Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, Robert Evans here and I wanted to let
Speaker 1: you know this is a completion 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. Hi. Everyone, it's just me today,
Speaker 1: James again, and I'm talking today with my friend Billy
Speaker 1: Billy Ford. Billy is a program off SIR for the
Speaker 1: Burma team at the United States Institute of Peace. And
Speaker 1: do you want to say hello Billy James. Hi, thanks
Speaker 1: for tuning it. Yeah, thanks for joining us without a
Speaker 1: decent introduction. If I summed up right, what you do
Speaker 1: get I want to get that wrong. So people will
Speaker 1: have heard Billy before and heard from Billy when we
Speaker 1: finished our last series on them, where we spoke about
Speaker 1: the funding that the pdfc using and how they're using
Speaker 1: a lot of unique and really innovative methods to continue
Speaker 1: to support their revolution when they're not getting very much
Speaker 1: at all in the way of international support, and certainly
Speaker 1: nothing compared to countries like Ukraine. But what we wanted
Speaker 1: to talk a little bit about today was the s
Speaker 1: A C or the Hunter's attempts at kind of staging
Speaker 1: a sham election, which they've sort of backed off on.
Speaker 1: Can you explain a little bit about what they had
Speaker 1: proposed and then what they maybe what they're doing now, right, yeah, UM.
Speaker 1: So the expectation was upon UM instigating the coupe February
Speaker 1: f that UM the state of emergency would end on
Speaker 1: UM February first, which was two days ago, UM, giving
Speaker 1: them six months after that, uh, that period to kind
Speaker 1: of undertake an election. And so the expectation was that
Speaker 1: before August one, there would be this sort of shame
Speaker 1: UM electoral process UM, and the the Hunter would essentially
Speaker 1: structure of the process in such way that they they're there,
Speaker 1: their political party, the U s DP, would prevail UM,
Speaker 1: and that the Commander in Chief men online who runs
Speaker 1: the HUNTA would ascend as he had dreamed to become
Speaker 1: the president of the country and kind of rule in
Speaker 1: a military dictatorship model, but under kind of these auspices
Speaker 1: of civilian governance. So that was the expectation. But things
Speaker 1: have changed, as you kind of alluded to. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: they've they've said they got to extend for another six months.
Speaker 1: Who's that right, that's right. UM, So they said they
Speaker 1: would extend for another six months until August first. UM.
Speaker 1: But then this morning they also announced a new political, Economic,
Speaker 1: and Social objectives which includes a five point road map UM, which,
Speaker 1: for those of you who have been following m R
Speaker 1: for some time, is often the way that they frame
Speaker 1: there UM kind of sham and circuitous approaches to civilian governance. UM.
Speaker 1: But UM that articulates a series of reforms, restoring law
Speaker 1: and order, you know, social development, implementing a peace process,
Speaker 1: and then holding elections UM. And this is I think
Speaker 1: indicates to most people that elections are very unlikely to
Speaker 1: occur any time in the near future. UM. They did
Speaker 1: something almost identical in two thousand and four articulating a
Speaker 1: roadmap to democracy, and that didn't really start until two
Speaker 1: thousand and ten, UM, where when there were elections and
Speaker 1: there weren't really meaningful ones until UM. This is kind
Speaker 1: of an indication to I think a lot of folks
Speaker 1: that UM, elections are unlikely this year and that there's
Speaker 1: kind of a long road ahead. UH. The interesting element
Speaker 1: of this will be to see how the the hunter's
Speaker 1: kind of enablers in the international community, including Thailand, China,
Speaker 1: and India in particular, how they will respond, in part
Speaker 1: because they were pushing the SAC very hard to undertake
Speaker 1: these elections as a potential off ramp to the horrifying
Speaker 1: violence that is UM that resulted from the coup and um,
Speaker 1: you know, all the atrocities that the SEC has committed.
Speaker 1: Maybe we could talk a little bit about the the
Speaker 1: international support they have, because it's still quite significant and
Speaker 1: like especially in terms of propping up their military force
Speaker 1: through the use of air power they can and they
Speaker 1: don't have domestic like fighter yet manufacturing, right, So can
Speaker 1: you talk a little bit about that, Like I think
Speaker 1: they received a couple more planes very recently, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: from um the Chinese. UM. Yeah. There. It's kind of
Speaker 1: an interesting dynamic whereby you have a an entire country
Speaker 1: of fifty three ish million p bowl UM fighting against
Speaker 1: a tiny military institution of about five thousand or fewer
Speaker 1: UM if you include their families and all the medics, UM,
Speaker 1: and that tiny institution is being supported by just a
Speaker 1: handful of countries UM. As I said, kind of China Russia, UH,
Speaker 1: to a certain agree, Indian and Thailand UM and a
Speaker 1: few others UM. And the vast majority of the world
Speaker 1: is kind of opposes this military takeover and the subsequent
Speaker 1: dictatorship and all the her indoc atrocities that they've committed. UM.
Speaker 1: And so there's quite a lot of international actors who
Speaker 1: are providing kind of UM rhetorical support to the resistance
Speaker 1: and some you know, support to civil society and humanitarian
Speaker 1: assistance and others. But you know, on balance, the support
Speaker 1: that the Chinese, Indians, Russians in particular UM have provided
Speaker 1: in terms of material assistance to the s A c UM,
Speaker 1: as well as the diplomatic assistance that the Chinese provide
Speaker 1: at the secure the Council in particular, but also the
Speaker 1: Ties provide UM with an ascion, is you know for
Speaker 1: outweighs the rhetorical and small material assistance at the West
Speaker 1: and UM. You know other supporters of the resistance movement
Speaker 1: have provided UM. So Yes, to answer your question, the
Speaker 1: you know, the Chinese and Indians continue to provide material
Speaker 1: military assistance to the s A c UM. And you know,
Speaker 1: my question is kind of what is there theory of
Speaker 1: change here and how will UM supporting the sac militarily
Speaker 1: lead to anything like stabilization. It's just kind of perplexing
Speaker 1: to me when both countries are very UM interested in
Speaker 1: in in supporting UH a level of functional stability so
Speaker 1: they can undertake their economic and geopolitical objectives UM, many
Speaker 1: of which go through my Mr UM. I just don't
Speaker 1: really understand how they see kind of a military victory Bray,
Speaker 1: the s A c is a pathway to stabilization when
Speaker 1: you have an entire nation that has risen up against
Speaker 1: UH the dictatorship and has wholly rejected it and demonstrated
Speaker 1: that they're willing to make the these incredible sacrifices to
Speaker 1: UM to ensure that this coup does not succeed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is. It's very perplexing because like it's not in
Speaker 1: in any sort of conventional sense like a consolidated regime
Speaker 1: and no show any chance of being one. Right, Like,
Speaker 1: it doesn't even have territorial control of a large sways
Speaker 1: of the country that they claims. Yeah, exactly, and you're
Speaker 1: you're even hearing this. I mean, there's been quite a
Speaker 1: bit of research, contested research that that shows the HUNTA
Speaker 1: has less than fifty control, but even today you are differ.
Speaker 1: Yesterday you heard from an online the the Hunter Leader
Speaker 1: UM that he's now admitting that they um only have
Speaker 1: sixty percent control, which is a pretty sangular analysis of
Speaker 1: what they control. Um, it's probably much smaller than that.
Speaker 1: But you know, them demonstrating that they do not have
Speaker 1: UM control over of the country as a pretty staggering
Speaker 1: proposition and kind of indication to their allies that, UM,
Speaker 1: you know, they just don't have the capacity to administer
Speaker 1: a country that's unwilling to be pacified and um so
Speaker 1: and and you know, on top of that, there's very
Speaker 1: little I just don't see a pathway in which they
Speaker 1: will capture more territory. UM. I mean they have, you know,
Speaker 1: constrained resources. Um they have. I think they had twenty
Speaker 1: two entrants into the Defense Service Academy last year. I
Speaker 1: mean there's when they when there's casualties on the front lines,
Speaker 1: you just there's not a lot of replacement happening. UM,
Speaker 1: they're not able to get spare parts for their Russian
Speaker 1: made helicopters. You know, there's just major material constraints that
Speaker 1: the s a c. S. Military is facing, and it's
Speaker 1: just hard to imagine that they will ever regained much
Speaker 1: more than you know, what they say is territorial control. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's very if Then if we look at the
Speaker 1: PDF by comparison, and I got banned from Twitter last
Speaker 1: week for posting a picture of them, but it's there.
Speaker 1: Their equipment compared to even a year ago, is vastly improved.
Speaker 1: Like I don't know if you saw the one group
Speaker 1: of guys with it actually international rifle, but I have
Speaker 1: no idea where that came from, but it it's very
Speaker 1: impressive that they have one. Yeah, yeah, it's kind of um. Honestly,
Speaker 1: the resilience of this movement is partly a testament to
Speaker 1: the ingenuity and innovation UM. I mean we saw it
Speaker 1: in the beginning in the non violent action, demonstrating or
Speaker 1: kind of deploying tactics that we've never seen before that
Speaker 1: have you know, been lessons to other international non violent
Speaker 1: movements around the world, just really creative fundraising tactics, as
Speaker 1: you and I have discussed in the past. But yeah,
Speaker 1: now it's the military ingenuity. I mean essentially creating UM
Speaker 1: facilities for retrofitting drones for aerial attacks. Um. One of
Speaker 1: the military's helicopters was taken down this morning. I haven't
Speaker 1: I don't know exactly what weapons were used in that,
Speaker 1: but you know, it's just kind of a level of
Speaker 1: innovation given that these you know, the PDFs and most
Speaker 1: of the eras have have very little access to very
Speaker 1: few um kind of international um, you know, arms markets.
Speaker 1: So the fact that they're able to sustain themselves at
Speaker 1: all and maintain this, you know, which is probably much
Speaker 1: more um of the territory is is kind of an
Speaker 1: incredible testament to their innovation ingenuity. Yeah, it's this a
Speaker 1: couple obviously of several PDF fighters who I keep in
Speaker 1: touch with, and like they they've spoken to me about
Speaker 1: like first or three D printed guns, which we've spoken
Speaker 1: about extentively, but also torna CA's night vision goal goals,
Speaker 1: even process is like like limbs people who have lost legs,
Speaker 1: right to land, minds and things. So like, it's amazing
Speaker 1: that they've set up all these things which normally require
Speaker 1: like a massive interaction with the state and with an
Speaker 1: international system, and they've done it using in this case,
Speaker 1: the Internet and a three hundred dollar printer. They've got
Speaker 1: an early Express or something. Yeah, it's incredible, Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's extremely sort of inspiration on that sense, but also
Speaker 1: very sad like I want to talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about the s a C seems to have It's not
Speaker 1: fair to say they've pivoted to war crimes, because it's
Speaker 1: been kind of integral to what they've done from the outset,
Speaker 1: but they seem to have given up on trying to
Speaker 1: make like targeted strikes against the military formations and just
Speaker 1: pivoted to dropping bombs on civilians. Could you talk about
Speaker 1: a couple of those, like maybe we could talk about
Speaker 1: the Kitchin music cultural festival that they bombed, or well
Speaker 1: one of the other examples of that. Yeah, there's definitely
Speaker 1: been a ship if from UM a strategy of essentially
Speaker 1: augmenting UM or providing air support to UH kind of
Speaker 1: exposed frontline light infantry to a tactic of targeted air
Speaker 1: strikes against civilian targets and against UM armed organization headquarters
Speaker 1: which had UM under previous UM negotiations been deemed like
Speaker 1: off limits, but UM it seems as if there's nothing
Speaker 1: off limits now. They bombed UM the Chin National Front's headquarters,
Speaker 1: which is right on the India Chin border, UM on
Speaker 1: the western part of the mr UM and there's pretty
Speaker 1: reliable accounts that there were UM, there were bombs that
Speaker 1: landed in Indian territory. UM. I mean, as you reference,
Speaker 1: they there was a bombing in um a Chin state
Speaker 1: on a on a festival, killing least sixty civilians. They've
Speaker 1: done something similar on um Uh ethnic armed organization headquarters
Speaker 1: in the southeastern current territories, including the our acount of
Speaker 1: armies facilities in those areas. So there has been a
Speaker 1: shift in tactic to UM targeting headquarters facilities in that sense,
Speaker 1: and as you said, kind of civilian targets to I
Speaker 1: don't know, you know, this is just the modus operandi
Speaker 1: of an institution that is devoid of humanity and UM
Speaker 1: so alienated from society that they you know, they're they're
Speaker 1: willing to go to any ends to kind of protect
Speaker 1: themselves and their control of power. I think, particularly now
Speaker 1: that they've seen that the public is against them, and
Speaker 1: UM probably quite concerned that if they are unsuccessful in
Speaker 1: this military endeavor that they will be kind of strung up,
Speaker 1: you know. So it's UM, I think it's kind of
Speaker 1: a sign of desperation and as you mentioned, kind of
Speaker 1: a tactical shift. Maybe we should explain the sort of
Speaker 1: four cut strategy which has been a long term strategy
Speaker 1: even before the coup of the military, and what that
Speaker 1: means and how that sort of provide I guess, I
Speaker 1: don't know, like a moral framework, maybe a certain way
Speaker 1: that you know that it's it's not like they started
Speaker 1: doing this ship in February one, right like that, this
Speaker 1: is what this is how they do stuff. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is an institution that's been at war with its
Speaker 1: own people for seventy years. Um. Yeah, I mean the
Speaker 1: there is an underlying philosophy of the more military that
Speaker 1: that they essentially are the protectors of national sovereignty and
Speaker 1: to a certain degree of protectors of the Bomar ethnic
Speaker 1: group and Bomar Buddhism in particular. And um, this is
Speaker 1: a deeply in trance philosophy within the UM military establishment.
Speaker 1: And UM it's been to a certain degree of fairly
Speaker 1: compelling narrative for retention and institutional solidarity, which is why
Speaker 1: in some part I mean, it's one of the reasons
Speaker 1: there are a number why this the s A C.
Speaker 1: And the the sit that memory military is has been
Speaker 1: resilient to UM collapse, despite you know, being extremely incompetent
Speaker 1: and UM very isolated UM and virtually never having one
Speaker 1: a war despite being at war for seventy years and
Speaker 1: having structural and military a vantages UM. And so this
Speaker 1: is kind of underlying the justification and the moral philosophy
Speaker 1: of this institution that is morally UM corrupted. But as
Speaker 1: you said, their UM tactical strategy is essentially one of
Speaker 1: social isolation, division UM and ensuring as much human suffering
Speaker 1: as possible so as to UM pacify a population into
Speaker 1: submissi sh in. And so essentially the strategy is to
Speaker 1: kind of cut communications and food supply and um uh
Speaker 1: connections between communities and these sorts of things, which is UM.
Speaker 1: For for a very long time, the military strategy has
Speaker 1: been one of divide and conquer, in which they've UM
Speaker 1: attempted to exacerbate divisions between ethnic and religious minority communities
Speaker 1: to ensure that they would not face a united front.
Speaker 1: And so the incredible challenge and opportunity of the current
Speaker 1: resistance movement is one in which the MIAM or military
Speaker 1: is no longer at the table in conversations with one
Speaker 1: another UM, and they are trying to build cohesion with
Speaker 1: one another and Frankly, this is where there's unbelievable progress
Speaker 1: that I don't think it's enough attention and appreciation that
Speaker 1: there's meaningful changes in behavior in terms of the bomar
Speaker 1: majority of the communities, posture towards ethnic and religious minorities,
Speaker 1: and you know, communication and coordination across um institutions that
Speaker 1: had historically been at odds and happy to go more
Speaker 1: into that, but yeah, the strategy of divide and conqueror
Speaker 1: is really front and center. Yeah, and ironically, by pushing
Speaker 1: that so high that they've they've done the complete opposite,
Speaker 1: which is forced people to form like a popular front
Speaker 1: against them. Yeah, let's talk about that, because I find
Speaker 1: it really fascinating how like even how like e A
Speaker 1: O s and PDFs are kind of vaguely underneath a
Speaker 1: unified command at this point. And again, let's talk about
Speaker 1: how those barriers which existed for so long a sort
Speaker 1: of gradually breaking down now yeah, rapidly. I guess one
Speaker 1: of the ways in which there's been a meaningful shift
Speaker 1: has been just kind of the individual experiences of the
Speaker 1: military's atrocities. I mean, um, I think in your previous
Speaker 1: episode with Gantomo, he had indicated that ps uh. You know,
Speaker 1: public perception of Rohenja has shifted somewhat, although it's kind
Speaker 1: of questionable whether it's a durable shift and whether it's
Speaker 1: meaningful and all that. But um. He had attributed that
Speaker 1: shift in part to the fact that the Bomar majority
Speaker 1: Buddhist population is now experiencing frankly, some of the forms
Speaker 1: of atrocity that the Rohenja had experienced, you know, in
Speaker 1: the seventies and the nineties and then in seventeen UM
Speaker 1: when things escalated to genocide. So I think this is
Speaker 1: one of the shifts, is that the in the Burmese heartland,
Speaker 1: in the area where the military recruits most of its soldiers, um,
Speaker 1: they are undertaking the most arguably the most um extreme atrocities,
Speaker 1: burning villages to the ground, um, you know, just horrendous
Speaker 1: stuff that like I don't even want to say on
Speaker 1: the air, but just um, you know, just an incredible
Speaker 1: campaign of terror. Um. In part because the people's defense
Speaker 1: forces and the resistance forces are are extremely strong there
Speaker 1: and only strengthening and respond to these atrocities. So I
Speaker 1: think that's one of the dynamics is that there's um,
Speaker 1: there's been a shift in perception because of UM, because
Speaker 1: of the Hunter's behavior. Another is that, frankly, there's just
Speaker 1: a massive political shift at play. I mean, you have,
Speaker 1: you know, February one, the National League, like Nationally for
Speaker 1: Democracy Led Government is deposed and they don't necessarily have
Speaker 1: arms or an experience of military combat, whereas the ethnic
Speaker 1: armed organizations have been fighting for seventy years against the
Speaker 1: central government, including the National League for Democracy Led Government.
Speaker 1: And so there is a shift in power at that
Speaker 1: moment um that you know, shift power from the BAMAR
Speaker 1: Center to ethnic minority communities in a in a particular way.
Speaker 1: So UM, that kind of open space for greater humility
Speaker 1: and greater dialogue and UM, you know, willingness to make
Speaker 1: concessions to ethnic and religious mi arty communities. UM. And
Speaker 1: that isn't there's actually been tremendous progress there. So there's
Speaker 1: the National Unity Consultative Council, which is you know, probably
Speaker 1: the most important dialogue platform, but one one that is
Speaker 1: very focused on big picture governance challenges UM and long
Speaker 1: term kind of national dialogue processes. But UM, there's been
Speaker 1: some good progress there. But frankly, the most progress has
Speaker 1: been made in UM military and governance coordination platforms. So
Speaker 1: this includes the C three C, which is essentially a
Speaker 1: command of control platform that's between the National Unity government
Speaker 1: and ethnic armed organization leadership where they're coordinating military strategy
Speaker 1: and tactics. So that and there's been considerable trust building
Speaker 1: through those sorts of operations. And similarly, there's been trust
Speaker 1: building in you know, basic things like coordinating humanitarian assistance
Speaker 1: or UM local administration or policing these sorts of things.
Speaker 1: UM where there's UM, you know, there's a problem that's
Speaker 1: needs to be solved in the near term, and we
Speaker 1: can come together to solve it collaboratively and in that
Speaker 1: process sort of build understanding and trust with one another.
Speaker 1: So UM, there's been really meaningful differences I've seen in
Speaker 1: terms of cohesion across traditional lines of intercommunal division. UM.
Speaker 1: Obviously a long way to go, but this is a
Speaker 1: lot of what what we're working on at the U
Speaker 1: S and stitutent piece and UM that the U S
Speaker 1: Government is supporting is trying to support the resistance capacity
Speaker 1: to chart a viable pathway to stabilization, and a lot
Speaker 1: of that relies upon building cohesion and trust among resistance groups. Yeah,
Speaker 1: everyone I spoke to maybe not everyone I spoke to
Speaker 1: is Mama, some people Karen UM, and some of them
Speaker 1: were some of the people we've spoken to that remotely
Speaker 1: or ranger. UM. All of them said that what has
Speaker 1: to come out of this is like a federalized democracy.
Speaker 1: Do you think that that's that's likely? And what does
Speaker 1: that look like in the country it's been a war
Speaker 1: with itself for most of the century. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: clearly this is a question that needs to be answered
Speaker 1: by them people. UM. And I think the National Unity
Speaker 1: Consultative Council is a good platform for having this discussion.
Speaker 1: But there is a number of free requisits for for
Speaker 1: having that discussion is and one of them is kind
Speaker 1: of new norms of dialogue based on trust and mutual
Speaker 1: um respect. But yeah, I think that, um, the only
Speaker 1: viable pathway to stability is you know, is one that
Speaker 1: results in a federal democratic system in which subnational federal
Speaker 1: units have a degree of autonomy UM, and in which
Speaker 1: there is a baseline of equality. UM. There's rule of law,
Speaker 1: independent judiciary, UM. You know, just the basic fundamentals that
Speaker 1: ensure protections of minority populations. Uh. UM. You know. Another
Speaker 1: challenge being that even you know, within states like Kachin State,
Speaker 1: where you know, the Kachin at the community is an
Speaker 1: ethnic minority at the national level, but there are also
Speaker 1: subminorities that you know, like the Shawnee population, and and
Speaker 1: there's concerns that you know, there may um there needs
Speaker 1: to be productions for the minorities within the minority state.
Speaker 1: So you know, all of these things need to be
Speaker 1: sort of worked out. And this is of course like
Speaker 1: a maybe a decade long national dialogue process that will
Speaker 1: ultimately culminate in a new federal governance structure, a new
Speaker 1: security structure that you know, maybe doesn't have a federal
Speaker 1: you know, a union level military with the level of
Speaker 1: autonomy or political involvement that you know has played this
Speaker 1: country for so long. But this is really like the
Speaker 1: key to long term peace and stability in the country.
Speaker 1: And frankly, like it felt a long way off under
Speaker 1: the NLD administration. I mean, they were making a lot
Speaker 1: of progress in a lot of ways, but you know,
Speaker 1: building a just and inequitable governance structure in which ethnic
Speaker 1: and religious minorities had a voice and didn't feel oppressed
Speaker 1: by the dominant but mor Budhist population. Um. Frankfully, it
Speaker 1: was it was quite a ways off, and this, you know,
Speaker 1: as horrible as the coup has been, it is definitely
Speaker 1: a shock to the system that may open up new
Speaker 1: pathways for dialogue, um, new opportunities for trust building, and
Speaker 1: you know, the opportunity to you know, think about a
Speaker 1: new model of governance that is you know, more just
Speaker 1: more equitable and more inclusive. Yeah, it's definitely bought in
Speaker 1: a whole generation of younger people who like aren't sort
Speaker 1: of why didn't come through the institutions that created the
Speaker 1: old regime and just came at this. It's like I'm
Speaker 1: seventeen and I'm bucking angry and like, I'm going to
Speaker 1: make this better sort of however I can. And yeah,
Speaker 1: they're they're really, i mean obviously very inspirational and then
Speaker 1: fascinated to talk to I wonder, like, how do you
Speaker 1: see the end to this conflict? Because we're still a
Speaker 1: long way from either side having a definitive military victory. Right, Certainly,
Speaker 1: all these big cities are still more or less controlled
Speaker 1: by the Hunter, and that's there's not an immediate way
Speaker 1: that I can foresee them not being that way. So
Speaker 1: if I could ask you to like speculate a little
Speaker 1: bit or look at the way things are going. How
Speaker 1: do we get out of the situation where the hunters
Speaker 1: bombing schools and music concerts and right, um m hmm,
Speaker 1: it's yeah. This is honestly like I think everyone is
Speaker 1: kind of lost, um in our attempts to make predictions
Speaker 1: of where this is going. Um. Honestly, I don't know
Speaker 1: that there is a path to a military victory for
Speaker 1: either side here. UM. I mean it seems pretty unlikely
Speaker 1: that you'll SEEPDS marching on nepied on capturing the Ministry
Speaker 1: of Defense anytime soon. Um. But equally unlikely that the
Speaker 1: s a C will consolidate, you know, control of the country.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's just that's just not going to happen. UM.
Speaker 1: So I mean the the a lot of our work
Speaker 1: is thinking through the best postile outcomes and increasing the
Speaker 1: probably trying doing the work to try to increase the
Speaker 1: probability of those outcomes. And I think the um, this
Speaker 1: is where it's just like I have questions for a
Speaker 1: lot of the international actors that are supporting the s
Speaker 1: a C because I I just don't know of any
Speaker 1: possible pathway to peace and stabilization that goes through a
Speaker 1: stronger s a C. It just seems unfathomable. Um, But
Speaker 1: you know, there are pathways to stabilization that go through
Speaker 1: a stronger resistance movement that either yields some radical transformation
Speaker 1: of the SACS composition and then some sort of dialogue
Speaker 1: process UM or you know, just a very very extended
Speaker 1: uh um conflict in which you know, the resistance holds
Speaker 1: territory UM in some parts of the country, the SAC
Speaker 1: controls some other areas UM. Over an extended period, the
Speaker 1: ethnic armed organizations contain kind of UM act more and
Speaker 1: more autonomously. And you have areas in you know, Kachin
Speaker 1: and Wa Ho Kong and the Chinese border re kind
Speaker 1: state that kind of gained a bit more autonomy and
Speaker 1: sort of act more independently of one another. So like
Speaker 1: this sort of fragmentation process. And honestly, if if there
Speaker 1: is an election, you know, a sham election by the
Speaker 1: s a C, it seems to increase the probability of
Speaker 1: this fragmentation scenario. Um. You know, it increases the probability
Speaker 1: that the s a C just maintains its presence in
Speaker 1: the in the urban areas and then rekind state Kachin
Speaker 1: State Waw State, these kind of become more autonomous regions,
Speaker 1: Chin State, UM, and they start to operate as some
Speaker 1: independent states. So honestly, that's that's part of why I
Speaker 1: feel like support to the SAC. Not only is it
Speaker 1: sec for the elections, I should say, not only does
Speaker 1: it almost definitely increase violence because you know the elections
Speaker 1: are a target, but also it increases the probability of
Speaker 1: national fragmentation UM. And it doesn't do anything to increase
Speaker 1: the probability of stability. So I just don't I don't
Speaker 1: really see that that being a pathway to any form
Speaker 1: of stability or ending the SACS bombings of schools. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it gives them this way talking point bit
Speaker 1: at the Russian shamow elections in the dom Bass, like
Speaker 1: like because we saw like I think it was a
Speaker 1: mobi a PDFU. I don't know if you saw this,
Speaker 1: but they did a drive by and shot some people
Speaker 1: who were polling for it out doing some kind of
Speaker 1: election stuff, and obviously that gives them this kind of oh, look,
Speaker 1: our election workers are being attacked with terrible people. The
Speaker 1: PDFs a kind of but you know, if you've spent
Speaker 1: more than ten minutes your entire life reading about Miama,
Speaker 1: then you're realized that that's the false claim. The international
Speaker 1: community just just doesn't seem to care to a large
Speaker 1: degree about the trustees in Miama, about the revolution in Miama,
Speaker 1: about the cou and miam A certainly doesn't care in
Speaker 1: the same way that it cares about what's happening in Ukraine. Right,
Speaker 1: it doesn't care with man pads and tanks and guns
Speaker 1: and training and all the things that could bring this
Speaker 1: water an end much more quickly. Do you think that
Speaker 1: that will change or it's just going to be Burmese
Speaker 1: people liberating Burmese people because the world doesn't care about
Speaker 1: them or it doesn't care in a material fashion. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think there's like, yeah, I think there's um sort
Speaker 1: of like two dynamics that player. One is that, yeah,
Speaker 1: people care a lot less than Ukraine or Tiwan or
Speaker 1: other geopolitical interest. They see this to a certain level
Speaker 1: as a domestic issue that doesn't have regional implications, something
Speaker 1: that we're very focused on demonstrating is totally untrue. Um.
Speaker 1: And the other thing is that people don't know what
Speaker 1: to do. And like I mean, even um, the US
Speaker 1: Congress just past the Burma Act, which is a piece
Speaker 1: of legislation that essentially signals congressional interest in Burma and
Speaker 1: more to be done UM, alongside appropriations and resources to
Speaker 1: support it. UM. The challenge now is figuring out what
Speaker 1: is the best use of resources. And I think that
Speaker 1: UM countries like Japan and UM, honestly some U states,
Speaker 1: you know, Ascan states. It's more they are very uncomfortable
Speaker 1: with the engaging with revolutionary actors and there's just not
Speaker 1: a lot of certainty as to how to help because
Speaker 1: there's like, okay, military assistance UM to the end eu G.
Speaker 1: It's like there's a lot of concern that you know,
Speaker 1: you know, significant expansion of arms access in the countries.
Speaker 1: You know, you have this mass proliferation of weapons. You
Speaker 1: have you know, concerns about post conflict warlordism or weapons
Speaker 1: and resources getting into the hands of narco traffickers. UM.
Speaker 1: You know, there's just a lot of uncertainty, and so
Speaker 1: there's not an adequate given what the first point that
Speaker 1: this is really a kind of peripheral regional matter in
Speaker 1: the eyes of some UM. It yields a very low
Speaker 1: risk tolerance and uncertainty as to what to do. And
Speaker 1: so this kind of has resulted in a couple of things,
Speaker 1: one being that the buck is just passed to multilateral
Speaker 1: institutions like ACON. I mean, I think China has done
Speaker 1: a very effective job of ensuring nothing happens in the
Speaker 1: international realm UM by pushing it to ascon which it
Speaker 1: knows is incapable of doing anything meaning well. UM, and
Speaker 1: so it's just relegated to multilateral platforms where nothing will happen.
Speaker 1: You always have a veto from UM Highland Cambodia or
Speaker 1: Russia and China at the n S, at the Security
Speaker 1: Council UM, and so you know, it's these combinations of
Speaker 1: factors that really challenge this thing. And even within the
Speaker 1: U S. Government there's like a very robust inter agency
Speaker 1: debate about exactly what is the best form of assistance,
Speaker 1: what is the most ethical way of engaging and UM
Speaker 1: what are risks associated with different forms of assistance to
Speaker 1: the resistance movement UM. So I think that uncertainty plays
Speaker 1: a lot into it, and so UM a lot of
Speaker 1: what I think there's a lot of value that could
Speaker 1: be added if UM the resistance movement can come together,
Speaker 1: essentially around a common set of requests from the international community.
Speaker 1: Essentially saying this is what we need, um to be effective.
Speaker 1: And you know you, based on your risk tolerance, help
Speaker 1: us as you can. But we're demonstrating to you that
Speaker 1: we have we're unified in these ways, we have these needs,
Speaker 1: and um, you know, help us however you feel is
Speaker 1: most appropriate given your risk tolerance. So I don't know,
Speaker 1: it's incredibly complicated. I think them having China, India, Bangladesh,
Speaker 1: Thailand and Laos as your neighbors also makes this just
Speaker 1: incredibly challenging. You can't access the country in the way
Speaker 1: that you can um for Ukraine. Um, so just logistically,
Speaker 1: it's incredibly challenging. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, it does seem
Speaker 1: still like like you said, like it's like in Ukraine,
Speaker 1: we also have deeply problematic groups who we are, who
Speaker 1: we are arming, And yeah, it's it's ironic that their
Speaker 1: concern is spreading the preventing the proliferation in arms, and
Speaker 1: what they've done is helped like a giant leap forward
Speaker 1: in I don't artisanal homemade weapons technology, like we're probably
Speaker 1: only seeing the very tip of and like our reporting, like,
Speaker 1: I'm sure that's more stuff that we'll see as time
Speaker 1: goes on. And but I wonder what can people do?
Speaker 1: People often ask like if where they can donate, how
Speaker 1: they can help, right, because obviously it is extremely difficult
Speaker 1: to see little kids getting shot in schools and want
Speaker 1: to do something. And I wonder what you would suggest
Speaker 1: for people who are looking to help. We've both spoken
Speaker 1: to people who are collecting money through click to donate,
Speaker 1: which is one thing people can do. But um, do
Speaker 1: you want to explain that, actually explain how people can
Speaker 1: and can participate in click to donate? I think that's cool. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean there's been a number of really fascinating fundraising models. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the click to notating model is essentially the resistance leveraging
Speaker 1: what it has um a comparative advantage in which is
Speaker 1: huge numbers of people on their side. And essentially, um,
Speaker 1: the resistance creates creates web pages or YouTube content or anything,
Speaker 1: and you know, just engages the advertisements on those pages,
Speaker 1: which create increases the value of those that ad space
Speaker 1: and then they can kind of generate revenue that way. Um.
Speaker 1: The National Unity government has also done some really fascinating
Speaker 1: stuff issuing bonds, uh, conducting a lottery, um, selling off
Speaker 1: you know s a c military properties. I think they
Speaker 1: just sold the mini on a lines house and yangon
Speaker 1: for a considerable amount UM. So it's kind of a
Speaker 1: an incredible fundraising model and requiring tremendous innovation. They also
Speaker 1: created uh a financial technology called and u g pay
Speaker 1: and a digital current currency d mmk um. So yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's kind of a remarkable um innovation there. Um.
Speaker 1: In terms of what kind of a uh your listeners
Speaker 1: could do, I think, UM, you know, I think engaging
Speaker 1: in UH so of the international kind of advocacy and
Speaker 1: awareness raising is really valuable. I think some of these
Speaker 1: things like if you know, if you're a congress person
Speaker 1: acknowledges demand for this, then that can increase that the
Speaker 1: pressure that they put on the State Department, d D,
Speaker 1: National Security Council UM and potentially increase the risk tolerance
Speaker 1: of the US government if if there's just more pressure there.
Speaker 1: So those sorts of things I think, UM. Honestly engaging
Speaker 1: with some of the content that's being that's being created
Speaker 1: by the resistance, learning about my mr um, you know,
Speaker 1: just just following the story. I mean it's like, I
Speaker 1: don't know, you've probably experienced this doing your reporting, but
Speaker 1: it's just like the most unbelievable stories of human resilience
Speaker 1: and just like, I don't know, it's it's such like
Speaker 1: an honor to be nearby these people who are just
Speaker 1: risking so much for such a for such an honorable
Speaker 1: pos that they truly believe in. It's just like the
Speaker 1: quintessential example of integrity and um, yeah, goodness, Yeah, it's amazing.
Speaker 1: It's stuff you couldn't make up, and like it's stories
Speaker 1: you can sell as fiction almost like yeah, their integrity,
Speaker 1: like even they're like and one thing I find absolutely amazing,
Speaker 1: Like you said, perspectives on ethnic groups have changed on
Speaker 1: so many things that people they're willingness to be like,
Speaker 1: I've examined my stance on this and it was the
Speaker 1: wrong stance, and I'm changing my stance on this. It's
Speaker 1: like we spoke to so many young people who were like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I was fairly misogynist, like a February first one, and
Speaker 1: since then, like I fought alongside women. I've you know,
Speaker 1: I've seen them do things that I didn't. I've been
Speaker 1: told that they weren't capable of and I've changed I
Speaker 1: was wrong, and like we need to not be a
Speaker 1: misogynist country going forward. Yeah, no, there was I was
Speaker 1: maybe you know this group, but I was engaging with
Speaker 1: organization and that was it's led by kind of an activist,
Speaker 1: former activist um and he was kind of saying that
Speaker 1: they've essentially tried to eliminate all of the sort of
Speaker 1: misogyny in their in their training protocols, like even just
Speaker 1: using terms like man up or something. It's like wiped
Speaker 1: it from their approach because it's like that's a misogynistic
Speaker 1: kind of you know, approach to thinking about strength and power.
Speaker 1: And so it's like what you're saying is I'm here,
Speaker 1: I'm feeling the same hearing the same things. It's which
Speaker 1: is incredibly powerful given particularly given the pressures and what
Speaker 1: they're all going through, just having the wherewithal to kind
Speaker 1: of like their head ups and think about, you know,
Speaker 1: be reflective of themselves. Like imagine in the American political discourse,
Speaker 1: people actually changing their minds for once. It's remarkable. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: the genuine is. And it's it's refreshing in that sense
Speaker 1: to see people like wanting the right thing and not
Speaker 1: letting tiny differences like blow them into seven thousand different pieces, right,
Speaker 1: the broad date ring on one thing, yeah, exactly, And
Speaker 1: that's kind of the remarkable. I mean the Nationally Unity
Speaker 1: Consultative Council for example. You know, it's how its challenges
Speaker 1: UM as a dialogue platform, but it's still going and
Speaker 1: that is like people are still coming to the table.
Speaker 1: And frankly, it's remarkable because repeatedly, in quote unquote peace
Speaker 1: processes in MR history, they've collapsed because you know, someone
Speaker 1: said something and you know another party left the table
Speaker 1: um and didn't return. So the fact that these dialogues
Speaker 1: are continuing on is an incredible testament to people's willingness
Speaker 1: to kind of open up and be more humble and
Speaker 1: kind of consider the other's opinion and question their own,
Speaker 1: which is you know, a lesson we could all learn. Yeah, yeah, definitely, Billy,
Speaker 1: where can people like, where can people find you online?
Speaker 1: And where can they find more good information about my
Speaker 1: mba UM I am. You know, if you search Billy
Speaker 1: Ford at us I P dot org, you and find
Speaker 1: the stuff I've written recently, and then I'm on Twitter
Speaker 1: at b I L L E. The number four, the
Speaker 1: letter d UM and good sources of information. I mean
Speaker 1: there's great UM investigative work by Myanmar witness UM which
Speaker 1: is just an incredible group of researchers. Um, there's been
Speaker 1: a couple of good reports recently by Global Witness and
Speaker 1: Earth Rights related to sanctions that just came out. Um
Speaker 1: U s I P. You can check out some of
Speaker 1: our writing. My colleagues Jason Tower in Brasilo Coop just
Speaker 1: published something related to how the conflict has regional consequences
Speaker 1: that could be of interest. Um and UM there's I
Speaker 1: don't know, there's innumerable great um meam R think Tanks,
Speaker 1: the Chin Human Rights Organization has done some incredible research
Speaker 1: and reporting about military atrocities and Chin state. Um. You
Speaker 1: could go on and on, but um. Yeah, if you
Speaker 1: don't know, check out my Twitter. I've I tend to
Speaker 1: repost stuff that I find fascinating and there's there's a
Speaker 1: lot out there. Yeah. Great, Well, thank you so much
Speaker 1: for giving us some of your time this afternoon. I
Speaker 1: really appreciate it. It's good to catch up. Yeah, thanks
Speaker 1: for having me. James has been great, no worries, Hello
Speaker 1: and welcome to It could happen here once again hosted
Speaker 1: by myself and Drew. As you know, we talked about whatever.
Speaker 1: We've entered a new year, so you know, Happy New
Speaker 1: Year by the way, James, I don't think I told you.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, Happy New Year, Andrew. Yeah. What I've in
Speaker 1: question this time is carrying over from some of the
Speaker 1: discussions we had in the previous year, because you know,
Speaker 1: time moves forward. Uh, And with time moving forward, hopefully
Speaker 1: to know it, it becomes excreasingly necessary, very very necessary
Speaker 1: to interrogate into uproot a lot of the classical capitleists
Speaker 1: I ideas embedded in a world, an ideology, for example,
Speaker 1: it just won't die, that idea of development, despite as
Speaker 1: many critics over the past few decades, despite the colonizing
Speaker 1: and post clear nations, people of those nations you know,
Speaker 1: rallying against such projects of development due to the harms
Speaker 1: they've caused socially environments and otherwise, this ideology, this idea
Speaker 1: of development, just won't die. Um. But here we are,
Speaker 1: and I think at least here in this podcast, among
Speaker 1: the audience of this podcast, we can agree that the
Speaker 1: time has come for some kind of alternative. Maybe some
Speaker 1: kind of alternative can happen here, you know, a different view,
Speaker 1: a new path you all frecurrently have and stage right
Speaker 1: when vere are you familiar with the concept, I'm not
Speaker 1: actually no, we fun to learn about all right, well, fantastic,
Speaker 1: So you could ask anything any questions you have about
Speaker 1: it as I go along. So a lot of the
Speaker 1: early concepts related to this idea of when Vivie arose
Speaker 1: in reaction to the classical economic development strategies that have
Speaker 1: ripped through communities in their environments. I'm talking of course
Speaker 1: about acts of inclosure, prioritization, new life, new liberalization, economic
Speaker 1: imperialisms and so forth. Capitalism and its element basically government
Speaker 1: projects that lyne the pockets of politicians and bureaucrats, development banks,
Speaker 1: quote and quote that really never seemed to fund the
Speaker 1: people directly. When Revere draws from this heritage, a heritage
Speaker 1: of indigenous communities, uh, particularly in South America, in some cultures,
Speaker 1: they have no concepts analogous to the modern western capitalist
Speaker 1: concept of development. Of course, modernis and coots. There's no
Speaker 1: concept of a linear life, a linear time, even with
Speaker 1: a foreman subsequent state. And so the idea of underdevelopment
Speaker 1: and development of primitive and advance just does not mesh
Speaker 1: with that ontology. And all these and these concepts of
Speaker 1: wealth and poverty, no are they are necessarily concepts of
Speaker 1: wealth and poverty as we understand them based on the
Speaker 1: accumulational lack of material good I've said when revere probably
Speaker 1: a dozen times by now. The question is what is
Speaker 1: when revere? In Latin America, the concept of gen vivere
Speaker 1: or good life or good living provides new alternatives to development. UM,
Speaker 1: and it's very nstitute. I feel like, I feel like
Speaker 1: it's something that we should have been working on for
Speaker 1: a really long time. UM. You know, like me personally,
Speaker 1: I don't know what you James, but I really care
Speaker 1: about GDP growth or increase in return on investment. You know,
Speaker 1: I care about living a good life. I care about
Speaker 1: gen vivere. And so I think the name of the
Speaker 1: philosophy itself and the name of the concept itself automatically
Speaker 1: gets you to ask the question what is a good life?
Speaker 1: And the answer, the beauty of the answer is that
Speaker 1: you decide that, I decide, that we decide that our
Speaker 1: communities decide that collaboratively. The good life is not some
Speaker 1: sort of policy proposal or government project or development initiative.
Speaker 1: For imposition, the good life is a pluralistic concept. Is
Speaker 1: when nos contrivers it's a different ways of living well
Speaker 1: together it's not a single homogeneous or unrealizable good life.
Speaker 1: It's not like this single homogeneous pursuit of profit that
Speaker 1: our entire system is built around. Now now the good
Speaker 1: life when revere, it's more about people living well together
Speaker 1: in a community, in different communities living well together, and
Speaker 1: individuals and communities living well with nature. And that these
Speaker 1: concepts sound familiar, it's because you know, they must have
Speaker 1: heard it from other places. It's a it's a trend
Speaker 1: we're starting to see around the world in this twenty
Speaker 1: centery and even prior to then. Uh, these ideas are
Speaker 1: solely gained one more esteem as time goes on. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, the ideas presence in social ecology, The idea
Speaker 1: is present in various animals, tomtologies, and they're really being
Speaker 1: brought to the forefront in this time because we need
Speaker 1: them now more than ever. Despite efforts of Western forces
Speaker 1: primarily to erase and to redact and to confine these
Speaker 1: ideas and these contexts of the realm of irrelevance or
Speaker 1: backwardsness or superstition, they endure in sometimes new forms, as
Speaker 1: with gen Revere. What Reviere is about quality of life,
Speaker 1: but also molso the idea that quality of life I
Speaker 1: will well be in as individuals. It's only possible within
Speaker 1: a community. The community, which as I mentioned includes the
Speaker 1: floor and flour that's surround us and in many ways
Speaker 1: that can be interpreted, which is the real beauty of it.
Speaker 1: So as a concept, you kind of look at wend Revere.
Speaker 1: It's two word phrase and it's also a double barrel
Speaker 1: of a concept. It's a two for one package of
Speaker 1: both criticism of the classical western capitalist notion of development
Speaker 1: and an alternative to that Eurocentric tradition but onto indigenous
Speaker 1: traditions plural and so that two for one package within
Speaker 1: that and you can really unpack that package and see
Speaker 1: that you know, you see the idea of the same
Speaker 1: sort of basis that the growth is getting its critique
Speaker 1: from the same sort of ideas being shared. And in
Speaker 1: terms of alternatives, when you look into wend review, you
Speaker 1: sort of see the anarchic bent that has become ever
Speaker 1: more present in a new political imaginations over the past
Speaker 1: few years. At least it feels that way to me.
Speaker 1: That's um, that sort of community oriented, autonomy oriented, liberatory,
Speaker 1: decoding oriented mindset is becoming more and more prevalent. Of course,
Speaker 1: I could be you know, my own Internet biases and
Speaker 1: algorithms present to me what I want to see. But
Speaker 1: I would like to think that more and more people
Speaker 1: are exploring these ideas. Yeah, it is hard to say
Speaker 1: his because I feel the same way, Like am I
Speaker 1: am I seeing whatever? It's like, Oh that these new
Speaker 1: institutes and initiatives and programs and movements, it's so amazing
Speaker 1: all these things are developing. And then like you talk
Speaker 1: to somebody who is not like in this fair and
Speaker 1: they haven't heard of any of it. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: it's like they still think anarchism means, like I don't know,
Speaker 1: throwing a breakthrough a window like that is the whole ideology.
Speaker 1: And yeah, I don't know. We can hope, we can hope,
Speaker 1: we can hope. I would like to think it's getting
Speaker 1: more prominence, but we can only hope. And so like
Speaker 1: so like anarkis are too keen on, you know, necessarily
Speaker 1: submitting to earn and I gus some sense that's like
Speaker 1: Google Vlee and sense or some kind um. But I
Speaker 1: would like to think that anarchic ideas UM, I mean,
Speaker 1: and all the exploration that I've done of um various
Speaker 1: parts of the world however, you know, shallow my expliration
Speaker 1: has been so far, Um, I just I see it
Speaker 1: could be my anarchist tinted glasses seeing anarchic principles and everything.
Speaker 1: But I see it in certain practices, in sign ideologies
Speaker 1: and sign ideas and you know, ways of living. And
Speaker 1: I think gen Vere is a sort of a recognition
Speaker 1: of that in one sense. So there is no single
Speaker 1: gen Vivere, right, there is no single good life, you know,
Speaker 1: I might want. For example, my ben view might look like, uh,
Speaker 1: sailing the Caribbean Sea, um, you know, touching down in
Speaker 1: various islands and exploring the ecology therein. Or my good
Speaker 1: life it looked like a more settled sort of homestead
Speaker 1: existence um, or sort of a fusion of urban and
Speaker 1: rural living. Uh, sort of a good ending for the suburbs,
Speaker 1: where you're able to live in a walkable sort of
Speaker 1: environment and community that is both not too far from
Speaker 1: you know, the goings on of human social interaction, but
Speaker 1: also very much rooted and connected with, um, what's happening
Speaker 1: in the natural world. But I mean, what might your
Speaker 1: good life, your ben revie look like. James, Yeah, that's interesting,
Speaker 1: isn't it. I think, Uh, you know, I grew up
Speaker 1: in the countryside, so with light the idea of living
Speaker 1: in a rural area and still having community and having
Speaker 1: like that, being like to nature, and still also being
Speaker 1: close to people who I care about and being able
Speaker 1: to look after each other. I think it's interesting how often,
Speaker 1: like at least the sort of set like colonial concept
Speaker 1: of rural life or the construct of real life. I
Speaker 1: guess in America it's like, oh, rugged individualism, being on
Speaker 1: your own one in fact, like living in the countryside,
Speaker 1: people have to look after one another. Yeah, exactly, exactly.
Speaker 1: We maintain this kind of this this false idea that
Speaker 1: it's you against thee against the elements and crushing nature
Speaker 1: and subjecting it to your will and all this stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think that's there's something interesting about at least
Speaker 1: the people have spoken to um in various circles and stuff.
Speaker 1: When I asked them, you know, what is your ideal life?
Speaker 1: What is your good life? I don't necessarily say when viewed.
Speaker 1: I just asked them, you know what do you want? Um?
Speaker 1: And you dig into it? You asked him a couple
Speaker 1: of problem questions, and people, despite ben vvie being a
Speaker 1: pluralistic concept, people tend to generally want similar things, and
Speaker 1: so it sort of begs the question, like, why are
Speaker 1: we in this situation in the first please, you know,
Speaker 1: because like everyone says, well, you know, I want like
Speaker 1: an involved community, and I want like I want to
Speaker 1: be able to grow my plans, and I also want
Speaker 1: to be able to do my arts and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: enjoy my time of people and do a bit of
Speaker 1: travel and not work my whole life and that kind
Speaker 1: of thing. People of course phrase it and frame it
Speaker 1: in certain ways. And so that's why I asked the
Speaker 1: proving questions because what might initially say, oh, well, like
Speaker 1: I want to retire early. I want to really dig
Speaker 1: into that means it's like I don't want to spend
Speaker 1: my whole life working, you know. Or they might say
Speaker 1: something like, um, you know, I want to I want
Speaker 1: to travel a lot, so I want to like start
Speaker 1: a business. When you ask them what kind of business
Speaker 1: they want to start, why they want to start a business,
Speaker 1: it really comes down to I want autonomy. I want
Speaker 1: flexibility in my labor. I want to control of my
Speaker 1: own le book kind of thing. Like yes, of course
Speaker 1: they are people who have they couldn't qute entrepreneur spirit
Speaker 1: who want to just be at the top of the
Speaker 1: food chain. But then I think mostly entrepreneurs they couldn't
Speaker 1: qute entrepreneurs that I've met up in people who just like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: you know, I started selling candles because I really like
Speaker 1: making candles and I wanted to share them with people,
Speaker 1: and I also need to make a living and I'm
Speaker 1: just passionate about it or whatever that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: It's undernecessarily wanted to grow it or whatever. They just
Speaker 1: want to be able to sustain themselves doing something that
Speaker 1: they enjoy. Yeah, it's interesting because we're always sold like
Speaker 1: every new advancing technology and in production that comes along,
Speaker 1: like these concepts you're talking about, like like working less,
Speaker 1: having community, all these things like always sold as what
Speaker 1: that's going to do, right, like, but instead we end
Speaker 1: up working more or the same amount and instead just
Speaker 1: generating more income for a certain group of people. Like
Speaker 1: we don't get any of these good things. But yeah,
Speaker 1: there's there's always a carrot in whatever this kind of
Speaker 1: neoliberal capitalism that we have is, but we never get
Speaker 1: there exactly. That's the tragedy of it. Another aspect of
Speaker 1: you know, the idea of the good life is that
Speaker 1: it's not a static concept, right, It's not like we
Speaker 1: come up with this good life that's when we here
Speaker 1: where we want for ourselves. Now we etch it into
Speaker 1: stone tablets and piously here to them forever like the
Speaker 1: Ten Commandments. Like nah, you know, the good life is
Speaker 1: supposed to be flexible when the video is what responding
Speaker 1: to your conditions, the conditions of the community or ecology, etcetera,
Speaker 1: and really redefineing what it means to go to live
Speaker 1: a good life continuously, you know, in response to change
Speaker 1: and circumstances, because you know changes life. Um, of course
Speaker 1: not is this idea to good life quote unquote backward
Speaker 1: concept so problematic fram in and of itself. But um
Speaker 1: sometimes you have to use problematic shortcuts to community kids effectively.
Speaker 1: But the yea when revideo is not like an invitation
Speaker 1: to return to some idea like past or ide like
Speaker 1: non past, you like nonexistent world that people are sort
Speaker 1: of mentally constructed, as in the case of a lot
Speaker 1: of these romanticizations you see on social media. Um, be
Speaker 1: in video is not like some kind of religion with
Speaker 1: its own rules and functions. But it's and it's not
Speaker 1: Also it's not imposing that you must become a home
Speaker 1: insteader or a forager, you must live in a rural
Speaker 1: community to live a good life. There's more possibilities yet unrealized. UM.
Speaker 1: And it should be something that is, it should be
Speaker 1: considered something that is undergoing a constant construction and reproduction process.
Speaker 1: And that's I think way of the global potential that
Speaker 1: when review a lize UM. You know, that's why I
Speaker 1: think there's viral potential for it. I mean, of course,
Speaker 1: when you look at a lot of the things that
Speaker 1: end up dominating the social media news cycle, it's a
Speaker 1: lot of negativity UM dominating current discourse right now, I
Speaker 1: think is the topic of masculinity and UM, particularly the
Speaker 1: prevalence of ah Andrew teats and you know, UM, you
Speaker 1: also have the constantly bubbling under the surface existence of
Speaker 1: in cells UM and so and then you go on TikTok.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you go on TikTok, James, I
Speaker 1: don't know. That's the point I would just like anymore. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I should have made that decision, But I mean I
Speaker 1: kind of like TikTok because UM, I don't know how
Speaker 1: other people are curiats in there their fo you pages,
Speaker 1: but by four you pages. Um a place I enjoy
Speaker 1: being out a bit too much, which is why I
Speaker 1: have like limits on my phone to prevent me from
Speaker 1: staying on TikTok for too long. But yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: place that I enjoy way and um. You see a
Speaker 1: lot of trends come and go on TikTok right now.
Speaker 1: The big thing is like Niche stock and core core um,
Speaker 1: which I know is is probably Greek to you, yes, um,
Speaker 1: but in that general v and if you were to
Speaker 1: see what those trends were, I think you get a
Speaker 1: sense of when I'm talking about Niche shock and Corko
Speaker 1: and then as well, so it seems to be an
Speaker 1: attempt to um rebrand the idea of Sigma um and
Speaker 1: the Sigma male. It started off as a very you know,
Speaker 1: patriarchal thing, and then I've seen a couple of different
Speaker 1: creators who who didn't a sort of an ironic or
Speaker 1: a post ironic sense um as a sort of a meme,
Speaker 1: because it became a meme to make fun of people
Speaker 1: who take it seriously. Um. And then from that that
Speaker 1: sort of mumification of it, people said reclaimed the tomb
Speaker 1: um and then it became a sort of you see, um,
Speaker 1: you see like a video where I, um does something
Speaker 1: polite or something, you know, shiver us something kind and
Speaker 1: the comments are like, um, typical sigma, true sigma, this
Speaker 1: is what true signal looks like. Kind of um. So
Speaker 1: I think it's just a national aspect that they fluid
Speaker 1: it to you the Internet, the fickles of the interne
Speaker 1: because I'm sure they're still they have the misogynistic Sigma people,
Speaker 1: they still exist. But then there's also people who memes
Speaker 1: themselves into a brand of Sigma that's kind of a
Speaker 1: way pseudo positive masculinity. It's kind of interesting. Um. I'll
Speaker 1: continue to do my TikTok anthropological research and and you know,
Speaker 1: discuss my findings as this situation develops. But in that
Speaker 1: vein of in that vein of comunification, and those are developments,
Speaker 1: I think there is a potential of wend Vera to
Speaker 1: become a global phenomenon, to have that Google potential, to
Speaker 1: have a global reach because and then there's something in
Speaker 1: it for the people. The there's also an anti work
Speaker 1: current present in a lot of TikTok trends, so you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's something too and again again, I see there's
Speaker 1: an anti currency or the TikTok trends, but those are
Speaker 1: the TikTok trends. I ain't being presented with the post
Speaker 1: ironic rebrandification or whatever. Sigma is something my for you
Speaker 1: pee has given me. It's not necessarily reflective of the
Speaker 1: entirety of reality. And that's the scary part of the Internet, right,
Speaker 1: Like you're not seeing the full reality, You're seeing algorithmically
Speaker 1: produced version and skewed version of reality. Yeah, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: interesting to me, how like, like most people I encounter
Speaker 1: on a daily basis will not know what will where
Speaker 1: me and marras and like if I look at my
Speaker 1: Twitter page right now, it's just all like half of it.
Speaker 1: It's in Burmese, you know, and there's lots of people
Speaker 1: I follow and that that's like my reality. But yeah,
Speaker 1: sort of. Then I get really frustrated when when people
Speaker 1: don't have a clue what's going on there exactly exactly,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's it's can't tricky. It's kind tricky because
Speaker 1: you really in terms that they really get a sense of,
Speaker 1: how you know, in moments like those where you confront
Speaker 1: that in real life, it's like okay, So like my
Speaker 1: my possession of reality is like slightly skewed by the Internet,
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, in ways that I am aware and
Speaker 1: not aware of, in ways that other people are aware
Speaker 1: not aware of. So that's interesting. We're back to when review,
Speaker 1: right when we view. I think it is also like
Speaker 1: a path for decolonization, you know, sort of a way
Speaker 1: to let go of a lot of the Western norms
Speaker 1: and impositions and speech and dress and labor and lifestyle
Speaker 1: and knowledge and social norms and relationships and ceteral and
Speaker 1: adopting ways of life that are count for our cultures
Speaker 1: and conditions free of those mental I think that it's
Speaker 1: the power of when reviere. So I guess another question arises,
Speaker 1: who or where, oh when did when review come from?
Speaker 1: And so the radical questioning that birthedpen Revere was made
Speaker 1: possible within several indigenous traditions in South America, which, as
Speaker 1: I said, culturally lack tic concepts of developmental progress. And
Speaker 1: so the contribution of indigenous knowledge brend Revere continues to
Speaker 1: be the sort of critical threat. Associated values and experiences
Speaker 1: and practices and worldviews of interview already existed in some
Speaker 1: form before the arrival of um European conquistadors, but they
Speaker 1: were of the process of qualization, silence, and marginalized and
Speaker 1: even openly opposed. Brendeverea is part of a long leg
Speaker 1: you see, long quest along pursuits of alternative lifestyles forged
Speaker 1: from the passionate battles of indigenous peoples and nations seeking
Speaker 1: new ways of life, seeking freedom from the Latin America
Speaker 1: and the quintessential American oliga called nation state. Brutish is
Speaker 1: of course rooted in clunialism and new liberalism, and so
Speaker 1: we are seeing through renvivere within renvie outside of and review.
Speaker 1: Adjacent to ren review um utopias in the making, the imagination,
Speaker 1: the imagining of utopias of the Andes and of the
Speaker 1: Amazon that are shaping discourses, shaping political projects, that are
Speaker 1: shaping social and cultural and economic practice. The good life
Speaker 1: been revere is not something that is unique to Latin America.
Speaker 1: Of course, it has been practiced in many different epochs
Speaker 1: and regions of this Earth. It's been known by many
Speaker 1: different names. The concept has been known by many different names.
Speaker 1: In Ecuador, it's known as suma um, which is a
Speaker 1: Quechua wording for a fullness of life and community together
Speaker 1: to the persons in nature and believia The iyemarra concept
Speaker 1: for it is called suma kamana in the Mapuche in Chile,
Speaker 1: and the Guarani in Paraguay, and the Kuda and Panama,
Speaker 1: and the chu Aqua and Ecuadorian Amazon, the Maya and
Speaker 1: Guatemala and Chiapas Mexico, and of course the African to
Speaker 1: Ubuntu and the Indian concept of saraje. They are all
Speaker 1: these sorts of threads of what a good life, good
Speaker 1: life and community, radical ecological democracy and community. All of
Speaker 1: these sort of concepts sort of threaded within developing diffront
Speaker 1: in different forms in different contexts. However, UM the concept
Speaker 1: has also been adopted in some sense by certain states,
Speaker 1: most notably Bolivia and Ecuador. Recently, Bolivia, you know, rewrote
Speaker 1: its constitution um establishing itself as a flury national state,
Speaker 1: and they've taken it to what they quality the orban um.
Speaker 1: They're trying to basically propose economic model that accommodates various
Speaker 1: diverse cultural origins. In Ecuador, UM that conceptual freework is
Speaker 1: a bit different. They take one vera and they use
Speaker 1: it as a sort of described as a set of rights,
Speaker 1: rights to shelter, to health, to education, to foods, the environment.
Speaker 1: So it's less of an ethical principle, more of a
Speaker 1: complex set of rights that are also found in Western
Speaker 1: traditions but also include, uh, you know, the the right
Speaker 1: to freedom, participation, communities, to protection, and to nature. Part
Speaker 1: of that recognition of the right to nature and the
Speaker 1: fundamental rights of water has led to the banning of
Speaker 1: any form of privatization of water um, and also the
Speaker 1: promotion of leaving crude oil in Ecuadorian Amazon blew the ground. Um. However,
Speaker 1: I feel like I need to point out that I
Speaker 1: don't believe the state is compatible with the essence of
Speaker 1: when vere with the practice of when vere um, and
Speaker 1: so the use of those concepts and state propaganda uh
Speaker 1: in state rebranding efforts unnecessarily encouraging to me, doesn't necessarily
Speaker 1: make such states the power corn so they would paint
Speaker 1: themselves to be because to me, when vie can only
Speaker 1: really be grassroots concepts. So I think we must be
Speaker 1: careful of fall into that trap of accepting uh you know,
Speaker 1: state propaganda on the good life um, you know, compromising
Speaker 1: the concept and allowing it to be co opted or
Speaker 1: water down. As I previously noted, I think there's a
Speaker 1: major overlap between concept of de growth and the idea
Speaker 1: of when Revere and both agree that one of the
Speaker 1: fundamental problems is, you know, this idea, this constant commercialization
Speaker 1: of societal fabric and of nature of criticism of capitalism,
Speaker 1: this criticism of the way that progress felt an economic
Speaker 1: growth understood and implemented um. And so they almost they
Speaker 1: sort of complement each other, right, because I think a
Speaker 1: criticism people who have of the growth is that as
Speaker 1: this destructive thing, as it's negative thing, as negative freemen.
Speaker 1: And so in a sense, when Vere and the growth
Speaker 1: can sort of be coupled, the growth as the couldn't
Speaker 1: quote missile wood destructive. Well, Gwen Vivere is you know,
Speaker 1: presenting a constructive alternative. As you know, we attempt to progress,
Speaker 1: to move away from capitalism, transitions and new systems. There's
Speaker 1: a lot to learn with have a lot we can
Speaker 1: learn from various non capitalist practices around the world. And
Speaker 1: I think gen vivie um is a concept that really
Speaker 1: tries to look at the way is a way of
Speaker 1: harmoniously quite sisted as humans in our environment Um and
Speaker 1: the way is that you know, a good life can
Speaker 1: be combined with the growth efforts. There's also a measure
Speaker 1: of fluidity present in green vivere Um that seeks balance socially, ecologically, politically, economically.
Speaker 1: UM encompasses and encompasses within that balance people, plans, and animals.
Speaker 1: There's not separate nature from society as found in classical
Speaker 1: Western dualism, and that sort of perspective is necessary if
Speaker 1: we were to move beyond the exploitation of nature for
Speaker 1: the propos of accumulating capital cell that has really placed
Speaker 1: us in this mess and even in that and recognized
Speaker 1: and that we need to move beyond exploitation of nature
Speaker 1: baked into that because we are part of nature. It's
Speaker 1: a recognition that we need to stuff exploiting humans. They
Speaker 1: need to recognize human beings as part of a community,
Speaker 1: that we are not just as my individuals, that we
Speaker 1: are in communities, that we must be part of community
Speaker 1: used that our community is the people within them and
Speaker 1: the lands we are part of must cooperate in harmony.
Speaker 1: I think there's a challenge to one review. Of course
Speaker 1: what the video is not restricted to the countryside, but
Speaker 1: it did it did originate there. UM. I think the
Speaker 1: challenge one review is to confront today's urban spaces where
Speaker 1: much of humanity's population lives UM, to find ways to
Speaker 1: deal with environment respectively and solidarity in an urban setting,
Speaker 1: to find to conceptualize a good life for and in cities.
Speaker 1: We can't exactly expect everybody to move to the countryside,
Speaker 1: nor should everybody, UM, and so we need to find
Speaker 1: ways that city life, urban I life UM can be reconstructed.
Speaker 1: And so one potential sort of way that that has
Speaker 1: manifested is through the Transition Towns movement, which you can
Speaker 1: look more and to have something that interests you where
Speaker 1: people are basically attempting to taking truth of their communities
Speaker 1: and to survive the challenge that is climate change and
Speaker 1: to create you know, sustainable economies and ecologies. Wherefore they
Speaker 1: find themselves movements. It can be found in many different countries.
Speaker 1: You know, you might even find it in your area
Speaker 1: and your country. Look it up, UM, and it has
Speaker 1: a lot in common with the concept of Ween Revere.
Speaker 1: Like I said, like I feel that they're selling different
Speaker 1: movements and ideas and philosophies, you know, sort of with
Speaker 1: the same ideas that seemed to be feel like they're
Speaker 1: on the rise. Ultimately, I believe wend Revere is highly
Speaker 1: h subversive. I believe it looks not to return to
Speaker 1: the past or to you know, get caught up in
Speaker 1: any kind of strict rules or positions. It seeks a
Speaker 1: good life. It seeks to oppose cleanism and its consequences,
Speaker 1: to encourage new, more sustainable ways of living drawn from
Speaker 1: old examples and models, and to really create horizontal society,
Speaker 1: a cooperative society, to develop self management instead of new
Speaker 1: forms of top down governance. UM the one that rejects
Speaker 1: both the market and the state as solutions to our
Speaker 1: issues and looks to ourselves. One that looks one that
Speaker 1: rejects the markets in the state, has potential solutions, and
Speaker 1: looks to ourselves. The idea of development is an almost
Speaker 1: a zombie category, as some writers have described it. It's
Speaker 1: supposed to be dead and yet it lives. And so
Speaker 1: gwen Vivere provides an opportunity to move away from development
Speaker 1: and look towards when it recognizes that all may never
Speaker 1: create a perfect life, we can create a good life.
Speaker 1: That's it thanks here, and that's really interesting. I like
Speaker 1: that you can find me on YouTube at Andrewidsum on
Speaker 1: to dot com slash and is called saying Drew, and
Speaker 1: if you're so inclined, you can support me on picture
Speaker 1: dot com slash saying Drew. This has been Andrew at
Speaker 1: happen here with James signing off, Hello and welcome to
Speaker 1: it could happen here. This is Sharne and today I
Speaker 1: will be talking to you about the series of devastating
Speaker 1: earthquakes that have happened in Turkey and Syria this week.
Speaker 1: I am recording this the afternoon of Tuesday, February seven.
Speaker 1: I am giving you that disclaimer because the numbers keep
Speaker 1: changing as far as the casualties and the death toll goes.
Speaker 1: So if the numbers are different by the time this
Speaker 1: comes out, which they probably will be, that is why. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: that is the nature of disasters like this. So there's
Speaker 1: nothing much that we can do. But let's talk about
Speaker 1: the earthquakes themselves. First. The initial earthquake was a magnitude
Speaker 1: of seven point eight and it happened in southeastern Turkey
Speaker 1: early on Monday morning their local time, and it was
Speaker 1: followed by magnitude seven point five earthquake only nine hours later.
Speaker 1: Amidst several aftershocks. All aftershocks are individual earthquakes, but as
Speaker 1: long as they are not stronger than the original quake,
Speaker 1: they are considered after shocks. But the seven point five
Speaker 1: magnitude tremor that happened after the seven point eight one
Speaker 1: only point three of a difference. It was an unusually
Speaker 1: strong aftershock. According to seismologists, aftershocks are typically about one
Speaker 1: point to magnitude units lower than the original earthquake, so
Speaker 1: if there was a magnitude eight earthquake, the aftershock would
Speaker 1: be in magnitude seven. So this was all a very rare,
Speaker 1: disastrous occurrence. The second earthquake was a shock notable all
Speaker 1: on its own, as well as in relation to the
Speaker 1: primary earthquake. As of Tuesday morning, according to the United
Speaker 1: States Geological Survey, at least one and twenty five aftershocks
Speaker 1: measuring four point zero or greater have occurred since the
Speaker 1: initial seven point eight one. The frequency in magnitude of
Speaker 1: the aftershocks are decreasing, as is expected as we get
Speaker 1: further out from the time of the original earthquake. However,
Speaker 1: five point zero and six point zero aftershocks are still possible,
Speaker 1: and they bring a risk of additional damage to structures
Speaker 1: that are compromised from the original earthquake. This brings a
Speaker 1: continued threat to rescue teams and survivors. The aftershocks stretched
Speaker 1: for more than four d kilometers or about two fifty
Speaker 1: miles along the fault zone that ruptured in southern Turkey.
Speaker 1: It stretches from the Mediterranean Sea off the northern coast
Speaker 1: of Syria up to the province of Malatia. The initial
Speaker 1: tremor was centered about twenty miles from a major city
Speaker 1: and provincial capital, Gauziantep and seismologists said that this first
Speaker 1: earthquake was one of the largest ever recorded in Turkey's history.
Speaker 1: It was also the region's strongest earthquake. In nearly a
Speaker 1: century nine, an earthquake of the same magnitude killed thirty
Speaker 1: thousand people. Earthquakes of this magnitude are rare, with fewer
Speaker 1: than five occurring each year on average anywhere in the world.
Speaker 1: Seven earthquakes with magnitude seven point zero or greater have
Speaker 1: struck Turkey in the past twenty five years, but the
Speaker 1: one that occurred on Monday it's the most powerful. The
Speaker 1: effects were also felt in the neighboring countries of Cyprus, Lebanon, Israel,
Speaker 1: and Egypt, to name a few. But there's a reason
Speaker 1: why earthquakes are so frequent in Turkey. Turkey sits on
Speaker 1: fault lines, and these earthquakes in the region have caused
Speaker 1: deadly landslides in the past. Turkey is situated on two
Speaker 1: massive tectonic plates, the Arabian and the Eurasian, and these
Speaker 1: meat underneath Turkey's southeastern provinces. Along this fault line, about
Speaker 1: hundred miles from one side or the other, the earth slipped.
Speaker 1: Seismologists refer to this event as a strike slip, where
Speaker 1: the plates are touching and all of a sudden they
Speaker 1: slide sideways. In a strike slip, the plates are moving
Speaker 1: horizontally rather than vertically. This matters because the buildings don't
Speaker 1: want to go back and forth, and then the secondary
Speaker 1: waves begin to go back and forth as well. Because
Speaker 1: of the nature of this seismic event, the aftershocks could
Speaker 1: last for weeks and months. I have had to update
Speaker 1: the death toll many many times in preparing this episode.
Speaker 1: I am probably going to have to update it many
Speaker 1: many more times before this comes out, but as of now,
Speaker 1: when I am recording this, the evening of Tuesday, February seven,
Speaker 1: the death toll is over seven thousand and nine hundred
Speaker 1: deaths in Turkey and Syria combined, and it's expected to
Speaker 1: rise significantly more in Syria as these days go by.
Speaker 1: The exact number that is being reported is seven thousand,
Speaker 1: nine hundred and twenty six people. The Syrian Civil Defense
Speaker 1: a k a. The White Helmets said that the number
Speaker 1: of fatalities and rebel held areas in northwest Syria rose
Speaker 1: to a thousand, two hundred and twenty and the number
Speaker 1: of injured people rose to two thousand, six hundred, and
Speaker 1: these figures are expected to rise significantly due to the
Speaker 1: presence of hundreds of families under the rubble. The White
Speaker 1: Helmets said quote, our teams continue search and rescue operations
Speaker 1: in difficult circumstances, and they described a tally of more
Speaker 1: than four hundred collapsed buildings and more than one thousand,
Speaker 1: three hundred partially collapsed buildings and thousands of others that
Speaker 1: were damaged. Additionally, at least eight hundred and twelve deaths
Speaker 1: have been confirmed in government controlled parts of Syria. In Turkey,
Speaker 1: at least five thousand, eight hundred and ninety four people
Speaker 1: are dead and thirty four thousand, eight hundred and ten
Speaker 1: are injured, and this number is only going to continue
Speaker 1: to rise. I don't know when it will stop. Maybe
Speaker 1: a week from now, maybe a month. I don't know
Speaker 1: how many more people will be unaccounted for and not
Speaker 1: reported about. But this is what we have for now.
Speaker 1: You've probably seen pictures or videos of the devastation that
Speaker 1: is happening. In all the destruction. There have been really
Speaker 1: disturbing images of the ground literally just opening up in
Speaker 1: two and as if you can see the core of
Speaker 1: the earth, and other videos show the collapsed buildings and
Speaker 1: the rubble that rescuers are trying to dig underneath to
Speaker 1: find survivors. This is one story out of many, but
Speaker 1: a newborn baby was reportedly rescued from the rubble in Syria,
Speaker 1: and there is a video of this. A baby girl
Speaker 1: was rescued from the rubble of her home. Her umbilical
Speaker 1: cord was still attached to her mother when she was found,
Speaker 1: and her mother is believed to have died after giving birth.
Speaker 1: One of the men that found her said, we heard
Speaker 1: a voice while we were digging. We cleared the dust
Speaker 1: and found the baby with the umbilical cord intact, so
Speaker 1: we cut it and my cousin took her to the hospital.
Speaker 1: The girl is receiving treatment at a children's hospital and
Speaker 1: as of now, she is stable, but arrived with bruises, lacerations,
Speaker 1: and hypothermia, and she's the sole survivor of her immediate family.
Speaker 1: They lived in a five story apartment building that was
Speaker 1: leveled by the quake. And again, this is one example
Speaker 1: of the stories of thousands of people. And I think
Speaker 1: what's important to remember is that even after someone is rescued,
Speaker 1: they're not exactly home free. They can have many injuries
Speaker 1: or hypothermia because it's very cold over there right now,
Speaker 1: and their recovery is going to be brutal. And I
Speaker 1: feel like that's a good thing to keep in mind
Speaker 1: when you hear the word rescue, because the trauma doesn't
Speaker 1: stop there. Almost six thousand buildings have been destroyed by
Speaker 1: this earthquake, and this includes residential buildings, hospitals, schools, and
Speaker 1: the damage is even more severe in northwestern Syria because
Speaker 1: it had been in the process of attempting to reconstruct
Speaker 1: itself since the Syrian War started in Thankfully, members of
Speaker 1: the international community have stepped up to coordinate relief efforts
Speaker 1: to Turkey and Syria after the powerful earthquakes. However, sending
Speaker 1: aid to Syria is going to be difficult because there's
Speaker 1: no central guf are meant to take care of the
Speaker 1: multisectorial response. The Turkish government said quote, we do not
Speaker 1: know where the number of dead and injured can go.
Speaker 1: In Syria, rescue workers used headlamps and floodlights to work
Speaker 1: throughout the night. Many Syrian war refugees are also in
Speaker 1: the quick stricken area of Turkey. Turkey has taken in
Speaker 1: three point six million Syrian refugees, more than any other country,
Speaker 1: and this is according to the u N Refugee Agency,
Speaker 1: which runs one of its largest operations in Gaussian Tepe,
Speaker 1: where the first earthquake happened and again. Videos shared on
Speaker 1: social media from Turkey and across the border in Syria
Speaker 1: have showed destroyed buildings and rescue crews searching through piles
Speaker 1: of rebel for survivors. Some people fled their homes in
Speaker 1: the rain and took shelter in their cars, and governments
Speaker 1: around the world quickly responded to Turkey's request for international assistance,
Speaker 1: many of them deploying rescue teams and offers of aid,
Speaker 1: which I will get into in a bit. The World
Speaker 1: Health Organization warned that the number of casualties are likely
Speaker 1: to increase as much as eight times as rescuers are
Speaker 1: finding more victims in the rubble. Rescuers have been combing
Speaker 1: through mountains of rubble and freezing and snowy conditions to
Speaker 1: find survivors, and these freezing conditions will leave many people
Speaker 1: without shelter, adding to the dangers. It is freezing over there,
Speaker 1: and that obviously only makes things more difficult and more
Speaker 1: painful and more complicated. And we always see the same
Speaker 1: thing with earthquakes unfortunately, which is that the initial reports
Speaker 1: of the numbers of people who have died or have
Speaker 1: been injured will increase quite significantly in the week that follows.
Speaker 1: The situation on the ground seems to be more disastrous
Speaker 1: in Syria, and this is according to the country director
Speaker 1: in Ghazian Tep for the Syrian American Medical Society Foundation.
Speaker 1: He said it's a disaster stiss situation in both Turkey
Speaker 1: and Syria, although Syria is more disastrous. Over a decade
Speaker 1: of conflict in Northern Syria has fostered a poor economic situation,
Speaker 1: to say the least, making it very difficult to respond
Speaker 1: to the current crisis. In contrast, the situation in Turkey
Speaker 1: is coordinated through a very well settled government and Northern
Speaker 1: Syria unfortunately has no government that gives a shit about it.
Speaker 1: In Northern Syria, most of the services and help are
Speaker 1: provided by n g o s and this is due
Speaker 1: to a long term lack of investments in early recovery
Speaker 1: and infrastructure. One of these groups again is the White Helmets.
Speaker 1: They were one of the main saviors or helpers ever
Speaker 1: since the Syrians Civil war started in eleven They have
Speaker 1: been on the ground helping and they are made up
Speaker 1: of Syrian volunteers. And I think that's important to keep
Speaker 1: in mind because many Syrians have relied on each other
Speaker 1: and each other alone because they didn't receive help in
Speaker 1: the past. And I'm going to get into later how
Speaker 1: much the country's civil war has made things exponentially worse.
Speaker 1: Several parts in northwestern Syria, including the city of Islab,
Speaker 1: are still controlled by anti government rebels. This representative added
Speaker 1: that they evacuated to maturity hospitals because of the physical
Speaker 1: impact of the earthquake on the infrastructure and so the
Speaker 1: question is where are these people going to go. There's
Speaker 1: no shelter, it is freezing, and there's not enough aid
Speaker 1: to go around. And I'm hoping the countries that have
Speaker 1: said they will help are in the process of actually
Speaker 1: doing so, and I'm going to get into some of
Speaker 1: them in a moment, because I'm grateful that there's help
Speaker 1: coming from somewhere. And amongst all this, there have been
Speaker 1: calls to ease the Syrian border restrictions and controls for
Speaker 1: countries to offer their aid. And again, the rebel held
Speaker 1: on clave in northwest Syria, across the border from Turkey,
Speaker 1: is among the areas that have been hit the worst
Speaker 1: by this disaster. International pledges, as I said, of emergency
Speaker 1: aid have poured in for Turkey and Syria, leading to
Speaker 1: calls for the international community to relax some of the
Speaker 1: political restrictions on aid entering northwest Syria. The Turkish President Aragon,
Speaker 1: who was facing an election only a few months, said
Speaker 1: the offers of aid to Turkey had come from forty
Speaker 1: five countries, ranging from Kuwait to Israel, Russia and the UK.
Speaker 1: Syria said it had received offers of help from China, Russia,
Speaker 1: Lebanon Algeria and the United Arab Immirance. Aid from around
Speaker 1: the world is thankfully heading towards Turkey and Syria, and
Speaker 1: some seventy countries and fourteen international organizations have offered their assistance.
Speaker 1: Here's a roundup of some of the latest pledges. There
Speaker 1: is a Hungarian rescue team of fifty people, including five
Speaker 1: military doctors and to search dogs. South Korea plans to
Speaker 1: offer humanitarian aid worth five million to Turkey and sent
Speaker 1: about a hundred and ten disaster relief workers a military
Speaker 1: personnel to support its search and rescue work. You may
Speaker 1: notice that I'm only saying they're sending aid to Turkey
Speaker 1: and a couple of these, and I will get into
Speaker 1: why in a little bit, But to continue, the Palestinian
Speaker 1: International Corporation Agency will deploy seventy experts to the quake
Speaker 1: later this week, sending two crews comprised of the Civil Defense,
Speaker 1: Ministry of Health and the Palestinian Red Cross, as well
Speaker 1: as doctors and engineers. There are also teams from the
Speaker 1: Palestinian Red Crescent and they are carrying out earthquake rescue
Speaker 1: and relief operations in the Palestinian refugee camps and the
Speaker 1: surrounding areas in Syria. At least three Palestinian refugee camps
Speaker 1: in Syria were struck by the earthquake. Pakistan deployed two
Speaker 1: contingents of emergency services to Turkey. China said it will
Speaker 1: send about five point nine million dollars worth of aid
Speaker 1: to Turkey, while also coordinating with Syria for emergency supplies
Speaker 1: and accelerating ongoing food aid projects. Two Israeli aid groups
Speaker 1: chartered a special flight to Gauzi and tep on Tuesday
Speaker 1: to bring personnel and equipment to victims. Germany's Federal Agency
Speaker 1: for Technical Relief is sending a team of fifty recovery
Speaker 1: experts to Turkey. The Dalai Lama committed to sending rescue
Speaker 1: and relief efforts early today, and Taiwan increased its donation
Speaker 1: to Turkey from two hundred thousand to two million dollars
Speaker 1: and it dispatched about a hundred and thirty rescue teams.
Speaker 1: Indonesia also supplied aid for Turkey. The Vice President of
Speaker 1: Indonesia highlighted the urgency of dispatching humanitarian aid to Turkey
Speaker 1: to return the support granted by the country to Indonesia
Speaker 1: during their times of need over natural disasters in the past.
Speaker 1: Canada also pledged seven point five million dollars to earthquake relief.
Speaker 1: Egypt offered relief assistance to Syria in the wake of
Speaker 1: this earthquake. Ukraine will send eighty seven emergency staff workers
Speaker 1: to Turkey to assist with the relief efforts. And not
Speaker 1: just countries, but also companies and nonprofits have offered their
Speaker 1: help this week. For example, Amazon announced that it will
Speaker 1: help the victims of the Turkey earthquake by donating food, medicine,
Speaker 1: and equipment from its Istanbul warehouse. Amazon has about two
Speaker 1: thousand employees in Turkey, and in a statement on Monday,
Speaker 1: it said that it activated its quote disaster relief capabilities
Speaker 1: and was preparing to donate relief items including blankets, tense food,
Speaker 1: baby food, and medicines. Even here in the US, the
Speaker 1: Virginia Task Force one is sending a crew of seventy
Speaker 1: nine members and six dogs to Turkey, and there are
Speaker 1: seventy eight members of the l A County Fire Department
Speaker 1: who left Monday evening to Turkey. And then there's Greece,
Speaker 1: who set aside tensions with Turkey to send aid but
Speaker 1: helping Syria. They said is more complicated. Despite its tensions
Speaker 1: with Turkey. Greece was among the countries that have dispatched
Speaker 1: help to the country, but conflict torn northwest Syria makes
Speaker 1: the same efforts more complicated, the Prime Minister said. Grace
Speaker 1: and Turkey, he said, are quote neighbors who need to
Speaker 1: help each other through difficult times. This is not the
Speaker 1: first time earthquakes have struck our countries. This is a
Speaker 1: time to temporarily set aside er differences and try to
Speaker 1: address what is a very, very urgent situation. He continued
Speaker 1: to explain that in Syria, however, there is no official
Speaker 1: person or official from the government to have a dialogue with,
Speaker 1: and no assurance that aid will make it to the
Speaker 1: impacted area and people, and that makes relief efforts hard
Speaker 1: to pull off. No country on its own has the
Speaker 1: ability to actually make these sort of arrangements. That's why
Speaker 1: I think it is important that these negotiations could take
Speaker 1: place either through the u N or through the European
Speaker 1: Union by pulling resources. I would not feel confident having
Speaker 1: these sort of discussions at a bilateral level. He also
Speaker 1: added that he has not directly communicated with Damascus. He
Speaker 1: went on to say that quote. I want to stress this,
Speaker 1: this is not about geopolitics, This is not about recognizing
Speaker 1: any sort of regime. This is about saving people and
Speaker 1: horrible conditions who desperately need our assistance. So the scale
Speaker 1: of aid being offered is going to require a large
Speaker 1: coordination effort as well as delicate diplomatic maneuvers to supply
Speaker 1: aid to Syria, where the leadership of Charla said is
Speaker 1: not recognized in the West. It's not recognized for me either,
Speaker 1: and many Syrians feel the same way. But that is
Speaker 1: the monster that we are currently dealing with and there's
Speaker 1: not much we can do about that at this certain
Speaker 1: point in time. And so, as I mentioned, the Syrian
Speaker 1: side of the border is going to be a challenge
Speaker 1: since the worst affected areas contain hundreds of thousands of
Speaker 1: Syrian refugees that are locked in a war zone and
Speaker 1: still facing attacks from Syrian government forces. Aid agencies reported
Speaker 1: that some of the roads from Turkey into Syria were blocked,
Speaker 1: including the main cross border crossing used by international aid agencies.
Speaker 1: The White Helmets said hundreds of families were still trapped
Speaker 1: in the aftermath of the earthquake. They also added that
Speaker 1: terrible weather conditions, including freezing temperatures, had compounded the crisis,
Speaker 1: and they're continuing rescue operations in Syria despite great difficulties
Speaker 1: and aftershocks, they said. The White Helmets also urged the
Speaker 1: Assad regime and Russia to refrain from military activity, and
Speaker 1: they affected areas in order to allow international groups to
Speaker 1: unify and help the people affected. A spokesperson from the
Speaker 1: White Helmets said, our teams responded and until now many
Speaker 1: families are under the rubble. Our teams are trying hard
Speaker 1: to find all the casualties. Northwest Syria is now a
Speaker 1: disaster area. We need help from everyone to save our people.
Speaker 1: I think this would be a moment to take a
Speaker 1: little break. I don't have the capacity or emotional bandwidth
Speaker 1: to think of a clever segue. So here are some
Speaker 1: ads and are back. We're talking about the difficulty sending
Speaker 1: aid to Syria along the Turkey Syrian border. Last month,
Speaker 1: actually the U N. Security Council agreed to allow aid
Speaker 1: into northwest Syria from Turkey across one border crossing Bablahella,
Speaker 1: surprising no one. The Syrian regime has been resistant to
Speaker 1: allowing aid into a region serving more than four million
Speaker 1: of its people because it regards the AID as undermining
Speaker 1: Syrian sovereignty and reducing its chances of winning back control
Speaker 1: of the region. Yes, that is correct. The Syrian government
Speaker 1: doesn't want to help more than four million of its
Speaker 1: own people because one day it wants to control them again.
Speaker 1: Are you fucking kidding me? I? I don't understand that
Speaker 1: malignant desire to rule over a land that you have destroyed,
Speaker 1: in a people that you have murdered. I don't get
Speaker 1: the fucking point. But regardless, that is one of the
Speaker 1: many reasons why getting aid into Syria is going to
Speaker 1: be much more complicated than getting aid into Turkey. Additionally,
Speaker 1: Mark Locock, the former head of UN Humanitarian Affairs, said
Speaker 1: the area's worst affected by the earthquake inside Syria look
Speaker 1: to be run by the Turkish controlled opposition and not
Speaker 1: by the Syrian government. It is going to require Turkish
Speaker 1: acquiescence to aid in these areas. It is unlikely the
Speaker 1: Syrian government will do much to help. Yes, Mark, I
Speaker 1: think you're right. The Syrian government isn't gonna do shit,
Speaker 1: if anything. Charles said, is probably happy seeing all these
Speaker 1: people dying, because that's his whole mma, just to kill
Speaker 1: the Syrian people anyway. A video from a hospital posted
Speaker 1: by the Syrian American Medical Society showed that it was
Speaker 1: immensely crowded. They said, our hospitals are overwhelmed with patients
Speaker 1: filling the hallways. There is an mediate need for trauma
Speaker 1: supplies and a comprehensive emergency response to save lives and
Speaker 1: treat the injured. Initial needs are for tens of thousands
Speaker 1: of tents, heaters for the tents, tens of thousands of blankets,
Speaker 1: thermal clothes, ready to eat food, and basic first aid kits.
Speaker 1: A UNICEF representative in Aleppo said that the hospitals in
Speaker 1: Syria are absolutely overloaded. Hospitals are full of patients with trauma,
Speaker 1: broken bones and lacerations, and some people are going to
Speaker 1: the hospital to seek help for the mental trauma they
Speaker 1: endured after the earthquake struck, The UNISEF representative Angela Kearney said,
Speaker 1: while hospitals are functioning, the task has been overwhelming. Describing
Speaker 1: the scene in Aleppo when the earthquake struck on Monday,
Speaker 1: Kearnie said children who have already been traumatized by war
Speaker 1: were bewildered. They didn't know what was happening. Kearnie said
Speaker 1: that on Monday morning, when UNISEEF began its work in
Speaker 1: the area, there were seven schools and a bow that
Speaker 1: are being used as shelters. By Tuesday morning, that number
Speaker 1: grew to sixty seven and currently it is nearly two
Speaker 1: hundred and all of those schools that are partially damaged.
Speaker 1: There are families there who left their apartments, left their
Speaker 1: houses with just their pajamas, she said. She also added
Speaker 1: that while aid is starting to go into the affected areas,
Speaker 1: there is still a desperate need for blankets, food, clean water,
Speaker 1: medical care and nutritional care. She said that water, sanitation
Speaker 1: and nutrition needs are the most urgent. The aid is
Speaker 1: starting to go in, but it is overwhelming. The needs
Speaker 1: are very great. There are discussions under way to open
Speaker 1: aid corridors from the government controlled parts of Syria to
Speaker 1: the rebel held areas. Hammad Hammoud, Syria Country manager at
Speaker 1: the Norwegian Red Cross, said that he hopes with the
Speaker 1: help and efforts from humanitarian communities, this would happen in
Speaker 1: the coming days, and he said currently nothing has moved there,
Speaker 1: but there are discussions about moving aid and access to
Speaker 1: these areas. He continued to say after being asked if
Speaker 1: the Syrian government in Damascus has been helpful to these areas,
Speaker 1: he said. They have stated that they are open to
Speaker 1: cross line intervention, meaning from government held areas to these
Speaker 1: non government held areas. They are open to it. They'reout
Speaker 1: doing ship though obviously earlier today, the head of the
Speaker 1: Syrian Arab Red Crescent, which described itself as an independent
Speaker 1: and volunteer based humanitarian organization, said that the organization is
Speaker 1: ready to immediately send aid convoys to rebel held areas,
Speaker 1: including Islib through the u N. Hammoud added that the
Speaker 1: humanitarian situation is worsening. He said, we are in a
Speaker 1: race against time. In describing the rescue and search operations,
Speaker 1: Hammoud said that due to the lack of machinery, most
Speaker 1: of the work on clearing the rubble is done by
Speaker 1: hand and the cold weather conditions are not helping. He
Speaker 1: also added that the buildings are already weakened because of
Speaker 1: eleven years of war. In addition to the thousands of
Speaker 1: people that have been lost to this tragedy, there are
Speaker 1: also some cultural sites that have been permanently damaged in
Speaker 1: both Turkey and Syria. UNESCO, the United Nations Cultural organization,
Speaker 1: said it's going to provide assistance following the cultural site damage,
Speaker 1: UNESCO said that it is particularly concerned about the situation
Speaker 1: in the ancient city of Aleppo, which is on the
Speaker 1: list of World Heritage and Danger. It added that the
Speaker 1: citadel had significant damage, the old city wall has collapsed,
Speaker 1: and several buildings and the sux have been weakened. In
Speaker 1: the Turkish city of the yad Beka, UNESCO lamented the
Speaker 1: collapse of several buildings. The city is home to the
Speaker 1: World Heritage Site, the Yabukat of Fortress and the he
Speaker 1: cl Gardens cultural landscape, which is an important center of
Speaker 1: the Roman, sun Acid, Byzantine, Islamic and Ottoman periods. The
Speaker 1: organization says it is mobilizing experts to establish a precise
Speaker 1: inventory of the damage with the aim of rapidly securing
Speaker 1: and stabilizing these sites. Aleppo was also one of the
Speaker 1: city's worst damaged by the Syrian regime. It is a beautiful,
Speaker 1: beautiful place. Everything that the regime has destroyed was a beautiful,
Speaker 1: beautiful place. Aleppo had a lot of history, though, and
Speaker 1: that region is just home to so much history, and
Speaker 1: it's just really heartbreaking to know the extent of the
Speaker 1: loss that doesn't just include lives. In talking to my
Speaker 1: mom and my family about this, the sentiment seems like
Speaker 1: it's the same that it's been for the past decade. Essentially,
Speaker 1: Syrians don't have a government. There is no government. Assad
Speaker 1: in his regime doesn't care about the Syrian people. My
Speaker 1: mom literally said, we have no one. We've known this
Speaker 1: for years, no one helped us. Syrians are the ones
Speaker 1: supporting each other. The White Helmets is a great example
Speaker 1: of this. One of our family's friends on the ground
Speaker 1: in the city of Hamma, which is where my mom
Speaker 1: is from, was saying that it was absolute chaos. Everyone
Speaker 1: is in the streets and no one is daring to
Speaker 1: go back inside their homes. Another person was telling us
Speaker 1: about his experience, and he said, I was asleep and
Speaker 1: felt the earthquake start in my bed. My son was terrified,
Speaker 1: and I went to hug my son. I kept telling
Speaker 1: him it'll be over soon, It'll be over soon, and
Speaker 1: then the roof started crumbling on top of us. So
Speaker 1: then he ran outside and he saw many people doing
Speaker 1: the same, just running outside their homes if they were
Speaker 1: able to make it out, and watching their homes just
Speaker 1: crumble in front of them. Let's take a break, and
Speaker 1: when we come back, I want to set the scene
Speaker 1: of what Syrians have been going through even before this
Speaker 1: earthquake been happened, and how sanctions in particular have made
Speaker 1: the impact of this disaster exponentially worse. So we're back
Speaker 1: and we're going to talk about how sanctions have only
Speaker 1: aided in the suffering of the Syrian people. Twelve years
Speaker 1: after the eruption of the Syrian Uprising and the eleven
Speaker 1: subsequent conflict, the us IS Syria policy has constrained political
Speaker 1: pressure on the Assad regime to broad economic sanctions, but
Speaker 1: despite an expansive approach that targets entire economic sectors, these
Speaker 1: sanctions have had little to no effect in pushing the
Speaker 1: regime to offer political concessions, engage meaningfully in a peaceful
Speaker 1: settlement of the conflict, or improve its human rights record.
Speaker 1: All the while, conditions in Syria have steadily worsened as
Speaker 1: sanctions along with the destructive effects of twelve years of conflict,
Speaker 1: the economic crisis and neighboring Lebanon, and the COVID nineteen pandemic.
Speaker 1: All of this has fueled an economic collapse that has
Speaker 1: left more than i d percent of the population in
Speaker 1: Syria living in poverty. In nineteen seventy nine, the United
Speaker 1: States listed Syria as a state sponsor of terrorism, and
Speaker 1: since then it has pursued sanctions as a primary tool
Speaker 1: in its policy towards Syria. The George W. Bush administration
Speaker 1: issued a series of sanctions under executive orders aiming to
Speaker 1: limit serious destabilizing influence in Iraq. However, after the uprising,
Speaker 1: the Barack Obama and Donald Trump administrations sanctioned the Assad
Speaker 1: regime on an unprecedented scale for its gross human rights
Speaker 1: violations against his people. These sanctions ultimately accumulated in the
Speaker 1: passing of the Caesar Act in twenty nineteen, and this
Speaker 1: allows primary and secondary sanctions targeting both those who commit
Speaker 1: the sanctionable offenses and those who enable them. Just three
Speaker 1: months ago, in November two, a u when appointed independent
Speaker 1: human rights expert urge the United States to lift the
Speaker 1: unilateral sanctions against Syria, warning that they are perpetrating and
Speaker 1: exacerbating the destruction and trauma suffered by ordinary citizens since
Speaker 1: the brutal war began in This expert's name is Alana Dohan,
Speaker 1: and she said, I am struck by the pervasiveness of
Speaker 1: the human rights and humanitarian impact of the unilateral coercive
Speaker 1: measures imposed on Syria, and the total economic and financial
Speaker 1: isolation of a country whose people are struggling to rebuild
Speaker 1: a life with dignity. In a statement that followed her
Speaker 1: twelve day visit to Syria, Dohan presented detailed information on
Speaker 1: the catastrophic effects that sanctions have had on all aspects
Speaker 1: of Syrian life. Currently, serious population is living below the
Speaker 1: poverty line, she said, pointing to their limited access to food, water, electricity, shelter,
Speaker 1: cooking and heating, fuel, transportation, and healthcare. Moreover, growing economic
Speaker 1: hards ship threatens to trigger a massive brain drain in
Speaker 1: the country, she said, with more than half of the
Speaker 1: vital infrastructure either completely destroyed or severely damaged. The imposition
Speaker 1: of unilateral sanctions on key economic sectors, including oil, gas, electricity, trade, construction,
Speaker 1: and engineering, have quashed national income and they undermine efforts
Speaker 1: towards economic recovery and reconstruction. These sanctions have committed various
Speaker 1: human rights violations in their existence, including these serious shortages
Speaker 1: and medicines and specialized medical equipment. My family and I
Speaker 1: have direct experience with these repercussions of the lack of
Speaker 1: medicines and medical equipment. My cousin, a child, had brain
Speaker 1: cancer and it got worse and worse, and the city
Speaker 1: they were in did not offer the treatment necessary or
Speaker 1: even key mo to help his condition. So his mother
Speaker 1: would drive to Damascus, where at least some of the
Speaker 1: treatment options were available. But the road to Damascus, even
Speaker 1: though it shouldn't take more than a few hours, can
Speaker 1: sometimes take all day because there are so many checkpoints
Speaker 1: and road closures and just the regime making it so
Speaker 1: difficult to do anything. Ultimately, my cousin was suffering for
Speaker 1: the remainder of his very young life, and he didn't
Speaker 1: get the treatment that he needed. And I really think
Speaker 1: these sanctions have a lot to do with the lack
Speaker 1: of access that my family and many families have in Syria.
Speaker 1: And that experience that my family went through is one
Speaker 1: of many that many Syrian families have endured because of
Speaker 1: these sanctions. So I want you guys to keep that
Speaker 1: in mind. That numbers also contain individual lives, and each
Speaker 1: one is devastating all on its own. And I know
Speaker 1: I say that often, but I think it bears repeating
Speaker 1: every time. I don't want us to be numb to
Speaker 1: statistics and numbers when it comes to casualties and suffering
Speaker 1: and loss. And maybe it sounds obvious, but I just
Speaker 1: think we need to remember the value of human life
Speaker 1: and what it means to take it away. So that's
Speaker 1: what I'm going to say about that for now. Let's
Speaker 1: get back to the reports that Ms Dohan was showing
Speaker 1: the US back in November two about the effect of
Speaker 1: the sanctions, so including the impact that sanctions have had
Speaker 1: on these serious shortages and medicines and specialized medical equipment
Speaker 1: due to the unavailability of equipment and spare parts. She
Speaker 1: warned that the rehabilitation and development of water distribution networks
Speaker 1: for drinking and irrigation has stalled, with serious implications for
Speaker 1: public health and food security. Twelve million Syrians are experiencing
Speaker 1: food and security. This is pre earthquake. The number is
Speaker 1: probably much higher now. Dohan urged for the immediate lifting
Speaker 1: of all unilateral sanctions that severely harm human rights and
Speaker 1: prevent any efforts for early recovery, rebuilding and reconstruction. She said,
Speaker 1: no reference to good objectives of unilateral sanctions justifies the
Speaker 1: violation of fundamental human rights. The international community has an
Speaker 1: obligation of solidarity and assistance to the Syrian people. I
Speaker 1: want to add something that UNICEF said about the children
Speaker 1: in Syria. Children in Syria continue to face one of
Speaker 1: the most complex humanitarian situations in the world. A worsening
Speaker 1: economic crisis. Continued localized hostilities after more than a decade
Speaker 1: of grinding, con liked mass displacement, and devastated public infrastructure
Speaker 1: have left two thirds of the population in need of assistance.
Speaker 1: Water Borne diseases pose another deadly threat to children and
Speaker 1: families affected. And all of this is again pre earthquake.
Speaker 1: This is the life that Syrians have known for years
Speaker 1: now without any assistance. Sanctions have done nothing but contribute
Speaker 1: to the increase in the suffering of Assyrian people, and
Speaker 1: now countries and organizations might have a hard time providing
Speaker 1: aid because of these sanctions. Sanctions have done nothing but
Speaker 1: contribute to the suffering and pain of Assyrian people. They
Speaker 1: didn't do anything they were supposedly meant to do. The
Speaker 1: assad regime isn't going to change anything. It hasn't changed anything.
Speaker 1: It's still killing its people. I also want to mention
Speaker 1: that last year on MATEO, the EU extended its sanctions
Speaker 1: against the Syrian government for another year. Who knows if
Speaker 1: this will change, but for now that's the reality. So
Speaker 1: I'm really hoping these sanctions get eventually lifted or else.
Speaker 1: Helping the Syrian people is going to be extremely difficult,
Speaker 1: and right now rescuers are still digging through thousands and
Speaker 1: thousands of flattened buildings in near freezing temperatures. The death
Speaker 1: toll is only going to continue to rise, and everyone
Speaker 1: there needs all the help they can get. And I know,
Speaker 1: at least for me, it feels really helpless. I've felt
Speaker 1: pretty helpless for a long time when it comes to Syria.
Speaker 1: But if you're able to donate any money at all,
Speaker 1: I would really urge you to donate to a charity
Speaker 1: that you trust. I really like the White Helmets because
Speaker 1: they're just on the ground and they've been doing the
Speaker 1: work for years. So if you're able to, I think
Speaker 1: help can go a long way. I want to end
Speaker 1: with something that Atlanta Dohan, the UN appointed independent human
Speaker 1: rights expert that gave the US this report about the
Speaker 1: sanctions in November. She quoted one view that she heard
Speaker 1: expressed many times. She said, I saw much suffering, but
Speaker 1: now I see the hope die. So that's where the
Speaker 1: Syrian people started, that's where they've been. Nearly seventy of
Speaker 1: the Syrian population was already in need of humanitarian aid
Speaker 1: before the earthquake even happened, and it's an issue that's
Speaker 1: only been compounded by the tragedy today. The UN said, quote,
Speaker 1: this tragedy will have a devastating impact on many vulnerable
Speaker 1: families who struggle to provide for their loved ones on
Speaker 1: a daily basis. The statement outlined the impact of serious
Speaker 1: twelve year war, describing a country as grappling with economic collapse,
Speaker 1: severe water, electricity and fuel shortages. They issued an appeal
Speaker 1: to all donor partners to provide assistance necessary to alleviate suffering.
Speaker 1: The U N and humanitarian partners say they are currently
Speaker 1: focusing on immediate needs including food, shelter and non food
Speaker 1: items and medicine. And the devastation of this earthquake because
Speaker 1: of this is truly devastating. I cannot emphasize that enough.
Speaker 1: So again, if you're able to donate, I really urge
Speaker 1: you too, And if you can't, just keep raising awareness
Speaker 1: because someone else might be able to donate. And that's
Speaker 1: all we really have for now. So that's the episode.
Speaker 1: I hope it was informative or eye opening in any way.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening. I will talk to you later.
Speaker 1: It seems like hardly a month goes by where we
Speaker 1: are not bombarded with horrific images of far ride Islands,
Speaker 1: mass shootings, the target synagogues, black churches and queer nightclubs,
Speaker 1: death threats to hospitals spurred by post from online trolls.
Speaker 1: In a barrage of fascist groups attempting to intimidate everyone
Speaker 1: and everything, from children's events, black Lives Matter protests, pride celebrations,
Speaker 1: and abortion clinics. Wooden resistance is mobilized and people do
Speaker 1: push back. The media often frames these confrontations the clash
Speaker 1: simply between two sets of extremists. On today's shows, the
Speaker 1: It's Going Down crew once again takes over. It could happen.
Speaker 1: Here we look at how far from being just confined
Speaker 1: to small sets of antifast super soldiers, mass community self
Speaker 1: defense is part and parcels to the DNA of grassroots
Speaker 1: movements for liberation in the so called United States. We
Speaker 1: can see this throughout the ongoing history of indigenous resistance
Speaker 1: to colonization. In the fight against slavery and racial apartheid.
Speaker 1: Radical labor unions such as the i w W organized
Speaker 1: against Ku Klux Klan attention that even led to running
Speaker 1: gun battles, while militant organizers like Robert F. Williams and
Speaker 1: groups such as the Deacons for Defense, who helped inspire
Speaker 1: the Black Panthers, fought back against white racist mobs. In
Speaker 1: the book This Non Violent Stuff Will Get You Killed,
Speaker 1: author Charles E. Cobb documents this history, discussing the wide
Speaker 1: use of arms and defending civil rights organizers from white supremacists.
Speaker 1: Groups like Anti Racist Action or a r A carried
Speaker 1: on this trajectory, working to set up chapters of organized
Speaker 1: anti racists that confronted neo Nazi groups the Clan, and
Speaker 1: participated in defense of abortion clinics. Once again, I'm Mike Andrews.
Speaker 1: Let's get into it. In two thousand five, in the
Speaker 1: wake of Hurricane Katrina, the levy surrounding New Orleans broke,
Speaker 1: flooding working class communities and homes. Those that could evacuate fled,
Speaker 1: while many, often poor and black, were stuck behind to
Speaker 1: fend for themselves. Stepping into this setting was a group
Speaker 1: of Black Liberation and anarchist activists who worked to set
Speaker 1: up mutual aid hubs and free clinics, dubbed Common Ground.
Speaker 1: But as these volunteers worked to feed people, restore people's homes,
Speaker 1: and provide free medical care, they quickly found that they
Speaker 1: weren't the only organized force on the streets of New Orleans.
Speaker 1: In this following interview, Sunseri Ali Shakur discusses how the
Speaker 1: group came up against and defended themselves from a formation
Speaker 1: of armed racist white vigilantees who worked directly with local
Speaker 1: police and our suspected of carrying out multiple murders of
Speaker 1: unarmed black men a warning. However, this interview was graphic
Speaker 1: in details death, racist violence, and anti black racism. My
Speaker 1: name is s I'm organized out of Wasson and d C.
Speaker 1: I went to New Orleans UH doing Kataka add the
Speaker 1: mass and I helped um co co found Common Ground
Speaker 1: Relief and Common Ground was formed as a response to
Speaker 1: the calamity of Katrina and um Common Ground was also
Speaker 1: the brainchild of the Angola Three, so a lot of
Speaker 1: the base organizers of Common Ground were already in New Orleans.
Speaker 1: UH organized and the help the Angola Three. So the
Speaker 1: Angle of Three was basically the god fathers of common
Speaker 1: ground ground relief. We lost a few of the of
Speaker 1: the elders, Alfred wood Fox as such, and we still
Speaker 1: got King, Uh King, Wos and everything. A note to
Speaker 1: our listeners. The Angola Three referred to here is a
Speaker 1: group of formally incarcerated black political prisoners and members of
Speaker 1: the Black Parther Party in the ninet seventies were imprisoned
Speaker 1: in the notorious Angola Facility in Louisiana. This included Robert
Speaker 1: Hillary King, Albert wood Fox, and Hermann Wallace. King was
Speaker 1: released in two thousand one, and, along with another former
Speaker 1: Black Panther, Malik Raheem, became involved in mutual aid and
Speaker 1: disaster relief efforts in New Orleans following Katrina in two
Speaker 1: thousand five under the banner of common Ground. Wallace was
Speaker 1: released from prison in October one, only to pass away
Speaker 1: sadly three days later, a day after being reindited by
Speaker 1: the state. Albert Wood Fox was finally released in February
Speaker 1: of two thousand sixteen and passed on six years later
Speaker 1: due to complications from COVID nineteen tireless activists on both
Speaker 1: sides of the prison walls together the angal of three
Speaker 1: endured a combined total of one fourteen years in solitary confinement. Yeah,
Speaker 1: my job when I when I touched down the common
Speaker 1: ground was basically I was a relief scout UM. I
Speaker 1: wore many hats, I was a mediation person, head of
Speaker 1: security UM. And I also organized about seven UM makesuret
Speaker 1: hurricane distribution UH centers from New Orleans to the Bayou
Speaker 1: and I spent eighteen months there and children's free breakfast program,
Speaker 1: anything that the community needed, you know, I provided UM.
Speaker 1: I used to drive like fourteen hundred miles a week
Speaker 1: taking supplies from New Orleans UH into different bious and
Speaker 1: different surrounding areas in New Orleans. That was my my job.
Speaker 1: When I first got there, I ran into Malink Rahim,
Speaker 1: a former black pather in New Orleans, thus Minister of Defense,
Speaker 1: and when I touched down, he had told me that
Speaker 1: there were a group of white vigilantees, up to eighteen
Speaker 1: of them, riding around and murdering black people as they
Speaker 1: walked through these white communities and Algiers and alger Point.
Speaker 1: Algiers wasn't affected by water, but it did have a
Speaker 1: great deal of wind damage. Most of the houses wasn'ttact
Speaker 1: It just wasn't no electricity and the water was also
Speaker 1: a problem. Well, what they would do they would tie
Speaker 1: uh cans from one fence to another beginning of the
Speaker 1: neighborhood of the street. And if they were in their
Speaker 1: homes and uh you bumped in, you know you you
Speaker 1: tried to get up under the cans, and the cans
Speaker 1: started ringing. They would open up windows and and and
Speaker 1: begin uh fire at you. And they were jumping their
Speaker 1: pickup trucks and chase you down. And some uh you know,
Speaker 1: some are murdered, you know, point blank. And those whom
Speaker 1: they wounded, they were throwing the back of the truck.
Speaker 1: Take to a garage and pour gasoline over your wounds,
Speaker 1: put cigarettes out on you, and uh some didn't make
Speaker 1: it out. That's such suation. They like I said, they
Speaker 1: dropped about court and information. When we got they dropped
Speaker 1: nineteen and some black men and the brothers in the
Speaker 1: community got tired of of of these guys, and they
Speaker 1: broke into a pawn shop and stole all the guns
Speaker 1: out the powd shop. And there was about to be
Speaker 1: a major race war. And um, you gotta understand too,
Speaker 1: how tight the situation was because their base, their house.
Speaker 1: The day they hung out at their backyard connected with
Speaker 1: our backyard, so it was extremely tense. So when the
Speaker 1: brothers broke into the pond shop got the weapons out,
Speaker 1: just so happened. The next day the National Guards showed up.
Speaker 1: But if the national Guard didn't show up the next day,
Speaker 1: it would have been extremely ugly out there. Uh and everything.
Speaker 1: And yeah, they used to patrol the streets and the
Speaker 1: pickup trucks. We would see them all the time. I
Speaker 1: would see them all the time. And they were cowards man,
Speaker 1: you know. They would tender one. It's always tender one,
Speaker 1: you know, ten vigilantis the on black man, unharmed black man.
Speaker 1: But we noticed one they would drive by. We would
Speaker 1: come out with our weapons on our hips and let
Speaker 1: them know that this ain't no place to mess with.
Speaker 1: Keep driving. You know what I'm saying. You will be
Speaker 1: fired upon you come here with that business. And I
Speaker 1: would have to set up patrols for our house. At night. UM,
Speaker 1: I would sleep uh in the hallway and malnks home
Speaker 1: with a nominal of me to car being rifle strapped
Speaker 1: across my chest and the radio colm so I could
Speaker 1: keep in contact with the others who were unarmed and
Speaker 1: doing patrols, you know, watching the house while the other
Speaker 1: thirty six volunteers have slept intense in the backyard. You know,
Speaker 1: we're asleep, Lucky for us. They were a bunch of
Speaker 1: cowards and they kept it moving. I would see them
Speaker 1: all the time, and they were they were afraid of
Speaker 1: me because they knew that I was not afraid of them,
Speaker 1: and I was armed, and we all when we had
Speaker 1: a few people back at the house that was armed
Speaker 1: as well. You could ride down certain streets and there
Speaker 1: will be uh dead bodies that were bloated, uh from
Speaker 1: being left out in the sun. And uh those bodies
Speaker 1: were left by the vigilantees. The rumor was that the
Speaker 1: do on the police department told the vigilantees. We gave
Speaker 1: the vigilantees a green light to do what they needed
Speaker 1: to do and as far as the bodies, just leave
Speaker 1: them near the gutter and they will come and collect
Speaker 1: them later, which they didn't. The body stayed out there,
Speaker 1: I would say up to two months, you know you,
Speaker 1: I mean, they were like you can see them all
Speaker 1: the time, and um, there a lot of people had left.
Speaker 1: There wasn't a lot of people there because people had evacuated,
Speaker 1: a lot of stray dogs running around uh in pacts
Speaker 1: of thirty and what we would have to do is
Speaker 1: get up early in the morning when the curfew was over,
Speaker 1: take bids she's from malnks mother's room, and go out
Speaker 1: and wrap up the bodies with these sheets. Keep the
Speaker 1: dogs from ripping them open for fluid and food. Reporting
Speaker 1: in the nation in Republica, investigative journalists A. C. Thompson
Speaker 1: spent months speaking with survivors of Katrina about a racist
Speaker 1: militia that formed in the predominantly white neighborhood of Algierst Point,
Speaker 1: who carried out a series of deadly shootings and even
Speaker 1: worked directly with local law enforcement. White residents told investigators
Speaker 1: the police had given them a green light to shoot
Speaker 1: anyone quote breaking into their property and to quote leave
Speaker 1: the bodies on the side of the road. Others spoke
Speaker 1: of a free for all of white against black where
Speaker 1: whites condulged in violence with impunity. Years later, several white
Speaker 1: vigilanties were found guilty were sentenced to prison time for
Speaker 1: shootings and murder, and like many modern conspiracy theories pushed
Speaker 1: by the far Ride about x FI and BLM. During
Speaker 1: the George Foyd Uprising, the vigilantes and algiers point were
Speaker 1: largely animated by widespread racist rumors that were nutfounded about leaders. Um.
Speaker 1: We were harassed a lot by the and OPD. You
Speaker 1: know a lot of times at gunpoint. They would come
Speaker 1: to our house sometimes you know, ten cars deep in
Speaker 1: op D wood and looking for Malink. One night they
Speaker 1: came through looking for Malink and what we had heard
Speaker 1: that they were out to assassinate him and anybody with him.
Speaker 1: They came out looking for Malink one night, about ten
Speaker 1: cars dep and they had went through the house looking
Speaker 1: for him, and they couldn't find them. And they pulled
Speaker 1: out this fourteen year old young man that we had
Speaker 1: befriended to live on the backstreet for mLink and they
Speaker 1: started beating him, saying that he had stole the cooler
Speaker 1: out somebody's yard and minds you, you know, no one's there,
Speaker 1: so no one's really missing that cool And the young
Speaker 1: man thought, you know, because we didn't have refrigeration and
Speaker 1: we hadn't put everything on ice. You know, ice was
Speaker 1: very important at that time, and the water was very important,
Speaker 1: you know, along with gasoline. But the young brother brought
Speaker 1: us a cooler, and the police put shot guards and
Speaker 1: everybody's stomachs, and they beat them in front of us
Speaker 1: and dared us to do anything. As far as like
Speaker 1: what the environment looked like, it was not and I
Speaker 1: say this, it was not a rescue mission. This was
Speaker 1: seemed like they were running a drill, a military drill,
Speaker 1: you know, like the same hour, I mean, like the
Speaker 1: albat project. You will look at the bridge and you
Speaker 1: will see continue with military cars going across the cresta
Speaker 1: city bridge at nighttime. In four corners of the community.
Speaker 1: You would have black Hawk helicopters patrolling. You know, they
Speaker 1: will follow you through the yard with spotlights. Also, we
Speaker 1: had homeland security, which included mercenaries. They were sometimes up
Speaker 1: to cars and if you were to violate, uh, the curfew,
Speaker 1: they were ride up on you. And they had these
Speaker 1: little and I used to have to interact with them
Speaker 1: because we had some some some young people there. They
Speaker 1: thought they had privileged from up north would translate in
Speaker 1: New Orleans, which it did not. Um they've seen any
Speaker 1: white person outside of New Orleans as a bunch of
Speaker 1: quote unquote nigga levels. So I would have the negotiate
Speaker 1: with these homeless security people. UM, you had to be
Speaker 1: very calm, very still, because you could see the pupils.
Speaker 1: Their pupils were dilated with small anybody that's been in
Speaker 1: war like Vietnam and such an Uh, there's a storm
Speaker 1: they know when these people when the pupils are dilated
Speaker 1: like that, that means these people have killed several times.
Speaker 1: And my huncle used to call it a hundred miles there.
Speaker 1: And you had to be very calm with these people
Speaker 1: because if you flinched, if you did anything that they
Speaker 1: didn't like or they felt threatened in any type of way,
Speaker 1: they will open up fire on you. Um. They were
Speaker 1: they had a R fifteens. All of them had a
Speaker 1: R fifteens and not milling me distrapped to their legs.
Speaker 1: So it was more you know, it's seemed more like
Speaker 1: a military takeover, like I said before, then ar rescue
Speaker 1: and further down the line. For in the months, you
Speaker 1: had National guardsmen that opened fire on people, uh into
Speaker 1: busy traffic. Um. You will find bodies in the seventh ward,
Speaker 1: in the eighth ward in different houses, UH with bullets
Speaker 1: in the back of their head, you know, execution style.
Speaker 1: And um our investigating team will go out and witness
Speaker 1: this firsthand, and I was a part of that investigating team.
Speaker 1: They would do a walk through the house where the
Speaker 1: body was at. It was shot in the back of
Speaker 1: the head, and the rumor was, you know, we had
Speaker 1: some rogue National guardsmen executing you know, people who didn't
Speaker 1: have homes. We're home some homeless people, you know that
Speaker 1: were left behind. Number one lesson I learned uma trainer
Speaker 1: was you may be a pacifist, but you might need
Speaker 1: to passive fists. You may need to go out and
Speaker 1: get you firearms. Of course, we want you to get
Speaker 1: proper training. Of course, we don't want you to do
Speaker 1: anything illegal. Get your legal firearms and get some training.
Speaker 1: The second lesson was that human beings are incredible. We
Speaker 1: saw a lot of destruction, but we also saw a
Speaker 1: lot of beauty and a lot of love. In my
Speaker 1: experience too, we were common ground. People came together in days,
Speaker 1: and we fell in love with each other within days.
Speaker 1: Because of the pressure of the situation. If we didn't
Speaker 1: love each other, if we didn't get along with one another,
Speaker 1: we had to, you know, in order for survival. Things
Speaker 1: were so bad that if your car had broken down
Speaker 1: on the side of the highway on the road you
Speaker 1: had to call us and five different vehicles will be
Speaker 1: speeding to your low cases. Um, you know to see
Speaker 1: who we'll get there first before Homeland Security or a
Speaker 1: vigilante group will roll up on you. You can't rely
Speaker 1: on the state. Can't rely on the state. Stay with
Speaker 1: us as it could happen. Here returns after the short
Speaker 1: break and a word from our sponsors. The same year
Speaker 1: that Sinceria was facing down armed racist vigilantes in New Orleans,
Speaker 1: the stage was also set for an uprising to kick
Speaker 1: off in Toledo, Ohio. In our next interview, Tom tells
Speaker 1: us how a largely black community an archists affiliated with
Speaker 1: anti racist action hit the streets against the National Socialist
Speaker 1: Movement for the NSM and participated in uprising that exploded
Speaker 1: not just against the neo Nazis, but the police that
Speaker 1: were protecting them as well. The Toledo anti racism protests
Speaker 1: really began when a National Socialist Movement member who was
Speaker 1: living in a black neighborhood in Toledo pulled a gun
Speaker 1: on two black children that were playing in the alley
Speaker 1: behind his house. Um. Those kids then went home and
Speaker 1: told their parents. Their parents then showed up to his
Speaker 1: house with weapons. The guy pulled a gun on them
Speaker 1: and then called the National Socialist Movement, who then showed up.
Speaker 1: And so they had been This is back when Bill
Speaker 1: White was still the head of ns M and NSM
Speaker 1: was actually starting to make some headway, like they were
Speaker 1: growing really quickly. They targeted Ohio as a recruiting ground
Speaker 1: UM because they thought that they could gain a lot
Speaker 1: of membership there, and so Toledo was kind of their
Speaker 1: first foray into trying to do stuff in Ohio. And
Speaker 1: so they announced a date and the organizers on the
Speaker 1: ground and Toledo did something really interesting. Then instead of
Speaker 1: organizing activists, they went and organized in the community directly
Speaker 1: UM that they were going around the streets talking to people.
Speaker 1: Street gangs were calling truces for the day, right, and
Speaker 1: so when October fifteenth rolled around, like everybody showed up,
Speaker 1: like there were anarchists there, but there were like tons
Speaker 1: of people from the neighborhood there. The whole protest didn't
Speaker 1: last very long. It was this is October fifteenth and five.
Speaker 1: They sort of n s M was there and they
Speaker 1: had their shields and people were hooking stuff at them,
Speaker 1: but they were kind of too far away to really
Speaker 1: like hit. So the cops started surrounding them and allowing
Speaker 1: them to mark and as they were marching, they got
Speaker 1: within projectile range of people and then started pelting them
Speaker 1: with everything that they could think of. The cops and
Speaker 1: got them to run, got the Nazis to run so
Speaker 1: they could kind of try and get them out of
Speaker 1: the area. A group of people sort of cut back
Speaker 1: behind the school trying and cut them off. I got
Speaker 1: tear gased, and when the tear gas flew, everything just
Speaker 1: got set off. There was rioting on and off for
Speaker 1: like three days in this neighborhood. After this, a bar
Speaker 1: owned by a cop got burned, got looted, and then
Speaker 1: burned to the ground. People trying to burn this Nazi's
Speaker 1: house down. They had to declare state of emergency over this.
Speaker 1: And so there are a number of things that were
Speaker 1: really important about that day. I think for for us,
Speaker 1: one was it really did point to the effectiveness of
Speaker 1: community anti fascist work. People that neighborhood were already mad,
Speaker 1: but it was this sort of like mobilization work which
Speaker 1: was down by people in the neighborhood and also done
Speaker 1: by kind of anarchists that were down in the neighborhood
Speaker 1: working with people to really make that what it was right,
Speaker 1: And it really showed what a community can do when
Speaker 1: Nazis show up in their name, and how much a
Speaker 1: community can reassert its ownership over their space when the
Speaker 1: police decided to protect the Nazis that are attacking their neighborhood.
Speaker 1: But the other thing that really demonstrated that it really
Speaker 1: kind of created was it created a dynamic in Ohio
Speaker 1: which had been sort of building for a little while,
Speaker 1: but you can kind of still feel the ramifications of it.
Speaker 1: So starting with the over the Rhine riots, which I
Speaker 1: think we're in two thousand three or two thousand one,
Speaker 1: when the Cincinnati police killed Timothy Thomas, there had kind
Speaker 1: of been this escalating series of you know, tensions with
Speaker 1: with the state around this period of time. It's also
Speaker 1: the period of time that a lot of Ohio cities
Speaker 1: were sort of beginning. They're the really cute period of
Speaker 1: their decline that they had been sort of declining for
Speaker 1: a while, but this is really when things got bad.
Speaker 1: It was starting really like the early two thousands, mid
Speaker 1: two thousand's um the financial collapse in Cleveland, for example,
Speaker 1: was in two thousand six, um. But it had already
Speaker 1: been sort of going for a couple of years before that,
Speaker 1: and so there were these political conditions that were in
Speaker 1: place that facilitated this. But this also kind of created
Speaker 1: a dynamic of confrontation with the state and created a
Speaker 1: mentality within anarchist communities about being really realistic about what
Speaker 1: those confrontations look like. UM that instead of being idealistic
Speaker 1: sort of like people were in the anti war movement
Speaker 1: and um, sort of approaching police from a perspective of
Speaker 1: ideas and discourse, what we learned during those days is
Speaker 1: that we should probably approach the police as a logistical
Speaker 1: force and understand them as such. Um. It was after
Speaker 1: that point that people really started researching police tactics in
Speaker 1: this area of the country, and that has had really
Speaker 1: profound impacts over the last fifteen years. Right. It really
Speaker 1: did create an entire culture of really digging into those
Speaker 1: kinds of things very carefully and doing it in a
Speaker 1: way which wasn't bombastic, but was focused on actual research.
Speaker 1: The reason that that could happen was what went down
Speaker 1: on those days was so intense. UM. It was the
Speaker 1: first time a lot of people had experienced like full
Speaker 1: blown major rioting before and like major large scale urban
Speaker 1: writing before, and it definitely changed a lot about the
Speaker 1: way that anarchists in this area of the country approached
Speaker 1: things um and you can still feel the the ramifications
Speaker 1: the ripple effects of that today. Stay with us. We're
Speaker 1: gonna take a quick break and we'll be right back
Speaker 1: after these words from our sponsors. In our last segment,
Speaker 1: we're going to speak to anti fascist researcher and author
Speaker 1: Spencer Sunshine. But first, let's rewind the clock to when
Speaker 1: Trump first came in as president in two thousand seventeen,
Speaker 1: kicking off riots, walkouts, and protests around the country, and
Speaker 1: grey protests soon spilled into airports. His people in the
Speaker 1: tens of thousands took action to defeat the Muslim band Um.
Speaker 1: February second, a massive riot kicked off at you see
Speaker 1: Berkeley against the far right troll Milo Napolis, shutting down
Speaker 1: his scheduled talk. The far right responded by holding a
Speaker 1: series of free speech rallies throughout the summer, and anti
Speaker 1: fascists soon found themselves out flanked in the streets by
Speaker 1: a loose coalition of militia members, Proud Boys, Neo Nazis,
Speaker 1: and Alt right groups seeking to seize on this moment.
Speaker 1: The White Nashal swing of the movement called for another
Speaker 1: free speech rally in Charlesville, Virginia, and the scene was
Speaker 1: set for historic and deadly showdown. It was pretty clear,
Speaker 1: especially as the run up to it happened, about how
Speaker 1: big it was going to be, how many different kinds
Speaker 1: of groups were going to be involved, and that for
Speaker 1: the first time, although there had been increasing mobilizations throughout
Speaker 1: the year especially, it was the first one that was
Speaker 1: gonna be led by open fascists. Some of the other
Speaker 1: ones fascists participated in them, but there were more a
Speaker 1: pan far right. We were like pan far right events
Speaker 1: like what happened in Berkeley, but this one was going
Speaker 1: to be led by fascists, and they were all those
Speaker 1: many different kinds of groups, and they were coming out
Speaker 1: of the woodwork. We had old activists who had been
Speaker 1: around in the eighties um who stated they were going
Speaker 1: to come, and there was clearly a lot of energy
Speaker 1: behind it, and it seemed like it was the big bid,
Speaker 1: and there were some of the participants were openly saying
Speaker 1: this it was gonna be the big bid for power
Speaker 1: and legitimacy of the ault right. I believe it was
Speaker 1: Richard Spencer who said, or Matthew Hibeck. I forget which
Speaker 1: one actually said, there's gonna be before Charlotte's Ville and
Speaker 1: after Charlotte's Bille, which was true, but not in the
Speaker 1: way that they hoped for. I think it was a
Speaker 1: success for anti fascists and other people who wanted the
Speaker 1: ault right to wanted that inertia to stop and eventually
Speaker 1: end um. But it was not a success I think
Speaker 1: in the way that people wanted it to be or
Speaker 1: think about it um as a success. It could have
Speaker 1: it was. It could have been a failure very easily
Speaker 1: after the event. The event itself was fairly neutral. I mean,
Speaker 1: there was all the fighting that is in people's minds
Speaker 1: that all happened before the rally was supposed to start.
Speaker 1: That was kind of a draw, which certainly was not
Speaker 1: a success that anti fascists stopped the rally. They did not.
Speaker 1: It did not stop people from entering into the rally grounds.
Speaker 1: The police dispersed it before the rally itself actually started,
Speaker 1: so that can be seen as a success. And then
Speaker 1: the car attack, of course was well in some ways
Speaker 1: a failure for us, and I think at the very beginning,
Speaker 1: many of the fascists, you know, were excited about it,
Speaker 1: like it really did add to their inertia, and the
Speaker 1: whole thing could have been forgotten about very quickly, in
Speaker 1: which case I think it then would have been seen
Speaker 1: as a success for the fascists. If people remember the
Speaker 1: first when it happened, Trump immediately was like, nazis bad.
Speaker 1: And then the next day he made his very fine
Speaker 1: people on both sides comment, and this is what energized
Speaker 1: liberals essentially to condemn him and to jump on the
Speaker 1: bandwagon against him. If he had and said that, this
Speaker 1: could have just sort of passed out of the public
Speaker 1: eye very easily, and it be seen, at least by
Speaker 1: fascists that anti fascists were unable to mobilize enough people
Speaker 1: to stop them, you know, and the only stopping of
Speaker 1: them only happened because the police did it. So I
Speaker 1: think it could have easily been a draw or neutral
Speaker 1: or a failure without Trump's comments. It did end up
Speaker 1: being success because of this backlash against them. It did,
Speaker 1: for whatever reason, did finally bring it to the consciousness
Speaker 1: of people that um this huge rising in the far
Speaker 1: right that Trump had engendered. What it really meant how
Speaker 1: violent it was really going to be, what a threat
Speaker 1: it really was, and it did motivate people two and
Speaker 1: the and the aftermath in particular. Unfortunately, this sort of
Speaker 1: went away fairly quickly to take the streets and come
Speaker 1: out in big numbers and condemned. The alt right, and
Speaker 1: the fascist wing of the right did collapse fairly soon afterwards,
Speaker 1: by spring of the next year. Charlottesvill was real interesting
Speaker 1: because people had been killed by the ult right before it,
Speaker 1: but not in such a dramatic manner, not in public
Speaker 1: and not on video. And it was sort of like,
Speaker 1: I think for people, and I've said this before, I
Speaker 1: kind of you remember the first murders, you remember the
Speaker 1: first blood, and in that sense, because afterwards a lot
Speaker 1: of people were killed during the Trump administration and car attacks.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think a few dozen people during the
Speaker 1: Black Lives Matter demonstrations. It became almost wrote where you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: someone was killed at a demonstration again. But it was
Speaker 1: the shock of this at first, because this had not
Speaker 1: been seen for a very long time in the United States,
Speaker 1: that someone would be murdered at a demonstration, um, and
Speaker 1: that really sort of stuck with people and in that
Speaker 1: way it became a symbol. Um you can even today
Speaker 1: still say Charlottesville unless people are you know, teenagers or something,
Speaker 1: don't remember, people know what you're talking about. Biden invoked
Speaker 1: it when he was running for president. So it's good
Speaker 1: it remains as a symbol of how big the really
Speaker 1: really far right, you know, the fascists can become quite quickly,
Speaker 1: and how violent and murderers they are, and so that
Speaker 1: remains is as symbol to people, I think, and frankly
Speaker 1: that there can be resistance to it. Like people also
Speaker 1: saw there was real resistance and people were willing to
Speaker 1: fight them, and especially after one six like there's no
Speaker 1: more of this idiotic discourse. Bet if it's okay to
Speaker 1: punch and nazi, I really think most people do think
Speaker 1: it's okay now, you know, after they've seen what unfolded
Speaker 1: under the entire arc of Trump from Charlotte'sville to the
Speaker 1: capital takeover. If people had stayed at home, if there
Speaker 1: wasn't the allart the mobile zathent that did occur, it
Speaker 1: would have been a total victory for them. They would
Speaker 1: have taken it as a total victory and then moved
Speaker 1: on to the next thing. And tried something bigger. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: if you held a demonstration and a thousand people came,
Speaker 1: you know, wouldn't you be and you did your thing,
Speaker 1: wouldn't you be like cool? Like, let's move on to
Speaker 1: the next thing that was successful. Over the years and
Speaker 1: I've done more and more activism, I come to realize
Speaker 1: what nothing succeeds as success means, Like once you start going,
Speaker 1: when something succeeds, more people come to it, and you
Speaker 1: can move on and move on as a bigger thing
Speaker 1: and be able to do things you weren't able to
Speaker 1: do before. So this is why I always say we
Speaker 1: need to confront people. We have to break their movement.
Speaker 1: We can't let it jump from either success to success
Speaker 1: or just simply not a failure. Because if you're already
Speaker 1: moving and you hit something that's not a failure, you'll
Speaker 1: just go on to the next thing. Nothing will stop you.
Speaker 1: And we need to need these things to stop. The
Speaker 1: night of Heather Higher was murdered, thousands hit the streets
Speaker 1: and cities across the United States, tearing down Confederate statues
Speaker 1: and marching in solidarity. A few weeks later, when far
Speaker 1: right activists tried to hold a rally in Boston, over
Speaker 1: forty hit the streets to shut it down. A week later,
Speaker 1: in San Francisco and Berkeley, tens of thousands of march
Speaker 1: to shut down more alright rallies. In Berkeley, a black
Speaker 1: block of several hundred strong march information as part of
Speaker 1: a wider anti racist coalition, pushing both far right activists
Speaker 1: and heavily armed riot police out of a downtown park.
Speaker 1: Were only months before far right activists had driven out
Speaker 1: anti fascists. The events of the first eight months of
Speaker 1: the Trump administration showed that there was mass militant opposition
Speaker 1: on the streets of the US against the far right,
Speaker 1: which destabilized the Trump regime and made it back pedal.
Speaker 1: But more importantly, it showed millions of people across the
Speaker 1: country the resistance was possible. That is going to do
Speaker 1: it for us today follow i g D at It's
Speaker 1: going Down dot org and on masodon at i g
Speaker 1: D Underscore News. Thanks so much for tuning in and
Speaker 1: be sure to come back next time as it could
Speaker 1: happen here returns. We will continue to tread where we
Speaker 1: please into the fascist No passan Hi have one, It's
Speaker 1: meet James and just before we start today we're going
Speaker 1: to discuss in quite some detail the being to death
Speaker 1: of Tyry Nichols by the police in Memphis. And if
Speaker 1: you don't want to hear that detail, that's totally fine,
Speaker 1: But we wanted to let you know now so that
Speaker 1: you didn't get surprised by it and your money commute
Speaker 1: or whatever. So if you want to skip this one,
Speaker 1: if you don't listen to that one, then we are
Speaker 1: trying to give you that warning ahead of time. Discourse discourse.
Speaker 1: Discourse is about podcast. I don't know it could happen.
Speaker 1: Here is the podcast that you're listening to. Uh. If
Speaker 1: you came here list looking for another podcast, then you
Speaker 1: fucked up, But you sucked up in a good way
Speaker 1: because that podcast was trash. Thank you for being here
Speaker 1: with us today. Who all? Who all? Who? Who? Who's here?
Speaker 1: Who are you people? We're a little unsure. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: the along, I'm here. Wow, I'm I'm James. I'm a
Speaker 1: little unsure about who I am beyond that, but that's
Speaker 1: who I am. It's okay. I'm Garrison Davis and I'm
Speaker 1: here to engage in discourse. I there's nothing I love
Speaker 1: more than discourse. Um. Speaking of discourse. Today we're gonna
Speaker 1: be talking about, well, I don't know, it's not really discourse,
Speaker 1: but today we're gonna be talking about the reaction to
Speaker 1: the video of the Memphis police murdering Tyrene Nichols. In particularly,
Speaker 1: we're gonna be talking about the way in which kind
Speaker 1: of the left responded to this, both online and kind
Speaker 1: of public channels and actually in the streets, because I
Speaker 1: think there's some interesting stuff here, um, and I think
Speaker 1: it's kind of worth analyzing outside of uh, you know,
Speaker 1: the broader conversation about police violence and you know, uh
Speaker 1: that sort of thing, because I think there's some interesting,
Speaker 1: sort of tactical stuff to kind of talk about here. UM.
Speaker 1: And yeah, that's that's that's what we're going to be
Speaker 1: doing today. UM. In case you've been kind of stuck
Speaker 1: under a rock, uh, you should probably be aware that
Speaker 1: on January seven, police from the Memphis p D Scorpion Unit,
Speaker 1: which was a unit with a very sinister name that
Speaker 1: existed to effectively over police UM a chunk of the
Speaker 1: city of Memphis. Uh yeah, UM, pulled over Tyree Nichols,
Speaker 1: a twenty nine year old black man. Uh. Tyree was
Speaker 1: an amateur photographer. UM. He liked skating, he had Crohn's disease. UM,
Speaker 1: he was just driving around that night. UH. And the encounter,
Speaker 1: as we would later see on the video, went pretty
Speaker 1: much immediately violent on behalf of the police. Nichols was
Speaker 1: beaten very badly. UH. And he died in the hospital
Speaker 1: three days later. And for the first few days after
Speaker 1: the killing, obviously, you know this happened, the police did this,
Speaker 1: and then rumors started kind of spreading in the immediate
Speaker 1: wake of the beating, but very little was known for
Speaker 1: certain about like what had happened, UM, about you know what,
Speaker 1: why this had had gotten escalated so quickly. UM. One
Speaker 1: of the first kind of signs that this was going
Speaker 1: to become a thing on the national uh in terms
Speaker 1: of like the national attention span, was when the Tennessee
Speaker 1: Bureau of Investigation in the U. S. Department of Justice
Speaker 1: independently opened investigations into the beating. UM after reviewing body
Speaker 1: camera footage from multiple officers on scene. Five Memphis p
Speaker 1: D officers were dismissed on January. Three days later, an
Speaker 1: autopsy commissioned by Tyrese family found extensive bleeding caused by
Speaker 1: a severe beating outrage around the killing grew rapidly, and
Speaker 1: it was announced by the Memphis Police that body camera
Speaker 1: footage of the stop and of the beating would be
Speaker 1: released to the public. Uh. This started the rumor mill
Speaker 1: really churning up. UM. There was kind of a couple
Speaker 1: of leaks from people who had seen the footage, I
Speaker 1: think who were close to the case, and they all
Speaker 1: sort of described it as uniquely bad. The term that
Speaker 1: I heard a lot was that it's worse than the
Speaker 1: Rodney King beating. UM. This is just the way in
Speaker 1: which people started talking about it. And as more details
Speaker 1: filtered out, there were conversations around the country, particularly folks
Speaker 1: on the activists left, who started talking about the need
Speaker 1: to prepare for what they suspected would be the aftermath
Speaker 1: of the video's release. UM. And one of the things
Speaker 1: that was kind of kind of worth discussing here is
Speaker 1: that in the immediate like immediately before the video came out,
Speaker 1: a lot of the conversations that people on the left
Speaker 1: we're having and that people in law enforcement we're having,
Speaker 1: kind of focused around the same expectations, which was that
Speaker 1: there would be widespread protests and rioting as a result
Speaker 1: of the release of this video. UM. Police departments around
Speaker 1: the country entered high alert. Riot squads were prepped. Um,
Speaker 1: and then kind of on the other side of things
Speaker 1: and sort of open channels on Twitter and massed on
Speaker 1: and in person, and a number of of of different
Speaker 1: cases leftists and people you know who claimed to be
Speaker 1: that online talked about their expectations too. I heard variations
Speaker 1: of the phrase, you know, it's going to be a
Speaker 1: really hot year. This is going to like lead into
Speaker 1: a particularly aggressive Some are on the ground, people are
Speaker 1: going to make the burning of that precinct in Minneapolis
Speaker 1: look tame. You know, get your gear together, check in
Speaker 1: with your friends. Everything's about to go off. Um. There
Speaker 1: was a lot of chatter kind of along those lines,
Speaker 1: and I don't know, I didn't really speak up too
Speaker 1: much about this, but my kind of thinking, as folks
Speaker 1: were sort of anticipating the reaction to this was I
Speaker 1: suspected that the actual reaction on a mass scale to
Speaker 1: the video's release was going to be more muted and
Speaker 1: law abiding than than people were expecting at the time.
Speaker 1: And I guess the primary reason that I felt this
Speaker 1: way was simply that kind of the vibes were off.
Speaker 1: It just didn't feel like folks were ready for that
Speaker 1: kind of a response. Um, but I do kind of
Speaker 1: have a fact based reason for why I was anticipating
Speaker 1: that as well. UM. On January, two days before the
Speaker 1: video's release, five Memphis p D officers were arrested and
Speaker 1: charged with murder, kidnapping, assault, a bevy of very serious charges.
Speaker 1: Immediately after that, three firefighters to E. M. Tease and
Speaker 1: a police lieutenant who had been on scene after the
Speaker 1: beating were fired for failing to assess and provide emergency
Speaker 1: care to Nichols on scene. And there's a couple of
Speaker 1: ways to view what happened here. I think the less
Speaker 1: optimistic one is that the state simply made a pragmatic
Speaker 1: decision to throw these guys onto the bus. That's definitely
Speaker 1: what happened. The more optimistic way to look at this
Speaker 1: is that because people had rioted so hard for so
Speaker 1: long in the wake of George Floyd's murder, the state
Speaker 1: felt like it had to throw these guys under the
Speaker 1: bus rather than, you know, risk another year of rage.
Speaker 1: And this is also correct. I think both of these
Speaker 1: things are are pretty accurate ways to look at what happened.
Speaker 1: The idea that the release of the footage of Tyree's
Speaker 1: murder would lead to massive protests. Was not quite universal,
Speaker 1: but I didn't notice that a lot of the people
Speaker 1: who felt similarly to me expressed the belief that if
Speaker 1: people didn't riot over what had happened to Tyree, that
Speaker 1: was due to a mix of liberal cowardice and racism,
Speaker 1: since most of the officers who beat Tyree to death
Speaker 1: were themselves black. And I think this is kind of
Speaker 1: a short sighted and unfair take, and I'll talk about
Speaker 1: why shortly. On January Friday, the Tyree Nichols videos were
Speaker 1: released by the Memphis Police Department UM, along with a
Speaker 1: lot of you. I watched them all immediately, UM, and
Speaker 1: you can find there's a description on my Twitter page.
Speaker 1: It's turned currently pinned to my profile of the video
Speaker 1: if you haven't seen it but want to know what
Speaker 1: happened there. UM To kind of summarize it in brief,
Speaker 1: it's it's very ugly. Uh. Tyree is immediately calm as
Speaker 1: he's pulled over and taken from his car. The police
Speaker 1: are not calm. He attempts to de escalate them. They
Speaker 1: accuse him falsely of resisting, then they mace him and themselves.
Speaker 1: I think in general that The inciting incident for the
Speaker 1: beating was the incompetent use of mace by these officers.
Speaker 1: They hurt themselves, they got pissed, and then they beat
Speaker 1: Tyree because they were angry at themselves for macing themselves. UM.
Speaker 1: It's also kind of worth noting that a white officer
Speaker 1: who has since been fired as well, also deployed his
Speaker 1: taser on the young man. There's been some kind of
Speaker 1: this was kind of left out of a lot of
Speaker 1: the initial summaries of what had happened. Uh, that guy
Speaker 1: has now been fired. UM, and yeah, it's it's bad.
Speaker 1: The video is is very unpleasant and very brutal. UM.
Speaker 1: Watching it, though, I think kind of the thing that
Speaker 1: struck me most was how much like a normal traffic
Speaker 1: stop a lot of this was. UM. I think that
Speaker 1: if you know, they had gone a little bit less
Speaker 1: hard and beating him a little less badly and he
Speaker 1: had survived, they probably would have charged him with resisting
Speaker 1: arrest and assault on a police officer. UM. And who
Speaker 1: knows how the case would have gone. You can hear
Speaker 1: the police preparing for this eventuality in the footage. One
Speaker 1: officer claims that Tyree went for his gun there's no
Speaker 1: evidence of this in the footage, uh, And you can
Speaker 1: kind of hear them all working to get their stories
Speaker 1: straight after they beat tyree Um for the inevitable court case,
Speaker 1: more officers an emergency personnel arrive on scene as he's
Speaker 1: just kind of laying there, and none of them seemed
Speaker 1: to find what's happened peculiar or noteworthy, which is interesting
Speaker 1: because immediately prior to the video's release, police departments around
Speaker 1: the country all shoot statements that were basically identical, condemning
Speaker 1: the officers who had beaten nichols Um, saying basically, this
Speaker 1: behavior is unacceptable. These men are bad apples. This is
Speaker 1: like an extreme example that does not represent policing values.
Speaker 1: And there's a couple of things that are are interesting
Speaker 1: about this. One of them is that the actual way
Speaker 1: in which emergency responders on scene treated the beating kind
Speaker 1: of puts the lie to that, because nobody acts as
Speaker 1: if anything outside of the normal has occurred. And the
Speaker 1: other thing that is noteworthy is the uniformity of these
Speaker 1: these messages by police departments around the country. I have
Speaker 1: not actually seen that happen before. There was kind of
Speaker 1: a version of this that occurred in the wake of
Speaker 1: the George Floyd video, but it was much more cohesive
Speaker 1: prior to the release of the Tyree Nichols video. UM.
Speaker 1: That said, there were no widespread riots or acts of
Speaker 1: property destruction. After the video was released. There were protests
Speaker 1: in a number of cities, most notably in Memphis, UM,
Speaker 1: but compared to things were very subdued. There was not
Speaker 1: kind of widespread property destruction or rioting in Portland, which
Speaker 1: was obviously the site of intense radical street actions. In
Speaker 1: there were two fairly small marches. UM. I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: delve into this in tremendous detail, but there were kind
Speaker 1: of allegations from one of the marches that the larger
Speaker 1: and less radical of the two was an op designed
Speaker 1: to take numbers and energy away from the radical march.
Speaker 1: There were confrontations between members of both groups, and while
Speaker 1: the overall story, again is not worth spending time on,
Speaker 1: the gist of it is that very little happened. Now
Speaker 1: this is not kind of limited to Portland. Atlanta, Georgia
Speaker 1: is probably the city in the US today that's been
Speaker 1: the center of the most effective radical protests against law
Speaker 1: enforcement and the history of attempts to stop and sabotage.
Speaker 1: The construction of Cops City, which is obviously a massive
Speaker 1: police training compound in Atlanta's largest urban forest, has been
Speaker 1: well documented by by Garrison Davis UM as well as
Speaker 1: a number of other reporters. UM. I do think it's
Speaker 1: worth noting that days before the Nichols video was released,
Speaker 1: Atlanta police shot and killed the forest defender Tortuguia, and
Speaker 1: a moderately large protest followed, where protesters smashing windows and
Speaker 1: lighting one cop car on fire. This was the kind
Speaker 1: of action that I think most of the activists I
Speaker 1: observed expected in the wake of the Nichols video as well,
Speaker 1: but we simply didn't see that. I'm just going to
Speaker 1: butt in here for a little bit and you'll you'll
Speaker 1: you'll hear more about that riot slash protest in Atlanta
Speaker 1: next week. UM. I'm putting together a series on it
Speaker 1: that'll that'll be out soon. But definitely one of the
Speaker 1: things that was talked about a lot in Atlanta was
Speaker 1: the upcoming release of this video and the potentiality of
Speaker 1: this video getting released shortly after the death of Tortuguita
Speaker 1: at the hands of police. Kind of both of these
Speaker 1: things feeding off each other. Into a into a similar
Speaker 1: like level UH uprising, and this was like no one
Speaker 1: was like for sure about this, Like no one was
Speaker 1: like saying, this is absolutely definitely gonna happen, But it
Speaker 1: was something that was definitely thought about. UM, it was
Speaker 1: something that was definitely considered. I think, honestly, if the
Speaker 1: the video was set to come out originally on like
Speaker 1: the Monday or Tuesday following the big downtown protest in Atlanta, UM,
Speaker 1: it was supposed to come out just a few days later,
Speaker 1: and that that didn't happen. It was delayed once again
Speaker 1: for further further into the week. UM. I think if
Speaker 1: it came out sooner, I think that could have fed
Speaker 1: off momentum in a pretty considerable way. I think a
Speaker 1: few things happened both in Atlanta that in the in
Speaker 1: the next few days that kind of stunted possible possible
Speaker 1: for their protest. UM National Guard was deployed, UM police
Speaker 1: and Savannah were ordered to start arresting people and shutting
Speaker 1: down gatherings of over teen UH specifically for like including vigils,
Speaker 1: and in Atlanta, obviously there was people getting really pretty
Speaker 1: pretty inflated, UH high level felonies and domestic and domestic
Speaker 1: terrorism charges simply for being simply for being present at
Speaker 1: a protest UM. So I think those those things kind
Speaker 1: of all in all impacted people's ability to like prepare
Speaker 1: for you know, a sequence of protests which there was
Speaker 1: someone there was someone in l a for for like
Speaker 1: a day or two. The ones in Memphis were pretty big,
Speaker 1: but I think they the the timeline in which they
Speaker 1: released the video is definitely should be considered in terms
Speaker 1: of when they chose to release it um to like
Speaker 1: in terms of like the state's goal of preventing you know,
Speaker 1: large large scale protests. But that was definitely something that
Speaker 1: was talked about a lot, uh during during like the
Speaker 1: little over a week that I was that I was
Speaker 1: in Atlantis, because everyone was getting ready for this. Like
Speaker 1: everyone heard that this is going to be like the
Speaker 1: worst of video that we've seen since Rodney King. Like
Speaker 1: that that that that was the way it was. It
Speaker 1: was thought up of like on the ground, you know,
Speaker 1: just like word of mouth being being passed um, and
Speaker 1: people were definitely like preparing for like preparing themselves for it,
Speaker 1: like like like thinking like thinking about like what's going
Speaker 1: to happen if this is like if this really is
Speaker 1: the most horrific thing. What is the appropriate response to that?
Speaker 1: And and this is kind of a lot of what
Speaker 1: I wanted to talk around, because you have sort of
Speaker 1: Georgia law enforcement, there's this this riot, and the response
Speaker 1: to that as well as the response to the tree
Speaker 1: set is a series of domestic terrorism charges. Um. And
Speaker 1: then this video comes out and there's not a mass,
Speaker 1: like radical street response to it, and it it seems
Speaker 1: to me and Garrison you can correct me if I'm
Speaker 1: wrong that a big part of that is people in
Speaker 1: Atlanta were kind of not willing to throw more lives
Speaker 1: and bodies at the police without kind of more of
Speaker 1: a cohesive plan of what to do given the severity
Speaker 1: of the repression that that was being engaged in. I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously can't comment on people's yeah, the motivations or like
Speaker 1: plans for for for stuff, because that's not something that
Speaker 1: I would be would be privy privy to. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: so I I don't know, there's there's there's a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff. I mean, like, I think a big part
Speaker 1: of why I heard a lot about it in Atlanta
Speaker 1: was one because of a friend of a lot of
Speaker 1: people who were involved in the force in the force
Speaker 1: events got killed by police a few days earlier. And two.
Speaker 1: Memphis is only a few hours away from Atlanta, but like,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's not it's it's it's not that far,
Speaker 1: and it's a big part of the stuff in Atlanta
Speaker 1: is like solidarity with struggles that are not just in
Speaker 1: your immediate vicinity. And you could argue that Memphis really
Speaker 1: is in the immediate vicinity of Georgia. Um, but like
Speaker 1: that that type of cross cross state solidarity is is
Speaker 1: a big part um. But yeah, I can I I
Speaker 1: could not comment on on on why why people did
Speaker 1: or did not choose to do specific things. I think
Speaker 1: that that's that's up for people themselves. Yeah, I wouldn't
Speaker 1: want to put words into anyone's mouth. But it was
Speaker 1: kind of interesting because I I paid attention a lot
Speaker 1: to the reaction, and there were a lot of folks
Speaker 1: talking about how disheartening it was that there were not
Speaker 1: more of the kind of radical actions that they wanted
Speaker 1: to see in the wake of the video coming out,
Speaker 1: And I'm that's kind of the thing I wanted sort
Speaker 1: of to talk most around because I feel very mixed
Speaker 1: around this. But broadly speaking, I guess I'm glad that
Speaker 1: we didn't see a repeat of the part of that
Speaker 1: was folks standing up in front of cops shops until
Speaker 1: riot police came in and getting charges against them, because
Speaker 1: I just don't think that that works right now. I
Speaker 1: don't think it works is functional anymore. Um, I don't
Speaker 1: think it actually hurts the state because the reaction, like
Speaker 1: there was a period of time early in those first
Speaker 1: couple of months in particular, where you could see the
Speaker 1: police were off balance. Obviously in like Minneapolis with the
Speaker 1: burning of the Third Precinct was was this kind of
Speaker 1: sea change moment um, but you could see it in
Speaker 1: a number of cities that like they didn't really know
Speaker 1: what was going on, and they were themselves concerned with
Speaker 1: how out of control the situation had gotten. And then
Speaker 1: it kind of morphed later in the year to I
Speaker 1: think a situation they could control very well where there
Speaker 1: were these acts of fairly minor property destruction and then
Speaker 1: a bunch of people would get picked up and charged.
Speaker 1: And I I think that while I understand like the
Speaker 1: desire to react that way and to do something um
Speaker 1: kind of very firm and uh and radical in response
Speaker 1: to state violence like this, I'm also like deeply concerned
Speaker 1: about people not throwing away months and years of their
Speaker 1: lives fighting charges. Yeah. I mean a big part of
Speaker 1: it is is people learning that treating protesters as disposable
Speaker 1: meat bags to throw against the wall of the state
Speaker 1: is kind of a bad idea. Um. And there's I
Speaker 1: think this is something that that that was talked about
Speaker 1: in conversations just just like regarding like, hey, this video
Speaker 1: is going to come out, what do you think it's
Speaker 1: going to happen. Like there's just a lot of the casual,
Speaker 1: casual conversations, but like there was a lot to make happened.
Speaker 1: A lot of things contributed to the intensity and the
Speaker 1: length of those protests. I think, uh, COVID being a
Speaker 1: pretty big part. This was a few months into the pandemic.
Speaker 1: People have been stuck in their homes now for a
Speaker 1: few months and not really like prepared for that. Like
Speaker 1: at this at this point, we're kind of we're all
Speaker 1: kind of used to being in our house a lot
Speaker 1: more now, but back then it was it was new
Speaker 1: for a lot of people. So I think the opportity,
Speaker 1: the opportunity to get out of the house for what
Speaker 1: seemed like an important reason I think was a really
Speaker 1: big part of people being out of a lot of
Speaker 1: work was a really big part of because a lot
Speaker 1: of people did did not have the types of jobs
Speaker 1: that they might have now, did not have the jobs
Speaker 1: they had like in like the months before. It's maybe
Speaker 1: because I can't really think of another example like this
Speaker 1: from history. Obviously a lot of uprisings occur when people
Speaker 1: are suddenly out of work, but this was a mix
Speaker 1: of people are suddenly out of work and they suddenly
Speaker 1: they all have cash like that, that which contributed in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways because like that, that was I
Speaker 1: think what funded a lot of you know, people bringing
Speaker 1: in food and people bringing in like pallets of water
Speaker 1: and getting gas mask and stuff. Is they had these
Speaker 1: sort of checks for you know, as a result of
Speaker 1: like COVID relief, which was an interesting situation as well
Speaker 1: that hasn't been replicated since. I think there's there's another
Speaker 1: very important factor of this that doesn't get talked about
Speaker 1: that much, which is just the weather. Like if if
Speaker 1: if you if you, if you go back and look
Speaker 1: at when the largest police like largest anti police protests
Speaker 1: in the US have happened, right, they either start like
Speaker 1: late spring, early fall, or just the middle of the summer,
Speaker 1: and there's reason. Yeah, like then this is I think
Speaker 1: another this is this is the thing up in Chicago
Speaker 1: right was it was just really fucking cold, and I
Speaker 1: mean this this affects actually circles too, but it's like
Speaker 1: you can't get the critical mass of just regular people
Speaker 1: in the streets when it's like twenty degrees. I think
Speaker 1: the other side of that is, um, just summer vacation
Speaker 1: of a lot of a lot of the people who
Speaker 1: go the hardest at these protests are people in high school. Um.
Speaker 1: And during winter, fall, spring, kids are in school during
Speaker 1: during summer, uh, people have People under the age of
Speaker 1: eighteen have a lot more free time on their hands.
Speaker 1: So I think that is another contributing factor. UM. And
Speaker 1: I think there's there's there's one other aspect which is
Speaker 1: very sinister um and but I think is worth talking
Speaker 1: about in terms of how of how the state may
Speaker 1: have been trying to frame this to like to to
Speaker 1: frame the release of this video too kind of like
Speaker 1: curtail the the the the the intensity of any type
Speaker 1: of like um of a protest revolt uprising. Now obviously
Speaker 1: that there was like the fucked up nature of like
Speaker 1: making this feel like a world premiere of like a
Speaker 1: snuff film. It was like it was it was it
Speaker 1: was like a weird a weird aspect, which I think
Speaker 1: it encouraged the video to be to be something that
Speaker 1: is consumed versus something that's actually like watched and like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is a fucked up thing that we that we
Speaker 1: need to do something about. Instead, it turned it into
Speaker 1: this like element of consumption and the other aspect for
Speaker 1: this in terms of a lot of hardcore activists like
Speaker 1: like like people who have thrown down in the streets before,
Speaker 1: people who have who have who have seen fucked up
Speaker 1: ship is that the intensity, what was the violence depicted
Speaker 1: on this video was framed as being extremely horrific, being
Speaker 1: being a very very unusual, a very um like uncommon
Speaker 1: but but but but horrifying display of violence and display
Speaker 1: of brutality by the police. This is this, This is
Speaker 1: what police departments were faring it as. This is what
Speaker 1: the President of the United States was framing this as
Speaker 1: like this, this is a case of a few of
Speaker 1: a few bad actors who who did an egregious, um
Speaker 1: but you know, uncommon thing. And I think when a
Speaker 1: lot of people who have thrown down watched this video,
Speaker 1: it just reminded you of stuff that you've seen before, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: they saw a thing they had seen it was it
Speaker 1: was not shocking in the same way that it was
Speaker 1: getting framed as. Because what separates this from most of
Speaker 1: the arrests that happened in Portland during is very little
Speaker 1: Like one or two punches that were that were thrown
Speaker 1: just a little bit too hard is all that separates
Speaker 1: this from most like violent police arrests, Like this was
Speaker 1: not an uncommon display of violence. This was an ordinary,
Speaker 1: an ordinary encounter that just a few things were pushed
Speaker 1: just barely over the edge. And I think a lot
Speaker 1: of people watched, Like my first reaction was like, oh,
Speaker 1: like this, this is not as bad as what I
Speaker 1: thought like this and that that that should be like
Speaker 1: a condemnation of the police's actions. Like That's why I
Speaker 1: think one of the most important things to watch is
Speaker 1: how the other cops who were not present for the beating,
Speaker 1: but who show up immediately after or at the end
Speaker 1: of it, because some of them did watch the others
Speaker 1: beat him, how they react because they're just kind of
Speaker 1: even the MTA, right who turned up, Oh yeah, this
Speaker 1: has happened where we we we do a stand back
Speaker 1: when this happens. Right, the people on the ground were
Speaker 1: not concerned, Like it was not you could you could
Speaker 1: slowly watch because like a lot of this video was
Speaker 1: not of the actual beating. It was it was of
Speaker 1: the aftermath. And you you you could you could watch
Speaker 1: these cops slowly start to realize that maybe they went
Speaker 1: a little too hard, just very slowly over the course
Speaker 1: of thirty minutes. But for most of the time they're
Speaker 1: on the ground, they're like making jokes. They are talking
Speaker 1: about how fun, like how fun it was to beat
Speaker 1: up this person and there each other. That is most
Speaker 1: of the video. I think it's worth noting like a
Speaker 1: couple of things. One like it's extremely long, Like I'm
Speaker 1: not in the in the way that the George Floyd
Speaker 1: video like fits into the attention span of stuff we
Speaker 1: consume on our telephones at a time minute versus minutes
Speaker 1: versus like an hour of footage. Right, Yeah, if Tyree
Speaker 1: Nichols had just been seriously disabled, had life altering injuries,
Speaker 1: been charged with disting rest all the things that very
Speaker 1: plausibly could have happened if a couple of punches had
Speaker 1: handed in different place. This body camera footage would have
Speaker 1: been denied under the investigative exemption right then have said, no,
Speaker 1: we're investigating his resistance of arrest. You can't you can't
Speaker 1: see it, and none of this ship would have happened.
Speaker 1: And like, yeah, the normalcy of so much other than
Speaker 1: the outcome. I don't know that that stritched some of
Speaker 1: the rage away, but it's important context. I think a
Speaker 1: few things I mean, and this is again one of
Speaker 1: the things that I think you can see from this
Speaker 1: that is evidence of sort of a positive long term
Speaker 1: result to and it's it's a very mixed bag when
Speaker 1: I say it's positive, but that is kind of a
Speaker 1: positive sign. Is that they acted so quickly to throw
Speaker 1: all of these guys. They are firing and charging a
Speaker 1: lot of city employees over this. It's going to be
Speaker 1: between all of the people fired and all of the
Speaker 1: people charged, more than a dozen people by the time
Speaker 1: this is all done, which I can't think of another
Speaker 1: time when that has happened this quickly over an incident
Speaker 1: of police violence. And they did that not because it's
Speaker 1: the right thing to do, but because they were scared.
Speaker 1: And again I do I want to emphasize here the
Speaker 1: thing that they're scared of is not that like radical
Speaker 1: left wing protesters will take to the street. It's that
Speaker 1: liberals and moral they know that the consequence of the
Speaker 1: cops beating someone to death is that like someone sucker,
Speaker 1: mom will fucking abandon how many vans wing a snehammer
Speaker 1: into your cop shop? If you don't do this, do
Speaker 1: like give a scapegoat? Right, like do the fair the
Speaker 1: bare minimum? And so the positive the thing that I
Speaker 1: can say that is probably positive about this is that
Speaker 1: it does show there's still some fear there on their behalf.
Speaker 1: The thing that's negative is that, like, well, it it
Speaker 1: worked because I will say, on a moral level, I
Speaker 1: think a why variety of radical actions are morally justified
Speaker 1: by what was done to Tyrene Nichols. Now that said,
Speaker 1: like back to the sort of the point we were
Speaker 1: making the start of this, I don't particularly urge or
Speaker 1: encourage that just because, like I don't like seeing people
Speaker 1: get arrested and charged and spend years of their life
Speaker 1: fighting ship in court, um for the chance to like,
Speaker 1: let's say, carry out minor acts of property destruction on
Speaker 1: a cop shop. Um, I don't think like that sort
Speaker 1: of activism works right now, um, it certainly doesn't work
Speaker 1: without them, without the critical mass of like liberals sort
Speaker 1: of behind it, without enough people saying like we like
Speaker 1: again you look at like the fact that the burning
Speaker 1: of the Third Precinct in Minneapolis is still one of
Speaker 1: the most popular things in modern American politics. But that
Speaker 1: was the product of a fairly unique moment, And I
Speaker 1: just don't I see some positives in like the lingering
Speaker 1: fear of that moment, but I also don't see the
Speaker 1: material conditions that make me think it's something like that
Speaker 1: is coming again in the immediate future. And especially because
Speaker 1: this this situation around this video demonstrates how much more
Speaker 1: effort the state's putting into trying to prevent things from
Speaker 1: happening before they start. Like there was a lot of
Speaker 1: like inter agency work put into having all of these
Speaker 1: local police departments and release statements, having the FBI release statements,
Speaker 1: having uh, the president, yea, like having having the president
Speaker 1: release statements, and it's it is all made slightly more
Speaker 1: bizarre considering that the contents of the video are not
Speaker 1: the on on the level of like uncommon or like
Speaker 1: rare rare displays of violence that the police do, like
Speaker 1: this is this is this is relatively standard, um and
Speaker 1: that that kind of one thing I've been thinking about
Speaker 1: is like why did they choose this video? Like why
Speaker 1: did they why did they make this one? Like what
Speaker 1: were they afraid of, like for this video, because like
Speaker 1: other other other videos have come out in the past
Speaker 1: few years, like other like other police killings have happened,
Speaker 1: like this police killing is all the fucking time. But
Speaker 1: they they did a lot of work on this one specifically, um.
Speaker 1: And it's kind of it's kind of interesting that, like
Speaker 1: why why they chose this specific video to to dedicate
Speaker 1: all of this work into Because not not only did
Speaker 1: they like you know, denying stuff, but they also they
Speaker 1: like they like hyped it up. They're like you using
Speaker 1: this as like an example, Yeah, like like using this
Speaker 1: as an example, like here, this is what bad cops
Speaker 1: look like. Watch us punish these bad cops. Well, but
Speaker 1: I think I think I think there's a rate. I
Speaker 1: think there's a huge racial aspect of this, right, which
Speaker 1: is that like you know, like the cops were getting prosecuted.
Speaker 1: Are only the black cops who are involved in this, right?
Speaker 1: And I think that's a huge part of this entire strategy.
Speaker 1: I think that's why they framed this as exceptional violence
Speaker 1: is to play on people's racism, right. I think I
Speaker 1: think that's why why this is is allowed to happen,
Speaker 1: which was that yeah, you can it is. It's like
Speaker 1: even inside the police it is a lot easier to
Speaker 1: throw black cops under the bus and it is there
Speaker 1: white cops under the bus. That's just how the system works.
Speaker 1: And it doesn't trigger that same like visceral response right
Speaker 1: that that we all had to seeing the George Floyd video,
Speaker 1: I don't think quite like like there is a j
Speaker 1: old tradition of white men doing violent to black men
Speaker 1: on behalf of the state. And I think also it's
Speaker 1: it's also easier politically inside of the police departments because
Speaker 1: I think I think there would have been a lot
Speaker 1: more pushback from it, like the police part Like there
Speaker 1: hasn't been much that I've seen like internal pushback, like
Speaker 1: from inside of police partments, because I I think if
Speaker 1: it had been five white cops, I think this would
Speaker 1: have been a huge fight, and I think you would
Speaker 1: have had like the fucking police union, like calling Biden
Speaker 1: like an anti cop, like whatever. But I I think
Speaker 1: I think these were people who they were like we
Speaker 1: could tell these people onto the bus and doesn't looking
Speaker 1: matter because who cares? Yeah, so arity isn't there for them.
Speaker 1: I think those are I mean, that's certainly like significant
Speaker 1: aspect of why like this was the one they focused on.
Speaker 1: But I also think a major aspect of it is
Speaker 1: that it shows and records the reaction of other city
Speaker 1: employees to this, and you can see in real time
Speaker 1: the police putting together um that story like it's it.
Speaker 1: There's I think a few things about this that are
Speaker 1: are really unique, but even I don't know the it's
Speaker 1: relatively unusual to have an angle, which is not like
Speaker 1: the body camera, right, which really I think the violence
Speaker 1: in this was was captured and depicted in a way
Speaker 1: which was more explicit than you would get from many
Speaker 1: individual cops body camera. And like the fact that they
Speaker 1: most of the time when cops kill people to do
Speaker 1: it with guns, right or maybe to taste or something.
Speaker 1: That the fact that they took minutes, you know, like
Speaker 1: several minutes to be a man to death. It's it
Speaker 1: is just it should be. We've we've said like how
Speaker 1: this isn't unusual, and it's not, But it doesn't mean
Speaker 1: it's not repulsive. No, No, it's sucking disgusted by it.
Speaker 1: It's it's nightmarish. Yeah, yeah, it's it's it's even more
Speaker 1: nightmarish considering how common this is, because yes, they did
Speaker 1: spend a few minutes doing this, but it was really
Speaker 1: only I think one or two punches that threw it
Speaker 1: right over the edge. Like it wasn't just a punch.
Speaker 1: Is the thing that I think one of the things
Speaker 1: that I saw that I think was probably critical and
Speaker 1: why he died. No, it was when they tackled him.
Speaker 1: His head bounced against the ground with a significant amount
Speaker 1: of force. There's a number of like a perfect storm
Speaker 1: of factors, right, that went into making this the inctident
Speaker 1: that they talked about, and like this the incident that
Speaker 1: didn't start two. I guess like it's no one particular thing,
Speaker 1: it's all these things that led to it. And I
Speaker 1: do think also, like we have Joe Biden as president, right,
Speaker 1: like a lot of the same bullshit it's still happening
Speaker 1: that we've covered, right, like talking about the cops, talking
Speaker 1: about the border, talking about all this stuff, but it's
Speaker 1: not being shoved in people's faces by legacy media outlets.
Speaker 1: Liberal folks have not been getting gradually angry or more
Speaker 1: upset at like the appearance of vulgarity from the White House.
Speaker 1: And yeah, and that's also a big aspect of why
Speaker 1: things went the way they did in is you had
Speaker 1: four years of pent up frustration on behalf of the
Speaker 1: a large group of liberals as well. Although I do again,
Speaker 1: I don't like pushing kind of the simple narrative here
Speaker 1: because I see that on the left a lot that like, oh,
Speaker 1: the Libs they stopped coming out because Biden one, and
Speaker 1: they never really cared. And I think that like, that's
Speaker 1: there's certainly like a decent chunk of people who who
Speaker 1: showed up because it was the thing to do and
Speaker 1: we're not committed. But I also think the folks who
Speaker 1: are just like, um, you know, people stopped coming out
Speaker 1: because they suck. That's a that's a little bit of
Speaker 1: a reductive summary of the take. But I think that
Speaker 1: that that broad idea leaves out a lot. One of
Speaker 1: the things that leaves out is that a lot of
Speaker 1: those those Libs and moderates who showed up in got
Speaker 1: the ship beaten out of them and got pretty traumatized
Speaker 1: and are probably would be willing to get back out again.
Speaker 1: But are going to need to feel like there's a
Speaker 1: an actual chance of doing something because they understand the
Speaker 1: consequences of showing up in the street better. Um, and
Speaker 1: they're like, well, I don't want to do the same
Speaker 1: thing that I just got my ass kicked and there's
Speaker 1: still cops. Um, there is a decent amount of evidence
Speaker 1: that for kind of the long term positive impact of
Speaker 1: getting all those people out in the street and of
Speaker 1: the fact that so many more people in witnessed police
Speaker 1: violence with their own eyes. Um. There's a couple of
Speaker 1: places you can go to look at this, But I
Speaker 1: was I was watching going through a recent ABC News
Speaker 1: Washington Post poll that showed that from three, confidence that
Speaker 1: police treat black and white people equally fell from fifty two,
Speaker 1: where it was the thirty nine percent among Americans. Um,
Speaker 1: and confidence that yeah, and confidence the police still a
Speaker 1: lot like it's too it's certainly too high, but that's
Speaker 1: a significant change. And confidence that police were adequately trained
Speaker 1: to avoid use of excessive force fell from f to um. Like,
Speaker 1: and confidence in both of these things fell twice as
Speaker 1: fast from twenty three as it did from and that
Speaker 1: like thirty something percent number is just that is also
Speaker 1: just like close to like the number of people who
Speaker 1: are like active, like like actively hardcore racist about of
Speaker 1: the country are biggest. Yeah. Yeah, I don't think the
Speaker 1: election was real think that. Yeah. I want to quickly
Speaker 1: mention that, like some of those liberal folks as well,
Speaker 1: like like this is not we don't do like shipping
Speaker 1: on the lips or whatever it's use Listen, it doesn't help.
Speaker 1: But like a lot of those folks have been out
Speaker 1: doing other ship too, Like I've seen folks so I
Speaker 1: haven't seen since twenty like to protect trans kids, trying
Speaker 1: trying to stop biggest shout and get little children going
Speaker 1: to the pantomime ship like they they've been doing stuff,
Speaker 1: and and that contributes to close to people being you know,
Speaker 1: fatigue from other actions. A large part of what I'm
Speaker 1: seeing people not being willing to do anymore is like
Speaker 1: the same ship that they did in that stopped working, right,
Speaker 1: it didn't continue to be effective. Yeah yeah, And I
Speaker 1: think also like and this this also you know the
Speaker 1: s sspectors, like the weather, like the stuff that was
Speaker 1: happening in the very very like the first week, we're
Speaker 1: like I don't know, like the cops lost control of
Speaker 1: like the sid at the center of Chicago, right, like
Speaker 1: that the kind of people who did that stuff like
Speaker 1: aren't really like that. Those those those are those those
Speaker 1: that was not being done by people who were sort
Speaker 1: of like political liberals or whatever. That was being done
Speaker 1: by people who like had like very various tines, very
Speaker 1: tenuous connection to politics at all under normal circumstances. And
Speaker 1: you know, like eventually, eventually you'll get we'll see something
Speaker 1: like that again. I don't know, I mean it took
Speaker 1: like six six five or six years between like Ferguson
Speaker 1: and like that. That will happen again. But there's that
Speaker 1: kind of that that kind of stuff doesn't happen that
Speaker 1: Like those those like the kind of people who actually
Speaker 1: riot very significantly, who are not in the sort of
Speaker 1: like cadra of like hardcore left or organizers, like, they
Speaker 1: don't throw in that often. And a lot of political
Speaker 1: conditions have to like converge exactly correctly for it to happen,
Speaker 1: and it's just not going to happen most of the time.
Speaker 1: And that's in pressing in a lot of ways. But
Speaker 1: like you like that's just that's just what reality is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't think there's been enough time between cycles in
Speaker 1: order for things to really pick up, because yeah, it
Speaker 1: hasn't required a lot of people to forget, to forget
Speaker 1: the brutality of what the cops did to people, and
Speaker 1: like and and and and and just like material conditions
Speaker 1: and like recovering from burnout, and it creates Like one
Speaker 1: thing that's been so incredible about Atlanta is the level
Speaker 1: of atliency because they've not they've not really stopped since
Speaker 1: like they've like they've they've kind of they they've they've
Speaker 1: kept going in a very particular way that both like
Speaker 1: encourages people to take care of themselves and not to
Speaker 1: be treated as disposable. And I think a big part
Speaker 1: of that is having like a multi pronct movement, Like
Speaker 1: the movement isn't it's not built around a singular thing
Speaker 1: like going out and breaking windows or even even just
Speaker 1: like camping in the forest. Like, the movement isn't just
Speaker 1: those things. There's a lot of other various aspects. So
Speaker 1: when you're exhausted from one single thing, you can move
Speaker 1: on to one of the other many aspects and like
Speaker 1: do that as like as your recovery um and and have.
Speaker 1: Having that, I think it's contributed to the level of
Speaker 1: resiliency that we've seen, um, but I don't think the
Speaker 1: rest of the States has those types of practices. Like
Speaker 1: people in Portland are definitely still extremely burnt out from
Speaker 1: from and I assume a lot of a lot of
Speaker 1: other cities are dealing with similar level of fatigue. One
Speaker 1: thing I do want to address really quickly is the
Speaker 1: horseshit framing of this by legacy media. Again, like the
Speaker 1: very fucking people who, like on the day that Derek
Speaker 1: Chauvin went to Joe retweeted that initial statement where Minneapolis
Speaker 1: p D like basically said George Floyd died of a
Speaker 1: heart attack. I think we had a cardiac condition or something. Um,
Speaker 1: the very same people who retweeted that statement said never
Speaker 1: again are we going to be calmed by this ship
Speaker 1: and now out there fucking just carrying water for the cops,
Speaker 1: like CNN saying that Tyry Nichols had an encounter with
Speaker 1: the police, Like I don't understand what it fucking takes
Speaker 1: for these people to understand, Like and I've been like
Speaker 1: I was on NBC this year trying to persuade other
Speaker 1: NBC journalists to maybe critically assess the claim to the police,
Speaker 1: and like here we are again doing the same ship again,
Speaker 1: and we should we should probably close out here soon.
Speaker 1: But one kind of final thought that I've had is
Speaker 1: the other another kind of crucial difference between how this
Speaker 1: was treated as opposed to the George Floyd videos. At
Speaker 1: the person who recorded the George Floyd video was like
Speaker 1: a bystander, Like they were just there and they posted
Speaker 1: that on their own accord, and it was able to
Speaker 1: grow to it was able to grow traction over the
Speaker 1: course of a few weeks kind of slowly in like
Speaker 1: underground um like in like underground communities, you know, people
Speaker 1: who are much more aware of police violence, and then
Speaker 1: that's the least seeped out into the mainstream. I think
Speaker 1: there's a difference in having that type of natural growth
Speaker 1: of people learning about like hey, did you see this
Speaker 1: fucked up thing that my friends sent me where like
Speaker 1: did you like Like there's that level of like, oh,
Speaker 1: we found this thing that is really fucked up and
Speaker 1: people need to care about this, versus the framing of
Speaker 1: the police and how they used this as like a
Speaker 1: world premiere of this like of this of this like
Speaker 1: snuff film. It's it's like that there was like a
Speaker 1: fucking countdown to to to to to watch the video,
Speaker 1: and that that immediately frames this as something to be consumed.
Speaker 1: That immediately frames this is something like the way to
Speaker 1: engage with this is to sit down and watch it
Speaker 1: and then you're done. Like that, then the that is
Speaker 1: the like they're they're they're framing this the same way
Speaker 1: that you would watch like a movie or like a
Speaker 1: music video drop like that is that is the style
Speaker 1: of engagement. Because this video is being published by the
Speaker 1: police like they are. They are they are from from
Speaker 1: the very start, They're controlling the way that information is distributed.
Speaker 1: They're controlling what information is distributed. It like creates this
Speaker 1: scenario where the consumption of the video itself like is
Speaker 1: the event as opposed to any type of like follow
Speaker 1: up action or protest or direct action that instead of
Speaker 1: that being like the action event, the action event is
Speaker 1: just the consumption of the video based on how it
Speaker 1: was hyped up as as this thing that was to
Speaker 1: be like officially released and you like count down for
Speaker 1: it and then you watch it and you're like, Okay,
Speaker 1: that was it, that was the thing, um, And I
Speaker 1: think that does just really impact it when it's like this,
Speaker 1: like sanctioned premier versus this thing that's spread by regular people. UM. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think you're right. I think it kind of became
Speaker 1: this act of penance. Like you watched the video, you say,
Speaker 1: holy funk, that's disgusting, and then like the thing is
Speaker 1: already done right like that, the cops are already fired,
Speaker 1: So you just do your penance. You go through the
Speaker 1: painful thing, rather than the George Floyd thing, which was
Speaker 1: like nothing has been done about this. I've got this
Speaker 1: organically from my friend and I'm fucking furious. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I think you're right. I think it's very different. Yeah, alright,
Speaker 1: well I think that's probably going to do it for
Speaker 1: us today. Um until next time. Uh, I don't know.
Speaker 1: Don't don't let your city name a police elite unit
Speaker 1: scorpion or anything else. Yeah you can tell stuck. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't have special police if. Yeah, I would prefer
Speaker 1: no cops. If you're going to have a special police unit,
Speaker 1: maybe call it like the Barney Fife Battalion or something
Speaker 1: like that. Um, at least at least try not to
Speaker 1: hype them up to be scorpions. Yeah. Um, anyway, that
Speaker 1: that that that that the fuck? Howeveryone it's James again
Speaker 1: book ending the episode, and I'm just here to ask
Speaker 1: you again to donate if you have the means, if
Speaker 1: you're able to, to relief for people in Syria who
Speaker 1: are obviously experiencing terrible consequences from this earthquake. The new
Speaker 1: cycle kind of moves on, but people's lives don't, and
Speaker 1: they still need your help. So a couple of plays
Speaker 1: you can donate. The White Helmets that's White Helmets dot org,
Speaker 1: slash e N for English Syrian American Medical Society Foundation,
Speaker 1: that's s A M S hyphen USA dot net, metsan
Speaker 1: San Fontiere, Doctors Without Borders and that's Doctors Without Borders
Speaker 1: dot org. And the Curtish Rear Question h E y
Speaker 1: V A S O r u K dot r G.
Speaker 1: Those were all great places and we'd love it if
Speaker 1: you could spare little money to help people out. Thanks bye, Hey,
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