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