It Could Happen Here Weekly 72

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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 got to be nothing new here for you, But
you can make your own decisions. Hot fucking Moses, Welcome

(00:29):
to it could happen here. The podcast that is sometimes
introduced by me, Robert Evans, other times it's introduced by
James Stout or Mia Wong, who are both on the
call today. How's everybody doing? Pretty good? We've we've we've
declared victory over the balloon. Yeah we we Finally the
F twenty two gets its first air to air kill.

(00:52):
Yeah yeah, yeahs later. We did it, guys, we did it.
We really can. Like the F tway two is like
God's perfect killing machine. Yeah, and it's thus it is
like it is a six hundred and it was like
a sixty seven billion dollar aircraft. Completely. It is a
it is a perfect air It is a perfect air

(01:13):
superiority craft. Which in modern warfare makes it slightly less
useful than an eight hundred and fifty dollars DJA i'd
drone with hand grenades. Yeah yeah, I express. I cannot
think of like a better metaphor to understand how the
US Army works than shooting a using it using a
sixty seven billion dollar aircraft to shoot a three hundred

(01:35):
and sixty one thousand dollars missile at a balloon. Just
like listen, somebody several balloons in his life, ammitately, not
this high up. It is extremely entertaining. And uh yeah,
I can't fault that pilot. I am deeply disappointed in
rural America that no crazy rich guy with a cessna

(01:56):
flew his friend with a fifty cow up to like
thirty thousand feet drop. That why the seventeen incinerator was
invented for this specific instance. And yeah, we've been let
down again. Anyway, what are we talking about today, Maya?
We're talking about the balloon a little bit, and then
we're going to talk about something more interesting, which is
the sort of history of US China relations and how

(02:17):
it's not what everyone thinks it is. I've been led
to believe by the media that there is nothing more
interesting than the balloon, and that we should be focusing
all our coverage on the balloon. That's true. There have
been other balloons. There are now a fifth balloon, has
it the towers? Okay? So yeah, let's let's go yeah.
So okay, So I want to start off by like,

(02:39):
I want to talk a little bit about the balloon,
which is that. Okay, so we have the American Army's claim,
but this is a surveillance balloon. There's a there's a
chance it just was a random balloon. Like, I don't know.
I don't want to completely discount the fact that it
was a balloon. I do want to talk a little
bit about sort of balloon surveillance stuff though, because I've
seen a lot of people both on the left and
also on the right, who are just like, why would

(03:00):
anyone ever have a spy balloon? It's like, okay, so
let's talk a little bit. In order to do this,
we need to talk a little bit about surveillance satellites,
which I come from a family of astronomers, and one
of the sort of dark secrets of astronomy is that
the stuff you point up also could be pointed back
down again and yeah, yeah, so And you know, one
of the other things about this is that a lot
of the companies that make telescopes, to make the lenses

(03:22):
for that, are companies that work heavily with the NRO,
which is the National Reconnaissance Office, which is a a
gen du winely terrifying organization with an unfathomable black budget
to dedicated to just like spying on people from aircrafts
now from space and more people, more people should be
like we have a lot of Like people are scared
of the NSA, people are scared of the CIA, but
more people should be scared of the NRO, because Jesus Christ,

(03:43):
that stuff is who but on the only head. Okay,
so the NRROW has a bunch of satellites, right, But
the thing about satellites that they move. Okay, you can't
prove that. I will, I will prove I will I will,
I will, I will do a war thunder, I will
post classic live underneath of dome. And satellites are stationary.

(04:03):
The dome rotates in a clockwise direction around them, and
that's responsible for the illusion of motion in the heavens. Sure, yes,
there's no competing response today. So okay, all right, So

(04:24):
so satellite satellites move, they move in stable and pdictable
orbits and this means a few things, right. One of
the things that it means is that a satellite is
only over the area you want it to cover for
a limited amount of time because it's you know, satellites
moving around the Earth, right, um. And this means that
you know, you can you can calculate their orbits, and
you can calculate when they're going to be in range
of whatever they want to look at, and you know,

(04:45):
and this means you can do things like, for example,
figuring out where the satellite is going to be in
hiding whatever you're working out when they pass this. This
is how the CIA, this is how the CIA completely
missed India's nuclear weapons program, is that they knew when
that they've been dowhen the flies, the spy satellites you're
flying over, they just hid all the way puts equipment
and the CIA never figured out they were building dukes
base well actually not based its bad, but but yeah, yeah,

(05:06):
it was very funny. Yeah yeah, but they do did
they just paint it like a hot dog or something
and just be like guy, they lit just like put
tarps over it. The satellite came around, and then they
build things under ground. It's very funny. I'm passionating the
world's biggest hot dog. I dare in case someone else does. Yeah,
I think Jamie Loftus actually might. If you beat that,

(05:28):
you don't have to do all to the death. Jamie
secret something we're not supposed to talk about on the podcast. Well, look,
it's it's it's it's like the Israeli secret arsenal. It's
it's it's an open secret and not a closed secret.
So okay. You can solve this problem of of sort
of telescope go move um either by having just a
bunch of satellites going constantly or by having a geosynchronous satellite,

(05:50):
which is which is in an orbit where it's like
basically over the same spot of the Earth at one time.
The problem is that both of these are like unfathomably expensive,
and doesn't mean that governments don't do that, Like the
US is a multi spy satellites like satellites, but you know,
it's really really expensive, and there's you know, there's a

(06:10):
few other reasons why you would use a balloon um.
Which are you know some of the reasons the US
uses that use them in Afghanistan. One is that you
have really limited space on a satellite, which means that
there's there you know, you can only fit certain kinds
of equipment onto each satellite. There's another issue, which is that, Okay, um,
if you're putting spy stuff on a satellite that has
to work in space, and it turns out that space sucks,

(06:34):
and yeah, I mean wanting to kill you. I didn't
like it. It's a it's a mark of how like
bad people are at strategic thinking that they would ever
ask why would you put spy stuff on a balloon? Especially? Yeah,
Like it's a little weirder to float it over the
US if that's what happened. But like, if if you
are the US or China or Russia engaging in most

(06:55):
of the conflicts those countries engage in where they're not
dealing with state level actors, provides perfect surveillance, very cheaply,
it doesn't require refueling. Like, it's an incredibly reasonable platform
to spy on people with. Yeah, And I think there's
another thing which I think has been less talked about,
which is that, Okay, there's an equipment gap basically between
when you design a camera for a satellite and when

(07:17):
the satellite goes up. And this means that whatever you
whatever kind of cameras and technology you're putting in a
satellite are going to be by definition a few years
out of date, because that's just how long it takes
a design the equipment and putting it and put it
into the air. But you know, for a balloon, you
could you can, you could use stuff that's more modern
than way you would have on a spy satellite now,
you know. And also like you can you can also
just put other stuff on the balloon that's such as

(07:38):
cameras like you can do cig and stuff you can use.
So okay, well, the moral of this story is that, like,
the spy balloon is not like a completely implausible thing.
If if you like put a gun to my head
and said meo, what happened here, my guests would be
was like the spy balloon went off course or some
shit and this lost control of it. Now, yeah, it

(08:00):
probably was not meant for the continentally United States, because
that's a weird move. But AGA's happening. So Hi, this
is Mia in post. So but back when we recorded
this episode in the heady days of early February, there
had been but two balloons. There have now been so
so many more balloons. Oh my god, there the US

(08:20):
just has balloon mania. We now know a little bit
more about the sort of suspected Chinese balloon. It does
that that balloon seems to be an actual balloon at
the very least. The US government claims that they've recovered
an enormous amounts of sort of technical and observational equipment
from it. They said it was, well, what was the

(08:41):
exact line, the size of three school buses, A bunch
of signals intelligence stuff, which is something we didn't mention
an enormous amount. But yeah, like that, that's an Everything
you can use a balloon for is intercepting phone communications
or radio communications, etcetera, etcetera. Okay, so like it seems
like they're like they're the first balloon may have been
an actual balloo. Every subsequent balloon, however, we have learned

(09:02):
more so at least one, and my assumption is this
is every single subsequent balloon after the first balloon. We
have confirmation that so one of the balloons is shot
down over Canada by a F twenty two and this
seems to be a Pico balloon from the Northern Illinois
Bottlecap Balloon Brigade. These are just like these are these
just like tiny balloons that people send out so they

(09:25):
can serve and navigate the globecause these people are just
like balloon hobbyists. They just they just like balloons, and
you know, it's just honestly really sad, like these are
just people who like they just like putting balloons up
and watching them go around the world. And they were
met with the entire aerial light of the world's greatest superpower,
which spent literally more money than I have ever seen

(09:46):
in my entire life to annihilate literally like about one
hundred or two hundred dollars worth of essentially foil and
some GPS equipment. These people apparently tried to contact the
US government and tell them what was going on. US
government was like, so, yeah, congratulations to the US government
which has uh, it has one, it has one an

(10:08):
important geostrategic victory over the Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade. Uh.
This is this has been this has been breaking news
from MIA in in the in the balloon war. Yeah,
enjoy the rest of the episode. But you know, I
wanted to use this to talk about something more interesting,
which is again like the sort of arc of US

(10:29):
China relations and what actually drives it, because I think
people have a really really not very good understanding of
how it works and why. Okay, I think it's reasonable
to ask you why why are you talking about the
arc of US China relations? Aren't US China relations always bad?
And the answer is no, In fact, US shaded relations
to sometimes actually quite good. US China relations are driven
by these two sort of interlocking forces. Right on the

(10:51):
one hand, you have the internal domestic and also kind
of global balance of class forces inside a country, and
that plays a huge role on a lot of the
things that are going to happen in Duwish China relationship.
And the other thing that happens is what you, I
guess would call geopolitics. And we're going to kind of
start with the geopolitics sign and then move back and
forth between that and the sort of class angle on it,

(11:11):
so you can get get get a kind of understanding
of how how this stuff actually works and how to
think about it in ways that are just sort of
incredibly simplistic and useless. So all right, I'm not gonna
go all the way back to like the eighteen hundreds
or whatever, because there are US China relations. We actually
invaded China at one point in like the eighteen hundreds

(11:32):
for some fucking reason, and we actually we did it
again the nexteen hundred and two. Yeah, but okay, So,
but in terms of dealing with modern China, dealing with
USU and modern US China relations is about the US's
relationship with the CCP, and weirdly dream world War two
it was the relations were actually really good, um, you know,

(11:52):
because obviously China, China is the US's ally and World
War two I were there were also allies with China's
nationalist part, the KMT. But you know what's interesting about
this is that there's a faction of the US army
that is anti KMT and pro CCP. And they're not
pro CCP because they're communists. They're pro CCP because a

(12:12):
they're kind of racist and they really don't like the
KMT kind of out of racism. And the second thing
that that's going on is that the KMT, as we've
talked about elsewhere, it's just like incredibly corrupt Esquad party,
and that means that you know, some of the people
who have to like the people who have to work
with them on the ground to World War two or
like these are literally the worst people who have ever lived.
Why on earth are we doing this? That means that

(12:35):
when when the civil war starts, right like the US
takes the nationalist side, but like nowhere near as strongly
as they could have. And this creates this sort of
like this myth around like the loss of China that
becomes this massive thing in the US. Is because this
is one of the things that triggers someth McCarthys and
etceterac Is like everyone becomes convinced it was like, oh
my god, like Truman, like like they lost China, Like

(12:57):
we could have kept China for the communists, but like
they lost it, and it's wow, okay. But this has
another massive impact, which is that it creates this thing
called the China Lobby. And the China lobby is this
is this sort of bank of these like incredibly psychopathic
right wing like anti communist goools and some also people
who had some also people who were like had been

(13:18):
rich in China and then about owned by this CCP,
and they start pushing incredibly aggressively for like regime change
in China for just the US and try to not
have a diplomatic relations, and this this star starts to
sort of like tank relations between the US and China.
And then obviously like so we we fought. We fought
a war with China and Korea, a thing that I

(13:40):
feel like doesn't get talked about as much as you
would think it would. Yeah, the Korean War is the
memory hold war in yeah, and in the UK. It's
why I was in America. But it's the war that
no one Yeah, I mean the Forgotten War is literally
like it's it's most common nickname. There's a pretty good
book by that title too. Yeah. Yeah, but you know,
like like that were like there are there are US

(14:01):
and Chinese troops like shooting the shit out of each other,
like oh yeah, well yeah, like a cross the entire peninsula,
Like there are there are Chinese troops doing bayonet chargers
through the road artillery like the American lines. My my,
the last before I bought my place, my last landlord
was a Chinese citizen um living in the US on
a green card, and during a pandemic conversation over some wine.

(14:22):
We kind of figured out that both of our grandfathers
wound up at the same battles and made very in
shooting each other. Yeah, so that's the melting pot, buddy.
You she became a landlord. M hmm, Well, I mean,
I mean that's a dream there, you like, there there

(14:43):
is a reasonable argument that they're in back again. A
landlord story is the entire course of the of the
sort of like Chinese Chinese politics in the twentieth century
any respect to the United States. Yeah, well, and also
trying to right because landlords are back now. It sucks.
Yeah yeah, land yes, and no Chinese people have become landloads.
But yeah, many a subject to landloads. Shit. Yeah, you know. Okay,

(15:07):
So like obviously it's really interesting too because when people,
like when people write about US China relations, they normally
like the thing that the thing they picked from this
period tends to be like the Tawanies straight crisis, and
it's like, okay, yeah there was this, there were this
race crisis. But again, like the US and China were
like shooting at each other like before this, like why
why is this that? Why is this the thing that
you pick for the downcour of US China relations like

(15:27):
we were at war. Okay, but baffling stuff, right, But
you know, and relations are not good to like the
sixties either, like sort sort of based on very very
similar sort of lines that you've seen in the fifties.
You've like, this is a period where people sort of
take communism anti communism seriously. That stops being true very quickly.

(15:49):
On the other hands, these these sort of geopolitics things
have real material consequences, right. You can look at this
in the American side, where, for example, the industrial build
up of the Japanese and Korean economy and also the
industrial build up like the industrial building of California, right,
has to do with these sort of trade linkuages that
are that are being set up in order for US
to run the war in Korea and run the war

(16:10):
in Vietnam. And China has its own sort of version
of this, where which which starts getting more and more
apparent by it starts around the mid sixties, they have
this thing called the Third Front, which is okay, so,
having having now been through like I don't know how literally,
I don't even know how many wars since the start
of this century, the CCP goes, Okay, we need to

(16:30):
shift art. We need to shift our production away from
sort of the coast and into the middle of the
country so that they can't be attacked by the Soviets
and they can't be attacked by the Americans. And this,
this has, this has a really major effect in terms
of what sort of Chinese industriization looks like. Over the
course of the mid twentieth centuries. You get, you get
this industrial belt that's built up and that is going
to be destroyed later on. And it's destroyed in part

(16:55):
because of of what starts happening in the seventies, which
is the sort of warm up between the US and
China based on sort of Nick Nixon and Kissingers attempts
to sort of peel the Chinese away from the Soviet Union.
And you know, like Robert, you've you've talked about this
ambassadors before, um, but you know, part of part of
what's going on here is that China like basically gets

(17:18):
into a war with the Soviet Union in Nitteen sixty nine.
It's not called that, it's technically just called the border dispute,
but like like there are troops like shooting at each other,
like all across the border, people are beating each other
the death with sticks like people are people are shooting
borders at each other. It's it's it's it's a real war,
and it's in a grand British tradition of course, calling
like massive conflicts an emergency or the troubles. Yeah. Yeah,

(17:42):
it's like okay, you know, but but this, but this,
this this really sort of this this really sort of
drives Chinese sort of international like relations to the point
where they're like, okay, so I know we're supposed to
be communists, but also like the other communist power next
door might like marching army across the board at any point.
So you know, you get you you get this sort

(18:04):
of trying to triangle diplomacy of of of becausin you're
trying to sort of bring China into the or at
least away from the Soviet spear and then closer into
the US beer And you know this starts to work, right,
and you can ask, you know, there's other there's other
things going on here, right, It's China's not just playing
pure geopolitics. Um there there there, there's there's another factor involved,

(18:25):
which is that part of the sort of conditions for
US and Chinese sort of like as you called bilatter
relations or what what whatever sort of geopolitical can't bullshit
you want to say for like getting along closer is
the US starts sending these technology transfers over to China,
like I mean literally like like like taking like sometimes

(18:45):
like taking factories basically and like taking them apart and
then putting them in boxes and shipping them over to China.
And you know, okay, and this is this is this
is a huge deal for the CCP because like the
Chinese econ mean, this period has been really bad. And
part of this is just you know, this is what
happens when you bow. But a secondary part of this

(19:08):
is that China's has has had a real basically it's
it's China's been dealing with this sort of economic crisis
since like like literally since since they came out of
World War Two, which is that okay, so, but most
of China's industrial capacity was completely destroyed you in the
War of the Parchment that weren't were like there was

(19:29):
this belt in Macharia that had stuff and that the
Soviets literally loaded loaded the factories on trains and shipped
them back and shipped them back east or back west.
So bye bye bye. By the by the time, by
the time that the CCP takes over, like China has
less industrial capacity than like Russia dated at the beginning
in nineteen seventeen, Jesus. So situations really bleak, right, And
the other the other thing that's bleak about it is that, Okay,

(19:50):
so in order to build an industrial base, right, we've
talked about this a bit on the show. In order
to build industrial base, you need food. But in order
to get like increase your agriculture productivity, you need like
medical goods. But you can't get those mechanical goods unless
you can increase your jectal capacities. You have this bottleneck.
And this winds up being one of the solutions to
the bottleneck is getting technology transfers from the US. And

(20:14):
you know, the sort of product of this is that
now all of our products and services which we are
about to talk about, which you should buy, are made
in China. So yeah, go go, go, buy, go buy
those things that are the product of all of this.
That's no problem. Yeah, don't don't question it, just purchase it.
Go to Ali Baba, and just finally, their express. Get

(20:35):
Alie Express and just wire them seven hundred dollars. Within
I'm going to say two weeks to seventeen months, you'll
get a package of something yet by a drac. Honestly,
if you order something from Ali Express, there's no real
way to know what you will get. That's the beauty
of Ali Express. Look you you. On the other hand,
there there there is there is a non zero chance

(20:55):
you get a collection of really really sick Chinese shirts
that just have absolutely random on him. It's great Chinese shirts,
or like knockoff versions of military grade optics that work
well enough for the Taliban to use. Yeah, they liberating
people of the world over at the expressed optics. All right,
and we're back. So okay. The Chinese swing into sort

(21:18):
of like alignment with the US. They they start doing
things that are like even a lot of the US's
right wing allies won't do. Like, for example, China, China
is one of the first countries to like to diplomatically
recognize Pinochet Chile, and they like send him a shit
ton of money. Those loans they send they send him
with direct cash transfers and like this is a point
where even like France and like the UK are like,

(21:39):
oh we woo, that's that's a like we're we're not
We're not We're not gonna have We're not gonna acknowledge
his military kindship. And China is like yeah, this rules.
Hell yeah, Pinochet, And you know, they do other stuff
that's very sort of pro us, right. They invade Vietnam
in nineteen seventy nine in the war that you know,
the only war that's more forgot, and then the Korean War. Yeah,

(22:01):
that's it's the side of wit of ease war. Um. Yeah,
that was some pretty good Twitter threats. That taught me
a lot about China's non aggression tour to other countries
last week. Yeah, it's it's a good time. I I
can we we could all talk about like the Sino
Indian War in the middle of this where they just
invade India, which is great, but you know, okay, but

(22:22):
like what what what this sort of comes up to
you is in is like you you you get a
point where the US and China, by by by the
end of the seventies and going into the eighties, are
very much on the same side. Like for example, when
when Dangel Ping came to visit the US. He takes
he takes like an hour out of his schedule to
make a secret visit to the CIA so that he

(22:43):
can set up a joint like USCA Listening posted in
China to monitor the Soviets. We talk about this a
lot in the Kissinger episodes from last year, but folks
should generally be aware that like Chairman maw and Richard
Nixon legitimately got along, like enjoyed one another's company as
did and Chowchesscu like they were they were all good friends. Yeah,

(23:05):
which is something something one ruling class, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah,
there's almost a class analysis you could make the yeah,
but you know, okay, we we're gon're gonna do it.
We're gonna do a slightly different class analysis, which is
that like, okay, so US Shuna relations are very good
literally like basically until Tianneman and then everything gets kind
of messed up because Chianamenianemans. It's a very has a

(23:28):
set of like very weird and contradictory effects, right, you know,
we we talked about some of this in our Chaman episodes.
But it does two things. Right. On the one hand,
like in the US, people are horrified, right the you know,
the the entire media classes like watches, this happened the
outside their windows. There's just like it is an incredible uproar.
It becomes one of the sort of like central like

(23:52):
I don't know, like I sort of like it becomes
it becomes a thing. It's like incredibly central to just
like the memory of what it is to be an
Asian American is to sort of like remember uote unquote Tianneman.
But on the other hand, you know, so okay, what
do you would expect from there, is like the US
and China break off diplomatic relations, and like the Cold
War two starts again immediately with the US and China,
and it doesn't happen like that. And it doesn't happen

(24:13):
like that because the second thing that that that Tianaman
does is it finally crushes the Chinese working class. And
you know, once once, once, the once, the old, once,
the last deald Chinese working class is just gone, right,
and all that's left is an incredibly disorganized and incredibly
desperate sort of market working class. Suddenly, hey, look, we

(24:34):
have a very highly educated, very poor population that you
can that you can just you know, just ship labor too.
And this is what this is what actually happens in
sort of terms sort of the US and Chinese relationship
over the nineties, which is that you know, you you
have these this double D industrialization going on. You have
a D industrialization in the US where you know, the
last of the old russbelt falls apart, the sort of

(24:54):
like mining industrial boom that had happened that the Reagan
just implodes. And you know, some of this is some
of this is these jualization something. This is these jobs
go to like the suburbs and shit, or like places
like Decalb that are just incredibly accursed. But real call
out there, man, I look, I'm sorry to anyone who
lives in Decalb. I wish you best luck fleeing that

(25:18):
guy's at Decalb tourist board sponsorship we've been looking for. Yeah,
but you know, but but simultaneously there's there there's another
wave of the industrial relation happening in China too, which
is that that old third wave industrial belt that I
was talking about, Right, those people had worked in like
basically the equivalent of like the Chinese equivalent of sort
of like good union jobs. Right, They're they're they're working.
They're working for state for state owned enterprises, so they

(25:39):
have housing, they have healthcare, they have pensions, and all
of that is just destroyed. Like all these people lose
their pensions, they lose everything. There are like millions of
people who are pushed out of their jobs. And you
know when when both both of both of these things
happen at the same time, and a lot of companies
who are watching the sort of vast Asian companies like
like economies collapse, We're watching the v B is sorry,

(26:01):
who are watching the South Korean economy collapse, who are
watching the Japanese economy collapse, suddenly start looking at China
and throughout the course of the nineties sort of more
and more American capital. I mean there's already's been capital
from East Asia sort of flowing in the China, more
and more American capital starts flowing in. And what you
get here is you get this battle between geopolitics and economics,

(26:22):
right that the sort of geopolitics side and the sort
of like you know this this this is side that
like the media is on and the side is at
this sort of like the sort of intellectual etc. Et cetera,
like anti China classes on is. You know, they don't
they don't want to let China into the World Trade Organization.
But it doesn't work, right, those guys just get destroyed China.
China get submitted into the World Trade Organization. Both Bill

(26:42):
Clinton and George W. Bush support China entering the WTO,
and they do it because they can they can see
when I'm partially a little bit of it is because
they've they've for some like they've they've they've been drinking
the kool aid and they believe that like, if you
have capitalism, then democracy will follow, which I and lyrical
data suggesting yeah, okay, sure sure, indio cons like whatever.

(27:08):
But you know, but it's also it's also because these
these these these people have financial backers, and their financial
backers are telling them like, hey, look, we can you know,
if if if if if like if all of the
sort of weird sanction regime shit has worked out, and
if China's fully integrated into the capital system, like we
can make a lot of money. And they do that
that this is what the two thousands is, right, like
Walmarts and like Walgreens and shit like directly integrate all

(27:28):
of their supply lines into Chinese supply lines. They make
deals with the Chinese government in order to do this,
and suddenly by you know, by in two thousand and one,
China is i think, like the fourth exporter of goods
in the world. By two thousand and nine they are
number one by like an order of what on order
in magnitude. But they're like very very much the dominant
export like world's dominant export economy. And this is a problem,

(27:49):
right because on the one hands, you know, if if
like American Chinese relations get there, they're actually really good
around nine to eleven, they're actually really good, right, Like
the the US like there were there there were guys
from shing who, like China sends the Guantanamo. It's like here,
take these people in US, torchis them for China, Like
you know, yeah, like relations are like relations are good, right,
It's like, well, okay, hey, we both have like this

(28:10):
like quote Muslim extremist threat that we're like dealing with,
you know, and they try to get on the war
on terror. But eventually relations kind of degrade, like you
have the whole Olympics thing. You have there's like in
like the two thousand tens, there's this whole fight over
these islands that the Philippines claim. But you know, but
but the problem with this is that, like, okay, so

(28:30):
you get, on the one hand, a faction of the
American right that is really and also and also like
there's actually the American right that's really really hard line
anti Chinese based on sort of racism. There's American liberalism,
which you know, has this thing about like the rules
based international order that like China is violating. They're also racist.
And then there's like progressives like Elizabeth Warred who are

(28:51):
also racist and um, and also but you know who's
thing is like, oh, well, workers rights in China are
really bad, so we need to do like competition with them.
It's like, okay, that's how you fix it with more capitalism. Yeah, right,
And but they have a political issue, which is that
there's another massive section of American capital that has enormous
investments moth sort of financially and in terms of where

(29:12):
their factories are, where the logistics are, where the supply
lines are that make them incredibly supportive of sort of
close to US China relations, or at the very least
makes them oppose any kind of sort of like real
like anything that goes beyond kind of geopolitical posturing that
makes it harder to do business for them. And this
is something I think people have a tendency to forget
when they when they try to think about US China

(29:33):
relationship terms of economics, is that like, Okay, so there,
the US has a military industrial complex, but that's not
the that's not the entire US economy. Like, there are
other people in the US who have lots of money.
There was an entire financial sector, there was an entire
tech sector, and those people also have a shit ton
of money. And even even sort of tech companies, right
who who have a foot in sort of the American

(29:53):
contracting business, also often have a bunch of their you know,
a bunch of the places where the technology is built
is in China, right, So you know, even even people
who could theoretically be brought into a sort of like
like an umbiltering industrial complex political coalition against China, like
have reasons not to do it. And you know, and
this this works down the board. Right if you look

(30:15):
at when Trump did the trade war, he you know,
initially there was a lot of popular support among sort
of like American like mid sized businesses, who are like, oh,
we can bring industrial capacity back to the US. And
then all of them discovered that they had to pay,
like all of discovered that, like they had to pay
more for their Chinese goods, and we're like, wait, hold on,
we fucked up. We've made a mistake. He's actually screwed us.

(30:36):
And like, you know, there's there's another kind of guy,
right who there's a lot of people who you expect
to be really antic CCP who aren't, right, and Elon
Musk is the best example of this. Like she's the guy.
I think we'd expect Elon Musk to fully support anyone
who can fully stamp on the face of their working class,
because that's true. But he's the kind of person, true

(30:57):
you would expect, by pure racism to be like a
really hard Lana to CCP guy, and he's not, because
like he has, there's a class consciousness I think which
overapes even apartepe boys racism well and and and like
he has, there's the Tesla has this like oh god,
it's called the Giga factory, which is a name that
makes me want to die. Yeah, I mean, but the

(31:19):
Giga factories in Shanghai, right, And like he ha. He
has even even dream when like the media was like
like pretending to care about the weaker genocide, like he
opened a showroom and shing John like dream that period.
So you know, and there's also people like Michael Bloomberg
who are for very like you know, if you if
you if if you read Michael Bloomberg talking about China,
like in the media, he also talking about like how

(31:40):
grave leader Hijinping is and it's you know, it's because
the people have financial interests there and you know, and
and this this means that like you know, even even
the sort of media coverage of this balloon bullshit, right,
and like China has been like threatening revenge or whatever
for the shooting down to the balloon, But like this
isn't going to turn into anything, right, It's it's the
same in the same way that like the last time

(32:00):
I watched like straight stuff like didn't turn into anything.
In the same way that like less seventeen goddamn with
these scandals isn't going to go anywhere. And it's not
going to go anywhere because there's a there's an enormous
like faction of American capital who relies on this stuff.
I think it serves like the manditary industrial complex and
the military specifically to have China be like Schrodinger's Next

(32:22):
World War, right, like that they're always a threat, but
like then they're not a threat, you know, like we
can justify so much spending and allocation of resources if
we can always like wave this stick of potential conflict
with China. Yeah, And I think there's something that's kind
of like this important to understand is that like both
the China Hawks and the China Doves are enemies of

(32:45):
both the American and Chinese working classes. Like the China
Hawks thing is they want to like, you know, they
want to put the Chinese American working classes against each other.
And it's like national philist fervor in order to get
everyone to ignore the fact that like both the societies
are collapsing around them. And by the way, didn't did
we we have no, I don't. I don't think this
has really made the news yet, but a Norfolk Southern
fucking basically set off a chemical weapon in Iowa by

(33:08):
crashing one by crashing a train full of toxic chemicals. Yeah,
and it's it's literally exploding like right now, as as
we're fucking to recording this episode. It's on fire. Oh good.
You know. I love how when you deregulate train industry
so that you can have just like one guy working
a massive train hauling huge amounts of toxic chemicals, it

(33:31):
works out great. Yea happens. It's good efficiency. Rub Yeah. Look,
a train crash like this would have normally taken dozens
of people to engineers. So we have we have improved
our efficiency markedly well. And also in terms of efficiency,
Robert like, think of how bad it could have been
if we hadn't crossed the rail strikes. Yeah, so yeah,
it can been disaster, Yeah, terrible. There might not be

(33:55):
there might not be a giant poisoned gas clad and
what is it, Ohio, we can't have that. Yeah, it's
in the East Palestine, Ohio. That's it's it's Palestine. They
don't say, can have American solidarity with with Palestine. NICs. Oh, free,
free Palestine. That's what I'm saying. That's been done already,

(34:18):
the first, the first Palestine. This will this will seem
like it's in bad taste if a lot of people
wiped up dying. But yeah, yeah, I also want to
mention here that I'm I'm gonna take this opportunity to
mention that China is the second large Israel's second largest
trading partner, and they do like yeah, and like they
they do like security exchanges with each other where people

(34:38):
trade each other's military is it's great, it's great. Um yeah,
but but you know, you could rely if someone is
oppressing working people they've done a security exchange with Israel.
That is it's golden lore of cup beating you in
the head with a stick. So it's never more than
two degrees removed from the idea. Okay, there's one less

(35:00):
thing I want to talk about really briefly, which is okay,
So one of the things you will see people talk
about who are like pundits or like people on the
news talked about this thing called decoupling. And the thing
you need to understand immediately is at the moment someone
says the word decoupling, you can stop listening to everything
they're about to say because they are lying to you,
like it is bullshit. So the what in theory the

(35:24):
coupling is this thing where like supposedly, like the US
and Chinese economies are gonna decouple, right, and like all
the American firms in China are gonna pull out, and
they're gonna pull out their supply chains and they're gonna
relocate them to swhere else in the world, and the
US and Chinese economies suddenly will like not be coupled
to each other. It's like, no, they're not, Like this
has never happened. It didn't. It didn't Like if it
was gonna happen, it would have happened in twos and seventeen,
and like, doesn't eighteen when Trump was Trump is doing

(35:45):
the trade war, It didn't happen. Then. The only time
it's ever happened, or the only time American companies ever
sort of pulled out of China like on mass or
tried to was Ironic Green twen two thousand and eleven.
But in two thousand and eleven they are trying to
pull out because of the Wukan riots and this like
mass of surge of strikes in China, and suddenly all
these companies were like, oh my god, China might not
be able to keep our I might be not be

(36:05):
able to suppress the working class hard enough. And then
they yeah, they got horribly crushed. And well, the other
thing that happened was like company. They like companies tried
to go elsewhere and they couldn't do it because no one,
like no other countries had the combination of like a
like things like a stable electrical grid and like working roads,
like an actually highly educated population. So like they didn't

(36:27):
have all of these things at once. So they all
came back and you know that that was that was
close as ever came to happening. Everyone talks about this
all the time, they're lying to you. Ignore them. Yeah,
it's it's it's not it's not going to happen. The
US and Chinese economies are inextorably bound to each other,
and they're going to continue to be. Yeah, I mean,

(36:48):
we can't run like our economy to a logic extent
on an economy, but I cast society runs on like
providing treats to the working class just enough to prevent
them from a battle angle from trying to radically change anything.
And like we can't keep the constant stream of treats
running if if we decouple from China, right, like cheap
consumer goods. And also like the Chinese economy relies on

(37:10):
like as an expert economy, right like they've they've they've
they've been trying to turn to an internal consumption economy
for a decade. It's like not really working because hilariously,
it's not working because they don't pay people enough to
buy shit, and surely no one will ever do that
because yeah, yeah, so you know, but yeah it's great.
But you know, okay, I guess like the gist of

(37:32):
what I wanted to say here is that, like like you,
US China, relations are driven by forces that are more
complicated than man on TV yell at balloon, and as
as powerful as man on TV yell at balloon, seems
like in the moment, it's not actually the thing underlying
what's going on here. And you need to be able
to look past man yell at balloon on TV in

(37:54):
order to look at the sort of the broader, the
broader political and social forces that are that are going
on here. And I think beyond that, what we need
to do is recognize that there's a deep emptiness at
the center of American society that should have, in this
case been filled by rich people in cessnas and their
friends with high caliber precision rifles flying into the sky

(38:15):
and a noble caxote quest to shoot that fucking balloon down,
just having Sancho Panza. C'm so disappointed in this country. Um,
I expected forty or fifty people to die, but that
balloon to be taken down. There was a time when
we had a country. Yeah, our founding fathers would have

(38:39):
dropped that son of a bitch. Yeah, Joe Brandon has
forced some wan into retirement. Yeah, and China has revealed anyway,
I hope China sends another balloon. Yeah, what else are
we going to do? Yeah? I feel like a Mickey
Mouse fucking Frozen balloon. You know, if they do like
the girl from Frozen, Sure, it would be cool. I'd

(39:01):
like to see that. They should start pranking us with
character balloons. I'd fucking love that. Oh God. But but
but then the US would start sending like Wi the
Pool balloon. Elizabeth would commission a Moana balloon to like
illegal for raising fun to happen. We would have like
a balloon based Cold war where the United States starts

(39:22):
shooting over balloons across China and the Russians start floating,
and it's just, yeah, we got to close the balloon gap.
Becomes the number one world power. Green Chili Jack boots
stamping over the face of humanity strong minutary capacity. The

(39:46):
developers of Balloons Tower Defense get hauled before a Senate
committee for supposedly doing the future. God yeah, yeah, we
got a nationalized MYLA production in order to monopolize it.
All right, well the balloon pause. Yeah, I think that's
our episode. Yea, all right, until next time, everybody go
forth in balloon. Yeah yeah. Float a balloon into the

(40:09):
airspace of a sovereign nation, just to take with them
a little bit by Cameron Ali Express, put it on
a balloon, send it somewhere. But you can be be
the CIA you want to see in the skies over
a sovereign country on the balloon, spree painted on the side.
Why not? Why not? What's the harm? What could possibly

(40:33):
go wrong? Now I'm going to listen. On an unrelated note,
I'm finally going to listen to the SI song ninety
nine Red Balloons for the very first time. Changes my
opinion on what people should do with balloons. All right,
everyone out, Hi, everyone's it could happen here and today

(41:10):
it's near and myself and we're doing two interviews, which
is going to split over two different episodes. What we're
talking about is a case in Asha, North Carolina, where
a group of people doing mutual aid work with and
How's people have been charged with felony littering. Now we're
going to get a little bit in the episode into
what felony littering is. Unfortunately, I don't think any of

(41:31):
us can explain why that exists as a charge for
individuals and not for like you know, BP or SHELL
or something, but such as a state. And so in
the first episode, we're going to talk to Sarah. Sarah
is one of the people facing these felony littering charges.
Sarah's also been banned from parks in Nashville and which
we're going to talk about. So Sarah will explain a
little bit of the process that led up to those

(41:52):
felony littering charges, what the situations like in Ashville for
mutual Aid in front How's people. And then we're going
to talk to Maniba tomorrow. Maniba is one of the
lawyers at the ACOU, and she will explain a little
bit of the legal background to the case and what
is sort of the way that the ACOU is helping
these people oppose the ban. So we'll have two separate episodes,

(42:14):
but we actually recorded them in a different order, so
you're going to hear Sarah maybe referring to some stuff
Maniva said, and Maniba saying, Sarah will say some stuff.
Just know that we recorded Mania first because she had
a pressing time commitment, But we felt that Sarah's interview
gives you a better set up for listening to Manya's
interview tomorrow. Okay, hope you enjoy. We're going to start
out talking to Sarah. He's one of the people who

(42:35):
is a quote unquote problem child in Asheville. We can Yeah, yeah, Sarah,
did like to introduce yourself and tell us where you're
a problem child? Yeah, my name is Sarah Norris. Um.
It's so funny to be called something like a problem
child because I'm mostly like what I am as a

(42:57):
mom of a little kid. I'm a social work student,
like I am a career educator. Um. And I am
also yeah, one of sixteen local organizers who who has
been facing for almost the last year felony littering charges

(43:19):
in conjunction with December twenty one. December twenty twenty one
art spaced protest. Yeah, I'm sorry, did this bizarre thing
has happened to you. Obviously, like on the face fit felines,
feloninees ring is a bizarre charge and the fact that
you are banned from parks is also very weird. Al Right,

(43:41):
so let's maybe start off with like the situations before this,
what were you what we were doing in the parks
that led to you being deemed unsuitable for parks? Gosh,
no way, you'd have to ask those who deemed who
so deemed us. But I can talk about what I
did in parks for for the year prior to being banned. Um,

(44:03):
And that's a I was part of a collective whom
who at the beginning of the pandemic um did like
six times a week meals, coffee, gear distribution in parks. Um.
By the time I came around and started participating in
these in these food sharings, in these community gatherings, UM,

(44:27):
we were at like two or three times a week.
And um, really what the way I spent my time
in parks was Saturdays and Sundays. I brought my daughter
to Aston Park and we brought food with us, gear
with us, art supplies with us, or nothing with us.

(44:50):
We just showed up as us and we hung out
and we distributed food, tents, packs, socks, toothbrow is really
whatever we could get our hands on. UM. And towards
the end of the year, we got a little bookshelf
and uh we were we were in charge of bringing

(45:11):
books UM on this like little white plastic shelf and
like talking to people about what they most wanted and
see if they can match them up with whatever we
randomly had. UM. It was really like sitting in the
sunshine and uh making sure the coffee thing was full UM,
and mostly just talking to people, people who were run house,

(45:32):
people who are housed, people who walked by and were like,
what's this? What's this picnic? Why is everybody like using
glitter glue? Like, oh, because there's a five year old
and that's what we do. UM. So So that's what
mostly I did in Parks UM. And this is this
this activity UM is in the context of a city

(45:54):
who I think in twenty twenty one, UM, I think
we know there were at least twenty one sweeps of
homeless encampments, and a sweep like that name for some
of us, really connotes violence, but I think it's important

(46:16):
to name how violent those are. A camp sweep means
that folks have to leave the place where they've been living,
and very often their belongings are then considered to be trash,
are bulldozed over, are are at a minimum lost to them.

(46:39):
And this had happened over and over again in the
city of Asheville. And yeah, there's a way that that
being in the park weekly felt like a thing that
happened in Ashville that was the opposite of feats that
was like we're here, We're all here together, like here

(47:00):
we are. And so the protest itself around which in
the context of which like these arrests have come, happened
in December, and it was an arts based protest and
was really about was in favor of sanctuary camping in

(47:26):
the city of Ashville with sanitation services. That was the
point of it. And there were like kind of standard
protest related events on or sorry, arrests on Christmas night.
So that's what um Asheville Police did. And I think
it's important just to note that there were not unhoused

(47:47):
folks evicted that night on Christmas night, and no one
who was there was pretending to be unhoused and was arrested.
That's a strange narrative that the City of full Police
department has set in open court. Um. But there were
standard sort of like misdemeanor trespass resisting officer arrest that night, um,

(48:10):
including of journalists. And then these felony littering cases came
much later and in a kind of a different context.
But that's what that's what happened around Christmas. Okay, yeah,
it's already pretty weird, but I think, yeah, it gets waited.
Yeah yeah. So so particularly if you were not arrested,

(48:33):
then I went home and Chrismasy stuff, and then at
some point, well a letter comes through your doors saying
that you've been charged with like felony littering. So my
own experience was that people organizers in the mutually collective

(48:54):
that I'm part of, who had been showing up in
the parks week after week distributing food and gear, started
getting arrested in mid January. For um, what we learned
was something you could be arrested for, which was felony
littering and or aiding into and a betting felony littering,

(49:16):
which like honestly exactly and and some people had one,
some people had the other. Some people had both um
people were and this is you know, our understanding is
that there's an unstated but generally followed policy by the
City of Ausha police de forma that they don't go
arrest people at work. But they went to people's work

(49:38):
with five cops and arrested them. Um. And this began
in mid January and it continued um into into February.
And be arrest I mean, honestly, the charges on the
on the charge sheets would read like crazy statues that

(49:58):
weren't even felony littering. It seems like they it really
seemed like they were making it up as they went along,
just from the what I can say is, I mean,
I can't speculate about what they were doing, but there
was a strangeness to to even like the documentation that
people who are arrested received. And then at the first
week of March of last year, the letter that I

(50:23):
received was similar to others that others other folks received
that day, which was in an envelope from the Asheville
Police Department but was on Ashell Parks and arc stationary
that told me that I had been banned from all
city parks for a period of three years based on

(50:46):
the commission of a felony. And this was how I
found out that I even had any charges, was through
this letter. And that's true for more than me, that's
true for a few defends. Um. So you know, not
everybody who is now we understand to be banned from

(51:07):
parks has even received one of those letters, but I did,
and a few of us did, And there was on
there a sort of like if you would like to
appeal this, you have seven days, but the letter had
been dated sort of five days before that, and we
were like, wow, what are we even doing? And so

(51:28):
it's hard to it's hard to really communicate the like
level of um both like sort of desperation and nonsense
that was involved. The next day, but um, you know,
so a few of us found this out. We were
we self surrendered, and because we were a lot of

(51:50):
us around the courthouse in city hall, we were trying
to figure out what does this letters even mean? Like
what does it mean to appeal this? What does it
need to be banned? And so we trapesed around city hall,
city offices, the courthouse trying to get some sort of
answer like what here we've got these what does this mean?
And every place sent us somewhere where they were like,

(52:11):
we don't know what that is. Park Snart said, we
don't know what that is. Go talk to the police.
We said, we don't know what that is. Go talk
to the magistrate. The criminal magistrate said, oh, this seems
like a civil magistrate thing. So there's like a group
of five mutual aid workers, you know, sort of just
trapesing around trying to find out like can I do
I get to go give out sandwiches intense in the

(52:33):
park this week or not for three years? What is?
And who can help me figure this out? And no
one could? And what insod We never got an answer
that day. We just had city employees looking at us,
often with a like wow, we don't We're sorry this
is happening to you. This seems really dumb expression. And eventually,

(52:56):
via email it became clear that they were like, we
don't know what this process is, but we're going to
tell you soon, like thank you for your email, you know,
saying you're going to appeal it. And over time we
kind of got a little bit more like okay, we're
going to schedule the hearings. You will have a hearing eventually,
like okay, we ask who will be these are like

(53:16):
for what what is a hearing? And they didn't know,
and then like, oh, okay, well there will be some
police officers there and you know, the city representative from
the City Attorney's office, and you will have a chance
to provide information. And you know, at this point, like,
none of us, I think none of us had maybe
we'd had Adam appearances, but like, at this point, we're

(53:36):
dealing with felony littering charges that we don't understand. We're
trying to figure out whether we can continue to provide
community care in the way we've been doing for years,
and it seems like what the city is offering is
a chance to come and maybe entrap ourselves. Like it

(53:58):
doesn't make any sense to us. And so you know,
those of us who had representation that we could speak
to said, oh, we're coming, um, and have you heard
the recordings? No, Well, if you would like them, I'm
happy to send them. Mine is particularly I can't listen
to mine. I have a huge nervous system response. Um,

(54:21):
but mine is my my attorney asking over and over
again questions of the of the representative, the city attorney.
It's not it's John Maddox, who's um named in the
ACLU demand letter. Um, just saying over and over again,
like what at that point, we haven't even seen any discovery,
Like we don't know what information this is even based on.

(54:42):
Like there are two cops in uniform pointing body cams
that assume I have to assume pointing body cams at me, um,
and in this in this hearing, and my lawyer is
just asking over and over again, like upon what evidence
is this space? And they just said over and over again,
you're here to give information. We are not giving any information.
My lawyer asking what is the standard of review here?

(55:04):
Like how upon what is this base? And the parks
director just saying like my decision and the and and
then and then you know, what are the what is
the remedy if this is if the appeal is denied,
there's none, then the appeal is denied. Like and so
it really was for me one of the moments where
I realized, like, oh, the city is is pretty hell

(55:29):
bent on keeping a bunch of sweethearts who give out
tens and sandwiches out of the park, and they're gonna
like they're they're up to something here. Um. But I'm
happy to share that recording. We have all of them reported. Yeah,
I'd like that performance of like suitable legal ceremony well

(55:51):
and again and and like pseudo in a dangerous and
extra judicial way, like I had no protections there, right, Yeah,
you know, like yeah, there's something to respond to. Yeah,
it's like these these are these, these are Star Chamber proceedings,
like like the King of France is going to walk out.

(56:13):
I just think it seems like such a British thing,
like yeah, you told me this in Britain and you've
been like shooting the Queen's swans or something. I'd buy it.
You know. Here we are in the land of the free.
You know that well, And I think the equivalent of
shooting the Queen's swunts here is um hanging out with

(56:35):
poor folks in a park um and in ways that
inconvenience or that apparently inconvenience the folks who go who
pay money because you have to to play tennis at
a public tennis court which is like right by Aston

(56:55):
Park and and we can go in in a minute
as much as you want to to what you saw
as far as like their attempts after their attempts to
pass to sneak through an ordinance. Um. Now we know
quite clearly from public records directed at at food sharing
in Austin Park. Yeah, it's really I keep thinking about

(57:15):
that that Helder Kamara aligned I. When I give food
to the poor, they called me a saint. When I
asked why the air poor? They call me a communist.
But it's like they really seem to have blown all
the way, Like they didn't even get to part two.
They were just like, wait, hold on, you're giving food
to the poor, like it is time for a military response.
It's just it's just horrible. Yeah, and being banned from

(57:39):
parks for three years has a pretty big effect on
my on my little life, you know, like there are
constitutional um aspects to it that matter far beyond me
and and which matter in many ways more too. But

(58:01):
the fact right now is that like I can't legally
take my young child like to the park, buy her
house without risking a rest for misdemeanor trust house. Um
and and to my knowledge I won't be able to
for three years. Um. And you know, they've succeeded in
getting us out of the park. They caused the harm

(58:23):
to they disrupted community care Um, they did it. They
didn't need the ordinance. Um, you know, it does happen.
Food distribution happens, but it's in a place that really
isn't the same. Like my daughter can't go there. She
has some sensory stuff like being in the loud place
that it is right now, it really doesn't work. Um.

(58:46):
So yeah, there's this. There's this very um like the
scopes of all of this um from how Asheville as
a city views and treats the folks who live on
the street here who the city has most abandoned. There's
the legal mechanisms, the like very strange way they are

(59:10):
like doubling down on criminalization of folks doing community care.
And then there's just like the really day to day
personal personal bits of this that affect all of us
in different ways, and a felony would affect lots of
us in different ways, Like it endangers professional licensure, Like
I'm trying to get a social work license, like people,

(59:34):
it endangers professional licensure. Of course, I right to vote,
housing and employment. And you know, I'm the like middle aged, white,
middle class mom, second graduate degree person in the group.
I am not really representative of our group. Like folks
are in a lot less folks are in a lot
more precarious and material circumstances than I am, and so

(59:58):
much so that like, you know, it feels safe for
me to come on this podcast. It doesn't feel safe
for everybody to come on a podcast. It feels safe
for me to have my name out, like, um, it
doesn't for everybody. And I think, um, yeah, I think
that that's something that has to be named too. Of
like how what I threat this is to folks future

(01:00:20):
material will being as well as currently Like folks have
most housing over this, Folks have lost employment over this,
like um Jesus Christ. Yeah, like even if you're found
completely innocent or whatever, like this has robbed your time
or people at the housing or people's their jobs. It
caused stress and in that way, you know, it does
feel and often to us like the like the punishment

(01:00:45):
is the process. Yeah, it's just harassment. So I don't
know if I feel are updated on like there are
five of us being taken to trial. Is that something
you know? Okay, yeah so yeah yeah, but our listeners
probably aren't. So it's lain like so right after this
happened or at some point, Alt's happening. So I know
when we started speaking, I was like, oh, well, I'd

(01:01:05):
pr ra this shit out of Aya City council people,
and you were like we already have. Yeah, so because
there was some stuff in there that was just weirdly Yeah,
can you what you got from, like this has got
a problem job Montaka come from, among other things. Sure, yeah, gosh,
it's so even talking about it, I have such a

(01:01:28):
reaction and um that I can feel um and I
should say, you know, I speak about this to my
not not about the city of the text necessarily, but
I speak about the situation to a lot of people
because it does feel to us like you know, they're
also I think they would like us to be ashamed,

(01:01:49):
but we're not ashamed of what is happening to I mean,
that's part of the degradation of a quick system. And
so you know, all of my neighbors know what is
happening to me, all of the people that I work
with in the various like uh, school related jobs and
such that I do. And to a person, everyone in
Asheville starts with disbelief. They're like no, and then I'm

(01:02:11):
like yes, and then they're just so disappointed, like they're
just they're so appalled. Often people say the number in
nineteen eighty four, Like often people are like, wow, I
really I didn't know. Some people did know, you know
that the city was was like this. UM, but you

(01:02:32):
know that's that's sort of paralleled my experience in a way,
just like disbelief and then and then disappointment. UM. But yeah,
we recently it's intensified recently seeing the publicly available communication
between council members UM, and I think, UM, I want

(01:02:59):
to be careful and I don't have it in front
of me, and so I don't want to I don't
want to misquote it. But what I can say, UM,
is that anybody can go find on the City of
ashtables public records or busts. Anybody can go get those
now because they've been requested UM. And so they're publicly available.
And we have texts between council members that UM, that

(01:03:21):
are kind of debate that that are in contemplation of
an ordinance that would restrict food sharing in public places
to to require permitting in contemplation of that, like we
have we have texts from council members calling um, those

(01:03:43):
who do those who do fouturing and ask and park
problem children, um and saying that it's a shame that
the problem children have ruined it for the rest of
the class. We have. We have one saying like, you know,
probably if if we go ahead, we city council go
ahead with this, with this ordinance, there will be a
lot of protests and a lot of pushbacks, which of
course there was once it came out. UM. And we

(01:04:05):
have the other council members saying like, yeah, that might
be UM, but if permitting is the only way to
get them to stop, then so be it. And any
I mean I read that, and I have a variety
of reactions, but mostly just like a kind of nauseous
disappointment UM. In And this is not true of all

(01:04:28):
council UM, because some of some some folks have tried
to like understand the gap being filled by folks who
give out food and gear in a park. UM. And
I think some of the council and have recognize it
as a gap um that is being filled. And I
think some are are so aware of what it says

(01:04:53):
about the city that folks have to show up in
a park and give out food and gear and there's
never enough of either. Um. They're so aware of what
that lays there, about the abandonment that the city practices
of those who live here, that they can only see that,
and they can only be angry with us, right and
call us problem children like forty three. Yeah, well you

(01:05:17):
can see the sort of like like the kind of
just like petty dictatorship mind that they've gotten themselves into.
Were like they can't see the people who like you know,
nominally they're supposed to be serving, right, but like, okay,
we know how far that goes, but they can't see
like you as anything other than just like a child.
Because that's the kind of like this is the sort
of dictator brain that they've that they've from like holding

(01:05:37):
this power. It's it kind of reminds me of like
how you see with the fourteenth he said, like the
state is me and therefore a tax on my reputation
or like a tax against the state. Like yeah, that's
how it feels like you're being treated us by making
them look bad. And I don't know if you saw

(01:05:57):
this also in there, but um on the day that
the arrests happen. So so those discussions about the ordinance
were I think a little earlier in January that we
should actually too that. Um, but there's a there's one
that came right on the day of the first arrests
for felany lettering that um or someone asks like can

(01:06:20):
those arrested be banned from certain places? Um? And and
we know now yes, but it is it's a lot
to see that. It's a lot to see what looks, um,
what looks so deliberately like depriving us of a sorry
to be in a perk? Yeah? Yeah? And so where

(01:06:46):
is where's the five you are going to trial? Yeah?
Unknown number of people are banned from parks in Nashville. Yes, yes.
My understanding is that someone has been told, um, oh,
we don't keep records of that, which also doesn't make
a lot of sense. Yeah, how can you force a

(01:07:07):
bath if we don't have a record of who's bay? Yeah,
and I shouldn't be quoted on that, but um, but
my understanding is that, like, um, is that that has
been the It's like, oh no, there aren't records that
we can that can be made public about that, because
there's some police aren't for records. UM do that just
seems like that's just just like incredibly bizarre secret police shit.

(01:07:27):
Of like, yeah, I know we have like we have
we have lists that don't exist of people who are
banned from spaces and we won't tell you what they
are because I don't existe. Yeah, you'll find out when
this what team comes from behind the swings and yeah
yeah yeah, yeah terrible. So yeah, you're banned from the park,
you're facing you're going to trial. Yeah, five of us

(01:07:52):
um have been have been scheduled for trial and the
other folks UM have been kind of it's called taken
off the calendar, so they don't have nothing's dismissed um
but um, but they're not scheduled. There's no there's no
next quart date for them. Okay, so when when will
you if you don't mind saying, when would your trial

(01:08:13):
date be? Our trial date right now is set for
February twenty seventh. Well okay, so you're coming up, it's
coming right up. Yeah, that's tough. We'll make sure we
get this out before then. How can people support you,
support the work that you uh not doing in parks anymore?
How can people help you through this? I'm sure it's

(01:08:35):
a really stressful trial prices, Yeah, thank you for asking. Um,
so we post updates in a few different places. UM,
But we don't have our own Instagram right now because
we're we just don't. But our our defendant statements get

(01:08:56):
released in a few different places, including UM at a
V survival on Instagram. We also have a website where
we always post our own statements and also all the
press that comes out about us, and that is abl
Solidarity dot no blogs dot org. We have a VENMO

(01:09:19):
which is used that those funds are used for attorney
fees and and frankly, like you know when someone loses
housing or their car breaks down and they have had
trouble finding employment because they have fell any lettering churches
against them, and it's also used for material needs in
that way, and that is a VL defendant fund And

(01:09:43):
all that's actually on the website too. You can find
those UM. And honestly, it matters so much that people
just know this is happening, you know, when I tell
people in Ashville, like more people know now than did before. UM,
when I tell people outside of Asheville, there's very much
like I thought about coming there. I heard it was cool.

(01:10:04):
It's like they do want those who make not just
like a living from tourism but those who make tons
of money from tourism are certainly invested in you thinking
that it's really cool and tell me to spend your
money here. And it's not cool in the ways that
they want you to think it's cool. It is cool
because neighbors show up for each other and you can
come here and we'll talk to you about that. But

(01:10:24):
there's a way that, like people knowing what this place
is really like does matter. And there's a way that honestly,
people just like sending us like they're beautiful energy and
hope really matters too, Like that actually that actually really
doesn't matter. So they can send us through beautiful energy
and hope and material contributions as they might have them. Yeah,

(01:10:45):
I'm sure people will because horrifically fucked up. I wanted
to ask, what is the sentence range for felony littering? Yeah,
so it's the lowest class of felony. As it happens
none of us have any criminalstery. Yeah, we'd be facing
felony probation and so that could that there's a range

(01:11:07):
there of whether that probation is supervised or unsupervised. Um,
there's a range of how long it would be there's
a range um of restitution in terms of community service,
um and and I actually don't have the paper in
front of me that says what the range of those
things are, but I feel like it's eight twelve months

(01:11:27):
on probation um and a lot of that is simply
at the discretion of incentencing um and um And I
think that that there are some puzzible restrictions on just
like being able to leave the state. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
I mean yeah, probation. Sorry, christ Like, this is fully

(01:11:49):
fucking sent me now. Because a guy, a man called
Robert Wilson in San Diego was arrested for hate crimes
because he assaulted his gay neighbor. Since he was arrested,
he's riven around San Diego and La dressed as a Nazi,
sometimes with horrifically anti semitic slogan. Has just left the
country and is living in Poland because because fucking like somehow, sorry,

(01:12:14):
I'm sorry, I love it. This is fully fully sent
me now too. Yeah, yeah, what is wrong with this ship?
Yeah there's something else you wanted to get to you? Yeah,
I think I wanted to name so, you know, people
are so in a way like I wish I had
a super cut of everyone I've ever said the word

(01:12:35):
felony lettering too, just like their faces over and over again.
Maybe I'll come to Asheville and just vox pops. Yeah,
so there's a way that you know, of course that's
just like and with you add on eating and a betting,
which we've all been bumped up to felony lettering but
or sort of but but but the myst miyor is
conspiracy to commit no, yeah, what's next greco charge? Yes,

(01:13:04):
so so um so on its face, you know, it
has this ring of absurdity, and of course like it is.
You know, a lot of the press about us, you know,
they'll go talk to someone at the School of Government
who says, like, well, this is baffling and at the
very least seems like a misapplication of the statute, which
is about um huge amounts of waste often being like

(01:13:27):
dumped by businesses. Um. But I think it's it's it's
telling that a couple maybe a month or two ago,
there was an article in the Citizen Times, a local paper,
about US and a company, Waste pro which had dumped
um an entire dumpster's worth of trash um. Now I'm

(01:13:50):
like out somewhere outside of um where it should have
been like in the in the landfillm um. And but
it was all about like how actually they had followed
procedure because there was like maybe a little bit of
a battery fire or something. There was something going on
with it where they they weren't supposed to bring it in,
so they just had to dump it. But in the
course of this article, they interviewed a lot of people

(01:14:15):
about like, well, what's going on with like litter in
general and like big amounts of litter, and our case
was never mentioned, but they did talk to some folks
who who do river clean up, an organization called GreenWorks,
and that person said, you know, sometimes there are like
there's huge amounts of dumping that happens, and we call

(01:14:35):
the city and they say, yeah, that's illegal, but we
don't actually prosecute that. And like seeing you know, that's
the sort of thing also that seeing in print, I'm
just like, what what sort of strange like dystopian novel
am I living in where the city is so upfront

(01:14:55):
that like, oh no, like we wouldn't prosecute felony littering,
but when it comes to aiming to disrupt a kind
of community care and political speech that they don't like. Um,
they're willing to expend an incredible amount of resources on it,

(01:15:16):
you know, like the number of resources that have gone
into this would have funded like sanctuary camping with sanitation
services like for years, for years, and you know, I
think you alluded though maybe this is in the future
of the podcast, like to the way the City of
Asheville or our lawyers have been clear that when you
when you look at the City of Asheville's like public

(01:15:38):
apronouncements and the way that that they talk about um homelessness,
it does seem like, oh wow, we're really we're really
trying to get on this UM. But at a recent
meeting where a consultant group often referred to as like yeah,

(01:15:58):
that other that that consultant group from now because it's
happened to over and over again, presented findings about like
what should actually be done to end unsheltered homelessness. Here
presented finding to the city council and accounting commissioners. No
one was allowed to talk except for this huge meeting.
No one was allowed to talk except for council members
and commissioners and those who were presenting. But a man

(01:16:20):
who actually has experience, was experience with homelessness, got up
and talked anyways, and he was interrupted by the mayor
and like that's telling in its own right. That's that's
telling in its own right. Also telling is that later
also not allowed to speak. A local pastor got up

(01:16:41):
and said, you know, I saw that happen. You know,
like what we need to be doing is actually listening
to the folks who've experienced this and like data, yes,
we need data, but we also need to like actually
listen to the voices of what's going on. And he
used the phrase, which I think was echoing the man

(01:17:02):
who had spoken earlier, spiritual death, and said that this
he thinks as a pastor, that Ashville is in a
moment of spiritual death. And in a way, that's why
I say, like we need you, We need your material
contributions to us as defendants to collective care. Like when
we have extra money in that defendive fund, we just
give it away. Some people can buy more tents, and

(01:17:24):
we need like we need some hope because Ashville is
in this momentum where it's as a city, it's making
choices that seem so misaligned, not just with like the
image that it would like to sell to tourists, but
like with the people who live here and are actually

(01:17:44):
like about it day to day in a neighbor's caring
for a neighbor's way, like really misaligned with what we
actually want and what we actually are capable of offering
each other. Yeah, yeah, it is deeply sad, but like
we've created this abstraction of society which is being entirely
anti social, like no one wants, no one, ye, no

(01:18:07):
reasonable person would do that, But we've got the state,
which in theory acts on our behalf and is doing it.
Yeah yeah, which also is probably to editorialize for a second.
Often people will make this argument, I see it specifically
around gun laws, but with other laws, to where this
law won't always be enforced and only use it if
they need it if they have to get a bad person.

(01:18:29):
They will use it if anybody threatens their interest, their
shit right, Like it was extensively mobilized for a ghost
gun law here, which made some bizarre things illegal, like
the bank stick which you use for spear fishing, is
now a ghost gun and a felony, and like there
were definitely boomers who have dozens of those in their
garage right and don't keep up on local audiences and

(01:18:51):
are now, in theory at risk of committing a felony.
And then obviously the response to that from the councilors, oh, well,
we wouldn't charge them, like who we can't us the
state to be benevolent when it's your experience is shown
it's anything but and you know we And I can
say this personally because I've spoken I've spoken to people

(01:19:11):
in city government or in state government who I've just
said like, hey, did you know this is happening? Um?
And and they're clear about how Um sure it sounds
nettie but the city but like that, but that that
we as a group have been painted as particularly dangerous.

(01:19:33):
And that part to me is like, I mean, don't
do this to anybody, you know, don't do it to anybody.
But the part where where what's going on is like,
it's is this strange justification, um, with the idea that
that we are dangerous people who deserve to be taken
you know, who need to be taken out of a part,

(01:19:55):
who need to not be allowed to be in a park.
You know is particularly easily disproved by anyone who actually
like hangs out with us, knows what, knows who we
are and what we've done. But not when it's just
like a weird whisper campaign in the in the halls
of city government, like oh no, they're bad, Like they're
just bad. Um. Like we we've heard the lies that

(01:20:18):
they've told about us, some of them we have in
um in you know, public records requests like um that
we haven't even talked about. But it's it's a it's
a really strange thing to be to be painted that way. Yeah, yeah,
it's design. Again. I'm sorry it's happening to you. And
so I think to wrap up, maybe again, you could

(01:20:39):
just give that venmost people can support materially and yeah,
you know, if there's any other social media account where
people can follow along, where people can send their support
and best wishes, that yeah, that's great. Um our venmo
is a VL defendant fund and um yeah you can

(01:21:01):
so on Instagram. We're easy to get you through a
VL survival and there's a way to contact us through
our website. We can have a little we have a
little email. I'll be so cute to get some supportive emails,
and that website is a VL solidarity dot no blogs
dot org. Amazing. Thank you all so much, thank you

(01:21:23):
for giving us your time. I'm sorry that you're dealing
with the fairy US state bullshit. All right, So that
wraps up. Are into you with Sarah. Tomorrow we'll be
talking to Maniba from the ACOU, the American Civil Liberties Union,
and he will be giving us a legal perspective and
some more insight into this case. We'll look forward to
talking to you then. Hi everyone, it's James again. I

(01:21:59):
just want to remind you that this is part two
of a two parta and if you haven't listened to
yesterday's podcast, today's might not make a lot of sense,
So I would suggest starting there. Obviously, you know of
your own lifetill you want, but you're going to understand
today's a lot more if you start with yesterday's. Today
we speaking to Menieba with the ACLU about the legal
response to some of the bizarre things City of Asheville

(01:22:20):
has been doing. If you hear reference to Pip in
this episode, that's because Pip is another of the activists.
They weren't able to make our call but we're going
to be speaking to them as well in our ongoing
coverage of this. So hope you enjoy today's episode know
that we'll keep you updated as this moves forward. All right,
so our first guest today is Niba and Minnie. But
would you like to introduce yourself explain your relationship to

(01:22:42):
what we're talking about today. Yeah. Sure, So my name
is Maniba Talister. I'm a stop attorney with the ACLU
Narth CAREL I know, and I represent some of these
wonderful folks that you'll be talking to actor me and UM,
it's unfortunate that we met this way, um, but you know,

(01:23:06):
I'm happy to be working with them. So basically I
can go into it or do you want to ask
me questions about it? Or I think it'd be great
if you could start off by sort of walking us
through how Mutual Aid seems to have met with this
bizarre prosecution. Yeah, of course. UM, so we got connected

(01:23:29):
to um, you know our now clients, UM, this group
of individuals whom you know have been doing important advocacy
and rachel Aid work on the house of on house folks,
um in ethel and UM we were connected by this
other organization called Center for Constitutional Rights and kind of

(01:23:52):
filled in quickly about how this group of people were
not only banned from perks, but these bands were based
on this absurd criminal charge called felony littering um, which

(01:24:14):
you know, it sounds as crazy as it is. Um.
So so yeah, you know, I think, um, my colleagues
and I at the ECLU, we were eager to talk
to these folks and learn more about what happened and

(01:24:36):
see what we can do and um uh and you know,
start talking about some of the legal issues that um
that arise from when a city tries to ban a
large group of people from from one of the few
places that they have to convene and to protest um

(01:25:00):
and demonstrate, which you know, one of the first things
I learned in law school is like how or like
one of the first things I think I learned as
someone living in the US, like you you always hear
kids say, oh, I have free speech, like you know,
free speeches. So it's such a central part of being

(01:25:27):
in this or like growing up in this country and
being a citizen or a member of this country. Is
just the way that is thrown around, sometimes inaccurately, but
people generally know that that speech should be protected and
cannot be restricted except in very narrow ways by the government. UM,

(01:25:52):
not by like you know, your mom. You don't have
free speech in front of your mom. Like that's not
that I learned that. Um. Yeah when I took my
being an American test, I took I became a citisen
a couple of months ago. And there's like only like
fifty questions they can ask you, And I think two

(01:26:13):
of them are like, what it's free speech? Like like yeah, yeah,
can you claim free speech when you get banned from
Twitter dot com? Like yeah, it's something, Yeah, that's yeah.
And I think, um, I think you know it's UM
it's absurd to criminalize protest, of course, UM, but it's

(01:26:39):
it's also like equally as troubling to take away this
this important public space from people that UM, you know,
especially in a city like Ashville, if you've been there,
it's one of the few public spaces that people can
convene and um get together and enjoy each other's company. UM.

(01:27:03):
You know that that being separate from also one of
the few places that you can protest and and um
engage and discussion about how to fix problems. So it's
really troubling, um that the City of Bashville has had
taken that route. So when the ACIL you got involved,

(01:27:26):
we thought it would be best to list out some
of these legal issues. UM. You know, I mentioned the
First Amendment UM and free speech, but there are also
a lot of procedural due process problems that um are
issues that come up when you then folks from a park. Um.

(01:27:51):
One of you know, one of the things that the
city didn't do is provide proper notice. So a few
of our clients never received notice that they were banned
from the park, and you know, found out that they
were banned either through the discovery process in their criminal
cases or by doing like very intense investigation of their

(01:28:16):
own which you know, that is not a that's just
not okay, Like a city needs to you need to
at this is like a very basic thing, right, notice
and hearing. Those are the tenets of procedural due process.
And the city fails there. The city then sails again

(01:28:40):
at providing hearing and providing opportunity to appeal these bands,
Like there is no pre deprivation hearing. First of all,
like the bands, once our clients received them, they're banned.
They're banned from the parks and cannot go and don't
how didn't have any opportunity to defend um why they

(01:29:05):
shouldn't be banned or be heard about why they shouldn't
be banned before that band happened, which is, you know,
it's it's not okay. I think a pre deprivation hearing
is really important when you're taking away an interest, like
like the First Amendment interests that I laid out, and

(01:29:28):
and then the hearing that was provided was problematic in
a lot of ways. For one, these were very short
cursory hearing um that lasted from I want to say
like five to thirty minutes, but I'll let Sarah and
Tip confirm. And they they had people from Ashville Police

(01:29:53):
Department who are you know, arguably also involved in the
criminal case as that that several of our clients are
still sattling through. They were not allowed to ask questions,
and you know, several of our clients do not have
the resources to have proper legal representations, so it's sometimes

(01:30:18):
our clients were there alone and had to fend for
themselves and navigate that tricky area of not saying something
that could hurt you in your criminal case, and you know,
the hearing was just a mess in all of the ways.

(01:30:40):
How does the city like legally justify banning someone from parks?
I guess they're like a way which they can do that.
So they have this policy called the Restricted Access to
City Parks falls policy, and it is I think we
should call it the park bound policy. They basically allows

(01:31:01):
the city to to ban folks from parks based on
certain violations of I think the categories are city park rules,
city Parks and Recreation Department program rules, city ordinances, state laws,
and federal laws. So what's interesting is there is no

(01:31:30):
there's nowhere in the policy that says when a person
has committed or that defines what a violation of any
of these rules are like. Is that a conviction? Is
that a formal like citation there the policy does not
provide that. So this is important, I think, especially here

(01:31:55):
where our clients, none of them, or actually I shouldn't
say none of them. Three three of our clients have
pled to lesser misdemeanor charges, but everyone else has an
open case and they have not been formally convicted of anything.
And so it's it's strange that you know, you can

(01:32:20):
ban someone based off of the steleny charge that hasn't
even been fully litigated. Yeah, have they banned there like
a record of the city banning people from parks or
have they just like dug this one up from the
bowels of legislation to ban these people. Oh, that's a

(01:32:44):
really interesting question, and I'd love to know the answer myself.
We did submit a public records request to try to
figure out if they have, but I imagine the city
is not going to want to tell us. And I think, Sarah,
you could speak to this later. But I don't think
they have. They. I think they've rejected PRRs that you

(01:33:09):
all have done and have not provided that elusive restricted
access list which they have of like folks that they've
spanned from the perks and and maybe that list is
just you know, our clients, which yeah, I mean, maybe
they have. I don't know what's worse, like if they

(01:33:30):
have a parks black list and they're just not notifying
people until like they send a swat team after them,
or if it's if it's only people who are helping
unhouse people and they just don't want to admit that.
Both those are pretty dark on the topic of weird
legal things. What on earth is felony littering? I'd love
to know. I'd love to know what felony littering is, because, um,

(01:33:55):
I'll tell you this. When I told my partner, like,
I was like, oh, did you know they're something called
felony littering? And he's like, I hope that's when corporations
get punished for, you know, dumping toxic waste into the sea.
But no, it's apparently when community members come together for

(01:34:15):
a demonstration and the city is mad about what's left behind, which, um,
you know that's uh. I think it's really telling that
the city has chosen to to prosecute folks on this

(01:34:37):
like felony littering charge, which you know hasn't I think
in the past ten years there's only been one felony
littering case out of Buncombe County, where Ashville is Okay,
So I think that's really telling, and I think it's

(01:34:58):
it's really troubling that's city of Aashville seems to be
really taking out a position in silencing speech. It does
not like yeah, yeah, go ahead, No, they just seem
to be taking like the most bizarre and ran around
the first amendment that they can. Yeah, it must be
a lot of munds. You a lot of like the
Occupy era stuff where like all of these cities suddenly

(01:35:21):
realized that like wait, hold on, these people can actually
use a park for political activity. And then immediately like
suddenly that all these like organizes started appearing where like
everyone has to like clear out of the park by
ten pms leaking clean it or something that eventually just
were just like was used to force people out. And
I don't know, it seems like there's there's something interesting

(01:35:41):
too about Like it seems like it's it's almost when
whenever like a city government tries to something, because it
seems like they always like immediately reach for sanitation ordinances.
Like yeah, I was saying like that was that was
like the big occupy thing, Like they're doing this here too,
and it's it's I don't know. I think all around
the country we're seeing the government fish out these weird

(01:36:05):
ordinances and make new laws to criminalize poverty and um
and to criminalize unhoused people existing. And I think that trend,
unfortunately carries even in places like Ashville, UM that are

(01:36:25):
seeing especially after COVID, you know, there's been a rising
and house population everywhere, and so it's it's really upsetting,
but it is the truth that these these ordinances and
laws that are being fished out are being fished out

(01:36:46):
to targets folks and um and new laws that lawmakers
are creating. Now, I was thinking about this. I remembering
there there's a whole sort of anthropological literature about like
how colonial states use use like sanitation ordinances as a
way to sort of destroy like indigenous public spaces and

(01:37:06):
the places they colonize. And I guess, like, yeah, I
don't know, Like there's there's a lot of sort of
throughput I guess between like the sort of old like
colonial government's regimes and the way that people still use
sanitation is like the default way to sort of cleanse
people out of public spaces. I think it's interesting how

(01:37:28):
like um an analogy one can make me visit there
are people with rights and people without rights, even when
in theory we all have rights, and like this attempt
to sort of use sanitation to be like all of
these people's rights don't matter what. They don't have those
rights at all. Yeah, it's not not linked to the
way like metropolits rural colonies. I think also just you know,

(01:37:55):
going back to this position that the Ashville is taking. Um,
what's really troubling is like the different angles that they're
coming at this issue with. Like if you look at
you know, if you look at some of the press

(01:38:16):
releases and blog posts on the city's website about the
house population, you might get a sense that they're trying
to find solutions to address what they seem to acknowledge
as a big problem. But then you know, on the
flip side, you see these actions that directly contradict that sentiment,

(01:38:37):
and you know, these part funds. That's that's one of
the ways that UM, the City of Aashville kind of
indirectly is like no, please, like, let us do our thing.
We don't want to hear anything bad about what we're doing.
Like we're trying our hardest. You know, that's rich on
its own, but you know, there's so there's a felony

(01:39:01):
littering charges, there's the park bands, and then you know,
alongside all of this, Like a few weeks ago, we
followed the petition in Bunkham Truntium Superior Court petitioning for
the release of police body camera footage of the arrest
of two journalists for the release of um the footage

(01:39:23):
that UM that shows the arrests of these journalists covering
covering the eviction of encampments of unhoused folks in Aston
Park on Christmas night in twenty twenty one, so around
the same time that several of our clients, UM, you

(01:39:45):
know are being hit with these felony charges and then
shortly after with park bands and UM, the rest of
journalists in a democracy is very or should be very
rare and should be troubling. Uh. And these journalists, like
just to give you some context, UM, we're not shy
about their critique of the city and how it's handling

(01:40:08):
done housed community. And UM that critique is protected by
the First Amendment. The city of Asheville, I think, is
just you know, doing its own thing when it's allowing
arrests of journalists and and UM, the release of that
body camera footage we think is important to m just

(01:40:33):
show what happened, because that's that's that's kind of strange,
like just in the same way that felony littering is strange. Yeah,
it does seem like there is there is kind of
a Yeah, bipassies and commitment to not wanting journalists to
meddle with you, harassing and house people. It seems to
be like very much a democrat thing is one of

(01:40:54):
the Republican thing. What did were those journalists charged anything
or were they dis arrested? They were also charged with UM,
I want to say second degree trust pass UM. And
they've been pretty vocal about UM their arrests and and

(01:41:16):
UM and I think what's been happening. Like their names
are uh, Veronica Quite and Matilda Bliss. UM. I'm not sure,
Sarah if you want to add more to that, but UM,
I think that's that's like another thread that's important to

(01:41:37):
this story is like all of the different ways that
Asheville is operating to silence folks and and and to
continue doing what they're doing, which you know, in a
like if you look at UM just their own narrative
where they talk about, oh, yes, we've you know, evicted

(01:41:58):
these folks as a success story, and you know, like
they'll they'll maybe list like all of the hotels, like
free hotel nights that UM, these folks got for one
or two nights. But that's obviously not a sustainable solution
to UM. To you know the plight of that community. Yeah, certainly. Yeah.

(01:42:25):
I think sometimes things get done because things look good
on a press release around them, because it gives anyone
like longto Maxis to housing. So I wonder what's the situation.
Several of your clients are now facing felony charges? Are serious? Right?
If people maybe on in the US or don't realize,
maybe you could explain, like a felony follows you around
for the rest of your life, right, Yeah, And and

(01:42:48):
just to be clear where the AFLU is not defending
m the on the criminal charges. Um, I think all
of our clients have suffer representation for their criminal charges
we've taken on the charge of um addressing these parts
bands and how we think they're constitutional. So I'm sure

(01:43:11):
like I can I can speak a little to this,
but yeah, I think, um, you know, maybe getting getting
one of the criminal defense attorneys to talk if they
can about the criminal case might be more helpful for sure. Yeah,
maybe can you explain this in general terms what a

(01:43:32):
felony would mean for someone living in North Carolina in
terms of just how would affect their life going forward? Yeah,
so there's there's a lot I think, you know, um, right,
I'm not a criminal lawyer, but let me just think
of a few things. Uh, you know, having a felony

(01:43:57):
on your criminal record just on its own, nobody nobody
wants a criminal record in a country and state that
is still looking and you know, allowing background checks for
certain jobs and having to explain that in any context

(01:44:19):
like I will just you know, you know, let me
just talk from my own experience where I've whenever I
am getting admitted to a bar. I've moved a couple
of times in the past few years and had to
deal with the unfortunate process of being admitted into that
state's bar. There's several intrusive questions and many of those

(01:44:44):
involved like what kind of what your background is, and
that means what your criminal background is, Like we have
to do like I have gone through the moral character
fitness tests for stage now, and um, it's never fun.
It's you know, as someone who is privileged and does

(01:45:07):
not have a criminal history background, it's not fun for
me because I like the number of questions they ask you.
It's like you really like you know, have to dig
back into the past, like your whole life, Like they
ask all of the addresses that you've lived at in

(01:45:28):
the past fifteen years and if you get it wrong,
you're lying. So you're okay, I'm going out unattention. But
the point is, like any any sort of certification or
job or UM new opportunity that is that is something
a criminal record is something that's looked at and considered

(01:45:48):
and oftentimes in in a negative way and can result
in people not getting jobs. UM. It's I think Sarah
and like other Saharan tips maybe can explain more about
like what the consequences would be like if you've had
conversation with your attorneys. But I also have some background

(01:46:11):
in immigrants race work, and I know that if any
any kind of criminal charges slash convictions that you're facing
can be used by UM, can be used by ICE,
can be used by USBIS to deny you immigration privileges
and and UM and to deport you, to detain you

(01:46:34):
before they deport you and UM. So you know, beyond that,
like having to have this hang over your head where
the the process is not short, it's not easy, is
mentally taxing and UM it's honestly degrading to go through

(01:46:58):
our criminal legals them and it's decorating for everyone UM
and and I mean, that's that's all I can say
of like someone, um who does like general civil rights work.
But if you talk to someone who's doing criminal defense
work and in this all the time, I'm sure they're

(01:47:21):
they're you know, can paint a better picture of how
dark that that processes and how dark it can be
to have that on um a record. I think another
thing with this is, um about Okay, I'm not a lawyer.
I'm also not like your lawyer, legal advice, eta, et cetera. UM,

(01:47:42):
but I'm pretty sure the way it works in North
Carolina is that if you if if you have a
felony conviction, you can't vote until you serve out the
time Jesus. So yeah, like in country. Yeah, yeah, so
that's that's another thing. And um, I'm fairly muted in
North Carolina and I moved here in March, so almost

(01:48:02):
a year but not quite so. But I do know
that the hoops that you have to jump through just
to vote are a lot more than other states that
I've lived in. And you know, of course that is
that is also another thing done on purpose to silence
certain voices. Yeah, that's dark and certainly like you'll lose

(01:48:26):
your Second Amendment right, So be jobs you can't do.
There will be things that you have access to, like, yeah,
your rights will go away potentially forever, which is bad
when you're just trying to help some people who need
to help. It's pretty unconstable. Yeah, I think that's the
other like really wild thing about all of this is

(01:48:46):
like a lot the folks that are, you know, being
banned on, being targeted on this way are providing really
important services in a way that the city haven't been
able to and hasn't and it's filling in this this
really important role of like making sure that folks stay

(01:49:09):
alive and have support and are fed and clothes and um,
it's unfortunate to have that taken a way like being
banned from a park means being banned from one of
the few spaces that our clients had to do this
work and where they were able to distribute food and

(01:49:33):
other aid to folks who don't have a home. And
it's just it's wild that that kind of action is
being taken when when we know that this is a
crisis that the city is just not addressing. Yeah, they're
like taking action against people pointing to the crisis rather

(01:49:55):
than the crisis itself, which is yeah, very sad. So
what stage is you are? I know you have to
go in a second here, what stage is your lucky
sabco you with challenging the park ban? How has that?
How's that gone for you? So so far? We've spent
a demand letter to the city. The city have responded
to that letter with UM right now kind of wishywashie

(01:50:20):
commitments of like reviewing the policy and UM. While while
I think that's a great first step, I do think
the city needs to commit to doing more and UM
to commit to retracting the bands for all of our
clients and potentially others who have been affected by this policy.

(01:50:42):
They also need to change the policy. Like reviewing the policy,
that's a great first step, but you know, I want
to see, like what are the things that they are
building in to make sure that folks are getting proper notice,
that this policy isn't being abused and used by UM
actual police department others in an unfair way, and that

(01:51:06):
there's like you know, basic standards of like when the
policy can be instituted, Like is there a conviction involved
and what are the convictions? Like doesn't make sense to
then someone from a park for I don't know, like

(01:51:26):
I'm trying to think of like something, um felony, literate. Yeah,
it's it is bizarre. And I think, like, you know,
historically park bends from what I know, is like they've

(01:51:48):
been used against like people who have committed like sexual
offenses and um, and so it's kind of it's kind
of out of lust field to and and I'll just
say this, that's a city like in their response, they
cited to one of the cases that are two cases

(01:52:09):
unsolved sexual offenders who are banned from parks, which you know, yeah,
some peaceful demonstrators who provided aids to folks who are unhoused.
So you know, it's it's not really there. The comparison

(01:52:29):
is not there. And I think I hope the city
can be honest and um if they are not willing
to put the network and to take some of um,
do the actions that I've laid out. I do think
that we will continue to challenge these park bands and um,
you know, will continue to prepare to file suit if

(01:52:52):
that's necessary, great, And how can people follow along with
that or if they want to sort of donate or
support it, is there a place they can do that. UM.
You know, our website UM is a great space to
our website. I think our socials like Twitter, UM and Instagram,
like our comms team is amazing and they update on

(01:53:13):
our work frequently and often and UM and we try
to we try to provide updates there. But also UM
kind of engage with our work and what it means
broadly for UM books across North Carolina and across the US. Yeah. Great,

(01:53:34):
And that's just a CLU North Carolina. There would be
the socials. I shouldn't know that. That's fine of UM.
So it's a CLU of North Carolina dot org. And
if you go to our website you'll find our socials
that it's probably a very cho Yeah, wonderful. Well, thank

(01:53:56):
you so much for giving us some of your time.
Thanks so much for having me. Yeah, that's great, Thank you.

(01:54:18):
Welcome back, Dick had happened here? Once again the folks
from It's Going Down are taking over the show as
today we do a deep dive into how autonomous organizers
are pushing back against a wave of far right attacks
on reproductive freedom and autonomy across the United States. A
note to our listeners, this episode will include discussion on
both sexual and far right violence. I'm your host, Mike Andrews.

(01:54:41):
Let's get into it. In May of twenty twenty two,
Politico first reported on the historic league from the Supreme
Court about the overturning of Roe versus Wade, the landmark
nineteen seventy three decision, which ruled under the Fourteenth Amendment,
that a pregnant person has the right to privacy, including
the liberty to abort their fetus. In June of twenty

(01:55:02):
twenty two, the Dab's Decisions struck down Row, ruling that
the Constitution does not guarantee a person the right to
an abortion, triggering a wave of state governments rolling back
abortion rights in access for many. However, the fall of
Row only further cemented a lack of access to reproductive
healthcare has already been the norm for millions. As The

(01:55:23):
Hill wrote, quote as of twenty twenty, six states had
only one abortion clinic each, and eighty nine percent of
America's counties had no abortion clinic at all, the cumulative
effect of decades of restrictions authored by anti abortion lawmakers.
This is not to say that things haven't gotten worse.
They have in the months following the Dabbs decision. In

(01:55:43):
states like Ohio, where access has been attacked, a rape
survivor was forced to travel out of state to find
an abortion, while local politicians, including the state's Republican Attorney general,
claimed on Fox News that the story was totally fabricated.
In other instances, people in Ohio have been denied care
even though they face potentially life threatening complications. In Texas,

(01:56:05):
one woman nearly died due to sepsis because she was
initially barred access to an abortion by doctors. And these
are only some of the stories that have made headlines.
The deeper impact on this countrywide attack and reproductive health
has hit low income and communities of color the hardest.
A recent study from the University of San Francisco found
that quote a third of American women of reproductive age

(01:56:27):
now face excessive travel times to obtain an abortion, while
twice as many are being forced to travel more than
an hour to reach an abortion provider. In short, attacks
on abortion, coupled with the already exploding wealth gap, lack
of access to healthcare, the rising cost of living, and
the continuing COVID nineteen pandemic, will only expand existing in equalities,

(01:56:49):
especially for people of color, the disabled, and queer and
trans folks in particular. On the legal front, some states
have pushed to expand abortion access, and many are challenging
attacks in the courtroom. Minnesota, for instance, most recently became
the first state to enshrine abortion is a right. Meanwhile,
many continue to donate to abortion funds, and nonprofits like

(01:57:11):
Planned Parenthood are even launching mobile clinics to provide care
and areas hit the hardest due to recent bands. But
as our first two guests, Beck's part of a clinic
defense group in New York City. In ashe, an abortion
doula in North Carolina, reported, many autonomous organizers aren't putting
their faith in the courts, the cops, or the state.

(01:57:32):
You know, living in New York City, abortion is legal,
and it is legal before a row, and it's been
legal after row. But that doesn't really necessarily mean anything
kind of is what we've seen. So one of the
things that we've seen is we've seen on anti abortion
protesters and activists coming up from red states to target
blue states now, and so we've definitely seen their presence
increasing outside of the clinic that we defend, and SOHO

(01:57:54):
in Manhattan and so that's I would say is one
of the biggest things that we've seen is that they
really are targeting Blue states, are targeting New York City.
There I'm actively trying to recruit people to come to
New York City. Is I think the biggest thing that
we've seen, and that also in New York City we've
been struggling a lot with a really escalatory police presence
at our clinics. So that's the other thing that we're

(01:58:15):
definitely really really struggling with is the response of the
state after doubs. So the first thing that I want
folks to know is that people abortion has people who
might have abortions. Where I am in time and space,
they have always already been navigating some of these post
roar realities that a lot of folks are just getting
hip to, like after that Fateful Friday in June last year.

(01:58:38):
And so I want to name here that we've always
had a seventy two hour waiting period in North Carolina,
which is one of the longest waiting periods in the country.
And there's a slew of other things that we find
both hostile and restrictive, and I'm using those words to
describe a situation, an ongoing situation, because these are the

(01:58:59):
words that are being used to describe North Carolina now
as we're seeing an influx of folks coming to North Carolina.
So I'm saying that for the folks who live here
always already like they've been dealing with a restrictive, hostile climate.
Becks just shared a little bit about like the presence
of anti abortion protesters, so we've always been dealing with that.

(01:59:23):
In twenty eighteen, the abortion clinic that I had two
abortions at in my life, they saw the most anti
abortion protesters in the Southeast, and we continue to see this.
We also continue to see as we see these anti
abortion protesters right a police presence, and we know or
I'm concerned about what that means for black folks having abortions,

(01:59:46):
for people who are undocumented, and for people who otherwise
like don't want the police all up in their business.
In addition to what's changed, since jobs are not change, right,
but change, we have semen influx of folks coming to
North Carolina from states where abortion is illegal or there
are bands kind of early ingestation, and we're seeing those

(02:00:08):
folks come to the clinics and access the services and
the support networks that we have here in North Carolina.
I think that one thing with the group that I
work with called ad VIC for Abortion Rights, one thing
that we've been working really hard on is not only
talking about abortion, not only talking about you know, going
beyond just legalizing it, but also really focusing on like
our communities and building mutual aid networks, building repro justice networks,

(02:00:30):
and also just working overall on like community defense. So
we work with a lot of mutual aid organizations all
over the city of New York. And that's one thing
that we're doing, like Ash was saying, is we're focusing
on you know, how do these people who are outside
of our clinics are not only anti abortion, but they're
also anti LGBTQ. They are fascist, That is something that
we should be saying. They are also pro police. None.
None of these things happen inside of a vacuum. They're

(02:00:52):
all interconnected. And I think that that's one thing that
we really really have to do is talk about how
the issue of abortion bridge is out to so many
other things, and we can't only fight one issue. We
have to fight all of them. But we also have
to fight the root of where these things are coming from,
and they're coming from this mass conservative movement that's been
being built since the nineteen seventies, you know, groups like
Focus on the Family, like the Federalist Society. These groups

(02:01:14):
have so much influence in our society, and we need
to be going after all of it. We can't only
be going after you know, one tiny, you know, sector
of the massive problem, because like Ash said, it is
all interconnected. Here, I'm thinking about like some political education
that needs to happen, like and that is the framework

(02:01:34):
and the theories of reproductive Justice. I know that they
recognize so many it recognizes so many things. But one
of the things that grounds me that it recognizes that
r J recognizes is that dismantling white supremacy is key
to achieving reproductive justice. It also says, it posits that
we live interconnected lives and not single issue lives. And

(02:01:58):
it also for me yields that, like, we can't rely
on the state to provide what we need. I'm seeing
abortion doulas, clinic escorts, abortion funds, and other organizers and
organizations really come together to support people having abortions and
resist criminalization and state violence right now, and we need
to see more of that. You know, you talk about

(02:02:20):
pro choice, I think it's so whack, like the logics
of pro choice. We need to go further beyond the
logics of pro choice and understand that RJ says that
there is no choice without access. And furthermore, RJ posits
that the key to controlling entire communities is to controlling bodies.
So if they're coming for the trans people on their

(02:02:41):
HRT and their access to gender affirming and medical care,
then they're gonna come for everyone else. Then they're gonna
come for the abortion hovers. They've been coming for the
poor people. I think that, like again, when we go
back to that reproductive justice framework, we can begin to
like make these connections. And I'm also saying this as

(02:03:01):
an organizer, like reproductive justice is my lane, but so
as like environmental justice and SOS racial justice, and I'm
on the front lines of different movements, and I go
back to this framework because it acknowledges that, like black
people need an end to anti black racism, and we
need an end to the police and clean fucking water.

(02:03:22):
Right now, I don't know of a framework that says that,
like we ought to demand all of those things right
fucking now, and that we actually can't live self determined
lives without all of that shit. And so I'm ready
to talk about r J like I'm ready to do
that political education. I think it's ongoing work and right like,
you don't have to be an abortion dou lah or

(02:03:43):
a frontline organizer to help someone get to their appointment,
to fund an abortion, to affirm someone's decision and support
their decision to have an abortion, and so we really
need that, like, we need that vibe right now. We
need people to show up that way. I think that
my biggest frustrate with Democrats is they've been telling us
for years, like, oh, you know, vote for us, vote
for us. They've been fundraising off of the issue of

(02:04:05):
abortion for decades now. They have done absolutely nothing, And
I think that what they've really done is they've really
made us, made us, as in the general like American
populace feel as though voting is the only way that
we can change things, and that voting is the only
way that we can like show our impact and like
help our communities, when in reality, it isn't. It's going
out onto the streets. It's also you know, doing abortion

(02:04:26):
do the work. It's also you know, going out defunding clinics.
It's doing all of this work. And we don't need
the Democrats to do that. And what we need to
be doing is we need to be talking about the
state and how we can go beyond the state. I
also want to say here, like fuck Row. Like Row
is the kind of legal infrastructure that made abortion possible.
But it also made it possible for like both the Democrats,

(02:04:50):
the Republicans, the Christian Evangelicals, anyone who was checking for it,
to take abortion away. So like fuck Row. It also
gave us the trimester framework, which is like really black,
and it also kind of made it more possible for
the states and the federal government to put in bands
and restrictions on abortion. That's something that we need to
get clear about as well as we fight to decriminalize

(02:05:12):
and not legislate further abortion. Stay with us, it could
happen here. We'll return after these words from our sponsors.
On July twenty seventh, nineteen ninety six, Eric Rudoff set
off a nail bomb during the Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia.
The explosion killed one person immediately, while over one hundred

(02:05:33):
more were horrifically injured in the communicate. Claiming responsibility for
the bombing, Rudolf denounced the Olympics, abortion, and LGBTQ rights
with talking points that seemed ripped right out of Tucker
Carlson's nightly news headlines. He wrote, the world converged upon
Atlanta to celebrate the ideals of global socialism. The purpose

(02:05:55):
of my attack the Washington government sanctioning of abortion on demand.
Along with abortion, another assault upon the integrity of American
society is the considered effort to legitimize the practice of homosexuality,
whether it's gay marriage, homosexual adoption, hate crime laws including gays,
or the attempt to introduce a homosexual normalizing curriculum into

(02:06:19):
our schools. All of these efforts should be ruthlessly opposed.
The existence of our culture depends on it. Rudolph would
go on to carry out more deadly attacks against abortion
clinics in a queer nightclub, releasing communications under the banner
of the Army of God, a group which endorsed leaderless
resistance and was linked to the white supremaci Christian identity movement,

(02:06:42):
and the murder of multiple abortion providers. The Army of
God was just one formation that grew out of Christian identity,
a mix of white supremacy in Christianity, the preach that
Jews were Satanic and people of color were subhuman and
need to be destroyed in a racial holy war. Christian
and inde adherents set up paramilitary compounds, Bible camps, radio stations,

(02:07:04):
and churches from the Aryan Nations to the Covenant of
the Sword in the Arm of the Lord, and they
helped usher in a wave of homegrown terrorist groups such
as The Order and individuals like Timothy Vey carried out
the Oklahoma City bombing. Meanwhile, above ground groups like Operation
Rescue cheered on the violence against abortion providers while organizing

(02:07:26):
mass protests at clinics with the aim of shutting them down.
In twenty fifteen, when a gunman killed three people in
a mass shooting at a clinic in Colorado Springs, the
far right anti abortion movement had carried out eight murders,
seventeen attempted murders, forty two bombings in one hundred and
eighty six arsons, all targeted against abortion clinics and providers.

(02:07:47):
Wanted to know more about the history of far attacks
on abortion access if they were indeed rising in the
current post stops period, We sat down with Bullets of
Fowler of the National Abortion Federation. Unfortunately, since abortion was
legalized with the ROVERSUS Weight decision, there has been a
really coordinated campaign of harassment and violence to target abortion

(02:08:11):
providers and try to stop access to legal abortion. And
we've been tracking this since the late seventies. There have
been a number of escalating events, everything from clinic protests
and clinic blockades all the way up to arsons and
murders of providers just because they do this work. So

(02:08:31):
when we talk about this, it's very real. It's a
very real threat, and it is really terrorism that's happening
by a coordinated group of people and individuals who really
are aimed at stopping any access to legal abortion care.
So we definitely and have seen for a long time

(02:08:52):
that there is an overlap between the people that target
abortion providers and the people that are involved in other
types of violent streamist movements, including white nationalists. We've known
that for a long time. It's existed many years. In fact,
in the eighties, the KKK began creating one imposters listing

(02:09:12):
the personal information of abortion providers, and the first provider
who was murdered, doctor David Gunn, who was murdered in
nineteen ninety three, was murdered by someone who was a
white supremacist who had been mentored by someone who was
a former KKK member. And so we've seen the overlap
of these groups, and in the last couple of years,

(02:09:34):
we've seen that overlap be more coordinated and more public.
So on January sixth, at the insurrection, a lot of
our members were watching on TV and recognized people because
they were the same people that protest at their clinics.
In fact, providers that even noted that day of pulling
in the parking lot and not seeing their usual protesters

(02:09:55):
and wondering what was going on because they saw less
people outside of clinics, And we later found out it's
because many of them were at the capitol. And you know,
a number of people who are active in the anti
abortion movement have boasted about being at the insurrection, posted
video and pictures of themselves at the insurrection, and so
it's it's very clear to us and we very much

(02:10:16):
see that overlap. We also see more more of these
right wing groups actually showing up and participating at anti
abortion events, so attending some of the marches around the
country in a more visible way than we've seen in
the past. Sometimes these right wing groups will do quote
unquote security for the anti abortion movement, So when they

(02:10:37):
have people who are speaking or they're holding large events
to target providers, they'll get security assistance from white nationalist groups.
And so, you know, it's particularly disturbing to see. It
doesn't surprise us because we've been We've known that there's
an overlap in these groups for a really long time.

(02:10:59):
But as we've seen in recent years, as people seem
to be more okay being more visible about their membership
in these groups or more vocal about their hate, we're
seeing it more publicly. The anti abortion movement is not
doing anything to distance themselves from these groups. So since
the leak happened last May, we immediately saw an increase

(02:11:22):
in harassment and online posts that were threatening toward abortion providers.
Even though we got a preview of the decision and
we knew what was coming and that it would lead
to clinics closing, that wasn't enough for some people. We
saw calls for people to go and burn clinics or
go and take matters into their own hands and not
wait for the decision to go and try and stop

(02:11:43):
abortions from being provided that moment, and so we track
those types of online posts. We saw a real spike
in May and June around the decision, and we also
started immediately hearing from our member clinics that they were
seeing increase in protesters and increase in threats, and it
increase in the intensity and hostility of those activities, so

(02:12:07):
more really aggressive protesters that were touching patients and staff,
yelling at patients and staff, photographing patients and staff, and
you know, since the decision, we have seen a number
of clinics close in places that are considered more hostile
to abortion rights. But we know from our past experience
that when a clinic closes, the protesters don't just give

(02:12:30):
up and go home. In many cases, anti abortion individuals
will travel the same paths the patients are traveling, and
they will go to other states where abortion remains successible
and target the clinics there. So we are seeing an
increase in activity in the places where abortion is remaining
legal and where patients are going to get care. And
we're still you know, we're just now collecting the numbers

(02:12:51):
for twenty twenty two, so we don't we don't have
those for a little bit, but we do know anecdotally
and what we're hearing from members and what we're seeing
on the ground is that there is an increase in
that activity. There have been a few arsons this year
who are also seeing clinic invasions continue, and these are
instances where people might pose as patients. In some cases,

(02:13:13):
they go to a lot of work to try and
infiltrate the clinic and find out about their practices for
making appointments, and then they will pose as patients, make
fake appointments and try to get into the clinic forcibly
if they if they have to, and then once they're inside,
they're harassing patients, they refuse to leave. In some cases

(02:13:36):
they hand out flowers or seeing or yell. In California,
they walked through the halls screaming the name of the doctor,
ordering the doctor to come out and face them, and
it was very traumatic for staff. They didn't know if
this person was armed or what they were doing. And
you know, they had patients in procedure rooms with them

(02:13:56):
or in counseling rooms, and they were locking the door
and shelf ring in place and was very frightening, and
we continue to see these types of invasions happen across
the country. Ironically, however, laws passed in the nineteen nineties
designed to protect people seeking abortions and reproductive healthcare have
now been weaponized against those who have been taking action

(02:14:17):
in the wake of the Daub's decision, most notably under
the banner of Jane's Revenge, a moniker used by anonymous
activists taking action, usually in the former broken windows and
graffiti against anti choice, crisis pregnancy centers and beyond. As
Natasha Leonard wrote in the Intercept, Congress passed the Face
Act in nineteen eighty four, allowing the assassinations and mass

(02:14:39):
clinic blockades, making the physical obstruction of clinics a federal offense,
as well as threats of force and violence against clinic
workers and clinic property. In its thirty years on the
books has been used sparingly. Now this law has been
used to prosecute to reproductive rights activists who allegedly spray
painted the outside walls of misleading and dangerous crisis pregnancy

(02:14:59):
centers known as CPCs and now face up to twelve
years in prison for the graffiti. This use of the
Face Act against those fighting to protect reproductive freedom and
autonomy by weaponizing laws supposedly aimed at those threatening it
mirrors the numerous domestic terrorism charges lodged against forest defenders
in Atlanta, made possible by a bill in twenty seventeen

(02:15:20):
following the massacre of nine black parishioners by the white
supremist Dylan Roof. Stay with us, it could happen here,
will return after these words from our sponsors. As the
culture war is deepened on the right and even mainstream
GEOP leaders have embraced white nationalists talking points, many openly
neo nazi and white supremist groups have come to see

(02:15:41):
the anti choice movement as a lucrative recruiting ground and
a point of engagement with the wider right wing base.
Again we hear from clinic defender Becks in New York,
an abortion doula ash in North Carolina. In our case
in New York City, the group that we defend, the
Clinic Front, is its Catholic group that gets an armed
escort from the NYPD. So that's one thing that really

(02:16:03):
really scares me. You know, when we talk about a
far right is that the NYPD has been aiding these
far right groups and getting them escorts for a very
very long time. And so I think that kind of
like goes to a lot of the fears that a
lot of us have when it comes to this kind
of collaboration and the changing face of anti abortion protesters.
We already know down here that cops and clay go
hand in hand, and unfortunately, like newly white radicalized I

(02:16:27):
don't know if you can call them that, but like
politicized white women who want to defend clinics, they saw
they they realize these realities, like the cops are not
here to defend you or people who want to have abortions,
and we actually don't need the cops to have abortions
and to make reproductive justice a real possibility in all

(02:16:49):
of our lives. I'm thinking here also about like the
need to decriminalize abortion and not legalize abortion again. As
an abolitionist, as an abortion do and as someone who's
had abortions, I'm making these connections and as a trans
person right, I'm making these connections that like the folks
who are standing outside of abortion clinics, the anti choice

(02:17:11):
the anti abortion folks. These are the same people who
are pro police people. These are the same people who
are racist in our communities, who are classist, who are
anti black, who are fascists, and furthermore, right like these
people who stand outside of abortion clinics, they are the
same people perpetuating these rhetorics that like gay people are groomers,

(02:17:33):
but also that like critical race theory, for examples, shouldn't
be taught in school. I am making these connections and
I'm also going back to that reproductive justice framework that
reminds me that, like, what do we have to do
now is that we have to fight together, and one
of the ways we can do that is by making
these connections. Right, like these people are Christian evangelicals, they

(02:17:57):
are fascists. Explicitly, we need to say that, and it
behooves all of us to really fight together along those lines.
In the year since the attempted pro Trump coup on
January six, neo Nazis, white supremacists, and Proud Boys have
ramped up their presence at anti choice events. The neo

(02:18:18):
Nazi group Patriot Front has shut up to march alongside
various anti abortion groups, often to be bent with handshakes
from anti abortion activists and police escorts to protect them
from anti fascists. Several weeks ago, openly fascist groups took
part in the yearly Walk for Life rally in San Francisco, California.
US Thousands took to the city streets after being bust

(02:18:38):
in from across the state. Marching alongside them were proud
boys decked out in your uniforms and mass neo Nazis
holding openly racist banners. Wanting to know more about this
continued crossover, we spoke with anti fascist journalists Paschal Singh,
based in southern California. In the wake of the reversal
of Rovy Way, there was big spike in demonstrations from

(02:18:59):
the right wing where they were targeting clinics, they were
targeting any kind of school boards with any kind of
reproductive health anything. They were doing it for several months
in places like California where abortion is still provided and
still accessible. That makes a lot of the anti abortion
movement still feel like they're the victim of something, even

(02:19:21):
though they just had this massive political victory, and at
least in southern California, I've noticed that they've continued to
rally they've had some pretty large rallies, especially for the
pro life thing that happened recently. We're cities around the country,
including San Francisco, had some pretty alarmingly sized anti abortion rallies,
and some of them, like in San Francisco, you had

(02:19:43):
some of the more extremest elements, white supremacist elements showing
up quite explicitly, quite proudly, and here in Southern California,
I've seen that starting to pick up again. It's almost
building off of the momentum from all these rallies, targeting
drags shows, which have been excellent networking opportunities for different

(02:20:03):
right wing groups to work with more far right extremists
and even about all out white supremacists. Once they get
into a groove together, even if these groups don't always
get along, they have a revolving door of enemies, and
if it's time to target somebody because they think there's
an advantage to it in the moment, then they're going
to do it. And right now it does seem like
reproductive rights is back in the crosshairs alongside LGBTQ rights.

(02:20:28):
Just a couple of weeks ago, there was a rally
in southern California outside of a outside of a Walgreens
shareholders meeting where a lot of right wing activists were
marching through the hotel chanting that Walgreens is killing people
because they because you can get an abortion fill through them.
I think this has created a very tenuous situation where

(02:20:52):
there's always someone to go after. If it's not planned
parenthood this week, next week, go after your local pharmacy,
go after your local click, go after your local doctor.
The anti abortion movement is very malleable, it's very fluid,
and right now they're taken whoever they can get, and
that includes a lot of openly radical militant groups who

(02:21:13):
they turn to as groups that can do quote unquote
security work, you know, because they're afraid of the left
coming and attacking them. The anti abortion movement isn't sewing down,
as our guests from across the country of discuss, the
more mainstream organizations with deep pockets also aren't attempting to
distance themselves from the street level fascist groups flocking to
right wing demonstrations, especially at a time when far right

(02:21:36):
violence is escalating across the country. And our last segment,
IGD correspondent Marcella speaks on recent anti choice demonstrations which
brought together both the mainstream and the fringe, organized in
part by Progressive Anti Abortion Uprising, which weaponizes feminist and
progressive language against drug store giants CBS and Walgreens an
effort to stop them from selling abortion medication. Anti abortion

(02:22:00):
people protest it outside like CBS and Walgreens it's past Saturday,
like in multiple places, to prevent pharmacies from selling abortion pills.
I'm honestly, like really angry at this, not only because
these people are trying to make sure they completely take
away our rights to bodily autonomy, but because you're also
making me have to defend CVS and Walgreens. I've also
thought about protesting outside CVS and Walgreens, but not because
I'm obsessed with other people's to productive organs. I'm tired

(02:22:22):
of them putting everything I need behind a glass anyway,
Like these abortion protests outside CBS and Walgreens were organized
by the Progressive Anti Abortion Uprising. Yes, I will say
that again, the Progressive Anti Abortion Uprising PAAU, which claims
to want to dismantle the abortion industrial complex. Honestly, it
sounds like the pa You think that you can just

(02:22:46):
add industrial complex to something to make it sound bad,
or they're just trying to sound cool to make people
forget that they are fascists. Like, one interesting thing about
PAU is they want to be so cool that their
lead organizer, Lauren Handy, calls herself a femt. I honestly
can't believe that I have to say this, but being
anti abortion immediately disqualifies you from being a feminist. Fun

(02:23:07):
fact about Laura in Handy is that she randomly, she
didn't randomly. She was caught with five fetuses in her
apartment and was indicted from blocking a clinic in Washington,
DC in twenty and twenty. So she's out here blocking
clinics collecting fetuses, just like doing the worst. This is
like just the tip of the berg about how like
these people are trying to act like their freedom fighters. Well,

(02:23:29):
the PAU spokesperson literally said, and I quote, their vision
to turn pharmacies into abortion businesses, which will exploit and
kill disproportionately low income people and people of color for
profit will be met with non violent resistance at every turn.
That's hilarious. These people are literally trying to make fascism
sound like freedom fighting like, if PAU actually cared about

(02:23:51):
low income people and people of color, they would be
giving away abortion pills that like every corner, not trying
to stop people from buying them. And also they'd be
boycotting cb US on Walgreens for totally different reasons. They
wouldn't be boycotting Walgreens and CBS, we're trying to sell
people abortion fills. What they'll be doing is that there
would be boycotting Walgreens and CBS for putting toothpaste behind
a locked glass, which makes it much harder for poor

(02:24:13):
people to get a five finger discount on things that
they need. That is going to do it for us today.
Thanks for tuning in once again. This has been It's
going Down occupying the offices of it could Happen here.
Be sure to follow us online It's Going Down dot org,
on Macedon, at igd, Underscore News until next time. Hey,

(02:24:35):
We'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from
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