It Could Happen Here Weekly 68

All of this week's episodes of It Could Happen Here put together in one large file.

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Episode Transcript

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

(00:22):
producer DJ Daniel. The following episode was recorded before the
horrible events in Monterey Park. The team will release an
episode addressing the situation once more details have emerged. Thank
you and enjoy. It''s Aluter New Years. Yeah, Happy New Years.
It's it's it's it's the New Year's Special. It's me Mia,

(00:44):
I've got I've got cherin with me. Yeah, how how
are you doing? I guess, I guess it's I guess
it's not the New Year yet while we're recording it,
but it will be by the time you hear this.
That counts. That counts. Um. I'm good. I'm I got
a cat recently and I call funny. And then I
learned later that this year is the Year of the Rabbit.
So yeah, I feel really happy about that for this year. Yeah, exactly,

(01:12):
So I'm good. I'm good. That's a that's that's having
new Cat is an amazing way to start any year. Yes, yes,
I agree, this was very exciting that. Do you know
what else is very exciting? Transitions? They paid me to
do this for some reason. Alright, this this this year,
we're going to talk about Chinese restaurant syndrome and the

(01:33):
whole sort of anti MSG craze. Yes, so that was
that's always been so big. I don't know. I grew
up in like a I don't know, a diverse area
in San Diego, but we would always go to fun
like regularly, and the no MSG was like all over
the menu and everything. It's like this thing that I mean,
every restaurant I went to basically was just like come

(01:53):
to us, there's no must. So I'm really curious how
it started because growing up I was like, okay, MS trees, Dad,
I guess you know what I mean too, So yeah,
I feel like it wasn't It wasn't really, it wasn't
as intense where I was growing up, but that was like,
I don't know, it was it was a very white suburb.
But and people people were still freaked out about MSG.
But it wasn't but like the the the Asian restaurants

(02:15):
didn't like talk about it ever, I don't know, but
it was still it was still very sort of like
like I remember I would go like eat dinner with
like white families and they'd be talking about MSG, and
I was like what for a good amount of time. Yeah,
having now talked about MSG for a bit, we should
we should ask like what what is MSG? And the

(02:36):
answer okay, So MSG stands from mono sodium glutamate, which
is it's just a salt. Basically, it's salt with like
glutamate and it has a bunch of your mommy and
it I'm gonna read this thing from Kenji from Serious
Eats because every every every single article started that starts
about this has like this exact paragraph in it. So
I'm just gonna read it instead of trying to rewrite
this paragraph that I wanted to. MSG is a sodium

(03:00):
salt of glutamic acid and a amino acid. It was
first isolated in nineteen o eight by Japanese biochemist Kakua Ikeda,
who was trying to discover what exactly gave Dashi the
Japanese flavor broth with comba, Japanese giant sea kelp its
strong savory character. Turns out that comba is packed with
glutamic acid. It was Akita who coined the term mummmi,

(03:23):
which roughly translates a savory to describe to glutamic acid
and other seminal similar amino acids. Until that point, scientists
had only discovered the other four flavors sensed by the
tongue and the soft palate, salty, sweet, sour, and bitter.
By nine, pure crystallite MSG extracted from the abundant kelp
in the sea around Japan, was being sold under the
brand name a gi No Moto roughly Element of Flavor.

(03:47):
The company exists to this day. Now keep that in mind,
that's going to be important to the last part of
the story. But you know, in the meantime, you know,
around around around nineteen oweight, once this is discovered, that
it turns into this sort of enormous industry. Um here's
from a pretty good Men's Health article about it. By
the nineteen forties, number of American companies were producing MSG

(04:08):
domestically for the consumer, the most famous being accents. Okay,
there there's like it's spelled acts. It's it's accent, but
it's spelled a c apostrophe C E N T. That's
not yeah, no, that's me, yeah said, which was its

(04:29):
it's advertising is a bleak place. That's that's a different episode,
I think partially, yes, also partially this episode, but yeah.
The most famous one being accent, which was advertised as
pure mono sodium glutimate. That quote makes food flavors sing.
Various food magazines and community cookbooks featured the additive as

(04:51):
an ingredient and the likes of fried chicken wings and
barbecue sauce recipes. By nineteen sixty nine, fifty eight million
pounds of MSG were being produced in the US per year,
says Food a Story and Ian Moseby PhD. For an
entire generation, the ingredient was presented in a dizzying array
of food products breakfast cereals, TV dinners, frozen vegetables, baby food,

(05:11):
and soup produced by beloved brands such as Campbells and Swanson,
which today offer foods products free of MSG additives. And okay,
if you think about this, for a second. It's actually
really weird that msg s thought it as a Chinese thing,
because like, okay, MSG all told has only been around
for like a hundred years, right, It's heavily used in

(05:32):
the US for like thirty or forty years. Like it's
not in it's not really in China for that much longer.
For it is in the US, and it's used in
just like a bunch of American food. How didk that start?
Do we know how that association started? And continued? Yeah,
well we'll get it. Most it mostly has to do
with like it has to do with restaurants, and it

(05:53):
specifically has to do with the part that we're getting
to about this letter, which is weird. And I will
say like that there are a lot of Chinese families
at like just use MSG for like they're cooking. My
my house never did it because we're lazy and most
of our cooking involves like as few ingredients and prep
as possible, so we just like it's also really in uh,

(06:15):
Vietnamese food. I feel like uses it a lot too.
That's like that was my first association with it, So
I just associate because I'm I was, I don't know
fourteen I just said, Okay, this is Vietnamese, but that's
really interesting to just know, like, well, it's a Japanese too,
like yeah, I mean it's Asian. It's yeah, yeah, I

(06:35):
don't know, but like it is just it is just
it's just interesting. Like the like people in the U
s were just like, I don't know, it's like it's
it was in everything. People in the US were also
just using it to cook food. This is also a
thing that like people in China use a lot too,
So it's not that like Chinese people don't do. It's
just like everybody, Like the moment everyone got it, they
were like, oh my god, this makes our food taste better.

(06:57):
Choose more of it. Of course, I'm I'm assuming. Once
it got demonized, it was like, oh, this is a
Chinese thing, but I don't know for sure. Yeah, I
will be patient. Yeah so this is this is in
fact the next thing. So nobody really cared about it
until nineteen sixty eight rolled around. Well so for those

(07:17):
sixty years, MSG was like, yeah, I just use it. Yeah, Um,
I'm forgetting where I'm going to read apart from this
journal article, and I've forgotten to put in what journal
is from because I'm a hack and a fraud. I
think it's a general natural health sure about that's right
to me? Yeah, sure, it's it's from It's from some journal.
Some doctors wrote it. Quote. In the spring of nine,

(07:40):
Dr Robert Homeman wrote to the New England Journal of
Medicine asking the assistance of the journal's readership and invite
identifying the source of phenomenon that Dr Goa labeled the
Chinese Restaurant Syndrome CRS, numbness of his back and neck, palpitations,
and general weakness after he consumed meals in Chinese rest runs.

(08:00):
Dr Gua hypothesize that the source of his syndrome might
be a reaction to the soy sauce, the cooking wine,
the high sodium content of the food, or to the
flavor enhancing mono sodium glutamate MSG. Within two months, the
journal received a flurry of letters from readers who had
noticed a similar phenomenon after eating restaurant prepared Chinese food.

(08:21):
So this is the start of this whole thing. And
there's one thing I need to point out right away
that is in almost every single article about this that
is wrong, which is that this this this this article
says that he's talking about Chinese food, which is true,
but very specifically and this and this is this is

(08:43):
going to be very important in about ten minutes. Well,
I don't know, it's gonna be important soon, which is
he specifically has a thing about how this is about
northern Chinese food mhm. And you know, this is something
that is something that everyone everyone sort of misses. The
other thing interesting about this is that, you know, he
he says it could be MSG, but you know, he's

(09:05):
treating MSG exactly like all of the rest of the
other stuff that's in this that's in the food. Right,
he lists soy sauce, he lists cooking wine. Maybe he's like, okay,
maybe there's too much salt, right, Like, he's not really
doing an MSG thing, But everyone who reads this immediately
focuses on the MSG. Okay. So before I started researching this,
I had heard that this whole letter was actually fake.

(09:27):
It was actually a prank. And you know, this is
this is a thing that's like it's kind of like okay.
So the story behind this was that it was supposed
to have been a prank by a white guy named
Dr Steele, who made it up as a joke and
this is the sort of like a folk like. Okay,
so this story is not true. The story I am
about to say is not true. It turns out this

(09:48):
letter is actually real. But there was there was basically
a story that went around that it was this guy
named Dr Steele who had made it up as a
way to get published in a journal for like a bet,
because like Dr Steel like claimed responsibility for it, and
that got out to researchers. But it turns yeah, and
so for a bit everyone was like, oh my god,
this whole thing was started by a prank. But it
turns out that's also not true. So this American life

(10:12):
figured out that Dr Robert Homa is a real guy. Uh.
Dr Steele had pretended that he said that he made
it up the name. It's not true. There's a real guy.
They talked to his family and his colleagues and all
of them were like, oh, noguad like wrote this thing.
And interestingly, there's a lot of racism here too, because

(10:32):
Dr Steele had claimed that Homan, which is okay, So
this is where things get weird. Um I'm saying cool
because that's how you actually pronounce it. Um. It's spelled
h O M A N k w okay wha. Yeah, okay,
so this this is this is some Yeah, so this

(10:52):
is a wad Giles bullshit, the previous attempt to sort
of romanize Chinese. Just think of Way Giles and it
is the band of my existence. It's dogshit. Hi, this
is me and post. I made a mistake here. K
w okay is actually the standard Cantonese spelling of good.
Sorry about that. I am a dipshit who does not
speak Cantonese. Yeah, enjoy the rest of the show. They

(11:14):
heard someone say go and we're like, this is k
w It's like no, no, it's not. Please, So that's bad.
It's literally the worst. Like if you if you ever
you know, so sometimes if you if you're if you're
looking at anything, you'lle something that's just spelled really weirdly,
like or for example, like the way that schenkai check
is spelled is actually like like it's actually a Way

(11:38):
Giles thing like that. There's there's a whole bunch of
likes that are like that. Yeah, yeah you can find um.
I don't know that that's I mean, that explains a lot,
but yeah, it's what and part part of everything that's
happening to you here is that like so, and then
this is also gonna be important later. KOs is a
is a Cantonese last name. Um, but it's it's it

(12:00):
gets really really confusing really quickly if you don't know
what's going on, because if if, if you're reading, if
you're reading a word that's in Chinese in the US,
it could either be in Mandarin or in Cantonese, and
it also could be either written with the terrible way
ales one or it could be in opinion, which is
like the one that's actually sort of usable. Um, but

(12:21):
Dr Steele because again the way it's written is h
O m A and k w o kay and Dr
Steele claims that he wrote it to be like human
croc of shit like how man kruk Yeah, excuse me,
people like people believe yeah, well he's dead, so yeah,

(12:47):
that's that's so yeah, like this is this is so
racist and it's like you know, but this like people
people believe this for a while because m yeah, I
don't know, but okay, so eventually people figure out that
it's not true. And I'm going to read something from

(13:08):
from this American life piece where they talk about how
they figured out that it was actually like that was
like actually a real guy. And when you read the
original letter, there are details that seem more likely to
come from her father was a close father than from Howard.
How Howard Steel is the doctor, like when he said
he moved to the US, which the real doctor Good did,
and how he's very specific the syndrome happens with northern

(13:31):
Chinese food in the sixties. How many white guys in
Philadelphia could have made that distinction? Also, home Man Kool
is an actual Cantonese name. What are the odds that
dr Steel through together random sounding Chinese syllables to arrive
at that? So, Okay, I read that. I had a revelation.
I I cracked this case. Why the funk open? I

(13:52):
figured it out. I figured out what was going on
with this letter. Okay, I'm so excited for this. I'm
gonna hypen this up for like hours. I'm so exciting.
So I'm bts of this. We have like a group
chat essentially, and I didn't. I wasn't sure if I
can make this recording. But then Mia dropped that that
bomb being like I have this big break breakthrough, and

(14:14):
I was like, I gotta be there. I just gotta
be there. And so I kicked James out because James
couldn't make me time. I couldn't make it. So here
I have I have. I have not told Sharine what
the breakthrough this time? Here? Okay? So is Cantonese, right,

(14:34):
and she specifies in this letter that this is about
northern Chinese food. My thesis right here, right now is
that this whole letter it's actually about, It's actually about
Cantonese anti Northerland sentiments. This is the whole last thing
in China. Canton or like the region that was called Canton.
The west is like where Cantonese people are. This is like,

(14:56):
this is the very south of China. Right, there is
a whole last thing in China. Let like people from
the North people from the South hate each other. Um,
it's actually very weird. So my my family is like
half from the north, half from the South. And like
when my mom was growing up, she like she would
like get made fun of for how she like rolled
dumplings because people were like, oh, you rolled dumplings like

(15:16):
a Southerner And she's like, what, it is a whole
fucking thing it's like people hate each other. How else
how would you know those intricracies, you know what I
mean unless you were from there, like had history there. Yeah,
well I mean I was just this is the thing
is that that that's persisted in the U s too.
You you still you still run into this stuff like
they're they're they're like there are definitely like Candidie restaurants

(15:37):
were like you probably shouldn't speak Mandarin. They're like there's
there's like this is this is still a thing. It's
not really talked about very much because it's like it's
it's kind of an internal Chinese thing. But you know,
the one place you actually really gotta see this, You
gotta see this from the Hong during the Hong Kong
protests in both sides, because like okay, so there there
there's a strain of this sort of like like there's

(15:59):
a strain of Chinese nationalism that's very sort of like
it was doing this like really very sort of like
anti Southern racism from you know, you get this from
a lot of the Chinese nationalists the CCP side. There's
another faction of like the Hong Kong protesters who's like
thing was like we're not actually Chinese because we're not
like the Northerners who are a communist and like evil,
which which is really funny because like you know, like okay,
the if you if you run through the actual history

(16:23):
of communism in China, it's like, okay, like like one
one one of the one of the largest communists like
strikes that ever happened was in Hong Kong. Like sure, fine,
but you know, but obviously, like I'm simplifying all of
this enormously because it's very complicated. There's a lot of
regional ship that's going on here. Yeah, but so your

(16:43):
your thesis is that the person that started all of
this was like maybe like from the south or like
just like yeah, I mean that is that is definite,
Like that is that is like the like that is
the most Cantonese asked name I've ever heard, like that
that that guy, that guy, that guy is definitely from
southern China. And yeah, my my thesis is specifically it's
this Cantonese guy going a funk. Those nerds litters, I

(17:04):
hate their I hate their asses, I hate their food.
Their food at eating it makes me sick. But because
because it's the US that the subtlety of this gets
lost and everyone just runs with it is like Chinese
restaurant syndrome. Even though this is the this is this
is my theories, this is this is like this is
like kind of semi obscured like Chinese like internal grudge vat.

(17:26):
Like like knowing the origin point makes a lot more
sense now to be honest, like why would this be
some random like why would he specify a region like
a very specific region that that's just I don't I
don't know that that that that that's my theory. I
could be wrong about this, but all it fits with
all of the details, so it checks out. It checks out,

(17:49):
I think. Yeah, So okay, alright, so so this this
letter happens and there's like a flurry of letters rather
people talking about this, and okay, I want to talk
about why this got picked up the way it does. Um,
I'm gonna be yeah, this is this is I'm going
to read from every single article in this also goes

(18:11):
exactly the same way. So I'm gonna read from Men's
Health version, so you get this section of it. Before
I talked about why it's I think like not sufficient
to capture what was Happening mostly describes the late fifties
at a time of heightened anti Chinese sentiment. By the
nineteen sixties, domestic and international politics had shifted towards a
fairly clear anti communist agenda. In fact, he says, during
this time, anti Chinese sentiments were so widespread and accepted

(18:34):
that most Americans didn't consider their apprehension to be racial bias. Now,
this is true as far as it goes. But we
need to go to ADS and Wenna come back from ADS.
I will tell em what else was going on turn
that week? All right, and we're back. We're back. We're
talking about how this like letter to like a journal

(18:55):
in New England suddenly became an entire like national American thing. Okay,
So the way this happened is that this got picked
up by the news. Now there's a huge New York
Times article about this, and that article is published on
May nineteenth, nineteen. Now, Sharine, do you know what else

(19:17):
was going on in May? I've heard a lot of
ship went down in the sixties. Yeah, so this is
this is right, This is like smack dab in the
middle of May sixty eight in France. This is this
is like one week after the Night of the Barricades UM.

(19:39):
Three days before this was published, the situationists who are
like these this like ultra left student organization who who
who at this point are occupying the Sorbonne like they
have fully taken control of their campus. They have run
the cops out, they have run the administration out. UM.
Three days before this is published, the students had the sorband,
reacting to a factory occupation they heard about, send out

(20:00):
this famous communicate calling for the occupation of all factories
in France. And like it fucking happens, Like the workers
in France take control of like a huge portion of
Francis factories, like the Reinault factories are under control of
the workers UM like by by by this time, like
this is happening, right the police have like the police

(20:21):
are fighting them, but they're losing. UM. Two days before
this article is published, UH, the Sorban sends this to
the Chinese consulate quote, shaking your boots, bureaucrats, the international
power of the workers councils will soon wipe you out.
Humanity won't be happy until the last bureacrat is hung
with the guts of the last capitalists long live, the

(20:43):
factory occupations long lived, the Great Chinese Proletarian Revolution evcted
twenties seven, betrayed by the Stalinist bureaucrats. It goes on
and on like this. This is what they're sending to
the Maoists, right like that, that is that is how
far left these people are. Like they they're telling the
Maoist shaking your boot spirit craft, the international power of work,

(21:06):
those councils will soon wipe you out, like it is
wild in sense. Yeah, I mean the fact that this
is happening all during all of that, and I don't know,
that's no, yeah, no one, it's it's really important. I
have never read an article that actually puts this together,
and it was like, it's not just that going on, right,

(21:27):
Like you know, if you like the situation in France,
they are a week and a half out from de Gaul,
who was the president, literally fleeing the country because he's
so convinced that they're about to lose the country to communism.
Like well, and I should say when I say communism,
by the way, part of that message to the to
the Maoist is down with the state. Revolutionary Marxisms like
that that that these are these people are like these

(21:48):
people have are Marxists who have gone like so far
left they've essentially become anarchists. It's it's wild and mean,
you know. And also what's happened, like the prog Spring
is happening during the middle of this um. This is
also like this is a month after the Holy Week
uprising in the US, which is so after MLK was killed.
There were these like probably the most intense riots the

(22:10):
US has ever seen, like even like even more so
than like the ones we saw in the Holy Week riot.
Like they were like like there there were there were
like like thousands of paratroopers We're being deployed to like
kill rioters. Yeah, like nuts, Yeah, like that was that
was probably the closest, like some of the closest the

(22:32):
US has ever had to just like actually having revolution
in the government, losing control of the entire country and
like and while this article is coming out, like there
are still even in May, the Holy Week up risings
in April, but like even I like even in May,
there are still people on the streets fighting the cops.
Like while while this article is being written, and you know,

(22:52):
if you look at the there's something about perse on
that entire year. I mean it's wild like six sixty
like that that that year is just the year like
the entire world went. I mean there's like like like
they they I can't remember if they act successfully over
through the government. They like almost over to the government
of Pakistan. Like a whole bunch of students get shot

(23:12):
in Mexico because they were trying to bring down the government.
Like it's everywhere. There was all this stuff going on. Um.
And you know, also the ever thing that is happening
is we're two years into the Culture Revolution and it's
kind of interesting because but by sixty eight we're kind
of into the backlash phase of the culture Revolution, where
most of what's happening is that the sort of various

(23:32):
rebel factions that formed the nine seven and nine sixty
six are just getting like slaughtered by the sort of
like state factions. And it's more it's it's it's a
culture revolution. It's really complicated, but like bye bye. By
this point, the sort of like revolution part of it
has like kind of calmed down and it's more the
state in its sort of new form taking control. But

(23:52):
you know, if you're living through this, right, it looks
like the culture revolutions happens in in in sixty six,
and then you get six and then suddenly there was
a cultural revolution happening literally everywhere. And this is the
context of the MSG scared like kicks off in right.
It starts in like right in the middle of arguably
the two most radical months of the entire twentieth century. Wow. Yeah,

(24:16):
And and this is this is the kind of ship
that starts like just an absolute mania in the American
mind that is powerful enough that like sixty years later,
it's still around. I mean, it feels like the it
happening as such like a manic time, like people were
probably already like kind of feeling that energy. Right, it

(24:38):
was like like everything it was directed everywhere, even at
this article. Yeah. And I genuinely think if if this
had happened two months later, two months earlier, I don't
think I don't think there would have been like a
big scare about it. Like it might have been a
thing I stuck around for a bit. But I think
the fact that the end of the the New York Times
article happen came out exactly like in the middle of
May sixty eight, and that like the original one comes

(25:00):
out like right before the like the original article that
gets set to the thing comes out like a couple
of weeks before the Holy Week up Rising. I think
it was the fact that it was exactly in this
moment where everyone on Earth is if you're living through this,
like this is the capital our revolution like has come
and you know, and that that shattered everyone's brains. Like

(25:20):
I don't know, I want like do people remember what
it was like like when like when like the height
of twenty was happening, Like just how sort of wild
like there was just psychologically I'm telling you there was
like an energy. Yeah, yeah, that's collective strange. I mean,
like obviously it's different than it was at sixty eight,
but I really do agree with you, like if it
happened in January, yeah, and you know, I so. The

(25:47):
the other thing that's interesting about about this whole sort
of like Chinese restaurant syndrome is that you could actually
track it spread like across other countries by sort of
like moments of like heak anti Chinese like sentiment. It
also anti Japanese sentiment to a lesser extent, because that
that that sort of replaces the anti Chinese stuff by
time and nineties, but well not replaces. But it's like

(26:10):
it's like the dominant mode of like we have a
person we needs to be afraid of an East Asia. Um.
But there's interesting, okay, So if if if, if you,
if you look up um like he was looking for you,
like medical stuff about Chinese restaurant syndimeme. One of the
things you will find is a case report of the
Indian Journal of Critical Medical Care from two thousands seventeen
claiming that they were treating a patient who got Chinese

(26:31):
restaurant syndrome and like couldn't speak because the thing in
the back of his throat had like inflamed, and you know,
and then they had this whole thing about like this
this is like this is like a serious disorder, and
they beifically cited that letter to the editor from sixty
eight the power of that thing. And you know, well, okay,

(26:52):
so if you look what what was going on in
in India in two thousand seventeen, and it turns out
the thing that's going on is like a giant rise
in anti Chinese sentiment, culminating in the twenty seventeen Indian
Chinese Border incidents. Where do you remember when all those
guys are like beating each other to death in the
mountains with sticks. Yeah, I do remember that. I's so

(27:14):
sad and many times in my life, and especially post pandemic,
my brain is broken. But I do vaguely remember that
I had kind of forgotten about it. And then and
then I just look at this article and sol seen.
I was like, wait, hold on, hold on, wasn't that
wasn't didn't didn't that happen in twenty seventeen? And it's
funny because like, yeah, right, CenTra rise again, suddenly Chinese
restaurant center reappears. It's it's really, it's really incredible. It's

(27:38):
it's yeah, it's an incredible set of brain worms. Um.
I just I mean, this is definitely not on topic,
I guess, but even just seeing like COVID being blamed
on China, like there's almost like like a way for
ignorant people just to point the finger at China, which
is really fucking shitty. It's so shitty. It's yeah, I mean,

(28:01):
I think it's it's just sort of like like one
of the things you sort of need to have a
national project, is that in order for you to be.
In order for you to be like a nation, you
have to have you have to have another you have
to have people who aren't part of the nation, and
the US is prett effectively they have they you know,
they can have the sort of rotating cast of people
who like aren't like from the nation. Right, if you

(28:22):
want to stay in, there are people that need to
stay out. Yeah, So sometimes it's with Mexico. Sometimes sometimes
you get it with sort of like like internal subversion
from like black people are like indienous people. But yeah,
you know, they have this rotating cast. China is always
one of the ones that come back to because it's
just big and there's a lot of them, and you know,
people are easily feared by it. Like I think it's

(28:44):
like it's unknown and maybe people don't understand it very well,
that don't look into it themselves and wanted to be educated.
But forever reason, people fear it so easily, and it's
so bizarre. It's so bizarre. Yeah, it sucks. Oh yeah, Okay,
So I'm gonna do an ad break and then we're

(29:04):
gonna talk about more of this stuff because it keeps
going and we're back, all right. So obviously we're dealing
with sort of anti Chinese sentiment and anti Japanese sentiments
as you know, jes sentiment escalating as the safety surting
into like the eighties and nineties. But there's more going
on here. Um. Part of the reason, you know, back

(29:25):
like this in theory could have been about like soy sauce, right, Like,
there's a lot of things that they could have picked
out of that to be the thing about, but they
picked M. S. G. And part of the reason they
picked MSGS that this is the period when people start
like figuring out that food additives exist mm hmmm, and

(29:46):
people don't get really sort of touchy about it. And
actually Ralph Nader uh famous. Yeah, so he's around in
the sixties, Um, because he's old as ship. Yeah yeah,
I mean he's you know, okay, so I I give
I give him credit for for like he has probably
saved as many lives as like any other American, single

(30:08):
American you can name, by being the guy who like
lobbied to have seatbelts in cars being mandatory. I think
that was not before because the US is a like
truly deranged country. Yeah, he wasn't half bad most of
the time. Yeah, but but come on, he's also one
of the guys who's like the big pusher for getting

(30:28):
the US government to study MSG and a lot of
other food editives and like nine, so you know, and
like there's a bunch of other food aims that they're
studying the health effects of and and on the one hand, like, yeah,
it probably is good to study the effects of like
food editives because like I don't know, companies do stuff
that sucks all the time, and so it is good

(30:50):
to study within your food. On the other hand, Okay,
it's gonna sound really ignorant, so I apologize. What where
again you already said this? Where was that foul? Where
was MSG found? Is it created in a lab? Like
what's the Yeah, but by this point it's basically created
a lab. The first time someone was able to distill
it was they did this whole distillation process of seaweed seed. Yeah.

(31:15):
But but but by this point, it's no worries. Yeah,
I know, like by bye bye bye, I mean even
by like the early actually twenties, I think it's it's
mostly being produced artificially, which is probably but it's yeah, yeah,
and it makes it taste better. But like, like you
know it is something that like you like you can't
find it like in in dashi, Like you can find

(31:35):
it in like soup broths and stuff like from the
way from seaweed. So it's it's not like I didn't
know that. I've known about MSG for most of my
life and I never like, for whatever reason, growing up,
we always associated with sodium like salt salty. Yeah, well,
I mean it is right, like it is a kind
of salt. Yeah, but like I don't know, like people

(31:57):
people have this whole thing like oh, it's artificial. It's
like like yeah, we may kid artificially, but like it's not.
It's not like it's not a thing that you can
get out of plants. It's just that we don't do
it that way because it's easier. Yeah, the source of
it is the artificial. But also like you're gonna be
a stickler on this one thing when you eat, like
I don't know, so many other drink so many other things,

(32:17):
Like there was cocaine and coke. Yeah, it's I think
every every every every every American like in nineteen sixty
nine is like by by their body volume, drinking two
pounds of lead a year. So like it's like like
this is the thing you're gonna stick up. Yeah, well
and and you know, and this is this is this
is this is sort of the problem with with what
Ralph Nader is doing with this sort of like pushing

(32:39):
the government investigation of it is that like you know,
like I don't know how racist nine nine Ralph Nader was.
My My guess is that I don't think that his
big thing was we need to study this because it's
the dirty Chinese like salt or whatever. I I think
I think mostly just wanted to you wanted the thing
to study food editives. I could be wrong about that.

(33:01):
I don't know. I haven't I've looked into this exactly
zero percent. But like you know, the problem is that
like once this sort of racial panic is going, like
you can't put you can't put the sort of cork
back in the bottle, right and you know, Okay, so
there have been a bunch of studies about this um
and like but but you know, okay, so the problem

(33:24):
with what's happening is that because of the way ms
she has been sort of racialized, like the studies don't matter,
like it's it just does not matter what anyone actually
sort of writes about it until you get an actual
cultural change because the study science is irrelevant. Um, they
have the study to justify a bunch of things, and
that's the only study they care about. Yeah, it's it's

(33:45):
it's it's like the like vector, that's like the like
the fake factory of vaccines cause autism ship Like no,
it's they just believe this. They have one paper that's
literally a joke. Exactly does it? Yeah, that's like but
this event, but like yeah, there's a million others like that.
By the way, that study, I want to point this out.
The methodology of that study was they asked parents who

(34:07):
thought their kids had developed autism because of the vaccine
if they thought their kids had developed autism because of
the vaccine, and then the parents said yes, And that's
the study. That's the study. Yeah, that's a lot of study.
It's a joke, like it's it's literally a Twitter pool.
They like got published and they're attracted because al right,
like this this is the scientific basis of all this bullshit,

(34:28):
and that's what qualifies is a fucking study. Then you
could you could, I don't know, you can. You can
publish fucking anything if you put your mind to it.
This is this. This, This is what I'm telling all
of you, like follow your dreams, try to get something published.
They published this bullshit, so like you know, I'm gonna
I'm gonna do a study. Yeah, well the other thing,
the other thing specifically, like there's a real problem here

(34:50):
with like this is everything with medical studies, because like
you can have a medical study that you get published
with a sample size of one because it's you found
a thing and a guy and you're like, oh, I'm
gonna publis this, but you like medical studies, like you
could just like you could publish any bullshit and like
it sucks. But okay, so all right, like lots of

(35:12):
so after this, there are lots of studies by lots
of people, and like mostly what they find is they
can't find any Okay. So there's some like initial studies
that like find some alarming stuff in mice. But the
problem with these studies that what they're doing is okay, Yeah,
it turns out if you take a mouse and you
just like fill a syringe with MSG and inject them
with it, it's bad for them. But like yeah, yeah,

(35:35):
you would you injected a mouse with pure salt and
bad things happen, Like yes, if you took a human
being and you injected fucking a third of a cup
of MSG directly into their veins, it would probably be
bad for them, like okay, you know, right, um, And
that they found out. The conclusion from that was basically like, okay,

(35:56):
if someone ate like a third of a cup of
MSG raw having not eaten for like forty eight hours,
it would probably do things that are not great for you.
Can't you say that. I've had a bunch of other
like like like I don't know if if if you
didn't eat for twenty four hours and eight a third
or a couple of salts, like that's probably that's not
good for you. Like I don't do that, so like

(36:18):
you know, okay, very very specific circumstances have to light
it up for you to have reaction. So there's a
study from two thousands where they also this is also
another empty stomach study, by the way, because they've okay,
no one has ever been able to replicate like any
of these results with a person eating food that has

(36:39):
MSG in it. They've every been able to do it.
They've been able to get some results. If you have
people eat like basically pure MSG and have not eaten
any food like around it. Yeah, it's like you're, OK,
that's useless because the the molecule at that point it
probably interacts with other things and that's you know what
I mean, Like if it's just I'm not the act

(37:00):
will I don't know. Yeah, I'm a very good at chemistry,
so I'm gonna what the chemistry nerds arguing I did
fail a p chem so great, Yeah, I I look
how I only had to take chemistry in so I
just didn't take a p KEM because like I suck,
Like I took a CHM like my first my freshman year.
Now it's like, let's not do this again. I can't

(37:20):
do this. Just the thing. I wanted to be a
psychiatrist for a really long time. But failing AP chemistry
and just experiencing chemistry, I was like, I can't. Yeah,
it sucks. It's the worst, but okay. So the reason
I was talking about the vaccines cause as like autism
ship is that there was another thing with MSG where
people were claiming it was causing asthma and it no,

(37:42):
they had they had another looking incredibly elaborate pseudoscience bullshit
about like the MSG like getting absorbed, like getting absorbed
improperly through like like fetal membranes. That's like completely nonsense,
Like it doesn't. Yeah, people people like what what White
people love to say that the diseases they've gotten from

(38:04):
fucking the fact that like they're they're the air in
their house is n c O two by volume and
like and and could because because they've decided to run
an entire country by just putting fucking trucking yards everywhere,
like okay, a finger to point out right, it can't
be Yeah, you know you know what I mean, Like, yeah,

(38:26):
I should. I should make this clear. By the way,
when when I when I when I when when when
I say when I say that like autisms, I'm not sorry.
When when I say that asthma specifically is when I'm
talking about the bad air specifically talking about asthma, I'm
not talking about autism with that that that that is
not what causes autism or whatever, like and it's cool
and also funk autism speaks, yes, yeah, but yeah, I

(38:51):
want to put that on the record. That's what I mean.
I'm not I'm not saying that trucks cause autism. They
don't like yeah, yeah, so okay, but there's a lot
of like incredibly weird, racial, very dumb, anti scientific panic
about it. It's possible that there existed so ofvisually it
was about like like anyone who eats this will have
these sentiments, right, And then over time the argument got

(39:14):
sort of fizz down to there might be a group
of people who in the population, like a small group
people who are like specifically sensitive to it, and that's
probably plausible, Like there's some experimental evidence that shows that
there could be a group of people for whom they're
more sensitive to it than a regular person and I
don't know, people of allergies like whatever, like yeah, yeah, yeah,

(39:38):
Like it's not like like yeah, it's it's not a
thing to sort of like like yeah, I don't know,
like if you're a person who gets allergy reactions to ship,
like yeah, that's allergies, right, but like it's it's not
the sort of like I don't know if the panic
about it is utterly unjustified. There may be if there
may be a group of people who it has some

(39:59):
effect on because there are a lerger to it or whatever.
But yeah, imagine imagine demonizing peanuts because there's a group
of people that can't eat peanuts, you know what I mean,
Like that's that's that's why, like, why would you ever
do that. To be fair, I I am okay with
demonizing peanuts specifically, specifically if it gets people to stop
fucking were shipping that bastard Jimmy Carter, who was a

(40:22):
neoliberal ghoul, and his reputation has been fucking just like, like,
his reputation has been saved entirely by the fact that
every single person who came after him was an utterly
deranged war criminal and his war crime was like suppressing
well he was a peanut farmer. Oh sorry, sorry, this
is this is this is this is the this is

(40:43):
this is the the deep Jimmy Carter lore. Okay, yeah, okay,
but you know, all right, So going going back, I
think so this was the kind of thing that like,
you know, people avoiding msg is just kind of had
just kind of been like like a part of daily life,
Like it was just like a thing that existed in

(41:04):
the world, but it wasn't like at a certain point
it became the kind of thing that people would talk
about like in conversation, and like they did you know,
you could just get people to do ant MSG rans,
but it wasn't really a sort of like mainstream political
issue in the way that it had been like in
that st nine where the well, the only thing that
happened is in the nineties the FDA did to study
about it. The f d A was like, it's fine,

(41:28):
don't don't don't eat three d grams of it at
one time, Like, but as long as long as you're
not sitting there like eating MSG raw out of the
fucking Like do you think about like hyd syrup? Why? Yeah,
and like by by volume, hypric dose, chord and syrup
was killed way more people than although also now now

(41:49):
there's like a whole thing about like MSG causing obesity,
which I I don't know if that's true or not.
I think their studies are fucking whack, but you know
it's it's it might cause obesity like every other food
that the US has made in the last twenty years. Yeah, yeah,
and what what what one one day we will do

(42:10):
a episode about like the politics of anti fatnists because
it's fucked but today we're we're doing this episode and okay,
so you know, every once in a while, the way
the way of this stuff work. Every once in a
while there would be a sort of like like a
mainstream like Asian American figure who would talk about it.
For example, there's there's there's a Korean chef named David

(42:30):
Chang who talks about it um and he he did
some like he gave speeches about it and the start
demonization of it, but it didn't really get back to
mainshame discourse until when are Good Friends a Ginomoto. The
people who made the stuff in the first place hired
a bunch of Asian American like celebrities to do a
pro MSG campaign. So they hired Eddie Huongg who's like

(42:53):
a writer and chef who's like probably most famous for
being the guy who wrote Fresh off the Boat, And
so that they have this whole sort of campaign and
this like takes off right like he he this is
this is one of those things that was like completely
forgotten that happened in that no one now remembers, because
this happens like before COVID, like before we had the
lockdowns and before I'll be honest, it escapes my memory.

(43:17):
I I have no member this happening either. But apparently
it did. I don't know. I was I think this
is still well the I think this is well the
election was still going on, so yeah, the best time
to do that year everything happens. But okay, so you know,
this campaign like takes off like like ny Hwang's on
on NBC and to be like the talk show circuit

(43:39):
with Jenny Am advocating for like so that their whole
thing is that they wanted to remove Chinese restaurants sent
from the dictionary and they had this whole like hashtag
redefinance CRS is like the Redefining Chinese Restaurant syndrome and
this is like a whole thing, and you know, and
there's there's there's something okay, but this was one of

(44:00):
the things that sort of drew me to the story
because if you look at the press for this, right,
it's like activists pressure maryon Webster and like that's kind
of true, Like it's superficially it is kind of what happened,
and like, yeah, I'm glad the dictionary change the entry
to say like this is like outdated and kind of bullshit,
but like, okay, think about what actually happened here, right,

(44:25):
A company that makes a product hired a bunch of
a bunch of sort of Asian American like big celebrity
people to do a marketing campaign for them in the
name of anti racism, which like, yes, I I am
glad we are addressing the racism in our own MSG.
However common I feel like it's a really sort of

(44:46):
like it's a it's a really literal example of the
kind of like vopidity and listlessness of like Asian American
identity and culture and politics like pre COVID, like this
is this is this is this hands something like early January, right,
so COVID is still sort of like some disease in China,
Like we haven't hit full of racism yet. And again
like this is not like an activist campaign, you know,

(45:07):
I mean, like activists get on board with it, I guess,
but like activism is doing an ad campaign for a
company that makes salt right. Yeah, it's not exactly grassroots
or yea, and and you know, okay, and it works
right like this this is a thing that like the
Asian American community like picks up right, I mean sort of.

(45:31):
I don't know, I I don't remember it, but I
when I look looking looking back on the articles and
hashtags and stuff. It's like, wow, they got lots of tweets.
But you know, I I think I think the reason
that this worked is is because of the sort of
self conception of like Asian American nous. Is this like

(45:52):
backstory of like like immigrants stepping off the boat and
they start a restaurant and then your kids get an
education to the answer of the professional class and like
there isn't I don't know, like this is in fact,
this is literally like part of the reason I'm doing
is also like this is literally what happened to my family.
Like they like they showed up from Taiwan, they worked
in a restaurant, then they opened a restaurant, and then
like I don't know, like every successive generation, well okay,

(46:15):
I was gonna say every every successive generation got more
like professionally, but like I have a bunch of talktors something.
But but then they also produced me, who's a podcaster.
So I'm defying Asian American stereotypes bite being more dipship
than my parents. But you know, like this has become
like this single sort of cultural narrative of like what

(46:35):
it is to be in Asian American, right, Like, you
see this in every single story that Asian American media
like has produced in the last like ten years, it
has one plot. Right, There's a family in the US.
They're trying to fit in. They almost always have some
kind of small business, and then something appears that challenges
their ability to like assimilate into American society. This is

(46:56):
and then you know they deal with it and that's
the end. Right, This is a plot of crazy rich
Asians a pot of everything ever all at once. The
plot of Fresh Out the Boat is the pout of
the fucking c W Kung Fu show. It is the plot.
Like literally everything that like we produce has one plot,
and it's this. And the reason why is it's you know,
there's the reason why this is the only sort of
like piece of media that that the sort of Asian

(47:17):
American culture class have been able to produce. Is the
reason why all the fucking activism and ad campaigns are
just like, fucking we got hired by a company and
we're gonna talk about where racism racism is bad about
this company can sell more product. Like, the reason is
this is because this is an incredibly marketable self conception
of Asian American nous like that the conception of it
as being restaurant owners is there because it's it's it's

(47:40):
a form of culture that can be sold to white people, right. It's, hey,
look we're different, we eat wacky food, but you can
eat it too, And ultimately we're all in this for
capitalism in the patriarchal family, like just like you are.
Don't worry, It's gonna be fine. And you know that
that really depresses me because this this is a moment
that demands something else. And I think that's why kind

(48:01):
of like I think that's why the sort of mainstream
like Asian American reaction to like, you know, like that
there was there was another there was another Asian woman
like who got stabbed to death like two weeks ago,
and there was like fucking no coverage of it, Like
nobody gave a ship. It's just gotten to the point
where like this happens, like six people report on it

(48:25):
and then everyone just sort of moves onto their life. Yeah,
And I think the reason why this sort of like
stop Asian hate ship has gotten to a you know,
like it's gotten it gets gone through the sign cycle
where everyone like had the signs up and then they
took them down, and so you know, like and I
think the reason why it was it turned into this
sort of like like did the organizing turning this like

(48:46):
incredibly vapid like put a sign in your store like
two to hashtag stuff like is because of this is
is because what like what what it means to be
sort of Asian American has been hollowed out and hauled
out and hold out and sold and sold and sold
for just decades and decades and decades, and now, you know,
like in a time when it's actually sort of like
you know, when it when it's really in danger and

(49:07):
it's called to action, it hasn't been able to do
much right. And well, yeah, pointing out the film and
TV thing is really important because I mean, so many
marginalized communities have this experience. But I think China, like
Asian culture in particular, I think it really people if
they're ignorant and they just see what's depicted on media,

(49:29):
they don't see them as three dimensional beings, you know
what I mean, what they have is like a very
hollow version of a human and so I don't know,
it's it kind of upsets me because I feel like
media is the first thing people learn things from, whether
it's film or TV or whatever. But yeah, well and
also I think it's I think it's part of the
reason why, like the way that those those depictions sort

(49:54):
of obscure class where you know, because these things, right,
like a lot of these families are poor, but they're
still business owner, right and that that's like like if
you're a poor American as well, it's because you're a
business and you're like a sort of struggling like American entrepreneur.
And this obscure is the fact that there there is
a massive Asian American just underclass people who are like
delivery drivers or work in warehouses or you know, I

(50:15):
mean like they're they're there. Who could there are groups
of people who like come to the US from China,
who you know, like live in like basically completely isolated
communities in part of Chinatown where they're only speaking Chinese
and they just sucking. Like there are people who have
to do a bunch of like warehouse ship and then
they leave and that's it, right, like, and these these
people this ship never you like, you never actually get

(50:37):
any kind of sort of class analysis because the way
that media thinks about Asian Americans is like there's there's
one of they're either one or three things. They're a
business owner, they're like a rich professionals like a doctor
or something, or they're like the fucking people on Blink
where they're just like super rich assholes. And that that
allows I think, like a specific kind of anti Asian

(50:58):
politics to work that like Asian people are seen this
sort of like perpetual like for an elite, and it's
like no, I don't know, like it's it's just not
you know, it's it's not true and and it and
it means that when you get like Asian American political movements,
like the sort of stuff antiation hating, right, like you
have like the guy who founded door Dash, right is

(51:20):
like is a nation is like a Chinese American guy, right,
He's like he used to he's a tech billionaire. He
used to be like an emany Like you know, you
would have the stop Asian hate advance, Like this fucking
guy is on their light, is up on the stage
talking about anti agent hate and it's like, Okay, this
guy has like brutally and horribly exploited like literally millions
of Asian Americans. But you know, there's there's there's there's

(51:42):
no there's never gonna be reckoning with that because success
and he's he's capitalist, like he's achieved the capitalist dream
or whatever. The ship and and I I mean because
because because Asian American contentia has been flattened in this way,
like those people are just completely invisible and it it
sucks and I hate it and yeah, yeah, I it's

(52:07):
just I don't know, there's nothing good. I can like
anything I can say to make anything better. But I
think it's just I don't know. Maybe we can do
an episode one day about like film and TV and stuff,
because I think it really starts there unfortunately, like like
it's it's silly, but people that don't know a Chinese

(52:27):
person will see a Chinese person on their TV and
be like, that's the only Chinese person I've ever seen
in my life. And I'm gonna make assumptions about the
whole race now. But one day I'm gonna do an
We're gonna do an episode that's entirely me shipping on
Jackie Chan. People are gonna get really mad at me.
But funk that guy, that's a hot take. He started

(52:48):
his career as a fucking scamp. That was literally his
first thing was he was a scap. And he's yeah,
he's the fucking homophote piece of shit. Fuck him. Uh yeah,
done your reparable damage for this episode. Let's do it. Yeah,
all right? That that will that will be something we
are We are now to the part of the episode
where we are teasing you with subsequent episode. But yeah,

(53:09):
but yeah, I don't know, And it's a little bit
upsetting how these are really important movements are just like
they the plateau and they become like this vapid thing
like you're saying, Like, I think that gives people such
an easy out of like quote unquote being an ally
or supporting because they think they're doing something by like
holding up a sign or something without really internalizing or

(53:32):
spreading the awareness that is necessary. And uh, I don't know.
I I guess the thing I want to end on
also is me being piste off at a bunch of
Asian American kids in the saets. So one of the
stories you will hear a lot if you're studying Asian
American politics, like is the story that, like the term
Asian American was invented by these like activists who actually

(53:54):
were like doing a bunch of stuff eight um, these
like student active like this radical student activists, and that's true.
But the thing you have to understand about those people
is that all of those people were like like all
those people were basically like, we're third world ists. And
part of the reason this whole politics collapses, well a
part of the reason part of what happened was like

(54:17):
part of the demands of these students in these sort
of like radical student groups like but you know, the
their form to sort of like support the sort of
like black radical student groups into like advocate for themselves.
But like one of their big demands was they wanted
cultural studies departments in in American universities, and they got them.
But you know, okay, so what what what what are
those cultural studies like departments? They basically just became these

(54:39):
giant traps through radicals where instead of like overthrowing the government,
you like come do this cushy job in academia, and
like all of all of the sort of like old
radicals like from that area either like got regular jobs
or became like African academics, right, And the other thing
that happened with this politics that was the reason why
it was completely unsustainable was that and this this is
this has been a sort of a problem with the

(54:59):
Asian America entity. Right is that okay, like what the
fund is an Asian American right, it's like anyone from
like I don't know, likes anyone from like the like
the edge of the Pacific to like I don't know,
like how how how far? How far? Like I what's

(55:20):
it called? Like how far? How far west? Does that go?
The other direction? Like who knows? It's like yeah, like
I mean, this is like billions and billions and billions
of people with completely your related cultures and languages and
stuff like that. And the reason they were able to
do this right was because they were mirroring their movement
off of like the Third World right. But the problem
that they ran into, and this is the problem with

(55:42):
all the Third World movements was that, Okay, So the
Third World movement like as a thing was it was
based on a bunch of different nationalist movements, right, Like
it was based on that there's going to be this
like alliance between like the sort of like the rising
socialis powers in Africa and the rising socialist powers and
I in East Asia, and they were gonna sort of
like ally with like the rising sort of like I know,

(56:05):
like the rising sort of like minorities getting power in
the US. But okay, if you look at those nationalisms, right,
you have Chinese nationalism, Cambodian nationalism, and Vietnamese nationalism all
colliding with each other. And you know, if it turns
out like what okay? So what what what happens if
your movement is based on sort of like the unity
of a bunch of nationals movements and they go to

(56:26):
war with each other? And you know what happened was
when when when China when Vietnam and Vadas Cambodia in
and and Vietnam and Vedas Cambodia and then China invades
Vietnam in nineteen seventy nine. Right, the entire politics is
fucked because what what what are you supposed to do?
Like what's who's who side you're supposed to take? Here? Right?
Like you can you can do the you know, like

(56:47):
if if you're gonna be like a Marxist, like a
Marxis Leninist, like the probably the correct line to support Vietnam, right,
But that's a mess because you know how many people
in Maoists, right, and if you but but you know,
if you're a Maoist and you're fucking people just invaded Vietnam,
like you know, what are you supposed to do? Right?
And there was there were earlier attentions with this too,
where like like China, with China was backing like a

(57:08):
really shitty fashion in Angola who ended up ended up
being backed by the US and like South Africa, and
that caused a whole bunch of tensions between the sort
of Chinese Maoists and a bunch of the sort of
black radical groups because they were like, why the funk
are you guys backing these people in Angola? But you know,
and and and this, this whole thing became a problem
because all of these nationalisms are competing nationalisms right there.
There was never going to be one unified third world.

(57:31):
It was always it was always going to end with
a bunch of nationalists fucking fighting each other. And when
that happens, the Asian like the Asian American movement such
as it was just fucking died, and you know, like
as a radical movement, it was just over. And so
you know, I think I think the lesson that I
would take out of this is just that like, do

(57:52):
not build. Do not build your movement based off of
someone else's nationalism, because those people are going to do
things because they're nationalists that are just fucked right. They're
gonna win. They're gonna invade Vietnam like camp, like the
Cambodians are gonna invade Vietnam, and then Vietnam is gonna
like you know, like are arguably justifiably because they've been

(58:13):
getting attacked because they're fighting Khmer Rouge. But like you know,
they're they're these people are all going to go to
war with each other, right like you're or you know, you're,
you're gonna be stuck in the situation where like you're, you're,
you're you're being forced to two sides between like the
DIRG and the and like the Marxist government Somalia because
they've they've randomly gone to war with each other. So
don't do this. This has been my rants that I wanted,

(58:35):
all I wanted to do about this because yeah, no,
I'm glad you did. I'm glad that I was here
for it too, because I don't know, it's good to
know this stuff and I get to learn by listening
to you still me Um, yeah, I I appreciate all
the research that you did. Thanks. Yeah, and yeah, so

(58:57):
I guess this has been It can happen here? Yeah, yeah,
that's the episode. You can find us happened here pod
um on Twitter and Instagram. I'm at h three Um
yeah yeah, I'm a sure hero six six six on
Twitter and then on Instagram. Just take out the six
six sixes, but maybe I should add them because OK

(59:18):
here anyway, thanks by this is it could happen here.
My name is Jake Hanrahan. I'm a journalist and documentary filmmaker.

(59:40):
Today you're gonna hear me reporting from an undisclosed location
in Europe where I met with anti Putin Russian partisans.
So right now, heading into the forest somewhere on the
edge of Europe. There's snow absolutely everywhere. It's pitch black

(01:00:00):
and it's very very cold. I'm heading into the forest
to meet with anti government Russian partisans. They've been launching
attacks inside Russia against Kremlin infrastructure. They've been blowing up
railway tracks and attacking military recruitment centers because they want
to disrupt the continued Russian invasion of Ukraine. These partners

(01:00:21):
and attacks have been taking place all across Russia, but
obviously over there there's a complete media blackout on this situation.
So this group have come over um and agreed to
meet with me to tell me what's actually happening and
to let people know that it's not everybody there that
supports this, and some people are even taking up arms,
taking massive risks to try and stop proputing is up to.

(01:00:45):
When Russia invaded Ukraine on February, the Ukrainian people bravely
mobilized to fight back against Putin's attack on their country.
Russia's so called Three Days Special Operation has turned into
a grueling, year long battle whether Ukrainian resistance has been
highly effective. Despite this chaos, it seems that many people

(01:01:07):
in Russia have come out in favor of this brutal war.
Even now, with over forty people killed and over fourteen
million displaced, there's still large scales support for Putin's attacks
on Ukraine. This much is fact. The idea that every
Russian is in favor of the war is not. Russia
is a huge place, with a population of over one

(01:01:30):
d and forty million. Many people there do not support
Putin or his war. Some have even taken the risk
to fight back. As I mentioned, there's a quiet but
highly effective network of anti Poutin partisans that are fighting
from within. They're doing this by blowing up military railways,

(01:01:51):
sabotaging Kremlin cell towers, and burning down war recruitment centers,
all this in an effort to help Ukrainians from Afar.
If caught by the Russian security writy forces, they faced
torture and life in prison. Despite the risks, in the
last twelve months, there have been more than eighty confirmed
attacks against the government inside at Russia. The attacks have

(01:02:12):
taken place all across the country as well, from Moscow
in the west to Vladivostok in the far east. There
are dozens of different partisans cells and lone wolves. As
is with real life, the partisans have varying different political
ideologies from far left to far right. For the moment, though,
they all share information with each other, recognizing their common

(01:02:36):
enemy in Putin. One of the most organized groups is
made up of militant anarchists. They're known as the Anaco
Communist Combat Organization, more commonly referred to by their Russian
abbreviation BOAK. It's two fighters from Boak who had arranged
to meet in a Russia bordering forest of eastern Europe.

(01:02:57):
We've spoken weeks before via encrypted email. They told me
which country to fly to and then send me coordinates
of where to meet them within a specific window of time.
A driver as far as I could, abandon the car
and took off into the forest. Eventually, a red torchlight
emerged through the trees, cutting the silhouette of two figures.

(01:03:17):
As the two approached, it was clear it was the
Boak fighters. They were both dressed head to toe in black,
and we're both wearing balaclavas. We confirmed things, shook hands
and set off to find a spot for the interview.
They let me through an underground tunnel to an area
they felt comfortable with. Just to protect the identity of

(01:03:39):
the rushing partisans, we've scrambled their voice. That voice you
just heard that, Oh yeah, she's a female, and the
other fire said the voice you'll hear that's Jura, he's
a male. Can you explain the actions, like what are
the main things you've been doing to disrupt Putin's invasion?
The assembled railways, which leads to their after really else

(01:04:00):
in the most court region do it the fronto to
give to the Krainian people more time to prepare for
the The railing trains in Russia is something the Partisans
specialize in. They've managed to knock several Kremlin cargo trains
off their tracks, trains that were destined to the level

(01:04:20):
weapons to Russian soldiers as they continued to invade Ukraine.
We'll probably never know how helpful this was for Ukrainians,
but every second counts when battling for frontline positions in war.
For example, if Russian soldiers were left waiting for a
resupply which was delayed because of partisan attacks, they might

(01:04:41):
then be overrun by Ukrainians. This would definitely be an
effective blow for the Partisans. I asked the Borack fights
is why they felt the need to form such an organization.
We see that we need to create a partisan organization
because in the Russia the state depression is very hard.
So you came to use some uh legal methods to

(01:05:03):
do some step by step changes. Even if you do
some so called legal actions, anyway, you'll go to the jail.
We are attacking the state to make it weaker, to
show people that we can do it. We as people
people of Russia, people of all the old We have
this power in our hands. And yeah, and them the

(01:05:23):
stay they are small and we are there's a lot
of us. And the second direction, which we are developed
since is a coordination of such kinds of attacks. Attacks
all over the Russia. Recently we published I think maybe
even more than an attacks from many different regions. We
have small partisan cells to find out how to make attacks,

(01:05:46):
help them with supplies, helps such as small person groups.
It's increasing, it's increasing here and they make more and
more serious attacks. For example, not a long time ago
they bombed some kind of military road near the graying
In border. So hope is not in that one small
group can do, but that we have a lot of

(01:06:08):
small groups and altogethers that we can change things. So
you guys been around before the uk MOS started, or
at least since the invasion started this year, but that's
when you've got a lot more known. I think online
we've seen that you guys are actually doing attacks inside
Russia and in Belarus. Very dangerous thing to do. Um,
what is it that you know spurred you guys on
why you're doing this way? You're taking such a risk

(01:06:29):
to basically attack who in in his own country, because
it's not his country, it's our country. We can't do nothing.
We can do legal things. And this patternan tax can
make military imagine of Russian state. We got the supply lines,
we attack the military equipment centers, so the army became

(01:06:54):
so we can end as it was very often in
the Russia and many others states study on the state
lows war. That is, the window of possibilities opens for
the people of this country. What was Boach a pragmatic
focused currently on the pressing issue of Putin's or on Ukraine.

(01:07:15):
They're also looking to carve out a space for themselves
in what they believe will be a wild post Putin Russia.
When Putin dies, there will be a vacuum where many
other groups feel the same Boach in their minds, setting
down foundations already. For now though, they concentrate on assisting
the Ukrainians and in terms of like solidarity with Ukraine,

(01:07:37):
are you doing this outh the Ukrainians as well or
just for yourselves, like are you in contact with Ukrainians
or is this just like a movement you guys are
doing yourself. Of course, we have contacts, we can of
course uh see what exactly contact? Yes, but yes we
have contact moves uh different not only on his organization,

(01:07:57):
in all ex country as well, we try to provide
information for those other groups which don't yet know how
to do things and don't yet have funds enough for
supplies because even gasoline costs money and they don't have money.

(01:08:19):
And as well, near the start of war, our group
organized a few attacks like on a mobile cell towers
Ukraine border, as we've seen from the telegram channels, the
kind of underground, there's definitely a lot of attacks. As
you've said, as you've been doing, how big is your
organization because it's hard to tell how how prevalent are

(01:08:40):
these attacks inside Russia? So that is well two or
three dozens finished groups. Um, everyone has a different number
of members. And what about geography as you know of
the dance X from the calliand west over us to
the what your stalk which is yeah, specifically being anarchist

(01:09:05):
but being partisans is extremely extremely dangerous inside Russia. You're
taking a massive risk doing this kind of stuff. Um,
some people are going to leave this and go like
why why would you take that risk? If we won't
take those risks now we won't have future at all.
And you're not worried, you're not scared of getting caught.
But it's much more scarier to leave, know that you

(01:09:28):
had chanced to change something and you didn't. Our people
killing people of Ukraine and making a golds and wars,
so every day it was interest for nuclear war and
so on, because if you do it now, maybe we
will not have the future at all. Not only in Rush,
all over the world. People on the internet, they will
see what you guys are doing and they say, are

(01:09:48):
you guys are CIA opertures and stuff like this, particularly
like Westerners that actually support putting. Now you know what
it's like living there under putting? Um, you know what,
how would you right? Stuff? Would you say to always
kind of actus eyes? I think if we would be
saying hey, we would act more effectively. But we acted

(01:10:12):
with those forces, with those resources which we have, we're
trying to increase them. But when said that, it's time,
it's process from zero partisan attacked to the full parts
of the ward. So if we were see we had
a lot, well, we would have a lot of more resources.
And yeah, we like we have homemade boombs or anything

(01:10:38):
we can get our hands on or even speaking about
sources which we used. When we uh the sample trailways,
we used simple instruments which we could be bought in.
We are showing people that they can just go to

(01:10:59):
the and buy those tools and do that themselves. It's
not just you know, us doing some stuff with some
specific materials you can only get in the darknet. Now,
let's be honest. It's likely the c i A are
up to something in Russia considering their past history, but

(01:11:21):
personally I believe back when they say they're nothing to
do with that. I think it would be pretty unlikely
that the CIA would help an Anaco communist group when
there are ultra nationalist groups doing similar things. How do
you get the information? Like how do you know which
railway to blow up? We used to wiki mar provides
description for each object on the map and every everyone

(01:11:44):
can contribute to eat. So he just opened it and
you find, okay, minite objects here. It's doing something like
that that, it's it's photos and people who did they
didn't do it for us just because formation you just
can take it im do it. So they use wiki
mapia to help their attacks. This I found quite funny.

(01:12:06):
It's like the modern version of guerrillas gathering intel from
locals about the enemy, only the locals in this case
don't even know they're doing it. Scouting is also a
big part of their sabotage preparations. But but of course,
so we need to a lot of scouting. Yeah, scouting
like you you check out the PO. I know the

(01:12:29):
anarchists specifically in Russia have been tortured quite a lot.
If they're captured for anything, Um, what do you think
would happen to you? Guys? If you got caught? For sure,
we're going to as well, if you will be if
you will live enough because we not link to Yeah,

(01:12:51):
we don't give any information on our comrades, and when
you're tortured, it's hard to say when we would or
would not your break. So it's got to prevent this
by dying fighting. Does that mean your firearms? If you
want to do a revolution, you can do to the
forums like why why are you doing this? Why are

(01:13:12):
you giving us? Why do you want this this information
to get out there? Do you think that it's important
that people see us not as some internet warriors. We
want people to hear our voices, to hear what we
can we have to say people to think that we
are some shay the organization, but we want them to

(01:13:32):
see that we are real people just like them, and
just like us. They can do things that we do.
A lot of it is online, but there's there's definitely
a perception that all Russians agree with the invasion, the
destruction of Ukraine, what Putin wants to do. Obviously, people
like you very clearly, you know, a small but effective

(01:13:53):
resistance against Putin policies. What do you think about that?
How would you respond to that? Is? Is it in
the country and more people against the then it would
seem or what? There are a lot more people against
it than it seems, because propaganda shows only people who
agree with Putta and many many people don't agree, and

(01:14:14):
many people just just silent because they're afraid to lose
their jobs. If you will beat a dog every day
and then some day it will think that you I
live like that, it's normally, you know. So as we
see a lot of people in Russia are also victims
of the Putin's regime at the moment, they just don't

(01:14:35):
think that if they stick up they will change anything.
I think our main message is that people shouldn't just
sit and wait that someone else is gonna do anything
for them. They should take their lives in their own hands.
As we often repeat, if not to be, don't who?
If not now that when, thank you very much, life

(01:14:57):
and everything. It's very good. Much without. The two partisans
from Boak vanished into the forest. As Russia's war on
Ukraine approaches at twelve month, Russian partisans like the ones
I spoke to continuing to disrupt Putne's war effort from within.
Organizations like Boak are fighting and uphill battle, but still

(01:15:18):
their attacks have definitely been effective. As we said, several
military trains have been derailed and word of the partisan
underground is spreading. Whilst there's next to no Russian state
media coverage on this, the Russian government is clearly aware
of it. Security around Russian train tracks has been tightened,
and the Russian court has find the telegram app for

(01:15:41):
allowing partisan networks to share information. There not to mention
the uptick in unexplained fires breaking out across the country.
Even though Prune's government acts like they can't see them,
they know the partisans there. If you want to watch
the extended documentary version of this reporting. Go to YouTube

(01:16:02):
dot com slash popular Front and look for the documentary
Rushes Anti poutin Underground. Music in this episode of It
Could Happen Here was by Sam Black seas music at
Sam black pf dot com. Reporting production editing was by me.
You can follow me at Jake Underscore Hanrahan h A

(01:16:26):
N I A H A N. Please do check out
my platform, independent grassroots conflict Reporting www dot Popular Front
dot CEO. Welcome back to It Could Happen Here, a

(01:16:56):
podcast that is today about it happening here or or
more particularly in Atlanta. So so it's here if you
happen to live in Atlanta, Georgia. Otherwise it is it
is still happening there. Um. And I don't actually know
much about this because, like the rest of you, I
have been watching from the sidelines since a forest defender

(01:17:17):
was killed by the Georgia State Police. But someone who
has been in Atlanta for most of the last week
is Garrison Davis. Garrison, Hi, Hi, it's been a long week. Yeah,
it sounds like it. You uh had just gotten back
from c e S when all this happened, and booked
booked the next flight and flew out and we're on

(01:17:39):
the ground during uh, some of the immediate protests that
followed news about the death. Do you do you want
to just kind of take it from here. Yeah, So
we're gonna be putting together kind of a more in
depth thing similar to my similar to my on the
Ground to Defend the Atlanta Forest episodes from last May.

(01:17:59):
That is that's that's gonna come out. But you know,
it'll take a little bit because I'm doing a lot
of interviews, doing a lot of on the ground stuff here. Um,
but this is important enough that I feel like it's
it's worth that it was it was worth mentioning something
a bit sooner, which is why we're recording here today
just to kind of give a one oh one on
what's been going on ever since Wednesday. So Wednesday, January

(01:18:24):
there was a raid on the Wallawnee Forest or the
South River Forest in Atlanta, where people have been currently
staying in encampments for the past like a year and
a half in opposition of this upcoming proposed police training
facility to be built on this same land. So Wednesday
morning there was this raid. Um, there's a few things

(01:18:44):
different about this raid. One it seemed to be in
some ways kind of led by the Georgia State Patrol. UM.
This is uh, you know, a state, a state run
police that has not been in this force before. UM.
Other raids have been coordinated between the Decap County Police
in Atlanta Police. So the swat team was was unfamiliar

(01:19:05):
with the forest. They had not been in there before.
There was there was other police on on site. This
was an inter agency thing. There was it does seem
like there was Atlanta police here as well. But this
started at around eight am and then at around nine
am we got word that uh, a forest defender was
shot and killed by it seems like in an estate

(01:19:28):
patrol officer that they are not releasing the name of,
nor are they releasing the name of one other officer
who was injured. UM and George georgiea State patrol claims
that they were shot during this raid as well. Police
by Day Yes, police police claim that they were shot
by the person that the George State Patrol killed. There's

(01:19:51):
very little information about this. UM. Nobody cameras no, they
have said that there's no nobody cam which does seem
consistent because George st. Patrol are not are not required
to our body cam, so that obviously hit a lot
of people pretty hard. Because this is um, to our knowledge,
the first like you know, environmental ist protester to be

(01:20:14):
killed by police. It's the first fatality that we've had
in the in this in this movement here in Atlanta.
And for the record, it is still deeply unclear what happened.
It's certainly not impossible that this person fired first on
the police officer, but it's it's also incredibly important to
note that there is no evidence of this that's been presented.

(01:20:38):
The only evidence that the police have presented is a
photo of a of a pistol on the ground. UM.
And then they've made the very weasily worded claim that
UM ballistics testing has shown that the bullet that struck
the officer was consistent with the gun that they're saying
with the the individual they killed had all that means

(01:21:00):
I said it was nine millimeter. That was the same caliber, right,
a caliber for which there are tens of millions of
guns in this country. UM. Most ballistic science is in
terms of like identifying bullets to guns is actually nonsense.
There have been massive lawsuits about this. The FBI, UM
has has this is a bigger topic than than we

(01:21:23):
can get into today. But it's very shady, and all
that they actually said is the cop was shot with
a nine millimeter and hey, look we found a nine millimeter.
Not interestingly enough, we have confirmed that this gun was fired. Um.
So very anyway, so no one knows what's happened. It's
it's it's shady. I mean, so I've I got I

(01:21:43):
got here like less than twenty four hours later. A
lot of people on the ground have been kind of
sharing their memories of the person that was killed. So
the person was named their Their forest name was Tortuguita,
which means little turtle. Their name that has been released
is uh Manuel Um, I'm just gonna I'm gonna call
them tortuga or tort um. Sure, there's been people of

(01:22:05):
you know, spent a lot of the past few days
talking about tort remembering tort um, the types of things
that that they advocated for the types of things that
they would talk about. So we'll well, we'll get into
some of the more kind of specifics of that of
that of that later. Um. But a number of other

(01:22:26):
journalists have talked about their conversations with with toward, including
Um the fact that they evinced a pretty principled um
and and extensive commitment to non violence, UM, at least
in interviews. This is something they had been quoted on
by an other journalists a number of times. And this
is something I've heard a lot of people bring up.

(01:22:48):
Is that is that tort was was a believer in
in non violence and would and would talk about and
advocate that. The other the other kind of angle to this,
and I'm not taking a position one way or another here,
but this is something that I think it's important to
mention is that I also don't want to remove the
agency of a person if they did decide to do
if I, if I did, if they did decide to

(01:23:09):
do this. Because the other thing I've heard a lot
about Towards is that they always made thoughtful decisions, in
meaning that they put thought into everything they did. Um.
They were they acted strategically. They did not they did
not put people in unnecessary danger. They would not do
something if they thought it would endanger other people. They

(01:23:30):
always acted with thought and that that that could include
if you feel like your life is under immediate threat, um,
what what actually happened Wednesday morning? We will probably never know,
we will never know the exact series of events. Yeah,
and it's and in some ways like that's we can

(01:23:53):
we should respect towards either way, um, because they made
it a decision that they thought that was right in
the moment where they were just flat out murdered by police. UM.
So that's that's kind of the gist of of what
happened Wednesday morning. Throughout the rest of the day, their

(01:24:14):
police continued their raid on the forest. The last the
last tree sitter was eventually taken down like twenty hours
later after the raids. That someone was stuck up in
a tree for over twenty hours, no food or water, Um,
police agitating them the entire time, and many all of
all the other people arrested, I think it total around

(01:24:34):
seven got charged with the domestic terrorism among other charges.
So that's pretty significant. Um. That is people. That's that
and we will circle back to this to this point
a little bit later. So that is that is what
happened on Wednesday. Uh, you know, the first few hours
after the shooting, people were unsure of of who actually

(01:24:57):
got killed. It was it was hard, it was hard
to say. Um. Other force defenders who were in the
area did report from that what they heard there was
a pretty a pretty quick single firing of of guns,
multiple guns going off in a pretty quick succession. There
was no like one shot and then seconds later bunch
of other shots. It was all kind of one event.

(01:25:17):
This is reports from people on the ground. This is
what this is what they've said. UM, A lot of
a lot of people speculate that this could have been
friendly fire. If if this, if this, if this, if
this other patrol officer was was, um, you know, got shot.
They went to the hospital. So it doesn't it doesn't
police officer had got a bullet inside of them. Um.

(01:25:40):
But obviously there's a number of ways in which that
could have occurred. And I don't find it. I certainly,
I don't think it's conspiratory at all, too conspiratorial at
all to say they have not presented evidence. It is
certainly possible that a bunch of cops wandering through the forest,
somebody would have a negligent discharge, you know, somebody would
just pant. You know, there's enough we and again, as

(01:26:01):
you've stated, we just we probably will never know precisely
what happened. Um, And that's that's that's the feeling on
the ground, a lot of people coming to terms with
the fact that we will never know. A lot of people,
you know, thinking that it's you know, very likely chance
it was friendly fire. Other people, you know, trying to
trying to emphasize the fact that, you know, we will

(01:26:21):
never know if we cannot say one way, they or another.
But it's also important not to minimize someone's autonomy, especially
since they're no longer around to advocate for themselves or
their actions. Yeah, let's go, let's have a let's have
an ad break, and then we'll kind of continue on
to what happened in the in the days after we're

(01:26:42):
back Garrison. Please continue to take it away. So the
late the day of the shooting, there was a vigil
before we found out who it was. There was a
vigil set up at Little Five Points in Atlanta, and
then the next two days there was there was a vigil.
Space is created at entrenchmentt Creek Park or Woolani People's Park. Uh,

(01:27:05):
this is an area of the forest that's too that's
on like the eastern side, and this is the section
that is currently being sought as a place to expand
black Hole Movie studios. So this is this is separate
from the actual cops City element of this, but it's
still part of the Defend the Atlanta Forest side of

(01:27:25):
this because this is all the same forest. They're just
kind of split um down the middle by this by
this power line cut. So this section of the park
is on a section of land that's contestedly owned by
Ryan Millsap, the guy who runs Black Hall Studios. I
first arrived at at the Willani People's Park on Friday

(01:27:46):
for the for like the more public facing vigil, and
I just just kind of I want to talk a
bit about the park because this is such a I
think it's such a solid encapsulation of what's changed since
last time I've been in Atlanta. So last time I
was in Atlanta, there was the Muscogee Creek. People were
traveling from my belief, Oklahoma to Atlanta what what is

(01:28:10):
now Atlanta what what used to be Muskogee land um,
and they were they were like giving talks and presentations
about the forest inside the section of forests that that
the Defend the Atlanta Fort stuff is about. And I
went to one of those events at in Trenchpant Creek Park.
It was green trees all around, there was a nice gazebo.

(01:28:33):
There was a there was a piano inside the gazebo,
people handing out food, a little kitchen was set up,
pretty pretty picturesque. It was. It was pretty. It was
pretty great. So then when I pulled up to this
same spot a few days ago, it was like apocalyptic.
The gazebo has been completely torn down and is laying

(01:28:55):
in shambles in the front of the parking lot like
for everyone to see. The destroyed rooms, all of the
all of like the uh, the the concrete sidewalks and
stuff have all been torn up and it's just scattered everywhere.
It's now it's just it's just a massive mud pit.
It's it's such a different place. Um. And you know

(01:29:17):
when you when you get there for a vigil, the
moods not cheery obviously. Um. There was people you know,
sharing stories of Tort, singing songs and you know, building
this like a almost like a virgual shrine. Um. So
that was like the first the first big thing Friday night. Um.

(01:29:39):
So a lot of people talked about their memories of
Tort and you know the different things they contributed to,
not just to defend the a lint of force stuff,
but stuff across the entire South. They did mutual aid
work UM and stuff to secure housing for people in Florida.
They helped defend drag shows in U Tennessee. They they did,

(01:30:02):
they did stuff all all across the South. And you know,
they had they had allies and accomplices from across the South,
you know, talking about how great toward was to work
with the types of solidarity that tort would show too
too many many different people. So that was Friday, and

(01:30:22):
everyone was kind of you could kind of feel the
almost calm before the storm. In some ways, people didn't
people didn't really know what was going to happen in
the coming days, but there was there was a sense
of like eerie quietness. And then Saturday happens. Saturday, there
is this protest planned meeting in Underground Atlanta, which is

(01:30:44):
a spot in downtown Atlanta kind of on the south side.
I got there for this protest there. Initially there was
people from this like socialist organization called PSL. They they
tried to lead them march one way. Um the crowd
rejected their authority and was like, no, we're not going

(01:31:06):
to go to the federal district. We're not going to
go to the CNN Center, which are places notorious for
getting cattled at UM, and they and people autonomously redirected
the crowd um North towards the and and North is
also just so happens to be the direction of the
Atlanta Police Foundation headquarters, the pseudo union lobbying group that

(01:31:28):
is that is behind the big push for for Cops
City UM. But before this march started, there was similarly,
you know, people giving speeches about tort people, not not speeches,
like people just sharing memories of torts. So people so
that tork can like live on UM in some way,
so people can you know, know about them now that
they're no longer around. You know, people from a local

(01:31:50):
medic collective talking about you know, towards towards involvement in
that and how much toward cared about, you know, helping
other people. So this this this march starts up. UM.
It was funny there was a few blocks away from
this march location. They're just so happened to be like

(01:32:12):
a single police car in the street but like parked
on the wrong side of the road, and this police
car sees this march coming and it's like kind of
freaking out. He doesn't know what to do. It drives
in reverse for like like two blocks, trying to find
a spot to turn around, as the marches like increasingly
getting closer. Like you could just you cause you could

(01:32:32):
just feel you could feel the anxiety of the cot
inside this car. He they do not want to get
surrounded by a crowd. Um. Eventually they're able to back
up enough to turn around and they get out. They
are they are zooming away. If you do not want
to be anywhere near this. And short shortly after people

(01:32:53):
arrive at the Atlanta Police Foundation headquarters, windows spontaneously shatter um.
As as is expected, a few bank windows also get
um get get broken. What Wells Fargo being one of them, Yes,
r I P bank windows, Wells Fargo being another one.

(01:33:15):
Wells Fargo is a major contributor to the Atlantic Police Foundation.
So this happens. Two cop cars that are just you know,
blocks away, UM, that are sitting completely empty, get there,
get their windows smashed. You know, there's there's there's fireworks
going off around the crowd. Um. There's there's this one

(01:33:37):
clip that I that I saw from some some some
group that was live streaming UM that there was. There
was a few a few officers like stationed beside the
Atlantic Police Foundation and as soon as they as soon
as they heard fireworks, they again similarly just like ran
away as fast as they could. They were not equipped
to deal with UM, to deal with a fireworks for

(01:34:01):
them were the main thing they seem to be scared of.
So two to two cop carsgether when they're smashed. UM,
fireworks going around. March continues, goes for about a few
more blocks and uh then Corker's notice police police are
starting to come. Police are approaching the approaching the crowd.

(01:34:22):
Head on, please start rushing towards the crowd. UM one
they they tackle, tackle a few people holding a banner. UM,
I think they they people. People scatter. The most of
the crowd gets away. Most of the crowd splits up
into into two groups. The largest chunk is able to
move away from police presence. There's you know, people chanting,

(01:34:45):
be water, you know, all of all the stuff. So
most most people do successfully get away. The smaller, smaller
section of people split off another direction. Cops follow. They
are able to tackle and arrest a few a few
more people in this in this group. In the end,
it looks like there was six people arrested. Um, most
moost people got away. After all these arrests are happening,

(01:35:08):
people start noticing something that in the background a few
a few blocks previous to where people were marching. Uh,
it looks there looks to be a glowing police car. Uh.
So we we we look back, and sure enough in
an Atlanta police car is up in flames, um, completely
completely completely glowing, huge, huge flames. So so as that happens,

(01:35:34):
more and more cops show up. This is where like
the cops now are like taking over downtown. Um, you know,
cops with with the Air fifteen or a er style
rifles are are going around staring, starting to do patrols.
So this is like the night. The night is over
at this point. Now it's time for like people to

(01:35:55):
scatter and leave, which is what people did. The The
aftermath of this is super fascinating and unfortunate, if not unexpected. Uh.
You know, there's been very little statements about the police
killing of an of of tortequita of you know, an
environmental activist UM force defender, but very very very little

(01:36:17):
statements addressing this this matter at all. A huge flood
of statements. However, exte seeming to be extremely concerned that
like a few windows were broken and that a cop
car got torched. This this is and you know this,
this is this is less than a week after Martin
Luther King day. Um, this is you know this is.

(01:36:42):
The big quote was that the police chief a few
hours later declared that breaking windows and starting fires is terrorism,
which is a wild thing for a police chief to say.
As the mayor stands behind nodding in agreement, it's one
of the most fascist things that we've that has that

(01:37:04):
has occurred in the United States. You cannot understate like
the severity of yeah, like this, the severity of this,
of this change in the types of framing by the
state to describe civil disobedience, to describe property destruction, to
describe vandalism as a form of of of domestic terrorism
is is appalling. Um. I mean, if if this, if

(01:37:30):
this holds up, then in states where this is done,
there is effectively no longer any right to protest. Yeah,
And I mean, and we'll get into some some of
the details of this in a bit, even in this
in this episode, Um, and I think the the other
side of this is that this is something that I've
heard people talk about here on the ground, is that

(01:37:51):
if if breaking windows is terrorism, right, if if if
if the destruction of inanimate objects is terrorism, what what
exactly is destroying an entire forest like this is? This
is like the juxtaposition that people are dealing with on
the ground right now. So the end, the result of

(01:38:13):
this is that we got six people who not six
people who were to be clear arrested completely at random.
This this was very clear. Police were tackling anyone they
could get their hands on. They were not doing targeted arrests.
They were not going after specific individuals who they suspected
of of like actually doing crimes. Um they were. They
were tackling random people, as is kind of usual for

(01:38:36):
these sorts of things. But they have gotten a series
of ridiculous charges um riot, arson, interviewing, interfering with government property,
and also domestic terrorism and domestics. So this is domestic terrorism,
not even for people that are like in the forest,
just people protesting out on the street. Ums were broken,

(01:38:59):
when windows broken, there's no evidence of this. The bail
hearings were today as of being recorded. This is this
is Monday, but bail hearings were today the judge. The
judge for the hearings specifically said that these hearings are
not to litigate the facts of the issue. What actually
happened doesn't matter. There's there's obviously no evidence to support

(01:39:21):
that any of these people arrested did any crimes. There's
there's no evidence that that shows that the specific people
arrested did anything beyond marching in the street. And that
does not matter. That that that simply does does not matter.
The brutality is the point in this case. To two
people have had their bail set at three hundred and

(01:39:43):
fifty five thousand dollars each, So that's over seven hundred
thousand dollars for just two people's bail. The other four
people arrested were deemed to be from out of state
by the judge and then thus a flight risk, including
people that are just like less than ninety minutes away
in Tennessee. And again this this is like where people

(01:40:04):
are born, there's this, there's this there's this sense that
like people no longer have freedom to choose where they live,
that people like no longer have any freedom of movement,
that they no longer have the autonomy to go to
two different places. You know, this is this is like
in line with the outside agitator angle that's been being
pushed by governments and media ever since, especially since this

(01:40:27):
is in line with that sort of stuff. But because
these people were deemed non local or a flight risk,
these people are not getting any bond at all. These
people are going to be held in jail. Definitely, it
could this, This could literally be years. The legal system
is so slow and like being held in prison in

(01:40:49):
jail for for years with no evidence presented that you
did literally anything wrong. Um. I've talked with a lot
of people, people from Solidarity Fund, which will I'll mention
here at the end, and and you know, just just
people around like what they're you know with people are

(01:41:09):
getting arrested with no evidence and getting you know, indefinite
time in prison, hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars
to be released, like the the the obvious abuse of
power by the state, UM the year audacity and uh,
you know the extreme danger that if these, if these
are able to to to stick and hold is incredibly

(01:41:32):
frightening for any any kind of future, um, any future
civil rights movement at all. Like this, it might say
that it's the strategic use of terror in order to
achieve a political One might say that, and I mean
it's we're in Atlantic, the streets they're marching on, there's
banners of Martin Luther King hanging above us like it's

(01:41:56):
it's incredibly frustrating. The Solidarity Fund, which we interviewed on
the show literally days before that, well with the episode
released days before the killing of Tortuguita. UM. But the
Alliance Solidarity Fund is providing both legal support and UM
and and and bail for people arrested for political actions.
The previous amount needed to bail out people was over

(01:42:19):
a hundred thousand dollars, which is a lot of money,
and now just just for two people, it's seven thousand
more dollars. So the Atlanta Solidarity Fund desperately needs funds
to continue supporting people and to continue resisting state repression. UM.
We'll talk about this more once I have my Deep

(01:42:40):
Died episodes out on this topic. But it's it's crucial
that that if if if anyone cares about people's right
to protest, to people's people's you know, ability to resist
state violence. UM, then it's it's absolutely crucial that that
people support the solidarity on right now. Ah. Just just

(01:43:03):
today I went to another another kind of vigil UM
at Emery College here in Atlanta. More more people were
sharing stories of tort Um. One person was reading out
a letter that they sent to sent to their UM
comrades in Italy who are setting up a vigil as well.
There's been a good amount of international support, as I've

(01:43:26):
seen vigils from Germany, UM from Italy. There's been there's
been events, demos, rallies, UM direct actions and vigils all
across the United States UM about to defend the land
of forest and about the killing of Tortoquita people. People
here absolutely do appreciate the solidarity. And the other thing

(01:43:50):
people are saying is that, I mean, all of these
tactics are meant to scare people away from the idea
of protesting and people are still needed on the ground here.
This fight is not This fight is not over, UM,
this is this is not this is not the end.
You know, Tactics may have to change, tactics may have
to shift, people may have to approach things from from

(01:44:10):
UM you know, different angles. But it's not over, and
there's there's people have said that there's still a need
for you know, for support, rules, for people on the ground,
for people to be in Atlanta, because it's not done.
I mean, I think there's a lot of sentiment on
the left that what's happening in the Atlanta Forest defense

(01:44:31):
is probably the most important radical action going on in
the country right now. And I think there's a few
reasons for that. Um not just the fact that the
forest that is going to be torn down for cops
city is a crucial part of the city of Atlanta's
tree cover, and that all of this ties into both
the impossibility of actually combating climate change under the present

(01:44:56):
system and the complicity of the police in in making
it impossible to combat that um or even to mitigate
it in many cases. But but I think what you've
gotten to is probably the most direct the most directly
frightening thing about what's going on in Atlanta, and the
thing that's most relevant to the future of any kind

(01:45:17):
of resistance in this country, which is, um, the the
gloves are are coming off right the the this is
this is not going to be the last time that
state security forces use the fact that terrorism has a
special place in American law and that crimes that are

(01:45:39):
deemed to be terrorism, Um, open up the ability of
the government to act in ways that they normally are
not supposed to be able to act. Um, Like that
is going to be It's not going to be just
forest defenders that gets used on. It's going to be
anyone who ever carries out any kind of act of
protest that has a chance of setting the balance of power,

(01:46:02):
um in this country. Like, that's that's where this is headed.
And UM, it's a bummer. Do you want to talk
a little bit about the role of the media in this,
because that is something that is I'm certain going to
be of We just had a thing today where some

(01:46:22):
weirdo lefties on the true and on subreddit decided and
someone on Twitter decided to accuse me of getting a
bunch of people in Atlanta arrested for terrorism because I
interviewed them on camera. I've I've never interviewed anyone in Atlanta,
I said, I simply have never worked there. Um. I'm
not sure where the rumors started, but it's it's reigniting
this kind of debate about it seems it seems like

(01:46:44):
tanky stuff. It's it's it's it's nonsense, But it has reignited,
and I saw this on the it could happen here subreddit,
people talking about like, um, obviously, you know this is nonsense,
but it is a you know, looking at these terrorism charges,
it's a simple fact that activists should never talk to press.
And um, obviously a lot of these arrests had nothing

(01:47:05):
to do with anyone talking to the media. Like folks
were present at a riot and the cops were tackling folks.
That's that's nobody but the cops's fault. But there's a
there's a there's a conversation to be had about what
is the what is the smart balance in terms of
getting pr and getting press coverage and getting word of

(01:47:28):
mouth about a radical movement and the fact that doing
that will inevitably ramp up pressure. Like that is that
is a reality that when when radical activists get attention
from the media, the state cracks down. Now does that
mean that the media is responsible for the movement getting

(01:47:49):
cracked down or does it simply mean that the cops
judge whether or not something's a threat by the amount
of press that it's getting. You know, the the this
is this is an ongoing like thing. People they're going
to be talking about in a lot of ways. It's
a continuation of conversations people were having in But I'm
interested in because when you went over there, we had

(01:48:10):
a little a few hours of debate after it became
clear that the cops had killed a forest defender over like, Okay,
what's the right thing to do? Should should Garrison head
over to Atlanta? Um? Should we have some boots on
the ground for this, because you've been covering it for
so long and one of the things you pointed out
is that there was a call for media coverage from

(01:48:30):
people who were on the ground in Atlanta. Yes, this
is something I will get born into when I go
in depth with this for an upcoming episode, probably probably
probably a two parter um. That's this is a conversation
that people are constantly having in Atlanta. This is a
conversation I've been having with people NonStop ever since coming here,
ever since before coming here. I you know, this is

(01:48:52):
something I don't want to just parachute into someone else's city.
I had conversations with multiple people before before coming over.
There's a few aspects to this. The amount of people
doing stuff, and you know how many people are in
the forest, not a not a giant number of people.
There's not hundreds of people living in the woods. There's
there's not there's there's not there's not tons of people. Um. Uh.

(01:49:15):
An intentional media strategy has been a part of this
movement since the beginning. UM, even among the insurrectionary anarchists
who are here. Uh, this is this has been something
that people have been you know, working on as as
a part of a decentralized movement, having conversations about. Uh.

(01:49:35):
There's been a lot of There's been coverage in the
Rolling Stone that people here seem to be pretty happy with. UM. Yeah,
it was very and the Guardian also published. People have
been people have been pretty happy article. People have been
very pretty happy with coverage from the Guardian. Um, there's
a people have been pretty happy with some stuff from
a J plus. Um. People have been um, decent lee

(01:50:00):
happy with the work that I've done on this. But
based on many conversation dozens and dozens of conversations I
have I've had with people here. UM, Ultimately, I don't
for what for what cops are doing in the forest.
I don't think there seems to be a clear correlation
between media coverage happening of stuff of of you know,

(01:50:24):
the movement and cops response to the forest. There doesn't,
there does, there's no linked timeline there. Cops are doing
stuff in the forest because they want the forest clearance
that they can build their police training, their police training facility.
From what I've talked with people, the amount of pressure
that has been caused by media covering the forest has
not only elongated the construction process, elongated the the amount

(01:50:47):
that stuff that they're that they're able to do. It's
it is, it has it has made it harder because
this is this this is not a very popular proposal.
Even even before the encampments started, it was estimated that,
like people in Atlanta were not for this, we're not
for the construction of this facility. So I think people
people make a lot of intentional media choices. That's not

(01:51:09):
to say that there isn't also um intentionally harmful actors
who are trying to frame this as Atlanta burning down
Atlanta and disorder Antifa taking over sections of Atlanta. That
is absolutely another part of it. But there's a very
people here have a very clear distinction between between um

(01:51:29):
bad actors between people who are you know, providing accurate, fair,
coverage of what's going on. UM, and then you know
people who are just out to profit, which is you know,
like a lot of like local TV channels. UM, there's there.
I think stuff that happened on the protests on Saturdays
is a good example. There's this far right account that
I'm not going to name, um at least not yet.

(01:51:52):
I might. I might talk about it in the future.
UM who you know, tries to collect information on on protesters.
They had there, They have someone on the on two films.
They also a really good aggregate of like random people's
instagram and TikTok's or snapchats of you know, filming filming
people from unfortunate angles. UM. The local local TV like Fox,

(01:52:12):
like the like the local Fox news station, you know,
tries to get as much sensational footage of crimes as possible.
And you know, people people, to the best their ability,
well you know, try to try to block them off
with like umbrellas if they see that happening, but you know,
you can it's it's me. There's definitely a clear tension
that people in the movement do not want the media

(01:52:34):
narratives around this to solely be decided by the state
and be decided against people who are in clear opposition
to them. That is, that is absolutely something that people
are putting and putting attention in. Uh. They just that's
because that that creates a lot of really really harmful scenarios.
Because there's the state itself is already a pretty powerful

(01:52:56):
propaganda machine. Already a lot of local news just agitates
state talking points. Right, this is the idea of the
fourth Estate. There is does seem to be a pretty
a distinction between stuff like the fourth Estate and stuff
like the derivative idea of the fifth Estate of being
more of like the people's voice for for for for these,
for these sorts of movements. Also in that vein there's

(01:53:19):
stuff like the Atlanta People's Press, which is like decentralized
media collective UM run by a lot of like rad
people who who who helped to coordinate media coverage, who
helped to coordinate UM stuff with I mean they have
they have worked with people, They've worked with us on
our on the on the history of the old Atlanta

(01:53:42):
prison farm. So I would say there's a lot of
thought put into media strategy UM and not like in
like a Libby like optics way, but like actual effective
media strategy that will improve material conditions and will help
push the goals of the movement forward, the goal being

(01:54:02):
that the construction of cop City does does not continue.
So there's a lot of thought going into that and
they and that is viewed as another like that that
is another wing of of the effort. Right, There's there's
stuff like the encampments, there's stuff like sabotage, there's stuff
like protests. There's stuff like you know, like a a
very above board stuff you know that like very u

(01:54:24):
you know, like a of above grand organizations will do
like you know, writing campaigns, calling campaigns and media strategy
is another angle of this because to completely give up
the public perception of what's going on to the state
is seen as a bad thing. So, but this is
this is absolutely a contentious topic. I think people in

(01:54:47):
Atlanta have a lot of nuanced conversations about this, and
media stuff is handled with a lot more intention here
than it has been in the Pacific Northwest. Um, that
is my that is my subject of opinion. But based
on based on it's a smaller community, so I think
maybe it's easier. It does seem like there's more solidarity

(01:55:08):
within the community and a shared vision. I wouldn't say
that's true. There is the community is forced to reinforce itself.
It is small enough that it cannot treat people as disposable. Um.
It needs to maintain the people that it has. And
so people work through problems, people work through conflicts and
ways to actually resolve it and keep going to build
everyone up and make them stronger. There's a shared community

(01:55:31):
space which I've I've been to a few times, um,
and I think even just something like that is so
is so useful in being able to actually keep something
that resembles a community. You see a lot of anarchists,
um talk about how like community isn't a real thing.
There isn't actually community, um, you know. Or and in

(01:55:53):
a lot of places, I would say that's that's true.
A lot of places are just click driven, um you know, uh,
drama it it honestly gets towards or like interesting conflict
if if you don't want to use sword drama um.
Whereas circular firing squad type ship. Yeah. Whereas here there
is such a feeling of actual community like that that

(01:56:15):
actually is a thing here because people are forced to
foster it. We're in the South we're surrounded where you
know you're you're surrounded by a lot of people who
want to hurt you. Um, Atlanta is the most surveilled city.
There's so many different police forces. There's a police force
for Fulton County, the police force for De Cab County,
it's a police force for Atlanta. There's the Georgia State Patrol.
There's the Georgia Buer of Investigation. There's the Georgia Department

(01:56:37):
of Homeland Security. There's so many people, so many agencies
are involved in this. There's so much, so much outwards
um threats to people that you really are forced to
keep people, uh, keep people close and and trust the
people around you because the consequences are quite dire. UM.
So people take things very seriously and they put a

(01:56:58):
lot of thought into into a lot of into a
lot of things. Yeah, that makes sense. I mean that
that also jells with my own experience in the South. Right,
it's it's easier to find communities of people who are
um doing anything kind of radical because there's that that

(01:57:21):
bunker mentality. Right, you're under siege, you're surrounded on all sides,
and um, you know that that's very different when you
go to a place where there's kind of more like
what what would be in other places, deviancy is more
than norm um. And yeah, I guess that that is
probably has a lot to do with the fact that

(01:57:42):
this forest defense has so far been so successful in
delaying the construction of this facility which it which it
has construction construction deadlines continue to have been passed and
been passed and been passed. It has the very least
showed that stuff like this can be resisted and significantly delayed.
And at this point they're projecting construction won't be complete

(01:58:04):
for about four more years. And again these deadlines keep
getting pushed back and back, and that is really what
the movement is trying to do, keep these deadlines getting
pushed back and back until they just give up on
the project or try to put it somewhere else. And
if they try to put somewhere and if they try
to put it somewhere else, then the forest was defended.
But then there's still the top cop city aspect of
being like, yeah, it can go somewhere else, but we

(01:58:26):
we don't want it there at all. And then at
that point the movement would change, you know, very significantly.
But in terms of the defend the Atlanta Forest aspect
of this. Right, the whole goal is to make to
make this as unenticing as possible. UM. And there's a
multitude of strategies involved in that UM, including stuff like propaganda,
madget prop media strategy, sabotage, direct action calling campaigns, stuff

(01:58:51):
about pressuring the construction agencies, all all those sort of things.
That's so much more because what you're talking about is
is what we call, in sort of calm flick studies,
a strategy of friction, right, UM, and and so much
there's so always so much focus on kind of these
like we had in Portland, and these like grand moments

(01:59:12):
that are are very visually spectacular of resistance, but what
actually what actually wins Because the state has the ability
to take a lot of hits, it is a it
is a durable force. And if you're going up against
a durable force, the only way to win victories is
to be durable yourself and to wear away at them.

(01:59:33):
It's it's friction, UM. And I think that's like, that's
still the winning play is to keep up pressure. It's
just the kinds of pressure, especially now that they've cleared
out the tree sitters and stuff. And now that we've
seen what they're going to do to people who are
arrested at demonstrations, the kinds of friction that completely be

(01:59:54):
applied have to change otherwise the movement's going to get
worn down before the state does. In this fight. Something
that Tortuguita has said is that the state is very
good at doing violence. We we cannot we we cannot
beat the state at violence. The states, the state will
probably win that game. That's that's that's the entire point

(02:00:16):
of the state that like, the state has a monopoly
on violence. That is the entire point. They will win that. Um.
But there but there are other ways where we can
see successes, and we have seen successes before. UM. So
it's not over. It will probably grow and change. UM

(02:00:37):
what actually happens will remain to be seen. But I
am um just I'm prepping to go through a whole
bunch of my audio files and uh and and and
piece and piece together kind of a pretty pretty distinct
deep dive. That is, it is a true a true
successor to the to the original on the ground at

(02:00:59):
the Defend the Atlanta Force episodes that I did last
May so well, I look forward to that. I'm sure
I know everyone else's as well. Um, thank you for
going over there and uh and being in the thick
of it, and um, yeah, we'll we'll continue to cover
this story as best we can. But whatever comes in

(02:01:19):
the future, all right, I think that's an episode. Welcome
to Dick It happened here, a podcast about things falling

(02:01:40):
apart and how to put them back together again. I'm
your host, me along and today I am returning to
my roots and the ceed criminal anarchist hacker underground, which
has gotten much less ceed and somehow even more gay
since I was last there and with with me to
talk about this is Maya Arson Crime You who is
most recently famous is the person who owned an airline

(02:02:02):
so hard they got a copy of the fucking no
flight list, which is yeah, just just first any things. Yeah, so, Maya,
how how are how are you? How are you doing?
Being deluged with when Trilli an interview requests and um,
so yeah, it's not my first time experiencing like a

(02:02:23):
big news cycle, but this is certainly the biggest one yet.
It's I'm surprised that this is bigger than the one
life Happy for with other stories. Yeah, but I feel
like becoming a transfermime. At the same time, I have
like a national security new cycle going on probably helped
a bit. I'm I'm I'm very happy for weed Cat,

(02:02:44):
like that that that that cat did, like that every
every single other thing that has happened to weed Cat
is like done that thing dirty. But I'm happy for Yeah,
we kind is now just like a hacking icon and
I'm so here for it. Did he see like like
like just like like fifteen minutes before we got uncalled
there's now a like Bengle meme from the SCP Foundation

(02:03:06):
on Oh my god, they commissioned an artist to make
a like it has just turned into a thing now
like that that's the way. It's so good. It's not
even it's not even like the whole hacking story anymore.
It's just the fact that I tingled into a meme
like how how Yeah, and especially that Bengal turned into
a meme because that started as a like discord in

(02:03:28):
joke like that that's all it was. And now it's
the name of this cat. But okay, so we should
explain for it for people, for people who don't know
what this cat is. This is the Pokemon spriggary sprig.
How do you? I don't know how to properly pronounce it.
It's it's Italian. I'm under no obligation to pronounce an
Italian sounding thing correctly. It's fine. Yeah, it's the wheat cat.

(02:03:55):
Like wheat cat and Bengle are now the only two
acceptable names for this that the Yeah, but in in
in in the blog where you went through and talked
about how you got the no filist by owning this thing,
you posted a picture of of of this. Yeah, I
did actually like take that picture while I was like

(02:04:16):
hacking this stuff and like talking in some like small
friends discord about it, and I just posted that together
with like the phrase this aviation should get serious. That's
why that's also in the blog. I expected that to
become the meme that blows up that this aviation ship
gets serious, because that's just so stupid. Yeah, but I

(02:04:37):
guess Bengle it is. And that's funny because yeah, it
was just an in choke nonsense word and now the
entire world knows about it and it's like a transferm thing.
It rules, it rules. Yeah, So okay, I guess we
should talk about what actually you did, so I I
am not a very technical person. I'm out here defined

(02:04:57):
like defying transcise stereotypes by such being asset coding. Um So,
my my understanding of what happened is you were browsing
a list of servers that are cocking to the Internet
that you can use through sort of like various search
engines that do this, and you stop. You stumbled upon
the server that belongs to commute Air and then they

(02:05:18):
just like I had a bunch of hard coded privileges there,
and like us, it's it's still it's still funny to me.
How Like I realized what it was because I saw,
like there word eight cars and stuff, and I was like, wait,
that that reminds me of like mentor Pilot YouTube videos,
because of course I'm an autistic transfer and binge watch

(02:05:39):
mentor Pilot while eating dinner. Um So, so that is
the only reason I clocked it as like an aviation thing,
and that's something I should dig into deeper, because, like
you can imagine, like while I'm going through these search results,
I'm looking at like hundreds of servers in a day,
and most of the stuff I decided is boring or
it was too easy to hack, so I'm not going
further because I have a h d um So yeah,

(02:06:02):
and then this cause it was like, wait, that's an
aviation word. I've heard that before. Um, So I take
a little deeper and there were just passwords there, and
and then like two minutes after I found that server,
I was looking at like a car's messages, as in
like messaging between ground stations and the airplanes, and that

(02:06:24):
was just like, yeah, this is a story, and started
tweeting about it, looking for journalists to work with because
with stories like this, I like to work with journalists
from the very start because I want to make sure
it doesn't get wiped under the rock when I reported
to a company. So I make sure that when I
do reach out and get things fixed, I reach out
via journalists so that the company's not yet this is

(02:06:46):
being reported on, so they can't be like, yeah, we
will fix it under the condition that you never tell
anyone about our bad security. Because like the whole point
of what I'm doing is exposing like the security issues,
but also exposing yeah, with a political background at the
end of the day. Yeah, And I guess like another thing,
I don't I don't know how many people sort of

(02:07:07):
are aware of this. But like another thing that has
happened with people who have tried to go to companies
and been like, hey, here's the security thing is like
the company tries to like go after them criminally, like immediately,
which sucks. Ass end is the worst. Yeah, so so
so from that stand but it doesn't even matter if
I like do it, like this are actually reported to them,

(02:07:28):
But this way I get to talk about the publicly
and like that's important, not because I'm on cloud, like
I don't mind the cloud, but like yeah, yeah, and
so okay, so uh, there's there's been a lot of
focus on the fact that you found the no fly

(02:07:48):
list on there, which is very funny. But okay, why
like okay, one thing I'm trying to figure out why
was there? Why were there just message used from like
ground cruise to airplane just like sitting around on this
random server that's just like the exposed to the internet, right,
so the messages weren't directly on that server, but like

(02:08:09):
it's the server where they like for testing purposes, like
I don't know how much I can understand really, but
where they like test the software automatically. And and so
there's all, and because of how they configured the server,
I could just have access to all the source code,
which included lots of passwords for example, for like the

(02:08:30):
server that then had the car's messages on it. Okay,
but yeah, or access credentials for APIs that would have
followed me to update the crew and are which like,
if you think about that's almost the bigger story that
ye like at least theoretically could have been able to
change crew cruise because like that's the real terrorism risk. Yeah,

(02:08:56):
like if I'm just like if I'm just allowed to
spell it out like that, like that, that's the dream
of any Yeah. Yeah, like I mean, you know, you know,
like I'm One of the things you were talking about
when when you're writing about this was that like journalists
thought that you were the one who had like caused
all of the flight delays. It was like, no, that
was just their computer breaking. No, But yeah, like that

(02:09:16):
was just funny because I didn't even know the thing
with yes, with the f a A happened. But I
was like tweeting about, oh, I have a big aviation
story any churnal that's interested it's like a security breach,
and people were like, wait, what did you two to
the f A A And it was like hot, what
f A A. Oh so that happened, Like I am
still not up to date in US anymore. Yeah, I

(02:09:38):
mean so for people who don't know what that story is.
So basically, the Federal Aviation Administration had a computer problem.
It was very the very very short version data computer
problem and this grounded like a ship ton of flights
because the huge like computer bottlenecks where if you know,
it was we saw this over like like like last
month when there was that when all of those flights

(02:09:59):
got down by uh Southwestern because the computer system just
went down. It's it's the same thing except us y. Yeah,
but it's it's just funny because yeah, I first found
this server like exactly the day after Like that was
literally a day after the f a A incident, So
people were rightly assuming that that was me, which it

(02:10:21):
obviously wasn't, but like it would have been cool. Yeah,
But it's also like it is very disturbed to be
like this kind of stuff is just sitting there and
like someone yeah could just like theoretically going and screw
with all of this stuff, which is like and then
also the fact that like there was just all of
like the personal information of all of the pilots on there,
Like what the hell like that is? Yeah that yeah,

(02:10:43):
it was terrifying. Yeah, it's it is crazy how much
stuff is just out there, and like that's part of
what I tried to show with my work. It's just, yeah,
there's so much stuff out there and it's just waiting
to be found. And I both mean that in terms
of like, yeah, you can find ship if you try to,
but also in the sense of things are not secure,

(02:11:04):
Like yeah, like all the systems are like entire life
depend on nowadays, not none of those systems are really secure.
They're entirely dependent on like one system administrator who doesn't
get paid enough. Our entire like computer systems depend on
like a bunch of furies being motivated enough to do

(02:11:25):
their work. Uh So, basically, like the moral of the
story is pay furies well. And yeah, yeah, and this
is probably looking everything that I was thinking about when
I was looking at this, which is like, you know, okay,
so like when when when I was like a teenager,
Like one one of the things I think I was
the most wrong about that I believed was like I
actually genuinely believed that like automating cars was a good

(02:11:48):
idea because humans are really really bad at driving. And
then and then, and then I had to learn the program,
and I had to like see scientists code, and I
had to I I I opened a program and there's
a section of it that no one knows how it works.
And I look, I look at the notes, and the
notes say, I don't I didn't write this. I don't
know how it works. This is produced. This is produced
at four am on like like seven billigrams of caffeine.

(02:12:10):
And that's like, yeah, on at least caffeine, if not
the Yeah, well these are these were astronomers, so I
I think it was actually just a lot of caffeine
and not means but yeah, like you know. And then
I had the realization the only single thing that we
as humans are worse at than driving is coding exactly, yeah,

(02:12:32):
we are. We are even worse at that. And then
the other thing we're also very bad at is labeling data,
which is like the whole thing machine learning is dependent,
like because like the entire intelligence of like an automateive car,
like a self driving car, is entirely dependent on how
intelligent the like underpaid workers and Kenya are getting paid

(02:12:53):
like two bucks an hour to label things as car, human,
and child and then make moral this sessions of whether
or not those should get run over. Um like yeah,
like this is you know what one of one of
my sort of political things that I'm coming to is
I I think the only person people who should be
allowed to do machine learning are astronomers, and no one
else should be allowed to do it. And even they

(02:13:15):
know because they have to. They like they have a
legitimate reason, which is that like they actually a they're
doing a bunch of big dates, like most of astronomy
is just big data analysis and then be like the
the the analysis itself doesn't really hurt anyone. Uh, you
you can argue about putting the telescopes, but like you're not,
You're not, Like yeah, just like anything that involves humans

(02:13:36):
probably yeah, also involves AI in anyone. Yeah that's terrible idea,
but yeah, I guess, I guess. Okay, So circling back
around to the point I was going to make and
then forgot distracted talking about AI because such as the world.
Um yeah, so you know, it's really remarkable to me,
like how little technical skill you need to just like

(02:13:56):
absolutely own enormous corporations and governments and you know. But
but the other thing that that that struck me about this,
that I've been thinking about for a while is that, like, Okay,
on the one hand, you have how easy hacking is,
like like this server stuff is like easier than the
stuff that I remember back in the day, which is
a lot of like people like you, someone somewhere long

(02:14:19):
ago in a galaxy far far away wrote like a
script and then you just copy and paste it into
like every single text box on a web page, and
like that's I think, like that's probably maybe like more
hackery quote unquote than just like looking through a list
of servers. But like even that is like the level
of technical sophistication is so low or or you know,
you don't need technically it's just needs to be stupid

(02:14:42):
enough to pull it up. Like yeah, but but you know,
but the thing that I realized about this and I
was thinking about this was like, on the one hand,
the level technical sophistication for this is extreme below. On
the other hand, one of the sort of like like
one of one of the sort of trends of the
way capitalism has been distributing digital technology, which is sort
of by apping it, like by by which has been
packing it into apps and these closed guarding ecosystems and

(02:15:04):
like putting uys in between you and like what like
you and what's actually happening in your computer has been
you know, it's it's been designing a way to make
a quote unquote consumer friendly, but also it's been designed
away such like successive generations of computer users just have
less and less knowledge of how their devices technology actually work. Yeah,

(02:15:25):
that's like like there's that whole thing of like about
how how like younger kids just don't understand the concept
of faults anymore because like that's completely abstracted away on
like smartphones. Yea chromebook in particularly, which I I genuinely
think we need to ban chromebooks and schools like just
just like for for for the sake of human Yeah,

(02:15:48):
it's awful, Like, oh god, they're the worst. Yeah, I
don't know, Like at the end of today, That's what
I wanted to say earlier about like how easy it
is to hack all the paper operations and stuff. And
it's just like the answers are asked to why it's
just capitalism, It's it's cheaper not to deficit about cybersecurity.
It's cheaper to just pay when you get hacked than

(02:16:09):
to like secure your ship upfront, because like the only
people that will really suffer is like your customers and
your empathies, and they can forget your your shareholders, they're
gonna be just fine, you know. And you look at
the way the regulatory structure works is like, okay, so
what what what happens if you get in trouble of
something like this? Will the government takes a cut? That's it? Yeah, Yeah,

(02:16:30):
that's that's it. Like it's literally, it's it's literally like
you can budget getting there. There is cyber insurance now
you can get insured against getting hacked. Like like it's
it's just capitalism out of work. And I feel like
one of the things that one of the things that
journalists have sort of I don't know and I understand
why they focus on it, but I feel like there's

(02:16:51):
a lot of focus in in sort of like intech
journalism and journalism on sort of hacking stuff in like
the really big sophisticated like stut necks or what was
the what was the more recent one I can remember, Like, yeah,
like the were the really sort of convoluted trawling program
and things that like you know, take nation state level
of resources and it's like, well, yeah, you know this.
This was always the thing with like the with like

(02:17:12):
the n s A, to where it's like, well, okay,
so the the the the the the the. On the
on the one hand, the n s A does have
enough money to like spend like fifty million dollars factoring
one numbers like a break a bunch of encryption. On
the other hand, like they can't just force us companies
and and also give them access. And also like I
don't know they can they can get most of this

(02:17:32):
information because like some server admin in like a farm
in like the middle of world, Nebraska, like misconfigured a file,
like misconfigured a server. So like, you know, I don't know.
That's so that's what I find funny about the things
I find because I like almost exclusively go for like
the low hanging fruit, because like, why why would I
invest more effort when I can get the really big

(02:17:55):
scoops like this. And also sometimes sometimes I do kind
of think about how, hey, you know, like maybe I
just cut off access to the CIA. Maybe this was
like how the CIA got this access. Maybe maybe the
n s A was here obviously most likely not in
most cases, but it's just a funny little thought of
like who did I just kind of access by reporting this?

(02:18:17):
I will say this, like I can't imagine that there
isn't someone at the n s A and there isn't
someone at the CIA whose job it is to do
exactly the same thing you do and like scrolling server
list every day, like absolutely like like like that. That's
why by now I you sue my like for the surgeon,
since there's Showdown, which is like the famous U S one,
which is why I still always say I found it
on show them, even though by now I use because

(02:18:39):
Showdown has like half of like all U S I
P centered and they have an artificial delay between finding
the servers and showing them to you and have really
bad search. And I'm pretty sure it's just because at
one point the US government got upset because they kept
getting yeah uh and so yeah, but like the Chinese
are very a link to give me all the that's

(02:19:03):
that they too centsor a lot of Chinese I P
s though, but I think a lot of that was
so I was I was trying to figure out why
that name was relation. But then I had this, I
remembered that there was a story where some researcher did
like almost the exact same thing you did to a
Chinese security company and found out that they were doing
I guess what, exactly the same ship the U. S.
Government was doing, which was using using a bunch of

(02:19:24):
valance cameras to spy on Muslims. And it was like, well,
this is great. Yeah, it's it's always like like it's
always appointing and doing the same thing behind the scenes,
like yeah, okay, so we unfortunately going to have to
take an ad break. I yeah, but then once we
returned from capitalism, we will go back to opposing capitalism.

(02:19:46):
Welcome to all right, and we're back. Yeah, so speaking
of any capitalism that that was another thing I wanted
to sort of talk about, which is said, okay, so
like long long, long ago, in a galaxy far far away,
little little little baby, fifteen year old Mia was radicalized,
like back back, back back when I was overthrowing trying
to overthrow my first government. It was um, a lot

(02:20:09):
a lot of it was being in the same spheres,
a lot of sort of anaitist hackers that were in
the sort of like loose anonymous sphere. But you know,
by by like sixteen, like that stuff was kind of
falling apart, like partially because of in fighting, partially because
of FED infiltration, partially because you know, like everyone arrested. Yeah, yeah,
all the big players have been arrested like three years

(02:20:29):
p yeah, and and you know, and the other thing
that was going on too, I think was like Anonymous,
like it's politics were always really incoherent. Like you you've
had I don't know, you're just like everywhere. Like the
thing I remember was there was a big split between
like basically the fascist and the anarchists between like like
over Trump specifically, Like yeah, I think the thing with

(02:20:52):
Anonymous is just like the way it started to just started.
That's just like a group of trap was like, well
okay that bic just to say, like, I mean, it
makes instead. Anonymous is the way it is and has
been the way it has been. I think it's still
like important that it exists and that it motivates people. Uh,
Like I have been involved with Anonymous before. There's the

(02:21:14):
one thing I can talk about with like Operation mean
Mar where we did like support things. Um that was
shortly before my indictment. But yeah, it's it's interesting like
Anonymous brings people together to do operations and that's what
they do, and they can do pr for stuff. Uh yeah,

(02:21:34):
I don't want to like to talk down on them,
Yeah no, but I think, like I think, especially especially
like in life, when I was got involved with Chilse' thirteen,
it was like like it was it was a lot different,
like it was you know, like a yeah, it was.
It was. It was like a thing. And also it
wasn't just like like it wasn't just that it was

(02:21:55):
sort of like Okay, we're like we're like trolling, trolling
a government by taking down their web pages or whatever,
like they were actually sort of there was like there
was real coordination between like people like you know, revolutionaries
on the ground in like Egypt, Uran, Brazil and not
like that does still happen, Yeah, that does still happen,
it's just less of a public thing. Like that's what
we did in in as well as where we did

(02:22:18):
communications with people on the ground where we helped them
communicate among each other, where we helped them keep the
Internet got up even when the government tried to turn
it off, other fund other other fun shenanigans like that,
and also archival and that like just in case some
kids that does decide to eat us literally every web
page in the country, which is mostly nonsensical, but like, yeah,

(02:22:42):
but I do find it interesting how like yeah, there's
like the twenty twelve twenty generation that was mostly anonymous
tone terminated and now we're in like this new generation
where it's just small little groups. Yeah, and I wanted
to talk about that because it's much more decentralized. I
don't know, it's weird to talk about it because at
the end of the day, I inspired a lot of it,

(02:23:03):
which is really weird to say. It's so weird to
say that. I like, but yeah, I'm kind of part
of what revived activism and it sounds so so pretentious
of me to just say that myself, but like, yeah, no,
it is kind of what happened, and like yeah, and
like that that was what was interesting to be too,

(02:23:24):
because it was it was very like I don't know,
like the the US and twelve stuff was also like
it was very very I guess media centered in a
way where it was it was about drawing, like drawing
masses of people into things and then using it to
sort of get media attention, using it to sort of like,
I don't know, be be this sort of like online

(02:23:45):
like also this sort of like online social movements in
a way that I think it's very different than the
modern stuff. So this is my conception of it, though,
because I've also been kind of like, I don't know,
I was off doing other stuff in twenty nineteen that
had nothing to do with this. So yeah, I'm I'm curious. Well, okay,
so I'm curious a like, how how you see the

(02:24:09):
politics of these new groups either sort of as different
from what came before it. I think it's hard for
a lot of the groups, it's hard to like see
what their politics are, and some of them aren't even
Like there's things like Lapses that aren't specifically doing activism,
but they're accidentally doing anti corporate activism by just making

(02:24:31):
everything like uh, that's like groups that are like in
the way that they operate are very clear and inspired
by my work that I used to do um and
they're just not very like political per se. They but
but I still call them activists because even if it
might not be their intention, they're doing activism, and they're

(02:24:51):
making corporations angry and wasting corporate resources, and in my book,
that counts as like activism and the fact that they
in a way fi for like freedom of information, even
if they might not be the goal. Yeah, I don't know,
I feel like that is the main unifying factor. Now
it's just a fight for information because like they're currently

(02:25:12):
like the single biggest active activist thing happening right now
since like twenty nineteen is just leaking the whole linkedivism
thing that happened before as well, but like now that's
like the main thing. Before it was often a lot
like just dedosing and stuff, but now we're so focused
and like getting documents, getting software, getting files, getting like

(02:25:35):
proof that things happened, getting fucking no fly list. It's
just it's just a very different environment, where like the
goals are probably about the same in a lot of ways,
at least for the people who do have an ideology.
But but like, yeah, I feel like it's just much
more focused on like releasing information into the free, which

(02:25:58):
I find really great. Like that that is kind of
my big fight that I tried to devote myself to. Yeah,
I wanted to ask also sort of just about your
personal anarchism, because I don't know, I like talking about
anarchism and yeah, everyone has their own. Um, I don't know,

(02:26:18):
it's it's it's a difficult question, and I feel my
answer to this question changes like every other thing. Um.
I especially find it hard because like I am like
doing work in very specific focus bits of like anarchists work,
and so I don't really want to lock myself into
like I'm sorry, So so it's it's like very fluid.
I'm just like obviously against states. I am like, I

(02:26:42):
don't know, it's it's hard. No no governments, no shitty
co operations, and it's just like having fun with friends
and being gay. That is like the rules we take
this is this is a good form of chasm. Yeah,
I don't know, it's just some form of queer anarchism. Yeah,

(02:27:03):
being gay doing crimes, it's a it's a good it's
a good thing. I guess in a way, like what
kind of defines me and what keeps getting me into
the spotlight is that I do just kind of have
like a very strong moral compass and I go by
that rather by what's legal or not legal or like
sure I try to stay with him like some safe boundaries,

(02:27:24):
especially now like post indictment, um, given that they're definitely
even more eyes on me now than than before and
this podcast is definitely being played at some NBR. Yeah,
there's there's there's ah, so that's something to consider, but like, yeah,

(02:27:44):
I feel like I feel like that's kind of what
I want to demonstrate this that like if you have morals,
you can't just stick by them, like no one is
stopping you from doing that. They might try to, but
like you can just stick with your morals. Yeah, and
I I think it's worth mentioning even like you know, okay,
like a lot of people go to prison for doing

(02:28:04):
stuff like this, some of them didn't like there there
there's like, to the best of my knowledge, there is
at least still one low set guy who's just in
the wind who they never got and like and low
sec like they they had a FED mole in the
group and one of these people still got away fox. Yeah. Yeah,
just so really don't do Savo's basically the guy that

(02:28:30):
the Fed's flipped inside of lo Sek who got everyonce
at the prison. Um. Like, like I do have to
say I kind of get why he flipped like he
at that point already had a family and stuff. But like,
I get that that is hard, but still, yeah, your friends, Yeah,
so you simply do not like like, I don't know,

(02:28:51):
and the fact that he still like has some sort
of image. Honestly, I don't know that it's just in commune.
It's uh, I don't know. It's it's interesting for sure,
but yeah, I can't come in too much a lot
of fun. There are a lot of funny chokes to
be made that I shouldn't. Yeah, the Feds suck. I'm

(02:29:16):
just gonna say that, like, oh god, it's it's been.
It's it's it's been. It's been a bad week of
Feds in the US too. Like yeah, honestly, just one
thing again. But I am so curious what's going to
happen with the Congression link. Yeah, I don't know if
you saw that, like, especially since like this means that

(02:29:38):
the Republicans are going to be exposed to my block
post presumably. Ah, And I am so excited for all
these larks they can come up with. It is going
to be extremely funny. But I'm also very excited for
like the Turfs to be like this is terrorism, see
right along. Yeah, yeah, I have gotten that before. I

(02:29:59):
have gotten terffre applies before on like articles about me
where they were like, see, no, women don't commit cry.
So this is clear proof that it's just like what
what are you talking about? This is this is my
male cheenes coming out. I always also like, man, like
do do you do? You do? You do? You know

(02:30:20):
what people? What people did? So you have the right
to vote, Like come on that, Like That's the funny
thing is that they at the same time also like
fetishizes the whole suffragette thing. Yeah, I think, no fucking
clue what that movement? Yeah, it's like no, no, no
suffragette what what whatever? Horsewhip, Richie suonac, no turf whatever,

(02:30:43):
unlike unlike the suffragettes, who Yeah, exactly, I don't know,
it's it's silly. I'm surprised how little harassment I've gotten
on Twitter so far if we exclude the whole by
lesbian this. Yeah, I'm so sorry for re start that this.
I think me talking about that single handedly restarted that this.

(02:31:05):
It just happened. It just happens periodically, Like yeah, yeah,
it's just funny because like I was just like, yeah,
this is gonna get me some hatred place. But like
within five minutes, I had twenty one private quote Yeah,
I mean like my, my my. I won't wake an
official statement on that, which is that if you give
a single ship about people calling themselves by lesbians, like,

(02:31:26):
please let me know so I can trade lives with you.
Like you you seem to have like very few problems
going on. I would love to like have grown up
in the world where like that's like that's the thing
that you think, Like, I don't know. I think it's
I think it's funny how there's people who were like
one thing to follow me wanting to interact with me

(02:31:49):
as like and it's it's uh fury and kitten who
like does uh funny things to the U. S. Government,
but then they draw the line at a specific sexuality. Yeah,
it's really like I I then made like a post
where I was like sorry, I deleted that I didn't.
I don't have the energy to deal with people getting

(02:32:09):
so upset over an innocent word, and that has gotten
so many many quote weeks being like yeah, and an
innocent word in question was by lesbian. I say if
I said, like the N word or something like that
was literally the kind of response I got. And it's
just like do you not have anything else to do?
Like like do you know how many people the cops

(02:32:30):
killed last week? Can you please do something like come
on and all the things are happening here right now,
Like especially then when some of the people that come
up with that are like non binary lesbians, which if
you know anything about this purity and discourse, like half
of the them would also like from the sounder the
pit because non binary lesbians also can't exist, and like

(02:32:53):
it's why are you why? Why are you fighting for
the turf? Like that? That is my one single question
that I have through all the fourteen year old careers
on Twitter dot com. Also, why did that Why did
that discourse ever escaped Tumbler? Like that was because all
the Tumbler because all the Tumbler refugees came to Twitter. Yeah,

(02:33:14):
but they could have left a discourse there. Yeah, but no,
the world I don't know Twitter, Twitter, Twitter in the
last like like okay, like twitter'sdress course has never been good,
but like in the last obviously it's just been getting
worse and it's it's yeah, it's just the same side,
like it's it's not even that it's just bad discourse.

(02:33:36):
It's just the same discourse every week, and I'm just
tired of it. And I guess now that I'm a
big account, I have to have an opinion on everything.
Um And also the fun part about being trans ever,
everyone is like like absolutely razor focused for like the
exact one word that you say wrong so they can act,

(02:33:58):
so they can like like legitimately uoteunquote beechan trobic at you.
And it's like this is great, Like this is a
great system that we've developed for existing with each other.
We could simply do this, Yeah, you can just say
like that. The fact that literally, like I was like,
I'm gonna see what happens if I say by lesbian
and then I can't wait twenty four followers, and and

(02:34:19):
the fact that it literally took seconds for people to
tell me to tell all their mutuals to unfollow me
because I'm highly problematic. Um was it was quite interesting
and someone was just like this has completely shattered my
world view, and I'm just like sorry, if your world
view gets shattered by my sexuality, you have some soul
seeking to do, like yeah, like like like like like

(02:34:43):
like actually, like like I grew, I grew like like
for some of them. For some people, me saying the
phrase by lesbian was genuinely like my milkshake doc moment. Yeah,
it was like it was like a second it's called
a second sexuality description as hit the towers, like it was, yeah,

(02:35:07):
that's so like god, it was like five am when
I made that tweet. It was just like, oh, I'm
going to get a little silly with it. And I
expected like a backlash, but not that much. It was
just too much. And yeah, like I know, it's not
like backlash that matters and I should just ignore it,
but it's like so overwhelming. Yeah, I guess do you

(02:35:30):
do you have anything else that you want to say?
I don't know. I think that's that covers like most
of the things I have to talk about. H Yeah,
just like be gay to crime, Hacked the Planet, Oh
my god, it was genuinely it is one of my
favorite things in the world that they made the movie Hackers,

(02:35:51):
and it was the worst depicture. But then also like
like I was like, so I did watch them. I mean, okay,
I watched it, like not to the first time, Like
it wasn't like like like I was. I was like
not that or when I watched it, but it was
after I like first ran into Hackers, So it took
me a while to figure out that, like, wait, hold on,

(02:36:11):
no hack the planet is the thing that everyone says,
but that's actually because it's a joke for hackers, which
I see. I still find it funny how Hackers is
a movie that got hacking culture completely wrong and changed
it forever, because like because like there's I don't know
if you've ever seen that, but from like Defcon from

(02:36:33):
there's a page on the official Deacon website talking about
how bad Hackers is and how it gets everything wrong
and no one should watch this movie. And now you
look at this like twenty years later, and that's just
what hacking culture turned in. Yeah, the most incredible thing
about Hackers is that someone managed to get the queerest
fucking movie ever made made by one of the biggest

(02:36:56):
companies in Hollywood, and also make it about hacking, and
like it's it's the best piece of cinema ever. And
I stand by this, like it fucking sucks in a
lot of ways, but it's just they just managed to
make a movie where no one has says somehow like
so no one says it's pretty amazing. I will say

(02:37:20):
the two Asian characters are kind of whack, but yeah,
other than that, it's like, yeah, it's a it's a
like like it's it's a whack movie. Like like if
you look at it objectively, it's a pretty bad movie.
Like like there's you know, there was just like a
lot of way stuff in the nineties is absolutely terrible,
but also like there was stuff you could just do

(02:37:41):
in movies in the nineties that like you can't now,
like like okay, well, like what my example this is.
I may have said this on the podcast before, but
like they so they they did a like completely straight
like modern day live adaptation of Romeo and Juliet that
is like it's Romeo and Juliet. It's it's exactly the
lines in Shakespeare, but it's like with characters set in

(02:38:05):
like the like modern times, and they're shooting guns each other.
But like one of these happens now is there's just
like a black guy doing drag and it's just like
a thing, like nobody comments on it, like it's just
like a thing that he's having a good time and
you could not like like people people people would show
up to yeah, like people people, which people like yeah,
like I won't be on Tucker Carlson like yeah, like
like the people people. Yeah, you'd have like mobs showing

(02:38:27):
up in front of your house like it's yeah yeah,
like I don't know, like yeah, if hackers came out now,
we would have like Tucker Carson complaining about the wokeme
up trying to kids and to gay activists like I
don't know. I love the movie so much, not not

(02:38:48):
because it's good, but because it's culturally important, yes, and yeah,
and the characters are like great, like they made everyone
career somehow. And I'm still not sure I whether Devil
was intentional or not. I don't know, but I leaned
towards they didn't know what they were doing, and that
makes it even funnier. Yeah, it makes it so much better.

(02:39:11):
And also the fact that it's like got past like
producers and everything, and it was made the queerest piece
of like Hollywood media I have ever seen that wasn't
meant to be queer. It's just like, yeah, yeah, cool
time we weren't on this tension because yeah we we
we we we we We simply love to see it
be gay, do crimes hack the planet? Uh, this is

(02:39:34):
not legally for the FBI. This is not legally actionable.
This is a joke, yes, from the movie Hackers, which
you could watch Hackers. Yeah in places. Yeah, if you
can watch it very legally on the internet. I actually
don't know if it's on any streaming platform. I don't

(02:39:55):
think I watched it. I think it is because I
watched it with my family kind of recently, which was
a wild time. It's probably streaming. Oh, it's it's it's
an Apple TV apparently. Yeah, so it's there. You can
find it there. You can find it in other places.
It can it can find it somewhere, both legally and illegally.

(02:40:16):
If I'm allowed to endorse like piracy on your podcast,
it's we We We did an entire episode about how
the pirate stuff. So yeah, so yeah, you can find
it both legally and illegally, and if you're lucky, I'm
the one seeding the Torrent. And then actually, okay, but
the other thing I actually should before you if people

(02:40:38):
want to find you, where can they find you? I'm
on Twitter at Underscore nine crime you and in case
Twitter suspends me once again for the sex time. I
have a website at Maya dot crime you dot k
it rules. It's so good it Yes, the reason I'm
famous now, it's just because my website is paying. It's great.

(02:41:01):
Uh yeah. So this this has been Make it Happen here.
You can find us at Happened here pod at Twitter, Instagram. Um, yeah,
I guess I am at it b h R three.
Uh yeah, go in, go in crime. Welcome back once again.

(02:41:36):
This is the crew from It's Going Down, squatting the
air waves if it could happen here. On today's show,
we're going to look at the growing crisis around homelessness
and how the state has moved to address it with
brutal sweeps and new laws that target the poor. In
the wake of the global COVID nineteen pandemic, the US
housing crisis deepened, and homelessness crew following the George Foyd rebellion.

(02:42:00):
Republicans pointed to a rising murderate during the election cycle,
along with growing encampments of the houseless, as examples of
rampant democratic mismanagement and the supposed in result of defunding
the police. In reality, two years after the uprising. Both
funding for the police has only increased along with the
number of people killed per year by law enforcement, while

(02:42:23):
growing police budgets have had no impact on crime. Meanwhile,
both parties have embraced a draconian crackdown on the house
list as a slew of new laws targets sleeping outside,
and police move against encampments even in the midst of
extreme weather. But a new wave of resistance is also
materializing as communities mobilized to provide mutual aid, fight for

(02:42:47):
access to housing, and resist sweeps of encampments. On today's episode,
we investigate the history of these struggles and how these tactics,
ranging from squatting to a cant defense, are spreading across
the social terrain as the current crisis deepens, can more
people find themselves out in the call? But to kick
things off, let's talk about state strategy. Just why are

(02:43:09):
they carrying out these sweeps? I think one of the
first thing that comes to mind for me is how
this behavior from like the Democrats or like liberals or
progressives isn't an anomaly that they are You know that
their role is facilitating a capitalist state, just with slightly
different tactics than the Republicans, but basically they're trying to
do that. What they're doing, which is basically demonizing unhoused

(02:43:32):
people and sort of pushes the blame of, um, what's
going on, of the failings basically of our culture, onto
these individuals that are unhoused, rather than on their failures
as like mayors of democratic cities or whatever, um and
the kind of logical outcome of class based capitalists extracted society.

(02:43:55):
And when they can just make it that instead of
it being like a social problem that people are on hours,
they can make it these bad homeless people and they're
dirty and crime or whatever, and just kind of trying
and eliminate that to protect their image. But I think
it's just a way of scapegoating a built in problem
with how they operate. And actually it's something that makes

(02:44:15):
me think, especially thinking about San Francisco in terms of
like precedence for this. It makes me think about the
Ugly Laws, which, for anyone who doesn't know that was
something kind of in the San Francisco implemented in eighteen
sixty seven, which was a law forbidding people who were
kind of like unsightly according to this law, UM to
not be seen in the streets. So if people were

(02:44:36):
physically disabled or they were begging or even limping, there
were laws targeting them. And part of it even says
that anything that's triggering like disgust or guilt like to
not be seen. And I feel like it's a really
similar thing that's happening now. And so yeah, progressive as
they do this. I'm one that you brought up able
is because I think that this ties in rur role

(02:44:57):
while into that. So we live in essentially like on
a extremely able to society that says if you don't work,
you die, and I think criminalizing homeless people is a
huge part of that. I mean, really think about it.
We have to rent our bodies to corporations so we
can get money to pay rent to landlords. Essentially we're
being paid at tax to live. But how do you

(02:45:19):
force people? How else can you get people to do
the drudgery that we have to do at work if
you don't like show them the consequences of that. So
like if they were nice to homeless people, if they
were like, oh, here's a free home, they not create
a president of like, oh, you cannot work and have
a home. So like they don't want to do that.
So I mean, I think one thing that people don't
talk about, like homelessness is existing. I think it's like

(02:45:40):
a way to like scare us into essentially doing these
things that we don't want to do to live, because
you're constantly reminding us of like, oh, you want to
quiet Quinn, you want to go on a strike, this
is what your life could be. You're gonna be homeless.
And not only that, we're gonna make it so that
you can't exist as a homeless person in this society
because people like if you go to New York right now,

(02:46:01):
all these brunchy folks they eat on the sidewalk, they
have all these like houses build up on the sidewalk,
people and drinking mimosas. But you can't have a tan
but one of these makeshift things. So I mean it
goes to show you like it's not even like the
idea of taking public space. It's like who's taking public space?
And if it's somebody who's not serving capitalism, you can't
take up public space. The housing question. To really understand

(02:46:23):
the connection with democrats and capitalists understands of housing, we
have to think about how housing, how property structure space, right,
how capitalism structures space. And so you know, when I
was thinking about this before we're recording, I keep going
back to James Scott Seeing Like a State, which is,
you know, an amazing book. If people haven't read it,
absolutely pick up a copy. But in the first you know,

(02:46:45):
couple of chapters, one of the things he talks about
islantic closure, and he's talking about this structure specifically in France,
in which sort of towards the end of monarchism, there
was an attempt to actually create a tax regime where
individuals were taxed, and to do that into jules had
to exist legally, but they didn't at that point. They
existed as communities within feudalism. They pay taxes as communities

(02:47:07):
that held land as communities. When the French government went
to these towns to figure out who owned what, but
they found was that every single community broke up their
understanding of land differently and that it wasn't really based
on ownership, is based on use. And so they had
to standardize all of that. To do that, they had
to fragment the commons. They had to sit there and go,
you owned this piece of land, and you owned this

(02:47:28):
piece of land. They did that, they made maps, and
they went back two years later they realized nobody was
following the maps. But what they did was they started
charging taxes based on the maps. And so people had
to start making money on the land to pay the
taxes based on the maps that have nothing to do
with their lives, right. And what that was was the
creation of property right. Because when we think about property,

(02:47:50):
you know, there's this fiction of you know, stateless capitalism, right,
you have like Murray Rothbard grand types we were talking about.
You know, capitalism can exist without the state. But really
we can see the fallacy of at when we look
at the at the question of property right, the question
of exclusion from property or exclusion from space. Um. Not
only is it fragmenting public space, but we start to
look at um the way that all of a sudden

(02:48:14):
property has to exist. Right. And so in the Rust Belt,
for example, after the financial crisis, cities Cleveland, Buffalo, Detroit
got all this money from the federal government to tear
houses down, and they were tearing down like fifty houses
a day in these cities right for years on end.
And these are cities that have people that don't have houses.
And so you you sit there and you go, well,

(02:48:35):
why are they tearing houses down when there are people
that don't have houses, right, When there's more vacant houses
than there are people without housing, How can you justify
tearing the houses down. And the answer was, we need
to create a real estate market again, because if you
allow people to just squat, there's no reason to pay
for housing. If there's a reason to pay for housing,
housing seasons to be a commodity. Right, Like this is

(02:48:57):
actually the important part. Like capitalism has to function through
that exclusion of access. Otherwise commodities can't have the scarcity
necessary to allow them to be priced right. There can't
be a supply that is lower than in demand, for example,
unless you artificially limit supply. Right. And so when we
really see this, we can really see not just the

(02:49:20):
way that capitalism sort of atomizes us, right, creates us
as people who live in individual housing units, as opposed
to as people who can see ourselves as living in communities.
But it also really comes to highlight the relationship between
the state and the police at capital and how we
have to understand capital as a content of the state.
It is a definition of life that is imposed through

(02:49:42):
policing purity and can't exist outside of that. Right, It's
the fallacy of quote unquote anarcho capitalism, which isn't the
thing that really exists for this exact reason. Right, And
so when we're looking at why are democrats engaging in
techniques that involve pushing people off the streets, this is
exactly why it's a capital was political property. They're trying
to maintain properly, They're trying to be properly value, right,

(02:50:04):
And this is why you see this happen in cities
where gentrification is really horrible and a much much faster
clip than you see it in cities where there's like
open housing stock. That really makes me think about the
beginning of like workhouses in England in the eighteen thirties
and the poor law reforms, and it goes back to
what you were saying more about just that making it

(02:50:26):
really undesirable to be poor, you know, like needing a
group of people who are in that position, And the
workhouses was something that were introduced by liberals, progressives, you know,
like this as a form of like changing this or
poor release system. So instead of giving people money so
they could be supported and stay with their families or whatever.
People would put into these institutions where they're separated from

(02:50:47):
their kids, from their husbands and wives or whatever. And
it's meant to be so undesirable that you would only
seek it if you was desperately needed it or whatever,
um as a way to like save on taxes for
like money. Basically it's really sucked up. And it's like
this was part of the sort social reform progressive like project,
and I think we can see echoes of that in this.

(02:51:07):
The other thing that I wanted to bring up is
like you talked about atomizing and isolating and like how
capitalism does that. One thing that I think about specifically
New York is that homeless and camps do offer this
radical idea of like what it looks like to take
back a public space and to collectively like meet together,
you know. And like that's the other thing that I
was thinking about last night when I was high, this
whole idea of what happens if we just allow homeless

(02:51:29):
encampments to spread and take over. Then people who are
not homeless start interacting with homeless people as we do
like people in the city do. Then you form these
connections in these relationships, and then it becomes perfectly normal
for people to take over public spaces, and then what
does that mean? Then we have to provide services in
public spaces like bathrooms and showers because the public would
start requesting and like asking for these things the more

(02:51:51):
of a relationship they form with homeless folks. So I
think part of the cleaning, which is what the term
Eric Adams is used, which is absolutely disgusting terms of
like moving homeless people the whole, I think a huge
part of it is also just like destroying the notion
that we own public spaces, like you do not own
a public space, and we want to let you know
that and we want you out. Um. So I think

(02:52:12):
that really And and the additional aspect of that too
is like when you look at homeless is in New York,
like a huge chunk of it like black people too,
So there's like a racial component of it too. When
you really want to add it for this whole idea
of like black people are not allowed to take up
space and then specifically if you're homeless, you're not allowed
to take up public space. I wanted to bring that in.
It's like very much related to work, but also just
related to the idea that the government owns everything and
corporations own everything, including the spaces that we exist in. Well,

(02:52:36):
speaking of corporations owning everything, here's some words from our sponsors.
Across the US, in large cities, often controlled by Democrats,
a war on the poor, and specifically on encampments of
houses people has been increasing ways over the past year.
In San Francisco, the city's mayor, London Breed recently declared

(02:52:59):
it was time to que be less tolerant of all
the bullshit that has destroyed our city, an effort to
ramp up police harassment of the poor and unhoused. In Portland,
city officials openly toyed with the idea of forcing quote
up to three thousand homeless people in the massive temporary
shelters staffed by the Oregon National Guard, while on California,
the Democratic governor Gavin Newsom has pushed for quote care courts,

(02:53:23):
which threatened to place those who do not complete state
directives under involuntary hospitalization of policy, which mirrors efforts already
underway in New York. Bands against camping, panhandling, sleeping in
one's car have also proliferated last spring For instance, Tennessee
made it a felony to camp on public owned land.
In Missouri, those caught sleeping on state property could now

(02:53:46):
get jail time and fines under a new law that
just went into effect on January one. Other new laws
out lawn caminton, l a next to schools and forbid
houses folks from sleeping on public transit in New York.
In the progressive bashing the Asheville, North Carolina, over a
dozen mutual aid organizers also now faced trumped up charges
of felony littering for supporting protest against sweeps of encampments.

(02:54:10):
This shift in many liberal cities to criminalize attack and
band encampments shows just how much the Democratic Party has
continued to move to the right while embracing Republicans line
on combating rising crime. Instead of mobilizing the state's forces
to house people need their most basic needs in a
period of mass pandemic and a growing housing crisis, liberal
governments across the country have instead mobilized their forces to

(02:54:33):
attack some of the most vulnerable. When you know more
about what's driving these ongoing attacks on the houses and
how it relates to the housing crisis itself, we sat
down with Gifford Hartman, a long time radical organizer in
the Bay Area. In a former squatter movements arise like
say the George Floyd Uprising, and there's some changes. There's

(02:54:53):
some movement towards reforms the police brutality and things like that,
and then there's kind of a backlash. And I think
right now we're kind of suffering through a backlash. And
I think that's kind of a pattern that happens, is
there's pushback kind of penal reform, trying to ring the
pelias in a little bit, and then the kind of
the backlash means just the police have more power and

(02:55:14):
they have more power to really kind of brutalize on
house people. And I think we're living through that right now.
I think the trends go, you know, like back and forth,
and the pendulum has swung in the direction where right
now in San Francisco there's constant sweeps of tents and
how and how's people living on the streets. There's a
lot of media support given to that, and it's kind

(02:55:35):
of like, as I said, the tail lags the dog
and then they start doing all this stuff and the
pushback hasn't really Activism hasn't really been able to kind
of stand up to that and stop it or even
challenge it. Right now, at least what I see, booms
happen and property values go up and vacancies go to
almost zero, the cops cracked down harder. And I think

(02:55:55):
there have been periods at least in my lifetime here
in the Bay Area, where there's out of a lulla,
there's the bottom of the trough, when maybe there's more vacancies,
a little bit more wiggle room, the cups quite aren't
quite so brutal. But when things are peaking, or when
the economies, you know, it's dynamic, kind of high poise,
that's where I see the repression is the worst, because

(02:56:16):
there's more people to complain. There's more people whose you know,
values are tied to property and who are more willing
to push the cops to brutalize on house people and um.
But you know, right now it's kind of framed because
there's a lot of tech layoffs. Yet the agenda of
sweeping tense and none house people off the streets is

(02:56:37):
kind of still kind of a rapid pace. So I
don't know how much longer to last, but right now
it's at a pretty high point as we speak. The
weather is awful and the sweeps haven't really stopped, and
there aren't enough shelter beds to house although on the
house folks. So it's really a crisis. It's not only
just a you know, human crisis, but it's a health

(02:56:57):
crisis because people out in the cold rain are more
vulnerable to getting sick and dying. And it's it should
be the time where we're doing the opposite. We're making
sure everybody's housed, and it just certainly isn't happening. Even
though San Francisco, the Marits have been Democrats, I believe
since the mid sixties. The Democrats aren't a monolith, and
they're not all progressive, and even the progressive ones aren't

(02:57:20):
that good. But the ones that are in power now,
like mayor London Breed are moderates, and um, they really
are more believe in the police more, and they believe
in using police for social crimes. And when they're not moderate,
it's a little less bad, but it's not better, it's
just less bad. I don't know if that really makes sense,
because I don't think there's ever been a political regime

(02:57:41):
in San Francisco. That wasn't pro cop. You know, everybody
loves the cops. Everybody sees the cops is um ways
to enforce the social values of society, which are private
property and all that. And it just never stops. It
just depends how brutal they are. And again, unless I
said earlier, it goes through waves. And presently we're in
a brutal way and the only alternative that is a

(02:58:02):
less rutal way. And so my opinion, there's never a
time when the cops don't, you know, run rapid, but
just right now. But right now they're actually at the
high point that they've been in a long time. And
now we speak with Javier from the National Coach on
Homelessness in San Francisco. We talk about the current wave
of a tox against house those people in big cities
and how they mirror historic attempts at policing and repressing

(02:58:24):
the poor. The income that you need to rent a
two bedroom apartment, by the city's own estimation, you need
an hourly wage of about sixty one fifty to have
an apartment like that. So the income gap is becoming
more evident than ever. Nowadays, there's a nine percent increase
in homelessness for every hundred dollar increase in rents. So

(02:58:46):
it's like if healthcare, housing, education all gets more expensive
but wages don't go up, people are gonna lose their housing. Um. So,
I think people need to understand and how similar we
are to the unhoused population and how important it is
to recognize that we should have solidarity with each other,
because if we're fighting against each other, then guests is

(02:59:08):
when the millionaires in the build we're doing the city
because when they do these sweeps, they're taking people's belongings,
which is a legal searcuncedure and cruel and unusual punishment
because the shelter that they're offering a lot of times
isn't adequate for the folks who are being sweat. We're
looking for permanent supportive housing for folks and it's not there.

(02:59:33):
And if you're telling people that they have to move
across the street every day in the morning, then it
kind of shows I think a social and kind of
cultural understanding that mirrors the ugly laws people have had
in place, especially in America for a long time, which
is homeless people are not supposed to be seen and

(02:59:55):
they're supposed to be criminalized and speaking of things that
probably shouldn't be scene again some words from our sponsors,
from resisting sweeps, studying up autonomous warming centers, to taking
over vacant buildings. Over the past few years, there's been
a wide array of expressions of solidarity, direct action, and

(03:00:17):
mutual aid in the face of attempts by the state
to displace and destroy the lives of houses people across
the US. But these projects and actions haven't come out
of nowhere, building on the radical history of groups in
the Bay Area, such as the Diggers and the White Panthers,
who set up free stores, grocery programs, and squatted buildings.
Starting in the nineteen eighties, out of the anti nuclear movement,

(03:00:39):
peace activists began sharing free vegan food in a protest
of the US war budget under the banner Food not Bombs.
In the late nineteen eighties, Food Not Bombs in San
Francisco faced over one thousand arrest for sharing free food
publicly and taking part in demonstrations. Soon, another group, Homes
not Jails, evolved out of the same scene and began

(03:01:00):
to open up and squat vacant housing, part of a
wave of other houses activist groups that sprouted nationwide following
the economic recession of the nineteen eighties. Chapters of Homes
Not Jail's work to open squats weekly to covertly house people,
also organizing public housing takeovers, which thrust squatting into the
spotlight of the mass media. Again, here's Gifford Hartman talking

(03:01:23):
about squatting in the ninety nineties. There have been a
wave of I'm really successful squats in the nineteen seventies.
One group was called the White Panthers that did it
in the Lower Hate neighborhood, and they were modeled on
the Black Panthers. So they actually squatted, but actually created
community programs for things like new distribution. They defended their squads,

(03:01:43):
they fortified their squads, and that was a tradition that
kind of preceded my period of squatting. But so that
we're both looking at the squatting in Europe but also
the previous generations doing it here in San Francisco. Um
I moved to the Bay Area in nineteen eight six.
I have been Berkeley for most of the beginning of
the years I was here. From the end of World
War Two in the nineteen forties, the population in San

(03:02:06):
Francisco peak in the mid twentieth century, and then it
went down. Population decreased by a hundred thousand in the
late eighties. There were still a lot of cracks in
the surface of housing, and there was a lot of
empty units. There's a lot of abandoned units, and there
was a lot of a lot of ability to people
to find squads and I was part of that. And

(03:02:26):
there were various times where I either wasn't working or
had a part time job, and I chose as a
political active squad, and I began doing that in late eighties,
but most of my success in squadding was in their
early nineties. But then I kind of ran up against
the contradiction, and groups like Homeside Jails were founded in
nineteen two had already been squatting um. But then there

(03:02:48):
was another wave of repression. So in nine to the
former chief of police in San Francisco, Frank Jordan, got
elected mayor and by nineteen ninety three he was doing
something called the Matrix program. And the Matrix program was
very much like what Juliani did in New York with
his zero tolerance for broken windows, which just cops would

(03:03:10):
get tough on quality of life crimes, which means like
broken windows and graffiti, but it also included food not bombs.
Feedings were attacked by the police, and squatters were even
myself included, were attacked and cleared out, even in a
way that was not legal. When I succeeded, we squatted covertly,
and when we didn't succeed often we were aligned with

(03:03:31):
groups like Homes Not Jails, where they were a high
profile group or media savvy. Well, media savvy might be
an overstatement. They were kind of had a media focus,
and the media focus was often a double edged sword.
It brought popular understanding of the conditions of the housing stock,
but also it was a way for the police to

(03:03:51):
be telegraphed exactly what we were doing in to come
down and crack down on our squads. Homes on Jails
wouldn't be the last group to take over vacant homes
for housing. In mid two thousands, Take Back the Land,
based out of Miami, Florida, work to block evictions and
move un housed families into foreclosed homes. In the present period,
various grassroots groups have organized to stop the sweeping of

(03:04:13):
houses and cameras cruise in Olympia Washington and Austin, Texas
have been successful in organizing broad campaigns. In Minneapolis, groups
have mobilized mass numbers two at times all divictions. In
the following interview, we speak with Christian and Post from
Minnieapolis on the ongoing battle with the city government and
police to stop attacks and sweeps on their houses neighbors.

(03:04:34):
In the summer of George Floyd was murdered by Minneapolis police.
It raised a lot of people's awareness as to the
way that our systems and practices in our city aren't
really serving us UM. I think there was there was
a lot of work happening in Minneapolis in particular before
that in regard to policing and the way that our

(03:04:55):
systems do or do not serve people UM. And then
in tw twenty, the awareness just grew exponentially. And because
that foundational path had been laid already, we had something
to go with UM and we can see the direct
line between what happened to George Floyd and to the

(03:05:17):
community at George Floyd Square and the way that that
also shows up in other spaces in our communities, such
as with our own house neighbors. We know that the
majority of people that are living at encampments in Minneapolis
are indigenous UM immigrant populations or UM Black Americans, and

(03:05:38):
so we can see that there is you know, a
specific need and also a real um a you know,
a disparity between and a direct through line to all
of them oppression that through in the face of every
you know, I mean person with the heart absolutely and

(03:06:01):
I think she started practicing a lot of mutual aid
UM more like much bigger than we ever have his historically.
In the summer, we saw lots of people getting involved
that were encampments UM throughout the city as there was
for some time because of covid UM people were able
to stay outside and couldn't be evicted as easily UM

(03:06:23):
at that time, and we saw lots of community getting
involved and doing mutual aid UM and that really helped
build I think, a movement that is you know, sort
of beautifully disorganized in many ways because lots of people
from lots of different walks of life coming together and
showing up for each other. I mean, I think people
started to become aware of the way that we are

(03:06:44):
all connected to each other, and that when when we're
taking care of each other, we're all happier, we're all safer,
we're actually able to meet needs, and the resources are there.
It's a matter of the will. I cannot over emphasize
enough how terrible the boy Mayor Frey has been since
he took power here and so called Minneapolis. You know,

(03:07:06):
he ran on ending houselessness and was in majority funded
by developers during his campaign, and we've seen what ending
houselessness means to democrats. It basically means ending visible poverty
and ending the new lives of houseless people. But frankly,
I mean the number of evictions over the course of

(03:07:28):
the last few years has just skyrocketed. And you know,
are so called progressive politicians love to give some money
to the nonprofit industrial complex and do their private public partnership,
and then when there are people who are quote unquote
resistant to service, that's the that's the phrase they love
to use. They have all of their excuses lined ups

(03:07:49):
that they can just build those people's houses and kick
them out of the roofs that are keeping them warm
and dry. And it's just been a really eye opening
thing for a lot of people, I think, to see
how our progressive quote unquote establishment here has just fully
committed to jack boot thuggery, all in the name of
clearing the streets and making it so that people in

(03:08:10):
their kind of four story mixed use of condos can
can have a beautiful view without having to see the
poverty that that lifestyle the suff You know, in the summer,
there were several council at the time, council members who
committed to UM defunding the police. However, that did not
come to fruition UM. Since that time, there's been um

(03:08:31):
increases in the budget to policing in Minneapolis, no decreases,
only increases that police haven't been able to spend their
whole budget, and yet the city continues to pour more
money into them. And what we're seeing happen is unhoused
people come together to keep one another safe and also
so community is able to stay connected with them. And

(03:08:52):
you know, we'll be in an encampment and then various
levels of discovery of government will come in and displace them,
and and so the people don't have anywhere else to go,
so they need to move to a new space together.
So what's happening is not housing. What's happening is not
even laying a foundation for somebody to be able to
get the services or support that they may want or need.

(03:09:16):
What's happening is displacement. When somebody hears about an eviction
potentially happening, it becomes a situation that's it's almost it's
almost kind of magical that people come together and it
is kind of chaotic, but it always comes together and
we end up having whether it's people they're doing cop

(03:09:36):
watch or are just neighbors, like we had neighbors show
up on the first day the day that the Corey
was planned to be evicted on December UM, I can't
tell you how many different people that just live in
that area. We're coming up and asking questions, and we're
appalled at the response from the city because really that
the Corey encampment was in a space that you could

(03:09:59):
barely see it. You wouldn't know it was there. If
you didn't know it was there, you know, And we're
talking about by the last day, the day that it
was evicted, there were eight people there and over a
hundred and fifty police officers. It was bonkers and that
extreme response is something that when you see it, you
can't unsee it. And so we come together in what

(03:10:20):
you know, you get in where you fit in, with
whatever skills you have, whatever gifts you have, whatever time
you have, you know, and a lot of us show
up because we are people who have experienced other forms
of trauma or have seen and experienced other forms of
oppression too. You can't unsee it once you do. In
the last few years, mutual aid and autonomous disaster relief

(03:10:40):
efforts having formed projects like heat or Block, the squatting
of land for people displaced by climate change, field fires,
and the setting up of autonomous warming centers in the
middle of winter. In the winter of autonomous groups across
Texas also mobilized when the state's electrical grid failed and
hundreds of people tragically died the lack of heat. Autonomous

(03:11:01):
groups have also worked to directly house people in the
Los Angeles area. This has looked like houses folks taking
over homes owned by Caltrans, and various groups in the
Pacific Northwest, occupying in domaining access to hotels in the
dead of winter in Philadelphia and housing activists squatted and
then won the keys to homes for upwards of fifty

(03:11:22):
unused families in the midst of the George Floyd Rebellion,
and there have been other success stories as well. In Boise, Idaho,
after months of ongoing protests by houses folks and their supporters,
the city was pushed to green light the building enough
hundreds of housing units. In Berkeley, California, last summer, people
once again tore down the fences surrounding people's park and
destroyed machines, stopping the destruction of the autonomous enclave. Once again.

(03:11:47):
In Sacramento, California, households people and their supporters beat back
in eviction attempt at Camp Resolution, a parking lot which
is home to people living in their vehicles and r vs.
Here's two Camp Resolution residents, Sharon and Satara, who speak
on the deadly impact of sweeps. I think that the
biggest thing is like being treated inhumanely, you know what

(03:12:08):
I mean, or or rudely or like you're an animals.
They're very mean to people, you know what I mean.
When they sweep you, they take people's stuff and just
throw it out, No don't matter if it matters to
them or you know what I mean, or you know
which you know creates mental health issues for some people
because people get traumatized from stuff like that. You know
what I mean, You just coming in and the only

(03:12:31):
place that they have that they can call home or
a place of shelter. And you know, stormy times like this,
you know, they come and even now while it's raining,
and make them move and tell them, you know, they
gotta go throw their things out or you know what
I mean, make them leave without whatever they you know
what I mean, whatever, no matter if it's important to

(03:12:52):
them or not, you know what I mean. Like, I
think that's the most messed up part because like I
have a friend out here who who lost you know,
her child ashes, you know what I mean, half the
half of the people that were at the we lose
contact with and and every time they sweep that to
another half. And they're just diminishing people. Where people are good,
where are people going? They're just disappearing. And before the

(03:13:14):
you know, people who do need like other help with
other things, help things and stuff like that, the harm
reduction people and stuff like that that come out and
you know, give people things their needs, you know what
I mean, they'll they move you around, they can't be found.
People can die, and people die like that all the time,

(03:13:34):
especially you know when they move us around. Sometimes we
got to go to areas that are not necessarily safe,
especially the women, you know what I mean, women die
out here all the time. Separated calf resolution was formed because, uh,
this lot that we're on, it was part of the
original sighting plan and they spent six hundred seventeen thousand
dollars on this for a fence in a parking lot

(03:13:56):
and promised folks that they would that they were going
to get them too little tidy houses or trailers so
they can get back on their feet and get housing.
They swept them off the lot as soon as they
were finished with this. They just came out. They came
and viciously swept them off of the property the other
side of the property we're on and could a fence

(03:14:16):
up and promised those people and they got nothing, and
then didn't even bother to contact them or anything, and
just left those people hanging after they signed up for
all the services and were denied. And my sister in
law was one of those people, and she's a quadriplegic
and she's still waiting for housing, and we weren't gonna
have another winter of her being down on the countyside

(03:14:37):
in the weather, in the water. So that's why we
started it and if we're here for safety so we
can get back up on our feet. Were human beings,
not to mention like half more than half the camp,
you know, the majority of the camp. There are males
that I live here, so please don't get me wrong,
but this is the camp of majority women. You know
what I mean? Who out here, who live out here?

(03:14:58):
And you know, a lot of us know we're homeless,
but we're not. We're not bumms, you know what I mean. Like,
we're not um We have regular lives like everyone else.
We have family, we have friends, you know what. We're like.
We and we take care of each other, you know
what I'm saying. Like, and a lot of us have
been camping right here for the last for years, some
of us years up against the county, and you know

(03:15:20):
what I'm saying. But for every success, sweeps remain a
daily constant United States, and many attempts to push back
by houses folks and their supporters are met with extreme
resistance from law enforcement. So I'm curious what you all think.
How can communities continue to organize for change in the
face of his brutality. Something that comes to mind is
just kind of more of some things that I have

(03:15:41):
already been happening basically, UM and I'm thinking of a
capolic that you brought up. UM And the INCA was
really interesting to me because UM it was that that's
a neighborhood in l A. And it grew to maybe
two to three hundred people living there. UM And as

(03:16:01):
it went on, it kind of like a sense of
community developed pretty strongly there with support from people in
the neighborhood to UM and people had set up like
a garden, a community kitchen. They were like meetings, even
showers near the end. Like. Um, it was actually kind
of thriving. I it's like doing well, and people are
like pretty like uh politicized, are like aware of like

(03:16:24):
what's going on and talking about it and sharing with
each other. UM And yeah, people coming together to resist
sweeps and like threats of sweeps of the park um
and the response to it was one of the most
like heavy handed, sort of disproportionate seeming things that I'd
ever seen, where they had been threatening the city had

(03:16:45):
been threatening that they were going to do a sweep,
and they were saying they were going to get everyone
into housing. It's like this humanitarian um offer of secure
housing to people. UM. That they came with like four
hundred cops and like all the rest of like l
A p D S four forcing the hell of copters
and just like everything. They blocked entrances into Echo Park
to stop supporters coming from out of the neighborhood. UM

(03:17:07):
and basically yeah, evicted people, fought with people resisting UM
and then put a fence up very quickly like during
this whole thing, UM, and close the park off. And
that fence is still up, and that's like and then
what is it now a year and a half or
something new years that that fence has been up. And
something I think is like interesting about this example is

(03:17:28):
I really think that the reason that response was so
heavy handed is because the very existence of it was
disrupting this logic of like rent and landlord de terms
of like people were reclaiming the comments basically reclaiming public space,
using it to meet their needs, and this was incredibly
threatening to the city and they needed to shut it
down and sort of turn the park back into recreation

(03:17:50):
for middle class people. Basically, UM. And I think you
know what we've talked about already, Like, um, Tom, what
you were talking about with like enclosure and stuff like
I really see that these sweeps, this is such a
just a continuation of this in echo puk um in
a really big way. And what you were saying more
about just like what happens when we challenge that logic
being the most like threatening thing to them, you know,

(03:18:10):
just like what happens if it was just like this
homes camp survives and then another encampment, another encampment, and
it basically disrupts everything we know about property and rents
and everything anyway, So I think just more of that, Yeah,
I mean I would, Yeah, I agree with you. So
I think it's like more of what's happened Like currently
New York there's still sweets happening, Like um DTAs Department
of Homer Services puts up these like UM sweet notices UM.

(03:18:33):
And the way it works is that when these two
twops notices go up, like there's a group of people
who let each other know that that sweet is about
to happen. People show up to the people who are
about to be swept. I hate that word swept. Oh
my gosh, that's so disgusting. What can we use instead
of swept um treated badly by evil air adoms? I
don't know, maybe we could do that. Um but anyway,
so like, um, so people will go and talk to
the people who are in the encampment we're going to

(03:18:54):
be swept and ask them like what type of support
would you like, like do you want us to help
you us move your stuff? Do you want us to
stand you know when the cops and like so the
sanitation department comes usually during these cleanups and like throws
away people's things. And because you know, if you don't
serve capitalism, your stuff you don't matter. So definitely your
stuff doesn't matter. One thing that has been happening is

(03:19:15):
that people have been showing up for people who are
about to be have their things thrown out and either
moving the things for them or supporting them or standing
in the way from in front of the police, or
like documenting it. And I think that's like a huge
way to just like show up right now if you can,
you sickly block out time on your calendar at work,
if you know something happening down the street like this
is like something like you could do now. And I

(03:19:35):
think that's really important, Like this is solidarity that we
should show and which show up for our comrades because
they are on the ground of fighting for us having
housing as a human right. Then that's why we should
show up for them and to support them. Another item
that I wanted to bring up. I don't know if
y'all heard about anarchy Rope which happened last year, where
like s RG was, the Strategic Response Group showed up.

(03:19:55):
This is a calendar terrorism group. Y'all showed up to
get people out of an encampment in Tompkins Square which
was deemed anarchy roy I think it was like five people.
Five people brought an SAR or counter terrorism groups. It
just goes to show you the extent to which like houses,
people taking up public space is a threat to the
idea of property as we know. It is a threat

(03:20:18):
to capitalist and it's a threat to landlords like Eric Adams.
Eric Adams is a landlord. I don't know if you
all know that this the New York the New York
City mayors, the landlord. If you need to know anything
as to why they're sweeping homeless people. Landlords run everything,
and they have rats like Eric Adams because he had
racks and he was supposed to pay a fine and
he didn't pay a fine because he's the landlord. I
guess just going back to that, it's like, yeah, show

(03:20:38):
up for people now, Like the need now is like
onceeps are happening, is for people to show up in
place with people. And the other part of it, I
want to say this, and this is a wild idea,
but I've been thinking about it for a while. What
if we all stop paying rent? What if we all
did what if we got together with all our friends
and stop paying rent? And I know this is wild,
and I know some people might be like, oh no, Marcella,
we're gonna get a victim. But what if we aid

(03:21:00):
rent and we all thought the cops and they're trying
to pay us when when when when they're trying to
evict all of us? So like that's another part of it,
is like showing up to people's evictions, trying to come
up together to come up with a long strategy because
houses people right now are fighting for us to like
have housing as a human right. We can meet them
on the other end and s actually, we're not going
to pay rent as long as you're doing this because
we're that's like solidarity. When I'm thinking about how to

(03:21:22):
resist displacement, you know what, I go back to is
squatter movements that existed in Europe, right, like the social
center movements in the seventies and eighties, um, but also
squatting that happened in the rest Belt in the two thousand's, right,
And like what was unique about those situations like others
have have existed obviously, but what was unique about those
situations is that squatting became about more than just space.

(03:21:43):
It also became about autonomy and self defense. Right. So
in those situations, what would happen is in these rest
belt squads, people would like lock down a whole street
and take over a house and then just that was
just their space, you know, and the cops just couldn't
get back there or didn't want to get back there, um.
And some of those squads held out for years, like

(03:22:04):
years and years and years um. And we see that
in Europe too. And so what that does, though, is
it it accomplishes something really important which I think we
have to sort of shift in our discussions of this question,
which is that the question isn't just about housing. The
questions about space, right and very specifically how we understand space.

(03:22:25):
So currently we talked about a neighborhood or when city
politicians talked about a neighborhood, they don't mean what I
think a lot of us mean. Like a lot of
us we talked about our neighborhoods mean like our neighbors, right,
the people that live around the corner, the old lady
up the street, the feeds of cats, like whatever it
happens to be, you know, like you have a community
that you live in, at least where I live. When

(03:22:45):
city politicians talk about a neighborhood, what they mean is
real estate. They mean this fragmented space of commodified housing
where individual houses can just be slotted in and slatted out.
New residents could just be slatted and slatted out, and
the space becomes reduced down to its physical form, right,
and within all capitalists understanding some space, that is what happens.

(03:23:08):
Space gets reduced down to the commodification of that space, right.
And so we're talking about that inscription into our spaces.
You know, I'm saying earlier that doesn't occur without the
ability to get arrested for trustpassing. And so this becomes
a fight against the police as much as it's a
fight against housing, because at the end of the day,

(03:23:28):
the enforcements of that structuring of space comes through the
projection of police force into that space, right, whether that's
passive things like surveillance, with those active things like sending
a counter terrorism team to evict five people from a
park in Manhattan. And so as we're kind of like
looking through this, we can take some interesting sort of examples.

(03:23:49):
I mean, the Paris Commune had a whole discourse that
talked just about how they were going to rebuild the city,
Like what is the city going to look like without property?
How are we going to restart actual our uses space?
Who gets to decide how to use these big public spaces? Right?
These were the big discussions that were happening. The Situations
International had a whole discourse on building conceptual cities and

(03:24:11):
avant garde cities, and you know, graffiti was a big
part of that because what is graffiti. Graffiti is the
marking of people's presence in space. Why do cities cracked
down on graffiti so hard every single time? So it
puts a tag up, that's a gap in police coverage
is being marked literally every single time. Right, And so
when we're talking about these questions, we have to push
this into a question of capitalism in general. But that

(03:24:35):
makes it a question of the state. We can't talk
about capitalism and isolation from that, and so we have
to really talk about how our spaces are fragmented and
the ways that things like even encampments or squats or
things like this that are defended that are able to
be sort of preserved, isn't the right word, are able
to maintain their autonomy. Those becomes sort of the models

(03:24:56):
of different ways to live in some ways, right, these
become the places where people are experimenting with different types
of living, whether it's my choice or not. But these
are the spaces that get eliminated because of that specific dynamic,
right that they are fundamentally violating the entire concept of
property in their very exist and that's why we see

(03:25:17):
the crackdowns happening the way that they are. Democrats are
just as you know, complicit in that as Republicans are.
It's it's functionally no difference, especially after the George Floyd uprising,
were you really see in a lot of democratic cities
them hiring a lot more cops, giving them a lot
more guns, like doing the same stuff that that happened
in more conservative cities. Right, The gap is almost non existent.

(03:25:37):
That's going to do it for us. Once again. This
has been the It's Going Down cruise squatting the offices
of It Could Happen Here. Thanks again for listening and
we will see you soon. Hey, We'll be back Monday
with more episodes every week from now until the heat
death of the Universe. It Could Happen Here is a
production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool

(03:25:59):
Zone Media, visitor website cool zone media dot com, or
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