
Speaker 2: They served billions and billions served in that one McDonald's
Speaker 2: and Kirk Cobain's McDon donalds. But yeah, I mean they
Speaker 2: you know, they they were, they were following. They had
Speaker 2: orders the Washington State Patrol too, you know, pull over
Speaker 2: a car ful full of known anarchists. There was alert
Speaker 2: gone out to all the police departments. They pulled them,
Speaker 2: they pulled them over, They made him walk the line.
Speaker 2: He was hadn't you know, wasn't drinking at no drugs
Speaker 2: like nothing in his system. But they he was driving
Speaker 2: under like one mile per hour under the speed limit.
Speaker 2: They arrested him for d d W I, you know,
Speaker 2: eventually fought the chargers, sued them h and you know
Speaker 2: what a big settlement out of all that. But that's
Speaker 2: just one example of many of the lengths that the
Speaker 2: police would go to. It was pretty severe. Even there's
Speaker 2: a house of a bunch of anarchists, younger anarchists called
Speaker 2: pitch Pipe Info Shop and Tacoma, and that was also
Speaker 2: a big target. The police were swarming around them all
Speaker 2: the time.
Speaker 4: They had like cameras set up, like specifically just side
Speaker 4: the Inn Fishop, Like there weren't seriunce cameras there before,
Speaker 4: but then there's like, oh well, just conveniently put them
Speaker 4: on this one specific street corner.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think like those One of the things I
Speaker 1: was reading about this is you have that stuff. And
Speaker 1: then also I think one of the sturiest parts of
Speaker 1: this is that like army intelligence gets involved, and yeah,
Speaker 1: do you want to talk about the man named quote
Speaker 1: unquote John Jacob, who was in fact not.
Speaker 2: That Yeah, so, uh, you know, I'm curious what memories
Speaker 2: you have of our our good dear friend John Jacob. Juliana.
Speaker 4: I don't think I ever actually knew him in person,
Speaker 4: but he was the moderator of the list serve, wasn't he.
Speaker 2: Yes, he's one of the moderators of our list serves.
Speaker 4: Now that I look back on it, I'm like the
Speaker 4: the Aport militization resistance the SERB was always just like
Speaker 4: this dramatic shit show. It's like, looking back on it,
Speaker 4: I was like, oh, moderated by a cop that did nothing,
Speaker 4: absolutely nothing to like establish order or that was a purpose.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So I think there's definitely some things that happened,
Speaker 2: Like you know, looking back from our vantage point today,
Speaker 2: it's like, Okay, things make a little more sense at
Speaker 2: the time though, And we're in this movement, right and
Speaker 2: so that means like meeting people where they're at, we
Speaker 2: would find all kinds of people that would like want
Speaker 2: to join the movement, like I, like I said earlier,
Speaker 2: like active duty soldiers that were joining. So I met
Speaker 2: this guy named John Jacob and he sent an email
Speaker 2: out to me. I was one of the contacts for
Speaker 2: the Olympia STS Group, and it's like, hey, you know,
Speaker 2: there's kind of like a parent organization that's some old
Speaker 2: like elder activists are in to kind of mentor us
Speaker 2: called movement for a democratic society, very small, never really
Speaker 2: took off, but like I'm interested in getting involved. We
Speaker 2: met up in public, and he seemed like an alright guy.
Speaker 2: I mean he was, you know, forty ish early forties.
Speaker 2: He told me had like you know, been in the
Speaker 2: military for years, and he actually still worked at Fort Lewis,
Speaker 2: so he was always open about that. But it only
Speaker 2: went that far. He didn't ever tell us what he
Speaker 2: actually did there, and it wasn't abnormal for you know,
Speaker 2: we have many folks that worked active duty, you know,
Speaker 2: on base and civilian civilian roles or soldiers. As I
Speaker 2: mentioned that, we're in port militarization resistance. So he gets involved,
Speaker 2: and he gets really involved with Port militarization resistance. He
Speaker 2: goes to protests, He gets pretty close with this group
Speaker 2: of anarchists I mentioned who lived in Tacoma, and he
Speaker 2: seemed like a really solid guy to most of us.
Speaker 2: And you know, things happen as as we progress and
Speaker 2: you know, as the military responded to our you know,
Speaker 2: how effective we were in the anti war movement and
Speaker 2: the gi resistance movement by changing their tactics. We noticed that, Okay,
Speaker 2: when we first started the protests, we had the ability
Speaker 2: to catch the police by surprise by setting up, you know,
Speaker 2: a blockade here or having a surprise action there at
Speaker 2: this time or this port, et cetera, et cetera. And
Speaker 2: as time progressed, we found out that you know, we
Speaker 2: were having these making these decisions for tactics in our strategy.
Speaker 2: We thought that we're in private, and then for whatever reason,
Speaker 2: the police kind of knew about where we were going
Speaker 2: to be before we even showed up. And that I
Speaker 2: remember that clearly happening in two thousand and seven the
Speaker 2: Port of Olympia.
Speaker 4: Yeah, in Takoma. There was a lot of things like that.
Speaker 4: Like there was one time when there are like some
Speaker 4: people who had a meeting in a closed room, like
Speaker 4: all their they had taken, like the batteries out of
Speaker 4: their cell phones.
Speaker 3: They had simply.
Speaker 4: Written on the whiteboard the time and place they are
Speaker 4: going to have their next meeting, which is going to
Speaker 4: be in a diner near the port. And so that way,
Speaker 4: if like if for any reason the room bugs, it
Speaker 4: wouldn't be caught up because it was just written on
Speaker 4: a board. And then it was like a small meeting too,
Speaker 4: so it's like there weren't and then when they got
Speaker 4: to that diner, there's like full of cops like clearly
Speaker 4: waiting for them. Like at that point, it's like it
Speaker 4: was very clear there was some level of infiltration involved.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think were from early on, like you know,
Speaker 2: we we knew our history. I mean, you know, one
Speaker 2: of our fellow activists in PMRS and a friend of ours,
Speaker 2: Peter Bohmer, is a professor at the Evergreen State College.
Speaker 2: He was in the original STS back in the sixties,
Speaker 2: and you know, he was essentially a political prisoner for
Speaker 2: a couple of years in both Massachusetts and California. I mean,
Speaker 2: the FEDS essentially tried to assassinate him back in the
Speaker 2: seventies when he was active in the anti war movement
Speaker 2: in San Diego. Like we knew, you know, former Black Panthers,
Speaker 2: and we read our history, so we knew about the
Speaker 2: history of co intel pro the counterintelligence program of the
Speaker 2: sixties and seventies and the war on the anti war
Speaker 2: and civil rights and black power, American Indian movements, et cetera.
Speaker 2: So we knew, you know, just intuitively early on. But
Speaker 2: there was one thing that happened in particular which prompted
Speaker 2: some of us to file for a public records request
Speaker 2: with the City of Olympia, and another activist is walking
Speaker 2: down the street in Olympia. I'm a member of the
Speaker 2: Wobblyes and Dustal Workers of the World Union and we
Speaker 2: had like one of those metal newspaper boxes downtown and
Speaker 2: it was locked to a poll, you know, with a
Speaker 2: bike lock. And there are some city workers there with
Speaker 2: a pickup truck and they're cutting the lock to the
Speaker 2: newspaper box and they threw it in their pickup truck,
Speaker 2: and so, you know, this friend of ours was there.
Speaker 2: It was like, what the hell, what are you doing?
Speaker 2: What's going on? And one of the workers just kind
Speaker 2: of shrugged and was like, I don't know. The police
Speaker 2: told us to do this, and they drove off like
Speaker 2: they stole you know, are essentially like our union property
Speaker 2: or whatever. So we had you know, our lawyer friend
Speaker 2: Larry Hildes and the National Lawyer's Guild you know, call
Speaker 2: and kind of threatened the city and then a number
Speaker 2: of us got together were like, hey, you know, let's
Speaker 2: do like a public records request with the City of
Speaker 2: Olympia freedom of information law right, and so we did
Speaker 2: and the request was you know, just requesting any all
Speaker 2: information the city had any exchanges communications by email, et
Speaker 2: cetera between the police and like other agencies about anarchists
Speaker 2: IWW students for a Democratic Society, and their initial search
Speaker 2: that the city clerk did yielded something like thirty thousand responses.
Speaker 2: So she's like, Okay, I got to narrow this down.
Speaker 2: And I don't know, I was working on the request
Speaker 2: at the time and for some reason, like I don't know,
Speaker 2: we're port protests were near a military base, communications between
Speaker 2: army not thinking anything, and so the initial responses it
Speaker 2: actually got you know, maybe one hundred, one hundred and
Speaker 2: thirty or so different documents, just copies of emails, et
Speaker 2: cetera that were little puzzle pieces for this massive puzzle,
Speaker 2: and it was just a few of them, and it was,
Speaker 2: you know, there was an email talking about our guy
Speaker 2: in the Navy going to a PMR meeting to get
Speaker 2: some intel. Uh, there's you know, all kinds of things
Speaker 2: like that. There were a few emails in particular, and
Speaker 2: the email address was something like John John J Towery
Speaker 2: at you know, Army dot us, whatever the email address was.
Speaker 2: So there's a crew of activists that got together put
Speaker 2: their heads together, did some research quietly for a few
Speaker 2: months and eventually found out by publicly accessible information like
Speaker 2: voter registration records and also finding out something about like
Speaker 2: a motorcycle club called like the I don't know, like
Speaker 2: the Brown Butte Club or the Brown Butt Club or
Speaker 2: something and the like. Found out that this John Towery
Speaker 2: guy that was in this motorcycle club and had his
Speaker 2: you know, was registered to vote outside of Tacoma in
Speaker 2: this town there. It was actually John Jacob. It was
Speaker 2: this guy that we thought was a fellow activist, an
Speaker 2: anarchist and a friend, you know, I thought he was
Speaker 2: a personal friend of mine. Turns out he was actually
Speaker 2: essentially an Army intelligence officer working for something called the
Speaker 2: Force Protection Unit at Joint Joint Base Lewis McCord and
Speaker 2: also working with a whole list of different agencies and
Speaker 2: what turned out to be like a massive surveillance network
Speaker 2: that was national in scope. This guy was sent by
Speaker 2: the Army along with many others to infiltrate us, to
Speaker 2: spy on us, and to disrupt us. It was huge.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And that's one of the things that are always
Speaker 5: so much really interesting on this So, like I learned
Speaker 5: about militarization resistance basically because I was like poking around
Speaker 5: the history of like informists and I ran into this
Speaker 5: and I was like what because?
Speaker 1: And then that was what I thought. One of the
Speaker 1: things I thought was really interesting about this is that like,
Speaker 1: like I think that this chapter of the anti war
Speaker 1: movement is even on the left, is like not very
Speaker 1: well known, but like the serious dis is which the
Speaker 1: army seems to have taken it is, like is really remarkable.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm wondering what you think about that.
Speaker 4: One thing we have to emphasize is is that we
Speaker 4: were not a large group of people. Yeah, like the
Speaker 4: number of people who are actively involved in port military.
Speaker 4: I guess my insistence at its peak was at how
Speaker 4: many people do you think it was, Brandon.
Speaker 2: Well, it depends. I mean I'd say they're probably like
Speaker 2: at its peak, maybe probably four to fifty people that
Speaker 2: would like consistently show up to think, you know, maybe
Speaker 2: a slightly smaller, very core group, but we would have
Speaker 2: demonstrations with like and then like four hundred people, you know, yeah.
Speaker 4: And like that would be like the max like there is.
Speaker 4: It's like there were like the peaceful like kind of
Speaker 4: like support actions. You know, you would get like a
Speaker 4: couple hundred people, and then like for the stuff like
Speaker 4: where it's like the first night that that the part
Speaker 4: of the entrance to the part of Olympia was occupied,
Speaker 4: would be like like forty to fifty people. These were
Speaker 4: not These were not very large groups of people. I
Speaker 4: feel like, and like I said, it's like one thing
Speaker 4: that we need to keep in mind was that the
Speaker 4: peace police were much stronger back then than they are
Speaker 4: now nowadays, Like as we saw last year, it's like
Speaker 4: people in the US have learned to throw down, but
Speaker 4: that was not the case at the time. And so
Speaker 4: this is a very very small group of people, and
Speaker 4: I think we accomplished a lot from with how small
Speaker 4: it was. If it had been larger, it would have
Speaker 4: accomplished way more. But even that small core of like
Speaker 4: forty to fifty people with maybe expanding out to like
Speaker 4: a larger group of a couple hundred, had them that
Speaker 4: scared that they went that far to try and disrupt it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this is one of the things I've been
Speaker 1: thinking about a lot recently. Of this has seem to
Speaker 1: be a very consistent thing, which is that like the
Speaker 1: two things that are guaranteed to like just have a
Speaker 1: hammer drop on you if you touch them. Is pipelines
Speaker 1: and ports, and that was something you know, we've talked
Speaker 1: a lot on here about pipeline protests.
Speaker 3: But I was interested in.
Speaker 1: What you two think about, because yeah, this this is
Speaker 1: like a very particular moments right now in what you're
Speaker 1: dealing with all these logistics chain failures.
Speaker 3: And I was wondering if if you do think there's
Speaker 3: anything that we.
Speaker 1: Can learn from how your versions of the sort of
Speaker 1: of port demonstrations worked for potentially trying to leverage that
Speaker 1: in the future, especially with like contract negotiations for port
Speaker 1: workers in Oakland coming up next year.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a great question. You know, it is this
Speaker 2: old saying and the IWW, direct action gets goods, right,
Speaker 2: And I think it really boils down to that. It's
Speaker 2: building up you know, mass movements and social movements from
Speaker 2: below that rely on direct action, that rely on civil resistance,
Speaker 2: civil disobedience. Yeah, and the pipeline protests that have been
Speaker 2: ongoing where Indigenous people have been on the front lines
Speaker 2: of that for many many years now. I mean, the
Speaker 2: kind of repression and surveillance that we face really pales
Speaker 2: in comparison to the kinds of you know, surveillance of
Speaker 2: repression that folks we're facing at Standing Rock for example.
Speaker 2: You know, I think, of course, one of the well
Speaker 2: one of the main differences is that it was primarily
Speaker 2: the military, you know, with us, right that was surveilling us,
Speaker 2: because this was very specifically you know, a war issue
Speaker 2: and a military issue. But yeah, I mean I think,
Speaker 2: you know, like I think there's a big questions like
Speaker 2: what do we have to do that's that's new? And
Speaker 2: to me, I say, you know, for both that kind
Speaker 2: of militant action, but also for the labor movements, like,
Speaker 2: it's not you know, we don't have to reinvent the wheel.
Speaker 2: There are things that have tried and true track record
Speaker 2: of getting the goods, and that is you know, these
Speaker 2: more disruptive kind of actions and movements, and so one
Speaker 2: of them would be you know, I guess my suggestion
Speaker 2: would be to like go back to the basics. And
Speaker 2: even like I would say, now you know this, remember
Speaker 2: this is at a time when like Facebook was around, right, like,
Speaker 2: but we weren't really using that for our organizing. We
Speaker 2: really relied on like face to face meetings, you know,
Speaker 2: phone calls and building up trust with people and building
Speaker 2: up our capacity to like take actions and make change.
Speaker 2: You know, I think I'm not saying throw out everything
Speaker 2: that you know, that at least some of the good
Speaker 2: that social media has to offer, but like I think
Speaker 2: going beyond that and going back to these older tactics
Speaker 2: and then for the labor movement, like the big thing
Speaker 2: is you know, and it's just like a bigger question
Speaker 2: for for mainstream unions in particular. I mean, they're the
Speaker 2: whole idea of like union contracts is that workers also
Speaker 2: lose a lot. Yeah, they get some things, but business
Speaker 2: owners and bosses have rights carved out in those contracts.
Speaker 2: And with the long shore workers, I mean the difficult
Speaker 2: thing with that, of course, is like there would be
Speaker 2: some symbolic strikes that of course, like longshore workers have
Speaker 2: done and continue to do, you know, around like the
Speaker 2: Warren Rock historically supporting movement Abou Jamal may Day, et cetera,
Speaker 2: like in Oakland, but they have some things for that
Speaker 2: written into their contracts, and you know, for all these
Speaker 2: other like unions, it's like, well, you know, we can't
Speaker 2: strike at all for the next two years or next
Speaker 2: three years, whatever the life of the contract is, Like
Speaker 2: I think it's a bigger question and challenge for the
Speaker 2: labor movement to move beyond that and not be put
Speaker 2: in this straight jacket of contracts like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that that, particularly like the the no
Speaker 1: strike clause part of contracts, I think is an interesting
Speaker 1: thing because it I don't know, there's not I mean,
Speaker 1: there are some unions that will actually do stuff around
Speaker 1: fighting it, but mostly people just sort of don't care.
Speaker 1: And I think you wind up in a situation where
Speaker 1: it seems like you kind of have to plan your
Speaker 1: tactics around when contract negotiations are happening, because otherwise you
Speaker 1: can't actually get people to do anything more of in
Speaker 1: like a one day symbolic strike.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and or you know, the challenge is like, you know,
Speaker 2: we have this great American tradition that's not unique to
Speaker 2: the US. It's universal really, and it's one that resonates
Speaker 2: with me breaking the law right and like we're you know,
Speaker 2: we're like civil disobedience. That is that what we are
Speaker 2: doing in the streets and blocking the ports. We were
Speaker 2: breaking the law and we knew it. And that's what
Speaker 2: the civil rights movement, the Black freedom movement did in
Speaker 2: the nineteen sixties. But like we have recent examples of
Speaker 2: workers breaking the law in mass like the West Virginia
Speaker 2: teacher strikes and a few years ago, like teachers in
Speaker 2: every single county in that state went on strike. They
Speaker 2: broke the law, and they want something out of that.
Speaker 2: And I think that's what we really need to encourage people,
Speaker 2: is this idea of breaking out of like the norm
Speaker 2: and and breaking the laws, which you know, the laws
Speaker 2: that are in place, which are not there to you know,
Speaker 2: expand our freedom, they're there to contract it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, one of one of my friends kind a joke
Speaker 1: about what was the exact line. It was, it's it's
Speaker 1: only illegal if you get caught and it only matters
Speaker 1: if you lose, which I think is a good way
Speaker 1: of thinking about.
Speaker 3: Both.
Speaker 1: And yeah, and you know, yeah, I think it's also
Speaker 1: like it's worth mentioning that like the other sides, the
Speaker 1: law doesn't matter to them at all, Like they just
Speaker 1: tear it up and like light it on fire constantly.
Speaker 1: So don't don't bind yourself if you can, if you
Speaker 1: can not get caught and not like go to prison
Speaker 1: for the rest of your life. Don't bind yourself by
Speaker 1: a bunch of like paper that the other side just
Speaker 1: doesn't care about.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And that's an excellent point because that's the big thing,
Speaker 2: you know with the army and law enforcement in general,
Speaker 2: like surveillance of us. They were in the police, just
Speaker 2: their actions, their brazen actions on the street, like the
Speaker 2: riot police. They were just breaking the law all the time.
Speaker 2: They absolutely have a deep visceral hatred of the Bill
Speaker 2: of Rights, of civil rights and civil liberties. And so
Speaker 2: there were a number of you know, court cases that
Speaker 2: sprung out of you know, this movement. There was a
Speaker 2: case called Panagoacas Vitari. Another Juliana Panagakas was another PMR
Speaker 2: member coplaintiff in that case. And you know, it is
Speaker 2: a case against the army that you know, we waged
Speaker 2: and brought up to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals
Speaker 2: and you know, eventually lost and it could have brought
Speaker 2: it to the Supreme Court but didn't. But you know,
Speaker 2: like the the other thing is like the violation of
Speaker 2: the posse commentatous Act. It was a whole other thing.
Speaker 2: You know, we don't have to get like so tied
Speaker 2: up into like the legalistic I think, but like the
Speaker 2: point your point is valid, Like they don't care about
Speaker 2: the laws that are already there. They'll they'll just intentionally
Speaker 2: break them, break their own laws that they have set up,
Speaker 2: and you know, they'll just get a slap on the
Speaker 2: wrist because that's really all that's all that happens to them.
Speaker 3: I think, I think, I think that's a good note
Speaker 3: to end on. Break the law. It's fake. It's also bad.
Speaker 2: Do you two have anything you want to plug other
Speaker 2: than that, other than you know, encouraging people to break them.
Speaker 3: Your local port.
Speaker 2: Yeah, uh yeah, I mean I think it's you know,
Speaker 2: I guess just encourage people to do as you know,
Speaker 2: it sounds like what we're you're doing by having this
Speaker 2: on the show, And like there are some in our
Speaker 2: very recent history, you know, movements and wins that we
Speaker 2: all as activists today can still learn from. And I
Speaker 2: think part of that, you know, I don't want to
Speaker 2: call us elders because we're not that old, but like
Speaker 2: one part of that is like making sure like our
Speaker 2: movements are still like multi generational and like we we
Speaker 2: learned from each other and also as as Julianna and
Speaker 2: I did, like I mentioned earlier, like we learned from
Speaker 2: the movements of the past, SDS, the Black Panthers, the
Speaker 2: Black Freedom Movement, et cetera. But there's a lot that
Speaker 2: you know, these these struggles I think have to offer
Speaker 2: us today.
Speaker 1: All right, well think thank you, Thank you both for talking,
Speaker 1: coming on and talking with.
Speaker 2: Us, for having us. Thank you.
Speaker 3: Well, this is, this has been. It could happen here.
Speaker 1: I find us at happen Here pod on Twitter, Instagram,
Speaker 1: and the rest of our stuff is a closone media
Speaker 1: at the same somewhat accursed social media places.
Speaker 3: I don't know why I'm saying somewhat. They're just a cursed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, see you next time whenever.
Speaker 2: That is.
Speaker 3: It could Happen Here as a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 5: For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
Speaker 5: coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 5: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can
Speaker 5: find sources for It could Happen Here, updated monthly at
Speaker 5: Coolzonemedia dot com slash sources.
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening.