Speaker 1: All the media, welcome to it could happen here, a
Speaker 1: podcast about it happening here, which, if you are paying
Speaker 1: attention to the news today is Los Angeles, not just LA,
Speaker 1: but largely LA right now, which over the course of
Speaker 1: the last couple of days while we were off for
Speaker 1: the weekend, has broken out into a series of protests
Speaker 1: and cop riots that are kind of consuming national news.
Speaker 1: The federal government has activated the California National Guard and
Speaker 1: asserted federal control over them. Governor Newsom is kind of
Speaker 1: pushing back against that, although not in a way that
Speaker 1: I am convinced or I've seen any evidence of matters
Speaker 1: at this point. The United States Marines, a group of
Speaker 1: I think about five hundred from Camp Pendleton, which is
Speaker 1: down near San Diego, have been activated as well, which
Speaker 1: is a probable violation of Passe coma tadas, So that
Speaker 1: was kind of unclear to me the extent which they're
Speaker 1: in the theater at this point. Largely, all of these
Speaker 1: actions have been ineffective in making the protests go away
Speaker 1: at this point. What sparked them was a series of
Speaker 1: ice raids that took about two thousand people into custody
Speaker 1: and brought a bunch of Los Angelinos out in Paramount,
Speaker 1: California who were met by the police, the LAPD providing
Speaker 1: crowd control to Homeland Security HSI agents. Yeah, and that's
Speaker 1: the gist of what went down. Things have just kind
Speaker 1: of escalated from there. Yesterday, probably four to six thousand
Speaker 1: people in the street as opposed to five hundred or
Speaker 1: so the day before. So things have continued to escalate
Speaker 1: and the LAPD and their police have had no real
Speaker 1: luck in containing the demonstrations. We'll see how long that
Speaker 1: situation lasts. But yeah, that's where we are right at
Speaker 1: this second. More or less, things are continuing to evolve today,
Speaker 1: will have evolved since yep.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a way, we're recording this on Monday. This will
Speaker 2: probably coming out like Monday night, Tuesday morning, so who
Speaker 2: fucking knows what will have happened by then. This is
Speaker 2: like about one pm Pacific time when we're recording this.
Speaker 2: I want to start also by going back to that
Speaker 2: National Guard deployment, because the federalized National Guard deployment is
Speaker 2: hideously illegal. Oh yeah, like unbelievably illegal. I cannot emphasize enough.
Speaker 2: This is like constitution shatteringly illegal. Yeah, and the way
Speaker 2: this is being reported in the media is fucking hideous.
Speaker 2: They are just straight up lying about it. So okay,
Speaker 2: So Trump has not declared the Insturruction Act yet, right.
Speaker 1: No, they activated a directive that Trump signed cited ten
Speaker 1: USC one two four six, which is a specific provision
Speaker 1: within Title ten if the US Code on Armed Services,
Speaker 1: that provision allows, or part of that provision allows for
Speaker 1: the federal government to deploy National Guard forces quote, if
Speaker 1: there is a rebellion or danger of a rebellion against
Speaker 1: the authority of the Guard of the United States.
Speaker 3: So basically, the.
Speaker 1: Claim being made by the administration here was that the
Speaker 1: federalization of the California Guard was justified by the fact
Speaker 1: that the people of Los Angeles, which at the point
Speaker 1: this was done was somewhere less than a thousand.
Speaker 4: Of them five hundred people, Yeah.
Speaker 1: And were an open rebellion because they had yelled at
Speaker 1: a bunch of vice officers for a while. That was
Speaker 1: the situation.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, and also it's worth noting too, even if there
Speaker 2: was a rebellion, which there isn't, he also can't use
Speaker 2: that section because it's in coordination with the governor. You
Speaker 2: could only do what if the governor is working with
Speaker 2: you and the governor, like Newsom is being a real
Speaker 2: piece of shit about this.
Speaker 1: For again, like the president, the LAPD has been yeah.
Speaker 2: But it's like he's been sitting the LPD up, but
Speaker 2: he hasn't given permission for the federal government to use
Speaker 2: the California National Guard. They're just doing it, right, This
Speaker 2: is like they've just stolen a state national Guard. And
Speaker 2: newsroom's response has been because he fucking hates protesters, so
Speaker 2: has been.
Speaker 4: Like, oh, this is bad.
Speaker 2: Am, I gonna like do anything about the fact that,
Speaker 2: like again, every single law about how the National Guard
Speaker 2: is supposed to be used, it's just been torn the
Speaker 2: fuck up. Yeah, no, like fucking MPR and like a
Speaker 2: bunch of the mation media reporting about this has just
Speaker 2: been saying that, oh, well, he used this provision and
Speaker 2: it's like, no, he didn't. Like he did not He
Speaker 2: explicitly every single part of the thing that lets you
Speaker 2: use this provision, none of the conditions have been fulfilled,
Speaker 2: which means he's not using it.
Speaker 4: He's just saying shit and doing it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's exactly right.
Speaker 1: And the activation of the US Marines is based on
Speaker 1: like heg Seth posted a tweet being like I've got
Speaker 1: marines ready in Camp Pendleton, which like there's absolutely no
Speaker 1: constitutional justification for no, especially since the National Guard had
Speaker 1: just been put in for deploying active duty US marines
Speaker 1: into this situation. Absolutely not, it's all super like. For
Speaker 1: one thing, the situation that they're in right now in
Speaker 1: terms of like what we've seen from the National Guard
Speaker 1: yesterday was like they're not very effective at this, right.
Speaker 1: They fairly quickly after being deployed started using, you know,
Speaker 1: firing impact munitions at the crowd, attacking the crowd in
Speaker 1: the same way that the LPD had done. Nothing That
Speaker 1: was like, I would say, an escalation beyond how the
Speaker 1: fucking cops were active.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: But National Guard is bad at handling these kinds of things, right,
Speaker 1: Their force organization is not meant to be able to
Speaker 1: be split up into small enough units the way the
Speaker 1: cops are in enough areas, Like they're just not mint
Speaker 1: for this sort of thing. It's not how they're meant
Speaker 1: to be deployed to counteract protests, So you wind up
Speaker 1: just kind of keeping them in this big blob of
Speaker 1: guys who you don't have good Like they're sleeping on
Speaker 1: floors in government buildings, right, now because the quartering Act exists,
Speaker 1: which is amazing, and because there's not much in the
Speaker 1: way of organization behind deploying them, and they don't know
Speaker 1: they're not there. I mean, neither are the police generally
Speaker 1: well trained with their impact munitions, but these guys certainly aren't.
Speaker 1: And they freak out at the drop of a hat,
Speaker 1: like they're like worse at it than the LAPD, and
Speaker 1: the LAPD is.
Speaker 3: You know, not good at it, They're just good at
Speaker 3: hurting people.
Speaker 1: So you've just kind of got this large, brittle group
Speaker 1: of guys who you can plunk down in an area
Speaker 1: while protesters continue to gather in groups all around the city.
Speaker 1: And the more stories of shit like a blob of
Speaker 1: National guardsmen fucking up protesters you get, the more people
Speaker 1: are coming out and the less controllable the situation becomes.
Speaker 2: And it seems like we're seeing the very beginning stages
Speaker 2: of people actually learning tactical lessons from twenty twenty and
Speaker 2: twenty twenty four with the pala Sign encampments. Yeah, which
Speaker 2: is like, yeah, like, if you concentrate all of your
Speaker 2: people in one spot, police departments are very very good
Speaker 2: at massing the whole bunch of people and rolling you over.
Speaker 2: I mean, we've known this since twenty twenty. If you
Speaker 2: are at a whole bunch of different spots at the
Speaker 2: same time, they're terrible at responding to that. And that's
Speaker 2: kind of what's been happening. Yeah, there's been a bunch
Speaker 2: of protests popping up in different places. It's been very
Speaker 2: effective at sort of like preventing that kind of like
Speaker 2: one giant Sweet mobilizations that were like destroying the student encampments.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I'm looking at based on reporting from CBS News,
Speaker 1: about seven hundred US Marines have been activated from the
Speaker 1: twenty nine Palms base near San Diego, which is, per
Speaker 1: Jim Laporta, who's a defense reporter, widely considered to be
Speaker 1: one of the worst bases to be stationed at in
Speaker 1: the entire military, are being deployed to Los Angeles right now.
Speaker 3: So that's just great.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Someone asked Trump what would it take for him to
Speaker 2: use to authorize the deployment of the US military on
Speaker 2: American soil, and he said, that's just that's up to me,
Speaker 2: which is.
Speaker 4: Not how any of this works.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like that's just pure military dictatorship stuff. If Trump
Speaker 2: is just able to like use the military just do
Speaker 2: whatever the fuck he wants. That is just that is
Speaker 2: the constitution gone. That is the pretense of democracy gone.
Speaker 2: It is real bad. Now it hasn't happened yet, but
Speaker 2: there has been a bunch of extremely alarming.
Speaker 4: Other shit that's happened.
Speaker 2: So the cops arrested the president of California SEIU, which
Speaker 2: is the Service Workers Union in California, a very very
Speaker 2: large union, not a super billetant one.
Speaker 1: No, And David Huerta isn't who you'd call like a
Speaker 1: particularly militant leftist.
Speaker 2: No, he's just like he's just like a kind of
Speaker 2: like a Democratic Party labor guy. And they just like
Speaker 2: arrested him outside of outside of one of the initial
Speaker 2: protests where he was injured him quite badly too. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: like beat the shit out of him. And then he's
Speaker 2: still being held in in a federal detention building. They're
Speaker 2: they're they're charging him with with federal felony conspiracy to
Speaker 2: impede an officer. And again, this is this is the
Speaker 2: this is the head of like one of the largest
Speaker 2: unions of California.
Speaker 1: No, and they're they're justifying it in part based on
Speaker 1: the charging documents because they saw him texting on his
Speaker 1: phone outside and assumed he was texting to like a
Speaker 1: protester to give them.
Speaker 2: More Yes, right, Like it's like fucking courtoon clown shit.
Speaker 2: But like the actual effect of this again is that
Speaker 2: they have like one of they they have like the
Speaker 2: president of one of the largest unions in the state,
Speaker 2: like yes, in a federal detention building. So, I mean
Speaker 2: there's obviously been like unions are pissed about it. There
Speaker 2: hasn't been any kind of large scom mobilization from them yet.
Speaker 2: But if there was one possible thing you could do
Speaker 2: to actually get Seiu outfit's ass and like show up
Speaker 2: to shit, it's this. We don't know exactly what's going
Speaker 2: to happen. The reporting that I've seen so far has
Speaker 2: suggested that there is actually a kind of heartening degree
Speaker 2: of cross union support for like, holy shit, the Feds
Speaker 2: like just grabbing the president of a union is in
Speaker 2: fact bad. We're gonna have to see exactly how that
Speaker 2: plays out. But like he's still fucking in there. Maxine
Speaker 2: Walters like tried to enter the facility to check on him.
Speaker 2: This has happened with a bunch of different Congress people
Speaker 2: who tried to enter this one in LA and a
Speaker 2: couple of other tension facilities. They are all being denied,
Speaker 2: which is unhinged.
Speaker 1: Yeah, especially since they have oversight over facilities like this.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Other news from today that's just come out in the
Speaker 1: last less than a day, the government has deployed m
Speaker 1: Q nine reapers. I think at least two of them
Speaker 1: over Los Angeles. These are the drones that are that
Speaker 1: we were using overseas to shoot hell fire missiles of people.
Speaker 3: That's not what they're being used for here. They're being
Speaker 3: used for surveillance.
Speaker 1: The last time this was done was in Minneapolis in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty ye. Outside of their use for surveillance over
Speaker 1: the border, but there's MQ nine's over an American city
Speaker 1: surveilling protesters. Speaking of that, there's also just been like
Speaker 1: the threat of surveillance being used against protesters.
Speaker 3: Kind of.
Speaker 1: The most chilling example from yesterday was an LAPD helicopter
Speaker 1: flying low over a crowd, shining a spotlight on them
Speaker 1: and saying like I've seen, we can see all of you.
Speaker 1: We're going to come. I'm going to come to your
Speaker 1: houses later, like you're all on camera and I'm cut,
Speaker 1: Like specifically, I'm going to cut. We're coming to your
Speaker 1: houses later.
Speaker 4: Yeah it's police state shit.
Speaker 1: Like, yeah, it's police state shit. Now do I believe
Speaker 1: that they actually have the ability to know? They don't actually,
Speaker 1: but yeah.
Speaker 4: That's aid.
Speaker 2: Like where if you're going to one of these protest,
Speaker 2: wear a fucking mask, yes, like I don't know, like
Speaker 2: both for COVID, but like also Jesus fucking Christ, Like
Speaker 2: they're flying petat trouts over these protests, like wear masks.
Speaker 2: Good lord, do you know what else wants you to
Speaker 2: buy masks?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: The products and services that support this podcast perhaps, and we're.
Speaker 4: Yees.
Speaker 2: So I also want to talk a bit about the
Speaker 2: specific conditions that caused all of this stuff, because I
Speaker 2: think the reporting on it has been really bad. So
Speaker 2: there were two thousand arrests from ICE on Tuesday. They
Speaker 2: rested two thousand people on Wednesday. I think these are
Speaker 2: like national numbers, the numbers like very specifically in LAS
Speaker 2: are at least several hundred people have been being held
Speaker 2: in just horrory find conditions. You know, some of them
Speaker 2: are being held in federal attention centers, but they're also
Speaker 2: just being held in like the basements of these fucking
Speaker 2: buildings because there's not enough room to hold this many people,
Speaker 2: you know, I mean, even the conditions and the regular
Speaker 2: attention center are terrible.
Speaker 1: But like the.
Speaker 2: Immigration lawyers who people were able to reach and talk to,
Speaker 2: are talking about hundreds of people in rooms designed for thirty.
Speaker 2: There's no cots, They're sleeping on the ground. Sickness is spreading,
Speaker 2: there's not enough food or water. Conditions are fucking horrifying.
Speaker 2: A lot of the people who are in there, you know,
Speaker 2: the ones that we've been able to get any kind
Speaker 2: of contact with from their lawyers. A lot of these
Speaker 2: people cannot be deported because there are people who have
Speaker 2: been granted stay of deportation by the US government, which
Speaker 2: means they cannot be deported. But I said, just fucking
Speaker 2: kidnapped them.
Speaker 4: Anyways.
Speaker 2: There's videos you can see from the protesters outside the buildings,
Speaker 2: and there's something I remember from Occupy Ice in twenty
Speaker 2: eighteen that's just fucking harrowing, is that, like, when you're
Speaker 2: outside these buildings, sometimes you can hear the people inside shouting,
Speaker 2: and it's fucking harrowing. And with these ones, there's a
Speaker 2: bunch of videos if you can see that the people
Speaker 2: inside the buildings are trying to like shine lights out
Speaker 2: of windows so that people know that they're inside.
Speaker 4: It's fucking horrifying.
Speaker 2: And I think, just how bad this is, Like how
Speaker 2: bad it was that like all of these fucking people
Speaker 2: in their fucking tanks just rolled up and started kidnapping people.
Speaker 2: Has just kind of been lost in all of this
Speaker 2: discourse about the protest is like, no, this is what
Speaker 2: was happening, Like this is straight up soldiers are just
Speaker 2: taking people in the night, Like that's what this is,
Speaker 2: you know, And this has been happening all over. There
Speaker 2: was also a huge sort of protests have started at
Speaker 2: this home depot where okay, so this is where this
Speaker 2: is where we would get into the point where like
Speaker 2: it's kind of difficult to see what's going on. Ice
Speaker 2: claims that they were just staging a bunch of people
Speaker 2: the private whole ind Security said to the BBC that
Speaker 2: there was no raid on this home depot planned and
Speaker 2: that they were just staging there. I don't believe that,
Speaker 2: because these people lie for a living. It is their job.
Speaker 2: They are police. It is their job as a cop
Speaker 2: to lie to you. It is a constitutionally protected thing
Speaker 2: that they have according to the Supreme Court, which is
Speaker 2: absolutely ridiculous. But I am pretty sure they're lying about that.
Speaker 2: But regardless, there's you know, like their approaches started up
Speaker 2: and then like the cops just started tear gassing the
Speaker 2: people who were protesting. Yep, this massive rage at a
Speaker 2: home depot.
Speaker 1: Now there was another kind of noteworthy event is when
Speaker 1: Ice showed up in force they got There were kind
Speaker 1: of two different actions. There was one down at a
Speaker 1: federal building where people attacked and dissembled barricades at the
Speaker 1: same time as people showed up to go after the
Speaker 1: ICE caravan. Ice officers were pelted in their vehicles with
Speaker 1: a number of objects yea. And again this is the
Speaker 1: kind of thing that makes it a lot more difficult.
Speaker 3: I mean that just.
Speaker 1: Appears operational operationally to be true for them to crack
Speaker 1: down when they're expecting, you know, action in one direction
Speaker 1: and it comes in multiple at the same time. There
Speaker 1: was another instance earlier in the protest where ICE officers
Speaker 1: were surrounded by a crowd and cut off for about
Speaker 1: eight hours while the LAPD refused to respond to them,
Speaker 1: and they eventually had to land a black Hawk on
Speaker 1: the street in order to resupply because they were out
Speaker 1: of water and I think running low on munitions which
Speaker 1: they then used with reckless abandon So yeah, there's also
Speaker 1: as I'm looking right now, just as about two hours ago,
Speaker 1: a US Marine Age one z viper attack helicopter was
Speaker 1: filmed flying low over Los Angeles. So it looks like
Speaker 1: we've got active duty US Marine Corps forces in the city.
Speaker 1: Unclear if they're directly engaging with anyone. I haven't really
Speaker 1: heard of a lot of activity today, but yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, my guess is things will intensify, you know, as
Speaker 2: the day goes on and as we sort of roll
Speaker 2: into night, because some people sort of start getting off
Speaker 2: work and when temperatures start coming down a bit.
Speaker 1: That's the open question right as to like what's going
Speaker 1: to happen. The last couple of days we saw numbers escalate,
Speaker 1: but now it's Monday, people have work and there's more true.
Speaker 1: It's like, yeah, it's not clear to me that that's
Speaker 1: going to happen, that this.
Speaker 4: Is going to be like a yeah, we'll see.
Speaker 1: I'm seeing a lot of early comparisons to twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: and it's not clear to me that's going to happen.
Speaker 1: One thing to note is that kind of at the top.
Speaker 1: So far, we've had four to six thousand people out
Speaker 1: in the street in La Yeah, which is not you know,
Speaker 1: compared to twenty twenty numbers. And while we've seen some
Speaker 1: sympathy demonstrations, I mean here in Portland, I don't think
Speaker 1: it got larger than forty or so people. There was another,
Speaker 1: you know somewhere less than one hundred people in San
Speaker 1: Francisco that some a good chunk of them got.
Speaker 3: Kettled the other day.
Speaker 1: But not mass demonstrations yet in other cities.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Yeah, it hasn't.
Speaker 2: It hasn't like really kicked off everywhere yet. And it's
Speaker 2: also interesting because like these protests are kind of coming
Speaker 2: off of the back of a couple of like scattered things.
Speaker 2: We talked about this on executive disorder, but there was
Speaker 2: a there was a very big confrontation in Minneapolis last
Speaker 2: there's another one in Chicago where they like attacked a
Speaker 2: bunch of Chicago aldermen, which was a time. The way
Speaker 2: it's been going is like you get a giant rage
Speaker 2: and it pisses people off, and there's a flare up,
Speaker 2: and the flour ups have been getting larger but it
Speaker 2: hasn't been like a sustained thing. It's largely been reactive
Speaker 2: to these kind of large raids, and you know that's
Speaker 2: not necessarily like the recipe for a sustained thing. However,
Speaker 2: come the term administration, their target goal for the number
Speaker 2: of arrests a day is three thousand, so like they're
Speaker 2: trying to intensify the number of rage they're doing and
Speaker 2: how sort of like aggressive and like militant they are.
Speaker 2: And I think that might be a thing that causes
Speaker 2: this to accelerate as we go, as we head into
Speaker 2: like next weekend, because if they're still doing this right,
Speaker 2: like if feds are if suddenly like like hundreds of
Speaker 2: FEDS are in Chicago again and they're like grabbing people
Speaker 2: out of like Logan Square, right, or you know, they're
Speaker 2: they're trying they're doing this in like in New York,
Speaker 2: they're doing this in like other places, I think it
Speaker 2: could start to escalate, But right now it's still very
Speaker 2: much unclear.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, and that's where I stand too on
Speaker 1: this is like I don't actually know what's going to
Speaker 1: happen with this demonstration, but I think that, you know,
Speaker 1: one possibility is certainly that this continues to escalate and
Speaker 1: that you just get more and more people out consistently,
Speaker 1: the others that it kind of peters out from this point.
Speaker 1: If it continues to escalate, then the state is or
Speaker 1: the FEDS are in a situation where they have committed
Speaker 1: to continuing the escalation chain and there's not much for
Speaker 1: them to go once they've got active duty soldiers in
Speaker 1: the streets, but just actually shooting at people with live rounds,
Speaker 1: assuming that they can't stop the demonstrations with a show
Speaker 1: of force, and likewise, there's not much else for people
Speaker 1: to do but either back down and stop coming out,
Speaker 1: at which point the administration will take a victory lap
Speaker 1: and say that like, look, this works, and this will
Speaker 1: become their standard go to whenever a city erupts is
Speaker 1: immediately nationalize the state National Guard, bring out live troops. Right,
Speaker 1: that's what will happen everywhere. That's going to become the
Speaker 1: new norm. Or people will continue escalating and yeah, like
Speaker 1: in that case, the situation is like do people escalate
Speaker 1: to deploying more force, do they have that real option
Speaker 1: right or does the kind of stress of responding with
Speaker 1: that sort of force, largely with soldiers that this is
Speaker 1: not the primary thing they signed up to do. Do
Speaker 1: they start like stop obeying orders? You know, these are
Speaker 1: the kind of things that we would then be looking
Speaker 1: at to see, right, Like, that's kind of where there's
Speaker 1: a couple of different places it can go from here.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: Another possibility is that, like if we see an instance
Speaker 1: of like, okay, in order to try and crack down
Speaker 1: on this, they authorize the use of deadly force against
Speaker 1: a chunk of demonstrators and people get killed, then do
Speaker 1: you see this kind of thing erupt in cities all
Speaker 1: around the country like we saw in twenty twenty, right,
Speaker 1: which case, again, things get very because there's not there's
Speaker 1: not a lot of the US army. Really, there are
Speaker 1: a lot of cops, but compared to the US population,
Speaker 1: there's not even that any cops, right, and widespread enough
Speaker 1: discent like this, you know what would force some very
Speaker 1: difficult decisions from the federal government and from the administration, right,
Speaker 1: And that's kind of our best case scenario is that
Speaker 1: you get enough people out in enough cities that like
Speaker 1: it is just crashing the US economy, right, and there's
Speaker 1: no real way to lock down the unrest, and you
Speaker 1: start getting National Guard refusing to respond to deployment orders
Speaker 1: as well as active duty soldiers like refusing to respond right,
Speaker 1: Like these are the That's the kind of thing that
Speaker 1: we're looking at in terms of like a potential best
Speaker 1: case scenario here.
Speaker 3: I don't know where things are going to head.
Speaker 1: I think maybe a likelier possibility is not that we
Speaker 1: hit that that situation right now, but that we start
Speaker 1: to see, like as this kind of peters out, the
Speaker 1: administration puts out a victory lap, and then we start
Speaker 1: to see you know, demonstrations responding in other cities, and
Speaker 1: maybe there's kind of a slower tempo of escalation here.
Speaker 3: But I don't know.
Speaker 1: I want to say that my hope is that they
Speaker 1: overplayed their hands here, but I just don't know that
Speaker 1: that's clear, in part because we haven't seen the scale
Speaker 1: of mobilization by people that is clearly going to be
Speaker 1: impossible for them to respond to.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: I am still expecting that we're going to get a
Speaker 2: really large escalating series approachest this summer. It's June, if
Speaker 2: I am, it is June ninth as we're recording this, right,
Speaker 2: it is going to be a long, hot summer, right,
Speaker 2: Regardless of whether this is the whether it Peter's out here.
Speaker 2: I think it is absolutely possible that this Peter's out
Speaker 2: and this isn't the one. I don't think it's very
Speaker 2: likely that this Peter's out the Republican's sake of victory lap
Speaker 2: and then we don't get more protests this summer. Yeah,
Speaker 2: at this scale or larger, Yeah, I think I think
Speaker 2: that's very unlikely. We should take an at break and
Speaker 2: that I want to talk a little bit about some
Speaker 2: of the tactics we've been seeing, because they're very funny.
Speaker 1: Ah, and we're back. I should probably note very quickly that,
Speaker 1: like obviously, one thing that happens when shit like this
Speaker 1: goes down is that you get people posting on the.
Speaker 3: Internet their thoughts about this.
Speaker 1: One of the more prominent posters on Twitter in the
Speaker 1: new musc Era has been the menswear guy, who made
Speaker 1: a couple of statements that I don't entirely agree with
Speaker 1: about like I mean general support protests, but like I
Speaker 1: don't support you know, violent protests what I would call
Speaker 1: some kind of miss interpretations of the civil rights movement,
Speaker 1: but also like not something I wouldn't I don't care
Speaker 1: that much if people are wrong on the internet.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean he did have a straight up poster
Speaker 2: meltdown where he was like yelling about someone's like breakup
Speaker 2: to say that they're insufficiently devoted because they didn't stay
Speaker 2: with this person to keep them in the court.
Speaker 4: There is melt on base.
Speaker 1: Shit, But like what matters, people melt down, posters melt
Speaker 1: out what I think what matters is that like he
Speaker 1: made a post later, a longer one, talking about the
Speaker 1: fact that he was undocumented, his family was undocumented because
Speaker 1: you know, they came to initially Canada after the tet
Speaker 1: offensive and entered the US through a porous border and
Speaker 1: talking about the way in which being undocumented has like
Speaker 1: affected his entire life. And now the vice president and
Speaker 1: the DHS account put us in a picture of like
Speaker 1: spy kids of a kid with like a little like
Speaker 1: computer tracker thing on his eye, and JD. Vance made
Speaker 1: a post being like basically, we're going to deport the
Speaker 1: menswear guy for his posts.
Speaker 4: Yeah, which is fucking hideous.
Speaker 1: Which is it's just like again another example of the
Speaker 1: ridiculous level of government repression that we're looking at here,
Speaker 1: like where the federal government is like targeting themselves based
Speaker 1: on posts that make people angry.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and well it's bifically post on Twitter, yeah too,
Speaker 2: like and like that's also an important thing of like,
Speaker 2: if you're not on Twitter, it is harder to get
Speaker 2: the eye of the state on you if you are
Speaker 2: on Twitter. Yeah, Like, the Vice president can be posting
Speaker 2: fucking unhinged reply images to someone talking about deporting you,
Speaker 2: like Jesus fucking Christ. Yeah, is a horrifying level of repression.
Speaker 2: The sort of mirror to this is the stuff we've
Speaker 2: been seeing on the ground. Right there's a video going
Speaker 2: around of a like a pretty right wing like Australian
Speaker 2: journalists who's just like talking about the protests and.
Speaker 1: Like maybe twenty feet their back turned to a police
Speaker 1: right line.
Speaker 2: It's more like like fifteen. The guy like the end
Speaker 2: of the right line just like turns and shoots.
Speaker 1: Her, very casually. No protesters close to her, absolutely, no question,
Speaker 1: no no, no chance that he was aiming at someone else,
Speaker 1: zero chance, no chance that he thought that she was
Speaker 1: attacking him. Just shot a lady in the back of
Speaker 1: her thigh with an impact mutition for no reason.
Speaker 2: The most on hinge part of this, well, okay, the
Speaker 2: most on hinge part of this was that they fucking
Speaker 2: did this. The second most hinge part of it was
Speaker 2: that her fucking like her fucking outlet in the description
Speaker 2: of the video said that they appeared to be targeting
Speaker 2: the profire, like appeared to be targeting a protest.
Speaker 4: It's like, no, they weren't. Man, there's this really.
Speaker 2: Amazing thing with the American press, were like they are
Speaker 2: incapable of objectively describing the thing that a cop does
Speaker 2: because if they described the thing that the cop does,
Speaker 2: it looks like antipode.
Speaker 3: Everyone can see yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so they have to just lie about it
Speaker 2: and be like, oh, it was commonly. Crush was like, no,
Speaker 2: with your own eyes you can see. But the headline
Speaker 2: is lying.
Speaker 1: This is not questionable. This is not an arguable point.
Speaker 1: This is not debatable. Oh, the footage is objective.
Speaker 4: Watch the video.
Speaker 1: It's like, Okay, guys, he just shot her because he
Speaker 1: wanted to, because he thought it was funny, Like that's
Speaker 1: why he did it, we.
Speaker 2: Know, Yeah, And like this kind of shit just continues
Speaker 2: to happen, Like the press has learned nothing from twenty twenty.
Speaker 2: They're still doing all the stupid snography shit. There's actually
Speaker 2: been shit the cops have done in this protest that
Speaker 2: I've never actually seen before, which is a new one,
Speaker 2: because by by the time I was like I was
Speaker 2: like a few weeks of twenty twenty, I had seen
Speaker 2: basically everything, right, Like, I'm doing this for like fucking ages.
Speaker 2: I've seen the cops trample people with horses before. I
Speaker 2: had never seen them trample a guy and beat him
Speaker 2: with the same person on a horse. Yeah, beating a
Speaker 2: guy and trampling them with the horse at the same time.
Speaker 2: That's a new one. Good fucking God. That's also and
Speaker 2: I think it's actually is this worth understanding? Is that,
Speaker 2: like that is the point of police horses, Like the
Speaker 2: reason they have them is so they can trample people
Speaker 2: with them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's to run people over with them.
Speaker 2: Yes, Yeah, And it's it's real fucking bad. That's that's
Speaker 2: hideous and shit like this has been happening this whole time.
Speaker 2: There's been a bunch of journalists who have really been
Speaker 2: really severely injured by impact munitions already.
Speaker 1: Yeah, one guy I get shot in the skull with
Speaker 1: a You can tell it's a forty millimeters because of
Speaker 1: the indent that left in his skull.
Speaker 2: Yeah, those things are like the size of your fist, and.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're just they're they're massive, and they're not they're
Speaker 1: not even meant to be fired directly. When you're shooting
Speaker 1: at people, you're supposed to shoot them up at the
Speaker 1: ground and bounce them into people.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Now, no cop has ever done this.
Speaker 3: They don't use them that way. I've had a used
Speaker 3: on me, like I'm sorry.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this this munition has never been used like that,
Speaker 2: no single time media.
Speaker 1: History's And that's the general truth of riot munitions. And actually,
Speaker 1: I don't know if this guy was shot with a
Speaker 1: with a with a rubber around or a foam round.
Speaker 1: I think they probably shot him with a grenade, which
Speaker 1: you're also not supposed to shoot at people, but again
Speaker 1: they do all the.
Speaker 4: Time, which also kills people a lot.
Speaker 1: Guy very nearly died in Portland a few years back
Speaker 1: from that. Only his bike helmet saved them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, like this is this is a This is
Speaker 2: one of the most common ways people get killed in
Speaker 2: protests is by the cops shooting them.
Speaker 4: Yeah, like pure gas can.
Speaker 2: Specifically, especially like in Turkey, this is a huge thing.
Speaker 2: Like a bunch of people got killed by by You're
Speaker 2: gonna keep my ter gut canisters.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 2: However, come there has been a bunch of extremely funny
Speaker 2: and like pretty effective tactics people are using. One of
Speaker 2: which I've never seen before that is fascinating is people
Speaker 2: were calling wimos.
Speaker 4: Which are these like driverless yes, yes, yeah. So they
Speaker 4: would use the app.
Speaker 2: To call winmos the places they wanted to set up roadblocks,
Speaker 2: stop police cars going through, and stop ice cars going through,
Speaker 2: and then they would land them on fire. And they
Speaker 2: did this to so many of these cars that the
Speaker 2: LAPD called Wimo and told them to shut it down
Speaker 2: because they were like.
Speaker 4: Literally, it's it's it's a self driving flaming barricade.
Speaker 1: Well, and I think white people were doing it is
Speaker 1: in part because like they like the board started spreading that,
Speaker 1: like the police, were you getting footage from wimo right, ye,
Speaker 1: so they were like, well, these are surveillance machines and
Speaker 1: yeah if you if you show up, you light one
Speaker 1: on fire and there's this flaming barricade.
Speaker 3: Yeah yep.
Speaker 2: And then and then people figured out that you could
Speaker 2: just like oh, we could just bring these to places
Speaker 2: like this, this is.
Speaker 4: A self deploying flaming barricade.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And and the other thing that that's interesting about
Speaker 2: it too, is it's another one of these examples that
Speaker 2: you see in protests of like people have this tendency
Speaker 2: to think of riots as these like really spontaneous things
Speaker 2: that nobody's like thinking.
Speaker 4: About a lot.
Speaker 2: But the thing about why MOS is that like, if
Speaker 2: you've like walked in a city that has these things,
Speaker 2: these things have tried to run you over at least once.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Like there's there's a serverials angle.
Speaker 2: There's also the angle that these things are trying to
Speaker 2: fucking kill you all the time. And so and this
Speaker 2: is like, you know, this is a very common like
Speaker 2: like first thing that happens in the riot is like
Speaker 2: people burn down the thing that has been trying to
Speaker 2: fucking kill them this whole time. Yeah, so this is
Speaker 2: this one, except they figured out how to try into
Speaker 2: flaming card parricees.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I don't know, I guess we should end this
Speaker 1: with assuming things do kind of get get bigger, or
Speaker 1: assuming things get bigger later. Yeah, and you're watching this
Speaker 1: and either you head out soon and wind up you know,
Speaker 1: being at a protest, or that happens later. There's a
Speaker 1: couple of things to keep in mind. One of them
Speaker 1: is is, especially as we hit the summer, there's always
Speaker 1: trade offs when we talk about like different kinds of
Speaker 1: body armor that you may or may not want to have,
Speaker 1: right you know, the two broad types are soft ballistic
Speaker 1: armor and hard ballistic armour. When we talk about like
Speaker 1: ballistic body armor that can that is resistant to bullets.
Speaker 1: Downsides to both of those are expense no reliable body armor,
Speaker 1: and I'm talking about NIJ certified body armour, which you
Speaker 1: should always shoot forard. None of that is ever cheap.
Speaker 1: Some is cheaper than others. Soft body armor is really
Speaker 1: all you need for riot munitions. It doesn't stop the
Speaker 1: pain as much as hard body armor. I've been hit
Speaker 1: in hard body armor by impact munitions by like foam
Speaker 1: rounds and stuff and barely felt it, whereas being hit
Speaker 1: with them in soft armor is still pretty painful. However,
Speaker 1: hard body armor, like the stuff that stops rifle rounds,
Speaker 1: can shatter when hit by impact munitions, and again, because
Speaker 1: it's a significant expense, means you might not have that
Speaker 1: hard body armour anymore. The other thing to keep in
Speaker 1: counter is that when you're talking about like armor for
Speaker 1: your body, if you're worried primarily about impact munitions. It
Speaker 1: doesn't have to be ballistic stuff like football pads, hockey
Speaker 1: pads works very well against soft munitions.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: Again, there's a huge trade off and potentially a safety
Speaker 1: trade off if it's one hundred and ten degrees where
Speaker 1: you are, like the danger of wearing any body armoor
Speaker 1: and how much it slows you down, and how the
Speaker 1: odds of it causing you to have heat stroke or
Speaker 1: whatever can be significantly higher than like whatever you'd gain
Speaker 1: in protection. However, there are some things you should never
Speaker 1: go into a situation like this without in terms of armor.
Speaker 1: One of those is a helmet. Again, there are ballistic
Speaker 1: helmets that are resistant to pistol rounds. There are no
Speaker 1: helmets that exist that will reliably stop rifle rounds at
Speaker 1: in my close range with a rifle. We're talking within
Speaker 1: a couple hundred meters, right, Those don't exist. They can
Speaker 1: stop maybe a ricochet or a glancing blow. They're good
Speaker 1: for shrapnel, they're good for pistols. That's what helmet ballistic
Speaker 1: helmets are for, and those are great for police riot rounds.
Speaker 1: A ballistic helmet is a really good thing to have
Speaker 1: if they are shooting rubber rounds or shooting grenades directly
Speaker 1: at people. It is not, however, the only thing you
Speaker 1: need or the only thing that could provide safety. It's
Speaker 1: not ideal to have like a bump helmet or a
Speaker 1: bike helmet as opposed to a ballistic helmet, or like
Speaker 1: a bike helmet as opposed to a bump helmet. These
Speaker 1: are different things. A bump helmet is higher rated than
Speaker 1: like a standard bike helmet. A motorcycle helmet is also
Speaker 1: pretty robust. A bumper motorcycle helmet is better to have
Speaker 1: if you're being shot at with non lethal or less
Speaker 1: than lethal whatever you want to call them munitions, but
Speaker 1: all of those, any kind of helmet is better than
Speaker 1: your bare skull when police are shooting into a craft.
Speaker 1: So where something even if it's a ten dollars fucking
Speaker 1: bicycle helmet, if that's all you can get where that.
Speaker 1: Don't go into a situation like this without a helmet.
Speaker 1: Bring something like a fucking camelback or whatever that you
Speaker 1: can have on your back and drink water from regularly,
Speaker 1: as well as bottles of water that you can use
Speaker 1: to wash out tear gas. Only use water to wash
Speaker 1: out tear gas only water water and if you catch
Speaker 1: people being like milk works, tell them you are wrong.
Speaker 3: Don't use milk.
Speaker 4: No friends, co rets, lovers, your family.
Speaker 2: He can be the generation that stops using milk for
Speaker 2: tear gas.
Speaker 4: You can do this.
Speaker 1: You don't need to make cheese and your eyes only you.
Speaker 1: You can people, for the love of God, it doesn't
Speaker 1: work anytime. And if somebody starts talking about well, no,
Speaker 1: you know, actually it's just like if you eat something spicy. No, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: none of that's right.
Speaker 3: I'm telling you none of that's right.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: Some people do use something called law, which is like
Speaker 1: a mixture of I think it's an answer or something
Speaker 1: like that. I think exactly what's in law, And yeah,
Speaker 1: that can be effective, but don't use it. Just use water.
Speaker 1: Use water. Use water.
Speaker 3: Just use water.
Speaker 1: If you are if you have some degree of like
Speaker 1: professional medical treatment, and you decide law is better, do
Speaker 1: whatever you want doctor right, but like, don't you listening,
Speaker 1: use water right?
Speaker 3: Just want water.
Speaker 2: Look melt ice into water, use clean water.
Speaker 1: Idea from something like anyway whatever. When it comes to mace,
Speaker 1: water eventually will get mace out. Mace is way different
Speaker 1: from tear gas. Tear gas with water You can be
Speaker 1: back to functional in a couple of minutes, right, if
Speaker 1: you wash your eyes out. I've been tear gas like
Speaker 1: two hundred fucking times, and I'll tell you it never
Speaker 1: takes that long to get your eyes functional again.
Speaker 4: Assuming.
Speaker 1: The other thing you want to note is that if
Speaker 1: you're going into a tear gas situation, if you wear contacts,
Speaker 1: don't glasses only, right, because you do not want to
Speaker 1: have mace or tear gas in your eyes. When you
Speaker 1: have contacts, it can cause permanent debilitating damage.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: They may need to surgically remove your fucking contacts where
Speaker 1: your goddamn glasses. You can, And I have worn contacts
Speaker 1: with like a full face respirator or a full face
Speaker 1: gas mask, But there are still dangers there, including that
Speaker 1: if you are wearing a full face mask or a
Speaker 1: gas mask or something like that and the police catch you,
Speaker 1: they will pull that up and mace you underneath your mask.
Speaker 1: It's happened to a bunch of people I know. And
Speaker 1: if you're wearing contacts under there, you can get in
Speaker 1: very bad shape. There are easy ways to make glasses
Speaker 1: holders if you've got a spare pair of lenses inside
Speaker 1: a mask like that, Anyway, the other thing to note
Speaker 1: is that mace is not the same as tear gas.
Speaker 1: Mace fucks you up for much longer. You are going
Speaker 1: to be out of commission for at least probably twenty
Speaker 1: to thirty minutes with mace. In the best case scenario,
Speaker 1: enough water will eventually wash out mace, right, It will
Speaker 1: eventually deal with it, but not on any kind of
Speaker 1: short timeframe. Right, It's going to take you a while
Speaker 1: to get enough mace out of your eyes.
Speaker 3: That way.
Speaker 1: Ideally, you get to a place where you have access
Speaker 1: to something like a faucet or a hose, and you
Speaker 1: use dawn dish soap is the best thing to use.
Speaker 1: That's going to remove the surface thing. There's a better
Speaker 1: thing for this, but I'm talking about if you don't
Speaker 1: have access to specialized things or like baby shampoo, right,
Speaker 1: something like that. Ideally, dish soap next would be something
Speaker 1: like baby shampoo, right, with a good amount of water. Now,
Speaker 1: the very best thing for mace is a specific wipe
Speaker 1: that's made to be used for this, and this does
Speaker 1: also help for tear gas. It's called Pseudocon Wipes sud
Speaker 1: e co In. You can buy it off of Amazon
Speaker 1: right now. They're not expensive and carry a couple of packs.
Speaker 1: You generally want to like take what's in there in
Speaker 1: two different pieces and use one to kind of wipe
Speaker 1: away from your eyes and then the other to clean
Speaker 1: your face up afterwards, once you've removed the bulk of
Speaker 1: the material. Pseudocon wipes are the best thing to use
Speaker 1: with mace. Anyway. That's a quick and dirty guide to
Speaker 1: what kind of stuff is useful for this. And as always,
Speaker 1: water water, water, Yeah.
Speaker 2: And the one last thing I want to add is
Speaker 2: that there is there is one more scourge that you
Speaker 2: can end in this generation. Stop getting kettled on bridges.
Speaker 2: I swear to God. Don't cross the bridge. Do not
Speaker 2: don't be like My action is we're going to hold
Speaker 2: a bridge. Every single time there's one of these goddamn protests,
Speaker 2: like ten thousand people get a rest on the Brooklyn Bridge.
Speaker 4: It happens every time.
Speaker 2: The thing with bridges is that if the police cut
Speaker 2: off both ends, you are now stuck on the bridge.
Speaker 2: Don't go onto the bridge, simply do not. Like I'm
Speaker 2: not even gonna give normally a speech that I give
Speaker 2: here is about like, oh well, if you've on a bridge,
Speaker 2: make sure you can hold one side of it. No, no, no, no,
Speaker 2: no fuck that. No bridges, don't go on bridges. We
Speaker 2: can stop. As a society. We have the technology. Don't
Speaker 2: get don't get kettled on a bridge. It is so
Speaker 2: fucking easy you simply don't go on the bridge.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, and that's that's the episode for today. Everybody
Speaker 1: use water, don't get kettled on bridges.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Good luck everyone, good luck.
Speaker 5: It could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 5: For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
Speaker 5: coolzonmedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 5: Apple Podcasts, or wherever.
Speaker 4: You listen to podcasts.
Speaker 5: You can now find sources for It Could Happen here,
Speaker 5: listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.