Speaker 1: Hey everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let
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Speaker 2: It's It's it can happen here. It's the podcast sometimes
Speaker 2: hosted by me and Bia Wong.
Speaker 3: It is.
Speaker 2: I guess this is a combination things falling apart putting
Speaker 2: things back together.
Speaker 4: Episode.
Speaker 2: We are doing some more coverage of the US's sort
Speaker 2: of epidemic of mass evictions. But yeah, so with me
Speaker 2: to talk about this is Max Is, one of the
Speaker 2: organizers and co founders of Santa Barbara Tennant's Union, and
Speaker 2: Sam Sapiazi, who's another tenant and a member of the union.
Speaker 5: YouTube.
Speaker 2: Yeah, welcome to the show.
Speaker 3: I thank you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So, I guess we should start with talking about
Speaker 2: the specific mass eviction that is happening, which has been
Speaker 2: caused by a terrifying and unfortunate product of my hometown Chicago,
Speaker 2: a very large company called core Spaces, who have incredibly
Speaker 2: suspicious branding for the fact that they're a giant landlord company.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think guy has bought your building and is attempting
Speaker 2: to evict everyone is.
Speaker 3: This Yeah, Yeah, So Core Spaces out of Chicago and
Speaker 3: I believe Austin, Texas have purchased r for building apartment
Speaker 3: complex approximately two hundred and forty three units. I believe
Speaker 3: over a thousand people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they just immediately Yeah. So I guess this
Speaker 2: is one of the other things we should we should
Speaker 2: talk about first. Is this thing that landlords do where
Speaker 2: they either buy a property or they have a property,
Speaker 2: then they're like, oh, hey, we're doing renovations on we're
Speaker 2: evicting everyone, and then you don't let anyone ever come
Speaker 2: back because you're you know, you're quote unquote renovation. You're
Speaker 2: just a way to do a price hike, which seems
Speaker 2: to be what's happening here.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 6: And renoviction it's a nice it's a nice term for that, right, renoviction.
Speaker 6: It's you're renovating to evict, Just to if listeners aren't
Speaker 6: aware of that term.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think if I'm understanding their plan, right,
Speaker 2: they're trying to basically turn this into luxury student housing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that's that's what we presume. That's kind of
Speaker 3: their business model is to buy up housing in college
Speaker 3: towns and do some renovations and then hike up the
Speaker 3: rent drastically.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's definitely a thing that happened. There's a
Speaker 2: lot of colleges in Chicago, which I don't know, presumably
Speaker 2: people know that on a sort of abstract level, but
Speaker 2: this is the thing that happens basically everywhere there are colleges.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we've we've actually talked to other like grad student
Speaker 2: organizers about this stuff too, because it up sort of
Speaker 2: affecting everyone at all sides.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So I guess, Okay, so facing this eviction, I guess
Speaker 2: I wanted to talk about how you all started organizing
Speaker 2: against it.
Speaker 3: We got our original notices on March sixteenth. We had previously,
Speaker 3: I want to say it was like December or January.
Speaker 3: We had got notice that some people will be coming
Speaker 3: through our apartments investors to look at it, and I
Speaker 3: like took pictures of my bathroom and my kitchen. It
Speaker 3: was super and so we kind of I think a
Speaker 3: lot of us knew at that point like, Okay, something's
Speaker 3: going on, right obviously. And then March, I want to
Speaker 3: say it was March fifteenth or sixteenth, we got a
Speaker 3: notice that the building was sold from Essex to Course Spaces.
Speaker 3: And then it was the day after that we got
Speaker 3: a notice that said, hey, you're all getting evicted because
Speaker 3: we got to do renovations. I kind of expected it
Speaker 3: to be honest, because I've seen what Blackstone has done. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and I had just heard about it from a lot
Speaker 3: of properties or also tenants, like in La friends that
Speaker 3: I had, other college students that had had this happen
Speaker 3: to them. But after that, basically, I mean, I don't
Speaker 3: want to speak for everyone but my own personal Like
Speaker 3: what I did. I just kind of went on Reddit
Speaker 3: and was like, hey, this really awful thing is happening.
Speaker 3: You know. I went on the UCSB reddit page. This
Speaker 3: really awful thing is happening. There's like a lot of
Speaker 3: families that live here. There's so many Section eight disabled people,
Speaker 3: elderly and udents, but our complex is a little different
Speaker 3: and that it does have more of the marginalized groups.
Speaker 3: And I went on Reddit and was like, dude, this
Speaker 3: is this is awful, like just yeah. So I made
Speaker 3: a post saying this sucks, and from there I was
Speaker 3: referenced to contact Santa Barbara Tendancynon which I was like
Speaker 3: kind of hesitant at first, because I was like, oh,
Speaker 3: what are they going to do, Like I don't know.
Speaker 3: I thought, you know, it's just like one of those
Speaker 3: resources you get where you're just like, are they actually
Speaker 3: going to do anything or is this just for me
Speaker 3: to like waste my time with. But I reached out
Speaker 3: and I got, you know, a response back within hours
Speaker 3: and they're like, yes, here's a flyer for you. We
Speaker 3: are we have your back, We're going to do this,
Speaker 3: we will support you. And so from there, I want
Speaker 3: to say, it was within a day or two, we
Speaker 3: went flying door to door. And remember it's it's two
Speaker 3: hundred and like I said, I think it's play sixteen. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's it's it's a lot of it's a lot units
Speaker 3: to knock doors on. I know one of our county representatives,
Speaker 3: Laura Capps, called it the largest eviction in California history,
Speaker 3: and I've heard others say at the largest eviction in
Speaker 3: the United States history. I don't I don't know if
Speaker 3: that's uh what they're basing that off of. But it's
Speaker 3: a gigantic eviction. There are many people here. But yeah,
Speaker 3: So from there, I just went like door to door knocking.
Speaker 3: I knew none of my neighbors. I am a hermit.
Speaker 3: I stay in my apartment. I keep my curtains closed.
Speaker 3: I'm like, but the only contact other like my neighbors
Speaker 3: make are with my cats just chilling in the windows
Speaker 3: and stuff.
Speaker 2: But I mean, yeah, to be fair with cat in
Speaker 2: the windows not the worst rep you can have.
Speaker 3: I mean, yeah, true. But even even then, I yeah,
Speaker 3: I didn't even want my cats in the windows.
Speaker 4: I was.
Speaker 3: I was very very antisocial. I still am. But I
Speaker 3: have opened my mind quite a bit and come out
Speaker 3: of my shell a little bit. But that's irrelevant. From there,
Speaker 3: like I said, we went flying. We went door to door.
Speaker 3: We found other people that were like, oh, yeah, this
Speaker 3: is super messed up, like we need to fight this.
Speaker 2: And we.
Speaker 3: By just going door to door telling people, hey, we
Speaker 3: can fight this eviction. These eviction notices aren't super valid. Anyway,
Speaker 3: we were able to get a gigantic group of our
Speaker 3: neighbors together. Yeah, yeah, and it kind of move from there.
Speaker 3: I don't know how much further. I should explain, there's
Speaker 3: such a like long timeline of the things that have
Speaker 3: happened in the past two months. So I don't know
Speaker 3: where you want me to go from there, but you
Speaker 3: know that's at least the beginning of it was just
Speaker 3: you know, us flying going door to door, getting everyone together,
Speaker 3: getting everyone in a in a group chat, and then
Speaker 3: SBTU truly supporting us and telling us, hey, here's the
Speaker 3: next steps that you need to do. This is how
Speaker 3: you become you know, a union, a tennis association for
Speaker 3: your for yourselves right with their full on support.
Speaker 2: Okay, so there is one thing I wanted to sort
Speaker 2: of talk about a little bit before we move on,
Speaker 2: which is, yeah, can you explain what Section eight is
Speaker 2: for listeners who don't know.
Speaker 3: I can explain it based off my knowledge. I'm not
Speaker 3: currently on Section eight, but I know that resident many
Speaker 3: residents here are on Section eight, which I probably couldn't
Speaker 3: give the best description of it personally, but I know
Speaker 3: a lot of times it's people that are very low
Speaker 3: income or disabled individuals, people that can't work for various reasons,
Speaker 3: get low income housing, meaning they pay Maybe I know
Speaker 3: some of our residents, for example, pay like they get
Speaker 3: Section eight vouchers that will pay about twenty five twenty
Speaker 3: six hundred dollars for their rent and their utilities, and
Speaker 3: then maybe they pay one hundred or two hundred because
Speaker 3: they're unable to get that income otherwise. But Max might
Speaker 3: be able to describe it a little bit better than me.
Speaker 5: Well, that sounds about right.
Speaker 6: I grew up on Section eight with like a single
Speaker 6: mom and stuff, and she yeah, I mean, it's just
Speaker 6: subsidized housing. It's basically it's what public housing, or in
Speaker 6: some countries, social housing would be.
Speaker 5: But in the eighties, like the Reagan era like gutted
Speaker 5: all public.
Speaker 6: Housing, and so the concession was it's a voucher based
Speaker 6: system for the poor, like for the low income people.
Speaker 6: So yeah, it's just the government, Okay, a portion of it.
Speaker 5: Some said it pretty bigger. I think, yeah, And.
Speaker 2: I guess, you know, I guess that this is the
Speaker 2: sort of Yeah, an interesting thing about your building is
Speaker 2: that there's a very there's a very wide range of
Speaker 2: like sort of different backgrounds of people who are involved.
Speaker 2: And I was wondering, you know, we talk a little
Speaker 2: bit about like what that's been like.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So I guess I could say we have four buildings,
Speaker 3: so we have so it's CBC and the SWEEPS, so
Speaker 3: it stands for Colonial Balboa Cortes Sweeps. The SWEEPS has
Speaker 3: a lot of students because it rents by the bed,
Speaker 3: but CBC has a on of families. And as we mentioned,
Speaker 3: you know Section eight and lower income. I want to
Speaker 3: say I had heard from another representative, like a county representative,
Speaker 3: this is I think it might have been more apps.
Speaker 3: Don't quote me on this, but that this is like
Speaker 3: the lowest one of the lowest income housing apartments in
Speaker 3: Ila Vista, and so there's a ton of like large families.
Speaker 3: When when this happened, you just people were just crying
Speaker 3: everywhere like they didn't know what to do.
Speaker 6: This building is it's not unlike a lot of buildings
Speaker 6: where you have a pretty diverse kind of I guess
Speaker 6: just class composition. And I'm just like, so, so you know,
Speaker 6: if you think there's disabled people that have caseworkers, you
Speaker 6: have monolingual Spanish speaking immigrants, You have students, and you
Speaker 6: have some students who are sort of like city college
Speaker 6: students that are working full time or part time and
Speaker 6: their full time students so they're sort of worker students.
Speaker 6: There's like full time UCSB students whose like parents may.
Speaker 5: Be totally loaded or whatever.
Speaker 6: You have you know, often an immigrant and low income
Speaker 6: family families. You have like way more people packed into
Speaker 6: like a one or two bedroom than you would want.
Speaker 6: But it's the only way for free to make rent
Speaker 6: because rent keeps going up every year. So there's a
Speaker 6: lot of that, And so I guess I'll just speak
Speaker 6: to I mean, I've only you know, I've run into
Speaker 6: it a bit, like I'm in the group chats and
Speaker 6: I've been I've been to the building like a few times,
Speaker 6: but I'm not like there every day, and I'm not
Speaker 6: like flying every day and stuff like Sam is living there.
Speaker 6: But like one common kind of like difficult. It's like
Speaker 6: it's it's a beautiful thing and it's a difficulty and
Speaker 6: that like there's so we need interpreters. And like in
Speaker 6: sbtwo we have where we're a sort of self funded
Speaker 6: autonomous tenets union, which means we don't get grants from
Speaker 6: like wealthy foundations or government government entities.
Speaker 5: Or whatever, so we can kind of more dependently make decisions.
Speaker 6: So but we have like a fair amount dues money
Speaker 6: now just from the mass membership that we have kind
Speaker 6: of built, and so we can afford to pay interpreters
Speaker 6: to come out basically whenever we need. So there's been
Speaker 6: interpreters there at almost every one of the Saturday meetings,
Speaker 6: and without that it would it would actually just be impossible,
Speaker 6: I mean not like so that's like when there's a
Speaker 6: language barrier, right that makes it hard to organize, or
Speaker 6: it wouldn't be impossible. There's there's a handful of like
Speaker 6: bilingual people, but they're usually super busy. It's if if
Speaker 6: if one of them doesn't show up, or if the
Speaker 6: child of a parent, like a teenager of a parent
Speaker 6: isn't there or whatever, right, like, how do you actually
Speaker 6: get the info across? So I'll just speak to lastly
Speaker 6: on that that it is like it's a really kind
Speaker 6: of frustrating, sad situation. And we could probably elaborate on
Speaker 6: this in that like the whether it's the lawyers right
Speaker 6: now who have been hired by by Course Baces, which
Speaker 6: they're a snaky, slimy piece of shit, evil firm. They're
Speaker 6: called Tyne Taylor, Fox Howard LP. Just if you see
Speaker 6: any of them on the street, just give them dirty looks.
Speaker 6: Don't do anything violent, use that against me at some
Speaker 6: point in the inevitable thing that's probably gonna happen. But
Speaker 6: but whether it's them with the landlords directly, there's there's
Speaker 6: always a you know, this is happens in labor organizing.
Speaker 5: It's a divide and conquer strategy.
Speaker 6: So they want to spread misinformation amongst the Latinos or
Speaker 6: amongst you know, amongst the families, amongst the disabled, like
Speaker 6: whoever they can sort of get an ear to, they're
Speaker 6: going to give them certain kinds of information to make
Speaker 6: them really afraid. They're going to tell them lies, and
Speaker 6: and they're going to get people to try to self evict.
Speaker 6: So I'm I am jumping a little bit ahead, but
Speaker 6: like that, that definitely has been like a challenge in
Speaker 6: that you know, if there was like a totally like linguistically,
Speaker 6: culturally monolithic group of a thousand people, that would probably
Speaker 6: be a little bit easier to keep things like totally unified.
Speaker 6: But those those demographic different differences do present some challenges
Speaker 6: for sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that makes it, that makes sense. I mean if
Speaker 2: we've talked to a couple of other kinds of associations
Speaker 2: that have had to actually well, I mean this one
Speaker 2: was actually like you know, and back when I was
Speaker 2: doing tennis to organizing too, like i've i've i've I've
Speaker 2: seen worse in terms of like like in in terms
Speaker 2: of like the number of languages. But it's still like
Speaker 2: never like an enormously easy thing to sort of have
Speaker 2: to bridge, Like just having to bridge linguistic divides too,
Speaker 2: especially when you're getting information like misinformation different languages is
Speaker 2: a whole thing. I could I could talk for like
Speaker 2: seven hours about the effects this has had on like
Speaker 2: Asian American communities, like Chinese Americ communities particular. Yeah, but
Speaker 2: instead of doing that, we're gonna we have to take
Speaker 2: an ad break. We'll be back after whatever incomprehensible ads
Speaker 2: are playing.
Speaker 5: Okay, cool, great ads. Bye by the stuff on the ads.
Speaker 2: And we're back. I hope the ads were short.
Speaker 6: I don't know, there are some great ads.
Speaker 5: I'm gonna buy that thing whatever.
Speaker 2: The Raking coins again or like one of the casinos.
Speaker 5: Okay, So.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I guess, yeah, you know, we'll just okay.
Speaker 2: Having having having done a thematic jump, I will now
Speaker 2: go back to chronological jumps, which is okay, So you
Speaker 2: have you're starting these organizing what what starts to happen
Speaker 2: after you're starting to get people together and you have
Speaker 2: the tenants, the center parpat tendency need involved.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So it started from flying getting to everyone just
Speaker 3: like a basic letting them know that they don't have
Speaker 3: to move, that this eviction is this eviction is bullshit.
Speaker 5: Right. Oh but by the way, we didn't. We were
Speaker 5: never giving legal advice that people shouldn't move.
Speaker 6: It was if you don't want to, you don't have
Speaker 6: to because there's certain illegitimacies. Just because I know that
Speaker 6: the slimy piece of human fucking garbage fire trash lawyers
Speaker 6: are going to be listening to this and trying to
Speaker 6: use us again, use it against us.
Speaker 3: Go ahead, Yeah, no, thank you for the correction. That
Speaker 3: is entirely Yeah, they don't have to if they don't
Speaker 3: do basically. But yeah, So after we did the flying,
Speaker 3: we Santa our Attendants Union set us up with some
Speaker 3: group chats and we just worked together. From there. We
Speaker 3: just started talking to one another, and I think it
Speaker 3: was it was a new situation for most of us.
Speaker 3: A lot of I mentioned this before, but a lot
Speaker 3: of us didn't talk to each other before. We didn't
Speaker 3: go out of our apartments, which I think is kind
Speaker 3: of normal nowadays. It's not like you know the sixties,
Speaker 3: where like, oh, everyone has a house and knows the
Speaker 3: neighbors and stuff. No, people kind of keep to themselves,
Speaker 3: especially in really large apartment complexes. So yeah, we we
Speaker 3: just started going in the group chat and then someone
Speaker 3: was like, hey, I can do this. Another person was hey,
Speaker 3: I can do this, and then eventually we set up
Speaker 3: a group meeting where we could all come together and
Speaker 3: basically share our our feelings, our emotions, our pain about this,
Speaker 3: but also find a way to fight against it. So
Speaker 3: what we learned was, which we fully learned from the
Speaker 3: center of our rettenants union, was oh, if we go
Speaker 3: in front of the county board, we can convince them,
Speaker 3: we can share our stories, we can share our pain,
Speaker 3: and we can tell them, hey, we need the law
Speaker 3: to change, we can pass something, we can use our
Speaker 3: voices to stop this from not only happening to us
Speaker 3: but future residents. So from there it was really in
Speaker 3: the early stages. We I don't know if this is
Speaker 3: jumping ahead. Honestly, my brain is a little foggurant. So
Speaker 3: there's so much that's happened, so quickly, but I do
Speaker 3: know the next biggest step was us coming in front
Speaker 3: of the of the Santa Barbara County Supervisors Board of
Speaker 3: Supervisors and telling our stories and sharing that. I think
Speaker 3: Max could probably also share a little bit.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I have, so like the dates in my head
Speaker 6: are like, you know, the March fifteenth they bought the building,
Speaker 6: March sixteenth, they issued the notices, and then April sixth,
Speaker 6: which is like three weeks from that, they passed the
Speaker 6: new law. So that means I mean that's like three yeah,
Speaker 6: a three week period from the notices to like having
Speaker 6: I think at least a couple of meetings with like
Speaker 6: dozens of people I don't know, thirty to fifty plus
Speaker 6: people there, and then like forming you.
Speaker 5: Know, deciding to form the association and.
Speaker 6: Voting to call I don't remember exactly if the vote
Speaker 6: to call it. Course, basis their association was before that
Speaker 6: the county meeting or after.
Speaker 5: But and then they're also because there's there's also two like.
Speaker 6: Pretty crazy facts here too, where like about so six
Speaker 6: weeks before, of course BACES announced a new ownership, all
Speaker 6: of us in SBTU had sort of we heard so
Speaker 6: many stories on the Santa Barbara City level, and Santa
Speaker 6: Barbara's City is not the county, right. The county is
Speaker 6: like this larger geographical entity, and Santa Barbara City is
Speaker 6: within the county. On the city level, we've been hearing
Speaker 6: so many really terrible stories about people being renevicted, and
Speaker 6: we just decided.
Speaker 5: To kind of like throw people at like yo.
Speaker 6: Go to go to public comment, tell the city about
Speaker 6: what they're doing, Tell them they need to pass a
Speaker 6: ban on renovictions. We had like a big rally in
Speaker 6: front of city council and we were just going week
Speaker 6: after week, and after about six weeks of this, like
Speaker 6: four to six weeks, I forget the exact timeline, we
Speaker 6: got the city to pass. It wasn't a ban on renovictions,
Speaker 6: but it was an amendment to their what's called their
Speaker 6: Just Cause Ordinance, which makes it a lot harder for
Speaker 6: landlords to renevict and that now that they have to
Speaker 6: get permits first, they have to to put the permits
Speaker 6: in the eviction notices when they're going to do it,
Speaker 6: they need to there's some language that says that it
Speaker 6: needs to be done in good faith, which which is
Speaker 6: like really subtle but potentially really important because if your
Speaker 6: reason is that you just want to trigger what's called
Speaker 6: vacancy de control, which is like kicking people out so
Speaker 6: you can jack the rent over the ten percent limit.
Speaker 6: In California, like like right now, a landlord can raise
Speaker 6: the rent about ten percent every year if just just
Speaker 6: because they want to, but if you can get people
Speaker 6: out of the unit, you can raise it to whatever
Speaker 6: you want. So on the city level, it was just
Speaker 6: it was a really big deal. We had just won it,
Speaker 6: and we were like pretty exhausted from it. We're like, shit,
Speaker 6: that was a lot of work, and we won really quickly,
Speaker 6: and everybody around us that's been doing stuff for a
Speaker 6: while was like, we don't know how you guys did
Speaker 6: that shit so fast.
Speaker 5: That was really amazing. And then like I.
Speaker 6: Think it was like the week, like within a couple
Speaker 6: of days of us like celebrating that win course spaces
Speaker 6: the core spaces thing. Yeah, but this is but this
Speaker 6: is county jurisdiction. So we were like, okay, I guess
Speaker 6: we got to go from city account. We got to
Speaker 6: get the need to do the same fucking thing. So
Speaker 6: we were already really fucking exhausted, like we were. There
Speaker 6: was like a sprint sprint sprint sprint, like every week.
Speaker 6: So the reason I'm bringing this up is it just
Speaker 6: felt like natural for us to just like and we
Speaker 6: don't like tell people what to do, like not to
Speaker 6: not like correcting you, Sam, But when it's like Okay,
Speaker 6: do this, do this, do this, it's sort of like
Speaker 6: we ourselves are just tenants. We're not paid staff, we're
Speaker 6: not like highly trained like nonprofit staffers or something like
Speaker 6: that that I think we know everything. We're just tenants
Speaker 6: ourselves that are in the struggle just like everyone else,
Speaker 6: and we're trying to gain information, share information, and become
Speaker 6: collectively smarter and more experienced and better at handling the
Speaker 6: shit together. And so we were like, hey, we just
Speaker 6: won some shit on the city level. If you guys,
Speaker 6: throw all of all of you, which is like a
Speaker 6: lot of you straight to those county meetings. And the
Speaker 6: county meetings are every Tuesday at nine am and they
Speaker 6: go back and forth every week between Santa Barbara and
Speaker 6: Santa Maria. Santa Maria is like an hour to hour
Speaker 6: and a half drive from where they live, so that's
Speaker 6: like pretty unrealistic for most people to not only get
Speaker 6: work off and stuff like that, but like that upcoming
Speaker 6: Tuesday from that meeting we had that Saturday. They just
Speaker 6: happen to be in Santa Barbara, which is more like
Speaker 6: a ten to fifteen minute.
Speaker 5: Drive like down the streets.
Speaker 6: So we're like, okay, there's the fucking meeting, like we
Speaker 6: want to try to get people there. And so the
Speaker 6: you know, the news it was like hought off the
Speaker 6: presses for a week or two. There was all these
Speaker 6: articles on the crisis, and then so that Tuesday morning,
Speaker 6: all of them going and hitting the public comment, hitting
Speaker 6: the mic, and and I should say like public comment
Speaker 6: is typically anybody who's like gone to the public comment
Speaker 6: at a city or count like a government meeting, there's
Speaker 6: usually one or two people that are just like really weird,
Speaker 6: like they are they're like human on they're like human
Speaker 6: on people, or they are like or like they're like
Speaker 6: the next door care in person that's complaining about, like
Speaker 6: I don't know, some stupid stupid shit that nobody gives
Speaker 6: a fuck about. But like sometimes that person actually gets
Speaker 6: something changed because they actually complain over and over again.
Speaker 6: And then there's actual agenda items in these government meetings
Speaker 6: and having this many people like totally flood of public
Speaker 6: comment just for one issue as if it's on the agenda,
Speaker 6: is like it's kind of jaw dropping, right, So people
Speaker 6: just went so crazy with it. People got off of work,
Speaker 6: they were monolingual Spanish speakers. They just spoke in Spanish
Speaker 6: and there's a live interpreter.
Speaker 5: That they legally have to have at the county meeting.
Speaker 6: So on Wednesday, the county supervisors called an emergency meeting
Speaker 6: for Thursday, and on Thursday they passed the Emergency just
Speaker 6: Caused Ordinance, which was just basically copy pasting the city
Speaker 6: ordinance that we'd just won after the six week like marathon.
Speaker 5: So I don't know if you if you caught all that,
Speaker 5: but like that's how from.
Speaker 6: All perspectives, is like don't we don't live in the building.
Speaker 6: We just like we just try to make shit happen.
Speaker 6: Like it was insane of like how quickly because it
Speaker 6: took us about six weeks for the city thing, which
Speaker 6: was still like everyone told us, like that's rapid fire.
Speaker 6: Laws don't get changed that quickly, and this was like
Speaker 6: two weeks or some shit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was. I was stunned by this when I
Speaker 2: was reading about these, like this is one of the
Speaker 2: fastest like, this is one of the fastest campaigns I've
Speaker 2: ever seen, Like I don't know, like I we've we've
Speaker 2: run into like Chicago City Council before, for example, and they,
Speaker 2: oh boy, those people are yeah yeah, so yeah, it
Speaker 2: was a really impressive campaign that you all were able
Speaker 2: to pull off.
Speaker 6: Like yeah, but and this narrative is if we wanted
Speaker 6: to like really make this in a curated way, we
Speaker 6: could probably have like hopeful, we could have inspirational background music.
Speaker 6: Then we could have like horror music, and we could
Speaker 6: have because I mean, I don't know, Sam, if you
Speaker 6: want to take it from that.
Speaker 5: But there's also been some very dark turns since.
Speaker 6: That, Yeah, like very dark, depressing, scary turns because the
Speaker 6: minute well all this, I guess I'll just say it.
Speaker 6: If we want to go deeper into we can or
Speaker 6: skip it. But like as soon as we were really excited,
Speaker 6: like okay, they can't like what we just did makes
Speaker 6: it illegal for them to evict everyone like for now
Speaker 6: because they don't have permits. And oh oh and this
Speaker 6: is this is actually really like important kind of legal
Speaker 6: fact is that that what the law said was that
Speaker 6: this notice applies to any current notices posted to tenant
Speaker 6: stores like after this date, as well as unlawful detainers.
Speaker 6: Unlawful detainer is a fancy term for an eviction lawsuit.
Speaker 6: So so basically like any eviction lawsuit that Course Spaces
Speaker 6: would try to file against any of the two hundred
Speaker 6: and fifty plus people would be they would just be
Speaker 6: tossed out in court because they're just like you. You know,
Speaker 6: an eviction defense attorney would just point to the law
Speaker 6: and be like, the new law says you have to
Speaker 6: do X, Y and Z, and they didn't.
Speaker 5: They be like, yeah, you're right.
Speaker 6: It's just very there's nothing ambiguous. It's not it's not
Speaker 6: a great area. It's not like you can interpret it
Speaker 6: this or that way. It's just not you can't.
Speaker 5: You can't.
Speaker 6: There's no like, there's no like the other side we
Speaker 6: say like, well what about this and this, there's no
Speaker 6: well there's no other thing. But immediately, like almost immediately,
Speaker 6: within like a week or something, the other side started
Speaker 6: countering with like insane propaganda, like like disinformation, which I
Speaker 6: guess I'm kind of taking up a lot of space now,
Speaker 6: but Sam, I don't know if you want to, because
Speaker 6: you're actually there with all the people having being foresped
Speaker 6: the disinformation but by by Tyne Taylor, Fox, Howard Lop
Speaker 6: and four spaces vertically integrated private equity piece of shit firm.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so the emergency ordinance passed and we all were like, yay,
Speaker 3: this is great, we have protections. But then yeah, that
Speaker 3: law firm decided to well that end management. Actually, I
Speaker 3: think prior to the law firm's notices on our door,
Speaker 3: man went around being like like, come pick up your checks.
Speaker 3: These aren't you know, like you need you need to
Speaker 3: go take your checks, You need to sign that you're leaving,
Speaker 3: et cetera. And when that notice from the the Tyne
Speaker 3: Law Firm came signed by Lacy Taylor.
Speaker 5: It Lay Taylor reported.
Speaker 3: To the bar it basically said, this doesn't apply to you,
Speaker 3: and if you I mean, okay, this is my interpretation
Speaker 3: of it. When I read it as a just you know,
Speaker 3: random human being, not a law major or anything, it
Speaker 3: sounded like they would take our relocation checks and or
Speaker 3: charge us more money if we bought back. That's the
Speaker 3: way it was phrased. Granted, I know it was like
Speaker 3: law jargon, but it was made to almost like, in
Speaker 3: my opinion, harass us. Like it felt like, oh, everything
Speaker 3: the course basis tennasalization and SBT is saying is a lie.
Speaker 3: This is the truth. If you want to join them
Speaker 3: and be with them, well you might not get your
Speaker 3: relocation assistance check and or we might charge you more
Speaker 3: from that, at least with that specific notice. It was
Speaker 3: super confusing. And you know, most people here don't have
Speaker 3: law degrees. They don't they don't know the law. On
Speaker 3: top of that, you know, the law firm intentionally left
Speaker 3: out the last part of the ordinance. They said, hey,
Speaker 3: this doesn't apply to you because the eviction notice were
Speaker 3: issued before this, but it left out the unlawful detainer part.
Speaker 5: Yes, so it was it's lying by omission.
Speaker 6: It's like I wish I had a good movie example
Speaker 6: or something, but like we've all seen this kind of thing, right,
Speaker 6: It's like you tell the person everything and then you
Speaker 6: kind of black out the last part of the sentence
Speaker 6: so that I don't know, I wish, I wish there
Speaker 6: was like an obvious movie thing to be like, look
Speaker 6: at what the villain did. So the person would like
Speaker 6: make the wrong choice like go down the wrong path
Speaker 6: in the forest or some shit right like, so they'd
Speaker 6: get attacked like like, that's what it did.
Speaker 5: That's what they did.
Speaker 3: That was that was exactly what they did. They literally
Speaker 3: quoted the new ordinance and then cut off the second
Speaker 3: half and put dot dot dot.
Speaker 8: Which was implying something else was there, right.
Speaker 6: I mean maybe maybe some English major was like, oh,
Speaker 6: I wonder what's in that dot dot dot, Like what's
Speaker 6: the rest of the quote.
Speaker 5: But that's the thing.
Speaker 6: That's the thing about like using abusing their power as lawyers,
Speaker 6: fancy letterhead and all this shit of knowing. And this
Speaker 6: goes back to like this this kind of diversity of
Speaker 6: class composition.
Speaker 8: Right.
Speaker 6: If this is a bunch of like super highly educated
Speaker 6: uh professionals, like either with law degrees or or whatever,
Speaker 6: they'd be like, Oh, I'm just going to jump onto
Speaker 6: the county, you know. I'm gonna like look up the
Speaker 6: ordinance and be like, oh, it's Ordnance five to one whatever,
Speaker 6: and I'm going to read through it and be like, Aha,
Speaker 6: they left out the unlawful detainer. But like, how my
Speaker 6: guess is almost zero of the tenants to receive those
Speaker 6: notices did that.
Speaker 5: And that was that was the law firm. That was
Speaker 5: That was Tyne.
Speaker 6: And Taylor and Fox and Howard and whoever the fuck
Speaker 6: else's is involved in their in their you know, fraudulent
Speaker 6: joke of a firm there. Their whole thing was they
Speaker 6: wanted to scare people to get to get them the
Speaker 6: self evict. Right, So if you think about like the
Speaker 6: logistics of like like okay, let's say you're a you're
Speaker 6: a landlord firm that works for landlords, and.
Speaker 5: You you evict people and you get paid a lot.
Speaker 6: Of money to do so, Right, So you get paid
Speaker 6: some retainer amount that's like I don't know, tens of
Speaker 6: thousands or more just for just for like being on
Speaker 6: a call to do stuff for them, and then and
Speaker 6: then maybe you get paid of other amounts. You you're
Speaker 6: looking at you're looking at a situation like this, and
Speaker 6: you're like, okay, two hundred and fifty units and then
Speaker 6: there's somewhere between five hundred and one thousand people, and like,
Speaker 6: you know, you don't need to evict the little kids,
Speaker 6: but like you need to evict like every person on
Speaker 6: the lease. Like that's a lot of unlawful detainers. Like
Speaker 6: that's a lot of filing that we're going to have
Speaker 6: to do, meaning we're going to have to like get
Speaker 6: every single name and every single lease, and we're going
Speaker 6: to have to like every individual person on every lease,
Speaker 6: we're going to have to file an eviction lawsuit in
Speaker 6: the court that we know is going to get tossed out.
Speaker 6: Like that's so much fucking work for us to do.
Speaker 6: We don't want to do all that work. That's insane, right,
Speaker 6: Like we we want to kind of just keep this
Speaker 6: retainer money and do like minimal work, like because we
Speaker 6: also don't have it. It's a four person law firm,
Speaker 6: and they probably have some legal assistance, but like, do
Speaker 6: they really have the capacity to do something of that
Speaker 6: scale like this little slimy, garbage trash fire of a
Speaker 6: fucking firm, of course not. What their strategy was was
Speaker 6: to was to scare people through lying with abusing their
Speaker 6: power as much as possible to empty out that building
Speaker 6: so there'd be no need to file eviction lawsuits and
Speaker 6: and do the bidding of their of course spaces without
Speaker 6: going to court knowing they would lose. Right, So that's
Speaker 6: anybody listening, by the way, this is not like this
Speaker 6: actually isn't about course Bass or the time law firm,
Speaker 6: Like this is just a strategic set of like a
Speaker 6: methodology for an industry that views human beings as obstacles
Speaker 6: to profit in in a hyper commodified real estate you know,
Speaker 6: capitalist market.
Speaker 5: Like that's all this is.
Speaker 6: We're just describing like like a normal process that's happening
Speaker 6: at this point.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And something something we've talked about in other like
Speaker 2: tenant struggles is that, I mean one of the things
Speaker 2: that yeah, I'm not going to I'm not going to
Speaker 2: use a specific law firm of doing this, but it's
Speaker 2: something we've seen in other places is like, you know,
Speaker 2: you'll get landlords who will just fire just file like
Speaker 2: mass file just illegal evictions, and they do it because
Speaker 2: you know, okay, so if they get caught, like nothing
Speaker 2: happens to them, right Like, but if they don't gay cut,
Speaker 2: you know this this is an enormous were people who
Speaker 2: you could just throw out and not have to go
Speaker 2: through any kind of legal process with and so yeah,
Speaker 2: these like you know, like it's like this goes back
Speaker 2: to the old, the old sort of capitalism problem, right,
Speaker 2: which is like the easiest way to make money just
Speaker 2: by taking it from someone, and the second eiastest way
Speaker 2: is by is in you know, like it's like the
Speaker 2: one that's even easier than that is you is you
Speaker 2: lie to them and trick them into either trick them
Speaker 2: or intimidate them, and she's giving you the money without
Speaker 2: having to like actually fight them. H And yeah, it's
Speaker 2: you know what they're doing here, it is legal terrorism.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and I I reported Lacey Taylor to the bar.
Speaker 5: I don't know, Lacey. I'm sure you're listening to this if.
Speaker 6: You if they even notified you, But it was it
Speaker 6: was a bit frustrating because they were just like, yeah,
Speaker 6: this isn't really like we can't really do anything about this.
Speaker 6: It has to be a matter that's settled in civil court.
Speaker 6: And so it's definitely frustrating. So it's like, no, like
Speaker 6: this is just straight up lying. This is not like
Speaker 6: an interpretation of the law. But I do think like
Speaker 6: this is as a side note, like this is the
Speaker 6: issue with you can have like evil ass people who
Speaker 6: are trying to make people homeless in order to retenant.
Speaker 6: That's the kind of language of these these firms views.
Speaker 6: The word is retenant in the building, You're just retenanting,
Speaker 6: right like that that's the sort of real estate capitalist
Speaker 6: law firm or that's the industry like language, right that,
Speaker 6: Like there's just there we got lawyers for that, right, Like,
Speaker 6: we have a thing we want to do and this
Speaker 6: is just the wild West, and we just want to
Speaker 6: make a lot of money, and we just have like
Speaker 6: stacks of lawyers just on deck that we'll just pay
Speaker 6: to do this. And then you even have like these
Speaker 6: state bar associations that are like, well, yeah, that's just
Speaker 6: how it is, man. Probably most likely because like on
Speaker 6: the side of real estate, I guess I'm like making
Speaker 6: up this number. The eighty percent of the lawyers working
Speaker 6: in real estate are on the side of landlords, and
Speaker 6: then maybe twenty percent, probably way less than twenty two.
Speaker 7: Yeah, that's high on the side of tenants.
Speaker 6: Right, And then some of the landlord tenants sometimes will
Speaker 6: help tenants, right, so they can like brag it at
Speaker 6: their little wine and cheese things like, oh, I help
Speaker 6: the people or whatever, and I donate to charities or
Speaker 6: some garbage. But they at the end of the day,
Speaker 6: they're just they're happy to make people die of starvation on.
Speaker 5: The street so that somebody else can make a shit
Speaker 5: ton of money.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this has been nickeld happen here. Join us tomorrow
Speaker 2: for part two of this interview, in which the landlords
Speaker 2: do were bullshit. Welcome to Dinick had appen here a
Speaker 2: podcast about landlords doing bullshit and how you can stop them. Today,
Speaker 2: we're continuing our interview with two tenants in California fighting
Speaker 2: a massive diction by landlord Ghouls Core spaces Enjoy. Yeah,
Speaker 2: something else I wanted to ask about that I'd heard
Speaker 2: about was like harassment from the guards and the fact
Speaker 2: that there suddenly started being security guards after this started.
Speaker 4: Yeah, either you want to talk about that a bit.
Speaker 3: I yeah, I would love to talk about that. So
Speaker 3: I have lived here for almost three years. We did
Speaker 3: have security. I want to say it was saturdays between
Speaker 3: It was one security guard for all four buildings Saturdays
Speaker 3: between eleven pm and like three four am, just just
Speaker 3: one security guard that will walk around just during that time.
Speaker 3: Since course Basis has purchased the property, we have two
Speaker 3: to four twenty four to seven security guards. I know
Speaker 3: they're they're really They've made me personally super fucking uncomfortable.
Speaker 3: I've had them ask me where I live, Like when
Speaker 3: I'm going around canvassing right trying to get flyers people's stores,
Speaker 3: let them know like, hey, this is these are the
Speaker 3: actual facts. Stuff like that they've asked me like where,
Speaker 3: what building do you live in? What's your name? Creepy things,
Speaker 3: And I'm like, I'm not gonna tell you that I
Speaker 3: have no idea who you are. They walk past our
Speaker 3: apartment constantly. It's every time I go outside, they're waiting
Speaker 3: right outside the building. They're taking photos of the things
Speaker 3: across the buildings, like like stuff outside of people's units.
Speaker 3: It's really uncomfortable, and it's kind of telling because it's like, well,
Speaker 3: we never need a security before. Oh, but but once
Speaker 3: you bought the building and wanted to kick everyone out, Oh,
Speaker 3: all of a sudden, you're you're you know, you're hiring
Speaker 3: these random people, which I will also add one of
Speaker 3: our neighbors talk to one of the security guards. He
Speaker 3: worked there for a day and was like, yeah, they
Speaker 3: lowered my pay to like minimum wage. I'm not going Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: he literally don't.
Speaker 6: Maybe we should try to like help unionize. Yes, cources,
Speaker 6: you guys are such a Mark li and Chris Richards,
Speaker 6: you guys are the cheapest, stummiest human being planet.
Speaker 3: Right, And and he was like, yeah, I'm leaving, like
Speaker 3: I'm not gonna do this, this is stupid. But usually
Speaker 3: when I go out, you know. I mean for the
Speaker 3: most part, they're usually just sitting on their phone, standing
Speaker 3: in front of the entrance, locking the doors.
Speaker 4: Against normal cops.
Speaker 3: Stuff like that kind of Yeah.
Speaker 8: Well with yeah, well the standing around part of the
Speaker 8: cop chop so far, hopefully not the other part of
Speaker 8: the cop chop where they yeah.
Speaker 3: Minus any credentials. Basically not that I want cops here either,
Speaker 3: but but yeah, it's been in my own personal opinion,
Speaker 3: it's harassing behavior, you know, and it's in and I've
Speaker 3: talked to so many tenants here, especially again the more
Speaker 3: marginalized tenants. I'm not going to like specify them, but
Speaker 3: they're very intimidated by them, and they actually do think
Speaker 3: they are cops. They don't know that. No, these aren't
Speaker 3: police officers. They aren't trying to. They don't have the
Speaker 3: power to do certain things that you may be afraid of.
Speaker 2: Are they like, are they like in like like policy uniforms.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, no, they have. Yeah, they have security uniforms.
Speaker 3: They have tasers on them. They they they like to
Speaker 3: direct their power.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's probably not similar enough to be able to get
Speaker 2: them on a person, to get a police officer, but
Speaker 2: it's still really depressing that. Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 6: But but and again, and the strategy is to get
Speaker 6: to it's to scare the ship out of people say.
Speaker 9: Yeah, it's just terror.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, it's it's uncomfortable. It's uncomfortable when you go
Speaker 3: out of your apartment and there's just some random person
Speaker 3: with a taser just like right next to you, and
Speaker 3: you're like, uh, I'm just trying to go check my mailbox,
Speaker 3: Like what the what the hell?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 6: Yeah, well you guys are safer though, right, So that
Speaker 6: like that stuff happened like if a like if like
Speaker 6: if an evil landlord and their slimy, scummy evil law
Speaker 6: team were to try to like put you guys under
Speaker 6: the streets, the security guards would come and defend you
Speaker 6: against them.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 5: Oh wait, no, I am I mixed up.
Speaker 6: Oh they're here to serve the evil people trying to
Speaker 6: put you on the streets.
Speaker 5: Oh that's minimum.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean that's the sad thing too, is that
Speaker 6: that the security guards are probably going to get renevicted
Speaker 6: by like the Homeboys of the Core Spaces executives at
Speaker 6: some point, right, Like yeah, uh, they're they're going to
Speaker 6: get renovicted. Somebody is going to look at their wherever
Speaker 6: they're living as a as a low performing asset that
Speaker 6: needs to be retenanted and ship.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so yeah, I don't. So that's fun. That's cool.
Speaker 3: I don't I don't blame I know, I understand the job.
Speaker 3: I don't blame them. I guess as individuals, well, some
Speaker 3: of them, I do, because they're clearly on power trips.
Speaker 3: They like to enforce their power. But I do understand
Speaker 3: that they are being hired outside to do a job.
Speaker 3: But it's it's really not fun. I couldn't imagine ever, Yeah,
Speaker 3: doing that myself, I wouldn't feel right. But I don't know.
Speaker 3: You know, everyone, we're all suffering right like that. You know,
Speaker 3: we're all trying to survive. So I try not to
Speaker 3: judge too much, but I can't help it. When you
Speaker 3: know they're taking photos inside the windows of my apartment,
Speaker 3: it's sucking creepy, like.
Speaker 5: Yeah, pretty creepy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess.
Speaker 2: Okay, is there anything else that you two want to
Speaker 2: specifically wanted to talk about.
Speaker 6: Let's see, we got the beginning, so we got the
Speaker 6: law passed, and then we got the slimy.
Speaker 5: Tie.
Speaker 6: Taylor Fox Howard, LLP, Garbage Law Firm, came along. Well, okay,
Speaker 6: so one one thing that's been a struggle, and I
Speaker 6: would say, like Sam and a couple others have been
Speaker 6: it's just nuts to me, like how much stamina. Well no, actually,
Speaker 6: let me say this, like, uh so I am. I
Speaker 6: am a mental professional, which I don't like to say
Speaker 6: in organizing spaces a lot because I don't like to
Speaker 6: mix up the role too much.
Speaker 5: But like, straight up, everybody I talk to in.
Speaker 6: These situations, like in the role of like tenant organizer,
Speaker 6: not not like therapists. It's just everything reeks of PTSD symptoms,
Speaker 6: Like straight up, like people can't sleep, people are hyper vigilant.
Speaker 6: They're going out to their car and they're looking around
Speaker 6: to see if there's a security guard. They're in constant fear,
Speaker 6: they're confused there, you know, their their startle responses up,
Speaker 6: which is which is hyper vigulous. I mean there's literally
Speaker 6: you can pick up a fucking ds M five and
Speaker 6: look at the definition of PTSD and I would say, uh,
Speaker 6: I can't say everyone. I haven't talked to everyone in
Speaker 6: the building, but I mean this process creates fucking PTSD.
Speaker 6: Like I'm not exaggerating, I'm not making this up. And
Speaker 6: also because the mental health fields, as a side note,
Speaker 6: is such a like neoliberal, individualistic, fucking trash fire. It's
Speaker 6: hard to actually look at this correctly to say like
Speaker 6: this is this is like a mass like trauma of it.
Speaker 6: But despite the mass rama that everybody experiences with this,
Speaker 6: the resilience in it of being like Okay, we're still.
Speaker 5: Going to go out and we're going to flyer and
Speaker 5: we're going to knock.
Speaker 6: On doors and so like, there's been this phase, like
Speaker 6: a two part kind of phase, which has been continuing
Speaker 6: to talk to the county supervisors to try to get
Speaker 6: them to pass a stronger law because there's kind of
Speaker 6: this race now where if and when course Spaces gets permits,
Speaker 6: then they can send out like actually proper notices, although
Speaker 6: maybe there'll be problems of the notices and that can
Speaker 6: be addressed or whatever, but like it is, it is
Speaker 6: kind of just buying time, right if they if they
Speaker 6: get permits and then they try to evict everybody, then
Speaker 6: then then there's the actual sixty day uh like countdown,
Speaker 6: I guess, depending depending on a lot of different factors. Right,
Speaker 6: But so the county one of the supervisors said, you know,
Speaker 6: I want to I want to make like the most
Speaker 6: gruesome speed bump to you know, to speed bump is
Speaker 6: eviction for core spaces. And so what they did is
Speaker 6: it is a big speed bump, but it actually doesn't
Speaker 6: like solve the problem. Would solve the problem is either
Speaker 6: a no fault eviction more toorium, which is be like
Speaker 6: really broad. We're not sure how how what the chances
Speaker 6: are getting them to pass that. But another thing would
Speaker 6: be it's usually called right to return, but we're calling
Speaker 6: it right to re rent because right to return, I
Speaker 6: guess is a thing that like I don't know, I
Speaker 6: don't know, like Ziona say or something I don't know.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's a whole right r right.
Speaker 6: So so, but right to re rent, which is like
Speaker 6: a thing that is in several other other cities and counties,
Speaker 6: which just means like if the landlord legitimately needs to
Speaker 6: make renovations because of like safety, inhabitability concerns or whatever,
Speaker 6: they have to relook relocate the tenant temporarily, and then
Speaker 6: they they have to re rent to the tenant for
Speaker 6: what we were.
Speaker 5: Asking is the same rent.
Speaker 6: We also think that like using the using the ten
Speaker 6: percent a year framework would be fine, like relocate them
Speaker 6: and then raise it by ten percent if you didn't
Speaker 6: already once that year, right, just just treat it as
Speaker 6: a normal thing. Like so if we get them to
Speaker 6: pass that law, then they can divict anybody.
Speaker 8: Right.
Speaker 6: So on the one hand, we're like really trying to
Speaker 6: get the supervisors to do this, and it's just sort
Speaker 6: of it's just unknown, like how how likely we are
Speaker 6: on that in this moment. But then simultaneously we need
Speaker 6: to continue kind of like educating the tenants on like
Speaker 6: on their rights because they keep like as of today,
Speaker 6: management started illegally in a racist way, targeting Spanish speaking
Speaker 6: Latino tenants telling them that that they have to pick
Speaker 6: up their checks right now. And Sam, you can correct
Speaker 6: it from but it's like you have to pick up
Speaker 6: your checks by today, I don't know, like next week
Speaker 6: or something.
Speaker 5: It's like really soon or.
Speaker 6: Otherwise, like you don't get your relocation money and then
Speaker 6: you're going to get into viction lawsuit and course space
Speaker 6: is already as permits. Just making up all the like
Speaker 6: all these things are lies. None of them they're true.
Speaker 3: I was just gonna say I'm white, so I actually
Speaker 3: didn't get that notice. But you are correct the Latina
Speaker 3: families take get that.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, because course spaces are racist and John Tyne
Speaker 6: is a racist, and Lacy Taylor's a racist, and they're
Speaker 6: fucking evil pieces of shit. And I'm glad they're listening
Speaker 6: to this quote me as many fucking times as they
Speaker 6: want in any context. But so having to like try
Speaker 6: to counter those all that disinformation, all those lies is
Speaker 6: like this constant, like parallel process, like trying to get
Speaker 6: the county to do stuff, but trying to get people
Speaker 6: to like understand like, no, they're lying to you, right,
Speaker 6: like while they're in this like chronic state of kind
Speaker 6: of like PTSD, They're like where am I going to go?
Speaker 5: What am I going to do? What's happening?
Speaker 6: And it's hard for them to know who to trust
Speaker 6: because they're being pummeled with disinformation and lies from people
Speaker 6: with a lot of power over them.
Speaker 5: I don't know if you had anything else. Sorry, I
Speaker 5: kind of went off there.
Speaker 3: No, you're you're fine, It's yeah, that's that's kind of
Speaker 3: the way I see it as well. I guess what
Speaker 3: I would add is if the county doesn't do something,
Speaker 3: this is going to be horrible for the entire county
Speaker 3: of Santa rab Brah, but just California in general. I mean,
Speaker 3: you have to think of two one hundred and forty
Speaker 3: plus units, fifty whatever. We don't even know how many units.
Speaker 3: There's so many units here, it's like it's insane. If
Speaker 3: this is going to be so bad, where are these
Speaker 3: people going to go? If Santa Barbara has a from
Speaker 3: what I've heard, a one to two percent vacancy rate,
Speaker 3: these these these people have, including me as a person
Speaker 3: living here, have nowhere to go, I'm I will be
Speaker 3: entirely forced out of the county. Me and my partner,
Speaker 3: who holds a job here. He works as a delivery driver.
Speaker 3: He likes his job. It doesn't pay great, doesn't have
Speaker 3: good benefits, but he enjoys it and he's an important
Speaker 3: part of the community. And if all of these human
Speaker 3: beings are forced out of here, what is that going
Speaker 3: to do to Santa Barbara? Are you know who's going
Speaker 3: to who are going to be, the teachers, the healthcare professionals,
Speaker 3: the everything. I will say in addition to that, this
Speaker 3: is why we formed Course Basis Tenants Association with the
Speaker 3: help of SBTU, so that we can not only stay
Speaker 3: together and work together as a union to fight this,
Speaker 3: but also what course Spaces will likely do in the future.
Speaker 3: So we actually learned from the Santa Barbara Independent. They
Speaker 3: interviewed one of the I think was one of the
Speaker 3: Course Basis representatives who said this was they've done this
Speaker 3: forty six times and this is the first time they
Speaker 3: ever got this level of community outreach, which I was like,
Speaker 3: excuse me, what what we know that their executives are
Speaker 3: They've previously worked for Goldman, Sachs and Blackstone, and to
Speaker 3: find out they've done this forty at least forty six
Speaker 3: other times and just gotten away with it. Now, we're
Speaker 3: not going to keep letting that happen. And so whatever
Speaker 3: happens here at CBC in the sweeps are four bill things.
Speaker 3: However it turns out, and hopefully it turns out in
Speaker 3: our favor, We're not going to stop because they are
Speaker 3: further They're just going to keep continuing this and it's
Speaker 3: we it's disgusting. We can't keep letting this shit happen.
Speaker 3: Like someone needs to stop it. It needs to be stopped.
Speaker 3: And if I hope that we can get legislation to
Speaker 3: stop it, but if not, we're going to be a
Speaker 3: fighting force and we're not yeah, we're not stopping hell yeah.
Speaker 6: Oh and then I guess like, yeah, I don't think
Speaker 6: you really said this, but like if any other tenants
Speaker 6: that are you know, course Space as tenants wanted to
Speaker 6: join Sam and her neighbors, right, Like that's that was
Speaker 6: like you're saying Sam, Like the point was to create
Speaker 6: something like they could have They could have named it
Speaker 6: as more of a local thing like there their tendant Association,
Speaker 6: but they chose Course Spaces as the company name. Right,
Speaker 6: So like and if you're in Arizona, if you're in Tennessee,
Speaker 6: if you're in Seattle, Seattle or whatever, and you are
Speaker 6: people getting rid of it did by these people or
Speaker 6: or I don't know, you're just students like renting by
Speaker 6: the bed and they won't fix stuff or whatever, like
Speaker 6: you can join the course basis. Then association this very
Speaker 6: well could be like a national level organization. Like right
Speaker 6: now it's local, but it's been set up to be
Speaker 6: something that could be potentially national or international. Of course
Speaker 6: Bass wants to go you know, Capital and those now boarders,
Speaker 6: so they want to go fuck people up in other countries.
Speaker 5: Then you know, we can pay more interpreters I.
Speaker 2: Guess yeah, And I guess that's the thing I wanted
Speaker 2: to close on is like, you know, tennants unions are
Speaker 2: not composed of like some kind of like like special
Speaker 2: group of people, right, They're just people, right, Like I
Speaker 2: did it back what I was doing stuff right, and
Speaker 2: like it's just it's just composed of random people. And
Speaker 2: like that random person could very easily be you. And
Speaker 2: you know, yeah, so you're saying, like someone has to
Speaker 2: stop these people, and if it's not going to be that,
Speaker 2: it's not going to be you. The tenants fighting them
Speaker 2: like no one, no one is ever going to and
Speaker 2: they're just going to keep running people over forever.
Speaker 5: And politicians just aren't going to do this. I mean
Speaker 5: acted really.
Speaker 6: Quickly because of the like show of force from right,
Speaker 6: so they get like a cover from the constituency. We're like, oh,
Speaker 6: we're allowed to do this, Like we can do this,
Speaker 6: and or we're terrified of what will happen, like will
Speaker 6: this be like another police station burnt down if we
Speaker 6: pissed them off or something? Right, Like you actually have
Speaker 6: to sort of like make the politicians afraid of you.
Speaker 6: I mean you want to be their friends and stuff too.
Speaker 6: I'm not very good at that. I'm good at like
Speaker 6: scaring them, I guess, but like you have to like
Speaker 6: kind of scare them into acting. You have to like
Speaker 6: discipline the politicians in acting. So anybody that's like we
Speaker 6: just see more policies, it's like policies don't just happen, Like.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like the the like the Center burd people, It's like, yeah,
Speaker 2: they acted quickly when they were forced to. But you know,
Speaker 2: they could have literally at any time in the entire
Speaker 2: history of Santa Barbara, they could have just passed this,
Speaker 2: and they didn't until until you came for them.
Speaker 3: Right exactly, Yeah, yeah, yeah, And I think you're right
Speaker 3: about out like the Tennants Association, the Tennis Association being
Speaker 3: just we're random tenants. I'm not some politician, I'm not
Speaker 3: some leader. I'm a student, you know. I usually just
Speaker 3: spend my nights making dinner with my cats, watching Jeopardy,
Speaker 3: Like I don't do this. But the point being is
Speaker 3: when you come together as a group, you have power
Speaker 3: in numbers. And although I have faith that we will
Speaker 3: win against score spaces for our complex, even if we don't,
Speaker 3: we've left a huge mark and we've helped so many
Speaker 3: residents of Santa Barbara County. For maybe landlords that we're
Speaker 3: planning to change the stove out and not get permits,
Speaker 3: Well now they have to find a reason to get
Speaker 3: a permit. We've at least done that, but I think
Speaker 3: there's a lot more that we will do and can
Speaker 3: do actually against course spaces and their future endeavors their
Speaker 3: properties they decide that they want to overpay.
Speaker 6: For, yeah, I will throw out. Like one other resource
Speaker 6: that is like a group that's called the Autonomous Tenants
Speaker 6: Union Network, which is a network that SB two is
Speaker 6: a part of. Just if you are if you're in
Speaker 6: attendance union or you're interested in tenant organizing from anything.
Speaker 5: You've heard, they are there. It's like a network.
Speaker 6: Like the word autonomous again is like it's people who
Speaker 6: are sort of independent of various like you know, like nonprofits,
Speaker 6: foundations and governments just be sort of responsive just to
Speaker 6: tenants themselves. So I'm not like a representative of the
Speaker 6: group or au tuned, but it's a really strong network
Speaker 6: of really experienced organizers that are really intent on these
Speaker 6: kinds of things, right like forming like there's a crisis
Speaker 6: former tenant association, like organize your whole block, like get
Speaker 6: the politician to do a thing, go on rent.
Speaker 5: Strike like whatever. Right, this more sort of militant, like
Speaker 5: we desperate.
Speaker 6: Crisis requires us to you know, to meet the crisis
Speaker 6: where it's at and act that way.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 6: So, and there's other resources and I'm sure you can
Speaker 6: have like show notes and stuff, you can have links.
Speaker 2: But yeah, other places specifically people can go if they
Speaker 2: want to help the struggle specifically.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so for core spaces Tenet Association, the social media
Speaker 3: handle is all core spaces t A. That that would
Speaker 3: be for Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and TikTok. We have a
Speaker 3: go fundme going as well, just to pay for things
Speaker 3: like you know, food for events or I don't know,
Speaker 3: printing paper, flyering stuff like that. We also have an
Speaker 3: email that anyone can reach us at at core spaces
Speaker 3: TA at gmail dot com.
Speaker 2: And we will we will put all of that in
Speaker 2: the show notes.
Speaker 3: Sounds good.
Speaker 2: Thank you to so much for coming on, and yeah,
Speaker 2: go beat these sons of bitches.
Speaker 5: Yeah, let us swear.
Speaker 3: We're definitely making their lives a lot harder than they expected,
Speaker 3: which is kind of cool.
Speaker 2: But yeah, yes, let's been make it up in here,
Speaker 2: and yeah, you too can go make your landlords days
Speaker 2: worse and you and your day's better.
Speaker 9: Hello, welcome, this is what could happen here, and I
Speaker 9: am Sharene. Today I'm here to talk to you about, well,
Speaker 9: you guessed it, Palestine, but today is going to be
Speaker 9: a little different. I actually want to talk about olive
Speaker 9: trees and how the olive tree came to symbolize Palestinian
Speaker 9: national identity. The olive tree is not just symbolic as
Speaker 9: a symbolized their national identity, but the roots of it
Speaker 9: are far deeper pun intended. So let's get into it.
Speaker 9: Olive trees feature prominently in Palestinian art and literature as
Speaker 9: symbols of steadfastness amid a life of displacement. Palestinian olive
Speaker 9: trees are yet another target, however, for Israeli settlers and
Speaker 9: the IDF. And this is why I wanted to talk
Speaker 9: about this, because there's so much talk in Zionism about
Speaker 9: how sacred the land of Palestine is, how sacred their
Speaker 9: land is, the land that I will call Palestine, and
Speaker 9: how this land belongs to only them, the chosen people.
Speaker 9: But these chosen people are the same ones desecrating the
Speaker 9: land and quite literally pulling out trees from their roots,
Speaker 9: trees that have been there for centuries, been part of
Speaker 9: that land for centuries. I've never been able to reconcile
Speaker 9: that with what Zionism pretends to be. That they respect
Speaker 9: anything at all, not even the land they supposedly belong to.
Speaker 9: And it's just something I always think about when I
Speaker 9: read reports about olive trees being uprooted or chopped down.
Speaker 9: Isn't that the land you pretend to love? What could
Speaker 9: possibly be the Zionist rationale behind destroying the nature of
Speaker 9: that land. The olive tree encapsulates the Palestinian identity. It
Speaker 9: roots an entire nation to a land and livelihood lost
Speaker 9: to occupation, while serving as a potent symbol of resistance
Speaker 9: against the territorial encroachment of illegal settlements. The Mediterranean climate
Speaker 9: is pretty balmy, and olive trees have for centuries provided
Speaker 9: a steady source of income from both the sale of
Speaker 9: their fruit and their silky golden oil derived from the
Speaker 9: fruit aka olive oil. The land around the Sea of Galilee,
Speaker 9: which is an enclosed sea in the northeast region of Palestine,
Speaker 9: was once the world's most important olive region. The area
Speaker 9: was the site of the earliest olive cultivation dating back
Speaker 9: to five thousand BC. And this is just a fun
Speaker 9: fact that I thought was interesting, but southern Spain and
Speaker 9: southeastern Italy are now the biggest olive oil producing regions.
Speaker 9: To this day, between eighty thousand and one hundred thousand
Speaker 9: families in the Palestinian territories rely on olives and their
Speaker 9: oil as primary or secondary sources of income. The industry
Speaker 9: accounts for about seventy percent of local fruit production and
Speaker 9: contributes about fourteen percent to the local economy. The trees
Speaker 9: have been a target for violence and vandalism in Palestine
Speaker 9: for decades, which is nothing new, but this is also
Speaker 9: compounding the already damaging effects of climate change. While other
Speaker 9: farmers around the world can work to adapt their cultivation
Speaker 9: practices to a warming climate, Palestinians lack regular access to
Speaker 9: their olive groves and is coupled with increasingly violet attacks
Speaker 9: on the trees and the farmers themselves, and all of
Speaker 9: this spells out just a grim future for their historic
Speaker 9: way of life. An olive press owner in Palestine, Abuid, said,
Speaker 9: climate change and the occupation are making our job more
Speaker 9: difficult than it already is. He owns several dunams of
Speaker 9: land in the inaccessible seam zone. He said, bitter olives.
Speaker 9: That is our present, that will be our future. Palestinian
Speaker 9: farmers are also often restricted by Israeli authorities from accessing
Speaker 9: their lands that are close to settlements or the separation Wall.
Speaker 9: In twenty twenty one, the International Committee of the Red
Speaker 9: Cross said for years the ICRCA has observed a seasonal
Speaker 9: peak in violence by Israeli settlers residing in certain settlements
Speaker 9: and outposts in the West Bank toward Palestine farms and
Speaker 9: their property in the period leading up to the olive
Speaker 9: harvest season, as well as during the harvest season itself
Speaker 9: in October and November, and that quote was said by
Speaker 9: Els Debouff, the head of ICRC's mission in Jerusalem. They
Speaker 9: went on to say farmers also experience acts of harassment
Speaker 9: and violence that aim at preventing a successful harvest, not
Speaker 9: to mention the destruction of farming equipment or the uprooting
Speaker 9: and burning of olive trees. The olive harvest season, which
Speaker 9: runs between October and November, is a lifeline for again
Speaker 9: about eighty thousand to one hundred thousand Palestinian families in
Speaker 9: the occupied West Bank. Since nineteen sixty seven, more than
Speaker 9: eight hundred thousand Palestinian olive trees have been illegally uprooted
Speaker 9: by Israeli authority. In August twenty twenty one alone, more
Speaker 9: than nine thousand olive trees were removed, and on February
Speaker 9: ninth of twenty two, twenty fifty olive trees were forcibly
Speaker 9: uprooted and destroyed in the occupied West Bank region of Selfet.
Speaker 9: For the past several years, when the olive harvest begins
Speaker 9: around October, both Israeli forces and settlers regularly attack Palestinian
Speaker 9: villages and farmers and destroy their crops on almost a
Speaker 9: daily basis. They beat farmers, they spray crops with chemicals,
Speaker 9: and uproot olive trees by the hundreds. In November of
Speaker 9: twenty twenty two, Israeli forces uprooted two thousand olive trees
Speaker 9: in the West Bank. Make it make sense, you can't.
Speaker 9: It's stupid and illogical. On October twentieth, twenty twenty two,
Speaker 9: a group of men armed with metal bars and stones
Speaker 9: attacked klasm At Hajbrahammad and his olive grove in the
Speaker 9: village of El Lureyev, northeast of Vermola. This group of
Speaker 9: nearly two dozen settlers from the nearby illegal Israeli settle
Speaker 9: of Adiad attacked the olive farmer and his friend Mazda Muhammad,
Speaker 9: the owner of the grove next door, uprooting and heavily
Speaker 9: damaging a total of eighty olive trees and all men
Speaker 9: saplings between the two properties. The trespassers also set fire
Speaker 9: to a vehicle and water tank just for good measure
Speaker 9: before retreating to their homes in the legal settlement in
Speaker 9: the northern West Bank. Klose madhaj Rahammad is a forty
Speaker 9: five year old father of four, and he said, the
Speaker 9: Israeli army backed the aggressors and through tear gas canisters
Speaker 9: and rubber bullets at us so that the settlers can
Speaker 9: keep on destroying our crops. I thought the first time
Speaker 9: this has happened. This man already lost an eye in
Speaker 9: a similar settler attack a decade ago, and these are
Speaker 9: far from isolated incidents. This man lost an eye, now
Speaker 9: he was losing his entire livelihood and the thing he's
Speaker 9: built for his entire life, probably his family's life as well.
Speaker 9: For another incident came from Doha Assous, who is a
Speaker 9: sixty year old farmer. She says that she got up
Speaker 9: at five a m. To journey to her olive grove
Speaker 9: to harvest, only to find thirty five of the precious
Speaker 9: trees that were planted by her father seventy years ago.
Speaker 9: These trees were scattered in pieces after settlers took a
Speaker 9: chainsaw to them. I couldn't contain my sorrow. I hugged
Speaker 9: the broken trunks and waved goodbye to them forever. Then
Speaker 9: the Israeli army pulled me away from my field. Many
Speaker 9: of the groves of Palestinian farmers are located in the
Speaker 9: vicinity of settlements in restricted areas under Israeli administrative and
Speaker 9: military control, which means that farmers need to apply for
Speaker 9: permits specifying when and for how long they can gain
Speaker 9: access to their own property. On top of that, Israeli
Speaker 9: law allows the government to seize Palestinian fields if they
Speaker 9: are abandoned for more than three years, which is at
Speaker 9: go back to Autumn era land codes. Taken together, these
Speaker 9: rules incentivize attacks to keep the farmers from accessing their groves,
Speaker 9: thus allowing for claims of abandonment and eventual seizure of
Speaker 9: the land, and many families have given up on reaching
Speaker 9: their lands for fear of being killed, which is also
Speaker 9: I think what the settlers want. Farming activists Gasan Najad
Speaker 9: said during the harvest, settlers attack us on a daily basis.
Speaker 9: They want to take possession of our lands and build
Speaker 9: more settlements. Today, the number of Israelis living in some
Speaker 9: two hundred and fifty settlements built on Palestinian territory illegally
Speaker 9: according to international law is between six hundred thousand and
Speaker 9: seven hundred and fifty thousand people, and as settlements keep expanding,
Speaker 9: the rights of Palestinians to access their land in those
Speaker 9: areas are stifled by ever more restrictive permitting. Since two
Speaker 9: thousand and five, more than ninety two percent of investigations
Speaker 9: into complaints made by Palestinian victims were closed without filing
Speaker 9: legal charges, surprise, surprise. According to independent observers appointed by
Speaker 9: the UN, the violence attributed to Zuri settlers against Palestinians
Speaker 9: in the West Bank has worsened in recent months amid
Speaker 9: a quote atmosphere of impunity. In response to these attacks,
Speaker 9: Palestinian farmers have been forced to plant about ten thousand
Speaker 9: new olive trees in the West Bank each year to
Speaker 9: prevent the region's five thousand year old industry from dying out.
Speaker 9: Chauna Dullan, the director of international relations with the NGO
Speaker 9: yesh Din, said impunity encourages settlers to take over more land.
Speaker 9: They feel more empowered than ever to use violent means
Speaker 9: to attack Palestinians. It's hard to imagine the situation getting
Speaker 9: worse than this, but it likely will. And they also
Speaker 9: added that cooperation between settlers and the army on these
Speaker 9: organized attacks has become something of an established pattern. We've
Speaker 9: talked about this on other episodes in the past, but
Speaker 9: legislative elections in November of last year brought a sharp
Speaker 9: rise in settler violence because the far right religious Zionist
Speaker 9: Party and the Utzvah Yehudid party surged in the polls.
Speaker 9: It'samar Benavide is now Israel's National Security Minister under a
Speaker 9: new coalition deal, and this grants him control over the
Speaker 9: Israeli Border Police Division in the West Bank. He proudly
Speaker 9: advocates for expelling disloyal Arab citizens from Israel. Dior Sadat
Speaker 9: from the Jerusalem based NGO bit Selim, which documents human
Speaker 9: rights violations in the occupied territories and frames Israeli policies
Speaker 9: in the West Bank as those of an apartheid regime.
Speaker 9: They said, the State of Israel is using settlers as
Speaker 9: its unofficial armed arm in the West Bank to take
Speaker 9: over more land. Settlers are fully backed by the state.
Speaker 9: We expect to witness much more violence as far right
Speaker 9: parties gain positions of power. As the unfortunate triumph of
Speaker 9: nationalist religious ideals has made the Israeli far right integrated
Speaker 9: in mainstream politics, human rights groups are becoming increasingly concerned
Speaker 9: with the implications for Palestinians and the occupied territories, going
Speaker 9: as far as to fear a formal annexation of all
Speaker 9: or parts of the West Bank through a Kinesset vote.
Speaker 9: According to U one experts, twenty twenty two was the
Speaker 9: sixth year of consecutive annual increase in a number of
Speaker 9: Israeli attacks in the occupied territories, and the deadliest in
Speaker 9: the West Bank since two thousand and five. Let's take
Speaker 9: our first break right here. We'll be right back because
Speaker 9: we always are. Okay, Okay, we are back. Let's just
Speaker 9: jump right back in. In twenty twenty Harts magazine publish
Speaker 9: an article about Israeli's growing ancient olive trees in the
Speaker 9: Galley region in northern Israel. The article focuses on the
Speaker 9: Neu Maher family, who have been growing quote hundreds of
Speaker 9: these ancient trees, many of which are between two hundred
Speaker 9: and eight hundred years old, on land adjacent to Mojave
Speaker 9: Da Zapori in the Lower Galilee region. The olive oil
Speaker 9: produced by Neu Mayor's company rish Makish or lakish. Sorry
Speaker 9: he was pronouncing that, probably, but this olive oil received
Speaker 9: high praise from Ronetz Vered, the article's author, and the
Speaker 9: Harrit's food critic. But my question is how did such
Speaker 9: ancient trees fall into the hands of the Neu Mayer family,
Speaker 9: who settled into Zapori only twenty years ago. No historical
Speaker 9: context is given in the article to explain the existence
Speaker 9: of these trees, which the author rights are quote spread
Speaker 9: out over a large area and found in pasture is
Speaker 9: difficult for cultivation and harvesting. The answer to this question
Speaker 9: is that mojav Da Zapori this region sits on land
Speaker 9: to the destroyed and depopulated Palestinian village of Safuria. According
Speaker 9: to Palestine remembered a website dedicated to preserving the memory
Speaker 9: of more than four hundred Palestinian villages which were destroyed
Speaker 9: during the Nekba. Safuria was a relatively large community, with
Speaker 9: over five thousand residents in nineteen forty eight. The area
Speaker 9: around the village, according to Wild Khalidi's book All That Remains,
Speaker 9: was well endowed with fertile soil and surface and underground
Speaker 9: water resources, with olives being the village's chief crop. Safuria
Speaker 9: was conquered by Israeli forces on July fifteenth, nineteen forty eight.
Speaker 9: According to village residents, only a small number of people
Speaker 9: remained in the village after it was bombed from the
Speaker 9: air by Israeli forces, and very few people were able
Speaker 9: to return and retrieve their property. We talked about the
Speaker 9: Nipka in the previous episode. If you guys want to
Speaker 9: revisit that, I won't get into it too much in
Speaker 9: this episode because I already have one all of it.
Speaker 9: But I'm just going to continue talking about this author,
Speaker 9: while Khalidi and his books. While Khalidi has another book
Speaker 9: titled The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, which unveiled
Speaker 9: previously concealed Israeli state archives, which Khalidi references in his book.
Speaker 9: Israeli historian Benny Morris writes that those who remained in
Speaker 9: Sefudia were expelled in nineteen forty eight, but that quote
Speaker 9: hundreds infiltrated back in the months that followed. Israeli authorities,
Speaker 9: Morris wrote, feared that if they returning Palestinians were allowed
Speaker 9: to stay, the village would quote soon return to its
Speaker 9: pre war population. By then, neighboring Jewish settlements had already
Speaker 9: coveted Sefuia's lands. According to Morris, one senior Israeli official
Speaker 9: stated in November of nineteen forty eight, next to Nazareth
Speaker 9: is a village whose distant lands are needed for our settlements.
Speaker 9: Perhaps they can be given to another place. After the
Speaker 9: inhabitants were loaded on trucks in January of nineteen forty
Speaker 9: nine and expelled again to neighboring Arab communities. In short,
Speaker 9: going back to that Heart's article, the hundreds of ancient
Speaker 9: olive trees that our reference did not just grow out
Speaker 9: of thin air. The Palestinian residents of Safuria planted and
Speaker 9: cultivated them for centuries. The trees were stolen from them
Speaker 9: by force the state leases those trees after claiming the
Speaker 9: village's land as its own. Some of that land is
Speaker 9: now part of a man made forest planted by the
Speaker 9: Jewish National Fund. But to ignore the village's history, as
Speaker 9: the Heart's article did, is no worse than ignoring the
Speaker 9: stolen land on which Israeli companies like the one mentioned
Speaker 9: and many others produced its olive oil in the West Bank.
Speaker 9: Taha Muhammadadi, the famed Palestinian poet, was born in and
Speaker 9: expelled from Safuria. The family of Muhammad Bedeck, the politician
Speaker 9: who heads the High follow Up Committee for Arab citizens
Speaker 9: of Israel, was uprooted from the village. Safuriya may be gone,
Speaker 9: but its memory lives. I want to talk about how
Speaker 9: olive trees became a symbol in Palestinian art in literature.
Speaker 9: Olive trees are featured so prominently in Palestine art in
Speaker 9: literature even the far flung diaspora, as symbols of rootedness
Speaker 9: in an age of displacement, self sufficiency in times of hardship,
Speaker 9: and peace in periods of war. Sliemad Mansour, a Palestinian
Speaker 9: painter in Jerusalem whose art has been long focused on
Speaker 9: the theme of Land said, the olive tree represents the
Speaker 9: steadfastness of the Palestinian people, who are able to live
Speaker 9: under difficult circumstances. In the same way that the trees
Speaker 9: can survive and have deep roots in their land, so
Speaker 9: too do the Palestinian people. Mahmoud d Ruish, the celebrated
Speaker 9: Palestinian poet who died in two thousand and eight, his
Speaker 9: works have many reference to olives. In his nineteen sixty
Speaker 9: four poetry collection Leaves of the Olive Tree, he wrote,
Speaker 9: olive is an evergreen tree. Olive will stay evergreen like
Speaker 9: a shield for the universe. Nabil Anani, the celebrated Palestinian painter,
Speaker 9: Saramesis and sculptor, believes that the olive tree is a
Speaker 9: powerful national symbol that must be protected at all costs. Anani,
Speaker 9: who was considered one of the founders of contemporary Palestinian art,
Speaker 9: told Arab News. For me, it is both a national
Speaker 9: and artistic symbol. It reflects the nature and beauty of Palestine.
Speaker 9: Our traditions, culture, poems and songs are often centered around
Speaker 9: the tree to the west of Ramolah, the administrative heart
Speaker 9: of the Palestine government. Annani said that the hillsides are
Speaker 9: full of olive trees as far as the eye can see.
Speaker 9: They cover entire mountains, and it is one of the
Speaker 9: most pleasant views that anyone can observe.
Speaker 4: He said.
Speaker 9: That is the economic and symbolic power of the olive
Speaker 9: tree and Palestinian national life. The rural communities that have
Speaker 9: tended to these crofts for generations are routinely targeted by
Speaker 9: illegal settlers, attempting to strip families of their land and living.
Speaker 9: The late Fudadalchran, one of the most respected female poets
Speaker 9: in Palestinian literature, saw olive trees as symbols of unity
Speaker 9: with nature and of hope for the renewal and rebirth
Speaker 9: of Palestine. In a nineteen ninety three poems, she wrote,
Speaker 9: the roots of the olive tree are from my soil,
Speaker 9: and they are always fresh. Its lights are emitted from
Speaker 9: my heart, and it is inspired until my creator filled
Speaker 9: my nerve, root and body, so he got up while
Speaker 9: shaking its leaves due to maturity created within him. More
Speaker 9: than just a source of income and artistic inspiration, however,
Speaker 9: olives also form a vital part of Palestinian diet and
Speaker 9: culinary culture. Pickled olives feature and breakfasts, lunches, and dinners,
Speaker 9: and also provides significant nutritional health benefits. Olive oil, meanwhile,
Speaker 9: is used in scores of recipes, the most popular of
Speaker 9: which is zata rousset, which is basically fluffy peta bread
Speaker 9: dipped in oil then dabbed liberally in a time based
Speaker 9: powder that includes sesame seeds and spices. My mom actually
Speaker 9: talks about this all the time. It was what our
Speaker 9: hers staples growing up in childhood. Were obsessed with it.
Speaker 9: Palestinian zata is delicious in particular, but olive oil is
Speaker 9: a huge part of this cultural Arab staple. Beyond the
Speaker 9: dinner table, Olive oil historically has had many other uses.
Speaker 9: It's been a source of fuel and oil lamps, a
Speaker 9: natural treatment for dry hair, skin and nails, and even
Speaker 9: as an insecticide. It is not only the fruit in
Speaker 9: its oil, but the olive tree contributes to the cultural
Speaker 9: and economic life of Palestine. Olive pits, the hard stones
Speaker 9: in the center of the fruit have long been repurposed
Speaker 9: to make strings of prayer beads used by Muslims and
Speaker 9: Christians alike. As for the leaves and branches of the trees,
Speaker 9: they are trimmed during the harvest season to be used
Speaker 9: as feed for sheep and goats, while the broad canopy
Speaker 9: of the olive grove provides animals and their shepherds with
Speaker 9: welcome shade from the relentless afternoon sun. The wood of
Speaker 9: felled trees has also been widely used in the carving
Speaker 9: of religious icons as far back as the sixteenth century,
Speaker 9: and as a source of firewood before the modern use
Speaker 9: of gas. In fact, the glassmakers of Hebron, who are
Speaker 9: famed for their stained glass, continue to use charcoal derived
Speaker 9: from olive trees to fire their kilns. And while the
Speaker 9: quantifiably beneficial uses of the olive tree are many, perhaps
Speaker 9: what is even more valuable to Palestinians is the inspiration
Speaker 9: it has provided for poets, painters, and prophets down the ages.
Speaker 9: Not to mention this special place it continues to occupy
Speaker 9: in their culture and quests for statehood. This is all
Speaker 9: why I wanted to mention the olive tree and really
Speaker 9: illustrate its significance to Palestinians and also just point out
Speaker 9: that destroying these crops and these trees, or claiming them
Speaker 9: for your own it actually is an insult to the
Speaker 9: land itself, and that is a Zionist action that I
Speaker 9: just think has no actual excuse or defense. Why destroy
Speaker 9: the land that you want so badly if not for
Speaker 9: spite and hate. So that's what I want to talk
Speaker 9: about today. I hope it was interesting, educational or whatever.
Speaker 9: How we encourage you to try Zeta Zata one day
Speaker 9: in your life from an actual air person so you
Speaker 9: can make sure it's good. But yeah, that's all I got,
Speaker 9: So thank you for listening and until next time. Fuck
Speaker 9: the idea. The tug is real.
Speaker 10: Bye.
Speaker 11: Hello, it's just me again.
Speaker 4: Today it's James.
Speaker 11: I'm joined by Eric Mesa, who will introduce himself in
Speaker 11: a second, and we're going to be discussing the environmental
Speaker 11: and human impact of the border policies in the last
Speaker 11: decade or thereabouts and to include the border wall. So Eric,
Speaker 11: would you like to introduce yourself.
Speaker 4: Thank you James.
Speaker 12: Of course my name is Eric Mesa, I just hear
Speaker 12: him pronounced, and I am the Border the Lands coordinator
Speaker 12: for a club part of the Grand Canyon Chapter based
Speaker 12: out of Tuson, Arizona, which is the on city land
Speaker 12: of the Tona Autumn and Pasco Yaki people many other
Speaker 12: tribes that might call home.
Speaker 4: Thank you for having me.
Speaker 11: Yeah, thank you very much for joining us, And it's
Speaker 11: a fantastic introduction. So, Eric, I think if we start
Speaker 11: out by just explaining what the border wall kind of
Speaker 11: looks like in the landscape and how it operates in
Speaker 11: the landscape, because although it's something that you and I
Speaker 11: might see almost every day, for a lot of people
Speaker 11: it's something that they kind of saw on the news
Speaker 11: three or four years ago and then the new start
Speaker 11: reporting on it. So can you explain like the physical
Speaker 11: kind of stature and impact of the wall.
Speaker 12: Yes, well, I think for each person it definitely takes
Speaker 12: into a with the perspective that they might have. You know,
Speaker 12: it definitely impacts people in a different way. But one
Speaker 12: thing that you can like notice as soon as you
Speaker 12: see it is how massive it is. How it just
Speaker 12: divides these pristine, beautiful Sonoran desert lands and divides them
Speaker 12: on half. So that already for us as an organization,
Speaker 12: since the beginning and the conception of the idea of
Speaker 12: start rolling all of these remote areas, start looking at
Speaker 12: the environmental impact that social action can have.
Speaker 4: So it's always really hard to see and just to
Speaker 4: imagine and.
Speaker 12: To think about all of the different things, not only people,
Speaker 12: but all the different movements that used.
Speaker 4: To happen in these areas. Now it is being completely interrupted.
Speaker 11: Yeah, yeah, definitely. I remember in twenty twenty I was
Speaker 11: out in on cum Island in place called Kampa filming
Speaker 11: a Kumi I protest against the desecration of the sacred sites.
Speaker 11: But actually I was writing for this er club and
Speaker 11: I saw Ada that day, like and it just came
Speaker 11: up to the world, and it was like, what the.
Speaker 4: Fuck do I do? This wasn't here last time I
Speaker 4: came here.
Speaker 11: It was just just really I don't know why. Obviously,
Speaker 11: well those horrible cruel things to people every day, but
Speaker 11: I don't know why it struck me at how unnatural
Speaker 11: and unwelcome it was in that place, but it did.
Speaker 11: So I think maybe if we could look at these
Speaker 11: different The wall spans a huge area and it stops
Speaker 11: randomly throughout that area, so preps you could explain some
Speaker 11: of the ecological impacts. Maybe if we start where you
Speaker 11: are in Tucson, and then we move gradually west to
Speaker 11: where I am and at the western end of it,
Speaker 11: And would that be a good sort of way to
Speaker 11: do that?
Speaker 4: Yeah, of course, Well here in Tucson.
Speaker 12: Our closest border is Nogalles, and once we started moving
Speaker 12: east or I'm sorry west from there, the closest one
Speaker 12: very next to it's called Sassabi, and as you mentioned Nogles,
Speaker 12: there is big walls and then soon it stops because
Speaker 12: then the terrain gets very uneven. There is a range
Speaker 12: of mountains called the Pahari Too Mountains, which is one
Speaker 12: of the most biodiverse areas here in the Southwest, with
Speaker 12: some endemic species of plants and animals. Actually, thankfully the
Speaker 12: wall stops there. And then there is certain areas that
Speaker 12: there is a lot of unfinished projects, or we also
Speaker 12: call them orphan walls, like sections of the wall that
Speaker 12: never were completed and they just stand there. Unfortunately, to
Speaker 12: get them up there, there was a lot of impact.
Speaker 12: For example, they use dynamite to blow up entire mountain
Speaker 12: tops to get equipment up there, and some of the
Speaker 12: cases without even constructing any wall at the end.
Speaker 4: So it's really unfortunate.
Speaker 12: Because a lot of the debris that came out of
Speaker 12: these explosions right now it's causing a lot of erosion
Speaker 12: issues and it's like moving into those canyons and covering
Speaker 12: a lot of the vegitation that was there before. Then
Speaker 12: as you keep coming, passing through the Phariitu Mountains, then
Speaker 12: you get to the area called the Buenos Aires National
Speaker 12: Refuge near the town of Sassab, and there is a
Speaker 12: large segment of a wall there with twenty six gaps,
Speaker 12: small gaps, big gaps, and all of these gaps have
Speaker 12: been there since the beginning of the construction.
Speaker 4: CBP recently announced that they're going to be closing some
Speaker 4: of these gaps.
Speaker 12: They have been used by migrants a lot recently, but
Speaker 12: in recent days actually the influx of migrants have definitely
Speaker 12: declined a lot, different to what other people seence in
Speaker 12: other parts of the country, but especially in this area
Speaker 12: in Arizona, we didn't see the huge amounts of migrants
Speaker 12: coming after Title forty two. So once you pass that section,
Speaker 12: then you get to what's the Once you pass the
Speaker 12: Sasaba Port of entry, then you enter the Tona Autumn Reservation.
Speaker 12: Tona Autumn decided that they didn't want a wall there,
Speaker 12: and they fought for it, and they didn't build a wall,
Speaker 12: and there is about.
Speaker 4: I'm not really sure about the number of miles.
Speaker 12: I think there is about sixteen to twenty two miles
Speaker 12: of just the land that only contains what's known as
Speaker 12: a vehicle barrier or normandy barriers. These are made out
Speaker 12: of like all train tracks, which we really like environmentally
Speaker 12: speaking because it allows the movement of the animals and
Speaker 12: the flow of the water as well. And then once
Speaker 12: you pass the reservation, then you go into Organ Pipe
Speaker 12: National Park, and then you start seeing more wall sections
Speaker 12: on areas like Kito w Akito Springs like a very
Speaker 12: important ceremonial site for he has shed.
Speaker 4: Automn people and a lot of destruction on those areas.
Speaker 12: Sacred sites as well, there are very cultural and important
Speaker 12: for the ton autem people, like Monument Hill, a burial
Speaker 12: site that.
Speaker 4: Wall was built right on top of it.
Speaker 12: And just keep moving and then you get to areas
Speaker 12: that are more remote until you get to Yuma, and then.
Speaker 4: We have also Coco pat Reservation there that there is
Speaker 4: no wall.
Speaker 12: The wall exists just after the the reservation and there
Speaker 12: are some segments I believe that still have no wall
Speaker 12: in there. Recently, there was the action by the state
Speaker 12: governor to put shipping containers there.
Speaker 4: They were removed.
Speaker 12: Recently to be replaced with the regular baller type of
Speaker 12: ball the wall that you see in other places. And yes,
Speaker 12: you keep coming pastcal Lexico and all those areas until
Speaker 12: you get to Kumie Land and the yume Atai Mountains
Speaker 12: and all the way to what's known as Friendship Park,
Speaker 12: which is a BI national park located in the border
Speaker 12: between San Diego and Tijuana, which is the last BI
Speaker 12: national parker the only one that we have in the
Speaker 12: southern border. And now as we speak, new terry full
Speaker 12: walls are being built in that area as well. So
Speaker 12: even so President Biden said that he was not going
Speaker 12: to build more walls, we still see a new construction
Speaker 12: happening as we speak right now.
Speaker 11: Yeah, we've had friends of Friendship Park on our share
Speaker 11: before and I'm sure we will again because they do
Speaker 11: very important work and it's a very important space for
Speaker 11: so many families who are divided by the border. Yeah,
Speaker 11: So I think people, I guess when we talk about
Speaker 11: ecological impact, people always like people like big animals, right,
Speaker 11: it's the charismatic megapahuna, I guess that are impacted by this.
Speaker 11: So maybe that's a good way to look at this.
Speaker 11: I know that there are some jaguars. Jaguars, however, you
Speaker 11: want to say that that are impacted in it's my
Speaker 11: very British pronunciation. In Arizona, there is the bighorn sheep,
Speaker 11: of course, who are closer to me, right near to
Speaker 11: Cumba where people will have heard the scripted series by
Speaker 11: the time this comes out, so they'll be familiar with
Speaker 11: the Cumba And can you talk about the impact of
Speaker 11: the wall on those sort of bigger animals.
Speaker 4: Absolutely.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 12: That has been our main focus as an environmental organization
Speaker 12: since two thousand and five when the Real id Waiver
Speaker 12: came up, signed by George W. Bush as a response
Speaker 12: to nine to eleven and the intention secure the borders.
Speaker 4: The Real Idea Act waved every.
Speaker 12: Single environmental loaw that we know, like, including the Endangered
Speaker 12: Species Act, Clean Water Act, the low that you can
Speaker 12: imagine it's included. It's about forty or more of these laws.
Speaker 12: We're completely waved in order to start building walls. We
Speaker 12: noticed right away that the first walls that are started
Speaker 12: coming up, it was really easy for people to go over,
Speaker 12: under cut.
Speaker 4: Through them, or go around them.
Speaker 12: But then we start noticing that animals were not able
Speaker 12: to do that anymore. We're start seeing the impacts on
Speaker 12: some of the species that are super important. You remember
Speaker 12: the species of the desert. They need to cover large
Speaker 12: amounts of territories to find the resources they need to survive.
Speaker 12: We're talking about large migration routes that go from Mexico
Speaker 12: into the United States back and forth. And just to
Speaker 12: mentioned some of the species that are considered in danger
Speaker 12: in the area of California.
Speaker 4: We got the big corn chip.
Speaker 12: Then you start coming and there's the Sonora and Dere'sert
Speaker 12: pro corn into the Sero, the altar. Then we got jaguars.
Speaker 12: In Arizona, we have also black bears. The thing that
Speaker 12: makes this area so special here in Arizona is what
Speaker 12: we have known as the Sky Islands, which is really
Speaker 12: high altitude mountains that you can find some of the
Speaker 12: species that come from the north this is the southest
Speaker 12: more territory, and some of the species from the south
Speaker 12: this is the northest most territory. So species like jaguars
Speaker 12: can all of a sudden be drinking water out of
Speaker 12: the same pond with a black bear, and that is
Speaker 12: very unusual and very rare and very amazing, you know.
Speaker 12: So we also have ocelots, which is another type of
Speaker 12: cat that lives here in Arizona. We also have the
Speaker 12: Mexican gray walls species there is in danger that use
Speaker 12: these corridors back and forth, and unfortunately we haven't had
Speaker 12: the opportunity to track properly a lot of these animals
Speaker 12: to recognize their migration patterns, because a lot of these
Speaker 12: animals cannot be put on a GPS color for example.
Speaker 12: But what we have done is put a lot of
Speaker 12: cameras on the wilderness and we're able to photograph jawars
Speaker 12: on this side of the border and photograph the same
Speaker 12: jahwa a few years later in Mexico or vice versa.
Speaker 12: So there is a lot of proof that all these
Speaker 12: animals have been using these corridors for thousands of years.
Speaker 12: There is plenty of evidence that the importance of these
Speaker 12: wildlife corridors in the Sonoran Desert. And also we see,
Speaker 12: you know, like that with the construction of the border wall,
Speaker 12: a lot of the species that we used to see
Speaker 12: more often in the United States don't see as much anymore.
Speaker 12: Animals have a memory, so when they come and all
Speaker 12: of a sudden, city is really large obstacle, they're less
Speaker 12: likely to come back and try it again, and that
Speaker 12: can be an a racial thing that they came past
Speaker 12: it two fture generations.
Speaker 11: One thing that you mentioned that which I think is
Speaker 11: something else which it stress is like you spoke about
Speaker 11: how the jaguars and the past can share the same pond.
Speaker 11: But the wall and the roads, which we should mention
Speaker 11: that too, right, Like people didn't just get helicoptered in
Speaker 11: to build the wall. They had to first build roads
Speaker 11: to get to the place where the border is to
Speaker 11: build the wall. And can we talk about how those
Speaker 11: have affected drainage and water sources along the border.
Speaker 4: Absolutely? Yeah. Water is life.
Speaker 12: So here in Arizona, for example, we have two rivers
Speaker 12: that are actually flow on north the San Pedro River
Speaker 12: and the Santa Cruz River. These are rivers for example,
Speaker 12: San Pedro is born in Mexico and the Santa Cruz
Speaker 12: comes in the United.
Speaker 4: States, then goes down to Mexico and then goes up again.
Speaker 12: And a lot of the drainage that has been one
Speaker 12: of the biggest issues that we have encounter because the
Speaker 12: wall acts like a dam almost and in a lot
Speaker 12: of places doesn't allow the water to flow as it
Speaker 12: used to, and that is going to bring an impact
Speaker 12: to all of the different species of animals, but also
Speaker 12: the plants that depend on this water to survive. So
Speaker 12: when the construction of the border wall came, you mentioned roads,
Speaker 12: and the road right next or adjacent to the wall.
Speaker 12: Now it's like a four or five line road in
Speaker 12: some places, and it's been also increased the elevation. So
Speaker 12: when you increase the elevation on these roads and do
Speaker 12: not have the proper drainage on the areas that need
Speaker 12: to be and then you're going to have water being
Speaker 12: stuck on one side or the oider of the border,
Speaker 12: not able to make it to the areas where it
Speaker 12: used to flow normally. So we might not see the
Speaker 12: consequences and the first year or the second year, but
Speaker 12: we can start seeing consequences in a few years from now.
Speaker 12: Several plants all of a sudden starting to die because
Speaker 12: they didn't have the water that their habita used to
Speaker 12: provide for them. So that's why they grew there on
Speaker 12: the first place. So we might see a lot of
Speaker 12: changes on the landscape in regards of the way that
Speaker 12: the water moved on those places.
Speaker 11: Yeah, So another thing I want to address is like
Speaker 11: the we talked about plants, right, and a number of
Speaker 11: cacti specifically, like cacti that is sacred to to Hona
Speaker 11: Autumn people have been either moved or destroyed in the
Speaker 11: construction of the wall around organ pipe and like just
Speaker 11: not on their reservation, but very much on their unseated homelands.
Speaker 4: Right, Yeah, Yeah, there's a water cactus. It is considered
Speaker 4: as a relative autumn.
Speaker 12: So just imagine the sentiment of the Tona autem people
Speaker 12: by looking at the sawados being shopped or bulldoze on
Speaker 12: these areas considered sacred for them. So there was definitely
Speaker 12: a lot of that happening. There is an airport, but
Speaker 12: we haven't seen it yet. It's just on written right
Speaker 12: now that they're going to revegitate some of these areas
Speaker 12: that got impacted.
Speaker 4: We're still waiting for that.
Speaker 11: Yeah, and that stuff always comes like last and slowest
Speaker 11: if it happens at all. And I know, like both
Speaker 11: the Kumii the Autumn, I'm sure other Tahona Autumn other
Speaker 11: tribes have had their their ancestral burial grounds as you mentioned, destroyed,
Speaker 11: and for a similar reason to the real Idea act.
Speaker 11: I think it was different. I think this was because
Speaker 11: it was done in an executive order and it was
Speaker 11: an emergency that they waived a lot of those. Normally
Speaker 11: they would have tribal nations would have the right to
Speaker 11: sort of inspect and do a survey before digging back.
Speaker 11: I know in twenty twenty they weren't doing that, right.
Speaker 4: No, they didn't know. So the Real Idea Act also
Speaker 4: has a law there to protect.
Speaker 12: Archaeological resources, so they were able to do those things
Speaker 12: even when there was if it was on federal land
Speaker 12: and it was an indigenous sacred site.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 11: So another thing talking of federal land that we should
Speaker 11: probably mention is this concept of the Roosevelt Reservation that
Speaker 11: people might not be familiar with. Can you explain what
Speaker 11: that is to folks?
Speaker 4: The Roosevelt Reservation.
Speaker 12: It is the area the border about sixty feet away
Speaker 12: from where the border line or division is, and that's
Speaker 12: what's known as the Roosevelt Reservation. So that is an
Speaker 12: area that's right now mostly managed by CBP Border patron and.
Speaker 11: People can't it's like technically not it can't be private land,
Speaker 11: right or the government can take it at any point,
Speaker 11: Is that right exactly? I know that's what they were
Speaker 11: using in the case of the around Campo. That's what
Speaker 11: that's what they were doing. One thing I think we've
Speaker 11: neglected to do. I guess I spent half my life
Speaker 11: trying to do this. But I'll let you take a
Speaker 11: swing at it. Is like, can you describe these desert
Speaker 11: landscapes for people who are because people think of the desert, right,
Speaker 11: and they think of Osita wells like where where people
Speaker 11: like to go drive their vehicles, you know, and it
Speaker 11: looks like like Saudi Arabia. But that's not most of
Speaker 11: the desert. The desert is actually a very live place
Speaker 11: and a place full of like life that has struggled
Speaker 11: and made a way to exist there, can you explain.
Speaker 11: And it's a very special place, not just sort of
Speaker 11: because it's it's unique, but it has a real sort
Speaker 11: of well yeah, it has a uniqueness you can't really
Speaker 11: feel anywhere else in the world.
Speaker 4: I guess yes, Thank you, James. I definitely agree with
Speaker 4: you on that.
Speaker 12: As a person that grew up here and had this
Speaker 12: deep appreciation for the desert environment, I think it's it
Speaker 12: is such a beautiful area, and not only beautiful on
Speaker 12: the sense that it's The Sonoran Desert, for example, is
Speaker 12: considered the most biodiverse.
Speaker 4: Desert in the world.
Speaker 12: So yeah, so it's considered a desert because the amount
Speaker 12: of water that we have, but the amount of species
Speaker 12: it matches no other desert in the world. Here we
Speaker 12: have the most species of plants, most species of animals,
Speaker 12: and only for people like and people goes out there
Speaker 12: sometimes on a hike on the desert and might not
Speaker 12: see much of the wildlife there or older than the birds,
Speaker 12: and especially on areas where there is a little bit
Speaker 12: of water. But you got to remember also that the
Speaker 12: desert comes most alive at night, so that's when all
Speaker 12: the species you know that are not wanting to hang
Speaker 12: out on the heat of the desert, they come out
Speaker 12: and this place becomes like a whole other place at night.
Speaker 12: So it is it is definitely worth protecting this and
Speaker 12: every single desert, you know, because sometimes as we might
Speaker 12: not see the biodiversity in our first visit, it's there,
Speaker 12: and we like the amounts of plants and animals wor
Speaker 12: enough to sustain entire populations of people as well in
Speaker 12: the past. So I think once you build a relationship
Speaker 12: with the desert and able to experience, you and everybody
Speaker 12: that I have talked starts developing this really deep appreciation.
Speaker 4: For it for sure.
Speaker 11: Yeah, it sort of pulls you in once you once
Speaker 11: you appreciate, Yeah, you become a desert person. We're talking
Speaker 11: about this cumber the other day. How like you just
Speaker 11: turn into a desert. You know, you can see who
Speaker 11: the desert people are and here the people who haven't
Speaker 11: been at there before. So obviously the desert is a
Speaker 11: beautiful place and a very diverse place, but it's not
Speaker 11: a place that it is necessarily easy to cross, right,
Speaker 11: and when we as you've explained so well, there the
Speaker 11: wall is not a contiguous thing. It's full of gaps
Speaker 11: and holes and a lot of the places where there
Speaker 11: are gaps of places where it's hard to build and
Speaker 11: therefore it's hard to cross. Can you explain what this
Speaker 11: It creates a funnel, right, like a funneling effect through
Speaker 11: the gap sometimes. Can you explain what that means for
Speaker 11: people who are crossing north.
Speaker 12: Yeah, there is a huge issue these funnels or areas
Speaker 12: where there are no walls, because what's been happening and
Speaker 12: we observe is that as more people start going to
Speaker 12: these really remote areas of the desert, we have two issues.
Speaker 12: You know, First, people is putting themselves on bigger danger
Speaker 12: and they're more likely to.
Speaker 4: Get themselves hurt and some of them die.
Speaker 12: So as also, you start pushing up people to more
Speaker 12: remote areas out in the desert where it used to
Speaker 12: be these nature pristine environments. Now we have the impacts
Speaker 12: of people moving through these areas, and not only the
Speaker 12: impacts of the people, but you got the impacts of
Speaker 12: border patrol in the area with their trucks and draging
Speaker 12: tires to erase their footprints.
Speaker 4: And these are really fragile soils.
Speaker 12: Already opening new roads through the desert with ATVs or
Speaker 12: flying helicopters on these mountains, or drones or putting lights
Speaker 12: in the middle of an areas where it used to
Speaker 12: be one of the most darkest skies in the country.
Speaker 12: So all of those put together create huge issues for
Speaker 12: people and the environment as well.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 11: Yeah, the light thing you mentioned is very I don't know,
Speaker 11: people again who haven't been to the desert won't understand
Speaker 11: how much more you can see when like there is
Speaker 11: no like hundreds of miles and there's a place I
Speaker 11: like to go which recently got a border patrol like substation,
Speaker 11: and now it's just like glowing and you can't see
Speaker 11: the milky way in things. In addition to the human impact,
Speaker 11: which is we said is terrible, right, Like I think
Speaker 11: eight one hundred and sixty people Border Patrol found in
Speaker 11: twenty twenty two had died crossing north. That's a very
Speaker 11: low estimate for the amount of people who died, and
Speaker 11: Border Patrol are kind of actively trying not to count
Speaker 11: all of the deaths according to agents I've spoken to.
Speaker 4: Right, So.
Speaker 11: This is a difficult topic because it's it's a horrible
Speaker 11: thing that like shouldn't happen. But I guess can we
Speaker 11: discuss how lethal these the wall is for people crossing
Speaker 11: north if you're comfortable talking about that.
Speaker 12: Yeah, Well, really the design of it, like on most
Speaker 12: of the places, it's a thirty foot wall with a
Speaker 12: metal plate on the top.
Speaker 5: And this for some.
Speaker 12: Sources I have heard that it was designed because when
Speaker 12: people reach a thirty food high they start kind of
Speaker 12: getting dizzy or nauseous, so they're more likely to fall down.
Speaker 12: So it's already like a dead apparatus, you know, like
Speaker 12: designed to kill. Still, people will venture and give it
Speaker 12: a try. Some young folks are almost it's kind of
Speaker 12: funny to see them climb how fast they're able to
Speaker 12: do it, but we got to remember that not only
Speaker 12: like young folks are trying to climb. You know, sometimes
Speaker 12: there is an older lady or sometimes an older man
Speaker 12: that wants to give it a try. And the rate
Speaker 12: of injuries definitely has increased. So much of people falling
Speaker 12: because they got this year, they got naushalls, they burn
Speaker 12: their hands, or they lost balance and then fall from
Speaker 12: thirty feet high.
Speaker 4: You know, it can be lethal.
Speaker 12: So we have a lot of broken legs, spine injuries,
Speaker 12: head trauma, people that has fall or people one person
Speaker 12: one time hang out from it and end up choking herself.
Speaker 12: So there is definitely a lot of dead when people
Speaker 12: try to go.
Speaker 4: Over the wall.
Speaker 12: But we also see people now just cutting through the
Speaker 12: bowlers so it's easier and then just put the thing back.
Speaker 12: So there is all kinds of people doing it in
Speaker 12: all different kinds of ways depending on the area, and
Speaker 12: we see a little bit of everything for sure. And
Speaker 12: of course, you know, if you try to reach for
Speaker 12: the gaps, then you have to do a longer hike
Speaker 12: and usually people is not even able to carry the
Speaker 12: amount of water that they need.
Speaker 4: To do these kind of hikes.
Speaker 12: We got to remember that a lot of the people
Speaker 12: that we encounter now in the border they come from
Speaker 12: other kinds of environments. They're not familiar with the desert.
Speaker 12: They come from tropical areas where they can find water everywhere.
Speaker 12: They are not used to the heat of the dry
Speaker 12: heat of the desert.
Speaker 4: They are not used to the cold of the nights
Speaker 4: of the desert. So all of these factors.
Speaker 12: Make this environment really challenging for people to try to
Speaker 12: cross it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, tell in a lot of ways.
Speaker 11: Yeah, definitely. And it's a very hard environment. Like I
Speaker 11: spent a lot of time camping in the desert, and
Speaker 11: I don't think there's a yet that I've been hiking
Speaker 11: in the desert that I haven't rescued someone who was
Speaker 11: very well equipped and had just gone on a day hike,
Speaker 11: right and they've run out of water, they've overheated, they've
Speaker 11: drunk water not electrolytes, and they've got hypenetremia whatever it
Speaker 11: is like that. And that's people who went to our
Speaker 11: ei today before little learned, people who've been walking since
Speaker 11: the Darian Gap, or you know, people who have much
Speaker 11: lesser means to equip themselves. It's a very dangerous environment.
Speaker 11: People maybe listening and thinking, Like I think with immigration
Speaker 11: issues and specifically with the wall and the border, it's
Speaker 11: such an apparatus right the whole, you know, DHS and
Speaker 11: its one hundred and seventy five billion dollar budget. It's
Speaker 11: such an apparatus that people can feel powerless in trying
Speaker 11: to just put a stop to this, to make this change,
Speaker 11: to make this even you know, a little bit more humane,
Speaker 11: just so we seem to like ratch it up the
Speaker 11: evil meter every year at the border, regardless of Democrats
Speaker 11: or Republicans, Like, it doesn't matter. What would you suggest,
Speaker 11: folks listening can do to make it more humane, to
Speaker 11: advocate for like even less impactful border policies on the
Speaker 11: environment or on people.
Speaker 12: Yeah, I think we need to look at what we
Speaker 12: have done so far and look at the results. You know,
Speaker 12: I think we can see that in some areas to
Speaker 12: build a border wall a mile of border wall, we're
Speaker 12: spending over thirty million dollars, and I think it's important
Speaker 12: to think about what can.
Speaker 4: We do with that money.
Speaker 12: You know, there is a lot of resources that we
Speaker 12: have used for this false sense of security a border
Speaker 12: wall can give us, and it's just not working the
Speaker 12: way it's supposed to be working, and it's putting a
Speaker 12: lot of pressure on the environment. And if we really
Speaker 12: care about the environment, I think that should not be
Speaker 12: after talk conversation because I think when we listen to
Speaker 12: politicians and it's our next time to go out to vote,
Speaker 12: we need to really start asking the questions about the environment.
Speaker 4: I know it's important that we here in the border narrative.
Speaker 12: Of politicians talking about immigration, border security, trade with Mexico,
Speaker 12: but there is very little talk in the border around
Speaker 12: the environmental issues, you know, and that shouldn't be an afterthought.
Speaker 12: Border people, people that lives in the borderlands also should
Speaker 12: have a chance to live on a on a good environment,
Speaker 12: a clean environment. Yeah and yeah, So I think a
Speaker 12: solution or for people things that they can do is
Speaker 12: definitely like ask those questions when it's time to bote
Speaker 12: and see how can we really address root causes. You know,
Speaker 12: the border wall is just a medieval solution that it's
Speaker 12: really trying to stop such a.
Speaker 4: Complex issue. By doing that, it's not going to work out.
Speaker 12: So it's originally Border Patrol said that the border wall
Speaker 12: is just the only intention it has is to slow
Speaker 12: down people for at least five minutes. Well, is it
Speaker 12: really worth it then, you know, to slow them five
Speaker 12: more minutes to all these impacts and all these expenses
Speaker 12: that we're doing.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 12: And the maintenance that nobody has talked about yet is
Speaker 12: that we have sections of the wall already that they're
Speaker 12: falling apart because it was just thrown up really fast.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 12: The erosion is already exposing the foundation. And we are
Speaker 12: looking at millions of millions of dollars that will come
Speaker 12: just to try to keep it every year after every
Speaker 12: monsoon season.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 11: Yeah, I know in the on the real grand as well,
Speaker 11: like the wake from the border patrol boats is causing
Speaker 11: the river to undercut the foundation of the wall. Yeah,
Speaker 11: which is fantastic on the part of the government. Good work.
Speaker 11: And yeah, Eric, where can people follow you and your
Speaker 11: efforts if they want to, if they want to follow
Speaker 11: along online and maybe see some pitches of the border
Speaker 11: and hear more about what you're doing.
Speaker 4: Thank you, James.
Speaker 12: I appreciate that we do have a website, a Sierra
Speaker 12: Club Border Length. You can learn all about the waivers there.
Speaker 12: You can learn a lot of the work that we've
Speaker 12: been doing in the past. We're part of a larger
Speaker 12: coalition of environmental related border organizations. We work with people
Speaker 12: all the way from California through Texas, but mostly here
Speaker 12: in Arizona. And we have our social media cre A
Speaker 12: Club Borderlands. You can find us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram,
Speaker 12: all of the different We have a YouTube channel as well,
Speaker 12: and you can see some of the videos of the
Speaker 12: documenting that we do. We're able to go down to
Speaker 12: the boorder document with drawn so people can actually look
Speaker 12: at the irony of the whole project. We do also
Speaker 12: autiings that we take people out into the desert to
Speaker 12: get familiar with the issues themselves. We do clean up
Speaker 12: at the local rivers and collaborate with other organizations, all
Speaker 12: kinds of works. So with people and the audiences based
Speaker 12: here in Arizona, they're welcome to join us to some
Speaker 12: of these audience or activities that we do with the community.
Speaker 12: We are going to do an announcement probably in the
Speaker 12: next month because since twenty nineteen, Sierra Club, in collaboration
Speaker 12: with the Southern Border Community coalitions to the federal government
Speaker 12: for the legal use of funds of the two eighty
Speaker 12: four and two eight h eight funds, which were funds
Speaker 12: that were originally allocated for the military and drug related
Speaker 12: programs that were used to border work construction.
Speaker 4: So we sue the government and.
Speaker 12: We're about to settle on this and we're hoping that
Speaker 12: we're going to get good results on environmental remediation and
Speaker 12: wildlife passages along the southern border.
Speaker 11: Oh great, that's good to hear. Yeah, there are a
Speaker 11: lot of lawsuits. Individual tribes suit the government as well
Speaker 11: for that, and so we'll have to do a lawsuit
Speaker 11: roundup one day and have you back. Well, thank you
Speaker 11: very much, Eric, thank you for joining us and sharing
Speaker 11: some of your experiences along.
Speaker 4: The Absolutely thank you for the invitation, and I'll see
Speaker 4: talk to you soon.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh boy, it could happen here a podcast about
Speaker 1: what we like to call the crumbles, which is the
Speaker 1: process of the aspects of modern life that were nice
Speaker 1: and convenient and functional breaking down as the climate and
Speaker 1: our political systems continue to fray around the edges and
Speaker 1: gradually collapse. Today a lot of you are living through
Speaker 1: a pretty undeniable piece of that. If you're anywhere kind
Speaker 1: of in the Eastern Seaboard, if you're in New York City,
Speaker 1: if you're in Philly, if you're in d C. If
Speaker 1: you're in one of the other places. At Baltimore, you're
Speaker 1: dealing with air quality the likes of which you've probably
Speaker 1: never seen unless you fled there from the West Coast.
Speaker 1: Basically everyone who lives in the northeast of the United
Speaker 1: States right now, as well as a huge number of Canadians,
Speaker 1: are absolutely cloaked in wildfire smoke, drowning in the ghosts
Speaker 1: of a thousand forests. And that's a bummer. It's a bummer,
Speaker 1: and it's a real problem. And so I wanted to
Speaker 1: kind of sit down with Margaret Killjoy, our resident Prepper extraordinaire. Hi, Margaret, Hello,
Speaker 1: how are you?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Doing great? Because we're not drowning in wildfire smoke. But
Speaker 1: three years ago in Portland in twenty twenty, the air
Speaker 1: quality was even worse than it is in New York
Speaker 1: City right now. So I've got some experience dealing with this,
Speaker 1: and Margaret, you spend a lot of time thinking about
Speaker 1: practical prepping, and that's something that I think a lot
Speaker 1: of folks probably are wishing that they had spent more
Speaker 1: time doing right now. This is the kind of thing
Speaker 1: that happens. You know, it's not on you know, anybody
Speaker 1: is like a moral thing. But it happens anytime there's
Speaker 1: a disaster that affects everybody at once, all the stuff
Speaker 1: that is useful for countering that disaster sells out or
Speaker 1: is looted very very quickly, and then people suddenly don't
Speaker 1: have the kind of options for tools that they need.
Speaker 1: You know, this is not great. So I wanted to
Speaker 1: kind of sit down first off and kind of talk
Speaker 1: about one of the better airsats tools that you can
Speaker 1: put together if you are trying to deal with the
Speaker 1: problem of making your air cleaner. And basically we have
Speaker 1: to kind of split this problem into two. Right, there
Speaker 1: is the problem of what do I do if I'm
Speaker 1: going outside, and we'll talk about that later. But there's
Speaker 1: stuff that you purchase, you know, that is the only
Speaker 1: things that's going or stuff that you already had on
Speaker 1: hand is all that's going to help in that instance.
Speaker 1: But there are some things you can do to keep
Speaker 1: your inside space clean of particulate and relatively safe that
Speaker 1: don't require at least as many things to purchase, and
Speaker 1: that are you know, can be made with stuff that
Speaker 1: you probably are likelier to have on hand. So I
Speaker 1: want to talk first about what you can do to
Speaker 1: like filter your indoor air. You know, in Portland when
Speaker 1: we had our horrible fucking wildfire apocalypse, yellow smog blanketing
Speaker 1: the world and making everything look like fucking blade Runner,
Speaker 1: everyone at least had gas masks and full face respirators,
Speaker 1: which you know, folks in the Northeast right now haven't
Speaker 1: gone through that experience and so don't have that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff on hand. But what we didn't have in
Speaker 1: Portland was the stuff that can keep your indoors cleaner.
Speaker 1: For one thing, people don't have like HEPA filters or
Speaker 1: central air you know in Oregon as often as they
Speaker 1: have it in some other parts of this country, and
Speaker 1: so a lot of people wound up creating building for
Speaker 1: themselves what are called Corsey Rosenthal box now a Coarsey
Speaker 1: Rosenthal box is a kind of like air filtration system
Speaker 1: for rooms that's made up of a box fan and
Speaker 1: five air filters, like the kind of filters that you're
Speaker 1: going to use for your HVAC system in your house.
Speaker 1: Right pretty much most houses are going to have some
Speaker 1: kind of like air filter already, and they're also widely available,
Speaker 1: Like if you go to any home depot or lows,
Speaker 1: they're going to have a shitload of air filters. You
Speaker 1: can use multiple different types. The bigger the air filter,
Speaker 1: the more air it'll handle. Coursey Rosenthal boxes were invented
Speaker 1: kind of right at the start of the pandemic. One
Speaker 1: of the guys who made it, Richard Corsi, was an
Speaker 1: environmental engineer who kind of realized as soon as the
Speaker 1: pandos started that a lot of poor people were going
Speaker 1: to be absolutely fucked when it came to filtering air
Speaker 1: in their homes. Because good you can get like a
Speaker 1: nice Hepa filter, like standalone Hepa filter, but they're usually
Speaker 1: several hundred dollars. So he wanted to try and provide
Speaker 1: people with something that could make that was a lot cheaper.
Speaker 1: He had worked previously with the CEO of a filter
Speaker 1: company that I think is based in Texas, so he
Speaker 1: called that guy up and they collaborated on a design
Speaker 1: that basically used you build like a box out of
Speaker 1: air filters and you stick a back box fan on
Speaker 1: top of it. If you google Coursey c O R
Speaker 1: S I DASH Rosenthal R O S E N T
Speaker 1: H A L box, you'll find the Wikipedia page which
Speaker 1: has a guide to making these. It's very simple. If
Speaker 1: you're not crafty at all or have no real tools,
Speaker 1: you can still make it work. I built won a
Speaker 1: couple of years ago, you know, when should happened in Portland,
Speaker 1: as did several people I knew. And they're not hard
Speaker 1: to do. And the most common size of box that
Speaker 1: you can build will allow it'll basically change the air
Speaker 1: out in a room five full times per hour and
Speaker 1: a five hundred square foot room, which is reasonably good.
Speaker 1: It'll make a meaningful difference in your indoor air quality
Speaker 1: if you're like blanketed in Hell's mog right now.
Speaker 7: Yeah, that's about That's about the same as like one
Speaker 7: hundred and fifty dollars. If you were to like go
Speaker 7: out and buy, yeah, a five hundred square foot filter,
Speaker 7: it would be about one hundred and fifty bucks.
Speaker 1: And that is about what this will cost you right now,
Speaker 1: I think, because shit's got more expensive. At least that's
Speaker 1: what a recent Outside magazine article gave the cost of
Speaker 1: constructing this. Oh interesting, that said you might be able
Speaker 1: to get it for cheaper. There's a good chance. That's
Speaker 1: if you're buying everything. Most people in most places have
Speaker 1: a box fan, you know, and most people have a
Speaker 1: couple of filters, which which should cut down on the cost.
Speaker 1: You know, it'll depend on kind of where you are
Speaker 1: and what things are are running. But HEPA filters are
Speaker 1: also standalone ones likelier to sell out fast as opposed
Speaker 1: to kind of the raw components to making a Coarsey
Speaker 1: Rosenthal filter, so you may find it easier to get
Speaker 1: access to I like the Corsy Rosenthal filter for a
Speaker 1: couple of other reasons. Obviously, it's accessible and it's comparatively affordable,
Speaker 1: but it also is something that you can make yourself
Speaker 1: that will have a meaningful impact on how you weather
Speaker 1: this event. That's important psychologically in a disaster, feeling as
Speaker 1: if you have some sort of agency by actually doing
Speaker 1: the useful thing. And it can also be important from
Speaker 1: a community point of view. You can theoretically raise money
Speaker 1: and put together people to make Corsey Rosenthal boxes and
Speaker 1: hand them out to people who maybe can't afford them,
Speaker 1: or have mobility issues or less able to get the equipment.
Speaker 1: That's the kind of thing that builds community connection and
Speaker 1: also offers an immediate alleviation of suffering and health consequences
Speaker 1: for people, which is the kind of thing that I
Speaker 1: like to see people doing in a disaster like this.
Speaker 1: I also kind of like this filter because it represents
Speaker 1: a rare example of people you might call elites taking
Speaker 1: immediate action to ensure cash poor individuals had a life
Speaker 1: saving tool available to themselves. It's one of those kind
Speaker 1: of rare examples from the start of the pandemic of
Speaker 1: like that radical solidarity we saw bits and pieces of.
Speaker 1: And I think Jim Rosenthal and Richard Corsi are pretty
Speaker 1: cool in my book for figuring out this thing. So
Speaker 1: you know, there's a lot that's nice about these filters.
Speaker 7: So I just looked at the cost of making one.
Speaker 7: I just like kind of added it together, and it
Speaker 7: looks like you could probably make one for about sixty
Speaker 7: five bucks.
Speaker 1: Oh great, great, great grade. It is probably the outside
Speaker 1: guy was probably buying all the Gucci shit, right.
Speaker 7: If you just buy cheap, you need at least a
Speaker 7: MERV thirteen filter. That's the level of filter where it
Speaker 7: starts cutting out smoke. And if you get the twenty
Speaker 7: inch filters, which I think is what usually people are
Speaker 7: getting a twenty inch box fan, and so it's and
Speaker 7: then you only need four filters, I believe, because the
Speaker 7: bottom isn't sucking air in the bottom ends up a
Speaker 7: flat when I was looking at it earlier today. But
Speaker 7: you've built one and I haven't.
Speaker 1: So yeah, honestly it was three years ago. Yeah, everybody,
Speaker 1: I misspoke saying five. I think you can do it
Speaker 1: just fine with four. I'm not sure if either we
Speaker 1: did it weird when we did it last or if
Speaker 1: I was just rumbering wrong. But that means, yeah, a
Speaker 1: lot more available. Like I had three filters on hand
Speaker 1: in my house this morning, just because that's how many,
Speaker 1: you know, I usually keep as a backup, So a
Speaker 1: lot of you are probably in a similar situation. And yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a more accessible thing compared to the equipment. We're
Speaker 1: about to start talking about stuff like respirators and stuff
Speaker 1: like standalone HEPA filters, which are likely to sell out
Speaker 1: pretty quickly as people go to all of the stores
Speaker 1: to buy up all the things.
Speaker 7: Although I will say it's almost depressing right now. I
Speaker 7: was checking availability for some of my East Coast friends.
Speaker 7: I'm actually an East Coast friend normally, but I went
Speaker 7: to the land of Smoke, the usual smoke Pacific Northwest
Speaker 7: and missed it. But most things are still available right now,
Speaker 7: at least as of recording. I don't know whether it's
Speaker 7: people just haven't put it together that it's necessary, or
Speaker 7: people felt like they couldn't afford it. A lot of
Speaker 7: stuff is still in stock as of this.
Speaker 1: That's really good to hear, because that's what we're about
Speaker 1: to get into. So I did want to kind of
Speaker 1: lead into this, moving from this kind of what I
Speaker 1: think is inspiring about the Coursey Rosenthal filter, which is
Speaker 1: that it's something that is accessible, something that like people
Speaker 1: can work on and provide for each other together, and
Speaker 1: sort of representative of the kind of radical solidarity you
Speaker 1: see in disasters. I think that's kind of particularly meaningful
Speaker 1: to me because of why this air quality event is
Speaker 1: so frightening to folks. You know, people who are in
Speaker 1: New York or Philly or Richmond or DC or a
Speaker 1: lot of other places in the Northeast have not dealt
Speaker 1: with this kind of air quality before. This is because
Speaker 1: most people who are young in those areas, because most
Speaker 1: young Americans have had the privilege of experiencing air pollution
Speaker 1: primarily as either an annoyance or as an abstract concept.
Speaker 1: A big part of why is that the Clean Air Act,
Speaker 1: instituted in nineteen sixty three, did a huge amount to
Speaker 1: stop the kind of poisoning of the sky that led
Speaker 1: to fairly regular smog events in the fifties and early
Speaker 1: to mid nineteen sixties, even nineteen seventies in a lot
Speaker 1: of parts of this country. You know, it took a while.
Speaker 1: There was more involved than just the Clean Air Act,
Speaker 1: but shit like this used to be a lot more common,
Speaker 1: and Americans suffered from a variety of illnesses, including adult
Speaker 1: onset emphysema or young adult on set mphysima at a
Speaker 1: much higher rate because of stuff like this. If you
Speaker 1: are young, and by young, I mean like my age,
Speaker 1: Margaret's age, you know, not all that young. Because air
Speaker 1: quality in the United States has been significantly better than
Speaker 1: it was for like my parents when they were kids
Speaker 1: for quite a while. You have benefited from a pretty
Speaker 1: remarkably successful campaign to render Americans at least less vulnerable
Speaker 1: to them to this kind of pollution. Now, this came
Speaker 1: alongside years of others' reforms and things like emission standards,
Speaker 1: which were successful enough that in like West La right now,
Speaker 1: a lot of days of the year you can see
Speaker 1: the mountains. That was not a thing for people who
Speaker 1: lived in Los Angeles and say the nineteen seventies. I
Speaker 1: had an annual check up right after I moved there
Speaker 1: with my doctor in you know, southern California, and I
Speaker 1: asked him, like what life had been like there during
Speaker 1: the smog years. And the thing that he mentioned to
Speaker 1: me that stuck with me is that he had a
Speaker 1: shitload of like patients in their twenties who had like
Speaker 1: the early symptoms of emphysema, which is just not a
Speaker 1: thing that really occurred occurs in southern California anymore. Although,
Speaker 1: you know, because of climate change, there are similar things
Speaker 1: that are starting to hit. You know, there's a number
Speaker 1: of like fungal based infections that people are getting, particularly
Speaker 1: in the valley that's really nasty, and wildfire smoke could
Speaker 1: bring back a lot of this stuff. And so, yeah,
Speaker 1: we're kind of looking at a lot of the gains
Speaker 1: in public health caused by reducing you know, the amount
Speaker 1: of smog in the air going away as a result
Speaker 1: of you know, externalities that can't be controlled locally. Now,
Speaker 1: the downside of the really lovely state of affairs that
Speaker 1: was kind of ushered into by the Clean Air Act
Speaker 1: is that most Americans have spent their lives in kind
Speaker 1: of a bubble of artificially pure air, while the negative
Speaker 1: externalities that made are tech heavy lives possible were exported
Speaker 1: to the global South, and those people experienced with increasing
Speaker 1: regularity the kind of catastrophic pollution that in an earlier
Speaker 1: age here caused the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland to light
Speaker 1: on fire every spring or so. Globally, in twenty eighteen,
Speaker 1: some eight point seven million deaths were caused by air pollution,
Speaker 1: specifically pollution created via the burning of fossil fuels. David
Speaker 1: Wallace Wells, who writes about climate catastrophe better than most people,
Speaker 1: put the cost this way in a testimony before the
Speaker 1: US Senate Committee on the Budget in twenty twenty one.
Speaker 1: Those punishments are harrowingly widespread. The Lancet puts the global
Speaker 1: annual death toll of air pollution at nine million. This
Speaker 1: is dying at the scale of the Holocaust every single year.
Speaker 1: In India, where three hundred and forty nine thousand stillbirths
Speaker 1: and miscarriages have been attributed annually to the effects of
Speaker 1: air pollution, the average resident of Delhi has had his
Speaker 1: or her life expectancy shortened by more than nine years
Speaker 1: from the repetitive inhalation of smog. Globally, the average figure
Speaker 1: is two years.
Speaker 4: So this is bad.
Speaker 1: So this is real bad, and it's one of those
Speaker 1: things that we're it's so shocking and traumatic to people
Speaker 1: right now because we haven't experienced this in most of
Speaker 1: the US outside of like, yeah, the West, you know
Speaker 1: recently as the wildfires have gotten worst for quite a while.
Speaker 1: But the problems that cause this we were, you know,
Speaker 1: suffered by people outside of the United States consistently for years.
Speaker 1: Like one of the things that's you know, you've kind
Speaker 1: of seen on like Twitter and shit is like people
Speaker 1: in the West Coast and the East Coast fighting about
Speaker 1: who's had it worse in terms of wildfire smog lately,
Speaker 1: and like, well, the answer if you want to talk
Speaker 1: about who's been dealing with this the worst and the
Speaker 1: longest is like people in fucking Day, people in Shinzhen,
Speaker 1: you know, the in China. Like this is a problem
Speaker 1: that is primarily born I mean, this is not in
Speaker 1: the US too, by the poor, but it's been born
Speaker 1: by the poor outside of the United States because we
Speaker 1: successfully externalized a lot of the consequences of our lifestyles,
Speaker 1: and ideally the hopeful thing is that perhaps experiencing this
Speaker 1: in New York City, which is, if you're not aware,
Speaker 1: we're the only writers that people apparently listen to live
Speaker 1: will cause some kind of enhanced solidarity for the folks
Speaker 1: in what you might call or what often is described
Speaker 1: as the Global South, who are have been dealing with
Speaker 1: this for years and will continue to deal with this
Speaker 1: in a much more severe form with much fewer resources
Speaker 1: available to them. If you are currently living in one
Speaker 1: of the great cities besieged by wildfire smoke, your life
Speaker 1: span has already been shortened. Now, I'm not trying to
Speaker 1: be like panic inducing. We're talking about like by the
Speaker 1: same it would be like if you had smoked half
Speaker 1: a pack of cigarettes since this all started. It's kind
Speaker 1: of similar to that. But there is no safe amount
Speaker 1: of time to inhale particulate in the quantities when you're
Speaker 1: talking about AQI over four hundred. There's no safe amount
Speaker 1: of time to just kind of be raw dogging the
Speaker 1: air out in the street. Any amount is going to
Speaker 1: damage your lungs, it's going to stiffen your arteries, it's
Speaker 1: going to increase your chances of a number of cancer's.
Speaker 1: Heart attack risk increases by a meaningful amount. When you
Speaker 1: are out dealing with stuff like this, your immune system
Speaker 1: is significantly weaker, and.
Speaker 7: You don't get to look cool like smoking.
Speaker 1: You don't get to look cool like smoking. Right, Like,
Speaker 1: it's all of the downsides of being a daily smoker
Speaker 1: with none of the significant benefits of looking rad as
Speaker 1: hell of looking like fucking Martin Sheen and apocalypse. Now, ah, man,
Speaker 1: I love a good smoker, but nobody looks good in
Speaker 1: this shit unless you're like, have one of those sick
Speaker 1: ass you know, apocalypse dusters and like a face mask,
Speaker 1: which we're about to talk about, then you can look cool,
Speaker 1: although you're clothing will probably always smell of wildfire. There's
Speaker 1: a lot also, it's kind of worth noting that, like,
Speaker 1: when we're talking about the dangers here, it's not it
Speaker 1: may smell like a little like campfire smoke, but you're
Speaker 1: also inhaling an incinerated asbestos and particle board and you know,
Speaker 1: presumably hordes of ammunition that had been buried by Canadian preppers.
Speaker 1: So like, there's a lot of reasons why you don't
Speaker 1: want to breathe this shit in. So when you go outside,
Speaker 1: you are going to want to wear a mask in
Speaker 1: ninety fives work reasonably well for adults if you have
Speaker 1: any on hand, or if you're fortunate enough to live
Speaker 1: in a city with the kind of emergency preparedness budget
Speaker 1: that allows them to provide stuff like that New York
Speaker 1: City is providing in ninety fives in some quantity right now.
Speaker 1: If you're out on your own, an N ninety five
Speaker 1: maybe an easy thing to acquire quickly for relatively cheap.
Speaker 1: That said, they're not perfect for one thing. They don't
Speaker 1: tend to work very well on kids. For this just
Speaker 1: because like the fit is off and wrong. You may
Speaker 1: find that something like a KF ninety four allows you
Speaker 1: to get a better fit on a child, And those
Speaker 1: do work reasonably well, certainly better than like nothing at
Speaker 1: all in this kind of a situation. My personal recommendation,
Speaker 1: if they are in stock and if you can afford them,
Speaker 1: is either a half or a full face respirator. We'll
Speaker 1: talk about the differences between those in a second, But
Speaker 1: these are the kind of masks that, like, if you're
Speaker 1: a contractor and you're like putting together a building, You're
Speaker 1: dealing with a shitload of insulation. You're like cutting certain
Speaker 1: kinds of metal or you know you're doing a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of different things that can kick up nasty particulate.
Speaker 1: You probably have a number of these, right like people
Speaker 1: I know in graffiti and graffiti. Yeah, if you're doing
Speaker 1: a lot of graffiti, you know, hang out near a building,
Speaker 1: you know that kids that kids spray paint a lot,
Speaker 1: and then you know, stick them up with a handgun
Speaker 1: for their their respirators. That's a responsible way to deal
Speaker 1: with Yeah, that's teach everyone smoke through the respirator. That
Speaker 1: makes it extra cool and healthy. So yeah, what we're
Speaker 1: talking about here, Like, if you're looking for a thing
Speaker 1: to type into Google or whatever, threem half mask respirator.
Speaker 1: I found a three half mask respirator kit with a
Speaker 1: couple of what are called Bayonet filters for forty six
Speaker 1: forty one on Granger dot com right now. You can
Speaker 1: get them for similar prices on Amazon dot com. If
Speaker 1: you walk into a Lows or a home depot and
Speaker 1: they have not there hasn't been a run on them,
Speaker 1: you can probably find these. You will want to make
Speaker 1: sure you get filters with them. Sometimes you get just
Speaker 1: the respirator and you have to buy the filters separately. Yeah,
Speaker 1: usually if you get one, it'll it'll come with them.
Speaker 1: But make sure the filters are going to be these.
Speaker 1: Most of them look kind of like triangles with like
Speaker 1: rounded edges that are sort of this like pinkish purple color.
Speaker 1: For the most part, there's some that are gray and
Speaker 1: like circular. It doesn't really matter you know which kind
Speaker 1: of filters yours get. I would say, just get whatever
Speaker 1: they have the most of Well, yeah, the in.
Speaker 7: General, the filters filter out a ton of different stuff,
Speaker 7: And the thing looking for is the particulate filteration, which
Speaker 7: is actually the easiest and that's why almost any filter
Speaker 7: will do this. The rawest doesn't do anything else. Filter
Speaker 7: that you would be looking for is a P one hundred,
Speaker 7: and sometimes those are they're more likely. I believe three
Speaker 7: M marks them as the pink. So if it's pink,
Speaker 7: it's particulate.
Speaker 12: With three M.
Speaker 7: There's other brands. There's Honeywell, and then there's yeah, I
Speaker 7: can't remember off the top of my head, but anyway,
Speaker 7: P one hundred is like you just look for particular filter,
Speaker 7: but honestly, yeah, pretty much anything is going to do it.
Speaker 1: Basically, any kind of respirator you're going to get it.
Speaker 1: Like a home depot with filters is going to be
Speaker 1: sufficient for this. There are kind of like the one
Speaker 1: and that. There's two main categories of respirators. The one
Speaker 1: we're interested in are called air purifying respirators. That means
Speaker 1: you breathe in the air from outside and it filters
Speaker 1: it right. The other kind of atmosphere supplying respirators, which
Speaker 1: normal people do not need in this situation. That's like,
Speaker 1: you know, it has like a tank of stuff walking around.
Speaker 1: Don't get that it's going to be a lot more
Speaker 1: than is necessary for at least the next like six
Speaker 1: to eight months. Respirators are then further divided into half
Speaker 1: face masks, which things like Batman from that the Worst
Speaker 1: of the Nolan Batman or not Batman. Think of Bane
Speaker 1: from the Worst of the Nolan Batman movies. It's a
Speaker 1: little bit like that right where it's kind of just
Speaker 1: over your mouth and jaw. And then there's full face masks,
Speaker 1: and there are also reusable elastomeric respirators. I tend to
Speaker 1: prefer half a full face masks for one thing. There's
Speaker 1: no reason to like you're not working in some sort
Speaker 1: of like capacity where you want to be tossing it
Speaker 1: every time, you know, you might as well just get one.
Speaker 1: You can plug new filters into. A half face mask
Speaker 1: is going to be a lot more convenient. It's a
Speaker 1: lot less sort of weight and stuff, but it doesn't
Speaker 1: protect your eyes or anything, which if you're dealing with
Speaker 1: really heavy particulate, you may find your eyes getting irritated
Speaker 1: out there. The benefit of a full face mask is
Speaker 1: that it does protect your eyes and if you happen
Speaker 1: to ever be in a situation where there's hella, mace
Speaker 1: or tear gas being used, it provides excellent protection from
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. The downside is that these are
Speaker 1: three to four times as expensive as the half faced respirator,
Speaker 1: so they're not my general recommendation to people. But again,
Speaker 1: either of them is going to be perfectly adequate for
Speaker 1: wildfire smoke.
Speaker 7: And then the full face ones of the additional problem
Speaker 7: of most of them are not designed for wearing glasses, yes,
Speaker 7: and you need a full seal on the side of it,
Speaker 7: so don't just throw it over your glasses. But they
Speaker 7: make adapters or you can wear contacts if you're not
Speaker 7: actually out expecting.
Speaker 1: Chemical weapons, and I would do that sometimes when we
Speaker 1: were dealing specific particularly with like mace, heavy fights as contacts,
Speaker 1: and a full face. It always worked for me. People
Speaker 1: will say that if you have a beard, it can
Speaker 1: fuck with the seal. I think I'm sure that's true
Speaker 1: with like really heavy beards. I keep mine reasonably trim,
Speaker 1: and I never noticed a problem, you know, even in
Speaker 1: very thick tear gas with either my full face or
Speaker 1: with my gas mask.
Speaker 7: So you know, this is why beards fell out of
Speaker 7: favor in the United st Dates.
Speaker 1: Oh, because of a World War One and gas masks.
Speaker 7: Military people had to start shaving because otherwise you'll die.
Speaker 7: Because that's the difference, right, You're like, oh, a little
Speaker 7: bit of smoke is getting in, that sucks. A little
Speaker 7: bit of murder gas gets in.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's you have a more severe problem. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: a lot of folks may be and I've seen questions
Speaker 1: about like getting a gas mask, right, And obviously, if
Speaker 1: that's what's available to you, if you already happen to
Speaker 1: have one because you're a weirdo prepper, or if that's
Speaker 1: just what you can find, a gas mask will indeed
Speaker 1: protect you from particulate. You may if you are someone
Speaker 1: who has the benefit of money decide I'm going to
Speaker 1: just go ahead and get a good gas mask if so,
Speaker 1: you know, there's a number of places you can look
Speaker 1: to for that. The one I have is called a
Speaker 1: mira Ir. They're three four hundred dollars something like that.
Speaker 1: I can confirm that they work great when you're drenched
Speaker 1: in tear gas so heavy that you can't see through it.
Speaker 1: People bitch at them online in like weirdo prepper communities
Speaker 1: sometimes because they have some like silly attachments and stuff
Speaker 1: that are kind of too expensive. But like I have
Speaker 1: used every kind of face mask filtering product in heavy
Speaker 1: gas and mace mirrors are comfortable, they do work well.
Speaker 1: That said, much more expensive and much heavier than you
Speaker 1: need for something like filtering particulate. This would not be
Speaker 1: my first go to for anybody. Any kind of gas
Speaker 1: mask you get is going to be very bulky. Even
Speaker 1: the ones that are made specifically for stuff like special
Speaker 1: forces use where they're like really streamlines so that you
Speaker 1: can like shoulder a rifle with them, those are still
Speaker 1: much bulkier than you know a normal half faced respirator
Speaker 1: is going to be. They also, you know, one of
Speaker 1: the benefits. One thing I will say I did a
Speaker 1: few times when Portland was bad, as I would put
Speaker 1: on too filters in my gas mask, which allows you
Speaker 1: to kind of breathe it close to the normal rate
Speaker 1: that you can, and I would go jogging because like otherwise,
Speaker 1: you really can't safely. I'm not saying you should do this,
Speaker 1: Please don't like avoid outdoor exercise as a general rule. Anyway,
Speaker 1: Military surplus gas masks, if that's what you have, again,
Speaker 1: and you have filters for them that can help. If
Speaker 1: you do attempt to do this, you will immediately gain
Speaker 1: an understanding of why chemical warfare suck so much, because most,
Speaker 1: especially MILLSERP gas masks suck ass to wear super uncomfortable,
Speaker 1: super shitty visibility. Not ever my primary recommendation, but again,
Speaker 1: if that's what you've got and all you can get,
Speaker 1: it will indeed filter out particulate.
Speaker 7: And an expired filter, a military style filter. It's usually
Speaker 7: the NATO standard. Yeah yeah, yeah, they an expired one.
Speaker 7: It's like I'm not recommending people use expired ones. Yeah,
Speaker 7: but they're if you're not defending yourself against like murder gas, yeah,
Speaker 7: an expired one should do you.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 12: We are.
Speaker 1: Again, when we come to stuff like this, as long
Speaker 1: as you have some sort of filter and a military
Speaker 1: gas mask, it's probably going to be certainly better than nothing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because we are just kind of dealing with smoke in
Speaker 1: particulate here. We're not dealing with like mustard gas or
Speaker 1: sarahen or whatever. Yet I'm bringing up gas masks just
Speaker 1: because it's what a lot of people might already have
Speaker 1: on hand or something, as opposed to recommending that as
Speaker 1: what you get you you should just get a respirator.
Speaker 1: That's going to be a lot more effective for basically
Speaker 1: one hundred percent of people. Now, you will probably notice,
Speaker 1: if you've been paying attention to what we've been talking
Speaker 1: about today, that all of the effective measures for mitigating
Speaker 1: the danger of smoke cost money, nearly all of them
Speaker 1: at least, and also rely on having stuff like access
Speaker 1: to transit that can get you to a store, on
Speaker 1: you know, having an address that packages can be delivered to.
Speaker 1: Because once again, as we talked about with you know,
Speaker 1: places like India that have been dealing with smog like
Speaker 1: this for many, many years, the costs of climate collapse
Speaker 1: are always heaviest on those who can least bear them,
Speaker 1: assuming you are housed. There are some other decent tips
Speaker 1: that can allow you to protect your house. One of
Speaker 1: them is that you probably want to create a clean
Speaker 1: room for your animals. Your cats, your dogs number one,
Speaker 1: are less capable of understanding what's happened happening, and they
Speaker 1: will notice something is wrong. You know, they will not
Speaker 1: go outside and feel like it's a normal day just
Speaker 1: because they're stupid dog or whatever. Like, they will recognize
Speaker 1: that something is gravely wrong. You want to keep them
Speaker 1: inside as much as possible because it's even they're smaller
Speaker 1: than you, right, it's even worse for them. The same
Speaker 1: thing with think like you want to keep your kids
Speaker 1: inside because the kind of shit that like maybe a
Speaker 1: two hundred pound adult can sort of shrug off in
Speaker 1: terms of particulate will hit a sixty five pound child
Speaker 1: or a forty five pound dog a lot worse. So
Speaker 1: a good thing to do is to create a clean room,
Speaker 1: potentially with the kind of filters, the Corsey Rosenthal filters
Speaker 1: that we talked about, if you have the ability doing
Speaker 1: something like you would do kind of for a mudroom,
Speaker 1: a little kind of airlock situation when you take your
Speaker 1: pets in and out from doing their business, so you
Speaker 1: can minimize the amount of shit that gets in. There's
Speaker 1: a few ways to do this, you know, when there's
Speaker 1: not currently hell s everywhere. Making sure that the seals
Speaker 1: and stuff on your windows and doors are of quality
Speaker 1: and up to date and recently replaced is key. Obviously
Speaker 1: if you're under smog right now, that's less of a
Speaker 1: realistic thing that you can do. But one thing you
Speaker 1: can do people, did you know in Portland during this
Speaker 1: if you get like towels and soak them and put
Speaker 1: them around the edges. If you know you've got oh
Speaker 1: I know this windows, Yeah, I know stuff's getting in.
Speaker 1: If you kind of can tape that up around and
Speaker 1: keep it wet around the window, that will take some
Speaker 1: of the basically particulate. It'll get kind of soaked into
Speaker 1: the towel and it should minimize kind of what you're
Speaker 1: dealing with in the house. I haven't seen, actually, this
Speaker 1: is one of the things I haven't seen like studies
Speaker 1: on how well this works. But it's what most of
Speaker 1: the people I knew who had kind of older houses
Speaker 1: did and do during wildfires, and it seems to have
Speaker 1: an impact. So I would recommend kind of trying that.
Speaker 7: And if you can get to the store you get
Speaker 7: like phone strips and stuff like that. If you don't
Speaker 7: have much money, you can do the whole everything's a
Speaker 7: free store for the brave. Yeah, but it's not very
Speaker 7: expensive anyway. They're like foam tape.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that would be again, much better than trying
Speaker 1: to do the wet towel thing that said. One thing
Speaker 1: you should be doing every day is wiping off large
Speaker 1: surfaces in your house with a damp cloth to clean
Speaker 1: away the particulate that's settled during the day. That's going
Speaker 1: to reduce the strain on whatever kind of filters you've
Speaker 1: got going indoors. You're going to want to very quickly
Speaker 1: change your air filter, unless you like, if you change
Speaker 1: your filter a week or two before this hit, you
Speaker 1: know it'll be fine for a little while. But if,
Speaker 1: like most people, you kind of let that go a
Speaker 1: little long, probably one of the first things you should
Speaker 1: do is slot in a fresh air filter if you've
Speaker 1: got one. If you are shopping for an air filter
Speaker 1: and you want something that is going to work better
Speaker 1: in your HVAC system on particulate, you want something with
Speaker 1: a high minimum efficiency reporting value or MERV, which Margaret
Speaker 1: mentioned a little earlier. Value. Those are going to catch
Speaker 1: more particles than normal filters. You're going to want to
Speaker 1: switch your HVAC into fan only mode immediately. This will
Speaker 1: insist ensure that it runs your indoor air through the
Speaker 1: filter rather than pulling air in from the outside. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that is a key thing to do. If you've got
Speaker 1: kind of a central system, you're also going to want
Speaker 1: to turn off anything that pulls in air from the outside, like,
Speaker 1: for example, the portable air conditioner units with like hoses
Speaker 1: that go at your window, which is the things that
Speaker 1: like everyone in the East Coast tends to have as
Speaker 1: opposed to a central system. So if you've got one
Speaker 1: of those, some window acs will have what's called an
Speaker 1: outdoor air damper that you can close. If they don't
Speaker 1: have that, you're gonna want to keep it off and sealed,
Speaker 1: and you're going to want to in any case use
Speaker 1: tape or whatever you have to ensure that the seal
Speaker 1: around the unit is more robust. I know, people generally,
Speaker 1: you know, can be a little bit lax days about
Speaker 1: the actual like window seal with a unit like that
Speaker 1: is generally not perfect. You're going to want to be
Speaker 1: extra careful because even a small gap, you know, that
Speaker 1: that allows shit in is going to allow quite a
Speaker 1: lot of particulate and like a surprising amount. Again, a
Speaker 1: lot of some of these methods are just like stuff
Speaker 1: that you should be doing to prep your house, but
Speaker 1: a lot of them do require resources, which is, you know,
Speaker 1: frustrating for a lot of reasons. I'm sure hope I'm
Speaker 1: hoping Margaret that like what you found online is accurate
Speaker 1: people's experience and that stores have not sold out of
Speaker 1: the things that are useful in this situation. That is
Speaker 1: one of those things kind of when we talk more
Speaker 1: broadly about preparation for stuff like this, that people should
Speaker 1: be thinking about, like, don't just think about what stuff
Speaker 1: has gone wrong in the past. That's a great way
Speaker 1: to have plenty of toilet paper when there's a shortage
Speaker 1: of water or whatever. Right likewise, it's one of those
Speaker 1: things where, you know, if you were in when I
Speaker 1: made a couple of posts about what was happening in
Speaker 1: New York earlier, and somebody responded, and I was making
Speaker 1: the joke that like, hey, if you get a full
Speaker 1: face respirator, it'll be useful, you know, if you've got
Speaker 1: to fight the cops too, And their comment was like well,
Speaker 1: we don't really get tear gassed here. And first off,
Speaker 1: I mean that may be true, but like you guys
Speaker 1: do get maced, and they're great against mace. I can
Speaker 1: say that from a intense personal experience. But the other
Speaker 1: thing is that, like, well, that's part of when we
Speaker 1: talk about kind of proactive practical prepping. A big part
Speaker 1: of it is thinking about stuff that like maybe unlikely,
Speaker 1: but it's not impossible, and that if you don't have
Speaker 1: shit on hand, you're not going to be able to
Speaker 1: deal with, right.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And one of those things is having a fucking respirator. Basically,
Speaker 1: everybody who is capable of affording them should have a
Speaker 1: half or a full faced respirator. You should get that,
Speaker 1: you should get a couple of spare filters, and you
Speaker 1: should just have it, even if you're in a place
Speaker 1: where wildfire smoke has never been a problem for you,
Speaker 1: because it will be at some point. That's just basically guaranteed.
Speaker 7: Yeah, And I want to say for dogs, I don't
Speaker 7: know about cats, but they make masks for dogs, they
Speaker 7: make respirators for dogs. The brand that I've gotten that
Speaker 7: I can't specifically I haven't compared to other brands is
Speaker 7: called canine mask. And then I know people who have
Speaker 7: made their own dog respirators basically out of and ninety
Speaker 7: fives and tape and stuff. And then if your dog,
Speaker 7: if you're really on top of it, you're going to
Speaker 7: do the work to acclimate your dog to this, right, Yeah, reward,
Speaker 7: reward your dog greatly and slowly build up their tolerance.
Speaker 7: And if you don't have time for that, you can
Speaker 7: put a cone on your dog to keep your dog
Speaker 7: to keep the mask on. And obviously you don't want to,
Speaker 7: like I mean, mostly just want to keep your dog inside, right,
Speaker 7: but yeah, if your dogs, yeah, exactly. There's actually an
Speaker 7: argument for pad training my dog that I I've never
Speaker 7: bothered to do.
Speaker 1: And that may be by the way, when we're talking
Speaker 1: about like what stuff should you keep on hand, Well,
Speaker 1: if you're not a normal pad training person, yeah, that
Speaker 1: could be a useful prepping thing to have to have
Speaker 1: pads on hand and to occasionally use them so the
Speaker 1: animal understands that that's an option, because they are a
Speaker 1: variety of things that might make it not feasible to
Speaker 1: take them outdoors, you know, if you don't have a
Speaker 1: yard especially, So yeah, but.
Speaker 7: Also say, even though it's better to look at what's
Speaker 7: next instead of what's current, right, Like, look at the
Speaker 7: next problem instead of the current problem. It's also okay,
Speaker 7: And what most people do realistically is prep for the
Speaker 7: thing that went bad last time. Yeah, you know, like
Speaker 7: I have an emergency blanket on me at almost all times,
Speaker 7: in my emergency kit because when I was like thirteen,
Speaker 7: it saved my life or whatever. Right, yeah, I've never
Speaker 7: needed one ever again, but I didn't forget that I
Speaker 7: needed one and someone else had one. I will just
Speaker 7: have one, right And you know, so if this is
Speaker 7: you're suddenly I need an air purer of fire. It
Speaker 7: maybe is too late, it may not be too late.
Speaker 7: It don't beat yourself up if this is when you
Speaker 7: decide that you're going to start having one, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like it's for one thing. There's this, there's this.
Speaker 1: If you like study military history, you run into this too,
Speaker 1: like the problem that military planners are always fighting the
Speaker 1: last war right when they're when they're preparing for shit,
Speaker 1: which is why a lot of like stupid and useless
Speaker 1: craft is on hand every time we enter a new conflict.
Speaker 1: But everything actually really does work that way, because that's
Speaker 1: just the way people be and so like, I'm sure
Speaker 1: basically everyone in New York had extra toilet paper on
Speaker 1: hand just shit hit, but they weren't ready for you know,
Speaker 1: which is you know that's not New Yorkers, you so stupid. No,
Speaker 1: that's everybody. That's how that's how we all are. The
Speaker 1: only reason Portland was more prepared for this when it
Speaker 1: hit us is that we'd been getting like a significant
Speaker 1: portion of the city had been going out and getting
Speaker 1: tear gassed every night.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but it is.
Speaker 1: It does kind of mean that, like part of prepping
Speaker 1: is like sitting around and like bullshitting with your friends.
Speaker 1: If you want to like be all cool and and
Speaker 1: military larpie about it, you can. You can put on
Speaker 1: gear and you can sit around a war table with
Speaker 1: the map and game plan out stuff. You can make
Speaker 1: it fun, ye Like, there's no reason not to treat
Speaker 1: it like a you know, a session of D and D.
Speaker 1: Walk through different kinds of problems that you guys think
Speaker 1: are more likely and try to lay out kind of
Speaker 1: consequence trees as to like what might happen and what
Speaker 1: might be necessary, and then you know, think about what
Speaker 1: kind of equipment would be useful in those situations and
Speaker 1: put it in a kind of teer it in a
Speaker 1: list of like what is more affordable, what is more likely,
Speaker 1: and you know, kind of trioge with that, and what's
Speaker 1: small too, Yeah, what's small? Like what's easy to have
Speaker 1: on hand? I'm going to go get eye drops.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 7: I don't keep eye drops around normally, But as I'm
Speaker 7: like looking at this stuff and I'm talking to people
Speaker 7: who deal with smoke, They're like, well, the half mask
Speaker 7: rustpbraider is great, but if you don't have a full
Speaker 7: mask rust braider, bring eye drops, yeah, you know. And
Speaker 7: I'm like, oh, that's not something I ever considered. That's
Speaker 7: cheap and takes up no room in my truck.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you can have that in your go bag. You
Speaker 1: can have that in your car.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you know.
Speaker 1: I always heap a set of bone knives and nitrial
Speaker 1: gloves and a tarp in my car because I like
Speaker 1: to process roadkill. But there's other disasters that's potentially useful,
Speaker 1: you know, much like your pig farm. But much like
Speaker 1: my pig farm.
Speaker 12: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So, and it's just kind of like like this, this
Speaker 1: this shit's going to keep happening. Something else will probably
Speaker 1: happen this year that's like a chunk of the country
Speaker 1: dealing with some sort of terrible disaster that affects everybody
Speaker 1: at once that people in that area at least haven't
Speaker 1: dealt with before, like it, because that's the world that
Speaker 1: we're living in now, and so you're never going to
Speaker 1: be perfect at thinking through stuff. But like, the more
Speaker 1: time you spend kind of trying to make your brain
Speaker 1: elastic when it comes to disaster, the more likely you
Speaker 1: are to have at least some of the things that
Speaker 1: you need to deal with problems when they occur. Especially
Speaker 1: since a lot of tools are like multi use tools
Speaker 1: you know, are great with wildfire smoke. They're also you know,
Speaker 1: potentially useful if like, for example, a pandemic where to hit.
Speaker 7: Right, wouldn't it be awful if that all this happened
Speaker 7: during a respiratory pandemic.
Speaker 3: That would be fucked.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 7: Yeah, And I think that if you do prepping right,
Speaker 7: it can actually reduce anxiety instead of increase it. A
Speaker 7: lot of people avoid prepping because they're afraid to engage
Speaker 7: with these problems because if they if they think, if
Speaker 7: they look at the it's the prey animal thing. I
Speaker 7: don't know if this is real or not. But you
Speaker 7: think if you don't look at the predator, it won't
Speaker 7: notice you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 7: And I think that people do that because they don't
Speaker 7: want to think about these things, and that is understandable.
Speaker 7: We live in a very high anxiety time, right, But
Speaker 7: I think that looking at these problems has overall reduced
Speaker 7: my anxiety around them because like, for example, when I
Speaker 7: lived in more in the woods than I currently do,
Speaker 7: and I live in a cabin in the woods, and
Speaker 7: I was like, what will I do if there's a
Speaker 7: forest fire? And I thought it through and most of
Speaker 7: the answer was keep my car, you know, gassed and
Speaker 7: ready to go and have my go bag. And then
Speaker 7: I was like, that's it. That's the only preparation I'm
Speaker 7: gonna do for this fire that may or may not happen.
Speaker 7: And so then I stopped worrying about it because I've
Speaker 7: done everything that I'm going to do. There's like a
Speaker 7: next level thing, like actually these particular fires. I was
Speaker 7: looking it up. I think one hundred thousand people have
Speaker 7: been displaced from their homes in Canada as a result
Speaker 7: of this.
Speaker 4: Jeez it is.
Speaker 7: We are currently at one four hundred percent of the
Speaker 7: fires that are normal for this time of the year.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and we're not even in summer yet.
Speaker 7: Yeah, they've eight point seven million acres have burned so
Speaker 7: far this year. Six point two million per year is normal,
Speaker 7: like total, and we're not at summer yet, and so
Speaker 7: shit's gonna get worse, but it's not. But we can
Speaker 7: we can handle it. And we can like look at
Speaker 7: these things, and we can look at the predator and
Speaker 7: well we can't it's invisible because of the yeah, little
Speaker 7: invisibility field.
Speaker 4: But we can, we can.
Speaker 1: I mean there are some predators that we can look at,
Speaker 1: which is where I should say that, Like there's a
Speaker 1: pretty good move about pipelines that came out recently. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: but uh yeah, no, I mean you you have like
Speaker 1: looking at in the face is necessary and also finding
Speaker 1: this is part of why I brought up the first
Speaker 1: thing I brought up was those those Coarsey Rosenthal filters
Speaker 1: because like having a thing to do when like you
Speaker 1: wake up in the morning and it's orange. Yeah, Like
Speaker 1: it's a nice way to allay the doom feeling, Like
Speaker 1: give yourself a task. It increases agency and when you
Speaker 1: once you build that thing, you know either you'll use
Speaker 1: it all up right away because those filters don't last forever,
Speaker 1: or you'll have something on hand the next time this occurs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so yeah, I don't know. That's what I got, Margaret,
Speaker 1: You got anything else to get into?
Speaker 2: Uh?
Speaker 7: I want to say that if you're in a fire area,
Speaker 7: you should have your plan of escape.
Speaker 3: You should have your go bag.
Speaker 7: If a fire is like particularly likely, you're going to
Speaker 7: keep that go bag in your vehicle and keep it
Speaker 7: pointed outwards. You want to clear the area around your house,
Speaker 7: if that's something that you choose to do. Obviously, if
Speaker 7: you're like, no, the whole points I live in a
Speaker 7: cabin with trees over it or whatever, right, Yeah, And
Speaker 7: there's more that you can do to look at making
Speaker 7: sure that like a lot of the fires are about
Speaker 7: sparks getting sucked in through vents, and there's ways to
Speaker 7: close it up. And I also want to say this
Speaker 7: is a really good time to take care of each
Speaker 7: other in particular, look out for asthmatic friends, or if
Speaker 7: you're the asthmatic friend, get other people to help take
Speaker 7: care of you. Go get groceries for your asthmatic friends
Speaker 7: during a smoke emergency, because you're gonna be able to
Speaker 7: handle it a lot better than some other people might.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if you're heading down to the store to go
Speaker 1: get filters in a box fan or something, check in
Speaker 1: with your neighbors and see how they're doing and what
Speaker 1: they're capable of handling for themselves and stuff. You know,
Speaker 1: hopefully this won't be bad for everyone for too long,
Speaker 1: you know, as we always say. But like, look, guys,
Speaker 1: this isn't going to be the last time in New York.
Speaker 1: Is the color of Mexico in a breaking bad right,
Speaker 1: Like it's this is going to happen again, because the
Speaker 1: fires aren't going to stop until there's no more forest
Speaker 1: left than they all have more gloriously clean air.
Speaker 4: Yeah, totally.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 7: Well, and then the final thing I want to say
Speaker 7: is that like a lot of the stuff, right, like
Speaker 7: walking around in a half mask respirator is a little
Speaker 7: bit less weird to people than walking around in a
Speaker 7: full face respirator is a little bit less weird than
Speaker 7: walking around in a gas mask. And we actually need
Speaker 7: to build these social norms. I think the reason that
Speaker 7: people have stopped masking in a lot of parts of
Speaker 7: the country is literally just because of social norms. Have
Speaker 7: stopped having people mask and people don't want to be
Speaker 7: the weirdo with a mask. And I will say, as
Speaker 7: someone who has been the weirdo for the past thirty
Speaker 7: years of my life, it's not that bad to be
Speaker 7: the weirdo. And we can build new social norms. And
Speaker 7: so if you're worried about wearing a half mask respirator
Speaker 7: and a smoke emergency because you'll look weird, it is
Speaker 7: better than getting sick.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, it's one of those things. All of us
Speaker 1: crazy people had a nice moment yeah, at the start
Speaker 1: of the pandemic when we like looked over at our
Speaker 1: mountains of beans and storable foods and rifles, and.
Speaker 4: Ah, it was all worthwhile.
Speaker 7: Yeah, And so we need to break the social modum
Speaker 7: about preparing in general, right, And I actually, I mean
Speaker 7: if you're listening to the show, then you're probably a
Speaker 7: little bit aware of this, but we just yeah, like
Speaker 7: talk to your friends who wouldn't normally talk about preparing
Speaker 7: and talk about how we can how we can do this.
Speaker 7: We need to make preparedness like a part of our
Speaker 7: culture because shit is getting more intense.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you know, handle handle your shit. Sorry, this
Speaker 1: is happening to you, you east Sts, you Coasti's I
Speaker 1: did hear a good joke recently where someone was like,
Speaker 1: the visibility is so bad that we New Yorkers can't
Speaker 1: even go on walking here anymore. Yeah, it's good. It's
Speaker 1: good anyway. Enjoy that joke everybody, and avoid dying. Hey,
Speaker 1: we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from
Speaker 1: now until the heat death of the Universe.
Speaker 3: It Could Happen Here as a production of cool Zone Media.
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Speaker 9: Thanks for listening.