It Could Happen Here Weekly 112

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
All media.

Speaker 2 (00:03):
Hey everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let
you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode
of the week that just happened is here in one
convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to
listen to in a long stretch if you want. If
you've been listening to the episodes every day this week,
there's got to be nothing new here for you, but
you can make your own decisions.

Speaker 3 (00:29):
Welcome to Dickodapton here a podcast, and we are recording
for the first time. All of the audio worked perfectly.
It was great. Yeah, the society that has put multiple
human beings on the moon did successfully produce functioning audio software.
It's wonderful.

Speaker 1 (00:46):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (00:47):
With me to celebrate this is Carl Eugene Stroud. He's
a language teacher and anarchist Builtin's and read angles, who's
a bus driver and an anarchist, member of the Center
for Specific Studies. Yeah, both of you. Welcome to the show.

Speaker 4 (01:03):
Thanks for having us.

Speaker 5 (01:04):
Yeah, thank you for having us for this wonderful celebration
of audio recording technology.

Speaker 3 (01:10):
It's all great, it's all wonderful. Speaking of things that
are wonderful, this is this is this is why they
pay me the am I legally allowed to say that
it's a below market rate. That's why they paid me
the slightly below market rate bucks. Yeah, So, speaking of wonderful,
we are here to talk about a I guess putting
things back together project, which is Miltant Kindergarten. And I

(01:34):
guess I guess we should start with talking about what
Billetant Kindergarten is and what it isn't in terms of, like,
it's not we're teaching we're teaching small children how to
take apart buildings.

Speaker 4 (01:46):
Yes, so Milton Kindergarten is a multi month study of
a text, and in that way, you know, we call
it a seminar, but it's not that much different than
reading group or study circle or any of those kinds
of things. Essentially, what we're doing is we're using one

(02:07):
text to revisit and have conversations with different people that
are at various you know, points in a path of radicalization.
We're you know, distinctly trying to spread the word about
the importance and necessity of militancy in our movements, but
also teach people about a specifismo, which is an anarchist

(02:31):
current that comes out of Latin America. But it's also
like you know, in in the socialist movement, anarchists can
often be characterized by stereotypes that come from Marxists, and
that in the libertarian and anarchist movement, any kind of
mass anarchism, any kind of class struggle anarchism can also

(02:56):
be characterized by you know, individualists and insurrectionists. And so
we mean to you know, not convert people to a
certain current of anarchism. We see this as a kind
of grouping of tendency. So all the participants come from
different ideologies. This is just a reading group, so you've
got to apply this stuff, you know, outside of this.

(03:18):
This isn't some kind of be all and dull solution.
We're not, you know, educationalists thinking that this is going
to be the first step in some like process that
we're just already on. But at the same time, we
think that educational space needs to be defended. That's why
this is the third militant kindergarten. So, yeah, maybe i'll

(03:39):
let read talk about some of the ones and how
we've gotten here and yeah, kindergarten up to now.

Speaker 5 (03:46):
Yeah, sure, I think that's a good explanation. The group
basically started off in the wonderful, amazing, complicated year twenty
twenty in the wake of the uprising over the summer.
Both of us live in a relatively small down with

(04:08):
maybe an outsized hundreds above its weight. In terms of
like activism and anarchism, there's probably more anarchist tendencies here
than there are anarchists, And something that we saw in
the wake of the height of the uprising was one
a huge amount of burnout that people weren't really addressing.

(04:31):
The solution to burnout that we saw being proposed was
just do it again, more harder, And we also saw
the burnout as kind of coming from a lack of
strategy and organization on the ground, people sort of repeating
tactics because that's what you do, and that's what we

(04:52):
were doing, so we're just going to try to keep
doing it. And both of us were unable to participate
in the more aggressive street actions that were going on
at the time, so we decided we individually needed to
study and get better at our understanding of strategy an

(05:12):
organization and try to rethink like some of the problems
that had occurred and how to move on from there,
and also to provide a space for people who were
more active in different places, the chance to meet together
and reflect in a non non urgent space where you
could just like pause and learn and discuss the topic.

(05:36):
So we were, yeah, we hit upon We were both
kind of simultaneously interested in the spess of seasonal current
from Latin America, so we both just kind of decided, yeah,
we want to read some of these texts, and we
quickly came upon social anarchism an organization. We thought, like, wow,

(05:57):
this is a really comprehensive introduction not only to this
tendency but also to anarchism and social anarchism broadly. Like
it really covers just the basics, principles and theory up
to history and organizational theory, strategy, tactics, ideology in a

(06:18):
much higher, more sophisticated and like i guess, like modernized
way than many other previous documents we'd read. It's like,
if you took the platform, you know, the Maximvist platform.

Speaker 3 (06:34):
We should explain what that is because people are not
going to yeah, okay, going back.

Speaker 5 (06:42):
So it's it's the organizational platform of the Anarchist Federation
of Riodaian Hero which is basically their foundational document, and
it's a very comprehensive look at the kind of theory
and strategy and work that goes behind goes on behind

(07:04):
founding an organization like that. It's similar to the anarchist
platform written by the X, the Magnavist in exile in Paris,
the Ukrainian anarchists in exile after the revolution in Russia.
They wrote this platform saying anarchists should maybe be somewhat

(07:25):
organized and unified in their tactics and their strategies, and
received a whole bunch of pushback from it, but founded
The sort of the platform is current of anarchism. But really,
when you go back to the platform, there's not a
ton there. It's more of a document for organizing a

(07:49):
like a military force in a already ongoing revolution, Whereas
what we found in Social Anarchism and Organization is a
much more road kind of introduction to social anarchist organization
that is more widely applicable to a variety of situations.

Speaker 3 (08:07):
Yeah, and you know, Okay, so we've covered a spacifistmo
on here with Andrew once. I think we've talked about
it a little bit in some other episodes. But yeah,
do we want to get into what what about a
specifiespo is sort of different from older kinds of like well,

(08:29):
just like other anarchist tendencies and other sort of kinds
of platformism, and talk a little bit about how it
sort of came about because it's one of the tendencies
I guess that some people adopted in the US, but
I don't. I don't think it's as famous as a
lot of other tendencies here.

Speaker 4 (08:48):
Yes, so you know, a lot of the motivation behind
organizing the Center for US Specifiesmo studies. This came after
us studying this text a few times. We decided to
formalize this into militant Kindergarten, and a lot of that
came from the need to articulate what is a specifismo

(09:12):
in English. Because a lot of the resources, a lot
of the ideas and writings come from Latin America, and
so they're written in Spanish. A lot of the theory
has been developed in Spanish. Espacifismo originally comes from the
Anarchist Federation of Uruguay. In the nineteen sixties. They began

(09:34):
to articulate a kind of organizational strategy that imagined what
the way we've described it is kind of two rails
for a train, and this train is bringing this revolutionary rupture.
So these two rails are the social level, which includes

(09:54):
all kinds of class struggle. This is class struggle against domination, exploitation,
and a press.

Speaker 3 (10:00):
And that the other rail is.

Speaker 4 (10:03):
The political organization. And so this is the anarchist principles
and ideologies that, yeah, I think we share probably pretty
broadly with most all anarchist currents, at least you know,
coming out of the socialist movement. But when it comes
to the way to balance these and to keep them

(10:27):
both working towards the same ends, we see a need
to keep them theoretically distinct. And so a lot of
what we've done at the Center forres Becifismo Studies is
try to articulate these ideas in English so that we
can start to develop what that means here and not

(10:48):
just sort of translate or take a translation and sort
of try to input an idea into our own context. So,
like you said, like I think at some of the
we could we could take for example, the Black Rose
Rosa Negra anarchist federation in the US that's the largest

(11:11):
organization of a specificst anarchists in North America. They are
distinctly influenced by this current. They have sister organizations in
Latin America and but but they're they're just one kind
of organization that's that's kind of known on a national level.

(11:33):
And as far as planting its, you know, ideas in
North America, we're definitely still doing that work. So a
lot of what we've done is also developed second secondary resources.
This includes like audio versions of this text, but also
like things we've produced through our study and through these

(11:54):
discussions that come out of kindergarten. So last year, for example,
we made a a minizine. There was like a kind
of working group that worked on a minizine to define
some basic terms and make something really really really basic
in introductory to a specifismo. We also I've written a

(12:16):
few pamphlets, one of which is how do you say
a specifismo in English? And so that is yeah, exactly
trying to address this this idea. And you know, some
people they hear a specifismo and they're like, oh, that's
you know, exotic and cool and like new, and that's
a reason to be attracted to it. But then you know,

(12:39):
other people might hear that, and they have kind of
other reactions where they sort of try to put it
into a really specific box. I mean, what our understanding
is is that it's important to be able to acknowledge
what current you're kind of plugging into where your ideas
are coming from. It takes a lot of pressure off

(13:00):
of us to not feel like we're inventing everything and
we're supposed to be coming up with like the most perfect,
cool ideas. But it's also a humbling experience of like, yeah,
we know about this because other people have done this
militancy before us to make these things available for us
to have preserved these ideas. That's the political level of

(13:22):
the two rails, right, So that's that is preserving this
so that it is possible to say I have this
opinion about a specifismo and it relates to my context
in this way or likewise that it doesn't you know,
if we don't have anyone doing that militancy to preserve
those ideas, then it's actually not even up to people

(13:45):
to be able to pick them up and use them
the way that they see fit.

Speaker 3 (13:49):
One of the sort of barriers is, I think kind
of what you're alluding to of like a specifismo as
a tendency in the US is that it wasn't like,
it wasn't really it wasn't developed in the American context,
and that has different sort of you know that that
that that has sort of like a range of different effects.

(14:12):
And one of the things that I think is very
interesting about it that I think is definitely a product
of the context that it was developed in, is the
strategy of social insertion. Yeah, and I was wondering if
you could talk a bit about social insertion and how
you see that working in the US and how sort
of like, how do we think about this sort of

(14:33):
in the wake of twenty twenty and the kind of
restructuring of what is what is sort of happening is
out of social movements in the US.

Speaker 5 (14:42):
Yeah, I think the twenty twenty lesson is very important
for thinking about social insertions for anyone who doesn't know.
It's just the practice of anarchists who are organized in
the same organization being present in social movements within them,
supporting them, trying to help them achieve their own goals

(15:02):
rather than take them over, or something like you would
see in maybe a entryism from trapeists or something but yeah,
I think one of the major problems that we ran
into when we started reading this stuff is like social
insertion requires there to even be social movements.

Speaker 3 (15:22):
Yeah, that was an issue in the US for a
long time because we didn't really have social movements in
the way that like Latin America does right, or.

Speaker 5 (15:30):
When we do, they're like extremely spontaneous or kind of chaotic,
or they're also there, they could be extremely co opted
or managed by a political party Democrats, some socialist groups, Republicans, whoever.
And so that's kind of one of our major sort
of projects of theoretical translation into North Americas. You can't

(15:55):
just plug this into North American and say, Okay, we're
going to go join ex social movements to achieve these
goals and obtain this amount of influence there and some
we really have to start. I think what is useful
about that problem is that it forces us to start
really trying to theorize what actually is happening here, what

(16:17):
social movement actually is there, And that leads us to
start thinking about things more literally, like movement, what does
it mean to be moving? What is the role of
anarchists in movement? So we can think of the idea
that we've developed is the idea of anarchists who are
organized as anarchists, the role of them in movement is

(16:42):
to actually literally be moving between different kinds of spaces,
different movements, and starting through their movement to generate a
kind of flow of people and of ideas and energy
and momentum, acting as a small motor within a big,
a big system, if you will, not driving it, but

(17:06):
getting things going. And so I think that's kind of
more the level that we're here in the US is
we still need to just theorize what is out there
and how can we help it, how can we plug
into it, How can we start getting things moving in
a direction that is actually going to meet the needs

(17:29):
of these movements, For these movements that aren't yet articulated. Well,
you know, you see this with like the rise of
tenant unions and tenant organizing still in a very like
nascent stage, but people are seeing that need and they're
starting to get that moving from a variety of socialist tendencies.
And I think, yeah, the idea is important in this

(17:52):
context because we have to we have to be finding
these spaces, we have to be moving to them, and
we have to be returning to our own spaces to
be able to actually understand what we're encountering out there
and figure out how to such a course or move
to something else or adapt to a new situation.

Speaker 4 (18:12):
Yeah, Like maybe similar to read said, they're this idea
that the politics need to be moving, that anarchism needs
to be a movement, and that in that way, like
we can't allow our ideas to be stuck in certain
you know, just stations or organizations or spaces that are

(18:37):
friendly or that we're really familiar with. We need to
be able to engage those ideas in the relevant spaces
where we do live. That looks really different in different
parts across the US and North America. So the idea
that you know, we would be able to just simply
take one thing and apply it across the board would

(19:00):
also like, uh, yeah, be really limited here. And so
I think a lot of what we're we're well, a
lot of what we've seen in terms of the utility
of a specifismo as a as an influential current in
the politics in leftist politics in North America. Is this
theoretical aspect and how we can see both like we

(19:22):
learn more about social movements more about the necessity of
them being popular, more about popular power, and at the
same time as in doing that, that shows us more
about what is political unity, what is uh you know,
unity of strategy, what is unity of theory, what is
a unity of commitment? And that those things we want

(19:47):
to as we keep learning about them individually. That goes
back to this trained idea of their being too rails
is we need them to be on independent cycles. You know,
we know that social movements don't last forever, that mobilizations
and you know, insurrections will fade away, that there are

(20:09):
ebbs and flows of the engagement, and that when we're
talking about a massive popular level, we should expect that
even more right, plenty of people will only even if
they're engaging militantly, only be engaging militantly with social movements,
not with political ideas, not with political organization. And so

(20:30):
the idea that something needs to endure someone even needs
to be able to tell the story from the last
time that things got spicy, so that we understand even
what happened without even necessarily having the the critique or
the analysis, even just simply the retelling is something that
is grossly missing from our struggles in North America, and

(20:56):
so that's where we see like there being a complete
absence of of political organizing, and especially when we think
about being on an entirely different cycle. So that kind
of goes back to kindergarten being an annual thing. And
you know, where we live, like in the winter, there's
not a lot you can do, and so it kind

(21:16):
of made sense to develop a seasonal pattern of this,
right where like exactly as things are dying down, it's
kind of like, well, the people who do still have capacity,
the people who are still attempting to be active, how
can we keep that little bit of movement moving and going.
The idea of the metaphor of a small engine a

(21:38):
small motor is often used in aspecifismo, and that's what
the political level is trying to be. Is a small
motor just assisting in something larger that's happening, but it
needs to be connected to something larger that's happening.

Speaker 5 (21:53):
Yeah, And I think a key part of this for
us that we've found is that in our context there
exists sort of these two levels to some extent, there
are political organizations and there are social movements, but what
is often missing, like we were struggling with this, trying

(22:14):
to find the way into one or the other. And
what we discovered is that like this kind of educational
tendency of really open, really educational, really discussion based learning
kind of starts to generate that movement between the two.

(22:35):
Like by having this space open to beginners and experts,
so to speak, you're able to actually get more movements
opened between the two. So it opens up political organizations
people who have not participated in that before don't have
a way into it. And it opens up social movements

(22:59):
to people who maybe politicized but are not organized in
some sort of social and it starts to mix everything
together in this learning space where we can build trust
as a learning community and assisting each other in connecting
these kind of two necessary levels of organization.

Speaker 3 (23:18):
I've been thinking a lot about how you were talking
about how we don't have any kind of organizational continuity
between movements and the kind of disorganization and the loss
of just memory that happens with that, And I think
it's one of these weird things because you can find
people who've been in like all of these movements, but

(23:39):
if you're relying on just you know, okay, well you
can you can get the story of what really happened
in occupy Oakland if you know exactly like the right
for people and you can't like you can't say their
names because like you know, and I mean this has
always sort of been a problem with parts of social
movements because I mean there's somef a necessssarily has to

(24:00):
be cleandestine, like you know, and there's reasons for operacial security,
but also just means the stuff gets lost. And yeah,
I think having having a like having a thing that
goes as a way to transmit got thing that goes. Wow,
incredibly technical language, you know, but having having an organization
that can act as a bridge between these sort of

(24:22):
moments and also is able to sort of you know,
allow people's spaces for discussions, for reflection, for learning. That's
also sort of a bridge between like a like I
don't know, I guess like capital p political organization and
the social stuff. Is it's a it's a it's a
really interesting idea, and yeah, I don't know, I think

(24:44):
I don't know. I think I think this is like
this is a very cool project, and yeah, I'm looking
forward to seeing what else comes out of it as
the new session sort of approaches.

Speaker 5 (24:55):
Yeah, I think what you're just saying about, like, how
do you learn about what happened to occupy oak And
without having to go through like three layers of signal
chats or something to find the right person to learn
from anonymously being as preface with allegedly this happened. Is
a real problem that we've thought about. Like, I think

(25:16):
a big thing for us that we've found is a
role that we can play, is that there is a
need out there for there to be some sort of
we call it mask off anarchism, like there needs to
be a public facing, approachable space where you can actually

(25:38):
just learn about stuff. And yeah, there is definitely a
need for operational security culture or for clandestine things, but
that those things don't need to be everything for those
who even exist. You need levels that are more open
to people. Otherwise those things just become increased we lost,

(26:01):
they go down the memory hole, as they say, or
the Latin American groups like to talk about anarchism becoming
ghetto wise further and further, like separated from mainstream society,
and there's no ways in unless you, like, you know,
a guy. So that was something that was a problem
we were encountering and something that like from our particular circumstances,

(26:24):
we felt like we could provide and maybe start and
modeling for people as a group.

Speaker 4 (26:29):
I think also, like you mentioned there like this idea
of memory and what what black Rose has referred to
in their program as muscle memory. Like for our organizations,
this idea that like, I mean, organizing seems so mysterious
to us because we don't have this like kind of active,
like uh, living memory of how to do that. It's

(26:52):
not just a thing we do by second nature or
like without without really needing a lot of work. And
so I think in that sense, like we could also
think of there being two kinds of struggles going on,
where Like on the social level, the struggle is the

(27:13):
class struggle and the antagonists are the dominant people in society.
It is the ruling class, it is the status quo,
it is the capitalist system. But on the political level,
there's also struggle because it's not about everybody, you know,
just being one uniform block. It is about that struggle though,

(27:38):
not being trying to topple each other but instead trying
to develop and create unity. It's not find unity, it's
not look for the people you have the most consensus with,
because that in itself is even really limiting that we
need to be able to form new agreement. We need
to be able to find and struggle for that unity

(28:01):
with people who aren't trying to just aim for a
divisive end. That there needs to be an antagonist on
the social level, but on the political level, the goal
is unity. It's not it's not struggle for the sake
of taking down the opponent. And so in that sense,
like something else that we do in Militant Kindergarten and

(28:24):
in the Center for Us BECIFIESMO studies is not just
try to do a reading, but try to produce a reading.
Try to leave behind some kind of trace of our reading.
That that's an important aspect of this. So all of
our sessions we take thorough notes, and those notes are
available to all the participants. People can go back through

(28:45):
it later to look at what was said if they
missed a session, or if they'd like to follow along
with those as they as the conversation goes to help
add you know, other aspects of support. Then what we
do is we have a whole other team that goes
through those notes afterward and produces a kind of internal
journalistic writeup of what happened in that meeting, and so

(29:10):
we will also be releasing those this year as part
of our kind of monthly publishing that we'll be.

Speaker 3 (29:18):
Doing so for people who are interested in this. When
is it happening and how do you get involved?

Speaker 5 (29:24):
It starts on January thirteenth and it runs till April
twentieth of next year, twenty twenty four, And we're going
to be holding the session on Saturday two to four
pm in Pacific time US, which is not the greatest
time for everybody, but it's where most of us are based,
kind of on the edge of time here on the

(29:46):
West coast. And the best way to get involved is
to just send us an email. We have the email
specifies most studies at gmail dot com, and that's the
way to sort of start the enrolling process needs to
take the one step send us an email, and we'll
get you signed up and all the materials and zoom

(30:06):
link and all that stuff.

Speaker 3 (30:08):
Yeah, and well, we'll put the email in the description
youah probably links to the website too, I think. On
that note, unless you have anything else that you want
to say or plug no, I think that's it.

Speaker 5 (30:21):
Yeah, good breath. I would like to see people there.
It's going to be an interesting year. I can guarantee that.

Speaker 3 (30:30):
Yeah, we're yeah, like the literal year.

Speaker 5 (30:33):
Twenty twenty four. Who knows what's going to happen, And
even kindergarten is going to be pretty interesting. We've had
a lot more people contacting us than last year, so
it's going to be a pretty big and diverse group.
So it'll be interesting to see kind of what everybody's
able to produce out of that gathering and learning space.

Speaker 4 (30:54):
Yeah, you know, maybe another thing just to say real quick,
is just that even if somebody doesn't feel they could
make that time, it's still worth reaching out to us.
We you know, will be developing other seminars and things
in the future. And if you don't think that you'd
be able to make to all the sessions, like, don't
worry about that either. That's part of why we do

(31:17):
this every year is that we expect that, you know,
working people without a lot of time will need more
than one year to you know, get all this information.
So we expect people to need to kind of be
cobbling together a few sessions here and there for several times,
and yeah, you're definitely welcome to do that and shouldn't

(31:37):
feel as if it's like a kind of start and
then you're stuck and afraid to start.

Speaker 5 (31:42):
So yeah, yeah, it's a sort of an endurance study group.
So yeah, we don't want anyone burning themselves out. Just
do what you can start together and together.

Speaker 3 (31:53):
Yeah, it sounds like it's going to be a great program,
and yeah, excited to see what comes out of it.
And yeah, if you want, if if you want to
get your theoretical stuff in before fighting season presumably starts
again around the election. Uh, yeah, now is the time.
It's gonna be really chaotic and for the next like

(32:14):
long time. So this is this is your opportunity. Now.

Speaker 5 (32:18):
Yeah, we'll need some good ideas to arm ourselves with. Yeah,
this one it's gonna be rough.

Speaker 1 (32:24):
Yep.

Speaker 3 (32:26):
And yeah, on that note, this has been naked up
in here. You can find us on Twitter and Instagram,
at fulls on media, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah, go go, go,
go into the world and learn and then use that
to make the world less gone off. It's it's another

(33:06):
Chicago episode. It's it could happen here, the podcast where
things fall apart. I'm your host, Nea Wong. This is
this is another episode about Chicago police departments who occupy
a city groaning under its tyranny, and with you to
talk about some absolutely bad shit Chicago police stuff and
also how Randon Johnson our mayor is also shit? Is

(33:31):
Raven the Chicago journalist from Jingspress.

Speaker 6 (33:33):
Hi is our mayor?

Speaker 1 (33:35):
Ever?

Speaker 6 (33:36):
Not shit?

Speaker 3 (33:38):
You know, No, it's all shit. It's never not bad.

Speaker 1 (33:44):
It's never not bad.

Speaker 6 (33:45):
And it's always like, you know, the progressive darling who
ran on promises and then slowly breaks them and you know,
breaks everyone's hearts over time.

Speaker 3 (33:57):
Yeah, I will I will say Johnson wasted absolutely no
time on the heartbreaking part, like he really he really
just wanted to rush that shit out. So there's a
lot of there's a lot of Brandon Johnson stuff that
we could talk about and we will want eventually, we're
gonna do the episode on the bigrant camp in the

(34:18):
fucking the migrant camp and the toxic waste dump, but
that that's gonna happen next year. Right now, we want
to talk about a different utterly insane Chicago thing. Well
it is actually a thing in other cities too. I
wanted to talk about shot Spotter, So I guess to
start with, can you explain what shot spotter is for

(34:39):
people who don't have it in their city or don't know.

Speaker 6 (34:43):
Well, it's in i want to say, like one hundred
and thirty different cities across the country, so a lot
of people probably do have it. But it's a gunshot
detection system. So basically just you know, through a bunch
of fancy tech stuff we won't get into, and I'm
not even going to pretend to understand that side of it.

(35:04):
It's there are these audio sensors that are installed all
around the city, right and in predominantly black and brown neighborhoods.
You know, they're specifically in Chicago. There's actually a lawsuit
currently up and coming filed by the MacArthur Justice Center
over the fact that they are primarily installed in black

(35:25):
and brown neighborhoods and not on like the North Side.
And yeah, it's just a bunch of fancy little stuff
that detects noises that are supposed to be gunshots, right,
so any loud popping or bringing sound, you know, could
could potentially set them off.

Speaker 3 (35:43):
Yeah, and unfortunately, as anyone who's ever been in a
city and had a car backfire nose. People are just
indescribably dogshit at telling what is a gunshot and what
is not a gunshot exactly exactly.

Speaker 6 (35:58):
And I mean there's so much evidence too, like there
been I mean are here in Chicago, Like our Office
of the Inspector General wrote like a whole report about
all of shots bars failures. But there's a bunch of
other research out there across the country about how inaccurate
this is. And you know, it's generating tens of thousands

(36:22):
of also like unjustified CPD deployments, like because when the
alert goes off, the cops get deployed, and you know,
it doesn't tell you anything about even if there was
a gunshot, like who fired a gun? You know, all
it's telling you is in this area. You know this

(36:43):
was determined. So you can imagine like all of these
you know, police encounters happening in response to these alerts,
like all the shit that could go wrong.

Speaker 3 (36:53):
Yeah, and it's CPD, right, Like the Chicago Police Department's
motto was shoot first, don't ask questions later. So right,
this is a this is an absolutely terrible idea. It's
just sending all of these cops on random wild goose chases.

Speaker 6 (37:08):
Yeah, yeah, well, and it's what happened, was I mean,
most people probably remember Adam Toledo shooting. Those cops, you know,
were initially assigned to patrol that area because it was
designated as a violence box, you know, and ShotSpotter brought

(37:29):
them to the alley like where this thirteen year old
kid was, you know, shot and killed by police because
another and older man was with him and fired a
gun and then handed him the weapon. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (37:43):
And that's another that's another one of the problems with
the technology, which is that even if it does detect
a gunshot, the thing that detecting a gunshot does and
send it to the police is send a bunch of
like absolutely unhinged murderers to a place and like make
to incredibly paranoid and then you know, have them in

(38:04):
like deal with the situation mode. And what Chicago cops
do when they're in deal with the situation mode is
they take out a gun, they shoot a thirteen year
old and kill them.

Speaker 6 (38:12):
Yeah. Yeah, and the you know, the officer that shaw
him too, had had this one like rarely talked about
in the media. I think I don't know. It just
wasn't something that came up much when that was all happening.
But like that officer had a weird incident that was
recorded on bodycam like a little bit before he shot

(38:32):
and killed out in Toledo. I don't remember if it
was like months before, I don't know the timeline, but
it was fairly close to that where he like pulled
someone over at a traffic stop and was just acting
really jumpy and strange. H And it was kind of
investigated as like, you know, an undostified traffic stop and
and nothing happened with that. But it's just an example

(38:52):
of like how there were potentially warning signs because this
guy was also like a war veteran, you know, and
jumpy to begin with. And so yeah, you're sending these
guys into these areas who are already ready to go
off at a trigger, right.

Speaker 3 (39:12):
Yeah, And you know, and there's like there's no actual
good outcome of this, because like I guess, arguably the
best possible outcome is the cops show up, there's nobody there,
enters out to have been a false alarm, but that
means we're paying the cops an unbelievable amount of money
to do nothing, and that's the best outcome, right.

Speaker 6 (39:32):
And the way the alerts work also too, is like
unless the police file a complaint that an alert was false,
like a false alarm, it's automatically flagged in the system
as like a positive. Because there's all this algorithmic stuff
that happens, like with the shotswarter detection, where like, yeah,

(39:53):
the system detects it, but then also it goes to
like their I don't know, their whole systems like researchers
or whatever kind of put it all together and like
package a report about what happened. And so unless a
police complain and are like, oh, you know, this one
was false, or this was a this one was wrong,
this was a firework, this is a car back firing,
and of course like CPD is not doing.

Speaker 3 (40:14):
That, yeah, because and I mean, I mean, this is
one of the problems with the system just inherently, if
even if you think that on some level this technology
could work, is that both the company's shots spotter and
the police have an enormous inherent incentive to make like,
at very least pretend that every single one of these
detections is real. Because if you're a police officer, right,

(40:36):
and you can point it. Oh, hey, look at how
many shots are being fired around the city all the time.
You know you need to give us more funding. This
is incredibly useful for them if your ShotSpotter. You don't
want everyone to know that your system detects like a
bird dropping an acorn out of a tree next to
your sensor or whatever. Like, you don't actually want people
to know that your your system brings up false positives

(40:59):
all the time, and it's actually basically completely useless, right, Yeah,
and so the incentive structure is just bad. It's just
it's only going to produce bad results.

Speaker 6 (41:08):
Yeah. Well, and it's kind of like somebody, I don't
I forget where I read this, but somebody likened it
to if you had an informant working for you and
they were wrong nine times out of ten, would you
still use them?

Speaker 3 (41:20):
Well, CPD would like to be.

Speaker 6 (41:24):
To be fair, but like if you were a journalist
and you had a source that lied nine times out
of ten, you know, or was wrong nine times out
of ten, would would you call them back? Would you
trust that source?

Speaker 1 (41:36):
You know? Well?

Speaker 3 (41:37):
And the other thing too is this isn't even it's
not even just like this is an informant, right because
you know, shot spot is wrong and annoymous percentage of
the time. But the thing is you don't have to
pay informants eight million dollars a year, which is what
we're paying for this dog shit shots fire system.

Speaker 6 (41:54):
Yeah, well, I mean the company itself all so like
they're so embedded with what's going on, like with police departments.
You know, they're Shotswater is leveraging their own money to
try to like win police contracts that include shots fotter.
You know, they advise different police departments on how to

(42:18):
respond to requests about ShotSpotter. So it's like it's not
just like this this I don't know, this mutual tool
that's just like out there that they're just using. It's
like Shotswater has this vested interest in, uh, strengthening the
police and vice versa.

Speaker 3 (42:35):
Yeah, and then it gets into one of these very
very I mean it's a very common thing for the cops, right,
but one of these unbelievably messed up spirals where like, yeah,
like everyone everyone involved has you know, the cops want
want more power. These guys want more money, and the
more money you give them, the more money they have
to then turn around again and put back into the

(42:56):
political system so you can you buy more power, which
they can again turn into more money every single time
another contract.

Speaker 6 (43:02):
Comes up right right on, which they just they just did.
Brandon Johnson just gave them more money in their contract.

Speaker 3 (43:10):
Yeah, and we should talk about this because Okay, so
Brandon Johnson ran a weird campaign in respect to the police,
in the sense that he didn't really run a he
didn't run an anti police campaign. I guess like his
campaign was pretty pro police, but it also originally had

(43:30):
things like taking cops out of schools, and very specifically
he ran on canceling the ShotSpotter contract, which is a
thing that everyone in like people in Chicago who aren't
who don't live in like cop neighborhoods. Basically like it's
pretty popular to cancel this contract because it's it's millions
of dollars a year going to nonsense that just throws
cops everywhere. And then he got into office and his

(43:52):
budget still has the ShotSpotter shit in it. So huh,
electoralism win.

Speaker 7 (43:58):
Yay.

Speaker 6 (44:00):
Yeah, I mean it wasn't explicit. It was an explicit
campaign promise, Like, it wasn't just like Oh, we were
hoping that he would do this because he's like our
big movement guy. It was like he explicitly made it
part of his platform was ending the contract for shot Spotter,
and now he is not, and there's there's some time

(44:22):
left before the budget hearing. I think it's like, I
don't know, like fifty five days. I might be off
by a few days there, but there's only around, you know,
two months left, and since he's been elected. So like
the other thing, I mean, this is like the shady
part too, is like since he's been elected, he's been
asked whether he'll extend the contract and he's just like
refused to answer.

Speaker 3 (44:43):
Which is a really great politician stuff, like you know,
you you know that your politicians being completely normal and nothing,
everything is above board when they just straight up refuse
to answer questions, only good things ever result from that.

Speaker 6 (45:00):
Yeah, And it's been there's been like a lot of
similar sort of just like I don't know, lack of
transparency kind of incidents with him over the last however
longest been since he's been elected, God has been a
long year. It's kind of like there's this pattern now.

(45:21):
So yeah, I mean there were people who kind of Look,
he was never like the abolitionist like I'm going to
abolish the police, mayor, and like I get that. I
think a lot of people get that. But there's a
pretty big departure kind of between how he's approaching policing

(45:47):
and what Yeah, a lot of movement people or leftists
or abolitionists want you know, every encounter with a cop
is a potential for violence, right, And he's coming at
it more from the side of like, well, we just
need to rebuild trust in the police, and the community

(46:07):
just needs to you know, like we're just going to
rebuild trust and we're going to get these bad cops out.
We're going to have only good cops left and then everything.
I don't know what the logic there is personally, but
the you know, the logic is that we'll just have
good police encounters then. And it's just like this refusal
to acknowledge that like policing itself is a problem.

Speaker 3 (46:29):
Yeah, we are on year fifty of the mayor says
we need to restore trust in the police, We'll get
rid of the bad cops and everything. Like year fifty,
we are on what number of torture scandals? Are we
on since people first started saying this, like, I, it's
just right.

Speaker 6 (46:48):
We shouldn't be laughing at torture. But it's like, yeah,
it's like every I don't know, every month there is
a new Chicago police scandal. I literally cannot keep track.

Speaker 3 (46:57):
Yeah, and okay, so we're going to talk about one
of those scandals. But first, uh, we're gonna talk about ads.
I was gonna do like a you know what else
is a scandal, but I don't know. It's really late
being up for an outrageous number of hours and we

(47:17):
are back. So okay, speaking of Chicago police scandals, there's
a lot. I mean, the CPD is always having scandals
because Chicago cops are just evil. But yeah, do you
want to talk about the specific shot spotter one that
we're having right now?

Speaker 1 (47:38):
Yeah?

Speaker 6 (47:39):
I mean, well, there there are other Chicago police shot
spotter scandals, but no, the most this most recent story
you know that just came out.

Speaker 1 (47:50):
Uh.

Speaker 6 (47:50):
There's a political journalism site, slash blog. They're also our
homiees we don't want to work with them, called people
Stabric and they wrote, you know, an analysis of some
videos that they obtained of what is like essentially a
CPD gang. I mean everybody's heard of, like the LATD
gangs were not everybody, but I'm sure a lot of

(48:12):
listeners have followed the story out of out of la
with like the Sheriff's deputies gangs just roaming around and
committing horrible acts against people, and you know, in these
sort of like cruise of bad cops and and this
is definitely not the first instance of something like that

(48:35):
happening in Chicago, but you know, there were just there
was a lot of video evidence against these guys. One
of them has been indicted. I don't know if the
other three have, but yeah, they were just driving around
basically terrorizing this community. You know, a lot of just
unlawful stops, stopping people on the street, shaking them down

(48:57):
for cash, drugs, and a lot of guns. And they
were filing false reports about found guns, so like they
would stop somebody take a gun and then log it
as like a gun that was found And you know,

(49:19):
in one instance, they said that they were a mile
away from where a shot spotter alert had gone off
and claimed that they looked around and just happened to
find a gun on the ground. They had taken the
gun from a woman.

Speaker 1 (49:33):
You know it.

Speaker 6 (49:34):
They didn't find it on the ground, but they were
able to use the fact that there was a shot
spotter alert that went off in that area as like
a way to cover their tracks.

Speaker 3 (49:45):
Basically, Yeah, and this is something so we talked about
on the show, like, oh god, was that like two
years ago? It was a year ago. A while back
we talked about on this show. The Chicago's used to
have this police nic called Special Operations Sectionion SOS, which

(50:08):
was disbanded after it was revealed they were doing literally
the same thing, which is they would go up to
people to rob them. And one of Chicago has one
of these scandals about once. It like once a decade
there's like a big one of these, and we're kind
of due for one. We haven't had a really big
one of these. Specifically, there's an entire section of the
CPD that's just a burglar or a drug ring. So

(50:31):
I suspect we're gonna find out more about this stuff
because it's it's about time that another one of these
turns up. But yeah, I mean, they were just like
just rolling up on people, just going give me your
gun and then driving away and saying don't tell anyone,
which is really.

Speaker 1 (50:55):
Really yeah.

Speaker 6 (50:56):
Well, I'm like also for seemingly no reason, like some
instances like there. I mean, we look, we can't know
all of their motivations for everything, and a lot more
is going to come out, I'm sure, like in the
court proceedings. But it's like, were they trying to had
the gun retrieval statistics and or were they trying to

(51:20):
do something else? You know, they were like a tactical team,
So I presume, I mean, I think it's the case
that like there are certain gun retrieval statistics that CPD
wants to mate, but you know, the other stuff like
obviously taking cash from people, you know, like like there's
other things they were doing, you know, and and they've
always been look there, I'm not going to allege anything

(51:40):
that isn't proven in the specific instance, but I will
say that there have always been rumors about Chicago police
officers specifically taking things like guns to like sell back,
you know, to gangs basically, and same with drugs. Right,
you know, these guys were we're logging some of them

(52:02):
at least, but what if there were ones that they
weren't logging, Like we don't know. I mean, this is
just what we know happened and what was caught. And
I mean they were dumb enough to like have some
of this caught on their body camps. It's like they
were turning their cameras off for like some parts of
these stuffs, but like not others, or like the camera

(52:22):
would be on and there's like you know, cash and
drugs and then like oh, the camera goes off, and
it's like, well, any logical person can deduce what may
have happened here, like why turning your camera off? Right?
And so yeah, they've always been rumors about kind of
like what these crews driving around are like ultimately doing

(52:43):
with this kind of stuff, and I think it just
it varies depending on them. But I would also add,
you know, the what you mentioned the special operations section.
You know, we only recently learned there's like a Sun
Times investigation into all the Chicago cops who were on
the Hoast Keepers membership role. Oh and a number of

(53:05):
those guys were in soos actually, so that's a fun
little fact.

Speaker 3 (53:10):
Also, yeah, that's another one of the another episode in
the endless parade of Juhago Police Department scandals is like, yeah,
a bunch of these are in far right militias, which
is this is this really interesting? So we did an
episode pretty recently that I was talking about David Graber.
One of one of the one of the points that

(53:31):
he makes in this essay on Batman and the problem
of constituent power, which is a wild thing to be
citing in a police thing, but you know, one of
the points that he makes is one of the one
of the sort of key like fascist convergences. Is this
cooperation between the police, the far right and organized crime
and the CPD. Is this incredible nexus of it, right,

(53:54):
I mean you it's literally the same person is all
three of these things at the same time. It is
a cup who is in a fart right militia who
is also like literally just doing organized crime at the
same time. It's really Yeah, you used to have to
sort of like make metaphors, and you no longer have

(54:17):
to do that. The metaphor just is real. You're just
physically describing the event. It's really something.

Speaker 6 (54:24):
Yeah. I mean, when you really think about it, I
think policing in and of itself is just like a
cult like anything else. And it makes sense that like
the same people who would gravitate towards like militia groups
and like white supremacist groups, any any like I don't know,
group where people kind of have those like hardline beliefs

(54:49):
about the world. And then it's also just like a
lot of these guys are like especially the ones on
like taskal teams, they're all like fucking like traumatized war vetter,
you know, they all have kind of these long backstories
of like military service and just like to get onto
like special ops or like the tactle reading, you know,

(55:11):
et cetera, they kind of look for people with military experience,
not always, but like frequently. And so there's also that
intersection there two of like militarism and abroad and then
like policing at home.

Speaker 3 (55:23):
Right, Yeah, and that's a really common thread. I mean,
just like across the entire world. This is a thing
where like the police office, like the police groups that
are the most likely to go completely rogue and either
just start murdering people randomly or turn into organized crime things,
like are these special operations units there. There was like
in twenty twenty, they were these huge protests and like

(55:45):
anti police protests in Nigeria that were specifically about trying
to get one of these special operations like police special
operation things, I like abolished because special operations guys just
kept shooting everyone and this, you know, like every single
like this happens just everywhere in the world that these
it is like, you know, I mean, obviously normal cops
also do crime. And we talked also another episode about

(56:08):
some kind of normal cops. You did a cartel and
like the the twenty tens, but the special operations groups
go off the rails at a rate that is staggering,
which you would think, you would think someone in government
would look at this, like even if you're a pro
police person, you would look at this and go, wait,
maybe it's a bad idea to have specifically formed these

(56:30):
units that every single time turned into a cartel. But no, no,
they ever do this because the point of cops is
not to not form cartels.

Speaker 6 (56:40):
Well, I think also too, there's like a very uh,
I don't know, I guess neoliberal sort of line of
thinking about like policing and how like we really really
need like the tactical, high skill kind of units. Right
Like there's always like we're giving the cop, we're always
tearing the cops more more, and that's for training. Training

(57:02):
is a big justification for why we're always giving you
them more money. But so there's like you know, skills
and sort of technology, and like I think as we're
dealing with i don't know, like mass shootings and like
all this really horrible stuff just like going on around
us at all times too. Now, it's like it's a
really I think easy way to justify policing to people

(57:25):
is like honor the guise of these like tactical units
or units with like a lot of firepower to deal
with like really really bad guys. Quote right, Like you know,
maybe those people might be like, oh, we've like fewer
cops thetrolling our neighborhoods. You know, we're kind of we
get like, you know, black lives matter or whatever, but
they're like, but we really need to, you know, have

(57:50):
the big guns ready for when something bad comes to
our neighborhood. And so I think that's also like a
sticking point for a lot of people on the on
the way to like actually thinking about it. Polishing the
police too is like what would we do without these
units the guys with like all these skills and all
these crazy weapons to like help us if if if
a bad guy comes and of course the guys, like

(58:13):
the bad guys are those guys like Guy Well.

Speaker 3 (58:17):
And there's the more cynical side of it too, which
is like, you know, if you're if you're the mayor
of Chicago, it's like, well, someone has to shoot the
black panthers, right, Like you need to have guys whose
job it is to like when when you know, when
like revolutionary movements started up, you need like someone has
to start shooting those guys. So yeah, so I want

(58:39):
to go back to talk a bit more about the
like shot spatter and the budget stuff that's been happening,
because so the current the current budget has what is it,
I think it like doubles the the any raises that

(59:01):
that cops were getting. Is that the right number?

Speaker 6 (59:04):
I don't know if it doubled, but I read that
it was actually wait, yeah, so it's it's five percent,
up from like two point five. Yeah, it's double. It's
also the largest package of raises for any city employee
union in modern history. I mean, I'm directly quoting a
Better Government analysis, but but but yeah, no, like literally

(59:25):
it is. It is an enormous It is an enormous race.
And here's the thing. The cops were thrilled with this contract.
Uh the hat of fop John Cavanzara, who is just
like a racist, misogynistic, horrible, just like garbage dump of
a person, you know, was thrilled with with this contract.
Was thrilled with this being passed, you know. And that's

(59:47):
like number one sign that your mayor sucks is when
like the cops are thrilled about something he did like this.
Uh so so yeah, I mean it's it's a huge
amount of money. There's a bunch of other stuff in it,
like you know, salary grade changes and like stipends for
stuff and bonuses and uh there's some changes to like

(01:00:10):
the bodyborn camera policy too, which are kind of concerning.
But but ultimately it's like, yeah, Brendon Johnson is now
the funds the police mayor. Like I don't know how
you can say that he's not when you when you
look at this, like this is just handing the cops
more money.

Speaker 3 (01:00:30):
Yeah, And Chicago cops are already just unbelievably dog shit overpaid.
Chicago teachers are unbelievably underpaid. Yeah, so you know, I
mean we are we are once again paying a bunch
of people to rob us it's really it's it's good stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:00:47):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (01:00:47):
And and they they get a lot of time off too.
I mean, look, they have they have a ton of benefits.
There's a ton of you know, privileges and things that
that the cops get. But it's kind of kind of
like he he could have given them slightly less money,
Like it was almost this contract almost feels like the

(01:01:11):
way I've seen some people describe it is it almost
feels like an act of like goodwill towards the cops.
Like it almost like I was like, I'm giving you
this thing that you really want in the in the
hopes of like I don't know, I don't know what
he's trying to get out of it. I mean, I
don't know what what the motivation is. But it's like
you could have done you could have done less, and

(01:01:31):
you're going for like a lot, So what's what's the
deal there? And you know the new superintendent too, is
like hugely concerning. He picked a guy who's uh like
an expert in surveilling communities ahead of like the DNC
coming next summer, the former head of the counter Terrorism Bureau.

(01:01:54):
You know, like it's just it's a lot of really
disappointing moves, and I think a lot of people were
really hoping to see I guess a more abolitionist kind
of streak. But the ultimately he's like he ran as
a liberal, like we knew this was coming, but there

(01:02:17):
was like almost like taking advantage I guess of like
movement groups to sort of get get the power behind
him during the campaign. But look, our alternative was also
like an evil, like lying, maniacal Paul Vallas. So it's
just like a shit sandwich. It's like bad choices all around, right.

Speaker 3 (01:02:40):
Yeah, and I mean not just is Chicago. I mean
it's just Illinois. Electoral politics in general is a choice
between the guy he gives the police more money and
the other guy who gives the place more money. So yeah,
it's not good exactly. Again, it really seems like we're
going to get more shot spotter of the technology that

(01:03:00):
is wrong over ninety percent of the time.

Speaker 8 (01:03:03):
So it's great, it's really well.

Speaker 6 (01:03:07):
It was a few months left. I mean hopefully, look,
hopefully this is I don't know, there's arguments to be
made for and against harm reduction, I guess, and whether
it's like a worthwhile goal, but maybe there's still like
a shot at like at least getting this part scratched out.
I mean there is, like I said, like this big

(01:03:27):
lawsuit and if nothing else, you know, perhaps he and
his administration could be concerned about just like you know,
the bad press around it if it's included and so
many people are opposing it. But this is also an
administration that like didn't care about the bad press that

(01:03:49):
came with like saying, we're building a detention camp on
polluted land.

Speaker 3 (01:03:54):
So yeah, well look look like this, this is this
is the thing that that the fight over the police
budget is distracting from, which is that we defined a
second toxic waste dump to build the migrant concentration cap on.
So you know, progressive, progressive values are getting happening either way.

Speaker 6 (01:04:14):
Look, I frequently said all mayors are bastards, which is
true corny, but I think you just it's fine. Look,
it's fine to vote, I guess if that is your sting,
just don't convince yourself that once you leave the voting
booths that like the struggle is over, because whatever happens,

(01:04:38):
like this person, this authority figure in charge, is your enemy.
Like it doesn't matter how.

Speaker 1 (01:04:45):
Nice he is.

Speaker 6 (01:04:46):
It doesn't matter how many jokes he cracks, like whatever,
whatever you're trying to like resist or like liberate, Like
this person is going to stand in your way just
by virtue of being the mayor. Like it's into what
that is. So I think it's just a matter of
being like clear eyed about that rather than like convincing

(01:05:09):
yourself that you can somehow like co run the city
like with the government.

Speaker 3 (01:05:14):
Yeah, I mean I'm gonna, okay, I'm gonna take a
shot at a city on the other side of the world.
But fuck it, I'm still mad about this.

Speaker 8 (01:05:21):
Okay.

Speaker 3 (01:05:22):
So the the nominal best case scenario for this inside
an electoral framework was when Barcelona and Camu, which is
this sort of left wing platform in Barcelona made of
a bunch of ex anarchists I like, managed to get
managed to get a semisabled majority of the city council.

(01:05:43):
Then the first time they got their mayor elected, the
first thing that that fucking mayor did, like a weekend
of office, was she knew where all the squats were
in Barcelona, And the first thing she fucking did was
she knew which immigrant squat didn't have enough community support
behind them to stop them from getting evicted, and she
had them evicted. So you know, this is what happens
when you put activists in charge. They they do a

(01:06:04):
more efficient job of uh being the kind of insurgency.
So oh my god, yeah, this is this is this
is what you're getting into.

Speaker 6 (01:06:13):
Oh my god. Well yeah, and I mean then it
also becomes like its own smoke screen, you know, like
just using the fact that like, oh, I was elected
by activists, or like I was elected by movement people,
so like you know, I'm on your side, and just
using it as like a shield against like every move

(01:06:35):
and being like, well, I know this looks bad, but
like you guys know, like I'm I'm your guy, Like
I'm one of you, like like just trust me, Like
we're doing this for the for the right reasons. It
might look bad, but because I'm your guy, you know,
it's okay. I mean, it's the same thing with like
like a uh Biden and the and the border wall.

Speaker 3 (01:06:55):
Now I think ironically our episode on that is going
to be the episode that comes right before this, so
oh wait, sorry, sorry, two episodes. Sorry, There'll be two
episodes before. Yeah, oh, and the two episodes after well
is also going to be borderwall shit, So yeah, border
wall bad. Fuck Biden from border wall.

Speaker 6 (01:07:14):
But it's like it's Brighten's border wall. He's doing all
this shit. And then you know it's just if it
was Trump, we know what the response would be from
supposed progressives.

Speaker 3 (01:07:28):
Yeah, don't don't let people like put a code of
paint on a turd and hand it to you and
be like, no, it's good. Actually we don't have to
do this.

Speaker 6 (01:07:37):
Right, But I mean, also the border wall. Do you
remember there was a brief flash of time in October
when when Brandon Johnson and his team announced they were
going to visit the border wall and then it only
lasted like twenty four hours, seventy two hours. I don't

(01:07:58):
know when, but at some point then they like very
quickly reversed the decision when they realized like how bad
that would look as we have like like at that time,
there were thousands of people in police like thousands of
migrants to it who had traveled here and staying on

(01:08:19):
police station floors, and there was like they were gonna
have this publicity stone want went to a while, and
then they changed their minds about it, and we're like, oh, yeah,
this is probably a bad idea. But it's become this
this like Pilgrimage site. I mean, like I know, AOC
went there. It's like liberal politicians like go there to
be like, oh, this is so terrible and then they like,

(01:08:39):
you know, just kind of let Biden make it worse.

Speaker 3 (01:08:43):
Yeah, so this this has been that, this has turned
into the liberal groups elected on big promises, make your
life worse episode. Well, this has been naked happen here.
You could find us in the places where can people
find you, just you.

Speaker 6 (01:09:03):
Know, on the Hell site which I know you're back
on now unfortunately unfortunately. Yeah, you know, we have drinks
Press dot org pro site and then yeah, Twitter, Instagram,
all that stuff.

Speaker 3 (01:09:18):
Yeah, so go check out the Drinks Press people. They
do they do great work. And yeah, cops, bad.

Speaker 6 (01:09:25):
Cops, bad cops, always bad cops, keep being bad.

Speaker 8 (01:09:44):
Hi everyone, it's James, and today I've got a two
part episode for you. Initially, I'd planned to have my
friends Emmitt and Dave talk to me about the shelters
that we've all been building in Aucumber because the weather's
getting worse and worse. But we're able to connect with Amos,
who is one of the migrants who has spent time
in outdoor detention sadly, and then in indoor detentions you'll

(01:10:05):
hear and I really wanted to sort of refocus this
episode on sharing Amos's story because I think, as I've
said countless times right that if we don't spent the
migrants in our reporting about migration, then we're doing it wrong.
And so you will hear introductions from Dave, and you
will hear introductions from Emmett, and you'll heard a little
bit from them next episode about how we're bullying they,

(01:10:27):
but we'll bring you that episode another time, because I
wanted this episode to be mostly about Amos's migration journey.
Hello everybody, it's me James. I am hosting it could
happen here today again and I'm joined by my friends
Amos and Emmett and potentially later our friend David. We're

(01:10:48):
going to talk today again about the situation in hit
the Komba. Amos is one of the people who we've
detained in the outdoor detention sites, and it's going to
explain some of his experience. And then Emmett is someone
who has been working with a group of people, including myself,
to build shelters for migrants to build slightly more permanent,
slightly more improved shelters. Unfortunately, border patrol has taken upon

(01:11:11):
themselves to instruct migrants to destroy those shelters, and so
we're going to talk about how we build them, what
we learn when we're building them, and unfortunately the fact
that they have been destroyed. So I'm going to ask
my three guests to introduce themselves. David is here now,
so we'll start with you, Amos, and then and then David,

(01:11:33):
just tell us who you are and anything you think
is relevant about yourself.

Speaker 1 (01:11:36):
So I guess thank you for the invite. I appreciate
the opportunity to add whatever I can to this very
very important subject. I happen to be. I call myself
an accidental and legal immigrant, if you want to put
it that way. Due to some family circumstances, I found

(01:11:57):
myself following a the new migratory road, I mean roads
that has taken me through I lost count ten or
twelve countries starting from North Africa all the way to
the border with the United States. So that's me, and uh,

(01:12:21):
you know, I mean, I would I would love nothing
more but to add to this conversation.

Speaker 8 (01:12:26):
Thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:12:27):
I am. My name is Emitt.

Speaker 9 (01:12:29):
I am a volunteer with Borlands these collectives.

Speaker 8 (01:12:32):
And then David, would you like to finish up by
introducing yourself him.

Speaker 7 (01:12:36):
My name is David.

Speaker 10 (01:12:37):
I'm a volunteer with Borderlands Relief Collective as well as
Detention Resistance. I do water drops and I've also been
helping out as a volunteer in the Border Patrol Open
Air Detention site doing uh work as a medic and

(01:12:58):
helping out building.

Speaker 8 (01:12:59):
These great Yeah, thank you, thank you so much everyone.
So I think everyone will be interested in hearing Amos's story.
So as far as you're comfortable sharing, Amos, and there's
no need to share anything that you're not comfortable with
or don't want to share. Can you tell us about
your journey from North Africa to the United States. And

(01:13:20):
I think we've been particularly interested in, like how people
are finding out about these obviously these big gaps in
the war that that are in Cucumber, and how people
are ending up there from all over the world.

Speaker 1 (01:13:31):
Now right, well, buckle up. It's a long journey, James.
It's a long one.

Speaker 11 (01:13:39):
So for me personally, it started with.

Speaker 1 (01:13:44):
A sort of an accidental separation from my family, my
wife and kids for reasons proportionate reasons have to go
to go back to the United States, and I was not.
I was the the visa to join them. They went
for initially two mourn the loss of a brother in law,

(01:14:10):
I mean a brother in law, and unfortunately I wasn't
able to get there by obtaining a visa to do so.
So I spent six seven months arguing with the embassy.
Was not given any legal reasoning for whye and my
visa was denied. I've lived in the United States for

(01:14:31):
the sixteen years. I've had a Clington record with one
arrest and release and it was part of a protest
that really that happened in Los Angeles and were released
right away. And basically I left in twenty fifteen. I'd

(01:14:52):
got to think the clean hands, no issues and then
going back to Tunisia where I was with my new
family anyhow. So so basically I was denied visa I
really wanted to do. I've never done anything illegal in
my life. I wanted to do the legal route, following

(01:15:13):
what's what's been always told that you know, follow their
legal route, don't don't come ilegally. So so that was
not even a question in my mind. You know, you know,
the wife is American, the kids are American. I mean,
I just it shouldn't be an issue. But I really
was confronted with I mean, I can safely say bye
by now it's a bias.

Speaker 12 (01:15:34):
It's it's got to be some racism just by by
by deduction really, because when you run out of reasoning,
you have to really start making these sad and you
know said conclusions.

Speaker 11 (01:15:48):
So yeah, so basically no, again, that was that took.

Speaker 1 (01:15:51):
Me on a long and painful depression and anxiety and
a cocktail of mental health issues that I'm still actually
dealing with right now. And it took my kids, my
two kids, my beautiful kids, through therapy and they're still
going through therapy. My wife is going through therapy. I'm
going through therapy, and it took it blew apart in

(01:16:12):
this family. We're still trying to figure out why so
much you know nothing but could define it but hate. Really,
there is no other way of putting it. So and again,
I just the discussion was with my friends in America
has been very difficult because they have no understanding or

(01:16:33):
concept of what, you know, the diplomatic core is doing.
And what is the these embassies are doing because there
is no there is no access to them by Americans.
It's just usually foreigners who do. And that really creates
like this black hole of tax money going to these embassies.

(01:16:55):
And then what they're doing is just just with a
stroke of a pen, yes, yes or no, no explanation.
You can't sue, you can't appeal, you can't do. It's
absolute power. And then you know, I'm I'm mentioning this
that the embassy is because through my journey, through this
long and painful journey, I've met time and time again

(01:17:15):
other fellow immigrants who again tried to go through the
League route were denied with no reason, with no like
no written reason, no no valid reason. So again you
know this this discussion on and off again, and you
know among American citizens as to why people are showing

(01:17:38):
up in the border, well, I mean, at least in part,
what I see is no accountability whatsoever to the embassies.
Like time and time again, you have these embassies denying
people who are trying to do it the right way,
trying to do it. They either have family or work
or whatever, and they're denied time and time again. And
then you have, you know, and the hundreds of thousands

(01:17:59):
going through process, and of course they try, they try,
and then eventually they have no choice. So I'm not
saying this is the only explanation, but it's a big
part of it. I've spoken for people who are crossing
and who are on the way from anywhere from Brazil
to Colombia to Ecuador, to Panama, to Nicaragua, to Guatemala

(01:18:22):
to Belize, in Mexico, all across. I've come across so
many people and they, you know, at least I mean,
my little humble mass I would say fifty to sixty
percent have tried through embassies, but unfortunately you know that,
you know, they just turned down. So this is an
issue that is not talked about. This is an issue

(01:18:44):
they really get away with Scott Free. I mean they
really don't. There's zero can I mean, there are gods.
I mean the ambassador have zero accountability now, I mean
he he is absolutely he has all the power and
no cannability. I mean, rarely you see ambassador being recalled
by Congress. Rarely you see an ambassador being questioned, hey,

(01:19:07):
why are these these are demands being the client, why
what are you doing about it all that stuff, you know.
So this is this is some of the stuff I
want to add to the conversation because nobody has ever
mentioned this.

Speaker 11 (01:19:20):
Nobody talks about this.

Speaker 8 (01:19:21):
Yeah, so, yeah, it's very important. I think your experiences
is far from unique, as you've said, right, I have
seen hundreds of people carrying visa rejection letters come across
the southern border. They've shown them to me, right. They
are people who have been victims of some of the
worst things that can happen to human beings, and they've

(01:19:42):
survived them. And we've still refused to give these people
a safe place, so they've had to take their journey
in a more dangerous way.

Speaker 11 (01:19:49):
I mean, I didn't see a single round person in
the embassy.

Speaker 1 (01:19:53):
It's all right again, I'm I'm I hope you guys
don't feel like I've been like two.

Speaker 11 (01:20:00):
I'm just being honest because I see.

Speaker 1 (01:20:01):
It, and I'm I'm up to date of what people
are talking about and all the discussions, and I see it,
like you know, almost have a level of a of
a right wing supremacy style, like you know, I mean,
it's just you feel it.

Speaker 11 (01:20:18):
You feel it.

Speaker 1 (01:20:18):
It's thetter you have to be a quote unquote brown
person or a minority person to feel it. I don't
expect others to understand it, but we feel it. And
this is a discussion I've had in detention with a
lot of the fellow detainees. There is that sense, there's
a sense that you know, we're being looked down at,
not on our merits, but on you know, a little

(01:20:39):
bit of you know, assumptions because of where you're from.
Assumptions like you go in and it's already baked. It's
already baked. It's already And this is me. I've had
a visa from the US for sixteen years. I mean,
it should be a slam dunk. You know. So my
two kids are American, my wife, my wife is American.
We are and til today are all confused as to

(01:21:01):
why the denials happened. I mean, I've called Congress members
that David was with me today when I was at
the Congress Membership Shift Adam Shift in Bourbon, California, and
we you know, even they don't have an answer as
to why the denial happened.

Speaker 11 (01:21:16):
And you know, I mean to close my personal issue, James.

Speaker 1 (01:21:21):
It's interesting because I was told that perhaps you were
illegally in the United States between twenty thirteen twenty fifteen
and then, but they can't say for sure that was
the reason. But in detention when they when they didn't
all the research on me, none of that existed, none
of that. There's none of that. They released me because

(01:21:42):
they have nothing against me.

Speaker 8 (01:21:44):
Nothing.

Speaker 1 (01:21:44):
And this is and this is the uscis, this is
the Immigration Service, not the embassy coming up with some
of these you know, bogus ideas. You know, so again
it's a mess, and I feel like, you know this, this,
this sees need to be looked into more because the
border patrol ends up feeling the blunt of all this.

(01:22:06):
But where does it start? Where is the source?

Speaker 11 (01:22:09):
I s always the question of where is the source?

Speaker 1 (01:22:11):
Where the source is? Yes, there's economic issues, there is,
there is there is uh physical abuse, there's all kinds
of stuff. But then also there's tax dollars being spent
in the billions and the billions and hundreds of billions
on these diplomatic course. I mean to be fair, my
journey was not was not as difficult as many many, many, many,
many stories that I've heard heart worming, I mean, really

(01:22:34):
heartbreaking stories. My journey really, you know, I'm I'm somewhat
to have a somewhat of a sophisticated life in the
sense that you know, I spent a lot of time
again we wasted. Most of the time that we wasted
was waiting on the embassy because they kept on dragging
and dragging their feet, six seven months waiting while my
kids are crying on the phone, and you know, we

(01:22:55):
don't have the income to to be able to able
to have them come back to to to to Nisia
where I was. So anyhow so, yeah, it started by researching, researching,
reading a lot of articles, researching as far as North Africa.
The route that is being used right now by mostly
by a lot of Mauritanians and West Africans. This goes

(01:23:18):
through Turkey and then from Turkey they're going to Nicaragua.
Because Nicaragua Managua the capital of Nicaragua, they have allowed
for visa and arrival, and then from and then from
Managua there is literally almost like travel companies doing packaging

(01:23:39):
packages for upwards to six seven thousand dollars from there
to and then six seven thousand dollars from Nicarago. But
before Nicaragua there's at least three four.

Speaker 11 (01:23:50):
Thousand dollars, so I'm told by.

Speaker 1 (01:23:54):
I think, yeah, the four Mauritanians that were detained, I'm
told about tenth thosand dollars, which comes down to their
local currency, about forty five thousand of their local currency,
which is a lot, I mean a lot. So they so,
like I said, so they managed to get the flights
to Nicaragua. Managua has been on arrival for thirty days

(01:24:18):
for North Africans, and then from there you got literally
their journey through I don't know, coyotes, whatever you want
to call them, facilitators whatever, well established with buses through
El Salvador, through what Honduras, Honduras and Salvador, Guatemala, and

(01:24:38):
then through Mexico. So that's the route that's been you know,
upwards of six seven thousand Mauritanians and West Africans as
far as the last articles that I've read, have taken
their route. So I looked into it. I couldn't afford it,
to be honest with you, this is just you know,
I was sending money to my kids and wife because

(01:24:59):
she I had to be on welfare. She just arrived
there and she had to keep the kids at school
and there's a lot of struggle, so I had to
kind of try to help with that. On the same time,
I was waiting on the embassy and we you know,
and the WAF was calling them to see if can
we expedite, can we do this, can we do this?
But they were literally rude and and you know, treated

(01:25:21):
her like a second class citizen. I don't know why.
We still can't figure that out anyhow. So another route
right now, which is a difficult route, is through Brazil
because Brazil has a I don't know if you guys know,
and I think they do that for Americans too. Yeah,

(01:25:41):
so Brazil has sort of I don't know the word,
but the equivalent to them is if you impose a
visa on Brazil. Brazilians were imposed vision news. They do
that to Americans too, So so you know where I'm from,
they don't have a visa to as far as for Brazils,
so we don't. So a lot of Africans can go

(01:26:03):
to Brazil and from Brazil take the route all the way.
So David mentioned the Amazon Strait where they crossed the
jungle from Colombia to Panama and so on and so forth.
That is I mean, I'm yes, the Darian, the famous
Darian that is to me personally. Man, it gives me

(01:26:27):
chills because the two or three guys that one of
them did it on his own with Google Maps. Man,
I don't know how the hell he did it. I
have no clue how he did it. I am. I
was listening and trying to understand them. Oh, it was
just heartbreaking, you know, the suffering. So but yeah, through
Brazil and then Colombia and and keep on going that way.

(01:26:51):
That's another route for me.

Speaker 3 (01:26:55):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (01:26:56):
Again, I booked flights. I didn't all through that trouble,
to be fair, but I've had some issues with vis
is because North Africas don't get a lot of visa
access around the Latin America. We don't have a lot
of embassies there, we don't have a lot of trade,
we don't have a lot of commerce between our countries.
So it's kind of an unknown uh, an unknown commodity

(01:27:20):
in the sense that you know, everything is is, you
know is new. For me. I was able to get
a visa to Colombia, and I'm very grateful for to
choose Columbia because it's a it's affordable. It's been a
good experience for myself to get out of UH me
get closer and on the same time figure out the
lay of the land and understand where I'm going. So

(01:27:42):
those I'm grateful for that. And from there my goal
was to get a visa to Mexico, and a lot
of and most of my American friends get are still confused.
That's why I would need a Mexican visa. That's a
whole other discussion. And then the Mexican visa has become
extremely difficult, almost as difficult as the American visa because
of pressure from the United States to stop the flow.

(01:28:03):
So UH again we end up making it very difficult
for people who want to legitimately do this. So finding
an appointment for a Mexican UH embassy, then you find
out which embassy of Mexico has the available. Some of
them don't have ever, some of them have them two
years from now. Some of them have them, you know,

(01:28:25):
UH for a particular visa but not the other. And
you know, so for me, it was Colombia, and then
UH I found an appointment in in for for Mexican
visa and belize UH but unfortunately I ended up in
you know, going from Colombia to Panama to UH, Nicaragua

(01:28:46):
to Guatemala, and then Belize because Belize has not a
lot of UH flights UH from Latin America. And then
when I got to Guatemala, all the previous countries allowed
me to transit without a problem, but Guatemala decided to
put me in a detention for almost forty hours and

(01:29:11):
then wanted to return me back to original country because
they yeah, So I'm like, I'm my plane departs a
few hours of going to Belize. Why are you doing
this please? I'm not on need the visit to Guatemala.
I'm not going to Guatemala. Nothing, no discussion. They threw
me in there, cockroaches, you name it, the whole Enchilada.

(01:29:32):
I mean, no food, no water, no nothing. I mean,
you know, it's just sad, very sad, very sad, very sad.
That was a really very sad And then so I
was sent back to Panama, then from Panama to Colombia,
and then Colombia that was going to send me back
to North Africa. So it was going to be a
really mess. So I had to use some of my

(01:29:53):
customer service skills that have run through the years to
wiggle myself where I this minute was able to help
some friends buy a ticket to like, you know, in
the midnight hour. Really they were going to send me.
So I bought a ticket to Ecuador, where I had
a visa for ninety days. So I was able to

(01:30:14):
get out of that mess, stay in Guador for a
couple of weeks, and then try to get to Belize again.
And the next time I was successful in going to
Belize through Panama and then Nicaragua, then straight to Belize,
avoiding Guatemala, and then Believe. I was there for a
couple of weeks, and then I was able to get

(01:30:34):
a visa to Mexico, thank God. And there was a
lot of Russians, there was a lot of Turks, there
was a lot of no no, no Turks, no Russians,
and a lot of East Europeans trying to get a
visa there too for Mexico. And basically from there it
was the journey of taking a bus from Belize to Cancun,
can Coon to Monterey Monterrey to Cabo. I found a job,

(01:30:58):
a volunteering job in Fortois, Condido. I'm a yoga practitioner,
and I found a yoga to treat there to try
to help me with my mental health and all that stuff.

Speaker 11 (01:31:11):
So yeah, so and they're doing a great job.

Speaker 1 (01:31:15):
It's in the middle of the wilderness. They're really present,
you know, working on natural preservation and in beautiful job
they're doing there. And then from there Gambos and Lucas.
Gambos and Lucas. I volunteered at a hotel to kind
of be able to eat and sleep, and then from
there Tijuana and Tijuana. I met someone earlier in can Kun,

(01:31:39):
a Colombian who was all the time I was in Mexico,
I was trying to do the app, the CVB one app.

Speaker 8 (01:31:48):
Yeah, and how was your experience with that?

Speaker 1 (01:31:50):
Because absolutely absolutely horrible, absolutely horrible, absolutely horrible. I mean
it's just basically useless. It's useless. And I met people
who've been there for two months on the app and
it didn't work.

Speaker 8 (01:32:03):
Explain to me what didn't work about it? Like, did
it LOK you out? Did it?

Speaker 1 (01:32:06):
I wish I can send you screen I have screenshots
that can send you to you can understand what so
so it tells you, that tells you, that tells you
you're so you sign up, you put your information, you
passport and all that stuff. And then basically what you're
doing is you're you're in the queue, and it's there's
like a lottery system where they see how long you've

(01:32:27):
been waiting, how old are you, where are you from.
There's like a lottery system that randomly selects people. So
but again, you know, out of a close to one
hundred people in my detention cell, you know room, everybody's saying,
we all tried, and none of them, you know, got
an appointment. I mean everybody wants an appointment. I mean,

(01:32:47):
who's in the reds, who's in the right in his
right mind would choose to forego an appointment and go
do throughout that trouble. So and if we can do
a little bit of math, eventually, at some point I
spoke to the supervisor of the Border Patrol detention center
and he told me there's eighteen hundred people at any
given point in that place. So out of eighteen hundred people,

(01:33:09):
and if my cell there was about six cells or
something or more than that much more, much more the
six seals and then four blocks, I think, sonya, So
uh yeah, I mean if about out of one hundred,
then you have nobody was able to use the app.

Speaker 11 (01:33:27):
Then what's what's to tell tell out of the eighteen.

Speaker 1 (01:33:29):
Hundred maybe nine nine percent, I mean all of them really,
because if they did have appointment, Yeah, if they had appointments,
there would have been not in there, right, I mean
that's that's the key.

Speaker 8 (01:33:39):
Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 (01:33:40):
So, I mean it's just a flawed system. I was
telling my wife yesterday, that's like ellipstick on a pig,
because you know, you're just trying to make it look
because you're doing something, but it's really it's really like
there's nothing being done about it. And anyhow, so I'm
still dazed, unconfused. I mean, I'm trying to understand the situation.

(01:34:04):
So I literally I was the last one to get in,
and literally I'm sitting there and I'm standing there at
the border itself, at the wall, and I'm like, what's
going on? Where is the border patrol? Where is the
port of entry? Where is this? I'm not confused.

Speaker 8 (01:34:20):
After finding himself unable to make an appointment through CBP one,
he must have decided to make his way to Accumber
like thousands of other migrants. And I think it's worth
pointing out here that nothing that he has done up
to this point is breaking any laws. Right, It's not
illegal to drive around in Mexico. It's not illegal to
approach the border from the south. All of this stuff

(01:34:43):
is the legal way to move around. No, no crimes
have been committed. And it is course legal to cross
the border and present yourself for assylum immediately upon doing so,
even to cross between ports of entry. It's the discretion
of the administration or the prosecutors to charge for that crossing.
But that is a legal means to claim asylum. And
so we'll let they must pick up again here as

(01:35:05):
he takes his first step into United States.

Speaker 1 (01:35:08):
The first thing I say is, I'm pretty sure that
there's some Fox News stuff because they were there were
so aggressive camera and a brand new jeep and they
were like, hey cool Google shoot shoot, and then you know,
ladies and dudes and everybody was running and they were
running after them to shoot them with the I mean

(01:35:28):
with the camera. I mean, I mean, that's what I mean.
And you can tell there is malicious intent behind what
they're doing. It was not like trying to be sort
of neutral or anything. They were just you know, anyhow,
So I'm looking for a border patrol. I'm trying to say, hey,
I'm finding for asylum. Where are you?

Speaker 11 (01:35:48):
What's going on?

Speaker 1 (01:35:49):
Nothing, there's nobody. So I'm just walking around with the
with the around the world. I call my wife, I
call some friends. Thank god it's to that signal. And
then uh, yeah, I mean, you know, the first book
Border patrolman that I saw, he was pissed off. He said,
a few, a few, a few, this, move out of

(01:36:11):
my way. Fine cool. Uh. I told him whatever I said.
If I didn't like, I said, I'm sorry. And then
I moved on and nobody's interested in even to talk.
So and then I moved closer, closer to the crowd,
and uh, I don't know if that's when I saw David,
but it was almost almost almost yeah, And even when

(01:36:34):
I saw David initially, but then I kept going to
do to have an idea of the whole camp, camp
and the whole like understand what the dynamics. I saw
some National guardsmen, I saw some DHS police, and I
saw some Border patrolmen. It's like a whole mix of people.
And I think I think there was uh Park rangers.

(01:36:55):
If I'm not, I'm not second Yeah, yeah, so ber
lam Rangers. Yeah. So so it's a huge mix of people.
And right away my my survivor instincts kind of you know,
I I saw David and I saw tools, and my
eyes opened up because you know, I worked and I
built my farm from scratch in North Africa, and I

(01:37:18):
have my tools are everything to me. So anyhow so,
I'm glad I did see that that that familiar site,
and I appreciate that. But you but you, David and Caissar,
you guys were terrific. And yeah, I mean nobody spoke English.
Nobody spoke English, nobody, and everybody's being treated like.

Speaker 11 (01:37:39):
I mean, I told one border performent, I have house,
I have sheep.

Speaker 1 (01:37:43):
I treat them better the way you treat these guys.
I really do. I truly do. And they were didn't
like that kind of talk. But anyhow so, yeah, I
mean I got really cold, I mean very quickly, and
right away David and Scissor, thank god, had had some
tools and we started, you know, working on getting some

(01:38:05):
tents up and running. And uh, I mean they did
most of the work really, I was just there helping,
so uh and it was it was it was, dude,
My heart was really pain giving me a lot of
pain because in my mind I had my my my
boy and my girl on my mind and I'm just
trying to get to to them.

Speaker 11 (01:38:25):
But I seen these kids. Man, that was that was horrific.

Speaker 1 (01:38:29):
Man. That was not right. That was not right in
that cold, it was just not right. And uh, I'm
telling you still in my mind right now.

Speaker 11 (01:38:39):
I mean, I'm not gonna let you.

Speaker 1 (01:38:39):
It's it's it's just it's embedded, you know.

Speaker 8 (01:38:42):
Yeah, it affects all of us. Like I would say,
last night, I was a little baby there and I
couldn't sleep coming home, you know, like I.

Speaker 1 (01:38:49):
Mean, you know, jeez, dude, like you know, the thing
is this? You know? Okay, Again, I told David, uh,
it's not a question of left or right. The question
is so I get it. I spoke to Bush, a
border patrol, and again I couldn't sleep at night. I
basically kept on going. After David and Caesar left, I

(01:39:09):
tried to sleep. I couldn't sleep. I called my kids.
They sleep at eight forty eight thirty, so I spoke
to them and then they were asleep. And then I
got up and I.

Speaker 11 (01:39:18):
Kept walking around. Some people had a lot of woods.

Speaker 1 (01:39:22):
Some people didn't have enough wood, so and some people
didn't want me to take some of their wood. I
had to go pick up some wood and try to look,
you know, make sure everybody's fire is up and running.
And then, you know, when everybody had the fire and
everybody kind of somewhat settled in, I figured, hey, let
me if I'm up, let me talk to the border patrol.

(01:39:44):
I spoke to the first one. He was kind of,
you know, didn't want to talk, but still said a
few things. But then another one originally from San Diego.
Cool guy, really cool guy. He gave me the picture.
I mean, look, listen, I mean, you know, we're here
to work and the stress is a lot where we
try and do the best we can. It's not our fault,

(01:40:04):
and it's not you know what I mean, you know,
you know, And he told me, listen, you can go
back to Tijuana, or you can go in the United
States or do whatever you want. But if I pick
you up outside of this area, you go straight to deportation,
that's the bottom line. But if you stay here, you
get to be picked up and processed and you'll have
a chance to fight for your asylum. So again, excellent information.

(01:40:26):
With the exception of even they don't know the process
because you don't get to fight for asylum and detention
and detention they release you on your recognizance and then
later on you fight for asylum.

Speaker 8 (01:40:40):
Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, so.

Speaker 1 (01:40:42):
And that's a misconception because everybody is saying. Everybody that
I spoke to initially said yeah, you can fight for
an asylum right in here, but it's not true. So
but anyhow, so and then I spoke to a couple
of National guardsmen, a couple of kids that in the
early twenties from New York, from New York, and uh,
I mean, you know, just just a couple of kids.

(01:41:04):
We started talking about hunting, We started talking about you know,
fishing and stuff like that, and they were, you know,
what do you expect. You know, they're doing their job
and they're human beings doing what humans beings do. So
I mean, I can absolutely sympathize and understand, you know,
these guys' jobs. My only beef is like, do you

(01:41:25):
have to be the I mean, yes, you're pissed. Yes,
it's a lot of work. Yes it's frustrating, Yes it
feels like your country is invaded. Blah bah blah, we
get all that, but is you being mean, rude or
downright evil? Is that going to change anything? It's not.

Speaker 11 (01:41:40):
These guys went through flicking the Amazon. I mean, at
some point I swum with a crocodile.

Speaker 1 (01:41:46):
I didn't even know the crocodiles around. I'm just saying,
it's so weird that they're educated and they're informed, yet
they still have that attitude. It's just like, you know
what I mean, it doesn't it.

Speaker 8 (01:41:59):
Doesn't, Yeah, it doesn't. It doesn't help. And like like
it doesn't matter what you think about policy, Like if
there's a baby crying because it has no.

Speaker 1 (01:42:08):
They get cold. They became cold hearted, and it sucks
because again I spoke to this guy from San Diego,
which I really appreciate his you know sort of you know,
he's he was very forward with me, and I appreciate
that because it probably doesn't get to talk to anybody
because nobody speaks English. So and then the idea is,
you know, they're frustrated. They're with the system. They're frustrated

(01:42:32):
with the with the capacity, with with the with the
with the positions they're put in. Okay, I absolutely sympathize.
You cannot go wrong with that. I mean, I mean
it's you have every right to to to to to
be that way. Again, my beef is, why do you
like good morning? A few, good afternoon, a few, good night,

(01:42:52):
a few like like what it becomes so sad. It's
just like, you know, loses it's importance. Even the war
is no longer important, you know what I mean. So yeah,
it's just too much, so much.

Speaker 8 (01:43:05):
It's very dehumanizings and it gets human.

Speaker 1 (01:43:10):
Absolutely absolutely, And I mean eventually I got inspired by
David and Caesar, and I think they did a freaking
amazing job. I mean, I just it was a shock
in my system to see the contrast between I think
it's the biggest necessary contrast in that specific place. You

(01:43:30):
need to see the two sides of the American spirit.
Right there. You have volunteers saying a few to the system,
and you have borders men saying a few to the system,
you know what I mean, Like you know, it's it's
just a huge contrast, and that's what really gives hope
for anything going forward. So I appreciate it. I don't

(01:43:51):
think David and Caesar really understand how important what they're doing.
It's extremely important it's very valuable. So to me personally,
it's just the shaka, all the initial shock. I just
went away really quickly because I saw tools and I
saw David, and I knew what's going on because I
volunteered in shelters in LA. In Los Angeles, I volunteered

(01:44:13):
at the mission down at uh you know, downtown LA.
You know on schied Row. If you hear of skid Row,
I've volunteered there. And I mean, I know very well
what homelessness looks like. So I've done Christmas service, I've
done food service. Automatically, when I saw David, I just
completely kicked in and I it was a natural thing
for me to jump aboard and help. Uh. And then

(01:44:38):
again I couldn't sleep. Early in the morning, like four
or five, I started seeing some border patrolment coming in
and right away the huffing and pufflin starts. You know
what I mean, the traveling and all that business. Okay,
and Uh initially I mean, I again I hate to
use the word I, but I helped organize the crowd
a little bit because the were fighting because they were

(01:45:02):
the PP was VP was picking up UH people that
have been there that they're just arrived, they're leaving the
people that were there longer.

Speaker 9 (01:45:13):
You know.

Speaker 1 (01:45:14):
For the ones that were that I stayed with, were
there for four days, they didn't get picked up, and
so that's a logistical issue, and people were just not
being organized. So we did the line demarcation line. Those
who were here for three days, they need to be
here two days. One day. We did that, and then

(01:45:35):
the first border patrolment that showed up on a g
sorry yelling at me, you're doing our job. Okay, sorry, sorry, sorry,
I backed up. I backed up. I minded my business.
And then another border patrolment tells me, hey, listen, listen, listen,
I needed to do forty seven on the side.

Speaker 11 (01:45:51):
Forty seven on the side.

Speaker 1 (01:45:53):
I need to Yeah. I'm like, what's going on here? Okay,
I mean again, I dropped my ego. I don't care
as long as these guys get a chance to get through,
because there was a lot of frustration where they're picking
up people random and they're picking up leaving people that
are been there for a long time. You had families
that did not want to be separated, you had families

(01:46:15):
that have been there longer, and you had you know,
so it's just a huge miss missmash of situations and
you know so, uh yeah, I mean eventually, on on
on on the next day, early in the morning, we
did some organizing and it seemed to me that we
were much more fluid and and and the border patrolman
filled up the bus and it happened to be one

(01:46:37):
of them, one of the people that were picked up. Yeah, anyhow, so.

Speaker 8 (01:46:43):
But what a story? What did journey?

Speaker 6 (01:46:46):
Right?

Speaker 1 (01:46:46):
It's insane. I'm still processing, man.

Speaker 3 (01:46:48):
Of course.

Speaker 8 (01:46:49):
I mean that's a traumatic experience. And yeah, it's just
I guess one story. And like you said, there are thousands.

Speaker 11 (01:46:56):
Of them, thousands, thousands, all.

Speaker 8 (01:46:59):
Right, that's we were going to cut it off today
and we will pick up again tomorrow to hear more
about any of his journey, how he's found himself in
the United States, where he's going, and where he is now.
Thank you so much. I wanted to ask. So one

(01:47:26):
of the people on the corner is Emmett. Emmett had
helped build some other shelters. You may not know. And
most there are three camps. Maybe David shaddis with you,
similar to the one that you were in. There are
three in different locations. Some of them are even colder
than the one that you've stayed in, and volunteers including

(01:47:48):
myself included Emmett, had built shelters. Emmett, perhaps you could
describe like how you sort of decided to do that
and came up with the shelter design that you came
up with.

Speaker 9 (01:48:01):
Yeah, definitely, And I just just want to say I'm
processing also a most is also hearing your story and appreciating,
like for all of us coming to build shelters, it's
it's it's realizing there's all these stories that we're are
not knowing, and you know, all of us are these
lives that are so independent individual and showing up and

(01:48:23):
meeting folks who've been through whatever they have been and
it like does it does stuff to us all?

Speaker 1 (01:48:31):
You know?

Speaker 9 (01:48:31):
And I think I'm hearing you right now. I'm just
really processing kind of what you're saying. And I hope
many people hear how you're framing all this. Guys really
appreciate how you're framing the story and how you're sharing
both your perspective but also what it means to just
be confused to think.

Speaker 1 (01:48:48):
So for for me.

Speaker 9 (01:48:49):
Like I've I guess I felt so even after many
years of working.

Speaker 1 (01:48:54):
In this space.

Speaker 9 (01:48:55):
Just so confused by how or by how CVP is
treating people in the in the oasis in this desert
right now. But uh, basically it's winter time now in
in in California, and for the last several months people

(01:49:15):
have been kept overnight in in the desert on in
the borderlands, which has been brutal, and it has been
terrible and and and any humane have.

Speaker 1 (01:49:26):
First cup to keep people of the desert.

Speaker 9 (01:49:28):
But as it became winter, it became deadly and the
risk of extreme hypothermia events for for hundreds of people
became so severe that a lot of a lot of
our you know, day in, day out, uh work to
make sure people had food and if there were babies
that they were taking care of as needed, or if

(01:49:49):
if folks had specific health issues that we could show
it for them. But but the thought of just doing
that and hope, you know, bringing as many blankets as
we could. Uh, We're bringing up blankets and tents and
tarps things keep people off the ground, you know, basically
looking in our basements and asking all of our friends, like, hey,

(01:50:09):
we're looking behind every gas station for for for boxes
of cardboard or whatever it is. But that just didn't
seem enough.

Speaker 1 (01:50:17):
It didn't.

Speaker 9 (01:50:17):
It seemed like we were actually doing a harm to
be to be the ones who had seen this and
something we deal with israelizing. There's so many folks who
just don't know what's going on. So for us to
be a community seeing this and not not taking to
the next the next level and its still I feel
this way, but it felt like we were not doing

(01:50:39):
or we were actual doing a harm by not by
not kind of addressing the winter as it was happening.
So the idea of building shelters was was to try
to basically do do something more than just bringing out
supplies and letting people you know, vent for themselves, but
creating something that might actually create more of a long

(01:50:59):
term safety. And then again, I mean this is this
is these are detention sites. We are we are working
as volunteers inside of a basically informal detention site that
CBP is operating. So it's a very confusing for us
to know, you know, we're here trying to be with
people directly, trying to see what people are wanting and

(01:51:21):
needing and what is their their needs, but we're also
kind of navigating around this very erratic system that is
sometimes denying us entry to these sites, sometimes trying to
have us do things for them, and other times kind
of allowing us to be there and you know, you know,

(01:51:43):
bringing food because it serves them, serves VP for us
to keep people alive. But that's a really confusing process.
So anyways, there was a lot of talk going on
about making shelters that people have been assembling palts, and
one day I was just talking with some of the
other organizers and we're thinking, well, 't's do this. I'll
come back tomorrow and we will start. And so with

(01:52:05):
with some volunteers from the Dollar Lunch Club from UC
San Diego, we set out and to the campsite we
call Tower one seven seven and started building this. And
immediately kind of as you're saying, also, Amos, we had
about a team of ten people from Columbia and Kyrghistan

(01:52:27):
helping us build this.

Speaker 3 (01:52:29):
This shelter.

Speaker 9 (01:52:31):
From palettes, cardboard, plastic, sheeting, tarts, and James and myself
and some other folks had been talking the night before
what are the different shelters and using all of our
outdoor experience, worlderness experience and kind of putting it all
together and having kind of a roundtable discussion like well,

(01:52:52):
I've seen this work before, I've I've done this before.
I mean, this might work, might be, this might be
a nice way of using these palettes, trying to find
something that'll be stable to uh, you know withstand wind conditions,
it being kind of you know, resource smart, making sure
we're not over using whatever would we have, and some
sort of super intricate design and also something that we

(01:53:13):
could we could assemble quite quickly and would be versatile,
so something we could do in different different settings. And
also building something and building a design that wouldn't wouldn't
be super hard for people to use. So yeah, so
it just felt like we were kind of just like
kind of putting putting our herds together. And that's what
we came up with was basically this super shelter that
was has basically a backbone of six palettes and maybe

(01:53:36):
I don't know, James, it's possible to like some some
photos or what whatnot, but putting together basically great, right, Yeah,
some sort of ur like structure that can be kind
of designed or can be changed as it wouldn't be
and especially something that anybody who's using it gets to
actually have mimic their own their own home, their own setup,

(01:53:57):
So it's not something that we're kind of dictating how
it needs to be used. But yeah, we've got to
had a really positive experience and a lot of expertise
from folks from from Kyrgyzstan to kind of lead the way.
So we brought tools and other folks who were you
going to use it? Basically creditd them created shelter themselves. Yeah,

(01:54:20):
so that that was that was that, that was our
first experience and yeah, and.

Speaker 8 (01:54:24):
Most his point was really a good one and it's
one I'd considered too, like it it's quite Yeah, I
don't want to compare the difficulties we encounter as volunteers
to the difficulties so almost has just encountered, has just
kind of shared with us in his journey because they're
not the same, but like, it can be quite different.
I speak quite a few languages, but still with large
groups of people who you can't speak to, and do

(01:54:45):
you want to connect? You want to be like what's
happening to you is it's it's disgusting and disgraceful and
it's not me. I'm not I don't want it to happen,
and it shouldn't be. And I want to be in
community with you as much as I can. And so
when we don't have that language, the way that we
can connect. One of the ways that we can connect

(01:55:07):
is to grab a hammer or its screwdriver or something
and stop building.

Speaker 1 (01:55:11):
I love it. I love it. You're so right. You're
so right, James, you are so on pointed. No, I mean,
you know, it's just seeing that that real B drill
was like heaven to me. I mean, I swear not
to give you know, any brands or whatever. I'm just
saying it's not It's not my favorite brand for sure,

(01:55:32):
But but but you really, really, I mean truly like
you guys say, I mean, it's just such an universal
sort of language. Like as men and as women and
as people, we want to build, we want to protect,
we want we want to I mean, I'm taking this
journey to come to my kids and show them support

(01:55:53):
and safety and protect. And it's happening, you know right now,
I'm talking. I was talking to them earlier, and you know,
they're excited to see their dad soon and you know,
just that that feeling of warmth, and I mean, this
is what we do. This is what we do. And
then if you want to narrow it down and break
it down to the basics, it's just what it is.
It's the human level, it's the human condition. I mean really,

(01:56:14):
so these guys are going to go through this pain
for what I mean, clearly they're going through you know, worse,
worser things. And then that's the whole point, that's what
they're trying to do. So and then, uh, before I forget,
and then I don't hope, I hope my phone doesn't
you know, die on me. Let me just give you
the detention. If you guys haven't, let me give you Yeah, yeah,

(01:56:35):
before I you know, so basically on I think it
was Monday.

Speaker 13 (01:56:40):
We we uh get rounded up to what is can
easily be compared to the cattle I wrench cattle kind
of process where you know, here, take off your.

Speaker 1 (01:56:56):
Your your belts and everything that's familiar, but you know
it's a little extra. The bus driver is cussing a
t you like it's nobody's business, and and and you know,
gratuitous humiliation.

Speaker 11 (01:57:08):
And you know, maybe you have one of them is nice.

Speaker 1 (01:57:10):
But the rest are just you know, absolutely want to
just carry you down as much as they can. And anyhow,
so we're lined up, we're onto this bus that's behind
the camp.

Speaker 11 (01:57:23):
Closer to Highway eighty I believe Highway eighty.

Speaker 1 (01:57:26):
Yes, yeah, and uh uh and basically we're lined up,
we're tagged, we're uh, basically stripped of everything that could
be quote unquote dangerous. We're left with only one shirt
in the middle of that cold morning. And uh doesn't
man and man doesn't matter, man woman. Everybody is treated

(01:57:47):
as saying I appreciate their their equality on that issue.
Uh So, and then we are on a bus journey
that's about an hour and a half, maybe two hours
anymore to the Uh. I'm trying to remember this very
well because it's just, you know, it's important. I guess
San Diego, Uh, the San Diego Sorting Facility, san Diego

(01:58:11):
District Sorting Facility a k A. M c U, that's
what we call it. And basically, uh, you know, your
your stuff is sorted and anything that needs to be
thrown with a thrown away and you're given you become
a let me be clear, you become a subject. You're

(01:58:32):
a subject. Now you're not an alien. You're a subject. James,
make sure you understand this. You're a subject, sir. Let's
be clear about the naming structure. You are a subject,
all right. So I'm given a subject number and yeah, exactly.
I mean, I can't believe in this day and age,
I got used to the whole alien thing, you know,

(01:58:54):
alien number, but now it's a subject number. So anyhow,
so we're done. We're going through that. And then you
you know, you just look at people and the daisiness
and the confusion and confusion elders, women, babies. It's just
heart taking. And again you had a couple of military
order performance all and acting like they're in the Marine Corps.

(01:59:16):
They're just shouting up the right and they're like, you know,
treating people that they were disposable. So that's right there.
Uh anyhow so that's the they call it the intake.
So you're you're doing the intake and you're lined up
and you're being stripped, not striptured, searched. You're searched, and

(01:59:36):
then your your backpack is taking away. You open it
up in front of them as if you were at
the airport, and then they throw away stuff.

Speaker 11 (01:59:43):
That's that, even though they're not what's crazy is there?

Speaker 1 (01:59:48):
The backpack is gonna be h zipped and they're gonna
be tagged and put away. So I'm not sure why
thrown away food from the backpack is going to add
anything or anyth Some things don't make sense, but I
guess that's what it is. So then you're you're you're
done with the intake, your sit down inside the central

(02:00:10):
area and you're waiting to be processed.

Speaker 11 (02:00:13):
Processing means fingerprints, picture.

Speaker 1 (02:00:17):
And then you're right down they take a copy of
your passport and in there you write down the address
in which you will be quote unquote released later on.
So that's that, and then basically a couple of hours later,
you're assigned a detention cell. It's not it's a big place,

(02:00:38):
and it's not a cell like a small cell. It's
probably I don't know, twenty by. I don't know. I'm
bad with that business. But any of the point is
we're there, we're taking to this place. I don't know, James,
I don't know what you think of this. So so
they don't put handcuffs on us, but they tell you

(02:00:59):
to put your hands behind your back as you're walking.

Speaker 8 (02:01:03):
Yeah, very strange.

Speaker 1 (02:01:05):
I don't understand. What's the point of that. Like they
insist on putting your hands as if they were handcuffed
behind your back as you walk. It as as you're walking.
That is a big rule. And if you don't do it,
they get pissed at you. And I'm not gonna at you.
I'm always testing the water. And I pissed them off
a number of times. I did put my hands forward

(02:01:27):
because I'm like, what what are you trying to get to?
You know? Anyhow, so you get into your cell. Mine
was two A right, two A yeah. Pod. I'm sorry,
it's called they called pods.

Speaker 3 (02:01:38):
Pods.

Speaker 1 (02:01:38):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Because you know we're we're into share
what is it, work share spaces basically pods.

Speaker 11 (02:01:50):
Said, yeah, we work here, we go, we work.

Speaker 1 (02:01:53):
So we were there. You're giving gym mats gym matts,
and then you know, when we all put our gym
mats on the floor, imagine there is zero space in between,
Like the whole pod is covered with gym mats. Now
you have to walk on gym mats basically anywhere you go.

(02:02:15):
All right, So that's that's the fact. And then you're
giving these what do you call them? There's the not thermos,
the alloy foil blankets whatever.

Speaker 8 (02:02:24):
We have blankets, yeah, yeah, thank you.

Speaker 1 (02:02:27):
Yeah, those guys and they do kind of work. But
for me, they're too small. I mean, I guess I'm
a tall guy. I mean, I don't know. So either
your foots are sticking out or your head is sticking
out or whatever. And I'm not the only one. That's
a lot of people like that. So and then AC
is blasting full speed twenty four to seven light, full

(02:02:48):
bright light twenty four seven and yeah, and then a
lot of you know again, they teach this in school
in psychology. Want to want so light twenty four to seven,
AC freezing. I see, we're only allowed the shirt one shirt,
one shirt. And then I'm talking about probably they have
it on fifty five sixty sixty sixty no more than

(02:03:13):
sixty degrees for sure, all right. And then you have
people cold and getting sick. And then they cleaned three
times a day to their credits where we all have
to get out so the cleaning crew could come in.
But here's the key. They clean at eight in the morning,
at the at five in the afternoon, and at midnight.

Speaker 8 (02:03:37):
You can't sleep.

Speaker 14 (02:03:38):
Come on, dude, really seriously, and God forbid you ask
God forbid you ask, because that's just not allowed, you know.
So midnight, exactly, midnight sharp, get out people, everybody sleep,
everybody sleep, get up, get up, get up, get out,
and there's no again. It's it's it's you know, we
know these tactics, we read about these.

Speaker 1 (02:03:59):
This is like, you know, torture in a way.

Speaker 6 (02:04:01):
You know.

Speaker 1 (02:04:02):
I bet you somewhere in the Geneva Convention there's something
about this. I mean, I'm sure, yeah, So so, you know,
I didn't want to create too much drama the first day, James.
The second day I started testing the water. I'm like,
you know, I'm being nice to everybody. Nobody speaks English,
so I have to kind of speak up for people.
You know, some people need to go medicine, I mean,

(02:04:22):
you know, medicine or whatever. I speak for that whatever.
And then some people are just don't understand when their
name is called for it because it's misspelled. So I'll
help for that, you know. In general, like you know,
I literally would walk around and ask for extra blankets
and things like that. It's all of being doing. I
hope the video will come out and we're doing a
few Freedom of Information Act requests. Hopefully we can get that. Yeah, yeah,

(02:04:46):
hopefully we'll share that with you. I mean it takes.
I mean they're gonna fight at tooth and nay, they're
gonna fight at tooth and nail. Oh yeah, exactly, thank you,
thank you exactly. Sonyhow so uh yeah. After the second
day again they give you for I mean food, I
guess food. Yeah, they give you food. The second day,

(02:05:06):
I started asking the question, Okay, when am I going
to get my phone call? The first person said, oh,
I'll cast on to your request. By the end of
the day, I've asked like three.

Speaker 11 (02:05:16):
Four times to three four different people.

Speaker 1 (02:05:19):
So the pods area is manned supervised by DSS police
and then the processing in the central area is done
by VP, and VP and Customs and DSS hate each other.
I mean, that's just clear. They told me that to
my face. They don't get along all right, Right, So

(02:05:43):
when you were talking to DSS policicals, they're the one
kind of the prison guards. They just don't then talk
to VP. They don't convey the information that you're as
a prisoner there. So that's been difficult. So you would
want to ask to go to the or something, so
on the way you can try to pass on then
sony know, so I kind of located the situation. And

(02:06:05):
then on the second day, I asked three times I
need my phone call. They came out and told me,
you're crazy. We don't do phone calls. Stop asking. So
you're telling me I'm a us soil. I you know,
I don't get to see the outdoor twenty four to seven,
and you don't let me make a call to my

(02:06:25):
lawyer or family. And that's when I just lost my
my ship. So that by the end of the second day,
I entered into a hunger strike. Wow, my body shut yeah,
my body shut down completely. My body shut down completely.
People were that that known me to be constantly active.
I do I do yoga. I do I did yoga.

(02:06:48):
Did you know? People will started following me doing activities
and trying to be sharp, you know, stay sharp. They
saw me shut down completely. I didn't I didn't eat
or drink anything. I mean completely, I shut down everything,
all systems of board. That's it. So right away my
eyes are closed. The next day they start freaking out.

(02:07:11):
They bringing the wheelchair, but before they you know, just
to let you know, before they put me on the
wheelchair with the baton. They're just hammering me to make
sure I'm this is real their hammer. I still have bruises.
I still have like a red dot on my chest,
you know what I mean.

Speaker 11 (02:07:27):
So so yeah, I mean, you know the kindness of
their heart.

Speaker 1 (02:07:31):
Yeah. Again, they're very hateful because of where they are
and what's going on. So yeah, so uh yeah, So
I'm taking to the nurse. The nurse tells me what's
going on. I thought, look, my body has shut down.
My wife and kids don't know where I'm at. They
don't know if I'm life or death or dead, and

(02:07:54):
I just can't eat or drink or anything. Listen, sir,
it's okay if you don't want to eat, but you
have to drink well at least water, or we're gonna
put the iv We can give you IV or medical
or anti depressants or anti anxiety medicine. Listen, lady, I've
never had the time depressant or medication. I rarely take medication.
I would not have medication. That is not an option.

(02:08:16):
I don't want the ivy. I don't want you to
touch my body. Period. I am this is me fully
where what the consequences are and unless I get a
hold of my Laura, or call my family and tell
them that I'm alive or where I'm at. This is
gonna go. Last time I did this, I did it
for four or five days, no problem. So they started

(02:08:37):
freaking out. James there really they called the big guns.
I think he was a lieutenant or whatever the ranking is.
He came in, listen, what's going on? What are you doing? Man?
They can't be doing this in my house again, my house.
The guy owns the place, all right. So I'm like, listen, yeah,
I'm done. If you don't give me my call, expect

(02:08:59):
me to do this for the I'll go to the end.
I've done this against corrupt governments and when I was
arrested in Tunisia or whatever.

Speaker 11 (02:09:07):
I can do this all day long, man, all day long.

Speaker 1 (02:09:10):
So he's like, you can't do this. This is ridiculous.
I have eighteen hundred people here. You're going to start
a problem. I don't want problems here. So he takes
me straight up to the central area, put me in
front of phone, give me the phone number. I give
him the phone number. He does my wife bam, bam, shazam.
I call her. They were still asleep at seven in
the morning. They have school at eight thirty, so I

(02:09:31):
live her a voicemail. I later found out that she
did get the voicemail, thank god, and then she felt
really good when she heard my voice and she knew
you yeah, yeah, So I don't know, tell you man,
you know, it's just a no man's land and it's
just dude. When I got to talk to the supervisor,
when I escalated because they took my DNA, like what

(02:09:53):
I told him, Look, what's going on? Why are you
taking people's DNA? Like, what's going on? I told him,
what are you accusing us for? What is the accusation exactly?
He said, you're not accused of anything, and what am
I guilty of? You're not guilty of anything? So why
are you taking my DNA? And then when he's just
because this is the guy, the main guy. This is
the guy that I saw coming in an intake and

(02:10:14):
then laid on an outcake. He's got like twenty screens
in front of him, he's manning the border. He's like,
you know, it's the main guy. Like I say, it's him.
So I told him, do you have your DNA your
own DNA taking? He said yes, I did okay. I
told him if your DNA was taken and you can
take mine, that's fine. So they're taking people's DNA to
put it in the database. And if you don't sign,

(02:10:35):
they don't let you. They don't let you out. So
you can stay there indefinitely until you do your DNA.
How is this okay? Yeah?

Speaker 11 (02:10:43):
And you're not givet you of anything, James.

Speaker 1 (02:10:45):
You're not gilty of anything. That's the key. So you're
not guilty of anything. I mean, I understand if you're
arrested for a misdemeanor or a pelony, and you know,
you know in states they take the DNA, I get it.
But if you're there's no isation, there's no guilty, and
yet you're taking my DNA for what for what? So so,

(02:11:08):
so it was really rough. It was really rough.

Speaker 11 (02:11:09):
And then and they were very very nasty.

Speaker 1 (02:11:12):
I mean, one lady, miss Diaz, I will never forget her,
Officer DEAs. I mean, she was cussing left and right,
left and right, left and right. And then I lost it, man,
when I when when she had me for I think
they had me do sign papers again, all right? So
I was simply asking why am I saying signing the

(02:11:33):
same papers again, do you want to leave? What do
you want to leave? Do you want to leave? What
you want to leave? And then on the same time, James,
as she talks to me, she pauses. She looks at
her colleagues and she's smiling to them, and she's talking
to them so nice. I simply told her, why are
you talking nicely to your friends and you're so mean
to us that? Why why are you doing this? Like?

Speaker 11 (02:11:53):
What is what is the problem?

Speaker 1 (02:11:55):
Did I did I?

Speaker 11 (02:11:56):
Did I call your names? Did I say something bad?

Speaker 1 (02:11:59):
No? But you know my friend. Yeah, But even if
I'm not your friend, why are you clussing at me?

Speaker 11 (02:12:02):
Why are you saying these bad things that shut her down?

Speaker 1 (02:12:05):
That totally shut her down? James, I mean it was
a completely different person after that because it was in
front of her boss. It was in front of her boss.
I mean, I'm telling you, man, they're just this is
what happens when you have zero accountability zero. I mean, anybody,
this is basic fruit in understanding of psychology one O

(02:12:27):
one that if you give someone ultimate power, they're going
to take advantage. And you know, I don't know what
to tell you, man. I feel bad for the people
in that attention because you know, I'm not saying they're
being tortured, but it's just a you know, the little
drops of water on your head, Yeah, you know, the
little you know, after a while you can turns up.

(02:12:48):
So there's one guy from Russia that was there for
three weeks, wow, three weeks. There's one guy from Brazil
that was there for a week. Come on, man, I
mean seriously, like that's too much.

Speaker 8 (02:12:59):
Yes, much, So that's crazy.

Speaker 1 (02:13:03):
You know, that was horrific. And then when I was leaving,
uh I found out that they put the wrong address
on my release form. And you know, I don't know
if you know anything about the US immigration bureaucracy, James,
it is horrific. It is horrific. All it takes is
the one the wrong digit in the address. They send
the paperwork to the wrong address. Oh, we did it,

(02:13:24):
we sent it. We don't care. We don't care, you
know what I mean. And then you're basically waiting all
your life. And then that's pretty much what happened to
me before when I was in the United States. And
then you know, they don't care always to take it
up with the with the US postal postal service. Are
you serious, Like you know you're going to put someone
in jail and because he sent them the wrong address.
Anyhow so, anyhow so I came back from the bus.

(02:13:44):
The bus is loaded, we're leaving. I came back to the.

Speaker 11 (02:13:47):
Look you got you know, you got the wrong address here?

Speaker 1 (02:13:49):
Like you know, what's going on? Do you want to leave?
What do you want to stay? Do you want to leave?
That's all that's all they talked about. It's like a
favor she's doing. It's not like a law thing. It's
not the produe process. No, no, I'd be more than
happy to stick you in there because you complain about it.
A mistake that we made on your on your form.

Speaker 8 (02:14:07):
It's just yeah, the whole thing. It's just just don't
need to make it as cruel and as hard and lit.
People of people have died in the outdoor attention in
another site, not the place where you were in San Diego,
right like, And it's a tragedy and it it doesn't

(02:14:28):
have to happen, and it doesn't have to be disandignified.
And yeah, I didn't. I think maybe people will have
disagreements about the immigration, the different immigration laws, and they
might feel differently to the way I do what you do,
David do. But I don't think anyone in their right
mind would really justify the way you've been treated. And

(02:14:50):
you can multiply that by thousands, right, and you're fortunate
enough to be in relatively good health and not too
young or not too old or to sick for this
to be a deadly trip or right. And still it's
obviously had a massive effect on you. And I can
understand why, I mean, I'm.

Speaker 1 (02:15:09):
Having a little bit of nightmares against with you, because
what bugs me the most is those kids. Uh. And
then on top of it, it's overwhelming because I was
thrust in a position where sadly, I mean, I had
to pick up for a lot of people. I mean,
you know, yes, it's my family tragedy, I mean is

(02:15:29):
an issue. But I mean, you know, I don't want
to talk too much about what I did in Tunisia,
but I was standing up against corruption and against bribery
and things like that, and that costed me a lot
of problems. And it cost me, I mean, being in
a blacklist in a government that's ever going negatively.

Speaker 11 (02:15:49):
You know, I'm jailing activists and jailing for speech.

Speaker 1 (02:15:53):
It said that that Tunisia, the home of the art
of spring now is turning into another dictator ships sadly.
So you know, I didn't want to use that as
a reason, but I mean it is what ruined my
personal life because I was constantlyating, you know, harassed and
and pushed and shopped by Tunesian you know, ay holes.

(02:16:17):
Uh And then here I am to find myself and
you know, like with a Dijah who kind of feeling
well with these gratuities themselves for nothing, so that that
kind of triggered me a lot, big time, James, and
uh uh. And then I felt like, you know, what
is life worth? I mean, I know I'm coming from

(02:16:38):
my kids there, the love of my life, and and
then my wife as well, but you know, I want
them to remember their dad as someone who sticks up
for fathers and you know, the you know, James, the
the most difficult part were was David mentioned the Persian

(02:17:03):
guys running guys. You know, I got annoyed a little bit, James,
because they were really lining up behind me and holding
my hand, begging me to help them get out. Yeah,
and because I'm.

Speaker 15 (02:17:18):
The only one that spoke the language, and it felt
like you know, they didn't have any recourse and the
detention center, I'm not gonna let you, James, that was
very difficult.

Speaker 1 (02:17:31):
It was very difficult. That was very I felt like
when I was leaving, I was leaving friends, brothers, brothers behind,
and that stuck with me. Dude, Yeah, it's just a
few people specifically that really really really really was stuck

(02:17:51):
on me.

Speaker 16 (02:17:52):
And uh, this is uh what is this world war?
What are we doing all this war? There's a genuine
decent human beings. This country needs as many workers and
as many new citizens as possible. Instead of just shoving

(02:18:13):
these people with hatred, just align them, just give them
a chance, just rehab, just kind of make sure they
know the languages, they do all this and be good.
They all want to work, they all want to be good.
Nobody that I met there is into drugs or anything.

Speaker 1 (02:18:28):
You know. It's just it sucks because it's not it's
not shooting you yourself on the foot.

Speaker 11 (02:18:36):
It doesn't make sense. And I really felt really sad,
and on a on a lighter.

Speaker 1 (02:18:44):
Note, getting into eventually released and getting on the bus
and going to the central uh the central Elementary, I
believe in school, and I just got out of the
bus and I can hear the voices everybody's calling, and

(02:19:06):
I'm like, it's getting dark and I can't see I
can't see the people. But I found like at least
twenty or eighteen people that I that were with me
there and they were like they were crying and they
were like thank you, thank you, thank you, and uh,
you know it was it was. It was really hard warming.

(02:19:27):
It really was really hard warman. And I appreciate that
the that they recognized what we did. We tried to
do a bunch of more Italians, Colombians, Mexicans, Ecuadorians, uh,
I mean, you name it. It was just a Turkish, uh An,
older gentleman, Iranian, the Iranians, the same Iranians that that

(02:19:51):
that that I helped get onto the bus from from
Willow the same guys. Eventually all I found them central
and it was really nice to see them and for
them to just literally jump on me almost and tell
me thank you in so many languages.

Speaker 11 (02:20:08):
I appreciate that. So I just hope all this, this,
this this kind of get somewhere where they understand that.

Speaker 1 (02:20:19):
It doesn't have to be this way. It really doesn't
and we're not asking I'm not asking.

Speaker 11 (02:20:23):
Either get more people or do this.

Speaker 1 (02:20:26):
I'm just saying there is little tweaks that are not
meant to increase the integration or or make it impossible
or anything. It's just little tweaks to, you.

Speaker 11 (02:20:37):
Know, to get this system a little better.

Speaker 1 (02:20:39):
That's all. That's all I'm saying personally.

Speaker 8 (02:20:42):
Yeah, make it a little kinder. And I think like
it's always that way, right, Like it's people helping each other,
even when the government doesn't help them, and.

Speaker 1 (02:20:50):
Like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 8 (02:20:52):
We just got use. I was there yesterday that that
all the shelters at one of the sites were torn down,
so like it's we'll have to go back and build
them again. But yeah, yeah, people will because I think
we all, at least or of us here, I think
people should be treated with dignity and that they deserve
a little better than their being given currently. And have

(02:21:15):
you been able to reunite with your your children yet
or is that so in your future?

Speaker 1 (02:21:20):
Yes, it's it's uh, technically on Thursday, suppose you're not
with them. I am getting there on steps. I'm financially
not viable right now. I'm relying on some friends to
who got me up to Los Angeles right now, and
then we're collecting money for guests and uh, my wife

(02:21:41):
Lauren will be coming down on Thursday with the kids
and then we're gonna go to her mom's in Lancaster
for a Christmas party that she does, and then from
there we'll make it back up to Pisonal and Insal.
My wife was sheltering in but the house is overcrowded

(02:22:03):
and there's no way I can stay there, so I'll
be That's something that I'm trying to figure out and
where to stay. And I don't have friends up there
and don't have anything. Uh, so that's it's a problem
that I'm having to deal with. And at the same time,
I was given April twelve as a court date and
nice and I have to deal with a lawyer and

(02:22:26):
the contact the lawyers, and they're expensive. The Progonal lawyers
that we called h they don't take they're not taking
new cases.

Speaker 6 (02:22:37):
So it's.

Speaker 1 (02:22:39):
I knew it was going to be difficult, but when
you're in it and it's uh, you think that will
be kind of a little better. But it's definitely not
looking good. But you know, it'll be close to my
kids somehow, and that's what matters to me. But it's
just a struggle. I was a Congressmanship of Plase. I mean,

(02:23:00):
what kind of resources you have for immigrants. I just
need a little bit of a you know, start, so
I can get back on my feet. And I kept
them in touch since I was in Africa through the trip.
They're the only congress office that at least interacted with us,
me and my wife. But you know, she looked at

(02:23:23):
me from from behind the glass door and she said
good luck. She sent me the county Immigrant Affairs office, uh,
you know, linked and she told me good luck, and
then uh and said bye bye. And that's all that
she did. So it's uh, it's tiring and not giving up,

(02:23:46):
of course, but it's just it's very difficult change.

Speaker 8 (02:23:51):
Yeah, no, it's yeah, it shouldn't be this hard. It's complicated,
or this taxing, especially in your family here already.

Speaker 1 (02:24:00):
I'm just trying to be I don't. I mean, my
wife is on welfare and they keep cutting her welfare
smaller and smaller, just you know, two kids. I just
need a chance to get up the back on my
feet and be a good father to work, and I
can't work right now. I'm not allowed to work. Yeah,
and I have to find money, money for the lawyer.

(02:24:20):
I have to find money for me and my kids.

Speaker 11 (02:24:23):
It's really quite a humbling experience.

Speaker 1 (02:24:27):
And I know I don't want to rely on anybody,
but I mean, it's just it's just it's hard. It's hard.

Speaker 8 (02:24:32):
Yeah, no, it is. And like I don't know how
people are expected to pay for the legal representation and
they're also expected not to work. It's just it's a
system that seems to design to be as cruel and
complicated as possible.

Speaker 1 (02:24:46):
Yet you know, the jobs are available. The jobs are available, James.
I mean I contacted about four or five places. My
previous work experience in LA and California was logistics and
parental and stuff like that. I told my previous bosses.
They all told me to come over, you know, get

(02:25:06):
your steps up figured out, and come over. We'll find
a job. So we have plenty of vacancies, basically, I mean,
you know, so, uh, but you know here, you are here,
you are there. Yeah.

Speaker 8 (02:25:20):
Man, it's it's I've heard so many of these stories,
but and then stop upsetting me. And I'm glad in
a way because you know they're bad and they shouldn't.
They should be upsetting to everyone who is and I'm
sure everyone who is this will want to do whatever
they can to make this little easier. Are there like
any orcs or nonprofits that have been helping you since

(02:25:43):
you've got in the US that you think people should Oh?

Speaker 1 (02:25:46):
Man, nothing, nothing.

Speaker 11 (02:25:48):
I mean it's been you know, those who call.

Speaker 1 (02:25:52):
Very centric as far as Asian Americans or this or
that is very specific.

Speaker 8 (02:25:59):
But yeah, migrants of everyone, it's I'm telling you no joke.

Speaker 1 (02:26:06):
And if you're a father trying to make it to
your kids and trying to you know what I mean,
do right by your kids doesn't mean anything, nothing, absolutely nothing.

Speaker 8 (02:26:16):
So that's terrible.

Speaker 5 (02:26:17):
Man.

Speaker 1 (02:26:18):
Yeah, this is the first Christmas for This is the
first Christmas for the kids outside of their where they
grew up. I really wanted to make it as family
friendly and happy as possible, but I don't even have
the capacity to give them gifts or anything or or

(02:26:38):
even I don't know. This is gonna be hard, Yeah man,
it is.

Speaker 8 (02:26:43):
Yeah, yeah, man, sorry, that's I know, that's okay.

Speaker 1 (02:26:49):
I mean, I'm just I'm just a drop in an
ocean of of of despair when it comes to immigrants,
and I'm getting messages from some of them in New York,
some of them in UH, North Carolina, some of them
in UH and in Illinois, UH, a couple in California.

(02:27:11):
I mean, they're they're still desperate for for health and
especially with language and all that. So you know, I'm grinding,
and I mean they're doing the best I can. But
you know it's a reality check. It's a reality check joke.

Speaker 8 (02:27:27):
Yeah, no, it's it's it's really. I mean, it's sickening
how quickly you can be and cut out and nothing
when the state doesn't care about you. But I want
to thank you so much for giving us your story
and your time and being so open with us, because
I think that's the only way that this stuff changes,
is that people here Like number numbers are great and

(02:27:48):
and your story is one of tens of thousands, but
I think sometimes we need to hear individual stories to
understand the human impact of this true, true, true, and
like we'll stay in You have my friend number. Anything
you need, anything we can do for you.

Speaker 11 (02:28:04):
Yeah, I mean I can't. I can't wait to come
down to the border.

Speaker 1 (02:28:07):
I'm not giving up on the border, dude, I'm not
I want to bring at some point my kids to
see the price, and then I want to contribute. I
want to find a way to give back. I want to.
I know I can't do it right now, but I
send my mom in my mind, and I know I'm
not going to give up on that, on that on
that dream of coming back there and continue to help

(02:28:28):
with the volunteers.

Speaker 8 (02:28:29):
That's very kind of Yeah, well when you come down
that me know, bring some ray tools and we can
we can build some sounds.

Speaker 1 (02:28:36):
Good sounds, good fun.

Speaker 9 (02:28:39):
I mean, so I'm just like I'm just for processing.

Speaker 8 (02:28:42):
Yeah, me too, for processing this.

Speaker 9 (02:28:43):
And like hearing Amos say all this is like fuck,
Like that's that's the conversation, right just with what he's
saying in his accountability is human nature, like something in
the way that he was saying that, I was just
like taking a piles on everything that I want to
just share because I really like it hit to the
core of that. Like my own frustration with our response

(02:29:05):
is it's not getting to the point that like what
he was what he was saying any other words right
now to say that my mind is now totally much.

Speaker 8 (02:29:13):
Well ended there. I do want to give both of
you a chance to plug any and all organizations so
you think can help. And because the people will get
to listen to this, we'll break up to two parks.
People will want to alleviate the suffering, and there are people,
including yourselves and myself, trying to do that. So if

(02:29:35):
there's an organization that you'd like to plug, fundraiser you'd
like to plug, please do well.

Speaker 7 (02:29:39):
Just the way the conversation ended, the thing that I
was thinking is you know, just a you know, anybody
listening to the to what Amos has said, just one
one very small but perhaps meaningful thing would be to

(02:30:02):
do something to enable him to buy some presents for
his kids. I think that would be pretty cool.

Speaker 2 (02:30:10):
Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week
from now until the heat death of the universe.

Speaker 3 (02:30:15):
It could Happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
cool Zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
You can find sources for It could Happen Here, updated
monthly at Coolzonmedia dot com slash sources.

Speaker 1 (02:30:32):
Thanks for listening,

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