Speaker 1: It seems like hardly a month goes by where we
Speaker 1: are not bombarded with horrific images of far ride violence,
Speaker 1: mass shootings, the target synagogues, black churches, and queer nightclubs,
Speaker 1: death threats to hospitals, spurred by post from online trolls,
Speaker 1: and a barrage of fascist groups attempting to intimidate everyone
Speaker 1: and everything. From children's events, black Lives Matter protests, pride celebrations,
Speaker 1: and abortion clinics. Boden resistance is mobilized and people do
Speaker 1: push back. The media often frames these confrontations is a
Speaker 1: clash simply between two sets of extremists. On today's shows,
Speaker 1: the It's Going Down crew once again takes over it
Speaker 1: could happen. Here we look at how far from being
Speaker 1: just confined to small sets of antifas super soldiers, mass
Speaker 1: community self defense is part and parcel to the DNA
Speaker 1: of grassroots movements for liberation in the so called United States.
Speaker 1: We can see this throughout the ongoing history of indigenous
Speaker 1: resistance to callization. In the fight against slavery and racial apartheid.
Speaker 1: Radical labor unions such as the i w W organized
Speaker 1: against the Ku Klux Klan, attention that even led to
Speaker 1: running gun battles, while militant organizers like Robert F. Williams
Speaker 1: and groups such as the Deacons for Defense, who helped
Speaker 1: inspire the Black Panthers, fought back against white racist mobs.
Speaker 1: In the book This Non Violent Stuff Will Get You Killed,
Speaker 1: author Charles E. Cobb documents this history, discussing the wide
Speaker 1: use of arms and defending civil rights organizers from white supremacists.
Speaker 1: Groups like Anti Racist Action or a r A carried
Speaker 1: on this trajectory, working to set up chapters of organized
Speaker 1: anti racists that confronted neo Nazi groups the Clan, and
Speaker 1: participated in defense of abortion clinics. Once again, I'm Mike Andrews,
Speaker 1: Let's get into it. In two thousand five, in the
Speaker 1: wake of Hurricane Katrina, the levy surrounding New Orleans broke,
Speaker 1: flooding working class communities and homes. Those that could evacuate fled,
Speaker 1: while many, often pouring black, were stuck behind to fend
Speaker 1: for themselves. Stepping into this setting was a group of
Speaker 1: black liberation and anarchist activists who worked to set up
Speaker 1: mutual aid hubs and free clinics dubbed Common Ground. But
Speaker 1: as these volunteers worked to feed people, restore people's homes,
Speaker 1: and provide free medical care. They quickly found that they
Speaker 1: weren't the only organized force on the streets of New Orleans.
Speaker 1: In this following interview, Sunseri Ali Shakur discusses how the
Speaker 1: group came up against and defended themselves from a formation
Speaker 1: of armed racist white vigilantees who worked directly with local
Speaker 1: police and our suspected of carrying out multiple murders of
Speaker 1: unarmed black men. A warning. However, this interview was graphic
Speaker 1: in details death, racist violence, and anti black racism. My
Speaker 1: name is s I'm organized out of Wasson and d C.
Speaker 1: I went to New Orleans UH doing Katraina, doing the
Speaker 1: Katraina after Math, and I helped form co co found
Speaker 1: Common Ground Relief and common Ground was formed as a
Speaker 1: response to the calamity of Katraina and UM. Common Ground
Speaker 1: was also the brainchild of the Angle of Three, so
Speaker 1: a lot of the base organizers of Common Ground were
Speaker 1: already in New Orleans. UH organized and helped the Angola Three.
Speaker 1: So the Angle of Three was basically the god fathers
Speaker 1: of Common Ground Ground Relief. We lost a few of
Speaker 1: the of the elders, Alfred Wood Fox and such and
Speaker 1: we still got King uh King, what is and everything?
Speaker 1: A note to our listeners. Of three referred to here
Speaker 1: is a group of formally incarcerated black political prisoners and
Speaker 1: members of the Black Parentther Party when the nineteen seventies
Speaker 1: were imprisoned in the notorious Angola Facility in Louisiana. This
Speaker 1: included Robert Hillary King, Albert Wood Fox, and Hermann Wallace.
Speaker 1: King was released in two thousand one, and, along with
Speaker 1: another former Black panther, Malik Raheem, became involved in mutual
Speaker 1: aid and disaster relief efforts in New Orleans following Katrina
Speaker 1: in two thousand five under the banner of common ground.
Speaker 1: Wallace was released from prison on October one, only to
Speaker 1: pass away sadly three days later, a day after being
Speaker 1: reindited by the state. Albert Wood Fox was finally released
Speaker 1: in February of two thousand sixteen and passed on six
Speaker 1: years later due to complications from COVID nineteen tireless activists
Speaker 1: on both sides of the prison walls. Together, the angal
Speaker 1: of three endured a combined total of one fourteen years
Speaker 1: in solitary confinement. Yeah, my job, when I when I
Speaker 1: touched down the common ground was basically I was a
Speaker 1: released scout UM. I wore many hats, I was a
Speaker 1: mediation person, head of security UM. And I also organized
Speaker 1: about seven UM makeshift hurricane distribution UH centers from New
Speaker 1: Orleans to the Bayou. And I spent eighteen months there
Speaker 1: and children's free breakfast program. Anything that the community needed,
Speaker 1: you know, I provided. I used to drive like fourteen
Speaker 1: hundred miles a week taking supplies from New Orleans UH
Speaker 1: into different bious and different surrounding areas in New Orleans.
Speaker 1: That was my my job. When I first got there,
Speaker 1: I ran into Malink Rahim, a former black pather in
Speaker 1: New Orleans, Scutive Minister of Defense, and when I touched down,
Speaker 1: he had told me that there were a group of
Speaker 1: white vigilantees, up to eighteen of them, riding around and
Speaker 1: murdering black people as they walked through these white communities
Speaker 1: and Algiers and Algier Point. Algiers wasn't affected by water,
Speaker 1: but it did have a great deal of wind damage.
Speaker 1: Most of the houses was intact, it just wasn't no
Speaker 1: electricity and the water was also a problem. Well, what
Speaker 1: they would do they would tie UH cans from one
Speaker 1: fence to another beginning of the neighborhood of the street.
Speaker 1: And if they were in their homes and uh, you
Speaker 1: bumped in, you know, you you try to get up
Speaker 1: under the cans, and the cans started ringing. They would
Speaker 1: open up windows and and and begin u fire at you.
Speaker 1: And they were jumping their pickup trucks and chase you down.
Speaker 1: And some uh you know, some are murdered, you know,
Speaker 1: point blank. And those whom they wounded, they were throwing
Speaker 1: the back of the truck. Take to a garage and
Speaker 1: pour gasoline over your wounds, put cigarettes out on you.
Speaker 1: And uh, some didn't make it out that situation. They,
Speaker 1: like I said, they dropped about courting and information we got.
Speaker 1: They dropped nineteen and some black men and the brothers
Speaker 1: in the community got tired of of of these guys
Speaker 1: and they broke into a pawn shop and stole all
Speaker 1: the guns out the pown shop. And there was about
Speaker 1: to be a major race war. And um, you gotta
Speaker 1: understand too, how tight the situation was because their base,
Speaker 1: their house the day they hung out at their backyard
Speaker 1: connected with our backyard, so it was extremely tense. So
Speaker 1: when the brothers broke into the pond shop and got
Speaker 1: the weapons out. Just so happened. The next day the
Speaker 1: National Guards showed up. But if the National Guard didn't
Speaker 1: show up the next day, it would have been extremely
Speaker 1: ugly out there. Uh and everything. And yeah, they used
Speaker 1: to patrol the streets and the pickup trucks. We would
Speaker 1: see them all the time. I would see them all
Speaker 1: the time, and they were cowards, man, you know, they
Speaker 1: would tender one. It's always tender one. You know. Ten
Speaker 1: vigilante is the one black man, unharmed black man. But
Speaker 1: we noticed one they would drive by. We would come
Speaker 1: out with our weapons on our hips and let them
Speaker 1: know that this ain't no place to mess with. Keep driving.
Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying. You will be fired upon
Speaker 1: you come here with that business. And I would have
Speaker 1: to set up patrols for our house at night. Um,
Speaker 1: I would sleep uh in the hallway and malaks home
Speaker 1: with a nominal of me to car being rifle strapped
Speaker 1: across my chest in a radio column, so I could
Speaker 1: keep in contact with the others who were unarmed and
Speaker 1: doing patrols, you know, watching the house while the other
Speaker 1: thirty six volunteers have slept intense in the backyard. You know,
Speaker 1: we're asleep. Lucky for us. They were a bunch of
Speaker 1: cowards and they kept it moving. I would see them
Speaker 1: all the time, and they were they were afraid of
Speaker 1: me because they knew that I was not afraid of them,
Speaker 1: and I was armed, and uh we all when we
Speaker 1: had a few people back at the house that was
Speaker 1: armed as well. You could ride down certain streets and
Speaker 1: there will be uh dead bodies that were bloated, uh
Speaker 1: from being left out in the sun. And uh those
Speaker 1: bodies were left by the vigilantees. The rumor was that
Speaker 1: the do on the police department told the vigilantes. We
Speaker 1: gave the vigilantes a green light to do what they
Speaker 1: needed to do and as far as the bodies, just
Speaker 1: leave them near the gutter and they would come and
Speaker 1: collect them later, which they didn't. The bodies stayed out there,
Speaker 1: I would say up to two months, you know you.
Speaker 1: I mean, they were like you can see them all
Speaker 1: the time, and um, there a lot of people had left.
Speaker 1: There wasn't a lot of people there because people had evacuated,
Speaker 1: a lot of stray dogs running around out uh impacts
Speaker 1: of thirty And what we would have to do is
Speaker 1: get up early in the morning when the curfew was over.
Speaker 1: Take bids she's from Malink's mother's room, and go out
Speaker 1: and wrap up the bodies with these sheets. Keep the
Speaker 1: dogs from ripping them open for fluid and food. Reporting
Speaker 1: In the Nation of Republica, investigative journalists A. C. Thompson
Speaker 1: spent months speaking with survivors of Katrina about a racist
Speaker 1: militia that formed in the predominantly white neighborhood of Algiers Point.
Speaker 1: He carried out a series of deadly shootings and even
Speaker 1: worked directly with local law enforcement. White residents told investigators
Speaker 1: the police had given them a green light to shoot
Speaker 1: anyone quote breaking into their property into quote leave the
Speaker 1: bodies on the side of the road. Others spoke of
Speaker 1: a free for all of white against black, where whites
Speaker 1: condulged in violence with compunity. Years later, several white vigilantings
Speaker 1: were found guilty were sentenced to prison time for shootings
Speaker 1: and murder. And like many modern conspiracy theories pushed by
Speaker 1: the far right about and BLM during the George Foight Uprising,
Speaker 1: the vigilantes and Eltiers Point were largely animated by widespread
Speaker 1: racist rumors that weren't founded about looterers um we were
Speaker 1: harassed a lot by the and OPD. You know a
Speaker 1: lot of times at gunpoint. They would come to our
Speaker 1: house sometimes, you know, ten cars DP, you know, p
Speaker 1: D would looking for Malink. One night they came through
Speaker 1: looking for Malink and what we had heard that they
Speaker 1: were out to assassinate him and anybody with him. They
Speaker 1: came out looking for Malink one night, about ten cars
Speaker 1: D and they had went through the house looking for him,
Speaker 1: and they couldn't find them. And they pulled out this
Speaker 1: fourteen year old young man that we had befriended to
Speaker 1: live on the backstreet for mLink and they started beating him,
Speaker 1: saying that he has stole a cooler out somebody's yard
Speaker 1: and minds you, you know, no one's there, so no
Speaker 1: one's really missing that cool And the young man thought,
Speaker 1: you know, because we didn't have refrigeration and hadn't put
Speaker 1: everything on ice. You know, ice was very important at
Speaker 1: that time, and the water was very important, you know,
Speaker 1: along with gasoline. But the young brother brought us a
Speaker 1: cooler and the police put shot guards and everybody's stomachs
Speaker 1: and they beat them in front of us and dared
Speaker 1: us to do anything as far as like what the
Speaker 1: environment looked like it was not and I say this,
Speaker 1: it was not a rescue mission. This was seemed like
Speaker 1: they were running a drill, a military drill, you know,
Speaker 1: like the same hour, I mean, like the old project.
Speaker 1: You will look at the bridge and you will see
Speaker 1: continue with military cars going across the cresta city bridge
Speaker 1: at nighttime. In four corners of the community. You would
Speaker 1: have black Hawk helicopters patrolling. You know, they will follow
Speaker 1: you through the yard with spotlights. Also, we had homeland security,
Speaker 1: which included mercenaries. They were sometimes up to cars and
Speaker 1: if you were to violate, uh, the curfew, they were
Speaker 1: ride up on you and they had these little and
Speaker 1: I used to have to interact with them because we
Speaker 1: had some some some young people there that thought they
Speaker 1: had privileged from up north would translate in New Orleans,
Speaker 1: which it did not. Um, they've seen any white person
Speaker 1: outside of New Orleans as a bunch of quote unquote
Speaker 1: nigga levels. So I would have to negotiate with these
Speaker 1: homeless security people. Um, you had to be very calm,
Speaker 1: very still, because you could see the pupils that pupils
Speaker 1: were dilated with small anybody that's been in the war
Speaker 1: like Vietnam and such an Uh, there's a storm. They
Speaker 1: know when these people, when pupils are dilated like that,
Speaker 1: it means these people have killed several times. And the
Speaker 1: my huncle used to call it a hundred miles there.
Speaker 1: And you had to be very calm with these people
Speaker 1: because if you flinched, if you did anything that they
Speaker 1: didn't like or they felt threatened in any type of way,
Speaker 1: they will open up fire on you. Um. They were
Speaker 1: They had a R fifteens all of them had a
Speaker 1: R fIF teams and not milling meter strapped to their legs.
Speaker 1: So it was more you know, it seemed more like
Speaker 1: a military takeover, like I said before, than ar rescued
Speaker 1: and further down the line. For in the months, you
Speaker 1: had National guardsmen that opened fire on people, uh into
Speaker 1: busy traffic. Um. You will find bodies in the seventh ward,
Speaker 1: in the eighth ward in different houses, UH with bullets
Speaker 1: in the back of their head, you know, executive style,
Speaker 1: and UM our investigating team will go out and witness
Speaker 1: this firsthand. And I was a part of that investigating
Speaker 1: team that would do a walk through the house where
Speaker 1: the body was at. It was shot in the back
Speaker 1: of the head and the rumor was, you know, we
Speaker 1: had some rogue National guardsmen executing you know, people who
Speaker 1: didn't have homes. We're home some homeless people. You know,
Speaker 1: they were left behind. Number one lesson I learned, umu
Speaker 1: a trainer, was you may be a pacifist, but you
Speaker 1: might need to pass and fists. You may need to
Speaker 1: go out and get you firearms. Of course, we want
Speaker 1: you to get proper training. Of course, we don't want
Speaker 1: you to do anything illegal. Get your legal firearms and
Speaker 1: get some training. The second lesson was that human beings
Speaker 1: are incredible. We saw a lot of destruction, but we
Speaker 1: also saw a lot of beauty and a lot of love.
Speaker 1: In my experience too, we were common ground. People came
Speaker 1: together in days and we fell in love with each
Speaker 1: other within days. Because of the pressure of the situation.
Speaker 1: If we didn't love each other, if we didn't get
Speaker 1: along with one another, we had to, you know, in
Speaker 1: order for survival. Things were so bad that if your
Speaker 1: car had broken down on the side of the highway
Speaker 1: on the road, you had to call us and five
Speaker 1: different vehicles will be speeding to your location. Um you know,
Speaker 1: to see who will get there first before Homeland security
Speaker 1: or a vigilante group will roll up on you. You
Speaker 1: can't rely on the state. Can't rely on the state.
Speaker 1: Stay with us as it could happen. Here returns after
Speaker 1: the short break and the word from our sponsors. The
Speaker 1: same year that Sinceria was facing down armed racist vigilantes
Speaker 1: in New Orleans, the stage was also set for an
Speaker 1: uprising to kick off in Toledo, Ohio. In our next interview,
Speaker 1: Tom tells us how a largely black community an intergists
Speaker 1: affiliated with anti racist action hit the streets against the
Speaker 1: National Socialist Movement for the NSM and participated in uprising
Speaker 1: to the sploded not just against the neo Nazis, but
Speaker 1: the police that were protecting them as well. That Toledo
Speaker 1: and to racism protests really began when a National Socialist
Speaker 1: Movement member who was living in a black neighborhood in
Speaker 1: Toledo pulled a gun on two black children that were
Speaker 1: playing in the alley behind his house. Um those kids
Speaker 1: then went home and told their parents. Their parents then
Speaker 1: showed up to his house with weapons. The guy pulled
Speaker 1: a gun on them and then called the National Socialist Movement,
Speaker 1: who then showed up, and so they had been This
Speaker 1: is back when Bill White was still the head of
Speaker 1: ns M and NSM was actually starting to make some headway,
Speaker 1: like they were growing really quickly. They targeted Ohio as
Speaker 1: a recruiting ground um because they thought that they could
Speaker 1: gain a lot of membership there. And so Toledo was
Speaker 1: kind of their first foray into trying to do stuff
Speaker 1: in Ohio. And so they announced a date and the
Speaker 1: organizers on the ground and Toledo did something really interesting.
Speaker 1: Then instead of organizing activists, they went and organized in
Speaker 1: the community directly um that they were going around the
Speaker 1: streets to talking to people. Street gangs were calling truces
Speaker 1: for the day, right, And so when October fifteenth rolled around,
Speaker 1: like everybody showed up, like there were anarchists there, but
Speaker 1: there were like tons of people from the neighborhood there.
Speaker 1: The whole protest didn't last very long. It was this
Speaker 1: is October five they sort of NSM was there and
Speaker 1: they had their shields and people were hooking stuff at them,
Speaker 1: but they were kind of too far away to really
Speaker 1: like hit. So the cops started surrounding them and allowing
Speaker 1: them to mark and as they were marching, they got
Speaker 1: within projectile range of people who then started pelting them
Speaker 1: with everything that they could think of the cops and
Speaker 1: got them to run, got the Nazis to run so
Speaker 1: they could kind of try and get them out of
Speaker 1: the area. A group of people sort of cut back
Speaker 1: behind the school trying and cut them off. I got
Speaker 1: tear gas and when the tear gas flew, everything just
Speaker 1: got set off. There was rioting on and off for
Speaker 1: like three days in this neighborhood. After this, a bar
Speaker 1: owned by a cop got burned, got looted, and then
Speaker 1: burned to the ground. People try to burn this Nazi's
Speaker 1: house down. They had to declare state of emergency over this,
Speaker 1: And so there are a number of things that really
Speaker 1: important about that day, I think for for us, one
Speaker 1: was it really did point to the effectiveness of community
Speaker 1: anti fascist work. People that neighborhood were already mad, but
Speaker 1: it was this sort of like mobilization work which was
Speaker 1: done by people in the neighborhood and also done by
Speaker 1: kind of anarchists that were down in the neighborhood working
Speaker 1: with people to really make that what it was right.
Speaker 1: And it really showed what a community can do when
Speaker 1: Nazis show up in their name, and how much a
Speaker 1: community can reassert its ownership over their space when the
Speaker 1: police decided to protect the Nazis that are attacking their neighborhood.
Speaker 1: But the other thing that really demonstrated that it really
Speaker 1: kind of created was it created a dynamic in Ohio
Speaker 1: which had been sort of building for a little while,
Speaker 1: but you can kind of still feel the ramifications of it.
Speaker 1: So starting with the over the Rhine riots, which I
Speaker 1: think we're in two thousand three or two thousand one,
Speaker 1: when the Cincinnati police killed Timothy Thomas, there had kind
Speaker 1: of been this escalating series of you know, tensions with
Speaker 1: with the state around this period of time. It's also
Speaker 1: the period of time that a lot of high cities
Speaker 1: were sort of beginning. They're the really cute period of
Speaker 1: their decline that they had been sort of declining for
Speaker 1: a while, But this is really when things got bad.
Speaker 1: It was starting really like the early two thousands, mid
Speaker 1: two thousand's UM. The financial collapse in Cleveland, for example,
Speaker 1: was in two thousand six UM, but it had already
Speaker 1: been sort of going for a couple of years before that,
Speaker 1: and so there were these political conditions that were in
Speaker 1: place that facilitated this. But this also kind of created
Speaker 1: a dynamic of confrontation with the state and created a
Speaker 1: mentality within anarchist communities about being really realistic about what
Speaker 1: those confrontations look like. UM that instead of being idealistic
Speaker 1: sort of like people were in the anti war movement
Speaker 1: and um, sort of approaching police from a perspective of
Speaker 1: ideas and discourse, what we learned during those days is
Speaker 1: that we should probably approach the police as a logistical
Speaker 1: force and understand them as such. UM. It was after
Speaker 1: that point that people really started researching police tactics in
Speaker 1: this area of the country, and that has had really
Speaker 1: profound impacts over the last fifteen years. Right. It really
Speaker 1: did create an entire culture of really digging into those
Speaker 1: kinds of things very carefully and doing it in a
Speaker 1: way which wasn't bombastic, but was focused on actual research.
Speaker 1: The reason that that could happen was what went down
Speaker 1: on those days was so intense. UM. It was the
Speaker 1: first time a lot of people had experienced like full
Speaker 1: blown major rioting before and like major large scale urban
Speaker 1: writing before, and it definitely changed a lot about the
Speaker 1: way that anarchists in this area of the country approached things. UM.
Speaker 1: And you can still feel the the ramifications the ripple
Speaker 1: effects of that today. Stay with us. We're gonna take
Speaker 1: a quick break and we'll be right back after these
Speaker 1: words from our sponsors. In our last segment, we're going
Speaker 1: to speak to anti fashion his researcher and author Spencer Sunshine.
Speaker 1: But first, let's rewind the clock to when Trump first
Speaker 1: came in as president in two thousand seventeen, kicking off riots, walkouts,
Speaker 1: and protests around the country. Angry protests soon spilled into airports.
Speaker 1: His people in the tens of thousands took action to
Speaker 1: defeat the Muslim ban. On February second, a massive riot
Speaker 1: kicked off at you See Berkeley against the far right
Speaker 1: troll Milo Napolis, shutting down his scheduled talk. The far
Speaker 1: right responded by holding a series of free speech rallies
Speaker 1: throughout the summer, and anti fascists soon found themselves out
Speaker 1: flanked in the streets by a loose coalition of militia members,
Speaker 1: Proud Boys, neo Nazis, and alt right groups. Seeking to
Speaker 1: seize on this moment, the White Nashal swing of the
Speaker 1: movement called for another free speech rally in Charlesville, Virginia,
Speaker 1: and the scene was set for historic and deadly showdown.
Speaker 1: It was pretty clear, especially as the run up to
Speaker 1: it happened, about how big it was going to be,
Speaker 1: how many different kinds of groups were going to be involved,
Speaker 1: and that for the first time, although there had been
Speaker 1: increasing mobilizations throughout the year especially, it was the first
Speaker 1: one that was gonna be led by open fascists. Some
Speaker 1: of the other ones fascists participated in them, but there
Speaker 1: were more a pan far right. We were like pan
Speaker 1: far right events like what happened in Berkeley, but this
Speaker 1: one was going to be led by fascists, and they
Speaker 1: were all those many different kinds of groups, and they
Speaker 1: were coming out of the woodwork. We had old activists
Speaker 1: who had been around in the eighties who stated they
Speaker 1: were going to come, and there was clearly a lot
Speaker 1: of energy behind it, and it seemed like it was
Speaker 1: the big bid, and there were some of the participants
Speaker 1: were openly saying this it was gonna be the big
Speaker 1: bid for power and legitimacy of the ault right. I
Speaker 1: believe it was Richard Spencer who said, or Matthew Himeeck
Speaker 1: I forget which one actually said. There's gonna be before
Speaker 1: Charlotte's Bille and after Charlotte's Bille, which was true, but
Speaker 1: not in the way that they hoped for. I think
Speaker 1: it was a success for anti fascists and other people
Speaker 1: who wanted the alt right to wanted that inertia to
Speaker 1: stop and eventually end um. But it was not a
Speaker 1: success I think in the way that people wanted it
Speaker 1: to be or think about it um as a success.
Speaker 1: It could have it was. It could have been a
Speaker 1: failure very easily after the event. The event itself was
Speaker 1: fairly neutral. I mean, there was all the fighting that
Speaker 1: is in people's minds that all happened before the rally
Speaker 1: was supposed to start. That was kind of a draw,
Speaker 1: which certainly was not a success that anti fascists stopped
Speaker 1: the rally. They did not. It did not stop people
Speaker 1: from entering into the rally grounds. The police dispersed it
Speaker 1: before the rally itself actually started, so that can be
Speaker 1: seen as a success. And then the car attack, of
Speaker 1: course was well in some ways a failure for us,
Speaker 1: and I think at the very beginning many of the
Speaker 1: fascists you know, were excited about it, like it really
Speaker 1: did add to their inertia, and the whole thing could
Speaker 1: have been forgotten about very quickly, in which case I
Speaker 1: think it then would have been seen as a success
Speaker 1: for the fascists. If people remember the first when it happened,
Speaker 1: Trump immediately was like, nazis bad. And then the next
Speaker 1: day he made his very fine people on both sides comment,
Speaker 1: and this is what energized liberals essentially to condemn him
Speaker 1: and to jump on the bandwagon against him. If he
Speaker 1: hadn't said that, this could have just sort of passed
Speaker 1: out of the public eye very easily, and it be seen,
Speaker 1: at least by fascists that anti fascists were unable to
Speaker 1: mobilize enough people to stop them, you know, and the
Speaker 1: only stopping of them only happened because the police did it.
Speaker 1: So I think it could have easily been a draw
Speaker 1: or neutral or a failure without Trump's comments. It did
Speaker 1: end up being success because of this backlash against them.
Speaker 1: It did, for whatever reason, did finally bring it to
Speaker 1: the consciousness of people that um this huge rising in
Speaker 1: the far right that Trump had engendered, what it really meant,
Speaker 1: how violent it was really going to be, what a
Speaker 1: threat it really was, And it did motivate people two
Speaker 1: and the and the aftermath in particular. Unfortunately, this sort
Speaker 1: of went away really quickly to take the streets and
Speaker 1: come out in big numbers and condemn the alt right,
Speaker 1: and the fascist wing of the right did collapse fairly
Speaker 1: soon afterwards. By spring of the next year. Charlottesvill was
Speaker 1: real interesting because people had been killed by the ault
Speaker 1: right before it, but not in such a dramatic manner,
Speaker 1: not in public and not on video. And it was
Speaker 1: sort of like, I think for people, and I've said
Speaker 1: this before, I kind of you remember the first murders,
Speaker 1: you remember the first blood, and in that sense, because
Speaker 1: afterwards a lot of people were killed during the Trump
Speaker 1: administration and car attacks. I mean, I think a few
Speaker 1: dozen people during the Black Lives Matter demonstrations. It became
Speaker 1: almost wrote where you're like, oh, someone was killed at
Speaker 1: a demonstration again. But it was the shock of this
Speaker 1: at first, because this had not been seen for a
Speaker 1: very long time in the United States, that someone would
Speaker 1: be murdered at a demonstration. Um, And that really sort
Speaker 1: of stuck with people, and in that way it became
Speaker 1: a symbol. Um. You can even today still say Charlotte'sville
Speaker 1: unless people are you know, teenagers or something, don't remember
Speaker 1: people know what you're talking about. Biden invoked it when
Speaker 1: he was running for president. So it's good it remains
Speaker 1: as a symbol of how big the really really far right,
Speaker 1: you know, the fascists can become quite quickly, and how
Speaker 1: violent and murderous they are, And so that remains is
Speaker 1: a symbol to people, I think, and frankly that there
Speaker 1: can be resistance to it, Like people also saw there
Speaker 1: was real resistance and people were willing to fight them,
Speaker 1: and especially after one six like there's no more of
Speaker 1: this idiotic discourse. A bet if it's okay to punch
Speaker 1: and nazi, I really think most people do think it's
Speaker 1: okay now, you know, after they've seen one unfolded under
Speaker 1: the entire arc of Trump from Charlotte'sville to the capital takeover.
Speaker 1: If people had stayed at home, if there wasn't the
Speaker 1: allart the mobilization that did occur, it would have been
Speaker 1: a total victory for them. They would have taken it
Speaker 1: as a total victory and then moved on to the
Speaker 1: next thing and tried something bigger. Absolutely, if you held
Speaker 1: a demonstration and a thousand people came, you know, wouldn't
Speaker 1: you be an you did your thing? Wouldn't be like cool,
Speaker 1: like let's move on to the next thing that was successful.
Speaker 1: Over the years, since I've done more and more activism,
Speaker 1: I come to realize what nothing succeeds as success means,
Speaker 1: like once you start going, when something succeeds, more people
Speaker 1: come to it and you can move on and move
Speaker 1: on as a bigger thing and be able to do
Speaker 1: things you weren't able to do before. So this is
Speaker 1: why I always say we need to confront people. We
Speaker 1: have to break their movement. We can't let it jump
Speaker 1: from either success to success or just simply not a failure.
Speaker 1: Because if you're already moving and you hit something that's
Speaker 1: not a failure, you'll just go on to the next thing.
Speaker 1: Nothing will stop you. And we need to need these
Speaker 1: things to stop. The night of Heather Higher was murdered,
Speaker 1: thousands hit the streets and cities across the United States,
Speaker 1: tearing down Confederate statues and marching in solidarity. A few
Speaker 1: weeks later, when far right activists tried to hold a
Speaker 1: rally in Boston, over forty hit the streets to shut
Speaker 1: it down. A week later in San Francisco and Berkeley, too,
Speaker 1: of thousands of march to shut down more alright rallies.
Speaker 1: In Berkeley, a black block of several hundred strong marched
Speaker 1: information as part of a wider anti racist coalition, pushing
Speaker 1: both far right activists and heavily armed riot police out
Speaker 1: of a downtown park where only months before, far right
Speaker 1: activists had driven out anti fascists. The events of the
Speaker 1: first eight months of the Trump administration showed that there
Speaker 1: was mass militant opposition on the streets of the US
Speaker 1: against the far right, which destabilized the Trump regime and
Speaker 1: made it back pedal. But more importantly, it showed millions
Speaker 1: of people across the country the resistance was possible. That
Speaker 1: is going to do it for us today. Follow i
Speaker 1: g D at It's Going Down dot org and on
Speaker 1: masodon at i g D Underscore News. Thanks so much
Speaker 1: for tuning in and be sure to come back next time.
Speaker 1: As it Could Happen Here returns. We will continue to
Speaker 1: tread where we please into the fascist no past on
Speaker 1: It Could Happen Here as a production of cool Zone Media.
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Speaker 1: happen here, Updated monthly at cool zone media dot com
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