Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let
Speaker 1: you know this is a compiletion episode. So every episode
Speaker 1: of the week that just happened is here in one
Speaker 1: convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to
Speaker 1: listen to in a long stretch if you want. If
Speaker 1: you've been listening to the episodes every day this week,
Speaker 1: there's gonna be nothing new here for you, but you
Speaker 1: can make your own decisions. It could happen here it
Speaker 1: being the future and here being to you. Um this well,
Speaker 1: last week when you hear this, but this week when
Speaker 1: we're recording this, because we're recording this in the past
Speaker 1: for you. Garrison Davis, intrepid correspondent and myself, Garrison Davis's boss,
Speaker 1: went to c e S, the Consumer Electronics Show in
Speaker 1: in order to explore the future, uh and and in
Speaker 1: keeping with our guide both to the future which we
Speaker 1: cover here and collapse because the tech industry is falling apart. Um.
Speaker 1: I think this was a pretty interesting time to be
Speaker 1: at c E S. I did an episode last week
Speaker 1: where I kind of talked preliminary about some preliminaries, you know.
Speaker 1: I went to an event called CS Unveiled where some
Speaker 1: of the more prominent products were there. But we've we've
Speaker 1: since spent three days walking around the convention floor, probably
Speaker 1: around thirty miles on foot something like that. My legs
Speaker 1: and back are falling apart. Yeah, we've turned you into
Speaker 1: an old man. Um, but we have we have learned
Speaker 1: what the future is going to be. Uh and I
Speaker 1: am I'm boy howdy. I'm excited to tell the folks
Speaker 1: what they can expect. Garrison, where do you? Where do
Speaker 1: you think we should start? Let's start with some of
Speaker 1: the more COLLAPSEI type things revolving around crypto, because crypto
Speaker 1: was kind of Crypto was kind of like the white
Speaker 1: elephant in the c e s because this is happening
Speaker 1: right after the FTX fiasco, so it's it's kind of
Speaker 1: it's kind of weird. It was we saw it printed
Speaker 1: the word crypto and web three point oh printed on
Speaker 1: more stuff than I heard people talk about. Yeah, people
Speaker 1: are People were not talking about it the way I
Speaker 1: think they would have been. Definitely definitely last even even
Speaker 1: like a few months ago. M hm. And that was
Speaker 1: really interesting. Um. We did sit in at one crypto
Speaker 1: industry event where it was a group of like French regulators,
Speaker 1: UM and French crypto business people talking about what they
Speaker 1: felt like regulations were basically in the in the wake
Speaker 1: of the FTX collapse, what kind of regulations did they
Speaker 1: think would make crypto work? And you might have got
Speaker 1: more than I did, Garrison, because they couldn't get their
Speaker 1: microphones to work. Their microphone stopped working, then they're backup
Speaker 1: microphone stopped working, and then they got a third backup mike,
Speaker 1: which is a little tiny lav mike that they had
Speaker 1: to finish the speaking into a tiny little lava lier mike.
Speaker 1: And you were amplifying it and sending hain ful feedback
Speaker 1: into everyone's ears. And look, they're gonna be defending the
Speaker 1: traditional financial system. But I will bet you when a
Speaker 1: bunch of Goldman Sachs bankers get up on stage, microphones work. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean that was just the one thing in a
Speaker 1: long line of crypto and metaverse kind of fiascos that
Speaker 1: we ran into at ces WE the first night we
Speaker 1: got here, we were going to be going to a
Speaker 1: crypto happy hour UM that was supposed to be held
Speaker 1: at a bar called The Nerd on Fremont Street. You've
Speaker 1: never been to Fremont Street Fremont Street is old Las Vegas,
Speaker 1: so it's the worst part of town. Um, there's a gigantic,
Speaker 1: fucking football field, long l c D screen above you
Speaker 1: that plays animated versions of God Bless America. How do
Speaker 1: you feel about Fremont Street? Here? Nightmare? Horrible, the cigar chy,
Speaker 1: The smell walking back to the car was something. I
Speaker 1: don't think I'll ever forget that smell. By the way, folks,
Speaker 1: one of the things you're going to get from this
Speaker 1: is a travelogue of young Garrison's first trip to Las Vegas. Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: it's been a real one. So we get to Freemont Street.
Speaker 1: Nobody is in the nerd. Um No, the nerd is
Speaker 1: completely empty. It's a it's a bowling alley bar, which
Speaker 1: sounds like a great idea, but it was completely deserted.
Speaker 1: There was there was not a single soul and I
Speaker 1: poked my head in. It was all under harsh purple
Speaker 1: light and completely empty. And this is this is like
Speaker 1: off off a Freemont Street, so like there's there were
Speaker 1: plenty of people around on street and the music music
Speaker 1: was blaring both inside and outside. Completely dead. Um. So
Speaker 1: once this so we we saw this being empty, so
Speaker 1: we checked the email for the crypto party again and
Speaker 1: they said there there there was another location list, which
Speaker 1: there's obviously just to clarify, there was the party invitation
Speaker 1: thing that you would click in the list of c
Speaker 1: S parties, and it had one invitation, one location, and
Speaker 1: then there was also what you got emailed, which was
Speaker 1: a secon separate location. There was zero indication as to
Speaker 1: which was accurate. So we decided to go to the
Speaker 1: other location listed because no one was at this one,
Speaker 1: which was which was called the go to bar. Yes,
Speaker 1: immediately immediately upon pulling up, we got great impressions. Uh yeah,
Speaker 1: it was the hole in the wall, a little box,
Speaker 1: uh window list box, windows box. All of the letters
Speaker 1: were coming off of the science. It was impossible to
Speaker 1: tell what they had, and they were descending in an
Speaker 1: almost artful manner. It's like there's a photo on my Twitter.
Speaker 1: We'll probably use it to headline this episode. It's beautiful.
Speaker 1: It's like, I don't know if someone could have intentionally
Speaker 1: intentionally placed those as well as they were. It was.
Speaker 1: It was a perfect microcosm of this entire thing. Um,
Speaker 1: we went inside, very nice people. The person there said
Speaker 1: that the party wasn't happening here anymore, but that this
Speaker 1: bar is the Crypto guys the usual hang out spot,
Speaker 1: which was a glorious sentence to here, not a big
Speaker 1: money location. And look, I I've drink, I've drinking a
Speaker 1: lot of dive bars. I have both been poor and
Speaker 1: in need of alcohol for much of my life. This is, um,
Speaker 1: this is a classic dive bar. This is really really
Speaker 1: And by that I mean not the kind of like
Speaker 1: like trying to play it being a dive bar so
Speaker 1: that people feel like they're getting the dive bar. I
Speaker 1: mean like you will get tetanus from the bathroom dive bar.
Speaker 1: It was great. Just the fact that that the person
Speaker 1: like running the bar referred to this as their regular hangouts,
Speaker 1: referred to this as the Crypto guys regular hangout spot,
Speaker 1: is just warm into my heart. My biggest regret from
Speaker 1: this trip is that we didn't stay for karaoke, but yeah,
Speaker 1: we had other plans. Yeah, so that probably leads us
Speaker 1: into meta There's not a lot else to say about
Speaker 1: Christ was the which is the other kind of like
Speaker 1: but both like Crypto n f T s a metaverse.
Speaker 1: We're all kind of trying to piggyback off each other.
Speaker 1: And I think metaverse has survived the best out of
Speaker 1: those three US. It's doing better than Crypto and n
Speaker 1: f t S, which isn't saying much UM but but
Speaker 1: even still, I think there was a slight It was
Speaker 1: weird some people were trying to emphasize that the metaverse aspects.
Speaker 1: Some people were trying to empasize just the VR aspect. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the UM there. I saw metaverse and meta around, but
Speaker 1: when I would go to the company's advertising various VR products,
Speaker 1: they would usually were focused more often on other applications
Speaker 1: for VR tech technology, Like I kind of get the
Speaker 1: feeling again, a lot of them ordered stuff with Meta
Speaker 1: on it before it became clear what a disaster it was,
Speaker 1: and there's some backing for this. So for one week
Speaker 1: we went and we saw UM Magic Leap, which is
Speaker 1: a company that makes VR headsets and VR programs. Um
Speaker 1: They have had pretty disastrous sales to the consumer market,
Speaker 1: even though they's a very good product because it's really
Speaker 1: high end and people aren't willing to spend hours on
Speaker 1: a headset, and kind of prior to CE S sort
Speaker 1: of reoriented themselves trying to sell to enterprise and and
Speaker 1: trying to like move units uh, in like an industrial
Speaker 1: capacity for people doing like training, and it's one of
Speaker 1: those things one of the things you can do with
Speaker 1: VR as you can sit a guy down, um and
Speaker 1: have someone remotely explained to him how to fix or
Speaker 1: repair something if he's less anyway, So they were showcasing
Speaker 1: a lot of that as opposed to games. And certainly
Speaker 1: no one tried to make me hop and do a
Speaker 1: fucking Horizon Worlds or even VR chat. There wasn't much
Speaker 1: in terms of like trying to advertise their their their
Speaker 1: software hardware for building like virtual concerts I probably have
Speaker 1: a lot of It was way more enterprise and like
Speaker 1: you know, workplace training, and a lot a lot more
Speaker 1: very like practical applications were gaming or gaming, but like
Speaker 1: in terms of like what the like the high end
Speaker 1: you know, expensive, big big VR producers were. Therefore, they
Speaker 1: were definitely pivoting or at least at least showcasing the
Speaker 1: applications that were more for enterprise. Yeah, and that that's
Speaker 1: what I found really interesting because I probably had a
Speaker 1: dozen different VR headsets on my head at some point.
Speaker 1: Uh And and not once was I dropped into like
Speaker 1: the kind of metaverse type thing that Facebook is and
Speaker 1: again none of their products were on display. Um. Meta
Speaker 1: Facebook was not here at all. There was another company
Speaker 1: called Meta that I think that's some kind of machining,
Speaker 1: which was funny because the Meta booth was just some
Speaker 1: completely different company. Yeah. Um. But in terms of circling
Speaker 1: back to the collapse aspect of the Metaverse, so Night
Speaker 1: one was this failed crypto party where we went to
Speaker 1: two locations and they were at neither one of them.
Speaker 1: They weren't Night too. We signed up for an invite
Speaker 1: to a metaverse party, and I can't tell you how
Speaker 1: excited we were for this Metaverse. We were actually very well.
Speaker 1: For one thing, legs are now in the Metaverse, and
Speaker 1: Garrison's never experienced legs, so I was really cited for
Speaker 1: them to see that. Yeah, I only had the quest
Speaker 1: one which did which did not include legs. I was
Speaker 1: also psyched to maybe make a big red robot friend,
Speaker 1: like in that horrible video that Mark Zuckerberg made where
Speaker 1: his friends are playing poker on a spaceship. So the
Speaker 1: party on the invite that we request, like, you couldn't
Speaker 1: just show up, you need you need to request an
Speaker 1: invite and like get a ticket, and we got four tickets.
Speaker 1: We got four tickets to this Metaverse party. It was
Speaker 1: first for it first said it was at the Palazzo
Speaker 1: um about Polazzo being part of the Venetian And about
Speaker 1: two hours before the party they said it was no
Speaker 1: longer at the Polazzo and instead where we were supposed
Speaker 1: to meet them at the uh at that at the
Speaker 1: fountain at the fountains outside of the Blaggio, which one
Speaker 1: of the big famous Vegas landmarks and quite far away
Speaker 1: from the Venetian. Yeah, because um the Venetians where half
Speaker 1: of CS was taking. The other half was in the
Speaker 1: Las Vegas Convention Center. So we make our our jaunty
Speaker 1: walk over to to Blaggio. We get there and we
Speaker 1: realized that we have to do we have to use
Speaker 1: this application on our phones for the for the Metaverse
Speaker 1: party thing to work. It's like this a R application
Speaker 1: that and they did tell you if you have a
Speaker 1: VR headset you should bring it. Yeah, I think one
Speaker 1: person did at least, and bringing a charged phone, bring
Speaker 1: a charge phone, bring your headphones. So we all, you know,
Speaker 1: open up this QR code or whatever or link to
Speaker 1: try to get this software working. And around twenty people
Speaker 1: there are all are all met with perpetual loading screens.
Speaker 1: Now a few people did have I saw one or
Speaker 1: two people that this was working for. Mine loaded just
Speaker 1: the VR avatars of people, but it was on like
Speaker 1: a gray background. But it didn't look any of the
Speaker 1: background or any of the the way it was supposed
Speaker 1: to look. Because one guy had it more or less working.
Speaker 1: I think it was basically it was a video like
Speaker 1: a live feed of the Bellagio Fountain in front of
Speaker 1: us because as his like camera scanned over it, it's
Speaker 1: using the phone camera all of the different like a
Speaker 1: bunch of different awkwardly jerking avatars kind of crudely dancing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: in front of it. They did have legs ringing endorsement. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was. It was It was supposed to be that
Speaker 1: it was supposed to be. This this a r animated
Speaker 1: experience thing sinc to the Blagio Fountain and to Viva
Speaker 1: las Vegas, and that was what it was supposed to be.
Speaker 1: The thing is only one or two people it was
Speaker 1: working for. Everyone else had these loading screens or had
Speaker 1: just the just had the avatars popped in with none
Speaker 1: of the other features working um as before the Pelagio founded.
Speaker 1: Like just like the guy the guy who was Reviva
Speaker 1: before the final Viva, the guy running this party left.
Speaker 1: He was gone quite rapidly. He exited the premises. He
Speaker 1: took advantage of the pact fact that people were confused
Speaker 1: and trying to figure out what was happening, and he escaped.
Speaker 1: So we have all like twenty people not sure what
Speaker 1: to do, and then we get we get an email
Speaker 1: like ten minutes later saying that thank you for coming
Speaker 1: to the show of I hope you enjoy your time
Speaker 1: at beer Park, which is across the street. Your Park
Speaker 1: is a place, by the way. I know it's it
Speaker 1: seems like a joke name, but it's quite large business.
Speaker 1: So we were told that the party had a reservation
Speaker 1: at beer Park and that we were all going to
Speaker 1: go over to beer Park and you know, by the way,
Speaker 1: the people heading up there. It's not just like pieces
Speaker 1: of ship like us. There's like some serious industry people,
Speaker 1: like people who are including like the CEO of arguably
Speaker 1: the most prominent virtual reality game company. Yeah there was
Speaker 1: the CEO or whatever, the CEO. Yeah, you like, there
Speaker 1: was people who who have been involved in very popular
Speaker 1: VR games, who are industry industry entrepreneurs, engineers. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: other other other like VR enthusiasts and then also people
Speaker 1: like us, I assume who just wanted to watch it
Speaker 1: crash and burn, which it did. It was just there
Speaker 1: to be the sickos in the window laughing. Yes, So
Speaker 1: we're told they have that. They were told that they
Speaker 1: have the reservation for beer Park. Like, okay, well, the
Speaker 1: a R technology didn't work. That's that's a bummer. You know,
Speaker 1: it would not happen. It's not the first failed demo
Speaker 1: I've seen. It's stuff happens. Maybe they didn't test it
Speaker 1: for how many people was there? They thought too many? Yeah,
Speaker 1: like who like actually who knows? Um, but at least
Speaker 1: we can hang out with people. But so but the guy,
Speaker 1: the guy running the party laughs, so he's just gone, uh.
Speaker 1: But everyone else makes make you know, like you know,
Speaker 1: like a dozen or a dozens of people make our
Speaker 1: way over to beer Park and we're told that there
Speaker 1: is in fact no reservation for this party. But he
Speaker 1: has called them. They don't know what we're talking about.
Speaker 1: Could we please get out of the way. So we
Speaker 1: start our way to have this staircase and that we
Speaker 1: then we that we stop halfway down because someone at
Speaker 1: beer Park says, there is like there's a bar in
Speaker 1: the very back of of of and they're not selling
Speaker 1: alcohol there, but you guys can stand around and buy
Speaker 1: from other places. We can stand there. As they figured
Speaker 1: out what's going on, we later learn that the that
Speaker 1: the guy who's who's running the party, who's who did
Speaker 1: not show up, uh, did have a did have a
Speaker 1: reservation for six people at one table. Yeah, Garrison, that
Speaker 1: man hung himself at Circus Circus within thirty minutes of
Speaker 1: the show. I do know. He actually made his way
Speaker 1: over to beer Park at some point, but he did
Speaker 1: not go to where everyone else was going. He was
Speaker 1: at the other side of the bar, but he was
Speaker 1: not talking to anyone else from the party. So that was.
Speaker 1: That was the second party we went to, which was
Speaker 1: of a similar level of competency. So that is that
Speaker 1: is the crypto and people did show up for the
Speaker 1: second part. So I'm gonna have to give it to
Speaker 1: the metaverse. I mean, they change locations three times from
Speaker 1: the Plaza to the Blagia Fountain to be a park
Speaker 1: um with you know, variety of issues along the way.
Speaker 1: In terms of the VR stuff, we actually got to try,
Speaker 1: so Robert tried like I think three or four different
Speaker 1: haptic feedbacks. I tried every haptic product I could find,
Speaker 1: and haptic again, for the folks who don't know this,
Speaker 1: whenever you like touch your phone and it like buzzes
Speaker 1: like let you know that you're you're typing or whatever. Um,
Speaker 1: that's haptic feedback, And that's kind of the crudest form
Speaker 1: of it. But the idea and the hope of the
Speaker 1: people kind of playing with the technologies that you can
Speaker 1: find ways to basically like simulate a keyboard so that
Speaker 1: you would be able to touch type in a keyboard
Speaker 1: that's not really there because you know, you would be
Speaker 1: wearing a glove or something that would simulate the feeling
Speaker 1: so well. And so this is a key part of
Speaker 1: when you think about, like what would it take to
Speaker 1: go from where VR is now, which is a pretty
Speaker 1: visually immersive and can be a pretty auditorially immersive experience,
Speaker 1: but that leaves the rest of your body isn't there, yeah,
Speaker 1: um to something that is kind of more like a
Speaker 1: holidack where you feel and and like can you know
Speaker 1: even people have talked about like smell eVision and stuff,
Speaker 1: which um is a little further behind, but like it's
Speaker 1: something that's actually engaging the entirety of your of your
Speaker 1: physical person at the very at least not being able
Speaker 1: to like walk through walls, or at least more of
Speaker 1: your physical person than just your head and eyes and ears. UM.
Speaker 1: So that's that's the goal. So the first one I
Speaker 1: tried was the tax suit, which basically feels like and
Speaker 1: I wrote this was in the last episode. It feels
Speaker 1: like having much of in sixty four bumble packs on
Speaker 1: your body. It does not mimic the feeling of hugging
Speaker 1: or touching a human being. Another one that we tried,
Speaker 1: I tried one that was just gloves that did a
Speaker 1: pretty good job of and and the tax suit gloves
Speaker 1: did a pretty good job of mimicking keyboards UM, which
Speaker 1: is kind of interesting. I don't think it would allow
Speaker 1: me to touch type, but it was it was neat
Speaker 1: to see that kind of developing a little bit. UM.
Speaker 1: Then we tried one by O W O. It's like
Speaker 1: big capital O S little W We're just going to
Speaker 1: call it oh oh oh um. And that was like
Speaker 1: a full body um suit, where it's basically it's like
Speaker 1: a skin tight like a workout shirt UM with a
Speaker 1: bunch of e G pads underneath it, so the e
Speaker 1: G pads make direct connection to your skin. And then
Speaker 1: if you have ever engaged in the kind of kinky
Speaker 1: sex play that involves like a violet wand, which is
Speaker 1: a device that erotically electrocutes you or your partner, you
Speaker 1: can also like drawing each other with it. Or if
Speaker 1: you've ever used like any of those fake sex cattle
Speaker 1: prods they used to sell them at the kink dot
Speaker 1: Com arena in that old Castle in San Francisco, if
Speaker 1: you ever used any of those, it's like that, So
Speaker 1: you're just like getting zapped a bunch all over your body.
Speaker 1: And on the low settings it's kind of like a
Speaker 1: nicer massage gun thing, and on the higher settings it's
Speaker 1: actually really cruciating. It's actually I tried this one today.
Speaker 1: I put on the little skin tight and jumper thing,
Speaker 1: and even just during the calibration settings, it was really
Speaker 1: fascinating because it's even though the electrodes are only on
Speaker 1: like a few of your muscle sections that the current
Speaker 1: runs through, and it doesn't really it doesn't necessarily have
Speaker 1: like you know, like a taser shocky feeling. It just
Speaker 1: it just is like muscle pain it's involuntarily contracting your muscle. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's it's it's not just like static e shocky stuff.
Speaker 1: Um there was you know, get you know. The cool
Speaker 1: thing about this is that it can simulate you know,
Speaker 1: an entry round and an exit wound. So Robert was
Speaker 1: playing the popular VR game Pistol Whip where you get
Speaker 1: shot by dudes and you do like a John Wick
Speaker 1: thing basically, and you can feel you know, like bullet
Speaker 1: goes in, bullet goes out. Yeah and yeah. So it's
Speaker 1: not just like a rumbull pack type things actually depth
Speaker 1: to the feeling. And one of the things they simulated
Speaker 1: it was really cool is getting stabbed and then having
Speaker 1: the knife twist was the worst with the worst feeling
Speaker 1: for me is like honestly like getting shot in like
Speaker 1: the Chester shoulders. It was. It was painful, but it
Speaker 1: wasn't necessary. It wasn't like painful on like a bad way.
Speaker 1: He was like, Oh, I'm playing a game and this
Speaker 1: is this, this is a published and it's it hurts,
Speaker 1: but it's kind of fun. The stabbing was awful. I
Speaker 1: would seek to avoid it. It was very painful because
Speaker 1: all the all the stuff like below my chest was
Speaker 1: way more uncomfortable and painful versus like chest and arms
Speaker 1: was kind of was kind of fun. Yeah, And I
Speaker 1: don't know again whether or not you find this appealing
Speaker 1: will have to do with the way that you like
Speaker 1: to do your video games. But what I will say
Speaker 1: is that from a perspective of just like enjoying a
Speaker 1: an FPS type game, it it is the first time
Speaker 1: I've been playing a game that's had some sort of
Speaker 1: feedback when you're hit that actually is negative reinforcement, like
Speaker 1: you do not want to get hit um and you
Speaker 1: actually kind of dread getting hit. It. Actually it makes
Speaker 1: the game a lot more immersive. Yeah, and like this
Speaker 1: that's that's that that's like a bullshit phrase people use
Speaker 1: for like this is immersive, Like no, this actually like
Speaker 1: this actually introducing consequence thought. I think that they put
Speaker 1: into something like how do we simulate a knife wound?
Speaker 1: How do we actually do like a through and through gunshot?
Speaker 1: And and it all so makes your makes your VR
Speaker 1: body feel more connected to your actual body, yeah, which
Speaker 1: is something that usually doesn't happen. Yeah, you feel a
Speaker 1: sense of like defensiveness towards your person um and it
Speaker 1: like when I was trying to like dodge the bullets
Speaker 1: and ship like I actually felt it didn't just kind
Speaker 1: of feel like I was playing a game, Like my
Speaker 1: body felt more on the line, which was Which is
Speaker 1: interesting because this is purely we're talking about this kind
Speaker 1: of in the context of stuff that matters, and the
Speaker 1: stuff that matters here, not that gaming doesn't matter, but
Speaker 1: the stuff that actually matters here is the ability of
Speaker 1: people to simulate accurately life in a digital form. Because
Speaker 1: if that can be done, then a lot of other
Speaker 1: weird things are possible, many of which you're good, some
Speaker 1: of what you're bad, many of what you're bad. Um,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think the next the next day we're
Speaker 1: talking about has a bit more packed complication. And because
Speaker 1: that's what I want to say, all the only application
Speaker 1: I saw for this was in gaming. This does not
Speaker 1: I didn't see like a metaverse application of this, Like
Speaker 1: this is not going to help in Zuckerberg, Like you
Speaker 1: don't want to unless you can get mugged in the
Speaker 1: metaverse and some some asshole ten you're will lock up
Speaker 1: to you with a knife and stab you. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: that's a good point when we're talking about is it
Speaker 1: possible that people will be living increasing quantity like portions
Speaker 1: of their life in persistent digital environments. One thing I
Speaker 1: would not want to have as a suit like this
Speaker 1: because people will find ways to access it well. And
Speaker 1: we've talked to we've talked to some people who program
Speaker 1: for these things, who are like other versions of them,
Speaker 1: but the metaverse actually at the Metaverse party, they funk
Speaker 1: up and it's like getting electrocuted. You can't take it
Speaker 1: off yourself. It's a serious problem. There is a competing
Speaker 1: model to the Obo suit called the Tesla Suit, not
Speaker 1: not made by Elon Musk's Tesla, different company, but similar
Speaker 1: similar degrees of care towards safety. Maybe I mean it
Speaker 1: is this is the most high end haptic suit that
Speaker 1: does this electro shock thing. Um And he said that
Speaker 1: he has watched demos where people have been in the
Speaker 1: suit and the suit like glitches and all of the
Speaker 1: things turn on and like at full capacity, which means
Speaker 1: you're you you're get You're not only in extruciating pain,
Speaker 1: you also you also just like can't move your body,
Speaker 1: like you're stuck frozen in horrible pain until someone turns
Speaker 1: the suit off. So like there is there is this
Speaker 1: type of like logistical problems with with these sort of
Speaker 1: things as well, and it's one of those. Like the
Speaker 1: first that I had when using that thing was like,
Speaker 1: this is kind of neat, uh, this what makes this
Speaker 1: actually would make certain video games better. And the second
Speaker 1: thought I had was, I would only ever want to
Speaker 1: have this on if I was playing a video game
Speaker 1: that was not connected to the Internet, because the instant
Speaker 1: I would never want to invocage in a multiplayer game
Speaker 1: where I could be that it would be horrible constantly. Bet.
Speaker 1: I mean obviously, like you you can have lower settings
Speaker 1: on these things to make it not painful at all,
Speaker 1: and you do get to pick that. But I I
Speaker 1: tried to go as far as I could. But in
Speaker 1: terms of practical applications beyond just gaming, the next haptic
Speaker 1: suit that we tried, this company is working with governments.
Speaker 1: Haptics is the is the is the company. We know
Speaker 1: that they do the thing where they like remove our
Speaker 1: um and they have they have military contracts. We we
Speaker 1: we saw we saw army people testing it out, two
Speaker 1: employees of the United States Army, but they already are
Speaker 1: working with law enforcement UM well and you know industrial
Speaker 1: government training video of Jeff Bezos us with their products
Speaker 1: to like wirelessly control a robot that's like based off
Speaker 1: of human hands in order to do that. But they
Speaker 1: work with governments, they work with businesses, corporations. This is
Speaker 1: this isn't really a consumer thing at this point because
Speaker 1: the full suit, I think they said the next it's
Speaker 1: going to be like eighty thou dollars. No, No, the
Speaker 1: the gloves are four thousand, the gloves and battery pack.
Speaker 1: The next full suit that they're doing, it's gonna be
Speaker 1: eighty thou dollars or four months subscription. But that's for
Speaker 1: their suit that's not even released yet. That is their
Speaker 1: next model. Yeah, not a consumer Like theoretically, if you're
Speaker 1: willing to pay the monthly fee, you could have this thing, um,
Speaker 1: but that's not the intent. But I think what's interesting
Speaker 1: about it is this is kind of where all of
Speaker 1: the technology is going and and the main difference is
Speaker 1: that the haptics that we had used on us in
Speaker 1: the lower end gaming products, where again they're basically just
Speaker 1: kind of like shocking you a bunch in specific ways
Speaker 1: or just like vibrating, yeah, or just like vibrating, whereas
Speaker 1: this suit used air prect is like pneumatic, so it
Speaker 1: was basically you have these gloves on, and the gloves
Speaker 1: are much more cumbersome than the other gloves. Um. You
Speaker 1: have these gloves on and they're like blowing air onto
Speaker 1: you parts of your hand. It's it's it's compressed air
Speaker 1: that that that feeds into these little sensor things that
Speaker 1: actually go in they they make contact with your again
Speaker 1: and so you're the feeling is is real um in
Speaker 1: a way that the other haptic stuff isn't UM. And
Speaker 1: it doesn't. First off, it does not actually it does
Speaker 1: not feel like you're getting pots of air blown on
Speaker 1: your hands. No, it does not. M One of the
Speaker 1: things that they did in there is they simulated holding
Speaker 1: your hand under a leak with drops of I think
Speaker 1: it was oil in that, but like drops of a
Speaker 1: liquid coming down on your hand, and it felt like
Speaker 1: having water cup pour onto your hands without wetness, which
Speaker 1: is an odd feeling. UM. But the they had like
Speaker 1: a bonzaiet tree which kind of felt like it felt
Speaker 1: like a prickly almost yeah, it felt it felt like
Speaker 1: it felt like a prickly plant. Running your hands through
Speaker 1: both plants. If you'd closed your eyes and you'd run
Speaker 1: your hands through both plants, they would feel like different
Speaker 1: plants um, And one thing you could do is you
Speaker 1: could grab the vine with leaves on it and pull
Speaker 1: your hand down. The leaves would come off the way
Speaker 1: they would in a real vine and felt it. You
Speaker 1: can feel it. And then you're hand is full of
Speaker 1: leaves at the end and you feel them too as
Speaker 1: they like slide off of your hand, which is a
Speaker 1: kind of fidelity I didn't really realize was possible at
Speaker 1: the moment um. There was other stuff that really there
Speaker 1: was some stuff that worked better than like the turning
Speaker 1: wheels and stuff was kind of like whatever. Um, the
Speaker 1: knobs and buttons weren't great. I actually thought that the
Speaker 1: weak point was turning knobs. It just felt kind of
Speaker 1: shocky um. But the straw. There was one where the rope. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there was a rope hanging from the ceiling, so you
Speaker 1: could like pull it to like it was kind of
Speaker 1: like attached to you were on basically like a fake
Speaker 1: airship in this guy, so it's kind of like attached
Speaker 1: to a horn. So you could pull the rope and
Speaker 1: then you could the way you can grab a rope
Speaker 1: and pull it down hand over hand. You could pull
Speaker 1: it and it felt like it felt just like pulling
Speaker 1: a rope through your hand like it was like if
Speaker 1: if I was if I had no near perfect fidelity,
Speaker 1: if I had no like visual sensory perception, I would
Speaker 1: think I am pulling a rope through my hand. It
Speaker 1: felt perfect. And there there were there was a moment
Speaker 1: where I was at a desk and I had to
Speaker 1: open it, and so I like, I pull like and
Speaker 1: normally in VR, if you're like opening a desk or something,
Speaker 1: you just kind of like grab and pull in the
Speaker 1: right area and it opens the drawer. This I I
Speaker 1: felt like there was a big metal kind of like
Speaker 1: hook thing that glast that you get your hand up
Speaker 1: into pull. So I pull it out and I feel
Speaker 1: my hand inside that thing as I pull it. And
Speaker 1: then at a certain point I stuck my hand into
Speaker 1: the drawer to push it open the rest of the way,
Speaker 1: which I do on real drawers when they get stuck.
Speaker 1: And it worked the same way that it does in
Speaker 1: a real drawer, and it it felt like one I mean.
Speaker 1: And the other thing that was impressive about that is
Speaker 1: that even just I I instinctually picked up a mug
Speaker 1: by putting like half my hand inside the mug and
Speaker 1: holding onto the other side, which you can't really you
Speaker 1: can't do that if you're using VR controllers, and you
Speaker 1: can't even do that if you're doing like hand tracking,
Speaker 1: It just it just doesn't work. But that you you
Speaker 1: put your hand in pinch both sides of the mug
Speaker 1: and picked it up and like just that by itself,
Speaker 1: like as you're like feeling the mug in your hands,
Speaker 1: like extremely impressive right now, which kind of sounds silly
Speaker 1: because you're talking about like the mechanics of grabbing a mug,
Speaker 1: but it's it's actually also talking the capacity for mimicking
Speaker 1: reality with close to perfect fidelity, which um I would
Speaker 1: not have guessed walking into the show you could do
Speaker 1: the things that we're doing. Yeah, and and we talked.
Speaker 1: We talked to one of the products managers they're they're
Speaker 1: talking where they were speaking about how how they're using
Speaker 1: this for workplace training, but also even even talking about
Speaker 1: how you don't want to just use this tech for
Speaker 1: workplace training because then people will get too used to
Speaker 1: doing it in VR and then when they actually go
Speaker 1: into the real world will actually be completely lost because
Speaker 1: it's not close enough to to the VR. So they
Speaker 1: actually talked about how you know VR it can only
Speaker 1: do so much you want to you want to use
Speaker 1: you know, VR training as a supplemental thing for also
Speaker 1: in person training and kind of go back and forth
Speaker 1: so that you actually stay grounded in what you're gonna
Speaker 1: be actually doing. But then you can also use the
Speaker 1: VR as an assistant, so you can you know, train
Speaker 1: it on, you can train on your own, but also
Speaker 1: you get to apply it to the real world so
Speaker 1: you don't get stuck just doing the stuff in the
Speaker 1: in the digital world, which I thought was an interesting
Speaker 1: comment from the person who's like trying to sell the technology. Yeah, yeah, which, yeah,
Speaker 1: And that was kind of the thing. One of the
Speaker 1: neat things about c E S. So most of the
Speaker 1: people you encounter and and CS for those of you
Speaker 1: have never been to a trade show, it's rooms that
Speaker 1: are bigger than you ever thought. Rooms could be filled
Speaker 1: with thousands of booths, and some of the booths contain
Speaker 1: earth movers by the company CAT that are like the
Speaker 1: size of a mansion in terms of their actual like mass,
Speaker 1: and some of the booths are crazy person sitting with
Speaker 1: his homemade air conditioner and his cut open gloves explaining
Speaker 1: to you the new way he's figured out how to
Speaker 1: make air condition your coils. Um, and so you get
Speaker 1: this mix of At the big corporate booths, a lot
Speaker 1: of the time, like p are people who are hired
Speaker 1: to sell a line and don't know what they're talking
Speaker 1: about and they're just trying to hype a product. And
Speaker 1: then inventors uh and people who like have are actually
Speaker 1: have actually made the thing in front of you and
Speaker 1: are very excited about it and are kind of incapable
Speaker 1: of bullshitting you. Sometimes they believe irrationally in their products,
Speaker 1: but they don't they're not pr people. UM. And yeah,
Speaker 1: I got that that feeling from the from the haptic people.
Speaker 1: We should move on from metaverse, so I want to
Speaker 1: talk about some of the other since we're doing the good.
Speaker 1: The other products we saw or things that we saw
Speaker 1: in mentions. We saw that that I made me kind
Speaker 1: of hopeful about aspects of the future. So we we
Speaker 1: saw some a R glasses and again VR is immersive.
Speaker 1: A R is just kind of putting an overlay from
Speaker 1: the digital world on the regular ship. You're wearing glasses
Speaker 1: and you're seeing something that a computer is showing you. Um.
Speaker 1: One of the things that we saw that I was
Speaker 1: most impressed by was by a company called zis v
Speaker 1: U z I x UM, and it was there Zander glasses,
Speaker 1: Zander with an X, like the guy from Buffy. UM.
Speaker 1: And these are glasses that are designed to provide real
Speaker 1: time captioning those with hearing loss. So you are wearing
Speaker 1: them and you are conversing with people all around you,
Speaker 1: and you see every word that's being set around you,
Speaker 1: including the words you say on screen in front of
Speaker 1: you live caption ing. UM. And it worked extremely I
Speaker 1: didn't see it miss or funk up any words. It's
Speaker 1: not like punctuated or anything. But it was perfectly easy
Speaker 1: to follow. And it works for all of the voices
Speaker 1: around you. UM to the extent that I could tell.
Speaker 1: And I'm not hard of hearing in a way that
Speaker 1: I need captioning glasses, but I think that if you are,
Speaker 1: this is kind of a miracle product. It worked incredibly
Speaker 1: well as far as I could tell. And UM, I
Speaker 1: think a good amount of thought from what they said,
Speaker 1: at least it seems like a good amount of thought
Speaker 1: went into the fact that if you are acting as
Speaker 1: someone's ears, you have a responsibility to take care of
Speaker 1: their privacy. UM. Because all of it was local. None
Speaker 1: of it was going into the cloud. There's no appar
Speaker 1: ap it doesn't touch your fucking phone. It's just it's
Speaker 1: just the glasses. It's that's all it is. There's no Internet,
Speaker 1: there's no apps, just the glasses. So that was one
Speaker 1: of the coolest things that I think we saw there
Speaker 1: and was just also a fairly rare, legitimate example of
Speaker 1: a need being met through fascinating technology that I think
Speaker 1: could really improve people's lives. Yeah. One of the pair
Speaker 1: of air glasses I tried was by ant Reality Optics.
Speaker 1: They had a few different models. They're the ones that
Speaker 1: make the actual lenses. They had models that were that
Speaker 1: you could switch between A R and VR. It was
Speaker 1: actually pretty impressive how there. They look pretty much like
Speaker 1: regular glasses. Um, the specific A R and VR ones
Speaker 1: look a little bit funky, but they're not. They're not
Speaker 1: completely ridiculous. But you could with a button you could
Speaker 1: switch between having like the A our path through mode too.
Speaker 1: It's like you can see you see the A R
Speaker 1: screen and then but you also see the world around you.
Speaker 1: Then you can hit to the VR mode and it
Speaker 1: blacks out the real world and you just see the
Speaker 1: VR stuff and that that was. That was pretty impressive.
Speaker 1: They also had a full frame A R glasses that
Speaker 1: again looked look look relatively normal in terms of like,
Speaker 1: you know, this is the regular pair of glasses. And
Speaker 1: but this was the only pair of air glasses I
Speaker 1: saw at the show that had the A R going
Speaker 1: over the course of like the entire lens. All the
Speaker 1: other ones had like a little box that they operated
Speaker 1: in in some cases up your vision when you didn't
Speaker 1: have yeah, and it's like hard to it's hard for
Speaker 1: your eye. Yeah, and it's hard it's hard for your
Speaker 1: eye to know what to focus on. Um. But this
Speaker 1: the A R was was over. There was was across
Speaker 1: the entirety of the lens, and that one was was
Speaker 1: very nice to uh to test out. Now. I think
Speaker 1: one of the things that we're kind of talking around
Speaker 1: here is the fact that if you've paid attention to this,
Speaker 1: you'll note that none of the really cool stuff we're
Speaker 1: talking about is made by a giant tech Companacebook, Yeah, Facebook,
Speaker 1: Matter or like Samsung, Panasonic, um LG. We went to
Speaker 1: those booths. Those are the largest boosts at the show.
Speaker 1: They're fucking massively million dollar booths. God knows how much money.
Speaker 1: UM Panasonic spent had one of the largest boosts at
Speaker 1: the show, which had probably was tens of millions of dollars.
Speaker 1: It is not cheap to get the list state in
Speaker 1: the LBCC. They had like the third largest booth in
Speaker 1: the entire show. Massive. They didn't really have any of
Speaker 1: the problem. They didn't have any products Panasonic makes things. No,
Speaker 1: they had like they had like two cameras and like
Speaker 1: maybe like ten lenses, but like not not multiple ones
Speaker 1: of those, just those the only two cameras and like
Speaker 1: ten lenses. That that's all they had for this massive,
Speaker 1: massive booths, some fucking TVs and the displays and like
Speaker 1: like not not not displaces for sale. It was like
Speaker 1: just like like projected displays of people using their stuff.
Speaker 1: Like they didn't they didn't have anything to show at all.
Speaker 1: But they did have They did have a breakdancing stage
Speaker 1: and they brought up DJ Funky and his Breakdancing Crew,
Speaker 1: which I swear were pulled right out of Times Square
Speaker 1: in two thousand and three um and just thrust into
Speaker 1: into into our reality. It was deeply awk because it's
Speaker 1: these very like clearly people who spend most of their
Speaker 1: time doing breakdancing shows out in public in streets and
Speaker 1: crowded cities, and a bunch of confused Japanese businessmen just
Speaker 1: like staring back at them, and they're being like, come on,
Speaker 1: come on, make some noise. And the Japanese businessmen are
Speaker 1: continuing to do not want to make any noise. Don't
Speaker 1: understand why this is being asked of them. Um. It
Speaker 1: was extremely funny. Um, but uh yeah. And and that
Speaker 1: was one of kind of the takeaways for me was
Speaker 1: the lack of ideas from big tech. Most of what
Speaker 1: the big companies were showing was like either a million
Speaker 1: different cars and you know, our technologies, this car technology,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure they're all great cars. Cars were very popular.
Speaker 1: That that was one of the bigger trends we saw
Speaker 1: was how much people were pushing their EV cars, which
Speaker 1: is I think if you want to read something about that,
Speaker 1: it's bad news for Tesla. I also don't think it's
Speaker 1: good news for the rest of us, because just replacing
Speaker 1: all of the cars on the road with e V
Speaker 1: cars does not solve many of the fundamental problems that
Speaker 1: we have, including even emissions because even yeah, it's not
Speaker 1: easy to make that a lot of that electricities generated
Speaker 1: and like yeah, some of them look neat. There were
Speaker 1: a lot of e bikes, a lot of a lot
Speaker 1: of e bikes which all look neat, And of course
Speaker 1: that's going to be a huge thing, a big, a
Speaker 1: big imputu for the e bikes right now is that
Speaker 1: Ukrainians have been using them very effectively in combination with
Speaker 1: drones to murder Russian soldiers, and the U. S Military
Speaker 1: is actually put in large orders for e bikes as
Speaker 1: a result of that, So I suspect you're going to
Speaker 1: see a lot more ebikes geared towards military applications too
Speaker 1: in the near future. But like what most of the
Speaker 1: big companies had were like TVs, like like they fucking Samsung,
Speaker 1: like Samsung and LG mostly big TVs, and like LG
Speaker 1: had one that it was like stored in a little
Speaker 1: box where it was all rolled up and it was
Speaker 1: like when you press a button, kind of like the
Speaker 1: you ever had a hotel that has automatic blackout curtains
Speaker 1: that kind of works that way, um, but which is
Speaker 1: like conceptually like, oh, neat, you've developed a TV that
Speaker 1: can fold and put itself away, But also is this
Speaker 1: really better than my current TV in a way that's
Speaker 1: going to alter my life? Is this Like yeah, there isn't.
Speaker 1: There's not much in terms of actual new innovation. Like
Speaker 1: they were trying to make their transparent TVs seem really
Speaker 1: cool and new, but like that's not new tech either.
Speaker 1: It's just that people don't really like using them outside
Speaker 1: of like the corporate space. Yeah, transparent TVs are neat
Speaker 1: for if you're decorating a space, if you're doing like
Speaker 1: a lobby. Likes room because it's a worse experience. But
Speaker 1: but like so like I I think out of all
Speaker 1: the big companies, LG had the best booth experience. Um
Speaker 1: I walked through Samsung after waiting in a massive line
Speaker 1: and all it looked half like a hospital and half
Speaker 1: like an Ikea where you're walking through and they're kind
Speaker 1: of showing you all their different like smart appliance products,
Speaker 1: but nothing is like actually new or innovative. It's all
Speaker 1: it's all the same ship you can find it at
Speaker 1: like the best Buy. It's not it's not cool or interesting.
Speaker 1: You're just waiting in line to walk through these little
Speaker 1: Ikea homes that that, and they show you how you
Speaker 1: can now use you can now use like Microsoft teams
Speaker 1: from your television and you're like, oh, a lot of
Speaker 1: people bragging about their Microsoft Teams integration. Look, you and
Speaker 1: I both have to use Teams for work sometimes always
Speaker 1: the worst part of my day. But but now, but now, Robert,
Speaker 1: with with your new rollable TV, you too can use
Speaker 1: Microsoft Teams. Finally, a rollable TV that automatically takes me
Speaker 1: into my team's room. So would you bootop Microsoft Teams?
Speaker 1: And you and you don't want to be there? When
Speaker 1: I first when I first on Firefox and it says
Speaker 1: this browser is not supported, You're going to have to
Speaker 1: use another browser? Does start Microsoft Teams. You probably wouldn't
Speaker 1: run into that issue. If you had your rollerble TV
Speaker 1: that was a smart TV, they could connect it directly
Speaker 1: to Microsoft Teams. Yeah. Um, I hate it. The Samsung
Speaker 1: booth was horrible. Sony mostly had PlayStations, which is fine,
Speaker 1: that's their people love them stations, and Masonic was a
Speaker 1: complete bust. LG at least had some interesting stuff, like
Speaker 1: they had this one projection powered TV extension room where
Speaker 1: you have you have an image or a three D
Speaker 1: a three D like a three D video file of
Speaker 1: the of the thing on the television that then projects
Speaker 1: out into the entirety of the room at least that
Speaker 1: was cool and new, So there was there was no
Speaker 1: stated release date for this, no stated price point complication
Speaker 1: because honestly, what what movies are going to work in that? Now?
Speaker 1: The answer is that what you want to do is
Speaker 1: you wanna combine that kind of drawing AI and use
Speaker 1: it so you can run a movie through it and
Speaker 1: it will finish the rest of the scenes. So, for example,
Speaker 1: you could put on Boogie Nights that opening scene where
Speaker 1: it's that one long shot as they go through it's
Speaker 1: just all around you, but everyone looks a little wrong
Speaker 1: and their hands are tweaked and fucked up, and we
Speaker 1: have mid Journey continuing up the movie to fill the
Speaker 1: Lord of the Rings. When you look to your right,
Speaker 1: one of the elves has hands that just curl up
Speaker 1: in himself and then you just take a shipload of
Speaker 1: acid and permanently damage your brain. I think the funniest
Speaker 1: thing at the l G Booth though all the despite
Speaker 1: being corny, was still miles miles better than anything else
Speaker 1: in Panasonic or inside Samsung was the Home of the
Speaker 1: Future was. They had three different Home of the Futures,
Speaker 1: which was mostly talking about how do you smart appliances
Speaker 1: and how to integrate them with your phone or whatever.
Speaker 1: That that was most of what they were talking about.
Speaker 1: But they had three actors in each of the home,
Speaker 1: actual ass human being who are kind of kind of
Speaker 1: doing like a kind of doing a presentation, kind of
Speaker 1: doing a fourth wall breaking performance. It's a it was
Speaker 1: a weird it was a weird mix of the mom
Speaker 1: kept emphasizing that she was almost criminally incompetent at cooking
Speaker 1: and thus had to be taught by a robot how
Speaker 1: to make pasta. But like they're talking about like their
Speaker 1: kids and my husband, and it's like it's a weird
Speaker 1: performance art thing. But honestly, that way of presenting their
Speaker 1: products was much more enjoyable to watch than walking through
Speaker 1: the Samsung booth who didn't have any of that you
Speaker 1: were just walking through like it's despite being silly, it
Speaker 1: was still much much more enjoyable. Yeah, and so I
Speaker 1: have been attending c e s since two thousand ten,
Speaker 1: not every year, but all and I try to hit
Speaker 1: it every couple of years just to kind of keep
Speaker 1: abreast of what's not just like what's possible, because you
Speaker 1: always see some exciting new stuff that you wouldn't have
Speaker 1: guessed was a thing, but also to just kind of
Speaker 1: get an eye for how the tech industry is talking
Speaker 1: about itself to itself. Um. And the thing that struck
Speaker 1: me most was how completely out of the driver's seat
Speaker 1: the big tech companies were, um and not even really
Speaker 1: even not even trying. Google's big Box was not in
Speaker 1: the main convention center their main booth. They had it
Speaker 1: outside the convention center. And it does not seem to
Speaker 1: be a focus of much coverage, right people, people are
Speaker 1: not do not care. It's just more phones and it's
Speaker 1: like Razors. They're right, the company makes gaming laptops, and
Speaker 1: they make perfectly fine gaming laptops. But it's also just like, well,
Speaker 1: now I can see what the new sixteen inch Razor
Speaker 1: looks like. It looks like a Razor laptop. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: I can go to Lenovo and see what they had
Speaker 1: actually a couple of cool laptop Leniva. I was bummed
Speaker 1: because they took away the laptop clit. They did take
Speaker 1: the clitter iss off of the laptop, which is a shame.
Speaker 1: Although they have a semi clitterest button on the side
Speaker 1: of the phone. It's red like the old Anyway, whatever, um,
Speaker 1: look up Lenovo clitter iss or just type clitterus into
Speaker 1: red tube. Um don't, well, I don't know, whatever, it's
Speaker 1: your life. Uh So the Lenovo has like I mean,
Speaker 1: there's some like, oh, here's a laptop with two screens
Speaker 1: that doesn't completely suck. Um, you know, here's a laptop
Speaker 1: that is in a slightly better form factor, but it's
Speaker 1: there's kind of they've given up the idea that like, um,
Speaker 1: there's anything kind of but iterative, Like here's TVs that
Speaker 1: are slightly better than your current TV, but not in
Speaker 1: a way that you can notice. And that's most of
Speaker 1: like the products there, which is like, well, on paper,
Speaker 1: this is slightly better than the thing I have, but
Speaker 1: I don't think I would actually notice a difference in
Speaker 1: And when you're seeing that from the companies that are
Speaker 1: put spinning thirty million twenty, you have a many fucking
Speaker 1: millions of dollars to be at C E S and
Speaker 1: have god knows how many billions that they put into
Speaker 1: R and D when that's what they're bringing to the table.
Speaker 1: And there's just like three nerds in a tiny booth
Speaker 1: in a corner of a room that have a device
Speaker 1: that like is capable of reading all of the speech
Speaker 1: around you and translating and like captioning it live. Or
Speaker 1: there's those I mean that little not a massive company,
Speaker 1: although not you know, clearly a decent amount of backing
Speaker 1: doing that kind of ship with happticks like that's all
Speaker 1: of the that's the I think that the main takeaway
Speaker 1: to me is like there's big tech um seems to
Speaker 1: have entirely given up driving the conversation about what the
Speaker 1: future is going to look like. Even I don't take
Speaker 1: as a bad thing. Actually, even we went to the
Speaker 1: John Dear booth and they had this, They had this
Speaker 1: u AI assisted way to scan your crops and locate
Speaker 1: where weeds are, and another kind of Amazon like one
Speaker 1: of those gigantic um uh irrigation to drive it around.
Speaker 1: It's like a hundred yards long, and it waters and
Speaker 1: sprays pesticide. But it's it's the AI power thing that
Speaker 1: recognizes things that are not crops and tries to remove them.
Speaker 1: The case and point being like trying to spray pesticides
Speaker 1: just on the weeds and not on the rest of
Speaker 1: the crops. And it can it can go. It can
Speaker 1: do this while operating at twelve hours an hour. This
Speaker 1: this the person we talked to, They just started working
Speaker 1: for John Deer because this technology was developed at a
Speaker 1: different company that John Deer just bought. Like John Deere
Speaker 1: didn't make this, other companies did, and then they just
Speaker 1: bought it. I think that's just another interesting these case
Speaker 1: of like that was just another small, random company who
Speaker 1: was doing you know, innovative farming technology that then you know,
Speaker 1: another big company with money just decided to buy and
Speaker 1: be like, hey, this is our thing now, And I
Speaker 1: think I want to We'll do another part where we
Speaker 1: talk about the dark side. We'll talk about Palinteer, who
Speaker 1: was there and who we got to chat with. We'll
Speaker 1: talk about Valence, We'll talk more about John Deer, because
Speaker 1: there's some some bleak ship in the John Deer stuff too. Um.
Speaker 1: But I think this is the stuff that I found
Speaker 1: broadly optimistic, even the ship that didn't work, because what
Speaker 1: didn't work is like big tech, and I kind of
Speaker 1: like the fact that big tech it seems stumbling and
Speaker 1: crypto those particulars that didn't work. What I like is
Speaker 1: the fact I like to see big tech stumbling out
Speaker 1: the gate and a bunch of weirdos um putting some
Speaker 1: cool shit out there, and that actually makes me more
Speaker 1: hopeful of like a future where technology makes things more accessible.
Speaker 1: And uh, I get to wear motorized Exo skeletons. Oh,
Speaker 1: let's end on the Exo skeleton. So we got to
Speaker 1: finally try the motorized Exo skeleton, which is supposed to
Speaker 1: basically increase your lifting capacity by sixty or seventy pounds. Um.
Speaker 1: It's like a backpack you were in your back with
Speaker 1: a chest piece and hooks around your hips and stuff. Uh,
Speaker 1: and it works when you're like carrying loads and moving
Speaker 1: and squatting. You don't have to move the way you
Speaker 1: normal due to protect your lower back, which is kind
Speaker 1: of harder on your knees. If you've ever liked done
Speaker 1: cattle bell spots or dead lifts, um, when you when
Speaker 1: you first put it on and they had you bend
Speaker 1: over and then stand back up. The first thing we
Speaker 1: did that, it was you kind of felt like you're
Speaker 1: getting launched in there. Yeah yeah, because it's pushing up
Speaker 1: with you, it's assisting you. Yeah, but you can move
Speaker 1: like springs in your step as you're running. It worked
Speaker 1: really well. It was very cool. I want to and
Speaker 1: I was kind of shocked at how this is from
Speaker 1: a German biotics German German biotics um, which is the
Speaker 1: name of the company, and it was a really awesome
Speaker 1: first off shout out the folks were fans, so that
Speaker 1: was nice um, but it was really cool product for like,
Speaker 1: the price point was surprisingly like we're not talking Toyota
Speaker 1: factories can afford them. We're talking like if you are
Speaker 1: if you work in like a mid like a small
Speaker 1: automotive company or whatever, like you could afford one of
Speaker 1: these suits. They're not they're sub tin k so they're
Speaker 1: not cheap, but they're not like the kind of thing
Speaker 1: that only a multi billion dollar corporation could have access
Speaker 1: and it will actually improve the lives of workers. You
Speaker 1: can rent them for two fifty bucks a month, which
Speaker 1: is again very because it would allow you to work
Speaker 1: lifting and hauling ship all day or do stuff like
Speaker 1: on a farm like bail hay and huck hey up
Speaker 1: without straining your knees and back, which you know, we
Speaker 1: talk a lot about like the kind of devices oftentimes,
Speaker 1: the kind of devices that make work more that are
Speaker 1: like marketed to companies in this may make work more efficient,
Speaker 1: but they don't try to they try to trying to
Speaker 1: increase productivity, Yeah, by just doing more numbers, but not
Speaker 1: actually improving the experience for the worker. Like. The human
Speaker 1: side of this is that, well, maybe a bunch of
Speaker 1: people who ruin their backs and knees working in factories
Speaker 1: every day won't and that would be nice to uh
Speaker 1: and and it seems like it works really well. Um.
Speaker 1: So if you are currently working a job or run
Speaker 1: a company and your employees are destroying their backs and knees,
Speaker 1: maybe reach out to the German biotics guys. Um. Also,
Speaker 1: it does seem like I could rent or purchase one
Speaker 1: and then combine my plate carrier with the chest rig
Speaker 1: purchased extra thigh and shoulder armor and have what is
Speaker 1: effectively powered armor without straining my body. I can't say
Speaker 1: any reason why that wouldn't work Garrison. Um, So come
Speaker 1: back next week where I will have recreated space marine
Speaker 1: power armor. Um, and soon after that gone mad with
Speaker 1: power and take over Circus Circus finally finally take over Garrison.
Speaker 1: Why don't we end this by so Circus Circus most
Speaker 1: beautiful place in the Las Vegas Strip if you've never been,
Speaker 1: if you've ever read the book Feared Loathing, in Las Vegas.
Speaker 1: You're watched the movie it's where Hunter Thompson starts hallucinating. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: the thing about Circus Circus is that it's a clown
Speaker 1: them to casino and it's supposed to be a circus
Speaker 1: themed casino. There's a lot of clouds, but there is
Speaker 1: a lot of cleans in their branding and that it was.
Speaker 1: It's like one of the oldest casinos on the strip,
Speaker 1: so everything is faded. They have not repainted it in
Speaker 1: a very long time. It is the outside as a
Speaker 1: shade of like move that you only get when the
Speaker 1: sun has deeply damaged your building. You cannot purposely produce
Speaker 1: set color. No man cannot create it, even with all
Speaker 1: of our talents. Um. And it's it's just I perfectly
Speaker 1: put Garrison up there because it's where I used to
Speaker 1: stay on the strip and it's one of the worst
Speaker 1: places in the world. I love it very much. UM.
Speaker 1: Tell the people how you found Circus Circus gear. I mean,
Speaker 1: initially I wanted I wanted more theming on the inside.
Speaker 1: I think it's it's a bummer that clowns have gotten
Speaker 1: such a bad rap in the past twenty years that
Speaker 1: I feel like they've kind of taken a back pedal
Speaker 1: off the clown theming. Yeah, it's cowardice because with without
Speaker 1: the clown, without the clown theming, it's just kind of
Speaker 1: dingy and depressing, where instead could be surreal and uncomfortable.
Speaker 1: And I would prefer it to be surreal and uncomfortable.
Speaker 1: That just did you depressing? See, this is why I
Speaker 1: wanted to support you in your dream of sitting in
Speaker 1: dark corners of Circus Surcus wearing your clown costume. I
Speaker 1: brought a clown costume you could give. I mean, you
Speaker 1: might get stabbed. I still I still have one more night.
Speaker 1: That's right. Yesterday, yesterday, after I said to my hotel,
Speaker 1: there was a Las Vegas police officer what time of
Speaker 1: day am? A Las Vegas Plue officer was walking the
Speaker 1: hallway in the very top floor where I'm staying. And
Speaker 1: then then I go downstairs and there's a whole team
Speaker 1: of police sweeping the ground at seven am. Probably just
Speaker 1: a murder um. So this has been it could happen here.
Speaker 1: Reporting from C E. S. We'll be back probably tomorrow
Speaker 1: to talk about the dark, horrifying things that we saw
Speaker 1: that made us deeply uncomfortable. And then we'll probably have
Speaker 1: like in an audio documentary on the way as well,
Speaker 1: using audio that we recorded at CES so that will
Speaker 1: be integrated at some point in the future. Will continue
Speaker 1: to inform you of the future that is mercilessly rushing
Speaker 1: towards you and cannot be stopped and will inevitably crush
Speaker 1: you and everything and everyone you love. But in this
Speaker 1: episode in a good way, so true, So be happy. Ah,
Speaker 1: welcome back to it could happen me All that's horrible.
Speaker 1: You didn't like that, Garrison, Well, they can all be winners. Uh.
Speaker 1: This is part I Guess three of our coverage of
Speaker 1: the Consumer Electronics Show and what the tech industry has
Speaker 1: in store for all of us in the future. UM.
Speaker 1: Last episode we talked about the stuff we saw at
Speaker 1: c e S that was both cool and optimistic and
Speaker 1: spoke to some some potentially positive trends in tech, and
Speaker 1: today we're going to get back to what we do best,
Speaker 1: which is making you feel bad. But first I want
Speaker 1: to open this up a little bit with Garrison. You're
Speaker 1: a Canadian. You're you're you're You're a very young Canadian
Speaker 1: twenty years old, grew up in a cult and now
Speaker 1: you have just seen Las Vegas, Nevada for the first time.
Speaker 1: Did it change your life? Um, I mean I guess so,
Speaker 1: I guess. I guess it did change my life in
Speaker 1: in my perception of what Las Vegas is and my
Speaker 1: desire to never return of But yeah, I mean we
Speaker 1: we've been able to spend probably around half our time
Speaker 1: at CES, the other half just uh so soaking in
Speaker 1: the impeccable vibes of Las Vegas, Nevada. Yeah, I've been.
Speaker 1: I've been tour guiding you around, uh soberly and safely.
Speaker 1: We went to the Venetian and the Palaza. We took
Speaker 1: a very expensive gondola, right, that was an expensive gondola. Right,
Speaker 1: got to see the beautiful blue skies of Venice and
Speaker 1: all their four corners. Your reaction to seeing inside the
Speaker 1: Vinea if you've never been the Venetian, the interior of it,
Speaker 1: it's this massive casino, as they all are. They're all
Speaker 1: like small towns inside buildings massive, and the Venetian is
Speaker 1: like a replica of the city of Venice with a
Speaker 1: fake sky. And that is one giant mall. I believe
Speaker 1: it's the second largest hotel in the world. Yeah, it is.
Speaker 1: Unbelievably large, uh, incredibly expensive, and the fidelity of like
Speaker 1: the fakeness of all of these things that are based
Speaker 1: on real stuff is is quite high to it's it's
Speaker 1: a whole thing. Yeah, it's it's really interesting because some
Speaker 1: of the most impactful stuff is all of like the
Speaker 1: fake storefronts inside because in many ways they're kind of
Speaker 1: just all glorified malls, um and glorified our aids, all
Speaker 1: slot machines. And it's funny because, like, you know, they
Speaker 1: make all of these facades on the inside, they have
Speaker 1: they have the ceiling painted to look like the sky,
Speaker 1: but it's it's it's just it's so dark in there,
Speaker 1: like it's so like it's you see blue skies above you,
Speaker 1: but there's like no light anywhere, no light anywhere. There's
Speaker 1: no clocks in the rooms. No, you never know what
Speaker 1: time it is. You never see the outdoors. You're all
Speaker 1: isolated in these little corridors leading from one shop to
Speaker 1: another with slot machines all along the way. You're flying
Speaker 1: back soon, are you looking forward to not being in
Speaker 1: a maze of lights designed to bewilder and and slowly
Speaker 1: damage you enough that you sit down at a craps table,
Speaker 1: very excited to see a real tree it's not a
Speaker 1: palm tree. Very excited to like touch grass because there's
Speaker 1: no grass in Las Vegas. No, it's actually I think
Speaker 1: illegal in a lot of parts of the city to
Speaker 1: have like a grass lawn, which is so one of
Speaker 1: the things. So obviously Vegas is in an objective sense,
Speaker 1: incredibly wasteful. A huge amount of resources get poured into
Speaker 1: what is effectively just for gaming. But um, the other thing,
Speaker 1: like another thing that you have to hold in your
Speaker 1: mind when you recognize that, is that of all of
Speaker 1: the states in the Southwest utilizing the very limited water
Speaker 1: resources there. If I'm not mistaken, because it was just
Speaker 1: reading an article about this, Nevada is the one state
Speaker 1: that has reduced its water usage while it's grown by
Speaker 1: like three quarters of a million people. Um, so it
Speaker 1: contains multitudes. And also Nevada, like Vegas, is where the
Speaker 1: I'm spacing on the name right now. But basically you
Speaker 1: have all of these different states in the Southwest that
Speaker 1: are all kind of coming together to try to figure
Speaker 1: out how to deal with the fact that uh lake
Speaker 1: meat water levels are getting lower in the Colorado River
Speaker 1: is disappearing in some areas, and it is the only
Speaker 1: thing that makes life out here possible on the scale
Speaker 1: that it currently exists on um And a couple of
Speaker 1: months before c e S they had their big meeting
Speaker 1: in Las Vegas in order to talk about how to
Speaker 1: try and deal with the calamitous water situation. So it
Speaker 1: is very much this city that is like filled with
Speaker 1: simulacra of the past um which it uses to try
Speaker 1: to hack your brain to get you to stay up
Speaker 1: for four days in a row, gambling and spending tens
Speaker 1: of thousands of dollars. And it also because it's the
Speaker 1: best place to hold a convention, and in a very
Speaker 1: technical sense, like it is the most prepared for a
Speaker 1: large convention. They they this city can handle a hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty two hundred thousand people coming in overnight and
Speaker 1: needing places to stay and needing infrastructure in order. So
Speaker 1: it's also where a lot of things about the future
Speaker 1: get decided, which is when you spend enough time walking.
Speaker 1: It's kind of horrified the fact that important decisions get
Speaker 1: made in this in this realm of in this place
Speaker 1: that's designed to be mind altering. Yeah, it is, it is.
Speaker 1: It is crafted. We're not like joking about this. There
Speaker 1: are no clocks in the hotel rooms, like the casinos
Speaker 1: are crafted to damage your perception of time. Um so
Speaker 1: I don't know that somebody should maybe look into that.
Speaker 1: It's I do like when you're talking about like meat.
Speaker 1: Just a great example of the overall vibes of Las
Speaker 1: Vegas is as as lake meat is drying up, we
Speaker 1: keep finding bodies inside the lake like bodies have been
Speaker 1: there a long time, bodies of people who had alternate
Speaker 1: ideas about how Vegas should look. I mean a lot
Speaker 1: of them were probably yeah, well, walk walk to the Venetian,
Speaker 1: walked through Caesar's Palace. Uh, they had they had some
Speaker 1: nice vapor wave lieds displays outside. Briefly went into the
Speaker 1: Paris one, which was honestly, I think they Paris handled
Speaker 1: the handled the fake sky the worst, because not only
Speaker 1: was this the sky painted ceiling so low, the the
Speaker 1: bottom part of the Eiffel Tower just stops where the
Speaker 1: ceiling stops. That they didn't even try. They don't even
Speaker 1: try to continue the illusion. It's just just as a
Speaker 1: is a hard stop. Um. We wrote a roller coaster.
Speaker 1: We we went to New York. We we went to
Speaker 1: the Little blurry for me because you were so drunk.
Speaker 1: But I just bought. I dumped the the attempt at
Speaker 1: like buying drinks from places and just got a handle
Speaker 1: of Woodford Reserve, which allegedly you can mix into one
Speaker 1: of the th HC Pina coladas that they have, and
Speaker 1: allegedly it's pretty good time. We we went to Rainforest Cafe.
Speaker 1: I unfortunately bought. You got sicker than I did eating
Speaker 1: Rainforest Cafe. The I I bought, I bought this volcano
Speaker 1: cake and it was quite regrettable. Um. And then we
Speaker 1: walked over to the New York themed casino inside Las Vegas.
Speaker 1: So if you want a city themed casino inside the
Speaker 1: city that you're in, you can go there. Just pretty
Speaker 1: different city creating microcostums within microcostums. You're just like the nesting,
Speaker 1: nesting all the way down. And I, in an effort
Speaker 1: to make both me and Robert vomit, we went on
Speaker 1: a roller coaster we've barely survived. That did feel like
Speaker 1: a very dangerous roller that was we were so close
Speaker 1: to vomiting everywhere. Just yeah, it was a good time.
Speaker 1: That was pretty fun. I felt great so that I
Speaker 1: just felt people would enjoy your your your first Vegas experience,
Speaker 1: and of course you stayed at Circus Circus, which we
Speaker 1: just walked through earlier today, one last time, one final,
Speaker 1: one final debt to see a family of four with
Speaker 1: thirty eight thousand dollars. I mentioned losing that Circus Circus, unbelieve,
Speaker 1: the worst casino in the world. I think, in order
Speaker 1: to segue into our next topic. It's pretty I think
Speaker 1: Las Vegas is probably one of the most heavily surveilled
Speaker 1: cities in the United States. It would be hard to
Speaker 1: find one with more, especially when you're on the Strip.
Speaker 1: Obviously there's a lot of lots of I have family
Speaker 1: who live here and they can go years without visiting
Speaker 1: the fucking strip because it's terrible. Um. But another another
Speaker 1: and so kind of in a similar sense. At CES,
Speaker 1: there was a lot of stuff about surveillance, a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff about, uh, you know, collect different new innovative
Speaker 1: ways to collect data on you and your and your
Speaker 1: appliances and what's in your home. Um, do we want
Speaker 1: to stalk start by talking about the the almdipure of
Speaker 1: of surveillance tech. Yeah. Um, there was actually just an
Speaker 1: article in the Washington Post about this about how unsafe
Speaker 1: quite a bit of it is. And one of the
Speaker 1: things that you may have caught in some of your news,
Speaker 1: because this was probably one of the more viral stories,
Speaker 1: is that there was a lot of piss based technology,
Speaker 1: a lot of p analyzation. Vivu had a thing there
Speaker 1: was there was at least three different p test kits
Speaker 1: that were on the show floor. I think some of
Speaker 1: them won't some some of the CS Innovation Awards where
Speaker 1: basically you can analyze what's in your urine. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: these are always framed as like it can let you
Speaker 1: give you confirmation if you have a U t I,
Speaker 1: it can help people who have all these different illnesses,
Speaker 1: it can help diabetics UM. And I'm sure there's a
Speaker 1: degree to which that's true. But I asked the Vivu
Speaker 1: lady and I didn't speak with the There was another
Speaker 1: called um you scan by with things and and you
Speaker 1: you scans urine sensor analyzes hormone levels in urine. That's interesting, Yeah,
Speaker 1: which is is why it won some awards and also
Speaker 1: why a bunch of folks, including Consumer Reports UM put
Speaker 1: out like a warning about it, saying like we shouldn't
Speaker 1: be celebrating this. This is an incredibly dangerous product because
Speaker 1: it all is going to your phone, the data is
Speaker 1: being collected digitally, and if, for example, you are in
Speaker 1: a state that heavily restricts women's access to reproductive healthcare, uh,
Speaker 1: there is literally nothing stopping the law enforcement or the
Speaker 1: government of those states from demanding all of that data
Speaker 1: be handed over, potentially even in real time. There's absolutely
Speaker 1: nothing stopping that. And the company has already said they'll
Speaker 1: comply with law enforcement with government requests, um. And there's
Speaker 1: they don't have any kind of plan for the fact
Speaker 1: that they are creating a way to surveile people's bodies
Speaker 1: um for the government. Um. And when I talked to
Speaker 1: the one of the representatives of Vivu, which is another
Speaker 1: one of these urine companies that I don't believe detect
Speaker 1: your hormone levels, but but does is generating a lot
Speaker 1: of data about your body, a lot of biometric data.
Speaker 1: And the most she would give me is that the
Speaker 1: data is encrypted, which great, that that's a fancy word
Speaker 1: for saying, yeah, we have it. We are. We are
Speaker 1: sitting here right after one of the most damaging data
Speaker 1: hacks of all time, which has h it was was
Speaker 1: last pass it was one of the massive password collecting
Speaker 1: apps where you basically like centralize all your passwords behind
Speaker 1: one and remember and like it. A lot of people
Speaker 1: are exposed as a result of that, And um, I
Speaker 1: just think that, like the this show, such a massive
Speaker 1: part of it was we have we are debuting devices
Speaker 1: that will allow you to monitor front parts of your
Speaker 1: body at all times and get real time biometric data
Speaker 1: your body in your house and centralizing all this data
Speaker 1: about you were talking about ring in one place, because
Speaker 1: that's the same thing with like smart homes and smart
Speaker 1: appliances were very popular. Smart cars were a very big thing.
Speaker 1: Um We're talking about like smart cities were another big
Speaker 1: thing for just other ways to centralize all of the
Speaker 1: data about what you own, where it is, um and
Speaker 1: how to effectively provide advertising to get you to buy more.
Speaker 1: There's an attempt being made by Republicans in Oklahoma right
Speaker 1: now to make it criminal two do gender transition if
Speaker 1: you are under twenty six years of age. There's no
Speaker 1: reason why a product like this couldn't be used to
Speaker 1: determine whether or not somebody is illegally taking hormones in
Speaker 1: a state where they are attempting to restrict trans people
Speaker 1: like it's this is all We're not just being like
Speaker 1: fuddy duddies. These are all very serious implications and there's
Speaker 1: zero thought, zero evidence of thought being given to it
Speaker 1: with any of the biometric companies. Now, one of the
Speaker 1: reasons we talked about that those smart glass um that
Speaker 1: are for people who are hearing impaired that caption conversations
Speaker 1: live around them. One of the reasons I was impressed
Speaker 1: by that is that it's all a closed loop. None
Speaker 1: of it goes to your smartphone, none of it's broadcast wirely, wirelessly. Um.
Speaker 1: It is all on device and none of it is
Speaker 1: stored anywhere. And when they said that, that was part
Speaker 1: of what convinced me these people understand the responsibility they
Speaker 1: have delivering a healthcare product. We should move on to
Speaker 1: the other part of the Panopticon that we saw and
Speaker 1: talk about Ring. Yeah, the ring booth was one of
Speaker 1: the more terrifyingly dystopian bits. And it's you know, and
Speaker 1: it's describe it for our listeners, well, I mean it's
Speaker 1: they basically made like a white Pickett house. Um. And
Speaker 1: you know, again cs these are massive, massive buildings, and
Speaker 1: so they do people can construct a full house in
Speaker 1: there and you did, so like you know, there's fake
Speaker 1: fake green grass, a nice little fence, this perfect little
Speaker 1: ideal at home. And the massive, massive sign above was
Speaker 1: like you know, ring keeping, like keeping keeping your neighborhood.
Speaker 1: Say if you know like all of all of all
Speaker 1: of that that type of messaging. UM. The in the
Speaker 1: model home they had there was like a dozen cameras
Speaker 1: on you know, every all all around the sides, and
Speaker 1: multiple cameras on the doors. There's a doorbell camera, peephole camera,
Speaker 1: camera on the fence, and one door with three cameras
Speaker 1: on the door itself. And I mean ring zoned by Amazon,
Speaker 1: there was you know, Alexa Alexa assisted ring cameras um
Speaker 1: all of the day that gets gets used by law enforcement.
Speaker 1: A ring partners like directly with law enforcement to make
Speaker 1: data like immediately available and make feeds immediately available. And
Speaker 1: the probably the still least thing we saw at the
Speaker 1: ring booth was this home security tiny little drone ye
Speaker 1: so basically they've built and it's weird because the so
Speaker 1: the box it comes in looks like a fucking um
Speaker 1: de humidifier that I used to have or humidifier that
Speaker 1: I used to have in my house it's almost identical. Um,
Speaker 1: but it's like this little plastic box and a drone
Speaker 1: can take off and fly out of it. Uh. And
Speaker 1: the drone trains itself on your house, so it knows
Speaker 1: how to get around and if somebody it thinks somebody's
Speaker 1: breaking in, a person who is effectively like works for Ring,
Speaker 1: like an actual human beings sitting in a call center somewhere,
Speaker 1: takes control of the drone and can confront someone in
Speaker 1: your house. Which I guess there's a potential security benefit there,
Speaker 1: But also, you are signing up to allow Amazon to
Speaker 1: have a random person travel around your home at any
Speaker 1: hour of the night in a in a thing they control,
Speaker 1: in a little flying machine that they control, and that
Speaker 1: I cannot put myself in. That I get, obviously, I
Speaker 1: get wanting to have cameras. I don't think it's unreasonable
Speaker 1: to have security cameras on your home. I even understand
Speaker 1: how some people who are not as privacy conscious as
Speaker 1: I am could be like, yeah, I don't care if
Speaker 1: it's connected to the internet. Um, even though that's not
Speaker 1: a thing I like, I can't put myself in the
Speaker 1: head of somebody who would want that thing in their house. Yeah,
Speaker 1: It's bizarre because obviously there's niche. Like again, they're like
Speaker 1: health related. Maybe if you've got like an illness or something,
Speaker 1: you might want something like that. Like I can understand
Speaker 1: how very specific purpose driven needs, but like as a
Speaker 1: normal person wanting an Amazon employee to be able to
Speaker 1: wander around your home, it seems weird to me. I
Speaker 1: mean that's obviously can also all that data getting used
Speaker 1: to Amazon can scan your entire house, figera what what
Speaker 1: products you buy, you know, what what non Amazon things
Speaker 1: are inside your home, what types of trends that you're using,
Speaker 1: and all that can get used to help get you
Speaker 1: to buy more things. That the the one of the
Speaker 1: morin Cities parts of like all of the marketing and
Speaker 1: some of like the some of like the video commercials
Speaker 1: for Ring that we saw, you know, playing on these giant,
Speaker 1: giant screens inside is they're they're really trying to also
Speaker 1: push the they're trying to push in a normalize using
Speaker 1: Ring as a part of your everyday life, but for
Speaker 1: non security means, like you know, when you're leaving your
Speaker 1: grandma's house, you say goodbye to her in her little
Speaker 1: ring camera. You know, when you when you're getting to
Speaker 1: your friend's house, you do a little funny pranks in
Speaker 1: front of their ring camera. It's like it's all these
Speaker 1: different ways to make rings seem like this fun and
Speaker 1: normal thing to like play with your friends and your
Speaker 1: family social, when in reality, look again, security cameras are
Speaker 1: inherently anti social. It doesn't mean that there aren't good
Speaker 1: reasons to have one. And as someone who's been burglarized,
Speaker 1: I do understand that, Um it's not bad, but it's
Speaker 1: anti social because you are surveilling people because you're worried
Speaker 1: about what they might do. That is that is a
Speaker 1: fundamentally anti social thing. And so the attempt to like
Speaker 1: turn that, the attempt to kind of like merge that
Speaker 1: into normal family life and to make it like friendly,
Speaker 1: is really bad. Yeah. I think that we briefly stopped
Speaker 1: by the A d T Booth and this is kind
Speaker 1: of this This is kind of similar to the little
Speaker 1: drone that we just talked about, but a little bit
Speaker 1: more ridiculous. Um, they have at the A d T
Speaker 1: booth this home security robot, like six six ft tall
Speaker 1: robot with uh with like a like like an like
Speaker 1: a lc D little face with this big smile on
Speaker 1: it and and it's powered or not powered. It is
Speaker 1: controlled by you, the owner, by wearing an Oculus headset,
Speaker 1: and it has it has rolling feet so it can
Speaker 1: move around by rolling. But it's like six ft tall.
Speaker 1: It has two arms, massive smiling face. And if if
Speaker 1: you have you know, your headset with you and you
Speaker 1: think someone's breaking into your home, you can put this
Speaker 1: on and control this robot to like chase them out.
Speaker 1: And I was overhearing that a d T guys talking
Speaker 1: about it, and they're like, yeah, this is even. This
Speaker 1: is even just like a great deterrence. Like imagine you're
Speaker 1: if someone's breaking into your home and then they see
Speaker 1: a massive smile like robot rolling towards you. I would
Speaker 1: run away very quickly, like like like what this This
Speaker 1: thing has to cost like tens of tens of thousands
Speaker 1: of dollars, and like this is what you're doing to
Speaker 1: feel like you're really just spend that much money to
Speaker 1: to create this sense of safety. Really really, this is
Speaker 1: this is what you're doing. You're you're you're getting a
Speaker 1: robot that gets powered by a Facebook headset so you
Speaker 1: can walk around your house in a rolling robot to
Speaker 1: make sure no one's gonna come you know, take random
Speaker 1: shipped from your house. Yeah, when like number one, Um,
Speaker 1: anyone who would do that is the kind of person
Speaker 1: that needs to be have things taken from them. Um.
Speaker 1: But number two like if you're actually concerned for your
Speaker 1: actual safety, and again I think that's perfectly valid. Um.
Speaker 1: None of these drones, this robot of security theater, it's
Speaker 1: not theater. It's easy to to like damage, it's easy.
Speaker 1: You can knockna it's it's a three wheels you knock
Speaker 1: it over. It can't get up, put on block so
Speaker 1: that you're completely covered, knock it over, and then proceed
Speaker 1: to rob the house. It's not useful. It's it's it's
Speaker 1: just a security alarm at that point. It's it's it's
Speaker 1: wild and like and people will find ways to hack
Speaker 1: them and stuff. You know, you can't hack a well
Speaker 1: trained guard dog, which also will cost you tens of
Speaker 1: thousands of dollars less, and we'll love you like a
Speaker 1: Doberman pincher will kill your enemies if they break into
Speaker 1: your home, and loves you like the same way. You know,
Speaker 1: there was people getting into Alexa machines. A few years
Speaker 1: ago there was Alexa Alexa machines listening and sending info
Speaker 1: when they weren't supposed to do. There was a mass
Speaker 1: there was a pretty big incident actually in Portland a
Speaker 1: few years ago of of Alexa listening in too when
Speaker 1: it was wasn't supposed to and and and like listening
Speaker 1: to different conversations and trying trying to finish conversational cues. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, it's only a matter of time before someone
Speaker 1: figures out how to control, how to remotely control one
Speaker 1: of these A D T robots and you have something
Speaker 1: like rolling around in your house that you don't control anymore.
Speaker 1: Like it's yeah, there are it's there are always vulnerabilities
Speaker 1: in these things and they always get hacked. Um. And
Speaker 1: more to the point, like well, if you have some
Speaker 1: sort of security drone like your ring drone, there's no
Speaker 1: way like again, Amazon would comply with law enforcement requests.
Speaker 1: There's nothing that says law enforcement, if it was part
Speaker 1: of an investigation, could not use this technology to surveil
Speaker 1: you in real time. UM. So I don't like that. UM,
Speaker 1: not my favorite. And while we're when we're talking about surveillance, Uh,
Speaker 1: we can't ignore our good friends at palent here. Now,
Speaker 1: if you haven't been paying attention to the surveillance industry.
Speaker 1: Palent Here is a company that exists to collect data
Speaker 1: and build machine solutions and machine learning solutions UM to
Speaker 1: surveil people and to help equipment like drones, targeting and
Speaker 1: whatnot work better. They're an intelligence company. There's like lots
Speaker 1: of systems. They do systems. It's not like they make
Speaker 1: a single product. They help build systems to collect data
Speaker 1: and enable governments and militaries to make decisions off of
Speaker 1: that data. That is like the thing that they do
Speaker 1: primarily systems analysts tracking. I mean, like what one of
Speaker 1: the one of the things we saw was them you know,
Speaker 1: analyzing homes to data around like water conservation. Right there,
Speaker 1: they're trying to put a variety of their usage not
Speaker 1: just kill brown people, but but they do a lot
Speaker 1: of the primary the center of their booth was this
Speaker 1: massive military truck with a huge armored box on the
Speaker 1: back that was filled with computers specifically to collect data
Speaker 1: and to um like do command and control for drone
Speaker 1: fleets in theater um And one of the things you
Speaker 1: know when you see a vehicle of that size and
Speaker 1: it was very massive, is that well, this is not
Speaker 1: this is intended either to be very far back from
Speaker 1: the front, which which mitigates some of the uses of it,
Speaker 1: or it is intended to be used in an area
Speaker 1: in which the enemy does not have air power. Um.
Speaker 1: But so again the kind of places where you're just
Speaker 1: bombing them, right, like theaters like Yemen where the rebels
Speaker 1: have minimal ability to do something like bomb a gigantic
Speaker 1: truck that's a target. Um, but you have kind of
Speaker 1: unrestricted ability to do stuff like drone strike school buses,
Speaker 1: which has happened repeatedly there. Um. We had a couple
Speaker 1: of conversations with the good people at Palanteer. Uh they
Speaker 1: were I don't I think we kind of figured out
Speaker 1: they were primarily they're looking for talent, because they were
Speaker 1: looking for people to recruit, looking for different things to
Speaker 1: integrate into their systems. Yeah, they would not show much
Speaker 1: of what they had. Everything inside the van itself was
Speaker 1: uh classified. Here would you hear me my phone? Find
Speaker 1: that person's name? But everything in there was was classified
Speaker 1: whenever we started talking, especially the first time we were there,
Speaker 1: because I started asking some pretty specific questions about what
Speaker 1: was actually in that and how it worked and how
Speaker 1: it was different from current drone command and control solutions.
Speaker 1: And there was a very specific woman with Palenteer who,
Speaker 1: no matter who I was talking to, would come up
Speaker 1: behind me and kind of direct conversation. And I think
Speaker 1: also was there to listen to the answers that were
Speaker 1: being provided to me and stop people from saying things
Speaker 1: on her team if they weren't supposed to say them. Um.
Speaker 1: There were a couple of occasions in which I asked, Hey,
Speaker 1: can we check this thing out on the inside, and
Speaker 1: we were told no, it was classified. No one else
Speaker 1: could get in. You have to you have to gain
Speaker 1: permission from the army. Yeah. I definitely saw some individuals exited,
Speaker 1: but they were Palenteer people. But then the next day
Speaker 1: we came back UM, and I watched a woman exit
Speaker 1: the vehicle UM and a man from Palenteer with her,
Speaker 1: but the woman was not from Palenteer. Now, people wear
Speaker 1: badges at c e s, so their names are on
Speaker 1: display and what they do was on display. Although it's
Speaker 1: easy to look this person up, and I saw she
Speaker 1: had a badge as a speaker. Her name was Mary
Speaker 1: or sorry, her name was Melody Hildebrand. UM, So I
Speaker 1: I googled Melody Hildebrand because I wanted to know she
Speaker 1: does not work for Palenteer. What is she doing inside
Speaker 1: Palentteer's giant class classified robot murder box? Uh Melody is
Speaker 1: the president of Blockchain Creative Labs and the chief information
Speaker 1: security officer for the Fox company, for the you know
Speaker 1: that Fox corporation. So it looked like by the way
Speaker 1: her her Twitter says, uh c I s O Fox
Speaker 1: Web three Engineering, cybersecurity, former war gamer, lover of farm animals,
Speaker 1: so that's cool. Um. And yeah, over here we've got
Speaker 1: her retweeting a post about and a rill, which is UM.
Speaker 1: One of the Peter Teel companies, like Palenteer, is raising
Speaker 1: one point four eight billion in their Series E funding. UM.
Speaker 1: This new funding will enable us to accelerate R and
Speaker 1: DED and bring new cutting edge autonomous defense capabilities to market.
Speaker 1: Now I don't know, I wonder what they mean by
Speaker 1: the word defense. Yeah, yeah, yeah, she's also pro n
Speaker 1: f T. So that's good. I'm gonna I'm gonna tweet
Speaker 1: to her in a little bit. Um. But no, it
Speaker 1: was it was very clear that there was you know,
Speaker 1: there was pr people on the ground to make sure
Speaker 1: that the line of questioning if they were too if
Speaker 1: people were asking questions about their surveillance tech, about this
Speaker 1: big Titan truck, which is what it's called Titan um
Speaker 1: that there's only very very specific answers, and like they
Speaker 1: were not there to talk to journalists. They were not
Speaker 1: there to talk to media. They were there to recruit
Speaker 1: people to you know, become more capable at their surveillance tech.
Speaker 1: That's that was very clear. Uh. They were also right
Speaker 1: across the street, right across the hall from the Fantastic
Speaker 1: Robos and Transformers robots. So on the on one side
Speaker 1: you have a fun optimist Prime robot that transforms, the
Speaker 1: other side you have the rolling metal deathcage. So that
Speaker 1: was that was that was most of Palentteer. They had
Speaker 1: this um sky box, which was this box that had
Speaker 1: like encrypted communications technology, uh, drones and drone drone piloting
Speaker 1: technology and like um, you know, a military computer that
Speaker 1: all in this little tiny box that they can drop
Speaker 1: into people who are you know, basically drop into people
Speaker 1: who are in trouble. Yeah, they were, they were. They
Speaker 1: were building it as basically number one. It would be
Speaker 1: for it could be for special forces teams. It has
Speaker 1: like a laptop in there, it has potentially several drones
Speaker 1: in there, um and it has like a bunch of
Speaker 1: specially modified field cameras you could set up surveillance on
Speaker 1: an area um and and those cameras kind of work
Speaker 1: with a machine learning algorithm to do stuff like try
Speaker 1: and identify where landmines are. And again like these are
Speaker 1: the stuff that's problematic primarily about palanteers. It's it's data collecting,
Speaker 1: its surveillance, and the fact that we know that drone
Speaker 1: warfare is generally pretty fucked up and has an extremely
Speaker 1: high civilian casualty rate and is used in a lot
Speaker 1: of theaters obviously, not in a lot of theaters where
Speaker 1: they are primarily just massacring people either fighting for their
Speaker 1: freedom or trying to survive. This is the problem with it. Obviously,
Speaker 1: all of this tech will also be used in generally
Speaker 1: positive things, like, for example, dropping a box like this
Speaker 1: into the hands of some Ukrainian special forces guys to
Speaker 1: to integrate them into a more advanced command and control
Speaker 1: networks so they have better access to tactical data like
Speaker 1: is not a thing. I don't specifically have a problem
Speaker 1: with that application. The problem is more broadly palent heer Um.
Speaker 1: Do you want to do do you want to briefly
Speaker 1: explain in case people are not Lord of the Rings fans.
Speaker 1: So again, these are all companies owned by Peter Thiel,
Speaker 1: who is a self described fascist, believes in ending democracy,
Speaker 1: believes that democracy and freedom are not compatible because freedom
Speaker 1: he defined mind specifically as the ability of people with
Speaker 1: lots of money to not have any kind of restrictions
Speaker 1: on their behavior or what they can compel other people
Speaker 1: to do. Peter Teal owns Palenteer and andy rill Um.
Speaker 1: The Palanteer Palenteer both of those are names from Lord
Speaker 1: of the Rings, and in Lord of the Rings, the
Speaker 1: Palenteer was an orb given by the Big Bad Guy
Speaker 1: Sawon to one of his lackeys, a wizard named Saramon,
Speaker 1: so that he could surveil any part of Middle Earth
Speaker 1: he wanted in order to send his armies to crush
Speaker 1: the free peoples of the world. Like that is that
Speaker 1: is literally what this company is named after. It is
Speaker 1: the bad guy surveillance tech to use the Orokai against
Speaker 1: the free people of Middle Earth. It is it is
Speaker 1: specifically something that only evil people use. Um, It's it's
Speaker 1: pretty cool that the whole company is named after. And
Speaker 1: there were all these very nice, polite people in uh
Speaker 1: Patagonia style vests with Palenteer logos stick on them, standing around. UM.
Speaker 1: Happy to answer any of your questions. Uh. Anyway, I'm
Speaker 1: I'm curious as to why Melody Hildebrandt was inside there.
Speaker 1: What the chief information security officer of Fox would want
Speaker 1: to do with one of those vans. That is curious.
Speaker 1: That is curious, she's on Twitter. I did reach out
Speaker 1: to her, but we that We also saw a few
Speaker 1: of the robot dogs. We saw the Boston the Dynamics one,
Speaker 1: which was very impressive and how it moves. Um. Then
Speaker 1: we saw one much more cheaper um uh model of
Speaker 1: of a robot dog that had not as great mobility,
Speaker 1: but it seemed to be more more suited towards the
Speaker 1: types of the types of style of dogs that were
Speaker 1: that we've seen law enforcements start to buy. Um, the
Speaker 1: cheaper ones with less flexibility, more mounts to attach you know,
Speaker 1: things to the top of the robot which you don't
Speaker 1: really see you with the Boston Dynamics ones. They do
Speaker 1: not like mounting extra things on. But the the other
Speaker 1: robot dog we saw had this little arm that it
Speaker 1: was that it was that that had attached to the
Speaker 1: top that was in the robotics section, pretty close to Palentteer.
Speaker 1: That one was much less impressive than because we saw
Speaker 1: both robot dogs and these are if you've see video
Speaker 1: of a robot dog that people are freaking about out
Speaker 1: about online, these are those robot dogs. UM. The one
Speaker 1: we saw with the arm on, it did not move.
Speaker 1: It was number one, controlled directly by a guy with
Speaker 1: a controller. It was not autonomous and it didn't move
Speaker 1: very smoothly. The sitting in front of the Boston Dynamic
Speaker 1: Spot spot and watching it move was really surre It
Speaker 1: was number one. We both talked about this Garrison. It's
Speaker 1: like watching c g I in real life because it's
Speaker 1: it's so fine tuned. Yeah, it moves like a living thing,
Speaker 1: but clearly is not UM and it moves like a
Speaker 1: living thing enough that it is not it's not an
Speaker 1: uncanny valley. That's not the right way to describe it now,
Speaker 1: because the movements are kind of perfect. It's just not
Speaker 1: it's alive. It's almost it's it's not uncanny valley. It's
Speaker 1: almost like instead, it's like too perfect. Yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: just so fine tuned. It's it was pretty it was
Speaker 1: pretty impressive to watch. It was very impressive, and it
Speaker 1: it's become obvious to me that like, one of the
Speaker 1: things that absolutely is going on at Boston Dynamics is
Speaker 1: that they feel there is there is an it is
Speaker 1: important to them as a business. Some of this may
Speaker 1: just be that they this is a personal challenge for
Speaker 1: a lot of these engineering guys, but I suspect they
Speaker 1: also see this as valuable to their business to replicate
Speaker 1: physical emotionality. And when I talk about that, when you like,
Speaker 1: watch a dog, right, you can tell a dog's emotions
Speaker 1: from the way that the dog moves, because that's how
Speaker 1: dogs work. Um, the robot dog expresses physical emotion and
Speaker 1: obviously it doesn't feel emotion, but it physically expresses emotion
Speaker 1: in a similar way to a dog, like curiosity. They're
Speaker 1: very good at mimicking a curious dog in the way
Speaker 1: it's body language works, which is really wild. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: would be one of the things I did not like. Um.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's impressive. A lot of this stuff is
Speaker 1: objectively impressive. Most of the other robotics we saw there
Speaker 1: was not that impressive. Like I saw this this robot
Speaker 1: bartender that was making boba but it but it didn't
Speaker 1: know it didn't know how, or it wasn't able to
Speaker 1: actually deliver the boba onto the secondary robot that delivers
Speaker 1: the boba. So this this this one robot with arms
Speaker 1: made made the drink, a human picked it up, inspected it,
Speaker 1: then put it on a secondary robot which then delivered
Speaker 1: the trick. And I and this technology, I mean I
Speaker 1: I was eating at a at a at a Burmese
Speaker 1: place in Portland a few months ago where they were
Speaker 1: using this same food delivery robot system. It's not it's
Speaker 1: not brand new, it's just becoming cheaper and more people
Speaker 1: are trying to like make it a thing. And there
Speaker 1: was so there was a lot of those types of things,
Speaker 1: a lot of like R two D two on Jabba's
Speaker 1: sale barge, like delivering drinks style style robots that are autonomous,
Speaker 1: like they do move themselves around. They they don't need
Speaker 1: a remote controller, but they're not that impressive. But that
Speaker 1: that that was like the majority of stuff in the
Speaker 1: robotics section was that there was a few other kind
Speaker 1: of smaller rolling robots that were there assist like elderly people,
Speaker 1: like if if someone falls down, this kind of goes
Speaker 1: around and will help you. And yeah, I don't feel
Speaker 1: well that specific stuff. I don't feel like well suited
Speaker 1: to describe, like to guess as to how well it
Speaker 1: would work. UM. But I think more broadly talking about
Speaker 1: autonomous tech because that was one of the biggest product
Speaker 1: categories at SEA as it was all over the place. Um,
Speaker 1: there were a lot of cars and a lot of
Speaker 1: companies doing autonomous software and light our solutions for cars.
Speaker 1: I consider that all to be vaporware. There's a great
Speaker 1: deal of evidence here, but fully autonomous vehicles UM in
Speaker 1: the way that some of these companies are advertising is
Speaker 1: simply not They simply do do not exist, do not exist,
Speaker 1: and will not exist. And we did talk to a
Speaker 1: couple of people. So again for the stuff that's very
Speaker 1: real about autonomous tech, there's things like driver assistance, so
Speaker 1: for like truck drivers, to allow them to strain and
Speaker 1: stress themselves less while driving and to help um make
Speaker 1: certain things like backing up and parking that can be
Speaker 1: very difficult in certain environments safer by having more cameras
Speaker 1: and machine assistance. That makes sense. And one of the
Speaker 1: people who worked at one of those companies said to us, UM, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's no such thing as autonomous trucks or cars, like,
Speaker 1: they don't exist outside of very tightly controlled conditions. All
Speaker 1: we are trying to do is make truck driving safer
Speaker 1: and less stressful in the driver, which sounds great. Um.
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously there's problems with the way the trucking
Speaker 1: industry exists outside of that, but that sounds again like
Speaker 1: one of those products meant to actually mitigate worker fatigue
Speaker 1: and discomfort and potentially makes it safer. So I'm on
Speaker 1: board with that kind of stuff. But um, other like
Speaker 1: an autonomous and smart tech that we like, like like
Speaker 1: smart cars, um e V like electronic vehicles and auto
Speaker 1: of stuff. There was some stuff at the John Deer
Speaker 1: booth which it was pushing towards automation like we talked
Speaker 1: about in the last episode. And then also they're they're
Speaker 1: evy tractor just launched, which so John Deer, if you're
Speaker 1: not aware, has had a series of long running legal battles,
Speaker 1: particularly with farmers in Ukraine, over the fact that they
Speaker 1: do not want it to be possible or legal for
Speaker 1: you to repair your tractor if you're a farmer. Farmers
Speaker 1: have previously in history often repaired and fixed and modified
Speaker 1: their vehicles. Um, this is both necessary if a thing breaks,
Speaker 1: you can't always get it back to a manufacturing facility
Speaker 1: in time. And a lot of farmers in the middle
Speaker 1: of nowhere. A lot of farms are in the middle
Speaker 1: of nowhere, which is where food comes from. And you
Speaker 1: also like, you can't wait, you can't just be like, well,
Speaker 1: let's just put harvesting off for a week or two.
Speaker 1: That that is a problem. Um. John Deere sees that
Speaker 1: as a severe threat to their profits, and they have
Speaker 1: fought viciously in courts UH to make it, to try
Speaker 1: to make it illegal to repair your own devices. Um.
Speaker 1: They have lost a lot of those fights in the
Speaker 1: United States, and to its credit, the Biden administration has
Speaker 1: taken a strong stance in favor of the right to repair.
Speaker 1: And what we saw from John Deere at this CS
Speaker 1: was a bunch of very impressive autonomous products that just
Speaker 1: coincidentally will also make it completely impossible to repair your tractors,
Speaker 1: like specifically with the new EV tractor that launched. So
Speaker 1: much of it is a computer that it is impossible
Speaker 1: to repair unless you work for John Deere. Like we
Speaker 1: when we asked them, like, hey, you know, if if
Speaker 1: this thing breaks down. How how would a farmer go
Speaker 1: about trying to fix this since it is a lot
Speaker 1: of it is like not it's it's it's not like
Speaker 1: motors and stuff from like a classic car. It is
Speaker 1: it is like it is computer driven. Um, and they're
Speaker 1: like they just can't. It's just it's just so complicated
Speaker 1: that an average person cannot repair this like at all.
Speaker 1: It's just it just it's impossible. So that's the way
Speaker 1: they are gonna try to it around this, uh, this
Speaker 1: right to repair issue. Yeah, we will just and the
Speaker 1: and it's being done under the guys of well you
Speaker 1: you know, by having this much more advanced we can
Speaker 1: use a lot less pesticide, which is better for the soil,
Speaker 1: better for everything, um, using less carbonius and less carbon
Speaker 1: the farmer will have more time because the vehicle can
Speaker 1: handle this autonomously. So that's eight hours the farmer you know,
Speaker 1: gets to to spend doing something else and um, all
Speaker 1: of this stuff that's kind of meant to distract from
Speaker 1: like well, I guess yeah, maybe he'll have more time,
Speaker 1: but also substantially less autonomy and be completely dependent upon
Speaker 1: the John Deer Corporation in order to produce the food
Speaker 1: that human beings need to survive. UM. I'm also gonna
Speaker 1: point it out there and say I started this by
Speaker 1: saying that, like, one of the major lawsuits was between
Speaker 1: John Deer and a lot of a group of Ukrainian farmers. Um,
Speaker 1: the same farmers presumably who were towing a lot of
Speaker 1: Russian ordinance away with the John Deer tractors. UM. I
Speaker 1: don't know that it's that kind of stuff. And one
Speaker 1: of the things that I think looking at a lot
Speaker 1: of this autonomous tech, some of it's great, some of
Speaker 1: it could will save lives. Some of it Rather than
Speaker 1: like reducing the need for humans to do work that
Speaker 1: it would be good if they didn't have to do,
Speaker 1: we'll do just what you recognize, create an even less
Speaker 1: human job for a human, like taking drinks from a
Speaker 1: robot that makes drinks to a robot that carries them
Speaker 1: to people. Because we we just couldn't figure out that
Speaker 1: interstitial step. So your job as a human being, as
Speaker 1: a as a member of of of a species that
Speaker 1: spent millions of years evolving to be capable of creating
Speaker 1: nearly anything, your job will be to take a drink
Speaker 1: from one robot and set it down at another I
Speaker 1: mean we we The thing is like that we already
Speaker 1: had that same idea in factories, Like as as factories
Speaker 1: have gone towards being more made by machines, they're still
Speaker 1: as factory workers who need to do all this little
Speaker 1: in between steps. So we're taking this factory model and
Speaker 1: now just applying it to customer service doing the same thing,
Speaker 1: trying to automize as much as pop simile and then
Speaker 1: only rely on humans for all of these little in
Speaker 1: between steps that for some reason the robots and all
Speaker 1: of the autonomous texts isn't very good at yet or
Speaker 1: you know, isn't really focused on completing. And that's that's
Speaker 1: the main thing that that humans are going to be
Speaker 1: are going to be doing in the in the autonomous
Speaker 1: Boba store that's gonna come to your neighborhood in like
Speaker 1: ten years. Speaking of bad things about the future or
Speaker 1: at least the present, let's talk about Elon Musk's celebrity
Speaker 1: death tunnel. So, if you're not aware Elon, one of
Speaker 1: the companies, actually the company he started that is based
Speaker 1: on his own legitimate ideas is the boring company UM,
Speaker 1: which makes big tubes underground, uh so that people can
Speaker 1: drive their individual cars through them and avoid traffic. Now.
Speaker 1: Elon Musk is a man who takes his private jet
Speaker 1: between airports in the same city in order to avoid traffic.
Speaker 1: There is nothing he hates more than the idea of
Speaker 1: being a normal person or being at all connected to
Speaker 1: the lives of regular people, which is why you get
Speaker 1: a private jet UM when you could just like fly
Speaker 1: first class or something, because even if you're flying for
Speaker 1: first class, you're still going to an airport and through
Speaker 1: security around like the poor the poors. UM. Elon has
Speaker 1: been vociferous about his hatred of of traffic um transit,
Speaker 1: but also he hates public transit because you might sit
Speaker 1: next to a serial killer. UM. So his solution is
Speaker 1: dig holes underground and let people drive there. And Uh.
Speaker 1: Most of the cities that have attempted to have bording
Speaker 1: tunnels completed have been ghosted by the company. It is
Speaker 1: kind of a con um. But they did build one
Speaker 1: in Las Vegas and Garrison and I used it, uh
Speaker 1: and it took us from one side of the convention
Speaker 1: center to the other. Um. We potentially, if we had
Speaker 1: made the most use of this service, we we might
Speaker 1: have gotten at a five to seven minutes that we
Speaker 1: didn't have to walk just just you and me alone
Speaker 1: inside the tesla, not having to be around other people
Speaker 1: in in the in the RGB tunnel if you're in
Speaker 1: One of the things Lama has literally said is like, well,
Speaker 1: if you take public transit, you might sit next to
Speaker 1: some serial killer. The way this tunnel thing works is
Speaker 1: you tell them whether you're going east or west, and
Speaker 1: they put you in a tesla that some dude is
Speaker 1: driving that you don't know, and then they fill the
Speaker 1: tesla with other other people that you also don't know.
Speaker 1: You're still sitting next to stranger and you're in this
Speaker 1: this tube that is lit up the same way a
Speaker 1: pair of like Razor gaming headphones are lit up um
Speaker 1: and you just slowly stuck in this tunnel with two
Speaker 1: random people who you don't know. I horrible, like one
Speaker 1: thing I feel like, obviously if you're in like New
Speaker 1: York or something or Berlin. I've been in a lot
Speaker 1: of cities where I've traveled on the underground, and I
Speaker 1: don't feel scared traveling in the underground because those have
Speaker 1: existed for a very long time, and so we know
Speaker 1: what happens when there's floods and when there's fires, and
Speaker 1: there's a lot of systems built, which is why you
Speaker 1: don't generally hear about a shipload of people dying in
Speaker 1: sub way. I used an extremely safe way to travel.
Speaker 1: This tunnel is filled with vehicles that take we know
Speaker 1: about fifty five gallons of water to put out a
Speaker 1: fire when the battery catches fire, and the batteries on
Speaker 1: Tesla's we also know, catch fire with some regularity. And
Speaker 1: you are trapped in a tunnel. Uh, there is sometimes traffic.
Speaker 1: Near the end of our ride, we wound up in
Speaker 1: a line of like twenty Tesla's and that did not
Speaker 1: feel good because you just you can see nothing but
Speaker 1: Tesla's ahead of you and behind you, and you're surrounded
Speaker 1: entirely by this tight claustrophobic wall with absolutely no emergency
Speaker 1: exit's visible. So in fire suppression systems visible, I don't
Speaker 1: know what they have installed, but you can't see anything.
Speaker 1: You cannot see a thing. All you see is the
Speaker 1: Razor r GB gaming mouse. And then as as so,
Speaker 1: as soon as we got off this this thing that
Speaker 1: was supposed to take us to like the central area,
Speaker 1: it just took us to the other side of the
Speaker 1: convention center in order to actually get to where we
Speaker 1: needed to go, we just use the monorail, the thing
Speaker 1: that's been there for a long time, and it's fine.
Speaker 1: And mono rails are also not great ideas for a
Speaker 1: lot of reasons. But it got us right to the
Speaker 1: other end of the strip very quickly, conveniently, cleanly. It
Speaker 1: took cost five dollars um. So good work, Ellen. I
Speaker 1: love the tunnel. I hope you're proud, ringing, ringing indoors.
Speaker 1: I can't wait for there to be tunnels like that
Speaker 1: in every city. Don't worry, they want the boring company
Speaker 1: is not a real company. Um yeah, anything else care?
Speaker 1: I mean we already talked about the digital health stuff,
Speaker 1: which was a very big part of the ES. UM. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's I think that's most of what we want to
Speaker 1: touch on for now. Okay, well that's gonna just about
Speaker 1: do it for all of us here at whatever show
Speaker 1: this is. UM we will at some point have some
Speaker 1: stuff based on Oh yeah, actually, let's let's in by
Speaker 1: I went in by talking about Um, I guess another
Speaker 1: good thing, but it's a good thing that relates to
Speaker 1: the bad things. Um. We ran across a booth on
Speaker 1: our way out that on the first day I had
Speaker 1: seen and I had thought was just UM like a
Speaker 1: I had assumed it was like a GPS solution or
Speaker 1: something because the company was called off grid UM, and
Speaker 1: it's the off grid phone. We talked to the founder
Speaker 1: of the company, Ben Wilson, who was just a guy who,
Speaker 1: as he put it, does not like that. Uh. We
Speaker 1: consistently seated more and more control over our data and
Speaker 1: over our communications to large companies and governments and whoever
Speaker 1: the funk else gets access to these massive and or
Speaker 1: massive not anonymous data sets, and wanted to build a
Speaker 1: thing for himself that could eventually replace his smartphone. UM.
Speaker 1: So he and the company he started have produced these
Speaker 1: their dumb phones at this moment that context and can
Speaker 1: call and do encrypted end to end communication. They also,
Speaker 1: if you are off grid, like in the middle of nowhere,
Speaker 1: and you and your friends have these, you can communicate
Speaker 1: through text through your phone to each other even if
Speaker 1: there is no network. Right. The phones themselves do like
Speaker 1: make a network. They communicate just just to each other,
Speaker 1: just to each other. You can do don't connect to
Speaker 1: the why their internet? Yeah, which is really cool and
Speaker 1: potentially extremely useful. This is this is UM there's a
Speaker 1: number of applications that this could have. Garrison you mentioned
Speaker 1: that the Atlanta Forest Defense people could benefit from something
Speaker 1: like this because it will effectively they're about two hundred
Speaker 1: bucks apiece. Anyone who can afford a few of these,
Speaker 1: you can set up your own secure comms network for
Speaker 1: wherever you are and whatever you're doing, and and the other.
Speaker 1: The other feature of this is that you can set
Speaker 1: it onto something called sheep mode, where basically, if if
Speaker 1: if you suspect that that someone who you don't want
Speaker 1: to look at your phone, whether that's law enforcement, whether
Speaker 1: that's other random random other people, you can set it
Speaker 1: to this mode that when they when they either seize
Speaker 1: or gain gain possession of this device, all of the
Speaker 1: the the data is immediately wiped before they can actually
Speaker 1: open up the phone. Um and they will open it up,
Speaker 1: they will see this fake profile that called the called
Speaker 1: not fake profile, but like this, this alternate profile called
Speaker 1: it called the sheep profile, which shows not not the
Speaker 1: stuff that not the stuff that you were using the
Speaker 1: food for. You can then just be blank or you
Speaker 1: could like stick other numbers in there. You could have
Speaker 1: like a series of fake text but and then and
Speaker 1: but if you ever regain possession of the phone, you're
Speaker 1: able to put in UM a special a special password
Speaker 1: that will it will send the data. It'll it'll it'll
Speaker 1: send the data through encryption back onto this device. So
Speaker 1: you still have the things that you would have lost.
Speaker 1: And obviously there's a degree of like you would have
Speaker 1: to have some trust for the company, yes, which says
Speaker 1: like and Ben says, like, we are attempting to do this.
Speaker 1: He was very open about the fact that that they
Speaker 1: have the phones, we saw them, like some of this
Speaker 1: stuff is still getting built out. It is it is
Speaker 1: is still in development. They're still figuring out but for
Speaker 1: ways to keep the servers secure, to protect the servers
Speaker 1: from subpoenas from the American government and from other from
Speaker 1: other governments, like there's this this is still something that
Speaker 1: is being worked on. Uh. It was just one of
Speaker 1: the you know, we we see a lot of like
Speaker 1: like a lot of lofty promises and very very little
Speaker 1: thing to show for this. This is one of the
Speaker 1: things that had actually you know, just this one guy
Speaker 1: that had you know, some pretty some pretty relatable promises
Speaker 1: UM and and it's very open about what they have
Speaker 1: done and what they haven't done. And what they're trying
Speaker 1: to do now. He he he was, he was, He
Speaker 1: was not bullshitting. He wasn't trying to over emphasize what
Speaker 1: it can do UM or what I can do at
Speaker 1: the moment, like it's it's still being worked on. But
Speaker 1: this is one of the one of the one of
Speaker 1: the few, one of the future things that we will
Speaker 1: be that we will want to follow up on. And
Speaker 1: I think we're going to try to have been on
Speaker 1: the show in the near future because they're going to
Speaker 1: be doing a Kickstarter to fund one of the next
Speaker 1: phases of production of this UM. But you can you
Speaker 1: can look them up yourself. You can buy the version
Speaker 1: one of their product, which is on sale and functional
Speaker 1: now at off grid phone own dot com. Spelled the
Speaker 1: way you would expect UM. So yeah, check out off
Speaker 1: grid phone dot com. We found it interesting, will be
Speaker 1: following up on that. Um. Ben gave me very strong
Speaker 1: the good kind of libertarian vibes. Reminded me of a
Speaker 1: couple of people I've I used to hang out with
Speaker 1: in my youth, and it's very much is that kind
Speaker 1: of like product of just a cranky guy who knows
Speaker 1: tech and is angry at all of the data being
Speaker 1: sucked up and all of the data that we just
Speaker 1: kind of agree together we're going to give away two
Speaker 1: unsavory characters because life in the modern world is kind
Speaker 1: of impossible if you don't do that. No, I'm like
Speaker 1: one of one of the things on his signs was
Speaker 1: something along the lines of don't let the pope po
Speaker 1: look at your phone. So like it's yeah, it is
Speaker 1: somebody who gets it. Yeah, yeah, we liked we liked
Speaker 1: ben Um. So yeah, that is that is the dark
Speaker 1: side of the future of tech, as this year's CES
Speaker 1: has unveiled it to us. Um. You know, this is
Speaker 1: the also the conclusion of our reporting directly on the
Speaker 1: convention itself. We will have some reporting in the future
Speaker 1: that will be influenced by things we found here that
Speaker 1: we're going to continue to look up. But um and
Speaker 1: and we should have we should have some of the
Speaker 1: audio that we pulled from inside the convention center that
Speaker 1: should be edited together sometime in the near future. Talk
Speaker 1: to Paler. That'll be fine. Yes, As as a little
Speaker 1: kind of documentary, little daily diary of of of what
Speaker 1: we were actually doing on the ground. So that's being
Speaker 1: worked on. But this is this is as we're recording
Speaker 1: right now. This is the final day of CES. We
Speaker 1: are almost done. We have we are both very sore.
Speaker 1: Is surprisingly hard on your body. We have to enter
Speaker 1: Eureka Park one more time, but then we will be finished,
Speaker 1: and then we'll have to upload this and and edit
Speaker 1: edit the rest of the stuff we've made into into
Speaker 1: a little piece for you. So that is that that
Speaker 1: is still coming, you say, we, which was very generous.
Speaker 1: You're going to be doing that. Me and Daniels I
Speaker 1: will not be editing anything. Um. I don't know how
Speaker 1: to anyway. Go to Hell. I love you. Hagel remarks
Speaker 1: somewhere that all great world historical facts and personages appear,
Speaker 1: so to speak twice you forgot to add the first
Speaker 1: time as tragedy, the second time as farce. Welcome to Nick.
Speaker 1: It happened here the podcast where when we last left
Speaker 1: Jayerree Bolsonaro, he had locked himself in the presidential mansion,
Speaker 1: turned off the lights, and refused to leave or talk
Speaker 1: to anyone. Now, Bolsonaro has returned to his ancestral home
Speaker 1: hospital in Orlando, where he's been admitted for abdominal pain,
Speaker 1: joining me to discuss maybe the first man in history
Speaker 1: to be his own Napoleon. The third is James. Hi, man,
Speaker 1: this is I'm very much looking forward to this. Oh god.
Speaker 1: I okay, So for for those of you who I
Speaker 1: don't know somehow have missed this. I I woke up
Speaker 1: on Sunday and ten minutes later this was happening, and
Speaker 1: I was like, well, okay, I guess I'm canceling my
Speaker 1: dinner plans were doing this instead. Yeah, I think Marx
Speaker 1: could have added to that quote and then as fast
Speaker 1: again and then for a third time as fast. Yeah.
Speaker 1: We really, we really, we really have sort of left
Speaker 1: the tragedy cycle and on now just in the forest
Speaker 1: over and over and over again. Yeah, we kind of
Speaker 1: need a new word for what keeps happening because it's
Speaker 1: not it's not really a coup and it's certainly not
Speaker 1: a revolution. It's just like an extreme reactionary tantrum. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I kind of like storming the capital because
Speaker 1: it is what they do. But then yeah, I don't know,
Speaker 1: like I'm upset that everyone calls it insurrectionism or insurrectionist
Speaker 1: because it's like they're not like insurrectionary reactionary is like
Speaker 1: a power. Yeah, It's like, like I think like auto
Speaker 1: who is closer. But the problem with COO is that
Speaker 1: coop implies that the military is actually cooperating, which it isn't. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's why they always failed. Yeah, we're going to
Speaker 1: get into that more in a bit, but yeah, okay, So,
Speaker 1: so the thing that has actually happened is on Sunday,
Speaker 1: supporters of of UH former former Brazilian president Jay Bilsonaro,
Speaker 1: who I fled the country to Orlando. I sacked the
Speaker 1: Plaza of the Three Powers in Brazil, which is the
Speaker 1: home of the basically the buildings are the three branches
Speaker 1: of governments, and unlike in the US, they sacked all
Speaker 1: of them. They stored their presidential mansion, they stormed Congress,
Speaker 1: they stormed the Supreme Court, and then having seized control
Speaker 1: of the buildings, as cops either sat around joking with him,
Speaker 1: which is actively walked them into the building. Like there
Speaker 1: is a video of a procession of Bolsonaro supporters with
Speaker 1: just like they're they're all walking in a line towards
Speaker 1: the plaza and there's just like two cop cars like
Speaker 1: in the middle of the thing driving with them like
Speaker 1: it's wild. There are cups taking selfies of them, taking
Speaker 1: selfies yeah, like I that that one that was the
Speaker 1: one in particular that was like, I feel like that
Speaker 1: goes slightly above and beyond even what was happening with
Speaker 1: with the American cops. Like that was some Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's okay. So they get there, they do that, they
Speaker 1: do the thing where they grab metal stuff and they
Speaker 1: break the windows and then they break in and you know,
Speaker 1: they they do classic January six stuff. Um, they take pictures.
Speaker 1: There's one picture that I found that's I think it's
Speaker 1: in the Supreme Court. That's a picture of someone like
Speaker 1: you can't see their face. It's just them squatting on
Speaker 1: a like facing backwards, squatting on it on a filing
Speaker 1: cabinet like fully butt out about take a dump. It's wild. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just what democracy lived like yeah, and shifting on
Speaker 1: a finding cabinet and government office. Yeah. Okay, so like
Speaker 1: they this this. They don't have a great plan here. Um.
Speaker 1: The thing that they do is that so they all
Speaker 1: do this. They break in, they like break stuff, they
Speaker 1: like take random stuff. Um, and then they a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of people sit down on the ground and sing
Speaker 1: the national anthem, uh, waiting for the army to show up.
Speaker 1: Because they think that when the army shows up, the
Speaker 1: army is going to join them, and said, the army
Speaker 1: shows up and arrest them all. There's some people who
Speaker 1: try to fight the police. Uh they beat up a
Speaker 1: horse cop, which I think is funny because apparently this
Speaker 1: is just every single one of these Now someone beats
Speaker 1: up a horse cop. Um. But you know, by bye
Speaker 1: bye bye. By the end of Sunday, like it's all
Speaker 1: over the government forces. We take the plaza. People try
Speaker 1: to fight the police, but they lose really badly, and
Speaker 1: you know, okay, so obviously there's a reason why I
Speaker 1: read that versus strategy a second time. Was first line
Speaker 1: to start this, like, okay, the January six comparisons start
Speaker 1: fast and get harder, which is this happened literally on
Speaker 1: January eight, like two days after the American I mean
Speaker 1: they stowed the Capitol buildings. But this is something I
Speaker 1: think it's kind of important to understand. This is an
Speaker 1: even worse plan than the January six plan. So the
Speaker 1: January six plan, if people remember this, so crucially, January
Speaker 1: six happens while Trump is technically still in office, and
Speaker 1: what's going on when when they're showing me the capital
Speaker 1: in January six, is that Congress is trying to basically
Speaker 1: pass power to Joe Biden, right, like they're they're they're
Speaker 1: doing the vote to proof the ballot totals from the
Speaker 1: the electoral College. Blah blah blah blah blah. But okay,
Speaker 1: so this means that you know, when when when when when?
Speaker 1: On Jay's on January six, right, Congress was actually in session,
Speaker 1: so the people who were there actually had a thing
Speaker 1: they were trying to do to overturn their results, and
Speaker 1: there was like there were people they could have harmed.
Speaker 1: There was like they had they had like a goal
Speaker 1: kind of it was like seth Abramson. But on the
Speaker 1: other side, think it was like constitutional fantasy. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: lest yeah, but like I can't believe, you know, like
Speaker 1: this is the thing about about about what's happening Brazil's
Speaker 1: like I genuinely cannot believe that I am being made
Speaker 1: to defend the planning capacity of the January six crowd,
Speaker 1: like genuinely stunning. But the plan for the plan for
Speaker 1: January eighth in Brazil was even worse because Okay, the
Speaker 1: day they do this on right, Congress is not in session.
Speaker 1: The Supreme Court is on holiday and Lulu, the actual
Speaker 1: president of Brazil has a already taken power and b
Speaker 1: is ins apollo. Yeah, no money is there. Literally, they
Speaker 1: stored three abandoned buildings. There was nothing there could they
Speaker 1: could tried. It's in milligration was like three days before, right.
Speaker 1: It's funny. Louva talked about it in this in his
Speaker 1: speech where part of like in this speech after after
Speaker 1: this happens, is he he has this line about how
Speaker 1: like all of these people were already in Brazilia, but
Speaker 1: they were too cowardly to face the people who were
Speaker 1: there for the inauguration, so instead they waited for everyone
Speaker 1: to leave, which is true. It's really funny, And this
Speaker 1: is kind of what they always do, right, They always
Speaker 1: kind of take the easy thing and then grandstand like
Speaker 1: like it's a big brave thing that they've done. Like
Speaker 1: we see this constantly on the right. Yeah, and you know,
Speaker 1: I like, I I think I think it's reasonable to
Speaker 1: ask what were they actually trying to do? Um? And
Speaker 1: I'm I'm gonna read from the Washington Post. The Washington
Speaker 1: Post is talking about um some of the previous attempts
Speaker 1: to do the same thing. Quote one radicalized Bilsonarista named
Speaker 1: George Washington Day Olivaria was what, Yeah, all of the
Speaker 1: people involved with this are named like George Washington Olivaria.
Speaker 1: It's incredible. Do wow did they did they change their
Speaker 1: names or is the whole thing just being a lame
Speaker 1: part of American conservatives. Well, I mean that's that is like,
Speaker 1: like it really like there is a lot of truth
Speaker 1: to the analysis that like, like Brazilian fascist culture is
Speaker 1: just like the fourth time of Facebook meme isn't passed around,
Speaker 1: but this time on what'sapp Like it's it's some it's
Speaker 1: it's somehow more cringe than than the American stuff. Like
Speaker 1: it's port of incredible. But here he was, okay, he was, Yeah,
Speaker 1: this guy named George Washington Lavaria was arrested and accused
Speaker 1: of planting a bomb beneath a bus at the Brazilia airport.
Speaker 1: In a statement to police, he said he wanted to
Speaker 1: quote begin chaos that would lead to military intervention. So
Speaker 1: she's trying to do the strategy of tension, right, which
Speaker 1: is which is this thing from Italy? Where? Okay, so
Speaker 1: you you you have the government running a bunch of
Speaker 1: sort of like no, I mean, I don't know, calling
Speaker 1: them fake fascist groups is technically correct, but you have that,
Speaker 1: you have them running a bunch of terrorist groups and
Speaker 1: you know, okay, so they they this is this happening
Speaker 1: in like the sixty seventies and yeah, I guess a
Speaker 1: little bit into the eighties. Is that they're they're doing
Speaker 1: all these bombings and stuff, and they're doing all these
Speaker 1: terrorist attacks and the goal is to get people to
Speaker 1: like sort of trust the government and like allow like
Speaker 1: sort of further state of military intervention. But the thing
Speaker 1: about that was that crucially the strategy of tension was
Speaker 1: a strategy that was done by the government. It doesn't
Speaker 1: really work if you're not the government and you are,
Speaker 1: in fact that people causing the chaos, and where do
Speaker 1: you get to military to sort of join you. So
Speaker 1: this is a crucial problem for Brazilian fascism because as
Speaker 1: much as the sort of the modern fascist movement is
Speaker 1: a cultiple scenario, it's really a cult of the military.
Speaker 1: Bulsonaro is sort of just the person who embodies the
Speaker 1: sort of desire the fascist masses from military rule. But
Speaker 1: this means that if the military just refused to do
Speaker 1: a coup, they have no idea what to do. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but they could deploy Baltonara himself. Have you seen that
Speaker 1: video of him trying to do press ups to prove
Speaker 1: that he's kind of super solidate. Don't worry, you know,
Speaker 1: but this is this is sort of this is a
Speaker 1: real issue for them. And Okay, so if I am
Speaker 1: pretty confident that if the military had actually decided to
Speaker 1: do a coup, this would have worked, like and I
Speaker 1: think they would have pretty trivially just like smashed sort
Speaker 1: of the rest of the forces of the state. Lulu
Speaker 1: would be in prison. But and this is the thing
Speaker 1: that's been the key to everything that's been going on
Speaker 1: in Resolve from the beginning. The army does not have
Speaker 1: the green light from Washington to do a coup because
Speaker 1: once again Biden just absolutely hates Baillsonaro, which is like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know this this this is this is a coup
Speaker 1: that was planned from Orlando and not Langley. Now we're
Speaker 1: on like number four in the last few years that
Speaker 1: was planned from Florida, and notably three of the four
Speaker 1: of them have failed. And this is on the Carstralia
Speaker 1: that was much fun. Yeah, well, I mean, I like
Speaker 1: to be fair, this is a better plant coup attempt
Speaker 1: than the venezuela one that's not hot. That's an extremely bar. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the kind of bar that you can get over by tripping.
Speaker 1: But you know, we're sold the very early process of
Speaker 1: figuring out how exactly who was involved in this and
Speaker 1: that like to what extent everyone was coordinating with each
Speaker 1: other and like you know, i'm actual extent like literally
Speaker 1: governors were involved seen to have been involved in this,
Speaker 1: but we don't. We don't exactly know yet. Um. What
Speaker 1: we do know in terms of it's being planned from
Speaker 1: Orlando is that Bolsonaro for literally years has been saying
Speaker 1: ship like quote, the patience of the people has run out.
Speaker 1: I want to tell those who will make me unelectable
Speaker 1: in Brazil, only God removes me from power. There are
Speaker 1: three options for me jail, death, or victory. And I'm
Speaker 1: telling the scandal rules. I will never be imprisoned, evening
Speaker 1: literally years and years and years just saying sing like that,
Speaker 1: like just over and over and over again. And you know, Okay,
Speaker 1: So the other thing that we know right now and
Speaker 1: this this this is being recorded on what day is
Speaker 1: it is the ninth, Yeah, but it's being recorded on
Speaker 1: Monday to night. So this is this is the next day. Uh.
Speaker 1: If by the time this goes out there's more information,
Speaker 1: there will be more information is going on what we
Speaker 1: have right now. One of the things that we know
Speaker 1: is that the guy who was in charge of security
Speaker 1: for the Federal District, which is like the Federal District
Speaker 1: is basically like what if washing d C Was a state,
Speaker 1: but like a tiny one. So the guy who was
Speaker 1: in charge of security for that, uh, was a Bulsonaro
Speaker 1: supporter who just so happened to be on vacation in Orlando,
Speaker 1: where Bulsonaro was staying with an mm A fighter whose
Speaker 1: mansion has a Minion Stein room. Uh, he's just coincidentally
Speaker 1: on afication in Orlando with Paulsonara. Well this is happening,
Speaker 1: so you know, Okay, the Brazilian state seems to be
Speaker 1: being a lot faster to sort of crack down on
Speaker 1: everything that's happening than the American state was. Um that
Speaker 1: the guys who was in charge of security, I who
Speaker 1: was in who's in Orlando? That the Brazilian federal defender
Speaker 1: has already asked the Supreme Court to arrest him. Um.
Speaker 1: A Supreme Court justice like deposed the governor of the
Speaker 1: Federal District for allowing this to happen. So, yeah, it's wild.
Speaker 1: The Brazilian Minister of Justice as they've already entedified people
Speaker 1: in ten states who helped plan or fund the operation.
Speaker 1: They've arrested like well, the Totalsome yesterday said that they
Speaker 1: arrested four hundred people. I saw somewhere that arrested twelve.
Speaker 1: I don't know about that. I could be wrong, but yeah,
Speaker 1: there was at least four hundred of people. Um, there's
Speaker 1: a huge like there's a huge track down on people
Speaker 1: involved in this Lula. It's much better than the January
Speaker 1: six response, and like, like part part of what's happening
Speaker 1: right is like like Lula literally like basically declared a
Speaker 1: state of emergency in the federal zone and like God
Speaker 1: basically like I guess you called, like he basically sent
Speaker 1: in the FEDS and like has like his people now
Speaker 1: have direct control over security in the capital because because
Speaker 1: because the police there were so unreliable and you know,
Speaker 1: and like he's been yeah, theresil states moving very very
Speaker 1: fast to sort of stuff better than the US charge
Speaker 1: and that probably yeah, and and also like Lula, Lula,
Speaker 1: unlike Biden, Lula, Lula has like like literally like three
Speaker 1: hours like as this was happening, he's making a speech
Speaker 1: about like that him vowing to go after everyone who's
Speaker 1: involved in this, including Bullsonaro and Um. A Brazilian member
Speaker 1: of Congress has formally asked to Foreign Ministry to extradite
Speaker 1: Bulsonaro to the US. Who knows what's going to happen there, Uh,
Speaker 1: there have been there has actually there's been like a
Speaker 1: surprising amount of sort of support for that in the US.
Speaker 1: And you know, I mean that's everything that's been kind
Speaker 1: of interesting for this, like before we take the ad break,
Speaker 1: is that like he's gotten Lula is getting support from
Speaker 1: like everyone, like this is this is one of the
Speaker 1: rare we we we we have the great capitalist Triumvirate
Speaker 1: of Vladimir Putin, Joe Biden and and Macron have all
Speaker 1: said that they're backing him, which is wild real international
Speaker 1: Lincoln Project vibes. Yeah, it's I mean that that that
Speaker 1: that that that is. I guess like Hulula is drabroad extent, right,
Speaker 1: Like you know, if you go back to a Lula episodes,
Speaker 1: like he was close with the Bush administration but also
Speaker 1: like close with the World Social Forum people. So he's
Speaker 1: he's always kind of like been the guy who straddles
Speaker 1: a divide between like, yeah, he's not and he's the
Speaker 1: guy he straddles a divide between the sort of like
Speaker 1: international imperialists and what was the left. Yeah, yeah, So
Speaker 1: all right, we're we're gonna we're we're gonna go to ads,
Speaker 1: and then when we come back, we're gonna talk more
Speaker 1: about how everything is actually sort of gone. All right,
Speaker 1: we're back. So one of the things I think is
Speaker 1: very interesting about this whole thing is that for all
Speaker 1: of the sort of planning and organizational capacity that's gone
Speaker 1: into building the sort of like transnational fascist movement, the
Speaker 1: American right like that that the American Party has been
Speaker 1: setting up, uh, the American Right has just actively been
Speaker 1: making their allies worse here like their ideas. It's it's
Speaker 1: sort of incredible, I mean, And this is something I
Speaker 1: think that that's genuinely very scary about the Brazilian right
Speaker 1: is that their regular combination of tactics are really effective.
Speaker 1: Um that you know that they've been able to successfully
Speaker 1: wild this combination of sort of electoralism of lawfare sort
Speaker 1: of like using the legal system against their political enemies
Speaker 1: of the road blockades, mass marches and you know, just
Speaker 1: straight up paramilitary death squads of various kinds. You know,
Speaker 1: you have you have your sort of urban desk squads,
Speaker 1: you have these like genocidal logger death squads, and that's
Speaker 1: been very effective. And you know, Okay, so like they
Speaker 1: lost this one election, but you know, their their position
Speaker 1: inside resil in politics is still really strong. They control
Speaker 1: a bunch of like governorships, they like Bolsonoo's party and
Speaker 1: his coalition like control control the Brazilian parliament. Okay, so
Speaker 1: you know, like they're in a very strong position. But
Speaker 1: then they talked to the Americans and they imputed January
Speaker 1: six and stormed the capital, and at least right now,
Speaker 1: it looks like it's going really badly for them. Like
Speaker 1: even even the sort of like right wing Ali Great
Speaker 1: Process turned on them. Globo, which is like it's Brazil's
Speaker 1: biggest newspaper, well is the biggest new paper. It could
Speaker 1: be second biggest, I'm pretty sure's the biggest. It's funded
Speaker 1: by like right wing ship at billionaires um. But you know,
Speaker 1: their entire front page right now is just them yelling
Speaker 1: about the coup and like gleefully reporting them like like
Speaker 1: that they had a frit page thing for an individual
Speaker 1: sociology professor who stepped off a bus coming back from
Speaker 1: Brazilian immediately got arrested. Like this is this is the
Speaker 1: kind of sort of jubilation that it's really it's kind
Speaker 1: of it's kind of amazing too, because like kind of
Speaker 1: sociologist is also a bosonarist insurrection rate. Yeah, well okay,
Speaker 1: I feel like that. If you're a sociologist, there were
Speaker 1: exactly two you have. You have three paths. One has
Speaker 1: you become a cop? Two is you is you do
Speaker 1: the Italian thing and you become the Red Brigades. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was that. That was That was Italy's first sociology department,
Speaker 1: by the way, I turned out the Red Brigades or
Speaker 1: three you become a Nazi. Those are your three options. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there are. Yeah. I've never been unfortunate enough to run
Speaker 1: into any of the chad sociologies, to be very right,
Speaker 1: they are there. Yeah, we we we stayed away from them.
Speaker 1: In the anthro department, we're like nope, no, Yeah, I've
Speaker 1: taught in sociology before and you definitely do get a
Speaker 1: lot of students who are there to be a cop.
Speaker 1: I've forgotten about that. Yeah, it sucks. I will say
Speaker 1: Brazil has had at least one. I feel like they've
Speaker 1: had at least a couple of sociologist presidents. For Fernando
Speaker 1: Henrique Cardoso was what yeah, what was the sociologist was
Speaker 1: presid it for a while and then he got replaced
Speaker 1: by Lula Um. This is this has been This has
Speaker 1: been a tangent about what happens when you put sociology
Speaker 1: professor's lefted out of their cages. Uh so okay, And
Speaker 1: you know, I would say this is going back to
Speaker 1: global for a second, Like some of the stuff that
Speaker 1: they're saying is not exactly true. Like they're they're they're
Speaker 1: trying to sort of make a separation between the like
Speaker 1: extremist Wilsonario eastas and then like the people in Parliament,
Speaker 1: and it's like okay, so like yeah, they have this
Speaker 1: whole thing about these are streamists with no support in
Speaker 1: Parliament and it's like okay, buddy, Like there are literally
Speaker 1: people like in Congress who are in Congress because they
Speaker 1: were elected because they filmed themselves doing right wing trucker borodblocks,
Speaker 1: Like you know, okay, like well if one of these
Speaker 1: other things, one of the other stories, was them talking,
Speaker 1: was them talking about I Brazilian politicians frantically deleting the
Speaker 1: social media posts in support of the protests. So okay,
Speaker 1: you know it is it is actually true that like
Speaker 1: a lot of like even both people in both to
Speaker 1: know his own party like denounced it. But you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean we saw the same ship, right, and then
Speaker 1: they'll gradually reimagine it over the next two or three
Speaker 1: years to where like that they're they're not denounced again. Well, well,
Speaker 1: we'll see what happens, because there is also a chance
Speaker 1: here that like everyone who was even intitentially like everyone
Speaker 1: was like, we'll back out of this. I'm not a
Speaker 1: big pro prison guy, but the video of them arriving
Speaker 1: in a coach at the jail was pretty immediate. That
Speaker 1: was pretty funny. Yeah, So okay, so right now it
Speaker 1: looks like this has gone pretty badly for them. Again,
Speaker 1: this is this is this is being recorded one day
Speaker 1: after it happens. So I don't know if if the
Speaker 1: army has actually done the coup tomorrow. It's not my fault,
Speaker 1: it wasn't out yet. But you know, I think we
Speaker 1: should we should ask shoud take a step back and
Speaker 1: ask why is this happening, And I think we should
Speaker 1: we should ask why did this happen in the same
Speaker 1: way in both the US em Brazil and why did
Speaker 1: it not work? And the answer to this is that
Speaker 1: the capital is a trap. What what what the American
Speaker 1: and Brazilian right has ran into, sort of ironically, is
Speaker 1: the crisis of the century revolutionary movement. So to explain
Speaker 1: what I mean here, I'm gonna I'm gonna read a
Speaker 1: bit of to our Friends, which is a work produced
Speaker 1: in late by the Invisible Committee, which is the pen
Speaker 1: name of some French anarchists who are most famous of
Speaker 1: writing The Coming Insurrection. Um. I'm not normally a huge
Speaker 1: fan of their work, but they got they got one
Speaker 1: thing very very right, and that's this occupation of the
Speaker 1: Kaspa and Tunis, and of the Stagma Square and Athens,
Speaker 1: siege of Westminster and London during the student movement of
Speaker 1: two thousand and eleven, encirclement of the Parliament in Madrid
Speaker 1: and September twelve, or in Barcelona on June five, thousand eleven,
Speaker 1: riots all around the Chamber of Deputies in Rome, December
Speaker 1: four attempt on October fifteenth, thousand eleven, in Lisbon to
Speaker 1: invade the Assembly at the REPUBLICA birding of the Bosnian
Speaker 1: presidential residents in February. The places of institutional power exert
Speaker 1: in magnetic attraction on revolutionaries. But when the insurgents managed
Speaker 1: to penetrate parliaments, presidential palaces, and other headquarters of institutions,
Speaker 1: as in Ukraine, in Libya, or in Wisconsin, it's only
Speaker 1: to discover empty places that is empty of power and
Speaker 1: furnished without any taste. It's not to prevent the people
Speaker 1: from taking power that they are so fiercely kept from
Speaker 1: invading such places, but to prevent them from realizing that
Speaker 1: power no longer resides in the institutions. There are only
Speaker 1: deserted temples there, decommissioned fortresses, nothing but stage sets, real
Speaker 1: traps revolutionaries. The popular impulse to rush onto the stage
Speaker 1: to find out what is happening in the wings is
Speaker 1: down to be disappointed. If they got inside, even the
Speaker 1: most ferbrent conspiracy freaks would find nothing ur cane there.
Speaker 1: The truth is that power is simply no longer that
Speaker 1: theatrical reality to which maternity accustomed us. Yeah, and gets
Speaker 1: very prescient and like, and it's we're raised on these
Speaker 1: myths right, both on the left and right, Like on
Speaker 1: the on the right, like there are these myths of
Speaker 1: these American institutions which took great and unique and shining
Speaker 1: cities on the hill and on the left, like we're
Speaker 1: raised with the storming of the Bastille and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: As he's the Winter Palace, right, these moments have kind
Speaker 1: of revolutionary change. But yeah, and I want to I
Speaker 1: want to specifically, I want to take a second talk
Speaker 1: about the Winter Palace because this is actually something that
Speaker 1: I think sort of worryingly this is uh Nick what
Speaker 1: is actually talked about this in one of his podcasts,
Speaker 1: which is that like and he's right about this, which
Speaker 1: is that like the like there there there are like
Speaker 1: you can't actually just store with Winter Palace and take
Speaker 1: power right, doesn't work anymore. And but but but I
Speaker 1: think it's actually worth like taking like two minutes to
Speaker 1: layout why that's true. And it's because the Winter Palace
Speaker 1: was like a once in like a like like a
Speaker 1: once in a century historical moment, and it only worked
Speaker 1: because and this is something that I think people forget.
Speaker 1: The storming of the Winter Palace was not the thing
Speaker 1: that overthrew the Czar that was later. That was that
Speaker 1: was the February Revolution. That is a completely given revolution,
Speaker 1: the Stormy of the Winter Palace. And the reason why
Speaker 1: that worked was that the government that that that the
Speaker 1: Polsheviks were overthrowing was Kerensky's government, which is just like
Speaker 1: really dipshit like interim interim governments that was only supposed
Speaker 1: to be their own town election happened and had like
Speaker 1: the most fig leaf legitimacy of any government ever. Everyone
Speaker 1: hated them, they had no supporters with but and any
Speaker 1: of this is why it worked, right because when they
Speaker 1: had no power at all, and so when the bull
Speaker 1: shwiks rolled in on them, everyone else just stayed home.
Speaker 1: And that is not going to work in any modern
Speaker 1: context unless like I don't know, you're like you're you
Speaker 1: two were also like two years in a revolution and
Speaker 1: there's like three years into a war. Yeah, there's like
Speaker 1: an incredibly fig leave government. Maybe you can pull this off,
Speaker 1: but like that that that that is not that is
Speaker 1: a absolutely terrible, god awful model for attempting to seize
Speaker 1: like any kind of power or bring down any governments.
Speaker 1: But you know, it's it's become because that because that
Speaker 1: became the sort of like mythology of of the Soviet
Speaker 1: Union that you know, that was sort of burned, the
Speaker 1: sort of false image of that was burned into the
Speaker 1: certain memory of of collective memory of the left to
Speaker 1: the point where, like, most people don't even remember that
Speaker 1: Kerensky was also technically a socialist and that like and
Speaker 1: that that's how revolution was a socialist. Like a group
Speaker 1: of socialists overthrowing another group of socialists, and both of
Speaker 1: them have a very tenuous sort of like it's tenuous
Speaker 1: and whether they're either of them are socialists at all? Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then going on to take power and kill a
Speaker 1: bunt too bad of the socialists. Yeah, yeah, okay, so
Speaker 1: that aside, you know, this this crisis I was talking about,
Speaker 1: like this is the reason why we're here in the
Speaker 1: first place. Right, it's in large part because of the
Speaker 1: failure to overcome the movement of power out of the
Speaker 1: sort of palace where people expected to be that in
Speaker 1: the two thousand eleven revolutions failed like that that that
Speaker 1: that's why we're here in hell world because people people
Speaker 1: were sort of unable to figure out a way to
Speaker 1: actually bring down our government instead of sort of being
Speaker 1: like drawn magnetically into these traps. But those problems sort
Speaker 1: of like magnetic draw the Capitol building to will be revolutionaries.
Speaker 1: This is just as much a problem to the right
Speaker 1: as it is the left. And for right now, this
Speaker 1: has saved us. It's caused the Brazilian right to abandon
Speaker 1: things they were doing that actually, like are genuinely terrifying
Speaker 1: and you know, could could have been and have been effective.
Speaker 1: Like for example, one of one of the cleanup operations
Speaker 1: that was happening today was the Brazilian army cleared a
Speaker 1: bunch of these people who were trying to do blockades
Speaker 1: to state oil facilities, and you know that actually could
Speaker 1: have worked, right like that, Yeah, and you know, and
Speaker 1: and yeah, we've talked about this before and then the
Speaker 1: other and the other sort of bose in our episodes.
Speaker 1: But like that, those kind of like trucker blockade things,
Speaker 1: blocking highways, blockades like those are tactics that the Brazilian
Speaker 1: rights sort of natively uses. And there's a world where
Speaker 1: the Brazilian fascist sticks to their instincts and instead of
Speaker 1: doing this doomed attempt to s from the capital, they
Speaker 1: put these same numbers of people into trucks with roadblocks
Speaker 1: and burning tires and they try to shut down their
Speaker 1: Brazilian economy. You know, in essence, there's a world where
Speaker 1: instead of doing it October an impossible like January sixth revolution,
Speaker 1: where they do an invisible committee one where they realize
Speaker 1: the powers and logistics and attempting to shut shut down
Speaker 1: its flow is how you do a revolution. And that
Speaker 1: is a world that is a lot scarier than the
Speaker 1: one that we're in. But and you know, I think
Speaker 1: we'll see how this ultimate plays out. But I actually
Speaker 1: think the fact that this was planned for Orlando is
Speaker 1: like you know, with the help of sort of the
Speaker 1: usual American generay seth crowd, I think this actually really
Speaker 1: really fucked them, like it it really deeply hurt sort
Speaker 1: of the Brazilian fascist provement, which is good. Um It
Speaker 1: always like when I see the I think about this
Speaker 1: recently with like um me and mar and everything else,
Speaker 1: Like I always come back like marcusa where he talks
Speaker 1: about the false choice of masters by slaves and like
Speaker 1: how the solution is not this like one big sort
Speaker 1: of like like big I didn't want to call it,
Speaker 1: like symbolic kind of active violence, but like the great
Speaker 1: refusal to participate in these things, which is something that
Speaker 1: lots of people have power to do as opposed to
Speaker 1: doing this stupid ship which centralizes them in one place
Speaker 1: to get some all arrested. Well, I mean it's also
Speaker 1: likes there's another sort of part of this, which is
Speaker 1: that like both in the US and in Brazil, the
Speaker 1: right is not very good at fighting the cops. Like
Speaker 1: they got that one horse cup pretty good. There's a
Speaker 1: couple that like don't get a cold people, but like
Speaker 1: they're only they only do well when they're really like
Speaker 1: when they outnumber the cops like a hundred or one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that is different in Europe. That is a thing that
Speaker 1: like like if you look at Whereasov comes from, Asov
Speaker 1: comes from right wing football hooligans who like the front
Speaker 1: line in the minda and beat the ship into the cops. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But but but in the in the US, it's like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, everyone's just like this doesn't fight the
Speaker 1: busy shooting people. Yeah, but there isn't that history of
Speaker 1: like like that's not I'm not don't just want to
Speaker 1: pick on like where I come from, but like like
Speaker 1: crowd violence, like like football hood against like that that
Speaker 1: doesn't exist in a meaningful sense in the US, it's
Speaker 1: not as commonplace, and there isn't that like institutional memory
Speaker 1: of fighting riot police that exists all over Europe. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I think I think the thing is that, like, okay,
Speaker 1: American sports fans do fight the cops, but they only
Speaker 1: do it once a year, if that like the super Bowl. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: you know, they'll do with the NHL, but things like
Speaker 1: it's only it's only like maybe like three cities a
Speaker 1: year that do it, right, Yeah, and everyone series too.
Speaker 1: It's harder because the World Series has this whole sort
Speaker 1: of like like that they have the parade, they have
Speaker 1: this whole stage managing to people, they get people stop
Speaker 1: from writing. So really there's only like two or three
Speaker 1: events per year where you can get riots, whereas like
Speaker 1: in Europe, any time, yeah, any given Saturday, he could
Speaker 1: be throwing down with a cop on a horse. But
Speaker 1: like it's outside of it. It's gone long beyond that.
Speaker 1: Like I remember in like just before this two thousand
Speaker 1: eleven moment, like the two the earlier two thousands antig
Speaker 1: eight movement, like the institutional knowledge on how to deal
Speaker 1: with large volumes of police and still get your point across,
Speaker 1: just as we saw in twenty did not exist here
Speaker 1: and had to be imported from Hong Kong and other places,
Speaker 1: badly imported in Yeah, but infographic from Hong Kong. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So okay. Having said all of this, this is not
Speaker 1: to say that everything is fine. Um, it's not. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know. I think something that's that's very important that
Speaker 1: I have not seen anyone talk about either in either
Speaker 1: sort of generosic of January eight, is that the the
Speaker 1: reaction to the coup on the left, and this is
Speaker 1: as true of the Brazilian left as it was with
Speaker 1: the American left. In fact, I think the American lifted
Speaker 1: American lefted way worse. In January six was paralysis, right,
Speaker 1: even in Brazil, which has these sort of one body
Speaker 1: social movements kind of mobilizations took almost a full day
Speaker 1: and materialized by the type, you know, by which point
Speaker 1: the threat already dissipated. So you know, for a for
Speaker 1: a full day, the only thing standing between the fascist
Speaker 1: and power was their own stupidity. And you know, as
Speaker 1: boundless as their stupidity seems like, watching these people like
Speaker 1: taking a dump on a cabinet, like with a camera
Speaker 1: in front of them, like it's not actually a shield
Speaker 1: against fascism, Like every every fascism after Bussolini and even Napoleon.
Speaker 1: The third who's like the sort of modern prototype of fascism,
Speaker 1: has at least one and usually two or three comically
Speaker 1: stupid like uprisings and coups that just fail, and they
Speaker 1: failed when everyone lasted them, and then number four, they're
Speaker 1: suddenly in power and it's like, wow, you can't you
Speaker 1: can't actually write these things off because they're funny, because
Speaker 1: again they're always funny for the first like two. Then
Speaker 1: on number three, like all your friends are being bars
Speaker 1: into a camp and shot, and it's like wow, yeah,
Speaker 1: and like we don't want to be in a place
Speaker 1: where like one growing up in the room is all
Speaker 1: that's between us and fascism, right like and adult making
Speaker 1: a plan, And I think there's there's a specific like
Speaker 1: I actually I think social media actually plays a really
Speaker 1: big role in this because you know, I can I
Speaker 1: remember this January six, like there was this kind of
Speaker 1: like the way that just turns everyone into a spectator.
Speaker 1: Everyone was just like, you know, I think it was
Speaker 1: Vicky Ouster, while I think was the first person who
Speaker 1: said this was like Twitter twit. Twitter is a machine
Speaker 1: that turns action into discourse. Yeah, and so you know what,
Speaker 1: while it was going on, right like everyone turned the
Speaker 1: action of the thing into discourse. Everyone was sort of
Speaker 1: like sitting there paralyzed watching it. And that is fatal
Speaker 1: like like that if you look at the actual stress
Speaker 1: test of the sort of machinery of power, right, like,
Speaker 1: it's actually I think it's actually much less of a
Speaker 1: big deal that the cops were on their side of
Speaker 1: the cops in Responder, because the cops eventually did clear
Speaker 1: them out right, it took it took a long time.
Speaker 1: The cons eventually did it. But I think I think
Speaker 1: the thing is actually more dangerous is that like there
Speaker 1: was there like there wasn't a response to the left
Speaker 1: at all. There's nothing right like there there were there
Speaker 1: were rallies in Seal Pollo. Like the next day was
Speaker 1: actually funny because both both both the rallies, both like
Speaker 1: the people sacking the capital and the people in sal
Speaker 1: Polo were both were both singing the national anthem, which
Speaker 1: is some real fun politics moments. It's another thing to
Speaker 1: talk about. Yeah, but yeah, you compare that to Spain,
Speaker 1: which somebviously where I'm most familiar with well, like people
Speaker 1: immediately got guns Scott in the street and started killing
Speaker 1: soldiers when they had much more effective and organized coup, right,
Speaker 1: and that coup would have failed where not for fascist
Speaker 1: intervention from abroad. But yeah, Brazil has powerful unions who
Speaker 1: did shit. Yeah, well, and partially I think that's that's
Speaker 1: like that has to do with the hollowing out of
Speaker 1: the unions and there's there's sort of long story here,
Speaker 1: but like you know, and even if you look at
Speaker 1: like I think this is this is a sign really
Speaker 1: of sort of how actually dynamic the left is because
Speaker 1: you know, if if if you want to look at
Speaker 1: like like a dynamic Latin American left, like they you know,
Speaker 1: there there was there was there was a very very
Speaker 1: well organized US backed coup against Hugo Chavez. She doesn't one.
Speaker 1: I was just one. It was it was just before
Speaker 1: I moved there, so I think it would. Ah, there
Speaker 1: were other coup attempts in Venezuela two that were less
Speaker 1: well organized. Yeah, she doesn't too. Yeah, he doesn't too.
Speaker 1: And yeah, that one't got far enough that like the
Speaker 1: New York Times was like had an article out about
Speaker 1: how democracy had been restored to the Cuba to Venezuela
Speaker 1: and then you know the thing, the thing that happened
Speaker 1: after that, and then there's there's a very famous movie
Speaker 1: of this from from a filmmaker who was just there.
Speaker 1: Is that over over over the next forty seven hours,
Speaker 1: like the left mobilized and they put so many people
Speaker 1: in the street that like the Coop Water has had
Speaker 1: to back down, and Hugo Travis has got to be
Speaker 1: president and you know that that's the thing that that's
Speaker 1: the thing that a strong left can do, right, they
Speaker 1: can actually defeat the military. And yeah, but you know,
Speaker 1: but this didn't the US just we fell down on
Speaker 1: the job. Like there wasn't much of that in Brazil.
Speaker 1: Like I like like it, Like it is true, as
Speaker 1: Lulu was saying, that they picked a day when everyone
Speaker 1: was gone. But it's still, I think really alarming that
Speaker 1: just by just by sort of acting first, they have
Speaker 1: so much of a sort of time advantage, sort of
Speaker 1: an advantage of reaction over US. Yeah, that film, by
Speaker 1: the way, people want to watch is called The Revolution
Speaker 1: Will Not be Televised, which is kind of a great
Speaker 1: title to the spectative thing that you were talking about.
Speaker 1: And yeah, I watched that bat boy and VHS back
Speaker 1: in the day in Caracas. Wow, yeah, good times. So okay, finally,
Speaker 1: in a broad sense, I want to ask, like, what
Speaker 1: are we doing here right? Um, the sort of dominant
Speaker 1: mode of quote unquote anti fascism, and this is the
Speaker 1: model that's being adopted by Lula and the rest of
Speaker 1: the sort of liberal and even sort of moderate conservative
Speaker 1: ruling class in Brazil. It's what's been adopted by the
Speaker 1: Democrats is their anti fascism is posing their opposition to
Speaker 1: fascism as a defensive democracy, the rule of law. Mhm.
Speaker 1: But yeah, okay, let's look at what's actually happening. These
Speaker 1: coups aren't working. That's the sort of actual power. Military
Speaker 1: attempts to take power. They're losing every time. But do
Speaker 1: you know how the fascists are taking power by democracy?
Speaker 1: Their greatest success has been in taking power but just
Speaker 1: winning elections. Like look look at what happened in India, right,
Speaker 1: That is a country that has been like very nearly
Speaker 1: totally consumed by fascism, and it was done by just
Speaker 1: elections over and over and over again. Hungry. Yeah, even
Speaker 1: here on a fundamental level, like what we're seeing right
Speaker 1: now out of the sort of broad swath of social
Speaker 1: sort of liberalism, conservatism and social democracy is an unsustainable strategy,
Speaker 1: anti fashion, anti fascism as a pure defensive democracy is
Speaker 1: just preserving the machine that will hand the power of
Speaker 1: the state over to the fascist of the silver platter.
Speaker 1: And you know that like this, this defensive democracy in
Speaker 1: the abstract is a death march. Right. You know, if
Speaker 1: if you can, you can you can look at the
Speaker 1: sort of course of of the late nineties, the late century, Right,
Speaker 1: why did the bombs fall over Bagdad? Well, protect democracy?
Speaker 1: When when the Mexican government was shooting the Zapatistas, they're
Speaker 1: protecting democracy. When the cops rated the when the cops
Speaker 1: rated the Forest Defenders in Atlanta, Oh, it's because they
Speaker 1: were domestic terrorists who are threatening democracy. But what's happened
Speaker 1: here is that the threat of fascism has sort of
Speaker 1: press ganged armies of people who otherwise would be enemies
Speaker 1: of sort of capitalist quote unquote democracy into protecting the
Speaker 1: very institutions that are inevitably going to bring these people
Speaker 1: back into power. And that's really grim because it means
Speaker 1: that something has to change or we're just gonna come
Speaker 1: back here again and again and again, until eventually enough
Speaker 1: of the ruling class flips to back into fascists that
Speaker 1: they seiz power once and for all. So, you know, something,
Speaker 1: we have to do something else that's not just this
Speaker 1: that sort of desperate treading water. Yeah, like like fighting
Speaker 1: to stand still in this terrible place where people can't
Speaker 1: pay their heating bills and feed their families. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's pretty dire sucking outlook for us, isn't it. Yeah?
Speaker 1: But I mean, you know, I would say this like
Speaker 1: that there was a vision inw of what that something
Speaker 1: else could be, right, Like, it's it's it's not it's
Speaker 1: it's it's not like we're in the depths of like
Speaker 1: the two thousands where no one has ever seen like
Speaker 1: anything that's taking possible, right. Yeah, Like there are a
Speaker 1: lot of people probably listening because they saw that vision
Speaker 1: and it changed who they want to be and how
Speaker 1: they want the world to be. And I think that's
Speaker 1: really good and uh for me at least, I think
Speaker 1: once people around in the streets, which people weren't able
Speaker 1: to do in time in Brazil, like, they will tend
Speaker 1: to find that salute shann Outside of institutions, that the
Speaker 1: response has been almost entirely institutional, at least in here
Speaker 1: in this country to a fascist coup because people didn't
Speaker 1: and people were tired from your industry and they've all
Speaker 1: been fucking arrested and half of them have been shot.
Speaker 1: And but part of the problem also is just like
Speaker 1: there's there's like the US just has a sort of
Speaker 1: geographical problem then, and Brazil has this to to some extent,
Speaker 1: which is that like, yeah, this is not like Belgium
Speaker 1: you can very quickly get people to the capital, like
Speaker 1: you can't. You can't actually like it is actually genuinely
Speaker 1: very hard to get a bunch of people to a
Speaker 1: place quickly here, right, which you know is a thing
Speaker 1: where we're lucky that yeah, like that the capital kind
Speaker 1: of like holding the capital, doesn't you know, it's it's
Speaker 1: it's not a thing that actually allows you to sort
Speaker 1: of take power. But it's also a real sort of
Speaker 1: concern about politics in the US because it can't work
Speaker 1: the same way it works in a lot of places
Speaker 1: that are smaller. Yeah yeah, yeah, like Bolivia for example,
Speaker 1: yeah yeah, or even Venet's wait, right, like so much
Speaker 1: of the institution almost everything is in Caracas, even though
Speaker 1: it's a big country. Yeah, that's that's that's pretty much
Speaker 1: all I got. Um, well, we'll see, we'll see if
Speaker 1: Bolstaro when when he gets out of the hospital, if
Speaker 1: he gets out of the hospital, he's returned to his
Speaker 1: social home. Yeah, yeah, it's it's always good to see
Speaker 1: people with with takes on situation in Brazil who also
Speaker 1: think the capital is Rio. That's always a fun thing
Speaker 1: that I can see on Twitter Dot. It's okay not
Speaker 1: to post you know, this is my okay, I have
Speaker 1: what what are my rules of thumb about talking about
Speaker 1: a place is if if you can't name five cities
Speaker 1: in a country, don't talk about it. Yeah, this is
Speaker 1: the thing that like so many like people, people people
Speaker 1: who get paid to write articles about places like just fail.
Speaker 1: People who get this is like like, frankly, you should
Speaker 1: be able to like like if if I was doing
Speaker 1: due diligence, I would I would be learning, I would
Speaker 1: be actually learning Portuguese right now instead of like relying
Speaker 1: on my Spanish to sort of like power through it.
Speaker 1: But you know, like the lowest bar is you should
Speaker 1: go the capitol and you should be able to name
Speaker 1: five cities in it. And if you can't do that,
Speaker 1: like maybe don't post. Yeah, it's fine not to post.
Speaker 1: In fact, when dealing with coups, maybe consider options that
Speaker 1: are not posting. Yeah, and and yeah, go go out
Speaker 1: and stop them. M hmm, make friends. Yeah. So this
Speaker 1: this is when it could happen. Here. You can find
Speaker 1: us in the places on social media. We live in
Speaker 1: a period of increasing class conflict. During the Trump years,
Speaker 1: strike action reached the seventeen year high. Strike surged, increasing
Speaker 1: almost over as workers fought back against rising inflation and
Speaker 1: the cost of living. Fights over unionization hit sectors previously
Speaker 1: thought to be un organizable, as workers declared victory across
Speaker 1: fast food chains, Starbucks, and Amazon. And this increased strike
Speaker 1: activity is taking place against the rising course of revolt.
Speaker 1: Tenants are farming unions and launching rent strikes. Riots kick
Speaker 1: off in the face of police murdering on average over
Speaker 1: three people per day, and kids walk out of school
Speaker 1: demanding everything from access to ppe to an end too
Speaker 1: attacks on queer and trans youth. It's not just that
Speaker 1: strikes are increasing, but the logic of the strike to
Speaker 1: strike a blow against one's class enemies, to enact a
Speaker 1: cost and generalized collective refusal is spreading. As two comes
Speaker 1: to a close. The largest strike by education workers across
Speaker 1: the University of California system has seen barricades, occupied buildings,
Speaker 1: and strikers even liberal eating dining halls to feed themselves.
Speaker 1: Members of the United Mine Workers have been on the
Speaker 1: picket lines for almost two years. In this holiday season,
Speaker 1: over one thousand rail workers stunned the brink of crippling
Speaker 1: the US economy and an effort to win sickly as
Speaker 1: the government rushed to enforce a contract and break the strike.
Speaker 1: With so many people on the verge of striking, it's
Speaker 1: easy to wonder what would happen if a strike across
Speaker 1: industries could be organized, a general strike. It's this very
Speaker 1: subject that we tackle in today's show. And speaking of strikes,
Speaker 1: the producers of it could happen here have walked off
Speaker 1: the job and it's going down. It's taken over. Excited
Speaker 1: to be here, that's right. I g D will be
Speaker 1: occupying the means of this production for five shows throughout
Speaker 1: the month of January as we address some of the
Speaker 1: major issues of today while looking back at recent examples
Speaker 1: in history about how the exploiting excluded have attempted to
Speaker 1: meet the conditions which miserate our lives head on. Each episode,
Speaker 1: of course is going to have special guests and he
Speaker 1: die from us. Launching the summer of two thousands fifteen,
Speaker 1: it's going down as a media platform, radio show, and podcast.
Speaker 1: It covers a ton of a social movements from an
Speaker 1: anarchist perspective. As a group, we represent folks from across
Speaker 1: the US. Tom and myself have been involved in covering
Speaker 1: and participating in social struggles for over twenty years. Sophie's
Speaker 1: a long time educator and community organizer across multiple continents.
Speaker 1: Marcella is a writer and comedian. This is Mike Andrews.
Speaker 1: Happy to be here. I'm Sophie Marcella and I'm Tom. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is really cool. Thanks to all that it could
Speaker 1: happen here people. It's awesome. Yeah, I'm excited to be
Speaker 1: here and talk about strikes. It's gonna be a fun time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm excited about today's topic very much. So, just to
Speaker 1: start off, it's interesting, it seems like every few weeks
Speaker 1: on social media, every couple of months, whenever there's like
Speaker 1: a big issue that comes up or something's going on
Speaker 1: in the news cycle, the idea of a general strike
Speaker 1: will trend or sort of kind of get out in
Speaker 1: the ether as this zeit guys that becomes really popular
Speaker 1: and you know, we live in this time and increasing
Speaker 1: protests and strikes and riots. But it also seems like
Speaker 1: the possibility of a general strike seems like very far off,
Speaker 1: or the idea of it even being this like trending
Speaker 1: thing on social media is sort of like passe are silly.
Speaker 1: And also it happens so often and we don't see
Speaker 1: it materialized, it can be easy to sort of write
Speaker 1: it off. Or on the other hand, a lot of
Speaker 1: people will say, well, if you want that to happen
Speaker 1: instead of just like wishing it to be on social media,
Speaker 1: you should just join a union and get involved that way.
Speaker 1: It seems that this drive to constantly declared general strikes,
Speaker 1: though ambitious, sometimes to the point of, you know, people
Speaker 1: being able to sort of make fun of it, the
Speaker 1: reality is is that the repeated sort of call for
Speaker 1: that has normalized that idea and what we're seeing a
Speaker 1: lot in specifically in the US, but we're seeing a
Speaker 1: lot of people at the workplaces recognized that the business
Speaker 1: unions have failed. Right, It's how we got here. I
Speaker 1: live in the rest Belt I live in the midst
Speaker 1: of the failure of business unions every single day in
Speaker 1: my life, and that they've also come to understand something
Speaker 1: that the autonomous in Italy we're talking about the seventies,
Speaker 1: which is that workers already control the means of production.
Speaker 1: They're already there. They already run the coffee shop, run
Speaker 1: the restaurant, run the warehouse, run the tech company, whatever.
Speaker 1: And if they just stop, nobody makes any money. And
Speaker 1: you don't need a union in a formal sense to
Speaker 1: do that. And so I think a lot of workers
Speaker 1: that traditionally fell outside of unions are starting to understand
Speaker 1: their powers workers outside of that structure, and that is
Speaker 1: incredibly important for us going forward. Yeah, I mean, I
Speaker 1: think you're totally right. I mean, I don't think quiet
Speaker 1: quitting came out of nowhere. And I know it's just
Speaker 1: like an idea. I like loud quitting more like I
Speaker 1: prefer that. But um, I do think this culture, we're
Speaker 1: creating a culture where it is okay to be anti work.
Speaker 1: It is okay for you to say I hate my
Speaker 1: job and I actually don't do anything and I steal
Speaker 1: from my boss, and we should normalize that, right, Like
Speaker 1: I don't think striking is just this whole thing. And
Speaker 1: I do want to say this before I move into that.
Speaker 1: Every single time I posted TikTok video, somebody's always like
Speaker 1: general strike July. So it's like, yeah, it's definitely on
Speaker 1: the internet a lot. But I do think even people
Speaker 1: saying that I'm not doing it has an impact because
Speaker 1: it's like, what is that? Martin Soustri said, you have
Speaker 1: to fight the culture, and the culture that we live
Speaker 1: in now is a culture that's like obsessed with work
Speaker 1: for works sake, and so like maybe part of it
Speaker 1: is like, yeah, workers already owns the means of production. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I just don't work as hard on your job, you know,
Speaker 1: and if your work steal from your boss, it doesn't
Speaker 1: have to be like this organizational thing. Because one thing
Speaker 1: is that, like you have to realize is that sometimes
Speaker 1: union work unions work with management. So it's like even
Speaker 1: if you're like, yeah, like I want to wait for
Speaker 1: my union, it's like what if your union is like
Speaker 1: the fertile a union that will go behind your back
Speaker 1: and like make decisions. Um. I guess all this to
Speaker 1: say is that I think changing the culture is important. Um.
Speaker 1: And I think that's happening now. I think I, like
Speaker 1: you said at the end of that, just like how
Speaker 1: something that I think we'll get into a lot more
Speaker 1: in this episode is looking at how this life claims
Speaker 1: to join the union being the practical thing to do
Speaker 1: towards a general strike just isn't accurate at all. And
Speaker 1: that when you look back in history at kind of
Speaker 1: any of the exciting moments of UM general strikes are
Speaker 1: uprising and stuff, it doesn't come from those official channels UM.
Speaker 1: And so I'm excited to get into that more. And
Speaker 1: I think, Yeah, I like with saying like this thing
Speaker 1: where it's just become this thing that people will like
Speaker 1: say and talk about even if there's not that cultural
Speaker 1: memory of like exactly what a general strike means or
Speaker 1: what what what's going to happen, there's this idea of
Speaker 1: like refusal and of solidarity that is captured just in
Speaker 1: the world and just in saying it. But I think
Speaker 1: it's really like sewing that energy up and speaking of
Speaker 1: cultural memory. Fact, you're dynamite in your pitchforks because it's
Speaker 1: time for a trip down memory lane. In the early
Speaker 1: dred of the United States Group site the Industrial Workers
Speaker 1: of the world of the IWW, which advocated for the
Speaker 1: abortion of the wage system and capitalism, rejected racist exclusions
Speaker 1: of non white workers in the labor movement, and even
Speaker 1: engage in shootouts with the KKK popularized the idea of
Speaker 1: the general strike in the United States on a large scale,
Speaker 1: but the idea itself and its application in US history
Speaker 1: is much older. Throughout the late eighteen hundreds and early
Speaker 1: nineteen hundreds, anarchists, socialists, and everyday members of the working
Speaker 1: class all promoted and carried out multiple general strikes as
Speaker 1: a means to win political and economic concessions. For some,
Speaker 1: the general strike was also a launchpad for revolution, in
Speaker 1: which workers could, in theory, seize the means of existence
Speaker 1: out of the hands of the capital's class and run
Speaker 1: society on its own terms. And it's this battle that
Speaker 1: thrust millions of everyday working class people directly into conflict
Speaker 1: with the American state and its military. In US history,
Speaker 1: the first large scale example of a general strike occurred
Speaker 1: in the midst of the American Civil War and W. E. B.
Speaker 1: Dwo Boys famous book Black Reconstruction, he explains how it
Speaker 1: was the general strike of the enslaved black proletariat that
Speaker 1: brought down the plantation system, not President Lincoln. Er Union bullets.
Speaker 1: The Boys argues that just like the black lead insurrections
Speaker 1: of today and ferguson him in the Apple, this strike
Speaker 1: took bourgeois white society by total surprise, he writes it
Speaker 1: in the South newspapers, and ied the very idea that
Speaker 1: slaves could ever free themselves, and even claim that they
Speaker 1: quote did not want to be free, he writes, of
Speaker 1: white society in the North. The North shrank at the
Speaker 1: very thought of encouraging servile insurrection against the whites. Above all,
Speaker 1: it did not propose to interfere with property. Black people
Speaker 1: on the whole were considered cowards and inferior beings whose
Speaker 1: very presence in America was unfortunate. Only John Brown knew
Speaker 1: that revolt would come, and he was dead. So the
Speaker 1: Boys really painted this picture of this mass care and
Speaker 1: society in which slavery is seen as very sad. More
Speaker 1: terrifying is the idea of mass black insurrection, which of
Speaker 1: course mirrors today's situation. I mean, that's what the suburbs are.
Speaker 1: I mean right like that suburbs aren't. It's like for
Speaker 1: you to like pretend like all the things that you
Speaker 1: have are not built on blood. It's for you to
Speaker 1: like segment yourself away from the people in society than
Speaker 1: give you everything you have, yet you've denied them everything.
Speaker 1: See you going you a little home and like drinking
Speaker 1: a little tea and like watch your little movies and
Speaker 1: just like ignore the fact that you're an asphalt, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean, Like just like and even not
Speaker 1: even more more than an apple. I was going as
Speaker 1: far as saying, I used to say that they're not
Speaker 1: good or bad people, but like you're acting like a
Speaker 1: bad person, Like you don't care about other people because
Speaker 1: you've been tricked to think that, like you're getting a
Speaker 1: good deal. And it's an interesting point that the Boys
Speaker 1: makes about just like. It was only kind of the
Speaker 1: radical wing of the abolishnist movement that was talking about
Speaker 1: open revolt. There's this early anarchist A lot of people
Speaker 1: don't reference a lot, but wis under Spooner. He conspired
Speaker 1: with John Brown in various plots, and he later became
Speaker 1: a member of the First International and a contributor to
Speaker 1: early anarchist publications like Liberty. He produced this really early
Speaker 1: text which is just fantastic. It's called a Plan for
Speaker 1: the Abolish of Slavery, published in eighteen fifty eight. It's
Speaker 1: a couple of years before the Civil War. He writes,
Speaker 1: Our plan then is to make our war openly or
Speaker 1: secretly a circumstances may dictate upon the property of the slaveholders.
Speaker 1: Burn the master's buildings, kill their cattle and horses, conceal
Speaker 1: or destroy farming utensils, abandoned labor in seed time and harvest,
Speaker 1: and let the crops perish. Make slavery unprofitable. I love
Speaker 1: the line conceal or destroyed that you can destroy them,
Speaker 1: you can also hide them. This is like a parallel
Speaker 1: that we can drawn out to like if you want
Speaker 1: to like have solidarity with like like other wage slaves,
Speaker 1: is that like do accommodate them and help them steal
Speaker 1: from their I mean from their jobs. I mean it's
Speaker 1: like these things happened in the past, but these are
Speaker 1: tactics that we can still use in the present. There's
Speaker 1: echoes of this quote later with Lucy Parsons, right, and
Speaker 1: you see this during the structure in Our Work at Chicago,
Speaker 1: where she gives a speech where she's talking about grabbing
Speaker 1: knives and going to the doors of the rich as
Speaker 1: a way to make it very very very clear that
Speaker 1: they weren't going to be able to live off the
Speaker 1: backs of the working class anymore. Right, um, And it's
Speaker 1: the sort of idea of direct action, which now, I mean,
Speaker 1: if we think about, now, what are politicians doing. They're
Speaker 1: trying to pass laws to make it a felony to
Speaker 1: have home demonstrations, right to like do exactly these kinds
Speaker 1: of things, but in much more passive ways. So if
Speaker 1: we can really think back, I mean, this is a
Speaker 1: tried and true technique that people used in the United
Speaker 1: States for a very very long time, and we can
Speaker 1: see still how much that terrifies people with power. There's
Speaker 1: another awesome quote from Spooner I just want to read
Speaker 1: as well, and this I find this one really interesting
Speaker 1: because he's speaking actually to white people in the South,
Speaker 1: especially people that work in the slave patrols. He says,
Speaker 1: white rascals of the South, willing tools of the slaveholders.
Speaker 1: You who drive slaves to do their labor, hunt them
Speaker 1: with dogs, and flogged them for pay without asking any questions.
Speaker 1: You are the main pillars of the slave system. That
Speaker 1: is the most eloquent way to say exactly that's exactly
Speaker 1: what I was thinking. I think it's interesting to point out,
Speaker 1: as do Boys Rights, and as Frederick Douglas said of
Speaker 1: the Civil War, it was started quote in the interests
Speaker 1: of slavery on both sides. The South was fighting to
Speaker 1: take slavery out of the and the North was fighting
Speaker 1: to keep it in. And the mass black exodus did
Speaker 1: not kick off at the start of the war. He
Speaker 1: makes the really important point that Union leaders made it
Speaker 1: clear that they did not want to disrupt the plantation system.
Speaker 1: At times, generals even offered to put down slave rebellions,
Speaker 1: and he says that they even forbade at least in
Speaker 1: some instances, union soldiers from singing the song John Brown's Body.
Speaker 1: But as the North pushed into the South, the flood
Speaker 1: of former slaves escaping into Union hands grew and grew.
Speaker 1: By eighteen sixty two is the Boys Rights. This was
Speaker 1: the beginning of the swarming of increasing numbers no longer
Speaker 1: to work on Confederate plantations, a movement that became a
Speaker 1: general strike against the slave system. This was not merely
Speaker 1: the desire to stop work. It was a strike on
Speaker 1: a wide basis against the conditions of work. It was
Speaker 1: a general strike that involved directly in the end, perhaps
Speaker 1: half a million people. They wanted to stop the economy
Speaker 1: of the plantation system, and to do that they left
Speaker 1: the plantations. It's interest into and the Boys makes this point.
Speaker 1: The general strike also encouraged and took place alongside many
Speaker 1: poor whites deserting the Confederate army. One thing that's interesting
Speaker 1: about the Confederate side of the Civil War. You could
Speaker 1: get out of fighting if you own slaves, and a
Speaker 1: lot of poor whites deserted the Confederate army, which further
Speaker 1: crippled it. As the Boys noted, the poor white not
Speaker 1: only began to desert and run away, but thousands followed
Speaker 1: black people into the northern camps. And just some key
Speaker 1: takeaways to like launch into discussion side of this, It's
Speaker 1: interesting that the wider society, as the Boys notes, before
Speaker 1: the Civil War disparaged the possibility of mass collective action.
Speaker 1: And I think this really mirrors contemporary conspiracy theories and
Speaker 1: narratives around black rebellion today that happened often either in
Speaker 1: the midst of the George Flight uprising or afterwards, and
Speaker 1: also the mass strike and refusal that happened during the
Speaker 1: Civil War, which disrupted the economy and made things like
Speaker 1: the slave patrols, the policing of the plantation system and
Speaker 1: possible that helped bring down the Confederacy obviously, and I
Speaker 1: think it's important to ask, as our contemporary society remains
Speaker 1: structured around racial capitalism, what might be done in the
Speaker 1: current system in terms of mass refusal and desertion that
Speaker 1: would cause a similar effect. The idea of the widest
Speaker 1: society and disparaging mass collective action is because that the
Speaker 1: fear is letting us know that we do have mass power,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. It's like it's not a
Speaker 1: surprise that people always say that Lincoln freed the slaves,
Speaker 1: and Lincoln literally said, if I have had to end
Speaker 1: slavery to save the Union, I would have ended slavery.
Speaker 1: And if I have to keep slavery to save the Union,
Speaker 1: I would have kept a slavery, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: So just like this whole idea of like letting black
Speaker 1: people know you can't do ship, don't even bother is
Speaker 1: because they know that we can't do ship, and we
Speaker 1: are doing ship because black people are always rebelling. Um
Speaker 1: if you come to flop push you see it in
Speaker 1: full color. They realize the governments them and give a
Speaker 1: funk about them, and they've created their own institutions to
Speaker 1: support them. So um yeah, So it's like this whole
Speaker 1: idea to let us tell us don't even bother and
Speaker 1: and and like criminalizing like the informal sector because it's
Speaker 1: like that's a way for us like gain power outside
Speaker 1: of like the formal sector, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: and things like that. So I just think it's like
Speaker 1: it's like when they tell us don't bother, trying to
Speaker 1: fight back, like everybody has to suffer, Like that's what
Speaker 1: they always say. Everybody suffered, and we all just suffer.
Speaker 1: And it's like, no, we don't want to suffering. We're
Speaker 1: actually doing things to ease our suffering. And um, I
Speaker 1: think this is just like all this is to say
Speaker 1: that people who are out there doing stuff keep doing stuff.
Speaker 1: And like, if you want to do stuff, do it.
Speaker 1: You don't have to be brought of reunion. You don't
Speaker 1: have to put your job and be an activist. By
Speaker 1: the way, paid activists not really activists. You can do
Speaker 1: regular ship and your hold that you can do a
Speaker 1: free store on the corner of your streets. So people
Speaker 1: can have clothes. It's like you could striking from the
Speaker 1: economy means like divesting your time and resources, and you
Speaker 1: can do it. We can all do it in some
Speaker 1: shape or form well, and I think it becomes a
Speaker 1: lot more possible today to think about that than it did,
Speaker 1: say before. Right, So, we had this kind of collapse
Speaker 1: of the legitimacy of the American political projects sort of
Speaker 1: with the Iraq War, right, we all kind of saw
Speaker 1: how badly that can turn out. But what was left
Speaker 1: in America to uphold the entire edifice was the idea
Speaker 1: that even though things politically were kind of screwed up,
Speaker 1: at least there's economic success. And then that failed to right.
Speaker 1: And so this sort of idea that built up after
Speaker 1: World War Two, this kind of concept of, you know,
Speaker 1: the labor corporate compromise, the loyal worker that's going to
Speaker 1: get provided for for the rest of their life. Not
Speaker 1: only did our parents generation find out that that was
Speaker 1: a lie, but younger generations don't really buy it at all.
Speaker 1: And so what you're really seeing is, I think this
Speaker 1: kind of breakdown socially of the legitimacy of the idea
Speaker 1: of the American dream. Because of all of its problematic
Speaker 1: elements and it's impossibility and its absurdity, and kind of
Speaker 1: this revival of an idea which existed prior to World
Speaker 1: War Two, which was an idea of social revolt, right,
Speaker 1: and it was something we saw manifest during the Great Depression,
Speaker 1: and it's part of the reason why the New Deal exists.
Speaker 1: Was a way to put that down, was a way
Speaker 1: to prevent workers from feeling like the only thing that
Speaker 1: they had in front of them was to take over
Speaker 1: their factories and chow up at the doors of the
Speaker 1: rich and so on, so and so on. Right. But
Speaker 1: that whole idea of the New Deal, that concept that
Speaker 1: the government was going to take care of you and
Speaker 1: the company was going to take care of you, um,
Speaker 1: collapsed in the nineties seventies, but the idea that it
Speaker 1: existed still holds on in some sectors of the of
Speaker 1: America today. I Mean, you see this with the magacrat
Speaker 1: out really heavily, the idea that like nothing systematically needs
Speaker 1: to change, really we just need better outcomes, and we
Speaker 1: just need, you know, in their case, Donald Trump, to
Speaker 1: pay attention to us and give us the things that
Speaker 1: we want. But really, outside of that almost comical patriotism. Um,
Speaker 1: you don't really see a out of adherence to that
Speaker 1: vision any further. And that makes the idea of mass
Speaker 1: refusal not only a lot more possible, but something that's
Speaker 1: actively happening currently. Yeah. And the other parts who I
Speaker 1: want to bring in is that when the New Deal
Speaker 1: is caused, it excluded like black people, right, And so
Speaker 1: that's one way. It's like it's like this constants like
Speaker 1: how white people are like tricked into like submitting to
Speaker 1: the system, and it happens so many times, and they
Speaker 1: still keep saying, trick us again, trick us again. It's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're gonna give you ship so you're not upset, and
Speaker 1: then they're going to exclude black people because at the
Speaker 1: end of the day, black people do all the work
Speaker 1: that we need to survive as a society. Do we
Speaker 1: not remember who the essential workers were? Like who does
Speaker 1: the jobs that we need to like live? Like you
Speaker 1: know what I mean? So yeah, you could like be
Speaker 1: out of work and get your little thing, But as
Speaker 1: long as we keep inslating and treating the people who
Speaker 1: make the society run, it's fine. Um. And now that's
Speaker 1: happening to white people too, and they're like Oh no,
Speaker 1: it's not cute, Like it's not fun and quiet quitting,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, because like they're we are
Speaker 1: like the way black people have been treated is starting
Speaker 1: to happen to white people. And it's just like, I, well,
Speaker 1: this is what I was going to ask you, how
Speaker 1: do we prevent another New Deal situation from happening where
Speaker 1: white workers are tricked again? Like because I feel it's coming.
Speaker 1: I feel like they're going to find a way out
Speaker 1: of this, and like how do we know what if
Speaker 1: it's like bullshit? And like how do we call it out?
Speaker 1: And how do we call it out? That's what Student
Speaker 1: unforgiveness was, right, I mean, like, if we really think
Speaker 1: about it, the democratic parties been built recently since the
Speaker 1: Obama era on this idea of reinstituting elements of the
Speaker 1: New Deal without threatening the existence of capitalism. Um very
Speaker 1: intentionally right. We saw that the Affordable Care Act as
Speaker 1: version of that. Right, So, I mean they are doing
Speaker 1: this and I think what's fascinating about this And this
Speaker 1: is something that radicals in the late sixties pointed out
Speaker 1: often about Lyndon Johnson is they said, you know, liberals
Speaker 1: voted for Lyndon Johnson, and they put all their hopes
Speaker 1: in him, so when he failed them, it didn't have
Speaker 1: anything left to do except hit the streets, right, like
Speaker 1: there was no other option. And I think what we've
Speaker 1: really seen since the Obama era is the collapse of
Speaker 1: the idea that the way that the Democrats do socialists,
Speaker 1: this is in any way going to solve anything. Um,
Speaker 1: that's just going to continue to perpetuate the situation of
Speaker 1: which we need social assistance, right, as opposed to fundamentally
Speaker 1: ending that, which is, you know, the language that they
Speaker 1: put forward when they talk about things like justice, which
Speaker 1: we all know that they don't really have much adherence to. Right.
Speaker 1: But I think until the until the Democratic Party gains
Speaker 1: legitimacy again, if they ever do, which hopefully they don't,
Speaker 1: but if they ever do, yeah, we might be able
Speaker 1: to see this kind of use of reformism, this counterinsurgency again, right,
Speaker 1: which is really what the New Deal was. But really
Speaker 1: until that, I mean we saw in twenty twenty. You know,
Speaker 1: when the legitimacy of the group of people who often
Speaker 1: relies on that technique falls apart, you get uprisings in
Speaker 1: the streets, right, And so we're at kind of a
Speaker 1: different point I think than than maybe just before the
Speaker 1: new Deal kind of came into effect something I want
Speaker 1: to go back to that. I think it's what it was.
Speaker 1: This is the piece where the quote um it's been
Speaker 1: is talking about concealing or like in secret or in
Speaker 1: public or whatever. How there's like a of power in
Speaker 1: terms of like things like general strikes in that sort
Speaker 1: of like invisibility or whatever, in the unpredictability in like
Speaker 1: not going for like building movements based on like visibility
Speaker 1: or public perception or like the media or whatever, but
Speaker 1: actually building them in these ways that can't be seen
Speaker 1: as much and might be concealed. Um. And also this
Speaker 1: thing where people are underestimated, Like it makes me think
Speaker 1: about the revolution in Haiti in the late seventeen hundreds,
Speaker 1: which is you know, a long time ago but still
Speaker 1: very relevant um. And just thinking about how the kind
Speaker 1: of like colonizes in Paris, like couldn't believe the reports
Speaker 1: that were coming out of uprising in Haiti at the
Speaker 1: time because they were so racist basically that they didn't
Speaker 1: believe that black people there who were say could rise
Speaker 1: up and could have that like awareness, gumption or whatever. Um.
Speaker 1: And that gave them a lot of room. You know,
Speaker 1: that was like a position of power for them that like, um,
Speaker 1: they were being underestimated like that much. And I think
Speaker 1: that's something we see with like even though like the
Speaker 1: idea that's gone on from that time really of like
Speaker 1: outside agitator and stuff like in any uprising that we see, Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: that both part people, is that there's something in that
Speaker 1: that is also powerful and it gives possibility. Well, speaking
Speaker 1: of outside agitators, We're going to take a break and
Speaker 1: hear from some of our sponsors right now. In eighteen
Speaker 1: sixty five, on paper, the Civil War ended and the
Speaker 1: Union was saved. A decade later, the North began pulling
Speaker 1: out of the South, marking the end to reconstruction efforts
Speaker 1: in the beginning of both jem Crow and a reign
Speaker 1: of terror and white vigilanism in the form of the
Speaker 1: Ku Klux Klan. The eighteen seventies was also a period
Speaker 1: of increasing poverty, declining wages, rising homelessness, economic depression, and
Speaker 1: exploding class conflict, as the stage was said for the
Speaker 1: Great Upheaval of eighteen seventy seven, a general strike that
Speaker 1: rocked multiple states as workers across lines of color, gender,
Speaker 1: professional an age threatened the very core of the capitalist state.
Speaker 1: As the decades were on, multiple general strikes followed, as
Speaker 1: did a heavy handed government response that evolved to police
Speaker 1: and repress the broader population. Wanting to know more about
Speaker 1: this history of these general strikes in their importance, we
Speaker 1: caught up with labor historian and author Robert O. Vetts,
Speaker 1: author of One Workers Shot Back and We the Elites.
Speaker 1: Ovetts argues that the often violent general strikes of the
Speaker 1: late eighteen hundreds and early nineteen hundreds showcase the ability
Speaker 1: of working people it's not only confront the state and capitalism,
Speaker 1: but also organized society on their own terms. Well, general
Speaker 1: strikes have been a rare occurrence, but a very powerful
Speaker 1: example of the way that organized workers and communities can
Speaker 1: transform society and hopefully transcend capitalism. I think we have,
Speaker 1: in the examples of general strikes in US history, an
Speaker 1: example of the potential for getting on capitalism, and so
Speaker 1: that's what makes them really exciting to to study and
Speaker 1: to write about. At A general strike doesn't just happen,
Speaker 1: and we don't actually know exactly why general strikes happen,
Speaker 1: but we know that they don't just happen they're not spontaneous.
Speaker 1: There has to be a groundwork of organizing and engaged
Speaker 1: activists and organizers who are working quietly, sometimes for months
Speaker 1: or years, to to work and organizing their fellow workers
Speaker 1: and to build community connections to support their strike actions.
Speaker 1: And there also has to be a good communication of
Speaker 1: what what the strike is, about what their demands are,
Speaker 1: and the ability to communicate and spread information about that strike.
Speaker 1: Probably the two most important general strikes in US history
Speaker 1: where the one in eighteen seventy seven and the one
Speaker 1: in nine in Seattle. And the one in eighteen seventy
Speaker 1: seven was a general, real strike throughout the railroad industry,
Speaker 1: but it also had this extraordinary um microcosmic, if you will,
Speaker 1: a general strike that was happening in St. Louis and
Speaker 1: East St. Louis. But what was fascinating about that was
Speaker 1: that the groundwork had been late in eighteen seventy seven,
Speaker 1: not by a union actually because the workers had tried
Speaker 1: to form a union, but it was sabotaged, it was infiltrated,
Speaker 1: and they tried to the the organizers tried to call
Speaker 1: off the set date to start the general strike and
Speaker 1: the railroad industry, but the workers wan't on strike anyways,
Speaker 1: and they built their own organization across dozens of different
Speaker 1: railroad companies on their own. In St. Louis, however, there
Speaker 1: was a new left wing party called the Workingmen's Party
Speaker 1: that was formed by various socialists and communists and anarchists
Speaker 1: who had taken over the city and for a few
Speaker 1: days tried to run it. And that was that was
Speaker 1: probably closer to what happened in Seattle in nine where
Speaker 1: over a hundred local unions actually pressured the Labor Council
Speaker 1: to call a general strike, and so that was kind
Speaker 1: of built up from below through formal unions. But then
Speaker 1: it went far beyond anything that those AFL affiliated unions
Speaker 1: were willing to really do. The St. Louis General strike
Speaker 1: in eighteen seventy seven that I was just mentioning. Uh,
Speaker 1: there was a multi racial coalition of worker organizers who
Speaker 1: literally took charge of the strike. There had been a
Speaker 1: strike committee form and those that strike committee was dominated
Speaker 1: by the Workingmen's Party activists, but the workers themselves started
Speaker 1: to organize outside the confines of the strike coordinating committee
Speaker 1: and it was very multiracial. They started marching on one
Speaker 1: workplace and another. UH. There was some evidence that there
Speaker 1: were some women that were involved in it, so there
Speaker 1: were strong ties to the community and various households and neighborhoods.
Speaker 1: But they marched on one workplace to another and spread
Speaker 1: the strike, and within a couple of days much of
Speaker 1: the city had been shut down. And the irony of
Speaker 1: this was that the strike coordinating Council actually freaked out
Speaker 1: about how multi racial of the crowds were that were
Speaker 1: shutting down these workplaces and leaving and leaving work um
Speaker 1: and internally they became very divided based on their their racism,
Speaker 1: and there were some members of the coordinating committee that
Speaker 1: were extreme racial supremacists and didn't want the strike to continue,
Speaker 1: and they debated how to stop the strike, how to
Speaker 1: call it off, and but the reality was that they
Speaker 1: had lost control of it to the workers outside of
Speaker 1: the committee, And when it became clear that the militias
Speaker 1: were being called into St. Louis to attack the city,
Speaker 1: the workers marched on the meeting hall where the strike
Speaker 1: coordinating Council was and demanded that they appropriate money to
Speaker 1: acquire arms to defend the city. But they refused to
Speaker 1: do that, and they eventually tried to call off the strike. UH.
Speaker 1: So that lasted a few days, and race was a
Speaker 1: huge factor in why the strikes spread and how the
Speaker 1: workers took over the city, but it was also a
Speaker 1: factor in how it was actually killed by those who
Speaker 1: were supposedly quote unquote running the actual general stripe. In
Speaker 1: the case of Seattle, we don't know as much about
Speaker 1: the racial composition of the workers, UM, but we do
Speaker 1: know that it was very generalized throughout the entire city. UM.
Speaker 1: And the reason we know this is because the the
Speaker 1: General Strike Committee, which was formed by the Labor Council,
Speaker 1: had representatives of every union, and they took care of
Speaker 1: many of the reproductive needs of the population. For example,
Speaker 1: they kept the hospital running. Uh. They set up free
Speaker 1: kitchens where people could eat UM. They as well as
Speaker 1: setting up and publishing a newspaper that came out every
Speaker 1: day during the five days of the strike. So they
Speaker 1: took care of also of public safety. UM. So what
Speaker 1: was extraordinary about the Seattle General Strike is how it
Speaker 1: incorporated many of these issues that we would say is
Speaker 1: about gender and reproductive needs of the population. They didn't
Speaker 1: just shut down the workplace. They actually took over the
Speaker 1: city and reorganized society to meet the needs of humanity.
Speaker 1: The seventy seven strike actually resulted in what I show
Speaker 1: in a lot of detail in my first book, when
Speaker 1: workers shot back, how the state and capital reorganized themselves
Speaker 1: in order to um be able to respond a lot
Speaker 1: quicker to self organized workers and strikes, and especially general strikes.
Speaker 1: For example, the modern police came into being in many
Speaker 1: cities as a result of the eighteen seventy seven strike,
Speaker 1: because up until that point, the police were um, if
Speaker 1: you will, they were kind of like give workers. They
Speaker 1: worked on quote unquote tips or bribes. Uh. There were
Speaker 1: very few cities that had any municipal police, and if
Speaker 1: they did, they had very small forces. And so that
Speaker 1: was one reason why the strikes spread so quickly around
Speaker 1: the country over that that ten day or so period
Speaker 1: in July of eighteen seventy seven. Uh So, modern policing
Speaker 1: really came into being. Also, as you mentioned, the militias
Speaker 1: were transformed into what became the National Guard. The militias
Speaker 1: also proved to be undependable because they were mostly composed
Speaker 1: of working men, and if they were called out locally,
Speaker 1: they knew the strikers, and in fact, some of them
Speaker 1: were strikers and didn't even show up for their militia duty.
Speaker 1: So militias were essentially de emphasized and they were replaced
Speaker 1: by a state controlled National Guard UM. As a result
Speaker 1: of the passage of a new federal law UH, the
Speaker 1: military was also funded on a permanent basis. One reason
Speaker 1: why the military was so slow to be UH to
Speaker 1: be deployed to put down the strike in eighteen seventy
Speaker 1: seven was most of the soldiers were out in the
Speaker 1: West fighting essentially a genocidal war against the Plans native peoples,
Speaker 1: and so there weren't enough military around. And also Congress
Speaker 1: hadn't funded the military that you believe it or not,
Speaker 1: and so the military was unfunded and undersized. Another consequence
Speaker 1: of this was that many corporations started to work together
Speaker 1: to create their own you could say, mutual aid to
Speaker 1: protect one another. They started forming employer groups in order
Speaker 1: to be able to respond at a more coordinated method UM.
Speaker 1: So you started to see corporations cooperati as a result
Speaker 1: of this. In fact, many of the technologies that we
Speaker 1: take for granted today were a result of the eighteen
Speaker 1: seventy seven railroad strike. For example, UH, the telegraph was
Speaker 1: installed in many rich people's homes as a way to
Speaker 1: be able to contact the police directly. Those lines went
Speaker 1: directly to the police UH. The so called patty wagon
Speaker 1: UH was also invented as a result of the seven
Speaker 1: strike as a weapon against large crowds UM. So there
Speaker 1: were a number of m of new technologies that were
Speaker 1: implemented UH and became more widespread as results of that strike.
Speaker 1: In Seattle also UH, the workers were prepared. They had
Speaker 1: known their history, and they formed a self defense group
Speaker 1: composed primarily of War War one veterans who had just
Speaker 1: come back from More one UM and they patrolled the
Speaker 1: city and they did things like shutdown bars because they
Speaker 1: didn't want UH people to get drunk and start fighting
Speaker 1: and that would be a justification for the National Guard
Speaker 1: to be called in. But the police started to essentially
Speaker 1: line up outside the boundaries of the city and they
Speaker 1: waited for reinforcements threatenings essentially to invade Seattle before the
Speaker 1: general strike was called off. But the workers were prepared.
Speaker 1: They did carry out and organized self defense against that eventuality.
Speaker 1: The Oakland General Strike was part of an extraordinary wave
Speaker 1: of post War two strikes that were happening just like
Speaker 1: after World War One and Actually, during World War One,
Speaker 1: there was a wave of strikes. UH. The same thing
Speaker 1: happened when a lot of soldiers started coming back from
Speaker 1: War two. Unemployment shot up, women were sent as sent packing. UH,
Speaker 1: prices exploded, there was a shortage of housing UH, and
Speaker 1: workers started to organize and U. During that few year period, UH,
Speaker 1: there was a general strike in the steel sector and
Speaker 1: Truman threatened to take over some of the larger companies,
Speaker 1: and he was repelled by the Supreme Court. But as
Speaker 1: a consequence of this UH, this upsurge of class struggle UH,
Speaker 1: the Congress passed a Staff Hardly Act, which still governs
Speaker 1: US today. For workers who started organized in the private sector,
Speaker 1: where they're under the National Labor Relations Act. That Taff
Speaker 1: Hartley Act was an amendment to that law. One of
Speaker 1: the most important things it did was a banned so
Speaker 1: called secondary strikes, which means that if workers go on
Speaker 1: strikes somewhere, workers can't strike in solidarity UM, and particularly
Speaker 1: if they have a union contract with their employer, would
Speaker 1: be illegal. Now, there are some workers that are exempted
Speaker 1: from that, for example, transport workers because they're under a
Speaker 1: different federal law. They're under the Railway Labor Act. Which
Speaker 1: is part of the reason why we almost just saw
Speaker 1: rail railroad general strike before the Democrats killed it a
Speaker 1: few weeks ago. But the Taffed Hartley Act continues to
Speaker 1: serve as a means of suppressing and repressing the ability
Speaker 1: not only of workers but organized unions in their local workplaces,
Speaker 1: but to actually engage in a general strike. So again,
Speaker 1: we've been listening to Robert Ovette's author of One Workers
Speaker 1: Shot Back and We the Elites just a few key
Speaker 1: takeaways from that discussion. We see various examples in these
Speaker 1: general strikes of tensions developing between more radical elements and
Speaker 1: reformist ones that want to contain revolutionary expressions and also
Speaker 1: stop workers from really taking over society. We also see
Speaker 1: positive examples of these strikes spilling out across lines of race, gender,
Speaker 1: and age and profession. One thing we see, of course,
Speaker 1: again and again is the state responding to these strikes
Speaker 1: with the combination of militia's police and of course the
Speaker 1: National Guard. And finally, many of these strikes lead to
Speaker 1: the passing of legislation, which is interesting because far from
Speaker 1: this sort of progressive arc towards justice, instead we see constantly,
Speaker 1: again and again the state either reforming itself to become
Speaker 1: more oppressive, engage in surveillance, reconstitute the police in a
Speaker 1: certain way, reconstitute the military, or sometimes bring the workers
Speaker 1: into the superstructure of the state and rogers the better man. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I totally agree. It's not getting better. They're just being
Speaker 1: smart about it. They're like like little like slimy balls.
Speaker 1: They're just like reshaping as they need to shape and
Speaker 1: form to like get workers. So like when you were
Speaker 1: reading that, it felt like a writer's were It felt
Speaker 1: like a movie of like how do we control these people?
Speaker 1: You know what I mean? It felt like it was
Speaker 1: like this like checker where they're like, oh, they make
Speaker 1: their move, we make their move. And it's like it's
Speaker 1: like the state as a tool, and like you see
Speaker 1: that because it's like it's a tool of the elite,
Speaker 1: and you see that people laws that are passed, and
Speaker 1: like when they're passed, like because when black and white
Speaker 1: people form them, there's violence, like a lot of state violence,
Speaker 1: like extreme state violence, because it's like they want to
Speaker 1: remind us like that's bad, you don't do that, and
Speaker 1: then they'll do stuff to play get workers like white
Speaker 1: workers too, Like with a Wagner Act, like with unionization,
Speaker 1: like a lot of black people were excluded from that.
Speaker 1: Maybe just maybe things aren't getting better like they're telling
Speaker 1: you they are, things are just reshaping. That's something else
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about as he was talking, and just like
Speaker 1: from from that history that it is like we hear
Speaker 1: that like the creativity of the state with their oppression
Speaker 1: or whatever it's going on, but also how people keep
Speaker 1: coming back with like new and different things, you know,
Speaker 1: like actually takes a lot of repression to stop these things.
Speaker 1: Like if you look at what happened STUBBN or whatever,
Speaker 1: it's like they kill quite a lot of people to
Speaker 1: stop that strike wave and stuff, you know, like it's
Speaker 1: really heavy handed. And then but still a lot of
Speaker 1: strikes happen after that, and it leads up to Haymarket
Speaker 1: in a six or whatever. And I just think, again,
Speaker 1: again we seem like repression, but then we see it
Speaker 1: flowering again. And I think that what we're seeing like
Speaker 1: right now maybe is like a sort of creative non union.
Speaker 1: That when we're talking at the beginning about people just
Speaker 1: saying general strike, general strike, it's like whatever happens next
Speaker 1: will be something different. What we're seeing is we're seeing
Speaker 1: over this time the mechanism of counterinsurgency get a lot
Speaker 1: more complex. Right, So in the eighteen seventies, it's let's
Speaker 1: get some guns and force everyone to go back to work.
Speaker 1: But now it's why don't we get nonprofits to fund these,
Speaker 1: you know, public programs. Why don't we have community policing
Speaker 1: and copy with cops and and so you saw during
Speaker 1: the Georgia a uprising, as you saw a lot of
Speaker 1: this like, well, I know that y'all want to cut
Speaker 1: funding from police departments, but really what you should do
Speaker 1: is you should come to our budget meeting and we
Speaker 1: could put it in the city budget and we should
Speaker 1: talk about it that way. And that was the way
Speaker 1: to force the resistance in the streets back into a
Speaker 1: mechanism that's able to be more easily controlled. Um. But
Speaker 1: we see in like rust belt cities, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, places
Speaker 1: like this, the way that the wealthy at this period
Speaker 1: of time, the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, we're
Speaker 1: already talking about trying to change entire environments. Right, So
Speaker 1: like surveillance, nonprofit activity like that changes the whole environments.
Speaker 1: It's not just about a single individual objective but it
Speaker 1: shapes an entire reality in these rust belt cities during
Speaker 1: that period of time. I mean, you have a lot
Speaker 1: of like free art museums and stuff like this that
Speaker 1: are world class institutions. But if you look at their
Speaker 1: charters and actually look at them closely, the reason those
Speaker 1: institutions exist was to quote inculturate the working class. And
Speaker 1: it was all about like Rockefeller very specifically Cleveland money
Speaker 1: to these institutions so working class wouldn't kill them, like
Speaker 1: wouldn't murder them. And it was in the middle of
Speaker 1: really intense anti capitalist activity in those cities, right and
Speaker 1: so we can watch the development of those techniques right now.
Speaker 1: It takes the form of defunding the police campaigns and
Speaker 1: things like that as opposed abolitionism. Um it takes the
Speaker 1: form of trying to find softer means of policing, like
Speaker 1: surveillance as opposed to just having clubs and guns and
Speaker 1: stuff um. Or in the case of the Democratic Party
Speaker 1: of the Smart Border, when they talked about the smart Border,
Speaker 1: which is essentially putting a bunch of sensors and cameras
Speaker 1: in the desert to try and catch people crossing the border,
Speaker 1: that somehow less repressive by shaping the entire space around
Speaker 1: surveillance that's somehow less repressive than just having police. And
Speaker 1: they use that idea that if they're not in a
Speaker 1: uniform and they don't have a weapon right in front
Speaker 1: of them or aren't human, that somehow there's some benefit
Speaker 1: that emerges and somehow the stage is retreating a little
Speaker 1: bit when in actuality thinks like body cameras, stuff like
Speaker 1: that just increase the ability of the state to have visibility,
Speaker 1: just increases the number of cameras on the street, and
Speaker 1: increases the ability of the state to control information and
Speaker 1: decide what information gets out. Um. These are all things
Speaker 1: which have reinforced the power of the state, but they
Speaker 1: get portrayed as you know, forms of as reforms that
Speaker 1: are supposed to solve these huge social problems that people
Speaker 1: keep raising up. Well, speaking of things rich people give
Speaker 1: us so we won't kill them. We're going to now
Speaker 1: here for some from some of our sponsors. So far,
Speaker 1: we've talked about general strikes that are largely over a
Speaker 1: hundred years old. But now we're going to turn and
Speaker 1: look at two examples of general strikes that took place
Speaker 1: within the last twenty years. In December of two thousand five.
Speaker 1: Republicans passed in the House of Representatives. HR four four
Speaker 1: three seven, also known as the Border Protection, Anti Terrorism,
Speaker 1: and Illegal Immigration Control Act of two thousand five, a
Speaker 1: proposed piece of legislation that's as jaconian as it sounds. Bill,
Speaker 1: as the A. C. L. You wrote, pushed to quote,
Speaker 1: militarize the border, give extraordinary powers to low level immigration officials,
Speaker 1: allowing law enforcement to expel without hearing anyone believed to
Speaker 1: be undocumented and detained non citizens and definitely without meaningful review.
Speaker 1: The bill also sought to levy criminal penalties against anyone
Speaker 1: that engage in assisting someone that was undocumented, which threatened
Speaker 1: both employers of undocumented workers, as well as union organizers, teachers, clergy,
Speaker 1: and beyond, Foreshadowing the Trump presidency. It also called for
Speaker 1: hundreds of miles of border fence and authorized state and
Speaker 1: local law enforcement to enforce federal immigration law. As George
Speaker 1: Campas wrote in the See Say Poty Insurrection, the bill
Speaker 1: would transform almost every person in the United States into
Speaker 1: either undocumented violators, police enforcers, or classify them as criminally complicit.
Speaker 1: The authoritarian nature of the legislation and the existential threat
Speaker 1: and represented pushed many a document of workers to take
Speaker 1: action and organized on a mass scale. As Kemphus wrote,
Speaker 1: starting in March of two thousand, six marches and more
Speaker 1: than half a million people overwhelmed the centers of major
Speaker 1: cities like Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, and Dallas halteing business,
Speaker 1: while there were literally hundreds of smaller gatherings and many
Speaker 1: other smaller cities. There were dozens of student walkouts and
Speaker 1: high schools around the country, as well as a nationwide
Speaker 1: immigrant general strike called for on Maybee that was heated
Speaker 1: by hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of workers, including truck drivers,
Speaker 1: who shut down the port of Los Angeles. Despite a
Speaker 1: series of large scale immigration raids aimed at derailing the movement,
Speaker 1: millions took the streets and carried out strikes, all outside
Speaker 1: of the direction of Union in Democratic Party leadership. The
Speaker 1: mass protests and strikes helped revive May Day as a
Speaker 1: day of labor and worker action in the United States.
Speaker 1: Installed for over a decade. Right wing attacks on immigrants
Speaker 1: are four four, three seven failed to pass, in large
Speaker 1: part due to the mass opposition and faced on the streets.
Speaker 1: In the spring of two thousand six direct action, as
Speaker 1: they say, gets the goods. And what's fascinating about the
Speaker 1: two thousand six strike is that it was organized outside
Speaker 1: of established unions and political parties, especially Democratic Party, had
Speaker 1: a key youth wing to it. We saw lots of
Speaker 1: student walkouts. It was able to seriously push back against
Speaker 1: this draconian wave of anti immigrant legislation, and that worked
Speaker 1: for around ten years. And it seems like we don't
Speaker 1: reference this strike enough and talk about how important it was.
Speaker 1: I was in a junior in high school when kids
Speaker 1: were walking out, but this is how I sleep. I was.
Speaker 1: I didn't walk out, and I just remember thinking, oh
Speaker 1: my god, those kids are so courageous and they're such badasses,
Speaker 1: and it's so cool that they're doing that, and I
Speaker 1: wish that I could. Well that law was like he
Speaker 1: should have slave Law Act, like straight up. They were
Speaker 1: just trying to like re install slavery among people who
Speaker 1: were not out here documented like you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: They were trying to create a situation where people were
Speaker 1: still working dest bread, they were going to work for
Speaker 1: slave wages. And I'll say this about New York City,
Speaker 1: there's a huge like immigrant population, a huge undocumented work
Speaker 1: of population that we didn't even I mean, I didn't
Speaker 1: know about until COVID hit. Like, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: people who are keeping the economy alive that are not
Speaker 1: even counted, and they pay for our existence. As we're
Speaker 1: talking about those, two things that always come up for
Speaker 1: me from talking about these strikes. First is, you know,
Speaker 1: the entire concept of quote immigration reform as it was
Speaker 1: being talked about by Republicans at the time and then
Speaker 1: later accelerated under Trump. This idea of border walls started
Speaker 1: with the American Nazi Party, right, Like, this was an
Speaker 1: American Nazi Party policy proposal in the nineteen fifties and
Speaker 1: sixties that got picked up through white supremacist movements, through
Speaker 1: people like George Wallace and sort of imported into the
Speaker 1: Republican Party. Yeah, because it's Nazis. I think the other
Speaker 1: thing that was really inspiring about that movement I was,
Speaker 1: you know, out of college at that point watching this happen.
Speaker 1: It was one of the first times I saw mass
Speaker 1: decentralized action happened across the entire country at that scale
Speaker 1: that sort of hit and apex like during these days, right,
Speaker 1: the sort of period of time in which people kind
Speaker 1: of took it upon themselves to shut the whole country down,
Speaker 1: And it just shows what can happen when community is
Speaker 1: organized as communities of people and not as spectators in
Speaker 1: some sort of removed symbolic political action, but actually become
Speaker 1: immediate protagonists and what's going on in front of them.
Speaker 1: Another thing I think is really interesting about this is
Speaker 1: that it was such a massive response and that part
Speaker 1: of what the Act was saying was that you could
Speaker 1: be like prosecutor for assisting someone who's undocumented. That I
Speaker 1: think it like goes back to what we've be talking
Speaker 1: about with the other strikes stuff, is like the government
Speaker 1: is very aware that like solidarity between people is dangerous
Speaker 1: basically and tries to letisate it. And we see, you know,
Speaker 1: after that strike in you know, the strike way of
Speaker 1: in eighteen seventy seven, you start to get all those
Speaker 1: anti conspiracy laws and stuff because that's a threat. And
Speaker 1: I love it in the sense it's like they put
Speaker 1: out and it gets like, um, such a massive response
Speaker 1: against it that people really like win basically and that
Speaker 1: last for like a decade. Yeah. I think that goes
Speaker 1: back to the idea of white supremacy historically in the
Speaker 1: United States being this system of how people described it,
Speaker 1: of carrots and sticks, of offering incentives to be included
Speaker 1: in this bracket of whiteness, but then also saying, oh,
Speaker 1: and if you help that kid at school, we're gonna
Speaker 1: throw you in jail along with them, which again is
Speaker 1: a good reason to celebrate these strikes because they were
Speaker 1: effective in beating back this legislation, but also pointing out
Speaker 1: that everyone should have been taking part in these actions. Well, hey,
Speaker 1: thanks for tuning in. That's going to wrap up the
Speaker 1: first episode. We encourage you to follow us going down
Speaker 1: on masses on at I g D Underscore News and
Speaker 1: we hope you enjoyed us taking over It could happen here.
Speaker 1: We're gonna be back tomorrow. We're going to continue to
Speaker 1: look at general strikes. We're gonna do a deep dive
Speaker 1: into Occupy Oakland that kicked off in two thousand eleven,
Speaker 1: and we're gonna look at how a citywide general strike
Speaker 1: grew out of the Oakland Commune after the police nearly
Speaker 1: murdered in Iraq War veteran and thanks for tuning in.
Speaker 1: Welcome back once again, you're listening to It could happen
Speaker 1: here with the crew from It's Going Down Taking Over.
Speaker 1: This is our second show and we'll be doing a
Speaker 1: total of five episodes throughout the month of January. So
Speaker 1: if you like what you here, please let the amazing
Speaker 1: folks at cool Zone Media know. Yesterday we began by
Speaker 1: looking at general strikes in US history, starting with the
Speaker 1: mass plantation strike during the American Civil War. We spoke
Speaker 1: with labor historian Robert Ovetts about the revolutionary and bloody
Speaker 1: history of general strikes in the United States, and we
Speaker 1: also looked at the immigrant general strike in two thousand
Speaker 1: six that successfully beat back drew Conian legislation that sought
Speaker 1: to further militarize the border and attack and documented people.
Speaker 1: On today's show, we're going to be looking at a
Speaker 1: general strike that was called for by Occupy Oakland, which
Speaker 1: took place on November two. Occupy Oakland was part of
Speaker 1: the much larger occupy movement that beginning New York with
Speaker 1: the occupation of Zukkati Park, but was seen as the
Speaker 1: radical focal point for the growing struggle, starting as an
Speaker 1: occupation on October tent in front of Oakland City Hall
Speaker 1: named Oscar Grant Plaza. On October twenty Iraq War veteran
Speaker 1: Scott Olsen was nearly killed after being shot with a
Speaker 1: police projectile during clashes between police and demonstrators as law
Speaker 1: enforcement attempted to evict the growing Oakland commune. Following the
Speaker 1: Olsen shooting, thousands were occupied Oscar Grant Plaza and the
Speaker 1: general strike was called for a week later. Upwards of
Speaker 1: one hundred thousand people took part in the strike's associated actions,
Speaker 1: which included mass marches, a large anti capitalist black block
Speaker 1: which broke bank windows, and the shutting down of the
Speaker 1: Port of Oakland, with upwards of one thousand people participating.
Speaker 1: Well before we hear from our guests on the subject,
Speaker 1: I wanted to talk a little bit about the occupy
Speaker 1: movement and Occupy Oakland and why it was so important.
Speaker 1: The occupy movement itself grew amidst this growing anger over
Speaker 1: the economic crisis, but also this fading belief and the
Speaker 1: hope and change promised by Obama. While naturally it seemed
Speaker 1: to kind of sort of come out of nowhere, there
Speaker 1: were certainly things that really helped influence it. Naturally, there
Speaker 1: was the occupation by Chicago workers at the Republic Windows
Speaker 1: and Doors Factory, which signaled a real turning point, as
Speaker 1: well as the occupation of the Wisconsin State capital in
Speaker 1: two thousand eleven against anti union legislation, and all this
Speaker 1: was happened against the backdrop of the Arab Spring, and
Speaker 1: then in the Bay Area the Oscar Grant rebellion and
Speaker 1: riots in two thousand and nine and two thousand ten
Speaker 1: kicked off and had a massive impact, centering discussions around
Speaker 1: police race and supremacy, as well as the role of
Speaker 1: rioting and social movements. At the same time, students and
Speaker 1: graduate workers occupied college campus buildings in New York and
Speaker 1: across California, which really spread the concept of occupying across
Speaker 1: the social terrain, as well as slogans like strike, occupied, takeover,
Speaker 1: and occupy everything. Now, the explosion of the occupy movement
Speaker 1: in the fall of two thousand eleven cannot be overstated.
Speaker 1: Occupying camments became a focal point for people angry at
Speaker 1: the general state of the world to gather discuss an
Speaker 1: act and they became a real focal point for encounter.
Speaker 1: While some cities saw these encampments come and go pretty quickly,
Speaker 1: when he saw concrete projects and organizing come out of them,
Speaker 1: people were fighting to resist foreclosures, for instance, in a
Speaker 1: lot of cities, and for many people this was where
Speaker 1: they were introduced to anarchist concepts such as direct action,
Speaker 1: horizontal organizing, and consensus decision making, which really brought these
Speaker 1: ideas front and center to hundreds of thousands of people
Speaker 1: in a real and tangible way. And while a lot
Speaker 1: of people on the left from a variety of backgrounds
Speaker 1: took part, the real backbone of those involved and occupy
Speaker 1: were just everyday people who were new to social movements
Speaker 1: and became activated by material conditions and just the zeitgeist
Speaker 1: of what was happening at the time. Occupy was fascinating
Speaker 1: for me, like I was in the Rust Belt at
Speaker 1: the time. Still at the occupy, I was part of
Speaker 1: the first march of five thousand people there. There may
Speaker 1: be like two or three d people at the general
Speaker 1: Assembly the night before, So most of the people that
Speaker 1: showed up were not people currently connected at that point
Speaker 1: to any kind of political organizing. They were just people
Speaker 1: that showed up because they heard about it on the
Speaker 1: internet and they showed up to do the thing. And
Speaker 1: that camp alot lasted nine months, but we can start
Speaker 1: to see the impacts of that kind of breakdown of
Speaker 1: that division between people who declared themselves political and quote
Speaker 1: everybody else. When we start to move forward past Occupy,
Speaker 1: we start to see that manifest during the ground Uprising Ferguson,
Speaker 1: We start to see that manifest during the George Floyd Rebellion,
Speaker 1: where this kind of division between those that declare themselves
Speaker 1: to be iCal agents and those that have not declared
Speaker 1: themselves to be so just ceases to really exist. And
Speaker 1: it's in those moments where we really actually see uprisings occur.
Speaker 1: Occupied pointed out an important thing which is a fallacy
Speaker 1: in the way that we think, and that we think
Speaker 1: that radicals make revolts happen, when in reality, people make
Speaker 1: revolts happen, and our job is to antagonize circumstances. And
Speaker 1: it's only at the point in which that division breaks
Speaker 1: down between quote us and everybody else, that revolts actually occur.
Speaker 1: And Occupy it was a really important point in a
Speaker 1: trajectory of I think a sector of the American anarchist
Speaker 1: movement and a sector of the American political scene starting
Speaker 1: to really internalize that understanding, starting to really grasp how
Speaker 1: different that is from the way that we have been
Speaker 1: taught to organize, and we're still seeing the ramifications of
Speaker 1: a lot of that work today, many many many years later,
Speaker 1: looking at like occupied, looking at any of these big moments.
Speaker 1: When we look back, we can see all these things
Speaker 1: that like contribute to it, you know. And I think
Speaker 1: that this thing that you ASO can see tom of them,
Speaker 1: like the kind of losing that thing of like professor
Speaker 1: active act or like or actor in a situation is
Speaker 1: like so important, and I think that that is something
Speaker 1: that can really inspire in terms of what's happening in
Speaker 1: this moment too, or like how general strikes happen, or
Speaker 1: how something that occupy happens. Is that things happen, like
Speaker 1: there are sort of moments that are kind of outside
Speaker 1: of our control. It's not something that can be like
Speaker 1: planned for, and if you do all the right things,
Speaker 1: then you get a general strike. But you can kind
Speaker 1: of like be relating to circumstances and to each other
Speaker 1: and then different things happen. Um like thinking about the
Speaker 1: George Floyd uprising in twenty like none of us predicted COVID,
Speaker 1: you know, and like how that might have contributed to
Speaker 1: what happened in that or just like all these different
Speaker 1: circumstances that come together to make these moments um and
Speaker 1: I think that you know, something like what's going on now,
Speaker 1: we could look back and look at all these different
Speaker 1: things that are happening that then make something big happen,
Speaker 1: and we never really know or can control that. A
Speaker 1: lot of the striking and occupy it serves the purpose
Speaker 1: of not us just coming together collectively, but it also
Speaker 1: serves as purpose of propaganda, and it just reminds me
Speaker 1: of this idea important idea of us occupying public spaces
Speaker 1: and the reason why we're not allowed to occupy public
Speaker 1: spaces because it's like sort of taking the power. And
Speaker 1: when there's lots of us occupied in public spaces, the
Speaker 1: media covers it and then it's like, well, what are
Speaker 1: these people talking about? What are they doing? And that
Speaker 1: would then itself also serves as a propaganda mechanism to
Speaker 1: like spread, so like I like just like listening to that.
Speaker 1: And I remember when again, like occupy was one of
Speaker 1: the moments that I was one of the people who
Speaker 1: viewed myself as not political, but I cared about what
Speaker 1: was happening in the movement because that was the first
Speaker 1: time I heard we are I think about moments of
Speaker 1: radicalization that I think of this one as being one
Speaker 1: of them as a person who's just like recently and
Speaker 1: as a five years ago recently awoke, Like these are
Speaker 1: moments that I remember, like had an impact on me
Speaker 1: seeing people on the street taking public spaces, and I
Speaker 1: think that perhaps that's something that we should continue to do.
Speaker 1: And maybe it's not one of those things where it's
Speaker 1: like maybe not as large as occupy, maybe it's not
Speaker 1: consistently large, but like maybe we as civilians to just
Speaker 1: over public spaces all the time, just as a reminder
Speaker 1: to ourselves that we do have the power to do that.
Speaker 1: Like we can't have a free store here because we
Speaker 1: want to. We don't have to ask the government for
Speaker 1: permission to do anything, like I think it's a huge
Speaker 1: first stop of becoming ungovernable and speaking of things that
Speaker 1: belong in a free store. We're now going to hear
Speaker 1: from our sponsors. For us to understand how the Oakland
Speaker 1: General Strike of took place, we first have to go
Speaker 1: back to what made Occupy Oakland so important to so
Speaker 1: many people just a few short weeks in October. In
Speaker 1: the following interview, we speak with it's Going Down. Contributor,
Speaker 1: author and translator based in Mexico, Scott Campbell about his
Speaker 1: memories of occupy and what set the stage for a
Speaker 1: massive strike on November two. We didn't speak with Tova,
Speaker 1: who was involved in the Occupy Oakland Labor Solidarity Committee,
Speaker 1: about Bay Area labor unions becoming involved in the strike.
Speaker 1: So to kick things off, Scott tell us about Occupy Oakland,
Speaker 1: what it looked like, how life and Oscar Grand Plaza
Speaker 1: was organized, and about this living, breathing thing many came
Speaker 1: to call the Oakland community. If you were to walk
Speaker 1: into Occupy Oakland, I think you'd be overwhelmed. Um. It
Speaker 1: was an amazing, vibrant, self managed, auto jestive community where
Speaker 1: you had folks living there in an Oscar Grant plaza.
Speaker 1: You had food, childcare, medical care, libraries, UM, all sorts
Speaker 1: of projects UM in a self run sort of directly
Speaker 1: democratic assembly based, communally organized space. And it was open
Speaker 1: to anyone except for police and politicians who wanted to
Speaker 1: come and participate in this sort of radical experiment, this
Speaker 1: radical form of being with one another outside the constraints
Speaker 1: of how society normally constructs us to perform and interact
Speaker 1: with one another. And I think what really stuck out
Speaker 1: to me the most during this time period was just
Speaker 1: the the welcoming atmosphere or the sense of potential that
Speaker 1: the camp um and the activities based around the camp held,
Speaker 1: the openness of people, and really the wide range of
Speaker 1: individuals who were participating in collectives who were participating, which certainly,
Speaker 1: of course led to differences of opinions at times that
Speaker 1: made that created some dynamics that were a struggle to
Speaker 1: to work through and navigate, but at the same time
Speaker 1: really added to a sense of a space that went
Speaker 1: beyond a single project, that went beyond a single vision,
Speaker 1: but that was horizontal, communal and open in a way
Speaker 1: that I had never experienced before and that I have
Speaker 1: yet to experience again. It definitely had an organic feel
Speaker 1: to it of of sort of people coming together, lending
Speaker 1: what skills they had, lending what resources they had across
Speaker 1: a variety of positions UM that may be broadly categorized
Speaker 1: on the left or or post left spectrum, a spectrum
Speaker 1: of folks with the spectrum of capacities of needs UM
Speaker 1: I mean a large number of unhoused neighbors who were
Speaker 1: there who brought their own life experiences and their own
Speaker 1: knowledge and their own skills to bear on the project,
Speaker 1: which I think was a really, I guess, a powerful
Speaker 1: learning opportunity for a lot of people who hadn't really
Speaker 1: been in direct contact with unhoused folks um and who
Speaker 1: were unfamiliar with really perhaps the impetus beyond Occupy Oakland,
Speaker 1: and beyond occupy the impetus behind Occupy Oakland, and the
Speaker 1: impetus behind occupy Wall Street in general, which was of
Speaker 1: course the two thousand and eight financial crash and the
Speaker 1: Great Depression and the bailout of the banks while people
Speaker 1: got fore clothes on their homes, especially people of color
Speaker 1: and black folks, which which hit particularly hard in Oakland.
Speaker 1: And so we see all these dynamics coming together and
Speaker 1: trying to work themselves out organically without being mediated by
Speaker 1: any one organization or any particular ideology. And it was
Speaker 1: a powerful, confusing, messy, lively, beautiful experience. How to categorize
Speaker 1: as general assemb it is a great question, I think
Speaker 1: for me, how I interpreted it is it added a
Speaker 1: structural framework for how to navigate issues that would arise
Speaker 1: within the camp, within the sort of occupation. For lack
Speaker 1: of a better word of Oscar Grand Plaza, facilitating the
Speaker 1: day to day functionings of things. In a lot of ways,
Speaker 1: was a decision making body. I wouldn't call it a
Speaker 1: government as such, because it tried to run on consensus
Speaker 1: or modified consensus, and anyone was free to bring proposals
Speaker 1: to the General Assembly that were free to bring their
Speaker 1: ideas for and promote their events and promote their actions
Speaker 1: and activities. A lot of decisions were also being made
Speaker 1: by people who just showed up to do the work
Speaker 1: without necessarily consulting the General Assembly, So you almost had
Speaker 1: different tiers of activity and different tiers of organization occurring
Speaker 1: in the same space. That seemed, again I go back
Speaker 1: to this word, that seemed to organically work itself out
Speaker 1: most of the time, and within the General Assembly that
Speaker 1: was the more formal structure where people came together at
Speaker 1: times nightly to discuss issues facing the camp, to discuss
Speaker 1: issues with in terms of um dealing with the police
Speaker 1: and the city government and eventually the state and federal
Speaker 1: government as they showed up to determine how to respond
Speaker 1: to various acts of aggression and attacks on the camp
Speaker 1: and attacks on the space, to figure out how to
Speaker 1: better run the space. Even to figure out how to
Speaker 1: better run the General Assembly itself was a big question
Speaker 1: within the General Assembly. And these were general assemblies that
Speaker 1: anyone could participate and you didn't have to show qualifications
Speaker 1: or necessarily be living in the space. Anyone was free
Speaker 1: except for the police and politicians um to come and
Speaker 1: speak to the General Assembly. I remember one time gene Quon,
Speaker 1: then mayor of Oakland, wanted to come and speak to
Speaker 1: the General Assembly, and she was told she could, but
Speaker 1: she had to wait her turn, and so she decided
Speaker 1: to leave because she didn't want to wait. She didn't
Speaker 1: feel like she had to wait. It was really a
Speaker 1: space of encounter for people to bring up different aspects
Speaker 1: that there were concerned in them, that they were working on,
Speaker 1: that they wanted to see flourish in the space. The
Speaker 1: biggest general Assembly was happened around when to move forward
Speaker 1: with the general strike, but there were also general assemblies
Speaker 1: on on things like issues around smoking and people's health
Speaker 1: and well being in the space, issues around cleanliness, issues
Speaker 1: around safety, how to interact with the police, how to
Speaker 1: interact with the government, do we put forward demands? What
Speaker 1: should the name of it be? Is occupied Oakland? The
Speaker 1: problematic name. Should we change it to occupied to colonize Oakland?
Speaker 1: These were all sorts of issues that were brought forward
Speaker 1: to the General Assembly, along with like how do we
Speaker 1: meet the material needs of the space, and how do
Speaker 1: we handle the supplies that are being brought in and
Speaker 1: make sure that they're equally equitably distributed. Who can do
Speaker 1: what for whom within the space? How do people skills
Speaker 1: get the most use out of them. It was a
Speaker 1: very much a lively atmosphere. It felt like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: I I know the word democracy is contentious. It felt
Speaker 1: like a directly democratic process um. But there were also
Speaker 1: you know, it's important to recognize that there were some
Speaker 1: people who were more skilled and more familiar with how
Speaker 1: consensus works, who are more familiar with the process that
Speaker 1: was behind the running of the General Assembly, which which
Speaker 1: has its roots and anarchist practice and anarchist forms of
Speaker 1: decision making, and so those folks definitely had a hand
Speaker 1: up when it came to making decisions, when it came
Speaker 1: to presenting proposals, when it came to even administering and
Speaker 1: running the General Assembly itself, those tasks often fell into
Speaker 1: the lapse of anarchists who I think did a good
Speaker 1: job of making sure that these general assemblies ran smoothly
Speaker 1: and that they were inclusive and open to all who
Speaker 1: wanted to participate, and people could bring their ideas, and
Speaker 1: sometimes they got approved, sometimes they got rejected. Even if
Speaker 1: they got rejected, some some folks decided they would implement
Speaker 1: them anyways, and and that also worked out as well
Speaker 1: as sometimes creating conflict. The city grew increasingly frustrated with
Speaker 1: the encampment as they were they found themselves unable to
Speaker 1: make any progress in trying to recuperate, in trying to
Speaker 1: gain favor sort of the encampment their own and extension
Speaker 1: of the electoral body, right of the electoral body politic. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: that's what moved Kwan, the supposedly progressive mayor, more to
Speaker 1: the side of the police way of seeing things as
Speaker 1: force was the only option to deal with these people
Speaker 1: who are you know, being unrealistic, were being naive, who
Speaker 1: are being entranched in and transigent, and you know, at
Speaker 1: the same time, the police along with the city eventually
Speaker 1: started building up this narrative of the camp as a
Speaker 1: violent and unsafe space where people are being harmed in
Speaker 1: a variety of ways. And it was necessary for for
Speaker 1: public safety's sake to move against the encampment. I was
Speaker 1: there the night the encampment was evicted. I think it
Speaker 1: was October or early morning October twenty five, around three
Speaker 1: am in the morning, three thirty four am, and I
Speaker 1: was actually arrested. I was one of I believe eighty
Speaker 1: eight plus people were arrested. UM. During the process of
Speaker 1: the camps eviction, UM the police came in force. They
Speaker 1: massed up outside of Oracle Arena and the A Stadium.
Speaker 1: It was a massive operation. They came in from all sides.
Speaker 1: People upon hearing word that the camp was going to
Speaker 1: be evicted, UM set up barricades. They laced the entire
Speaker 1: area with string, trying to impede UM the possibility of
Speaker 1: the police getting injured. Quickly, there were battles with the
Speaker 1: police as they tried to make their way into the encampment,
Speaker 1: and eventually UM they came in from all sides and
Speaker 1: until they took over the encampment and encircled the people
Speaker 1: who remained in the camp. I was in jail when
Speaker 1: Scott Olsen was shot, but I do recall the prison
Speaker 1: guards or the Almeda County sheriffs who were making these
Speaker 1: comments as we were being released finally after about twenty
Speaker 1: four plus hours of being held, saying things like, oh,
Speaker 1: go have fun rioting and that sort of thing, and
Speaker 1: and we get out there and then hear about all
Speaker 1: the events that had happened over the course of the
Speaker 1: day that we had been locked up, of these people
Speaker 1: of folks in the thousands, just like you said, coming
Speaker 1: out to try and retake the space of running battles
Speaker 1: in the streets. I have so many friends and comrades
Speaker 1: who were telling stories about getting tear gassed, geting shot
Speaker 1: at with pepper balls, of Scott Wilson's devastating injury of
Speaker 1: getting shot in the head. It was violence that occurred
Speaker 1: outside the normal narrative of violence deployed by the police
Speaker 1: in Oakland, right, and so it made it exceptional, even
Speaker 1: though much more brutal violence occurs daily by the police
Speaker 1: in Oakland against primary the black black population in Oakland
Speaker 1: and and other people of color um. But we see
Speaker 1: a huge upswelling of outrage at the rate of the
Speaker 1: camp Um, outrage at the injury against Scott Wilson, and
Speaker 1: this ultimately the attempt to use force to quash a
Speaker 1: movement tremendously backfired against both the police and the city
Speaker 1: government in terms in terms of it building up even
Speaker 1: more support for Occupy Oakland and its efforts. I recall
Speaker 1: going to the General Assembly when the general strike was
Speaker 1: decided to be moved forward, when the proposal was made
Speaker 1: to have a general strike in a week, which was
Speaker 1: just seemed like a completely impossible notion and completely impractical,
Speaker 1: but also within the realm of the possible at the
Speaker 1: same time, because what had been going on, especially the
Speaker 1: response to people in terms of fighting against the police,
Speaker 1: in terms of taking back namcmon of basically winning against
Speaker 1: the government, winning against the police forces, reclaiming this space,
Speaker 1: um taking injuries, supporting one another through that process, it
Speaker 1: seems possible that we could pull up a general strike
Speaker 1: within a week. When it came around, it was clear
Speaker 1: that the word had been spread, that that energy that
Speaker 1: brought on that impulse to move forward with the general
Speaker 1: strike was still there a week later, and I would
Speaker 1: say that that day itself was a tremendous success. We
Speaker 1: had a hundred thousand people marching on the Port of Oakland,
Speaker 1: shutting it down. We had a day's worth of activities,
Speaker 1: everything that encapsulated Occupy Oakland. I feel like I found
Speaker 1: a home UM in particular on that day on November two. Again,
Speaker 1: we've been listening to Scott Campbell. Next we'll hear from Tova,
Speaker 1: who was involved in the Labor Solidarity Committee of Occupy Oakland,
Speaker 1: which worked to bring in labor unions into the organizing
Speaker 1: of the general strike. There were just masses of people
Speaker 1: down there at Oscar Career, at Plaza. Some of them
Speaker 1: were working on maintaining or re re establishing the different
Speaker 1: services that they had set up. I had been involved
Speaker 1: in labor struggles in the past back in Detroit when
Speaker 1: I was in the u a w. SO UM volunteered
Speaker 1: to work on the Labor Solidarity Committee to do the
Speaker 1: outreach to get support and participation of various unions, teamsters
Speaker 1: who played a very big role in in support UM
Speaker 1: for that general strike as well. And that I think
Speaker 1: it's the o e A, the Oakland Education Association as
Speaker 1: a teachers union, and they were very much involved in
Speaker 1: So was the s c IU, particularly the sci U,
Speaker 1: the City Workers, So the city workers were down there
Speaker 1: every day and saw what was going on. UM, and
Speaker 1: we're you know, very much involved and affected by it.
Speaker 1: You know, the teachers Union had, like you said, been
Speaker 1: involved with in support work before all the attacks by
Speaker 1: the police happened. UH. There was a lot of involvement
Speaker 1: beforehand as well, UM one or two Teamsters locals that
Speaker 1: were you know, supporting officially. They you know, it wasn't
Speaker 1: just their rank and file members, which had been great also,
Speaker 1: but you know, the we had support from one or
Speaker 1: two Teamsters locals and the i LW is primarily Local ten.
Speaker 1: The longshoreman whole proposal was to march down to the
Speaker 1: port UH and shut down the Port of Oakland. We
Speaker 1: had people involved from my LW. You although I'm pretty
Speaker 1: sure that the i LW Local ten officially was not
Speaker 1: involved in calling for that strike, but there were members
Speaker 1: who were involved in the i LW organization who were
Speaker 1: definitely involved in helping to plant and organize it as well.
Speaker 1: The Teamsters added some logistical support in terms of trucking
Speaker 1: and supplies and things like that. I think that the
Speaker 1: o e A the teachers also in addition to participation,
Speaker 1: donated supplies and things like that. So there was a
Speaker 1: lot of donations from the locals as well. We've been
Speaker 1: listening to Tova from the Occupy Oakland Labor Solidarity Committee,
Speaker 1: We're now going to take a short break and be
Speaker 1: right back. As the Oakland Commune and the Occupy movement
Speaker 1: faded into history, it helped inspire and inform a new
Speaker 1: generation of activists. As under Obama, we saw continued explosions
Speaker 1: in Ferguson, Baltimore, Minneapolis, and later at Standing Rock. By
Speaker 1: the time that Trump took office, autonomous resistance movements were
Speaker 1: bubbling beneath every surface. As airports were shut down against
Speaker 1: the Musli band, r It's broke out against the ault right,
Speaker 1: and thousands of teachers started striking across Appalachia. Donny Red,
Speaker 1: Ben Dennis and omage of the so called Redneck War
Speaker 1: of when striking coal miners engaged in grilla warfare with
Speaker 1: government troops and the Air Force dropped actual bombs on strikers.
Speaker 1: With the current uptick and strikes under Biden continuing into
Speaker 1: and the economic conditions of porn working people continuing to worsen,
Speaker 1: we asked labor reporter and author A Fight Like Hell,
Speaker 1: Kim Kelly, just what are the possibilities of mass strike
Speaker 1: action in the coming year? You know, I think we're
Speaker 1: in this really interesting moment where labor and workers and
Speaker 1: unions in general are getting a lot more attention than
Speaker 1: we're used to, and a lot of that attention is positive,
Speaker 1: and we have a lot of these big wins that
Speaker 1: we get to celebrate. We get to celebrate, you know,
Speaker 1: the workers at Staten Island, Amazon go on toe to
Speaker 1: toe of Jeff Bezos and the un election winning. We
Speaker 1: get to celebrate this ongoing wave of unionization efforts at
Speaker 1: Starbucks across the country, hundreds of Starbucks and unionized. We
Speaker 1: get to celebrate a lot of big wins. And they
Speaker 1: are also a lot of struggles that have been kind
Speaker 1: of set to this side, or not gotten as much
Speaker 1: attention as they deserve, or kind of written off. I
Speaker 1: think that's always the dichotomy of the labor movement in general,
Speaker 1: right because it's so big almost everyone is a part
Speaker 1: of it, whether or not they like to think of
Speaker 1: themselves that way. You know, I've been covering this coal
Speaker 1: minor strike in Alabama since April one. They're still out there.
Speaker 1: They have not gotten very much attention. They're kind of
Speaker 1: stuck in a stalemate at the bargaining table because the
Speaker 1: bosses want to starve them out. And this is Alabama,
Speaker 1: where workers in or outside the prison walls do not
Speaker 1: have very many rights, do not have any politicians on
Speaker 1: their side. They're struggling and they're still out there. And
Speaker 1: that's kind of the flip side of these big, energetic,
Speaker 1: inspiring moments in labor right where we have these winds,
Speaker 1: and we also have folks that are being left a
Speaker 1: slog or being ignored entirely, like the folks that we're
Speaker 1: going to see very soon in Pennsylvania who are going
Speaker 1: to be launching a strike and side the Department of Corrections.
Speaker 1: I hope that gets a lot of attention. I mean,
Speaker 1: we saw a similar effort by a carce rated workers
Speaker 1: in Alabama a couple of months ago, and that got
Speaker 1: a lot of attention. And I'm really hoping that this
Speaker 1: kind of renewed interest in labor and workers rights and
Speaker 1: then discussing even topics like prison slavery, in topics like
Speaker 1: forced labor, incarcerated work, and different types of work. I
Speaker 1: really hope that benefits these workers as they embark on
Speaker 1: their action. But we'll see, you know, like I am
Speaker 1: very interested to see perhaps the limits of this public
Speaker 1: support for labor actions. Is it easier to support a
Speaker 1: barista than it is to support a coal miner and
Speaker 1: incarcerated worker. There's all these different pieces that go into
Speaker 1: this moment. And I love being possy. I love seeing
Speaker 1: workers win and workers organized and strike and protest, and
Speaker 1: I also like keeping an eye out for the folks
Speaker 1: who aren't getting as much intention and aren' getting as
Speaker 1: much support and thinking about why that is. So it's
Speaker 1: kind of a long, rambly answer to say, I am
Speaker 1: cautiously optimistic, and I really hope that all of the
Speaker 1: people who have thankfully and you know, I'm I'm glad
Speaker 1: they're here, who have showed up in the past year
Speaker 1: in the media, the political class, whoever, regularly, regular people
Speaker 1: who have been paying attention to these these worker actions.
Speaker 1: I hope they keep that energy for this year, because
Speaker 1: we're going to need it, you know. Started we we've
Speaker 1: had a pretty good We're in a decent spot, and
Speaker 1: I really don't want to see a squander that. See.
Speaker 1: I think this moment with the Wildroad workers, I think
Speaker 1: that is something that's going to continue to resonate and
Speaker 1: reverberate out and I think that's going to have an
Speaker 1: impact the next time the Democratic part he says, hey,
Speaker 1: where the workers party like, you need to come vote
Speaker 1: for us and keep us in power, because well, we're
Speaker 1: the only ones who will protect you. Well will you
Speaker 1: did you? Were you there for us when we needed
Speaker 1: you or when we needed your help? No? You know,
Speaker 1: it just makes one wonder how much of the pro
Speaker 1: union uh sloganeering that that this administration loves to do,
Speaker 1: how much of it is pure public relations, how much
Speaker 1: of it is actually attached to whatever personal beliefs that
Speaker 1: Biden has, or if they just think it's politically expedient
Speaker 1: to you know, act as though where the we're pro union,
Speaker 1: we're pro worker, we're not going to pass any laws,
Speaker 1: we're not going to investigate any worker death at Amazon
Speaker 1: facilities are elsewhere, we're not going to use our power
Speaker 1: to help you. But we're not Republicans, So you know,
Speaker 1: it's um. I think it's going to be interesting to
Speaker 1: see how much the real words strike impacts people, because
Speaker 1: I think that the political calculus that the Biden administration
Speaker 1: did in choosing to crush the strike inside with the
Speaker 1: railroad bosses, I guess they figured, oh, well, it's not
Speaker 1: that big of a deal. Maybe not that many people
Speaker 1: are paying attention. We've got to make sure people get
Speaker 1: their Christmas presents on time. But a lot of folks
Speaker 1: were watching that. A lot of regular workers were watching
Speaker 1: that and thinking, oh so, if we were in that
Speaker 1: position at my job, the government would help us either.
Speaker 1: I think, you know, a lot of the chatter I
Speaker 1: saw from railroad workers, from other workers, just from people
Speaker 1: in generals like, oh so, okay, this was the big
Speaker 1: moment where Biden could have proved he cared about us,
Speaker 1: and instead he threw us under the bus straight onto
Speaker 1: the railroad tracks. And I don't think that's a surprise
Speaker 1: to people that are sort of paying more close attention
Speaker 1: to the way the state operates. But I think it
Speaker 1: was maybe a revelatory moment for folks who just sort
Speaker 1: of assumed, okay, like there's at least a little bit
Speaker 1: of benevolence at least, you know, democrats are in power.
Speaker 1: This guy says, hells unions, that should help us out
Speaker 1: a little bit. But seeing what happened there, I think
Speaker 1: it's going to be a profoundly disillusioning moment for a
Speaker 1: lot of people that maybe had a little bit more
Speaker 1: faith in the state or at least assumed it was
Speaker 1: sort of looking out for us. And I think that's
Speaker 1: gonna have an impact when you know, the Democratic Party
Speaker 1: comes back knocking on our doors and mostly asking for
Speaker 1: a vote in our support, because I mean you, we
Speaker 1: had a classic which side are you on moment and
Speaker 1: we saw which way they chose to go. We're gonna
Speaker 1: see more prolonged strikes, We're going to see more unfair
Speaker 1: labor practices, are going to see more organizing. I think
Speaker 1: that it is impossible to put this lightning back into
Speaker 1: a bottle. Right Like, activity and interest in unions and
Speaker 1: organizing is, if not skyrocketing, it's had a really nice
Speaker 1: little bump over the past few years, a noticeable improvement
Speaker 1: and a noticeable amount of new worker workplaces being organized
Speaker 1: and going on strike and fighting for their rights. Like,
Speaker 1: I don't think that's going away. And two of the
Speaker 1: aspects of this, this entire scenario that really interests me. First,
Speaker 1: the fact that we're seeing so many workers who some
Speaker 1: my categories as quote unquote white collar whatever, folks who
Speaker 1: work in nonprofits or at book publishers or journalism, other
Speaker 1: types of media kind of all of these other types
Speaker 1: of jobs that don't fit into that traditional manufacturing or
Speaker 1: extractive focused many more manual labor oriented jobs that I
Speaker 1: think a lot of people associate with the labor movement.
Speaker 1: They've been going on strike and they've been making big waves,
Speaker 1: whether it's the forty eight thousand grad student workers at
Speaker 1: the University of California or harperk HarperCollins Publishing workers currently
Speaker 1: still on strike in New York City. I think there's
Speaker 1: been kind of the shift in understanding of oh, Okay,
Speaker 1: you don't need to be a certain type of worker,
Speaker 1: or certain type of person, or come from a specific
Speaker 1: background in order to organize to join a union. Unions
Speaker 1: aren't just for the classic white guy in a hard
Speaker 1: hatch like my dad, right like, they're accessible to so
Speaker 1: many more of us than perhaps we thought, And I
Speaker 1: think that's going to be big because the work has shifted.
Speaker 1: Work looks different than it did thirty years ago. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of different ways to be exploited, and we
Speaker 1: know the employers have definitely looked into each and everyone
Speaker 1: and taken notes, So we have that happening. I think
Speaker 1: that's gonna continue propelling the energy behind this movement. And secondly,
Speaker 1: I'm really intrigued by the rise, and that's it's a
Speaker 1: smaller phenomenon, but it is very much happening, and it
Speaker 1: is kind of increasing slowly the exist, this existence of
Speaker 1: independent unions, because we saw, of course the Amazon Labor Union.
Speaker 1: They're the big ones, They've gotten tons of attention, deservedly so.
Speaker 1: But there are also efforts Trader Joe's Trade Jo's United
Speaker 1: as an independent union. Chipotle workers formed an independent union.
Speaker 1: There was an effort here in Philadelphia to form a
Speaker 1: Home Depot workers independent union, and that one wasn't successful,
Speaker 1: but I'm certain that the organizer has not given up
Speaker 1: and they're still going to keep working on that. Like
Speaker 1: and I think seeing these independent unions which are not
Speaker 1: affiliated with other internationals, are not part of the fl
Speaker 1: C oh there literally just d I Y you know.
Speaker 1: Thence the fact that we're seeing this happen. I think
Speaker 1: it just shows the cracks in the current labor movements
Speaker 1: as it stands, and especially in the way that power
Speaker 1: is concentrated and the way that resources are organized, in
Speaker 1: the way that the movement's priorities in terms of public
Speaker 1: statements and political power are kind of dictated by folks
Speaker 1: who tend to be more conservative, and I mean that
Speaker 1: in like a Democrat way and not like you know,
Speaker 1: Republican chaos, but just more conservative compared to a lot
Speaker 1: of the rank and file, like we see with the
Speaker 1: railroad workers that rejected rejected that deal that so many
Speaker 1: of their leaders agreed on. You know, I think there's
Speaker 1: more radicalism brewing in the rank and file and more
Speaker 1: militancy that and it's it's manifesting in different ways. It's
Speaker 1: manifesting and wildcatch strikes or an independent unions, or in
Speaker 1: organizing outside of the traditional organized labor structure in general,
Speaker 1: like what sex workers and incarcerated workers are doing and
Speaker 1: have been doing. I think ultimately the bottom line is
Speaker 1: that a lot of workers, a lot of people have
Speaker 1: realized that they have options, and they're exercising their rights
Speaker 1: to organize and to work collectively and to stand with
Speaker 1: their fellow workers against the bosses and against capital in
Speaker 1: ways that you know, perhaps wouldn't have felt as available
Speaker 1: or seemed as possible a few years ago, but now
Speaker 1: there's so many examples of other workers doing it. Of
Speaker 1: course have been there throughout history too, like I read
Speaker 1: about my book, but I think we're at this moment
Speaker 1: where people realize, Okay, there are a lot of different
Speaker 1: ways to do this. I have people with me, we
Speaker 1: have problems we need to address. Let's see what works.
Speaker 1: You know, it's not just picking up the phone and
Speaker 1: calling a union organizer, though that works for some folks, too,
Speaker 1: is recognizing the problems we face in our workplace, in
Speaker 1: our experience, and deciding together what we want to do,
Speaker 1: how we want to go forward, and how we're going
Speaker 1: to win. Once again, that was Kim Kelly, author of
Speaker 1: Philight Hell. Over the past two episodes, we've taken a
Speaker 1: deep dive into the history of general strikes in the
Speaker 1: United States, looking at everything from the mass strike of
Speaker 1: Enslave plantation workers during the Civil War all the way
Speaker 1: up to current examples during Occupy Oakland. I think one
Speaker 1: of the things history has to offer us as a
Speaker 1: guide for the present is that these upheavals are made
Speaker 1: possible not only by people responding to material conditions, but
Speaker 1: also learning from struggle. In the instance of the Great Upheaval,
Speaker 1: that general strike came after a series of other smaller strikes.
Speaker 1: This fall, thousands of prisoners across Alabama organized a general
Speaker 1: strike of incarcerated workers, downing their tools and refusing to
Speaker 1: work their jobs, bringing the prisons to a grinding halt.
Speaker 1: This historic strike comes on the heels of many other
Speaker 1: prisoner led strike actions in two thousand ten, two thousand sixteen,
Speaker 1: in two thousand eighteen, not to mention the fact that
Speaker 1: many Alabama prisoners saw themselves as acting in the spirit
Speaker 1: of the Great Plantation Strike during the Civil War, as
Speaker 1: epitomized by the strike slogan let the crops rought in
Speaker 1: the field in my final thoughts, instead of putting our
Speaker 1: hopes in a call for a general strike going viral,
Speaker 1: as the same goes, we have to walk before we
Speaker 1: can run. So strengthening our ability to engage in collective
Speaker 1: direct action and active refusal, as well as building our
Speaker 1: capacity for community self defense and mobilizing against state violence
Speaker 1: and oppression and whatever form, will ultimately allow us to
Speaker 1: expand and grow our ability to do these things in
Speaker 1: the future. A lot of times we're told that like
Speaker 1: we're powerless and were these passive beings and creatures, and
Speaker 1: we have to wait for somebody to order anizes. But
Speaker 1: every single day we wake up in the morning and
Speaker 1: we make capitalism happen like we do it like all
Speaker 1: of us, every single one of us, does it like
Speaker 1: this is not like, oh, like this is just something
Speaker 1: that's happening to us, we're doing to ourselves. We're doing
Speaker 1: it to each other. Like these are little things that
Speaker 1: we can do, like little acts of resistance. And I'm
Speaker 1: all about petty resistance because I do realize that a
Speaker 1: lot of people don't have time for the large resistances.
Speaker 1: So this is for anybody who's like, yeah, I hate capitalism,
Speaker 1: but I just don't have the breath on the space
Speaker 1: and the time to necessarily like go out and do things.
Speaker 1: If you can't, please do it. You can't like walk
Speaker 1: the funk out do But if you can't, like there's
Speaker 1: still stuff you can do. That's it for me. By
Speaker 1: you know which strikes me often about general strikes are
Speaker 1: two things. First is that general strikes actually function very
Speaker 1: differently than they do in leftist discourse. Like in leftist
Speaker 1: discourse it's workers do general strikes. But in reality, if
Speaker 1: we really look at general strikes, there these moments of convergence. Right,
Speaker 1: there's these these sort of points in which distinctions break down, Right,
Speaker 1: the distinction between like organizers and everyone else, or the
Speaker 1: distinction between workers and non workers completely breakdown. Right, It's
Speaker 1: not just railroad workers don't strike in eighteen seventy seven,
Speaker 1: is also their families, their neighbors, their whole communities on strike.
Speaker 1: And this the second thing that that raises often for
Speaker 1: me is again this kind of long term cultural implications
Speaker 1: of that sort of form of action. So growing up
Speaker 1: in a place where you know, strike culture is a thing,
Speaker 1: um still where there's still actual union density and people
Speaker 1: do walk off the job. Um, you grow up with
Speaker 1: that as an idea, right that you don't just walk
Speaker 1: off the job, But like the restaurant around the corner
Speaker 1: also gives out free food, and people bring coffee down
Speaker 1: to the picket line, and you know, workers from other
Speaker 1: unions show up the block entrances because the judge said
Speaker 1: you can, you know, so on so on, and it
Speaker 1: becomes this huge community initiative of autonomy and self defense.
Speaker 1: And what that creates is a sense in which class
Speaker 1: struggle is perpetual. Like you understand always when you grow
Speaker 1: up in a place like that, But when you go
Speaker 1: to work, you're making somebody else money because you've been
Speaker 1: told that your whole life right, and that if you
Speaker 1: get angry about that, that what you're supposed to do
Speaker 1: is organize and go on strike. And that's a very
Speaker 1: normal sort of narrative. That was because we all grew
Speaker 1: up in families where we were taught to do that.
Speaker 1: That if the wealthy we're taking advantage of you, you
Speaker 1: just leave. Right. That is not a normal thing outside
Speaker 1: of the rest of the America, right, Like, people don't
Speaker 1: get brought up with that. But I think as we're
Speaker 1: starting to see this kind of rise of the idea
Speaker 1: of the general strike, and we're starting to understand that
Speaker 1: is something that's not just connected to employment, but we
Speaker 1: can start to think of general strikes as social strikes
Speaker 1: and not just economic strikes. We can start to understand like,
Speaker 1: even if those may immediately not succeed, the long term
Speaker 1: impacts of those over time really create the conditions for
Speaker 1: them to succeed later. And if it hadn't been for
Speaker 1: that flame staying alive, I think in parts of America,
Speaker 1: this wave of worker action wouldn't be happening. There wouldn't
Speaker 1: be a foundation for it, there wouldn't be a way
Speaker 1: on your standard right um. And that's what's so critical
Speaker 1: about this moment is I think in some ways we're
Speaker 1: almost reviving a thing that my grandparents lived in the
Speaker 1: midst of just as a very normal part of their lives.
Speaker 1: I think that's like a really important piece about the survival.
Speaker 1: And I think that something that feels really important about
Speaker 1: general strikes is the idea of like solidarity and that
Speaker 1: our liberation is collective, you know, that it involves each other.
Speaker 1: And I think that, um, I feel like what happened
Speaker 1: between like what you're saying some about you, like your
Speaker 1: grandparents generation and now is like near liberalism in a
Speaker 1: lot of ways, and just like this really strong promotion
Speaker 1: of the idea of like individualism and that if you
Speaker 1: want to make your life better you have to do
Speaker 1: it yourself, and like it's down to you as an individual.
Speaker 1: But I think it was pretty effective at decimating a
Speaker 1: lot of ideas of like solidarity or the idea that
Speaker 1: I like, freedom is with each other, um. And I
Speaker 1: think that that is starting to fall apart, Like people
Speaker 1: are realizing however much they hustle or like have side
Speaker 1: hustles or whatever, they're still fucked. And just like I
Speaker 1: think that we're seeing like there's sergeants of this idea
Speaker 1: of like solidarity and that we have to do together.
Speaker 1: That is going to do it for us this week.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for tuning in. Check us out
Speaker 1: on Macedon at I g D Underscore News, and be
Speaker 1: sure to tune in as the workers that It Could
Speaker 1: Happen Here into their two day strike and return to
Speaker 1: the job. But stay tuned. We'll be back next week
Speaker 1: for even more episodes. Until then, Hey, We'll be back
Speaker 1: Monday with more episodes every week from now until the
Speaker 1: heat death of the Universe. It Could Happen Here is
Speaker 1: a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from
Speaker 1: cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zone media dot com,
Speaker 1: or check us out on the I Heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can
Speaker 1: find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated monthly at
Speaker 1: cool zone media dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening