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Speaker 1: Robert Evans here and I wanted to let you know.
Speaker 1: This is a compoletion episode. So every episode of the
Speaker 1: week that just happened is here in one convenient and
Speaker 1: with somewhat less ads package for you to listen to
Speaker 1: in a long stretch if you want. If you've been
Speaker 1: listening to the episodes every day this week, there's gonna
Speaker 1: be nothing new here for you. But you can make
Speaker 1: your own decisions, all right. We'll find so clever way
Speaker 1: to introduce us. Huh. You know what, I might just
Speaker 1: go with that. I will find some clever way to
Speaker 1: introduce us, and that is that is the introduction now.
Speaker 1: Because because I said it, Hello, welcome to it could
Speaker 1: happen here today. We are going to be talking about
Speaker 1: UM Internet privacy and some new bills that will possibly
Speaker 1: undermine it. UM. Today I have with me Christopher Hello, Christopher, Hello,
Speaker 1: I am here. I am. I don't know if excited
Speaker 1: is the right word, but no, people are really excited
Speaker 1: to come on the show. This is a this is
Speaker 1: a mild dread of the Internet. I try because we definitely,
Speaker 1: we definitely can. Things don't need to be always horrible
Speaker 1: and grim, even when you're talking about things that aren't great.
Speaker 1: But yeah, today we'll be talking about some some interesting things.
Speaker 1: As per the title of this episode will probably be
Speaker 1: related to we are talking about the proposed earn It Act,
Speaker 1: and we'll just I'll explain what it is in the
Speaker 1: different kind of implications that could have on how like
Speaker 1: everyone uses the internet, UM, but also affects a few
Speaker 1: specific types of people in particular. So but kind of
Speaker 1: part of this whole thing. We're gonna start off by
Speaker 1: talking about something a little bit different and then to
Speaker 1: kind of segue to the inn An act. UM. So
Speaker 1: last year, Apple, the company announced like a controversial plan
Speaker 1: to install photo scanning software into every kind of every
Speaker 1: every device. UM. Apple's kind of long been seen as
Speaker 1: a pro privacy company UM. In the past, they have
Speaker 1: like refused FBI demands to help investigators bypass locked phones.
Speaker 1: So this this idea on this plan to create a
Speaker 1: backdoor into the iPhone storage system to scan for photos.
Speaker 1: It was kind of a big deal coming for Apple
Speaker 1: because they were definitely, at least in the past, known
Speaker 1: as a generally like out of all of the companies,
Speaker 1: the ones that if you're dealing with sensitive matters, Apple
Speaker 1: is generally generally the better one. That that it has
Speaker 1: become less of a case in the past few years,
Speaker 1: but that was that that definitely was the case. So
Speaker 1: when when this kind of idea was announced, there was
Speaker 1: a decently sized global coalition also formed to push back
Speaker 1: on this thing UM and the company did pause the plan. Now,
Speaker 1: this came out a time that a lot of different
Speaker 1: kind of companies were also pushing back against not safe
Speaker 1: for work materials UM, specifically for like like like relating
Speaker 1: to the transactional money and banks. This was you know,
Speaker 1: around the time that only fans was flip flopping on
Speaker 1: whether they would actually have not safe for work kind
Speaker 1: of materials as a part of this kind of growing
Speaker 1: trend of like worrying about Um, the term now is
Speaker 1: like child sexual abuse materials were traditionally was it's called
Speaker 1: child pornography or you know. So it's part of this
Speaker 1: kind of overall kind of extra fo because that tech
Speaker 1: companies have about being worried that if they if someone
Speaker 1: is doing that who is underage, or if someone's being
Speaker 1: exploited who's underage. Um, you know, they could unfinancially hurt
Speaker 1: the company. So they're trying to a lot lots of
Speaker 1: companies have been trying to do this thing to prevent
Speaker 1: that legal and financial issue for happening. Now, of course,
Speaker 1: all this really actually ends up doing is just negatively
Speaker 1: affecting sex workers. Um. But that's that's kind of a
Speaker 1: topic for a different episode because we're talking about the
Speaker 1: Arenet Act more specifically, and not not specifically talking about
Speaker 1: only fans. But this was Apple's plan to kind of
Speaker 1: scan all these photos to make sure that that they
Speaker 1: were not you know, naked photos of and of children. UM. Now,
Speaker 1: there's whole much of other privacy issues around that because
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously teens do take news and send them
Speaker 1: to each other and there is really no stopping that. Um.
Speaker 1: So the idea that all these shots are getting scanned
Speaker 1: and then seen and then like it would be The
Speaker 1: idea was that parents would be like alerted if something
Speaker 1: was found on the phone auomatically, which means that for me,
Speaker 1: I have a whole bunch of other issues with that,
Speaker 1: Like that is a whole another kind of level, especially
Speaker 1: for queer kids, like that is like that is a
Speaker 1: whole again, but that that is mostly a whole whole
Speaker 1: other discussion that I'm not going to talk about right
Speaker 1: now because we are I do want to focus is
Speaker 1: focus this more on the more on the earn it act. Um.
Speaker 1: But so this this plan was paused, Um, But now
Speaker 1: that may not necessarily matter actually, um, because Congress kind
Speaker 1: of wants to force Apple's hand along with along with
Speaker 1: essentially every other company that allows users to store or
Speaker 1: share messages or kind of really any content. Um. And
Speaker 1: Congress is some senators and there's a bill that will
Speaker 1: try to essentially mandate photo scanning and specific photo scanning
Speaker 1: technology approved by the government. So yeah, So while Apple's
Speaker 1: plan would have put privacy and it's the security at
Speaker 1: risk for all of us users, the Earned Act of
Speaker 1: compromises the security and free speech for basically everyone who
Speaker 1: uses the Internet. Um. The bill would create serious legal
Speaker 1: risks for businesses that host content such as messages or
Speaker 1: photos of stored in the cloud, online backups, and potentially
Speaker 1: even any kind of cloud hosting sites such as Amazon
Speaker 1: Web Services, which means basically most of the Internet UM
Speaker 1: and based so have the all these companies, all these
Speaker 1: services and companies would be in serious legal risk unless
Speaker 1: they use this government approved scanning tools. A version of
Speaker 1: this bill was first introduced two years ago, sponsored by
Speaker 1: Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican from South Carolina, and Senator Richard Blumenthal,
Speaker 1: a Democrat from Connecticut. And now, like a lot of
Speaker 1: these other things, it is allegedly aimed at tackling so
Speaker 1: called child sexual abuse material online. UM. Which is which
Speaker 1: is a problem there is the kids definitely do get exploited. UM,
Speaker 1: kids do get groomed, exploited, photos of children do get
Speaker 1: shared online. Uh. That like that that that actually is
Speaker 1: a real issue. UM. Now, a lot of the ways
Speaker 1: that these tools get implemented don't actually address that issue.
Speaker 1: And of course it doesn't actually deal with the people
Speaker 1: that do this, like you know, like the bad the
Speaker 1: bad people that do exploit kids. It doesn't necessarily deal
Speaker 1: with them either. That is that is what they wrapped
Speaker 1: this idea as the original bills that was introduced two
Speaker 1: years ago threatened encryption and privacy features that would have actually,
Speaker 1: you know, put Americans privacy, particularly particularly the privacy of children,
Speaker 1: UM at risk. It also got in section to thirty
Speaker 1: in ways that caused over fifty civil rights groups to
Speaker 1: pennel letter describing the potential consequences UM of such things
Speaker 1: like censorship, um, you know, cramming down on free speech,
Speaker 1: and the basically destruction of encryption. So when the legislation
Speaker 1: failed to advance two years ago, digital UM, liberty advocates,
Speaker 1: you know, sex workers, civil rights organizations all breathed a
Speaker 1: sigh of relief. But this past month, as I record
Speaker 1: this um in twenty in February, a group of lawmakers,
Speaker 1: again led by Senator Richard Bluementhal and Senator Lindsay Graham,
Speaker 1: reintroduced the Earnet Act UM, a slightly modified version of
Speaker 1: it UM, and on the on the tenth of February,
Speaker 1: the Senate to Judiciary Committee voted to advance the dangerous
Speaker 1: earn It Act bill. So yeah, it is, it is.
Speaker 1: It is chugging along a bit further than what it
Speaker 1: did than what it did last time. The earn AT
Speaker 1: Act aims to tackle the horrific criminal activity related to
Speaker 1: child sexual abuse material by making Section to thirty protections
Speaker 1: contingent on the prevention and response to such a material online.
Speaker 1: So Section to thirty shields online services like you know
Speaker 1: commonly used social media from liability from most user generated content.
Speaker 1: Under earn it, a Section to thirty would be amended
Speaker 1: to enable civil claims and state criminal prosecution related to
Speaker 1: child abuse materials online against platforms. Now already this can
Speaker 1: kind of happen federally a little bit, um but it
Speaker 1: depends on how the company responds to it. So, but
Speaker 1: this would introduce a whole new wave for civil claims
Speaker 1: and state claims to be filed against companies like this.
Speaker 1: Um if if if if if material like this is
Speaker 1: to be found hosted on their site you know, including
Speaker 1: you know that. That would even include if like someone
Speaker 1: who's underage operates a not safe for work twit our
Speaker 1: account that they probably should not be operating. Um but
Speaker 1: this this you know this this could also this could
Speaker 1: basically make the company in trouble. They could fall under
Speaker 1: state claims or civil claims, so as as a result,
Speaker 1: online services could be subjected to endless litigation under fifty
Speaker 1: different you know legal law systems per you know, for
Speaker 1: all the states regarding you know, finding child sexual beast
Speaker 1: material online. So the bill's proponents claim that this isn't
Speaker 1: necessarily a problem for any service as long as it
Speaker 1: is scanning the files then reporting child sexual beast material
Speaker 1: to law enforcement. Internet companies are already required to report
Speaker 1: suspected material if they come across it, and they do
Speaker 1: report material on a massive scale that often comes comes
Speaker 1: with a lot of mistakes. Facebook is often held as
Speaker 1: a positive example by what lawmakers and law enforcement for
Speaker 1: how much they do report such such material. But while
Speaker 1: their new scanning techniques have produced many millions of reports,
Speaker 1: most of them are inaccurate. Like most of them actually
Speaker 1: aren't of miners. It's it's it's not it's not actually none,
Speaker 1: none of the scanning material is good because a lot
Speaker 1: of cases, many people up into their thirties can get
Speaker 1: often flagged and often like even non humans can get flagged,
Speaker 1: like pictures of fruit because like like it's not like
Speaker 1: it's not like, yeah, none of these scanning tools are
Speaker 1: actually very good. Yeah, and like this is I think,
Speaker 1: I think a thing that like, if you've never liked
Speaker 1: had to work with a machine learning algorithm before, I
Speaker 1: think it's difficult to understand how unbelievably bad these things are.
Speaker 1: Like it's just these oh god, like the the the
Speaker 1: incomprehensible horror of trying to get a machine learning algorithm
Speaker 1: to do the thing that you wanted to do and
Speaker 1: not do the the things that you're not that you
Speaker 1: don't want it to do. To like, you know, be
Speaker 1: able to tell a difference between like a particularly smooth
Speaker 1: and round peach and like Child's exeibuse material. You know,
Speaker 1: you human being can do this, right. The machine cannot.
Speaker 1: And it is they it is horrifically inaccurate. You have
Speaker 1: to do all kinds of like hacking stuff together in
Speaker 1: order to get this stuff to work. And yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's a fiasco. A good example of this that
Speaker 1: I've that I've heard before that I'm probably gonna butcher
Speaker 1: this explanation, but you know that you can take, you know,
Speaker 1: a photo of a wolf, um, maybe even three photos
Speaker 1: of a wolf, and say here this is these these
Speaker 1: are photos of wolves. Um, here's the here's other here's
Speaker 1: here's these these are photos. Find which ones are wolves,
Speaker 1: and it'll, you know, it'll it'll sort throw the ones.
Speaker 1: So some of them have wolves, some of them don't.
Speaker 1: Um and it only finds one picture that says this one,
Speaker 1: based on the three photos you've given me, this photos
Speaker 1: is a wolf, and instead the photo is not. The
Speaker 1: photo is of a tree. And you're like, why did
Speaker 1: it tell me this is a wolf? And the computer
Speaker 1: will answer, well, look at all the all of the
Speaker 1: backgrounds are the same because it's trying, it's trying to match,
Speaker 1: like it doesn't have the same thing that humans do.
Speaker 1: When when all these computer algorithms that are trying to
Speaker 1: learn to replicate and trying find these patterns, it is
Speaker 1: never perfect. So the big thing that is people often
Speaker 1: overlook is that, yeah, specifically with this, like with with
Speaker 1: Facebook scanning tool and the millions of reports that that
Speaker 1: it does make. You know, federal law enforcement will frequently
Speaker 1: use the massive number of reports to suggest there is
Speaker 1: this giant recent uptick in child sexual abuse materials. But
Speaker 1: that's not because there actually is. That's because this the
Speaker 1: scanning that some companies are doing is just so bad,
Speaker 1: Like it's just it's just some accurate that it flags
Speaker 1: so many things, so like in action, the new earn
Speaker 1: It Act would just pave a massive new surveillance system
Speaker 1: run by private companies that would roll back some of
Speaker 1: the most important privacy and security features and technology used
Speaker 1: by people around the globe. Right, the idea is to
Speaker 1: compel private companies to scan every message that sent online
Speaker 1: and report violations to law enforcement. And it may not
Speaker 1: stop there. That in an act could ensure anything hosted
Speaker 1: online incular like backups, websites, cloud photos, and more, is
Speaker 1: all scanned. Now, of course you can say, I mean
Speaker 1: there is no actual true privacy online, right. The n
Speaker 1: s A does see everything, which is basically true, but
Speaker 1: stuff like local police departments in the FBI do not
Speaker 1: have constant access to what the n s A has
Speaker 1: It does actually like legally, it does actually take some
Speaker 1: time for that to happen. The fact that all these
Speaker 1: private companies would be doing it for them um and
Speaker 1: the fact that this would actually break encryption makes people
Speaker 1: like the FBI makes the local law enforcement have a
Speaker 1: much easier time accessing what we do on the Internet,
Speaker 1: because yes, the n s A kind of does always
Speaker 1: see everything, but that that this actually this actually is
Speaker 1: this actually is quite different in terms of the accessibility
Speaker 1: of that information. And I think I think it's also
Speaker 1: you know, to to to go back into one of
Speaker 1: the sort of like encryption arguments to right, So, okay,
Speaker 1: what once you put a backdoor into decryption? Right once
Speaker 1: once once you have you know, you have your system,
Speaker 1: you have your encryption system. But you know, now there's
Speaker 1: now there's a way to access it, right, because oh,
Speaker 1: well we need to access these you know, we need
Speaker 1: to be able to decrypt this in order to see
Speaker 1: if there's like child pornography materials on it. Right. Once
Speaker 1: that backdoor exists, any anyone who finds it can use
Speaker 1: it for anything they want. And it's it's it's it's
Speaker 1: not even just that like well we'll get into some
Speaker 1: other things around encryption, but but yeah, continue, yeah, and
Speaker 1: you know, and I think I think this is something
Speaker 1: that I think people don't like. The people who are
Speaker 1: just thinking about this in terms of child pornography don't
Speaker 1: think about which is that like I don't know a
Speaker 1: lot like there these these kinds of backdoors, right, like
Speaker 1: other people can find them, yes, and you know, okay,
Speaker 1: now now you've just put it back to it all
Speaker 1: of the encryption, like oh, hey, here's you know, like
Speaker 1: here you're you you are, you are going to get
Speaker 1: people killed, and you're gonna get people killed because you're
Speaker 1: going to have people who are doing things under governments
Speaker 1: that you know, will will will Like you know, you're
Speaker 1: gonna have people in mel mart You're gonna have people
Speaker 1: in You're gonna have people in Egypt. You're gonna have
Speaker 1: people in Syria who like these these regimes and like
Speaker 1: these you know, private private companies right are are going
Speaker 1: are going to sell the backdoors to ease regimes and
Speaker 1: they're going to use it to hunt down, torture and
Speaker 1: kill people. And so yeah, there is there's a lot
Speaker 1: of problems with them, especially especially how it how it
Speaker 1: kind of addresses encryption, because the bill does try to
Speaker 1: actually have some encryption protections, but the way they go
Speaker 1: about it, of course is not is not adequate, and
Speaker 1: it even kind of fosters it's its own negation in
Speaker 1: some ways if you read the entire bill. So, but
Speaker 1: I'll get more into encryption in a sec because there
Speaker 1: are other like technical issues with the way this bill
Speaker 1: is designed and how it would be enacted. There is
Speaker 1: this sort of benefit to having a legal material that
Speaker 1: is that is actually exploding miners being primarily hosted on
Speaker 1: big tech platforms because these platforms are used so much
Speaker 1: and are mostly non restricted, so it makes catching this
Speaker 1: stuff and reporting it actually much easier, like it is
Speaker 1: if they're hosted on these mainstream things. It does make
Speaker 1: seeing it and reporting less difficult. So not only will
Speaker 1: this bill make tech companies be more likely just to
Speaker 1: ban all not safe work material in general, right, because
Speaker 1: if companies are forced to scan and they're gonna be
Speaker 1: filing swimming reports that this will this will result in
Speaker 1: a lot a lot more companies just saying no new
Speaker 1: photos at all, like just completely gone. Not only will
Speaker 1: this bill just make tech companies more likely to ban
Speaker 1: all not safe work content in general, which would be
Speaker 1: horrible for sex workers and just a bad precedent. But yeah,
Speaker 1: they would be more likely just to do that because
Speaker 1: of how much overscanning there would be and just a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of things we'd create. It would create too
Speaker 1: many fears of legal repercussions. Thus, you know, that would
Speaker 1: force people who distribute child porn onto more sketchy sites
Speaker 1: and sites that might just refuse to scan content in
Speaker 1: general because they're temporary hosting. But the bill could also
Speaker 1: just to scare these bad people off of mainstream platforms
Speaker 1: and make them voluntarily migrate to more niche and hard
Speaker 1: to find the corners of the Internet, making illegal content
Speaker 1: harder to catch and take down, because there will always
Speaker 1: be weird temporary sites to host this type of thing.
Speaker 1: Like they're always they're like, these bad people will find
Speaker 1: a way. It's always like that is it is gonna
Speaker 1: always be a problem. Um. And so in a way,
Speaker 1: it's it is better to have these things on mainstream
Speaker 1: platforms because reporting them and taking them down can be
Speaker 1: much easier. Um. It's it's like it's like when people
Speaker 1: really advocate platforms like Telegram shut down all fascist channels, right.
Speaker 1: The thing is is that there's a lot of benefits
Speaker 1: to having these chat rooms on Telegram because it makes
Speaker 1: them really easy to monitor and really easy to infiltrate. Um.
Speaker 1: So there's a lot worse places for fascists to organize. Um,
Speaker 1: if you're doing it on Telegram, it's actually really easy
Speaker 1: to watch. So it's this weird given take in terms
Speaker 1: of in terms of where where these things happen, because
Speaker 1: they are going to happen somewhere. So I now want
Speaker 1: to talk about how specifically this bill threatens UH threatens
Speaker 1: online encryption services all right, UM. The bill would strip
Speaker 1: critical legal protection for websites, apps, and specifically Section to thirty.
Speaker 1: If passed, it would empower many different levels of government
Speaker 1: to make sweeping new Internet regulations right in individual States
Speaker 1: will be able to pass laws UM to hold private
Speaker 1: companies like libel um as long as they somehow relate
Speaker 1: their new rules to child abuse materials. It's like they
Speaker 1: they able to have a whole bunch of new rules
Speaker 1: on Internet regulations if they can sift it through this lens.
Speaker 1: The goal is to get states to pass these laws
Speaker 1: that will punish that will punish companies when they deploy
Speaker 1: end and encryption or offer other encryption services. This includes
Speaker 1: messaging systems like What's Apps, Signal my Message, and as
Speaker 1: well as web hosting like Amazon Web Services um earn.
Speaker 1: It aims to spread the use of tools to scan
Speaker 1: all online content against law enforcement databases like directly UM.
Speaker 1: In a myths and Facts document and distributed by the
Speaker 1: bill's proponents, it even names a government approved software program
Speaker 1: that they could mandate called a photo DNA, which is
Speaker 1: a program that Microsoft made that reports directly to law
Speaker 1: enforcement databases. So arn it doesn't specifically attack encryption per
Speaker 1: se um. But that's because it doesn't need to, Like
Speaker 1: it doesn't have to because of the way the bill
Speaker 1: is designed how it approaches encryption is actually a little
Speaker 1: more insidious. Um. It allows the fact that encryption exists
Speaker 1: on the platform itself to be used as evidence against
Speaker 1: a company in order to find it liabele for hosting
Speaker 1: child sexual abuse materials. So they can use the fact
Speaker 1: that encryption exists as evidence, which is wild, Like this
Speaker 1: is this is the thing. This is the thing that
Speaker 1: CCP does a lot like with you know, like they'll
Speaker 1: they'll use they're used the fact that like somebody is
Speaker 1: using a VPN for example, as evidence that their turk.
Speaker 1: This happens constantly and and it's it makes a lot
Speaker 1: of a lot of encryption stuff incredibly unsafe because like
Speaker 1: you know, you show up with your phone, you have
Speaker 1: signal on it, and like, well you're this is this
Speaker 1: is this is proof. We're just gonna we're gonna locker
Speaker 1: up and throw away the key. Yeah, and yeah, it's
Speaker 1: extremely bad. So the result is that laws will make
Speaker 1: companies liable um if they don't scan and report user
Speaker 1: content for child, sexual beast materials, which they can't do
Speaker 1: unless they make break encryption. You know, big companies like
Speaker 1: Apple um are going to full to to protect themselves.
Speaker 1: UM so earn it would is like it coerces these
Speaker 1: sites and platforms and services to do this sort of scanning.
Speaker 1: And not just some messages, but all online content encrypted
Speaker 1: or not. UM. Companies that handle online content would have
Speaker 1: to weigh the benefit of their users securely encrypting their
Speaker 1: data content against the legal risk of doing so. UM.
Speaker 1: And encryption becomes much harder when it, you know, puts
Speaker 1: the company's bottom line at risk. And and and and
Speaker 1: like and and and and. Encryption isn't just for messages, right,
Speaker 1: It's it's not just on signal. It secures most of
Speaker 1: the Internet, or at least at least a out of it,
Speaker 1: keeping what you do allegedly you know, private unsafe online.
Speaker 1: You can't have a secure internet where all the content
Speaker 1: is also screened because you can't haven't encryption alongside mass
Speaker 1: scanning requirements. It's just so, this isn't just an attack
Speaker 1: on encryption, it's attack on any fund of fundamental security
Speaker 1: that the Internet you know has. Yeah, and you know
Speaker 1: there's lots of like god, there are lots of extremely
Speaker 1: technical reasons why this is an extremely bad face Like
Speaker 1: it's like okay, yeah, like you you you think you
Speaker 1: think malware is bad? Now like god, like look at
Speaker 1: like the things the things that will happen, Like you
Speaker 1: you think people are stealing apes now, like the things
Speaker 1: that will happen if you have to if you have
Speaker 1: to deal with an Internet that's unencrypted, are you know,
Speaker 1: like you know, it's an absolute horror show like if yeah,
Speaker 1: like I yeah, it's this. This is a thing bad
Speaker 1: enough that like I do not have the words to
Speaker 1: express how catastrophic this would be because it's just a
Speaker 1: fundamental structure of the Internet. It really is not just
Speaker 1: for messages like the earn it uh miss and fast
Speaker 1: document also like specifically attacks Amazon for not scanning enough
Speaker 1: of its content um and since Amazon is the home
Speaker 1: of Amazon Web Services, which hosts a huge number of websites,
Speaker 1: that implies that like the bill's aim is to ensure
Speaker 1: that anything hosted online also gets scanned, like like like
Speaker 1: everything the online service providers, even the smallest ones, will
Speaker 1: be compelled to scan user content with government approved software
Speaker 1: like photo do an a UM and if earn It
Speaker 1: supporters succeed in getting large platforms like cloud fair and
Speaker 1: web services to scan, they may not even need to
Speaker 1: compel smaller websites because the government will already have access
Speaker 1: to the data through the cloud platforms. So like, as
Speaker 1: long as they get you know, these hosting platforms, they
Speaker 1: don't even like, they won't even need need to bother
Speaker 1: with a lot of with a lot of smaller sites.
Speaker 1: I think there's another thing I think that's probably worth
Speaker 1: mentioning here, which is so we don't really have like
Speaker 1: the time to fully go into this in this episode,
Speaker 1: but like there's a lot of this sort of stuff
Speaker 1: is being pushed by these incredibly right wing evangelical anti
Speaker 1: porn groups and their goal is just to eliminate anything
Speaker 1: that is not like part of their sort of fundamentalist
Speaker 1: Christianity from the Internet and those people. And this is
Speaker 1: this is particularly relevant to this because those people are
Speaker 1: going to find a way to to to like to
Speaker 1: bring lawsuits against these companies specifically so that they specifically
Speaker 1: so that they can do is because this is you
Speaker 1: know what what what you've done. Is that you've just
Speaker 1: handed them a gun. Porn sites will all be taken
Speaker 1: down because they'll be because they'll be facing so many
Speaker 1: endless lawsuits um like only like only fans will no
Speaker 1: longer host ethical poor like like not none of this
Speaker 1: will have like all of it will be taken down.
Speaker 1: No one like there this will this will attack sex
Speaker 1: workers to such an absurd degree. Um it'll make base.
Speaker 1: It will make a lot of, if not most, online
Speaker 1: sex work just impossible because there will be so many
Speaker 1: lawsuits always happening that companies will just always ban it
Speaker 1: just because they can't. They can't risk dealing with all
Speaker 1: those legal fees. Um it's it's yeah. And and and
Speaker 1: in the fact that state prosecutors and private attorneys will
Speaker 1: be able to drink an online service provider into court
Speaker 1: over accusation that their users committed crimes and then use
Speaker 1: the fact that the service chose to encrypt like like
Speaker 1: chose to use encryption um at all as evidence against them.
Speaker 1: Is the fact that the strategy specifically allowed under earn
Speaker 1: it will like it makes the possibilities of this type
Speaker 1: of thing just endless, like like imagine imagine, like they'll
Speaker 1: be able to take down signal so easily because like
Speaker 1: it's it's it's it's wild all if they can, if
Speaker 1: they can find one instance of you know, as like
Speaker 1: as like a of an abuser using signal or has
Speaker 1: you signal, then basically all of signal description will be
Speaker 1: severely threatened, UM because of the way that legal finds
Speaker 1: will be forced onto this company. It's is like specifically
Speaker 1: for stuff based like for any kind of in any
Speaker 1: any service allowed in the States. And yeah, it's really
Speaker 1: frustrating because you know, people including senators UM who are
Speaker 1: pro earn it, say that the new tools are necessary
Speaker 1: to tackle the issue of online child abuse and the
Speaker 1: and the distribution of illegal materials online. But you know,
Speaker 1: obviously like possessing, viewing, or distributing child poor and or
Speaker 1: child sexual abust materials is already written into laws. Is
Speaker 1: a serious, like it's an extremely serious crimes can do yes,
Speaker 1: and it has a broad framework of existing laws seeking
Speaker 1: to eradicated. Right people cannot like companies can already get
Speaker 1: in federal trouble if they're find if they're found to
Speaker 1: continue if like you know, if stuff is found and
Speaker 1: they continue to host it, or if they're going if
Speaker 1: like their state of purpose is to hosted like like
Speaker 1: some of the most trouble you can get into UM
Speaker 1: at least at least like on the books, UM, because
Speaker 1: you know you can you can look at you know
Speaker 1: how many cops are involved with this type of thing
Speaker 1: as like than to be like like like as evidence said,
Speaker 1: like it doesn't like it may not get enacted upon.
Speaker 1: Always there was there was a horrible story recently of
Speaker 1: a teacher who sorry, this this is this is this
Speaker 1: is this is going to be quite graphic, UM, but
Speaker 1: of a like skip ahead like a minute or two
Speaker 1: if you don't want to, UM of a teacher who
Speaker 1: fed students UM food containing her husband's seamen UM. Her
Speaker 1: husband was a cop and her and her husband again
Speaker 1: who was a cop and the also the leader of
Speaker 1: a swatch team UM had raped multiple children um as
Speaker 1: like it had and had had pictures of children UM
Speaker 1: and like like both of them were doing this together.
Speaker 1: So like yeah, that's like the leader of swat teams
Speaker 1: like police. Like the fact that like if you if
Speaker 1: you look at the people often doing this type of stuff,
Speaker 1: it's cops a lot of the time, Like the cops
Speaker 1: raped so many UM kids that that they that they
Speaker 1: arrest and detain. It is shocked. Like you you can
Speaker 1: google this every week and you'll find you'll find like
Speaker 1: new reports of it. It is, it is. It is horrific. Um.
Speaker 1: And you know, online service providers that have actual knowledge
Speaker 1: of an apparent or imminent violation of current laws around
Speaker 1: child sexual beast materials are required to report it or
Speaker 1: they will face legal trouble. Um. Yeah, like you you
Speaker 1: could you can kill people and get in less trouble
Speaker 1: with the law. Then then you will get if if
Speaker 1: if you intentionally do this stuff like that, there are
Speaker 1: scenarios where you can kill people where you won't get
Speaker 1: in trouble with law. There is no scenario where you
Speaker 1: do you you like you you intentionally do like you
Speaker 1: intentionally do this stuff where you will like unless you're
Speaker 1: a cop with like with with the legal protection of
Speaker 1: your other cops won't rat you out, like yeah, or
Speaker 1: you're like very very rich, yeah, like you know, un
Speaker 1: unless unless you have extra legal protection. Yeah, like you
Speaker 1: are fucking going to vanish. So yeah, like we already
Speaker 1: have a lot of stuff to deal with this. And
Speaker 1: the methods proposed by earn Itt would not only chip
Speaker 1: at the last semblance of of of privacy online. But
Speaker 1: it would all but it would arguably make actually combating
Speaker 1: real instances of online check of online child abuse a
Speaker 1: lot more difficult. It would pressure distributors and abusers um
Speaker 1: into harder to find corners of the Internet that don't
Speaker 1: fall under big tech companies UM. Plus, the massive increasing
Speaker 1: content scanning would produce so many false flags it would
Speaker 1: clog up any effort to find action materials because so
Speaker 1: much stuff is gonna get flagged, right, it's gonna you're
Speaker 1: gonna get a wave of so many images that you
Speaker 1: have that you have sort, sort through and figure out
Speaker 1: if the people in it actually are under age because
Speaker 1: a lot of people who look thirty and sorry, a
Speaker 1: lot of people that are thirty can also look under
Speaker 1: age sometimes like like with lighting, with the fact like
Speaker 1: it's it is, it will be. It's gonna it's gonna
Speaker 1: be such a task um And we can only see
Speaker 1: this in effect with new scanning techniques used by Facebook.
Speaker 1: They that have produced millions of reports to law enforcement,
Speaker 1: most of them inaccurate. Um. Of course, federal law enforcement
Speaker 1: use uses this massive number of reports produced by low
Speaker 1: quality scanning software to you know, suggest there's a huge
Speaker 1: uptick in these images. Thus, you know, armed with misleading statistics.
Speaker 1: The same law enforcement groups make new demands to break
Speaker 1: encryption um or with earn it, to hold companies liable
Speaker 1: if they don't scan user content those scanning algorithms, right,
Speaker 1: like you know, okay, this this is an oversimplification, but
Speaker 1: like to to to conceptualize why this is a bad idea,
Speaker 1: like these these are these like this is the this
Speaker 1: is the same stuff that like you know how, you
Speaker 1: know how there's there's there's those like trending topics on
Speaker 1: Twitter and they'll they'll they'll show you a tweet and
Speaker 1: the tweet will be like I don't know, they'll they'll
Speaker 1: they'll be someone talking about a subway sandwich and it'll
Speaker 1: get like it'll show up under trains. This those are
Speaker 1: the algorithms that they want to fucking run the entire
Speaker 1: Internet through. I have seen I have seen some very
Speaker 1: I've seen some very erotic bell peppers um and like
Speaker 1: it's it's gonna like that these things are aren't going
Speaker 1: to be good um And like independent child protection experts
Speaker 1: are not asking for systems to read everyone's private messages. Rather,
Speaker 1: they recognize that children, particularly children that might be abused
Speaker 1: or exploited actually need encrypted and private messaging just as much,
Speaker 1: if not more than the rest of us. Like, no one,
Speaker 1: including the most vulnerable among us, can have privacy or
Speaker 1: security online without strong encryption. UM. And the Earner Act
Speaker 1: doesn't really just target big tech. What it does is
Speaker 1: it targets every individual Internet user, treating all of us
Speaker 1: as potential criminals who deserve to have every single message, photograph,
Speaker 1: or document scanned and you know, compared against a government database,
Speaker 1: like direct directly to law enforcement. UM And since direct
Speaker 1: government surveillance would be you know, blatantly unconstitutional and promote
Speaker 1: public outrage, U earn it to use as tech companies,
Speaker 1: you know, from the largest swaps to the smallest ones,
Speaker 1: as its tools to kind of bypass that constitutional like
Speaker 1: barrier um because yeah, if you, if you, if you,
Speaker 1: if you, if you hit the touch companies where it hurts,
Speaker 1: they will not allow this type of stuff at all.
Speaker 1: Like and this is also you can you know, you
Speaker 1: cannot deny this is also just part of a larger
Speaker 1: effect to ban porn um and just to ban any
Speaker 1: kind of sex work online as well. Like you you
Speaker 1: cannot deny that this is this is this is definitely
Speaker 1: an ingrained part of this, particularly with a lot a
Speaker 1: lot of its supporters and of course you know Senator
Speaker 1: Lindsay Graham appealing to that side of the Republicans. This
Speaker 1: is this is a big part of just trying to
Speaker 1: you know, remove porn and remove um, you know, any
Speaker 1: not safe work material from being hosted online. So the
Speaker 1: strategy is to get private companies to do the dirty
Speaker 1: work of mass surveillance. UM. You know, it's the same
Speaker 1: it's the same tactic that government's tried to use this
Speaker 1: year trying to you know, convince Apple to subvert its
Speaker 1: own encryption and scan all of its users photos. Um.
Speaker 1: It's the same strategy that the that the UK law
Speaker 1: enforcement is using to convince the British public to give
Speaker 1: up their privacy, having spent public money on a laughable
Speaker 1: public publicity campaign that demon as his companies that use encryption. UM.
Speaker 1: So that that's really how it's operating. UM. I do
Speaker 1: want to shout out, um uh the e f F
Speaker 1: for providing a lot of the kind of research that
Speaker 1: I used for compiling stuff on on this episode. UM,
Speaker 1: thank you, thank you, thank you e f F. UM
Speaker 1: you often often do good work. That's the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Speaker 1: They focus a lot on like Internet privacy issues UM
Speaker 1: and I do want to point people to a a
Speaker 1: link tree. It is, uh you know, l I n K,
Speaker 1: t R, dot E S stop earn it UM. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: you can find different ways to UM. You know, if
Speaker 1: you're the type of person that enjoys calling representatives or something,
Speaker 1: it has. It has links for that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: It has links to send you know, automated messages onto
Speaker 1: your representative to vote no on the Internet Act. That
Speaker 1: has too. You know, if if you're the type of
Speaker 1: person that enjoys the signing petitions, UM, it has it
Speaker 1: has more info on what earn it is and what
Speaker 1: it does UM and a whole whole bunch of other
Speaker 1: stuff around, you know, organizing to help stop this bill.
Speaker 1: There's like discord channels that have people organizing to to
Speaker 1: stop this bill. UM links links forward on that has
Speaker 1: info on like actions you can take UM. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I would uh if if you're interested in like looking
Speaker 1: for the different ways that can maybe you know contribute.
Speaker 1: You know, not no single person can make an impact,
Speaker 1: but you know enough people, enough people can UM. So yeah,
Speaker 1: that's link tree slash stop earn it um and then
Speaker 1: also again another shout out to the e f F. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I wanted to make don't say two closing things before
Speaker 1: we close this up. One if if you think that,
Speaker 1: if you think that once you're handing the entire content
Speaker 1: of the Internet over to the government to run through
Speaker 1: scanning groups, that the only thing they're ever going to
Speaker 1: scan for is child pornography. I have no n f
Speaker 1: D to sell you. It is a picture of a bridge.
Speaker 1: Once once you buy this n f T of the bridge,
Speaker 1: you will own the Brooklyn Bridge contact contact me for
Speaker 1: more details. The second thing is that, um, you know,
Speaker 1: when when we talk about like when we talk about
Speaker 1: anti porn stuff, when we talk about how you know,
Speaker 1: the way you get around this is by banning all
Speaker 1: one different work content, right the other thing that almost
Speaker 1: immediately gets banned. It's inevitably when when when when when
Speaker 1: companies for for whatever reason, and this is true just
Speaker 1: of of of companies that are trying to comply with
Speaker 1: you know, like the app store or stuff like that,
Speaker 1: like when when when whenever you get target things that
Speaker 1: target not for working, they inevitably, inevitably without failed target
Speaker 1: queer content content literally nothing at all through sexuality, because
Speaker 1: that's you know, this is this is, this is this
Speaker 1: has always been like accusing queer people of of being
Speaker 1: child predators has been the attack line on queer people.
Speaker 1: People are always on the front line of all of
Speaker 1: this stuff. Yeah, they will always be the first people impacted.
Speaker 1: They will be the first people demonized, even if even
Speaker 1: if even if it's not even not safe for material,
Speaker 1: if if it has if it has nothing to do
Speaker 1: with it, it will still always always be impacted more
Speaker 1: than basically any anyone else. Yeah, I mean we've we've
Speaker 1: been seeing this on YouTube, but constantly lots of lots
Speaker 1: of people who just you know, make trans content clear
Speaker 1: channels always being banned or demonetized, yep marked as a
Speaker 1: belt content Like yeah, it's it's horrifying. And if if
Speaker 1: you want an internet, not even just if you want
Speaker 1: to Internet that has like sex on it, if you
Speaker 1: want to Internet that has queer people on it, right
Speaker 1: expressing themselves in in in in any way that's not
Speaker 1: like literally just it's straight person but you say queer, right,
Speaker 1: if if that's a thing that you think is valuable,
Speaker 1: and if you and if you think that you know,
Speaker 1: it is important for core people to be able to
Speaker 1: express themselves for their own health and safety. Like you
Speaker 1: have to oppost this, yes, you absolutely. Um. I guess
Speaker 1: what one final thing I'll add because they know someone
Speaker 1: will probably message me about it. Um. There is a
Speaker 1: slight opinion piece by somebody saying that this bill would
Speaker 1: actually let child abusers walk free because they could use
Speaker 1: the fact that this bill essentially, um, you know, compels
Speaker 1: companies to do scanning software via via government like mandate
Speaker 1: because of this bill. They would that because because in
Speaker 1: their mind, this could possibly violate the Fourth Amendment to
Speaker 1: this would allow abusers, um, the evidence that they is
Speaker 1: collected to prosecute abusers to become invalid in court. So
Speaker 1: this would actually also make the this would just make
Speaker 1: this would make the bill um uh, you know, actually
Speaker 1: make people walk free. I do not agree with this take.
Speaker 1: I don't think that's how it would work out at all,
Speaker 1: because especially for you know, you can use this for
Speaker 1: like political organizing. You can use this for a lot
Speaker 1: of like you can use this same argument for a
Speaker 1: lot of cases, and it never works out that way
Speaker 1: because the government does not care about that sort of thing. Um,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's not. That's not how it works. Um.
Speaker 1: I mean the things that get violated like in theory
Speaker 1: that does not know that's like they illegally seized you know,
Speaker 1: ten Kazinski's you know, uh like evidence and yeah, you
Speaker 1: know it doesn't it doesn't matter like that's that's that's
Speaker 1: that's that's not gonna matter, because then this bill would
Speaker 1: be seen as a good thing because it would prevent
Speaker 1: people from you know, then the encryption wouldn't be necessary
Speaker 1: because then none of the evidence that people would you know,
Speaker 1: would have gathered would ever be admissible in court. And
Speaker 1: that is that they would never design the bill like
Speaker 1: that that that's not that's not the case. I disagree
Speaker 1: with this take. So do not send me this article
Speaker 1: saying actually it's going to have this happen, because I
Speaker 1: do not believe it. Because this assumes that the government
Speaker 1: operates like like coherently and operates like you know, like
Speaker 1: no think the government does does does not care no
Speaker 1: like again, like the First Amendment is superseded by traffic law,
Speaker 1: like you know that you're not going to be able
Speaker 1: to use this insistent like this will secretly let abusers
Speaker 1: go free. This is not secretly a good thing because
Speaker 1: it will make all evidence inadmissible in court. Bullshit anyway, Anyway,
Speaker 1: I'll give a final shout out to the link tree
Speaker 1: link tree slash stop earn it um. That's l I
Speaker 1: n K T dot e er slash stop earn it
Speaker 1: um if you're the type of person that likes doing
Speaker 1: those types of things. And also it has like links
Speaker 1: like discord channels for other types of organizing beyond you know,
Speaker 1: petitions and calling and senators and sending messages and blah
Speaker 1: blah blah blah blah. Anyway, that's the episode. UM, thank
Speaker 1: you for listening. I just thought, I just thought, this
Speaker 1: is this is this is an important thing enough that
Speaker 1: I haven't seen enough. I have not seen enough people
Speaker 1: talking about the Earned Act and the way it does
Speaker 1: seriously threatened digital privacy. And because it was approved by
Speaker 1: the Senate Judiciary Committee to be pushed forward, um, it
Speaker 1: is actually chugging along on the slow legal process, so
Speaker 1: it's gotten further than what it got. So I thought
Speaker 1: it was actually worth talking about, um, you know, for
Speaker 1: the privacy issues, how it affects queer people, how it
Speaker 1: affects sex workers, um, and all all that general thing.
Speaker 1: So yeah, and also I wanted you know, it's very
Speaker 1: easy to feel hopefuls with this kind of stuff, but like,
Speaker 1: we've beaten legislation for I like, one of my one
Speaker 1: of my formative childhood experiences was when was when we
Speaker 1: beat when we beat soap, and people like we can
Speaker 1: beat them. It takes it takes a lot, takes a
Speaker 1: lot of mobilization, but yeah, like we we we we
Speaker 1: we I know we can. I know we can beat
Speaker 1: this because we've beaten things like it before. Agreed, all right,
Speaker 1: that nothing for us today. If you to find us
Speaker 1: on a currently more secure than what it could be Internet,
Speaker 1: you can follow us on Twitter at cool Zone Media
Speaker 1: um and happened here pod. I think apparently Instagram too,
Speaker 1: So that's cool. If you're an Instagram person, good for
Speaker 1: you because Twitter Twitter is bad. Um, you can find
Speaker 1: me on Twitter at Hungry about tie Um yeah, find
Speaker 1: me at three you can't. You can, indeed that that
Speaker 1: us it for us UM encryption. Hey there, I'm Jess
Speaker 1: Milady Confetti here. Hi, I'm Psyche and I am pay
Speaker 1: Shady Lady And welcome to Boss Level Podcast, where we
Speaker 1: feature conversations with gas Tube leveled up bringing an xp
Speaker 1: roost to the table. That was always my response, because
Speaker 1: is like I am like a unicorn here right, like
Speaker 1: because there's not allowed of like out of the closet
Speaker 1: female gamers. I know a lot of them. Like it
Speaker 1: was like a battlefield, like this is our cool boys
Speaker 1: club and here no, sorry, Honny, this is a very
Speaker 1: dark corner and I'm a lot of light and right.
Speaker 1: We picked the brains of professionals, creators and bosses and
Speaker 1: industries across the globe to help our listeners achieve their
Speaker 1: own boss level. We are not just creating a podcast,
Speaker 1: but a gamified an engaged community. Listen to Boss Level
Speaker 1: on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast or wherever
Speaker 1: you get your podcasts. And we're live here outside the
Speaker 1: Perez family home, just waiting for them. And there they go,
Speaker 1: almost on time. This morning. Mom is coming out the
Speaker 1: front door strong with a double arm kid carry. Looks
Speaker 1: like dad has the bags daughter he is bringing up
Speaker 1: the rear. Oh but the diaper bag wasn't closed. Diapers
Speaker 1: and toys are everywhere. Oh but mom has just nailed
Speaker 1: the perfect car seat buckle for the toddler. And now
Speaker 1: the eldest daughter, who looks to be about nine or
Speaker 1: ten has secured herself in the booster seat. Dad zips
Speaker 1: the bad clothes and they're off, but looks like Mom
Speaker 1: doesn't realize her coffee cup is still on the roof
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Speaker 1: Mitza and the Ad Council from Cavalry Audio, the studio
Speaker 1: that brought you The Devil Within and The Shadow Girls.
Speaker 1: Comes a new true crime podcast, The Pink Moon Murders.
Speaker 1: The local sheriff believes there may be more than one killery.
Speaker 1: It's been four days since those bodies were found, and
Speaker 1: there's no stas it this morning. They were afraid to
Speaker 1: face it out in that area. What if they come
Speaker 1: back or whatever. It scared me to death, Like it
Speaker 1: scared me. I was very very intimidating to live here.
Speaker 1: Crazy to think you go to sleep one night, maybe
Speaker 1: snuggling with your loved one and never wake up, or
Speaker 1: maybe you wake up in a struggle for your life,
Speaker 1: which you lose. Joint host David Radoman as he explores
Speaker 1: one fateful night when evil descended upon small town, Ohio
Speaker 1: killed eight members of an Ohio family in a pre
Speaker 1: planned execution. The family was targeted, most of them targeted
Speaker 1: while they were sleeping. Follow the Pink Moon murders on
Speaker 1: the I Heart radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you
Speaker 1: get your podcasts. Hey, everybody, Robert Evans here. Um, obviously,
Speaker 1: as I'm sure everyone is being bombarded with. The war
Speaker 1: in Ukraine, is UH in its fifth day right now
Speaker 1: something like that, Um, we just passed ninety six hours.
Speaker 1: By some accounts, more than three hundred thousand people have
Speaker 1: been made refugees. Those are going to be very in
Speaker 1: exact numbers, but it's it's likely to be somewhere between
Speaker 1: like fifty and a hundred thousand people per day being
Speaker 1: made refugees, and it's possible that's gonna last for the
Speaker 1: foreseeable future. Much of the coverage that you will have
Speaker 1: seen at this point, UM is going to focus on
Speaker 1: heroic pieces of of of resistance. You know, things that
Speaker 1: Ukrainian civilians picking up arms, throwing molotov cocktails, Ukrainian soldiers
Speaker 1: destroying Russian armored columns. Some of that's going to be
Speaker 1: a propaganda, some of that A decent amount of that's
Speaker 1: actually happening. Obviously, we have a fair amount of documentation,
Speaker 1: but what I think has not gotten nearly as much
Speaker 1: play is the situation at the border of Ukraine and
Speaker 1: Poland um because this refugee crisis is enormous, but it's
Speaker 1: also not sexy and it points to a number of
Speaker 1: things that are ugly about some of the stuff that
Speaker 1: people like to celebrate. This con concluding the conduct of
Speaker 1: President Zelinsky, who is I think handled himself objectively well
Speaker 1: as a wartime leader, and who is also, as you'll
Speaker 1: hear in the interview that's about to follow, made some
Speaker 1: decisions that have had a catastrophic impact on people's lives.
Speaker 1: So this is an interview conducted by a journalist H.
Speaker 1: James Stout, who is working with us on this project
Speaker 1: and with another project that will be launching soon, with
Speaker 1: a person, an individual an American who was well as
Speaker 1: a couple of different passports, but with a person who
Speaker 1: was in Ukraine when the invasion began and left and
Speaker 1: eventually wound up leaving on foot with tens of thousands
Speaker 1: of other people for the Polish border. So this is
Speaker 1: a story of what it is like to flee a
Speaker 1: country at the beginning of a war, um and and
Speaker 1: the realities that increasing numbers of Ukrainians are going to
Speaker 1: be facing every single day. So please listen there, Hey, manny,
Speaker 1: how are you? I'm doing well? How are you good?
Speaker 1: Goods very to keep you up later period exhausted, No, No,
Speaker 1: it's okay, it's okay. Um. I actually just arrived at
Speaker 1: a new hostel in New City, UM, and I'm going
Speaker 1: to be up for a couple more hours anyway, so
Speaker 1: it's a good time to talk. Nice. Great, do you
Speaker 1: mind if I record this? Go ahead? Cool, excellent, and
Speaker 1: let me explain what we're going to do. So I'm
Speaker 1: I'm bringing a piece for NBC on the the refugee
Speaker 1: situation that's emerging, and then I'm also helping to make
Speaker 1: a podcast for I Heart Radio about a similar thing.
Speaker 1: So it's okay with you. We'll use the audio for
Speaker 1: one and then some of your words for another. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: how is my audio coming through it's great. Actually, it's
Speaker 1: really really good. But you wanted to telephone or you
Speaker 1: on a computer. I'm on a telephone right now. I
Speaker 1: don't have a computer with mechical. Now you're doing really well.
Speaker 1: If you're on a computer, i'd ask you to record
Speaker 1: it back up, but this is just fine. I'm recording.
Speaker 1: So yeah, like, um, it seems like you've had a
Speaker 1: pretty exhausting forty eight hours now. And so if we
Speaker 1: go back to when you were in Kiev, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: So I was in Kiev a few days ago. I
Speaker 1: was in Kiev eight days ago. Um, and then I
Speaker 1: went to Leviv four days ago. Okay. And had you
Speaker 1: been how long have you been in Ukraine? I had
Speaker 1: been I've been in Ukraine or I had been in
Speaker 1: Ukraine in total for one week, okay, so you know
Speaker 1: that long. And you so you rand in Kiev, you
Speaker 1: went to Leviv. Can you remember, like where you were
Speaker 1: when you found out that the invasion was happening and
Speaker 1: that it was going to go past don Bass and
Speaker 1: into Ukraine. Yeah, of course. So I woke up on
Speaker 1: the morning of twenty four February to the sound of
Speaker 1: air raid sirens outside, and it was a very confusing sound.
Speaker 1: I had never heard it right, so I was in
Speaker 1: real life. I just heard them in movies and television
Speaker 1: shows and such, and I knew immediately what had happened.
Speaker 1: I didn't even have to check the news, um. And
Speaker 1: I did check the news soon afterward, and there were
Speaker 1: bombings all over the country. There were reports of bombings
Speaker 1: in a Banda front Kiss, which is a city on
Speaker 1: KOs south of le Viv, where I was, and there
Speaker 1: were so many rumors flying around. There were rumors that
Speaker 1: the Russians were coming coming to Leviv at that moment,
Speaker 1: which was not the case but can still be the
Speaker 1: case very soon. Anyway, So we heard I heard these
Speaker 1: these air raids sirens as I woke up, and I
Speaker 1: shook away my roommate, who was a British journalist UM,
Speaker 1: and I told him we might be bombed any minute.
Speaker 1: So we went outside to try and find a shelter.
Speaker 1: UM pretty much still in our nightclothes. We went outside
Speaker 1: to try and find a shelter, and they were loudspeakers saying, uh,
Speaker 1: everybody remained calm, fine shelter helped the elderly stockpile water,
Speaker 1: and it was repeating this unrepeat and people were shuffling along.
Speaker 1: There was a sense of muted panic. So it was
Speaker 1: an outright panic, but it was a sense of urgency
Speaker 1: I guess you could call it it. And um, we
Speaker 1: were at war and that was when I realized that
Speaker 1: Ukraine was being invaded at that very moment. Wow, yeah,
Speaker 1: it sounds dramatic. And at that point you went to
Speaker 1: the shelter, I'm guessing, so did you spend some time
Speaker 1: then before making a decision to head to polent So
Speaker 1: after about fifteen minutes, the air rates I would stopped.
Speaker 1: The news generally came around the city that Lviv was
Speaker 1: not about to be bombed, but nevertheless, massive exodus of
Speaker 1: people began from Lviv at that moment. Because okay, we're
Speaker 1: safe for now, but for how long are we safe?
Speaker 1: Was the general sentiment that was around. So, Um, everybody
Speaker 1: just started making for the train station, the bus station,
Speaker 1: They got in their cars. People were just leaving. There
Speaker 1: were huge lines at the A T. M. S. There
Speaker 1: were huge lines at the grocery stores. People were buying
Speaker 1: no perishables. Um, it was just not a panic full
Speaker 1: out I would call it, but it was an urgent departure.
Speaker 1: It was an an exodus that was happening, and so
Speaker 1: me and my roommate we went to the train station,
Speaker 1: waited in the line for two hours to see if
Speaker 1: there were tickets. There were no tickets. We went to
Speaker 1: the bus station. We waited in the line for one
Speaker 1: hour to see if there were tickets. There were no tickets,
Speaker 1: um and so then we started to get a little
Speaker 1: worried because it was noon on the day of the invasion.
Speaker 1: Russian forces were everywhere in the country. Of our bombings
Speaker 1: everywhere in the country, and we had to leave, and
Speaker 1: there was no viable means to leave. The airport was closed.
Speaker 1: Of course, the airport was being bombed a few hours later.
Speaker 1: Um and so we tried to look into car higher.
Speaker 1: We tried to see if we could rent a car.
Speaker 1: We tried to see if we could take an Uber
Speaker 1: or a lift or a blah black car, which is
Speaker 1: the Ukrainian version of Uber, and none of those options
Speaker 1: were available. Because everybody was thinking the same thing and
Speaker 1: in a sense of almost resigned to spare, we decided
Speaker 1: that it would be best to just start walking last
Speaker 1: and see what happened. And it was around noon when
Speaker 1: we began to walk west. Wow. UM so when you
Speaker 1: you set off to walk, did you just sort of
Speaker 1: take what you could carry and that's sort of what
Speaker 1: most people were doing, or did you get the sense
Speaker 1: that at least the people were like preparing for a
Speaker 1: long period of time away when they left. The people
Speaker 1: certainly were not preparing for a long period of time away.
Speaker 1: The people were not preparing for war. Um For the
Speaker 1: longest time, President z of Lynski and the Ukrainian government
Speaker 1: maintained that there would be no war. They called indications
Speaker 1: of war alarmists, they called them ludicrous. And uh, it
Speaker 1: was only in the final twenty four hours that everybody
Speaker 1: sort of woke up and said there's going to be
Speaker 1: a war. So I remember the last day before the invasion.
Speaker 1: People were getting ready, people were waiting at the A
Speaker 1: T m s. People were buying groceries, people were packing.
Speaker 1: But it was not before before that time nobody was
Speaker 1: getting ready for the war. And so when the war struck, everybody, uh,
Speaker 1: everybody just sort of left hastily. And it is a
Speaker 1: terrifying departure, of a sudden and terrifying departure because people
Speaker 1: didn't know what to do and they just sort of
Speaker 1: grabbed what they had and they ran. Luckily for me
Speaker 1: in my roommate, we were traveling with you know, just
Speaker 1: one pack or so because we were not living in Ukraine, um,
Speaker 1: and so we were able to just carry what we
Speaker 1: had on our backs. Yeah, so he told me through
Speaker 1: that wook then it's I think that's sortays like forty
Speaker 1: three miles is a right, that's that's right. So we
Speaker 1: did take a municipal bus a little bit of the way,
Speaker 1: which are from municipal bus. I believe it was five
Speaker 1: kilometers down the road road, um. Five kilometers being like
Speaker 1: three miles down the road um. And the total distance
Speaker 1: from Lviv to the border is eighty eighty kilometers, sorry
Speaker 1: eighty kilometers, so that really did not make a dent
Speaker 1: at all in the distance. And it was noon when
Speaker 1: we started, and we knew for a fact that um,
Speaker 1: that we would not make it before nightfall. And we
Speaker 1: knew that and we were terrified at that. So at
Speaker 1: first we walked along the countryside was picturesque, it was beautiful.
Speaker 1: It was indistinguishable from holiday during springtime. There was a
Speaker 1: fair fair, weather was sunny, um, and no one could
Speaker 1: even tell that the nation was at war. There was
Speaker 1: really nobody else walking on the road besides us in
Speaker 1: the beginning and the first twenty kilometers, I would say, um.
Speaker 1: And then we started seeing long lines of the petrol stations.
Speaker 1: Every everywhere was out of gas. There nobody had gas. UM.
Speaker 1: There was just no ability to fuel cars. And as
Speaker 1: a consequence of that, UM, cars were running out of
Speaker 1: gas and they were being abandoned on the side of
Speaker 1: the road, which caused further traffic pile ups, and soon
Speaker 1: the road was impenetrable to vehicles. UM. And so because
Speaker 1: of this, everybody started getting out of their cars and walking.
Speaker 1: And so these families who had planned to escape u
Speaker 1: Crane to Poland in their cars and carry their lives
Speaker 1: with them were suddenly faced with the hard decision of
Speaker 1: taking what they could carry with them. Yeah, that just terrible.
Speaker 1: That sounds really difficult. And I'm sure you saw like
Speaker 1: older folks and younger people as well, with people sort
Speaker 1: of and struggling to that's a long walk, right, It's
Speaker 1: not a walk and everyone could do it, must be
Speaker 1: very dear. It's a difficult walk for a young man,
Speaker 1: and many old women and little children under the age
Speaker 1: of five or forced on this march because there really
Speaker 1: was no other option for them. It was either go
Speaker 1: back to Ukraine and risk being bombed, risk being under
Speaker 1: Russian occupation, or it was get out of your car
Speaker 1: and walk in the wintertime with no food or water,
Speaker 1: no toilet, four fifty miles. And it was just this
Speaker 1: nightmare scenario because all these people were on the road.
Speaker 1: There were people in wheelchairs who couldn't negotiate the mud.
Speaker 1: There were mothers with strollers who couldn't get get the
Speaker 1: children um out, and the children were crying, and the
Speaker 1: children were asking why are we here, what it will
Speaker 1: be doing? Why didn't we have to leave home and
Speaker 1: stand walk fifty miles in the middle of winter um
Speaker 1: And the old people were sort of resigned to it.
Speaker 1: They There was one old woman I passed too, was
Speaker 1: using a cane and she was hobbling along jade a backpack,
Speaker 1: and I asked her where are you going, because we
Speaker 1: were a part we were a long long way from
Speaker 1: the border, and she said, I'm going to Poland, very simply.
Speaker 1: It was a very matter of fact, um statement. And
Speaker 1: so these people walked with a sense of duty and
Speaker 1: a sense of urgency and um it was just a
Speaker 1: very tragic humanitarian scene. Yeah, I can imagine. And that
Speaker 1: was a major that was a major route that you're on, right,
Speaker 1: like a major road that just become impossible. It wasn't
Speaker 1: one of the bigger highways, but it was I believe
Speaker 1: the M eleven, the Ukrainian M eleven and it runs
Speaker 1: east to west throughout the country, and uh, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: one of the major roads and it had become completely clogged. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So on arrival in Impoland or owed the border. And
Speaker 1: I understand that there's some men like broadly defined as
Speaker 1: like military age eighteen to sixty, I think allowed us
Speaker 1: and leave because they they have they have to stay
Speaker 1: in it and enlist. Is that right? Did you see? Yes?
Speaker 1: The border was absolutely the worst part. For that reason.
Speaker 1: About five kilometers from the border. At the end of
Speaker 1: our walk, we were feeling relieved. We were feeling like,
Speaker 1: finally we've made it. Ukrainian military patrols started walking by
Speaker 1: and driving by and announcing through loud speakers and announcing
Speaker 1: with their own voices, Um, all men must stay. All
Speaker 1: men between the ages of eighteen and sixty have to stay.
Speaker 1: Get out of line now. And so the fathers naturally asked,
Speaker 1: because there were a lot of fathers who were there
Speaker 1: to protect their families, to safeguard their families, and to
Speaker 1: provide for their families. Uh. These fathers asked, how about us,
Speaker 1: we have we have little children, We have children under
Speaker 1: the age of five. How are we supposed to provide
Speaker 1: for them if you conscript us? Right here? The Ukrainian
Speaker 1: Army did not care. They pulled them away physically from
Speaker 1: their family. There were a lot of tears. There was
Speaker 1: a lot of crying. There were a lot of hurried goodbyes.
Speaker 1: Brothers left sisters, mothers left, husbands, um, lovers left each other.
Speaker 1: People people just left. It was terrifying to watch. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all these men were conscripted immediately into the army. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I can imagine. And what people at that point like
Speaker 1: it seems like that were ready to be stoic. Up
Speaker 1: to that point, were people sort of resisting that, like
Speaker 1: just what they like, sort of sad but resigned to
Speaker 1: it was Maure that was that. Well, that was when
Speaker 1: the panic began, because everybody was sad but resigned to
Speaker 1: their faith of walking to Poland. But nobody was prepared
Speaker 1: for losing all the men. Um. So when all the
Speaker 1: men were lost, when all the men were taken forcibly,
Speaker 1: and this was public. Everybody could see these men being
Speaker 1: yanked from their families. People first started yelling at the
Speaker 1: soldiers that didn't do anything obviously, um, and they were
Speaker 1: they were so angry at the soldiers and soldiers were
Speaker 1: didn't care. Um. And then panic began because people realized,
Speaker 1: oh my god, this this person who was here with us,
Speaker 1: who was a travel companion, who's a relative, now we
Speaker 1: have to leave without him. And even more, he's going
Speaker 1: to the front now and he is in great danger
Speaker 1: at the front. So people began pushing, they began shoving,
Speaker 1: they began being rude to one another. Um. There there
Speaker 1: was no sense of empathy among the people at all
Speaker 1: because it was a panic to get across the border
Speaker 1: at that point. Um. So there were people fainting, uh,
Speaker 1: and that was really just overlooked. The people who fainted
Speaker 1: were sort of dragged to the side and left there.
Speaker 1: And I think they they made it. I don't know
Speaker 1: if they made it out, Okay, they certainly didn't die.
Speaker 1: But there were people who were fainting. There are people
Speaker 1: who were sobbing there or people who were hyperventilating. There
Speaker 1: was vomiting going on it was just this sense of
Speaker 1: absolute human panic as people just tried to escape in
Speaker 1: the last in the last five kilometers and especially in
Speaker 1: the last was the very worst. So, yeah, terrible thing
Speaker 1: to see if you hadn't say you stay in touch.
Speaker 1: He's one of the lads who was conscripted, right, Yes,
Speaker 1: that that was a development from tonight. So while we
Speaker 1: were walking about, this was about fifteen kilometers out from
Speaker 1: the border, we met a young Ukrainian man, UM and
Speaker 1: we just got to talking to him because, I mean
Speaker 1: we could relate to him. We were about I'm about
Speaker 1: the same age as him, um, and so I we
Speaker 1: were just like sort of talking about our lives and
Speaker 1: it was almost as if the war wasn't going on.
Speaker 1: And then we got to these army checkpoints, um, and
Speaker 1: they started calling all the men you have to you
Speaker 1: have to leave, um. And so my friend said, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm not I'm not leaving. I don't want to fight
Speaker 1: in this war. And you tried to, you know, sort of, um,
Speaker 1: stay with us. Because we were foreigners, we were not
Speaker 1: we were not eligible to be conscripted. So he sort
Speaker 1: of tried to stay with us. He was he was
Speaker 1: a student, he was trying not to fight in this
Speaker 1: war because he had a life elsewhere. He had a
Speaker 1: girlfriend who who was traveling with U, and so we
Speaker 1: we were walking with him and I said, hey, do
Speaker 1: you want to do an interview? He said sure, UM,
Speaker 1: and I started talking to him on camera and then
Speaker 1: the soldier came by and yelled in his direction, hey,
Speaker 1: you get out of line. And UM, he said, I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: I have to go, and he just gave me this look,
Speaker 1: like this despairing look, and he went with the soldier. UM.
Speaker 1: The two days later today tonight, he messaged me on
Speaker 1: Instagram and he said, because we by the way, we
Speaker 1: had exchange contact information where we were talking. Um. He
Speaker 1: messaged me on Instagram and he said, hey, I saw
Speaker 1: that you mentioned me in uh in your Twitter because
Speaker 1: I told him about the Twitter as well. UM, and
Speaker 1: he said, just letting you know I'm safe, uh in Viv.
Speaker 1: I'm not in the east fighting the Russians. Um. I
Speaker 1: am in Leviv and I am safe. And it is
Speaker 1: my knowledge that he may have escaped conscription because he
Speaker 1: would otherwise be in the East, but UM, I'm not sure.
Speaker 1: I just know that he was safe right now. And
Speaker 1: he confirmed that he was safe okay, So so yeah,
Speaker 1: you're not sure whether he's doing training or whether he's
Speaker 1: in some rearrestual role or if he's managed to get
Speaker 1: out of it. To hihow, I know that he has
Speaker 1: managed to escape the brunt of the hiding with the Russians,
Speaker 1: that's right, Yeah, okay, yeah, good for him, but it's
Speaker 1: still a terrible thing to have to do with. So
Speaker 1: it's my understanding. It's that visa. There's visa free entry
Speaker 1: into Poland right now, Is that right? That people can
Speaker 1: walk aggressive? Yes, The entry into Poland was an absolute
Speaker 1: priest compared to the exit from Ukraine. I don't know why,
Speaker 1: but you have to wait in a long line in
Speaker 1: Ukraine for an exit piece, just for permission to leave
Speaker 1: the country. And so, as I mentioned, that was the
Speaker 1: worst part because they were only letting ten people out
Speaker 1: every twenty minutes. That ten people get an icon visa
Speaker 1: every twenty minutes, and there were at least two thousand
Speaker 1: people at the border with US, and so that's that's
Speaker 1: where this panic is because every time they opened that
Speaker 1: gate every twenty minutes, and by the way, this is
Speaker 1: like two in the morning in the cold weather, and
Speaker 1: people are as I mentioned crying, vomiting, fainting, um. And
Speaker 1: so every time they opened that gate, there was a
Speaker 1: human crush to get to that gate, and it closed
Speaker 1: it and they forced the people back, and then it
Speaker 1: was another twenty minutes before it happened again. And this
Speaker 1: happened all night long. Um. And this was literally just
Speaker 1: to get permission to exit the country. It was ludicrous,
Speaker 1: it was insane. UM. So yeah, I'm sorry to divert
Speaker 1: from your question, but it's very interesting. Poland was extremely
Speaker 1: easy to enter. There was no visa process. They understood.
Speaker 1: They let us through. I think they just barely looked
Speaker 1: at our passports. Um. So yeah, it was it was easy.
Speaker 1: Were you at that point, like obviously had no plans
Speaker 1: or places to go? So the could day house you
Speaker 1: with some kind of refugee housing that they put you in.
Speaker 1: Uh not when I was there, Um, they did do that.
Speaker 1: They did implement that about twelve hours after I arrived. Um.
Speaker 1: But when I arrived, we were greeted immediately pretty much
Speaker 1: right out of the border facility with donuts and tea. Um.
Speaker 1: And so they gave us donuts, they gave us a
Speaker 1: te um, and then they said, hey, there's a bus
Speaker 1: to Premisshill, which is the city about fifteen kilometers west
Speaker 1: of the border, um where all the refugees are gathering.
Speaker 1: And they said there's a bus the Premiership at least
Speaker 1: every fifteen minutes, and we got on that bus um
Speaker 1: and then we end up. We arrived in Premiershill, and
Speaker 1: at that time refugees were responsible for their own accommodation.
Speaker 1: We managed to book a room in a hotel with
Speaker 1: eight other refugees UM in the room. Uh. And so
Speaker 1: I was sleeping in this this room with eight other refugees.
Speaker 1: They didn't want to talk to me. They were kind
Speaker 1: of despondent. They lost everything and so they were just
Speaker 1: very sad the entire time that I was there. But
Speaker 1: to answer your question about housing real quick, uh, about
Speaker 1: twelve hours after we arrived, they began setting up tents
Speaker 1: for the refugees and that is where many of the
Speaker 1: refuge us are living. Now. Okay, it's that you know
Speaker 1: that's a Polish government or the Red Cross or is
Speaker 1: that citizens to Poland. I have no idea which organization
Speaker 1: did that, but I can tell you that I did
Speaker 1: not see a single Red Cross or United Nations representative
Speaker 1: while I was in Poland. Okay, interesting, Yeah, they can
Speaker 1: be sometimes a little slow to react. Yeah, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: So you then stayed in that hostel, you weren't able
Speaker 1: to really talk to the people there, which understandable. They
Speaker 1: probably had a very very difficult twenty four hours and
Speaker 1: we all have had. Yeah, I mean, no talking was
Speaker 1: being had pretty much. Did you get a sense when
Speaker 1: as you met the people walking there crossing the border,
Speaker 1: et cetera, where people did they have plans to be
Speaker 1: gone from Ukraine? Were they thinking where can I stay
Speaker 1: for a long period of time? Were they thinking I'm
Speaker 1: going to wait this out in Poland? And see? Um?
Speaker 1: I was pleasantly surprised that a good half of the
Speaker 1: people that I spoke to in that in that convoy,
Speaker 1: in the refugee caravan had relatives either in Poland or
Speaker 1: elsewhere in Europe. Um, and so they were all they
Speaker 1: had all called their relatives and they had arranged them
Speaker 1: to go to Western Europe and meet the relatives. Okay, yes,
Speaker 1: and they've got a place and they're planning to at least. However,
Speaker 1: another half of them have no plans whatsoever, and they're terrified.
Speaker 1: And those are the refugees that I stayed with the
Speaker 1: hotel last night. Um is that they're terrified and they
Speaker 1: have no place to go. Yeah, right, and no one's
Speaker 1: really provided them with one yet. And yeah, that's difficult,
Speaker 1: and it seems like I have to be interesting to
Speaker 1: see how the United States three acts because it hasn't
Speaker 1: really done very much so far. Um, it's amazing. I
Speaker 1: heard that the reason I crossed at that place rather
Speaker 1: than any other places that I heard that the U. S.
Speaker 1: Army was there and I did not see the U.
Speaker 1: S Army and I searched for them and I did
Speaker 1: not find them. So I don't know where the US is. Okay, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you haven't seen any any evidence of like any seeing
Speaker 1: no sort of n POS or government sort of aid
Speaker 1: for refugees yet. Then it's kind of surprising. As I
Speaker 1: mentioned that, I I haven't seen any U N representative, any
Speaker 1: Red Cross representative, any WHO representative. I haven't seen any
Speaker 1: NGO or governmental representatives. I did see, of course Polish
Speaker 1: government representatives at the border, but that was about it,
Speaker 1: right it said from Polish people. Do you get a
Speaker 1: sense of sort of solidarity? How I think talk about
Speaker 1: So it was actually amazing to see. It was heartwarming
Speaker 1: to see. The citizens of Freshman Dell are now swamped.
Speaker 1: Their population has been doubled or tripled by the incoming
Speaker 1: Ukrainian refugees, and yet they are showing great amounts of solidarity.
Speaker 1: I actually attended a solidarity rally today, um where the
Speaker 1: citizens of Freshman Dill got together and they said Ukraine
Speaker 1: is our our brothers and putin us clearly in the wrong,
Speaker 1: and we will stand with them, We will show solidarity
Speaker 1: with them. That was hard for me to say. I
Speaker 1: talked with a few of those Poles at that rally
Speaker 1: and they said, yeah, we knew this was coming and
Speaker 1: we prepared for it, and we're ready to take in
Speaker 1: as many as it is necessary. Yeah, that's really nice
Speaker 1: to herite at least people a sort of showing slidarity
Speaker 1: with each other, in support with each other. And yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: So when you were on your way west, I presume
Speaker 1: that like the conflict didn't catch up with you, right,
Speaker 1: you weren't to be sabject to like in direct fire
Speaker 1: or you see any of that. No, however, there was
Speaker 1: about fifty KOs behind us a bombing. As I mentioned,
Speaker 1: We did not hear it, but there were reports of
Speaker 1: the fighting going on all the time, but it's not
Speaker 1: catch up to us while we were in that while
Speaker 1: we were in that caravan, and um, it would have
Speaker 1: been absolutely terrifying if it had. But I'm glad that
Speaker 1: it did that, right. Yeah. And then so you've been
Speaker 1: there for about a week. Had you previously been doing
Speaker 1: some reporting in Ukraine. I've never done reporting in Ukraine
Speaker 1: but four. But when I came to Ukraine and the
Speaker 1: war had not had started, I was mostly just doing
Speaker 1: interviews with civilians about what they thought about the possibility
Speaker 1: of war, about what they thought about the war, and
Speaker 1: don Bass um most a lot of cultural stuff. It
Speaker 1: was kind of boring. I mean not that not that
Speaker 1: war is interesting or fund but it was not really
Speaker 1: much of a story. Um. So I was just doing
Speaker 1: interviews with people about basic Ukrainian things. And then the
Speaker 1: war found us so right, and it seemed to have
Speaker 1: come as much a shock to them as it did
Speaker 1: to the rest of us. As I mentioned, nobody was
Speaker 1: prepared for war until about twenty four hours before it hit,
Speaker 1: and that's when the Ukrainian government said, yes, there will
Speaker 1: be a war, and everybody began sort of to have
Speaker 1: a sense of urgency about them, right, did you see
Speaker 1: any of the citizen militias and citizens preparing for defense
Speaker 1: the people who decided to stay. Yes, I didn't see
Speaker 1: any of the militias, but I was went into a
Speaker 1: Ukrainian gun shopping Kiev and there was a line almost
Speaker 1: off the door. People were buying guns, um And I
Speaker 1: asked one of the people on the line, why are
Speaker 1: you buying a gun? And he said, if the Russians come,
Speaker 1: I want to be prepared. So a lot of people
Speaker 1: are buying guns privately and chief at least as of
Speaker 1: last week, okay, so that they weren't waiting for the
Speaker 1: government to supply. Then they were supplying themselves with guns.
Speaker 1: I believe. I believe the government's supply was a rather
Speaker 1: um my sudden decision. I don't think the ngraainting people
Speaker 1: were counting on it. And so they were supplying themselves.
Speaker 1: And they're buying like like collashing cough to the rifles
Speaker 1: we talked about rifles. Yeah, you can't buy clashing cobs
Speaker 1: in the gun store. They were buying sort of hunting
Speaker 1: rifles and shotguns. Jesus. Okay, yeah, yeah, really under equipped,
Speaker 1: all right, So they were just prepared to trying to
Speaker 1: get anything they could get their hand zone to look
Speaker 1: after themselves and their families. Yeah, I bought pepper spray.
Speaker 1: Yeah that it in nothing. Yeah, okay, so yeah there
Speaker 1: was there was Did you see like the people well
Speaker 1: you walked with with it. Did families tend to leave
Speaker 1: as a whole or did did some folks so say
Speaker 1: I'm going to stay behind and fight, or I'm going
Speaker 1: to stay behind to stay and look after a house
Speaker 1: and you should leave. Did you get into that the
Speaker 1: vast majority of people traveling were families as a whole.
Speaker 1: There were very few single travelers or partial families traveling.
Speaker 1: It was I think that people wanted to stick together
Speaker 1: and so it was the vast majority of people traveling
Speaker 1: were families. Okay, yeah, yeah, state or left. Do you
Speaker 1: get a sense of how many people you said about
Speaker 1: two thousand people there at the border, like of what
Speaker 1: proportion of the city decided to leave for Poland not
Speaker 1: all the people that the border were from leviv Um.
Speaker 1: A lot of them have been traveling since that morning
Speaker 1: from Kiev, uh and other cities in uh central western Ukraine. Um. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: I was talking to people at the border, and a
Speaker 1: lot of them were from Kiev. A lot of them
Speaker 1: were from zephyr Zisa, I'm pronouncing that wrong. A lot
Speaker 1: of them were from turn of Pill or Ivana, frankisk Um,
Speaker 1: or Odessa, and uh so I would not have any
Speaker 1: sort of conjecture on what percentage of the city. Also,
Speaker 1: it was still pretty early in the crisis, because it
Speaker 1: was still the first day and it was fewer than
Speaker 1: twenty four hours after the invasion began, So I imagine
Speaker 1: the numbers are a lot higher now. When you were
Speaker 1: getting news right, if you were traveling, etcetera, were you
Speaker 1: like on Whatsapple? What people on Twitter? Like? How are
Speaker 1: they getting news of what was happening? Everybody, and absolutely
Speaker 1: everybody was completely dark during the walk. Um because I
Speaker 1: don't know why, but there was no sense of cell reception,
Speaker 1: there was no sense of data reception, there was no
Speaker 1: sense of Internet connection at all during the walk. And
Speaker 1: so everybody I met, we we asked, we asked everybody
Speaker 1: we met, do you have any news? And they said no,
Speaker 1: do you have any news? Um, So nobody had any
Speaker 1: news until we got to the border. Some people had news,
Speaker 1: but for about about sixteen hours we were completely in
Speaker 1: the dark about what was going on. And that was
Speaker 1: terrifying because when we left the invasion had just begun
Speaker 1: and we didn't get to be updated on the first
Speaker 1: a half day, so right, yeah, it's crazy. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: then on arrival you're faced with this news of this
Speaker 1: like sort of blitzkrieg, all those right of bombing and
Speaker 1: right yes, um, I mean we we saw a little
Speaker 1: bit of it in the morning that day, well when
Speaker 1: we when we started out, um, but it had really
Speaker 1: accelerated and amplified by the time that we arrived. Um.
Speaker 1: And the Ukrainians were absolutely terrified at this because they
Speaker 1: did not realize what happened on such a large scale. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think very few people did. Okay, imagine if it's
Speaker 1: in your own country, it's petrifying. Were you there when
Speaker 1: the fighting began in the Chernobyl exclusion zone or were
Speaker 1: you in Poland by then? When did the fighting begin
Speaker 1: in Charnel? I believe about twenty four hours after the
Speaker 1: fighting began, big period. I was crossing into Poland twenty
Speaker 1: four hours after the fighting began, period, so I was
Speaker 1: probably crossing into pool and when that fighting began. Okay,
Speaker 1: it's interesting to know, especially how sort of the older
Speaker 1: people or people who have been alive, like the nuclear accidents,
Speaker 1: you know. But I was wondering how they right. I mean,
Speaker 1: I've been talking to plenty of plenty of older people,
Speaker 1: and as I mentioned, the older people especially were resigned
Speaker 1: to this because during the Soviet times, during the Cold War,
Speaker 1: this sort of thing was common, um, And so the
Speaker 1: older people knew what was going on, and the younger
Speaker 1: people were the ones who were more panicking. That's interesting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they said they've been raised with a fear of that.
Speaker 1: I suppose, right. And this happened in nine to like
Speaker 1: this is the biggest refugee crisis since nineteen eight nine,
Speaker 1: because in nineteen eight and nine when all the republics
Speaker 1: fell in the Warsaw Pact, so many people turk to
Speaker 1: the roads, and so the older people were used to
Speaker 1: that kind of thing, um, But as I mentioned, the
Speaker 1: younger people were not so right. Yeah, yeah, and so yeah,
Speaker 1: since from reactions, I guess, and it's very young people
Speaker 1: obviously unable to understand what's going on. And beyond that,
Speaker 1: there they're leaving their homes, which is said right, and
Speaker 1: especially the little children had no idea what was going on,
Speaker 1: and it was impossible to explain to them. So nobody
Speaker 1: did um and so I can't imagine how terrifying this
Speaker 1: must have been as a child, not knowing why you
Speaker 1: had to walk dozens of hours in the cold carrying
Speaker 1: everything you had. Yeah, it's always the saddest thing to
Speaker 1: see children in those refugee situations when they obviously don't
Speaker 1: know what's going on and didn't do anything wrong and right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: hopefully they're all safe. Hopefully they're in Poland, hopefully they
Speaker 1: can go to safe places. I made several contexts during
Speaker 1: this trip, and as I mentioned, only one of one
Speaker 1: of them has gone back to me, So I hope
Speaker 1: the others get back to me soon. Yeah, that's tough,
Speaker 1: but you've got the sense of everyone since they weren't
Speaker 1: turned back. They say they just might be sort of
Speaker 1: not in touch because their phone didn't charged or something
Speaker 1: like that. It's either their phones don't aren't charged, or
Speaker 1: if in the men men's case, they were sent to
Speaker 1: the East, or they're too busy trying to arrange accommodations
Speaker 1: or food for themselves or something. I mean, everybody was
Speaker 1: just very busy trying to survive. So I don't blame
Speaker 1: them if they don't If they don't hop on social media. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: of course, and of course think I did very very
Speaker 1: stressful time for everyone. Did you did you hear of
Speaker 1: anyone who has been sent to the east, either second
Speaker 1: hand or like three people you met people who are
Speaker 1: in the front already. Um, I do not have any
Speaker 1: contacts of anybody who was sent to the East. From
Speaker 1: what I understand, the Ukrainian Army has a strict uh
Speaker 1: communication social media sort of policy, and so none of
Speaker 1: these soldiers that I met one wanted to talk to me.
Speaker 1: I did not talk to any Ukrainian Army soldiers in
Speaker 1: uniform because they had a very strict policy. They could
Speaker 1: not talk to me, and too I could not get
Speaker 1: their contacts for much of the same reason. Okay, so
Speaker 1: they didn't want to talk to you, and I didn't
Speaker 1: want to talk to anyone. They were just looking for now.
Speaker 1: They were just they were very stern and they did
Speaker 1: not want to talk to anybody. So I talked to
Speaker 1: zero soldiers in uniforms during this experience. Okay, yeah, so
Speaker 1: where are you now? You've you've gone further west west, right,
Speaker 1: that's right. I took a long bus ride to crack
Speaker 1: Off today. UM, and so I'm crack off Poland Okay,
Speaker 1: how folks deal? Is it different? There being about a
Speaker 1: little bit more distant. I've already talked to a few
Speaker 1: people and uh, well it's a Saturday night. They're going
Speaker 1: out to drink, and they they're saying, well, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's terrible that this war is happening two fifty miles
Speaker 1: east of us, but what are we supposed to do
Speaker 1: about it? So they're going out and drinking. So it's
Speaker 1: this very detached sense here and crack out. Not the
Speaker 1: same as it was in Freshmanville. Yeah, interesting to people
Speaker 1: are living their normal life and it's just it's a
Speaker 1: news item for them. It's they're not worried about any
Speaker 1: potential spin over a fallout, right, Okay, yeah, they're not worried.
Speaker 1: Nice and well you do you plan to stay there?
Speaker 1: What's what's next to you? So I actually just booked
Speaker 1: a flight uh an hour ago. I'm going to be
Speaker 1: flying back to the States on Marshall first. Okay, great,
Speaker 1: yeah you can. You can come back. And presumably you're
Speaker 1: like your US passport holders, so you could just get
Speaker 1: that's how you got through being conscripted, etcetera. I am not.
Speaker 1: I'm not carrying US passport right now. I'm carrying an
Speaker 1: Italian passport um because I'm also a citizen of Italy.
Speaker 1: And I was told before I left by some friends
Speaker 1: in the intelligence community that it would look significantly less
Speaker 1: suspicious to carry a U passport than an US passport.
Speaker 1: So I bought the U passport. Nice. Yeah, and then
Speaker 1: you can travel free D three D yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: Do you know if Ukrainian people can crebble once? Because
Speaker 1: once they're in Poland, can they then move through the
Speaker 1: Shangan's own freely? Ukraine is not a member of the EU,
Speaker 1: they're not a member of Shangan. I do not believe
Speaker 1: they can move really, right, that's wondering, Like, yeah, they
Speaker 1: would be I don't know how their passports would be
Speaker 1: checked if they're going across some of those land borders
Speaker 1: that I think they I do know that this was
Speaker 1: it was an emergency situation yesterday, and so that's why
Speaker 1: they were just very personally checked. But I'm sure it's
Speaker 1: director usually. Yeah. I wonder what they would be like
Speaker 1: if they tried to exit Poland or if they'll right,
Speaker 1: I don't know what's going to happen to them. No,
Speaker 1: I don't think. I'm guessing there's been no communication of
Speaker 1: that that you've seen, either right leg of what they
Speaker 1: should do or how to apply for asylum or anything
Speaker 1: like that. I have talked to a few people. They
Speaker 1: say that they're banking on these countries being empathetic to refugees,
Speaker 1: and I understand. I think that countries will be empathetic
Speaker 1: to refugees. Yeah, yeah, said, do you certainly hope they will.
Speaker 1: So they're just gonna hope that those countries, the ones
Speaker 1: who don't have a country to go to. You get
Speaker 1: the sense that, yeah, that they'll they'll apply for asylum
Speaker 1: wherever they can find a safe place. That's right. Um,
Speaker 1: And I believe that countries Western European countries that have
Speaker 1: been very vocal of pro Ukraine recently, um, we'll take
Speaker 1: them in. So I think that they'll they'll be safe. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's good to hear. I know. I've seen estimates of
Speaker 1: up to five million refugees, which would be I mean,
Speaker 1: Germany absorbed a million people from Syria, right, it's not Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not impossible for West European countries do that at all,
Speaker 1: but it will, but it would still be a catastrophic crisis,
Speaker 1: the worse than's Maine, and we have to hope it
Speaker 1: doesn't get to that. Do you get the sense of
Speaker 1: people are still flowing across the border? I know you're
Speaker 1: a bit yes, I think for me, I mean it's
Speaker 1: weird because you want to believe that what you experienced
Speaker 1: and what the people around you've experienced was a one
Speaker 1: time thing, that it was a one time incident, that
Speaker 1: it was one caravan. But this is happening constantly and
Speaker 1: it will continue to happen constantly for weeks. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: the trains and across the border, things like that that
Speaker 1: people can take or is it solely yes. So when
Speaker 1: when I said that I went to the train station
Speaker 1: and the leaven there were no trains. What was really
Speaker 1: happening is, yes, there were trains, but all the trains
Speaker 1: until March March were booked, So okay, so yeah, people,
Speaker 1: people can't take those trains across that kind of thing. Uh,
Speaker 1: if they tried a book right now, they won't be
Speaker 1: able to find a booking for a while. Okay, so
Speaker 1: they're already booked up. And by the way, here in
Speaker 1: crack out Um, the first two hostels that I went
Speaker 1: to the first two places to say that I went to,
Speaker 1: We're all booked up and I asked why and they said,
Speaker 1: Ukrainian refugees. So there are Ukrainian refuges here and crack out. Okay, Yeah,
Speaker 1: people are moving for it. I'm sure a lot of
Speaker 1: people want to get far aways they can. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: people are just constantly moving west right now. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: they have friends of a family that they try to
Speaker 1: get to because Yeah. And I've been hearing the Ukrainian
Speaker 1: language just constantly on my trip, so that's interesting too. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: thanks for that's a really really interesting inside. Is there
Speaker 1: anything else you think from your experience that people ought
Speaker 1: to hear about? Um? No, I believe I've told you everything.
Speaker 1: I've I've really told the story dozens of times since
Speaker 1: it happened, and UM, I really hope that I hit
Speaker 1: all the all the right notes here. UM if you
Speaker 1: if you had to tell anything to the people who
Speaker 1: were reading or listening to this, Um, Ukraine really needs weapons, yes,
Speaker 1: but they also need humanitarian aid. When I was walking
Speaker 1: all that distance with all those people, there was not
Speaker 1: a single sense of food being provided to anyone, water
Speaker 1: being provided to anyone. There was no chance to go
Speaker 1: to the toilet. There was often no chance to sit down.
Speaker 1: If we could give even a chance for these people
Speaker 1: to eat something, to drink something, to have a minute
Speaker 1: of solace, um, that would mean the world to them.
Speaker 1: And so I think that we need to provide humanitarian
Speaker 1: aid to the refugees as soon as possible. And you
Speaker 1: you said you didn't see any organizations you'd suggest people
Speaker 1: donate to that you you didn't see any of that?
Speaker 1: Is there anyone you can know? And I don't know.
Speaker 1: I haven't actually done the research and that I probably should, um,
Speaker 1: but I uh, I know that the Welcome Committee in
Speaker 1: Poland were private citizens. They were not part of any
Speaker 1: energy or anything. They were private citizens or welcoming awesome. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've seen some of them organizing on Facebook, So I'll
Speaker 1: try maybe linked to some of those or something like that.
Speaker 1: So people going to support and all right, and then
Speaker 1: is there anything like you'd like to to plug? Like
Speaker 1: do you have a you have a Twitter? Right? Is
Speaker 1: anything else you could tell us what your Twitter is? Um?
Speaker 1: I mean, so the Twitter that I'm using for this,
Speaker 1: which you've probably seen as a temporary one, it was
Speaker 1: not only to cover this crisis. I guess my private
Speaker 1: Twitter plugged that. Which is you've seen that as well? Probably,
Speaker 1: Um it's just my name. Um, yeah, I guess just
Speaker 1: plugged that. And uh, I mean thank you for everything? No,
Speaker 1: of course. Um it's a man nae marutta with two
Speaker 1: T s right, Yes, m A R O T T
Speaker 1: here great, Okay, we got that. And yeah, thank you
Speaker 1: very much. Thanks for taking the time to talk. I
Speaker 1: appreciate a pretty difficult couple of days to get some rest.
Speaker 1: And if there's anything else in any developments, please do
Speaker 1: let me know. Give mel Tyler thank you all right,
Speaker 1: jeez mate, do you have a meat me? Hey everyone,
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Speaker 1: while the trial was going on. I remember doing a
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Speaker 1: Who is the fake Heiress? Anna Delvi join us as
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Speaker 1: the official podcast, every Wednesday on the I Heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple podcast US, or wherever you get your podcasts. That's
Speaker 1: that's that's the thing. Just take photos of his children
Speaker 1: walking into the door of their public school. Yeah, send
Speaker 1: him to him with a pro pro pro toutotail account.
Speaker 1: Don't let him know what he did to provoke this,
Speaker 1: just just frighten him. I do like that els is
Speaker 1: being recorded. Yeah, that's that's how you do it. With
Speaker 1: the episode has begun, we're including all of that, Sophie,
Speaker 1: all of that Welcome to could happen here the podcast
Speaker 1: where we will take pictures of your children entering a
Speaker 1: public school and send them to you as a threat,
Speaker 1: But we won't tell you what you're we're threatening you
Speaker 1: over because that's I don't know what that is, probably
Speaker 1: terrorism technically speaking, speaking of child abuse. Great Garrison very
Speaker 1: proud nailed it. Yeah. Yeah, So we're gonna be We're
Speaker 1: gonna we're doing an episode to talk about the recent
Speaker 1: kind of letter and opinion piece that the governor of
Speaker 1: Texas and the Attorney general wrote relating to trans kids
Speaker 1: in Texas. We're we're also planning like a like a
Speaker 1: more like a week long worth of stuff kind of
Speaker 1: going into this issue across not not just the States,
Speaker 1: but also like like internationally as well in terms of
Speaker 1: like the growing kind of war on trans people. But
Speaker 1: because this thing happened, we we do want to kind
Speaker 1: of talk about it now as well before we you know,
Speaker 1: spend a lot of time making a week long is
Speaker 1: the worth of of of scripted pieces on it. So anyway,
Speaker 1: we're gonna be talking about what happened last last weekend
Speaker 1: or last week at time of recording, UM when the
Speaker 1: Texas Attorney General, Kent Paxton released an opinion piece UM
Speaker 1: on I think it was it was Monday the twenty one,
Speaker 1: declaring gender affirming medical care for transgender children to be
Speaker 1: child abuse UM. In response, the next day, UH, the
Speaker 1: Governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, directed the Texas Department of
Speaker 1: Family and Protective Services UM to investigate these practices UM.
Speaker 1: And then kind of on that following Wednesday, the letter
Speaker 1: that Grey Gabbott wrote went viral, detailing both the Attorney
Speaker 1: general's kind of opinion that a number of the so
Speaker 1: called quote sex change procedures constitute child abuse under existing
Speaker 1: Texas law UM and directing the Family and Protective Services
Speaker 1: to protect these to quote unquote protect these kids from abuse.
Speaker 1: And I hear by director agency to conduct a prompt
Speaker 1: and thrown investigation to any reported instances of these abusive
Speaker 1: procedures UM. And what's really insidious is that, like it's
Speaker 1: not even it's like, of course, like there is not
Speaker 1: gender affirming surgery done on minors anyway, that does not happen. Um.
Speaker 1: But the but this letter actually does, um go into
Speaker 1: it says uh, it's it says a according according to
Speaker 1: the General Attorney General opinion, it has already against the
Speaker 1: law to subject Texas children to a wide variety of
Speaker 1: elective procedures for gender transitioning, including re assignment surgeries that
Speaker 1: can cause sterilization, removals of otherwise healthy body parts, and
Speaker 1: administration of puberty blocking drugs or doses of testosterone or estrogen.
Speaker 1: So it's not it is also including HRT, including puberty blockers,
Speaker 1: which again we already give to sis gender children all
Speaker 1: the time. Um. Puberty blockers are given to kids who
Speaker 1: have early onset puberty who are assists. Um, but it's
Speaker 1: now including puberty blockers inside like constituting that in its
Speaker 1: in and of itself as child abuse, which is an
Speaker 1: escalation of things that we've seen before. Um. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: then it's also talking about how Texas law imposes reporting
Speaker 1: requirements upon all licensed professionals, um, including doctors and nurses, teachers, therapists,
Speaker 1: and provides you know, criminal penalties for failure to report things.
Speaker 1: So like it is that that was that was that
Speaker 1: was the that was the main part of the of
Speaker 1: the letter, that one viral detailing the different different ways
Speaker 1: that they're trying to harass, intimidate, and um introduce possible
Speaker 1: legal legal repercussions to parents and um, you know, caregivers
Speaker 1: who support transgender youth inside the state of Texas. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: um it is. It is like the perfect example of
Speaker 1: the thing these people always do when they make laws
Speaker 1: based on their bigotry, which is like reflexively make a
Speaker 1: law based on whatever is like the fucking Twitter talking
Speaker 1: point that they've been yelling about, and then don't consider
Speaker 1: all of the different things that it's going to do
Speaker 1: that have nothing to do with the group of people
Speaker 1: they're trying to hurt. And lots of cases, this is
Speaker 1: just gonna it's it's not even gonna it's it's gonna
Speaker 1: impact a lot of like queer people in general, right
Speaker 1: because it's it's in terms of like reporting things that
Speaker 1: seem outside the mainstream, so not even necessarily trans not
Speaker 1: even necessarily and gender people, not even necessarily queer people
Speaker 1: as well, Like there's a lot of like you know,
Speaker 1: I I and if definitely when I was growing if
Speaker 1: there was a lot of like cis girls who enjoy
Speaker 1: dressing more like butcher tomboy. Um. You know, there's a
Speaker 1: there's a and there's a whole bunch of stuff that
Speaker 1: will just affect like kids in general. Um, with all
Speaker 1: of this reporting and all of this like and making
Speaker 1: making these like procedures and like hormone treatments like you know,
Speaker 1: to trying to make them seem like they're legal. Because
Speaker 1: that because again, like the actual Texas law has has
Speaker 1: not changed. It is it is the it is. This
Speaker 1: is an opinion piece investing directing the child Protective Services
Speaker 1: to investigate these things. So the actual law in the
Speaker 1: books doesn't changed. What it has done is caused a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of like possible legal danger um and a
Speaker 1: massive headache and just a whole bunch of like legal
Speaker 1: harassment against parents and kids. And that that's what it's
Speaker 1: gonna that's what's gonna result in because it's it's unclear
Speaker 1: what this what the governor's directive is going to actually
Speaker 1: practically look like. Um, because in the in the in
Speaker 1: a tweet on last Tuesday, he said that he's directing
Speaker 1: the Child Protective Services to enforce this ruling and investigate
Speaker 1: and refer for prosecution for instances of miners receiving affirming
Speaker 1: care UM and then to the Texas Protective Services told
Speaker 1: Time magazine on Wednesday that it was going to comply
Speaker 1: with the Governor's directive UM, but in terms of like
Speaker 1: directing them for prosecution, there has been like five Texas
Speaker 1: District Attorneys UM, including the d as of Dallas County
Speaker 1: and Houston's Travis County. They issued a statement to the
Speaker 1: day after UH condemning the directive UM and saying that
Speaker 1: they plan to enforce the Constitution with their quote unquote
Speaker 1: that's what they said, and that they are quote deeply
Speaker 1: disturbed by Governor Abbots and Attorney General Paxton's cruel directives
Speaker 1: treating transgender children's access to life saving gender firm and
Speaker 1: care as child abuse. We will not irrationally and a
Speaker 1: jujustifiably interfere with medical decisions made between children, their parents,
Speaker 1: and her medical physicians to ensure the safety of transgender youth,
Speaker 1: adding that we will not allow the Governor or turned
Speaker 1: General to disregard Texas children's lives in order to score
Speaker 1: political points. So in terms of you know, there's many
Speaker 1: certain parts of the certain parts of the state where
Speaker 1: even even if protective services does investigate reports of this,
Speaker 1: they're not gonna get prosecuted. But there will be other
Speaker 1: parts of the state where these they probably will like
Speaker 1: and because like it's it's because because it is just
Speaker 1: because it is just an interpretation of the law, you
Speaker 1: can still you can still get lots of legal trouble
Speaker 1: and it's going to be up to juries and other
Speaker 1: people to decide on what interpretation of the law is
Speaker 1: going to be enforced and enacted upon. Um, So you're
Speaker 1: seeing a lot of people being like, oh, no, it's
Speaker 1: actually okay because the law is not changing, it's just
Speaker 1: the interpretation. They're like, well, no, it actually is a
Speaker 1: big problem. Like it's like and it's not even it's
Speaker 1: just the overall like it's saying the things that have
Speaker 1: been gone unsaid for a long time, like it's it's
Speaker 1: it's it's making the things that everyone kind of assumed
Speaker 1: or was kind of the unsaid bigotry, putting it into
Speaker 1: writing and making it concrete. And it's like the overall
Speaker 1: escalation of this thing which is which is deep, deep,
Speaker 1: deeply concerning I mean, it's it's the thing that happened
Speaker 1: with like COVID restrictions with like masks and stuff, where
Speaker 1: you've got the cities and stuff where you have kind
Speaker 1: of more rational leadership are saying like we're not we're
Speaker 1: not paying attention to this directed from the governor. We're
Speaker 1: going to keep having letting people mask or we're not
Speaker 1: going to let you, you know, go after businesses that
Speaker 1: require masks. But with the added dimension of like the
Speaker 1: rather than it being sort of targeting businesses and schools,
Speaker 1: it's it's targeting individuals, and it's allowing individuals to target
Speaker 1: other individuals, like the the Texas abortion law exactly. And
Speaker 1: the primary purpose of this is going to be too
Speaker 1: basically gradually erode the areas in which which trans kids
Speaker 1: can can live in Texas. Like yep, they'll be able
Speaker 1: to live in some of the cities for a while
Speaker 1: at least, well and even even in the cities. Right,
Speaker 1: it's like, yeah, okay, so maybe the the A doesn't prosecute,
Speaker 1: but that doesn't mean that CPS can't just can't investigate you.
Speaker 1: And like that's that's gonna be traumatic a lot of
Speaker 1: legal harassment because like DFPS cannot remove any child from
Speaker 1: their parents or guardians without a court order, and no
Speaker 1: court in Texas or anywhere in the country has yet
Speaker 1: found gender affirm and care to be considered child abuse.
Speaker 1: So it has not happened yet, but they sure wanted
Speaker 1: to happen, and this is these are the next These
Speaker 1: are the next steps that can make it happen. Right,
Speaker 1: They are trying to get there um with this like
Speaker 1: incremental like these incremental things, you know, starting off with
Speaker 1: like legal interpretations of the law. Eventually they would want
Speaker 1: to change the law just to reflect this opinion, right,
Speaker 1: Like they want this to happen. They're just they're trying
Speaker 1: to slowly, slowly, slowly get at it um and it
Speaker 1: needs to be pushed back upon because yeah, any any
Speaker 1: slow incremental thing that they're going to try to do
Speaker 1: to make it basically be impossible to live as trans
Speaker 1: in Texas, the UH and lots of other states as well.
Speaker 1: It's not just it's not just Texas. There's things like
Speaker 1: this happening across all of the United States, basically, especially
Speaker 1: especially you know, por portions, portions of the South. Um.
Speaker 1: And it's yeah, it does play into this kind of
Speaker 1: overall in the past five years. You know, once they
Speaker 1: lost the gay marriage issue, they're like, Okay, the next
Speaker 1: line of defense for these people is making it be
Speaker 1: impossible to be trans. So it is that it's like
Speaker 1: the new that's the new thing they're gonna be really
Speaker 1: focusing on. And it's we've seen so many, so many
Speaker 1: new bills against against like being trans over the course
Speaker 1: of the past five years. Again, it's it is more
Speaker 1: so putting into writing the things that have been always
Speaker 1: kind of unconscious bigotry or even concious bigotry, but it's
Speaker 1: putting that into actual stone and making it like cemented. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, just at just at the start of this year,
Speaker 1: there was new restrictions put in place protectas is transgender
Speaker 1: student athletes playing on K through twelve school sports teams
Speaker 1: UM that that went into effect on January eighteenth. It
Speaker 1: was it was a house built twenty five authored by
Speaker 1: Representative Valerie Swanson. UM requires student athletes to complete in
Speaker 1: interslastic competition to play on sports teams that correspond with
Speaker 1: the sex listed on their birth certificate at or near
Speaker 1: their time of birth, which means that the legislation went
Speaker 1: further than the previous rules from the University of Slastic
Speaker 1: League UM, which governs the school sports in Texas, in
Speaker 1: which the students gender is determined by their birth certificate,
Speaker 1: but that that can also be legally modified, like you
Speaker 1: can change these sex assigned at birth only on your
Speaker 1: birth certificate. The new ruling is that it needs to
Speaker 1: be it needs to match the one that it was
Speaker 1: at or near your time of birth. So again, like
Speaker 1: they're finding all these little, these little small like things
Speaker 1: to like pry um that just makes things overall be
Speaker 1: harder to live in UM. And at this point, like
Speaker 1: ten ten other states have put in very similar laws
Speaker 1: relating to like relating to to school sports and like
Speaker 1: bathroom bills, and yeah, yeah, I mean it's it's the
Speaker 1: it's the same thing that authoritarians always do, which is
Speaker 1: they're just kind of edging further and further and and
Speaker 1: continuing to proceed as they do not meet resistance, and
Speaker 1: the goal is to make it illegal and impossible to
Speaker 1: exist as a transgender person in society. You know. Part
Speaker 1: of what they're doing with with the wording of how
Speaker 1: this change in Texas has been announced as they're trying
Speaker 1: to frame being trans is a contagion that threatens children.
Speaker 1: And step one of that under the is going proceeding
Speaker 1: under the ages if we are protecting children by making
Speaker 1: these kind of surgeries and stuff illegal. But the steps
Speaker 1: beyond that are eventually banning and restricting the ability of
Speaker 1: trans people to be around children and eventually be in
Speaker 1: civil society at all because they're a threat to children.
Speaker 1: That that that's the logical procession of the arguments that
Speaker 1: they're making, and I think they're proceeding in a fairly
Speaker 1: um um logical way in terms of achieving that as
Speaker 1: a goal, and they're not going to stop until they
Speaker 1: are stopped by probably force, if anything stops it. At
Speaker 1: this point, that's that's what it's going to have to be,
Speaker 1: because the local government has realized that that's how you
Speaker 1: get elected because you can't you can fix the power
Speaker 1: grid in Texas, you can't provide people with anything that
Speaker 1: makes their lives easier, but you can hurt trans people.
Speaker 1: Um and Republicans are are well, are always down with that.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's it's it's this thing fascists do where
Speaker 1: they introduce a false crisis. They introduce a false crisis
Speaker 1: that they can actually take steps to to you know, UM,
Speaker 1: make changes about but all that ends up doing is
Speaker 1: hurting more of the population. It doesn't actually solve any
Speaker 1: issue that actually hurts people. UM. It's it's one of
Speaker 1: the core things in the fascist playbook. And I think
Speaker 1: it's even in the States where there aren't just like
Speaker 1: blanket bands on kids being able to participate in sports teams. Um,
Speaker 1: there's other horrifying things happening. UM. Like in the beginning
Speaker 1: of February, it came out that the Utah Republicans propose
Speaker 1: a Commission to analyze trans its bodies. Um. You're talking
Speaker 1: about the first of its kind anti transit sports bill
Speaker 1: that would form a commission to determine a student athletes
Speaker 1: eligibility on a case by case basis. The commission would
Speaker 1: have authority to establish a baseline range for various attributes
Speaker 1: including height, weight, body mass, wingspan, hiptoony ratio another physical
Speaker 1: characteristics affected by puberty bearing trans athletes UM who do
Speaker 1: not fall within the established limits to from from participating
Speaker 1: engendered sports. UM. And yeah, asking like a government appointed
Speaker 1: panel to analyze the bodies of transminers. It does sound
Speaker 1: like a giant recipe for disaster. UM. And there is
Speaker 1: some even more like horrifying details. The bill would render
Speaker 1: the commission quote immune from suit like lawsuits with respect
Speaker 1: to all acts done and actions taken in good faith
Speaker 1: in carrying out their purposes. Uh so, yeah, you can't
Speaker 1: sue anybody for what happens under the guise of this commission.
Speaker 1: So yeah, they're just gonna be investigating trans youth bodies
Speaker 1: and yep, you can't. There's no law suits allowed. That's great.
Speaker 1: Let's let's let's let's get let's give the let's give
Speaker 1: the trans child abuse. Uh phrenology panel just immunity from
Speaker 1: lawsuits like, yeah, qualified extend qualified immunity to citizens hurting
Speaker 1: the group of people that, uh, we don't think are human, Like,
Speaker 1: this isn't the only way place we're going to see
Speaker 1: that logic extended towards you're already seeing in places like
Speaker 1: Louisiana with these bills to make it legal to kill
Speaker 1: protesters if you feel threatened. Um, like, it's it's the
Speaker 1: same playbook, and it's going to be the same playbook
Speaker 1: because there's no way to fight it without some sort
Speaker 1: of force. You can't vote these people away. The courts
Speaker 1: are packed for the time being. There's there's only there's
Speaker 1: not a solution that isn't some kind of force. Now
Speaker 1: we can discuss is it like the force of getting
Speaker 1: the FEDS to intervene or whatever, But like there's no,
Speaker 1: there's no solution that is just like democratic I mean,
Speaker 1: And like Biden's office made a statement on this recent
Speaker 1: Texas like law opinion interpretation thing, and they're like, yeah,
Speaker 1: this seem was bad anyway, good luck? Could you like yeah,
Speaker 1: oh cool, Yeah, it's that that meme of like the
Speaker 1: person drowning with their hand out and they high, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's exactly what's happening. And I think the situation is
Speaker 1: like on is he's worse than that too? Because you know,
Speaker 1: in the past couple of weeks, what's something we started
Speaker 1: seeing as we started seeing democratic journals and democratic strategists
Speaker 1: openly talking about how we need to make as sessions
Speaker 1: to the right and the culture war, It's like, okay, well,
Speaker 1: what does that mean is like, yeah, throw tro trans
Speaker 1: concert the bus, right, Yeah, because they can't vote, they're
Speaker 1: already freaks, So yeah, they're the easiest person to pick
Speaker 1: away at the rights for um. And because overall, just
Speaker 1: in the past year alone, more than a hundred bills
Speaker 1: designed to restrict the rights of transgender people have been
Speaker 1: introduced at least three three states. Um, it's a it's
Speaker 1: a it's a record breaking year for anti trans legislation
Speaker 1: that's been that has been introduced. UM. In Arkansas to
Speaker 1: state legislator recently banned gender affirming treatment for miners, um,
Speaker 1: including hormotherapy like like puerty blockers and similar treatments. Again,
Speaker 1: this is the thing that like that could not happen
Speaker 1: for a long time anyway, just because like culturally and
Speaker 1: medically doctors would never do that. But now at the
Speaker 1: point where that started starting to change, it is this
Speaker 1: it is this like um reactive, reactive effect that people
Speaker 1: are doing. And like now now that now that these
Speaker 1: cogs are turning, people are putting the massive brakes on
Speaker 1: it and putting the thing that used to be just
Speaker 1: unsaid now into actual legal writing. So now this actually
Speaker 1: is like just not allowed as opposed to it's just
Speaker 1: not happening because doctors were assholes. So yeah, in Arkansas,
Speaker 1: you can't even receive hormone treatment or beauty blockers. The
Speaker 1: bill was called the Save Adolescence from Experimentation Act. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so referring to medical treatment of one of affirming one's
Speaker 1: gender identity as experimentation. Um, which is not great. I
Speaker 1: mean that is that is how I view it for
Speaker 1: myself because I like being a freak. But as an
Speaker 1: overall trend, that is that is horrible. Like, that is
Speaker 1: a horrible way to to phrase this type of thing
Speaker 1: for a lot of people, especially the people who who
Speaker 1: know specifically what gender they want to be and and
Speaker 1: are like that is that affects them so differently. I
Speaker 1: mean I'm I'm lucky enough just to be more gender
Speaker 1: queer ish um. And but yeah, it's all of these
Speaker 1: bills are gonna affect so many people in different ways,
Speaker 1: and it's it's real bad. Like shortly after the Arkansas
Speaker 1: bill prohibiting transforming medical practices was signed into law last April,
Speaker 1: reports of suicide attempts among trans youth in the state. Uh,
Speaker 1: we're going up. Um. And the doctor Michelle Hutchinson, who
Speaker 1: runs the largest provider of hormo therapy in the state,
Speaker 1: called the ap that just just into her office alone
Speaker 1: during April she saw an uptick in suicide attempts from
Speaker 1: from from Trent youth and this is this is it's
Speaker 1: gonna keep happening, and like there is you can't trust
Speaker 1: a lot to stop it. Like the Arkansas Governor um
Speaker 1: uh Issa Hutchinson, a Republican, did veto this bill, citing
Speaker 1: potentially dangerous consequences for trans youth and telling it that
Speaker 1: telling reporters that it was a vast government overreach and
Speaker 1: a byproduct of the culture war in America, and her
Speaker 1: veto was vetoed by the state legislator. So like it's
Speaker 1: gonna be a looping, endless problem of legal issues. So
Speaker 1: it's there's there's needs to be other things. Like I've
Speaker 1: been on Twitter the past week just watch looking at
Speaker 1: all the go fund means by parents of trans kids
Speaker 1: in Texas who are trying to move out of state
Speaker 1: so that their kid can receive like hormone treatment and
Speaker 1: just like be allowed to be a person without being
Speaker 1: harassed by protective services and teachers and the school system.
Speaker 1: And it's it's it's it's horrifying, like watching all these
Speaker 1: people like asking for help so they can move out
Speaker 1: of state so that they can let their kid be
Speaker 1: just a kid. Um, And it's it is, it is
Speaker 1: really rough, um And a big part of why, part
Speaker 1: of why it's so horrifying is that, Like, obviously, if
Speaker 1: you're in that situation, you can get your kid out there,
Speaker 1: of course, but it also means the more people who
Speaker 1: move out of places like that, the less resources there
Speaker 1: will be in the future for kids whose parents can't
Speaker 1: get them out, you know, and the less support there
Speaker 1: will be, the less and like there is just there
Speaker 1: is no real escape from it, like you cannot get
Speaker 1: fully away. It is that you cannot ever fully escape
Speaker 1: that type of fascist um thought and creep within the state.
Speaker 1: Letis later and specifically around you know how it's going
Speaker 1: to affect different different classes of minorities. UM, I will
Speaker 1: dract people if you want to kind of learn more
Speaker 1: about this sort of thing, and if you, you know,
Speaker 1: can you can find some some stuff around there. There's
Speaker 1: an organization Texas called TENT, which is the UH I
Speaker 1: just want to make sure I say it right. Oh no,
Speaker 1: it's the EXIS Educational Network, the trans Educational Network of Texas. UM.
Speaker 1: It's one one of those, but it is it is a.
Speaker 1: It is a It has a whole bunch of like
Speaker 1: mental health resources, guides for trans youth in Texas, for
Speaker 1: how to make things slightly less shitty, um, and yeah,
Speaker 1: they do. They do some advocacy work in Texas. There's
Speaker 1: also a Quality Texas which is another organization that does
Speaker 1: that does some assistance for transgender people like in schools.
Speaker 1: Um and just you know, try again trying to make
Speaker 1: life slightly less slightly less shitty. Um, yeah, I kind
Speaker 1: of the last the last thing I wrote is the
Speaker 1: is just fix your hearts or die, which is the
Speaker 1: kind of overall overall message that you can really only
Speaker 1: give to people who want to do this type of thing,
Speaker 1: is that, Yeah, there's really no arguing with them. Um,
Speaker 1: you have to either they need to fix their hearts
Speaker 1: or not be around anymore. Like they're they're just like
Speaker 1: whether that be like just secluded to your part of society,
Speaker 1: but it's think it it needs to be actually like
Speaker 1: resisted upon because these people are never going to back
Speaker 1: down on their own. The other part of the problem
Speaker 1: here again is just with how you know, like this
Speaker 1: this is sort of kind of this is an inherent
Speaker 1: problem that you have with democracies, right with with democracies
Speaker 1: and civil rights, where it's yeah, you have a group
Speaker 1: people who aren't extremely small minority, and you know, and
Speaker 1: you know and and and This gets compounded by the
Speaker 1: fact that you're dealing with extremely well minority of people,
Speaker 1: and you know, you're already dealing with like the you know,
Speaker 1: the thing that is called democracy, right is only participated
Speaker 1: in by an extremely small number of people, especially when
Speaker 1: you get you know, especially when you get down to
Speaker 1: like the the state level, of the local level, right,
Speaker 1: like very few people are actually voting in these things.
Speaker 1: That people who are voting in these things like want
Speaker 1: trans people to die, and so you know, you you
Speaker 1: you you need, you need some kind of other solution
Speaker 1: to actually secure to secure civil rights, because there's just
Speaker 1: there's there literally are not enough trans people, and there
Speaker 1: are not enough people who support them and care enough
Speaker 1: to do it and also are in these areas to
Speaker 1: prevent this through just the normal like vote blue. I mean,
Speaker 1: like I keep seeing this with with Texas. Everyone keeps
Speaker 1: saying it's like, well, okay, we just gotta vote blue.
Speaker 1: And it's like people have been like people have been
Speaker 1: saying this about stuff in Texas for as long as
Speaker 1: I've been alive. It has never happened. Ever, Like it
Speaker 1: hasn't my entire life. They keep saying, is it keeps
Speaker 1: not happening? And kids keep dying, and yeah, there has
Speaker 1: there has to be something else because yeah, Texas is
Speaker 1: going to come back here. Texas has been labor laboriously
Speaker 1: constructed as a political entity to sty me all of
Speaker 1: your liberal dreams of of uh it going purple um
Speaker 1: and and it will continue to be for the foreseeable future.
Speaker 1: Like you cannot. This is not a voting issue. This
Speaker 1: is a I mean, like I said, some kind of
Speaker 1: force is going to have to be used to oppose
Speaker 1: these people. They're not they're not there. They wouldn't listen
Speaker 1: if you voted amount you know, and and they do
Speaker 1: like they themselves do for is you look at all
Speaker 1: the stuff we've been doing. Yeah, and and and even
Speaker 1: like regular people like this whole thing of like yes,
Speaker 1: you should like report to your neighbors that you see
Speaker 1: if you if you see a kid who doesn't look
Speaker 1: like a regular normal borings this child, then yeah you
Speaker 1: should report them. But you should go harass everyone who
Speaker 1: works in your school board so that they ban all
Speaker 1: books referencing anything related to being queer. It's like they
Speaker 1: do take steps to actually hurt other individuals. Um, and
Speaker 1: they can do it through these means that you know,
Speaker 1: they don't necessarily have to always punch you in the face,
Speaker 1: but they can sure direct the state to send agents
Speaker 1: to your house to to like to intimidate, harass you
Speaker 1: and threaten to threaten to take away your children. Um
Speaker 1: or they can you know, if you're a therapist or
Speaker 1: a teacher, you can be fired or put in jail
Speaker 1: for failing to report, you know, kids who don't subscribe
Speaker 1: to their Christian supremacist ideas of like traditional general rules. Um.
Speaker 1: Because again it's it's it's not even all it's like again,
Speaker 1: there's not tons of trends people in general. Usually it's
Speaker 1: like this is just gonna affect a lot of CIS
Speaker 1: kids as well, who maybe don't want to who don't,
Speaker 1: who don't who don't who who just want to dress cool?
Speaker 1: Like it's like it's it's it's it doesn't even just
Speaker 1: like it is is it does affect everybody. Um, So
Speaker 1: it is it's a it's a it's a it's a
Speaker 1: horrible it's a horrible thing that is not even like
Speaker 1: there's no escape from it, and it will affect you
Speaker 1: whether or not your trends or not. And I think
Speaker 1: it's important also to talk about the manager reporting stuff,
Speaker 1: because even manager reporting in general, like even like I've
Speaker 1: I've had things where I was in a school and
Speaker 1: my school essentially turned into a police state because there
Speaker 1: are people who I couldn't talk to about things because
Speaker 1: of things that happened to me that if if, if
Speaker 1: if any of them hurt it and one time someone
Speaker 1: didn't had to literally beg them, like on my knees
Speaker 1: not to report me, right, not not to report the
Speaker 1: thing that happened to me, because if you know, because
Speaker 1: because if if that had and heard, like and if
Speaker 1: that had actually been reported, it would have you know,
Speaker 1: it would have started an enormous process and I would
Speaker 1: have had to, you know, like the I I would
Speaker 1: have had to, you know, deal with this, like this
Speaker 1: is an institutionalized thing. And that like the absolute terror
Speaker 1: that this kind of stuff creates where you have to,
Speaker 1: you know, you have to watch every single word that
Speaker 1: you say around all of the adults in your life
Speaker 1: because if you don't do it, they are going to
Speaker 1: report you. It is like the level of psychological terror
Speaker 1: you were inflicting on people is horrific, and that in
Speaker 1: and of itself just is a cost. Like and and
Speaker 1: it is something that is going to contribute to trans
Speaker 1: kids killing themselves, and it's it's just that simple. In
Speaker 1: that place, it is such a life and death issue,
Speaker 1: so you have to really be forced to go. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it goes into like it's very like ontological issue as well, um.
Speaker 1: And it deals with so many things around the nature
Speaker 1: of like the and what you're allowed to be inside
Speaker 1: as this societal construct um. And they're just trying to
Speaker 1: make that impossible for so many people, and they make
Speaker 1: everything so limited in their very narrow version of what
Speaker 1: they want the world to be that makes them feel comfortable. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then and you know, because because it's not it's
Speaker 1: not what the world is, they have to use violence
Speaker 1: to do it. Yeah, So because it's stuck, because that
Speaker 1: is the rule that that is, That is the rules
Speaker 1: that we're playing by. That is the game we're playing. Yeah, my, my,
Speaker 1: only the the the default response to be for those
Speaker 1: people is yeah, they need to they need to fix
Speaker 1: their hearts or die and just get out of the way.
Speaker 1: And because it's that's they already have that for us,
Speaker 1: except they don't want us to fix their hearts. They
Speaker 1: just want us to die. So like we are way
Speaker 1: more empathetic than they are, um, because they can just
Speaker 1: not be transphobic. They cannot, they can they can just
Speaker 1: not do these things. Um. But if they're gonna keep
Speaker 1: doubling down, then yeah, well that's if if you want
Speaker 1: to play by their rules, then we need to start
Speaker 1: playing by their rules because they're not going to have
Speaker 1: if they're not going to change the rules, then that
Speaker 1: is the that is the game that they want us
Speaker 1: to do. Um. And again like actual, like I wanted,
Speaker 1: I always, I always perhaps it's like this always want
Speaker 1: to kind of end with like here are some steps
Speaker 1: that you can like take that are relatively easy, and
Speaker 1: it's it's it's challenging for these types of some sorts
Speaker 1: of things like like there, yes, there is things you
Speaker 1: can do around you know, getting like making sure you're
Speaker 1: aware of what bills are being talked about in your
Speaker 1: local like your local area, contacting representatives to to do stuff,
Speaker 1: going to going to you know, either whether their school
Speaker 1: board meetings or stuff. But like a lot of the
Speaker 1: electoralist type of ideas around this feels always so inadequate, um,
Speaker 1: and that it feels always so fake. Um that you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's it is so much it feels a lot
Speaker 1: easier to that to like, you know, figure out different
Speaker 1: ways to actually help actual trans people in your area,
Speaker 1: um and give trans people money, um like because like
Speaker 1: that is often can be actually have a way more
Speaker 1: positive effects, at least effects that are like observable. But like,
Speaker 1: but there are also ways to stop this type of legislation,
Speaker 1: like there is that, there is, there is there is
Speaker 1: ways to do that, and I will I'll try to
Speaker 1: get into more of that kind of stuff as well
Speaker 1: once we get you know, our our week long of
Speaker 1: stuff about the war on trendspeople, um, that will be
Speaker 1: upcoming probably sometime in this in this next month. Yeah. Um. Remember, folks,
Speaker 1: if anybody ever suggests doing something for children that isn't
Speaker 1: providing them with food or shelter, you should probably hit
Speaker 1: that person because they're probably trying to fund something up
Speaker 1: for somebody. It's nearly always don't trust anyone who says
Speaker 1: there we need to do something to protect children that
Speaker 1: they're lying to you as as a rule, they're lying
Speaker 1: to you. Um anyway, you guys, Um, how's the boy
Speaker 1: that's Star Wars? Oh yeah, I love there's the there's
Speaker 1: the there's the the Obi WANs coming out that'll be good.
Speaker 1: I am excited for the obi WANs because speaking of speaking,
Speaker 1: speaking of you and McGregor. A few months ago, I
Speaker 1: saw the film Velvet gold Mine starring you and McGregor,
Speaker 1: which is a wonderful, like pseudo fictional film but about
Speaker 1: kind of the glam rock era inside Britain. It's very,
Speaker 1: very very gay, very whole bunch of a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of very good twink action. And there was one scene where, um,
Speaker 1: you McGregor's character, he's he's like, he's kind of based
Speaker 1: off one of the one of those types of music people.
Speaker 1: I forget, I forget which one it is. Um, I think, people,
Speaker 1: I think, I think, I think. I think he's playing
Speaker 1: like a kind of a version of that. But there's
Speaker 1: one scene where he's doing performance where he takes all
Speaker 1: of his close off on stage and you get to
Speaker 1: see you and McGregor's dick, um and yeah you do.
Speaker 1: So if if people, if people want to see a
Speaker 1: kind of David Bowie esque film starring you and McGregor,
Speaker 1: it has it has like a weird gay email, Christian
Speaker 1: bale As as a twink, and a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: other really really solid twink stuff. I would recommend watching
Speaker 1: Vella guld Mine. It has it has a lot of
Speaker 1: great stuff. Um and you do very early in the
Speaker 1: film get to see you and McGregor's penis just flapping
Speaker 1: around on stage and it is. It's pretty good. It's
Speaker 1: speaking of movies where you see a famous person's dick.
Speaker 1: If you want to see another famous penis the movie
Speaker 1: Galaxy Quest contains several shots and Tim Allen Dong. I
Speaker 1: don't want to see Tim Allen's hanging wang as as
Speaker 1: someone who's seen both Galaxy Quest and Velvea gould Mine
Speaker 1: and who appreciates both films. Dearly You and You and
Speaker 1: McGregor is miles hotter than Tim Allen Dong. Shot is
Speaker 1: not hot. It's not pleased. It is not supposed to be.
Speaker 1: He has hungover in his like bathrobe leaning over. But
Speaker 1: if you want, if you if you want to see
Speaker 1: see rain or Fastbenders, Dick Germany and Autumn. Okay, that
Speaker 1: that's I could. I could. I could do that very
Speaker 1: weird movie. However, alright, alright, if you in terms of
Speaker 1: in terms of actionable things to make you feel better,
Speaker 1: everyone go watch Vela gold Mine because it has some
Speaker 1: dairy it has some very good gender play, has wonderful,
Speaker 1: wonderful suf around gender, wonderfu stuff around gayness. And yeah,
Speaker 1: the film from like the nineties where there it was
Speaker 1: like lots of gay fucking and you're like, wow, how
Speaker 1: is this filmmate in the nineties, because it is a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of like big name actors now who were
Speaker 1: like unknown at the time, all being gay and sucking
Speaker 1: each other, and you're like, holy sh it, alright, So
Speaker 1: that is the Uh, that's what we got. That there's
Speaker 1: your action items. Action items, Go watch, Go watch Velvet
Speaker 1: gold Mine. Make everyone you know watch Velvet gold Mine
Speaker 1: and make you feel good about gender takes, screen grabs
Speaker 1: of Ellin McGregor's dick, make Berner Twitter accounts and just
Speaker 1: start posting. Just just get it out there, get it
Speaker 1: out there, so one it needs to know. Throw some
Speaker 1: of Tim Allen's dick out there too. Don't be don't
Speaker 1: be choosy. Stick it all all the dicks, all right,
Speaker 1: that's gonna be the day. That's that's the show. On
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Speaker 1: revolutionizing not just their own industries, but also culture more broadly.
Speaker 1: From Lisa Today, the author redefining what it means to
Speaker 1: tell women's stories, to the fashion industry virtuoso Olivier Roosting.
Speaker 1: You'll even hear me break bread with some of the
Speaker 1: most iconic and disseous names in pop culture, like Sir
Speaker 1: Elton John. After a lot of upsets, a lot of disappointments,
Speaker 1: a lot of betrayals, It's turned out to be the
Speaker 1: most wonderful life right now that I've could ever imagined.
Speaker 1: I can't wait to share all of this and more
Speaker 1: with you. Listen to do Relieber at your service on
Speaker 1: the I Heart radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you
Speaker 1: get your podcasts. Welcome, it could happen here. A podcast
Speaker 1: that is uh you know this this this, This is
Speaker 1: the podcast about the world falling apart. The world is
Speaker 1: in fact falling apart extremely quickly right now. And I'm
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Christopher, and I am here today to
Speaker 1: talk about an immense occupying army with an extensive record
Speaker 1: of torture and extradicial killings. I am referring, of course
Speaker 1: to the Chicago Police Departments and with with me to
Speaker 1: talk about yet more just absolute horrors that this department
Speaker 1: has committed here and worldwide. I have Raven, who is
Speaker 1: a journalist in Chicago Free Media. Raven, Welcome to the
Speaker 1: show and thank you for joining us. Hi, thank you
Speaker 1: for having me. Yeah, how how how have you been
Speaker 1: holding up in these uh oh boy, things are going bad? Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, we uh we have discussed doing this interview
Speaker 1: earlier this week, and I don't think either of us
Speaker 1: expected uh Russia to invade Ukraine. Last night was yeah,
Speaker 1: and that wasn't even the yeah, it was the convoys
Speaker 1: about you know, this is this is a this is
Speaker 1: a a time of chaos and death. Um. But I
Speaker 1: think it's important to understand that he has always has
Speaker 1: always been a time of chaos and death. And yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think especially where the Chicago Police Department is concerned. Um,
Speaker 1: we've talked about, we've we've talked about some of their
Speaker 1: more famous crimes on the show. But I wanted to
Speaker 1: have ravenon to talk about a police killing that I
Speaker 1: don't think got that much attention. I mean not even
Speaker 1: because I got a lot of in Chicago, but even
Speaker 1: inside Chicago, I don't think it's as well known as
Speaker 1: some of the other police killings. And that's the killing
Speaker 1: of Rikia Boyd. Um. Yeah, do you want to walk
Speaker 1: us through how basically what what happened the night that
Speaker 1: uh don't I servant killed Riquet Boyd? And yeah, we
Speaker 1: can start from there. Sure, sure, I mean there's some
Speaker 1: context here for sure about sort of the the way
Speaker 1: we ignore the murders of black women specifically. Um. And
Speaker 1: you know, Rickia Boyd was was murdered after sort of
Speaker 1: like the first wave of of national Black Lives Matter protests.
Speaker 1: So it wasn't like it wasn't on the radar right
Speaker 1: that people weren't talking about police killing black people. Um,
Speaker 1: but there, you know, there is this long standing issue
Speaker 1: of course, was like the killings of black women specifically
Speaker 1: not getting as much attention, right, And this was just
Speaker 1: such a horrible, horrible incident that, like, I mean, looking
Speaker 1: at the details, even even though I live here and
Speaker 1: I was like around when it happened, and some of
Speaker 1: our other you know, the other journalists and are collective
Speaker 1: covered the protests and and and the the court drama
Speaker 1: and everything, it still just blows my mind, um, the
Speaker 1: way this happened, and um, you know, ultimately the most
Speaker 1: important thing to take away from it is that her
Speaker 1: family never saw a justice. He walked away, He walked
Speaker 1: away from the incident and then went on to start
Speaker 1: training police in Latin America, which we can talk about also.
Speaker 1: So so not only did this, did the Chicago police
Speaker 1: officer who was off duty with an unregistered gun murder
Speaker 1: and innocent twenty two year old black women hanging out
Speaker 1: with her friends in a park. He then got a
Speaker 1: job with like a tactical training institute to travel to
Speaker 1: Honduras and train police there. Yeah. I think, yeah, we can.
Speaker 1: I think we yeah, we definitely will be getting to
Speaker 1: the sort of international ankle of this. But yeah, the
Speaker 1: export of American policing essentially. Yeah, but I guess for
Speaker 1: people who aren't familiar with what happened, UM can can
Speaker 1: cantinue walk through that. Yeah, so, so servant showed up
Speaker 1: um at a park with an unregistered gun. Um he
Speaker 1: you know, witnesses reported that he smelled like alcohol that night.
Speaker 1: He may have been drinking. I don't know if that
Speaker 1: that was ever verified, but certainly wouldn't be surprising. Um
Speaker 1: showed up at this park to complain about a group
Speaker 1: of people making noise, and one ofver Key Avoid's friends
Speaker 1: approached the car with a cell phone in his hand,
Speaker 1: which Servant then would go on to say, I thought
Speaker 1: was a gun and started firing shots and shot Roky
Speaker 1: Avoid in the head. Um he wasn't on duty, He
Speaker 1: wasn't actively policing. This was totally totally outside of the
Speaker 1: realm of duty incident, right, yeah, Um, And no weapon
Speaker 1: was ever recovered from the scene, Nothing like that. I mean,
Speaker 1: it was there was no in no universe was there
Speaker 1: any justification for this, right, It just defies it defies
Speaker 1: logic like that that it could even happen this way. Um.
Speaker 1: And after it happened, you know, so not only did
Speaker 1: he kill Rickie avoid in this park, um, but after
Speaker 1: it happened, there was there was just a lot of
Speaker 1: like there were a lot of missteps in in the
Speaker 1: justice system. Um. And it has been I think, I
Speaker 1: want to say, like seventeen years at that point since
Speaker 1: a Chicago cop had actually been charged with with murder, right, Um,
Speaker 1: So it has been a long time since there had
Speaker 1: been even any accountability. And um, basically the prosecutor there
Speaker 1: was something called a directed verdict where the prosecutor essentially
Speaker 1: under charged him intentionally or we think it was intentionally,
Speaker 1: um with with like reckless conduct and manslaughter. And the
Speaker 1: judge tossed the case because the judge was saying, you know,
Speaker 1: it didn't even meet the criteria for for reckless conduct
Speaker 1: because it was clearly first degree murder. And then he
Speaker 1: couldn't be tried again because of rules surrounding double jeopardy,
Speaker 1: which is like just a it's just like what like
Speaker 1: it's it's such like I was reading this like it's passling,
Speaker 1: like it's like this whole thing is like it's it's
Speaker 1: very like very very seemed very clearly to fail. It's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: like we're we're gonna, we're gonna intentionally have a case
Speaker 1: when we try this guy with things that you that
Speaker 1: you just you cannot convictim of because like again it's
Speaker 1: it's it's not it's not like manslaughter. He just he
Speaker 1: drove up and shot her. He very very clearly with
Speaker 1: intention shot Ricky Boyd. And it very much seems like
Speaker 1: they planned this out that they were like and you know,
Speaker 1: this is we talked about this on on the last
Speaker 1: CPD episode, Like prosecutors collaborate with judges and the police
Speaker 1: constantly because that's just how the thing called the justice
Speaker 1: system works. Um. But like yeah, like this is like
Speaker 1: a parcripularly egregious example of them just setting up a
Speaker 1: case that they know that they just knew would fail exactly.
Speaker 1: And this is the same prosecutor who was ousted in
Speaker 1: the aftermath of the Laca McDonald murder. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: there were there were very large protests. Then there was
Speaker 1: a hashtag going on social media. Her name is Anita
Speaker 1: alvarett As. The hashtag was by Anita yeah, and it
Speaker 1: was Anita alphres Like I think people outside the city
Speaker 1: probably didn't. I don't know about much about this, but
Speaker 1: like this Anita Alvarez was like so hated that like
Speaker 1: like every like like everyone in the city basically worked
Speaker 1: together a runner out like you had, like you had
Speaker 1: like liberals and anarchist groups like working together like like ever,
Speaker 1: like everyone in this like all like the the the electoralists,
Speaker 1: nanti electoralists, like the people who just like have no
Speaker 1: politics basically whatsoever. Like it was, it was just sort
Speaker 1: of it was just really incredible like coalition because she,
Speaker 1: like just the stuff Anita Alpharez is doing is just
Speaker 1: so egregious that everyone was able to find a way
Speaker 1: to put aside their differences on just the logic of
Speaker 1: get her out right right. But you know, to know
Speaker 1: again that was in the for matha of the Lakoha
Speaker 1: McDonald's shooting. And you know, it wasn't it didn't what
Speaker 1: happened with Rickia Boyd wasn't enough for those large protests.
Speaker 1: And and this is not to like Denni Grade or
Speaker 1: to mean the people who did come out in protests,
Speaker 1: because it's still like like there were still protests, don't
Speaker 1: get me wrong, Like people showed up for Rakia. But
Speaker 1: the difference in people showing up for Rakia and people
Speaker 1: showing up for black men being shot, you know, like
Speaker 1: that that's something that black women have drawn attention to you.
Speaker 1: You know, they're like, why don't you care when we
Speaker 1: get murdered? Um, And it's just it's become this sort
Speaker 1: of um, you know, ongoing chance. Like if you go
Speaker 1: to any Chicago racial justice protests, you will hear people say,
Speaker 1: we do this for Lakwan, we do this for Rakiya,
Speaker 1: because it's just one of those names that, for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: based on what was going on in the media at
Speaker 1: the time, just like didn't make its way outside of
Speaker 1: Chicago very much. Um. And we're seeing a similar sort
Speaker 1: of situation right now with what happened with the mirrorlock
Speaker 1: in Minneapolis. Right Like that was something where I think
Speaker 1: a lot of us thought, Okay, wow, this this is
Speaker 1: gonna this is going to explode. You know, this is
Speaker 1: such just a horrible miscarriage of justice, Like how could
Speaker 1: this happen? Um, Surely there will be massive protests again,
Speaker 1: you know, something like that. And of course, you know,
Speaker 1: Minneapolis was out there. We had like some small actions
Speaker 1: here in Chicago, but didn't really catch fire, so to say,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think that there's always sort of cycles
Speaker 1: of this where you know that there's cycles where you
Speaker 1: get these massive protesting cycles you don't but you know,
Speaker 1: and I think this is one of the things with
Speaker 1: that you can look at with the cube way to
Speaker 1: where it's it's like, regardless of whether people are in
Speaker 1: the streets or not, the killing continues. And yeah, and
Speaker 1: I think that just just sort of that's an extremely
Speaker 1: grim thing to live with, but that that just you know,
Speaker 1: that that that's just what the police is, right and
Speaker 1: until you know, until they are actually stopped, you're just
Speaker 1: gonna keep getting this cycle of I don't even know
Speaker 1: if select selective outrage is the right word, but you
Speaker 1: get these cycles of people who get murdered and there's
Speaker 1: this protests and people who get murdered can get forgotten
Speaker 1: and yeah, yeah, yeah, And and it really does seem
Speaker 1: to be kind of you know, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: layers to it, like like obviously the misogyny against black
Speaker 1: women is part of it, and I think the media
Speaker 1: just you know, is a part of it too, Like
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm a part of the media in a sense,
Speaker 1: but we're alternative media, so it's a little bit different.
Speaker 1: But you know, like there are there are choices made
Speaker 1: behind closed doors about what stories to follow and and amplify.
Speaker 1: And um, I will say. You know what I will
Speaker 1: say is I think because of what happened in twenty
Speaker 1: I think there's a lot more scrutiny on Chicago police now,
Speaker 1: at least more mainstream scrutiny of them than there was
Speaker 1: back in when Rikiya was murdered. Um. And that's not
Speaker 1: to say that we're doing enough because we have, because
Speaker 1: we absolutely are not. But I I think did in
Speaker 1: some way, you know, push things just like a little
Speaker 1: bit further, if that makes sense. That you know, there
Speaker 1: are some more liberal mainstream types of people talking about
Speaker 1: the horrors of Chicago policing and and all of that.
Speaker 1: But you know, when it comes to Chicago police, like
Speaker 1: I just they're they're apparatus is so massive, like not
Speaker 1: just from like the funding they get, but like their
Speaker 1: media and pr you know, the prosecutors and the judges
Speaker 1: like you mentioned, are absolutely the part of the policing apparatus.
Speaker 1: Like they're not separate, right, It's prosecutors are cops, and
Speaker 1: we have a prosecutor for a mayor and she is
Speaker 1: a cop like like and and you know it was
Speaker 1: black youth who tried so hard to speak up about
Speaker 1: this before she was elected and and said like Lori
Speaker 1: lifebut is a cop, and people didn't listen to them.
Speaker 1: And that's where we're at now, where we have this
Speaker 1: this prosecutor for a mayor who's because of her background,
Speaker 1: like she can only view things through a punitive lens,
Speaker 1: Like her answer to everything is just punishment. How can
Speaker 1: we how can we punish people? Yeah, the only things
Speaker 1: she was trying to do recently was she wanted to
Speaker 1: do these like basically this measure where they called it
Speaker 1: like an anti gang funding thing, but it was basically
Speaker 1: just like if there's a group of people, you can
Speaker 1: just take the cops and just take money from them.
Speaker 1: And it was like it was just an incredible things
Speaker 1: like it was it was you know, part of what's
Speaker 1: going on here is that I've talked about this before,
Speaker 1: but like Lori Lightfoot is you know, at the time,
Speaker 1: I think people voted for her partially because they just
Speaker 1: didn't listen. And the north Siders were just like, oh hey,
Speaker 1: look it's Loria Lightfoot. But then you know, like part
Speaker 1: part of it was she she she ran as like
Speaker 1: the anti machine candidate, and it was like, no, she's
Speaker 1: just a cop. But like I think the just thing is,
Speaker 1: you know, like she she's like incredibly widely hated, like
Speaker 1: to the point where like, you know, the Chicago City
Speaker 1: Council is like not notably a a anti police body,
Speaker 1: but like even the city Council was like, you can't
Speaker 1: do this. Like then they you know, they actually blocked
Speaker 1: I think if if if, if I'm if I'm getting
Speaker 1: my my my facts right on this, like I'm prett
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure that they blocked Life with reposal because
Speaker 1: it was just like yeah, and that that's been one
Speaker 1: of the things that was like we've had a couple
Speaker 1: of like weird kind of like attempts to reign the
Speaker 1: CPD in, but they're not really happening because of like
Speaker 1: anti police sentiment. They're basically happening because the city council's
Speaker 1: feuding with a mayor. Yeah, and and you know I've
Speaker 1: seen it, like it's it's she's such an god, I
Speaker 1: could the figure of Mayor lor lor lifebook. I mean,
Speaker 1: it just makes no sense, right because she's hated by
Speaker 1: people on the left, you know, who obviously are anti police. Thing,
Speaker 1: she's also hated by the police. Yeah, I mean it's
Speaker 1: just like yeah she I mean, if you go through
Speaker 1: any of the conservative like cop blogs and and Twitter accounts,
Speaker 1: you know she proba police are very active on social media, right,
Speaker 1: which is you know, it's whole, a whole thing in
Speaker 1: of itself. These people, you know, they shouldn't be pope
Speaker 1: broadcasting that on social media that they do. But she's
Speaker 1: universally hated by everyone at this point. Um, So you know,
Speaker 1: it's just been a really it's been a really tough
Speaker 1: couple of years for Chicago since the riots, especially because
Speaker 1: Chicago just the word has become so loaded in the
Speaker 1: national media, right, like it's become this this this racist
Speaker 1: boogeyman essentially for like what what could happen to your
Speaker 1: city if if the woke mobs successfully defund police or
Speaker 1: you know whatever, which is completely at odds with reality
Speaker 1: because at no point have we defunded the police, Like
Speaker 1: they just keeps increased. Yeah, like what what's what what's
Speaker 1: their budget is? Like is it I want to say
Speaker 1: it's the total budget, but I think that's low it's
Speaker 1: something like that. I mean, it's billions of dollars, Like
Speaker 1: it's we're pumping billions of dollars into this standing army
Speaker 1: that is that is basically occupying of travel's budget goes
Speaker 1: to the police department, right right, And you know all
Speaker 1: of that money could obviously be sent on other things,
Speaker 1: and and we know, like we know what reduces crime.
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously we could get into like the category
Speaker 1: of what even is a crime? Right, Like, there are
Speaker 1: certainly lots of things that shouldn't be labeled crimes that
Speaker 1: are but we know that communities with resources don't have
Speaker 1: significant violent crime problems. Like we know that lifting people
Speaker 1: out of poverty and giving them opportunities and homes and
Speaker 1: all of these things, like we know that that reduces
Speaker 1: in our personal harm. And instead we just keep looking
Speaker 1: at everything through this lens of punishment and how punitive
Speaker 1: we can be. Yeah, yeah, and it's been I don't know.
Speaker 1: The Chicago Police Department is just it's just an absolute
Speaker 1: horror show. Um. And it's a horror show. And and
Speaker 1: they're also like it's a horror show not just because
Speaker 1: of how evil they are, but also because they're incompetent right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like you've got them doing all of these really bad
Speaker 1: things and then they also just like struggle to to
Speaker 1: cover up their crime, and then they're messing up like
Speaker 1: along the way at every step. Yeah, and it's yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know, they have the cpds like it's they
Speaker 1: have this kind of you know, I mean, I don't know,
Speaker 1: I don't know how you exactly unique it is. But
Speaker 1: but I think going back to our sort of theory
Speaker 1: of like every police department has one thing at the
Speaker 1: really good at it, the CBD has this unique combination
Speaker 1: of like incompetence, torture, and crime that they do. That's
Speaker 1: like I think, so I think sets it apart from
Speaker 1: a lot of other UM police departments. I think that's
Speaker 1: a good place to sort of jump off into the
Speaker 1: second I guess part of the Rickyed Boyd story, or
Speaker 1: really it seems to be the Ricked Boyd story. It's
Speaker 1: the story of Dante Servant, which is his role in
Speaker 1: essentially exporting American policing and the horrors of UM, the
Speaker 1: horror of the American police system, the horrors of sort
Speaker 1: of American imperialism to other countries because it is not
Speaker 1: enough that the CPD murders people here, they've also got
Speaker 1: to do it other places, right, right, And and so
Speaker 1: there was a there was a Chicago Reader piece written
Speaker 1: about this UM back in February. Servants not mentioned in it,
Speaker 1: but it was a really good story. I recommend people
Speaker 1: look it up because you know, some of this research
Speaker 1: is not like my original research, right, it's it stems
Speaker 1: from the research that people with the Invisible Institute did.
Speaker 1: But essentially, you know, there are Chicago police officers and
Speaker 1: there's one in particular. His name is Aaron Cunningham. He's
Speaker 1: the man who UM founded this Tactical Training Institute UM
Speaker 1: that go you know, they go abroad, like they go
Speaker 1: to different countries and and it's private, privately funded though
Speaker 1: they claim to be working with with the SAIS, and
Speaker 1: there's a lot of like weird gray area there where
Speaker 1: there's not a lot of oversight and nobody really knows,
Speaker 1: like are you getting federal money to do this? Are
Speaker 1: you just saying you are, like like what's the deal? Right?
Speaker 1: But the Cunningham was essentially like a crooked cop who
Speaker 1: funded this tactical Training Institute so that they go overseas
Speaker 1: to under resource countries with underresourced police departments and train
Speaker 1: them and how to be police. They train them in
Speaker 1: crowd control, they trained them in like narcotics and drug investigations,
Speaker 1: they train them in like gang warfare, you know, all
Speaker 1: of these things, right, And these are countries that have
Speaker 1: tremendous issues with like you know, outright warfare going on
Speaker 1: between gangs and the existing police forces. Right, so they're
Speaker 1: in desperate need of of of aid of assistance. And
Speaker 1: and of course, like some of these conflicts that are
Speaker 1: going on stem from American imperialism to begin with, right,
Speaker 1: So it's like we caused the problems. Then we're gonna
Speaker 1: come in and like send a bunch of cops over who,
Speaker 1: like you know, have extensive misconduct records in their in
Speaker 1: their home cities, and some of them have even just
Speaker 1: like murdered innocent women in the park. And we're going
Speaker 1: to have them train your guys into how to be cops. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and yeah, you know that that goes about as
Speaker 1: well as you would expect it to, which is one
Speaker 1: of one of the things that the reader piece talks
Speaker 1: about is so one of they these guys get brought
Speaker 1: in to train a bunch of cops. Now Salvador, after
Speaker 1: the Salvadorian police do a bunch of horrible massacres, and
Speaker 1: then they trained these cops, and then the cops immediately
Speaker 1: turned around and also again do a bunch of horrible massacres.
Speaker 1: And it's this, it's this, you know, I mean, I
Speaker 1: I don't want to de emphasize the fact that like
Speaker 1: the like Al Salvador for example, like is a place
Speaker 1: that has its own like native right wing like it
Speaker 1: had there, like it has his own Salvadorian like right
Speaker 1: wing death squads, right, and they they back by the CIA.
Speaker 1: But like you and I don't want to like under
Speaker 1: my under to play just how violent just like the
Speaker 1: local reactionaries are, because it's it's not it's like it's
Speaker 1: it's it's it's not like they wouldn't also be death
Speaker 1: squads if the US wasn't there, but like the US,
Speaker 1: you know, and the chocol Police Apartment sending people to
Speaker 1: train them is making them even worse. And it's yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and and every place has their own right wing reactionaries,
Speaker 1: right like we're seeing right now. To bring to loop
Speaker 1: everything together and just bring us back to like what's
Speaker 1: going on with Ukraine and Russia. Um, it's related, you know,
Speaker 1: like both sides of this conflict of their own reactionary
Speaker 1: right wing forces, right yeah, And anywhere you go around
Speaker 1: the world, that's going to be a sting and empires
Speaker 1: like the American Empire or the Russian Empire are or
Speaker 1: the Al Salvador Empire, you know, whatever empire, they're going
Speaker 1: to be looking for ways to take advantage of those forces.
Speaker 1: And I think that what I think is important, Like
Speaker 1: one of the things I think is important about this
Speaker 1: politically is to understand that there is a like there
Speaker 1: there there is an incredible amount of international solidarity between cops,
Speaker 1: right they have you know, like that you know, I've
Speaker 1: seen I think there's a book called The Thin Blue
Speaker 1: Line International, but it's it's yeah, I mean that's that's
Speaker 1: that's a thing like you see this basically have wore
Speaker 1: the cops. Like the comps know which side they're on,
Speaker 1: and it's the side of the other cops. And I
Speaker 1: think that's something that that confuses a lot of people
Speaker 1: because you thinks, like for example, like like that's the
Speaker 1: Chinese police, right, Like the Chinese police like go like
Speaker 1: we're trained by I think, I mean, what you know
Speaker 1: because the like the Chraine place in Hong Kong, for example,
Speaker 1: like that that police force like is still literally justical
Speaker 1: on your British police force. They just they didn't even
Speaker 1: like they didn't even bring in new people. They just
Speaker 1: like promoted a new person who was a British colonial
Speaker 1: police officer and then made them the new head of
Speaker 1: the police. And then you know, and those those and
Speaker 1: those cops are also trained by the trained by American
Speaker 1: comps train British cops. Uh, they're trained a lot by
Speaker 1: Israeli cops. Um this and this is this is this
Speaker 1: is the same thing. You know, it's the same thing
Speaker 1: with with with with the like the you know like
Speaker 1: this this is the sort of the same effect that
Speaker 1: gets you like Erik Prince like you know, being being
Speaker 1: like hired by the CCP to run stuff and Chang
Speaker 1: John like it's it's there's there's an incredible right wing
Speaker 1: sort of militarist comp alliance that go just you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's, it's, it's, it's it's it's a kind of
Speaker 1: international police solidarity that scrambles a lot of the sort
Speaker 1: of perceptions of what people think, like like what what
Speaker 1: how how people try to think about the world because yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know, and like fundamentally, like the basis they
Speaker 1: have is the defensive property and the defensive sort of
Speaker 1: the like the I usually call like the the global
Speaker 1: white supremacist regime. And they all know, you know, when
Speaker 1: when when an American cocks Salvador, like, they know which
Speaker 1: side they're on. They're on the cops side, and it's
Speaker 1: and you know, and and they share, they share information,
Speaker 1: they share weapons, they share tactics, they share are you
Speaker 1: just literally people, they share training and yeah, and and
Speaker 1: of course because again it's the cpd uh, they shared
Speaker 1: Dante's servant. Yeah, and so he he I you know, Apparently,
Speaker 1: at some point very shortly after the murder of Rakia Boyd,
Speaker 1: it looks like, based on what I've seen on his
Speaker 1: social media and what I pieced together from from his
Speaker 1: employment history, it looks like he had begun working with
Speaker 1: one of these practical training institutes right before the murder.
Speaker 1: And then he murdered Rickie Avoid And I mean, I
Speaker 1: guess technically I'm not supposed to use the word murder,
Speaker 1: but you know, yeah, no, fucking I mean murdered. And
Speaker 1: so so he murdered Rickie Avoid and then everything happened
Speaker 1: with like going through courts, and he walked away without
Speaker 1: being charged or imprisoned. I mean he was charged, but
Speaker 1: without being convicted or imprisoned. Then, um, the police board
Speaker 1: you know, recommended his firing, but he resigned two days
Speaker 1: before like he was supposed to have his hearing, so
Speaker 1: he still gets a pension. I'm pretty sure that's how
Speaker 1: got word. Um yeah, and so he gets Yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't I thought to confirm that, but I'm pretty sure
Speaker 1: he gets a pension. So he resigns, and then at
Speaker 1: some point after he resigned, he starts posting to social
Speaker 1: media about his trips to Honduras, and you know, it's
Speaker 1: posting photos of of like hanging out in the bar
Speaker 1: with with the cops down there and and kind of
Speaker 1: just all of that. And this is not like public information,
Speaker 1: like it's he has like a LinkedIn page where he's
Speaker 1: like the things he's been doing, Like like this is
Speaker 1: completely public. I don't know like why nobody knows about
Speaker 1: it or has talked about it. Um, But you know
Speaker 1: that also I think just comes back to this murder
Speaker 1: kind of flying under the national radar a lot um,
Speaker 1: And so you know, we don't know what company or
Speaker 1: organization he's there with. Um, it doesn't say he's with
Speaker 1: International Tactical Training Association, which is the the Chicago based
Speaker 1: group led by Aaron Cunningham and his wife. My guests
Speaker 1: would be it's that group, because that's the big one
Speaker 1: out of face out of Chicago. But you know, like
Speaker 1: we can't, I can't prove it could be another It
Speaker 1: could be another right wing tactical training group that's training squads. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And that's the thing, right, is that this is not
Speaker 1: just happening here in Chicago. So like there are these
Speaker 1: tactical training groups all over and there are a number
Speaker 1: of US based ones started by different police officers from
Speaker 1: different departments because it's kind of like a career path
Speaker 1: for them in a sense because it's a thing they
Speaker 1: can do once they retire. You get and it's a
Speaker 1: money maker. You hold these these tactical training seminars, and
Speaker 1: so a number of them are domestically based, right, Like
Speaker 1: they're not necessarily going overseas, but what they're doing is there,
Speaker 1: they're having these seminars and their training other police officers
Speaker 1: in like certain things, like some of them be like
Speaker 1: an afternoon session where you go and you learn about
Speaker 1: like you know, firearms safety or something. Then there might
Speaker 1: be like larger ones where you go and you like
Speaker 1: stay and camp out for like three days and you
Speaker 1: practice like ambushing guerrilla gangs in the jungle or something
Speaker 1: like that. Um, And then a lot of them are
Speaker 1: are based around gun safety and firearms training, and some
Speaker 1: of those are open as of the general public. It depends.
Speaker 1: Some of these are like only for other cops or
Speaker 1: law enforcement and you have to like show I D
Speaker 1: or military and you have to prove um that you're
Speaker 1: affiliated with police or military. Some of them are open
Speaker 1: to the public and you just have to have like
Speaker 1: a firearms cart. So that's problematic for one reason because
Speaker 1: we found that in the aftermath of the January six
Speaker 1: Capital riot that a number of a number of the
Speaker 1: Capital rioters did attend like firearms training classes, tactical training
Speaker 1: classes in just various sort of locations. So this is
Speaker 1: a way for officers who have left the force for
Speaker 1: whatever reason to then have a captive audience. And yeah,
Speaker 1: they're teaching them how to like shoot guns and you
Speaker 1: know follow them more like specific sort of things like that,
Speaker 1: But what kind of conversations are they having like what
Speaker 1: kind of ideology is being espoused, what kind of other
Speaker 1: people are showing up to these meetings, and what are
Speaker 1: they talking about? What groups are they recruiting for, what
Speaker 1: are their affiliations. Yeah, and I think and I think
Speaker 1: that that's something that's important to think of about and
Speaker 1: also to you know, have have more generation of journalists
Speaker 1: look into because you know, when when you look at these,
Speaker 1: I mean like we know we we we've had stories
Speaker 1: like this before, right, Like, I mean, this is a
Speaker 1: lot of how for example, like the Taiwanese Special Forces
Speaker 1: for example, uh, spent an enormous amount of parts special force,
Speaker 1: especially just the Taiwanese armies spent an enormous amount of
Speaker 1: time doing stuff very similar to this. And you know,
Speaker 1: the the product of that was and this is uh,
Speaker 1: this is called warrior um. They're doing this the seventies
Speaker 1: and during this in the eighties some except the sixties, um,
Speaker 1: you know, and and I mean the product of this
Speaker 1: is like arena. The product of this is you know,
Speaker 1: the like the like one of the people they trained
Speaker 1: did the Almozete massacre, like and that that that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff. You can you can trace these these influence
Speaker 1: networks and you could trace these sort of I mean
Speaker 1: a lot of this is i mean literally just funded
Speaker 1: by weird cults, um, but you can, you know, you
Speaker 1: can trace these different sort of paramilitary and intelligence influence networks,
Speaker 1: and what you see at the end of them is
Speaker 1: like a lot of the time, it's just a bunch
Speaker 1: of fascists, and it's a bunch it's a bunch of
Speaker 1: fascists doing coups. And you know, like in some sense
Speaker 1: like yeah, this is this is a kind of like,
Speaker 1: you know, like liberal democracy has this sort of problem, right,
Speaker 1: which is that in order for liberal democracy too, you know,
Speaker 1: function as a liberal democracy, you have to have cops.
Speaker 1: And that means that you're you know, you are producing
Speaker 1: domestically and internationally a group of just ferocious, bloodthirsty right
Speaker 1: wing murderers, and you're you're giving them Saya thority, and
Speaker 1: you're giving them all these training and weapons, and you know,
Speaker 1: the product of that is they do what they're trying
Speaker 1: to do, which is they kill people, they torture people,
Speaker 1: they train other people how to do this, and yeah,
Speaker 1: you get these these cascading series of effects that lead
Speaker 1: you know, a bunch of people taking these classes. January six,
Speaker 1: They lead them to coups all over the world. They
Speaker 1: leave the desk ods over the world. This has been
Speaker 1: Nick could happen here? Join us tomorrow for part two
Speaker 1: of our interview with Raven. You can find us on
Speaker 1: Instagram and on Twitter. It happened here. Pot check out
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Speaker 1: love with spreaker from my Heart. Welcome to it could
Speaker 1: happen here a podcast to about how much I Christopher
Speaker 1: Wong hate the police and specifically the Chicago Police Department.
Speaker 1: UM and we are bringing you part two of my
Speaker 1: interview with Chicago journalist Raven about more Crimes of Chicago.
Speaker 1: Police department, the international in fact, and how the police
Speaker 1: weaponize racing class lines order to preserve their power enjoy.
Speaker 1: You know, I spent a lot of time just like
Speaker 1: in like cops social media spaces, right, and of course
Speaker 1: it's like rotting my brain, and you know, it's it's
Speaker 1: honestly just really tough to deal with sometimes. But you
Speaker 1: know one thing that we see like over and over
Speaker 1: again if you look at the memes that they share
Speaker 1: and the the posts that they write on spacebook and
Speaker 1: all of these things, is it's they s the people
Speaker 1: as their enemy, right, like they're they're trained the military.
Speaker 1: The militarization of the police isn't just about the equipment
Speaker 1: that they have and the money that they have. It's
Speaker 1: also about their psychology and how they they view themselves
Speaker 1: as like warriors fighting the bad guys. But because of
Speaker 1: the nature of policing, the bad guys are literally anyone
Speaker 1: who isn't complying with what they say. And usually this
Speaker 1: is like black people, you know, marginalized people, poor people, um.
Speaker 1: And then there's sort of this like you see a
Speaker 1: lot of these like memes where they they talk about
Speaker 1: themselves as like sheep dogs protecting the sheep from the wolves,
Speaker 1: and yeah, and like the sheep are supposed to be
Speaker 1: like the innocence, which typically if you if you really
Speaker 1: go deep into it, it's like in their minds. That's
Speaker 1: like women and children who are like mostly white, right,
Speaker 1: Like they think they're protecting like white innocence from like
Speaker 1: bad guys. And and there are layers to it, right
Speaker 1: because like obviously it doesn't always work out that way.
Speaker 1: And you know, there are like poor white people in
Speaker 1: rural areas who deal with police repression. You know, there
Speaker 1: are like wealthy black people who get pulled over by
Speaker 1: the cops just because they're driving will black. Like, there
Speaker 1: are certainly like layers upon layers here, depending on like
Speaker 1: class and and just everything. But at the end of
Speaker 1: the day, like they're training themselves up to be a
Speaker 1: military fighting the people in invading their spaces, taking over,
Speaker 1: And the psychology of it is just really really dark too,
Speaker 1: because you have these people who because because we're sending
Speaker 1: them into underresourced communities sort of after the fact, after
Speaker 1: trauma's occurred, after there have been there's been violence, there's
Speaker 1: been shootings, everyone's poor, you know, whatever, we're sending them
Speaker 1: into these places where there's just like the most horrible
Speaker 1: things about poverty and about violence are happening and that's
Speaker 1: all they're exposed to. So then they end up with
Speaker 1: PTSD or all of these problems, you know, like the alcoholism, rape,
Speaker 1: domestic violence. Right, all of these things within the tropic
Speaker 1: beliefs of force are extremely high. And all of this
Speaker 1: comes back to because we're treating everything as punishment. We're
Speaker 1: coming in after the fact. We're not actually treating these
Speaker 1: problems at the source. We're just sending people in to
Speaker 1: to manage the chaos after the fact, and then they
Speaker 1: end up traumatized, they end up enacting more crime and
Speaker 1: more violence to these communities, and it just becomes the cycle,
Speaker 1: but no one can get out of. And then it
Speaker 1: and it comes back to just like defunding the police
Speaker 1: and and state priorities, Like where are we putting our resources,
Speaker 1: because if we were putting them in the right place,
Speaker 1: so many of these things wouldn't be happening in the
Speaker 1: first place. Yeah, and I think one everything, I think
Speaker 1: it's it's important to note that we talked about this
Speaker 1: on our you know, the episodes about the cartels. We
Speaker 1: talked about this on our episodes about the other episodes
Speaker 1: about Chocolate Police, which is that the other thing that
Speaker 1: happens is that the Characo police just they you know,
Speaker 1: they see the drug trade and they go, okay, we're
Speaker 1: just gonna get in on it, and you know, and
Speaker 1: the the sort of the combination of these people, these
Speaker 1: just incredibly violent, armed people with total impunity and an
Speaker 1: enormous amount of money is that you know, they they
Speaker 1: they they become themselves just you know, they they become
Speaker 1: exactly the same thing that they that they were you know,
Speaker 1: nominally supposed to be fighting. And that has all of
Speaker 1: these these downstream effects. If you talked about the way
Speaker 1: that the way that this militarizes basically everything, right, this
Speaker 1: this militarizes the police just says that, you know, the
Speaker 1: violence of it has the effect of militarizing like the
Speaker 1: militarizing everyone else, militarizes the nonside actors, and it just
Speaker 1: sort of it just keeps rashing up the level of violence.
Speaker 1: And as long as you keep throwing the state at it,
Speaker 1: and as long as the state just keeps essentially like
Speaker 1: going okay, I just okay, we have a drug trade
Speaker 1: and I'll just got a cut of it. And as
Speaker 1: long as that keeps happening, like all of the stuff
Speaker 1: that the cops are you know, nominally there to to
Speaker 1: deal with, it's just going to keep escalating because the
Speaker 1: state that like because just because state violence is intensifying
Speaker 1: and making it worse, right, right, and it's just so
Speaker 1: like they're so fucking racist. Yeah, like I just can't,
Speaker 1: I mean, like I don't. We have to we have
Speaker 1: to keep talking about that because it's just like so
Speaker 1: much of just like where like where they get their
Speaker 1: information and how they exchange. Like if you look at
Speaker 1: these cops social networks and where they're getting their information,
Speaker 1: and the kinds of things they're saying to each other
Speaker 1: about black people in Chicago are all so ridiculously wrong
Speaker 1: because they're just parroting these like cop blogs that they
Speaker 1: read full of all kinds of just that shit fucking
Speaker 1: conspiracy theories about like our our black d a or
Speaker 1: prosecutor excuse me, Kim Fox being like a puppet of
Speaker 1: George Soros. They literally believe this, and and it's echoed
Speaker 1: by people like Tucker Carlson, you know, in national media,
Speaker 1: Like anytime Chicago comes up, you will hear these kinds
Speaker 1: of just completely off the wall conspiracy theories about like
Speaker 1: communist BLM an Tifa, Soros funded Kim Fox, like ruining Chicago.
Speaker 1: And and I'm not like defending Kim Fox. Don't getting wrong.
Speaker 1: She's still prosecutor, she's still like putting people in jail.
Speaker 1: But she you know, she was elected because she was
Speaker 1: to do she was supposed to be this big reformist
Speaker 1: and and all of that, and so she's become a target.
Speaker 1: And then she's also become a target with them because
Speaker 1: she's a black woman, So it's easy for them to
Speaker 1: to make her into a lightning rod of hate basically,
Speaker 1: and you know, like they just the dehumanization of of
Speaker 1: black Chicagoans that you see in these in these Facebook
Speaker 1: posts that these people are writing and the things that
Speaker 1: they're tweeting, like it is violently disturbingly racist. And all
Speaker 1: of that comes back to just how they view themselves
Speaker 1: as like an occupying army in the communities, Like they
Speaker 1: don't view themselves as like cooperative partners in helping these communities.
Speaker 1: Like it's no words there to occupy, We're there to
Speaker 1: extract resources. We're there to like, you know, benefit off
Speaker 1: of this gang warfare. If we can you know and
Speaker 1: and like you mentioned, like if you look at like
Speaker 1: the corruption and and the things that that have gone
Speaker 1: on with that, I mean, like I mean that goes
Speaker 1: back to city council, right. I mean we have we
Speaker 1: have alder men. We have we have older people who
Speaker 1: are essentially in bed with the cops, looking for looking
Speaker 1: out for them and you know, like their dedicated cop alderman.
Speaker 1: I mean, like all of our Chicago aldermen are older
Speaker 1: people excuse me, are Democrats by name, But it's like no,
Speaker 1: we have five or six older people who are repelled wlikins.
Speaker 1: Like they called themselves Democrats because they wouldn't be able
Speaker 1: to be elected in Chicago if they didn't. But they
Speaker 1: are absolutely like cop loving Republicans. You know, they just
Speaker 1: call themselves Democrats because they like support gay marriage or whatever.
Speaker 1: Well it's because it's Chicago and you like you can't
Speaker 1: run it like the like the the the only time
Speaker 1: a Democrat has ever lost one of these elections was
Speaker 1: the time a I want blanking on the name of
Speaker 1: the cult, the time of Larushite accidentally won the primary.
Speaker 1: Like that that's basically it, Like yeah, I mean, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's you know this, this is a democratic city,
Speaker 1: but you know, the democratic city just means incredibly right
Speaker 1: wing and police, which right, right, Yeah, And when you
Speaker 1: look at the history of policing in Chicago, you have
Speaker 1: to go back decades and decades and kind of look
Speaker 1: at all so to it like where a lot of
Speaker 1: these cops came from. In the aftermath of like the
Speaker 1: dissolution of like the official like mafia and like al
Speaker 1: Capone and all that stuff, you had a lot of
Speaker 1: working class immigrants from like European communities, like the Polish community,
Speaker 1: the Irish community, the Italian community, and all of these
Speaker 1: communities have their own like police associations here, like the
Speaker 1: Italian American Police Association, the Polish American Police Association, all
Speaker 1: of these things, and and so like it becomes this
Speaker 1: being a cop to go back to sort of like
Speaker 1: the international ties here, being a cop becomes this identity
Speaker 1: for them and their families. Like a lot of people
Speaker 1: are cops because their dad was a cop, their grandpa
Speaker 1: was a cops. Their cousins are cops, their brothers are cops.
Speaker 1: There's like a family honor sort of in like being
Speaker 1: a cop, and and a lot of them show, you know,
Speaker 1: and that that that goes back to why they show
Speaker 1: so much solidarity too with like cops from other countries
Speaker 1: is it's like the profession in and of itself is lionized.
Speaker 1: And then on top of that, you have right now
Speaker 1: in Chicago, like because of gentrification, because of just like
Speaker 1: immigration patterns and the way communities have changed. We have
Speaker 1: these like traditionally Polish Italian communities that feel like they're
Speaker 1: being encroached upon by mostly like Latin X communities. So
Speaker 1: we had for example, like you know, the shooting um
Speaker 1: the murder of Anthony Alvarez up on up on the
Speaker 1: northwest side, the far northwest side of Chicago last year,
Speaker 1: and in the aftermath of that, we saw a lot
Speaker 1: of like pension between the traditional like Polish Polish American
Speaker 1: community up there and then the new wave of like
Speaker 1: Latin X immigrants um. And the problem is a lot
Speaker 1: of the people in the Polish community up there have
Speaker 1: family and relatives who are cops. So we had like
Speaker 1: cops trashing the memorial, you know, to the s Anthony Alvarez.
Speaker 1: We had like Polish biker gangs like riding by the
Speaker 1: rallies trying to like intimidate people and it all comes
Speaker 1: back to like white supremacy and just straight up racism, right.
Speaker 1: Like there's another example of that with like the the
Speaker 1: Columbus statue that was sent here by Bussolini that eventually, yes,
Speaker 1: one of the like one of the I guess you'd
Speaker 1: call it the second wave of the upraising in Chicago
Speaker 1: was a bunch of people, like enormous members of people
Speaker 1: throwing things at cops who were attempting to defend the statue.
Speaker 1: And this was like a like the Italian like Americans
Speaker 1: like the right way, and we got like extremely mad
Speaker 1: about this, and there was all of this sort of
Speaker 1: know there's all the sort of tension between between these
Speaker 1: these different community. Yeah, and some of that comes back
Speaker 1: to like also, um, the construction of of the inter states. Right,
Speaker 1: so like in the I don't know when they started
Speaker 1: building the highways down by U. I c. Is like
Speaker 1: in the fifties of the sixties, right, you had this
Speaker 1: like traditional Italian American community down there by University of
Speaker 1: Illinois Chicago and like on Taylor Street, and then people
Speaker 1: built the highway and it like funked up a bunch
Speaker 1: of ships. You know, some people had to sell their
Speaker 1: home Holmes. You know, the traditional neighborhood was like destroyed
Speaker 1: all of these things, and then this university is built
Speaker 1: and that coincides with that, and so you end up
Speaker 1: getting a lot of like old school racist Italian getting
Speaker 1: piste at the students and at the school and everything
Speaker 1: in the aftermath. And it's a really really multicultural school.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you're familiar with you I see,
Speaker 1: but it's like, yeah, so U I see has like
Speaker 1: one of the largest immigrant student population student bodies like
Speaker 1: in the country. Um, it's just a very very diverse school.
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure white people are actually a minority if
Speaker 1: you look at like the demographics of just like how
Speaker 1: people identify in student surveys. U I s A is
Speaker 1: the University of Illinois and Chicago. Uh yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: one of the big universities in the city. Yeah, just
Speaker 1: for the non Chicago Yeah yeah, different, there's a different one,
Speaker 1: University of Chicago. That's like that was all I went to,
Speaker 1: which is first, they've got their whole thing going on
Speaker 1: because their campus police force is one of the largest
Speaker 1: private police forces in the world. Yeah, and you know,
Speaker 1: I guess we're talking about that a little bit too.
Speaker 1: Because that's this sort of like it's kind of horrible
Speaker 1: bind where it's like, yeah, so it's that that police
Speaker 1: force is one of the largest police forces in the world.
Speaker 1: It has shot students, it has shot people who are
Speaker 1: not students. It does a bunch of horrible things. But
Speaker 1: then you know, some you're there's there's this kind of trap, right,
Speaker 1: because like one of one of the things that happens
Speaker 1: is like, well, okay, so you get rid of the
Speaker 1: u cp D, right, and then then you know, okay,
Speaker 1: so they're going to bring the Chicago Police Apartment in
Speaker 1: and it's like the Chica Police Apartment are like one
Speaker 1: of the few institutions in the world that's worse than
Speaker 1: like the regular UCPD, and it's you know, and that
Speaker 1: was that was one of the things that that was
Speaker 1: really inspiring, um in was just yeah, the way that
Speaker 1: the abolished the Chicago Police Department like movement was sort
Speaker 1: of like unfolded in this broader just this broader potential
Speaker 1: just abolished chiccoco the Chicago police in general. But it's
Speaker 1: this weird thing where it's like you have these you
Speaker 1: have these occupation zones, and it's like that that that
Speaker 1: part of the South Side and then the other The
Speaker 1: other thing I think that people don't understand about Chicago
Speaker 1: Police Department is that they have an absolutely enormous range
Speaker 1: that they patrol. Right that that doesn't include that it's way,
Speaker 1: it goes way off campus like they have. They have
Speaker 1: an absolutely enormous range of things they conclude and they
Speaker 1: do things like, uh, you know, they'll they'll just like
Speaker 1: like like lock down the entire campus and they'll just
Speaker 1: do this just happen because there they'll be like chasing
Speaker 1: someone who like like one of one of the one
Speaker 1: of the times when I was there, someone like they
Speaker 1: like stolen something from like a video game store, and
Speaker 1: the whole campus got locked down, like the cops are
Speaker 1: screaming and every want to stay in the buildings, like
Speaker 1: and they just like, you know, they had this like
Speaker 1: enormous numbers of cops just sort of like swarmed through
Speaker 1: the entire the entire campus for like an hour. And
Speaker 1: this is just like happens. I mean, there's cops everywhere.
Speaker 1: They just they do stuff like that, and there's this
Speaker 1: whole you know, and and but this is one of
Speaker 1: the other things where you get these tensions because so
Speaker 1: you Chicago, the University of Chicago also has like it's
Speaker 1: not as large, but also has like a like it
Speaker 1: also has like a pretty large international student immigrant like population.
Speaker 1: And there was this, uh there was there was there
Speaker 1: was a Chinese national student who got shot, who got
Speaker 1: shot a robbery last year, and that was a huge
Speaker 1: I think that was last year. Yeah that was yeah,
Speaker 1: it wasn't yeah, yeah, And that turned into a huge
Speaker 1: thing where you had these sudden you know, because we
Speaker 1: had the anti police protests, but then suddenly there was
Speaker 1: this huge wing of like basically the right wing faculty,
Speaker 1: a bunch of just like absolutely reactionary, like extremely rich
Speaker 1: CCP scions and like this this sort of like nucleus
Speaker 1: of of the like like people like people in the
Speaker 1: right wing law faculty, like the ECON people who suddenly
Speaker 1: had this like giant thing that was like it was,
Speaker 1: it was. It was a sort of microcosm of of
Speaker 1: of the broader sort of like turn against the anti
Speaker 1: police movements by using crime. And they had this whole
Speaker 1: thing is that we need to keep the campus safe,
Speaker 1: and they're like, oh, we need to give you the
Speaker 1: ucp D the ability to lead to to go off
Speaker 1: of campus, which you know, they already have there, like
Speaker 1: we need to get the more money, we need to
Speaker 1: have more cops everywhere, and it was just and it's
Speaker 1: it's just this sort of like you get this horrible,
Speaker 1: horrible sort of pendulum effect where like you get this
Speaker 1: violence and then you know, people like the like the
Speaker 1: the rights response to that violence is just to create
Speaker 1: is you know, just descended more cops to create more violence,
Speaker 1: and it just keeps escalating and keep escalating, and it's
Speaker 1: it's and then you know, and then there's there's a
Speaker 1: sort of dynamic of this right where rich students at
Speaker 1: the unniversary of Chicago, And this is so some extent
Speaker 1: this is it's mostly a class embraced thing, but it's
Speaker 1: not entirely. But like people who go there just like
Speaker 1: have this like incredible fear of literally everyone around them.
Speaker 1: It's like they turned to many cops. Like there are
Speaker 1: people who are screaming about how like just the red
Speaker 1: line is not safe at night. And I was like
Speaker 1: I have literally like I have walked like thirty blocks
Speaker 1: back home at two in the morning and been completely fine.
Speaker 1: Like you guys are just cowards, but and you know
Speaker 1: your your cowards and extreme racist but like yeah, like
Speaker 1: all all all of these sort of factors blend together
Speaker 1: and you get these you get these coalitions of of
Speaker 1: these these right wing pro police people who want to
Speaker 1: just not not just like you know, not not just
Speaker 1: support the police, but want to continue to expand it
Speaker 1: so they can feel safe. And it's like you're not,
Speaker 1: you're not even in danger, but they have they have
Speaker 1: they have the same sort of like this whole town
Speaker 1: is trying to kill us, like racist cop rand mentality,
Speaker 1: and yeah, sorry, this is this is this is this
Speaker 1: has been being upset about this because I feel you
Speaker 1: and it's like it's and but it relates back to
Speaker 1: kind of like campus policing in general and kind of
Speaker 1: why it exists, which is that a lot of colleges,
Speaker 1: I mean not all of them. It depends on where
Speaker 1: you are, but like some colleges, especially in like large
Speaker 1: urban areas, you know, are we're built in the middle
Speaker 1: of like largely black communities. Yeah, and because the land
Speaker 1: was cheaper to buy, you know, there are reasons why necessarily,
Speaker 1: like they're built in these spaces, and so the campus
Speaker 1: police departments function as just a way to like keep
Speaker 1: the students isolated from the community, like it's making a
Speaker 1: community within a community. It's making this little enclave. And
Speaker 1: then of course people are are then going to view
Speaker 1: anyone outside of that enclave with like racist suspicion. Right,
Speaker 1: And if you have immigrant students who may or may
Speaker 1: not be wealthy, it's a punklem where they come from.
Speaker 1: But UFC has like a lot of as far as
Speaker 1: I am aware, like wealthy international students. And they might
Speaker 1: be coming from countries where like there aren't any black
Speaker 1: people or there aren't very many. And just because they're
Speaker 1: they're coming from like this country doesn't necessarily mean that
Speaker 1: they like our left wing. So they they're coming into
Speaker 1: these communities, you know, with not a lot of experience,
Speaker 1: just sort of around people who look different from them,
Speaker 1: and so they're going to be of course looking to
Speaker 1: like these police figures than to quote protect them. But
Speaker 1: but to go back to it, it's like, Okay, well,
Speaker 1: if if you are feeling unsafe on the train at night,
Speaker 1: for example, why why isn't the train safe? Like why
Speaker 1: are people using it as you know shelter? Why are
Speaker 1: people doing drugs on the train? Like why is there
Speaker 1: violence happening? And that just comes back to again, like
Speaker 1: we're not actually addressing the route problems by just adding
Speaker 1: more police. And I will say, like I think, I
Speaker 1: think again, Like the other thing that's happening here is
Speaker 1: really just the University of Chicago, like is a place
Speaker 1: to which the world's ladish is transplanted. And yeah, you
Speaker 1: can see this like very clearly along because yeah, like
Speaker 1: there is the wealth gap between like between poor international
Speaker 1: students of Richard national students is like it's it's the
Speaker 1: largest single wealth gap in like in this in the
Speaker 1: entire university. It's it's unbelievable. Um and you know, and
Speaker 1: you could you could just you can watch it playing
Speaker 1: down on class lines in a place down other lines
Speaker 1: right where you have like like you know, like yeah
Speaker 1: you have like you have both we have students from
Speaker 1: I don't know, you have China, students from Vietnam, and
Speaker 1: like one of them will be trans and you know
Speaker 1: it turns yeah, it's like oh hey, look like yeah,
Speaker 1: like when when when you have like when you have
Speaker 1: a Chinese trans student rights, like yeah, they're there. They
Speaker 1: the people who back home had have experienced depression in
Speaker 1: various ways, are consistently like consistently um or like consistently
Speaker 1: anti police and consistently like significantly less bad about this stuff.
Speaker 1: It's it's in my experience, it's it's very much. Is
Speaker 1: just you have this sort of transplanted like you have
Speaker 1: the short of transplanted elief and by the countries to
Speaker 1: come to the University of Chicago so they can you know,
Speaker 1: study economics and go back to their own countries and
Speaker 1: like continue to like rob their own populations. And those
Speaker 1: people are the ones who are doing this stuff. And
Speaker 1: it's I don't know, it's you see a lot of
Speaker 1: kind of like this like I think really misguided like
Speaker 1: anti racism. That's like, well, okay, we have to take
Speaker 1: the security concerns of of of these these of of
Speaker 1: Asian people seriously. It's like these are this is this
Speaker 1: is the Chinese ruling class, this is the this like
Speaker 1: you don't need to take these people's concerns seriously. They
Speaker 1: are finatally they're ferocious right wingers who just read highatt
Speaker 1: for the first time. Like you guys, these these are
Speaker 1: these are not the same people as the people who
Speaker 1: are suffering under the right right. And we saw that.
Speaker 1: We saw that too with like the big wave of
Speaker 1: of stop Asian hate protests here last year where we
Speaker 1: had like this big rally down in China Town, UM
Speaker 1: with like a huge, huge number, like hundreds of people
Speaker 1: from the community came out and and you had a
Speaker 1: lot of younger people who very much had like you know,
Speaker 1: defund the police kind of sentiments. But then you had
Speaker 1: we had like police representatives speaking at the rally, yeah,
Speaker 1: about how they were going to make like Chicago safer
Speaker 1: for Asian people. It's like this stuff like it makes
Speaker 1: me so angry, like CPT yeah, no, it was. It
Speaker 1: was regular CPD, Like I I'm Chinese. They almost killed
Speaker 1: me on campus. Like these people like they're not these
Speaker 1: these these they they're like the police don't keep us safe.
Speaker 1: But like you know, there's been this, there's been this
Speaker 1: incredible weaponization of of the Asian American community. Like you
Speaker 1: see this, you see this in Chinatown. There's there's been
Speaker 1: this like that. There's like China Town is like this
Speaker 1: is different. Even in the last like like three or
Speaker 1: four years, has turned into this just like incredibly right wing.
Speaker 1: I mean it's not everyone, but like you see like
Speaker 1: they're they're like I like there there's there's a there's
Speaker 1: there's there's a bench in uh in Chicago in front
Speaker 1: of the library right that had they have these tables
Speaker 1: and the tables have an engraved plaque on them that
Speaker 1: says no loiter ring, and that says we will call
Speaker 1: the police on you if you loiter. That this is
Speaker 1: outside of the library. Like it's yeah, there's they have
Speaker 1: this sort of like increa just this incredibly right wing
Speaker 1: like anti anti like anti like homeless people campaign that's happening,
Speaker 1: and it's it's I don't know, it's it's one of
Speaker 1: just the most depressing things I've seen here because you have,
Speaker 1: you know, you have the Chamber of Commerce is to
Speaker 1: sort of like you know, as the most powerful political
Speaker 1: force in a lot of these communities, and like those
Speaker 1: people's are right wingers and they just they they don't
Speaker 1: have the same interests as like the rest of the Asia,
Speaker 1: of the Asian American community, and it, you know, and
Speaker 1: it gets you get this horrible, horrible thing, which is
Speaker 1: what was happening on the USA campus, which is like
Speaker 1: essentially the right wing like pitting the right wings like
Speaker 1: just just pitting the like basically basically like pitting Asians
Speaker 1: against black people. And it's horrible and it it just
Speaker 1: comes back to like who who is benefiting from this?
Speaker 1: Like who when we when we have immigrant communities or
Speaker 1: nonimmigrant communities, you know, like being upset with other communities,
Speaker 1: What are the greater forces here that are like benefiting
Speaker 1: from that sort of like infighting. And it's always like
Speaker 1: the fascist cops who who ultimately come out of the
Speaker 1: top there because if they can keep the people fighting
Speaker 1: amongst themselves, or they can stoke prejudice and racism between
Speaker 1: the people, you know, they can then come in and
Speaker 1: scoop up resources. And when you look at like a
Speaker 1: school like University of Chicago, they just have a massive,
Speaker 1: massive amount of money, right, Like the resources there are
Speaker 1: just unbelievable. And so of course you're going to have
Speaker 1: people in the community who are resentful of that, who
Speaker 1: are upset about that because like they don't have affordable housing,
Speaker 1: they don't have good jobs, like they're trying to make
Speaker 1: a living and keep their kids safe, and here's this
Speaker 1: like university in the middle of their neighborhood with all
Speaker 1: of this money. And wow, I'm so amazed. I'm just
Speaker 1: so happy that like somebody's doing construction right now outside
Speaker 1: my apartment. Thank you for this timing I'm so glad
Speaker 1: about the um. But but essentially, like you know, you
Speaker 1: they the students, the students end up being a scapegoat
Speaker 1: for all of their like all the communities like justified
Speaker 1: fears about what's going on right justified. They're justified in
Speaker 1: being upset that they don't have these resources. But it's
Speaker 1: not necessarily like the individual student. Yeah, and and there's
Speaker 1: there's been a lot of really good right right before.
Speaker 1: One of the things that was happening in I part
Speaker 1: right before I got there, it was there was this
Speaker 1: huge campaign basically there wasn't a level one trauma center
Speaker 1: like on this outside, and so you know, if you
Speaker 1: get shot, right, they have to like take you in
Speaker 1: a helicopter to the north side to a hospital there,
Speaker 1: and you know, in that time, like there's a good
Speaker 1: chance you're gonna die. And there had there had been one,
Speaker 1: but it got shut down because it wasn't making any money.
Speaker 1: And so you know, there was this huge, uh community
Speaker 1: student campaign to like to force the university to open
Speaker 1: one of these trauma centers. And so I think and
Speaker 1: I think it's important that like we don't have to
Speaker 1: fight each other like that. That's not a thing that
Speaker 1: you know, like yeah, like I think I think like
Speaker 1: that university, I I don't think it should continue to exist.
Speaker 1: I think at the very least it should be like
Speaker 1: taking out of the community control. But who but like yeah,
Speaker 1: like you know, for for the people who are there,
Speaker 1: and you know, I think like for for the Asian
Speaker 1: Americans listening to this, and for for for people who
Speaker 1: are students like you, you do not have to be
Speaker 1: the weapon of the cops. You don't. You can you
Speaker 1: can work together and and and when you do that,
Speaker 1: you can win and you you can win. You can
Speaker 1: win like really incredibly tangible games for the community, and
Speaker 1: you can save people's lives, you know it also outside
Speaker 1: of campus, same deal with Chicago police, right, Like, we
Speaker 1: don't need to have the Eastern European communities fighting the
Speaker 1: Latino communities fighting the Black communities. Like we don't need
Speaker 1: to have these like all of these communities just like
Speaker 1: fighting each other instead of like the actual oppressive forces
Speaker 1: at the top. Um. But you know, right now we're
Speaker 1: at like this kind of I don't know, I guess
Speaker 1: tipping point. I think where either people start to show
Speaker 1: solidarity or we're fucked. Like there are massive and not
Speaker 1: to get like super are existential with you, but like
Speaker 1: there are massive, massive forces right now, right wing forces
Speaker 1: trying to benefit off of all of this factionalization, and
Speaker 1: as we see tanks rolling into Ukraine, like that's this
Speaker 1: is a global phenomenon. It's not just happening at home.
Speaker 1: It's happening everywhere, and like we don't have a lot
Speaker 1: of time left to stop this and to bring it
Speaker 1: back to this like far right trucker foe trucker convoy
Speaker 1: ship show that's to happen and and then roll into
Speaker 1: roll into our capital. Like I'm just struck by the
Speaker 1: timing of it all. And I'm certainly not going to
Speaker 1: be like a conspiracy theorist about it and be like,
Speaker 1: well putin Is has planned this all happen at the
Speaker 1: same time. Um, But I do think that whether or
Speaker 1: not it's like plans happen at the same time, it's
Speaker 1: absolutely going to benefit these people that you know this
Speaker 1: is happening right now, and yeah, it's it's it's the
Speaker 1: same thing with with just horrific anti trans bills that
Speaker 1: the anti transport like not bills, but in anti trans
Speaker 1: government action, I guess is the correct term in that's
Speaker 1: happening in Texas right now. Yeah, it's uh, you know,
Speaker 1: like people people draw comparisons to to the Third Reich
Speaker 1: and to Nazi Germany and them banning like you know,
Speaker 1: homosexual dance parties and things like that. You know, like
Speaker 1: they didn't start out saying we want to kill all
Speaker 1: the Jews. Like that's not like it doesn't you don't
Speaker 1: start that way, you make you would do the smaller
Speaker 1: attacks first, you build up to it, You take power
Speaker 1: inch by inch until like nobody can stop you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I think I think you know there, there's there
Speaker 1: There's an important note here, though, which is that, like
Speaker 1: it's it's very easy to sort of especially in times
Speaker 1: like this, to sort of just like be be in
Speaker 1: a place where just it looks like history is just
Speaker 1: washing over you, right that you know, we're we're we're
Speaker 1: bound by these sort of irresistible powers and forces, And
Speaker 1: that's not true. Like these these these these kinds of
Speaker 1: fascist movements can be defeated, these kinds of militarist movements
Speaker 1: can be defeated, but they they they they can only
Speaker 1: be defeated when we actually take our place as the
Speaker 1: subjects of history, right like we we we are that
Speaker 1: we are the people who, through our actions, create history,
Speaker 1: and you know when we also are the people who
Speaker 1: create the world we see around us. But you know,
Speaker 1: as David Graby was incredibly fond of saying, right, it's
Speaker 1: like we we are the people who create the world
Speaker 1: around us, and that means that we can it can
Speaker 1: be otherwise. And you know, when when we essentially like
Speaker 1: when we when we reclaim our you know, our our
Speaker 1: status is subjects or status is human beings are status
Speaker 1: as the people of which history is composed of. And
Speaker 1: we move we can stop these things like they're there.
Speaker 1: There do not have to be another Like there don't
Speaker 1: have to be more Nazis, they don't have to be
Speaker 1: more genocides, they don't have to be more worse. We
Speaker 1: can stop them. We just have to fight, right. I
Speaker 1: don't disagree with that. I think I think it's completely true.
Speaker 1: I guess I'm just I don't know, maybe I'm like
Speaker 1: a dum I don't know. I mean it's really hard
Speaker 1: right now to kind of see I guess sort of
Speaker 1: mass resistance forming in the US specifically just because of
Speaker 1: the way the pandemic has wrecked us, and I feel
Speaker 1: like people are I mean, people are just checked out, right,
Speaker 1: Like they're exhausted, they're broke. I you know, a million
Speaker 1: people have died because of because of the government's just
Speaker 1: complete lack of adequate handling of COVID and and so
Speaker 1: I completely agree that like this isn't inevitable, like we
Speaker 1: can stop this. At the same time, I just I
Speaker 1: don't know what it's going to take for Americans like
Speaker 1: as an entity to actually stand up and fight this.
Speaker 1: And I'm not blaming individual people because it's like all
Speaker 1: the reasons for people being exhausted and checked out are
Speaker 1: like also by design, right, because or like if we
Speaker 1: keep people exhausted and checked out, then the oligarchs at
Speaker 1: the top like can continue to like loot society. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I think I'm sort of less sync when
Speaker 1: on that, just because, like you know, because I remember,
Speaker 1: this is the same thing that like everyone said right
Speaker 1: before the uprising, like everyone was checked out. Everyone was
Speaker 1: sort of like you know, like the pandemic had just started.
Speaker 1: Everyone there's this like general consensus that like mass action
Speaker 1: wasn't possible, and then you know, like two days later,
Speaker 1: they burned down they burned down a police station and
Speaker 1: like deluding the American Mile, and you know, it's like
Speaker 1: it's like it's these these things like you know, every
Speaker 1: like the the people who are in some sense the
Speaker 1: most in tune with like what is happening, it'll often
Speaker 1: tend to be the people who are most shocked by
Speaker 1: when when these kinds of things just emerge seemingly out
Speaker 1: of nowhere. And so I don't know, I think, I think,
Speaker 1: I think we can't know what exactly will set off
Speaker 1: the next wave, but I but I think it's a
Speaker 1: safe bet there will be another one, because there always is.
Speaker 1: We've never you know, we we have yet to hit
Speaker 1: a point so bad that people stop fighting like ever
Speaker 1: in history, so oh for sure. Yeah. And that's the
Speaker 1: long arc of history too, is it's like people have
Speaker 1: always been fighting for their liberation in some way, And
Speaker 1: if you look at the longer story, you know, there
Speaker 1: might be very long periods of darkness and repression and collapse,
Speaker 1: and then people emerge from that and new societies emerge,
Speaker 1: new ways of thinking all of that. And I think
Speaker 1: where we're at now, like at this moment, there are
Speaker 1: certainly small ways that people can resist and ways that
Speaker 1: we like we have to focus on, like our immediate
Speaker 1: communities too. You know, it's so easy to get to
Speaker 1: feel helpless when you like you look at things on
Speaker 1: such a grand scale. Because of course, like we can't
Speaker 1: all just like run into Ukraine right now and like
Speaker 1: stop putin like there's there's really not a lot we
Speaker 1: can do when it comes to like things like that.
Speaker 1: But we can like take care of our friends. We
Speaker 1: can like make sure that the people immediately around us
Speaker 1: like have what they need. We can like check in on,
Speaker 1: like you know, our on house neighbors. We can like,
Speaker 1: you know, some people here in Chicago are prepping to
Speaker 1: like take in Ukrainian refugees, for example, right now. And
Speaker 1: and that's like the sort of action that like is
Speaker 1: definitely going to be needed. Um. And you know, like
Speaker 1: when you look at the story of like something as
Speaker 1: as horrible and just like awful as a holocaust, like
Speaker 1: of course, there are all all these like small stories
Speaker 1: of like people who like sheltered, people who are who
Speaker 1: are being sought out, and you know, there were there
Speaker 1: were all these different kinds of resistance movements in Germany
Speaker 1: and in Poland. Um. And it's not just about like
Speaker 1: all the people that that Hitler killed. It is also
Speaker 1: about all the people that like we're that people managed
Speaker 1: to save, you know, and it is also like I
Speaker 1: don't know we we in America especially, it's like we
Speaker 1: gotta get away from the Hitler comparisons, which I know
Speaker 1: I just like just made, but like it's it's you know,
Speaker 1: like don't get me wrong, Like there's obviously like plenty
Speaker 1: of parallels, and it's important to be like students of
Speaker 1: history and like understand what's going on and everything, but
Speaker 1: like we don't. What we're seeing is like we're going
Speaker 1: to see a kind of fascism that is unique to
Speaker 1: our era, right, Like I don't know that Trump is
Speaker 1: going to come out and call for like outright genocide
Speaker 1: and like you know, build build deaf or like Rhonda
Speaker 1: Santis is going to get elected and like build deaf camps.
Speaker 1: Like it's going to look different than it has in
Speaker 1: the past, even if like some of the phenomenon are similar.
Speaker 1: So what we're looking at instead is like, especially with
Speaker 1: climate change, we're looking at a lot of controls over borders.
Speaker 1: And obviously some of that is like what's happening in
Speaker 1: Europe right now too, but you know, people are going
Speaker 1: to be looking to control resources like water, oil, land,
Speaker 1: as we know that they're like running out. And so
Speaker 1: this this sentiment against like immigrants especially, you know, that's
Speaker 1: something that is going to just keep getting worse, and
Speaker 1: so I think it makes it harder for people to
Speaker 1: I guess recognize that things are as bad as they were,
Speaker 1: if that makes sense. Um, And ultimately, like it's just yeah,
Speaker 1: mass resistance is the only way out, right, Like, the
Speaker 1: people have to resist and we can't keep waiting for
Speaker 1: like Joe Biden or or anyone to be our political savior. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think I think that's a that's that's a pretty
Speaker 1: good note to end on. Yeah, thank you, thank you
Speaker 1: for joining us. Do you have stuff that you want
Speaker 1: to plug? Um, not at the moment. No, I mean
Speaker 1: I think, uh, I guess our Twitter account, but that's
Speaker 1: about it. Okay. Yeah, well this this has been This
Speaker 1: has been another episode if it can happened here. You
Speaker 1: can find us on Twitter and Instagram at happen here pod. Uh,
Speaker 1: you can find stuff at the Cool Zone. We have
Speaker 1: a website. Go there. Stop asking me for sources. They're
Speaker 1: they're on the website. They get out again uploaded. Uh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So yeah, thank thank you once again. For twining us. Hey,
Speaker 1: We'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from
Speaker 1: now until the heat death of the Universe. It Could
Speaker 1: Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media. For
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