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 gonna be nothing new here for you, but you
Speaker 1: can make your own decisions. What's What's? What's? I'm Robert Evans,
Speaker 1: this is it could happen here the show that asks
Speaker 1: what's and also other questions, um more, more more meaningful
Speaker 1: questions than that about you know, things falling apart, fixing them,
Speaker 1: all that good stuff with me today as usual Garrison
Speaker 1: and Chris and as is currently unusual, but will be
Speaker 1: more usual every preceding month after this one. Our good
Speaker 1: friend st Andrew. St Andrew quite about but that's fine.
Speaker 1: How are you doing today, Andrew? I'm good. I'm good.
Speaker 1: You know, it's rainy, it's chill. It's better than the
Speaker 1: kind of hot weather we've been getting lately, so I'm good. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's raining and chill here, but that's seven months of
Speaker 1: the year. Uh, I think there's slightly different uh climates
Speaker 1: in Portland, Oregon and Trinidad, probably I've been told. Um,
Speaker 1: so we have had you on a couple of weeks
Speaker 1: back to talk about solar punk, and we're gonna be
Speaker 1: bringing you back on about twice a month to talk about, um,
Speaker 1: whatever the hell you want to talk about. And so
Speaker 1: I'm going to now hand the episode over to you,
Speaker 1: um and trust like a little lamb that you'll lead
Speaker 1: me somewhere beautiful and filled with good forage. Yes, sunshine, rainbows,
Speaker 1: the promised Latin. Yeah. Okay, So I think we've all
Speaker 1: noticed that the environmental this movement kind of sucks jumping
Speaker 1: into it, has not done the things that has not accomplished,
Speaker 1: has been around for like over half a century or
Speaker 1: actually really more than that, and you know, where are
Speaker 1: we now? You know? Um, of course we do have
Speaker 1: to confront and acknowledge that, like there's the s C
Speaker 1: where oil company has literally suppressed a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: information and you know, co opted like a lot of
Speaker 1: the earlier movements and stuff. But we've kind of known
Speaker 1: for a while now and we are still here. So
Speaker 1: it's like what gives you know, Um, I think there's
Speaker 1: kind of an interesting phenomenon that I wanted to talk
Speaker 1: about today, um, known as soft climate change denial. So
Speaker 1: are you're familiar with that or what you're thinking is
Speaker 1: based on foot impressions? Um, I mean, yeah, I've heard
Speaker 1: the term. I would think it's sort of Um, I
Speaker 1: mean a number of different things, including the idea that like,
Speaker 1: well there's nothing we can do, so nothing should be done,
Speaker 1: you know, m hmm, yeah, what what whatous your garrison? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Most most of my understanding of the term is like
Speaker 1: someone like saying they like, know, the climate change is
Speaker 1: the thing, Like they recognize that, but they are kind
Speaker 1: of more in denial of what solutions can be done
Speaker 1: to really change anything. That's generally understanding of the term.
Speaker 1: When I see it like online or something, Yeah, what
Speaker 1: about your Chris, Yeah, I usually see it. It's it's
Speaker 1: like it's usually in the context of people, you know,
Speaker 1: it can in the US there's the whole um. There's
Speaker 1: whole political factions whose entire thing is saying, like, we
Speaker 1: believe in science, and then they'll go talk about like
Speaker 1: how much they believe in climate change, and then two
Speaker 1: seconds later and around are like signings. Yeah, so that
Speaker 1: That's that's my understanding of it, right. Yeah. So, according
Speaker 1: to everyone's favorite source, um, Wikipedia, self climate change denial
Speaker 1: is a state of mind acknowledging the existence of global
Speaker 1: women in the abstract what remaining to some extent, impartial
Speaker 1: psychological or intellectuals to nihilism about its reality or impact.
Speaker 1: And something I was spoken about in my channel in
Speaker 1: my most recent video where I was talking with the
Speaker 1: different facets of sula punk. You know what sula punk is,
Speaker 1: what it needs, um, things that probably potentially drag down
Speaker 1: the sula punk movement. I think that people have been
Speaker 1: using to try to drag it down, because so the
Speaker 1: punk is kind of building in popularity, and with anything
Speaker 1: that builds in popularity, there are attempts from all sorts
Speaker 1: of angles to co opt it and to repackage it
Speaker 1: and com modify it and all those things. So I've
Speaker 1: kind of noticed with the sugar punk phenomenon that there's
Speaker 1: this effort by people who profess to care about the
Speaker 1: climates and stuff to try to push it away from
Speaker 1: more radical directions towards something more appealing and appeasing to
Speaker 1: the status school into the system UM And I mean,
Speaker 1: according to the wikipia definition. You know, it's they call
Speaker 1: it a state of mind. I think it's also like
Speaker 1: an implicit philosophy that undergodes like entire groups and entire movements.
Speaker 1: You know, so like, for example, obviously you know in
Speaker 1: affects individuals, where you know, people will um miscalculated it's
Speaker 1: risks and think that climb climate change is just extra
Speaker 1: storms or something. But then they also, like people are
Speaker 1: really the movements that would neglect its urgency with just
Speaker 1: these platitudes and these um direction less actions that just
Speaker 1: serve like this kind of middling reformism. Um, they underestimate
Speaker 1: the extent of social change required to like mitigate climate change,
Speaker 1: so basically don't seek to change it's out of school,
Speaker 1: but just to sort of tweak it ever so slightly
Speaker 1: to like capitalism with a carbon tax or something. Yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: And then of course the people who kind of straddle
Speaker 1: that that fence, or maybe it's more of a spectrum
Speaker 1: between soft climate change Nile and hardclim change Nile, where
Speaker 1: they might overestimate the extent of scientific uncertainty, so they
Speaker 1: might think that oh well, you know, um, yeah, colob
Speaker 1: warming is happening, but we don't exactly know how much
Speaker 1: it's going to change the climate or how much it's
Speaker 1: impacting our lives and that kind of thing. So they
Speaker 1: basically turn it into something that's still up for debate,
Speaker 1: you know. And that's why I say it kind of
Speaker 1: straddles that line between soft line and hardline, because obviously
Speaker 1: the hard climb change nihilists, they're just like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: you know it doesn't exist, or if it does exist,
Speaker 1: humans don't cause it. If you and still cool it,
Speaker 1: there's nothing we can do that kind of thing. Have
Speaker 1: you all had like experiences with soft climbs nio like,
Speaker 1: and you wouldn't place no organizing? Oh yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: would say, so I've encountered. Um. I mean it's kind
Speaker 1: of a thing you encounter constantly in American politics because
Speaker 1: it's it's really like often times your best option, uh,
Speaker 1: in terms of like it's that or the people who
Speaker 1: say that talking about climate change is socialism. Yeah, you know.
Speaker 1: So I was in verminal Studies mature for most of
Speaker 1: college and then I decided not to do it, and
Speaker 1: then I got like a minor instead because like one
Speaker 1: class often look long story, but you know, it was
Speaker 1: interesting seeing it there because like you know, there there
Speaker 1: were basically like two possible reactions to learning that one
Speaker 1: was like people who you know, one way, you get
Speaker 1: incredibly depressed and that's what I did. Or and then
Speaker 1: that's the second one was people would you know and
Speaker 1: these people who like actually you know, you know, I
Speaker 1: mean these abio studies madeas right, like these people have
Speaker 1: spent a lot of time studying this stuff, and they
Speaker 1: kind of like, I don't know. This is almost like
Speaker 1: like this kind of intellectual retreat where you could see
Speaker 1: people business just like convincing themselves that like somehow this
Speaker 1: would be okay, and they'd like I don't know, people
Speaker 1: would just get like completely obsessed with like electoral maps
Speaker 1: and you're like no, no no, no, no, no no, okay, okay,
Speaker 1: if if if we went exactly this number of seats
Speaker 1: in this year, then like we can we can start
Speaker 1: doing carbon credits or like, I don't know, it was
Speaker 1: it was. It's really interesting to watch because it was
Speaker 1: like it was it was I mean, because like I
Speaker 1: think I think that there's there's like there's very there's
Speaker 1: bad faith versions of it, and then I think there's
Speaker 1: also versions of it that are just sort of like
Speaker 1: people do not want to accept yeah, like the what's
Speaker 1: necessary to stop this? And so they sort of like
Speaker 1: that I can't even really like think about what's necessary
Speaker 1: because because of how the education system works. And trust
Speaker 1: I could go on like long runs about education system.
Speaker 1: It really it really really, um it really limits people's
Speaker 1: ability to think outside of like this very very strict
Speaker 1: box of possibilities because you know, so much just left
Speaker 1: out of UM for example, history classes and soone just
Speaker 1: left out of um really all the subjects. There's this
Speaker 1: very clear ideology that you're expected to come out of
Speaker 1: the education system with. And so even when you reach
Speaker 1: academia and high education and stuff, you're still stuck with
Speaker 1: that mode of thinking. And even as you're presented with
Speaker 1: all this new information, because your brain currentally like handle
Speaker 1: like the great extent of what climate change is, you know,
Speaker 1: it kind of retreats into this sort of simple kind
Speaker 1: of Oh, we just need to vote, because voting is
Speaker 1: all I know, voting is all the tools to do.
Speaker 1: Voting is politics, and politics is voting. That's the extent
Speaker 1: of it, right, Yeah, It's like this weird form of
Speaker 1: self preservation that people need to do in order to
Speaker 1: kind of like keep their keep them from in their mind,
Speaker 1: you know, like spiraling out of control, because this is
Speaker 1: the only thing that you know, they have. They need
Speaker 1: to focus on their own life right now and their
Speaker 1: own current problems. And if they think about this because
Speaker 1: this like large looming threat too much, it just freaks
Speaker 1: you out right. And you have in order to keep
Speaker 1: or to just keep going on with your life. A
Speaker 1: lot of people like segment off this type of thing
Speaker 1: in their own brain so that you know, manifests in
Speaker 1: a lot of cases, and this kind of soft denial
Speaker 1: so that you can just keep on going. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I see with with friends, and I see with
Speaker 1: the family. You know, obviously they are the handful of
Speaker 1: people who still, at least in my experience, we still
Speaker 1: deny climate change. But there's like a bigger portion of
Speaker 1: people who's whole understanding climate change is just this or
Speaker 1: what we just need to recycle and we just need
Speaker 1: to like switch to electric vehicles and once we do that,
Speaker 1: you know we'll be okay. Um, which is tweak a
Speaker 1: couple of things, get some solar panels and yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: the understanding of it has been completely limited to like
Speaker 1: this very restricted conversation that is like um basically cultivated
Speaker 1: by certain interest groups and certain um lobbying groups and
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. You know, Yeah, the only a
Speaker 1: certain amount of change is allowed, and that's what we're
Speaker 1: allowed to think. So that's what we're like shown for
Speaker 1: examples of in like media and pop culture or whatever. Right,
Speaker 1: So this is you know, this is kind of what
Speaker 1: you know, like all of the YouTubers who got money
Speaker 1: from Bill Gates when Bill Gates wrote his climate book, right,
Speaker 1: all of the things that they were talking about. It's like,
Speaker 1: it's like this kind of stuff because the only way
Speaker 1: for Bill Gates to keep his money well you know,
Speaker 1: talking about climate change is to have these kind of
Speaker 1: half assed like solutions that are actually deny the impending
Speaker 1: reality and deny that. No, the only way to actually
Speaker 1: fix it is by taking all his money, um, which
Speaker 1: he's not as big a fan of. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: have you all seen the Cuska sucked video on climate
Speaker 1: change and economy? Coming want climate change socks in a nutshell?
Speaker 1: It's like this like that, so people can find it,
Speaker 1: but people will I think people people know. I think
Speaker 1: a lot a lot of people know what it is.
Speaker 1: Or you can just search in a nutshell on YouTube.
Speaker 1: It's key you are. I'm gonna try. I'm gonna try.
Speaker 1: You are. No, it's ku r g was it ku
Speaker 1: r z? I think it's ku r z g E
Speaker 1: s A A G t A Right, it is, it is.
Speaker 1: It is a weird one. But what what what are
Speaker 1: you talking about? The can you fix Climate change? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: where the whole thesis is basically vote with your ballots
Speaker 1: and vote with your wallet. Yeah, that's the only thing
Speaker 1: that you're really allowed, right, Yeah, And I believe this
Speaker 1: is one of the videos sponsored by they put this, um, yeah,
Speaker 1: they did. It was and then they had this whole
Speaker 1: line about some people think we need to change like
Speaker 1: our system from climate ch from from capitalism, but we're
Speaker 1: not so sure about that. We don't know the answer.
Speaker 1: So it's just been like shrug towards maybe system, it's
Speaker 1: from with the system. But they basically gave it no attention.
Speaker 1: You know. But their channel is literally about like quite
Speaker 1: deep into research about things, So it's very obvious that
Speaker 1: if they spent no time like doing any kind of
Speaker 1: research into like why people have the system and critique
Speaker 1: that obviously Bill Kate's hand is very deep in their pockets.
Speaker 1: You know, because I believe that I believe the researchers
Speaker 1: actually kind of that, but they're not. They just can't
Speaker 1: say yeah, and I mean like, yeah, I think they're
Speaker 1: making the bargain a lot of people make where they're like, Okay, well,
Speaker 1: if we can push for you know, the immediate necessary changes,
Speaker 1: we can worry about, you know, stuff like that later on.
Speaker 1: It's it's just important to get something done, um, and
Speaker 1: so we'll compromise and will not will not call for
Speaker 1: what we know is actually necessary to deal with the problem.
Speaker 1: We'll just we'll just go with a half measure because
Speaker 1: at least it's something we've got to do something now. Right.
Speaker 1: The thing that's always been very grim about that to
Speaker 1: me is like you look about how how that plays out, right,
Speaker 1: And it's always like, well, okay, so our our half
Speaker 1: measure is gonna be we're gonna we're gonna just like
Speaker 1: put put put a monetary value on indigenous forests so
Speaker 1: that governments can like steal them and get paid for
Speaker 1: taking the land. And it's never stuff like why don't
Speaker 1: we like make more marshes, which is you know, if
Speaker 1: if you're gonna talk about stuff that like could actually
Speaker 1: be done, right, It's like, okay, well look but what
Speaker 1: do re marshing do we? What? Like? That's that that
Speaker 1: stuff like is easy and doesn't need you know, you
Speaker 1: don't literally have to overthrow capitalism to get people to
Speaker 1: like restore marshes. But it never happens because this that's
Speaker 1: you know, the whole basis of the sort of soft
Speaker 1: denialism stuff is not actually you know, it's not actually
Speaker 1: the type of solve climate change. They just want to
Speaker 1: make money and it's extremely grim. Yeah. Yeah, there's this
Speaker 1: video that the storyteller is this YouTuber Um he did
Speaker 1: recently on co opting movements, and he was explaining that, um,
Speaker 1: with the March in Washington right during the Civil rights movement, Um,
Speaker 1: that was an organic movement that you know, the people
Speaker 1: had come up with, right, but obviously a mass movement. Yeah,
Speaker 1: FI isn't gonna just sit back and let that happen, right,
Speaker 1: So they brought in these leaders. Um they're called the
Speaker 1: Big Six, and um, the story teller was explaining that
Speaker 1: basically they were paid to co opt the march to
Speaker 1: basically become its figureheads and its leaders. They hadn't organized
Speaker 1: it themselves, but they came on afterwards and became the
Speaker 1: leaders of the march and read the speeches that they
Speaker 1: were supposed to read, that kind of thing, and so
Speaker 1: that sort of mass movement was basically defound like that.
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously reforms were made and you know, Civil
Speaker 1: Rights Act was passed. But then, you know, after all
Speaker 1: that happened, and MLK got disillusioned by the system as
Speaker 1: a whole and wanted to start pushing even harder against
Speaker 1: capitalism and whatnot. That's when well, coincidentally, he got a bullet,
Speaker 1: you know. So I think it's interesting that these movements
Speaker 1: they're able, they're they're comfortable with these movements up to
Speaker 1: a certain point. Um, and comfortable easily is going these
Speaker 1: sitting directions as to a certain point. But then when
Speaker 1: you actually start poising a threat to this out of school,
Speaker 1: that's when you know, you become a problem in like community.
Speaker 1: Not to see that, Okay, it wasn't a threat to
Speaker 1: this out of school, but just to say that, you know, um,
Speaker 1: there was. They have certain limits that they don't want
Speaker 1: people to cross. Yeah, Capitalism one of the things that's
Speaker 1: that makes it such a robust system in terms of
Speaker 1: its ability to to not get overthrown or destroyed? Is
Speaker 1: that up to a certain point. It loves dissent, It
Speaker 1: loves anti capitalism because you can market that very easily.
Speaker 1: Like there's a lot of money in in in anti capitalism,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of money and being critical of the system.
Speaker 1: It's just when you hit a certain point, um, then
Speaker 1: it then it becomes you know, the CIA or the
Speaker 1: FBI or some person who's been um convinced to shoot
Speaker 1: use problem like it. There's a there's a point at
Speaker 1: which uh, that's no longer accepted, but quite a bit
Speaker 1: of criticism and even like agitation to change or end
Speaker 1: the system can be accepted because it's monetize herbal and
Speaker 1: speaking of that, you know what time it is? Time
Speaker 1: for a serious absolutely is oh boy, time for an
Speaker 1: ad or or that's the CIA at the door. We
Speaker 1: won't know until we come back from break. Ah, we're back.
Speaker 1: It wasn't the CIA this time. Good news, guys, thankfully.
Speaker 1: I mean the fact that they flew all the way
Speaker 1: down just to meet me. I'm on it, honestly. Oh,
Speaker 1: I mean they've come to trend a dad for less.
Speaker 1: Oh that's true. Yeah, yeah, But like we were saying, right,
Speaker 1: there's this whole issue of these movements being able to
Speaker 1: go in a certain direction, but only up to a
Speaker 1: certain point. Um. And I think it's something that Peter
Speaker 1: Gallus also talks about in how non violence protects the state,
Speaker 1: in the sense of, you know, these people are able
Speaker 1: to once they get a certain level of attention, all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, you know, you're invited to speak of
Speaker 1: these events, and you're invited to go this place and that,
Speaker 1: and you basically get consumed into the workshop machine, the
Speaker 1: angio machine, and the climate conference machine kind of things.
Speaker 1: So you end up with all these figures, these organizers,
Speaker 1: these activists who go from like generally trying to organize
Speaker 1: their communities and their spaces, and then before you know it,
Speaker 1: they're like at such and such a conference because well,
Speaker 1: they think it's an opportunity to actually make like a
Speaker 1: bigger change. But in reality, you know, they just there
Speaker 1: too be defound. You know. Like, for example, who mainly
Speaker 1: comes to mind is like Greta Thunberg. I mean, I
Speaker 1: haven't looked at deeply into her past or anything. Um.
Speaker 1: I know they are certain right wingers who are very
Speaker 1: obsessed with her, but I know that she recently said
Speaker 1: that she's kind of done with politicians. UM. Because when
Speaker 1: you think of how she basically came up, you know,
Speaker 1: right exactly, think what how she basically came up. It
Speaker 1: was like she is talking at these events and you know,
Speaker 1: people are in fighting out the things because you know,
Speaker 1: look at look at this cute little google UM yelling
Speaker 1: about climate change, right, and she basically becomes this spectacle,
Speaker 1: you know, and that spectacle is entertained up to the
Speaker 1: point people make big event out of her, you know,
Speaker 1: like breaking down in front of these positions and stuff,
Speaker 1: and you know what, they just go right back to normal. UM.
Speaker 1: I think it was copy was like last week or
Speaker 1: the week before UM and representatives from representative I think
Speaker 1: the Prime Minister of Barbados was there and she had this,
Speaker 1: you know, a great speech about how the global nothings
Speaker 1: do more for you know, these countries and Goloble South
Speaker 1: because you know they have responsibility. That kind of thing. Cool. Um.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, you know there's like developments
Speaker 1: going on Barbados too, you know, basically bring in more
Speaker 1: tourists and to bring in more um and like you know,
Speaker 1: resorts building and that kind of thing that basically add
Speaker 1: to the UM emissions and add to the UM negative
Speaker 1: impact in the environment. You know, same thing with like
Speaker 1: Trn's government, you know, like representatives that would went to Copy,
Speaker 1: including the Prime Minister, and you know they're all about
Speaker 1: things changing and you know, the climate movement um and
Speaker 1: the climate change being real and the actions need to
Speaker 1: be taken. And then like this didn't make it in
Speaker 1: like like mainstream news of course, but in local news.
Speaker 1: Basically right after primester tryan to veagle dos Keith Rowley,
Speaker 1: he went and met up with like Shell. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: representatives at Shell to like basically bring the country and
Speaker 1: the company closer together, you know, um, because you know
Speaker 1: not is reliant and oil and that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: So obviously these sort of leaders and these sorts of movements,
Speaker 1: they only go up to a certain point. And even then,
Speaker 1: so much of it is just this performance yeah, and
Speaker 1: this um act. Basically I'll be I'm putting together a
Speaker 1: thing on copies six right now, UM because I think
Speaker 1: it actually it does demonstrate a lot of the soft
Speaker 1: denial stuff that you're talking about. Like the biggest thing
Speaker 1: to come out of COP twenty six in terms of
Speaker 1: like actual deals is just uh progress on carbon markets
Speaker 1: and carbon offset credits. That's there. That's really the only
Speaker 1: thing we actually got. Um. And they say, but not
Speaker 1: not like us, but like you know, the people in charge,
Speaker 1: they they got this and and the the the quote
Speaker 1: they gave was that the being able to buy carbon
Speaker 1: offset credits, meaning that like you don't actually make emissions differences.
Speaker 1: So they staid, you you buy pretend emissions differences from
Speaker 1: other countries that actually did make changes, um, so that
Speaker 1: you don't get penalized. So that's it's buying the credits far.
Speaker 1: But they said, they said, buying the credits can potentially
Speaker 1: unlock trillions of dollars for protecting trees, expanding renewable energy,
Speaker 1: and other pludgets a combat climate change. It's it's like,
Speaker 1: don't climate credits. It's like, um, it's the same as
Speaker 1: saying like, hail Mary's because you sinned and you went
Speaker 1: to your priest and confessed. It's like, I've I've I've
Speaker 1: done bad things to the environment. Tell me like how
Speaker 1: many times I need to go through this ritual in
Speaker 1: order to in order to cleanse myself of having compen
Speaker 1: into the atmosphere. Exactly. I think it's bleaker than that
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways, like it's it's, it's, it's, it's,
Speaker 1: it's it's really it's the climate version of like the
Speaker 1: World Wildlife Fund having death squads. Okay, now, Chris, you
Speaker 1: are a very anti death squad, and I think we
Speaker 1: need to deal with that at some point because hashtag
Speaker 1: not all death squads. Yes, my mother will need to
Speaker 1: be able to account for by strong anti death squad stance.
Speaker 1: This is a yeah, you say that now, but you're
Speaker 1: gonna get a death squad to fight the death squads,
Speaker 1: and then where are you be going to be? Sea?
Speaker 1: But you get they get a death squad to fight
Speaker 1: your death squad, and then it's just like they can't
Speaker 1: sel each other out, and then you have to get
Speaker 1: another death squad, and then Marxist lendinis um. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a number of other things too, to be fair to Marxism.
Speaker 1: Another thing that might make you kind of question the
Speaker 1: integrity of CUT is that there were more delegates at
Speaker 1: Cup six from fossil field companies than there were from
Speaker 1: any individual nation. That makes sense, But then right, that's
Speaker 1: like another thing, right, because you're talking about six and
Speaker 1: we have soft climate change denil gets into that, But
Speaker 1: I don't think. I think seft FIM change denial can
Speaker 1: only be applied so far when it comes to those
Speaker 1: sorts of big spectacles and those big major events. Because
Speaker 1: even if they themselves really truly understand the depths of
Speaker 1: climate change and trust and believe like these wild barns
Speaker 1: and stuff, they knew, like they have all the infull
Speaker 1: right present front of them. They've done they're already done there,
Speaker 1: like cost benefit analyses and like risk assessments and kind
Speaker 1: of thing, so they know exactly like what the impact
Speaker 1: is going to be. They have the money to have
Speaker 1: access to the scientists, right, But it's not soft clime
Speaker 1: change denial for them. It's I'm a capitalist. I'm going
Speaker 1: to do what a capitalist does. You know, it's ultimately
Speaker 1: a funct Wait, they're operating within a system, you know,
Speaker 1: so soft time changenial um it is like sort of
Speaker 1: a psychological phenomenon. But we also to keep in mind
Speaker 1: the day is also like a structural component to it.
Speaker 1: See that even if they're a person does not face
Speaker 1: self clanis change. Now it's an experiencing self clans change
Speaker 1: denial that alone, even if they're like fully confront the
Speaker 1: sue that's just an individual, you know, and there's still
Speaker 1: like a whole structure around that individual that will still
Speaker 1: incentivize certain behavior. And then of course with the incentives
Speaker 1: of certain behavior comes like the psychological justifications for that behavior.
Speaker 1: So it kind of almost becomes at the end of
Speaker 1: justifying themselves into selft climate change denile, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. So it's kind of like it's like a
Speaker 1: fluid that it's like a feedback loop that reinforces its
Speaker 1: own existence. Yeah. Absolutely, I mean I think that honestly,
Speaker 1: like the feedback loop model is where we have a
Speaker 1: lot of our problems with the climate change are they're
Speaker 1: all very much linked to the feedback loop model of
Speaker 1: things trying to justify their own existence. And then you know,
Speaker 1: certain and then on the reverse side of things, you know,
Speaker 1: when certain changes in the climate happen, those create their
Speaker 1: own feedback loops which create more changes to happen. It's
Speaker 1: like everything everything one one massive loop. Yeah. Shall I
Speaker 1: gets me to like there's the discourse around climate change
Speaker 1: and stuff is like halted and divoted and immobilized you know,
Speaker 1: by soft climate change denial. You know, discussions are the
Speaker 1: very real, very current very near future and very violent
Speaker 1: impacts of climate change just basically softened, like like you
Speaker 1: know when you try to throw a punch in a dream. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like you're trying to like push, and then it's like,
Speaker 1: you know, it's like this kind of soft um or
Speaker 1: like you throw something in space. I guess it's just
Speaker 1: you put all this effort into it and then you
Speaker 1: go in another direction that kind of thing. Um, I
Speaker 1: don't know what I'm going with this analogy, so I'll
Speaker 1: just keep on going. Um. Basically that there's an issue
Speaker 1: with the conversation, with the discourse has just been you know,
Speaker 1: harmed by the psychological phenomenon. But of course there's the
Speaker 1: other side of psychological phenomenon of soft clim engine nial,
Speaker 1: not the hard climngine genial side, but rather the I'm
Speaker 1: so on the opposite end of soft clian chine nil
Speaker 1: that I'm like an inconsolable and like illogical and I
Speaker 1: can't even imagine the possibility of anything happening kind of yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the kind of the kind of extreme dumerism where you
Speaker 1: you recognize how you organize that climtage is bad, um,
Speaker 1: but then you you see it as such a massive
Speaker 1: overwhelming thing that basically shuts you down from be able
Speaker 1: to do anything else, and you just like, exactly, there's
Speaker 1: really no point to do anything if it's going to
Speaker 1: be this bad. There's really no one's you know, it's
Speaker 1: such a hard capitalism and the systems that are working
Speaker 1: to keep it going or such a hard thing to
Speaker 1: overcome that it seems like the best thing to do
Speaker 1: is just sit down and do nothing. Yeah, and that's
Speaker 1: the thing, right, Like these are slash collapse people, right, Um.
Speaker 1: I mean I appreciate that they don't shy away from
Speaker 1: like the really difficult stuff, and they also stumble into
Speaker 1: this kind of like coop that's dumorism, Like it's dramatic
Speaker 1: kind of we are screwed, We're all going to be
Speaker 1: fight saying this mad Max style arena. Like that's not
Speaker 1: how you know Climbine is going to play. You know,
Speaker 1: it's not a movie. You know, like things are going
Speaker 1: to break down in certain places and other places are
Speaker 1: gonna locked down in sutain ways, but it's not going
Speaker 1: to be like this Suddain global devolution into madness like that.
Speaker 1: You know, that's not really how social change that's already
Speaker 1: how collapses have you know, functional history. You know, of
Speaker 1: course we live in a like a global civilization, and
Speaker 1: previous collapses have been fairly localized. But still, you know,
Speaker 1: climate change is both global and local, so there are
Speaker 1: certain changes it will only affects it in localities. This
Speaker 1: is something that actually the book Desert addresses fairly well,
Speaker 1: and I find it frustra from yeah, yeah, because I
Speaker 1: find really frustrating because, especially on the online left, there's
Speaker 1: people who treat desert like the gospel, or at least
Speaker 1: they say they do, but they're actually extreme doomers who
Speaker 1: fetishize collapse, um, and they're like, oh, everything is hopeless.
Speaker 1: Read desert but then you but then, but desert is
Speaker 1: like explicitly anti collapse. Same collapse isn't gonna happen. Collapse
Speaker 1: is a fantasy you tell yourself to keep you going.
Speaker 1: And for this kind haven't heard of desert. Desert is
Speaker 1: a book that's available for free online about what's coming um.
Speaker 1: It's titled Desert because of an old quote about how
Speaker 1: empires um leave nothing but deserts in their wake. Basically
Speaker 1: like that's it's it's just like a thing that that empire.
Speaker 1: I think the exact quote is like empires make a
Speaker 1: desert and call it peace. Um. And it's it's basically
Speaker 1: discussing the fact like not just literal desertification, but like, um,
Speaker 1: that that's more of a more of a better picture
Speaker 1: of like our future under climate change than kind of
Speaker 1: these these mad max dreams this like slow dissolution of
Speaker 1: resources and uh environments. Um. And that that's kind of
Speaker 1: the Yeah, it's a it's a good book. You can
Speaker 1: read it yourself, and it's it's quite influential online. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, as as Garrison pointed out, there are people
Speaker 1: who kind of take it in a in a direction
Speaker 1: that I don't believe the authors. I mean clearly the
Speaker 1: authors didn't mean, because they directly called out that kind
Speaker 1: of thinking. Yeah. Yeah, it's kind of like some people
Speaker 1: treat like collapse and stuff as basically the secular version
Speaker 1: of like revelation in the Bible. Yeah yeah, or it's
Speaker 1: or it's like the non markets version of like the revolution.
Speaker 1: It's like it's like this this kind of mythical event
Speaker 1: to like prepare for and almost be excited for, but
Speaker 1: like it's it's fake, it's a fantasy. It's it's something
Speaker 1: we tell ourselves to keep ourselves going as things are bad,
Speaker 1: but it's not it's it's not real. Yeah, like any
Speaker 1: d you know, the trumpets will sound in the heavens
Speaker 1: and the screws will be broken, and the great, the
Speaker 1: great beast will arise from the sea and you know
Speaker 1: all that fame. Yeah, And I I don't know what
Speaker 1: the solution is for that. I I don't know how
Speaker 1: both on the soft climate denial side of like, how
Speaker 1: do you go about? How do you go about It's
Speaker 1: like the only thing we can really do is the people,
Speaker 1: you know, we know, how how do we go about
Speaker 1: and tell them that, hey, things are probably gonna be
Speaker 1: a bit worse and which you're preparing for um, And
Speaker 1: how do we tell the people who are doomers, Hey,
Speaker 1: it's not gonna be like this weird dystopian thing that
Speaker 1: you're thinking of. Either, it's like it's it's it's interesting
Speaker 1: because like they're both veering off in two opposite directions,
Speaker 1: but it both kind of leads to the same point
Speaker 1: of kind of doing nothing. But one version. One version
Speaker 1: of nothing is basically you know, voting for stuff that's
Speaker 1: not that's never gonna happen. The other version is not
Speaker 1: just not doing anything in general. Um, And I I
Speaker 1: don't know how to how to reach those types of
Speaker 1: people very easily. Yeah, which kind of brings me to
Speaker 1: like my thoughts on like how we move past soft
Speaker 1: climate gene nil Um. I don't think it's just a
Speaker 1: matter of like trying to like push like campaigns on people.
Speaker 1: I think it's gonna be like a very personal sort
Speaker 1: of journey that each person has to go through, right,
Speaker 1: because each wisnes is different. Each wisnes is like has
Speaker 1: different worries and dealing things in a different way, you know. Um,
Speaker 1: So like you want to keep in mind like people's
Speaker 1: mental health and sort of fortifying your mental health and
Speaker 1: helping people fortified days. Because when it comes to mental
Speaker 1: health with regard to like climate change, doing it an
Speaker 1: isolation in my experience has not really worked out. I
Speaker 1: think what has worked best for me is when I
Speaker 1: am with why I am connected with a group of
Speaker 1: people or even just one other person, and when I'm
Speaker 1: feeling down about climate change. Because despite all my messages
Speaker 1: about sula punk and you know, we can do this
Speaker 1: like that that's basically the message of my YouTube channel.
Speaker 1: You know, I still experience like those sort of thoughts
Speaker 1: and feelings public about it. But what I try to
Speaker 1: do is when I'm feeling those things, I try to
Speaker 1: be with people who are not currently feeding that, you know,
Speaker 1: so we're not feeding all of each other's next of energies. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so like when I'm in a bad spot, you know,
Speaker 1: people are on who could lift me up, and when
Speaker 1: they about d and about spot because it kind of
Speaker 1: comes and weaves, you know, yeah, absolutely, no, Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's silly to deny those thoughts exist because they do.
Speaker 1: Like they're they're very they're a very easy neutral state
Speaker 1: at least for me to slip into um. And the
Speaker 1: way to get around that is by doing chores at
Speaker 1: a farm and shoveling poop and taking care of animals
Speaker 1: and cooking for people. That's like the way that I
Speaker 1: get out of that kind of mindset. And you know,
Speaker 1: not not to be too hard on all of the
Speaker 1: kind of doomer nihilists, because there there is there, there
Speaker 1: is a there's this there's like a sect of like
Speaker 1: doomer nihilists who use like the actual definition of nihilism,
Speaker 1: which is like if if things don't really matter, we
Speaker 1: should probably fux some stuff up, um, And that's very useful,
Speaker 1: right like if if if you're if, if you're on
Speaker 1: that train and you're like, yeah, you should be tree
Speaker 1: spiking if if if if you're okay with if you
Speaker 1: think nothing matters, um, and you are you want to
Speaker 1: be an actual nihilist, then yeah you should make you
Speaker 1: should make destroy um. Just make sure it's focused on
Speaker 1: the people with actual power, UM. Because if if you're
Speaker 1: willing to do that, then great, we need we need
Speaker 1: as many as many people like that as possible. But
Speaker 1: it's certainly easier to do that once you have friends
Speaker 1: and once you're not stuck in this super depressed state
Speaker 1: all the time. Yeah, and um, I think there's a again.
Speaker 1: We we we do take a look at like some
Speaker 1: of the criticisms people have a the show online, And
Speaker 1: I know one that's come up a bunch is people
Speaker 1: will listen to like our when when we'll talk about,
Speaker 1: you know, the severity of the problems and then we'll
Speaker 1: talk about things like you know, mutual aid collectives and
Speaker 1: small guards, seed bombings and all that stuff, they'll be like, well,
Speaker 1: that's not a solution, And no, of course that's not
Speaker 1: going to solve the global problem of carbon emissions from
Speaker 1: a civilization of seven billion humans. What it does do
Speaker 1: focusing on stuff like that, focusing on building soil UM,
Speaker 1: focusing on building community resistance. In addition to like having
Speaker 1: an immediate impact on the number of people you know
Speaker 1: in in in your community, it builds a sense of um,
Speaker 1: a sense of power for the individual. It. It gives
Speaker 1: you something to do that isn't just thinking about how
Speaker 1: bad things are, and that puts you in a mind
Speaker 1: state that's more useful to actually potentially dealing with the
Speaker 1: bigger problems. At some point. UM, you have to have
Speaker 1: a sense of your own agency that feels real if
Speaker 1: you're going to actually change anything UM, and you can.
Speaker 1: You can build it's a muscle, right. You can build
Speaker 1: it up by by doing things that are not bigger
Speaker 1: but are are part of the solution. UM. And it's
Speaker 1: exactly valuable to do that for your own for your
Speaker 1: own mental health, because then maybe you if you're maybe
Speaker 1: if if if your friend group, if your your affinity group,
Speaker 1: whatever you wanna call it, the people you are hanging
Speaker 1: out with, if some of them are always engaged in
Speaker 1: something productive, then when you're in a doomed spiral. You
Speaker 1: can find someone who's working on something um and vice versa. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it doesn't just help your mental health, but it
Speaker 1: also contributes to the pre figurative activities that we need
Speaker 1: to actually make a switch to a different system. You know,
Speaker 1: like revolution is something that happens overnight or in a future.
Speaker 1: It's something that's supposed to be happening all now because
Speaker 1: as we build those systems, you know, we are building
Speaker 1: up power. You know, it's kind of like how the
Speaker 1: black socialst in America described to a power you know
Speaker 1: s we have lindy systems and putting these things in
Speaker 1: place so that we can push towards like fundamental transmission.
Speaker 1: This system it's it's rative, but a small people build
Speaker 1: on top of that, you know, that's how the transmission happens.
Speaker 1: We all also need to contribute. I mean, I think
Speaker 1: it's it's it's important to talk about this both to acknowledge,
Speaker 1: like it's a thing that happens and we all deal with.
Speaker 1: We all have our moments of like overwhelming despair over
Speaker 1: what's happening, um and and at some some moments of
Speaker 1: unrealistic optimism too. Yeah, everyone's in a while and the
Speaker 1: unrealistic optimism needs to be encouraged UM, as long as
Speaker 1: it's not the kind of what we don't need to
Speaker 1: do anything because someone's I guess there's toxic optimism and
Speaker 1: there's helpful. A toxic optimism would be like reading an
Speaker 1: article about some new carbon capture technology and being like, oh, cool,
Speaker 1: well I don't need to worry. UM. But but most
Speaker 1: optimism I think is positive UM. And I think it's
Speaker 1: good to build a capacity for optimism by by building
Speaker 1: your your personal sense of of agency and power, by
Speaker 1: by doing ship that helps UM. And I think that
Speaker 1: accepting that you can do things that are meaningful UM,
Speaker 1: and that uh there are things to be done that
Speaker 1: can help the situation is a critical way of fighting
Speaker 1: against you know this uh soft climate change denial, which
Speaker 1: which is a UM, a major threat because there's I think,
Speaker 1: honestly at this point more people who are subscribing to
Speaker 1: some form of soft climate change denial than there are
Speaker 1: people who are uh just denying climate change and its
Speaker 1: entirety UM. And that's I think where a lot of
Speaker 1: the effort has to go. So I yeah, I think
Speaker 1: this is a really important thing for people to understand
Speaker 1: and to be vigilant against absolutely. Yeah. All right, well, Andrew,
Speaker 1: where can the audience find you outside of me here
Speaker 1: right now? Yeah? So you can find me on my
Speaker 1: YouTube channel st Andrew's um, and you can find me
Speaker 1: on Twitter at und School of Sture. Excellent. Well, you
Speaker 1: can find us here where you just found us. We'll
Speaker 1: be here tomorrow, unless this is a Friday, in which
Speaker 1: case we'll be here on Monday. UM. I have a
Speaker 1: have a good you know life, have a good life.
Speaker 1: Take care. All right, welcome to it could happen here
Speaker 1: a podcast about things falling apart and also sometimes about
Speaker 1: how things have been falling apart for a while now,
Speaker 1: and today we're gonna talk about how things were also
Speaker 1: bad in falling apart in the two thousands, which a
Speaker 1: profoundly cursed time period. And specifically we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about I think a part of the anti war movement
Speaker 1: that does not get much attention, um, which is the
Speaker 1: port militarization resistance that happened sort of two and with
Speaker 1: us today to talk about this is two people who
Speaker 1: were part of this movement. If Juliana Newhauser hello, and
Speaker 1: Brendan Maslaska's done. Yeah, both of whom were organizers and
Speaker 1: activists while this was going on. Yeah, and I thank
Speaker 1: thank you, thank you both for being here. Yeah, thanks
Speaker 1: for having us so. Yeah, as as I was saying
Speaker 1: a bit in the intro, I think that this is
Speaker 1: a part of the anti war movement that is not
Speaker 1: very well known. I think I think a lot of
Speaker 1: people know about the initial stuff happened in two dozen three,
Speaker 1: and people might know about some of the stuff that
Speaker 1: was happening against the war in Afghanistan but right when
Speaker 1: it started, but I don't think most people know that
Speaker 1: it like you know, even after Chils and three sort
Speaker 1: of doesn't work, that it continues and it continues sort
Speaker 1: of informs that are that are very interesting, and so,
Speaker 1: like I guess I want you to start out, I
Speaker 1: want to ask how we sort of got from the
Speaker 1: early part of the anti war movement into this and
Speaker 1: how usually got involved. I would say that there's this
Speaker 1: narrative about the women against the word Iraq, that there
Speaker 1: is the largest protests in human history, at least at
Speaker 1: that point. I don't know if it's still true against
Speaker 1: the invasion, and then it didn't work and everyone kind
Speaker 1: of went home and ended there and to a certain extent,
Speaker 1: that's true. But like you said, the people that didn't
Speaker 1: go home went an interesting direction. And UM so at
Speaker 1: the time there were direct action was not as acceptable
Speaker 1: as it is now. The or this movement was largely
Speaker 1: dominated either by UM big liberal coalitions or PSL front
Speaker 1: groups that were basically indistinguishable and what they actually did,
Speaker 1: which was basically nothing and in the best of cases
Speaker 1: and in the worst of cases, kind of insurgency. UM.
Speaker 1: But then there were small groups of people that at
Speaker 1: when we saw that it didn't work, and we saw
Speaker 1: that these giant, peaceful marches from one part of town
Speaker 1: to another UM or voting for John Kerry or whatever,
Speaker 1: it didn't work, that we started to look for other options. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, I got involved, you know, i'd
Speaker 1: say with the anti war movement. That idea of how
Speaker 1: Warson just was really taught to me from a very
Speaker 1: young age. I mean, my parents were you know, children
Speaker 1: of the sixties, and they had family members fighting in
Speaker 1: Vietnam and um, you know, friends dying in Vietnam and
Speaker 1: we're against the protests back then. So I grew up
Speaker 1: hearing these stories and of course stories from family members,
Speaker 1: particularly one of my grandfather's. Both of them, we were
Speaker 1: veterans in World War Two. One of them was a
Speaker 1: marine and the you know, in the Pacific theater and
Speaker 1: still into his seventies, eighties and nineties until his final days,
Speaker 1: was just dealing with horrific PTSD and had always taught
Speaker 1: me from a young age never to get involved. So
Speaker 1: I you know, and I remember when when the very
Speaker 1: clearly um, you know, I'm sure it's on everyone's minds now,
Speaker 1: and when the invasion of Afghanistan started, when the invasion
Speaker 1: of a Rock started, I was at that that massive
Speaker 1: demonstration in Washington, d C. That Juliana just mentioned, and
Speaker 1: you know I ended up. I'm from Utica, New York,
Speaker 1: and went to a rural high school wool uh just
Speaker 1: outside of of Utica, you know, russ Bell generally speaking,
Speaker 1: impoverished and also very conservative area of New York. And
Speaker 1: you know, I had the recruiters bothering me, military recruiters
Speaker 1: in high school, recruiting my friends, and they were just
Speaker 1: everywhere in the hallways. Uh So it was very present,
Speaker 1: um with me. When I was younger, I moved out
Speaker 1: to Olympia, Washington two thousand six, and that's one a
Speaker 1: new student activist group, Students for Democratic Society, was launched.
Speaker 1: That's how Juliana and I first met. We were both
Speaker 1: in separate chapters of that new organization in the Pacific Northwest,
Speaker 1: and the port protests started just just a few months
Speaker 1: after I moved out there in in Olympia in two
Speaker 1: thousand six. So wait, just declare for this for a second,
Speaker 1: because I've never quite been clear on this history. So
Speaker 1: there was a second SD, like Students for Democratic this
Speaker 1: idea that was like unrelated to the first one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that they're born briefly um at the end of the
Speaker 1: bushop manaster. That that explains a lot of things that
Speaker 1: it's very baffling. We're not that old. Yeah, we're definitely
Speaker 1: in the in the second uh, you know, the rebirth
Speaker 1: of it um. So you know, I think it it
Speaker 1: took on some things in spirit um you know, but
Speaker 1: also was i'd say different in many ways, and it
Speaker 1: was very active to me at least, it was very
Speaker 1: exciting to be a member of the new STS because
Speaker 1: they're over a dozen chapters in the Pacific Northwest and
Speaker 1: it was a great way to connect with young activists
Speaker 1: all over the US. So STS is emerging in this
Speaker 1: time period. One of the other things I was interested
Speaker 1: about is something something you were talking about in the
Speaker 1: in the in the early part of this, which has
Speaker 1: to do with the way that these giants, both the
Speaker 1: sort of Answer Coalition PSL Frank Group and I guess
Speaker 1: the I s O was still around back then co
Speaker 1: Asians work versus how like anything else worked on. So
Speaker 1: so what was was s T sort of like consciously
Speaker 1: set up and in opposition to those groups? I don't
Speaker 1: think it was conscious, but there was just like I
Speaker 1: mean these days, I mean like there's a lot of
Speaker 1: controversy around PSL with like anarchist versus tanky politics, None
Speaker 1: of that mattered at that time, Like, none of that mattered.
Speaker 1: The only thing that mattered was the answer, which is
Speaker 1: the ps O Front group was completely fucking useless. Like
Speaker 1: they completely indistinguishable from any peace police um liberal Democratic
Speaker 1: Front group. There was literally no difference just in terms
Speaker 1: of their aesthetics. Maybe like is there a donkey or
Speaker 1: a hammer and sickle on something. That's the only difference
Speaker 1: we saw. So I don't I don't think there was.
Speaker 1: It wasn't There wasn't like a conscious like political opposite
Speaker 1: attention to it. It was just like they're not doing anything,
Speaker 1: and and so we had to look in another direction. Actually,
Speaker 1: you know, it's hard to keep track of the alphabet
Speaker 1: soup of athalitarian communist groups at times, but this was
Speaker 1: actually answer for those who don't recall, it was front
Speaker 1: group for the Workers World Party the W which yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's hard to keep track, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the same thing, like I think, so, so okay,
Speaker 1: So for people who are sort of unaware of this,
Speaker 1: there's a network of connected but sometimes feuding like weird
Speaker 1: Stalinist cults that kind of kind of like they hold
Speaker 1: on through the eighties and nineties and they start sort
Speaker 1: of rebuilding again around the antiwar movements in that period.
Speaker 1: That that's the PSLs of the up. That's answer like,
Speaker 1: and I think that's like most like modern anti war
Speaker 1: groups are also still these people, which is incredibly depressing
Speaker 1: something you want to talk a bit about it towards
Speaker 1: the end of this. But yeah, just for people who
Speaker 1: have not spent the last half decade in the in
Speaker 1: the trench is of extremely weird anti war politics. So yeah,
Speaker 1: so I think we should get into how the the
Speaker 1: first action starts in Olympia. Yeah. So, and there were
Speaker 1: actually a couple of actions that happened, um in the
Speaker 1: year proceeding that, you know, before I moved out to
Speaker 1: Olympia in two thousand and six, it was not yet
Speaker 1: under the banner of PMR Port Militarization Resistance. That was
Speaker 1: a name that was officially coined in uh, you know,
Speaker 1: in in May and June of two thousand six. And so,
Speaker 1: just to give you an idea Olympia, it's it's a
Speaker 1: college town or at the Evergreen State College is there.
Speaker 1: It's also the capital Washington State, so you have that
Speaker 1: going on. It's also a military town. It's a little
Speaker 1: over twenty miles south of what we called Fort Lewis.
Speaker 1: It's now called j B l M j BLOM or
Speaker 1: Joint Base Lewis McCord. It's an Army and Air Force
Speaker 1: base now it's one base. Um, so you had all
Speaker 1: these you know, different kind of elements, uh in you know,
Speaker 1: in tandem in in that town and the public port.
Speaker 1: The port of Olympia is one of about seven years
Speaker 1: so public ports in the state of Washington, some of
Speaker 1: which are I mean, they're used for all kinds of
Speaker 1: things you know, for commercial, private industry, but also the
Speaker 1: military and the U. S. Government. Uh so, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: I heard from someone I don't even remember who that
Speaker 1: the military was sending a ship to the port of
Speaker 1: Olympia in late May of two thousand six. And this
Speaker 1: happened for ten or so days. And it was just
Speaker 1: kind of a natural instinct for a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: us to go down to the Port of Olympia. It
Speaker 1: was it was the war machine in our backyard, and
Speaker 1: the idea was to just block the vehicles. It started
Speaker 1: out with just like less than ten people number folks
Speaker 1: getting arrested, and that very rapidly culminated into larger protests
Speaker 1: every single day um an active blockades people, uh, those
Speaker 1: of us like Juliana and myself and other folks using
Speaker 1: civil disobedience or what we prefer to call civil resistance
Speaker 1: to try and stop or at the very least slow
Speaker 1: down these striker vehicles and to give folks an idea
Speaker 1: of what a striker vehicle is. You can look it
Speaker 1: up online, but it's kind of halfway between. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: a tank and a hum vy doesn't have the slats,
Speaker 1: you know that a tank would have it's you know,
Speaker 1: and they were being used in both Iraq and Afghanistan
Speaker 1: for for raids of residential areas. They were really on
Speaker 1: the front lines of of the war in in both
Speaker 1: those countries, and that's what we're trying to stop. I
Speaker 1: only got involved later, um, because I wasn't living in
Speaker 1: Olympia at the time. UM. I was another STS chapter.
Speaker 1: But my roommate was from Olympia and he had been
Speaker 1: involved in that first round of protests in Olympia before
Speaker 1: moving up to Bollingham. Yeah. So, like hearing his story
Speaker 1: has got me very excited because just like finally someone's
Speaker 1: someone's doing something like someone's they're not. Just like it's
Speaker 1: like everything else was just so liberal. Take whether it's
Speaker 1: marching from one place to another or writing to your
Speaker 1: congress people or occupying their office. It was like asking
Speaker 1: someone else to do something which you knew from the
Speaker 1: beginning they were never going to do. And finally this
Speaker 1: is finally someone was like actually getting into it. UM.
Speaker 1: I think the first one of the things that happened
Speaker 1: here was that um they started to avoid UM. There's it.
Speaker 1: It was kind of a geographical thing, I think, UM,
Speaker 1: for people who either don't know Washington, Washington, or because
Speaker 1: they're normal people don't know like the port areas of
Speaker 1: these cities very well, because it's like like unless you're
Speaker 1: a long sherman, like why you would you go down
Speaker 1: to like the port of Tacoma. UM. But they kept
Speaker 1: moving it around because um Olympia is also not very
Speaker 1: big and UM, so it's there's really only two roads
Speaker 1: into the port, which is very small, and so it
Speaker 1: was it's very easy to block it UM. And so
Speaker 1: then I think the first time that I got involved
Speaker 1: UM was in two thousands seven when they had moved
Speaker 1: it because they kept moving it around to try and
Speaker 1: switch things up and wait before the seeing the ship around. No,
Speaker 1: it's like they had to make a military ship met
Speaker 1: they would UM. It's like like once the ship it
Speaker 1: wasn't the port, they would just have to go through
Speaker 1: with it. But then UM, you know, it's like everything
Speaker 1: every six months or so they had to make another
Speaker 1: military ship met and they would change the port usually
Speaker 1: each time, UM to try and let basically to avoid us.
Speaker 1: It doesn't seem like this is like normal crap. UM.
Speaker 1: The first time I had gone down was in UM Tacoma,
Speaker 1: which is a much much much more industrialized port than Olympia.
Speaker 1: It's you know, it's like a big port, a more
Speaker 1: normal port, I guess. And that one was honestly pretty crazy, um,
Speaker 1: because you're just trapped in this giant industrial maze basically
Speaker 1: at the mercy of the riot cops. The best success
Speaker 1: we had was definitely at the port of Olympia. UM.
Speaker 1: I think the in two thousand seven in Olympia was
Speaker 1: definitely the glory moment, which was when people were able
Speaker 1: to on and off like actually hold the port and
Speaker 1: control it. The Yeah, and I wanna you know, just
Speaker 1: emphasize that, like the the one the military changing their
Speaker 1: approach right to avoid us so jumping from port to
Speaker 1: port with these different shipments. They actually went so far
Speaker 1: because we were so successful as a movement in the
Speaker 1: Pacific Northwest to ship striker vehicles by rail out of
Speaker 1: the Pacific Northwest and even going so far as to
Speaker 1: ports and Texas. I don't know, but you know, one
Speaker 1: one thing that we did is that we built up
Speaker 1: contacts with other activists with longshore workers all up and
Speaker 1: down the West coast in California. There are other activists
Speaker 1: were connected within Texas, Hawaii, New Jersey, in New York,
Speaker 1: there is a desire and the anti war movement. Uh
Speaker 1: and and you know, in some extent maybe it's like
Speaker 1: it was small. But some folks in the labor movement,
Speaker 1: especially in Oakland where the I LW the you know,
Speaker 1: longshore workers Union, it's a lot more militant than say
Speaker 1: in a place like Olympia. UM. But yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: people wanted to replicate this model because, as Juliana said,
Speaker 1: we wore successful in two thousand seven, we shut down
Speaker 1: the port of Olympia for a total of it was
Speaker 1: essentially two days. They were not they're not shipping anything
Speaker 1: in or out. We set up blockades, were willing to
Speaker 1: throw down with the police in the street. And one
Speaker 1: of the things that was cool about that blockade is
Speaker 1: that one of the there's two entrances, like I said,
Speaker 1: and one was completely blockaded and then the other one, UM,
Speaker 1: we had like a moving I don't really know what
Speaker 1: it was, but something with wheels that we can move
Speaker 1: in and out UM to open it up. And so
Speaker 1: then we could allow like civilian cargo to move then out,
Speaker 1: but then like we feel it back in place, UM
Speaker 1: to block military shipments. So we were able to actually
Speaker 1: like stopped them from like what while in in that
Speaker 1: oneted to come, were able to actually like stopped them
Speaker 1: from moving the self all together? Would you when sheally
Speaker 1: cleared up by the police and they moved it, we
Speaker 1: would eventually get cleared out by the police. It's like
Speaker 1: we were never able to It's like we're we we
Speaker 1: held it for two days. That those protests took place
Speaker 1: over a series of two weeks or more or less. Um,
Speaker 1: we were only able to fully hold it for two
Speaker 1: days before eventually they would clear us out. But one
Speaker 1: of the things is that this does it did create
Speaker 1: problems for the army because when you work with a port,
Speaker 1: you know, it's like you've got like a certain time
Speaker 1: frame that you've contracted with the port to do whatever
Speaker 1: it is because you're going to do and it's the
Speaker 1: not too happy if you take longer very than you
Speaker 1: said you would or yeah, yeah. And the other thing
Speaker 1: I want to add is, you know, I think the
Speaker 1: other really important element with this whole movement going on
Speaker 1: is the Pacific Northwest was um it is specifically western
Speaker 1: Washington where the two of us were living. It was
Speaker 1: it was you know, the center and in a sense
Speaker 1: it was the heart of the anti war movement in
Speaker 1: the country at that time. One because of this militant
Speaker 1: direct action that we were, you know, we were building
Speaker 1: up in the streets and trying to throw a wrench
Speaker 1: in the gears of the war machine to to at
Speaker 1: the veryly slowed down, which in some ways we did.
Speaker 1: But we're up against so much. But the other added element,
Speaker 1: of course is the g I resistance and the soldiers
Speaker 1: who are resisting. I've all also known as the Rock
Speaker 1: Veterans against the War was very active there. They set
Speaker 1: up a g coffeehouse across you know, literally across the street, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, the gates for one of the entrances for
Speaker 1: Fort Louis. Um. There are a whole bunch of soldiers
Speaker 1: that were going a wall. We had friends who were
Speaker 1: active duty soldiers who had fought in you know, Iraq
Speaker 1: and Afghanistan that were a wall and they were hiding,
Speaker 1: you know, refusing to go back into the striker brigades
Speaker 1: that joined us in port militarization resistance. Uh. There are
Speaker 1: a whole you know, long list of soldiers that were
Speaker 1: very publicly saying, you know, I'm refusing to fight in
Speaker 1: Iraq or Afghanistan for you know, various reasons, and so
Speaker 1: we are very much connected with this movement too, and
Speaker 1: I think the higher ups in the military they're they're
Speaker 1: hyper aware of that. They studied us very well, um,
Speaker 1: you know, to the point of actually spying on us.
Speaker 1: So that's like a whole other element of the story too.
Speaker 1: One of the things that I've heard from talking to
Speaker 1: other people who were involved in this was that like, wow,
Speaker 1: like during these protests, like the level of police militarization
Speaker 1: just like skyrocketed, and like I remember I was talking
Speaker 1: trend about this. It was like, you know, if if
Speaker 1: you go back and look at like old system of
Speaker 1: a down videos, you know, they'll they'lly'll have these things. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you'll see these you see these riot police and
Speaker 1: like you look at them and it's like these people
Speaker 1: they look so much less armored than like the people
Speaker 1: that we have now. And one of the things that
Speaker 1: I thought was interesting about this was that like this
Speaker 1: is I think one of the points where you start
Speaker 1: getting the modern riot police showing up that are just like,
Speaker 1: you know, completely encased in like armor. And yeah, I
Speaker 1: want to talk about just like the police response to this,
Speaker 1: because I think that's that's another thing I think. I
Speaker 1: think there's never there's a kind of a tendency to
Speaker 1: sort of project back what the police look like one
Speaker 1: just onto the whole history of police and I think
Speaker 1: it's like it's it's it's gotten worse even in the
Speaker 1: last twenty years. Yeah, I mean, so I lived downtown
Speaker 1: in Olympia and probably just like a six minute walk
Speaker 1: away from the Port of Olympia and and also very
Speaker 1: conveniently just a few blocks away from the police station.
Speaker 1: So so lucky us. So we actually saw you know,
Speaker 1: we could see from the front of down on the road,
Speaker 1: down the sidewalk from the front of our house, Uh,
Speaker 1: some of the military shipments going by. And we we
Speaker 1: we did see that absolutely, and at at times it
Speaker 1: was it was terrifying. I mean I lived in an
Speaker 1: Activis house we jokingly called HQ because that's just you
Speaker 1: know where because of its proximity to the port, that's
Speaker 1: where a number of us were having meetings, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: around these protests early on in two thousand six, and um, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean we like they look like RoboCop and it's
Speaker 1: something I had I you know, I hadn't like I
Speaker 1: had been to like mass marches and demonstrations like the
Speaker 1: r n C protests and d NC protests in Boston,
Speaker 1: New York, and like in Washington, d C. Uh and
Speaker 1: so I would see these like riot cops, but they
Speaker 1: were I mean ubiquitous in the support protests. It was
Speaker 1: like a whole army of them that was sent out.
Speaker 1: I mean when Juliana said that things got kind of
Speaker 1: crazy at the Port of Tacoma protests, I mean there
Speaker 1: was like a police riot, you know, like the cops
Speaker 1: went absolutely nuts, are shooting people with tear gas and
Speaker 1: pepper balls and and brutalizing people. I had never before
Speaker 1: witnessed anything like that. And it got to the point
Speaker 1: in you know, in Olympia where we we kind of
Speaker 1: knew early on that we were being traced by the
Speaker 1: police to the extent where, you know, one friend of
Speaker 1: ours was followed from our house to the bus station
Speaker 1: to take a bus to school by the police and
Speaker 1: then was stopped and essentially assaulted by them on the street.
Speaker 1: And we had another fellow activists and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: a roommate of mine who is going out to driving
Speaker 1: out with a few friends, uh, few fellow activists from
Speaker 1: Olympia to Aberdeen, about an hour's drive. So Aberdeen, there's
Speaker 1: a port of Gray's Harbor there, pretty conservative small town.
Speaker 1: It's where Kurt Cobain is from, home of the famous
Speaker 1: Kurt Cobain teams. McDonald's they served billions and and billions
Speaker 1: served and that one McDonald's and Kurt Cobain's McDonald's. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean the you know, they they were they were following.
Speaker 1: They had orders the Washington State Patrol two, um, you know,
Speaker 1: pull over a car full full of known anarchists. There
Speaker 1: was alert gone out to all the police departments. They
Speaker 1: pulled them. They pulled him over, they made him walk
Speaker 1: the line. He was had you know, wasn't drinking and
Speaker 1: no drugs like nothing in his system. But they he
Speaker 1: was driving under like one mile per hour under the
Speaker 1: speed limit. They arrested him for or d d W
Speaker 1: I you know, eventually fought the chargers sued um uh
Speaker 1: and you know when a big settlement out of all that.
Speaker 1: But that's just one example of many of the lengths
Speaker 1: that the police would go to. It was pretty severe.
Speaker 1: Even there's a house of a bunch of anarchists, younger
Speaker 1: anarchists called a pitch Pipe Info Shop in Tacoma, and
Speaker 1: that was also a big target. The police were swarming
Speaker 1: around them all the time. They had like cameras set
Speaker 1: up like specifically just outside the Infra shop, like there
Speaker 1: weren't surrounds cameras there before, but then it was like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: just conveniently put them on this one specific street corner. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think like that was one of the things I
Speaker 1: was reading about this is you have that stuff. And
Speaker 1: then also I think one of the steerest parts of
Speaker 1: this is that like army intelligence gets involved and yeah,
Speaker 1: do you want to talk about the man named quote
Speaker 1: unquote John Jacob, who was in fact not that Yeah, so, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm curious what what memories you have of
Speaker 1: our our good dear friend John Jacob Juliana. I don't
Speaker 1: think I ever actually knew him in person, but he
Speaker 1: was the moderator of the List Serve, wasn't he. Yes,
Speaker 1: she's one of the moderators of our list Serves now
Speaker 1: that I look back on him, Like the Port Militarization Resistance,
Speaker 1: the sirup was always just like this dramatic ship show,
Speaker 1: and it's like, looking back on it, I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: a cop that did nothing, absolutely nothing to like established
Speaker 1: order or uh I if it was on purpose. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I think there's definitely something that happened, Like you know,
Speaker 1: looking back from our vantage point today, it's like, Okay,
Speaker 1: things make a little more sense at the time though,
Speaker 1: And we're in this movement, right and so that means
Speaker 1: like meeting people where they're at, we find all kinds
Speaker 1: of people that would like want to join the movement
Speaker 1: like I, like I said earlier, like active duty soldiers
Speaker 1: that were joining. So I meant to a guy named
Speaker 1: John Jacob and he sent an email out to me.
Speaker 1: I was one of the contacts for the Olympia STS group,
Speaker 1: and it's like, hey, you know, there's kind of like
Speaker 1: a parent organization that's some old like elder activists or
Speaker 1: in uh TO kind of mentor US called Movement for
Speaker 1: a Democratic Society, very small, never really took off, but like,
Speaker 1: I'm interested in getting involved. We met up in public
Speaker 1: and he seemed like an alright guy. I mean he was, um,
Speaker 1: you know, forty ish early forties. He had told me,
Speaker 1: like you know, been in the military for years and
Speaker 1: he actually still worked at Fort Lewis. So he was
Speaker 1: always open about that but it only went that far.
Speaker 1: He didn't ever tell us what he actually did there,
Speaker 1: and it wasn't abnormal for you know, we have many
Speaker 1: folks that worked active duty, you know, on base and
Speaker 1: civilian civilian roles or soldiers. As I mentioned that we're
Speaker 1: in port militarization resistance. So he gets involved, and he
Speaker 1: gets really involved with port militarisation and resistance. He goes
Speaker 1: to protests, He gets pretty close with this group of
Speaker 1: anarchists I mentioned who lived in Tacoma, UM, and he
Speaker 1: seemed like a really solid guy to to most of us. UM.
Speaker 1: And you know, things happen as as we progress and
Speaker 1: you know, as a military responded to our uh you
Speaker 1: know how effective we wore in the anti war movement
Speaker 1: and the g I resistance movement by changing their tactics.
Speaker 1: We noticed that Okay, when we first started the protests, UM,
Speaker 1: we we had the ability to catch the police by
Speaker 1: surprise by setting up you know, a blockade here, we're
Speaker 1: having a surprise action there at this time, or this
Speaker 1: support etcetera, etcetera. And as time progressed, we found out
Speaker 1: that you know, we were having these making these decisions
Speaker 1: for tactics in our strategy we thought that we're in
Speaker 1: private and then for whatever reason, the police kind of
Speaker 1: knew about where we were going to be before we
Speaker 1: even showed. And that I remember that happening in two
Speaker 1: thousand seven the Port of Olympia. Yeah, in Tacoma. There
Speaker 1: are there was a lot of things like that. Like
Speaker 1: there was one time when they're like some people who
Speaker 1: had a meeting in a closed room, like all there,
Speaker 1: they had taken the batteries out of their cell phones.
Speaker 1: They had simply written on the whiteboard the time and
Speaker 1: place they were going to have their next meeting, which
Speaker 1: is going to be in a diner near the port.
Speaker 1: And so that way if like if for any reason
Speaker 1: the room was bugged, it wouldn't be caught up because
Speaker 1: it was just written on a board. And then it
Speaker 1: was like a small meeting too, so it's like there
Speaker 1: weren't and then when they got to that diner, there's
Speaker 1: like full of cops like clearly waiting for them. Like
Speaker 1: at that point, it's like it was very clear there
Speaker 1: was some some level of infiltration involved. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: think we from early on, like you know, we we
Speaker 1: knew our history. I mean, you know, one of our
Speaker 1: our fellow activists and pmrs and a friend of ours,
Speaker 1: Peter Boehmer's professor at the Evergreen State College. He was
Speaker 1: in the original sts back in the sixties, and you know,
Speaker 1: he was essentially a political prisoner for a couple of
Speaker 1: years in both Massachusetts and California. UM. I mean the
Speaker 1: FEDS essentially tried to assassinate him. Um back in in
Speaker 1: the seventies when he was active in the anti war
Speaker 1: movement in San Diego. Like we knew, you know, former
Speaker 1: Black Panthers, and we read our history, so we knew
Speaker 1: about the history of cointelpro the counterintelligence program of the
Speaker 1: six season and seventies and the war on the anti
Speaker 1: war and civil rights and black power, American Indian movements, etcetera. UM,
Speaker 1: so we knew, you know, just intuitively early on. Uh.
Speaker 1: But there's one thing that happened in particular which prompted
Speaker 1: some of us to file for a public records request
Speaker 1: with the City of Olympia and another activists walking down
Speaker 1: the street in Olympia. I'm a member of the Wobby's
Speaker 1: Industrial Workers of the World Union, and we had like
Speaker 1: a one of those metal newspaper boxes downtown and it
Speaker 1: was locked to a poll um, you know, with a
Speaker 1: bike lock and there are some city workers there with
Speaker 1: a pickup truck and they're cutting the lock to this
Speaker 1: newspaper box and they threw it in their pickup truck
Speaker 1: and so are you know this friend of ours was there.
Speaker 1: It was like, what the hell, what are you doing?
Speaker 1: What's going on? And one of the workers just kind
Speaker 1: of strugged and was like, I don't know, the police
Speaker 1: told us to do this, and they drove off like
Speaker 1: they stole you know, are essentially like our union property
Speaker 1: or whatever. UM. So we had you know, our our
Speaker 1: lawyer friend Larry Hilda's and the National Lawyer's Guild you know,
Speaker 1: call and kind of threatened the city and and then
Speaker 1: a number of us got together like, hey, you know,
Speaker 1: let's do like a public records requests UM with the
Speaker 1: City of of Olympia freedom of information law right and
Speaker 1: so we did. And the request was, you know, just
Speaker 1: requesting any all information the city had, UM, any exchanges
Speaker 1: communications by email, etcetera between the police and like other
Speaker 1: agencies about anarchists i WW Students for a Democratic Society UM.
Speaker 1: And their initial search that the city clerk did yielded
Speaker 1: something like thirty thousand responses. So she's like, Okay, I
Speaker 1: gotta narrow this down. And I don't know, I was
Speaker 1: working on the request at the time, and for some reason,
Speaker 1: like I don't know where support protests are near a
Speaker 1: military based communications between the army not thinking anything, and
Speaker 1: so the initial responses who actually got um, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe a hundred hundred thirty or so different documents, just
Speaker 1: copies of emails, etcetera. That, Um, we're little puzzle pieces
Speaker 1: for this massive puzzle. And it was just a few
Speaker 1: of them. Uh. And it was you know, there was
Speaker 1: an email talking about our guy in the Navy going
Speaker 1: to a p MR meeting to get some intel. Uh.
Speaker 1: There's you know, kinds of things like that. There are
Speaker 1: a few emails in particular. Um, and the email address
Speaker 1: was something like John John J Towery UT you know,
Speaker 1: Army dot us whatever the email address was. So there's
Speaker 1: a crew of activists that got together, put their heads together,
Speaker 1: did some research quietly for a few months, and eventually
Speaker 1: found out by publicly accessible information like voter registration records
Speaker 1: and also finding out something about like a motorcycle club
Speaker 1: called like the I don't know, like the Brown Beauque
Speaker 1: Club or the Brown butt club or something, and and
Speaker 1: the like found out that this John Towery guy that
Speaker 1: was in this motorcycle club and had his you know,
Speaker 1: was registered to vote outside of Tacoma in this town there.
Speaker 1: It was actually John Jacob. It was this guy that
Speaker 1: we thought was a fellow activist, an anarchist um and
Speaker 1: and a friend, you know, I thought he was a
Speaker 1: personal friend of mine. Turns out he was actually essentially
Speaker 1: an Army intelligence officer working for something called the Force
Speaker 1: Protection Unit at uh AT Joint Phase Joint based Lewis
Speaker 1: McCord and also working with a whole list of different
Speaker 1: agencies and what turned out to be like a massive
Speaker 1: surveillance network that was national in scope. This guy was
Speaker 1: sent by the Army along with many others to infiltrate us,
Speaker 1: to aspire on us, and to disrupt us. It was huge, Yeah,
Speaker 1: And that That's one of the things that I've always
Speaker 1: always really interesting about this is like, so like I
Speaker 1: learned about poor militarization resistance basically because I was like
Speaker 1: poking around the history of like informists and I ran
Speaker 1: into this and I was like what because and then
Speaker 1: that was what what I thought. One of the things
Speaker 1: I thought was really interesting about this is that, like,
Speaker 1: like I think that this chapter of the anti war
Speaker 1: movement is even on the left, is like not very
Speaker 1: well known, but like the seriousness is which the army
Speaker 1: seems to have taken it easily is really remarkable. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm wondering what you do think about that. One thing
Speaker 1: we have to emphasize is is that we were not
Speaker 1: a large group of people. Like, um, the number of
Speaker 1: people who are actively involved in port militaristication assistance at
Speaker 1: its peak was how many people do you think it was, Brandon, Well,
Speaker 1: it depends. I mean I'd say they're probably like at
Speaker 1: its peak maybe probably four ye to fifty people that
Speaker 1: would like consistently show up to things. You know, maybe
Speaker 1: a slightly smaller, very core group, but we would have
Speaker 1: demonstrations with like and then like four people, you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: and like that would be like the max like there
Speaker 1: is it's like there are like the peaceful like kind
Speaker 1: of like support actions. You know, you would get like
Speaker 1: a couple hundred people and then like for the stuff
Speaker 1: like where it's like the first night that that the
Speaker 1: part of the entrance to the part of Olympia was occupied,
Speaker 1: it would be like Um, these were not These were
Speaker 1: not very large groups of people. UM. I feel like
Speaker 1: and like I said, it's like one thing that we
Speaker 1: need to keep in mind was that, um, the peace
Speaker 1: police were much stronger back then than they are now nowadays.
Speaker 1: Laton like as we saw last year, it's like people
Speaker 1: in the US of learn to throw down, but that
Speaker 1: was not the case at the time. And so this
Speaker 1: is a very very small group of people. UM. I
Speaker 1: think we accomplished a lot from with how small it was. UM.
Speaker 1: If it had been larger, it would have accomplished way more. UM.
Speaker 1: But even that small core of like people with maybe
Speaker 1: expanding out to like a larger group of a couple
Speaker 1: of hundred, had them that scared that they went that
Speaker 1: far they're trying to disrupt it. Yeah. And and this
Speaker 1: is one of the things I've been thinking about a
Speaker 1: lot of recent lee of this seems to be a
Speaker 1: very consistent thing, which is that like the two things
Speaker 1: that are guaranteed to like just have a hammer drop
Speaker 1: on you if you touch them is pipelines and ports,
Speaker 1: And that that was that was something you know, we've
Speaker 1: we've talked a lot on here about pipeline protests. UM.
Speaker 1: But I was interested in what you too think about
Speaker 1: because you know, this this is like of very particular
Speaker 1: moment right now in which you're dealing with all these
Speaker 1: logistics chain failures. And I was wondering if if you
Speaker 1: do think there's anything that we can learn from how
Speaker 1: your versions of the sort of of port demonstrations worked
Speaker 1: for potentially trying to leverage that in the future, especially
Speaker 1: with like contract negotiations for port workers in Oakland coming
Speaker 1: up next year. Yeah, that's a great question. You know,
Speaker 1: it's this old saying in the I w w D
Speaker 1: action gets goods, right, And I think it really boils
Speaker 1: down to that it's building up uh, you know, mass
Speaker 1: movements and in social movements from below h that rely
Speaker 1: on direct action, that rely on civil resistance, civil disobedience. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and the pipeline protests that have been ongoing where
Speaker 1: Indigenous people have been on the front lines of that
Speaker 1: for many many years now. I mean, the kind of
Speaker 1: repression and surveillance that we face really pales in comparison
Speaker 1: to the kinds of you know, surveillance of repression net
Speaker 1: folks were facing at Standing Rock, for example. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: I think, of course one of the well one of
Speaker 1: the main differences is that it was primarily the military,
Speaker 1: you know, with us, right that was uh, surveilling us
Speaker 1: because this is very specifically, you know, a war issue
Speaker 1: and a military issue. Um. But yeah, I mean I think, um,
Speaker 1: you know, like I think there's a big questions like
Speaker 1: what what do we have to do that's that's new?
Speaker 1: And to me, I say, you know, for both that
Speaker 1: kind of militant action, but also for the labor movements, like,
Speaker 1: it's not you know, we don't have to reinvent the wheel.
Speaker 1: There are things that have a tried and true track
Speaker 1: record of getting the goods, and that is you know,
Speaker 1: these more disruptive kind of actions and movements. Um. And
Speaker 1: so one of them would be you know, I guess
Speaker 1: my suggestion would be to like go back to the basics.
Speaker 1: And even like I would say, now, you know this,
Speaker 1: remember this at a time when like Facebook was around, right, Like,
Speaker 1: but we weren't really using that for our organizing. We
Speaker 1: really relied on like face to face meetings, you know,
Speaker 1: phone calls and building up trust with people and building
Speaker 1: up our capacity to like take actions and make change.
Speaker 1: You know, I think I'm not saying throw out everything
Speaker 1: that you know, that at least some of the good
Speaker 1: that social media has to offer. But like I think
Speaker 1: going beyond that and going back to these older tactics
Speaker 1: and then for the labor movement, like the big thing
Speaker 1: is you know, and it's just like a bigger question
Speaker 1: for for mainstream unions in particular, I mean, they're that
Speaker 1: the whole idea of like union contracts is that workers
Speaker 1: also lose a lot. Yeah, they get some things, but uh,
Speaker 1: business owners and bosses have rights carved out in in
Speaker 1: those contracts. And with the longshore workers, I mean the
Speaker 1: difficult thing with that, of course, is like there would
Speaker 1: be some symbolic strikes that of course, like longshore workers
Speaker 1: have done and continue to do, you know, around like
Speaker 1: the war Iraq historically supporting movie a bou Jamal maydea, etcetera,
Speaker 1: like in Oakland, Um, but they have some things for
Speaker 1: that written into their contracts, and you know, for all
Speaker 1: these other like unions it's like, well, you know, we
Speaker 1: can't strike at all for uh, for the next two years,
Speaker 1: the next three years, whatever the life of the contract is. Like,
Speaker 1: I think it's a bigger question and challenge for the
Speaker 1: labor movement to move beyond that and not be putting
Speaker 1: this strait jacket of contracts like that. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: that that, particularly, like the the no strike clause part
Speaker 1: of contracts, I think is an interesting thing because it
Speaker 1: I don't know, there's not I mean, there are some
Speaker 1: unions that will actually do stuff around fighting it, but
Speaker 1: mostly people just sort of don't care. And I think
Speaker 1: you wind up in a situation where it seems like
Speaker 1: you kind of have to plan your tactics around when
Speaker 1: contract negotiations are happening, because otherwise you can't actually get
Speaker 1: people to do anything more in like a one day
Speaker 1: symbolic strike. Yeah, and or you know the challenges, Like,
Speaker 1: you know, we have this great American tradition that's not
Speaker 1: unique to the US. It's universal really, and it's one
Speaker 1: that resonates with me breaking the law right and like
Speaker 1: we're you know, we're like civil obedience. That is that
Speaker 1: what we were doing in the streets and blocking the ports.
Speaker 1: We were breaking the law and we knew it. And
Speaker 1: that's what the civil rights movement, the Black freedom movement
Speaker 1: did in in the nineteen sixties. But like we have
Speaker 1: recent examples of workers breaking the law and mass like
Speaker 1: the West Virginia teacher strikes that happened a few years ago,
Speaker 1: Like teachers in every single county in that state went
Speaker 1: on strike. They broke the law and and they want
Speaker 1: something out of that. And I think that's what we
Speaker 1: really need to encourage people, is this idea of breaking
Speaker 1: out of like the norm and and breaking the laws
Speaker 1: which you know, the laws that are in place, which
Speaker 1: are not there to you know, expand our freedom there
Speaker 1: there too contracted. Yeah, one of one of my friends
Speaker 1: kind a joke about what was the exact line. It was,
Speaker 1: it's it's only illegal if you get caught and it
Speaker 1: only matters if you lose, which I think is a
Speaker 1: good way of thinking about. But King and you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it's also like it's worth mentioning that like
Speaker 1: the other sides, the law doesn't matter to them at all,
Speaker 1: Like they just tear it up and like light it
Speaker 1: on fire constantly. So don't don't bind yourself if if
Speaker 1: you can, if you can, not get caught and not
Speaker 1: like go to prison for the rest of your life.
Speaker 1: Don't bind yourself by a bunch of like paper that
Speaker 1: the other side just doesn't care about. Yeah, And that's
Speaker 1: an excellent point because that's the big thing, you know
Speaker 1: with the army and law enforcement in general, like surveillance
Speaker 1: of us. They were in the police just their actions,
Speaker 1: their brazen actions on the street, like the riot police. Um,
Speaker 1: they were just breaking the law all the time. They
Speaker 1: absolutely have a deep visceral hatred of the Bill of Rights,
Speaker 1: of civil rights and civil liberties. And so there were
Speaker 1: a number of you know, court cases that sprung out
Speaker 1: of you know, this movement. There was a case called
Speaker 1: Panagocus Vitari. Another Juliana Panagoucus was another PMR member co
Speaker 1: plaintiff in that case. And you know, is it a
Speaker 1: case against the army that you know, we we waged
Speaker 1: and brought up to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals
Speaker 1: and you know, eventually lost and it could have brought
Speaker 1: it to the Supreme Court but didn't. But you know,
Speaker 1: like the the other thing is like the violation of
Speaker 1: the Posse Commentatus Act. It was a whole other thing.
Speaker 1: You know, we don't have to get like so tied
Speaker 1: up into like the legalistic thing. But like the point,
Speaker 1: your point is valid, Like they don't care about the
Speaker 1: laws that are already there. They'll they'll just intentionally break them,
Speaker 1: break their own laws. That they have set up and
Speaker 1: you know, they'll just get a slap on the wrist
Speaker 1: because that's really all that's all that happens to them.
Speaker 1: I think, I think I think that's a good note
Speaker 1: to end on break the law. It's fake, it's also bad. Um.
Speaker 1: Do you two have anything you want to plug other
Speaker 1: than that, other than you know, encouraging people to break
Speaker 1: the do any cage your local port? Yeah? Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean I I think it's you know, I guess just
Speaker 1: encourage people to do as you know, it sounds like
Speaker 1: what we're doing by having us on the show, and
Speaker 1: like there are some in our very recent history, um,
Speaker 1: you know, movements and winds that we all as activists
Speaker 1: today can still learn from. And I think part of that, um,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't want to call us elders because
Speaker 1: we're not that old, but like one part of that
Speaker 1: is like making sure like our movements are still like
Speaker 1: a multi generational and like we we learned from each
Speaker 1: other and also as as Juliana and I did, like
Speaker 1: I mentioned earlier, like we learned from the movements of
Speaker 1: the past, sts, the Black Panthers, the Black Freedom Movement, etcetera. Um,
Speaker 1: but there's a lot that you know, these these struggles
Speaker 1: I think have to offer us today. All right, thank
Speaker 1: thank you, Thank you both for talking coming on and
Speaker 1: talking with us. You're for having us. Thank you. Well,
Speaker 1: this is this has when it could happen here find
Speaker 1: us at happened here pod on Twitter, Instagram, and the
Speaker 1: rest of our stuff is at closoned media at the
Speaker 1: same somewhat accursed social media places. I don't know why
Speaker 1: I'm saying somewhat, they're just a cursed Yeah, see you
Speaker 1: next time whenever that is, Welcome back to it could
Speaker 1: happen here, the show about things not being great and
Speaker 1: maybe trying to make them better. UM, I'm Robert Evans. Uh.
Speaker 1: This week we got we have a special little little
Speaker 1: little episode for you. UM, I'm gonna sit down and
Speaker 1: talk with Lucas Herndon. UM. Lucas, you are from New
Speaker 1: or you live in New Mexico at least, um, and
Speaker 1: you wanted to talk to me a bit about some
Speaker 1: stuff that's going on in your school boards. We just
Speaker 1: did a two parter on fascist attempts to kind of
Speaker 1: take over and dominate school boards around the country, and
Speaker 1: you've got some personal experience with that, so I wanted
Speaker 1: to kind of just turn this over to you to
Speaker 1: start us off. Yeah, thanks for Robert, thanks for having
Speaker 1: me on the show. Um. Yeah, my name is Lucas
Speaker 1: and I live in Las Cruces, New Mexico, which is
Speaker 1: in the southern part of the state. Were close to
Speaker 1: the border for people that are interested. Um and yeah,
Speaker 1: like you know that my experience had happened last week
Speaker 1: is sort of the quintessential. It could happen here, Yeah,
Speaker 1: did exactly. Plus Las Cruces, Um, politically speaking, is actually
Speaker 1: a very progressive little time. I mean, in general, New
Speaker 1: Mexico has been for what you know, however you consider
Speaker 1: the progressive or not. Is has been blue for quite
Speaker 1: a while. As in terms of like voting like it's
Speaker 1: not it's not like Texas politically at least right that's
Speaker 1: yeah exactly. Yeah, we voted for we voted for Bush
Speaker 1: the first time, but have voted blue every election since
Speaker 1: two thousands four. Like federally, so in my little stretch
Speaker 1: of the of the state, our congressional district has been read.
Speaker 1: But the city of Los Cruces, which is the like
Speaker 1: where the biggest city in the southern part of the state,
Speaker 1: where the second biggest city in the state. UM. Our
Speaker 1: city council has not only been democratic, but like progressively democratic.
Speaker 1: UM we have UM as of this recent election, you know,
Speaker 1: from the beginning of November, we now have an all
Speaker 1: female city council. UM there is at least we have
Speaker 1: UM one one if not too trying to think. Sorry.
Speaker 1: Currently there are two UM folks on the city council
Speaker 1: have immigrated from Mexico in their life. UM one will
Speaker 1: still be on one is now running for Congress. UM
Speaker 1: we have UM. The school board that currently is sitting
Speaker 1: is generally progressive, and the one we just elected, we
Speaker 1: just elected our first openly queer person onto that school board. UM.
Speaker 1: Our little group of of legislators that go up to
Speaker 1: Santa Fe every year is very progressive. So again, just
Speaker 1: to kind of reiterate, like Las Cruces, New Mexico, pretty
Speaker 1: progressive little place. And yet at the school board meeting
Speaker 1: last week, UM totally dominated by a public attendance of
Speaker 1: very far right extremists, UM spouting all kinds of nonsense
Speaker 1: about all kinds of things. So yeah, it was pretty
Speaker 1: well yeah, and this, I mean, this has happened. This
Speaker 1: happened in Portland, Oregon, too, which is also famously. I
Speaker 1: don't know. I wouldn't call Portland politics progressive but solidly democratic.
Speaker 1: And the the school board meeting gets taken over by by
Speaker 1: far right activists. This is a yeah, So when did
Speaker 1: you kind of first become aware of this? Well? So, um,
Speaker 1: it was it was a weird convergence of my personal
Speaker 1: end my and my private or I'm sorry, my personal
Speaker 1: and my professional life where I um, I work for
Speaker 1: an organization called progress Now in Mexico, so it's like
Speaker 1: I do progressive politics for a living. But um and
Speaker 1: a colleague who works for the A C. L U
Speaker 1: here had asked if I would go and help lend
Speaker 1: support to this gender inclusion policy that the school board
Speaker 1: was going to be um commenting on. They weren't voting
Speaker 1: on it that day. It was what's called a first reading,
Speaker 1: and she asked if I could go and if I could,
Speaker 1: you know, just speak, and I was like, yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: be happy too. So I was gonna go and and
Speaker 1: talk about this in a i'm sorry, professional capacity. And
Speaker 1: then that day, um, as like before I went to that,
Speaker 1: my daughter, who's in middle school, texted me a picture
Speaker 1: a bunch of kids had on Monday of of last
Speaker 1: week which was like trans Awareness Week or Transvisibility Week.
Speaker 1: Some kids had shown up wearing trans flags and Pride
Speaker 1: flag eggs on that Monday. The following day, that Tuesday,
Speaker 1: some kids showed up wearing UM thin blue line flags
Speaker 1: in in response like indirect response um and in my
Speaker 1: daughter and you know, my daughter is aware enough to
Speaker 1: know what that means. So she texted me and I
Speaker 1: was like, I can't believe this ship and I was
Speaker 1: like I know. Um. So then I'm like right. So
Speaker 1: then I'm like, okay, well, now I want to go
Speaker 1: speak about this gender inclusion bill or policy personally right
Speaker 1: like now like has impacted me. Um. So I show
Speaker 1: up at you know, about an hour before the meeting
Speaker 1: is supposed to start. Because the third thing that kind
Speaker 1: of happened was that I, um, I am, I'm on
Speaker 1: like a bunch of mailing lists because of my job.
Speaker 1: And sure enough the local gop um, who is not
Speaker 1: very active because again they kind of lose all the time,
Speaker 1: they sent out a like come show up at this thing,
Speaker 1: you know email. So I showed up early, thinking okay,
Speaker 1: well I want to see if there's gonna be something.
Speaker 1: And at first I was like, oh, like I don't
Speaker 1: think they showed up. Don't think that they turned out.
Speaker 1: That's good. But it turns out they were all like
Speaker 1: hiding in their cars so that they could like swarm
Speaker 1: the building at once. And so then like about half
Speaker 1: an hour before the meeting, they all walked in at once,
Speaker 1: and like I was already sitting inside the room, and
Speaker 1: they all came in at once, and they took over
Speaker 1: all the chairs. They was standing room only. Um to
Speaker 1: the point where like the there was a bunch of
Speaker 1: f f A kids that were there that was supposed
Speaker 1: to be recognized for you know, f A something or other,
Speaker 1: and like they had to kick some people out so
Speaker 1: that they weren't violating the fire code. Um that's how many. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So anyway, that's kind of how it all. That's the
Speaker 1: setting for where this all happened. Um. It turns out
Speaker 1: that at the same meeting there was gonna be a
Speaker 1: policy discussion on a different policy that had to do
Speaker 1: with New Mexico's revision of Social Studies standards. Um, and
Speaker 1: of course that got everybody hot and bothered about so
Speaker 1: called c RT, which isn't a thing. But so like
Speaker 1: they were there, but I mean, but the folks that
Speaker 1: showed up to speak. I mean they were all over
Speaker 1: the place. They were talking about critical race theory, they
Speaker 1: were talking about the Gender Inclusion Bill and like trans
Speaker 1: violent the myth of trans violence and um. But then
Speaker 1: of course like like COVID protocols and all kinds of
Speaker 1: I mean just again like way out their stuff, um
Speaker 1: and actually kind of funny. I was listening to Knowledge
Speaker 1: Fight this morning, and uh, Jordan and Dan really hit
Speaker 1: on it that like they have just figured out that
Speaker 1: these are places they can go and yell and like
Speaker 1: no one, you know, like school board people aren't gonna
Speaker 1: like they're all just these are all just like teachers,
Speaker 1: like retired teachers who are on these school boards and
Speaker 1: they're like they're not there to just you know, have
Speaker 1: these like whatever discussions, so they're not gonna you know,
Speaker 1: they just like let these people yell and they did.
Speaker 1: So anyways, it got it got heated, uh pretty quickly,
Speaker 1: because I mean again, these people just like go off
Speaker 1: and they get they riled themselves up and those lots
Speaker 1: of applause and anyway, that's kind of how it all started,
Speaker 1: I guess, or that's what it was. And I mean,
Speaker 1: has has there have you noticed kind of any sort
Speaker 1: of mobilization in the community now that this has happened,
Speaker 1: because it seems like the first ones of these, at
Speaker 1: least always take everybody by surprise. People are not used
Speaker 1: to still not really used to school board meetings being
Speaker 1: um shall I say interesting, Um, certainly important, but like
Speaker 1: not a thing that you have to really be concerned
Speaker 1: about for the most part. And that's that's changing. Have
Speaker 1: you seen the community kind of start to adapt to that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, since so, you know, I put some content
Speaker 1: out on my you know, local Twitter, um and and
Speaker 1: and um got some traction there thanks to sort your retweet,
Speaker 1: I think. But um, but then the biggest thing was
Speaker 1: that kind of going back to what had happened at
Speaker 1: my daughter's school, that progress that got worse, if you will.
Speaker 1: The following day, the Wednesday of last week, some kids
Speaker 1: showed up in an actual Confederate stars and bars flag, um,
Speaker 1: which is yeah, that's nuts. Has famed Confederate state New Mexico.
Speaker 1: You know, Messia, New Mexico, which is right down the road.
Speaker 1: Was it was the capital of the Confederate territory. But yeah,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't a state at that point. It was
Speaker 1: not a state, and I'm not aware of were their
Speaker 1: battles in New Mexico. And I know we had some
Speaker 1: in like further south Texas than you would think, but
Speaker 1: I was not there of any. There's a couple there
Speaker 1: was one of famously up north called the Battle of Greetta,
Speaker 1: and then and then there was one here where I live.
Speaker 1: Wasn't a battle. It was a bunch of confederates got
Speaker 1: um stranded and super drunk, and then I couldn't cross
Speaker 1: the desert fast enough, so they got stranded up in
Speaker 1: the mountains in a place called Baylor Canyon. And then
Speaker 1: they get to the top and like the North was
Speaker 1: just sitting there like waiting for them and was like,
Speaker 1: well you're captured now, We'll see. That's clearly that's some
Speaker 1: history worth celebrating right there. Yeah. I think that the biggest,
Speaker 1: like one of the scariest but biggest things is like
Speaker 1: and this goes towards this is a slight tangent, but
Speaker 1: like the social studies revision, for instance, in the state
Speaker 1: of New Mexico. Uh, there are two paragraphs in our
Speaker 1: history book about the Gaston purchase. Um Like I live
Speaker 1: in the chunk. That is the guest and Purchase, and um,
Speaker 1: like the guests and Purchase is like James Gaston was
Speaker 1: a notorious racist who left the South and took all
Speaker 1: of his railroad money, went to California and Mexico, lobbying hard,
Speaker 1: using his influence and money to try to create a
Speaker 1: slave state in Baja in Mexico. Like that's what he
Speaker 1: was trying to do, and like that part of the
Speaker 1: that part of the context of why the guests and
Speaker 1: Purchase even happened is like totally left out of history books,
Speaker 1: and its like if anywhere it should be taught, it
Speaker 1: should be taught in the place that is called the
Speaker 1: guest and Purchase when it comes to the United States.
Speaker 1: So anyway, just a little tangent there why it's important
Speaker 1: to have context in history. Um so sorry, go back
Speaker 1: to my daughter's school and these kids wearing the stupid
Speaker 1: stars and bars so um that. So like I went
Speaker 1: and spoke to the assistant principle and was like, so
Speaker 1: I understand that your answer to this was to ban
Speaker 1: all flags and he was like and he was like yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: because they're causing a disruption to education. And I was
Speaker 1: like yeah, but I you know, I think I feel
Speaker 1: like you're giving a false equivalency to like, you know,
Speaker 1: gender and and pride acknowledgment to flag. Yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: I mean, it's this constant. This has happened in a
Speaker 1: couple of places, including a town in Oregon, where it's
Speaker 1: like this is sort of the the centrist and kind
Speaker 1: of the right wing solution to this. It is just
Speaker 1: that like, well, if if kids can't wear racist hate flags,
Speaker 1: then gay kids can't wear a flag that says that
Speaker 1: their existence is valid. Uh, you know, because those are
Speaker 1: the same thing. Yeah. Yeah, it's frustrating. It is frustrating.
Speaker 1: So that was not my favorite thing. Um. And so
Speaker 1: then the culmination of that this week was that my
Speaker 1: daughter's social studies teacher, who had allowed the kids in
Speaker 1: her class to make little paper flags after the real
Speaker 1: flags were banned, um, was fired. Jesus Christ. And because
Speaker 1: it's a personnel matter, no one was willing to tell
Speaker 1: me more. I've I've called the president of the school
Speaker 1: school board, who actually, in all fairness, he doesn't actually
Speaker 1: probably have that much sway over these kinds of things.
Speaker 1: I would imagine that happened at a level a level
Speaker 1: that was not his. But yeah, yeah, but I mean,
Speaker 1: but I but I have anyway, so I did call him.
Speaker 1: I also called the school and got very little information
Speaker 1: from them obviously, so you know who knows. But again,
Speaker 1: like that's how it was perceived from the kids in
Speaker 1: her class. Um, and that's so like what we know
Speaker 1: happened is that we know that after the flags got banned,
Speaker 1: she let kids make flags out of paper and hang
Speaker 1: them up, and by Friday she was gone. So like
Speaker 1: not a great response, no, not not not ideal not yeah,
Speaker 1: so anyway, that's kind of where we left at. But
Speaker 1: I guess maybe what maybe what I should say to
Speaker 1: get back to your original question, which is to say, like,
Speaker 1: have we seen a mobilization that yeah, Like so I
Speaker 1: learned the newspaper the reporter who that teacher like a
Speaker 1: couple of weeks ago, had actually been in the newspaper
Speaker 1: because she had also like um, she she spearheaded this
Speaker 1: like response like apport, like a girl who wore her
Speaker 1: job to school had been bullied, and like when news
Speaker 1: got around in the school, like the like the majority
Speaker 1: of the student body and this teacher like went up
Speaker 1: and above out of their way to make her feel
Speaker 1: welcome and like walk her to her class and like
Speaker 1: it got kind of viral on local TikTok, so like
Speaker 1: this teacher got quoted in the newspaper, so I like
Speaker 1: called them. I called the report. I tweeted the newspaper
Speaker 1: and I was like, like, you guys know that the
Speaker 1: teacher who was in like startlet in your article is
Speaker 1: fired for allowing kids to waste their thoughts about these
Speaker 1: flags things, right, And they were like no, we didn't know,
Speaker 1: And I was like you should probably find more. So
Speaker 1: so you know, I don't know where we're gonna be
Speaker 1: at now. The next reading for the gender Inclusion policy
Speaker 1: is um December, so we've got a couple of weeks
Speaker 1: before that next school board meeting. UM. I think that
Speaker 1: on my end, like there's gonna be some local organizing
Speaker 1: to try to get some better, more inclusive voices to
Speaker 1: be a part of things. UM. I don't, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know what the interim will hold, um, because
Speaker 1: it's like, you know, it's the holidays and there's a
Speaker 1: lot going on and Kyle rittenhouse and build Black better.
Speaker 1: I mean there's like, you know, there's always a million
Speaker 1: things happening, so it'll you know, there will have to
Speaker 1: be some drum beating to like get people to show
Speaker 1: up to that. But on the other hand, I think
Speaker 1: with some of the momentum we have and I think
Speaker 1: people will show up in mass for the fourteenth um
Speaker 1: in support at least this is the kind of community
Speaker 1: me that in general we have shown up and shown
Speaker 1: out to support you know, these kinds of issues in
Speaker 1: the past. But I do think that up until now
Speaker 1: people felt for pretty asleep about it. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: and hopefully you do see the kind of response you're expecting.
Speaker 1: Can you walk me through sort of how the kind
Speaker 1: of attempts like you talked about getting the local media
Speaker 1: aware of what had happened to that teacher, Um, how
Speaker 1: are people like what is the actual organizing effort look
Speaker 1: like on the ground, Like how are you trying? How
Speaker 1: are you and others trying to get the word out
Speaker 1: so that you know there's a response to this. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I think that the first thing is is that
Speaker 1: there was there was a problem with the way that
Speaker 1: the school board handled public comment that first time. In
Speaker 1: an attempt to help limit their own sort of exposure
Speaker 1: to some of the toxic stuff they knew was coming
Speaker 1: their way, they had they had instituted UH a limit
Speaker 1: on public comment. Um, you had to show up by
Speaker 1: a certain time and fill out these little pieces of
Speaker 1: paper saying that you were there to comment about something,
Speaker 1: and if you weren't there, then you couldn't sign up.
Speaker 1: And the problem was was that all these like old
Speaker 1: white male retirees who are sitting around listening to Alex
Speaker 1: Jones all day, they had nothing better to do than
Speaker 1: show up to this meeting at three o'clock in the afternoon,
Speaker 1: whereas a bunch of for instance, teachers, students, parents, UM,
Speaker 1: they were busy because they were in school or like
Speaker 1: picking their kids up from school. UM. So I think
Speaker 1: one of the things that we're going to try to
Speaker 1: do is get public comment ahead of time, and we're
Speaker 1: gonna try to like bombard the not bombard that's that's
Speaker 1: a violent word. But we're gonna try to like just
Speaker 1: make sure that UM voices from the community that hadn't
Speaker 1: been represented are represented and sent to the school board
Speaker 1: ahead of time. UM. I think we're gonna try to
Speaker 1: go and save physical space ahead of time for those
Speaker 1: of us that can write, for those us that can
Speaker 1: will go, and we'll try to save physical space. And
Speaker 1: we did learn that even if they keep that policy,
Speaker 1: for the little forms we can we can actually give
Speaker 1: that time. We can fill out other people's names, right,
Speaker 1: So we're gonna try to like make sure that we
Speaker 1: have better voices. That was one of the things if
Speaker 1: you listen to the recording of what I said at
Speaker 1: that meeting. Um, I asked the school board president if
Speaker 1: it's possible for me to yield my time because it
Speaker 1: had literally been like a dozen white men out there
Speaker 1: spouting nonsense. And then I get up there and I'm like, yeah, hey, um,
Speaker 1: we've heard from enough white men. Can we have like
Speaker 1: a member of the trans community or one of the
Speaker 1: women of color who are here to talk about this, um,
Speaker 1: but couldn't get here in time. And there they're legal
Speaker 1: team was like, oh no, that you didn't sign up
Speaker 1: in time or whatever. So um, but it turns out
Speaker 1: we could have put their names down ahead of time.
Speaker 1: So we're gonna try to organize that thing so that
Speaker 1: people can show up and save you know, physical space. Um.
Speaker 1: And then UM. I think the other thing too is
Speaker 1: to try to involve some other local elected office shows
Speaker 1: from the county and city level, because again, we have
Speaker 1: these really amazing progressive candidates who have come from all
Speaker 1: walks of life, including immigrants and members of the l
Speaker 1: g B t q A community. UM So having them
Speaker 1: come and speak in their official capacity, UM I think
Speaker 1: will carry a lot of weight um for the both
Speaker 1: for the school board, but also just for the public
Speaker 1: to hear from those voices. Yeah, where are these like?
Speaker 1: Have you have you gotten any kind of research on
Speaker 1: where the people showing up are coming from? Are these
Speaker 1: like folks within your community or these people coming from
Speaker 1: kind of outlying areas? Um to swarm these meetings? Like?
Speaker 1: Is there is there kind of an active research contingent.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's part of what I do. It's part
Speaker 1: of part of my job with Progress Now New Mexico.
Speaker 1: My my title is Energy Policy Director. I usually spend
Speaker 1: most of my day talking about oil and gas stuff. However,
Speaker 1: I've been doing this job long enough that before I
Speaker 1: became that person, I was actively researching and track a
Speaker 1: lot of white supremacy activity in the in the state,
Speaker 1: especially along the border, some of the border militia stuff
Speaker 1: a couple of years back. So in that regard, I
Speaker 1: knew and I knew a number of these folks. A
Speaker 1: lot of them do live in the city, but so
Speaker 1: our our county is considered rural by the census, even
Speaker 1: though we're a city of a hundred thousand people. But
Speaker 1: we're a big county. So there's there's two people here,
Speaker 1: so um, so there's you know, it's it's hard to
Speaker 1: tell how many people may or may not have lived in,
Speaker 1: for instance, the public school district. But what I can
Speaker 1: tell you, like hands down, is that of those dozen
Speaker 1: folks that spoke before I did, like, there's no way
Speaker 1: that at least I mean, maybe one or two of
Speaker 1: them had kids that could have gone through the laws
Speaker 1: cruses public school system, but like the majority of them
Speaker 1: far and away, like either aren't from here at all,
Speaker 1: or you know, they've lived here for a long time,
Speaker 1: but they are They are not active parents or even
Speaker 1: grandparents of kids that live and will go to school
Speaker 1: in this in this district. They're just they're just agitated wingers. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And it's how does this all tie in? Because New
Speaker 1: Mexico's had I think it's kind of been on the
Speaker 1: back burner in terms of like national attention, but y'all
Speaker 1: have had some really significant dust ups, not just with
Speaker 1: you know, the border militias, for years there have been
Speaker 1: violent um acts and even murders as the result of
Speaker 1: that stuff going on. But like during last year's the
Speaker 1: protest over George Floyd's murder, y'all had some really ugly
Speaker 1: who's should we the dueling rallies were like right wingers
Speaker 1: shot at people, um and and some really some nasty situations.
Speaker 1: I'm wondering, are like those folks like, are you seeing
Speaker 1: that kind of organization being brought into the school board
Speaker 1: meeting or is this just kind of bubbling up as
Speaker 1: part of the same stew it is. Yeah, there, it's
Speaker 1: loosely affiliated for sure, um and and the crossover, the
Speaker 1: crossover is hard to tell depend I mean, what am
Speaker 1: I trying to say? There's there is crossover, It's hard
Speaker 1: to tell how on purposes or sort of the fact
Speaker 1: that this is like a small population community states, right,
Speaker 1: So what I what I mean by that is that
Speaker 1: some of the some of the physical white supremacists who
Speaker 1: showed up last year at one of our um BLM
Speaker 1: support you know, George Floyd related peaceful protests, who they
Speaker 1: showed up at a parking lot across the street, you know,
Speaker 1: armed long guns, tech vests, all that kind of stuff
Speaker 1: who that those were the folks that when I when
Speaker 1: I went and filmed them and put them on blast
Speaker 1: to to try and sort of out them as best
Speaker 1: we possibly could, or at least identify them. Um, they
Speaker 1: came back and docked me as and then went after
Speaker 1: UM a number of my colleagues up north in Albuquerque.
Speaker 1: That was about a week before there was the there
Speaker 1: was a shooting of of a UM anti fascist protester
Speaker 1: in Albuquerque, And it was during sort of all of
Speaker 1: that stuff that I was like trying to talk about
Speaker 1: all this out loud um and got tied into a
Speaker 1: few more other anti fascist voices in the state. So
Speaker 1: since then we've all been kind of working together. Um.
Speaker 1: We found each other on Twitter, thankfully. And so so
Speaker 1: what it seems like is is that like the folks
Speaker 1: that showed up to the school board meeting were what
Speaker 1: I'll call usual suspects, like politically active old you know,
Speaker 1: right wingers. That being said, UM, in that room, there
Speaker 1: were a number of people that I've identified as showing
Speaker 1: up to anti vax rallies, a number of the Trump
Speaker 1: train rallies that happened last year before the election, and
Speaker 1: at least one person who I recognized as being I
Speaker 1: have never seen carry firearm, but like has been at
Speaker 1: rallies where people were carrying firearms and that kind of thing,
Speaker 1: um in response to these you know, in response to
Speaker 1: like peaceful protests. So there is crossover for sure. Where
Speaker 1: do you see this going, like, because you've been kind
Speaker 1: of paying attention to this for a while, not just
Speaker 1: the school board stuff, but just kind of the general
Speaker 1: problem of right wing UM organizing in your area, Like
Speaker 1: where do you where do you see this heading within
Speaker 1: kind of the context of New Mexico. Well, I mean,
Speaker 1: so we haven't really talked about this, but like, so, well,
Speaker 1: while here in Los Cruces, we did really well, um
Speaker 1: during the November election in terms of our school board
Speaker 1: to be re elected a really good progressive school board
Speaker 1: president and two new good progressive candidates, including, like I said,
Speaker 1: the first you know, queer openly queer person. So that's amazing. However,
Speaker 1: up in Albuquerque, Uh, they lost seats to some of
Speaker 1: these far right wing UM candidates and um, so the
Speaker 1: Albuquerque school board is um not um not looking as
Speaker 1: good politically. So, I mean, so on the like I
Speaker 1: guess what i'd say is on the soft end, what
Speaker 1: I expect is more continued pressure in sort of the um,
Speaker 1: the way these things are supposed to happen, which is
Speaker 1: to say, like continued presence of the right wing folks
Speaker 1: at meetings, yelling, taking up space, UM, slowing things down,
Speaker 1: running for office when the time comes, you know, those
Speaker 1: kinds of things I see. UM, I guess I wouldn't
Speaker 1: be surprised though, if UM, if I if there were
Speaker 1: further escalation of things UM in a you know, in
Speaker 1: the way we've seen other places, in terms of some
Speaker 1: sort of you know, an armed response or somebody showing up. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, in New Mexico's an open carry state, and
Speaker 1: so people can walk around with guns all the time. Um.
Speaker 1: And and you know, I mean that's the thing too,
Speaker 1: is like, while I didn't see anybody with an open
Speaker 1: carried firearm at the school board meeting, there were guys
Speaker 1: wearing like, you know, Vortex Optics brand hats, thin blue
Speaker 1: line shirts, a guy with that like Remington's shirt, you know,
Speaker 1: And like, I don't regret anybody from gun culture. I'm
Speaker 1: you know, I'm a lefty with a gun. So it's
Speaker 1: like I get gun culture. But like when you show
Speaker 1: up in those things and then those spaces with that
Speaker 1: kind of yeah you're making a point yep, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're you're you're not Yeah, I get that. Um, have
Speaker 1: you is there some kind of have you seen like
Speaker 1: any kind of budding left wing armed response? Like, is
Speaker 1: there do you guys have like an organized group of
Speaker 1: folks who have been showing up? Um? When there are
Speaker 1: armed protests in the area. Um, I mean I always
Speaker 1: have my gear with me. UM. I mean, I've got
Speaker 1: I've got a ceramic plate, I've got my you know,
Speaker 1: rifle and pistol. I I am a member of a
Speaker 1: number of different groups. I've been a member of the
Speaker 1: s R A, UM, I've I've worked with some of
Speaker 1: the armed groups up in Albuquerque. So down here there
Speaker 1: hasn't been a ton but UM, I've got a I've
Speaker 1: got what I'll call a luciffiliation with a number of folks,
Speaker 1: and I would trust to to be armed if need be.
Speaker 1: Thankfully that hasn't happened yet. Thankfully, the one big, big
Speaker 1: protests that happened here in Las Cruces that I was
Speaker 1: sort of nervous about, and I did have my gear
Speaker 1: for remained peaceful and and we you know, we took
Speaker 1: over some streets since blocks traffic for a couple hours,
Speaker 1: and there was never any violent response from anybody other
Speaker 1: than maybe like one car at one point trying to
Speaker 1: push through and car got banged on, and that was
Speaker 1: about it. But um, so so, so, to answer your question, like, yes,
Speaker 1: there are those of us that are left wing and armed,
Speaker 1: and there are those of us that have been able
Speaker 1: to show out if we needed to. Thankfully we haven't
Speaker 1: had too at this point. Yeah, well, all right, I
Speaker 1: think that's everything I had to ask. Is there anything
Speaker 1: else you wanted to to get to to make sure
Speaker 1: to talk about today? Well, I just I mean, I
Speaker 1: would be I would be um not doing the best
Speaker 1: of my job if I didn't mention the fact that,
Speaker 1: like one of the so one of the talking points
Speaker 1: of the right wing here and our school board is
Speaker 1: that New Mexico's education system is is fifty feet in
Speaker 1: the country, and I the the my assumption is that
Speaker 1: that has to do with DC's public schools being counted. Um.
Speaker 1: So it's not a great Yeah, that's not a great record.
Speaker 1: It's not a it's not a great record. And um
Speaker 1: and and I and I you know, as a parent
Speaker 1: of a kid who's in the public schools. I uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I cannot ignore that, right. That's so that's
Speaker 1: a legitimate talking point. But the but the thing that
Speaker 1: they want to bring it about is that you know, there,
Speaker 1: you know, it's because we're trying to be gender inclusive.
Speaker 1: It's because we're trying to like you know, teach kids
Speaker 1: about like actual history that happened whatever. Um. And the
Speaker 1: reality is it's because our education system is, unlike most places,
Speaker 1: funded by the oil and guests industry and not by
Speaker 1: like our communities. Um. And so like you know, eighteen
Speaker 1: months ago, oil prices crashed, right and the State of
Speaker 1: New Mexico had to have an emergency special session for
Speaker 1: our legislature to figure out how we were gonna like
Speaker 1: fund things like cops and schools and like whatever. Um.
Speaker 1: And then like now, you know, oil and gas is
Speaker 1: like gangbusters and where you know, record prices, and like
Speaker 1: the State of Mexico has this like surplus budget. But
Speaker 1: the thing is is that like that that extra money
Speaker 1: that we're gonna get this time doesn't make up for
Speaker 1: the like cyclical bad you know way that we fund
Speaker 1: our schools. So I just want to like tie in that,
Speaker 1: like like all of these things tie in together, right,
Speaker 1: Like we can't talk about education in New Mexico without
Speaker 1: talking about the oil and gas funding and so anyway,
Speaker 1: so like because that's my you know, that's part of
Speaker 1: the reason why I was going to go talk about
Speaker 1: this stuff at the on my professional level, is that
Speaker 1: like I get to talk about education as an as
Speaker 1: an energy expert in the state of New Mexico because
Speaker 1: energy and education so intertwined here. Um and like when
Speaker 1: you have literal like Cooke Brothers founded UM and and
Speaker 1: UM like monetarily supplied think tanks in the state of
Speaker 1: New Mexico who are pushing out this kind of propaganda
Speaker 1: and encouraging people. So that there's a group called the
Speaker 1: Rio Grand Foundation and like another one called Power of
Speaker 1: the Future uh PTA, Power the Future in New Mexico.
Speaker 1: Like both of those organizations are like tied to the
Speaker 1: Cooke Brothers because the Kokee Brothers are tied to oil
Speaker 1: and they're pushing these right wing talking points UM and
Speaker 1: it's all part and parcel of just like you know,
Speaker 1: clouding the information space. That's what they want to do.
Speaker 1: They want to have, they want to have the new
Speaker 1: cycle dominated with things like CRT and gender inclusion studies
Speaker 1: to you know, to tie up things like school boards
Speaker 1: so that so that the electorate is busy talking about
Speaker 1: these things. Well meanwhile, they're just raking in money, hand
Speaker 1: over fist, um, you know, stealing our oil. So anyway,
Speaker 1: I just that's so important to me to like make
Speaker 1: those connections, um, especially in this state. And it's something
Speaker 1: that a lot of people don't consider and don't think about,
Speaker 1: and it's just really important to me that people understand that.
Speaker 1: So yeah, UM, all right, well, thank you so much, Lucas.
Speaker 1: This has been I'm not gonna say fun, but certainly
Speaker 1: enlightening and I think valuable. A good a good dispatch
Speaker 1: from you know, a fight that we we continue to
Speaker 1: see is important here and that everybody should be paying
Speaker 1: attention to both wherever it happens, including in Los Cruses
Speaker 1: and around the country. Um, because they ain't given up, um,
Speaker 1: and they can't be ignored. Um. Yeah. And that's you've
Speaker 1: mentioned this many times over the years, but like that's
Speaker 1: the kind of thing is like we have to show up. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we can't just let them have these spaces. Um. And
Speaker 1: I think that this this past school board meeting was
Speaker 1: a great example of why. UM. And and I'm I'm
Speaker 1: really counting on a lot of my my, my friends
Speaker 1: and and close you know, the folks that I have
Speaker 1: come to love and support in this community, UM, to
Speaker 1: show up and show out for that, because that's you know,
Speaker 1: we've been there, right we Like I said, you know,
Speaker 1: and if you look up Los Cruises politics over the
Speaker 1: years on the news cycle, like you'll see stories about
Speaker 1: our you know, progressive city council and passing a living
Speaker 1: wage and you know, beanding classic bags. I mean like
Speaker 1: all these like you know, we've we've tried, we've we've
Speaker 1: tried to be that kind of little community and and
Speaker 1: and yet you know, these folks are still there and
Speaker 1: they're still allowed and if we give them the space,
Speaker 1: they will take those spaces over. So yeah, yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: So thanks for having me on. Let me talk about this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it really means a lot. Thank you for stepping up,
Speaker 1: because it is this is the thing that's a giant
Speaker 1: pain in the butt, um, is that everybody's got a
Speaker 1: lot going on. Life is complicated. There's all sorts of
Speaker 1: shipped to do in the old world. UM. But every
Speaker 1: time these fascists and their their affiliates decide they're going
Speaker 1: to try to take over something. You know, as busy
Speaker 1: as people are, as exhausting as it is, you do
Speaker 1: have to like they can't just be able to have
Speaker 1: to do it. Like That's how they win, is they
Speaker 1: have they have unlimited energy for this ship and um,
Speaker 1: if they're not like the thing that causes them to
Speaker 1: lose energy is actually um being outnumbered and shown to
Speaker 1: be like like like being kind of pushed out by communities. Um,
Speaker 1: you can do it. It takes it, but it requires
Speaker 1: people showing up. Yes, that's exactly right. So UM, I
Speaker 1: appreciate the signal boost means a lot to me. Uh
Speaker 1: and this, are there any local organs that people can support?
Speaker 1: So big shout out to a group called Cafe here
Speaker 1: in Las Cruces that works on all kinds of border
Speaker 1: issues immigrant rights but also like workers rights and um immigrants,
Speaker 1: like student rights, migrant student rights. Um, they've been very
Speaker 1: active in this for a long time. UM. And so yeah,
Speaker 1: I definitely shout out Cafe uh here in here in
Speaker 1: I mean all of New Mexico, but specifically it's set
Speaker 1: in New Mexico. They're doing a lot of work. And
Speaker 1: then um, uh Dreams in Action, which is part of
Speaker 1: a national network for dreamers. But again here in New
Speaker 1: Mexico have done a lot of good work. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: thank you very much, Lucas. All right, um, and that
Speaker 1: is going to do it for us here. It could
Speaker 1: happen here. Um, until next time, go, uh, I don't know,
Speaker 1: hang out at a school board meeting. Go take up
Speaker 1: space from fascists. Yeah, go take up space from fascists
Speaker 1: in general. Welcome back to it could happen here. The
Speaker 1: podcast about you know, the problems and stuff that are
Speaker 1: happening and how to maybe make them better and speaking
Speaker 1: of the problems that are happening and how to make
Speaker 1: him better Garrison Davis, Hi, Hello, that's so that's a
Speaker 1: weird segue. I wanted to introduce this video telling you
Speaker 1: guys that I just watched a movie that you should
Speaker 1: watch because it's pretty rad and it's ties into all
Speaker 1: the things we talk about. It's all the Pizza Gate massacre.
Speaker 1: And I didn't know it is a micro budget under
Speaker 1: a hundred thousand dollars film. It looks great. They did
Speaker 1: a really good job with the budget they had. About
Speaker 1: um an Alex Jones employee type person and a mass
Speaker 1: shooter who go looking for UH to try to solve
Speaker 1: the Pizza Gate things. Oh boy, it is a an
Speaker 1: actually very nuanced and I think deeply knowledgeable commentary on
Speaker 1: specifically like the Texan conspiracy scene. Like it's a like film.
Speaker 1: They're Alex Jones character who's played by a woman in this.
Speaker 1: They film in the original studio that he recorded in
Speaker 1: back in then. Like the filmmaker who did this gets
Speaker 1: like the culture in the area and kind of the
Speaker 1: relationship between the people who get radicalized and do ship
Speaker 1: and the people who just profit from it. It's a
Speaker 1: very good Um it's it is, by the way, a
Speaker 1: grindhouse horror movie. Like whatever you're expecting, It's not that
Speaker 1: it is, like it is an incredibly gory grindhouse movie. Um,
Speaker 1: but it's it's pretty it's pretty fun. What does that
Speaker 1: have to do with? Nothing at all? But it has
Speaker 1: a lot to do with it could happen here, because
Speaker 1: all right, well we'll watch it anyway. Um, this is
Speaker 1: that could happen here? A show about how things are
Speaker 1: kind of falling apart and how we can then maybe
Speaker 1: slow that down or prepare for an uncertain future. UM
Speaker 1: episode about cops, right, I mean, I mean we are
Speaker 1: we are planning an episode in Washington State patrol. Um.
Speaker 1: But no, this is episode is a different a different
Speaker 1: kind of cop about just as useful. Um. So in
Speaker 1: the first half episodes of the The Daily Show or
Speaker 1: season two, which if you haven't listened to you should
Speaker 1: definitely listen to those as they kind of act as
Speaker 1: our show's manifesto of sorts. But nevertheless, the first time
Speaker 1: episodes of the scripted Daily Show put forth like a
Speaker 1: more like realistic, non sugarcoated look at what climate change
Speaker 1: will bring if we continue on our current course. Um.
Speaker 1: But not just looking at the obvious environmental and extreme
Speaker 1: weather effects, but also like the socio political effects. So
Speaker 1: when I was helping Robert out with the research for
Speaker 1: those episodes, some of the best indicators of like the
Speaker 1: mainstream conception of the scientific, environmental and political status of
Speaker 1: climate change was at the United Nations past uh I
Speaker 1: I PCC reports, which is the inter Governmental Panel on
Speaker 1: Climate change and the COP conferences. So during the first
Speaker 1: few weeks of this past November, of November one, the
Speaker 1: twenty six annual COP comp Friends took place in Glasgow. Um.
Speaker 1: And yeah, the name of the conference is kind of
Speaker 1: a decent indication on how useful these things actually are. Um.
Speaker 1: But a COPS stands for a conference of the parties,
Speaker 1: and for almost three decades they've been like the main
Speaker 1: international stage uh for for countries and companies to discuss
Speaker 1: climate related information. And like they're alleged like goals. Um,
Speaker 1: so yeah, they're a good indicator, not onlike sometimes they
Speaker 1: do present actual good science and like decent predictions, but
Speaker 1: they're often just like a good indication of what kind
Speaker 1: of the mainstream people think about what climate change is,
Speaker 1: and you know what the people in power, how they
Speaker 1: are viewing it and how urgent they think it's worth
Speaker 1: addressing versus how much money they want to spend on it.
Speaker 1: So the most notable cop in recent memory was in
Speaker 1: Paris cop one. This is kind of where the pair
Speaker 1: of climate accords were born. Uh. The commitment was to
Speaker 1: aim for one point five degrees of warming, and it
Speaker 1: was signed on by nearly all major countries. Of course,
Speaker 1: the US signed on left then resigned on. But anyway,
Speaker 1: under the Paris Agreement, countries committed to bring forth like
Speaker 1: a national plans uh figuring figuring out how they would
Speaker 1: reduce their missions, but they would do it like by themselves,
Speaker 1: and they would be called n d c s or
Speaker 1: nationally determined contributions. And the idea was for every five
Speaker 1: years countries would gather up and present their current plans
Speaker 1: on the national stage. This was what COPPY was going
Speaker 1: to be. Now it was delayed a year because of
Speaker 1: the pandemic, but COP twenty six was the time for
Speaker 1: countries to present their n d c s on for like,
Speaker 1: their updated versions on their plans to reduce some missions.
Speaker 1: So most of the NDCs got submitted before the conference
Speaker 1: and kind of led the discussion of the conference UH
Speaker 1: by like mid October. UH, I think about uh of
Speaker 1: the countries or states that signed onto the Paris Agreement
Speaker 1: submitted their submitted their version of the NDCs and and
Speaker 1: and those countries about a hundred and forty of them
Speaker 1: are responsible for the majority of global emissions. So that
Speaker 1: that that was what kind of led up to two
Speaker 1: copy from happening UM and the the overarching aim of
Speaker 1: the conference according to President Um, when I try to
Speaker 1: pronounce this name, um outlock sharma Um. He said that
Speaker 1: the the the idea for the conference was to like
Speaker 1: keep alive the Paris Agreements target to keep global temperatures
Speaker 1: from rising above one point five degrees celsius above pre
Speaker 1: industrial levels. So that was that was like the goal
Speaker 1: of the conference going into it was to kind of
Speaker 1: keep the idea of the Paris Climate Accords of still
Speaker 1: being achievable. UM. And that's and that's not what happened
Speaker 1: at the top twenties. So um, now it's it's it's
Speaker 1: important to kind of point out that the commitments laid
Speaker 1: out in the Paris Accords don't come close to limiting
Speaker 1: global warming to one point five degrees, as it is
Speaker 1: said in the accords, like they they acknowledge that, um,
Speaker 1: which is what the kind of NDCs are for. But
Speaker 1: even still those are just non those are those are
Speaker 1: just non binding agreements. But anyway, so the cord the
Speaker 1: accords and the restrictions and goals and well there's no
Speaker 1: restrictions as just goals. The goals and them don't don't
Speaker 1: come close to limiting to one point five degrees. And
Speaker 1: we have already most likely shot way past the point
Speaker 1: of that being in any way achievable. Um. But you know,
Speaker 1: we can still limit things from being megabad like four
Speaker 1: degrees but we are we are already on a certain path.
Speaker 1: So in in asking nations to set tougher targets by
Speaker 1: next year for cutting climate warming emissions, the new agreement
Speaker 1: at Glasgow acknowledge that the commitments that were in place
Speaker 1: are inadequate, and if rigorously followed, the the new national
Speaker 1: pledges so include the stuff including the Paris Accords and
Speaker 1: the new Glasgow packed um and all of the individual
Speaker 1: like uh N d C s. If all of those
Speaker 1: are followed, the world is now on track for a
Speaker 1: two point one to two point four degrees celsius of
Speaker 1: warming by the end of the century. And that is
Speaker 1: the lower estimate, as we'll see later on. Higher estimates
Speaker 1: were also um um shown at at the at the
Speaker 1: Glasgow conference, So we have the the idea was to
Speaker 1: hopefully keep it to one point five, and already we're
Speaker 1: pushing that back by almost a whole a whole degree
Speaker 1: if we're going to like two point four um so
Speaker 1: that that's that's like the main one of the main
Speaker 1: impacts there is like just totally kissing one point five goodbye,
Speaker 1: Like no what, no one even is going to view
Speaker 1: that as a possibility at this point. Huh. So I
Speaker 1: don't know how many people were still looking at that
Speaker 1: as really a goal. Apparently some people of the planners
Speaker 1: of copy apparently were. Um. But I mean, I know
Speaker 1: for us, we've we've been aware of that, and I'm
Speaker 1: not sure how, you know, really what mainstream liberals were
Speaker 1: thinking before this, but hopefully at the very least, maybe
Speaker 1: Cop twenty six made them realize that maybe it's there's
Speaker 1: a there's kind of it's it's maybe maybe worse than
Speaker 1: what you were thinking. Um. But so there are other
Speaker 1: things did happen at at Glasgow that are that are
Speaker 1: worth looking into. Um. So the main quote unquote achievements
Speaker 1: of the Glasgow Deal besides like revisiting the emissions cutting
Speaker 1: plants to try to keep stuff down, which of course
Speaker 1: we're you know, not not not met in shot way past. Um,
Speaker 1: But there we also had the first ever inclusion of
Speaker 1: a commitment to limit coal use. Now, the way phrasing
Speaker 1: is gonna work here, it's gonna be really interesting because
Speaker 1: the reason why this deal got passed is because some
Speaker 1: very specific shifts in their phrasing around coal use. Um.
Speaker 1: The other thing that caught that Cut twenty six tried
Speaker 1: to do was increase financial help for so called developing
Speaker 1: countries and provide funds and assistance for like climate disasters.
Speaker 1: So like when when like extreme weather events happen, have
Speaker 1: a set of funds UH set aside to help countries
Speaker 1: in these disasters. Now those are that that is a
Speaker 1: good idea, but as we'll see later, the way copy
Speaker 1: actually did it is not actually doing it. It's like
Speaker 1: they're they're they're pushing there, they're postponing this kind of goal,
Speaker 1: but they're just making it a prospect. But back to coal.
Speaker 1: So the Glasgow Climate Pact was the first ever climate
Speaker 1: deal to explicitly planned to reduce coal, which was a
Speaker 1: one one of the worst, like fossil fuels for four
Speaker 1: greenhouse gasses UM and and cole really can be phased out.
Speaker 1: Coal can be phased out by um electric power really easily.
Speaker 1: It's it's it is the easiest one. UM it's it's
Speaker 1: it's way easier to phase out cold than it is
Speaker 1: uh natural gas or other um or sorry, let's see
Speaker 1: the the the other main one. There's three there's a coal,
Speaker 1: natural gas, what's what's the last one? Regular gas? I
Speaker 1: guess so yeah, yeah, petroleum based stuff. Um yeah, But
Speaker 1: so the coals because coal is you mostly used for
Speaker 1: heat um. Electrically generated heat is way is way easier
Speaker 1: than all than those other two. So coal coal really
Speaker 1: should be phased out as soon as possible UM. But
Speaker 1: the commitments to phase out coal that was introduced in
Speaker 1: earlier negotiations UM led to some fighting, specifically among India
Speaker 1: and China who were in in strong opposition to the
Speaker 1: phrasing and the actual strengths of of the deal UM.
Speaker 1: And a lot of this is like the argument that like,
Speaker 1: if these countries are still developing, it's not fair to
Speaker 1: them to remove this resource when other developed nations had it,
Speaker 1: so that that that's that's the thing. We see that
Speaker 1: argument a lot around, like climate change stuff is like, oh,
Speaker 1: you you're just gonna stop other countries from developing because
Speaker 1: you you you got to get to this certain point
Speaker 1: of being a successful, like wealthy nation um and like
Speaker 1: you know with all this like industrial development on the
Speaker 1: back of fossil fuels and stuff. But then now you're
Speaker 1: going to remove that opportunity for other countries. Now there
Speaker 1: is there is UM a lot of stuff around like
Speaker 1: the growth frameworks that address this issue and specifically try
Speaker 1: to try to get um fossil fuel savings like a
Speaker 1: decrease in emissions and be able to use some of
Speaker 1: those gains to assist countries in getting stuff set up
Speaker 1: to a decent standard of living. UM. But you know
Speaker 1: that is going to be addressed on a whole another
Speaker 1: scale around like capitalism and and how countries intervened in
Speaker 1: other countries. That that's part of a bigger political question.
Speaker 1: But anyway, UM, Indian China did not like that, did
Speaker 1: not like the coal deal. UM. So in the end,
Speaker 1: the countries did agree to phase down coal rather than
Speaker 1: phase out coal. So that that that is the phrase
Speaker 1: that they ended up using is phase down. UM. The
Speaker 1: people weren't super happy about this. Uh. The Cup six
Speaker 1: president um Alec Sharma said that he was deeply sorry
Speaker 1: for how these events unfolded. And like, focus on coal
Speaker 1: is good, it's because it's responsible for about of annual
Speaker 1: CEO two emissions. But also like just focusing on coal
Speaker 1: leaves of really big lack of discussion on oil and gas,
Speaker 1: like there's like those are also like very bad and
Speaker 1: arguably we should be focusing on those a lot, Like
Speaker 1: those are those are the main ones we should get
Speaker 1: we should get rid of coal. Yes, but if we
Speaker 1: just focus on that, then they're so a lot of
Speaker 1: other stuff going on. So that is that is a
Speaker 1: lot of coal talk. Uh you know who also uses coal?
Speaker 1: Our sponsors, Yeah, we're entirely sponsored by Joe Manchin. Um,
Speaker 1: big friend of the pod. Thank you, thank you for
Speaker 1: always having our back, Joe. Anyway, here's the ads and
Speaker 1: we are back talking about copy and there is there
Speaker 1: is a decent there's stuff. Stuff did happen. So and
Speaker 1: I know it is going to be more of a
Speaker 1: sign C in numbers episode, but it is worth actually
Speaker 1: figuring out what what happened there because everyone just kind
Speaker 1: of had the perception like, oh, copy was a failure,
Speaker 1: because yeah it was, um, but it's it's it is
Speaker 1: good to know what actually is going on at things
Speaker 1: like this because if we're going to get some kind
Speaker 1: of you know, liberal change, this is where it's going
Speaker 1: to happen. So it is good to keep an eye
Speaker 1: on what these types of people are thinking. So we
Speaker 1: we left off on talking about how their plans to
Speaker 1: phase down coal, and there was like a general lack
Speaker 1: of focus on oil and gas and it is interesting,
Speaker 1: um if you so there was uh a group of
Speaker 1: activists led by this uh I think. I think it's
Speaker 1: like an NGO called Global Witness. UM assessed the participant
Speaker 1: list published by the u N at the start of
Speaker 1: the meeting, and they found that there was five hundred
Speaker 1: and three people with links to fossil fuel interests who
Speaker 1: were like accredited members of the Climates Summit and so,
Speaker 1: and they were like delicates. So cop twenty six delegates
Speaker 1: associated with fossil fuels outnumbered national delegate numbers for every
Speaker 1: other country. So there were more people representing fossil fuel
Speaker 1: interests than there were representing any individual country. So you're thinking, maybe,
Speaker 1: I wonder why this stuff is not going too good. Oh,
Speaker 1: it's because it's being run mostly by fossil field companies.
Speaker 1: That's that's uh huh. That's an interesting, interesting little thing there. Um. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the the other the other kind of notable thing
Speaker 1: about copy is uh it uh it it led to
Speaker 1: a quote unquote breakthrough in the rules for government led
Speaker 1: carbon markets. So this is the thing that the neoliberals
Speaker 1: are really excited about, is this idea of carbon markets,
Speaker 1: because it's a way to make more money kind of
Speaker 1: off of removing carbon and just to create a lot
Speaker 1: of red tape and bureaucracy around this idea of lowering emissions. So,
Speaker 1: I guess one of the ways to describe carbon markets
Speaker 1: if you're kind of unfamiliar with this idea, is that
Speaker 1: countries that do not meet their emission reduction targets in
Speaker 1: their national climate pledges are like penalized for this. Um so,
Speaker 1: so countries that countries that don't meet their mission targets
Speaker 1: or or want to just pursue like less less expansive
Speaker 1: emission cuts. What what what this deal set out to
Speaker 1: do is that instead of actually lowering emissions, they can
Speaker 1: purchase like emissions reduction tokens and credits from other nations
Speaker 1: that have cut their emissions more than the amount that
Speaker 1: they pledged, uh so, like by you know, moving to
Speaker 1: low carbon energy and various stuff. So the turn of
Speaker 1: phrase that people were using to discuss this to how
Speaker 1: you can like purchase purchase credits to represent emissions that
Speaker 1: you didn't cut but wanted to, is that this can
Speaker 1: potentially unlock trillions of dollars for protecting forests, expanding renewable energy,
Speaker 1: and other projects to combat climate change. Um So, the
Speaker 1: idea here is that the money used to purchase these credits,
Speaker 1: it's going to get put into other things that will
Speaker 1: help fight climate change. But all of this is non
Speaker 1: binding and speculative, and it just furthers this whole carbon
Speaker 1: market concept, which I'm not thrilled about. Um yeah, we should,
Speaker 1: we should do like a full episode of carbon markets.
Speaker 1: But the thing so I I this is you know,
Speaker 1: this is the thing I studied academically in college and
Speaker 1: is incredibly important for everyone to understand that carbon markets
Speaker 1: are fake and do not work at all. Ever one
Speaker 1: has ever gotten one where no one's ever gotten the
Speaker 1: national one to work, and no one's ever gott an
Speaker 1: international one to work. Uh, implementation of carbon markets, Like
Speaker 1: China had a big thing that they're gonna implemented carbon market.
Speaker 1: Uh it was fake. It didn't work. Their carbon emission
Speaker 1: still increase, very very import Like how fuy carbon markets
Speaker 1: can be. So you get carbon credits if you're a
Speaker 1: business like Tesla that makes no emission electronic vehicles, and Tesla,
Speaker 1: for a lot of it's earlier history, made a significant
Speaker 1: chunk of its profits selling carbon credits to polluting industries
Speaker 1: and basically saying you guys, keep polluting. We got your back,
Speaker 1: Like the fact that we're putting electric cars out onto
Speaker 1: the street means you guys can keep admitting at the
Speaker 1: same all like that's that's like literally how how kind
Speaker 1: of the business can work. It's it's not the best
Speaker 1: way to fix the problem. Yeah. So there's a lot
Speaker 1: of a lot of talk was around carbon markets, um,
Speaker 1: because that's of course with the Neil liberal establishment, neo
Speaker 1: liberal englishment is going to focus on because it's still
Speaker 1: is within their kind of worldview. Um, how do we
Speaker 1: monetize the rot? Yeah, how do we how do we
Speaker 1: make money off of the world ending? Um? Which I
Speaker 1: guess we're going to see a lot more of that
Speaker 1: uh in the next in the next few decades. Um.
Speaker 1: The the other the other thing that they decided on is,
Speaker 1: uh next year there's gonna there's gonna be again. So
Speaker 1: there's there's they decided to procrastinate, which is just a
Speaker 1: general theme of cop car offerences we've been with. It's
Speaker 1: what everyone's been doing about plimate change since forever. So Yeah,
Speaker 1: the main thing they do is decide to procrastinate. Um.
Speaker 1: So next year there's gonna be a u N committee
Speaker 1: to report on progress towards delivering one billion dollar per
Speaker 1: year in a promised climate funding. Uh. This was after
Speaker 1: rich nations failed to deliver on the deadline for said
Speaker 1: funds um and then financing is gonna be discussed again
Speaker 1: in two those conferences. Um. But this this deal left
Speaker 1: a lot of more vulnerable nations who were going to
Speaker 1: rely on this promised funding. Uh kind of just they
Speaker 1: just left them without things. So the whole idea was
Speaker 1: that like, yeah, we need this funding to help people
Speaker 1: in these disasters and different losses and damages and to
Speaker 1: help you know, start start making more um, renewable energy
Speaker 1: technology in lieu of doing tons of tons of coal
Speaker 1: mine And that's where this money was going to get
Speaker 1: used for and it's not happening. Um. So this this
Speaker 1: promise was initially made at a u WIN a conference
Speaker 1: on climate change, and we're still we're still pushing it
Speaker 1: back year by year. So this pledge is older than
Speaker 1: I am. Yeah, it sure is. Another pledge meant as
Speaker 1: a nine to provide a hundred billion dollars to emerging
Speaker 1: economies was supposed to be made in that also was
Speaker 1: missed um. And it was it was designed to help
Speaker 1: nations adapt to climate effects and make the transition to
Speaker 1: clean energy UM and UH. The cop Spring six president
Speaker 1: said that around five hundred billion will be mobilized by
Speaker 1: so cool. Thanks for saying those numbers which mean nothing.
Speaker 1: It's fun. It's fun how you can just talk and
Speaker 1: say things and it doesn't actually matter. It's It's one
Speaker 1: of the things that's so frustrating about this is trying
Speaker 1: to get a hand along, like how how a lot
Speaker 1: of these solutions are supposed to work. So, like one
Speaker 1: of the articles, if you're trying to actually if you're
Speaker 1: not just taking our word for it, which you never should,
Speaker 1: and trying to research like carbon credits and carbon markets
Speaker 1: and like how they might work or might help. Like
Speaker 1: one of the articles you're going to come across is
Speaker 1: an article in Nature dot org called making Carbon Markets
Speaker 1: Work for Faster Climate Action. And this is very much
Speaker 1: obviously so it's pretty it's pretty recent, and it's not
Speaker 1: at all a climate denial piece. It's it's just kind
Speaker 1: of laying out a case for how carbon markets could
Speaker 1: be very effective at reducing emissions. But you have to
Speaker 1: grapple the whole time you're looking at this with the
Speaker 1: fact that like they haven't that that global global emissions
Speaker 1: are still shoo and they provide a number of like
Speaker 1: options for how this could work. And it's one of
Speaker 1: those things where I'm not gonna say it's impossible. I'm
Speaker 1: certainly not an expert on this, and you can read
Speaker 1: through the article, um if you want, but it it
Speaker 1: it's it's certainly certainly think the thing you can say
Speaker 1: right now is that carbon markets have not led to
Speaker 1: a global decrease in emissions because we we have not
Speaker 1: had emissions decrease other than that little dip we had
Speaker 1: when a covid uh did it's it's sweet little dance. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that one month where we could actually see the sky again. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was pretty rad um. But yeah, there's there's I mean,
Speaker 1: you you can check that article out for kind of
Speaker 1: the pro carbon markets case. It all seems i mean,
Speaker 1: one of the things that's frustrating to me about it
Speaker 1: is it all it's all like, yeah, here's how it
Speaker 1: might work if you know, everybody got on board the
Speaker 1: Paris Climate Agreement and also all of this worked ideally,
Speaker 1: But there's there just doesn't seem to be a lot
Speaker 1: of I I just don't see any evidence that like
Speaker 1: they've shown that this is actually likely to be helpful. Um,
Speaker 1: it's more just like yeah, this this could this could
Speaker 1: work if if we do these other things. Um, we
Speaker 1: just frustrating. That's like all all of the kind of
Speaker 1: ship that you get at at at COP twenty six,
Speaker 1: where it's like, yeah, I guess theoretically, if you were
Speaker 1: to do that, or if that were to work the
Speaker 1: way you're saying, or if that were to work with
Speaker 1: the assumption that like all these other factors don't grow
Speaker 1: over this period of time, than than this might help.
Speaker 1: But we also know what's happened with emissions and global
Speaker 1: attempts to reduce climate change. UM. Which is not to
Speaker 1: say that like like emissions in the United States, Like
Speaker 1: there have been there's been a lot that's been done
Speaker 1: to curb emissions from the United States. Now, the thing
Speaker 1: that's often left out of like the discussion of these
Speaker 1: different things and how they impacted our emissions is like, well,
Speaker 1: a lot of those emissions got pushed off to other
Speaker 1: countries that are now making the things that we were
Speaker 1: making for I yes, like that. That's the big thing
Speaker 1: when people argue against the growth and they're like, no,
Speaker 1: you can you can still keep growing your economy while
Speaker 1: lowering emissions, and like, yeah, one country can, but we
Speaker 1: still want the stuff, so we're just moving it to
Speaker 1: other countries to produce, so like we're not at actually
Speaker 1: lowering it on a global level. You can lower you
Speaker 1: can lower it on like an individual country level, but
Speaker 1: not totally globally because we still want to consume the thing.
Speaker 1: This is one of the single most frustrating things about
Speaker 1: talking to people about climate change is that, Okay, you know,
Speaker 1: if you if you talk to the sort of Neiler
Speaker 1: Book Cormon market people, right, if you talk about literally
Speaker 1: anything else, right, the only thing they ever talked about
Speaker 1: is how the entire world is inter connected, how the
Speaker 1: entire economies and connected, how we're more interconnected than ever.
Speaker 1: And then the moment you start talking about climate change,
Speaker 1: they go, oh, well, it's all the individual country, individual country,
Speaker 1: individual country, the economy is not connected at all. It's
Speaker 1: all about the individual policy makers country. It's like, no,
Speaker 1: it's not the it's it's about like all all of
Speaker 1: the like, the the the the the the emissions are
Speaker 1: foreign direct investment driven, right, it's about it's a it's
Speaker 1: about's about what it's about where investment money is going.
Speaker 1: And you cannot and you know this, this is this
Speaker 1: is why cop and someone is like, this is why
Speaker 1: it doesn't work. And even though it's the only frame
Speaker 1: rate that could work, right, you have to have an
Speaker 1: international response, has to be coordinated, it has to be
Speaker 1: working across national lines, because again that's how the economist
Speaker 1: dim works. But it doesn't because a state's individual states
Speaker 1: can't and will not ever solve this and then be
Speaker 1: copies like Okay, so here's here's our international framework. But
Speaker 1: also we're just going to have you know, the actual
Speaker 1: the the the actual international framework is going to be
Speaker 1: just essentially hammered up by bunch of fossil fuel companies
Speaker 1: and so it's just you know, it's it's the worst
Speaker 1: of both worlds. I mean, it's and it you can
Speaker 1: see there's there's some kind of acknowledgement at the fact
Speaker 1: that this is an international problem in in like the
Speaker 1: basic idea of of carbon markets, which includes the idea
Speaker 1: that like, um, you can companies that that emit emit
Speaker 1: lesson don't use up their carbon budget can like sell
Speaker 1: carbon credits, and you can do this across international lines.
Speaker 1: And like if we hold if we hold companies to
Speaker 1: different like emission standards internationally based on things like the
Speaker 1: Paris Climate Agreement, then that will cause the carbon credit
Speaker 1: system to work better. Um, there's that acknowledgement that it
Speaker 1: is an international problem. But again I just don't I
Speaker 1: don't see I don't see evidence that it's working, and
Speaker 1: they like none of the evidence that I've read makes
Speaker 1: it seem like there's a very good case that this
Speaker 1: is going to at the very least, that this is
Speaker 1: going to provide the kind of emissions productions that are
Speaker 1: necessary to forestall the worst case scenarios that are coming. Um.
Speaker 1: And if we're gonna be again to be completely intellectually
Speaker 1: honest here, we can talk about D growth all day long. UM.
Speaker 1: I have a similar problem with that that I do
Speaker 1: to a lot of these the different kind of targets
Speaker 1: that COP twenty six introduced, stuff like carbon markets, where
Speaker 1: it's like, I don't I don't see that solving the
Speaker 1: problem either. It's like a theoretical it's it's yeah, if
Speaker 1: we were to get people to if if we've gotten
Speaker 1: people on board with D growth, then you've already fundamentally
Speaker 1: shifted the very nature of global society. UM. And also
Speaker 1: the way in which Americans and people in other Western
Speaker 1: nations like conceived of economics at a fundamental level. Um.
Speaker 1: And so it's it's one thing to say that, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: if people accepted that and and got on board with
Speaker 1: a lifestyle that is not based on this this kind
Speaker 1: of capitalist notion of endless growth, of ever increasing extraction
Speaker 1: from the world in order to create value, um, then
Speaker 1: we could we could actually stop emitting at the kind
Speaker 1: of levels that are going to lead to these horrible consequences. Um.
Speaker 1: The question is like, I don't see, I don't see
Speaker 1: you you can. I think you can argue that de
Speaker 1: growth is more realistic in that Yes, that would absolutely work,
Speaker 1: as opposed to carbon credits and other things where it's like,
Speaker 1: well theoretically it might work if they do all this
Speaker 1: other stuff. Yeah, it does. It does revolve on the
Speaker 1: cultural notion of America and the West completely changing. Um.
Speaker 1: It's a big it's a big ask, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I mean like there is there are smaller steps,
Speaker 1: like totally like reorganizing how cities work so we do
Speaker 1: not use cars, uh, like like like re redoing a
Speaker 1: public transportation um like sector uh in you know, um,
Speaker 1: making making like a cellar panels and renewable energy. I
Speaker 1: required part of like city infrastructure right there, there's a
Speaker 1: there's a lot of ways to push us towards that thing,
Speaker 1: but there's not one thing we can do right because
Speaker 1: it is in large parts of cultural change. Stuff stuff
Speaker 1: will help with emissions. Like if we if we redesign
Speaker 1: cities around public transportation and make it so stuff is
Speaker 1: not as as far apart, and yeah, that that's gonna
Speaker 1: help lower emissions. If we if we require all these
Speaker 1: other types of renewable energy projects to be built into
Speaker 1: buildings and added on to our current cities, and yeah,
Speaker 1: that that is going to help lower emissions. But you know,
Speaker 1: there's there's not one one big step that we can
Speaker 1: all do at the same time. And I think that
Speaker 1: that's I don't know. I'm of two minds about it.
Speaker 1: One part of me says that's absolutely the most intelligent
Speaker 1: way to go about it is focusing on things like
Speaker 1: reducing the use of like like like really all ending
Speaker 1: car culture in cities, because it's not even a reduction thing.
Speaker 1: It has to be like that that has to die. Um.
Speaker 1: But we're a lot closer to that than ending the
Speaker 1: idea of like uh, capitalism because they're at number one one,
Speaker 1: because there are capitalists, very capitalist countries that have that
Speaker 1: do not have a car culture that like stopped that
Speaker 1: and that actually like had one at one point and
Speaker 1: then reworked there. So that's that's and that would Yeah,
Speaker 1: that is a significant that's probably go that would probably
Speaker 1: lead to larger emissions reductions than any kind of carbon
Speaker 1: credit system could ever lead to. UM. I also, and
Speaker 1: so yeah, I think that that's on an objective level, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's it's smart to focus on stuff like that where
Speaker 1: you're all you are arguing for reducing growth, but you're
Speaker 1: also arguing and for like, hey, your life will be
Speaker 1: more pleasant if you live in a city where you
Speaker 1: can walk everywhere. You're not at risk of getting run
Speaker 1: down by you know, two ton trucks anytime you cross
Speaker 1: the street, and like you're not dealing with smog and
Speaker 1: pollution and horrible like hour and a half long communes
Speaker 1: on these crowded nightmare highways. Um. But it's also it's
Speaker 1: still incrementalist. You know, we we are we are talking here,
Speaker 1: we are kind of like walking through here, Um, all
Speaker 1: of the best incremental solutions and and what is the
Speaker 1: most realistic of those. UM, And I think that's fine.
Speaker 1: I think that's kind of where we have to be
Speaker 1: because that is what's most likely to actually happen to
Speaker 1: make the problem better. UM, but it is we have
Speaker 1: to acknowledge it is incremental, like we're not we're not
Speaker 1: solving It would be very arrogant to say, like, here's
Speaker 1: how we solve this problem once and for all, you know,
Speaker 1: I just want to. I think sometimes when you talk
Speaker 1: about stuff like deep growth you can get into this,
Speaker 1: you can kind of it can come across as if
Speaker 1: you're trying to like simplify, like and if we do this,
Speaker 1: like it will be perfectly like now, this would be
Speaker 1: like the hardest. No, that's that's like saying we have
Speaker 1: to confix it by all doing a revolution. It's like
Speaker 1: that's it's it's not okay, okay, cool, Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: but anyway, we have to do some ADS and then
Speaker 1: we'll be back to finish up kind of their closing
Speaker 1: expectations on COP twenty six and the other kind of
Speaker 1: things happening in the periphery. Um, here's ads. Okay, we
Speaker 1: are back and we're talking about kind of what happened
Speaker 1: towards the end of copy. So we already kind of
Speaker 1: discussed how the deal was made, what was in the deal,
Speaker 1: what things were talked about. Um now we're kind of
Speaker 1: going to talk about, you know, the other kind of
Speaker 1: closing thoughts around it. Um in in in. In the
Speaker 1: lead up to to cap to plenty six, the United
Speaker 1: States Special Presidential Climate Envoy John Kerry, who's like he's
Speaker 1: supposed to be like our climate guy. Um he he
Speaker 1: also said the goal this something it was to it
Speaker 1: was to you know, hope that we can limit stuff
Speaker 1: to one point five degrees and you know, he he
Speaker 1: called this the last best hope for the world to
Speaker 1: get its act together. But by the time Capturist six
Speaker 1: came to the end, his language and attitude had kind
Speaker 1: of changed. Um after after two weeks of debate and negotiation,
Speaker 1: his his final remarks reflected the kind of the points
Speaker 1: we've been talking about, how um and and and said, like, uh,
Speaker 1: like the government energy policy is currently in place around
Speaker 1: the world are projected to result in about two point
Speaker 1: seven degrees uh celsius of warming above pre industrial levels,
Speaker 1: and government pledges to cut climate emissions would limit warming
Speaker 1: to two point four uh if they are met. So
Speaker 1: that's the the Again, we're just launching way past this
Speaker 1: like mythical fantasy of of one point five degrees. And
Speaker 1: the other scary things is that we're getting a lot,
Speaker 1: a lot closer to large scale feedback loops. Uh. Feedback
Speaker 1: loops are things like once we have reached a certain
Speaker 1: degree of warming, environmental effects will be triggered that will
Speaker 1: cascade and produce like exponential growth in warming. This is
Speaker 1: like a this it's not purely theory article, but it
Speaker 1: is mostly stuff that we still probably can prevent, and
Speaker 1: we really need to get on it like a S
Speaker 1: A P. Because once these things start happening, they are
Speaker 1: very hard to reverse. One of the biggest ones that
Speaker 1: are that are already being affected is photosynthesis by plants
Speaker 1: on land and how that is decreasing its ability to
Speaker 1: suck up carbon um. About of our annual carbon emissions
Speaker 1: are removed by the air by photosynthesis um and the
Speaker 1: rest of which are dissolved in the ocean, causing ocean
Speaker 1: acidification or that you just hang around in the atmosphere,
Speaker 1: which causes you know, a bigger thermal blanket. So uh,
Speaker 1: photosynthesis has like a thermal maximum beyond which carbon can
Speaker 1: only be taken so much of it in and then
Speaker 1: the process which by plants give off carbon and water
Speaker 1: actually increases. And we are already at that point in
Speaker 1: a in a lot of places, and we are we
Speaker 1: are at that we we achieve the warming required to
Speaker 1: get to that point a few times throughout the past decade.
Speaker 1: So land based carbon uptake is projected to decline by
Speaker 1: nearly fift percent as early as and and these effects
Speaker 1: have not been included in any of the you know,
Speaker 1: published pathways leading to lower like lower degrees of warming. Um.
Speaker 1: And again this isn't this isn't just as speculative. Like
Speaker 1: the biggest example of this that we can like point
Speaker 1: to is like the Amazon rainforest. How that is now
Speaker 1: a net emitter because it is no longer sucking up
Speaker 1: enough carbon to offset the amount of carbon and actually
Speaker 1: shoots out. So we need to stop deforestation and keep
Speaker 1: planting more trees essentially because that that sucks. And also
Speaker 1: just as a general kind of indicator of the cascading
Speaker 1: effects that are happening, and we are we're still on
Speaker 1: the path for kind of large, large scale disasters in
Speaker 1: a lot of places around the world. Um, the it's
Speaker 1: around nine of the Earth's land area is in pretty
Speaker 1: pretty dire risk on our current emission pathway of the
Speaker 1: Marshall Islands. And I'll all these UM Vietnam, Southeast Asia,
Speaker 1: Middle East, parts of North Africa, and Central America. UM. Overall,
Speaker 1: around one third of the land humans occupied are predicted
Speaker 1: to either drowned by by sea level rise or became
Speaker 1: or become too hot for human life just by the
Speaker 1: end of this century alone. So that that will cause
Speaker 1: you know, my migration, panics and wars and all, like
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of bad things that we can we
Speaker 1: can limit that, Like, that is something that we need
Speaker 1: to limit now, and if we don't, it's still it's
Speaker 1: still happening. So these are the other kind of things
Speaker 1: talked about at the end. UM. So that was kind
Speaker 1: of copy as a whole. UM. The one last thing
Speaker 1: I want to mention is just how evil Facebook is. UM.
Speaker 1: So kind of kind of an aside, but UM, Facebook
Speaker 1: vice president of Global Affairs UH talked um and about
Speaker 1: Facebook's efforts to combat climate misinformation. UM as the Glasgow
Speaker 1: somewhat began. But as this was happening, conservative media, let's
Speaker 1: like Newsmax or we're running ads on Facebook calling a
Speaker 1: global warming a hoax, gaining hundreds of thousands of views,
Speaker 1: stuff like you know, Canadas WinCE and Daily Wire, we're
Speaker 1: spreading climate misinformation. But and you know, as as Facebook
Speaker 1: is bragging about its ability to to combat misinformation around
Speaker 1: climate change. Um. The UK based think tank Influence Map,
Speaker 1: which identified misleading Facebook ads UH from several media outlets
Speaker 1: UM around Copy also found that fossil field companies and
Speaker 1: lobbying groups spent half a million dollars on political and
Speaker 1: social issue Facebook ads during the summit, resulting in over
Speaker 1: twenty two million impressions, including content that promoted environmental effects
Speaker 1: under what we would call like green washing. Stuff like
Speaker 1: you know, the American Petroleum Institute putting up putting an
Speaker 1: ad out over like a natural landscape as it liked
Speaker 1: touts its efforts to tackle climate change. UM, so all
Speaker 1: all of that kind stuff. So I just think it's
Speaker 1: really dumb because Facebook breaks about its ability to combat
Speaker 1: misinformation as its running ads saying climate changes the hoax
Speaker 1: and then doing generally green greenwashing is more common, but
Speaker 1: still trustrating um And and yeah, just as a note,
Speaker 1: like we talked about this in the Facebook it as
Speaker 1: it's a bastards that dropped recently, but like the number
Speaker 1: one spreader right now of climate disinformation on Facebook is
Speaker 1: bright Bart, which a lot of the Facebook papers have
Speaker 1: gone on too. Like the extreme lengths, Facebook executives went
Speaker 1: to keep bright Bart as one of their like trusted
Speaker 1: news partners and continue putting their stuff out to a
Speaker 1: huge audience because it goes very viral. It was good
Speaker 1: for engagement on the platform, and that's the decision. Facebook's like,
Speaker 1: whatever they say, this is like when we when we're
Speaker 1: talking about car carbon credits, when we're talking about like
Speaker 1: the different proposed solutions, I'll do a bit of waffling
Speaker 1: because I don't want to come across as too certain
Speaker 1: about what the right way to go forward is. When
Speaker 1: it comes to how Facebook has handled climate disinformation, it's
Speaker 1: very black and white. They enabled it for direct profit
Speaker 1: and they talked about it, and people within the company
Speaker 1: were like, Hey, we're deliberately enabling climate change misinformation in
Speaker 1: order to make more money. Um, it's a it's a
Speaker 1: it's a very easy case to make. Yeah. So that
Speaker 1: wraps up my uh, my report back on COP twenty six.
Speaker 1: I know a lot of a lot of stuff was
Speaker 1: like there's there's a lot of headlines like before the
Speaker 1: somebody even ended, before the deal was even finalized, I
Speaker 1: was like, is a failure, which is like yes, But
Speaker 1: I think I think it is worth actually really learning
Speaker 1: what happens at these things, because I think we have
Speaker 1: this idea that they're like some like mythic secret gathering
Speaker 1: of people to discuss plans. And it's like no, like
Speaker 1: you can actually like see everything they're talking about, Like
Speaker 1: it's it's all out in the open, like you can
Speaker 1: actually see what what the plans are. It doesn't need
Speaker 1: to be all shrouded in it. It doesn't need be
Speaker 1: like shrouded in mystery. So I just wanted to give
Speaker 1: people like a rundown on what the actual people in power,
Speaker 1: how they're discussing climate change, and what their expectations are
Speaker 1: and how you know, expectations have you know, the past
Speaker 1: five years have arisen by basically a degree, right, because
Speaker 1: like we're like we can do one point five, and
Speaker 1: now we're like we can do two point five. So
Speaker 1: that is what we've done in five years. That's what's happened.
Speaker 1: And I think that's what justifies the kind of blanket
Speaker 1: pessimism about anything coming from copy about anything being suggested
Speaker 1: by like a state actor and international organization, which is
Speaker 1: that like we've all watched the last twenty years, like
Speaker 1: they've said a lot of great stuff about what could work.
Speaker 1: It's like that Nature article about like Okay, well, like
Speaker 1: you've got a bunch of math here arguing about how
Speaker 1: it might work. But we've got the last twenty years
Speaker 1: of policies to snave. But it probably won't right. But
Speaker 1: it's almost certainly not going to work, right, so we
Speaker 1: we can say, like, yeah, theoretically this might be helpful,
Speaker 1: but like, realistically nothing, everything you guys have argued about
Speaker 1: in the same way has been a miserable failure pretty much. Well,
Speaker 1: that that wraps it up for us. Uh. You can
Speaker 1: follow the show on Twitter and apparently Instagram. Um at
Speaker 1: happened here? Pod and Coolson of Media. We got a
Speaker 1: new Coolson Media show dropping soon. Uh, Mega Corp. That's
Speaker 1: pretty exciting. Check it out. It's about how we love
Speaker 1: Amazon and you should pay the money. I don't think
Speaker 1: that's what it's about, but anyway, Yeah, so buy some
Speaker 1: carbon offsets from Amazon and with that, with that, we're
Speaker 1: closing the show. Welcome back to it could happen here
Speaker 1: a show about how things are following up art at
Speaker 1: least generally, a show about how things are falling apart,
Speaker 1: um and how to you know, maybe maybe not falling
Speaker 1: apart that much. But we have a we have a
Speaker 1: little bit of a different episode for you today. A
Speaker 1: friend of a friend of mine reached out to me
Speaker 1: recently in the wake of a pair of episodes we
Speaker 1: did From Behind the Bastards on sexual abuse within the
Speaker 1: by Scouts of America, which was, if you're not aware,
Speaker 1: and endemic problem, with more than a hundred thousand victims
Speaker 1: having come forward in the last year alone. UM. And
Speaker 1: this is a case that kind of ties into that. Uh.
Speaker 1: It's it's the case of a young man UM who
Speaker 1: committed murder in a young man who was also UM,
Speaker 1: a victim of a terrible series of crime. So I
Speaker 1: wanted to kind of shine a little bit of light
Speaker 1: on the case of Heath Stocks today, UM. And to
Speaker 1: help me do that is Mr Michael Kaiser. Michael, welcome
Speaker 1: to the show, Good afternoon, Thanks for having me. Michael.
Speaker 1: Would you like to introduce kind of your affiliation with
Speaker 1: this case before we go over the broad strokes of it. Sure. UM. Again,
Speaker 1: my name is Michael Kaiser. I'm a criminal defense attorney
Speaker 1: with the Last and Cassinelli Firm in Little Rock, Arkansas. UM.
Speaker 1: This case started in the nineties and I was I'm
Speaker 1: thirty two, so I was not practicing. Then I came
Speaker 1: into this case in the last two years after Heath
Speaker 1: has already I've been sentence to three life sentences, and
Speaker 1: I assisted him in filing a petition for a commutation,
Speaker 1: asking for the Governor of Arkansas to reduce those sentences
Speaker 1: to a term of years and giving him a chance
Speaker 1: of parole while he is still alive. And and can we, uh,
Speaker 1: let's go over kind of what happened in this case
Speaker 1: the basis because this is this is a really sad story, UM,
Speaker 1: and it's one of those things where there's there's not
Speaker 1: a lot of I think, easy answers. But yeah, let's
Speaker 1: let's talk about sort of the broad strokes of what happened,
Speaker 1: and then we can drill into what what you're trying
Speaker 1: to achieve here. Sure, So the broad strokes are back
Speaker 1: in UM, when Heath was a young man, UM, just
Speaker 1: twenty years old. UM, he was arrested and charged with
Speaker 1: killing his entire immediate family, both his mother, father, UM,
Speaker 1: and his younger sister. He was quickly identified as the
Speaker 1: primary suspect, question confessed, arrested, charged, and within I believe
Speaker 1: six months, had pleaded guilty to all three capital murders
Speaker 1: and received a sense of life without parole for each
Speaker 1: each one of those, for a total of three life sentences. UM.
Speaker 1: Shortly after he was convicted, UM, it came to light
Speaker 1: that his longtime boy scout Scout Master Jack Walls had
Speaker 1: been molesting Heats since he was around age nine or ten.
Speaker 1: UM that it was a serial sort of abuse that Heat,
Speaker 1: that Heath was not the only one. UM, that it
Speaker 1: was particularly brutal, and that his abuse didn't just involve
Speaker 1: you know, sexual acts. UM, it was kind of a
Speaker 1: long term I hate to use the term brainwashing, but
Speaker 1: a lot of people have about what he did to
Speaker 1: those boys. UM. Heats is not the only life that
Speaker 1: was ruined. Heath's family is not the only families lives
Speaker 1: who were ruined. UM, but Heats is unfortunately the most
Speaker 1: extreme case UM where where he he ultimately committed a
Speaker 1: crime against against his family. We'll get into the circumstances
Speaker 1: in a second. I just want to add a little
Speaker 1: bit of clarification that the scout master, we're looking at
Speaker 1: between a hundred and a hundred and fifty victims, kind
Speaker 1: of conservatively based on what I've been reading. Yes, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's it's some of I mean, it's so this guy.
Speaker 1: Some of it's the stuff that you heard in a
Speaker 1: lot of these other cases. Some of it is is
Speaker 1: very unique to this guy. But he would basically he
Speaker 1: would have people over, kids over camping on his land. UM,
Speaker 1: he would take them shooting. He worked for an ammunition company. UM,
Speaker 1: he would molest them. He would also like purchase prostitutes
Speaker 1: for them. And it was this, UM, I mean a
Speaker 1: lot of of really some of the worst abuse that
Speaker 1: I've read about in connection to any of these these
Speaker 1: boy scouts sexual abuse cases. UM, it's it's pretty harrowing
Speaker 1: stuff when you read the stories of other kids, UM,
Speaker 1: who were kind of in the same position that Heath was. Yeah, Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: you're you're correct. It's you know, every time you think
Speaker 1: this can't get worse, or this case is so extreme,
Speaker 1: that you find some other element that's more offensive, more appalling,
Speaker 1: more victims, more more families ruined down the line. Even
Speaker 1: um today thirty forty years fifty years later. M. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so how does the because I mean, one of the
Speaker 1: things about this is this is a pretty the initial
Speaker 1: crime here is pretty horrific. Um. And I think it's
Speaker 1: it's one of those things where it is hard to
Speaker 1: have a lot of sympathy for Heath until you kind
Speaker 1: of learn about what this guy like, his his his
Speaker 1: role in the crime, because it was not just a
Speaker 1: case of, um, you know, a kid committing murder. It
Speaker 1: was a case of a kid being um, very deliberately
Speaker 1: pushed into committing murder. And potentially I think that there's
Speaker 1: the allegations being made her that he was he directly
Speaker 1: helped with it as well. Yes, um, so you know,
Speaker 1: at first glance, yeah, it looks it looks really bad
Speaker 1: for Heath. Um. But over the years, um, what we
Speaker 1: have learned is that what what really happened is that
Speaker 1: Heath had been serially abused sexually, physically, emotionally and otherwise
Speaker 1: by Jack for a period of ten plus years. His
Speaker 1: mother discovers the abuse and discusses it with her, her
Speaker 1: pastor another religious counselor. Uh. Heath informs Jack that you know,
Speaker 1: his mother is aware and and Jack instructs heath to
Speaker 1: do as he's been taught. UM, and and to kill
Speaker 1: the problem. Um. Jack was never convicted with anything associated
Speaker 1: with the death of of the Stocks family. UM. However,
Speaker 1: his first set of life sentences for the many assaults
Speaker 1: that he was convicted of, UM, when they were reversed,
Speaker 1: it was because the judge in that in that sentencing
Speaker 1: hearing said, you know that the death of the Stocks
Speaker 1: family is also on your hands. And because he hadn't
Speaker 1: been formally convicted of that, he actually had his original
Speaker 1: life sentences reversed. Every sentencing he got essentially the same sentence,
Speaker 1: multiple life sentences in additional years. UM. But yes, there
Speaker 1: there's there is a connection. UM. It wasn't known at
Speaker 1: the time, or at least it wasn't publicized, And if
Speaker 1: if it had been, I think the results of his
Speaker 1: case would be very different. I don't think you and
Speaker 1: I would be speaking right now. Yeah. And it's I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously like this is this is this is a thoroughly
Speaker 1: horrible situation. UM. And when somebody commits three murders, I
Speaker 1: think even people who are very critical of the criminal
Speaker 1: justice system should agree that, like something needs to be done.
Speaker 1: But I it just seems so unfair to lock this
Speaker 1: kit up for his entire life without kind of and
Speaker 1: and and acting as if this was just a thing
Speaker 1: he did on his own, rather than kind of the
Speaker 1: result of a pretty horrific I mean, one of the
Speaker 1: most one of the most horrific patterns of abuse and
Speaker 1: exploitation of a of a child that I can imagine,
Speaker 1: um And I don't know, I don't know what would
Speaker 1: actually like help other than getting him into a situation
Speaker 1: where he's not spending the rest of his life in
Speaker 1: a prison cell. Like I don't know what the long
Speaker 1: term for him looks like in terms of rebuilding this
Speaker 1: guy's potential to have a life, but it certainly starts
Speaker 1: with him not spending the rest of that life in
Speaker 1: a jail cell. The problem we've encountered, um with Heat's
Speaker 1: case is the parole board, and many just even just
Speaker 1: people that encounter the case wonder why would he attack
Speaker 1: and kill you know, his immediate family rather than his abuser.
Speaker 1: And in the twenty five plus years or in the
Speaker 1: twenty five years or so since this happened, I mean
Speaker 1: juvenile that our understanding of the juvenile brain, neurocycle psychology
Speaker 1: in general um has has come leaps and bounds, and
Speaker 1: so know that a serially abused child has brain damage
Speaker 1: from really about the time that that starts happening. And
Speaker 1: so in Heats crazy world, and we do have this
Speaker 1: in our clemency application. We've had UM abuse specialists evaluate
Speaker 1: Heath and and see how he you know, his actions
Speaker 1: conformed to our current understanding within the crazy world that
Speaker 1: he lived in. He actually was making, dare I say,
Speaker 1: the reasonable decision. So Jack had demonstrated numerous times over
Speaker 1: the years he has physical, sexual, and and even control
Speaker 1: over heats life. He can end it at any time.
Speaker 1: He explicitly and implicitly threatens the boys all the time.
Speaker 1: He's got weapons everywhere. He's a Vietnam veteran. He brings
Speaker 1: them out to his property, shows them how to shoot,
Speaker 1: shows them what he will do to those who you know,
Speaker 1: go against him. Um, So, within Heat's world, he actually
Speaker 1: made a somewhat reasonable decision. He uh, the bigger threat
Speaker 1: was was Jack. Um. He can't kill Jack, so he
Speaker 1: has to do the thing to appease Jack to avoid
Speaker 1: the more severe abuse. That's oversimplifying it, but that's something
Speaker 1: that I don't think we would have been able to conceptualize.
Speaker 1: Back in the nineties, you had the element of there's
Speaker 1: it's it's mail on mail, and we're talking about a
Speaker 1: very small rural community, UM in central Arkansas, and that
Speaker 1: element cannot be overlooked at all as well. That was
Speaker 1: a huge thing that Jack was counting on to keep
Speaker 1: these boys silent. UM. He explicitly told them, if you
Speaker 1: tell what happened to you, they're going to think that
Speaker 1: you are homosexual and a liar. So there's just there's
Speaker 1: there's just so many horrible things. UM. In this case,
Speaker 1: Jack had decades of experience doing this and unfortunately, because
Speaker 1: of his position in the community, the son of a
Speaker 1: prominent judge, UM, the long time Scout master, the communities
Speaker 1: man of the Year multiple times, UM, he had access
Speaker 1: to dozens and dozens of boys, in fact, entire generations
Speaker 1: of these of these boys in Lono County. UM. Heat's
Speaker 1: case is just one of many. Unfortunately, it's the most
Speaker 1: extreme case and it's kind of tests the bounds of
Speaker 1: our mercy. But the kid that discovered Jack, while he's
Speaker 1: a hero, ultimately he killed himself and he's not the
Speaker 1: only one. So unfortunately, the Stocks family are not the
Speaker 1: only people who lost their lives and not the only
Speaker 1: people whose lives, just like he's, were completely destroyed by
Speaker 1: Jack Walls. Yeah, and this is this is an important
Speaker 1: thing to understand because when we're talking about kind of
Speaker 1: the the lingering impacts of childhood sexual abuse, it can
Speaker 1: take a wide variety of forms and when we like
Speaker 1: but but it but it is important to understand that
Speaker 1: the damage it can do goes so much further beyond
Speaker 1: like the physical damage done by the abuse, like these
Speaker 1: are your your brain is still forming and growing when
Speaker 1: you're that young, and he this is one manifestation of
Speaker 1: kind of what can happen um at the more extreme end, admittedly,
Speaker 1: um as as the result like this is why it's
Speaker 1: such a heinous crime to abuse a child in this way.
Speaker 1: And it's just I don't know, like you're right, it
Speaker 1: is it It tests the limit of um people's capacity
Speaker 1: for I don't know, forgiveness seems like the wrong word,
Speaker 1: but like clemency. You know, this again is a pretty
Speaker 1: heinous crime. Um. But at the same time, I can't
Speaker 1: bring myself to think that what he endured leading up
Speaker 1: to this shouldn't have an impact on what happens to
Speaker 1: him afterwards, right, Like it does. It does reduce his
Speaker 1: his complicity in this, and I just feel it feels
Speaker 1: so wrong to say that, like, well, he should spend
Speaker 1: the rest of his life behind bars, Like that's just
Speaker 1: not I can't imagine anything could help, Like I can't
Speaker 1: imagine that could help in any way. Um, just writing
Speaker 1: this this person and off forever, I don't know. It
Speaker 1: just is, it's it's fucked. What are the next steps
Speaker 1: for y'all, for your for the defense team. So at
Speaker 1: this point, we've already filed a petition UH with the
Speaker 1: Arkansas governor requesting a commutation. That's not a pardon, that's
Speaker 1: not something saying say that Heath is innocent. We're asking
Speaker 1: the governor to modify his sentences to a term of
Speaker 1: years forty years in each case, to be served concurrently.
Speaker 1: So in effect, one single sentence of forty years. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: in Arkansas, you're actually at the time he was convicted,
Speaker 1: he'd be parle eligible at se. So that's twenty eight years.
Speaker 1: That's not a guarantee of pearle. That is just what
Speaker 1: it means, parole eligibility. So that's what we've asked for. Um,
Speaker 1: we think his institutional record speaks for itself, and if
Speaker 1: and when he is a candidate for pearle, he hopefully
Speaker 1: will make pearole. He's he's done everything within his power
Speaker 1: UM to do so. UM. If this fails, it's right now. Uh.
Speaker 1: We in Arkansas at first goes to the parole Board,
Speaker 1: who makes a non binding recommendation to the governor. They
Speaker 1: have recommended that the governor deny it. UM, which is unfortunate,
Speaker 1: but again it's not binding. UM. The governor now has
Speaker 1: I believe until February or March of two to issue
Speaker 1: his decision. UM. He has not yet. UM. We have
Speaker 1: requested a sit down with the governor. I don't know
Speaker 1: if we'll actually sit down with Governor Asa Hutchinson. We
Speaker 1: will sit down with his criminal justice coordinator. UM. We're
Speaker 1: thankful and lucky to have the support of all of
Speaker 1: the remaining victims family members. So both sides of Heat's family. UM,
Speaker 1: you know we have we have extensive support. UM. It
Speaker 1: wasn't they they A lot of them had to work
Speaker 1: to get to this point, a lot of them had
Speaker 1: to understand the true impact of the abuse. But at
Speaker 1: this point, UM, we have extensive support from both sides.
Speaker 1: Of his family. UM. As far as we know, there
Speaker 1: are no objections to his commutation application from from victims
Speaker 1: family members. The only ones that there have been are
Speaker 1: from the sentencing judge or from the sentencing court. It's
Speaker 1: actually not the same judge and the sentencing or the
Speaker 1: prosecutor from that from that county, again a different person um,
Speaker 1: but they felt the need to object. I should this fail,
Speaker 1: we will seek additional post conviction remedies um uh. In Arkansas,
Speaker 1: we have something called a petition for writ of ericorium
Speaker 1: nobis UM. You can file it. You have to ask
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court, Hey, is it okay if I file
Speaker 1: a petition back in the trial court asking them to
Speaker 1: consider something that, if we had known back in ninety eight,
Speaker 1: would have affected the outcome of the litigation. In this case,
Speaker 1: we would point to the we we've had heath evaluated. UM.
Speaker 1: It will point to that neuropsychological evaluation UM as as
Speaker 1: new evidence. UM. We couldn't fully make a connection at
Speaker 1: the time between his abuse and the offense to answer
Speaker 1: that question why he killed his family rather than his abuser.
Speaker 1: We now can. And so that's what we're going to allege,
Speaker 1: is that is that new evidence. Um whether the court
Speaker 1: will will find that it is remains to be seen.
Speaker 1: When he tried this on his own about five years ago,
Speaker 1: the court denied it. He alleged the new evidence was
Speaker 1: the fact of the long term sexual abuse of him
Speaker 1: by Jack Walls, and the court in a in an
Speaker 1: opinion that really does not um, you know, shows shows
Speaker 1: the lack of understanding of long term juvenile sexual abuse,
Speaker 1: found that well though you personally were aware of all
Speaker 1: of that in your own mind because it had happened
Speaker 1: to you, So that was not new evidence. And I
Speaker 1: mean we know that the average male who makes this
Speaker 1: sort of disclosure, it occurs deep into adulthood. So it's
Speaker 1: just at every level of the system. Even today, we're
Speaker 1: still feeling the effects of kind of that old school
Speaker 1: mentality about about this, and it's unfortunate. We could talk
Speaker 1: about kind of the the car serile state and this
Speaker 1: idea that like penalty is the way to respond to
Speaker 1: any kind of crime. But even if you believe that,
Speaker 1: even if you believe that, like you have to punish
Speaker 1: people with incarceration when they commit crimes. He's done twenty
Speaker 1: five years, Like that's no one, No one is discussing
Speaker 1: the possibility of Heath not being punished for the murder,
Speaker 1: you know, because it's he has been not just with
Speaker 1: time behind bars, but the fact that his family's gone.
Speaker 1: The idea that the state could do anything that's worse
Speaker 1: to him than than the scout Master did, to be honest,
Speaker 1: is kind of absurd in my head. But UM, where
Speaker 1: is there anything that, like, I don't know, I'm trying
Speaker 1: to determine, like what can be done to help in
Speaker 1: this situation? Is there any way people can actually help
Speaker 1: outside of like you and the team that's that's working
Speaker 1: to try and sit down with the governor? Yeah? UM,
Speaker 1: I mean public support is is wonderful. The more people
Speaker 1: that are pointing out the problems in Heath's case and
Speaker 1: with his sentences and that are reaching out to the governor, UM,
Speaker 1: the better we think our chances are. UM. I apologize,
Speaker 1: I don't have the email address on me, but the
Speaker 1: governor has several publicly accessible UM accounts, as does his
Speaker 1: criminal Justice coordinator. Even just getting on Facebook UM and
Speaker 1: and bringing it up. UM, there's a Facebook account managed
Speaker 1: by one of Heath's friends. I'm in Florida called at
Speaker 1: Hope for heat Stocks. UM. It's there's also a website.
Speaker 1: I think it's Hope for Heat stocks dot info. It's
Speaker 1: probably the most extensive trove of resources in this case.
Speaker 1: It has almost all original documents. It's where I still
Speaker 1: go to access things when I need them, even though
Speaker 1: I am his attorney. So there's a lot out there.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of ways to support the cause, even
Speaker 1: just telling other people about it. Um. We do have
Speaker 1: a documentary in the works. UM. I actually don't think
Speaker 1: it has a producer at this point, but we're hopeful
Speaker 1: to have something out in early to make Keith, to
Speaker 1: make Jack, to make this case more of a household name. UM.
Speaker 1: The hopes that you know, if any sort of um,
Speaker 1: you know, if there's more support out there, more pressure
Speaker 1: on the governor, it will increase the odds that that
Speaker 1: will do the right thing here. Yeah, I mean, this
Speaker 1: shouldn't be a political issue. There shouldn't be a left
Speaker 1: or right thing. Like everyone should be able to see
Speaker 1: this is uh, this is the result of abuse, and
Speaker 1: that should have an impact on the what we actually
Speaker 1: what's actually what our society actually does to this kid
Speaker 1: in the wake of the crime. Perhaps it's like foolish
Speaker 1: to hope for some sort of rationality as regards a
Speaker 1: case like this, But I would hope that we could
Speaker 1: be rational about this and everyone agree, yes, this kid
Speaker 1: deserves something more than what he's gotten. UM. I don't know.
Speaker 1: It's it's a bleak one though. That's putting it lightly.
Speaker 1: New York recently recently passed a law that kind of
Speaker 1: acknowledged kind of where you're at with it for victims
Speaker 1: of domestic or sexual abuse who then committed crimes um
Speaker 1: that weren't necessarily during the course of that specific abuse UM.
Speaker 1: And it allowed people like Heath to apply for resentencing
Speaker 1: if they met certain statutory qualifications um for things that
Speaker 1: mitigated their crime didn't justify it, but that didn't come
Speaker 1: out originally. Unfortunately, in Arkansas, we don't have a similar process.
Speaker 1: The only thing we have available is this clemency commutation process.
Speaker 1: And unfortunately, as you said, it should be a political
Speaker 1: but it's not. It's it's explicitly political. The parole board
Speaker 1: are all appointees by our governor. The governor is an
Speaker 1: elected official. There's a reason we filed it in the
Speaker 1: last year of his last term in Arkansas. He has
Speaker 1: term limited, so we're trying to get him at a
Speaker 1: point where he's as free from the politics to do
Speaker 1: what he actually thinks is correct. But to think that
Speaker 1: politics will be removed is I mean, yeah, it never is. No,
Speaker 1: this is this is the United States inies, you know,
Speaker 1: politics is is a factor here, and there's a deeply
Speaker 1: divisive case in the state and especially in Lono County. Well,
Speaker 1: it's hard I can imagine it being hard to talk
Speaker 1: with people about just because again, the nature of the
Speaker 1: crime is is horrific. And so if you talk about like, well,
Speaker 1: we we think this guy should have another chance at life,
Speaker 1: and you're like, well, but he killed three people, he
Speaker 1: killed his sister, and yes, that is the case, but
Speaker 1: that's not the only thing going down here. And you
Speaker 1: just have to I think, if you're if you're at all,
Speaker 1: even if you're not coming at this from kind of
Speaker 1: politically where I am in regarding you know, the car
Speaker 1: serial state, you have to acknowledge that, like, this is
Speaker 1: not a race Heath's crimes. But Heath's crimes were also
Speaker 1: the result of not just the scout master's abuse, but
Speaker 1: of a number of failures on a on a wide
Speaker 1: level in our society that allowed that abuse to occur.
Speaker 1: Um and so I don't know. I I feel like
Speaker 1: there's a lot of reasons why it behooves us to
Speaker 1: give this kid another chance. I don't know. That doesn't
Speaker 1: make it easier to convince anyone else, But yeah, well,
Speaker 1: how would this case play out if it happened today
Speaker 1: versus in even in a more rural part of Arkansas.
Speaker 1: I think our understanding of several of the issues here
Speaker 1: it is so has come so far that my hope
Speaker 1: is Heath would have received a term of years rather
Speaker 1: than being charged with capital are They originally were seeking
Speaker 1: the death penalty, and he made a deal for multiple
Speaker 1: life sentences, both as someone under twenty one and as
Speaker 1: a victim of long term sexual abuse. I would like
Speaker 1: to think that if this happened today, even in that county,
Speaker 1: what we're asking for is something close to what what
Speaker 1: would what would happen? I would hope, I would hope
Speaker 1: so that that's why, again, we didn't ask for a pardon.
Speaker 1: We didn't ask let him out today. We said, let
Speaker 1: him earn it, let him still feel the weight of
Speaker 1: of what he has done. But give him that light
Speaker 1: at the end of the tunnel, because you know, there
Speaker 1: is no one in the Arkansas Department of Correction. Even
Speaker 1: with that, there's just not a victim like him there,
Speaker 1: and there's not someone who who could be an advocate
Speaker 1: for victims like him were he to be released. So yep, well,
Speaker 1: all right, Michael, is there anything else you wanted to
Speaker 1: get into with this or any other ways people might
Speaker 1: be able to help check out the website again and
Speaker 1: post on social media. Um. Uh. The one thing I
Speaker 1: think we didn't focus on here is Heath himself. Um.
Speaker 1: Heath is a deeply spiritual individual. He's someone who lives
Speaker 1: with this on his conscious almost every moment of the day.
Speaker 1: This is not not someone who you know, feels he's
Speaker 1: skated by by avoiding the death penalty. Um. This is
Speaker 1: someone who has had to learn about trauma, mostly on
Speaker 1: his own, because with those life sentences, he is ineligible
Speaker 1: for so many of the programs of the scant programs
Speaker 1: and resources that we have in the Department of Correction
Speaker 1: because they don't give it to people who don't have
Speaker 1: parole dates. So he's had to do a lot of
Speaker 1: this on his own. He's come a remarkable way. He's
Speaker 1: still someone that needs um probably extensive treatment and therapy
Speaker 1: to deal with his own trauma as well as to
Speaker 1: deal with the effects of what he did on himself. Um.
Speaker 1: But he's a remarkable individual. He's a great self advocate.
Speaker 1: I wish you could speak with him as well. Um.
Speaker 1: He's someone I'm proud to represent. Not just that I
Speaker 1: do because I get paid. Um, this is why I
Speaker 1: got into the practice of law. Is this type of case. Um,
Speaker 1: he is not innocent, but he is not. Uh, he
Speaker 1: should not be bearing the full weight of what occurred.
Speaker 1: While you know, Jack is serving a life sentence. I
Speaker 1: think he should have one or two or three more
Speaker 1: for his role in this. I mean heats youth and
Speaker 1: heats brain damage. Because of that, sexual abuse should have
Speaker 1: and now should be considered. And we just hope the
Speaker 1: governor will Yeah, yeah, hopefully so. And again, if you
Speaker 1: want to learn more, there's Heath stocks dot info. Um,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of good about Jack Walls on there
Speaker 1: as well. UM, and you can there's a link to
Speaker 1: make a donation to Heath's defense. Um. Alright, well, Michael,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for coming on today. UM, and
Speaker 1: I hope you have a good rest of your week.
Speaker 1: Now's well, yeah, hey, we'll be back Monday with more
Speaker 1: episodes every week from now until the heat death of
Speaker 1: the universe. It Could Happen Here is a production of
Speaker 1: cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool zone Media,
Speaker 1: visit our website cool zone media dot com, or check
Speaker 1: us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources
Speaker 1: for It Could Happen Here, updated monthly at cool zone
Speaker 1: media dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.