Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Hey everybody, Robert Evans here and I wanted to let
you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode
of the week that just happened is here in one
convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to
listen to in a long stretch if you want. If
you've been listening to the episodes every day this week,
there's going to be nothing new here for you, but
you can make your own decisions.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
Welcome to tack it Up and hear a podcast about things
falling apart and putting them back together again. I'm your host, Bio.
Long so long ago, in a galaxy far far away,
we talked about the collapse of the US Postal Service
and the absolute horror show that's been inflicted on postal workers.
When we last left our intrepid heroes, things were not great.
(00:49):
They have continued to be not great. And with us
to talk about this entire shit show is bad Mouth.
He's a letter carrier and for it Worth and Tommy Espinoza,
who is a former letter carrier and former union steward
for the Post Office Union. That one. Yeah, look, it's
like I got up at seven am this morning. It's
(01:11):
up and that locus. I got up and get it.
You're getting tired, Via, But both of you two, welcome
to the show, and I'm excited to talk to you both.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
Yeah, it's great to be back.
Speaker 4 (01:20):
Yeah, thanks for having us.
Speaker 3 (01:21):
Yeah. So all right, let's start in a place where
many things start, which is to say, the nineteen seventies,
the full crow upon which history pivoted. So one of
the things that we talked about the listeners sort of
the last episode is that post office workers are not
legally allowed to go on strike. This is sort of nonsense,
but it also doesn't mean that it's never happened. Oh,
(01:45):
by the way, is this we're abut to talk about
wildcat strike disclaimers? No one here represents a union there
speaking of their individual capacity, et cetera, et cetera. None
of this is legal advice. I do I do I
have any more caveats that we usually say for these things.
That's roughly all of them. Yeah, but did you want
to talk about sort of the last time that things
(02:05):
kind of looked like this and what happens.
Speaker 4 (02:09):
Yeah, tell me you want to take that one.
Speaker 5 (02:10):
Yeah, So, going back to the nineteen seventies, the working
conditions for letter carriers were so bad that most of
them couldn't afford the cost of living. They found themselves
in a position where they are working for a quasi
federal position and are finding themselves on welfare, struggling just
(02:31):
to find the means to get to work, oftentimes having
to work a second job, if they even have time
for a second job. Because the Post Office has and
still is very good at skipping around a lot of
labor laws. I think nowadays people probably work around sixty
hour weeks. I think probably at a minimal around fifty
(02:53):
hour weeks, especially around the holidays. And it's not just
letter carriers, this is people inside of the distribution centers,
inside of the warehouses. Things were not good. And on
top of the actual working conditions themselves, the environment was
incredibly toxic.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
There was a long history of abuse.
Speaker 5 (03:15):
You're dangling people's livelihood over their head, care like holding
a carrot over them, you know, and it really pushed
people to an edge. You saw a lot of violence
on the workroom floor, not only from supervisors but from
carriers that just snapped.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
Yeah, it was a time of great disparity.
Speaker 6 (03:37):
Yeah, the thing with the Post Office is Tom was
mentioned and they dangled a carrot, but there's never any
goddamn carrot. It's all stick. It's supposed to be a
carrot and stick, it's all stick. There's no carrot there.
Management in the post office is just trying to get
you to move as fast as possible and cut corners, and
that erodes safety, it erodes service, and it just a toxic, horrible,
(03:59):
horrible and vironment. And so back in the seventies, before
the wildcat strike, it was illegal then, just like it's
illegal now. The NELC National Association of Letter Carriers Congress
called all the shots like we had some collective bargaining rights,
but not full collective bargaining rights. But like back then,
adjusted for inflation, starting wage was fifty thousand a year roundabout,
(04:22):
and it topped out at about sixty eight thousand dollars
adjusted for inflation, and that took twenty one years to
get to that point. Yeah, so it's pretty wild and
like very similar to today. Now starting wage adjusted for
inflation is just over forty thousand dollars before taxes. So
(04:44):
we're making even less money now than we were before
that wildcat strike, right, And a couple other real familiar
things like you know on popular wars, rampant inflation, you know, Yeah,
every time you turn on the radio or TV, there's
some lunatic politician that you can't stand hearing about.
Speaker 4 (05:03):
Yeah, time is a flat circle.
Speaker 6 (05:06):
But Vince Sobrado, who was an organizer out of New
York City, the ANOC didn't strike all over the country.
Speaker 4 (05:13):
It was New York and Chicago and San Francisco.
Speaker 6 (05:15):
It was some major hubs, right, and Vince Sobrado came
out of that and we won in that strike one
collective bargaining rights. Now, the thing we gave up, and
it was a trade off, so we have a no
layoff clause, so they can't lay us off.
Speaker 4 (05:31):
But we gave up the right to strike.
Speaker 6 (05:33):
Making sure that there wouldn't be another wildcat strike.
Speaker 4 (05:37):
Right.
Speaker 6 (05:37):
So that's kind of why our hands are tied in
that sense. Now, if we have an impasse our with
our negotiation, and like we get a tentative agreement and
we during the ratification process vote that down, now we
can either try and go back to the bargaining table
or it gets brought in front of an arbiter basically
an impartial judge, and they'll have a panel. The post
(05:58):
Office will pick two, and they then ELC will pick two,
and then I think there's one impartial that's supposed to
be impartial between that. I believe that's how the arbitration
process works. We got to prove our case in front
of impartial arbiters instead of going on strike.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
Yeah, and so, as we sort of mentioned before, one
of the things about the post office, it's it's similar
if people remember the rail like the rail strike that
didn't happen, where there's all of these hoops you have
to jump, you'd be able to go on strike. And
that's because again, like rail workers, postal workers don't operate
under the normal sort of National Labor Relations Board like framework.
Right now, admittedly there was a very good chance that
(06:36):
it like in like seven months, we don't even have that.
No one has that anymore. But you know, things are
as we are right now. Yeah, it's it's I think
things are going good, but the as things are going
right now, let's get into the current tentative agreement, and
I guess we should actually we should roll this back
a little tiny bit. People who haven't listened to these
episodes before, can you explain what a tentative agreement is right.
Speaker 5 (07:00):
So a tentative agreement is effectively the first draft. When
you are going through and negotiating, you will reach a
contract where management and the union kind of agree and
they put it before their union members. And the idea
is that your union members are able to vote whether
or not this tentative agreement passes. And again, like that
(07:24):
nof was saying, if it gets rejected or if it
gets turned down, then it goes back to the drawing board,
or we get an arbitrator, and it goes through a
lengthy process. Our specific contract has been under negotiation since
before I.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
Was in the Post Office.
Speaker 5 (07:45):
The amount of back pay that they're going to have
to pay on some of these races is kind of insane,
and I imagine that a lot of people won't see
it for a long time.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
But yeah, that's what a tentative agreement is.
Speaker 5 (07:57):
A lot of people think that it's a bad thing
to go back to the drawing board, or a bad
thing to be negotiate or be put before an arbitrator.
I largely think that is a myth. If you think
about any sort of negotiation, the first the first offer
is never the best one. I think a lot of
people are just afraid that somehow you would end up
(08:19):
giving more than you're getting. And I think that's just
the way that the rhetoric has gone for unions lately,
and I guess I need to adjust that a little bit,
because the Teamsters, even like the Service Workers' Union, they're
all really doing well. The Communications Union, we're in a
little bit of a different age, but a lot of
(08:41):
the Post Office is old heads, military veterans, that kind
of sort who will just come from a little bit
of an earlier time when the labor movement was really
starting to plant their feet on the ground.
Speaker 6 (08:54):
Yeah, a lot of them are still dealing with I
like most of us are the hangover from the Reagan years. Yeah, right,
so they're all terrified of union stuff. Even though they
love the union and they're in the union, they're very
distrustful of it. And they don't think that we can
ask for what we deserve. They think we need to
ask for what they think we can get based on
(09:16):
the ship that management is saying, because they're again still
shell shocked from the Reagan years and all the anti
labor stuff.
Speaker 3 (09:23):
And that's that's how a profound impact on most of
the unions that survived that period and a lot of
them didn't, right, which is which is you know, part
of why you get people who behave like this. But
on the downside is it means that you get handed
a lot of deals that absolutely suck. But do you
(09:43):
know what else absolutely sucks? It's the products and services
that's for this podcast, the probably don't I don't know.
We are back, so let's talk about what the tentative
(10:06):
agreements that y'all are being asked to sign is right now?
Speaker 6 (10:12):
Yeah, yeah, so it's been I think we're coming up
on six hundred days since our last contract expired.
Speaker 4 (10:19):
Jeez. Yeah.
Speaker 6 (10:19):
Yeah, there's people that just want their back pay. So
even if the back pay is dog shit, they're desperate
because inflation is eight percent across the country in some places, right,
and like people are just desperate for that chunk of money.
That delaying process feels very very intentional.
Speaker 4 (10:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (10:38):
So the tenetive agreement comes out around five hundred days
after negotiations we're supposed to have started, and there's all
sorts of nonsense going on during then, but we're getting
promises like it's going to be a historic agreement, We're
going to get significant raises. We're going to go to
an all career workforce, which, by the way, we don't
have right now.
Speaker 3 (10:56):
Hey, can you saw what that is with the way? Yeah?
Speaker 4 (10:58):
Uh okay.
Speaker 6 (10:59):
So in every other trade you have an apprenticeship program, right,
so when you get on the job, you wet behind
the ears, you're brand new. You are automatically career, you
are automatically paying into your retirement. You're automatically getting the
regular benefits everyone else is. In most trades, you're paying
half the dues that the journeymen are paying, and you
(11:19):
are considered a full employee.
Speaker 4 (11:21):
You're the new jack.
Speaker 6 (11:22):
You're getting all the shit jobs, but you are a
full employee. The Post Office has a position called the
City Carrier Assistant, which, on paper and how they'll tell
you sounds like an apprenticeship program, but it's really more
like they took an apprenticeship program and an unpaid internship
and jammed them together. Because these kids are coming in
and I'm not even kids. I'm forty years old. I
(11:44):
started as a CCIA of forty years old. They're coming
in making less than twenty dollars an hour. They're not
considered a career, so they're not paying into their retirement.
You have got all the same union protections, Your benefits
are super low, you get five days of annually the
year and no sick time. Like it's it's yeah, it's
a meat it's a meat grinder.
Speaker 4 (12:05):
So that was a big thing.
Speaker 6 (12:06):
And it creates a whole third tier because we already
have two different, two different tiered wage system which sucks enough,
and anyone that pays attention to labor that drives a
huge wedge between workers and it crushes solidarity at kneecaps
a union, and now with the CCA position in this
non career workforce, it's created a whole third tier.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
This is one of the things that the UAW is
fighting for. It's like, is eliminating teering systems all together,
because if you're actually trying to get a functional union
and make people's jobs better, that's the thing that you do.
And having a having a third tier yeah not good,
extremely bad.
Speaker 6 (12:42):
Yeah exactly, And it's it's it's because they've adopted sort
of this Amazon model of doing things where they just
have this burning churn situation where like Amazon Bezos said
that he doesn't want anyone working for Amazon for more
than like.
Speaker 4 (12:53):
Two years, Yeah, if they have these.
Speaker 6 (12:55):
People constantly and they're constantly burning through them, and they
never have to pay full benefits, they never have to
pay into their retirement, they never have to pay them
more than twenty dollars an hour, and they can just
get you to work your ass off and burn out
and quit within two years.
Speaker 4 (13:09):
As people retire, their labor costs go down. It's evil.
It's absolutely it's some Jack Welch hateful bullshit.
Speaker 5 (13:18):
So touching on that, if people are really quitting before
they reach a point in their career where they're educated
and can stand up for themselves or stand up for
each other on the workroom floor, that's one of the
major reasons that our union is failing. And like you said,
you use the exact example that I would have. The
(13:38):
Amazon model is working really well. If you can just
make it so that people are so miserable they quit
their job before they understand what their rights are, how
they can protect each other, what even the contract says
on the basics of when can you call out, when
are you required to come in? Can they send you
home early without your pay? That's massive. And while we
(14:01):
were talking about the conditions of the nineteen seventies and
how long it takes you to get to the top
of the pay scale. This third tier actually increases that
time by sometimes three or four years. I've known people
who have been ccas for three or four years. I
don't think I've seen beyond that, but it wouldn't surprise me.
(14:22):
What this does is it means that before you go career,
you're spending all this time. You're effectively a fully trained,
full employee, completely capable of doing everything that's required of you.
You're just not getting any of the career benefits making
a minimum wage. And on top of that, the way
our benefits work is it does come out of your
pay chash Sheet's not like other jobs where it might
(14:44):
be a separate package or already calculated. In for instance,
a lot of the trades, they'll say, hey, you get
twenty three an hour, but the reality is you're making
around twenty nine or thirty because you're not paying into
your health.
Speaker 1 (14:57):
Insurance or your retirement or.
Speaker 5 (14:59):
Anything, that you're effectively making less than the minimum wage.
You're almost paying to go to work as a CCA.
Then just to be Yoda and told that you're not
going fast enough, even though there's no street standard. But
that's that's getting into a little bit of nipicky key
contract and stuff that language.
Speaker 6 (15:19):
Yeah, so yeah, that's one thing that they're promising was
to get rid of that non career workforce. So this
ta comes out and after hearing that we're getting rid
of the non career significant raises, it's going to be
historic for us. What they offered us was one point
three percent Jesus Christy.
Speaker 3 (15:34):
Yeah, I mean, and this is something for if you
were in a union and you hear your leadership say
the words historic contract, you are screwed. That agreement is
going to suck. I remember on this show, literally live
and recording right before they're supposed to be the Teamster's
ups strike, right Like, I'm literally on the episode with
two of the union people and we get the text
(15:55):
of the contract in the middle of recording, and we
get the thing with it is this historic contract, and
we're like reading it in the middle the episode was like, wait,
this fucking sucks. Shit. It's like, that's that's how you
know you are duped when you get the historic When
they start pulling out the historic contract thing.
Speaker 6 (16:12):
Yeah, you'd think if you're making six figures a year,
you could understand how to buy a used car and
know that you promise low and deliver high. Like I
don't understand how making six figures a year. They haven't
figured that out. But yeah, so in this contract, one
point three percent, and that's enough to piss anyone off
because that drops about the same time that we all
see the longshoremen getting going back to the table because
(16:34):
they didn't get sixty percent, you know what I mean. Yeah,
I'm surprised more people just didn't call in sick because
we all got this news on the worker and floor
and I was like, did you see this shit? I
know people that quit that day, you know what I mean, Like, yeah,
it's it's wild. So one point three percent. They're keeping
the city carrier assistance to nin career workforce. They're removing
(16:55):
some of our union protections right like it used to be.
Speaker 4 (16:59):
You have twelve six the hour rule.
Speaker 6 (17:01):
You don't have to work more than twelve hours in
a day or sixty hours in a week. You can
say I can't do this, I'm going home, and the
union could protect you. Now if you are a CCA,
or if you have signed up to do overtime and
they tell you to stay sixteen hours you have you
have no choice.
Speaker 3 (17:18):
Jesus Christ. So so so you you gave up things
for a one point that's that's a one point three
percent raise. Is like like that that's the kind of
thing that you get if like I don't know, say,
like you got like some unbelievable concession package somewhere else,
maybe conceivably you would take that, or maybe maybe it's
(17:40):
a thing where like you're you're you're like a nurse
and your problem isn't pay. Your problem is you're working
like two million hours a week. But like that's that's
a that's a you got concession somewhere else, the kind
of thing, not a we gave up stuff for like
the worst rays you've ever seen.
Speaker 6 (17:55):
Yeah, I mean it makes it makes you think about,
like what was there?
Speaker 4 (17:58):
What was their first offer?
Speaker 6 (17:59):
Like it's been over five hundred days of negotiations, what
was the first offer? We got to put the fuel
in the mail trucks ourselves?
Speaker 4 (18:07):
Like you know what I mean, Tom.
Speaker 6 (18:11):
Do you want do you want to talk about what
the tenet of agreement doesn't address?
Speaker 5 (18:14):
So the tenetive Agreement, we spoke about the Post Office's
strategy for dealing with our grievances or how to combat
the union last episode, and so for the people that
didn't listen to it or just need a refresher, the
Post Office has found this extremely effective strategy that if
(18:35):
they just don't agree at any point in our in
our grievance procedure, which is if they violate the contract
and we want to be made whole, whatever that may
look like, they can just keep on saying no and
push it up to arbitration because there is a grievance
procedure that ends up with a third party intervening as well,
and if they push enough of those grievances up, we
(18:58):
have a major backlaw on this process because our final
resort is now just the standard of operation. And what
that means is that there's nothing to force the Post
Office to comply with the contract. If someone wasn't paid
correctly or was missing a whole day of pay, got
(19:18):
sent home, or was put on emergency placement, which is
a process where they say you did something dangerous and
so they can take you off the clock. It could
be months or even a year before your case is
even looked at. They do have a process, of course,
where they try and prioritize it, but it's obviously not working.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
The other thing that the contract doesn't really touch on is.
Speaker 5 (19:41):
Our uniform situation, where the companies that make and manufacture
the uniforms for our letter carriers and actually for all
the positions in the post office are effectively trying to
sell you a shirt for like eighty dollars, or the
most egregious one is like your win your Parka is
close to four hundred dollars and your balance that you're
(20:04):
you're giving is I think three eighty FM.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
I don't know, it's been one.
Speaker 4 (20:09):
Oh, it's up to four ninety nine.
Speaker 6 (20:11):
But the rain trench coat, just the raincoat is four
hundred and sixty five dollars and you have to get
it through a vendor, so you can't even pay them
money to do that. Like a pair of polyester pants
that's going to fall apart in two months, ninety five dollars.
Speaker 3 (20:28):
Oh my god.
Speaker 4 (20:29):
Oh yeah, no, it's it's wild. It's wild price gouging.
Speaker 6 (20:31):
And they they were going to address that, and what
they did was they increased are they increased our uniform
allowance by thirty five dollars, which is like three pairs
of socks from those magazines.
Speaker 3 (20:42):
Great incredible stuff.
Speaker 4 (20:44):
Yeah, it's it's it's wild.
Speaker 3 (20:46):
Someone should dig into who's running that company and like
who they're working with to get those contracts, because probably
a fun story there.
Speaker 5 (20:55):
I think it's like four out of five of the
approved manufacturers or the distributed are owned by the same people.
Speaker 3 (21:02):
So oh great, okay, Yeah, I'm bequeathing this as a
gift to it. I know there's a bunch of journalists.
You listen to this, go go do that story. I
guarantee you'll find some unbelievably unhinged stuff.
Speaker 5 (21:14):
And a quick shout out to any letter carriers that
are listening to this. If you don't use your entire allowance,
look out for the ccas, look out for the PTFs,
the non career and the fresh faces on there. If
you don't use the entirety of your uniform allowance, to
the way that they view it is that they can
give us less money, So use all of it. Don't
(21:35):
protest by not spending that money. It's not even yours,
so spend it. Give it to someone, do something, you.
Speaker 6 (21:41):
Know, Yeah, get the new jack in your office a
fucking raincoat, because like I tried, to do the math
on it. For winter gear for a place like Minnesota,
to get all the winter gear and your summer gear,
it's going to take you four years of uniform allowances
to get.
Speaker 4 (21:55):
All that gear. Jesus right, it's ridiculous. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (21:58):
And like it's Minnesota, right, Like I'm from Chicago, so
like it is, it is slightly warmer in Chicago and
you get wincheles in negative forty here, Yeah, and like
Minnesota is much worse. So like that is that that
is not like optional stuff. That is the difference between
you having hypothermia and you not.
Speaker 4 (22:17):
Have Yeah, no, exactly.
Speaker 6 (22:20):
And and god forbid you want to buy a pair
of shorts as well, because Minnesota, Minnesota summers get over
one hundred index.
Speaker 3 (22:28):
Yeah. Yeah, speaking speaking of ways to not die in
Minnesota summers, here are some product and services that will
probably not help you with that, but maybe they will.
(22:48):
And we are back.
Speaker 6 (22:50):
One of the other things that Tom touched on that
this agreement doesn't address is he talked about the non
compliance and the grievance backlog, but also just the toxic
work environment, which we've talked about.
Speaker 4 (23:02):
And it's so bad.
Speaker 6 (23:04):
The whole reason we have The trope of someone going
postal is usually because someone's bullied to a point where
violence occurs. They either take it out on management or
my own manager in my first year got in a
fistfight with one of the clerks.
Speaker 3 (23:18):
Jesus correct.
Speaker 6 (23:18):
The post office has lost grievances because management was threatening
to shoot an employee. Any letter carrier would have been
fired for that immediately that manager got a letter of warning.
Speaker 5 (23:28):
Yeah, we have a joint statement on violence in the workplace,
which I think you were about to get into the leg. Yeah,
they're just not complying. It's a very one sided thing. Effectively,
management has qualified immunity.
Speaker 3 (23:41):
Great, great, your managers are also cops. It could attack you. Incredible,
incredible stuff from the post office.
Speaker 6 (23:49):
Yeah, and then there's a bunch of wage theft too.
I mean personally, I caught my own manager putting in
all the ccas for two hour lunches because the ccas
are new and don't know what they're doing and they
don't know check their time all the time, putting us
all in for two hour lunches and then told me,
tried to pretend to me, oh, that was just an
automatic computer error. Whereas if we take a thirty one
(24:10):
minute lunch. I have my phone blowing up being asked
why I'm not moving and delivering the mail. But you
guys manage to accidentally miss a two hour left.
Speaker 3 (24:19):
Come on, don't lie.
Speaker 4 (24:20):
You don't gotta lie.
Speaker 6 (24:21):
You don't gotta lie to be my friend, Like, come on,
and then and then there's other places around the country
where we the NLCS one grievances where management was making
CCA's work in the dark, delivering mail till like seven
thirty pm and clocking them out at four o'clock in
the after business. All right, so they got people out
there working for free. It's it's and we have to
catch we have to catch them doing that. Yeah, they're
(24:43):
never going to own up to it that they all
watch their payroll. The management structure at the post office,
it's like the TMU version of Game of Thrones. They're
all nasty, they're all backstabbing each other, and like, the
nastier you are and the more willing you are to
screw people, the higher up you go in management at
the post office, Like it's disgusting.
Speaker 5 (25:06):
So there's even more convoluted ways that the management finds
to effectively steal from the employees, and one of them
huge problem is changing the metrics on what a route
looks like. And so they can alter the times of hey,
how long you were in the office packing your truck
(25:27):
when you got back to the office and started unloading
and cleaning, And so what they do is they make
it look like the street time took you, let's call
it five hours, and you were in the office for
four hours. That way, they can make a route look
smaller than it actually is and have an excuse not
to hire another person, which makes it so that this
(25:47):
poor carrier who was assigned to this route now has
a ten hour day, eleven hour day just by default
on a light day, on a regular day.
Speaker 1 (25:58):
This is a really big problem for the rural carriers.
Their contract is a little bit different.
Speaker 5 (26:03):
Effectively, they get paid by the job, not necessarily hourly,
or that's the case for a lot of them, and
so if you're adjusting their times, they're going to be
paid out for an eight hour day. But you know,
the route has just been stretched out through this method
of just dishonest scanning and disalamant entries, and they get
free labor. And I'm not even well versed on the
(26:25):
RCA contract that's a whole other You know, there's only
nine unions that go into the post office, which means
there's probably nine different contracts.
Speaker 3 (26:35):
Yeah, and in every single one of these contracts, they're
inventing new, different and unique ways to do wage theft
just steal people's money, which, and it's worth noting again,
like if a post carrier like broke into an office
and stole the amount of money that is being stolen
from them, they would go to prison forever. Right, But
because it's your boss doing this, Like, the worst thing
(26:57):
that happens to them is they have to go through
a grievance procedure even though they are just literally robbing you.
Speaker 6 (27:02):
Yeah, yeah, and yeah, you do not fuck with the
mail cops. But the mail cops the postal inspectors work
for management. So yeah, and management does nothing but sit
in their chair all day, sniffing their own farts, watching tiktoks,
and trying to figure out how to screw people through
the virtue of spreadsheets while we are all out working
(27:24):
our asses off. It's a very demoralizing and abusive, abusive situation.
So we were hoping that shit would get addressed in
the tenetive agreement and none of it was. So there's
all sorts of problems with that. I'm with building a
fighting an elc and we are basically a bottom up
(27:44):
more of a radical reform caucus.
Speaker 4 (27:46):
I am out of Fort Worth, but like it's started.
Speaker 6 (27:49):
In Minneapolis, and you've got people in Chicago and New
York and Naples, Florida, and San Antonio, Hawaii, all over
the country who are basically, we are tired of we
are tired of our leadership being in bed with management
or at least doing things where they look like they're
in bed with management. We've been putting on vote no
rallies all over the country. You've probably seen some on
(28:10):
the news.
Speaker 3 (28:11):
And this this is vote no for the tight devisse. Yes,
this is this is this is a vote to send
your bargaining reps back to the table with the demand
that we can't take a deal that sucks this much.
That's what a vote no thing is. Yeah.
Speaker 6 (28:22):
So yeah, we've been trying to get letter carriers to
vote no on it. That's so we've been doing the
vote no campaigns so we can vote this shit down
and get it in front of a judge. Because once
it goes into arbitration, there's a lot of fear mongering things,
Oh we could lose this, Oh we could lose that.
Oh we could lose this. But like Mia, you you
said it yourself. These are all concessions. We're not getting
anything for giving up all these things. One point three
percent is what we're getting.
Speaker 3 (28:43):
Like, yeah, like one point three percent is the kind
of raise that like in a normal functioning union is
like that. That's like a company's opening agreements that both
you and the company knows you're not going to take. Yeah,
like it's a joke.
Speaker 6 (29:00):
Like that in and of itself would be a major
concession to get something else.
Speaker 4 (29:04):
But we're doing all these concessions to get that.
Speaker 3 (29:07):
Yeah, that's the win quote unquote.
Speaker 4 (29:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (29:10):
So the thing is the Postal Reform Act says that
we are supposed to get paid comparatively to a comparable
company in the private sector. So an arbiter is going
to look at that and try and look at ups
UPS or Amazon, and the post Office is really trying
to push it towards Amazon, which is why I try
to talk to every letter carrier i know to support
(29:33):
and get some crosscraft solidarity with Amazon, because without going
on too much of a rabbit trail the whole you know,
a rising tide lifts all ships, and one union in
another industry helps everyone in every other industry. And trying
to get people to understand that. But like you compare
our contract to UPS and UPS they top out with
(29:55):
I think their benefits package tops out one hundred and
twenty four thousand a year and it's about, you know, five.
Speaker 4 (30:00):
Or eight years to reach top scale. Ours tops out.
Speaker 6 (30:04):
With this tentative agreement at ninety three thousand a year,
and it still takes us thirteen years to get to
top steps. Christ, that's not comparable, right, yeah, yeah, no,
not at all. So I'm not afraid of arbitration. I'm
hoping we get this in front of an arbiter, because
unless that arbiter is completely crooked, I can't see him saying, well,
you guys deserve one point three percent.
Speaker 3 (30:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (30:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (30:26):
So when I first saw badmouth talking and what his
posts were on Reddit and stuff like that, I got
really excited because I remember when I was speaking to
my local president and talking to the stewards in my
area across like a couple of different stations, the kind
of big question was what do you do when the
union breaks your heart? And I guess the answer is
(30:49):
everything that badmouth has just talked about. You build a
better one. You remind people that there is an alternative.
Everything started somewhere. And if you go to his first
episode on the From Aid to Arbitration podcast, he has
something called the CCA Corner where he's educating the newcomers,
the fresh faces. He's just talking about horizontal power. And
(31:12):
I was listening to that episode before we had spoken.
I got so excited just to hear what this this
person was up to.
Speaker 6 (31:20):
You know, I try to sneak in as many anarchist
shit without saying I'm an anarchist. I try and sneak
as much of that shit in as I can. I
get old heads who have a Trump hat on talking
about anarchist talking points.
Speaker 4 (31:33):
It's it's funny as fuck to me.
Speaker 1 (31:35):
You know who won't break your heart?
Speaker 3 (31:38):
Frogs support this podcast if you don't fight them with
therefore canoffee. Is there anything else you want to talk
about with arbitration or should we move on to the
(32:00):
impending doom of the postal Service? Yeah?
Speaker 6 (32:04):
I think I think the arbitration there's a whole lot
of fear mongoring and shit. I think anyone paying attention
to things we can't get a worse deal is the
main point there, and that's that's the whole point of
the vote no campaign is to just tell people, hey, dude,
we might as well go down swinging, like we're not
going to get a worse deal than this.
Speaker 4 (32:21):
But that's that's pretty much it for arbitration.
Speaker 3 (32:23):
Yeah, so let's let let's let's move on to the
future of the post office, which I want to take
a second to mention that, like, Okay, look like I
am not someone who has any respect for the people
who built the US government. However, if you want the
US government to like exist, right, the postal service is
something that was deemed so important that it is like
(32:43):
establishing the postal service is in the main body of
the constitution. Now, freedom of speech right, and like the
right to free association, that's not in the main body
of the constitution. That is a fucking amendment. Right. The
people who built the American system thought that the postal
service was a more important thing to make sure to
have in the main body of the constitution that set
(33:06):
up the modern version of the government.
Speaker 7 (33:08):
Right.
Speaker 3 (33:08):
They thought that shit was more important than like you're
right to have freedom of assembly, like you're right to
not literally be grabbed off the street and tortured, which
is like the Fourth Amendment right. So like, you know,
in the scale of priorities of like how important is
the postal service, Like that's how important people who set
it up thought it was. And those people were not
(33:29):
very smart and like a bunch of racist slave voters.
So I would argue it's actually more important than they
thought it was because they're you know, I mean, like
obviously their priorities are completely out of whack.
Speaker 6 (33:40):
But like I am not a founding father, stand but
the post office was actually invented by Benjamin Franklin, who
I don't believe owned any slaves, and.
Speaker 3 (33:49):
Yeah he was really racist, but yeah, oh yeah, I
mean like I know, I know that, I know that part.
Speaker 6 (33:55):
I'm I just I don't think he actually owned anybody,
but like that's it's a yeah yeah, and it was
started I think fifteen years before the Constitution was even written.
Speaker 3 (34:07):
Oh no, he did, he he he he did own
a slave as a young man, and I think freed him.
Speaker 6 (34:15):
You know, I was trying to get the racist bastard
a little bit of a win.
Speaker 3 (34:19):
But like we're finding this out live on this So yeah,
he did for his early life and then became an
abolitionist later, which is still bad.
Speaker 4 (34:31):
Yeah, yeah, that's uh. You know, I'm glad you came
around eventually, I guess.
Speaker 8 (34:37):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (34:39):
Look, we're finding this out live on the show. Oh
my god, that was a lot of time of him
owning slaves. That absolutely I.
Speaker 4 (34:47):
Take that was why I take back my critical support.
Speaker 3 (34:50):
Critical uncritical opposition.
Speaker 6 (34:56):
To hell with Brent frank in school, the hell with
b Franklin too. But yeah, we're coming in a Trump
administration and stuff. And let me tell you that the
situation wasn't really great under Biden either, because we have
a postmaster, Lewis.
Speaker 4 (35:12):
Dickhead to Joy.
Speaker 6 (35:14):
He was put into place by Donald Trump, and you've
seen they wanted to slow walk the post office into
privatization since the Reagan years, right, and they're just slowly
chipping away at service and quality. D Joy was connected
to XPO, the giant logistics company. He had stock and
I can't remember what position he held. He apparently detangled
(35:37):
himself from that when he became postmaster. But you know,
they all say that I don't know for sure. I
am not an accountant, so I can't do that well.
Speaker 3 (35:44):
And like like, also I want to point out the
president of the United States is issuing a cryptocurrency like
that shit that sit is that shit is so fake now,
like oh god yeah.
Speaker 6 (35:55):
So like Joy's also got a reputations of just being
a massive job killer besides looking like a low rent
spider man villain. So under his tenure, we've seen service
take quality take a nosedive. And I want to talk
about this stuff, and this might get my ass in trouble,
but I am tired as a letter carrier who loves
my job, loves saying hi to people in the neighborhood,
(36:18):
loves walking three yards and knowing the names of all
the dogs on my route, and being the face of
the post office. It is so frustrating to have people
blame the mail man and the letter carrier for the
decline in service, because we are out there being brutalized
by the Post Office, doing our best and fighting against
(36:41):
the degradation of service. That is a top down problem
with leadership in the Post Office. I wanted to outline
some of the stuff that I have evidence of and
have seen firsthand of management undercutting the service of the
post office. They willfully delay the mail all the time.
(37:03):
There's pictures of racks and racks of DPS. It's assorted
letters and they come in trays just sitting in a
warehouse somewhere, and management they will order you on a
regular basis to prioritize delivering packages over the mail. If
it's a big heavy day and they're looking at labor hours,
they will sometimes tell you to not deliver the mail
and just deliver.
Speaker 4 (37:23):
The packages because the packages.
Speaker 6 (37:24):
Have a tracking number and their boss can get in
They can get in trouble for that, but they can
lie and hide the mail for another day.
Speaker 4 (37:32):
Like that shit happens all the time.
Speaker 3 (37:34):
Yeah, So it's like can just be like they can
just be like hiding like your bills yep, or life
social Security check yeah yeah, also your junk mail.
Speaker 6 (37:42):
Have you ever have you ever ordered something and it
says it was delivered but you didn't get it, and
then it shows up the next day, or it says that,
oh there's a vacation hold, I didn't put this on hold,
and then it shows up the next day, or you
got to go down to the post office.
Speaker 1 (37:56):
To get it, or recently severe weather delay.
Speaker 6 (38:00):
Yeah, well, I mean the severe the severe weather delay
can happen, but I'm talking. What I'm talking about is
ones where the package didn't make it to the letter
carrier who's out there delivering. Because this has happened to
me multiple times, and it didn't make it to me
before I left the station. But because they want to
make their numbers look good for their boss, they will
scan it at the station as if it was delivered
(38:21):
or as if it's a Jesus.
Speaker 7 (38:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (38:23):
So because they want.
Speaker 6 (38:24):
Their numbers to look good, because their entire job is
life on a spreadsheet. And so then I have to
I have to talk to my customers the following day.
But like it said, it is delivered.
Speaker 4 (38:34):
I didn't. I saw you, and you didn't drop it off.
I was worried someone stole it. What happened. I was like,
I know exactly what happened. I know what their name is.
Speaker 6 (38:41):
That's some of the service degradation. We've had people in
other areas catch management.
Speaker 3 (38:46):
Throwing away mail Jesus Christ.
Speaker 4 (38:48):
Yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 6 (38:49):
Management reprimanding carriers who follow the manual and provide good
customer service, like I've been on the phone where I've
had my manager call me because I was standing in
one place for five minutes. And it's because I was
helping an elderly woman move her garbage cans and helped
her get some groceries out of her car to bring in.
You know, all the stuff that you see the good
(39:10):
mail man, the reason why people love the post office.
Speaker 4 (39:13):
Shit like that. I got told no, you're not doing that.
Speaker 6 (39:16):
And I had another customer come up to say hi
to me while I was on the phone, and I
just stopped to just say hi as I'm walking by,
and my manager chewed me out for even talking to
the person. They don't care about us, and they throw
us under the bus all the time. Because if I
don't deliver a package because they never made it to
me and it says delivered, the customer will come and
(39:37):
complain at the post office. Management will tell them, oh,
I'll talk to the carrier. That carrier made a mistake,
and it's no, carriers do make mistakes, but like this
intentional degradation of service to make the numbers, that blame
always goes on the letter carrier, and it is we
love our job. We love our jobs we love our communities.
(39:58):
I got like I might start crying if I talk
about this too much, Like I love bringing treats to dogs,
like I get Christmas cards from old folk on my route,
Like I know, like I know when some people's birthdays are.
And I had an old time around on my route,
sat outside to say I to be every day. Suddenly
he wasn't and his wife was out in the garden,
and I said, where is he. Oh, he passed last night,
(40:20):
and she starts crying. I start crying, and like I
get in trouble for taking five minutes to give her
a hug and talk things through for a second, like it's.
Speaker 4 (40:33):
Yeah, sorry.
Speaker 3 (40:34):
This is one of these areas where like delivering the
mail is a social thing, but the thing is like
sociality is the enemy of capital, and that's that's the
people who are running the post office that they don't
give a shit about, you know, like the actual social
bonds and ties that you know that that are the
thing that society is supposed to be composed of. Like
(40:55):
they care about their metrics and them being able to
make more money in them, you know, being able to
advance higher in their career ladder. Yes, it reminds me
a lot of the campaign against the school system, where
you deliberately underfund things and then you blame the teachers
for why the service is bad, and it's like, well,
it is not a teacher's fault that there's like forty
eight kids in a classroom, right, Like, yeah, you know.
(41:17):
And there's also a very very similar preparatization campaign run
by a bunch of Australia powerful forces. Let's go back
and talk a bit about like who the people are
who are doing this and what their sort of plans are.
Speaker 6 (41:29):
Yeah, so you have to joy he's doing that, and
we have all of these they're starting to some of
the stuff they're building these I think they're called sdnc's.
It's basically they take a bunch of post offices from
a metro area and then they make one big distribution
hub like Amazon. Well that is adding an hour commute
onto some of these letter carriers. They come in, they
(41:52):
get to their mail truck and then they have to
drive their mail truck for an hour to even start delivering. Right.
It's a huge message, it's a huge fiasco, and it
feels very intentional because what's going to happen when they
close those facilities built by the government down and it
starts to privatize. Well, what do you know, Amazon just
got a new hub or whoever ends up trying to
(42:13):
step in. That's a little conspiracy brained, but like certain
fiasco's done by de Joy's delivering for America plan seem
Taylor made to fail for the Post Office but work
for someone else. And then also you have Brian Renfrow,
who is the current president of the NLC, the one
(42:34):
who was telling us that our tentative agreement was going
to be historic, when all it does is help management.
He has gone on speaking tours lying about this tentative
agreement and everything he says sounds like management gave him
a script. And there's a whole lot of theories on
that and how when he know when he loses his position.
(42:54):
People have running bets on what position he's going to
take in the Post Office the second he's voted out.
Speaker 3 (43:00):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4 (43:01):
He's the one who's negotiated this whole contract.
Speaker 6 (43:03):
He used his position as president, He iced out everyone
from the union. He's the only one who talked to
the Post Office. So this this tenet of agreement is
his Babe, Wait, what yep, the executive council. What yeah,
he didn't tell the executive council.
Speaker 3 (43:18):
Wait, you didn't even have like a bargaining team.
Speaker 4 (43:20):
No, he had a.
Speaker 6 (43:20):
Bargaining team that were all outside contractors. He had no
one from the union with him. What yeah, because he wanted.
Speaker 4 (43:26):
It to be his baby.
Speaker 3 (43:28):
That's so unhidea. That's like, I need to stop here
for a second, because that's like, if your union is
doing that to you, you need to understand, Like, dear listener,
that is not how any of this shit is supposed
to work. Yep. Like, even even a normal corrupt union
will have a bargaining team that is composed of like
it will have a bargaining team that isn't outside contractors,
so there'll be people from inside the union who are
(43:49):
like the stooges of like whatever sort of management click
is in power. Like having them all be outside contractors
is one of the most ludicrous things I've ever heard.
Speaker 4 (43:59):
You need to.
Speaker 3 (44:01):
Cutting out. That's so wild, Oh my god.
Speaker 4 (44:04):
Oh yeah No.
Speaker 6 (44:04):
And the thing is we're coming up on six hundred
days without an without a ratified contract, like he has
been the only one doing it this whole time, and
there's a bunch of shady shit. Okay, so he's struggled
with alcoholism. I have dealt with addiction. I have lost
friends to addiction. I have family members to struggle with addiction.
I respect anybody who is going to take care themselves.
(44:28):
But he disappeared for something like fifty days or something,
didn't tell anybody. He ghosted everybody. He ghosted everybody, and
this is the early days of negotiation. People stepped in
to start negotiating without him. It turns out he had
gone and checked himself into rehab. But the thing is,
the NLC has two fucking vice presidents. I have all
(44:52):
the respect in the world for someone to take care
of themselves. But when you got two hundred and seventy
seven thousand employees livelihood, yeah, you're responsible for and you
got I don't care if you got cancer, if you
got an addiction problem, or I don't care what it is.
If you got to step away to take care of yourself,
please do that. But puts your vice, one of your
(45:13):
two fucking vice presidents in charge. So what happens is
someone steps in while he's gone, he comes back, gets
mad that at them, strips them of their responsibilities. Blackballs
them from the union and goes back into negotiations all
by himself, which is why getting to the next point
on this. At the most generous, he is in ept
as hell. He is inept as hell and just the
(45:36):
worst sort of person to be in there. At the worst,
he has corrupt as hell and just DeJoy's stooge. And
the thing is, we work for the federal government. Whether
it's malice or incompetence with the federal government, it's usually both.
Speaker 4 (45:49):
And it doesn't matter.
Speaker 6 (45:52):
Which one it is to me, whether he's corrupt or
just an idiot, it's all the same to me because
I can't make my fucking rent. So expect de Joy
and the Post Office to do us dirty. That's their
job as management. But to have the president of our
own union doing this to us is unacceptable, and like
(46:12):
it's yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 5 (46:15):
So on that note, that's one of the big pushes
for the union recently has been to reach open bargaining
where the membership is actually a part of it. And
that's what to my knowledge, it is one of the
major issues that the building and fighting and IOC or
the building better union talks are going towards.
Speaker 3 (46:38):
Yeah, can you can you talk about what open bargaining is.
It's a thing that should be the standards for all unions.
Speaker 5 (46:42):
But yeah, I mean open bargaining is effectively the bottom
up structure of having your members were even the representatives
put forward motions that are open to the public and
open to the membership so that you can effect tofllly
ask for more or get a different variety of opinions
(47:05):
and strategies, you know, the duality of power kind of structure.
But what the post office currently has it's not open bargaining,
or what postal union has, it's not open bargaining. They
have their own team that they send in. They don't
talk to the membership. You kind of just elect your
officials and then they come back with whatever they ended
up with, and they don't consult with any of their
(47:26):
bottom line, which is problematic for obvious reasons, including this
one where someone can go missing for fifty days and
most of the membership has no idea. I've even talked
to people. I think it was like two or three
weeks ago. I went to a bar and I ran
into a letter carrier from the next city over as
a go did you vote?
Speaker 9 (47:47):
Know?
Speaker 1 (47:47):
And it's like, what are you talking about? He doesn't
know that there's a vote going on.
Speaker 3 (47:53):
Is out there?
Speaker 4 (47:54):
Yeah yeah, but yeah, yeah, I guess. I mean, like
the main objective we want to do, I'm sure we're
running at a time.
Speaker 3 (48:02):
Yeah yeah, sorry.
Speaker 4 (48:03):
I could talk about this shit for days.
Speaker 3 (48:06):
I mean I do.
Speaker 4 (48:06):
That's pretty much all I do anymore. Like Tom was saying,
the building of fighting ALC and pushing for the vote,
no thing.
Speaker 6 (48:14):
The main thing that we're wanting is coming onto shows
like this and getting the public perception of what the
letter carrier deals.
Speaker 4 (48:20):
With what's going on.
Speaker 6 (48:21):
Because this Trump's coming in, they're going to be trying
to privatize it like they always do.
Speaker 4 (48:25):
That's already been in the works.
Speaker 6 (48:27):
It's important that the public knows this degradation of service
is the point of it, and how how can the
public sort of support our fight so we can keep
the post office.
Speaker 4 (48:38):
So I wanted to just share a couple of links.
Speaker 6 (48:40):
If you're a letter carrier and you want to get
involved with reforming things from an electoral end, there's the
Concern Letter Carriers and you can go to Concern Lettercarriers
dot com. They're going to be running in twenty twenty
six to get rid of Renfro. If you are impatient
like me and you can't fucking wait that long, and
if even if you're not a letter carrier, you can
(49:01):
see how we're fighting with the building of Fighting NLC,
which is more of a radical, bottom up reform caucus.
If you want to get involved in that, or you
just want to kind of get updates from people who
aren't going to bullshit you, you can go to Fighting
NLC dot com to check that out. Oh, Tom, did
you want to talk about the ANLC Legislative Action Center.
Speaker 5 (49:23):
Yeah, so we touched briefly on last episode. The NLC
actually can't really use a lot of the money and
funds from the union itself to lobby or to push
Congress or anything like that, so there are separate organizations.
There are facets of our organization that do that. You
can find that at NLC dot org. Specifically, they do
(49:43):
have a link where you put in new zip code
and it gives you the appropriate Congress member to write
a letter to and really push them on what to do.
Speaker 4 (49:52):
There.
Speaker 5 (49:53):
You can also donate to their fund if you see
so fit and are able to do so.
Speaker 6 (49:59):
Yeah, at that legislative action thing is actually pretty cool
because you don't even have to call. They'll have pre
filled out things that you can just click, enter your
email and it'll do it for you.
Speaker 4 (50:09):
So it's a real quick snap.
Speaker 6 (50:11):
It's the easiest way to harass or your congress person,
aside from drunk dialing Ted Cruz, which is my favorite.
Speaker 3 (50:18):
Yeah, we'll have links to all that. We'll have links
to all that in the Discover.
Speaker 6 (50:23):
There's one more plug I wanted to make because all
the fires out in LA right now, because you have
letter carriers where the post office burned down and so
did their house, and now they're reporting to duty at
another post office twenty minutes away to go and deliver
deliver mail to a devastated neighborhood.
Speaker 4 (50:40):
Because the thing is, when shit happens.
Speaker 6 (50:43):
Whether it's a hurricane or a fire or you know,
the first people who show up are your neighbors or
the punks or the punks and mutual aid in your
neighbors show up. The first person you see from the government,
we're federal employees, were not federally is. But the first
hint of normalcy that a lot of people get is
(51:06):
trying to just hide out and be safe and then
they see their mail man walking through their fucking lawn
trying to deliver it to their shit, you know what
I mean. Like that's important, and we all love what
we do. We love being a part of the community,
and we love helping. And sorry, I knew I was
gonna cry at some fucking point.
Speaker 4 (51:23):
Okay.
Speaker 6 (51:23):
So the NLCS an NLC Disaster Relief Fund.
Speaker 4 (51:26):
The public can donate to it. It's usually letter carriers.
We all donate to it.
Speaker 6 (51:31):
And what happens is if your house burns down like
in La right now, or if like you were devastating
the fires in in in Hawaii or whatever. When that happens,
a letter carrier can apply and as soon as they're approved,
which can happen within a day or two, they automatically
get sent like a thousand dollars from the fund to
just pay for their pay for their hotel or pay
(51:52):
for their rent a car. And then they get approved.
It's not a fix all, but they'll get like they'll
get another check after a little bit to help with
some of their damages after they make their claim. That's
something that normally it's just letter carriers giving to letter carriers.
So we can all take care of each other, but
like the public is allowed to donate to that too.
I know there's a lot of you guys have already
(52:13):
been talking about a lot of mutual aid stuff at
the beginning of your episodes lately. I just want to
plug that one as a mailman specific one. Yeah, I'm
sorry for crying.
Speaker 3 (52:22):
No, no, Yeah, I mean it's emotional, it's yeah.
Speaker 4 (52:26):
That shit sucks, bro, Yeah, it really does.
Speaker 3 (52:31):
Yeah. Is is there anything else that you want to
make sure people know before we head off?
Speaker 5 (52:35):
If I have one thing, it's just help your co workers.
You don't have to be a steward. You don't have
to be anything. Just find somebody who don't think deserves it.
Speaker 1 (52:43):
Help them too. I guarantee you that they do.
Speaker 10 (53:07):
I'm Michael Phillips, an historian, the author of a book
about racism in Dallas called White Metropolis, and the co
author of an upcoming book about the eugenics move in
Texas called The Purifying Knife.
Speaker 11 (53:19):
And I'm Stephen Monchelli, an investigative reporter and columnist in
Texas who covers political extremism and beyond.
Speaker 10 (53:26):
Since the late nineteen nineties, Alex Jones built an extensive
media empire, spreading out landish conspiracy theories from his home
base in Austin, Texas. A native of the Dallas suburb
of Rockwall, over the years, Jones has claimed that the
Apollo eleven moon landing was fake, so too, he said
was the Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shooting, he claimed
(53:49):
was stage to justify new gun control laws. According to Jones,
the US government can control the weather has intentionally caused
floods and other weather disasters to punish Texas and other
conservative states. He has insisted that chemicals intentionally placed in
American drinking water are turning frogs gay, part of an
(54:10):
experiment by the American government seeking a way to undermine
the nuclear family while peddling dubious supplements with unproven health benefits.
Jones began his broadcasting career with a call in public
access cable TV show, before moving on to radio and
then online. In spite of his outlandish claims, in twenty fifteen,
(54:31):
Jones was able to set off a panic in Texas
that inspired action from Governor Greg Abbott.
Speaker 12 (54:37):
Now to a Texas sized conspiracy theory, sparking headlines across
the country, including this week in the New York Times
the theory that an upcoming Pentagon training exercise is actually
part of a plan to impose martial law.
Speaker 3 (54:54):
To many, it's far fetched, but not.
Speaker 12 (54:56):
To some of the top politicians in the Lone Star State.
Speaker 11 (55:00):
The conspiracy theory Jones described on his Info War show
spun in even wilder directions. The Army troops participating in
the jade Helm military exercise, panicked right wingers said, would
turn on the local population. Guns would be seized from
private citizens, and local walmarts would be converted into vast
holding cells where those opposing Obama's plan to seize dictatorial
(55:23):
power would be imprisoned. According to these sorts of theories,
these accusations went viral, and a military spokesman got waylaid
by angry questions At a Bastrop County Commissioner's Court meeting
held near the Central Texas staging area for jade Helm.
Armed men in trucks patrolled in Bastrup County and surrounding communities,
and a private group called Counter jade Helm spied on
(55:45):
the movement of troops and military vehicles while they quizzed
residents for any intelligence they may have gathered on the
impending alleged coup d'eta.
Speaker 10 (55:54):
The crazier the conspiracy theory got, the more Texas's far
right political leaders were willing to pander to Jones and
his elk. Texas Governor Greg Abbott ordered the Texas National
Guard to monitor US Army troops near Austin.
Speaker 7 (56:09):
We're playing a pivotal role of government, and that is
to provide information until people have questions.
Speaker 10 (56:17):
Texas Senator Ted Cruz pledged that he would demand answers
from the Pentagon about the military's intentions, and said he
completely understood the widespread paranoia.
Speaker 3 (56:27):
You know, I understand the.
Speaker 13 (56:28):
Concern that's been raised by a lot of citizens about
Jade Hell.
Speaker 3 (56:32):
We have seen for six.
Speaker 14 (56:33):
Years a federal government disrespecting the liberty of the citizens,
and that produces fever.
Speaker 10 (56:40):
Suffice it to say, the Obama administration did not overthrow
the state government. The intense outrage and fear generated over
army combat preparations might have seen perplexing to those outside
of Texas, a state that prides itself on being patriotic
and pro military. However, seething distrust of liberal elites is
(57:00):
a lucrative business in Texas. Alex Jones built a fortune
of two hundred and seventy million with his Internet show
and sales of dubious health and survivalist products advertised on
those broadcasts. This is nothing new south of the Red River.
From the beginning of its history, the state has been
an incubator for outlandish and occasionally not completely unreasonable conspiracy theories.
Speaker 11 (57:24):
After Texas violently separated from Mexico in eighteen thirty six,
white Texans spent the next decade fearing their southern neighbor,
a nation that saw the Texas Revolution as illegitimate and
wanted to regain control of the breakaway province. Meanwhile, those
same white Texans viewed the African Americans they enslaved with
suspicion bordering on dread, knowing that their black captives desperately
(57:47):
wanted freedom and might use violence to liberate themselves. This
created an atmosphere of uncertainty and distrust that fed conspiracy
theories of all sorts. After their rebellion against Mexico, Texans
won to become part of the United States, but they
were forced to spend almost a full decade as an
independent republic because of well founded suspicions held by American
(58:08):
abolitionists that the Texas Revolution was a part of a
plot to add a slave state to the Union.
Speaker 10 (58:15):
A decade later, the tide shifted and Texas was hurriedly
annexed in eighteen forty five after widespread rumors gripped Washington
d c of a British plot to an next Texas
and converted to a haven for African Americans escaping slavery.
In the eighteen fifties, even prominent Texans like Sam Houston
flocked to the American Party, also known as the know Nothings,
(58:38):
that claimed the Pope had ordered Catholics from Ireland Germany
to immigrate to the United States in order to take
the country over and hand power over to the Vatican Panics.
O were suspected rebellions by the enslaved, gripped Anglo Texans
in eighteen thirty five, eighteen thirty eight, eighteen forty one,
and in eighteen fifty six went perhaps as many as
(58:59):
four hundred African Americans held in Bondage and Colorado County
in south central Texas apparently plotted to rise up against
their white oppressors and battle their way to freedom. In Mexico,
where slavery had been abolished.
Speaker 11 (59:13):
Eighteen sixty, construction workers carelessly tossed matches into a pile
of wood in Dallas during a hot, drought ridden summer.
The blaze that resulted destroyed much of what was then
only a village. Immediately, suspecting that enslaved arsonists had set
the fire as part of a planned revolution, whites in
Dallas tortured and whipped almost every enslaved person in the
(59:34):
county in search of scapegoats. Eventually, they hanged three African
Americans and set off what would become known as the
Texas Troubles. Fires broke out across the state, and each
got blamed on black suspects and their supposed white abolitionists.
Instigators often men from northern states. As one historian put it,
white Texan enslavers decided it was better to quote hang
(59:56):
ninety nine innocent men than to let one guilty pass.
Acting on little evidence, mobs lynched as many as eighty
enslaved African American men and thirty seven accused white abolitionists.
By the time the panic burned out in September.
Speaker 10 (01:00:11):
A wave of labor unrest, including the Great Southwest Railroad
Strike of eighteen eighty six and the rise of the
Populace movement, which called for the government seizure railroads and
telegraph lines, in addition to a global panic amongst the
well to do about anarchism. After a series of bombings
in Europe and even the United States from the eighteen
eighties to just after World War One convinced economic elites
(01:00:34):
in Texas that revolution was in the air. The ku
Klux Klan, which in its original incarnation during reconstruction served
as a goon squad to keep newly freed African American
labor under tight control, came to dominate cities like Dallas
in the nineteen twenties, where one and every three eligible
men were members.
Speaker 3 (01:00:54):
Of the KKK.
Speaker 10 (01:00:55):
At its peak, the KKK charged that both Jews and
Catholics were conspired hiring to control the world. Texas politicians
like Representative John Box of Texas, in a column in
Henry Ford's anti Semitic newspaper The Dearborn Independent, charged that
Jews had manipulated the Congress. They add loopholes to American
immigration laws passed in nineteen twenty one nineteen twenty four
(01:01:18):
in order to let Jewish people escaping the Russian Empire
into the United States as part of a scheme to
undermine American society.
Speaker 11 (01:01:26):
As oil millionaires and billionaires built their wealth over the
twentieth century, they became a force in conspiratorial faw right
politics in Texas. Starting in the nineteen thirties, they mobilized
against Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, which they insisted was a
part of an international communist plan to overthrow capitalism around
the planet. Anti communism, anti Semitism, and hostility to the
(01:01:48):
post World War II African American civil rights movement blended
seamlessly in the conspiratorial imaginations of the fall right, in
the lone Star State, ideas that reached a national audience
in large part because of oil money.
Speaker 10 (01:02:01):
John Owen Beatty, the longtime chairman of the English Department's
Southern Methodist University in Dallas, in nineteen fifty one, authored
one of the first and perhaps the best selling of
all time, book promoting Holocaust denial Iron Curtain over America.
Beatty claimed that the Jews of today were not the
Hebrew heroes of what Christians called the Old Testament. Instead,
(01:02:25):
they were descended from a sinister Asian trot called the
Kazars that converted his Judaism around the year eight hundred,
too arrogant to assimilate with Christian Europe, Baty wrote Kazar's
undermined society under their stolen identities and caused the Communist
Revolution in Russian nineteen eighteen. After immigrating to the United
(01:02:45):
States in large numbers, they took over the Democratic Party,
Batty said, and moved it to the radical left. Beatty
also claimed that Jews controlled Franklin Roosevelt's administration and pushed
it into war against Hitler's Germany, which Beatty discribed in
his book as quote the historic bulwark of Christian Europe,
a mere six years after Soviet and American troops that
(01:03:07):
liberated Nazi concentration camps. Betty claimed that most of the
victims there died from disease and the Holocaust was a
fraud used after nineteen forty eight to blackmail the West
into political and financial support of Israel. The SMU professor
urged the United States to expel Jews from the United States.
Speaker 11 (01:03:25):
Rather than earning him scorn. Bed's virulently hateful anti Jewish
rants won him a large following his book, Iron Curtain
Over America went through nine printings. By nineteen fifty three,
the Public Affairs Luncheon Club, a women's organization, adopted a
unanimous resolution backing BAT and requesting that SMU investigate alleged
(01:03:45):
communist influence on the university's faculty politics and values. Bed
taught at SMU until his retirement in nineteen fifty seven,
two years after a panic over allegedly read art during
which the conservative Dallas Patriotic Council accused the Dallas Museum
of Art of intentionally promoting quote subversive artists who were
(01:04:06):
ostensibly part of communist front groups connected to the Soviet
Union after.
Speaker 10 (01:04:11):
World War Two in the establishment of communist regimes in
Eastern Europe and in China. The uber wealthy giants of
the Texas oil industry, to a large degree, funded what
came to be known as McCarthyism. Clinton murchison, whose son
in nineteen sixty became owner of the Dallas Cowboys National
Football League team, became one of the largest financial contributors
(01:04:32):
to red baiting Senator Joe McCarthy of Wisconsin. In Houston,
hard right organizations like the Minute Women Fought Against School
Integration took over the school board firing the assistant superintendent,
George eBay because he previously lived in California and Oregon,
where he had nice things to say about Roosevelt's new
deal in the African American freedom struggle. A math instructor
(01:04:55):
got fired after he carelessly common in a teacher's lounge.
They supported Adleae's Stevenson, the Liberal Democratic Party nominee for president.
In nineteen fifty two and nineteen fifty six, Theston School
Board yanked books from campus libraries that said positive things
about the United Nations, while right wingers in Dallas force
the City Library and the Museum of Fine Arts the
(01:05:17):
demand artists like Diego Rivera and Pablo Picasso because of
their supposed communist sympathies.
Speaker 3 (01:05:23):
But before we get into that quick ad break.
Speaker 11 (01:05:36):
One Dallas oil magnate who built a mansion intentionally designed
to be a bigger duplicate of George Washington's Mount Vernon estate.
He used his wealth to broadcast extremist fever dreams in
the nineteen fifties and nineteen sixties. His name was hl Hunt,
and he was profiled by the BBC in the nineteen sixties.
Speaker 8 (01:05:55):
But as well as being perhaps the most approval. The
most stingy plutocrat of Texas, HL Hunt is probably the
most controversial, for he is a fervent advocate of right
wing some would say reactionary causes. He is against the UN,
against the War on Party, against Medicare, against central government
aid of any sort. He would rather Washington didn't rule
the United States at all, and in his ideal land,
(01:06:17):
votes would be distributed according to the amount of taxes
who paid more than most Texans. Even he is inclined
to see communists under every couch and behind every curtain.
To Hunt, mankind is divided into communists and constructives. His
private word for anti communists, you are either for him morroganim.
Speaker 15 (01:06:35):
He brooks no halfway position.
Speaker 11 (01:06:37):
A health baddist who avoided whitebread and sugar, Hunt believed
his diet of largely raw vegetables might actually allow him
to achieve immortality. He also thought he had psychic abilities,
lived as a secret bigamist, and published pamphlets such as
Hitler was a Liberal, an early prototype of Rupert Murdoch
and Elon Musk. Hunt tried to create an alternative right
(01:07:00):
wing media infrastructure, funding a nationwide radio program and pamphlet
subscription called Lifeline that promoted conspiracy theories from coast to coast.
Speaker 15 (01:07:10):
Didn't time for last time.
Speaker 3 (01:07:12):
Let the tective class is around the world.
Speaker 16 (01:07:16):
Every leftist praise and cliche of the past half cent
three now has the hollow ring of mythology.
Speaker 7 (01:07:23):
This is freedom Talk number fifty three Brendy.
Speaker 16 (01:07:25):
Cup is all available at the rate of three for
twenty five cents from Lifeline, Dallas, Texas seven five two
o six.
Speaker 7 (01:07:33):
I'll be back after this message.
Speaker 4 (01:07:34):
From our sponsor.
Speaker 10 (01:07:36):
The Lifeline show was hosted by a former FBI agent
named Dan Smoot and broadcasts on more than eighty television
one hundred and fifty radio stations. Hunt believed that democracy
was the instrument through which wealth would be seized from
billionaires such mself and redistributed to the lazy and the worthless.
Hunt once rage at Smoot when the Lifeline hosts claimed
(01:07:58):
on air that democracy was political outgrowth of the teachings
of Jesus Christ, Hunt corrected Smooth, condemning democracy is the
handwork of the devil in a phony liberal form of
watered down communism. Hunt innovated in number of ways to
alarm audiences about far left plots during.
Speaker 8 (01:08:17):
The last two years, hl Hunt has added another emotive
missile to his armory, his league of so called youth
freedom speakers, engaging young teenagers drilled to deliver three minute
bursts of his propaganda to rotary clubs and Bible classes.
Speaker 9 (01:08:32):
Many people in the United States really don't believe that
communism is a serious threat. Well, these people are in
for a big shock because the communists have every intention
of doing exactly what they've said they'll do, and they
do not hesitate to use force and violence anytime they
think that it.
Speaker 17 (01:08:52):
Will further their cause. Now, I don't pretend to know
all the answers, but I do know that it is
our duty to get out and warn others of the
serious threat that we are facing. We have got to
get out and tell others of the subversive movements that
are going on right here under our very own noses.
Speaker 18 (01:09:14):
It's time to do away with this attitude. Oh, it
can't happen here. Will communists bury us? Will we face
fine squad as in Cuba? And will our little bitty
children become slaves? Ladies and gentlemen. The answer rests in
the hands of you and others like you.
Speaker 15 (01:09:37):
Thank you.
Speaker 11 (01:09:41):
For much of the twentieth century, Dallas had built up
a reputation as a clean, dull, modern, and efficiently run city.
By the nineteen fifties, however, it had also acquired a
reputation as the capital of crackpots and conspiracy theorists, a
development that historian Edward H. Miller would describe in his
book Not to Country. In nineteen fifty four, Dallas elected
(01:10:04):
a far right House representative, Republican Bruce Alger. Less than
a week prior to the nineteen sixty presidential election between
John Kennedy and Richard Nixon, a pro Alger mob assaulted
in spat on the Democratic vice presidential nominee and then
Texas Senator Lyndon Johnson and his wife, Ladybird, as they
left the Adolphus Hotel in downtown Dallas. Alger joined the protesters,
(01:10:27):
who held signs with slogans that said LBJ sold out
to Yankee socialists. Soon thereafter, Major General Edwin Walker, who
inspired the deranged fictional character General Jack d Ripper, the
person responsible for global nuclear holocaust in the nineteen sixty
four film at Doctor Strangelove, called Dallas Home.
Speaker 14 (01:10:46):
I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration,
Communist in doctor nation, communist subversion, and the International Commune
conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.
Speaker 11 (01:11:08):
Before filmmaker Stanley Kubrick turned Walker into an unforgettable caricature,
the real life Walker achieved infamy commanding an infantry division
in what was then Western Germany. President Kennedy pressured Walker
to resign because he repeatedly lectured soldiers under his command
to vote for far right wing political candidates. He also
distributed among the troops literature from the conspiracy theory promoting
(01:11:32):
far right John Birch Society, and he encouraged them to join.
The John Birch Society, formed in nineteen fifty eight, opposed
American membership in the United Nations, which it claimed was
part of a global communist conspiracy to enslave free peoples
around the world. The fringe organization, established by former candy
manufacturer Robert Welsh, accused all American presidents from Franklin Roosevelt
(01:11:56):
to Kennedy of being secret communists under the command of
the Soviet government.
Speaker 10 (01:12:02):
The John Birch Society also saw the African American Civil
rights movement as part of a Bolshevik conspiracy to divide
the country, and argued that efforts of towns and cities
after World War II to add fluoride to public water
supplies was part of a sinister scheme to weaken men
physically and make them less able to resist the radical
takeover the United States. That particular Bircher conspiracy theory made
(01:12:26):
a long lasting impact on the American psyche. Cities across
the United States banned fluoridated water today. That John Birch
Society is still active in North Texas, where recent gubernatorial
candidate and car dealer Don Huffines has published anti floridation
essays on The Dallas Express, a right wing website that
(01:12:46):
repurposed the name of historic black newspaper that went defunct
in the nineteen seventies.
Speaker 11 (01:12:51):
Edwin Walker's devotion to the John Birch movement cost him
his military career. Under pressure from Defense Secretary Robert mcmara,
Walker retired and moved to Dallas, where he found a
friendly political environment. The national far right saw him as
a martyr to Kennedy's supposedly out of control leftism, and
he received financial support from fellow devotee of the John
(01:13:14):
Birch Society hl Hunt. In nineteen sixty one, Walker made
the cover of Newsweek as a leader of the New Right,
and in nineteen sixty two he entered the race for
Texas governor.
Speaker 7 (01:13:26):
To all victims of communist tyranny throughout the world, I
send this word the hour of your deliverance is approaching.
To patriots in every land Korea, China, the Ukraine, the
Baltic Nations, Poland, Hungary, East Germany, the Congo, Cuba, and
every other land strickened by the monster of communism. I say,
(01:13:51):
for the time, lie low, preparing your hearts for liberation.
Do not expose yourselves to the brutal requital of a hunster.
Speaker 10 (01:14:00):
Temporarily in power, Walker was a painfully dull public speaker.
In the end, he couldn't bring his version of deliverance
to his own state, finishing a distant sixth in the
nineteen sixty two coubinatorial race. That would not prevent him
and his allies from creating mayhem over the following months.
He got arrested and was ordered to be psychiatrically evaluated
(01:14:22):
by Attorney General Robert Kennedy after he incited racial violence
during the integration of the University of Mississippi. In September
nineteen sixty two, Adelaide Stevenson, John Kennedy's ambassador of the
United Nations, would confront Walker and a model of his
followers when the diplomat visited Big d on October twenty sixth,
nineteen sixty three. Stevenson was shoutowed down as he attempted
(01:14:45):
to deliver a un day's speech to Dallas Council on
World Affairs.
Speaker 15 (01:15:03):
Shall we get on with the business of the meeting?
Speaker 19 (01:15:13):
Surely, surely, my dear friend, I don't have to come
here from Illinois to teach Texas.
Speaker 7 (01:15:21):
Mantors, do I.
Speaker 11 (01:15:24):
Outside Memorial Auditorium theater, where Stevenson delivered his speech, Walker
had gathered a furious gang of middle and upper class
men and women who rocked his limousine back and forth
while it waited to whisk him away to safety, and
surrounded the ambassador when he stepped outside. When he finally
returned to Washington, d C, Stevenson warned the administration about
(01:15:45):
the intense and extremist atmosphere in Dallas, where President Kennedy
was planning a visit meant to heal a rift between
the conservative and liberal wings of the Democratic Party in Texas.
Speaker 10 (01:15:56):
On the morning in November twenty second, nineteen sixty three,
Kennedy and his entourage felt foreboding as they prepared for
a short airplane draft from Fort Worth to Dallas. The
president just examined a full page ad in the far
right Dallas Morning News that featured a bold face headline
welcome mister Kennedy to Dallas. The advertisement, paid for in
(01:16:18):
part by H. L. Hunt's son Nelson bunker Hunt and
the future owner of the Dallas Cowboys. HR bum Bright,
featured accusations that Kennedy was soft on communism around the
world and radicals at home, while persecuting conservatives who criticized him.
The same morning, a group distributed leaflets designed like a
(01:16:39):
wanted poster, with front and side photos of the President
with the caption wanted for treason. How can people say
such things? The President said to first Lady Jackie Kennedy,
We're heading into nut country.
Speaker 4 (01:16:52):
Soon.
Speaker 10 (01:16:53):
The Kennedys would make their faithful flight to Dallas, and
the President would die from an assassin's bullet shortly after noon.
Speaker 11 (01:17:00):
The President's murder spawned a cottage industry of conspiracy theorists.
Some said the president had been murdered by the mafia,
angered because they had been investigated by the president's brother,
Attorney General Robert Kennedy. Others blamed Teamster's president Jimmy Hoffa,
who also had been the subject of criminal probes by
the Justice Department. Others suspected assassination plotters included Cuban leader
(01:17:23):
Fidel Castro, who had himself been targeted for assassination attempts
by the Kennedy administration, exiled Cubans in Florida, angered because
the president had not fully supported the attempted overthrow of
Castro during the nineteen sixty one Bay of Pigs invasion,
and even the Soviets. One of the more elaborate theories
involved an alleged plot hatched by American military leaders and
(01:17:47):
CIA agents, angered that Kennedy supposedly wanted to end American
involvement in Vietnam. Finally, others said Lyndon Johnson order to
hit on the Chief executive because he wanted to grab
or maybe others said Kennedy died because of combination of
some or all of the above, having made enemies with
(01:18:07):
the intelligence agencies under his command, who he had said
he would dash to the wins if they continued to
do things that were against what he saws in the
best interests of the United States. Quote President shot one
hundred twenty nine times from forty three different angles. A
satirical headline from The Onion later.
Speaker 10 (01:18:27):
Asserted sometimes conspiracy theories have deadly consequences.
Speaker 3 (01:18:32):
William L.
Speaker 10 (01:18:33):
Pierre spent his teen years attending a military academy in Dallas.
As a city student, anti communist dread and any Semitic hatred.
As a young adult, he had joined the John Birch Society,
but grew frustrated because there wasn't racist enough. He became
a leading figure in the American Nazi Party at the
age of forty one, formed the Neo Nazi National Alliance.
(01:18:56):
Beginning in nineteen seventy five, he published in serial form
us influential examples of white supremacist literature, The Turner Diaries,
a novel which told the story of white nationalist revolution
in the United States in the near future. This revolt
is sparked by a Jewish authored law outlying private ownership
of guns. The hero Earl Turner, joins an underground terrorist
(01:19:20):
army the organization, which battles a Jewish plot to destroy
America not just through gun control, but also through uncontrolled
non white immigration and by using rock music and drugs
to encourage interracial sects. At one point, to save the
white race, Turner blows up the FBI National headquarters in Washington,
d C. With a truck bomb.
Speaker 11 (01:19:41):
In the novel, racist revolutionaries then take over Vandenberg Air
Force Base in southern California and sees its nuclear missiles,
which they later use on cities across the nation while
ethnically cleansing California of non whites. They hang sixty thousand
so called race traders during the day of the Rope,
a phrase you may find familiar if you've ever looked
(01:20:03):
at white supremacist posts online. In the end, the book's hero,
Earl Turner, finally defeats the system by flying a crop
duster armed with a small nuclear weapon into the pedagon.
Speaker 10 (01:20:15):
White nationalists have since seen the Turner Diaries as both
an accurate description of the modern world and as a
manual on how to win a race war. From nineteen
eighty three to nineteen eighty four, The Order a white
supremacist terrorist group that took its name from the Secret Circle.
The fictional Earl Turner joins robbed a pornography shop, banks,
(01:20:36):
and armored cars, hoisting more than eight million dollars. They
later distributed to several white supremacist groups with the intent
of funding a white revolution. Along the way, they assassinated
Jewish radio talk show hosts Alan Berg. The Turner Diary
became the favorite novel of Timothy McVeigh, a bitter, disgruntled
veteran in the nineteen ninety one Gulf War who saw
(01:20:58):
the deadly confrontation between in the FBI and the Bureau
of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and the gun toting branch Davidian
religious sect in Waco, Texas on April nineteenth, nineteen ninety three,
as a major step and a government plan to seize
firearms from law abiding Americans.
Speaker 11 (01:21:15):
McVay had spent years selling copies of The Turner Diaries
at gun shows. He retaliated against what he saw as
his government oppressors by blowing up the Alfred Murrah Federal
Building in Oklahoma City on the second anniversary of the
Waco configuration. He used a truck bomb facing his attack
in part on the fictitious bombings of the FBI headquarters.
(01:21:35):
In William Pierce's novel The Turner Diaries also depicted a
deadly attack on the US Capitol. Some of the pro
Trump riots who assaulted the Capitol on January sixth erected
gallows and livestreamed their crimes as they joked about hanging politicians,
comparing it to the day of rope, Pierce described in
his pro Nazi work of fiction, Stay with Us through
(01:21:57):
this adbreak to learn more.
Speaker 10 (01:22:09):
Kennedy was a classic Cold War liberal in support of
an aggressive military intervention to stop Communist expansion abroad, and
with varying degrees, a commitment economic and civil rights reforms
at home. But because of his assassination by the twenty
first century, many on the far right saw as a
martyr to the liberal deep state. Beginning in twenty seventeen,
(01:22:31):
a very online far right conspiracy theory arose that centered
on cryptic messages first posted on the four chan message
board and then on eight chan by an anonymous person
who identified themselves as Q. The pseudonym was a reference
to the Q Clearance, which gives government officials access to
high level security secrets. Kennedy would be central in the
(01:22:55):
imagination of what came to be known as the QAnon movement.
Speaker 11 (01:22:59):
Q or QAnon developed a huge following that interpreted these
confusing and often contradictory posts as actually revealing a secret
global capal that included top Democrats like Hillary Clinton and
liberal celebrities like Tom Hanks. These people were all accused
of being a part of a child sex trafficking ring
in which the young victims were molested and tortured, and,
(01:23:22):
in some interpretations of the theories, had their precious bodily
fluids harvested to manufacture a drug known as adrenochrome, a
drug that produces hallucinations and supposedly grants eternal youth. These
stories resembled anti Semitic legends about Jews kidnapping Christian children
before passover in order to use their blood in Manza bread,
(01:23:45):
a trope or canard really that has become known as
blood libel in the QAnon mythology. Donald Trump plans to
conduct mass arrests and executions of these Satanic child molestors
in an event called the Storm. Trump has winked and
nodded to the q and On movement, encouraged believers and
(01:24:05):
even incorporated some of its key slogans in imagery in
speeches and posts online, such as where we go On,
we go All, and as I've reported for Rolling Stone,
a cult like spinoff group of Q and On believers
have repeatedly gathered at Daley Plaza, the site of JFK's murder,
to wait for the prophesied return of JFK and his son,
(01:24:28):
JFK Junior, who both are dead, but these believers think
were either miraculously resurrected or never actually died, and have
been secretly working with Trump to take down the aforementioned
global satanic pedophile cabal. Some believe that when JFK and
(01:24:48):
JFK Junior finally reveal themselves, a sort of kingdom of
righteousness will reign and good will ultimately prevail over evil.
Speaker 10 (01:24:55):
Q and On believers were a heavy presence during the
Capital Insurrection in January sixth and q Andon banners competed
with Trump and Confederate battleflags for attention, and November that
first year we saw the first of the series rallies
that Steve just referred to. They went to Deey Plaza,
(01:25:15):
where President Kennedy had been murdered fifty eight years earlier.
Over the course of many months, q Andon disciples kept
returning to the site of JFK's death, some staying at
a local hotel so they could be nearby when the
Kennedy return happened. This was covered by Dallas ABC affiliate
WFAA in November twenty twenty one. Reporter Kevin Reese interviewed
(01:25:39):
some of the ones gathered at the Kennedy assassination site.
Speaker 20 (01:25:42):
Word on the street is that Junior JFK Junior will
show up and introduce his parents.
Speaker 21 (01:25:50):
You're expecting JFK Junior absolutely, Okay, how is that going
to happen and never die?
Speaker 3 (01:25:57):
Are we going to see him today? JFKG. Yeah, that's whatever.
We're helping. We're hoping to hope and pray, and then
after that he'll probably be the vice president with Trump.
Speaker 10 (01:26:07):
Conspiracy theorists often pay a high personal price for beliefs
that marginalize them from family, friends, and mainstream society.
Speaker 3 (01:26:17):
There was one real truth several of these people agreed
to talk about. But you got to understand that most
of the world is going to think that's just crazy.
Speaker 20 (01:26:25):
That's why half my family won't talk to me. Anymore,
then will my girlfriend thinks I've.
Speaker 3 (01:26:30):
Lost my mind.
Speaker 10 (01:26:32):
With the return of Donald Trump to the White House
on January twentieth, conspiracy theories will move from the fringe
to the seat of power. JFK Junior won't emerge and
grab the reins, but a different Kennedy will. Bobby Kennedy Junior.
Bobby Kennedy Junior has insisted that Wi fi causes cancer
and that AIDS might not be caused by HIV vaccines.
(01:26:55):
He claims against overwhelming evidence cause autism, anti depressed since
caused school shootings, and chemicals and water lead to gender dysphoria.
One of these chemicals, RFK Junior insist might be an
old obsession of the conspiratorial right.
Speaker 7 (01:27:12):
I think fluoride is a poison becauses loss IQ in
our developmental injuries, and think florid is on the way up.
Speaker 11 (01:27:22):
RFK Junior mind You is the nominee for the head
of the Department of Health and Human Services, and in
a recent interview claimed that he was aided in his
schoolwork through the recreational self medication of heroin. Trump has
himself obsessively promoted his own sinister tales of the deep
(01:27:43):
state that supposedly stole the twenty twenty election from him, and,
as we have said, has co opted some of the
slogans of the q Andon movement. None of this, obviously,
was disqualifying to a plurality of voters this past November.
So why are people drawn to conspiracy theories? First off,
they provide convenient explanations that can be broken down into
(01:28:04):
sort of simple logics for people who may not have
frameworks for understanding a complex world. And they also provide
believers sort of new family and friends as they become
increasingly alienated from their original family and friends. Regardless of
whatever plots they believe they have revealed. It's clear that
(01:28:25):
conspiracy theorists of this sort they don't believe that history
is a product of class conflict, or imperialism or the
global scramble for natural resources, not ahing like that. It's
not shaped by political and economic alliances between elites, or
irreversible transformations and technology that render old job skills irrelevant.
(01:28:49):
There's no material analysis. All of this loss, all this fear,
all this terrifying disruption of what is comfortably routine they
view stems from a sinister plot, a plan that is
hidden tightly by a small circle of elites, sort of
cartoon villains with near superpowers that control the world. And
(01:29:12):
if only the right people, the sort of heroes of
the story of the movie that they think that they're watching,
if only those people would step forward and pull off
the mask of the villains, then everything would be set right.
Speaker 10 (01:29:26):
These enemies of freedom somehow pull all the strings in
sight unseen, manipulate every aspect of the world's politics, culture
and finance, manipulate elections, engineer depressions, urban riots, and even hurricanes.
Yet for all their cleverness, they leave just enough clues
so that amateur sleuths, if they are just smart enough,
(01:29:48):
can crack the code. Conspiracy theories make history and understandable
contests between ruthless bad guys and intrepid heroes, who then
feel superior because they've unveiled the mass their plan. As
they discover kindred spirits, they find community otherwise lacking in
their lives. Perhaps, if just enough people know about the conspiracy,
(01:30:09):
they hope the bad guys will fall and the millennium
will follow. That fantasy offers a simpler, more emotionally satisfying
vision of the future than planning on how to dismantle
capitalism or figuring out how to persuade white people, for instance,
surrender their privileges that come with skin color. Conspiracy theories
(01:30:30):
are mostly a distraction, but unfortunately they are often from
Oklahoma City to the US capital, a call for deadly action.
Speaker 11 (01:30:38):
And while figures like hl hunt and their operations like
Lifeline maybe in the past, we have our own contemporary
versions of this with roots in Texas. We now have
Elon Musk who controls x formerly known as Twitter, in
which he has used his platform with millions of followers
to promote dangerous conspiracy theory like the Great Replacement theory,
(01:31:01):
which we recorded a previous episode of this podcast about. Ultimately,
we are living in a culture that swims with conspiracy theories,
and for us to make our way out of the
rabbit hole, we're going to need some sort of framework
for understanding the world, something that can help us better
understand how we got here and where we're going. And
(01:31:23):
no matter what that is, it certainly won't be something
as simple as believing that we just have to pull
off the mask of some villain and then everything will
be set straight from there.
Speaker 10 (01:31:35):
This is Michael Phillips and this is Stephen Monticelli.
Speaker 22 (01:31:39):
Thanks for listening, Hello, and welcome to It could happen
(01:32:04):
here a podcast about things falling apart and how to
put them back together. I'm your guest host, Margaret Kiljoy,
and this is an episode about both of those things.
Not Margaret and Killjoy, but about things falling apart and
putting them back together. If you live in the US,
you might have noticed the things are falling apart. In
(01:32:24):
the onslaught of new federal changes over the past few weeks.
There is one that is both astoundingly important and also
likely to disappear below people's radars because it affects prisoners,
trans prisoners. Prison is the place that society puts people
to forget that they exist. We shouldn't be that way,
while prisons ought not to be how we solve problems
(01:32:47):
as a society at all, but it is the way
that things currently are. Things that affect prisoners are routinely ignored,
even though we live in a society built on the
idea of incarceration. It's been in the news that US
trans people somehow just sort of don't exist anymore, that
everyone is either male or female, dictated at birth and immutable. Obviously,
(01:33:11):
this flies in the face of biological and social reality,
and it's going to impact us trans people quite a bit.
One group of people that it's going to impact very immediately,
very dramatically, and very dangerously is trans prisoners. According to
Bureau of Prison Statistics, there are currently one thousand, five
(01:33:34):
hundred and twenty nine trans women and seven hundred and
forty four trans men held in federal prisons, and not
all of them are being held in gender appropriate prisons already.
As we're going to talk about with our guests in
a bit, prisoners have to go through an incredible amount
of dehumanization in order to have a chance of being
placed in the right facility. But now that isn't an option,
(01:33:58):
and women are being moved into men's prisons. Does the
idea of being a woman in a men's prison scare you?
Speaker 3 (01:34:07):
It should.
Speaker 22 (01:34:08):
It's terrifying. It's worse than what you might imagine. One
trans woman prisoner who's using a pseudonym for her lawsuit
going by Maria Moe, has already filed a lawsuit in
federal court to stop this new regulation. She is challenging
it on both procedural and constitutional grounds. The government didn't
(01:34:29):
go about this in the legal manner, and to house
trans women with men goes against the Eighth Amendment, which
prohibits cruel and unusual punishment, as well as the Fifth
Amendments do process clause. I simply can't imagine putting a
woman into men's prison as anything other than cruel and
unusual punishment. The state can pretend that trans women aren't women,
(01:34:52):
but the men in prison will not treat her like
how they treat assists men. On January twenty first, the
woman suing the prisons was told that she was going
to be moved to men's prison after all of her
records were suddenly changed to mark her male. Federal data
says that trans prisoners are sexually assaulted at ten times
the rate of other prisoners, and that's the state's own reporting.
Speaker 15 (01:35:15):
On the issue.
Speaker 22 (01:35:17):
But you know who doesn't know how to effortlessly transition
to ads after saying something as serious as that, it's me,
I don't know how to effortlessly transitions ads after giving
you a statistic like that. When we come back, we're
going to talk about how serious the situation is, but
also provide just an absolute, incredible number of things that
you can do at various levels of risk to support
(01:35:40):
the people whose lives are about to be ruined by
this policy change. Okay, and we're back. So to talk
about how trans people fare in prison, I have brought
on my friend with the most experienced in prison, the
(01:36:02):
former political prisoner Eric King. Eric served just shy of
ten years in prison for throwing a molotov into an
empty federal building one night in response to the Ferguson
uprising of twenty fourteen. Those were a protests that were
anti police protests that started in the wake of the
police killing of eighteen year old black man Michael Brown.
Eric is also the co editor of a book called
(01:36:24):
Rattling the Cages, Oral Histories of North American Political Prisoners,
which has a forward by none other than Angela Davis
and is worth checking out. Eric was released from the
eighty X Supermax in December twenty twenty three. He walked
out of prison wearing a support trans kid shirt and
has been vocal about his support for us as soon
as he walked out the door. So Eric, thanks for
(01:36:47):
coming on. It could happen here.
Speaker 3 (01:36:48):
How are you.
Speaker 22 (01:36:49):
I'm doing really well, glad to be back, Thank you
so much. Yeah, so you reached out to me about
this what would you call it, like a policy change?
Yeahcus to order, I guess, yeah, you know, And basically
we talked about like how do we try and make
sure that people know about what's happening. And I wanted
(01:37:10):
to ask you, So, you're a sis man and you
didn't have an easy time in prison, right as far
as I as far as I understand now, I think
no one gets to have an easy time in prison
is one of the things, especially in a supermax, So.
Speaker 3 (01:37:23):
Not that easier than others.
Speaker 22 (01:37:24):
I guess, yeah, you were not among the people who
had it easier. And as I would follow your journey
through the federal prison system, it seems like you had
to defend yourself against both other prisoners and also prison staff.
Speaker 3 (01:37:37):
Is that a fair way to put it mildly? Yeah, yes,
that was what was going on. Can you tell me a.
Speaker 22 (01:37:44):
Bit about the experience of trans people in prison, because
when you look at this executive order, it sort of
implies like all trans women are in women's prison and
all trans men. Actually, I literally have no idea where
transmit are held. I would rather if I was a
transmit I'd probably rather be in women's prison. I just
I don't know what was the situation like before this
executive order.
Speaker 19 (01:38:05):
So I want to start with saying, like, the reason
I hit you up is because there's so much like
horror happening this first week of like Trump's new presidency,
and I didn't want this issue to get swept under
the rug. A lot of times, the bigger, more mainstream
issues will get the most attention. And I still remember
(01:38:25):
our trans family inside, and so that's what scared me
enough to be like, dude, I need.
Speaker 3 (01:38:31):
To talk to you about this.
Speaker 4 (01:38:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 19 (01:38:33):
So when I was inside, there was not very many
trans people, and they're like, correct prison, Like a trans
woman should be in a women's prison, yea, a trans
man should be in a man's prison.
Speaker 3 (01:38:46):
And that wasn't happening on the level that it should have.
Speaker 19 (01:38:50):
And there was a rare case like Marius Mason who
had enough support, enough publicity where they were able to
but most people we were stuck at their gender at birth.
And so over the last couple of years, people started
getting a lot more access to safe prisons. That's why
I'll call them my prisons where they feel safest. Okay,
(01:39:12):
so I trans women were starting to go to women's prisons,
and it wasn't very many. It's not like there's tens
of thousands, but handfuls. Because it is it's very hard
in the federal system. To get recognized as a transgender person.
You have to go through years of degrading and humiliating
therapy with a prison psychologist. You have to get just
(01:39:36):
horribly treated by doctors who ignore you, gaslight you, diminish,
you try to push Christianity on you, and then if
you make it through their brutality, then you were one
of the lucky ones.
Speaker 3 (01:39:48):
You got to say, like, I am this person, this
is who I am.
Speaker 19 (01:39:51):
And if you're even more lucky, you got to be
transferred to a prison that would make you feel the
safest and the most whole is a human And that's
the goal, Like, that's the safety goal. Basically, that's where
we wanted things to be pushed. That people would be
recognized for who they are, they would get treated for
who they were, and they would be sent to a
(01:40:14):
prison that was congruent with who they were.
Speaker 3 (01:40:17):
And that's what's all being taken away.
Speaker 22 (01:40:19):
Yeah, and when you talk about the safety, I don't
want to like necessarily go on at great length about
how trans women suffer invents prisons, but it's probably worth
talking about, like because you've described it as there's like
literal sexual slavery happening in the prisons.
Speaker 3 (01:40:37):
Is that a fair way to put it?
Speaker 19 (01:40:38):
Yeah, one hundred and ten percent yes, yes, And I
only speak for federal prisons. I know in some states
it's different. Like in some states people are able to
use like their femininity as like a power play, as
a tool to keep themselves safe. And so if that,
if that's an option, then great, But what I witnessed
in the federal prison was the exactly opposite of that.
(01:41:00):
People are getting destroyed. And if you go into a
men's prison presenting as female in any way or soft anywhere,
or as any type of one or any type of
nonsense straight mail, you are an automatic target. And it's
not like hyperbole to say that if you walked onto
a penitentiary yard and you had makeup, if you had
(01:41:22):
your hair long, if you had breast, if you had
anything presenting as female, you will get butchered.
Speaker 3 (01:41:30):
Within an hour.
Speaker 21 (01:41:32):
You won't survive that, or you'll get by some group
and you will be a site like you will be
property and at the lower custody levels, it's a lot safer.
Speaker 3 (01:41:42):
If you're at a low security like FCI.
Speaker 19 (01:41:44):
Englewood, you're not in danger, though you're a danger of
humiliation and being degraded by staff, but you're not going
to get stabbed there.
Speaker 3 (01:41:52):
But God forbid you go to Victorville.
Speaker 19 (01:41:54):
Medium, Florence Medium, or any penitentiary, Like that's a death
sentence for real.
Speaker 22 (01:42:00):
Yeah, do you want to talk about the worst things
that ever happened to you? Do you want to talk
about you? And I We did another episode on my
other podcast Live like the World is Dying and talking
about how to survive prison, and in it, you talked
a little bit about what was necessary to kind of
stand up for trans prisoners. Do you want to talk
(01:42:22):
about that a little bit?
Speaker 19 (01:42:24):
Yeah, So, like everyone needs to have like consequence awareness
and they need to work on the lines that make
them feel most comfortable, of course, but for me, I
was not comfortable at all watching trans or gay prisoners
get brutalized. And so there were times where we'd have
to raise money to buy a prisoner out of sex slavery. Yeah,
(01:42:46):
we just have to buy them and then basically free
them or pay off whatever debt they owed so that
they no longer have to be in that situation.
Speaker 3 (01:42:54):
And there was other times that you you have to
knife up or you have to show up physically.
Speaker 19 (01:42:59):
And I'm not a big I of course, like I
don't tolerate like anti trams bullshit in my life anywhere,
and that includes in prison, and so like there are
times you have to step to people and say like
I am not gonna let this person have this happen
to them. And if you want to continue doing this,
then like we're going to take it to the next level.
(01:43:19):
And I wish to god there was more prison allies
that would be willing to do that inside, because once
someone is shown to have like support, it makes them
less easy to be a victim. If people see that
like this person's trams or like other people are riding
with them, they're less likely to go after them because
they'll be consequences. But if they're all alone, then they're
(01:43:40):
just a sitting duck. And so like we need that,
we need CIS men to show up and be like this.
Speaker 3 (01:43:47):
Is not happening.
Speaker 19 (01:43:48):
I don't care what race you are, I don't care
what gang you in you're in, You're not going to
hurt this person, And that's stuff that we had to do.
Sometimes it's scary as shit because you don't know what's
going to happen.
Speaker 3 (01:43:57):
But you have to, like you have to live your ethics.
Speaker 22 (01:44:00):
One of the reasons that I wanted to talk to
you about it and have you on this show is because, unfortunately,
I mean, prison is kind of a concentration of the
worst parts of society. I do not want to say
the worst people in society. I believe it has much
more to do with the incarceration and the way that
people are forced to be right when they're incarcerated. There's
a tangent. But have you heard the whole thing where
there's no such thing as an alpha male.
Speaker 3 (01:44:22):
Wolf in the wild. I've only heard from you, and
I loved it.
Speaker 22 (01:44:25):
Okay, I probably said this exact same thing last time
we time think activity.
Speaker 3 (01:44:28):
Yeah, And so it's like it obviously is going to
bring out the worst in people.
Speaker 22 (01:44:32):
That one of the reasons I want to have you
want to talk about this is because I think that
the experiences that you're talking about, they're much more real
and intense than most people on the outside are like
really thinking. You know, they're like, oh, that sounds bad,
but then their brain kind of turns off and they
stop imagining what bad looks like. And I think that
(01:44:53):
this idea that we're going to have to stand up
for our ethics regardless of the risk and cost to
ourselves sometimes is what it takes to create a society
that is resistant to fascism. I think it's the same
energy that people are going to have to do with,
like no, you can't take my neighbors right in the
era of ice.
Speaker 3 (01:45:13):
I think that's really well said too.
Speaker 19 (01:45:15):
I think the way, like I used to wear inside
is like we can't take steps backwards. We can't relinquish
any progress we've made, not a single pinch of it.
Speaker 3 (01:45:23):
Like everything has to move forward.
Speaker 19 (01:45:25):
And whatever you're capable of doing, Like not everyone's capable
of like physically stepping to someone and saying like no, right,
But everyone's capable of something, whether that's doing calling campaigns,
organizing protests outside of prison, whether it's contacting region, contacting
this person, raising money, doing whatever it takes. Everyone can
do something to keep people safe. And it's the same
(01:45:47):
in the free world, Like it's not different. Everyone has
something to offer. But it can't be apathy. It can't
be this nihilism that like what does it matter, Like
they're going to do it anyway. If we do that,
like we're just forfeiting the future and we're letting our
our family get but butchered.
Speaker 14 (01:46:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 22 (01:46:01):
I really like that way of phrasing it. Yeah, we
can't forfeit the future. How can people support transprisoners with
what's going on right now? I don't know how in
touch you are with people on the inside and things
like that. How are people feeling, like what's the vibe?
Speaker 3 (01:46:19):
What can be done?
Speaker 19 (01:46:21):
So I assume, like when you're asking what can people
do to support transprisoners? I assume you're asking what can
free world people do to support those inside?
Speaker 4 (01:46:28):
Yeah?
Speaker 22 (01:46:28):
I mean you actually kind of have said what people
on the inside can do, all right, which is necessary
and important.
Speaker 3 (01:46:34):
But people on the outside, what can people do?
Speaker 19 (01:46:36):
Visibility is safety, Like I saw that in my bid,
and I've seen that in other people's bids. And if
you look at someone like Marius Mason, if you look
at people like Jennifer Rose, keeping people visible and letting
the prison know that, like we're not turning a blind
eye to this person, like you're not going to get
a free one on them that cups people alive, Okay.
Speaker 3 (01:46:55):
And so the more the staff knows.
Speaker 19 (01:46:57):
And the administration knows that like this per is looked after,
the more they are likely to look after them because
they don't want to be held accountable. Okay, So things
like getting books into people, things like getting pin pals
of people, raising money so that they don't have to
go into debt, Like that's real, Like this debt stuff
is serious. So making sure they have money on their books,
(01:47:17):
Like I don't care what they spend it on. I
don't care if they spend on drugs. I don't care
if they spend it on twenty bags of coff. You're
gambling as long as it keeps them out of slavery
or out of that knife, like that's what matters. And
then Patsy names around like it's almost as if we
concentrate like all of our prisons supporting like five or
six people, and then we forget that there's like fifteen
thousand trans people in prison. Yeah, and so organizations like
(01:47:40):
Black and Pink do a really amazing job, but like
there's there's not enough, Like we need visibility like, we
need to keep people present in our lives that we
don't know and we might not like their charges, they
might not be nice people like, they might not be cool,
but we need to.
Speaker 3 (01:47:56):
Keep them alive. Like that's what abolition is. So visibility.
Speaker 22 (01:48:00):
Yeah, that makes sense. I sort of know the answer
to this, but I'm gonna pretend like I don't know
it at all. What's Black and Pink. Black and Pink
is an organization. I know it used to be an
anarchist organization.
Speaker 19 (01:48:11):
It might be something else now, but it's an organization
that's focused strictly on supporting trans and queer prisoners. That's
all they do, social prisoners, political prisoners, it doesn't matter.
We're gonna find you a pinpal and we're gonna get
people to write you and they do a really amazing job.
Like I honor them for putting in that work because
it's hard.
Speaker 22 (01:48:30):
And so someone who's listening, who's never considered being pen
pals of the prisoner could get in touch with Black
and Pink and be hooked up with someone to write to.
Speaker 3 (01:48:38):
Yeah, if you like.
Speaker 19 (01:48:39):
Even just like right now, someone googled black and Pink
pin palm, black and Pink prison Pinpal, like it'll pop
up the website. You just click on flying a pin
Pal and you can find someone in your city, find
someone in your state, find someone back to relate to,
like to have a little biography, and you can find
someone like to connect with and potentially save their life
or save your life.
Speaker 3 (01:48:57):
Yeah, it can make you better too.
Speaker 22 (01:48:59):
Yeah, okay, so writing helps when you talk about putting
money on people's books, like who does that? Is that
something you also could go through black and pink? Should
people be doing their own fundraisers? And then like working
with prisoners that they've already made connections with, like how
should people either plug in or start things?
Speaker 19 (01:49:16):
So each prison is different, like state and federal, But
to put money on someone's books, you can do that yourself.
You go you find out wherever prison that person's at,
and you can just go to the BOP website or
that prison's website. BOP is Bureau Prisons. It's for federal people,
and it will just walk you through how to do it,
how to send the money ground from Walmart or how
to do the JPay and put it on through your
(01:49:38):
credit card, and you can do it like if there's
an ABC in Erica's Black Cross community near you, you
can fundraise with them. If there's any like books through
bars or abolitionist groups near you, like you can and
should fundraise with them to raise awareness. But you don't
have to, Like everyone can do this on your own,
Like this is a single person job. Yeah, but it's
(01:49:59):
better if we do it as a community.
Speaker 22 (01:50:01):
Well, the way that I fund raised is that I
have advertisers that interrupt me talking about anti capitalist things.
Speaker 3 (01:50:09):
And here's one of those interruptions.
Speaker 22 (01:50:11):
And I'm gonna go ahead and donate my pay for
this episode to exactly what we're talking about. And here's
ads they are not donating. You can think of whatever
you want about these ads, and we're back okay with
(01:50:34):
this new executive order, Like how are people feeling either
inside or people who are doing prison abolition work, or
like how crisis does this feel?
Speaker 4 (01:50:42):
Like?
Speaker 3 (01:50:42):
What's going on? I can't like speak for ever. It
should quel like a ten out of ten.
Speaker 19 (01:50:46):
Yeah, like this is a carceral genocidee real, this isn't
a rasure of an entire people. So like, if you're
not at a ten for this, like you either do
not care or you're not understanding how serious the prison
system is.
Speaker 3 (01:50:58):
I've talked to a couple homies inside.
Speaker 19 (01:51:00):
I have to be really delicate because I'm still on probation,
but those people understand that, like the mood is turning dark. Okay,
they see inside that like when fascists come into power,
it empowers everyone else below them to be brutal because
they can get away with it now. And so these
people that were already monsters under the most liberal of
(01:51:21):
prison director are now getting told by the president that
they do not have to respect this person's entire life.
And so it's a very serious situation. We've got a
non binary person about to go and name Casey Goonan,
and they got sentenced for allegedly fire bombing some cop
cars and support with Palestine, and I talk with them
(01:51:41):
on a weekly basis, just trying to prepare them because
like right now, where they're at is a jail and
they haven't really experienced the prison yet, and so it's
all about like getting them ready for like here are potentials,
like here's what they could do. But it's dark in there,
like the Nazis are celebrating, and that includes the ones
with badges especially.
Speaker 22 (01:52:00):
Yeah, that makes sense. What kind of support felt the
most useful to you in other prisoners. He talked about
this a little bit, but I'm I'm like curious about
like you talked about, like visibility, are protests outside of jails?
Do they do they make people feel like good and
welcome or does it make the guards cracked down on everyone?
Like I know that there's this you know, habit of
noise demonstrations every New Year's and what kind of stuff
(01:52:23):
felt good, and what kind of stuff felt good but scary,
and what kind of stuff was just annoying? Like I
don't know, I'm just trying to find more stuff that
people can do.
Speaker 3 (01:52:31):
Yeah, the noise demos are cool, but they're performative.
Speaker 4 (01:52:34):
M M.
Speaker 19 (01:52:35):
It's more for the people that are doing them than
the people inside.
Speaker 4 (01:52:38):
M hm.
Speaker 19 (01:52:38):
But like, let's say you're a trans person out of
jail and there's thirty five people outside waving your banner.
That will get you respect inside, get people to say, oh,
what the hell.
Speaker 3 (01:52:47):
Is going on with them? Okay?
Speaker 19 (01:52:49):
Yeah, like that is that's serious to where you can
build up a rep if someone's already in prison, that's
you'll probably get them fucked up and put in the shoe.
Speaker 3 (01:52:57):
That's what happened to me.
Speaker 22 (01:52:57):
If there's a noise demonstration with your name, yeah, yeah,
be delicate how you do it?
Speaker 3 (01:53:01):
Yeah, because that's what put me in ad X. Oh shit,
so that's a real that's a real double edged sword, right.
Speaker 4 (01:53:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 19 (01:53:08):
They use that as the as the thing saying I
was the leader of Antifa because I got people to
come out and protest for me.
Speaker 3 (01:53:14):
So I got pulleyt. Bel Chapo.
Speaker 22 (01:53:15):
We shouldn't tell everyone that you're we have to keep
it on the DL that you're the leader of Antifa.
Speaker 3 (01:53:22):
For real. We dropped the ball. I know. Wait, I've
been told I'm the leader of Antifa. You're my leader?
Oh okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, totally yeah, I'm more reagional leader.
Speaker 19 (01:53:33):
The things that help the most, like in a real
life situation, are the things that provide mental safety and
something to do. Okay, so books, magazines that gives you
something to do, like empower yourself and pass the time
and stay out of the way. Money helps because then
you can do crafts, you can paint, you can do art,
you can sell things, you can do crochet. That stuff helps,
(01:53:55):
and then letters obviously like that gives you someone to
talk to. It people are actually putting thought into the letters,
and I always encourage and I always will for as
many people as possible to on a daily or weekly basis,
call that prison, call the prison, no matter what prison, state, federal, county,
and demand to speak with the warden, the captain, the warden, secretary,
(01:54:17):
the lieutenant, the head of psychology, and demand to know
how is this person doing? What are you doing to
keep them safe? We're hearing this in this what is
going to happen to our family? That makes a difference. Okay,
if you know a lawyer, pay the one hundred and
twenty dollars an hour to have them do.
Speaker 3 (01:54:33):
A legal call.
Speaker 19 (01:54:35):
That way, the prison sees this person has a lawyer
protecting them. They don't need to know that. It's just
a one time call. Yeah, but that legal call, just
the wellness check is what they call it. Let's that
person get word out about what dangerous stuff is happening.
But it also forces the prison to recognize that they
might be protected by legal system.
Speaker 3 (01:54:52):
Okay, so these things help.
Speaker 22 (01:54:54):
Yeah, what's the master plan here for how we're going
to respond to this executive order? Because obviously we're not
necessarily in a position to immediately reverse this order and
get women put into women's prison, which is a crazy
thing to have to say, we're not going to be
able to get women put into women's prisons, but is
organizing with a local group. You create a group and
(01:55:16):
you basically like figure out who the local trans prisoners
are in your area and make sure that you're communicating
with them and that they're getting wellness calls from lawyers
and basically like just making sure that the prison knows
that people are paying attention to the fact that there's
now women in the men's prison.
Speaker 19 (01:55:33):
Is that that's a soft version of what we should do, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:55:36):
Fair enough.
Speaker 19 (01:55:37):
There's other versions that are yeah, okay, there's the other
version that like I wish people would do. Yeah, there's
a version where we do BDS but for every single
company that's benefiting from prison labor, yeah, and say, as
long as you let this transgender hate go on, we're
not going to support your business. There's boycotting, there's putting
people on the road so that the cops can't show
up to their jobs.
Speaker 4 (01:55:55):
Uh huh.
Speaker 19 (01:55:55):
There's protesting outside warden's houses, there's protesting outside governor's houses.
If it's for state prison there is tangibly putting your
body on the line. There is sabotaging cop cars that
go into the prison, there is barricading the entrances. There's
a thousand things we can do to say, if you
heard our people were hurting you, yea, whether it's in
your pocket, whether it's in your car, whether it's in
(01:56:15):
your daily life, whether it's annoying you. We can find
things to do if we care enough. And we saw
people do it for Palestine. And I don't think transgender
lives are less important than Palestinian lives. Yeah, it has
to be an equal thing in my mind. Yeah, but
the subu sid's really great too. That's like that's daily stuff.
Speaker 22 (01:56:31):
No, No, but you're right, and it's like it's funny
because it's like, in my mind, it's so hard to
ring the alarm bells when all of the alarm bells
are ringing, and everyone's kind of ignoring alarm bells right now.
I mean, I guess the answer is that we talk
about it like this, but like, how do we make
sure that people actually listen to the alarm bells that
are happening right now? And I think part of it
is being really unfortunately brutally honest about what it's like
(01:56:54):
to be a woman in men's prison.
Speaker 3 (01:56:56):
I mean, I don't think people understand it all.
Speaker 19 (01:56:58):
And yeah, there's all this misinformation too, Like you'll hear
these like fascist talking points coming out of liberals' mouths
to where like well, I don't want my tax dollars
going to like pay for their surgery, or I don't
want some man just sneaking into a woman's prison saying
these transgenders we can rape everyone. And these are like
the same scare tactics and like misinformation that's used for
every single, like every single repression you've ever seen. And
(01:57:22):
it's our job to confront those head on and call
them out. His lives, show show the real information, and
it's our job to continue to just force people to
recognize that this is a dangerous and real situation.
Speaker 3 (01:57:36):
We can't let this entire group.
Speaker 19 (01:57:38):
Of people be destroyed, because like, if you're going to
turn your blind eye to transgender people, you're going to
do it to gay people, You're going to do it
to women, You're going to do it to black people,
and then it's just you, and then no one's going
to protect your stupid ass. We have to as or
as I have to as assist man. We have to
keep bringing this bell. We have to make people listen.
Speaker 22 (01:57:57):
I mean as a as a not currently in prison
and trans women. Like one of the reasons I think
this almost happens. I mean it happens because the cruelty
is the point, but like it's terrifying. You've actually experienced
the thing that's terrifying. It is terrifying the idea of
going into prison in the United States, especially maximum security prison,
potentially especially men's prison, both as a man or a
(01:58:20):
trans woman. I wouldn't want to be in men's prison,
and I don't.
Speaker 19 (01:58:23):
Even want to compare it, by the way, Okay, it's
not comparable. Okay, Like if I didn't have antique attachment
on my face, I could walk into any prison in
the country and be like, Oh, there's just a white guy.
There's just a white roll. Yeah, have no problems. Yeah,
a transgender person. There's a single place except for a
protective custody yard, where they can walk in and immediately
feel safe. Yeah, it's the exact opposite. Everywhere they go
(01:58:44):
is fight or flight. The scariest moment you've ever had
your entire life. Point four to seven, all day.
Speaker 4 (01:58:49):
Every day.
Speaker 19 (01:58:49):
Yeah, picture someone breaking into your home in the middle
of the night, in that terror you get. They have
to walk into a new prison every single time and
face that terror every single day. Yeah, it's not comparable
at all. It's scary as shit.
Speaker 3 (01:59:01):
No, that's fair.
Speaker 22 (01:59:02):
Like to be honest, like I think about and this
is like maybe more honest than I'm usually am on
this podcast. Like, you know, I don't do as much
frontline activism as I did. And part of that's like, oh,
I'm like aging and I have other work that I do,
And part of it is like I came out as trans,
you know, part of it is like I never liked
the idea of like because I always was trans and
the idea of like being surrounded by only men was
(01:59:23):
just viscerally terrifying. But now in particular, like it's just
such a it's a mind fuck. It's terrifying, and you know,
I feel like one of my main roles is to
try and help people be like, look, we're in this
together enough that you should be scared, but you should
get through the fear. But it's like the fear of
prison is like such a I mean, it's part of
the reason that people say, like, no one is free
(01:59:45):
is till everyone is free, as long as there is
a single person in prison, you were not free because
your freedom can be taken away from you at any point,
and that fear of prison it's funny. Okay, I'm almost
done with this rant. You know, people have kind of
like figured out at this point that certain branches of
Christianity will use the fear of hell to force people
(02:00:06):
to be good by their definition of good right. And
it's a scare tactic. It's terrorism. It is like a
you know, you better behave or infinite suffering awaits you.
But then even the people who are critical of that
haven't necessarily wrapped their head around that. The existence of prisons,
especially the existence of punitive prisons, like the sort of
theoretical perfect model of the Norwegian prison or whatever, where
(02:00:29):
you're just sort of separated from society, which I suspect
is not actually I suspect Norwegian prison actually kind of sucks.
But the American prison system is a prison system that
exists to make you on the outside not feel free,
like because it can be taken away from you and
you can be thrown in prison.
Speaker 19 (02:00:46):
That's my rant, Yeah, well, I mean, you're absolutely right,
like that is the entire goal is to make sure
that the community walks the government line, because if you don't,
this is what will happen to you. And when people
pull like the nonsense of like well, if you're not
committing crimes, you shouldn't worry about it, Like they are
not looking at how like arbitrary crimes are. Yeah, they're
(02:01:06):
not looking at how quickly something can become a crime,
or how quickly something that wasn't a crime can be
portrayed as one. And the trans struggle, like trans people
should not have to be on the front line. Again,
no point should you or any of our trans family
ever have to like put their freedom on the line,
Like that is that's a privilege role, Like that's our role,
(02:01:26):
my role, and my boss shouldn't have to get arrested
for transliberation. Like they should be safe, like they should
be able to feel comfort and warmth. You should be
able to feel that safe and warmth and love, Like
black people shouldn't be flighting the black liberation pipe. That's
that's white people's flight. Trans people should not have to
put their vulnerable lives on the line for this struggle
(02:01:47):
if we really believe in in the liberation struggle.
Speaker 22 (02:01:50):
Yeah, and it's hard because you also want to like
while also not wanting to like lead that struggle. Right, Like,
I think that like white people putting themselves on the
line for black liberation is like super important.
Speaker 3 (02:02:00):
But then obviously you can get into there's the hero
shit and trying to take a leadership.
Speaker 19 (02:02:03):
Yeah, do the David Gilbert role, be a soldier how
they need you, and help and fight how people actually.
Speaker 3 (02:02:11):
Need you, not how you think it should be done. Yeah, totally.
Speaker 22 (02:02:14):
Well, any last words for our audience around this particular issue.
Speaker 19 (02:02:20):
Yeah, Here in Denver, Brenn Rose's Legal Center, that's who
I work for. It's a transgender ran civil rights law firm.
We're about to put forward the trans Bill rights here
in Colorado to guarantee safety. And I bring that up
to say that not only is there direct action and
protest we can do, we can also try to weasel
into the legal system.
Speaker 4 (02:02:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 19 (02:02:41):
There's a thousand ways we can fight these motherfuckers, and
we've got to use every single one of them.
Speaker 4 (02:02:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 19 (02:02:45):
And I have nothing but love and solidarity for every
transgender person alive anywhere and I'm with you, and we're
going to get through this.
Speaker 22 (02:02:53):
I hope we are going to get through it, because
even as individuals we might not, right, But that's as
it's true about being alive, right, Literally, none of us
are going to get through being alive alive right. At
some point that's going to stop working for us, and
they can't get rid of us. We have always been here,
we will always be here as long as there are
(02:03:13):
humans that are going to be trans people, they're going
to be queer people, they're going to be All of
the identities that they're trying to destroy cannot be destroyed,
even if us as individuals might But again, we weren't.
Speaker 3 (02:03:26):
Going to get out of life alive anyway. That's what
I hold on to.
Speaker 22 (02:03:29):
I don't know about everyone who's listening, but the thing
that I hold onto is that just literally I was like, well,
I wasn't.
Speaker 3 (02:03:33):
I'm not immortal. You know, it's got a time limit.
Speaker 22 (02:03:37):
Yeah, And all we can do is to say, go
back to one of the first things that you said,
we just kind of can't compromise our ethics, you know,
like there's like balancing acts right where you have to think, like, well,
I probably shouldn't do something where I like while out
and get myself killed and accomplish nothing. Fight to win, yeah, exactly,
and some of fighting to win is knowing when not
(02:03:57):
to fight and things like that. Right, but but not
and secretly you're just actually doing it at a cowardice way.
You actually have to be strategically being like where and
when should I engage in what ways? And there are
so many different ways that people can engage. Yeah, thanks
for coming on, And do you want to talk about
your book?
Speaker 3 (02:04:14):
So rather than the cages out right now?
Speaker 19 (02:04:16):
It's with ak Press and it is a oral history
of the political prisoner movement hold from the mouths of
those prisoners. It covers like fifty or so prisoners from
every movement, Black trans Our Elders are more recent anti fascists.
And it was a beautiful way not just to hear
about like oh I fought for this, but what was
(02:04:37):
my life like inside?
Speaker 3 (02:04:39):
What did I experience?
Speaker 19 (02:04:40):
What gave me joy? What gave me hope, what gave
me sadness? And it's a way to see the vulnerability
and humanity of those inside. And I think that's really
valuable right now and here soon my ADX book is
coming out on them press. Oh cool, so I'll be
I'll be hounding you for that here soon, for that coverage.
Speaker 3 (02:04:56):
Yeah yeah, Wait, well what's that book callor about.
Speaker 19 (02:05:00):
It's gonna be called a clean hell, and it's gonna
be about how I want it trial, because no one
does that in the Feds. Zero point zero eight percent
of people win in federal trial. And then how I
got sent to the federal supermax and there's no books
out about the supermax, there's none. Well, and so one
of your homies has the inside scoop.
Speaker 22 (02:05:18):
Yeah I got Yeah, you were just an undercover journalist,
just a real undercover solitary confinement.
Speaker 3 (02:05:27):
So had Josh Davidson is helping me edit it.
Speaker 19 (02:05:29):
Josh Davidson from rather than the Cages, who did also
certain days.
Speaker 3 (02:05:34):
So it's seemed been a really great project, Carlso awesome.
Speaker 22 (02:05:37):
All right, Well, people should check out both of those
things and take care of people inside. And I hope
that we'll have you one again soon.
Speaker 3 (02:05:44):
Yay, thank you so much.
Speaker 13 (02:06:06):
It could happen here. I'm Garrison Davis, and yeah, it's happening.
The past few years I've been writing about how the
religious right has been trying to roll back trans rights,
take away gender affirming health care, and essentially remove trans
people from public life. And the day that I'm writing this,
President Trump just issued an executive order aiming to ban
(02:06:27):
gender affirming health care for everyone below the age of
nineteen in the United States, with promises to weaponize the
Justice Department and alter the national Health guidelines for gender
affirming care. And unfortunately this is just the start. But
this won't be a wallowing in the doom and gloom episode,
(02:06:48):
nor will I be laying out the fool proof solution
to get us out of this predicament. Instead, we'll be
hearing from two people who are trying to do something
to affect change in the physical world. Last month, Mia
and I talked with Neha and Cassie, who are organizers
and baristas with Starbucks workers Unite It, and they also
(02:07:11):
co facilitate that union's trans Rights action committee called Track.
Speaker 3 (02:07:17):
And specifically, the topic of this episode is how.
Speaker 13 (02:07:20):
To use union organizing as a way to fight for
trans rights and secure access to gender affirming healthcare, which
is unfortunately an increasingly critical issue. We've already had conservative
states like Tennessee pressuring private insurance companies to drop covering
gender affirming care by blocking insurers from contracting with the
(02:07:41):
state's medicaid program, basically holding it hostage. And now with
the federal government threatening gender affirming care and seemingly more
and more restrictions kind of on the horizon, working outside
the state and not relying on government programs like Medicare
and Medicaid will only become more and union organizing is
(02:08:02):
one way to do that. A union contract, union infrastructure,
and the collective resources of you and your fellow union
workers can help protect trans people in the workplace and
get us the things we need. If you already have
a union at your workplace, you can get more involved
and fight to prioritize trans rights. And if you don't
have a union, you can work to secure access to
(02:08:24):
gender affirm and care through unionizing your workplace and having
healthcare protections as a core part of your contract. For
more on that topic, I'm going to play the conversation
between my fellow union member Mia and Neha and Cassie
from Starbucks Workers United, and I'll occasionally pop back in
to provide some context. Here's Cassie.
Speaker 23 (02:08:46):
When you fight for a collective bargaining agreement, a contract
between union workers and their employer. You can fight for
gender affirming care to be included in the healthcare that's provided,
and make sure that that healthcare is afforded and actually
usable by the people working there, and that their wages
are adequate to cover out of pocket expenses, including travel
(02:09:08):
expenses if you live in a state that's coming under threat.
Speaker 13 (02:09:11):
But it is not just healthcare that is under threat
right now. Just days into office, Trump already started to
roll back Biden era federal discrimination protections. Last Monday, the
Trump Badman sent a memo ordering a freeze to all
federal grants, loans, and aid, requiring a sort of audit
(02:09:32):
to ensure the recipients of those funds use the money
in a way that quote conforms to the administration priorities unquote,
and not to promote quote dei and woke gender ideology unquote.
On Tuesday, a judge temporarily halted the order, and on
Wednesday the White House provoked the directive. But this clearly
(02:09:55):
demonstrates what the new priorities are for the Conservative government,
and they we'll most certainly try this again, probably in
a more targeted, discriminatory fashion, to limit the general backlash.
But even as the government starts openly allowing discrimination or
even encouraging it, discrimination protections is still something that unions
(02:10:17):
can write into their contract.
Speaker 23 (02:10:19):
Having non discrimination language in a contract that covers gender
identity is a really critical way to improve not just
for yourself, but then also we talk about these things
like hiring discrimination. If you get that kind of language
in a contract at a union job, that's going to
help everyone who comes after you. Because additionally, as a
(02:10:40):
union you have the mechanism of enforcement of a grievance
and an arbitration procedure. Right, that's sort of, you know,
the critical in addition to obviously all the kind of
actions you can perform. And you know, we can talk
about what things might look like without the NLRA, but
for now, we have grievance and arbitration procedures still. And
in states where there are legal protections against employment discrimination
(02:11:04):
for trans people, like here in California, the bar to
defending yourself legally is obviously a lot higher, including financially,
than defending yourself through a grievance procedure at a union job.
Speaker 14 (02:11:17):
Right.
Speaker 23 (02:11:18):
A grievance procedure at a union job is way more
accessible to the average working person than hiring a lawyer
and going through a legal system that is totally stacked
against you and in favor of the wealthy. Having a
union to defend you, you know, with the collective resources
of your union that you're part of, and having your
shop steward or you be a shop steward and filing
(02:11:40):
those grievances yourself. It's so much more accessible for regular
workers to get enforcement when they are discriminated against. And
that's obviously not only relevant for trans people, but it
is certainly relevant for trans people.
Speaker 13 (02:11:53):
Now, if you don't have union organizing experience, this could
all seem a little intimidating, even if you already have
a pre existing union at your workplace. MIA has done
a whole bunch of episodes on unions and labor organizing
on this podcast you could certainly look to for more
information and a bit of encouragement. In twenty twenty three,
(02:12:14):
Neha co founded TRACK, the Trans Rights Action Committee, which
is a subcommittee of the Starbucks union that was started
to help advocate for trans rights within the union and
share information about the challenges trans workers were experiencing. We
asked Neha about the process of getting this focus on
securing trans healthcare through your union to be something that
(02:12:37):
the union collectively fights for the way that our union.
Speaker 15 (02:12:41):
Started focusing on trans healthcare as one of the core
issues isite we weren't organizing around. And all started with
a conversation with like a regional staffer here in Oklahoma.
I have like a regular check and call with my staffer,
and this was like two two and a half years ago,
(02:13:01):
and he was just like asking, you know, what's going on?
What are you concerned about? And I was like, well,
I'm having some issues with like accessing health care, and
he not heard like how difficult it was for like
trans people to access healthcare and Starbucks. He wasn't aware
of like how expensive it could be. And as I
(02:13:21):
started talking to him, he was like, hold on, let
me like set up a meeting with some other people.
I think they need to hear this too. So then
we have like a follow up meeting with more like
staff and other organizers. I talked about these issues again,
and one thing led to another thing, and they ended
up encouraging me to form a subcommittee with their union
(02:13:44):
for trans workers to kind of like build community for
us and connect us, but also hear more stories from
trans workers about the struggles that they were facing, specifically
in accessing healthcare. And so that's kind of how TRACK started.
And it's been really moving to see how over the
(02:14:05):
past like two three years, this went from like an
issue that was affecting like a minority of a minority
of workers, right, Like, it's not like every single work
at Starbucks is trying to like have facial combinization surgery
or anything like that. Right This issue that was affecting
like a small step set of us ended up becoming
(02:14:25):
like one of the biggest issues we were organizing around.
It makes me really emotional when I think about like
how much my union coworkers and like my comrades like
actually like fucking care about trans people. Right of kind
of like how TRACKS started and how we started to
organize around trans healthcare specifically.
Speaker 23 (02:14:47):
It's been a focus for us for a long time.
Also in part because the initial you know, our public
bargaining proposals that were released early on when we first
formulated our demands in included improvements to gender affirming care
at Starbucks.
Speaker 3 (02:15:04):
And part of that's because there.
Speaker 23 (02:15:05):
Were trans people involved in writing those initial demands right,
and you know, Neihaw was involved nationally in the campaign
and had the opportunity and the encouragement to start track.
Speaker 3 (02:15:22):
You know, we have to be part of it.
Speaker 23 (02:15:23):
I think is on some level, you know, the most
basic prerequisite for everything that came after is because trans
people have been involved with this campaign from the beginning.
We do have so much support and solidarity from our
coworkers and from our fellow union comrades, regardless of whether
they're SIS or trans, and I think part of that
(02:15:45):
is because we've really showed up and done the work.
This again goes to that kind of like false narrative
of there's like some kind of contention between workers' rights
and trans rights. It's like trans people have been super
motivated to get involved in this camp pain and fight
for the rights and benefits for every worker at Starbucks.
Other workers have seen that, seen the way we've been
(02:16:08):
involved and dedicated, and that's given them the sympathy and
solidarity to stand by us for an issue that affects
us very you know, directly and somewhat narrowly compared to
a lot of the other things we're fighting for. So yeah,
on some level, I think it comes down to unions
are a place where trans people can get involved in
(02:16:29):
political life in a way that's hard to do in
other parts of American political life. And you get to
build that solidarity, and if you're there at the table,
you have a chance to highlight the issues that are
important to us. And if you're fighting for everyone else,
they're going to want to fight for you too.
Speaker 13 (02:16:45):
Track's logo says trans rights are labor rights, a phrase
one of Nahe's co workers came up with to express
the idea that even if your state becomes an unsafe
place for queer and trans people, trans people will still
fight to ensure that their workplace, their store, is a
safe place for any trans person who works there. As
(02:17:07):
the functioning of the state and the federal government becomes
more and more alienated and distant, or in many cases,
increasingly hostile to the likes of you and me, one
of the few ways we can still exert power over
our lives is through unions, regardless of whether you live
in Portland, Oregon, or Oklahoma City, and specifically, as access
(02:17:30):
to trans healthcare becomes more and more of a growing issue,
this is becoming more of a core issue itself. That
you can organize around and can actually build a union around.
Speaker 23 (02:17:40):
Lots of different struggles have been highlighted in our campaign.
You know, we have really made racial justice a major
priority as well. I mean, obviously economic justice is at
the core of any union struggle, but you know, we're
really invested in making sure all workers are included in
(02:18:01):
this movement and their specific concerns are represented as well
as our general shared concerns. And as more and more
things get taken away at the level of federal politics
and state politics in many places, people will be looking
for recourse. It's like, how do I get back the stability,
the protections, the dignity, the power that I've lost, particularly
(02:18:22):
if you know some of these folks are not super
democratically accountable. People will be looking for how they can
build power and how they can find security when the
state is not providing it and when the state's actively
undermining it. Actually, and unions are one of the truly critical,
(02:18:43):
irreplaceable answers for protecting yourself, for protecting the people you
work with, for protecting your community, and for taking back
some of the things that they're trying to take away
from you, whether that's on the job protections, whether that'sanomic equality,
whether that is your access to trans healthcare, whether that's
(02:19:05):
protections from racism or misogynistic discrimination in your job and harassment,
all of these things. If the state steps away, people
should and will look to labor organizing as the answer instead.
Speaker 15 (02:19:20):
Our ability to build power in this way is a
way that we maintain hope so that we can keep
organizing for a better future. I think one of the
best tools like these fucking fascist freaks have is making
us feel like there's no hope. It's beating us down,
it's making us feel like we have no power, it's
making us feel completely disconnected from the government, our workplace,
(02:19:45):
all of these different things that like exert power over us.
And I think labor is such a direct way to
give people that power back.
Speaker 3 (02:19:53):
Yeah, Morales a terran a struggle, and this is a
way that you can fight there that does other things
too at the same time, critically important and.
Speaker 13 (02:20:02):
Do you know what else is important? Being subservient to
the capitalist impulse of pivoting to ads.
Speaker 3 (02:20:17):
Okay, we are back.
Speaker 13 (02:20:19):
Here is more of our interview with Starbucks workers.
Speaker 11 (02:20:21):
You needed.
Speaker 3 (02:20:23):
Yeah, I'm excited to talk to you because things have
been very bad. And one of the specific ways that
they've been very bad is that there's become this framing
and this has been around for a while, but it's
getting sort of increasingly adopted in mainstream circles that trans
rights are opposed to workers' rights, and that's just nonsense.
(02:20:44):
So I wanted to sort of start there with a
bit of a discussion about, well, the ways in which
the trans struggle is a worker struggle.
Speaker 15 (02:20:51):
The trans community is like disproportionately like impoverished, like a
lot of us are struggling to just pay for rent,
are basic like needs, right, Yeah, I think that's firmly
assumes that like all trans people are like, I don't know, rich, working,
attack or some shit like that, which just is not true.
Speaker 3 (02:21:12):
Yeah. The actual stats, by the way, these are running
from the US Trans Survey, which is the largest survey
of trans people in the US. Thirty four percent poverty
rate than the national number for assist people is eleven percent.
The unemployment rate is eighteen percent. The US uneployment rate
assists people is four percent, eighteen percent is nineteen thirty
six great depression levels of unemployment. Thirty percent of trans
people have experienced homelessness in their lives. The national rate
(02:21:34):
is about seven percent, and those numbers are actually very
misleading because it's actually much worse than that, because these
demographics skew young significantly because of both the shortness of
our life expectancy and how often we get killed. And
also there's more people who are realizing that they're trans
now than there ever has before, So those homelessness numbers
(02:21:54):
are we are racking up a rate of homelessness that
is four times higher than the regular rate, and we're
doing it in significantly less years than it takes the
CIS population to rack up these levels of homelessness. So
things are extremely bad for trans people. Transfems make like
sixty cents on the dollar of like the average American worker.
Speaker 23 (02:22:14):
Yeah, and I think you see that in our union.
We have a lot of worker leaders who are trans.
It's a noticeable obvious fact about our unions that trans
people have really been deeply involved since day one at
all levels of this union. And I think part of
that is because Starbucks has been associated as a place
(02:22:37):
of economic stability and opportunity for trans healthcare for a
community that has relatively few opportunities. I mean, if you're
talking about eighteen percent unemployment. Then you're talking about people
who certainly are going to have difficulty getting employer provided healthcare,
let alone employer provided healthcare that's going to include gender
affirming care, right, And so Starbucks has been held up
(02:23:03):
as an opportunity for that for a lot of people.
It's obviously drawn a lot of us to the company.
Many of us started working there for that exact reason,
and then, you know, have discovered in many cases that
it's actually not so accessible. You know, I can say
in my case, it's definitely one reason I started working
at Starbucks because I heard like, hey, if you want
(02:23:25):
facial feminization surgery, go work at Starbucks.
Speaker 3 (02:23:27):
That was a community tip.
Speaker 23 (02:23:29):
And then it turned out that I made so little
money that I qualified for Medicaid, And in California, where
I'm lucky enough to live for now, Medicaid covers those
things and is more affordable and accessible than the Starbucks
healthcare actually was, So I ended up relying on Medicaid instead.
And I think a lot of us have felt and
seen that dissonance between coming to this company looking for opportunity,
(02:23:54):
looking for a place that is inclusive and will hire
trans workers, it says, and ostensibly offers trans healthcare, but
then finding out where those gaps are and realizing like,
actually it's better for me to stay on Medicaid, which
is easy to do because I make so little money
at this job. It takes that shine off. And I think,
you know, our economic vulnerability as a group is precisely
(02:24:18):
what drove a lot of us to seek improvements here.
It's related to our transness, sure, but it's also like
just fundamental working class issues. We need better wages, we
need better healthcare. You know, that's something everyone benefits from
and everyone can relate to.
Speaker 15 (02:24:34):
And I mean, I can also attest to the fact
that I started at Starbucks five years ago because I
needed to have access and gender firming care. I was
coming from a situation where I came out as a teenager.
I was disowned and kicked out by my family. I
didn't have access to college. I was like basically on
(02:24:56):
my own right, and I had no idea how I'm
going to matter transision, and like older trans women in
my life told me to apply to Starbucks. And it
was also like one of those things where like, again,
I live in Oklahoma, It's not like there's a ton
of employers who are like super excited to hire trans women. Right.
Speaker 3 (02:25:17):
That's something I also want to highlight because I don't
think people understand this at all. If there's cysts is
that the level of employment discrimination is staggering. It is, however,
hard if you are a sis person you think it
is to find a job, it is like thirty times
harder if you are trans. It's unbelievably difficult. And the
promise of just like any job that will hire a
trans person is a huge deal because you know otherwise
(02:25:40):
odds are you walk in the door and they take
one look at you and like, you know, you're fucked.
Speaker 15 (02:25:46):
Right, And I think that's how Starbucks kind of like
advertises itself too queer and trans workers, right. And I
think this is reflected in the demographic of my store.
Ninety nine percent of my coworkers are clear a lot
of us or trans. There's like a lot of trans
women who work at my store. I actually don't even
know if we have a single straight coworker. Actually, we
(02:26:07):
have liked one token like diversity higher, but he literally
just transfers. I think it's all gay people, but no,
like all of us applied to Starbucks because like, what
other options do we have? Right, And again, in my case,
I applied to Starbucks because I needed access to gender
froming care. And over like the five years that I've
(02:26:27):
worked here, I've realized that while that benefit might look
good on paper, in practice, it's hard to actually qualify
for that healthcare. It can be completely unaffordable for a
lot of us. Right Like, last year, I made sixteen
thousand dollars in total from Starbucks, and like a disproportionate
(02:26:52):
amount of that income was just going towards healthcare, which
doesn't even take into account like rent or bill or
anything else. Like we're struggling to just fucking get by.
Speaker 13 (02:27:05):
Something that Mia pointed out is that one of the
few places trans people are actually overrepresented is in union organizing.
Because trans people don't really have a safety net. Fewer
of us can turn to or rely on family support.
So union organizing is one of the ways we can
directly fight for a better life.
Speaker 15 (02:27:26):
But the current political climate as it is, it's even scarier.
I mean, Cassie was talking about not being able to
actually access the Starbucks healthcare and having defined other ways
to pay for gender firm and care. But I mean,
we're looking at like a Trump administration that could possibly
be trying to make it impossible for anyone to use
(02:27:48):
Medicare and Medicaid to cover gender firming care. We're looking
at state by state like healthcare vans, right. I think
it's more important than ever to organize and focus on
transwrites and our access to healthcare, our wages, our safety
at the workplace. Where else are we gonna protect ourselves
(02:28:09):
like that?
Speaker 13 (02:28:10):
The Starbucks union is also fighting for guaranteed scheduling and
better staffing in stores, and this relates directly to a
worker's ability to access health care and gender affirming healthcare.
Part of Starbucks healthcare being somewhat inaccessible is that employees
have to work a certain threshold of hours to qualify
for benefits, including healthcare. Failure to get enough hours of
(02:28:32):
work scheduled means losing access to your own health care,
and this kind of reflects a more subtle form of
employment discrimination.
Speaker 15 (02:28:41):
I can speak to this. I've heard this from many
other workers. It is such a struggle just to get
the minimum amount of hours to keep your benefits. I
was talking to another worker who was telling me about
how she had to like literally cry and beg her
manager to schedule her enough so she didn't lose access
(02:29:02):
to gender firm and care. And of course this manager
was scheduling enough hours for other workers who weren't trans women, right,
And so I've been having like protections in a contract
that guarantee a certain number of hours that are scheduling.
That kind of thing also makes it easier for us
to maintain and keep the benefits that we need.
Speaker 13 (02:29:25):
And obviously this benefits all workers because everyone benefits from
having enough hours to actually get the money you need
to live. The Starbucks union started the official bargaining process
with the company last April, and they were supposed to
have their final bargaining session last December, based on a
shared expectation that the contract would be closed and ratified
(02:29:47):
by the end of twenty twenty four.
Speaker 15 (02:29:49):
So after nine months of bargaining, it's December or expecting
to finish up contract bargaining. And after like a few
months of like delaying and not really giving us a
counter on wages or benefits, Starbucks like finally gave us
a counter proposal, I mean like counter proposal.
Speaker 3 (02:30:09):
It was literally like a page.
Speaker 15 (02:30:13):
And their counter proposal was basically no changes to benefits whatsoever,
and a one point five percent raise if non union
stores received a raise that was less than that, And
for context, one point five percent for most of us
is thirty cents. So yeah, after nine months, that was
(02:30:34):
the best they could do. So it wasn't really a
serious like counter proposal. I mean, frankly, it was a
fucking insult.
Speaker 13 (02:30:45):
So with less than a week's notice, they organized the
biggest ULP strike in the union's history, resulting in five
thousand baristas at over three hundred stores across the country
going on strike on Christmas Eve. Now, this is not
the kind of open ended, ongoing strike that you're probably
more familiar with. A ULP strike refers to a short
(02:31:08):
term strike action directly tied to an unfair labor practice,
which is any act by an employer that violates a
worker's legal rights, and unlike ongoing strikes, ULP strikes can
happen anytime, not just during contract bargaining. In fact, the
Starbucks union has utilized ULP strikes the past few years
(02:31:29):
to address unfair labor practices. Part of the shared agreement
to finish the contract before the year's end was to
also resolve outstanding unfair labor practices by the end of
twenty twenty four, which did not happen and thus the strikes.
And this was a super tight turnaround to organize strikes
of this scale. By having a representative or delegate from
(02:31:53):
each store in the union present at bargaining, which is
hundreds of workers, that provides a direct link to every
store in the campaign. This was how the union was
able to pull off a mass mobilization on an extremely
tight turnaround. So when it's time to vote to go
on strike, there's already workers across hundreds of stores around
the country ready to organize their co workers and get
(02:32:15):
the word out. Contacts with union advocacy groups and a
network of allies ranging from campus activists to LGBTQ organizations
can also help spread the word about these strikes, raise awareness,
and pull more numbers onto the picket line. On more
of a big picture note, once you get these sorts
of structures and networks from union organizing, you also gain
(02:32:38):
the actual capacity to deploy them quickly in a way
that actually lets you do rapid responses to changing situations.
And that capacity is something that transadvocacy just hasn't really
had in a long time.
Speaker 15 (02:32:50):
These sites are directly connected to the broader political situation
in America right. I think that a big issue that
trans organizing has right now is that there's not a
lot of on the ground reaching out, connecting to mobilizing
people who are impacted by these policies that are like
(02:33:13):
negatively impacting trans people. And so I think the kind
of organizing that unions are doing right, that we've been
doing this entire time right where we're speaking to people directly,
where we're getting them organized, getting them involved, is really
a helpful starting point for like turning discontent and turning
(02:33:35):
anxiety and fear around issues into like actual action. I
think it's like super essential that we have this contract.
Now we're heading into twenty twenty five, we're heading into
a frankly pretty fucking scary time for trans people. We
need a contract that protects trans healthcare. We need a
(02:33:57):
contract that guarantees better wages. We need a contract of
only for the protections that it guarantees workers in terms
of like safety at work and type of terms of
making sure that they're not being taking advantage of at work.
Right well, Starbucks offered us again was an insult. It
wasn't a real counter proposal. We're more ready than ever
(02:34:19):
to like finish his contract and to have something, but like,
we need movement from Starbucks. We need a serious counter proposal.
Thirty cents and no changes to benefits isn't going to
fucking do it.
Speaker 13 (02:34:32):
We're going to go on another ad break and return
to finish up our interview with Starbucks Workers United. Okay,
we're back. I'm now gonna throw to MIA or a
(02:34:52):
discussion on how union organizing can help strengthen trends. Advocacy
in general.
Speaker 3 (02:34:58):
We're in this kind of crisis period of I don't
know what you call the national trans movements, just the
extent that it exists, where the advocacy orgs and the
legal strategies they've been pursuing are not working. We're losing
in the courts all the time. Their electoral strategy of
kind of bearrying themselves to the Biden administration has failed,
and I think this is a moment where we need
(02:35:20):
a new plan. And this is as good of a
plan as I've ever seen. And I think one of
the things that we're going to see, we're going to
need to see and we're literally just going to have
to do over the next few years. I mean ideally
over the next couple of months, because we don't have
we don't have much time until these people take power.
Is more sort of you know, not just intra union
(02:35:42):
coordination of organizing a transworkers, but is organizing trans workers
across different unions and trying to figure out how we
leverage our power, like more broadly to you know, protect
ourselves and to fight for our rights and fight to
be free. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:35:59):
I think.
Speaker 23 (02:36:01):
That's something we're still building our capacity for that in
this union, but we definitely do have relationships with other
trans union activists and organizers. We're affiliated to Workers United,
which is affiliated to SCIU, So obviously that's kind of
the most direct and easiest way for us to get
in touch with other trans folks that are in the
labor movement, get support, get feedback, get ideas, and share
(02:36:25):
in turn what's been working for us. But it is
a capacity we want to build out even further because
we are going to need that solidarity between and among
labor unions in order to form a coherent response. I mean,
as you're saying, the response hasn't been working. The kind
of problem solving we're seeing from a lot of politicians
(02:36:47):
basically amounts to sidestepping the issue, pretending it doesn't exist.
You know, maybe not throwing trans people under the bus
explicitly by actively supporting our elimination from public life, but
certainly not standing up and defending us. And unions are
one of the only ways that working people can come
(02:37:07):
together in large groups and pool resources for political activity.
And we know there are a lot of problems with
how many unions currently do that. But for those of
us who are you know, very committed to struggle for equality,
that's not going to compromise and throw some group under
the bus. We understand that we have to get involved
(02:37:29):
and be part of labor in order to improve how
labor does politics in this country. If we want people
to stand up and defend trans rights and defend trans healthcare,
and defend our ability to exist in public life.
Speaker 3 (02:37:46):
Then we have to, like we have to be the
ones to do it. We just we have to do it.
Speaker 23 (02:37:51):
And getting involved in your union is one of the
only accessible ways that trans people are going to be
able to build that kind of political capacity and find allies.
We have an opportunity here because you know, to do
a version of Jijik's mistranslation of Antonio Gramsci is like,
you know, the old trans movement is dying in the
(02:38:13):
New World's like struggles to be born. Now is a
time of monsters. But I think this means that, you know, you, like, literally,
the people listening to this show, the people on this now,
we are going to be the people who define what
the trans movement is going to be going forward, right,
and we have to because we have no other choice.
But this also means that, yeah, we are going to
be the ones who get to set the tone of
(02:38:35):
what we're doing, get to like strategically decide on how
we're going to do this. And I think we have
advantages too in the sense that there are ways in
which our economic marginalization is sort of helpful in that,
you know, if you look at the sort of independent
unions that have been forming recently, right, even more so
than in conventional unions, unbelievable numbers of those people are trans,
right because you know, Okay, you're dealing with the population
(02:38:57):
where it's very easy to get salts, easy to send
people into unionized stores because no one has jobs anyways,
and so the you know the risk of you losing
it is like lower because you're already taking a low
wage job, et cetera, et cetera. And I think I
think there's there's things about these movements and the way
that we're embedding ourselves in also sort of new movements,
Like the start unionization thing is not that old, right.
(02:39:20):
I think we're well positioned on the sort of front
of a bunch of different changes that are happening in
both union organizing and in how the American working class
works to build something together that can actually go back
on the offensive for the first time in like a decade.
Speaker 6 (02:39:41):
Right.
Speaker 15 (02:39:41):
And I think we're at a moment where we actually
have to like fight for ourselves, right. Yeah, Again, we're
at a point where no one else is going to
fight for us. We have to be willing to take
that step and fight for ourselves advocate for ourselves. At
this moment, it's up to trans people to get involved
acially with the labor movement, and there's so much opportunity
(02:40:03):
to advocate for trans rights, to like build up the
transliberation movement in a way that hasn't been done before.
I think it's so essential for us to not feel
hopeless and see the potential here and get involved. I'm
not necessarily telling people that, like you should go apply
to a Starbucks and like convince them to unionize, but
(02:40:26):
also like I'm.
Speaker 23 (02:40:27):
Not not saying that, you know, trans people are getting
that opportunity to actually drive our own liberation, and there's
just so few places in society where we get that.
That's been one of the most exciting things about being
part of this union for me.
Speaker 3 (02:40:47):
And yes, you should.
Speaker 23 (02:40:48):
Consider going to work at Starbucks and unionizing it. And certainly,
you know, to directly plug a little bit. If there
are Buristas in your audience, they absolutely should go to
our website. I think there will be a link like
in the description of the episode or something. Go visit
our union's website, get in touch with an organizer, and
(02:41:08):
start organizing. I know it can like sound daunting in theory,
like what does it mean to start organizing my workplace?
But there is a template, there's a plan.
Speaker 3 (02:41:17):
You know. We've done this a bunch.
Speaker 23 (02:41:18):
We've done it at over five hundred stores, at least
five hundred and twelve at this point nationwide, which is
pretty incredible, especially to have done all that without yet
having even secured our contract. So we have a good
template for how to win, and if you just get
in touch, then people will reach out to help you.
And that does include professional staff, but it also includes
(02:41:40):
people like us who are workers that will be peer
to peer, worker to worker organizers, because that's what this
campaign has been built on from the beginning, is workers
organizing each other. So yeah, I mean, there's really truly
never been a time that's better than now and also
never been more essential.
Speaker 3 (02:42:00):
It's never been more needed than now. So this is
the time.
Speaker 23 (02:42:04):
And if you're not a barista, or you can't become
a barista, then we still really need people to sign
a solidarity pledge with our union and get involved that
way as allies, as supporters. You know, community support is
always critical to union struggles. We are bargaining our contract
with Starbucks right now, and community support is a huge
(02:42:26):
part of what's going to get us, you know, the
contract that does deliver the kind of protections and benefits
we're looking for, that does set a precedent for what
trans inclusive union organizing and union bargaining can look like
in this country. It's kind of a terrifying responsibility sometimes.
But the thing about this union is because it is
(02:42:47):
one of the exciting bright spots in American labor right now.
I do think a lot of people are looking to
us to figure out, well, what are they doing, what's working,
what's going well? And I certainly think, you know, the
results we get for trans workers in our union have
some precedent setting importance. So it is really critical, even
(02:43:09):
if you're not in this union, even if you don't
work at Starbucks, to support this struggle because it will
have ripple effects. There will be ramifications for American labor
and for the struggle for transliberation as a consequence of
how things turn out with us.
Speaker 3 (02:43:27):
So yeah, we could really use your support.
Speaker 13 (02:43:30):
Earlier this episode, we talked about hope, and as important
and as useful as that can be, it is also
super crucial that people know how they're actually able to
organize and actually try to get things done. After this
last election, I'm sure many of you, like myself, were
flooded with posts and performative calls to action. Now is
(02:43:52):
the time to organize your community, but never with any
real information on what that actually means or how to
go about it. But something like the Starbucks union is
actually a very direct way to do that, especially if
you're a barista.
Speaker 15 (02:44:07):
I think I have to emphasize how achievable that is,
Like it is possible five hundred plus stores across the
nation have done it in this political environment. Right, I'm
going to shout out one of my coworkers. She transferred
to another store in Oklahoma, and I was chokingly telling her.
I was like, well, you're allowed to transfer as long as,
(02:44:29):
like you, you unionize your store immediately, and she was
like okay, And she did it, like within like a
week of being there. She'd like talked one on one
with everyone at that store, people who were all already
wanting better wages, better healthcare, better staffing, And through these conversations,
(02:44:51):
she organized that store. And that is so fucking amazing
to me, and it makes me feel so I don't know,
I don't want to sound like patronizing or whatever, but
it makes me so proud to see that, right, to
see that she's been able to see how our store
has organized, how we've spoken to people, how we've reached
out to like her co workers, and she's been able
(02:45:13):
to take that and replicate that so easily, get so quickly,
Like when I say, with them, like a week or
two of transferring to the store. I am not exaggerating.
She was fucking on top of it. If we can
do this in fucking goddamn Oklahoma, we can do this anywhere. Right,
It is possible. You can do it if you can
(02:45:34):
have a conversation with your coworker, if you can have
a conversation with multiple co workers, if you can develop
relationships with them friendships, if you can establish that you
have like a common issue, right, if you can make
it clear that like the struggles we're facing at our
workplaces have a solution. You can do this. All you
(02:45:56):
have to do is actually fucking take that step to
make it happen.
Speaker 3 (02:46:01):
Every single union that has ever been formed was maybe
by people exactly like you. You the listener listening to
this right now, Right, you are exactly the person who
has organized every union that anyone has ever done. Right,
It's it's not something that's like the domain of pure
professional organizers. You can do this too, Yeah, you really can.
Speaker 23 (02:46:21):
And I mean, you know, at my store, I was
the only transperson at my store, and despite being a
transsexual communist, I was able to organize a successful election
at a store that includes you know, half of people
being Trump voters like the idea that you have to
hide or diminish yourself, or that because you know your
(02:46:44):
trans or otherwise marginalized, that it's impossible for you to
build that solidarity with your coworkers and come together for
your common issues.
Speaker 3 (02:46:53):
It's just not true.
Speaker 23 (02:46:54):
People understand their own economic liberation, even if they don't
fully just yet. There's always an intuitive level you understand
you're getting screwed over. You can tell that the system
is not set up fairly and it's not set up
for you to succeed as a working person. And with
the right conversations, with the right information, with the right
(02:47:15):
relationships and solidarity that you build with someone else, people
can be brought to understand what the solution is and
that the situation you currently live under with shareholders and
capitalists stealing all of this value from you is unacceptable,
and that there is a way to fight to get
(02:47:35):
back what you've earned with your labor. So for those
of you who are listening, you don't have to hide
who you are politically or personally to do that work
to bring people along. And in fact, if we do
hide who we are, then we're not really going to
be getting people all the way to where they need
to go. You know, we're not going to build a
(02:47:56):
movement of people committed to liberation by side stepping issues
and hiding pieces of who we are and saying that, oh, well,
you know, transliberation is not really important. That's not how
we're going to build like a durable coalition. I think
this is a problem that politicians in our country keep making.
It's a mistake they keep making of thinking they can
(02:48:17):
ignore or downplay certain issues tensions within their coalitions to
keep those coalitions together. But when you ignore it, you
don't address it, it just blows up later in the end. Anyway, Yeah,
get involved that you really have nothing to lose and
nothing you know, accept your change not to be I
(02:48:37):
mean I just realized halfway through. I was like, well,
I might as well finish the quote.
Speaker 15 (02:48:41):
So, Okay, we're like such a scary point for trans people,
and I know that that's terrifying that that's also an
opportunity to pivot and to like actually make meaningful change.
Right again, I cannot emphasize enough we create our own
(02:49:02):
hope for a better future. It has to be on us, right,
We can't just I don't know, depend on other people
to do this work for us. We have to show
up and do this work. And I don't know. Personally speaking,
I am fucking tired of liberals who want to just
ignore trans people and pretend we don't exist. As like,
(02:49:24):
I don't know, our TVs are flooded with anti trans ads.
I'm tired of depending on people who aren't advocating for
me right. I'd rather fight for myself through my union.
Speaker 3 (02:49:36):
So yeah, and I think that's a good place to
close on. Is in some sense a cold world that
has left us with no one to fight for ourselves
but ourselves. But if we fucking do it, we can win,
and we can drag everyone else along with us.
Speaker 13 (02:49:49):
On that note, I'm going to close out the show
here with a few plugs for Starbucks Workers United. You
can find their website at Sbworkersunited dot org and SB
Workers United on social media. I'll have a link to
their website and their solidarity pledge in the description below.
See you on the other side.
Speaker 24 (02:50:30):
Welcome to it could happen here.
Speaker 25 (02:50:32):
We decided every week you were going to do in
episode called Executive Disorders, White House Weekly, where we report
the news, and today we are going to start that episode.
We have the entire full time team here. We have
Mio Wong, Garrison Davis, Robert Evans, James Stout, and I
(02:50:54):
am the voice in your ear Sophie Lichterman.
Speaker 2 (02:50:56):
Yeah, and you should know we'll be making a number
of references to a show you haven't watched, called The
news Rooms. So many we didn't just pretend we didn't.
Speaker 25 (02:51:04):
Yeah, anyways, let's do the episode now go.
Speaker 12 (02:51:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 13 (02:51:09):
So this episode is also going to be a little
bit different because the idea is to cover each week
of stuff that's happening visa via the White House. And
it's been two weeks since since Inauguration Day, and we
are recording usually on Wednesdays, so there'll be, you know,
a day or two there that we will record the
week after. But we have a whole bunch of stuff
today because we are covering essentially two weeks. I'll start
(02:51:31):
with some of the transgender executive orders that happened last week.
There was an order defining two sexes assigned at conception,
which made plenty of biologists scratch their heads. A lot
of this is just going to impact the ability to
change your gender marker on federal documents for the next
(02:51:51):
four years, you know, passports, also removing the the ex
gender marker from federal documents. There's also a new directive
that Pride flags are not to be flown on federal buildings.
Also a separate one. I don't think we have included
here in the research doc but how brutalist and modernist
architecture is now not allowed to be used on new
(02:52:13):
federal buildings. You have to use Greek or Roman inspired
architecture because they project power. So all of those like
Greek avatar statue Twitter accounts have a complete cultural victory.
Speaker 2 (02:52:26):
Now, uh great, I am going to agitate to replace
the Oregon State capital with just a statue of a
Roman orgy. You know, we don't even need place for
the legislators. Just look at the statue and you'll know
what to do.
Speaker 13 (02:52:40):
This actually is like bad, you know, very very nineteen thirties,
you know.
Speaker 26 (02:52:44):
Yeah, yeah, famously no other regimes have hawken back to
Claus Caalle era.
Speaker 13 (02:52:48):
Well, and specifically is like