It Could Happen Here Weekly 62

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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 compilation episode. So every episode
of the week that just happened is here in one
convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to
listen to in a long stretch if you want. If
you've been listening to the episodes every day this week,
there's gonna be nothing new here for you, but you
can make your own decisions. A welcome to It could

(00:28):
happen here, a show about things falling apart and also
putting things back together. Today we have an episode about
well it's this is This is kind of a big one, folks.
So everyone who listens to the show regularly will know that.
There have been a rash of attacks by the far
right on drag Queen's Story hours and kind of similar
events to that. Events that are LGBT friendly, events that

(00:52):
also involved children have been regularly attacked all over the
United States. At the same time, there have been escalating
attacks by wingers, often the very same people, on reproductive
healthcare resources clinics that sort of thing. Um. This is
happening all over the country, but one place where things
have been particularly aggressive as of late is in New York, um,

(01:16):
New York City, and today we're going to be speaking
with a couple of different people who live in New
York who have been present at some of these actions
and who want to talk about what's been going on
with the far right and the attempts to defend these
people in these organizations from from right wing aggression. So
I want to introduce Talia now. Talia, you are known

(01:39):
to our audience. You've been on this show and some
of our other shows a couple of times in the past.
Welcome to the show, Thanks for having me, and hello
to everyone who still remembers what I sound like. And
do you wanna you wanna drop your your your Twitter
and stuff up at the top here too, because you
do a lot of on the ground reporting at different
times and in this to young it's pretty simple. It's

(02:02):
Talia O t G as an on the ground UM
and yeah that's where I do my reporting on events,
analysis all that dumb ship. And then our other guests
are two New Yorker is sorry New York people, um,

(02:24):
who are both anti fascist activists who have been present
in the streets for a number of these recent events.
I'd like to introduce Tom and Barry. Do we want
to go around and do pronounced real quick? Here? Um,
I'm I'm he him, Yeah, sure, I'm she are they?
This is Tom, I'm here him and I'm she her. Awesome?

(02:45):
All right, Well that is so, I guess I'd like
to kind of start and and hand it over to
to Talia if she wants to give kind of an
overview of how all of this has has has gone down.
But basically we've seen. I mean, the thing that surprised
me most in the coverage that I have watched from
a distance is how aggressive and large some of the

(03:05):
right wing presence has been at like reproductive health clinics
in New York City. I was kind of surprised to
see that in New York. Yes. So there's a group
in New York called NYC for Abortion Rights and they
host once monthly clinic defenses at the Planned Parenthood on
Bleaker in Lower Manhattan. UM. And they do that because

(03:26):
there is a church nearby the basilica of Old St.
Pat's that hosts a a coalition of anti abortion religious
zelic groups. They organized these large they're usually processions to
the Planned Parenthood where they pray outside they throw holy

(03:49):
water on the building. They attempt to hand out UM
propaganda and literature and intimidate people who are coming into
the clinic for necessary health services. UM. And these same
individuals have been seen attending anti vaxx rallies that the
man who leads the procession to the Planned Parenthood UM,

(04:14):
his name is Christopher Mansinski. He's also known as Fidelist.
And he has invaded clinics in White Plains, New York
in I think UM East Hempstead. UM. He has been
trying to revive Red Rose Rescue, which UM. People who
are familiar with the fight for reproductive rights are probably

(04:34):
aware that that is the primary group that invades clinics
and tries to harass patients. UM, threatens doctors and care
workers and all all sorts of things. That the main
people who lead Red Rose are either in jail or
have died thankfully. UM. And he's trying to revive that

(04:56):
here in New York. UM. And he has attended um
rallies organized by far right conspiracists anti vax conspiracists. UM.
And it's like, you know, he he went to d
C for the March for Life, and then he stuck
around for the my body, my choice, anti vax rallies.

(05:20):
It's it's very it's it's very contradictory. But we see
these same people because they're aligning on conservativism, on crystal fascism,
and we're seeing him pop up um insured spaces pretty
frequently in New York in ways that I think are
more transparent or like more easy to clock here, even

(05:41):
if there is like a larger density of them that
do mobilize to these specific things like clinic Crossman's Yeah,
that's um, that's a really interesting point. And that's also
what we've seen a lot in the Pacific Northwest. Um.
You know, we just had an attempt rally at a
drag Queen story our and Eugene and it was a
lot of the same old crowd who used to rally

(06:03):
in Portland before they got scared off of Portland. Now
I'm wondering kind of what how would you characterize the
response of the police to these events and how they
kind of have have have treated the right wing at
these well, it is about it's uh cliche as cliche comes,

(06:24):
because every single time, um, when I've covered clinic defenses specifically,
the police are helping move the procession along and threatening
clinic defenders with arrest on the basis that they're blocking
the roadway. Um. They are. They they essentially work as
like secondary of security. Um. Sometimes they will split off

(06:48):
from the other police and be like pushing and shoving
clinic defenders on their own in a way that doesn't
make any sort of strategic sense. But it's like they're
getting enjoyment from doing that. Um. It's it's the same
story over and over again. You know. We see it
in in San Diego when anti fascists were mobilizing against uh,

(07:10):
like Trump's supporters that were being very violent. The Trump
supporters were doing the violence, and it was the police
that were attacking the anti fascists trying to fight against
like trying to defend themselves against the far right. Um.
And we saw the same thing at Penn State just
the other night. The there was a gaggle of like

(07:32):
proud boys or or I think Tess Owen referred to
them as fascists in all black, who were macing the
crowd and they they you know, I didn't do anything.
The police escorted there was an incident where a proud
boy was assaulting or like somehow there was a fight

(07:53):
that happened with a demonstrator and a proud boy, and
the demonstrator the police threw the demonstrator on the ground
and then escorted the proud boy into the building where
Gavin mcinness and Alex Stein were supposed to put on
a very bad it didn't end up happening, lead him
back to his friends. Jesus Christ. Yeah, I asked that question,

(08:14):
and I know everybody like listening, and I know all
of you knew like what the answer was going to be.
I feel like you still have to like ask it. Um.
I am curious. The NYPD has a kind of manpower,
access to manpower, and access to surveillance equipment that, in
my experience out does most nations I've been in. And

(08:36):
I'm interested particularly and everyone's responses are welcome, but particularly
what what Tom and Barry might have to say about
what sort of roadblocks that provides towards organizing responses to
these events and kind of how activists have had to
adapt to that. Uh, this is Tom here. I mean,
I will say it's very clear that the NYPD constantly

(08:58):
monitors any sort of online space whatsoever, and I think
most people know to organize, you know, in person or
on signal with a small group of their friends, rather
than trying to get a larger group of people to
come to a thing publicly on the internet, because any
time that happens, it's like there's instantly you know, that
much larger of a police presency. Get dozens and dozens

(09:21):
of what's called the s RG, their Strategic Response group,
which I think probably can maybe speak on that a
little more, but they're basically the hats and bats that
come bust up protests. Yeah, definitely agree with that UM.
And I would also say that because of the sheer
volume of the vests that these exact same groups of
people who are now attacking UM drag story hours and clinics,

(09:44):
because we know this group already and they were having
on these daily anti bax rallies which objectively stopped kind
of being a thing to them, consider try to mobilize
accountable test for UM. So I think there is kind
of a large disconnect right now, which there by design
or accidentally where I think a lot of people feel
like UM, people who might attend account of protest that

(10:06):
is might feel like, oh no, it's just those same
idiots up to their nonsense again, you know that that's
we don't worry about that. But tell me if it's
the proud voice coming and we'll mobilized kind of protest. Um. So,
I honestly feel that it's sort of the mental kind
of the mental associations that we have with these familiar faces. Um.
I mean, despite the fact that it's been kind of

(10:28):
obviously Bond observed that the anti vax stuff is direct
pipeline and radicalization, um, platform for these more extremelyst Cristal
fascists and transford with actions, now people still can't really
detach that, you know, this is actually serious now. So um,
But yeah, I agree with what Tom said that it's

(10:50):
a matter of not dropping it. I'm sorry. I mean
that that gets to another kind of advantage these folks have,
which is because is of how much additional state repression
y'all are dealing with the kind of personal cost of
attending these events encountering the right is higher, both in
terms of potential risk and just kind of in terms

(11:10):
of the trauma incurred. I know from personal experience. I mean,
I haven't been out in the street in quite a while,
about a year at this point, and I know a
lot of other people who are in the same place,
because it just kind of you know, you can only
take so much as an individual. What are some ways
in which y'all is a community try to cope with
burnouts that you can continue to meet the pace at

(11:31):
which the right is doing this stuff. I mean, I
think it's really relying on other people, like the same
one two or three or four or five people can't
keep doing everything well, so as people start to get exhausted,
I think that it's time to you know, take a
step back, take a week off, take three weeks off,
like there have to be other people that are ready
to step up, um, you know, throughout your community, but

(11:51):
throughout everywhere. Yeah, and definitely I think there's going to
be more of a need to emphasize that this requires
every day and a fascists. I think in New York
City especially, we kind of fell into a traveler any
kind of public fall encounter. It was very I mean,
they looks into style and boarding, you know, very clear
that it's a cab there, black the water, things like that,

(12:14):
and the kinds of people that are just meaning members
that we actually do need to also show up and
saw the fascists that they're not welcoming their neighbors either,
they're not going to respond to something like that multitude
of reasons. And UH, what can you say about sort
of the numbers that you're seeing kind of on on
both sides on the ground here, what's like a normal
action looking like in terms of that? UM? I mean,

(12:36):
you know, just from reporting and keeping tabs on different
types of protests. In New York City, we have a
lot of UH nonprofits and more established type groups that
organize larger events UM, and those are typically just marches
for visibility and awareness UM. And when it comes to

(13:00):
a counter or some sort of direct action like mutual
Aid for example, UM, we see much smaller numbers. But
those numbers that I mean that I see at least
is that these are people who've built community and UM
communicate together. As opposed to seeing a flyer and showing

(13:21):
up just for that one day. These are people who
consistently are engaging with one another and with that space. So,
like I mentioned mutual Aid, we have UM Washington Square
Park mutually which meets every Friday, and the core group
that UM sets it up and distributes and everything is

(13:43):
relatively small. But the people who have shown up to
support in some capacity in the past two years that
it has been active. Um, they all know each other,
and that doesn't mean that, you know, they're like necessarily
like going to birthday parts together for um, you know,
donating kidneys to one another or something like that. It's

(14:05):
not necessarily like best friend groups. But it's people who
have built a sort of neighborhood in this ideology and
in this space in this time. I would also say
like these particular events have kind of brought in like
a different group of people. It's not like the same
cruise of people that we're doing other things, because there's
more kind of liberal people getting involved that are like

(14:27):
coming to these drag string court, drag queen story our
defenses to you know, be joyful and hold up signs
and saying and like welcome people into the library. So
that's also made it more easy to keep these going
because we've kind of got a larger revolving door of
people rather than you know, smaller groups. Yeah, that makes sense,

(14:47):
as like particularly is a way to not burn people out.
You know, I'm curious as to what have you seen
as far like one of the major tactics anti fascists
always uses identification UM and exposing people who are attending
these events rallying with fascist organizations. Have you noticed a

(15:10):
difference on how well this works for the people who
are showing up to protest like drag Queen story Our
events versus UM the people showing up at at reproductive
healthcare clinics, at planned parenthoods and such. Because it kind
of strikes me that one of those is more mainstream
maybe than the other. Although perhaps I'm being kind of
optimistic in that, but I'm wondering, does that does it

(15:31):
appear to be more effective against kind of one kind
of rally than it is in another kind, if that
makes any sense. So, a lot of the people who
are engaging in the clan carassments are known among their networks,
and because their goal is to present a sort of
legitimizing face for opposing abortion UM, they don't typically show

(15:57):
up to things that are a little bit more volatile.
But we have seen that with so it as it
happens that this the people who are harassing Drag story
Our for the most part, have been a part of
one specific core group of people that I've been monitoring
and reporting on for the past year, so I know
all of their names, which has pigeonholed them into what

(16:22):
they can and can't do. We had there's there's this
far right propagandist or in Levy. His brother was at ah.
He was trying to harass a drag story Hour at
the Andrew High Scale Library for the Blind and that
was an event put on for NEUROW divergent children and
he was attempting to harass that. He ended up pepper

(16:42):
spraying to people. And because he has known, his name
is out there, his face is known, and he is
identifiable across all social media networks. It was very easy
for those people to be able to file complaints against him. Um. Yeah.
And another thing too, is it because this one group

(17:03):
does all of these harassments together. They started out doing
anti vax stuff where they were going and harassing a
restaurant called Dame in Um I think it's in the
village or yeah, it's in the village. They were harassing
that restaurant for a while, and then they started harassing
the Health Commissioner's house and then Gracie Mansion, which is
where Eric Adams lives. And they were all doing these

(17:24):
things together. So their network was very easy to monitor
and trace UM, and so when they started harassing Drag
Story Hour, which was undeniably they were doing that as
a result of far right propaganda that was being pushed
into all of their social media spaces, trying to convince
them that Drag Story Hour is, you know, the Satan incarnate,

(17:48):
and they start showing up and trying to harass those
and immediately they're known. They tried to harass Um, they
tried to disrupt um aoc at a listening event she
was doing in Queens. Immediately they were known. It was
like I saw the footage and I was like, that's
Robert White, that's you know, Cliff Lee, that's our Ronan Levy.

(18:08):
And it's doing that because they're known. Because it's clear
that it's one group that's showing up and doing this,
trying to trying to follow the lead on what is
the trending outrage on the far right that week. It
limits the number of people who are interested in joining them,
because it's they rely on making it seem like they

(18:32):
are just neighbors and constituents who aren't happy with X,
y Z, and it's like, no, you're a coordinated group
of harassers. We know who you are, so that mask
being off definitely I think has helped to reduce the
willingness to grow in those harassments. But I can't necessarily

(18:52):
speak to the future on what would hold or like
what other people have been inspired by them, because we
have seen you not to show up in other states
to protest drag story. I were the same way that
these this little you know band harassers has been harassing
the story hours. Yeah, um yeah, sorry, just a direct

(19:13):
response to that that I definitely agree um that. Yeah.
We've been monitoring the movement of the main actors in
the anti backs movement for a while, but I did
want to say that it is occasionally other groups, but
that they all have the same thing in common and
that they attached to the kind of hot topic issue
that they see happening in other cities and states. So

(19:36):
we did have actually like very like certainly Crystal cashis
group um uh TMP. I believe that it was called
whom you know had publicly next a rally to harass
the story. Our initially flashed onto that, um. But all
of it is kind of following national trends. Um. But
as they are initially trying to make see ur t

(19:59):
and schools be the thing that was a multitude of
different groups that are trying, and you know, they're looking
for something that sticks, and they're looking for something that
passers by any given passers by walking by will see
their side of if they hear it. Um. But their
lack of success though, is because of their violence and
um not especially convincing and very human on sounding antics

(20:22):
to where it is clear that they are not actually
they're protesting what they playing themselves. They're protesting, UM. You know,
they're they're losing sympathy because eventually their signs started being
about Antifa instead of about electracy protecting the children themselves. UM.
So their own messaging kind of probably also at fault there.

(20:43):
But this issue is still always going to be at
risk for attracting different new Nazi groups. UM. I mean
we've seen Orlando and Ow there's a relition of Nazi
surgery together to attack story Hour. We've actually seen some
of that in New York. And it was just coincidence
that this crazy atax um showing to a tax story

(21:04):
I was the same day. Perhaps other groups were um
say too much something. Yeah, I was just gonna say,
I mean about the you know, neo Nazis and other
areas coming in protesting these drug Queen Story Hours. I
mean that the first bigger one we did was at
Elmhurst Library. There were not only somebody who was at

(21:26):
a neo Nazi rally in front of Trump Tower once
we had a January six insurrectionists and I think Holly
can probably speak to those two characters a little more.
But then there was some other there was another drug
Queen Story Hour where someone from g d L showed up.
And I'm sure you're familiar with g d L, Robert right, yes, yes, yeah,

(21:47):
the Goyam Defense League, these guys around the hate bus
flying the swastika there. Yeah, I mean you just said swastika.
But in place people are not aware of what Goyam means.
What you need to know is the Gham Defense League
or hardcore not Zis. Yeah, like they are legitimate, straight
up neo Nazis. They fly to swastika, they go harassed
Jewish neighborhoods um in those yeah capital m Nazi. Yeah,

(22:14):
one of them went and harassed one of the drag
Queen story I was recently. Uh then he ran off
and said he was going to get his friends and
didn't show up with anyone else from what then, Speaking
of neo Nazis, you probably know Jovie Valve. Oh yeah,

(22:35):
Jovie and I had a conversation a couple of years
ago with with my good friend Goad. Yeah, your old buddy.
Mm hmmm. Well, he showed up at um I believe
it was a pediatric health care facility. I don't know
if they do gender affirming care, but he was in
front of it to sign I'm sorry, I said, neither
did he? Yeah, exactly. It was literally because the clinic

(23:01):
had pried flags in the window. Yeah, okay, because he
was holding up a sign that said I'd rather a
Nazi than a pedophile, which is just like a nonsensible
and be like, we all know, just say you're a
fucking Nazi. Why is that the choice. It's so funny

(23:24):
because there's like pictures of him with the swastic netflace,
like doing the Roman salute, like everyone knows you're a Nazi.
You know, he's completely unashamed. And that's the weirdest part
about him, because you know, he learned an interesting lesson
about wearing just a you know, a maga hat in
a bar in Brooklyn a few years ago. If anyone
knows what incident I'm talking about, Oh yeah, So I

(23:48):
find it interesting that this actually did not deter him
from ever leaving his house again, you know, nearly losing
his entire nose, um so, and then still deciding to
just double down and actually start carrying the Nazi flags,
thinking it'll go better this time. Um And apparently he
just guys trying to make Nazi ship. He's trying to
make his name again in two like jovie Val is,

(24:12):
like he's he's expired, and he doesn't seem to realize
that he's one of You know, what I'm gonna do
is I'm gonna show up and I'm gonna have nobody
with me, and I'm just gonna be standing in front
of a closed pediatric clinic, like with a sign telling
people all they see from a distance is the word

(24:32):
pedophile and the word Nazi. But I mean, he did
have his one little body with him in fairness, according
to his own videos that he posted of the encounter,
and that buddy of his, whoever he was, could be
heard saying, uh something like hey man, you know I
can't fight actually got posted on Telegram and he said, Jovie,

(24:54):
I can't find I can't find man, I can't find
you can also hear Jovi Yeah, like what are you doing?
What are you doing? As he gets tossed into like
a construction area, and he's such an embarrassment to like
even other Nazis. They're even making fun of him online.
I mean somebody literally said that, why does jovie always
get his ass kicked? This is ridiculous. He is he

(25:17):
is the kind of he is the kind and generation
of Nazi that other Nazis consider cringe like fucking Jovie
valve ate him so much. At the same time, though,
it is a little bit alarming because all of this
attention on UH figures such as Jovie Vale failing every

(25:38):
time and like stepping on rakes metaphorically every time he
goes outside, it does kind of open a nerving vacuum
up to like, oh what, I can be a way
better Nazi than that. So that is the part that
concerns me. If the constant attention is that, um, you know,
Jovie Val did not succeed in organizing a transphobic Nazi
rally outside of a closed pediatric clinic. Okay, I guess

(26:01):
that's a win. But who else sees that and sees
and thinks, oh, we can do so much better because
we do have a problem with unidentified Nazis throughout New
York City. There's you know, there's been increases in all
sorts of graffiti all over the subways, um Nazi literature
being put on trains and lefted places. It's, uh, you know,
so who is seeing this and how what is the

(26:23):
messaging exactly to say that you won't succeed if you
try this either, just because you know, Jovi keeps getting
his ship rocked, like we need you to know he will,
you will get your ship. I mean, that's the most
important thing, at least in my experience, and that is
mostly as an observer. I'm not an organizer, but I've

(26:43):
I've watched what's happened in the Pacific Northwest. And the
reason why these people don't rally in Portland's the way
they used to is they were faced with consequences and
that required I mean, that was that was not a
simple process. It took fucking five years, and a lot
of people got broken bones and a number of them
got killed. But like that is that is the thing

(27:06):
people like. These people's lives have to be created. And
one of the things that is a real problem is
that it's a lot easier to create people for rallying,
or it used to be. Number one, it used to
be easier to create people's lives because they were willing
to rally with Nazis. But also now the right has
succeeded in mainstreaming these two specific things, going after drag

(27:28):
Queen story our events and going after reproductive healthcare clinics
and the people using them, to such a degree that
it's gotten a lot harder to ruin people's lives over
this sort of thing. That's that's true. But at the
same time, there is an increase in so many of
them who are just unabashedly that way, beset their full names, addresses,
photos they say, you know, identifying or doc see them

(27:52):
is not there. It's just actually almost hyeah is in vogue,
like most like a large chunk of the country is
totally fine if you're a crazy bigot. The far right
is radicalizing in a sort of gradual pace over the

(28:15):
course of many years. UM And what's happening with um
people who are countering them is that there is this
density of media and pundits sort of um looking down
their nose at the decorum of countering them. So you know,

(28:36):
we look at Penn State, UM students showed up in mass,
hundreds of them, UM significantly outnumbered the Proud Boys that
did show up, the fascist that did show up and
successfully shut the event down. But there's still this like
armchair pungentry reflex to say, oh, well, they didn't do

(28:56):
it right. There's no like it's not the right way
to protest. And I think, um, what Barry is sort
of Verry mentioned earlier about everyday anti fascists, and that's
again like with your neighbors and recognizing that it's not
this weird, um inaccessible, like isolated group of people who

(29:19):
solely show up very militant and in black block and
they've got like all this training and all these like
slogans and slang and words, and you know, it's it's
none of that iconography. Because that is also the conservative
media i e. Andy know constantly refers to all sorts
of things as, oh, this is just antifa, and the
purpose of that is to make it seem like you

(29:41):
can't do that too, when in reality he uh andy
know that little ship stain. He referred to the defense
of the successful defense at the Elmhurst Library. He claimed
that it was ANTIFA militants. When I happen to know,
there was as a pastor who was there. There was

(30:03):
a nursing mother with her infant and her toddler who
was there. There were librarians present, and there were people
who showed up because they were in the neighborhood and
they heard that far right extremists were going to try
and grass And sure enough, just like Tom mentioned, there
was a J six insurrectionist who tried to get into
the building. I recognize, Yeah, he tried to rush in.

(30:27):
I recognized him. His name is Mitchell Bosh. He's best
known for getting arrested for taking a knee in a
burger king. Get arrested, okay, hoodie. Yeah, this guy tried
to rush in and I don't know how it happened,
but all of a sudden, my arm was hooked into
his arm, twisting his upper body slightly, so he didn't

(30:48):
have a good he didn't have good leverage to try
and burst into the building where I knew that if
he got in, he would refuse to leave until he
was physically removed by police, so then he could then
go online and say that he was fighting for freedom
and collect bullshit donations for bullshit legal funds. So getting
all back to this though, is that the media and

(31:08):
like these these pundits and everything, they are complicit in
making it harder for people to build community. But people
need to understand it is literally your neighbors. It is
your local librarians, it is your UH friends, it is
your coworkers, it's regular people. The same way people showed
up to protest in they you know, oh, should I

(31:29):
bring a sign? Should I bring a bottle of water?
Should I bring my a d what should I bring?
And they just showed up and they mark you can
do the same thing because when you have a significant
number of people, you don't need to worry about being
militant because you outnumber them. And across the board, if
you look at data, the positions and the politics that

(31:51):
these people hold and the things that they're pushing are
in the significant minority of opinion. A majority of people
are totally fine with trans people. They're totally fine dregs
story our like it's not a thing. But people aren't
showing up to remind them that their opinion is the
minority and they are outnumbered. Yeah. I was going to

(32:13):
say I agree with that last point, And unfortunately the
problem seems to be about our kind of cultural um
inability to agree on the definition of violence and how
even though people are okay largely with queer and trans
people and protecting trans kids, UM, and they definitely do
not support Nazis, UM, they still do not think that

(32:33):
UM any kind of militant action, including violence against these
people is ever appropriate. UM. And just a direct response
to the Penn State thing that goes beyond punditory, even
because Penn State itself released a statement saying that UM
that it does not condone violence without saying who started
the violence, ak the Proud Boys, who are amazing people. UM,

(32:56):
they said that, uh, just because you don't agree with
a speaker and their right to free speech the game
UM hateful tour of Gavin mcinnesson the Proud Boys, UM
that there is no excuse for violence. So they denounced
the content of the message as well as the response
to the message. So we're kind of in this limbo

(33:18):
where people who have the voice to send these messages
are still playing the meat at the dinner table both sides.
Surely we can come to a peaceful resolution and then
blaming the side that actually is militantly opposed to it
and how to overcome that, I don't know, but I
do think the like Tolly also said, every day anti

(33:38):
fascism is a pretty good start. Yeah, I mean with
every day anti fascism, like the right does this grassritt
organizing and gets people to like tacitly agree with what
the Proud Boys and these fascist groups do. I think
there's plenty of like normal people who would tacitly agree
with what we're doing on this side of things. Um,
but I mean you look at like I think it

(33:59):
was a body campaigning for Maybe it was Ron de Santis,
Robert you know about this. It was like a literal
neo Nazi who got it was a Ruby Rubio and
it was the guy was a member of the He
was a Cuban fascist who was a member of the
League of the South. Like there was a journalist online

(34:20):
who was like this is awful. Somebody's like he's literally
a Nazi. And then you look up this journalists like
history of articles she's written, and one was like this
is why you should be friends with the Nazi or
I'm paraphrasing, but that's literally like we should be friend Nazis.
Like it's it is ridiculous how so much of the
Mazed dream is like, let's come to the table and
be polite. I mean, I really think, and I think

(34:41):
a lot of other people think, when it comes to
Nazis and fascists in the far right, you have to
make it as costly as possible, whatever that means to you.
You have to make it as costly as possible for
them so they are deterred from doing this. Organizer. Yeah,
I think that's the the most durable conclusion certainly that

(35:02):
I have. Seems like what y'all have experienced too and
are continuing to experience. Is there is there anything else
y'all wanted to get into about about what's been happening
in with with these events before we kind of close
out for the day. The only thing I could think
to add was that that it's not over. And um
people might think, oh, they stopped coming to Drag Story
hours for whatever reason, but they're going to find the

(35:24):
next thing, the next issue, the next clinic, the next hospital,
the next healthcare provider. The next family was trans children. Uh,
they have dresses, they have names, they know where to go.
They're just looking for when they feel most emboldened to
do so. Um, And it's kind of it's hard to
communicate that because people think, oh, Okay, that was a

(35:48):
successful action. You know, we're done, We're done with them
for now. But I don't know, it's it's it's just
it's really hard to communicate the message that, like, you know,
it's like head on this level, this is the this
is the hardest thing to not just to get across
to people, but to kind of like actively except for yourself,
because it's it's one of the most frustrating realities of

(36:11):
living in our society, and there's no way to get
around it, which is that like not being eaten by
these people is the result of constant vigilance against them.
Like they win if you don't continue showing up and
one day in in in the bright blue yonder. I

(36:32):
do believe that if people continue showing up and continue
making it clear that their cause is hopeless, these people
will I'll drink themselves to death or whatever. But um,
you know that's that's not an immediate term sort of thing. No,
I know, and I mean for just my personal note, like, yes,
that is exactly the mode I'm in now. And I

(36:53):
mean I'm a Jewish anti fascist organizer. It's almost this
kind of history repeating itself ancestral um to keep at it.
And I'm one of many people UM in the same
kind of mindset towards not an option to rest and
wait until they you know, strike when they think we're
not looking. Yeah, but it's it's you know, obviously yeah,

(37:13):
I mean we have like, we have evidence that they
are looking for the next thing. We have evidence that UM.
You know, there's this one woman who got heavily involved
with UM, the anti vax group New York Freedom Rally UM,
and she would go on you know, Instagram live stream
saying a lot of like transphobic stuff. But she never

(37:36):
transferred that over onto public spaces until this week, where
she reiterated the same points that she was making in
the privacy of her home on that live stream to
her little audience. She's now saying it on a stage
that she's sharing with the candidate for governor, Lee z Eldon. UM.

(37:57):
She's she's repeating these same things, So it's showing also
that they are finding it. They're finding themselves more comfortable
in saying these uh bigoted things and pushing more extreme
things and expecting for their followers and their friends to
follow suit. There's people who have shown up to these

(38:18):
harassments of drag story art who have said directly to
me that they don't really agree with the harassment itself,
but that their friends are they're doing the harassment, and
so they're showing up for them, and that's a very
quick road to they are going to decide to care
about this very deeply and go very hard about it.

(38:39):
But what has worked is when people show up and
make it not happy and not good for them, when
their footage is ruined, when their sound bites are sucked up,
when they are blocked from doing the thing that they're
trying to do to generate that content to feed that
like bigoted beast. When people show up, when those events
keep happening, that's a big thing is that like the

(39:01):
venues that host these events need to not cancel them,
because when those venues cancel, it tells the biggests that
they are winning. And what needs to happen is the
venues feeling brave to put out calls for community support
the same way that had been in Eugene. Because when
that then you put out that ask, they got hundreds
of people and they outnumbered the biggests ten to one.

(39:27):
I was just gonna say I was, I'm very heartened
by like how supportive the UH people in the neighborhoods
and libraries have been, whether they're allowed to officially support
anything or not, it's been you know, nice to know
that people are happy we're there. And also I would
really love to see a name of Jovie Val stepping

(39:47):
on a rank. Now you had that image in my head. Yah, Um,
was there anything else we wanted to get to? UH?
Self defense is community effect defense and if people are interested. UM.
People in New York created something called I fact Fund

(40:10):
where you donate funds and then people who want to
receive individual first aid kits UM can request one and
receive one for free. UM. And it was created in
honor of a anti fascist badass named torch Um who
is always present a UM. But yeah, if if people

(40:32):
wanted to check that out, it's UH. The Twitter account
is just at I fact Fund, I f a k
fund UM if they want to donate I think it's
uh cash app is I fact fund? I think you
know someone else could look at up to check dollar
sign fund. Oh, I'm sorry dollar signed I fact fund.

(40:52):
Thank you whatever. Yeah, Um, and you know it's it's
just a matter of like knowing that we keep us
safe in every sense of the word. Yeah. And I

(41:12):
think that's a that's a perfect note to end on.
Thank you all for your time, Thank you for continuing
to be out there in the streets. Um and everybody
else get out there and make a fascist stay worse.

(41:44):
We live in an age of uprising. From Haydi to
Hong Kong, from Ecuador to Sudan, from Chile to Myanmar,
from the US to Iran, an entire generation has been
confronted with the horror of our world and took the
simple expedient of picking up a brick and throwing it
at a cop. Yet, as the uprising swept the globe,

(42:05):
there was one country where it was considered impossible. Every expert,
every policymaker, every kid on a street corner new there
was simply no chance of a mass street movement in China.
On Monday, it was unimaginable. On Friday, it was everywhere
welcome to it could happen here. What we've been watching

(42:27):
for the past three weeks now is the failure of
one of the most sophisticated political regimes in human history,
a political, social, and economic regime designed specifically to stop this.
One moment, after thirty years of repression, the national mass
street movement has returned to China. This is what it
was all about, everything from the censorship policies to union

(42:48):
busting to subsidize mortgages from a rising Chinese middle class.
It was about keeping people from going back to the streets,
to make even the idea of it impossible. And yet
here we are. In one sense, the Party is little
to fear from this round of protests, barring an immense
intensification of violence, which at the moment seems extremely unlikely.

(43:11):
But in another sense, the CCP is perhaps the last
regime on earth that truly remembers the previous age of revolution,
that remembers when the workers took Shanghai in sixty seven,
very nearly took Beijing and eighty nine. These are people
who understand that China's political system is built on shaving
a sleeping bear, and no matter how profitable that system
is there's always a chance that one day that bear

(43:34):
is going to wake up. Now the bear isn't fully
awake yet. We are not watching in China full scale
uprising unless you're Dan or Myanmar. But that bear the
air too, maybe the most militant working class and modern
world has ever seen, is starting to open its eyes.
So what is the CCP currently facing. Since about November,

(43:54):
there have been widespread anti government protests in China. Unlike
anything we've seen in the last thirty year years. These
protests are everywhere. They're in Beijing, They're in Nanjing, They're
in Shanghai. There in guang Show, there in Shing. John
will get back to that one in a second. There
in Wuhan, reports I saw said that there were protests
at seventy seven universities. That number is almost certainly an

(44:17):
under account now and these student protests are not just
taking place at small colleges in the middle of nowhere.
There were protests at singh Qua University, which for an
American audience I would compare to China's version of Harvard.
It's the college that produces the upper echelon if the
Chinese ruling class. Hi Jimping graduated from there, so did
his predecessor, Hu Jintao. And the only reason that ju

(44:38):
Jintao's predecessor did not graduate from there is that that
guy was so old that he went to college under
the Japanese occupation. When I was originally writing this, I
had a joke here about how the only city where
there haven't been protest is Harbin, which is the city
in the absolute middle of nowhere in northern China. But no,
I googled it, and it turns out there have been
protests in bloody Harbin. For people who aren't very good

(45:00):
at Chinese geography, which is probably most people. This means
these protests are everywhere. There in the north, there in
the south, they're in the east, there in the west,
they're in the far West. And it's true that a
lot of these protests are not that big, although some
of them are absolutely massive. But the importance here is
that this is the first time in thirty years that
we've seen widespread national protests over a single issue in China,

(45:24):
the anormity of which is compounded by the fact that
people in the streets of cities like Shanghai are openly
calling for the fall of the CCP and Sijianping, something
that by itself can get you a decade in prison
just for saying we can ask what these protests are
actually about. The version you see in the American press
is that these are anti lockdown protests, are protests against

(45:44):
China's COVID zero policy, or that they're also pro democracy
protests against the entire regime. And this is sort of
true as far as it goes, but it doesn't capture
the core of what's going on, which is that what
we're seeing is a widespread fusion of labor rebellion, anti
police brutality protests, and a revolt against the authoritarian state.

(46:06):
The thing that's brought all of this together is the
CCPs COVID policy, but that's because that policy is the
most visible and most concentrated expression of the state's general
authoritarian is a bit brutal war against the working class.
We can learn a lot about what's actually been happening
by going back a little bit to the very start
of the protests. There are three specific events that sparked

(46:30):
the protests, two of which are pretty well covered and
one of which has been basically ignored because of how
long ago it happened. The first spark is essentially an
event in its own right. This is what I would
call the fox Con revolts, a series of worker uprisings
against the manufacturer of the iPhone, which with a single factory,
controls vast portions of the regional economy of Hainan Province,

(46:54):
whereas large as factory is based. The fox Con revolt
is I'm brewing for a long time. It began essentially
when fox Con began to impose what's called the closed
loop system. The closed loop system was originally developed by
the NBA to run an NBA season during the beginning
of the pandemic. The idea is that you keep everyone

(47:15):
inside a closed loop. This means that everyone in the
production process has no contact with the outside world at
all for as long as the manufacturing cycle goes. The
CCP started adopting the closed loop as they hit problems
with their twin imperatives to both stop COVID and also
to make sure that fox Con hit its production targets
so Apple could have enough iPhones for the Christmas rush.

(47:38):
The result was that as an October wave of infections
hit Hangan Province, where fox CON's largest factory, was located.
Two hundred thousand workers were put into a closed loop system,
which meant they were trapped in the factory in their dormitories.
In order to keep this factory running, fox Con needs
about a hundred thousand migrant workers. The problem from capital

(48:00):
perspective with MiCT workers is that they can, if things
get bad enough, just go home, and that's exactly what happens.
Workers inside the fox Con plant started to be quarantined
with people who were sick in the same dormitory. And
it's worth noting here that these dormitories are tiny. The
conditions even outside of lockdown are atrocious, and when people

(48:23):
were suddenly getting quarantined with people who were sick, workers
essentially just said no and started to stage massive breakouts.
There are incredible videos of these trains of people like
along the road walking home as sort of hitching rides
on people's trucks, fleeing the factory. We don't actually know
how many workers escaped, but it was enough to be
a massive problem for Capital. Again, they need these workers

(48:46):
in order to make enough iPhones this for Christmas. Current
estimates suggest that Apple is somewhere between eleven and fifteen
million units behind what it needs to make the Christmas rush.
So fox Con had the local government recruiting people to
go work in a factory. What they told these workers
was that if they entered the closed loop for thirty days,
they'd be given three thousand yuan which is about four

(49:08):
hundred and fifteen dollars to live on for the next month,
and then get paid thirty on or about four dollars
an hour, and then after the end of the next
dirty days they'd get another three thousand john In the US,
this would be a subminimum wage poverty job for a
Chinese worker. This is a lot of money, or it

(49:28):
would have been had it not been for one minor problem.
All of it was bullshit. Fox Con and the CCP
were lying out of their asses. After workers were already
in the closed loop, they learned that the two three
thousand yuan bonuses weren't going to be paid until March
and May of next year, meaning that in order to
get what they were promised for two months of work,

(49:50):
they were going to have to work for seven months. Also,
the thirty U on an hour wage that they were
promised was a lie. They were getting paid substantially less
than that. So on Tuesday of November, workers who had
emerged from quarantine to start work only to learn that
they had been systematically lied to by both the governments

(50:11):
and Chinese and Taiwanese capitalists came out of their dormitories
and demanded that they either get their money or be
allowed to leave. There's another part of this account that
I think complicates a lot of the sort of narratives
that we've heard about what the Chinese poster about that
did not make the Western press at all, which is
that these workers were also demanding that their bosses quote

(50:32):
implement pandemic prevention and control measures. Um, it's not entirely
clue what the specific demands refers to, but it seems
to be about not quarantining sick people in the same
dorms as healthy people, a thing that seems relatively obvious,
but capitalism regardless. The product of bosses ignoring these demands

(50:52):
was several days of full scale fighting with the police.
On November twenty three, a bunch of videos began to
spread of work is taking those metal police barricades that
you see all the time in the US that are
essentially an arch with a bunch of bars and not
get into a flat base. You've you've probably seen these
picking them up and straight up throwing them at cops
or grabbing them and beating police riot shields with them.

(51:15):
I have I have never seen anything like it. It
was absolutely wild. At this point, after several days of fighting,
after their own regular security people literally refused to show
up to go fight these workers, and police from outside
had to be called in. Fox Con gave up said okay,
we will give you ten thousand yond to literally leave

(51:35):
right now, please just stop, And a lot of people
took the money and left. And in any other year,
in any other moment, that would have been the end
of it. The fox Con riots would be another episode
in the never ending series of they tried not to
pay us riots that are the most common one of
the most common forms of workers protests in China. Instead,

(51:58):
on Thanksgiving Day in the United States, videos started to
circulate of a fire in a residential block in a
room Sheet, the capital of shing Jong. There are several
videos of the fire. In one that journalists were able
to verify, you can hear people screaming from inside the
building as they tried and failed to escape the flames.

(52:19):
Further videos showed that cops had barricaded off the streets
with metal wires as a way to enforcing John's one
hundred day long lockdown, which prevented firefighters from getting to
the scene. Firefighters can be seen firing water hoses at
the building, only for the hoses arc to fall shorts
trapped behind barricades that prevented them from getting any closer.

(52:40):
Speculation about whether the doors of the apartment building themselves
have been sealed shut with locks or barricaded from the outside,
as had happened to so many other people's homes during
the lockdown, ran rampant. One video I saw from another
city appeared to show workers and has met suits who
become known as the Big Whites, literally welding someone's door
shut to keep them in. To make matters worse, the

(53:03):
head of the roomsche city Fire Rescue department blamed the
families for their own deaths, saying quote some residents abilities
to rescue themselves were too weak. These are the videos
the fragments of Nightmares brought to life that started the
mass protests. This is a revolution scene at thirty second intervals.
Everyone is trying to beat the sensors, clips float back

(53:26):
and forth between weach at, Twitter telegram back to weach
hat again. Ironically, many sensors were ready home for the weekend,
allowing clips and posts that otherwise would have been removed
immediately to circulate for hours and sometimes even days. These
brought back the memory of the third Spark, the one
that's basically been forgotten about in the West, if anyone

(53:46):
even cared to know about it in the first place.
In September, a bus full of people with COVID and
Guangzho that the government was shipping to a quarantine center
crashed and killed twenty seven people, wounding twenty others. Condition
in these centers, which COVID patients are often forced to
go to rather than quarantining in their homes, are atrocious.
Pictures and videos circulate constantly of bathrooms covered in human

(54:10):
ship from failing drainage systems, as China's already over tax
medical systems simply failed to keep up with the demands
on a place by the government, which, like the American government,
has and continues to systematically refuse to invest in medical infrastructure.
Intimate familiarity with these wretched conditions and the raw horror
at the deaths and Shing John and Guangzho sparked protests

(54:32):
across the country. In a room sheet and now seventy
percent Han City under constant police occupation, Han protesters appeared
to be moved in solidarity with the weaker families killed
in the fire, and fought the police with a ferocity
unmatched anywhere but the migrant worker villages of Guangzho along
the Parer River Delta, one of China's great manufacturing hubs.

(54:54):
These desperate struggles were given relatively little attention by a
Western media class enamored with the image of students carrying blank,
white pieces of paper to protest the censorship, a common
form of protests in places like Hong Kong. This time,
at least, they were tied to a particularly funny piece
of media censorship. As protests mounted, people started posting an

(55:16):
article version of a speech by Mao called let the
People Speak, the Sky will not Fall. Chinese censors quickly
ran into a classic CCP problem, which is that in
a state whose heroes are communist revolutionaries, celebrated historical figures
produced an immense repertoire of slogans and quotes for subsequent
generations and revolutionaries to draw from, which has caused the CCP,

(55:39):
at various points in time to ban the opening of
its own national anthem arise Ye who refused to be
slaves as sensors banned Let the people speak, the sky
will not fall. People began posting the article, but with
the words replaced by squares. This too was also deleted
and then posting simply blanks white squares themselves, which saw

(55:59):
their if auction in the students in the streets. The
CCP in turn retreated to its traditional tactic of blaming
the protests on foreign forces interfering in China, a claim
which is less incredible on a country that has rolled
up the CIA's entire in country intelligence network at least
once in the last decade. There's an incredible exchange has
made the rounds between a cop who is telling a

(56:21):
group of protesters that there are quote foreign forces around
manipulating the protests, who is immediately yelled at by a
guy screaming who are the foreign forces? Marks and angles
Stalin and Lenin. Another man appears and asks, Hi, can
I ask if it was foreign forces who started the
fire in Shing? John was the Guigo bus overturned by

(56:42):
foreign forces. Another man grabs the mic and says, was
everyone told to come here by foreign forces? The crowd
shouts no. He then makes an incredibly obvious point, We
can't even access to foreign internets. How are foreign forces
meant to be communicating with us? Another man says, we
only have domestic forces, not allowing us to govern themselves.

(57:04):
Where are these foreign forces from the moon? Still managing
these accusations to become a constant part of the protests,
with calls from protesters to stop chanting things like down
with the CCP, and attempts to keep the demands focused
on COVID policy like ending COVID zero. And this is
where things get incredibly muddled by a Western press that

(57:24):
decided to stop giving a shit about COVID deaths a
year ago, and a set of contrarians arguing that no, actually,
China's COVID policy is actually good. This entire debate hinges
on the conflation of the state of government policy of
zero COVID, which is an attempt to stop all cases
of COVID, and the actual execution of the policy, which
has taken the form of a war against China's working

(57:46):
class and a set of draconian police state abuses. One
thing that Western quote unquote experts have been quick to
point out is that will the CCP has to keep
doing COVID zero or one point five million people will die.
There was a tiny bit of truth to this in
that one reason Chinese COVID restriction so so harsh is

(58:07):
that if COVID was simply let rip like it has
been in the US, it would go through China's largely unvaccinated,
rural elderly population like a chainsaw. And unlike in the US,
if a million people died in China because the government
fucked up a pandemic response, party officials would be getting
beaten to death in the streets. And part of the
reason for the crisis in China in the first place

(58:28):
is that the rest of the world gave up on
trying to contain COVID entirely. If the rest of the
world had, you know, done their jobs and stamped out
the virus, none of us would be here right now.
On the other hand, no, absolutely not. You do not
actually need to wield people into their houses or drag
them by force out of their home so they can

(58:49):
die and bus crashes on their way to unsafe and
unsanitary pseudo hospitals with bathroom floors literally covered ship in
order to contain the pandemic. Lots of pandemics across human
history have contained without doing this ship just because the
two great world powers have decided that the COVID responses
are kill a million people by forcing everyone back to

(59:09):
work so that no one has to actually deal with
the political consequences of telling a bunch of unbelievably deranged
and heavily armed fascists no and lock two people in
a factory and forced them to make iPhones and then
beat the absolute shit out of them when it turns
out you lied to them about their pay. Doesn't mean
that there aren't other options that we could take for
pandemic responses if we decided to stop letting a bunch

(59:31):
of venal and corrupt assholes rule us all. And this
is something that people in China also understand. Even if
the Western press corps dead set on presenting their demands
as if they're American anti maskers, you can tell, obviously
the Chinese protesters are not simply a copy of right
wing American fascists by simply looking at a picture of
a protest and seeing how many people are wearing masks.

(59:54):
China is not the US. Regular people actually do care
about containing the pandemic. This is why there is a
real pandemic response in the first place, after the government
utterly boshed it. If you look at the actual demands
of the protesters, you will see things that normally would
seem more at home with liberal American protesters attempting to
see pandemic restrictions enforced properly, things like our pandemic response

(01:00:16):
must be based on science. But people, even people who
don't want to die of a plague, do not want
to be horribly abused by cops or horrifically exploited by
the state and capitalists. And that, I think is something
we do all understand. Only time can tell what will
happen to these protests. The government is quietly making concessions

(01:00:37):
and not so quietly hunting down people who took to
the streets. It is entirely possible that the protest will
simply die, and that in two or three years most
people will have forgot they ever happened. From a sort
of brutal materialist perspective, however, it seems unlikely. China's social
system could function fine as long as growth was at

(01:00:59):
fifteen or ten percent, or even eight percent, But when
growth inevitably comes down to two percent, but the deal
of keep your head down and everyone will get rich
starts to look a lot less attractive. Covid is simply
intensified all of the traditional contradictions in side Chinese society
and made visible the horrors that previously had been obscured.

(01:01:20):
And it seems unlikely that those contradictions will someday vanish.
But here in the presence, the impossible continues, and every
day it does is another day that the gates of
possibility in h a bit further open. This espina could
happened here. You can find us that happened here pot
on Twitter or Instagram. We have a website closoned Media

(01:01:41):
dot com where you can see the sources for this
In other episodes, Enjoy your week, and remember that you
too can defeat your own ruling class. It could happen here.

(01:02:10):
Rail Strike Edition. I'm Robert Evans, Garrison, Davis, Chris. How
are we all? How are we all doing? How's this?
We were talking about a rail strike today. We're praying,
we're praying for it. It hasn't happened. If you're listening
to this, you probably know the broad strokes of this,
which is that the people who make the trains go,

(01:02:31):
and by the way, trains are like a critical part
of us all not starving to death or running out
of insulin or whatever. The people who make those trains
go have a pretty hard job and there's not a
lot of them. And for a variety of reasons, that
boiled down to companies not wanting to spend money. Uh,
it's impossible for that. They don't get sick days. Um,
So there were a bunch of other ship things like

(01:02:52):
things that were shipped about the job, including pay, especially
since rail company profits have been at like record levels,
so they were threatening to strike. There were union negotiations.
Some of the union leaders reached an agreement with the
rail companies, but it wasn't it didn't include the sick days.
So a lot of workers, potentially most of them are,

(01:03:15):
we're at least willing to strike. And then Biden came
in and had Congress basically say do the same thing
Reagan did to the air traffic controllers in the eighties,
where it's like, no, if you strike, it's illegal because
this is a too critical a service for the country. Anyway,
that's broadly the situation. Chris, you know this a lot

(01:03:35):
better than I, the most pro labor president, the most
pro labor precord. Okay, this is I think this is
actually like that's that's why I don't like, that's my knowledge,
and I think that's close to a layman's knowledge. So
I'm waiting for you to fill in the gap. All right,
let's let's let's start with what Biden has actually done,
because it's it's it's slightly different than what Reagan was

(01:03:57):
doing there with the air traffic controllers. Um. Part of
the reason everything is fucked up with the railroads is that,
like railroads almost since their inception have had like an
almost entirely different regulatory framework than like anything else. So
you know, your normal strike is covered by the National
Labor Relations Act, Right, you go through your National Labor
Relations Board, you do your votes, blah blah blah blah. Uh.

(01:04:20):
If your railroad workers are not covered by that, they're
covered something by something called the Railway Labor Act, which
lets Congress just be like no, fuck you, you have
to take this contract and the other thing it does.
I mean, there is like a it is a oh
I didn't realize that so well before, so well before,
like you know, the modern era, and Reagan did his
ship with the air traffic controllers. There was a it

(01:04:43):
was written into the law that Congress could say like, yeah,
you're a to a rail strike. That's really interesting, I guess.
And it goes back to the days when they were
literally making them out of human bones. Yeah. I mean
it's been so it's been amended over time, and it's
changed a bit. And there's some other stuff that happened
in the nineties. After there's a there's a there's a
failed rail strike in the nineties where Congress is also
just like no, fuck you, you have to take this contract.

(01:05:05):
But yeah, the the important thing about this is that like, okay,
so in order to even potentially strike, you have to
go through so much bullshit. It's called self help in
the law. Like the people have been trying to strike
for two years, and everything that we're seeing now is
the product of two years of bullshit of these like
there's all of this nonsense you have to go through.

(01:05:27):
There's these like cooling off mandatory cooling off periods. You
can't like, uh, you know, you have to like wait
before you do anything else, and you you have to go
to the next step, the next step, and the final
step is Joe Biden had the choice to either let
these rail workers strike and actually get the things that
they fucking needed, or he could tell them to funk
off and just eat a contract. And that that that
that's what's happened right now, is that Joe Biden has

(01:05:48):
just and also again with the support of both houses
of Congress. And I also like explicitly want to mention
here that a lot a lot of nominally socialist politicians,
including like a lot of social Democrats vote talk about
that too, because that that's that's another part of it.
That again, so my my surface and I guess I'm
playing playing the podcast idiot in this one, which is

(01:06:11):
not abnormal for me. But my like layman's understanding of
what happened with this is that, uh, there was a
bill up in Congress as to whether or not to
endorse this, and uh a bunch of progressives said that
they wouldn't vote on it unless it included seven days
of paid sick leave, including Sanders that got pushed off

(01:06:32):
into a separate bill, and there was like some kind
of sketchy wording about like well we won't you know,
like I I don't, I don't understand the congressional hijinks,
but I know they just wound up voting for the
the negotiate like what the union had negotiated without any
sick leaf like it. Yeah, Like it seems like it

(01:06:52):
kind of provided an opportunity for a bunch of progressives
in the House to vote yes on the sick leave
knowing that it wouldn't pass the sent it and knowing
that the strike would still get stopped. Right Like what
am I um? I mean it's basically that like the
I'm not a congress nowhere. Yeah, I mean, there there's
a bunch of sort of hiji inks that were happening
in Congress where there's there's a slightly different version of

(01:07:13):
the bill in the House, and they had this whole thing.
But okay, the House, the House one for sick leaved
did pass with support of every Yeah, and it's three
three Republicans. But okay, the thing I think I want
to point out here and I want to move away
from the sick leave thing, because the sick. That's the
fact that these people don't have sick leave is important.
This is also not like the main thing the strike

(01:07:35):
was about, like things are, things are things are so
much worse like things are, things are so much like
infinitely worse than people like at all understands. Like what
the thing that the thing that's real strike is about,
if you if you go like actually talk to the
people who are doing it, is that these people are
on call for nine of their lives, like and and

(01:07:55):
when I say nine percent of their lives, they're on
call while they were asleep. They're on call constant. Uh,
there's there's there's no way to even there's no way
to plan a consistant sly schedule because you can just
be on call and you know, and part part part
of what's going on here. And if if you read
the sort of detailed accounts, you will see a lot
of people talking about this thing called precision scheduled railroading. Yeah,
precision scheduled railroading was it was a great theory kind

(01:08:20):
of that was implemented so atrociously badly. It's basically fucked
like the entire economy. Um that the idea behind it
was like you could you could schedule when like a
freight railroad was going to go right, and this this
would give you a bunch of efficiency bonuses. You could
plan like you could schedule things around each other. Um,

(01:08:40):
this just didn't happen people implementing it. But what they
implemented was just this nightmarror like amalgamation of we're going
to reduce a bunch of staff and then we're going
to make these trains that have like two cars on them.
And this has been a catastrophe. It's called monster trains
that there's there's Justin Rosniak, who's podcast doesn't see it

(01:09:01):
doesn't seem like a good solution to the problem of
not enough guys to make trains work is make the
trains huge. Yeah, it's like it's just denorable train crap.
It's awful. Again, these are your tw orter trains long right,
so if if you don't get the weight you ship
you should write, the train will fucking fall over. They
keep doing this this this has been happening for like
several years now. Is there's just trains everywhere derailing. There's

(01:09:22):
like no coverage of it. The reason, you know, you know,
you know, you know where I knew that from Chris
Garrison will tell you when I get when I get
drunk or something late at night. My favorite thing to
watch his videos of trains hitting stuff and train crashes
are amazing to watch. It's incredible to think of all
the human ingenuity it took to make that big, big boom.
There's thousands of videos on YouTube of cool cargo getting

(01:09:44):
stuck on train tracks and train happening through there yea
boxes being pulverized in the air, they vaporized. It's so cool.
So the downside is that one day we're going to
have one of these trains that is run by a
person who has had three hours of sleep in the
last forty eight hours, and it's going to be caring,

(01:10:05):
like fucking I don't know, it's gonna be carrying like
sodium nitrate on it or some ship and it's just
going to explode and it is going to kill enormous
every pole. That just actually happened in Canada like a
decade ago. But yeah, like these trains are too big.
They're so big they don't fit in the fucking rail yards.
Like they're so big that most the training infrastructure doesn't
work for them. They are so everything is okay. They're

(01:10:27):
they're really really really badly planned, despite the fact that
this is supposed to be precision scheduled railroading. Like they're
unbelievably badly planned. You have people just like being forced
to just like sit there for twelve hours in a train,
like waiting for the rest of like the other like
ninety five cars that are supposed to be on this
train to show up. You know. The whole situation just
like it is utterly nightmares. And the ever thing about this,

(01:10:48):
right is, if you're an engineer, right, and you're in
one of these trains and you're sitting there for twelve
fucking hours in this train, you legally can't have your
phone because you know, I mean, this is a safety thing, right,
And in some sense this makes sense. It's like a
safety measure. You can't of your phone because you know,
you can't be distracted what you're driving. But you're just
sucking sitting on the tracks for like twelve hours, and
you know this this this stuff is, you know, and

(01:11:08):
the fact that the fact that people are on call constantly,
the fact that the entire rail network is just physically
falling apart because the other thing about these trains rise
they make an enormous amount of money. None of them
ever fucking show up on time. It's a disgaster. It's
a catastrophe, like like like genuinely like part of the
reason why we're having all these supply issues is that
no train has fucking showed up on time in like
four years. And it's a new contract. It's okay that

(01:11:30):
the new contracts signed in says that workers can have
up to three unpaid days off for medical appointments. Oh wow,
that's something. It's a three unpaid tab stays off from
pre made medical appointments. Yeah, none for whatever. Yeah. And
again like like like these people are on call for

(01:11:53):
pent of their lives. You can't even like like you
can't schedule when you're going to sleep because you might
be on call, and call might be you have to
fucking like drive like several hours to a place so
you can get on a train, and the train cannot leave,
and the train eventually leaves like six hours later, and
you fucking drive and then you're just like dropped off
somewhere in the middle of nowhere and then unpaid, you
have to go back to like where you live. It

(01:12:16):
is like, like, Okay, the thing, the thing I wanted
to get out of this is like the railroading system
in general, that the system of freight railroading that we
have in the US is in the midst of collapsing.
Like it it is falling apart, It is not working,
it is is becoming increasingly dangerous. It is I mean,

(01:12:37):
utterly inhumane for the people working on it. And and
you know, none of the fucking even this even the
sick Bowl contract, like didn't do anything for it. Right,
The only way this actually could have been resolved is
if Joe Biden and in a fifth the Democrats and
if Congress hadn't been fucking cowards and had let these
people strike because these kinds of concessions like and you know,
I also like, I don't want to let the fucking

(01:12:58):
unions off the hook here to be because they know
all of this. But again, most of the sort of
like senior union people are very tight with a very
tight with Democratic Party. This is part of why all
of this ship was postponed till after the elections, because
they didn't, you know, they didn't want to deal with
this ship. They've been trying to force people to sign
these contract too, and it's it's it's a ship show.
It is a just absolute catastrophe on on every every level. Yeah.

(01:13:20):
I mean, it's almost as if the rail system probably
shouldn't be run by private interests. Yeah, because there's going
to be now a hundred hundred rail workers who are
forced to work under these still not great conditions. Meanwhile,
the managers and the owners of the railroads get to
go back to just making tons of money. Yeah, and

(01:13:42):
again record profits. None of this is happening. Not that
that would make it okay, but none of this is
happening in an environment well, well, you know, we're running
at a loss, and we we have no money and
no ability to like like they have. They're making hundreds
of billions of dollars profits like this is this is
like one of the most profitable times to run a railroad,
and US can thence and devise more people to be
railroad road workers if the job isn't a fucking nightmare.

(01:14:05):
For example, what if instead of not being able to
have their phones, we gave each of them a DVD
player in a screen with a DVD of Step Brothers
and they could watch step Brothers as much as they
want while piloting a train. I think that would actually
get I think that would cause mass mass layoff set
a rail yard. That's that's how we get the strike.

(01:14:28):
We include this in the next provision for destruction. I
was I was stealthy in my accelerationist beliefs here. This
is the fastest way he can transit infrastructure. He got
like two years before this holding fucking implodes anyways, because
part part of what's keeping people in the railroading system
is that so railroading also has its own pension system

(01:14:50):
that's like disconnected from the regular pension system, and you
have to you have to work there for ten years
in order to collector pension. This is why like enormous
numbers of people just haven't left, right. People have been leaving, right,
But there's a there's a huge number of people who
were hiring these giant expansion in two thousand four, and
you know, like we're two years out from that contract
from from all these people being able to collect their

(01:15:10):
pensions and fucking leaving. Yeah, that's it's like, this is
the only chance I have to ever not work myself
to death, so I have to tough it out. But yeah, yeah,
but these those those people are those people are going
to leave, and you know, this is this is the
sort of like this is the sort of hammer that
capitalism has built over its own head, which is that like, yeah,
congratulations you you successfully flexibilized and casualized your entire workforce.

(01:15:33):
That means that if people like don't want to do
your shitty job, they can leave and find another job.
And at some point, like there are there is a
ship that in this economy that like actually does need
to be done. But these people have been sort of
like so blinded by just like you know, they're so
so blinded by Lyne grow goes up. They're so blinded
by short term profit that they really don't understand that

(01:15:56):
at some point there's just not gonna be fucking workers
to run the railroad. Yeah. I mean a lot of
this situation is built off of and instead of being
compared to Reagan's stuff for their traffic controllers, it's actually
more similar to what Carter did with some with some
airline workers. Um. Then also with the with the nineteen
eight kind of a Railroad de Regulation act um which

(01:16:19):
which caused would would you which gave a lot more
power to companies to run the railroads. And that's that
is what kind of shifted shifted things to our to
our current, our current problem because they were they gave
permission for these rail companies to close down lines that
were less profitable and to set their own um freight rates.
And it's it's not being controlled by the inter State

(01:16:42):
Commerce Commission. Instead it's being controlled by execuity. That that
thing's weird, right because like, on the one hand, like
the wave of corporatesalidation that happened after that is like
a disaster, and the fact that there's basically like four
real like rail companies now is a disaster. On the
other hand, like it is also true that the Interstate
Common Board was like dogshitted his jaws, it also s yes,

(01:17:04):
absolutely it sucked, and for a short period of time
it actually did improve things. But now it's it's it's
it's powers coalescing again into the very types of monopolies
that caused the that caused railroad regulation to be necessary
back in the nineteenth century. Like in the first place,

(01:17:25):
um power is being consolidated again, and it's it's this vicious,
vicious cycle that are that fundamentally puts short term profits
above of the conditions of workers. Yeah, I think, like,
you know, Okay, so there have been a lot of
people talking about like what the potential solutions to this

(01:17:45):
are in a sort of macro sense, because like, okay,
even even even with a better contract, right, like, something
actually has to be done in order to force the
railroads to not fucking suck and to like actually properly
scheduled our goddamn trains and not work if one to death.
And you know, I want to put that it is

(01:18:06):
worth noting like we actually did like have national nationalized
railroad company for a while, and it was kind of
a ship show like it. Okay, Okay, this is something
that's also important. Think about this, Like there's a lot
of like there's a lot of different kinds of nationalization,
right Like there there there was a huge difference between

(01:18:27):
a firm that's like like you know, like we we
we we sort of technically nationalized a bunch of the
like car companies after two thousand and eight, right we
bailed them out, but you know, like we like when
in that stuff, we didn't really like take it. We
we owned, we owned like a bunch of their stock.
We didn't like take a control and like we we
got like Nick tonight, like proto neoliberal nationalization of the

(01:18:50):
railroads last time, and it kind of contributed to the
problems we have now. There was also a period where
Conrail's union was trying to like buy like the railroad,
so we all we almost we almost got a railroad
system that was run by its but it was owned
by its own union, and then the company just like
refused to sell it to them because they were like
waiting to hold on, we can't have a worker run railroad.

(01:19:12):
But one thing, one thing I am interested in is
I I don't actually know this. What would what would
the how would how would an illegal strike actually work? Like,
what's what's the how? What is the differences between people
striking illegally? Now, like there's some some discussion of that,
who knows that's actually actually happened, But what is the
main kind of difference between that and um, the non

(01:19:35):
illegal strow? Okay, so the big thing is okay, So
the thing about the National Labor Relations Act, right, which
is the thing that covers normal strikes, was that like
and this is also true to see I sat under
the room, but like, okay, so if you're doing a
legal strike, you have legal protections, right, like there there
are there are things corporations can't do to you. Um,

(01:19:56):
like yeah, there there there's there's a bunch of stuff
that can't Like I don't like it's it's it's a
lot harder to just sort of fire people. The other
thing is that also, like especially something like this, there's
a like you you if you do if you do
a wildcats trick like this and you you a specifically

(01:20:17):
a strike that is like that is specifically illegal under
this act, like you can all get fired. Um, I'm
I think that I think they could technically arrest you.
Like it It's it's I don't know that that part
of it's not exactly clear to me, But yeah, I
don't know. I mean there there's sort of like I

(01:20:37):
feel like if if if they arrest you just for
not going to your job, I feel like that is
I mean that that has happened to people, Like I
know people have been yes, like in the long history
of labor struggles, people have been straight up killed. Um,
but at least in you, I think it would be

(01:21:02):
a bad look. Yeah, I mean I think Okay, So
I mean I think where we're headed, and I think
what they ought to do is just force get all
of like the worst criminals, and I mean the murderers,
the terrorists, all of those guys, and you make them
run the trains. Whoever blew up all of those power
transformers in North Carolina. You make them run the trains,

(01:21:25):
and it'll be fine. Nothing bad will happen as a
result of this. It'll work out perfectly well. The the
the alternative plan and the thing that maybe these rail
companies are just holding out for because maybe they're just
making conditions be not great and underpaying and not giving
sick days, is because they're waiting for trains just to

(01:21:46):
become autonomous. They're already planning to severely cut down the
crews that are on the trains. There's already trains in
Australia that are a totally autonomously run that carry mining
materials over for hundreds of miles, and that is the
future that these that these companies want, because then they

(01:22:07):
don't they need to pay for employees to actually run
the train. Frustrating because like in an actual if we
were an evening that approached a society that like dealt
with things ethically and humanely, uh and equitably. Then this
would be good, like because it seems like working on
train sucks, and it would be great if we could
automate most of that work. Uh, and then people less

(01:22:30):
people would have to work in order to keep society running.
But that's people don't have to work. We're just going
to run through these people's bodies by like as we
get up to autonomy automization, and then we will throw
them away. Yeah, and then they will and then because
they'll do it badly, there's going to be a disastrous
train crash caused by the fact that they got all

(01:22:51):
of the people off of a train hauling nitro glycerin
or whatever, and it's going to destroy I don't know,
duluth um, which you know, not the worst to lose,
but I I sorry to Luke. Y'all are fucked well, okay,
it's it's worth meesying. Like this stuff, like the automation
stuff is already happening right like that we have right
we have like this well and I mean it's like
a very real sense that there's this sort of nightmare.

(01:23:13):
Is one of the other sort of nightmare things that's
going on right now, is that there are these like
like I don't know, like driver assistance programs basically that
are being run on trains. Now, where that are that are?
You know that they're supposed to be like making decisions
like for and with the drivers, but ay, they suck
ass um be there. They're they're design. They're designed to

(01:23:33):
basically maximize design to maximize profitability, right, And the way
you maximize profitability is by running trains really really slowly,
and you know that's contributing to the fact that every
train is fucking late now and the phrases that doesn't work.
And the third problem is that these is that these
things keep fucking running trains off Like this is another
reason why trains keep sucking crashing is that they suck.
They keep they keep running trains off the tracks, and

(01:23:54):
like you know and like that there's there's there's like
there's there's a lot of ship here, right because it's
like if you if you override the system, like you
can you can get disciplined for for for overwriting the system.
But then you have this sort of like you have
this thing where it's like okay, so do I do
I get disciplined for overriding system and not making the
train crash, or do I just make the fucking train
crash and doing the trolley problem? Yeah yeah, it's literally yeah,

(01:24:19):
just like you love that this is just gonna inevitably
gonna result in an exact recreation of the trolley proffle.
It's already like this is already happening to people, and
it's just like like it's none of the none of
the stuff works automatic into this orphanage. I can divert
it instead of this old folks. So it's like it's
literally happening, like it's just like none of this stuff, Like, Okay.

(01:24:43):
The thing that's like frustrating about this, right is okay,
if any of the people at the sort of like
at the level of where they're planning these trains could
even sort of do their job right that this isn't
even a thing that's like an inevitable contradiction between capital
and labor. Like this is just if any of these
people could actually fucking schedule the railroads, which is the

(01:25:03):
thing they're supposed to be trying to do. If they
could actually schedule when the train was supposed to go
and when it was supposed to leave, you wouldn't have
these problems because then all of the people who worked
there would also be told when the fucking train was
leaving and they could schedule around it. But no, they
can't fucking do it because they're too fucking lazy, they're
too fucking stupid, and they don't want to spend the
money to actually make any of these systems fucking work,

(01:25:23):
And so the consequence is just this bullshit. And then
also because again and this is everything like that, like
capital is also really falling down on the job here,
because like the rest of capital needs to get their
ship together and force the railroad to do something, because like,
it's your asses on the line too, if this railroad
then collapses. But because of because of the sort of
immediate amount of money that that that these these shitty

(01:25:45):
rail companies that pumped into Congress, they were able to
buy people off, and the rest of capital was just like, yeah,
we don't care. That's like three years out, we don't
have to care about this ship. It's like guys like
Bernie Sanders is fighting to save capitalism, right, These people
are trying to save you from yourselves, and you know
you won't won't even let That's that's their entire job,
though of course it's like, yeah, what what what is

(01:26:08):
happening here? Is that like is liberalism is running an
acceleration is program to like cause the American American infrastructure
to fall apart, and social democracy is attempting to save
capital from itself, and capital was like literally fuck you
eat ship. No, it's it's i've i've. I'm reading right
now in interview with a railroad Workers United member and

(01:26:29):
they're they're talking about how like there's this plan to increase,
uh increase their pay over the next five years, and
he's there, like he says that lots of the railroad
workers that he's talked to as a part of the
union is saying, like people are willing to work for
less money and take a job at like an Amazon

(01:26:50):
factory or like a trucking job because at least those
offer slightly more consistent hours, and like, yeah, like it's
it's at least you when you're not working, you're not working. Yeah,
And I just wanted to mention that because because we
were bringing up like how these people are getting not
very good pay, which is which is true, but for
a lot of people it isn't even just to pay
question it's it's it's just overall working conditions and like

(01:27:13):
when you're thinking about moving to an Amazon factory instead
because they have better working conditions, like oh god, yeah,
it's like, I mean, they've they've managed to create like
one of the worst systems that is imposed on like
any worker in the country. Like it is. It is

(01:27:34):
genuinely stunning. And right now again they're they're getting bailed
out that people are by the fact that people are
stuck in because they want their pensions. But like, but
as soon as a people are done and we start
moving to more autonomous things, then it's not it's not
going to be worth it. I know, media companies have
spent decades trying to convince kids to work for trains,
with Thomas the Train chuggington for for decades and decades,

(01:27:56):
you've tried to send train propaganda to these kids, and
I I don't think I don't think they're gonna buy it. Yeah,
did you guys know that in Thomas the Tank Engine,
canonically World War Two happened and canonically all of the
diesel engine signed sided with the Nazis. Well, that doesn't
first today and that is official. Thomas the Tank in

(01:28:18):
Jin Laura. I wonder how many other zoomers will um
symbolize with me on this. I recently found out that
Thomas the Train wasn't just the uncanny train segments that
used to have live action actors in like little inter
cut scenes, because it was fucked up because by the

(01:28:40):
time Thomas the Train was airing on television when I
was a kid, all of those were re edited. They
had they had, they had no live actions segments at all.
It was all the weird stop motion animation, which is
still very uncanny, with like the faces. But I had
no idea until like a year ago that there was
live action actors in the original additions of Thomas the Train.
Fletely oblivious. Well, I'm glad, I'm glad we could have

(01:29:03):
this important union discussion. I am too. I'm gonna I'm
gonna admit to you all right now. There was a
moment earlier where Chris You kept saying that that the
owners of the railroads were blinded, and I very nearly
went into a bit where I just started reading the
lyrics to Bruce Springsteen's Blinded by the Light. But I
didn't do it. I didn't do it that I'm glad

(01:29:25):
we were saved from that. That's that's that's because everybody, nobody,
nobody gets the lyrics to that one, right because of
the Manford Man's earth band version, which makes it sound
like he's saying douche when he's really saying deuce and
talking about an engine, which is why it would have
been relevant to railroads. But none of you all would
have gotten that, and you would have fucking made a
big thing about it on Reddit. So to hell with

(01:29:48):
you all. Anyway, support rail workers if they do an
illegal strike, make sure we set up things so that
they get protected and they get food and things to
fight cops, go make rail way. I mean, people like,
just keep it, keep an eye on what's going on,
and if it happens, there will be ways. There will

(01:30:09):
be ways to support these through the US government, Like
I don't know things of this nature. Yeah, I mean
that would be that, that would be nice. But if
we got to put a pin in that, you know,
keep an eye on the situation and if these people
go on strike, there will be community resources and whatnot
popping up to support the wildcat strike. It's the thing
that's happened before. Wildcat strikes have a long history in

(01:30:31):
this country too, um, you know, and we will we
will be collecting resources if that happens, for ways people
can help with the wildcatters. So this is a thing
to have on the old, on the old noggain as
we as we lurch forward into the holidays and uh
possibly gigantic labor battle we'll see. And I like people

(01:30:55):
in the UK have been doing rail strikes, uh like
for a good part of this year, like they've been,
they've been. There's been on and off rail strikes for
most of for like, for like the most of the
past few months. Um, it's possible, except again they're they're
they're they're British, so they stopped doing the strike when
the queen died. Well of course, so look, look there's

(01:31:19):
certain realities that can't ever be a clipstograph. Here's the
here's the thing. We have thrown off the shackles of
the anglos are where a rail strikes stops for no one,
al right except for the most pro labor president, Joe Biden. Alright,
And that's the episode. It's the episode. And remember, if
you see a diesel train, it is a Nazi. You

(01:31:41):
you were obliged to punch it. Welcome to Dake bap
in here a podcast at it happening somewhere else, you know. Okay,

(01:32:04):
the theme, the theme of the show has gone slightly
slightly off the rails since it was first conceived. However, Comma,
I do think this is something that is very important
to talk about, which is getting some more sort of
background information and an understanding of what the history of
sort of labor in general protest is in China as

(01:32:25):
we look at a certain the sort of current protest
wave that is going on there. And with me to
talk about this is Eli Friedman, who teaches at Cornell
University and is the author of the book The Urbanization
of People, The Politics of Development, Labor, markets, and Schooling
in the Chinese City. So, Eli, welcome to the show.
It's good to be here. Yeah. So I'm excited to

(01:32:46):
talk with you about this um partially because I think, Okay,
so insofar as you've gotten sort of mainstream coverage of it,
there's been a lot of focus UM in term in
terms of this sort of current way of protests, There's
been a lot of focus on like the A four

(01:33:07):
paper stuff and people sort of you know, hanging signs, up,
and as as the coverage has gone on, there's been
a lot less about the fox con stuff. There's been
a lot less about the broader trajectory of what protests
has looked like in China in the last twenty years,
as everyone sort of like immediately reaches back for their

(01:33:29):
stock tienem in comparisons. I think you're very good. Yeah, yeah,
So I guess I guess we could in some sense
start with genomen because I think this is this is
has nothing really to do with it. But I guess
we could start with why why are the chan in

(01:33:50):
comparisons bad? And why is everyone still reaching for them
thirty years later? Yeah, I mean they're there's maybe a
couple of reasons why. So. Um, the the the unsympathetic
take on it is that you have a lot of
people outside of China, particularly in the United States, who

(01:34:13):
hope for things to go poorly in China as part
of our imperial competition. And so UH was a bad
year for China, whichever side of of that movement you
you were on UH, and so they believe that it heralds,
you know, that the downfall of the Communist Party, and
you know, therefore America can march into the rest of

(01:34:36):
the century without any real competitors, so that that is
a real thing, right um. And that I think the
somewhat more sympathetic take on this is that the Chinese government,
and particularly under Stigent Ping, sets a ridiculously high standard
for what qualifies as social stability. Right. So minor d

(01:35:00):
deviations from um absolute harmony as conceived of by this state,
which means you know, no street protests, it means relatively
little descent online. And to the extent that you do
see forms of collective action, they remain pretty small scale
and fractured um. And so when you see deviations from that,
that suggests that, well, they've kind of lost control because

(01:35:23):
they do want to maintain this, you know, absolute image
of placidity um. And if we look at the whole
sequence of events that led up to where we are now,
I think we have to trace it back. Well, there's
a bunch of things, but one of them is the
setone bridge protest um, which is just a single person

(01:35:45):
hanging banners off a bridge in Beijing, um, and a
single person hanging banners or holding signs in any other
big city around the world does not create that kind
of a stir, right. I mean, you know, you you're
in Washington, d C. Or Or you're in Berlin or
or Tokyo or whatever. You know, nobody cares, right, so

(01:36:06):
that but that just shows a little bit of a
crack in the system, and so then people let their
imaginations kind of run wild. Um. And we're clearly not
in a nine situation right now. It's not inconceivable that
it would develop in that way in the future. Um.
At the same time, I don't think it's particularly likely
for for all sorts of reasons. And we can get

(01:36:27):
into that if you want. Yeah, I mean one of
the things that I think, I don't know one of
the things that I've been looking at with these protests
versus eight nine. I partially it's just the sort of
class composition is just very very different. Like there are
student protests, but it's it's they're like these these the

(01:36:48):
students now, like are not the nine nine students, Like
this is just if this is a very different sort
of like it's's very different student body. It's a very
different like the class competition of those people are different.
The experience that they've had in the Chinese system is
very different, and then also, I think someone more interestingly
is like, it's it's not the same working class that
showed up in because that class doesn't really exist anymore.

(01:37:12):
And yeah, and I guess that that's another part of
this that I think, I don't know. There is definitely
extent to which these protests are weird, in that it
is like it's it's it's it's a bunch of people
in different places who are protesting about the same thing
which hasn't which you know, hasn't really happened for a
long time. But also like I don't know, there seems

(01:37:34):
to be this reluctance to talk about the fact that
there have been like not in significant protests in the
last thirty years, like especially in the nineties, there are
these huge protests against sort of like the industrialization, like
the destruction of sort of the Chinese welfare system. And
I guess one of the things I'm interested, I don't
know it asking you more about is like there's there's

(01:37:57):
a kind of jectory of what urban sort of protest
has looked like and like as as as the sort
of like as the Chinese working classes like increasingly become
a sort of vigrant working class and so yeah, I
guess we could jump off from there to also also
I guess because that's the other thing is like Chinese

(01:38:18):
cities are very different now than they were thirty years ago,
which is the thing that is both incredibly obvious and
also like people don't really seem to understand very well. Yeah,
let's see, there's a lot in that question. Maybe we
should circle back around to the question of the class
composition of the students and the workers today in comparison

(01:38:41):
to nineteen eighty nine. But first let's just talk a
little bit about the sequence of labor protests over the past.
And there is a lot of me going through stuff there. Yeah,
I mean, all all really important insights um, each deserving
a little bit of their own attention. So you know,
after nine, Uh, there's this big divergence in the UM

(01:39:03):
in in the opportunities that are afforded to the two
constituent groups that were in Tanneman Square and other places
around China. So you have the students and you have
the workers, right, and there's there's other people, but like
that's the sort of the social backbone of that movement. Uh.
The students basically get this deal with the state, which
is they demand compliance and political acquiescence in exchange for

(01:39:26):
which they will enjoy a couple of generation, a couple
of decades of unbelievably fast growth. And if you are
graduating with a degree from one of these elite universities
in Beijing or even not super elite universities and in
other cities, there's a pretty good chance that you're going
to experience upwards social mobility, that you'll be able to
buy an apartment that you know, you will feel more

(01:39:48):
materially secure than was the case for your parents, right, UM,
I think that that deal is coming undone right now,
which explains the students that we say out in the street, UM,
but in any of and that that certainly was the
case for for you know, for about thirty years after UM,
or at least you know, twenty five years after after tenement.
The workers who were in the square in nineteen nine

(01:40:11):
had almost diametrically opposed social trajectory because immediately thereafter UH
they were subjected to a brutal regime of privatization, of dispossession,
of theft of public property. They were thrown out of
these jobs that they had believed they were going to
have forever. It was called the Iron Rice bul Um.
One of the main architects of that was Johnsman, who's

(01:40:33):
just died. He along with Drew g So I saw.
I saw a great quote where someone was like, this
is basically China, George W. Bush, where everyone's remember again
fondly because things are so bad now. But oh my god,
this guy was awful, Like dying dying right now is
maybe the best thing he ever did. Like yeah, and
it really is a testament to how bad things are now.

(01:40:54):
But he is I think, um, the most neoliberal anyway
of China's leaders, more so than than dung shopping in
some important ways. Uh. And so you know that old
working class who was told that they were the masters
of the nation, um, you know under Jungs them in
front in the late nineties, they were just they were
just subjected to these real subsistence crises. And in response

(01:41:16):
to that, actually the largest mobilizations to have happened since
nineteen nine occurred in the like nineties and really the
early two thousands. In some cases, you have these protest
movements with many tens of thousands of people out on
the street resisting privatization, resisting the theft of their pensions,
um and and basically this you know, private profiteering and

(01:41:36):
theft of public property. And I think that even the
protests that we've seen in the last a week or
two are are still not on the scale of those
worker uprisings that we saw twenty years ago. Yeah, which
I guess, you know, like part part of the reason
why we are where we are now is that those
people lost. And I think that's been one of the

(01:41:56):
other sort of themes of like Chinese protests. Lie. I mean,
I think like like some some of the local ones
like when, but the large scale ones have kind of
just been like just like really just been getting owned
for the last like twenty really like thirty years. Like
it's it's been kind of a bleak march. And I mean,

(01:42:19):
I actually I want to circle back around a bit,
talk a bit more about the d industrialization, because I
think this is a thing that like really is badly understood,
especially on the left. Um. The other thing I wanted
to talk about in that is, Okay, so you have
this massive wave of privatization, you have this industrialization, and
can we talk a little bit of also about how

(01:42:40):
like for the people for the people who held on
and say on the industries, what the transformations happen inside
there was like because I think that's also like not understood. Well, yeah,
so you have two prosessies. One is um the they
talk about as a smashing the iron rice ball, right,
and and that involved of two process. One is just unemployment.

(01:43:03):
And there's been a lot of um efforts to try
to estimate how many people lost their jobs. It is
very hard. Political scientists named Dirthy Salinger wrote an article
called why It's impossible to know how many unemployed people?
There are some something to that effect. Um, but certainly
tons of millions of people lost lost their jobs and
we're just kind of thrown out into the market. And
it's worth remembering that they're thrown out into the market

(01:43:24):
largely in regions where the market was not at all dynamic, right,
so in the northeastern part of the country, which did
not have the booming economy of Guangdong Province or you know,
jong Su Province or places like that. Um. So, so
there were those people. People also probably know that there
are still a lot of state on enterprises and something
like a quarter to you know, maybe a third of
China's economy is still accounted for by state on enterprises,

(01:43:47):
but those enterprises have increasingly come to function like capitalist enterprises,
at least with respect to the labor relations. They still
receive a lot of subsidies from the state. They still
enjoy um monopolies, right, so they you know, they don't
face competition from other firms, at least domestically UM, and
like monopoly based firms in capitalist countries, they offer somewhat

(01:44:08):
better UM pay and somewhat better benefits to their core workforce. Right. So,
I mean, if you think of of GM or four
in the middle of the twentieth century in the United States,
or you can think about Facebook or Google today, you know,
these companies that are also basically enjoy monopoly position. Their
core workers enjoy, you know, somewhat better pay. Right. But
the other thing that's happened is they have increasingly come

(01:44:29):
to be surrounded by a very large contingent of temporary
and flexible workers, right um, and so in in in
many of these state owned firms, UM, more than fifty
of the employees are what they call in China dispatch workers. Right,
they don't enjoy any of those same benefits they don't
enjoy the same job stabilities um, and they eat in

(01:44:52):
eat in response to market fluctuations and profitability. Those are
always the first ones to be let let go, right.
So you know, the fact that they are state owned,
I think matters to some extent um, but when But
it doesn't mean that the old labor regime from you know,
the nineteen seventies has kind of continued unchanged. Like they

(01:45:12):
are being these firms are being subjected to market pressures
and that's reflected and how they treat labor. Yeah, I
mean that's something that like if if if you, if
you listen to and Ping like actually talk about what's
going on. He just constantly, every every like two speeches
that he gives there is a line about how like
the economy is directed by the market, and like, yeah,

(01:45:33):
he's very clear about it, and in some ways he's
he's like very Reganite, like he's just like, we don't
we don't want what these lazy people just enjoy welfare benefits,
like they believe in the power of the market to
discipline people. There's no question about it. Yeah, And I
guess the other sort of consequence of this is China's
enormous market worker population. And that's definitely another thing I

(01:45:55):
wanted to talk about because that was another round of
protest happens in two thousands. That's about uh, this giant
fight over household registration that I guess was the last
kind of successful, like really mass protest thing in China.
We talked about that a little bit. Yeah, I mean,
there haven't been the same scale of of collective protests

(01:46:16):
by migrant workers. But um, you know, just as a
little bit of background, you have the old state state
owned working classes kind of declining or subjected to the
market pressures that we're talking about, and so unrest um
in that sector becomes a little bit less significant over
the course of the two thousands. But that's happening at
precisely at the same time that the working class in

(01:46:38):
the private firms is increasingly constituted by these rural urban
migrant workers. When they come to the city's they are
treated essentially a second class citizens and don't have guaranteed
access to all kinds of social services healthcare, pensions, education, etcetera. Um,
and so there is a lot of mobilization. I mean,
you know, the the Juko household system, household registration systems

(01:47:01):
still exists, and it still has an important role in
structuring people's UM classed experiences. UM, but it's it's a
little bit less coersive than it used to be. So
in two thousand three, there was this famous case UM.
A migrant named Soon You're goung Um was taken into custody,

(01:47:21):
as frequently happened, you know at the time, like police
would just ask people for their papers on the street
if they looked suspicious, and they had a thing in
place at the time called custody and repatriation where they
would take you into custody and they would they would
repatriate you back to your village. Right, So very similar
you know to like ice rates against Chinese people. Yeah, yeah,

(01:47:42):
like they had even this is I think one of
the things about like, insofar as you can make comparisons
between like the Chinese system of the Soviet systems like that,
that's one of the few things that was I think
kind of similar, is that you do have these very
intense into well okay, it's simultaneous that you have these
very intense like internal restrictions on migration, but also very
similar to the U S system. It's like the the

(01:48:04):
economy is based on everyone breaking these things, that's right.
Simultaneously it's illegal, yeah, yeah, right, exactly, Like there's no
illegal immigration to the United States, but the economy would
obviously collapse without undocumented workers. And it's exactly the same
in China. Like, you know, they're like, we we know
that these people are here, we know that our economy,

(01:48:25):
particularly the coastal cities, is completely dependent on them, but
we're still gonna have cops ask you for your papers
on the street, and if they don't like you, they can,
you know, round you up and send you home. In
this in this particular case back in two thousand and three,
the guy they got, it's like he was the quote
unquote wrong guy because he was actually a university student

(01:48:45):
and they they they detained him and killed him. And
so when this came out and they're like, oh, they
killed a college student. Like if had they killed a
normal migrant worker, that would be one thing, but he's
a college student. So so that created a big fuss
and as a result, you know, they actually got rid
of of the tention and repatriation, which is good, um there,

(01:49:05):
And so migrant workers today when they're on the streets
in the big cities are are not likely to you know,
just have cops randomly asked them to see their papers.
But they're still subjected to all kinds of social discrimination
and definitely, um, you know, institutional discrimination. Yeah, So okay,
we're sp speaking of institutional discrimination. We're going to take
an ad break and then we will come back and

(01:49:25):
talk or about this. So I enjoy some ads from
companies who are probably benefiting from all of this, and
we're back. So okay that That's another thing that I
I do want to sort of, I guess, use this
to push us forward a little bit, which is that, okay,
this this is obviously skipping a lot of riots in

(01:49:47):
til USand and eleven. But one of the big things
about the COVID restrictions that I don't think people understand
has been how bad it's been affecting megicant workers and
the extent to which, you know, because one one of
the things about the House of Registration system is like,
as best I can tell, this is this is the
way a lot of like a lot of resources in
terms of like here's how you're getting food haven't being

(01:50:09):
distributed and if you know, if you're in a place
that's not weird house. The registration is just like, well, okay,
the state's not giving you your food, how are you
going to deal with this stuff? And yeah, they're not
doing that. That that that That's been a big thing that, like,
I don't know, a lot of this has been me
being upset with the media coverage of these protests because

(01:50:29):
like people will just say COVID zero and then not
explain what the actual consequences of this are. So, yeah,
I was wondering if you could talk about sort of
specifically how how the lockdowns, especially as lockdowns have gone on,
have been affecting my co workers, and then how that's
and yeah, okay, well so we'll start start there before

(01:50:50):
I jump into a question with seven parts. I mean,
I do think it's really important to understand why people
are opposed to zero COVID, and sometimes for people outside
of China, they think back to the spring of when
you know, in the United States, we had like libertarians
with guns being like in the lockdown, like we want
our freedom, Like it is not that for all sorts
of reasons, um and and the way to get at

(01:51:13):
why it's different is to understand some of the classed
differences that zero COVID has has entailed. And I should
just say it's been pretty terrible for everybody, including rich people,
and like you know, we can we can feel some
sympathy for them to UM, but but it's had some
particularly nefarious consequences for for migrant workers. This became really

(01:51:34):
clear in the Shanghai lockdown. It's also worth noting that
there are three hundred million migrant workers in China. So
this is not like this this is like half the
population of Europe like so many people are talking about here.
It's it's it's almost an America sized population of people
who are not living where their household registration is. And

(01:51:55):
so the basic thing is, as you were just sort
of saying that when they're is a lockdown and you're
a migrant worker, you you kind of don't exist from
the states, or you might exist, but like you might
also be overlooked from the perspective of the state. So
one very concrete way that this UM screwed people over

(01:52:15):
was in these hard lockdowns, you're not allowed out of
your house and you're dependent on the neighborhood committee, which
is which is connected to the state. It's kind of
the lowest level of the state. You were dependent on
them for the delivery of everything that you need to survive,
right critically food and medicine. Yeah, can back up and
say something about this. This is something This is something

(01:52:36):
very very different than the American lockdowns, which is like, well, okay,
it depends on a like it it depends on a
on on like a province of profit s basis. Like
I know, my family was in Mogolia. They like in
the Mogolia like you you just you like. The lockdown
isn't like you don't go to work. The lockdown is
you cannot leave your house like you can. You can say,

(01:52:56):
I think I think their lockdown, their first one was
one person in their house once a week can leave
to go get groceries. But it's like it's not like yeah,
like it's it's you, like you physically cannot leave. You
will be if you attempt to leave, you will be
prevented from doing so. And this means that you don't
really have an independent way of like getting food or

(01:53:17):
like going shopping or yeah, like getting I don't know,
like toilet paper, like yeah, not toilet resonates with with
Americans in our in our toilet paper shortage of but
I mean in some cases, like people would actually just
be literally chained into their apartments, right, So like this
is not whatever people in in in the U s.
Or even even in parts of Western Europe, you know,

(01:53:39):
where the lockdowns were a little bit more intensely police like,
it is not that it is a qualitatively different thing.
And so yeah, you're completely dependent on the state. So
therefore it's really really important that the state know that
you are there and that the state feels itself to
be tasked with your survival and if you're a migrant worker.
So so one of the very greet ways that this

(01:54:01):
effective migrant workers is that a lot of them live
in informal housing, even in the biggest cities, even in
place like Shanhai and Beijing, because those are the only
places that they can live as far as the state's concerned,
Like that informal housing might not exist, they are very
very frequently more people living in those dwellings than are
sort of legally accounted for. So you know, like there's

(01:54:22):
ten people living in an apartment that's supposed to be
for for you know, a family of three, and so
they deliver three people's worth of food, but there's actually
ten people living there. That's a subsistence crisis, right. Um.
You know, the medical stuff is just like astonishing and
very harrowing. I mean, you know, just people just dying
in their apartment because like they can't get insolent or
all kinds. I know, I know people whose family died

(01:54:44):
because they had cancer and they couldn't get treatment for
it because yeah, yeah, like yeah, it's disaster. Yeah. So
so that's that's the situation. That's one of the problems
with them for the migrant workers. And then in the
very intense lockdowns at least in in Shanghai, back in
in the spring of this year. Um, you know, they
also can't leave. So like one option would be like okay,

(01:55:06):
will you go back to the place where you do
have your household registration, you know, back in the village
and you have a piece of land and like you
can survive. They couldn't leave, right, there's no transportation, um,
And so they were trapped in this situation where they
couldn't work, the government wasn't you know, delivering them food,
and they couldn't go to some place some other place
where they could get food. And so you know, there's

(01:55:28):
been a lot of attention to these recent protests, which
are extremely important and qualitatively different. But even back in
in April, we saw food riots, like in Shanghai, a
group of group of migrant workers just like requisitions like
a truck full of cabbage, you know, and just started
like tossing cabbages to people on the street because people
were like literally starving. So I mean, yeah, so there's

(01:55:49):
a real problem for the bigrant workers. And on that note,
this has been nic could happen here? Join us tomorrow
for part two of this episode. We'll be talking more
about lockdowns, similar problems with workers and this all going

(01:56:18):
Welcome to Dick It Happened Here, the podcast that you're
listening to right now. It's your host, Christopher Long, and
we are back with part two of our interview with
Eli Friedman about the reason protests in China. I want
to go back and talk about lying flat and that
whole kind of I don't know, movement discourse that was

(01:56:39):
happening last year, because it seems like the kind of
I don't know if nihilism is the right word, but
this kind of like collective understanding that the whole sort
of bargain of the Chinese social system of you know,
and this was to some extent extended to everyone, right,
like the bargain of the Chinese social system of everyone
everyone keep your head down while get rich together, or

(01:57:00):
it suddenly became clear that this just wasn't gonna happen.
And you know, I mean, I think like, in some
sense it's possible to sort of like, you know, you
can you can put on your sort of like hard
materialist hat and you can like look at like the
number of hammers banging out, and you can just look
at the show of Chinese GDP graph of the last
decade and be like, okay, well so eventually like when

(01:57:21):
what what what it hit like two percent? Eventually we
were going to have protests. But yeah, I guess, I
guess I I wanted to talk a bit about like, yeah,
what lying flat was? We covered this on the show
a long time ago when it was happening, but and
then also sort of how that attitude shift was important
or wasn't important. I don't know, Maybe it wasn't. I
think it was, but yeah, I think it's very important. Right, So, yeah,

(01:57:46):
you can't just be a crude materialist and like mechanically
read social protest off of some chart of you know,
falling profitability or something like that. Um, but there it
is a cultural expression of real fundamental changes in the
organization of the Chinese economy. Uh. You know, we already
talked about how the post eighty nine generation was like

(01:58:07):
you go to college and like you come out and
you know you'll you'll be middle class right on average,
And that's just not at all the case anymore. And
young people in China and and older people, middle aged
people you know, who are who have children, who are
who are going through the system, um, feel immense pressure
in like immense competition in all spheres of life, beginning

(01:58:30):
from a young age in elementary school, all the way
up through high school, through the super competitive and intense
university admissions process, and then after graduating university and getting
a job, and then getting a job that can you know,
um uh, you can earn enough money to be able
to afford an apartment. And so here we have to
understand you know, the cost of housing and all of

(01:58:51):
the other costs associated with social reproduction. So the like
the cost of care workers. Right, middle class people in
places like Shanghai and Beijing expect to have domestic workers, um,
you know, looking after their children. They expect to be
able to hire tutors who can um you know, and
comtutor their children in English or in math um. And
so just people feel under unbelievable pressure. And this is

(01:59:15):
in a situation. The part of the reason that the
pressure has is really ramped up is that there are
fewer good paying jobs. You know, youth unemployment now in
China is around um and so one of the responses
to that is just forget about it. We're you know,
we're gonna lie flat, We're gonna we're gonna reject all
of this. There's different expressions, and I don't actually the

(01:59:39):
sort of like you know, sociologists and me is like, well,
we don't actually have numbers to know how many people
are are lying flat, and like that is true, Like
maybe most people are still just going to work and
you know, doing their job. But there's enough you know,
stories and certainly in terms of cultural residence of people
just doing the bare minimum at work or working for
short periods of time, earning just enough money to survive

(02:00:01):
and not worrying about meeting those kind of social expectations
around buying a car, buying an apartment, getting married, having kids,
because people just see it as as kind of it's
kind of hopeless. Um. And so I think that's a
really important backdrop, because we have to understand at some
level that these protests are about a sense of hopelessness,
right be at economic opportunities, be at the political system

(02:00:24):
where cigent being is going to rain as long as
he wants, or be at zero COVID where you know,
at any given moment, you're gonna be locked inside your
apartment and you're not gonna be able to see your
friends or or do anything. So um, yeah, So I
think it's very relevant. Yeah, and I wanted to I
guess also too. This is something I talked about on
this podcast a lot. But I need to like drill

(02:00:44):
into people's heads, like just the sheer amount that people
in China are working, just like like the number of hours,
a number of days a week, the the amount of
effort that is being put in is like it it is,
it it is. It is a level of rowser plus
value extraction that like like like most places in the

(02:01:07):
world haven't seen in like a quarter, like in like
half a century. It is like or even longer than that,
Like it is, it is a a truly stunning like
there's a truly stunning level of exploitation in terms of
things like nine six, in terms of the people who
are working schedules that are way worse than that, who
don't really ever get like talked about because they're not

(02:01:29):
tech workers or they're not people who have sort of
like a platform Chinese society. Yeah, it's it's extremely normalized,
you know, I mean like thing which which first of all,
it is maybe worth mentioning that China legally has a
forty hour work week. You're only allowed to work thirty
six hours of overtime a month, right, so probably you know,

(02:01:52):
not more than forty nine or fifty hours a week.
That's that's like the legal the legal standard. Nobody even
remotely pretends like that is a thing in any industry.
There's legal debates about like whether it applies to professional
white collar you know, salaried workers or not. But um,
you know, when the n S thing came out and
there was a pretty cool i think movement based mostly

(02:02:14):
online among tech workers, it was it was great, it
was very inspiring, and also every single blue collar worker,
like we've been waiting the United six for decades, you know,
um and so so it is, it is very normal
across these these different kinds of of stratum for sure. Um.

(02:02:36):
One of the cool things about nine six is people
were we're revolting against it and saying like this is
an unacceptable way to live. And again it comes back
to this whole thing of like all of these feelings
of you know, these enhanced pressures right where it's just
like how do I live in this city? How do
I find like decent housing? Like if you know, if
I want to have like a social life, which is

(02:02:57):
the thing that some people in their twenties want to have,
you know, how do I do that? It's impossible under
those circumstances. Um. So so again, like you can't read
these movements mechanically off of these these uh, these structural changes.
But like that is a thing that has been happening
that is unresolved. It's not at least for the you know,

(02:03:19):
the blank paper protesters, the kind of the more elite
students and stuff. They haven't specifically articulated um, their grievances
as labor demands. Um. But it's it's at least an
important backdrop to what's happening today? Yeah, and I think
it's remember like how I think I think this was

(02:03:40):
like mide twenty night keeen. I'm trying to remember when
I when I saw this specific video. But there there, there,
there there was a video from the Hong Kong protests
that was like it's almost it was it was like
literally one of these classic like like sort of Twitter things,
but like what do you want out? What do you
want to do after the revolution, And it was like

(02:04:00):
most of it was like I want to start a bakery,
like I want to work in a library. And it
strikes me that there's these things that get subsumed under
you know when when when when you see a pro
democracy movement, right when when you see you know, like
the sort of well, I I guess that there's something
interesting to hear about the like like day one of

(02:04:22):
the protests, there were a lot of videos that we're
talking about Iran and that kind of seemed to like
like the very early videos were about sort of solidarity
with the protests in a room she and then like
it was like it was like specifically tying that to
Iran and then to sort of pro democracy demands and
then later on you get the sort of like like

(02:04:42):
the Shanghai like down with the party, Downianping, like we
went to bocracy and free speech stuff. But it strikes
me that like a lot of the times when you
see people making those demands, it's because they think that
like you know, it's like there there there's a whole
set of of like things that they things that they
believe about the future and about what will happen in

(02:05:03):
the future that are like not articulated in the demands,
but if you talked about if you talk about them,
like if you talk to people about what they think
is going to happen after that, there's this whole sort
of like opening up of social stuff that they think
will be like the necessary results of like the end
of the one party state. And it's like, you know,
I don't want him, Like I don't know. I had
this debate a lot with like like there there's kind

(02:05:24):
of like Chinese international student you get in the US
who like comes to the US and it's like immediately
like enormously enamored with the US. It's it's it's sort
of the mirror image of how we have a bunch
of people who are like incredibly enamored with the Chinese state,
and then you get people who come here and are
like incredibly enamored the American state, and it's like, well, yeah, okay,
this politician will see you and they will talk to you. However, Comma,

(02:05:47):
in about two years they will be voting to throw
you in prison. So like, but like obviously, like both
people in China understand the Chinese system sucks and that
the promises that people like in the US believe about
it are fake, and then people in the U s
understand that you can get a multiparty democracy and things
because still be absolutely shit. But yeah, yeah, you know,
it strikes me that there's a lot of stuff sort

(02:06:09):
of embedded in in these demands that are like not
really explicitly articulated until later. And then that's also, I guess,
been a hard part about these protests that like, I
don't know, it's hard to get information out. You can
get shortened views with people. Mostly what you're getting are
like thirty seconds of footage of people yelling at a cop. Right, yeah, yeah,

(02:06:30):
I mean there's a lot going on. Like if you
have this one, this tiny little opening, and then instantly
you have protests in like all of these cities all
over the country, dozens of universities, protests among you know,
working class migrants, like middle class people in Shanghai, like
you know, all across the country. Like that suggests that

(02:06:51):
people have a variety of sets of grievances and they're
kind of funneling them through this this meta narrative around
ending the lockdown, which is not to minished the significance
of the actual lockdowns, which are are called causing real
human suffering. But there's definitely a lot going on, and
you know, one of the big ones is what's happening
in shin Jong, Like it's we still don't really know

(02:07:14):
how Weakers are feeling about all of this. The fact
that like all of the all the Protestants in the
big Eastern cities are about commemorating what happened in ermchi
uh in a fire that killed mostly if not exclusively, weaker.
It's like that that that deserves to be talked about. Um,
we don't really know how Like the Han people on
the streets in the Eastern cities, like if they're thinking

(02:07:36):
about this this backdrop of you know, massive repression, surveillance
and mass internment of of weakers and other Moslim minorities. Um,
but that's another thing. Uh And and I think the
same thing goes for the treatment of migrant workers in
in fox Con and these other um blue collar workers
who were put into the closed loop. Like to what

(02:07:57):
extent our urban um Han people still kind of willing
to go along with sacrificing migrant workers and treating them
as as as second class citizens or is there a
possibility of developing some real sense of of solidarity um
with ending not just the closed loop, but ending you know,
like kuko based discrimination, ending the camps in Shinjong, you know,

(02:08:18):
I mean, you can kind of spin out from there
if if you are interested in thinking about what it
would mean to democratize China in like a in a
robust sense of the word, I think points out of
everything about these protests that are complicated, right, which is
that like they are cross class in a lot of ways.
But I don't know, it seems to me like the

(02:08:40):
way they're manifesting is very much down class lines. Like Okay,
I genuinely don't understand what's going on in Guangzho that
like every single video I see at a Gwangho is
like seventy people throwing bottles at a cop, and like
every video I see out of like Shanghai is like
six people holding a piece of paper. But it very
much seems like, you know, like when when it when
when when the cops are getting to like these these

(02:09:02):
sort of like these working class neighborhood these neighborhoods that
are like a informal housing, these neighborhoods that are full
of migrant workers. There were these really really intense conflicts
with the police in ways that like kind of aren't happening. Well,
I mean, okay, that's because the kind of stuff seems
to be happening in a room sheet and I think
it's happening there partially because you know, this is like
well okay, I don't know off thought in my head

(02:09:23):
whether it's more militarized than Tibet, but like one of
the most militarized, like one of the most heavily police
places in China. And then also people are just really
like the the the immediate and palpable anger seems to
be the highest there because you know, I mean, like
like it you're you're going to be more piste off
when it's people in your city or like you know,

(02:09:44):
you you maybe were like three blocks away from this fire.
Yeahs like these people. But yeah, one of one piece
about about urch is that they've been in some form
of lockdown for like a hundred days, you know. Yeah,
so that's not and and part of that has to
do with the fact that it is this colonial setting

(02:10:05):
where they feel like they can do things to people
that they can't do in Beijing and Chong like people
are not going to do that, right, It's just like
it's inconceivable. Um, there's obviously a lot of Han people
in An She is actually a majority Han, now yeah,
I think, yeah, um that that sounds right to me,
and shin Jong is increasingly Han as well, although I

(02:10:25):
believe we are still constitute a plurality. So you know,
there's just like each the lockdowns kind of filtered down
to these different localities and into different communities with their
different social and class compositions in different kinds of ways
and have different kinds of effects. Right, So you can
put people in lockdown in shin Jong for a hundred
days and they're going to be really pissed when they

(02:10:48):
get out. In the case of Guang Joe, you know,
this was also part of the sequence that I think
has been written out of the official narrative. It's not
it wasn't just fox Con. You had the initial fox
Con escape in in October early in November, and then
you had these pretty intense riots that happened in Guangzho.
But those were in these urban villages, so called urban villages,
largely informal housing, very densely populated, that are overwhelmingly migrant workers.

(02:11:13):
In this case, it was mostly people from Hubei Um,
which is which is where Wuhan is and Um and
so you know, just those migrant communities were put into
lockdown in Guangho. So if you were over in yeah,
if you over in Tianaha District, which is the sort
of the the newer like fancier part of Guangho with
lots of high rises, um, you know, those places were

(02:11:36):
not under lockdown. And so they they put the migrant communities.
And I saw some like really not nice stuff, you know,
people just being like oh yeah, you know. The the
local Guanggo people on the other side of the river
are just like going about their life and and they're
they're okay with what's happening to the migrants, and the
migrants were, as is the case in some of these
earlier lockdowns, actually facing real subsistence crisis, like they didn't

(02:11:59):
have enough food to eat, and they couldn't leave to
try to get food. Um. So that's why you saw
these super intense riots, and that's why you see them
confronting the police and you know, screaming at them, throwing
things at them. You see tear gas, all of these things,
I think. So, I think that's the only place I've
seen tear gas so far, like a room. I'm not

(02:12:19):
there may have been a video, I don't I don't
remember specifically by the room sheet, but definitely like going
only place I've seen that level of repression. Yeah, yeah, no,
it was. It was. I mean, you know, the Jung
Joe Fox con was probably the most violent and the
larger scale. Um, but you know that was it was
a little bit different Gwangjoe. It's kind of like smaller streets.
They're fighting, you know, street by street. So um yeah,

(02:12:42):
so they have a different experience of people in Shanghai. Again,
not to minimize their demands, and I think it's it's
important for people to find points of commonality, um against
this policy. Um, but it's you know, it's not like
that if if you're if you're a middle class person
Han person in Shanghai, which is again not to minimize
the very real difficulties that those folks have been facing

(02:13:04):
as well. Something this kind of you know, I think
that there there's there's like another group of people who
should probably talk about a little bit, which is like
this sort of downwardly mobile class a business owners who
have been kind of just getting a dilated by the lockdowns.
And does that that happen in the US too, although
the Chinese version of it seems they're like less marginally

(02:13:27):
less absolutely psychotic, like they haven't tried, they haven't tried
to like kidnap a governor yet, Like they're not like
they're not as fascist as their American counterparts. Yeah, but
it's it's it seems it seems like there's a kind
of interesting I don't know, there's there's a class dynamic
that kind of reminds me of occupy and that you

(02:13:49):
have this sort of like kind of tenuous alliance between
like some some parts of the working class, these elite
students and like this downwardly mobile middle class. But it
strikes me that, you know, I mean, the the sort
of defining thing about occupying I think, like the defining
thing about the whole sort of two thousand eleven doesn't

(02:14:09):
thirteen wave of protests, was that, like it was it
was really really easy to get people together into a
physical space, and when when you were in that single
physical space, it was like, yeah, it's not it's not
like classes appeared, but it was like, you know, it was,
it was, it was. It was it was a way
in which sort of like classes were mixing and you
could form this new kind of like identity based around

(02:14:31):
like what you're doing in this place. And it doesn't
really seem like that's possible here. It really seems like,
I don't know, like there's this huge like you know,
this this this is a protest that is like happening
in a lot of different places at the same time.
But it's like it doesn't. Yeah, the segments they don't
and they don't they don't really have a sort of
like cohesive social identity that in a way that you

(02:14:54):
could get out of a bunch of people being in
the same place. Yeah. No, I think that's right. I mean,
they're spatially segmented. Um. Something someone pointed out on Twitter
I can remember who. But they're drawing comparisons to the
protests and the kind of the physical arrangements where people
are living and so particularly given you know, the online censorship,

(02:15:16):
like that's been really important. So you have these worker
dormitories and fox Con like you can organize by actually
talking to people with student dormitories, right, Um, and then
you have much smaller protests among the you know, the
middle class people who are able to circulate things online.
And so the consequence of that is is they are
pretty segmented. And I think you know, everyone has their

(02:15:36):
own grievance with zero COVID, but these grievances are actually
pretty different. Right. So the fox Con workers don't like
the closed loop management system where you know, where they
can't leave, where where they're subjected to unsafe conditions, etcetera. Um,
you know, the petty bourgeoise like they don't like the
fact that there's no foot traffic, you know, coming into
their shops. Right. And UM, I don't know if you

(02:15:57):
saw the video of the guy like kicking down the
wall with a soup latal and yeah, specifically yeah, I
mean it was. It was very theatrical and dramatic and
uh and a great video you know in terms of
like the class position, and yeah, you can see how
it can kind of capsize into fash quickly. Um. And
then like the students, you know, they want to be

(02:16:19):
able to live normal student lives and like leave their dormitories.
And that's the thing that I think students anywhere can
associate with. So it's like, yeah, they're all against the
zero COVID policy, but then it's kind of like what
are their politics after that? And I think if if
this is going to open up, um, you know, some
kind of more expansive political vision, like, it's gonna be
hard to maintain that like that unity. Right. The students

(02:16:41):
are already talking about like you know, censorship, freedom of speech,
those things which I support, I think are very good.
You're probably not gonna get the petty bougeoisie to like
risk arrest and violence with the cops, you know, over
like holding up a blank white piece of paper, um,
you know. And then the micrant workers have another whole
set of things you know, around like basic like health infrastructure,

(02:17:01):
like you know, can they get access to decent healthcare
in the places where they're where they're living, and that's
not going to resonate to the same extent with the students.
So yeah, the one I think about a lot was
like that there there's a video going around it this
guy being like I don't care about politics, I just
want to go to the movies, and I was like,
this is the most American person in China, Like this
is the one person that I'm like, okay, like that,

(02:17:23):
you know, and and like that there is that kind
of sort of like I just I just want to
live my normal life like thing that's happening. And then
that that I think is a kind of recognizable American impulse.
But then you have the stuff that's like did you
see did you see those pictures that were going around
of like the hospitals they were putting vgicant workers in
were just like the entire bathroom floor is just like

(02:17:43):
covered in poop and like no, awful. Yeah, it's like
the whole whole bathroom floors is just flooded. There's like
just like the the the you can't flush toilet paper
down it, so there's just these like mountains of toilet
paper and I think like, yeah, it's awful like that
the difference between the people whose things are like I
want to go to the movies and the people who's

(02:18:03):
demand is like please stop locking me in this like
like people like you know that that was I guess.
I guess the other sort of lost thing that seemed
to be pretty big in Chinese social media that I
don't that wasn't talked about much here was the uh
there was this bus that capsized that killed like twenty
seven people who were being taken like to a facility

(02:18:24):
to specifically to hold, like you know, this is like
what one of one of these sort of like I
don't I don't even really want to dignify them by
calling them hospitals because they're like like just a complete
disaster um. But where were people were being held like
held because they had yeah, yeah, and I don't know,
it seems like that there's a really big sort of

(02:18:46):
like you know, I mean, I guess it's like like
the the protests are reflecting all of all of the
sort of like existing classified in Chinese society in ways
that I think are are pretty obvious if you look
at it, which I guess in some sense, like this
this does strike me as the most gentlemin esque thing
we look. The most unuminous thing about it is the

(02:19:08):
way that the media has been like specifically covering the
grievances of exactly like two groups of people, which is
like the students and like and then all of the
labor stuff has just vanished after about day two. Yeah, yeah,
yeah for sure. Um. And I mean I don't have
much optimism that that that the coverage will um, but

(02:19:33):
you know, there there is an experience, um that middle
class people I think have had pretty acutely going back
at least to the Shanghai lockdown, of this realization that
there actually are no limits on state power, right, and
that to them was kind of like a shock. You know.
They're like, oh, like I thought I was just gonna

(02:19:53):
be able to go about my life like as long
as I didn't you know, demand to be able to
vote for the president. Like I can have a job, job,
I can um, you know, go eat hot pot or
you know, get whatever kind of delicious food I want.
Living in these big cities, can travel internationally. You know,
all of these things are you know more or less Okay, Um,
there's been lots of you know there's lots of other

(02:20:14):
people in training society for him, that's never been the experience, right,
most importantly the minorities and the workers and the migrant
workers who have always you know, experienced that raw and
unchecked power of the state. And so you know, does
does this have the capacity to kind of bring them together?
You know, it's going to be extremely difficult to do,

(02:20:35):
especially because there aren't like spaces for political organizing and
working through these differences in a constructive way. Yeah, I mean,
I will see. The one thing that kind of that
strikes me is something that like is just different about
this cycle is that, like I don't know, I don't, like,
I don't think I've ever seen in my lifetime outside
of like really tiny maoist sex like people openly calling

(02:21:00):
for the downfall of the government, like just in in
a kind of like a large systemic way, and like
it it seems like, I don't know, maybe maybe the
censors will sort of get control back, but it really
seems like there's been this kind of floodgate that's opened
where suddenly, like there's a there's a brief moment where

(02:21:21):
like it suddenly became possible to talk about things where
you know, like like two months ago, it was like
one guy laid aside on a bridge and like this
was this was like the biggest thing that had ever
happened in Chinese society whatever, etcetera, etcetera. And then suddenly,
like you know, you just have people on the streets
are shrun high, like just chanting stuff that wasn't even
on that banner, and like, I don't know, like it

(02:21:43):
really seems like like it's it's not like they've actually
like fully lost control of the country or anything like,
they're not even close to that, but it's it's like
the sort of like the sort of regime of terror
and fear that had been in place to keep people
from doing this kind of stuff has fallen off a
little bit. Yeah. I mean, I I'd be very curious
to know what the vibe is like in China, and

(02:22:05):
obviously I have not been there for a while. Um,
but like, and this is wildly speculative, and if you
have any Chinese listeners who want to correct me, I
would be glad to have some more information about this.
But my feeling from Hofar is that you know, like
she Jinping is just like you can't you can't say
anything about him, and that even in like private spaces,

(02:22:29):
you know, people just like don't feel like the ability
to kind of imagine something different and like that has
been changed. Like I don't think we're going to see
a lot more people on the streets chanting down to
down with the Communist Party like that's you know, it's
a risky it's a risky thing to do. But I
do think that like now, at least people know that

(02:22:49):
there's other other people in the country that are thinking
the same things that they're thinking. And then at least
within you know, like you know, face to face interactions,
that people might be a little bit more willing to
kind of say like, oh, like these protests happened, that
was pretty crazy, Like let's talk about that, um and
so so so that to me is optimistic. UM. And

(02:23:10):
I do hope that more of this organizing can take place,
you know, offline, because I think that's the only safe
way to do it. Um. So So, yeah, I I
think something has changed significantly, and you see it here,
you know. I mean, I've been teaching Chinese students for
ten years. Um, there's no question that people are interested,
um in talking about things now in a in a

(02:23:31):
more open way than was the case a couple of
years ago. And like Herett Cornell, we had we had
a little vigil for um Fer and she as well,
and people were chanting, you know, down with Hi Jin
ping Um, which is kind of like okay, you're you know,
you're the good New York Like it's not dangerous. Well,
I think students feel it to be dangerous, And definitely
a month or two ago would have felt it to

(02:23:53):
be quite dangerous. So yeah, and I guess we probably
shouldn't like completely downplay the fact that like the CCP
has international networks in a way that's like the way
it tends to get covered in the press is very
sort of like this kind of like right wing fear mongering.
But was like, no, these people do exist, and like, yeah,
like it is possible for you to like tweet something

(02:24:15):
while you're in the US and then like someone in
China finds out about it and things start to go
very badly for you very quickly, And that's for sure,
Like that's that's that's a real danger that yeah, and
regardless of how many spies there are, how pervasive they are,
like it is a real experience, real fear of the
Chinese students here have right, they don't feel comfortable. You know,

(02:24:37):
they might feel more comfortable speaking openly here than they
do actually within China, but they still don't feel totally free,
and and that is a very widespread sentiment. I guess,
sort of enclosing, I don't know, my, I don't think
anyone can really have much of an analysis that's better
than them guessing about what's going to happen next, because

(02:25:00):
this already was something that like two weeks ago, like
if you'd ask anyone, like anyone in China or outside
of China who wasn't like I don't know, like in
the following Gong or something, whether whether they were suddenly
going to be large deal like protested China, everyone would
have been like, are you nuts? But yeah, I'm wondering
how what you think is going to happen next? I

(02:25:23):
don't know. My my, my sort of tentative read of
it was like, it seems like I don't know. It's
it seems to me that for for a very very
long time, the Chinese political system was specifically set up
to stop this, like like this was this was the
exact thing. It was. It was designed to make sure
there would never be another sort of like like that
there would never be a large well you know, we

(02:25:46):
don't know how how long this is going to go on, right,
but there was there was never there was never supposed
to be another street movement that was like coordinated between cities,
that was large and that had real political demands. And
you know, I like, I I don't know. Maybe maybe
I could, I could be the most brog I've ever been,
but I cannot imagine this like this specific round of

(02:26:06):
protests really like challenging the government at all, Like I
don't know, some something something would have to like I
don't know, like aliens would have to like descend from
the sky or something like. I don't know. I don't like,
I don't I don't think they can do it. But
the frequency at which these kinds of things break out

(02:26:26):
has been increasing steadily for the past probably twenty or
thirty years. I mean in the nineties are sort of
a low point for this stuff. But you know, like
if if you're if you're in a country like Ecuador, right,
You've seen like two pretty large scale like mass street
movements in like three years, right, And you know it's

(02:26:48):
it's it's, it's, it's. It seems to be sort of
broadly the there's there, there's, there's been this sort of
like the decaying economic conditions are combined with this like
the general decaying ability of the state to prevent like
a subsequent movement from from unfolding. And so I don't know,
Like I I my senses that this one's not gonna
do anything, but we might see another one of these

(02:27:10):
in like three years or something. Yeah, I don't think
we're going to see this movement in the in the
weeks and months to come to like cohere into this
like massive politically potent force that has the capacity to
either continue to exert demands on the central state or

(02:27:30):
threatened state power. Like, I don't think that that's going
to happen. Um, I do think. I think I think
the first thing is to acknowledge and to chalk up
the victories that have already been Um one, So Fox
foxne workers got paid, you know, they went out the
rioted like Fox's like, here's ten thousand un for you
to leave that even for you to do your job right,

(02:27:52):
so like, and those were workers that came in after
the other workers escaped so they have been there in
quarantine for like a couple of days. Rioted got ten
thousand un which is almost U S. Dollars like they
so so they did really well. Um And but I
think more broadly, you know, around the zero COVID, the
government has already made changes. They will never acknowledge we're

(02:28:12):
doing this because people protested, like that's not how they operate.
But um, you know, they said, Okay, we're actually gonna
get more serious about vaccinating people, which is what they
need to do in order to have sort of an
exit strategy. There have been some some signals, low key
ones about further loosening. I mean, I think that there's
a real question about how they go about doing this

(02:28:32):
because if they just let it rip tomorrow, like actually,
hundreds of thousands of people will die. Yeah. So like
I think what they need to do is they need
to vaccinate people, and they need to build a real
public health infrastructure that includes migrant workers. But you know,
that's we'll see if that happens. So so I think
that those are already victories like which which we should

(02:28:53):
which you know, we should take account of. And I
think moving forward, the ability to repress like the the
street demonstrations should not be under underestimated, like the state
has immense resources at its capacity. I don't think that
we're going to continue to see people chanting, you know,
down with the Communist Party in the streets regularly. Um
So I think that they'll be able to at least

(02:29:15):
push that down a little bit and maybe with some concessions,
people will be satisfied. You know, the guy who just
wants to be able to go to the movie, like
next year this time, there's a good chance he will
just be able to go to the movies. To kind
of continue with my labor centric perspective, though, I think
it's going to be harder for for workers. I think
it's going to be harder for them to repress that
as long as the closed loop management systems are in

(02:29:36):
effect and lockdowns are happening. I mean, it just puts
insane demands on these workers, and there were revolts against
it when it first happened in Shanghai back in April,
uh and I think that those will continue to exist.
Um but I think we'll probably see this kind of
reversion to what's existed for the last couple of decades,

(02:29:58):
which is lots of you know, small scale, somewhat manageable
and localized protests. The question is, like, does this kind
of open up, um the possibility of politicization, which we
have not really seen since nine um in a in
a robust way at least, And so does this kind
of open up some of those possibilities so those local

(02:30:20):
protests can begin to to speak to each other with
some sort of common language. UM, and and coher some
kind of political force that's harder for the state to tame. UM.
We'll see. Yeah, And I guess I guess the other
sort of X factor here is like can can can
the CCP get the growth rate above like five? But yeah,

(02:30:41):
like yeah, I I I don't. I don't know how
they do it like that. I don't know, like I
I short of like short of like actually just letting
all of the sort of like like all all of
the sort of like slack and excess capacity just get
like you know, just just like intention like tanking the
entire economy and just like running all of these sort

(02:31:03):
of unprofitab business in the ground. Like yeah, I don't,
I don't see how they do that. And that does
seem to me, like you know, to be a kind
of like the sort of like looming horizon over. I
mean this and this is really true of everyone, like
the the sort of looming horizon over. Like every government
in the world has been that the growth rate has
been collapsing for like the last forty years. And China was,

(02:31:25):
you know, trying to change the comedy was like the
last thing that was really driving in and that's like
not really true anymore. It's it's a disaster. I mean.
And then even even without COVID, it was sort of
like not going great. I mean, it wasn't like you know,
I mean, it hadn't reached like it hadn't like reached

(02:31:45):
like you know, like recession or i hadn't really reached
like sort of post industrialized country levels of like here's
your two percent growth every year, be happy with it,
but like I don't know, yeah, but but the growth,
I mean this is maybe like another whole conversation, but
like the growth has become less effective, right, It's just

(02:32:05):
it's this like investment led growth. It's there, there's massive
growth in debt and they can you know, build another bridge,
build another airport, building. I mean, they're not building the
apartment blocks as much anymore. But they do that they
can prop up the growth a little bit, right, But
like the fundamental problem that they've been unable to address

(02:32:26):
is like increasing domestic consumption and having a more equitable
model of growth, And the reason that they can't do
that is fundamentally a political problem, Like they can't figure
out a way to give working class people more money
and to give them some social protections, um and like
until they resolve that political problem, Like I just don't
see them being able to deal with with that economic problem.

(02:32:47):
So that means you are going to continue to have
this kind of ongoing forms of stagnation. Zero COVID really
hurts it a lot more. Of course, the geo political
conflict with the US and and Biden, you know, trying
to economically unique at them like that doesn't help. And
then the demographics of you know, like all of these
things are making making their lives much more difficult. And

(02:33:07):
so one way to interpret what's happened um under under
zero COVID is the expansion of a massive and terrifying
surveillance state that will allow them to weather whatever political
storms are coming in the future. Yeah, and I guess
I don't know well well well, well, well well we'll see,
we'll see whether that works for them. I am somewhat

(02:33:29):
skeptical in that, like I don't know, like good luck,
actually terrible luck. I hope it goes badly for them,
the worst of luck. Yeah. So, Eli, thank you so
much for coming on the show. Yeah, it's been a pleasure. Yeah.
And okay, where where can people find you and find
the stuff that you do? Uh well, I'm on Twitter

(02:33:52):
as long as it's still there, um Eli D Friedman
And uh yeah, I'm on the Internet. I don't know,
that's that's the main place. Come if you're in Ithaca,
come on by, all right. Yeah, this this has been
Make it Happen here, drag every government into perpetual and

(02:34:12):
terminal crisis until it stops existing. Hey, we'll be back
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(02:34:34):
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