Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, lead the listeners tag here. Last season on Lethal Lit,
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(00:24):
I'm going to be realty tig I like you, but
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you get your podcasts. Hey everybody, Robert Evans here and
I wanted to let you know. This is a compiletion episode.
So every episode of the week that just happened is
(01:55):
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 gonna be nothing new here for you,
but you can make your own decisions. Whats What's? What's?
(02:16):
I'm Robert Evans, this is it could happen here? The
show that asks what's and also other questions. Um more
more more meaningful questions than that about you know, things
falling apart, fixing them all that good stuff with me
today as usual Garrison and Chris and as is currently unusual,
(02:37):
but will be more usual every preceding month after this one.
Our good friend st Andrew. St Andrew quite about but
it's fine. How are you doing today, Andrew? I'm good.
I'm good. You know, it's rainy, it's chill. It's better
than the kind of hot weather we've been getting lately.
So I'm good. Yeah, it's raining and chill here. But
(03:00):
seven months of the year. Uh, I think there's slightly
different uh climates in Portland, Oregon and Trinidad, probably, I've
been told. Um, so we have had you on a
couple of weeks back to talk about solar punk, and
we're gonna be bringing you back on about twice a
(03:20):
month to talk about, um, whatever the hell you want
to talk about. And so I'm going to now hand
the episode over to you, um and trust like a
little lamb that you'll lead me somewhere beautiful and filled
with good forage. Yes, sunshine, rainbows, the Promised Land. Yeah. Okay,
So I think we've all noticed that the environments this
(03:44):
movement kind of sucks jumping into it has not done
the things that has not accomplished. It's been around for
like over half a century actually really more than that,
and you know, where are we know? You know? Um,
of course we do have to confront and acknowledge that,
(04:07):
like there's the s C where oil company has literally
suppressed a whole bunch of information and you know, co
opted like a lot of the earlier movements and stuff.
But we've kind of known for a while now and
we are still here, So it's like what gives you know? Um,
I think there's kind of an interesting phenomenon that I
(04:29):
wanted to talk about today, um known as soft climate
change denial. So are you're familiar with that or what
you're thinking is based on foot impressions? Um, I mean, yeah,
I've heard the term. I would think it's sort of um,
I mean a number of different things, including the idea
that like, well there's nothing we can do, so nothing
(04:50):
should be done, you know, mm hmm yeah what what
about your garrison? Yeah? Most of my understanding of the
term is like someone like saying they like, know, the
climate change is the thing, like they recognize that, but
they are kind of more in denial of what solutions
(05:13):
can be done to really change anything that's generated understanding
of the term when I see it like online or something, Yeah,
what about your Chris, Yeah, I usually see it. It's
it's like it's usually in the context of people, you know,
you can in the US, there's the whole um. There's
whole political factions whose entire thing is saying, like, we
(05:34):
believe in science, and then they'll go talk about like
how much they believe in climate change and then two
seconds later and around there like signings. Yeah, so that
that's that's that's my understanding of it, right, Yeah, according
to everyone's favorites source um Wikipedia, soft climate change denial
(05:57):
is a seat of mind acknowledging the existence of a
woman in the abstract what remaining to some extent, impartial,
psychological or intellectual denihilism about its reality or impact. And
something I was spoken about in my channel in my
most recent video where I was talking with the different
facets of sula punk. You know what sula punk is,
(06:18):
what it needs, um, things that can probably potentially drag
down the soula punk movement, and things that people have
been using to try to drag it down because so
the punk is kind of building in popularity, and with
anything that builds in popularity, there are attempts from all
sorts of angles to co opt it and to repackage
(06:39):
it and com modify it and all those things. So
I've kind of noticed with the Sula punk phenomenon that
there's this effort by people who professed to care about
the climate and stuff to try to push it away
from more radical directions towards something more appealing and appeasing
(06:59):
to the status school into the system UM. And I
mean according to the Wikipedia definition, you know, it's they
call it a state of mind. I think it's also
like an implicit philosophy that undergodes like entire groups and
entire movements. You know, so like for example, obviously you
know in effects individuals where you know, people will um
(07:20):
miscalculated it's risks and think that climb climate change is
just extra storms or something. But then they also like
people are really the movements that would neglect its urgency
with just these platitudes and these um direction less actions
that just south like this kind of middling reformism um,
(07:46):
like they underestimate the extent of social change required to
like mitigate climate change, so basically don't seek to change
it s out of school, but just to sort of
tweak it ever so slightly to like capitalism with the
carbon tax or something. Yeah. Um. And then of course
they're people who kind of straddle that that fence, or
(08:07):
maybe it's more of a spectrum between soft climb change
nile and hard clim change nile, where they might overestimate
the extent of scientific uncertainty, so they might think that, oh, well,
you know, um, yeah, colob warming is happening, but we
don't exactly know how much it's going to change the
climate or how much it's impacting our lives and that
(08:29):
kind of thing, so they basically turn it into something
that's still up for debate, you know. And that's why
I say kind of straddles that line between soft line
and hard line, because obviously the hard climb change nihilists
they're just like, oh, well, you know, it doesn't exist,
or if it does exist, humans don't closet if you
and still course there's nothing we can do that kind
(08:49):
of thing. Have you all had like experiences with soft
climb change nil like and you wouldn't personal organizing? Oh yeah, yeah,
I would say, so I don't care ard um. I mean,
it's kind of a thing you encounter constantly in American
politics because it's it's really like often times your best option, uh,
(09:11):
in terms of like it's that or the people who
say that talking about climate change is socialism. Yeah, you know.
So I was in verminal Studies mature for most of
college and then I decided not to do it, and
then I got like a minor instead because like one
class often a long story, but you know, it was
(09:33):
interesting seeing it there because like, you know, there there
were basically like two possible reactions to learning that one
was like people who you know what one was you
get incredibly depressed and that's what I did or and
then the the second one was people would you know
(09:53):
and these people who like actually you know, you know,
I mean these are rebial studies mais right, Like these
people have spent a lot of time studying this stuff,
and they kind of like, I don't know, this is
almost like like this kind of intellectual retreat where you
could see people businessly just like convincing themselves that like
somehow this would be okay, and they'd like, I don't know,
(10:15):
people would just get like completely obsessed with like electoral
maps and you're like no, no no, no, no, no no, okay, okay,
if if if we win exactly this number of seats
in this year, then like we can we can start
doing carbon credits or like, I don't know, it was
it was. It was really interesting to watch because it
was like it was it was I mean, because like
I think I think that there's there's like there's very
there's bad faith versions of it, and then I think
(10:37):
there's also versions of it that are just sort of
like people genuinely not want to accept, yeah, like the
what's necessary to stop this? And so they're sort of
like that, well, they can't even really like think about
what's necessary because because of all the education system works,
and just I could go on like long runs about
the education system. It really it really really, um it
(10:59):
really it's people's ability to think outside of like this
very very strict box of possibilities because you know, so
much just left out of UM for example, history classes
and soone just left out of UM really all the subjects.
There's this very clear ideology that you're expected to come
(11:21):
out of the education system with. And so even when
you reach academia and high education and stuff. You're still
stuck with that mode of thinking. And even as you're
presented with all this new information, because your brain currently
like handle like the great extent of what climate change is,
you know, it kind of retreats into this sort of
(11:42):
simple kind of all we just need to vote, because
voting is all I know. Voting is a tool to do.
Voting is politics, and politics is voting. That's the extent
of it, right. Yeah, It's like this weird form of
self press servation that people need to do in order
to kind of like keep their keep them from in
(12:06):
their mind, you know, like spiral ling out of control
because this is the only thing that you know, they have.
They need to focus on their own life right now
and their own current problems, and that they think about
this because this like large looming threat too much. It
just freaks you out right, and you have in order
to or to just keep going on with your life.
A lot of people like segment off this type of
thing in their own brain so that you know, manifests
(12:28):
in a lot of cases, and this kind of soft
denial so that you can just keep on going. Yeah. Yeah,
and I see with with friends and I see with
the family. You know, obviously they're the handful of people
who still, at least in my experience, we still deny
climate change. But then there's like a bigger portion of
people whose whole understanding climate change is just this or what.
(12:51):
We just need to recycle and we just need to
like switch to electric vehicles and once you do that,
you know we'll be okay, um, which is tweak a
couple of things, get some solar panels, and yeah, you know,
the understanding of it has been completely limited to like
this very restricted conversation that is like um basically cultivated
(13:16):
by certain interest groups and certain um lobbying groups and
that kind of thing. You know, Yeah, the only a
certain amount of change is allowed, and that's what we're
allowed to think. So that's what we're like shown for
examples of in like media and pop culture or whatever. Right,
So this is you know, this is kind of what um.
(13:36):
You know, like all of the YouTubers who got money
from Bill Gates when Bill Gates wrote his climate book, right,
all of the things that they were talking about is
like it's like this kind of stuff because the only
way for Bill Gates to keep his money well, you know,
talking about climate change is to have these kind of
half asked like solutions that are actually deny the impending
reality and deny that. No, the only way to actually
(13:59):
fix it is by taking about his money, um, which
he's not as big a fan of. Yeah, I mean,
have you all seen the cucked video on climate change
and economy coming? So what did you want? To? Climate change?
In a nutshell? It's like this like that so people
can find it, but people will I think people people know.
(14:23):
I think a lot a lot of people know what
it is. Or you can just search in a nutshell
on YouTube. It's key you are. I'm gonna try. I'm
gonna try, k you are. No, it's ku r G
Was it ku r z? I think it's k you
r z G E s A A G T Right,
(14:48):
it is. It is a It is a weird one.
But what what what are you talking about? The can
you fix climate change? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, where the whole
thesis is basically vote with your boots and food with
your wallet. Yeah, that's the only thing that you're really allowed, right, Yeah,
And I believe this is one of the videos sponsored
(15:08):
by They put this, um, yeah, they did. It was
and then they had this whole line about some people
think we need to change like our system from climate
chy from from capitalism, but we're not so sure about that.
We don't know the answer. So if it's just be
like shrug towards a system, it's from with the system.
But they basically gave it no attention, you know. But
their channel is literally about like quite deep into research
(15:30):
about things. So it's very obvious that if they spent
no time like doing any kind of research into like
why people have the system and critique that obviously Bill
Kate's hand is very deep in their pockets, you know,
because I believe that I believe the researchers actually kind
of know that, but they're not. They just can't say
you're not allowed to. Yeah, And I mean like, yeah,
(15:51):
I think they're making the bargain a lot of people
make where they're like, Okay, well, if we can push
for you know, the immediate necessary changes, we can worry about,
you know, stuff like that later on. It's it's just
important to get something done. Um, And so we'll compromise
and will not will not call for what we know
is actually necessary to deal with the problem. We'll just
(16:13):
we'll just go with a half measure because at least
it's something we've got to do something now, right. The
thing that's always been very grim about that to me
is like you look about how how that plays out, right,
and it's always like, well, okay, so our our half
measure is gonna be we're gonna we're gonna just like
put put put a monetary value on indigenous forests so
(16:34):
that governments can like steal them and get paid for
taking the land. And it's never stuff like why don't
we like make more marshes, which is you know, if
you're gonna talk about stuff that like could actually be done, right,
it's like, okay, well, but what do re marshing do
we want? Like that's that that stuff like is easy
and doesn't need you know, you don't literally have to
(16:56):
overthrow capitalism to get people to like restore marshes. But
it never happens because this that's you know, the whole
basis of the sort of soft denialism stuff is not
actually you know, it's not actually the type of solve
climate change. They just want to make money, And it's
extremely grim. Yeah. Yeah, there's this video that the storyteller
(17:17):
is this YouTuber. Um he did recently on co opting movements,
and he was explaining that, Um, with the march in
Washington right during the Civil Rights movement. Um, that was
an organic movement that you know, the people had come
up with, right, but obviously a mass movement. Theah FI
(17:40):
isn't going to just sit back and let that happen, right,
So they brought in these leaders. Um they're called the
Big Six, and um, the storyteller was explaining that basically
they were paid to co opt the march to basically
become its figureheads and its leaders. They hadn't organized it themselves,
(18:00):
but they came on afterwards and became the leaders in
the march and read the speeches that they were supposed
to read, that kind of thing, and so that sort
of mass movement was basically defound like that. I mean,
obviously reforms were made and you know, Civil Rights Act
was passed. But then, you know, after all that happened,
(18:22):
and MLK got disillusioned by the system as a whole
and wanted to start pushing even harder against capitalism and whatnot.
That's when well, coincidentally, you got a bullet, you know,
So I think it's interesting that these movements they're able,
(18:44):
they're they're comfortable with these movements up to a certain point, um,
and comfortable these leaders going these certain directions at to
a certain point. But then when you actually start posing
a threat to this out of school, that's when you know,
you become a problem in the community. Not to see that, okay,
wasn't a threat to the side of school, but just
(19:05):
to see that's you know, um, there was. They have
certain limits that they don't want people to cross. Yeah, capitalism.
One of the things that's that makes it such a
robust system in terms of its ability to to not
get overthrown or destroyed is that, up to a certain point,
(19:27):
it loves dissent. It loves anti capitalism because you can
market that very easily. Like there's a lot of money
in in in anti capitalism. There's a lot of money
and being critical of the system. It's just when you
hit a certain point, um, then it then it becomes
you know, the CIA or the FBI or some person
(19:48):
who's been um convinced to shoot use problem like it.
There's a there's a point at which, uh, that's no
longer accepted. But quite a bit of criticism and even
like agitation to change your end the system can be
accepted because it's monetize herbal and speaking of that, you
know what time it is? Time for ad serious? Absolutely
(20:15):
is oh boy, time for an ad or or that's
the CIA at the door. We won't know until we
come back from break. Ah, we're back. It wasn't the
CIA this time. Good news, guys, thankfully. I mean the
fact that they flew all the way down just to
meet me. I'm on it, honestly. Oh, I mean they've
(20:38):
come to trend a dad for less. Oh that's true. Yeah, yeah,
But like we were seeing, right, does a school issue
of these movements being able to go in a cittain
direction rowning up to a certain point. Um. I think
it's something that's Pizza Caloso talks about in how non
(21:02):
violence protects the state, in the sense of, you know,
these people are able to once they get a certain
level of attention, all of a sudden, you know, you're
invited to speak of these events, and you're invited to
go this place and that, and you basically get consumed
(21:23):
into the workshop machine, the angio machine, and the climate
conference machine kind of things. So you end up with
all these figures, these organizers, these activists who go from
like generally trying to organize their communities and their spaces,
and then before you know it, they're like at such
(21:43):
and such a conference because well they think it's an
opportunity to like actually make like a bigger change. But
in reality, you know, they're just there too be defound.
You know. So like, for example, who mainly comes to
mind is like Great Thunberg. I mean I haven't looked
at deeply into her past or anything. Um. I know
(22:03):
they are certain right wingers who are very obsessed with her,
but I know that she recently said that she's kind
of done with politicians. Um. Because when you think of
how she basically came up, you know, right exactly what
how she basically came up. It was like she is
(22:27):
talking at these events and you know, people are in
frighting out things because you know, look at look at
this cute little google um yelling about climate change, right,
and she basically becomes this spectacle, you know, and that
spectacle is entertained up to the point people make big
(22:47):
events out of her, you know, like breaking down in
front of these positions and stuff, and you know what
they just go right back to normal. UM. I think
it was copy was like last week or the week
before UM and representatives from representative I think the Prime
Minister of Barbados was there and she had this, you know,
(23:10):
a great speech about how the global nothings do more
for you know, these countries in Global South because you
know they have responsibility that kind of thing. Cool UM.
But at the same time, you know there's like developments
going on Barbados too, you know, basically bring in more
tourists and to bring in more UM and like you know,
(23:31):
resorts building and that kind of thing that basically add
to the UM emissions and adds the UM negative impact
in the environment. You know, same thing with like T's government,
you know, like the representativeution that went to top including
the Prime Minister, and you know they're all about things
(23:52):
changing and you know, the climate movement UM and the
climate change being real and the actions need to be taken.
And then like this didn't make it in like like
mainstare news of course, but in local news. Basically right
after Prime Minister trans vehicle dos Keith Rowley, he went
and met up with like Shell. Yeah, like representatives at
(24:15):
Shell to like basically bring the country and the company
closer together, you know, um, because you know you're not
is reliant and oil and that kind of thing. So
obviously these sort of leaders and these sorts of movements,
they only go up to a certain point, and even then,
so much of it is just this performance. Yeah, this
(24:40):
UM act. Basically I'll be I'm putting together a thing
on copies right now, UM because I think it actually
it does demonstrate a lot of the soft denial stuff
that you're talking about. Like the biggest thing to come
out of copy in terms of actual deals is just
(25:01):
uh progress on carbon markets and carbon offset credits. That's there.
That's really the only thing we actually got, um. And
they say wed but not not like us, but like
you know, the people in charge, they they got this
and and the the the quote they gave was that
the being able to buy carbon offset credits, meaning that
like you don't actually make emissions differences. So they said,
(25:24):
you you buy pretend emissions differences from other countries that
actually did make changes, um, so that you don't get penalized.
So that's buying the credits far. But they said, they said,
buying the credits can potentially unlock trillions of dollars for
protecting trees, expanding renewable energy, and other pludgets combat climate change.
It's that's the fuckers like don't climate credits. It's like, um,
(25:51):
it's the same as saying like hail Mary's because you
you send and you went to your priest and confessed.
It's like, I've I've I've done bad things to the environment.
Tell me like how many times I need to go
through this ritual in order to in order to cleanse
myself of having the atmosphere you know exactly. I think
it's bleaker than that in a lot of ways, Like
it's it's, it's, it's, it's, it's it's really it's the
(26:13):
climate version of like the World Wildlife Fund having death squads. Okay, now, Chris,
you are a very anti death squad, and I think
we need to deal with that at some point because
hashtag not all death squads. Yes, my mother will need
to be able to account for by strong anti death
squad stance. This is a yeah, you say that now,
(26:35):
but you're gonna get a death squad to fight the
death squads, and then where are you begin to be
se death squadsception get they get a death squad to
fight your death squad, and then it's just like the
constant each other out and then you have to get
another death squad and then see Marxist Lendon is m Yeah,
(27:01):
it's a number of other things too, to be fair
to Marxism. Another thing that might make you kind of
question the integrity of CUT is that there were more
delegates at CUP six from fossil field companies than there
were from any individual nation. That makes sense. But then right,
(27:22):
that's like another thing, right, because you're talking about six
and we have Selft. Climate change denial gets into that,
But I don't think. I think self fim change denial
can only be applied so far when it comes to
those sorts of big spectacles and those big major events.
Because even if they themselves really truly understand the depths
of climate change and trust and believe, like these oil
(27:45):
barons and stuff, they know like they have all the
infund right present front of them. They've done they already
done their like cost benefit analyses and like risk assessments
and kind of thing, so they know exactly like what
the impact is going to be. They have the money
to have access to this. Scientists right, But it's not
soft clime change denial for them, it's I'm a capitalist.
(28:07):
I'm going to do what a capitalist does. You know,
it's ultimately a funct Wait, they're operating within a system,
you know, so soft time changenial um it is like
sort of a psychological phenomenon. But we also to keep
in mind the day is also like a structural component
to it. See that even if they're a person does
not face self clim change now is an experiencing self
(28:28):
clim change denial that alone, even if they're like fully
confront the sue, that's just an individual, you know, and
there's still like a whole structure around that individual that
will still incentivize certain behavior. And then of course with
the incentives of certain behavior comes like the psychological justifications
(28:49):
for that behavior. So it kind of almost becomes that
they end up justifying themselves into self climate change denial,
you know what I mean. So kind of like it's
like a FID that it's like a feedback loop that
reinforces its own existence. Yeah. Absolutely, I mean I think
(29:11):
that honestly, like the feedback loop model is where we
have a lot of our problems with the climate change are.
They're all very much linked to the feedback loop model
of things trying to justify their own existence. And then
you know, certain and then on the reverse side of things,
you know, when certain changes in the climate happen, those
create their own feedback loops which create more changes to happen.
It's like everything, everything, one one massive loop. Yeah. I
(29:38):
gets me to like, there's the discourse around climate change
and stuff is like halted and divoted and immobilized, you
know by soft climate change. Now, you know, discussions of
the very real, very current, very near future and very
violent impacts of climate change just basically softened, like like
(30:00):
you know when you try to throw a punch in
a dream. Yeah, Like you're trying to like push, and
then it's like, you know, it's like this kind of
soft um or like you throw something in space. I
guess it's just you put all this effort into it
and then you go in another direction that kind of thing. Um,
I don't know where I'm going with this analogy, so
I'll just keep on going. Um. Basically that there's an
(30:23):
issue with the conversation with the discourse has just been
you know, harmed by the psychological phenomenon but of course
there's the other side of psychological phenomenon of soft clan
engine nial, not the hard clansine genial side, but rather
the I'm so on the opposite end of soft clungine
nil that I'm like an inconsolable and like illogical and
(30:48):
I can't even imagine the possibility of anything happening kind
of yeah. Yeah, the kind of the kind of extreme
dumerism where you recognize, how you organize that clumpsage is bad, um,
but then you you see it as such a massive
overwhelming thing that basically shuts you down from be able
to do anything else, and you're just like, exactly, there's
really no spot to do anything if it's going to
(31:09):
be this bad. There's really no one's you know, it's
such a hard capitalism and the systems that are working
to keep it going or such a hard thing to
overcome that it seems like the best thing to do
is just sit down and do nothing. Yeah, And that's
the thing, right, Like these are slash collapse people, right, Um.
I mean I appreciate that they don't shy away from
(31:32):
like the really difficult stuff, and they also stumble into
this kind of like coop that's dumorism, Like it's dramatic
kind of we are screwed, We're all going to be
fight saying this Mad Max style arena. Like that's not
how you know, climb Chine is going to play out.
You know, it's not a movie. You know, like if
things are going to break down in Sutain places and
other places are gonna lockdown in Sutain, weez, but it's
(31:55):
not going to be like this certain global devolution into
hotness like that. You know, that's not really how social change.
That's already how collapses have you know, functional history. You know,
of course we live in a like a global civilization
and previous collapses have been fairly localized. But still, you know,
(32:17):
climate change is both global and local, so there are
certain changes it will only affects it in localities. This
is something that actually the book Desert addresses fairly well,
and I find it frustrat Yeah, yeah, because I find
really frustrating because especially on the online left, there's people
who treat desert like the Gospel, or at least they
(32:39):
say they do, but they're actually extreme doomers who fetishize
collapse um and they're like, oh, everything is hopeless read
desert but then you but then desert, but you reasert.
Like desert is like explicitly anti collapse and same collapse
isn't gonna happen. Collapse is a fantasy you tell yourself
to keep you going in for this kind of haven't
(33:02):
heard of. Desert the Desert is a book that's available
for free online about what's coming. Um. It's titled desert
because of an old quote about how empires um leave
nothing but deserts in their wake. Basically like that's it's
it's just like a thing that that empire. I think
the exact quote is like empires make a desert and
call it peace. Um. And it's it's basically discussing the
(33:25):
fact like not just literal desertification, but like, um, that
that's more of a more of a better picture of
like our future under climate change than kind of these
these mad max dreams this like slow dissolution of resources
and uh environments. Um, and that that's kind of the Yeah,
it's a it's a good book. You can read it yourself,
(33:46):
and it's it's quite influential online. Um. But yeah, as
as Garrison pointed out, there are people who kind of
take it in a in a direction that I don't
believe the authors. I mean clearly the authors didn't mean
because they directly called out that kind of thinking. Yeah, yeah,
it's kind of like some people treat like collapse and stuff.
It's basically the secular version of like revelation in the Bible.
(34:12):
Yeah yeah. Or it's or it's like the non marketus
version of like the revolution. It's like it's like this
this kind of mythical event to like prepare for and
almost be excited for, but like it's it's fake. It's
a fantasy. It's it's something we tell ourselves to keep
ourselves going as things are bad. But it's not. It's
(34:34):
it's not real. Yeah, like any day, you know, the
trumpets will sound in the heavens and the screws will
be broken and the great, the great beast will arise
from the sea and you know all that fame. Yeah,
And I I don't know what the solution is for that.
I I don't know how both on the soft climate
denial side of like how do you go about? How
do you go about? It's like the only thing we
(34:55):
can really do is the people, you know, we know,
how how do we go about and tell the um that, hey,
things are probably gonna be a bit worse than what
you're preparing for. Um, And how do we tell the
people who are doomers, Hey, it's not gonna be like
this weird dystopian thing that you're thinking of. Either it's
like it's it's it's interesting because like they're both veering
(35:16):
off in two opposite directions, but it both kind of
leads to the same point of kind of doing nothing.
But one version. One version of nothing is basically, you know,
voting for stuff that's not that's never gonna happen. The
other version is not just not doing anything in general. Um.
And I I don't know how to how to reach
(35:38):
those types of people very easily. Yeah, which kind of
brings me to like my thoughts on like how we
move past soft climate change Nile. Um. I don't think
it's just a matter of like trying to like push
like campaigns on people. I think it's gonna be like
(36:01):
a very personal sort of journey that each person has
to go through, right, because each wisnes is different. Each
wisnes is like has different worries and dealing things in
a different way, you know. Um, so like you want
to keep in mind like people's mental health and sort
of fortifying your mental health and helping people fortified days.
(36:21):
Because when it comes to mental health with regard to
like climate change, doing it an isolation in my experience
has not really worked out. I think what has worked
best for me is when I am with why I'm
connected with a group of people or even just one
other person, and when I'm feeling down about climate change.
(36:43):
Because despite all my messages of what soula punk and
you know, we can do this like that that's basically
the message of my YouTube channel. You know, I still
experience like those sort of thoughts and feelings of public
about it. But what I try to do is when
I'm eating those things, I try to be with people
(37:03):
who are not currently feeding that, you know, so we're
not feeding all of each other's nights of energies. Yeah,
so like when I'm in a bad spot, you know,
people are on it who could lift me up, and
when they about dan about spot because it kind of
comes in weaves, you know, yeah, absolutely, no, Yeah, it's
it's it's silly to deny those thoughts exist because they do,
(37:24):
like they're they're very they're a very easy neutral state
at least for me to slip into UM. And the
way to get around that is by doing chores at
a farm and shoveling poop and taking care of animals
and cooking for people. That's like the way that I
get out of that kind of mindset. And you know,
(37:46):
not not to be too hard on all of the
kind of doomer nihilists, because there there is there, there is,
there's this there's like a sect of like doomer nihilists
who use like the actual definition of nihilism, which is like,
if if things don't really matter, we should probably fux
some stuff up, um. And that's very useful, right like
if if if you're if if you're on that train
(38:07):
and you're like, yeah, you should be tree spiking. If
if if you're okay with if you think nothing matters UM,
and you are you want to be an actual nihilist,
then yeah you should make you should make destroy um.
Just make sure it's focused on the people with actual
power UM. Because if if you're willing to do that,
then great, we need we need as many as many
people like that as possible. But it's certainly easier to
(38:29):
do that once you have friends and once you're not
stuck in this super depressed state all the time. Yeah,
and UM, I think there's a again. We we we
do take a look at like some of the criticisms.
People have a show online and I know one that's
come up a bunch is people will listen to like
our when when we'll talk about, you know, the severity
(38:50):
of the problems and then we'll talk about things like
you know, mutual aid collectives and small guards, seed bombings
and all that stuff, they'll be like, well, that's not
a solution. No, of course, that's not going to solve
the global problem of carbon emissions from a civilization of
seven billion humans. What it does do focusing on stuff
(39:10):
like that, focusing on building soil, UM, focusing on building
community resistance. In addition to like having an immediate impact
on the number of people you know, in in in
your community, it builds a sense of um a sense
of power for the individual. It It gives you something
to do that isn't just thinking about how bad things are,
(39:32):
and that puts you in a mind state that's more
useful to actually potentially dealing with the bigger problems at
some point. UM you have to have a sense of
your own agency that feels real if you're going to
actually change anything, um and you can. You can build
it's a muscle, right, You can build it up by
by doing things that are not bigger but are are
(39:55):
part of the solution. UM And it makes valuable to
do that for your own for your own mental health,
because then maybe you if you're maybe if if your
friend group, if your your affinity group, whatever you wanna
call it, the people you are hanging out with, if
some of them are always engaged in something productive, then
when you're in a doomed spiral, you can find someone
(40:16):
who's working on something UM and vice versa. Yeah, and
it doesn't just help your mental health, but it also
contributes to the pre figurative activities that we need to
actually make us switch to a different system. You know,
like the revolution is something that happens overnight or in
a future. It's something that's supposed to be happening all now,
(40:36):
because as we build those systems, you know, we are
building up power. You know, it's kind of like how
the Black socialists in America described dual power. You know,
it should be a building these systems and putting these
things in place so that we can push towards like
fundamental transmission of the system. It's iterative, but as small
(40:59):
people do on top of that, you know, that's how
the transmission happens. We also need to contribute. I mean,
I think it's it's it's important to talk about this
both to acknowledge like it's a thing that happens and
we all deal with. We all have our moments of
like overwhelming despair over what's happening. UM and and at
(41:20):
some some moments of unrealistic optimism too. Yeah, every once
in a while, and the unrealistic optimism needs to be
encouraged UM, as long as it's not the kind of
what we don't need to do anything because someone's I
guess there's toxic optimism and there's helpful. A toxic optimism
would be like reading an article about some new carbon
capture technology and being like, oh cool, Well I don't
(41:42):
need to worry. UM. But but most optimism I think
is positive UM. And it I think it's good to
build a capacity for optimism by by building your your
personal sense of agency and power, by by doing ship
that helps UM. And I think that accepting that you
(42:03):
can do things that are meaningful. Um, and that uh,
there are things to be done that can help the
situation is a critical way of fighting against you know
this uh soft climate change denial, which which is a um,
a major threat because there's I think, honestly at this point,
(42:23):
more people who are subscribing to some form of soft
climate change denial than there are people who are uh
just denying climate change and its entirety. Um. And that's
I think where a lot of the effort has to go.
So I yeah, I think this is a really important
thing for people to understand and to be vigilant against. Absolutely. Yeah.
(42:45):
All right, well, Andrew, where can the audience find you
outside of here right now? Yeah? So you can find
me on my YouTube channel st Andrew's m and you
can find me on Twitter at a mischool of Sture. Excellent. Well,
you can find us here where you just found us.
We'll be here tomorrow, unless this is a Friday, in
(43:07):
which case we'll be here on Monday. UM. I have
a have a good you know life, have a good life. Care.
This is Roxanne Gay, host of the Roxanne Gay Agenda,
(43:28):
The Bad Room, and his podcast of Your Dreams. Now
what is the Roxanne Gay Agenda, You might ask, Well,
it's a podcast where I'm going to speak my mind
about what's on my mind, and that could be anything.
Every week I will be in conversation with an interesting
person who has something to say. We're going to talk
about feminism, race, writing, and books and art, food, pop culture,
(43:52):
and yes, politics. I started each show with a recommendation, Really,
I'm just going to share with you a movie or
a book, or maybe some music or a comedy set,
something that I really want you to be aware of
and maybe engage with as well. Listen to the Luminary
original podcast, The Roxanne Gay Agenda, The Bad Feminist Podcast
(44:14):
of Your Dreams, Every Tuesday on the I Heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. From Cavalry Audio,
comes the new true crime podcast, The Shadow Girls. I
always wanted to know what it felt like. We killed
somebody and started laughing. Prosecutors described him as a serial killer,
(44:36):
savant kicking up these girls, getting him in a position
of vulnerability. When he got ahold of their neck, that
was it. I'm Caroline Asia, a journalist and lifelong resident
at the Pacific Northwest. I grew up near the banks
of the Green River and in the shadow of the
Killer that bears its name? Did you bring the camera
one time? Just one he started fantasizing about having sex
(44:59):
with it his mother, and he fantasized about killing her.
But this podcast isn't only about tracking down the killer.
It's about the victims. We stayed in the woods. He
always liked to go into woods, all of the kind
of strange you know how it feels about prostitutes. Listen
to The Shadow Girls on the I Heart Radio app,
(45:19):
on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Executive
producer Paris Hilton brings back the hit podcast How Men Think.
And that's good news for anyone that is confused by men,
which is basically everyone get an inside look at what
goes on in the mind of men from the men themselves.
(45:42):
It's real talk, straight from the source. How Men Think
podcast is exactly what we need to figure them out.
It's going to be fun and formative and probably a
bit scary at times because we're literally going inside the
minds of men. As much as we like to think
all men are the same, they're actually very different. Each week,
a celebrity guest host provides honest advice in his area
(46:05):
of expertise. When I agreed to do this reboot, I
had a few conditions. No sugarcoating, no mind games, and
absolutely no man splaining. Men are hard enough to understand
without the mind games. Listen to How Men Think on
the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you
get your podcasts. All right, welcome to it could happen
(46:31):
here a podcast about things falling apart and also sometimes
about how things have been falling apart for a while now.
And today we're going to talk about how things were
also bad in falling apart in the two thousands, which
a profoundly cursed time period. And specifically we're going to
(46:52):
talk about I think a part of the anti war
movement that does not get much attention um, which is
the portmeal Tourization resistance that happened sort of two and
with us today to talk about this is two people
who were part of this movement. If Juliana Newhauser, hello,
(47:14):
and Brendan Maslaska's done, Yeah, both of whom were organizers
and activists while this was going on. Yeah, and I
thank thank you, thank you both for being here. Yeah,
thanks for having us. So, Yeah, as as I was
saying a bit in the intro, I think that this
is a part of the anti war movement that is
not very well known. I think I think a lot
of people know about the initial stuff happened in two
(47:35):
thousand three, and people might know about some of the
stuff that was happening against the war in Afghanistan but
right when it started, But I don't think most people
know that it like you know, even after jails and
three sort of doesn't work, that it continues and it
continues sort of informs that are that are very interesting,
(47:56):
and so I guess I want you to to start out,
I want to ask how we sort of got from
the early part of the anti war movement into this
and how usually got involved. I would say that there's
this narrative about the women against the word Iraq, that
there is the largest protests in human history, at least
(48:18):
at that point. I don't know if it's still true
against the invasion, and then it didn't work and everyone
kind of went home and ended there, and to a
certain extent that's true. But like you said, the people
that didn't go home went an interesting direction. And um
(48:39):
so at the time there were direct action was not
as acceptable as it is now. The protest this movement
was largely dominated either by UM big liberal coalitions or
PSL front groups that were basically indistinguishable and what they
actually did, which was basically nothing and in the best
(49:04):
of cases and then the worst of cases kind of
insurgency UM. But then there were small groups of people
that at when we saw that it didn't work, and
we saw that these giant, peaceful marches from one part
of town to another UM or voting for John Kerry
(49:27):
or whatever, it didn't work, that we started to look
for other options. Yeah, and uh, you know, I got involved.
You know, i'd say with the anti war movement. That
idea of how wars onjust was really taught to me
from a very young age. I mean, my parents were
(49:49):
you know, children of the sixties, and they had family
members fighting in Vietnam and um, you know, friends dying
in Vietnam and we're against the protest back then. So
I grew up hearing these stories and of course stories
from family members, particularly one of my grandfather's, both of
them who were veterans in World War Two. One of
(50:09):
them was a marine in the you know, in the
Pacific Theater and still into his seventies, eighties, and nineties
until his final days, was just dealing with horrific PTSD
and had always taught me from a young age never
to get involved. So I you know, and I remember
when when the very clearly, um, you know, I'm sure
it's on everyone's minds now, and when the invasion of
(50:31):
Afghanistan started, when the invasion of a Rock started, I
was at that that massive demonstration in Washington, d C.
That Juliana just mentioned, and you know I ended up.
I'm from Utica, New York. I went to a rural
high school, uh just outside of of Utica, you know,
russ Bell generally speaking, impoverished and also very conservative area
(50:56):
of New York. And you know, I had the recruiters
bother me, military recruiters in high school, recruiting my friends,
and they were just everywhere in the hallways. Uh So
it was very present, um with me. When I was younger.
I moved out to Olympia, Washington two thousand six, and
(51:17):
that's one a new student activist group, Students for Democratic Society,
was launched. That's how Juliana and I first met. We
were both in separate chapters of that new organization in
the Pacific Northwest, and the port protests started just just
a few months after I moved out there in in
(51:39):
Olympia in two thousand six. So wait, just declare for
this for a second, because I've never quite been clear
on this history. So there was a second st like
students for Democratic Idea that was like unrelated to the
first one. Yeah, they're born briefly at the end of
the bushop Nater date. That that explains a lot of
(51:59):
things that it's very baffling. We're not that old. Yeah,
we're definitely in the in the second uh, you know,
the rebirth of it um. So you know, I think
it it took on some things in spirit um, you know,
but also was i'd say different in many ways, and
it was very active to me at least, it was
very exciting to be a member of the New STS
(52:22):
because they're over a dozen chapters in the Pacific Northwest
and it was a great way to connect with young
activists all over the US. So STS is emerging in
this time period. One of the other things I was
interested about is something someone you were talking about in
the in the early part of this which has to
do with the way that these giants both the sort
(52:43):
of answer coalition PSL Frank Group and I guess the
I s O was still around back then coalitions work
versus how like anything else worked. So so what was
was sts sort of like consciously set up and in
opposition to those groups. I don't think it was conscious,
but there was just like I mean these days, I
mean like there's a lot of controversy around PSL with
(53:06):
like anarchist versus tanky politics. None of that mattered at
that time, Like, none of that mattered. The only thing
that mattered was the answer, which is the PSO Front
group was completely fucking useless. Like they completely indistinguishable from
any peace police um liberal Democratic Front group. There was
(53:27):
literally no difference just in terms of their aesthetics maybe
like is there a donkey or a hammer and sickle
on something. That's the only difference we saw. So I
don't I don't think there was. It wasn't There wasn't
like a conscious like political opposite attention to it. It
was just like they're not doing anything, and and so
(53:48):
we had to look in another direction. Actually, you know,
it's hard to keep track of the alphabet soup of
authilitarian communist groups at times. But this was actually answer
for those who don't recall, it was a front group
for the Workers World Party the W which yeah, I
mean it's it's hard to keep track, right, Yeah, that's
the same thing, like I think, so, so okay, So
(54:10):
for people who are sort of unaware of this, there's
a network of connected but sometimes feuding like weird Stalinist
cults that kind of kind of like they hold on
through like the eighties and nineties and they start sort
of rebuilding again around the anti war movements in that period.
That that's the pslist of the DUP. That's answer like
and and I think that's like most like modern anti
(54:33):
war groups are also still these people, which is incredibly
depressing something I want to talk a bit about towards
the end of this. But yeah, just for people who
have not spent the last half decade in the in
the trenches of extremely weird anti war politics. So yeah, so,
(54:53):
so I think we should get into how the sort
of the first action starts in Olympia. Yeah so, and
there were actually a couple of actions that happened um
in the year proceeding that, you know, before I moved
out to Olympia in two thousand and six. It was
(55:14):
not yet under the banner of PMR Port Militarization Resistance.
That was a name that was officially coined in uh
you know, in in May and June of two thousand six.
And so, just to give you an idea, Olympia, it's
it's a college town or at the Evergreen State colleges there.
(55:36):
It's also the capital of Washington State, so you have
that going on. It's also a military town. It's a
little over twenty miles south of what we called Fort Lewis.
It's now called JBLM j BLOM or Joint Base Lewis McCord.
It's an Army and Air Force base now it's one base.
Um So, yet all these you know, different kind of elements,
(55:56):
uh in you know, in tandem in in that town
and the public port. The port of Olympia is one
of about seventy years so public ports in the state
of Washington, some of which are I mean they're used
for all kinds of things, you know, for commercial, private industry,
but also the military and the U. S. Government. Uh So, uh,
(56:19):
you know, I heard from someone I don't even remember
who that the military was sending a ship to the
port of Olympia in late May of two thousand six,
And this happened for ten or so days, and it
was just kind of a natural instinct for a whole
bunch of us to go down to the Port of Olympia.
(56:43):
It was it was the war machine in our backyard,
and the idea was to just block the vehicles. It
started out with just like less than ten people number
folks getting arrested, and that very rapidly culminated into larger
protests every single day um An active blockades people, uh,
(57:04):
those of us like Julian and myself and other folks
using civil disobedience or what we prefer to call civil
resistance to try and stop or at the very least
slow down these striker vehicles and to give folks an
idea of what a striker vehicle is. You can look
it up online, but it's kind of halfway between um,
you know, a tank and a humby. Doesn't have the
(57:26):
slats you know that a tank would have. It's you know.
And they were being used in both Iraq and Afghanistan
for for raids of residential areas. They were really on
the front lines of of the war in in both
those countries, and that's what we're trying to stop. I
only got involved later, um, because I wasn't living in
Olympia at the time. UM. I was in another STS chapter,
(57:49):
but my roommate was from Olympia and he had been
involved in that first round of protests in Olympia before
moving up to Ballingham. Yeah. So, like hearing his story
has got me very excited because just like, finally someone's
someone's doing something like someone's they're not just like you know,
(58:12):
it's like everything else was just so liberal, whether it's
marching from one place to another or writing to your
congress people or occupying their office. It was like asking
someone else to do something which you knew from the
beginning they were never going to do. And finally this
was finally someone was like actually getting into it. Um.
(58:37):
I think the first one of the things that happened
here was that um, they started to avoid UM. There's
it's kind of a geographical thing, I think for people
who either don't know Washington Washington, or because they're normal
people don't know like the port areas of these cities
(59:02):
very well, because it's like like unless you're a long sherman, like,
why you would you go down to like the port
of Tacoma. UM. But they kept moving it around because
UM Olympia is also not very big and UM, so
it's there's really only two roads into the port, which
(59:25):
is very small, and so it was it's very easy
to block it. UM. And so then I think the
first time that I got involved UM was in two
thousands seven when they had moved it because they kept
moving it around to try and switch things up and
(59:45):
wait before the moving the ship around, No, it's like
they had to make a military ship men. They would UM.
It's like like once the ship it was in the port,
they would just I have to go through with it.
But then UM, you know it's like everything. Every six
months or so, they had to make another military shipment
(01:00:07):
and they would change the port usually each time, UM
to try and let basically to avoid us. It doesn't
seem like this is like normal craps UM. The first
time I had gone down was in UM Tacoma, which
is a much much much more industrialized port than Olympia.
It's you know, it's like a big port, a more
(01:00:28):
normal port, I guess. And that one was honestly pretty crazy, um,
because you're just trapped in this giant industrial maze basically
at the mercy of the riot cops. The best success
we had was definitely at the Port of Olympia. UM.
I think in the in two thousand seven in Olympia
(01:00:51):
was definitely it's like the glory moment, which was when
people were able to on and off like actually hold
the port and control it. The Yeah, and I wanna
you know, just emphasize that, like the one the military
(01:01:12):
changing their approach right to avoid us so jumping from
port to port with these different shipments. They actually went
so far because we were so successful as a movement
in the Pacific Northwest to ship striker vehicles by rail
out of the Pacific Northwest and even going so far
as to ports and Texas. I don't know, but you know,
(01:01:34):
one one thing that we did is that we built
up contacts with other activists with longshore workers all up
and down the West coast in California. There are other
activists were connected with in Texas, Hawaii, New Jersey, and
New York. There is a desire in the anti war movement.
Uh and and you know, in some extent maybe it's
like it was small. But some folks in the labor movement,
(01:01:58):
especially in Oakland or the i LW the you know
longshore Workers Union, it's a lot more militant than say
in a place like Olympia. UM. But yeah, I mean
people wanted to replicate this model because, as Juliana said,
we wore successful in two thousand and seven, we shut
down the port of Olympia for a total of it
was essentially two days. They were not they're not shipping
(01:02:21):
anything in or out. We set up blockades, were willing
to throw down with the police in the street. And
one of the things that was cool about that blockade
is that one of the there's two entrances, like I said,
and one was completely blockaded and then the other one, UM,
we had like a moving I don't really know what
it was, but something with wheels that we can move
(01:02:42):
in and out UM to open it up, and so
then we could allow like civilian cargo to move in
and out, but then like we feel it back in place,
UM to block military shipments. So we were able to
actually like stopped them from like what while in that
oneted to come, we able to actually like stopped them
from moving the self all together. Would you whentually cleared
(01:03:04):
up by the police and they moved it, we would
eventually get cleared out by the police. It's like we
were never able to It's like we're we we held
it for two days. That those protests took place over
a series of two weeks or more or less. Um,
we were only able to fully hold it for two
days before eventually they would clear us out. But one
(01:03:27):
of the things is that it this does it did
create problems for the army because when you work with
a port, you know, it's like you've got like a
certain time frame that you've contracted with the port to
do whatever it is because you're going to do and
it's not too happy if you take longer than you
(01:03:51):
said you would or yeah, yeah. And the other thing
I want to add is, you know, I think the
other really important element with this whole movement going on
is the Pacific Northwest was um it is specifically western
Washington where the two of us were living. It was
it was, you know, the center and in a sense
(01:04:14):
it was the heart of the anti war movement in
the country at that time. One because of this militant
direct action that we were, you know, we were building
up in the streets and trying to throw a wrench
in the gears of the war machine to to at
the veryly slowed down, which in some ways we did.
But we're up against so much. But the other added element,
(01:04:37):
of course is the g I resistance and the soldiers
who are resisting. I've all also known as the Rock
Veterans against the War was very active there. They set
up a g I coffeehouse across you know, literally across
the street, uh, you know, the gates for one of
the entrances for Fort Louis Um. There are a whole
(01:04:58):
bunch of soldiers that we're going a wall. We had
friends who were active duty soldiers who had fought in
you know, Iraq and Afghanistan that were a wall and
they were hiding, you know, refusing to go back into
the striker brigades that joined us in Portan militarization resistance. Uh.
There are a whole, you know, long list of soldiers
(01:05:19):
that were very publicly saying, you know, I'm refusing to
fight in Iraq or Afghanistan for you know, various reasons.
And so we are very much connected with this movement too.
And I think the higher ups in the military, they're
they're hyper aware of that. They studied us very well, um,
(01:05:40):
you know, to the point of actually spying on us.
So that's like a whole other element of this story too.
Is one of the things that I've heard from talking
to other people who were involved in this was that like, wow,
like during these protests, like the level of police militarization
just like skyrocketed, And like I remember were I was
(01:06:00):
talking friend about this, it was like, you know, if
you go back and look at like old system of
a down videos, you know, they'll they'lly'll have these things. Yeah,
you'll see these you see these riot police and like
you look at them and it's like these people they
look so much less armored than like the people that
we have now. And one of the things that I
thought was interesting about this was that like this is
I think one of the points where you start getting
(01:06:23):
the modern riot police showing up that are just like,
you know, completely encased in like armor. And Yeah, I
don't talk about just like the police response to this,
because I think that's that's another thing. I think I
think there's never there's a kind of a tendency to
sort of project back what the police look like, just
onto the whole history of police and I think it's
(01:06:43):
like it's it's it's gotten worse even in the last
twenty years. Yeah, I mean, so I lived downtown in
Olympia and probably just like a six minute walk away
from the Port of Olympia and and also very convenient,
like just a few blocks away from the police station.
So so lucky us. So we actually saw, you know,
(01:07:05):
we could see from the front of down on the road,
down the sidewalk from the front of our house. Uh,
some of the military shipments going by, and we we
we did see that absolutely, and at at times it
was it was terrifying. I mean I lived in an
activis house we jokingly called h Q because that's just
(01:07:25):
you know where because of its proximity to the port.
That's where a number of us were having meetings, uh,
you know, around these protests early on in two thousand six,
and um, yeah, I mean we like they look like
RoboCop and it's something I had I you know, I
hadn't like I had been to like mass marches and
(01:07:46):
demonstrations like the RNC protests and d NC protests in Boston,
New York and like in Washington, d c uh and
so I would see these like riot cops, but they
were I mean ubiquitous in the support protests. It was
like a whole army of them that was sent out.
I mean when Juliana said that things got kind of
(01:08:08):
crazy at the Port of Tacoma protests, I mean there
was like a police riot, you know, like the cops
went absolutely nuts, are shooting people with tear gas and
pepper balls and and brutalizing people. I had never before
witnessed anything like that. And it got to the point
in you know, in Olympia where we we kind of
knew early on that we were being traced by the
(01:08:29):
police to the extent where you know, one friend of
ours was followed from our house to the bus station
to take a bus to school by the police and
then was stopped and essentially assaulted by them on the street.
And we had another fellow activists and you know, a
roommate of mine who is going out to driving out
(01:08:52):
with a few friends, uh few fellow activists from Olympia
to Aberdeen, about an hour's drive. So Aberdeen, there's a
port of grays Harbor there, pretty conservative small town. It's
where Kurt Cobain is from, home of the famous Kurt
Cobain teams. McDonald's. They served billions and and billions served
(01:09:14):
and that one McDonald's and Kurt Cobain's McDonald's. But yeah,
I mean the you know, they they were they were following.
They had orders the Washington State Patrol two, um, you know,
pull over a car full full of known anarchists. There
was alert gone out to all the police departments. They
pulled them. They pulled him over, they made him walk
(01:09:36):
the line. He was had you know, wasn't drinking and
no drugs, like nothing in his system. But they he
was driving under like one mile per hour under the
speed limit. They arrested him for d d W I
you know, eventually fought the chargers sued um uh and
you know what a big settlement out of all that.
But that's just one example of many of the lengths
(01:09:59):
at the police would go to. It was pretty severe.
Even there's a house of a bunch of anarchists, younger
anarchists called the pitch Pipe Info Shop in Tacoma, and
that was also a big target. The police were swarming
around them all the time. They had like cameras set
up like specifically just outside the Infra shop, Like there
weren't surrounds cameras there before, but then it was like,
(01:10:20):
oh well, just conveniently put them on this one specific
street corner. Yeah. I think like that was one of
the things I was reading about this is you have
that stuff. And then also I think one of the
steerest parts of this is that like Army intelligence gets
involved and yeah, do you want to talk about the
man named quote unquote John Jacob, who was in fact
not that Yeah, so, uh, you know, I'm curious what
(01:10:44):
what memories you have of our our good dear friend
John Jacob Juliana. I don't think I ever actually knew
him in person, but he was the moderator of the
List Serve, wasn't he. Yes, he's one of the moderators
of our list Serve now that I look back on him,
like the apport militarization resistance, the sirup with always just
(01:11:05):
like this dramatic ship show, and it's like, looking back
on it, I was like, oh, a cop that did
nothing that absolutely nothing to like established order or uh
I if that was on purpose? Yeah, so I think
(01:11:27):
there's definitely something that happened like you know, looking back
from our vantage point today, it's like, Okay, things make
a little more sense at the time though, And we're
in this movement, right and so that means like meeting
people where they're at, we find all kinds of people
that would like want to join the movement like I,
like I said earlier, like active duty soldiers that were joining.
(01:11:47):
So I met this guy named John Jacob and he
sent an email out to me. I was one of
the contacts for the Olympia STS group and it's like, hey,
you know, there's kind of like a parent organization that's
some old like elder activists are in, uh to kind
of mentor us called Movement for a Democratic Society. Very small,
never really took off, but like I'm interested in getting involved.
(01:12:09):
We met up in public and he seemed like an
alright guy. I mean he was, um, you know, forty
ish early forties. He had told me, like you know,
been in the military for years and he actually still
worked at Fort Lewis, so he was always open about that,
but it only went that far. He didn't ever tell
(01:12:29):
us what he actually did there, and it wasn't abnormal
for you know, we have many folks that worked active duty,
you know, on base and civilian civilian roles or soldiers.
As I mentioned that we're in port militarization resistance. So
he gets involved, and he gets really involved with port
militarization resistance. He goes to protests, He gets pretty close
(01:12:50):
with this group of anarchists I mentioned who lived in Tacoma, UM,
and he seemed like a really solid guy to to
most of us. UM. And you know, things happen as
as we progress, and you know, as a military responded
to our uh you know how effective we wore in
the anti war movement and the g I resistance movement
(01:13:13):
by changing their tactics. We noticed that Okay, when we
first started the protests, UM, we we had the ability
to catch the police by surprise by setting up you know,
a blockade here, we're having a surprise action there at
this time, or this port, etcetera, etcetera. And as time progressed,
(01:13:33):
we found out that you know, we were having these
making these decisions for tactics in our strategy. We thought
that we're in private and then for whatever reason, the
police kind of knew about where we were going to
be before we even showed up. And that I remember
that clearly happening in two thousand seven the Port of Olympia. Yeah,
(01:13:53):
and the COMMA. There was a lot of things like that.
Like there is one time when there are like some
people who had a meeting in a closed room, like
all there they had taken the batteries out of their
cell phones. They had simply written on the whiteboard the
time and place they were going to have their next meeting,
which is going to be in a diner near the port.
(01:14:15):
And so that way if like if for any reason
the room was bugged, it wouldn't be caught up because
it was just written on a board. And then it
was like a small meeting too, So it's like there
were and then when they got to that dinner, there's
like full of cops like clearly waiting for them. Like
(01:14:36):
at that point, it's like it was very clear there
was some some level of infiltration involved. Yeah, And I
think we from early on, like you know, we we
knew our history. I mean, you know, one of our
our fellow activists and p Mars and a friend of ours,
Peter Boehmer's professor at the Evergreen State College. He was
in the original sts back in the sixties, and you know,
(01:14:58):
he was essentially a political prisoner for a couple of
years in both Massachusetts and California. UM, I mean the
FEDS essentially tried to assassinate him. Um back in in
the seventies when he was active in the anti war
movement in San Diego. Like we knew, you know, former
Black Panthers, and we read our history, so we knew
about the history of cointelpro the counterintelligence program of the
(01:15:21):
six season seventies and the war on the anti war
and civil rights and black power, American Indian movements, etcetera. UM,
so we knew, you know, just intuitively early on. Uh.
But there's one thing that happened in particular which prompted
some of us to file for a public records request
with the City of Olympia and another activists walking down
(01:15:43):
the street in Olympia. I'm a member of the Wobby's
Industrial Workers of the World Union, and we had like
one of those metal newspaper boxes downtown and it was
locked to a poll um, you know, with a bike lock.
And there are some city workers there with a pickup
truck and they're cutting the to this newspaper box and
they threw it in their pickup truck and so are
(01:16:05):
you know this friend of ours was there. I was like,
what the hell, what are you doing? What's going on?
And one of the workers just kind of strugged and
was like, I don't know, the police told us to
do this, and they drove off like they stole you know,
are essentially like our union property or whatever. UM. So
we had you know, our our lawyer friend Larry Hildes
and the National Lawyer's Guild you know, call and kind
(01:16:25):
of threatened the city and and then a number of
us got together like, hey, you know, let's do like
a public records requests UM with the City of of
Olympia freedom of information law right, and so we did.
And the request was, you know, just requesting any all
information the city had UM, any exchanges communications by email,
(01:16:48):
etcetera UM between the police and like other agencies about anarchists,
I WW Students for a Democratic Society UM. And their
initials that the city clerk did yielded something like thirty
thousand responses. So she's like, okay, I gotta narrow this down.
And I don't know, I was working on the request
(01:17:09):
at the time, and for some reason, like I don't
know where report protests are near military based communications between
the army not thinking anything. And so the initial responses
who actually got um, you know, maybe a hundred a
hundred thirty or so different documents, just copies of emails, etcetera. That, um,
(01:17:31):
we're little puzzle pieces for this massive puzzle. And it
was just a few of them. Uh. And it was,
you know, there was an email talking about our guy
in the Navy going to a p MR meeting to
get some intel. Uh. There's you know, all kinds of
things like that. There are a few emails in particular. Um,
(01:17:51):
and the email address was something like John John J.
Towery at you know, Army dot us whatever the email
address was. So, well, there's a crew of activists that
got together, put their heads together, did some research quietly
for a few months, and eventually found out by publicly
accessible information like voter registration records and also finding out
(01:18:14):
something about like a motorcycle club called like the I
don't know, like the Brown Beauque Club or the Brown
Butt Club or something and and the like. Found out
that this John Towery guy that was in this motorcycle
club and had his you know, was registered to vote
outside of Tacoma, in this town there. It was actually
John Jacob. It was this guy that we thought was
(01:18:36):
a fellow activist, an anarchist um and and a friend,
you know. I thought he was a personal friend of mine.
Turns out he was actually essentially an Army intelligence officer
working for something called the Force Protection Unit at uh
At Joint Face Joint based Lewis McCord, and also working
with a whole list of different agencies and turned out
(01:19:01):
to be like a massive surveillance network that was national
in scope. This guy was sent by the Army along
with many others to infiltrate us, to aspire on us,
and to disrupt us. Was huge. Yeah, And that that's
one of the things that I've always always really interesting
about this is like, so, like I I learned about
poor militarization resistance basically because I was like poking around
(01:19:22):
the history of like informists and I ran into this
and I was like what because and then that was
what I thought. One of the things I thought was
really interesting about this is that like, like I think
that this chapter of the anti war movement is even
on the left, is like not very well known, but
like the seriousness which the army seems to have taken.
It is like, is really remarkable. Yeah, I'm wondering what
(01:19:42):
you to think about that. One thing we have to
emphasize is is that we were not a large group
of people. Like, um, the number of people who are
actively involved in Portmoloditisation assistance at its speak was how
many people do you think it was, Brandon? It depends.
I mean I'd say they're probably like at its peak
(01:20:03):
maybe probably four ye to fifty people that would like
consistently show up to things. You know, maybe a slightly smaller,
very core group, but we would have demonstrations with like
and then like four people you know, yeah, and like
that would be like the max like there is it's
like there are like the peaceful like kind of like
(01:20:27):
support actions. You know, you would get like a couple
hundred people and then like for the stuff like where
it's like the first night that that the part of
the entrance to the part of Olympia was occupied, it
would be like, um, these were not these were not
very large groups of people. Um. I feel like and
(01:20:50):
like I said, it's like one thing that we need
to keep in mind was that, um, the peace police
were much stronger back then than they are now nowadays.
Lating like as we saw last year, it's like people
in the US of learn to throw down, but that
was not the case at the time. And so this
is a very very small group of people. UM. I
(01:21:12):
think we accomplished a lot from with how small it was. UM.
If it had been larger, it would have accomplished way more. UM.
But even that small core of like people with maybe
(01:21:33):
expanding out to like a larger group of a couple
of hundred, had them that scared that they went that far.
They're trying to disrupt it. Yeah, And and this is
one of the things I've been thinking about a lot
recently of this needs to be a very consistent thing,
which is it like the two things that are guaranteed
(01:21:55):
to like just have a hammer drop on you if
you touch them is pipeline and ports. And that that
was that was something you know, we we've talked a
lot on here about pipeline protests. UM. But I was
interested in what you two think about, because, yeah, this
(01:22:15):
this is like of very particular moment right now in
what you're dealing with all these logistics chain failures. And
I was wondering if if you do think there's anything
that we can learn from how your versions of the
sort of of port demonstrations worked for potentially trying to
leverage that in the future, especially with like contract negotiations
(01:22:38):
for port workers in Oakland coming up next year. Yeah,
that's a great question. You know, it's this old saying
and the I w W direct action gets goods, right,
and I think it really boils down to that it's
building up uh, you know, mass movements and social movements
from below that rely under wrecked action, that rely on
(01:23:01):
civil resistance, civil disobedience. Um. Yeah, and the pipeline protests
that have been ongoing where Indigenous people have been on
the front lines of that for many many years now.
I mean, the kind of repression and surveillance that we
face really pales in comparison to the kinds of you know,
(01:23:21):
surveillance of repression that folks were facing at Standing Rock
for example. Um. You know, I think, of course, one
of the well one of the main differences is that
it was primarily the military, you know, with us, right,
that was uh surveilling us because this is very specifically
(01:23:42):
you know, a war issue and a military issue. Um.
But yeah, I mean I think, um, you know, like
I think there's a big questions like what what do
we have to do that's that's new? And to me,
I say, you know, for both that kind of militant action,
but also for the labor or movements, like, it's not
you know, we don't have to reinvent the wheel. There
(01:24:04):
are things that have tried and true track record of
getting the goods and that is you know, these more
disruptive kind of actions and movements. Um, And so one
of them would be you know, I guess my suggestion
would be to like go back to the basics. And
even like I would say, now, you know this, remember
(01:24:26):
this at a time when like Facebook was around, right, like,
but we weren't really using that for our organizing. We
really relied on like face to face meetings, you know,
phone calls and building up trust with people and building
up our capacity to like take actions and make change.
You know, I think I'm not saying throw out everything
(01:24:46):
that you know that at least some of the good
that social media has to offer, but like I think
going beyond that and going back to these older tactics.
And then for the labor movement, like the big thing is,
you know, and it's just like a bigger question or
for mainstream unions in particular, I mean they're that the
whole idea of like union contracts is that workers also
(01:25:09):
lose a lot. Yeah, they get some things, but uh,
business owners and bosses have rights carved out in in
those contracts. And with the longshore workers, I mean the
difficult thing with that, of course, is like there would
be some symbolic strikes that of course, like longshore workers
have done and continue to do, you know, around like
the war Iraq historically supporting movie a bou Jamal maydea, etcetera,
(01:25:35):
like in Oakland, um, but they have some things for
that written into their contracts, and you know, for all
these other like unions it's like, well, you know, we
can't strike at all for for the next two years,
the next three years, whatever the life of the contract is. Like,
I think it's a bigger question and challenge for the
labor movement to move beyond that and not be putting
(01:25:58):
this strait jacket of of contracts like that. Yeah, I
think that that particularly like the no no strike clause
part of contracts, I take an interesting thing because it
I don't know there's not. I mean, there are some
unions that will actually do stuff around fighting it, but
mostly people just sort of don't care. And I think
(01:26:20):
you wind up in a situation where it seems like
you kind of have to plan your tactics around when
contract negotiations are happening, because otherwise you can't actually get
people to do anything more in like a one day
symbolic strike. Yeah, and or you know the challenges, like,
you know, we have this great American tradition that's not
unique to the US, it's universal really, and it's one
(01:26:42):
that resonates with me breaking the law right and like
we're you know, we're like civil disobedience. That is that
what we are doing in the streets and blocking the ports.
We were breaking the lawn. We knew it. And that's
what the civil rights movement, the Black freedom movement did
in in the nineties sixties. But like we have recent
examples of workers breaking the law and mass like the
(01:27:06):
West Virginia teacher strikes that happened a few years ago,
Like teachers in every single county in that state went
on strike. They broke the law, and and they want
something out of that. And I think that's what we
really need to encourage people. Is this idea of breaking
out of like the norm and and breaking the laws
(01:27:26):
which you know, the laws that are in place, which
are not there to you know, expand our freedom there
there too contracted. Yeah, one of one of my friends
kind of joke about what was the exact line. It was,
it's it's only illegal if you get caught and it
only matters if you lose, which I think is a
good way of thinking about both breaking. Yeah, and you know, yeah,
(01:27:52):
I think it's also like it's worth mentioning that like
the other side the law doesn't matter to them at all,
Like they just tear it up and like light it
on fire constantly. So don't don't bind yourself if if
you can, if you can not get caught and not
like go to prison for the rest of your life.
Don't bind yourself by a bunch of like paper that
(01:28:13):
the other side just doesn't care about. Yeah, And that's
an excellent point because that's the big thing, you know,
with the army and law enforcement in general, like surveillance
of us they were in the police, just their actions,
their brazen actions on the street, like the riot police. Um,
they were just breaking the law all the time. They
(01:28:34):
absolutely have a deep visceral hatred of the Bill of Rights,
of civil rights and civil liberties. And so there were
a number of, you know, court cases that sprung out
of um, you know, this movement. There was a case
called Panagocus Vitari another Juliana Panagoucus was another PMR member
(01:28:56):
co plaintiff in that case. And you know, is it
a case against the army that you know, we we
waged and brought up to the Ninth Circuit Court of
Appeals and you know, eventually lost and and it could
have brought it to the Supreme Court but didn't. But
you know, like the the other thing is like the
violation of the posse commentatous Act. It was a whole
other thing. You know, we don't have to get like
(01:29:17):
so tied up into like the legalistic thing. But like
the point, your point is valid, Like they don't care
about the laws that are already there. They'll they'll just
intentionally break them, break their own laws that they have
set up, and you know, they'll just get a slap
on the wrist because that's really all that's all that
happens to them. I think, I think, I think that's
(01:29:39):
a good note to end on. Break the law. It's fake,
it's also bad. Um. Do you two have anything you
want to plug other than that, other than you know,
encouraging people to break the cage your local port. Yeah, yeah,
I mean I I think it's you know, I guess
(01:30:01):
just encourage people to do as you know. It sounds
like what we're doing by having us on the show.
And like there are some in our very recent history, um,
you know, movements and winds that we all as activists
today can still learn from. And I think part of that, um,
you know, I don't want to call us elders because
(01:30:21):
we're not that old, but like one part of that
is like making sure like our movements are still like
a multi generational and like we we learned from each
other and also as as Juliana and I did, like
I mentioned earlier, like we learned from the movements of
the past, sts, the Black Panthers, the Black Freedom Movement, etcetera. Um,
(01:30:43):
but there's a lot that you know, these these struggles
I think have to offer us today. All Right, thank
thank you, Thank you both for talking coming down and
talking with us. You're for having us, Thank you. Well,
this is this is when it could happen here. Uh
find us at happened here pod on Twitter, Instagram, and
(01:31:05):
the rest of our stuff is that close on media
at the same somewhat accursed social media places. I don't
know why I'm saying somewhat, They're just accursed. Yeah, see
you next time whenever. That is what's up, guys. I'm
(01:31:27):
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Brandon and Kelly's first kiss to shouting Donna Martin graduates,
you have an amazing memory. You remember everything about the
entire ten years that we filmed that show, and you
(01:34:17):
remember absolutely nothing of the ten years that we filmed
that show. Listen to nine O two one OMG on
the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you
get your podcasts. Welcome back to it could happen here,
the show about things not being great and maybe trying
(01:34:39):
to make them better. UM, I'm Robert Evans. Uh. This
week we got we have a special, little, little little
episode for you. UM, I'm gonna sit down and talk
with Lucas Herndon. Um. Lucas, you are from New or
you live in New Mexico at least, um, and you
wanted to talk to me a bit about some stuff
that's going on in your school boards. We just did
a two harder on fascist attempts to kind of take
(01:35:02):
over and dominate school boards around the country, and you've
got some personal experience with that, so I wanted to
kind of just turn this over to you to start
us off. Yeah, thanks for Robert, thanks for having me
on the show. UM. Yeah, my name is Lucas and
I live in Las Cruces, New Mexico, which is in
the southern part of the state. Were close to the
border for people that are interested. UM, and yeah, like
(01:35:23):
you know that my experience had happened last week is
sort of the quintessential. It could happen here. Yeah exactly,
lu LUs cruses. UM. Politically speaking, is actually a very
progressive little time. I mean, in general New Mexico has
been for what you know, however you consider the progressive
(01:35:45):
or not. Is has been blue for quite a while.
Is in terms of like voting like it's not it's
not like Texas politically at least, right that's yeah exactly. Yeah,
we voted for we voted for Bush the first time,
but have voted blue every elect since two thousan four.
Like federally, so in my little stretch of the of
(01:36:05):
the state, our congressional district has been read. But the
city of Los Cruces, which is the like where the
biggest city in the southern part of the state, where
the second biggest city in the state. UM, our city
council has not only been democratic, but like progressively democratic.
UM we have UM as of this recent election. You know,
(01:36:25):
from the beginning of November, we now have an all
female city council. UM. There is at least we have
UM one one if not too trying to think. Sorry,
Currently there are two UM folks on the city council
have immigrated from Mexico in their life. UM, one will
still be on. One is now running for Congress. Um
(01:36:49):
we have UM. The school board that currently is sitting
is generally progressive, and the one we just elected, we
just elected our first openly queer person onto that school board. UM.
Our little group of of legislators that go up to
Santa Fe every year is very progressive. So again, just
to kind of reiterate, like Las Cruises, New Mexico, pretty
(01:37:09):
progressive little place. And yet at the school board meeting
last week, UM totally dominated by a public attendance of
very far right extremists, UM, spouting all kinds of nonsense
about all kinds of things. So yeah, it was pretty
well yeah, and this, I mean, this has happened. This
happened in Portland, Oregon, too, which is also famously I
(01:37:31):
don't know, I wouldn't call Portland politics progressive but solidly democratic.
And the school board meeting gets taken over by by
far right activists. This is a yeah, So when did
you kind of first become aware of this? Well? So,
um it was it was a weird convergence of my
personal and my and my private or I'm sorry, my
(01:37:52):
personal and my professional life where I UM, I work
for an organization called progress Now in Mexico, so it's
like do progressive politics for a living, but UM and
a colleague who works for the a c LU here
had asked if I would go and help lend support
to this gender inclusion policy that the school board was
(01:38:13):
going to be UM commenting on. They weren't voting on
it that day. It was what's called the first reading,
and she asked if I could go and if I could,
you know, just speak, and I was like, yeah, absolutely,
be happy too. So I was gonna go and and
talk about this in a i'm sorry professional capacity. And
then that day UM, as like before I went to that,
(01:38:34):
my daughter, who's in middle school, texted me a picture
a bunch of kids had on Monday of of last week,
which was like trans Awareness Week or Transvisibility Week. Some
kids had shown up wearing trans flags and pride flags
on that Monday. The following day, that Tuesday, some kids
showed up wearing UM thin blue line flags. In in
(01:38:57):
response like indirect response, UM, and in my daughter and
you know, my daughter is aware enough to know what
that means. So she texted me and I was like,
I can't believe this ship and I was like I know.
Um so then I'm like right. So then I'm like, okay, well,
now I want to go speak about this gender inclusion
bill or policy personally right like now like has impacted me. Um.
(01:39:19):
So I show up at you know, about an hour
before the meeting is supposed to start. Because the third
thing that kind of happened was that I, um, I am,
I'm on like a bunch of mailing lists because of
my job. And sure enough, the local gop um, who
is not very active because again they kind of lose
all the time, they sent out a like come show
(01:39:40):
up at this thing, you know email. So I showed
up early, thinking okay, well I want to see if
there's going to be something. And at first I was like, oh, like,
I don't think they showed up. I don't think that
they turned out that's good. But it turns out they
were all like hiding in their cars so that they
could like swarm the building at once, and so then
like a about half an hour before the meeting, they
(01:40:01):
all walked in at once and like I was already
sitting inside the room and they all came in at once,
and they took over all the chairs. They was standing
room only. Um to the point where like the there
was a bunch of f A kids that were there
that was supposed to be recognized for you know, f
f A something or other, and like they had to
kick some people out so that they weren't violating the
(01:40:23):
fire code. Um that's how many. Yeah, So anyway, that's
kind of how it all. That's the setting for where
this all happened. Um. It turns out that at the
same meeting there was gonna be a policy discussion on
a different policy that had to do with New Mexico's
revision of Social Studies standards. UM. And of course that
(01:40:44):
got everybody hot and bothered about so called c RT,
which isn't a thing. But so like they were there,
but I mean, but the folks that showed up to speak,
I mean, they were all over the place. They were
talking about critical race theory, they were talking about the
gender Inclusion Bill, and like trans violent the myth of
trans violence and um. But then of course, like like
(01:41:04):
COVID protocols and all kinds of I mean just again
like way out their stuff. Um and actually kind of funny.
I was listening to Knowledge Fight this morning and uh,
Jordan Dan really hit on it that like they have
just figured out that these are places they can go
and yell and like no one, you know, like school
board people aren't gonna like they're all just these are
(01:41:25):
all just like teachers, like retired teachers who are on
these school boards, and they're like they're not there to
just you know, have these like whatever discussions, so they're
not gonna you know, they just like let these people yell,
and they did. So anyways, it got it got heated,
uh pretty quickly because I mean again, these people just
like go off and they get they railed themselves up
and those lots of applause and anyway, that's kind of
(01:41:46):
how it all started, I guess, or that's what it was.
And I mean, has has there have you noticed kind
of any sort of mobilization in the community now that
this has happened, because it seems like the first ones
of these at least always take everybody by surprise. People
are not you You're still not really used to school
board meetings being um shall I say interesting? Um, certainly important,
(01:42:06):
but like not a thing that you have to really
be concerned about for the most part. And that's that's changing.
Have you seen the community kind of start to adapt
to that. Yeah, you know, since so you know, I
put some content out on my you know, local Twitter,
um and and and um got some traction there thanks
to sort of your retweet, I think. But um, but
(01:42:28):
then the biggest thing was that kind of going back
to what had happened at my daughter's school, that progress
that got worse, if you will. The following day, the
Wednesday of last week, some kids showed up in an
actual Confederate stars and bars flag, um, which is yeah,
that's nuts. Famed Confederate state New Mexico. But you know Messia,
(01:42:54):
New Mexico, which is right down the road was it
was the capital of the Confederate territory. But yeah, but
it wasn't a state at that point. It was not
a state. And I'm not aware of were their battles
in New Mexico. And I know we had some in
like further south Texas than you would think, but I
was not there of any. There's a couple there was
one of famously up north called the Battle of Loureetta
(01:43:17):
and then um and then there was one here where
I live. Wasn't a battle, it was a bunch of
Confederates got um stranded and super drunk. And then I
couldn't cross the desert fast enough, so they got stranded
up in the mountains at a place called Baylor Canyon.
And then they get to the top and like the
North was just sitting there like waiting for them and
was like, well, you're captured. Now, we'll see. That's clearly
(01:43:41):
that's some history worth celebrating right there. Yeah, I think
that the biggest, like one of the scariest but biggest
things is like and this goes towards that this is
a slight tangent, but like the social studies revision, for instance,
in the state of New Mexico. Uh, there are two
paragraphs in our history but about the Gaston purchase. Um
(01:44:03):
like I live in the chunk that is the guest
and purchase and um like the guests and Purchase is
like James Gaston was a notorious racist who left the
South and took all of his railroad money went to
California and Mexico, lobbying hard, using his influence and money
to try to create a slave state in Baja in Mexico,
(01:44:26):
Like that's what he was trying to do. And like
that part of the that part of the context of
why the guests and Purchase even happened is like totally
left out of history books. And it's like, if anywhere
should be taught, it should be taught in the place
that is called the Guests and Purchase when it comes
to the United States. So anyway, just a little tangent
there why it's important to have context in history. Um
(01:44:49):
so sorry going back to my daughter's school and these
kids wearing the stupid stars and bars so um that. So,
like I went and spoke to the assistant principle and
was like, so I understand that your answer to this
was to ban all flags and he was like and
he was like yeah, yeah, yeah, because they're causing a
disruption to education. And I was like, yeah, but I
(01:45:12):
you know, I think I feel like you're giving a
false equivalency to like, you know, gender and and pride
acknowledgement to flag. Yeah. It's it's I mean, it's this constant.
This has happened in a couple of places, including a
town in Oregon where it's like this is sort of
the the centrist and kind of the right wing solution
to this is just that like, well, if if kids
(01:45:32):
can't wear racist hate flags, then gay kids can't wear
a flag that says that their existence is valid. Uh,
you know, because those are the same thing. Yeah. Yeah,
it's frustrating. It is frustrating. So that was not my
favorite thing. Um. And so then the culmination of that
this week was that my daughter's social studies teacher, who
(01:45:55):
had allowed the kids in her class to make little
paper flags after the real flags were banned, um, was
fired Jesus Christ. And because it's a personnel matter, no
one is willing to tell me more. I've I've called
the president of the school school board, who actually, in
all fairness, he doesn't actually probably have that much sway
(01:46:16):
over these kinds of things. I would imagine that happened
at a level a level that was not his. But yeah, yeah,
but I mean, but I but I have anyway, So
I did call him. I also called the school and
got very little information from them obviously, so you know
who knows. But again, like that's how it was perceived
from the kids in her class. Um, And that's so
(01:46:38):
like what we know happened, is that we know that
after the flags got banned, she let kids make flags
out of paper and hang them up, and by Friday
she was gone. So like not a great response, no,
not not not ideal. Yeah yeah, so anyway, that's kind
of where we left at. But I guess maybe what
maybe what I should say to get back to your
(01:46:59):
original question, which is to say, like, have we seen
a mobilization that Yeah? Like so I learned the newspaper
the reporter who that teacher like a couple of weeks ago,
had actually been in the newspaper because she had also
like um, she she spearheaded this like response like a
support like a girl who wore her job to school
(01:47:22):
had been bullied, and like when news got around in
the school, like the like the majority of the student
body and this teacher like went up and above out
of their way to make her feel welcome and like
walk her to her class, and like it got kind
of viral on local TikTok. So like this teacher got
quoted in the newspaper. So I like called them, I
(01:47:43):
called the report. I tweeted the newspaper and I was like, like,
you guys know that the teacher who was in like
startlet in your article is fired for allowing kids to
vote their thoughts on about these flags things right, And
they were like, no, we didn't know, and I was like,
you should probably find so, So, you know, I don't
know where we're gonna be at now. The next reading
for the gender Inclusion policy is UM December, so we've
(01:48:08):
got a couple of weeks before that next school board meeting. UM.
I think that on my end, like there's gonna be
some local organizing to try to get some better, more
inclusive voices to be a part of things. UM. I
don't you know, I don't know what the interim will hold, um,
because it's like, you know, it's the holidays and there's
a lot going on and Kyle Rittenhouse and both Black Better.
(01:48:31):
I mean, there's like, you know, there's always a million
things happening, so it'll you know, there will have to
be some drum beating to like get people to show
up to that. But on the other hand, I think
with some of the momentum we have and I think
people will show up in Mass for the fourteenth UM
in support at least this is the kind of community
that in general we have shown up and shown out
(01:48:53):
to support you know, these kinds of issues in the past.
But I do think that up until now people felt
for pretty asleep about it. Yeah, I mean, and hopefully
you do see the kind of response you're expecting. Can
you walk me through sort of how the kind of attempts,
like you talked about getting the local media aware of
what had happened to that teacher, Um, how are people like,
(01:49:15):
what does the actual organizing effort look like on the ground, Like,
how are you trying? How are you and others trying
to get the word out so that you know there's
a response to this. Yeah, so I think that, Um,
the first thing is is that there was there was
a problem with the way that the school board handled
(01:49:37):
public comment that first time. In an attempt to help
limit their own sort of exposure to some of the
toxic stuff they knew was coming their way, they had
they had instituted a limit on public comment. Um, you
had to show up by a certain time and fill
(01:49:57):
out these little pieces of paper saying that you were
there to comment about some thing, and if you weren't there,
then you couldn't sign up. And the problem was was
that all these like old white male retirees who are
sitting around listening to Alex Jones all day. They had
nothing better to do than show up to this meeting
at three o'clock in the afternoon, whereas a bunch of
for instance, teachers, students, parents, um, they were busy because
(01:50:21):
they were in school or like picking their kids up
from school. UM. So I think one of the things
that we're going to try to do is get public
comment ahead of time, and we're gonna try to like
bombard the not bombard that's that's a violent word. But
we're gonna try to like just make sure that UM
voices from the community that hadn't been represented are represented
(01:50:41):
and sent to the school board ahead of time. UM.
I think we're gonna try to go and save physical
space ahead of time for those of us that can write.
For those of us that can will go and we'll
try to save physical space. And we did learn that
even if they keep that policy for the little forms
we can UM, we can actually give that. I'm we
can fill out other people's names, right, So we're gonna
(01:51:02):
try to like make sure that we have better voices.
That was one of the things. If you listen to
the recording of what I said at that meeting. UM.
I asked the school board president if it's possible for
me to yield my time because it had literally been
like a dozen white men out there spouting nonsense. And
then I get up there and I'm like, yeah, hey, UM,
we've heard from enough white men. Can we have like
(01:51:24):
a member of the trans community or one of the
women of color who are here to talk about this, um,
but couldn't get here in time? And they're legal team
was like, oh no, like you didn't sign up in
time or whatever. So UM, but it turns out we
could have put their names down ahead of time. So
we're gonna try to organize that thing so that people
can show up and save you know, physical space. UM.
And then UM, I think the other thing too is
(01:51:47):
to try to involve some other local elected officials from
the county and city level, because again, we have these
really amazing progressive candidates who have come from all walks
of life, including immigrants and members of you know, lgb
t q A community. UM. So having them come and
speak in their official capacity UM, I think will carry
(01:52:08):
a lot of weight um for the both for the
school board but also just for the public to hear
from those voices. Yeah, where are these like have you
have you gotten any kind of research on where the
people showing up are coming from? Are these like folks
within your community or these people coming from kind of
outlying areas um to swarm these meetings? Like is there
(01:52:28):
is there kind of an active research contingent. I mean,
that's part of what I do. It's part of part
of my job with Progress now in Mexico. My my
title is Energy Policy Director. I usually spend most of
my day talking about oil and gas stuff. However, I've
been doing this job long enough that before I became
that person, I was actively researching and tracking a lot
(01:52:50):
of white supremacy activity in the in the state, especially
along the border, some of the border militia stuff a
couple of years back. So in that regard, I knew
and I knew a number of these folks. A lot
of them do live in the city. But so our
our county is considered rural by the census, even though
we're a city of a hundred thousand people. But we're
(01:53:10):
a big county. So there's there's two people here, so um,
so there's you know, it's it's hard to tell how
many people may or may not have lived in, for instance,
the public school district. But what I can tell you,
like hands down, is that of those dozen folks that
spoke before I did, like, there's no way that at
least I mean, maybe one or two of them had
(01:53:31):
kids that could have gone through the Las Cruces public
school system, but like the majority of them far and away,
like either aren't from here at all, or you know,
they've lived here for a long time, but they are
They are not active parents or even grandparents of kids
that live and we'll go to school in this in
this district. They're just they're just agitated right wingers. Yeah,
(01:53:51):
And it's how does this all tie in? Because New
Mexico has had I think it's kind of been on
the back burner in terms of like national attention. But
y'all have had some really significant dust stops, not just
with you know, the border militias. For years there have
been violent um acts and even murders as the result
of that stuff going on. But like during last year's
the protest over George Floyd's murder, y'all had some really ugly,
(01:54:15):
who's shall we say, dueling rallies were like right wingers
shot at people, um and and some really some nasty situations.
I'm wondering, are like those folks, like, are you seeing
that kind of organization being brought into the school board meeting?
Or is this just kind of bubbling up as part
of the same stew it is. Yeah, there, it's loosely
(01:54:37):
affiliated for sure. Um And And the crossover, the crossover
is hard to tell. Depend I mean, what am I
trying to say? There's there is crossover. It's hard to
tell how on purpose it is or sort of the
fact that this is like a small population community states, right.
So what I what I mean by that is that
(01:55:00):
some of the some of the physical white supremacists who
showed up last year at one of our um BLM
support you know George Floyd related peaceful protests, who they
showed up at a parking lot across the street, you know, armed,
long guns, tech vests, all that kind of stuff. Who
(01:55:22):
that those were the folks that when I when I
went and filmed them and put them on blast to
to try and sort of out them as best we
possibly could, or at least identify them. Um, they came
back and docked me as and then went after a
number of my colleagues up north in Albuquerque. That was
about a week before there was the there was a
(01:55:44):
shooting of a of a UM anti fascist protester in Albuquerque,
and and it was during sort of all of that
stuff that I was like trying to talk about all
this out loud, um and got tied into a few
more other anti FASCI voices in the state. So since
then we've all been kind of working together. Um. We
found each other on Twitter, thankfully. And so so what
(01:56:07):
it seems like is is that like the folks that
showed up to the UH school board meeting were what
I'll call usual suspects, like politically active old you know,
right wingers. That being said, Um, in that room, there
were a number of people that I've identified as showing
(01:56:28):
up to anti vax rallies, a number of the Trump
train rallies that happened last year before the election, and
at least one person who I recognized as being I
have never seen carry firearm, but like has been at
rallies where people were carrying firearms and that kind of thing.
(01:56:48):
Um in response to these you know, in response to
like peaceful protests. So there is crossover for sure. Where
do you see this going, Like, because you've been kind
of paying attention to this for a while, not just
the school board stuff, but just kind of the general
problem of right wing UM organizing in your area, Like
where do you where do you see this heading within
(01:57:08):
kind of the context of New Mexico. Well, I mean,
so we haven't really talked about this, but like, so, well,
while here in Los Cruces, we did really well, um
during the November election in terms of our school board
to be re elected a really good progressive school board
president and two new good progressive candidates, including, like I said,
(01:57:30):
the first you know, queer openly queer person. So that's amazing. However,
up in Albuquerque, Uh, they lost seats to some of
these far right wing UM candidates and UM, so the
Albuquerque school board is UM not UM not looking as
good politically. So, I mean, so on the like, I
(01:57:52):
guess what I'd say is on the soft end, what
I expect is more continued pressure in sort of the
UM the way these things are supposed to happen, which
is to say, like continued presence of the right wing
folks at meetings, yelling, taking up space, UM slowing things
down running for office when the time comes, you know,
(01:58:13):
those kinds of things I see. Um, I guess I
wouldn't be surprised though, if um, if I if there
were further escalation of things, UM in a you know,
in the way we've seen other places, in terms of
some sort of you know, an armed response or somebody
showing up. Um. You know, in New Mexico's an open
(01:58:33):
carry state, and so people can walk around with guns
all the time. Um. And and you know, I mean
that's the other thing too, is like, while I didn't
see anybody with an open carried firearm at the school
board meeting, there were guys wearing like, you know, Vortex
Optics brand hats, thin blue line shirts, a guy with
that like a Remingtons shirt, you know. And and like
I don't regret anybody from gun culture. I'm you know,
(01:58:54):
I'm a lefty with a gun. So it's like I
get gun culture. But like when you show up in
those things and then those spaces with that kind of
yeah you're making a point yep. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're
you're you're not Yeah, I get that. Um, have you
is there some kind of have you seen like any
(01:59:14):
kind of butting left wing armed response, like, is there
do you guys have like an organized group of folks
who have been showing up? Um when there are armed
protests in the area. UM, I mean, I always have
my gear with me. Um, I've got I've got a
ceramic plate, I've got my you know, rifle and pistol.
I I am a member of a number of different groups.
(01:59:36):
I've been a member of the s R A, UM,
I've I've worked with some of the armed groups up
in Albuquerque. So down here there hasn't been a ton
But um, I've got a I've got what I'll call
a luciffiliation with a number of folks that I would
trust to be armed if need be. Thankfully that hasn't
happened yet. Thankfully, the one big, big protests that happened
(01:59:57):
here in Las Cruces that I was sort of nervous
about out and I did have my gear for remained
peaceful and and we you know, we took over some
streets and blocks traffic for a couple hours, and there
was never any violent response from anybody other than maybe
like one car at one point trying to push through
and car got banged on. And that was about it,
but um so so, so to answer your question, like, yes,
(02:00:20):
there are those of us that are left wing and armed,
and there are those of us that have been able
to show out if we needed to. Thankfully we haven't
had too at this point. Yeah. Well all right, I
think that's everything I had to ask. Is there anything
else you wanted to to get to to make sure
to talk about today? Well, I just I mean, I
would be I would be um not doing the best
(02:00:43):
of my job if I didn't mention the fact that,
like one of the so one of the talking points
of the right wing here and our school board is
that New Mexico's education system is is fifty feet in
the country. And I the the my assumption is that
that has to do with DC's public schools being um
(02:01:03):
so it's not a great Yeah, that's not a great record.
It's not a it's not a great record. And um
and and I and I you know, as a parent
of a kid who's in the public schools, I uh,
you know, I cannot ignore that. Right. That's so that's
a legitimate talking point. But the but the thing that
they want to bring it about is that you know
there you know, it's because we're trying to be gender inclusive.
(02:01:26):
It's because we're trying to like you know, teach kids
about like actual history that happened whatever, UM. And the
reality is it's because our education system is, unlike most places,
funded by the oil and guests industry and not by
like our communities. UM. And so like, you know, eighteen
(02:01:48):
months ago, oil prices crashed, right and the State of
New Mexico had to have an emergency special session for
a legislature to figure out how we were gonna like
fund things like cops and schools and like whatever. UM.
And then like now you know, oil and gas is
like gangbusters and where you know, record prices and like
the State of Mexico has this like surplus budget. But
(02:02:11):
the thing is is that like that that extra money
that we're gonna get this time doesn't make up for
the like cyclical bad you know way that we fund
our schools. So I just want to like tie in that,
like like all of these things tie in together, right,
Like we can't talk about education into Mexico without talking
about the oil and gas funding and so anyway, so
(02:02:33):
like because that's my you know, that's part of the
reason why I was going to go talk about this
stuff at the on my professional level is that like
I get to talk about education as an as an
energy expert in the state of New Mexico because energy
and education or so intertwined here UM and Like when
(02:02:53):
you have literal like Cooke Brothers founded UM and and
UM like monetarily supplied think tanks in the state of
New Mexico who are pushing out this kind of propaganda
and encouraging people so that there's a group called the
Rio Grand Foundation and like another one called Power of
the Future uh PT Power the Future in New Mexico.
(02:03:16):
Like both of those organizations are like tied to the
Cooke Brothers because the Kope Brothers are tied to oil,
and they're pushing these right wing talking points UM and
it's all part and parcel of just like you know,
clouding the information space. That's what they want to do.
They want to have they want to have the new
cycle dominated with things like CRT and gender inclusion studies
(02:03:38):
to you know, to tie up things like school boards
so that so that the electorate is busy talking about
these things while meanwhile they're just raking in money hand
over fist um you know, stealing our oil. So anyway,
I just that's so important to me to like make
those connections, um, especially in a state, and it's something
(02:04:00):
that a lot of people don't consider and don't think about,
and it's just really important to me that people understand that.
So yeah, UM, all right, Well, thank you so much, Lucas.
This has been I'm not gonna say fun, but certainly
enlightening and I think valuable A good a good dispatch
from you know, a fight that we we continue to
see is important here and that everybody should be paying
(02:04:23):
attention to both wherever it happens, including in Los Cruces
and around the country. UM, because they ain't given up, um,
and they can't be ignored. Um. Yeah. And that's You've
mentioned this many times over the years, but like that's
the kind of thing is that we have to show up. Um. Yeah.
We can't just let them have these spaces. UM. And
(02:04:45):
I think that this this past school board meeting was
a great example of why. UM. And and I'm I'm
really counting on a lot of my my my friends
and close you know, the folks that I have come
to love and support in this community, UM, to show
up and show out for that because that's you know,
we've been there, right we like I said, you know,
and if you look up lost Cruses politics over the
(02:05:06):
years on the news cycle, like you'll see stories about
our you know, progressive City Council and passing a living
wage and you know, being classic bags. I mean like
all these like you know, we've we've tried, we've we've
tried to be that kind of little community and and
and yet you know, these folks are still there and
they're still allowed and if we give them the space,
they will take those spaces over. So yeah, yeah, absolutely,
(02:05:29):
So thanks for having me on. Let me talk about this. Yeah,
it really means a lot, thank you for stepping up,
because it is this is the thing that's a giant
pain in the butt, um, is that everybody's got a
lot going on. Life is complicated. There's all sorts of
shipped to do in the old world. Um. But every
time these fascists and their their affiliates decide they're going
(02:05:49):
to try to take over something, you know, as busy
as people are, as exhausting as it is, you do
have to like they can't just be able to have
to do it. Like that's how they win, is they have.
They have unlimited it energy for this ship and um
if they're not like the thing that causes them to
lose energy is actually um being outnumbered and shown to
(02:06:10):
be like like like being kind of pushed out by communities. Um,
you can do it. It takes it, but it requires
people showing up. Yes, that's exactly right. So UM, I
appreciate the signal boost means a lot to me. Uh
and this, are there any local organs that people can support,
(02:06:30):
so big shout out to a group called Cafe here
in Las Cruces that works on all kinds of border
issues immigrant rights but also like workers rights and um, immigrants,
like student rights, migrant student rights. Um. They've been very
active in this for a long time. UM. And so yeah,
I definitely shout out Cafe uh here in here and
(02:06:52):
I mean all of New Mexico, but specifically it set
in New Mexico. They're doing a lot of work. And
then um uh Dreams and Action, which is part of
a NASH Network for dreamers. But um again here in
New Mexico, I've done a lot of good work. Okay, yeah,
thank you very much, Lucas. All right, UM, and that
is going to do it. For us here, it could
happen here. Um. Until next time, go uh, I don't know,
(02:07:18):
hang out at a school board meeting. Go take up
space from fascists. Yeah, go take up space from fascists
in general. The Black Effect Presents features honest conversations and
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(02:08:28):
Union Hall as his male life and death. I thank
these peeps of planning to kill Dr King. On April four,
Dr Martin Luther King was shot and killed in Memphis.
A petty criminal named James Earl Ray was arrested. He
pled guilty to the crime and spent the rest of
his life in prison. Case closed right, James L. Ray
(02:08:50):
was upon for the official story. The authorities would parade
all we found a gun the James el Ray bought
in Birmingham the jill Dr King, Except it wasn't the
gun that killed Dr. King. One of the problems that
came out when I got the Ray case was that
some of the evidence, as far as I was concerned,
(02:09:12):
did not match the circumstances. This is the MLK tapes.
The first episodes are available now. Listen on the I
Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Welcome back to It Could Happen Here, the podcast about
(02:09:35):
you know, the problems and stuff that are happening and
how to maybe make them better. And speaking of the
problems that are happening and how to make them better.
Garrison Davis, Hi, Hello, that's so that's a weird segue.
I wanted to introduce this video telling you guys that
I just watched a movie that you should watch because
it's pretty rad and it ties into all the things
(02:09:58):
we talked about. It's all the Pizza Gate massacre. And
I didn't know it is a micro budget under a
hundred thousand dollars film. It looks great. They did a
really good job with the budget they had. About Um,
an Alex Jones employee type person and a mass shooter
who go looking for UH to try to solve the
(02:10:19):
Pizza Gate thing. Oh boy, it is a an actually
very nuanced and I think deeply knowledgeable commentary on specifically
like the Texan conspiracy scene. Like it's a like film.
They're Alex Jones character who's played by a woman in this.
They film in the original studio that he recorded in
(02:10:39):
back in them. Like the filmmaker who did this gets
like the culture in the area and kind of the
relationship between the people who get radicalized and do ship
and the people who just profit from it. It's a
very good Um it's it is, by the way, a
grindhouse horror movie. Like whatever you're expecting, it's not that
it is, Like it is an incredible lee gory grindhouse movie. Um.
(02:11:02):
But it's it's pretty it's pretty fun. What does that
have to do with? Nothing at all? But it has
a lot to do with it could happen here, because
all right, well anyway, um, this is that could happen
here a show about how things are kind of falling
apart and how we can then maybe slow that down
or prepare for an uncertain future. Um about cops, right,
(02:11:27):
I mean, I mean we are we are planning an
episode on Washington State Patrol. Um. But no, this is
episode is a different a different kind of cop about
just as useful. Um. So in the first time episodes
of The Daily Show or season two, which if you
haven't listened to you should definitely listen to those that
(02:11:47):
as they kind of act as our shows manifesto of sorts.
But nevertheless, the first time episodes of the scripted Daily
Show put forth like a more like realistic, non sugarcoated
look at what climate change will bring if we continue
on our current course. Um. But not just looking at
the obvious environmental and extreme weather effects, but also like
(02:12:09):
the socio political effects. So when I was helping Robert
out with the research for those episodes, some of the
best indicators of like the mainstream conception of the scientific,
environmental and political status of climate change was at the
United Nations past uh I I PCC reports, which is
the inter Governmental Panel on Climate Change and the COP conferences.
(02:12:34):
So during the first few weeks of this past November
of November one, the twenty six annual COP Conference took
place in Glasgow. Um And yeah, the name of the
conference is kind of a decent indication on how useful
these things actually are. Um. But a COPS stands for
(02:12:54):
a Conference of the parties, and for almost three decades
they've been like the main international stage uh for for
countries and companies to discuss climate related information. And like
they're alleged like goals. Um. So yeah, they're a good indicator,
not unlike sometimes they do present actual good science and
(02:13:14):
like decent predictions, but they're often just like a good
indication of what kind of the mainstream people think about
what climate change is. And you know what the people
in power, how they are viewing it and how urgent
they think it's worth addressing, versus how much money they
want to spend on it. So the most notable COP
(02:13:35):
in recent memory was in Paris COP twenty one. This
is kind of where the Paris Climate Accords were born. UH.
The commitment was to aim for one point five degrees
of warming, and it was signed on by nearly all
major countries. Of course the US signed on left then
resigned on. But anyway, under the Paris Agreement, countries committed
(02:13:59):
to bring forth like a national plans UH figuring figuring
out how they would reduce their missions, but they would
do it like by themselves, and they would be called
n d c s or nationally determined contributions. And the
idea was for every five years countries would gather up
and present their current plans on the national stage. This
(02:14:20):
was what Coppy was going to be. Now it was
delayed a year because of the pandemic, but COP twenty
six was the time for countries to present their n
d c s on and for like, their updated versions
on their plans to reduce some missions. So most of
the NDCs got submitted before the conference and kind of
led the discussion of the conference. UM By like mid October, UH,
(02:14:44):
think about of the countries or states that signed onto
the Paris Agreement submitted their submitted their version of the NDCs,
and and and those countries about a hundred and forty
of them are responsible for the majority of global emissions.
So that that that was what kind of led up
to two copy from happening UM. And the the overarching
(02:15:09):
aim of the conference, according to President UM, when I
try to pronounce this name um outlock sharma UM. He
said that the the the idea for the conference was
to like keep alive the Paris Agreements target to keep
global temperatures from rising above one point five degrees celsius
(02:15:35):
above pre industrial levels. So that was that was like
the goal of the conference going into it was to
kind of keep this idea of the Paris Climate Accords
of still being achievable. UM. And that's and that's not
what happened at the top twenties UM. Now it's it's
it's important to kind of point out that the commitments
laid out in the Paris Accords don't come close to
(02:15:58):
limiting global warming to one point five degrees as it
is said in the accords. Like like like they they acknowledge that, UM,
which is what the kind of NDCs are for. But
even still those are just non those are those are
just non binding agreements. But anyway, so the cord, the
Accords and the restrictions and goals, and well, there's no
restrictions as just goals. The goals and them don't don't
(02:16:19):
come close to limiting to one point five degrees. And
we have already most likely shot way past the point
of that being in any way achievable. UM. But you know,
we can still limit things from being megabad like four degrees.
But we are we are already on a certain path.
So in in asking nations to set tougher targets by
(02:16:40):
next year for cutting climate warming emissions, the new agreement
at Glasgow acknowledge that the commitments that were in place
are inadequate, and if rigorously followed, the the new national
pledges so include the stuff including the Paris Accords and
the new Glasgow packed um and all of the individual
like uh N d c s. If all of those
(02:17:02):
are followed, the world is now on track for a
two point one to two point four degrees celsius of
warming by the end of the century. And that is
the lower estimate, as we'll see later on. Higher estimates
were also umm shown at at the at the Glasgow conference,
so we have the The idea was to hopefully keep
(02:17:23):
it to one point five and already we're pushing that
back by almost a whole a whole degree if we're
going to like two point four. Um So that that's
that's like the main one of the main impacts there
is like just totally kissing one point five goodbye, like
know what, no one even is going to view that
as a possibility at this point. Huh. So, I don't
(02:17:48):
know how many people were still looking at that as
really a goal. Apparently some people of the planners of
copy apparently were. Um but I mean, I know for us,
we've we've been aware of that, and I'm not sure
how you know, really what mainstream liberals were thinking before this,
but hopefully at the very least, maybe Cup twenty six
(02:18:09):
made them realize that maybe it's there's a there's kind
of it's it's maybe maybe worse than what you were thinking. Um.
But so there are other things did happen at at
Glasgow that are that are worth looking into. Um So,
the main quote unquote achievements of the Glasgow deal besides
like revisiting the emissions cutting plants to try to keep
(02:18:31):
stuff down, which of course we're you know, not not
not met in shot way past. Um but there we
also had the first ever inclusion of a commitment to
limit coal use. Now, the way phrasing is gonna work here,
it's gonna be really interesting because the reason why this
deal got passed is because some very specific shifts in
(02:18:51):
their phrasing around coal use. UM. The other thing that
caught that cut twenty six tried to do was increase
financial help or so called developing countries and provide funds
and assistance for like climate disasters. So like when when
like extreme weather events happen, have a set of funds
UH set aside to help countries in these disasters. Now
(02:19:14):
those are that that is a good idea, But as
we'll see later, the way Cops twenty six actually did
it is not actually doing it. It's like they're they're
they're pushing there, they're postponing this kind of goal, but
they're just making it a prospect. But back to coal. So,
the Glasgow Climate Pact was the first ever climate deal
to explicitly planned to reduce coal, which was a one
(02:19:37):
one of the worst. Like fossil fuels for four greenhouse
gasses UM and and and cole really can be phased out.
Coal can be phased out by UM electric power really easily.
It's it's it is the easiest one. UM. It's it's
way easier to phase out coal than it is uh
natural gas or other um or sorry, let's see the
(02:20:01):
the the other main one. There's three. There's a coal,
natural gas, what's what's the last one? Regular gas? I
guess so yeah, yeah, petroleum based stuff. UM. Yeah, but
so the coals because coal is you mostly used for heat, um,
electrically generated heat is way is way easier than all
(02:20:22):
than those other two. So coal coal really should be
phased out as soon as possible. UM. But the commitments
to phase out coal that was introduced in earlier negotiations
UM led to some fighting, specifically among India and China,
who were in in strong opposition to the phrasing and
the actual constraints of of the deal UM. And a
(02:20:47):
lot of this is like the argument that like, if
these countries are still developing, it's not fair to them
to remove this resource when other developed nations had it,
so that that that's that's the thing. We see that
argument a lot around, Like climate changed to of as
like oh, you you're just gonna stop other countries from
developing because you you you got to get to this
certain point of being a successful like wealthy nation um.
(02:21:11):
And like you know with all this like industrial development
on the back of fossil fuels and stuff. But then
now you're going to remove that opportunity for other countries.
Now there is there is um a lot of stuff
around like the growth frameworks that address this issue and
specifically try to try to get um fossil fuel savings
like a decrease in emissions and be able to use
(02:21:33):
some of those gains to assist countries in getting stuff
set up to a decent standard of living. UM. But
you know that that is going to be addressed on
a whole other scale around like capitalism and and how
countries intervened in other countries. That that's part of a
bigger political question. But anyway, UM, Indian China did not
like that, did not like the cold deal. UM. So
(02:21:54):
in the end, the countries did agree to phase down
coal rather than these out coal. So that that that
is the phrase that they ended up using is phased down. UM.
The people weren't super happy about this. Uh. The Cutty
six president um Alec Sharma said that he was deeply
(02:22:15):
sorry for how these events unfolded, and like, focus on
coal is good. It's because it's responsible for about of
annual CEO two emissions. But also like just focusing on
coal leaves of really big lack of discussion on oil
and gas, Like there's like those are also like very
bad and arguably we should be focusing on those a lot,
(02:22:36):
Like those are those are the main ones we should
get we should get rid of coal, Yes, but if
we just focus on that, then there's a lot of
other stuff going on. So that is that is a
lot of coal talk. Uh you know who also uses coal?
Our sponsors, Yeah, we're entirely sponsored by Joe Manchin um
(02:23:00):
big friend of the pod. Thank you, thank you for
always having our back. Joe. Anyway, here's some ads and
we are back talking about copy and there is there
is a decent there's stuff. Stuff did happen. So and
I know it is going to be more of a
sign C in Numbers episode, but it is worth actually
(02:23:20):
figuring out what what happened there because everyone just kind
of had the perception like, oh, copy was a failure,
because yeah it was, um, but it's it's it is
good to know what actually is going on at things
like this because if we're going to get some kind
of you know, liberal change, this is where it's going
to happen. So it is good to keep an eye
on what these types of people are thinking. So we
(02:23:44):
we left off on talking about how their plans to
face down coal, and there was like a general lack
of focus on oil and gas. And it is interesting,
um if you So there was a group of actor
bests led by this uh I think I think it's
like an NGO called Global Witness. UM assessed the participant
(02:24:08):
list published by the u N at the start of
the meeting, and they found that there was five hundred
and three people with links to fossil fuel interests who
were like accredited members of the Climate's Summit and so,
and they were like delicates. So cop twenty six delegates
associated with fossil fuels outnumbered national delegate numbers for every
(02:24:30):
other country. So there were more people representing fossil fuel
interests than there were representing any individual country. So you're thinking,
maybe maybe I wonder why this stuff is not going
too good. Oh, it's because it's being run mostly by
fossil fuel companies. That's that's uh huh, that's an interesting,
(02:24:53):
interesting little thing there. Um yeah. So the the other
the other kind of notable thing about is uh it
uh it. It led to a quote unquote breakthrough in
the rules for government led carbon markets. So this is
the thing that the neoliberals are really excited about, is
(02:25:15):
this idea of carbon markets, because it's a way to
make more money kind of off of removing carbon and
just to create a lot of red tape and bureaucracy
around this idea of lowering emissions. So, I guess one
of the ways to describe carbon markets if you're kind
of unfamiliar with this idea, is that countries that do
(02:25:37):
not meet their emission reduction targets in their national climate
pledges are like penalized for this. Um so, so countries
that countries that don't meet their mission targets or or
want to just pursue like less less expansive emission cuts.
What what what this deal set out to do is
(02:25:59):
that instead of actually lowering emissions, they can purchase like
emissions reduction tokens and credits from other nations that have
cut their emissions more than the amount that they pledged.
Uh so, like by you know, moving to low carbon
energy and various stuff. So the turn of phrase that
people were using to discuss this to how you can
(02:26:22):
like purchase purchase credits to represent emissions that you didn't
cut but wanted to, is that this can potentially unlock
trillions of dollars for protecting forests, expanding renewable energy, and
other projects to combat climate change. Um. So the idea
here is that the money used to purchase these credits
(02:26:42):
is going to get put into other things that will
help fight climate change. But all of this is non
binding and speculative, and it just furthers this whole carbon
market concept, which I'm not thrilled about. Um yeah, we should,
we should do like a full episode of carbon markets.
But the thing, so I I this is, you know,
(02:27:06):
this is the thing I studied academically in college and
is incredibly important for everyone to understand that carbon markets
are fake and do not work at all. Ever one
has ever gotten where, no one's ever gotten the national
one to work, and no one's ever got an international
one to work. Uh. Implementation of carbon markets, Like China
had a big thing that they're gonna implemented carbon market. Uh,
it was fake. It didn't work. Their carbon emission still increase,
(02:27:29):
very very like how fucky carbon markets can be. So
you get carbon credits if you're a business like Tesla
that makes no emission electronic vehicles, and Tesla for a
lot of its earlier history, made a significant chunk of
its profits selling carbon credits to polluting industries and basically saying,
you guys keep polluting, we got your back. Like the
(02:27:51):
fact that we're putting electric cars out onto the street
means you guys can keep admitting at the same well,
like that's that's like literally how how kind of the
the business can work. It's it's not the best way
to fix the problem. Yeah, So there's a lot of
a lot of talk was around carbon markets, um, because
that's of course with the neo liberal establishment, neo liberal
(02:28:14):
eblishment is going to focus on because it's still is
within their kind of worldview. Um, how do we monetize
the rot? Yeah? How do we how do we make
money off of the world ending? Um? Which I guess
we're going to see a lot more of that, uh
in the next in the next few decades. Um. The
the other the other thing that they decided on is, uh,
(02:28:35):
next year, there's gonna there's gonna be again. So there's
there's they decided to procrastinate, which is just a general
theme of COP conferences is what we've been doing with
It's what everyone's been doing about permit change since forever.
So yeah, the main thing they do is decide to procrastinate.
Um So, next year there's gonna be a U N
Committee to report on progress towards delivering one billion dollar
(02:29:00):
per year in a promised climate funding. Uh. This was
after rich nations failed to deliver on the deadline four
said funds um and then financing is gonna be discussed
again in twenty four six those conferences. Um. But this
this deal left a lot of more vulnerable nations who
were going to rely on this promised funding. Uh kind
(02:29:23):
of just they just left them without things. So the
whole idea was that like, yeah, we need this funding
to help people in these and disasters and different losses
and damages and to help you know, start start making
more um renewable energy technology in lieu of doing tons
of tons of coal mining. And that's where this money
(02:29:43):
was going to get used for and it's not happening.
Um So. And this this promise was initially made at
a UN Conference on Climate Change, and we're still we're
still pushing it back year by year. So this pledge
is older than I am. Yeah, it sure is. Another
(02:30:06):
pledge me into us A nine to provide a hundred
billion dollars to emerging economies was supposed to be made.
That also was missed. Um and it was. It was
designed to help nations adapt to climate effects and make
the transition to clean energy. Um and uh. The Cops
Spring six president said that around five dred billion will
be mobilized by so cool. Thanks for saying those numbers
(02:30:32):
which mean nothing. It's fun. It's fun how you can
just talk and say things and it doesn't actually matter.
It's It's one of the things that's so frustrating about
this is trying to get a handle on, like how
how a lot of these solutions are supposed to work. So,
like one of the articles if you're trying to actually
if you're not just taking our word for it, which
you never should, and trying to research like carbon credits
(02:30:55):
and and carbon markets and like how they might work
or might help. Like one of the articles you're gonna
come across is an article in Nature dot org called
making carbon Markets Work for faster climate action. And this
is very much obviously it's pretty it's pretty recent, and
it's not at all a climate denial piece. It's it's
just kind of laying out a case for how carbon
(02:31:15):
markets could be very effective at reducing emissions. But you
have to grapple the whole time you're looking at this
with the fact that like they haven't that that global
global emissions are still shoo and they provide a number
of like options for how this could work. And it's
one of those things where I'm not going to say
(02:31:36):
it's impossible. I'm certainly not an expert on this, and
you can read through the article um if you want,
but it's it's certainly certainly think the thing you can
say right now is that carbon markets have not led
to a global decrease in emissions, because we we have
not had emissions decrease other than that little dip we
had when a covid uh did It's it's sweet little dance. Yeah,
(02:31:59):
that one month where we could actually see the sky again. Yeah,
that was pretty rad um. But yeah, there's there's I mean,
you you can check that article out for kind of
the pro carbon markets case. It all seems I Mean,
one of the things that's frustrating to me about it
is it all it's all like, yeah, here's how it
might work. If you know, everybody got on board the
(02:32:21):
Paris Climate Agreement and also all of this worked ideally,
But there's there just doesn't seem to be a lot
of I I just don't see any evidence that like
they've shown that this is actually likely to be helpful. Um.
It's more just like yeah, this this could this could
work if if we do these other things, um, which
(02:32:42):
is frustrating. That's like all all of the kind of
ship that you get at at at COP twenty six,
where it's like, yeah, I guess theoretically, if you were
to do that, or if that were to work the
way you're saying, or if that were to work with
the assumption that like all these other factors don't grow
over this period of time, than than this might help.
But we also know what's happened with emissions and global
(02:33:03):
attempts to reduce climate change, um. Which is not to
say that like like emissions in the United States, like
there have been there's been a lot that's been done
to curb emissions from the United States. Now the thing
that's often left out of like the discussion of these
different things and how they impacted our emissions is like, well,
a lot of those emissions got pushed off to other
countries that are now making the things that we were
(02:33:25):
making for I like that. That's the big thing when
people argue against the growth and they're like, no, you can.
You can still keep growing your economy while lowering emissions,
and like, yeah, one country can, but we still want
the stuff, so we're just moving it to other countries
to produce, so like we're not actually lowering it on
a global level. You can lower you can lower it
(02:33:45):
on like an individual country level, but not totally globally
because we still want to consume the thing. This is
one of the single most frustrating things about talking to
peopleball climate change is that, Okay, you know, if you
if you talk to the sort of Neiler book carbon
market people, right, if you talk about literally anything else, right,
the only thing they ever talked about is how the
entire world is inter connected, how the entire economies and connected,
(02:34:06):
how we're ward are connected than ever. And then the
moment you start talking about climate change, they go, oh, well,
it's all the individual country individual country, individual country. The
economy is not connected at all. It's all about the
individual policy makers country. It's like, no, it's not the
it's it's about like all all of the like the
the the the the the emissions are foreign direct investment driven. Right,
it's about it's a it's about's about what it's about
(02:34:28):
where investment money is going. And you cannot and you
know this, this is this is why COP and someone
is like, this is why it doesn't work. And even
though it's the only frame rate that could work, right,
you have to have an international response that has to
be coordinated, it has to be working across national lines
because again that's how the economystem works. But it doesn't
because a state's individual states can't and will not ever
(02:34:50):
solve this. And then be COP is like, okay, so
here's here's your international framework. But also we're just gonna
have you know, the actual the the the actual international
framework is going to you just essentially hair it up
by bunch of fossil fuel companies and so it's just
you know, it's it's the worst of both worlds. I mean,
it's and it you can see there's there's some kind
(02:35:11):
of acknowledgement at the fact that this is an international
problem in in like the basic idea of of carbon markets,
which includes the idea that like, um, you can companies
that that emit emit lesson don't use up their carbon
budget can like sell carbon credits and you can do
this across international lines. And like if we hold if
we hold companies to different like emission standards internationally based
(02:35:35):
on things like the Paris Climate Agreement, then that will
cause the carbon credit system to work better. Um, there's
that acknowledgement that it is an international problem. But again
I just don't I don't see I don't see evidence
that it's working, and they like none of the evidence
that I've read makes it seem like there's a very
good case that this is going to at the very least,
(02:35:57):
that this is going to provide the kind of emissions
productions that are necessary to forestall the worst case scenarios
that are coming. Um. And if we're gonna be again
to be completely intellectually honest here, we can talk about
d growth all day long. UM. I have a similar
problem with that that I do to a lot of
these the different kind of targets that copy six introduced
(02:36:20):
stuff like carbon markets, where it's like I don't I
don't see that solving the problem either. It's like a
theoretical it's it's yeah, if we were to get people
to if if we've gotten people on board with D growth,
then you've already fundamentally shifted the very nature of global
society um. And also the way in which Americans and
(02:36:41):
people in other Western nations like conceived of economics at
a fundamental level. Um. And so it's it's one thing
to say that, like, yeah, if people accepted that and
and got on board with a lifestyle that is not
based on this this kind of capitalist notion of endless growth,
of ever increasing extraction from the world in order to
(02:37:02):
create value, um, then we could we could actually stop
emitting at the kind of levels that are going to
lead to these horrible consequences. UM. The question is like,
I don't see a I don't see you you can.
I think you can argue that D growth is more
realistic in that yes, that would absolutely work, as opposed
(02:37:23):
to carbon credits and other things where it's like, well,
theoretically it might work if they do all this other stuff. Yeah,
it does. It does revolve on the cultural notion of
America and the West completely changing. Um it's a big
it's a big ask, you know, yeah, And I mean
like there is there's smaller steps, like totally like reorganizing
(02:37:44):
how cities work so we do not use cars, uh,
like like like re redoing a public transportation like sector
uh in you know, making like making like a cellar
panels and a rowable energy I required part of like
city infrastructure right there. There's a there's a lot of
ways to put just two awards that thing. But there's
not one thing we can do right because it is
(02:38:04):
in large parts of cultural change. Stuff stuff will help
with emissions, Like if we if we redesign cities around
public transportation and make it so stuff is not as
as far apart, and yeah, that that's gonna help lower emissions.
If we if we require all these other types of
renewable energy projects to be built into buildings and added
on to our current cities, and yeah, that that is
(02:38:25):
going to help lower emissions. But you know, there's there's
not one one big step that we can all do
at the same time. And I think that that's I
don't know, I'm of two minds about it. One part
of me says, that's absolutely the most intelligent way to
go about it is focusing on things like reducing the
use of like like like really all ending car culture
(02:38:47):
in cities. Yeah, because it's not even a reduction thing.
It has to be like that that has to die.
Um But we're a lot closer to that than ending
the idea of like capitalism U because they're at number
one one, because there are capitalists, very capitalist countries that
have that do not have a car culture that like
(02:39:08):
stopped that and that actually like had one at one
point and then reworked there. So that's that's and that
would Yeah, that is a significant that's probably go that
would probably lead to larger emissions reductions than any kind
of carbon credit system could ever lead to. UM. I
also and so yeah, I think that that's on an
objective level, Yeah, that's it's smart to focus on stuff
(02:39:30):
like that where you're all you are arguing for reducing growth,
but you're also arguing and for like, hey, your life
will be more pleasant if you live in a city
where you can walk everywhere and you're not at risk
of getting run down by you know, two ton trucks
anytime you crossed the street and like you're not dealing
with smog and pollution and horrible like hour and a
(02:39:52):
half long communes on these crowded nightmare highways. Um. But
it's also it's still incrementalists, you know, we we are
we are talking here, we are kind of like walking
through here, Um, all of the best incremental solutions and
and what is the most realistic of those? Um. And
I think that's fine. I think that's kind of where
(02:40:13):
we have to be because that is what's most likely
to actually happen to make the problem better. Um. But
it is we have to acknowledge it is incremental. Like
we're not We're not solving It would be very arrogant
to say, like here's how we solve this problem once
and for all, you know, I just want to I
think sometimes when you talk about stuff like deep growth,
(02:40:33):
you can get into this, you can kind of it
can come across as if you're trying to like simplify,
like and if we do this, like it will be
perfectly Like now, this would be like the hardest thing.
That's like saying we have to confix it by all
doing a revolution. It's like it's it's not okay, okay, cool. Yeah,
I mean yeah, but anyway, we have to do some
(02:40:54):
ads and then we'll be back to finish up kind
of their closing expectations on top twenty six and the
other kind of things happening in the periphery. Um here's ads. Okay,
we are back, and we're talking about kind of what
happened towards the end of twenty So we already kind
of discussed how the deal was made, what was in
the deal, what things were talked about. Um, now we're
(02:41:14):
kind of going to talk about, you know, the other
kind of closing thoughts around it. Um in in In
in the lead up to to to play six, the
United States Special Presidential Climate Envoy John Kerry, who's like
he's supposed to be like our climate guy. Um he
he also said the goal of this something it was
to it was to you know, hope that we can
(02:41:35):
limit stuff to one point five degrees. And you know,
he he called this the last best hope for the
world to get its act together. But by the time
Copter six came to the end, his language and attitude
had kind of changed. Um After after two weeks of
debate and negotiation, his his final remarks reflected the kind
of the points we've been talking about how um and
(02:41:56):
and and said like like the government energy policies curly
in place around the world are projected to result in
about two point seven degrees h celsius of warming above
pre industrial levels, and government pledges to cut climate emissions
would limit warming to two point four uh if they
are met. So that's the the Again, we're just launching
(02:42:18):
way past this like mythical fantasy of of one point
five degrees. And the other scary things is that we're
getting a lot a lot closer to large scale feedback loops. UH.
Feedback loops are things like once we have reached a
certain degree of warming, environmental effects will be triggered that
will cascade and produce like exponential growth in warming. This
(02:42:39):
is like a this it's not purely theoretical, but it
is mostly stuff that we still probably can prevent, and
we really need to get on it like a sap,
because once these things start happening, they are very hard
to reverse. One of the biggest ones that are that
are already being affected is photosynthesis by plants on land,
and how that is decreasing its ability to suck up
(02:43:00):
carbon um about of our annual carbon emissions are removed
by the air by photosynthesis um and the rest of
which are dissolved in the ocean, causing ocean acidification or
that you just hang around in the atmosphere, which causes
you know, a bigger thermal blanket. So uh, photosynthesis has
like a thermal maximum beyond which carbon can only be
(02:43:23):
taken so much of it in and then the process
which by plants give off carbon and water actually increases.
And we are already at that point in a in
a lot of places, and we are we are at
that we we achieve the warming required to get to
that point a few times throughout the past decade. So
land based carbon uptake is projected to decline by nearly
(02:43:45):
fift pcent as early as and and these effects have
not been included in any of the you know published
pathways leading to lower like lower degrees of warming um.
And again this isn't this isn't just a speculative. Like
the biggest example of this that we can like point
to is like the Amazon rainforest. How that is now
a net emitter because it is no longer sucking up
(02:44:08):
enough carbon to offset the amount of carbon and actually
shoots out, So we need to stop deforestation and keep
planting more trees essentially because that that sucks. And also
just as a general kind of indicator of the cascading
effects that are happening and we are we're still on
the path for kind of large, large scale disasters in
a lot of places around the world. UM, the it's
(02:44:32):
around nineteen of the Earth's land area is in pretty
pretty dire risk on our current emission pathway of the
Marshall Islands and all dol VI's UM, Vietnam, Southeast Asia,
Middle East, parts of North Africa, and Central America. UM. Overall,
around one third of the land humans occupied are predicted
(02:44:53):
to either drowned by spicea level rise or became or
become too hot for human life just by the end
of this century alone. So that that will cause you know,
my migration, panics and wars and all, like a whole
bunch of bad things that we can't we can limit that,
like that is something that we need to limit now,
and if we don't, it's still it's still happening. So
these are the other kind of things talked about at
(02:45:15):
the end UM. So that was kind of copy as
a whole um The one last thing I want to
mention is just how evil Facebook is. Um so kind
of kind of an aside, but um, Facebook vice president
of Global Affairs UH talked um and about Facebook's efforts
(02:45:38):
to combat climate misinformation. UM as the Glasgow somewhat began.
But as this was happening, conservative media, let's like news
Max or we're running ads on Facebook calling a glob
global warming a hoax, gaining hundreds of thousands of views,
stuff like you know Canadas so once and Daily Wire
we're spreading climate misinformation. But and you know, as as
Facebook is bragging about its ability to to combat misinformation
(02:46:01):
around climate change. UM. The UK based think tank Influence Map,
which identified misleading Facebook ads UH from several media outlets
UM around Copy also found that fossil field companies and
lobbying groups spent half a million dollars on political and
social issue Facebook ads during the summit, resulting in over
(02:46:23):
two million impressions, including content that promoted environmental effects under
what we would call like green washing, stuff like you know,
the American Petroleum Institute putting up putting an ad out
over like a natural landscape as it like touts its
efforts to tackle climate change. Um, so all all of
that kind of stuff. So I just think it's really
(02:46:44):
dumb because Facebook breaks about its ability to combat climate
misinformation as its running ads saying climate changes the hoax
and then doing generally green green washing is more common.
But still it's frustrating. Um isn't like we talked about
this in the Facebook it as it's a bastards that
dropped recently. But like the number one spreader right now
(02:47:05):
of climate disinformation on Facebook is bright Bart, which a
lot of the Facebook papers have gone on too like
the extreme lengths, Facebook executives went to keep bright Bart
as one of their like trusted news partners and continue
putting their stuff out to a huge audience because it
goes very viral. It was good for engagement on the platform,
and that's the decision. Facebook's like whatever they say, this
(02:47:26):
is like when we when we're talking about car carbon credits,
when we're talking about like the different proposed solutions. I'll
do a bit of waffling because I don't want to
come across as too certain about what the right way
to go forward is. When it comes to how Facebook
has handled climate disinformation, it's very black and white. Um,
they enabled it for direct profit, and they talked about
it and people within the company were like, Hey, we're
(02:47:48):
deliberately enabling climate change misinformation in order to make more money. Um,
it's a it's a it's a very easy case to make. Yeah.
So that wraps up my uh my report back on
twenty six I know a lot of a lot of stuff.
Was like, there's there's a lot of headlines like before
the somebody even ended, before the deal was even finalized.
I was like, is a failure, which is like yes,
(02:48:10):
But I think I think it is worth actually really
learning what happens at these things, because I think we
have this idea that they're like some like mythic secret
gathering of people to discuss plans, and it's like no,
like you can actually like see everything they're talking about,
Like it's it's all out in the open, Like you
can actually see what what the plans are. It doesn't
need to be all shrouded in it. It doesn't need
(02:48:31):
be like shrouded in mystery. So I just wanted to
give people like a rundown on what the actual people
in power, how they're discussing climate change, and what their
expectations are and how you know, expectations have you know,
the past five years have risen by basically a degree, right,
because like we're like we can do one point five,
and now we're like we can do two point five.
(02:48:52):
So that is what we've done in five years. That's
what's happened. And um that's what justifies the kind of
blanket pessimism about anything coming from Cop twenty six, about
anything being suggested by like a state actor and international organization,
which is that like we've all watched the last twenty years,
like they've said a lot of great stuff about what
(02:49:13):
could work. It's like that Nature article about like Okay, well,
like you've got a bunch of math here arguing about
how it might work. But we've got the last twenty
years of policies to sneve. But it probably won't right,
but it's almost certainly not going to work, right, so
we we can say, like, yeah, theoretically this might be helpful,
but like, realistically nothing, everything you guys have argued about
(02:49:34):
in the same way has been a miserable failure. Pretty much. Well,
that that wraps it up for us. Uh. You can
follow the show on Twitter and apparently Instagram. Um At
happen here pod and Coolson Media. We got a new
Coolson Media show dropping soon. Uh megacorp. That's pretty exciting. Yeah,
check it out. It's about how we love Amazon and
(02:49:56):
you should pay the money. I don't think that's what
it's about, but any um. Yeah, so buy some carbon
offsets from Amazon and with that. With that, we're closing
the show. Give us ever attention. We need everything you've
(02:50:17):
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in every Thursday politics and wordplay. We fight for the
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Reparations on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or
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(02:51:01):
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(02:51:30):
Welcome back to it could happen here. A show about
how things are following up art at least generally, a
show about how things are falling apart, um and how
to you know, maybe maybe not falling apart that much.
But we have a we have a little bit of
a different episode for you today. A friend of a
friend of mine reached out to me recently in the
wake of a pair of episodes we did From Behind
the Bastards on sexual abuse within the Boy Scouts of America,
(02:51:52):
which was, if you're not aware, and endemic problem, with
more than a hundred thousand victims having come forward in
the last year alone. UM. And this is a case
that kind of ties into that. Uh. It's it's the
case of a young man, UM who committed murder and
a young man who was also UM a victim of
a terrible series of crime. So I wanted to kind
(02:52:13):
of shine a little bit of light on the case
of Heath Stocks today. UM. And to help me do
that is Mr Michael Kaiser. Michael, welcome to the show,
Good afternoon, Thanks for having me. Michael. Would you like
to introduce kind of your affiliation with this case before
we go over the broad strokes of it? Sure? Um, again,
my name is Michael Kaiser. I'm a criminal defense attorney
(02:52:34):
with the Lastter and Cassinelli firm in Little Rock, Arkansas. Um.
This case started in the nineties and I was I'm
thirty two, so I was not practicing. Then I came
into this case in the last two years after Heath
has already I've been sentenced to three life sentences, and
I assisted him in filing a petition for a commutation
(02:52:58):
asking for the Governor of Arkansas to reduce those sentences
to a term of years and giving him a chance
of parole while he is still alive. And and can
we uh, let's go over kind of what happened in
this case the basics, because this is this is a
really sad story, um, and it's one of those things
where there's there's not a lot of I think, easy answers.
(02:53:20):
But yeah, let's let's talk about sort of the broad
strokes of what happened, and then we can drill into
what what you're trying to achieve here. Sure, so the
broad strokes are back in UM. When Heath was a
young man UM just twenty years old, UM, he was
arrested and charged with killing his entire immediate family, both
(02:53:43):
his mother, father, UM, and his younger sister. He was
quickly identified as the primary suspect, questioned, confessed, arrested, charged,
and within I believe six months, had pleaded guilty to
all three capital murders and receive a sentence of life
without parole for each each one of those, for a
(02:54:04):
total of three life sentences. UM. Shortly after he was convicted, UM,
it came to light that his longtime boy scout scout
Master Jack Walls had been molesting Heats since he was
around age nine or ten. UM that it was a
serial sort of abuse, that Heat, that Heath was not
(02:54:25):
the only one. UM, that it was particularly brutal, and
that his abuse didn't just involve you know, sexual acts. UM.
It was kind of a long term. I hate to
use the term brainwashing, but a lot of people have
about what he did to those boys. UM. Heats is
not the only life that was ruined. Heath's family is
(02:54:47):
not the only families lives who were ruined. UM. But
Heats is unfortunately the most extreme case, UM, where where
he he ultimately committed a crime against against his family.
We'll get into the cumstances in a second. I just
want to add a little bit of clarification that the
scout master, we're looking at between a hundred and a
hundred and fifty victims kind of conservatively based on what
(02:55:08):
I've been reading. Yes, yeah, and it's it's some of
I mean, it's so this guy. Some of it's the
stuff that you heard in a lot of these other cases.
Some of it is is very unique to this guy.
But he would basically he would have people over, kids
over camping on his land. UM, he would take them shooting,
he worked for an ammunition company. UM, he would molest them.
(02:55:28):
He would also like purchase prostitutes for them. And it
was this, UM, I mean a lot of of really
some of the worst abuse that I've read about in
connection to any of these these boy scouts sexual abuse cases. UM.
It's it's pretty harrowing stuff when you read the stories
of other kids, um, who were kind of in the
same position that Heath was. Yeah, Unfortunately you're You're correct.
(02:55:52):
It's you know, every time you think this can't get worse,
or this case is so extreme that you find some
other element that's more offensive, are appalling more victims, more,
more families ruined down the line, even um today thirty
forty years fifty years later, M. Yeah, so how does
the because I mean, one of the things about this
(02:56:15):
is this is a pretty the initial crime here is
pretty horrific. Um. And I think it's it's one of
those things where it is hard to have a lot
of sympathy for Heath until you kind of learn about
what this guy like, his his his role in the crime,
because it was not just a case of, um, you know,
(02:56:35):
a kid committing murder. It was a case of a
kid being um, very deliberately pushed into committing murder. And
potentially I think that there's the allegations being made her
that he was he directly helped with it as well. Yes, um,
so you know, at first glance, yeah, it looks it
looks really bad for Heath, um. But over the years, um,
(02:56:58):
what we have learned is that what what really happened
is that Heath had been serially abused sexually, physically, emotionally,
and otherwise by Jack for a period of ten plus years.
His mother discovers the abuse and discusses it with her,
her pastor another religious counselor UH. Heath informs Jack that
(02:57:20):
you know his mother is aware, and and Jack instructs
Heath to do as he's been taught, UM and and
to kill the problem. UM. Jack was never convicted with
anything associated with the death of of the Stocks family. UM. However,
his first set of life sentences for the many assaults
(02:57:42):
that he was convicted of, UM, when they were reversed,
it was because the judge in that in that sentencing
hearing said, you know that the death of the Stocks
family is also on your hands. And because he hadn't
been formally convicted of that, he actually had his original
life sentences reversed. Every sentencing he got essentially the same sentence,
multiple life sentences in additional years. UM. But yes, there
(02:58:03):
there's there is a connection. UM. It wasn't known at
the time, or at least it wasn't publicized, and if
if it had been, I think the results of his
case would be very different. I don't think you and
I would be speaking right now. Yeah. And it's I mean,
obviously like this is this is this is a thoroughly
horrible situation. Um. And when somebody commits three murders, I
(02:58:26):
think even people who are very critical of the criminal
justice system should agree that, like, something needs to be done.
But I it just seems so unfair to lock this
kit up for his entire life without kind of and
and and acting as if this was just a thing
he did on his own, rather than kind of the
result of a pretty horrific I mean, one of the
(02:58:50):
most one of the most horrific patterns of abuse and
exploitation of a of a child that I can imagine. UM.
And I don't know, I don't know what would actually
like help other than getting him into a situation where
he's not spending the rest of his life in a
prison cell. Like I don't know what the long term
for him looks like in terms of rebuilding this guy's
(02:59:14):
potential to have a life, but it certainly starts with
him not spending the rest of that life in a
jail cell. The problem we've encountered, UM with Heat's case
is the parole board and many just even just people
that encounter the case wonder why would he attack and
kill you know, his immediate family rather than his abuser.
(02:59:35):
And in the twenty five plus years or in the
years or so since this happened, I mean juvenile that
our understanding of the juvenile brain neurocycle psychology in general
UM has has come leap leaps and bounds. And so
we know that a serially abused child has brain damage
(02:59:56):
from really about the time that that starts happening. And
so and heats crazy world, and we do have this
in our clemency application. We've had UM abuse specialists evaluate
Heath and and see how he you know, his actions
conformed to our current understanding. Within the crazy world that
(03:00:17):
he lived in. He actually was making dare I say,
the reasonable decision. So Jack had demonstrated numerous times over
the years he has physical, sexual, and and even control
over heats life. He can end it at any time.
He explicitly and implicitly threatens the boys all the time.
He's got weapons everywhere, He's a Vietnam veteran. He brings
(03:00:39):
them out to his property, shows them how to shoot,
shows them what he will do to those who you know,
go against him. UM. So, within Heat's world, he actually
made a somewhat reasonable decision. He Uh, the bigger threat
was was Jack. Um. He can't kill Jack, so he
has to do the thing to appease Jack to avoid
the more severe abuse. That's oversimplifying it, but that's something
(03:01:04):
that I don't think we would have been able to
conceptualize back in the nineties. You had the element of
there's it's it's mail on mail, and we're talking about
a very small rural community, UM in central Arkansas, and
that element cannot be overlooked at all as well. That
was a huge thing that Jack was counting on to
keep these boys silent. UM. He explicitly told them, if
(03:01:27):
you tell what happened to you, they're going to think
that you are homosexual and a liar. So there's just
there's there's just so many horrible things. UM. In this case,
Jack had decades of experience doing this, and unfortunately, because
of his position in the community, the son of a
prominent judge, UM, the long time scout master, the community's
(03:01:51):
man of the Year multiple times, UM, he had access
to dozens and dozens of boys, in fact, entire generations
of these of these voice in Lono County. Um Heat's
case is just one of many. Unfortunately, it's the most
extreme case, and it's kind of tests the balance of
our mercy. But the kid that discovered Jack, while he's
(03:02:12):
a hero, ultimately he killed himself and he's not the
only one. So unfortunately the Stocks family are not the
only people who lost their lives and not the only
people whose lives, just like he's, were completely destroyed by
Jack Walls. Yeah, and this is this is an important
thing to understand because when we're talking about kind of
(03:02:33):
the lingering impacts of childhood sexual abuse, it can take
a wide variety of forms and when we like but
but it but it is important to understand that the
damage it can do goes so much further beyond like
the physical damage done by the abuse, like these are
your your brain is still forming and growing when you're
that young, and he this is one manifestation of kind
(03:02:56):
of what can happen um at the more extreme ended
adly um as as the result like this is why
it's such a heinous crime to abuse a child in
this way, And it's just I don't know, like you're right,
it is it it tests the limit of um people's
capacity for I don't know, forgiveness seems like the wrong word,
but like clemency. You know, this again is a pretty
(03:03:18):
heinous crime. Um. But at the same time, I can't
bring myself to think that what he endured leading up
to this shouldn't have an impact on what happens to
him afterwards, right, Like it does. It does reduce his
his complicity in this, And I just feel it feels
so wrong to say that, like, well, he should spend
(03:03:40):
the rest of his life behind bars, Like that's just
not I can't imagine anything could help, Like, I can't
imagine that could help in any way. Um, just writing
this this person off forever. I don't know. It just is,
it's it's fucked. What are the next steps for y'all,
for your for the defense team. So at this point,
(03:04:01):
we've already filed a petition, uh, with the Arkansas Governor
requesting a commutation. That's not a pardon, that's not something
saying say that Heath is innocent. We're asking the governor
to modify his sentences to a term of years forty
years in each case, to be served concurrently, so in effect,
one single sentence of forty years. Yeah. Uh, well, in Arkansas,
(03:04:26):
you're actually at the time he was convicted, he'd be
parole eligible at se. So that's twenty eight years. That's
not a guarantee of parole. That is just what it means,
parole eligibility. So that's what we've asked for. UM. We
think his institutional record speaks for itself. And if and
when he is a candidate for parole, he hopefully uh
will make pearole. He's he's done everything within his power
(03:04:49):
UM to do so. UM. If this fails, it's right now. UH.
We in Arkansas at first goes to the parole Board,
who makes a non binding recommendation to the governor. They
have recommended that the governor deny it. UM, which is unfortunate,
but again it's not binding. UM. The governor now has
I believe until February or March of two to issue
(03:05:12):
his decision. UM. He has not yet. UM. We have
requested a sit down with the governor. I don't know
if we'll actually sit down with Governor Asa Hutchinson. We
will sit down with his criminal Justice coordinator. UM. We're
thankful and lucky to have the support of all of
the remaining victims family members, so both sides of Heat's family. UM,
(03:05:36):
you know we have we have extensive support UM, it
wasn't they They A lot of them had to work
to get to this point, a lot of them had
to understand the true impact of the abuse. But at
this point, UM, we have extensive support from both sides
of his family. UM. As far as we know, there
are no objections to his commutation application from from victim
(03:06:00):
family members. The only ones that there have been are
from the sentencing judge or from the sentencing court. It's
actually not the same judge and the sentencing or the
prosecutor from that from that county, again a different person, um,
but they felt the need to object. I should this fail,
we will seek additional post conviction remedies um. Uh. In Arkansas,
(03:06:22):
we have something called a petition for writ of ericorum
nobis Um. You can file it. You have to ask
the Supreme Court, Hey, is it okay if I file
a petition back in the trial court asking them to
consider something that if we had known back in ninety eight,
would have affected the outcome of the litigation. In this case,
we would point to the we we've had heath evaluated. UM.
(03:06:45):
It will point to that neuropsychological evaluation UM as as
new evidence. UM. We couldn't fully make a connection at
the time between his abuse and the offense to answer
that question why he killed his family rather than his abuser.
We now can and so that's what we're going to allege,
(03:07:06):
is that is that new evidence. Um whether the court
will will find that it is remains to be seen.
When he tried this on his own about five years ago,
the court denied it. He alleged the new evidence was
the fact of the long term sexual abuse of him
by Jack Walls, and the court in a in an
opinion that really does not um, you know, shows shows
(03:07:29):
the lack of understanding of long term juvenile sexual abuse
found that well though you personally were aware of all
of that in your own mind because it had happened
to you, So that was not new evidence. And I mean,
we know that the average male who makes this sort
of disclosure it occurs deep into adulthood. So it's just
(03:07:50):
at every level of the system. Even today, we're still
feeling the effects of kind of that old school mentality
about about this. And it's a fortunately we could talk
about kind of the the car serile state and this
idea that like penalty is the way to respond to
any kind of crime. But even if you believe that,
(03:08:11):
even if you believe that, like you have to punish
people with incarceration when they commit crimes. He's done twenty
five years, Like, that's no. No one is discussing the
possibility of Heath not being punished for the murder, you know,
because it's he has been not just with time behind bars,
but the fact that his family's gone. The idea that
(03:08:33):
the state could do anything that's worse to him than
than the scout master did, to be honest, is kind
of absurd in my head. But um, where is there
anything that like I don't know, I'm trying to determine,
like what can be done to help in this situation?
Is there any way people can actually help outside of
(03:08:54):
like you and the team that's that's working to try
and sit down with the governor? Yeah? Um, I mean
public support is is wonderful. The more people that are
pointing out the problems than Heath's case and with his
sentences and that are reaching out to the governor, UM,
the better we think our chances are. UM. I apologize,
(03:09:16):
I don't have the email address on me, but the
governor has several publicly accessible UM accounts, as does his
criminal Justice coordinator, even just getting on Facebook, UM and
and bringing it up. UM. There's a Facebook account managed
by one of Heath's friends, UM in Florida called at
Hope for heat Stocks. UM. It's a there's also a website.
(03:09:39):
I think it's Hope for heat Stocks dot info. It's
probably the most extensive trove of resources in this case.
It has almost all original documents. It's where I still
go to access things when I need them, even though
you know, I am his attorney. So there's a lot
out there. There's a lot of ways to support the cause,
even just telling other people about out it. UM. We
(03:10:01):
do have a documentary in the works. UM. I actually
don't think it has a producer at this point, but
we're hopeful to have something out in early to make Feith,
to make Jack, to make this case more of a
household name. UM. The hopes that you know, if any
(03:10:22):
sort of UM, you know, if there's more support out there,
more pressure on the governor, it will increase the odds
that that will do the right thing here. Yeah. I mean,
this shouldn't be a political issue. There shouldn't be a
left or right thing, Like everyone should be able to
see this is uh this is the result of abuse,
(03:10:42):
and that should have an impact on the what we
actually what's actually what our society actually does to this
kid in the wake of the crime. Perhaps it's like
foolish to hope for some sort of rationality as regards
a case like this, but I would hope that we
could be rational about this and everyone agree, yes, this
(03:11:05):
kid deserves something more than what he's gotten. UM. I
don't know. It's it's a bleak one though, that's putting
it lightly. New York recently recently passed a law that
kind of acknowledged kind of where you're at with it
for victims of domestic or sexual abuse who then committed
(03:11:25):
crimes um that weren't necessarily during the course of that
specific abuse UM. And it allowed people like Heath to
apply for resentencing if they met certain statutory qualifications um
for things that mitigated their crime, didn't justify it. But
that didn't come out originally. Unfortunately, in Arkansas, we don't
(03:11:46):
have a similar process. The only thing we have available
is this clemency commutation process. And unfortunately, as you said,
it should be a political but it's not. It's it's
explicitly political. The Parole Board are all appointees by our governor,
the governor or as an elected official. There's a reason
we filed it in the last year of his last
term in Arkansas. He has term limited, so we're trying
(03:12:07):
to get him at a point where he's as free
from the politics to do what he actually thinks is correct.
But to think that politics will be removed is I mean, yeah,
it never is. No, this is this is the United
States inies. You know, politics is is a factor here,
and there's a deeply divisive case in the state and
(03:12:30):
especially in Lono County. Well, it's hard I can imagine
it being hard to talk with people about just because again,
the nature of the crime is is horrific. And so
if you talk about like, well, we we think this
guy should have another chance at life, and you're like, well,
but he killed three people, he killed his sister, and yes,
that is the case, but that's not the only thing
(03:12:50):
going down here. And you just have to I think,
if you're if you're at all, even if you're not
coming at this from kind of politically where I am
in regarding you know, the car serial state, you have
to acknowledge that, like, this is not a race Heath's cribes.
But Heath's cribs were also the result of not just
the scout master's abuse, but of a number of failures
(03:13:12):
on a on a wide level in our society that
allowed that abuse to occur. Um And so, I don't know,
I I feel like there's a lot of reasons why
it behooves us to give this kid another chance. I
don't know. That doesn't make it easier to convince anyone else,
But yeah, well, how would this case play out if
(03:13:33):
it happened today versus in even in a more rural
part of Arkansas. I think our understanding of several of
the issues here, it is so has come so far
that my hope is Heath would have received a term
of years rather than being charged with capital murder. They
originally we're seeking the death penalty, and he made a
(03:13:55):
deal for multiple life sentences, both as someone under twenty
one and as a victim of long term sexual abuse.
I would like to think that if this happened today,
even in that county, what we're asking for is something
close to what what would what would happen? I hope,
I would hope so that that's why, again, we didn't
(03:14:16):
ask for a pardon. We didn't ask let him out today.
We said let him earn it, let him still feel
the weight of of what he has done, but give
him that light at the end of the tunnel. Because
you know, there is no one in the Arkansas Department
of Correction, even with the There's just not a victim
like him there, and there's not someone who who could
(03:14:36):
be an advocate for victims like him were he to
be released. So yep, well, all right, Michael, is there
anything else you wanted to get into with this or
any other ways people might be able to help check
out the website again, post on social media. Um. Uh.
The one thing I think we didn't focus on here
(03:14:58):
is heat himself. Um. Heath is a deeply spiritual individual.
He's someone who lives with this on his conscious almost
every moment of the day. This is not not someone
who you know, feels he's skated by by avoiding the
death penalty. Um. This is someone who has had to
learn about trauma mostly on his own because with those
(03:15:19):
life sentences, he is ineligible for so many of the
programs of the scant programs and resources that we have
in the Department of Correction because they don't give it
to people who don't have parole dates. So he's had
to do a lot of this on his own. He's
come a remarkable way. He's still someone that needs, um,
probably extensive treatment and therapy to deal with his own
(03:15:41):
trauma as well as to deal with the effects of
what he did on himself. Um, but he's a remarkable individual.
He's a great self advocate. I wish you could speak
with him as well. Um, he's someone I'm proud to represent.
Not just that I do because I get paid. Um,
this is why I got into the practic. Just a
law is this type of case. Um, he is not innocent,
(03:16:04):
but he is not. Uh, he should not be bearing
the full weight of what occurred. While you know, Jack
is serving a life sentence. I think he should have
one or two or three more for his role in this.
I mean heats youth and heats brain damage. Because of that,
sexual abuse should have and now should be considered. And
we just hope the governor will Yeah, yeah, hopefully so.
(03:16:27):
And again, if you want to learn more, there's heath
stocks dot info. Um, there's a lot of good about
Jack Walls on there as well. Um, and you can
there's a link to make a donation to Heath's defense. Um.
All right, well Michael, thank you so much for coming
on today. UM, and I hope you have a good
recipe week. Now's well, hey, We'll be back Monday with
(03:17:02):
more episodes every week from now until the heat death
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(03:17:25):
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