Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, Robert Evans here and I wanted to let
Speaker 1: you know this is a compiletion episode, So every episode
Speaker 1: of the week that just happened is here in one
Speaker 1: convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to
Speaker 1: listen to in a long stretch if you want. If
Speaker 1: you've been listening to the episodes every day this week,
Speaker 1: there's gonna be nothing new here for you, but you
Speaker 1: can make your own decisions. Welcome back to it could
Speaker 1: Happen here, the podcast about things happening that are bad
Speaker 1: and occasionally good, but all have to do with the
Speaker 1: fact that we're living in a society whose norms are
Speaker 1: crumbling as the environment also crumbles, and political violence and
Speaker 1: a bunch of other horrible things become more normalized, trying
Speaker 1: to figure out how to not die ideally um and
Speaker 1: occasionally how to thrive. And to that end, I have
Speaker 1: a guest today who has been kind of working with
Speaker 1: the working lately on how not to die in the
Speaker 1: face of things getting increasingly violent and aggressive out there.
Speaker 1: I want to welcome Jessica Keckler to the program. Jessica,
Speaker 1: how are you doing today? Doing great? So, Jessica, um,
Speaker 1: you know we are as listeners to the show and
Speaker 1: observers of just basic reality in the outside are aware
Speaker 1: we're kind of going under a or living through a
Speaker 1: period of like panic and concerted aggressive attack on the
Speaker 1: rights and ability to exist of transgender people. That's um
Speaker 1: hasn't like has never not been a problem as long
Speaker 1: as there's been you know, Western civilization, but has increasingly
Speaker 1: been a problem the last year or so. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's really Um, it's really wild because, um, when you
Speaker 1: take estrogen, you're When I start taking estrogen, it took
Speaker 1: like ten years off of my face as far as
Speaker 1: age goes, But then in this past year, I think
Speaker 1: it's put back by now. Um. Yeah, I mean that
Speaker 1: makes sense. Like it's it's it's stressful as hell out there. Um,
Speaker 1: there has been a surge in violence, UM, not just
Speaker 1: against trands people, obviously we've talked about in other episodes. UM,
Speaker 1: there's been a surgeon violence against Asian Americans, UM, against
Speaker 1: LGBT Americans, but transgender people are much more likely than
Speaker 1: almost any other group in the United States to be attacked. Uh,
Speaker 1: And that has been increasingly reality for a lot of people.
Speaker 1: And you are one of a number of folks in
Speaker 1: that position, who have been increasingly talking or who have
Speaker 1: find yourself thinking about the necessity and value of being
Speaker 1: armed in order to defend yourself from that. I want
Speaker 1: to talk a little bit about your background there and
Speaker 1: kind of what, um, how how you kind of came
Speaker 1: to deciding that that was something that you wanted to
Speaker 1: not just do personally, but advocate for other people to do. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I went through well llient libertarian spaces. It was it
Speaker 1: was many years, but you know, and I collected a
Speaker 1: bunch of guns, and you know, I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: that's you know, cool. But then, um, after I sort
Speaker 1: of worked through my childhood traump and stuff, I you know,
Speaker 1: I sort of feel a lot less threatened about about things,
Speaker 1: and I just sort of, you know, it, just sort
Speaker 1: of lost interest in them for a while. But then, um,
Speaker 1: a friend of mine, Kendall Stevens, was telling me about
Speaker 1: a time when she was attacked in her home by
Speaker 1: a group of transpos and just beaten almost to death.
Speaker 1: And that next morning, I, um, I I have reapplied
Speaker 1: for my Harry permit. Yeah, and this is I mean,
Speaker 1: this is a story I was not aware of. I
Speaker 1: was aware. Broadly speaking, there have been a number of attacks,
Speaker 1: including number of fatal attacks in the last couple of
Speaker 1: years on particularly trans women. There was the murder of
Speaker 1: West Philadelphia woman Alicias Simmons um in November of um,
Speaker 1: Chanta Tucker in Hunting Park in the fall of two
Speaker 1: thousand eighteen, uh, and may have two thousand nineteen, Michelle
Speaker 1: Tamika Washington was shot to death in North Philly and
Speaker 1: this is all like local to you. Um. And also
Speaker 1: Dominique Remay Fells was was murdered in June, if I think, um,
Speaker 1: And yeah, if people want to look this up, there's
Speaker 1: a couple of different articles. I'm looking at one on
Speaker 1: Billy Pin with the title after surviving a brutal attack,
Speaker 1: Kendall Stevens wants to help trans people citywide And yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a it's a fucking harrowing story, you know, after
Speaker 1: surviving a number of different attacks from from like people
Speaker 1: just kind of targeting her because she's trans. She was
Speaker 1: attacked in her home by six of her neighbors while
Speaker 1: her god daughter, who was twelve years old. Watch it's
Speaker 1: a fucking horrifying story. So you, like, did you find
Speaker 1: out about what had happened, like directly from her like,
Speaker 1: how does this kind of information? I was. I was at, um,
Speaker 1: there's a local trans group where we just you know,
Speaker 1: get on zoom and talk. And yeah, it was one
Speaker 1: of my first meetings, and actually I think it was
Speaker 1: the very first, and she just told this whole story,
Speaker 1: and I was just you know, it's like I always
Speaker 1: had the feeling of safety, but then it's just like realized, like,
Speaker 1: oh that's you know, like being white, I'm a little safer.
Speaker 1: But it's just like it's we're all you know, it's
Speaker 1: really yeah, it's it's a it's a matter of like
Speaker 1: a small number of degrees. It's not. Um. So you're
Speaker 1: you're you're trying to deal with this and you're you're communicating.
Speaker 1: You've got this group where you're all sort of like
Speaker 1: chatting about I'm guessing just kind of like safety stuff,
Speaker 1: like hey here, you know, we we should all be
Speaker 1: kind of keeping each other informed and trying to talk
Speaker 1: about what's going on. Right, Yeah, I mean we mostly
Speaker 1: just shoot the ship and just you know, talk things
Speaker 1: over and stuff like that. But she was, um, yeah,
Speaker 1: something had come up, and she recounted this whole story,
Speaker 1: and it was just it just really made me go like,
Speaker 1: oh my god. Yeah, so you kind of are in
Speaker 1: this position where you own firearms, You're you're comfortable with them,
Speaker 1: you've been using them for a while, and number one,
Speaker 1: you get your permit, right, Like that's kind of the
Speaker 1: first thing you do. And then I'm guessing you start
Speaker 1: to think like, well, there's not a lot of other
Speaker 1: people that are in this kind of group I'm in
Speaker 1: that have this experience that kind of like where the
Speaker 1: yeah right? Because um, you know, because when I would
Speaker 1: talk to people before that, they would just to sort
Speaker 1: of say like, yeah, I can see where you're coming
Speaker 1: with that. And but once the attack started, I'm I
Speaker 1: heard a lot I've heard a lot more people going like, yes,
Speaker 1: I need to do that too, you know. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: I kind of want to know because I mean, what
Speaker 1: we're kind of building too is you've been you've been
Speaker 1: putting together a class for trans folks in Philly to
Speaker 1: go to to learn about how firearms function, the legality
Speaker 1: and legal concerns about being armed, and like the steps
Speaker 1: they might need to go to if they decide to
Speaker 1: do that themselves. Um, how does that idea kind of
Speaker 1: come together for you to actually like put this this
Speaker 1: class together? Okay, well, um, I remember of the s
Speaker 1: R right, the Socialist Rifle Association, and they have classes
Speaker 1: they call Gundamentals and it's just sort of an uproad
Speaker 1: a review, um to sort of sort of every if
Speaker 1: you've never picked up a gun before, it's it will
Speaker 1: tell you, um, you know, it'll give you just information
Speaker 1: on you know, everything you need to to before you
Speaker 1: use it. And um, I thought it would be a
Speaker 1: good idea to just have a trans just a class
Speaker 1: with just my trans friends, and they were of course
Speaker 1: open to it, and it went really well, and I
Speaker 1: planted more in the future. Yeah, um, so you kind
Speaker 1: of you're going through both sort of the basics of
Speaker 1: here's and this is kind of a thing I think
Speaker 1: about a lot. I recently carried out a class for
Speaker 1: I don't want to be too specific, but at risk
Speaker 1: individuals in my local area. That was a mix of
Speaker 1: and I was not the one doing to stop the
Speaker 1: bleed portion, primarily we have people who are medical professionals.
Speaker 1: But it was a mix of a stop the bleed
Speaker 1: class and like a firearms familiarization class. And it was
Speaker 1: not from the perspective of like, hey, people need to
Speaker 1: be strapping up so here's how to get a gun.
Speaker 1: But it was from the perspective of, hey, there's four
Speaker 1: million firearms in the United States, whether regardless of what
Speaker 1: you think about the legality, you should have a basic
Speaker 1: understanding of how they function and how to since you're
Speaker 1: all adults, render a weapon safe, right, So we did.
Speaker 1: We have these fake bullet snap caps, so I would
Speaker 1: explain how an a are and a handgun works, and
Speaker 1: then we would have everyone take turns, kind of like
Speaker 1: we had with the stop the bleed portion, you know,
Speaker 1: where you teach people to use a tourniquet. Would everyone
Speaker 1: take turns arriving to the weapon, putting the weapon in
Speaker 1: their hands without like flagging everybody or putting their finger
Speaker 1: on the trigger and then dropping the magazine and clearing it.
Speaker 1: And a lot of folks the thing they expressed was
Speaker 1: like as people who didn't necessarily want to be armed
Speaker 1: themselves felt like I was. I had never got I
Speaker 1: never knew how to, like asked to have this experience
Speaker 1: because normally, when you're in the room with a firearm,
Speaker 1: it's because like maybe you're gonna go shooting with somebody
Speaker 1: or something. So if you're not seeking out that experience
Speaker 1: to actually go to a range. It's kind of hard
Speaker 1: to sit with a gun and just understand the base
Speaker 1: because of how this thing functions and how to render
Speaker 1: it safe. And so there were a lot of folks
Speaker 1: who particularly were like it seemed to be grateful for
Speaker 1: just that experience to kind of like reduce the mystery
Speaker 1: around it and gain kind of a functional understanding of
Speaker 1: just the mechanics. Yeah, it was. Yeah, the class was
Speaker 1: really good. I haven't taken it before, but it's, um,
Speaker 1: you know, it shows like you went through like the
Speaker 1: the anatomy of football, at the anatomy of a gun,
Speaker 1: how it works, how to how to do it safely,
Speaker 1: how to you know, like the four rules of gun safety, um,
Speaker 1: legal things, and it was just it was really good course. Now,
Speaker 1: so you take this course, you know, you're you're in
Speaker 1: communication with these friends, you're dealing with like this constant
Speaker 1: drumbeat of attacks. Um, you decide it's time to put
Speaker 1: together a course for people. How do you kind of
Speaker 1: work out what the syllabus is going to be for this? Um, well,
Speaker 1: if they're all they have the whole class set up already.
Speaker 1: I just sort of yeah, I had just had a
Speaker 1: version just for my transfriends. Yeah, so what what in
Speaker 1: like what did you kind of add to that or
Speaker 1: alter to that in order to like prepare it for this.
Speaker 1: Not much. I just it was just I just thought
Speaker 1: they would be more comfortable in a class with just us. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that makes sense. And it also do you
Speaker 1: think it helped that, Like this isn't because you know
Speaker 1: the Socialist Rifle Association. You're attending that class. You're kind
Speaker 1: of like attending a class put on by an organization
Speaker 1: that has being both armed and political kind of in
Speaker 1: its name, which maybe infers a little bit more commitment
Speaker 1: to something than the class kind of you put together
Speaker 1: on like a political level. Yeah, it's it's not as
Speaker 1: hardcore as as you might think from the name. It's
Speaker 1: just it's mostly they have the gundamental class. They have
Speaker 1: to stoppable courses kind of you know this kind of thing,
Speaker 1: and I think they there's very discussions too. I haven't
Speaker 1: gone telling them. Yeah, and and so you've you put
Speaker 1: this thing together. And the thing that you mentioned earlier
Speaker 1: when we were talking about this is kind of a
Speaker 1: discussion on like um like the the particularly legal concerns
Speaker 1: that trans people seeking to arm themselves might have in
Speaker 1: your area, and I wanted to talk to you a
Speaker 1: little bit about that because obviously, when we talk about
Speaker 1: gun legalities, it varies wildly from state to state. UM,
Speaker 1: So nothings that either of us say. And this should
Speaker 1: be construed as legal advice for what you should do
Speaker 1: in your own area. You're gonna have to check that
Speaker 1: out yourself. But yeah, I'm interested in what you saw
Speaker 1: is kind of worth putting in that. UM well, the
Speaker 1: I mean, the big addition to bring up is that
Speaker 1: if you're not UM, if you if you don't present
Speaker 1: as your assigned gender at birth, they could the person
Speaker 1: who's running the check could say that, hey, this person
Speaker 1: is coming to me in a disguise you know, UM,
Speaker 1: and you could UM in future if you're trying to
Speaker 1: get a gun in the future, that could be on
Speaker 1: your record and people could use that it's now you
Speaker 1: really I now, I had never heard about that, So
Speaker 1: that's like an actual I mean obviously, like when you
Speaker 1: file the form four four seven three. One of the
Speaker 1: problems I know from just talking to friends that you
Speaker 1: encounter is that like if you're if your your gender
Speaker 1: does not match, like it's on your legal documents and stuff,
Speaker 1: you have to write what's on your legal documents on
Speaker 1: the form because it's a government form. Um. Although the
Speaker 1: four four seven three, which is the background check form,
Speaker 1: does now allow you to put in non binary if
Speaker 1: that is, like, but you still have to have it
Speaker 1: on your legal documents. Um, And we're we're mostly used
Speaker 1: to that for everything else. But it's just the fact
Speaker 1: that they could specifically target you. Yeah, I was actually
Speaker 1: unaware of that as a specific problem, like that you
Speaker 1: could be accused of like showing up in disguise to
Speaker 1: do what's called a straw purchase, you know, which is
Speaker 1: when you illegally buy a gun for somebody else. I
Speaker 1: didn't realize that was a Yeah, So we're there kind
Speaker 1: of other things to like keep in mind there, Like
Speaker 1: because I'm particularly I'm sure we have a lot of
Speaker 1: folks listening who are in this same headspace right now. Um,
Speaker 1: because again, things aren't getting a lot less scary out there. Um.
Speaker 1: I mean I can say just within the last couple
Speaker 1: of years, probably around half of the people that I
Speaker 1: shoot with on a regular basis are trans just because
Speaker 1: like it's the of the you're the folks who are
Speaker 1: being kind of most directly targeted and have the least
Speaker 1: institutional support obviously, yea. And we have like people in
Speaker 1: Congress openly calling for our executions, and it's just, yes,
Speaker 1: that's a feeling, you know. It's like, yeah, that's something
Speaker 1: I've ever experienced before. But it's like, yeah, you have
Speaker 1: like nationally famous politicians just saying like, yes, we need
Speaker 1: to kill every one of them, and it's like, good lord. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And that's the thing, Like, you know, I think we
Speaker 1: talk a lot on the show when we do talk
Speaker 1: about being armed, and I've just talked a lot of
Speaker 1: my personal life about like sort of where what the
Speaker 1: left should be doing in terms of like a gun
Speaker 1: culture and like the kind of pitfalls that need to
Speaker 1: be avoided, because obviously the solution to like the discrepancy
Speaker 1: of arms in the left and the right in this
Speaker 1: country is not to recreate what the right wing has,
Speaker 1: because what the right wing has is like vicious and insane. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's bad. We don't we you don't
Speaker 1: want that, um but uh and and and so obviously,
Speaker 1: like one of the things that I tend to think
Speaker 1: of as as silly is like the the folks who
Speaker 1: are and I don't think this is a particularly large jump,
Speaker 1: but you do get people who are kind of look
Speaker 1: at being armed from like and then we're you know, um,
Speaker 1: this is so that we can you know, be the
Speaker 1: new red army insurgent type thing, which I think is
Speaker 1: a less realistic use case of firearms on the left
Speaker 1: than the police are not going to protect our community. Um,
Speaker 1: there are a shipload of people with guns who hate us,
Speaker 1: and you know, honestly, like one of the when I
Speaker 1: think about, like, what are the threats that are realistic
Speaker 1: and what are the threats when we talk obviously this
Speaker 1: show that we're on the way, they're the way the
Speaker 1: way they're doing the you know, you have um like
Speaker 1: Tucker Carlson saying like, oh another week in buy mar
Speaker 1: and you know, making all these things and they they're
Speaker 1: sort of like all these trans people. It's like someone
Speaker 1: should do something wink wink, Yeah exactly. And that's the
Speaker 1: when we're on a show right now that started out
Speaker 1: as me talking about, Hey, I think people who are
Speaker 1: I think the threat of massive civil conflict in the
Speaker 1: United States is higher than people guess, and that broadly speaking,
Speaker 1: is mainstream. Now there is a strong mainstream understand like
Speaker 1: standing that some sort of civil conflict is possible. It's
Speaker 1: still when people talk about it primarily in the terms
Speaker 1: of like this big civil war type thing, which I
Speaker 1: think is broadly speaking, probably pretty silly. What's not silly
Speaker 1: is the breakdown of expectations of social morays and things
Speaker 1: like you can't show up in a big armed group
Speaker 1: and start killing people that you have on a list,
Speaker 1: who are are folks that you have decided because their
Speaker 1: trans because whatever are are your enemy. And like one
Speaker 1: of the things that I'm kind of concerned we're going
Speaker 1: to see at some point in the future is a
Speaker 1: fucking mob gets spun up and go and take out
Speaker 1: some people on their list. And I'm not sure what
Speaker 1: that list is going to be, but you know, there's
Speaker 1: a couple of people who pay attention, there's a couple
Speaker 1: of broad possibilities as to who would be targeted. And
Speaker 1: then local law enforcements say, we're not going to choose
Speaker 1: to do anything about this. We're not going to and
Speaker 1: again this hat I'm not coming up with this because
Speaker 1: this is like a bleak. I know you are well
Speaker 1: aware of this, but like, we had an abortion clinic
Speaker 1: burnt down earlier this year, and I think it was
Speaker 1: Kentucky and the police refused to investigate it, right, like
Speaker 1: this kind of ship already happens, you know. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: it was. For a while I was like, okay, well
Speaker 1: they're not really going to and then it's like then
Speaker 1: they started coming after our kids, and just like I
Speaker 1: almost didn't survive my adolescent so I know just how
Speaker 1: much pain those kids are in. And yeah, and then
Speaker 1: it's like okay, then they got rid of rovers way
Speaker 1: and it's like, okay, they're not They're not just posturing anymore. No,
Speaker 1: they're santastic. Final it's like, you know, hey, someone should
Speaker 1: do something was bad enough. But then it's like, okay,
Speaker 1: they're really they're on a tear hair. So you're you're
Speaker 1: put together. This asked for folks who I'm going to
Speaker 1: guess most of them had not Number one, didn't have
Speaker 1: much experience with weapons firearms prior to this, and probably
Speaker 1: also had not prior to you know, the last year
Speaker 1: or two I thought that they would ever be someone
Speaker 1: considering purchasing armaments. I mean, some of them said that
Speaker 1: you know, they grew up you know, in rural places
Speaker 1: and grew up with guns and stuff, but touched them
Speaker 1: since they were kids, So, right, you were there any
Speaker 1: kind of like specific questions that you got that you
Speaker 1: you found were interesting or kind of like surprising. Like
Speaker 1: I'm kind of interested in sort of what sort of
Speaker 1: things people had to ask, not in particular, I think
Speaker 1: everyone was just sort of just trying to learn everything
Speaker 1: and just like that, Yeah, where there is there kind
Speaker 1: of a has there been sort of like, um, any
Speaker 1: further discussions about like well what comes next? Right like
Speaker 1: after the sort of basic class of people decided to
Speaker 1: start purchasing like firearms, step two is like train in
Speaker 1: order to use them like functionally, right, Like it's not
Speaker 1: a kind of thing you can just have. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: next up, the next step from the group of friends
Speaker 1: that I have, Um, I'm planning to you know, go
Speaker 1: to a range with them, and I mean we have
Speaker 1: to sort of find what ranges are most friendly. But yeah,
Speaker 1: so we're probably gonna do that and just see how
Speaker 1: it goes with everyone. I mean I know that where
Speaker 1: I am. One thing that people will do is you know,
Speaker 1: you'll you'll have folks who will kind of go out
Speaker 1: and be uh kind of a little guinea pigs for like,
Speaker 1: is this gun's store a friendly place like right, like
Speaker 1: is this a place we can go and buy weapons
Speaker 1: and not and and have people like respond, well, is
Speaker 1: this range a friendly place? And then kind of will
Speaker 1: spread that to the rest of the community that like, hey,
Speaker 1: this is a safe place to shoot too, this is
Speaker 1: a safe place to buy Do you have you guys
Speaker 1: been kind of like setting stuff up like that or
Speaker 1: what No, not yet, but that's that is the next step,
Speaker 1: trying to figure it out. Yeah, and when it when
Speaker 1: it comes to like just organizing for the increasing hostility
Speaker 1: that that people are facing. Um. Has it has it
Speaker 1: kind of pushed you to do anything more formal with
Speaker 1: like the communications groups you have in terms of like
Speaker 1: you know, I need I might need I'm going on
Speaker 1: a walk at night, I need somebody to be able
Speaker 1: to like call or something like that, I'm worried I'm
Speaker 1: being followed, Like is there Has this been the kind
Speaker 1: of thing that you've been like setting up more in
Speaker 1: the way of precautions around so much because most of
Speaker 1: us just live in the city and we're we're usually
Speaker 1: pretty okay with that, um or we'll have you know,
Speaker 1: friends nearby, you know, well nothing so um formal? Yeah? UM,
Speaker 1: I mean, which is yeah, I think how most people
Speaker 1: kind of do it. Um, what do you sort of
Speaker 1: like watching out right now? Um? What is kind of
Speaker 1: I don't know the thing you're you like, like, do
Speaker 1: you have anything sort of on the horizon that you're
Speaker 1: sort of looking at as you know, if this happens,
Speaker 1: then I'm going to expect this to happen, and like
Speaker 1: maybe we need to do this time for some kind
Speaker 1: of more formal plans. It's hard to say. I'm I've
Speaker 1: just been sort of just watching all of this horrible
Speaker 1: stuff unfold. Everything happens so fast. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: like I said, I didn't think they're going to get
Speaker 1: rid of Row, So it was just I just I
Speaker 1: don't know what's coming next. Um, I'm just realizing it's
Speaker 1: like it's so serious. It's actually getting to the point
Speaker 1: where I'm just sort of seeing myself just trying to
Speaker 1: make amends with people in my past, and it's like
Speaker 1: you just you just take a step back and look
Speaker 1: at yourself, like, oh wow, it really is getting bad
Speaker 1: that it's just subconsciously I'm just thinking I should make
Speaker 1: peace with some of these people. That's pretty bleak. Um.
Speaker 1: I I'm struggling for like something more positive to say, um,
Speaker 1: which I'm not sure is that is kind of the
Speaker 1: right impulse, but it is sort of like we're all
Speaker 1: kind of like grappling for because one of the problems
Speaker 1: is that the scale of the threat, I think is
Speaker 1: or the reality of the threat is very clear to people, right,
Speaker 1: whether you're kind of a centrist dim and you just
Speaker 1: see like, oh, ship, there's actually like a lot of
Speaker 1: like militia type folks with guns talking about a civil
Speaker 1: war and they almost took over Congress. This is a
Speaker 1: real threat. Or whether you're you know, a transperson or um,
Speaker 1: you know, an indigenous person or a migrant or something
Speaker 1: somebody who's you know, here in the country in a
Speaker 1: less than legal fashion and you're stay seeing like, oh,
Speaker 1: they're specific threats against groups people like me, and they're
Speaker 1: being more organized and more att actually being carried out. Um,
Speaker 1: the reality of the threat is I think clear in
Speaker 1: differing degrees to everybody. What's not clear is the the
Speaker 1: scope in the shape of it. Right, So we know
Speaker 1: there's a lot of like armed right wing assholes talking
Speaker 1: about violent ship. We don't know is are they going
Speaker 1: to get their shipped together right, like enough to do
Speaker 1: something like unto what extent and in what areas right
Speaker 1: that is? I think that you know, it's like the
Speaker 1: enemy is strong and weak at the same time, of course,
Speaker 1: but I think with us, really they really don't expect
Speaker 1: any resistance. And I think that if you know, if
Speaker 1: they start meeting resistance or're seeing us with that like, hey,
Speaker 1: we have shame rightful to you, do you know? Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: and I think that might you know, hold them off
Speaker 1: a little bit at least. I think that's generally like
Speaker 1: a if you're kind of like, I don't know, uh,
Speaker 1: thinking about it from that from the perspective of like
Speaker 1: and kind of a soulless, like, uh, top down view
Speaker 1: of this is just a strategic thing, like what are
Speaker 1: the what are the best ways to oppose this kind
Speaker 1: of like right wing and surgean force. Well, like obviously
Speaker 1: one of them is not to like hand them ground, right,
Speaker 1: like don't don't don't don't do the thing that you
Speaker 1: see a lot of people in the left doing, which is, oh,
Speaker 1: they're coming for you know, trans people. Well that's not
Speaker 1: you know, you there's been a lot of like very
Speaker 1: ugly talk on certains of liberals and left of like well,
Speaker 1: you know, if we defend these people, that's going to
Speaker 1: be bad for us in an electoral sense, you know,
Speaker 1: and like, this isn't something that gets you votes in
Speaker 1: small exact exactly. Hillary Clinton just fucking came out and
Speaker 1: said this, right, and it's Um. I I feel like
Speaker 1: I think historically as a bad strategy. You know, if
Speaker 1: you're just looking at what happened in history, obviously I
Speaker 1: think it's immoral. Um. And I also, yeah, I think
Speaker 1: that you are right in that the only reason that
Speaker 1: they're this scary right now is because for the better
Speaker 1: part of twenty years a little less than that, but
Speaker 1: this really started to accelerate after Obama got elected. Every
Speaker 1: time the far right has like pushed for something and
Speaker 1: like made a stink or started making threats, people have
Speaker 1: backed off right and even outside of you know, threats
Speaker 1: specific communities, they were ship like the Mayac report, which
Speaker 1: is in like the mid of Obama's term, the Homeland
Speaker 1: Security put out a report warning about the growth of
Speaker 1: the domestic militia movement, and they like made a big
Speaker 1: they flipped out about it, and we're like, look, they're
Speaker 1: saying that if you have a Gadsden flag, you're a
Speaker 1: domestic terrorist and all this stuff, and the bomb backed
Speaker 1: off and fired. All of the people in in the
Speaker 1: federal government who are like watching this ship. Um, which
Speaker 1: we can talk about the degree to which it's ever
Speaker 1: reasonable to hope that the Feds are going to do
Speaker 1: anything about this, but it's it's an example of this.
Speaker 1: You get scared that opposing these people is going to
Speaker 1: be bad for you politically, and so you make a
Speaker 1: craven political decision to seed ground to them, and then
Speaker 1: they get more dangerous. Right the Democrats have just been
Speaker 1: doing lately, I mean least several decades. Really, it's such
Speaker 1: like a mine field to talk about being armed and
Speaker 1: being armed responsibly in the context of twenty one century
Speaker 1: United States, because there's so much to juggle, including the
Speaker 1: fact that we have basically nearly weekly uh, massacres and
Speaker 1: stuff being committed by people who go and pick up
Speaker 1: a gun from you know, a sporting goods store whatever. Um.
Speaker 1: But fascists, yeah, and they're almost all fascists with the
Speaker 1: history of violence towards women. Um. But it it is
Speaker 1: like I think, when we are talking about what it is,
Speaker 1: the actual importance on both an individual level of being
Speaker 1: the importance on an individual level of people who are
Speaker 1: in threatened communities being armed is that they cannot trust
Speaker 1: the police or the state to take any actions to
Speaker 1: protect them. And we see that because they get thrown
Speaker 1: under the fucking bus every time somebody comes from after
Speaker 1: her attack, that the place just sort of dismissed her.
Speaker 1: They just sort of like, oh, you know, it was
Speaker 1: just you know, they like stender to her, just like
Speaker 1: just complete you know, dis interest, and yeah, and obviously
Speaker 1: like this is this is the thing you don't have
Speaker 1: to There's a bunch of numerous other stories of that. Um.
Speaker 1: And then on the other end of things, you have
Speaker 1: like most of these people. One of the things as
Speaker 1: we have in our corners like scary as the insurgent, right,
Speaker 1: is as most of them are fucking cowards, and when
Speaker 1: they get opposed, when somebody shows up and throws down
Speaker 1: usually they fucking It's one thing if it's like a
Speaker 1: street fight, right, because people don't tend to get killed
Speaker 1: in street fights, and you can make a lot of
Speaker 1: money filming videos of it. When fucking when when people
Speaker 1: start pulling straps, you know, like it gets really different,
Speaker 1: really fucking quickly. Um. And in general, we've seen in Portland.
Speaker 1: There have been a couple of these folks shot in
Speaker 1: defensive shootings, and it's part of why that's kind of
Speaker 1: stuff doesn't happen as much as it was in two
Speaker 1: thousand eighteen. Um, you saw that ship happen in Denver
Speaker 1: and it had an effect on the intensity of of
Speaker 1: rallies there. When these people are it would be irresponsible
Speaker 1: to say that it's like good when this happens, but
Speaker 1: when they suffer consequences for trying to hurt people, it
Speaker 1: scares some of them. Classically, Yeah, if you stand up
Speaker 1: to them, they'll really yeah. Yeah, I don't know. I
Speaker 1: this is just kind of turned into us sort of
Speaker 1: talking about the ethics of community self defense. But I
Speaker 1: think it's something I think it's important to talk about.
Speaker 1: And I think it's also important to kind of reclaim
Speaker 1: from this kind of masturbatory fantasy of becoming a minuteman
Speaker 1: or whatever, and also this masturbatory fantasy of like this
Speaker 1: is something this is a thing I do as like
Speaker 1: part of my identity, um, as opposed to like this
Speaker 1: is a thing that I do in order to defend
Speaker 1: my ability to continue to be who I am. Right,
Speaker 1: I'm not I'm not a radical. I just want to
Speaker 1: be alive, you know, and if I'm not, if I
Speaker 1: have to de transition, I will not want to be alive.
Speaker 1: And that's that. Yeah, yeah, and yeah, Well did you
Speaker 1: have anything else you wanted to get into where we're
Speaker 1: talking to digestica? All right, Well, do you have anything
Speaker 1: you wanted to plug any place you wanted to kind
Speaker 1: of direct? Um? Well, there's yea all right, um, because
Speaker 1: that's uh. If someone wanted to at home, wanted to
Speaker 1: uh to do their own thing, the s R would
Speaker 1: probably be great receptive. I'm sure there's other organizations. Um yeah,
Speaker 1: there's John Brown, gun clubs and stuff, and other organizations
Speaker 1: that don't have names. And on a personal level, I well,
Speaker 1: I I make bondage collars and paddles. It's called bondage Robot.
Speaker 1: It's any store. It's a Bondage hyphen robot dot com.
Speaker 1: Excellent do do? Yeah? Um so bondage robot dot com.
Speaker 1: Um check that out. You're also on Twitter? Do you
Speaker 1: want to direct people? It's that's where I Yeah, Jessic
Speaker 1: Lashnikov just figured out you'll say it, all right, that
Speaker 1: is gonna be our episode for the day. Everybody uh,
Speaker 1: stay safe and um, you know, think about the ethics
Speaker 1: of community self defense. It's important. Oh boy, it could
Speaker 1: happen here, and it seems to be happening more after
Speaker 1: the last couple of days. This is a podcast about
Speaker 1: how everything's looking pretty bad these days. Um, and in
Speaker 1: particular right now we're we're here. We've got the whole team,
Speaker 1: not the whole team. We've got the team here to
Speaker 1: do a round table discussion about the thing, you know,
Speaker 1: the thing, the thing that happened this last week that
Speaker 1: is still the main thing happening, which is the FBI
Speaker 1: rated former President Trump's house. Um, and now all of
Speaker 1: his fans are declaring war on the FBI, which has
Speaker 1: so far been let's all be honest here, pretty funny. Um.
Speaker 1: But everybody's also a lot there's a lot of worry
Speaker 1: going on. There's a lot the some folks of documented
Speaker 1: if we'll talk about this, that like discussion online of
Speaker 1: civil war and civil conflict has like exploded to new
Speaker 1: heights over the last like four days or so. UM.
Speaker 1: So yeah, we're gonna talk about all of that. But
Speaker 1: but here's here's here's the team. We've got Garrison Davis,
Speaker 1: James Stout and we've got Christopher Wong and of course me, Sylvie.
Speaker 1: How's everybody doing today? I'm doing great, magnificently. M Yeah,
Speaker 1: So where's where's where's everybody's new civil war counters at?
Speaker 1: Who here feels we're like we're we're closer and who
Speaker 1: he feels like we've gotten further away? Well, it's definitely
Speaker 1: gone up. It's definitely gone up a little bit. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: temperature is a little higher for sure. I mean we're
Speaker 1: still not really around the averages around J six, but
Speaker 1: it's it is, it's it's it's the highest it's been
Speaker 1: around like the Biden administration. Um, yeah, I just made
Speaker 1: some ceramic armor purchases. Is where my when when my
Speaker 1: current civil war counter is at? Yes? I did just
Speaker 1: get another set of rifle plates, got some side prates,
Speaker 1: like you know, you know who had body armor is
Speaker 1: the guy who single handedly attacked that FBI field office
Speaker 1: in Ohio with a nail gun and then died in
Speaker 1: a field. Okay, before we get into that, Ricky, she
Speaker 1: can we what the funk is going on with that
Speaker 1: guy who like lit himself on fire in his car
Speaker 1: and rammed into the capital barrier and like I forgot
Speaker 1: about that. Yeah, like that might adjust been a suicide
Speaker 1: because we don't seem to have any clear evidence that
Speaker 1: it was political. It's just it's just like a really weird,
Speaker 1: like I don't know that that that's that's a kind
Speaker 1: of thing that feels like if it was happening five
Speaker 1: years ago, would have been like a major news story.
Speaker 1: And when I was trying to find new stories about it,
Speaker 1: so the first thing I did was, Okay, I googled
Speaker 1: a DC car attack and I found a different DC
Speaker 1: car attack. And then I go DC shooting and I
Speaker 1: found a different DC shooting, and like if we combining
Speaker 1: to do She's like, oh, this is We're living in
Speaker 1: a great time. This isn't even the first, not even
Speaker 1: the first person to drive their car into a Capitol
Speaker 1: police barrier and then get out and start shooting, right like,
Speaker 1: this is this is the United States. It's just something
Speaker 1: we do here is incredible, approved marked the method. I mean,
Speaker 1: it just it does kind of seem like it was
Speaker 1: just a suicide, like that one was just that's what
Speaker 1: the Capitol Police are saying. It was twenty nine years old,
Speaker 1: didn't appear to be targeting any members of Congress fired
Speaker 1: shots into the air before taking his own life. Um,
Speaker 1: no officers shot their weapons. It was very it was
Speaker 1: very quick. Mm hmm. Okay, yeah, it is interesting because
Speaker 1: he is he is no Ricky Schiffer at that that
Speaker 1: the DC stories seeks the Shipper stories, Yes, much more
Speaker 1: funny having So this is obviously you have Donald Trump
Speaker 1: get rated by the FBI, and then less than two
Speaker 1: days later you have this guy show up outside of
Speaker 1: an FBI field office, try to force his way through
Speaker 1: or try to break through the bulletproof glass with a
Speaker 1: nail gun and then winds up in an hour's long
Speaker 1: standoff before being shot to death by the FBI. Which
Speaker 1: is very funny because he so. I guess the thing
Speaker 1: about this that's unsettling. Um, that that colleague of ours,
Speaker 1: Jason Wilson pointed out on Twitter, and that I think
Speaker 1: is worth noting, is that while this kind of thing
Speaker 1: is is extremely American and very common. Um, the thing
Speaker 1: that is kind of unsettling about shiff is that he's
Speaker 1: not he's he's just he's he's straight up normal maga right,
Speaker 1: Like he's not from any of the There's no evidence
Speaker 1: that he was kind of like dipping into these other
Speaker 1: subcultures that are more explicitly like terroristic in their Nameforceman
Speaker 1: says that he may have ties to Proud Boys, but yeah,
Speaker 1: well we'll see. He was at J six, you know,
Speaker 1: so I'm sure. But I mean it's what it is,
Speaker 1: is a a guy who is a normal Trump supporter
Speaker 1: um u in the Yeah, I mean, I mean he
Speaker 1: was ultra to the extent of what he did a
Speaker 1: few days ago, and he was on true social and
Speaker 1: like he he was. Yeah, but I feel like that's
Speaker 1: not that a regular Like if you watch the most
Speaker 1: recent Jordan Clipper video, there's people doing like like regular
Speaker 1: asked people saying things that are way more absurdan than
Speaker 1: what they were saying two years ago. Like the real
Speaker 1: reality has become so detached for a certain sect of
Speaker 1: like Trump lifers, and it's just impossible to pry them
Speaker 1: away to the point where they ineffectually attack an FBI
Speaker 1: office with an l gun, yeah, and die in a
Speaker 1: shootout hours later. And and Shiffer, I mean, one of
Speaker 1: the things that you might compare a little bit to
Speaker 1: Shiffer is you know, there have been particularly during the
Speaker 1: Trump years, there were a couple of attacks on ice
Speaker 1: facilities UM that were kind of like acts of desperation
Speaker 1: from people who were politically radicalized by the things happening UM,
Speaker 1: but also felt like there was kind of no hope
Speaker 1: of of taking any sort of useful action other than
Speaker 1: being an individual going out and attacking ice. And I
Speaker 1: think this is a lot more similar to that in
Speaker 1: terms of the headspace of the guy that it's similar to,
Speaker 1: for example, like the Nazis shooting up like an Al
Speaker 1: Paso fucking Walmart because they stopped by genocide, Like this
Speaker 1: is this is a guy who was like purely radicalized
Speaker 1: by mainstream conservative media UM and and the president's social
Speaker 1: media network. He was directly radicalized by President Trump, as
Speaker 1: opposed to like finding Trump funny and then like winding
Speaker 1: up and some some funked up places online that radicalize him.
Speaker 1: And that is unsettling, even though it's again pretty funny
Speaker 1: what happened to him. UM. I think both of those
Speaker 1: things can be true, and I think we have to
Speaker 1: take joy in the times when individual maga dudes use
Speaker 1: nailguns to try and attack the entire FBI. Really, he
Speaker 1: really thought that that you can use that that bulletproof
Speaker 1: glass can't be broken by bullets, but you can use
Speaker 1: nail guns to just really well. He thought that this
Speaker 1: gets to what the communities that he was kind of radicalized.
Speaker 1: And he thought that because there's a lot of like
Speaker 1: normal gun YouTube videos where people will, like, because the
Speaker 1: thing on like gun YouTube is people will take different
Speaker 1: kinds of firearms or other weapons and different kinds of
Speaker 1: materials and see how the to interact together, right, Like,
Speaker 1: do what happens when you shoot a bullet at this?
Speaker 1: How hard it is it to get through bulletproof glass?
Speaker 1: What are ways? And like he certainly figured that out
Speaker 1: because of because there are some specific videos people pointing
Speaker 1: out that are likely the ones he watched, where like
Speaker 1: there are ways that you can kind of damage and
Speaker 1: take the you can gradually like make bulletproof glass fail
Speaker 1: by using a nail Then there are ways in which
Speaker 1: you can do that. It just doesn't happen to be
Speaker 1: a way. It's something you can do while you are
Speaker 1: standing in front of an FBI field office without getting
Speaker 1: shot to death by the FBI. Before before he before
Speaker 1: he died, he posted a few messages onto truth saying, well,
Speaker 1: I thought I had a way and I didn't. If
Speaker 1: you don't hear from me, It's true, I tried tacking
Speaker 1: the FBI, and and it'll mean I was either taken
Speaker 1: off the internet, the FBI got me, or they sent
Speaker 1: to the regular cops. To be fair to this guy,
Speaker 1: he did successfully manage to shoot a nail gun at
Speaker 1: the FBI office, and the FBI weren't the ones who
Speaker 1: killed him. Like he actually got away from that, which
Speaker 1: is highway patrol, wasn't. Yeah. He also called for people
Speaker 1: to prepare themselves for combat in the days after the
Speaker 1: FBI search and that we must not tolerate this one
Speaker 1: along other posts around people urging to kill FBI agents
Speaker 1: on site and be ready to take down other active
Speaker 1: enemies of the people and those who try to prevent
Speaker 1: you from doing it. All all that kind of rhetoric.
Speaker 1: And there's like, sorry, I like the on site thing,
Speaker 1: Like we all have this kind of joke about like
Speaker 1: people dressing like Feds, right, but it's very funny that
Speaker 1: he thinks that maybe they're coming out like men in
Speaker 1: black or something. Yeah, he's not going to be looking
Speaker 1: for like like Feds and Patagonia, which which is what
Speaker 1: they actually wear of. Yes, Yeah, if you see if
Speaker 1: you see a Patagonia vest that is either a federal
Speaker 1: agent or an Amazon executive, and either way you should
Speaker 1: be frightened either way on site stand by just such
Speaker 1: a generous interpretation that they take him off the internet
Speaker 1: for the crime trying to shoot up an FBI office.
Speaker 1: They did, James, he's not online, although like kind of
Speaker 1: bluntly posting about the terroristic attack, you carry it out
Speaker 1: on the FBI like as you are actively dying, I know,
Speaker 1: as he's doing it. You have to say, the man
Speaker 1: had the soul of a poster. He had the poster. Well.
Speaker 1: I think it's also like it's an interesting because this
Speaker 1: isn't like because like there's lots of like mass shooters
Speaker 1: who sort of who kind of have poster brain, right,
Speaker 1: but like this is like this isn't like like he's
Speaker 1: he's not doing it for the post just has poster brain.
Speaker 1: It is like this is sort of like it is
Speaker 1: it is separate from someone doing a specific like memetic attack,
Speaker 1: like an attack to entice memetic violence in the future.
Speaker 1: This was just this was just his form of communication
Speaker 1: as in his regular life. And it was and it
Speaker 1: was the Ohio State troopers that pursued the vehicle yeah,
Speaker 1: but I think that that at this point is something
Speaker 1: that's kind of bleak about this right, which is like
Speaker 1: the extent to which, like the extent to which the
Speaker 1: way this kind of politics functions is by having like
Speaker 1: you know, social media becomes your entire like social sphere
Speaker 1: to the point where it's like, well, what are you
Speaker 1: doing in your last moments is you're like running away
Speaker 1: from the cops are about the shoot, was like, well
Speaker 1: we're gonna post, Yeah, gotta gotta sit down at truth.
Speaker 1: It's it's that scene from Love actually, but it's not
Speaker 1: true anymore, right where they're like talking about what people
Speaker 1: did at nine eleven when they were stuck in the
Speaker 1: towers and they like quote loved ones and told them
Speaker 1: they love them. Not this guy you have to do
Speaker 1: on true social this this guy, this guy didn't have
Speaker 1: people Ricky schefferd no, um. I mean, so there is
Speaker 1: One of the things that people have been asking again
Speaker 1: is in the wake of this massive surge in the
Speaker 1: right wing people talking about how it's time to have
Speaker 1: a civil war. And one of the things you didn't
Speaker 1: see is like as soon as Trump got rated, fairly
Speaker 1: like mainstream mega figures who tend to be more careful
Speaker 1: in terms of their language than like the radicals talking
Speaker 1: about like it's war. You know, now we're at war
Speaker 1: with a cold civil war, and most of them, like
Speaker 1: Stephen Crowder, we're doing it to sell T shirts. But
Speaker 1: that that's still that is an escalation in danger, right
Speaker 1: because with that the rhetoric that becomes common again, you're
Speaker 1: gonna have more Ricky shippers. And I'm sure that was
Speaker 1: part of like what was going on in this guy's
Speaker 1: head is Okay, well, if we are in a cold
Speaker 1: civil war, then I'm not going to just sit back
Speaker 1: and let the FBI destroy the only hope for Western civilization.
Speaker 1: I've got to fight back. Yeah, that's that's that's what happened.
Speaker 1: And and if you're people are asking kind of like
Speaker 1: what is about to happen? What is coming next? Um,
Speaker 1: I don't think the thing to worry about is like,
Speaker 1: you know, two sides taking up arms and suddenly fighting
Speaker 1: a big civil war. That is that is not I
Speaker 1: think the realistic threat model. But I also disagree with
Speaker 1: the folks who are like, look, it's just gonna it's
Speaker 1: it's not gonna be a problem. You're gonna get a
Speaker 1: couple of like lunatics, carriyat attacks. But it's all going
Speaker 1: to be fine. Now. What is happening is, Um, we
Speaker 1: are normalizing the language of political violence and normalizing that
Speaker 1: violence is the only resolution to our political problems. And
Speaker 1: that has gotten normalized for roughly thirty percent of the
Speaker 1: voting population of this country. UM. That's that's where they are,
Speaker 1: and that is intensely dangerous. UM. It is not. I
Speaker 1: don't I don't think, and I think partly you could.
Speaker 1: There's it's not entirely bad stuff that's come out as
Speaker 1: a result of Trump getting rated. Some of it is
Speaker 1: is positive because we are seeing that a significant number
Speaker 1: of like the media people are UM scared of that
Speaker 1: to a degree, UM and peeling back. There's an interesting
Speaker 1: thing that happened just today. The article came out that
Speaker 1: apparently Trump reached out to Merrick Garland and asked him
Speaker 1: how he could lower the temperature. UM. And it's it's interesting.
Speaker 1: It's it's Garland is who for the listeners, who doesn't
Speaker 1: do not keep up with the attorney general? So the
Speaker 1: president of the FBI effectively, UM, that's not how politics works.
Speaker 1: But let's just say that and make the people online
Speaker 1: who pay attention to the way the government works, very angry.
Speaker 1: But so basically what it seems like Trump is doing
Speaker 1: is saying, hey, I recognize that, like things are bad
Speaker 1: and scary, and the political temperature is like at a
Speaker 1: boiling point. I want to try to use that as
Speaker 1: leverage to work things out with the d o J.
Speaker 1: So you could see this as a complement. You can
Speaker 1: see it one as potentially Trump being just actually concerned
Speaker 1: about the rhetoric because they're shooting more would not be
Speaker 1: a good thing for him. You could see it as
Speaker 1: Trump being kind of manipulative and trying to use like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: this is now the fact that my supporters are scary
Speaker 1: and carrying out terrorist attacks as a way in which
Speaker 1: I can utilize leverage and like um exercise power over
Speaker 1: the government, and and it's it's kind of a bargaining
Speaker 1: chip that I have in my fight with the FBI.
Speaker 1: Or you could even see it as potentially evidence that
Speaker 1: he actually is scared of potential prosecution, because maybe this
Speaker 1: is him kind of that maybe this is a show
Speaker 1: of desperation. It's really unclear at the moment what it is.
Speaker 1: I can tell you I've read a couple of right wing.
Speaker 1: The New York Times is the one that broke this story,
Speaker 1: and they're they're reporting on it is pretty straightforward and
Speaker 1: mostly focuses on the uh like claims made by Trump's
Speaker 1: legal team about like, you know, how they attempted to
Speaker 1: comply with the requests to bring in classified information. But um,
Speaker 1: the right wing media coverage of this has been really
Speaker 1: different and has shown it as like Trump is just
Speaker 1: sort of desperately, you know, trying to trying to be reasonable,
Speaker 1: and the you know, the Justice Department, um just isn't
Speaker 1: willing to talk to him. It isn't willing to work
Speaker 1: with them at all. And that's kind of the way
Speaker 1: it's being spun right now. There was that pro Trump
Speaker 1: protest in d C, which got no one to show
Speaker 1: up because it was either canceled or a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of like forums or image boards or for blogs told
Speaker 1: people not to go because they thought it could be
Speaker 1: a trap. And I think stuff like that happening in
Speaker 1: d C might still take a long time to recover
Speaker 1: after j six, But stuff that's happening in other capitals
Speaker 1: and other places and other now FBI offices is much
Speaker 1: more concerning, and I think more localized shows of support
Speaker 1: for President Trump or support for just whatever the current
Speaker 1: thing is is probably gonna it's gonna continue going with
Speaker 1: some image of militancy and right, whether that's people in
Speaker 1: Hawaiian shirts showing up with guns outside the FBI office
Speaker 1: you've seen in Arizona just in the last couple of days, yeah,
Speaker 1: literally yesterday. As you record this, um, when it comes
Speaker 1: to actual like, so, one of the reasons people have
Speaker 1: been concerned about out civil war stuff is and this
Speaker 1: is not unreasonable, is the fact that you have had
Speaker 1: Republican officials, including some state level elected officials, particularly in Florida,
Speaker 1: saying some pretty wild shit, um, including like a state
Speaker 1: congressional candidate talking about, um, we need to basically kick
Speaker 1: the FBI out of the entire state. Governor de Santis
Speaker 1: needs to exercise uh like the basically saying that De
Speaker 1: Santis needs to use Florida state law enforcement to stop
Speaker 1: the FBI from investigating the former president and where that
Speaker 1: to happen, that would be a big deal, that would
Speaker 1: be um like, that is the kind of thing that
Speaker 1: could lead to a massive civil conflict, right because vaguely
Speaker 1: speaking stuff like that is what causes what started the
Speaker 1: actual shooting in the last Civil War is state saying
Speaker 1: we are not recognizing the authority of the federal government.
Speaker 1: We're not doing a thing that the federal government tells
Speaker 1: us we have to UM, and this is some thing
Speaker 1: like there's a lot of support from MAGA folks for this.
Speaker 1: Ben Collins Um, who does I think for NBC, was
Speaker 1: posting the other day UM a lot of like different
Speaker 1: Trump queue forum sort of posts where people are saying, hey,
Speaker 1: don jr Um, we know you lurk on the site,
Speaker 1: you should cross the rubicon and you know, somehow get
Speaker 1: to santist to use Florida law enforcement to attack the FBI.
Speaker 1: And there's some pretty gnarly stuff in those posts. Now,
Speaker 1: I don't think that that means there's actually I haven't
Speaker 1: seen evidence that there's much political world for that. And
Speaker 1: in fact, one of the things people are saying is
Speaker 1: that it looks like there's a decent chance to Santis
Speaker 1: um cooperated and helped because just wants to be president,
Speaker 1: because the Santis wants to be president, that he's actually
Speaker 1: like on board with this because he wants to funk
Speaker 1: over Trump. Ye. Now, that is scary, and that is
Speaker 1: I think a more realistic threat model than the idea that, um,
Speaker 1: the Santis might have the Florida State trooper start shooting
Speaker 1: against the sis as funny as it maybe to watch
Speaker 1: Florida law enforcement shoot at the FBI, that would be
Speaker 1: pretty funny, don't pretty funny? I know, I know. Um,
Speaker 1: I don't think the sand just will do that because
Speaker 1: De Santis really wants to be president, um, which is
Speaker 1: just another scary possibility, and that would want us to
Speaker 1: be less funny to watch. Um. It's it's like, it's
Speaker 1: not great overall. It's a it's too great, it's too
Speaker 1: not great sets of choices here. Yeah. And I think
Speaker 1: if we're looking at like with the actual kind of
Speaker 1: mass civil threat is as opposed to De Santis declaring
Speaker 1: a secession or something and the Trump States trying to
Speaker 1: declare their independence. I think the actual threat is that
Speaker 1: this could damage Trump enough that he doesn't run into Santis.
Speaker 1: Maybe is and this is very unclear by the way
Speaker 1: you look at the polling. It's extremely unclear as to
Speaker 1: whether or not to Santis would do better than Trump
Speaker 1: in a in a national election right now. Um, But
Speaker 1: some of the polling does suggest that even as unpopular
Speaker 1: as Biden is right now, um, he still has a
Speaker 1: sizeable lead over Trump in any headaway because that people
Speaker 1: fucking hate Donald Trump. Right if you are not one
Speaker 1: of the people who was on the verge of attacking
Speaker 1: an FBI building right now, you don't like him, even
Speaker 1: if Biden has not done anything to help you, at
Speaker 1: least in your mind, um, you know, than than And
Speaker 1: so that that is kind of the bet that the
Speaker 1: Santis is making. And I think what scares me most
Speaker 1: about the rhetoric we're seeing right now, less than the
Speaker 1: fact the idea that like Florida is going to declare
Speaker 1: war on the fucking d C government, is the threat
Speaker 1: that the rhetoric will stay at this heightened level and
Speaker 1: you're already seeing. The thing that scares me more than
Speaker 1: talk about like we should succeed, is talk about like, well,
Speaker 1: when we're back in power, we're just going to send
Speaker 1: the FBI after everybody that is that we considered it
Speaker 1: to me, let's let's let's raid them all, you know.
Speaker 1: And that's the thing that scares me. And that's the
Speaker 1: thing that I think could actually lead to the high
Speaker 1: It's loss of life. There's there's that part, and then obviously,
Speaker 1: like in terms of like bringing it back to what
Speaker 1: we to stuff we talked about on the show, a
Speaker 1: de Santist like presidency would be extremely hostile to queer people,
Speaker 1: way way, way more so than Trump um, and that
Speaker 1: would be varying on some very dangerous and very unshaky ground.
Speaker 1: And I think in the short term too, there's there's
Speaker 1: another danger there, which is that like we see this
Speaker 1: kind of militancy from the right like spreading more and
Speaker 1: more into just the other campaigns that they're doing, and
Speaker 1: so you know, we start getting attacks of gender clinics,
Speaker 1: we start seeing more attacks and abortion clinics, and I
Speaker 1: think that's as possible. And I think also like another
Speaker 1: thing to be thinking about is looking what what happened
Speaker 1: to where specifically around the anti lockdown stuff. You know,
Speaker 1: you just we just had a whole bunch of armed
Speaker 1: people like occupying capital buildings and it worked. It was
Speaker 1: it was incredibly effective. Right, Like there is like the
Speaker 1: the net result of that and the sort of like
Speaker 1: resulting political campaign from it is that like the entire
Speaker 1: Democratic Party has decided that it just doesn't like it's
Speaker 1: not even gonna talk about COVID anymore. And like the
Speaker 1: CDC is just like pretending it doesn't exist, and so
Speaker 1: like like that that that strategy like that there's just
Speaker 1: the things again like that stuff was the actual policies
Speaker 1: like stuff like like like like vaccine mandates for teachers.
Speaker 1: It's like a sixty four percent approve of reading, right,
Speaker 1: Like the actual like everyone doesn't die from COVID policies
Speaker 1: are popular. It's just that like this sort of you know,
Speaker 1: getting getting getting getting a bunch of guys with guns
Speaker 1: to go into a capital building and then yell about
Speaker 1: it is enough of a political threat that that they
Speaker 1: can they can force the Democrats to back down. And yeah,
Speaker 1: there's I think there's I think there's an anzero chance
Speaker 1: they start trying to do this other things I start
Speaker 1: trying to do this with like hey, if you're gonna
Speaker 1: have gender clinics in your state, we're going to start
Speaker 1: occupying capitals again. And you could see the fact that
Speaker 1: and one of the things that is unclear that makes
Speaker 1: it hard to tell if so, it is unclear as
Speaker 1: to whether or not the Biden White House knew that
Speaker 1: this rate was happening, like and who knew. There are
Speaker 1: definitely reports that some staffers found out about it on
Speaker 1: fucking Twitter. I have to I have to assume that
Speaker 1: the president was aware of it, and like it was
Speaker 1: probably hint that he to some extent pushed for it. Um.
Speaker 1: I would have trouble believing that he did not, because
Speaker 1: it's the FBI rating a former president, Right, The FBI
Speaker 1: has a lot of power. But I don't think that's
Speaker 1: a thing that the Feds just do because right, like
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, you have to have Garland on your side.
Speaker 1: And if Garland is, you know, directing this to some extent,
Speaker 1: and like I'm sure Biden is aware and that might be.
Speaker 1: And the idea rector that Trump appointed, Yeah, yeah, Chris
Speaker 1: ray Um, who sucks. They I mean, obviously they all suck.
Speaker 1: Everybody involved in this sucks. There's a great post someone
Speaker 1: made right after the raid that says, look, I want
Speaker 1: to make it really clear, the FBI cannot do good things,
Speaker 1: but they can do funny things. And this is extremely funny.
Speaker 1: And I just like that specifically, some of the some
Speaker 1: of the crimes around key being classified documents and this
Speaker 1: specific FBI director are both things that either Trump signed
Speaker 1: into into law or he appointed himself. Yeah, it is
Speaker 1: very funny. I have been talking to people who have
Speaker 1: had UH security clearances and understand some of that, and um,
Speaker 1: like the ship that they got from his house and
Speaker 1: those eleven boxes or whatever is the kind of thing
Speaker 1: that like does not get fucked with and the way
Speaker 1: that Trump would like fucked with it. Like it's I mean,
Speaker 1: the fact that the Espionage Act is in play is
Speaker 1: pretty shocking. Um as is the fact that brand Paul
Speaker 1: is now calling for the Espionage Act to be dissolved,
Speaker 1: which like based absolutely incredibly based Randall. I mean, it is, yeah,
Speaker 1: it is, really, it is. Really it is a thing
Speaker 1: to watch everyone go like, you know, a defund FBI,
Speaker 1: abolish FBI just because power gets used against one person
Speaker 1: one's time, and you're like, oh, this power only exists
Speaker 1: to hurt minorities. Why is it being used to hurt
Speaker 1: me or someone who I who I look up to.
Speaker 1: There's a discourse on the left right now that is like,
Speaker 1: should we be working with the right to defund the
Speaker 1: FBI or whatever? And here's the thing, in my opinion, no,
Speaker 1: you should not work with the right on any of
Speaker 1: this stuff because they don't want to get rid of
Speaker 1: the FBI. They want to take the weapon re empower
Speaker 1: that the FBI has and they want to like deploy
Speaker 1: it differently, but they still want that power to exist, right, Um,
Speaker 1: So no, you can't work with them on that. However,
Speaker 1: if they start actually trying to remove the spion Age Act,
Speaker 1: then absolutely we should vote to remove the SPIO. That's
Speaker 1: that's fine. Like just like if they actually vote to
Speaker 1: reduce funding to federal law enforcement, that's fine. But that
Speaker 1: doesn't mean, like you you act as if they're legitimately
Speaker 1: fighting against any of this stuff. But um, when it
Speaker 1: comes to so, I think that there's some potential evidence
Speaker 1: just the fact that this rate happened that shows that
Speaker 1: maybe there are folks in the Biden administration who understand
Speaker 1: the stakes of the fight and are taking it seriously.
Speaker 1: Because this is potential, I mean, and we'll see how
Speaker 1: it shakes out. It's all still too early to know
Speaker 1: if like anything more serious than his house being disrupted
Speaker 1: is going to happen. But like, if they really throw
Speaker 1: down legally against Trump in this way to try to
Speaker 1: stop him from being able to hold office again and
Speaker 1: to try to actually punish him for his abuses of power, um,
Speaker 1: that's potentially a pretty smart move. If they have the stones, right,
Speaker 1: That's a big question is like are they going to
Speaker 1: back down because the right starts threatening to shoot things up? So,
Speaker 1: like the scary thing potential here is that the right
Speaker 1: wing starts howling about how they're going to do a
Speaker 1: bunch of murders over this, and so the d o
Speaker 1: J backs off and the right is like, well, what
Speaker 1: if we just threatened to commit mass murder anytime something
Speaker 1: we don't like happens, Maybe that's how we win politics. Now,
Speaker 1: the positive with this is that, like the way fascists
Speaker 1: succeed historically is because people who are not fascists are
Speaker 1: not really willing to fight them, and so the fascists
Speaker 1: go for it and everybody else backs off because they're
Speaker 1: scared of having a fight. Right, So if this shows
Speaker 1: that there's actually some teeth within the Democratic Party to
Speaker 1: throw down, that's potentially a sign that like they've started
Speaker 1: to recognize where the stakes are. Um, that shouldn't be
Speaker 1: taken as too high of a possibility. I'm looking at
Speaker 1: a post from David froome Um, famed centrist idiot, who's
Speaker 1: talking about how he thinks of De Santis nomination represented
Speaker 1: a much better outcome for the whole country than a
Speaker 1: Trump return. Maybe you don't like his manner or record,
Speaker 1: but he's a recognizably normal US politician. Oh no, if defeated,
Speaker 1: he'd go peacefully. Like first off, great, incredible that that's
Speaker 1: where we are right now that you're like, well, he's
Speaker 1: a fine He would be a fine candidate for the
Speaker 1: Republicans to run because he wouldn't try to overthrow the
Speaker 1: country if he lost. Number one, not certain about that,
Speaker 1: but number were two. Um, yikes. Again, if David fruit
Speaker 1: is saying something, he's wrong, right, that is that is
Speaker 1: the rule of the rule of David Frum. He's one
Speaker 1: of those kind of like thinkers in American politics or
Speaker 1: whatever he's saying is not right. Yeah, And like in
Speaker 1: the Santis like right now, is like very openly like
Speaker 1: getting his people in position to take control of the
Speaker 1: Florida like to take control of Florida's like election procedures.
Speaker 1: Like he has this guy assault attorney general. It's like
Speaker 1: he's like very openly trying to do a what was
Speaker 1: the guy's name, help who rigged the election in Georgia
Speaker 1: a few years ago. Yeah, Yeah, he's like very obviously
Speaker 1: prepping to do that and it's like, I'm sure it'll
Speaker 1: be fine. He seems like a normal enough guy. Yeah, well, free,
Speaker 1: I do want to just read before we close out.
Speaker 1: Read a few things that how how the FBI and
Speaker 1: how the DHS have been talking about the threats that
Speaker 1: they've been seeing, because how the kind of institutions of
Speaker 1: power talking about these same things is worth noting. Um. Yes,
Speaker 1: they released a memos saying that there are threats quote
Speaker 1: occurring primarily online and across multiple platforms, including social media sites,
Speaker 1: web forms, video sharing platforms, and image boards. The FBI
Speaker 1: and DHS have observed an increase and violent threats post
Speaker 1: on social media against federal officials and facilities, including a
Speaker 1: threat to places so called dirty bomb in front of
Speaker 1: the FBI headquarters and issuing general calls for civil war
Speaker 1: and armed rebellion. Um. So yeah, they said that they're
Speaker 1: they're they're looking at their looking at threats through like
Speaker 1: uh specifically and identifying proposed targets, tactics and weaponry. Um.
Speaker 1: And you know it goes it goes on to talk
Speaker 1: about the targeted for people in like the judicial system,
Speaker 1: law enforcement, government officials associated with the Palm Beach search,
Speaker 1: the targeting the federal judge who who who approved the
Speaker 1: search warrant UM, and the FBI has also observed the
Speaker 1: personal identifying information of possible targets of violence, such as
Speaker 1: the home addresses and identification of family members, disseminated online
Speaker 1: as additional targets. So in terms of like what like
Speaker 1: the attack surfaces on these types of you know, image
Speaker 1: boards and social media sites. Uh even UM. But before
Speaker 1: before Schifferd did his attack, he posted when they come
Speaker 1: for you kill them being American not a steer, And
Speaker 1: I think other kind of things that could be at
Speaker 1: play and things that are worrying me as stuff develops.
Speaker 1: Not they're worrying me, not because they're convincing. They're worrying
Speaker 1: me because they don't need to be convincing. UM. Deceptively
Speaker 1: edited photos and videos have gone viral across social media
Speaker 1: over the past week following the search UM. While guest
Speaker 1: hosting Tucker Carlson tonight on Fox News, Brian Clemide showed
Speaker 1: a fake image of the judge who signed off on
Speaker 1: this on the search warrant, sitting beside uh Is Glyssie
Speaker 1: and Maxwell. How do how do you say her name?
Speaker 1: Jis Lane? Jis Lane? You know it's it's gilling gill
Speaker 1: Gillen Backwell, so you know, showing this, you know, quote
Speaker 1: unquote meme while not saying it's a meme, just showing
Speaker 1: the picture. On Friday, a fake video reporting to show
Speaker 1: another Fox host, Sean Hannity arguing with Florida Governor run
Speaker 1: De Sante's over the definition of what an FBI rate is.
Speaker 1: But that discussion never happened. This was spliced together footage
Speaker 1: from years apart in different interview segments. Um hours after
Speaker 1: the video went viral on Twitter, the platform did play
Speaker 1: the manipulated media label, um uh and yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: it's this kind of stuff that is going to be,
Speaker 1: you know, in terms of like you know, trying to prospect,
Speaker 1: trying to like prospect what the next few years could be,
Speaker 1: depending on who the who the president is, what types
Speaker 1: of like media is gonna be popular, How this is
Speaker 1: going to kind of impact the temperature politically and how
Speaker 1: people take in information and how people are willing to
Speaker 1: turn information into action in terms of taking out of violence.
Speaker 1: How often these little small things are happening. Is it's
Speaker 1: it's this, It's could be the start of a of
Speaker 1: a thing that becomes a much bigger problem very soon. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: I think maybe like in terms of the temperature rising,
Speaker 1: we should discuss just really briefly these other sort of
Speaker 1: um more or less baseless or sort of wildly off
Speaker 1: based conspiracies around law enforcement that we've seen on the right,
Speaker 1: like in the last few weeks. Um, we do we
Speaker 1: want to talk about those? Do we want to talk
Speaker 1: about those separately? I'm not sure what you're referring to.
Speaker 1: So there's there's a couple of things that have happened
Speaker 1: that have sent like the right pretty sort of crazy
Speaker 1: in the last few weeks. One is the in the
Speaker 1: inflation reduction. There's there's this part where they say they're
Speaker 1: going to hire eighty seven thousand new I R S
Speaker 1: agents right, yes, Yes, A large part of that is
Speaker 1: replacing the massive amount of virus people who are about
Speaker 1: to retire. UM, and the rest of it is getting
Speaker 1: them back up to sort of where they were a
Speaker 1: few years ago. It's not like they're going to actually
Speaker 1: hid three pandemic levels. Yeah. Yeah, so there are like
Speaker 1: seventy thousand I think half of them I supposed to
Speaker 1: retire in the next five years. They want to hire
Speaker 1: eighty seven thousand over the next ten years, so that
Speaker 1: will get them up like twenty thirty two to to
Speaker 1: where they were in nineteen or whatever. So it's not
Speaker 1: what it's betrayed airs, but that combined I think with UM,
Speaker 1: the A t F visiting a guy's house, which I
Speaker 1: know Garrison and I saw memes about in him, this
Speaker 1: crazy little conservative newspaper that were that we came across
Speaker 1: when we're reporting on a story. UM and the A
Speaker 1: t F reclassifying some think as the things that are
Speaker 1: called A R pistols, which we probably don't need to
Speaker 1: explain an the saying that they're a workaround for federal
Speaker 1: firearms or is that fair. Yeah, there's a bunch of
Speaker 1: different there's a bunch of kinds of guns that you're
Speaker 1: not supposed to be allowed to have without a special
Speaker 1: tax stamp, which is like a whole additional legal process
Speaker 1: in order to basically make sure that poor people can't
Speaker 1: own certain types of specific firearms. And there's workarounds where
Speaker 1: things function the same way as those guns that are
Speaker 1: normally illegal, but they aren't technically that in the FBI
Speaker 1: or not in the A t F is about to
Speaker 1: crack down on some of that um and so yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: at the sort of combination of these things has led
Speaker 1: a lot of figures on the right. You'll see it
Speaker 1: in that thread. I think Rubbert shared it and I
Speaker 1: shared it of like these dozens of tiktoks talking about
Speaker 1: civil war that came out the day after Trump with raided.
Speaker 1: They talk a lot about I R S raids and
Speaker 1: about people coming for their for their guns and their
Speaker 1: short barrowed rifles specifically, which I think is the combination
Speaker 1: of these things leading to this sort of again like
Speaker 1: it's if you misunderstand each of those three things completely,
Speaker 1: you get to the conclusion that the the I R
Speaker 1: S has hired eighty seven thousand arms shock troops and
Speaker 1: they're coming after a R pistol, which it's not true,
Speaker 1: but that narrative has definitely been sort of spread around.
Speaker 1: And again it's not exactly decreasing the temperature, no, I
Speaker 1: mean just I think today Trump was on Fox News
Speaker 1: Digital and he said, people are so angry at what's
Speaker 1: taking place. Whatever we can do to help, because the
Speaker 1: temperature has to be brought down in the country. If
Speaker 1: it isn't, terrible, things are going to happen. The people
Speaker 1: of this the people of this country are not going
Speaker 1: to stand for another scam. So huh. I wonder what
Speaker 1: he meant by that. Oh boy boy, Yeah, I guess
Speaker 1: like the others thing that I mean we kind of
Speaker 1: touched on. But I think it is important to understand
Speaker 1: is the extent to which like Trump is kind of
Speaker 1: a singular figure in his ability to actually get a
Speaker 1: bunch of people to do a thing. And like I
Speaker 1: think that, like that that power I think is reduced sense,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm like he's like he's not president anymore, right,
Speaker 1: because it's reduced since j six, Yeah, since six, But like,
Speaker 1: you know, he still has the ability to mobilize, like
Speaker 1: ability to mobilize parts of the right that like you're
Speaker 1: sort of like weird neo Nazi guy like can't and
Speaker 1: he like you know, and like he he seems to
Speaker 1: be aware of this, and he seems to be aware that,
Speaker 1: like you know, he can use he uses as a
Speaker 1: bargaining chip or uses to sort of like threaten people.
Speaker 1: But yeah, like that that's a real thing. Like it
Speaker 1: is a real thing that there's an incredibly large part
Speaker 1: of the country who like if Donald Trump told them
Speaker 1: to like go die for him a normity beach or
Speaker 1: something like they probably would. Yeah. Yeah. The FBI and
Speaker 1: Dachs in their moment, also warrant that midterm elections in
Speaker 1: November could be seen as an additional flashpoint in which
Speaker 1: will continue to escalate threats against perceived ideological opponents, including
Speaker 1: federal lawenforce and personnel. So stay tuned. Yeah, it should
Speaker 1: if people I haven't realized. By the way, it was
Speaker 1: bright Bot who named the FBI agents obtained a warrant.
Speaker 1: Ye didn't bother to google what their jobs were. They
Speaker 1: were like what is what is the sacronym stand for?
Speaker 1: No one knows. It's very secret pop journalism there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well good, we seem to be in a nice place
Speaker 1: then mm hmm. It's going well yeah yeah, start organizing now.
Speaker 1: The best time to start this was yesterday. The second
Speaker 1: best time is now, the third best time is tomorrow.
Speaker 1: And don't don't let them take how funny this is
Speaker 1: as well? There is an a lessons here, which is
Speaker 1: that like, there is an enormous amount you can get
Speaker 1: away with politically as long as it's funny. And like, frankly,
Speaker 1: we we we have we have not been utilizing that
Speaker 1: towards the potential the left end, like anarchists in general,
Speaker 1: have forgotten how to do good funny ship for the
Speaker 1: past ten years, and we have to bring it back. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is. This is We've been given a precious gift
Speaker 1: and how funny this is. And we have a couple
Speaker 1: of responsibilities, and one of them, of course, is to
Speaker 1: organize in order to be prepared to counter increasing like
Speaker 1: attempts to impose an authoritarian violence on us. But another
Speaker 1: thing that it is response that we have a responsibility
Speaker 1: to do is laugh at how funny this is and
Speaker 1: make sure that other people don't forget how funny this is.
Speaker 1: So go out into the world and remind somebody that
Speaker 1: a fucking trump nerd tried to take on the FBI
Speaker 1: with a nail gun in an a R fifteen and
Speaker 1: died in a fucking field in Ohio. Because that's pretty funny.
Speaker 1: It's pretty funny. Welcome, that's what could happen here. I'm
Speaker 1: Andrew of the YouTube channel Andreism, and I'm here with
Speaker 1: Oh it's me, it's Christopher. Yeah, we're doing what we're
Speaker 1: doing another episode of Bead and Andrew. We've sees the
Speaker 1: pod once again. It is too early in the morning
Speaker 1: for anyone else to be here, which gives us ultimate power.
Speaker 1: But you early in the morning, by the way, it's
Speaker 1: it's eleven Pacific time. But yeah, there's there. There is
Speaker 1: no prayer of anyone else being around for this. So
Speaker 1: we are now in control here. Ha ha ha. Yes,
Speaker 1: we good. We're We're doing We're We're doing the Maniacal Lives.
Speaker 1: We're doing the podcast. We're doing the podcast. Welcome, Welcome.
Speaker 1: We want to finish the story, the soldiers story that
Speaker 1: is Quasi Bo Lagoon's life and legacy. UM. When we
Speaker 1: last left off as part of the New York's City
Speaker 1: Panther twenty one trials, Kuasi was put in jail um.
Speaker 1: At the same time, he was also developing his political
Speaker 1: UM identity in a way and recognizing some of the
Speaker 1: issues he was having with the Black Panther Party and
Speaker 1: particularly after the East Coast West Coast split that I
Speaker 1: could Quasi as we as we covered last time, was
Speaker 1: born Donald Reams, but took on the identity of Quasi
Speaker 1: Po Lagoon due to his recognition of his African nous
Speaker 1: of himself Um through his experience in the army. Through
Speaker 1: his experience in London, connecting with the black diaspora and
Speaker 1: through his connections with the Uruba Temple and so Blagoon
Speaker 1: alongside that that personal recognition and political recognition of his
Speaker 1: antitheater in politics, also comes to see himself as someone
Speaker 1: who is at war with the state, and as such,
Speaker 1: once in jail, he sees himself as a political prisoner,
Speaker 1: as a prisoner of war. While in prison, the Panther
Speaker 1: twenty one were incarcerated in a variety of jails in
Speaker 1: different boroughs of New York City, but by Lagoon, Blumon, Busheker,
Speaker 1: and another defendant, Kinshasa, they were all incarcerated the Queen's
Speaker 1: Housed attention and they organize an uprising that took seven hostages,
Speaker 1: including a captain, five correctional officers, and a black cook,
Speaker 1: pulling them from October one to fifth nine. The slogan
Speaker 1: of the multi ethnic takeover, which by the way, it's
Speaker 1: pretty unheard of in prisons where black, Latino and white
Speaker 1: inmates come together. Um their slogan was all power to
Speaker 1: the people, free all oppressed people, and so their primary
Speaker 1: demand was for speedier trials, and in this process Balgoon,
Speaker 1: again developing his antithrogarian politics solely you know, crewing towards
Speaker 1: what he would come to define himself as. Decided not
Speaker 1: to play a vanguard rule in this decision making process
Speaker 1: in this uprising, even before he formally declared his commitment
Speaker 1: to anti authoritarian politics, his primary concern was consensus for
Speaker 1: all inmates and decision making, including access to food being
Speaker 1: brought from the outside, and so that sort of consensus
Speaker 1: process also helped build his identity. The prisoners, they formed
Speaker 1: committees to coordinate their uprisings and they agreed to release
Speaker 1: two hostages, the black cook and one of the prison
Speaker 1: guards as a sign of good faith. Eventually they had
Speaker 1: to release all of the hostages, and they also suffered
Speaker 1: abuse and charges from the uprising. It was sort of
Speaker 1: a failure, but of course he didn't see that way.
Speaker 1: While he was disappointed by the outcome, he believed that
Speaker 1: the power the inmates felt by holding the state to
Speaker 1: be for that you know, limited moment was a valuable experience.
Speaker 1: It was a learning experience as an organizing So the
Speaker 1: uprising as growing pains to those who believe that oppressed
Speaker 1: people would rise up and seek justice, because we can
Speaker 1: see that even with losses their lessons to be learned.
Speaker 1: And this isn't unique to just this one moment in history.
Speaker 1: In fact, we can apply it to more recent events,
Speaker 1: such as with the George Floyd uprising. It's easy to
Speaker 1: be nihilistic. Nihilistic probably isn't best used to say cynical
Speaker 1: and say that, oh, well, the uprisings Ophelia, millions of
Speaker 1: people got up and protested and nothing came out. It's
Speaker 1: of it, really, And yet that, in combination with the
Speaker 1: coronavirus pandemic, brought people together two establish programs of mutual aid,
Speaker 1: to get involved in organizations in their local situation, to
Speaker 1: connect with people, to radicalize themselves and radicalize others. It
Speaker 1: was not a loss, you know. Yeah, I mean, I
Speaker 1: think there's there's an extent to which, even if it's
Speaker 1: extremely hard to tell in the moment, there's there's this
Speaker 1: way in which like participating something like that just sort
Speaker 1: of permanently changes you. And and main thing I think
Speaker 1: also in the sort of context of the prison uprisings,
Speaker 1: right like this is like this is by no means
Speaker 1: like the last prison of pricing that's going to happen
Speaker 1: in this era. And so I think, like I don't know,
Speaker 1: it seems like one of those moments where it's like
Speaker 1: in the moment, it's like, oh, we failed. Things look bad,
Speaker 1: but like when in this sort of like broader historical sweep,
Speaker 1: it's like, no, this was like an early uprising in
Speaker 1: a period that is going to be sort of like
Speaker 1: an early yeah. Yeah, And I think that's something that
Speaker 1: can be really hard to like, like, especially in the moment.
Speaker 1: It can be really hard to sort of like see
Speaker 1: that because it's really easy to sort of like look
Speaker 1: narrowly at what you're one struggle is doing and then
Speaker 1: you know, but yeah, if you have this sort of
Speaker 1: like you know, if if you have the ability to
Speaker 1: sort of like see back through history, you can watch
Speaker 1: how stuff like this just sort of like has this
Speaker 1: massive effect on consciousness in a way that the people
Speaker 1: in it even have a lot of a hard time seeing. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So that's why, like I'm emphasizing the first part, it's
Speaker 1: really important to develop this perspective and to study our history,
Speaker 1: you know, a radical history, so we could learn, um,
Speaker 1: we could both you know, put things into focus into
Speaker 1: the perspective and also look at the specifics of all
Speaker 1: things played out. So after Bagoon's experience in the Panther
Speaker 1: Party and the oppression of the New York Chapter, he
Speaker 1: realized that the party was being turned away from its
Speaker 1: grassroots organizing of the black masses and the issues that
Speaker 1: affect the most, the daily survival, the housing, the education,
Speaker 1: police abuse. You realize the state was using it's in
Speaker 1: coostural system as a tactic by rounding up these organizers,
Speaker 1: by infiltrating the party, by charging people these high bills
Speaker 1: and such. It turned the party focus away from liberation
Speaker 1: to fundraies and for legal defense. And so he realized
Speaker 1: he could not continue the fight, could not continue on
Speaker 1: this front, that he needed to survive and contribute underground
Speaker 1: to build a Black liberation army as a clandestine freedom fighter.
Speaker 1: As a miracle from the previous episode, Balgoon was severed
Speaker 1: from the case of thirteen of those who have been
Speaker 1: arrested originally to face charges in New Jersey, and after
Speaker 1: the acquittal of most of his comrades, Balagun Queen pleaded
Speaker 1: guilty to the charge that he, an unidentified person, did
Speaker 1: attempt to shoot police officers, making him the only one
Speaker 1: of the twenty one original defendants to be convicted However,
Speaker 1: in September twelve nine three, Balagon would escape from the
Speaker 1: New Jersey's Railway prison, shortly after his conviction for arm
Speaker 1: robbery in New Jersey. And then eight months after his escape,
Speaker 1: on May fifth, he was again captured trying to assist
Speaker 1: a fellow Panther Party member and defend done Richard Harris
Speaker 1: from escaping custody. They were both apprehended after being wounded
Speaker 1: in a gun battle with correctional and police officers. And
Speaker 1: so what I find interesting about that he risked being
Speaker 1: recaptured so he could free Harris. And that's solidarity right there.
Speaker 1: He was so willing to sacrifice himself to help his comrades.
Speaker 1: That's admirable levels of commitment. And even though he was
Speaker 1: imprisoned and was disillusion with the Panther Party and that
Speaker 1: discourages involvement or commitment to revolution. While incostrate, he began
Speaker 1: to explore anarchist politics. He received and studied literature from
Speaker 1: solidarity groups like the Anarchist Black Cross, which is an
Speaker 1: anti authority and organization that provides material and legal supports
Speaker 1: political prisoners. And I and I was reading this, I
Speaker 1: recognized that name Anarchist Black Cross the ABC. I know
Speaker 1: that because they also helped Lorenz combo Van to be
Speaker 1: released from jail. They all provided him materials when he
Speaker 1: was incarcerated, and so kudos to them for that, you know,
Speaker 1: helping to connect these people and connect these ideas. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then in the Interos Black Cross, if I'm remembering
Speaker 1: my history right, like has a really really long history
Speaker 1: of doing this, going back to like I mean, I
Speaker 1: I know, I know they were negotiating like the releases
Speaker 1: of like political prisoners in the Bolsheviks went down. I
Speaker 1: didn't know they went that about that fount Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: pretty sure. Yeah, if I'm if I'm remembering, And that
Speaker 1: just goes to show you might not see yourself as
Speaker 1: doing anything that meaningful. Well, I'm just sending books to prisoners.
Speaker 1: In reality, your building foundations, you and you know, the
Speaker 1: people who you influence can go on to influence so
Speaker 1: many more, so many others. So anarchism ended up providing
Speaker 1: Balagoon with a great analytical lens to star up his
Speaker 1: critique of his experiences in the Panther Party. When he
Speaker 1: looked at you know the works of like Emma Goldman
Speaker 1: and others and apply them to the Black liberations struggle.
Speaker 1: He began to ask questions about how his comrades to
Speaker 1: going about revolution. How by allowing these hierarchies to develop
Speaker 1: in their organizations, they weakened their resolve in their fights
Speaker 1: and capacity. It's like, as he says, um the cauldrire
Speaker 1: accepted their command regardless of what their intellect had or
Speaker 1: had not made clear to them. The true democratic process,
Speaker 1: which they were willing to die for for the sake
Speaker 1: of their children, they would not claim for themselves. And
Speaker 1: so what Balagud wanted was a democratic process that would
Speaker 1: be established from today, not that you would have a
Speaker 1: sitting system now and then you would wait until after
Speaker 1: the revolution to set up a different system. It's like
Speaker 1: that whole connection of means and ends that you know
Speaker 1: anarchists keep going on about. He realized that the neediest
Speaker 1: democratic process to unleash the revolutionary potentially masses and not
Speaker 1: make them pray to new oppressors. The only way to
Speaker 1: make a dictatorship of the proletariat is to elevate everyone
Speaker 1: to defleet all the advantages of power, and already an
Speaker 1: anarchist revolution has that on this agenda, one of his
Speaker 1: inspirations was a fellow clandestine freedom fighter, that being Italian
Speaker 1: anarchists Eric Mala Testa, who exhorted that revolutionary struggle consists
Speaker 1: more of deeds than roods. You had a lot of
Speaker 1: different political figures and radical anarchists, but especially those involved
Speaker 1: in insurrection, especially those like Errico Manchester, who's also one
Speaker 1: of my personal favorites. When reading that, I found that
Speaker 1: to be a fun connection. Yeah he's so cool. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: he really is. I see why why Zoe Baker likes
Speaker 1: him so much. Yeah. Another influence of his first Spanish revolutionary,
Speaker 1: Jose Rutimage, organized the anarchist grilling movement Los Gesterros the
Speaker 1: avenger Once like their names Cereus, we're thought to be
Speaker 1: involved in political assassinations against you know, repression and driller
Speaker 1: raids on the military forces of the Spanish dictatorship. So
Speaker 1: people like Italian exiles Severan Severino di Giovanni and other
Speaker 1: anarchists like Sacco and Vincenti So Di Giovanni was known
Speaker 1: for his campaign of bombing as armed propaganda and soldarity
Speaker 1: with executed anarchists Sacco and Vancetti, and Giovanni engaged in
Speaker 1: ex appropriation of capitalist institutions, as a means of supporting
Speaker 1: the revolutionary movement and keep that point point in mind
Speaker 1: expropriation of capitalist institutions. To quote Mickey most, it's a surprise,
Speaker 1: too little help us later, all right. Another influence was,
Speaker 1: of course, I'm a Goldman, who was another advocate of
Speaker 1: revolutionary armed struggle, who supported her comrade Alexander Berkman's assassinated
Speaker 1: wealthy industrialist who believed in free love, which really resonated
Speaker 1: with Ballagoon. Because I'm not sure if I mentioned it
Speaker 1: in the previous part or not, but Ballagoon was an
Speaker 1: openly bisexual man in the nineteen seventies, nineteen sixties and
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies, and so that equipment of free love that
Speaker 1: Emma Goldman had really resonates with him. Balagun also recognized
Speaker 1: and continues to recognize, that black people in the United
Speaker 1: States were an into colony of the US, and so
Speaker 1: the Black liberation struggled as a national liberation movement, so
Speaker 1: began to identify with the New African independence movement. The
Speaker 1: Provisional Government of the Republic of New Africa the PGRNA,
Speaker 1: was founded in nineteen sixty eight March nineteen sixty eight
Speaker 1: at a conference of five hundred Black nationalists who declared
Speaker 1: that independence from the US and demanded five states in
Speaker 1: the Deep South South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana
Speaker 1: as reparations for the enslavement and racial oppression of black people.
Speaker 1: New Africa was designated the name of this new free nation,
Speaker 1: and at this time Balagun began to ideologically unite the
Speaker 1: political objective of the PGRNA for Independence um and and
Speaker 1: took on New African as his national identity. As he says,
Speaker 1: the US has no right to confine in New African
Speaker 1: people to read lined reservations, and we have a right
Speaker 1: to live on our own terms, on our common land,
Speaker 1: and to govern ourselves free of occupational forces such as
Speaker 1: the police, national Guard or gis that have invaded our
Speaker 1: colonies from time to time. We have a right to
Speaker 1: control our own economy, print our own money, trade and
Speaker 1: other nations trade with other nations. We have a right
Speaker 1: to control our education institutions and systems where children will
Speaker 1: not be indoctrinated by aliens to suffer the destructive designs
Speaker 1: of the US government. His position for black self determination
Speaker 1: was also combined with an anti capitalist perspective, the New
Speaker 1: Africans would enter workforce within our excluded by design, and
Speaker 1: we have the wages are not controlled by the ruling
Speaker 1: class and their wealth. And so I think this distinct
Speaker 1: self expression is very important because it was a key
Speaker 1: aspect of his political journey and how he saw himself.
Speaker 1: UM the AFROC futurest Abolitionists to the Americas, which is
Speaker 1: a black an archaic radical collective based in the US.
Speaker 1: UM they coined the term I believe Black an archaic
Speaker 1: radical in order to group and account for the different
Speaker 1: an archaic identity is that that black people have have
Speaker 1: identified us. So you have Anakata's, you have Black anarchists,
Speaker 1: you have New African anarchists, and then people who just
Speaker 1: go by bars and so at this time I think
Speaker 1: UM as a New African anarchist. Blaguna was definitely ideologically
Speaker 1: set apart from the black Marxist Leninists and revolutionary nationalists
Speaker 1: of the time, who wants to see state power for
Speaker 1: the from the white power structure of the US. And
Speaker 1: he still desired, you know, a land for black people
Speaker 1: to achieve self determination. Even as an anarchist, you wanted
Speaker 1: a space for black people to build a society based
Speaker 1: on antithoritarianism and freedom. I believe he was really unique
Speaker 1: at that time and not for God. Like other bars.
Speaker 1: He also recognized the importance of national liberation. Like Ashanti Alliston,
Speaker 1: he began to recruit soldiers for the Black Liberation Army
Speaker 1: and converts of anti authoritarian a New African politics. While
Speaker 1: in Trenton State Prison and New Jersey, he formed a
Speaker 1: political study group with Black Liberation Army members and Black
Speaker 1: Panther Party members and started to shift their perspectives on
Speaker 1: antithithoritarian politics and so that political education behind bars became
Speaker 1: the main vehicle of recruitment into the b l A.
Speaker 1: Another member of the b l A was a jury
Speaker 1: until another fairly, I would say somewhat obscure. We're still
Speaker 1: like conic black anarchists. And when he was providing his
Speaker 1: testimony concerning Blagoon's influence and his transition from Marxist Leninism
Speaker 1: to anti authoritarian thinking, he said, I became disillusioned with
Speaker 1: Marxism and became an anarchist thanks to Quasi bo Lagoon.
Speaker 1: Due to the inactiveness and ineffectiveness is Marxist Leninism in
Speaker 1: community in our communities along with the repressive bureaucracy that
Speaker 1: came with it. People are not going to commit themselves
Speaker 1: to a life and death struggle just because of grand
Speaker 1: ideas someone might have fluts around their heads. A few
Speaker 1: people commit themselves to a struggle if they can see
Speaker 1: progress being made, similar to the progress of anarchist collectors
Speaker 1: in Spain during the era of the Fascists. Like his
Speaker 1: teacher and comrade Jor Lutalo identified himself as a New
Speaker 1: African anarchist. Prison of war, Balagon would escape again from
Speaker 1: Railway State Prison, New Jersey and Maine and rejoined a
Speaker 1: clandestine network of the l A Soldiers in alliance with
Speaker 1: white radicals in solarities of Black Liberation movement. This ideologically
Speaker 1: diverse network of insurgent militants were known as the revolution
Speaker 1: Armed Task Force or r A t F. And so
Speaker 1: it's a strategic alliance under leadership of the Black Liberation
Speaker 1: Army that consists of people of all sorts of different identities.
Speaker 1: You had Muslims and revolutionary nationalists and anti imperialists and communists,
Speaker 1: and b. Lagoon was one of the few, if not
Speaker 1: the only, anarchists in this whole organization and so even
Speaker 1: though he was critical of Marxism and nationalism, he decided
Speaker 1: to join the comrades he loved and trusted in a
Speaker 1: common front against white supremacy, capitalism and imperialism. Me personally, um,
Speaker 1: and I have a video of my YouTube channel about it.
Speaker 1: I am not a left unity advocate, never have been. However,
Speaker 1: like I said in the video, um, you know there's
Speaker 1: still solidarity to be had on some topics, and sidness
Speaker 1: use and an important aspect, an important component of solidarity.
Speaker 1: His trust and to Bilagon clearly had trust in these
Speaker 1: comrades in order to work with them. You know, it
Speaker 1: can't just be this broad sweeping thing and say, oh,
Speaker 1: well's unity solidarity, unity solidarity, and there's nothing to back
Speaker 1: it up. There's new sort of connections or bonds to
Speaker 1: show for it. And of course he did have you know,
Speaker 1: political friction while in the R T R A T
Speaker 1: F his comrades. He saw his commerades is a bit rigid,
Speaker 1: a bit too rigid in their views. While he considered
Speaker 1: himself a free spirit and his comrades, despite the ideological
Speaker 1: differences and its sexual orientation, still respected him because of
Speaker 1: his commitment revolutionary struggle, because his history of sacrifices, and
Speaker 1: so the Black Liberation Army and the r A t
Speaker 1: F continue to carry out the condis signed work of
Speaker 1: armed propaganda, of expropriations of resources for capitalists, financial institutions
Speaker 1: for assisting comrades, and escape and from incarceration. At this time,
Speaker 1: there was an increase in white supremacist parlam military activity,
Speaker 1: including the goo klux Klan, including the KKK, and so
Speaker 1: the r A t F as an alliance helped to
Speaker 1: the whites in that organization, helped to gather intelligence on
Speaker 1: these right wing white terms its activities and their connections
Speaker 1: with the U. S. Military. While they also engaged in
Speaker 1: expropriations to obtain resources, they could build a capacity to
Speaker 1: resist the white supremacist groups because these vold acts that
Speaker 1: the KKK and these other riping groups are doing in
Speaker 1: the late Land in seventies in early nineties, they were
Speaker 1: murdering black children, black youth in Atlanta, black women in
Speaker 1: Boston and an Alabama, and so they were committed and
Speaker 1: organized and doing something about it. Militant commit month to
Speaker 1: doing something about it. The r t F also um
Speaker 1: we're involved with the escape of a Stata Shaker one
Speaker 1: of the most iconic of the Panthers and also the
Speaker 1: attempted Brings expropriation in Nyack, New York. Shaker was wounded
Speaker 1: and paralyzed from a shootout that they had with the
Speaker 1: New Jersey State Troopers and had to escape the scene,
Speaker 1: and as a someone considered the soul of the b
Speaker 1: l A by the FBI, her capture was seen as
Speaker 1: a very significant event, and even though she never fired
Speaker 1: a gun, even though she was paralyzed, she was convicted
Speaker 1: for the murder of two state troopers who were killed
Speaker 1: in the shootout, and so she was sentenced to life
Speaker 1: plus sixty five years. However, odinga Blagoon and two White
Speaker 1: Allies as a armed group facility the escape of Shaker
Speaker 1: from Clinton Correctional Institution Wooman in New Jersey on November two,
Speaker 1: n and I believe she's still in Cuba to this day.
Speaker 1: At the same time, the Vactorbriation Army was also trying
Speaker 1: to expropriate one point six a million dollars from a
Speaker 1: Brinx armed truck in New York City in October, and
Speaker 1: in the exchange of fire that resulted from that attempt,
Speaker 1: one Brings security and two police officers were killed and
Speaker 1: three white radicals and one black man we're also captured eventually,
Speaker 1: although he was laying loo in New York City in
Speaker 1: the Manhattan apartment, the Joint Terrorist Task Force did eventually
Speaker 1: apprehend Baldagoon and so once again he found himself in prison.
Speaker 1: But they did managed to successfully expropriate some fronts from
Speaker 1: financial institutions going back to nine and those funds that
Speaker 1: they were able to take were usually as to support
Speaker 1: the development of an underground infrastructure, to support families to
Speaker 1: political prisoners, to support political activities institutions for the Black
Speaker 1: liberation movement and general freedom struggles on the African continent,
Speaker 1: that is solidarity. After his capture as a New African
Speaker 1: anarchist prisoner of war for the the Good Time who
Speaker 1: as he spoke out to the movement for the first
Speaker 1: time again identify himself as a New African anarchist, he
Speaker 1: spoke to the public about his politics and I wanted
Speaker 1: to make his attentions clear. He acted as his own
Speaker 1: attorney in the Rockland County trial where he was charged
Speaker 1: with the armed robbery and the murders of the brins
Speaker 1: Garden police officers. And so you want to make an
Speaker 1: opening statement, and so it went as follows, I am
Speaker 1: a prisoner of war. I retract the crap about me
Speaker 1: being a defendant, and I don't recognize legitimacy of this court.
Speaker 1: The term defendant applies to someone involved in a criminal matter.
Speaker 1: It is clear that I've been a part of the
Speaker 1: Black liberation movement all of my adult life, and I've
Speaker 1: been involved in a war against the American imperialist You know,
Speaker 1: it's a free New African people from its yoke. He
Speaker 1: wanted it acknowledged that his armed actions are politically motivated
Speaker 1: to win national liberation, to eliminate capitalism, imperialism and ultimately
Speaker 1: authoritarian forms of government. And of course he was sentenced
Speaker 1: to life imprisonments. Yeah. He continued to speak to New
Speaker 1: African and Black liberation forces and two anarchists gathering through
Speaker 1: public skate statements. He advocated continuously for the building of
Speaker 1: an insurgent movement of building over tournaments communities at a
Speaker 1: hall and rally for imprison New African freedom writers. The
Speaker 1: statement was read that we must build a revolutionary political
Speaker 1: platform and a universal network of survival programs. In another statement,
Speaker 1: he said, where we live and work, we must organize
Speaker 1: on the ground level the landlords once we contested through
Speaker 1: round strikes, and rather than develop strategies to pay rent,
Speaker 1: we should develop strategies to take the buildings, set up
Speaker 1: communes and abandoned buildings to vacant lots into gardens. When
Speaker 1: our children grow out of clothes, we should have places
Speaker 1: we can take them, clearly marked anarchists clothing exchanges. We
Speaker 1: must learn construction and waste take back our lives. He
Speaker 1: wanted to challenge people to move from a theory into practice,
Speaker 1: to define in anarchy in the real will, to show
Speaker 1: the masses models of delivering water oppressors and of building
Speaker 1: a better way of life. Unfortunately, although he struggled long
Speaker 1: in prison and continuously advocated for the Black liberation movement
Speaker 1: for the anarchist movement, he died in prison on December
Speaker 1: thwote due to complications related to AIDS. So, although he's
Speaker 1: not a main extreme discourse, he's still recognized and respected
Speaker 1: in some blaque New African anarchists and queer anarchist spaces
Speaker 1: um because of his efforts in that time, because of
Speaker 1: his self identity in that time. I spoke about him
Speaker 1: briefly in my video and Black anarchism. The research five
Speaker 1: videos how it is covered in the first place. And
Speaker 1: I was surprised that he wasn't spoken about so much,
Speaker 1: considering his influence and his efforts and his She was
Speaker 1: almost like, and I hate to do this to history,
Speaker 1: to do this kind of great man things history. But
Speaker 1: the fan was like a main character. Yeah, Like he
Speaker 1: was there for the New York Plant, the twenty one Trials,
Speaker 1: he was like dropping rats and Congress. He was facility
Speaker 1: in the escape of a Sata sacre for crying out loud.
Speaker 1: He did so much in his short boost of freedom. Um,
Speaker 1: and I can't help but respect that he stood out
Speaker 1: most places he went, and I can't help but admire that.
Speaker 1: In two thousand five, the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, which
Speaker 1: is a new African activist organization, declared its annual Black
Speaker 1: Orcus Celebration dedicated to Quasi par Lagoon, and they in
Speaker 1: that celebration they also iighlighted the needful awareness of the
Speaker 1: AIDS virus and Africa and among the African aspiral. A
Speaker 1: couple of radical hip hop artists, such as Dead Prayers
Speaker 1: Inside Malik, have also mentioned bo Lagoon's name, but his
Speaker 1: name is still not commonly used enough, not as much
Speaker 1: as other Black revolutionaries like Hue and Shaker and Mutulu Shaker.
Speaker 1: Anarchist collectives have also recognized him, have republished his works
Speaker 1: um have you know, but his his his writings and
Speaker 1: newsletters and his trial statements and tributes, and yet he's
Speaker 1: still not well recognized. The Quebec collective Solarity is you
Speaker 1: have collected works of Lagoon's trial statements, essays, poetry and
Speaker 1: acknowledgements from Comrades titled A Soldier's Story, which you can
Speaker 1: find on the Anarchist Library, And in fact, that soldiers
Speaker 1: story is where I drew from for uh the script
Speaker 1: for this two part podcast episode. I think that his
Speaker 1: efforts and not even to mention his actual identity, being
Speaker 1: a vehicle to challenge homophobia within the broader black liberation movement,
Speaker 1: because he showed himself to be committed to the cause
Speaker 1: and he exposed people who may not have otherwise been
Speaker 1: exposed to it, you know, the validity and the humanity
Speaker 1: in Aquare Comrades. He will forever remain remembered and saluted
Speaker 1: by certain revolutionary nationalists around cilanarchists and qualiberation forces. He
Speaker 1: will forever be seen to me as an iconic roun
Speaker 1: and I don't only who hope that this podcast helps
Speaker 1: his legacy to live on and encourages and motivates and
Speaker 1: strengthens the resolve of people too, Wogan and suppressed people
Speaker 1: to build a revolutionary program to challenge capitalism, to challenge racism,
Speaker 1: wherever they find themselves the master their circumstances. And that's
Speaker 1: about it. This has been a soldier's story, the life
Speaker 1: and legacy of Quasi Ba Lagoon. I'm your guest toes
Speaker 1: for this episode. If it could happen here Andrew of
Speaker 1: the YouTube channel Andreism. You can find your on YouTube
Speaker 1: dot com slash Andurism, on theatre dot com Slash sat
Speaker 1: Drew and onter com slash Underscore. Same true. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: this has been It can happen here. You can find
Speaker 1: us that happened here, pot on Twitter, Instagram, there's other
Speaker 1: close and stuff you can find that too. And yeah,
Speaker 1: I dedicate your life to over throwing capitalism and imperialism.
Speaker 1: Well power to all the people. It's it's it's it
Speaker 1: could happen here the podcast. The thing that's happening here
Speaker 1: is that once again, like a bunch of random American
Speaker 1: politicians are going in Taiwan, and this time they didn't
Speaker 1: announced they were going, apparently because announcing they were going
Speaker 1: last time went great. So yeah, this is this is,
Speaker 1: this is what we're talking about today, and with with
Speaker 1: me is James. Hello, James, how you How you doing
Speaker 1: all right? I'm wonderful and I'm splendid. Oh okay, So
Speaker 1: we have to talk about Taiwan. And I think like
Speaker 1: people who've listened to me on this show for a
Speaker 1: while know that, like, so like, okay, a lot of
Speaker 1: my family some Taiwan I don't like talking about Taiwan
Speaker 1: very much. Um I I think I've talked about Taiwanese
Speaker 1: politics and detail exactly once on this show when I
Speaker 1: was forced to for the Iguana Woods shooting, and like,
Speaker 1: I would really prefer not to, Like, it's not something
Speaker 1: I particularly enjoy talking about, which is you know, a
Speaker 1: big part about what we haven't, But unfortunately I can't
Speaker 1: continue not to talk about it because the American left,
Speaker 1: and and this is true of not just the American institutes,
Speaker 1: the British sloft, this is true of the left kind
Speaker 1: of writ large is being systematically lied to about Taiwan
Speaker 1: by a group of incredibly malicious nationalists who are attempting
Speaker 1: to rally support for their like incredibly violent and bizarre
Speaker 1: imperial delusions, and unfortunately it's working. So I'm and instead
Speaker 1: of that, I'm going to give what I'm gonna call
Speaker 1: Taiwan one oh one, and I'm calling it tai Wan
Speaker 1: one on one, even though this is going to be
Speaker 1: like an hour long, because this is as far as
Speaker 1: I could cut this whole thing down, Like, Taiwanese politics
Speaker 1: is genuinely complicated, as part of the reason I don't
Speaker 1: like talking about at it and at people who are
Speaker 1: giving you simple answers to what's happening in Taiwan are
Speaker 1: lying to you. This is the best I can do,
Speaker 1: and it this is this is like the length of
Speaker 1: a Battels episode. So nice, I'm excited. Yeah, So well,
Speaker 1: welcome to tai Won one on one. Um. The beginning
Speaker 1: of Tie one one on one is that Taiwan is
Speaker 1: a series of islands off the coast of China. And yes,
Speaker 1: there are a bunch of islands. Nobody talks about this
Speaker 1: like because again, the people who talk about Taiwan like
Speaker 1: couldn't find their own ass on a map, so you know,
Speaker 1: there there, there, there's a bunch of islands. There's one
Speaker 1: big one that there's several like a lot of smaller ones. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: one of the sort of fundamental principles of not just
Speaker 1: being on the left, but like being a decent person
Speaker 1: is self determination. And you know, self determination on on
Speaker 1: a very basic level is that people have the right
Speaker 1: to choose how they want to live, and in a
Speaker 1: more immediate political context, they have the right to choose
Speaker 1: how they want to organize their governments and who they
Speaker 1: do and don't want to be ruled by. So okay, well,
Speaker 1: what are the actual numbers in Taiwan? Say, well, okay,
Speaker 1: we we we have recent pulling from the National Chung
Speaker 1: Chi University's elect Election Studies Center which says that a
Speaker 1: grand total of six point six percent of Taiwan's population
Speaker 1: wants unification with China. The overwhelming majority of people in
Speaker 1: Taiwan eight want to just maintain the status quo, which, yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess I said. So the status quo right now
Speaker 1: is that like China claims that it is the sole
Speaker 1: legitimate government of Taiwan. UM, Taiwan like technically legally claims
Speaker 1: that they are the sole legitimate government China. Nobody actually
Speaker 1: believes that anymore. Like, if if you scoured the entirety
Speaker 1: of Taiwan, you might find six dudes in a bunker
Speaker 1: who still believe that, like they're the real government of Tchina. Like,
Speaker 1: the actual status quo is that Taiwan is basically de
Speaker 1: fact is like this, Taiwan is de factoway self governing
Speaker 1: policy that has elections and stuff, And yeah, everyone gets
Speaker 1: incredibly mad about this. Most people want to preserve the
Speaker 1: status quo. Um inside of the people who want to
Speaker 1: maintain the status quo, you have, you know, it's like
Speaker 1: like basically for for three different options. Basically, so there's
Speaker 1: very similar numbers of people who either want to like
Speaker 1: decide the formal status of Taiwan, like is an independent
Speaker 1: country as a part of China that if you want
Speaker 1: to kick it down the road. Some of them want
Speaker 1: to keep the status quo indefinitely, and some of them
Speaker 1: want to move towards full independence like later on. But
Speaker 1: overwhelmingly what people want in Taiwan is for nothing to happen. Now,
Speaker 1: if this were a saying in rational world, that would
Speaker 1: be the end of the episode, right, Taiwan doesn't want
Speaker 1: to be ruled by China, Like okay, well that's okay,
Speaker 1: that's the right, they have the right self determination. That's it,
Speaker 1: case closed, end of story. It literally doesn't matter what
Speaker 1: the Chinese government thinks about whether it's should control Taiwan
Speaker 1: because again, Taiwan doesn't want to be rolled by China.
Speaker 1: And because a British person, I maybe I maybe you
Speaker 1: ought to like not contribute further to that discussion. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, and I mean, you know, there's
Speaker 1: there's there's this whole thing that exists right where when
Speaker 1: when you when you force your role on another population,
Speaker 1: it is called imperialism considered to be bad and anyway
Speaker 1: and everything is it's still bad even if everyone inside
Speaker 1: the imperial power thinks that it's good. Like if every
Speaker 1: person in the US suddenly decided tomorrow but they wanted
Speaker 1: to invade Cuba, like, it wouldn't make it morally right
Speaker 1: because people in Cuba don't want to people by the US,
Speaker 1: which we've done before. But it's true. Yeah, this is
Speaker 1: partially why I picked Cuba as example, because we really
Speaker 1: we did this, We we really did like kill an
Speaker 1: enormous number of people trying did yeah, based on both
Speaker 1: ship that people made up and portrayed as news, that
Speaker 1: was the best speculation. Yeah. But you know, as we
Speaker 1: can tell by the fact that the U. S Has
Speaker 1: invaded Cuba, we do not live in a saying irrational.
Speaker 1: We live in hell. And this means that I have
Speaker 1: a talk about a bunch of just absolutely bullshit arguments
Speaker 1: that a bunch of nationalist dip ships made up justify imperialism.
Speaker 1: So all right, this is where we start going into
Speaker 1: Taiwanese history. Um So, the starting point of any actual
Speaker 1: history of Taiwan that's worth a single ship is Taiwan's
Speaker 1: indigenous population. And it is incredibly important to understand from
Speaker 1: the outset. The indigenous population of Taiwan is not Chinese.
Speaker 1: They are not ethnically Chinese, they are not linguistically Chinese,
Speaker 1: they are not culturally Chinese. They are not any of
Speaker 1: these things. But literally any definition of the word Chinese,
Speaker 1: you can imagine they are not Chinese. Um this, this population,
Speaker 1: this indigenous population is austron Nesian. It's it's an Austronesian
Speaker 1: people are population stretches basically from like it's it's an
Speaker 1: enormous screw of people across specific stretches from like Madagascar
Speaker 1: all the way to like Hawaii, and that that that
Speaker 1: those are the people who who who who live on
Speaker 1: Taiwan and have lived on Taiwan for six thousand years.
Speaker 1: And you know, if if you read like CCP accounts
Speaker 1: of Taiwanese history, right, you'll see them they they won't
Speaker 1: talk about the fact that there again there's been an
Speaker 1: indigenous population that has lived in Taiwan for six thousand years. Um,
Speaker 1: what you'll see references to you are like in like
Speaker 1: the Suiti and like Sung dynasties, people like sent troops
Speaker 1: to Taiwan, and then the people will be like, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: no they they they they they governed Taiwan and they
Speaker 1: ruled it. It was a part of China and like
Speaker 1: ancient times, like this is all bullshit. Like basically what
Speaker 1: would happen is periodically, every like a few hundred years,
Speaker 1: some Chinese leader would be like we should send some
Speaker 1: people to that island and they went there and we're
Speaker 1: like this sucks, and they all left, but you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: and and and and you know, like okay, so like
Speaker 1: these guys they're like okay, this thing, this thing sucks.
Speaker 1: They leave and the indigenous population continues going like you know,
Speaker 1: goes back to dude, like their normal thing, right, Like
Speaker 1: this is the the the actual history of who has
Speaker 1: controlled Taiwan for almost this entire history is that it
Speaker 1: was controlled by sutigenous population. But in in sixteen twenty four,
Speaker 1: colonial powers start getting more involved and the Dutch sees
Speaker 1: control of Taiwan. Well, okay, so the Dutch taking most
Speaker 1: of Taiwan. There's a part of Taiwan in the north
Speaker 1: that's ruled about the Spanish, and they do like a
Speaker 1: bunch of just like horrible, like unspeakable crimes to the
Speaker 1: indigenous population before they ran out by like basically like
Speaker 1: a fragment of the dying like Chinese Ming dynasty. And
Speaker 1: so yeah, so in two this guy whose name okay, so,
Speaker 1: she has like a name that he's known by in
Speaker 1: the West that I genuinely have no idea how to pronounce,
Speaker 1: because this the name that he's known by in the West,
Speaker 1: I think is a Dutch translation of his title and
Speaker 1: not like his name his baffling I okay, Like, I
Speaker 1: think the Mandarin version of his title is something like
Speaker 1: shingy h. The Dutch somehow turned that into what I'm
Speaker 1: going to interpret as coachinga like it's baffling, it's a
Speaker 1: make any sense. Their transliteration is is nonsense. But yeah,
Speaker 1: So there's this guy. You'll you'll see you'll see his
Speaker 1: name written as like coaching u um, and he's described
Speaker 1: alternately as sort of like you know, You'll see some
Speaker 1: descriptions of him, which will be like he is a
Speaker 1: loyalist ming general um and that's kind of true, like
Speaker 1: sort of. You will also see descriptions of him that
Speaker 1: call him a pirate warlord, which is like also true.
Speaker 1: And you will also see nationalists like Chinese nationalist celebrate
Speaker 1: him as like an anti colonial hero and call him
Speaker 1: like running out the Dutchess like the liberation of Taiwan
Speaker 1: and like that's not true, um, like, which this is
Speaker 1: not true, Like I've I've I've seen people like from
Speaker 1: Taiwan like who do stuff with the digenospopulation like I've
Speaker 1: I've seen them call I've seen them call him by
Speaker 1: Taiwan's Christopher Columbus. So this is how this is going. Um. Wait,
Speaker 1: so we're saying that changing from one colonial power to
Speaker 1: another it is not liberation. No, it turns out and fascinating. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can tell it's not that not liberation because you know,
Speaker 1: like a lot of people like actually, like you know,
Speaker 1: do believe that, like, hey, it's gonna be less bad
Speaker 1: for us under this guy than it is going to
Speaker 1: be on for the Dutch. It is kind of less bad.
Speaker 1: Like there are a bunch of indigenous people who go
Speaker 1: who fight with uh coaching gun like you know, and
Speaker 1: he he helps they helped him defeat the Dutch. But
Speaker 1: what what he does instead of like you know, freeing
Speaker 1: the people there is he maintains the Dutch colonial system
Speaker 1: while basically just seizing Taiwan to run his court from
Speaker 1: and you know, like Dutch colonial rule. Okay, so like
Speaker 1: Dutch colonial rule is over, but what if we're placed
Speaker 1: by is the rule of an independent pirate warlord state.
Speaker 1: It sounds fun, I mean, it kind of is, like
Speaker 1: I mean, there's this whole so okay. So the kind
Speaker 1: of background of this is that, like the Hunters, the
Speaker 1: Mean Dynasty is falling apart. The Mean Dynasty had ruled
Speaker 1: China since they ever threw the Mongols basically, and but
Speaker 1: like they're they're imploding. There's a bunch of revolutions going on.
Speaker 1: There they are in the process of getting eventually getting
Speaker 1: knocked off by um the Ching dynasty, who a group
Speaker 1: of people from Manchuria who we will be getting to
Speaker 1: in a second. Yeah, this guy is like technically a
Speaker 1: main general, but he's sort of not and he's he's
Speaker 1: doing this sort of pilot warlord stuff. But then he
Speaker 1: like he sets up like his own dynasty, like very
Speaker 1: short lived dynasty there. And this is the first time
Speaker 1: that there's been like actual political control of Taiwan by
Speaker 1: any kind of Chinese entity, right like the like the
Speaker 1: weird dipshit armies that like China was sending in like
Speaker 1: the Song dynasty, Like they don't they don't actually like
Speaker 1: set up a government, right, Like they're just kind of
Speaker 1: there forbid they leave. This is the first time like
Speaker 1: they actually conquered the island and rule it as like
Speaker 1: a political enger. And even then it's kind of a
Speaker 1: half as conquest, like there's a lot of places they
Speaker 1: kind of just like they're just like, yeah, okay, we're
Speaker 1: just not gonna bother with this. But yeah, and you know, again,
Speaker 1: like this is the first time this has happened, and
Speaker 1: it's not like the Chinese state, right it's a pirate,
Speaker 1: wal Mart and his descendants get like knocked off by
Speaker 1: the Chain dynasty in sixteen three, and this is the
Speaker 1: first time like a real Chinese government has controlled Taiwan
Speaker 1: um because bye bye bye bye bye. Sixteen eighty three,
Speaker 1: the dynasty has finished taking overall of China or all
Speaker 1: all of what used to be like the main dynasty
Speaker 1: in China. And this is the period that Chinese nationals
Speaker 1: appoint to and say like no, no, no, really really
Speaker 1: hold on, hold on, uh, Taiwan actually is part of
Speaker 1: China because we conquered it in like sixteen eighty three,
Speaker 1: which you know, okay, yeah, yeah, this is this is
Speaker 1: a part of Taiwan's China's ancient times. Yeah that this
Speaker 1: place we conquered in sixteen eighty three, which ignores also
Speaker 1: again the previous five thousand, four hundred years where Taiwan
Speaker 1: was rule by the insdigenous people. It's it's baffling nationalist
Speaker 1: brain words stuff, yep. That has worked historically for other
Speaker 1: countries not to be this one and the one I'm from.
Speaker 1: But make it right. Yeah, well, and then you'll you'll
Speaker 1: get people arguing this is like well, how like like
Speaker 1: how how is this different? From the U S. It's like, well,
Speaker 1: here's the thing. I am a leftist and I am
Speaker 1: capable of understanding the multiple things can be bad at
Speaker 1: the same time, especially when they're bad in the same way.
Speaker 1: Like wow, hey, maybe these are all settler qualities. We
Speaker 1: should destroy them, Okay, But we should actually talk about
Speaker 1: the Chin dynasty a bit, because a lot of what
Speaker 1: Chinese nationalism draws from is the sort of imperial expansion
Speaker 1: of the Chin Chinese. Even though the Ching are the
Speaker 1: Ching are not like a Han Chinese dynasty. Um, they're
Speaker 1: like ethnically they're from a different ethnic group. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's said, it's it's the like the the
Speaker 1: Ching dynasty is a Manchou dynasty ruled by the people
Speaker 1: like the Manchin cendamnentaria. But I think like insofar as
Speaker 1: people think about the Chin dynasty, they tend to think
Speaker 1: about like the Late Chain dynasty Like this is like,
Speaker 1: you know, like the eight hundred Chang dynasty is a disaster, right,
Speaker 1: Like they lose the Opium Wars, they could beat by Japan.
Speaker 1: This is the whole sort of century humiliation thing has
Speaker 1: a lot to do with like Ching imperial decline. But
Speaker 1: you know that that's like the eighteen hundreds Chin, the
Speaker 1: seventeen hundreds change actually in the sixty cent unders Chang
Speaker 1: is an incredibly dynamic and you know, incredibly militant and
Speaker 1: expansionist empire. Um here, here's I'm gonna I'm gonna read
Speaker 1: a passage from the book Taiwan's Imagine Geographies. Having annexed
Speaker 1: Taiwan in sixteen eighty four, the Ching turned its attention
Speaker 1: to Central Asia, pacifying quote quote unquote pacifying the Mongols,
Speaker 1: and bringing eastern Turkistan and lass of the capital of
Speaker 1: Tibet under Chin rule. The Ching further expanded its control
Speaker 1: in south and southwest China, subjugating various non Chinese peoples.
Speaker 1: Of this reason to Ching domination at its height in
Speaker 1: the eighteenth century, Ching influence extended into Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, Burman, Nepal,
Speaker 1: all of which came under the suicerenity of the Empire.
Speaker 1: By eighteen sixty, the Ching had achieved the incredible feat
Speaker 1: of doubling the size of the empire's territory, bringing various
Speaker 1: non Chinese frontier people under its rule. The impact of
Speaker 1: changing expansionism was thus was thus tremendous as the chain
Speaker 1: not only redefined the territorial boundaries of China, but also
Speaker 1: refashioned China as a multi ethnic realm as a multi
Speaker 1: ethnic realm, shifting the traditional border between Chinese Hua and
Speaker 1: Barbarian Ye. In doing so, the Ching created an image
Speaker 1: of China that is vastly different from that of the Ming.
Speaker 1: And I think I think it's really important to understand
Speaker 1: what kinds of empire this is, which is to say
Speaker 1: that the Change dynasty is an incredibly brutal colonial power
Speaker 1: even like by the standards of like that's like, you know, okay,
Speaker 1: like all of all, like the all the the okay,
Speaker 1: Chinese dynastic history is not pretty right, like this is
Speaker 1: you know, it's an empire, right, it's an empire. It's
Speaker 1: ruled by an emperor. It kind of sucks, like it's
Speaker 1: not it's not good per se. But like even by
Speaker 1: the standards of Chinaina Qing are incredibly militants, an incredibly
Speaker 1: expansionist um. For example, like shing Jong, which which is
Speaker 1: a province that the Ching conquered, so it used to
Speaker 1: be inhabited by a Mongol speaking people until the Ching
Speaker 1: just exterterminated them all and settled the entire land with
Speaker 1: with Han and weaker like I think groups, and you know,
Speaker 1: this history points to something that's important to understand what
Speaker 1: we talk about China, Taiwan in the U S. Which
Speaker 1: is that what we're talking about is three settler qualities.
Speaker 1: And I think people, you know, might be like, wait,
Speaker 1: what do you mean China's settler colony? And I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna read this passage from the book Sovereignty, Frontiers the Possibility,
Speaker 1: which is by Julia Evans, Anna Genevis, Alexander Riley, and
Speaker 1: Patrick Wolf. And and yes, that is that Patrick Wolf,
Speaker 1: who was like was basically the godfather of settler colonial
Speaker 1: studies and one of the most important like academics are
Speaker 1: trying of like in terms of like advancity, annalysis of cetera, colonialism,
Speaker 1: like the Palestinian conflict. Here's here here, here's what he
Speaker 1: has to say about China. And this is kind of
Speaker 1: a long passage, but like, I want to include an
Speaker 1: explanation of what settler colonialism is because I've kind of
Speaker 1: just been tossing it around analytically. The case of Palestine
Speaker 1: reveals that the relationship between the external and internal dimensions
Speaker 1: of sovereignty is not a priori but contingent. Settler colonization
Speaker 1: converts external into internal, rendering indigenous sovereignties either non existent
Speaker 1: or domesticated. Annexation does the same thing, only it is illegal.
Speaker 1: The difference again is sovereignty. To annex is to practice
Speaker 1: settler colonialism in sovereign territory. Thus, the frontier is aligned
Speaker 1: in time as well as in space. Spatially, the frontier
Speaker 1: two limits unconquered native territory. Temporally, it marks the conversion
Speaker 1: of outside into inside. It renders externality a thing of
Speaker 1: the past in the global conquest of settler colonialism. Therefore,
Speaker 1: the internal and external dimensions represent the state of play,
Speaker 1: quote unquote. The ultimate prize is state formation with internationally
Speaker 1: recognized territorial sovereignty. Once the settler takeover as complete, the
Speaker 1: native realm becomes a thing of the past, superseded and detoxified,
Speaker 1: reduced to persisting in the settler's terms. Since in the
Speaker 1: case of Palestine, this process remains incomplete, the situation can
Speaker 1: still go either or potentially any way. At the international
Speaker 1: a level. This uncertainty is reflected in the ambivalent status
Speaker 1: of Palace Indian sovereignty, which remains simultaneously both acknowledged and
Speaker 1: questioned locally, The stage involved in the resolution of such
Speaker 1: international uncertainties could not be higher. Tibet represents a case
Speaker 1: in point. Despite significant informal deference to Tibet's national separateness,
Speaker 1: its incorporation into the People's Republic of China is not
Speaker 1: seriously questioned. At the diplomatic level, Tibetan representation at the
Speaker 1: United Nations remains unimaginable. Yet even Tibetans might count their
Speaker 1: blessings when they compare their situation to that of Weakers, who,
Speaker 1: like them, are being officially colonized by Han settlers in
Speaker 1: the so called autonomous region called shing Jong, a Chinese
Speaker 1: appellation that could have been scripted in sixteenth century Europe.
Speaker 1: It means new land, being so much more firmly domesticated
Speaker 1: within the Chinese state. However, weaker sovereignty remains in vote
Speaker 1: from global concern. Now. Now obviously, okay, this is written
Speaker 1: before like shing Jong became like a global news store.
Speaker 1: And also I I I question wolves translation of the
Speaker 1: word a little bit, like I think, I think new
Speaker 1: Frontier is probably a slightly better translation. But yeah, like
Speaker 1: you can see what's at work here, right, Like wolves
Speaker 1: argument is that like yeah, like like China is running
Speaker 1: two settler qualities, like the internal status of which is
Speaker 1: like even more internationally fucked than like most other settler colonies,
Speaker 1: which is incredibly grim. Like yeah, I think we don't.
Speaker 1: I don't know why we were so we've been so
Speaker 1: slow to see selling colonialism and these contiguous empires like here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I think part of what's happening here, like
Speaker 1: you know, okay, Like I think there's sort of a
Speaker 1: different dynamic with looking at this with Russia, but I
Speaker 1: think with China, it's like people are just like it's
Speaker 1: really really hard to get people to understand that colonialism
Speaker 1: and imperialism are things that like not that like non
Speaker 1: white people can do, yes, and especially especially like this,
Speaker 1: you know. And I think it goes back to the
Speaker 1: sort of like Chan dynasy discussion, right, which is that like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, the like the way that people on the
Speaker 1: left understand the Ching dynasty is do the sort of
Speaker 1: nationalist lens looking at like and so they miss the
Speaker 1: whole part where they're doing all the settler colony stuff.
Speaker 1: But like what happens to them basically is that, like,
Speaker 1: you know, it's like they're there. It's kind of like
Speaker 1: the Ottomans, right, We're like their empire suddenly runs into
Speaker 1: like newer, better, more violence and more efficient empires. But
Speaker 1: like it doesn't mean that like they worked also empires.
Speaker 1: Like it's yeah, and then when people do work that
Speaker 1: out sometimes, like people and when we talk about like
Speaker 1: settler clonism in the US, sometimes like when folks have
Speaker 1: forced to retreat from the first position and that like
Speaker 1: that the US is not a settler quality, they will
Speaker 1: then fall back on, well, they're indigenous empires beforehand, as
Speaker 1: if that somehow justifies Yeah, it's like it does not right,
Speaker 1: and like you know, like and and I think it's
Speaker 1: the thing that tibet to where it's like, yeah, the
Speaker 1: pre existing Tibetan government was not good, Like I'm not
Speaker 1: I'm not going to defend like that government. It sucks.
Speaker 1: I I would also point out that the whole we're
Speaker 1: going to stop the slave trade thing is one of
Speaker 1: the things explicitly in in the in the Tree that
Speaker 1: Decide of the Conference of Berlin. That was the thing
Speaker 1: that they claimed that that like that that was the
Speaker 1: thing that the European powers claimed they were doing when
Speaker 1: they invaded Africa, so like when they split Africa, but
Speaker 1: between the Clune of Powers, so like you know, okay,
Speaker 1: I mean also it's you know this this is getting
Speaker 1: slightly off topic, but it's also worth noting that like
Speaker 1: there wasn't there was actually a communist movement like in
Speaker 1: Tibet that wasn't the CCP, and the CCP killed them all.
Speaker 1: So that's great and fun. That's never happened before with
Speaker 1: ttalitarian communist pass Yeah, it's it's gonna happen again. The
Speaker 1: sort of I think the stakes of what's happening here,
Speaker 1: I think become more clear when you understand that, like
Speaker 1: you like the US and trying to to like two
Speaker 1: different extents, right, like I don't know, like China has
Speaker 1: parts there, like there are parts of China where it's
Speaker 1: like very hard, like it's not a settler state. It's
Speaker 1: just like their states, but there are part of definitely
Speaker 1: are a settlers state. And there's the U S which
Speaker 1: is like entirely a settler state, and then Taiwan is
Speaker 1: also to a settler state, although it's like post independence
Speaker 1: Taiwan is at least violence of them, which is like
Speaker 1: not like a, I don't know, you're not winning much
Speaker 1: of a price by being less violent than China in
Speaker 1: the US, but like good count between those two. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but you know, but but but I think that this
Speaker 1: brings us back to like the Chin the Ching coccupation
Speaker 1: of Taiwan, which is that the Ching occupation of Taiwan
Speaker 1: is China's first like first new settler colony. The Ching
Speaker 1: administrators they divide the indigenous population into quote cooked and
Speaker 1: raw savages. Um that those are their words. That literally
Speaker 1: that's what they call them. Like it is why because
Speaker 1: they're really racist like this, this is like this, this
Speaker 1: is like a very old thing and sort of like
Speaker 1: sort of Chinese imperial discourse. Right, It's like you have
Speaker 1: the difference between like barbarians and like Chinese people and
Speaker 1: like savages and non savages like this this is like
Speaker 1: this is how these people think, right, and it's not good.
Speaker 1: Like I don't know, I don' don't know, like how
Speaker 1: many more ways I can like try to explain to
Speaker 1: people who are like who have been like like people
Speaker 1: have been like telling the Chinese nationalist stuff for so
Speaker 1: long that it's like this this also was not good,
Speaker 1: Like guys, and again it's something the US has done
Speaker 1: the UK. There's classic imperialism right now. We took about
Speaker 1: tribes in the US, racist in the British Empire. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm going to read a passage from Taiwan's imagine geography. Indeed,
Speaker 1: as ching writers began to construct the Taiwan indigenous as
Speaker 1: two distinct groups. Negative traits that have been formally associated
Speaker 1: with quote the Taiwan savages as a whole began to
Speaker 1: be mapped on the wild or raw savages. We're Earlier
Speaker 1: text claimed, for example, that the savages quote by nature
Speaker 1: like to kill or quote were or were quote stubborn
Speaker 1: and stupid. Now writers attributed these characteristics to the raw
Speaker 1: savages alone. Head Hunting, a notorious practice that the earlier
Speaker 1: the earliest sources had associated with the natives of Taiwan
Speaker 1: and other Pacific islands, also became also came to be
Speaker 1: seen as a raw savage practice. By the early eighteenth
Speaker 1: century travel writing, travel writers increasingly emphasized the violent and
Speaker 1: murderous behavior of the raw savages. The expansion of the
Speaker 1: Han Chinese population at this time caused an exhalation of
Speaker 1: conflict between Chinese settlers and the indigenous over land and
Speaker 1: other resources. Hostile indigitees were thus becoming a real threat
Speaker 1: to the safety of Han Chinese settlers. Although some writers
Speaker 1: blamed inter ethnic conflict on trouble making Han Chinese settlers,
Speaker 1: many Ching literati attributed the belligerous of the raw savages
Speaker 1: to the inherent bloodthirsty nature. So, yeah, it's it's real.
Speaker 1: It's real, it's real, classic empire ship like textbook shit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know, and you can see that there's this
Speaker 1: whole nationalist myth that like you'll read if you read
Speaker 1: modern people like talking about this, or they'll be like, oh,
Speaker 1: the indigenous population that Chinese government got along so great.
Speaker 1: It is completely bullshit. This is an incredibly racist settler state,
Speaker 1: and it stays an incredibly racist settler state when when
Speaker 1: the Japanese take over Taiwan and the Japanese occupation is
Speaker 1: even worse than the chain occupation of indigenous people in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways to real ship show there's a
Speaker 1: huge massacre that they do in the thirties. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: and and okay, we' just also mentioned at this point.
Speaker 1: So I've been focusing a lot on the the indigenous
Speaker 1: population because almost everyone who tells the story from all
Speaker 1: sides doesn't talk about them ever, because it's it's incredibly
Speaker 1: inconvenient to like everyone's narrative that there were people here
Speaker 1: for literally six thousand years, um. But you know, while
Speaker 1: basically since the Dutch showed up in the in the
Speaker 1: mid sixteen hundreds, UM, there have been like increasing numbers
Speaker 1: of Chinese settlers, and as as the Chin occupation sort
Speaker 1: of wears on, the number of Chinese settlers increases and
Speaker 1: increases increases, and it gets to the point where, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of close to like what we have today, where
Speaker 1: like the the indigenous population of Taiwan is like two
Speaker 1: percent of the population, and it's which is which is
Speaker 1: pretty close to what the indigenous population presenting the population
Speaker 1: of the US is for example. Yeah, and would make sorry,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to It's okay, Yeah, I'm going to
Speaker 1: talk about Elizabeth Warren. But god, you know, actually fucking
Speaker 1: I will talk about Elizabeth Warren in the middle of this,
Speaker 1: because yeah, because her her whole thing of like pretending
Speaker 1: to be indigenous was also fun because like she has
Speaker 1: a cookbook, and the cookbook yeah, yeah, that claims both
Speaker 1: her and her husband or indigenous. And then in that
Speaker 1: he's like maybe the most incomprehensible, awful like example of
Speaker 1: Chinese cooking every scene in my life, which apparently stole
Speaker 1: from like another cookbook. And it's really like just cascading
Speaker 1: levels of racism all the way down. It's oh god,
Speaker 1: it's fine, it's all fine. All the settler colonies are bad.
Speaker 1: Their politics are all also always bad because again, like
Speaker 1: being a settler colony inherently makes your politics awful because yeah,
Speaker 1: and representing yourself as an indigenous person to gain personal
Speaker 1: advantage in a settler colony when you are not one
Speaker 1: is ongoing active colonialism. Yeah, genuinely terrific stuff Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: don't do it. So having said that, so okay, we
Speaker 1: have to talk about the Han population. There's like different
Speaker 1: like subgroups of the Han population who are have different ethnicities,
Speaker 1: to speak different rates, like speak different languages because Han
Speaker 1: is like a very large sort of category, and like
Speaker 1: inside of Han Chinese there's like people who are Hawka.
Speaker 1: There's there's a whole bunch of different groups. Um, And
Speaker 1: I guess the one thing that's worth mentioning is that
Speaker 1: a lot of the like you'll hear people talk about
Speaker 1: Taiwanese as like its own language, and like that's like
Speaker 1: there there are a bunch of people who were Hanbu
Speaker 1: who don't speak Mandarin, and so like a lot of
Speaker 1: people in Taiwan speak Taiwanese, which is sort of like
Speaker 1: Hakka h ish Lang. Well, okay, what's what what's what's
Speaker 1: the most technically accurate with sagas it is a language
Speaker 1: that has developed on Taiwan, like in Taiwan by people
Speaker 1: who speak Kaka, and it's basically pretty close to that. Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: And we're not gonna get into super gradular detail about
Speaker 1: these ways of immigration, um, but basically, like one of
Speaker 1: the things that happens is that among these sort of
Speaker 1: han settlers, there becomes this sort of like Taiwanese identity
Speaker 1: of like them being Taiwanese, like specifically as a thing.
Speaker 1: And when when the Japanese lose World War Two, the
Speaker 1: Nationalist Party or the CAMT just like occupies Taiwan. But
Speaker 1: this is a real problem because again, most of the
Speaker 1: people don't want to be ruled by the CAMT because
Speaker 1: the KMT like absolutely suck. Um. If you want me
Speaker 1: to hear me, like go deeper into them, go listen
Speaker 1: to my bastard's episode in the World Anti Communist League. Uh.
Speaker 1: The short version is that the KMT is a genocidal
Speaker 1: like anti communist des squad party run by an organized
Speaker 1: crime outfit that's led by Shankai Check and you know,
Speaker 1: like they suck like really like absolutely horrible people. Um.
Speaker 1: And as the CAMT starts to lose a civil word
Speaker 1: of MAO like born more CAMT supporters not some people
Speaker 1: just like running from the war start fleeing in Taiwan,
Speaker 1: and this develops a mass like you get these massive
Speaker 1: tension between then people who had already been there and
Speaker 1: the KMT and they're sort of new supporters and their
Speaker 1: new sort of like settler immigrant population, and this boils
Speaker 1: over into what's called the February incident or the two
Speaker 1: eight incident. UM. Basically what happens so a CAMT cop
Speaker 1: like attacks a woman who was like selling cigarettes on
Speaker 1: the street illegally because the KMT, like I really also
Speaker 1: kept like they're so unbelievably corrupt and so like that
Speaker 1: they have all these like monopolies where it's like okay,
Speaker 1: like there's a guy who has like the opium monopoly
Speaker 1: or like a guy who has like the cigarette monopoly, right,
Speaker 1: and unless you're running through that monopoly, you can't sell
Speaker 1: like cigarettes. Yeah, and so in something that I think
Speaker 1: will be familiar to people who like, like have followed
Speaker 1: the number of people in the US who have been
Speaker 1: killed for uh. Yeah, so the cops start like beating
Speaker 1: this woman over the head with it with his pistol,
Speaker 1: and everyone around them gets incredibly piste off. And there's
Speaker 1: these giant protests, um, and the camp to your response
Speaker 1: to the protests by shooting into the crowd. And yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean so there's another side of this I should
Speaker 1: mention like briefly, which is that, like part of what's
Speaker 1: happening here is like there's a there's a kind of
Speaker 1: ugly like basically race riot that starts happening at the
Speaker 1: beginning of this where like people like the sort of
Speaker 1: like Cantonese population like starts just like attacking like any
Speaker 1: random like any random people from like the campt generation,
Speaker 1: just like they found on the street and start attacking
Speaker 1: LNG and like that sucks. Um. It is also just
Speaker 1: unbelievably less violent than what happens next, which is at
Speaker 1: the KMT Like well, okay, so so there there there's
Speaker 1: sort of this race, right I think, and then there's
Speaker 1: there's like there's a full scale revolution and the Taiwanese
Speaker 1: population like seizes control of base of like almost the
Speaker 1: entire island, like the entirety of the main island, and
Speaker 1: they start demanding like democratic rights and stuff like you know,
Speaker 1: a free press and free assembly and like the protection
Speaker 1: of the digitus population. Although I should also mention that
Speaker 1: like like nobody really inti one like treating digitus population
Speaker 1: will like it was bad enough, Like my seven year
Speaker 1: old mom was like, oh my god, why is everyone
Speaker 1: treating these people so badly? Like it's but you know, okay,
Speaker 1: So they do this thing, they have this revolution and
Speaker 1: then the KMT like just sends the army to the
Speaker 1: island and they killed something like twenty people in a week.
Speaker 1: Um like they are like they're they're cutting people's face
Speaker 1: like later like cutting parts of people's faces off with
Speaker 1: like nive Like it is unbelievably brutal. And this begins
Speaker 1: thirty eight years of martial law. UM. The subsequent CAMPTI
Speaker 1: police state tortures like tens of thousands of people in
Speaker 1: rules Taiwan with like an with an iron fist until
Speaker 1: like the late eighties and this is where things get
Speaker 1: really messy, right because up until nineteen forty two, like
Speaker 1: nobody in China like and and and this included both
Speaker 1: the CAMT and the CCP. Until actually forty two, neither
Speaker 1: of them actually claimed that Taiwan was part of China.
Speaker 1: But then in two both of them start claiming that
Speaker 1: that one is part of China. Yeah, and so when
Speaker 1: when when the KMT flees to Taiwan, both the CCP
Speaker 1: and the CAMT both claimed to be a legitimate government
Speaker 1: of China and be to be the legitimate government of Taiwan.
Speaker 1: And it's a disaster. Like the cam T is nuts,
Speaker 1: Like my again, like they made my like seven year
Speaker 1: old mom sing songs about how would they there? One day?
Speaker 1: They were going to reclaim the mother land? Like these
Speaker 1: people suck some of them still in myanma or maybe
Speaker 1: perhaps not now, but like I've heard from them from
Speaker 1: friends who are older who were there, that there are
Speaker 1: a bunch of cam TE like living in parts of
Speaker 1: me and Mari and tourist would go pay to visit them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like that's that's the thing, Like yeah, they're like they
Speaker 1: most of the people flee that flee to Taiwan. But
Speaker 1: like they break in a number of different directions, and
Speaker 1: there's like a bunch of weird rump states they set up,
Speaker 1: they get knocked off. Eventually, it's a it's a whole mess.
Speaker 1: But in Taiwan, like they have this problem, which is that, like, okay,
Speaker 1: so there's like water in between China and Taiwan, and
Speaker 1: if you want to get troops over it, you have
Speaker 1: to have those troops across the water. And this is
Speaker 1: a real problem for like an invasion. So what ends
Speaker 1: up happening is a series so like okay, so you
Speaker 1: have the cam T in the CCP like staring each
Speaker 1: other down across these islands, and the product of this
Speaker 1: is what's called the Three Taiwan Straits christ these so
Speaker 1: basically in the CCP starts sell shelling Taiwan between in
Speaker 1: the five starts shelling like Taiwan, and then they do
Speaker 1: it again at fifty eight and like the CAMT shelves
Speaker 1: them back, and you know, and there's a couple of
Speaker 1: points where it looks like they're going to invade, but
Speaker 1: then the US like move supplies to the KMT to
Speaker 1: like keep the c from invading, and you know the
Speaker 1: result of this is just like I think, incredibly psychologically
Speaker 1: revealing move after like the crisis, which crisis ends with
Speaker 1: the KMT and the CCP agreeing to shell each other
Speaker 1: on opposite days because and I cannot emphasize this enough,
Speaker 1: this entire conflict is profoundly bullshit and was foisted upon
Speaker 1: Taiwan by a bunch of pedley squabbling Chinese nationalists. How
Speaker 1: big is that distance we're talking about, Like they're sending
Speaker 1: shells over there in the fifties, so it's probably not vast. Well,
Speaker 1: part of what's happening is so it's it's a hundred miles,
Speaker 1: hundred ten miles. But what's happening year is like they're
Speaker 1: they're there. They basically like have set up on outposts
Speaker 1: in different islands in between, like the Big Island and uh,
Speaker 1: the shore, so that they're they're like they're on these
Speaker 1: islands shelling each other, like they drafted My grandpa and
Speaker 1: sent him to one of these places and that's and
Speaker 1: then he came back and was like, funk this, we're
Speaker 1: out and so like that that's where my family's in
Speaker 1: the US because he was like, we're not doing this
Speaker 1: ship again. This sucks. Yeah, It's like, I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: be I'm not gonna be cannon fodder for these like
Speaker 1: weird nationalist psychos. So okay, So what the sort of
Speaker 1: result of this, though, is that the KMT gets the
Speaker 1: backing of the US, and the KMT becomes in Taiwan
Speaker 1: is the like the legitimately internationally recognized government, um like
Speaker 1: of all of China from the end of the Civil
Speaker 1: War until like the seventies. Yeah right, yeah, yeah, how's
Speaker 1: the UN seat I actually we get we'll get into that,
Speaker 1: and you know what we were doing here. So one
Speaker 1: of the things that happens here is that, okay, so,
Speaker 1: like the US really really does not want the CCP
Speaker 1: to have the u n C. And what are the
Speaker 1: things they try to do is that they offer neighbors
Speaker 1: India like the seat on like what's it called, am
Speaker 1: I blanking on the name of the thing? National Security Counsel? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you and Security Council. They offer India Sea the Security
Speaker 1: Council and neighbor is like, no, I'm not gonna take this.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna take this. This this is China seat
Speaker 1: on the Council, Like, I'm not gonna take this. And
Speaker 1: then Mao repays him by invading India. Three in ways, Um,
Speaker 1: this this is not in my script? I am I
Speaker 1: am off, yeah, I am off script? Oh two sorry
Speaker 1: yeah yeah, So like this a this, this goes great
Speaker 1: for neighbor Mao just like invades and the Indians lose
Speaker 1: the war very badly. To understand why eventually trying to
Speaker 1: gets recognied, you have to have talked about it about
Speaker 1: like what was going on inside of the PRC, inside
Speaker 1: of the people's probably in China. So the CCP fights
Speaker 1: a war with the Soviets in nineteen sixty nine, which
Speaker 1: and this war gets called the Sino Soviet Border conflicts.
Speaker 1: But like this is like pretty much a real war,
Speaker 1: Like there are like Chinese and Soviet division shelling each other,
Speaker 1: like a lot of people die. Um, like I I
Speaker 1: don't know if I've told the story on this podcast before.
Speaker 1: My my my favorite part of this whole thing is
Speaker 1: that the Soviets start like wargaming, can can they defeat
Speaker 1: China and nuclear war? And they figure out that they
Speaker 1: can't because the Chinese population is so just is so
Speaker 1: dispersed that even even if they knuke all of China,
Speaker 1: they can't kill everyone they'll and they'll lose the war
Speaker 1: in human wave attacks. So the Soviets started developing, developing
Speaker 1: the strategy of like having like a line of nuclear
Speaker 1: land mines across the Soviet Chinese borders so that the
Speaker 1: human wave attacks can't get through, because they like this
Speaker 1: is this conflict is nuts, Like both China and the
Speaker 1: USS are are trying to get the US to ally
Speaker 1: with them to like do do do a preemptive nuclear
Speaker 1: strike on on the other side, Like it's crazy and
Speaker 1: and this like completes the Sino Soviet split, and the
Speaker 1: US like really really wants to make sure that the
Speaker 1: Sino Soviets but sticks, and so the US starts negotiating
Speaker 1: with China basically to bring China to the well, Okay,
Speaker 1: there's two ways of looking at it. One is that
Speaker 1: they just want to separate, like, you know, the Chinese
Speaker 1: from the Soviets. The other way of looking at it
Speaker 1: is that they want to like bring China fully over
Speaker 1: to the American side of the Cold War. And I
Speaker 1: think the latter approach actually works, right um, So in
Speaker 1: in in nine, the US recognizes the CCP as the
Speaker 1: legitimate government of China. UH. Several months later, China invades
Speaker 1: Vietnam in defense of the Khmer rouge, which the US
Speaker 1: was also backing. So yeah, um, and and this is
Speaker 1: where we get into some more diplomatic bullshit. Uh okay.
Speaker 1: So China maintain something called the One China principle. The
Speaker 1: One China principle holds that the CCP is the only
Speaker 1: government mint of China and then it rules Taiwan. The
Speaker 1: US has something called the One China Policy, and the
Speaker 1: One China Policy is it does not take a stance
Speaker 1: either way on who the government of Taiwan is. What
Speaker 1: it does is it acknowledges that China claims that it
Speaker 1: rules Taiwan. And you will see nationalists lie about this constantly.
Speaker 1: They will say things like the US recognizes Taiwan as
Speaker 1: part of China under the One Child Policy, blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: Action is a violation of the One China Policy. And
Speaker 1: that's not true, right. What actually happened is that the US,
Speaker 1: the US technical term for this is called strategic ambiguity.
Speaker 1: And you know, so they have this thing like, they
Speaker 1: don't they don't formally recognize either side as legimate government
Speaker 1: of Taiwan. They recognize that this is what China says
Speaker 1: about Taiwan, they don't actually recognize, but they have no
Speaker 1: formal position on whether this is the actually rules Taiwan.
Speaker 1: What they have is a recognition that China believes this.
Speaker 1: And again this is all diplomatic bullshit. It's part of
Speaker 1: why I hate like talking about this because like, again,
Speaker 1: the lives of literally tens of billions of people are
Speaker 1: being governed by like diplomats saying doing like that kind
Speaker 1: of ship because it sucks. Yeah, So that's that's that's
Speaker 1: that's the one Child policy thing, which is not Jesus
Speaker 1: the one China policy, which is not the same thing
Speaker 1: as the one China principle. Um, yeah and so and
Speaker 1: so like. All the while, while this is going on,
Speaker 1: the CCP and the KMT yere in this massive race
Speaker 1: to see you can kill the most communists like that.
Speaker 1: The CCP kills about a million commination the Cultural Revolution
Speaker 1: and then invades Vietnam to kill even more communists. The
Speaker 1: KMT like not not to be outdone by by by
Speaker 1: by by their former comrades across the border. The KMT
Speaker 1: is training desk squalls in Honduras and like helping the
Speaker 1: Guatemalan government do the Guatemalan genocide. It's it's really grim stuff.
Speaker 1: And you know, the product of this ideolog the product
Speaker 1: of this whole thing is the audio complete audiological collapse
Speaker 1: of the Chinese Comunist Party as like a party that
Speaker 1: does communism, and then the political military collapse with the
Speaker 1: KMT so the but by I mean it's kind of
Speaker 1: it sort of has already stopped at the eighties, but
Speaker 1: by the nineties nineties, the CCP substantively has stopped being
Speaker 1: a communist party by the sense of the word, like
Speaker 1: they're just capitalists and they're not they're you know, they're
Speaker 1: out there making money. And by by by the late
Speaker 1: two thousands, even like you know, there had been a
Speaker 1: faction of what's called sure of the Chinese New Left,
Speaker 1: but had thought that like they could you know, they
Speaker 1: they could, you know, this is still a communist party
Speaker 1: and we can still change China from the inside. Those
Speaker 1: guys are like liquidated completely, like they're just gone, um
Speaker 1: and you know, and so but you know, by by
Speaker 1: like now right, like it's just it's just it's just capitalists.
Speaker 1: And meanwhile, in Taiwan in the eighties and nineties, there's
Speaker 1: there's increasing resistance the CAMT s like one party like
Speaker 1: dest squad, like one party state and their whole dest
Speaker 1: squad like reclaimed them motherland politics. Everyone like starts to
Speaker 1: hate them. And this is where things get really weird
Speaker 1: because on the one hand, the CAMPT is incredibly anti communists,
Speaker 1: but on the other hand, uh, they're the political faction
Speaker 1: that wants to tie type one the China. And this
Speaker 1: means that like, you know, as they're sort of like
Speaker 1: ruthlessly suppressing communists and leftists, they're also like vehemently independence
Speaker 1: and so like they kill a bunch of anti independence organizers, um,
Speaker 1: which is like not not not not how anyone like
Speaker 1: talks about this conflict because it's too weird. So in
Speaker 1: there's all the sort of weird political things going on
Speaker 1: in the seven. The KMT ends the martial law that
Speaker 1: they had been in force since the February incidents, and
Speaker 1: the KMT like disarms, right they disarm. They're not as
Speaker 1: in like, Okay, the KMT used to be a party
Speaker 1: that would like assassinate people for writing an author right,
Speaker 1: like assassinate Americans on American soil for writing on authorized
Speaker 1: biography biographies of like Shankai check. And they kind of
Speaker 1: stopped being that, like they disarm, they're not really in
Speaker 1: the drug trade anymore, caveats. Don't quote me on that,
Speaker 1: but like the they're they're they're they're not the party
Speaker 1: they were in the eighties, right, That's that's what the
Speaker 1: important thing like that they they lose is the one
Speaker 1: party dictatorship, and you get the sort of transition to
Speaker 1: democracy that ends in the first free presidential elections in
Speaker 1: Taiwani's history. In and this like the right right before this,
Speaker 1: you get the third Taiwan Straits Crisis, where the president
Speaker 1: of Taiwan like goes to the US and China react
Speaker 1: to this by having an enormous ture tempera tantrum and
Speaker 1: like starts doing military exercises, like they start like simulating
Speaker 1: an invasion of Taipwe. They start like shooting rockets like
Speaker 1: at the coast, like jet the the leve these rockets
Speaker 1: that will land like just off the coast, and it's edgy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And the event this ends when the US moves like
Speaker 1: two carrier groups into into the Pacific and the crisis ends.
Speaker 1: But like, okay, there's a feelings I would say here.
Speaker 1: One is that like okay, so on the one hand,
Speaker 1: this is the CCP having a temperate tensium. Right on
Speaker 1: the other hand, like it really and this is the
Speaker 1: thing that I think most Americans have ever experienced, right,
Speaker 1: because the US is not a country that like gets attacked, right,
Speaker 1: having another country firing missiles at you fucking sucks, like
Speaker 1: psychologically it is awful. Like we saw how insane the
Speaker 1: U S went, like the like the first time it
Speaker 1: had actually been attacked since like World War Two when
Speaker 1: I eleven happened, Like you know, you saw just absolutely
Speaker 1: batshitt the U S goes, right, Like, Okay, if you
Speaker 1: are a person in Taiwan, right, which like a lot
Speaker 1: of my family is, and you are constantly having another
Speaker 1: country shooting rockets at you, like, it sucks like and
Speaker 1: and I want people to like like sort of like
Speaker 1: think about that for a second, because like I think
Speaker 1: a lot of what how, how this crisis and how
Speaker 1: this whole thing has talked about on the left is
Speaker 1: as a sort of like abstract thing that's like you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's instead of abstract principles, right, and not
Speaker 1: stuff that's happening to real people who are like watching
Speaker 1: missiles fucking fall into the ocean, and you know, like
Speaker 1: and what we're watching another country like preparing to kill
Speaker 1: them and this sucks. UM. One of the other things
Speaker 1: that were not noting here is that like part of
Speaker 1: what's going on in terms of the hardening of China
Speaker 1: Taiwan relations is gentlemen square happened. Um. And the reason
Speaker 1: that this matters is that, so one of the things
Speaker 1: that like stabilizes I guess relations between Taiwan and China
Speaker 1: in part is the fact that they're both incredibly economic
Speaker 1: closely economically connected to the US. UM. And this is
Speaker 1: because all of the all China, Taiwan and UH and
Speaker 1: China are all capitalist countries and so they're ruling classes
Speaker 1: are all completely independence like people. People talk a lot
Speaker 1: about Pelosi like investing in a bunch of like chip
Speaker 1: manufacturing companies in Taiwan, and that's true, but she also
Speaker 1: has a bunch of investments in China, because again, capitalists,
Speaker 1: single ruling class, they all there. They all all of
Speaker 1: your logistics lines run through each other. Blah blah blah
Speaker 1: blah bla uh. I will insert and note here that
Speaker 1: is not in the script that anytime you should someone
Speaker 1: talk about like the U S decoupling with their economy
Speaker 1: from China. They're they're full of ship. Do not like
Speaker 1: everything they're saying, everything they're about to say is a lie.
Speaker 1: It does not happen, It has not happened, it will
Speaker 1: not happen, like they're lying. Um yeah, this is important. Um,
Speaker 1: even for the height of Trump's bullshit. Yeah. Yeah, Like,
Speaker 1: like there was kind of an attempt when it didn't
Speaker 1: work because like you know, you could, Okay, like there
Speaker 1: are some things you can offer to Mexico, right, but
Speaker 1: like most like China, China has a unique combination of
Speaker 1: a like a really good energy grid for the most
Speaker 1: part of those I mean, okay, there have been times
Speaker 1: where's gotten over tax but like it can compared to
Speaker 1: most other development countries that has a really good energy grid.
Speaker 1: It has a population in which actually doing union organizing
Speaker 1: is illegal, and it has a population that you know,
Speaker 1: like gets forced to work incredibly long hours, right, And
Speaker 1: the combination of those three things makes it makes it
Speaker 1: you know, a place where if you're an American capitalist,
Speaker 1: if're Taiwanese capitalist. And that's actually part of this too,
Speaker 1: is that like part part of the reason there's so
Speaker 1: much like hatred for Taiwan sort of China among people
Speaker 1: who you wouldn't expect it to be is that like
Speaker 1: there's a there's a lot of people in China whose
Speaker 1: only experience of Taiwan is working for like fucking Fox
Speaker 1: Cohn and like working just in hell conditions for a
Speaker 1: like for a Taiwanese capitalist, and you know, and that
Speaker 1: that's very easy to transformant a national sentiment and it sucks.
Speaker 1: But yeah, you know, but you know, like okay, so
Speaker 1: like there, the U s has an incentive just to
Speaker 1: stabilize US Chinese relations in part because it's economically like
Speaker 1: tied to both of these countries. But when something goes
Speaker 1: really wrong in US China relations, like for example, after
Speaker 1: Tianna Man where you know, and I think it's also
Speaker 1: worth noting like from from the period like basically from
Speaker 1: when China invades Vietnam and even before that from but
Speaker 1: from when China invades Vietnam in up until Tienamen, the
Speaker 1: US China relations are really good. Like the the US
Speaker 1: is seen as like an ally against the evil at
Speaker 1: Soviet evil Empire like all this, and you know, but
Speaker 1: gentlemen makes things go really badly because like the the
Speaker 1: only thing in American ally can possibly do that will
Speaker 1: sour the American press on them is to shoot a
Speaker 1: bunch of students in front of the American press corps
Speaker 1: like that. That's literally the only thing you could possibly do,
Speaker 1: Like you can, you can do actual genocides and the
Speaker 1: US press corps won't care. But if you shoot a
Speaker 1: bunch of students right in front of you, they will
Speaker 1: get very mad. And you know, okay times we've we've
Speaker 1: avoided doing that in minima. Yeah, yeah, I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's grim, lots lots of lots of yeah.
Speaker 1: But you know the consequence of this is like, yeah,
Speaker 1: when something goes really wrong in US China relations, you
Speaker 1: get China starts doing stabler rattling at Taiwan and the
Speaker 1: effects of this on Taiwan ease politics and also just
Speaker 1: sort of what's been happening inside of Taiwan is really weird.
Speaker 1: So the CAMT, who have been again like the militantly
Speaker 1: anti communist party for half essentially for half a century,
Speaker 1: are suddenly the fashion that once closer ties with this ECP.
Speaker 1: And the product of this is that the KMT and
Speaker 1: the smaller like hardcore pro Utification Party has become known
Speaker 1: as the Pan Blues. And the Pan Blues are the
Speaker 1: people who like want closer relationship with China and don't
Speaker 1: want closer relations with like the West. It's like the
Speaker 1: U s et etcetera. UM. And their opposition group is
Speaker 1: this reposition progressive opposition groups, which are just composed of
Speaker 1: the groups that opposed the camptis military dictatorship. And these
Speaker 1: groups form well, okay, they form a couple of parties.
Speaker 1: The big party. The first party they form, which is
Speaker 1: the biggest one by far, is called the Democratic Progressive
Speaker 1: Party or the d p P. And the DP panis
Speaker 1: allies which include some leftist parties I think, like the
Speaker 1: green parties in this coalition. Uh, there's also these like
Speaker 1: smaller like radical pro independent parties. UM. They become known
Speaker 1: as the Pan Greens. And this is like to this day,
Speaker 1: this is like the main dividing line in Taiwanese politics.
Speaker 1: You have the conservative Pan Blues you favor closer relations
Speaker 1: with China, and the Pan Green progressives you favor like
Speaker 1: closer relations with democracies. And also I think importantly, the
Speaker 1: the Pan Greens had this kind of like are the
Speaker 1: people who are in favor of like there being a
Speaker 1: distinct Taiwanese national identity, and the Pan Blues are kind
Speaker 1: of more suspect of that because again, like you know,
Speaker 1: their basis the KMT right, they want closer sizes with China,
Speaker 1: and closer sizes with China means not having like a
Speaker 1: distinct Twani's identity that's separate from China. And Okay, I'm
Speaker 1: enormously oversimplifying this, and people who are experts in this
Speaker 1: will like this part of it, will be like it's
Speaker 1: more complicated than that, and it is this is This
Speaker 1: is the simples explanation I could give you that people
Speaker 1: will understand. Like I I was, like, I was debating
Speaker 1: whether I even wanted to talk about like the Pan
Speaker 1: Blue like closer ties with China versus paying Green like
Speaker 1: closer ties with the West thing at all, because it's
Speaker 1: confusing and people probably won't remember it. But yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, if you want to understand tiwan these politics
Speaker 1: at all, like this is the line you have to take. No,
Speaker 1: I think it's important to at least throw out the
Speaker 1: people are gonna hear if they're going to engage in
Speaker 1: any discussion beyond like what has his tweeting and I'm, I'm, I'm,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna also like I'm gonna like lay my cards
Speaker 1: on the table so people don't understand my political position
Speaker 1: on this um. And my political position is one that
Speaker 1: pisces off literally everyone, which is that like, I'm not
Speaker 1: like a DPP supporter, Like I'm not one of the
Speaker 1: sort of like progressive like groups. I'm not in this
Speaker 1: sort of like I'm not really kind of like in
Speaker 1: this sort of like I wanted dependance camp. I'm not
Speaker 1: really like a DVP person. I I don't know, like,
Speaker 1: but I'm also not a KMT person, like because the
Speaker 1: KMT are capitalist reactionaries. Um. But I also like, okay,
Speaker 1: like I'm i'm, I'm, I'm gonna do my critique of
Speaker 1: the DPP and then I'm gonna sort of walk it
Speaker 1: back a little bit. I think that Taiwanese progressives in
Speaker 1: general are waged you close to the American security state
Speaker 1: for me to want anything to do with them. And
Speaker 1: the ones who aren't, like, okay, the Taiwanese left, like
Speaker 1: Jesus Christ, get your ship together. Taiwan's most famous anarchist
Speaker 1: is literally a government minister. Like this, This is how
Speaker 1: funny the Taiwanes's left is like like like like these people, God,
Speaker 1: I'm enormously frustrated by Like people couldn't develop, like a
Speaker 1: left to the people, couldn't develop a national class analysis.
Speaker 1: You beat them over the head with a copy of
Speaker 1: capital Um. And okay, like I think, like Taiwanese progressives
Speaker 1: will point out, and I think this is fair that
Speaker 1: it's very easy to criticize like allying with the U
Speaker 1: S when it's not your ass in the firing line
Speaker 1: of Chinese rockets, which is true. It is much easier
Speaker 1: to criticize the US when the when the rifles being
Speaker 1: pointed in your face are American rifles, then when it's
Speaker 1: you know, Chinese soldiers pointing Chinese rifles. And this is
Speaker 1: a big part of what Chwanese politics are so fucked um.
Speaker 1: Things get reduced at this sort of like democracy versus
Speaker 1: authoritarian US versus China, like taiwanies and entity versus Chinese
Speaker 1: identity to less extent like binary. But it's like okay,
Speaker 1: like my family is Taiwanese, but like I was born here,
Speaker 1: I grew up here, and you know, I know, I
Speaker 1: know what American democracy looks like. It's the Army hiring
Speaker 1: Eric Prince to slaughter Rockey civilians in Baghdad. And you know,
Speaker 1: I also know what you know. I have a bunch
Speaker 1: of family in China too. I know what Chinese ratarianism
Speaker 1: looks like. It's the CCP hiring Eric Prince ability trading
Speaker 1: basis for mass and tonament camp guards John like you know, okay,
Speaker 1: And the only actual like political solution that will ever
Speaker 1: get anywhere is to fight both of them, a position
Speaker 1: that is extremely unpopular literally everywhere. And like you know,
Speaker 1: I I think they're like the progressives have a good
Speaker 1: argument that that you know, this isn't this isn't a
Speaker 1: line they have the luxury of taking right because they
Speaker 1: they they have they have an immediate enemy, and they
Speaker 1: they're going to do whatever they have to not get invaded.
Speaker 1: And that means allying with people who like I want
Speaker 1: to overthrow and see liquidated as a class. And like
Speaker 1: I I understand why they think that I also am
Speaker 1: not them. So yeah, this is this is this is
Speaker 1: me laying my cards on the table. And I think
Speaker 1: also like this goes back to the whole sort of
Speaker 1: like Settler state question, right, which is the sort of
Speaker 1: unresolved political question in the U s, Taiwan and China,
Speaker 1: Like no actual major political force has like committed itself
Speaker 1: to destroying the settler state and returning indigenous sovereignty. Uh,
Speaker 1: like two indigenous people, and you can't have like any
Speaker 1: kind of liberatory politics in a settler state without that.
Speaker 1: But on the other hands, like okay, the actual politics
Speaker 1: of Timani's diigenous people is really complicated, Like it doesn't
Speaker 1: work in the same way that like indigenous politics in
Speaker 1: the US does for example, like different true, I mean,
Speaker 1: and this is also true in the US, like different
Speaker 1: tribes and different relations to sort of indigenous nationalism. Like
Speaker 1: and another thing that that's true about um the that
Speaker 1: that that that that's true about Timany's indigenous people is
Speaker 1: that a lot of them vote for the KMT. And
Speaker 1: they do this for a couple of reasons, one of
Speaker 1: which is because the KMT has this like really really
Speaker 1: powerful and eccentric patronage network that they've been running for
Speaker 1: literally like basically since they got into the island. They've
Speaker 1: been running this patriots network and this allowed them to
Speaker 1: do like real incredibly intense and powerful based building in
Speaker 1: indigenous communities. Right, Like they're like the GDP are the
Speaker 1: people who like distribute like okay that they have like
Speaker 1: a center and right, and you go there and they
Speaker 1: get they give you food, right like they this this
Speaker 1: this is the place where you get your like sesame oil. Right.
Speaker 1: And then also there's there's the second layer of the
Speaker 1: Pictures network, right, is like if you want to get
Speaker 1: a job, you join the KMT, and so they have
Speaker 1: these they have these really deep sort of political roots
Speaker 1: in that sense. And then also, um, the CAMT does
Speaker 1: this thing where they're like, hey, look, the DPP is
Speaker 1: doing settler nationalism, like hey, these are the people who
Speaker 1: colonized you, like fuck them, like you should alley with
Speaker 1: us instead, which is true, Like like it is true,
Speaker 1: and like I think, I don't know, like Taiwanese progressives
Speaker 1: kind of like tap dance around this, but like yeah,
Speaker 1: like it is true that the sort of like Han
Speaker 1: Taiwanese identity is less sort of settler nationalism. But like
Speaker 1: also this is true with the KMT as well, Like
Speaker 1: the CAMT are also was settler nationalism, like you know,
Speaker 1: like they conquered the island and ruled as you know, okay,
Speaker 1: and and you'll you'll you'll try you'll also see people
Speaker 1: who will take this argument and try to argue that
Speaker 1: indigenous people voting for the KMT means that indigenous people
Speaker 1: support China invading Taiwan. And this is just comically wrong,
Speaker 1: Like they're just they are lying to you. Indigenous people
Speaker 1: in Taiwan, like literally everyone else in Taiwan do not
Speaker 1: support being ruled by China, and the argument that a
Speaker 1: Chinese occupation of Taiwan is somehow less of a settler
Speaker 1: state than the current system is just like comically propaganda
Speaker 1: bullshit and yeah, China, Yeah that's not being kind. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna get into like this a little bit too, right,
Speaker 1: which is okay, So like I've been trying to be
Speaker 1: fair and balanced here, right, like I have been giving
Speaker 1: you mi critique of taiwee Chiwanese progressivism. This is going
Speaker 1: to piss off a lot of people. But like having
Speaker 1: said all of this, China invading Taiwan would be really
Speaker 1: really really bad, Like I cannot emphasize enough how bad
Speaker 1: this would be. Like okay, so Taiwan is like a
Speaker 1: regular regular settler borgead democracy with like all of the
Speaker 1: sort of good and bad things about Bushwa democracies, which
Speaker 1: we're all familiar with, right, like we understand what is
Speaker 1: a learned democracy is um, to be fair, the modern
Speaker 1: Taiwanese government is like infinitely less violent than the modern
Speaker 1: American government. Like like the I I looked like the
Speaker 1: prison population in like relative population in Taiwan is like
Speaker 1: I think it's like an eighth of the of what
Speaker 1: the American prison population is, right, Like, it's it's not like,
Speaker 1: you know, okay, it's it's like Taiwan is not like
Speaker 1: a sort of like it's like Taiwan is not a
Speaker 1: socialist state, right, but it's also like, you know, better
Speaker 1: in the U s which is an incredibly low bar
Speaker 1: that like you could trip and fall over it, but like,
Speaker 1: you know, okay, it's it's better in the US. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, it's closer to like Sweden or something in
Speaker 1: terms of violence. But I think is also a good
Speaker 1: comparison because Sweden also has an indigenous population called the Sami,
Speaker 1: and I all Swedish leftists will studiously never admit that
Speaker 1: they exist or talk about them at all. So okay, again,
Speaker 1: this is not a stateless class society. But it's also
Speaker 1: like like since since since the CAMT has been disarmed,
Speaker 1: Like this is not one of like the world's great
Speaker 1: purveyors of violence, right, Like it's not the US. UM. China,
Speaker 1: on the other hand, is a ferociously reactionary, capitalist settler dictatorship,
Speaker 1: and this is something that Americans have very little experience with.
Speaker 1: UM For a long time, people argue that, okay, like
Speaker 1: if if if China, like if Taiwan became a part
Speaker 1: of China, Taiwan would get some kind of relationship similar
Speaker 1: to what Hong Kong has were like they were free
Speaker 1: elections and union organizing and free speech is legal. But
Speaker 1: you know, twenty nteing happens. Yeah right, you know, I
Speaker 1: mean even in Taiwan, like the I'm sorry, not even
Speaker 1: even in Hong Kong, right, the extent to which like
Speaker 1: you know, like union organizing and free association and free
Speaker 1: press existed. We're like and again like Hong Kong also,
Speaker 1: and I want to point this out, like the CCP
Speaker 1: has been strengthening this the entire time they were there.
Speaker 1: Hong Kong is the only place on earth for corporations
Speaker 1: have the right to vote and they vote for the
Speaker 1: ccpeach Like it's so okay, this is this is great,
Speaker 1: but you know twenty en happens, right, And guess what now,
Speaker 1: Hong Kong has National Security Law, which allows the government
Speaker 1: to rescue literally for posting on Twitter that you don't
Speaker 1: think that China should control Hong Kong. UM Secretary Secretary
Speaker 1: for Security in Hong Kong, Chris Tang said earlier this
Speaker 1: week that criticizing the government with the intention to provoke
Speaker 1: quote pretention to provoke hatred quote between the classes was
Speaker 1: a violation of the National Security Law. A position that
Speaker 1: if actually like that, that if actually like like this,
Speaker 1: if you take this position, this would outlaw in its
Speaker 1: entirety all socialist organizing in Hong Kong, because again, anything
Speaker 1: that attempts to provoke hatred between the classes ISA is illegal. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and yes, some pana era of liberal Democrats existence within. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this is this is the moneth and like you know,
Speaker 1: I mean again, like people people talk about this lot
Speaker 1: like Hong Kong is one of the world's most neoliberal
Speaker 1: cities and this is top has taken it over. And
Speaker 1: oh hey, guess what they're They're they're living out the
Speaker 1: neoliberal dream of making it illegal to try to do
Speaker 1: any like try to do like class war stuff. Um,
Speaker 1: one of the things that happens immediately after national security
Speaker 1: laws that it's used to destroy China's China's Independent Trade
Speaker 1: Union Federation. And this brings us to like the sort
Speaker 1: of class perspective on this um independent union organizing and
Speaker 1: China is illegal. And when I say it's illegal, I
Speaker 1: don't mean illegal in the sense of like jaywalking. We're like, okay,
Speaker 1: if someone if if like a cops sees you jaywalking,
Speaker 1: they might arrest you. Like if you try to do
Speaker 1: independent union organizing in China, men will show up to
Speaker 1: your house in the middle of the night and you
Speaker 1: will disappear for three months until a video of you
Speaker 1: with two very large men standing just out of camera
Speaker 1: range appears in which you recan't you're organizing and apologize
Speaker 1: for your crimes, like to to to get a sense
Speaker 1: of the level of oppression we're dealing with here to
Speaker 1: Chinese leftists named Louis You You and Leading You recorded
Speaker 1: and published a series of protests like the they basically
Speaker 1: they had they on the Chinese social media, like they
Speaker 1: posted this like record basically of strikes and protests that
Speaker 1: were happening in the country every day. So like literally
Speaker 1: all they're doing is they are documenting the strikes and
Speaker 1: protests that are happening and collecting data about them and
Speaker 1: posting it. Um in the police showed up to lose house,
Speaker 1: put a bag over his head and dragged him away
Speaker 1: to a dragging away to a jail cell. Lou spent
Speaker 1: four years in prison. Lee got two years, and the
Speaker 1: two of them never saw each other again. So again,
Speaker 1: this this is what happens. If you literally just report
Speaker 1: on the wildcat strikes that are happening, someone will put
Speaker 1: a bag over your head and you will go to
Speaker 1: prison for four years. Like it is. It is like
Speaker 1: the situation for organized labor of any kind of anyone
Speaker 1: trying to do. Union organizing in China is unbelievably dire. UM. Now, China,
Speaker 1: and this is when I'm talking about, here's the independent
Speaker 1: union organizing. China has an official trade union federation. Um,
Speaker 1: the trade Unifederation China has such a fucking joke. That
Speaker 1: is literally a matter of academic debates, Like there are
Speaker 1: academic papers arguing about whether or not it even actually
Speaker 1: counts as a union. And this has been true since
Speaker 1: the late nineteen fifties, when the CCP decided that oh hey,
Speaker 1: this trade union is there to represent the party and
Speaker 1: not workers, and its roles to mediate between the you know,
Speaker 1: to mediate between the party and workers, not actually to
Speaker 1: you know, like represent them when they like when they
Speaker 1: have disputed with their bosses. So yeah, like they don't
Speaker 1: like they they don't. They don't go on strike like ever,
Speaker 1: like they they they they they they They exist as
Speaker 1: like another part of the party state, the goal of
Speaker 1: which is to make sure that bosses keep making money.
Speaker 1: If you try to work outside, if they will arrest you. Now,
Speaker 1: Taiwan is not like a shining workers paradise, right that
Speaker 1: the sort of vaunted semiconductor industry that everyone talks about
Speaker 1: is run by a bunch of workers getting the ship
Speaker 1: burned out of them by vats of acid. But conditions
Speaker 1: for the Chinese working class are even worse. Counties wages
Speaker 1: are higher China, Taiwan is better workplace protections. Again, you
Speaker 1: can legally organize unions. Uh. Meanwhile, in China there are
Speaker 1: famously suicide nets around Chinese factories because working for these
Speaker 1: places is so fucking awful that people would literally rather
Speaker 1: kill themselves and live in it. And you know, you
Speaker 1: can ask why is this happening, And the reason it's
Speaker 1: happening is that a lot of the stuff that is
Speaker 1: literally the worst fucking nightmare of the American left, things
Speaker 1: like your boss owning your apartment is just standard practice
Speaker 1: in China. This is this is just this is just
Speaker 1: what it's like to be a worker in China. Your
Speaker 1: boss owner apartments. You have literally hundreds of millions of
Speaker 1: people who live in these time any like they're called
Speaker 1: workers dormitories, which again often literally owned by like the
Speaker 1: owner of the factory they're in. You get like when
Speaker 1: when I say like the workers dormitories, right, it's not
Speaker 1: even like it's not even like an American dorm building
Speaker 1: right where like you you know you have like your
Speaker 1: own room. It's like it is yeah, like it's it's
Speaker 1: a bunch of people sleeping in cots, like like sleeping
Speaker 1: in bunk beds with like a fucking bucket next to
Speaker 1: them to go to the bathroom. Like it is. It
Speaker 1: is horrible. Um, you have like like the the I
Speaker 1: talked about this lot in this show. But again like
Speaker 1: literally there are paid a loans integrated into delivery apps
Speaker 1: like this. This is the level of capitalism that that
Speaker 1: China is, and like I'm not gonna like, I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna like argue that it's worse than the US. I
Speaker 1: think they're bad in different ways. Like they're there, there
Speaker 1: are there are third like the the U s IS
Speaker 1: incarceration system is like you know, like one of the
Speaker 1: great human evils in the entirety of human history. Right there,
Speaker 1: there are things that like the US is worse at
Speaker 1: like the Chinese police are a lot less likely just
Speaker 1: fucking murder you like you know, but like yes, but
Speaker 1: like China, it sucks to be a worker in China,
Speaker 1: Like it really sucks. And I can't emphasize this enough
Speaker 1: because I don't because people don't really understand this, like
Speaker 1: they they like people do not understand that. Again, like
Speaker 1: the normal Chinese schedule is called you work nine am
Speaker 1: to nine pm, six days a week. This is the
Speaker 1: normal schedule. Mostly a lot of workers like that. That
Speaker 1: that again that that that's like an average schedule. Most
Speaker 1: people work more than this seventy hours a week, right
Speaker 1: like it is it is it is a ship show.
Speaker 1: And yeah, if if Taiwan, if China invades Taiwan, that
Speaker 1: you addition to the Taiwanese working class are going to
Speaker 1: get worse. That is just a fact. Try like imposing
Speaker 1: Chinese law on Taiwan, which strengthened the power of the
Speaker 1: capitalist class a week in the proletariat um from from
Speaker 1: an indigenous respective, which we we've talked about this at
Speaker 1: length about you know, we talked about at length how
Speaker 1: the Taiwan system is not that good. But you know,
Speaker 1: it's not like it's a settler colony. There's some representation,
Speaker 1: but you know, it's not great. It is much better
Speaker 1: over the CCP system. The CCPs line on ethnic minorities
Speaker 1: is that if you're an ethnic minority in China, you're
Speaker 1: going to work in a Han factory, You're going to
Speaker 1: pick crops from Han owed fields. You're going to dance
Speaker 1: and smile for hon tourists. If you step out of line,
Speaker 1: you will be dragged out of your bed in the
Speaker 1: middle of the night and sent to a fucking camp.
Speaker 1: There are you know, like this is the thing that
Speaker 1: Americans sort of have similar experiences with. It's like, you know,
Speaker 1: you have immigration raids, you have raids on homeless encampments,
Speaker 1: but it's not that's and that that's like you know
Speaker 1: that that's a kind of experience that is somewhat similar
Speaker 1: to what it's like to live and change on but
Speaker 1: like it's not exactly the same. Like I I know
Speaker 1: people whose families are just fucking gone, Like the police
Speaker 1: showed up in the middle of the night, and their
Speaker 1: families are just gone. They've never seen them again, Like
Speaker 1: they're they're just gone. No no one knows where they are,
Speaker 1: no one knows who they're even alife. They're just finished.
Speaker 1: And if and if you think that this isn't going
Speaker 1: to happen to Taiwan's indigenous population, the moment they start
Speaker 1: talking about self determination, you are incredibly bafflingly, hopelessly naive.
Speaker 1: And you know, like like that there there's a lot
Speaker 1: of other ship that you can point to, right like
Speaker 1: for example, Taiwan has game marriage and China doesn't like
Speaker 1: the degree of press censorship, just like social media censorship
Speaker 1: in China that doesn't need some Taiwan is like absolutely absurd,
Speaker 1: Like you know, I I think like most like some
Speaker 1: people talking about press censorship in the US are like
Speaker 1: almost always right wing ship heads who were complaining about
Speaker 1: like they yelled a bunch of slurs, like in China,
Speaker 1: a very common thing that happens, like someone will be
Speaker 1: posting about a corrupt local official and then every single
Speaker 1: post about it will get to lead and if you
Speaker 1: try to post the guy's name of your post won't
Speaker 1: go up. And then any emoji that people were using
Speaker 1: in association with the corrupt local official like get blocked
Speaker 1: and you can't use the emotis anymore, and like you
Speaker 1: know and like and I it's it's almost like the
Speaker 1: level of censorship is almost comical to the extent where
Speaker 1: like people don't believe like in the US, like don't
Speaker 1: like you know when people people talk about like like oh,
Speaker 1: the the Chinese government isn't really banning get guys who
Speaker 1: look too feminine and gay guys from appearing in medians
Speaker 1: Like no, they are like they're they're, they're they're. I
Speaker 1: think I think it was a Beyonce concept that they're there.
Speaker 1: Or there was a very famous, like very funny thing
Speaker 1: that happens like a few months ago where there was
Speaker 1: this concert. I think it was a Beyonce concert, must be.
Speaker 1: I can't remember who it was, but like so there
Speaker 1: was a stream of it in China and there was
Speaker 1: a guy there was a censor who was like putting
Speaker 1: like one of those gray out censored bars, like over
Speaker 1: over the singers closed because they were they were considered
Speaker 1: too explicit. And she's just like moving this like dot
Speaker 1: of like censorship thing across the stage, trying to fall
Speaker 1: Like this is the level of bullshit that happens here,
Speaker 1: Like it's it's not a thing that like the US
Speaker 1: really has much reference for because like we don't experience,
Speaker 1: like this is not a thing that you don't experience
Speaker 1: you experience in the US. Like, Yeah, sometimes I like
Speaker 1: to think about these things in terms of like like
Speaker 1: like all people talk about oh Well and Huxley as
Speaker 1: these dystopian novels, right, and imparhaps people don't read those novels,
Speaker 1: but they love to quote them. And like in all
Speaker 1: we else, we have like a system which like keeps
Speaker 1: you quiet by pushing you down, right, and in Huxley's
Speaker 1: we have a system which keeps you quiet by keeping
Speaker 1: you happy with with drugs and such, and like it.
Speaker 1: Then it's important to recognize it that it both things
Speaker 1: can be bad, but the material conditions in the day
Speaker 1: to the life of people, especially marginalized people in one society,
Speaker 1: can be markedly better. Yeah, well and I think also,
Speaker 1: like yeah, like I think it's we're not like the
Speaker 1: ways in which the American like there there are similarities,
Speaker 1: but like yeah, like there are lots of ways in
Speaker 1: which the sort of Chinese system and the American system
Speaker 1: are differently bad. And that breaks people's brains because you
Speaker 1: get a lot of like you get you get a
Speaker 1: lot of Americans who are convinced to become convinced that
Speaker 1: like China as a socialist paradise. There's a Chinese version
Speaker 1: of this where like you get international students who come
Speaker 1: to the US for the first time and see an election,
Speaker 1: and they like lose their minds and are like absolutely
Speaker 1: convinced that like American democracy is like the only table
Speaker 1: political system and they read Hyak and they like lose
Speaker 1: They just like they become the Chinese version of tank You's,
Speaker 1: which are like weird near liberal people. And it's like, no,
Speaker 1: like I know, actually, in fact, none of these things
Speaker 1: are good. Both of these societies are just like not
Speaker 1: good to live in in any way, and like, you know,
Speaker 1: and I think that there's nothing I should mention here,
Speaker 1: like why all of this sort of like bullshit posturing
Speaker 1: is happening between the US and China right now, which
Speaker 1: is that like on on the American side, like Biden
Speaker 1: is trying to distract from the fact that the country
Speaker 1: is falling apart and there's a bunch of fascists trying
Speaker 1: to take over, and like, you know, like all of
Speaker 1: this bullshit is happening. China is trying to distract from
Speaker 1: the fact that they have nineteen percent youth unemployment right
Speaker 1: now and that like there are there are like cops
Speaker 1: dispersing people doing runs on banks because the it finally
Speaker 1: looks like the Chinese housing bubble is about to crack,
Speaker 1: Like it's you know, this sort of nationalist stuff is
Speaker 1: like for for for China in the US, it is
Speaker 1: this sort of game that they play that has a
Speaker 1: lot to do basically with pacifying their own internal populations.
Speaker 1: But you know, for everyone in Taiwan, like it's not
Speaker 1: a game. And that's that's the thing I think I
Speaker 1: want to close on, which is like the single most
Speaker 1: important thing here is that there is no way for
Speaker 1: China to take control of Taiwan except by war. Of
Speaker 1: the population does not want to be ruled by China.
Speaker 1: Of the population of Taiwan wants to status quo. If
Speaker 1: you try to force Chinese rule of Taiwan, the only
Speaker 1: way to do it is by war and season and
Speaker 1: controlling season, control of and occupying a place with twenty
Speaker 1: three and a half million people is going to be
Speaker 1: a blood bath. There's no other way to do it,
Speaker 1: even if you are I don't want to leave this
Speaker 1: as sort of a message to people who like who
Speaker 1: don't agree with me on this, which is that if
Speaker 1: you've gotten to the end of this and you genuinely
Speaker 1: believe that Taiwan is part of China, are you willing
Speaker 1: to watch your family get burned alive for that principle?
Speaker 1: Because that that that is what you are asking us
Speaker 1: to do. You are asking us to watch our families
Speaker 1: die for your belief about lines in a map. And
Speaker 1: if if you are not willing to accept the consequences
Speaker 1: of your belief personally, if you are not willing to
Speaker 1: see your family get obliterated by a fucking rocket, then
Speaker 1: don't push for it to happen to us. And yeah,
Speaker 1: that is that. That is type one one on one. Um, Please,
Speaker 1: for the love of God, stop doing this bullshit. I
Speaker 1: don't want my family to die. I yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: think that's very well said mate, I think a lot
Speaker 1: of people are so detached from the underground consequences so
Speaker 1: they're like theoretical on Twitter dot compositions that it can
Speaker 1: be very easy to be incredibly callous to people who
Speaker 1: have loved one skin in the game. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: think I think this is a part of it. Like no,
Speaker 1: like people on Twitter posting about this that there have
Speaker 1: no stake in this whatsoever. It doesn't matter to them.
Speaker 1: If everyone on top, if everyone who lives and I
Speaker 1: one died tomorrow, it would have no material effected them whatsoever, right,
Speaker 1: Like the worst thing that would maybe happen to them,
Speaker 1: it was it would be harder for them to get
Speaker 1: graphics cards. Yeah, you entire family, like this is this
Speaker 1: is this is twenty three million people, an enormous number
Speaker 1: of whom are going to die if this thing happens.
Speaker 1: So yeah, like on like, unless you are committed enough
Speaker 1: to this to kill your own family, then fucking stop
Speaker 1: posting about it, because that that that like, if you
Speaker 1: were not willing to materially accept the consequences of your
Speaker 1: own position on yourself, then you shouldn't have it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: especially when you're pretending to be left is Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's this is this is gonna make it happen Here's yeah,
Speaker 1: don't don't have a Chinese invasion of Taiwan happened here? Yeah,
Speaker 1: overthrow your local settler quality. Yeah it settling clonings is bad.
Speaker 1: That's the official stunt of Yeah. Actually, I don't. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure if we can legally. I think I think
Speaker 1: we cantally say this the official stance of cools of
Speaker 1: cool Zign Media. I'm pretty sure we can't legally say
Speaker 1: it's the official stance. Yeah, if you cut that down. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: here are cool Zone Media. We don't endors set like colonialism. Yeah,
Speaker 1: don't do it. War is bad, don't rocket cities. Welcome
Speaker 1: to dig it happened here a podcaster. We occasionally have
Speaker 1: introductions and mostly we have this and yeah that it's
Speaker 1: it's the podcast. Things fall apart, Things come back together again,
Speaker 1: they fall apart again, we put them back together again. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, you know the drill um. Yeah. And with
Speaker 1: me is James Glow. James, Hello, and speaking of things
Speaker 1: falling apart, we're talking today about the what what what
Speaker 1: it looks like when this sort of the interconnectivity of
Speaker 1: the American judicial system comes apart under the weight of
Speaker 1: dueling abortion laws, and with us to talk about that
Speaker 1: is a lot of people who have written a lot
Speaker 1: of very good stuff about this. So with us is
Speaker 1: Ali Handra car Baio, who is a clinical instructor at
Speaker 1: Harvard Law School Cyberlaw Clinic where she works on the
Speaker 1: intersection of gender and technology. Hello, welcome to the show. Um.
Speaker 1: We also have Michelle McGrath who is a public defender
Speaker 1: in New York City for like almost a decade and
Speaker 1: specializes in bail and parole litigation. Michelle, Welcome to the showy,
Speaker 1: happy to be here. And finally we have Evka Pierre
Speaker 1: who's a senior litigation counselor where she works at the
Speaker 1: intersection of reproductive and criminal law, and she is on
Speaker 1: cases where folks are criminalized for their pregnancy lass. So
Speaker 1: if you welcome, welcome to the show as well. So
Speaker 1: y'all have written, Actually, I don't it occurs to me
Speaker 1: that it's been long enough. This is still not published yet, right, Yes,
Speaker 1: it's so. It's basically we submitted it to Cuney Law
Speaker 1: Review and we're waiting for edits. We expect our Law
Speaker 1: Review article to be published in December um, so, but
Speaker 1: you know, we've we've basically created a t L d
Speaker 1: R that we we collaborated for Slate, so we you know,
Speaker 1: there's a word article on Slate. You can read that
Speaker 1: kind of condenses down our article from like words as
Speaker 1: much as we can. I we were we were graciously
Speaker 1: provided the long one, and so we read the long one.
Speaker 1: We're gonna really talk about it because yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: it's a it's a really interesting look at I don't know,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of sort of points of Okay, so
Speaker 1: I guess we should rerun and talk about what this
Speaker 1: actually is, which is that one of the things that's
Speaker 1: been happening in the last I mean basically, since jobs
Speaker 1: is a series of questions about what Okay, so it's
Speaker 1: a series is about what happens if you are in
Speaker 1: a state where abortions are illegal and you go to
Speaker 1: another state and you get an abortion there, and yeah,
Speaker 1: and there there's lots of jurisdictional questions here and yeah,
Speaker 1: and this article is a very very sort of in
Speaker 1: depth and really interesting look at it. And I guess, okay,
Speaker 1: I want to jump into this at a kind of
Speaker 1: weird place, but I wanted to start with. One of
Speaker 1: the things that one of the things that's in this
Speaker 1: article that's I haven't really seen much discussion of is
Speaker 1: about the way that the sort of safe harbor laws
Speaker 1: that states have been setting up are being like if well, okay,
Speaker 1: the way that they can potentially be in the way
Speaker 1: that previous safe harbor laws for immigration stuff were sabotaged
Speaker 1: by the fact that like all of the cops are
Speaker 1: sending like all of their stuff to each other. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: I was wondering if you could talk a bit about that.
Speaker 1: I guess it's like a lead into it. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean I with respect to specifically, like how all the
Speaker 1: law enforcement is talking to each other. I think Alejandro
Speaker 1: might know a little more with respect to that. But
Speaker 1: when it comes to the way these laws are being
Speaker 1: written there, they really don't have the kind of teeth
Speaker 1: that sort of the politicians are spinning to the public.
Speaker 1: They're sort of letting folks think that, well, we would
Speaker 1: never we in New York would never send you to
Speaker 1: Texas for anything related to the criminalization of a pregnancy laws. Um.
Speaker 1: And because of the way the law of extradition works
Speaker 1: in the United States, which is actually a constitutional law Um,
Speaker 1: it's going to be hard in a lot of ways
Speaker 1: for them to resist that. And so we have our
Speaker 1: article does talk about a little bit um in actually
Speaker 1: great detail about how they could actually craft the craft
Speaker 1: laws that would be a little bit different. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: think one of the things that you know, this just
Speaker 1: this past week, there was the story that came out
Speaker 1: of Nebraska where Facebook provided the d MS of someone
Speaker 1: who's uh, you know, being charged with you know, it
Speaker 1: wasn't even charged with like like there wasn't a formal
Speaker 1: charge of like committing an abortion, like the person that
Speaker 1: was being charged it was like disposing of a body,
Speaker 1: like and uh they say hiding a body. And so
Speaker 1: Facebook like released a statement and was saying like, well,
Speaker 1: we weren't told that this had anything to do with
Speaker 1: an abortion, and like that's the exact problem, right, is
Speaker 1: that when states are going to seek extradition, they're going
Speaker 1: to bring charges that have probably nothing to do with
Speaker 1: it in the immediate like on its face, to do
Speaker 1: with abortion. It could just be like, you know, they
Speaker 1: can repurpose all kinds of laws like endangerment of a minor, right,
Speaker 1: Like they can do all these things that like would
Speaker 1: ordinarily like never reply in a pregnancy, but they can
Speaker 1: just kind of do it just to bring charges. Um.
Speaker 1: And so you know, um, my colleague who's fortune out
Speaker 1: here said their countant cook has has written about the
Speaker 1: successively about like the criminalization aspect. But in terms of
Speaker 1: like how you know these these safe harbor states, you know,
Speaker 1: these laws like are going to be very difficult. I
Speaker 1: think it is just really what we're dealing with their
Speaker 1: effects of surveillance capitalism. Right, So, like Facebook turned over
Speaker 1: these d ms. Facebook has been in the process of
Speaker 1: moving to end to end encryption, which basically would have
Speaker 1: made this impossible to do in the first place because
Speaker 1: it would have been similar to signal. But what Facebook
Speaker 1: did is because they realized that they would have lost
Speaker 1: access to data around people's messages and what they're talking about,
Speaker 1: they made it optional instead of by default. And suppose
Speaker 1: people who are not very tech savvy are very familiar
Speaker 1: or understanding of you know, who has access to the
Speaker 1: messages and whether the government can get access, they might
Speaker 1: not know that they can set this to end end
Speaker 1: to end encryption, and so essentially, like in pursuit of profit,
Speaker 1: Facebook doesn't enable this privacy feature. But this is the
Speaker 1: exact same kind of stuff, right, So, like Facebook has
Speaker 1: access to this data, but there's also this whole shady
Speaker 1: system of data brokers that gets access to all kinds
Speaker 1: of data. And that's exactly how I think were you
Speaker 1: alluded to when you ask this question about ICE having
Speaker 1: access to basically all this information on immigrants that states
Speaker 1: had swore they would never share with better immigration officials.
Speaker 1: Like ICE is basically built this entire shadow system where
Speaker 1: they're purchasing data about driver's licenses and all this stuff
Speaker 1: basically by the purchasing it on the open market, and
Speaker 1: that bypasses all kinds of formal data requisition requests, warrants, subpoenas,
Speaker 1: all those things that would normally be required because it's
Speaker 1: just freely available. So, you know, suffices to say, as
Speaker 1: much as these states may want to protect things on
Speaker 1: that end in terms of data, it's going to be
Speaker 1: incredibly hard to do so. And I think they're the
Speaker 1: previous efforts around UH, Safe Harvard for Immigrants UM and
Speaker 1: asylum states and things like that. UM, it's just gonna
Speaker 1: be really hard to enforce. Some practice, however, on the
Speaker 1: extradition side, when when like criminal charges are actually brought
Speaker 1: that there there is some things that states can actually
Speaker 1: do to help protect the folks who are caught up
Speaker 1: with any kind of abortion related charges in their states. Um.
Speaker 1: I just also want to jump into say that the
Speaker 1: system works the way that it works because nobody's monitoring it.
Speaker 1: So when we're talking about law enforcement officials that are
Speaker 1: talking to one another and getting information through very informal means, right,
Speaker 1: things that probably by the book, would take a warrant
Speaker 1: to go from one place to the other just takes
Speaker 1: Marcy calling over Janice that works that the other system
Speaker 1: and getting something faxed over, even if they're not doing
Speaker 1: it out of malice, it's just, oh, this is out
Speaker 1: of convenience. It makes life a lot easier to get
Speaker 1: information from this place to that place. And folks have
Speaker 1: these informal systems that are set up that even when
Speaker 1: the law says that they cannot do it, if we
Speaker 1: don't have safeguards that I hate to say go after
Speaker 1: people because it seems so carceral, but like that protects
Speaker 1: what the intent of the law is. It has no teeth. Right,
Speaker 1: if your law doesn't stop Marcy from calling Janice and
Speaker 1: getting information on someone that they're not supposed to have
Speaker 1: in your law doesn't matter. It's kind of in a
Speaker 1: nothing sandwich, right, Um, and I have plenty of thoughts
Speaker 1: and stuff to say about the criminalization when we get
Speaker 1: there later, because that's a lot of my work. But
Speaker 1: I think that gets to what Michelle and Alejandra and
Speaker 1: what um Conti who's not here, have found. It's just
Speaker 1: you gotta have something more than nothing sandwich. Is something
Speaker 1: more than something that seems good on the surface and
Speaker 1: doesn't actually help the people that we want to help.
Speaker 1: And I want to sort of help folks sort of
Speaker 1: understand how this plays out on the grounds. When the article,
Speaker 1: we we give an example, right, So, maybe I've got
Speaker 1: a New Yorker who gets prescribed a medication that would
Speaker 1: induce a war Osian and you know, they bring it
Speaker 1: to their friend in a state where that's criminalized, and
Speaker 1: they give their friend the medication, the pregnancy ends, Maybe
Speaker 1: the person is concerned and they go to the hospital. Um.
Speaker 1: Quite often nurses and doctors are part of the criminalization process,
Speaker 1: and so you know, maybe they call law enforcement official
Speaker 1: based on this information. They get a subpoena for that
Speaker 1: person's phone. So now they're in the phone and they
Speaker 1: can find out, Wow, they got this medicine from the
Speaker 1: New Yorker. Well, now now the person who took the medication,
Speaker 1: perhaps it's charged with homicide. Right. I think what's key
Speaker 1: here is that they're not necessarily going to be charged
Speaker 1: with abortion. Maybe they're charged with homicide. They're charged within fanticide.
Speaker 1: And guess what, the person who came from New York
Speaker 1: is now probably going to be charged as an accomplice.
Speaker 1: So now we have a warrant for for a homicide
Speaker 1: for the person in New York. Because of all the
Speaker 1: national databases that we have have, the NYPD, the any
Speaker 1: of the law enforcement in New York is going to see,
Speaker 1: oh that New Yorkers wanted for homicide, Let me go
Speaker 1: get that person. Um. And so when then that person
Speaker 1: comes in front of a judge, even though New York
Speaker 1: is saying or Connecticut is saying, you know, we're not
Speaker 1: going to give any resources to extradite someone related to
Speaker 1: the termination of pregnancy, Well they're just being brought before
Speaker 1: law enforcement in front of a judge who sees that
Speaker 1: there wanted for homicide, right, and so on the ground
Speaker 1: these laws don't have anything to stop them, and and
Speaker 1: so we've sort of suggested things that involve immediate rights
Speaker 1: to counsel people need to be released for extradition UM.
Speaker 1: And we can talk about some of those more, but
Speaker 1: I think it helps to sort of give that example
Speaker 1: to see how it's happening, how it would happen in
Speaker 1: real life. There's something else I wanted to sort of
Speaker 1: talk about this because one of the things that that
Speaker 1: on the sort of surveillance front has been the way
Speaker 1: in which like what we're seeing now is sort of
Speaker 1: the culmination of like a bunch of the types of
Speaker 1: surveillance that have been inflicted on a bunch of different
Speaker 1: groups of people. Do you have the antisex worker stuff,
Speaker 1: you have the deservation, the surveillance stuff that's music as immigrants,
Speaker 1: you have uh, the sort of post nine eleven like
Speaker 1: I mean, this is where the sort of fusion centers
Speaker 1: UM come from. Is the sort of like post nine
Speaker 1: eleven security state build up. And then you have the
Speaker 1: stuff that's been used to go after activists. And I
Speaker 1: think that's been really interesting to me to sort of,
Speaker 1: I mean incredibly like depressing too to watch has been Yeah,
Speaker 1: like I don't know, like I remember like the few
Speaker 1: like one of the things if you these fusion centers
Speaker 1: were like all of these sort of like law enforcement
Speaker 1: agencies like share information with each other, like I don't know,
Speaker 1: like I remember in like they were like sending one
Speaker 1: of my friends tweets around because that was one of
Speaker 1: the things they were doing to like go after people
Speaker 1: change their protests, and like, I don't know, I was
Speaker 1: interested in in this question of of these fusion centers
Speaker 1: because it's it's this I don't know, it's this real
Speaker 1: sort of like like it really seems like the sort
Speaker 1: of like the the next step of where all of
Speaker 1: this stuff goes is, you know, the fusion centers becomes
Speaker 1: becomes this place where it's really really easy to bypass
Speaker 1: the law because you know, all of this stuff is
Speaker 1: just getting shared anyways. And it brings up this other
Speaker 1: problem which I was interested in, which is about like
Speaker 1: to what extent can the state even control law enforcement
Speaker 1: because like, okay, like law enforcement are those like cops
Speaker 1: in general, very reactionary. There there's you know, if if
Speaker 1: you you know, if if if you go back into
Speaker 1: the history of the anti bustion movement, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of them being like aided to better it by the cops,
Speaker 1: and I was wondering, I don't know what what you
Speaker 1: think about, like, like what what what do you even
Speaker 1: do if the cops just decide they don't want follow
Speaker 1: the law at all, and they're just you know, they're
Speaker 1: gonna they're just gonna keep passing information on no matter
Speaker 1: what you do. I think Alejandra and I probably uh
Speaker 1: different on views about where things are going next, probably
Speaker 1: just because of the nature of our our work in
Speaker 1: the things that we're dealing with the most. So this
Speaker 1: is gonna be fun. So I I actually think so, well, yesterday,
Speaker 1: two days ago, whenever this airs, However, many days ago,
Speaker 1: one of our colleagues at if When how my colleague
Speaker 1: Laura Huss, who's brilliant UM has been working on this
Speaker 1: research project for like the last two years, tracking cases
Speaker 1: of when folks are criminalized for self managed abortion. Why
Speaker 1: self managed abortion, because that is the abortions that were
Speaker 1: happening outside of clinical spaces right that we're There were
Speaker 1: always questions about who can be criminalized for self managing
Speaker 1: their care. There weren't as many protections in the law
Speaker 1: for a lot of helpers and things like that in
Speaker 1: self managed care. So when her and her team looked
Speaker 1: at this data. UM. What they found was that the
Speaker 1: biggest risk of criminalization didn't actually necessarily come from UM
Speaker 1: external forces looking at big data, right, but was actually
Speaker 1: cut like the hell is other people. Because what they
Speaker 1: were finding was that nearly the majority of cases of
Speaker 1: folks coming to the attention of law enforcement was coming
Speaker 1: from medical professionals. So I want to say, I have
Speaker 1: the numbers in front of me somewhere it's UM. Well,
Speaker 1: so it's something like of folks that were reported to
Speaker 1: the police were reported by some sort of medical professional,
Speaker 1: whether that's a doctor, a social work, or a nurse
Speaker 1: or whoever, that was at a hospital when they were
Speaker 1: seeking care or they were getting prenatal care at some
Speaker 1: point when they found out they were pregnant. That's how
Speaker 1: they came to the attention of law enforcement. Another of
Speaker 1: those folks that came to the attention of law enforcement
Speaker 1: came to people that they told information to that they entrusted,
Speaker 1: whether that was a family member, a partner, a former partner,
Speaker 1: whoever the heck right. So, what we're finding is that
Speaker 1: the vast majority of people that came to the attention
Speaker 1: of law andforcement was because of folks, like actual people
Speaker 1: that had the information, and then that turned into them
Speaker 1: being individually targeted by police, and then that turned into
Speaker 1: their data being mined on their actual physical devices. Not
Speaker 1: like big brother down but small brother up right. So uh,
Speaker 1: When I certainly think about kind of how big data
Speaker 1: can be used and manipulated and like absolutely messed up
Speaker 1: to do a dragnet of folks, that's always kind of
Speaker 1: a possibility that's swimming. But I think the immediate possibility
Speaker 1: is like, how do you protect your individual data on
Speaker 1: your individual devices? What safety plan do you have in
Speaker 1: place about how you use the internet wholesale? Because I'm
Speaker 1: a lawyer, I can't tell people to commit crimes, but
Speaker 1: I can tell people to be very careful about how
Speaker 1: you manage your devices and how you manage information. Who
Speaker 1: do you tell your business to full stop? Right, because
Speaker 1: that's how folks are coming to the attention of law enforcement.
Speaker 1: Can the laws control cops? I think what we generally
Speaker 1: see is like, probably not um, but will the courts
Speaker 1: respond to cops that work outside of the law? I
Speaker 1: think the loyally awful answer is it depends on the
Speaker 1: jurisdiction that you managed to find yourself in Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think I think Keith guys just hit it right on
Speaker 1: the head. Um, you know, it's cybersecurity or weakest like
Speaker 1: as always a human element, So like that's always going
Speaker 1: to be the biggest concern, right, Like who are you
Speaker 1: telling about any of this? Like who knows about it? Um?
Speaker 1: Like you know, you know on a tangential as you're
Speaker 1: like with genderforming care in Texas, like one of the
Speaker 1: one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit against Texas, like
Speaker 1: one of the trans boys like that that was like
Speaker 1: you know, found out about you know, Governor Abbott's letter
Speaker 1: to like basically equate gender firming care as child abuse
Speaker 1: attempted suicide and then when was taken to the hospital,
Speaker 1: the hospital staff then made a report to like the
Speaker 1: Department of Yeah, so I mean this was all in
Speaker 1: in the A. C. L Use lawsuit and it's like
Speaker 1: it's just insane, right, So like that that's exactly the thing,
Speaker 1: Like the biggest risk is always gonna be the human element,
Speaker 1: Like you're like the doctors, the nurses, your friends, like
Speaker 1: family members, you know it, and it might even be
Speaker 1: people like you deeply trust. You just never know, And
Speaker 1: so that's always going to be an aspect. But I
Speaker 1: think one of the biggest risks as well is is
Speaker 1: that the amount of data that we have now, like
Speaker 1: even if that can't be used like in a proactive
Speaker 1: way to like target people on the back ends, like
Speaker 1: once you do have that kind of friend turning you
Speaker 1: into like all of a sudden, they have intent. They
Speaker 1: have like all of these things from messages, they have
Speaker 1: location data. They show exactly where you were at what time.
Speaker 1: Like it's it's just like the perfect surveillance system that
Speaker 1: basically makes like any kind of reasonable defense nearly impossible, right,
Speaker 1: Like they can show where you were, who you talked
Speaker 1: to um. And so I think that the best tweet
Speaker 1: that I saw about this is from from someone who
Speaker 1: works at Digital Defense Fund, and they're basically like there
Speaker 1: um actually might not have been them. I just remember
Speaker 1: it was just like there there is no conversation about
Speaker 1: criminal activity. There is only conspiracy. Like basically it's like
Speaker 1: any time you're chatting about any of this stuff, Like
Speaker 1: it's basically like that that in itself can be potentially
Speaker 1: considered like criminal conduct, and like that can be used
Speaker 1: like as intent and like all these things and like
Speaker 1: um in prosecution. So like there's all of those aspects,
Speaker 1: and I think just to answer your your question like
Speaker 1: more broadly on on what police can be done, like
Speaker 1: like to be honest, I guess an attorney, it's been
Speaker 1: very very frustrating seeing qualified immunity just being like increased,
Speaker 1: right like, so so basically there's been no appetite by
Speaker 1: the courts to like like remove this doctrine or whittle
Speaker 1: it away actually like being rapidly expanded, especially in aspect
Speaker 1: around um federal agents. Right and now like there's some
Speaker 1: can you explain, sorry briefly just what that is for
Speaker 1: people who don't know. So, qualified immunity basically means that
Speaker 1: you can't bring a civil rights lawsuit, particularly what it
Speaker 1: call like a nineteen eighty three lawsuit, which is like
Speaker 1: the federal statute that allows you to bring civil rights
Speaker 1: lawsuits against state and federal individuals for um, any kind
Speaker 1: of civil rights abuses. And it's everything from like discrimination
Speaker 1: on basis of race to basically you know, the cop
Speaker 1: beating someone you know within an inch of their life
Speaker 1: though so basically any any kind of civilis violations. It's
Speaker 1: called like a nineteen eight three case, which is like
Speaker 1: the citation is the actual law that like dates back
Speaker 1: to the nineteenth century, Like it's part of um like
Speaker 1: the ku klux Klient Acts, which like so this is
Speaker 1: a long running like civil rights statute that really gained
Speaker 1: prominence in the last sixty years. But you know, so
Speaker 1: basically what qualified immunity does is it basically says it, well,
Speaker 1: if it wasn't a clearly established right when this abuse
Speaker 1: or violation of your civil rights happened, the officer or
Speaker 1: the government of show it can't be held liable for it.
Speaker 1: So basically like and the way that they do it
Speaker 1: is very strictly interpreted. It was like clearly established right.
Speaker 1: So it's like, well, I wasn't clearly established right that
Speaker 1: you weren't supposed to be able to be beaten with
Speaker 1: a baton like and it's just like what like it's
Speaker 1: some of these cases get really crazy. I'm not an
Speaker 1: expert on this by any means, but like I've I've
Speaker 1: you know, come across a few, and it's it's absolutely insane.
Speaker 1: Like how how like narrowly they'll they'll oftentimes like define
Speaker 1: what like clearly like it's not like you know, broadly
Speaker 1: defined right of like maybe police officers shouldn't beating people. Um,
Speaker 1: but you know, and I think it was. It was'ce
Speaker 1: even crazier is that this law or there's an upcoming
Speaker 1: lar of the article by this professor that I was
Speaker 1: just came across the other day and like, apparently there
Speaker 1: is a whole provision of nineteen eight of the section
Speaker 1: that has been omitted from the Federal Register for a
Speaker 1: hundred and like forty years. Basically like a clerk omitted
Speaker 1: a section and this large like this this um like
Speaker 1: the Farriarca basically uncovered this omission that should have been
Speaker 1: in it passed in Congress. I'm like, but hey, if
Speaker 1: you we didn't. It wasn't a clearly established right Alejandra,
Speaker 1: So does it really apply? The one that I'm like
Speaker 1: haunted by that that I read about that was that
Speaker 1: was one of the qualified beauty cases was like there
Speaker 1: was a guy who got lit on fire by a
Speaker 1: cop with the taser, and the courts ruled that because
Speaker 1: because there hadn't been a prior instance of someone's like that,
Speaker 1: you don't have clearly established right for a cop. Don't
Speaker 1: you on fire with the taser? Yeah? And you know
Speaker 1: you can. Guy burned it death because again you got
Speaker 1: lit on fire with a taser, like because because there
Speaker 1: wasn't a clearly everything. It's like this is like this
Speaker 1: is like the worst, Like yeah, the secret is it's
Speaker 1: never it's never clearly established like like mostly folks lose
Speaker 1: these lawsuits. And I mean this is where you know,
Speaker 1: I think folks need to recognize and I say this
Speaker 1: very much as a lawyer, that the law is not
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, what's going to save
Speaker 1: us like collective organizing and working together to keep each
Speaker 1: other safe. Is because the law is not designed to
Speaker 1: hold police accountable. It is not designed to keep people
Speaker 1: out of jail. In fact, it's designed to do the opposite, right,
Speaker 1: And I think we're going to see a whole lot
Speaker 1: of folks start to understand how criminalization works in a
Speaker 1: way that they may not have realized before. And to
Speaker 1: your question, like as a public defender in New York
Speaker 1: City who spent many of those years in the Bronx, like, no,
Speaker 1: the police are not accountable to anyone and they continually
Speaker 1: do unlawful things all day. And this is part part
Speaker 1: of one of the solutions. And again, all of these
Speaker 1: are stopgap measures so that people have time to plan
Speaker 1: and plot and organize and and and do what they
Speaker 1: need to do. But is that in these states that
Speaker 1: are saying, oh, we're not you know, we're going to
Speaker 1: keep state resources away. No, no one shall use state
Speaker 1: resources to move someone for any of these you know,
Speaker 1: criminalization of pregnancy. UM. But we imagine that law enforcement
Speaker 1: is generally a rather conservative group of people will simply
Speaker 1: disagree with that law and probably at times do things anyway. Right,
Speaker 1: And sure we can file a lawsuit later, but that's
Speaker 1: not really preventing the harm in the interim, right, like
Speaker 1: someone's going to be incarcerated. All of these things are
Speaker 1: going to happen. And so one of our proposals is
Speaker 1: that it should be crystal clear that any any state
Speaker 1: actor who does participate in such extradition can be sued individually.
Speaker 1: They will have none of this qualified immunity. It will
Speaker 1: not exist. Now, Listen, this seems very reasonable to me
Speaker 1: and to us, But do I think it's something that
Speaker 1: the legislature will actually pass. I'm not particularly optimistic about
Speaker 1: most of our proposals on this because it will mean
Speaker 1: a lot of other folks who will not be criminalized.
Speaker 1: In addition to UM, folks whore criminalized for abortion. But
Speaker 1: so so I do think that that that does police.
Speaker 1: You have a problem with rampant police impunity uh in
Speaker 1: this country. UM, and it will show up here just
Speaker 1: like it does in many other sectors. I think sometimes
Speaker 1: when we talk about criminalization of abortion wholesale, for folks
Speaker 1: that have not been working in and about repro it
Speaker 1: feels very new, like this is something that we need
Speaker 1: to kind of like gird our loins and prepare for.
Speaker 1: But folks that have been working in the RHRJ movements
Speaker 1: reproductive rights, health and justice movements, UM, we have been
Speaker 1: talking about criminalization for a long time. And the reason
Speaker 1: that we've been talking about criminalizations because it's been happening
Speaker 1: for a long time. So I was talking about my
Speaker 1: colleagues research that, um, the preliminary and folk just came out.
Speaker 1: So when she was combing through all of these like
Speaker 1: different clerks offices all over the country, she unearthed like
Speaker 1: sixty one cases of folks being criminalized with self managed
Speaker 1: aboard and in twenty states now we only have three
Speaker 1: states that have laws criminalizing self managed abortion left on
Speaker 1: the books. So holy crap. The fact that there have
Speaker 1: been prosecutions in twenty states when only I think at
Speaker 1: the time that some of these cases were about only
Speaker 1: like five or six states had these laws on the books.
Speaker 1: Tell us that prosecutors are very, very creative in the
Speaker 1: ways that they go after people. So the likelihood of
Speaker 1: always seeing abortion written at the top of the warrant
Speaker 1: is going to be low. And then in some states
Speaker 1: we are going to start seeing it because they are
Speaker 1: going to if they haven't already criminalized abortion wholesale, any
Speaker 1: kind of abortion right, all abortions are going to become
Speaker 1: self managed because their folks are not able to get
Speaker 1: clinical care. So it's it's not new, and I think
Speaker 1: that's one of the things that I want to make
Speaker 1: sure that folks understand that there like criminal defense attorneys
Speaker 1: can and can deal with this because it's just the
Speaker 1: same messed up ways that they charge people in a
Speaker 1: variety of other cases. But I think the shock and
Speaker 1: awe um that's hitting some folks who the criminal legal
Speaker 1: system doesn't move within their lives is I need folks
Speaker 1: to get out of shock and all quick and get
Speaker 1: into work mode because some of the things that I'm
Speaker 1: seeing on the internet. While we're talking about how hell
Speaker 1: is other people and how we can protect ourselves in
Speaker 1: our communities. Um, some of the ways that folks are
Speaker 1: talking about this on the Internet shows that they're not
Speaker 1: people that have had the impact of the criminal legal
Speaker 1: system necessarily touched their lives, right, Like folks that think
Speaker 1: they're doing op set on Twitter. But like, if you
Speaker 1: want to get a manicure, you can come to my
Speaker 1: state and I'll pick you up for your manicure. And
Speaker 1: that's when we talk about how cases get put together
Speaker 1: on the back end. And I think, um Michelle can
Speaker 1: probably speak to this too, like as a public defender,
Speaker 1: when you're seeing how when you have a very motivated
Speaker 1: prosecutor a cop that actually knows how to do their
Speaker 1: job in the information that they're able to gather when
Speaker 1: they investigate. Yes, they will pull your tweets. Yes, even
Speaker 1: if it's not your case, they will pull your tweets
Speaker 1: and connect that person that got their abortion to the
Speaker 1: tweets that you put online to show that they intended
Speaker 1: to go to your place to go and get an abortion,
Speaker 1: and then try to use those things to prosecute them
Speaker 1: over here. So even if you're willing to take the
Speaker 1: risk with your own life, if you're trying to help people,
Speaker 1: don't put them in a position that they can be
Speaker 1: harmed by some of the things that we say out loud.
Speaker 1: Because if you're living in a state where you're not
Speaker 1: afraid of criminalization, but the person you aren't trying to
Speaker 1: help is in a state that and they have to
Speaker 1: go back to somewhere they can be criminalized, you gotta
Speaker 1: think about how you're protecting them. That's my soapbox rant.
Speaker 1: I think that's really valuable. Actually this like we start
Speaker 1: letting the Trump administration to this like legal constitutional magic
Speaker 1: that like like they steth Abramson, the the Twitter thread
Speaker 1: guy right like it's it's yeah, it distracts from useful
Speaker 1: organizing a mutual aid because people are just like, well
Speaker 1: if this and this and this and this and this,
Speaker 1: and then like I understand this and no one else
Speaker 1: does and this is a special secret. And then if
Speaker 1: we do this and turn around three times and go
Speaker 1: through the wardrobe and Donald Trump will be impeached or
Speaker 1: you know, I can give you it a safe a
Speaker 1: safe of safe access to reproductive healthcare rather than just
Speaker 1: doing the work. And I think another part of what
Speaker 1: was going on here and this has been something that like,
Speaker 1: you know, if you if you talk to people who've
Speaker 1: been doing this, like okay, if if if this is
Speaker 1: the thing you genuinely want to do, there are people
Speaker 1: who have been doing this kind of work for decades
Speaker 1: and decades and decades of decades, and they know largely
Speaker 1: what is safe and what isn't and more stuff is
Speaker 1: a factor for not And the way that this sort
Speaker 1: of like like the kind of sort of like, hey,
Speaker 1: I'm going to go do this on my own. I
Speaker 1: have I've never done this before. I don't know what
Speaker 1: I'm doing, but here I'm going to sort of signal
Speaker 1: that I can do this thing. Like, go talk if
Speaker 1: you want to do those go talk to the people
Speaker 1: who have been doing it for ages, and go support
Speaker 1: them because, like you know, again, like the reason the
Speaker 1: reason we're here in the first place is because that
Speaker 1: this whole, like the entire right to abortion has for
Speaker 1: literally decades, been supported by just a really tiny number
Speaker 1: of incredibly underfunded and understaffed people in organizations. So like,
Speaker 1: go help them, don't like strike out on your own
Speaker 1: to boldly get you and everyone you're working with arrested. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think you know some of that is you know,
Speaker 1: I think some people have some good intentions, but my god,
Speaker 1: like that energy can be spent in so much more
Speaker 1: productive ways, and it's it's kind of unfortunate. I think
Speaker 1: that the worst aspect of it, though, is like the
Speaker 1: tech bros coming in and being like, I'm going to
Speaker 1: save this space with We're going to create a dow
Speaker 1: and like distribute funds, and I'm like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: Like I'm just sitting here, like, you know, because this
Speaker 1: is something like you know, I've looked into is students
Speaker 1: like this earlier this year, like you know, how payment
Speaker 1: transactions could be used, um and basically how there's basically
Speaker 1: almost no security with with payment transactions, right, like like
Speaker 1: if you're using Venmo, which which in and of itself
Speaker 1: has like a social media function, so like you know,
Speaker 1: you can see when you're your friend, you know, Joe
Speaker 1: is like getting brunch on Sunday, and like, you know,
Speaker 1: they could you know, if you're not sending that to
Speaker 1: private by default, like that that's already a problem. But basically,
Speaker 1: like you know, they can get access to those records
Speaker 1: pretty easily, um, in a much easier way. And you know,
Speaker 1: one of the things we we we started to look
Speaker 1: at like towards the end was like, oh you know
Speaker 1: has you know had some some students being like, well,
Speaker 1: can you can you use krypto? Can you use like bitcoin?
Speaker 1: It's like you still have to interact at some point
Speaker 1: with a financial institution and they can tie these things back.
Speaker 1: It is not that exceptionally hard, especially like now it's
Speaker 1: been shown that like coin bases like cooperating with the
Speaker 1: FEDS and basically acting like a giant honey pot. So
Speaker 1: like I just I finally wish that people would just
Speaker 1: like realize that like technology is not going to save
Speaker 1: us here, Like it can help if used wisely and creatively,
Speaker 1: but don't think that like you're just gonna like do
Speaker 1: this one little neat trick, like as James was saying,
Speaker 1: and then suddenly we're gonna fix this because it's not right,
Speaker 1: Like this is going to take a million different solutions
Speaker 1: with a million different people doing all the little things
Speaker 1: that they can to push back. And like that's one
Speaker 1: of the things I think we we tried to be
Speaker 1: very hopble about in our papers, like look, none of
Speaker 1: this is a silver bullet. We're just trying to provide
Speaker 1: some concrete solutions that states can take and some stuff
Speaker 1: that they can take, but we realize that nothing is
Speaker 1: ever going to be perfect to solve this kind of
Speaker 1: Pandora's box. It's been opened by a Lido and all
Speaker 1: these like right wing reactionaries on the court. So like,
Speaker 1: I guess speaking of things that are not silver bullets
Speaker 1: and will not save us. Um, Yeah, I guess could
Speaker 1: we get a bit more into looking at what the
Speaker 1: sort of like It's like a lot of the article
Speaker 1: is talking about I guess, the the the history of extradition, uh,
Speaker 1: and how how that sort of been understood and interpreted,
Speaker 1: And so I guess I was wondering, Yeah, can we
Speaker 1: go into talking about what the sort of legal stuff
Speaker 1: is going to look like when it's like, you know,
Speaker 1: if if we start getting these large showdowns between like
Speaker 1: states with like actually sort of like you know, if
Speaker 1: states actually start trying to have sanctuary laws that are
Speaker 1: like have teeth and are good, what what what is
Speaker 1: that sort of what is that going to look like? Yeah,
Speaker 1: So this is a kind of part that I focused
Speaker 1: on in the article. And so basically a lot of
Speaker 1: people aren't aware about this because it's not really a
Speaker 1: contested area of the Constitution. But basically when the Constitution
Speaker 1: was drafted um and ratified, it contained what was called
Speaker 1: the extradition Clause, and basically what it said is that,
Speaker 1: you know, all the states have a duty to turn
Speaker 1: over fugitives from other states that have been charged with
Speaker 1: the crime and have fled into those states. Is the
Speaker 1: United States kind of where it's a federal system, so
Speaker 1: like every state is still considered kind of its own
Speaker 1: sovereign in some ways, in a very quasi sovereign way.
Speaker 1: And so there was a question about, you know, since
Speaker 1: all criminal prosecutions, basically especially the inception of the United States,
Speaker 1: were done at the state level, you know, what what
Speaker 1: happens when somebody crosses and across state lines? Like how
Speaker 1: are we going to handle that? And so basically this
Speaker 1: was you know, one of the drafts. And initially they
Speaker 1: tried to set it at a higher bar, like to
Speaker 1: be like high crimes and misdemeanors, similar to kind of
Speaker 1: the impeachment clause, and you know, they whittled it down
Speaker 1: to and basically made it very applicable as at all crimes, um.
Speaker 1: But it really did not get much play until basically
Speaker 1: in the eighteen forties when obviously, the tension around slavery
Speaker 1: picked up, right, So you had enslaved people escaping to
Speaker 1: the north and the South being very angry about that
Speaker 1: and wanting the North to to return. Um then escaped
Speaker 1: enslave folks and the North being like no. And Congress
Speaker 1: tried to figure out a way to like thread some
Speaker 1: kind of needle, but made it ten times worse and
Speaker 1: put us on an accelerating path towards Civil war by
Speaker 1: passing the Fugitive Slave Act of eighteen fifty. And a
Speaker 1: bunch of radical abolitionists in the Northeast were like, we
Speaker 1: don't ever want to comply with this, right, So like
Speaker 1: Vermont passed this bill called the Habeas Corpus Act, which
Speaker 1: basically created all kinds of legal procedures so that Southern
Speaker 1: bounty hunters wouldn't just come into the state and just kidnap,
Speaker 1: you know, the first black person they saw, because they
Speaker 1: assumed that they were been an escaped and slave person
Speaker 1: rather than a free person. And you know, and it
Speaker 1: was trying to stop that kind of issue of kidnappings
Speaker 1: and also just not to comply with this, you know,
Speaker 1: the institution of slavery, because there were people who had
Speaker 1: escaped slavery and were in the North, and so it
Speaker 1: was causing all kinds of tension. And while like the
Speaker 1: Vermont Law was never fully tested, it did create a
Speaker 1: lot of incendiary back and force between the North and
Speaker 1: the South and then the press, and it was really
Speaker 1: interesting like reading some of these old newspaper articles from
Speaker 1: the eighteen like from eighteen fifty, because it was like
Speaker 1: basically the press and Richmond and the press in Boston
Speaker 1: like taking stabs at each other. And it was like
Speaker 1: the eighteen fifty version of ship posting, because they were
Speaker 1: like one person was just like this is nullification made easy,
Speaker 1: and like basically with like it's just it was. It
Speaker 1: was the surreal thing like if you know, if you
Speaker 1: get a chance when when our full article comes out
Speaker 1: in December, there'll be some some highlights from that and
Speaker 1: the notes um. But basically what it really got tested
Speaker 1: was in eighteen sixty one. The case started in eighteen
Speaker 1: fifty nine, though it's called Kentucky be Dennisent and so
Speaker 1: what what essentially happened is there was someone who aided
Speaker 1: Um and it's like person escape Kentucky and get to
Speaker 1: Ohio and basically the governor of Ohio was an abolitionist
Speaker 1: and was like, I don't want to comply with this
Speaker 1: right and I do not want to I don't believe
Speaker 1: like this is a crime because this is not a
Speaker 1: crime in our state. And the Attorney General of Ohio
Speaker 1: basically wrote a long legal memo stating that this this
Speaker 1: is a crime not known to the laws of civilization
Speaker 1: or man. So basically, yeah, they thought they want to
Speaker 1: read to the Supreme Court. And Chief Justice Taney also
Speaker 1: notable for dread Scott decisions, so like absolutely just terrible
Speaker 1: court like they were. This came I think about like
Speaker 1: three weeks before the Civil Wars. This is like I
Speaker 1: think it's in in like March of eighteen six one,
Speaker 1: so basically like three weeks before Fort Sumter got like
Speaker 1: sacked by by the south Um. But basically what it
Speaker 1: did was is that it said states actually can't utilize
Speaker 1: any discretion in extradition. So like the like the governor
Speaker 1: of Ohio can't say, like, I have concerns about human
Speaker 1: rights and that this isn't a crime in our state. Right,
Speaker 1: there's not this dual criminality analysis, and we're concerned about
Speaker 1: human rights and all these things. So the Supreme court
Speaker 1: basically said no, states don't have that discretion, which you know,
Speaker 1: but they essentially split the baby by by then saying
Speaker 1: federal courts can't issue a rid of and NamUs, which
Speaker 1: is basically an order for a government official to do something. Um.
Speaker 1: They said that federal courts couldn't do that to a
Speaker 1: state governor an extradition. So basically it means that like,
Speaker 1: states don't have discretion, but federal courts can enforce it.
Speaker 1: So therefore it's just a non issue. Right. Fast forward
Speaker 1: a hundred and twenty years and we get to a
Speaker 1: case called Perdorico v. Brand's Dad, which basically, somebody committed
Speaker 1: murder in Perto Rico, fled back to Iowa, and then
Speaker 1: was sought for extradition back to Pertorico. And there's a
Speaker 1: huge element of racism here because you know, they were
Speaker 1: concerned that a white man couldn't get a fair trial
Speaker 1: in Puerto Rico, which is just deeply offensive. Um. And
Speaker 1: so they were. And there was also a question of
Speaker 1: like territoriality, right because Perdorico is a territory. I wasn't
Speaker 1: sure if they had to comply with the extradition clause.
Speaker 1: And so essentially the Supreme Court said, yes, federal courts
Speaker 1: can comply with or can't issue a rid of mandamus
Speaker 1: to to ensure extradition. So essentially what it did was
Speaker 1: it partially overturned the Kentucky be dens In case, but
Speaker 1: upheld the central ruling. The basics, states have no discretion.
Speaker 1: So what does that mean? Basically that states can't really
Speaker 1: stop the extradition of someone in their in their um jurisdiction,
Speaker 1: even if they have extreme concerns. Right, So if you have, like,
Speaker 1: let's say, going back to Michelle's example earlier, someone who
Speaker 1: sends their friends like abortion pills from New York to
Speaker 1: let's say Texas, right, and Texas is seeking extradition in
Speaker 1: New York's like, well, that's not a crime here, so
Speaker 1: we don't want to extradite um. You know, the states
Speaker 1: would typically be hard pressed. But there's kind of two
Speaker 1: kind of or there's one major issue with like the
Speaker 1: extradition part right, actually has to apply to someone who's
Speaker 1: quote unquote an actual fugitive, meaning that they had to
Speaker 1: actually be present in the state when the crime occurred,
Speaker 1: and the commission of the crime can't in itself create
Speaker 1: what's called constructive presence. You have to be corporeally present
Speaker 1: in the state, meaning you have to be physically present.
Speaker 1: You can't just like the commission of the crime doesn't
Speaker 1: constitute that. So in this instance, um, you know, the
Speaker 1: person who says a pill in York technically like constitutionally
Speaker 1: does not have to be extradited, right, Like they can
Speaker 1: contest that. The problem is, as Michelle pointed out, is
Speaker 1: that you know, the extradition causes it exist today is
Speaker 1: pretty much almost entirely just a formality that is waived
Speaker 1: basically almost every single time. And so the courts, the
Speaker 1: like the state attorneys, the district attorneys, even defense attorneys
Speaker 1: might not be familiar with that and might not know
Speaker 1: that that's something that they can potentially contest or it's
Speaker 1: even something that they can um that that is a
Speaker 1: potential constitutional issue, right And so that's one of the
Speaker 1: things that we focused on is our potential solution, um
Speaker 1: is to ensure that people who were not present in
Speaker 1: the state where the actor occurred are able to mount
Speaker 1: a challenge to the extradition. Um. You know, it creates
Speaker 1: all kinds of other problems because there's still federal extradition,
Speaker 1: meaning like if you leave this the country and come
Speaker 1: back in like border patrol could potentially get you. We
Speaker 1: still don't have a clear understanding of how that necessarily
Speaker 1: would work, um, you know, because that's never been a
Speaker 1: question that's like fully resolved. So you know, basically, you know,
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, like we want to
Speaker 1: make sure that like folks are aware of that. But
Speaker 1: like the folks that like leave Texas, right, so, like
Speaker 1: if you commit an abortion, you were charged in Texas
Speaker 1: and you go to New York, Like New York is
Speaker 1: not going to have very many options to protect you
Speaker 1: from being extradited back to Texas. UM. And so you know,
Speaker 1: one of the things that you know, I fundamentally believe
Speaker 1: Kentucky be Dennison was wrong. Was wrongly decided on the
Speaker 1: sense that state shouldn't be able to have a concern
Speaker 1: around human rights because it essentially acts as a one
Speaker 1: way ratchet where the states with the most regressive anti
Speaker 1: human rights criminal justice laws get to have like get
Speaker 1: to dictate that over all of the other states. Similar
Speaker 1: to how um slavery, like the southern states were trying
Speaker 1: to enforce the institutional slavery on northern states that had
Speaker 1: that had abolished slavery decades ago, so it's a very
Speaker 1: complicated issue. And again I reached back to that slavery
Speaker 1: analysis because not because I think that, you know, the
Speaker 1: slavery and abortions should be compared directly, but because this
Speaker 1: is like, this is fun eventually the last time where
Speaker 1: you have criminal laws that are so different between states,
Speaker 1: Like one state's human right is another state's capital crime.
Speaker 1: Like if you can't get further apart than that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I wanted to just clarify for folks. If I
Speaker 1: drove the pill to Texas, then I would have committed
Speaker 1: the crime in Texas, and New York could extradite me
Speaker 1: um and I what I also think I'm sort of
Speaker 1: here is the what happens on the ground, right, So
Speaker 1: if you to be clear, while as Alejanda correctly points,
Speaker 1: if I just mailed it to Texas and they have
Speaker 1: the warrant while we're sorting out this extradition warrant, I
Speaker 1: am very likely incarcerated and the sorting out of the
Speaker 1: extradition warrant will probably take ninety days. So just because
Speaker 1: I think folks get confused with this a lot, just
Speaker 1: because something is illegal doesn't mean or your lawyers arguing
Speaker 1: it's illegal doesn't mean it just magically stops um or
Speaker 1: the process ends. And so this is something where we
Speaker 1: think that, um, really there should be a basis to
Speaker 1: contest your extradition on a human rights ground on two grounds,
Speaker 1: Either there is no dual criminality, that is, this is
Speaker 1: not actually a crime, and the other state Interestingly, here,
Speaker 1: handing someone a person scription pill in New York is
Speaker 1: actually a felony, whether or not you get money for it.
Speaker 1: Most folks don't know that he's smiling because she also
Speaker 1: has a public defender in New York City. Um, because
Speaker 1: it blows your mind. You're like, wait, they just handed
Speaker 1: it to them. There's no money exchange. Yeah, that's a
Speaker 1: felony drug sale, So we might have dual criminality. New
Speaker 1: York might actually say, um, you did do a crime,
Speaker 1: so I will extradite you, Which is why we think
Speaker 1: there also needs to be a human rights defense. And
Speaker 1: this may also extend to, well, we're not going to
Speaker 1: extradite them to Texas because they have the death penalty
Speaker 1: and we think that is a clear contravention of human rights.
Speaker 1: Maybe we can extend it to prison conditions. I don't
Speaker 1: know how that far that goes again, these are things
Speaker 1: I don't know they'd be likely to be codified. But
Speaker 1: if we're actually dreaming up the world that we think
Speaker 1: where this could work, like I, as your attorney, should
Speaker 1: be able to come in and say there's no dual criminality,
Speaker 1: this isn't contravention of human rights. And once I mount
Speaker 1: that defense, then the court is bound to release you
Speaker 1: while we sort that out. Um and and that is
Speaker 1: sort of our vision. Another thing that that Alejandro mentioned
Speaker 1: the ver the Vermont law in the eighteen hundreds, and
Speaker 1: one of the things that it said was you could
Speaker 1: get a jury of your peers in a situation like this.
Speaker 1: There's no jury in an extradition case. But the idea,
Speaker 1: of course, is that a jury is going to say
Speaker 1: this is morally wrong. I don't care what the law says,
Speaker 1: We're not sending this person back to enslavement. And the
Speaker 1: idea here is if you put a jury in and
Speaker 1: you assert of human rights defense, perhaps the jury will say, no,
Speaker 1: we're not sending you. So these are these are a
Speaker 1: lot of ideas that we've been coming up with. So
Speaker 1: we're doing the plan. There was jury nullification, yes, it
Speaker 1: absolutely was. It absolutely was jury nullification of love love
Speaker 1: love love love love jury nullification. I anybody with the
Speaker 1: law review that's listening to this, let me write about
Speaker 1: jury nullification for you and feel like, but but we
Speaker 1: we we. I feel like I have been wanting to
Speaker 1: explain jury nalification on this show. Literally sense the like
Speaker 1: I asked the first week coming back for the next one.
Speaker 1: So there's something that I don't want to be lost.
Speaker 1: And that's the idea of like, people don't necessarily know
Speaker 1: what they're being charged with in the state that's asking
Speaker 1: for them to go back, because there's not really a
Speaker 1: requirement that that. So for an extradition, like thinking through
Speaker 1: what you actually need, like the bare bones of an extradition.
Speaker 1: It needs to be like a piece of paper that's
Speaker 1: signed by the governor, but not necessarily the governor of
Speaker 1: the state, but somebody with authority to ask for you
Speaker 1: to return back. And that's in essence it right, just
Speaker 1: like a piece of paper signed by somebody that says
Speaker 1: x y Z birthdate, x y Z did a crime
Speaker 1: in our state. Give them back to us. Right, they
Speaker 1: don't have to say what crime. Not really a requirement
Speaker 1: it usually says it, but it doesn't. It doesn't require
Speaker 1: a probable cause, Affid David, I think is really the
Speaker 1: more important part. It doesn't require you to prove that
Speaker 1: there is enough to charge them with a crime in
Speaker 1: the sending state. Right, So we're saying that's a bare
Speaker 1: minimum change that we can make two laws to make
Speaker 1: the state that's asking for you to use your resources
Speaker 1: to put somebody in a cage and then put them
Speaker 1: in a traveling cage to bring them to our cages. Um.
Speaker 1: And I keep saying the word cage because I don't
Speaker 1: want us to move away from what like prisons and
Speaker 1: jails actually are. It's like bars and cages and boxes. Right,
Speaker 1: So it doesn't really harm the system, doesn't really tear
Speaker 1: yall apart to say, and here's what they're being charged
Speaker 1: within the reason why because that would be the bare
Speaker 1: minimum for someone to be charged for a crime in
Speaker 1: New York. You would need to have probable cause for
Speaker 1: the arrest, and then a judge that's sitting on the
Speaker 1: bench gets to say, Yep, there's enough probable cause for
Speaker 1: this person to be charged next court date, you know.
Speaker 1: And but we don't have that with extradition. We just
Speaker 1: trust that the wheels of bureaucracy are turning the way
Speaker 1: that they need to. Holy crap, that can harm so
Speaker 1: many people. So we're just saying, hey, make them write
Speaker 1: it down. So maybe a judge that's sitting in Illinois
Speaker 1: can look at this warrant from Missouri that says we
Speaker 1: want X y Z back here because of a self
Speaker 1: managed abortion, and then they can see whether or not
Speaker 1: Illinois's new fancy extradition law, which they haven't written up
Speaker 1: and I'm sure they will, applies, right. I think that's
Speaker 1: a bare minimum that we can do. And as much
Speaker 1: as I crave shaking systems and tearing them apart, I
Speaker 1: don't think that's going to be a thing that does it.
Speaker 1: But it might. You know, have y'all ever played Mario Kart,
Speaker 1: You know, when you're driving and you're able to throw
Speaker 1: like the turtle shell or the banana, that might be
Speaker 1: the banana that might slow down the process of somebody
Speaker 1: kind of getting dragged along on this course. Well, and
Speaker 1: I think I think there's like there's another thing that
Speaker 1: that would do too, which is that that vice time
Speaker 1: for a community response, because like you know, if we
Speaker 1: go back to sort of the ice stuff, it was like, well, yeah, Okay,
Speaker 1: like ice raids weren't stopped by the sanctuary laws. The
Speaker 1: thing that like did slow them down was massive community response. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I think that's very Uh it's certainly I've
Speaker 1: seen that happen here. Like in San Diego, it wasn't
Speaker 1: any of our performative Democrats laws. It was people getting
Speaker 1: out into the street. Now I was gonna say, there's
Speaker 1: It's also like in the UK in the last couple
Speaker 1: of months, there's been a lot of really really impressive
Speaker 1: community defense things and like cops showing up and like
Speaker 1: just entire communities and neighborhoods showing up the cops just
Speaker 1: like running away. And it's been it's been incredible to watch.
Speaker 1: And you two can also do this. But performative Democrats
Speaker 1: keep giving us good laws, like give us something, give
Speaker 1: anything like a nub of a thing that folks can
Speaker 1: hang their hats on. Um. I just don't want any
Speaker 1: politician out there to think that they're absolved from the
Speaker 1: job of protecting people. Yeah. Well, and I think I
Speaker 1: think again to think with these laws, right, it's like
Speaker 1: you you actually like with this e tradition stuff like
Speaker 1: I don't know how like I don't. I don't know
Speaker 1: how you would even like try to stop it unless
Speaker 1: like because like you don't know, like I mean, I
Speaker 1: like unless unless youre going to commit to try to
Speaker 1: stop trying to stop every person who gets arrested, which
Speaker 1: I think is like a noble goal, but like there's no,
Speaker 1: we don't have a capacity for that. Like if we
Speaker 1: lived in a world where we could do that, like
Speaker 1: the world will be much better and the state would
Speaker 1: be running for its life. But yeah, it's like like
Speaker 1: it seems like a thing that like it gives like
Speaker 1: it gives time for the law to act. More importantly,
Speaker 1: it's like it gives time for us to act. And
Speaker 1: that seems sure. Absolutely one of the most important thing
Speaker 1: is that it's buying time for people to organize and
Speaker 1: be able to be able to push back. It also
Speaker 1: creates a lot of higher barrier right like at the
Speaker 1: end of the day, like these systems are still made
Speaker 1: up people, and people are incredibly lazy and oftentimes like
Speaker 1: the police and other folks like don't want to have
Speaker 1: to deal with like engaging and going with like an
Speaker 1: extradition request because of the actual process for dealing with
Speaker 1: that is actually very onerous. Like, um, they have physically
Speaker 1: go to the state to pick them up, and they
Speaker 1: have to do all these things, right, and so what
Speaker 1: we're doing is like we're suggesting make it even harder,
Speaker 1: like make it absolutely hard for them to go through
Speaker 1: this and actually have to litigate in courts and like
Speaker 1: bring all this stuff, um and just basically like so
Speaker 1: down the process and raise that kind of buried entry
Speaker 1: on it. But you know, I thinks, like I think
Speaker 1: that's you know, very important to say, is like you know,
Speaker 1: the commune defense aspect cannot be able to stated because
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, like laws are just
Speaker 1: words on paper, right, Like it's it's the people that
Speaker 1: give them the effect and the power. So really what
Speaker 1: we need is like people say like this is morally wrong, right,
Speaker 1: Like we're not going to prosecute people for for exercising
Speaker 1: their bodily autonomy engaging in a fundamental human right. And
Speaker 1: so you know, when one of the things I have
Speaker 1: but heartened byas ums like um for John Brown gun
Speaker 1: Club in Dallas, like what they've been doing like protecting
Speaker 1: houseless folks like under the over passes, like they show
Speaker 1: up and like you know, in Texas they can open
Speaker 1: carry and like the police don't want to deal with them,
Speaker 1: so they're like buying a few more days so that
Speaker 1: the Dallas police doesn't um come in and sweep you know,
Speaker 1: the only belongings that these people have. And like that
Speaker 1: in and of itself brought so much attention that like
Speaker 1: brought so much scrutiny to Dallas p D's actions. So
Speaker 1: like it is that kind of community defense. And I
Speaker 1: think it also harks back to how these extradition issues
Speaker 1: like prior to like the Civil War worked out. It
Speaker 1: wasn't necessarily like these formal systems in Vermont that like
Speaker 1: stopped you know, escaped as like persons from being returned
Speaker 1: back to the South. It was like entire mods of
Speaker 1: people coming and like being like, you're not taking this
Speaker 1: person out of our town, and if you try to,
Speaker 1: you're not gonna leave here. Like I as a whole person,
Speaker 1: I guess it's probably the best way to put that,
Speaker 1: um shoot your local bounty hunters. Yeah, And so like
Speaker 1: essentially like that that's how it worked, right, And like
Speaker 1: you know, at the end of the day, I feel like,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't want to du something kind of violence,
Speaker 1: but like like what really what it means is like
Speaker 1: when people show up and they physically put themselves in
Speaker 1: the way, it makes it so much harder for the
Speaker 1: like this kind of wheel of injustice to continue. And
Speaker 1: so that's really what it's going to take. And like
Speaker 1: you were mentioning with like the with the ice raids
Speaker 1: and everything like that, like it took people it's sometimes
Speaker 1: physically putting their bodies in front of ice fans to
Speaker 1: stop them from driving away and like chaining themselves to stuff,
Speaker 1: and like that's the kind of like non violent like
Speaker 1: direct action that I think is like going to be
Speaker 1: like needed. Yeah, And I think folks seem to have
Speaker 1: figured out that their district attorneys are elected and the
Speaker 1: person bringing the fugitive case, which I don't think I've
Speaker 1: been crystal clear about, is the district attorney. So then
Speaker 1: the police officer is going to go to the district
Speaker 1: attorneys of it, and that is the person who's going
Speaker 1: to bring the court case to help facilitate sending the
Speaker 1: person um. And I know New York recently has seen
Speaker 1: a number of successes of folks organizing around individual people
Speaker 1: would be saying you need to drop these charges. This
Speaker 1: conviction got overturned you should not be continuing with the case.
Speaker 1: This person is a for whatever reason, folks are organizing around, right,
Speaker 1: and so if we can create some delays whereby the
Speaker 1: person is free, right, because this is the key thing.
Speaker 1: We don't want people incarcerated. Incarceration in of itself is
Speaker 1: extreme violence. Right, So if the person is not incarcerated,
Speaker 1: then we can sort of delay this process and organize
Speaker 1: around pressuring whoever needs to be pressured, particularly the two
Speaker 1: Democratic politicians who say there against all of this stuff.
Speaker 1: But then at the end of the day, are they
Speaker 1: going to ignore the homicide extradition warrant? Like that's where
Speaker 1: the rubber meets the road. Are you going to do
Speaker 1: it or not? Right? And and and I think that's
Speaker 1: a much harder question when it comes down to that
Speaker 1: for them, because they're like, well, it's a homicide warrant, right,
Speaker 1: and and so that's where they need the pressure because um,
Speaker 1: all the wild ideas go out the door in that moment. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think, like, I think that's the thing with with
Speaker 1: these people. It's like ideologically like they don't care enough
Speaker 1: to deal with do it. But if you but you
Speaker 1: can force them to care about having a job, Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: it's not not even just so much that, like there
Speaker 1: there are long established ways of putting pressure on people
Speaker 1: and systems that can force them to do things they
Speaker 1: don't want to do, and yeah, go do that because
Speaker 1: we're going to need it. Frankly, I think part of
Speaker 1: this is also destigmatizing work right, um, Because when we
Speaker 1: have kind of these big divergent ideas, when we find
Speaker 1: ourselves at the split of like good versus evil, right,
Speaker 1: like slavery versus not slavery, bodily autonomy versus not bodily autonomy, um,
Speaker 1: sometimes the good guys compromise to the point that we
Speaker 1: get ourselves to this position later on down the line,
Speaker 1: and what we can do is kind of galvanized community
Speaker 1: response and also civic engagement by forcing folks to take
Speaker 1: a look at the laws that we so rely on
Speaker 1: and questioning why does this thing exist this way? Why
Speaker 1: is this process moving that way? Someone that didn't know that.
Speaker 1: Folks facing an extradition warrant like often have to make
Speaker 1: the decision at an arrayment. Am I going to waive
Speaker 1: my right to extradition and wait for them to couldn't
Speaker 1: get me because they said that takes thirty days for
Speaker 1: them to come and get you. But if you don't wait,
Speaker 1: if it's going to take ninety days to them to
Speaker 1: come and get you, so you'll be sitting there longer,
Speaker 1: and that's a decision that you need to make. Kind
Speaker 1: of like in that moment, if we're talking about extradition
Speaker 1: in normal conversation, we're moving forward to a place where
Speaker 1: we're destigmatizing and frankly demystifying what the criminal legal system
Speaker 1: really looks like. In an and bolts. It might end
Speaker 1: up with better conversations and better output for folks in
Speaker 1: the future. It might end up with you being able
Speaker 1: to talk about jury nullification and having like and not
Speaker 1: having it be kind of like a shaking the table conversation,
Speaker 1: because frankly, these are all like civics. Civics, it's rights,
Speaker 1: it's things that are written in the constitution that governs us,
Speaker 1: where the cops don't need to know the law, but
Speaker 1: we're all expected to write. So it takes all kinds,
Speaker 1: it takes all responses for us to just get to
Speaker 1: the place that's better than the stop gap that Row
Speaker 1: had been giving us for the last forties some odd years.
Speaker 1: And I'll say, like the one thing that does terrify
Speaker 1: me in this end is like or I guess like
Speaker 1: really concerns me is like what Bonda Santist just did
Speaker 1: in Florida in Hillsboro County. Like I grew up in
Speaker 1: Hillsboro County, so I'm from there. So it's like like
Speaker 1: the twice elected UH state attorney there was just suspended
Speaker 1: because he said he would refuse to um prosecute crimes
Speaker 1: related to abortion and gender for carry, like also refused
Speaker 1: to prosecute trans people using the bathroom right, So like
Speaker 1: these kinds of things and the santis just like sacked him. Right,
Speaker 1: an elected person that reflects the values of that county,
Speaker 1: and so like that that's the other thing to be
Speaker 1: aware of. It's you know, like even when you do
Speaker 1: exercise that power and like say like this is our
Speaker 1: as a community, these are our values on like who
Speaker 1: we should be prioritizing um in the criminal justice system.
Speaker 1: There are still people out there that will will try
Speaker 1: to circumvent that in a very authoritarian and autocratic way,
Speaker 1: and so um, you know, I think it's not just
Speaker 1: who you're voting for your local das, who are you
Speaker 1: running for? A governor? Who are you running for? Like,
Speaker 1: you know, these people that have broader powers over this.
Speaker 1: I wanted to briefly talk about this because I know
Speaker 1: like it was proposed at least by my representative the
Speaker 1: and I think it's being bandied about as a solution,
Speaker 1: and uh, it doesn't seem like it is. But this
Speaker 1: My Body, My Data Act, which I was trying to
Speaker 1: read through it a little earlier. It seems like it
Speaker 1: allows people to like sue tech companies for selling their
Speaker 1: data that leads to their prosecution. I don't know if
Speaker 1: you are familiar with it, but maybe we could just
Speaker 1: discuss a little bit what No, okay, all right, I
Speaker 1: mean so I'm not familiar, but based on what you
Speaker 1: just said, right, I think there's this and I really
Speaker 1: think it goes back to what EVCO is saying about
Speaker 1: folks just like not not fully understanding precisely how the
Speaker 1: criminal legal system just like runs over people. Okay, great,
Speaker 1: so I can sue the tech company after the police
Speaker 1: have put me in a cage and and convicted me
Speaker 1: based on the day like like, okay, I mean great,
Speaker 1: maybe I'll have a lot of money on my commissary,
Speaker 1: my family will have enough um like funds to come
Speaker 1: drive and visit me at whatever state prison they've got
Speaker 1: me locked up in, right, Like, like, this is where
Speaker 1: we have to step back and think, are is this
Speaker 1: is this thing actually preventing the harm? Because I think
Speaker 1: a lot of times folks are just like, we can
Speaker 1: do them, or we could get back at them. And
Speaker 1: I also want folks to remember that just making something
Speaker 1: illegal does not prevent harm. Right, and and a whole
Speaker 1: another conversation about criminalization as a solution to anything, which
Speaker 1: I think it is not, um, but but just on
Speaker 1: on the face of what you've said to me, that
Speaker 1: doesn't sound like a solution that if I it wouldn't
Speaker 1: feel adequate to me if if I were in that
Speaker 1: And also thinking about how cases become cases from what
Speaker 1: we know, it's not again, it's not coming from big
Speaker 1: data down right for the most part. It certainly can happen,
Speaker 1: but really what's happening is violations of people's Fourth Amendment rights.
Speaker 1: Cops being able to access things on people's actual devices,
Speaker 1: oftentimes without warrants, oftentimes by not fully explaining that people
Speaker 1: have the right to they know. Um And I'm sure
Speaker 1: Michelle has had clients that were like, oh, they just
Speaker 1: took my phone. How many times have we heard that? Right?
Speaker 1: They just took my phone and started going through it.
Speaker 1: A police officer that does that is not going to
Speaker 1: write in their report. And I just took his phone
Speaker 1: without any permission. It's always permission was granted. It was
Speaker 1: in plane view. I saw it from the street. I
Speaker 1: smelled it as he was walking by. Like, if the
Speaker 1: laws that are being created are not actually responsive to
Speaker 1: the harm that folks are experiencing in a way that
Speaker 1: actually prevents it, then we need to kind of push
Speaker 1: back at our legislators and say, Okay, this is great,
Speaker 1: but is it responding to the thing that you're saying
Speaker 1: it's responding to? Because yeah, shout out to people being
Speaker 1: able to sue big tech for selling our data without
Speaker 1: our permission. Bet, But is that gonna prevent prosecutors from
Speaker 1: going after folks that have abortions? Probably not, Because even
Speaker 1: in the Nebraska case that Alejandra mentioned at the top
Speaker 1: of the hour, that was a warrant that was signed
Speaker 1: by judge, it was a search warrant that was provided
Speaker 1: to Facebook that didn't say the words abortion on it,
Speaker 1: that didn't say that we're going after someone for abortion.
Speaker 1: Had I think the words like abuse of a corpse
Speaker 1: or something of that nature on there, and for them
Speaker 1: it was wrote what they normally do, bureaucracy, search warrants,
Speaker 1: stamp here's the data that you're looking for. A law
Speaker 1: that prevents folks from selling your data doesn't prevent that
Speaker 1: from happening. Something I think a lot about those. One
Speaker 1: of my sort of like former political experiences was back
Speaker 1: in like I think, I think it's something which isn't
Speaker 1: twelve doesn't thirteen um. Right after the revolution in Bahrain.
Speaker 1: So okay, so the revolution in Bahrain, Saudi tanks roll in,
Speaker 1: they crush it, they kill a bunch of people, and
Speaker 1: the government starts doing this crackdown. The way the government
Speaker 1: does to crackdown is they go they go to Facebook
Speaker 1: and they takes off those on people's public accounts, and
Speaker 1: then they go to Facebook and they asked them for
Speaker 1: information and Facebook turns go over, and you know, the
Speaker 1: government just goes to and finds everyone who's at a
Speaker 1: protest and starts to ressing them. And you know, Facebook
Speaker 1: is just like m HM and like that, if if
Speaker 1: if if if if if they if they will comply
Speaker 1: with a literal monarchy who has had a second monarchy
Speaker 1: send an army across the border in order to crush
Speaker 1: a bunch of protests. Like they're going to comply with
Speaker 1: the US and they're gonna keep doing this stuff to you.
Speaker 1: And so yeah, I was like, I like, even if
Speaker 1: you can sue them, they're still going to cooperate with
Speaker 1: the U. S. Government because yeah, they have a greater
Speaker 1: financial interest in doing big tech doesn't give a funk
Speaker 1: about you. Yeah, I think folks, again, as he was saying,
Speaker 1: like ea saying, it was just so like this is wrope.
Speaker 1: This is what they do every day. This is not
Speaker 1: that serious or that deep to them. And I think
Speaker 1: we need to start asking bigger questions about why do
Speaker 1: we have a system we're so easy for the government
Speaker 1: to just like come in and um, have a subpoena signed,
Speaker 1: Like the subpoenas are easy to get, like we have
Speaker 1: these mechanisms are all in place. And that's what I
Speaker 1: was sort of saying earlier is that I think folks
Speaker 1: who haven't been paying attention to this, who are all
Speaker 1: of a sudden like, wow, how is this happening? Oh
Speaker 1: my goodness, Well, these are the machines of massim corceration
Speaker 1: that we have spent a few decades really building up,
Speaker 1: and so now when the person the people you're sympathetic
Speaker 1: with start to get criminalized all of a sudden, we're
Speaker 1: very shocked. And listen, however, you got here, great welcome.
Speaker 1: I'm glad folks are here and saying like, wow, this
Speaker 1: is a problem. And I want folks to think the
Speaker 1: If the abortion context and the self managed abortion is
Speaker 1: your entry point, I hope it is not the end point.
Speaker 1: I hope that you are thinking bigger about how did
Speaker 1: all these systems get here? Who do they serve? And
Speaker 1: and and I hope how do we dismantle them? Because
Speaker 1: it's it's not just this select few people group of
Speaker 1: people that we should care about, I think is all
Speaker 1: all the people who are who are exposed to this
Speaker 1: on the daily. Um. So yeah, that's my soapbox. I
Speaker 1: always wonder how many judges, um have refused to sign
Speaker 1: a search warrant. That's like a big wonder of mine.
Speaker 1: I don't judges don't hang out with me, obviously for
Speaker 1: a lot of obvious reasons. But if I were to
Speaker 1: like just whisper in my ear real quick, how many
Speaker 1: times have you ever said no to a police officer
Speaker 1: that comes to ask to swear a warrant in front
Speaker 1: of you. How many times have you found there is
Speaker 1: no probable cause? Dude? Like to to be fair, there
Speaker 1: there there are. There have to there have to be
Speaker 1: a certain number of times where they're trying to go
Speaker 1: after another. Judge es I don't know, it's good to
Speaker 1: have happened once like that. There has to have been
Speaker 1: one time where it was like this judge piste me off,
Speaker 1: I'm going to go raid his car or something. Never
Speaker 1: Never that I can like that, I can think about
Speaker 1: never happening. But I just wonder how many times has
Speaker 1: somebody said we are going to go search for drugs
Speaker 1: and X y Z house in this specific neighborhood that
Speaker 1: that a judges says, you don't have enough here. Try again.
Speaker 1: It doesn't happen. Yeah, at least told in federal court
Speaker 1: maybe maybe you know they turned down one out of
Speaker 1: but in state court. My experience is it's it's it's again,
Speaker 1: it's routine. It's just how things go. I mean, one
Speaker 1: of the one of the things that I came across
Speaker 1: when I was you know, I was not dealing with
Speaker 1: particularly judges issuing warrants. But one of the things I
Speaker 1: did when when I was looking into the payment app
Speaker 1: issue this past spring, um is, you know, I talked
Speaker 1: to a former prosecutor and was like, you know, what
Speaker 1: is it like to get documents from or or data
Speaker 1: from like Facebook and you know, Instagram or Meta whatnot,
Speaker 1: or like Twitter or any of these other places. And
Speaker 1: they were just like, Oh, we just send a request,
Speaker 1: like we don't even like basically an administrative subpoena, and
Speaker 1: they just like hand over everything like, um, it's basically
Speaker 1: they're just like so routine oftentimes, especially if it's coming
Speaker 1: from a district attorney's office or law enforcement. But like
Speaker 1: often times these companies just like casually handover stuff all
Speaker 1: the time, especially when it's like dealing with low level
Speaker 1: drug stuff um or any kind of like issues like that.
Speaker 1: You know, they like to say, oh, we're we're big
Speaker 1: on on civil rights and stuff like that and making
Speaker 1: sure your data is protective. In reality, like there's so
Speaker 1: many requests around this stuff, and it's just you know,
Speaker 1: the only time they ever maybe make a standards when
Speaker 1: a case is higher profile and it may damage their brands, right,
Speaker 1: and that's that's the only time they actually ever care.
Speaker 1: On the defense attorney side, it's hard as heck to
Speaker 1: get your client's records for things like so hard, so
Speaker 1: so hard. You're looking for information on a Facebook for
Speaker 1: somebody that's incarcerated that might get them out of jail,
Speaker 1: and they don't remember their password, you don't know how
Speaker 1: to get into their stuff, and it need to be
Speaker 1: not a screenshot because that you might not be able
Speaker 1: to get that authenticated and admissible in court. And it
Speaker 1: is so hard when you're working on the other side
Speaker 1: and not in law enforcement to get data and information.
Speaker 1: But on the flip side when it comes to like
Speaker 1: people's medical information, which comes into play in a lot
Speaker 1: of these cases because we're at this intersection of bodily
Speaker 1: autonomy and health in the criminal legal system. We've certainly
Speaker 1: seen in cases where folks are having a medical emergency
Speaker 1: and cops are able to just go and do a
Speaker 1: bedside interview with somebody that's coming out of surgery still
Speaker 1: drugged up. Right, They're able to just go up to
Speaker 1: a charge nurse something like, so, how's he doing, and
Speaker 1: they're getting information that's wild because I have had request
Speaker 1: for my clients medical records with signed HIPPA authorizations returned
Speaker 1: because I signed with blue ink instead of black ink.
Speaker 1: It's not wrote. It's not wrote when it's not coming
Speaker 1: from law enforcements sometimes, and that's kind of the wild thing.
Speaker 1: There's this assumption that folks and law enforcement have a
Speaker 1: right to all information at all times forever, and that's
Speaker 1: where things get rubber stamped, and that's the stuff that
Speaker 1: we're not really looking at that have large impact on
Speaker 1: how people access their rights. I was just as we
Speaker 1: were talking about like Facebook doing everything about you and
Speaker 1: loving the cops, I was like reminded of Fouko's Panopticon
Speaker 1: and like this idea that you'll start to internal life
Speaker 1: discipline because you never know when you're being watched, right, um,
Speaker 1: And so I wondered, like obviously, like when talks about it,
Speaker 1: the idea is that you will do you act like
Speaker 1: you think the state is watching, because the state could
Speaker 1: always be watching. Therefore you have to act like it
Speaker 1: is watching. Uh, And like it's if we're not there yet,
Speaker 1: right like that, Tally there, have you not heard the
Speaker 1: FBI and your phone joke? The FBI on my computer?
Speaker 1: Like I hope he likes my makeup today we're totally there,
Speaker 1: Like I think there's an assumption that we're all being watched.
Speaker 1: Don't know. Even sometimes I wish our clients I thought
Speaker 1: they were being watched more because sometimes people put too
Speaker 1: much on Facebook do Well, yeah, you're right, let me
Speaker 1: not keep myself from that because I am very much included. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but yeah, so like that's what I wanted to ask, right,
Speaker 1: Like how do we not you know, we don't want
Speaker 1: people to listen to some do crimes, but like how
Speaker 1: should people act in their interactions like in in a
Speaker 1: way that is like I guess I don't know that
Speaker 1: it makes them less vulnerable to like these very obvious
Speaker 1: upsets fails. I guess, Um, I have some resources, so
Speaker 1: if one how we have this thing called the repro
Speaker 1: Legal Helpline. It's repro legal helpline dot org. It's also
Speaker 1: a warm line with the phone number that people can
Speaker 1: call and ask questions like what are my rights when
Speaker 1: it comes to my abortion my self managed abortion? And
Speaker 1: on that website we have did atal tips about how
Speaker 1: do you protect yourself and sanitize your digital space just
Speaker 1: for safety as a whole, not to hide information from everyone,
Speaker 1: but how do you move and prevent and minimize your risks.
Speaker 1: What does harm reduction look like to you? We also
Speaker 1: have the repro Legal Defense Fund, and that exists for
Speaker 1: folks when they are actually being criminalized to pay for
Speaker 1: things like bail, help out with attorneys fees, help out
Speaker 1: with expert fees. So there are folks that are working
Speaker 1: on this stuff that exists as resources, and there are
Speaker 1: resources out there. But I would tell folks to really
Speaker 1: think about who are you telling your business to? UM?
Speaker 1: When you share information, is that information that's necessary for
Speaker 1: treatment that you're being asked? UM? Just because we're used
Speaker 1: to being in spaces where there is a power and
Speaker 1: balance about sharing all of the information that's asked of us,
Speaker 1: and I think when it comes to spaces and times
Speaker 1: where we're more vulnerable UM to state actors causing harm
Speaker 1: to us, being mindful about what questions are you being asked?
Speaker 1: And it's that question necessary for you to be able
Speaker 1: to receive care or services X Y Z UM. And
Speaker 1: it sucks to have to put work on the back
Speaker 1: of folks that are already being oppressed by systems. It's
Speaker 1: absolute trash. And I fully recognize that's it's it's messed up,
Speaker 1: But UM, when we're thinking when we're thinking about what
Speaker 1: does harm reduction look like. I think that's one of
Speaker 1: those things that we have to keep in mind. UM.
Speaker 1: And harm reduction also looks like folks knowing generally what
Speaker 1: the law is and being able to advocate for themselves
Speaker 1: in those spaces. Yeah. I'll just add from my side
Speaker 1: from like kind of just you know, from from a
Speaker 1: cyber perspective, it's, you know, just in general ways, like
Speaker 1: there's nothing that's gonna be bullet proof or a silver
Speaker 1: bullet in terms of always protecting your privacy, but like
Speaker 1: the quicker ways that you can kind of at least
Speaker 1: make yourself generally safers. Use applex signal for for chatting. UM.
Speaker 1: Also use like auto delete features. UM, you know, don't
Speaker 1: don't keep like years worth of text messages and stuff
Speaker 1: like that. UM. Additionally, UM, you know, don't use biometrics
Speaker 1: because you don't have a Fifth Amendment right for yourself
Speaker 1: subcrimination for for biometrics. Right SOS so long long reason
Speaker 1: why that is in the courts, use a password, don't
Speaker 1: use a short pin. Use a password. I know it's annoying.
Speaker 1: I know it's like, you know, if a finger prayer
Speaker 1: in our face, like unlock is like much more convenient.
Speaker 1: But you know, if you are at high risk or
Speaker 1: you worry about this stuff and you're concerned about your privacy,
Speaker 1: like use those things because they can't compel you to
Speaker 1: do that generally. UM. You know. The other things is
Speaker 1: UM the UK app e u k I UM, which
Speaker 1: is a UM sexual health app that has a lot
Speaker 1: of information about UM, you know, reproductive issues UM. It
Speaker 1: also is like a menstrual tracker, but it's all encrypted
Speaker 1: client side, they get no data UM and it has
Speaker 1: it prompts you for a password and pin to open
Speaker 1: it UM. And it also has uh resources for self
Speaker 1: managed abortion UM and and how to safely handle those UM.
Speaker 1: And yeah, you know, just generally, you know, anything you
Speaker 1: put out there on social media also like be careful
Speaker 1: like what you you put out there, like stay to
Speaker 1: end and end to end encryption, use VPNs if you can.
Speaker 1: You know that these are just kind of like general
Speaker 1: stuff like nothing is again ever gonna be full proof,
Speaker 1: but yeah, there are some small stuff you can take
Speaker 1: at least increase some of your protections. And on my end,
Speaker 1: you know, you have a right to remain silent. You
Speaker 1: should use it, uh and thanks to the Supreme Court,
Speaker 1: you have to say I want to be silent in
Speaker 1: order to invoke your right to be silent. You cannot
Speaker 1: just be silent. Um. So you I would advise people
Speaker 1: to say, I want to be silent and I want
Speaker 1: a lawyer. Those are the magic words. I also want
Speaker 1: to hold that being captured by police officer is a
Speaker 1: violent experience and a scary experience, and sometimes asserting your
Speaker 1: rights can provoke more violence, and so people do what
Speaker 1: they need to do to stay safe in that moment um.
Speaker 1: From all the law of perspective, saying I would I
Speaker 1: want to be silent and I want a lawyer, um
Speaker 1: are the things that invoke all of your constitutional protections. Um.
Speaker 1: And the police may lie about whether or not you
Speaker 1: said that later, so you know, say it as many
Speaker 1: times as you need to. But those are really the
Speaker 1: only things you should say, which is a lot um
Speaker 1: easier said than done. But that that is the thing
Speaker 1: that folks should do if they do find themselves in
Speaker 1: the custody of law enforcement. And also if you're on
Speaker 1: the street, ask if you're free to go, and if
Speaker 1: you're free to go, please walk, do not run away.
Speaker 1: There's also a case about that God hate the cops. Well,
Speaker 1: thank you a so much for joining us. Um this
Speaker 1: this has been really great, and yeah, don't talk to
Speaker 1: cops yep. Would you like to plug anything before we
Speaker 1: leave with don't coote the cops? Yeah, I can just
Speaker 1: throw my personal side. You can follow me on ALLSO
Speaker 1: shows on Twitter and stuff at Square underscores like Portmanteau
Speaker 1: of Esquire and Queer s E s q U E
Speaker 1: R Underscore UM and also have a podcast called Queering
Speaker 1: the Law um or talk about a lot of these
Speaker 1: issues as well. UM, so if you want to give
Speaker 1: that a listen. UM, don't follow me on social media
Speaker 1: because all my stuff is closed, but I would recommend
Speaker 1: that folks follow at IF when how on all socials
Speaker 1: because we're always uh providing up to date information on
Speaker 1: what's actually going on with carminalization of self managed abortion
Speaker 1: and resources from you know, community partners that are on
Speaker 1: the ground, local that are doing the work. So if
Speaker 1: lks are looking to get connected, I would say reach
Speaker 1: out to IF one how and we can usually point
Speaker 1: you in the right direction. You could follow me on Twitter,
Speaker 1: but I don't really remember what my handle is, so
Speaker 1: what I would suggest that you do. Uh, pre trials,
Speaker 1: attention and bail litigation is really my heart. You got
Speaker 1: folks locked up and they haven't even been found guilty.
Speaker 1: Not that anyone should be locked up. So donate to
Speaker 1: your local bail fund if you don't know who that is.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of organs, National Bailout, the Bail Project,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of places you can find that. But
Speaker 1: growing five, ten, fifteen dollars at your local bail fund,
Speaker 1: we'll get someone free because you can purchase your freedom
Speaker 1: here in America. So um do that. M Yeah, thank
Speaker 1: you so much that this has been They can happen here. Uh,
Speaker 1: you can find us in places don't talk to cops,
Speaker 1: and yeah, if there weren't any cops, you couldn't make
Speaker 1: things legal. H Hey, we'll be back Monday with more
Speaker 1: episodes every week from now until the heat death of
Speaker 1: the Universe. It Could Happen Here is a production of
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Speaker 1: for It Could Happen Here. Updated monthly at cool Zone
Speaker 1: Media dot com slash sources, Thanks for listening.