Speaker 1: Also media.
Speaker 2: Hey everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let
Speaker 2: you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode
Speaker 2: of the week that just happened is here in one
Speaker 2: convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to
Speaker 2: listen to in a long stretch if you want. If
Speaker 2: you've been listening to the episodes every day this week,
Speaker 2: there's going to be nothing new here for you, but
Speaker 2: you can make your own decisions.
Speaker 3: Welcome to it could happen here, a podcast about things
Speaker 3: falling apart and putting them back together again and occasionally
Speaker 3: discovering that there is in fact a second union. I
Speaker 3: am your host of Meal Long Now. A little while back,
Speaker 3: I did an interview with a group of electrolysis workers
Speaker 3: who are working for a company called Real Electrolysis, and
Speaker 3: we talked about, you know, their unionization efforts and the
Speaker 3: kind of horror show that was going on there. Now,
Speaker 3: what I didn't mention at the time was that in
Speaker 3: the process of talking to those work and that union,
Speaker 3: I learned that there was in fact a second union
Speaker 3: that had been organized kind of unrelated to the first
Speaker 3: union at the other location. And that is who we
Speaker 3: are talking to today. To get an update on what
Speaker 3: has been going on in general with the entire situation,
Speaker 3: and also talk about their union and a thing that
Speaker 3: you will kind of commonly experience randomly unionizing places, which
Speaker 3: is that sometimes there is another organizing effort at another
Speaker 3: one of the locations at the same place that you
Speaker 3: were organizing, and you don't know about it because everyone's.
Speaker 2: Keeping it secret.
Speaker 3: So yeah, to talk about this, I'm joined by Lake
Speaker 3: and Andy from Gender Affirming Care Workers Alliance. Yeah, both
Speaker 3: of you two, welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Hi, thank you for having us. Thank you.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm very excited to talk to you both.
Speaker 3: And I guess before we get into the initial organizing,
Speaker 3: just what was it like finding out that the other
Speaker 3: shop was also unionizing?
Speaker 1: Oh my god, it was terrifying. So, like our number
Speaker 1: one priority during our Lakewood campaign was secrecy. We absolutely
Speaker 1: knew how hostile management was towards any kind of improvement
Speaker 1: of workplace conditions. So going from almost five versus spy
Speaker 1: level of off sec to figuring out that Vancouver was
Speaker 1: also unionizing and was doing a walkout, like, I think
Speaker 1: that was when we learned. Oh god, was when the
Speaker 1: day that they kind of imploded and we were terrified,
Speaker 1: Like we did not think there would be any way
Speaker 1: out of that for Lakewood.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a rough way to find out when Yeah,
Speaker 3: the other union is like, oh God, okay, we have
Speaker 3: to do we have to do a walkout, we have
Speaker 3: to go on strike because they're firing us.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it was certainly understandable. I wouldn't say
Speaker 1: we knew why the walkout was happening. When we found
Speaker 1: out that the walkout happened and that a strike was starting,
Speaker 1: our campaign kind of came to a halt. Like realizing
Speaker 1: there was another campaign happening made us had to reconsider
Speaker 1: what we were doing. Like we had our own a
Speaker 1: grievances and we were really just in the process of
Speaker 1: getting people on board. We had maybe a core group
Speaker 1: of five, but we had thirteen or up to thirteen
Speaker 1: in the end, but we had like ten to twelve electrologist.
Speaker 1: Because that number was constantly changing, we had to stop
Speaker 1: and reassess.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker 1: And obviously we wanted solidarity with Vancouver. We wanted to
Speaker 1: do whatever we could to support them, but we also
Speaker 1: didn't want to lose our jobs.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: One of the first things we decided that Lakewood is
Speaker 1: that we weren't going to ask anyone to lose their
Speaker 1: job in order to unionize. We weren't going to put
Speaker 1: anyone in a position where they would then become unstable.
Speaker 1: Almost every single worker at Lakewood like desperately needed this job.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Without it, we would risk calmlessness or other things. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so we kind of got stuck. I mean, it was
Speaker 1: it was a tough situation to be in. Knowing that
Speaker 1: we would have been on their side, and with more
Speaker 1: information and more planning, we would have probably joined them,
Speaker 1: but we weren't there yet.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And this is I guess partially also, Like you know,
Speaker 3: one of the things is difficult about doing campaigns is
Speaker 3: that sometimes like sometimes campaigns move at the speed that
Speaker 3: the workers are organizing at, and then sometimes they move
Speaker 3: at the speed of like, oh my god, the boss
Speaker 3: is firing everyone.
Speaker 4: We just have to go now.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And that's yeah, that's always one of the issues
Speaker 3: is like as much as you want to be setting
Speaker 3: the tempos, sometimes you're responding to like what management is doing,
Speaker 3: and that can get very rough, very quickly.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, I think Vancouver did great with their circumstances. Like
Speaker 1: you said it, management set the pace and they had
Speaker 1: to respond. At Lakewood, we were really trying to do
Speaker 1: the opposite. We wanted to put us put ourselves in
Speaker 1: a position where we were taking an action and management
Speaker 1: was responding, and in the end we did. We paused
Speaker 1: when Vancouver went on strike, we tried to assess how
Speaker 1: best we could help them without just also imploding Lakewood.
Speaker 1: Part of what we realized is that management had not
Speaker 1: realized any campaign was happening at Lakewood because they were
Speaker 1: going to use us as no votes in the election.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: They wanted us to be considered one bargaining unit because
Speaker 1: they thought that we would say no and that union
Speaker 1: would lose the election.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So our Sky versus SPIC shit was successful.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're doing well. Management deceived, yeah perfectly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So do you want to re wind the clock
Speaker 3: a bit and talk about sort of how organizing efforts started.
Speaker 3: It was not connected to the other campaign at all.
Speaker 1: It wasn't, but I think we were dealing with a
Speaker 1: lot of similar issues. Yeah, in our first year, as
Speaker 1: we got onboarded and saw how things were versus the
Speaker 1: position that was promised to us and sold to us, Yeah,
Speaker 1: everyone kind of started catching on to things and started
Speaker 1: like building a list of grievances. There were concerns about
Speaker 1: the lack of training and patient safety. There were concerns
Speaker 1: about the lack of time to do our job, you know,
Speaker 1: working during breaks, working during our lunches. There was really
Speaker 1: unclear and inconsistent disciplinary actions being taken left and right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like one person would be told they could do something,
Speaker 1: another person would do that and get written up for it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it felt targeted. At some point, Lake would realize that
Speaker 1: there was no position you could be in where your
Speaker 1: where your job was safe. You could be management, you
Speaker 1: could be the owner's absolute favorite electrologist, you could be
Speaker 1: the best at your job. You could keep your head
Speaker 1: down and do absolutely nothing, and one day you would
Speaker 1: be disappeared for whatever reason if you got one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was like a span of like two or three
Speaker 1: months where we lost maybe five employees and everyone heard
Speaker 1: a different reason if one was given.
Speaker 3: Hmm, which is a pretty clear sign that something is
Speaker 3: going wrong.
Speaker 1: Exactly.
Speaker 6: Yeah, And I think I was the second employee to
Speaker 6: be disappeared.
Speaker 3: At the location.
Speaker 4: Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there were two employees where we were told they resigned,
Speaker 1: and everyone very very much knew that These are employees
Speaker 1: that wouldn't have resigned. These were employees that were ready
Speaker 1: to start careers and build their life around real you
Speaker 1: we all believed in real use mission. But yeah, eventually
Speaker 1: we just realized it didn't matter. Yeah, there was no
Speaker 1: job stability for anyone, and that was a really big
Speaker 1: issue because that's what all of us came to this
Speaker 1: job for. We were hoping for long term careers that
Speaker 1: paid us livable wages and also were safe for us
Speaker 1: to be ourselves in. There's not a lot of jobs
Speaker 1: where trans women get to be trans women, and like
Speaker 1: this was a job that almost celebrated it.
Speaker 6: And I know, for me personally, I was really excited
Speaker 6: for the opportunity to be able to help the community.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I come from Florida, I'm born and raised unfortunately,
Speaker 1: where transitioning for a long time was kind of a
Speaker 1: pipe dream, Like it was not a realistic goal of
Speaker 1: mine until moving to Washington. And now I get to
Speaker 1: take or I used to get to take part in
Speaker 1: people's transition every day for my job.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know, And that's I think like one
Speaker 3: of the kind of cruelest parts of all of this,
Speaker 3: And like what management has done it's just like ripping
Speaker 3: that away from both you and from the community.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, And it didn't have to be that way.
Speaker 4: No, it really didn't. Yeah.
Speaker 3: And I guess speaking of the cruelty of management, Yeah, Andy,
Speaker 3: I guess do you want to talk about when you
Speaker 3: said getting disappeared? What was going on with that?
Speaker 6: So I had brought a lot of the grievances that
Speaker 6: I was seeing and had towards the owners of the
Speaker 6: company on on Lea, alongside the manager of the clinic
Speaker 6: at the time. And any time anything wrong with the
Speaker 6: business was brought up, hostilities just grew and they kept
Speaker 6: growing the more and more that we said, hey, you know,
Speaker 6: there's issues with the training. There these issues with the
Speaker 6: amount of time that people have to do your jobs.
Speaker 6: And it was honestly a really hostile environment created by Anna.
Speaker 6: And before I had gotten disappeared, I was in my
Speaker 6: educational program for electrolysis. I was in the process of
Speaker 6: completing that before my termination, and I had brought up
Speaker 6: some of my concerns because as I was learning more
Speaker 6: and more about electrolysis, I realized that so many of
Speaker 6: the things we had been taught were just wrong. Yeah,
Speaker 6: And because Ana and Leah didn't want to address it
Speaker 6: and didn't want that information being out there. I was
Speaker 6: put in the position where I either had to sign
Speaker 6: a non disclosure to forgive my student low debt, or
Speaker 6: I could choose to just be fired.
Speaker 1: And then assume the debt.
Speaker 3: Jesus, I mean they did. They just literally forced you
Speaker 3: out of the company.
Speaker 1: Correct, it was an involuntary resignation.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that is only voluntary, and like the strict Hobbesy
Speaker 3: in sense where like Hobbes considers that if someone has
Speaker 3: a gun at your head and tells you to do
Speaker 3: something and you do it, you still voluntarily made the decision.
Speaker 2: And I don't know.
Speaker 3: About you, I don't hold to the strict hobsy an
Speaker 3: interpretation of voluntary. I don't think I agree, but I
Speaker 3: think that if you were coerced into a decision, it's
Speaker 3: not voluntary.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 4: Oh God, obviously.
Speaker 3: I think the other part of this that's just really
Speaker 3: grotesque is what you were talking about in terms of
Speaker 3: just the education being wrong, because this is something that's
Speaker 3: really common in trans healthcare, where like there should Yeah,
Speaker 3: there is just a bunch of stuff the medical professionals
Speaker 3: are being taught that was developed from something someone figured
Speaker 3: out kind of in the eighties and has never been
Speaker 3: updated in the course of like the last twenty five
Speaker 3: years of the development of science and then just also
Speaker 3: the development of there being more and more trans people
Speaker 3: who have been, you know, just like experiencing treatment. And
Speaker 3: it's frustrating, I think, because you really rarely ever get
Speaker 3: a scenario where there are trans people who actually are
Speaker 3: in a position sufficient enough in any kind of medical
Speaker 3: institution to even like get to talk about it. And
Speaker 3: the fact that their response was to just like disappear
Speaker 3: you and like force you out of the company is
Speaker 3: really bleak.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 6: And on that note, I would say most of the
Speaker 6: whole poes received about two weeks training before working on patients.
Speaker 4: Oh boy.
Speaker 6: That and the educational program that I went through was
Speaker 6: four months. So if you kind of compare the timelines
Speaker 6: there of how we were trained in the job versus
Speaker 6: the education that I got, it just wasn't enough.
Speaker 1: Yeah, not only was it not enough, but anyone who
Speaker 1: voiced that it wasn't enough put their job at risk.
Speaker 1: I mean there's more than one Lakewood worker that went
Speaker 1: to management saying, hey, I don't feel well trained enough,
Speaker 1: I don't feel informed enough, and they were met with
Speaker 1: well more than one situation in which they were like
Speaker 1: directly asked like do you feel comfortable working on patients?
Speaker 1: Do you think you're capable of this job? With the
Speaker 1: implication or the direct verbal statement being if you don't,
Speaker 1: maybe you should find somewhere else to work. Yeah, But
Speaker 1: all of us signed up for this job with the agreement,
Speaker 1: like we signed these loan agreements with the idea that
Speaker 1: we'd be going to this in depth training. Like the
Speaker 1: owners themselves during my interview process at least talked up
Speaker 1: sat Master's constantly like this is the place to go
Speaker 1: to learn about how to provide electrolysis for transgender clients specifically.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then I worked there for sixteen months and never
Speaker 1: saw any training after my first few weeks, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think the entire sixteen months there after my first month,
Speaker 1: my sessions were only observed three times. Jesus only three times.
Speaker 1: And I was not an electrolysist provider before this. This
Speaker 1: was my entry into it. Their training was the only
Speaker 1: training I got. Yeah, And the only reason my sessions
Speaker 1: started being shadowed at all is because providers themselves started
Speaker 1: asking for like auditing sessions.
Speaker 6: There is an instance that I would like to bring up.
Speaker 6: I was overseeing the training of new hire and during
Speaker 6: this training period, I had a patient on my books
Speaker 6: who had requested to never be on my books again,
Speaker 6: which no, totally fine, totally valid, But the fact that
Speaker 6: they were put on my books after requesting not to
Speaker 6: see me again was an issue.
Speaker 1: It's not totally fine or totally valid to do that.
Speaker 6: That's not fine on management's part. And so as I
Speaker 6: am training this new hire and we're going into this session,
Speaker 6: the patient wasn't comfortable with me being there in the
Speaker 6: room to provide training to the new hire. So I
Speaker 6: had to leave the new hire alone.
Speaker 2: With that patient Jesus.
Speaker 6: Because they weren't come with me being there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that is a just absolutely unacceptable way for any
Speaker 3: of this to be running, especially with a delicate healthcare
Speaker 3: thing that can cause.
Speaker 4: Inturgue to people.
Speaker 3: Exactly, if we can back up for a second, can
Speaker 3: you explain a little bit for people who didn't listen
Speaker 3: to the first episode or people who don't remember about
Speaker 3: the absolutely wild I guess nominally student loan like in
Speaker 3: danger program thing that was. That's the key component of
Speaker 3: this whole of this whole story.
Speaker 1: So just about every worker until like some of the
Speaker 1: most recent workers, got a job at real U Electrolysis
Speaker 1: with the understanding that we would be hired and trained
Speaker 1: and receive pay well being trained by real you, but
Speaker 1: that at some point they would send us to zap
Speaker 1: Masters in Centralia for an electrolysis training program and to
Speaker 1: get us licensed via Oregon State. Washington doesn't have electrolysis
Speaker 1: licensure requirements. You could buy a machine and start providing.
Speaker 1: You shouldn't, but you could, yea. So the idea was
Speaker 1: that they would pay for our zap Master's training, they
Speaker 1: would pay for our machine, they would pay us while
Speaker 1: we were learning this job and starting with them, and
Speaker 1: they totally all of that at around nineteen thousand, five
Speaker 1: hundred dollars plus interest, So nineteen to twenty one thousand
Speaker 1: is the number that gets thrown around. They would pay
Speaker 1: for that and forgive it if we agreed to work
Speaker 1: for them for four years after they license us. So
Speaker 1: this four year timer doesn't even start until we're finished
Speaker 1: with school and get our license in Oregon. It included
Speaker 1: a clause where not only do we have to work
Speaker 1: for them for four years, but we can't work for
Speaker 1: other electrolysis.
Speaker 6: Clinics, which these kinds of employment agreements are literally called
Speaker 6: trap agreements. Yeah, if that kind of cluesy in anything.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Yeah, it's like it's since an indigered servitud agreements.
Speaker 1: Like and that's like, God, hindsight is twenty twenty Jesus crushed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a lot of us had the foresight to know it
Speaker 1: wasn't a good situation, but we were coming from worse situation.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think a way to think about this also is
Speaker 3: just that, like, you know, there's two parts of us
Speaker 3: that are predatory. One is the recruitments that is designed
Speaker 3: is you know, based on i mean just lying to
Speaker 3: people about how this is going to go. And then
Speaker 3: there's the secondary parts that's the exploitiveness of the agreement itself.
Speaker 3: And I don't know, I think we have this very
Speaker 3: very annoying tendency to look at being an inherently exploitive
Speaker 3: situation to something as you know, something that like through
Speaker 3: anioliberal personal choice, you could just avoid being in these
Speaker 3: situations entirely, and that's just like not true.
Speaker 1: No, Unfortunately, if you have a regular job, you are
Speaker 1: being exploited.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, and you know the fact that like going
Speaker 3: back to the sort of like hobbsy and consent thing,
Speaker 3: it's like, well, okay, like, is anyone actually like you know,
Speaker 3: operating freely in a set of conditions where yeah, like
Speaker 3: if you don't take the job, your alternative is that
Speaker 3: you don't have food, and you you know, you can't
Speaker 3: pay your rent and you and you don't have a
Speaker 3: home anymore exactly.
Speaker 6: I mean when I came to real you, I was homeless. Yeah,
Speaker 6: before being employed with them.
Speaker 1: You're not the only one. I think many of us were.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And that's something that I think is also really
Speaker 3: bleak about the way that this was structured, which was
Speaker 3: like one of the things that we talked about the
Speaker 3: last episode was at Annealantry like very specifically said that
Speaker 3: she was targeting trans people because you could just like
Speaker 3: treat them a little bit nicely and they would do
Speaker 3: anything for you. And yeah, it's like, you know, this
Speaker 3: is a deliberate targeting of a population that has an
Speaker 3: unemployment rate that is what like four and a half
Speaker 3: times the un the general unemployment rate in the US,
Speaker 3: that is, at all times and at all places, operating
Speaker 3: in like great depression levels of unemployment and that's yeah,
Speaker 3: you know who's like homelessness rates and like rate of
Speaker 3: having been homelesses like orders of magnitude higher for the
Speaker 3: general population. And I don't know, it's extremely bleak that,
Speaker 3: you know, the opportunity to both like help your community
Speaker 3: and also make a just absolutely seismic like class increase
Speaker 3: from like being homeless and struggling to feed yourself to
Speaker 3: like having stable employment is ultimately kind of this like
Speaker 3: debt peon ship trap.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean you put it pretty clearly.
Speaker 3: Capitalism sucks like christ bad economic exist.
Speaker 2: Of good Lord Ough agreed.
Speaker 3: So speaking of capital we should probably throw to ads,
Speaker 3: and then when we come back, we could talk more
Speaker 3: about resisting capitalism, which is to say, how the organizing
Speaker 3: dot going and what's been happening.
Speaker 1: Since Yeah sounds good.
Speaker 3: Sounds good, and we are back. Yeah, so let's get
Speaker 3: into a little bit more of like how the organizing
Speaker 3: process started and how it sort of went.
Speaker 1: I think Andy might be a good one to start
Speaker 1: with this, because, unbeknownst to everyone, there were three different
Speaker 1: starts through our union efforts. Andy, before you got.
Speaker 6: Got yeah, I was looking into the possibility of trying
Speaker 6: to start a union at the shop. I was reaching
Speaker 6: out to different union organizations, and I was also looking
Speaker 6: at what government agencies that I could be reaching out
Speaker 6: to about some of the things that we were experiencing
Speaker 6: at our workplace.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so that would have been around November of last year.
Speaker 3: Around November.
Speaker 1: And then Andy disappeared that there was a string of firings,
Speaker 1: and I would say our efforts started again around January
Speaker 1: of this year. Kind of just started with one of
Speaker 1: our workers chatting with their patients. The trans community is
Speaker 1: also pretty involved in organizing mutual aid unions. So like
Speaker 1: when you're shooting the ship with your patient and they
Speaker 1: hear like a workplace ripe for organizing, they tell.
Speaker 3: You, wait, that is the that is that is maybe
Speaker 3: the sweetest thing I've ever heard.
Speaker 1: Like it was pretty good. This wouldn't have happened.
Speaker 3: Trans people, truly, truly amazing.
Speaker 1: Oh so, yeah, we had a patient who was an
Speaker 1: IWW member who told us that was, look, you gotta start,
Speaker 1: you gotta get in contact with the GNB and then
Speaker 1: start learning how to organize. So we did.
Speaker 8: That's amaze.
Speaker 3: Okay, it's not quite salting because he was someone who
Speaker 3: was a patient and not like an employee, but it's
Speaker 3: like it's kind of like an accidental saulting.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, none of this would have happened without
Speaker 1: our patients. They've been supportive of the entire way. When
Speaker 1: things in Vancouver started happening, we all started having patients
Speaker 1: ask or tell us that, look, I don't want to
Speaker 1: put you in an AFERA position, but if y'all started unionizing,
Speaker 1: that'd be dope. Yeah, it was really nice getting a support.
Speaker 1: Sucked that we couldn't talk to them about it because,
Speaker 1: like we said, we were kind of doing spy versus
Speaker 1: s by level of yeah, yeah, we didn't want management
Speaker 1: to know, so our patients didn't know until kind of
Speaker 1: the last month, which sucked. I mean these people that
Speaker 1: we've been seeing weekly or more often for months, weeks,
Speaker 1: up to a year, it sucked not getting to tell
Speaker 1: them what was going on, knowing that they cared.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And it just really starts example of like what
Speaker 3: community actually is versus what it's sold to us as
Speaker 3: we're like, yeah, you have this thing where you know,
Speaker 3: you have genuine community with the patients that you're treating
Speaker 3: in a way that's staggeringly, unbelievably rare in any kind
Speaker 3: of trans healthcare field, and you know, and from that community,
Speaker 3: you get hey, you get hey, you should organize, and like,
Speaker 3: you know, people trying to help do the organizing, and
Speaker 3: then you know, you have the sort of like the
Speaker 3: corporate version of community, which is the boss is running
Speaker 3: a terror campaign and like disappearing your trans coworkers.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's pretty stark contrast. Yeah, Honestly, part of why
Speaker 1: it went on for so long is every red flag
Speaker 1: that management had, there were at least one, if not
Speaker 1: two green flags between your coworkers and your clientele. That
Speaker 1: made up for it. Yeah, But going back to organizing. January,
Speaker 1: we got in contact with the Tacoma GMB for the
Speaker 1: IWW GMB is General Membership branch, so it's essentially just
Speaker 1: the local IWW to us, and we had a organizing
Speaker 1: rep who would do kind of like monthly calls with
Speaker 1: us at first, just telling us how to organize, what
Speaker 1: conversations to have, and how to get people interested the
Speaker 1: AIOU conversation, Agitate, educate, inoculate, organized, push one of those.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, you got it.
Speaker 1: Because none of us had any organizing experience, So we
Speaker 1: had all of this energy to write our conditions, but
Speaker 1: we didn't know how to do it, So we started
Speaker 1: having conversations with the IWW and just slowly started building
Speaker 1: up our group of trustworthy workers that we knew wanted this.
Speaker 1: It wasn't hard. Most of us lean left, if not radical,
Speaker 1: so binding union sympathies was not difficult. Binding the grievances
Speaker 1: was even easier. I mean, these things are pretty clear
Speaker 1: in the workplace.
Speaker 3: Yeah to bosses once again, the best organizer.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. What really did it for us is when
Speaker 1: paychecks started bouncing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I just I just still saw I a hole
Speaker 3: on this for a second to flight, Yeah, what do
Speaker 3: you mean the paychecks are bouncing?
Speaker 2: What the fuck? Jesus Christ?
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's about how we felt like. At the end
Speaker 1: of March, they swapped us from direct posit over to
Speaker 1: paper paychecks. Our first one was in April and there
Speaker 1: was at Lakewood only one person who had it balance.
Speaker 1: I think Vancouver also had some issues, but like we said,
Speaker 1: there was no communication between the branches, so we didn't
Speaker 1: know what they were dealing with. Yeah, and the management
Speaker 1: kind of did their best to keep the locations separate.
Speaker 1: Like Lakewood was told things about Vancouver to kind of
Speaker 1: view them negatively, and the same with Vancouver.
Speaker 3: Yeah, which again is this real sort of image of
Speaker 3: like what the world's ruled by bosses is, which is like, yeah,
Speaker 3: they're deliberately trying to isolate people from their community and
Speaker 3: liberally trying to separate people and instill sort of like
Speaker 3: fear and hatred against each other. And then you get
Speaker 3: put in this position where it's like it becomes difficult
Speaker 3: to actually like do the kind of like community building
Speaker 3: and the kind of like solidarity and organizing that you
Speaker 3: want to because everyone also has to like hide from
Speaker 3: this boss surveillance state.
Speaker 1: I feel pretty bad. Like all the way up until
Speaker 1: we heard about Vancouver's walk out, I kind of referenced
Speaker 1: Vancouver as like the Vancouver colt, because it sounded like
Speaker 1: everyone was really happy and fine with how things were going,
Speaker 1: and Anna and Leo were just doing what they wanted Vancouver,
Speaker 1: and everyone's fine with it, and everyone's happy with it,
Speaker 1: and it was okay over there. So I mean that
Speaker 1: was part of why we didn't contact them Initially. We
Speaker 1: didn't know who it was safe to. Lakewood had our
Speaker 1: own experiences of like talking to a worker we thought
Speaker 1: was on our side and they immediately turned around and
Speaker 1: go talk to management. Yeah yeah, so yeah, communication just
Speaker 1: wasn't there between us and Vancouver. So when checks started bouncing,
Speaker 1: the total number was always unclear. The first paycheck it
Speaker 1: was just one. That second paycheck in April, it was
Speaker 1: already a few more people, Chris. So when they told
Speaker 1: the first worker they had no idea why that check bounced,
Speaker 1: and then the next paycheck, more checks bounced, it was
Speaker 1: like immediately obvious they were being Yeah, untruthful, I'm dishonest, Like.
Speaker 3: Like what one paycheck bouncing is already unacceptable, like the
Speaker 3: correct the paycheck second bounce is zero, but it's like
Speaker 3: the woman there's more than one. Suddenly it's like that
Speaker 3: it becomes a lot less likely that it's like they
Speaker 3: fucked up, and more likely that like like something deliberately
Speaker 3: like malicious and messed up is happening.
Speaker 1: Here exactly each paycheck. The frequency kind of just went up,
Speaker 1: like how many people had their paychecks bounce, and the
Speaker 1: way that it was handled was just rewriting them, like
Speaker 1: it was your responsibility to figure out it had bounced,
Speaker 1: go to management and ask them to fix it. Them
Speaker 1: fixing it was either reissuing you a check or asking
Speaker 1: you to try cashing it again.
Speaker 4: Oh my god.
Speaker 1: There was one paycheck where after it bounced for me
Speaker 1: and my partner, they did just tell us to try
Speaker 1: every day because they couldn't tell us when they would
Speaker 1: have the funds to pay us because some money comes
Speaker 1: in and out every single day. It was a pretty
Speaker 1: wild situation to be put in.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like Jesus Christ, like just like absolute nightmare.
Speaker 4: Oh my god.
Speaker 1: So when checks started bouncing, it it kind of clarified
Speaker 1: what we could organize around.
Speaker 3: First.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, if you're not getting paid, you don't
Speaker 1: have a job to unionize.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's that's like the most like nothing to lose
Speaker 3: in a world to win situation you could possibly abagine
Speaker 3: exactly like we're getting paid, we're doing real work for
Speaker 3: fake money, like.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 1: So we kind of settled on that as like our
Speaker 1: first grievance and demand to organize around is we're demanding
Speaker 1: guaranteed pay, which isn't even like it shouldn't be a demand.
Speaker 1: It's their legal so much.
Speaker 3: It's like, yes, you must form a union in order
Speaker 3: to have the right to be paid. Which I've been
Speaker 3: saying this kind of joke about what it's like being
Speaker 3: trans for a while where it's like to be a
Speaker 3: trans person in America is to like aspire to the
Speaker 3: status of a meer proletarian. We only get regular exploitation
Speaker 3: instead of like the even honestly you get here, it's like, yeah,
Speaker 3: we had to form a union so they would like
Speaker 3: pay us, and it's like.
Speaker 4: God, like.
Speaker 1: We just wanted real job.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Like, oh my god.
Speaker 1: Going back to when we started talking to the IWW
Speaker 1: in those first like initial union ish meetings, it was
Speaker 1: still just very few of us and we hadn't put
Speaker 1: words to it yet, but we kind of realized that
Speaker 1: we weren't super interested in going the route of the
Speaker 1: an RB with a election for a union and then
Speaker 1: collective bargaining for a contract. We had contracts. We know
Speaker 1: how real you write its contracts. We weren't interested in
Speaker 1: another one. We wanted the ability to react to changes
Speaker 1: in the workplace with flexibility, which is what the IWW
Speaker 1: was offering. They focused on solidarity unionism that doesn't use
Speaker 1: the NLRB but instead uses worker power via direct action
Speaker 1: to get management to the table and to meet your demands.
Speaker 1: Because a lot of this was rushed, we didn't get
Speaker 1: a chance to really get the terminology and our options.
Speaker 1: But one of the terms they used was involuntary recognition.
Speaker 4: That's fun.
Speaker 1: We were running underground until we were ready to go public,
Speaker 1: but we were fine with being a public union. We
Speaker 1: just didn't need the NLRB's backing. We had the worker
Speaker 1: power in the workplace and we were going to do
Speaker 1: direct action to get what we wanted. So, yeah, I
Speaker 1: think the word we were using was involuntary recognition.
Speaker 4: Yeah, like I love that. That's great, right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So going back to March and April, knowing that we
Speaker 1: weren't interested in contracts and that we were going to
Speaker 1: go the round of direct action, we just had to
Speaker 1: choose a demand to start with. The bouncing paychecks was
Speaker 1: a pretty easy one. So we started having meetings and
Speaker 1: talking about what kind of direct action we could do
Speaker 1: and what kind of escalations we could have if we
Speaker 1: were organizing around the demand for guaranteed pay and that
Speaker 1: demand essentially we were asking them to resume direct deposit
Speaker 1: or deliver our next check in the form of guaranteed
Speaker 1: funds like cash, money orders, cashier's check, something that won't balance. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we wanted our money on the day it was due.
Speaker 2: And also, like I want to say, this too.
Speaker 3: That like there's like a theory version of this in
Speaker 3: Capital where March talks about how like labor is the
Speaker 3: only commodity that you pay for at the end and
Speaker 3: not at the beginning when you purchase it, where like
Speaker 3: every other commodity you have to like pay for it
Speaker 3: before you get it, whereas with labor you pay for
Speaker 3: it after. But like, if you tried this with any
Speaker 3: other commodity other than labor, this is a crime, right.
Speaker 1: I mean it's a crime for labor too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is a grid for labor.
Speaker 3: But it's like but it's also like like if you
Speaker 3: do this at a grocery store, like you will be arrested, yes,
Speaker 3: And when a corporation does it, it's like, okay, if
Speaker 3: you want the law to help you for doing again
Speaker 3: the same thing that will get men with guns to
Speaker 3: take you away at a grocery store, right, you have
Speaker 3: to form a fucking union and organize. I don't know,
Speaker 3: I hate this fucking system.
Speaker 9: It's so unbelievably exploitative, and it's so clear in these
Speaker 9: sort of moments like who is designed to protect and
Speaker 9: who's not designed to protect, where like the punishment for
Speaker 9: the same literally the same crime is like one of
Speaker 9: them guess you arrested, and the other one gets you
Speaker 9: like a union campaign.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's also something that I'd like to mention.
Speaker 6: Yeah, for those who managed to go through this app
Speaker 6: master program, one of the things that was supposed to
Speaker 6: happen was that those employees during their education were supposed
Speaker 6: to receive stipends to cover their living expenses during our schooling,
Speaker 6: many of whom which were either not working at the
Speaker 6: time or working at reduced hours, and some of them
Speaker 6: saw stipends or partial stipends, and some of them, from
Speaker 6: what I understand, received nothing at all. Jesus, but we're
Speaker 6: still working at those reduced hours trying to support themselves
Speaker 6: while also going to school.
Speaker 3: Yeah, which is again also a I guess like it's
Speaker 3: a form of wage stuft. And also b it's a
Speaker 3: thing where like, like the difference between the bosses making
Speaker 3: slightly less money that year and a bunch of workers
Speaker 3: who are like mostly trans and in really horrifying like
Speaker 3: economic conditions not having that money. Is the difference between
Speaker 3: someone like maybe buying I don't even want to say
Speaker 3: buying a slightly less like fancy car because it's not
Speaker 3: even that much money for them, It's like, I don't know,
Speaker 3: like they have one day where they don't go to
Speaker 3: like an unbelievably expensive restaurant, versus like can I feed
Speaker 3: myself at night?
Speaker 1: Yeah, they get one less personal massage. Yeah, we might
Speaker 1: end up homeless.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 10: Yeah.
Speaker 1: That was part of the situation that was starting to
Speaker 1: really weigh on me near the end. Is because part
Speaker 1: of what I had signed up for was agreeing to
Speaker 1: work part time and do schooling part time, and it
Speaker 1: was supposed to be like anywhere from five to six
Speaker 1: days a week with the two, which was going to
Speaker 1: be a bit much for me. But at some point
Speaker 1: they decided they wanted all their workers doing school full
Speaker 1: time so that they could get through it quicker. But
Speaker 1: they didn't adjust the stipend they were offering, so you
Speaker 1: were expected to stretch the shame amount of money over
Speaker 1: time where you weren't getting any income at all, and
Speaker 1: that money was four thousand, five hundred dollars, which is
Speaker 1: not enough for that like three months of rent and
Speaker 1: food and gas gas because it's in Centralia.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So yeah, Like I had had multiple conversations with them
Speaker 1: about it, and they would not give me a clear
Speaker 1: answer on whether we would be able to continue working
Speaker 1: or if we wouldn't get to work, or what we
Speaker 1: would do about our income situation.
Speaker 6: And that's the situation that I ended up in was
Speaker 6: for the last two months of my schooling, I had
Speaker 6: to float myself on very little income because I had
Speaker 6: only received enough to really cover the first two months
Speaker 6: of the.
Speaker 1: School And it's going took like six to nine months
Speaker 1: if you were part time.
Speaker 6: If you were a part time it took six to
Speaker 6: nine months, yeah, yeah, and four months if you were
Speaker 6: full time, which I was going full time.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And then also like the second thing with that too
Speaker 3: is just like it's not only are you like spending
Speaker 3: time doing training for this job unpaid, Like that's also
Speaker 3: taking in time where you can't work another job to
Speaker 3: get more income.
Speaker 1: Well, if you wanted to work at another job, you had
Speaker 1: to get their approval jeess chrust. Yeah, they made it
Speaker 1: pretty clear they wanted you committed to reel you and
Speaker 1: nothing else.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's it's cult tactics. And then also the classic
Speaker 3: like wonderful capitalist double freedom where you have freedom from
Speaker 3: the ability to eat and then the freedom to sell yourself.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I could always choose to go homeless
Speaker 1: and hungry.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so that the law and is magnificent equality bans
Speaker 3: both the rich and the poor from sleeping under a bridge.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So we chose our demand and we came up
Speaker 1: with our plan. We had our actions settled, and we
Speaker 1: had a plan for if management responded, if they didn't,
Speaker 1: if they escalated, we had our options and we felt
Speaker 1: secure going in at that point. Like when we first
Speaker 1: started our actions, we only actually had five workers participating,
Speaker 1: more that were sympathetic, but all that felt that they
Speaker 1: weren't in a position to do direct action and lose
Speaker 1: their job. We saw Vancouver lose their jobs when they
Speaker 1: took action. We knew it was a very real possibility,
Speaker 1: but we started, I believe. On June twenty ninth, we
Speaker 1: delivered our demand for guaranteed pay to our manager. The
Speaker 1: IWW calls it a march on the boss.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: It was like less than five minutes total. The five
Speaker 1: workers presented our demand. We gave two testimonials for like
Speaker 1: how it's been impacting us directly, and then we left.
Speaker 1: We sent a follow up email to the owners of
Speaker 1: the company because we had handed it to the manager
Speaker 1: and we're waiting for their response, we put it out
Speaker 1: there and we just had to wait. Yeah, the next day,
Speaker 1: the manager caught one of our workers on her own
Speaker 1: to respond, essentially telling us they could not afford to
Speaker 1: pay us any other way that they were paying us.
Speaker 1: They could cut us paper checks on each payday and
Speaker 1: that was it. That wasn't one of the options we
Speaker 1: gave them.
Speaker 11: Yeah, I just.
Speaker 3: Can't get over the like, yeah, sorry, the only way
Speaker 3: i could afford to keep running my business is if
Speaker 3: I'm allowed to not pay you, and that that's the
Speaker 3: next thing you have to accept is if.
Speaker 1: I'm allowed to hand out checks that can't be cashed.
Speaker 10: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So when they told us no, we looked at our
Speaker 1: plan and we took our next action. We submitted a
Speaker 1: bunch of l and I claims for our checks that
Speaker 1: had been NSF or insufficient funds. An LANI claim Labor
Speaker 1: in Industries is kind of like the Protective body body
Speaker 1: for workers in Washington. For each check that we had
Speaker 1: received that bounced, we had a right to file a
Speaker 1: worker's rights complaint. The problem with those complaints is that
Speaker 1: they're not anonymous. Your employer gets told when one is filed.
Speaker 1: Hoogled it and why they filed it. Unfortunately, that wasn't
Speaker 1: an option, and so we were all doing it together
Speaker 1: unless we wanted to lose our job as one by one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So when they told us no, we started by submitting
Speaker 1: our LNI claims. It all happened so quick and it
Speaker 1: was one action after another that it kind of blurs together.
Speaker 1: So I think we submitted our l and I claims
Speaker 1: when we gave them our demand on the twenty ninth,
Speaker 1: we gave them a deadline for our next payday, So
Speaker 1: July third is when we were due to get paid again,
Speaker 1: and we said, by then, you have to agree that
Speaker 1: you're going to give us guaranteed pay or deliver guaranteed funds.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: The next day they had told us no, and on
Speaker 1: Friday they delivered paychecks like any other pay day. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they didn't really acknowledge what we had asked. They didn't
Speaker 1: acknowledge that they weren't meeting our demand. They did not
Speaker 1: tell us there were any issues with these checks, or
Speaker 1: that they might bounce, or that there weren't the funds.
Speaker 1: They at no point asked anyone to delay cashing their
Speaker 1: checks because they didn't have the funds like that was
Speaker 1: part of the issue is like, sometimes businesses run into
Speaker 1: financial issues and you have to deal with it. The
Speaker 1: way to deal with it is not by giving out
Speaker 1: bad checks and not telling your workers.
Speaker 3: For people who haven't like thought of this before, there
Speaker 3: are like actual consequences for attempting to to cash a
Speaker 3: check that doesn't cash, absolutely, like that gets taken out
Speaker 3: on you the person choose attempting to cash the check,
Speaker 3: like as well as the people upstream who are doing
Speaker 3: the bad checks.
Speaker 5: Like.
Speaker 1: We actually managed to avoid that at Lakewood for the
Speaker 1: most part because once checks started bouncing, we were scared
Speaker 1: of that happening. Yeah, so we started cashing them at Chase,
Speaker 1: which is who real you banks with. You don't have
Speaker 1: to have an account with Chase to go get your
Speaker 1: check cash with them. You just have to pay a
Speaker 1: ten dollars fee and have forms of identification. So the
Speaker 1: people who went to Chase and had their checks bounce there,
Speaker 1: it never hit their account.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's good.
Speaker 1: There were never any fees or any negative marks on
Speaker 1: our accounts. For the people who couldn't do that, there were, Yeah,
Speaker 1: there were NSF fees. At least one lakequoiod employee now
Speaker 1: has had their account completely shut down for ninety days
Speaker 1: while it's investigated for fraud.
Speaker 3: Yeah, which is because it's like, Okay, the people who
Speaker 3: were committing the fraud are the bosses, but now you
Speaker 3: don't have a fucking bank account for ninety days, which
Speaker 3: is just a nightmare.
Speaker 1: Part of our hope had been that by cashing them
Speaker 1: at Chase, Chase would flag the account because like their
Speaker 1: account was with Chase, and they were consistently issuing these
Speaker 1: checks that they couldn't afford to cash, and we were
Speaker 1: consistently cashing them at Chase, who had to acknowledge them.
Speaker 1: Weren't the funds there?
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately, they told us a couple of times that there
Speaker 1: was just nothing they could do on their end.
Speaker 3: Love, capitalist, class solidarity, great stuff.
Speaker 1: So we did our demand, we did our L and
Speaker 1: I claims, and then they delivered our paychecks as if
Speaker 1: nothing had happened.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So, over that weekend we finalized our plan to stage
Speaker 1: walkouts starting on Monday from to one. Workers would leave,
Speaker 1: really you to go to the local Chase and attempt
Speaker 1: to cash their checks, and we did that until each
Speaker 1: worker got paid. It normally took like fifteen to twenty minutes,
Speaker 1: and then we spent the rest of the hour, you know,
Speaker 1: doing our direct action, not returning to work. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: when it was one o'clock we returned to work. We
Speaker 1: were ready to see our patients. We all messaged our
Speaker 1: clients the night before if they were affected, and if
Speaker 1: we had the time, we offered them replacement sessions. We
Speaker 1: did our best to follow the rules as much as
Speaker 1: we could while breaking them. We were trying to send
Speaker 1: a message management we weren't trying to disrupt patient care
Speaker 1: every step of the way. We were doing our best
Speaker 1: to disrupt actual patient care to the least amount possible.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So that went on for three days. On Monday, none
Speaker 1: of the checks cleared. On Tuesday we got six of them,
Speaker 1: and on Wednesday we got the last one. I did,
Speaker 1: forget to say that was when we picked up two
Speaker 1: more workers. There were a couple of workers who weren't
Speaker 1: comfortable prior to them taking part in direct action, that
Speaker 1: were ready and did join the walkout with us. Management
Speaker 1: ignored the walkouts. We got absolutely no response.
Speaker 4: Oh boy.
Speaker 1: We sent email updates each day, you know, like this
Speaker 1: mini checks cleared, this many didn't. We're going to keep
Speaker 1: going at any point if they had just told us, yes,
Speaker 1: we'll give you guaranteed pay next payday, we would have stopped. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they didn't. Yeah, so we got paid on Wednesday. A
Speaker 1: few days went by when we still weren't hearing from them,
Speaker 1: so we escalated again. I think after that we did
Speaker 1: a stick out, So there was a day where everyone
Speaker 1: called in sick and most of the workers weren't in
Speaker 1: the office. Yeah, yeah, which is pretty noticeable, especially when
Speaker 1: management doesn't come into the office and all that's left
Speaker 1: is your newbies. We did that again, still no response.
Speaker 1: We sent another follow up email being like, you continue
Speaker 1: to not meet our demands, We're going to continue to
Speaker 1: take action. At any point. We will call a ceasefire
Speaker 1: if you come to the table and either meet our
Speaker 1: demand or tell us why you can't tell us what
Speaker 1: your plan is to do to meet it in the future.
Speaker 1: And they still didn't, so we moved on to what's
Speaker 1: called the good Work strike. Every provider that was taking
Speaker 1: part we showed up. We did our jobs, we treated
Speaker 1: our patients, we cleaned our rooms. We just didn't sign
Speaker 1: our notes because that meant that management wasn't able to
Speaker 1: bill for them. Because if we weren't getting paid, neither
Speaker 1: should they.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a version of the bus strikes, where like
Speaker 3: you just run the buses but then don't charge anyone.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. That was exactly the line of thinking. There
Speaker 1: was another group of nurses in a hospital that would
Speaker 1: stopped charting so that patients would be billed, but they
Speaker 1: kept performing the work. And that's exactly where I got
Speaker 1: the idea from. Yeah, we had patients that we wanted
Speaker 1: to take care of, but we didn't want to give
Speaker 1: real ne money when they weren't meeting their obligations.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Thats that went.
Speaker 1: On for a few days, and then on our day off,
Speaker 1: we got a bunch of information. On that Thursday, it
Speaker 1: was revealed that management had been told really you was
Speaker 1: going bankrupt and would be closing probably the twenty fourth.
Speaker 4: Oh boy.
Speaker 1: So they learned that Thursday, and we didn't know what
Speaker 1: they would tell us if anything, and payday was Friday,
Speaker 1: so they were either going to meet or demand or
Speaker 1: not meet it again yea. And so that plus the
Speaker 1: information we got on Thursday, we decided to do another
Speaker 1: stick out so that we could reassess. We wanted to
Speaker 1: see what they were actually gonna do. We wanted to
Speaker 1: see if the business was going to be open.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because there's just.
Speaker 1: Red flag after red flag. Some of us are expecting
Speaker 1: them to close up and run away at any point. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean they opened on Friday, checks were delivered. Two
Speaker 1: of us received fake ones.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah, let's talk about the fake checks for
Speaker 3: a second. What the fuck?
Speaker 2: I can't get over this?
Speaker 1: What listed We like to joke that whatever you think
Speaker 1: the worst option is, really you will choose a worst one.
Speaker 12: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So at least two employees, We're certain more. We're just
Speaker 1: not sure who exactly and how many. But we were
Speaker 1: given checks that were kind of handwritten, Like the only
Speaker 1: things printed on them were like the color that check
Speaker 1: paper is and one of the lines on the back
Speaker 1: where you endorse it. Everything else was hand drawn from
Speaker 1: like who was made out to how much it was
Speaker 1: the lines those were written on. Yeah, like it sent
Speaker 1: alarm bells ringing pretty quickly.
Speaker 3: That's not even monopoly money, because monopoly money is printed.
Speaker 1: This is like yeah, no, it was like a crafts project.
Speaker 13: Yeah.
Speaker 3: It was like they've invented a form of payment like
Speaker 3: fakers and company store money.
Speaker 2: Like it's unbelievable.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we got those, and we were pretty suspicious but
Speaker 1: we took them to Chase anyways, and the teller was like, look,
Speaker 1: I can't I can't even cash this to tell you
Speaker 1: that it's bounced, because there's no way for me to
Speaker 1: verify it's real. The security markets that are supposed to
Speaker 1: be on the back are not there.
Speaker 13: It's like, sorry, I have a poor frake tell and
Speaker 13: it's just like, yeah, sorry, I like can't cash, Like
Speaker 13: like just like child's draw money, this is not an
Speaker 13: extensible form of payment.
Speaker 3: Yeah, she's right.
Speaker 1: Oh no, They unfortunately couldn't really tell us what to
Speaker 1: do about it. Yeah, So we had to reach out
Speaker 1: to our management and ownership to be like, hey, we
Speaker 1: could not cash our checks. We need real ones issued.
Speaker 1: Uh huh, let us know how you're doing that. Also,
Speaker 1: on Friday, we were out of work. We were waiting
Speaker 1: for news, and I think that's when they sent out
Speaker 1: the email about the business closing. At like one point
Speaker 1: fifty six workers got an email to their company email,
Speaker 1: which meant most of us could not access it because
Speaker 1: we don't access work emails from home. That's when they
Speaker 1: sent it out, and like thirty minutes later they sent
Speaker 1: out a patient announcement, and that's how most of us learned.
Speaker 1: We learned as patients first that really was closing in
Speaker 1: one week.
Speaker 4: Yeah, which is just horrifying stuff.
Speaker 1: That was when it really hit me. When I opened
Speaker 1: my patient portal and read the announcement, I felt like
Speaker 1: I was seeing it, like all my patients were reading it,
Speaker 1: and like I was losing access to needed care out
Speaker 1: of nowhere. It was heartbreaking. It was devastating, Like there's
Speaker 1: no words to describe how I felt for all of
Speaker 1: my patients. Some of them knew it was coming, most
Speaker 1: of them didn't. A lot of them didn't get last sessions.
Speaker 1: I mean when we got the notice, we as a
Speaker 1: union realized that if we worked that last week, whether
Speaker 1: or not we'd get paid was up in the air.
Speaker 1: I mean, if they chose not to pay us, we
Speaker 1: would have to go through bankruptcy court and get in
Speaker 1: line to get paid. So instead we decided to strike.
Speaker 1: We spent the last week that really was open on
Speaker 1: the pick line telling patients what was actually happening. We
Speaker 1: weren't boycotting, We weren't asking anyone not to go in
Speaker 1: and have their last sessions. We were encouraging that any
Speaker 1: of the providers that were left, anyone who had sessions,
Speaker 1: we wanted them to get them before they couldn't. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but we also didn't want to provide free labor.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And it wasn't an easy decision. I mean it's one
Speaker 1: that the group had to talk about and go back
Speaker 1: and forth on. I mean, none of us thought that
Speaker 1: our last sessions were going to be our last sessions.
Speaker 1: We all wanted to see our patients one more time.
Speaker 1: We didn't want our patients' last session to be their
Speaker 1: last session. Yeah, but we also didn't want to be
Speaker 1: exploited even further.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean we made it clear what we were willing
Speaker 1: to do, and we followed through.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think it's really like the most pure
Speaker 3: example of just the dilemma that healthcare work, and also
Speaker 3: like nonprofit work and anything where you're taking care of people,
Speaker 3: it's you're put in this dilemma. Were like the way
Speaker 3: that exploitation by the bosses were like, they're going to
Speaker 3: exploit you and pay you less because of your care
Speaker 3: for the work that you're doing and the people that
Speaker 3: you're helping. And this is like the most pure like, yeah,
Speaker 3: the choice you've been given by your bosses is to
Speaker 3: probably work for free. To help your community and make
Speaker 3: these people a little bit more money before they fuck
Speaker 3: off or go on strike and have to deal with
Speaker 3: you know, like have to try to get your patient's
Speaker 3: treatment somehow.
Speaker 1: Exactly.
Speaker 4: It's horrifying.
Speaker 1: It's an impossible choice. Yeah, it sucked. None of us
Speaker 1: wanted it to go that way. It didn't have to
Speaker 1: be that way.
Speaker 3: It didn't.
Speaker 6: And I think it's really unfortunate because multiple steps along
Speaker 6: the way, they could have scaled back operations to focus
Speaker 6: on fixing the internal issues with the business.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's not like they didn't have people telling them
Speaker 1: what was happening. Mm hmm. It's just they chose to
Speaker 1: stick their head in the sand like an ostrich and
Speaker 1: keep going.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And you know, and ultimately, like you're the people who
Speaker 3: are paying the price for their mistakes and you know,
Speaker 3: their greed and arrogance and malice.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but we survived, and I know that a lot
Speaker 1: of my fellow workers agree with me that this was
Speaker 1: an experience we would rather have than not have. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we found a lot of solidarity and community, and I mean,
Speaker 1: we've built relationships that are going to last past this.
Speaker 1: We're hoping to move on and work together again. In
Speaker 1: something better.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, And my understanding is that the long term
Speaker 3: goal is to try to set up a co op
Speaker 3: to be able to do this without sort of the
Speaker 3: exploitation of the bosses.
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, that is the ideal. I think every
Speaker 1: union number's dream would be a worker cooperative or somewhere
Speaker 1: where they have some form of either ownership or say
Speaker 1: in the process. We would love to create something where
Speaker 1: our patients and our workers are working in tandem together
Speaker 1: to create the care that they deserve. Like you mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: there's just such a lack of standards of care for
Speaker 1: trans like gender firm and care. We don't talk to
Speaker 1: each other enough. We don't value the patient experience enough.
Speaker 1: We figured out a lot of things in the eighties
Speaker 1: and didn't bother doing more research. We want to do that.
Speaker 1: We want to fill that hole, and we have a
Speaker 1: lot of workers that are very committed to that, that
Speaker 1: are very excited by that opportunity. It's a long term
Speaker 1: goal and the short term we're hoping to get more
Speaker 1: people educated like we were promised, and back to providing.
Speaker 1: We're hoping to find new placements for our patients that
Speaker 1: have urgent care needs, like people who have surgeries that
Speaker 1: are coming up. Yeah, we're working on a database of
Speaker 1: like local electrolysis clinics, who has availability, who treats what areas,
Speaker 1: and who takes what insurance is. So if we have
Speaker 1: patients that are looking for new places, they can reach
Speaker 1: out and we can point them somewhere. But we're always
Speaker 1: looking for more resources too. We're in our information gathering phase.
Speaker 1: We're trying to resource compile, just get everything we can
Speaker 1: for our workers so that we can take those next steps.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 6: And what's devastating about this all is really was one
Speaker 6: of the few places that actually took insurances. Not many
Speaker 6: electrolysis clinics do, so it can be very difficult for
Speaker 6: people to find and afford care.
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, And that's I don't know, like, yeah, that's
Speaker 3: like another one of the heart wrenching things about this
Speaker 3: is like all of the patients whose medical care is
Speaker 3: ripped away by this, and the fact that it's y'all
Speaker 3: trying to figure out how.
Speaker 4: To help them and not the bosses is.
Speaker 3: Like such an indication of which side people are fundamentally on.
Speaker 1: I mean, how they handled the closure is a pretty
Speaker 1: clear sign of that too. Yeah, if you cared about
Speaker 1: your patients finding new places before their services were disrupted,
Speaker 1: you would have given them more than one week notice. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean you require two weeks notice from workers before
Speaker 1: they owe you.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think our patients deserve better.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they absolutely do, and you also deserve better.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, we have better, We've made better, we're going
Speaker 1: to create better. But it would have been nice to
Speaker 1: have what we thought we were getting.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Speaking of that is, are there ways for listeners to
Speaker 3: reach out and help?
Speaker 1: So right now we have a link tree. It's a
Speaker 1: little bit bare bones because this happens so much sooner
Speaker 1: than it was supposed to. Yeah, a gofund me that
Speaker 1: is for worker stability. Not all of us are going
Speaker 1: to qualify for unemployment, and it's going to be a
Speaker 1: while before we can find new jobs because ecolsis clinics
Speaker 1: and being transgendered. Just it's a tough combination, yep. But
Speaker 1: we also have an email for anyone to reach out
Speaker 1: to if they have questions for like if our patients
Speaker 1: are trying to contact us, or if they need somewhere
Speaker 1: new to go. If we have any electrologists in the
Speaker 1: community that have openings, we would love to know. So
Speaker 1: we can send people to you.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, if anyone who has knowledge starting cooperatives, that's also
Speaker 1: a resource we're really interested in. We want to do
Speaker 1: this right and we want to talk to the people
Speaker 1: that have experience doing it.
Speaker 14: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Do you have anything else that you want to make
Speaker 3: sure people know?
Speaker 1: So?
Speaker 3: There are a.
Speaker 6: Couple of different electrology associations that clinics can align themselves with.
Speaker 6: One of the ones that I'm thinking of is called
Speaker 6: the American Electrology Association or Electrolysis, and they have a
Speaker 6: code of ethics and standards that they require the businesses
Speaker 6: that are partnered with them to adhere to. It's an
Speaker 6: association that you have to pay a subscription fee to,
Speaker 6: but in turn, you get resources for your business and
Speaker 6: are able to have somewhere to reach out to when
Speaker 6: you have questions about the ethics in your business or
Speaker 6: how things are being run. I think something really important
Speaker 6: to note is that really you was not partnered with
Speaker 6: any of them, And there are electrology conventions that will
Speaker 6: happen that a whole bunch of different electrologists, surgeons, you know,
Speaker 6: from different places, we'll get together to discuss the health
Speaker 6: care that they're providing and It's from my understanding that
Speaker 6: really you did not have the best reputation in these circles.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, the truth is near the end. Really you
Speaker 1: was having to form their own education program. They were
Speaker 1: forming their own school because their connection with Zapmaster and
Speaker 1: with the rest of the electrologist community was just so poor,
Speaker 1: like they couldn't maintain it.
Speaker 15: Yeah.
Speaker 6: But for the patients, finding a clinic that is associated
Speaker 6: with one of those associations provides them an extra level
Speaker 6: of protection, especially since Washington State is not licensed for electrolysis.
Speaker 1: Is a really really good point. If you are a
Speaker 1: patient and you've heard what was going on behind the scenes,
Speaker 1: it real you and you're concerned about continuing your care,
Speaker 1: one of the ways to protect yourself against the practices
Speaker 1: that you want to avoid is by finding a clinic
Speaker 1: that's associated with one of these professional institutions correct somewhere
Speaker 1: that has standards you have to meet. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think I think that's a good place
Speaker 3: to end with. You know, the twin promises of workers
Speaker 3: being able to do their jobs and care for the communities,
Speaker 3: and communities being able to get the care that they need.
Speaker 3: How Yeah, this system simply delivers neither of them, and
Speaker 3: the only way out of it is to fight for
Speaker 3: a better one.
Speaker 1: We're swinging well I can say that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean.
Speaker 1: Our group is full of fighters.
Speaker 6: I'm hopeful I am too, and every step of the way,
Speaker 6: every action I have taken has been from a love
Speaker 6: for my patients and the work that I do and
Speaker 6: intend to continue doing.
Speaker 1: Hell yeah, Absolutely, I'm pretty excited to close this chapter
Speaker 1: and start the new one where we can only go up.
Speaker 3: Yeah, hell yeah, hell yeah. Thank you to both so
Speaker 3: much for coming on the show.
Speaker 1: Thank you for having us. Hopefully this was exciting as
Speaker 1: part one.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, thank you so much. Yeah, I'm happy to
Speaker 3: and hopefully we get to talk to you all again when,
Speaker 3: like the co Op starts should be lovely.
Speaker 1: Absolutely. Part three will be about our successful co Op beginnings.
Speaker 3: Hell yeah, hell yeah, looking forward to it.
Speaker 14: Hello yeah, hello everyone, unwelcome to it could happened here.
Speaker 8: My name is Dana al Kurd, and I'm a researcher
Speaker 8: and analyst of Arab and Palestinian politics. Today I wanted
Speaker 8: to talk about Western Sahara and the Moroccan occupation of
Speaker 8: Western Sahara. I'm taking this opportunity because Morocco is in
Speaker 8: the news, specifically for the World Cup, but it's always
Speaker 8: a good opportunity when Morocco is in the news to
Speaker 8: bring up this issue and to talk about the ongoing
Speaker 8: occupation of this territory. Now Western s he Hera, for
Speaker 8: those who are unfamiliar, is often called Africa's last colony.
Speaker 8: It's been contested between the Saharawi indigenous people and the
Speaker 8: Moroccan government since Spain withdrew from the territory in nineteen
Speaker 8: seventy five. Now, Morocco took over most of the territory
Speaker 8: and fought a war with the Polisaria Front, which is
Speaker 8: a liberation movement that represents the Saharawi people backed by
Speaker 8: other neighbors of Morocco, including Algeria, and it fought a
Speaker 8: sixteen year war for independence before there was a nineteen
Speaker 8: ninety one seasfire. Now the ceasefire collapsed in twenty twenty
Speaker 8: and there was a un promised referendum on self determination
Speaker 8: that never happened. So today Morocco controls roughly eighty percent
Speaker 8: of the territory and there's still hundreds of thousands of
Speaker 8: Saharawi refugees that remain in refugee camps in Algeria. The
Speaker 8: United States accepted and recognized Morocco's sovereignty over Western Sahara
Speaker 8: in exchange for Morocco signing a peace agreement with Israel.
Speaker 8: So that happened with the Abraham Courts. Now recently, through
Speaker 8: US led diplomacy, there was a twenty twenty five UN
Speaker 8: Security Council resolution that pushed for Moroccan autonomy rather than
Speaker 8: Saharawe independence as the basis for resolving this conflict. So
Speaker 8: to talk more about this issue, I thought it would
Speaker 8: be a good opportunity to get the perspective of a
Speaker 8: Saharawi person and someone who is very embedded in the
Speaker 8: issue and has lived experience. So I spoke today with
Speaker 8: Mahmad Saem Murad, who is the co founder of Saharawi Voice.
Speaker 8: This is a collective of citizen journalists and filmmakers based
Speaker 8: in the Western Sahara refugee camps in southwest Algeria. And
Speaker 8: this collective basically is a way to provide a platform
Speaker 8: for Saharawis to share their challenges, experiences and hopes with
Speaker 8: an international audience, while equipping Sahawi youth with the knowledge
Speaker 8: and tools to advocate effectively for their cause. So I
Speaker 8: spoke some Hama Sadams today to get a Saharawi perspective
Speaker 8: on things. Now, there might be some listeners that don't
Speaker 8: agree with everything that was mentioned, and that's fine. The
Speaker 8: point of this kind of interview is a type of data.
Speaker 8: How do people see this issue from this perspective? So,
Speaker 8: without further ado, here is my interview with them. Hama
Speaker 8: Setum Hamma Sanam, thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 5: Thank you for the invitation.
Speaker 8: So I'm going to ask a few questions about recent
Speaker 8: Saharawi politics and events, starting with the UN resolution that
Speaker 8: happened in October Resolution twenty seven ninety seven, which basically
Speaker 8: for the first time made Morocco's autonomy the explicit basis
Speaker 8: for negotiations while kind of ignoring self determination for the
Speaker 8: Saharawi people. A lot of our listeners have never heard
Speaker 8: of this resolution, but people have called it the biggest
Speaker 8: shift in the conflict in decades. So can you tell
Speaker 8: us from a Saharawi perspective what it means that the
Speaker 8: UN and international body that once promised Saharawi self determination
Speaker 8: and referendum starts treating the occupier's plan as the starting point.
Speaker 5: So the resolution itself is after they exhausted all the
Speaker 5: other pressure means the US, the European Union and through
Speaker 5: their own individual country pressure and inconditional support to the Morocco,
Speaker 5: the Yuan was the last resort and they want to
Speaker 5: have a stamp of legality on it. And that's why
Speaker 5: the instrument usually the Yuan and their reality in the
Speaker 5: talk now because we don't have a negotiation yet, we
Speaker 5: have talks that have been sponsored and actually administrated and
Speaker 5: by the US. There now is a sideline. And the
Speaker 5: reason is because the international law is clear and the
Speaker 5: repeated resolution before this, all of them they have called
Speaker 5: and demanded that the final status of the territory should
Speaker 5: be decided through a referendum, and sometimes the referendum was mused,
Speaker 5: but always there has to provide for the self determination
Speaker 5: for the Sahara people. And even like playing with self
Speaker 5: determination for listeners and the referendum itself, it's a huge
Speaker 5: concession from the Sahara side. What a in a just world,
Speaker 5: In ideal world, maroc would be called to withdraw from
Speaker 5: western sahar paying the reparation for the Saharai. And those
Speaker 5: are the steps for a just solution for the Saharai. Past,
Speaker 5: but the Saharai, we're willing to go to the extra mile,
Speaker 5: and they made the concessions. They accepted the referendum, which
Speaker 5: is by the way, we will intel a huge number
Speaker 5: of the settlers will be taken a part in that
Speaker 5: referendum and would not be just the Saharau. But even
Speaker 5: with that is still not sure that they will even
Speaker 5: win the support of their own settlers that they brought
Speaker 5: with them, So they had to ask the US for
Speaker 5: the help. And of course the US is doing this
Speaker 5: as a reward for local for being a sub servant
Speaker 5: stage and the watching dog of the European Union, for
Speaker 5: being willing also to go public with their relationship with
Speaker 5: the Zions State of Israel, because for us, we I've
Speaker 5: been saying this for a long time. Morocco always had
Speaker 5: those relationships. It was the price of recognizing the moroccanity
Speaker 5: of Western Sahara was the price to go public with
Speaker 5: those relationships, and that's what they did. Eventually, Morocco is
Speaker 5: selling themselves to the Doubles to get support and recognization
Speaker 5: for their occupation of Ustern Sahara. They are accepting the
Speaker 5: Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. They are sending their
Speaker 5: money to finals the Peace Board committee that Trunt made.
Speaker 5: They are sending their troops. They are willing to send
Speaker 5: them even to fight resistance as they are doing everything.
Speaker 5: They are building chemicals, drunk chemicals factories, Israeli chemicals factories
Speaker 5: in Morocco. Everything that people couldn't even in nation. Now
Speaker 5: it's a reality. And the prices to win a pac
Speaker 5: and Israel support and they're back in turning the occupation
Speaker 5: into a fatal company. And not just that, but to
Speaker 5: even use you. And in the international law and all
Speaker 5: the international body sompose the occupation of But for us,
Speaker 5: we know that slavery and many other stuff were legal.
Speaker 5: So even if they were to outlaw the self determination,
Speaker 5: outlaw our demand for free and independent state, still will
Speaker 5: not make any difference to us. We are determined to
Speaker 5: fight for what's ours. And as a Sahara ex Saharawi
Speaker 5: leader who passed away told the Bush, because this is
Speaker 5: not the first time. Maybe this is public, but this
Speaker 5: is not the first time US try to do this.
Speaker 5: During George W. Bush's first term, when the Twin Tower
Speaker 5: head and US wanted to just like rush to solve
Speaker 5: or to just finish all other conflicts, everywhere. They wanted
Speaker 5: to resolve the occupation of rust in Saharas and asking
Speaker 5: the Sahara to accept the autonomy lane of Moroccan people.
Speaker 5: And that's it. And they said, like when when the
Speaker 5: Sahara leader was pressed to accept that said will not accepted.
Speaker 5: You know, we are so powerful that you can dictate
Speaker 5: to people how to live, but you are not powerful
Speaker 5: enough to dictate to people how to die. So it's
Speaker 5: the same for us. Nothing changed. Morocco has enjoyed the
Speaker 5: supports for a long time from the majority of the
Speaker 5: country and especially those like called the first world country
Speaker 5: and feel world all that bs. They have always the supports,
Speaker 5: but not on theerground. Nothing changed. Of course, made our independen.
Speaker 5: It's difficulty, but will never make it impossible.
Speaker 8: Yeah, the rights of indigenous people are not determined by
Speaker 8: international law.
Speaker 5: Yeah. Yeah. And Morocco is asking for support and I
Speaker 5: want to legalize their occupation first from Western sat They
Speaker 5: are asking the wrong people and they are waiting the
Speaker 5: support from that. And yeah, the teacher and their biggest
Speaker 5: sponsors are friends with all its colonism atrocity in all
Speaker 5: Africa and other places. And the US, who was a
Speaker 5: country that was built on the genocide of indigenous people.
Speaker 5: So they are there, they are.
Speaker 2: In the right company.
Speaker 5: Yes, yes, yes, exactly, that's what we Yeah, Saha will
Speaker 5: say like if someone gives you advice, you have to
Speaker 5: look at their house and if they are abiding by
Speaker 5: the advice, they are giving you a nuts. So yeah,
Speaker 5: the market choose the the right mass and the right
Speaker 5: sponsors to continue its occupation and yeah, graduates from the
Speaker 5: occupation in the university.
Speaker 8: So for our listeners, I want to also kind of
Speaker 8: specify that this February, after the UN resolution, the US
Speaker 8: can be in secret talks in Madrid between Morocco, Algeria,
Speaker 8: Mauritania and the Pulsario overseen by Trump's African advisor.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 8: Now it's being negotiated behind closed doors. How are ordinary
Speaker 8: is always especially in the camps. What is their relationship
Speaker 8: right now to these negotiations and to the Pulsaria leadership.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so that's the talk I refer because negotiation has
Speaker 5: to start after you established a framework for what to negotiate,
Speaker 5: and until now that hasn't happened, so that more accurately
Speaker 5: should be described as tall or you know, early stages
Speaker 5: of talk and meetings instead of negotiation, because negotiation then
Speaker 5: when you have a framework for the things that you
Speaker 5: want to achieve and the demands of two parties and
Speaker 5: uh and this case that we haven't even seen one
Speaker 5: photo of the tool negotiating parties, and that's very obvious
Speaker 5: because it shows just how different and how how far
Speaker 5: from each other. And the US came with the misconception
Speaker 5: that they think they just like, can't rush this into
Speaker 5: solutions and be done with it. And when they saw
Speaker 5: a resistance from the from the Sahara negotiation team and
Speaker 5: also for the record, also Algeria hesitance to accept them
Speaker 5: posing of all those solutions, they started to reconsider. And
Speaker 5: we have many statements from Mostart Bulls, advisor for North
Speaker 5: Africa and Middle East or in North Africa, where he's
Speaker 5: saying this seems to be more difficult than what we
Speaker 5: early imagine, and you know, starts to reconsider his positions.
Speaker 5: As to your question, the Saharah in general, the vast
Speaker 5: majority of the Saharawi consider the policario to be a
Speaker 5: liberation movement and their representative. And even if they don't
Speaker 5: have opposed or work in a certain they consider themselves
Speaker 5: to be a policerio member. That doesn't mean we agree
Speaker 5: with all policario or we don't have a different opinion
Speaker 5: about how things should be managed and how the saharawikas
Speaker 5: should be administrated and how to deal with many things.
Speaker 5: That there is a huge and age gap between the
Speaker 5: first generation of police. Are that the vast majority of
Speaker 5: those are the members now and are at the top
Speaker 5: of the leadership. Are people who started the police? Are it? So?
Speaker 5: I was talking about people who have been in the
Speaker 5: leadership position for fifty years, So of course there is
Speaker 5: an obvious need for them to step down and be
Speaker 5: replaced by younger generations, by people who have the ability
Speaker 5: both the physical and the mental and right judgment of
Speaker 5: the time and of the means that should be employed
Speaker 5: to accelerate the liberation. First, Sahara, we see them. But
Speaker 5: the negotiation, as you said, it's happening behind the closed door.
Speaker 5: There are no press conferences. We are dependent on the
Speaker 5: statement from there and there to try to build a
Speaker 5: bigger picture of what's happening. But the biggest takeaway and
Speaker 5: the conclusion from the three rounds that took a place
Speaker 5: so far, two in Washington and one in Madrid, there's
Speaker 5: nothing measure is happening, except the fact that the US
Speaker 5: is starting to think that it's it's it's more difficult
Speaker 5: and it's going to take more time than what they
Speaker 5: initially imagine. So that's the biggest time I think that
Speaker 5: and the Morocco the autonomy plan they had it in
Speaker 5: a three paces paper that was their proposal for a solution,
Speaker 5: and France and you asked them for a more extended
Speaker 5: version where they have to outline details, and they haven't
Speaker 5: showed or produced anything yet. So that's I think they
Speaker 5: are closest ally and supporter and formal colonizer as Francis
Speaker 5: is working closely with them to develop that that proposal
Speaker 5: I see for that doesn't change a lot because you know,
Speaker 5: if we wanted autonomy would have been better up with
Speaker 5: with Spain. And why would we like say, say not
Speaker 5: to to Spain all to accepted fifty years later to
Speaker 5: a craft monarch and the paper to the Zion the
Speaker 5: standard France. Yeah, our occupied is enjoying their support or
Speaker 5: nothing new in Dada San.
Speaker 8: I mean, it's it's funny that you you mentioned that
Speaker 8: the United States and the African Advisors is starting to
Speaker 8: recognize it's not as easy. I mean, you know, very
Speaker 8: surprising that the Trump imgstoration advisors thought it was going
Speaker 8: to be easier than it is, but obviously not. Yeah,
Speaker 8: I wanted to ask a question also about kind of
Speaker 8: daily life right now for Saharawi's You know, it's been
Speaker 8: fifty years after the Madrid Accords, you still have Harawis
Speaker 8: under Moroccan control in the territory. And then there's of
Speaker 8: course the refugee camps in Algeria.
Speaker 2: Now that the diplomatic.
Speaker 8: Horizon seems to be narrowing, what's life like for people
Speaker 8: who are fighting for Saharawi in dependence? So like human
Speaker 8: rights defenders, the women, the students, you know, I know
Speaker 8: they face a lot of repression in Moroccan territory, but
Speaker 8: maybe you can describe to the listeners, Yeah, what the
Speaker 8: conditions are like.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I know, it's probably not something intended to do,
Speaker 5: but it's not Moroccan territory. It's Western Saharay occupied by
Speaker 5: moroccle my mistake.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, So the.
Speaker 5: Situation there is difficulty the territory. There is a media
Speaker 5: black black heide that's in posing the territory, So non
Speaker 5: international observer or a journalistill allowed to access the territory
Speaker 5: and to see the situation on the ground. The people
Speaker 5: there are morocco Is using both the stick and the carts,
Speaker 5: so trying to buy their allusions to the occupation, try
Speaker 5: to reward those who are willing to give up their
Speaker 5: political rights and so giving them out, putting them on
Speaker 5: social welfare projects and those it's not a lot, but
Speaker 5: enough to survive. And on the other hand has jail
Speaker 5: and depression and the job cutting people from their job
Speaker 5: and making their life as miserable as possible, to the
Speaker 5: to the point either they are announced their activism or
Speaker 5: leave the territory, and in some cases there are sentenced
Speaker 5: to life in prison, which has happened to many Saharawi
Speaker 5: activists who have a group called their Music Group have
Speaker 5: been in jail since two thousand and ten. And yeah
Speaker 5: there are some of them are are serving thirty years,
Speaker 5: some of them twenty, some of them life sentence, and
Speaker 5: a few of them were released recently. So the situation
Speaker 5: is very difficult, and we're very deplorable, and what is
Speaker 5: next to even difficult. That's how they're in the occupied
Speaker 5: territory are out numbered, so there are three morecanslers to each.
Speaker 5: Those are very conservative estimates, it could be more so,
Speaker 5: anything that's civil disobedience strategy or tactics will be would
Speaker 5: be dimity unsuccessful and would not produce any results. So
Speaker 5: it's very difficult situation. But none the less, there are
Speaker 5: still or are standing. Background are or still despite all
Speaker 5: the oppression and all the economic warfare that Mark is
Speaker 5: waging against them, and the even social astralization to try
Speaker 5: to even threaten people around you. So if you are
Speaker 5: an activist, even your father, your people around you, they
Speaker 5: will be laid from their job just as the percussions
Speaker 5: for your activism, So they can punish you if you
Speaker 5: don't care about or own self like they punish you
Speaker 5: through the people or inner circle, and your pop are
Speaker 5: close to you. So it's very difficult. And on the
Speaker 5: other hand, also the infrastructure there are are not are
Speaker 5: not as fancy as Morocco try to claim. There aren't
Speaker 5: a single university, and Morocco is building more of jails.
Speaker 5: And even the presenter Sahara, they sentenced them and they
Speaker 5: when they're serving their senses, they put them far away
Speaker 5: to punish their family, to make them pay a lot
Speaker 5: of money and travel inside Morocco to be able to
Speaker 5: visit their loved ones instead of having them close by
Speaker 5: artists and occupied Western Sahara. So the situation is very difficult.
Speaker 5: But those who are choosing to stand their ground are
Speaker 5: a reader of history and they are aware of the
Speaker 5: price that has to be paid an order to obtain
Speaker 5: our freedom and our independence. And the darker it gets,
Speaker 5: we know that closer that there will be another morning
Speaker 5: that's coming behind that. So we have been here way
Speaker 5: longer before Trump administration and his advisor, and we will
Speaker 5: be here. So it's the Morocca. I think that they
Speaker 5: think this is their golden opportunities and that they can
Speaker 5: use everything including the international law and international institution and
Speaker 5: body like the johan to impose their accupation and Western Saharabad. Again,
Speaker 5: they are misguided. At the end of the day, they
Speaker 5: would have to put out the table and.
Speaker 8: Try to find I think from a pasting in perspective,
Speaker 8: like the genocide in Gaza has clarified that the international
Speaker 8: system is not functioning, So you know, they're trying to
Speaker 8: use the international system. Countries like Morocco are trying to
Speaker 8: use the international system for legitimizing control. But the international
Speaker 8: system itself needs to be restructured, and I do also
Speaker 8: want to apologize. I meant Moroccan control of the territory,
Speaker 8: so I sincerely apologize for that. Yes, I also wanted
Speaker 8: to ask because we, I mean, we have listeners everywhere,
Speaker 8: but especially for listeners in the United States. You know,
Speaker 8: our government here is driving this process. What would you
Speaker 8: want listeners in the United States to take away from
Speaker 8: this conversation or to do?
Speaker 5: To be honest, I have been to the States one time,
Speaker 5: and I have met many Americans, and I am a
Speaker 5: lead the reader of their media, and I follow their
Speaker 5: their famous podcasts and TV channels and Twitter, you know, discussion.
Speaker 5: And it's very obvious that American they don't care about
Speaker 5: what's going on outside America. They care about the prices
Speaker 5: of oil, all of house prices, and their rents and
Speaker 5: the college is And it's okay. I think it's okay
Speaker 5: to a degree when your country is not involved in
Speaker 5: maintaining and supporting and that's your own taxes are used
Speaker 5: to maintain and support and finance genocide and other military occupation. Otherwise,
Speaker 5: then you have the luxury of ignoring what's outside. But
Speaker 5: when it's not, you can just like put your head
Speaker 5: in the ground and imagine and just going to care
Speaker 5: about what's happening here domestically and foreign policy. What's happening
Speaker 5: there is far away there, I don't so I would
Speaker 5: like them to inform themselves about Western Sahara, understand that
Speaker 5: they have to push their government and functionally to the
Speaker 5: Western Sahara. At least, we don't have a politician in
Speaker 5: the United States who thinks that the occupation of Western
Speaker 5: Sahara will accelerate the arrival of the Messiah and that
Speaker 5: it's far away, it has nothing to do with the ideology,
Speaker 5: with the religion, believe with anything like that, and would
Speaker 5: be easier, supposedly and will be less hesitant politician to
Speaker 5: take the right stand and the right position if enough
Speaker 5: people know there and they have a responsibility to learn
Speaker 5: and to understand and that their money and their politicians
Speaker 5: and their foreign policy are taking tools on people past,
Speaker 5: present and the future in a very practical way. And
Speaker 5: they don't have the luxury to be ignorant or to
Speaker 5: be to have the apathy they have to just not
Speaker 5: care about what's going on. They should care because their
Speaker 5: money and their political support and their country resources are
Speaker 5: used against many other people and then anything happens. We
Speaker 5: have the Americans acting like we don't know what's happened.
Speaker 5: Why the rest of the world hates you. People hate
Speaker 5: you for the million of the things that your government
Speaker 5: and your silence has done and has caused everywhere else.
Speaker 5: So they have to learn they have a responsibility. They
Speaker 5: have to speak to their local politician and their their
Speaker 5: representative in Congress and Senate and ask them just to
Speaker 5: do the basic thing, to follow the international law and
Speaker 5: start supporting my local militarily and politically and involved in
Speaker 5: them to continue their occupations and prolonging the suffering of
Speaker 5: the Sahai. That's the very bare minimum.
Speaker 3: Well, thank you so much.
Speaker 8: On that note, I will link Sharawi Voice in the
Speaker 8: show notes. Yeah, I think that people can can learn
Speaker 8: more about the work that your collective does. And thank
Speaker 8: you for making the time.
Speaker 5: Thank you for the invitation as an honor. Thank you.
Speaker 1: Take care, Take care.
Speaker 12: Picture going to the grocery store a few years from now.
Speaker 12: You push your car, grab your staples, scan and head
Speaker 12: out the door. Not much to it, but unlocking your car,
Speaker 12: you hear a faint buzzing sound. Looking around, you don't
Speaker 12: see anything yet it gets louder. Then you look up.
Speaker 12: A drone shoots out toward the street, where you spot
Speaker 12: a man running down the sidewalk with a full backpack.
Speaker 12: They both slip out a view behind some overgrown hedges.
Speaker 12: Then come the sirens. As you drive away, you see
Speaker 12: multiple cops on top of a man, one pulling objects
Speaker 12: out of his backpack. Tags still dangling off a shoplifter.
Speaker 12: Welcome to it could happen here. I'm Kevin Foster, an
Speaker 12: independent journalist and your host for this two part series
Speaker 12: on retail crime, ice, and some deeply concerning policy making
Speaker 12: its way through Congress. In this image of a shoplifter,
Speaker 12: it isn't really from the future. In late June of
Speaker 12: this year, police in Redmond, Washington used the drone to
Speaker 12: track down an alleged shoplifter who had left a store.
Speaker 12: If you live in a major city, you've probably are
Speaker 12: you witness the bolstering of security in retail stores. The
Speaker 12: ungodly number of items locked up behind glass, security guards
Speaker 12: block cameras in the parking lot. This is an industry
Speaker 12: in its own right, commonly referred to as loss prevention,
Speaker 12: and it's surged after the pandemic the national retail Federation
Speaker 12: or NRF for short, who I'll be talking a lot
Speaker 12: about today puts on a yearly conference known as NRF
Speaker 12: Protect where they bring together all the loss prevention slash
Speaker 12: asset protection bigwigs to show off new tech and security strategies.
Speaker 12: Here's the clip of a senior product manager for Amazon
Speaker 12: at the twenty twenty six event, part in the awful
Speaker 12: corporate background music.
Speaker 11: Gotta say, the most unique thing that I saw in
Speaker 11: the expo hall was the robot.
Speaker 2: Seen it on TV, and this was the first time
Speaker 2: I saw it in person. I was like, oh, these
Speaker 2: exactly real. To paint you a picture.
Speaker 12: The video features retail lobbyists, tech giants, and police investigators.
Speaker 12: They show off drones, cameras, people aiming guns, others shooting
Speaker 12: some type of paintballs at hanging targets, and of course
Speaker 12: multiple robots, including one that looks like a mini tank
Speaker 12: called Romeo but spelled like roaming around. Don't worry though
Speaker 12: this quote physical AI on patrol can only go ten
Speaker 12: miles per hour and it has a big led smile
Speaker 12: across the front. If you haven't got the drift. NRF
Speaker 12: Protect is like a National rightfle Association convention, but for
Speaker 12: people obsessed with supply chains and storefront scanners. While our
Speaker 12: little tank Romeo likely invokes the strongest image of a
Speaker 12: sci fi dystopia, it's probably the least of our worries.
Speaker 12: An October twenty twenty four article in Loss Prevention Magazine
Speaker 12: states that multiple top ten retailers rely on facial recognition
Speaker 12: for loss prevention, many working with Face First, a company
Speaker 12: that provides AI facial recognition tech with the goal of
Speaker 12: preventing retail crime. In July of this year, Mission Local
Speaker 12: reported on grocery outlets in the Bay Area using facial
Speaker 12: recognition tech from the AI company Safer. Worried about your
Speaker 12: privacy well, Safer's president says that your photo is immediately
Speaker 12: deleted if it doesn't match a watch list of shoplifters. However,
Speaker 12: stores can manually create their own watch list and pool
Speaker 12: data with other retailers. Surely nothing could go wrong there.
Speaker 12: Even excluding AI, retail stores have become a massive surveillance
Speaker 12: black box. Your photo is taken as you go in
Speaker 12: and out. Video cameras are at checkout. They know the
Speaker 12: time you come in, they know what days you shop,
Speaker 12: what you're buying, They know who you are retailers will
Speaker 12: justify this invasion of our privacy through AI robots and
Speaker 12: large scale data collection as necessary for marketing and to
Speaker 12: protect their capital and employees. Still, I wouldn't blame you
Speaker 12: for worrying about where that data is going. After all,
Speaker 12: if police investigators are already attending NRF conventions, and the
Speaker 12: retailers are happy to work with them, why not other
Speaker 12: law enforcement? Why not ICE? As it turns out, Congress
Speaker 12: is having similar thoughts. The House of Representatives just pushed
Speaker 12: a bill forward that could give ICE access to this
Speaker 12: massive surveillance drag net, and there's a bipartisan effort in
Speaker 12: the Senate to include it any National Defense Authorization Act.
Speaker 12: Why would they do this? To answer that question, we
Speaker 12: need to look at a recently hyped phenomenon known as
Speaker 12: organized retail crime. You may have heard the term organized
Speaker 12: retail crime in the past few years, probably on the
Speaker 12: news or from a politician hinting at a hidden crisis
Speaker 12: in our stores. A basic Google Trends report shows use
Speaker 12: of the term is up two hundred percent in the
Speaker 12: past five years versus the five years before. Organized retail crime,
Speaker 12: sometimes referred to as just ORC, is defined by the
Speaker 12: FBI as the large scale theft of retail merchandise with
Speaker 12: the intent to resell the stolen items for financial gain.
Speaker 12: If you've seen the movie I Love Boosters, that's a
Speaker 12: good satirical example, although the definition is actually quite vague,
Speaker 12: which can cause a lot of problems. The outlet Retail
Speaker 12: Dive says the definition is quote neither legal nor precise,
Speaker 12: contributing to uneven reporting on the part of store workers,
Speaker 12: loss prevention staff, and police, which results in it often
Speaker 12: being lumped in with morban aal form of theft such
Speaker 12: as shoplifting, and this begs the question is organized retail
Speaker 12: crime actually a thing? It is, but the threat to businesses, prices,
Speaker 12: and even national security have largely been blown out of proportion.
Speaker 12: To get a sense of those proportions, here's Iowa Senator
Speaker 12: Chuck Grassley at a Senate hearing on organized retail theft.
Speaker 12: He's the chief sponsor of the bill I mentioned earlier,
Speaker 12: known as the Combating Organized Retail Crime Act or CORKA
Speaker 12: for short.
Speaker 10: The reality is some of the worst criminal organizations, including cartels, terrorists,
Speaker 10: and human traffickers, use this type of crime, funding their
Speaker 10: misdeeds or launder ill gotten proceeds.
Speaker 12: Side note, after hearing how this guy talks, I had
Speaker 12: to look up how old he is. He's ninety two
Speaker 12: fucking years old. This old bat that was born in
Speaker 12: the Great Depression is probably being lobbied till his heart fails.
Speaker 12: We're going to get into the issues with painting this
Speaker 12: all as a national security crisis later. But speaking of lobbying,
Speaker 12: the notoriety of organized retail crime is due in no
Speaker 12: small part to the National Retail Federation, the host of
Speaker 12: the aforementioned Loss Prevention Conference and the largest retail lobbying
Speaker 12: group in the nation. The NRF has spent about fifty
Speaker 12: million dollars on lobbying since just twenty twenty, according to
Speaker 12: Open Secrets, and they've been the driving force behind the
Speaker 12: Combating Organized Retail Crime Act, which passed the House of
Speaker 12: Representatives on May twelfth with bipartisan support, including one hundred
Speaker 12: and forty four Democrats, and it may well get lumped
Speaker 12: in with our defense spending this year. CORCA has a
Speaker 12: slew of problems, but the general picture is a prosecution
Speaker 12: and police cracked down around this idea of organized crime
Speaker 12: in the retail theft world. Despite what the NRF would
Speaker 12: like you to believe there doesn't appear to be an
Speaker 12: organized retail theft crisis in the US, or really even
Speaker 12: a shoplifting crisis in general. With the exception of some
Speaker 12: large cities, particularly New York City, shoplifting in twenty twenty
Speaker 12: three was actually lower than pre pandemic levels, according to
Speaker 12: the Council on Criminal Justice. In twenty twenty two, the
Speaker 12: Council found retail shrink, the term for lost merchandise from
Speaker 12: theft or operational errors, was about one point six percent,
Speaker 12: the same as in twenty nineteen according to the nrf's
Speaker 12: own data. Before we get too deep, I think it's
Speaker 12: worth noting measures of shrink are also somewhat imprecise, and
Speaker 12: a lot of the accessible data surrounding all of this
Speaker 12: comes directly from the retail lobby, who have an incentive
Speaker 12: to make problems look worse to justify security policing, price increases,
Speaker 12: and cutting corners in inventory management. As you'll see, they
Speaker 12: have some credibility issues as well. You know who else
Speaker 12: may or may not have credibility issues the products and
Speaker 12: services that support this podcast, and we're back. In October
Speaker 12: of twenty twenty three, the NRF claimed to Congress that
Speaker 12: organized retail crime accounted for nearly half of the ninety
Speaker 12: four point five billion dollars in SHRINK in twenty twenty one.
Speaker 12: In reality, Retail Dive found that organized theft accounted for
Speaker 12: about five percent of SHRINK, meaning the NRF was off
Speaker 12: by a literal order of magnitude. How did they arrive
Speaker 12: at such a conclusion. Well, they essentially just took some
Speaker 12: guy's word for it, specifically Ben Dugan, the former president
Speaker 12: of the Coalition of Law Enforcement in Retail, a nonprofit
Speaker 12: whose website currently features a giant, low resolution banner saying
Speaker 12: Vegas Baby, the nation's largest ARC investigative conference. An NRF
Speaker 12: spokesperson specifically said their fifty percent claim was an inference
Speaker 12: made by an analyst based on Dugan's congressional testimony, not
Speaker 12: actual statistics or data. The NRF retracted the claim about
Speaker 12: two months later, but the damage was already done. According
Speaker 12: to the Vera Institute, a nonprofit advocacy group and think
Speaker 12: tank focused on criminal justice reform, The NRF leveraged its
Speaker 12: inaccurate data point in a press release, testified to it
Speaker 12: in congressional hearings, and even spoke about it at a
Speaker 12: press conference with Senator Grassley. The figure, of course, stirred
Speaker 12: panic across the country, fueled by viral social media videos
Speaker 12: showing high profile thefts and retail companies pushing the narrative
Speaker 12: that they are under attack. In some cases, retailers either
Speaker 12: closed or threatened to close stores. For example, in San
Speaker 12: Francisco in twenty twenty one, Walgreens blamed organized retail crime
Speaker 12: for the anticipated closure of five locations. The closures made
Speaker 12: it into the national spotlight, but in reality, the locations
Speaker 12: faced less than two reported shoplifting incidents per month on
Speaker 12: average over the previous five years. Target had a similar
Speaker 12: story in New York, Seattle, and San Francisco, blaming retail
Speaker 12: theft for store closures when nearby locations actually had higher
Speaker 12: incidences of shoplifting. What actually happened to these stores, My
Speaker 12: best guess is the shift to online shopping during the
Speaker 12: pandemic drove down the sales of many brick and mortar locations,
Speaker 12: but rather than project something that could lower their stock valuation,
Speaker 12: retailers blamed it on organized theft. Many took up controversial
Speaker 12: practices such as locking up merchandise, which decreased sales and
Speaker 12: customers satisfaction. Even Walgreen's chief financial officer, James Cahoe, would
Speaker 12: later say they quote cried too much unquote about shoplifting
Speaker 12: when the issue was really overblown. But even with a
Speaker 12: lack of evidence, the NRF and Senator Grassley refused to
Speaker 12: back down from their messaging and legislation, and in a
Speaker 12: lot of ways it worked. Let me play you a
Speaker 12: clip of Gavin Newsom at a press conference in twenty
Speaker 12: twenty four signing legislation intended to combat organize retail crime.
Speaker 12: Here he's surrounded by a number of elected officials, law
Speaker 12: enforcement leaders, and representatives of retail associations.
Speaker 16: The issue organized retail theft, the issue of serial theft,
Speaker 16: the issue that is front and center in the consciousness
Speaker 16: of so many Californians. You see it online social media,
Speaker 16: you see it on the nightly news. This is the
Speaker 16: real deal. Grocers and the retailers understand.
Speaker 12: That after the NRF retracted its inflated claim nearly a
Speaker 12: year prior, organized retail crime was still making headlines and
Speaker 12: considered a very serious issue, serious enough that Newsome included
Speaker 12: three hundred and seventy four million dollars in his twenty
Speaker 12: twenty four budget proposal. To combat retail theft. In that bill,
Speaker 12: which he happened to sign atop a table covered in
Speaker 12: orange home depot buckets, it stiffened both enforcement and penalties
Speaker 12: for retail crime.
Speaker 4: It allowed for.
Speaker 12: The aggregation of theft value from different shoplifting incidents, meaning
Speaker 12: the value of items can be added up to turn
Speaker 12: what would be minor charges into grand theft. It also
Speaker 12: allows police to arrest shoplifters solely based on a witness's
Speaker 12: sworn state or video footage of a crime. Again, surely
Speaker 12: nothing could go wrong with that, but the crackdown didn't
Speaker 12: stop there. In the twenty twenty four general election, California
Speaker 12: voters overwhelmingly approved Prop thirty six, which made key changes
Speaker 12: to how thefts are prosecuted. To Newsom's credit, he did
Speaker 12: not support the proposition. Prior to Prop thirty six, thefts
Speaker 12: of items worth less than nine hundred and fifty dollars
Speaker 12: were considered misdemeanors, but now if the individual has two
Speaker 12: or more past convictions for certain theft crimes such as shoplifting,
Speaker 12: it could be considered a felony, with a sentence of
Speaker 12: up to three years in jail or prison. San Diego's
Speaker 12: District Attorney Summer Stephen really hyped up Prop thirty six
Speaker 12: as an advancement in fighting organized retail crime. She actually
Speaker 12: went on the nrf's podcast talk about this. Yes, they
Speaker 12: have a podcast. It's called Retail Gets Real. It's bad,
Speaker 12: don't check it out. But here she is with the
Speaker 12: host having a little laugh about locking people up.
Speaker 17: So we used to have people with like twenty four
Speaker 17: theft cases. They're all misdemeanors. Some thieves bring a calculator
Speaker 17: and they're just under nine hundred and fifty dollars. Literally,
Speaker 17: it's madness.
Speaker 2: Right, got a gun or a calculator? I'm not sure what.
Speaker 12: Yeah, let's joke about mistaking someone for being armed in
Speaker 12: a store. It's not like that's ever gone poorly before anyways.
Speaker 12: What's missing from the analysis here is how these laws
Speaker 12: harm people who aren't necessarily the intended target. A particularly
Speaker 12: striking example of how this could really fuck someone's life
Speaker 12: up comes from Pennsylvania. In twenty twenty one, Joseph Sobeluski
Speaker 12: reportedly misunderstood a discount at an Exxon gas station and
Speaker 12: accidentally underpaid forty three cents for a bottle of mountain
Speaker 12: dew Sobuluski had two theft charges in the past ten years,
Speaker 12: one for a tank of gas and another for a
Speaker 12: pair of shoes. After the Mountain dew incident, state police
Speaker 12: arrested him on a felony charge because of a three
Speaker 12: strikes law in Pennsylvania similar what could happen with Prop
Speaker 12: thirty six. A judge ordered Sobeluski beheld on a fifty
Speaker 12: thousand dollars cash only bond, and he faced up to
Speaker 12: seven years in prison. Fortunately, his public defender successfully argued
Speaker 12: for his release after seven days, and prosecutors ultimately dismissed
Speaker 12: the charge. But it's easy to see how this could
Speaker 12: go wrong for another individual, particularly minorities, who faced disproportionate
Speaker 12: punishment in our legal system. This style of legislation, intended
Speaker 12: to target retail crimes, spread like wildfire across the country.
Speaker 12: According to the text of the twenty twenty five Combating
Speaker 12: Organized Retail Crime Act, more than thirty state laws have
Speaker 12: been enacted since twenty twenty two to address organized theft.
Speaker 12: Common theme stricter penalties and policing. Here's how New York
Speaker 12: Governor Kathy Hokel put it in her twenty twenty four
Speaker 12: State of the state address.
Speaker 18: Let's back our businesses, back our businesses and the workers
Speaker 18: with the full force of the law, and punish those
Speaker 18: who think they can break the rules with impunity.
Speaker 12: After all, policing and aggressive enforcement are the American way
Speaker 12: to deal with crime rather than I don't know addressing
Speaker 12: the root causes, notably poverty and inequality. The pervasive tough
Speaker 12: on crime mentality doesn't have much evidence backing it up,
Speaker 12: but of course there is a wealth of research indicating flaws.
Speaker 12: For one, enforcement is heavily racialized, with black and brown
Speaker 12: people facing retail theft charges at significantly higher rates than whites.
Speaker 12: The Very Institute also highlights how increasing sentences as a
Speaker 12: deterrent doesn't actually work. A twenty eighteen article from Pew
Speaker 12: Research says states can safely raise their value threshold for
Speaker 12: what counts as a felony theft without risking more crime.
Speaker 12: The thirty states that did so between twenty and twenty
Speaker 12: twelve saw no meaningful increase in property crime or larceny rates.
Speaker 12: In South Carolina, Pew found that when they doubled the
Speaker 12: felony threshold from one thousand dollars to two thousand dollars
Speaker 12: in twenty ten, property crime continued to fall by fifteen
Speaker 12: in the next three years. Pew also found that the
Speaker 12: value of stolen goods remained steady, and when adjusted for inflation,
Speaker 12: the median value actually decreased. In essence, the state level
Speaker 12: push for these three strikes shoplifting laws and the aggregation
Speaker 12: of theft value won't meaningfully decrease crime. Rather, it will
Speaker 12: result in more people, particularly minorities, being locked up for
Speaker 12: longer sentences than being saddled with felony convictions that hurt
Speaker 12: their ability to get a job and obtain housing, ultimately
Speaker 12: increasing the likelihood of committing crimes in the future. The
Speaker 12: nonprofit think tank Prison Policy Initiative estimates twenty seven point
Speaker 12: seven billion dollars in annual direct costs of incarceration on
Speaker 12: individuals and families across the US. Families pay in on bail,
Speaker 12: legal fees, civil asset forfeiture, commissary for loved ones, and
Speaker 12: more often going straight to private prison operators. This also
Speaker 12: doesn't begin to factor in the impacts on children and
Speaker 12: local communities. The cost of incarceration on the state also
Speaker 12: needs to be factored in. The California Legislative Analyst Office
Speaker 12: estimates the annual cost of incarcerating one person in state
Speaker 12: prison at one hundred twenty seven thousand, seven hundred eighty
Speaker 12: eight dollars. With massive spending to bolster retail theft enforcement,
Speaker 12: this could create a compounding problem, costing hundreds of millions.
Speaker 12: In July of twenty twenty five, Di Stefan wrote in
Speaker 12: congressional testimonies supporting Korka that her office had prosecuted over
Speaker 12: two hundred eighteen cases of organized retail crime in just
Speaker 12: two years. She says these cases involved theft losses of
Speaker 12: more than two point six million dollars. Putting this into perspective,
Speaker 12: if even half of those prosecutions resulted in one year
Speaker 12: sentences in California state prisons, you're looking at an estimate
Speaker 12: of nearly fourteen million dollars in incarceration costs, over five
Speaker 12: times the reported theft value. But these thoughts don't really
Speaker 12: seem to cross the mind of people like Da Stefan
Speaker 12: or our pals at the NRF.
Speaker 2: This is an argument that drives me crazy, the idea
Speaker 2: that they're stealing because they can't afford the food to
Speaker 2: put on the table to feed their children.
Speaker 17: This is their sole job is to rip off your business.
Speaker 17: That's their blob, that's how they wake up in the morning,
Speaker 17: and so we didn't want them to wake up as
Speaker 17: comfortably as.
Speaker 2: The before with their calculator.
Speaker 12: Yes, they paint this image of people almost getting off
Speaker 12: on doing crime rather than any number of more charitable explanations.
Speaker 12: At face value, it may just sound like typical high
Speaker 12: minded bs from an aggressive DA and lobbyist. But obviously,
Speaker 12: when you think about the position of power someone like
Speaker 12: Stephan is in, it's pretty sickening. In another section of
Speaker 12: the NRF podcast episode, they discuss people switching from drug
Speaker 12: dealing to selling stolen merchandise because of lower penalties, generally
Speaker 12: glossing over the circumstances that might lead an individual into crime.
Speaker 12: Stefan even mentions the need to go after quote frontline boosters,
Speaker 12: the people who are being hired to go into stores
Speaker 12: and steel, who she admits are often homeless or poor.
Speaker 12: It's honestly maddening the listening to this. So that's the
Speaker 12: last quote I'm going to bring from that. Anyways, here's
Speaker 12: some mats. So in the next episode we're going to
Speaker 12: dive into the specifics of the corka bill and how
Speaker 12: Ice has become a key player. But for now I
Speaker 12: want to end on a note that ties together some
Speaker 12: of the broader consequences of all this retail theft propaganda.
Speaker 12: Lobbyists for the bill have a common refrain, quote, organized
Speaker 12: retail crime is not a victimless crime.
Speaker 2: Unquote.
Speaker 12: I think the same goes for their lobbying. Corka hasn't
Speaker 12: even passed the Senate yet there may already be some
Speaker 12: downstream tragedies because of the intensified rhetoric around retail crime.
Speaker 12: In recent years and months, there have been a number
Speaker 12: of high profile killings of individuals accused of shoplifting by
Speaker 12: both shop owners and police. In June of this year,
Speaker 12: police shot and killed Cohen Wiley, a one year old boy,
Speaker 12: while responding to a shoplifting call in Senatobia, Mississippi, over
Speaker 12: allegedly stolen diapers. Police also shot his mother while her
Speaker 12: friend was driving their car. Authorities claim they tried to
Speaker 12: stop the vehicle, but the driver nearly hit an officer,
Speaker 12: a story we've unfortunately become far too familiar with at
Speaker 12: this point. Wiley's mother disputes that the diapers were even
Speaker 12: stolen in the first place, and denies that her friend
Speaker 12: drove towards the officers. Obviously, it didn't matter to the
Speaker 12: trigger happy cops on the scene, who never should have
Speaker 12: pointed firearms at the vehicle in the first place. Other
Speaker 12: similar cases include the killing of Banco Brown, a black
Speaker 12: twenty four year old trance organizer in San Francisco, by
Speaker 12: a Walgreen security guard, and the killing of black fourteen
Speaker 12: year old Cyrus Carmack Belton by a shop owner in
Speaker 12: South Carolina. In Brown's case, San Francisco, Dia Brooke Jenkins,
Speaker 12: who ran on a tough on crime agenda, not pursue
Speaker 12: charges against security guard Michael Arlwaine Anthony, saying he acted
Speaker 12: in self defense based on video footage. The video shows
Speaker 12: Brown and Anthony fighting as Brown apparently tried to leave
Speaker 12: the Walgreens without paying. They grapple on the ground for
Speaker 12: a minute, then Anthony releases Brown but follows him to
Speaker 12: the door. Brown stops just outside the store, possibly talking
Speaker 12: back to the guard. Then the guard pulls his gun
Speaker 12: and shoots Brown as he turns to run. Brown was unarmed,
Speaker 12: and in interviews following the shooting, Anthony repeatedly misgendered him
Speaker 12: for Carmack Belton, his killers. Shop owner cheek. Rick Chow
Speaker 12: face trial for murder but was found not guilty. The
Speaker 12: thing is Carmack Belton, ever actually stole anything, not even
Speaker 12: the water bottles Chow wrongly accused him of. Prosecutors say
Speaker 12: Chow chase the teenager one hundred and thirty yards outside
Speaker 12: the store before shooting him in the back. Prosecutors acknowledged
Speaker 12: that Carmack Belton had a pistol, but said that it
Speaker 12: fell on the ground in the chase. It seems, based
Speaker 12: on the reporting, that the only person who claims to
Speaker 12: have seen the pistol or had it pointed at him
Speaker 12: was Chow's son. I think all this just goes to
Speaker 12: show where we place property, even just a few water bottles, snacks,
Speaker 12: or diapers, relative to human life, especially those in black communities.
Speaker 12: There's a very clear irony that may reflect the types
Speaker 12: of enforcement we could see from CORCA, tough on crime
Speaker 12: for the marginalized, not for those pulling the trigger. There's
Speaker 12: no easy way to determine whether political statements about retail
Speaker 12: crime have an effect on police or shop owners, but
Speaker 12: it's not hard to imagine how a constant bombardment of
Speaker 12: propaganda could embolden someone to take matters into their own hands.
Speaker 12: The retail companies are complicit in this. Somehow they've managed
Speaker 12: to turn a manufacturer's story into a national security crisis
Speaker 12: where states grant hundreds of millions of dollars to protect corporations.
Speaker 12: Retailers blame consumers when they failed to hit desired profits,
Speaker 12: then they raise prices. When that fails, they demonize the
Speaker 12: poor and rattle on about crime. Then they pilfer our
Speaker 12: general funds and team up with the police to crack down.
Speaker 2: It's never enough.
Speaker 12: Now they've sucked in the federal government and we could
Speaker 12: be on the verge of the next upgrade to ice terror,
Speaker 12: but that'll have to wait for the next episode. We'll
Speaker 12: see you tomorrow. Welcome back to It Could Happen Here
Speaker 12: and our Retail Thunderdome. I'm Kevin Foster, and today we're
Speaker 12: continuing our dive into organized retail crime. In the last episode,
Speaker 12: I went over the multi year propaganda campaign waged by
Speaker 12: the retail lobby to make organized retail crime into a
Speaker 12: national crisis, requiring stricter policing and penalties and investment from
Speaker 12: all levels of government. I recommend listening to that episode
Speaker 12: before this one. But in short, huge swaths of politicians
Speaker 12: bought right in spending hundreds of millions at the behest
Speaker 12: of retail giants despite a serious lack of evidence. I
Speaker 12: also touched on the advancements in surveillance at retail stores.
Speaker 12: Whether we see a rollout of AI powered robots in
Speaker 12: the coming years may not matter so much as many
Speaker 12: industry leaders are already implementing facial recognition technology and creating
Speaker 12: watch lists under the guise of loss prevention. And this
Speaker 12: surveillance dragnet is a key element in the rising concern
Speaker 12: around the Combating Organized Retail Crime Act or CORKA, which
Speaker 12: passed the House of Representatives in May with resounding bipartisan support.
Speaker 12: In all likelihood, CORCO will be signed into law. In
Speaker 12: today's episode is about why that is very bad and
Speaker 12: how it's going to impact the American public, notably immigrants.
Speaker 12: Let's get right into it. The Combating Organized Retail Crime
Speaker 12: Act has remained in circulation for years, but to get
Speaker 12: it over the finish line, the retail lobby and supporters
Speaker 12: of the legislation and ultimately found a new boogeyman, cargo theft.
Speaker 12: And this is how they've managed to turn a manufactured
Speaker 12: retail theft story into a national security problem that demands
Speaker 12: intervention by the Department of Homeland Security. In a nutshell,
Speaker 12: the cargo theft narrative has striking similarities to organized retail crime.
Speaker 12: The American Transportation Research Institute says there's between one point
Speaker 12: eight billion and six point five billion dollars in yearly
Speaker 12: losses because of cargo theft, but this includes indirect costs
Speaker 12: a measure of costs across the entire supply chain in
Speaker 12: terms of the actual value of goods. Cargo net, a
Speaker 12: nationally coordinated database placed total cargo theft losses at seven
Speaker 12: hundred twenty five million across the US and Canada in
Speaker 12: twenty twenty five, despite total physical losses being under a
Speaker 12: billion dollars. There have been more attempts to dramatically inflate
Speaker 12: the numbers. Phil Brink, the quote head of fraud Media
Speaker 12: and Education unquote at freight Waves, a trucking logistics and
Speaker 12: news company, estimated the total losses could actually be closer
Speaker 12: to sixty billion dollars because of under reporting of theft.
Speaker 12: No clear evidence is provided to back up this assertion
Speaker 12: other than unnamed experts. If this sounds familiar, it's almost
Speaker 12: the exact same story as the National Retail Federation's fraudulent
Speaker 12: organized retail crime numbers, where they inflated their stats by
Speaker 12: an order of magnitude, mostly based on vibes. And while
Speaker 12: cargo theft did spike in twenty twenty three, a funny
Speaker 12: little side note is that AI integration into logistics might
Speaker 12: be a big part of the problem. Reporting in the
Speaker 12: news outlet the Lever indicates that instead of modern day
Speaker 12: highway robberies, cargo theft is beginning to look more like
Speaker 12: people simply impersonating trucking companies than fooling faulty new AI
Speaker 12: logistics systems. And once they're cleared by the AI, they
Speaker 12: can essentially just pick up the cargo and roll off.
Speaker 12: So between retail crime and cargo theft were essentially operating
Speaker 12: under two manufactures crises. And yet here's the language any
Speaker 12: Combating Organized Retail Crime Act quote. Organized theft groups impact
Speaker 12: the national security of the United States through financing trans
Speaker 12: national criminal activity and providing profit and proceeds supporting larger
Speaker 12: criminal goals of the criminal organizations. In other words, retail
Speaker 12: crime is now a national security threat and it demands
Speaker 12: the influence of Homeland Security and ICE, specifically Corka, calls
Speaker 12: for the establishment of a coordination center to combat organized
Speaker 12: retail and supply chain crime. The DHS Secretary will establish
Speaker 12: the center, and it will be run by an individual
Speaker 12: chosen by the Director of ICE. Fantastic in essence, this
Speaker 12: coordination center will be the hub for federal law enforcement
Speaker 12: activity and connections between the national and local level and
Speaker 12: the public and private sector. Obviously, ICE deepening its involvement
Speaker 12: in our day to day lives is something to be
Speaker 12: concerned about. But here's where it gets really crazy. The
Speaker 12: bill states, quote in general, subject to the approval of
Speaker 12: the director of the center, information that would otherwise be
Speaker 12: subject to the limitation on the disclosure of confidential information
Speaker 12: set forth in Section nineteen oh five of Title eighteen
Speaker 12: United States Code may be shared if such disclosure is
Speaker 12: operationally necessary unquote. Putting the legalese aside. What this means
Speaker 12: in practice is that ICE can access confidential and proprietary
Speaker 12: data from retailers, and because operationally necessary is an extremely broad,
Speaker 12: undefined term, ICE is essentially given full discretion over what
Speaker 12: data they can collect. If anyone questions them, they'll likely
Speaker 12: just say we need to play it safe because organized
Speaker 12: retail crime is a matter of national security that could
Speaker 12: finance drug and weapons trafficking, harming Americans. So that retail
Speaker 12: surveillance dragnet I mentioned in Part one, the AI facial recognition,
Speaker 12: the robots, the customer profiles, they say can be leveraged
Speaker 12: to boot customer loyalty. ICE could potentially leverage that data
Speaker 12: in its immigration crackdown. Imagine a world where ICE knows
Speaker 12: who is going to witch stores and when. No need
Speaker 12: for scanning license plates on the streets anymore. Now they
Speaker 12: can just look up your customer profile and head over
Speaker 12: to Walmart when you're doing your biweekly grocery run. Given
Speaker 12: what we've seen in the past year and a half,
Speaker 12: ICE will likely try to leverage this heavily. They already
Speaker 12: have facial recognition technology like the mobile Fortify app, which,
Speaker 12: according to Vanderbilt University's School of Law, is connected to
Speaker 12: a database of over two hundred million images. The ACLU
Speaker 12: of Wisconsin states that you may already be in this database,
Speaker 12: as it's connected to other databases containing federal biometric systems,
Speaker 12: passport and visa records, and state driver's license photos. A
Speaker 12: depressing little side note some of this may have been preventable.
Speaker 12: For example, in Oregon, the state police are being sued
Speaker 12: for sharing data with ICE, even though they and our
Speaker 12: governor were worn by Congress members to close certain loopholes
Speaker 12: that gave ICE access to DMV records. Now, obviously, grocery
Speaker 12: stores present a significant vulnerability to maintaining our privacy due
Speaker 12: to basic human needs. Nothing is clearly stopping ICE from
Speaker 12: running face scans out of retail stores and creating a
Speaker 12: new front for their anti immigrant crackdown. And there's already
Speaker 12: a blueprint for this. The ACLU published an article in
Speaker 12: January this year about Wegmans using facial recognition and sharing
Speaker 12: data on quote persons of interest with law enforcement on
Speaker 12: a quote, case by case basis. It's unclear how or
Speaker 12: if retail stores will challenge ICE's access in any way.
Speaker 12: As of now, many have been fully on board with
Speaker 12: the organized retail theft hype train. On the other hand,
Speaker 12: on May eleventh this year, a coalition of forty civil
Speaker 12: rights organizations, including the Immigrant Defender's Law Center in the
Speaker 12: National Association of Criminal Defense Attorneys, sent a letter to
Speaker 12: Congress urging the House not to pass corka highlighting how
Speaker 12: it would massively expand DHS's role in authority in domestic
Speaker 12: law enforcement, and the issues don't end there. They also
Speaker 12: pointed out how CORCA gives DHS influence over local and
Speaker 12: state law enforcement through the ability to expand certain grant requirements.
Speaker 12: In effect, this coalition sees a pathway for DHS to
Speaker 12: push jurisdictions toward more intrusive data collection and surveillance, especially
Speaker 12: if that jurisdiction is receiving federal grants. Additionally, the coalition
Speaker 12: noted how the sunset provision for the CORCA Coordination Center
Speaker 12: quote includes no requirement to dismantle data sharing systems, delete
Speaker 12: collected information, or reverse any entrenched surveillance practices quote, So
Speaker 12: these practices could very well be here to stay without
Speaker 12: some sort of intervention down the line. Good luck to
Speaker 12: us trying to get that. I think, as James put
Speaker 12: it in a conversation we had, it's like trying to
Speaker 12: convince a bunch of the HOA moms that we need
Speaker 12: to be softer on real detail crime. It just doesn't
Speaker 12: really seem like it's going to happen. And unfortunately, this
Speaker 12: coalition letter largely fell on deaf ears, with only fifty
Speaker 12: nine Democrats and one Republican voting against Corka in the House.
Speaker 12: I've spoken with many people about this, and there's often
Speaker 12: this question of like do they know? And I'd argue,
Speaker 12: it's their job to know, and this pill is pretty
Speaker 12: cut and dried power expansion for Ice. It's kind of
Speaker 12: hard to tell how they wouldn't have seen this coming,
Speaker 12: especially with progressive groups warning them about it. And by
Speaker 12: now this coalition has grown to over one hundred and
Speaker 12: twenty organizations urging the Senate not to pass Corka. In
Speaker 12: spite of this, in the Senate Judiciary Committee, Republican Senator
Speaker 12: Chuck Grassley and Democratic Senator Dick Durbin have teamed up
Speaker 12: to add Corka as an amendment to the National Defense
Speaker 12: Authorization Act for fiscal year twenty twenty seven. This would
Speaker 12: essentially just mean entrenching this into our defense policy. And
Speaker 12: if that happens, which seems somewhat likely, I suspect it's
Speaker 12: Kurt and Corca is going through. I highly doubt that
Speaker 12: the Democrats are going to hold the line on the
Speaker 12: NDAA for something they clearly either don't care about or
Speaker 12: don't seem to understand. But what they might care about
Speaker 12: are the products and services that support this podcast, And
Speaker 12: we're back, and I'm imagining this is starting to sound
Speaker 12: pretty frightening, and it is to cool the temperature a bit.
Speaker 12: It's important to consider ICE's capacity for enforcement. They've had
Speaker 12: ways of accessing various surveillance tools for quite some time now.
Speaker 12: To some extent, they likely could have done some of
Speaker 12: this stuff with flock cameras or other automated license plate readers.
Speaker 12: But I think the threat in retail comes more from
Speaker 12: the pre existing infrastructure and the fact that this bill
Speaker 12: seems to give ICE sweeping access to confidential and proprietary information. Still,
Speaker 12: there are strategies for resisting this, I won't lie. Many
Speaker 12: of them are time intensive and require consistent community effort,
Speaker 12: but that's the world we're in. For example, in Hillsboro, Oregon,
Speaker 12: just west of Portland, local mutual aid groups began delivering
Speaker 12: groceries to immigrant families who are afraid to go outside
Speaker 12: in the middle of Operation Black Rows, which was the
Speaker 12: massive ice surge last fall in winter. In Los Angeles
Speaker 12: last summer, similar groups set up community defense corners outside
Speaker 12: home depot parking lots in an attempt to protect day
Speaker 12: laborers from ice raids. These usually manifested as just pop
Speaker 12: up tents with community members water and snacks. Certainly didn't
Speaker 12: stop everything, but I know one group in Pasadena that
Speaker 12: was allegedly the last home depot in LA to be raided,
Speaker 12: and they had a consistent community effort for months. In
Speaker 12: terms of shopping, avoiding loyalty programs may end up being necessary,
Speaker 12: as this is one of the ways that we hand
Speaker 12: over a lot of our data to stores. But shopping
Speaker 12: locally or at stores that collect less data will probably
Speaker 12: be the best bet. So CORKA clearly has a number
Speaker 12: of ways that it could be abused by ice. But
Speaker 12: to get the full extent of what we're dealing with,
Speaker 12: I got in contact with Laura Conover, who is the
Speaker 12: district attorney in Pima County, Arizona, which contains Tucson and
Speaker 12: borders the Mexican state of Sonora. Contrary to Da Stephen
Speaker 12: featured in the first episode, Conover has actually been an
Speaker 12: outspoken opponent of CORKA. In particular, she has tied CORKA
Speaker 12: to the Lake and Riley Act, saying Congress is just
Speaker 12: compounding mistakes it already made. The Lake and Riley Act
Speaker 12: became law on January twenty ninth, twenty twenty five, passing
Speaker 12: Congress again with a substantial amount of bipartisan support greater
Speaker 12: than sixty percent in both chambers. It's a particularly abhorrent
Speaker 12: piece of legislation, as a quote requires DHS to detain
Speaker 12: certain non US nationals who have been arrested for burglary, theft, larceny, shoplifting,
Speaker 12: assault of a law enforcement officer, or any crime that
Speaker 12: results in death or serious bodily injury to another person.
Speaker 12: Notice how it says arrested, not charged, not convicted, but
Speaker 12: simply detained for one of the crimes listed, even if
Speaker 12: the individual didn't actually do anything wrong. The law also
Speaker 12: allows states to sue the federal government for alleged failures
Speaker 12: and immigration enforcement, meaning the federal government can effectively be
Speaker 12: held liable for a number of things, such as if
Speaker 12: an undocumented immigrant causes harm to state residents, including financial
Speaker 12: harm greater than one hundred dollars. It's tough to say
Speaker 12: the extent to which this could be applied, but the
Speaker 12: through line between this and CORKA is pretty clear. ICE
Speaker 12: could monitor retail locations for thefts and shoplifting through CORCA
Speaker 12: then they're essentially liable if they don't seek to detain
Speaker 12: someone who has stolen more than one hundred dollars worth
Speaker 12: of merchandise. Conover has specific examples of the ways in
Speaker 12: which the Lake and Riley Act is burdening local jurisdictions,
Speaker 12: destroying due process protections, and ultimately how CORKA will very
Speaker 12: likely make this worse. For example, it was Conover's job
Speaker 12: to prosecute the case of Jessica Corles Duarte, who entered
Speaker 12: the US when she was two years old with her mother,
Speaker 12: who had fled domestic abuse in Mexico and obtained legal
Speaker 12: status through the Violence Against Women Act. Corrales Duarte became
Speaker 12: a DOCA recipient, and she's now thirty two or thirty
Speaker 12: three based on the articles that I read, and she
Speaker 12: has two children. But in the past years she was
Speaker 12: arrested and charged with shoplifting and theft, and her DOCA
Speaker 12: status has been terminated. She allegedly stole up to fifty
Speaker 12: seven hundred dollars in perfume from an Alta beauty location
Speaker 12: over three days, which put her over the felony theft threshold,
Speaker 12: though this number is disputed by her defense. She had
Speaker 12: no prior criminal record, and Conover said based on a
Speaker 12: tape confession, she likely would have qualified for a program
Speaker 12: where she could pay restitution and get back on her feet.
Speaker 12: Then ICE came in. They detained Corles Duarte as she
Speaker 12: was leaving her home for her waitressing job. The ensuing
Speaker 12: months where it is at ICE held her at the
Speaker 12: Elloyd Detention Center, about an hour from Tucson, and blocked
Speaker 12: her from attending many of the court dates for her
Speaker 12: shoplifting case. According to an article in the Tucson Spotlight,
Speaker 12: here's da Conover on the situation.
Speaker 19: So, for example, in our case, the result was just
Speaker 19: defendants disappearing into federal custody and before any normal process.
Speaker 19: So you've got a victim who's now totally out of
Speaker 19: luck for any kind of restoration, be that through probation
Speaker 19: or through restitution, which is important.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 19: So victim's rights are violated. The defendant obviously gets no
Speaker 19: due process. You know, in our experience, they hardly had
Speaker 19: any contact with their attorney, and their attorney was just
Speaker 19: rendered totally ineffective in the local court. So it confounds
Speaker 19: the entire normal criminal justice to this process. It's like
Speaker 19: the opposite of collaboration.
Speaker 12: So not only are Kerles Duarte's rights violated on multiple levels,
Speaker 12: but it also actually hurts the property owner because they
Speaker 12: won't receive restitution if someone is deported. It's not clear
Speaker 12: whether Korles Duarte was involved in some sort of organized
Speaker 12: retail theft operation, but I want to stress again that
Speaker 12: the people in such a situation who actually do this dealing,
Speaker 12: commonly referred to as boosters, are often poor, homeless, or
Speaker 12: struggling in some way themselves. Many of you probably already
Speaker 12: know this, but undocumented people commit less crime overall than
Speaker 12: American citizens. An analysis by the National Institute of Justice
Speaker 12: using data from Texas between twenty twelve and twenty eighteen
Speaker 12: found that undocumented immigrants had offending rates less than half
Speaker 12: of that of US born citizens. This is in spite
Speaker 12: of the fact that the US fakes it much harder
Speaker 12: for undocumented people to obtain good paying jobs, which can
Speaker 12: drive people into poverty and therefore crime. And for all
Speaker 12: of this conover inform me that corle S Duarte appears
Speaker 12: to be in process for deportation away from her children.
Speaker 12: There are just more effective and humane ways to deal
Speaker 12: with this, like the diversion programs mentioned which don't need
Speaker 12: to involve the federal government, but instead we're just giving
Speaker 12: more power ties With.
Speaker 19: Lake and Riley and with Corka, you're talking about such
Speaker 19: a street level, local issue where we have local police
Speaker 19: and prosecutors whose entire purpose is to prosecute local crime,
Speaker 19: and to just give some random federal agency authority over
Speaker 19: that sweeping new authority of that just doesn't make any
Speaker 19: sense operationally. Not to mention the particular agency is one
Speaker 19: in which there's bipartisan concern about how recklessly they're being managed.
Speaker 12: On the note of recklessness, with the expansion of ISIS
Speaker 12: surveillance network comes greater concern over warrantless enforcement, constitutional violations,
Speaker 12: and technological mistakes. The podcast Reveal reported a case of
Speaker 12: ICE scanning the face of a twenty three year old
Speaker 12: US citizen purely on suspicion, and according to Innovation Law Lab,
Speaker 12: the same seems to have happened to a woman in Oregon,
Speaker 12: where Ice used a Palanteer developed platform called Elite, which,
Speaker 12: without a warrant, essentially geofence is an area and creates
Speaker 12: targets with a quote immigration nexus. In this case, the
Speaker 12: mobile Fortify app returned two different incorrect names and images
Speaker 12: for the same woman. Still ICE has told lawmakers it's
Speaker 12: a definitive measure of immigration status that effectively supersedes other
Speaker 12: evidence of citizenship, such as a birth certificate. The National
Speaker 12: Institute of Standards and Technology has also reported that facial
Speaker 12: recognition tech is less accurate on women than men, black people,
Speaker 12: and other individuals with darker skin. This hull gets much
Speaker 12: worse when you're not in a controlled environment where you
Speaker 12: can get a well lit, straight on shot of someone's
Speaker 12: face with no obstruction. Certainly something that isn't going to
Speaker 12: happen under the floodlights of a grocery store entryway. So again,
Speaker 12: I can't really say to what extent ICE will actually
Speaker 12: integrate all of these technologies or what capacity they'll have
Speaker 12: for enforcement, but it seems like the worst case scenario
Speaker 12: could be a warrantless surveillance frenzy where they couldn't care
Speaker 12: less if they're detaining the right people. I say the
Speaker 12: right people as in the individuals that they're actually targeting,
Speaker 12: and I don't actually believe there is a right person
Speaker 12: to be detained.
Speaker 4: It's all bullshit.
Speaker 3: But as Corka also calls for local and federal collaboration,
Speaker 3: cops could very easily worsen this problem, and ICE can
Speaker 3: leverage the Lake and rileyac to ramp up deportations. It's
Speaker 3: not good, but anyways, here's some ads. We're back to
Speaker 3: round out this two parter and like to connect some
Speaker 3: of the dots from the first episode to Corca. To
Speaker 3: do so, I've chatted with James about a concept known
Speaker 3: as moral turpitude. Moral turpitude is a vaguely defined concept
Speaker 3: and there's lots of nebulous legal language surrounding it, but
Speaker 3: in essence, it's a crime that is considered morally offensive
Speaker 3: and it's important to immigration law. Notably included in this
Speaker 3: definition is larceny or theft, and a conviction for one
Speaker 3: of these crimes can render an immigrant either inadmissible or deportable.
Speaker 3: Here's some of the conversation that James and I had.
Speaker 20: In admissibility could be important for someone who is inside
Speaker 20: the United States. Let's say they call it ewe entered
Speaker 20: without inspection. That means coming into the United States, not
Speaker 20: through a port of entry.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 20: Let's say they went over the wall, under the wall,
Speaker 20: around the wall, through the river, through the desert, through
Speaker 20: the mountains. Right, the many ways that people can enter
Speaker 20: with that inspection, they could then be found inadmissible long
Speaker 20: after entering the United States because they hadn't been admitted, right,
Speaker 20: they just came in. Just imagine, like you want to
Speaker 20: go Disneyland. It's prohibitively expensive, so you climb over defence.
Speaker 20: You were not admitted to Disneyland. Yeah, right, So if
Speaker 20: Disneyland found you, they would kick you out. The issue here,
Speaker 20: Let's say if someone has been in the United States
Speaker 20: for a number of years but they are undocumented. If
Speaker 20: they are found guilty of a crime including moral turpitude,
Speaker 20: or convicted of a crime moral turpitude, and the offense
Speaker 20: carries a maximum sentence of one year or more and
Speaker 20: the person committed the offense within five years after the
Speaker 20: date of admission, they are then deportable. Now if the eweed,
Speaker 20: if they ended with that inspection, there aout other reasons
Speaker 20: they could be deportable. Right, But I did say somebody
Speaker 20: has a visa. The same is true with inadmissibility.
Speaker 12: Right.
Speaker 20: So we recently had a Supreme Court ruling about admissibility
Speaker 20: with regard to permanent residents, which kind of brings them
Speaker 20: closer in line to visa holders. But admissibility doesn't just
Speaker 20: mean them giving you the visa. It could also, for example,
Speaker 20: impact you if you went somewhere else and return to
Speaker 20: the United States. Right, So a crime evolving moral TERMSUD
Speaker 20: could then render you in admissible, so you could be
Speaker 20: detained or not admitted to the United States when you
Speaker 20: came back. It's also important, I guess, to note that
Speaker 20: some diversion programs State diversion programs don't count as a
Speaker 20: conviction in terms of federal immigration law if a guilty
Speaker 20: plea is not entered. So if somebody who could previously
Speaker 20: have got into a diversion program ends up not in
Speaker 20: a diversion program. In addition to Corker, right, we have
Speaker 20: all these state sentencing enhancements. Yeah, we see in California. Right,
Speaker 20: If that person ends up with a conviction instead of
Speaker 20: being putting a diversion program without entering a plea, that
Speaker 20: is a night and day different in immigration terms.
Speaker 2: Right, It's black and white.
Speaker 20: One is a conviction for what it's probably a crime
Speaker 20: evolving moral turpitude, because lars andy is a crime evolving
Speaker 20: moral turpitude, and I think that's what this generally falls under.
Speaker 20: Rent again, not a lawyer. But if that is the case,
Speaker 20: one of these sentencing enhanced and at a state level
Speaker 20: results in somebody now having, for federal immigration terms, a
Speaker 20: conviction of a crime involving moral turpitude. They are now
Speaker 20: inadmissible and in a single conviction, as I said before,
Speaker 20: can make a non citizen deportable if it has a
Speaker 20: possible sentence for a year or more, which these sentencing
Speaker 20: enhancement to make a lot more likely. Right, and good luck,
Speaker 20: I guess trying to find some way of getting that
Speaker 20: conviction overturned or like you now you're fighting against all
Speaker 20: this lobbying that retailers are doing, right, and all this
Speaker 20: propaganda that has been put out there that is going
Speaker 20: to make it harder and harder for people to avoid
Speaker 20: those convictions in the first place, and then to get
Speaker 20: them overturned.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 12: I don't want to get like to doom and gloom
Speaker 12: about it, but like, do you worry that there's just
Speaker 12: a combination of factors here that could massively worsen things
Speaker 12: with at the level?
Speaker 10: Yeah?
Speaker 20: Yeah, Like every time we make a new law, we're
Speaker 20: giving a new powers to the state, right, and every
Speaker 20: single law is backed up by violence a matter of
Speaker 20: if it's a parking ticket or murder. Right, the state
Speaker 20: can lock you up, beat you up, or shoot you up.
Speaker 20: That is the basis on which all laws rest. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 20: so you don't pick a parking ticket that you don't
Speaker 20: go to court. Eventually someone's going to turn up, but
Speaker 20: your Dora is going to be a person with a gun, right, Like,
Speaker 20: that is the structure on which the state exists to
Speaker 20: use like the crass Faburian definition of the state. I
Speaker 20: guess this is a big one, right. We are handing
Speaker 20: a bunch of tools here to an entity which is
Speaker 20: tearing families apart, which is ripping children from parents, which
Speaker 20: is taking grandmothers away from their grandchildren.
Speaker 12: Right, yeah, I mean what do you Maybe this isn't
Speaker 12: for the episode, but like, what do you think people
Speaker 12: should do?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 20: Like, the answer to this is the same as an
Speaker 20: answer to everything. It's stronger. Community is Like, people steal
Speaker 20: things because they need to meet their material needs. Sure,
Speaker 20: some people also enjoy stealing stuff, Right, that's the thing
Speaker 20: that exists, But the vast majority of FAFT is happening
Speaker 20: because people are not meeting their material needs. We need
Speaker 20: to work out a way to meet each other's material needs.
Speaker 20: And like I was in Minneapolis in January, right, yeah,
Speaker 20: very hard for me to be hungry in Minneapolis in January.
Speaker 20: Like I'm vegan, I'm annoying to feed, right, but people
Speaker 20: would constantly bring me fucking food and hot tea. And
Speaker 20: like that's not the be all end all, but gets
Speaker 20: us a long way there. Like if your neighbors aren't hungry,
Speaker 20: and I guess to know if your neighbors are hungry,
Speaker 20: you have to know who your neighbors are, right, So like,
Speaker 20: start by knocking on someone's door, you know, start by
Speaker 20: your truck's not working. Let's work it out. I bet
Speaker 20: I can find a YouTube video. We can watch you.
Speaker 20: You have a bunch of sockets. Let's see how we
Speaker 20: can fix it.
Speaker 12: So I know the ending of this is sort of bleak,
Speaker 12: but I just want to be honest with you about
Speaker 12: the possibilities. If I used this to take Korka as
Speaker 12: far as they can, as Da Conover told me, you
Speaker 12: give them an inch and they take a mile, then
Speaker 12: this will get very bad. Surveillance capitalism isn't going to
Speaker 12: draw a line at immigrants, but that doesn't really matter
Speaker 12: either way. Clearly, the Democratic Party, given their votes support
Speaker 12: is not going to stop this. As James said, It's
Speaker 12: going to come down to community. So go find your
Speaker 12: co op grocery store. Get to know your neighbors' faces
Speaker 12: before Ice gets to know your face at.
Speaker 5: The grocery store.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.
Speaker 11: There were some strange looking at people at RNC. This
Speaker 11: is it could happen here at Executive Disorder Hour, with
Speaker 11: the newscast covering what's happening in the White House, the
Speaker 11: crumbling world, and what this means for you. I'm Garrison
Speaker 11: Davis to They am joined by Robert Evans and Mia Wong,
Speaker 11: with a special segment later on by James Stout, who
Speaker 11: is on the ground in Spokane. This episode recovering the
Speaker 11: week of July twenty ninth to August fifth, And let's
Speaker 11: actually start with James reporting from the wildfires in Spokane.
Speaker 20: Hi, everyone, it's James. I'm in Washington State this week
Speaker 20: covering the fires here. I will cover more in depth
Speaker 20: on my new show Natural Courses, which you will soon
Speaker 20: be able to download wherever quality podcasts given away for free,
Speaker 20: but I want to catch everyone up on the fires here.
Speaker 20: As an a little folk prefer to consume then news
Speaker 20: this way and might otherwise not be aware of what's
Speaker 20: going on. So on the first of August, the National
Speaker 20: Weather Service in each Washington and in Idaho issued a PDS,
Speaker 20: a Particular Dangerous Situation Notice. Fires were already burning across
Speaker 20: much of the state and across much of the Pacific Northwest,
Speaker 20: including on the land of the Colville Tribes and the
Speaker 20: Spokane Tribe. On Saturday, three fires struck near the north
Speaker 20: part of the city of Spokane. The PDS doubtless helped
Speaker 20: some folks prepare other folks, I'm sure will have missed
Speaker 20: it entirely. Very quickly, people went from nothing to level
Speaker 20: three go now warnings. This was somewhat compounded by things
Speaker 20: like a large travel volleyball tournament happening in an area
Speaker 20: which got a level three go now warning. What that
Speaker 20: means if you're not familiar. There are three levels of
Speaker 20: warnings when you are evacuated for a fire, and their
Speaker 20: level three is the most severe one, that being like
Speaker 20: you have to leave your home right now. Several people
Speaker 20: have related to me, and I want to caveat here
Speaker 20: that I'm not being critical of the response, which has
Speaker 20: actually been very good. I'm giving information because more people
Speaker 20: are going to find themselves in this situation in the future.
Speaker 20: And I think is important that people understand that the
Speaker 20: level three warning that buzzed on people's phones of the
Speaker 20: emergency alert came not very long before they saw fires
Speaker 20: and even structures on fire in the neighborhood.
Speaker 10: Right.
Speaker 20: I think people sometimes think that someone will come and
Speaker 20: tell you when it is your time to leave, and
Speaker 20: that's not always going to be possible, right, And again,
Speaker 20: I'm not conveying that to say that, like the response
Speaker 20: here was poor.
Speaker 2: I'm conveying that to say that.
Speaker 20: People need to understand this because we're all going to
Speaker 20: have to live with fire in the West because there
Speaker 20: has always been fire here. The climate is changing and
Speaker 20: we are pushing our homes further and further into the
Speaker 20: wildland urban interface, and that is where this fire began.
Speaker 20: Right on Saturday. This state was a tinderbox, and it
Speaker 20: was these neighborhoods along the wildland urban interface that caught
Speaker 20: the brnt of these fast moving fires that had a
Speaker 20: plentiful source of fuel and were pushed along.
Speaker 2: By the wind.
Speaker 20: Currently, about a third of the two hundred thousand people
Speaker 20: who live here in Spokane have been placed under evacuations
Speaker 20: orders and the community is obviously feeling the way of that,
Speaker 20: along with the hundreds of people who lost their homes
Speaker 20: and all their possessions. Here notable points of the evacuations
Speaker 20: included buses evacuating people from Old Folks homes and a
Speaker 20: VA hospital was also evacuated by buses. And of course
Speaker 20: many people left their homes in their cars with their possessions,
Speaker 20: their pets, their families, etc. And of course that resulted
Speaker 20: in very slow moving traffic. Nonetheless, from what I heard
Speaker 20: this morning, seems everyone evacuated in time at least to
Speaker 20: save themselves. I know many people will be dealing with
Speaker 20: tragedies right They've lost their homes, people will have lost pets,
Speaker 20: people will have lost things that are incredibly important to them.
Speaker 4: I spoke to.
Speaker 20: People out on the Covial Tribes reservation who were saying
Speaker 20: they had lost homes that their father, mother, grandparents built
Speaker 20: with their hands, right these intergenerational homes that had gone.
Speaker 20: That is absolutely tragic. I want to give an update
Speaker 20: that I got this morning from a public information officer
Speaker 20: of the IMT that's managing this fire, so we'll drop
Speaker 20: that in right now.
Speaker 5: My name's Tom Stokesbury.
Speaker 15: I'm the lead public information officer for California Interagency Incident
Speaker 15: Management Team seven. So right now, there's three fires that
Speaker 15: make up the Spokane area fires. That's going to be
Speaker 15: the Fairview Fire, the Old Trails Fire, and the Autumn
Speaker 15: Lane Fire. Currently all totaled in the acres is ten
Speaker 15: five hundred and forty But over the last twenty four hours,
Speaker 15: our firefighters have made tremendous progress in putting control lines
Speaker 15: in around the entire perimeter of all three fires. Now
Speaker 15: that doesn't mean the fires contained or controlled. We just
Speaker 15: have those management and control lines. There still have an
Speaker 15: active firefight. Sty'll have active flames in the interior. To
Speaker 15: the point, on the Old Trails and Fairview fire, we
Speaker 15: actually had a spot outside the line on each one
Speaker 15: of those that went to about an acre acre and
Speaker 15: a half, but we had the resources in the right
Speaker 15: place and they were able to pick those up at
Speaker 15: about one acre each. So that just kind of proves
Speaker 15: that there's still active heat hot spots in this interior
Speaker 15: and that's why we have engines and all three of
Speaker 15: these fires still protecting the structures that have not been
Speaker 15: impacted yet because any kind of wind can throw embers,
Speaker 15: and right now, the receptive fuels in this area. In
Speaker 15: by fuels, I mean the vegetation that is so dry,
Speaker 15: right your grass, your brush, it's very receptive to those embers.
Speaker 15: Proof being is the two spot fires. But we have
Speaker 15: thirteen hundred firefighters here. We're expected to be over two
Speaker 15: thousand by the end of the week.
Speaker 20: I also asked about the number of structures impacted and
Speaker 20: when people here can expect to return home. And here's
Speaker 20: what Tom said.
Speaker 15: Right now, we're well over seven hundred structures that have
Speaker 15: been impacted. We do have damage assessment personnel ordered and
Speaker 15: en route. It's my understanding they'll be showing up today
Speaker 15: and we'll have them on the ground tomorrow. So we're
Speaker 15: going to start to get a more accurate number of
Speaker 15: what those impacted structures look like versus a total loss
Speaker 15: to just an impacted structure. And those structures include not
Speaker 15: only people's personal homes, but garages, outbuildings, sheds. But we're
Speaker 15: going to get a better accurate number on those over
Speaker 15: these next few days, trying to get these communities back
Speaker 15: to where we can get them repopulated. But in addition
Speaker 15: to that, there there's a tremendous amount of hasmat in there.
Speaker 15: We're talking burned solar panels, we're talking LPG, possible gas leaks,
Speaker 15: the building materials from homes that have been burnt, the
Speaker 15: stuff that's inside those homes. There is a lot of hazmat.
Speaker 15: So we have to ensure the public is going to
Speaker 15: be safe before we repopulate and let them back in there,
Speaker 15: because our ultimate goal is life first, then property, and
Speaker 15: that life is not just firefighters, it's the public safety.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 20: Well, I was at the fire based camp also ran
Speaker 20: into local community members and businesses who are helping out.
Speaker 20: People were constantly dropping off food and snacks and supplies.
Speaker 20: His One local business owner who explained his efforts to.
Speaker 7: Me, So, my name is Tim Codzy. I'm with JK. Boots.
Speaker 7: I'm one of the owners with my brother, and.
Speaker 20: I asked him what him and his company we're doing
Speaker 20: to support the community.
Speaker 7: On Wednesday, August fifth, we're doing something home Front Day.
Speaker 7: We're going to donate one hundred percent of all the
Speaker 7: profits of that day to the Spokane residents who lost
Speaker 7: their homes so they could do that, they could participate
Speaker 7: just on our website and just do something, just get
Speaker 7: something and that'll go to those people. The other things
Speaker 7: you can do is you can come here and you
Speaker 7: can offer to drop off you know again, drinks, wipes, essentials.
Speaker 7: You can look on Facebook, they've posted those things. The
Speaker 7: other big thing is just there's other funds that are
Speaker 7: set up that have like meal trains, and because there's
Speaker 7: about sixty thousand people that are still not a bit
Speaker 7: not able to go back to their homes.
Speaker 20: Yeah, yeah, what's happening in Spokene is tragic and it
Speaker 20: is going to impact this community for years to come.
Speaker 20: It will take a very long time for rebuilding to happen,
Speaker 20: and probably even longer for people to heal emotionally. I
Speaker 20: want to make sure that we do not overlook the
Speaker 20: several large ongoing fires are impacting the indigenous communities around
Speaker 20: the city though, because as resources shift to the fires
Speaker 20: that then the city, these communities will see fewer resources,
Speaker 20: and indeed they already have seen fewer resources. I spent
Speaker 20: the last couple of days visiting the Colville Tribes Reservations
Speaker 20: Spokane Tribe Reservations.
Speaker 2: Today.
Speaker 20: I spoke to folks who would cut their own file
Speaker 20: around their homes and communities who were prepared to fight
Speaker 20: the fire. And indigenous people here have lived with fire
Speaker 20: for thousands of years, right, They have a deep understanding
Speaker 20: of fire, and people there had decided to stay and
Speaker 20: to defend their communities, even in areas that were impacted
Speaker 20: by Level three evacuations. Not everybody, right, Some people who
Speaker 20: were more vulnerable, Some people who were not able to
Speaker 20: pass this bit in that response or didn't feel safe
Speaker 20: doing so, left, and the folks stayed. As resources continue
Speaker 20: to be diverted to fight these fires and spokene, and
Speaker 20: as news coverage will continue to center on the city,
Speaker 20: folks who lost their homes out in these tribal communities
Speaker 20: will also need help, and it might be harder for
Speaker 20: them to find it. Some of these people are still
Speaker 20: in their homes. Just today, I spoke to several people
Speaker 20: who determined to do the hardest to save their homes
Speaker 20: and hoping that the wind doesn't pick up. They're cutting
Speaker 20: their own fire lines. In several cases, forestry and mining
Speaker 20: workers as well as tribal community members who were on
Speaker 20: contract fire crews, have been using their machinery and their
Speaker 20: skills to clear space and create better firebreaks around their communities.
Speaker 20: It's a really tragic and difficult situation, especially when combined
Speaker 20: with this reporting that I will link to of Red
Speaker 20: Cross volunteers making racist remarks shelters that made Indigenous folks
Speaker 20: feel unwelcome there. I don't think I need to repeat those,
Speaker 20: but I will link to the story if you'd like
Speaker 20: to read it. It is also, of course amazing to
Speaker 20: see the strengths and resilience of communities coming together to
Speaker 20: take care of one another in these tragic situations. I
Speaker 20: particularly want to highlight the work of the River Warriors Society.
Speaker 20: I spend today with them moving supplies from one reservation
Speaker 20: to another. I will include a link to the Spokane
Speaker 20: Tribal Network, which people can use if they'd like to
Speaker 20: donate to support that mutual laid work. They're really doing
Speaker 20: excellent work. They're getting people what they need, They're filling
Speaker 20: those gaps. They're moving more quickly than big organizations of
Speaker 20: big government things can even tribal governments where it will
Speaker 20: require paperwork, whereas what they're doing is literally standing at
Speaker 20: gas stations using cards to pay for people's gas so
Speaker 20: they can get where they need to go right, getting
Speaker 20: people hotel rooms, getting people food, getting people the things
Speaker 20: they need to get through this and to begin healing. Today,
Speaker 20: I help load hundreds of pounds of pet food and
Speaker 20: animal food into a trailer, for instance, so that people
Speaker 20: who need to feed their animals don't have to drive
Speaker 20: for hours away from their homes right when the risk
Speaker 20: of fire is high and they want to stay home
Speaker 20: and do what they can to protect their homes. They're
Speaker 20: really doing excellent work, and I would encourage you to
Speaker 20: support them movie you have the resources. I will have
Speaker 20: more of this when I get home. Currently, really tired,
Speaker 20: smell like a campfire, and I am in the bathroom
Speaker 20: of a motel because it is the only quiet place
Speaker 20: I could find. If you'd like to donate, I would
Speaker 20: suggest the Spokane Trible Network and I'll include their web address.
Speaker 20: It's Spokantrible Network dot org, not hard to find. I
Speaker 20: will also include the Innovia Foundation web page for donation
Speaker 20: to folks in Spokane and their ongoing recovery. And yeah,
Speaker 20: I'll have more on this soon.
Speaker 21: Everyone.
Speaker 20: Again, just a little pick up here that I wanted
Speaker 20: to add. Someone has been arrested for arson in connection
Speaker 20: with the Autumn Trails fire. I want to remind everyone
Speaker 20: that an arrest is not a conviction. There were three
Speaker 20: fires and impacted spoken and that fire needs more than ignition,
Speaker 20: right to spread in the way that they did here.
Speaker 20: It needs fuel crucially in this example, and that fuel
Speaker 20: was already there.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 20: That's why I wanted to highlight the PDS that was
Speaker 20: issued on the first of August. Now, I also want
Speaker 20: to address these conspiracy theories.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 20: The most common conspiracy theory seems to be that this
Speaker 20: was an attempt by big data center companies to clear
Speaker 20: a block of land in order to have a place
Speaker 20: where they could put a data center. I can tell
Speaker 20: you that I've spent the last two days driving hundreds
Speaker 20: of miles around eastern Washington. There is plenty of land
Speaker 20: where you could put a data center here without burning
Speaker 20: down the neighborhood. Data centers aren't that they are destroying
Speaker 20: so many beautiful places and so many wonderful things. It
Speaker 20: doesn't mean that they are comic book evil all the time.
Speaker 20: I think we need to inject a little rational thought here.
Speaker 20: We don't have any evidence that it was a data center.
Speaker 20: We did, then people would be presenting it. But the
Speaker 20: data center hypothesis seems to rest on people want to
Speaker 20: build the data center near here, therefore burn down neighborhoods,
Speaker 20: or the relatively common and frequently recurrent fifteen minute cities
Speaker 20: conspiracy theory, which suggests that rather than fifteen minute cities
Speaker 20: being an aspirational goal for urban planning and a framework
Speaker 20: around which you consider permitting, building and potentially growing our cities,
Speaker 20: they are some kind of George Sorrows mandated dictat that
Speaker 20: is now being enforced by burning people's neighborhoods down in
Speaker 20: suburban areas. Again to support that other than this wasn't
Speaker 20: a city that, you know, the fifteen minute city people
Speaker 20: consider to be a fifteen minute city. I want to
Speaker 20: address these things because they come up every single time
Speaker 20: there's a fire, and I think we need and we're
Speaker 20: going to talk about this more in my show Natural Causes,
Speaker 20: which you can hear from seventeenth of August wherever Good
Speaker 20: Podcast giving away for free. There are going to be
Speaker 20: fires in this ecosystem forever. There have been fires, since
Speaker 20: there have been plants to burn. Lightning started fires before
Speaker 20: people ever did. But the people who have been here
Speaker 20: for tens of thousands of years have lived along side
Speaker 20: fire for all that time. We can't entirely suppress fire
Speaker 20: and remove it from our landscape. This landscape needs fire,
Speaker 20: and it evolved co evolved with fire. But there are
Speaker 20: ways that we can prevent fire from doing what happened today,
Speaker 20: but they require a lot of effort, they require a
Speaker 20: lot of resources, and they require some rethinking of how
Speaker 20: we live along. That's something I'd like to approach later
Speaker 20: and in more detail. But I guess I just wanted
Speaker 20: to address these conspiracy theories because I see more and
Speaker 20: more of them. Also want to point out that there
Speaker 20: is no meaningful restitution that be astracted from one person
Speaker 20: if that person did start the fire. Healing doesn't come
Speaker 20: from punishing someone, comes from helping someone. And in this situation,
Speaker 20: there are hundreds of families who lost their homes, both
Speaker 20: on the Coval Tribes reservation, the Spokane Tribe Reservation, and
Speaker 20: here in Spokane the city, and I think the focus
Speaker 20: should be on how to help those people and how
Speaker 20: to help them heal, rather than blaming one person who
Speaker 20: may have started this fire, who may not write. We
Speaker 20: haven't got a conviction yet, but either way, I want
Speaker 20: people to remember that this is about a lot more
Speaker 20: than one person.
Speaker 11: Thank you, James. In other news, on Monday, A federal
Speaker 11: judge issued a preliminary injunction blocking New York's ban on
Speaker 11: ice agents wearing manks. New York State is suing to
Speaker 11: shut down Calshie for operating as an unregulated sports betting
Speaker 11: platform that offers illegal underage gambling. The state is also
Speaker 11: seeking thirty six billion dollars in penalties, and this lawsuit
Speaker 11: comes after a district court ruled against Calshi in their
Speaker 11: bid to protect itself from the enforcement of New York's
Speaker 11: gambling laws. Prior to this lawsuit from the state, Calshe
Speaker 11: attempted to bribe Governor Kathy Hokel by offering ten billion
Speaker 11: in tax revenue over five years. The governor responded on
Speaker 11: the everything app quote, Calshi can promise one hundred percent
Speaker 11: of its revenue. You can't buy yourself an exemption from
Speaker 11: New York law. If an i legal bookie offers this
Speaker 11: state a share of their profits, will still shut them
Speaker 11: down unquote. In response to a lawsuit from Trump accusing
Speaker 11: Capital One of unlawfully closing his bank accounts for political reasons,
Speaker 11: a Capital One is revealed in court filings that the
Speaker 11: Trump or organization bank accounts were closed in twenty twenty
Speaker 11: one for quote unquote anti money laundering reasons, following quote
Speaker 11: months of analysis and careful review by the bank's money
Speaker 11: laundering team. A few wants prior to the closure of
Speaker 11: Trump's accounts, Capital One had to pay a three hundred
Speaker 11: and ninety million dollar penalty to the Financial Crimes Enforcement
Speaker 11: Network for not enforcing an effective anti money laundering program.
Speaker 11: Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche's Senate confirmation hearing is coming up,
Speaker 11: but last week President Trump said he would keep Blanche
Speaker 11: on as acting Attorney General if Blanche doesn't get confirmed,
Speaker 11: and just try to nominate him again after the midterms.
Speaker 11: The US Attorney has dropped charges against three people who
Speaker 11: were accused of damaging the Lincoln Memorial reflecting Pool. The
Speaker 11: motion to dismiss the felony charge against the former Olympic
Speaker 11: athlete claims that it wasn't until after he was indicted
Speaker 11: that the Department of Interior gave evidence over to prosecutors
Speaker 11: that quote damaged to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in
Speaker 11: July twenty twenty six was the result of flawed installation
Speaker 11: by the contractor and the rush to complete the project
Speaker 11: prior to events associated with America two fifty celebration in
Speaker 11: the weeks surrounding Independence Day twenty twenty six. The motion
Speaker 11: also states, quote is difficult to attribute the widespread damage
Speaker 11: to the reflecting pool to vandalism unquote. Of course, Trump
Speaker 11: was not too happy about this, turning to truth social
Speaker 11: to say, I disagree one hundred percent with the Chennin Piro,
Speaker 11: the US attorney for the District of Columbia on the
Speaker 11: reflecting Pool. I don't know what she was thinking. To me,
Speaker 11: it was a pure case of vandalism in all caps.
Speaker 11: That includes the grass which had a big eighty six
Speaker 11: forty seven emblazoned in giant letters on it, Oh my god,
Speaker 11: and many other elements of the surrounding area.
Speaker 2: Ah god, ah god, oh God.
Speaker 11: There may have been some contract or difficulty, but the
Speaker 11: major damage was caused by vandals. President dj T. The
Speaker 11: President later said that Piro quote unquote folded like an
Speaker 11: umbrella end quote. Frankly, I think she choked because the
Speaker 11: judge was really vicious unquote. There was some speculation that
Speaker 11: he might fire the US attorney. That has not happened
Speaker 11: as of yet, but who knows.
Speaker 2: You know, it's it's the Trump administration. Things could have
Speaker 2: changed by the time we finished recording this. Yeah, there's
Speaker 2: I got thirty percent chance things will have changed by
Speaker 2: the time we finished recording this.
Speaker 11: Obviously, it's good that these charges were dropped. It was
Speaker 11: very clear that the damage to the reflecting pool was
Speaker 11: not done by vandals.
Speaker 2: No, and that fucking late, middle aged former olympian bending
Speaker 2: briefly down to touch the water did not cause one
Speaker 2: hundred and fifty foot cut in the fucking in this
Speaker 2: central Absolutely not.
Speaker 4: Oh god.
Speaker 11: Ohio House Rep. Max Miller, who's accused of abuse and
Speaker 11: breaking his two year old daughter's collarbone, which we covered
Speaker 11: last week, posted a video this week addressing the allegations
Speaker 11: made by his ex wife, saying, quote if I had
Speaker 11: assaulted her, would she have offered to cook me dinner
Speaker 11: six days later? Un quote. The next day, Trump was
Speaker 11: questioned about Miller and said this.
Speaker 22: It's a very sad thing. I know Max, he said,
Speaker 22: it's a good person. I mean, I always thought he
Speaker 22: was a very good person. And I'm gonna let the
Speaker 22: families figure that out. Those families, I know they're working
Speaker 22: on it. It's a very sad thing, especially when you
Speaker 22: know somebody so well could be going through that when
Speaker 22: it's accusations, and I'm gonna let them figure that out.
Speaker 11: On Tuesday, it was announced the House Ethics Committee would
Speaker 11: open investigation after Miller himself requested a probe into the allegations.
Speaker 11: Let's go to an ad break and then return to
Speaker 11: talk about the primary elections in Michigan and Missouri.
Speaker 21: Yeah, okay, we are back.
Speaker 11: This past Tuesday, left wing populist candidate Abdul el Said
Speaker 11: beat corporate backed and APAC backed candidate Hailey Stevens in
Speaker 11: the Democratic Senate primary in Michigan. In the week prior
Speaker 11: to the election, pulling and showed el Said pulling way
Speaker 11: ahead by double digits, but from election night he won
Speaker 11: by just one point forty eight point five percent to
Speaker 11: Stephen's forty seven point five percent. Very close race. Great
Speaker 11: The more traditional progressive candidate Mallorie McMorrow, who suspended her
Speaker 11: campaign months ago, got four percent of the vote over
Speaker 11: sixty thousand votes. El Sayid ended up winning by j
Speaker 11: fifteen thousand votes. But the fact that Tuesday wasn't a
Speaker 11: total blowout for el Sayid should not take away from
Speaker 11: the magnitude of this victory. Hailey Stevens had nearly seventy
Speaker 11: million dollars of outside spending helping her in this race,
Speaker 11: about half of which came from APAC. Elseayid was outspent
Speaker 11: eleven to one. For the past month, Pro Stevens ads
Speaker 11: have completely dominated the airwaves.
Speaker 2: Jesus, I didn't know it was that big a discrepancy
Speaker 2: in funding. That's crazy.
Speaker 11: It's a brutal This is the most expensive Democratic Senate
Speaker 11: primary and history. A pack and dark money really rallied
Speaker 11: for Stevens, especially in this past month.
Speaker 2: Whoops.
Speaker 11: Some of those ads and mailers just completely blanketing Michigan
Speaker 11: falsely implied that Stevens was endorsed by Barack Obama, which
Speaker 11: some voters cited as their reason for supporting Stevens. Other
Speaker 11: ads tried to smear Abdul as a sexist podcast bro
Speaker 11: for comments critical of Michelle Obama and Gretchen Whitmer's politics.
Speaker 11: Stevens received the endorsement of Michigan's sitting governor, Gretchen Whitmer,
Speaker 11: as well as multiple Democratic Establishment figures Pelosi, Jim Cliburn,
Speaker 11: as well as the Michigan Democratic Party Black and Jewish caucuses.
Speaker 11: Israel and Palestine became a central issue in this race.
Speaker 11: In the last two debates, Abdul hit Stevens again and
Speaker 11: again over APAC and corporate funding. In the final debate,
Speaker 11: even the moderator questioned Stevens on whether her APAC funding
Speaker 11: would influence how she votes in Congress. Also in that
Speaker 11: last debate, Stevens lied on stage about taking money from
Speaker 11: utility companies. In an interview just a week before the election,
Speaker 11: Stevens addressed the attacks over dark money funding. Quote, it
Speaker 11: seems like we got the campaign finance zoomis Jesus Christ.
Speaker 11: We've got to be really honest here. Who's benefiting from
Speaker 11: this level of infighting. It's the republic kids who've already
Speaker 11: have all their dark money all lined up and ready
Speaker 11: to go. Unquote. Let's take a listen to what those
Speaker 11: campaign of finance zuomies can buy you in the Senate.
Speaker 1: Israel comes to me in my dreams. I see Israel's future,
Speaker 1: and I know that Israel.
Speaker 2: Will continue to exist for.
Speaker 11: The Jewish people, just the Zuomies.
Speaker 12: It's fine everyone, It's the Zuomies God, and she's Christ.
Speaker 11: I will not stop playing that clip because it's one
Speaker 11: of the craziest things to have A then sit in
Speaker 11: Congress person say.
Speaker 2: Yeah, now, Hailey.
Speaker 11: Stevens tried to attack Abduel for having a super pack
Speaker 11: off his own, primarily funded by his father in law,
Speaker 11: who did donate three hundred thousand dollars to the pack,
Speaker 11: which was the highest individual contribution. You know, three hundred
Speaker 11: thousand dollars from his father in law versus seventy million
Speaker 11: dollars of outside sped. Dick is christ not a very
Speaker 11: compelling argument, but that was that was one of the
Speaker 11: main things that Stevens tried to hit Abdul law during
Speaker 11: the last two debates when he brought up the massive
Speaker 11: amount of eight pack spending backing her campaign. Abdul has
Speaker 11: worked in public health since twenty fifteen, and for Senate
Speaker 11: he ran on Medicare for All and abolishing medical debt,
Speaker 11: which he did for three hundred thousand residents of Wayne
Speaker 11: County in twenty twenty four as director of the county
Speaker 11: Health Department. His platform also includes repealing Medicaid cuts from
Speaker 11: Trump's quote unquote beautiful bill, codifying reproductive rights, and protecting
Speaker 11: gender affirming care. His quote unquote money out of Politics
Speaker 11: plank includes getting rid of Citizens United to stop dark
Speaker 11: money packs, ending partisan gerrymandering, supporting Supreme Court reform, getting
Speaker 11: rid of the filibuster, abolishing ICE and at quote ICE
Speaker 11: funds should be repurposed to build out the legal infrastructure
Speaker 11: of courts to create a clear pathway to citizenship for
Speaker 11: those who are stuck in limbo in our current system.
Speaker 11: Abduel supports Ukraine and opposes quote the illegal and unjustifiable
Speaker 11: war in Iran. He also opposes quote direct blank check
Speaker 11: funding to foreign militaries including Egypt, Israel, Saudi Arabia, the UAE,
Speaker 11: and others. And he supports an immediate arms embargo on
Speaker 11: Israel and rejects quote the false differentiation between offensive and
Speaker 11: defensive weapons, which is a reference to the Iron Dome.
Speaker 11: His Money in Your Pocket platform includes an anti monopoly
Speaker 11: FTC trade agreements negotiated with unions, restoring funding to the NIH,
Speaker 11: opposing private school vouchers, tying increases in the defense budget
Speaker 11: to an equal increase in education funding, Taxing capital gains
Speaker 11: over a million dollars at the same rate as ordinary income,
Speaker 11: closing loopholes used by the ultrawealthy, raising the marginal tax
Speaker 11: rate on earnings over one million, and a billionaire tax.
Speaker 11: He also supports a cost of living exemption on federal
Speaker 11: taxes up to fifty thousand dollars and closing the Social
Speaker 11: Security payroll tax cap. For housing, his platform aims to
Speaker 11: streamline local regulations to make it easier to build, while
Speaker 11: banning large corporations that speculate on housing stock from owning
Speaker 11: homes and supporting legislation to ban algorithmic rental price fixing software.
Speaker 11: El Said supports regulating AI companies, creating an independent technical
Speaker 11: agency with real enforcement power for AI, which he cites
Speaker 11: the FDA as an example, but having basically an FDA
Speaker 11: type organization to regulate and handle AI. He also is
Speaker 11: in support of federal zoning guidelines and legislation to protect
Speaker 11: communities from the consequences of data centers. In a primary debate,
Speaker 11: el Said said that data center projects must meet the
Speaker 11: following terms quote all union labor, no raising our utility rates,
Speaker 11: increasing our utility reliability, not touching our water. And there's
Speaker 11: got to be a community benefits agreement that's negotiated in
Speaker 11: good faith with all the money put into escrowow el
Speaker 11: Said is not a DSA candidate. He does not call
Speaker 11: himself a socialist, but he was endorsed by Bernie Sanders
Speaker 11: AOC and can paint with Hassan Piker. He's also been
Speaker 11: backed by the UAW, National Nurses United, the Working Families Party,
Speaker 11: Jewish Voice for Peace, and If Not Now. A few
Speaker 11: days before the primary, but after polling indicated that Abdul
Speaker 11: would likely be the nominee, incumbent Republican Senator Mike Rodgers
Speaker 11: released an AI generated ad depicting Abduel as a communist
Speaker 11: trojan horse. Let's take a listen.
Speaker 4: They'll never see us coming.
Speaker 21: They really think we're just democrats.
Speaker 2: God Jesus Christ. Every AI ad, I hear Jeff Goldblum's
Speaker 2: fucking voice say, you were so obsessed with whether or
Speaker 2: not you could you didn't stop to think, you know,
Speaker 2: should we? Is this a good idea? Is this ad
Speaker 2: going to work?
Speaker 11: So basically, this ad has a trojan horse rolling into
Speaker 11: Michigan with a large banner reading definitely not Communism. Inside
Speaker 11: the horse of Duel is dressed as Odysseus from the
Speaker 11: Nolan movie, along with Bernie Sanders IOC and so on,
Speaker 11: Mom Donnie. Text at the end reads don't let communism
Speaker 11: into Michigan. Mike Rogers for US said it, I think
Speaker 11: Mike Rogers should keep releasing ads just like this, nothing else.
Speaker 11: I wanted him just to keep releasing these ads. I
Speaker 11: think that'll be great.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 11: Rogers did release the statement after Abdul's victory. Quote, I
Speaker 11: spent years hunting terrorists and bringing Osama bid Laden to justice.
Speaker 11: Never in a million years did I think that I
Speaker 11: would be running against someone who believes America deserved nine
Speaker 11: to eleven unquote. Abdul has never said that, obviously.
Speaker 3: And I also think that this is a example of
Speaker 3: just the sheer level of racism that has defined this campaign.
Speaker 3: And we also saw versions of this with Mom Donnie.
Speaker 3: But like, just the the unhinged amount of Islamophobia that
Speaker 3: has been leveled against Ae just really really disturbing.
Speaker 2: And it's gonna get worse. Yeah, it's gonna get so
Speaker 2: much worse.
Speaker 15: Yeah.
Speaker 3: But it's also like this is an example of his
Speaker 3: almophobia from the Republicans, for the Democrats have been doing
Speaker 3: it too, and it's extremely bleak the extent to which
Speaker 3: this is just a thing you can do running a
Speaker 3: political campaign.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's interesting because it isn't entirely, at least lately
Speaker 2: to their benefit either, Like it it recently really screwed
Speaker 2: them over in another Michigan race, right like Michigan's eighth district,
Speaker 2: the Republican primary between Thomas J. Smith, Amir Hassan and
Speaker 2: Al Limo. Thomas Smith took ahead even though he had
Speaker 2: like suspended his campaign this campaign, like more than a
Speaker 2: month ago. Amir Hassan had been endorsed by Trump and
Speaker 2: is not a Muslim, but has a name that kind
Speaker 2: of sounds like he would be like two a racist
Speaker 2: and so like it beasts. That's the suspicion as to
Speaker 2: why Hassan did not do better against someone who was
Speaker 2: not actively running.
Speaker 11: Yeah, was not campaign.
Speaker 2: A lot of anger on truth social by MAGA people
Speaker 2: who thought that Trump had endorsed a Muslim. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: it's just I mean, like the level of bigotry is
Speaker 2: off the chart. It's interesting that it doesn't seem to
Speaker 2: or at least in this case, it torpedoed a Republican
Speaker 2: but not a Democrat, which I do think is kind
Speaker 2: of fun. But yeah, the overall trend is very much
Speaker 2: not fun.
Speaker 11: On a similar sort of note, last week, the Michigan
Speaker 11: State AGDNA Nessl announced at an ADL quote unquote anti
Speaker 11: Semitism roundtable great that she would not be attending the
Speaker 11: Michigan nominating convention for their Democratic nominee over fears of
Speaker 11: being booed for working with Trump and cash Hotel's FBI
Speaker 11: to indict the pro Palestine student protesters in June.
Speaker 23: I'm not going to be attending the nominating invention for
Speaker 23: the Michigan Democratic Party in August, and that is because
Speaker 23: of both state going.
Speaker 24: I feel like my presence is not even involved.
Speaker 23: I don't want to get it chased around. I don't
Speaker 23: want to get a prass.
Speaker 3: I don't want to in screedia.
Speaker 17: I don't want to get booed off.
Speaker 23: The stage, irrespective of what I'm saying. And I believe
Speaker 23: that if I go, that is both It's been happening
Speaker 23: to me.
Speaker 11: Gad fucked fuck yeah, which good like you are?
Speaker 3: You are by definition a collaborator for having participated in this.
Speaker 3: That is like the the absolute bare minimum of accountability
Speaker 3: that you should be facing is that you should be
Speaker 3: booed every single place you go to.
Speaker 11: Her office has tried for years to go after propels
Speaker 11: and protesters, and has been forced to drop charges because
Speaker 11: her office was specifically discriminatory, and she only got her
Speaker 11: way via teaming up with the Trump admin and cash
Speaker 11: hotels FBI to go after student protesters. This is something
Speaker 11: she's been trying to do for literal years and has
Speaker 11: been unable to because her her office is too racist.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and again also like student protesters were horribly brutalized
Speaker 3: by the police repeatedly. Is I think most people who
Speaker 3: listen to this remember to some extents.
Speaker 4: But Yeah.
Speaker 11: Also in Michigan, DSA endorsed Rashida Telib handily won her
Speaker 11: reelection in the District twelve primary with seventy four percent
Speaker 11: of the vote. Also in Michigan, left wing populist and
Speaker 11: co founder of the Sunrise Movement, William Lawrence won the
Speaker 11: Democratic primary for House District seven with about fifty six
Speaker 11: thousand votes. Two more kind of moderate candidates each got
Speaker 11: thirty five thousand votes, so there is a sort of
Speaker 11: moderates split here. Lawrence will now be facing the Republican
Speaker 11: incumbent Tom Barrett, who won by just four points in
Speaker 11: twenty twenty four. There's two hundred and twenty six thousand
Speaker 11: votes to two hundred and nine thousand votes, so this
Speaker 11: could end up being a close race. Really depends on
Speaker 11: voter turnout.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 11: Now, Lawrence is a member of DSA but is not
Speaker 11: DSA endorsed, though he does have the endorsement of Sanders
Speaker 11: El said Rashida talib Rocana, the Nurses Union, Working Families Party,
Speaker 11: and track a PAK.
Speaker 2: Quick update here.
Speaker 11: Lawrence went on CNN a Wednesday night to clarify that
Speaker 11: while he used to be a member of DSA, he
Speaker 11: let his membership lapse last month. In the weeks before
Speaker 11: the election, Lawrence was attacked by the Democratic Establishment and
Speaker 11: the Congressional Black Caucus for being quote unquote racist because
Speaker 11: of a quote from a podcast conversation on black liberation
Speaker 11: and black anti war activism with an activist named Hui
Speaker 11: Peterson Smith. I'll read the full quote here that was
Speaker 11: clipped and spread around mainly by huff Post. Quote the
Speaker 11: extent to which the older generation of black political leadership
Speaker 11: are such a pillar, frankly for establishment, capitalist, imperialist American
Speaker 11: power through their role as this kind of traditionalist establishment
Speaker 11: is pillar of the Democratic Party. It's a big problem.
Speaker 11: It's a big problem for left politics in this country,
Speaker 11: and it gets us every single time. It really the
Speaker 11: white left and puts us in impossible positions. Really, quote
Speaker 11: Willly Lawrence told huff Post quote, I've tremendous respect for
Speaker 11: black community leaders who have been at the forefront of
Speaker 11: the fight for freedom for centuries. This was in the
Speaker 11: context of a wide ranging conversation with a guest on
Speaker 11: the show about racial dynamics in progressive politics. I regret
Speaker 11: how this specific point was expressed unquote, and yes, absolutely
Speaker 11: there is no reason to say the white left there specifically,
Speaker 11: this harms the entire left. There's really no reason to
Speaker 11: say that. This is part of a larger conversation in
Speaker 11: this podcast he was having about racial dynamics in like
Speaker 11: left wing spaces. But I think that is a bad
Speaker 11: thing to say. Lawrence added to his statement online, quote,
Speaker 11: the way I made this point was clumsy, and I
Speaker 11: regret my choice of words. I understand the potential impact
Speaker 11: when received out of context. The way the story is
Speaker 11: being reported does not reflect my beliefs. National elected leaders
Speaker 11: across race, ethnicity, age, and gender had been supporters of
Speaker 11: unnecessary US wars. This poses a challenge to the anti
Speaker 11: war movement. Americans of all races and ages must work
Speaker 11: together to advance peace. Until we do our resources, we'll
Speaker 11: go to funding war and genocide abroad rather than investing
Speaker 11: in infordable housing and healthcare, or closing the racial wealth gap.
Speaker 11: DSA candidate Donovan McKinney beat Democratic incumbent Shri Tanadar by
Speaker 11: almost four percent about four thousand votes in House District thirteen,
Speaker 11: another close race. It was looking like Shri might pull
Speaker 11: ahead earlier in the night, but Donovan did end up
Speaker 11: winning and will now likely become another DSA congressman. Tanadar
Speaker 11: was backed by Apak Hakeem Jeffries, the Congressional Progressive Caucus,
Speaker 11: and the center left New Democrat Coalition. But it's not
Speaker 11: all wins in Michigan. Kyle Blomquist, another DSA candidate for
Speaker 11: Congress in Michigan House District one, lost to Moderate Hayley Barr,
Speaker 11: who will now face the Republican incumbent in the general.
Speaker 11: And DSA endorsed Asha Farruki lost to pro Israel Democrat
Speaker 11: Jeffrey Moss for Hailey Stephens House seat. So those are
Speaker 11: the two main losses for DSA last Tuesday, both US
Speaker 11: House seats in Michigan, though I think it is interesting
Speaker 11: to note that Detroit is now the only major city
Speaker 11: in the country to be fully represented in the US
Speaker 11: House by DSA candidates and two Day Say candidates for
Speaker 11: the Michigan State House also won their primaries. In Missouri,
Speaker 11: Corey Bush lost her comeback bid to incumbent Wesley Bell,
Speaker 11: who was backed by a pack and was also really
Speaker 11: really outspent, and the Kansas City DSA endorsed candidate Harzel
Speaker 11: Gray lost his primary for House District four by just
Speaker 11: under two thousand vo very close race, so lots of wins,
Speaker 11: some losses, but even just l said winning is probably
Speaker 11: the biggest blow to a pack that we've seen yet.
Speaker 11: Like like I said, this is the most expensive Democratic
Speaker 11: Senate primary in history in a state with open primaries,
Speaker 11: where tens of millions of dollars in ad spending can
Speaker 11: go really far in rural areas and with older, low
Speaker 11: info voters, a left wing Muslim candidate overcoming both a
Speaker 11: PAC and the Democratic establishment in a swing state is
Speaker 11: a massive victory. I have one final little election update
Speaker 11: for the gobnatorial race in Ohio. Oh God, because in
Speaker 11: late July, Republican nominee for governor, the veck Ramaswami, spoke
Speaker 11: or tried to speak at the Young Americans for Liberty
Speaker 11: National Convention, an annual ron Paul Esque convention for young
Speaker 11: libertarian conservatives at Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio. Ramaswami Is
Speaker 11: speaking block was for thirty minutes. He lasted fourteen before
Speaker 11: being booed off stage. Let's take a lesson.
Speaker 16: Truth of the matter is, you know, no matter what
Speaker 16: happens in whichever direction goes people, my.
Speaker 2: Generational party made it. We're gonna be fun.
Speaker 1: It's gonna be your generation.
Speaker 21: You're a political green and you need to do.
Speaker 2: Seems like it's going great.
Speaker 11: So there are two cuts in that club. But all
Speaker 11: that audio is from the last like two minutes of
Speaker 11: his speech. Ramaswami was also booed as he first went
Speaker 11: onto stage.
Speaker 2: Great sign, Great sign, And.
Speaker 11: Throughout the fourteen minutes he was heckled over Israel, H one, B, visas,
Speaker 11: data centers, energy prices, and his comments about how the
Speaker 11: socialist government sees your home as a wealth asset, to
Speaker 11: which people in the crowd responded, we can't afford a home.
Speaker 2: Great, isn't the whole premise of our economy that your
Speaker 2: home is like a wealth asset? Right?
Speaker 10: Like?
Speaker 11: Yeah, no, that's socialism, Robert.
Speaker 2: Doesn't everyone who owns a home seat their home that way.
Speaker 2: Isn't that like the how all of the US economy
Speaker 2: is predicated on. I cannot emphasize this enough.
Speaker 3: Literally, this distinction between between your house as a wealth
Speaker 3: asset and your house.
Speaker 2: And you living in it. This is Chapter one of Capital. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's a wild state.
Speaker 11: Well exactly that is communist, That is kind I think
Speaker 11: I think that that is exactly Ramaswami's point Throughout this
Speaker 11: fourteen minute speech. He tried to say that, like, the
Speaker 11: true divide in this country isn't isn't democrats as Republicans,
Speaker 11: but winners versus whiners. So why would you be a
Speaker 11: whiner and complain about all these things when you could
Speaker 11: just win? And this actually mirrors one of Hailey Stephens
Speaker 11: kind of late campaign tactics to refer to people to
Speaker 11: her left as being part of the quote unquote complaining class.
Speaker 11: Any like DSA, any kind of socialist person is part
Speaker 11: of the complaining class. Anyone talking about you know, a
Speaker 11: pak Israel, They're just complaining. Did not work out for Stevens,
Speaker 11: as we know, and this might not work out for
Speaker 11: Ramaswami either. Last month, the Cook Political Report switched the
Speaker 11: Ohio gobnatoil race from Lean's Republican to toss up and
Speaker 11: the latest New York Times Siena pol from late July
Speaker 11: has the race in a tie.
Speaker 1: All I have to add is that it's funny.
Speaker 11: Yeah, it is funny.
Speaker 1: And I picture him walking around the RNC like once
Speaker 1: a month. He looked like a sad little.
Speaker 11: Guy, not that little. His hair was very tall.
Speaker 1: His hair was very tall.
Speaker 17: His veneers, we were very right, were veneering.
Speaker 11: In the presidential race. You know, me and Robert were
Speaker 11: talking about how much, you know, Ramasamm was trying to
Speaker 11: go after this sort of like like groiper type of young,
Speaker 11: young conservative, right, that that was kind of what his
Speaker 11: like affect. That's a lot of stuff he was talking about,
Speaker 11: seemed seemed to be rooted in and at this you know,
Speaker 11: young Conservative convention, he was like loudly rejected. Right, this
Speaker 11: is the type of person that he's like trying the
Speaker 11: most to appeal to in some ways, or at least
Speaker 11: used to. This was also the case when he was
Speaker 11: doing campaign events with Charlie Kirk, one of which I
Speaker 11: went to in Georgia before the presidential election. But he
Speaker 11: was he was definitely trying to go after this sort
Speaker 11: of like young male Republican and like get make sure
Speaker 11: you mobilize them to the polls. Like that could be
Speaker 11: the thing that tips over the race, is like getting
Speaker 11: like young Republican males, and at least for the governatorial race,
Speaker 11: his strategy of like, you know, it's up to you
Speaker 11: to fix everything, Actually, millennials are going to be fine,
Speaker 11: don't complain too much might not actually help mobilize young
Speaker 11: voters in support of his campaign. So we will see
Speaker 11: how that goes come November. Let's pivot to ads and
Speaker 11: then return for some prediction market and tariff news, two
Speaker 11: great tastes that go great together.
Speaker 2: And we're back. So I wanted to talk a little
Speaker 2: bit more about the munition's crisis. I've reported several times
Speaker 2: on the growing munitions crisis that the US military faces,
Speaker 2: not just but largely as a result of our war
Speaker 2: of choice with AROD advanced munitions. Though like one hundred
Speaker 2: and fifty five milimeters artillery rounds have been stretched past
Speaker 2: the point of sustainability for years now, since the expansion
Speaker 2: of Russia's war with Ukraine, and so defense officials have
Speaker 2: spent much of the last four years scrambling to increase
Speaker 2: production of a number of different rounds, and there were
Speaker 2: a bunch of articles in like the spring early summer
Speaker 2: of twenty twenty five at the Trump Industry crowed over
Speaker 2: about how they'd finally met their goal of quadrupling production
Speaker 2: of one hundred and fifty five millimeters rounds, and a
Speaker 2: major part of this was the construction and opening in
Speaker 2: midcoat twenty twenty five of a fully operated one hundred
Speaker 2: and fifty five millimeters artillery shell factory in miss Texas.
Speaker 2: The factory is named Union Technologies. So that's all what
Speaker 2: the administration reported last year, right. I want to quote
Speaker 2: now from an article the Global Tactical Analysis Center put
Speaker 2: out in February of twenty twenty six. The US military
Speaker 2: is facing a significant crisis as production of one hundred
Speaker 2: and fifty five millimeters artillery rounds at the Mesquite factory
Speaker 2: has severely lagged. This shortfall raises alarms not only for
Speaker 2: domestic military readiness, but also for ongoing foreign military sales
Speaker 2: that depend on timely delivery of munitions. Army acquisitions are
Speaker 2: Bryn Ingraham expressed explicit dissatisfaction with the facility's performance during
Speaker 2: her recent congressional hearings, indicating that immediate investments are necessary
Speaker 2: to correct course and avoid further delays. The logistical and
Speaker 2: technical challenges at the Mesquite factory may involve outdated machinery
Speaker 2: or insufficient workforce levels to meet production quotas. Current estimates
Speaker 2: suggesting twenty five percent lag and output compared to contractual obligations,
Speaker 2: and that sounds bad in and of itself. That's not accurate.
Speaker 2: The lag is a lot more than twenty five percent.
Speaker 2: Oh boy, yeah, yeah. The DoD Office of the Inspector
Speaker 2: General went out to look into what's going on with
Speaker 2: this plant and why isn't shell production up to where
Speaker 2: the administration said it would be. They spent several months
Speaker 2: investigating and put together a report that was published in
Speaker 2: mid July of twenty twenty six. Here's a summary from
Speaker 2: TWZ dot com. Despite receiving close to five hundred million
Speaker 2: dollars from the US Army funded through supplemental spending bills
Speaker 2: from fiscal years twenty twenty two and twenty twenty three,
Speaker 2: General Dynamics, Ordnance and Tactical Systems failed to make a
Speaker 2: single subcomponent needed to produce the badly needed shells as
Speaker 2: of last March without the thirty thousand additional projectile metal
Speaker 2: parts anticipated from this skit facility, the Army will be
Speaker 2: unable to reach its monthly capacity goal of one hundred thousand,
Speaker 2: one hundred and fifty five millimeters artillery rounds. The report concluded,
Speaker 2: as of March twenty twenty six, officials have not developed
Speaker 2: a plan to produce the additional rounds that are supposed
Speaker 2: to be produced at the Mesquite factory. So this means
Speaker 2: that the US is produced and somewhere between like third
Speaker 2: and a half of the goal the Trump administration claimed
Speaker 2: they'd already reached. That's a little hard for me to tell.
Speaker 2: I've heard as low as like thirty six thousand and
Speaker 2: as high as like seventy thousand shells a month that
Speaker 2: we're making, both of which are shorter than were supposed
Speaker 2: to be. In for an idea of how much of
Speaker 2: a problem this is, Ukraine, when things are at a
Speaker 2: fever pitch, can fire up to eight thousand shells per day,
Speaker 2: which means they're shooting enough over there to account for
Speaker 2: a year of USHL production in two weeks. And as
Speaker 2: a result of this discrepancy, the US has seen at
Speaker 2: stockpile of one hundred and fifty five millimeters shells reduced
Speaker 2: by three point six million rounds over the last several years.
Speaker 2: Jesus so I was curious as to what had gone
Speaker 2: so wrong that these fuckers haven't been able to make
Speaker 2: a single solitary component, not fucking one. And it turns
Speaker 2: out this happened because the whole plot to have this
Speaker 2: Mesquite factory, you know, close the gap and production, was
Speaker 2: based on a hope and a prayer, specifically a hope
Speaker 2: that the very old machines in the factory would be
Speaker 2: able to produce modern quality weapons. The IG's report called
Speaker 2: this a high risk production line, which is not the
Speaker 2: kind of production line you want for artillery shells. Per
Speaker 2: an article and tasked purpose. Rather than build new machines
Speaker 2: for the Mesquite plant, the IG said, the Army allowed
Speaker 2: General Dynamics to convert machines U for M one oh
Speaker 2: seven shells, an older one hundred and fifty five millimeters
Speaker 2: round that the M seven ninety five, which we use
Speaker 2: now replaced the M seven ninety five can fire about
Speaker 2: six kilometers further than the M one oh seven, carrying
Speaker 2: a far more powerful explosive charge, But the decision to
Speaker 2: try it the untested production program, the IG said proved
Speaker 2: fateful Army officials believed the Mesquite facility was a high risk,
Speaker 2: high reward opportunity. The IG said the service accepted risk
Speaker 2: associated with the contractor's plan to purchase and adapt M
Speaker 2: one oh seven metal part production equipment, but the new
Speaker 2: production lines were never able to produce acceptable M seven
Speaker 2: ninety five parts using the reworked equipment, and the Army
Speaker 2: ordered the plant to stop work completely and stop spending
Speaker 2: money in August twenty twenty five, just months after the
Speaker 2: Trump administration claimed we were up two hundred thousand shells
Speaker 2: a month and that orders held through at least April
Speaker 2: of twenty twenty six. So we have no idea what's
Speaker 2: going to happen ultimately to this Mesquite factory. But I
Speaker 2: should note here that our munitions woes go even deeper
Speaker 2: than a lack of howitzer fuel. Earlier this year, Reuter's
Speaker 2: reporters Aaron Bonco, Mike Stone, and Nathan Lanley published an
Speaker 2: exclusive article titled US has used virtually all off its
Speaker 2: long range precision missiles during Iran Wars, sources say, citing
Speaker 2: three people familiar with the data, the article claims that
Speaker 2: the US has used virtually all of our army tactical
Speaker 2: missile systems and precision strike missiles. The army tactical missile
Speaker 2: systems are like the older missiles we were using. The
Speaker 2: precision strike missiles are the new ones. These are our
Speaker 2: main surface to surface weapons. And it gets worse to
Speaker 2: continue with another quote from that Reuter's piece. Military leaders
Speaker 2: have for weeks warned the president the stockpiles of defensive weapons,
Speaker 2: including Patriot interceptors, which are effective against ballistic missiles, we're dwindling,
Speaker 2: said two of the sources. Last week, several media outlets
Speaker 2: reported Trump had decided not to launch another massive offensive
Speaker 2: inside a Rod in part because his military advisors had
Speaker 2: warned about the US stockpile. A US official dispeeded those accounts,
Speaker 2: saying Trump's chose not to move forward with another attack
Speaker 2: because of pressure from Gulf states. Now, based on the
Speaker 2: most up to data info, we have at least sixty
Speaker 2: five percent of our Patriot interceptors have been used since February,
Speaker 2: and THAD stock piles are down by at least thirty
Speaker 2: eight percent. We've also used about half, if not more
Speaker 2: than half of our Tomahawk stockpile. None of these weapons
Speaker 2: can be replaced at rates that are even close to
Speaker 2: the rate we are burning them. And these are also
Speaker 2: the weapons systems that we would rely on most in
Speaker 2: the event of a conflict with Russia, China, or any
Speaker 2: other major power, which is why so many people in
Speaker 2: the defense industry are freaking out to the degree that
Speaker 2: Trump has had to pull back on some of his
Speaker 2: plans because they are telling him, hey, man, if we
Speaker 2: get into some serious shit and not this fuckery you're
Speaker 2: doing in the Gulf, we're screwed. We can't make more
Speaker 2: of these. So anyway, the reason I keep beating the
Speaker 2: drum onlike the AMMO shortage, is because I'm certain that
Speaker 2: in history books in the future there are going to
Speaker 2: be pages written about this before whatever fucking disaster comes
Speaker 2: our way next. So that's cool. Keep your eye on that.
Speaker 2: The other thing you should keep your eye on is
Speaker 2: that we have now added a new kind of gambling
Speaker 2: market to our gambling on things that are not traditional
Speaker 2: gambling industry, which is I guess, the only growth industry
Speaker 2: in the country aside from data centers. There's now a
Speaker 2: bunch of different services that are letting people gamble, specifically
Speaker 2: on wildfires and where they hit and how much damage
Speaker 2: they do. Oh Jesus, yeah, yeah, And I want to
Speaker 2: quote from an article in Oregon Live as Oregon surpassed
Speaker 2: its wildfire acreage record over the weekend, with more than
Speaker 2: two million acres burnt. Oregon lawmakers also raised a new
Speaker 2: wildfire concern Monday, as prediction markets continue to allow people
Speaker 2: to place bets on wildfires, saying it could lead to
Speaker 2: more human caused fires. In a letter to the Commodity
Speaker 2: Futures Trading Commission, which regulates prediction markets, Senator Jeff Merkley
Speaker 2: led lawmakers from other wildfire stricken states and Senator Ron
Speaker 2: Wyden in urging the agency to crack down on wildfire
Speaker 2: related contracts. The group warned that the markets could create
Speaker 2: financial incentives for arson. And that's the big deal, is that, Like,
Speaker 2: if you're letting people gamble on this shit, Yeah, firefighters
Speaker 2: might be incentivized to fuck with stuff. Regular people could
Speaker 2: be incentivized to fuck with stuff. We've seen this happen already.
Speaker 2: Like I reported a couple months ago about that Israeli
Speaker 2: journalists who like posted a video of a missile failing
Speaker 2: to get intercepted and like hitting into some trees and
Speaker 2: he started getting death threats because people were gambling on
Speaker 2: like how whether or not it would be intercepted, and
Speaker 2: his reporting was inconvenient to them. Shit's going to be
Speaker 2: happening like that with fires in addition to people trying
Speaker 2: to start them, if this is allowed to go right.
Speaker 2: Polymarket lets people bet on not just wildfires, but a
Speaker 2: variety of natural disasters. People can choose yes or no
Speaker 2: on as to whether or not they think a Category
Speaker 2: five hurricane is going to hit the United States, or
Speaker 2: like a volcano is going to erupt. It's just a
Speaker 2: really bleak thing. And there's one of the things that
Speaker 2: I read recently is there's even a new markets focused
Speaker 2: specifically on gambling on California wildfires called Wildfire wyldfyr. The
Speaker 2: company tagline is you can't predict wildfire, but you can
Speaker 2: trade on it, and I want to quote from High
Speaker 2: Country News and an investigation of this company. Currently, wildfire
Speaker 2: users can only simulate trading, but according to the site,
Speaker 2: the ability to bet with real money is coming soon.
Speaker 2: Go platform purports to be the first prediction market of
Speaker 2: its kind, price in county and city wildfire risk in
Speaker 2: real time. California burns every year and it's getting worse.
Speaker 2: The question is an if, it's when and where the
Speaker 2: site reads wildfire frames. Its platform is providing a public good.
Speaker 2: Wildfire turns collective intelligence into better wildfire forecasting, one trade
Speaker 2: at a time. The site reads, yeah, yeah, yeah, oh
Speaker 2: my god. But entities with the real need for wildfire forecasting,
Speaker 2: including federal and state firefighting agencies, say they aren't interested
Speaker 2: in prediction market data. The Forest Service does not use
Speaker 2: information from prediction markets for wildfire forecasts. It why they
Speaker 2: don't even need to go. It's useless, it's useless. And
Speaker 2: everyone's saying this is an idiot and a liar.
Speaker 11: It's insane. This this whole thing. It's like, we can
Speaker 11: chart like the world's collective knowledge.
Speaker 2: Because money, fucking morons.
Speaker 11: Money you know, speaks, speaks more truthfully than just words.
Speaker 11: Is just complete, complete nonsense.
Speaker 2: No, people are gonna burn down their own neighborhoods to
Speaker 2: get rich.
Speaker 12: Yeah.
Speaker 11: I mean, if you look at how much prediction markets
Speaker 11: have been wrong about a sequence of like high profile
Speaker 11: elections just in the past year, yeah, shows that this
Speaker 11: is not useful or reliable data. There's no you know,
Speaker 11: hidden truth that prediction markets can can can find through
Speaker 11: the the quote unquote wisdom of crowds and like this
Speaker 11: this specific thing on these wildfires is like a two
Speaker 11: pronged issue. One kind of evil right to just you know,
Speaker 11: win money based on the deaths of however many people
Speaker 11: in natural disasters.
Speaker 2: The destruction of other lives everything they've built, the fear.
Speaker 11: And so like, you know, like death markets is like
Speaker 11: one one aspect. The other you know aspect is if
Speaker 11: if someone has a lot of money riding on a
Speaker 11: certain wildfire hitting a certain location, then yeah, there is
Speaker 11: financial incentive to maybe cause a fire to hit a
Speaker 11: certain location.
Speaker 2: Or try to pay someone else to.
Speaker 11: Yeah, there's like that aspect as well.
Speaker 2: It's evil for so many reasons.
Speaker 11: Obviously should be illegal, Like it's insane.
Speaker 2: We should be hanging these people.
Speaker 3: I mean, uh I remember when arguing over whether the
Speaker 3: market is an information process that like like as you're saying,
Speaker 3: like haws, like all of this collective intelligence from market
Speaker 3: signals that it's like the most division information processor versus
Speaker 3: arguing that it's a gambling den Like that used to
Speaker 3: be an academic debate and now it's just like, oh no,
Speaker 3: we're doing this on fires and it's just God every
Speaker 3: every everything that was once metaphor is now literal, and
Speaker 3: all of the metaphors suck.
Speaker 11: Yeah, this is pretty fucked up. I I know that
Speaker 11: this was a this was a concern that was talked
Speaker 11: about with like the La fires yep last year or
Speaker 11: two years ago, because I know there was polymarket or
Speaker 11: caw she betting on those, and that created like a
Speaker 11: little mini news cycle of like talking about this maybe
Speaker 11: being a problem. But like the scale which this is
Speaker 11: like accelerated is crazy.
Speaker 2: Again. I used to do like sports gambling ads because
Speaker 2: I don't have a problem with gambling like ethically, the
Speaker 2: same way I don't have a problem with liquor and whatnot.
Speaker 2: And then it just became very clear before too much,
Speaker 2: Oh wait, no, this isn't your father's gambling. This isn't
Speaker 2: going to fucking like things are well beyond hit heading
Speaker 2: to Vegas for like a weekend or playing cards online
Speaker 2: with you your friends. This is turned into like everything
Speaker 2: like this is the omni culture. It's almost the only
Speaker 2: recreational activity a lot of Americans have anymore. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 2: gonna be honest, I didn't see that happening. That took
Speaker 2: me by surprise.
Speaker 11: No, I used to have a lot more kind of
Speaker 11: libertarian views on gambling, sure, and now I am firmly
Speaker 11: in favor of of like harsh state intervention. Yeah, into
Speaker 11: basically all forms of digital gambling.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think you should be able to go to
Speaker 2: a casino and gamble, but I don't think you should
Speaker 2: be able to do it on your phone. Like I've
Speaker 2: turned around on that.
Speaker 4: No.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you know, and you can you can look
Speaker 3: at those there's a whole bunch of data on like
Speaker 3: when when sports gambling is legalized in a state, like
Speaker 3: the bankruptcy rate increases, it's a catastrophe.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know.
Speaker 3: I mean it's it's already devoured sports, and it's now
Speaker 3: just devouring everything that's left of our society until something changes.
Speaker 11: Literally everything else. Yeah, it's like what if you copy
Speaker 11: that model for literally any event happening in the world. Anyway, Well,
Speaker 11: at least the economy are just doing fine, right me?
Speaker 3: Oh oh boy. Yeah, So let's let's let's check in
Speaker 3: with our dear friend. And by dear friend, I mean
Speaker 3: I don't know if he's an enemy of the show yet,
Speaker 3: but recurring character on the show. Yeah, we're recurring character
Speaker 3: on the show. Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Walsh, who had
Speaker 3: a press conference to address the fact that in the
Speaker 3: face of you know, rising inflation, everyone was expecting there
Speaker 3: to be some kind of interest rate increase and he
Speaker 3: didn't do one. And well, I mean that the Federal
Speaker 3: Reserve Board didn't vote for one, and he had a
Speaker 3: press conference that was so disastrous it triggered a giant
Speaker 3: sell off of US bonds, which.
Speaker 2: Is not good.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna read this piece from John Cassidy, who wrote
Speaker 3: an article in The New Yorker about it, because I
Speaker 3: think it captures the reactions to this quote. The selloff
Speaker 3: quote looks very much like a loss of confidence trade,
Speaker 3: one market at List told The Financial Times. Another commentor,
Speaker 3: Dario Perkins and economists at the Research from ts Lombard
Speaker 3: compared Worsh's press conference to Donald Trump's announcement last year
Speaker 3: of his Liberation Day tariffs and to the disastrous UK
Speaker 3: mini budget that costs Trust her job as Prime Minister
Speaker 3: in twenty twenty two, describing them all as occasions quote
Speaker 3: where you suddenly realize global policymakers are totally out of
Speaker 3: their depth and don't know what they're doing. Even some
Speaker 3: ex Fed officials, who tend to be more guarded in
Speaker 3: their public comments, voice concerns. In an interview with Bloomberg,
Speaker 3: James Bullard, a former president of the Federal Reserve Bank
Speaker 3: of Saint Louis, described Warsh's press conference as quote a
Speaker 3: little bit rocky, and the bond market's reaction as quote
Speaker 3: nerve racking.
Speaker 2: For a central painter, I don't know, it sounds fine
Speaker 2: to me.
Speaker 15: Now.
Speaker 11: A little bit rocky might seem a little timid to you,
Speaker 11: but for these people, that's like an insane thing to say.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for for a Federal Reserve banker, that is the
Speaker 3: equivalent of just nine alarm fire.
Speaker 21: Oh, I'm gonna.
Speaker 3: Read this one last fart of it. Loretta Mester, who
Speaker 3: headed the Cleveland FED from twenty fourteen to twenty twenty four,
Speaker 3: told the Wall Street Journal quote, I want to feel comfortable,
Speaker 3: but the FED knows what it is doing. I don't
Speaker 3: think it's sustainable what he's doing in terms of not
Speaker 3: saying anything. So that this press conference went so badly
Speaker 3: that the current analysis from basically the day has happened
Speaker 3: until now, the analysis has been that actually know the
Speaker 3: FED is going to be forced to raise interest rates.
Speaker 3: Just to make the markets take like Walsh as a
Speaker 3: guy running the central bank. Seriously, oh god, Economistic Bank
Speaker 3: of America labeled this a quote central bank inflation credibility shock,
Speaker 3: the term I have never seen before. So okay, what
Speaker 3: did Walsh actually say in this press conference that was
Speaker 3: this bad? Well, here here's Jackson baw at Fortune quote.
Speaker 3: He has vowed quote regime change and quote at the
Speaker 3: FED by rolling back so called forward guidance on where
Speaker 3: rates are headed and offered no such clues on Wednesday,
Speaker 3: even talking around no brain air questions on how to
Speaker 3: bring down inflation. So what does that actually mean? The
Speaker 3: Fed usually gives markets some indication of what they're going
Speaker 3: to do with interest rates at our next meeting the
Speaker 3: said interest rates, And you do this because you want
Speaker 3: to give people in the market an opportunity to plan
Speaker 3: around what the FED is probably going to be doing.
Speaker 3: Worsh thinks this is a bad idea, that is very weird.
Speaker 3: I don't think anyone has agreed with him that not
Speaker 3: talking to the markets about what you're about what the
Speaker 3: FED is going to do. I don't think anyone has
Speaker 3: agreed with him since at least like the eighties that
Speaker 3: the FED should just make his decisions in secret and
Speaker 3: not tell anyone. But that's not even the weirdest part
Speaker 3: of this. The weirdest part is a he's not just
Speaker 3: refusing to explain what the FED is going to do
Speaker 3: in the future. He is refusing to explain what the
Speaker 3: FED is doing right now, and that is really really weird.
Speaker 3: People just asked him point blank, like, hey, why did
Speaker 3: you not raise interest rates? And she just would not
Speaker 3: give an answer, and that is the thing that has
Speaker 3: been making it seem like she has no idea what's
Speaker 3: going on.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 3: It's possible that this is pure incompetence. I think that's
Speaker 3: probably part of it. Like it being in competence is
Speaker 3: kind of bolstered by the fed's next move, which was
Speaker 3: to do basically a I don't know if bailout's quite
Speaker 3: the right term, but basically to pump a bunch of
Speaker 3: money into the end to maintain the value of or
Speaker 3: to increase and maintain the value of Japan's currency. Now,
Speaker 3: this is also a kind of cataclysmic thing. The US
Speaker 3: hasn't done this for Japan since I think literally it
Speaker 3: was the Reverse Plaza Accords in the late nineteen eighties,
Speaker 3: as a way to like stave off the just complete
Speaker 3: ruin of the Asian markets during the Asian market collapse.
Speaker 3: So this in and of itself is remarkable. The ZUS
Speaker 3: hasn't done this since almost every economy in Southeast Asia
Speaker 3: was imploding during the end of the nineties. But the
Speaker 3: weirdest part is that instead of doing this by just
Speaker 3: selling dollars, right, he did it by selling euros, which
Speaker 3: is baffling. I have no idea why he did it.
Speaker 3: No one I've read seems to have any idea why
Speaker 3: he did this with the euros instead of dollars. Everyone
Speaker 3: is just extremely confused. So it's actually very funny because
Speaker 3: the thing I'm about to talk about next was brought
Speaker 3: up as the most important thing the FED had done
Speaker 3: during his tenure, and then this happened a few days later.
Speaker 3: So everyone is just completely baffled by what he's doing.
Speaker 3: None of it makes any sense. And it's not only
Speaker 3: doesn't make any sense, it's actively undermining itself because a
Speaker 3: lot of the things that he's doing. You know, this
Speaker 3: yen purchase is supposed to be about restoring confidence in
Speaker 3: the Japanese markets, but then the US is doing some
Speaker 3: weird stuff, and now everyone's what on earth is going on?
Speaker 3: The last thing I want to talk about with the
Speaker 3: FED specifically is because I think I kind of understand
Speaker 3: what he's doing, at least with the interest rates and
Speaker 3: why he's not talking about it. In order to get
Speaker 3: to this, we need to turn to some reporting from
Speaker 3: the New York Times, which reports that Warsh is trying
Speaker 3: to reduce the number of meetings that the FED has
Speaker 3: to decide interest rates. This is also really weird. The
Speaker 3: number of meetings to decide indust rates hasn't changed since
Speaker 3: the eighties, So okay, why is he trying to eliminate?
Speaker 3: But as he's trying to eliminate these meetings, and when
Speaker 3: you put it all together, the reason why he doesn't
Speaker 3: want to say what the FED is going to do
Speaker 3: in the future and he wants to have less meetings
Speaker 3: is that there is a FED meeting in September, right
Speaker 3: before the midterms, and if he raises interest rates, which
Speaker 3: is exactly the opposite of what Donald Trump wants right
Speaker 3: before the midterms. And this is one of John Cassiy's interpretations.
Speaker 3: If he does this, he could get fired by Trump.
Speaker 3: So he doesn't want to raise interest ry before the midterms,
Speaker 3: so he's taking a stance of not saying anything to
Speaker 3: the media and then potentially even canceling this September meeting
Speaker 3: in order to not have to do this. So that's great.
Speaker 3: I think it's an argument as to whether the US
Speaker 3: Federal Reserve is the single most important institution for all
Speaker 3: of global capitalism. I don't know if you can win
Speaker 3: the argument that it's the single most important one, but
Speaker 3: it's one of the most important institutions, and it is
Speaker 3: apparently being run by a guy who is making economic
Speaker 3: decisions with the entire global economy based on him trying
Speaker 3: not to get fired, So.
Speaker 2: This can only go great.
Speaker 11: One of the silliest things about that that purchase of
Speaker 11: yen was the photos leaked from the meeting with the
Speaker 11: notepad they like, oh God, to do call in buy
Speaker 11: ten billion US dollars worth.
Speaker 2: Of yet remarkably similar to my shopping list the other
Speaker 2: day when I went to Alberton.
Speaker 11: That's what concerns me is I feel like you shouldn't
Speaker 11: be able to remember to buy ten billion yen ten
Speaker 11: billion US dollars worth of yen?
Speaker 2: Is there not a better method to make sure that happens?
Speaker 2: In the US government.
Speaker 3: I cannot emphasize this enough. The last time we did
Speaker 3: something like this with Japanese currency, it has an actual name.
Speaker 3: It's called the Reverse Plaza Accords. It was a transformational
Speaker 3: milestone moment in what the American economy was going to be,
Speaker 3: because that was the moment the US abandoned having a
Speaker 3: manufacturing economy. Like that's the kind of decision that is
Speaker 3: being made here, and it's being written on a notepad,
Speaker 3: Like it's just.
Speaker 11: Just just throw that thing on a notepad. I'll do
Speaker 11: that later this afternoon.
Speaker 3: I admit I thought worsh because Worsh had been like
Speaker 3: with with a Federal Reserve bank before, I thought he
Speaker 3: was going to be like slightly more confident than this.
Speaker 3: But this, this entire week, Hassed has raised what I
Speaker 3: think the odds are of the Federal Reserve completely screwing
Speaker 3: things up and blowing up the entire global economy significantly.
Speaker 3: Because if this is the kind of shit that you're doing,
Speaker 3: like a couple of months into being in office, we
Speaker 3: are in for a long eight years. Assuming I guess
Speaker 3: he doesn't like purge by.
Speaker 11: Trump posting a picture of Jerome Powell hurts like shit,
Speaker 11: just want him back.
Speaker 4: God.
Speaker 10: Uh uh.
Speaker 3: Finally, I want to conclude on some tariff talk song.
Speaker 2: Rocky jazz rockety jazz bot Sorry locking.
Speaker 19: Rocking jazz bo Rocky jazz Bob.
Speaker 11: Sorry, we forgot to put this song in that last episode.
Speaker 2: They won't forget bad.
Speaker 4: Yeah, We're we're fixing it. We're fixing it.
Speaker 3: On Monday, half of the states in the Union, that
Speaker 3: is twenty five total states sued the Trump administration over
Speaker 3: the regime's tariff policies. What is bleak here is that
Speaker 3: because of the speed that the courts move at and
Speaker 3: because of the speed that these attorney generals are moving at,
Speaker 3: these lawsuits are coming in an entire terror cycle behind.
Speaker 11: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So these lawsuits are over the administry Section three zero
Speaker 3: one teriffs, which were the forced labor ten to twelve
Speaker 3: percent tariffs on basically all US imports that are supposed
Speaker 3: to be about forced labor. And as as I mentioned before,
Speaker 3: this is an entire cycle of tariffs behind where the
Speaker 3: Trump administration actually is now, which is his even more
Speaker 3: illegal usage of smoot Holly tariffs against Canada. We are
Speaker 3: still awaiting the lawsuit about that one because they just
Speaker 3: haven't gotten there yet. So it's fun in real time
Speaker 3: to get to see the stuff. I said last time
Speaker 3: I was talking about tariffs, about how Trump is just
Speaker 3: going to be able to keep using the tariff justification
Speaker 3: because it just takes time for stuff to get to
Speaker 3: the court. Where we're seeing that here. I mean, I
Speaker 3: guess the Section three oh one tariffs don't have a deadline,
Speaker 3: but who knows how long it's going to take to
Speaker 3: get rid of those ones, or if you could see
Speaker 3: a scenario where those tariffs are irrelevant, as we saw
Speaker 3: with the tariffs that he imposed earlier this year that
Speaker 3: were nominally about like the US having a balance of
Speaker 3: payments crisis, where there were lawsuits about it, but the
Speaker 3: lawsuits don't matter because the authorization expired. Were probably we're
Speaker 3: gonna see a similar thing like that where these terrorists
Speaker 3: are kind of irrelevant by the time. This way, so
Speaker 3: the courts so amazing political system we've set up.
Speaker 11: Here, Well, that does it for us today at it
Speaker 11: could happen here. James sent over two donation links for
Speaker 11: the Spokane wildfires. Both should be at the top of
Speaker 11: the episode sources in the description. The first one is
Speaker 11: Spokanetribalnetwork dot org. The second link is too long to
Speaker 11: fully read, but it's for the Spokane Complex Wildfire Response Fund.
Speaker 11: I can't read out the whole URL, but it should
Speaker 11: be at the top of the sources in the description.
Speaker 2: We the news reported, we.
Speaker 11: Reported the news.
Speaker 2: We reported the news. Hey, We'll be back Monday with
Speaker 2: more episodes every week from now until the heat death
Speaker 2: of the universe.
Speaker 24: It could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
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Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.