Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, Robert Evans here and I wanted to let
Speaker 1: you know this is a compilation episode, So every episode
Speaker 1: of the week that just happened is here in one
Speaker 1: convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to
Speaker 1: listen to in a long stretch if you want. If
Speaker 1: you've been listening to the episodes every day this week,
Speaker 1: there's going to be nothing new here for you, but
Speaker 1: you can make your own decisions.
Speaker 2: Other podcast fans. Today, it's me James, and I'm joined
Speaker 2: by Cave Hoda, who's a doctor in the Bay Area
Speaker 2: and also host of the House of Pod podcast, which
Speaker 2: NEXTI podcast. For you to add to what you've done
Speaker 2: listening this podcast, you can add that to your podcast rotation.
Speaker 2: But we're talking today about medication abortions, and specifically about
Speaker 2: attempts to ban medigation abortions by anti abortion activists, which
Speaker 2: included a recent case at the Supreme Court. So, Cave,
Speaker 2: would you maybe like you to add anything I'd missed
Speaker 2: from your introduction?
Speaker 3: No, yeah, that was pretty much all the good stuff.
Speaker 3: Thank you for having me. This is super fun. I
Speaker 3: love all your podcasts. I like your work, so thank
Speaker 3: you for having me. And yeah, the topic is. It's
Speaker 3: super duper important, and it is in the headlines a lot,
Speaker 3: but at the same time, not enough, you know what
Speaker 3: I mean. It's like people are talking about it a ton,
Speaker 3: but I don't know if they're talking about it enough,
Speaker 3: or if the gravity of the situation is really hitting people,
Speaker 3: or if it is. We're just overwhelmed by how much
Speaker 3: bullshit we've had to deal with in regard to this,
Speaker 3: and people are kind of feeling a little bit beaten
Speaker 3: about it and feeling a little bit disheartened. But I
Speaker 3: am super glad that we're going to discuss it today.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think maybe it is bizarre, how I don't Yeah,
Speaker 2: I think we're dealing with so much bullshit and every
Speaker 2: day something terrible happens, and so I can understand how
Speaker 2: this kind of came and went in the news cycle.
Speaker 2: At the same time, it does seem like why the
Speaker 2: fuck where they're not ten million people out in the
Speaker 2: street to try to burn things down when like, like,
Speaker 2: if you're listening to this and you don't think you
Speaker 2: know anyone who's used this, it's most likely because someone
Speaker 2: in your life hasn't shared that with you. Like I
Speaker 2: can think of more people than I can count on
Speaker 2: my fingers who I care about very dearly who have
Speaker 2: used this absolutely.
Speaker 3: Someone posted this once and I thought it was really
Speaker 3: actually pretty brilliant. It was like, if you don't know
Speaker 3: anyone that has, that means they don't trust you enough
Speaker 3: to tell you, or they think you're a douche, So
Speaker 3: like there's a reason you know.
Speaker 4: So, yeah, it's it's very.
Speaker 2: Common, right, and so I think maybe to start out with,
Speaker 2: we should explain, like what is a medication abortion and
Speaker 2: how does it work? And why is it so common?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'll talk a little bit about that.
Speaker 3: I think maybe we could touch a little bit on
Speaker 3: the history of it too, because I think it is
Speaker 3: kind of interesting to look at it from a bigger perspective.
Speaker 3: Medication abortions, they account for more than half of all
Speaker 3: abortions nationwide. It's usually done. There are a couple of
Speaker 3: different ways of doing it, but the most common one
Speaker 3: by far is a two drug combination mif for pristone
Speaker 3: and misoprostol, and these are the ones. They are used
Speaker 3: generally in the United States and in other countries as well.
Speaker 3: You can use misoprostle alone, but it's just not as
Speaker 3: effective as these two drugs together. Mifa prostone blocks progesterone
Speaker 3: and what that is. It's a hormone that you need
Speaker 3: to make the pregnancy happen.
Speaker 4: It makes the uterus a hospitable place for it to occur.
Speaker 4: And we'll talk a little bit.
Speaker 3: I think about the the mifa prostone the misoprostole as well,
Speaker 3: because that's a prostac land and they do a bunch
Speaker 3: of things in the body, but one of them is
Speaker 3: to cause contractions of the uterus. In that that's two
Speaker 3: these two drugs together. One makes the pregnancy less able
Speaker 3: to progress and then the other one expels it. So
Speaker 3: that's how these two medications work. What I think is
Speaker 3: really interesting about them is a little bit of the
Speaker 3: backstory to it. So my understanding that there might be
Speaker 3: some medical anthropologists or historians who know more about it
Speaker 3: than me. I'm sure that's the case, but it's you
Speaker 3: have to put this all in perspective because when I
Speaker 3: grew up, abortions were all invasive, surgical essentially, and it
Speaker 3: was a you had to have it done in a
Speaker 3: very specific manner. Now we have the opportunity and the
Speaker 3: option to do it in a much I think safer,
Speaker 3: control less traumatic way. And you know, it kind of
Speaker 3: started in Brazil because in Brazil, you know, I know,
Speaker 3: because it doesn't make sense, right, but abortion is illegal there,
Speaker 3: as you might imagine, and women there, like women in
Speaker 3: any place, are going to look for ways to have
Speaker 3: abortions if they want or need one.
Speaker 4: And one of the.
Speaker 3: Things they would do is it basically go to like
Speaker 3: a drug store or a pharmacy and they would look
Speaker 3: for medications that said beware, this could cause abortions. That's
Speaker 3: that's one of the ways this all started. One of
Speaker 3: those was mister prostal that medication I mentioned, that's a
Speaker 3: prostaglandin Again, prostal glands do a lot of things. I'm
Speaker 3: a gi doctor by trade, and you know from my perspective,
Speaker 3: they're also used for treatment of ulcers, not really something
Speaker 3: we go to that much or anymore, but there are
Speaker 3: other uses for it. And so they found that it
Speaker 3: could cause these contractions of the uterus and they would
Speaker 3: use it there for that purpose. The French were actually
Speaker 3: the ones that worked on mifiprostone or RU four eighty six,
Speaker 3: and that's the one that blocks the progesterone and stops
Speaker 3: the pregnancy from progressing. So the background, I think is
Speaker 3: really interesting and how far it's come during this time.
Speaker 3: You know, how it started when our use here, to
Speaker 3: how it changed during COVID, I think is a really
Speaker 3: fascinating thing. And where we're at now with these medications.
Speaker 3: I can't we're gonna talk about it. I'm sorry, I
Speaker 3: don't want to jump ahead, but I'm just so I'm
Speaker 3: so upset, And I know I should be at this
Speaker 3: point in my life much more used to like these
Speaker 3: weirdly cynical bs moves of a Republican judge or whatever
Speaker 3: promoting this as being a safety issue. I know I
Speaker 3: shouldn't be surprised and upset by it, but I am.
Speaker 3: And that's the part that really bothers me right now
Speaker 3: is the argument they're using against it is so bullshit
Speaker 3: and cynical that.
Speaker 4: And again I don't think enough people are talking about it.
Speaker 2: No, it is like I'm the same way, like I
Speaker 2: should be, a lot of my work has been border reporting,
Speaker 2: and like I should by now be Like, no, I shouldn't,
Speaker 2: because those people are fucking terrible. Like there's a group
Speaker 2: of journalists who just seem to have lost their capacity
Speaker 2: to care for other human being and can report on
Speaker 2: human suffering without taking any toll on their on their
Speaker 2: personal mental health, and they congregate on various Facebook groups
Speaker 2: and in bars and expensive hotels all around the world.
Speaker 2: And I don't like that. But like, similarly, a number
Speaker 2: of contive conservatives around word, like anti immigration States used
Speaker 2: Title forty two. They soon to keep Title forty two right,
Speaker 2: citing the risk of COVID nineteen from migrants crossing our borders.
Speaker 2: And these are the same fucking people who have been like,
Speaker 2: we don't want to wear masks, we shouldn't have vaccine mandates,
Speaker 2: Like yeah, it is infuriating that they can't just be like, yeah,
Speaker 2: I don't think you should have the right to bodily autonomy,
Speaker 2: and I don't care how I get there, so I'm
Speaker 2: just going to use this troll ass methodology.
Speaker 3: It bothers me that there were doctors involved in this case,
Speaker 3: the court case, and it does bother me that there
Speaker 3: are doctors that are fighting this. I mean, I get
Speaker 3: it if not every doctor wants to do an abortion,
Speaker 3: I totally understand that. But to not stand for a
Speaker 3: woman's autonomy over her own body is the part that
Speaker 3: I can't get. I mean, it's like it's I'm not
Speaker 3: an ethicist by any means, but that's like the bare
Speaker 3: minimum is like you're supposed to believe in someone's autonomy
Speaker 3: over themselves, and the fact that it's being removed piece
Speaker 3: by piece it should be bothering doctors who are who
Speaker 3: are supposed to be following ethics, you know what I
Speaker 3: mean it.
Speaker 4: So I'm also a little bit from that end.
Speaker 3: I'm mad at our own I'm mad at our own people.
Speaker 3: I'm mad at doctors and I and I am on
Speaker 3: my little echo chamber in Twitter, where there's lots of
Speaker 3: doctors who feel the same way I do, and I
Speaker 3: hear from them, but I know that it's kind.
Speaker 4: Of there alone. I'm not hearing it from other doctors
Speaker 4: out in the real world, you know, and not enough
Speaker 4: at least.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we should explain a little bit that like the
Speaker 2: original case, the complainants were doctors, right, who were claiming
Speaker 2: that they were having to treat complications that arose from
Speaker 2: medication abortion. Is that right?
Speaker 4: Yeah, they're a part of it.
Speaker 3: I don't know how big a part of it, or
Speaker 3: if they're just used because they're Like a lot of
Speaker 3: times people for good or bad reasons, will bring a
Speaker 3: doctor out in a white coat at like a press conference,
Speaker 3: which is like, you know, like we're just wearing white
Speaker 3: coats all the time, you know, and just the sand
Speaker 3: in the background and sort of add some sort of
Speaker 3: weight to the argument. And so I don't know how
Speaker 3: much of it was that in this situation, but I mean,
Speaker 3: the argument that they're making that these medications are not
Speaker 3: safe just it's a silly argument. I mean, we know
Speaker 3: that the mortality rate for medical abortion is less dramatically
Speaker 3: than the mortality rate for childbirth. And that changes too
Speaker 3: depending on if you're like a white woman in a
Speaker 3: wealthy neighborhood or a black woman. There's different mortality rates,
Speaker 3: but pretty much across the board it's going to be safer.
Speaker 3: I mean, the chance so a serious complication is there.
Speaker 3: It can happen any medication. It can happen penicillin, it
Speaker 3: can happen higher rates. By the way viagra.
Speaker 4: Viagra came out, there was the first year it came out,
Speaker 4: there was about five hundred and fifty deaths from viagra.
Speaker 3: We granted the cardiovascular problems patients had, whatever, but still
Speaker 3: there was It's not without risk. You don't see any
Speaker 3: judge from Texas you know, coming out to talk about
Speaker 3: viagra being an issue.
Speaker 2: No, I think you're right to highlight that, like being
Speaker 2: pregnant is also a risk, and much greater risk in
Speaker 2: many cases, especially like you said, because of these different
Speaker 2: intersectional things which can make it a greater risk for
Speaker 2: some people. So I would love to talk about why
Speaker 2: these became more popular's the wrong way, but maybe more
Speaker 2: widely used to facilitate abortions during coviduse. That's super interesting.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So the long and the short of it is
Speaker 3: when they first started doing these tests, I'm sorry, when
Speaker 3: they first started doing these medication abortions, there was a
Speaker 3: bit of a process that had to go into it,
Speaker 3: Like doctors were worried. I mean, we're always conservative. Doctors
Speaker 3: are always conservative. We always start with like probably more
Speaker 3: than it's absolutely necessary, and then over time we do
Speaker 3: enough research, we get enough like evidence behind us that
Speaker 3: we can peel back parts of it. So when it
Speaker 3: first started, you know, people wanted ultrasounds, lab tests make
Speaker 3: sure that they weren't people weren't mnemic or didn't have
Speaker 3: a risk of bleeding. They wanted to make sure the
Speaker 3: livers were okay, labs are probably weren't totally necessary. The
Speaker 3: ultrasound I think scared people a lot or people really
Speaker 3: wanted there always be an ultraound just to make sure
Speaker 3: there wasn't like an ectopic pregnancy or a pregnancy or
Speaker 3: it doesn't occur where it's supposed to outside of where
Speaker 3: we expected to and those can be dangerous. And if
Speaker 3: you do take these medications, you know, obviously you're going
Speaker 3: to be a bit more of a risk if you don't.
Speaker 3: If you don't know, that's an ectopic pregnancy. So there
Speaker 3: was a lot of a lot of things that people
Speaker 3: had to do back then. Then then started to peel
Speaker 3: away slowly, like doctors might were starting to be like,
Speaker 3: all right, do I really need to get liver tests
Speaker 3: if I'm going to give this patient a medicational abortion. Uh,
Speaker 3: And those tests started to peel off slowly. And then
Speaker 3: when COVID happened, basically people weren't able to go to
Speaker 3: the doctor as much or as easily. There weren't doctor
Speaker 3: offices that were open. It was harder for people to
Speaker 3: get to in the beginning, you know, and it only
Speaker 3: got harder with COVID. So the ACLU actually sued the
Speaker 3: FDA and they actually won and through that the women
Speaker 3: did have to come in anymore for these They could
Speaker 3: all be done via like teleconference or a video chat basically.
Speaker 4: Okay, so which is a big game changer.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that makes it much easier. And so
Speaker 2: it used to be the case at least, so you
Speaker 2: could get these things in the mail, right particably after
Speaker 2: some kind of teleconference or video chat. Is that still
Speaker 2: the Is that still the case in states where there
Speaker 2: isn't like the strictest kind of abortion ban or is
Speaker 2: it universal?
Speaker 3: No, it's my understanding it's still, as of now possible.
Speaker 3: It's still available. You're supposed to be able to do it.
Speaker 3: I think we're going to find that it's becoming more difficult.
Speaker 3: We're already seeing cases. I mean they've been highlighted on
Speaker 3: social media. How often they're happening now, I don't know,
Speaker 3: but there we see cases now of you know, a
Speaker 3: pharmacist not fulfilling medical abortion pills. And in the comments
Speaker 3: section when you look at why why not, they're saying
Speaker 3: because is now banned by a federal judge.
Speaker 4: So, I mean it's not true it was.
Speaker 3: The Supreme Court has you know, has okayed it for now,
Speaker 3: I mean for now it's still okay and allowed, but
Speaker 3: there's gonna be enough confusion about it. There's going to
Speaker 3: be enough worry about it that people are going to
Speaker 3: have a harder time doing it, getting it or.
Speaker 4: Even finding you know, people that are willing to do it.
Speaker 3: At this point, there's probably a lot of concern from
Speaker 3: patients and medical providers. So, you know, even though it
Speaker 3: is technically still allowed, I mean, I don't know how
Speaker 3: for how long you know, I am worried.
Speaker 4: And also I.
Speaker 3: Don't know if this is really hindered you know, people
Speaker 3: being able to access this, and I think it probably is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it certainly hasn't made it smoother, as you said,
Speaker 2: right that it it only takes you know, one person
Speaker 2: to have delay of a number of weeks or whatever,
Speaker 2: and it might not be an option or it might
Speaker 2: not be as safe. And how do you know how
Speaker 2: long how far along these these medical medication abortions are
Speaker 2: like generally advised, you.
Speaker 3: Know, the medicational abortions are considered safe in the second
Speaker 3: and I think even parts of the third trimester, but
Speaker 3: generally after the first trimester is when it's it's considered
Speaker 3: a little bit more dangerous and most medical professional would
Speaker 3: want you to come in to have it done.
Speaker 4: So, I mean that's my understanding.
Speaker 3: I'm not obigian, I should make that clear, but I
Speaker 3: think for for the most part, within the first trimester,
Speaker 3: people generally consider that's something that's manageable at home. Outside
Speaker 3: of that, I think you're probably more likely to have
Speaker 3: the medical professional want you to come in and see them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that makes sense, and in some states it's going
Speaker 2: to be a lot harder, if not impossible, or countries
Speaker 2: like I know, for instance, I've come across groups in
Speaker 2: Myanmar were distributing these drugs. Abortion has been illegal, they're
Speaker 2: more or less for since British colonial rule. I think
Speaker 2: it was United as a as a sort of state,
Speaker 2: not really a nation. The it's been a it's been illegal.
Speaker 2: They've sort of made some moves towards it being less illegal,
Speaker 2: and then obviously with the with the coup, it's it's
Speaker 2: become more illegal again, and people there have been It
Speaker 2: was a website up in in twenty twenty one about
Speaker 2: how they facilitated mutual aid distribution of it, which I
Speaker 2: found super interesting. And then at some point they obviously
Speaker 2: that must have got them some heat and they took
Speaker 2: it down, but it's used all over the world in
Speaker 2: places where people don't have access to care, right alongside
Speaker 2: being used here where people may or may not have
Speaker 2: access to care, which is pretty fucked up.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it's funny that, like, you know, we're
Speaker 3: comparing ourselves. I mean, it's you would think twenty twenty three,
Speaker 3: we wouldn't be, you know, looking to other countries to
Speaker 3: guide us at this point. You would hopefully we would
Speaker 3: have figured this out by ourselves after everything. But yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean it's funny. You look at the historical you
Speaker 3: look at it from a global perspective, it is interesting.
Speaker 4: It's really a global effort to.
Speaker 3: Try and get these medications out to people. One of
Speaker 3: the major major companies that sends these pills and mails
Speaker 3: these pills is in Europe, and they try to to
Speaker 3: other countries. It is sort of a global effort at
Speaker 3: this point to try it, which is kind of cool.
Speaker 3: That's one good thing about this. It shows you that
Speaker 3: most of the world seems to be on board with this,
Speaker 3: whether or not governments are or not. You know, I
Speaker 3: hear eighty percent here in the United States is it's
Speaker 3: for it. I mean, I think that sounds about right,
Speaker 3: you know, and the fact that there's so many people
Speaker 3: in the country and then the world trying to figure
Speaker 3: out ways to get these medications to people. That's one,
Speaker 3: I guess, sort of reaffirming thing about this.
Speaker 2: It's impressive to see people just doing ground streets to
Speaker 2: meet too laid. One thing that was very popular around
Speaker 2: the time of the Adobe's decision. A lot of people
Speaker 2: were sharing these videos on do it yourself abortion pills
Speaker 2: or like homemade I think it was misaprosto, it may
Speaker 2: have been both. It may have been Mithipristoine as well. Obviously,
Speaker 2: like this is empowering and like we want people to
Speaker 2: be empowered to extitgings about their own body, but perhaps
Speaker 2: you could explain why, like it's also suboptimal.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, it's it is definitely suboptimal. I mean
Speaker 3: I'm not every time I say something like that, there's
Speaker 3: always some corner of the Internet that's like, well, you're
Speaker 3: a shill for big farm or you're like part of
Speaker 3: the medical industry or whatever, and yeah, sure whatever.
Speaker 4: But I mean it is it's a risk.
Speaker 3: I mean, these medications, like I said, they're safe, but
Speaker 3: they're not without risk. You know, there are things that
Speaker 3: can occur when you have this are contradications to some
Speaker 3: of these medications, like there's contradications to mif aprosta and
Speaker 3: like ectopic pregnancy like I mentioned, and you can get
Speaker 3: that worked up to be evaluated, or you could at
Speaker 3: least have the very basic questionnaire filled out that would
Speaker 3: help at least give you the hint if it's there.
Speaker 3: Chronic adrenal failure, porphyria, inherited porphyria. These are things that
Speaker 3: are that doctors who do this think about and know
Speaker 3: and as part of the process to get these medications,
Speaker 3: even if it's just a questionnaire that you fill out online.
Speaker 4: So there there are risks.
Speaker 3: There are bad things that can happen with these medications,
Speaker 3: as there are with penicillin.
Speaker 4: Like I mentioned.
Speaker 3: I've seen people with, you know, life threatening allergies to
Speaker 3: to penicillin. I've seen people with who have liver failure
Speaker 3: from basic stuff that you know people take all the time,
Speaker 3: like tail and all. So you know, it's it's it
Speaker 3: doesn't make me very nervous, and I like, do it yourself.
Speaker 3: Is I like that that people are trying to find
Speaker 3: ways around it. But and I hope we never get
Speaker 3: to a place where this is that's absolutely necessary. I
Speaker 3: hope you know, but I understand why people are curious
Speaker 3: about it and why you're looking into.
Speaker 4: It and reading about it.
Speaker 3: I obviously I'm not going to ever really promote do
Speaker 3: it yourself medicine to that Farvard degree.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like someone, I use insulin every day, right, and
Speaker 2: people have been making their own insulin. I've seen on
Speaker 2: the internet for for a long time, and I find
Speaker 2: it super fascinating. Incident, also costs fuckle to produce, like
Speaker 2: like a couple of cents, and it costs hundreds of
Speaker 2: dollars to buy. Folks can accuse me of being a
Speaker 2: shell for big Farmer, but I have plenty of publications
Speaker 2: pointing in the other direction.
Speaker 4: You and me both, brother.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, look at us, two guys just rigging in
Speaker 2: the pharma doel.
Speaker 5: That's it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's why I'm recording in this shed provided
Speaker 2: by FISA. No, and yeah, there is. These things are
Speaker 2: not expensive to make, they shouldn't be expensive to buy,
Speaker 2: and they can be had extremely safely. And the things
Speaker 2: that are stopping you from accessing them cheaply and safely
Speaker 2: and easily are politicians and also pharmaceutical companies. Sometimes.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 3: That's the funny thing too, is that you think for
Speaker 3: like these right wing are always talking about like relaxing
Speaker 3: regulations and whatever. It's like, I wonder if they recognize
Speaker 3: that on some level, what this is doing is it's
Speaker 3: just going to impinge on you know, quote unquote innovation
Speaker 3: in pharma. Like if you're a farm company and you're
Speaker 3: thinking about some medication that could be used for this,
Speaker 3: or you're thinking about creating a new medication for something
Speaker 3: that could in the slightest way be deemed inappropriate by
Speaker 3: some judge somewhere, and then if they're making the decision,
Speaker 3: not the FDA, Like if you're a farm industry, you
Speaker 3: may be like, it screwed. I'm not going to worry
Speaker 3: about that medication at all, you know, nothing else.
Speaker 4: This is going to cut back on innovation in pharmacy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And like anything with a contry indication for being
Speaker 2: pregnant would be vulnerable to this. Right, we should probably
Speaker 2: explain that the use of myth of pristone as an
Speaker 2: abortion drug was approved by the FDA in an expedited process, right,
Speaker 2: and that was what was being challenged. Can you explain
Speaker 2: why although it's faster that doesn't mean it's any less thorough.
Speaker 2: In my understanding, I might be wrong. The FDA went like, yeah,
Speaker 2: fuck it, let's give it a try and see what happens.
Speaker 3: No, I mean it's a very good question. I mean
Speaker 3: we do have safety data behind it. So again, you're
Speaker 3: exactly right. This is not done in a vacuum. It's
Speaker 3: not done haphazardly. I mean there is there still always
Speaker 3: is a pretty strict process.
Speaker 4: To go through for these medications.
Speaker 3: It kind of it's the same thing that we had
Speaker 3: to deal with with operation warp speed one of the
Speaker 3: worst names or a very important medical advancement. So, you know,
Speaker 3: people like, how can these things be safe? It's happened
Speaker 3: so quickly, and it's not really true. I mean, there
Speaker 3: is years of research behind all these things. There's years
Speaker 3: of research behind it. There was a study from the
Speaker 3: Newly Journal of Medicine about the safety of these abortion pills.
Speaker 3: It had been studied worldwide and been looked at for
Speaker 3: a while. You know, because abortion is so common and
Speaker 3: there are so many of so many done that it
Speaker 3: makes it easier to see the results. It makes it
Speaker 3: easier to see the numbers. Part of the reason we
Speaker 3: were able to follow COVID so well and get information
Speaker 3: so quickly. Was because it was everywhere, and when it's everywhere,
Speaker 3: it does raise the numbers. It makes it easier to
Speaker 3: get people enrolled in the study, it makes it easier
Speaker 3: to make a study happen. So that's kind of what
Speaker 3: was happening here. This is something that was there wasn't
Speaker 3: a lot of question about. Again, are there risks to
Speaker 3: the medication. Absolutely, there's risks to every single medication that
Speaker 3: you get. I mean, I've heard toxicologists say that if
Speaker 3: Thailand all had to go through the same vetting process
Speaker 3: that we have medications go through today, that talanol wouldn't
Speaker 3: make the cut.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: And as a liver specialist to myself, I can attest
Speaker 3: to that. I mean, how talanell is a great medication
Speaker 3: if it's used, but I've also seen it cause a
Speaker 3: lot of liver failure. It's a very common cause of it.
Speaker 3: So there's there's a pretty strict and there always is
Speaker 3: a pretty strict method to the FDA when it comes
Speaker 3: to this sort of thing.
Speaker 2: It's not done haphazardly, right, and I think most of
Speaker 2: the people attacking it and not attacking it from a
Speaker 2: place of deep concern for the health of people who
Speaker 2: can get pregnant. It's quite the opposite. It's an attempt
Speaker 2: to control people's bodies, right, right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they're not. These are the same people.
Speaker 3: They're not concerned about the fact that the mortality rate
Speaker 3: in like African American women who are pregnant is so
Speaker 3: much higher.
Speaker 4: They'll never hear them talk about that.
Speaker 3: They don't give a damn, unless, of course, they want
Speaker 3: to somehow cynically tie this into like racism or something.
Speaker 3: They'll find a way to twist it in this weird
Speaker 3: way to be like, yes, you see Livprostone is racist
Speaker 3: or something, you know, so I yeah, yeah, sorry.
Speaker 2: No, Yeah, it's cynical and asinine, empathetic, but sadly like
Speaker 2: it's also the reality. Yeah, I wonder, like, obviously none
Speaker 2: of us can see the future. And we've talked about
Speaker 2: how mister prostal can be used on its own if
Speaker 2: I'm not mistaken, right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's not as good, it's not as good if
Speaker 4: it's used together.
Speaker 2: But yeah, do you foresee a world where like that
Speaker 2: is targeted next?
Speaker 7: Yeah?
Speaker 3: I mean, if they're really serious about that, they're going
Speaker 3: to try. I mean, I think at the end of
Speaker 3: the day. We can keep zelots out of the Supreme
Speaker 3: Court somehow.
Speaker 2: Get a while before we get another crack at that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, then I think we should be okay, because I mean,
Speaker 3: it's it's a bad argument. The argument doesn't really hold up.
Speaker 3: I mean, some judge interpreting the medical data with or
Speaker 3: without the help of some you know, quasi scientific group
Speaker 3: of like pro life doctors. It's just not going to
Speaker 3: hold up to what the FDA has done and has
Speaker 3: to go through. So I don't I don't know, I
Speaker 3: don't know. I want to say, I really want to say,
Speaker 3: I don't think it's going to be an issue, but
Speaker 3: I can't guarantee it because the fact that you know,
Speaker 3: this is such a relatively safe drug and it's been
Speaker 3: called the question, I mean, it's pretty brazen. I think
Speaker 3: that they're doing this and well they do it against
Speaker 3: other medications. Yeah, probably well win though I hope not.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I think this is setting they're setting basically
Speaker 3: a roadmap for this to be done again and again
Speaker 3: for medications they don't like.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and those are all going the medications they that
Speaker 2: like are all going to affect a certain group of people, right, Like,
Speaker 2: that's right, that's just that seems to be the sort
Speaker 2: of target group and for like you said, a very
Speaker 2: small percentage of the of the population who are just
Speaker 2: on their culture or bullshit and don't really care how
Speaker 2: this affects thousands of people's lives. Obviously, Like folks are
Speaker 2: also facing like they can't access gender firming care and
Speaker 2: lots of places, right, this is the other massive area
Speaker 2: of healthcare that Republicans seem to be very willing to
Speaker 2: ignore the some Democrats ignore the evidence on it and
Speaker 2: just attack people for culture war reasons. And I know
Speaker 2: that one thing folks do there is organized mutual aid
Speaker 2: networks to help people access medications that they need for
Speaker 2: their gender firm and care with medications like this is
Speaker 2: it like like you said, there are lots of contraindications
Speaker 2: and it's not always safe, Like are these things that
Speaker 2: people like people will be inclined and get to be like,
Speaker 2: oh shit, maybe I should stock up, maybe I should
Speaker 2: like load my medicine cabinet, and maybe we could discuss that,
Speaker 2: like you said that there are risks that come alongside that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I certainly would understand if I was
Speaker 3: in a position where I thought my bodily autonomy could
Speaker 3: be going away anytime soon. I think I could see
Speaker 3: why someone would stock up on it. I mean, I
Speaker 3: don't know enough about the medication to tell you about
Speaker 3: its shelf life. I know that it is just require
Speaker 3: some special handling, So I don't know if it's the
Speaker 3: kind of thing that you can keep for long periods
Speaker 3: of time. But you know, at that part of it
Speaker 3: was worked out, I certainly don't see. I mean, I
Speaker 3: could see why you'd want it. Again, it comes down
Speaker 3: to the do it yourself nature of it. Now, the
Speaker 3: beauty of this is these what these what we've seen
Speaker 3: with these medications is when we did the COVID, we
Speaker 3: took it when COVID happened, and we kind of took
Speaker 3: it out of the doctor's hands and made it more
Speaker 3: directly to the patient.
Speaker 4: Actually, the outcomes weren't much different. So that seems to
Speaker 4: be a very reaffirming thing. But you know, I still
Speaker 4: I would like for there to be medical involvement in this.
Speaker 4: I would like doctors to be involved in this.
Speaker 8: You know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, perhaps we are progressing towards a place where like
Speaker 2: technology can help with some of that and take way
Speaker 2: the liability from doctors in places where they could face
Speaker 2: a long time in jail.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, that's that's the other thing.
Speaker 3: It's going to be interesting to see how this pans out,
Speaker 3: like from doctors in the future, if there's gonna be
Speaker 3: people still willing to learn these skills, you know, because
Speaker 3: not every abortion can be done, you know, medically, still
Speaker 3: going to be a need for for the the more
Speaker 3: older fashion forms of abortion that's still going to need
Speaker 3: to be done. So, you know, I'm hoping that people
Speaker 3: are still going to be willing to learn from this,
Speaker 3: and if anything, I'm actually hoping that people young medical
Speaker 3: students are more interested to learn from it.
Speaker 4: So we'll see how it goes. Like you know, when
Speaker 4: when COVID.
Speaker 3: First started, there was a huge burst of people interested
Speaker 3: in medical school and going into facious disease. But then
Speaker 3: you know, over time, and and in the ER for
Speaker 3: that matter too, they saw the need for it, They
Speaker 3: saw the call to arms, you know, and it took
Speaker 3: three years of seeing what kind of bullshit ID doctors
Speaker 3: and ER doctors had to deal with before those medical
Speaker 3: school numbers dropped way off and people interested in those fields,
Speaker 3: you know, in fact, er for people trying to go
Speaker 3: into er, they have to go through this full match process,
Speaker 3: which is like a big deal. Like it's a stressful
Speaker 3: thing where you try to get into the best place
Speaker 3: you can. And r has always been a pretty like
Speaker 3: sought after field. It's not the most competitive, but you know,
Speaker 3: there is there is a good amount of competition to
Speaker 3: get into the good places. And this was like the
Speaker 3: first year I remember where there was a ton of
Speaker 3: unfilled spots at good institutions too, So, like you know,
Speaker 3: how I do worry will this be the.
Speaker 4: Same sort of thing.
Speaker 3: Will there be an uptick of people interested in women's
Speaker 3: healthcare and and providing that vital that vital need. I
Speaker 3: think there probably will be, But will it be sustained?
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 3: Will they just give up after seeing how much bullshit
Speaker 3: has thrown their way. It's totally feasible.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, if you're looking, it has to be
Speaker 2: like an idea, Like my sister is an obg wayn
Speaker 2: and like does my sister doesn't live in the United States,
Speaker 2: who doesn't have to deal with any of this bullshit,
Speaker 2: and so like that very much enjoys a job and
Speaker 2: it's very passionate about it. But I can see how
Speaker 2: doing get here. It would have to be almost a
Speaker 2: political idea or your commitment as well, Like you can't
Speaker 2: practice your your your career in half the state. I
Speaker 2: don't even know if you can go to medical school
Speaker 2: in like states where it's banned, And like that's a.
Speaker 4: Really interesting question.
Speaker 3: I wonder if it will affect the medical training in
Speaker 3: medical school. Yeah, in places where that's really interesting and
Speaker 3: scary now that I think about it, it, Yeah, it's
Speaker 3: gonna be.
Speaker 4: It's going to be available for people.
Speaker 3: There's always going to be organizations fighting to do this
Speaker 3: and to get it out there. But how how hard
Speaker 3: it's going to be to find a provider to help
Speaker 3: you with this that in the future. I'm hoping U
Speaker 3: does not become a problem.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, I did all these little sort of It's
Speaker 2: really important, I guess like that folks do whatever they
Speaker 2: can to preserve these rights because generally, like the state
Speaker 2: doesn't give back power that it's able to take from people.
Speaker 2: And this could mean a lot like this, And I'm
Speaker 2: not like trying to conflate fucking having to have a
Speaker 2: vaccine to breathe on someone and and like you know,
Speaker 2: like that is not really attacking your body autonomy, like
Speaker 2: you're attacking someone else's body autonomy if you want to
Speaker 2: give them an effects disease, right, But when it takes
Speaker 2: away things like this, they you know, like like that
Speaker 2: has other consequences. Even if you're not a person who
Speaker 2: can get pregnant and you don't think you're ever going
Speaker 2: to be getting somewhat pregnant, like this should matter to you,
Speaker 2: because your autonomy should matter to you.
Speaker 3: It seems a matter to most of the people in
Speaker 3: the country, So I mean, that's a part of this
Speaker 3: I don't understand. I mean, I guess it's all ideologically driven,
Speaker 3: but because it doesn't seem like a winning proposition if
Speaker 3: you're a politician to do something this unpopular.
Speaker 4: But I don't know much about politics, I suppose.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, what is popular and what wins elections
Speaker 2: in the United States can be vastly disparate things, as
Speaker 2: we've seen, given the system which is deliberately organized to
Speaker 2: befuddle the results of a popular vote.
Speaker 5: Okavit.
Speaker 2: I wonder if there's anything else you wanted to discuss
Speaker 2: around this issue of abortion and bodily autonomy. Obviously it's
Speaker 2: going to be one that plays out massively in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty four.
Speaker 3: But I want to make it clear. I mean, this
Speaker 3: should be pretty evident my stance on it. But I
Speaker 3: do believe abortion is essential and evidence based healthcare.
Speaker 4: It's in that evidence based part of it.
Speaker 3: I think is important to reiterate because we do have
Speaker 3: data on it, we do have data that it is safe,
Speaker 3: we do have data that it's safer than some of
Speaker 3: the other options. And if it's removed as option, we
Speaker 3: are not only taking away, you know, a woman's right
Speaker 3: to attimey over her own body, but we're putting them
Speaker 3: at more health risks potentially for it. And you know,
Speaker 3: I'm not an er doctor, I'm not obi gine, but
Speaker 3: I can guarantee that they're going to have to deal
Speaker 3: with a lot more problems because of this. If that happens,
Speaker 3: They're going to be dealing with a lot more complications
Speaker 3: and difficulties because of it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's one thing I wanted to hit that I
Speaker 2: totally forgot about. I don't want to I don't want
Speaker 2: to phrase this in terms of like people wanting to
Speaker 2: end a pregnancy have any more or less right to
Speaker 2: do so than people needing to end a pregnancy, because
Speaker 2: everyone should have the right to choose what happens to
Speaker 2: their body equally.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but.
Speaker 9: I am.
Speaker 2: I believe I'm right in thinking that many of these
Speaker 2: drugs are relied upon by people who have miscarried or
Speaker 2: have a pregnancy isn't compatible with life, right And.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean the horror stories about women
Speaker 3: that are forced to carry if you know, baby it's
Speaker 3: a term that are not compatible with life, or you know,
Speaker 3: a severe critical illness it's those are horrifying. And these
Speaker 3: are medications that can be done again at home for
Speaker 3: some For some patients it can be done at home,
Speaker 3: which is you know, not great. You know, it's still
Speaker 3: not gonna be maybe a fun process, but it'll be
Speaker 3: a much better process for them, much less traumatic, I
Speaker 3: would hope, you know, than having to to have it
Speaker 3: done later on and in a hospital in a much
Speaker 3: more clinical, cold setting. And we try to make these
Speaker 3: things as good as possible. Our nurses are amazing, and
Speaker 3: our doctors who do this are are compassionate.
Speaker 4: But you know, if someone could do something.
Speaker 3: Safely at home, you know, and it can be done safely,
Speaker 3: I don't see why not.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it can. The dignity and privacy of your own
Speaker 2: sting where you to use your home or you know
Speaker 2: whatever with your family. Then yeah, I suppose being forced
Speaker 2: to carry a baby which isn't compatible with life like
Speaker 2: that's got to really fuck you up. And it's I
Speaker 2: don't know, I don't think people are thinking about what
Speaker 2: they're doing to other people when they make these these
Speaker 2: I don't know, horrible decisions, but yeah, I hope they
Speaker 2: didn't get to keep making them. I guess we can
Speaker 2: all interpret that however we want. Are there any Are
Speaker 2: there any organizations that you'd suggest folks follow get involved with,
Speaker 2: like their groups that are helping to facilitate access to care,
Speaker 2: either where it's difficult or just trying to campaign to
Speaker 2: keep it legal.
Speaker 3: You know, I know there's been a lot of criticisms
Speaker 3: in the past towards its organization from all sides, But
Speaker 3: you know, I've known a lot of people who work
Speaker 3: for Planned Parenthood, and I still think they do good work.
Speaker 4: You know, They're not perfect by any means, and they have.
Speaker 3: Valid criticisms from both from really from from a couple
Speaker 3: of different angle but still, the people I know that
Speaker 3: are working there are aren't doing their best and are
Speaker 3: really want to help.
Speaker 4: And then there are international organizations still.
Speaker 3: That are involved in the abortion making the abortion pill accessible,
Speaker 3: and there's a lot of different ways to get to that.
Speaker 3: I don't have one in particular that I would recommend,
Speaker 3: but the one that I have worked with people that
Speaker 3: I've met in seen and talked to and have learned
Speaker 3: so much from a lot of those people are from
Speaker 3: Plant Parenthood.
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, yeah, And like you said, they have been
Speaker 2: criticized that they've also stepped up to meet like what
Speaker 2: is a pretty terrible situation, and they're building more clinics
Speaker 2: on the borders of states where you don't have the
Speaker 2: right to terminate your pregnancy so that people can travel.
Speaker 2: And yet it's pretty fucked up that that's what we're
Speaker 2: doing now we have the underground railroad for abortion kind
Speaker 2: of thing. But yeah, I mean it takes a big
Speaker 2: organization to deal with the organization that is the state
Speaker 2: or you know, the state of Texas or whatever. It's
Speaker 2: done really well. Is there anything like you'd like to
Speaker 2: plug or do you like to tell people where they
Speaker 2: can find you?
Speaker 3: So I'm available on Twitter at the House of Pod
Speaker 3: if you do Twitter, and you can listen to our podcast,
Speaker 3: The House of Pod it's pretty much everywhere you find
Speaker 3: your podcast, and guests range from like world Expert physicians
Speaker 3: to like Garrison Davis, so like you.
Speaker 4: Know, contrasting those two things. They're an expert of their
Speaker 4: own way.
Speaker 3: And and I'm sure I'll get you on soon enough,
Speaker 3: whether you like it or not.
Speaker 4: And so we get a lot of the different guests.
Speaker 3: The range is pretty wide, and we talk about medical
Speaker 3: related health topics and try to do it in a
Speaker 3: relatively informal way, and so it's I think it's relatively fun.
Speaker 3: It's been really educational for me. I'm really enjoying doing
Speaker 3: it and I get to be cool people like you.
Speaker 3: So it's a good show, I think. But I'm biased
Speaker 3: because it's my show.
Speaker 2: I enjoy it. People should listen. Thank you, Thank you
Speaker 2: very much, Thanks a lot.
Speaker 9: Mate.
Speaker 1: Hey everybody, this is Robert Evans. Welcome to It Could
Speaker 1: Happen Here, a podcast about things falling apart and occasionally
Speaker 1: about how to stop things from falling apart. Today we're
Speaker 1: doing one of those latter episodes. I'm happy to say
Speaker 1: we've actually got kind of something that's overall uplifting to
Speaker 1: talk about. If you are someone who pays much attention
Speaker 1: to the right wing, and particularly to the current right
Speaker 1: wing campaign against LGBT and most particularly transgender people. You
Speaker 1: are aware of a guy named Matt Walsh. He is
Speaker 1: a you might call him a pundit at the Daily
Speaker 1: Wire who has taken it upon himself to become kind
Speaker 1: of one of the central figures in the present campaign
Speaker 1: against trans people, to limit their rights to transition, to
Speaker 1: push laws that criminalize their existing in public spaces. He's
Speaker 1: a real piece of shit on, one of the worst
Speaker 1: people in the country presently, and like all terrible people,
Speaker 1: he has been going around in a series of speeches
Speaker 1: invited generally by local student body republican organizations at universities.
Speaker 1: It's not the only people who invite him to speak,
Speaker 1: but that's what we're talking about today. Oliver Wyline is
Speaker 1: a local community activist who showed up at one of
Speaker 1: these events and who recorded what was happening the reaction
Speaker 1: to Matt Walsh being invited to speak at a college
Speaker 1: in Iowa City. And yeah, Oliver, welcome to the program.
Speaker 4: First off, Yeah, thank you so much for having me on.
Speaker 1: And yeah, I just kind of wanted you to start with,
Speaker 1: how did you become aware of what was happening and decide,
Speaker 1: you know, to show up and do what you did,
Speaker 1: because I became aware of you just reading your thread,
Speaker 1: which was a mix of you know, Twitter uh posts
Speaker 1: on what was happening in some videos of what had
Speaker 1: been happening on the ground.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 10: So I am a towney here in Iowa City. I'm
Speaker 10: not a student, but I have you know, I'm very
Speaker 10: close both physically and you know, just personally with lots
Speaker 10: of activists on campus at Iowa City, lots of young activists,
Speaker 10: particularly organizations like the y DSA. They have a couple
Speaker 10: immigrants rights associations, some lgbt q IA associations and everything.
Speaker 10: So when this was made public that the YAF the
Speaker 10: Young Americans Foundation, that's what it stands for, right I think.
Speaker 10: But they announced that Matt Wall was indeed going to
Speaker 10: be speaking in April, and of course, you know, lots
Speaker 10: of people just started sending me things like Wow, I
Speaker 10: can't believe these motherfuckers are bringing Matt Walsh out of everybody,
Speaker 10: even though it wasn't very surprising because they love to
Speaker 10: have the YAF here loves to bring people to speak
Speaker 10: that are objectively terrible people. They just recently had al
Speaker 10: Alan West.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, I'm sure you know all about him.
Speaker 1: Oh no, yeah, he's yeah, yeah, playing the hits with
Speaker 1: Alan Dubbs.
Speaker 11: Yep.
Speaker 10: So yeah, the reaction was, you know, just kind of
Speaker 10: like a general we should do something about this, that
Speaker 10: Matt Walsh has come to campus or is going to
Speaker 10: come to campus. So you know, there was lots of
Speaker 10: flying campaigns, lots of calls online. There is a petition
Speaker 10: circulating trying to get the university to not allow Matt
Speaker 10: Walsh on campus. But here in Iowa, the board of
Speaker 10: regents is all just appointed by a Republican governor, Kim Reynolds,
Speaker 10: so you know, there's no way that they would do that.
Speaker 10: And yeah, so that's how everybody found out about it.
Speaker 10: And you know, it was just a lot of the
Speaker 10: YAF would put up flyers and then they would instantly
Speaker 10: get torn down and they would cry about it. Yeah,
Speaker 10: that was a lot of the build up to this event.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's how I knew.
Speaker 1: And one of the things, I mean, the thing that
Speaker 1: because obviously there are different right wing shitheads speaking in
Speaker 1: various places and protests against them, you know every day
Speaker 1: that go a variety of ways.
Speaker 8: One of the.
Speaker 1: Reasons I was interested in what you had to say
Speaker 1: and I think that this is a worthwhile one to
Speaker 1: talk to people about. Is that I think the Young
Speaker 1: America's Americans Foundation kids who invited him wound up demoralized
Speaker 1: at the end of this. That was my take on this.
Speaker 1: This is not an event that seems to have gone
Speaker 1: well to them. So I want you to walk through
Speaker 1: kind of what happened that night, both in terms of
Speaker 1: what you saw from the folks showing up to see
Speaker 1: Walsh and what you saw kind of from the response
Speaker 1: to him.
Speaker 10: Yeah, I would say it's a fair assumption that the
Speaker 10: YAF people were demoralized after this. So the protests, it
Speaker 10: was last Wednesday, the nineteenth, and the protest was very
Speaker 10: you know, there was no leader. It was very decentralized,
Speaker 10: you know, just lots of people showing up and instantly
Speaker 10: when everybody showed up, like at four o'clock, when the
Speaker 10: documentary was showing before Matt Walsh was going to speak
Speaker 10: his you know, shitty documentary What Is a Woman showed beforehand. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 10: it was like a joyous occasion almost People just were
Speaker 10: trickling in on the park right across the street. From
Speaker 10: the IMU and more and more people, just hundreds of
Speaker 10: people came, you know, not just students, but like people
Speaker 10: from Iowa City and Cedar Rapids and you know, just
Speaker 10: eastern Iowa in general that were just like, we do
Speaker 10: not you know, we're feeling really bad that this absolute
Speaker 10: fucking shithead is in our state right now. You know,
Speaker 10: the air smells bad, so we got you know, yeah,
Speaker 10: So it was it was very joyous, and then people
Speaker 10: were like, Okay, the documentary is about to get out.
Speaker 10: And the way this event was set up was the
Speaker 10: documentary was being shown in a theater that's in the IMU,
Speaker 10: the Memorial Union, just a student hangout spot basically, and
Speaker 10: then all the people that were in the documentary were
Speaker 10: going to then file into the main lounge whereas where
Speaker 10: he was speaking. And so when the documentary got let out,
Speaker 10: all the activists or just the people that came to
Speaker 10: protest him, we're just like, all right, we're going inside.
Speaker 10: You know, We're not we're not gonna, you know, just
Speaker 10: stand out here. You know, We're going to make sure
Speaker 10: that they know every second that this is bullshit that
Speaker 10: you came to see this guy speak, and especially in
Speaker 10: Iowa city. This isn't going to fly, you know, without
Speaker 10: some type of resistance. So everybody that lined up for
Speaker 10: the Matt Walsh speaking event and who came out of
Speaker 10: the theater after watching his documentary had to wait in
Speaker 10: line and be screamed at by protesters for like an
Speaker 10: hour at least. And it was so funny just these people,
Speaker 10: like they started out at first, you know, for a
Speaker 10: few minutes being like haha, look at all these triggered libs.
Speaker 10: But then after like twenty minutes they were just kind
Speaker 10: of like thousand yards staring, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, that's really interesting to me because obviously, like
Speaker 1: one of the particularly with the younger right right, you know,
Speaker 1: I think there is sort of a dividing line, both
Speaker 1: in my head and in physical behavior between kind of
Speaker 1: like older and maybe even less radical Republicans who are
Speaker 1: really tied to this idea of the silent and get
Speaker 1: a degree of emotional comfort from the idea that most
Speaker 1: people do think like them, they just don't want to
Speaker 1: talk about it. And then there's sort of not an
Speaker 1: entirely separate, but certainly much more common attitude among the
Speaker 1: younger right wing activists, people who were raised online in
Speaker 1: places like four Chan about the where a lot of
Speaker 1: their focus is on the joy of triggering the left,
Speaker 1: which they see as like controlling the culture to a
Speaker 1: large degree. And so it's interesting to me, you know,
Speaker 1: that's something that these people like to talk about a lot.
Speaker 1: They like to at least portray themselves as sort of
Speaker 1: above caring, but very few people are capable of like
Speaker 1: just being screamed at by a crowd of people and
Speaker 1: not feeling shitty after a while. That makes a lot
Speaker 1: of sense to me.
Speaker 10: Yeah, I mean it was definitely breaking through to a
Speaker 10: lot of them, I could tell, And I even heard
Speaker 10: some conversations amongst them, like very taken aback and like
Speaker 10: in shock, you know, like voice shaking when talking about it,
Speaker 10: just like why are they doing this? You know, I
Speaker 10: mean like putting two and two together. Like it was
Speaker 10: very fascinating to hear to eavesdrop on these conversations, and
Speaker 10: it was a lot of that, and it was also well,
Speaker 10: one thing that happened is I don't know if they
Speaker 10: oversold tickets or just didn't track like how many people
Speaker 10: were going to be there, but half of the people
Speaker 10: that showed up to see Matt Walsh, I would estimate
Speaker 10: about half half of them were not able.
Speaker 4: To go see him.
Speaker 10: They were told they were keeping track of how many
Speaker 10: people were going into the main lounge, and then just
Speaker 10: randomly they were just like, all right, that's it. You know,
Speaker 10: the cops there and the staff and the Matt Walsh's
Speaker 10: private security, which I will say there was more private security,
Speaker 10: or there was more security there in general than when
Speaker 10: Mike Pence spoke at the exact same place, at.
Speaker 1: Least obvious security with Pench.
Speaker 4: More obviously more obvious security.
Speaker 10: Yeah, and you know they had bomb snipping dogs and everything.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, interesting, yep. Do you know how full the
Speaker 1: actual theater was.
Speaker 4: The YAF claims seven hundred.
Speaker 1: People, and what's capacity for them, I.
Speaker 10: Don't exactly know, but they said that seven hundred people
Speaker 10: were able to see Matt Walsh. And then so I
Speaker 10: would say more people came to see Matt Walsh, like
Speaker 10: maybe a thousand or something. That's another number that the
Speaker 10: YAF threw out there. Yeah, but I would say there
Speaker 10: was at least an equal amount of protesters there at
Speaker 10: its peak too. And I will also say that there
Speaker 10: were people keeping track of the cars leaving when they
Speaker 10: were able to leave, and there was a considerable amount
Speaker 10: of out of state plates and out of county plates.
Speaker 10: People traveled pretty far to see Matt wallsh speak is
Speaker 10: kind of and there were people that showed up that,
Speaker 10: you know, the right wing weird was that I know
Speaker 10: that live in Des Moines, which is like two hours away,
Speaker 10: and even some in Omaha that came that I recognized personally. So, yeah,
Speaker 10: people came pretty far for this, and a bunch of
Speaker 10: those people that came pretty far were not able to
Speaker 10: see Matt Wall speak, and they were extremely pissed. And
Speaker 10: so I was watching a lot of these people yell
Speaker 10: at staff and trying to bargain with police officers like
Speaker 10: come on, we drove, like let us in and everything.
Speaker 10: The cops were just not having it, and so the
Speaker 10: mood turned pretty angry.
Speaker 12: At that point.
Speaker 1: I would say, I'm interested in sort of are you
Speaker 1: aware kind of like who was organizing the counter response
Speaker 1: and how that was. People were like informed that there
Speaker 1: was going to be something, because you know, it's it's
Speaker 1: not usually a simple matter to get that folks. Many
Speaker 1: folks to show up around one thousand for a counter protest.
Speaker 10: Yeah, I think mainly there were multiple student orgs. I
Speaker 10: think I named them a little bit earlier that you know,
Speaker 10: there was the Graduates Union, a Coggs Union, a graduate
Speaker 10: students union. They put out a statement inviting you know,
Speaker 10: not only their members to come, but everybody to come.
Speaker 4: They do a lot of good work around the university.
Speaker 10: The why dssay the Young Democratic Socialists of America. They
Speaker 10: have a chapter here and they were organizing. They did
Speaker 10: heavy flyering campaigns around town, not just campus, but around
Speaker 10: Iowa City itself. And on top of that, I would
Speaker 10: say just sharing liars and word of mouth like on
Speaker 10: the internet too. People know that Matt Walsh is kind
Speaker 10: of public enemy number one when it comes to the
Speaker 10: LGBTQ community, specifically the trans communities. So I think a
Speaker 10: lot of people were just extremely pissed that he was
Speaker 10: here in this town.
Speaker 4: In Iowa City.
Speaker 10: People call Iowa City a gayer town than San Francisco.
Speaker 10: Have referred to Iowa City as that.
Speaker 1: I don't know, if high bar it is San Francisco
Speaker 1: is a very gay town.
Speaker 10: Yeah, well if you Iowa City people call it little
Speaker 10: San Francisco for that reason.
Speaker 1: That's sweet. I don't think I've actually been to Iowa City.
Speaker 10: Yeah, I mean it is definitely the place in Iowa
Speaker 10: where it is, you know, eastern Iowa. It's considered the
Speaker 10: lib part of Iowa, but specifically Iowa City. People call
Speaker 10: it the People's Republic of Iowa City because like the
Speaker 10: right wingers think it's so left wing here, but in
Speaker 10: reality it's our city council is run by like Pete
Speaker 10: Boota Judge supporters, but you know, to them, that's communism. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 10: So I think just the spirit of Iowa City in general,
Speaker 10: like everybody was just pissed that this guy was coming
Speaker 10: to town, and everybody found out one way or another,
Speaker 10: and yeah, people showed up and showed out for sure.
Speaker 1: When it comes to like, uh kind of confrontations and stuff,
Speaker 1: how would you describe sort of the uh, the general
Speaker 1: mood towards that sort of behavior outside Like, was this
Speaker 1: the kind of thing where there was there uh action
Speaker 1: sort of taken beyond like the yelling, or was it
Speaker 1: kind of like, uh, mostly focused on demoralization and providing
Speaker 1: kind of a visual show of how much resistance there
Speaker 1: is to Walsh in his ideas well.
Speaker 10: After a lot of them were denied entry, I think
Speaker 10: a lot of them were extremely pissed off. And at
Speaker 10: that point I saw a bunch of old like, not
Speaker 10: a bunch, I would say, a handful of almost scuffles
Speaker 10: breaking out. The couple I saw were definitely the fault
Speaker 10: and instigated by Matt Walsh attendees, because you know, they
Speaker 10: probably drove really far and weren't able to get in.
Speaker 10: And now you've got all these people with trans flags
Speaker 10: screaming at you and calling you a Nazi and a
Speaker 10: fascist and that you're a piece of shit, you know.
Speaker 5: And so.
Speaker 10: But there was a lot of people and a lot
Speaker 10: of cops that were really, really really wanting to make
Speaker 10: sure that that didn't happen. So after these people weren't
Speaker 10: allowed in, they were being escorted towards the back entrance
Speaker 10: where they came in. And so they all went back
Speaker 10: towards the back entrance, and that is when somebody or
Speaker 10: some people I didn't see it, I only heard it
Speaker 10: dumped thousands and thousands of marbles by that exit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was my favorite thing that I saw on
Speaker 1: your thread.
Speaker 10: Yeah, So then the cops were like, well, shit, sorry, guys,
Speaker 10: you can't come this way, So you have to go
Speaker 10: back through the gauntlet of screaming protesters to get out.
Speaker 5: I love that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, area denial, taking a ya area denial and also
Speaker 1: kind of rerouting them from an area that's going to
Speaker 1: force them to confront the least pleasant aspect of it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's very smart exactly.
Speaker 10: And then even after that, lots of people were going
Speaker 10: to like the way the imus set up. There's a
Speaker 10: park by it, and there's also a parking garage right
Speaker 10: across the street from it, and there's a one way
Speaker 10: out of the parking garage, so there's one way out
Speaker 10: if you parked in the parking garage. And towards the
Speaker 10: end of his talk and when everybody was filing out
Speaker 10: of the Matt Walsh event, protesters had completely taken over
Speaker 10: that street. So there was no way any of these
Speaker 10: people were getting out. They just kind of like came
Speaker 10: out in a giant like horde of people. And then
Speaker 10: they slowly started realizing, you know, since all these people
Speaker 10: were blocking the street and there is a pet band
Speaker 10: in the middle of the street playing you know, yea,
Speaker 10: they were starting to understand that, oh shit, we're not
Speaker 10: going to be able to leave. So a lot of
Speaker 10: them were really mad about that, and they started going
Speaker 10: up to police officers and staff saying like, you got
Speaker 10: to get these people out of here.
Speaker 4: I'm trying to leave, you.
Speaker 10: Know, and the cops there was only like outside, I
Speaker 10: would say, there was only like seven police officers and
Speaker 10: there is no way. Like the cops tried to get
Speaker 10: people to move out of the street. They even put
Speaker 10: their hands on some people to try to move them,
Speaker 10: but then forty more people would just get in the street,
Speaker 10: and so they realized that that wasn't going to happen.
Speaker 10: So after going through a gauntlet of protesters and stepping
Speaker 10: over marbles, you know, these people are then also not
Speaker 10: able to leave the event when they want to, and
Speaker 10: I would say the road was blocked probably for like
Speaker 10: an hour hour fifteen minutes until the police were finally
Speaker 10: able to kind of like wedge a way out for
Speaker 10: these people. And that's when one confrontation that I know
Speaker 10: happened where one of the Matt Walsh attendees started shining
Speaker 10: a strobe light in people's faces and someone put a
Speaker 10: sign in front of it to stop them from doing that,
Speaker 10: and then that person grabbed the other person and there
Speaker 10: was kind of a fight that happened, But that was
Speaker 10: the only physical confrontation that I saw the entire night,
Speaker 10: besides cops putting their hands on protesters trying to get
Speaker 10: them out of the street at one point.
Speaker 1: So what would you say, we're kind of the main
Speaker 1: takeaways from this for people. You know, this is going
Speaker 1: to continue to be a thing if folks are looking
Speaker 1: at participating in or organizing responses to events like this
Speaker 1: in the future. What were your kind of big takeaways.
Speaker 1: My takeaways is that marbles obviously great idea. Marbles, Yes,
Speaker 1: marbles are a great idea, you know, But also what
Speaker 1: I think is kind of worth taking from that is
Speaker 1: that like it's not enough. We often see this when
Speaker 1: like different tactics go viral. Don't like do the cargo
Speaker 1: cult version of it? Right, The reason why the marbles
Speaker 1: were effective wasn't just that like it made an exit inaccessible.
Speaker 1: It's that because it made it was in a situation
Speaker 1: where it rerouted people back through that screaming gauntlet of
Speaker 1: counter protesters, which was demoralizing. So strategy is also like
Speaker 1: worth taking into account when you're adopting new tactics.
Speaker 10: Yeah, certainly, And from how it seemed to me is
Speaker 10: that that was intentional, that it was meant to block
Speaker 10: that exit, so they had to go back through the
Speaker 10: screaming people to get out.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, definitely.
Speaker 10: You know, marvels are funny, but it was deployed in
Speaker 10: such a way where it was even more funny, yeah.
Speaker 4: And effective.
Speaker 10: A takeaway that I had was that, you know, there's
Speaker 10: always going to be risk with this type of thing,
Speaker 10: risk of you know, risk of anything really, you know,
Speaker 10: physical harm, emotional harm, people getting in trouble at school
Speaker 10: or something. But I think these kids and a lot
Speaker 10: of these attendees went there expecting to own the libs
Speaker 10: and then walked away really demoralized, you know, And so
Speaker 10: I think it was definitely worth it to put our
Speaker 10: bodies on the line and everything and put ourselves on
Speaker 10: the line to just send that message and also make
Speaker 10: it clear that other people can do this too. And
Speaker 10: Matt Walls speaks, you know, just make it miserable. You know,
Speaker 10: you don't even necessarily have to prevent him from speaking,
Speaker 10: even though that would be pretty cool. But even though
Speaker 10: he did speak, like, no one's talking about that, and
Speaker 10: no one's.
Speaker 4: Talking about what he said.
Speaker 10: People are talking about how all the Matt Walsh people
Speaker 10: got stranded and how there were marbles that blocked their exit.
Speaker 10: And how the pet band came and played to a
Speaker 10: cadence of Buck Matt Walsh you know, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: All right, was there anything else you want to talk
Speaker 1: about before we roll out?
Speaker 10: I'd say that about does it for me, unless you
Speaker 10: have any more questions about specifics of the night.
Speaker 1: No, thank you for coming on, Oliver. Is there any
Speaker 1: sort of plugs you've got for anything you want to
Speaker 1: direct listeners towards before we end?
Speaker 10: Yeah, there's an organization around here called Iowa Trans Mutual
Speaker 10: Aid that does a lot of really really really good
Speaker 10: work for people in the state of Iowa that currently
Speaker 10: is experiencing, like so much of the country, really really
Speaker 10: really bad anti trans legislations. So if you find it
Speaker 10: in your heart or have the means to donate to
Speaker 10: such an Iowa Trans Mutual Aid, I really I really
Speaker 10: can't recommend it enough.
Speaker 4: Awesome.
Speaker 1: Well, thank you so much, Oliver, and a big thank
Speaker 1: you to everybody who showed up that night in Iowa City.
Speaker 1: That is it for us today. Everybody, have a great
Speaker 1: rest of your day.
Speaker 4: All right, thank you so much.
Speaker 5: Welcome to Take It Happened here a podcast about the transgenocide,
Speaker 5: because it keeps happening and so we keep having a
Speaker 5: new episodes about it because it just gets worse. Yeah,
Speaker 5: I'm Mia Wong with me as James.
Speaker 2: I'm yeah, I'm excited to hear more about what people
Speaker 2: are doing to trans people in different partsitive country.
Speaker 5: Yeah, the answer is not good.
Speaker 2: So okay, at about.
Speaker 5: Five am this morning, I was watching a video from
Speaker 5: last year, and you know, I had this line about
Speaker 5: how like there's been one hundred anti trans bills in
Speaker 5: twenty twenty two alone, and like, oh oh boy, that
Speaker 5: is a quaint figure from a more civilized age. We
Speaker 5: are three months into twenty twenty and there's been five
Speaker 5: hundred anti trans bills across the country.
Speaker 2: That was a Freudian slip. We have three years into
Speaker 2: twenty twenty, my friend.
Speaker 5: Oh god, yeah, twenty three that one, which I guess
Speaker 5: it won't work out like this, But technically, speaking of
Speaker 5: this pace continues, we're on track for what. Yeah, we're
Speaker 5: on track for I think two thousand this year, which
Speaker 5: would be great.
Speaker 2: Heyce, Yeah, it's good. We'll be rebing Mansona by November.
Speaker 5: Now. Most of these bills, have we've talked about before,
Speaker 5: are going to fail, but a lot of them haven't.
Speaker 5: And the other sort of aspect of this. I think
Speaker 5: it's been less reported on, but is also extremely important.
Speaker 5: Is that. Okay, so if you want to do anti
Speaker 5: trans bullshit, you have like three options. Basically, you have
Speaker 5: you try to get a bill through the legislature, You
Speaker 5: have the governor doing a and date or something, and
Speaker 5: then you have the attorney general doing some bullshit. And
Speaker 5: our first story from the front lines of the worst
Speaker 5: shit that's happening is from Missouri, where Missouri's Attorney General
Speaker 5: Andrew Bailey has issued a quote emergency rule that claims
Speaker 5: that because gender affirming care is quote experimental, it's already
Speaker 5: banned by state law, which is nonsense, but it gets worse.
Speaker 2: I don't know if it's worth like addressing this shit
Speaker 2: head on because it's such so clearly bullshit. But like,
Speaker 2: we have more than a century of people seeving gender
Speaker 2: firming care and auditioning. It's it's like people, people, television
Speaker 2: is more experimental than gender affirming care. Yeah, like this stuff,
Speaker 2: like aeroplanes are more experiment This stuff predates the Nazis,
Speaker 2: Like it's like it's old. Yeah, it definitely predates passenger flight.
Speaker 5: Yeah. Like so okay, I mean that there's like a
Speaker 5: standard turf argument though, is that it's like, oh, it's experimental.
Speaker 5: It's like, now it's not okay, so these rules are
Speaker 5: oh boy, okay, here's from so I think it was
Speaker 5: Saint Louis. Yeah, the city government of stint Lewis put
Speaker 5: out a thing about it that was basically like, this
Speaker 5: is bullshit. They said, quote the Interney General's Emergency Regulations
Speaker 5: institute extreme restrictions that require one medically documented gender just
Speaker 5: for you for three years, to at least fifteen consecutive
Speaker 5: therapy sessions over eighteen months, and three that all mental
Speaker 5: health conditions are treated and resolved prior to gaining access
Speaker 5: to gender affirming care. There's also this section that is
Speaker 5: I'm just gonna read it. I don't have any words,
Speaker 5: I don't have any analysis for this, so it's saying
Speaker 5: like you can't have care. That quote fails with respect
Speaker 5: to a patient who is a minor to ensure that
Speaker 5: the patient has received a comprehensive screening at least annually
Speaker 5: for social media addiction or compulsion, and has not for
Speaker 5: at least six months prior to the beginning of any
Speaker 5: intervention suffered from social media addiction or compulsion. So wow. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 5: so the good news is that this rule is supposed
Speaker 5: to go into effects, like before this episode is recorded,
Speaker 5: it was there instantly. There are a bunch of lawsuits.
Speaker 5: It's been blocked by a judge until May fifteenth, so
Speaker 5: hopefully the judge will be like, this is obviously illegal,
Speaker 5: not holding out hope for that.
Speaker 4: This is.
Speaker 5: Probably the worst law in the books anywhere in the
Speaker 5: country right now. Maybe we'll also I'll show you the
Speaker 5: other really bad one and what we'll see. But okay,
Speaker 5: so the notable thing about this law is that this
Speaker 5: is not just a band from minors. This is for everyone.
Speaker 5: And you know, there's lots of atrocious stuff in here, right,
Speaker 5: Like if you have autism, for example, and there's a
Speaker 5: bitfy thing about screening for autism. If you have autism,
Speaker 5: you cannot transition Jesus, and you know, and then you
Speaker 5: know there are right, even if you're like a ninety
Speaker 5: nine year old on your fucking deathbed, you can't transition
Speaker 5: unless you feel fill all of these bullshit requirements. There's
Speaker 5: this like there's a social media compulsion thing, which is
Speaker 5: this sort of bizarre like social contagient bullshit that these
Speaker 5: people have been spreading for a.
Speaker 2: Long time, especially given like where the fuck do we
Speaker 2: think their trans panic comes from? It's because they logged
Speaker 2: onto Facebook and you're racist. Uncle Joey had posted to
Speaker 2: think about like how Twitter is transing his niece's gender.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and you know, and like all of this stuff
Speaker 5: is very like we're getting into we're getting into the
Speaker 5: part of this where it's just sort of like they're
Speaker 5: like copying and pasting turf rants into like laws. The
Speaker 5: mental healthcare thing is like just awful.
Speaker 8: You know.
Speaker 5: For example, if you have depression, one of the reasons
Speaker 5: you might have depression if your trans is because you
Speaker 5: have dysphoria. So you're caught in this loop. If you
Speaker 5: try to get care for the depression, you can't get
Speaker 5: like treatment for the dysphoria. What if you get treating
Speaker 5: for the dysphoia, you can't get it for the depressions, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're totally alienated from getting care. And like I'm
Speaker 2: sure living in a fucking state which is trying with
Speaker 2: surgical precision to force you to pick which way you
Speaker 2: want to be suffering. It's not like great for your
Speaker 2: mental health to be like being a trans person in
Speaker 2: Missouri would be pretty hard, given that the state is
Speaker 2: taking or its powers to stop you getting anything of care.
Speaker 5: And you know, I mean everything that's about this is
Speaker 5: like the therapy requirement, the fifteen therapy things over eighteen
Speaker 5: months is just effectively a ban because you know, do
Speaker 5: you know how fucking hard it is to get an
Speaker 5: appointment with a gender therapist, Like it is so like
Speaker 5: there are we are talking about something where there are
Speaker 5: optimistically dozens of these people for an entire state. It
Speaker 5: is fucked. It is so bad even in states where
Speaker 5: it's legal. Right this this is sort of the grim
Speaker 5: joke of like the anti trans canard that like it's
Speaker 5: too easy for kids to get gender firming care and
Speaker 5: they're giving out hormones like candy. It's like, no, no,
Speaker 5: it's really even in states where it's legal to get
Speaker 5: gender firming care, it's hard as fuck, takes forever and
Speaker 5: is expensive, and you know, given how through few therapists
Speaker 5: there are and how hard it is to clear these requirements,
Speaker 5: the Missouri rule is just effectively a ban on gender
Speaker 5: ferman care for everyone. Now it's been stayed for now,
Speaker 5: but this is really bad. People are fleeing the state,
Speaker 5: we're gonna talk more about trans refugees yeah later, But
Speaker 5: you know, basically every state that has passed one of
Speaker 5: these laws has refugees already. I know, I personally know
Speaker 5: multiple people who fled multiple states. Yeah, it's really fucking bad.
Speaker 5: It's also you know, I mean, like it is genuinely
Speaker 5: important to make sure that people get supported and make
Speaker 5: sure people have a way out. It's also not a
Speaker 5: solution because there's just going to be new trans kids
Speaker 5: born into these states.
Speaker 2: So yeah, yeah, we can't fix it by the existing
Speaker 2: trans people leaving, and like obviously those people have their
Speaker 2: friends in their family and their community there. Like we
Speaker 2: didn't fix it by them getting someone completely different.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so now we're gonna move to the next state
Speaker 5: where shit's happening that this one, I don't know. The
Speaker 5: stuff that's happening in Kansas is also like, okay, relative
Speaker 5: to the amount of media attention it's gotten, this is
Speaker 5: the worst thing that's happening in absolute terms, it's unbelievably bad. Okay.
Speaker 5: So there's a bill in Kansas that people are calling
Speaker 5: a bathroom bill, and they're calling it that because bathroom
Speaker 5: bill is the terminology that they have This is not
Speaker 5: a bathroom bill. We need to be very clear about this.
Speaker 5: This is way, way, way, way fucking worse than a
Speaker 5: bathroom bill. So this is a bill that what it
Speaker 5: does is in the eyes of the state, it legally
Speaker 5: assigns you a gender by defining male and female in
Speaker 5: all states, in all state laws as and I'm going
Speaker 5: to let the legislature take it from here. Women are
Speaker 5: those who quote biologically whose biological reproductive system is developed
Speaker 5: to produce OVA, and men are those quote whose biological
Speaker 5: reproductive system is developed to fertilize the OVA of a female.
Speaker 5: Which hey yeah, hey Radfams, I hope you're fucking happy.
Speaker 5: Now you've gotten the state to legally define your gender
Speaker 5: as based on your reproductive capacity.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we've great job. Feed run of the fucking what's
Speaker 2: the thing where they will wear the bonnets?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 5: And here here's it just intersects people kind of exist.
Speaker 5: You're fucking it's worse, Okay, So again here here's kas NT,
Speaker 5: which is a news outlet in Kansas. In addition to restrooms,
Speaker 5: the legislation would define words like women, man, mother, and
Speaker 5: father are in areas like athletics, prisons, or other detention facilities,
Speaker 5: domestic violent centers, rape crisis centers, locker rooms, and quotes
Speaker 5: other areas where biology, safety or privacy are implicated that
Speaker 5: could result in separate accommodations.
Speaker 2: Jesus Christ.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so supposedly this is going to be on a
Speaker 5: case by case basis, but you know, like this is
Speaker 5: going to lead to trans women being put in Ben's
Speaker 5: prisons where they will be raped and almost certain like
Speaker 5: almost certainly will be raped, quite possibly will be killed
Speaker 5: because that happens all the time. You know, this is
Speaker 5: i mean, like kicking trans women out of domestic violence
Speaker 5: centers and rape crisis centers when you know, and this
Speaker 5: is going to happen, and you know, similar like bullshits
Speaker 5: gonn happen to trans men and also to non binary
Speaker 5: people who all of whom are abused and assaulted at
Speaker 5: rates that are fucking indescribable. I mean, there is also
Speaker 5: the bathroom bill shit, and like the worst version of
Speaker 5: bathroom billshit we've ever seen. And you know, but also
Speaker 5: so this is not the only one of these bills.
Speaker 5: That's what we'll talk about. The other one in Montana
Speaker 5: and a little bit. But because the Kansas Republicans are
Speaker 5: somehow even more cretnius than their colleagues in Montana. They
Speaker 5: have written the bill in such a way that, in
Speaker 5: the words of Pink News, quote definitions outlined in the
Speaker 5: bill also state that a female the female is a
Speaker 5: person who produces over in other words, eggs. Meeting sis,
Speaker 5: Women who are infertile and are unable to produce eggs
Speaker 5: could be barred from spaces under the legislation's legal terms.
Speaker 2: Likewise, sis, man, I guess yeah, it's it's yeah, like
Speaker 2: or like you have like fucking had an accident or
Speaker 2: you know, like yeah, you know, and and it's bullshit,
Speaker 2: like it pointing out the logical errors. It doesn't really
Speaker 2: work because that's not really the point, is it. Like,
Speaker 2: like that point is not to be like logically found,
Speaker 2: it's to be cruel.
Speaker 5: Yeah. But but but I think there is something very
Speaker 5: important about this, which is that this this is a
Speaker 5: very very firm example of how the struggle for trans
Speaker 5: rights and sort of you know, like trans bodily autonomy
Speaker 5: is intimately connected with the struggle with abortion rights. Because
Speaker 5: if you look at what's happened here right, Republican lawmakers
Speaker 5: are literally defining women by their by their capacity to
Speaker 5: produce children for them. Yeah, so you know this is
Speaker 5: this is not like the these are these are two
Speaker 5: very very interconnected struggles and the same people have the
Speaker 5: same absolutely dog shit like horrific patriarchal politics in both
Speaker 5: of them. So okay, so we're we're gonna we're gonna
Speaker 5: leave camp in Nebrette. Okay, so we've we've had two
Speaker 5: really grim stories in a row. We're gonna have one
Speaker 5: that saw less grim, which is Nebraska. So okay, there
Speaker 5: has been a bill to ban genuaryfirmin caare for minors,
Speaker 5: but it is being staved off, basically single handedly by
Speaker 5: the genuinely heroic efforts of state Senators Megan Hunt and
Speaker 5: Michelle Kavanaugh, who have been philibustering literally every bill that
Speaker 5: goes through the State Senate the stopman from happening, which
Speaker 5: fucking rips. Yeah, and like you know, because basically the
Speaker 5: things like we will, we will, we will fill a
Speaker 5: buster literally every single bill until they stop trying to
Speaker 5: patch this band through. And you know this is the thing. Okay,
Speaker 5: So like there was there was a thing that happened
Speaker 5: in the early twenty tens where in the US, like
Speaker 5: they're the big US Senate, Right, they change the rules
Speaker 5: about philibustering so that you don't actually have to stand
Speaker 5: there and talk for eight hours because they're fucking cowards
Speaker 5: and almays pieces of shit. Uh in that is not
Speaker 5: true in Nebraska. If you want to fill a buster
Speaker 5: a bill, you have to fucking stand up there and
Speaker 5: talk for eight hours. And they have been doing this
Speaker 5: for months. Yeah, and it's it's it's it's holding that
Speaker 5: you know. Basically, So the way philibuster works where it
Speaker 5: is you can't kind of like in the Senate, and
Speaker 5: then also in the state Senate, you can't stop someone
Speaker 5: from talking unless they like dream debate. You can't stop
Speaker 5: someone talking unless you get a two thirds vote of
Speaker 5: the body for emotion to cloture. So they've just been
Speaker 5: forcing you to do it for every single bill, and
Speaker 5: they don't have the votes in some of the bills.
Speaker 5: So yeah, you know, and the reason I think this
Speaker 5: is this is happening, you know, the reason that they've
Speaker 5: been doing this and not sort of just like doing
Speaker 5: bullshit like most of the Democrats. Well, partially it's because
Speaker 5: there's a Senate and partially because Senator Hunt has a
Speaker 5: twelve year old trans son yeah, which yeah, has has
Speaker 5: given her, you know, a sort of urgency that's absent
Speaker 5: from Democrats and other states.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which is theoretical for her.
Speaker 5: Yeah. And I mean, like, this is one of the
Speaker 5: things that sucks about this right is like it it
Speaker 5: should not fall on you know, like literally the trend,
Speaker 5: like the rights of the children of an entire state
Speaker 5: are falling on like one mom and the few other
Speaker 5: Democrats who decided to take a stand with her, And
Speaker 5: that's fucked. That is nonsense.
Speaker 2: Like it's yeah, it's great that she's doing it, but like, yeah.
Speaker 5: This is this is horrible. Yeah. Do you know what
Speaker 5: else is horrible?
Speaker 2: A is it the product services that support podcast.
Speaker 5: By FTC regulations. I don't think I can legally say that, but.
Speaker 2: No, no, we do, don't know, it's not not that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and we're back. Okay, So now we're gonna get
Speaker 5: to I think the most famous story or most most
Speaker 5: well known story of an anti trans fight that's been
Speaker 5: happening recently, and that is Montana. So Montana has passed
Speaker 5: a bill that bands gender for macare from binners and
Speaker 5: also opposes legal sanctions anyone who does it. Governor greg
Speaker 5: Giofanti like has a non binary son who's he they
Speaker 5: and he like gave a speech it was like dad,
Speaker 5: fucking don't sign these bills, and his dad signed them. Anyways. Yeah,
Speaker 5: one of the co sponsors of this bill, on the
Speaker 5: floor of of of the Montana House said she'd rather
Speaker 5: her children die in transition and then had it yeah yeah,
Speaker 5: And she had to give a press commence later saying
Speaker 5: she didn't actually mean that, but like, no, she that's
Speaker 5: literally what she said on the floor of the fucking house.
Speaker 5: So these people are ghouls and monsters. They are the
Speaker 5: dogs of the sort of the Republican Freedom Caucus, which
Speaker 5: is their like absolutely deranged like Matt Gates fucking weirdos
Speaker 5: in Congress who are if you remember that giant fight
Speaker 5: over the speaker of the house, like that was those
Speaker 5: freaks like the Yeah, these people are like their local
Speaker 5: sort of like dogs. There's two other absolutely terrifying bills
Speaker 5: that are about to become law. There's HB three fifty nine,
Speaker 5: which is a ban on kids attending drag shows, which
Speaker 5: like that bill has gotten less bad than it was,
Speaker 5: which is it's now a ban on kids attending adult entertainments.
Speaker 5: But you know, guess he gets to decide what adult
Speaker 5: entertainment is eta, et cetera. Right, yeah, and that bill
Speaker 5: has passed both the House and Senate is waiting for reconciliation.
Speaker 5: There is the even worse SB four fifty eight, which
Speaker 5: is basically the bill from Kansas, except I'm just gonna
Speaker 5: read some of it. Female. He is a member of
Speaker 5: the human species who, under normal developments, has produced xx
Speaker 5: chromosomes and producers, and would produce regular, relatively large, immobile
Speaker 5: gammeys or eggs dreen her life cycle, and has reproductive
Speaker 5: and endocrine system oriented around those production of gammes. An
Speaker 5: individual who would otherwise fall within this definition but for
Speaker 5: a biological or genetic condition, is female. So this is
Speaker 5: straight turf shit, right. This is the straight up like
Speaker 5: a woman as an adult human female thing that like, yeah,
Speaker 5: these people walk around saying thinking is like a normal
Speaker 5: thing to say, oh.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and thinking that like specifically the chromosonality thing we
Speaker 2: know has been bull shit for a very long time.
Speaker 5: There was nonsense. These people don't underst biology.
Speaker 2: Yeah, sorry, yeah, and we can like the example is
Speaker 2: this woman called Mario Jose Martinez Patino, who is a
Speaker 2: hurdler who won a number of events and then lost
Speaker 2: her medals because she failed a chromosonality test and fucking
Speaker 2: ruined her life right, lost her fiance, lost her job,
Speaker 2: lost all her competitions, and was able to successfully sue
Speaker 2: with the help of leading experts in the field, to
Speaker 2: prove that like I think she had like mosaics, she
Speaker 2: exhibited mosaicism like xx y, and that like this is
Speaker 2: in fact a normal fucking variation in the human species.
Speaker 2: And like this was in the eighties and we're still
Speaker 2: doing this shit.
Speaker 8: Yeap.
Speaker 2: Her papers are really good, by the way, she's a
Speaker 2: professor of philosophy. Now, oh cool, Yeah, yeah, she's yeah,
Speaker 2: she's great. I specator a few times, but.
Speaker 5: Yeah, rare rare w. Yeah. But like these people are
Speaker 5: doing you know, like they are you know this this
Speaker 5: this this bill legally rights trans people out of existence,
Speaker 5: and it is again another one of these gender pariograph
Speaker 5: things where this the state is legally defining what gender
Speaker 5: you are. But also you know, but again, like they
Speaker 5: have to do all this like bullshit, because you know,
Speaker 5: there's other thing I said, like these guys, these people
Speaker 5: are like slightly I don't know smarter is the right word,
Speaker 5: but they're slight there. They're slightly more engaged in turf shit.
Speaker 5: So they have a more convoluted, like biological misconception of
Speaker 5: what a woman is, which they can't define because it's
Speaker 5: not a thing, like.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a social constructagy yeah, because they can't society. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And put in mind of South Africa constantly chasing the
Speaker 2: fucking definition of what race was and like trying to
Speaker 2: define like a multi racial kids into one box or
Speaker 2: another box.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's you know, it doesn't work. But the problem
Speaker 5: is this bill is going to be signed by the
Speaker 5: governor like next week, probably possibly this week, like in
Speaker 5: the next couple of weeks, is going to be signed.
Speaker 5: So that's really fucking bad. So the part of the
Speaker 5: story that thinks the most well known is Montana Republican's
Speaker 5: crusade against Montana House Rep. Zoe Zephyr. Zoe Zephyr is trans.
Speaker 5: She is a Rep for a part of Missoula, which
Speaker 5: is a college town home to the University of Montana.
Speaker 5: We talked about this a bit when Zoe won her seat,
Speaker 5: but I really before we really get into what's been
Speaker 5: happening to Zoie, I want to talk a bit about
Speaker 5: Missoula and a bit about the sort of the geography
Speaker 5: of transmigration, because the way the media talks about this,
Speaker 5: right is that you know, transmit like trans trans refugees
Speaker 5: and transmigration is something that started with these anti trans bills,
Speaker 5: And that's not true. This is this, all of this stuff,
Speaker 5: all of the sort of fleeing, all the refugee stuff,
Speaker 5: predates Tennessee, it predates Missouri. It's always been happening, yeah,
Speaker 5: you know, because and the the actual process of this
Speaker 5: is that, you know, for for generations and generations, the
Speaker 5: retcht of the earth get fed to the wolves, and
Speaker 5: then the wolves spit them out of their homes and
Speaker 5: their communities, and they fled. They fled to places like Portland,
Speaker 5: in Philadelphia, in Atlanta and Chicago, places where people like
Speaker 5: us had clawed out in existence in a world that
Speaker 5: wants us dead, where we countinuously survive off the shit
Speaker 5: end of urban labor markets. And this is something that
Speaker 5: has happened beneath the notice or even the contempt of
Speaker 5: BOSHWS society. But it's been going on for longer than
Speaker 5: we've had words that we've had the words that we
Speaker 5: used today to describe it. And you know, Missoula is
Speaker 5: one of those places where you can go when your
Speaker 5: family kicks you out, and then you know and that
Speaker 5: that's not the only way people end up here, right,
Speaker 5: Like there's a lot of people who you know, you know,
Speaker 5: have better stories, right they go to college, they discover themselves.
Speaker 5: There are people who go here because it's where they've
Speaker 5: chosen to make new lives. And you know something, there's
Speaker 5: also just people who are from Missulu who just realize
Speaker 5: their trans and you know, it's this mix of sort
Speaker 5: of trans refugees, transmigrants and the local trans community that
Speaker 5: you know all fuse together and becomes a sort of
Speaker 5: beautiful community that we've been you know, has finally like
Speaker 5: stepped out of the shadows in the last like ten years.
Speaker 5: And you know, and this is why it's not enormously
Speaker 5: surprising that Missoula sent Zoe's efforts to all let it
Speaker 5: to represent them, because this is, you know again like
Speaker 5: this is one of these places that like collects people
Speaker 5: from all over Montana and you know, from all over
Speaker 5: like eastern Washington too. Some of these people go to Seattle,
Speaker 5: some of these people go to Portland's but yeah, they're there.
Speaker 5: There have always been these massive networks of migration that
Speaker 5: just you know, no one ever, no one researches, no
Speaker 5: one talks about, no one even It's it's hard to
Speaker 5: even know they exist unless you know the people who
Speaker 5: like have been moved along them. The product of this
Speaker 5: now is that Zoe zephyr is Trans is in the
Speaker 5: you know, on the floor of the House debating with
Speaker 5: Republican legislatures this bill to uh uh like ban health
Speaker 5: care for for like trans youth, and she says, quote,
Speaker 5: if you vote yes on this bill and yes on
Speaker 5: these amendments, I hope the next time there's an invocation
Speaker 5: when you bow your hands in prayer, you see the
Speaker 5: blood on your hands, which I really wish because I mean,
Speaker 5: it talks about the blood on your hands. Thing costs,
Speaker 5: and I wish they read the whole quote because it
Speaker 5: fucking rips like it's great.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think you need to do you. There's no
Speaker 2: fucking point in bourgeois civility with this stuff.
Speaker 5: Is that that's noo. And then and this is what
Speaker 5: has been one of things that's been happening.
Speaker 13: Right.
Speaker 5: It's like like the Republicans, their backlash that this been
Speaker 5: has been a sort of like, oh, you're not being
Speaker 5: civil thing right and like in uh like Senator Hunt
Speaker 5: in uh uh Nebraska was like literally didn't actually literally
Speaker 5: say fuck you. But you know, like I said, like yeah,
Speaker 5: like no, I'm I'm not gonna I'm not gonna like
Speaker 5: show up to like your like your dinner parties or whatever,
Speaker 5: like like you don't don't say hi to me in
Speaker 5: the halls, like you know, my fucking kid, and you
Speaker 5: know what you're doing to them.
Speaker 2: That's the way to approach it, right, like like the
Speaker 2: person trying to legislate your little trans son out of existence.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it was like fuck these people, they're gonna do
Speaker 5: this ship. Okay. So there's a couple of theories as
Speaker 5: to why what happened next happened next. There's been a
Speaker 5: lot of speculation that it's been like, oh, this is
Speaker 5: like a gambit by the the the Freedom Caucus to
Speaker 5: like turn Zoe's ephyr into like the face of the
Speaker 5: Montana Democratic parties they can win a Senate race. Like
Speaker 5: I actually don't buy that. I think very specifically the
Speaker 5: when you close your hands to pray, you see the
Speaker 5: blood in your hands thing, I think they got really
Speaker 5: fucking pissed off and then they just kept escalating. So
Speaker 5: after that happens, the Montana Republicans formally censor her and
Speaker 5: they prevent her from speaking on the floor until she
Speaker 5: apologizes and as long as like, no, fuck you, I
Speaker 5: got much, but she said no, I'm I'm not gonna apologize. Right,
Speaker 5: there are there are a bunch of like pretty large
Speaker 5: protests like in Helena that are like you know that
Speaker 5: that are that are like pro trans protests and protests
Speaker 5: to like let Zoe speak, and they arrest seven of
Speaker 5: the protesters.
Speaker 9: Uh.
Speaker 5: One of the people they arrest was I think a
Speaker 5: woman on crutches who like couldn't clear the area fast enough. Yeah,
Speaker 5: she was on crutches.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I was like I did go down before people didn't. Yeah,
Speaker 2: kinds of shit.
Speaker 5: And then and then the so there's like these are
Speaker 5: these protests in the gallery right, and the the Montana
Speaker 5: Republicans start doing this whole thing about how this is
Speaker 5: this is this is the democratic January sixth, and like
Speaker 5: they were storming the capital, the capitals in the seats.
Speaker 2: They tried to do that in Tennessee as well, Like
Speaker 2: it's so pathetic, like so asinine.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and the other thing I want to mention about
Speaker 5: this right is like okay, like the Montana Freedom Cocus
Speaker 5: people and all, like the censors and the fucking press
Speaker 5: releases are just constantly misgendering Zoe.
Speaker 8: It is.
Speaker 5: It's really fucking ugly. Uh yeah. And you know, so
Speaker 5: after these protests, the house like banishes her from the
Speaker 5: floor and kicks her out of her offices, and so
Speaker 5: she shows up like to work from a bench outside
Speaker 5: the chambers where like legally they can't kick her out
Speaker 5: of But then like this is an ongoing saga, right,
Speaker 5: like like this morning she showed up and there were
Speaker 5: like three really old white women sitting on.
Speaker 2: The bed speaker of the house's mum oh speak of
Speaker 2: the house as much.
Speaker 5: Yeah nice.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like this this fucking big Montana tough guy had
Speaker 2: to call his mom to fight his battles for him.
Speaker 2: Like they just insanely puerile, asinine nonsense. But it's unfortunately
Speaker 2: has very real consequences.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and like you know, so she was like at
Speaker 5: like a lut She was like like had her like
Speaker 5: tablet like on a lunch counter, taking meetings from like
Speaker 5: like standing at the counter. Yeah, it's it's been a
Speaker 5: whole thing. Also, I think earlier today someone someone tried
Speaker 5: to swat her girlfriend. Yeah, because the journalist Aaron Reid.
Speaker 5: Uh so that's bad.
Speaker 8: Uh.
Speaker 5: This whole thing has been getting like an unbelievable amount
Speaker 5: of media attention, and you know, in a very very
Speaker 5: short period of time, Zoe Zephyr goes from someone who
Speaker 5: I know about because I'm trans, and like all trans
Speaker 5: people are like four hops away from each other, something
Speaker 5: I probably shouldn't say, but like it's true. Yeah, you
Speaker 5: kind of get there aren't that many of us, and
Speaker 5: a lot of sor extremely online, so like, you know,
Speaker 5: I'm like two hops away from this person, right, like
Speaker 5: from multiple strangles with her, right, Yeah, I met her
Speaker 5: like very briefly in a stream. She's you know, like
Speaker 5: she's a good person. She I don't know, she's just
Speaker 5: like this is one of the things that I think,
Speaker 5: like I've met a couple of the or a few
Speaker 5: of the like very famous like trans people who sort
Speaker 5: of come under the gun, and they're just normal fucking people,
Speaker 5: like just normal trans people, and this bullshit happens to them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's so like bullshit that like, like I know
Speaker 2: a number of trans ladies who are bike racist, right
Speaker 2: and like they like, it must be pretty clear that
Speaker 2: if you win a fucking race, you win a big race,
Speaker 2: like you know what's coming for you know, fucking bright
Speaker 2: Barton News is going to have you on there the
Speaker 2: next year. It's and the same for her. Right, she
Speaker 2: likely would have been aware that at the moment she
Speaker 2: like tried to defend right to fucking exist all the
Speaker 2: very worst people around the country with baying for blood.
Speaker 2: She's very brave she did. Anyway, like that she should
Speaker 2: fuck them. They shouldn't be able to side and.
Speaker 5: Say yeah, okay, we should take an ad break. Yeah,
Speaker 5: one more time and then yeah we'll come back and.
Speaker 2: Say something funny. Bit more che che che church Chumber.
Speaker 5: Oh, okay, we're back. Okay. So in the middle of
Speaker 5: all of this, Zoe went home to I think there
Speaker 5: was like a recess or something, because legislatures work like
Speaker 5: two days a year, rich people hours. Yeah it's bullshit, like,
Speaker 5: yeah they have.
Speaker 2: Like a break for fucking horse racing and yeah, had
Speaker 2: to do polo or whatever.
Speaker 5: Yeah, But so she she went home to Missoula and
Speaker 5: there was a just like a massive march. There was
Speaker 5: this rally that turned into like this basically like a
Speaker 5: twenty four hour long party. People my favorite story for this.
Speaker 5: There's some people who Okay, so they brought beer they
Speaker 5: had got from rowing a boat out to a derailed train. Yes,
Speaker 5: I say, the two media narratives of twenty twenty three. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 5: I mean it's great and like you know, I mean,
Speaker 5: I think in these sort of moments, right, you can
Speaker 5: see the new world there, right, you can see a
Speaker 5: world where you know, we no longer live in fear.
Speaker 5: This you can see this world where we're free to
Speaker 5: create joy and meeting in art in our lives, you know,
Speaker 5: can be a celebration of the beauty that's in and
Speaker 5: around us. But that world, the world that generations and
Speaker 5: generations with trans people have fought and died to sort
Speaker 5: of claw out of the dirt the world tried to
Speaker 5: bury us in, that world will die unless we fight
Speaker 5: for it. And that fight cannot be left to individual
Speaker 5: state representatives. There's not enough of them. Eventually they will lose.
Speaker 5: And and this is this is the other story of
Speaker 5: Montana rights. As much as you know, as much as
Speaker 5: what's been going on in Montana, is a story about
Speaker 5: a trans woman defying like all of the sort of
Speaker 5: organized power for state, like all of those bills passed,
Speaker 5: and there is not enough power to If we keep
Speaker 5: trying to fight them in legislatures, and we keep trying
Speaker 5: to only fight them in in the legislatures and in court,
Speaker 5: we're going to lose. But okay, I probably shouldn't say
Speaker 5: this before I know we've we've locked in the title.
Speaker 5: But the projected title of this is the trans is
Speaker 5: the Transgendocide. A siege and a counter attack, And I
Speaker 5: promised a counterattack, So now I'm gonna give it to you.
Speaker 2: You didn't want like brief notes on the seage, like
Speaker 2: you could have gone full maoist on the side.
Speaker 5: Why we will, but we did. We did that with
Speaker 5: the other one, and I realized after the last episode
Speaker 5: we did on this that I could have just called
Speaker 5: it counterattack and that would be better. So I've saved
Speaker 5: it for this moment.
Speaker 2: I'm glad that you get to ease it.
Speaker 5: So, Okay. One of the things that's become incredibly apparent
Speaker 5: in the last in the last few years is that
Speaker 5: as as much as there is sort of passive transphobia society,
Speaker 5: transphobia is not a sort of nebulous idea that just
Speaker 5: like floats freely around the world. It is brought into
Speaker 5: this world by men. And you know, we know the
Speaker 5: foundational story of how these men and women gain power. Right,
Speaker 5: they cut a deal with capital to reconstitute the Republican
Speaker 5: Party in the eighties. But you know this is this
Speaker 5: is both their weakness and their strength.
Speaker 8: Right.
Speaker 5: It's their strength because this gives them an enormous amount
Speaker 5: of resources to pull on. It gives them the institutional
Speaker 5: backing of an entire political party. But it's weakness is
Speaker 5: and it means that capital and the transphobes are bound together.
Speaker 5: And this means that when you scratch a capitalist of
Speaker 5: transphobe bleeds. Now, the other things that we know are A,
Speaker 5: there are power in there's power and logistics, and b
Speaker 5: there are companies profiting from genocide. FedEx, for example. FedEx's
Speaker 5: headquarters are in Tennessee. Tennessee has passed a bunch of pennesces,
Speaker 5: like the state where this shit all fucking started, right
Speaker 5: with the original bathroom bills, with their drag bills, with
Speaker 5: their n you know, they've also passed bands on miners
Speaker 5: getting gender firm and care. There are other states where
Speaker 5: you know, you can look at the largest sort of
Speaker 5: companies in the states like Missouri is probably like Panera, Montana,
Speaker 5: Schnyder Electric, Kentucky's probably KFC, And you know those companies
Speaker 5: are weaknesses. So what am I talking about here? I'm
Speaker 5: not talking about a boycott because this is the US.
Speaker 5: Nobody fucking knows how to do a boycott. Like when
Speaker 5: when Americans try to do a boycott, they buy like
Speaker 5: sixteen pallets of bud light and shoot it with a bazuka,
Speaker 5: right Like, this is the This is a boycott.
Speaker 8: It is not.
Speaker 5: What I'm talking about here is something a lot more serious.
Speaker 5: You know, we we we've we've we've seen this sort
Speaker 5: of so let me praise this. We've sort of the
Speaker 5: sort of echoes of what this kind of campaign could
Speaker 5: look like with the subcop City protest with you know,
Speaker 5: you have protests outside the offices of banks and outside
Speaker 5: of corporations that are backing that are backing cop City.
Speaker 5: But I'm talking you know that and that at the
Speaker 5: most mild is something that we should be doing. Right,
Speaker 5: These companies that are profiting from genocide, the companies that
Speaker 5: are you know, funded by the fucking tax exemptions that
Speaker 5: are given out by these states, the companies that are
Speaker 5: you know, giving money to the seple political campaigns. But
Speaker 5: I'm talking about more than that. I'm talking about blockades.
Speaker 5: This is you know, very speifically FedEx is quite post
Speaker 5: is possibly the best example of a company that you
Speaker 5: can that you can just target. Right talking about blockades,
Speaker 5: we're talking about supply like disrupting their supply chains. I'm
Speaker 5: talking about very specifically a campaign that put the trans
Speaker 5: sword to the arteries of capital and make the bassards bleed.
Speaker 5: I'm talking about a counter attack. Now. The advantage of
Speaker 5: the strategy of picking corporations, targeting them and disrupt like
Speaker 5: not not not just necessarily protesting outside of their office
Speaker 5: so though doing that, but specifically actually making them fucking bleed,
Speaker 5: actually just rupting their ability to function as a company.
Speaker 8: Right.
Speaker 5: The advantage of this strategy, which is developed and sort
Speaker 5: of broad strokes of my dear friend Vicky Ostroweil, is
Speaker 5: that what one of the big, one of the big
Speaker 5: problems we have in this whole fight is this sort
Speaker 5: of weird is this geo the geographic mismatch, right, the
Speaker 5: you know, the majority of people in the US and
Speaker 5: also the majority of people in most of the states
Speaker 5: where this is happening, right, don't support this ship, but
Speaker 5: it doesn't matter because you know, the district are jerry
Speaker 5: mandered to fuck and you know, but but it means that,
Speaker 5: like there's a lot of people who like me, for example,
Speaker 5: like I live in Illinois, right, like the the you know,
Speaker 5: under normal circumstances, the best I can do is help
Speaker 5: my friends in Missouri get out and try to help,
Speaker 5: like you know, do do do things like secure access
Speaker 5: to transport and housing for refugees, secure access to hormones
Speaker 5: of people. But if we're if we're going after if
Speaker 5: you're going after capital, if we're going after the companies,
Speaker 5: the banks, the financial institutions that are funding this ship,
Speaker 5: we can hit them everywhere where because states have borders,
Speaker 5: but capital doesn't. And that means that you know, you know,
Speaker 5: we can if if if if you are specifically you
Speaker 5: want to target the legislature of Kentucky, you can go
Speaker 5: after fucking KFC, right, you can go after their banks,
Speaker 5: you can go after you can go after anyone who
Speaker 5: funds them. We can hit them on multiple fronts here, right,
Speaker 5: we can hit them with protests, but these companies also
Speaker 5: they rely on our labor, right, a lot of these
Speaker 5: places are you know, are either sort of fast food
Speaker 5: change or logistics networks, and that's that's a place where
Speaker 5: you know, trans people are overrepresented because trans people are
Speaker 5: overrepresented in the service sector, you know, again, because it's
Speaker 5: easier to get jobs there and institutional transphobia locks you
Speaker 5: out of better jobs. They also rely on public infrastructure.
Speaker 5: They rely on you know, streets being open, right, they
Speaker 5: rely on an entire logistics network to make sure and
Speaker 5: not only are they extracting the labor of people that
Speaker 5: they are like you know, the sort of like theoretical
Speaker 5: term for this is realization.
Speaker 8: Right.
Speaker 5: They have to actually be able to sell, They have
Speaker 5: to be able to assemble their product, and they have
Speaker 5: to be able to sell it. And you can stop
Speaker 5: them those things, right, I mean the KFC. And sometimes
Speaker 5: it's also kind of hard because there's franchise shit going on.
Speaker 5: But that's not true with FedEx, Like every FedEx office
Speaker 5: is FedEx, and you know, the these are these are
Speaker 5: companies that like, maybe we can't fucking drive them underground, right,
Speaker 5: but we can make them bleed, and we can make
Speaker 5: it we can make it painful enough to be complicit
Speaker 5: in this genocide that these people that you know, these
Speaker 5: people get fucking asked, right, we can, we can, we
Speaker 5: can make them bleed, we can go And you know
Speaker 5: another another thing that you know people can do, right
Speaker 5: is it's not that you know, if if if you
Speaker 5: have like a spare afternoon on a weekend, Right, it's
Speaker 5: not that hard to figure out that, like the specific
Speaker 5: business interests of the legislators who are voting for this stuff.
Speaker 5: You can just do this. All these people are unbelievably corrupt.
Speaker 5: They have land deals that they're doing.
Speaker 2: And so you know, open records and let you see
Speaker 2: who donates to all those people as well.
Speaker 5: Yeah. Yeah, and there are websites that you can just like,
Speaker 5: like you can just google who gives the notions to
Speaker 5: people and yeah, it's like donations trackers, and you can
Speaker 5: like plug in their name and it will show you
Speaker 5: whe who donates to them.
Speaker 14: Yeah.
Speaker 5: And so we have learned through the through sort of
Speaker 5: the experience of the past few years, right, that these
Speaker 5: people cannot be swayed by logic. They cannot be swayed
Speaker 5: by they can't be swayed by logic, they cannot be
Speaker 5: swayed by science. They cannot be swayed by. You know,
Speaker 5: they cannot be swayed by the emotional appeals. They do
Speaker 5: not give a shit about trans people. They would literally
Speaker 5: rather have their kids die than be trans. But again,
Speaker 5: the one thing they do care about is capital. And
Speaker 5: if you, if you, if you, if you, if you
Speaker 5: make capital bleed, these people will bleed to and that
Speaker 5: will actually fucking hurt them, and that will give you
Speaker 5: the leverage you need to let these people make a choice. Right,
Speaker 5: it's either us or the world of capital burns.
Speaker 12: It's a warm spring afternoon in Atlanta, Georgia. You and
Speaker 12: some of your friends are dancing in the sunlight at
Speaker 12: a music festival in South Atlanta. It's day two of
Speaker 12: the South River Music Festival. Last night you stayed up
Speaker 12: till three am, alternating between mashing in the pit and
Speaker 12: laying down on a blanket looking up at the night sky,
Speaker 12: trying to see stars through the light pollution. After you
Speaker 12: had your fill of edm you called it a night
Speaker 12: and hastily set up a tent in the forest near
Speaker 12: the edge of the festival. You tried to sleep as
Speaker 12: long as you could, but soon enough the hustle and
Speaker 12: bustle around the forest beckoned you out.
Speaker 4: Of your tent.
Speaker 12: As you mosied on over back to the music festival.
Speaker 12: Immediately something new caught your eye, a large, multi colored
Speaker 12: inflatable bouncy castle sitting right in the middle of the
Speaker 12: field with a big stopcop City banner hung along the side.
Speaker 12: After you fully woke up, you grabbed a free breakfast
Speaker 12: burrito and took a nice walk through the winding forest.
Speaker 12: Now that you've finished your breakfast, you're back at the
Speaker 12: far end of the open field, in front of the
Speaker 12: stage where there's been live music playing for the past
Speaker 12: few hours. You and some friends briefly try a stint
Speaker 12: in the bouncy castle, but quickly return to the festival
Speaker 12: stage as you tire out much faster than you expected.
Speaker 12: As the sun is barely starting to set around six pm,
Speaker 12: suddenly you notice the faint scream of police sirens piercing
Speaker 12: through the music being blasted from on stage. You stand
Speaker 12: up as the sirens get louder and closer, until a
Speaker 12: burst of police cars zoom past the music festival at
Speaker 12: high speed. A short sigh of relief is followed by confusion.
Speaker 12: Where else would a whole bunch of police cars be going,
Speaker 12: But as nothing seems to come of it, everyone starts
Speaker 12: to relax and begin enjoying music once again with the
Speaker 12: apparent absence of police. There's a few brief moments of
Speaker 12: peace at the festival as things continue as scheduled, except
Speaker 12: you can't help but notice the police helicopter is flying
Speaker 12: across the forest toward the festival. As you take note
Speaker 12: of the chopper, you receive a signal message from a
Speaker 12: friend quote cops have entered the parking lot with AR
Speaker 12: fifteen's unquote. You lift up your mask and start running
Speaker 12: across the field to the parking lot at Willawne People's Park,
Speaker 12: But before you even make it halfway across, you notice
Speaker 12: up ahead a few dozen police officers sprinting into the
Speaker 12: open field from the festival side entrance. As the sun
Speaker 12: is setting, a group of cops run past the bouncy
Speaker 12: house and starts chasing down seemingly random concert goers and
Speaker 12: loan stragglers. One officer points his rifle at the bouncy
Speaker 12: house as another.
Speaker 4: Turns off the generator.
Speaker 12: You group up with other people from the festival in
Speaker 12: hopes of working together to incentivize police to leave the area.
Speaker 12: As you get closer, the cops start getting more aggressive.
Speaker 12: Just up ahead a bit further into the woods, close
Speaker 12: to where you set up your tent, you hear some
Speaker 12: loud bangs and see a flash of bright light. First,
Speaker 12: you assume it's just fireworks being used to hold off
Speaker 12: the cops until you start coughing and see the faint
Speaker 12: plume of tear gas seeping in from the forest. You're
Speaker 12: forced to fall back to the festival and regroup with
Speaker 12: people by the stage, where music is still being played.
Speaker 12: As you're running back, you can see dozens of people
Speaker 12: in zip ti cuffs, many still pinned to the ground,
Speaker 12: still coughing from the gas. You make your way back
Speaker 12: to where you are washing the previous night. The crowd
Speaker 12: of festivalgoers tightens up as riot vans and a bear
Speaker 12: cat pull into the field next to the deflated bouncy castle.
Speaker 12: Police swat teams surround the South River Music Festival and
Speaker 12: creep towards the stage, threatening to charge hundreds of people
Speaker 12: with demes stick terrorism. Hanging on the backdrop of the
Speaker 12: stage is a massive banner that reads, quote in the
Speaker 12: eyes of the state, all who resist white supremacy, colonialism,
Speaker 12: environmental racism, gentrification, and police militarization are domestic terrorists unquote.
Speaker 12: That was the evening of Sunday, March fifth, twenty twenty three.
Speaker 12: This is it could happen here. I'm Garrison Davis. I
Speaker 12: arrived in Atlanta a few days prior in preparation for
Speaker 12: the March Week of Action to Defend the Atlanta Forest
Speaker 12: and Stop cop City. This is part one of a
Speaker 12: four part series covering this week of action, featuring interviews, reportbacks,
Speaker 12: and analysis from both participants and observers like myself. This
Speaker 12: four part series will be a follow up of sorts
Speaker 12: to the four stop Coop City episodes we put together
Speaker 12: last January following the death of forest defender Tortigita at
Speaker 12: the hands of the Georgia State Patrol, as well as
Speaker 12: building off my previous year of work covering the movement
Speaker 12: to defend the Atlanta Forest. But in case you're new
Speaker 12: or need a refresher, for over two years now, activists
Speaker 12: and community members have been in a fight to save
Speaker 12: the Wallani Forest from being turned into a massive ninety
Speaker 12: million dollar police training facility stretching across one hundred and
Speaker 12: seventy acres, with plans to include a mock city for
Speaker 12: urban combat training. To quell civil descent. The cop City
Speaker 12: project is being led by the Atlanta Police Foundation, one
Speaker 12: of the most powerful police lobbying groups in the country.
Speaker 12: Following seventeen hours of public comment, seventy percent of which
Speaker 12: was against the facility, the Atlanta City Council voted to
Speaker 12: approve the project's lease in September of twenty twenty one,
Speaker 12: despite months of protests and community organizing. Later that fall,
Speaker 12: people started occupying and camping out in the Wallani Forest
Speaker 12: to maintain a physical presence in the woods in hopes
Speaker 12: of preventing or delaying construction. Infrastructure sure to support long
Speaker 12: term encampments grew over the next year, with forest defenders
Speaker 12: erecting treehouses, road blockades, and making the forest a place
Speaker 12: that people could actually live in, with outdoor kitchens, community gardens,
Speaker 12: and places to sleep, whether that be up in a
Speaker 12: tree or in a tent. For a while it seemed
Speaker 12: to be working. Throughout twenty twenty two, construction continued to stall.
Speaker 12: Almost every time cops and workers came in to start
Speaker 12: cutting trees, they were met with resistance. Construction equipment left
Speaker 12: around the forest was routinely sabotaged, and last year, a
Speaker 12: tertiary targeting campaign resulted in the general contract of for
Speaker 12: a cop City, reeves Young Construction to drop out of
Speaker 12: the project. Police enacted multiple raids on the forest in
Speaker 12: twenty twenty two, trying to flush out any forest defenders
Speaker 12: camping out in the woods and tear down encampment infrastructure,
Speaker 12: but the occupation was generally able to bounce back pretty quick.
Speaker 12: As the movement to stop cop City was seemingly winning,
Speaker 12: police intensified their oppression as a series of raids in
Speaker 12: December of last year decimated much of the infrastructure that
Speaker 12: was built up over the course of that year and
Speaker 12: left six people with domestic terrorism charges. But things got
Speaker 12: worse just a month later. In January of twenty twenty three,
Speaker 12: multiple police agencies engaged in a mass raid of the
Speaker 12: Wallani Forest, destroying all remaining campsites. About an hour into
Speaker 12: the January eighteenth raid, the Georgia State Patrol swat team
Speaker 12: killed the twenty six year old forest defender Manuel Tehran,
Speaker 12: also known by their forest name Torti Ghita. Decab County's
Speaker 12: autopsy found at least fifty seven gunshot wounds from multiple officers.
Speaker 12: We'll talk more about the results from various autopsies in
Speaker 12: a later episode, but just a few weeks ago, tort
Speaker 12: would have turned twenty seven. The other side of the
Speaker 12: Defend the Forest movement is focused on a smaller section
Speaker 12: of the Wallani Forest just east of Entrenchment Creek. Initially
Speaker 12: in hopes of expanding his movie studios, the now former
Speaker 12: owner of Blackhall Studios, Ryan Millsap, has been trying to
Speaker 12: gain control of forty acres of public parkland through a
Speaker 12: shady landswap deal with Decap County that's currently subject to
Speaker 12: legal disputes. The slate of land in question contains the
Speaker 12: popular meeting spot in the forest known as the Living Room,
Speaker 12: which acts as a sort of central hub, as well
Speaker 12: as what's referred to as Wilauni People's Park, where the
Speaker 12: park gazebe used to be before Ryan Millsap demolished it,
Speaker 12: later ripping out all of the grass and sidewalks in
Speaker 12: a once again legally questionable move. In January, Wilani People's
Speaker 12: Park also became home to the vigil site for Torteguita.
Speaker 12: All at Let Matt from the Atlantic Community Press Collective
Speaker 12: explain the other happenings in the woods since January.
Speaker 15: They got their land disturbance permit in late January, and
Speaker 15: the first phase of the land disturbance permit only allows
Speaker 15: for soil erosion control work. So to this point, essentially
Speaker 15: what they've done is they've they've clear cut some paths
Speaker 15: into the forest into the proposed site, and then around
Speaker 15: the exterior of the site they've clear cut a line
Speaker 15: in order to install silt fencing. So there isn't a
Speaker 15: large amount of infrastructure. They're not allowed to do a
Speaker 15: large amount of disturbance right now. They're in like the
Speaker 15: pre construction phase right now. So they started in February
Speaker 15: and they did a lot of work very quickly. They
Speaker 15: installed a privacy fence so you can't really see what's
Speaker 15: going on, so our general understanding of it like comes
Speaker 15: from drone footage. It actually slowed down a couple weeks later,
Speaker 15: and from what I understand, they began to pull some
Speaker 15: construction equipment out, probably not wanting to leave you know,
Speaker 15: a target for shall we say, any sort of spicy activities.
Speaker 12: But not all of their construction equipment was removed. As
Speaker 12: everyone would soon find out, the deadly January raid left
Speaker 12: the community in the morning and unsure of how the
Speaker 12: fight to stop copp City would evolve with the use
Speaker 12: of lethal force and the loss of a friend. The
Speaker 12: Forest Defender's semi permanent occupation of the Wallani Forest ended
Speaker 12: after that raid, but the fight was far from over.
Speaker 12: About a month after the January raid, local Atlantans put
Speaker 12: out a call for supporters across the country to converge
Speaker 12: in Atlanta in early March for a mass gathering known
Speaker 12: as a Week of Action. There have been four previous
Speaker 12: Weeks of Action, but this one, more than any other,
Speaker 12: would be crucial in reifying what the next stage of
Speaker 12: the movement would be. I started off this episode with
Speaker 12: the Sunday night police raid on the South River Music Festival, because,
Speaker 12: for better or worse, what happened on that evening set
Speaker 12: the proverbial stage for what the majority of this Week
Speaker 12: of Action would look like and how its effects would
Speaker 12: ripple out in the coming months. But before we get
Speaker 12: to the rest of the week, we first have to
Speaker 12: go back to the official start of this Week of
Speaker 12: Action to explain how we got here in the first place.
Speaker 12: To kick off the Week of Action, a rally was
Speaker 12: planned for the morning of Saturday, March fourth, at Gresham
Speaker 12: Park in southeast Atlanta. By the time I arrived around
Speaker 12: eleven am, hundreds of people were already in the park.
Speaker 12: Music was blaring from loudspeakers. Some kids and a few
Speaker 12: brave adults were running around throwing multicolored powdered paint at
Speaker 12: each other. It was a pretty festive time. Soon enough,
Speaker 12: it was time for things to begin. Matthew Johnson, the
Speaker 12: interim executive director of Beloved Commune, formerly kicked off the week.
Speaker 7: Hoday, let's get started, all right.
Speaker 16: I just want to make sure that everybody.
Speaker 8: Is in the right place.
Speaker 14: I came here to stop cop city.
Speaker 16: What did you all come here to do? What did
Speaker 16: we come to do? What are we coming to do?
Speaker 16: What have we come here to do?
Speaker 8: All right? I'm glad that everybody found the right address.
Speaker 14: Thank you everybody for joining us.
Speaker 8: It's about two years ago.
Speaker 14: In what was formerly known as Entrenchment Creek Park now
Speaker 14: known as Wolani People's Park, where a ragtag bunch of
Speaker 14: individuals gathered under a gazebo. That gazebo was illegally destroyed
Speaker 14: by Ryan Millsap and his henchman an attempt to break
Speaker 14: this movement. In an attempt to bury this movement, Yet
Speaker 14: every single time that they have tried to bury us.
Speaker 14: They have forgotten that we were seeds. Every time they
Speaker 14: thought that they backed us into a corner with their repression,
Speaker 14: we had more of you show up and support this movement,
Speaker 14: and we thank you so much.
Speaker 17: They have set every hurdle in the way of every
Speaker 17: day at lanterns to intimidate them and stop them from
Speaker 17: supporting this movement, and we still show up.
Speaker 14: We appreciate every single person that has come here to
Speaker 14: support us in spite of the terror that.
Speaker 8: They has tried to instill in us.
Speaker 14: We must be very careful and understand the gravity of
Speaker 14: the situation that we are in, especially after we've lost
Speaker 14: a friend.
Speaker 8: Okay, thank you for standing with us.
Speaker 14: And now there are many things that we do not
Speaker 14: agree on, But what did we all come here to do?
Speaker 14: So let's remember what got us this far was a
Speaker 14: diversity of tactics, and now it's.
Speaker 8: Time for us to double down.
Speaker 12: The crowd gathered was a pretty diverse mix of people
Speaker 12: from a variety of backgrounds, beliefs, and preferred tactics. On
Speaker 12: this is Saturday morning, everyone felt pretty united. Whether you
Speaker 12: were a kid running around with paint all over your body,
Speaker 12: or an anarchist dressed head to toe and camp though.
Speaker 12: Next up, somebody read a statement from the Muscogee elder
Speaker 12: Miko Chabon, Colonel.
Speaker 8: I'm here to read.
Speaker 11: A statement from my Miko, Miko Shabbon.
Speaker 8: Yeah, my name is Marty.
Speaker 11: I'm Muscoge on my father's side. On my mother's side,
Speaker 11: I'm Atham both Acmel and Thana, and my dad's also Filipino.
Speaker 11: Miko asked me to read this statement. Band Strijaio mart
Speaker 11: At this time, I would like to express my gratitude
Speaker 11: to all who have converged onto these ancestral territories of
Speaker 11: Muskogean ancestors and modern spiritual inhabitants of the earth that
Speaker 11: we now stand on today. We represent a vast society
Speaker 11: of peoples whose presence in the colonized named states of Georgia, Alabama,
Speaker 11: and Florida have existed for over thirteen thousand years. We
Speaker 11: represent a way of life that strove to minimize the
Speaker 11: harm that human can do to the earth, to other species,
Speaker 11: and to each other. Today, we continue this movement that
Speaker 11: begun many years ago, and we honor those who have
Speaker 11: taken footsteps to protect this forest and our relative who
Speaker 11: gave the greatest of sacrifices, just as ancestors existed on
Speaker 11: these very grounds and carried of faith and confidence in
Speaker 11: what our ancient ones passed on to us. May the
Speaker 11: hope of peaceful existence for all be achieved for many
Speaker 11: more centuries to come. This existence can only occur when
Speaker 11: we realize the sacredness of the Wailani Forest, that all
Speaker 11: that is natural on this earth, Mother. This type of
Speaker 11: existence can only occur when we realize that we all
Speaker 11: belong to this earth and she does not belong to us.
Speaker 11: This type of holy existence can only occur when we
Speaker 11: realize that no cop city can ever exist because more
Speaker 11: weapons only create more violence. Wo With these efforts that
Speaker 11: begin today, perhaps reason will prevail and we could create
Speaker 11: a future where all people.
Speaker 8: Have the right to exist.
Speaker 11: Today, May our dreams for this forest and the surrounding
Speaker 11: community come true. For those who can hear, let them hear.
Speaker 12: The next speaker was from Community Movement Builders, a local
Speaker 12: black collectives that focuses on combating and gentrification and police violence.
Speaker 18: I may be a little bit selfish, and my reason
Speaker 18: for being here I want to be free.
Speaker 19: I want my children to be free. I want my
Speaker 19: mother to be free. I want my father, my brothers
Speaker 19: and sisters to be free. And I don't want to
Speaker 19: have to live a life in ten years when my babies.
Speaker 7: My nieces, and my nephews come to me and.
Speaker 8: Ask, come, I see.
Speaker 18: Where were you What were you doing when they destroyed
Speaker 18: our clean water, destroyed our clean What happened?
Speaker 8: Why were you not around?
Speaker 18: What were you doing when when my baby's twenty ten
Speaker 18: years and they say, come, I see what were you
Speaker 18: doing when this country turned into a fascist dystopia?
Speaker 7: What were you doing?
Speaker 8: Where were you where you're around? I can't sit here.
Speaker 18: Best shit back and saying I just sat home and
Speaker 18: watched this whole well burn to hell.
Speaker 7: I don't believe in the power.
Speaker 18: I don't believe in the power of being periless. I
Speaker 18: believe in the power of the people. So I say
Speaker 18: to everyone today that during this week of action, I
Speaker 18: don't know where you will be. I don't know what
Speaker 18: you will be.
Speaker 7: Doing, but we standing behind you and were staying with you.
Speaker 7: And we want to show the city of Atlanta.
Speaker 18: We want to show Mary Dickens that he is not
Speaker 18: fit to rule and he does not runing city.
Speaker 7: You want to show them, said the ninety million.
Speaker 18: Dollars that they took to build this warfare training facility
Speaker 18: will not cross our communities, Wheo. And we also want
Speaker 18: to ShW the city of that letter that again we
Speaker 18: are ready to stop really surviving, to start living.
Speaker 12: Finally, our last person Reverend Leo'she is a Baptist minister
Speaker 12: part of the Stop Copp City Clergy coalition, which we'll
Speaker 12: talk a bit more about in the next episode.
Speaker 13: And I believe my faith compels me and convicts me
Speaker 13: that in this moment, the work that has been done
Speaker 13: and the work that is to come to defend this,
Speaker 13: our beloved family, this, our siblings, the earth.
Speaker 4: Is a holy and righteous work.
Speaker 13: It is a holy and righteous work that is grounded
Speaker 13: in a faithful rage.
Speaker 20: A rage which has been boiling in the human family's
Speaker 20: blood for centuries, and meets us care at this moment
Speaker 20: and asks us, what will you do to defend those
Speaker 20: who have no defense?
Speaker 6: What will you do to protect those who have no shelter?
Speaker 7: What will you do.
Speaker 6: When the time comes to decide on whose side you
Speaker 6: are on? Will you stand for oppression or will you
Speaker 6: stand for the liberation of all people? My friends, I
Speaker 6: come with some good news if that's okay. And the
Speaker 6: good news is that God stands on the side of
Speaker 6: the oppress.
Speaker 7: God stands on the side.
Speaker 13: Of the forest defenders, Law stands on the side of
Speaker 13: the most marginalized. And let us make no mistake that
Speaker 13: in our protests and in our rage, we.
Speaker 7: Also have to cry out and lament.
Speaker 13: We cannot be silent as do Dujita's blood cries out
Speaker 13: from the ground. We must honor a life that did
Speaker 13: not have to be lost. It did not have to
Speaker 13: be this way. Do not listen to anyone who tells
Speaker 13: you that there is.
Speaker 8: Not a better way.
Speaker 13: There is always a better way. Do I come with
Speaker 13: my faith and the conviction that in this work, in
Speaker 13: this moment, a prophetic imagination, a creative vision is needed
Speaker 13: in the wall that we.
Speaker 7: Want to see. I'm not here to wait for the
Speaker 7: Kingdom of God.
Speaker 13: I want the Kingdom of God right now.
Speaker 20: Right now.
Speaker 12: After the speeches were finished, it was announced that the crowd,
Speaker 12: now nearing a thousand strong, would gather up together and
Speaker 12: march to Wilani People's Park to retake the forest. As
Speaker 12: everyone was getting ready to leave, you could see the
Speaker 12: care and solidarity people had for each other. On full display.
Speaker 12: Bike scouts were checking to see if the path was clear.
Speaker 12: Volunteer street medics ready to help anyone in need. Water
Speaker 12: bottles are being handed out to keep everyone hydrated, while
Speaker 12: others autonomously coordinated rides for people unable to make. The
Speaker 12: walk looks like approximately one thousand people marching from Gresham
Speaker 12: Park to Alana People's Park on.
Speaker 5: The bike path.
Speaker 12: That's a I can't even see the end of where,
Speaker 12: of where the of where the people stop. It's a long,
Speaker 12: long stretch of people marching hundreds and hundreds of feet.
Speaker 12: There's some banners in front of the march. One of
Speaker 12: them reads disarm, defund, dismantle, no cop City. There's one
Speaker 12: of the sun shining over a pink sky with a
Speaker 12: little blue turtle and their shell is the earth massive
Speaker 12: like ten person banner that reads defend the Forest. The
Speaker 12: energy of the march remained high as people chanted to
Speaker 12: the beat of drums. I sat down with Matt from
Speaker 12: the Atlantic Community Press Collective towards the end of the
Speaker 12: week to talk about what we saw throughout this week
Speaker 12: of action.
Speaker 15: At one point, the entire crowd, seemingly the entire crowd
Speaker 15: was chanting if you build it we will burn it,
Speaker 15: which seems.
Speaker 5: Yeah, almost like a thousand people.
Speaker 15: Yeah, and it was being chanted, like you know, looking
Speaker 15: around the crowd, you saw everyone for the most part
Speaker 15: partaking in that. So that was a very interesting moment
Speaker 15: where it felt like there was that sort of solidarity
Speaker 15: amongst the varied groups that make up the Defend the
Speaker 15: Atlanta Forest movement.
Speaker 12: As the march went on, the path was getting increasingly forested.
Speaker 12: About two thirds of the way to Wallani People's Park,
Speaker 12: after turning a bend, the crowd noticed three deer frolicking
Speaker 12: alongside the march from further within the tree line. To
Speaker 12: quote the Atlanta Community Press Collectives right up of the
Speaker 12: march quote, the joyous mood shifted slightly as the protest
Speaker 12: closed in on the People's Park, passing over the remains
Speaker 12: of the bike path destroyed in December by film executive
Speaker 12: Ryan Millsap, activists were uncertain what they were walking into
Speaker 12: or whether the police would offer any resistance.
Speaker 15: Activists thought that there was going to be an issue.
Speaker 15: They were concerned about the police being in Willani People's Park.
Speaker 15: So about halfway we saw that stack of makeshift shields
Speaker 15: made out of plastic rain barrels.
Speaker 12: About two dozen of those five Gatlandrum shields just mysteriously
Speaker 12: showed up along the bike path. We are arriving at
Speaker 12: Willannee People's Park, no cops.
Speaker 15: But then when we got there there was no police whatsoever.
Speaker 15: From what the scanner people told us, there were police around,
Speaker 15: they were just kind of monitoring from afar, but no
Speaker 15: police ever entered the park. And it was I would
Speaker 15: say it was a really nice high point return to the.
Speaker 12: Forest, banners and shields moving around willane People's Park as
Speaker 12: hundreds and hundreds of more people still pour in from.
Speaker 5: The bike path.
Speaker 12: As the back of the march finally arrived, the crowd
Speaker 12: gathered up one more time to all chant out a
Speaker 12: promise in unison, I Will.
Speaker 7: I Will.
Speaker 12: One of the activists I interviewed during the Week of
Speaker 12: Action was Matthew Johnson, the person who kicked off the
Speaker 12: rally at Gresham Park. We talked about the methodology of
Speaker 12: starting off this Week of Action with this big inclusive
Speaker 12: march and how that may have helped achieve the goal
Speaker 12: of retaking the forest.
Speaker 5: That first day.
Speaker 21: We wanted to be sure that we would be able
Speaker 21: to reoccupy the park and what that would entail is
Speaker 21: having a wide swath of the larger public involved with
Speaker 21: any efforts to enter into the park. And so we
Speaker 21: had the rally Aggresham Park and there was a march
Speaker 21: planned from that part to Wolani People's Park. There is
Speaker 21: violence that people have become accustomed to when it is
Speaker 21: people on the political fringes. That's just where we're at
Speaker 21: in the political situation in Atlanta. However, when you have
Speaker 21: several people that you would consider more normal, liberal, progressive, etc.
Speaker 21: Like representatives from NGOs, non profit organizations, just normal people
Speaker 21: that also wanted to see the project shut down cop City,
Speaker 21: that's when you have the ability to move towards people
Speaker 21: that want to reoccupy, having the space to do that
Speaker 21: without seeing tons of police repression as we have seen
Speaker 21: in the movement recently.
Speaker 12: After reaching Wolaanni People's Park, many of those who arrived
Speaker 12: from out of town for this week of action, myself
Speaker 12: included stopped by the shrine for Tortigita just off of
Speaker 12: the tree line. People added new wildflowers and packs of
Speaker 12: fruit snacks. I'm going to walk over to the Torti
Speaker 12: Guita vigil site. Looks about the same as last time.
Speaker 12: I was here, many candles, little turtles, still a few
Speaker 12: fruit snacks. Although the vigil shrine was the same as
Speaker 12: last time I saw it, almost everything else about being
Speaker 12: in this place was different. When I was here last
Speaker 12: time in January, it was a dark place of grief.
Speaker 12: The forest was barren, with all of the trees in
Speaker 12: their bare winter state. But looking around the forest this
Speaker 12: first sunny day, you could see new life growing all
Speaker 12: around you. To quote the Community Press Collective again quote,
Speaker 12: small campsites begin to crop up across the landscape. Some
Speaker 12: nestled in sight on air spaces, others tucked into thickets,
Speaker 12: providing shelter and cooler climate for the new residence. The
Speaker 12: trees themselves reflected this next phase. Sprigs of new growth
Speaker 12: leaves appeared on the ends of barren branches. Small white
Speaker 12: flowers bloomed along the periphery of the parking lot. After
Speaker 12: months of desolation and death, life prevailed and spring arrives
Speaker 12: in the forest. I'm excited to get back into the
Speaker 12: forest because it is so hot, and get back in
Speaker 12: the forest I did. One of the events that happened
Speaker 12: almost daily throughout the week was tours of the eastern
Speaker 12: side of the Wallani Forest. The walks through the woods
Speaker 12: were led by Joe Perry, a member of the South
Speaker 12: River Forest Coalition. I was able to attend the first
Speaker 12: tour during the Week of Action and got consent to
Speaker 12: record some of the forest walk.
Speaker 22: All right, hey, y'all, welcome to the living Room. So
Speaker 22: named because it's it's a very vital and comfortable place
Speaker 22: to relax. This is where a lot of the meetings
Speaker 22: happened during the previous Week of Action. People gather and
Speaker 22: have different events here. Oftentimes it will be food available here, campfires, silverware.
Speaker 22: So it's also just a very very comfortable place to
Speaker 22: relax because it's in this pine forest and so not
Speaker 22: really any undergrowth and just super comfortable. It's a really
Speaker 22: good place to have meetings and just kind of get
Speaker 22: to know each other and.
Speaker 4: Establish some calm.
Speaker 12: We made our way from the living Room to the
Speaker 12: Grandmother Tree, a large oak that is estimated to be
Speaker 12: a few hundred years old. On our way to Ryan
Speaker 12: Millsaps proposed a site for so called Michelle Obama Park,
Speaker 12: which is currently a forty acre mount of dirt about
Speaker 12: thirty feet high. We walked past some old tents that
Speaker 12: were slashed apart during the January raid. Among the destroyed
Speaker 12: remains were little pink flowers growing out of the ground.
Speaker 12: Next we headed to Entrenchment Creek. Joe Perry explained some
Speaker 12: of the background regarding the environmental state of the watershed
Speaker 12: and how protecting the forest is a crucial step in
Speaker 12: the process of helping the land heal itself.
Speaker 22: I got involved with a group called the South River
Speaker 22: Forest Coalition. We are trying to help further the vision
Speaker 22: of the South River Forest that Ryan Gravelle and the
Speaker 22: Nature Conservancy came up with to try to interweave about
Speaker 22: thirty five hundred acres of forest with the other businesses
Speaker 22: and homes and lands around this area that are in
Speaker 22: the watershed of the South River Forest. And Entrenchment Creek,
Speaker 22: which we will see on this tour, is the main
Speaker 22: tributary to the South River. The South River is the
Speaker 22: fourth most dangered river in this country and trenchmck Creek
Speaker 22: is one of the most polluted creeks in this county.
Speaker 22: And so that is what we're trying to protect. And
Speaker 22: in order to protect a river and a creek and
Speaker 22: a watershed, you have to protect the forest that's around it.
Speaker 22: I've been exploring these woods for the last decade and
Speaker 22: leading tours and talking to people about it, trying to
Speaker 22: explain what's going on with a lawsuit, trying to explain
Speaker 22: what's going on, the difference between in Trenchmth Creek Park
Speaker 22: and you know, the prison farm and the acreage and
Speaker 22: all these other things and all that stuff. It's just
Speaker 22: like it's just gears turning in your head because when
Speaker 22: you come out here and enjoy this, I mean, this
Speaker 22: is really what it's all about. This is all we
Speaker 22: have to do to convince people that this is worth
Speaker 22: saving it. Just bring you out here and let you
Speaker 22: appreciate it.
Speaker 12: As masses of people converged at Wallani People's Park Saturday afternoon,
Speaker 12: almost immediately a whole bunch of pop up infrastructure was
Speaker 12: set up to facilitate an encampment in the woods once again,
Speaker 12: really for the first time in any kind of large
Speaker 12: capacity since January and even December. The December raids decimated
Speaker 12: much of the camp infrastructure, which still had not been
Speaker 12: rebuilt since then. But upon arriving from Gresham Park on Saturday,
Speaker 12: both first time of visitors to the Wallani Forest and
Speaker 12: seasoned forest defenders worked together to rebuild a lot of
Speaker 12: that infrastructure to support camp life for the next week.
Speaker 15: One of the things that we saw on the march
Speaker 15: in was like eight cinder blocks right at the entrance
Speaker 15: to the living room, and then you and I went
Speaker 15: into the living room, we saw these huge water tanks.
Speaker 15: So later they moved those water tanks to those those
Speaker 15: cinder blocks, and that has become or a watering point
Speaker 15: for everyone. So like twice a day a truck comes
Speaker 15: with a water tank on the back and then they
Speaker 15: go through the arduous process of filling that water so
Speaker 15: that everybody in camp can have water. They had this
Speaker 15: system that was seemingly self organized. And then that first
Speaker 15: day we were sitting in the parking lot and it
Speaker 15: seemed like every time you turn around there was like
Speaker 15: a different train of people carrying supplies into the living room.
Speaker 15: The second day, there was a woman who was shoveling
Speaker 15: gravel from the torn up concrete on the side, and
Speaker 15: she was filling all of the random holes in the
Speaker 15: ground so that carts could go up them. And I
Speaker 15: was like, you know, did somebody assign this to you?
Speaker 15: She's like, no, I saw this. It just needed to
Speaker 15: be done, and I did it. And that was very
Speaker 15: much the entire vibe of those first I would say
Speaker 15: twenty four hours was okay, what do we need to
Speaker 15: do to get this thing running?
Speaker 12: As encampments were being established, simultaneously, infrastructure for the South
Speaker 12: River Music Festival was being erected in the adjacent radio
Speaker 12: control field. Within a short amount of time, a full
Speaker 12: stage was constructed, complete with lights and speakers, lining the
Speaker 12: sides of the field, where various tables and booths. One
Speaker 12: side featured a large variety of refreshments, as well as
Speaker 12: a medic tent, and the other side was home to
Speaker 12: free hot food and freshly grilled burgers and hot dogs.
Speaker 12: Next to the food were a few tables distributing an
Speaker 12: array of radical literature posters and stickers. What was your
Speaker 12: favorite stuff at the music FESTE tu?
Speaker 15: Well, there was an arepa table, and I'm very food motivated.
Speaker 15: So the arapas were delicious, and we had walked a
Speaker 15: bunch that day, so yeah, I needed sustenance. And then
Speaker 15: there was the burger table as well, but we I
Speaker 15: don't think. I don't know if you got a burger,
Speaker 15: but I did not get a burger.
Speaker 12: I got I got one burger, but they were out
Speaker 12: of buns when I got a burger, so I had
Speaker 12: a lettuce burger, and then soon after they they got
Speaker 12: the buns.
Speaker 4: Back, and I was kind of kind of bummed.
Speaker 15: Yeah, I did not, Well, at least you got something,
Speaker 15: but I had the arapis.
Speaker 12: So I mean stundth To be fair, hundreds of people
Speaker 12: were they've fed for They've said five hundred people, you know,
Speaker 12: And at one point they made announcement that like they
Speaker 12: needed to do another food run just to go get
Speaker 12: more more food, and like a bunch of people volunteered.
Speaker 15: And you know, only I think two or three went
Speaker 15: down to Walmart to get a bunch of more burgers
Speaker 15: and hot dogs. And it was just a really cool moment.
Speaker 15: And so I think by the end the end of
Speaker 15: the night when I was there, they were about five
Speaker 15: hundred people just enjoying the music and looking at the sky.
Speaker 15: It was just an immaculate vibe. There was a little
Speaker 15: fire pick off to the side. And yeah, you talked
Speaker 15: about the setting up the stage. You know, I didn't
Speaker 15: know what to expect walking in there, was not expecting
Speaker 15: quite that much of a production. I wasn't expecting a
Speaker 15: light fledged stage with lights all around sort of in
Speaker 15: this really like the lighting worked really well for it's
Speaker 15: it backdropped the surrounding for it like.
Speaker 5: Nice like green and purple lighting.
Speaker 12: Yeah, it was, it was.
Speaker 5: It was great.
Speaker 15: And then they had that green room tent back there,
Speaker 15: and then they had a separate ten for equipment. Like
Speaker 15: it was a very well thought out festival in the
Speaker 15: middle of nowhere.
Speaker 12: The South River Music Festival began early Saturday evening at
Speaker 12: five point thirty, kicking off two days of local musical
Speaker 12: artists playing shows free of charge. Before the lineup of
Speaker 12: live music began, someone on stage read out a small
Speaker 12: flyer that was being passed around, detailing the reasoning for
Speaker 12: the festival and its place within the fight to defend
Speaker 12: the forest. And I got permission to share that reading.
Speaker 23: In the limitless possibilities of the cosmos, in the mad
Speaker 23: flocks of events, reactions, and anomalies of the past twelve
Speaker 23: billion years since the birth of our universe, it's a
Speaker 23: statistical impossibility that we would be here now, But here
Speaker 23: we are alive.
Speaker 24: Together.
Speaker 23: Such incredible circumstances have brought us here, among them the
Speaker 23: incredible and innovative resistance to defend this place.
Speaker 24: For becoming a police training compound.
Speaker 8: Magic rooms.
Speaker 23: This resistance, which brings us together the most cunning and
Speaker 23: resilient techniques of the radical environmentalist movement with the incredible
Speaker 23: courage and ferocity of the George Floyd Uprising, is not
Speaker 23: just about a small piece of land.
Speaker 24: It's not about being fought.
Speaker 23: Between police and their goons on one hand and some
Speaker 23: activists and their friends on the other. We are witnessing
Speaker 23: a collision of two competing ideas of happiness, of.
Speaker 24: Life, of the future.
Speaker 23: In this competition, experiments with new types of Greek culture
Speaker 23: play a decisive role.
Speaker 24: This movement cannot be reduced.
Speaker 23: To what is happening in city hall, on social media,
Speaker 23: or in meetings. For two years we have descended on
Speaker 23: these woods, finding refuge from the high rents and predatory
Speaker 23: bookings fees of the corporate venues and bars, and not
Speaker 23: come here to redecorate the actions of some activists as allies,
Speaker 23: lending our service to the drab and loveless militancy of
Speaker 23: something we do not otherwise care about. As the gentrification
Speaker 23: of Atlanta intensifies, more and more diy venues and clubs
Speaker 23: are shutdown, and free spaces to play shows and dance
Speaker 23: are push further and further from the city center. Our
Speaker 23: free time is pinched as rents increase and traffic keeps
Speaker 23: us waiting longer and longer.
Speaker 24: That is going to change.
Speaker 23: Music is not like other forms of human culture. It
Speaker 23: is different from painting, drawing, poetry, literature, or film art.
Speaker 23: Politics and symbolic culture in general represent the passions conjuring
Speaker 23: strong feelings from the shadows of reality, pulling them from
Speaker 23: the depths of the soul or the back of consciousness. Music,
Speaker 23: on the other hand, is perhaps the only form of
Speaker 23: human creativity that contacts those feelings without any media. Music
Speaker 23: is physics, music is reality. The system we live in
Speaker 23: is at war with reality. The system is destroying forests, rivers, mountaintops,
Speaker 23: and oceans. It's destroying our imaginations, our bodies, and our world.
Speaker 23: To defend ourselves from certain annihilation, it will not be
Speaker 23: sufficient to strike the right notes at the right time.
Speaker 23: We will have to make recourse to other means, to
Speaker 23: more direct means, and that is why we're all here.
Speaker 23: The defend the Atlanta Forest Revolution will be economic, political,
Speaker 23: as well as cultural. We're building a new era of
Speaker 23: human history where music will be at the steering wheel.
Speaker 23: What is needed cannot be taught without first being discovered.
Speaker 23: We are those adventurers plunging the depths of the cosmos
Speaker 23: for the contours and textures of a free existence, of
Speaker 23: a life without dead time. When it is necessary, we
Speaker 23: will defend ourselves by the means appropriate to the task.
Speaker 24: Not with words. It's not with.
Speaker 23: Denunciations, but with actions, real and concrete, actions as real
Speaker 23: as the sounds, as real as reality.
Speaker 24: I'm so lucky to be here with y'all. Thank you.
Speaker 12: Across the middle of the field, hundreds of people laid
Speaker 12: out blankets on the grass and dirt. Concertgoers alternated between
Speaker 12: a dancing in front of the stage and relaxing and
Speaker 12: eating food on picnic blankets. As the night approached, over
Speaker 12: a thousand people were spread out across the RC field.
Speaker 12: Amoshe pit had formed directly in front of the stage.
Speaker 12: Musicians led stop Kopcity chants, and between sets, people spoke
Speaker 12: on mic about the movement.
Speaker 14: Everybody say stop cop City, Stop cop City.
Speaker 8: That's right, that's right.
Speaker 12: Saturday Night was headlined by local Atlanta rapper Zach Fox.
Speaker 12: Zach told stories about how he and his friends used
Speaker 12: to hang out in this very forest as teenagers.
Speaker 25: All Right, y'all, man, hey, I'm gonna say this. Fuck
Speaker 25: the mayor. I'm gonna say this, Fuck the mayor, and
Speaker 25: fuck all this shit. And I love everybody for coming
Speaker 25: out to support this ship.
Speaker 8: Do you're really fucking.
Speaker 5: When I tell you me, Archie.
Speaker 25: Everybody used to walk back in these woods and drink
Speaker 25: red stripes and and walk our dogs and shoot guns
Speaker 25: and shit. So I really don't want to see this
Speaker 25: shit happen. And I really appreciate alli y'all for coming
Speaker 25: out to do this shit.
Speaker 12: Fuck a cop City Chance erupted pretty regularly throughout the night.
Speaker 25: And this is all I'm gonna tell the police. This
Speaker 25: is all I'm gonna tell the police. Okay, hold on,
Speaker 25: let me make sure I push the right button.
Speaker 26: Say that ship. Let's go fucking right it fucking right
Speaker 26: it fucking running, fucking running, fucking running, fucking run it,
Speaker 26: fucking run it.
Speaker 24: Atlanta.
Speaker 25: I love y'all so much, man, Hell yeah, hey, man,
Speaker 25: let me say something real quick.
Speaker 5: Let me say something real quick before I get the
Speaker 5: fuck out, savee. Let my hummies right this shit.
Speaker 25: I love y'all so much for supporting this shit.
Speaker 8: I have.
Speaker 14: Let me tell you.
Speaker 7: Let me tell you something.
Speaker 8: I'm thirty two.
Speaker 25: A lot of niggas start getting old and they lose.
Speaker 14: Faith in the youth. I got so much faith in
Speaker 14: everybody in this motherfucking bitch.
Speaker 25: Wherever y'all going, I'm going, I truly believe that y'all
Speaker 25: gonna save this motherfucking world.
Speaker 23: So I'm with y'all.
Speaker 25: Fuck Cop City, fuck cops in general, fuck twelve, fuck authoritarianism,
Speaker 25: fuck capitalism, fuck all that bullshit.
Speaker 8: I'm with y'all to the end. So I motherfucking die.
Speaker 8: So let me hear y'all say this one more time.
Speaker 5: Start bud Wow, Start Bob Wow.
Speaker 26: Start bob whow stiite Bob Wow.
Speaker 12: Besides the domestic terrorism banner I mentioned in the opening
Speaker 12: of this episode, another banner was hung up beside the
Speaker 12: stage featuring turtles and butterflies, along with the Asada Shakur quote.
Speaker 12: Love is our sword, truth is our compass.
Speaker 3: This kind of music is about the naty of nature,
Speaker 3: filling the trees, feeling the crowd filling each other.
Speaker 5: Look right up there, look at the fucking moon.
Speaker 12: To quote a communicate from the Sonic Defense Committee quote,
Speaker 12: at this point, it was impossible to imagine a meaningful
Speaker 12: police intervention. The crowd was made up of elderly people,
Speaker 12: university students, rappers, indigenous activists, toddlers and newborns, skaters, people
Speaker 12: of all imaginable Atlanta demographics. The night ended around three
Speaker 12: thirty am to sounds of house techno and drum and
Speaker 12: bass without any notable incident.
Speaker 5: Unquote.
Speaker 12: Tents were set up all over the eastern side of
Speaker 12: the forest, with many people choosing to sleep under the
Speaker 12: tree canopy between the living room and the music festival
Speaker 12: for that first night. As the night went on, people
Speaker 12: carefully tended small campfires both in the festival field and
Speaker 12: in the middle of the living room. To quote the
Speaker 12: press collective, the movement was once again living in joyous
Speaker 12: harmony with the forest it had promised to protect. Tomorrow's
Speaker 12: episode will cover day two of the music festival, the
Speaker 12: frankly unprecedented direct action that took place Sunday afternoon, and
Speaker 12: a more detailed look at the police raid that happened
Speaker 12: later that evening. See You on the other Side. Music
Speaker 12: Festival audio courtesy of Unicorn Riot Welcome back to it
Speaker 12: could happen here. This is part two of my mini
Speaker 12: series detailing the March Week of Action to defend the
Speaker 12: Atlanta Forest and stop Coop City. Last episode, we covered
Speaker 12: the Week of Action kickoff rally at Gresham Park and
Speaker 12: Day one of the South River Music Festival. Will be
Speaker 12: picking up basically right where we left off, starting with
Speaker 12: my conversation with Matt from the Atlanta Community Press Collective.
Speaker 12: Saturday night, there was music going on to like four am.
Speaker 12: It was a long night, but like a really good night.
Speaker 12: What was your Sunday?
Speaker 15: Like Sunday, You know, Sunday started off really great, like
Speaker 15: walking in the first thing you see when you walked
Speaker 15: back onto the festival grounds was this amazing bouncy house
Speaker 15: that they had written some guidelines up there that it
Speaker 15: did seem like everyone fall foh you could fit six adults,
Speaker 15: which like for a bouncy house, that's pretty large.
Speaker 5: It was a big bouncy house.
Speaker 15: It was like six of dollars through twelve kids or
Speaker 15: something like that. So, yeah, you see this bouncy house,
Speaker 15: and like when you see that the first thing, but
Speaker 15: I think that visually sets the entire expectation, Like that
Speaker 15: is a statement in and of itself of like what
Speaker 15: they were going for that first.
Speaker 12: Day Day two of the music festival started around noon.
Speaker 12: Right in the middle of the rc field was this
Speaker 12: large rainbow colored bouncy castle adorned with a stop Copcity banner.
Speaker 12: People slowly trickled in all over the course of the afternoon,
Speaker 12: culminating in about one thousand people scattered across the field
Speaker 12: by four pm. Just like the night before, people enjoyed
Speaker 12: free food, Defend the Forest related literature, and a bustling
Speaker 12: refreshment booth while listening to live music. People played a
Speaker 12: soccer and frisbee in the open field, while others were
Speaker 12: continuing to build camp infrastructure in the forest.
Speaker 15: So I think the bousing castle set the tone and
Speaker 15: everything was really lighthearted for the first few hours. I
Speaker 15: spent most of that day walking around watching this like
Speaker 15: autonomous infrastructure in the forest kind of pop up on
Speaker 15: its own. It's like everywhere I went, you know, to
Speaker 15: the parking lot, you saw trains of people carrying like
Speaker 15: water and supplies deep into the forest. Everyone seemed to
Speaker 15: just be trying to find a place to fit in
Speaker 15: and to work and to really participate in the Week
Speaker 15: of Action.
Speaker 12: As the day went on, rumors started to circulate about
Speaker 12: inaction happening Later that afternoon, word quickly spread that people
Speaker 12: would meet up in the RC field at five pm.
Speaker 12: Eventually a flyer was posted to social media, and sure enough,
Speaker 12: come five o'clock, a group of a few hundred people
Speaker 12: made up of individuals and affinity groups, gathered behind the
Speaker 12: bouncy castle, most of whom were masked up and a
Speaker 12: donning some form of black block or camo block. A
Speaker 12: communicating posted later on the website scenes dot no blogs
Speaker 12: dot org described the feeling on the ground quote, the
Speaker 12: air was tense, no visible rage, just a stealed determination.
Speaker 12: No one knew what was coming next, but we knew
Speaker 12: it was something big.
Speaker 15: That was that was quite the visual like this, this
Speaker 15: this crowd of camo and black block, and like some
Speaker 15: people wearing normal clothes who I don't think quite knew
Speaker 15: what they were about to do next to this massive
Speaker 15: bouncy castle. And I think that that the visual of
Speaker 15: it kind of represents like two aspects of the movement,
Speaker 15: right like the militant aspect and the joyful aspect, and
Speaker 15: I think they're both very central to to what you know,
Speaker 15: the movement is.
Speaker 12: Yeah, it's a pretty good encapsulation of the diversity present
Speaker 12: around the defend the forest and stop cup City move.
Speaker 12: There's a few hundred people in camera block walking down
Speaker 12: I believe is a constitution A lot of people just
Speaker 12: in black block, mix of legal observers here, police shoppers
Speaker 12: overhead are Currently people are marching west in the direction
Speaker 12: of the old Atlanta Prison Farm, the slate of the
Speaker 12: forest that cop City is.
Speaker 2: Planned to be built on.
Speaker 12: There has not really been a mass convergence of people
Speaker 12: like this in the forest in a long long time.
Speaker 12: I cannot remember the last time there was anything quite
Speaker 12: like this. This is definitely the biggest group of people
Speaker 12: who's ever like converged on marching on the old Atlanta
Speaker 12: Prison Farm area. Last year, people were occupying and living
Speaker 12: in the forest in that side. Since there are pres
Speaker 12: has intensified, more people have moved over across on the
Speaker 12: other side of Intrenchment Creek Park, on a slate of
Speaker 12: land closer to Willane People's Park and the section that
Speaker 12: Lyon MILSAP is wanting to develop. Definitely never seen this
Speaker 12: many people marching like this near the forest in a
Speaker 12: much more militant seeming group of the crowd, as opposed
Speaker 12: to Saturday's first march, which was like a thousand people
Speaker 12: of various types. Everyone here looks much more willing to
Speaker 12: throw down. As the group, around three hundred strong, left
Speaker 12: the RC field, they calmly marched west down Constitution Road
Speaker 12: toward the power line cut, accompanied overhead by a police
Speaker 12: chopper equipped with a thermal camera.
Speaker 2: Popter's still overhead.
Speaker 4: I'm sure you can hear it.
Speaker 12: To get a clear picture of what actually happened that day.
Speaker 12: It's useful to understand the geography of the Wilaanni Forest,
Speaker 12: especially since the police have tried to make it sound
Speaker 12: like the individuals who were arrested later that night were
Speaker 12: apprehended at the scene of the crime, which is not
Speaker 12: actually the case.
Speaker 15: The entire area that the defenders are trying to defend,
Speaker 15: the entire Weilani Forest, the contiguous part of it, is
Speaker 15: surrounded in sort of a triangle by three different roads,
Speaker 15: Constitution Key and Bouldercrest. All the way to the east
Speaker 15: is Wilani People's Park, and like just to the west
Speaker 15: of that is the RC Field where the music festival
Speaker 15: was happening, where the bouncy castle is and where our
Speaker 15: group that we're following here starts to gather. And then
Speaker 15: all the way to the west is the proposed site
Speaker 15: of copp City along Key Road. So to get there
Speaker 15: through the forest takes a good thirty forty five minutes
Speaker 15: to get there. You know, if you're on the road,
Speaker 15: is still like a twenty five thirty minute walk. It
Speaker 15: is not like anywhere close on foot. No, it's from
Speaker 15: point A to point B.
Speaker 12: And if you're crossing through those you also have to
Speaker 12: like jump over Entrenchment Creek, which is not the easiest
Speaker 12: creek to cross over.
Speaker 15: It's not the easiest and it's not the cleanest. It's
Speaker 15: something you want to step in.
Speaker 12: I'm at the back of the march now. Everyone's kind
Speaker 12: of tightened up into one larger, larger group. They've paused
Speaker 12: briefly and are retrieving some tires that have been found
Speaker 12: near the ditch on the road here, dozens and dozens
Speaker 12: of tires are blocking are blocking the road. They're getting
Speaker 12: moved out pretty quick, and the march is moving on. Oh,
Speaker 12: and looks like people arrived at the power line cut,
Speaker 12: this massive clearing for power lines to run north south.
Speaker 12: People are now marching on the green grass underneath the
Speaker 12: power lines. The thin clear cut for power lines has
Speaker 12: been there for years and directly leads to where cop
Speaker 12: City pre construction work is taking place near the north Gate.
Speaker 12: The open area makes it easy to traverse, but on
Speaker 12: the flip side, that also makes it easy to surveil.
Speaker 12: There were only a little over a dozen cops stationed
Speaker 12: at the north gate, as well as the police chopper
Speaker 12: circling overhead. The group of block is slowly, slowly moving
Speaker 12: north along the power line cut. I'm keeping my distance
Speaker 12: for now so that I can continue doing stuff without
Speaker 12: being extremely jeopardized. The block approached the north gate in
Speaker 12: broad daylight, with shields in hand and people behind throwing
Speaker 12: projectiles in the direction of police. A barrage of fireworks,
Speaker 12: rocks and just the sheer size of the crowd overwhelmed police,
Speaker 12: causing officers to retreat as a swarm of hundreds of
Speaker 12: people overtook the proposed cop City construction site and current
Speaker 12: police security upost within the Wollani Forest. All right, the
Speaker 12: group has marched a decent ways up. There's now fireworks
Speaker 12: in the distance. A police helicopter is still over head.
Speaker 12: Looks like most of the crowd is still in the
Speaker 12: area of the power line cut. A pretty condensed large
Speaker 12: group of people up there lots of fireworks. Like I said,
Speaker 12: some individuals chose to focus their efforts on repelling the
Speaker 12: nearby police, giving the opportunity for others to set their
Speaker 12: sights on various targets. The large number of people in
Speaker 12: the block together allowed for individuals to feel more safe
Speaker 12: and capable of taking action. The APDs put a call
Speaker 12: out to get any available units down here by the
Speaker 12: old line of prison farm property and a quote from
Speaker 12: the scanner audios get here now, assholes. Forest defenders smashed
Speaker 12: up and set ablaze and office trailer, two UTVs, a
Speaker 12: surveillance tower, and a front end loader as the police
Speaker 12: ran for cover behind a fenced off secondary smaller outpost across.
Speaker 5: From Key Road.
Speaker 12: Despite the police helicopter circling overhead the gathering spot for
Speaker 12: a good thirty minutes, it seems APD was not fully
Speaker 12: prepared in their response or just did not know what
Speaker 12: going on, because they made it a decent way without
Speaker 12: any visible resistance so far. A communicate posted online reads
Speaker 12: quote when we approached the gate. Finally it was not chaos,
Speaker 12: but it was something like it. Our crowd unleashed a
Speaker 12: wild burst of energy. It was incredible and I will
Speaker 12: never forget it. It was rhythmic almost We devastated all
Speaker 12: of their work, their vehicles, the trailer, everything. But it
Speaker 12: looks like Atlanta Police is now trying to converge. Lots
Speaker 12: of fireworks are still I see smoke.
Speaker 2: Oh, a lot of smoke.
Speaker 5: WHOA a lot of smoke.
Speaker 12: Very fast is filling up, filling up the area around
Speaker 12: the little It looks like it's by the little control
Speaker 12: tower in the middle of the power line.
Speaker 16: Cut.
Speaker 12: Wow, that smoke is thick. That's a fire. That is
Speaker 12: a decent fire. You can I can see the orange
Speaker 12: flame now. As the few police officers stationed at the
Speaker 12: North Gate were forced to fall back under pressure, force
Speaker 12: defenders leveled months of their work within a few minutes.
Speaker 12: To quote the scenes dot no blogs communicate quote. This
Speaker 12: act of mass collective sabotage was done methodically and without anxiety.
Speaker 12: The crowd destroyed all of their equipment with ease and confidence.
Speaker 15: So the excavator there was a utility train vehicle, which
Speaker 15: is what the police have been using to sort of
Speaker 15: move in and around the woods, and sort of motorized
Speaker 15: move in and around the woods.
Speaker 14: And then the.
Speaker 15: Office space and the storage space. We're all torched. I
Speaker 15: think that that comprised like everything that.
Speaker 12: Was over there, and then the police surveillance tower, which
Speaker 12: has been taken down a few times.
Speaker 15: Surveillance towers in that area, they have this tendency to
Speaker 15: fall over.
Speaker 12: The fire has gotten a lot lot bigger. Police scanner
Speaker 12: audio is saying officer needs help, calling for all available
Speaker 12: units to converge on the spot.
Speaker 16: Wow.
Speaker 5: Ok, the fire is getting so much brighter.
Speaker 12: Smoke is incredibly It looks like some people are starting
Speaker 12: to move out of the area back into the woods.
Speaker 15: But wow, that is a.
Speaker 12: Huge fire. There was at least two separate things lit
Speaker 12: on fire. There were, in fact more than two things
Speaker 12: on fire. Looks like crowd is going to be starting
Speaker 12: to move because a lot of police is about to
Speaker 12: show up. I'm sure what the response will be for
Speaker 12: people at the music festival or at a Wolani People's
Speaker 12: park who are camping out for the Week of Action.
Speaker 12: But this is a pretty pretty big action for Week
Speaker 12: of Action Day two. Wow, this smoke plume is massive.
Speaker 12: While the action itself was a success, the notion of
Speaker 12: an overall one sided victory was about to come crashing down.
Speaker 12: A whole bunch of sirens just flew by about a
Speaker 12: dozen cop cars, Lots of cop cars by the music
Speaker 12: festival entrants as well by the RC field. Looks like
Speaker 12: the cop cars are converging at the festival, not at
Speaker 12: the fire here. Okay, back at the music festival. As
Speaker 12: you can hear, it is it is, It is still ongoing.
Speaker 12: There's still hundreds of people, probably like five hundred people
Speaker 12: gathered here at the music festival. You can see smoke
Speaker 12: in the air from this vantage point, from the spot
Speaker 12: by the power line cut where those two fires took place.
Speaker 12: One indication that this night was far from over was
Speaker 12: that the police helicopter seemed to be moving toward the festival.
Speaker 5: The chopper has moved.
Speaker 12: From being the power line cut to the music festival
Speaker 12: and Wailani people's spark vibe seems to be pretty chill
Speaker 12: on the ground here. I'm not sure how many people
Speaker 12: that are present know what's going on, but the chopper
Speaker 12: is still stationed above the entrance to the festival, so
Speaker 12: I think they're they're looking to see if the group
Speaker 12: that march is going to march back the same direction,
Speaker 12: which I don't think they will, but that is what's
Speaker 12: currently going on. People still still seem to be coming
Speaker 12: like to and from the fast. Sure enough, within minutes,
Speaker 12: an increasingly large number of police started to stage by
Speaker 12: the entrance to the RC Field. Doesn't the police cars
Speaker 12: are now stationed outside the entrance to the RC field
Speaker 12: where the music festival is taking place. There's a lot
Speaker 12: of police here, some with rifles. They're getting their zip
Speaker 12: tie cuffs ready. They've not entered the festival area yet,
Speaker 12: but I got word from somebody that they have entered
Speaker 12: the Wolaani People's Park parking lot and it looks like
Speaker 12: movement is to be expected very soon. At around six
Speaker 12: thirty pm, police began to raid the South River Music
Speaker 12: Festival and started what I think is accurately described as
Speaker 12: the police's own counter protest to the events that transpired
Speaker 12: the past hour.
Speaker 15: So when the police came running up onto the tarmac
Speaker 15: at RC Field where the bouncy castle was, of course
Speaker 15: they had to point a rifle at the bouncy castle.
Speaker 15: And if that doesn't show that police are not here
Speaker 15: to have fun and have joy, I don't know what
Speaker 15: what is. I don't know if anyone was in it
Speaker 15: at the time, I don't think so. I think they
Speaker 15: were literally just pointing a gun at an empty bouncy
Speaker 15: castle which they have they destroyed, and I think we
Speaker 15: have to take a moment to mourn that.
Speaker 12: Lots of police running into the music festival. They're rowing
Speaker 12: someone down, chasing down a few people, Cops approaching for
Speaker 12: multiple sides. Instead of immediately trying to confront the hundreds
Speaker 12: of music festival attendees head on, the still extremely outnumbered
Speaker 12: cops ran to the opposite side of the music festival
Speaker 12: and started to indiscriminately go after isolated stragglers. People running
Speaker 12: into the woods, chase by police. Someone's tackled, no one
Speaker 12: early around it to arrest someone else being arrested. One, two, three,
Speaker 12: four or five six people currently arrested that I can see,
Speaker 12: or at least being detained.
Speaker 15: Looks like an NLG person's on the ground.
Speaker 12: Eventually the concertgoers realized what was happening, and a little
Speaker 12: over one hundred people mobilized to pressure the cops out
Speaker 12: of the field. People from the music festival are now
Speaker 12: running behind the police that have rushed into the rc field,
Speaker 12: cops being flanked by hundreds of people.
Speaker 15: So the first thing that happened was a few officers
Speaker 15: entered the RC field, which is where the music festival
Speaker 15: was happening, and made a few quick arrests. Yeah, like
Speaker 15: five or six, I would say, And I would assume,
Speaker 15: seeing like the crowd and realizing that a small force
Speaker 15: of officers is easily overwhelmed, kind of pulled back with
Speaker 15: their arrests. And then just after that, over in Wheelani
Speaker 15: People's Park, that's when the cab came in with their
Speaker 15: SWAT teams. There was a group that was meeting in
Speaker 15: the gazebo and they report like dozens of police officers
Speaker 15: running by. One of them stood up to record and
Speaker 15: an officer with an ar fifteen yelled at them and
Speaker 15: told them to sit the fuck back down, and they did.
Speaker 15: They were allowed to finish their meeting, but they report
Speaker 15: this very surreal experience of just officers like flying by
Speaker 15: and also making arrest of individuals who were running. And
Speaker 15: then the third wave, I would say, came in on
Speaker 15: the back of a armored police vehicle with an L RAD.
Speaker 12: Good old dj L rad brings it brings back all
Speaker 12: the memories.
Speaker 15: And so from there they sort of launched into the forest,
Speaker 15: launching tear.
Speaker 12: Gas again also brings back all of the memories. Police
Speaker 12: are starting to come back into the music festival. Fireworks
Speaker 12: are happening in the woods.
Speaker 5: Near the living room.
Speaker 2: It looks like.
Speaker 12: The police that entered via the RCA field advanced up
Speaker 12: to join another group of cops who came in from
Speaker 12: Wollani People's Park and were already in the woods. What
Speaker 12: I first assumed were just fireworks were actually in exchange
Speaker 12: of munitions, with cops firing explosive tear gas canisters into
Speaker 12: the forest and people trying to hold the cops off
Speaker 12: with fireworks. Tear gas is in the woods.
Speaker 3: Fuck, it's hard.
Speaker 12: I can't get any I didn't I didn't bring my
Speaker 12: gas masks because this was a music festival. It's just
Speaker 12: the woods are completely caked and gas. Everyone who's inside
Speaker 12: I don't know how they're going to get out. Cops
Speaker 12: have the place surrounded. It's so gassed up in there.
Speaker 5: Police raided.
Speaker 12: They tear gased a section of the woods close to
Speaker 12: the RCA field, kind of blocking off the RCA field
Speaker 12: from from the Wallani People's Park parking lot and the
Speaker 12: Campsit's nearby, so you couldn't like really get away or
Speaker 12: run through that area because your breathing would stop. As
Speaker 12: mine temporarily did as I tried, as I tried to
Speaker 12: run through there, and then policer just took over this
Speaker 12: entire section of southeast Atlanta, just this entire section of
Speaker 12: the woods, all the intersections in.
Speaker 15: This area, except for the very small space that the
Speaker 15: music festival was still going on during this entire time.
Speaker 12: The section like right in front of the stage where
Speaker 12: people continued to have the music festival for the next
Speaker 12: few hours. As police were as like, I kid you not,
Speaker 12: Like over five hundred police officers were in this surrounding area.
Speaker 12: There was the most amount of police I've ever seen
Speaker 12: respond to anything ever.
Speaker 5: It was wild.
Speaker 2: I am currently heading out.
Speaker 12: I will try to loop back around to Blanna People's
Speaker 12: Park because there's just no way through it right now
Speaker 12: with all the tear gas.
Speaker 5: But a cop van has.
Speaker 12: Pulled into the rc Field music customal people. Some of
Speaker 12: them are study by the stage, others are kind of dispersing.
Speaker 12: Night's getting pretty hectic. Cops fully surrounding a lot of
Speaker 12: People's Park and the music festival on all sides. There
Speaker 12: was at least one individual of note who was witnessed
Speaker 12: to be at the music festival the entire time. During
Speaker 12: the direct action, and they were one of the very
Speaker 12: first arrests. Police chased this person down, tased and violently
Speaker 12: tackled them. Were you on the festival at that time.
Speaker 21: I was around the festival at that time. I even
Speaker 21: saw the police tackle someone at the festival and tackle
Speaker 21: and tase an Indigenous person at the festival. And initially
Speaker 21: the police officer Georgia State Patrol, and these are the
Speaker 21: folks that were responsible for killing Tortigita and making up
Speaker 21: a lie about it. They started running and there were
Speaker 21: three people in front of them. All three of those
Speaker 21: people started running, and then there were two white folks
Speaker 21: that veered off to the left and one Indigenous person
Speaker 21: that veered off to the right. Go figure, the Georgia
Speaker 21: State Patrol veered to the right and then tased and
Speaker 21: tackled the indigenous person. And then and there's the footage
Speaker 21: of this that may may not be released, uh, where
Speaker 21: I was trying to de escalate the situation because this
Speaker 21: police officer, with no grounds to attack this person, is
Speaker 21: choking them on the ground and then really just asking
Speaker 21: you like literally what are you doing?
Speaker 8: Like why are you doing?
Speaker 21: And then the persons that I didn't do anything, and
Speaker 21: then the uh Georgia State Patrol officer responded, well, you
Speaker 21: ran right, as if running when somebody with a gun
Speaker 21: chasing you is an admission of guilt of something. Uh
Speaker 21: So the response was nonsensical and stupid.
Speaker 15: So they they're tear gassing the forest and again, you know, uh,
Speaker 15: grabbing from reports anyone who who's who's running? Anyone who
Speaker 15: who you know rightfully runs from a police officer running
Speaker 15: at them with an AR fifteen, which you know, we've
Speaker 15: been around police all week, and like the instinct to run,
Speaker 15: you know, even even now is still pretty high.
Speaker 8: No.
Speaker 12: Absolutely, And if you've never been chased by police before,
Speaker 12: your first instinct isn't to like let them get you,
Speaker 12: like I've had police just charge at me for filming
Speaker 12: police brutality before. And yeah, you generally want to move away.
Speaker 12: It is your immediate reaction.
Speaker 15: Yeah, anyone running at you with a gun is caused
Speaker 15: for fear, and a police officer even more so. Okay,
Speaker 15: I am out of the area.
Speaker 12: Police have surrounded on basically every side of the Lone
Speaker 12: People's Park, the section of the four people are camping
Speaker 12: out of the music festival, all entrances and exits are stage,
Speaker 12: a whole bunch of intersections, this police stage. They're letting
Speaker 12: some people go, obviously they're arresting a whole bunch of
Speaker 12: other people. No clear indication on who their arresting or why.
Speaker 12: It's pretty chaotic right now.
Speaker 15: They put out this officer needs help.
Speaker 13: Call.
Speaker 15: That expanded beyond just APD, But the first thing they
Speaker 15: did was was calling every available APD officer. Fulton County
Speaker 15: Sheriff's Office joint to Cab County started to mount up,
Speaker 15: and then of course the Georgia State Patrol definitely had
Speaker 15: to get onto this action. So jurisdictionally wide or this
Speaker 15: multi jurisdiction wide force of police amassed on Key Road
Speaker 15: with the cab kind of coming in on the other side.
Speaker 12: I passed through at least five hundred individual police officers. Yeah,
Speaker 12: that like that would check out, because I walked a
Speaker 12: decent a decent, a decent ways. I passed by many
Speaker 12: an intersection with at least fifty to one hundred cops
Speaker 12: was stationed at like each intersection.
Speaker 15: Oh and we can't forget the Sandy Springs Police Department also,
Speaker 15: and its way down from outside the premier.
Speaker 12: Multiple swat teams there was like thinks read from Bearcats.
Speaker 12: After I evacuated the area, I was still in shock
Speaker 12: about how many police officers mobilized to raid the festival.
Speaker 12: This is the biggest police response I've seen to anything
Speaker 12: in Atlanta in the time that I've been here. This
Speaker 12: is bigger than the police responses to most of like
Speaker 12: Portland actions compared to Like twenty twenty. Massive, massive amount
Speaker 12: of cops from multiple agencies taking over a huge area
Speaker 12: of South Atlanta and de kep County. As the second
Speaker 12: wave of police charged in and detained several music festival attendees,
Speaker 12: panic spread throughout the crowd. Hundreds of people rushed to
Speaker 12: the exits in an attempt to evacuate. Police blocked exits
Speaker 12: and arrested, detained, or harassed and threatened those trying to leave.
Speaker 12: One concertgoer reported that they received death threats from an
Speaker 12: intruding officer quote you're going to get shot. I don't
Speaker 12: know how to put it, but you're gonna get shot
Speaker 12: with a bullet unquote. That same person who recorded that
Speaker 12: interaction also reported that she heard an officer with his
Speaker 12: side arm drawn in the living room say, quote, I
Speaker 12: swear to God, I will fucking kill you unquote. Some
Speaker 12: people opted for safety in numbers and decided they'd rather
Speaker 12: stay together as a group as opposed to the risk
Speaker 12: of trying to escape through the woods alone. That night,
Speaker 12: about one hundred and fifty people congregated in front of
Speaker 12: the festival stage, and musicians that stuck around continued to
Speaker 12: play music.
Speaker 15: So the music festival continues unhindered until dusk, and about
Speaker 15: then is when DJ l Rad comes up and officers
Speaker 15: get out and call over like five people from the crowd.
Speaker 15: And so at this point I think there's like somewhere
Speaker 15: between one hundred seventy five to one hundred people still
Speaker 15: at the music pest watching the music, and people are
Speaker 15: calling out from the stage like we have a legal
Speaker 15: right to be here, this is public property.
Speaker 12: We had We had dueling, dueling loud speakers trying to
Speaker 12: two people having a regular conversation across a field via
Speaker 12: opposing loud speakers.
Speaker 15: Ry Scott Pilgrim versus the world right like.
Speaker 12: You know, as the police are trying to shut down
Speaker 12: a concert, and there's like pulks screaming into the bike
Speaker 12: and police officers using they all read to scream back.
Speaker 15: It's just amazing I mean, the visuals of this whole
Speaker 15: day I think are kind of really easy to imagine,
Speaker 15: even if you're not there.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 12: Roughly after two hours of hunting down and detaining stragglers
Speaker 12: from the festival, dozens of swat in riot gear with
Speaker 12: high end rifles and armored vehicles slowly moved in towards
Speaker 12: the stage. Police told festivalgoers that they had three minutes
Speaker 12: to leave the festival under threat of arrest for domestic terrorism,
Speaker 12: to which festivalgoers responded by shouting no. In front of
Speaker 12: the stage. The crowd linked arms enchanted, let us go
Speaker 12: home and we have children.
Speaker 8: Go WHOA.
Speaker 12: Apparently unable to mass arrest one hundred and fifty people
Speaker 12: for whatever reason, police called for five individuals from the
Speaker 12: festival to engage in a brief discussion. After this odd
Speaker 12: negotiation with a handful of random concert goers, festival attendees
Speaker 12: were told they had ten minutes to walk to their
Speaker 12: cars and go home or else be charged with domestic terrorism.
Speaker 15: About half the crowd has cars parked in the rc field,
Speaker 15: and the police allow them to go to their cars
Speaker 15: and leave, leaving like somewhere between you know, three dozen
Speaker 15: somewhere around three dozen people without cars still remaining at
Speaker 15: the FESTI and this whole time they're also chanting, we
Speaker 15: have kids, let us go, and like, it's this very
Speaker 15: big moment of solidarity that I've been told from like
Speaker 15: people who were there that you could tell that everybody
Speaker 15: was like really interested in keeping each other safe.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was, It was.
Speaker 12: It was weird because police were definitely they were letting
Speaker 12: some people walk away and leave a place, some people
Speaker 12: drive away, arresting others not really with no clear indication
Speaker 12: for why they're letting some go and not not letting
Speaker 12: others go. But then this this crowd of people around
Speaker 12: the stage were eventually allowed to leave the music festival
Speaker 12: in big rent of vans. The police then id'd the
Speaker 12: people who rented the vans and were driving the vans,
Speaker 12: but but everyone was able to exit who stayed by
Speaker 12: the music festival. Around midnight, the Atlanta Police Department posted
Speaker 12: a press release saying that thirty five people have been detained,
Speaker 12: which was kind of weird language because everyone assumed that
Speaker 12: those who had been taken by police were all going
Speaker 12: to be arrested and charged. But then less than an
Speaker 12: hour later, twelve individuals were suddenly released from police custody
Speaker 12: back to Gresham Park. Since then, witnesses and lawyers have
Speaker 12: claimed that police separated out people with Atlanta addresses on
Speaker 12: their IDs and released those individuals, and then the remaining
Speaker 12: twenty three people, mostly with out of state IDs or
Speaker 12: a non Atlanta address, were arrested and charged with domestic
Speaker 12: terrorism to continue the outside agitator narrative, bringing the total
Speaker 12: number of people charged with domestic terrorism to forty two.
Speaker 12: Ever since Sunday night, there's been this effort from police
Speaker 12: and their media allies to frame these arrests as if
Speaker 12: they happened at the scene of the crime, alleging that
Speaker 12: the twenty three people arrested were themselves torching equipment or
Speaker 12: actively engaged in domestic terrorism. Yet all of the arrests
Speaker 12: took place almost a mile away at the music festival,
Speaker 12: and even further away in some cases, like in the
Speaker 12: parking lot, which is on the other side of the
Speaker 12: forest from the north gate. To quote an article in
Speaker 12: Truth Out by Candice Burned, quote, law enforcement failing to
Speaker 12: apprehend specific individuals at the site itself, indiscriminately targeted the
Speaker 12: music festival, pouring into the field, campgrounds and parking lot
Speaker 12: with weapons drawn, they issued commands, chased people down, and
Speaker 12: threatened to shoot and arrest festival attendees unquote. Still, major
Speaker 12: news outlets all but ignored the fact that all arrests
Speaker 12: occurred seemingly at random during a police raid of the
Speaker 12: nearby South River Music Festival, where people gathered to see
Speaker 12: Zack Fox Live, to jump in a bouncy castle and
Speaker 12: enjoy the outdoors. Many attendees had little to no idea
Speaker 12: of what had occurred at the copp City construction site.
Speaker 12: Those who got lucky were forced to walk through tier
Speaker 12: gas to get to their cars, while others were assaulted
Speaker 12: by police and charged with domestic terrorism, risking thirty five
Speaker 12: years in prison. Here's a clip from NBC's Today Show.
Speaker 27: Got breaking news out of Atlanta. Over nine dozens arrested
Speaker 27: after what's being described as a coordinated criminal attack. It
Speaker 27: happened at the future site of a police training center.
Speaker 27: And this is Blaine Alexander's on the story for US
Speaker 27: Blaine Good Morning.
Speaker 28: Officials say protesters burned construction vehicles and a trailer and
Speaker 28: set off fireworks toward officers stationed nearby.
Speaker 21: This wasn't about a public safety training center.
Speaker 5: This was about anarchy and this was about the attempt
Speaker 5: to destabilize.
Speaker 28: Police point to a group of what they call outside agitators,
Speaker 28: saying they left an event nearby, changed into black clothing,
Speaker 28: and mounted a coordinated attack on construction equipment and police officers.
Speaker 12: To quote a statement from the Sonic Defense Committee. Quote,
Speaker 12: the indiscriminate brutalization and arrest of festivalgoers suggests that law
Speaker 12: enforcement agencies will go to great lengths to paint the
Speaker 12: movement to stop Coop City and Defend the Atlanta Forest
Speaker 12: as a criminal organization. It is in fact a broad,
Speaker 12: decentralized movement with no ideological or organizational unity of shared goal.
Speaker 12: They believe that the movement is made up of bad
Speaker 12: actors who betray otherwise peaceful protesters, but the movement is
Speaker 12: not committed to any particular tactic, instead accepting the diversity
Speaker 12: of approaches to stop the project. The police claim that
Speaker 12: the movement is not made up of any Atlantans, while
Speaker 12: Atlanta University Center, students, local clergy, faith leaders, small businesses,
Speaker 12: and dozens of locally famous artists and musicians organize themselves
Speaker 12: within the movement. The police's false narrative and heavy handed
Speaker 12: approach to dealing with the opposition to the COP City
Speaker 12: project is slowly starting to enclose them in. As the
Speaker 12: movement grows and city and state officials refuse to see
Speaker 12: the reality of what they are dealing with, their own
Speaker 12: authority is being brought into question. If they are not careful,
Speaker 12: the stakes of the movement will soon exceed the bounds
Speaker 12: of the forest and COP City. In fact, that process
Speaker 12: may already have begun.
Speaker 15: I think to talk about what happened, we we kind
Speaker 15: of do have to go back to put it in context,
Speaker 15: and going back to January, that was the end of
Speaker 15: the occupation or the you know, continuous encampments in Wilani
Speaker 15: and then flash, uh fast forward to to late January.
Speaker 15: They get the LDP and so all of these people
Speaker 15: who have been protecting the forest for so long are
Speaker 15: now watching construction equipment roll in and they're watching clear
Speaker 15: cutting and they can't do anything about it. And you
Speaker 15: had that action, uh just after Tortigita's death in January,
Speaker 15: which was a very targeted you know, only two funders
Speaker 15: and other supporters of cop City and you know, maybe
Speaker 15: a random police vehicle. But it wasn't really like this,
Speaker 15: this letting of energy it was a very like specific
Speaker 15: sort of purpose. And so you have this like build
Speaker 15: up of energy that I think is really important to
Speaker 15: keep in mind with what is about to happen in
Speaker 15: this story. And they so they can't do anything, and
Speaker 15: then you have Saturday where you see this massive people
Speaker 15: return to the forest, and I think it's almost unavoidable
Speaker 15: in retrospect to look at that and for them not
Speaker 15: to have said, what can we do now that we
Speaker 15: couldn't do before? So they gather and they do what
Speaker 15: they couldn't do before they head over to the construction site.
Speaker 12: There had not been an action like this in the
Speaker 12: woods for a long time. Bulldozers and equipment had not
Speaker 12: been damaged in quite a while. But on Sunday people
Speaker 12: were able to use the safety in numbers that comes
Speaker 12: with a week of action to feel more empowered to
Speaker 12: take direct action against the actual machinery that is destroying
Speaker 12: the forest and building cop City. Sunday's action can be
Speaker 12: seen as a demonstration of the pent up righteous anger
Speaker 12: from watching the slow destruction of the forest. Participants view
Speaker 12: what happened as a justified strike against the active destruction
Speaker 12: of the forest, a strike back made an anger after
Speaker 12: watching the Atlanta Police Foundation make steady progress over the
Speaker 12: course of the past few months.
Speaker 15: The day before, there was this chant that was taken
Speaker 15: up by the entire crowd, and I think we talked
Speaker 15: about this and.
Speaker 4: Earlier.
Speaker 15: If you build it, we will burn it. And that
Speaker 15: was something that if you looked all throughout the crowd,
Speaker 15: like they were chanting everybody, everybody, like not just people
Speaker 15: wearing camera or black block, like a thousand people, everybody. Yeah,
Speaker 15: a thousand people marching from Gresham Park. And I think
Speaker 15: that this is that promise come true.
Speaker 12: Sunday's action was itself a pretty unique moment in the
Speaker 12: recent history of environmental and anti police struggles. Watching hundreds
Speaker 12: of people go on the offensive to participate in a mass,
Speaker 12: coordinated sabotage in defense of both the forest and targets
Speaker 12: of police of isolence felt like an unprecedented moment in
Speaker 12: our modern paradigm of resistance in the United States. But
Speaker 12: the raid on the music festival on March fifth was
Speaker 12: also just the start of an unparalleled wave of police
Speaker 12: repression during this week of action, which we will cover
Speaker 12: in the next episode, but throughout the whole week, the
Speaker 12: assurance that Copcity will never be built never faltered, as
Speaker 12: demonstrated by common chance, such as I believe that we
Speaker 12: will win. So I'm going to end this episode with
Speaker 12: the final chant from the Saturday Gresham Park rally right
Speaker 12: before a thousand people marched to the Wallani Forest in Atlanta.
Speaker 5: We always in.
Speaker 29: With the asslogan.
Speaker 24: We're with the words of the love or.
Speaker 29: Assata Spoor because we have a tuning. There's been so
Speaker 29: much bliss built here. Repeat that to me, our duty
Speaker 29: to fight for our freedom to each other each other.
Speaker 29: I'm not gonna lose, but on change.
Speaker 30: I'm not gonna loose, Bonchin, I'm nothnna those but on Chinee.
Speaker 31: Say Music Festival audio courtesy of Unicorn Riot.
Speaker 16: Hey.
Speaker 1: We'll be back Monday, with more episodes every week from
Speaker 1: now until the heat death of the Universe.
Speaker 15: It Could Happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
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Speaker 10: You can find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated
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