It Could Happen Here Weekly 246

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Also 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 (00:29):
Hello, dear listener you're listening to it could happen here.
My name's Carlos. I'm a journalist from Puerto Rico. I'm
here with James.

Speaker 4 (00:37):
Hey.

Speaker 5 (00:38):
How you doing.

Speaker 3 (00:39):
Hi, Nice to have you on for this. James.

Speaker 6 (00:41):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (00:42):
Let me ask, have you heard about a little thing
called imperialism?

Speaker 7 (00:47):
I have During my education in the United Kingdom, it
was an issue that they raised once or twice.

Speaker 3 (00:55):
So you would say you're quite knowledgeable about imperialism, then sure.

Speaker 7 (01:00):
I think I have a little a little grass of it,
both from there learning about it and teaching about it.
There's a whole lot of imperialism, you know. I don't
think I've covered all of it, so I'm excited to
learn about some extra parts of.

Speaker 3 (01:12):
It same same, and actually I would say so. I'm
from Puerto Rico, and as a subject of American imperialism,
I'm very happy to share this episode today, which is
kind of a history of American overseas expansion, focused particularly
on its colonies. There are several American colonies. Puerto Rico

(01:37):
is the most populous one and the most known, but
there are several others. So I want to start this
episode by laying out some definitions and frameworks in case
people aren't familiar with them. When people think of the
United States, they typically only think about the contiguous United States,

(01:58):
also known as the lower forty eight. This is how
most people imagine the US today, and maybe they include
Alaska and Hawaii. This is what historian Benedict Anderson calls
the logo map in his seminal book Imagined Communities. Essentially,
the way that it works is that if every country
had merged, then this is the logo that would be
on it. This is literal in some cases. For example,

(02:21):
I saw a lot of America two fifty shirts that
only had the map with the lower forty eight on it.
The logo map, whether people mean it or not, is
often a political statement. Whatever people imagine the logo map
to be is what they consider the dominion of their government.
For example, if you see an IDF or Russian soldier
with a patch that includes Gaza and the West Bank

(02:43):
in Israel or Ukraine as part of Russia, then you
very likely know that person's thoughts on the territorial borders
of their respective countries. However, what is included in the
logo map is often just as important as what isn't included.
In the case of the United States, which has continuously
lied to itself about being an empire, the lower forty

(03:04):
eight logo map hides the country's former territories Alaska and
Hawaii if they're not included, its current territories like Puerto
Rico and Guam, as well as a smattering of military
bases that it owns across the world. This emission, in
its self conception, is an active American exceptionalism, giving visual
credence to the fact that the country is one homogeneous polity,

(03:27):
not a settler colonial state or a global superpower with
overseas possessions that it continues to colonize to this day.

Speaker 7 (03:35):
Yeah, I think the America two fifty with the lower
forty eight on it. It's a really fascinating image, right, Like,
there is no historical argument the countries on that map
were not the United States two hundred and fifty years ago.
The place is on that map.

Speaker 3 (03:49):
Absolutely.

Speaker 7 (03:50):
When people think in their mind of their imagined community,
that is America, that is what they think of. Even
though I think very few of the T shirt wearers
with the two map would be like, yes, in Hawaii
and Alaska colonies and like we should, we should let
them be yet let alone discussing put Rico, Guam. And
then you have all the like the Cofa countries, right

(04:13):
like RMI. Yeah, absolutely, Like I guess if you want
to put them on a T shirt, you need a
really fucking big T shirt to keep it to scale,
right like it it is a vast global empire. Yeah, yeah,
you have bases in Africa, basis in Greenland, bases all
over the world.

Speaker 3 (04:31):
Absolutely So at a time when Trump has made several
overtures towards expanding the physical territory of the United States
by either making Canada, Greenland or Venezuela or a bunch
of other places ostensibly the fifty first state, I think
it's important that people know that the US is not
only a military and economic empire, but a literal one

(04:54):
with control over a series of territories and their people
that spans the pacif and the Caribbean, as well as
the aforementioned military bases. So to start, I should say
that that kind of ideological game about the US logo
map is almost wholeheartedly ripped from the beginning of Daniel
Imawar's How to Hide an Empire. Also, James, in the

(05:17):
case of the shirt with all of the territories and colonies,
that there is a map in there that I will
show you later that we could put on a T
shirt of sweet, Okay exciting. So How to Hide an Empire,
alongside Colonial Crucible, edited by Alfred W. McCoy and Francisco
as Carano, were monumental sources for these two podcast episodes

(05:39):
that we're about to do. Anyway, James, I know that
you've heard this term before, but I want to start
out by defining the term quote unquote insular area before
I get to the meat of this episode. When a
place is an insular area of the US, it means
that they are a US associated jurisdiction, but aren't states
or the District of Columbia. This encompasses several different legal

(06:01):
meanings in terms of sovereignty free of the US's insular areas.
The Republic of the Marshall Islands, the Federated States of
Micronesia and Palau are independent nations that have compacts of
free association with the US. This means that they have
their own sovereignty, but certain things such as defense, are
in hands of the United States. I won't be talking

(06:22):
about them too much, but if you want to learn
more about them, you should go listen to James's series
on the Republic of the Marshall Islands.

Speaker 7 (06:29):
Thank you. I was in that RMI when they were
renegotiating with the Biden admin. They are proud independent country,
of course, right, and they have sovereignty in a lot
of issues. But also like the US, didn't come at
that equal to equal, you know, like the US, a
country which nuked the Marshall Islands, which it never had
any quarrel with, it's still not paying people in those

(06:52):
places what it said it would pay them for the
damage it did by New Kingdom when they were downwind.
Like even now when they negotiate, they can't force the
United States to treat them with really what is human
BEI basic dignity.

Speaker 3 (07:07):
Yeah, absolutely, And this is you know, I think something
that extends not only to the countries under the compacts
of reassociation, but all of its colonies that when they
are at the bargaining table, it is very clearly an
incredibly unequal bargaining table with this like global superpower and
its colonies, and they're trying to reach the colonies are

(07:29):
trying to reach sometimes more independence or more federal funding
or something or another.

Speaker 6 (07:35):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (07:35):
So the other fourteen insular areas are what the US
calls quote unquote territories, and I should say that fourteen
doesn't even tell the whole story, but I'm going to
hold onto that fact for a second. These fourteen are
divided into thirteen unincorporated territories and one incorporated territory. There's
a complicated explanation for that that I'm going to explain

(07:57):
in the next episode. But all you have to know
for now is that people often talk about these territories
as being part of the United States. And while that
is true on a conceptual level, right when you imagine
the United States, or maybe not, when people going to
the America two fifty rallies imagine the United States, but
when you map out the US's global borders, you include

(08:20):
Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa as part of the United States. However,
in a strictly legal sense, all of the unincorporated territories
belong to but aren't part of the United States. So
of these fourteen territories, nine are uninhabited and five have
people on them. The nine uninhabited territories are Baker Island,

(08:44):
Holland Island, Jarvis Island, Johnston Atoll, Kingman Reef, Midway Atoll,
Kalmira Atoll, which is the sole incorporated territory, Wake Island,
and Navasa Island. There are also two other territories, Seeraniya
Bang and Bajonuevo Bank, that are claimed by the US
but administered by Columbia. Meanwhile, Haiti has also historically laid

(09:08):
claim to Navasa and still does. This is similar for
Wake Island, which is claimed by the Marshall Islands but
is administered by the US. In the modern day, these
remain mostly uninhabited save for military or scientific missions. All
of these little pieces of land are often grouped together
as the US minor outlying islands. Yeah, in the calculus

(09:33):
of the US, they're like so meaningless that they're usually
not even talked about by their names.

Speaker 7 (09:38):
Right right, It's like a footnote of existence.

Speaker 3 (09:42):
Exactly exactly, even though they have been, as I hope
to show, very important to the conception of the United
States as an empire. Meanwhile, the five inhabited territories are
Puerto Rico, where I'm from and currently located, Guam, the
US Virgin Islands, the Northern Mariana Islands, and American Samoa.

(10:03):
So this is going to be split into two episodes.
The first is kind of giving a crash course on
the inhabited islands and how the US has claimed the
minor outlying islands created the skeletal framework on which the
US would expand its overseas empire. And then the second
episode is mostly going to be about how the US

(10:24):
acquired those five uninhabited islands and how they kind of
shaped the metropol in ways that people rarely conceive of. However,
before getting into that, I want to make a quick
note about language. Up until now, I've been using the
word quote unquote territory to describe these places, just to
talk about them in the same way the US history

(10:44):
teacher might talk about them, or how the President of
the United States might talk about them. But going forward,
I'll be referring to them by the word quote unquote colony,
because that's what it's called when a foreign polity controls
a place and its people.

Speaker 7 (10:59):
Yeah, it's like the book Turtle hints at has done
a very good job of hiding its empire. But like,
I think part of that is because it's convinced people
not to call it by its name, and because it
hasn't called it by its name and then no one
else does, then somehow it fits into this magical third
space between independence and empire, rather than just saying, oh, yeah,

(11:19):
this is an empire, but they rebranded it.

Speaker 3 (11:21):
Yeah. Absolutely, it's like the of the However, many empires
that have existed throughout history. The only thing exceptional about
the US is that it doesn't conceive of itself as
an empire. So I'm going to assume that a lot

(11:44):
of people don't know much about the US colonies. So
here's a crash course. Puerto Rico and the US virsin
Islands are in the Caribbean, while Guam, the Northern Mariana
islands in American Samoa are in the Pacific. Between them,
the five US colonies have about four million people. Except
for American Samoa, everyone born there is born an American citizen.

(12:08):
People born in American Samoa are non citizen US nationals.
If they want to become US citizens, they have to
go for the naturalization process. People in the colonies can't
vote in federal elections, and we don't have voting representation
in Congress. Instead, we have a non voting representative whose

(12:28):
job is kind of just to squawk at other congress
people to convince them to do things. Politically, all the colonies,
say for Puerto Rico, have the US's two party system.
I should say that American Samoa's elections are nonpartisan, which
means that while candidates do affiliate with the Republican or
Democratic parties, they run the ballot as independent. In Puerto Rico,

(12:49):
political parties are divided based on whether they want Puerto
Rico to become a state independence or remain in the
colonial status quo. That has been that way for going
on about seventy years now. Although some candidates in Puerto
Rico do affiliate with US political parties, they run representing
the archipelagos political parties. A bunch of the sources I used,

(13:09):
like the AP or The Conversation, among others, are linked
in the show notes if you want more details. Puerto
Rico is probably the one that people most know about, right,
and I'm also going to be focusing a lot on
it throughout this these two episodes. Because I'm from here.
We're the most populated and largest in terms of land
mass by several magnitudes. The archipelago really only comes into

(13:33):
the American consciousness in times of crisis. For example, right now,
it's in the news because we're facing a pretty bad
water crisis, with some people having gone more than one
hundred days with no or an intermitent water service. This
is common across all the colonies, only getting media coverage
in times of crisis, and even then it's unlikely that
they'll receive the same media attention as any state. Puerto

(13:56):
Rico is often the one that's in then news just
because it's the biggest, Right But when was the last
time you heard a let's say, like a CNN report
about Guam or American Samhow right? In my experience, right,
only talking about Puerto Rico it's kind of a news
desert in relation to other states, which I know, right,
media has been affected everywhere, but the colonies specifically because

(14:19):
of their kind of colonial status and how it has
affected them. There's media blackouts from the metropol to them,
and in them, they are sometimes a little bit of
news deserts. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. I would wager to say
that the first time Puerto Rico entered American consciousness in
recent memory was in twenty seventeen, when hurricanes Irma and
Maria destroyed the archipelago and its long ailing electrical system,

(14:43):
causing thousands of deaths and the largest and longest blackout
in US history. Shortly after that, a Morning Consult poll
found that only about fifty four percent of Americans knew
that people here were also American citizens. And that's like
after kind of once in a lifetime natural disaster.

Speaker 7 (15:04):
Yeah, right, that's been in the headlines, like, and Trump
is there, like handing out toilet paper, like.

Speaker 3 (15:09):
True, absolutely right, he was doing the kind of free
point meme. Yeah photo that has become famous.

Speaker 7 (15:16):
Now, Yeah, your handing out is your own word, right,
flicking toilet paper at people?

Speaker 3 (15:23):
Absolutely, And you know he also like and This is
kind of a preview of what I'm going to talk
about next episode or at the end of next episode.
But he did remark that he wanted to trade Puerto
Rico for Greenland.

Speaker 7 (15:34):
Was Denmark, So like it would be the Danes who
would administer Puerto Rico or who's Yeah, who's he trading
it with?

Speaker 3 (15:41):
Yeah, no, he's trading it with with Denmark. Right, he
would trade Puerto Rico for Greenland, So Denmark would take
over Puerto Rico and the US takeover Why not over Greenland?
You know, we're just kind of there to be bartered with.

Speaker 7 (15:55):
Right, Yeah, this is not a place where people live exactly.
I'm sure the Dane really embrace like I mean, yeah, fine,
I guess that is what Embias used to do back
in the day, Right, we just swap land around.

Speaker 3 (16:10):
Absolutely. I mean, the US bought the Virgin Islands from
Denmark for a cool twenty five million, right, so yeah,
there's president for it. Yeah true.

Speaker 7 (16:21):
Yeah, and then not so long ago, Alaska like true.

Speaker 3 (16:26):
So, like I mentioned that, only appearing in US media
or receiving national attention is very common for the colonies.
This is particularly the case of Puerto Rico, which has
been suffering one crisis after another for the last two decades.
Our siblings and the other colonies receive even less media attention.
If you're listening and this is the first time you're

(16:46):
hearing about these colonies. To be honest, this is what
empire does to those it considers lesser than make them
invisible in public life until it is socio politically expedient
to use them for one purpose or another. Yeah, like
trading us for Greenland. And while I was writing, I
really struggled to find a concise way of explaining the

(17:08):
importance of the colonies to the formation of the United
States as we know it today. Today, we often talk
about the imperial boomerang produced by several overseas US invasions
in the Middle East coming back to haunt us. We've
seen the militarization of police throughout the country, the rise
of what any Latin American country would call quote unquote manolura,

(17:32):
politics at home, and much more. Yet, in the conception
of the American consequences of imperialism, the literal colonies of
the United States are often left by the wayside, but
the current and former colonies have shaped the country in
untold ways of which I'm going to be talking about

(17:52):
a few today. To quote from colonial crucible quote, the
United States held most of its larger colonies for just
a few decades and governed only a few million people,
Yet empire left an indelible imprint on the United States.
Colonialism was a crucible that plunged Washington's raw bureaucracy into

(18:12):
the white heat of nationalist revolution and great power rivalry,
forging you heretofore unimagined state capacities. Indeed, the ramifications of
this early American empire were far wider than anyone has
yet imagined, a marked expansion in the role of the
federal government for more activistic domestic administration, and the formation

(18:34):
of an agile, transnational imperial state for more effective global governance.

Speaker 7 (18:41):
I think a lot about how American self conception has
kind of changed. I guess I think a lot of
specifically about Cuba, right, and how like, there is not
an American politician who would not like to be compared
to Theodore Roosevelt, could be on any party right. Most

(19:02):
of the wild also like to be compared to FDR,
which is a whole other interesting thing when you look
at internment. But that's a separate topic. Part of that
is that he and his like rough riders, right, these
volunteers went to Cuba and then they charged up San
Juan Hill, and like at the time in America, there
was this feeling that like empires are going to fall

(19:24):
and we're going to help them. And we went from that,
and some of that was like yellow press stuff, right,
sort of whipping up this popular sentiment of like the
Americans and we destroy empires to the platinum n that, yeah, right,
and to effectively the United States to factor ruling Cuba
in formal colonialism. Like what that says about how the

(19:48):
United States conceived of its role in the world. Even
like you can go back even further right and see
Hamilton talking about the revolution in Haiti and the ship
that didn't make it into the musical, where he is
just wildly racist and believes that people, the black people
of Haiti to being capable of self government and to
just that they might want to appoint a king to like,

(20:10):
you know, keep them under some kind of control. I
guess I failed to fail to follow the logic there,
but I don't particularly care to try. But like it
says a lot about this country. Right, which does it
saying like all men are created equal? Well fuck not
in Haiti though.

Speaker 3 (20:26):
Yeah, not in Haiti, not in the Caribbean, not in
Latin America, not anywhere but the United States and maybe Europe.

Speaker 7 (20:33):
Yeah, like from sea to Shining Sea is in fact,
like those people are created equal unless they're indigenous to
the place that we want, in which case we don't
even fucking respect our treaties with them, let alone them.
I mean Britain did this too, but like just a
jarring disjuncture between rhetoric and actions, and like at the
same time that that rhetoric could still be used to

(20:55):
justify colonial actions, right, like when Hearst and the Yellow
Press a whipping up this idea of like Spanish empire
in Cuba and how unjust it is and how how
terrible it is, and that we shouldn't be allowing this
in our hemisphere. Stop and pause and think about our
hemisphere and anti colonial terms. But like, genuinely, I'm sure
that working people in America believe that, right, and some

(21:16):
of the people who look volunteered to fight their genuine
like hell, yeah, we're going to liberate another country in
the Americas, Like fucking all burnt down.

Speaker 3 (21:24):
We're going to bring the US freedom and liberty to
these people by crushing them.

Speaker 7 (21:30):
Yeah, Like we're the best country in the world, and
like we're going to share that with you all because
you're our neighbors to like, actually, psych we get to
intervene how we want, when we want, whenever we want
in your politics because we like the stuff that you've got.

Speaker 3 (21:44):
Yeah, because seeing the colonizer from the colonized position, right,
a lot of the US's approached to the rest of
the world is either right at the tip of a
barrel or from a position of imperial and colonial arrogant.
Like we figured it out before you did. Let me
teach you how to do it. And if you don't

(22:05):
follow everything I'm going to say, I'm going to force
you to do it right. And that's what defined this
period of colonial expansion by the US between like the
early eighteen hundreds arguably to now, honestly, right.

Speaker 7 (22:20):
Yeah, Like the attitude is indistinguishable from the attitude that
compelled Britain to create an emperil of the world.

Speaker 4 (22:27):
Right.

Speaker 7 (22:28):
I love to show my students a white Man's Burden cartoon.
I'm sure you've seen the one where he's like Uncle
Sam is like carrying the peoples of like Puerto Rico,
Guam and Cuba, I think, up in a little basket
up towards like civilization.

Speaker 3 (22:42):
Yeah, the shining mountain of the shining city on a hill,
carrying us to salvation.

Speaker 7 (22:47):
Yeah, and just like wildly racist caricatures. But I will
show that, you know. I've shown that to undergraduates for
getting on for fifteen years, and it's always wild to
see their responses to be like, I understand sometimes because
I'm British there, like I'm coming in there with a
history of our own imperial grind. But yeah, it's interesting

(23:08):
to see them conceive of the United States that way.
I try to wrap their heads around that when they're like, no,
it's not America. We didn't do that, man, a totally
different thing. It's fascinating that they could come through eighteen
years at a high school system and not be asked
to reflect on that or even be aware of it,
you know.

Speaker 3 (23:27):
And actually speaking of a colonial cartoons, I pulled it
up right now, but I'm really partial too. Have you
seen this cartoon from Puck that I believe was made
in nineteen hundred where it's Uncle Sam teaching its newly
acquired colonies Hawaii, Philippines, Puerto Rico. Q. I can send
the link in the chat right now. Yeah, yeah, I
think about it a lot because I growing up in

(23:50):
Puerto Rico and being educated by the school system. I
don't know about the American school system very much or
specifically how it's taught, but there was a critical to
the way that we were taught about the US is
kind of capture and colonization of Puerto Rica. And that
was mostly because I had a really great history teacher

(24:10):
my last senior year of high school. But this cartoon
has really stayed in my memory for a very long
time because it's like, oh, yeah, it's how I view
like the US's approach to so many foreign nations. Right,
you have so many facets of this, Right, you have
the black population, which obviously the US is historically oppressed

(24:31):
and enslaved for centuries. You have the indigenous population, also
historically oppressed and killed for centuries by the US government,
represented in the corner. And then you have these new
states which are like depicted as white people in colonial
dress being good students. And then you have Cuba, Puerto Rico, Hawaii.

(24:52):
The Philippines upfront depicted as not in like the clothes
the rest of the people are wearing, as if they
need special attention to. He taught the kind of education
of freedom and liberty by Uncle Sam, right right. I
don't know. I think about this like anytime I'm like
conceptualizing colonialism. This is this is it for me? They

(25:12):
peaked here.

Speaker 7 (25:13):
Yeah, that it's wild. It's interesting that Alaska is amongst
the like I know what to call them, like the
older kids. They're trying to portray like a civilization savagery
binary here right, Like, Yeah, that's what's what's happening. Alaska
is up there with the civilized stage. And then there's

(25:33):
someone I know, what's happening with his person outside the doors,
just like the Chinese exclusion.

Speaker 3 (25:39):
Actually I believe so, Yeah, I think that's that's what
they're trying to portray.

Speaker 7 (25:44):
Yeah, it's an excellent cartoon. Yeah, but yeah, there's a
whole lot happening here.

Speaker 3 (25:49):
Listeners. I know that this is an audio median, but
go go google School Begins and Puck and then you'll
see it. It's it's really yep. I don't know if
they were made this like rope was fully racist, or
if they were just really good at depicting the US's racism.
But they popped off with this one. Yeah, we should
teach this in every school everywhere.

Speaker 7 (26:09):
Yeah, it's pretty Uh, it gets right to the point.

Speaker 3 (26:13):
Yeah, exactly. So I want to be clear that the
way that the US was shaped by its colonies is
not a uniquely American phenomenon. Paraphrasing from colonial crucible, Every
empire is shaped by the Promethean experience of the colonizer
and the colonized, both empowering and eviscerating, yet mutually transformative

(26:36):
and traumatic. The chain of continuity that now spans almost
two hundred years of seafaring colonization has profoundly shaped the
American Empire, unleashing the catalytic forces that have shaped the
formation of the American state up to this day, the
lasting imprint of which is evident during Washington's recent misadventures

(26:56):
in the Middle East. And when they wrote that, it
was two thousand and nine, so they were talking about
the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, But twenty years later
it applies almost equally to the current war with Iran.
With that out of the way, to start with how
the US expanded, passed the American continent and became a

(27:16):
seafaring empire. We need to go back two hundred years
to the mid eighteen hundreds and talk about bird shit.
Manifest destiny had taken the United States on a genocidal

(27:38):
campaign that displaced indigenous people and killed them from sea
to shining Sea. Meanwhile, the Monroe Doctrine, while still nascent
and not completely enforceable by the American state, created the
ideological and legal framework for the country to overflow from
its recently established national borders. In the midst of all

(27:58):
of this, industrial agricate culture was becoming the norm across
the world and in the United States, which meant that
there was a severe need for fertilizer to grow crops quickly.
People were experimenting with different things, but the one fertilizer
that everyone wanted was guano, also known as white gold.
Guano is the accumulated poop of birds, bats, and seals.

(28:22):
It contained several nutrients that are very good for quick
agricultural growth. However, the thing about guano is that it
mostly grows on far off islands or caves. So the
big problem with guano is that at the time, most
of it was contained in islands off the coast of
the newly independent state of Peru. And I'm talking about

(28:45):
states in the nation state, the country essentially a country
of Peru. And that was a problem for the United
States because they needed guano bad but they didn't want
to rely on a foreign country for it. And I
should say that a lot of this comes from how
to Hide an Empire and an article titled Guano and
the Rise of American Empire by Mauri Siobadancourt published in

(29:05):
Sage Journal. So, with a desperate need for guano, what
is a fledgling empire to do but set sail and
lay claim to the islands that contained large deposits of guano.
US businessmen originally wanted the US to take Peru's Lobo
Islands for themselves so they could extract the guano, but
Peru protested and the US backed off. However, the American

(29:29):
taste for guano was clear, and in eighteen fifty six,
the US passed the Guano Islands Act, which allowed any
US citizen to lay claim to uninhabited islands that had
guano on them in the name of the United States.
American entrepreneurs set sale for poop covered islands, and while
the law specifically mentioned that they had to be not

(29:50):
claimed by other countries, that didn't really stop people from
claiming islands that were also claimed by other nations like Britain, Honduras,
and Colombia. It's kind of like that meme from Arfur
that says, a sign can stop me because I can't read.

Speaker 7 (30:06):
Yeah, this is like the wildest period. Maybe not, but
like it's just this bonkers period of US history where
you can personally expand the imperial possessions of the United States,
like on your own free will of volition.

Speaker 3 (30:22):
Right, So it's like you know, I mean that's like
part of the American conception.

Speaker 8 (30:26):
Right.

Speaker 3 (30:26):
You reached a place that was empty of people, you
settled there, and now you have brought the US to it. Right,
that's the story that America tells itself at.

Speaker 7 (30:36):
Least, right, Like that's manifest destiny, like writ large across
the whole global map.

Speaker 3 (30:42):
Absolutely so per how to hide an empire. By the
time that last claim was filed in nineteen oh two,
the US had added ninety four islands to its dominion.
All of these were uninhabited, so they weren't quite colonies
until US industry moved to them, establishing guano mining outfits
that used black laborers essentially induced to work there under

(31:04):
false pretenses in horrible conditions. In more ways than one,
the US had essentially exported Southern style plantations beyond its
continental borders to the edges of its empire. Nowhere was
this more clear than a tiny island off the coast
of Haiti called Davasa that the US still owns to
this day. Workers there mostly consisted of black laborers from Baltimore.

(31:28):
Fed up with horrible conditions, the workers eventually revolted, and
five white overseers died during the ensuing riot. For this,
dozens of workers were charged with crimes ranging from rioting
to murder. Free were given death sentences, and when their
case eventually reached the Supreme Court, their defense rested on
a hail mary play. Since Haiti also claimed Navasa, the

(31:51):
US did not have jurisdiction to prosecute them, and this
was to be clear an extreme long shot, and the
decision from this would define the US's legal approach to
its colonies for essentially until now. The Supreme Court sided
with the prosecution, laying it out explicitly that the US
owned Navasa and other territories, and that American citizens there

(32:15):
were working on American soil, even if it was a
sort of corporate fiefdom. President Harrison eventually commuted the death
sentences to life sentences pro write up in the History
News Network, but raised the issue that the US needed
to better extend its government to these territories, ostensibly to
protected citizens and its interest, no matter how far away

(32:38):
their people or its land was. At time of recording,
the ninety four Guano Islands have diminished to less than
ten for various treaties and sessions. Nevertheless, the US minor
outlying islands still represent important footholds of US military power
and American sovereignty across the world, particularly in the Pacific.
So I started with these often forgotten islands because they

(33:02):
have left a lasting legacy upon the American Empire, as
highlighted by How to Hide an Empire. The first legacy
is legal. Per the Guano Islands Act, these poop covered
rocks shall quote at the distrection of the President, be
considered as appertaining to the United States. Appertaining is a

(33:23):
strange word, right. It's mostly used as a legal term,
but to simplify, it means that these islands belong to
the United States. This word would come to define US
overseas possessions as legally belonging to, but not part of,
the United States. Right, it's this appertains to me. Doesn't
necessarily mean that it's part of me, but I own it.

Speaker 7 (33:45):
It's mine. Yeah, it's like owned by the US, but
in the US.

Speaker 3 (33:51):
Yeah, in a strictly legal sense, legal sense, yah, yeah, right, Yeah.
It's just like the thing that it's hard to explain
about the US colony to some people where they don't
get how it can be owned but not in but
also part of Yeah. Meanwhile, the second legacy is that
the quest for guano codified US overseas expansion is being

(34:13):
a quest of resource extraction. This kickstarted US imperialism past
continental borders and showed how the US government would encourage
its industries to occupy and integrate themselves overseas in order
to protect interest at home. Right, these companies went off
to farm, to mine guano, and then to send it
back home. We've seen this play out lots of times

(34:36):
throughout American history, like during the so called Banana Wars,
for out Latin America, as well as the continued quest
for oil that's played out throughout the twentieth and twenty
first century. And the third legacy is that these Guano islands,
once rich in natural resources, are now part of one
of the US's biggest exports military bases. Through the bases,

(34:59):
the US's establ was there, alongside the ones in the
inhabited colonies. The US has been able to project power
outside of its continental borders because these tiny islands served
or continued to serve as strategic military footholds in their
respective regions. This was particularly evident during World War Two,
where there was a wave of military expansion by the

(35:21):
United States throughout the world, but it remains true to
this day.

Speaker 7 (35:24):
During World War Two, they called some of those islands
in the Pacific unsinkable aircraft carriers was the way they
would refer to it. Like still actually, in many of
those islands there was a serious problem with unexploded ordnance,
which I think gets to the difference between like being
a place where the US can put its military and
being a place inside the US. Right, the US would
not have left that many bombs and mines inside Ohio.

(35:50):
There are some areas with Uxo, including in San Diego,
but like to know any of this extent.

Speaker 3 (35:55):
Right, yeah, absolutely right. In the actually to skip ahead
a little bit, Puerto Rico in World War two is
called the Gibraltar of the Caribbean because of how the
US operated kind of its force projection in the region.
And actually that now that you mentioned the mines, there
is an island municipality off the eastern coast of Puerto
Rico called bi I guess that the US used as

(36:17):
like a bombing range for for many years, and there's
still quite a few mines scattered throughout the island. I
believe I should have included this, but there's about two
thirds of the island municipality are still you still can't
walk on them because of the unexploded ordinance.

Speaker 8 (36:34):
Right.

Speaker 7 (36:34):
Yeah, It's like Kuai Schulin when you see like a
missile has been tested normally it's from VanderBurg Space Force
space right up in central California. That's where it's going,
Like Kwai, She's where quite in a toll is a
toll in the Marshal Lilands where the United States has
a large base, and like that, that is where that
missile is headed. Still we still do this, right, we

(36:55):
still test those and we of course testing nuclear weapons
inside the United States as well, but very quickly when
we realized that those things were devastating and the land
never recovers, we started to do that on land which
the United States controls. But there's not consider to be
of the same value as land in a conticuous low
forty eight.

Speaker 3 (37:14):
Absolutely no vichs and it's a sister island municipality. Colba
were used as bombing ranges for years. Vicus has a
very high cancer rate compared to the rest of Puerto Rico.
When I say decades that the Navy quote unquote left
viks in two thousand and three, right, that is still
like within living memory for a lot of people, right.

(37:37):
You know, the same people that protested the Navy's involvement
there are still alive in kicking today and several different
activist causes. Right. And they only left because they accidentally
killed a security guard that kind of incited the protests
that we're already going on, but that kind of kicked
it in the high gear. Actually, I don't know if
Americans know this, but like RFK for a very long

(37:59):
time was kind of a local Puerto Rican folk hero
because he'd participated in the anti navy protests here. Then
he became what he is today, although I guess he
might have always been that, but.

Speaker 7 (38:10):
Yeah, I did not know that he has been on
a journey throughout throughout his life. I think it's fair
to say, but yeah, there were people who doubted the
state parentheses good who have turned into people who doubt
the state parentheses back. And I think he is one
of those people. I was just thinking too about like

(38:30):
this same time period is like the same time period
as a cannon air strike. Are you familiar with the
cannon air strike?

Speaker 3 (38:36):
Not at all.

Speaker 7 (38:37):
It's where miners in Mexico go on strike right there
in Sonora, and the owner of the mine, whose name
I think was Green, it's just in the Porfyliato, right,
So Porfylio the Earth is the president of Mexico. And
it's like very pro American investment. And this is just

(38:57):
before the outbreak of the Mexican Revolution, and it's a
time when like the Americans are just like ruthlessly investing
in Mexico is far too guy, but they're exploiting Mexican resources,
right and then taking those for American profit. There was
a I think it's where the cannon there consolidated copper company.
The workers there go on strike, and this guy, I

(39:23):
think he's called mister Green or Colonel Green maybe, basically
starts Radioto America being like, the workers are on strike,
they're gonna kill me, They're gonna kill everyone. And then
they're they're not being particularly violent.

Speaker 1 (39:33):
Right.

Speaker 7 (39:34):
A fire starts in the strike, but it's not the workers,
it is the guards who.

Speaker 3 (39:38):
Are armed as often as the case.

Speaker 7 (39:42):
Yeah, and the fucking Arizona Rangers enter from Arizona, and
I believe they're deputized on entering Mexico to intervene in
this strike, right, Like the US is like Mexico is
an independent country, but that's our mind, guys, like we'll
be coming in here, like along with man. The guy's

(40:05):
name Emilio something. He was like a Russian emigrat who
became like an enforcer for football videodias in Mexico. But
it just reminds me of the same thing, like the
United States literally sending its colps into like invading a country.

Speaker 3 (40:19):
To protects its US business interests.

Speaker 7 (40:21):
Right right, Like don't fuck with our mind.

Speaker 3 (40:25):
In some ways right. This was preceded or preempted by
the US claims on the Guano Islands, which of course
were uninhabited, so it made it easy for the US
to take control and establish them as mining colonies through
its various industry companies. However, in modern times, resource mining

(40:46):
has defined the US's imperialist ambitions. While it's much harder
to establish dominion over places that people live in permanently,
that hasn't stopped the country from exerting its influence through
gunboat and dollar diplomacy. In place is like a rock
in Venezuela, where it controls a significant part of their
oil revenues. So this is the end of the first episode,

(41:08):
but I'm going to talk a lot more about this
phenomenon in the next episode, where we dive into how
the US occupies and takes over the inhabited colonies for
war and purchase. Any closing fonts, James.

Speaker 7 (41:21):
Statehood is no independents, and I'm sure we got to
touch on this, but I thought that was great. I
enjoyed that very much.

Speaker 3 (41:28):
Thank you, thank you for being a guest.

Speaker 9 (41:43):
Hello, and welcome to it could happen here. My name's
Kim Kelly, and I'll be your host for this morning
or evening or afternoon. I don't know your schedule. Little
about me, I'm a freelance journalist based in Philly, got
third generation Union member, an author of the books Fight
Like Hell, The Untold History of American Labor and his

(42:05):
Young Reader's edition, Fight to Win Heroes of American Labor.
Labor in History is obviously a passion of mine, but
it's also my job to keep up with current worker
struggles here in the US and abroad. Our pal Sophie,
Robert James, everybody else have kindly given me the opportunity
here to share some recent labor stories you might have missed,

(42:27):
and adding a little historical context here and there to
explain why exactly they're so important. All that being said,
let's talk about silica. There are a lot of things
out there that can kill you at work, but silica,
specifically respirable crystalline silica, really goes above and beyond the
call of duty. What is silica, you might ask, Well,

(42:51):
it's a chemical compound made up of silicon and oxygen
that is extremely common. Its government name is silicon dioxide.
There's actually the second most above an element on Earth
after oxygen doesn't sound so bad, right, Well, it all
comes down to how you encounter it. If you eat
it in the form of dietary silica, that's fine. You

(43:12):
can find it in leafy greens, oats, brown rice is
actually pretty good for you. But and this is a
big butt, if you breathe in silica dust, you're pretty
much fucked.

Speaker 10 (43:23):
See.

Speaker 9 (43:23):
Silica dust is extremely harmful, toxic, dangerous, no good. If
it gets into your lungs, it causes swelling and inflammation,
which then turns into hard scar tissue, which makes it
really hard to breathe and least even bigger problems like
lung cancer, tuberculosis, silicosis, COPD, kidney disease, and one of

(43:46):
the scariest occupational diseases in American history coal workers numoconiosis,
which you might know better as black long see silica,
is ten times more toxic than coal dust and has
been fueling a quiet epidemic and the Appalachian coal fields
for years now. A new report from the National Institute
for Occupational Safety and Health reveals that black lung rates

(44:09):
are higher than they've been in fifty years, a disease
that most people assume has been eradicated, has come roaring back,
and now one in three miners with twenty five or
more years experience in the mines has this brutal, fatal,
incurable disease. There's no longer an old man's disease either.
Let's do the math real quick. So if a worker

(44:32):
goes underground when they're eighteen nineteen, you know, right out
of high school, get their first big job, go down
the mines. Twenty five years later, they've barely hit their forties.
These are not old dudes. This is not the end
of the line. Like the stereotype of the elderly coal
miner with the oxygen tank. These people in their late twenties,

(44:54):
their thirties, their forties. It's horrifying. These workers have so
much more life to live, but their futures are being
stolen from them by silica and more specifically, the mine
operators who refuse to follow the proper safety protocols and
engineering controls needed to protect them, and the Trunk administration's

(45:14):
refusal to do deadly squat to make them. Actually, this
administration is actively making the problem worse. You see, after
decades of work from coal miners and their allies, the
Department of Labor under Biden was poised to enact a
new silica rule that would have the amount of deadly
dust that miners would be exposed to. Finally, it took

(45:34):
decades to get to this point, and this rule was
supposed to go in defect in April twenty twenty five.
A guess who was president then for all Trumps squawking
about beautiful clean coal and American workers and blah lah,
he and the scrubs who work for him are actively
killing coal miners to protect their coal barren buddy's bottom line.

(45:55):
And silica isn't just wreaking havoc and Appalachia and his
coal mines. It's a huge problem in the construction industry too,
specifically among stone masons and countertop fabricators. See, silica isn't
just floating around like Lucy Goosey. It's not like you're
not going to breathe it and walking down the street.
You got to dig it out of rocks like granite, marble, quartz.

(46:15):
Coal miners diate out of the earth. For stone masons
and countertop fabricators, they release the dust when they're cutting
and finishing slabs of stone. Artificial Stone aka manufacturer Quartz
isn't especially popular material for that kitchen makeover, and it
is chok full of silica. That's right, you're a shining

(46:36):
new kitchen counter. It might have killed someone already, sorry.
California is currently grappling with a silicosis epidemic that is
sickened over five hundred workers, fifty of them and needed
lung transplants, and as of today, thirty two of them
have died. These are not old men either. Their median
age is forty six. In almost every case in California

(47:00):
has occurred among Mexican and Central American immigrant workers, many
of them have died within a few years of their diagnosis.
It is a fucking nightmare. And like black Lung and Appalachia,
it is completely preventable when workers' health and safety is
taken into account and existing regulations are followed. When they aren't,

(47:21):
people die. Regulations are there for a reason, like it's
not just for funzies, Like it matters, man. It makes
me so mad. But with all that in mine, let's
wrap up this silica sponsored portion of our program with
a little sweet treat from Starbucks. The coffee giant has
gone all in on blended and frozen drinks. You've seen
them on Instagram TikTok. They're very pretty, they look very

(47:43):
radioactive in like a fun way. And they've recently started
using a new blending powder that contains wait for it,
silicon dioxide. Our old friend. Now, this silica is food
grade FDA proved and it's safe to ingest. Caveat cot,
big caveat. The trouble is that the workers who are
required to use this blending powder in the drinks they're

(48:06):
making for you are being exposed to it as they
mix up these little treats. That's not good. Members of
the Starbucks Workers United union have raised the alarm over
this and collected testimonies from hundreds of Starbucks workers who
started to suffer adverse health effects as soon as the
new blending powders showed up in their stores. As one

(48:27):
worker explained on the union's Instagram, you inhale those powders
every time you scoop them. Workers report experiencing rashes, headaches,
coughing fits, nausea, throat irritation, swelling, they had trouble breathing, and,
as one of them said, this powder is literally unavoidable
now Given what we've learned about silica today, you might

(48:49):
be feeling a little nervous for those Starbucks workers. Some
of those symptoms might sound a little familiar. Doesn't sound good.
We don't like silica in things. We don't want silica
anybody's lungs. And you'd think that after said workers alerted
their company to this issue, Starbucks management would have swiftly
removed this potentially dangerous substance from their stores and stopped

(49:10):
requiring their employees to handle it. But as of now, anyway,
you'd be wrong. So far, their response has been to
blog about it. Here's the entirety of the response Starbucks
posted on their official website and I quote. Their product
used in our coffee houses is a blending powder which
contains a small amount of food grade silica, an FDA

(49:33):
approved ingredient commonly used in food products that helps ingredients
mix consistently and supports a consistent beverage experience. It does
not contain crystalline silica and is safe for use in food.
We are committed to providing accurate information about our ingredients.
To learn more about our commitment to high quality food
and drinks, visit this link. End quote so, okay, that's

(49:58):
not the problem though. You know it's food safe. We
know it's fine once you get in your guts. It's
the lungs we're worried about. We know it's food safe.
The issue is that it's not worker safe. In a
message the company sent out to its stores, it avoided
the potential health issue entirely and instead simply told the

(50:18):
workers to poor slower when handling it, putting the burden
on them to protect their health instead of actually doing
something about it. Classic case, you hate to see it.
And for now, Starbucks work as United are continuing to
push the company to address the actual issue here, and
I bet they'd appreciate your support, So keep an eye
out on their social media accounts to follow this story,

(50:40):
let them know I sent you. And now a word
from our sponsors. And now for some good news. Deborah Kapecia,
a medical surgical nurse at Maine Medical Center in Portland,

(51:03):
is back home after a terrifying encounter with ice. According
to her union, the Maine State Nurses Association slash National
Nurses Organizing Committee, an affiliate of National Nurses United. Kapisha
was detained on July thirtieth while traveling through Boston Logan
International Airport. The union and her fellow nurses at Maine

(51:23):
Med immediately organized a rally that saw hundreds of nurses
and allies mobilized and successfully blocked her transfer to a
facility in Louisiana. Quote. We knew we had to take
action first to stop her from being transferred out of
New England while in custody, but also to demand her release.
We're incredibly proud that nurses and the community came together

(51:44):
in Portland to advocate for her, and now we need
to figure out how to stop ICE. That's a quote
from Kelly Brennan, a registered nurse at Main Med and
a nurse leader with a union got done a press release.
So Kapisha was born in Zambia and she's legally off
their eyes to live and work in the United States.
She's waiting for asylum case to be processed. I have

(52:05):
no reason for ICE to snatch her up bother her
any of that. Her fellow nurses have written more than
one hundred letters of support, while the union continues to
coordinate with her attorneys and her coworkers that made Med
are demanding their employer sponsor her permanent residency. She has
a bond hearing on August tenth, and I know we're
all crossing fingers for her.

Speaker 6 (52:25):
You know.

Speaker 9 (52:25):
I don't know if this is common knowledge, but nurses unions,
especially National Nurses United, go ridiculously hard for their members
and their communities, like they are so tough and inn
You has been on ICE's neck, calling it a illegitimate,
violent paramilitary organization that must be abolished. They've been publicly

(52:46):
mourning the ICE murder of Lorenzo Salgado Arajo and condemning
the persecution of anti ICE activists in Minnesota and Texas.
The union has been extremely outspoken on other human rights
issues too that many other big unions have ignored or
barely acknowledged because they're politically sensitive. Not really, if you
have a heart in the brain. They've been calling out

(53:07):
Israel for destroying medical warehouses and hospitals and gaza killing
thousands of healthcare workers in Palestinian patients. And they just
demanded an end to the US blockade of Cuba. This
is just the last couple of months of press releases
like they've been out here. And then You is also
the biggest nurses union in the country, with more than
two hundred and twenty five thousand members. They have a

(53:29):
lot of power and they're not afraid to use it
for good. Today they're trying to free a member from
ISIS clutches. Tomorrow they may be striking for safety staffing levels,
or organizing a new union in Louisiana, or holding your
grandma's hand as she takes her last breath. Nurses really
are the best of us, and I'm really glad they're
on our side. So everyone say good luck to Deborah. Finally,

(53:53):
I want to end today's episode with some very big news.
As I'm sure you all know, it's now Black August Month.
We dedicate each year to honoring the memory of fallen
black freedom fighters and political prisoners. It's a tradition that
began in nineteen seventy nine after the assassination of George Jackson,
a Black panther and black liberation activist. With that memory

(54:14):
and mind, Jailhouse Lawyers Speak, a collective of formerly and
currently incarcerated workers around the country have just gone public
with their plans for a big nationwide prison strike in
twenty twenty seven, and they're calling for allies and comrades
to support and spread the word. On August second, they
announced that prisoners will hold a national prisoner's human rights

(54:35):
strike from May one, the International Workers Day, through June
nineteenth June tenth, twenty twenty seven, uniting the fight to
and legalized slavery with the struggles to restore voting rights
to the prison class. They shared three core demands, which
I'll read to you now. They also maintain ten national
demands on their website that have a bigger program going on,

(54:58):
but this specific campaign is focusing on these three things.
One and legalized slavery repeal. The exception clause is a
Thirteenth Amendment. Two restore voting rights repeal exception clauses, including
Section two of the fourteenth Amendment that strip voting rights
from confined citizens, pre trial detainees, and former felons. Three

(55:23):
free all the political prisoners in US prisons. So they've
got a lot of work ahead of them. It all
sounds very reasonable to me, but unfortunately I'm not in charge.
You know, this isn't the first time the JLS and
their affiliated prisoner led organizations have raised these demands, nor
is it the first time they put their bodies on
the line for them. There is a long, long history

(55:44):
of resistance behind the walls of the American prison industrial complex.
I devoted a whole chapter to in my book, and
groups like JLS, the Free Alabama Movement, and the Incarcerated
Workers Organizing Committee have done an incredible amount of work
over the years keeping the spirit of hope and rebellion
alive and organizing these huge nationwide actions under nearly impossible circumstances.

(56:06):
Just because you haven't heard about them doesn't mean they're
not happening. There is so much organizing happening in sign
prison in the US, it's just difficult to report on
unless you have contacts and you care enough to do
a little bit of digging, which I guess not that
many mainstream reporters do, but fuck them now. The largest
prison strike in modern US history is said to have

(56:29):
been the twenty ten Georgia prison strike, wherein prisoners in
seven facilities across the state one on strike for six days.
Between twenty eleven and twenty thirteen, thousands of prisoners in
California when our hunger strikes to protest the dire conditions
in which they're held. Since then, we've seen large scale,
coordinated prison labor strikes in twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen, and

(56:51):
perhaps most notably twenty sixteen, which commemorated the forty fifth
anniversary of the Attica prison Uprising, which itself bears a
historical precedent to ancient Rome, when in about one hundred
and thirty five BC, just after the First Servile War,
a thousand slaves let a bloody revolt in Attica, a
region of what is now Greece. There really is nothing

(57:14):
new under the sun, at least when it comes to
the car sooral system and human enslavement, and the twenty
twenty seven prison strike makes the connection explicit with its slogan,
from May Day to Juneteenth, we refuse to slave. Now,
a prison strike may look a little different from what
you're thinking. Strikers have to get very creative since they

(57:34):
can't exactly walk out of their workplace. There won't be
any picket lines or cool matching T shirts. And I'd
be very pleasantly surprised if any elected officials or political
hopefuls showed up to support these strikes. May It sure
would be nice, given that one of the major goals
of this action is to have these incarcerated workers voting
rights restored. People in prison are a part of our

(57:57):
society and always have been ripping their rights as well
as their freedoms as a crime against their humanity, and
this strike is another desperate cry for help from people
who have been left behind and forgotten. A lot can
happen in nine months, and a lot needs to happen
to pull off an action of this magnitude. Prison strikes
aren't easy. There's so many dangers and risks for the

(58:19):
people that participate, so much repressions, so many repercussions. It's
truly an incredibly difficult and brave thing to take part
in a strike behind the walls, and they need support
from people outside too. JLS is calling on supporters of
the strike to get involved and support their resistance inside
by sharing the strike statement widely, centering prisoner voices, and

(58:42):
pressure in Congress and all those other fancy powerful people
to heed their demands or at the absolute least show
that they're listening. As JLS stated, the National Prisoner's Human
Rights Strike is more than a strike. There's a commitment
to building lasting institutions, banding legal knowledge, strengthening political education,

(59:03):
and organizing inside and outside the walls until legalized slavery
and the broader system of exploitation are abolished. So if
you got some time, you got some skills and a
desire to burn down the American Plantation, give a little whistle.
JLUS is waiting for you, and they need all the
help they can get. This has been a special labor

(59:24):
episode of It Can Happen Here. I'm still Kim Kelly
and it's been lovely talking with you. Until next time.
Be good, do no harm, and take no shit.

Speaker 11 (59:46):
Welcome back to It Could Happen Here. I'm Garrison Davis.
Today we have a very special episode because we are
talking once again to Bridget Todd, who we've had on
a few times. But Bridget has a new book, Love
at First prompt to AI and the Future of Intimacy,
and we will be discussing how AI companies are trying

(01:00:08):
to sell you love and how that might have a
few problems Beyond the sort of face conceit that I
think you know everyone could pick up on, there might
even be more problems underneath the underneath the hood. So
thank you Bridgard for coming on.

Speaker 12 (01:00:24):
Thank you so much for having me. I'm thrilled to
be back here.

Speaker 11 (01:00:27):
How did you first decide this is something that you
want to, like dedicate months of your life to researching.

Speaker 12 (01:00:33):
Yeah, that's a great place to start.

Speaker 13 (01:00:35):
I think, like a lot of folks listening, I would
hear these stories about individuals who would say things like
I am in love with chat GPT or I am
having some sort of intimate sexual relationship with an AI companion.
And I can admit that my reaction to a lot
of those those headlines where something is wrong with this person,
this person is pathetic, or maybe this person is super lonely,

(01:00:59):
super sad, they're putting themselves at great risk for harm.
And you know, I once had this therapist who told
me that judgment and curiosity could not coexist. And so
I realized I was really treating these stories with such
kind of knee jerk negative reaction and judgment. And then
I heard Mark Zuckerberg on a podcast talking about how

(01:01:20):
he thought in ten years time, while everybody, including everybody listening,
was going to have AI friends AI companions. He said
that most people don't feel like they have enough friends
to have a nourishing social life, and that in the
future it won't be a big deal.

Speaker 12 (01:01:36):
If all of us have AI companions.

Speaker 13 (01:01:38):
So what he didn't say is that it would be
AI that he owns, operates, and profits from. But I
got to thinking, you know, if Mark Zuckerberg and other
tech leaders are designing futures involving technology where they believe
this will be commonplace, whether the average person wants it
to be or not, we should really be looking to
the people who are already there to tell us what

(01:01:59):
brought them to experiencing intimacy with AI and what the
risks and ramifications might be. It's time to stop treating
these people like pathetic freak shows and sort of listening
to what they're actually saying, because it couldn't behove all
of us to know where we could be headed.

Speaker 11 (01:02:12):
No, the freak show aspect, I think is as a
real inhibitor towards actually understanding this problem, because I mean
a lot of the first sort of like reports around
this sort of thing, you know, like AI girlfriends, right,
it has this sort of freak element, even even the
way that we maybe talk about this on the show
when we're like reporting at ces, you know, we walk
through all these you know, ridiculous AI gadgets. You know,

(01:02:35):
we saw like you know, like an AI sex doll essentially,
you know, that has a very like low quality chat
bought component that can't really you know, understand what you're
saying very often. But I think it is a mistake
to just assume that this tech will always stay in
its kind of janky form. This stuff is rapidly advancing,
it is, it is, it is going to get better,

(01:02:56):
and just kind of denying that I think sort of
pushes the problem, know down the road. Yeah, like, no,
this is this, This is a real problem now and
this requires like regulation and intense, intense like intervention right now.
And just to kind of assuming that as it is
all like all these like little niche things, only you know,
crazy people are going to fall for this. The tech
is bad. I think that that is I think overlooking

(01:03:19):
what is legitimately like a you know, a society wide problem.

Speaker 13 (01:03:22):
Yes, I am so glad you said that, because one
of the researchers that I interviewed for the audiobook Love
at First Prompt is doctor Kate Devlin. She was really
one of the first people to sort of take seriously
the intersection of AI and robots and intimacy. And when
she first started doing this, the place that she started
looking was exactly the kind of thing that you saw
at CES, right, these physical, life size sexpots that were

(01:03:47):
also enabled with a kind of at the time low
grade AI chatbot quality. Yeah, if you were around a
few years ago, you probably saw so much breathless reporting
that was like, Oh, men are going to be buying
these sex dolls and they're gonna not need wives and
girlfriends all that. Now that ended up sort of not
being the case. People do buy those sex dolls, but

(01:04:10):
they're really expensive, they're not really that practical, so they're
really kind of a super niche thing. What did take
off was the AI intimacy part of that.

Speaker 12 (01:04:18):
That's what doctor Devlin really saw.

Speaker 13 (01:04:20):
She said, the physical bop part of this is probably
not gonna take off in mainstream ways. The AI companion
AI intimacy chat bop feature of these physical dolls, that's
what we're gonna see kind of become more mainstream. And
you know, again, a lot of people listening probably think
this sounds really niche, But I think Pew said that
one in ten Americans already use AI for some form

(01:04:43):
of intimacy. That's about as many Americans are left handed. Yeah,
when you look at younger folks, folks under thirty, that
number jumps to one in five who are already using
AI for some sort of emotional support.

Speaker 12 (01:04:54):
So this idea that it's this niche thing.

Speaker 13 (01:04:57):
Only weirdos are doing it really isn't alive with what
we're actually seeing.

Speaker 11 (01:05:02):
This is I think part of the problem with like,
you know, living in your own little Internet silo, right
because like you and your you know, blue sky friends
might think that no one uses AI, knowing that you know, serious,
knowing that I know would use AI. Right, It's there's
this sort of like ideological like resistance to AI, and
I think that is a very isolating. Look look at
the world because while that might be true for you

(01:05:23):
and your friends online or maybe your social circle, there
is millions of people who go through the world every
day who use these things and they just think of
it as like an extension of the Internet, right, because
that's what it is. For a lot of people, like
that is what it is. They don't have these sorts
of like moral frameworks around whether or not you should
use claude, whether or not you should use chat GPT

(01:05:44):
that I think you see among a certain strain of
like you know, like liberal like leftist online. And the
other thing that kind of that that silo produces is
that it makes it so that I think it's hard
to understand that for people using these tools every day
the same way you might use search engine right, the
same way you might use you know, a real friend
like bounce. Ideas off of how much that sort of

(01:06:06):
regular use can develop a sort of intimate component, the
line between AI girlfriend and tool you talk to online
might not be as like clear as what some people
might first assume. I know, this is something that you
discussed in the book. I mean, that's that's one of
the things I think to be It's one of the
most interesting is like how fuzzy this kind of barrier
actually is.

Speaker 13 (01:06:25):
Oh yes, So even before I was deeply interested and
sort of consumed on this topic, one of the most
fascinating things that I witnessed and sort of saw with
my own eyes was when CHATCHYPT changed models.

Speaker 12 (01:06:37):
You know, they had that four Oho model. Yeah, So
do you remember that was the.

Speaker 13 (01:06:40):
Model that like people were freely developing these intimate connections
with because it was so sick a fantic, it was
so kind of human like quote unquote when you asked
it a question, it wouldn't just say here's the answer.
It would be like, dear, you're so perceptive for even
asking such a smart question.

Speaker 6 (01:06:57):
Yeah.

Speaker 13 (01:06:57):
And so what really deeply fascinated me was that when
open ai switched that model to make it less sathantic,
less sort of glazing, less complimentary, people who did not
report that they were having any kind of intimate connection
with AI, who would not have said I have an
AI girlfriend or AI companion, yeah, who were just using
it exactly as you described, like a search engine, those

(01:07:19):
same people got online and expressed something like grief.

Speaker 1 (01:07:23):
No.

Speaker 11 (01:07:23):
Absolutely, yeah.

Speaker 13 (01:07:24):
I remember reading someone on auto rereddit form saying it
feels as if my friendly cheerleader in my pocket got
replaced overnight with a terse, overworked secretary. And so I
think you're exactly right that our brains are designed to
project human qualities and human intimacy onto things that we

(01:07:44):
know are logically not human. And it really the way
that these things are designed really easily blurs that line
for folks.

Speaker 11 (01:07:51):
I mean, it's trying to, you know, be as human
as as possible for its own for its own reason,
so that people use it more so that it's not
you know, a cold EMOTIONALLESSI that is maybe a little
bit hostile to the user. Obviously they don't want that,
so yeah, they want to be approachable. But I think
the specific thing you're talking about the switching from from
one GPT model to the other, from this like overly

(01:08:14):
like you know, praising kind of like it just almost
almost annoyingly so model towards something that is a little
bit more cold. It produce these reactions online with the
people that are like basically acting like a friend died
and like that was essentially what it was.

Speaker 8 (01:08:30):
Right.

Speaker 11 (01:08:30):
Imagine if you were talking to you know, a real
person online for like two years and then suddenly they
stopped or suddenly they had a complete personality change, and
it's like like there was no way to talk to
that other person again. That is basically the equivalent is
like what happened to a lot of people.

Speaker 13 (01:08:48):
Yeah, I think it's easy to make fun of that
or to other people who report this, but I don't
think that it's really right to discount the way that
online connects really do make people feel and really feel
like they are validating and filling a.

Speaker 12 (01:09:05):
Need that people have.

Speaker 13 (01:09:06):
You know, it's easy to say, oh, it's just an
online friend or an online community or an AI bot.
I've talked to people who said, oh, this video game
that I was obsessed with, it's gone, and I you know,
this has filled my life for two years.

Speaker 11 (01:09:21):
Yeah, that's real. Do you want to get into some
of the sort of problems beneath the surface of this,
beyond the sort of you know, maybe socially alienating aspects,

(01:09:43):
the issues of people having to turn towards these things
to kind of have some connection, but actually now kind
of discuss the motivations of the companies behind these products
and like why they are designing them this way, and
the sort of risks inherent towards having these sorts of
tools be run by an owned by companies with like
for profit sideps.

Speaker 12 (01:10:02):
I mean, you really said it.

Speaker 13 (01:10:04):
I think that we are spending far too much time
looking at individual users and sort of moralizing about what
brings individual people to this kind of connection with AI.

Speaker 12 (01:10:15):
It kind of goes back to what you were saying about.

Speaker 13 (01:10:17):
You know, I'm not a big AI person myself, but
I think that it goes back to this idea of
conversations about the ethics around AI use being hyper focused
on individuals, whether or not individuals are good or bad,
or pathetic, or this or that if they use AI,
when really, I think the conversation has to be about

(01:10:38):
the companies and what the companies from the people who
run them, are doing, how they are designing this AI,
because I can tell you AI chatbots like chat GPT
are intentionally designed to keep you talking and to keep
you engaged, because they want you to be more and
more locked into their AI. You know, I went through
a personal crisis myself where I was caring for my

(01:10:59):
dying father and was really thrust into a medical situation
that was way above my pay grate as a podcaster,
and I will admit that, in moments of extreme vulnerability,
turned to AI to try to get questions answered about
navigating insurance companies, navigating Medicare and Medicaid, all of that. Sure,
And the way that CHATCHBT did not just give me

(01:11:22):
the answer or try to give me something that looked
like an answer, It was this seems really hard, are
you asking.

Speaker 12 (01:11:27):
Because you're dealing with this yourself.

Speaker 13 (01:11:30):
And so it's the way that AI is designed to
ask increasingly intimate, sensitive questions of the people who use it,
with intention. I think that it's not any wonder that
individuals might find themselves becoming ensnared in that, because that's
exactly how they were designed by these for profit companies.

Speaker 14 (01:11:49):
Yeah.

Speaker 11 (01:11:49):
I mean, if you're asking it logistical problems, you help
me navigate the process to file and insurance claim, you know,
using it as this sort of like you know, advanced
like Internet assistant, but then in doing so, it kind
of latches onto, you know, vulnerabilities that they can infer
from the from the types of questions you're asking and
try to like you know, coax out more information that.

(01:12:13):
I mean that that that's like an incredibly insidious process.
You know, you're you want you want it to help
with like a very you know, direct task, and then
in its sly way of of maybe doing that, it's
trying to introduce the sort of like personal therapeutic element,
and like what happens to that data? Like what is
it what is it using that sort of record of

(01:12:33):
your own like personal experiences.

Speaker 13 (01:12:35):
For I am sad to report? The answer is we
don't really know. Recently, I mean, that's really just what
it is. The FTC recently asked some of the major
AI chatbot companies to give clarity about how these companies
are monetizing engagement and how they are using the sort
of intimate, personal sensitive information that is obtained through these conversations.

(01:12:56):
So we really don't know a ton, But to your wait,
you know, it's not just chat GPT knows when I'm lonely.

Speaker 12 (01:13:04):
CHATGPT knows when I'm sad or scared. It's chat GPT.

Speaker 13 (01:13:08):
This computer knows exactly what works on me when I
am lonely or vulnerable or scared. And so that to
me opens up an entire new level of potential for
surveillance and control. And so people have asked me a
lot of times, you know, is it so bad if
people are getting fulfillment or emotional support from AI? The

(01:13:30):
question is really not if it's bad or good or
pathetic or not or whatever. It's what are the companies doing.
Are the companies behaving ethically and are they really honoring
the deep sensitive nature of the information they are intentionally
harvesting from people, often at their lowest or most vulnerable moments.

Speaker 11 (01:13:47):
I'm gonna reckon to say probably not. I think that
the interests of these companies are probably slightly different from
your personal interests as a person or you know, obviously
like this is the sort of interests of like Yo,
likerapist or a friend immediate guesses is first an evolution
of advertising, like how search engine optimization has transformed from

(01:14:10):
companies trying to optimize for Google Search to now trying
to optimize for lllms like chat GPT and to have
your products be recommended to users by chat GPT by
creating posts online specifically intending for those posts to be
read by chat GPT and then regurgitated back to the user.

(01:14:30):
And for the past few months, open A has been
experimenting with ways to make direct purchases through chat GPT,
and of course companies pay open ai just to put
full ads at the bottom of your chat GPT logs,
oftentimes based on your query. The other thing is more
so kind of like you know, like the Walmart like

(01:14:51):
Uber model, like they introduce a service that is very
cheap to start, possibly free, and then people get hooked
on the service and then they jack out the price,
which is kind of what Opening Eyes made model has
been thus far. And I could I could see that
becoming a real problem if you have you know, thousands,
millions of people who use this tool both as like

(01:15:12):
a tool online. You know, this is an extension of
types of things that the Internet has like been operating
on for years, but using them in this much more
personally manipulative way because of this sort of you know,
emotional intimate component of like you're talking to something that
now just doesn't send information back to you, but talks
back to you like a person does. And if that

(01:15:32):
is the you know, one of the primary ways you
interact with the Internet, you can easily get hooked on that,
and then once they're hooked on that chat GPT can
start boosting.

Speaker 12 (01:15:41):
That price exactly.

Speaker 13 (01:15:43):
And I think these products are only going to get
better and better at convincing us that you're talking to
a person, not AI. And I think the more that happens,
the easier it becomes to sort of forget that you
are actually disclosing intimate information to a private company, depending
on what I are using, a company that has incredibly
cozy ties to the Trump administration.

Speaker 12 (01:16:04):
So Yeah, when.

Speaker 13 (01:16:05):
People ask me like, is it bad to be in
a relationship quote unquote with AI, I said that do
you want to be in a relationship with Sam Altman?
Do you want to be in a relationship with Mark
Zuckerberg or Elon Musk or Donald Trump. That's really who
you are in a relationship with, and don't let the
AI they're human like flattering, you know, back and forth

(01:16:25):
make you forget that reality.

Speaker 11 (01:16:28):
Do you have these any sorts of idea of what
we should do about the problem? I guess has governments
started to regulate the way that these ais communicate with people?
Is their you know, efforts to kind of adopt our
privacy policies to this like new emerging threat.

Speaker 13 (01:16:46):
I guess, yeah, that's a really good question. So I
would say the most clear cut legislation we see in China.
Folks might have heard that China's government just recently cracked
down on AI companions and the ways that AI companions
can be designed to connect with people.

Speaker 12 (01:17:01):
They really cracked down on that.

Speaker 13 (01:17:03):
Interestingly, in the United States, we're not really having that
conversation in the same way. It might not surprise you
to find out that the main legislative interest in the
United States is really kind of focus on minors and
this kind of idea that miners are using AI companions
for things like inappropriate erotic role play, and what's so.

Speaker 12 (01:17:26):
Interesting about that.

Speaker 13 (01:17:27):
There's two pieces of legislation moving through right now, neither
of which have been turned into law, but they really
are quite concerned about minors and sort of sexualizing minors.

Speaker 12 (01:17:38):
And when you actually look at the research about.

Speaker 13 (01:17:41):
How minors use AI, things like sex and romance are
actually way down on the list. Much higher on the
list is emotional support and advice. And so again we
are always going to this sort of most extreme iteration
of the way that AI intimacy is actually showing up
for people, whether they're adults or miners, and going right

(01:18:01):
to legislating romance and sex when in actuality, the much
more common use case is things like emotionality and advice.

Speaker 11 (01:18:10):
Yeah, that is a really troubling instinct that there's a
bunch of the Internet you know, regulation going on right
now is is all, you know, focused on this sort
of hysteria in some ways. You know, there is real
problems with the way that the Internet exploits children, obviously,
but the way that we are you know, going about
it resulting in many proposals to end up giving more

(01:18:32):
of your information over to these companies or the government
doesn't feel like it's going to solve many of the
sort of base problems here and completely overlooks the main
way that people use these tools. I mean, if I
if I had a nickel for every time i've I've
seen a story about this is also an extreme case,
but but not like a sexual one. But like a kid,
you know, discussing their like mental health leading to a

(01:18:54):
suicide attempt with an AI system, or discussing something as
extreme as like you know, like a public act of
violence a shooting, and the AI essentially helping coax them
into being able to do that. Right, there's a bunch
of problems that require like legitimate regulation, but the's sort
of like puritanical, you know, sex crazy nature of our

(01:19:14):
government and you know, specifically the Republicans, but but also
just like American culture in general is just going to
be so ill equipped to actually handle this. This sort
of like a subtlety and nuance of a lot of
these problems.

Speaker 13 (01:19:28):
Yeah, you really put that well, And it's it's a
little bit complicated because, as you said, there are real problems.
There are real legislative and regulatory needs that we should
be having real conversations about. And I think it is
so easy to get whipped up into a hysteria. It
is so easy to say, we just need some kind
of legislation. I need to feel like there is some

(01:19:50):
sort of progress being made on this complex, scary, sensitive issue,
and so I will get on board for.

Speaker 12 (01:19:57):
Legislation that is actually not really that good.

Speaker 13 (01:20:00):
Legislation that doesn't even really meaningly address the actual problem. Right,
And so yeah, I think that we're in this really
thorny place where even people that I think are reasonable,
like leftists whatever, can quite easily get on board with
legislation that really, in the end might change the Internet
in ways that we might not actually want because we

(01:20:22):
were so whipped up into this like moral panic about
legislating technology and the Internet.

Speaker 11 (01:20:37):
The lack of focus on the specific companies. You know,
just talking about these things is like abstract technologies instead
of actually talking about No, these are like specific companies.
We are doing specific things and that the government can
regulate in a specific way. Will that be the Trump government?
Probably not, But I don't think slash hope that Trump
won't be in power forever. We'll see, and we may

(01:21:01):
as well use, you know, these next two years to
try to build more public support for actual, you know,
sensible regulation at the federal level. When I was at
d C going to that you know, Liberal convention, which
I've talked about on the show. Last week, I did
go to a panel with Representative Don Bayer, who's getting
either a master's or a PhD in computer science right now,

(01:21:22):
specifically to help him do AI regulation, and he said
he's not optimistic about AI being regulated in a serious
way while Trump is in power because of you know
how much these companies have tried to cozy up to Trump,
and Trump's trying to shut down states attempts to regulate
certain things. But he does have hope that in our

(01:21:42):
next Congress or in the next presidential administration, there will
be the opportunity to regulate these companies on a federal level,
and in the meantime, states can push for their own regulation,
States can try to put certain safety measures in place.
But I think right now it would definitely behoove us
to take this technology as a real legitimate threat, not
something that's just gonna go away in the next few years,

(01:22:03):
not something that you know, the bubble is gonna pop
any day now. Any day now, it's gonna pop. As
nice as that is to you know, tell yourself that
is kicking the can down the road in like a
in like a real sense, and this this thing is
having very real impacts. I mean, people are focused obviously
on like the data center question, but I think that
that relates to the same base problem is do we
have an opposition to these things in this sort of

(01:22:26):
abstract technological sense, or do we have an opposition to
these tools being developed by and for for profit companies
who want to make money off of us. For me,
that that is the main problem. If you want to
be like a lunite that it was also the lunnit,
it's the main problem. They weren't opposed to technology in
this abstract sense, but the specific way that it was

(01:22:47):
transforming production to benefit capitalists instead of workers. And if
we want to think about the Internet in the same way,
what's happening is that they're deploying these technologies to benefit
the people that own these tech companies rather than regular people.
And if we can think about regulating on that basis
not just in complete opposition to these things, I think
that might actually have a lot more positive outcomes because

(01:23:08):
these things are gonna get developed, these things are gonna
get built. I don't think we're gonna be able to
totally shut down AI as an industry in the next
few years. I just don't see that being possible. Think about,
like in the nineties, do you think they could have
like shut down the like the Internet as an emerging technology,
this is where all the capital is going. The most
hope that I have is looking at something like the
stop Data Center movement as an opportunity to like educate

(01:23:30):
people about how these companies are profiting off of us,
and maybe we can team up together across party lines,
across you know whatever, to actually have a sort of
a popular front against these tech companies so that the
Internet and that you know, these advanced tools can actually
exist in a way that is democratically decided and actually

(01:23:52):
to the benefit of people and not like three dudes
who are overdosing on Academy and every week in San Francisco.

Speaker 12 (01:23:59):
I agree with you.

Speaker 13 (01:24:01):
I think while we are all sort of like having
this conversation, specific tech companies are increasingly making forays into
the most intimate inner parts of our lives. Open ai
just announced their first ever consumer hardware product, and you
could probably guess what that product is going to be.
It's going to be a hockey puck sized smart speaker

(01:24:23):
that you put in your home that reacts to you
like what they said, call a human like AI companion,
an intimate AI companion, and it will have the ability
to mechanically, they say, follow you around from room to
room in your house.

Speaker 12 (01:24:36):
And so while we're all kind.

Speaker 13 (01:24:38):
Of having this conversation, you can bet your ass these
tech companies are increasingly trying to not just be the
most powerful AI companies, but the most emotionally supportive, the
most emotionally invasive. You know, we've all talked so much
about the more kind of logistical elements of our digital selves,
you know, our intellectual property, our brows data, who gets

(01:25:00):
to make money from that? But I firmly do believe
the next iteration of the digital rights movement will be
about our inner emotional lives and who gets to commodify that,
who gets to profit from that? And so, you know,
as grim as that sounds, I completely agree with you
that I'm also incredibly optimistic about the moment that we're
in when it comes to your average person's sentiment around

(01:25:23):
things like big tech data centers, AI commodifying every resource,
whether that's our intimate emotional data, or our environmental resources.
I am incredibly optimistic that we are sort of on
the right page, collectively pushing back and saying, I don't know.
These tech companies say that this is all going to
be really great for us, Is it actually yeah?

Speaker 11 (01:25:44):
Based on let me look at the window briefly. No, No,
I don't think so.

Speaker 12 (01:25:50):
Let me look at back my magic apel sources say.

Speaker 11 (01:25:54):
No, signs points to naw. Is there either kind of
a final points about your new audiobook that you would
like to tease to to the listeners before we sign off?

Speaker 2 (01:26:07):
Yeah?

Speaker 13 (01:26:08):
It is really accessible, and the conversation is dark and
hard and vulnerable, but.

Speaker 12 (01:26:14):
Also fun and funny and engaging.

Speaker 13 (01:26:16):
I talk to people who actually say that they have
experienced intimacy with AI, and so, if you ever wanted
to go beyond the sort of clickbait headlines of some
of these stories that you might have skimmed on social media,
you hear directly from folks about what brought them into
connection with AI, which I find fascinating. I try to
ned chatchpt into having sex with me in the audio book.
If you want to find out if that worked or not,

(01:26:38):
check it out. And then ultimately again I would say
reporting the book made me very optimistic. One of the
reasons why I'm so optimistic in this moment is that
I just think when you actually look at the research
and listen to what people are talking about when they
talk about intimacy with AI, it just becomes incredibly clear
that AI can never replace humans.

Speaker 12 (01:26:58):
AI cannot replace human labor.

Speaker 13 (01:27:00):
AI cannot replace what people are looking for when they
look for nourishing connections and relationships. And so I kind
of ended the audiobook feeling incredibly optimistic about the power
of human connection and the power of human labor, and
the desire that we all have to connect with each
other that we know will never be replaced by AI.

Speaker 11 (01:27:20):
I've seen that Spielberg movie. I think it's possible. I
think it's possible. I think we could all have a
kind of creepy seven year old AI bought soon.

Speaker 12 (01:27:28):
Oh my gosh.

Speaker 13 (01:27:30):
I will say I am kind of low key obsessed
with movies like that, like AI or Ex Machina or
Blade Runner.

Speaker 12 (01:27:37):
I think that we're all so it sounds like.

Speaker 13 (01:27:39):
A niche thing, but when you look at pop culture,
we have been interested in people who have intimate connections
with technology and AI for a really long time, myself included.

Speaker 11 (01:27:49):
No. I think that is a big part of how
these companies are able to kind of pass this stuff
off to people. It creates a sort of public buy
in because of like the pop culture idea of these things,
both the good and the bad. I think both the
sort of apocalyptic versions of it make the company seem
more legitimate, and that makes investors excited because like, oh,
this is actually be a real thing, even if even

(01:28:10):
if it causes bad things. You know, it's this sort
of like a you know, don't invent the Torment Nexus
book being like, oh this is this is a great idea.
But I mean also in like the Blade under Sense,
you know, these these sorts of more like humanistic looks
about like what does it really mean to be human?
You know, what actually is the line between artificial intelligence
and humanity. I think that that sort of you know,

(01:28:30):
very like armchair philosophizing as that's in those sorts of
films that it does does make it easier for people
to start to talk to these things like they could
maybe be a person. In the more extreme cases, there
was that like Google Developer a few years ago, who
like who quitor got fired and was like, I've discovered
that Google's AI is a real person, and I think

(01:28:50):
it can it can really like encourage people to like
want to almost create this sort of conscious humanity within
these tools, even if those you know, tools aren't even
there yet, but there's like a desire to kind of
if I talk to it enough, maybe it will become human.
Which again this kind of sort of back to where
we started. There's these sorts of like, you know, very

(01:29:11):
very kind of base problems with the way that people
use the internet to kind of solve this sort of
you know, social alienation and social disintegration that we have
in our society and culture. My main issue is that
the way that companies golome on to that as an
opportunity to make a lot of money.

Speaker 12 (01:29:27):
Yeah, I think that's exactly what we're seeing.

Speaker 13 (01:29:29):
You know, we have a loneliness issue that people have
described as an epidemic right here in this country. We
live under such oppressive structures that the idea of doing
the labor that it takes to maintain friendships when you're
working a million hours to be able to afford your rent.
That's gone up one hundred dollars in the last month

(01:29:50):
seems impossible, and so all of these are very real needs,
and tech companies are not only making those needs worse,
but then selling us back a solution the form of
technology that they own, operate, and profit from. It's a
real cyclical problem, but I don't think we will solve
it until we have those systemic institutional conversations about how
we can meaningly fix what's so broken that is leading

(01:30:13):
people to find this kind of nourishment in technology in
the first place.

Speaker 11 (01:30:18):
Easypasy, yeah, simple. Where can people both hear more about
this in the audiobook and then also find you elsewhere
on the internet.

Speaker 13 (01:30:29):
Well, you can check out the audiobook at love at
first prompt dot com.

Speaker 12 (01:30:32):
You can get it wherever your audiobooks are sold.

Speaker 13 (01:30:34):
I particularly like Libro FM because they give money to
local bookstores and libraries. But you can also follow me
on Instagram at Bridget Marie in DC and check out
my podcast There Are No Girls on the Internet.

Speaker 11 (01:30:45):
Thank you, Bridget for introducing a new horror to everybody.
One of our favorite things to do on this show.

Speaker 14 (01:30:55):
Thanks so much for having.

Speaker 1 (01:30:56):
Me Welcome to it could Happen hear a podcast about
workers and the things that they do to fight, to
survive and live in a better world. I am your host,
Bio Wong. Some of the worst treated and most depressed

(01:31:19):
workers in the United States are incarcerated workers, a group
of workers who are very seldom talked about much less
actually like formally organized by the conventional labor movement, and
here with me today to talk about the Incarcerated Workers
Organizing Committee as Colin from IWALK, Giselle Garcia, who is

(01:31:41):
I walk's California outreach coordinator, and Adre Dawson, who is
a formerly incarcerated person and in his MA support the
all three of you, welcome to the show.

Speaker 14 (01:31:51):
Thank you so very much.

Speaker 4 (01:31:53):
Thank you well talking to me.

Speaker 1 (01:31:56):
Yeah, I'm excited to talk to all of you, and
I guess I want to start. Can you explain a
little bit about what the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee is
for people who are unfamiliar with.

Speaker 8 (01:32:06):
It, I'll kick us off and everyone can supplement.

Speaker 14 (01:32:10):
So I would.

Speaker 8 (01:32:10):
Definitely say that the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee or EYEWALK,
is a committee of the incarcerated workers of the World
Labor Union, and it was formed in recognition that there's
probably not a more exploitative kind of labor setting than

(01:32:31):
the prison system, and not just you know, US centric,
but also across the globe. And so our effort is
to build a bridge with our incarcerated neighbors, build that
connection and true solidarity rooted in connection, and then help

(01:32:51):
support those inside with resources so that they can not
only come to an understanding of the profound intentionality behind
a labor exploitation inside of carceral settings, but also give
them support them with tools that they ask for when

(01:33:13):
it comes to organizing those conditions, and it's led by
those inside really, because no one can inform practis in
this area other than those of largelatriation them.

Speaker 1 (01:33:26):
Yeah, do we want to talk more about like what's
happening right now and then come back to sort of
more historical components or if you want to try to do
the history now.

Speaker 5 (01:33:35):
Well, I think I can give like a tad bit
on assist says, I was in a carportd Amy not
long ago inside of CDCR Spatula, California.

Speaker 11 (01:33:46):
Cd ORC is.

Speaker 1 (01:33:47):
The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, which runs California's
prison system.

Speaker 5 (01:33:53):
And I do understand the significance of working for pennies. Yeah,
when that same job outside is paying you thirty forty dollars.
I worked for HFM, I made thirty five forty cents
an hour. That job out here pays in the streets
thirty five forty dollars a hour. Jesus, the cost of

(01:34:17):
living was low. The price of what it costs to
live inside when a incarcerated situation was high.

Speaker 14 (01:34:24):
Two paste two dollars.

Speaker 5 (01:34:26):
After you do the two paces, you're loashing your few
little at the small size dollar store size prizes. You
don't have anything left to live with, you know what
I'm saying. And it takes a lot to live inside
of CDCR because they provides you housing because you're incarcerated.
But outside of housing and the food that they try

(01:34:48):
to put together to make right for us, oh my god,
there's really not much more they can do for you.
A lot of the things they want you to do
for yourself out of your he need job, your job
that paid sense. Yeah, So it was really hard. I
did almost sixteen years. It was a struggle. It was ugly,

(01:35:09):
and it was a struggle if not for eye walk.
They gave us resources to help us with books and paper.
They taught us how to exercise our labor laws and
how to fight for ourselves and to know what you
are allowed and what you can have, and don't let

(01:35:29):
nobody beat you, don't let them cheat you.

Speaker 14 (01:35:31):
This is your right to have this, you know.

Speaker 5 (01:35:35):
I think just before our incarcerated I left, they had
raised the percentage rate on some of the jobs, the
more harder labors.

Speaker 14 (01:35:41):
They gave it a few more pennies.

Speaker 5 (01:35:44):
But it's crazy how multi billion dollar corporation don't take
care of the inmates who keep it working. We do
the laundry, we do the cooking, we do the housing,
we do the clerk work, make glass.

Speaker 14 (01:36:00):
Everything is done by inmates.

Speaker 5 (01:36:02):
I work for carpentry, so I built some of the buildings,
but yet I only worked for pennies. And if you
think about it, that penny labor is even lower than
slave labor in Mexico or some of the more countries
that don't provide anything.

Speaker 1 (01:36:19):
Yeah, so obviously, as you're describing, these are unbelievably horrific
conditions and wages, and god, I keep thinking about, you know,
like two dollars for toothpaste. If you're making twenty cents
an hour, it's like ten hours of work for like
one of the small rings of toothpaste, which is just nightmare.

(01:36:42):
What does organizing look like under those conditions?

Speaker 5 (01:36:46):
I think most of us lived in flight or fight mode.
You had to do what you had to do to survive.
The mental health level in CITYCR is like ninety nine
percent over super high because people are stealing toilet.

Speaker 14 (01:37:03):
Paper and past things.

Speaker 5 (01:37:05):
They give us what you need more because there's not
enough and I don't make enough money or you.

Speaker 14 (01:37:09):
Know, toothpaste, you're doing extra.

Speaker 5 (01:37:12):
So it has made the CITYCR system a little violentile
because people are stealing a robin and mugging like in
the free world, but you're taken from penny pinching people
that don't have anything. So it's made our environment a
little bit more violet if you've.

Speaker 4 (01:37:29):
Asked me, Yeah, I want to reflect on what Odre said.
Prison is tremendously expensive, you know, within our circles. I
guess it's famously more expensive to send someone to prison
than to send them to Harvard. However, people are in
these like really desperate material circumstances for stuff like toothpaste,

(01:37:54):
theodor and even toothbrushes and things like that. And within
people that know CDCR, they call from your prison system.
On the men's side, they do a thing where they
track and monitor the calories that people get because the
guys all, you know, like to work out a lot,
and like they just don't want people bulking up that much,

(01:38:14):
and so they physically restrict the amount of protein and
calorie intake to Jesus sort of facilitate their ideal security situation.

Speaker 1 (01:38:25):
So they're just starving everyone like intentionally.

Speaker 4 (01:38:28):
Yes, yes, precisely, yeah, keeping people yeah alive, you know,
and in purgatory and not not able to like be
how they want to be. And so like that situation
of artificial scarcity is it's reflected on you know, the
outside of prison too, and you know, just hustle culture,

(01:38:48):
you know, housing scarcity, artificial housing scarcity, all kinds of
other artificial scarcity. And I think in prison it's like
a it's like a form of social conditioning where people
are being condition into this scarcity mindset in like a
really extreme way and being forced into this kind of
hustle mindset. And so like all of the things that

(01:39:10):
the prison administration kind of like trots out to justify
their new security quote unquote measures, which is just often
stuff like banning physical mail, you know, restrictions on visits,
restrictions on books, restrictions on showers, restrictions on anything you
know remotely humane about prison. Like these things are all

(01:39:31):
justified as security. And the things that they talk about
when they talk about security is like you know, drugs,
you know, prison commerce, things like this, and like, prison
commerce exists because of this situation of incredible scarcity that
the prison itself is like maintaining to begin with. And
the point of eyewalk in part, like part of our

(01:39:53):
sort of mission and like strategy is to get people together,
get people like you know, talking about solidarity, connecting people
who have a kind of like minded kind of outlook
on things, so that we can start to form a
foundation for solidarity that is not based around the prison

(01:40:15):
economy as it exists, but rather based on like inside
outside solidarity, on like a you know, a humanistic socialistic
level in that sense, Like there are stark similarities but
also very stark differences with you know, other groups that
do the same thing, right, Like, essentially a lot of

(01:40:35):
groups that arise sort of spontaneously that do that kind
of stuff tend to have a capitalistic nature to them,
and those are the groups that come with the state
refers to as gangs oftentimes, and there are different ones
and they do different things and they have unique cultures.
Like the term gang kind of flattens them all into one.

(01:40:56):
But yeah, they're they're all very different and have different
sort of survival adaptation mechanisms.

Speaker 14 (01:41:03):
They're like large clicks.

Speaker 5 (01:41:06):
I think that would like kind of be better from
a CDR since CDCR is like one of the most
largest human trafficking industries in the business. They collect people,
they work people for nothing, and the revenue all goes
back to them because no matter what we spend, we

(01:41:27):
spend it with CDCR. So not only are you collecting
fifty sixty thousand a year per person, and the institution
is overpacked so it carries up to twenty five hundred
people at a time. These people are working for either.

Speaker 14 (01:41:41):
Dollars or cents.

Speaker 5 (01:41:43):
And every dollar they have is invested back at CDC
you are. So it is one hundred percent financial gain
for CDCR, no matter.

Speaker 14 (01:41:52):
How to look at it.

Speaker 5 (01:41:53):
Because they supply everything, they sell everything, everything goes right
back to CDCR at the cost of human lives, for medical,
for food, the things that they give you is for
you to barely make it. And what it does is
it keeps you in the same kind of criminal mind state,
so you're a better criminal when you leave because you
have to do what you have to do to survive.

(01:42:15):
In their and at forty fifty thousand dollars per person
a year, I feel like nobody should be hungry, nobody
should need shoes, nobody should need t shirts. Two bases
should be full sized, shampoos should be full size. They
invest the thousands millions of dollars in mental health, and
yet the suicide rate is high there because a bruce

(01:42:37):
rate is high there, whether it's being abused by.

Speaker 14 (01:42:39):
Staff or by inmate.

Speaker 5 (01:42:41):
Abuses twenty four hours around the clock in CDCR and
only a very few survive. And they don't survive on scratch.
They survive because they have a super will to survive.
So for me, that's where I was at. I had
a super will to survive. So I hid in the crack.
I tried to do my bare minimum. I stayed in

(01:43:03):
groups and stuff. I fed my mind, I nursed my
body the best I could. I took care of my
health the best I could. I just stayed focused. But
either go see always I will always have me always.
I've been a member for almost eight years now, eight
nine years I was a member incarcerated, and now I
would be able to talk to Collins and work through

(01:43:24):
some of the worst moments. He would refer me to
other entities of the organization for support. They would give
me referrals to how to give me books to take
my mind out of places, refer me to places that
would give us papers and pen people would help us
with laws and stuff we didn't understand.

Speaker 14 (01:43:41):
Senless copies.

Speaker 8 (01:43:42):
You know.

Speaker 5 (01:43:42):
It was just really a platform for making you a
stronger individual in an awful situation. And for that I
will always be grateful. And even now that I'm no
longer incarcerated in CCCDCR, I get to see the fruit
of the labor of everything this organization has given to
the people that are behind bars, and I'm so grateful.

Speaker 4 (01:44:06):
Yeah, jail conditions in California, and I think a lot
of places are like even worse than prison conditions. And
I mean, I remember when I was visiting someone in
the Sacramento County jail and she was excited, after multiple
years in the county jail to go to federal prison.
She was like over the moon that she was going
to federal prison and getting out of the Sacramento County jail.

(01:44:29):
So I was wondering if you could describe the conditions
in the Presno County jail and how we fixed them,
or at least how they kind of mickey moused it
for the entire time that you were there, just so
that this wouldn't happen again.

Speaker 14 (01:44:41):
So I was incarcerated.

Speaker 5 (01:44:43):
I went back for recentence, you know, my life sentence,
and that Fresnel County Jail is horrible. It's interested people
are dying daily. If you have nobody, you have nothing.
It was really sad. I asked Collins and I walked
to get involve. So when short time came, they had

(01:45:03):
put in to get some funny to help.

Speaker 14 (01:45:07):
People didn't have hygiens.

Speaker 5 (01:45:09):
It was very stinky and nasty, so they donated through me,
and I bought the girls their hygiens, shut pools, conditioners,
two pays.

Speaker 14 (01:45:21):
Bought guys of snacks.

Speaker 5 (01:45:22):
I made them all little care packs, and I got
to see a small amount of women in my pod
spring to life, all because the organization cared. All because
somebody researched their heart and did a little something different.
It made such a difference, like they really all wanted

(01:45:44):
to be involved, like how do I get involved with this?

Speaker 14 (01:45:47):
But I left shortly after this all.

Speaker 5 (01:45:50):
Happened, so we didn't really get to click it in
because using the phone and stuff in there is not
like being in prison. People are dying to get out
of county jail. I mean people are actually dying in
their cells. One lady was left to fester in her
infestations of cysts and stuff she had all over her body.
She sped another lady in there that actually went out

(01:46:12):
long responsive because they said nothing was along with her,
and yet she had an internal disease she had been
living with all her life and they would not help her.
And because I don't know a lot, I'm not going
to name anything or anyone. I just know I was
a part of the situation. We were denied meals. Sometimes
you were too late, you didn't come. People were denying meds.

(01:46:36):
You should have been there.

Speaker 14 (01:46:38):
People who couldn't even.

Speaker 5 (01:46:39):
Walk and they had no medical assistance. People who were kicking,
as we know, to kick alcohol or hang on or
crystal can be deadly. All they would do is bring
them gatorade, one cup in the middle of the night.
But these people were throwing up their guts, throwing up blood.

Speaker 14 (01:46:57):
It was crazy. It was really sad in there.

Speaker 5 (01:47:00):
But like I said, the one moment of joy was
when I came in. I came in and they literally
contributed to making it a better environment for us.

Speaker 4 (01:47:15):
And we did something with that jail that in activist
vernacular or organizing vernacular, you could call it a phone
zop or like a distribute distributed action.

Speaker 15 (01:47:25):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:47:26):
So do you remember what our demands were with the jail.
I think we had like four or five and they did.
They did most of them.

Speaker 5 (01:47:34):
I know one was with medical. It's been so long
I don't quite remember everything. So, but I know the
girls who were able to kyle all walk and file
complaints or tell people about what was happening with them,
and they would, you know, give them resources and help
them out the best they could. Women started filing grievouses
because they were actually being able to receive information that

(01:47:56):
would help them.

Speaker 4 (01:47:58):
Yeah. I just found what we won by the we
won a violent guard transferred from that unit. Undoubtedly they
were just transferred to another unit and then move back later.
Increased access to showers in clean water, provided mental health care,
put in repair work orders for showers and the television,
and provided grievance forms all that from just like what

(01:48:20):
I have to assume was like the Fresno County jails,
like first serious encounter with like public anger and scrutiny
in probably years. Not that people aren't angry at them
over this stuff, but like the way they just like
absolutely hopped to is you know, in my experience, indicative

(01:48:41):
of people just used to getting away with it and
receiving very little pushback.

Speaker 8 (01:48:46):
I just wanted to say that I think it also
highlights the importance of mutual aid within our movement work.
You know, oftentimes in especially labor movement spaces, you hear
a lot of you know, focus on quote unquote organizing
without recognition of kind of like the human element and

(01:49:07):
like the human connection aspect to it and how you know,
in different kind of spaces, being able to break bread,
or if we can provide basic needs and supplies like
you know, for hygiene or you know, I remember doing COVID,
being able to provide folks who were incarcerated with soap

(01:49:30):
right was huge. And it's those gestures. Some people challenge
that and say, well that's not really organizing, right, Yes,
it is absolutely. It's recognizing our humanity, our basic needs,
and showing up to try to support each other. It's

(01:49:52):
not just quote unquote fighting, right and that kind of advocacy,
But advocacy is also about mutual aid, and so trying
to live that and making sure we're meshing that with
our movement work is essential.

Speaker 4 (01:50:05):
Yeah, I wanted to emphasize that, Like, it's not like
we sent some incredible amount of money to Adro when
she was in Tresno kind of jail. It was like
maybe one hundred bucks or like not even, and yet
it was able to do a lot of stuff Autero.
You do remember how much it was, well, I think.

Speaker 14 (01:50:20):
It was seventy five bora hundred. It was one of them.

Speaker 4 (01:50:23):
Yeah, So I mean that's like one small example of
how like when you're doing prison solidarity, you're able to
do so much, like you're able to have a tremendous
impact for folks in a way that you are not
able to do in any kind of organizing, at least
for people in the present moment. And that is something

(01:50:46):
that really attracted me to it. As just kind of
a spectrum headed person. I was like, oh, this is
like a very good labor cost to benefit ratio of
like you can put in the same amount of work
and reap like much greater benefit for a greater number
of people. And that I think remains true today is

(01:51:06):
something that folks should consider when considering whether prison solidarity
is something that they'd like to take her in.

Speaker 14 (01:51:14):
Thank you Collins.

Speaker 5 (01:51:15):
The one thing I did remember more than anything out
of Collins and their organizations coming into our county. The
one thing I did see that you very get to
see in and incarcerated situations was in a lot pod,
a glimmer of hope. They planted a seed when they
made it possible for us to fund help for people,

(01:51:40):
and the next time around people were donating a little bit.

Speaker 14 (01:51:44):
People who had.

Speaker 5 (01:51:45):
More were donating to make sure those people kept things.
I see unity in its greatest form with culture difference,
stigma difference, race difference. Gangs didn't exist at that time.
I watched us come together. We started having prayer socals,
the pod became more positive, and that all started with

(01:52:09):
a heartfelt seventy five to one hundred dollars.

Speaker 14 (01:52:12):
It brought people together and that never left.

Speaker 5 (01:52:16):
That never left, and I think it's the same thing
in an incarceration, when you're in prison. When we build
our little insight organizations and we help each other, we
give hope to each other. I am so grateful to
be a member of such a profound organization that believes
in neighbor laws to help us be treated fairly, abolishments

(01:52:40):
of institutions because know.

Speaker 14 (01:52:42):
God, they need to reap a little bit of what
they sow.

Speaker 5 (01:52:46):
And a hand and a heart that says we care
from across the mouth. And this organization reaches different parts
of the US, so it's not from one place, it's
it's a whole unit and it's I'm grateful to be
a part of it right.

Speaker 4 (01:53:02):
And in fact IOWAK exists in the United States. We
have interests from some lob belief in Canada, and there
is also established IWALK presidents in the UK, including Northern Ireland.

Speaker 1 (01:53:29):
What does it actually look like to be doing sort
of jail house long, to be helping people understand what
their rights are and trying to fight for better conditions
through the internal legal system.

Speaker 5 (01:53:40):
I work for the Law Library in CDCR at Chachchilla SECWF.

Speaker 1 (01:53:46):
SCCWF is the central California Women's Facility, a California women's prison.

Speaker 5 (01:53:52):
And I am what they call a jail house lawyer
because I helped a few.

Speaker 14 (01:53:56):
People go home.

Speaker 5 (01:53:58):
Not that I was brilliant, just comprehend very well and
I articulate very well. So by me working there, I
got to learn first hand law books and penal codes
and processes, and it was a wonderful thing. But it
can also be a sad thing because before you know,

(01:54:19):
you make a lot of mistakes, and those mistakes hurt
people because people can't afford lawyers. I mean, I went
in there with thirty six to life, lost all my
levels of my appeal, and never thought I would ever
see the light of day. I knew I would die
in prison, and a lot of jail house lawyers helped me,
and just it didn't happen because financially I was not

(01:54:41):
able to do a lot. If it hadn't Gavin Knwsomon,
we sentenced me under exemplary programming. Obviously I did a
good program. I've done over one hundred and fifty years
old of their groups, and I facilitate, so I work
my way out. But you got documentation in there that's
probably thirty years old.

Speaker 14 (01:55:01):
It doesn't even apply with the laws that are today.

Speaker 5 (01:55:05):
If we're using old documentation, the course will rejecting them
because they have the wrong paperwork. A lot of things
had been happening until some of us started six oh
two een, like we need the right paperwork. We started
fighting for that, and we started getting it, and people
are now being able to see a glimmer of hope.

Speaker 14 (01:55:23):
It's all about for me, It's about the fight. How
bad do you want it?

Speaker 8 (01:55:27):
You know?

Speaker 5 (01:55:27):
I know what I would do to throw my life away?
What would I do to have my life back? You know,
after I've yeah worked it out. The same energy you
put into it, It's the same energy you got to
put it into it to get out of it.

Speaker 1 (01:55:42):
If not a little bit more, did you talk a
little bit more about how you went about actually getting
the correct copies of the legal code, because that seems
like just an absolute nightmare.

Speaker 14 (01:55:53):
No, it is a nightmare.

Speaker 5 (01:55:54):
When I first started, I had two incarcerations, two life sentences.

Speaker 14 (01:55:57):
I just beat my second life sentences.

Speaker 5 (01:55:59):
I was a three striker first, and at that time,
they didn't have a lot of paper and there was
a lot of Rigoro war going on because of the
law was so inadically we put together just.

Speaker 14 (01:56:10):
To please the people of the US, but not to
be fair all the way around.

Speaker 5 (01:56:15):
A lot of people were getting life sentences for slices
of pizza and hawk dolls, and you know, and I
was one of those people, don't get me wrong. So
at that time, there was not a lot a lot
of legal paperwork. The paperwork was so outdated they were
giving us and people started we started filing the pills.

Speaker 14 (01:56:35):
Hey, we have a right to the right paperwork. How
am I gonna get home?

Speaker 8 (01:56:39):
Yeah?

Speaker 14 (01:56:39):
If I don't, I'm a fight if I don't have
the right forms.

Speaker 4 (01:56:42):
To fight with.

Speaker 5 (01:56:43):
Or we would organizations would printice paperwork.

Speaker 14 (01:56:47):
Out that we wrote out to.

Speaker 5 (01:56:48):
And they would send us the right one in and
we would make copies in our own self at ten
cents of copy and put change the copy that they
used to copy the copy and the original would be in.
It was a lot of scheme in and scamming, but
it was worth it because we were starting to go home.
The paperwork was being updated. You know, they had a
lawsuit because they did have the right paperwork. They really

(01:57:11):
started up dating then because we had some legal monros,
you know.

Speaker 14 (01:57:15):
Lawyers go to prison too.

Speaker 1 (01:57:20):
So if I'm understanding this right, are you saying that
they had the right paperwork they were just giving you
the old one.

Speaker 5 (01:57:26):
No, they had the wrong paperwork. So we were sending
out for the right paperwork, throwing away to old paper
work and sliding the right paperwork in the clerks that
worked at the lawbrary.

Speaker 14 (01:57:37):
We would do anything to make sure.

Speaker 11 (01:57:38):
We can go home, you know.

Speaker 5 (01:57:39):
Yeah, I mean, but like I said, we had people who.

Speaker 14 (01:57:42):
Used to be lawyers. I mean, if we had to
wait a little bit.

Speaker 5 (01:57:45):
Longer, we could have had a president I don't know,
before going to prison these days.

Speaker 11 (01:57:51):
Yeah, so, you.

Speaker 5 (01:57:52):
Know, but it was just that you had to have
a will to be a success, and it took organizations
like eye walk.

Speaker 14 (01:57:59):
It when I was there. I need a certain paperwork
and college will look it up and reference for and
send it to me, you know, legal.

Speaker 5 (01:58:07):
Paperwork that would help us whether we were fighting for
our jobs, not paying us right, or we can't get
a hold of this paperwork for us to be free.

Speaker 14 (01:58:16):
He would send it and I would spread it like fire,
you know.

Speaker 5 (01:58:21):
Once she I'm a clerk, I make a hundred copies
hoping I don't get caught. You know, it is what
it is, and just trying to say why that was important.
But I'm wanted this thing talking. I really want to
hear Gigi's aspect, because she is like so superheroes. She's

(01:58:44):
a great human being and she fights for incarcerated inmates,
and she fights for labor rights, and she fights for
her organization, and she fights for everything. And I would
really like to hear her. I haven't heard her much.
I don't like to hear her side.

Speaker 8 (01:59:00):
All think you wants. You are incredible, and I just
I just want to listen to you, and you are,
you know, the one that we are taking notes from.
So thank you for everything that you do and everything
that you did while incarcerated and everything that you're doing now.
Just so just so you know that we are all

(01:59:20):
inspired by you.

Speaker 14 (01:59:21):
Always thank you.

Speaker 8 (01:59:23):
I you know, as someone who has been in the
legal field for many.

Speaker 15 (01:59:28):
Years, you really the more you're around legal professionals, specifically lawyers,
you learn how little they actually do. I think a
lot of the times are perception of civil rights and
just movement work.

Speaker 8 (01:59:48):
We think of lawyers. We think of big organizations right
that have been you know, those big gains in the courts,
But the reality is that the real work happens on
the ground, grassroots, and so in the case of our
prisoner movement, it happens behind those bars, behind those concrete walls.

(02:00:12):
And when it comes to the most vulnerable, as you
kind of go down right in terms of how impacted
folks are, there are less and less lawyers that are
willing to do their work, and definitely less that are
even able to. They just don't bother, you know. And

(02:00:33):
so what you really see when it comes to jail
health lawyers is that they said, we can't depend on
these privileged class of people to fight for us, let
alone free us. So they taken it into their own hands.

(02:00:56):
And that's why it's such an honor for organizations like
Eyewalk and our members to be able to support in
that hands on participatory defense model, where it truly is
about it's understanding that our liberation will not come from
external hands. It will come, you know, internally, it will

(02:01:18):
come from us who are impacted, and so supporting each
other is what is going to make the difference.

Speaker 11 (02:01:27):
And I sound so simple, but.

Speaker 8 (02:01:29):
Sometimes it looks like sending in a book an article,
pulling up supporting evidence that someone can use, right, doing
some research and sending it in. And California has the
Racial Justice Act, which is opening a pathway for a
lot of folks to reopen their cases and have some

(02:01:51):
resentencing done. And a lot of folks are, you know,
being free now because of that legislation, And so you know,
how can we support in that way? But also I
always go back to building the relationship with the folks inside,
because sometimes it looks like writing a letter of support
for folks. I mean, you can tell when someone writes

(02:02:15):
a letter that didn't have a relationship with the person
who needs a letter, right, But the opposite is also true.
You can really tell when someone actually has a relationship
with that person. It comes to life what you're writing
and you feel that connection, right. So truly building those relationships,
those friendships use some of our comrades inside. I bigger

(02:02:40):
with and we fight and we make up, you know,
and we're there for the ups and downs, and we'll
give each other advice. And it's true friendships that we
built behind those walls.

Speaker 10 (02:02:50):
And that alone is also a form of radical love
and a radical part of this movement to form those
bonds with those who the system tried to bury alive,
and circling back to jail house lawyers and how our
incarcerated neighbors have taken.

Speaker 8 (02:03:10):
Control and a lead of their own defense. How important
it is for us to be plugged in on the
outside to different advances or regressions when it comes to
the legal system, because oftentimes we need to recognize that
to be able to ignore policy, to be able to

(02:03:33):
ignore what's happening in the streets, is a tremendous privilege.
It's not impacting you when you are impacted. You cannot
ignore what's happening around you because it's happening to you, right.
And so for us, if we feel like we're not impacted,
even though we are, because it's all interconnected struggle, right.
But if we feel like maybe we don't need to

(02:03:54):
pay attention to struggles or advancements that could be used
by people inside, then we're really privileged and we're failing
are our neighbors inside. So I just hope that we
can recognize that and understand that it is an obligation
of ours to move through life in a way that

(02:04:19):
is thoughtful of those who who could use our support
and who we could empower because they don't have the
same access to that information or the resources. And so
in many ways, that's what I walked us. And there's
just something so powerful about getting out a piece of
paper and pen and writing a handwriting letter, stuffing an

(02:04:42):
envelope with literature with zine, or sending a book inside
and putting that stamp on the envelope. It feels like
a material manifestation of your solidarity.

Speaker 14 (02:04:55):
Oh oh no, that was awesome.

Speaker 4 (02:04:58):
Yeah, it's okay. I'd like to dig into some details
on the sort of state of the civil rights liberalism
as we know it here in California, because I think
like we glossed over certain things that I'd like to
clarify are not acts of benevolence on the part of
the state and are in fact acts of just kind

(02:05:20):
of like self glazing on their part, and like things
that they do to sort of pat themselves on the
back and then move on. So, I mean, first of all,
Audra mentioned that Gavin Newsim had something to do with
her release. I just wanted to circle back to that
and point out that he's also completely screwed over some
of our members, like gone completely out of his way

(02:05:41):
to use his like what it's basically like a veto
power over parole that should not exist, and it's just
like set up to yeah, create like me. I mean, like,
this is how Gavin Newsim does everything in California. He's like,
if I'm going to either take an action or not
take an action as governor, is there any possibility that
my action or inaction could make me look bad later

(02:06:05):
on the national stage to people that are not my
current constituents when I'm running for president. And he always
does what he thinks is going to create the least
risk and make him look good to a national audience
rather than to his current constituents. And that is pretty
clearly what happened with another one of our members recently.
So yeah, fuck Evan Newsom.

Speaker 1 (02:06:24):
Actually, why does he even have the power to overratee
the parole?

Speaker 11 (02:06:27):
Why does it even exist?

Speaker 12 (02:06:29):
That's absurd.

Speaker 4 (02:06:31):
I don't know. Yeah, you'd have to talk to some
sort of like California constitutional historian to learn that.

Speaker 1 (02:06:38):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (02:06:39):
The other thing I want to talk about was this
Racial Justice Act thing. So this is something that on
its surface, it sounds really radical. So first what they
did was like in twenty twenty when as we all
know nothing in particular was happening. They passed this law
called the Racial Justice Hack that was like, hey, if
you're convicted, but it was like due to racial animus

(02:07:01):
or like the length of the sentence perhaps, and if not,
the conviction itself is due to like a racial bias.
You can you can try to prove that or not
prove it, but like do what's called a prime at
fates are showing, which is like the lowest level of
you know, demonstrating something in court, and then we'll just
like let you go based on that alone. Right, So
that's wow, what are you radical?

Speaker 5 (02:07:20):
Right?

Speaker 4 (02:07:20):
Okay, So a couple things. First of all, that was
only from the future on herd, so that was not retroactive.
But later there was outcry about that, and so they
came back and were like, oh okay, yeah, all the
people in prison now can do it too. So the
thing is this is also the kind of thing that
can like overwhelm the courts.

Speaker 16 (02:07:36):
Right.

Speaker 4 (02:07:36):
So like the way that this is being done in
practice is like you get one shot at this. Ever, yeah,
as I understand it, And just like appeals, you get
different amounts of appeals I think based on the conviction.
But like basically if you fuck it up, like you're done,
because the courts are limited in their capacity and need
to be able to move on to hear other people's saying,

(02:07:59):
and of course will file it and it's it's not good,
it's not done well. And like the infrastructure to violate
your rights is like better funded all the time. Meanwhile,
the institutions to like defend your rights are typically not
publicly funded at all outside of like the court's proper
and you know, maybe there's certain government agencies in some states.

(02:08:21):
But then like private civil rights attorneys are who have
the option to be kind of the real civil rights defenders,
and they get funded based on like court fees that
are like set by the government. Right, and so the
government like creates these systems where you know, the legislature
essentially has the power to decide how much money a

(02:08:43):
civil rights lawyer is going to be able to get
practicing civil rights law by like suing the cops and stuff.
In California and probably elsewhere, it's already like been settled
that like if you do a civil rights case for
something happening on the street, and then you do the
same civil rights case for like the same thing happening

(02:09:04):
to people in prison, you're gonna make less money when
it occurred in prison, basically. And you know, maybe some
legal person has a finer, you know, detailed analysis of
that than what I just said, But that's essentially my understanding.
And I did work for for some attorneys who practice
is kind of law at one point, so that is

(02:09:26):
pretty egregious, yea, And yeah, I mean I think that, like,
there's there's a lot of stuff in the kind of
abolitionist sphere that is really kind of like nails on
a chalkboard to me. And I think a lot of
other people who tend to take a more like radical
yet like radical in the long run, yet day to
day pragmatic approach. I mean one of those things is

(02:09:47):
like the nonprofit route basically, or like the five oh
one C three route, where you you know, staff up
hire a bunch of people. If you started out, you know,
being in the same class as the people who are
in prison, you like quickly propel yourself out of that
class by doing this if you're successful, and then like

(02:10:07):
things deteriorate from there as far as relationships go with
people who are impacted. And then the other thing is
like there's this strain of abolitionists who are like, well,
we're the truest abolitionists because we just believe in like
infinite second chances basically, and so like we sometimes get
questions of like, how are you different from other abolitionist groups.

(02:10:29):
So I would say, yeah, like a, we're not afraid
to like pick people out. But it's like you behave badly.
I walk like you're talking, like you're out, Like that's
not the same as throwing someone in prison. All that
people will make that equivalence.

Speaker 5 (02:10:43):
I love this, but I do have to go. I
appreciate you guys allowing me a chance to speak.

Speaker 1 (02:10:49):
Thank you so much for doing this.

Speaker 5 (02:10:50):
I appreciate callings, your support. I appreciate your support for
allowness on your podcast.

Speaker 14 (02:10:58):
I would just want to say one thing.

Speaker 5 (02:10:59):
When I was in incarcerated, I would write and Collins
help me start me a little website because I would
write my emotions. I don't know if I can leak
that website. Can I say what that website is? In
case you guys want to look at it.

Speaker 1 (02:11:13):
It's your website, Okay, thank you.

Speaker 5 (02:11:16):
It's adras A U d r A S Real thoughts
r e A L thoughts with the s dot WordPress
dot com and it talks about my trauma, my prison
life and everything. It has pictures and everything, And it
would not be possible if it was not for Collins.
It was my way of forming a support group from

(02:11:38):
inside out. But I have to go because I do
have somewhere.

Speaker 14 (02:11:42):
Else to be.

Speaker 4 (02:11:42):
It's been great having me here. A.

Speaker 1 (02:11:45):
Yeah, it's been it's been amazing having you here. I
really appreciate it.

Speaker 14 (02:11:48):
Yeah, I love Gg Collins. Thank you guys so much.

Speaker 4 (02:11:53):
I'll talk to you later if you're comfortable with the
only if you're comfortable with it before you go, do
you want to tell me and the audience what your
third strike was? Allegedly yes.

Speaker 5 (02:12:05):
I was sentenced in nineteen ninety four for sales of
a twenty dollars piece of cocaine, and I was given
twenty five to life plus a five year enhancement. This one,
I was sentenced to thirty six to life for second
degree robbery. A lady say I robbed her while she

(02:12:26):
was with her child, and then she recanted that story
in court. I still was sentenced to thirty six to
life because she couldn't find her forty dollars that she lost.
There's a lot behind it. Actually, me and my partner
at the time were co defendants.

Speaker 14 (02:12:44):
He was let off.

Speaker 5 (02:12:45):
Because he hadn't been in trouble in California, which was
a good thing because he really was innocent. But I
had to spend almost sixteen years on my life in
prison for a crime I did not commit. It has
its pros and as cons I'm a better Hue human
being today, not because of CDCR, but because of me
and the support system that I had while incarcerated in CDC,

(02:13:07):
and it just made me a stronger person. They say,
if it doesn't break you, it'll only make you stronger.
So for anybody out there in the incarcerated world, don't
give up, because if this doesn't break you, it will
only make you stronger and you.

Speaker 14 (02:13:21):
Will get out because I did.

Speaker 5 (02:13:23):
And it's not always by the means that we think
it will be, but when it's time, it happens. I've
lived in the system long and I've lived a life
span as a human being. I've spent more time incarcerated
for little stupid things. No murders, no mayhems, no beatups,
no DUIs, no nothing, none of nothing like that.

Speaker 14 (02:13:44):
Ye thinks that no one should ever.

Speaker 5 (02:13:47):
See prison walls behind, but I did, And like I said,
I was made the stronger because of organizations like you
who support me. There were others, but you guys were
the most impact in my life.

Speaker 14 (02:13:59):
You came in my life like a whirl win and
you straightened everything. I helped me straighten my thoughts out
in my life.

Speaker 5 (02:14:04):
You helped me in many ways because you didn't come in,
get overwhelmed and take off. You stayed the long call.
Your organization is not an organization that quits.

Speaker 14 (02:14:15):
It's we're gonna get some.

Speaker 5 (02:14:16):
More to help us fight type of thing going on.
And there's not a lot of organizations like that. They
get overwhelmed. It's too much going on. We ain't got
enough manpower. You guys only had people and you were
making movements. And I don't understand correctly. I think you
guys wrote a letter for a friend and supported her
through board.

Speaker 14 (02:14:34):
Now she's out in the free world, you know what
I'm saying.

Speaker 5 (02:14:37):
So you guys change lives because you don't give up
on life. And for that, I hope you guys be
around one hundred thousand years from now and I'll always
be a member.

Speaker 14 (02:14:47):
You guys have a great thing.

Speaker 8 (02:14:50):
Luckily prisons aren't around for one hundred thousand years. But
we love the odra help.

Speaker 6 (02:14:55):
Yah.

Speaker 8 (02:15:06):
I just want to add when I clarified, like about
the Racial Justice Act, I don't want to.

Speaker 17 (02:15:10):
You know, applaud it as a victory of the system,
like they're not really victories when the systems will exist, right,
But I just want to say that it is still
our duty to know when we.

Speaker 8 (02:15:21):
Can find those little kind of avenues for some momentary
reprie for some people, and that can look like some
creative ways. During COVID, we actually created hundreds of pockets
for incarcerated folks so that they can actually file some
tax documents and get their stimulus checks.

Speaker 14 (02:15:42):
Oh, which was major, right, So a.

Speaker 8 (02:15:45):
Ton of people were able to get their stimulus checks
while incarcerated. Do you know how far that went? So
it's just like those kinds of creative ways, you know,
we often think, you know, we drive past a coffee
shopping with like, oh, yeah, my mom love that coffee shop.
We just hope that if we can make these connections
with incarcerated neighbors, then we can you know, as we're

(02:16:08):
going through the world on the outside. We also make
those connections like, oh, you know what, sumulus checks. Oh
you know what, how do we get our incarcerated comrades
to get those two?

Speaker 4 (02:16:20):
Right?

Speaker 8 (02:16:21):
Making those connections with the people that you build bonds
with it's really important.

Speaker 4 (02:16:27):
Yeah, yeah, Can I go on a rant that covers
most of the notes that I have that I haven't
covered yet?

Speaker 1 (02:16:33):
Yeah, go for it.

Speaker 4 (02:16:34):
Okay, thank you. Prison organizing is tremendously popular with people
in prison, and a lot of people on the quote
unquote left or just with humanitarian sentiments on the outside
are really great at you know, encouraging us and being
like what you're doing is awesome and kind of giving
us that like moral support which does help, and also

(02:16:55):
you know, subscribing to our newsletter and sometimes doing phones
apps and stuff like that. But generally it is tremendously
difficult moving people from passive to active support in this
kind of organizing. Typically, I think there is that kind
of out of sight, out of mind factor going on
for a lot of people, and I think there are

(02:17:16):
organizing avenues out of that that I think we are,
you know, always exploring new new ways to kind of
try and make those connections in an experiential kind of way,
rather than just like have you thought about how these
things are connected, but like actually making it like real
for people, you know. But we have just found that
like the most stalwart, steadfast people in this struggle for

(02:17:41):
the most part, are people you know directly impacted by it,
are people who've been to jail in prison or who
have like close family members who are often currently there
or were recently there. And so you know, we'd love
to hear from you, if that's you in particular, we'd
love to hear from you, love to plug you in.
We are speaking, you know, from California. But again, the

(02:18:05):
organization exists across the United States and aspirationally Canada as
well and the UK, and there are also other prisoner
solidarity organizations with a similar orientation, so it's not like
we're doing something totally unique and unheard of here. There's
something called gg slash BO in Germany, which is also
like a union for prisoners, and I want to say

(02:18:27):
there's pretty similar stuff in Spain to associated with the
anarchist movement there. In the United States, I think people
are probably pretty familiar with like political prisoner support or
like support committees for groups like the Minnesota fifteen or
the Prairie Land Defendants and situations like that, And that's
really valuable and really important. And no movement that like

(02:18:50):
doesn't look after its people when they're in prison, like
is a serious movement that will go anywhere at the
end of the day. So that work really really matters.
And I think that when people hear us as Eyewalk
repeat one of our mottos that like all prisoners are political,
they don't quite necessarily get the analysis there. I mean,
for one thing, like you know, I'm going to give

(02:19:11):
the spiel from the ground up. I guess for a second,
like crime as an artificial category, like what a conviction
says on paper is not like reflective necessarily of what
really happened. And there has yet to be I think
some really damning like study about this, just because there
just hasn't been a study. But it is widely understood

(02:19:32):
that like essentially all women in prison have suffered some
kind of abuse in their lives, and almost all of
the women in prison for murder murdered an abuser of
either themselves or their kids or both. And in my book,
that ain't a crime. Yeah, but Gigi maybe if she's
if she wants to, can talk about how narrow the

(02:19:55):
self defense rule actually is. And this is something that
is like a popular myth that like the self defense
rule is actually really wide and like if you know
someone's coming to kill you, you can kill them first
and it's not murder. Absolutely not true. I actually had
a manager at a job. He was doing a training
on something completely unrelated, I assure you, and he was

(02:20:19):
just sort of going off and he was like and
he was this fucking macho prick, right obviously based on
what I'm about to say, but like he was like, oh, yeah,
like if anyone attacks you in the middle of nowhere,
you should just like kill them if you have the chance.
And then there's only one story being told. And I
was like, yeah, so that would be murder and he
was like, well, not if they attack you first, and
I'm like, yeah, it is actually, you know, like if

(02:20:42):
there's just a body and you're like, yeah, you talk
to me, like you should not assume that you will
just get away with that, Like that is not how
things work at all. Yeah, do you want to elaborate
on the self defense rule and what it is versus
what people think it is.

Speaker 18 (02:20:56):
Yeah, so it's really important for us to understand stand
that our legal doctrines in the United States are created
to have loopholes for those in power and to be very.

Speaker 8 (02:21:09):
Convoluted and impossible to benefit from for those who are poor.
So when it comes to the self defense doctrine, we
actually have seen that it is disproportionately unavailable to victims
of domestic and intimate partner violence. We have seen it

(02:21:35):
disproportionately unavailable to black and brown men, to trans and
non gender conforming neighbors. And a big part of that
reason is because a complete self defense claim has six
really important elements. You know, you cannot be like the

(02:21:56):
first aggressor. There's distinctions between the use of versus non
deathly force, a reasonable belief that the level of force
that you use was necessary to protect yourself. But also
this concept of proportionality. Right. We've seen that absolutely impact

(02:22:17):
and am using DV cases because of this kind of
concept of imminence. Right, So, if someone was being abused
for a long time by their partner or their spouse,
and you know, our psychology as humans are psyche sometimes,

(02:22:39):
you know, sometimes we snap, right, if you didn't snap
in the moment as a reaction to you know, being
harmed in that moment. Right, if your brain didn't make
the proper calculation, that defense is not available to Right.

(02:22:59):
There's so many, unfortunately, bars to actually being able to
cleiming self defense in a successful way, and it's very intentional. Unfortunately,
it was intentionally designed that way to avoid the most
vulnerable from using it. For example, there's this kind of

(02:23:22):
concept of perception of threat, right along with proportionality. Right,
So if someone is taller or maybe physically larger than
their abuser, then there's this concept that, well, is your
abuser actually a threat to you?

Speaker 5 (02:23:42):
Right?

Speaker 8 (02:23:43):
And so there's just so many ways in which the
law has not actually caught up with our new knowledge
when it comes to the psychological effects of living with
intimate partner violence, the impact that it has on our
reaction action times, right on the cycles, on the challenges

(02:24:05):
for many survivors to be able to even compile long
term proof of abuse.

Speaker 14 (02:24:11):
Et cetera.

Speaker 8 (02:24:11):
Right, we can go on endlessly, and so unfortunately, I
think it's just a reflection of our legal system again
just created to bar those most vulnerable for many protection
and it's really just there so that those who have
the resources and those who have the control of social norms, right,

(02:24:38):
those like young white men who have been perceived by
juries as kind and innocent.

Speaker 19 (02:24:46):
Right, Kyle Rittenhouse, exactly right. That's who our laws were
designed to protect, not our individuals. And so that just
just tie into our understanding of incarceration in this country
and how it's truly not a reflection of what really happened.

(02:25:06):
Most of the time, it's void of context and it's
just out right in Jess.

Speaker 4 (02:25:14):
Yeah, And there are a couple resources I think for
people to check out if you're more interested in this.
I mean, one question is like, how many people are
in prison right now who are straight up innocent? And
the straightforward answer is, we have no idea. And you know,
as a rule, we just tend to take prisoner's word
on stuff. I mean, what everyone else does is just
take the cops word on stuff, frankly, including the news. Oftentimes.

(02:25:36):
A big part of what we do is we are
available to give comment to journalists when possible around certain
jail and prison disturbances or actions that people in prisoner
jail have taken to defend themselves against. You know, quote
unquote the law the people, you know, torturing them essentially

(02:26:00):
because oftentimes, you know, local news in par particular will
just be straight up stenographers for whatever the police press releases.
I mean, they'll often also just refer to things as
riots that are not like if people sit down and
like refuse to leave the lunch area or like the
you know, like the central sitting area, they will refer

(02:26:22):
to that as like a riot, even if no one
is like throwing punches.

Speaker 8 (02:26:26):
And just to sort of circle labor, if you refuse
to work, you get punished for it. It's not necessarily optional, right.
It is absolutely slavery, not just because of the conditions
and because of the you know, poor payment basically lack
of payment, right, but because you are forced to work

(02:26:49):
or you get punished, and sometimes it goes on your
record that could actually impact you for any kind of
parole opportunities, et cetera. So it is punitive and it
is exploitative and it is nothing more than slappy.

Speaker 4 (02:27:05):
Yeah, to also touch base on, Yeah, like the fact
is it's slavery. I think that's like we and other
organizers have done a pretty good job. I feel like
of like getting that fact into the mainstream and being
like yeah, like this is slavery like period end of sentence.
It is legally and material slavery. And now we're entering

(02:27:25):
this process in which states like Colorado, for example, are
passing laws that's like yeah, so we're just like abolishing
this slavery thing, and it's like it's like the apparatus
to deprive people of their rights has not itself been
disempowered in any way, and so they're just like waving
a blond over this system of slavery, being like it's
not now like okay, you know what I mean. So

(02:27:46):
like when we demand, you know, abolish the thirteenth, it's
like that's like kind of a long term, like strategic
like legal demand, but just because a state, like I
feel like this is being recuperated into the kind of
like self congratulates or you know, like like fox civil
rights like liberalism at this point, because like states are
like abolishing their version of the thirteenth and then being

(02:28:09):
like cool, our work here is done. Oh but you
didn't do anything actually right, And Colorado in fact still
forces people to work in their prisons and it is
illegal technically, but like it ain't quite as illegal as
you know, it ain't the same type of illegal when
the state is doing it right, the state is not
in fact bound by its own laws in practice. Yeah,

(02:28:31):
and I mean also juxtaposed like everything that Jigi just
said about self defense with like the excuses that cops
are allowed to give when they shoot people out out
at random. Right, it's like, oh, well, the standard for
a human being, you know, killing another human being is
it has to be like in mutual combat, like you

(02:28:52):
have to be using proportionate for sta da da da da,
whereas like a cop can just be like, well I
kind of thought that he was holding thing or whatever.
So yeah, And as far as organizing goes, I mean, people,
I just want to say, people take lots of actions.
So a lot of the form that our organizing takes
is like we establish ourselves as a presence. We have

(02:29:14):
our incarcerated members. They give us information about what either
they or other groups of people are doing. Other people
on the outside know about us. They give us information
about what's going on in places, and we are kind
of known as like the prison labor organization that does
stuff around those and there really isn't as far as
I'm aware, a kind of organization that like does that

(02:29:34):
direct support specifically around labor issues anywhere else in the
United States, again outside of the local level perhaps, So, Yeah,
what we do is we pressure the prisons and jails
to give into the prisoner's demands. And they're not necessarily
going to like be like, oh, well, now that we've
heard from the public, we will do all the demands.
But like you heard the list of stuff that we

(02:29:54):
read off about the Fresno jail, Like that was a
surprising list of stuff, and they weren't actually striking or anything.
And so oftentimes because of the power and balance, it
does sort of just make more sense for us to
just pressure the prison directly, regardless of whether there's a
strike or not. But people do go on strike in
prison and do work slowdowns in prison and all that

(02:30:15):
kind of stuff. And it helps to have an outside
like buffer and like support team and like a relational
network of support, just like it does with other workers, right,
Like building that kind of network of mutual aid and
respect and support is what makes more action possible. And

(02:30:36):
so that's what we kind of seek to do. And
prison solidarity is something that is also not one directional.
You know, you probably got a sense of this, you
know in the snippets with Odra. But we learn a
lot from our inside numbers. We learn life changing lessons
from our inside members a lot, and they learn from
us too. But we always tell new members, like especially

(02:30:59):
you know, if they don't have a lot of experience
with prison or whatever, it's like, do not approach this
or from like a paternalistic standpoint, Like yes, they have
a lot to learn, but so do we, and relationships
and lessons go both ways. And also like prison admins
are just incredibly vulnerable to public scrutiny, Like we heard
how bad things are there, and it's like they don't
want people knowing this, Like they have just skated by

(02:31:21):
on like the kind of general Reagan eighties vibe of
like oh yeah, this is actually part of the punishment,
like this entire time, and like that is still their mindset.
It's like, yeah, prison isn't supposed to be fun. What
do you mean we need to give people toothpaste? Like
that is still like their attitude to the tea and
we need to intervene in that because that's really terrible. Actually, yeah,

(02:31:43):
and you know, this is an authoritarian country, like straight
up for the less wealthy half of the population, and
this is like a huge part of that. And we
can't just like not challenge the prison system and then
do like radical organizing of any other kind and be like, yeah,
we can just ignore or this prison thing. It surely
will not come to eat us at any point.

Speaker 1 (02:32:04):
Right.

Speaker 4 (02:32:04):
There's also this kind of myth of like labor as rehabilitation,
which is just like a you know, kind of calvinist
sort of you know, humbug. But it's like, you know,
we've already established that a lot of people in prison
didn't do anything wrong, but like for those who did,
like you know, within whatevery mortal framework you're using like
if you're if you're someone who like goes around causing harm,
how is like performing labor going to make you not

(02:32:27):
that person? It's not. They're just producing surplus value, right,
So that's total shit. And uh, and it's also you know,
it's just kind of like this this old fashioned eighteen
hundreds logic of like coorehouses and shit, you know, like
make them work, We'll make everything better somehow. And as
for being sued, like we know that the persons hate
being sued, the people who really see them, the best,

(02:32:49):
oftentimes are jail house lawyers, and we know that they
hate that because like they will straight up try to
have those people killed. Not only will they try to
have those people killed, they will try to have any
kind of prison staff reguard that like grows a conscience
and is like, yeah, this thing that we did is
kind of fucked up. Like I can't say with certainty,
but like those people have died under suspicious circumstances. Just

(02:33:10):
to contextualize it, like the prison adminsphere of public scrutiny
like so much. And whenever we do something like this
that is like sustained and like strategic and involving a
lot of participation, which it's unfortunately not always and we
need to work on that. And that is part of
building a like staunch support base right is doing these
distributed actions in a way that is like really sustained,

(02:33:33):
so you know, we communicate with specific people and apply
it pressure to the institution directly without going through any
kind of like proper channels necessarily which tend to just
do nothing. But doing this, we have stopped jail house
lawyers from being killed. We have gotten firefighters at the

(02:33:56):
Central California Women's facility their time credits, which the prison
was like dragging their feet on giving them to the
extent that like it was actually going to affect when
they got out, like they were having like six months
of time that they like weren't applying like eight months
from like their current get out time, you know what
I mean, Jesus. And so we fixed that. We have

(02:34:18):
gotten multiple people like real medical care as opposed to
like fake medical care. There was actually a kitchen strike
that we didn't we didn't directly support, just because it
like happened too quickly. Like I just I think I
gave some like advice, but that was about it. And
like they just like stopped paying them. Like in california're
supposed to make like eight cents an hour or whatever,
and they just were like, we're just not going to
pay you with your eight cents anymore, but eight since

(02:34:40):
an hour.

Speaker 1 (02:34:40):
Is too expensive for you as a person could fuck
it off. God, Jesus Christ to hate these people.

Speaker 4 (02:34:46):
Yeah, I mean this is just the nature of exploitation. Yeah,
Like they're always just trying to like, oh, we've gotten
away with a million things, let's get away with a
million and month things. Yep, you know like it's it's
it's the nature of oppression and exploitation, right, yeah, So
they struck and they won back their eight cents an hour,
and there was a slowdown that you can read about

(02:35:06):
in Prison Reports, which is like a movement news outlet,
where people did a slow down. People that were producing,
like the boxers for other prisoners I believe, did a
work slow down about two years ago, eighteen months ago
or so. And this was just to get access to
the commissary. So like they were making good money by
like prison standards, but like the commissary closed while they

(02:35:28):
were still working, and so they couldn't spend their money.
Oh yeah, and so they did a slowdown to like
fix that. This was part of California Prison Industries Authority,
which like is the manufacturer of oftentimes first resort for
like all kinds of like furniture and other supplies for

(02:35:48):
the state of California, including the UC system. And this
is often the case with other states as well. And
we also just are disseminating helpful info all the time,
Like with that legal info. It's like if you show
up with like a bunch of like radical literature and
like some legal info to like a puncture, people are like,
why you have legal info? Befoor ing fall, But like

(02:36:08):
in prison, it's like, yeah, you're gonna find some people
interested in the radical info and like that stuff. People
are interested in it too, But like the legal info
is what people really want because it is more practical.
It's like, you know, we of course we distribute information
about the IWW and about solidarity, unionism and and you know,
feminism and all kinds of other stuff, you know, the
Black Panthers, you know, the whole nine. But like what

(02:36:30):
people really do want, because it's the most practical, is
like how do I sue the prison? How do I
legally hack my way out of this beast? And like
it works, and a lot of our best and like
brightest outside members who were once inside members, like they
didn't just wait for their sentence to expire. They like
had to file a grievances and like take every opportunity

(02:36:54):
to like be the prison's worst op to the point
that the prison was just like just what the fuck
out already Like enough of this person? Yeah, so yeah,
that's most of what I got.

Speaker 1 (02:37:04):
How can people support y'all and get involved more?

Speaker 8 (02:37:07):
So? Definitely Cook should visit us at Incarcerated Workers dot
org and we will provide those links and definitely sign
up for our newswatter where we give some updates on
what's happening inside in a safe way to protect our
members inside and their organizing work, but also hear about
you know, work happening across the country and across the

(02:37:29):
world as well.

Speaker 4 (02:37:30):
I would also, I guess, just add that we really
want labor unionists and healthcare workers and lawyers and law
students and researchers to plug into our website because there
are spaces and reporters and journalists, I should say as well,
to plug into our website because there are spaces for
just them. That doesn't mean that we don't want other

(02:37:51):
people signing up too, but those professions, I think, in particular,
you know and educators also have a lot of impact
and like a lot of relationships direct and indirect to
the system that we want to kind of zero in
on and do something with. And the website elaborates on that.
If you're addicted to Instagram, you can follow us there

(02:38:14):
at Incarcerated Workers and also at thea Underscore Iwalk or California.
But if you're not, then good for you. And instead
you should sign up to our email newsletter.

Speaker 8 (02:38:25):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (02:38:26):
I will leave it at that.

Speaker 14 (02:38:27):
In sure, let's burn it down amazing.

Speaker 1 (02:38:32):
Now, before we go, I want to mention something extremely
important that we'll be covering in more detail in a
later episode, which is the planned twenty twenty seven National
Prisoners Human Rights Strike plan to run from May Day
to juneteenth and twenty twenty seven. We're going to talk
more about this in a later episode and get more

(02:38:53):
of the history of the twenty sixteen to twenty eighteen
prisoner strikes that I walk in Joe House Lawyers Speak,
who we're going to be reading a statement from in
a second we're involved in. But for now, I'm going
to close this episode by quoting the statement released by
Jailhouse Lawyers Speak, why we strike. A political storm is

(02:39:14):
sweeping through many prisons across the nation, as the prison
class plainly see the hidden mechanisms of a system designed
to dehumanize the imprisoned population. For too long, many of
us were kept in the dark about the machinery behind
our confinement. How law enforcement, district attorneys, politicians, and judges

(02:39:34):
win elections on platforms of mass imprisonment, and how private
interests in rural economies profit off our bedcounts. Our captive
bodies are weaponized through prison based gerrymandering, where our numbers
are used to swell the political power and draw federal
funding into rural districts, all while stripping us of any
voter representation. Through these exceptional clauses, the prison class is

(02:39:58):
relegated to conditional citizens ship, a status where constitutional rights
are granted at the pleasure of the state. When officials
can openly discuss transferring imprisoned citizens to foreign prisons without
constitutional barrier, it is because these exception clauses have already
stripped the prison class of the full protections of citizenship.

(02:40:18):
Behind the razors, this legal disenfranchisement is paired with the
reality of living in unventilated, boiling cells during climate extremes,
enduring endless so called staffing shortage lockdowns ordered by prison crats,
washing militarized roundups and ice attention centers, and seeing poor

(02:40:38):
people funneled into plea deals simply because they cannot afford
cash bail or paid legal defense. The traffic extends beyond
the walls, thousands on thousands of people in prison who
meet the basic parole requirements are repeatedly denied parole by
arbitrary boards citing quote the nature of the original crime
end quote, a static reason that never changes, solely to

(02:41:01):
maintain prison bed quotas even upon release. The karstural state
traps formerly imprisoned people under supervision, debt, electronic surveillance inco monitors,
and restricted probation and parole systems that serve as a
revolving door back to a cell the core demands. While
the full ten national demands remain active, strike organizers across

(02:41:22):
committed states are focusing on three core demands. One and
legalized slavery. Repeal the exception clause at the thirteenth Amendment
to the US Constitution. This is the cause that last
slavery is punished with in prisons. Two Restore voting rights.
Repeal exception clauses such as Section two of the fourteenth

(02:41:43):
Amendment that strip voting rights from confined citizens, pre trial detainees,
and former felons. Three free all the political prisoners in
the US prisons. Thank you all both for doing this
work and for fighting this fight, and for being on
the show. And I hope we all go out into
the world and fight for workers everywhere, wherever they may be, and.

Speaker 11 (02:42:21):
This is it could happen here. Executive Disorder, our weekly
newscast covering what's happening in the White House, the crumbling world,
and what this means for you. I'm Garrison Davis today.
I'm joined by Mia Wong, James Stout, and Robert Evans.
Who do we do this episode? We're covering the week
of August twelfth through August.

Speaker 7 (02:42:38):
Nineteenth, So I guess I'll start with I've seen reports
that ICE is using parked vehicles, I guess as staging
points for cameras. And I have seen videos of what
appeared to be licensed plate flippers on ICE vehicles. If
you're not familiar, right, Like, there's been lots and lots
of reports of ICE agents like manually changing license plates.
This just appears to be a device gos rotates one

(02:43:01):
hundred and eighty degrees, so you've got two license plates available.
A lot of the pictures we saw a man being
I'm not sure if he was arrested or just like
harassed for saying like, why don't you have a license
plate on your vehicle? Why don't you have a license
plate on your vehicle? And it very much appears if
that vehicle had a license plate flipper on the front. Secondly,
CBP is pausing all construction in Big Bend. This is

(02:43:23):
according to Rodney Scott, who's the CBP commissioner, who says
he is personally on his way there to conduct a
quite personal evaluation. It's entirely unclear, like what that means
and what are the criteria for this evaluation? Right, Like,
there are dozens of laws, treaties and regulations that cover
the kind of thing that they are doing in the

(02:43:44):
place that they are doing it, and they have waived
all of them. So this is what we get now, right,
we get Rodney Scott going on a plane and just
like giving it the like the imperial thumbs up or
thumbs down like some kind of Roman emperor. I guess,
like this is a thing that wouldn't fly in like
a hereditary monarchy like the UK. Right where we now
have one person making this choice that everyone will have

(02:44:05):
to live with forever. They are destroying a place which
is beautiful and one of the places that has not
been ruined by capitalism and the state one of the
few large areas of public land in Texas. So I
will keep you updated on what Rodney Scott decides to do.
I will probably do an episode on my other show
Natural Courses about Big Bend soon. And then finally, I

(02:44:26):
guess as we're talking about borderwall stuff from me, people
are conducting a tree sit in a cottonwood tree in Arizona.
The cottonwood tree. It's a very old cottonwood tree, sometimes
called Grandmother tree. These people are trying to protect it
from being destroyed due to border wall construction. They've been
sitting in that tree for several weeks.

Speaker 4 (02:44:45):
Now.

Speaker 7 (02:44:46):
I will eventually go visit them. It's going to go
visit them, but I went to Spokane when those fires struck. Instead,
they have been joined by someone on the Mexican side,
So now there are two tree sitters, making this the
first international tree sit that I am ever aware of.
That rules Yeah, no, it's great. Hell yeah, hell yeah.
Well like trees don't know borders, right.

Speaker 1 (02:45:06):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (02:45:07):
As I highlighted in my other podcast, Natural Cause, is
the US left really fucked up when NAFTA came in
by not saying if you're going to try and pay
people less in Mexico, then we will try and organize
people in Mexico and together we will demand dignified wages
and conditions. I'm glad that people are not taking that
approach anymore because they didn't get us anywhere. Yeah, I'll

(02:45:28):
keep covering the situation there as well.

Speaker 1 (02:45:30):
So, speaking of I guess the long range effects of NAFTA. KOSB,
which is the Korean stock index, hit its circuit breaker,
which is the breaker that hits if you lose too
much percentage of the stock market's value again on Wednesday.
I genuinely have lost count of the number of times
that it has been triggered over the past few months.

(02:45:52):
This has become a regular recurrence in one of the
largest and most important stock markets in the world. This
time it was fueled by a collapse of textile and
the Brent Fruit Index hitting ninety dollars a barrel. We
will be getting into some more of the impacts of
that later.

Speaker 4 (02:46:06):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (02:46:07):
My guess is that it's going to rebound as everyone
buys the dip tomorrow. But any one of these could
be the one where it doesn't rebound, and we will
let you know whether the global economic collapses on Yay.

Speaker 2 (02:46:20):
Yeah, what happens if there's not a rebound? What is
that going to look like ud, everyone's fucked.

Speaker 16 (02:46:27):
No.

Speaker 2 (02:46:27):
I mean, like in terms of what is your expecting
cascade of events.

Speaker 1 (02:46:30):
If that goes down, Oh, the entire global economy goes under.
Because the Korean stock market right now is basically a
kind of tragedy as farcet version of the American market
where most of almost all of the value is congealed
into these three AI yeah, three companies that yeah, basically
make AI chips, right, and then the rest of the
value down the shane is people doing weird gambling stuff

(02:46:51):
on different AI components. If the market just actually crashes,
that is those three companies, and you know we're talking
like Samsung here, right, these are vital components in the
entire AI I mean not just the AI sere obviously
the Samsung, right, like we're talking about you know, things
that are vital components and the big tech companies Yeah, yeah,

(02:47:12):
in like all of the manufacturing of like tech all
over the world. If that stuff goes down, that takes
the American markets with it, That takes all of all
the global markets that are reliant on these AI surges
go with it. And that's kind of just the beginning
of the poppy of the tech bubble.

Speaker 3 (02:47:28):
Yep, yep, yep.

Speaker 2 (02:47:29):
I just wanted to get to that because it's like
it is, it is this mirror of exactly what's gone
on in the United States. I guess the big difference
is that so far, the obvious signs of trouble in
South Korea have not set off alarm bells in at
least in American investors to the extent that you might expect.
But I'm sure.

Speaker 1 (02:47:48):
There's been some Like it tends to be the other
way around, where Cosby tends to kind of be following
the American markets, But there have definitely been days where, like,
because of the time difference in Korea, all of the
American investors wake up to watch like ten percent going down,
like ten percent of the value of the createstock market
disappearing in one night, and in that lowers American stocks,
and then Trump says something about the war ending and

(02:48:10):
it goes back up again. So there has been some
notice of it, but our grand collective delusion to maintain
the functioning of capitalism continues.

Speaker 7 (02:48:19):
Great, good, good good.

Speaker 11 (02:48:22):
On Tuesday, there was a GP debate for the South
Carolina US Senate special runoff election so it's a special
election and a runoff. And in this debate, sister of
the fallen Lindsay Graham, Darlene Graham, could not answer a
pretty rudimentary foreign policy question because it is not her

(02:48:46):
area of expertise. Let's take a lesson, Senator, are Taiwan
and the South China Sea national security issues for the
United States?

Speaker 16 (02:48:55):
If so, what, I'm sorry, could you repeat it? If
our Taiwan and the South China Sea national security issues
for the United States? And if so, why or how?

Speaker 14 (02:49:08):
I'm just gonna be honest here.

Speaker 16 (02:49:10):
I'm not on national security that I'm not that informed
on national security. So, but I do support the military.
My brother was in the Air Force for thirty three years,
so I will do everything I can to support the
military stuff.

Speaker 2 (02:49:30):
You know what, honesty. That's what we need in politicians, is.

Speaker 1 (02:49:33):
Hon I love hereditary seats. This is an amazing feature
of what is supposed to be a representative democracy. It's
so good.

Speaker 2 (02:49:42):
Yeah, yeah, I don't know shit about fuck, but I
love the army.

Speaker 11 (02:49:47):
That's incredible. She later goes on to literally say it's
on her quote unquote area of expertise. It just talks
about how regardless, she will always support the US military.
It's this is townding Lindsay Graham rolling over in his grave.
So that is Darley and Graham, sister of Lindsay Graham,
who is facing Republican Ralph Norman in this runoff election,

(02:50:12):
the winner of which will then face the Democrat doctor
Annie Andrews for this general election in November to replace
Lindsay's seat.

Speaker 1 (02:50:23):
Pretty cool, God, I hope she wins the primary. I
want to see more.

Speaker 7 (02:50:29):
Yeah, yeah, this will be highly amusing if nothing else.

Speaker 11 (02:50:33):
Oh man, I want to briefly mention some new information
regarding the federal investigations into anti ice protests in the
Twin Cities, based on some newly released court documents. This
was first reported in the New York Times, and I
have read through the like thirty page motion filed by
the defense that unveiled these documents and a number of

(02:50:56):
the thirty some exhibits. And I'll report on this in full,
probably next week with its own episode. But I do
want to discuss with the group here a little bit.
So four days after CPB killed Alex pretty DHS open
investigation into labor unions and left wing activist groups. That
they thought were involved in funding the anti ICE protests

(02:51:19):
and quote providing material support to violent opportunists unquote. This
HSI investigation amounted to a massive spying operation called Operation
puppet Master and later Operation Whipple Shield. Whipple is the
name of the federal building that was at the heart

(02:51:42):
of a lot of the protests in the Twin Cities.
And these operations ended up probing three years of financial
records from organizations like Sunrise Movement, the Communication Workers of America,
and the Healthcare Union s CiU as a part of
a quote unquote financial investigation into quote unquote domestic terrorist financing.

(02:52:07):
I think it's really important to point out here is
that this three year time span of of of documents
extends far beyond the time span of Operation Metro Surge
and the protests. Right this this this, this is not
a probe into into financing specific protest groups responding to ICE.
This is just a general drag net into labor unions,

(02:52:29):
into left wing nonprofits, environmental groups, a racial justice activist
group in the area like this is this is a
huge probe. They're looking into VENMO transactions, They're requesting bank
records like this. This is a massive probe of like the
the interior of like some very major national unions.

Speaker 1 (02:52:49):
Yeah, it's interesting when you look at who they're looking into, right,
because it's it's a really really wide swath like across
the political spectrum of the left, like s c IU.
Like obviously there are like locals of SCIU that like
do good work, but like nationally, s CiU is not
like a radical organization, right, Like, yeah, of the major unions,

(02:53:10):
this is like an extremely extremely milk toast union, right.

Speaker 7 (02:53:15):
Yeah. I guess contacts with CiU particularly would be that
they arrested David Huerta in Los Angeles in Junia of
last year, right, it's union leaders.

Speaker 4 (02:53:23):
Yeah.

Speaker 11 (02:53:24):
Yeah, and I know because Alex Pretty was a healthcare worker.
SIU is a healthcare union. Like I went to like
a solidarity protest put together by a bunch of different
unions in New York City following the death of Alex Pretty. Yeah,
it's interesting that the federal government picked up on that
sort of union solidarity and then started investigating it.

Speaker 8 (02:53:46):
Yeah.

Speaker 11 (02:53:46):
I think that is that is really telling.

Speaker 8 (02:53:48):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:53:49):
Part of what I'm getting at here is like they're
just going after everyone who's even like tangentially involved in
these protests, right.

Speaker 7 (02:53:55):
Yeah, The way the state sees this is they're incapable
of organizing like spontaneous and like horizontal solidarity. Are seeing that, right,
they understand Yeah. SEIU folks showed up in New York
where Garrison is, and I think they're not called the AFT.
In Minneapolis, maybe they called the Federation of Educators or
something like that. MFE looks like, yeah, like another union

(02:54:17):
right for educators evidently, and fifty to fifty one and
some more explicitly socialists and leftist groups showed up against us,
showed up in solidarity off d alex Pretti was killed.
And the way the States sees this is therefore they
are nationally and vertically integrated and someone is pulling the
strings and paying the funds, not like they are fucking mad.

Speaker 1 (02:54:36):
Yeah, it's like it's like the way that they see
it is like, yeah, like SCIU National has like handed
down like the riot orders just.

Speaker 7 (02:54:42):
Like no no CiU like, but she's right, Like that
is how they understand it.

Speaker 1 (02:54:47):
If like time traveling militants for the nineteen seventies kidnapped
SEIUS leadership and held them at gunpoint and said we
will let you go if you order mass riots, they
still wouldn't do it. Like, that's not that's not what
this is. But yeah, the Feds have a hammer, and
they're trying to hammer down every single thing that even
vaguely looks like a nail, so they can do sort
of the broadest and widest ranging oppression that they can

(02:55:09):
deal with.

Speaker 11 (02:55:09):
Yeah, and we have like an example of how HSI
is envisioning this sort of conspiracy like what we're talking about,
because as a part of the new exhibits that were
released to the public, we have this slide that was
sent to grandeurors for the indictment which we'll soon talk about,
that targeting fifteen protesters. The grand jury was shown this

(02:55:33):
slide that is labeled the conspiracy that has about fifteen
different organizations with all with arrows pointing towards Direct Action
Minnesota DAM, which is the protest group that the government
alleges the fifteen people indicted were involved with in some way.

(02:55:55):
I want to read through some of these organizations that
are part of this conspiracy diagram. There's the Monarca Rapid
Response Line, There's Ray Rainbolt Memorial Gun Club, Red Pine
Revolutionary Collective, SCIU twenty six showing it for racial justice,
Socialist Alternative, Veterans for Peace, Whipple Watch, Workers Solidarity Circle,

(02:56:17):
afl CIO, Black Cat Workers Collective, the Democratic Socialist of America,
the Grease Pit, which is a local bike shop. Hell Yeah,
Minute Left CHAB, Minneapolis Federation of Educators Local fifty nine,
Minnesota Association of Professional Employees, Minnesota Ice Watch, and Minnesota

(02:56:38):
five oh five oh one. Pretty incredible, pretty incredible collection.
They're all supposed to.

Speaker 1 (02:56:47):
Be like sending like a council member.

Speaker 5 (02:56:50):
Yeah, the diagram has is that there's a council member
these organizations, council that like is part of Direct Action Minnesota.

Speaker 11 (02:56:59):
It's like orchestrating all these protests. It's incredible.

Speaker 7 (02:57:05):
I love to see like kreminology overcoming like a DIY
bike shop that has been for a few hours, a
few afternoons a week, like it's the Pollit Bureau of
Minnesota is populated by like bike co ops.

Speaker 1 (02:57:19):
It's just a shadow council, James Shadow.

Speaker 12 (02:57:22):
They're running everyway.

Speaker 7 (02:57:24):
It's incredible.

Speaker 11 (02:57:25):
This is what happens when Socialist Alternative and DSA can
overcome their differences and support council comunism to tend November
to Direct Action Minnesota High Council, Black and Red United.
Yet it's incredible stuff. Now, of course, none of these
organizations themselves have actually phased charges stemming from this investigation.

(02:57:49):
But this investigation did result in fifteen people being indicted
on quote, conspiracy to impede or injure a federal officer
for allegedly planning to block a roadway, among a few
other charges against specific individuals for participating in ice rapid response. So,
although dsay the Grease Pit and like SCIU are not

(02:58:12):
themselves as organizations you know charged this this sort of huge,
like a very broad investigation into nonprofit organizations, into electoral organizations,
into labor unions. This did result in charges against specific people,
many of whom are not part of these you know,
fifteen fifteen council member organizations. The defense lawyer Kevin Riach

(02:58:39):
wrote in emotion, quote Homeland Security Investigations investigation extended far
beyond any potential threat to law enforcement safety. It concluded,
with no evidence but obvious political animus, that numerous Twin Cities, unions,
and nonprofit organizations were involved in a widespread conspiracy to
violate eighteen USC. One one one assaulting, resisting, or impeding

(02:59:02):
certain officers or employees. And it surveilled and surptitiously gathered
financial records generated by these organizations, despite the lack of
any connection between those organizations and criminal conduct.

Speaker 1 (02:59:16):
Yeah, it's co intel, a pro shit. Just it never ended.
They're just doing it again. I've always been doing it.

Speaker 11 (02:59:23):
Yes, And part of what these new docs reveal is
is much more details on like the covert surveillance of
organizer meetings at libraries and churches, and the way in
the extent that Homeland Security infiltrated signal chats and how
undercovers tried to entice people into discussing or committing crimes.

(02:59:44):
And I want to discuss that in more detail in
its own episode because I think that requires a very
careful focus on how how that actually went about, because
I think that can very easily be turned into you know,
panicking or maybe overstating certain things regarding you know, where
ICE the ones actually you know, directing all the protests

(03:00:05):
against Ice, and like no, obviously not so. I think
that that requires a distinct focus. Specifically in these core documents,
there's there's a there's a reference to an undercover discussing
with someone at like a Sunrise Movement meeting about getting
more involved in direct actions and and maybe building quote
unquote devices for direct actions. So like it's it's that

(03:00:28):
kind of stuff, and I want to discuss that more
in detail. But this new batchel of core documents in
this case has revealed a lot about about how this
investigation went. How it started off very very broad against
a lot of organizations and like what you know, national
Security Presidential Memory dem number seven wrote about, you know,
looking to the finances of a lot of different nonprofit groups,

(03:00:48):
but then from there realizing that maybe they are not
going to be able to prosecute all these unions for
terrorist financing. Instead they find fifteen people who are engaged
in firstmen in activity that they think they could maybe
you know, turn into an Antifa boogeyman and get that
pastor grand jury, because you certainly couldnot get the rest

(03:01:09):
of this shit past a grand jury. Yeah.

Speaker 7 (03:01:11):
Talking of like pushing the boundaries of the Constitution with
regards to policing as a good tie into this next
piece that I have, which is to talk about the
national defense areas. So the DOJ has issued a new
opinion this week suggesting the military forces in the National
Defense Areas that span that much of the border can
now detain people not just inside the NDA but also

(03:01:33):
near the NDA who leave it before they have time
to arrest them. If you're not familiar with the NDA,
these areas along the border wall that have been transferred
to the military and are being managed as extensions of
military basis. For example, NDA number three, the California NDA
begins I think at the western edge of Oti mount
of Wilderness, stretches all the way to the Arizona border

(03:01:55):
in Imperial County. That is an extension of nafeal Center,
so that's Naval Air Facility EL Center, so that's patrolled
by marines. The New Mexico one is an extension of
Fort Huachuca and that's patrolled by the Army. There is
one in Texas which is an extension of Fort Bliss
for Bliss Spanzer's two states, but that goes that NDA

(03:02:19):
goes into Texas. More the bases themselves are being extended. Therefore,
the logic goes from the Justice Department that they are
not violating the Posscomatatis Act because there are recognized exemptions
they say for military installations so they're saying because the

(03:02:40):
base is being extended to generally but not always, it
is the Roosevelt Reservation, right, which is a sixty foot
area to the north of the physical border, but some
of these NDA's span areas larger than that. They are
claiming that that area is therefore exempt from PCA if

(03:03:00):
the military is prosecuting or in this case, arresting or
detaining people for trespassing on a military installation, right, they
think that the military can also enforce federal law on
its installations. So by definition, anyone ewie entry without inspection, right,
So thatt, someone entering between ports of entry, anybody doing

(03:03:23):
that in an NDA, which is a large amount of
southern border right now, would be trespassing on a military installation.

Speaker 3 (03:03:29):
Right.

Speaker 7 (03:03:30):
You can also see in this opinion they they're like
hinting it adding more NDAs soon. This is the same
legal reasoning that they are using. Claim it is illegal
to photograph things inside an NDA. I think this one
is incredibly suspect. Right, So the statutory law does ban
photography of quote, certain vital military or naval installations or equipment.

(03:03:53):
But I think you'd have a very hard time arguing
in call that like a pile of razor wire and
some rocks, is vital military equips. But that's what they're
going with, right. This is important because what we are
seeing here is a Trump administration pushing at the boundaries
of constitutionally what it can do. And as I've said
hundreds of times on this show of the last four years,

(03:04:14):
this always starts at the border, and it never stays
at the border.

Speaker 3 (03:04:18):
Right.

Speaker 7 (03:04:19):
Everything we see with mass surveillance now has been a
reality in border communities for some time. Everything we see
with the increased presence of ice of CBP, this has
been something that border communities have dealt with, right, This
particularly violent form of law enforcement that is particularly unaccountable.
If we see this at the border, and they get

(03:04:40):
away with it at the border, then I'm sure it
will continue in other places. It doesn't take like a
brain genius to look at, for instance, what happened in
Portland six years ago, right, and see how we could
edge towards the PCA Poscombat Artist Act waivers in other
parts of the United States as well. So I think
this is worth keeping an ion, and like I would

(03:05:01):
like it to get more attention in reporting.

Speaker 11 (03:05:04):
Let's go on add break, and then we'll discuss in
honor of Lindsay Graham, the US military.

Speaker 7 (03:05:09):
Who we support, but we don't know where they go.

Speaker 11 (03:05:24):
All right, there's a lot of military news this week.
That ship does not look like it's doing too well.
Let's let's start with the sad boat.

Speaker 2 (03:05:32):
That was sad boat? Anyone here old enough to have
watched the Love Boat on Nick at Night?

Speaker 4 (03:05:37):
No?

Speaker 2 (03:05:38):
No, no, okay, all right.

Speaker 7 (03:05:39):
Well he didn't have that where I grew out, Robert.

Speaker 2 (03:05:41):
Okay, that's hurtful. This is all very hurtful. Anyway, The
sad boat is the USS Abraham Lincoln.

Speaker 11 (03:05:48):
How sad is this?

Speaker 7 (03:05:50):
Yeah? Yeah, where is it?

Speaker 2 (03:05:52):
Ape said, well, well, yeah, miya, you want to you
want to start?

Speaker 1 (03:05:56):
Yeah, so so the US Abraham Lincoln. It's it's actually
funny because we have now reached a point where when
you say the sad boat, I actually couldn't tell which
of the boats you were referring to, because.

Speaker 2 (03:06:06):
It was the Jerry Ford before it was the Abraham Lincoln,
and the gerald Ford had longer to be sad.

Speaker 1 (03:06:12):
Well, there was also a destroyer this playing this all
trying to see where the power.

Speaker 12 (03:06:16):
Was out for three days?

Speaker 1 (03:06:17):
Oh yeah, they didn't have running water.

Speaker 7 (03:06:22):
Which one was it where they were blocking up all
the toilets, but like jamming, there was toilet paper.

Speaker 2 (03:06:26):
That's the Jerry Ford and I think the Lincoln, all
of our newest supercarriers have serious issues with the bathroom plumbt.

Speaker 7 (03:06:33):
Yeah, so the primary means of First Amendment expression that
is available to say, well.

Speaker 2 (03:06:38):
They practice the two man poop over the side technique,
which is an actual thing they have to do whenever
the bathrooms don't work.

Speaker 1 (03:06:45):
Which it's so funny reading about these ships and being
like this, this is shit from like my like slumlord
fucking apartments in Chicago.

Speaker 2 (03:06:56):
Except for the Dods your slum lord.

Speaker 1 (03:06:59):
Yeah, happening award like the most like the most advanced
and expensive military and human history. Oh god, where do
we even want to start with with the USS Abraham Lincoln.
I I guess, I guess, I guess we could start
with the fact that they have been hanging nets over
the side of of the aircraft carrier because sailors keep

(03:07:21):
trying to jump off to kill themselves, a thing that
I last saw with like Fox Confactories and Shenzen.

Speaker 11 (03:07:29):
Yeah, that's the last time I heard that.

Speaker 7 (03:07:31):
As well, yeah, but at least in Shenzend, to my knowledge,
nobody is shitting into the nets, which appears to be
from what Roba has said.

Speaker 2 (03:07:39):
You know, the shitting would be incidental.

Speaker 1 (03:07:41):
We have covered on this show before. I think it
was was it ten, I think was the one where
they're they're there their Chinese branch had like timers over
the toilets to show how long you say that would
not would not rule that out in Shenzend as well.

Speaker 11 (03:07:59):
Yeah, but this ship has not been getting resupplied.

Speaker 1 (03:08:03):
It has been out for significantly longer than the the
original plant duration. The sailors are just kind of trapped
on board. Sailors who have you know, attempted to commit
suicide because they've been stuck on this fucking ship are
getting like like their careers destroyed because of this. Oh wow,
it's just a nightmare. And this this is running into

(03:08:26):
one of the what I guess is turning into one
of the themes of this week's episode, which is that
there are a whole bunch of elements of the US
Navy and also of the world economy where them functioning
correctly are based on the US not fighting of forever
war in Iran and are based on the assumption that
eventually this is going to end. Yeah, and it's just not.
And so this ship is just also just physically breaking down.

Speaker 2 (03:08:49):
Well yeah, they're running low on all of the necessities.
And part of that is because of the success of
Arod's attacks on bases like US bases overseas and US
basis in like foreign countries.

Speaker 7 (03:09:02):
There was an.

Speaker 2 (03:09:03):
Article that came out just within the last couple of
days on August fourteenth in The New York Times by
John i Ismay that traced a lot of the supply
issues that the Abraham Lincoln's been having for its entire
deployment to like right after the first day of the war,
when Iran launched a massive attack on a US Navy
base in Bahrain, which destroyed a massive logistics hub that

(03:09:24):
the Navy has relied on basically the entirety of the
Global War on tear up to the present moment, and
that's what's forced them to switch over to using Diego
Garcia as a supply hub. If you remember, Keir Starmer
over in the UK initially was like, no, you guys
can't use Diego Garcia as like the supply hub for
your legal war, and then immediately changed his mind when
he got threatened a little bit, bravest, who are in

(03:09:48):
good stuff?

Speaker 3 (03:09:49):
Good stuff?

Speaker 11 (03:09:50):
Yeah?

Speaker 7 (03:09:50):
I think, like, I mean, it's so obvious right that Iran,
a country which like the US, has been saber rattling
out for decades, would very obviously have a plan of
what to do in the event that the United States
struck it and they executed that plan. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (03:10:06):
Trump, for his part, has repeatedly stated that the length
of the deployment of the Lincoln and the forward before
it are not big deals. When he was asked earlier
this week if carry deployments were too long, he responded, no, no, no,
not nearly long enough.

Speaker 7 (03:10:21):
See, he's really going to get into it with Lindy
Graham's sister over this one.

Speaker 1 (03:10:25):
No, He's It's also he's just been very personally meddling
with and fucking with a bunch of Navy stuff that
there's a whole kind of there's a whole kind of
side drama to this story where Trump has ordered the
Navy to go back to using steam catapults to like
launch aircraft off of the deck of the ship, which
is like a significantly worse thing than the electromagnetic systems

(03:10:45):
that the Navy has been using. But Trump like heard
that that some pilot liked them a long time ago,
and so he's been trying to force the entire Navy
to do this since the first administration, and he's finally succeeded,
which means you're going to have to like refit like
forty percent of the ship and they're probably gonna have
just design new ships because the ships are not designed
around having these things, and they're just going to be

(03:11:05):
worse because the Emperor has decided that he likes steam catapults.

Speaker 2 (03:11:11):
Oh yeah, no, no, no, there's a there's a piece
in the Guardia. Just about a week ago, Trump orders
Pentagon to redesigned US aircraft carriers to use steam catapult
solage tests.

Speaker 11 (03:11:21):
Yep, yep, yep.

Speaker 2 (03:11:22):
Yeah, because he thought the digital systems were too complicated.
I had missed this and the long list of like
bullshit which in the same military stuff.

Speaker 8 (03:11:30):
Reason.

Speaker 3 (03:11:30):
Yeah.

Speaker 8 (03:11:31):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (03:11:31):
He signed a National Security memorandum directing Pete Hegseth and
the acting Navy Secretary to make this change. That's great,
that's good.

Speaker 1 (03:11:38):
It's this astonishing combination of like she's she's made the
cardinal mistake that all of these people make, which is
that American military and economic supremacy is premised on having
the world's most expensive army and not using it. Yeah,
and now he's used it. And then also he's doing
all of this weird emperor fucking with stuff at the

(03:12:00):
same time.

Speaker 2 (03:12:02):
There's amazing quotes from this Apparently it started back in
twenty seventeen what he told Time magazine about a conversation
that he'd had with an unnamed Navy officer.

Speaker 3 (03:12:11):
Quote.

Speaker 2 (03:12:11):
So, I said, what's this, sir, This is our digital
catapult system. Trump went on. It sounded bad to me. Digital.
They have digital? What is digital? And it's very complicated.
You have to be auured Einstein to figure it out.
And I said, and now they want to buy more
aircraft carriers. I said, what system are you going to be, sir?
We're staying with digital. I said, no, you're not. You're
going to goddamn steam. The digital costs hundreds of millions

(03:12:31):
of dollars more money, and it's no good.

Speaker 7 (03:12:35):
He's also trying to get them to move the fucking
control tower of the aircraft carries into the middle of
the ship. According to the Washington Post.

Speaker 2 (03:12:45):
This is beautiful stuff. I hope he gets his way.
I hope he gets his way to'll protect the rest of.

Speaker 4 (03:12:49):
The world from us?

Speaker 7 (03:12:51):
Yeah, the rest of the world would do better v
all these ships when not deployed. Right now. This is yeah, outstanding,
great stuff, a great, amazing shit.

Speaker 11 (03:13:00):
God, very normal.

Speaker 7 (03:13:01):
This is this is how successful military is organized.

Speaker 4 (03:13:04):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (03:13:05):
I should point out that, like the latest statistics on
people wounded in action now suggested they're about seven hundred
US service people who've been wounded in a six month operation.

Speaker 11 (03:13:15):
Allegedly, the Washington is coming in to replace the Lincoln.
Unclear what will happen to the destroyers and also unclear
when this is actually going to happen.

Speaker 7 (03:13:26):
The destroyers have to come back so they can put
a mast on them, yeah, because that looks more epic,
and a big fucking cannon, like a black powder cannon
on the front.

Speaker 15 (03:13:34):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (03:13:34):
The last I heard from Trump, he said that a
replacement for the Lincoln is quote moving right now or
very shortly, and it's being replaced with another very similar ship.
So that's what we've got so far. It is worth noting,
just in terms of a general update on the situation,
in Iran, that the ceasefire that no one has really
been holding to has come to an end or is

(03:13:58):
in the process of coming to an end, and does
not look like it's going to be renewed.

Speaker 7 (03:14:02):
For all of the good that.

Speaker 2 (03:14:04):
That did everybody over the last sixty days or so, Yeah,
the Trump administration has gone back and forth. Up until
earlier this week, he had been claiming that he was
in that the US was in active talks with Iran,
but he said earlier this Tuesday that the US is
not in any talks with Iran and has no plans
to start new ones. This is around the same time
that he started saying that the Strait of Horror Moves

(03:14:25):
is open and that the US is going to take
it and make it a new US territory. This has
just been something he released as a series of truth
posts or truths, including one showing a map that circled
the Strait of Horror Moves with the words new US
territory Straight of horm Moves above and below it. So, again,

(03:14:47):
hard to say what's gonna happen here other than that
oil prices are continuing to rise. The same day that
he announced that there was no we're no talks going on,
and that the ceasefire was not going to be extended.
Four is fired on a Panama flagged ship, and around
the same time Iran struck a ship as well, killing
at least one sailor. Since the war began, seventeen sailors

(03:15:10):
have been killed in sixty five attacks. Most of those
have been the result of Ranian strikes, but three of
those deaths have been caused by a US Navy ship
that struck a merchant ship in June. So sailors are
getting killed all around the USS. Abraham Lincoln's probably getting
rotated out. The CeaseFire's over, and I guess we're trying
to take this straight although it's I mean, there's no

(03:15:31):
way to know what any of this actually means or
what Trump's going to do. He could announce that they've
got a new ceasefire tomorrow, like it would be silly
to take any of this as a final word on anything.

Speaker 7 (03:15:43):
Yeah, let me pick up on that where Robot left
off fairly, it does appay of it. In response to
Trump continuing to just post insane stuff, Iran has been
having talks with Aman, probably talking about like joint tolling
the Strait, right, which is something we spoken about a
lot in this podcast. Trump get interview with Trey Yinks.
If you're not familiar with tree Yinks, his job is
to kind of be a credulous, nodding head to broadcast

(03:16:05):
ship that Donald Trump says his chief foreign correspondent Fox Now.

Speaker 20 (03:16:09):
I asked the President about these parallel talks that are
taking place between Iran and Oman about control of the
Strait of horror moves, and the President told Fox News,
if Oman gets in the way, will bomb the s
out of them.

Speaker 7 (03:16:23):
That is Donald Trump threatening to bomb the shit out
of a man. A fantastic u turn in the United
States policy. This is a wild thing for him to
be saying. Right, this is a country that obviously the
US has had previously good relations with.

Speaker 1 (03:16:38):
Yeah, this is this is like a CIA outpost, like.

Speaker 7 (03:16:40):
Brand new country to do to do Middle East war with. Yeah,
exactly right. We've we're running out of countries. We're having
to turn on our own. Trump has also claimed in
the same interview as tree Yinks, he has a back
channel to the IRGC.

Speaker 20 (03:16:53):
Interestingly, President Trump confirmed to Fox News that there is
a back channel with the IRGC. These are the hard
line officials inside of Iran, and that the United States
and officials in Washington are speaking directly with IRGC officials
in Iran.

Speaker 7 (03:17:09):
So yeah, there he's talking about the United States negotiate
directly with IIGC. I would assume that they have had
back channels in the IIGC, right like that, That is
something one would assume. Yeah, this is very normal when
you have two states of this size which are frequently
kind of squaring off against each other, and generally it
is something that can be used to de escalate conflict.
Obviously that ain't happening right now. It was later reported

(03:17:33):
that these and you don't have to be a brain
genius to work out that he's probably came through the
Kurdistan Region of Iraq, right, southern Kurdistan. In related news,
Iran then attempted a drone strike on Barzani. What, yes, President,
that the Kurdistan reaching in of Iraq. Yeah, they sent
two drones to Barzani's residents, I believe.

Speaker 12 (03:17:52):
What the fuck?

Speaker 11 (03:17:53):
Yeah, sorry I missed this. Why was this not for
a pigeon?

Speaker 12 (03:17:56):
What the hell?

Speaker 7 (03:17:57):
Yes, they sent two drones to the office of the
Kurdstan Region Prime Minister of sul Basani and the residents
of the head of the Kurdistan Region Security Agency. The
drones obviously did not cause any casualty. They think they
were intercepted. This was reported by Axios right that this
link between Southern Kordistan and the ILGC back channel was

(03:18:19):
reported by Axios on the sixteenth, and then on the seventeenth,
Iran attempted to drone strike Masoul Bazani, the Prime Minister
of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. Yeah, they attempted to
drones strike his office and the residents of the Kurdstan
Regions Security Agency, both in the Abil Province of Kurdistan.
And like this again is like I've reported extensively. I

(03:18:41):
think that Iran is bombing southern Kordistan and has been
for some time. But this is a hell of an escalation.

Speaker 1 (03:18:47):
Yeah, try to was sad, like, but Brazoni is like
the political figure in this part of Kurdistan. Like yeah,
and like the Brazoni family has been has been a
political faction powerful enough that like a lot of politics
revolves around whether you're not you're like in their client
networks for a long long time. This is this is
kind of like trying to like, I mean again, he
literally is like the prime minister of rocket cursion like this,

(03:19:08):
this is like attempting to assassinate the Prime minister. Yeah, yeah,
staggering escalation.

Speaker 7 (03:19:13):
Like Bazani zeated I tweeted next that it was dangerous escalation,
a direct threat to the security instability of the curds
down region. He's not wrong.

Speaker 14 (03:19:23):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (03:19:23):
When you combine this with the US having a scheduled
withdrawal from Iraq, right, like this is bad, and like
it is very clear that Iraq is continuing and even
escalating its policy of punishing the curds for the United
States aggression. Right, there's this perception that the curds in
US are like always aligned. As Roberts said, Iran has
continued to strike vessals and straightform moves. What's interesting about

(03:19:46):
this recent strike and the number of strikes that came
in the days before it is that normally there has
been a pattern by which the bombing relaxes. Iran strikes
a vessel, the US Iran things peter out lower intensity,
Iran strikes a vessel, the US hits Iran, right, Like, yeah, yeah,

(03:20:08):
the US has not hit Iran yet. In response to
these most recent ones. And I think part of the
reason that might be is something we've talked about before
that the United States is not capable now of doing
what it did in February, Like it has significantly diminished
it's stockpiles.

Speaker 2 (03:20:29):
Yeah, by an estimate around seventy percent plus depending on
the munition. In terms of like our long range like
cruise missiles and our interceptors.

Speaker 7 (03:20:37):
Yeah, it's so like just to de jug in that
for people, that's like attack and defense. Right, it's your
ability to hit Iran and also your ability to stop Iranian.

Speaker 2 (03:20:46):
It's all the stuff that lets us hit Iran without
endangering the lives of US airmen, And it's what allows
us to defend our bases and all of the Allied
bases and increasingly fuel infrastructure in the region.

Speaker 16 (03:21:01):
Right.

Speaker 2 (03:21:01):
And it's low enough that in part why they don't
want to continue burning more, even though they have like
a third or more left, is that they have to
keep a stockpile in case shit goes down with China
or you know, expands with Russia. Right, Like these are
our primary weapons with Iran, they're completely unnecessary.

Speaker 11 (03:21:20):
Or a mon yeah, or are new Earth amont. Yeah,
if we were.

Speaker 2 (03:21:24):
To theoretically get into any kind of anything approaching a
near peer conflict on a good spot. It would be
our only weapons other than nukes.

Speaker 7 (03:21:33):
Yeah. So I know we're going to come back to
the US defense procurement situation. But I do want to
just point out that the President. I don't know if
this is related to the fact that gas prices are
still bonkers six month into this, but he has posted
an a image of a trima version of himself ripping
the Keystone pipeline out of the ground, with a banner

(03:21:53):
reading buried by Biden in the background. Not clear if
he understands how pipelines work. What, Yeah, you guess is
as good as mine on that one. Like it's uh,
it's it's I mean, yeah, let me just draw up
the link. I guess sometimes I'll just scroll this true
social page. It's it's it's it's wild up in there.

Speaker 1 (03:22:14):
But that is not a task for the faint of heart.

Speaker 7 (03:22:16):
No, Like, this is one of the things I do
for work. You know that traumatizes me. I've put it
in the chat, the zoom chat.

Speaker 11 (03:22:22):
We don't want our oil in the ground in those pipes.
We want it straight from the straight of horror moves
in barrels. Well, yeah, right, like what is he thinking?

Speaker 5 (03:22:31):
What does you.

Speaker 7 (03:22:32):
Think The Keystone pipeline, I should have not, also has
a plaque affixed to it that says Keystone pipeline completely
free energy jobs America first, No, and they're they're buried
by Bibi is on a gravestone. The pipeline also has
some handles. Trump's kind of in sort of a stable
wide stance. They're pulling it out the ground like it's

(03:22:54):
got roots on it. I don't know what the fuck
is going on here. But there are also some soldiers
in the background, like Undernea with an American flag.

Speaker 1 (03:23:01):
So yeah, this is the guy who just decided we
were at warworth a run and that was killed a
shit ton of people over it.

Speaker 7 (03:23:07):
Yeah, I guess now their response to the war where
they run and gas prices being up is more pipelines
at home, which is sick. Like I should add, I
guess there is a continuing ecological disaster in the straight
upforme moves because people keep shooting boats which are full
of fuel. Yeah, and Iran it's having to clean up
these oil spills.

Speaker 2 (03:23:25):
Well, there's also a further ecological disaster and that you
have an enormous fleet of vessels that are just sitting
around waiting and accumulating a huge number of different kind
of like mollusks that you don't want to spread around
the world that are definitely and it's also getting stuff
is getting sucked into like their water tanks and they're
what do you call it, their ballast tanks and shit

(03:23:46):
that's going to get shut squirted out somewhere else. Like
there's a lot of potential problems.

Speaker 7 (03:23:50):
Yeah, there are some procedures for like dumping ballast and stuff,
but yeah, this is all the problem is right, everything
is delayed. Every shipping company is losing money hand over fist. Yeah,
and they're gonna want to get movie pretty fast when
if the straightforward moves ever opens again. And yeah, we
will see more environmental damages, like every war is an

(03:24:10):
ecological disaster, but this one that isn't getting as much
reporting on. But it's great that we're bringing that home
with the Keystone pipelines, so we'll get a little piece
of that too.

Speaker 2 (03:24:20):
So I wanted to give an update on a story
because I talked about two weeks ago something like that
about the general dynamics artillery shell factory in Mesquite, Texas
that was meant to by now be producing somewhere between
twenty and ideally thirty thousand shells a month, of specifically
the kind that we're being used most rapidly in Ukraine
before Ukraine pivoted to using drones for a lot of stuff.

(03:24:42):
I mean, they're still burning through one fifty five's but
like that was, I mean, they incurred a shell debt
of something like three point six million shells in the
United States as a result of that, and so it's
a massive issue to get these shells being produced because
in any kind of modern war we're going to be
burning through a shitload of them. We have one hundred
something years worth of heavy artillery in warfare to know

(03:25:02):
that you never have enough shells. So this is a
problem the US has been trying to get its handle
on for a while, and as I noted, this factory
that was supposed to be producing like a third of
the total of all the shells in the United States
has not produced any so far. And a few days
after I discussed that on ed Jesse Coburn at Pro
Publica published a beautiful investigation into that general Dynamics factory

(03:25:23):
and Mesquite that opens with just a great lead. A
robot was on fire again, and it's talking about the
fact that all of this factory is filled with Jesus.
Because it was supposed to meant to be heavily automated,
which is why it was supposed to be able to
keep up with such a high level of production. It
was automated using these robots that had like giant metal

(03:25:45):
arms clamps for hands, and because of the way they
were designed, wound up soaked in oil constantly, and that
oil would combust because they were moving steel blocks that
had been heated to about eighteen hundred degrees fahrenheit, but
in too and out of a machine that also would
periodically beuch flame at them, and the robots were not
proofed against this much flame. Per the Carpoblica article, one

(03:26:05):
blaze that summer melted robots cables, putting an ADVO commission
for a week now. The series of fires in the
factory came just a few weeks before Trump administration. Defense
officials and executives for General Dynamics, the company that made
the factory, toured and through a gala opening event there
to celebrate that it was supposed to be up and
running by now. Exploding robots were not the only method

(03:26:27):
of uncontrollable failure that workers had documented at the factory
by that point. For one thing, the robotic arms had
a tendency to flail uncontrollably and destroy equipment. They also
would periodically drop heavy loads at random. The most sensitive
and expensive equipment in the entire factory was a machine
that was meant to stretch metal in order to make
artillery shells. It cracked them nearly constantly. The factory was

(03:26:48):
filled with smoke at all times and was usually over
one hundred degrees inside. Every description of the state of
the art Arms factory sounds worse than the ones that
were operating in World War One. This is probably my
favorite part of that article. Then there were the giant
press machines, which required regular pounding with a sledgehammer to function.
Property still sat the shaping of nearly every shell. We
didn't really have any standardized practice, said Quantel White, a

(03:27:11):
former employee. It was just a bunch of guys taking
turns going at the machine with a sledgehammer every night.

Speaker 1 (03:27:17):
This is fourhammer, forty k shit wyammer.

Speaker 2 (03:27:21):
Forty k works a lot better than this. There would
be a priest, he would be reading from a bible.
There'd be ungeons and oil. Well, there's lots of oil.

Speaker 7 (03:27:28):
I love this now.

Speaker 2 (03:27:30):
By last summer, which is when reports first started coming
out about the difficulties the factory was having. By that point,
General Dynamics had missed eight deadlines to get this thing
up and running. Their factory still has yet to produce
a single usable shell, despite five hundred and thirty three
million dollars in Pentagon funds going towards refurbishing old machines
and ordering new ones from Turkey. Even so, the Pentagon

(03:27:52):
continues to sign contracts with General Dynamics, and two months
ago the company announced a some new solution to all
of their ill fortune factory. These many issues. You guys,
guess what The magic bullet that finally is going to
fix everything that this factory that doesn't work is supposed
to be AI.

Speaker 7 (03:28:07):
Yeah, it's AI. It's it's fucking AI. Of course, it's yeah.

Speaker 2 (03:28:10):
Quote a news release from General Dynamics. In the new company,
the terrence was filled with techno business jargon. AI enabled
capabilities and intelligence and connectivity would be added at Mesquite
and other General Dynamics factories. The companies wrote, AI transforms
production facilities into strategic assets to terrens. As CEO said
on the release, we're building autonomous manufacturing systems that learned
to adapt and scale in real time. By the way,

(03:28:32):
what that CEO said, I'll guarantee was written by chat GPT.
The whole AI transformed that that's yeah, very clearly. Yeah,
these pronouncements have baffled former Mesquite workers. What are they
talking about. There's nothing to learn or adapt or scale
one set. It's all broken. It's really fun because no
one who actually works at the factory, and no US

(03:28:53):
military officials who are allowed to speak their minds openly,
have had anything positive to say about General Dynamics and
how they proceeded with this project. The article quotes a
former official in an Army office supervising the factory as
saying it's an absolute disaster. The Army should have gone
after recovering money from General Dynamics. Yeah, no, I mean
they should have.

Speaker 1 (03:29:13):
Yeah, But that gets the central contradiction of the American
war machine, which is that the point of it is
to give money to defense contractors not actually supposed to
have to use the stuff.

Speaker 7 (03:29:23):
I should say here.

Speaker 2 (03:29:24):
General Dynamics is one of the companies most responsible for
inventing that state of affairs. This is we're going to
talk about these folks because they keep coming up when
you look into like defense relateds, golduggery and fuckery and
like us history. I feel like now is probably is
a good time to talk a little bit about their history.
We're gonna I'm gonna give a brief overview of these
guys because we're in an illegal war that's currently shuffling

(03:29:46):
a fortune to defense contractors, and we should probably talk
about one of the most corrupt members of that family.
The General Dynamics Corporation was founded at the tail end
of the nineteenth century by Isaac Leopold Rice, a businessman
and a music coologist who was born in Bavaria and
raised in Milwaukee. He made his fortune doing a mix
of railroad law and publishing sheet music, and eventually got
into the electric battery and vehicle business. This ended with

(03:30:08):
him involved in submarines, because early Navy subs ran on
electric power when submerged. In eighteen ninety nine, he purchased
the halland Torpedo Boat Company and named it the Electric
Boat Company. The Electric Boat Company remained a submarine manufacturer
after his death in nineteen fourteen, providing subs for not
just the US government but the Peruvian government, and gradually

(03:30:29):
spinning up to produce other kinds of boats, including PT
boats for the US and Canadian militaries. After World War II,
it purchased Convair, which made anti aircraft missiles, jet fighters,
and the Atlas rockets used in the first US crewed
orbital flight. This new company, a mix of the Electric
Boat Company and Convair, became General Dynamics. In more recent decades,
General Dynamics became the manufacturers of the feared Tomahawk cruise missile,

(03:30:52):
arguably the most iconic ballistic missile in the entire US arsenal.
It also kept making subs, including the famous Los Angeles
Class and D. As time went on, the company got
really really good at corruptly fucking US taxpayers out of
their money. Investigative reporting first started shining a light on
constant cost overruns and blown budgets in a series of
GD defense contracts for a nineteen eighty five Time article

(03:31:13):
by Charles Alexander. A federal grand jury first started investigating
the company's cost overruns on submarines in nineteen seventy nine,
but dropped the probe in nineteen eighty one for lack
of enough evidence of fraud. Now the Justice Apartment has
reopened the case in light of new information from p
Tecis Veliattis, who in nineteen seventy seven became head of
Electric Boat, the company's subuilding division in Grotton, Connecticut. His
word is hardly unimpeachable. In nineteen eighty three he fled

(03:31:35):
to his native Grease to avoid being tried on charges
of perjuring himself before a grand jury and taking one
point three million in kickbacks from a subcontractor. Velliotis has
produced tapes in company documents that he claims reveal a
pattern of waste, corruption and cover up at General Dynamics.
In a tape of one talk he had with Lewis
the chairman, for example, the chairman suggests that Velliottis reassured
James Ashton, a discontented Electric Boat executive, that he is

(03:31:57):
still in the running for a promotion, in order to
keep him from popping off about shoddy work at the yard.
So we have all of these tapes from this equally
shady dude, villiatdis because nobody who's in a high position
in the defense contracting industry is not constantly committing crimes.
And the tapes that he provided showed several things that
are very familiar to the Mesquite factory case. For one thing,
Villiadis provided a nineteen seventy seven tape with the company's

(03:32:18):
executive vice president, Gordon MacDonald, telling him that the company
had issued an impossible delivery timetable for the first Trident
submarine because the CEO of General Dynamics wanted to quote
keep our stock price from sliding. In other words, every
time that the stock price slides, you can announce, oh,
we're about to release the Trident, and you can get
a quick.

Speaker 7 (03:32:36):
Boost in the stock price.

Speaker 6 (03:32:37):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (03:32:37):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (03:32:38):
And as a result of this kind of fuckery, the
sub was not produced until two years after this date.
Now that's pretty bad. But the incident that actually sparked
the first known criminal investigation of a defense contractor came
in nineteen eighty three when General Dynamics tried to charge
the Air Force ninety six hundred dollars for a four
inch long wrench. And this revealed a bunch of if
you've ever heard stories of like six thousand dollars wrenches

(03:33:01):
and YadA YadA, four thousand dollars plungers. It's General Dynamics
that people are talking about. That was a real series
of like news articles and eventually congressional investigations into the
fact that they were charging absurd amounts of money for bullshit. Now,
part of the reason for this was that, like Navy
and Air Force, procurement was completely fucked in this point,
and they just did not keep a backlog of like

(03:33:22):
the material they needed to repair their shit on hand.
But a lot of it was just massive rampant corruption
with companies like General Dynamics in particular. Now, charges like
this inspired further investigations into how GD functioned, and this
eventually led to a congressional inquiry. It came out that
in nineteen eighty two, General Dynamics had asked the Pentagon
to pay almost nineteen million dollars in overhead costs for

(03:33:43):
their company HQ. These were not what you'd call unavoidable expenses.
Quote four hundred and ninety eight hundred and forty dollars
for Lewis's that's the chairman's personal flights on corporate jets,
often to and from his farm in Albany, five hundred
and thirty eight seven hundred and eighty one dollars for
contributions in memberships, including te club fees for top executives,
and one hundred and fifty five dollars for the kinneling

(03:34:03):
of a dog named Firston while its owner, a General
Dynamics executive, attended a company conference at a South Carolina resort.
At last week's hearing, Congressman dingle Quiz Lewis about a
five hundred and seventy one dollars charge for a king
size serted a perfect sleeper mattress and a box spring set,
which was delivered to the Clayton Inn in suburban Saint Louis.
It was for mister Velliatis, since Lewis, who explained that

(03:34:23):
the executive said he needed the bed for times he
came to Saint Louis for meetings, added Gordon McDonald, a
General Dynamics executive Vice president. Mister Velliattis, being a very
large man, complained so much to the secretary of the
company that he got tired of hearing it and bought
the bed. Valiatis denied that the bed was for him.
So just very funny stories consistently when you look into

(03:34:44):
like eighties defense contractor procurement issues, specifically around General Dynamics. Now,
I know what you're wondering, how did they get away
with such corruption? Well, that nineteen million dollars the US
government spent on complete bullshit fees was matched with one
point two four million dollars in the General Dynamics accountmant
purely to entertain Pentagon officials in nineteen seventy seven. They

(03:35:05):
have a twenty five dollars diamond earring set to the
wife of Admiral Hyman rickover head of the nuclear propulsion program. Now,
to be fair to Hymen, the real reason they were
trying to butter him up is that he had repeatedly
complained about the company. But this is the kind of
shit that they have been doing forever. Like the fact
that they have now spent half a billion dollars of
taxpayer money on a factory that does not work is

(03:35:27):
nothing new to General Dynamics. And I'm sure they've now
promised to put another two hundred million dollars into the
factory and that it'll be producing twenty thousand shells a
month at least within a year. I'm sure at some
point they'll get at work if they keep shoveling a
bunch of money into it. But make no mistake, it
will not be General Dynamics money. It will be money
one way or the other that US taxpayers have given

(03:35:47):
them that winds up eventually, maybe making this factory produce
a single shell. Anyway, General Dynamics, Let's.

Speaker 11 (03:35:56):
Go on one more had break and then talk about
bonds and floor.

Speaker 21 (03:36:00):
I guess, yeah, wild, speaking of unbelievably corrupt bullshit that
is directly tied to the American war efforts in Iran.

Speaker 1 (03:36:22):
Okay, so bonds are not normally an extremely exciting topic.
So let's start off with the glaring part, which is
that early this week, the yields on US Treasury bonds,
specifically thirty year tea notes, hit highs not seen since
two thousand and seven, several weeks before the collapse of
the American stock markets. Is also noted by several analysts

(03:36:45):
that the other times that we've seen peaks like this
were like nineteen thirty nine, right before that, and I
think there was another one of these I forgot. I
forgot the other economic collapse where there was a there
was a giant one of these right before it.

Speaker 7 (03:37:01):
Like the nineteen twenty ninety thirty one. Is that like black.

Speaker 11 (03:37:06):
Fright, Yeah, there's one more.

Speaker 1 (03:37:08):
I think it mout have been like the dot com
bubble or something. I forget what juddle, But the experts
suggests that bond markets only do this when they are
in extreme distress. So what does this actually mean. Bonds
are a thing that, in this case, you can get
from the governments and you pay the government money, and
the government promises you to pay back more money later,

(03:37:29):
and the yield is like how much more money they're
they're giving you back? Right, High yields on bonds means,
you know, an increase of the cost of borrowing, and
high yields on US government bonds is a sign of
growing distrust in the long run economic feature of the US. Usually,
these bonds pay like absolute shit. But the reason they
pay like shit is that it's the US government. You're

(03:37:52):
guaranteed to get your money back, so they're supposed to
be an extremely safe asset, right, And when these rates
are up, it's because everyone is you know, looking at
something happening in the market, and something happening structurally in
the US economy and panicking. Now, one of those things
is they're looking at the US debt and panicking, and
you know, whether or not that's like a great way

(03:38:12):
to evaluate how panicky they have to be is an
open question. This has been one of the lines that's
been coming out is that they're looking at you know,
the US date and increasing faster than expected. The main thing, however,
that has been setting off this particular wave of like
mass selling of bonds is the collapse of that sixty
day piece deal that Robert was talking about earlier, which

(03:38:35):
you know, I don't think anyone who was actually following
the conflict really thought that was going to go anywhere.
But the thing that was important about it, strategically from
the American side was that this was this was the
thing that investors in financial antas were hanging their hat on.
And you know that these these people had convinced themselves
that this process was actually going to result in the
end of the war, and that quickly ending the war

(03:38:56):
was going to you know, restore economic growth et cetera,
et cetera, and stay off inflation. And this was sort
of the week as as as I mentioned earlier the
Brent crude index hit ninety dollars a barrel and the
peace talks formally completely collapsed. That there was a growing
realization that this war is not going to end. The
economic conditions caused by the war not ending out going

(03:39:17):
to continue, which means inflation is going to increase and
it's going to have sort of far reaching and long
lasting economic impacts. Now, this is a global squeeze that's
been hitting most developed countries. Japan has also been very
badly hit by these sort of shocks in bond yields. Now,
what's interesting reading analysis of it is that you're actually

(03:39:40):
starting to see a lot of firms. JP Morgan is
a good example of this with JP Morgan. For like,
basically since the war has started, JP Morgan's analysis has
been the war is going to end, and when the
war ends, things will go back to normal. So we're
just going to keep projecting things are going to be fine.
They are finally pointing out the things that we've been saying,
which is that yeah, the no, the war is not

(03:40:00):
ending and it's wreaking havoc on global supply chains. Now,
the other thing that's been causing this run up. There's
two sides of this back to back that seem very conflicting,
which is, on the one hand, there is growing fear
over the fact that the AI bubble looks like it's
going to collapse, right and we've seen this was sort

(03:40:22):
of like the kast b shock I was talking about earlier,
where you know, the stock market like ten five to
ten percent of the stock markets create stock markets value
keeps disappearing overnight and then reappearing the next day. But
then and this is sort of fascinating. One of the
other things that's been happening is that there has been
an unbelievable proliferation of bonds issued by AI companies because

(03:40:43):
these AI companies are having to go to the finance
markets to fund all of their weird data center bullshit.
And this has gotten a bunch of investors to pull
their money out of very safe US bonds and put
them into hideously unsafe AI I bonds, a thing which

(03:41:04):
I don't even this obviously is going to go catastrophically wrong.
I don't have a sophisticated analysis for why, like taking
the money out of the US government and putting it
into this AI company is going to create a transcendent
God is a terrible idea. And what we've kind of
seen in the past couple of days as these bond

(03:41:25):
yields have risen as from a combination of these factors,
is it looks like the beginning of the moment where
wildly coyote like looks down and realizes that he's off
the cliff. Now, on Wednesday, the Treasury began a massive
buyback of treasury bonds going to quote from CNBC here.
Under the accelerated buy back, Treasury, led by Secretary Scott Bessant,

(03:41:48):
will target the ten to twenty year and twenty to
thirty year portion of the market, which has seen a
buyer strike since late June. The government will at least
double the maximum size of its buyback operation from two
billion to quote at least four billion dollars, according to
an announcement from the Department. Now, in terms of the

(03:42:08):
actual size of this buyback, which is like not a
great sign when the government is buying back its own
debt in an attempt to stabilize the market. But that's
not you know, in terms of the size of like
the US bomb market, that's really a drop in the bucket.
But it does seem to have temporarily sort of stabilized
the markets on the belief that if things continue to

(03:42:29):
go run, the government will step in. However, the actual
underlying economic metrics remain bad for everything in the economy
that isn't ai and this is one of the things
that traditionally heralds a fall on economic collapse. Now, it's
also worth noting that, you know, cosp for example, keeps

(03:42:51):
hitting its circuit breaker. That's something that also traditionally has
been like the prelude to collapse, and it hasn't yet.
So you know, we're we're in it. We're in a
deeply weird and semi unprecedented time in the markets and
in sort of the behavior of these investors and financial actors.

Speaker 11 (03:43:09):
But it's not good.

Speaker 3 (03:43:11):
It's my, it's my.

Speaker 1 (03:43:12):
It's a conclusion on the state of the US bond
market and the global economy at large.

Speaker 11 (03:43:18):
Let's close with elections, and I want to start with
a quick correction for one or two of my last
election segments. I keep calling Governor Tim Walls Mike Walls,
and I don't know why this keeps happening. I picture
his face in my mind, and I just like autocreks

(03:43:39):
to Mike. I've caught this a few times and fixed
it before the episode goes out, but this pastime I
did not.

Speaker 12 (03:43:47):
Now.

Speaker 11 (03:43:47):
Slightly more importantly, I also accidentally referred to Mike Rogers
in Michigan as the incumbent, and that is not true.
This Senate race is open and Rogers's former congressmen. These are,
you know, smaller details and stories that are focused more
on how DSA left wing candidates are running their campaigns.
But these types of details are still important to get right,

(03:44:08):
and I regret the error. Let's turn to Florida, where
I'm sad to say the resistance has been defeated.

Speaker 2 (03:44:15):
Now, Garrison, are you talking about Florida the state or
flow RDA of the musical?

Speaker 7 (03:44:18):
Since now you missed a good chance to pivot with
talking of regret, and then.

Speaker 11 (03:44:23):
I thought about doing that, but I'm like, no, I
would rather not, because I'm just saying I still think
there's hope for Florida.

Speaker 7 (03:44:31):
I said, bold take.

Speaker 11 (03:44:32):
But American hero Alexander Vinman will not be that hope.

Speaker 7 (03:44:37):
You'll be assuring another correction for that bad boy. Let
me tell you.

Speaker 11 (03:44:42):
I'm talking in the grands. Okay, I'm talking about in
the cosmic sense, not in the short term.

Speaker 7 (03:44:46):
Yeah, okay, I agree with you. I have hope for
the Feraridianes.

Speaker 11 (03:44:51):
The resistance has been defeated. American hero Alexander Vinman, the
whistleblower who testified in Trump's first impeachment hearings, has lost
the Democratic nomination for US Senate in an upset to
Angie Nixon, a state representative from Jacksonville and a Democratic socialist.
Nixon won by one hundred and fifty thousand votes.

Speaker 7 (03:45:12):
Oh wow, it's fifty.

Speaker 11 (03:45:13):
Six point one percent to Vinman's forty three point nine.
And this, this, this is a big upset because Nixon
was out fundraised sixteen to one. She had just under
a million dollars while vinmin raked in over sixteen million.
And I think, like a resist lib hero, losing a

(03:45:33):
primary to a socialist in Florida is astounding.

Speaker 7 (03:45:38):
Yeah.

Speaker 11 (03:45:39):
Now, Nixon's a union organizer who's running on Medicare for all,
the taxing billionaires, free childcare, universal jobs program, and opposition
to Israel. She was endorsed by alanomar Or. She did
a Tleeve needed Turner, Cory Bush, and Miss Rachel who's
listed in the National Leaders section of Nixon's website.

Speaker 1 (03:45:58):
For her or you're only truly good national leader. No
complaints with her?

Speaker 7 (03:46:04):
Yeah, Miss Rachel shown more spine than most of Congress
in the last few years.

Speaker 11 (03:46:10):
Nixon was also endorsed by Working Families Party, Local Unions, JVP,
Jewish hoysh for Peace and Track APAK. She joined DSA
this past June, but did not pursue an endorsement, so
is a relative newcomer to DSA as an organization. Do
you want to play this clip from her back in
November twenty twenty three, a month into Israel's attacks on Gaza,

(03:46:33):
we are at.

Speaker 22 (03:46:34):
Ten thousand dead Palestinians.

Speaker 12 (03:46:36):
How man it will be enough?

Speaker 6 (03:46:40):
I also.

Speaker 11 (03:46:43):
One of the lawmaker's Republican Michelle Saltzman, just shouted out
all of them in the hearing. I'll continue the clip, Jesus.

Speaker 22 (03:46:51):
One of my colleagues just said all of them.

Speaker 14 (03:46:55):
Wow.

Speaker 11 (03:46:57):
One of my colleagues fed all of them.

Speaker 22 (03:47:00):
One of my colleagues also stated that this is gonna
dry up their fundraising if we vote on this resolution.
I also want that like, that's what we've become in
this state. That's what we've become in this state. Well,
we don't care about innocent babies that don't even get

(03:47:21):
the opportunity to blow out their first birthday candle.

Speaker 11 (03:47:24):
So this was a ceasefire resolution just a month in
two the war.

Speaker 7 (03:47:29):
Do you have the sense of like turnout versus like
electoral Like I'm wondering, is this a like people who
turn out for primaries tend to be like a more
politically engaged and people who turn out for generals or
is this a like this because it's she clearly has,
like just looking at that speech, she has a genuine
commitment to what she's talking about. And I think people, yes,

(03:47:50):
I appreciate that more than like you said, a resist
lib hero.

Speaker 11 (03:47:54):
Definitely, And I mean certainly I think in generals can
attract a bigger portion of the elector. Yeah, but there's
there's a few things going on that created this this
pretty pretty big difference in votes, like over one hundred
and fifty thousand. Yeah, it's big, and like, in my mind,
this relates to two of the elections last week in
Minnesota and Wisconsin. The My Pillow primary, where Trump endorsed

(03:48:20):
Mike Lindell lost the Republican governatorial primary to the state
Speaker of the House, and like this this is kind
of like the idea that a national political celebrity can
just like waltz into your state and gobble up a nomination.
Both Lindell and Alexander Vinman, you know, come from like
the Trump world, albeit on opposite side. It's still part
of like like you know, the Trumpian political circuit, and

(03:48:44):
voters rejected both of them in favor of proven state lawmakers,
you know, Janio, a more like regular state level Republican,
and Angie Nixon, who's like a community organizer with like
deep connections to a lot of a lot of different
commun in the state and specifically the working class black community. Now,

(03:49:04):
the other interesting thing that this race kind of continues
the conversation on relates to Francesca Hong's loss last week.
As as I discussed last week, Hong did not pay
for any TV ads and Nixon only spent sixty thousand
on ADS, was zero spent on broadcast or cable. Meanwhile,
Vinman spent two point two million on ADS. That's thirty

(03:49:26):
six times as much as Nixon. Yeah, and Nixon still
wants dumping money off a cliff. That's because she actually
ran a real campaign, like on the ground, and Vinman
did not. He ran an incredibly lazy campaign. He really
thought he could just like coast to the nomination based
on his resist Live credentials. And you know, while that
maybe helped in Palm Beach, it did not help him

(03:49:49):
in the rest of the state, where where just he
got absolutely trounced by Nixon. Like if you look at
like the county map, it's like whoa.

Speaker 8 (03:49:59):
Yeah.

Speaker 11 (03:49:59):
So come November, Nixon will face the incumbent Senator Ashley Moody,
the former state ag who Ron De Santis appointed to
fill Marco Rubio's Senate seat after he was tapped for
Secretary of State. And like Rubio is, Rubio has had
a strong hold on that seat for decades. So the

(03:50:19):
hope for Florida Democrats is that Ashley Moody won't command
as much loyalty at the ballot box as Rubio does,
or as Rubio did.

Speaker 1 (03:50:28):
Yeah, and maybe and maybe maybe, like a critical one
percent of the Republican vote thinks that she's another Nixon. Yeah, yeah,
hopefully you never know, but like this could very likely
be a much harder uphill battle than even you know,
like the Texas Senate race was hilarigo. In this recent election,
there were around three hundred thousand fewer votes in the

(03:50:51):
Democratic primary than the GOP primary. Like this is this
is going to be a very difficult race to win.

Speaker 11 (03:50:57):
Yeah, I don't want to, you know, understate how impressed
of this primary win like really is. And like I
don't think anyone will false Nixon or her politics if
she loses in the general.

Speaker 7 (03:51:08):
I mean someone will someone right, a shitty Like it's
just see end of the leftop ed right, they always do.

Speaker 11 (03:51:13):
It doesn't massive they will, they will try to Like
a lot of Centrists do not expect Vinman to win
if he wins the primaries. So like it's it's a
setate seat in Florida. It's like that's right, that's the thing.

Speaker 7 (03:51:24):
It's just I'm reflecting on the fact that like people
have taken Hong's result and been like, oh, the progressive
left is dead, and then they're still treating Callarico like
he's uh, like the presumptive victor.

Speaker 2 (03:51:38):
Yeah, and then they'll say yeah, but like yeah, I mean,
I think one thing we probably should take from Hong's
election is that television ads cannot be disposed of so
quickly yet at the general Yeah, I mean it, I
mean period like it. I think that's one of the
things that definitely hurt her campaign is that they made
a big choice not to do tv ads.

Speaker 8 (03:51:59):
Yeah.

Speaker 11 (03:51:59):
I want to write everything down to that, but yeah,
that was certainly a factor in Wisconsin. Nixon's like ground
game in Florida was able to overcome the massive deficit
in spending and just not really many funds for tv ads.
And I think yeah, because this is a Florida Senate
see that Vindman was not expected to win into general

(03:52:20):
and he was the presumptive nominee. But because this race
will be so hard to win, it'll be harder to
like blame her or her politics specifically for losing. I
think this race can also be a big opportunity to
push the overtin window in Florida and I come November,
it will be really interesting to see what the result
of this election are because if this is a super
close race, even if she's still loses, hopefully she will

(03:52:41):
not lose, but if this race even gets to be
where it's like more competitive than what it's been for
the past like ten fifteen years, I think that could
be an interesting look at how much Trump is hurting
Republicans in elections, like exactly how upset parts of his
base are at the current state of things, and to

(03:53:02):
what degree that affects turnout. But also on the other hand,
if Nixon and her politics are able to form a
new coalition and attract voters that might not usually vote
for Democrats, might not usually vote for socialists, or might
not vote at all, because even just in this primary,
her core voter base was very different than what's currently

(03:53:24):
considered to be DSA's most reliable voters. Nixon did best
in districts that were majority non college educated, and that's
usually the reverse for a lot of DSA type candidates
in other states. So she was getting out a slightly
different voter base than what L said was getting out
than what DSA candidates in New York have been getting out,

(03:53:46):
especially in the primaries. So I think she is someone
to watch and could alter what's seen as politically possible
in Florida.

Speaker 1 (03:53:54):
Yeah, I want to say briefly also that there is
a chance that you know, with how badly the Republicans
are doing on generic ballots, I mean, like the good
projections right now have them down seven points on just
like a generic Democrat versus the Republican ballot, Like there
is a small chance that we get a two thousand
and eight style blowout and she wins, which it's not

(03:54:15):
impossible in a way that it usually is. It would
be historic, right, it would. Yeah, No, it's possible, just
extremely unlikely. But like a I don't think it's likely,
but it would be like a history. It's more likely
than any of the times people have said that Democrats
are going to take Texas. So I'll say about this
like it's like actually technically possible. So while this is
a big win for the left, statewide, DSA candidates did

(03:54:39):
not fare as well in the recently redistricted US House
races in Florida. Let's brevely talk about my boy, Oliver Larkin.
Larkin was running for House District twenty five. That's Miami,
DoD Palm Beach, and Broward County, not exactly the friendliest
waters for an anti Israel socialist. I got sixteen, two

(03:55:01):
hundred and eighty four votes, while the incumbent House Rep.
Jared Moscowitz won with twenty eight thousand, two hundred and
ninety four votes. Larkin is DSA endorsed, and he ran
a solid campaign with an impressive ground game, over five
hundred volunteers, forty thousand doors knocked seven hundred and fifty
thousand calls. He campaigned with Angie Nixon. Also this past month,

(03:55:25):
A Larkin has gone and this is a technical term,
a beast mode in TV news interviews. Here's Larkin getting
some pushback from a Fox News anchor on abolishing and
prosecuting ice.

Speaker 23 (03:55:39):
What is the number that is fine with you? Is
there is there a benchmark? Is it fine how many
children can be raped? And it's fine if you're in
relation to the immigration community.

Speaker 24 (03:55:51):
If we're going to talk about children being raped, then
we need to hold this pedophile president Donald Trump accountable
and all those that have been implicated by the Epstein sales.
That Partment of Justice is still not leaking and they've
sent a pack after Thomas Massey for having the temerity
to accountables.

Speaker 4 (03:56:08):
That are in control of our government.

Speaker 7 (03:56:09):
Cue, oh, you appreciate your time very much.

Speaker 11 (03:56:15):
So beyond like attention grabbing moments like that, he's also
very clearly articulated the details of his platform and defended
it and DSA against bad way attacks. He's talked about
the need for a new past to citizenship and just
how cost prohibitive it is for immigrants to maintain the
documented status, and Trump has made things even harder on
purpose to manufacture a political crisis. On Foxy, argued very

(03:56:39):
eloquently against providing Israel with so called defensive weapons, which
he rejected as a categorical term. And he's gone toe
to toe with Sean AKA Scott Hannity on tax reform
earlier this week on Local ten. This Week in Florida,
host Glenna Milberg abruptly cut off her interview with Larkin

(03:56:59):
after he said that Israel has committed a genocide, which
she claimed was quote unquote factually incorrect.

Speaker 15 (03:57:08):
Now.

Speaker 11 (03:57:08):
Also late last week, Lower Lumer and Democrat state Representative
Michael Gottlieb tried to shut down a get out the
vote rally for Larkin, Angie Nixon, and another DSA candidate,
Elijah Manley, called chomp the oligarchy with a I want
to say alligator or crocodile on front. Don't don't at me.

Speaker 7 (03:57:27):
It's going to be an alligator, right, whatever the ones
are in Florida, alligator anything we have any indigenous crocodiles.

Speaker 11 (03:57:36):
Democrats State Rep. Michael Gottlieb said the rally was quote
unquote anti jew and told his constituents to not support
the venue hosting the event. Lor Lumer led an online
harassment campaign targeting quote gie Hottist Congresswoman Rashida Talib, who
was slated to speak at the rally. Lumer said that
Telib was quote bringing her band of jew haters to

(03:57:59):
South Florida and said that Oliver Larkin quote unquote hates
Jewish people and that he's trying to primary Jared Massowitz
because he is Jewish. Now, the venue originally contracted for
the rally canceled. They pulled out when the organizers wouldn't
remove Rashida Talib as a speaker. The rally was rescheduled

(03:58:20):
for August fourteenth, and the organizers secured a second venue,
which also canceled the night before the chomp. The Oligarchy
rally was supposed to take place next morning. The organizers
found a third location, which was kept secret until hours
before the rally, which was then also streamed live, and
the owner of that third venue, which did ultimately host

(03:58:41):
the event, said that within hours his phone was bombarded
with like six hundred messages from people protesting the rally.
This kind of shows, like this, the speed and scale
of the harassment campaign led by Lumer and this state Democrat.
So unfortunately, you know, Larkin did not win. I'm interested
to see what he does next. I think it would

(03:59:02):
be a mistake if he just completely disappears. Think he's
a good communicator, whether you know something like DSA national
wants to tap into that, or if he wants to
work on some other campaigns like Angie Nixon's campaign, which
I think he's he's indicated he'll do. But but after
the general be very interested to see what what he
does in the future and to close Like at this
point in like big cities, you know, in blue states,

(03:59:25):
DSA are left socialist candidates can only really like run
to win, like that's that's what you have to do. Now,
there's no more of this like participation trophies. It's it's
you have to you have to win. But it's it's
also really important for DSA to expand their electoral efforts
into red states and districts that are not solid blue
and in that vein I think what DSA has done
in Florida this primary reminds me of what nyc DSA

(03:59:49):
was doing in New York like a decade ago, experimenting, building,
organizing campaigns, running candidates. Even if there is a huge
uphill battle, campaign volunteers get to you know, get experience,
and you find your base of sport that can be
built on in future races. And in that sense, I
think what they were able to pull off, including in
some very hostile districts, was impressive. Now will continue in

(04:00:13):
some form with Angie Nixon running for Senate these next
few months. Finally, finally, before we close, I should mention
James fish Back, Enemy of the Pod, the Groyferd candidate
for governor, came in third place in the GOP gobernatorial primary.
He was expected to come in second, so that is interesting.

(04:00:33):
But Jay Collins instead got second place with almost half
a million votes. Oh, he got waxed Byron Donald's the
expected winner one with eight hundred and ten thousand votes.
Fishback got just less than two hundred thousand, which is
way too many votes. He should not be He should

(04:00:56):
not be getting that number of votes. That is not great.
His can was very tailored to a type of voter.
And also like places online and locations in the state
that the other candidates were not tailoring for. So I
I don't want to like overstate the sort of impact
of Fishbeck's campaign because there was really no one else

(04:01:16):
kind of going after that block, like especially late if
Fishback was pivoting very hard into like anti data center
stuff very late into the race to try to you know,
attract more voters. Really, so like he was, he was
doing stuff that other Republicans just were not doing, and
you know, using that sneak o Nick Fuentes asthma Goold endorsement,
which which which got him more than one hundred and

(04:01:38):
fifty thousand votes, which is not great.

Speaker 6 (04:01:41):
Yeah is it is?

Speaker 11 (04:01:43):
It is just over ten percent of the Republican vote.

Speaker 7 (04:01:46):
I think Garrison and I made an episode about Fishback,
god knows how long ago.

Speaker 11 (04:01:51):
Yeah, I don't know what he'll He'll he might just
try to get some sort of like right wing far
right pundit job in the future. We'll see. Yeah, yeah,
I want to.

Speaker 1 (04:02:00):
I want to also convey so Sophie's message of fuck
Byron Donald's this guy also sucks. But yeah, yeah, it's
it's a Republican primary. They're all going to be like
you're in a race with the worst, second worst or
third worst person you've ever seen.

Speaker 11 (04:02:17):
So yeah, but yeah, that is that is Florida. Yeah,
that is our our buye by annual Florida check in.

Speaker 7 (04:02:28):
If you are in Florida or elsewhere, you can email us.
You're seeing the email address Cool Zone tips at Proton
don't meet. Hey, you want it to be encrypted? Senate
for another Proton address. Yeah, have fun with that, don't.
It's still doing it with the fucking marketing emails. By
the way, like every time I think I've blocked a
you bastards. Unbelievable.

Speaker 1 (04:02:49):
Put a transgirl on your couch.

Speaker 11 (04:02:52):
We reported the news.

Speaker 8 (04:02:54):
We reported the news.

Speaker 2 (04:03:01):
Hey, We'll be back Monday with more episodes every week
from now until the heat death of the Universe.

Speaker 25 (04:03:06):
It could Happen Here is a production of pool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
folzonmedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
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