It Could Happen Here Weekly 47

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everybody, Robert Evans here and I wanted to let
you know this is a compiletion episode, So every episode
of the week that just happened is here in one
convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to
listen to in a long stretch if you want. If
you've been listening to the episodes every day this week,
there's gonna be nothing new here for you, but you
can make your own decisions. Welcome back to it could

(00:27):
Happen here, the podcast about things happening that are bad
and occasionally good, but all have to do with the
fact that we're living in a society whose norms are
crumbling as the environment also crumbles, and political violence and
a bunch of other horrible things become more normalized, trying
to figure out how to not die ideally um and

(00:51):
occasionally how to thrive. And to that end, I have
a guest today who has been kind of working with
the working lately on how not to die in the
face of things getting increasingly violent and aggressive out there.
I want to welcome Jessica Keckler to the program. Jessica,
how are you doing today? Doing great? So, Jessica, um,

(01:15):
you know we are as listeners to the show and
observers of just basic reality in the outside are aware
we're kind of going under a or living through a
period of like panic and concerted aggressive attack on the
rights and ability to exist of transgender people. That's um
hasn't like has never not been a problem as long

(01:37):
as there's been you know, Western civilization, but has increasingly
been a problem the last year or so. Yeah, it's
it's really Um, it's really wild because, um, when you
take estrogen, you're When I start taking estrogen, it took
like ten years off of my face as far as
age goes, But then in this past year, I think
it's put back by now. Um. Yeah, I mean that

(02:00):
makes sense. Like it's it's it's stressful as hell out there. Um,
there has been a surge in violence, UM, not just
against trands people, obviously we've talked about in other episodes. UM,
there's been a surgeon violence against Asian Americans, UM, against
LGBT Americans, but transgender people are much more likely than
almost any other group in the United States to be attacked. Uh,

(02:22):
And that has been increasingly reality for a lot of people.
And you are one of a number of folks in
that position, who have been increasingly talking or who have
find yourself thinking about the necessity and value of being
armed in order to defend yourself from that. I want
to talk a little bit about your background there and
kind of what, um, how how you kind of came

(02:45):
to deciding that that was something that you wanted to
not just do personally, but advocate for other people to do. Yeah.
I went through well llient libertarian spaces. It was it
was many years, but you know, and I collected a
bunch of guns, and you know, I was like, oh,
that's you know, cool. But then, um, after I sort
of worked through my childhood traump and stuff, I you know,

(03:08):
I sort of feel a lot less threatened about about things,
and I just sort of, you know, it, just sort
of lost interest in them for a while. But then, um,
a friend of mine, Kendall Stevens, was telling me about
a time when she was attacked in her home by
a group of transpos and just beaten almost to death.
And that next morning, I, um, I I have reapplied

(03:28):
for my Harry permit. Yeah, and this is I mean,
this is a story I was not aware of. I
was aware. Broadly speaking, there have been a number of attacks,
including number of fatal attacks in the last couple of
years on particularly trans women. There was the murder of
West Philadelphia woman Alicias Simmons um in November of um,

(03:51):
Chanta Tucker in Hunting Park in the fall of two
thousand eighteen, uh, and may have two thousand nineteen, Michelle
Tamika Washington was shot to death in North Philly and
this is all like local to you. Um. And also
Dominique Remay Fells was was murdered in June, if I think, um,
And yeah, if people want to look this up, there's

(04:12):
a couple of different articles. I'm looking at one on
Billy Pin with the title after surviving a brutal attack,
Kendall Stevens wants to help trans people citywide And yeah,
it's a it's a fucking harrowing story, you know, after
surviving a number of different attacks from from like people
just kind of targeting her because she's trans. She was
attacked in her home by six of her neighbors while

(04:35):
her god daughter, who was twelve years old. Watch it's
a fucking horrifying story. So you, like, did you find
out about what had happened, like directly from her like,
how does this kind of information? I was. I was at, um,
there's a local trans group where we just you know,
get on zoom and talk. And yeah, it was one
of my first meetings, and actually I think it was

(04:57):
the very first, and she just told this whole story,
and I was just you know, it's like I always
had the feeling of safety, but then it's just like realized, like,
oh that's you know, like being white, I'm a little safer.
But it's just like it's we're all you know, it's
really yeah, it's it's a it's a matter of like
a small number of degrees. It's not. Um. So you're

(05:18):
you're you're trying to deal with this and you're you're communicating.
You've got this group where you're all sort of like
chatting about I'm guessing just kind of like safety stuff,
like hey here, you know, we we should all be
kind of keeping each other informed and trying to talk
about what's going on. Right, Yeah, I mean we mostly
just shoot the ship and just you know, talk things
over and stuff like that. But she was, um, yeah,

(05:41):
something had come up, and she recounted this whole story,
and it was just it just really made me go like,
oh my god. Yeah, so you kind of are in
this position where you own firearms, You're you're comfortable with them,
you've been using them for a while, and number one,
you get your permit, right, Like that's kind of the
first thing you do. And then I'm guessing you start

(06:02):
to think like, well, there's not a lot of other
people that are in this kind of group I'm in
that have this experience that kind of like where the
yeah right? Because um, you know, because when I would
talk to people before that, they would just to sort
of say like, yeah, I can see where you're coming
with that. And but once the attack started, I'm I
heard a lot I've heard a lot more people going like, yes,

(06:25):
I need to do that too, you know. Yeah, So
I kind of want to know because I mean, what
we're kind of building too is you've been you've been
putting together a class for trans folks in Philly to
go to to learn about how firearms function, the legality
and legal concerns about being armed, and like the steps
they might need to go to if they decide to
do that themselves. Um, how does that idea kind of

(06:47):
come together for you to actually like put this this
class together? Okay, well, um, I remember of the s
R right, the Socialist Rifle Association, and they have classes
they call Gundamentals and it's just sort of an uproad
a review, um to sort of sort of every if
you've never picked up a gun before, it's it will
tell you, um, you know, it'll give you just information

(07:09):
on you know, everything you need to to before you
use it. And um, I thought it would be a
good idea to just have a trans just a class
with just my trans friends, and they were of course
open to it, and it went really well, and I
planted more in the future. Yeah, um, so you kind
of you're going through both sort of the basics of

(07:30):
here's and this is kind of a thing I think
about a lot. I recently carried out a class for
I don't want to be too specific, but at risk
individuals in my local area. That was a mix of
and I was not the one doing to stop the
bleed portion, primarily we have people who are medical professionals.
But it was a mix of a stop the bleed
class and like a firearms familiarization class. And it was

(07:52):
not from the perspective of like, hey, people need to
be strapping up so here's how to get a gun.
But it was from the perspective of, hey, there's four
million firearms in the United States, whether regardless of what
you think about the legality, you should have a basic
understanding of how they function and how to since you're
all adults, render a weapon safe, right, So we did.
We have these fake bullet snap caps, so I would

(08:14):
explain how an a are and a handgun works, and
then we would have everyone take turns, kind of like
we had with the stop the bleed portion, you know,
where you teach people to use a tourniquet. Would everyone
take turns arriving to the weapon, putting the weapon in
their hands without like flagging everybody or putting their finger
on the trigger and then dropping the magazine and clearing it.
And a lot of folks the thing they expressed was

(08:34):
like as people who didn't necessarily want to be armed
themselves felt like I was. I had never got I
never knew how to, like asked to have this experience
because normally, when you're in the room with a firearm,
it's because like maybe you're gonna go shooting with somebody
or something. So if you're not seeking out that experience
to actually go to a range. It's kind of hard

(08:57):
to sit with a gun and just understand the base
because of how this thing functions and how to render
it safe. And so there were a lot of folks
who particularly were like it seemed to be grateful for
just that experience to kind of like reduce the mystery
around it and gain kind of a functional understanding of
just the mechanics. Yeah, it was. Yeah, the class was
really good. I haven't taken it before, but it's, um,

(09:18):
you know, it shows like you went through like the
the anatomy of football, at the anatomy of a gun,
how it works, how to how to do it safely,
how to you know, like the four rules of gun safety, um,
legal things, and it was just it was really good course. Now,
so you take this course, you know, you're you're in
communication with these friends, you're dealing with like this constant

(09:39):
drumbeat of attacks. Um, you decide it's time to put
together a course for people. How do you kind of
work out what the syllabus is going to be for this? Um, well,
if they're all they have the whole class set up already.
I just sort of yeah, I had just had a
version just for my transfriends. Yeah, so what what in

(10:00):
like what did you kind of add to that or
alter to that in order to like prepare it for this.
Not much. I just it was just I just thought
they would be more comfortable in a class with just us. Yeah,
I mean that makes sense. And it also do you
think it helped that, Like this isn't because you know
the Socialist Rifle Association. You're attending that class. You're kind
of like attending a class put on by an organization

(10:23):
that has being both armed and political kind of in
its name, which maybe infers a little bit more commitment
to something than the class kind of you put together
on like a political level. Yeah, it's it's not as
hardcore as as you might think from the name. It's
just it's mostly they have the gundamental class. They have
to stoppable courses kind of you know this kind of thing,

(10:43):
and I think they there's very discussions too. I haven't
gone telling them. Yeah, and and so you've you put
this thing together. And the thing that you mentioned earlier
when we were talking about this is kind of a
discussion on like um like the the particularly legal concerns
that trans people seeking to arm themselves might have in
your area, and I wanted to talk to you a
little bit about that because obviously, when we talk about

(11:04):
gun legalities, it varies wildly from state to state. UM,
So nothings that either of us say. And this should
be construed as legal advice for what you should do
in your own area. You're gonna have to check that
out yourself. But yeah, I'm interested in what you saw
is kind of worth putting in that. UM well, the
I mean, the big addition to bring up is that
if you're not UM, if you if you don't present

(11:26):
as your assigned gender at birth, they could the person
who's running the check could say that, hey, this person
is coming to me in a disguise you know, UM,
and you could UM in future if you're trying to
get a gun in the future, that could be on
your record and people could use that it's now you
really I now, I had never heard about that, So

(11:47):
that's like an actual I mean obviously, like when you
file the form four four seven three. One of the
problems I know from just talking to friends that you
encounter is that like if you're if your your gender
does not match, like it's on your legal documents and stuff,
you have to write what's on your legal documents on
the form because it's a government form. Um. Although the

(12:07):
four four seven three, which is the background check form,
does now allow you to put in non binary if
that is, like, but you still have to have it
on your legal documents. Um, And we're we're mostly used
to that for everything else. But it's just the fact
that they could specifically target you. Yeah, I was actually
unaware of that as a specific problem, like that you
could be accused of like showing up in disguise to

(12:28):
do what's called a straw purchase, you know, which is
when you illegally buy a gun for somebody else. I
didn't realize that was a Yeah, So we're there kind
of other things to like keep in mind there, Like
because I'm particularly I'm sure we have a lot of
folks listening who are in this same headspace right now. Um,
because again, things aren't getting a lot less scary out there. Um.

(12:50):
I mean I can say just within the last couple
of years, probably around half of the people that I
shoot with on a regular basis are trans just because
like it's the of the you're the folks who are
being kind of most directly targeted and have the least
institutional support obviously, yea. And we have like people in
Congress openly calling for our executions, and it's just, yes,

(13:12):
that's a feeling, you know. It's like, yeah, that's something
I've ever experienced before. But it's like, yeah, you have
like nationally famous politicians just saying like, yes, we need
to kill every one of them, and it's like, good lord. Yeah.
And that's the thing, Like, you know, I think we
talk a lot on the show when we do talk
about being armed, and I've just talked a lot of

(13:34):
my personal life about like sort of where what the
left should be doing in terms of like a gun
culture and like the kind of pitfalls that need to
be avoided, because obviously the solution to like the discrepancy
of arms in the left and the right in this
country is not to recreate what the right wing has,
because what the right wing has is like vicious and insane. Yeah,

(13:57):
I mean it's it's bad. We don't we you don't
want that, um but uh and and and so obviously,
like one of the things that I tend to think
of as as silly is like the the folks who
are and I don't think this is a particularly large jump,
but you do get people who are kind of look
at being armed from like and then we're you know, um,

(14:18):
this is so that we can you know, be the
new red army insurgent type thing, which I think is
a less realistic use case of firearms on the left
than the police are not going to protect our community. Um,
there are a shipload of people with guns who hate us,
and you know, honestly, like one of the when I
think about, like, what are the threats that are realistic

(14:42):
and what are the threats when we talk obviously this
show that we're on the way, they're the way the
way they're doing the you know, you have um like
Tucker Carlson saying like, oh another week in buy mar
and you know, making all these things and they they're
sort of like all these trans people. It's like someone
should do something wink wink, Yeah exactly. And that's the
when we're on a show right now that started out

(15:05):
as me talking about, Hey, I think people who are
I think the threat of massive civil conflict in the
United States is higher than people guess, and that broadly speaking,
is mainstream. Now there is a strong mainstream understand like
standing that some sort of civil conflict is possible. It's
still when people talk about it primarily in the terms
of like this big civil war type thing, which I

(15:28):
think is broadly speaking, probably pretty silly. What's not silly
is the breakdown of expectations of social morays and things
like you can't show up in a big armed group
and start killing people that you have on a list,
who are are folks that you have decided because their
trans because whatever are are your enemy. And like one

(15:49):
of the things that I'm kind of concerned we're going
to see at some point in the future is a
fucking mob gets spun up and go and take out
some people on their list. And I'm not sure what
that list is going to be, but you know, there's
a couple of people who pay attention, there's a couple
of broad possibilities as to who would be targeted. And
then local law enforcements say, we're not going to choose

(16:11):
to do anything about this. We're not going to and
again this hat I'm not coming up with this because
this is like a bleak. I know you are well
aware of this, but like, we had an abortion clinic
burnt down earlier this year, and I think it was
Kentucky and the police refused to investigate it, right, like
this kind of ship already happens, you know. Um, yeah,
it was. For a while I was like, okay, well

(16:32):
they're not really going to and then it's like then
they started coming after our kids, and just like I
almost didn't survive my adolescent so I know just how
much pain those kids are in. And yeah, and then
it's like okay, then they got rid of rovers way
and it's like, okay, they're not They're not just posturing anymore. No,
they're santastic. Final it's like, you know, hey, someone should

(16:53):
do something was bad enough. But then it's like, okay,
they're really they're on a tear hair. So you're you're
put together. This asked for folks who I'm going to
guess most of them had not Number one, didn't have
much experience with weapons firearms prior to this, and probably
also had not prior to you know, the last year
or two I thought that they would ever be someone
considering purchasing armaments. I mean, some of them said that

(17:16):
you know, they grew up you know, in rural places
and grew up with guns and stuff, but touched them
since they were kids, So, right, you were there any
kind of like specific questions that you got that you
you found were interesting or kind of like surprising. Like
I'm kind of interested in sort of what sort of
things people had to ask, not in particular, I think
everyone was just sort of just trying to learn everything

(17:36):
and just like that, Yeah, where there is there kind
of a has there been sort of like, um, any
further discussions about like well what comes next? Right like
after the sort of basic class of people decided to
start purchasing like firearms, step two is like train in
order to use them like functionally, right, Like it's not

(17:57):
a kind of thing you can just have. Yeah, the
next up, the next step from the group of friends
that I have, Um, I'm planning to you know, go
to a range with them, and I mean we have
to sort of find what ranges are most friendly. But yeah,
so we're probably gonna do that and just see how
it goes with everyone. I mean I know that where
I am. One thing that people will do is you know,

(18:19):
you'll you'll have folks who will kind of go out
and be uh kind of a little guinea pigs for like,
is this gun's store a friendly place like right, like
is this a place we can go and buy weapons
and not and and have people like respond, well, is
this range a friendly place? And then kind of will
spread that to the rest of the community that like, hey,
this is a safe place to shoot too, this is
a safe place to buy Do you have you guys

(18:40):
been kind of like setting stuff up like that or
what No, not yet, but that's that is the next step,
trying to figure it out. Yeah, and when it when
it comes to like just organizing for the increasing hostility
that that people are facing. Um. Has it has it

(19:01):
kind of pushed you to do anything more formal with
like the communications groups you have in terms of like
you know, I need I might need I'm going on
a walk at night, I need somebody to be able
to like call or something like that, I'm worried I'm
being followed, Like is there Has this been the kind
of thing that you've been like setting up more in
the way of precautions around so much because most of

(19:21):
us just live in the city and we're we're usually
pretty okay with that, um or we'll have you know,
friends nearby, you know, well nothing so um formal? Yeah? UM,
I mean, which is yeah, I think how most people
kind of do it. Um, what do you sort of

(19:42):
like watching out right now? Um? What is kind of
I don't know the thing you're you like, like, do
you have anything sort of on the horizon that you're
sort of looking at as you know, if this happens,
then I'm going to expect this to happen, and like
maybe we need to do this time for some kind

(20:03):
of more formal plans. It's hard to say. I'm I've
just been sort of just watching all of this horrible
stuff unfold. Everything happens so fast. I mean, you know,
like I said, I didn't think they're going to get
rid of Row, So it was just I just I
don't know what's coming next. Um, I'm just realizing it's
like it's so serious. It's actually getting to the point
where I'm just sort of seeing myself just trying to

(20:25):
make amends with people in my past, and it's like
you just you just take a step back and look
at yourself, like, oh wow, it really is getting bad
that it's just subconsciously I'm just thinking I should make
peace with some of these people. That's pretty bleak. Um.
I I'm struggling for like something more positive to say, um,

(20:49):
which I'm not sure is that is kind of the
right impulse, but it is sort of like we're all
kind of like grappling for because one of the problems
is that the scale of the threat, I think is
or the reality of the threat is very clear to people, right,
whether you're kind of a centrist dim and you just
see like, oh, ship, there's actually like a lot of
like militia type folks with guns talking about a civil

(21:11):
war and they almost took over Congress. This is a
real threat. Or whether you're you know, a transperson or um,
you know, an indigenous person or a migrant or something
somebody who's you know, here in the country in a
less than legal fashion and you're stay seeing like, oh,
they're specific threats against groups people like me, and they're
being more organized and more att actually being carried out. Um,

(21:32):
the reality of the threat is I think clear in
differing degrees to everybody. What's not clear is the the
scope in the shape of it. Right, So we know
there's a lot of like armed right wing assholes talking
about violent ship. We don't know is are they going
to get their shipped together right, like enough to do
something like unto what extent and in what areas right

(21:54):
that is? I think that you know, it's like the
enemy is strong and weak at the same time, of course,
but I think with us, really they really don't expect
any resistance. And I think that if you know, if
they start meeting resistance or're seeing us with that like, hey,
we have shame rightful to you, do you know? Yeah, well,
and I think that might you know, hold them off
a little bit at least. I think that's generally like

(22:17):
a if you're kind of like, I don't know, uh,
thinking about it from that from the perspective of like
and kind of a soulless, like, uh, top down view
of this is just a strategic thing, like what are
the what are the best ways to oppose this kind

(22:37):
of like right wing and surgean force. Well, like obviously
one of them is not to like hand them ground, right,
like don't don't don't don't do the thing that you
see a lot of people in the left doing, which is, oh,
they're coming for you know, trans people. Well that's not
you know, you there's been a lot of like very

(22:58):
ugly talk on certains of liberals and left of like well,
you know, if we defend these people, that's going to
be bad for us in an electoral sense, you know,
and like, this isn't something that gets you votes in
small exact exactly. Hillary Clinton just fucking came out and
said this, right, and it's Um. I I feel like
I think historically as a bad strategy. You know, if

(23:20):
you're just looking at what happened in history, obviously I
think it's immoral. Um. And I also, yeah, I think
that you are right in that the only reason that
they're this scary right now is because for the better
part of twenty years a little less than that, but
this really started to accelerate after Obama got elected. Every
time the far right has like pushed for something and

(23:42):
like made a stink or started making threats, people have
backed off right and even outside of you know, threats
specific communities, they were ship like the Mayac report, which
is in like the mid of Obama's term, the Homeland
Security put out a report warning about the growth of
the domestic militia movement, and they like made a big
they flipped out about it, and we're like, look, they're
saying that if you have a Gadsden flag, you're a

(24:04):
domestic terrorist and all this stuff, and the bomb backed
off and fired. All of the people in in the
federal government who are like watching this ship. Um, which
we can talk about the degree to which it's ever
reasonable to hope that the Feds are going to do
anything about this, but it's it's an example of this.
You get scared that opposing these people is going to
be bad for you politically, and so you make a

(24:26):
craven political decision to seed ground to them, and then
they get more dangerous. Right the Democrats have just been
doing lately, I mean least several decades. Really, it's such
like a mine field to talk about being armed and
being armed responsibly in the context of twenty one century
United States, because there's so much to juggle, including the

(24:48):
fact that we have basically nearly weekly uh, massacres and
stuff being committed by people who go and pick up
a gun from you know, a sporting goods store whatever. Um.
But fascists, yeah, and they're almost all fascists with the
history of violence towards women. Um. But it it is

(25:09):
like I think, when we are talking about what it is,
the actual importance on both an individual level of being
the importance on an individual level of people who are
in threatened communities being armed is that they cannot trust
the police or the state to take any actions to
protect them. And we see that because they get thrown

(25:29):
under the fucking bus every time somebody comes from after
her attack, that the place just sort of dismissed her.
They just sort of like, oh, you know, it was
just you know, they like stender to her, just like
just complete you know, dis interest, and yeah, and obviously
like this is this is the thing you don't have
to There's a bunch of numerous other stories of that. Um.

(25:54):
And then on the other end of things, you have
like most of these people. One of the things as
we have in our corners like scary as the insurgent, right,
is as most of them are fucking cowards, and when
they get opposed, when somebody shows up and throws down
usually they fucking It's one thing if it's like a
street fight, right, because people don't tend to get killed

(26:14):
in street fights, and you can make a lot of
money filming videos of it. When fucking when when people
start pulling straps, you know, like it gets really different,
really fucking quickly. Um. And in general, we've seen in Portland.
There have been a couple of these folks shot in
defensive shootings, and it's part of why that's kind of
stuff doesn't happen as much as it was in two

(26:36):
thousand eighteen. Um, you saw that ship happen in Denver
and it had an effect on the intensity of of
rallies there. When these people are it would be irresponsible
to say that it's like good when this happens, but
when they suffer consequences for trying to hurt people, it
scares some of them. Classically, Yeah, if you stand up

(26:59):
to them, they'll really yeah. Yeah, I don't know. I
this is just kind of turned into us sort of
talking about the ethics of community self defense. But I
think it's something I think it's important to talk about.
And I think it's also important to kind of reclaim
from this kind of masturbatory fantasy of becoming a minuteman

(27:22):
or whatever, and also this masturbatory fantasy of like this
is something this is a thing I do as like
part of my identity, um, as opposed to like this
is a thing that I do in order to defend
my ability to continue to be who I am. Right,
I'm not I'm not a radical. I just want to
be alive, you know, and if I'm not, if I

(27:43):
have to de transition, I will not want to be alive.
And that's that. Yeah, yeah, and yeah, Well did you
have anything else you wanted to get into where we're
talking to digestica? All right, Well, do you have anything
you wanted to plug any place you wanted to kind
of direct? Um? Well, there's yea all right, um, because

(28:03):
that's uh. If someone wanted to at home, wanted to
uh to do their own thing, the s R would
probably be great receptive. I'm sure there's other organizations. Um yeah,
there's John Brown, gun clubs and stuff, and other organizations
that don't have names. And on a personal level, I well,
I I make bondage collars and paddles. It's called bondage Robot.
It's any store. It's a Bondage hyphen robot dot com.

(28:27):
Excellent do do? Yeah? Um so bondage robot dot com.
Um check that out. You're also on Twitter? Do you
want to direct people? It's that's where I Yeah, Jessic
Lashnikov just figured out you'll say it, all right, that

(28:47):
is gonna be our episode for the day. Everybody uh,
stay safe and um, you know, think about the ethics
of community self defense. It's important. Oh boy, it could

(29:16):
happen here, and it seems to be happening more after
the last couple of days. This is a podcast about
how everything's looking pretty bad these days. Um, and in
particular right now we're we're here. We've got the whole team,
not the whole team. We've got the team here to

(29:37):
do a round table discussion about the thing, you know,
the thing, the thing that happened this last week that
is still the main thing happening, which is the FBI
rated former President Trump's house. Um, and now all of
his fans are declaring war on the FBI, which has
so far been let's all be honest here, pretty funny. Um.

(29:58):
But everybody's also a lot there's a lot of worry
going on. There's a lot the some folks of documented
if we'll talk about this, that like discussion online of
civil war and civil conflict has like exploded to new
heights over the last like four days or so. UM.
So yeah, we're gonna talk about all of that. But
but here's here's here's the team. We've got Garrison Davis,

(30:20):
James Stout and we've got Christopher Wong and of course me, Sylvie.
How's everybody doing today? I'm doing great, magnificently. M Yeah,
So where's where's where's everybody's new civil war counters at?
Who here feels we're like we're we're closer and who

(30:41):
he feels like we've gotten further away? Well, it's definitely
gone up. It's definitely gone up a little bit. Um. Yeah,
temperature is a little higher for sure. I mean we're
still not really around the averages around J six, but
it's it is, it's it's it's the highest it's been
around like the Biden administration. Um, yeah, I just made

(31:03):
some ceramic armor purchases. Is where my when when my
current civil war counter is at? Yes? I did just
get another set of rifle plates, got some side prates,
like you know, you know who had body armor is
the guy who single handedly attacked that FBI field office
in Ohio with a nail gun and then died in

(31:25):
a field. Okay, before we get into that, Ricky, she
can we what the funk is going on with that
guy who like lit himself on fire in his car
and rammed into the capital barrier and like I forgot
about that. Yeah, like that might adjust been a suicide
because we don't seem to have any clear evidence that

(31:47):
it was political. It's just it's just like a really weird,
like I don't know that that that's that's a kind
of thing that feels like if it was happening five
years ago, would have been like a major news story.
And when I was trying to find new stories about it,
so the first thing I did was, Okay, I googled
a DC car attack and I found a different DC
car attack. And then I go DC shooting and I

(32:08):
found a different DC shooting, and like if we combining
to do She's like, oh, this is We're living in
a great time. This isn't even the first, not even
the first person to drive their car into a Capitol
police barrier and then get out and start shooting, right like,
this is this is the United States. It's just something
we do here is incredible, approved marked the method. I mean,

(32:31):
it just it does kind of seem like it was
just a suicide, like that one was just that's what
the Capitol Police are saying. It was twenty nine years old,
didn't appear to be targeting any members of Congress fired
shots into the air before taking his own life. Um,
no officers shot their weapons. It was very it was
very quick. Mm hmm. Okay, yeah, it is interesting because

(32:56):
he is he is no Ricky Schiffer at that that
the DC stories seeks the Shipper stories, Yes, much more
funny having So this is obviously you have Donald Trump
get rated by the FBI, and then less than two
days later you have this guy show up outside of

(33:18):
an FBI field office, try to force his way through
or try to break through the bulletproof glass with a
nail gun and then winds up in an hour's long
standoff before being shot to death by the FBI. Which
is very funny because he so. I guess the thing
about this that's unsettling. Um, that that colleague of ours,
Jason Wilson pointed out on Twitter, and that I think

(33:39):
is worth noting, is that while this kind of thing
is is extremely American and very common. Um, the thing
that is kind of unsettling about shiff is that he's
not he's he's just he's he's straight up normal maga right,
Like he's not from any of the There's no evidence
that he was kind of like dipping into these other
subcultures that are more explicitly like terroristic in their Nameforceman

(34:01):
says that he may have ties to Proud Boys, but yeah,
well we'll see. He was at J six, you know,
so I'm sure. But I mean it's what it is,
is a a guy who is a normal Trump supporter
um u in the Yeah, I mean, I mean he

(34:24):
was ultra to the extent of what he did a
few days ago, and he was on true social and
like he he was. Yeah, but I feel like that's
not that a regular Like if you watch the most
recent Jordan Clipper video, there's people doing like like regular
asked people saying things that are way more absurdan than

(34:44):
what they were saying two years ago. Like the real
reality has become so detached for a certain sect of
like Trump lifers, and it's just impossible to pry them
away to the point where they ineffectually attack an FBI
office with an l gun, yeah, and die in a
shootout hours later. And and Shiffer, I mean, one of

(35:04):
the things that you might compare a little bit to
Shiffer is you know, there have been particularly during the
Trump years, there were a couple of attacks on ice
facilities UM that were kind of like acts of desperation
from people who were politically radicalized by the things happening UM,
but also felt like there was kind of no hope
of of taking any sort of useful action other than

(35:26):
being an individual going out and attacking ice. And I
think this is a lot more similar to that in
terms of the headspace of the guy that it's similar to,
for example, like the Nazis shooting up like an Al
Paso fucking Walmart because they stopped by genocide, Like this
is this is a guy who was like purely radicalized

(35:47):
by mainstream conservative media UM and and the president's social
media network. He was directly radicalized by President Trump, as
opposed to like finding Trump funny and then like winding
up and some some funked up places online that radicalize him.
And that is unsettling, even though it's again pretty funny
what happened to him. UM. I think both of those

(36:08):
things can be true, and I think we have to
take joy in the times when individual maga dudes use
nailguns to try and attack the entire FBI. Really, he
really thought that that you can use that that bulletproof
glass can't be broken by bullets, but you can use
nail guns to just really well. He thought that this
gets to what the communities that he was kind of radicalized.

(36:31):
And he thought that because there's a lot of like
normal gun YouTube videos where people will, like, because the
thing on like gun YouTube is people will take different
kinds of firearms or other weapons and different kinds of
materials and see how the to interact together, right, Like,
do what happens when you shoot a bullet at this?
How hard it is it to get through bulletproof glass?
What are ways? And like he certainly figured that out

(36:52):
because of because there are some specific videos people pointing
out that are likely the ones he watched, where like
there are ways that you can kind of damage and
take the you can gradually like make bulletproof glass fail
by using a nail Then there are ways in which
you can do that. It just doesn't happen to be
a way. It's something you can do while you are

(37:12):
standing in front of an FBI field office without getting
shot to death by the FBI. Before before he before
he died, he posted a few messages onto truth saying, well,
I thought I had a way and I didn't. If
you don't hear from me, It's true, I tried tacking

(37:32):
the FBI, and and it'll mean I was either taken
off the internet, the FBI got me, or they sent
to the regular cops. To be fair to this guy,
he did successfully manage to shoot a nail gun at
the FBI office, and the FBI weren't the ones who
killed him. Like he actually got away from that, which
is highway patrol, wasn't. Yeah. He also called for people

(37:53):
to prepare themselves for combat in the days after the
FBI search and that we must not tolerate this one
along other posts around people urging to kill FBI agents
on site and be ready to take down other active
enemies of the people and those who try to prevent
you from doing it. All all that kind of rhetoric.
And there's like, sorry, I like the on site thing,

(38:19):
Like we all have this kind of joke about like
people dressing like Feds, right, but it's very funny that
he thinks that maybe they're coming out like men in
black or something. Yeah, he's not going to be looking
for like like Feds and Patagonia, which which is what
they actually wear of. Yes, Yeah, if you see if

(38:40):
you see a Patagonia vest that is either a federal
agent or an Amazon executive, and either way you should
be frightened either way on site stand by just such
a generous interpretation that they take him off the internet
for the crime trying to shoot up an FBI office.

(39:02):
They did, James, he's not online, although like kind of
bluntly posting about the terroristic attack, you carry it out
on the FBI like as you are actively dying, I know,
as he's doing it. You have to say, the man
had the soul of a poster. He had the poster. Well.

(39:27):
I think it's also like it's an interesting because this
isn't like because like there's lots of like mass shooters
who sort of who kind of have poster brain, right,
but like this is like this isn't like like he's
he's not doing it for the post just has poster brain.
It is like this is sort of like it is
it is separate from someone doing a specific like memetic attack,

(39:47):
like an attack to entice memetic violence in the future.
This was just this was just his form of communication
as in his regular life. And it was and it
was the Ohio State troopers that pursued the vehicle yeah,
but I think that that at this point is something
that's kind of bleak about this right, which is like
the extent to which, like the extent to which the

(40:11):
way this kind of politics functions is by having like
you know, social media becomes your entire like social sphere
to the point where it's like, well, what are you
doing in your last moments is you're like running away
from the cops are about the shoot, was like, well
we're gonna post, Yeah, gotta gotta sit down at truth.
It's it's that scene from Love actually, but it's not

(40:33):
true anymore, right where they're like talking about what people
did at nine eleven when they were stuck in the
towers and they like quote loved ones and told them
they love them. Not this guy you have to do
on true social this this guy, this guy didn't have
people Ricky schefferd no, um. I mean, so there is

(40:53):
One of the things that people have been asking again
is in the wake of this massive surge in the
right wing people talking about how it's time to have
a civil war. And one of the things you didn't
see is like as soon as Trump got rated, fairly
like mainstream mega figures who tend to be more careful
in terms of their language than like the radicals talking
about like it's war. You know, now we're at war

(41:16):
with a cold civil war, and most of them, like
Stephen Crowder, we're doing it to sell T shirts. But
that that's still that is an escalation in danger, right
because with that the rhetoric that becomes common again, you're
gonna have more Ricky shippers. And I'm sure that was
part of like what was going on in this guy's
head is Okay, well, if we are in a cold
civil war, then I'm not going to just sit back

(41:37):
and let the FBI destroy the only hope for Western civilization.
I've got to fight back. Yeah, that's that's that's what happened.
And and if you're people are asking kind of like
what is about to happen? What is coming next? Um,
I don't think the thing to worry about is like,
you know, two sides taking up arms and suddenly fighting

(41:58):
a big civil war. That is that is not I
think the realistic threat model. But I also disagree with
the folks who are like, look, it's just gonna it's
it's not gonna be a problem. You're gonna get a
couple of like lunatics, carriyat attacks. But it's all going
to be fine. Now. What is happening is, Um, we
are normalizing the language of political violence and normalizing that
violence is the only resolution to our political problems. And

(42:21):
that has gotten normalized for roughly thirty percent of the
voting population of this country. UM. That's that's where they are,
and that is intensely dangerous. UM. It is not. I
don't I don't think, and I think partly you could.
There's it's not entirely bad stuff that's come out as
a result of Trump getting rated. Some of it is
is positive because we are seeing that a significant number

(42:45):
of like the media people are UM scared of that
to a degree, UM and peeling back. There's an interesting
thing that happened just today. The article came out that
apparently Trump reached out to Merrick Garland and asked him
how he could lower the temperature. UM. And it's it's interesting.
It's it's Garland is who for the listeners, who doesn't

(43:06):
do not keep up with the attorney general? So the
president of the FBI effectively, UM, that's not how politics works.
But let's just say that and make the people online
who pay attention to the way the government works, very angry.
But so basically what it seems like Trump is doing
is saying, hey, I recognize that, like things are bad

(43:27):
and scary, and the political temperature is like at a
boiling point. I want to try to use that as
leverage to work things out with the d o J.
So you could see this as a complement. You can
see it one as potentially Trump being just actually concerned
about the rhetoric because they're shooting more would not be
a good thing for him. You could see it as

(43:49):
Trump being kind of manipulative and trying to use like, oh, well,
this is now the fact that my supporters are scary
and carrying out terrorist attacks as a way in which
I can utilize leverage and like um exercise power over
the government, and and it's it's kind of a bargaining
chip that I have in my fight with the FBI.
Or you could even see it as potentially evidence that

(44:09):
he actually is scared of potential prosecution, because maybe this
is him kind of that maybe this is a show
of desperation. It's really unclear at the moment what it is.
I can tell you I've read a couple of right wing.
The New York Times is the one that broke this story,
and they're they're reporting on it is pretty straightforward and
mostly focuses on the uh like claims made by Trump's

(44:32):
legal team about like, you know, how they attempted to
comply with the requests to bring in classified information. But um,
the right wing media coverage of this has been really
different and has shown it as like Trump is just
sort of desperately, you know, trying to trying to be reasonable,
and the you know, the Justice Department, um just isn't
willing to talk to him. It isn't willing to work

(44:52):
with them at all. And that's kind of the way
it's being spun right now. There was that pro Trump
protest in d C, which got no one to show
up because it was either canceled or a whole bunch
of like forums or image boards or for blogs told
people not to go because they thought it could be
a trap. And I think stuff like that happening in

(45:14):
d C might still take a long time to recover
after j six, But stuff that's happening in other capitals
and other places and other now FBI offices is much
more concerning, and I think more localized shows of support
for President Trump or support for just whatever the current

(45:35):
thing is is probably gonna it's gonna continue going with
some image of militancy and right, whether that's people in
Hawaiian shirts showing up with guns outside the FBI office
you've seen in Arizona just in the last couple of days, yeah,
literally yesterday. As you record this, um, when it comes

(45:55):
to actual like, so, one of the reasons people have
been concerned about out civil war stuff is and this
is not unreasonable, is the fact that you have had
Republican officials, including some state level elected officials, particularly in Florida,
saying some pretty wild shit, um, including like a state

(46:17):
congressional candidate talking about, um, we need to basically kick
the FBI out of the entire state. Governor de Santis
needs to exercise uh like the basically saying that De
Santis needs to use Florida state law enforcement to stop
the FBI from investigating the former president and where that
to happen, that would be a big deal, that would

(46:39):
be um like, that is the kind of thing that
could lead to a massive civil conflict, right because vaguely
speaking stuff like that is what causes what started the
actual shooting in the last Civil War is state saying
we are not recognizing the authority of the federal government.
We're not doing a thing that the federal government tells
us we have to UM, and this is some thing

(47:00):
like there's a lot of support from MAGA folks for this.
Ben Collins Um, who does I think for NBC, was
posting the other day UM a lot of like different
Trump queue forum sort of posts where people are saying, hey,
don jr Um, we know you lurk on the site,
you should cross the rubicon and you know, somehow get

(47:21):
to santist to use Florida law enforcement to attack the FBI.
And there's some pretty gnarly stuff in those posts. Now,
I don't think that that means there's actually I haven't
seen evidence that there's much political world for that. And
in fact, one of the things people are saying is
that it looks like there's a decent chance to Santis
um cooperated and helped because just wants to be president,

(47:44):
because the Santis wants to be president, that he's actually
like on board with this because he wants to funk
over Trump. Ye. Now, that is scary, and that is
I think a more realistic threat model than the idea that, um,
the Santis might have the Florida State trooper start shooting
against the sis as funny as it maybe to watch
Florida law enforcement shoot at the FBI, that would be

(48:08):
pretty funny, don't pretty funny? I know, I know. Um,
I don't think the sand just will do that because
De Santis really wants to be president, um, which is
just another scary possibility, and that would want us to
be less funny to watch. Um. It's it's like, it's
not great overall. It's a it's too great, it's too

(48:29):
not great sets of choices here. Yeah. And I think
if we're looking at like with the actual kind of
mass civil threat is as opposed to De Santis declaring
a secession or something and the Trump States trying to
declare their independence. I think the actual threat is that
this could damage Trump enough that he doesn't run into Santis.

(48:53):
Maybe is and this is very unclear by the way
you look at the polling. It's extremely unclear as to
whether or not to Santis would do better than Trump
in a in a national election right now. Um, But
some of the polling does suggest that even as unpopular
as Biden is right now, um, he still has a
sizeable lead over Trump in any headaway because that people
fucking hate Donald Trump. Right if you are not one

(49:14):
of the people who was on the verge of attacking
an FBI building right now, you don't like him, even
if Biden has not done anything to help you, at
least in your mind, um, you know, than than And
so that that is kind of the bet that the
Santis is making. And I think what scares me most
about the rhetoric we're seeing right now, less than the
fact the idea that like Florida is going to declare

(49:36):
war on the fucking d C government, is the threat
that the rhetoric will stay at this heightened level and
you're already seeing. The thing that scares me more than
talk about like we should succeed, is talk about like, well,
when we're back in power, we're just going to send
the FBI after everybody that is that we considered it
to me, let's let's let's raid them all, you know.
And that's the thing that scares me. And that's the

(49:58):
thing that I think could actually lead to the high
It's loss of life. There's there's that part, and then obviously,
like in terms of like bringing it back to what
we to stuff we talked about on the show, a
de Santist like presidency would be extremely hostile to queer people,
way way, way more so than Trump um, and that
would be varying on some very dangerous and very unshaky ground.

(50:22):
And I think in the short term too, there's there's
another danger there, which is that like we see this
kind of militancy from the right like spreading more and
more into just the other campaigns that they're doing, and
so you know, we start getting attacks of gender clinics,
we start seeing more attacks and abortion clinics, and I
think that's as possible. And I think also like another

(50:42):
thing to be thinking about is looking what what happened
to where specifically around the anti lockdown stuff. You know,
you just we just had a whole bunch of armed
people like occupying capital buildings and it worked. It was
it was incredibly effective. Right, Like there is like the
the net result of that and the sort of like
resulting political campaign from it is that like the entire

(51:04):
Democratic Party has decided that it just doesn't like it's
not even gonna talk about COVID anymore. And like the
CDC is just like pretending it doesn't exist, and so
like like that that that strategy like that there's just
the things again like that stuff was the actual policies
like stuff like like like like vaccine mandates for teachers.
It's like a sixty four percent approve of reading, right,
Like the actual like everyone doesn't die from COVID policies

(51:27):
are popular. It's just that like this sort of you know,
getting getting getting getting a bunch of guys with guns
to go into a capital building and then yell about
it is enough of a political threat that that they
can they can force the Democrats to back down. And yeah,
there's I think there's I think there's an anzero chance
they start trying to do this other things I start
trying to do this with like hey, if you're gonna
have gender clinics in your state, we're going to start
occupying capitals again. And you could see the fact that

(51:49):
and one of the things that is unclear that makes
it hard to tell if so, it is unclear as
to whether or not the Biden White House knew that
this rate was happening, like and who knew. There are
definitely reports that some staffers found out about it on
fucking Twitter. I have to I have to assume that
the president was aware of it, and like it was

(52:11):
probably hint that he to some extent pushed for it. Um.
I would have trouble believing that he did not, because
it's the FBI rating a former president, Right, The FBI
has a lot of power. But I don't think that's
a thing that the Feds just do because right, like
I think, yeah, you have to have Garland on your side.
And if Garland is, you know, directing this to some extent,

(52:32):
and like I'm sure Biden is aware and that might be.
And the idea rector that Trump appointed, Yeah, yeah, Chris
ray Um, who sucks. They I mean, obviously they all suck.
Everybody involved in this sucks. There's a great post someone
made right after the raid that says, look, I want
to make it really clear, the FBI cannot do good things,
but they can do funny things. And this is extremely funny.

(52:54):
And I just like that specifically, some of the some
of the crimes around key being classified documents and this
specific FBI director are both things that either Trump signed
into into law or he appointed himself. Yeah, it is
very funny. I have been talking to people who have

(53:16):
had UH security clearances and understand some of that, and um,
like the ship that they got from his house and
those eleven boxes or whatever is the kind of thing
that like does not get fucked with and the way
that Trump would like fucked with it. Like it's I mean,
the fact that the Espionage Act is in play is

(53:37):
pretty shocking. Um as is the fact that brand Paul
is now calling for the Espionage Act to be dissolved,
which like based absolutely incredibly based Randall. I mean, it is, yeah,
it is, really, it is. Really it is a thing
to watch everyone go like, you know, a defund FBI,
abolish FBI just because power gets used against one person

(54:00):
one's time, and you're like, oh, this power only exists
to hurt minorities. Why is it being used to hurt
me or someone who I who I look up to.
There's a discourse on the left right now that is like,
should we be working with the right to defund the
FBI or whatever? And here's the thing, in my opinion, no,
you should not work with the right on any of
this stuff because they don't want to get rid of

(54:22):
the FBI. They want to take the weapon re empower
that the FBI has and they want to like deploy
it differently, but they still want that power to exist, right, Um,
So no, you can't work with them on that. However,
if they start actually trying to remove the spion Age Act,
then absolutely we should vote to remove the SPIO. That's
that's fine. Like just like if they actually vote to

(54:44):
reduce funding to federal law enforcement, that's fine. But that
doesn't mean, like you you act as if they're legitimately
fighting against any of this stuff. But um, when it
comes to so, I think that there's some potential evidence
just the fact that this rate happened that shows that
maybe there are folks in the Biden administration who understand

(55:06):
the stakes of the fight and are taking it seriously.
Because this is potential, I mean, and we'll see how
it shakes out. It's all still too early to know
if like anything more serious than his house being disrupted
is going to happen. But like, if they really throw
down legally against Trump in this way to try to
stop him from being able to hold office again and
to try to actually punish him for his abuses of power, um,

(55:29):
that's potentially a pretty smart move. If they have the stones, right,
That's a big question is like are they going to
back down because the right starts threatening to shoot things up? So,
like the scary thing potential here is that the right
wing starts howling about how they're going to do a
bunch of murders over this, and so the d o
J backs off and the right is like, well, what
if we just threatened to commit mass murder anytime something

(55:50):
we don't like happens, Maybe that's how we win politics. Now,
the positive with this is that, like the way fascists
succeed historically is because people who are not fascists are
not really willing to fight them, and so the fascists
go for it and everybody else backs off because they're
scared of having a fight. Right, So if this shows
that there's actually some teeth within the Democratic Party to

(56:12):
throw down, that's potentially a sign that like they've started
to recognize where the stakes are. Um, that shouldn't be
taken as too high of a possibility. I'm looking at
a post from David froome Um, famed centrist idiot, who's
talking about how he thinks of De Santis nomination represented
a much better outcome for the whole country than a

(56:34):
Trump return. Maybe you don't like his manner or record,
but he's a recognizably normal US politician. Oh no, if defeated,
he'd go peacefully. Like first off, great, incredible that that's
where we are right now that you're like, well, he's
a fine He would be a fine candidate for the
Republicans to run because he wouldn't try to overthrow the

(56:56):
country if he lost. Number one, not certain about that,
but number were two. Um, yikes. Again, if David fruit
is saying something, he's wrong, right, that is that is
the rule of the rule of David Frum. He's one
of those kind of like thinkers in American politics or
whatever he's saying is not right. Yeah, And like in
the Santis like right now, is like very openly like

(57:19):
getting his people in position to take control of the
Florida like to take control of Florida's like election procedures.
Like he has this guy assault attorney general. It's like
he's like very openly trying to do a what was
the guy's name, help who rigged the election in Georgia
a few years ago. Yeah, Yeah, he's like very obviously
prepping to do that and it's like, I'm sure it'll

(57:40):
be fine. He seems like a normal enough guy. Yeah, well, free,
I do want to just read before we close out.
Read a few things that how how the FBI and
how the DHS have been talking about the threats that
they've been seeing, because how the kind of institutions of
power talking about these same things is worth noting. Um. Yes,
they released a memos saying that there are threats quote

(58:04):
occurring primarily online and across multiple platforms, including social media sites,
web forms, video sharing platforms, and image boards. The FBI
and DHS have observed an increase and violent threats post
on social media against federal officials and facilities, including a
threat to places so called dirty bomb in front of
the FBI headquarters and issuing general calls for civil war

(58:27):
and armed rebellion. Um. So yeah, they said that they're
they're they're looking at their looking at threats through like
uh specifically and identifying proposed targets, tactics and weaponry. Um.
And you know it goes it goes on to talk
about the targeted for people in like the judicial system,

(58:49):
law enforcement, government officials associated with the Palm Beach search,
the targeting the federal judge who who who approved the
search warrant UM, and the FBI has also observed the
personal identifying information of possible targets of violence, such as
the home addresses and identification of family members, disseminated online

(59:10):
as additional targets. So in terms of like what like
the attack surfaces on these types of you know, image
boards and social media sites. Uh even UM. But before
before Schifferd did his attack, he posted when they come
for you kill them being American not a steer, And

(59:31):
I think other kind of things that could be at
play and things that are worrying me as stuff develops.
Not they're worrying me, not because they're convincing. They're worrying
me because they don't need to be convincing. UM. Deceptively
edited photos and videos have gone viral across social media
over the past week following the search UM. While guest

(59:52):
hosting Tucker Carlson tonight on Fox News, Brian Clemide showed
a fake image of the judge who signed off on
this on the search warrant, sitting beside uh Is Glyssie
and Maxwell. How do how do you say her name?
Jis Lane? Jis Lane? You know it's it's gilling gill

(01:00:15):
Gillen Backwell, so you know, showing this, you know, quote
unquote meme while not saying it's a meme, just showing
the picture. On Friday, a fake video reporting to show
another Fox host, Sean Hannity arguing with Florida Governor run
De Sante's over the definition of what an FBI rate is.
But that discussion never happened. This was spliced together footage
from years apart in different interview segments. Um hours after

(01:00:39):
the video went viral on Twitter, the platform did play
the manipulated media label, um uh and yeah, it's it's
it's this kind of stuff that is going to be,
you know, in terms of like you know, trying to prospect,
trying to like prospect what the next few years could be,
depending on who the who the president is, what types
of like media is gonna be popular, How this is

(01:00:59):
going to kind of impact the temperature politically and how
people take in information and how people are willing to
turn information into action in terms of taking out of violence.
How often these little small things are happening. Is it's
it's this, It's could be the start of a of
a thing that becomes a much bigger problem very soon. Yeah. Um,

(01:01:25):
I think maybe like in terms of the temperature rising,
we should discuss just really briefly these other sort of
um more or less baseless or sort of wildly off
based conspiracies around law enforcement that we've seen on the right,
like in the last few weeks. Um, we do we
want to talk about those? Do we want to talk
about those separately? I'm not sure what you're referring to.

(01:01:48):
So there's there's a couple of things that have happened
that have sent like the right pretty sort of crazy
in the last few weeks. One is the in the
inflation reduction. There's there's this part where they say they're
going to hire eighty seven thousand new I R S
agents right, yes, Yes, A large part of that is
replacing the massive amount of virus people who are about

(01:02:11):
to retire. UM, and the rest of it is getting
them back up to sort of where they were a
few years ago. It's not like they're going to actually
hid three pandemic levels. Yeah. Yeah, so there are like
seventy thousand I think half of them I supposed to
retire in the next five years. They want to hire
eighty seven thousand over the next ten years, so that
will get them up like twenty thirty two to to

(01:02:31):
where they were in nineteen or whatever. So it's not
what it's betrayed airs, but that combined I think with UM,
the A t F visiting a guy's house, which I
know Garrison and I saw memes about in him, this
crazy little conservative newspaper that were that we came across
when we're reporting on a story. UM and the A

(01:02:53):
t F reclassifying some think as the things that are
called A R pistols, which we probably don't need to
explain an the saying that they're a workaround for federal
firearms or is that fair. Yeah, there's a bunch of
different there's a bunch of kinds of guns that you're
not supposed to be allowed to have without a special
tax stamp, which is like a whole additional legal process

(01:03:14):
in order to basically make sure that poor people can't
own certain types of specific firearms. And there's workarounds where
things function the same way as those guns that are
normally illegal, but they aren't technically that in the FBI
or not in the A t F is about to
crack down on some of that um and so yeah, yeah,

(01:03:34):
at the sort of combination of these things has led
a lot of figures on the right. You'll see it
in that thread. I think Rubbert shared it and I
shared it of like these dozens of tiktoks talking about
civil war that came out the day after Trump with raided.
They talk a lot about I R S raids and
about people coming for their for their guns and their
short barrowed rifles specifically, which I think is the combination

(01:03:57):
of these things leading to this sort of again like
it's if you misunderstand each of those three things completely,
you get to the conclusion that the the I R
S has hired eighty seven thousand arms shock troops and
they're coming after a R pistol, which it's not true,
but that narrative has definitely been sort of spread around.

(01:04:19):
And again it's not exactly decreasing the temperature, no, I
mean just I think today Trump was on Fox News
Digital and he said, people are so angry at what's
taking place. Whatever we can do to help, because the
temperature has to be brought down in the country. If
it isn't, terrible, things are going to happen. The people

(01:04:41):
of this the people of this country are not going
to stand for another scam. So huh. I wonder what
he meant by that. Oh boy boy, Yeah, I guess
like the others thing that I mean we kind of

(01:05:01):
touched on. But I think it is important to understand
is the extent to which like Trump is kind of
a singular figure in his ability to actually get a
bunch of people to do a thing. And like I
think that, like that that power I think is reduced sense,
you know, I'm like he's like he's not president anymore, right,
because it's reduced since j six, Yeah, since six, But like,

(01:05:22):
you know, he still has the ability to mobilize, like
ability to mobilize parts of the right that like you're
sort of like weird neo Nazi guy like can't and
he like you know, and like he he seems to
be aware of this, and he seems to be aware that,
like you know, he can use he uses as a
bargaining chip or uses to sort of like threaten people.

(01:05:44):
But yeah, like that that's a real thing. Like it
is a real thing that there's an incredibly large part
of the country who like if Donald Trump told them
to like go die for him a normity beach or
something like they probably would. Yeah. Yeah. The FBI and
Dachs in their moment, also warrant that midterm elections in
November could be seen as an additional flashpoint in which

(01:06:07):
will continue to escalate threats against perceived ideological opponents, including
federal lawenforce and personnel. So stay tuned. Yeah, it should
if people I haven't realized. By the way, it was
bright Bot who named the FBI agents obtained a warrant.
Ye didn't bother to google what their jobs were. They

(01:06:29):
were like what is what is the sacronym stand for?
No one knows. It's very secret pop journalism there. Yeah,
well good, we seem to be in a nice place
then mm hmm. It's going well yeah yeah, start organizing now.
The best time to start this was yesterday. The second

(01:06:49):
best time is now, the third best time is tomorrow.
And don't don't let them take how funny this is
as well? There is an a lessons here, which is
that like, there is an enormous amount you can get
away with politically as long as it's funny. And like, frankly,
we we we have we have not been utilizing that
towards the potential the left end, like anarchists in general,

(01:07:12):
have forgotten how to do good funny ship for the
past ten years, and we have to bring it back. Yeah,
it is. This is We've been given a precious gift
and how funny this is. And we have a couple
of responsibilities, and one of them, of course, is to
organize in order to be prepared to counter increasing like

(01:07:33):
attempts to impose an authoritarian violence on us. But another
thing that it is response that we have a responsibility
to do is laugh at how funny this is and
make sure that other people don't forget how funny this is.
So go out into the world and remind somebody that
a fucking trump nerd tried to take on the FBI

(01:07:54):
with a nail gun in an a R fifteen and
died in a fucking field in Ohio. Because that's pretty funny.
It's pretty funny. Welcome, that's what could happen here. I'm

(01:08:21):
Andrew of the YouTube channel Andreism, and I'm here with
Oh it's me, it's Christopher. Yeah, we're doing what we're
doing another episode of Bead and Andrew. We've sees the
pod once again. It is too early in the morning
for anyone else to be here, which gives us ultimate power.

(01:08:44):
But you early in the morning, by the way, it's
it's eleven Pacific time. But yeah, there's there. There is
no prayer of anyone else being around for this. So
we are now in control here. Ha ha ha. Yes,
we good. We're We're doing We're We're doing the Maniacal Lives.
We're doing the podcast. We're doing the podcast. Welcome, Welcome.

(01:09:10):
We want to finish the story, the soldiers story that
is Quasi Bo Lagoon's life and legacy. UM. When we
last left off as part of the New York's City
Panther twenty one trials, Kuasi was put in jail um.
At the same time, he was also developing his political

(01:09:33):
UM identity in a way and recognizing some of the
issues he was having with the Black Panther Party and
particularly after the East Coast West Coast split that I
could Quasi as we as we covered last time, was
born Donald Reams, but took on the identity of Quasi

(01:09:55):
Po Lagoon due to his recognition of his African nous
of himself Um through his experience in the army. Through
his experience in London, connecting with the black diaspora and
through his connections with the Uruba Temple and so Blagoon
alongside that that personal recognition and political recognition of his

(01:10:16):
antitheater in politics, also comes to see himself as someone
who is at war with the state, and as such,
once in jail, he sees himself as a political prisoner,
as a prisoner of war. While in prison, the Panther
twenty one were incarcerated in a variety of jails in

(01:10:39):
different boroughs of New York City, but by Lagoon, Blumon, Busheker,
and another defendant, Kinshasa, they were all incarcerated the Queen's
Housed attention and they organize an uprising that took seven hostages,
including a captain, five correctional officers, and a black cook,

(01:11:00):
pulling them from October one to fifth nine. The slogan
of the multi ethnic takeover, which by the way, it's
pretty unheard of in prisons where black, Latino and white
inmates come together. Um their slogan was all power to
the people, free all oppressed people, and so their primary

(01:11:21):
demand was for speedier trials, and in this process Balgoon,
again developing his antithrogarian politics solely you know, crewing towards
what he would come to define himself as. Decided not
to play a vanguard rule in this decision making process
in this uprising, even before he formally declared his commitment

(01:11:48):
to anti authoritarian politics, his primary concern was consensus for
all inmates and decision making, including access to food being
brought from the outside, and so that sort of consensus
process also helped build his identity. The prisoners, they formed
committees to coordinate their uprisings and they agreed to release
two hostages, the black cook and one of the prison

(01:12:10):
guards as a sign of good faith. Eventually they had
to release all of the hostages, and they also suffered
abuse and charges from the uprising. It was sort of
a failure, but of course he didn't see that way.
While he was disappointed by the outcome, he believed that
the power the inmates felt by holding the state to
be for that you know, limited moment was a valuable experience.

(01:12:33):
It was a learning experience as an organizing So the
uprising as growing pains to those who believe that oppressed
people would rise up and seek justice, because we can
see that even with losses their lessons to be learned.
And this isn't unique to just this one moment in history.
In fact, we can apply it to more recent events,

(01:12:55):
such as with the George Floyd uprising. It's easy to
be nihilistic. Nihilistic probably isn't best used to say cynical
and say that, oh, well, the uprisings Ophelia, millions of
people got up and protested and nothing came out. It's
of it, really, And yet that, in combination with the

(01:13:16):
coronavirus pandemic, brought people together two establish programs of mutual aid,
to get involved in organizations in their local situation, to
connect with people, to radicalize themselves and radicalize others. It
was not a loss, you know. Yeah, I mean, I

(01:13:38):
think there's there's an extent to which, even if it's
extremely hard to tell in the moment, there's there's this
way in which like participating something like that just sort
of permanently changes you. And and main thing I think
also in the sort of context of the prison uprisings,
right like this is like this is by no means
like the last prison of pricing that's going to happen

(01:14:01):
in this era. And so I think, like I don't know,
it seems like one of those moments where it's like
in the moment, it's like, oh, we failed. Things look bad,
but like when in this sort of like broader historical sweep,
it's like, no, this was like an early uprising in
a period that is going to be sort of like
an early yeah. Yeah, And I think that's something that

(01:14:25):
can be really hard to like, like, especially in the moment.
It can be really hard to sort of like see
that because it's really easy to sort of like look
narrowly at what you're one struggle is doing and then
you know, but yeah, if you have this sort of
like you know, if if you have the ability to

(01:14:45):
sort of like see back through history, you can watch
how stuff like this just sort of like has this
massive effect on consciousness in a way that the people
in it even have a lot of a hard time seeing. Yeah.
So that's why, like I'm emphasizing the first part, it's
really important to develop this perspective and to study our history,

(01:15:09):
you know, a radical history, so we could learn, um,
we could both you know, put things into focus into
the perspective and also look at the specifics of all
things played out. So after Bagoon's experience in the Panther
Party and the oppression of the New York Chapter, he
realized that the party was being turned away from its

(01:15:31):
grassroots organizing of the black masses and the issues that
affect the most, the daily survival, the housing, the education,
police abuse. You realize the state was using it's in
coostural system as a tactic by rounding up these organizers,
by infiltrating the party, by charging people these high bills

(01:15:52):
and such. It turned the party focus away from liberation
to fundraies and for legal defense. And so he realized
he could not continue the fight, could not continue on
this front, that he needed to survive and contribute underground
to build a Black liberation army as a clandestine freedom fighter.

(01:16:16):
As a miracle from the previous episode, Balgoon was severed
from the case of thirteen of those who have been
arrested originally to face charges in New Jersey, and after
the acquittal of most of his comrades, Balagun Queen pleaded
guilty to the charge that he, an unidentified person, did
attempt to shoot police officers, making him the only one
of the twenty one original defendants to be convicted However,

(01:16:40):
in September twelve nine three, Balagon would escape from the
New Jersey's Railway prison, shortly after his conviction for arm
robbery in New Jersey. And then eight months after his escape,
on May fifth, he was again captured trying to assist
a fellow Panther Party member and defend done Richard Harris

(01:17:01):
from escaping custody. They were both apprehended after being wounded
in a gun battle with correctional and police officers. And
so what I find interesting about that he risked being
recaptured so he could free Harris. And that's solidarity right there.
He was so willing to sacrifice himself to help his comrades.

(01:17:22):
That's admirable levels of commitment. And even though he was
imprisoned and was disillusion with the Panther Party and that
discourages involvement or commitment to revolution. While incostrate, he began
to explore anarchist politics. He received and studied literature from

(01:17:44):
solidarity groups like the Anarchist Black Cross, which is an
anti authority and organization that provides material and legal supports
political prisoners. And I and I was reading this, I
recognized that name Anarchist Black Cross the ABC. I know
that because they also helped Lorenz combo Van to be
released from jail. They all provided him materials when he

(01:18:06):
was incarcerated, and so kudos to them for that, you know,
helping to connect these people and connect these ideas. Yeah.
And then in the Interos Black Cross, if I'm remembering
my history right, like has a really really long history
of doing this, going back to like I mean, I

(01:18:28):
I know, I know they were negotiating like the releases
of like political prisoners in the Bolsheviks went down. I
didn't know they went that about that fount Yeah, I'm
pretty sure. Yeah, if I'm if I'm remembering, And that
just goes to show you might not see yourself as
doing anything that meaningful. Well, I'm just sending books to prisoners.

(01:18:50):
In reality, your building foundations, you and you know, the
people who you influence can go on to influence so
many more, so many others. So anarchism ended up providing
Balagoon with a great analytical lens to star up his

(01:19:12):
critique of his experiences in the Panther Party. When he
looked at you know the works of like Emma Goldman
and others and apply them to the Black liberations struggle.
He began to ask questions about how his comrades to
going about revolution. How by allowing these hierarchies to develop
in their organizations, they weakened their resolve in their fights

(01:19:33):
and capacity. It's like, as he says, um the cauldrire
accepted their command regardless of what their intellect had or
had not made clear to them. The true democratic process,
which they were willing to die for for the sake
of their children, they would not claim for themselves. And

(01:19:53):
so what Balagud wanted was a democratic process that would
be established from today, not that you would have a
sitting system now and then you would wait until after
the revolution to set up a different system. It's like
that whole connection of means and ends that you know
anarchists keep going on about. He realized that the neediest
democratic process to unleash the revolutionary potentially masses and not

(01:20:17):
make them pray to new oppressors. The only way to
make a dictatorship of the proletariat is to elevate everyone
to defleet all the advantages of power, and already an
anarchist revolution has that on this agenda, one of his

(01:20:37):
inspirations was a fellow clandestine freedom fighter, that being Italian
anarchists Eric Mala Testa, who exhorted that revolutionary struggle consists
more of deeds than roods. You had a lot of
different political figures and radical anarchists, but especially those involved

(01:20:59):
in insurrection, especially those like Errico Manchester, who's also one
of my personal favorites. When reading that, I found that
to be a fun connection. Yeah he's so cool. Yeah, yeah,
he really is. I see why why Zoe Baker likes
him so much. Yeah. Another influence of his first Spanish revolutionary,

(01:21:19):
Jose Rutimage, organized the anarchist grilling movement Los Gesterros the
avenger Once like their names Cereus, we're thought to be
involved in political assassinations against you know, repression and driller
raids on the military forces of the Spanish dictatorship. So

(01:21:40):
people like Italian exiles Severan Severino di Giovanni and other
anarchists like Sacco and Vincenti So Di Giovanni was known
for his campaign of bombing as armed propaganda and soldarity
with executed anarchists Sacco and Vancetti, and Giovanni engaged in

(01:22:00):
ex appropriation of capitalist institutions, as a means of supporting
the revolutionary movement and keep that point point in mind
expropriation of capitalist institutions. To quote Mickey most, it's a surprise,
too little help us later, all right. Another influence was,
of course, I'm a Goldman, who was another advocate of

(01:22:21):
revolutionary armed struggle, who supported her comrade Alexander Berkman's assassinated
wealthy industrialist who believed in free love, which really resonated
with Ballagoon. Because I'm not sure if I mentioned it
in the previous part or not, but Ballagoon was an
openly bisexual man in the nineteen seventies, nineteen sixties and

(01:22:45):
nineteen seventies, and so that equipment of free love that
Emma Goldman had really resonates with him. Balagun also recognized
and continues to recognize, that black people in the United
States were an into colony of the US, and so
the Black liberation struggled as a national liberation movement, so
began to identify with the New African independence movement. The

(01:23:09):
Provisional Government of the Republic of New Africa the PGRNA,
was founded in nineteen sixty eight March nineteen sixty eight
at a conference of five hundred Black nationalists who declared
that independence from the US and demanded five states in
the Deep South South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana
as reparations for the enslavement and racial oppression of black people.

(01:23:34):
New Africa was designated the name of this new free nation,
and at this time Balagun began to ideologically unite the
political objective of the PGRNA for Independence um and and
took on New African as his national identity. As he says,

(01:24:00):
the US has no right to confine in New African
people to read lined reservations, and we have a right
to live on our own terms, on our common land,
and to govern ourselves free of occupational forces such as
the police, national Guard or gis that have invaded our
colonies from time to time. We have a right to
control our own economy, print our own money, trade and

(01:24:23):
other nations trade with other nations. We have a right
to control our education institutions and systems where children will
not be indoctrinated by aliens to suffer the destructive designs
of the US government. His position for black self determination
was also combined with an anti capitalist perspective, the New
Africans would enter workforce within our excluded by design, and

(01:24:46):
we have the wages are not controlled by the ruling
class and their wealth. And so I think this distinct
self expression is very important because it was a key
aspect of his political journey and how he saw himself.
UM the AFROC futurest Abolitionists to the Americas, which is
a black an archaic radical collective based in the US.

(01:25:08):
UM they coined the term I believe Black an archaic
radical in order to group and account for the different
an archaic identity is that that black people have have
identified us. So you have Anakata's, you have Black anarchists,

(01:25:29):
you have New African anarchists, and then people who just
go by bars and so at this time I think
UM as a New African anarchist. Blaguna was definitely ideologically
set apart from the black Marxist Leninists and revolutionary nationalists
of the time, who wants to see state power for

(01:25:51):
the from the white power structure of the US. And
he still desired, you know, a land for black people
to achieve self determination. Even as an anarchist, you wanted
a space for black people to build a society based
on antithoritarianism and freedom. I believe he was really unique
at that time and not for God. Like other bars.

(01:26:14):
He also recognized the importance of national liberation. Like Ashanti Alliston,
he began to recruit soldiers for the Black Liberation Army
and converts of anti authoritarian a New African politics. While
in Trenton State Prison and New Jersey, he formed a
political study group with Black Liberation Army members and Black

(01:26:37):
Panther Party members and started to shift their perspectives on
antithithoritarian politics and so that political education behind bars became
the main vehicle of recruitment into the b l A.
Another member of the b l A was a jury

(01:26:59):
until another fairly, I would say somewhat obscure. We're still
like conic black anarchists. And when he was providing his
testimony concerning Blagoon's influence and his transition from Marxist Leninism
to anti authoritarian thinking, he said, I became disillusioned with

(01:27:21):
Marxism and became an anarchist thanks to Quasi bo Lagoon.
Due to the inactiveness and ineffectiveness is Marxist Leninism in
community in our communities along with the repressive bureaucracy that
came with it. People are not going to commit themselves
to a life and death struggle just because of grand
ideas someone might have fluts around their heads. A few
people commit themselves to a struggle if they can see

(01:27:44):
progress being made, similar to the progress of anarchist collectors
in Spain during the era of the Fascists. Like his
teacher and comrade Jor Lutalo identified himself as a New
African anarchist. Prison of war, Balagon would escape again from
Railway State Prison, New Jersey and Maine and rejoined a

(01:28:08):
clandestine network of the l A Soldiers in alliance with
white radicals in solarities of Black Liberation movement. This ideologically
diverse network of insurgent militants were known as the revolution
Armed Task Force or r A t F. And so
it's a strategic alliance under leadership of the Black Liberation

(01:28:29):
Army that consists of people of all sorts of different identities.
You had Muslims and revolutionary nationalists and anti imperialists and communists,
and b. Lagoon was one of the few, if not
the only, anarchists in this whole organization and so even
though he was critical of Marxism and nationalism, he decided

(01:28:49):
to join the comrades he loved and trusted in a
common front against white supremacy, capitalism and imperialism. Me personally, um,
and I have a video of my YouTube channel about it.
I am not a left unity advocate, never have been. However,
like I said in the video, um, you know there's

(01:29:13):
still solidarity to be had on some topics, and sidness
use and an important aspect, an important component of solidarity.
His trust and to Bilagon clearly had trust in these
comrades in order to work with them. You know, it
can't just be this broad sweeping thing and say, oh,
well's unity solidarity, unity solidarity, and there's nothing to back

(01:29:34):
it up. There's new sort of connections or bonds to
show for it. And of course he did have you know,
political friction while in the R T R A T
F his comrades. He saw his commerades is a bit rigid,
a bit too rigid in their views. While he considered
himself a free spirit and his comrades, despite the ideological

(01:29:55):
differences and its sexual orientation, still respected him because of
his commitment revolutionary struggle, because his history of sacrifices, and
so the Black Liberation Army and the r A t
F continue to carry out the condis signed work of
armed propaganda, of expropriations of resources for capitalists, financial institutions

(01:30:17):
for assisting comrades, and escape and from incarceration. At this time,
there was an increase in white supremacist parlam military activity,
including the goo klux Klan, including the KKK, and so
the r A t F as an alliance helped to
the whites in that organization, helped to gather intelligence on

(01:30:40):
these right wing white terms its activities and their connections
with the U. S. Military. While they also engaged in
expropriations to obtain resources, they could build a capacity to
resist the white supremacist groups because these vold acts that
the KKK and these other riping groups are doing in
the late Land in seventies in early nineties, they were

(01:31:02):
murdering black children, black youth in Atlanta, black women in
Boston and an Alabama, and so they were committed and
organized and doing something about it. Militant commit month to
doing something about it. The r t F also um
we're involved with the escape of a Stata Shaker one

(01:31:24):
of the most iconic of the Panthers and also the
attempted Brings expropriation in Nyack, New York. Shaker was wounded
and paralyzed from a shootout that they had with the
New Jersey State Troopers and had to escape the scene,
and as a someone considered the soul of the b

(01:31:48):
l A by the FBI, her capture was seen as
a very significant event, and even though she never fired
a gun, even though she was paralyzed, she was convicted
for the murder of two state troopers who were killed
in the shootout, and so she was sentenced to life

(01:32:08):
plus sixty five years. However, odinga Blagoon and two White
Allies as a armed group facility the escape of Shaker
from Clinton Correctional Institution Wooman in New Jersey on November two,
n and I believe she's still in Cuba to this day.

(01:32:35):
At the same time, the Vactorbriation Army was also trying
to expropriate one point six a million dollars from a
Brinx armed truck in New York City in October, and
in the exchange of fire that resulted from that attempt,
one Brings security and two police officers were killed and

(01:32:56):
three white radicals and one black man we're also captured eventually,
although he was laying loo in New York City in
the Manhattan apartment, the Joint Terrorist Task Force did eventually
apprehend Baldagoon and so once again he found himself in prison.

(01:33:18):
But they did managed to successfully expropriate some fronts from
financial institutions going back to nine and those funds that
they were able to take were usually as to support
the development of an underground infrastructure, to support families to
political prisoners, to support political activities institutions for the Black

(01:33:40):
liberation movement and general freedom struggles on the African continent,
that is solidarity. After his capture as a New African
anarchist prisoner of war for the the Good Time who
as he spoke out to the movement for the first
time again identify himself as a New African anarchist, he

(01:34:04):
spoke to the public about his politics and I wanted
to make his attentions clear. He acted as his own
attorney in the Rockland County trial where he was charged
with the armed robbery and the murders of the brins
Garden police officers. And so you want to make an
opening statement, and so it went as follows, I am
a prisoner of war. I retract the crap about me

(01:34:27):
being a defendant, and I don't recognize legitimacy of this court.
The term defendant applies to someone involved in a criminal matter.
It is clear that I've been a part of the
Black liberation movement all of my adult life, and I've
been involved in a war against the American imperialist You know,
it's a free New African people from its yoke. He
wanted it acknowledged that his armed actions are politically motivated

(01:34:50):
to win national liberation, to eliminate capitalism, imperialism and ultimately
authoritarian forms of government. And of course he was sentenced
to life imprisonments. Yeah. He continued to speak to New
African and Black liberation forces and two anarchists gathering through
public skate statements. He advocated continuously for the building of

(01:35:13):
an insurgent movement of building over tournaments communities at a
hall and rally for imprison New African freedom writers. The
statement was read that we must build a revolutionary political
platform and a universal network of survival programs. In another statement,
he said, where we live and work, we must organize
on the ground level the landlords once we contested through

(01:35:35):
round strikes, and rather than develop strategies to pay rent,
we should develop strategies to take the buildings, set up
communes and abandoned buildings to vacant lots into gardens. When
our children grow out of clothes, we should have places
we can take them, clearly marked anarchists clothing exchanges. We
must learn construction and waste take back our lives. He
wanted to challenge people to move from a theory into practice,

(01:35:59):
to define in anarchy in the real will, to show
the masses models of delivering water oppressors and of building
a better way of life. Unfortunately, although he struggled long
in prison and continuously advocated for the Black liberation movement
for the anarchist movement, he died in prison on December

(01:36:22):
thwote due to complications related to AIDS. So, although he's
not a main extreme discourse, he's still recognized and respected
in some blaque New African anarchists and queer anarchist spaces
um because of his efforts in that time, because of

(01:36:44):
his self identity in that time. I spoke about him
briefly in my video and Black anarchism. The research five
videos how it is covered in the first place. And
I was surprised that he wasn't spoken about so much,
considering his influence and his efforts and his She was

(01:37:05):
almost like, and I hate to do this to history,
to do this kind of great man things history. But
the fan was like a main character. Yeah, Like he
was there for the New York Plant, the twenty one Trials,
he was like dropping rats and Congress. He was facility
in the escape of a Sata sacre for crying out loud.

(01:37:27):
He did so much in his short boost of freedom. Um,
and I can't help but respect that he stood out
most places he went, and I can't help but admire that.
In two thousand five, the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, which

(01:37:49):
is a new African activist organization, declared its annual Black
Orcus Celebration dedicated to Quasi par Lagoon, and they in
that celebration they also iighlighted the needful awareness of the
AIDS virus and Africa and among the African aspiral. A
couple of radical hip hop artists, such as Dead Prayers
Inside Malik, have also mentioned bo Lagoon's name, but his

(01:38:12):
name is still not commonly used enough, not as much
as other Black revolutionaries like Hue and Shaker and Mutulu Shaker.
Anarchist collectives have also recognized him, have republished his works
um have you know, but his his his writings and

(01:38:35):
newsletters and his trial statements and tributes, and yet he's
still not well recognized. The Quebec collective Solarity is you
have collected works of Lagoon's trial statements, essays, poetry and
acknowledgements from Comrades titled A Soldier's Story, which you can

(01:38:58):
find on the Anarchist Library, And in fact, that soldiers
story is where I drew from for uh the script
for this two part podcast episode. I think that his

(01:39:21):
efforts and not even to mention his actual identity, being
a vehicle to challenge homophobia within the broader black liberation movement,
because he showed himself to be committed to the cause
and he exposed people who may not have otherwise been
exposed to it, you know, the validity and the humanity

(01:39:41):
in Aquare Comrades. He will forever remain remembered and saluted
by certain revolutionary nationalists around cilanarchists and qualiberation forces. He
will forever be seen to me as an iconic roun
and I don't only who hope that this podcast helps
his legacy to live on and encourages and motivates and

(01:40:08):
strengthens the resolve of people too, Wogan and suppressed people
to build a revolutionary program to challenge capitalism, to challenge racism,
wherever they find themselves the master their circumstances. And that's
about it. This has been a soldier's story, the life
and legacy of Quasi Ba Lagoon. I'm your guest toes

(01:40:32):
for this episode. If it could happen here Andrew of
the YouTube channel Andreism. You can find your on YouTube
dot com slash Andurism, on theatre dot com Slash sat
Drew and onter com slash Underscore. Same true. Yeah, this
this has been It can happen here. You can find
us that happened here, pot on Twitter, Instagram, there's other

(01:40:54):
close and stuff you can find that too. And yeah,
I dedicate your life to over throwing capitalism and imperialism.
Well power to all the people. It's it's it's it

(01:41:20):
could happen here the podcast. The thing that's happening here
is that once again, like a bunch of random American
politicians are going in Taiwan, and this time they didn't
announced they were going, apparently because announcing they were going
last time went great. So yeah, this is this is,
this is what we're talking about today, and with with

(01:41:42):
me is James. Hello, James, how you How you doing
all right? I'm wonderful and I'm splendid. Oh okay, So
we have to talk about Taiwan. And I think like
people who've listened to me on this show for a
while know that, like, so like, okay, a lot of
my family some Taiwan I don't like talking about Taiwan

(01:42:03):
very much. Um I I think I've talked about Taiwanese
politics and detail exactly once on this show when I
was forced to for the Iguana Woods shooting, and like,
I would really prefer not to, Like, it's not something
I particularly enjoy talking about, which is you know, a
big part about what we haven't, But unfortunately I can't
continue not to talk about it because the American left,

(01:42:23):
and and this is true of not just the American institutes,
the British sloft, this is true of the left kind
of writ large is being systematically lied to about Taiwan
by a group of incredibly malicious nationalists who are attempting
to rally support for their like incredibly violent and bizarre
imperial delusions, and unfortunately it's working. So I'm and instead

(01:42:44):
of that, I'm going to give what I'm gonna call
Taiwan one oh one, and I'm calling it tai Wan
one on one, even though this is going to be
like an hour long, because this is as far as
I could cut this whole thing down, Like, Taiwanese politics
is genuinely complicated, as part of the reason I don't
like talking about at it and at people who are
giving you simple answers to what's happening in Taiwan are
lying to you. This is the best I can do,

(01:43:05):
and it this is this is like the length of
a Battels episode. So nice, I'm excited. Yeah, So well,
welcome to tai Won one on one. Um. The beginning
of Tie one one on one is that Taiwan is
a series of islands off the coast of China. And yes,
there are a bunch of islands. Nobody talks about this
like because again, the people who talk about Taiwan like

(01:43:27):
couldn't find their own ass on a map, so you know,
there there, there, there's a bunch of islands. There's one
big one that there's several like a lot of smaller ones. Um. Now,
one of the sort of fundamental principles of not just
being on the left, but like being a decent person
is self determination. And you know, self determination on on

(01:43:47):
a very basic level is that people have the right
to choose how they want to live, and in a
more immediate political context, they have the right to choose
how they want to organize their governments and who they
do and don't want to be ruled by. So okay, well,
what are the actual numbers in Taiwan? Say, well, okay,
we we we have recent pulling from the National Chung

(01:44:08):
Chi University's elect Election Studies Center which says that a
grand total of six point six percent of Taiwan's population
wants unification with China. The overwhelming majority of people in
Taiwan eight want to just maintain the status quo, which, yeah,
I guess I said. So the status quo right now

(01:44:30):
is that like China claims that it is the sole
legitimate government of Taiwan. UM, Taiwan like technically legally claims
that they are the sole legitimate government China. Nobody actually
believes that anymore. Like, if if you scoured the entirety

(01:44:50):
of Taiwan, you might find six dudes in a bunker
who still believe that, like they're the real government of Tchina. Like,
the actual status quo is that Taiwan is basically de
fact is like this, Taiwan is de factoway self governing
policy that has elections and stuff, And yeah, everyone gets
incredibly mad about this. Most people want to preserve the

(01:45:12):
status quo. Um inside of the people who want to
maintain the status quo, you have, you know, it's like
like basically for for three different options. Basically, so there's
very similar numbers of people who either want to like
decide the formal status of Taiwan, like is an independent
country as a part of China that if you want
to kick it down the road. Some of them want

(01:45:34):
to keep the status quo indefinitely, and some of them
want to move towards full independence like later on. But
overwhelmingly what people want in Taiwan is for nothing to happen. Now,
if this were a saying in rational world, that would
be the end of the episode, right, Taiwan doesn't want
to be ruled by China, Like okay, well that's okay,
that's the right, they have the right self determination. That's it,
case closed, end of story. It literally doesn't matter what

(01:45:57):
the Chinese government thinks about whether it's should control Taiwan
because again, Taiwan doesn't want to be rolled by China.
And because a British person, I maybe I maybe you
ought to like not contribute further to that discussion. Yeah,
you know, I mean, and I mean, you know, there's
there's there's this whole thing that exists right where when
when you when you force your role on another population,

(01:46:18):
it is called imperialism considered to be bad and anyway
and everything is it's still bad even if everyone inside
the imperial power thinks that it's good. Like if every
person in the US suddenly decided tomorrow but they wanted
to invade Cuba, like, it wouldn't make it morally right
because people in Cuba don't want to people by the US,
which we've done before. But it's true. Yeah, this is

(01:46:39):
partially why I picked Cuba as example, because we really
we did this, We we really did like kill an
enormous number of people trying did yeah, based on both
ship that people made up and portrayed as news, that
was the best speculation. Yeah. But you know, as we
can tell by the fact that the U. S Has
invaded Cuba, we do not live in a saying irrational.

(01:47:00):
We live in hell. And this means that I have
a talk about a bunch of just absolutely bullshit arguments
that a bunch of nationalist dip ships made up justify imperialism.
So all right, this is where we start going into
Taiwanese history. Um So, the starting point of any actual
history of Taiwan that's worth a single ship is Taiwan's
indigenous population. And it is incredibly important to understand from

(01:47:22):
the outset. The indigenous population of Taiwan is not Chinese.
They are not ethnically Chinese, they are not linguistically Chinese,
they are not culturally Chinese. They are not any of
these things. But literally any definition of the word Chinese,
you can imagine they are not Chinese. Um this, this population,
this indigenous population is austron Nesian. It's it's an Austronesian

(01:47:43):
people are population stretches basically from like it's it's an
enormous screw of people across specific stretches from like Madagascar
all the way to like Hawaii, and that that that
those are the people who who who who live on
Taiwan and have lived on Taiwan for six thousand years.
And you know, if if you read like CCP accounts

(01:48:06):
of Taiwanese history, right, you'll see them they they won't
talk about the fact that there again there's been an
indigenous population that has lived in Taiwan for six thousand years. Um,
what you'll see references to you are like in like
the Suiti and like Sung dynasties, people like sent troops
to Taiwan, and then the people will be like, oh yeah,
no they they they they they governed Taiwan and they
ruled it. It was a part of China and like

(01:48:27):
ancient times, like this is all bullshit. Like basically what
would happen is periodically, every like a few hundred years,
some Chinese leader would be like we should send some
people to that island and they went there and we're
like this sucks, and they all left, but you know, yeah,
and and and and you know, like okay, so like
these guys they're like okay, this thing, this thing sucks.
They leave and the indigenous population continues going like you know,

(01:48:48):
goes back to dude, like their normal thing, right, Like
this is the the the actual history of who has
controlled Taiwan for almost this entire history is that it
was controlled by sutigenous population. But in in sixteen twenty four,
colonial powers start getting more involved and the Dutch sees
control of Taiwan. Well, okay, so the Dutch taking most
of Taiwan. There's a part of Taiwan in the north

(01:49:10):
that's ruled about the Spanish, and they do like a
bunch of just like horrible, like unspeakable crimes to the
indigenous population before they ran out by like basically like
a fragment of the dying like Chinese Ming dynasty. And
so yeah, so in two this guy whose name okay, so,

(01:49:30):
she has like a name that he's known by in
the West that I genuinely have no idea how to pronounce,
because this the name that he's known by in the West,
I think is a Dutch translation of his title and
not like his name his baffling I okay, Like, I
think the Mandarin version of his title is something like
shingy h. The Dutch somehow turned that into what I'm

(01:49:54):
going to interpret as coachinga like it's baffling, it's a
make any sense. Their transliteration is is nonsense. But yeah,
So there's this guy. You'll you'll see you'll see his
name written as like coaching u um, and he's described
alternately as sort of like you know, You'll see some
descriptions of him, which will be like he is a
loyalist ming general um and that's kind of true, like

(01:50:18):
sort of. You will also see descriptions of him that
call him a pirate warlord, which is like also true.
And you will also see nationalists like Chinese nationalist celebrate
him as like an anti colonial hero and call him
like running out the Dutchess like the liberation of Taiwan
and like that's not true, um, like, which this is
not true, Like I've I've I've seen people like from

(01:50:42):
Taiwan like who do stuff with the digenospopulation like I've
I've seen them call I've seen them call him by
Taiwan's Christopher Columbus. So this is how this is going. Um. Wait,
so we're saying that changing from one colonial power to
another it is not liberation. No, it turns out and fascinating. Yeah,
you can tell it's not that not liberation because you know,

(01:51:03):
like a lot of people like actually, like you know,
do believe that, like, hey, it's gonna be less bad
for us under this guy than it is going to
be on for the Dutch. It is kind of less bad.
Like there are a bunch of indigenous people who go
who fight with uh coaching gun like you know, and
he he helps they helped him defeat the Dutch. But
what what he does instead of like you know, freeing
the people there is he maintains the Dutch colonial system

(01:51:25):
while basically just seizing Taiwan to run his court from
and you know, like Dutch colonial rule. Okay, so like
Dutch colonial rule is over, but what if we're placed
by is the rule of an independent pirate warlord state.
It sounds fun, I mean, it kind of is, like
I mean, there's this whole so okay. So the kind
of background of this is that, like the Hunters, the

(01:51:45):
Mean Dynasty is falling apart. The Mean Dynasty had ruled
China since they ever threw the Mongols basically, and but
like they're they're imploding. There's a bunch of revolutions going on.
There they are in the process of getting eventually getting
knocked off by um the Ching dynasty, who a group
of people from Manchuria who we will be getting to
in a second. Yeah, this guy is like technically a

(01:52:06):
main general, but he's sort of not and he's he's
doing this sort of pilot warlord stuff. But then he
like he sets up like his own dynasty, like very
short lived dynasty there. And this is the first time
that there's been like actual political control of Taiwan by
any kind of Chinese entity, right like the like the
weird dipshit armies that like China was sending in like

(01:52:27):
the Song dynasty, Like they don't they don't actually like
set up a government, right, Like they're just kind of
there forbid they leave. This is the first time like
they actually conquered the island and rule it as like
a political enger. And even then it's kind of a
half as conquest, like there's a lot of places they
kind of just like they're just like, yeah, okay, we're
just not gonna bother with this. But yeah, and you know, again,
like this is the first time this has happened, and

(01:52:48):
it's not like the Chinese state, right it's a pirate,
wal Mart and his descendants get like knocked off by
the Chain dynasty in sixteen three, and this is the
first time like a real Chinese government has controlled Taiwan
um because bye bye bye bye bye. Sixteen eighty three,
the dynasty has finished taking overall of China or all

(01:53:09):
all of what used to be like the main dynasty
in China. And this is the period that Chinese nationals
appoint to and say like no, no, no, really really
hold on, hold on, uh, Taiwan actually is part of
China because we conquered it in like sixteen eighty three,
which you know, okay, yeah, yeah, this is this is

(01:53:29):
a part of Taiwan's China's ancient times. Yeah that this
place we conquered in sixteen eighty three, which ignores also
again the previous five thousand, four hundred years where Taiwan
was rule by the insdigenous people. It's it's baffling nationalist
brain words stuff, yep. That has worked historically for other
countries not to be this one and the one I'm from.
But make it right. Yeah, well, and then you'll you'll

(01:53:51):
get people arguing this is like well, how like like
how how is this different? From the U S. It's like, well,
here's the thing. I am a leftist and I am
capable of understanding the multiple things can be bad at
the same time, especially when they're bad in the same way.
Like wow, hey, maybe these are all settler qualities. We
should destroy them, Okay, But we should actually talk about

(01:54:11):
the Chin dynasty a bit, because a lot of what
Chinese nationalism draws from is the sort of imperial expansion
of the Chin Chinese. Even though the Ching are the
Ching are not like a Han Chinese dynasty. Um, they're
like ethnically they're from a different ethnic group. But yeah,
I mean it's said, it's it's the like the the
Ching dynasty is a Manchou dynasty ruled by the people

(01:54:34):
like the Manchin cendamnentaria. But I think like insofar as
people think about the Chin dynasty, they tend to think
about like the Late Chain dynasty Like this is like,
you know, like the eight hundred Chang dynasty is a disaster, right,
Like they lose the Opium Wars, they could beat by Japan.
This is the whole sort of century humiliation thing has
a lot to do with like Ching imperial decline. But
you know that that's like the eighteen hundreds Chin, the

(01:54:58):
seventeen hundreds change actually in the sixty cent unders Chang
is an incredibly dynamic and you know, incredibly militant and
expansionist empire. Um here, here's I'm gonna I'm gonna read
a passage from the book Taiwan's Imagine Geographies. Having annexed
Taiwan in sixteen eighty four, the Ching turned its attention
to Central Asia, pacifying quote quote unquote pacifying the Mongols,

(01:55:21):
and bringing eastern Turkistan and lass of the capital of
Tibet under Chin rule. The Ching further expanded its control
in south and southwest China, subjugating various non Chinese peoples.
Of this reason to Ching domination at its height in
the eighteenth century, Ching influence extended into Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, Burman, Nepal,
all of which came under the suicerenity of the Empire.

(01:55:43):
By eighteen sixty, the Ching had achieved the incredible feat
of doubling the size of the empire's territory, bringing various
non Chinese frontier people under its rule. The impact of
changing expansionism was thus was thus tremendous as the chain
not only redefined the territorial boundaries of China, but also
refashioned China as a multi ethnic realm as a multi

(01:56:03):
ethnic realm, shifting the traditional border between Chinese Hua and
Barbarian Ye. In doing so, the Ching created an image
of China that is vastly different from that of the Ming.
And I think I think it's really important to understand
what kinds of empire this is, which is to say

(01:56:23):
that the Change dynasty is an incredibly brutal colonial power
even like by the standards of like that's like, you know, okay,
like all of all, like the all the the okay,
Chinese dynastic history is not pretty right, like this is
you know, it's an empire, right, it's an empire. It's
ruled by an emperor. It kind of sucks, like it's
not it's not good per se. But like even by

(01:56:44):
the standards of Chinaina Qing are incredibly militants, an incredibly
expansionist um. For example, like shing Jong, which which is
a province that the Ching conquered, so it used to
be inhabited by a Mongol speaking people until the Ching
just exterterminated them all and settled the entire land with
with Han and weaker like I think groups, and you know,
this history points to something that's important to understand what

(01:57:07):
we talk about China, Taiwan in the U S. Which
is that what we're talking about is three settler qualities.
And I think people, you know, might be like, wait,
what do you mean China's settler colony? And I'm just
gonna read this passage from the book Sovereignty, Frontiers the Possibility,
which is by Julia Evans, Anna Genevis, Alexander Riley, and
Patrick Wolf. And and yes, that is that Patrick Wolf,

(01:57:29):
who was like was basically the godfather of settler colonial
studies and one of the most important like academics are
trying of like in terms of like advancity, annalysis of cetera, colonialism,
like the Palestinian conflict. Here's here here, here's what he
has to say about China. And this is kind of
a long passage, but like, I want to include an
explanation of what settler colonialism is because I've kind of
just been tossing it around analytically. The case of Palestine

(01:57:51):
reveals that the relationship between the external and internal dimensions
of sovereignty is not a priori but contingent. Settler colonization
converts external into internal, rendering indigenous sovereignties either non existent
or domesticated. Annexation does the same thing, only it is illegal.
The difference again is sovereignty. To annex is to practice

(01:58:11):
settler colonialism in sovereign territory. Thus, the frontier is aligned
in time as well as in space. Spatially, the frontier
two limits unconquered native territory. Temporally, it marks the conversion
of outside into inside. It renders externality a thing of
the past in the global conquest of settler colonialism. Therefore,

(01:58:32):
the internal and external dimensions represent the state of play,
quote unquote. The ultimate prize is state formation with internationally
recognized territorial sovereignty. Once the settler takeover as complete, the
native realm becomes a thing of the past, superseded and detoxified,
reduced to persisting in the settler's terms. Since in the
case of Palestine, this process remains incomplete, the situation can

(01:58:56):
still go either or potentially any way. At the international
a level. This uncertainty is reflected in the ambivalent status
of Palace Indian sovereignty, which remains simultaneously both acknowledged and
questioned locally, The stage involved in the resolution of such
international uncertainties could not be higher. Tibet represents a case
in point. Despite significant informal deference to Tibet's national separateness,

(01:59:20):
its incorporation into the People's Republic of China is not
seriously questioned. At the diplomatic level, Tibetan representation at the
United Nations remains unimaginable. Yet even Tibetans might count their
blessings when they compare their situation to that of Weakers, who,
like them, are being officially colonized by Han settlers in
the so called autonomous region called shing Jong, a Chinese

(01:59:41):
appellation that could have been scripted in sixteenth century Europe.
It means new land, being so much more firmly domesticated
within the Chinese state. However, weaker sovereignty remains in vote
from global concern. Now. Now obviously, okay, this is written
before like shing Jong became like a global news store.
And also I I I question wolves translation of the

(02:00:06):
word a little bit, like I think, I think new
Frontier is probably a slightly better translation. But yeah, like
you can see what's at work here, right, Like wolves
argument is that like yeah, like like China is running
two settler qualities, like the internal status of which is
like even more internationally fucked than like most other settler colonies,

(02:00:30):
which is incredibly grim. Like yeah, I think we don't.
I don't know why we were so we've been so
slow to see selling colonialism and these contiguous empires like here. Yeah,
I mean I think part of what's happening here, like
you know, okay, Like I think there's sort of a
different dynamic with looking at this with Russia, but I
think with China, it's like people are just like it's

(02:00:54):
really really hard to get people to understand that colonialism
and imperialism are things that like not that like non
white people can do, yes, and especially especially like this,
you know. And I think it goes back to the
sort of like Chan dynasy discussion, right, which is that like, yeah,
you know, the like the way that people on the
left understand the Ching dynasty is do the sort of
nationalist lens looking at like and so they miss the

(02:01:15):
whole part where they're doing all the settler colony stuff.
But like what happens to them basically is that, like,
you know, it's like they're there. It's kind of like
the Ottomans, right, We're like their empire suddenly runs into
like newer, better, more violence and more efficient empires. But
like it doesn't mean that like they worked also empires.
Like it's yeah, and then when people do work that

(02:01:38):
out sometimes, like people and when we talk about like
settler clonism in the US, sometimes like when folks have
forced to retreat from the first position and that like
that the US is not a settler quality, they will
then fall back on, well, they're indigenous empires beforehand, as
if that somehow justifies Yeah, it's like it does not right,
and like you know, like and and I think it's

(02:02:01):
the thing that tibet to where it's like, yeah, the
pre existing Tibetan government was not good, Like I'm not
I'm not going to defend like that government. It sucks.
I I would also point out that the whole we're
going to stop the slave trade thing is one of
the things explicitly in in the in the Tree that
Decide of the Conference of Berlin. That was the thing
that they claimed that that like that that was the
thing that the European powers claimed they were doing when

(02:02:22):
they invaded Africa, so like when they split Africa, but
between the Clune of Powers, so like you know, okay,
I mean also it's you know this this is getting
slightly off topic, but it's also worth noting that like
there wasn't there was actually a communist movement like in
Tibet that wasn't the CCP, and the CCP killed them all.
So that's great and fun. That's never happened before with

(02:02:43):
ttalitarian communist pass Yeah, it's it's gonna happen again. The
sort of I think the stakes of what's happening here,
I think become more clear when you understand that, like
you like the US and trying to to like two
different extents, right, like I don't know, like China has
parts there, like there are parts of China where it's

(02:03:04):
like very hard, like it's not a settler state. It's
just like their states, but there are part of definitely
are a settlers state. And there's the U S which
is like entirely a settler state, and then Taiwan is
also to a settler state, although it's like post independence
Taiwan is at least violence of them, which is like
not like a, I don't know, you're not winning much
of a price by being less violent than China in

(02:03:26):
the US, but like good count between those two. Yeah,
but you know, but but but I think that this
brings us back to like the Chin the Ching coccupation
of Taiwan, which is that the Ching occupation of Taiwan
is China's first like first new settler colony. The Ching
administrators they divide the indigenous population into quote cooked and

(02:03:46):
raw savages. Um that those are their words. That literally
that's what they call them. Like it is why because
they're really racist like this, this is like this, this
is like a very old thing and sort of like
sort of Chinese imperial discourse. Right, It's like you have
the difference between like barbarians and like Chinese people and

(02:04:08):
like savages and non savages like this this is like
this is how these people think, right, and it's not good.
Like I don't know, I don' don't know, like how
many more ways I can like try to explain to
people who are like who have been like like people
have been like telling the Chinese nationalist stuff for so
long that it's like this this also was not good,
Like guys, and again it's something the US has done

(02:04:31):
the UK. There's classic imperialism right now. We took about
tribes in the US, racist in the British Empire. Yeah,
I'm going to read a passage from Taiwan's imagine geography. Indeed,
as ching writers began to construct the Taiwan indigenous as
two distinct groups. Negative traits that have been formally associated
with quote the Taiwan savages as a whole began to

(02:04:53):
be mapped on the wild or raw savages. We're Earlier
text claimed, for example, that the savages quote by nature
like to kill or quote were or were quote stubborn
and stupid. Now writers attributed these characteristics to the raw
savages alone. Head Hunting, a notorious practice that the earlier
the earliest sources had associated with the natives of Taiwan

(02:05:16):
and other Pacific islands, also became also came to be
seen as a raw savage practice. By the early eighteenth
century travel writing, travel writers increasingly emphasized the violent and
murderous behavior of the raw savages. The expansion of the
Han Chinese population at this time caused an exhalation of
conflict between Chinese settlers and the indigenous over land and

(02:05:37):
other resources. Hostile indigitees were thus becoming a real threat
to the safety of Han Chinese settlers. Although some writers
blamed inter ethnic conflict on trouble making Han Chinese settlers,
many Ching literati attributed the belligerous of the raw savages
to the inherent bloodthirsty nature. So, yeah, it's it's real.

(02:05:59):
It's real, it's real, classic empire ship like textbook shit. Yeah,
and you know, and you can see that there's this
whole nationalist myth that like you'll read if you read
modern people like talking about this, or they'll be like, oh,
the indigenous population that Chinese government got along so great.
It is completely bullshit. This is an incredibly racist settler state,
and it stays an incredibly racist settler state when when

(02:06:21):
the Japanese take over Taiwan and the Japanese occupation is
even worse than the chain occupation of indigenous people in
a lot of ways to real ship show there's a
huge massacre that they do in the thirties. Um, yeah,
and and okay, we' just also mentioned at this point.
So I've been focusing a lot on the the indigenous
population because almost everyone who tells the story from all

(02:06:42):
sides doesn't talk about them ever, because it's it's incredibly
inconvenient to like everyone's narrative that there were people here
for literally six thousand years, um. But you know, while
basically since the Dutch showed up in the in the
mid sixteen hundreds, UM, there have been like increasing numbers
of Chinese settlers, and as as the Chin occupation sort

(02:07:03):
of wears on, the number of Chinese settlers increases and
increases increases, and it gets to the point where, you know,
kind of close to like what we have today, where
like the the indigenous population of Taiwan is like two
percent of the population, and it's which is which is
pretty close to what the indigenous population presenting the population
of the US is for example. Yeah, and would make sorry,

(02:07:26):
I'm not going to It's okay, Yeah, I'm going to
talk about Elizabeth Warren. But god, you know, actually fucking
I will talk about Elizabeth Warren in the middle of this,
because yeah, because her her whole thing of like pretending
to be indigenous was also fun because like she has
a cookbook, and the cookbook yeah, yeah, that claims both

(02:07:47):
her and her husband or indigenous. And then in that
he's like maybe the most incomprehensible, awful like example of
Chinese cooking every scene in my life, which apparently stole
from like another cookbook. And it's really like just cascading
levels of racism all the way down. It's oh god,
it's fine, it's all fine. All the settler colonies are bad.

(02:08:10):
Their politics are all also always bad because again, like
being a settler colony inherently makes your politics awful because yeah,
and representing yourself as an indigenous person to gain personal
advantage in a settler colony when you are not one
is ongoing active colonialism. Yeah, genuinely terrific stuff Like, yeah,

(02:08:30):
don't do it. So having said that, so okay, we
have to talk about the Han population. There's like different
like subgroups of the Han population who are have different ethnicities,
to speak different rates, like speak different languages because Han
is like a very large sort of category, and like
inside of Han Chinese there's like people who are Hawka.

(02:08:52):
There's there's a whole bunch of different groups. Um, And
I guess the one thing that's worth mentioning is that
a lot of the like you'll hear people talk about
Taiwanese as like its own language, and like that's like
there there are a bunch of people who were Hanbu
who don't speak Mandarin, and so like a lot of
people in Taiwan speak Taiwanese, which is sort of like
Hakka h ish Lang. Well, okay, what's what what's what's

(02:09:16):
the most technically accurate with sagas it is a language
that has developed on Taiwan, like in Taiwan by people
who speak Kaka, and it's basically pretty close to that. Yeah, um,
And we're not gonna get into super gradular detail about
these ways of immigration, um, but basically, like one of
the things that happens is that among these sort of
han settlers, there becomes this sort of like Taiwanese identity

(02:09:39):
of like them being Taiwanese, like specifically as a thing.
And when when the Japanese lose World War Two, the
Nationalist Party or the CAMT just like occupies Taiwan. But
this is a real problem because again, most of the
people don't want to be ruled by the CAMT because
the KMT like absolutely suck. Um. If you want me

(02:10:01):
to hear me, like go deeper into them, go listen
to my bastard's episode in the World Anti Communist League. Uh.
The short version is that the KMT is a genocidal
like anti communist des squad party run by an organized
crime outfit that's led by Shankai Check and you know,
like they suck like really like absolutely horrible people. Um.
And as the CAMT starts to lose a civil word

(02:10:22):
of MAO like born more CAMT supporters not some people
just like running from the war start fleeing in Taiwan,
and this develops a mass like you get these massive
tension between then people who had already been there and
the KMT and they're sort of new supporters and their
new sort of like settler immigrant population, and this boils
over into what's called the February incident or the two
eight incident. UM. Basically what happens so a CAMT cop

(02:10:46):
like attacks a woman who was like selling cigarettes on
the street illegally because the KMT, like I really also
kept like they're so unbelievably corrupt and so like that
they have all these like monopolies where it's like okay,
like there's a guy who has like the opium monopoly
or like a guy who has like the cigarette monopoly, right,
and unless you're running through that monopoly, you can't sell

(02:11:07):
like cigarettes. Yeah, and so in something that I think
will be familiar to people who like, like have followed
the number of people in the US who have been
killed for uh. Yeah, so the cops start like beating
this woman over the head with it with his pistol,
and everyone around them gets incredibly piste off. And there's
these giant protests, um, and the camp to your response

(02:11:31):
to the protests by shooting into the crowd. And yeah,
I mean so there's another side of this I should
mention like briefly, which is that, like part of what's
happening here is like there's a there's a kind of
ugly like basically race riot that starts happening at the
beginning of this where like people like the sort of
like Cantonese population like starts just like attacking like any

(02:11:53):
random like any random people from like the campt generation,
just like they found on the street and start attacking
LNG and like that sucks. Um. It is also just
unbelievably less violent than what happens next, which is at
the KMT Like well, okay, so so there there there's
sort of this race, right I think, and then there's
there's like there's a full scale revolution and the Taiwanese

(02:12:16):
population like seizes control of base of like almost the
entire island, like the entirety of the main island, and
they start demanding like democratic rights and stuff like you know,
a free press and free assembly and like the protection
of the digitus population. Although I should also mention that
like like nobody really inti one like treating digitus population
will like it was bad enough, Like my seven year

(02:12:37):
old mom was like, oh my god, why is everyone
treating these people so badly? Like it's but you know, okay,
So they do this thing, they have this revolution and
then the KMT like just sends the army to the
island and they killed something like twenty people in a week.
Um like they are like they're they're cutting people's face
like later like cutting parts of people's faces off with

(02:12:58):
like nive Like it is unbelievably brutal. And this begins
thirty eight years of martial law. UM. The subsequent CAMPTI
police state tortures like tens of thousands of people in
rules Taiwan with like an with an iron fist until
like the late eighties and this is where things get
really messy, right because up until nineteen forty two, like

(02:13:21):
nobody in China like and and and this included both
the CAMT and the CCP. Until actually forty two, neither
of them actually claimed that Taiwan was part of China.
But then in two both of them start claiming that
that one is part of China. Yeah, and so when
when when the KMT flees to Taiwan, both the CCP

(02:13:43):
and the CAMT both claimed to be a legitimate government
of China and be to be the legitimate government of Taiwan.
And it's a disaster. Like the cam T is nuts,
Like my again, like they made my like seven year
old mom sing songs about how would they there? One day?
They were going to reclaim the mother land? Like these

(02:14:04):
people suck some of them still in myanma or maybe
perhaps not now, but like I've heard from them from
friends who are older who were there, that there are
a bunch of cam TE like living in parts of
me and Mari and tourist would go pay to visit them. Yeah,
like that's that's the thing, Like yeah, they're like they

(02:14:26):
most of the people flee that flee to Taiwan. But
like they break in a number of different directions, and
there's like a bunch of weird rump states they set up,
they get knocked off. Eventually, it's a it's a whole mess.
But in Taiwan, like they have this problem, which is that, like, okay,
so there's like water in between China and Taiwan, and
if you want to get troops over it, you have
to have those troops across the water. And this is
a real problem for like an invasion. So what ends

(02:14:50):
up happening is a series so like okay, so you
have the cam T in the CCP like staring each
other down across these islands, and the product of this
is what's called the Three Taiwan Straits christ these so
basically in the CCP starts sell shelling Taiwan between in
the five starts shelling like Taiwan, and then they do

(02:15:10):
it again at fifty eight and like the CAMT shelves
them back, and you know, and there's a couple of
points where it looks like they're going to invade, but
then the US like move supplies to the KMT to
like keep the c from invading, and you know the
result of this is just like I think, incredibly psychologically
revealing move after like the crisis, which crisis ends with

(02:15:31):
the KMT and the CCP agreeing to shell each other
on opposite days because and I cannot emphasize this enough,
this entire conflict is profoundly bullshit and was foisted upon
Taiwan by a bunch of pedley squabbling Chinese nationalists. How
big is that distance we're talking about, Like they're sending
shells over there in the fifties, so it's probably not vast. Well,

(02:15:54):
part of what's happening is so it's it's a hundred miles,
hundred ten miles. But what's happening year is like they're
they're there. They basically like have set up on outposts
in different islands in between, like the Big Island and uh,
the shore, so that they're they're like they're on these
islands shelling each other, like they drafted My grandpa and
sent him to one of these places and that's and

(02:16:16):
then he came back and was like, funk this, we're
out and so like that that's where my family's in
the US because he was like, we're not doing this
ship again. This sucks. Yeah, It's like, I'm not gonna
be I'm not gonna be cannon fodder for these like
weird nationalist psychos. So okay, So what the sort of

(02:16:37):
result of this, though, is that the KMT gets the
backing of the US, and the KMT becomes in Taiwan
is the like the legitimately internationally recognized government, um like
of all of China from the end of the Civil
War until like the seventies. Yeah right, yeah, yeah, how's

(02:16:58):
the UN seat I actually we get we'll get into that,
and you know what we were doing here. So one
of the things that happens here is that, okay, so,
like the US really really does not want the CCP
to have the u n C. And what are the
things they try to do is that they offer neighbors
India like the seat on like what's it called, am

(02:17:19):
I blanking on the name of the thing? National Security Counsel? Yeah, yeah,
you and Security Council. They offer India Sea the Security
Council and neighbor is like, no, I'm not gonna take this.
I'm not gonna take this. This this is China seat
on the Council, Like, I'm not gonna take this. And
then Mao repays him by invading India. Three in ways, Um,

(02:17:41):
this this is not in my script? I am I
am off, yeah, I am off script? Oh two sorry
yeah yeah, So like this a this, this goes great
for neighbor Mao just like invades and the Indians lose
the war very badly. To understand why eventually trying to
gets recognied, you have to have talked about it about
like what was going on inside of the PRC, inside

(02:18:04):
of the people's probably in China. So the CCP fights
a war with the Soviets in nineteen sixty nine, which
and this war gets called the Sino Soviet Border conflicts.
But like this is like pretty much a real war,
Like there are like Chinese and Soviet division shelling each other,
like a lot of people die. Um, like I I

(02:18:25):
don't know if I've told the story on this podcast before.
My my my favorite part of this whole thing is
that the Soviets start like wargaming, can can they defeat
China and nuclear war? And they figure out that they
can't because the Chinese population is so just is so
dispersed that even even if they knuke all of China,
they can't kill everyone they'll and they'll lose the war
in human wave attacks. So the Soviets started developing, developing
the strategy of like having like a line of nuclear

(02:18:47):
land mines across the Soviet Chinese borders so that the
human wave attacks can't get through, because they like this
is this conflict is nuts, Like both China and the
USS are are trying to get the US to ally
with them to like do do do a preemptive nuclear
strike on on the other side, Like it's crazy and
and this like completes the Sino Soviet split, and the

(02:19:09):
US like really really wants to make sure that the
Sino Soviets but sticks, and so the US starts negotiating
with China basically to bring China to the well, Okay,
there's two ways of looking at it. One is that
they just want to separate, like, you know, the Chinese
from the Soviets. The other way of looking at it
is that they want to like bring China fully over
to the American side of the Cold War. And I
think the latter approach actually works, right um, So in

(02:19:32):
in in nine, the US recognizes the CCP as the
legitimate government of China. UH. Several months later, China invades
Vietnam in defense of the Khmer rouge, which the US
was also backing. So yeah, um, and and this is
where we get into some more diplomatic bullshit. Uh okay.
So China maintain something called the One China principle. The

(02:19:56):
One China principle holds that the CCP is the only
government mint of China and then it rules Taiwan. The
US has something called the One China Policy, and the
One China Policy is it does not take a stance
either way on who the government of Taiwan is. What
it does is it acknowledges that China claims that it
rules Taiwan. And you will see nationalists lie about this constantly.

(02:20:20):
They will say things like the US recognizes Taiwan as
part of China under the One Child Policy, blah blah blah.
Action is a violation of the One China Policy. And
that's not true, right. What actually happened is that the US,
the US technical term for this is called strategic ambiguity.
And you know, so they have this thing like, they
don't they don't formally recognize either side as legimate government

(02:20:40):
of Taiwan. They recognize that this is what China says
about Taiwan, they don't actually recognize, but they have no
formal position on whether this is the actually rules Taiwan.
What they have is a recognition that China believes this.
And again this is all diplomatic bullshit. It's part of
why I hate like talking about this because like, again,

(02:21:04):
the lives of literally tens of billions of people are
being governed by like diplomats saying doing like that kind
of ship because it sucks. Yeah, So that's that's that's
that's the one Child policy thing, which is not Jesus
the one China policy, which is not the same thing
as the one China principle. Um, yeah and so and

(02:21:26):
so like. All the while, while this is going on,
the CCP and the KMT yere in this massive race
to see you can kill the most communists like that.
The CCP kills about a million commination the Cultural Revolution
and then invades Vietnam to kill even more communists. The
KMT like not not to be outdone by by by
by by their former comrades across the border. The KMT

(02:21:46):
is training desk squalls in Honduras and like helping the
Guatemalan government do the Guatemalan genocide. It's it's really grim stuff.
And you know, the product of this ideolog the product
of this whole thing is the audio complete audiological collapse
of the Chinese Comunist Party as like a party that
does communism, and then the political military collapse with the
KMT so the but by I mean it's kind of

(02:22:09):
it sort of has already stopped at the eighties, but
by the nineties nineties, the CCP substantively has stopped being
a communist party by the sense of the word, like
they're just capitalists and they're not they're you know, they're
out there making money. And by by by the late
two thousands, even like you know, there had been a
faction of what's called sure of the Chinese New Left,
but had thought that like they could you know, they
they could, you know, this is still a communist party
and we can still change China from the inside. Those

(02:22:30):
guys are like liquidated completely, like they're just gone, um
and you know, and so but you know, by by
like now right, like it's just it's just it's just capitalists.
And meanwhile, in Taiwan in the eighties and nineties, there's
there's increasing resistance the CAMT s like one party like
dest squad, like one party state and their whole dest
squad like reclaimed them motherland politics. Everyone like starts to

(02:22:50):
hate them. And this is where things get really weird
because on the one hand, the CAMPT is incredibly anti communists,
but on the other hand, uh, they're the political faction
that wants to tie type one the China. And this
means that like, you know, as they're sort of like
ruthlessly suppressing communists and leftists, they're also like vehemently independence
and so like they kill a bunch of anti independence organizers, um,

(02:23:11):
which is like not not not not how anyone like
talks about this conflict because it's too weird. So in
there's all the sort of weird political things going on
in the seven. The KMT ends the martial law that
they had been in force since the February incidents, and
the KMT like disarms, right they disarm. They're not as

(02:23:31):
in like, Okay, the KMT used to be a party
that would like assassinate people for writing an author right,
like assassinate Americans on American soil for writing on authorized
biography biographies of like Shankai check. And they kind of
stopped being that, like they disarm, they're not really in
the drug trade anymore, caveats. Don't quote me on that,

(02:23:54):
but like the they're they're they're they're not the party
they were in the eighties, right, That's that's what the
important thing like that they they lose is the one
party dictatorship, and you get the sort of transition to
democracy that ends in the first free presidential elections in
Taiwani's history. In and this like the right right before this,
you get the third Taiwan Straits Crisis, where the president

(02:24:16):
of Taiwan like goes to the US and China react
to this by having an enormous ture tempera tantrum and
like starts doing military exercises, like they start like simulating
an invasion of Taipwe. They start like shooting rockets like
at the coast, like jet the the leve these rockets
that will land like just off the coast, and it's edgy. Yeah,

(02:24:37):
And the event this ends when the US moves like
two carrier groups into into the Pacific and the crisis ends.
But like, okay, there's a feelings I would say here.
One is that like okay, so on the one hand,
this is the CCP having a temperate tensium. Right on
the other hand, like it really and this is the

(02:24:58):
thing that I think most Americans have ever experienced, right,
because the US is not a country that like gets attacked, right,
having another country firing missiles at you fucking sucks, like
psychologically it is awful. Like we saw how insane the
U S went, like the like the first time it
had actually been attacked since like World War Two when

(02:25:21):
I eleven happened, Like you know, you saw just absolutely
batshitt the U S goes, right, Like, Okay, if you
are a person in Taiwan, right, which like a lot
of my family is, and you are constantly having another
country shooting rockets at you, like, it sucks like and
and I want people to like like sort of like

(02:25:42):
think about that for a second, because like I think
a lot of what how, how this crisis and how
this whole thing has talked about on the left is
as a sort of like abstract thing that's like you know,
it's it's it's instead of abstract principles, right, and not
stuff that's happening to real people who are like watching
missiles fucking fall into the ocean, and you know, like

(02:26:03):
and what we're watching another country like preparing to kill
them and this sucks. UM. One of the other things
that were not noting here is that like part of
what's going on in terms of the hardening of China
Taiwan relations is gentlemen square happened. Um. And the reason
that this matters is that, so one of the things
that like stabilizes I guess relations between Taiwan and China

(02:26:25):
in part is the fact that they're both incredibly economic
closely economically connected to the US. UM. And this is
because all of the all China, Taiwan and UH and
China are all capitalist countries and so they're ruling classes
are all completely independence like people. People talk a lot

(02:26:45):
about Pelosi like investing in a bunch of like chip
manufacturing companies in Taiwan, and that's true, but she also
has a bunch of investments in China, because again, capitalists,
single ruling class, they all there. They all all of
your logistics lines run through each other. Blah blah blah
blah bla uh. I will insert and note here that
is not in the script that anytime you should someone
talk about like the U S decoupling with their economy

(02:27:06):
from China. They're they're full of ship. Do not like
everything they're saying, everything they're about to say is a lie.
It does not happen, It has not happened, it will
not happen, like they're lying. Um yeah, this is important. Um,
even for the height of Trump's bullshit. Yeah. Yeah, Like,
like there was kind of an attempt when it didn't
work because like you know, you could, Okay, like there
are some things you can offer to Mexico, right, but

(02:27:28):
like most like China, China has a unique combination of
a like a really good energy grid for the most
part of those I mean, okay, there have been times
where's gotten over tax but like it can compared to
most other development countries that has a really good energy grid.
It has a population in which actually doing union organizing
is illegal, and it has a population that you know,

(02:27:52):
like gets forced to work incredibly long hours, right, And
the combination of those three things makes it makes it
you know, a place where if you're an American capitalist,
if're Taiwanese capitalist. And that's actually part of this too,
is that like part part of the reason there's so
much like hatred for Taiwan sort of China among people
who you wouldn't expect it to be is that like
there's a there's a lot of people in China whose
only experience of Taiwan is working for like fucking Fox

(02:28:14):
Cohn and like working just in hell conditions for a
like for a Taiwanese capitalist, and you know, and that
that's very easy to transformant a national sentiment and it sucks.
But yeah, you know, but you know, like okay, so
like there, the U s has an incentive just to
stabilize US Chinese relations in part because it's economically like
tied to both of these countries. But when something goes

(02:28:34):
really wrong in US China relations, like for example, after
Tianna Man where you know, and I think it's also
worth noting like from from the period like basically from
when China invades Vietnam and even before that from but
from when China invades Vietnam in up until Tienamen, the
US China relations are really good. Like the the US

(02:28:55):
is seen as like an ally against the evil at
Soviet evil Empire like all this, and you know, but
gentlemen makes things go really badly because like the the
only thing in American ally can possibly do that will
sour the American press on them is to shoot a
bunch of students in front of the American press corps
like that. That's literally the only thing you could possibly do,
Like you can, you can do actual genocides and the
US press corps won't care. But if you shoot a

(02:29:16):
bunch of students right in front of you, they will
get very mad. And you know, okay times we've we've
avoided doing that in minima. Yeah, yeah, I mean, yeah,
it's it's it's grim, lots lots of lots of yeah.
But you know the consequence of this is like, yeah,

(02:29:37):
when something goes really wrong in US China relations, you
get China starts doing stabler rattling at Taiwan and the
effects of this on Taiwan ease politics and also just
sort of what's been happening inside of Taiwan is really weird.
So the CAMT, who have been again like the militantly
anti communist party for half essentially for half a century,
are suddenly the fashion that once closer ties with this ECP.

(02:29:57):
And the product of this is that the KMT and
the smaller like hardcore pro Utification Party has become known
as the Pan Blues. And the Pan Blues are the
people who like want closer relationship with China and don't
want closer relations with like the West. It's like the
U s et etcetera. UM. And their opposition group is
this reposition progressive opposition groups, which are just composed of

(02:30:19):
the groups that opposed the camptis military dictatorship. And these
groups form well, okay, they form a couple of parties.
The big party. The first party they form, which is
the biggest one by far, is called the Democratic Progressive
Party or the d p P. And the DP panis
allies which include some leftist parties I think, like the
green parties in this coalition. Uh, there's also these like
smaller like radical pro independent parties. UM. They become known

(02:30:41):
as the Pan Greens. And this is like to this day,
this is like the main dividing line in Taiwanese politics.
You have the conservative Pan Blues you favor closer relations
with China, and the Pan Green progressives you favor like
closer relations with democracies. And also I think importantly, the
the Pan Greens had this kind of like are the
people who are in favor of like there being a

(02:31:03):
distinct Taiwanese national identity, and the Pan Blues are kind
of more suspect of that because again, like you know,
their basis the KMT right, they want closer sizes with China,
and closer sizes with China means not having like a
distinct Twani's identity that's separate from China. And Okay, I'm
enormously oversimplifying this, and people who are experts in this
will like this part of it, will be like it's
more complicated than that, and it is this is This

(02:31:24):
is the simples explanation I could give you that people
will understand. Like I I was, like, I was debating
whether I even wanted to talk about like the Pan
Blue like closer ties with China versus paying Green like
closer ties with the West thing at all, because it's
confusing and people probably won't remember it. But yeah, I mean,

(02:31:46):
you know, if you want to understand tiwan these politics
at all, like this is the line you have to take. No,
I think it's important to at least throw out the
people are gonna hear if they're going to engage in
any discussion beyond like what has his tweeting and I'm, I'm, I'm,
I'm gonna also like I'm gonna like lay my cards
on the table so people don't understand my political position
on this um. And my political position is one that

(02:32:07):
pisces off literally everyone, which is that like, I'm not
like a DPP supporter, Like I'm not one of the
sort of like progressive like groups. I'm not in this
sort of like I'm not really kind of like in
this sort of like I wanted dependance camp. I'm not
really like a DVP person. I I don't know, like,
but I'm also not a KMT person, like because the

(02:32:29):
KMT are capitalist reactionaries. Um. But I also like, okay,
like I'm i'm, I'm, I'm gonna do my critique of
the DPP and then I'm gonna sort of walk it
back a little bit. I think that Taiwanese progressives in
general are waged you close to the American security state
for me to want anything to do with them. And
the ones who aren't, like, okay, the Taiwanese left, like

(02:32:50):
Jesus Christ, get your ship together. Taiwan's most famous anarchist
is literally a government minister. Like this, This is how
funny the Taiwanes's left is like like like like these people, God,
I'm enormously frustrated by Like people couldn't develop, like a
left to the people, couldn't develop a national class analysis.
You beat them over the head with a copy of
capital Um. And okay, like I think, like Taiwanese progressives

(02:33:15):
will point out, and I think this is fair that
it's very easy to criticize like allying with the U
S when it's not your ass in the firing line
of Chinese rockets, which is true. It is much easier
to criticize the US when the when the rifles being
pointed in your face are American rifles, then when it's
you know, Chinese soldiers pointing Chinese rifles. And this is
a big part of what Chwanese politics are so fucked um.
Things get reduced at this sort of like democracy versus

(02:33:37):
authoritarian US versus China, like taiwanies and entity versus Chinese
identity to less extent like binary. But it's like okay,
like my family is Taiwanese, but like I was born here,
I grew up here, and you know, I know, I
know what American democracy looks like. It's the Army hiring
Eric Prince to slaughter Rockey civilians in Baghdad. And you know,
I also know what you know. I have a bunch

(02:33:58):
of family in China too. I know what Chinese ratarianism
looks like. It's the CCP hiring Eric Prince ability trading
basis for mass and tonament camp guards John like you know, okay,
And the only actual like political solution that will ever
get anywhere is to fight both of them, a position
that is extremely unpopular literally everywhere. And like you know,

(02:34:21):
I I think they're like the progressives have a good
argument that that you know, this isn't this isn't a
line they have the luxury of taking right because they
they they have they have an immediate enemy, and they
they're going to do whatever they have to not get invaded.
And that means allying with people who like I want
to overthrow and see liquidated as a class. And like
I I understand why they think that I also am

(02:34:43):
not them. So yeah, this is this is this is
me laying my cards on the table. And I think
also like this goes back to the whole sort of
like Settler state question, right, which is the sort of
unresolved political question in the U s, Taiwan and China,
Like no actual major political force has like committed itself
to destroying the settler state and returning indigenous sovereignty. Uh,

(02:35:03):
like two indigenous people, and you can't have like any
kind of liberatory politics in a settler state without that.
But on the other hands, like okay, the actual politics
of Timani's diigenous people is really complicated, Like it doesn't
work in the same way that like indigenous politics in
the US does for example, like different true, I mean,
and this is also true in the US, like different
tribes and different relations to sort of indigenous nationalism. Like

(02:35:27):
and another thing that that's true about um the that
that that that that's true about Timany's indigenous people is
that a lot of them vote for the KMT. And
they do this for a couple of reasons, one of
which is because the KMT has this like really really
powerful and eccentric patronage network that they've been running for
literally like basically since they got into the island. They've
been running this patriots network and this allowed them to

(02:35:48):
do like real incredibly intense and powerful based building in
indigenous communities. Right, Like they're like the GDP are the
people who like distribute like okay that they have like
a center and right, and you go there and they
get they give you food, right like they this this
this is the place where you get your like sesame oil. Right.
And then also there's there's the second layer of the
Pictures network, right, is like if you want to get

(02:36:08):
a job, you join the KMT, and so they have
these they have these really deep sort of political roots
in that sense. And then also, um, the CAMT does
this thing where they're like, hey, look, the DPP is
doing settler nationalism, like hey, these are the people who
colonized you, like fuck them, like you should alley with
us instead, which is true, Like like it is true,

(02:36:28):
and like I think, I don't know, like Taiwanese progressives
kind of like tap dance around this, but like yeah,
like it is true that the sort of like Han
Taiwanese identity is less sort of settler nationalism. But like
also this is true with the KMT as well, Like
the CAMT are also was settler nationalism, like you know,
like they conquered the island and ruled as you know, okay,

(02:36:51):
and and you'll you'll you'll try you'll also see people
who will take this argument and try to argue that
indigenous people voting for the KMT means that indigenous people
support China invading Taiwan. And this is just comically wrong,
Like they're just they are lying to you. Indigenous people
in Taiwan, like literally everyone else in Taiwan do not
support being ruled by China, and the argument that a
Chinese occupation of Taiwan is somehow less of a settler

(02:37:11):
state than the current system is just like comically propaganda
bullshit and yeah, China, Yeah that's not being kind. Yeah,
I'm gonna get into like this a little bit too, right,
which is okay, So like I've been trying to be
fair and balanced here, right, like I have been giving
you mi critique of taiwee Chiwanese progressivism. This is going
to piss off a lot of people. But like having

(02:37:34):
said all of this, China invading Taiwan would be really
really really bad, Like I cannot emphasize enough how bad
this would be. Like okay, so Taiwan is like a
regular regular settler borgead democracy with like all of the
sort of good and bad things about Bushwa democracies, which
we're all familiar with, right, like we understand what is
a learned democracy is um, to be fair, the modern

(02:37:54):
Taiwanese government is like infinitely less violent than the modern
American government. Like like the I I looked like the
prison population in like relative population in Taiwan is like
I think it's like an eighth of the of what
the American prison population is, right, Like, it's it's not like,
you know, okay, it's it's like Taiwan is not like

(02:38:15):
a sort of like it's like Taiwan is not a
socialist state, right, but it's also like, you know, better
in the U s which is an incredibly low bar
that like you could trip and fall over it, but like,
you know, okay, it's it's better in the US. Um. Yeah,
you know, it's closer to like Sweden or something in
terms of violence. But I think is also a good
comparison because Sweden also has an indigenous population called the Sami,
and I all Swedish leftists will studiously never admit that

(02:38:39):
they exist or talk about them at all. So okay, again,
this is not a stateless class society. But it's also
like like since since since the CAMT has been disarmed,
Like this is not one of like the world's great
purveyors of violence, right, Like it's not the US. UM. China,
on the other hand, is a ferociously reactionary, capitalist settler dictatorship,
and this is something that Americans have very little experience with.

(02:39:00):
UM For a long time, people argue that, okay, like
if if if China, like if Taiwan became a part
of China, Taiwan would get some kind of relationship similar
to what Hong Kong has were like they were free
elections and union organizing and free speech is legal. But
you know, twenty nteing happens. Yeah right, you know, I
mean even in Taiwan, like the I'm sorry, not even

(02:39:22):
even in Hong Kong, right, the extent to which like
you know, like union organizing and free association and free
press existed. We're like and again like Hong Kong also,
and I want to point this out, like the CCP
has been strengthening this the entire time they were there.
Hong Kong is the only place on earth for corporations
have the right to vote and they vote for the
ccpeach Like it's so okay, this is this is great,

(02:39:44):
but you know twenty en happens, right, And guess what now,
Hong Kong has National Security Law, which allows the government
to rescue literally for posting on Twitter that you don't
think that China should control Hong Kong. UM Secretary Secretary
for Security in Hong Kong, Chris Tang said earlier this
week that criticizing the government with the intention to provoke
quote pretention to provoke hatred quote between the classes was

(02:40:07):
a violation of the National Security Law. A position that
if actually like that, that if actually like like this,
if you take this position, this would outlaw in its
entirety all socialist organizing in Hong Kong, because again, anything
that attempts to provoke hatred between the classes ISA is illegal. Yeah,

(02:40:28):
and yes, some pana era of liberal Democrats existence within. Yeah,
and this is this is the moneth and like you know,
I mean again, like people people talk about this lot
like Hong Kong is one of the world's most neoliberal
cities and this is top has taken it over. And
oh hey, guess what they're They're they're living out the
neoliberal dream of making it illegal to try to do
any like try to do like class war stuff. Um,

(02:40:50):
one of the things that happens immediately after national security
laws that it's used to destroy China's China's Independent Trade
Union Federation. And this brings us to like the sort
of class perspective on this um independent union organizing and
China is illegal. And when I say it's illegal, I
don't mean illegal in the sense of like jaywalking. We're like, okay,
if someone if if like a cops sees you jaywalking,
they might arrest you. Like if you try to do

(02:41:12):
independent union organizing in China, men will show up to
your house in the middle of the night and you
will disappear for three months until a video of you
with two very large men standing just out of camera
range appears in which you recan't you're organizing and apologize
for your crimes, like to to to get a sense
of the level of oppression we're dealing with here to
Chinese leftists named Louis You You and Leading You recorded

(02:41:35):
and published a series of protests like the they basically
they had they on the Chinese social media, like they
posted this like record basically of strikes and protests that
were happening in the country every day. So like literally
all they're doing is they are documenting the strikes and
protests that are happening and collecting data about them and
posting it. Um in the police showed up to lose house,
put a bag over his head and dragged him away

(02:41:57):
to a dragging away to a jail cell. Lou spent
four years in prison. Lee got two years, and the
two of them never saw each other again. So again,
this this is what happens. If you literally just report
on the wildcat strikes that are happening, someone will put
a bag over your head and you will go to

(02:42:17):
prison for four years. Like it is. It is like
the situation for organized labor of any kind of anyone
trying to do. Union organizing in China is unbelievably dire. UM. Now, China,
and this is when I'm talking about, here's the independent
union organizing. China has an official trade union federation. Um,
the trade Unifederation China has such a fucking joke. That

(02:42:39):
is literally a matter of academic debates, Like there are
academic papers arguing about whether or not it even actually
counts as a union. And this has been true since
the late nineteen fifties, when the CCP decided that oh hey,
this trade union is there to represent the party and
not workers, and its roles to mediate between the you know,
to mediate between the party and workers, not actually to
you know, like represent them when they like when they

(02:43:01):
have disputed with their bosses. So yeah, like they don't
like they they don't. They don't go on strike like ever,
like they they they they they they They exist as
like another part of the party state, the goal of
which is to make sure that bosses keep making money.
If you try to work outside, if they will arrest you. Now,
Taiwan is not like a shining workers paradise, right that
the sort of vaunted semiconductor industry that everyone talks about

(02:43:23):
is run by a bunch of workers getting the ship
burned out of them by vats of acid. But conditions
for the Chinese working class are even worse. Counties wages
are higher China, Taiwan is better workplace protections. Again, you
can legally organize unions. Uh. Meanwhile, in China there are
famously suicide nets around Chinese factories because working for these
places is so fucking awful that people would literally rather
kill themselves and live in it. And you know, you

(02:43:44):
can ask why is this happening, And the reason it's
happening is that a lot of the stuff that is
literally the worst fucking nightmare of the American left, things
like your boss owning your apartment is just standard practice
in China. This is this is just this is just
what it's like to be a worker in China. Your
boss owner apartments. You have literally hundreds of millions of
people who live in these time any like they're called
workers dormitories, which again often literally owned by like the

(02:44:06):
owner of the factory they're in. You get like when
when I say like the workers dormitories, right, it's not
even like it's not even like an American dorm building
right where like you you know you have like your
own room. It's like it is yeah, like it's it's
a bunch of people sleeping in cots, like like sleeping
in bunk beds with like a fucking bucket next to
them to go to the bathroom. Like it is. It

(02:44:27):
is horrible. Um, you have like like the the I
talked about this lot in this show. But again like
literally there are paid a loans integrated into delivery apps
like this. This is the level of capitalism that that
China is, and like I'm not gonna like, I'm not
gonna like argue that it's worse than the US. I
think they're bad in different ways. Like they're there, there

(02:44:48):
are there are third like the the U s IS
incarceration system is like you know, like one of the
great human evils in the entirety of human history. Right there,
there are things that like the US is worse at
like the Chinese police are a lot less likely just
fucking murder you like you know, but like yes, but
like China, it sucks to be a worker in China,
Like it really sucks. And I can't emphasize this enough

(02:45:10):
because I don't because people don't really understand this, like
they they like people do not understand that. Again, like
the normal Chinese schedule is called you work nine am
to nine pm, six days a week. This is the
normal schedule. Mostly a lot of workers like that. That
that again that that that's like an average schedule. Most
people work more than this seventy hours a week, right

(02:45:32):
like it is it is it is a ship show.
And yeah, if if Taiwan, if China invades Taiwan, that
you addition to the Taiwanese working class are going to
get worse. That is just a fact. Try like imposing
Chinese law on Taiwan, which strengthened the power of the
capitalist class a week in the proletariat um from from
an indigenous respective, which we we've talked about this at
length about you know, we talked about at length how
the Taiwan system is not that good. But you know,

(02:45:54):
it's not like it's a settler colony. There's some representation,
but you know, it's not great. It is much better
over the CCP system. The CCPs line on ethnic minorities
is that if you're an ethnic minority in China, you're
going to work in a Han factory, You're going to
pick crops from Han owed fields. You're going to dance
and smile for hon tourists. If you step out of line,
you will be dragged out of your bed in the
middle of the night and sent to a fucking camp.
There are you know, like this is the thing that

(02:46:16):
Americans sort of have similar experiences with. It's like, you know,
you have immigration raids, you have raids on homeless encampments,
but it's not that's and that that's like you know
that that's a kind of experience that is somewhat similar
to what it's like to live and change on but
like it's not exactly the same. Like I I know
people whose families are just fucking gone, Like the police

(02:46:36):
showed up in the middle of the night, and their
families are just gone. They've never seen them again, Like
they're they're just gone. No no one knows where they are,
no one knows who they're even alife. They're just finished.
And if and if you think that this isn't going
to happen to Taiwan's indigenous population, the moment they start
talking about self determination, you are incredibly bafflingly, hopelessly naive.
And you know, like like that there there's a lot

(02:46:57):
of other ship that you can point to, right like
for example, Taiwan has game marriage and China doesn't like
the degree of press censorship, just like social media censorship
in China that doesn't need some Taiwan is like absolutely absurd,
Like you know, I I think like most like some
people talking about press censorship in the US are like
almost always right wing ship heads who were complaining about

(02:47:19):
like they yelled a bunch of slurs, like in China,
a very common thing that happens, like someone will be
posting about a corrupt local official and then every single
post about it will get to lead and if you
try to post the guy's name of your post won't
go up. And then any emoji that people were using
in association with the corrupt local official like get blocked
and you can't use the emotis anymore, and like you
know and like and I it's it's almost like the

(02:47:40):
level of censorship is almost comical to the extent where
like people don't believe like in the US, like don't
like you know when people people talk about like like oh,
the the Chinese government isn't really banning get guys who
look too feminine and gay guys from appearing in medians
Like no, they are like they're they're, they're they're. I
think I think it was a Beyonce concept that they're there.
Or there was a very famous, like very funny thing

(02:48:01):
that happens like a few months ago where there was
this concert. I think it was a Beyonce concert, must be.
I can't remember who it was, but like so there
was a stream of it in China and there was
a guy there was a censor who was like putting
like one of those gray out censored bars, like over
over the singers closed because they were they were considered
too explicit. And she's just like moving this like dot

(02:48:22):
of like censorship thing across the stage, trying to fall
Like this is the level of bullshit that happens here,
Like it's it's not a thing that like the US
really has much reference for because like we don't experience,
like this is not a thing that you don't experience
you experience in the US. Like, Yeah, sometimes I like
to think about these things in terms of like like
like all people talk about oh Well and Huxley as

(02:48:44):
these dystopian novels, right, and imparhaps people don't read those novels,
but they love to quote them. And like in all
we else, we have like a system which like keeps
you quiet by pushing you down, right, and in Huxley's
we have a system which keeps you quiet by keeping
you happy with with drugs and such, and like it.
Then it's important to recognize it that it both things

(02:49:07):
can be bad, but the material conditions in the day
to the life of people, especially marginalized people in one society,
can be markedly better. Yeah, well and I think also,
like yeah, like I think it's we're not like the
ways in which the American like there there are similarities,
but like yeah, like there are lots of ways in
which the sort of Chinese system and the American system

(02:49:27):
are differently bad. And that breaks people's brains because you
get a lot of like you get you get a
lot of Americans who are convinced to become convinced that
like China as a socialist paradise. There's a Chinese version
of this where like you get international students who come
to the US for the first time and see an election,
and they like lose their minds and are like absolutely
convinced that like American democracy is like the only table
political system and they read Hyak and they like lose

(02:49:47):
They just like they become the Chinese version of tank You's,
which are like weird near liberal people. And it's like, no,
like I know, actually, in fact, none of these things
are good. Both of these societies are just like not
good to live in in any way, and like, you know,
and I think that there's nothing I should mention here,
like why all of this sort of like bullshit posturing

(02:50:09):
is happening between the US and China right now, which
is that like on on the American side, like Biden
is trying to distract from the fact that the country
is falling apart and there's a bunch of fascists trying
to take over, and like, you know, like all of
this bullshit is happening. China is trying to distract from
the fact that they have nineteen percent youth unemployment right

(02:50:30):
now and that like there are there are like cops
dispersing people doing runs on banks because the it finally
looks like the Chinese housing bubble is about to crack,
Like it's you know, this sort of nationalist stuff is
like for for for China in the US, it is
this sort of game that they play that has a

(02:50:51):
lot to do basically with pacifying their own internal populations.
But you know, for everyone in Taiwan, like it's not
a game. And that's that's the thing I think I
want to close on, which is like the single most
important thing here is that there is no way for
China to take control of Taiwan except by war. Of
the population does not want to be ruled by China.

(02:51:11):
Of the population of Taiwan wants to status quo. If
you try to force Chinese rule of Taiwan, the only
way to do it is by war and season and
controlling season, control of and occupying a place with twenty
three and a half million people is going to be
a blood bath. There's no other way to do it,
even if you are I don't want to leave this

(02:51:32):
as sort of a message to people who like who
don't agree with me on this, which is that if
you've gotten to the end of this and you genuinely
believe that Taiwan is part of China, are you willing
to watch your family get burned alive for that principle?
Because that that that is what you are asking us
to do. You are asking us to watch our families
die for your belief about lines in a map. And

(02:51:53):
if if you are not willing to accept the consequences
of your belief personally, if you are not willing to
see your family get obliterated by a fucking rocket, then
don't push for it to happen to us. And yeah,
that is that. That is type one one on one. Um, Please,
for the love of God, stop doing this bullshit. I
don't want my family to die. I yeah, yeah, I

(02:52:15):
think that's very well said mate, I think a lot
of people are so detached from the underground consequences so
they're like theoretical on Twitter dot compositions that it can
be very easy to be incredibly callous to people who
have loved one skin in the game. Yeah, and I
think I think this is a part of it. Like no,
like people on Twitter posting about this that there have

(02:52:37):
no stake in this whatsoever. It doesn't matter to them.
If everyone on top, if everyone who lives and I
one died tomorrow, it would have no material effected them whatsoever, right,
Like the worst thing that would maybe happen to them,
it was it would be harder for them to get
graphics cards. Yeah, you entire family, like this is this
is this is twenty three million people, an enormous number
of whom are going to die if this thing happens.

(02:52:59):
So yeah, like on like, unless you are committed enough
to this to kill your own family, then fucking stop
posting about it, because that that that like, if you
were not willing to materially accept the consequences of your
own position on yourself, then you shouldn't have it. Yeah,

(02:53:20):
especially when you're pretending to be left is Yeah, Yeah,
that's this is this is gonna make it happen Here's yeah,
don't don't have a Chinese invasion of Taiwan happened here? Yeah,
overthrow your local settler quality. Yeah it settling clonings is bad.

(02:53:41):
That's the official stunt of Yeah. Actually, I don't. I'm
not sure if we can legally. I think I think
we cantally say this the official stance of cools of
cool Zign Media. I'm pretty sure we can't legally say
it's the official stance. Yeah, if you cut that down. Yeah, yeah,
here are cool Zone Media. We don't endors set like colonialism. Yeah,

(02:54:03):
don't do it. War is bad, don't rocket cities. Welcome
to dig it happened here a podcaster. We occasionally have

(02:54:25):
introductions and mostly we have this and yeah that it's
it's the podcast. Things fall apart, Things come back together again,
they fall apart again, we put them back together again. Yeah,
you know, you know the drill um. Yeah. And with
me is James Glow. James, Hello, and speaking of things
falling apart, we're talking today about the what what what

(02:54:51):
it looks like when this sort of the interconnectivity of
the American judicial system comes apart under the weight of
dueling abortion laws, and with us to talk about that
is a lot of people who have written a lot
of very good stuff about this. So with us is
Ali Handra car Baio, who is a clinical instructor at
Harvard Law School Cyberlaw Clinic where she works on the

(02:55:12):
intersection of gender and technology. Hello, welcome to the show. Um.
We also have Michelle McGrath who is a public defender
in New York City for like almost a decade and
specializes in bail and parole litigation. Michelle, Welcome to the showy,
happy to be here. And finally we have Evka Pierre

(02:55:36):
who's a senior litigation counselor where she works at the
intersection of reproductive and criminal law, and she is on
cases where folks are criminalized for their pregnancy lass. So
if you welcome, welcome to the show as well. So
y'all have written, Actually, I don't it occurs to me
that it's been long enough. This is still not published yet, right, Yes,

(02:55:58):
it's so. It's basically we submitted it to Cuney Law
Review and we're waiting for edits. We expect our Law
Review article to be published in December um, so, but
you know, we've we've basically created a t L d
R that we we collaborated for Slate, so we you know,
there's a word article on Slate. You can read that

(02:56:20):
kind of condenses down our article from like words as
much as we can. I we were we were graciously
provided the long one, and so we read the long one.
We're gonna really talk about it because yeah, it's it's
it's a it's a really interesting look at I don't know,

(02:56:41):
there's a lot of sort of points of Okay, so
I guess we should rerun and talk about what this
actually is, which is that one of the things that's
been happening in the last I mean basically, since jobs
is a series of questions about what Okay, so it's
a series is about what happens if you are in

(02:57:03):
a state where abortions are illegal and you go to
another state and you get an abortion there, and yeah,
and there there's lots of jurisdictional questions here and yeah,
and this article is a very very sort of in
depth and really interesting look at it. And I guess, okay,
I want to jump into this at a kind of
weird place, but I wanted to start with. One of

(02:57:28):
the things that one of the things that's in this
article that's I haven't really seen much discussion of is
about the way that the sort of safe harbor laws
that states have been setting up are being like if well, okay,
the way that they can potentially be in the way
that previous safe harbor laws for immigration stuff were sabotaged
by the fact that like all of the cops are

(02:57:49):
sending like all of their stuff to each other. So, yeah,
I was wondering if you could talk a bit about that.
I guess it's like a lead into it. Yeah, I
mean I with respect to specifically, like how all the
law enforcement is talking to each other. I think Alejandro
might know a little more with respect to that. But
when it comes to the way these laws are being

(02:58:11):
written there, they really don't have the kind of teeth
that sort of the politicians are spinning to the public.
They're sort of letting folks think that, well, we would
never we in New York would never send you to
Texas for anything related to the criminalization of a pregnancy laws. Um.
And because of the way the law of extradition works

(02:58:34):
in the United States, which is actually a constitutional law Um,
it's going to be hard in a lot of ways
for them to resist that. And so we have our
article does talk about a little bit um in actually
great detail about how they could actually craft the craft
laws that would be a little bit different. Yeah. I
think one of the things that you know, this just

(02:58:55):
this past week, there was the story that came out
of Nebraska where Facebook provided the d MS of someone
who's uh, you know, being charged with you know, it
wasn't even charged with like like there wasn't a formal
charge of like committing an abortion, like the person that
was being charged it was like disposing of a body,
like and uh they say hiding a body. And so

(02:59:20):
Facebook like released a statement and was saying like, well,
we weren't told that this had anything to do with
an abortion, and like that's the exact problem, right, is
that when states are going to seek extradition, they're going
to bring charges that have probably nothing to do with
it in the immediate like on its face, to do
with abortion. It could just be like, you know, they
can repurpose all kinds of laws like endangerment of a minor, right,

(02:59:45):
Like they can do all these things that like would
ordinarily like never reply in a pregnancy, but they can
just kind of do it just to bring charges. Um.
And so you know, um, my colleague who's fortune out
here said their countant cook has has written about the
successively about like the criminalization aspect. But in terms of
like how you know these these safe harbor states, you know,

(03:00:05):
these laws like are going to be very difficult. I
think it is just really what we're dealing with their
effects of surveillance capitalism. Right, So, like Facebook turned over
these d ms. Facebook has been in the process of
moving to end to end encryption, which basically would have
made this impossible to do in the first place because
it would have been similar to signal. But what Facebook

(03:00:26):
did is because they realized that they would have lost
access to data around people's messages and what they're talking about,
they made it optional instead of by default. And suppose
people who are not very tech savvy are very familiar
or understanding of you know, who has access to the
messages and whether the government can get access, they might
not know that they can set this to end end

(03:00:48):
to end encryption, and so essentially, like in pursuit of profit,
Facebook doesn't enable this privacy feature. But this is the
exact same kind of stuff, right, So, like Facebook has
access to this data, but there's also this whole shady
system of data brokers that gets access to all kinds
of data. And that's exactly how I think were you
alluded to when you ask this question about ICE having

(03:01:11):
access to basically all this information on immigrants that states
had swore they would never share with better immigration officials.
Like ICE is basically built this entire shadow system where
they're purchasing data about driver's licenses and all this stuff
basically by the purchasing it on the open market, and

(03:01:33):
that bypasses all kinds of formal data requisition requests, warrants, subpoenas,
all those things that would normally be required because it's
just freely available. So, you know, suffices to say, as
much as these states may want to protect things on
that end in terms of data, it's going to be
incredibly hard to do so. And I think they're the
previous efforts around UH, Safe Harvard for Immigrants UM and

(03:01:58):
asylum states and things like that. UM, it's just gonna
be really hard to enforce. Some practice, however, on the
extradition side, when when like criminal charges are actually brought
that there there is some things that states can actually
do to help protect the folks who are caught up
with any kind of abortion related charges in their states. Um.

(03:02:19):
I just also want to jump into say that the
system works the way that it works because nobody's monitoring it.
So when we're talking about law enforcement officials that are
talking to one another and getting information through very informal means, right,
things that probably by the book, would take a warrant
to go from one place to the other just takes

(03:02:40):
Marcy calling over Janice that works that the other system
and getting something faxed over, even if they're not doing
it out of malice, it's just, oh, this is out
of convenience. It makes life a lot easier to get
information from this place to that place. And folks have
these informal systems that are set up that even when
the law says that they cannot do it, if we

(03:03:01):
don't have safeguards that I hate to say go after
people because it seems so carceral, but like that protects
what the intent of the law is. It has no teeth. Right,
if your law doesn't stop Marcy from calling Janice and
getting information on someone that they're not supposed to have
in your law doesn't matter. It's kind of in a

(03:03:22):
nothing sandwich, right, Um, and I have plenty of thoughts
and stuff to say about the criminalization when we get
there later, because that's a lot of my work. But
I think that gets to what Michelle and Alejandra and
what um Conti who's not here, have found. It's just
you gotta have something more than nothing sandwich. Is something
more than something that seems good on the surface and

(03:03:43):
doesn't actually help the people that we want to help.
And I want to sort of help folks sort of
understand how this plays out on the grounds. When the article,
we we give an example, right, So, maybe I've got
a New Yorker who gets prescribed a medication that would
induce a war Osian and you know, they bring it
to their friend in a state where that's criminalized, and

(03:04:05):
they give their friend the medication, the pregnancy ends, Maybe
the person is concerned and they go to the hospital. Um.
Quite often nurses and doctors are part of the criminalization process,
and so you know, maybe they call law enforcement official
based on this information. They get a subpoena for that
person's phone. So now they're in the phone and they

(03:04:27):
can find out, Wow, they got this medicine from the
New Yorker. Well, now now the person who took the medication,
perhaps it's charged with homicide. Right. I think what's key
here is that they're not necessarily going to be charged
with abortion. Maybe they're charged with homicide. They're charged within fanticide.
And guess what, the person who came from New York

(03:04:47):
is now probably going to be charged as an accomplice.
So now we have a warrant for for a homicide
for the person in New York. Because of all the
national databases that we have have, the NYPD, the any
of the law enforcement in New York is going to see,
oh that New Yorkers wanted for homicide, Let me go

(03:05:08):
get that person. Um. And so when then that person
comes in front of a judge, even though New York
is saying or Connecticut is saying, you know, we're not
going to give any resources to extradite someone related to
the termination of pregnancy, Well they're just being brought before
law enforcement in front of a judge who sees that

(03:05:30):
there wanted for homicide, right, and so on the ground
these laws don't have anything to stop them, and and
so we've sort of suggested things that involve immediate rights
to counsel people need to be released for extradition UM.
And we can talk about some of those more, but
I think it helps to sort of give that example
to see how it's happening, how it would happen in

(03:05:52):
real life. There's something else I wanted to sort of
talk about this because one of the things that that
on the sort of surveillance front has been the way
in which like what we're seeing now is sort of
the culmination of like a bunch of the types of
surveillance that have been inflicted on a bunch of different

(03:06:13):
groups of people. Do you have the antisex worker stuff,
you have the deservation, the surveillance stuff that's music as immigrants,
you have uh, the sort of post nine eleven like
I mean, this is where the sort of fusion centers
UM come from. Is the sort of like post nine
eleven security state build up. And then you have the
stuff that's been used to go after activists. And I
think that's been really interesting to me to sort of,

(03:06:34):
I mean incredibly like depressing too to watch has been Yeah,
like I don't know, like I remember like the few
like one of the things if you these fusion centers
were like all of these sort of like law enforcement
agencies like share information with each other, like I don't know,
like I remember in like they were like sending one
of my friends tweets around because that was one of
the things they were doing to like go after people

(03:06:56):
change their protests, and like, I don't know, I was
interested in in this question of of these fusion centers
because it's it's this I don't know, it's this real
sort of like like it really seems like the sort
of like the the next step of where all of
this stuff goes is, you know, the fusion centers becomes

(03:07:16):
becomes this place where it's really really easy to bypass
the law because you know, all of this stuff is
just getting shared anyways. And it brings up this other
problem which I was interested in, which is about like
to what extent can the state even control law enforcement
because like, okay, like law enforcement are those like cops

(03:07:38):
in general, very reactionary. There there's you know, if if
you you know, if if if you go back into
the history of the anti bustion movement, there's a lot
of them being like aided to better it by the cops,
and I was wondering, I don't know what what you
think about, like, like what what what do you even
do if the cops just decide they don't want follow

(03:07:58):
the law at all, and they're just you know, they're
gonna they're just gonna keep passing information on no matter
what you do. I think Alejandra and I probably uh
different on views about where things are going next, probably
just because of the nature of our our work in
the things that we're dealing with the most. So this
is gonna be fun. So I I actually think so, well, yesterday,

(03:08:19):
two days ago, whenever this airs, However, many days ago,
one of our colleagues at if When how my colleague
Laura Huss, who's brilliant UM has been working on this
research project for like the last two years, tracking cases
of when folks are criminalized for self managed abortion. Why
self managed abortion, because that is the abortions that were
happening outside of clinical spaces right that we're There were

(03:08:42):
always questions about who can be criminalized for self managing
their care. There weren't as many protections in the law
for a lot of helpers and things like that in
self managed care. So when her and her team looked
at this data. UM. What they found was that the
biggest risk of criminalization didn't actually necessarily come from UM

(03:09:04):
external forces looking at big data, right, but was actually
cut like the hell is other people. Because what they
were finding was that nearly the majority of cases of
folks coming to the attention of law enforcement was coming
from medical professionals. So I want to say, I have
the numbers in front of me somewhere it's UM. Well,

(03:09:26):
so it's something like of folks that were reported to
the police were reported by some sort of medical professional,
whether that's a doctor, a social work, or a nurse
or whoever, that was at a hospital when they were
seeking care or they were getting prenatal care at some
point when they found out they were pregnant. That's how
they came to the attention of law enforcement. Another of
those folks that came to the attention of law enforcement

(03:09:47):
came to people that they told information to that they entrusted,
whether that was a family member, a partner, a former partner,
whoever the heck right. So, what we're finding is that
the vast majority of people that came to the attention
of law andforcement was because of folks, like actual people
that had the information, and then that turned into them
being individually targeted by police, and then that turned into

(03:10:12):
their data being mined on their actual physical devices. Not
like big brother down but small brother up right. So uh,
When I certainly think about kind of how big data
can be used and manipulated and like absolutely messed up
to do a dragnet of folks, that's always kind of

(03:10:32):
a possibility that's swimming. But I think the immediate possibility
is like, how do you protect your individual data on
your individual devices? What safety plan do you have in
place about how you use the internet wholesale? Because I'm
a lawyer, I can't tell people to commit crimes, but
I can tell people to be very careful about how
you manage your devices and how you manage information. Who

(03:10:52):
do you tell your business to full stop? Right, because
that's how folks are coming to the attention of law enforcement.
Can the laws control cops? I think what we generally
see is like, probably not um, but will the courts
respond to cops that work outside of the law? I

(03:11:13):
think the loyally awful answer is it depends on the
jurisdiction that you managed to find yourself in Yeah, I
think I think Keith guys just hit it right on
the head. Um, you know, it's cybersecurity or weakest like
as always a human element, So like that's always going
to be the biggest concern, right, Like who are you
telling about any of this? Like who knows about it? Um?
Like you know, you know on a tangential as you're

(03:11:36):
like with genderforming care in Texas, like one of the
one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit against Texas, like
one of the trans boys like that that was like
you know, found out about you know, Governor Abbott's letter
to like basically equate gender firming care as child abuse
attempted suicide and then when was taken to the hospital,

(03:11:57):
the hospital staff then made a report to like the
Department of Yeah, so I mean this was all in
in the A. C. L Use lawsuit and it's like
it's just insane, right, So like that that's exactly the thing,
Like the biggest risk is always gonna be the human element,
Like you're like the doctors, the nurses, your friends, like

(03:12:18):
family members, you know it, and it might even be
people like you deeply trust. You just never know, And
so that's always going to be an aspect. But I
think one of the biggest risks as well is is
that the amount of data that we have now, like
even if that can't be used like in a proactive
way to like target people on the back ends, like
once you do have that kind of friend turning you

(03:12:39):
into like all of a sudden, they have intent. They
have like all of these things from messages, they have
location data. They show exactly where you were at what time.
Like it's it's just like the perfect surveillance system that
basically makes like any kind of reasonable defense nearly impossible, right,
Like they can show where you were, who you talked
to um. And so I think that the best tweet

(03:13:01):
that I saw about this is from from someone who
works at Digital Defense Fund, and they're basically like there
um actually might not have been them. I just remember
it was just like there there is no conversation about
criminal activity. There is only conspiracy. Like basically it's like
any time you're chatting about any of this stuff, Like
it's basically like that that in itself can be potentially

(03:13:23):
considered like criminal conduct, and like that can be used
like as intent and like all these things and like
um in prosecution. So like there's all of those aspects,
and I think just to answer your your question like
more broadly on on what police can be done, like
like to be honest, I guess an attorney, it's been
very very frustrating seeing qualified immunity just being like increased,

(03:13:45):
right like, so so basically there's been no appetite by
the courts to like like remove this doctrine or whittle
it away actually like being rapidly expanded, especially in aspect
around um federal agents. Right and now like there's some
can you explain, sorry briefly just what that is for
people who don't know. So, qualified immunity basically means that

(03:14:06):
you can't bring a civil rights lawsuit, particularly what it
call like a nineteen eighty three lawsuit, which is like
the federal statute that allows you to bring civil rights
lawsuits against state and federal individuals for um, any kind
of civil rights abuses. And it's everything from like discrimination
on basis of race to basically you know, the cop

(03:14:26):
beating someone you know within an inch of their life
though so basically any any kind of civilis violations. It's
called like a nineteen eight three case, which is like
the citation is the actual law that like dates back
to the nineteenth century, Like it's part of um like
the ku klux Klient Acts, which like so this is
a long running like civil rights statute that really gained
prominence in the last sixty years. But you know, so

(03:14:49):
basically what qualified immunity does is it basically says it, well,
if it wasn't a clearly established right when this abuse
or violation of your civil rights happened, the officer or
the government of show it can't be held liable for it.
So basically like and the way that they do it
is very strictly interpreted. It was like clearly established right.
So it's like, well, I wasn't clearly established right that

(03:15:10):
you weren't supposed to be able to be beaten with
a baton like and it's just like what like it's
some of these cases get really crazy. I'm not an
expert on this by any means, but like I've I've
you know, come across a few, and it's it's absolutely insane.
Like how how like narrowly they'll they'll oftentimes like define
what like clearly like it's not like you know, broadly

(03:15:32):
defined right of like maybe police officers shouldn't beating people. Um,
but you know, and I think it was. It was'ce
even crazier is that this law or there's an upcoming
lar of the article by this professor that I was
just came across the other day and like, apparently there
is a whole provision of nineteen eight of the section
that has been omitted from the Federal Register for a

(03:15:54):
hundred and like forty years. Basically like a clerk omitted
a section and this large like this this um like
the Farriarca basically uncovered this omission that should have been
in it passed in Congress. I'm like, but hey, if
you we didn't. It wasn't a clearly established right Alejandra,

(03:16:16):
So does it really apply? The one that I'm like
haunted by that that I read about that was that
was one of the qualified beauty cases was like there
was a guy who got lit on fire by a
cop with the taser, and the courts ruled that because
because there hadn't been a prior instance of someone's like that,
you don't have clearly established right for a cop. Don't
you on fire with the taser? Yeah? And you know

(03:16:36):
you can. Guy burned it death because again you got
lit on fire with a taser, like because because there
wasn't a clearly everything. It's like this is like this
is like the worst, Like yeah, the secret is it's
never it's never clearly established like like mostly folks lose
these lawsuits. And I mean this is where you know,
I think folks need to recognize and I say this

(03:16:59):
very much as a lawyer, that the law is not
at the end of the day, what's going to save
us like collective organizing and working together to keep each
other safe. Is because the law is not designed to
hold police accountable. It is not designed to keep people
out of jail. In fact, it's designed to do the opposite, right,

(03:17:20):
And I think we're going to see a whole lot
of folks start to understand how criminalization works in a
way that they may not have realized before. And to
your question, like as a public defender in New York
City who spent many of those years in the Bronx, like, no,
the police are not accountable to anyone and they continually
do unlawful things all day. And this is part part

(03:17:42):
of one of the solutions. And again, all of these
are stopgap measures so that people have time to plan
and plot and organize and and and do what they
need to do. But is that in these states that
are saying, oh, we're not you know, we're going to
keep state resources away. No, no one shall use state

(03:18:02):
resources to move someone for any of these you know,
criminalization of pregnancy. UM. But we imagine that law enforcement
is generally a rather conservative group of people will simply
disagree with that law and probably at times do things anyway. Right,
And sure we can file a lawsuit later, but that's
not really preventing the harm in the interim, right, like
someone's going to be incarcerated. All of these things are

(03:18:25):
going to happen. And so one of our proposals is
that it should be crystal clear that any any state
actor who does participate in such extradition can be sued individually.
They will have none of this qualified immunity. It will
not exist. Now, Listen, this seems very reasonable to me

(03:18:47):
and to us, But do I think it's something that
the legislature will actually pass. I'm not particularly optimistic about
most of our proposals on this because it will mean
a lot of other folks who will not be criminalized.
In addition to UM, folks whore criminalized for abortion. But
so so I do think that that that does police.
You have a problem with rampant police impunity uh in

(03:19:10):
this country. UM, and it will show up here just
like it does in many other sectors. I think sometimes
when we talk about criminalization of abortion wholesale, for folks
that have not been working in and about repro it
feels very new, like this is something that we need
to kind of like gird our loins and prepare for.
But folks that have been working in the RHRJ movements

(03:19:32):
reproductive rights, health and justice movements, UM, we have been
talking about criminalization for a long time. And the reason
that we've been talking about criminalizations because it's been happening
for a long time. So I was talking about my
colleagues research that, um, the preliminary and folk just came out.
So when she was combing through all of these like

(03:19:53):
different clerks offices all over the country, she unearthed like
sixty one cases of folks being criminalized with self managed
aboard and in twenty states now we only have three
states that have laws criminalizing self managed abortion left on
the books. So holy crap. The fact that there have
been prosecutions in twenty states when only I think at

(03:20:14):
the time that some of these cases were about only
like five or six states had these laws on the books.
Tell us that prosecutors are very, very creative in the
ways that they go after people. So the likelihood of
always seeing abortion written at the top of the warrant
is going to be low. And then in some states
we are going to start seeing it because they are

(03:20:36):
going to if they haven't already criminalized abortion wholesale, any
kind of abortion right, all abortions are going to become
self managed because their folks are not able to get
clinical care. So it's it's not new, and I think
that's one of the things that I want to make
sure that folks understand that there like criminal defense attorneys
can and can deal with this because it's just the

(03:20:56):
same messed up ways that they charge people in a
variety of other cases. But I think the shock and
awe um that's hitting some folks who the criminal legal
system doesn't move within their lives is I need folks
to get out of shock and all quick and get
into work mode because some of the things that I'm

(03:21:18):
seeing on the internet. While we're talking about how hell
is other people and how we can protect ourselves in
our communities. Um, some of the ways that folks are
talking about this on the Internet shows that they're not
people that have had the impact of the criminal legal
system necessarily touched their lives, right, Like folks that think
they're doing op set on Twitter. But like, if you
want to get a manicure, you can come to my

(03:21:41):
state and I'll pick you up for your manicure. And
that's when we talk about how cases get put together
on the back end. And I think, um Michelle can
probably speak to this too, like as a public defender,
when you're seeing how when you have a very motivated
prosecutor a cop that actually knows how to do their

(03:22:02):
job in the information that they're able to gather when
they investigate. Yes, they will pull your tweets. Yes, even
if it's not your case, they will pull your tweets
and connect that person that got their abortion to the
tweets that you put online to show that they intended
to go to your place to go and get an abortion,
and then try to use those things to prosecute them

(03:22:24):
over here. So even if you're willing to take the
risk with your own life, if you're trying to help people,
don't put them in a position that they can be
harmed by some of the things that we say out loud.
Because if you're living in a state where you're not
afraid of criminalization, but the person you aren't trying to
help is in a state that and they have to
go back to somewhere they can be criminalized, you gotta

(03:22:44):
think about how you're protecting them. That's my soapbox rant.
I think that's really valuable. Actually this like we start
letting the Trump administration to this like legal constitutional magic
that like like they steth Abramson, the the Twitter thread
guy right like it's it's yeah, it distracts from useful

(03:23:06):
organizing a mutual aid because people are just like, well
if this and this and this and this and this,
and then like I understand this and no one else
does and this is a special secret. And then if
we do this and turn around three times and go
through the wardrobe and Donald Trump will be impeached or
you know, I can give you it a safe a
safe of safe access to reproductive healthcare rather than just
doing the work. And I think another part of what

(03:23:28):
was going on here and this has been something that like,
you know, if you if you talk to people who've
been doing this, like okay, if if if this is
the thing you genuinely want to do, there are people
who have been doing this kind of work for decades
and decades and decades of decades, and they know largely
what is safe and what isn't and more stuff is
a factor for not And the way that this sort

(03:23:49):
of like like the kind of sort of like, hey,
I'm going to go do this on my own. I
have I've never done this before. I don't know what
I'm doing, but here I'm going to sort of signal
that I can do this thing. Like, go talk if
you want to do those go talk to the people
who have been doing it for ages, and go support
them because, like you know, again, like the reason the

(03:24:09):
reason we're here in the first place is because that
this whole, like the entire right to abortion has for
literally decades, been supported by just a really tiny number
of incredibly underfunded and understaffed people in organizations. So like,
go help them, don't like strike out on your own
to boldly get you and everyone you're working with arrested. Yeah,

(03:24:32):
I think you know some of that is you know,
I think some people have some good intentions, but my god,
like that energy can be spent in so much more
productive ways, and it's it's kind of unfortunate. I think
that the worst aspect of it, though, is like the
tech bros coming in and being like, I'm going to
save this space with We're going to create a dow
and like distribute funds, and I'm like, oh my god,

(03:24:54):
Like I'm just sitting here, like, you know, because this
is something like you know, I've looked into is students
like this earlier this year, like you know, how payment
transactions could be used, um and basically how there's basically
almost no security with with payment transactions, right, like like
if you're using Venmo, which which in and of itself
has like a social media function, so like you know,

(03:25:16):
you can see when you're your friend, you know, Joe
is like getting brunch on Sunday, and like, you know,
they could you know, if you're not sending that to
private by default, like that that's already a problem. But basically,
like you know, they can get access to those records
pretty easily, um, in a much easier way. And you know,
one of the things we we we started to look
at like towards the end was like, oh you know

(03:25:37):
has you know had some some students being like, well,
can you can you use krypto? Can you use like bitcoin?
It's like you still have to interact at some point
with a financial institution and they can tie these things back.
It is not that exceptionally hard, especially like now it's
been shown that like coin bases like cooperating with the
FEDS and basically acting like a giant honey pot. So
like I just I finally wish that people would just

(03:25:59):
like realize that like technology is not going to save
us here, Like it can help if used wisely and creatively,
but don't think that like you're just gonna like do
this one little neat trick, like as James was saying,
and then suddenly we're gonna fix this because it's not right,
Like this is going to take a million different solutions
with a million different people doing all the little things

(03:26:21):
that they can to push back. And like that's one
of the things I think we we tried to be
very hopble about in our papers, like look, none of
this is a silver bullet. We're just trying to provide
some concrete solutions that states can take and some stuff
that they can take, but we realize that nothing is
ever going to be perfect to solve this kind of
Pandora's box. It's been opened by a Lido and all
these like right wing reactionaries on the court. So like,

(03:26:44):
I guess speaking of things that are not silver bullets
and will not save us. Um, Yeah, I guess could
we get a bit more into looking at what the
sort of like It's like a lot of the article
is talking about I guess, the the the history of extradition, uh,

(03:27:05):
and how how that sort of been understood and interpreted,
And so I guess I was wondering, Yeah, can we
go into talking about what the sort of legal stuff
is going to look like when it's like, you know,
if if we start getting these large showdowns between like
states with like actually sort of like you know, if
states actually start trying to have sanctuary laws that are
like have teeth and are good, what what what is

(03:27:27):
that sort of what is that going to look like? Yeah,
So this is a kind of part that I focused
on in the article. And so basically a lot of
people aren't aware about this because it's not really a
contested area of the Constitution. But basically when the Constitution
was drafted um and ratified, it contained what was called
the extradition Clause, and basically what it said is that,
you know, all the states have a duty to turn

(03:27:50):
over fugitives from other states that have been charged with
the crime and have fled into those states. Is the
United States kind of where it's a federal system, so
like every state is still considered kind of its own
sovereign in some ways, in a very quasi sovereign way.
And so there was a question about, you know, since
all criminal prosecutions, basically especially the inception of the United States,

(03:28:12):
were done at the state level, you know, what what
happens when somebody crosses and across state lines? Like how
are we going to handle that? And so basically this
was you know, one of the drafts. And initially they
tried to set it at a higher bar, like to
be like high crimes and misdemeanors, similar to kind of
the impeachment clause, and you know, they whittled it down

(03:28:34):
to and basically made it very applicable as at all crimes, um.
But it really did not get much play until basically
in the eighteen forties when obviously, the tension around slavery
picked up, right, So you had enslaved people escaping to
the north and the South being very angry about that
and wanting the North to to return. Um then escaped

(03:28:57):
enslave folks and the North being like no. And Congress
tried to figure out a way to like thread some
kind of needle, but made it ten times worse and
put us on an accelerating path towards Civil war by
passing the Fugitive Slave Act of eighteen fifty. And a
bunch of radical abolitionists in the Northeast were like, we

(03:29:19):
don't ever want to comply with this, right, So like
Vermont passed this bill called the Habeas Corpus Act, which
basically created all kinds of legal procedures so that Southern
bounty hunters wouldn't just come into the state and just kidnap,
you know, the first black person they saw, because they
assumed that they were been an escaped and slave person
rather than a free person. And you know, and it

(03:29:41):
was trying to stop that kind of issue of kidnappings
and also just not to comply with this, you know,
the institution of slavery, because there were people who had
escaped slavery and were in the North, and so it
was causing all kinds of tension. And while like the
Vermont Law was never fully tested, it did create a
lot of incendiary back and force between the North and

(03:30:03):
the South and then the press, and it was really
interesting like reading some of these old newspaper articles from
the eighteen like from eighteen fifty, because it was like
basically the press and Richmond and the press in Boston
like taking stabs at each other. And it was like
the eighteen fifty version of ship posting, because they were
like one person was just like this is nullification made easy,

(03:30:25):
and like basically with like it's just it was. It
was the surreal thing like if you know, if you
get a chance when when our full article comes out
in December, there'll be some some highlights from that and
the notes um. But basically what it really got tested
was in eighteen sixty one. The case started in eighteen
fifty nine, though it's called Kentucky be Dennisent and so

(03:30:46):
what what essentially happened is there was someone who aided
Um and it's like person escape Kentucky and get to
Ohio and basically the governor of Ohio was an abolitionist
and was like, I don't want to comply with this
right and I do not want to I don't believe
like this is a crime because this is not a
crime in our state. And the Attorney General of Ohio
basically wrote a long legal memo stating that this this

(03:31:08):
is a crime not known to the laws of civilization
or man. So basically, yeah, they thought they want to
read to the Supreme Court. And Chief Justice Taney also
notable for dread Scott decisions, so like absolutely just terrible
court like they were. This came I think about like
three weeks before the Civil Wars. This is like I
think it's in in like March of eighteen six one,

(03:31:29):
so basically like three weeks before Fort Sumter got like
sacked by by the south Um. But basically what it
did was is that it said states actually can't utilize
any discretion in extradition. So like the like the governor
of Ohio can't say, like, I have concerns about human
rights and that this isn't a crime in our state. Right,

(03:31:49):
there's not this dual criminality analysis, and we're concerned about
human rights and all these things. So the Supreme court
basically said no, states don't have that discretion, which you know,
but they essentially split the baby by by then saying
federal courts can't issue a rid of and NamUs, which
is basically an order for a government official to do something. Um.

(03:32:10):
They said that federal courts couldn't do that to a
state governor an extradition. So basically it means that like,
states don't have discretion, but federal courts can enforce it.
So therefore it's just a non issue. Right. Fast forward
a hundred and twenty years and we get to a
case called Perdorico v. Brand's Dad, which basically, somebody committed
murder in Perto Rico, fled back to Iowa, and then

(03:32:33):
was sought for extradition back to Pertorico. And there's a
huge element of racism here because you know, they were
concerned that a white man couldn't get a fair trial
in Puerto Rico, which is just deeply offensive. Um. And
so they were. And there was also a question of
like territoriality, right because Perdorico is a territory. I wasn't
sure if they had to comply with the extradition clause.
And so essentially the Supreme Court said, yes, federal courts

(03:32:56):
can comply with or can't issue a rid of mandamus
to to ensure extradition. So essentially what it did was
it partially overturned the Kentucky be dens In case, but
upheld the central ruling. The basics, states have no discretion.
So what does that mean? Basically that states can't really
stop the extradition of someone in their in their um jurisdiction,

(03:33:22):
even if they have extreme concerns. Right, So if you have, like,
let's say, going back to Michelle's example earlier, someone who
sends their friends like abortion pills from New York to
let's say Texas, right, and Texas is seeking extradition in
New York's like, well, that's not a crime here, so
we don't want to extradite um. You know, the states
would typically be hard pressed. But there's kind of two

(03:33:43):
kind of or there's one major issue with like the
extradition part right, actually has to apply to someone who's
quote unquote an actual fugitive, meaning that they had to
actually be present in the state when the crime occurred,
and the commission of the crime can't in itself create
what's called constructive presence. You have to be corporeally present

(03:34:06):
in the state, meaning you have to be physically present.
You can't just like the commission of the crime doesn't
constitute that. So in this instance, um, you know, the
person who says a pill in York technically like constitutionally
does not have to be extradited, right, Like they can
contest that. The problem is, as Michelle pointed out, is
that you know, the extradition causes it exist today is

(03:34:28):
pretty much almost entirely just a formality that is waived
basically almost every single time. And so the courts, the
like the state attorneys, the district attorneys, even defense attorneys
might not be familiar with that and might not know
that that's something that they can potentially contest or it's

(03:34:48):
even something that they can um that that is a
potential constitutional issue, right And so that's one of the
things that we focused on is our potential solution, um
is to ensure that people who were not present in
the state where the actor occurred are able to mount
a challenge to the extradition. Um. You know, it creates

(03:35:09):
all kinds of other problems because there's still federal extradition,
meaning like if you leave this the country and come
back in like border patrol could potentially get you. We
still don't have a clear understanding of how that necessarily
would work, um, you know, because that's never been a
question that's like fully resolved. So you know, basically, you know,

(03:35:30):
at the end of the day, like we want to
make sure that like folks are aware of that. But
like the folks that like leave Texas, right, so, like
if you commit an abortion, you were charged in Texas
and you go to New York, Like New York is
not going to have very many options to protect you
from being extradited back to Texas. UM. And so you know,
one of the things that you know, I fundamentally believe

(03:35:51):
Kentucky be Dennison was wrong. Was wrongly decided on the
sense that state shouldn't be able to have a concern
around human rights because it essentially acts as a one
way ratchet where the states with the most regressive anti
human rights criminal justice laws get to have like get
to dictate that over all of the other states. Similar

(03:36:12):
to how um slavery, like the southern states were trying
to enforce the institutional slavery on northern states that had
that had abolished slavery decades ago, so it's a very
complicated issue. And again I reached back to that slavery
analysis because not because I think that, you know, the
slavery and abortions should be compared directly, but because this

(03:36:34):
is like, this is fun eventually the last time where
you have criminal laws that are so different between states,
Like one state's human right is another state's capital crime.
Like if you can't get further apart than that. Yeah,
And I wanted to just clarify for folks. If I
drove the pill to Texas, then I would have committed

(03:36:58):
the crime in Texas, and New York could extradite me
um and I what I also think I'm sort of
here is the what happens on the ground, right, So
if you to be clear, while as Alejanda correctly points,
if I just mailed it to Texas and they have
the warrant while we're sorting out this extradition warrant, I
am very likely incarcerated and the sorting out of the

(03:37:21):
extradition warrant will probably take ninety days. So just because
I think folks get confused with this a lot, just
because something is illegal doesn't mean or your lawyers arguing
it's illegal doesn't mean it just magically stops um or
the process ends. And so this is something where we
think that, um, really there should be a basis to

(03:37:47):
contest your extradition on a human rights ground on two grounds,
Either there is no dual criminality, that is, this is
not actually a crime, and the other state Interestingly, here,
handing someone a person scription pill in New York is
actually a felony, whether or not you get money for it.
Most folks don't know that he's smiling because she also
has a public defender in New York City. Um, because

(03:38:09):
it blows your mind. You're like, wait, they just handed
it to them. There's no money exchange. Yeah, that's a
felony drug sale, So we might have dual criminality. New
York might actually say, um, you did do a crime,
so I will extradite you, Which is why we think
there also needs to be a human rights defense. And
this may also extend to, well, we're not going to
extradite them to Texas because they have the death penalty

(03:38:30):
and we think that is a clear contravention of human rights.
Maybe we can extend it to prison conditions. I don't
know how that far that goes again, these are things
I don't know they'd be likely to be codified. But
if we're actually dreaming up the world that we think
where this could work, like I, as your attorney, should
be able to come in and say there's no dual criminality,
this isn't contravention of human rights. And once I mount

(03:38:50):
that defense, then the court is bound to release you
while we sort that out. Um and and that is
sort of our vision. Another thing that that Alejandro mentioned
the ver the Vermont law in the eighteen hundreds, and
one of the things that it said was you could
get a jury of your peers in a situation like this.

(03:39:13):
There's no jury in an extradition case. But the idea,
of course, is that a jury is going to say
this is morally wrong. I don't care what the law says,
We're not sending this person back to enslavement. And the
idea here is if you put a jury in and
you assert of human rights defense, perhaps the jury will say, no,
we're not sending you. So these are these are a
lot of ideas that we've been coming up with. So

(03:39:35):
we're doing the plan. There was jury nullification, yes, it
absolutely was. It absolutely was jury nullification of love love
love love love love jury nullification. I anybody with the
law review that's listening to this, let me write about
jury nullification for you and feel like, but but we
we we. I feel like I have been wanting to

(03:39:57):
explain jury nalification on this show. Literally sense the like
I asked the first week coming back for the next one.
So there's something that I don't want to be lost.
And that's the idea of like, people don't necessarily know
what they're being charged with in the state that's asking

(03:40:18):
for them to go back, because there's not really a
requirement that that. So for an extradition, like thinking through
what you actually need, like the bare bones of an extradition.
It needs to be like a piece of paper that's
signed by the governor, but not necessarily the governor of
the state, but somebody with authority to ask for you
to return back. And that's in essence it right, just

(03:40:41):
like a piece of paper signed by somebody that says
x y Z birthdate, x y Z did a crime
in our state. Give them back to us. Right, they
don't have to say what crime. Not really a requirement
it usually says it, but it doesn't. It doesn't require
a probable cause, Affid David, I think is really the
more important part. It doesn't require you to prove that

(03:41:04):
there is enough to charge them with a crime in
the sending state. Right, So we're saying that's a bare
minimum change that we can make two laws to make
the state that's asking for you to use your resources
to put somebody in a cage and then put them
in a traveling cage to bring them to our cages. Um.

(03:41:24):
And I keep saying the word cage because I don't
want us to move away from what like prisons and
jails actually are. It's like bars and cages and boxes. Right,
So it doesn't really harm the system, doesn't really tear
yall apart to say, and here's what they're being charged
within the reason why because that would be the bare
minimum for someone to be charged for a crime in

(03:41:47):
New York. You would need to have probable cause for
the arrest, and then a judge that's sitting on the
bench gets to say, Yep, there's enough probable cause for
this person to be charged next court date, you know.
And but we don't have that with extradition. We just
trust that the wheels of bureaucracy are turning the way
that they need to. Holy crap, that can harm so
many people. So we're just saying, hey, make them write

(03:42:09):
it down. So maybe a judge that's sitting in Illinois
can look at this warrant from Missouri that says we
want X y Z back here because of a self
managed abortion, and then they can see whether or not
Illinois's new fancy extradition law, which they haven't written up
and I'm sure they will, applies, right. I think that's
a bare minimum that we can do. And as much

(03:42:31):
as I crave shaking systems and tearing them apart, I
don't think that's going to be a thing that does it.
But it might. You know, have y'all ever played Mario Kart,
You know, when you're driving and you're able to throw
like the turtle shell or the banana, that might be
the banana that might slow down the process of somebody
kind of getting dragged along on this course. Well, and

(03:42:53):
I think I think there's like there's another thing that
that would do too, which is that that vice time
for a community response, because like you know, if we
go back to sort of the ice stuff, it was like, well, yeah, Okay,
like ice raids weren't stopped by the sanctuary laws. The
thing that like did slow them down was massive community response. Yeah,
I think I think that's very Uh it's certainly I've

(03:43:13):
seen that happen here. Like in San Diego, it wasn't
any of our performative Democrats laws. It was people getting
out into the street. Now I was gonna say, there's
It's also like in the UK in the last couple
of months, there's been a lot of really really impressive
community defense things and like cops showing up and like
just entire communities and neighborhoods showing up the cops just

(03:43:35):
like running away. And it's been it's been incredible to watch.
And you two can also do this. But performative Democrats
keep giving us good laws, like give us something, give
anything like a nub of a thing that folks can
hang their hats on. Um. I just don't want any

(03:43:55):
politician out there to think that they're absolved from the
job of protecting people. Yeah. Well, and I think I
think again to think with these laws, right, it's like
you you actually like with this e tradition stuff like
I don't know how like I don't. I don't know
how you would even like try to stop it unless

(03:44:16):
like because like you don't know, like I mean, I
like unless unless youre going to commit to try to
stop trying to stop every person who gets arrested, which
I think is like a noble goal, but like there's no,
we don't have a capacity for that. Like if we
lived in a world where we could do that, like
the world will be much better and the state would
be running for its life. But yeah, it's like like

(03:44:40):
it seems like a thing that like it gives like
it gives time for the law to act. More importantly,
it's like it gives time for us to act. And
that seems sure. Absolutely one of the most important thing
is that it's buying time for people to organize and
be able to be able to push back. It also
creates a lot of higher barrier right like at the
end of the day, like these systems are still made

(03:45:01):
up people, and people are incredibly lazy and oftentimes like
the police and other folks like don't want to have
to deal with like engaging and going with like an
extradition request because of the actual process for dealing with
that is actually very onerous. Like, um, they have physically
go to the state to pick them up, and they
have to do all these things, right, and so what
we're doing is like we're suggesting make it even harder,

(03:45:22):
like make it absolutely hard for them to go through
this and actually have to litigate in courts and like
bring all this stuff, um and just basically like so
down the process and raise that kind of buried entry
on it. But you know, I thinks, like I think
that's you know, very important to say, is like you know,
the commune defense aspect cannot be able to stated because
at the end of the day, like laws are just

(03:45:43):
words on paper, right, Like it's it's the people that
give them the effect and the power. So really what
we need is like people say like this is morally wrong, right,
Like we're not going to prosecute people for for exercising
their bodily autonomy engaging in a fundamental human right. And
so you know, when one of the things I have
but heartened byas ums like um for John Brown gun

(03:46:03):
Club in Dallas, like what they've been doing like protecting
houseless folks like under the over passes, like they show
up and like you know, in Texas they can open
carry and like the police don't want to deal with them,
so they're like buying a few more days so that
the Dallas police doesn't um come in and sweep you know,
the only belongings that these people have. And like that

(03:46:25):
in and of itself brought so much attention that like
brought so much scrutiny to Dallas p D's actions. So
like it is that kind of community defense. And I
think it also harks back to how these extradition issues
like prior to like the Civil War worked out. It
wasn't necessarily like these formal systems in Vermont that like
stopped you know, escaped as like persons from being returned

(03:46:48):
back to the South. It was like entire mods of
people coming and like being like, you're not taking this
person out of our town, and if you try to,
you're not gonna leave here. Like I as a whole person,
I guess it's probably the best way to put that,
um shoot your local bounty hunters. Yeah, And so like
essentially like that that's how it worked, right, And like

(03:47:09):
you know, at the end of the day, I feel like,
you know, I don't want to du something kind of violence,
but like like what really what it means is like
when people show up and they physically put themselves in
the way, it makes it so much harder for the
like this kind of wheel of injustice to continue. And
so that's really what it's going to take. And like
you were mentioning with like the with the ice raids
and everything like that, like it took people it's sometimes

(03:47:32):
physically putting their bodies in front of ice fans to
stop them from driving away and like chaining themselves to stuff,
and like that's the kind of like non violent like
direct action that I think is like going to be
like needed. Yeah, And I think folks seem to have
figured out that their district attorneys are elected and the
person bringing the fugitive case, which I don't think I've

(03:47:53):
been crystal clear about, is the district attorney. So then
the police officer is going to go to the district
attorneys of it, and that is the person who's going
to bring the court case to help facilitate sending the
person um. And I know New York recently has seen
a number of successes of folks organizing around individual people
would be saying you need to drop these charges. This

(03:48:15):
conviction got overturned you should not be continuing with the case.
This person is a for whatever reason, folks are organizing around, right,
and so if we can create some delays whereby the
person is free, right, because this is the key thing.
We don't want people incarcerated. Incarceration in of itself is

(03:48:36):
extreme violence. Right, So if the person is not incarcerated,
then we can sort of delay this process and organize
around pressuring whoever needs to be pressured, particularly the two
Democratic politicians who say there against all of this stuff.
But then at the end of the day, are they
going to ignore the homicide extradition warrant? Like that's where

(03:48:57):
the rubber meets the road. Are you going to do
it or not? Right? And and and I think that's
a much harder question when it comes down to that
for them, because they're like, well, it's a homicide warrant, right,
and and so that's where they need the pressure because um,
all the wild ideas go out the door in that moment. Yeah,
I think, like, I think that's the thing with with
these people. It's like ideologically like they don't care enough

(03:49:20):
to deal with do it. But if you but you
can force them to care about having a job, Yeah, well,
it's not not even just so much that, like there
there are long established ways of putting pressure on people
and systems that can force them to do things they
don't want to do, and yeah, go do that because
we're going to need it. Frankly, I think part of

(03:49:41):
this is also destigmatizing work right, um, Because when we
have kind of these big divergent ideas, when we find
ourselves at the split of like good versus evil, right,
like slavery versus not slavery, bodily autonomy versus not bodily autonomy, um,

(03:50:01):
sometimes the good guys compromise to the point that we
get ourselves to this position later on down the line,
and what we can do is kind of galvanized community
response and also civic engagement by forcing folks to take
a look at the laws that we so rely on
and questioning why does this thing exist this way? Why
is this process moving that way? Someone that didn't know that.

(03:50:24):
Folks facing an extradition warrant like often have to make
the decision at an arrayment. Am I going to waive
my right to extradition and wait for them to couldn't
get me because they said that takes thirty days for
them to come and get you. But if you don't wait,
if it's going to take ninety days to them to
come and get you, so you'll be sitting there longer,
and that's a decision that you need to make. Kind

(03:50:46):
of like in that moment, if we're talking about extradition
in normal conversation, we're moving forward to a place where
we're destigmatizing and frankly demystifying what the criminal legal system
really looks like. In an and bolts. It might end
up with better conversations and better output for folks in
the future. It might end up with you being able

(03:51:06):
to talk about jury nullification and having like and not
having it be kind of like a shaking the table conversation,
because frankly, these are all like civics. Civics, it's rights,
it's things that are written in the constitution that governs us,
where the cops don't need to know the law, but
we're all expected to write. So it takes all kinds,

(03:51:27):
it takes all responses for us to just get to
the place that's better than the stop gap that Row
had been giving us for the last forties some odd years.
And I'll say, like the one thing that does terrify
me in this end is like or I guess like
really concerns me is like what Bonda Santist just did
in Florida in Hillsboro County. Like I grew up in
Hillsboro County, so I'm from there. So it's like like

(03:51:47):
the twice elected UH state attorney there was just suspended
because he said he would refuse to um prosecute crimes
related to abortion and gender for carry, like also refused
to prosecute trans people using the bathroom right, So like
these kinds of things and the santis just like sacked him. Right,

(03:52:07):
an elected person that reflects the values of that county,
and so like that that's the other thing to be
aware of. It's you know, like even when you do
exercise that power and like say like this is our
as a community, these are our values on like who
we should be prioritizing um in the criminal justice system.
There are still people out there that will will try

(03:52:28):
to circumvent that in a very authoritarian and autocratic way,
and so um, you know, I think it's not just
who you're voting for your local das, who are you
running for? A governor? Who are you running for? Like,
you know, these people that have broader powers over this.
I wanted to briefly talk about this because I know
like it was proposed at least by my representative the

(03:52:50):
and I think it's being bandied about as a solution,
and uh, it doesn't seem like it is. But this
My Body, My Data Act, which I was trying to
read through it a little earlier. It seems like it
allows people to like sue tech companies for selling their
data that leads to their prosecution. I don't know if
you are familiar with it, but maybe we could just

(03:53:12):
discuss a little bit what No, okay, all right, I
mean so I'm not familiar, but based on what you
just said, right, I think there's this and I really
think it goes back to what EVCO is saying about
folks just like not not fully understanding precisely how the
criminal legal system just like runs over people. Okay, great,

(03:53:35):
so I can sue the tech company after the police
have put me in a cage and and convicted me
based on the day like like, okay, I mean great,
maybe I'll have a lot of money on my commissary,
my family will have enough um like funds to come
drive and visit me at whatever state prison they've got
me locked up in, right, Like, like, this is where

(03:53:58):
we have to step back and think, are is this
is this thing actually preventing the harm? Because I think
a lot of times folks are just like, we can
do them, or we could get back at them. And
I also want folks to remember that just making something
illegal does not prevent harm. Right, and and a whole
another conversation about criminalization as a solution to anything, which

(03:54:21):
I think it is not, um, but but just on
on the face of what you've said to me, that
doesn't sound like a solution that if I it wouldn't
feel adequate to me if if I were in that
And also thinking about how cases become cases from what
we know, it's not again, it's not coming from big

(03:54:41):
data down right for the most part. It certainly can happen,
but really what's happening is violations of people's Fourth Amendment rights.
Cops being able to access things on people's actual devices,
oftentimes without warrants, oftentimes by not fully explaining that people
have the right to they know. Um And I'm sure

(03:55:02):
Michelle has had clients that were like, oh, they just
took my phone. How many times have we heard that? Right?
They just took my phone and started going through it.
A police officer that does that is not going to
write in their report. And I just took his phone
without any permission. It's always permission was granted. It was
in plane view. I saw it from the street. I
smelled it as he was walking by. Like, if the

(03:55:25):
laws that are being created are not actually responsive to
the harm that folks are experiencing in a way that
actually prevents it, then we need to kind of push
back at our legislators and say, Okay, this is great,
but is it responding to the thing that you're saying
it's responding to? Because yeah, shout out to people being
able to sue big tech for selling our data without

(03:55:47):
our permission. Bet, But is that gonna prevent prosecutors from
going after folks that have abortions? Probably not, Because even
in the Nebraska case that Alejandra mentioned at the top
of the hour, that was a warrant that was signed
by judge, it was a search warrant that was provided
to Facebook that didn't say the words abortion on it,

(03:56:08):
that didn't say that we're going after someone for abortion.
Had I think the words like abuse of a corpse
or something of that nature on there, and for them
it was wrote what they normally do, bureaucracy, search warrants,
stamp here's the data that you're looking for. A law
that prevents folks from selling your data doesn't prevent that
from happening. Something I think a lot about those. One

(03:56:29):
of my sort of like former political experiences was back
in like I think, I think it's something which isn't
twelve doesn't thirteen um. Right after the revolution in Bahrain.
So okay, so the revolution in Bahrain, Saudi tanks roll in,
they crush it, they kill a bunch of people, and
the government starts doing this crackdown. The way the government
does to crackdown is they go they go to Facebook

(03:56:49):
and they takes off those on people's public accounts, and
then they go to Facebook and they asked them for
information and Facebook turns go over, and you know, the
government just goes to and finds everyone who's at a
protest and starts to ressing them. And you know, Facebook
is just like m HM and like that, if if
if if if if if they if they will comply

(03:57:10):
with a literal monarchy who has had a second monarchy
send an army across the border in order to crush
a bunch of protests. Like they're going to comply with
the US and they're gonna keep doing this stuff to you.
And so yeah, I was like, I like, even if
you can sue them, they're still going to cooperate with
the U. S. Government because yeah, they have a greater

(03:57:31):
financial interest in doing big tech doesn't give a funk
about you. Yeah, I think folks, again, as he was saying,
like ea saying, it was just so like this is wrope.
This is what they do every day. This is not
that serious or that deep to them. And I think
we need to start asking bigger questions about why do
we have a system we're so easy for the government

(03:57:52):
to just like come in and um, have a subpoena signed,
Like the subpoenas are easy to get, like we have
these mechanisms are all in place. And that's what I
was sort of saying earlier is that I think folks
who haven't been paying attention to this, who are all
of a sudden like, wow, how is this happening? Oh
my goodness, Well, these are the machines of massim corceration

(03:58:14):
that we have spent a few decades really building up,
and so now when the person the people you're sympathetic
with start to get criminalized all of a sudden, we're
very shocked. And listen, however, you got here, great welcome.
I'm glad folks are here and saying like, wow, this
is a problem. And I want folks to think the

(03:58:35):
If the abortion context and the self managed abortion is
your entry point, I hope it is not the end point.
I hope that you are thinking bigger about how did
all these systems get here? Who do they serve? And
and and I hope how do we dismantle them? Because
it's it's not just this select few people group of

(03:58:58):
people that we should care about, I think is all
all the people who are who are exposed to this
on the daily. Um. So yeah, that's my soapbox. I
always wonder how many judges, um have refused to sign
a search warrant. That's like a big wonder of mine.
I don't judges don't hang out with me, obviously for

(03:59:19):
a lot of obvious reasons. But if I were to
like just whisper in my ear real quick, how many
times have you ever said no to a police officer
that comes to ask to swear a warrant in front
of you. How many times have you found there is
no probable cause? Dude? Like to to be fair, there
there there are. There have to there have to be

(03:59:39):
a certain number of times where they're trying to go
after another. Judge es I don't know, it's good to
have happened once like that. There has to have been
one time where it was like this judge piste me off,
I'm going to go raid his car or something. Never
Never that I can like that, I can think about

(04:00:02):
never happening. But I just wonder how many times has
somebody said we are going to go search for drugs
and X y Z house in this specific neighborhood that
that a judges says, you don't have enough here. Try again.
It doesn't happen. Yeah, at least told in federal court
maybe maybe you know they turned down one out of

(04:00:22):
but in state court. My experience is it's it's it's again,
it's routine. It's just how things go. I mean, one
of the one of the things that I came across
when I was you know, I was not dealing with
particularly judges issuing warrants. But one of the things I
did when when I was looking into the payment app
issue this past spring, um is, you know, I talked

(04:00:42):
to a former prosecutor and was like, you know, what
is it like to get documents from or or data
from like Facebook and you know, Instagram or Meta whatnot,
or like Twitter or any of these other places. And
they were just like, Oh, we just send a request,
like we don't even like basically an administrative subpoena, and
they just like hand over everything like, um, it's basically

(04:01:05):
they're just like so routine oftentimes, especially if it's coming
from a district attorney's office or law enforcement. But like
often times these companies just like casually handover stuff all
the time, especially when it's like dealing with low level
drug stuff um or any kind of like issues like that.
You know, they like to say, oh, we're we're big

(04:01:26):
on on civil rights and stuff like that and making
sure your data is protective. In reality, like there's so
many requests around this stuff, and it's just you know,
the only time they ever maybe make a standards when
a case is higher profile and it may damage their brands, right,
and that's that's the only time they actually ever care.
On the defense attorney side, it's hard as heck to
get your client's records for things like so hard, so

(04:01:49):
so hard. You're looking for information on a Facebook for
somebody that's incarcerated that might get them out of jail,
and they don't remember their password, you don't know how
to get into their stuff, and it need to be
not a screenshot because that you might not be able
to get that authenticated and admissible in court. And it
is so hard when you're working on the other side
and not in law enforcement to get data and information.

(04:02:12):
But on the flip side when it comes to like
people's medical information, which comes into play in a lot
of these cases because we're at this intersection of bodily
autonomy and health in the criminal legal system. We've certainly
seen in cases where folks are having a medical emergency
and cops are able to just go and do a
bedside interview with somebody that's coming out of surgery still

(04:02:34):
drugged up. Right, They're able to just go up to
a charge nurse something like, so, how's he doing, and
they're getting information that's wild because I have had request
for my clients medical records with signed HIPPA authorizations returned
because I signed with blue ink instead of black ink.
It's not wrote. It's not wrote when it's not coming

(04:02:56):
from law enforcements sometimes, and that's kind of the wild thing.
There's this assumption that folks and law enforcement have a
right to all information at all times forever, and that's
where things get rubber stamped, and that's the stuff that
we're not really looking at that have large impact on
how people access their rights. I was just as we

(04:03:17):
were talking about like Facebook doing everything about you and
loving the cops, I was like reminded of Fouko's Panopticon
and like this idea that you'll start to internal life
discipline because you never know when you're being watched, right, um,
And so I wondered, like obviously, like when talks about it,
the idea is that you will do you act like

(04:03:38):
you think the state is watching, because the state could
always be watching. Therefore you have to act like it
is watching. Uh, And like it's if we're not there yet,
right like that, Tally there, have you not heard the
FBI and your phone joke? The FBI on my computer?
Like I hope he likes my makeup today we're totally there,
Like I think there's an assumption that we're all being watched.

(04:04:00):
Don't know. Even sometimes I wish our clients I thought
they were being watched more because sometimes people put too
much on Facebook do Well, yeah, you're right, let me
not keep myself from that because I am very much included. Yeah,
but yeah, so like that's what I wanted to ask, right,
Like how do we not you know, we don't want

(04:04:22):
people to listen to some do crimes, but like how
should people act in their interactions like in in a
way that is like I guess I don't know that
it makes them less vulnerable to like these very obvious
upsets fails. I guess, Um, I have some resources, so

(04:04:43):
if one how we have this thing called the repro
Legal Helpline. It's repro legal helpline dot org. It's also
a warm line with the phone number that people can
call and ask questions like what are my rights when
it comes to my abortion my self managed abortion? And
on that website we have did atal tips about how
do you protect yourself and sanitize your digital space just

(04:05:04):
for safety as a whole, not to hide information from everyone,
but how do you move and prevent and minimize your risks.
What does harm reduction look like to you? We also
have the repro Legal Defense Fund, and that exists for
folks when they are actually being criminalized to pay for
things like bail, help out with attorneys fees, help out
with expert fees. So there are folks that are working

(04:05:26):
on this stuff that exists as resources, and there are
resources out there. But I would tell folks to really
think about who are you telling your business to? UM?
When you share information, is that information that's necessary for
treatment that you're being asked? UM? Just because we're used
to being in spaces where there is a power and
balance about sharing all of the information that's asked of us,

(04:05:49):
and I think when it comes to spaces and times
where we're more vulnerable UM to state actors causing harm
to us, being mindful about what questions are you being asked?
And it's that question necessary for you to be able
to receive care or services X Y Z UM. And
it sucks to have to put work on the back
of folks that are already being oppressed by systems. It's

(04:06:11):
absolute trash. And I fully recognize that's it's it's messed up,
But UM, when we're thinking when we're thinking about what
does harm reduction look like. I think that's one of
those things that we have to keep in mind. UM.
And harm reduction also looks like folks knowing generally what
the law is and being able to advocate for themselves
in those spaces. Yeah. I'll just add from my side

(04:06:34):
from like kind of just you know, from from a
cyber perspective, it's, you know, just in general ways, like
there's nothing that's gonna be bullet proof or a silver
bullet in terms of always protecting your privacy, but like
the quicker ways that you can kind of at least
make yourself generally safers. Use applex signal for for chatting. UM.
Also use like auto delete features. UM, you know, don't

(04:06:56):
don't keep like years worth of text messages and stuff
like that. UM. Additionally, UM, you know, don't use biometrics
because you don't have a Fifth Amendment right for yourself
subcrimination for for biometrics. Right SOS so long long reason
why that is in the courts, use a password, don't

(04:07:16):
use a short pin. Use a password. I know it's annoying.
I know it's like, you know, if a finger prayer
in our face, like unlock is like much more convenient.
But you know, if you are at high risk or
you worry about this stuff and you're concerned about your privacy,
like use those things because they can't compel you to
do that generally. UM. You know. The other things is
UM the UK app e u k I UM, which

(04:07:40):
is a UM sexual health app that has a lot
of information about UM, you know, reproductive issues UM. It
also is like a menstrual tracker, but it's all encrypted
client side, they get no data UM and it has
it prompts you for a password and pin to open
it UM. And it also has uh resources for self

(04:08:03):
managed abortion UM and and how to safely handle those UM.
And yeah, you know, just generally, you know, anything you
put out there on social media also like be careful
like what you you put out there, like stay to
end and end to end encryption, use VPNs if you can.
You know that these are just kind of like general
stuff like nothing is again ever gonna be full proof,

(04:08:25):
but yeah, there are some small stuff you can take
at least increase some of your protections. And on my end,
you know, you have a right to remain silent. You
should use it, uh and thanks to the Supreme Court,
you have to say I want to be silent in
order to invoke your right to be silent. You cannot
just be silent. Um. So you I would advise people

(04:08:47):
to say, I want to be silent and I want
a lawyer. Those are the magic words. I also want
to hold that being captured by police officer is a
violent experience and a scary experience, and sometimes asserting your
rights can provoke more violence, and so people do what

(04:09:08):
they need to do to stay safe in that moment um.
From all the law of perspective, saying I would I
want to be silent and I want a lawyer, um
are the things that invoke all of your constitutional protections. Um.
And the police may lie about whether or not you

(04:09:29):
said that later, so you know, say it as many
times as you need to. But those are really the
only things you should say, which is a lot um
easier said than done. But that that is the thing
that folks should do if they do find themselves in
the custody of law enforcement. And also if you're on
the street, ask if you're free to go, and if
you're free to go, please walk, do not run away.

(04:09:51):
There's also a case about that God hate the cops. Well,
thank you a so much for joining us. Um this
this has been really great, and yeah, don't talk to
cops yep. Would you like to plug anything before we
leave with don't coote the cops? Yeah, I can just

(04:10:13):
throw my personal side. You can follow me on ALLSO
shows on Twitter and stuff at Square underscores like Portmanteau
of Esquire and Queer s E s q U E
R Underscore UM and also have a podcast called Queering
the Law um or talk about a lot of these
issues as well. UM, so if you want to give
that a listen. UM, don't follow me on social media

(04:10:39):
because all my stuff is closed, but I would recommend
that folks follow at IF when how on all socials
because we're always uh providing up to date information on
what's actually going on with carminalization of self managed abortion
and resources from you know, community partners that are on
the ground, local that are doing the work. So if

(04:11:00):
lks are looking to get connected, I would say reach
out to IF one how and we can usually point
you in the right direction. You could follow me on Twitter,
but I don't really remember what my handle is, so
what I would suggest that you do. Uh, pre trials,
attention and bail litigation is really my heart. You got
folks locked up and they haven't even been found guilty.

(04:11:20):
Not that anyone should be locked up. So donate to
your local bail fund if you don't know who that is.
There's a lot of organs, National Bailout, the Bail Project,
there's a lot of places you can find that. But
growing five, ten, fifteen dollars at your local bail fund,
we'll get someone free because you can purchase your freedom
here in America. So um do that. M Yeah, thank

(04:11:48):
you so much that this has been They can happen here. Uh,
you can find us in places don't talk to cops,
and yeah, if there weren't any cops, you couldn't make
things legal. H Hey, we'll be back Monday with more
episodes every week from now until the heat death of
the Universe. It Could Happen Here is a production of

(04:12:08):
cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media,
visit our website cool zone Media dot com, or check
us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources
for It Could Happen Here. Updated monthly at cool Zone
Media dot com slash sources, Thanks for listening.