It Could Happen Here Weekly 144

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Zone Media.

Speaker 2 (00:03):
Hey everybody, Robert Evans here and I wanted to let
you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode
of the week that just happened is here in one
convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to
listen to in a long stretch if you want. If
you've been listening to the episodes every day this week,
there's going to be nothing new here for you, but
you can make your own decisions.

Speaker 3 (00:27):
Welcome to ick It Happen here. I'm your host Bia
Wong with me as James Stout By men. Hello, this
is a podcast about things falling apart putting it back
together again. For the rest of this week, we are
going to be going to our live correspondence from a
Democratic National Convention. We're going to be getting a bunch
of episodes from from the floor. We're you're gonna be
gonna be hearing all about all of.

Speaker 4 (00:47):
The serve of excitement.

Speaker 3 (00:49):
But for sort of day one of our DNC convention,
I thought we'd do something a little bit different, and
that is I want to take a look back at
the convention that I think I think most people have
been thinking is the most similar to this one, which
is the nineteen sixty eight Democratic National Convention, which is
also a convention that featured large anti war protests and

(01:09):
the vice president of an extremely unpopular president who was
waging an unpopular war seized control of the nomination. Yeah,
I mean, and you know, and the parallels. I mean,
you know, there's occupations that Columbia. I mean, right down
to the one that I think I've seen it. I
haven't seen anyone else talk about. Is that one of
the big uprisings in nineteen sixty eight is in Pakistan,

(01:31):
and particularly in the part of Pakistan that is now Bangladesh.
We are about a week ash maybe two weeks removed
from an enormous uprising of Bangladesh that just knocked out
theirlitical leadership. So you know, there are lots of sort
of nineteen sixty eight vibes in the air.

Speaker 5 (01:46):
It's not unsimilar, but it's also not the same, as
I'm sure I'm about to find out.

Speaker 3 (01:52):
Yeah, yeah, I think in some sense we'll get to
this war as the episode progresses. But in some sense,
sixty eight parts of it are sort of an inversion
of what's happening now, and parts of it are an
interesting case study and having the same pieces but having
them fit into totally different configurations. And because of that,
the results are going to be I think, very, very

(02:13):
staggeraally different. Yeah, And I think maybe the primary difference
is that really the nineteen sixty eight Democratic Convention does
not start in the US at all. It starts in
Vietnam on Vietnamese New Years, and it really starts with
the Tet Offensive. So for people who have forgotten this
from their history classes, like, so maybe some of you.

Speaker 4 (02:35):
Are around for this, I don't know.

Speaker 3 (02:37):
Statistically probably not, but I don't know.

Speaker 4 (02:39):
Maybe there's a few old timers here.

Speaker 3 (02:41):
So the Tet Offensive is this massive attack by the
viet Cong A's or of North Vietnamese forces on New
Years of well technically it's like Jenerary sick because the
calendar dates are off. But it's this massive attack on
American positions. It's an attempt really to sort of seize
control of South Vieta. It doesn't really work militarily because

(03:04):
and this is an interesting kind of display of bad judgment.
The North Vietnamese leadership bizarrely makes almost exactly the same
mistake that the Americans are going to make from the
invasion of Iraq, which is that they are under the
assumption that you know, their attack would trigger a series
of urban revolts that would like drive out the corrupt

(03:26):
Vietnamese South Vietnamese like puppet governments, and like run the
Americans out of the country. And that doesn't happen. There's
no uprisings. The viet Cong take a bunch of grounds,
but unbelievable numbers of their caladurators are just wiped out
by the sums of good American counterattack. But it didn't
matter at all, because what the head offensive really did
was instantly revealed to everyone in the US that LBJ

(03:49):
and every previous American administration had been lying to them
about the Vietnam War. In the wake of these attacks,
it is instantly clear that the US is not the war.
They are not making steady progress against the Communists. They
are at best locked in a granding stalemate against an
enemy with a capacity to launch attacks that could again
temporarily like run the US out of cities.

Speaker 4 (04:12):
Right.

Speaker 3 (04:13):
Yeah, And this this craters lbj's popularity. His popularity is
in the thirties.

Speaker 6 (04:19):
Oh damn, yeah, when incumbent, that's.

Speaker 3 (04:23):
Yeah, it's it's really really bad. It's I think he's
like thirty six percents he is. He is staggeringly, staggeringly unpopular.
And you know, the tet offensive also in some sense validates,
particularly the sort of radical wing of the anti war movements.
You know, I think people remember the anti war movement

(04:45):
today is this purely this sort of like hyper militant
students for democratic society, the draft card burning stuff, and.

Speaker 2 (04:52):
There was that.

Speaker 3 (04:53):
But those people for the early especially the early sixties
leading up to this point and even even eight are
a minority, right. Most of the anti war people are
sort of older, like anti nuclear activists, people who come
up in the forties, people who'd you know, been through
the Red Scare and are these sort of hypervigilant liberals.
And these people thought that they could work with LBJ

(05:16):
to end the war.

Speaker 7 (05:17):
Right.

Speaker 3 (05:17):
LBJ comes in not like quite explicitly promising to end
the war, but he comes in as the candidate who's
not you know, who's not literally threatening the bombs I gone,
and then he turns around a bombs I gone. And
so this moment the TET offensive is this moment where
the radical wing of the anti woman is vindicated, Right,
LBJ has been lying to them the whole time. All
of the sort of negotiations that people have been doing

(05:38):
have been a complete failure. And in the sort of
wake of this, there's a real sort of drive by
a couple of different anti war factions to stage a
protest at the Democratic National Convention for what you know,
to protest what everyone assumes is going to be the
coronation of LBJ. There are two different kind of umbrellas

(06:01):
of groups I guess you could call it who wind
up at sixty eight And this is something that we
aren't gonna have now because neither of these two kinds
of things really exists anymore. The first of these groups
are the politically serious hard lighters. They are organized into

(06:21):
this unbelievably large coalition of hundreds of groups called National
Mobilization Committee to end the War in Vietnam. Nobody says
that because it's so long. Everyone then and now just
calls it MOB or sometimes mobilization, but everyone in the
writing just calls them MOBE, and MOBE is one of

(06:44):
the groups that's been getting more radical by sixty eight.
But again, the Students for a Democratic Society, who are
kind of the sixties parallel to the DSA.

Speaker 4 (06:51):
If you're going to sort.

Speaker 3 (06:52):
Of do these directly one to one lines, right, are
a minority. And also sts basically lead is MOB to
focus on other kinds of organizing. So at sds is
going to be around, they're going to involved in this protest,
but MOB is kind of not being ran by them.

(07:14):
And MOB is also a very complicated endeavor because again,
these are big ten groups, right, These are very very
very big tent groups. You know, these range from honestly
sort of right liberal professional groups who oppose the war
to like one of one of the major leaders of
MOB in this period is a senior member of the SWP,
the Socialist Workers Party, who are like old school Trotskyit group, right. Yeah,

(07:39):
And it's very very hard to get coalitions like this
to work, partially because of secretariat infighting over some of
it's over tactics, because a lot of there's a lot
of people in MOB who do not want militant confrontation.
They don't want there to be big confrontations with the police.
And then also you know, these people just don't have
the same ends, right the SMVP people are trying to

(08:01):
have a socialist revolution. There's other people in this group
who are trying to not have their tax dollars pay
for a war.

Speaker 6 (08:11):
Not get their kids drafted into a war.

Speaker 4 (08:14):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (08:15):
Yeah, but MOBE is the big anti war hub. Right
with the exception of group we're gonna talk about next,
almost all anti war activity in the country is running
through VBE just to some extent or another, because it's
a coalition of like all of these groups. We don't
really have anything like this anymore. There are kind of
the tattered remains of this stuff, but they don't have

(08:35):
the kind of poll and the kind of especially they
don't have the kind of organizational capacity that this stuff had.

Speaker 6 (08:41):
Yeah, it's not really like that. There are a wide
variety of people.

Speaker 5 (08:45):
A posts to genocide and Palestine, but they're not united
under any even this. There isn't like a popular front
or a big tent. Yeah, that really brings them together.
Even in twenty twenties, if you didn't really have like
a big tent org did we like we had like
BLM capital, BLM five, OHO one C three, But that
wasn't really like an ORG that was that effective on

(09:09):
the ground.

Speaker 3 (09:10):
And that's a key component that's very very different about
you know, at about the sixty eight convention that the
one's gonna happen. You know, as as this comes out,
it will be day one of that convention. The terrain
of groups who are opposed to it are staggeringly different.
This kind of stuff, we just don't have it anymore now.
Part of what MOB is struggling to do, and this

(09:32):
is something that some of the things they're dealing with
the things that we don't deal with now. Some of
them are things that we deal with all the time.

Speaker 2 (09:37):
Now.

Speaker 3 (09:38):
One of the big ones is they're trying to develop
what eventually is going to be called the diversity of tactics.
So they're trying to have protests that you can have
three hundred thousand people and most of those people could
be sitting around having a picnic. And then there's also
a bunch of people who are like fighting the police
in the front.

Speaker 4 (09:53):
Right.

Speaker 3 (09:54):
We are, I think, sort of largely familiar with this
kind of from twenty twenty.

Speaker 6 (09:59):
Right, yeah, then the police take ASTs everyone.

Speaker 3 (10:01):
Yeah, well yeah, so this comes to another very important
part about this, which is that MOBE, even in the
planning stages, even the radicals, are not trying to fight
the cops, right, nobody wants to do it because everyone
is terrified about Chicago's reaction to the Holy Week uprising.
Though we talked about the Holy Week uprising in another episode,
very briefly, it's a massive series of riots and uprisings

(10:23):
that follow the assassination of Art Luther King. There's a
particularly bad one in Chicago where Mayor Daily is so
pissed off that he goes on TV and gives a
speech where he tells his cops to shoot and maim
people they could accuse of looting good stuff. And you know,
this goes over so badly that the next day he's
giving statements to the media saying he never said this,

(10:45):
but you know everyone saw him say it.

Speaker 2 (10:47):
I'm live TOV.

Speaker 3 (10:49):
So yeah, but people are terrified because this is a
period where the cops really will shoot into crowds. So,
you know, everyone into planning face of this. You know,
I think most people broadly know how this turns out,
which is there's a bunch of street fighting to police
attack people. But none of the planners wanted that. They

(11:10):
were very very deliberately trying to make sure there weren't
confrontations with the police, because, as it turns out, These
people are staggeringly unprepared for a confrontation with the cops.
I'm going to read a quote from the very good
book Chicago sixty eight, which is a politically it's a
bit questionable, but it has an excruciatingly in depth account

(11:31):
of these I mean we're talking hour to hour rundowns
of the convention itself, you know, very well documented accounts
of all of the meetings that produce this. So I'm
going to read a quote this is about MO about
their preparation for the Chicago D and C protests.

Speaker 2 (11:50):
Quote.

Speaker 3 (11:50):
Some even wanted to warn perspective protesters that they should
bring protective clothing like helmets, bulky sweaters, and ben danafferteer gas,
but it was decided that this might overly alarm would
be protesters.

Speaker 4 (12:03):
Great.

Speaker 3 (12:04):
Now, again, this is MOBE. They are supposed to be
the serious organizers here, right. The other group that we're
going to talk about the Yippies. Like, compared to the Yippies,
these guys look like shock troopers. And this is how
unprepared they are.

Speaker 6 (12:19):
Yeah, wow, Like, looking.

Speaker 3 (12:21):
At this from our perspective, these people are dangerous amateurs.
They have no idea what they're doing. They don't understand
how to deal with police at all. One of the
other things that happens is this is one of the
first and early deployment of so cs tear gas, right,
And they have a guy who'd been drafted into Vietnam
was become a special Forces guy, who would you know,
like after we got out, have become a leftist and

(12:41):
he's telling them about this gas and he's saying, yeah,
we need.

Speaker 2 (12:44):
To talk to the so they were thinking.

Speaker 3 (12:46):
That's going on here is you can tell how early
this is into the cycle because they don't have dedicated
street medics. They have basically a nurses association at doctors
association that they've gotten to go get feel a better care,
which is not bad, right, but no, I mean that's great,
but people need to be aware of what they're getting into,
and then the medical flats need to be aware of
how they can mitigate that. And the most people overrule

(13:08):
this guy and saying no, we're not going to tell
the medical people about the sort of solution thing he's
talking about to neutralize this gas. Right, These people are
just staggeringly unprepared for an actual police confrontation, and something
you have to keep in mind about about nineteen sixty
eight America, Right, is that we have a very different

(13:32):
sort of outlook on the police and how you deal
with the police than these people.

Speaker 4 (13:37):
Right.

Speaker 3 (13:38):
We come from basically the decade of the street fight
since Occupy twenty eleven and really intensifying and ferguson in
twenty fourteen. There has been a straight decade between conversations
and the police. If you were out in the most
intense parts of twenty twenty and statistically, if you're listening
to this show, you probably at least were out there
a little bit. You have seen shit that these kids,

(13:59):
like I call them kids, right, These people are in
the twenty thirties, but you have seen shit that these
people cannot even imagine.

Speaker 4 (14:06):
Right.

Speaker 3 (14:06):
If you're looking back from our perspective, right, you know,
with the experience with the police that we have, you
can look back at these people and you could instantly
tell that they're going to get claubered. One of the
things I trying to do is they're trying to copy
some of the techniques from the Japanese student movement, which
is an infamously very probably the best street fighters in
the world. Yeah, and they're trying to copy their techniques
and they can't do it. And they're trying to do

(14:26):
the snake line thing to break police lines. They're all
falling over and so it's very it's very clear from
our perspectives that this is going to be a fiasco.
But these people think that they understand how to manage
the police.

Speaker 5 (14:38):
Yeah, I mean the state's capacity for violence has increased
exponentially since then, Like you could kind of stand up
to the cops just by staying in the streets, you know,
to a degree. I think it's probably this is the
beginning of the state sort of moving towards ming itself
to deny people up access to public space in that fashion, right,

(14:59):
which we saw like if you grew up at the
time I did in Genoa, in Prague and these g
eight Summits, Kanku and all the different ones right at Octorada,
Like I think that was the beginning maybe of like
modern crowd control policing. But yeah, these yeah, this is
a different world to the one we are in now.

Speaker 3 (15:18):
Yeah, and they don't you know, and this is the
beginning of the modern world, right, but they haven't seen
it yet.

Speaker 6 (15:25):
Yeah, there's any one way to really experience that.

Speaker 4 (15:27):
So yeah, you have to go through it.

Speaker 3 (15:29):
So we're going to take an ad break and when
we come back, we are going to get to the Yippies,
the other group that's protesting at this convention. All right,
and we are back from the advertisements at the Yippies

(15:51):
with have loved hijacking. So the Yippies are another group
that we don't have anything really like this today because
this is the year twenty two, twenty four. Everyone kind
of smokes I mean not everyone, but people just kind
of smoke weed right all the time. Yeah, it's pretty normal,
but in sixty eight, this is really not that we're
mob are very very explicit political people, right capital P politics,

(16:16):
you know, communists, socialists, some like sort of left liberals, progressives,
et cetera, et cetera. There, and they're very clearly doing
politics conventionally. The Yippies are a counterculture group. It's this
mix of people who are political radicals to get caught
up in sort of this counterculture stuff. And then a
lot of them are just kind of counterculture people who
mostly just sort of want sex, drugs and rock and roll,

(16:38):
but see this as the way to sort of resist
the sort of death machine that they see themselves as
living in.

Speaker 5 (16:46):
Yeah, I think this is the time people start talking
about the MARCUSI in great refusal a lot in nineteen
sixty eight, right, and then kind of people going big
are different directions with that.

Speaker 4 (16:56):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (16:56):
Also these people are we'll get into this warness. These
people are not very theoretically sophisticated. Ye right, I'm not
reading her, but they are stoned out of their minds
at literally all times, you know. And so yippie is
a term that didn't exist before the sixty a Convention.
It was developed specifically as part of a plan to
do a sort of protest things as this rallying cry

(17:18):
of yeppee against the sort of death machine of the
Democratic National Convention, which everyone thought was going to nominate
LBJA to do more firebombing of Vietnam. And so their
plan is, and this is something that you can still
see kind of reflections of in some Ish modern movements,
so that we don't do it as much anymore. But
their plan was to have this sort of festival of

(17:39):
life to counterpose against the DNC's festival of death. They
were going to have a bunch of singers and people
were just going to like have public sex, and their
thesis of how they're trying to do this is to
hijack the sort of mass medium machine, which they see
as the kind of defining element of modern society. Right
it is the element a sort of totalitarian and social control,

(18:02):
and their plan is to hijack it for for their
own purposes. This is superficially similar to something you see
from the French sixty eight ters, who have sort of,
by the time this is happening, have done a revolution
that doesn't quite work well. We'll cover on the show
at some point. And the French sixty eight ters, both
the students and the workers who very very nearly take

(18:24):
control of France, are heavily influenced by a theorist named
Guide to Board and his sort of ubiquitous book The
Society a Spectacle, And superficially these are very similar things.

Speaker 2 (18:35):
But the Board's.

Speaker 3 (18:36):
Analysis is a technologically sort of ideologically sophisticated analysis the
social relations. And again, the Yippies are, contrary to that,
stone out of their minds at literally all times.

Speaker 6 (18:47):
Yeah. Yeah, they're doing like t moo dot com gidable. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (18:52):
Well, so I'm going to read back to back a
line an average line from Guide to Board Society a spectacle.
And then I'm going to give you a quote from
an Abbi Hoffman, who's one of the people who invents
the term yippium, to give a quote from one of
his speeches at the sixty eight convention. So here is
an average Guide to Board Society a spectacle line quote.
The spectacle is the existing order's uninterrupted discourse about itself.

(19:15):
It's laudatory monologue. It is the self portrait of power
in the epoch if it's totalitarian management of the conditions
of existence. The fetishistic, purely objective appearance. The spectacular relations
conceal the fact that their relations among men in classes.
Second nature with its fatal law, seems to dominate our environments.
But the spectacle is not the necessary product of technical development,

(19:38):
seen as a natural development. The society of the spectacle is,
on the contrary, the form which chooses its own technical content.
So this is this is this is what the people
and this is what the sixty eight is in France
are reading. Here is Yippie founder Abbi Hoffman, this is
this is in a speech. Why he would call it
a rap or something, But this is in a rambling

(19:58):
that he gives to a crowd sixty eight convention, meet
the press, face the nation, issues and answers all those
bullshit shows. You know, you get a Democrat and a
Republican arguing back and forward, this and that, this and
yeah yeah yeah. But at the end of the show,
nobody changes their fucking mind, you see. But they're trying
to push Brillo. You see, that's good. You want to

(20:19):
use Brillo. See in about every ten minutes on will
come three minutes of Brillo. Brillow is a revolution, Brillow
is sex, Brillo is fun. Brillo is At the end
of the show, people late fucking switching from Democrat or
Republican or commis. You know, the right wingers ready of
that shit. They're buying Brillo. I mean, can you imagine
if they had the Beatles gain zing zing zing, all

(20:40):
that jump and shout, you know, and all of a
sudden they put an ad where this guy comes on
very straight. You ought to buy Brillo because it's the
rationally correct decision. Part of the American process is the
right way to do things.

Speaker 8 (20:50):
You know.

Speaker 3 (20:51):
Fuck, they'll buy the Beatles, they won't buy Brillow. So
this is a semi incomprehensible rat right, is this just
goes on. And in the middle of this kind of
semi in cohre intentionally semi incoherent nonsense, is this point
about how the thing that changes people's minds is advertising, right,

(21:13):
and not not the sort of business of politics as usual.
It's this sort of performance spectacle that is the real
thing that like actually changes how people think. These are
performance artists, right, Alan Ginsberg, sort of famous beat Poe
is was one of the people who's going to be
speaking there. He's writing sort of, he's writing poetry about it.
The people are doing theater performances. If you've seen like

(21:33):
the giant puppets that used to be at Big protest
that was kind of a descendant of this stuff. Oh yeah,
And these performance artists are setting out to hijack the
biggest stage in the world and turn it against the war.
And that stage is the nineteen sixty eight Democratic Convention. Unfortunately, however,
if there's one group in the US who is even
less prepared for a street fight than MOBIZ, it is

(21:56):
the Yippies. The Yippies they you know, at least the
more radical members of MOBE have pretensions of street fighting.
The Yippies are not street fighters at all, and this
is something that's distinct from most of the sixty eight
up prices. Most of the sixty eight uprisings everywhere are
characterized by people who are very, very good at this, right,

(22:17):
and these protesters fight very well. I mean, the most
famous ones We've talked about it a little bit already
of the Japanese student movements, who have this sort of
iconic white construction hats and these giant wooden pulls. They
used to literally fight riot police at rage. But you know, students, workers,
and just like random people off the street everywhere from
Italy to France to Pakistan are able to fight the
police on fairly even footing. They equit themselves valiantly. The Yippies,

(22:41):
on the other hand, every single time they come into
contact with the police, they get absolutely mauled. And you know,
the pre DNC Yippie protests are extremely peaceful, right, You're
not even disruptive. They have permits and the police just
batter them. And this is kind of the plan, right.
These attacks are generating media coverage, and the Yippies are

(23:02):
trying to hijack this media coverage to spread their message,
and this kind of works to some extent. Part of
the problem, though, is that one of the biggest newspapers
in Chicago is Chicago Tribune, who are a kind of
reactionary that I mean, I guess we still have them,
but this is the kind of magazine that would have
been right there with the economists saying that, like all

(23:24):
of the Irish dying was good. Right, that's the kind
of like when the British killed them with the famine, right, Like.
This is the kind of kind of reactionary that the
Chicago Tribune is. And so some of their protest hijacking
stuff doesn't really work in Chicago because you'll have these
protests where just the Tribune shows up, and if your
Fribune shows up, the coverage of the cops just absolutely

(23:45):
beating the crap out of a bunch of people who
were just walking on sidewalks is going to be something
like did the police defeat unruly demonstrators or something. Before
we go any further, and by any further, we're gonna
talk about how these years relate to each other, and
oh boy, we need to go to the thing the
Yippies would have been hijacking, which is these products and services.
We're continuing in their noble tradition by using their money

(24:08):
to do this episode.

Speaker 9 (24:19):
We are back.

Speaker 3 (24:20):
So something that I think is very interesting about these
two groups. That is the final thing that you kind
of have to understand about why these protests go the
way they do. I've talked a bit about how sort
of the more radical parts of MOB and the Yippies,
who are very radical are are kind of being isolated
from the more moderate elements right, and this is part

(24:40):
of Mayor Daily's deliberate strategy. Daily is the all powerful
mayor of Chicago. He's one of the sort of the
builders of America's greatest ever political machine, which is the
Chicago Machine. By this point, he has single hand almost
single handedly like one elections for the Democratic Party by
handing them ILLINOI on a platter. He is the guy,

(25:01):
one of the people who turns Illinois from a swing
state into a say that votes for Democrats by Norla's
margins every single year. And he does this through this
incredibly powerful patriotish network and corruption network, and Dalies deliver
strategies to try to sort of separate He's trying to
knock the moderates out of the protests by threatening that
he's going to just like obliterate these people right by,

(25:21):
and also by continuously denying them permits so that certain
more water people won't show up. Yeah, and so the
plan is basically to isolate them. And part of the
other reason why this works is that this whole plan
is opposed by a group you wouldn't really expect to
be opposing it, which is the Communists. CPUSA wants nothing

(25:42):
to do with this. Even the SVP Socials Workers Party,
who are the Trotskyites who have very important roles in
MOB they're part of a faction that doesn't want to
do the DNC convention going in And this is something
you see all over nineteen sixty eight because weirdly, the
communist parties in sixty eight are a very conservative force.

(26:02):
This is something that we've talked about on the show before.
In places like Chile, you have fairly moderate Christian Democratic
Workers going into the streets and meanwhile the Chilean Communist
Party is going, no, no hold on, we must slow
the pains of reforms.

Speaker 6 (26:15):
Yeah, yeah, this isn't it.

Speaker 3 (26:17):
And you know that's even more mild example than what
happens in France, where the French Communist Party blows its
one shot of ever taking power by straight up working
with the government to stamp out the May sixty eight uprisings.

Speaker 2 (26:26):
There.

Speaker 3 (26:28):
These old left parties are very conservative, both because you know,
on an international level, because some of them are in
the sort of common turn orbit right, so they're taking
orders directly from Moscow, and Moscow doesn't want any disruption.
And in the US a lot of the older activists
don't want a confrontation because they're all still petrified of
the Red Scare, and so they're terrified of anything that

(26:49):
could like even sort of alienate a single person. And
this means that to some extent, all Mob and the
Yippies really have over each other. But the problem is
the Mob and the Yippies hate each other.

Speaker 6 (27:01):
That's the Tennis Odust time.

Speaker 2 (27:02):
Yeah, it's it's amazing.

Speaker 3 (27:03):
And again this is something that like all of the
mode people agree about which they agree about nothing. The
only thing they agree about is they don't even they
don't even agree about fully demanding an end to the
Vietnam War right like a immediate They don't agree with
anything except they hate the Yippies because they see the
Yippies as these like deeply unseerious bourgeois degenerates who are
just having sex and doing drugs that are just literally

(27:27):
the same culture that they're trying to resist. The yippeec
mobe has sort of self righteous assholes who are locked
in this death spiral of comically serious politics that are
also just a reflection of the thing they're opposing. So
you know, they both of these people take the same
things about each other. But meanwhile, both of these groups
and really everyone else in the US is going to

(27:48):
have to ride the wildest wave of vibe shifts in
the entirety of American history. So all right, we we
kind of famously had our vibe shift when Biden dropped
out and everyone was like, whoa hold on? Better things
are possible? Question mark, yeah, question. There's also a vibe
shift in sixty eight when when LBJ drops out. It's

(28:09):
March thirty first, But there are key differences here though,
Right Biden has already won the nomination right by the
time that he is forced out, and when he is
forced out, there is great rejoicing. Everyone's really happy about it.
Even the old Biden stalle wards immediately fall on line
behind Kamal Harris.

Speaker 5 (28:25):
Right, yeah, right, that Biden's wins account changed his name.

Speaker 2 (28:28):
Ya, yeah right.

Speaker 3 (28:31):
Sixty eight is much much bessier than that. LBJ doesn't
drop out until he almost loses a He almost think
he's the new Hampshire primary to anti war candidate Eugene McCarthy,
not to be confused with the other McCarthy. I was
really baffled the first time I just saw people talking
about McCarthy.

Speaker 4 (28:48):
I was like, what, wait, hold.

Speaker 3 (28:49):
On, yeah, this is this is anti war star warts
Senator Eugene McCarthy. And McCarthy almost beating LBJ in a
very conservative state really sort of lights this fire under LBJ.
And LBJ realizes that he could win the nomination, but
if he does that, he's going to lose general lussion,

(29:10):
so he books it and drops out. When LBJ drops out,
there's a competitive primary. The other reason the primary is
competitive is that RFK takes this as a shining moment
and goes, I am going to enter the race as
the anti war candidate. Now we now have our tragedy
as farce RFK.

Speaker 5 (29:31):
Gee jesus, Yeah, just to be clear, if people aren't familiar,
not the same dude, no, no different, Bobby Kennedy.

Speaker 3 (29:38):
Yeah, this is RFK. RFK really is seen as as
a guy, and both hum and McCarthy are seen by
young people who have been disillusioned by LBJ as someone
who can you can sort of like take this anti
war platform national right, and there is a massive vibe shift.
For a moment, there is hope. And this is a

(29:59):
real problem for the antie war fashions because this kind
of thing is exactly how the US got into this
mess in the first place. LBJ ran this same con
in sixty four. Yeah, exactly, and they got Leckt and
immediately made the war worse. So, you know, I think
there's a tendency to look back on the anti war
protesters as these sort of like spoiler people who ruin

(30:19):
the democratic nomination or whatever. But you know, they were
right to a large extent to be incredibly suspicious of
anti war democratic candidates.

Speaker 4 (30:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (30:27):
But you know this also throws all of the planning
for the protests and the chaos, because the center point
of the protest for both MOB and the Yippies was
to show an alternative to this sort of stagnant war,
ubund death machine politics of LBJ. But suddenly, like if
there's an anti war candidate who's a nominee, it becomes
so much harder to make this case. And these people
are really unbelievably depressed. The vibes everywhere else in the

(30:49):
country are great. Everyone believes in hope again, it's hope
and change. So they have their Obama and then RFK
gets assassinated. Everything goes to shit almost immediately. I mean,
the vibes are so bad that famously, one of the
one of the mob guys, I think he's on camera
just weeping because I mean, he and Bobby Kennedy had

(31:12):
kind of had sort of known each other through the
sort of anti war networks, and he's not a Kennedy supporter.
But when Kennedy gets killed, it's basically imagine our vibe
shift immediately flipped at his head and went even more
rancid than it had been the feeling that you all
had in the week after the failed Trump assassination. Right, yeah,

(31:33):
And you can see this as interesting, Right, like all
of the elements of ninety sixty eight are here in
twenty twenty four. Right, you have your own popular president leaving,
you have a vibe shift, you have a Kennedy, you
have an assassination attempt, but the pieces fit together differently
because what happens is, you know, the vibe shift collapses
with the RFK assassination, and suddenly, you know, anti war's

(31:59):
back on the table. But on the other hand, McCarthy's
still in the race, right, Eugie McCarthy, who's the other
anti war candidate, is still.

Speaker 4 (32:05):
In the race.

Speaker 3 (32:08):
However, it is becoming increasingly clear that what is going
to happen at the convention is that Eugene McCarthy is
going to get rat fucked, and they are going to
put Hubert Humphrey, who is lbj's vice president, back in
the saddle under the same policies. And this too is
a sort of inversion of twenty twenty four. The party

(32:30):
elites ousting Biden and installing Kamala Harris is broadly unbelievably
popular with the base. Yeah, Hubert Humphrey doesn't run in primaries.
He just wins by rankling all the delegates to vote
for him. In this incredible series and sort of smoke
filled backroom deals and peeling off people who've been Kennedy delegates,

(32:51):
and it becomes clear that he's going to win. But
it's terrifying because what has happened is that the Democratic elite,
against the will of law of democratic voters, has just
straight up stolen this election. Right they have they have
stolen it. They have rat fucked Eugene McCarthy.

Speaker 5 (33:09):
Yeah, this is kind of like the right has unsuccessfully
tried to play this narrative again, right.

Speaker 3 (33:16):
Yeah, and again. The thing about Harris is that she
is seen as something different than Biden. Yeah, this is
this partially has to do with the differences in Biden's
weakness versus lbj's.

Speaker 8 (33:24):
Right.

Speaker 3 (33:25):
A huge part of Biden's weakness that everyone thinks he's
completely senile, Yeah, because she is objectively senile. Yeah, yeah,
because he can't fucking certain together. A sentence goes off
that Trump can. No, not the Trump can either, right,
but it was, but Biden's was sort of more visible, right, Yeah,
because of sort of the way the media works, because
of Trump's ability to sort of run away.

Speaker 2 (33:45):
There's a lot of factors in this, right. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (33:46):
No one on Earth thinks that LBJ is seen now,
not even his worst enemies. I think that that man
is senile, right. His problem is his policies and the
problem with that is that his policies are being transferred
directly to his successor, who is as vice president. Whereas
Kamala Harris does not have the fundamental weakness of Joe Biden,

(34:06):
which is that she successfully and she is the first
major American political figure has been able to do this
in eight years. She can string together three consecutive sentences yeah.

Speaker 5 (34:15):
Which yeah, it appears like a manner from heaven to
the sort of politics appreciator classes, right when they have
to explain to all of us why we're pure rad
and juvenile of warning politics outside of politicians, while their
politicians are like struggling to do a whole paragraph without
talking about their corn pop or Scranton, Pennsylvania or something.

Speaker 3 (34:36):
Yeah. And so this is you know, even as we're
heading into the convention, things are things are going to
be very different.

Speaker 4 (34:43):
Than they're going to play out now.

Speaker 3 (34:45):
But there's one thing that is exactly the same. If
that is your your cargo police departments. No changes. The
only change is they are slightly, slightly, not not significantly,
they are slightly less willing to say the N word
in public like a little baby.

Speaker 4 (35:01):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (35:01):
And in return for that, they got approximately ten million
dollars of fucking weapons. Yeah yeah, ready up to you.

Speaker 3 (35:09):
These people are exactly the same as today. They are
overpaid and titled asshole screaming for violence. They are screaming it.
They're going to take their vengeance against what they see
as a leftist conspiracy to protect criminals and hand the
country to communists. They are precisely the swine who beat
us in the streets in twenty twenty. These people in
sixty eight are precisely the men today who ran a

(35:30):
black site at Home and Square to torture, to disappear,
and torture suspects and the false confessions, and who boldly
set out a few years ago to kill a sixteen
year old with sixteen shots on a cover up. This
is the exact same Chicago police department that it wasn't
sixty eight, and in fact, all of the key elements
of the modern police department.

Speaker 2 (35:46):
This is the period. Richard M.

Speaker 3 (35:48):
Daily is one of the people who gets the cops
to unionize, and again we're gonna see Daily is really
truly a terrible person. Daily wants the teamsters to organize
the cops. That doesn't work at all. He's bid completely fails.
The organized with the Fraternal Order of Police, who are
just effectively a giant cartel for police murderers now and
they were at the time. There are a bunch of

(36:08):
unbelievable reaction areas, a bunch of their leaderships will do things.

Speaker 2 (36:10):
Like quote Hitler.

Speaker 6 (36:13):
They just can't fucking stop themselves.

Speaker 2 (36:15):
No, yeah, so I.

Speaker 3 (36:17):
Want to read I'm going to read sort of the
modern police statements.

Speaker 2 (36:21):
Quote.

Speaker 3 (36:21):
The better we do our job of envoicing the law,
the more we are attacked. The state of our so
called objective press is sad to behold subtly. Too many
so called objective news writers attempt to excuse the actions
of minorities. Oh wait, that's not that's not the modern police,
that's the sixty eight police saying a thing that is
literally identical to every police statement today.

Speaker 6 (36:43):
They not changed at all, because no one made them.

Speaker 3 (36:48):
No, this is sort of the trap that the anti
war people are walking into, right, they are walking into
a bunch of ultra radicalized, unbelievably pissed off cops who
are elevating at the attempt to sort of beat up
long haired hippies. And also, there's one thing we should
also make clear that's that's very different between this anti
war movement and the modern one, which is that mob

(37:12):
and the yippies are terrifyingly white. They might be whiter
than the cops at this It's it's genuinely possible, that's true.
You give these love for reasons that are incomprehensible to
be other than racism. Absolutely love dressing up in like
indigenous costumes. Oh god, yeah, it's awful.

Speaker 8 (37:33):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (37:33):
And part of what's going on is that the sort
of black radical groups don't really want to be involved
in this. Yeah we can, we can see why, you know,
they're anti war, but they're like, this is not our problem.
You can sort this out.

Speaker 8 (37:44):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (37:45):
And this is also another thing, a very very key
difference between that anti war sort of coalition and today's
because today's anti war coalition. If you go to any
of the campus occupations, right, you go to an anti
war protests, it's basically a combination of two of two groups.

Speaker 2 (37:58):
Right.

Speaker 3 (37:59):
It's queer white people and just non white people in general,
some of whom are queer, with some of whom aren't.
And that's the core of sort of protest organization of
the US, right, those are the core of the people.

Speaker 5 (38:10):
Who show up, yeah, and then seventeen people with fucking
clipboards trying to get them to sign up for their various.

Speaker 3 (38:15):
Well, those are the leeches that show up to sort
of prey on pray on the Yeah.

Speaker 5 (38:20):
Yeah, they are the lamp prey on the on the
shock of protests.

Speaker 4 (38:24):
Yeah yeah.

Speaker 3 (38:25):
But this plays out very differently politically because of who
has been mobilized into sort of anti war things now
versus who is showing up to this convention. And this
is going to be true of the people who show
up to the convention this time, right, Yeah, they are
very much not the same kind of sort of middle
class student people who were showing up to like disconventional

(38:46):
though not all those people, but like there are a
lot of people who are workers, right, but like they're
distressingly white, and that is that is simply not true
of the modern movement. It's one of the reasons why
the pieces don't quite fit.

Speaker 8 (38:58):
Right.

Speaker 3 (38:58):
We need to go do some more ads and then
we're going to sort of wrap up what actually happened
at the convention and how it.

Speaker 4 (39:03):
Sort of shook out politically.

Speaker 3 (39:14):
We are back. So the other thing that guarantees really
that this is going to descend into sort of chaos.

Speaker 8 (39:20):
Is that?

Speaker 3 (39:21):
I mean, even days before the events, right, neither the
mode people nor the Yippies really know what they're planning
to do. The planning has been terrible. Part of it
is because again they can't get permits from the city,
and it's really hard to plan when you can't know
what you're supposed to be doing. There's also internal disagreements
in the groups of what to do. There's also a

(39:43):
truly staggering federal infiltration and not just the normal feds, right,
we're talking like military intelligence. Oh wow, the Army's intelligence
office is spying on protesters. They have guys inside of
McCarthy's campaign that should the legal like it doesn't matter
if it's legal, it doesn't, right, it's but it's it's nuts,

(40:05):
and you know, I mean there's an estimate that that's
from sixty Chicago, that book, that one in six protesters
were informants.

Speaker 5 (40:13):
Oh fuck me, it's like Afterwaffin ratio they've got going up.

Speaker 4 (40:17):
Yeah yeah.

Speaker 3 (40:17):
And like part of this is the numbers of protests
here aren't very good because people are terrified that the
CPD is going to start killing everyone. So the actual
number is even as peak is maybe ten thousand, which
is pretty small considering that the Pentagon mob mobilization that
mob had done in sixty seven was like one hundred
thousand people. Well, right, they've been able to put together
really massive protests, but this one is not that large.

(40:41):
So the Yippi's kind of do their concert thing. But
the moment night hits and they're trying to be in
this park, the police attack. The police are incredibly brutal.
By about three days in the National Guard gets deployed.
And this is something about sixty eight that's also different
from today. If the National Guard is deployed today, it's
not the same thing now as as as a national

(41:04):
Guard deployment CDA, because the national Guard deployment in sixty
eight very well could mean that the army is going
to kill you.

Speaker 4 (41:11):
All right.

Speaker 3 (41:12):
This is a period in which the National Guard, their
riot control mechanism is a line of guys with bayonets.

Speaker 6 (41:19):
Yeah, he's not to say that these bayonets les lethal.

Speaker 3 (41:22):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, and that's or less lethal because
when they're actually going lethal, and they've done this in
the past three or four years against a bunch of
the sort of black cop risings have been happening. Is
they just shoot people? Yeah, right, they straight up kill them.
This happened in Chicago. That was more of the cops
the National Guard because read Holy Week, they were sort
of told to stand down. So it's not to like
literally destroy the entire country in the giant war. But

(41:43):
you know, them showing up also really pisses off the
organizers and everything that happens to the cops start beating
the organizers, and this, it turns out, is a bad
idea because it turns out if you beat people, they
get really angry at you. And so suddenly you have
all these mob guys who literally their plan going into
the convention was we don't want to have a fight

(42:04):
because we're gonna lose. Who are suddenly like, well fuck it,
they're attacking U. Anyway, We're gonna fight them.

Speaker 2 (42:09):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (42:09):
And this is where everything sort of the police completely
go off the rails, right, This is where you see,
you know, all of the sort of famous footage of
beatings outside the convention. Although, and I will put this
something Robert pointed out is that like anyone who was
in Portland and twenty twenty has been through stuff that's
way worse than anything anyone saw here. Like you statistically
probably have seen something that was much worse than what

(42:31):
happened to the people, Which is not saying it wasn't bad, right,
I mean, these are people getting horribly beaten by guys
with billy clubs.

Speaker 6 (42:36):
But yeah, it just happens all the time.

Speaker 3 (42:38):
Now, we are so far past this being a thing
that nobody's ever seen before or whatever.

Speaker 5 (42:44):
Right, Yeah, we had a moment where I could have stopped,
and a lot of people fucking tried. Yeah, And as
a country, we are going down the path of the
cops beating people and getting away with it like that
is yeah, where we're at politically.

Speaker 3 (42:56):
Yeah, and in experience saxty eight, the cops, the cops
are able to go even more feral than they are now,
which is slightly more fail Which is to say that
this storm McCarthy's campaign office and they have his campaign
staffers beaten.

Speaker 6 (43:10):
Oh damn, Yeah, that is that is advanced.

Speaker 3 (43:12):
Yeah, I've never heard of another modern political thing where
police straight up stormed a campaign office of a presidential
campaign and had his staffers beaten. Right, And this has
a massive impact inside of the convention itself because what's
happening in the convention is not what we got with Kamala,

(43:33):
where like the old is gone and here's the new
or whatever, and you know you can you can look
for some kind of break there. It is Humphrey has
been put in. Humphrey is LBJ two. Lbj's Vietnam policy
is inscribed by vote into the platform of the Democratic
Party for what they're going to run in sixty eight.
And meanwhile, outside right, as a sort of rat fock
is happening, and as the party leadership is installing Hubert Humphrey,

(43:57):
the sort of liberal anti war wing of the part
Party is recoiling in horror. A McCarthy delegate who's a
senator famously is about to go on stage and endorse,
endorse super Humphrey because Humphrey's won the nomination. They have
to come together unity. But he's washing out the window
as the police are just like throwing kids around and

(44:17):
beating the shit out of them, and he instead gives
this speech where he says that if McCarthy was president,
the cops wouldn't be using gestapo tactics, and Chicago Bay
Or Richard M. Daly gets so angry that he starts
screaming from the crowd, and I quote, and I apologize
for saying this, but you need to understand who the
party elite is in this period. He says, quote, fuck

(44:40):
you, you juice, son of a bitch, You lousy motherfucker. Go home.
He is the mayor of Chicago. On the floor live
on TV at the Democratic National Convention. Jeez, you are
watching in sixty eight. You can see in real time
on TV the entire Democratic Party completely fall apart.

Speaker 4 (45:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (45:01):
Fuck the Yeah, the mosque has come off, that hasn't it.

Speaker 3 (45:04):
Yeah, everything everything's flowing apart.

Speaker 2 (45:05):
You can see.

Speaker 3 (45:05):
You can see the divisions. A lot of liberal anti
war candidates refuse to back, like Humphrey and his people.
They eventually come back together sort of as the general
election approaches, but the damage is done and that's not
something that we're really at risk of.

Speaker 5 (45:22):
No, they seem to be a pretty much lock step
right now, like both with police violence and with what
was happening in Palestine. Like, there's not much like real
within the party, the Democrat Party, like much descent that
I can see.

Speaker 3 (45:39):
Yeah, you know, and I think the other thing about
about the state election, people are trying to compare it
to the twenty twenty four election, is that the Democrats
only lost by about one percent of the vote, or
sub one percent of the vote, even even though it
was a blowout. They only lost about one percent of
the vote in sixty eight. And a big part of
what happened also was that George Wallace, the insane segregate

(46:00):
this guy was also running and drew a whole bunch
of electoral votes.

Speaker 6 (46:03):
Yeah, which we'd an't really have.

Speaker 3 (46:05):
But you know, the Democrats almost succesfully rallied and beat
Nixon Nixon, you know, and this is something that there's
this narrative that Nixon wins by sort of unbelievable margins
and that he represented the sort of silent majority, and
that's only sort of true. But on the other hand,
the ground in the US since then has changed, right
the uprisings of the nineteen sixties, and this is from

(46:26):
the Holy Week uprisings to the process of the d NC.
All of these protests are hideously unpopular. Everything MLK does,
everyone hates it, right literally until MLK dies, right. And
there's actually a very fun example of this. Bear Daily
had absolutely hated MLKA when he was alive. Right, he
gives speeches to college him saying he's stirring up trouble

(46:47):
and like Astlety despised him, and in the moment he dies,
he gives a speech saying everyone should follow Mlka's example
and remained peaceful and not in the state literally days after. Right, Yeah,
but that's the thing. All of these, all of the
these things are unbelievably unpopular. And you know, the gap
between their giant uprising which was holy weak and the
election was a few months whereas you know, in twenty

(47:11):
twenty four, Right, the twenty twenty four uprising was marked
by over fifty percent approval for burning a police station down. Yeah, right,
it was actually extremely popular. And even even four years later,
you know, with the sort of memory of the tear
gas fading, everything about American politics is operating in reverse. Increasingly,

(47:32):
it is not the left that's seen as out of
touch radicals to attempting to force their agenda on a
compliant population. It's the right. The silent majority today is
not composed of evangelical fanatics whose children monitor their porn consumption.
It is composed of people who think that shit is weird.
And that's the thing that I want to close on
which is that you know, in twenty twenty four, in

(47:53):
a lot of ways, is sixty eight standing on its head,
because everything that comes after the election is seen as
the backlash to the sort of excess of sixty eight. Right,
But we are already living in the backlash the last
four years, the last eight years, right. Trump Ism is
the backlash of Ferguson, and then all of the sort
of desant to stuff, the anti trans stuff, all of
the weird grumor panic, you know, all the anti critical

(48:15):
race theory stuff, all of the racism, all of that.
That's all the backlash to twenty twenty and it sucks.
Everyone hates it. It's awful. And so we are in
a period where the backlash that sort of swept in
the Republicans to power for a generation, that that's going
to sort of come out of the Nickson EARI that's

(48:35):
eventually going to lead to Reagan. It's entirely possible that
we are about to see basically the opposite of that,
where this kind of backlash politics, this kind of sort
of Trumpian fascism, this very well could be twenty twenty
four could be the shore on which that wave breaks.

Speaker 6 (48:52):
We can hope.

Speaker 3 (48:54):
I'm hoping.

Speaker 4 (48:55):
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (48:55):
I am mildly hopeful. I also, you know, and this
is an other thing that's sport, is this convention. It's
not going to look anything like even if there is
intense suppression of the protests, it's not going to play
the same way politically as as sixty eight convention did.

Speaker 5 (49:09):
Yeah, the history doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes, right,
and I think there will be similarities here. But it
is impossible for the way that the state interacts with
protest to beat the same and for people to be
as shocked by it as they were in sixty eight, right,
like a good number of Democrats, Like you know, if

(49:30):
you go on social media, okay, it's my representative example,
you've seen plenty of people barking for cops to crack
the heads of kids or people of any age, like
protesting against a fucking genocide. Like people don't care anymore.
I guess if you're clapping for bombing babies, you're also
going to clap for smashing students in the face of
the club, Like I kind of go together.

Speaker 3 (49:50):
I guess, yeah, And I mean that, I don't know.
I think the sort of long range things about anti
war movements is that the actual anti war movement almost
never stops the war right in the short run. Immediately,
it almost never works. But what happened with Vietnam was,
in the long run, the protests and the sty eight
did stop the war, right. But they stopped the war

(50:10):
not by not by moving sort of traditional American politics.
They stop the war by being one of the catalysts
that radicalized enough enough of the US army that almost
by by the time the war ends, something like half
of it is either on strike or openly in revolt,
and that eventually is the thing that crushes it. And
I think that's also a thing for this, is that like, yeah,
Kamala Harris probably not going to end the genocide.

Speaker 2 (50:31):
Yeah, But.

Speaker 3 (50:33):
There's good reason for this, right. We're very used to
looking for immediate, direct impacts of reactions, and a lot
of times the impact of reactions are in things in
the distant future in ways that we can't see right now.
And maybe that gives you hope, maybe that doesn't, but
that's sort of the way that these anti war things work,
and I don't know, Hopefully we'll get a fucking better

(50:56):
result this time and we can stop the rest of
Palestine from being completely exterminated.

Speaker 6 (51:03):
But yeah, that would be nice.

Speaker 3 (51:05):
That's the not hopeful part of this.

Speaker 5 (51:09):
Yeah, well I think it's so hopeful, But it's instructive, right, Like,
if you're out there now and you're expecting some big change,
if you joy attending at Chicago you're expecting some bid change,
you probably won't see it. It doesn't mean that what
you're doing isn't important, and it doesn't mean you shouldn't
keep doing it.

Speaker 4 (51:22):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (51:23):
Yeah, So this has been taken happen here. The rest
of the week will be an account of what actually
does happen at this convention. So stay tuned, enjoy, enjoy that,
and go stop genocidal.

Speaker 2 (51:56):
Welcome to it could happen here a podcast about it
happening here and here this week is Chicago. I'm Robert Evans.
I'm here in town with Sophie Lichterman, who will not
be on MIC for this episode but will be later
this week. And Garrison Davis, Hello, with whom I've been
out all day in the streets.

Speaker 8 (52:14):
We are currently recording just a few blocks away from
the DNC protest, the Coalition to.

Speaker 2 (52:20):
March Down on the corn out in the street.

Speaker 8 (52:22):
So we apologize for whatever sounds are getting picked up.
Today's been very hectic. There's been protests all day that
me and Robert have been at and that's mostly what
we're gonna be talking with you today.

Speaker 2 (52:32):
So this is day one of the DNC. We actually
have not yet been inside the venue, although we will
be later for the speeches. Today has basically all been protests.
So at the start of the day I went to
the kind of temporary headquarters out of like a rental space,
and I think North Chicago. Don't don't quote me on

(52:52):
the exact chunk of town. I'm bad at directions. But
organizations called behind Enemy Lines and it's a local they
call themselves a militant activist group. That has been kind
of controversial because they have made a couple of statements
about something. So what was the rhyme nineteen sixty eight was.

Speaker 8 (53:11):
That the slogan they've been using is make it great,
like sixty eight, make it.

Speaker 2 (53:14):
Great, because nineteen sixty eight was a famously bloody DNC
as a result of the conflict over McGovern versus Hubert Humphrey.
And this is not so far very much like sixty eight,
because everyone's known who the candidates are going to be
going into this thing, and the protest today, at least
by the time we left, no serious violence. You know,

(53:37):
I didn't want to talk a little bit about that
group because they made some interesting statements and this is
not their march today. The march today that we were
at is specifically billed as the family friendly one, whereas
Behind Enemy Lines has made a couple of statements about like,
you know, collect bruises from the Chicago police. It's the
new fall fashion, that sort of deal. So they're really
playing up the hole. There's going to be a big

(53:58):
conflict thing. If that happens, it'll be tomorrow because that's
when their event is planned. Today was the event that
everyone thought was going to be the largest march probably
will be.

Speaker 8 (54:09):
It's called the March on the DNC twenty twenty four. Yeah,
it's put together by a coalition of a lot of
local different organs in Chicago as well as some once
from around the country.

Speaker 2 (54:18):
So heading into this, when organizers were asked, they said
they were expecting thirty to forty thousand. I saw a
video by I think a CNN guy where he was
like fifty thousand people could show up. That's not the
numbers we've seen. I would say two to three thousand,
maybe five at the most, maybe five k kind of
on the outside end. One of the organizers on the
mic said that they had fifteen k there. I don't

(54:41):
think that was fifteen thousand people. I will say there's
more protesters than cops, but it is closer to parody
in terms of numbers than you normally get. The Chicago
police have been lining every block for several blocks around
the protest lines and lines of police vans, some of
them fold with riot teams, some of them clearly for
potential arrestees. Every time the protests moved, they started in

(55:04):
Union Park and moved towards what was the number of the.

Speaker 3 (55:07):
Park, number five seven eight.

Speaker 2 (55:09):
Five to seven eight sounds like a fucking half life two, which.

Speaker 8 (55:13):
Is the park that Chicago and DC is wanting most
of the protests to take place at. Protesters, at least
these big coalitions have preferred to use Union Park as
it's bigger. But in this very moment, we just walked
over from PARC five seven eight, where people are currently
lined up in front of the fence.

Speaker 2 (55:29):
I would say it was a very controlled event. It's
possible something's happened since we've left or will happen later,
especially people try to occupy the park, But from what
happened while we were there, there was a group of
a protest safety team who were all wearing Hiva's vests
that the entire line of march. The march itself was
him done on two sides by lines of bike cops

(55:50):
using their bikes to make a mobile wall. Inside the
line of bike cops was a line of protest safety
people in Hiva's vests who when folks tried to confront
the fence, there's a fence that is essentially the same
fence we had in Portland lining et side of the DNC.
Some groups of people tried to confront that tried to
get off of the route of march and move somewhere

(56:13):
other than back to the park that the safety team wanted,
and the safety team basically walled off the protest from
doing anything but going back into the park, essentially doing
like kind of what the police were doing directly next
to the police, which caused some conflict and some soreness
among people, But as of the time we left like
nothing else had really happened.

Speaker 8 (56:34):
Hello, Future Gear here cutting in from the middle of
the DNC where I was just suffering through the Hillary
Clinton speech, and I'm here to tell you that more
in fact did happen and things actually did get a
little bit more spicy. But you will hear about that
a little bit later on in the episode. Anyway, back
to us sitting on a random Chicago street corner. Yeah,

(56:56):
among the five thousand people, there's a lot of like
smaller groups. You know, you will have a few hundred
people from this organization, this organization, and it's a lot
of regular people who are both against the genocide in Palestine.
They do not believe that either political party is going
to put an effort to actually achieve that, and they
put most of the blame for sending bombs to Israel
on Biden and now Kamala.

Speaker 2 (57:18):
And I would say that's the vast majority. I did
run into some people wearing like DNC Kamala shirts that
my understanding was they were kind of here to get
the vibe. And yeah, it was definitely a lot of
hostility towards the DNC, So my guess would be not
a positive reaction. There A couple of different communist organizations.

Speaker 3 (57:41):
Here, including five I've never heard of before.

Speaker 2 (57:43):
Yes, almost none of them. But RevCom was there, which
is a fun one that's essentially a CULTL. A few
other PSLs there also, kind of on the cult east
side of things, I guess. Highlights. We did meet a
lot of nice people out there, a lot of fans
of the show. I was happy to see that they
were not with the Popovacchi and crew. Everyone was very nice.

(58:05):
I hope we weren't too kurt, which is kind of exhausted,
and I've been talking to folks all day.

Speaker 8 (58:10):
I was able to geolocate enemy of the podcast.

Speaker 2 (58:13):
Jack Posobic. Yes, yes, he was in quote unquote Camo.
He was just wearing a green shirt and a kefia
around his face, trying to interview people. I ran up
to him and yelled his name out repeatedly until he
acknowledged that he was in fact Jack Pisobic. Then I
asked him about an event from twenty seventeen where he
showed up at a protest undercover as an ANTIFA with

(58:34):
a sign that said rape Milania. BuzzFeed immediately published text
messages of him essentially talking to a friend about like, yeah,
I think this would be a great idea. We need
to get somebody in there with this fucked up sign.
So I asked him about it. He didn't want to answer,
but he eventually left. I think the only people who
were willing to talk to him were communists who wanted
to quote long passages of political writing at him. So

(58:58):
I don't think it was a great content for Jack.
But we'll see. Maybe this will be what causes him
to blow up. We're gonna do some ads, then we're
going to come back and talk about some of our highlights,
what we expect from the week ahead, and the great
city of Chicago, and we're back Garrison. Are you aware

(59:23):
because we're in Chicago, but the south side of this
very city is, according to many, the baddest part of town.
And if you go down, I'm just telling you, if
you go to the south side of Chicago, you need
to be aware of a man called Leroy. B I
knew it, bad, bad Leroy, But he's the baddest man
in the whole damn town here. I knew it. I
knew it batter than old King Kong. He's meaner than

(59:44):
a junkyard dog.

Speaker 3 (59:45):
I'm not looking at my fucking notes.

Speaker 2 (59:46):
All right, okay, great.

Speaker 8 (59:48):
As Robert was checking out this office for this other
group planning a protest at the Israeli Consulates tomorrow, I
got to the Union Park protest early, was able to
walk around. Got a whole bunch of flyers for communists
magazines that again I have never heard of, and you
don't need to seek them out either, they will walk
up to you and put one in yours.

Speaker 2 (01:00:05):
I got a whole book by Caleb Mappin, who is
a Lushite Communist, which is like it's like the it's
like the Foiled Charizard Communist, Like you're really yeah, it's
beautiful stuff.

Speaker 8 (01:00:16):
And then we had like three hours of speeches before
people eventually left and marched to the march to the
DNC fence by Park five seven eight. And although most
of this is about Palestine, there also is some like
intersectionality with a few other things.

Speaker 3 (01:00:29):
You know, there's a lot.

Speaker 2 (01:00:29):
Of LGBTQ stuff, a lot of trans.

Speaker 8 (01:00:32):
A lot of TBTQ stuff, a bottom stuff obviously a
lot of abortion rights and stuff that is one of
abortion rights that has become a recurring, recurring talking point
that I think, I think I'll mention something a little
bit closer to the end.

Speaker 2 (01:00:42):
Yeah, because there's one of the groups of counter protesters
who has kind of shown up for these people purporting
to be like dims against abortion. Basically one of their
chants was essentially being anti abortion is being pro trans
because trans people might get aborted, which was a fascinating
argument and an.

Speaker 8 (01:00:58):
Amazing chant that's both like abortion and is able lest abortions.
Transphobic abortion is racist. You know, all of all the
things and what.

Speaker 2 (01:01:06):
I'll say, so you know, obviously you and I have
both expressed either of us really like it when at
a protest you have a group of people basically being
security who wall off other people from doing stuff. What
I will say the protest safety team was effective at
was every time someone like the Progressives against Abortion or
whoever would show up, there was a one literal fascist
lady who I was definitely unwell with like a cardboard

(01:01:28):
sign covered in racial slurs. They would just get a
team to kind of wall them off with their bodies
and it kept them from becoming like media were not
focused around the folks coming into disrep stuff like they
were at the march yesterday, we were at a march
on Sunday afternoon, where as soon as those anti abortion
folks showed up, every camera turned towards them, because there's
this thought that like, oh, maybe this is where there

(01:01:49):
will be a conflict.

Speaker 8 (01:01:50):
No.

Speaker 3 (01:01:51):
I think walling off groups like that makes sense.

Speaker 8 (01:01:53):
It's a very effective way to do it. I do
get very hesitant and a little bit on my toes. Yes,
whenever they start people in the crowd who are actual participants,
who are just doing something that people in haives vests
don't like. Yes, and when you start restricting their freedom
of movement, when you start walling them off and keep
and pushing them towards the police await, everyone.

Speaker 2 (01:02:12):
Else looks like they were trying to push a chunk
of the crowd, you can get pretty fucked up, including
the person with a YPG flag that you know, I
don't know, I'm just inherently sympathetic towards, but yeah, trying
to push them towards the police riot line. I did
not like seeing that.

Speaker 3 (01:02:26):
And there was some talk about this leading up to
the DNC.

Speaker 8 (01:02:28):
There was some like leaked memo I think from some
PSL people and a few other orgs about plans too.
If there was any like quote unquote like disruptors or whatever,
to circle them off, keep them away from the march,
make sure they cannot rejoin the march, and push them
towards the police line. Yeah, and that is never great.
That's never great to see.

Speaker 2 (01:02:46):
No, especially when all of your chants are like fuck
the DNC, Kamala's evil, but like we need to do
what the police are not doing here, Like we have
to be the cops.

Speaker 8 (01:02:56):
Yeah, you're preventing people from actually marching to the DNC.
And for most of this march on Monday, it was
the cops who were leading the march. Yes, literallyhead of
the march, in front of everybody.

Speaker 3 (01:03:06):
They both had all of the streets walled off.

Speaker 2 (01:03:08):
At the head it was about six to eight cops
at any given time, and then a couple of dozen
people with cameras, media, and then it was the actual protest.

Speaker 8 (01:03:15):
But it's essentially the whole the whole march is being
is being led by police.

Speaker 3 (01:03:19):
And that's also one thing with.

Speaker 8 (01:03:20):
Men surrounded whenever you're chanting like who streets are streets
and all these other things, you're like, this is this.

Speaker 3 (01:03:26):
Is basically a cop street.

Speaker 8 (01:03:27):
This is basically a cop led protest all the cops
at most points I was I was walking by a
Chicago ped sergeant who was on his comms and that
he was telling like everyone on the walkie talkie system
or whatever, like there's there's quote nothing nefarious going on,
there's nothing to worry about. Everything's good and yeah, from
their perspective, that was what most of today was like,

(01:03:47):
at least until a few hours ago, when people in
the actual protest organizing committee were sectioning off people that
they didn't like.

Speaker 2 (01:03:54):
From what I have seen so far, you know, there's
not much that would go viral that would be big
news from this protest. Certainly not much that you would
say it was embarrassing to anyone now. But there's also
not much that's gonna like draw any attention if you're
considering that the goal of activism like this. I don't
see this as like being a needle moving march.

Speaker 8 (01:04:14):
And even if you have a martial tie dozen people,
which is good when it's after three hours of speeches
about communism, that's not actually doing anything to put pressure
on like the Vite administration the Democrats to actually do
something about Palestine.

Speaker 2 (01:04:25):
There were several minutes today about getting the US out
of Korea, and like that's going to be your issue.
That's going to be your issue. But like you, if
you're kind of making it about everything, it's about nothing. Yeah,
it's about nothing. It was not a lot of punch today.

Speaker 8 (01:04:37):
A ceasefire and Palestine is a very popular issue and important.
But the more time that you're talking about and trying
to recruit people for like the Revolution TM and fill
up your sign up sheet and have speeches about about
you know, Marxism, Marxism, Leninism, the immortal Science, that's not
going to actually help anyone in Palestine. At this point.
I'm not sure how effective these protests are are going.

(01:05:00):
That's always hard to say. But if you are actually
trying to apply pressure onto the Democrats onto, like the
party in charge of the executive branch, I think focusing
on that would would probably be be a slightly more beneficial. Hello,
this is gear cutting in again from a corridor underneath
the Democratic National Convention the United Center in Chicago. Sleepy

(01:05:22):
Joe Biden's about hitting the stage. Before he does, I
need to give you a special update. So right after
we recorded this little street conversation between me and Robert
a whole bunch of more things happened, So there was
already some kind of inter conflict within the march. On
the way to park five seven eight, people had differing
ideas on where they wanted the march to be, like
directed to whether that's just a stopping at the park

(01:05:43):
or trying to break through and go further into the
actual like DNC perimeter. And eventually we had a smaller
group of people kind of up by the fence line
that were able to breach a small secretion of the
fence and people started going into one of the many
layered barricades at the d and see now, as this
was happening, some of the protest marshals like organizers and stuff,

(01:06:04):
tried to rally the rest of the crowd to march
back to Union Park away from this breach at the DNC,
and others started pouring in. There was maybe about like
fifty to seventy five people who actually broke through this line,
and maybe like half of them were protesters, the other
half were like press and media. A whole bunch of
the guys that going through those barricades are people looking
to take photos, and it was a lot of press,

(01:06:26):
but police did pressure people out. I think they arrested
maybe like three people in this whole mess. But police
pushed the remaining people out of the park and closed
it for safety concerns. And then those people who got
pushed out, and then people who were kind of already
were on the move met back at Union Park where
the day's protests began, and almost immediately they started setting
up in campments, setting up tents, doing like logistics stuff.

(01:06:49):
Now police saw this happen and did not like this
very much, and they quickly moved in and gave a
dispersal order. I believe two people were arrested during this
kind of second kerfuffle. Police were saying, people can stay
in the park as long as you're not setting up
tense as long as you're not doing like larger logistics,
you know, using the sound system, all these kinds of things.
And at a certain point, I think police push most

(01:07:10):
people either onto the edges, onto the periphery orders out
of the area. But a whole bunch of like swat
to a whole bunch of Chicago PD just surrounded this
whole area and kept a pretty tight lit on things.
So I know people were planning to want to do
a larger encampment tonight, and Chicago p D would not
let that happen. And for whatever reason, there was either

(01:07:32):
wasn't enough people or there wasn't enough like logistics or
dedication to really fight off the chicagopd's.

Speaker 3 (01:07:38):
Incursion in Union Park.

Speaker 8 (01:07:40):
So now the day is wrapping up, Joe Biden's about
to head on stage, and that is the situation for
the protests. The first day of the DNC back to
Robert Evans is sitting on a random street corner.

Speaker 2 (01:07:54):
So you know, the highlight to me of today Again,
we met a lot of very nice fans and they
all seem to be doing smart things, which I like seeing.
There was an old man who had he had a
big Palestinian flag and underneath it was a Bosnian flag.
So we went up to him because I was just
kind of curious. I had a feeling it had something
to do with the genocide, but like you know, I
wanted to talk. And he was a survivor of Strebernitza,

(01:08:16):
which was a massacre during the the Yugoslav breakup. That was,
I mean, just one of the worst exogenocide of the
twentieth century. And we talked ab it because I'd been
to streb Burnitza and interviewed some survivors and stuff, and
he was like very moved to be here, expressed a
lot of solidarity with Gaza. Essentially said like I lived
through a genocide too, so I'm going to show up

(01:08:38):
and support these people, which was very moving. Was probably
the most moving part. Definitely the most moving part of
the day for.

Speaker 8 (01:08:44):
Me, among all these big like socialist, communist newspaper organizations.

Speaker 2 (01:08:57):
People are handing out books.

Speaker 8 (01:08:58):
Yeah, they had a lot of just peapeople who actually
really care about what's going on, and this feels like
to them, like the only thing that they can do. Yes, Like,
especially if you're like from this area, if you're from
the Midwest, You're like, what can actually do to stop
what's going on here?

Speaker 2 (01:09:10):
They are all of the leaders of the Democratic Party
are here, you know.

Speaker 3 (01:09:14):
And that is a majority of the thousands that are gathered.

Speaker 2 (01:09:17):
Yeah, you know, I have to say again not to
just be shitting on people, but it's probably a tactical
mistake to prior to the event. In the days heading
up to this, some of the organizers said they were
expecting thirty to forty thousand people in town for protests,
and you know, the crowd we got today was a
solid crowd, five thousand people or so, you know, marching

(01:09:37):
three to five thousand not bad. But when you've gotten
people prepped for that, then the story is going to
be that, like, well, less people than expected showed up,
and that can be used by folks to make the
case that, like, well, this isn't really that popular an
issue for the Democrats, why should they care as much
about it as they would if you had gotten fifty
thousand people in the street.

Speaker 8 (01:09:58):
Anyway, So that was the the second protest at the DNC.
Technically the first protest was yesterday, the day before mission
actually started.

Speaker 3 (01:10:08):
And yes, both me and Robert were there.

Speaker 8 (01:10:10):
I showed up as early as usual, and Robert showed
up late as usual.

Speaker 2 (01:10:14):
That's right, that's right, laid and hungover, don't you forget hungover?
Of course, I got drunk as hell on that plane.

Speaker 8 (01:10:19):
It started off with maybe like five undred people slowly
slowly accumulated to the two but like a thousand. This
protest was called Bodies Outside Unjust Laws. It was about
Palestine liberation as a part of reproductive justice and trying
to tie these issues together, so trying to like rope
in like a reproductive rights feminists who are here for
the DNC into looking at Gaza as a part of
the reproductive rights issue with like the deaths of you know, mothers,

(01:10:42):
the restriction of healthcare, and gaza deaths of babies, childrens
I've bred in children from families after bobbings or evacuations
all all that kind of stuff. So initially they were
all gathered in front of the Chicago Trump Tower, which
unfortunately is a pretty good looking building at least in
my opinion. There was also a few like big anti
Trump scigns as there were today. There was a yeah,
there was a woman with a sign that that just

(01:11:02):
read Trump and JAD events are weird, but she also
had Gaza stuff all like, she also had like Gaza pins.

Speaker 2 (01:11:07):
And there were also there's some people who I you
could tell her here for the DNC, but who showed
up and like yelled in support, but also had like
a Kamala shirt. Or there was one lady who had
like fuck Trump went written on her arm and who
clearly just kind of showed up in between her day
to like go cheer a couple of times.

Speaker 8 (01:11:22):
Then move on just up today. You know, there was
there was PSL people.

Speaker 2 (01:11:25):
Party for Socialism and Liberation, if you're curious.

Speaker 8 (01:11:28):
There was there was this one other socialist group who
was really repting Jill Stein, say Jill Stein, you know,
saying she's the only candidate that is against the genocide,
which technically isn't true.

Speaker 2 (01:11:37):
The Libertarian Party candidate, she's been pro several genocides and.

Speaker 3 (01:11:44):
Similar Today.

Speaker 8 (01:11:44):
You know, there were some people who showed up to
be like corkers, right people on bikes to help section
off the march from like roads or cars, which proved
to be ultimately useless because police were doing all of
the core and lots of cops immediately when I when
I when I was walking downtown to this protest yesterday,
just the sheer number of Chicago PD was just stifling.

Speaker 2 (01:12:03):
This is very different from the rn C almost I
would say ninety five percent of the law enforcement we've
seen have been Chicago and Illinois cops.

Speaker 8 (01:12:10):
Yes, actual local police, as opposed to the R and C,
where there's a majority like out of state police. Yes
yesterday did not have tons of medics today did. That's
not unsurprising.

Speaker 2 (01:12:18):
Everyone was expecting today to be the biggest day, and
it probably will turn out to be.

Speaker 8 (01:12:22):
Yes, But like I said, yeah, I mean even yesterday
at the very first one, they still they still had
one thousand people. They were really really tying as much
as they could into the reproductive rights issue.

Speaker 2 (01:12:32):
Yeah, we saw, we saw.

Speaker 8 (01:12:33):
Pussy hats, we saw you know, all of all that
kind of stuff. And one of the funniest things from
yesterday and we saw some of it today too, is
that with all these different communist newspapers, they were like competing,
they were competing to be the ones that have like
the true path to the revolution, like like handing out flyers,
handing out pamphlets, be like, no, this is we We're
the ones that haven't figured out. And you have like

(01:12:56):
seven of these groups going after this say like the
same person.

Speaker 6 (01:12:59):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (01:13:00):
I felt very good when Jack wound up stumbling into
one of those guys, because I was like, Okay, he
is going to bore the hell out of Jack Psobic,
but he's clearly he's also like has enough talking points
that they're just kind of be going to be running
talking points at each other, which is good. I always
get worried when some one like Jack shows up, that
they're going to find either some like nice normal person

(01:13:21):
who's not ready to be on camera, or you know,
somebody who's especially protests like this. She often I'm like
an old guy who's an anti circumsition activist just shows
up to every protest and he's like kind of harmless kook,
and they get made fun of a lot. So I'm
always happy to see when an asshole shows up and
gets confronted by someone who is just ready to sit
in there and talk for hours.

Speaker 8 (01:13:41):
And you know, similar to today, there was a small
collection quote unquote like progressive anti abortion activists that showed up.
They kept mostly to the side of the crowd largely
ignored them. But one thing I did like is that
there was people in the crowd caring around signs about
like abortion pill instructions, like how to use one word
to get one, and that was that that was very

(01:14:01):
nice to see. And similar to today as well, there
was a few like DNC volunteers walking through the crowd,
either because they actually do agree with these issues or
just because they're like just because like they're curious, who
knows what I mean. Obviously they're still you know, probably
more pro Haerrison, most people in the crowd, but they
still might you know, nominally care about these issues.

Speaker 2 (01:14:19):
But yesterday they got booed.

Speaker 8 (01:14:21):
Well walking through the crowd, the crowd was was was
not was not happy to have them, specifically the people
from behind enemy lines.

Speaker 3 (01:14:28):
We're giving out most of the booze.

Speaker 8 (01:14:30):
Referring to the protest tomorrow at the Israeli Consulate at
seven pm, that's Tuesday, they said that they're gonna be
the group that quote unquote brings the ruckus, and that
is the vibe that they have. I think that is
probably that's gonna be maybe but one of the more
like conflictual protests. Yes, that we're going to see this
week tomorrow on that's that's too.

Speaker 2 (01:14:48):
Loud, doubt, So yeah, we will.

Speaker 8 (01:14:51):
We will be there on Tuesday to see what goes
down there. I'm about to walk into the d n
C to hear Old Sleepy Joe. We're taking bets to
see if he has a stroke on stay age. One
thing that people have been able to use a lot,
and that is, you know, a very real and valid
issue is that just last week the government, including you know,
the Biden Harris administration as well as Congress proved a
twenty billion dollar arms deal to Israel. We know how

(01:15:13):
they're using these weapons as many meetings that Kamon's going
to take about, you know, in arms embargo. At least
currently we are still sending over we're doing the opposite,
which is what most people gathered here are concerned about.
You know, it's great to see people talking about abortion,
LGBTQ stuff. You know, all the other reasons that the
US is doing things that are bad. But you know,
when it comes to like talking to like the Democrats

(01:15:34):
at the DNC right that the Democrats are pro abortion.
They are, they are nominally pro these things. Pressuring on
the Palestinian stuff is going to be probably the biggest
thing as expected in these next few days.

Speaker 2 (01:15:45):
So we'll see how that goes. We'll be back tomorrow
and the rest of the week from the DNC. This
has been it could happen here, happening to you, Welcome

(01:16:15):
to it could happen here? A podcast about how to
pronounce the vice president and maybe future president's name, which
is Kamala. See I got it, Sophie.

Speaker 10 (01:16:23):
Yeah, but you looked at me for reassurance.

Speaker 2 (01:16:25):
No, I looked at you to be like look at me.
I'm doing it. I'm riding a bike with no training wheels. Garrison,
how's uh, how's grinder going?

Speaker 8 (01:16:32):
It's okay. I mean it's certainly better than the r
n C. Yeah, but it's it's still slow picking because
I mean to find better.

Speaker 2 (01:16:40):
Have you have you run into He lives in the
South side of Chicago, a guy named six Garrison. So
this is day two, ladies call him treat.

Speaker 8 (01:16:50):
The Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Illinois.

Speaker 3 (01:16:54):
I'm Garrison Davis.

Speaker 8 (01:16:55):
We are here with Sophie Lichterman and Robert Evans, and
I guess let's pick up right where we left off yesterday,
because we're recording this Tuesday morning. Yesterday we had a
full day of protests. There's still some protests today that
we'll get to later. But we were also able to
spend a decent bit of time in the actual d
and C last night. And I think me and Sophie

(01:17:16):
will have certainly much to say about that. But I'm
gonna throw it to Robert Evans, because Robert Evans went
back to protests after our dinner, and how was that
it was?

Speaker 2 (01:17:27):
You know, by the time I got back, the police
had mostly knocked everything apart. There was a brief attempt
to occupy the park after we left. So right after
we left, there was a scuffle over the fence and
some people managed to reach it, largely due to the
fact that the kind of fences that they use that

(01:17:47):
they put up outside of events like this are all
the same. It's the same tile of fence they had
up in Portland, and if you remember the fighting over
the fence in Portland, part of why there was days
of fighting is because it was a pretty short section
of fence, they were able to have it enforced very heavily. Here.
It was kind of more of a visual barrier than
an actual physical barrier because they just there was two

(01:18:08):
There's probably miles of cumulative fencing, and they don't have
it all reinforced enough, so when a crowd got close enough,
it was surprisingly easy for them to push their way in.
Three people i think got arrested at the fence breach.
I've heard some folks say it was partly because press
crowding in made it impossible for people to get away
from the cops. Just given the way the rest of
the day worked and what I've seen, I think that's

(01:18:31):
pretty credible. It was one of those things where on
the ground, if you were just kind of looking at tweets,
I think it would it would look like it had
been a larger part of what happened that day than
it was, because it really was a few minutes and
then things calmed down relatively quickly. But it did have
an impact on the actual DNC itself, like if you're

(01:18:52):
looking at the protests outside over Gaza. As part of
their goal being to disrupt the DNC, they succeeded in
doing that because once there was a breach in the perimeter,
the Secret Service has and I don't know what these are,
but said they certainly do have like a checklist of like,
these are the things we do if there is a breach,
And one of the things that we know they did

(01:19:13):
and after that breach is they shut down all of
the other multiple entrances for media and delegates and attendees
into the event and funneled everyone through one entrance, which
caused a clusterfuck for a massive bottom.

Speaker 10 (01:19:27):
Line, I was gonna say, they sure did.

Speaker 2 (01:19:30):
They sure did.

Speaker 8 (01:19:31):
Me and Sophy spent quite a while trying to get
into the DNC after this, because yes, all of the
entrances on the northeast and west side of the convention
all got shut down. Everyone was funneled into one entrance
on the south side. The line to get in was
just just crazy. It was so so large.

Speaker 2 (01:19:48):
I would have to say again if you're looking at
the goal of these movements as like causing embarrassment and
disruption to the DNC, because fucking up entrance to the
DNC fucks up for all of the influencers and media
people trying to get in. I saw more anger over
how fucked up getting in last night was than anything
that had happened, like in terms of like formative social

(01:20:12):
media anger, than anything that had actually happened in the streets.
So I would have to call that a pretty good
win for the protest.

Speaker 1 (01:20:18):
I ever heard numerous DNC goers wearing their their best
their best merch complaining that it was the protester's fault.

Speaker 10 (01:20:27):
Yeah, that the lines were so long.

Speaker 8 (01:20:30):
Well, I mean people were also complaining about just like
the level of like the DNC's like organization and.

Speaker 3 (01:20:38):
Out because it was a mix.

Speaker 8 (01:20:39):
It was because of this, you know, triggered by actions
via protesters, but also because of how the DNC was
handling everything. It was a compounding, a compounding nightmare for
many people. And I mean in terms of other like
other disruptions. We heard from a woman who's staying at
our same hotel that she left at four pm to
get to the DNC. She left on like one of

(01:20:59):
the the DNC shuttles and it took her four hours
to get in now. And part of what happened was
that if she left on the DNC shuttle at around four,
she probably got to the area around four forty five,
just because you know, there's slow it's traffic.

Speaker 10 (01:21:13):
No no, no, no, no, no no.

Speaker 8 (01:21:14):
And what happened next is that around four point fifty
is when the is when the fence got breached, and
then everyone getting off the shuttles could not what happened,
they did like this like a mini security lockdown. Everyone
was just told they have to stay in the shuttle.
She had to stay sitting in the shuttle for an
extra forty five minutes. She could not exit because they

(01:21:35):
were not letting people get off the shuttles as as
the fence was breached. So like it's it's stuff like
that that creates like these like compounding fractures.

Speaker 2 (01:21:43):
And this is probably if something similar were to happen tonight,
and the protests, as far as I know, are not
planned to be in the same kind of locations as
they were, so I don't think that's likely. I don't
think it would have a severe response because a big
part of what was going on Monday is that both
the president and vice president were in the same building.
So everything that normally exists in terms of security at
an event like this was taken up to the suitcase

(01:22:06):
that ends the world was in the venue right like,
so everything was on and like just escalated to the
nth degree, which is why never take the fucking buses.
It's long, but one of my rules.

Speaker 1 (01:22:18):
Yeah, my take is she left a four pm. She
didn't get in until about eight pm.

Speaker 2 (01:22:24):
Not worth it. Yeah, I would rather die. I would
rather die.

Speaker 10 (01:22:27):
It sounds like a episode of Black Mirror.

Speaker 2 (01:22:29):
Uh huh. It's terrible. So I got back to the
protest a little later. My understanding sounds like between seven
and nine arrests over the course of the day. There
were had been like three at the fence breach. There
were three or four more when people tried to briefly
set up an encampment that really did not last very long.

Speaker 3 (01:22:53):
Was very quick to take that down.

Speaker 2 (01:22:55):
And it was the I had been kind of wondering,
and I still think we might see some mace to night,
but it didn't, despite like the kind of Chicago sixty
eight tear gas stories that people keep talking about, that
did not seem likely at all during the no.

Speaker 8 (01:23:10):
Yeah, and I've heard from ultiple people on the ground
that it's it seems like chagoped is very aware of
the optics. Yes, And you know, despite being like the
police they are, they are trying to not immediately bring
out the truncheons on everyone's heads.

Speaker 3 (01:23:24):
Now, they do have the truncheons on.

Speaker 2 (01:23:26):
They've all got and they've got they have the they
have the worn ass old wooden ones.

Speaker 3 (01:23:31):
They do have them.

Speaker 8 (01:23:32):
But they are they are trying to be as hands
off physically as they can, of course, like relying on
the amount of like internal peace policing from these like
big or mass groups.

Speaker 2 (01:23:43):
But the other thing that they have going for them
is when they do have to get go hands on,
there are so many of them that they do not
need to use crowd control. Well, crowd control weapons are
things police use when they are out number That's partly
why Portland police are so nuts with it is because
they're almost no police in Portland, like it is literally
the least police city per capita in the country pretty much,

(01:24:06):
whereas you know Chicago. I think the protesters outnumbered the
police yesterday, but not by a lot, Like it was
not an overwhelming amount.

Speaker 8 (01:24:15):
There is a few differences between you know this and
the RNC, obviously, and one of the main ones is
that most of the cops we have seen have been local.
They have been Chicago PD. There's been some Illinois State troopers.
Of course, there's like Secret Service, Homeland Security Investigations FBI,
but mostly it is just Chicago PUD even around the.

Speaker 2 (01:24:33):
Premier CPD and Illinois State Illinois State. Yeah, based on
how because I had been I had been reading updates
for the last couple of weeks on how security plans
were proceeding for the DNC, I think that part of
what we've seen, a large part was influenced by the
guy that police murdered in Milwaukee, because it was a
couple of days after the RNC that I started seeing

(01:24:55):
the first articles about how there would not be out
of state police doing trolling around the City of Chicago.
So it does seem like, thankfully somebody over here recognized that, like,
oh you if we have a bunch of fucking Ohio
cops wandering around downtown Chicago like they're going to murder somebody,
like they're going to freak out because these hay seed

(01:25:16):
hicks have heard nothing in their entire lives as much
as how dangerous Chicago is, They're just going to start blasting. Yeah,
And I guess I'm just glad that hopefully nobody gets
murdered by the cops this this week.

Speaker 3 (01:25:27):
Well, do you know what we can't get murdered by?

Speaker 2 (01:25:29):
Yes, Garrison, Wow, Yes, Yes, indeed.

Speaker 8 (01:25:32):
Services. That's the fourth this podcast. If you enjoy them
too much, you know, too much of a good thing
is bad. That's what I've heard.

Speaker 2 (01:25:38):
Yeah, I mean that's really why I'm not sure if
you don't overdose on products. You meet with bad bad
Lee Roy Brown, because he's got a custom continental, he's
got an Alado, Sophie, I'm a trendsetter. Nobody was talking

(01:25:59):
about bad Badle Roy Brown except for the one guy
who very famously talked about bad bad Le Roy Brown.

Speaker 3 (01:26:04):
Welcome back to It could happen here.

Speaker 8 (01:26:06):
So after getting through that that clusterfuck of a security
entrance means Zobe did eventually make it inside the DNC,
which we'll talk about in a sec But as me
and Robert we were parading around the protests on Monday,
Sophie Lichterman was infiltrating dem Palooza, which is.

Speaker 2 (01:26:24):
The wrong way. It should be Demapalooza.

Speaker 3 (01:26:26):
It should be dema Paloza, but it's not.

Speaker 1 (01:26:29):
The angriest let me just give you some visuals here.

Speaker 10 (01:26:33):
First of all, you're absolutely cracked.

Speaker 1 (01:26:35):
The name is embarrassing, and that's generally how I felt
about Dempaluza.

Speaker 2 (01:26:40):
What is dem Paluzavalusa is like a first off only
the gen X people are going to remember Lollapalooza.

Speaker 8 (01:26:48):
No chapel Roone just performed at Lollapalooza.

Speaker 2 (01:26:51):
That doesn't seund do you? I don't some kind of
horse great?

Speaker 3 (01:26:55):
Keep going keeping somebody Jesus Christ.

Speaker 1 (01:26:58):
Anyways, it was like half trade show, half panels by
people talking about things that they think that the DNC
crowd will care about, leaning in too hard on the memes,
like a there was a booth.

Speaker 3 (01:27:13):
Was it the coconut Vibes booth.

Speaker 2 (01:27:14):
It was the I almost thought that was a bored
apes thing at first.

Speaker 10 (01:27:19):
They just they just I was like, why are we
why are we acknowledging?

Speaker 2 (01:27:22):
Fine, it's fine.

Speaker 1 (01:27:23):
There was there was like cool Coconut Vibes here booth,
and right behind it was a seated area with like
probably like one hundred chairs and there were two people
giving speeches on something, and there were two people.

Speaker 10 (01:27:36):
In the crowd.

Speaker 8 (01:27:37):
Many many such cases, such cases, and you know, there
was a lot of cardboard cutouts with VP Harris's face
on it.

Speaker 10 (01:27:44):
There was like a VP. Harris as Wonder Woman section,
and then there was a section with.

Speaker 2 (01:27:50):
Shirts they're having fun, just so.

Speaker 1 (01:27:52):
That people have an under understanding of like the level
of embarrassing. There was a one booth while I was
waiting in the very unorganized line to get into the
Panels area of Den Paloza that had shirts for sale
for twenty eight dollars, featuring one that said beware of
the uptidy whities.

Speaker 3 (01:28:10):
What does that mean?

Speaker 2 (01:28:12):
Uptight white people? I'm guessing.

Speaker 1 (01:28:14):
Okay, I believe, I believe so, But also why twenty
eight dollars? Band dictionaries at your own pearl?

Speaker 4 (01:28:21):
Oh god?

Speaker 10 (01:28:21):
Okay, make stupid embarrassing again.

Speaker 2 (01:28:24):
You get the picture.

Speaker 3 (01:28:25):
You get it, all right, you get the picture. So
what panels did you attend at Den Paluza.

Speaker 1 (01:28:30):
The first panel I went to was a panel that
was like, how to talk to your relatives about Project
twenty twenty five.

Speaker 2 (01:28:37):
A great Thanksgiving dinner talk.

Speaker 1 (01:28:39):
Yeah, And it was very unorganized, and so I was
thirty minutes late getting into it because not a single
volunteer had been trained on how to get people into panels.
And they had a circuit all around the building several
times until I found a very nice security guard who
actually worked for the building that was like, you go
that way, thank you, sir, And I walk into this panel.

Speaker 10 (01:29:02):
There are seats for maybe three hundred people.

Speaker 1 (01:29:06):
There is one man at the front of the stage
and about fifteen people listening. And I sat there for
about five minutes and got up because it was basically
the sum of it was, if your your relatives that
you disagree with are trying to tell you something, don't
yell at them.

Speaker 10 (01:29:22):
Listen to them first, which is not terrible to look.

Speaker 2 (01:29:26):
If your relatives want to start talking politics at the
dinner table this year, this is going to be terrible handgun,
drop it on the table, and then just sit down,
put your legs up, stare at them. Just like the
post the exact I learn everything about negotiations from the
Portland Police Union.

Speaker 8 (01:29:42):
This is interesting, though, Sovid because every night at the
DNC they're going to be reading from Project twenty twenty
five on the main stage. Yesterday they were reading about
all of the plans within that document to basically make
Trump a de facto dictator. Tonight they're going to be
reading on sections about how Project twenty five will affect
the economy in your pocketbook. So they have this plan

(01:30:03):
to every night actually talk about and read from the
actual document, you know. Framing this says like this is
basically like Trump's plan for once he gets into office,
or this is like Republicans plan for Trump once he
gets into office, and you know, this type of like
scaremongering fear rhetoric around what Trump would do was semi
successful in twenty twenty, and I think they're trying to,
you know, use this similarly now.

Speaker 2 (01:30:24):
I also think it's smart because there's two big threats here.
One of them is does the election, you know, go
badly for Trump, which is an open question. And then
the other is if it does, he's not going to concede.
Do the Republicans have shit together to actually steal the election,
to do another Brooks Brothers riot, to refuse certification, to

(01:30:46):
try and kick up enough uncertainty that they can take
it to the Supreme Court for a steal. And the
only way, ultimately, if it's an arrow enough election that
the Republicans go for that, the only real way to
fight back is to get an overwhelming number of people
out and angry in the streets, like enough that it
frightens you know, the Supreme Court and everyone else who

(01:31:07):
would be required to actually put in like sweat equity
to carry off that steel. And one of the ways
you do that is by making the stakes really clear.
And so I think this is a it's a good
idea and responsible that they're focusing on Project twenty twenty
five as much as they are, and probably what's necessary
to I'm hoping that the dims don't fold. If that happens,

(01:31:30):
I guess we'll fucking see. You know, it's not two thousand.

Speaker 8 (01:31:33):
Soby what was the second panel you went to at Dempaluzo?

Speaker 1 (01:31:37):
So I walked around and looked into a bunch of
different rooms to see if panels had a big crowd
or not, and it was definitely or not. And then
I went to the Voices for Justice, Democrats for Palestinian
Human Rights panel that was.

Speaker 11 (01:31:56):
Packed.

Speaker 3 (01:31:57):
It sounded like the most popular panel of the day.

Speaker 1 (01:31:59):
Packed, no seats available, standing room and just the the
energy was very respectful. Everyone in there was earnestly excited
that this was happening.

Speaker 10 (01:32:11):
But also it was.

Speaker 1 (01:32:13):
Mentioned many times that this was a step, but obviously
not the step that they wanted. And it was filled
with media but also just people that were there for
Dempaluza wanting to hear what people had to say. It
was a very diverse group of people and the panel featured,

(01:32:34):
you know, several activists, former members of the House of Representatives.

Speaker 3 (01:32:39):
Someone from the Uncommitted Committee.

Speaker 1 (01:32:41):
Yes, I believe they were part of organizing this panel.
Although this panel was a official campaign approved panel, which
was brought up many times by each person who spoke
as a thing that it was a first of its
kind approved campaign panel in regard to the people of Palestine.

Speaker 2 (01:33:02):
And it's part of the dance the DNC has been
trying to do where they it is such a popular
issue like giving a shit about the genocide, wanting to
cease fire, that they can't not signal to it. But
also there's absolutely no willingness at the top to actually
hold Israel accountable, so they like they hold this event,

(01:33:22):
they approve it, and it becomes the most popular one
at the DNC. Biden makes a very mild line and
support of life, basically saying there was a line during
speech last night that like the protesters outside of a
point right, which is not taking meaningful action, but it
is like it gets one of the largest reactions from
the crowd that night. I mean, you guys were in

(01:33:43):
the room, but at least from where I was watching
at the bar, it sounded like a pretty sizable response.
And that's I guess the juggling act that they're still
trying to do is like can we continue not actually
committing on anything while keeping some of these people happy.

Speaker 8 (01:34:00):
And the uncommitted people are basically like this the protest
group that's holding their votes, you know, hostage almost to
say like if you want us to vote for you, Harris,
you have to signal something, whether that be like an
arms embargo, a real effort towards getting a ceasefire done,
trying to lobby for change by using their vote as
a bargaining chip.

Speaker 1 (01:34:21):
Yeah, and a couple interesting things to note before I
play an audio clip for the listeners here. It took
almost the entire panel for them to mention Joe Biden
by name. I think that only happened once. It was
mostly just referring to the party itself. At one point
a panel member thank to VP Harris, and she's trying

(01:34:43):
we need to hold her accountable, but give her a chance,
which was the general energy from the entire entire group
is like, she is.

Speaker 2 (01:34:52):
Not Joe Biden.

Speaker 1 (01:34:53):
We're hoping for better. Yeah, she's made an inch of
a step. We need more, but we want to give
her a chance.

Speaker 12 (01:35:00):
To do that.

Speaker 2 (01:35:01):
And I mean, it's a really different vibe from a
lot of the protests where you have people who are
kind of more committed political radicals as opposed to the
uncommitted folks. The overwhelming vibe is we would really like
to get on board this, but you need to do
something right.

Speaker 1 (01:35:17):
The clip that I'm about to play for the listeners
here comes from a doctor, doctor Tanya Haja San, who
is a pediatric intensive care doctor who works with the
humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders, and she has spent the
last decade as a medical trainer and helping people and

(01:35:38):
organizations in Gaza in the West Bank. And she spoke
for ten minutes, and I thought it was pretty moving.
It was a large room and I was able to
get very clear audio, which kind of says a lot
about the crowd, and she kind of just spoke about
her experience, and yeah, I guess I'll just played that

(01:36:00):
clip for everyone now.

Speaker 12 (01:36:02):
When the Uncomitted.

Speaker 7 (01:36:03):
Movement asked me to be here, I be texted every
doctor and surgeon.

Speaker 12 (01:36:08):
That I knew who had been to Gaza in the
last ten months, and.

Speaker 7 (01:36:12):
I asked them if they wanted to join me here
in Chicago. And the overwhelming response, actually every single person
said yes, let me see if I can switch out
of my shift, and many.

Speaker 12 (01:36:20):
Of them are actually here in Chicago right now.

Speaker 7 (01:36:23):
Because we cannot unsee what we witnessed and caused every
single one of us, many of us have worked in
many wars before and we have never seen.

Speaker 12 (01:36:33):
Anything so it reaches so atrocious.

Speaker 7 (01:36:36):
And that is why many of us swapped out shifts.
Had phoned a very long way to speak to politicians
when we're not helps ourself.

Speaker 12 (01:36:48):
As doctors were trained to protect and reserve.

Speaker 8 (01:36:51):
Life, and.

Speaker 12 (01:36:54):
This Israeli military.

Speaker 7 (01:36:56):
Campaign that's targeting life and every thing needed to statement.

Speaker 12 (01:37:01):
Has rendered that impossible. And that is why so many
of us have.

Speaker 7 (01:37:06):
Taken to other needs of trying to protect life. For
the past ten months, we have witnessed civilian massacre after civilian.

Speaker 12 (01:37:16):
Massacre, school massacres who internally displaced people with.

Speaker 7 (01:37:19):
Children, the Flower massacre, massacres of people try to collect water,
massacres of people are collecting eight of eight sites massacre
after civilian massacre, Entire families exterminated in one single bomb, humanitarians,

(01:37:40):
healthcare workers killed at and journalists killed in record numbers,
pediatric amputations, amputations, and children that are heartbreaking records over
seventeen thousand children.

Speaker 12 (01:37:54):
Who have lost one or both parents.

Speaker 7 (01:37:56):
Since October in Gaza.

Speaker 12 (01:38:02):
We have treated so many children who have lost their
entire family that it has a term has.

Speaker 7 (01:38:13):
Been coined to describe these children who probably heard it
Wounded Child on Surviving Family in WCNSF. This is a
term that has been coined since October to describe as
very frequent phenomenon that I personally witnessed more times than
I can count while I was there.

Speaker 1 (01:38:30):
For children.

Speaker 7 (01:38:32):
I have held the hand of children who are taking
their last guests because their entire family was killed in
the same attack and couldn't be there holding their hand
and comforting them, and could not bury them thereafter. For
the children who I treated who were discharged, they were
and survived, they face a Russian let of a hundred

(01:38:53):
ways that they will like me and pretend to die
when they leave the hospital due to the service answer
is incompatible with life that has been architectured vias, military assault,
direct bombing, starvation, dehydration, disease. Alarming reports of the first
cases of polio and gaza right now. Polio's a potentially

(01:39:16):
deadly diseased that causes paralysis, including paralysis the muscles needed
to breathe, that has been eradicated for decades in that region.
There's been a polio fascination campaign that essentially is eradicated
the disease from the majority of the world, and now
we're seeing cases.

Speaker 12 (01:39:35):
Emerging in a.

Speaker 7 (01:39:37):
Area of the world that cannot that has a healthier
system that has been completely and entirely annihilated. I mentioned
these wounded children with no surviving family. I'm going to
give you two quick stories just so that you can
humanize what I mean when going to say this, because
I know it's really hard to hear these numbers and

(01:39:58):
think about individuals and what this means to them. I
received a young boy in the emergency department during one
of the mass casualties who had hating half of his
face and antholwa Luckily, the organs that are lighted for
breathing and blood supplied.

Speaker 12 (01:40:13):
To the brain were preserved.

Speaker 7 (01:40:14):
They were visible but preserved, and he was talking to us.

Speaker 12 (01:40:18):
He couldn't see himself, so.

Speaker 7 (01:40:19):
He didn't know what he looked like at that point
in time, and he kept asking for his sister.

Speaker 12 (01:40:23):
His sister was in the bed next to him.

Speaker 7 (01:40:26):
The majority of her body was burned beyond recognition. He
didn't recognize that.

Speaker 12 (01:40:31):
The girl in the bed next.

Speaker 7 (01:40:33):
In his sister, his entire family, parents, and the rest
of his siblings who are killed in the same attack.
That always survived. And the next day I went to
see him. A very young plastic surgeon, one of the
few remaining plastic surgeons in God because both the others
have either been killed or have fled. To understand, Lee

(01:40:54):
had removed part of his chest and created a graft
to cover those vible that organs in the net. He
was lying in his bed and mung Wing's so difficult
to talk, and he kept saying I felt really close
to him.

Speaker 3 (01:41:07):
And he said I envisioned and died too.

Speaker 11 (01:41:09):
And I said what And.

Speaker 7 (01:41:11):
He said, I think my entire family has gone to
heaven or it's not. My entire comming is exact words
or something effective. Everybody I loved is now in heaven.

Speaker 12 (01:41:20):
I don't want to be here anymore. That is one
of so many stories.

Speaker 1 (01:41:26):
Well, uh, yep, that's yeah.

Speaker 10 (01:41:30):
Here's some ads, some ads.

Speaker 9 (01:41:32):
Yeah, all right, we are back.

Speaker 8 (01:41:42):
We're gonna close this episode by talking about means of
these experiences in the actual DNC once we finally got
past that ridiculous security gate. So we got in and
the biggest thing that we realized first was just how
disorganized this was, at least compared to the RNC. Now,
this is due to number of factors, the protests being one.
There's simply just more people at the DNC, like, way

(01:42:05):
way more people.

Speaker 1 (01:42:07):
Yeah, I definitely feel like one of the right wing
things to do right now is to be like there
was nobody there.

Speaker 2 (01:42:15):
Absolutely, it was packed. It was way more crowded than
Monday at the Art.

Speaker 8 (01:42:19):
It was much harder to find a place to sit
inside the arena.

Speaker 1 (01:42:23):
Honestly hard to find a place to comfortably stand inside
the arena. No so unbelievably packed. Garrison and I got
inside of the actual seating area trying to find a
place to sit briefly as VP Harris came to greet
the crowd, and it was roar y.

Speaker 8 (01:42:43):
It was what I would describe as electric electric. People
really like to see her. She played it very casual
to kind of open up the convention. She didn't even
have a podium. She was just basically a stand upset
walking around with him.

Speaker 10 (01:42:55):
She came out to be like hey girl.

Speaker 8 (01:42:57):
Yeah exactly, and she was. She was opening things up
very formally. People seem to really like that, and then
you know, a lot of a lot of the main
speakers started started to kind of roll out. Now, me
and Sophie were able to somehow get special tickets to
go on the actual like delegate floor area, something we
never were able to do during the R and C.
Dare I say big mistake, which was this was a

(01:43:19):
massive error on our part.

Speaker 2 (01:43:20):
This is why I just sat at the bar.

Speaker 8 (01:43:22):
Because it is a nightmare down there, so much pushing, shoving,
no place to go.

Speaker 2 (01:43:28):
You really get to taste democracy.

Speaker 8 (01:43:30):
As soon as we stepped on the floor, AOC walked
on stage, everything went crazy.

Speaker 3 (01:43:36):
It was it was.

Speaker 1 (01:43:37):
A nightmare called for ceasfire Gaza, which apparently I did
not see any of the speeches before her, but apparently
that was the first time that was done at night,
and the.

Speaker 10 (01:43:49):
Crowd loved it.

Speaker 8 (01:43:49):
She gave a great speech, I mean speech talking about
working people. I think it's also important because of just
how well she was received and like the kind of
the spot that she had at the convention. Like she is,
she used to be kind of be like an outsider
to like the Democrat Party. Right at this point she
is like fully within the fold of like the Democrat
machine and for better or worse, I mean to probably

(01:44:10):
a mix of both.

Speaker 2 (01:44:11):
In some regards, there's a lot of talk that in
eight or twelve years she's going to be running and.

Speaker 8 (01:44:16):
Yeah, yeah, she she is preparing for a long political career. Yeah,
and people seem to like her and the person that
spoke immediately after AOC while while we while me and
Sophie were still being shuffled around the show floor.

Speaker 10 (01:44:30):
I don't think shuffled is the way to even describe it.

Speaker 2 (01:44:33):
You guys have seen the Jordan Peele movie. Sorry, what's
what's the one with the sky monster? Nope, nope. Yeah,
it's like being it's caught. It's like you're being sharned
with a bunch of other people.

Speaker 1 (01:44:44):
My hair, my hair was caught in like a CNN camera,
like you could not breathe.

Speaker 10 (01:44:51):
It was like a mosh bit, but not fought.

Speaker 8 (01:44:53):
No, we were we were caught inside the jean jacket.
But it was it was we were being slashed around.

Speaker 1 (01:44:58):
There's three I and we were in the center Aisle
Jesus christatically like parallel to where the person who would
be speaking comes up to talk.

Speaker 8 (01:45:08):
And then Hillary Clinton took the stage and unfortunately the
crowd loved it.

Speaker 10 (01:45:13):
They went fairal for Hillary Clinton.

Speaker 2 (01:45:16):
Yeah, baffling, just baffling.

Speaker 5 (01:45:18):
It was.

Speaker 1 (01:45:19):
I looked back at Garrison and I and we both
with each other like death.

Speaker 2 (01:45:24):
Wanted to die. It's it's like when you're in a
foreign country and they eat some sort of like lutfisk
or something some sort of like weird rotten fish dish
that they just love over there.

Speaker 8 (01:45:34):
Or okay, or when they eat like American garbage fast
food and also love it.

Speaker 3 (01:45:38):
You're like, oh no, it's a terrifying I don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:45:40):
What I was expecting, but I just didn't think the
DNC still loved Hillary the way they do.

Speaker 10 (01:45:46):
But they went fairal she.

Speaker 2 (01:45:49):
Was like very popular. I mean, she won the primaries.
She's got a base of support. She just is. The
people who hate her hate her a lot. Excuse.

Speaker 8 (01:45:59):
She gave a very big mad speech.

Speaker 10 (01:46:02):
She loss of arm waving.

Speaker 2 (01:46:03):
People disagree about that, Garrison. People got angry at me
for saying she seems angry. She she was a little
big mad. I would I wouldn't say.

Speaker 1 (01:46:12):
I would say she gave a standard Hillary Clinton.

Speaker 2 (01:46:15):
Yeah, yeah, it was a pretty standard.

Speaker 3 (01:46:16):
Yeah, she's just not very likable and charismatic.

Speaker 2 (01:46:19):
So but she did. I do.

Speaker 1 (01:46:20):
I do have a great picture of wins Garrison and
I survived the floor. We were up in a press
area and of Hillary Clinton with both her hands in
the air and the crowd eating it up.

Speaker 3 (01:46:34):
Again.

Speaker 8 (01:46:35):
A choice, Yeah, navigating this this whole place with an area.
We're never gonna go in the on the delegate floor again.
Just a nightmare, thank you, being shuffled around corridors. It's
it's it's terrible. There was a few other you know,
a few other speakers usher I think did didn't okay speech.
You know, uh, lot of stuff about abortion, a lot
of videos on the big jumbo tron about about cop

(01:46:58):
prosecutor Kamala taken down the and Donald Trump. As expected,
they had all.

Speaker 1 (01:47:03):
Do we want to play a clip of that? By
the way, do you have the Law and Order clip?
Sophie Heerson? Do I have the Law Order clip? Of course,
I have the Law.

Speaker 8 (01:47:11):
And Order and we can play twenty seconds of the
Law and Order clip.

Speaker 1 (01:47:14):
Yes. There was several different videos played throughout the night,
but I would say the most memorable one was the
Law and Order themed clip featuring big Bad kam Law
as the prosecutor and criminal Donald Trump as the villain
of the story the New York sex pest Criminal of

(01:47:35):
the Week.

Speaker 11 (01:47:36):
The criminal justice system the people are represented by two
separate yet equally important groups, the police who investigate crime
and the district attorneys who prosecute the offenders. This is
the story of Donald Trump his entire life. Trumps believed
he's above the law, that no one would ever dare
hold them accountable. For the first time in history, we

(01:47:59):
have a convict felon running for president, and to take
on this case, we need a president who has spent
her life prosecuting perpetrators.

Speaker 2 (01:48:08):
Like God, God damn it.

Speaker 10 (01:48:11):
It was the choice and it was night one.

Speaker 2 (01:48:14):
We'll see how that plays.

Speaker 8 (01:48:15):
So Jill Biden introduced well, first introduced her daughter, and
then they introduced Joe Biden. I think one interesting thing
is that throughout the night, I started seeing more green
Jill signs, which I thought was really confusing, like who's
stuck in Jill Stein green party.

Speaker 3 (01:48:31):
Signs into this?

Speaker 8 (01:48:31):
And then I realized, no, the signs for Jill Biden,
which I don't know if they chose green signs to
be intentionally like trying to like reclaim green for Jill
Biden instead of Jill Stein.

Speaker 3 (01:48:40):
I don't know. I found it to be odd.

Speaker 8 (01:48:43):
She led the crowd and like, we love Joe Chance
And immediately as soon as everyone started changing, like we
love Joe, thank you Joe. It's starting to feel like
we're kind of just sending him out to pasture and
that was the main vibe of the Joe Biden was very.

Speaker 2 (01:48:56):
Emotional putting on his favorite Spotify.

Speaker 1 (01:49:00):
Yeah, he was very emotional, came out crying after his
daughter introduced him. And I would say there was like
a good ten minute standing ovation for him.

Speaker 3 (01:49:08):
Maybe maybe five, but it was. It was long.

Speaker 10 (01:49:11):
It was I was being generous. It's his last big thing.

Speaker 2 (01:49:14):
I don't they It's a really nice farm. You know,
there's a great view of the mountains from it. Beautiful
helpstrassed run through in the summer all day long, which
we just run it.

Speaker 1 (01:49:24):
We had a direct view of the teleprompter. Did a
great job reading that teleprompter. He won off script, you know,
a handful of times.

Speaker 8 (01:49:30):
But his actual performance was pretty good, especially for coming
out around like eleven pm. He did.

Speaker 2 (01:49:36):
He did pretty good.

Speaker 10 (01:49:37):
It was a strong It was a strong performance for Joe.

Speaker 8 (01:49:39):
One of the first things he mentioned was Charlottesville, as
he talked about before in his campaign for being with
the Reason that he ran in twenty twenty, you know,
talking about how you know, lots of rhetoric was identical
from Nazis and anti Semitic vile from nineteen thirties. He
had a line describing kind of the alt right movements
as old ghosts in new garments. I thought that was
well written by whatever speed at the White House was

(01:50:02):
putting that one together. Yeah, you know, talking about how
Trump's being aligned with these like with this new version
of the KKK. They just they just forgot to wear
their hoods, talking about you know, very fine people on
both sides. Hate has no safe harbor in America, all
that kind of stuff. And you know, this was this
rhetoric was a lot more common back in like, you know,
twenty nineteen, you know, right after Charlotte's film, during like
the height of like the alt right movement. We don't

(01:50:24):
hear this as much anymore, but I think it is
important to remember that this was not that long ago.
He then kind of talked about mostly the past. He
wasn't talking about kind of the future. He was talking
about what the Biden administration has been able to do
the past four years and trying to tie in, you know,
Kamula to all of the good things that have happened,
you know, talking about four years of progress, you know,
making waves with a COVID, with the economy, lots of

(01:50:47):
new jobs, inflation is down, at least now he gave
his greatest shrinking the racial gaps. You know, health insurance
stocks are good. We finally beat big Pharma, I'm sure whatever.
A lot of stuff about tying him to the unions,
you know, saying that people have called him the most
the most pro union president in history, and he's like,
I'm proud to I'm proud to take on that Moniker.

Speaker 10 (01:51:08):
Or something like that, chanting Union Joe.

Speaker 8 (01:51:10):
Union Joe said he was the first president to walk
the picket line, so you know, they were definitely focusing
a lot of that union messaging. It is interesting considering
that one union leader spoke at the RNC yeah back
when the nomination for the Democrats.

Speaker 2 (01:51:23):
Speech is yes, yes.

Speaker 8 (01:51:25):
Yes, very brief talk about carbon emissions and pollution, but similarly,
very little climate change stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:51:31):
Almost yeah.

Speaker 8 (01:51:32):
It's which is which has been common throughout this whole campaign.
This this this, this whole election has been very little
mention of climate change stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:51:38):
You really get a feeling of what a gift it
has been for the Democratic Party that the Republicans have
given them all this fascism stuff to talk about, rather
than actually needing to make any kind of serious statements
about what they're going to do climate change.

Speaker 8 (01:51:52):
Part of the other kind of achievements that he was
you know, Lotting was saying that they finally beat the
NRA passing this gun safety bill, and next they're to
ban assault weapons and pass universal background safety bill.

Speaker 2 (01:52:03):
Okay, it was one of the ones that didn't really
do any Yeah. Correct.

Speaker 8 (01:52:06):
There was a brief section about the border, saying that
there's now fewer border crossings than when Trump left office,
saying that, you know, Trump tried to kill our border
security bill, and he said, the main thing that makes
us different from the Republicans is that we won't demonize immigrants.

Speaker 2 (01:52:22):
We are going to a They're going.

Speaker 8 (01:52:24):
To still do really really bad like border violence and
really really bad.

Speaker 2 (01:52:29):
Border security policies from asylum from being able to like
flee bad situations.

Speaker 8 (01:52:34):
But they're not going to be spending the whole convention
every single day talking NonStop about how immigrants are coming
to rape your family, and like, yeah, that is true.

Speaker 3 (01:52:41):
You don't talk about them the same way.

Speaker 8 (01:52:43):
But some of your actual policies are not all that
different from what most Republicans in office want. You know,
they're not calling for massive deportations at the same rate,
but still that border security bill was very similar to
ones that Trump was proposing, and the only reason that
Trump killed it was so that Biden wouldn't be able
to take credit, which Bin didn't also say during the.

Speaker 2 (01:53:01):
Speech order fear monger, I mean, it's just been a
titanic victory for the right.

Speaker 8 (01:53:06):
And I'll talk about abortion, talk about how if Harris's
is president, she'll be able to sign in something that
puts into law that right to abortion, saying that quote,
Maga found out the power of women in twenty twenty two,
saying that they're going to find out again in twenty
twenty four, which he's not wrong about, Dadley, that is
that is repealing Roe v Wade did I did sign
election results in twenty two, twenty twenty five.

Speaker 2 (01:53:28):
Abortion's mandatory finally.

Speaker 8 (01:53:31):
And yeah, he's you know, talking about quote we got
to put a prosecutor in the Oval office instead of
a convicted Felon said, saying that Harris is going to
be forty seven. And whenever he made a comment like that,
talking about how Harris is going to be the next president,
the whole crowd sort of breaking you own chance, saying
thank you, Joe, thank you Joe. It's just really funny

(01:53:52):
because they are just thanking him for stepping down for
the race.

Speaker 2 (01:53:54):
Everybody wanted a chance to remember what two thousand and
eight was like, and they got it and they could
not be more.

Speaker 1 (01:54:00):
Are great and just just interesting to note that it
took it did take him quite a while to really
start talking about Kamala, but whenever the large chance of
thank you Joe would start, he'd be like, no, no, no,
thank you Kamala.

Speaker 8 (01:54:12):
One of the last things that Joe talked about was
briefly mentioning Ukraine and then talking about Gaza, and this
is kind of one of the last things in his
speech before he started like his closing remarks. You know,
he talked about, you know, the need to get to
get the hostages to safety and to quote unquote end
of the war in Gaza, saying that they're working around
the clock to surge humanitarian aid into Gaza and to

(01:54:36):
get a lasting ceasefire. He then gave a small off
the cuff mention to the DNC protests, and this part
wasn't on the teleprompter. He said, quote, those protesters out
in the street have a point. A lot of innocent
people are being killed on both sides. And he made
similar comments to this last March, saying that protesters who
were disrupting a rally of his quote unquote have a point.

(01:54:58):
So he has used this line before, but this was
kind of the only acknowledgment of the protests that I
saw today from any of the DNC speeches.

Speaker 3 (01:55:07):
It is interesting that this was not scripted. This was
just something that.

Speaker 1 (01:55:10):
He said because, as mentioned before, we had a view
of the telerompter.

Speaker 8 (01:55:15):
And at the same time that this happened, someone on
the far side of the crowd unfurled a banner, and
I think Robert has some more infro on that.

Speaker 2 (01:55:22):
Yeah, there were a couple of delegates who managed to
sneak in a banner. Do you know if they were delegates, Well,
at least one of them was, okay, a banner that
said stop arming Israel. They unfurled it and got a
very strong and negative reaction from the people around them,
some of whom were hitting them or at least shoving them.
I think it kind of you could look at the

(01:55:43):
video and use either term. They were definitely like moving,
like pushing, They were definitely aggressively making contact with them.

Speaker 3 (01:55:50):
With these like big wooden signs that people have not.

Speaker 2 (01:55:52):
These thank you Joe signs, and then set up a
chant of thank you Joe to kind of like drown
them out out as the people filming in the venue
like cut the lights, basically down the lights in that
area so that it would it would be less visible.
Eventually they got the banner away from them, but it
was one of those like it shows you kind of

(01:56:13):
the hollowness of there's enough of a need that even
Biden had to make a positive reference to the protesters.
They see it as enough of a potential threat to
you know, being able to get the votes they need
that they they have to signpost to it. But a banner,
and this is not a radical banner. Stop arming Israel
is not a radical stance down.

Speaker 3 (01:56:33):
It's not calling an end to the state of events.

Speaker 2 (01:56:36):
It wasn't an Intifada revolution banner, right right. It was
a literally just stop sending guns and stopped doing this
to Israel that's being used to bomb them and people.
People were angry enough that I don't want to overstate
the level of physical violence, but I don't want to
understate it. They were physically aggressive over this, like to

(01:56:56):
and and had this small group of people surrounded and
seeing that that is a reminder that I am not
in line with the people on the left who repeatedly
call the DIMS fascist, because fascism means something, it's a
real political Democrats have plenty of authoritarians, and that's that's
what that is. Is that is authoritarian thinking, and it
can and will, if not checked, lead to a lot

(01:57:19):
uglier shift than what we saw last night. So I
did not like seeing that. It is a reminder that
even as nice as the vibe shift has been, and
I'm I'm not going to try to take enjoyment from
that away from people, we are still in a real
pickle as a country. Ari are acceptance of authoritarian aims

(01:57:40):
and tactics.

Speaker 3 (01:57:41):
And especially you know, sending twenty billion dollars in BOSS.

Speaker 2 (01:57:44):
And sending twenty billion dollars in BOP. Just send the tape,
take all the Israel weapons and send them to the Ukrainians.
That's that's my stance.

Speaker 3 (01:57:52):
I'm sure Rudy Giuliani will love that.

Speaker 8 (01:57:54):
Yeah, so yeah, I mean you said that the crowd
had a big reaction to some of the Palestine stuff,
and at least from inside the convention certainly calls for
ceasefire did that.

Speaker 2 (01:58:03):
That was big.

Speaker 8 (01:58:04):
When Biden made his little comment acknowledging the protests, the
whole room kind of went silent, like everyone was kind
of surprised. Like it was, it was like a chill
went over the air, like no one knew how to
take it. There. There wasn't like massive cheers, there wasn't
booze either, but like it was because like arguably Biden
gave a more positive comment referring to the protests than

(01:58:25):
most of like the regular like delegates and attendees. Most
of the attendees we were standing around in the waiting
line were much more like negative and dismissive. And I
think I think Biden's comment kind of like took the
wind out of the air, at least inside the convention arena.
But that was basically the end of it. He gave,
you know, closing closing remarks. Kamala went onto stage, they hugged,
they did their little thing, and then me and Sophie

(01:58:48):
went out of the convention as fast as we could
and we found this little corridor exit because we didn't
want to mess with like the like with like the
escalators or the elevators, because that's always a nightmare. So
we found this nice little state case and I turned
to the left walking down the stairs, and I saw
two very large men in writing gear with two assault weapons,
and I said, I guess we're not going that way.

(01:59:10):
Then I turned around and walk the other direction.

Speaker 10 (01:59:14):
Honestly, funniest moment of the day.

Speaker 8 (01:59:17):
Were like ten feet away from these guys away some
of the giants, some of the most heavily armed men
I've ever seen. I think we stumbled across because I
looked at that signs later, I think with someone across
the security gate for the presidential motor case. So that's
that's where we almost accidentally went.

Speaker 2 (01:59:36):
Yeah. No, those are guys who have spent every year
of the last twenty years of their lives just planning
to kill as many people as they care. The second
someone takes them off the leak, they would shoot a
twink on site. They not care, They don't give you,
they don't give a fuck who they shoot the instant
they have a chance.

Speaker 8 (01:59:52):
So me and so Be left as soon as we
could and went back to the hotel and immediately went
to sleep.

Speaker 3 (01:59:57):
And that was the first night at the DNC.

Speaker 2 (02:00:00):
Drinks with me Garison, I did not. We shared a
special moment.

Speaker 3 (02:00:04):
I'm trying to create a compelling narrative of the podcast.

Speaker 2 (02:00:06):
Well, I thought it was compelling narrative that we had
a nice drenth It.

Speaker 10 (02:00:09):
Was I said hi to you and then I went
okay bye.

Speaker 2 (02:00:13):
Yeah, I wasn't interested in you because you left.

Speaker 13 (02:00:15):
Yeah.

Speaker 10 (02:00:15):
Sorry, I abandoned you. I'm so sorry.

Speaker 8 (02:00:18):
But that anyway, that was the first night at the
dn Z. That was the first round of speeches. I
believe tonight we're gon't split up. Somebody's going to go
and then go over there, and me and Robert are
going to be back in the streets.

Speaker 2 (02:00:28):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:00:29):
I will report if anything of interest happens. It is
the I believe Bill Clinton Obama Night. Jesus Chris, it's
once again. The year is twenty twenty four. Is the
Bill Clinton Obama Night.

Speaker 2 (02:00:43):
It would be pretty funny if Bill Clinton got played
on the stage by bad Leroy Brown.

Speaker 3 (02:00:48):
All right, this is it happen? Think it happened year
recording from Chicago, Illinois.

Speaker 2 (02:00:54):
We'll see I did wuldn't walk all right, Jesus.

Speaker 8 (02:00:56):
Fuck.

Speaker 1 (02:01:18):
Kamala Harris and Tim Walls Little John didn't mention anything
about sweat dripping off his balls.

Speaker 2 (02:01:25):
He sure did not. And that's the greatest act of
you know, amongst all of the genocide denial, it takes
a lot of cowardice to really stand up in this crowd.
But Little John refusing to talk about sweat dripping down
his balls in the middle of the DNC was a
horrible mistake here.

Speaker 10 (02:01:42):
I'm sorry. I didn't know he was going to start
that way.

Speaker 2 (02:01:45):
I knew I was going to start that way. I
think it was o pain. Garrison, do you know the
song we're talking about?

Speaker 3 (02:01:53):
Welcome to what happened here?

Speaker 8 (02:01:55):
I'm Garrison Davis Lloyd with my bosses, Sophie Lichtman and
Robert Evans.

Speaker 2 (02:02:00):
Very old, very old. Remember when Lil John was slightly
not He was never really that transgressive. Little John's always
been pretty family friendly.

Speaker 1 (02:02:10):
I guess somebody somebody replied to the video I posted
of Little John saying maybe the best lil And you know.

Speaker 2 (02:02:18):
Ah, there's I have a soft spot in my heart
for Lil Wayne, not that he was good, but because
he's really funny, Like missus Officer, that's that's a fun song.
That's a fun story about Way pretending he had sex
with a police officer.

Speaker 8 (02:02:32):
The Democratic National Convention continues inside Chicago, Illinois.

Speaker 2 (02:02:37):
Lil Wayne not yet present, but maybe to night. People
say Swift might show up soon.

Speaker 1 (02:02:42):
Well, she she had a couple shows and she could
potentially get here by tomorrow.

Speaker 2 (02:02:48):
Okay, that's great, that's great. I was actually talk about
Jonathan Swift. Oh okay, author of a modest proposal.

Speaker 1 (02:02:54):
But yeah, but in my heart, I really don't think
she's coming.

Speaker 2 (02:02:57):
No, why would she would? What does she gained from that?

Speaker 10 (02:03:01):
Yeah?

Speaker 8 (02:03:02):
So Tuesday we spent the day split up, mostly with
me and Robert going to a protest and Sophie entering
the United Center to watch the lib Utopia unveil, complete
with an appearance. So happy Lil John, I believe is
what he's referred to as.

Speaker 10 (02:03:21):
That is that is correct?

Speaker 2 (02:03:22):
Thank you? Yes, just checking my source as someone currently
wearing a mesh shirt. He is in your line of descendants,
like this is one of your one of your Saint
At ancestors. I don't know how I feel about that.

Speaker 8 (02:03:32):
And we will we will get to the Little John
antics uh, specifically with the State of Georgia, which made
quite a show later on in the episode we will
be talking about that, but first we will be talking
about what me and Robert spent a good I don't
know four hours yesterday doing.

Speaker 2 (02:03:49):
I was out for closer to eight because I went
out earlier to look at some stuff I went to.
There was a pro Israel Free the Hostages event that
I went to and looked around. Briefly, not a whole
lot to say about it other than some art that
I don't fully know how to think about yet. They
had a massive one of the young women that was
abducted by Hamas that very famously had like blood on

(02:04:12):
her gray sweatpants. They had just like a massive, two
story tall pair of gray sweatpants covered in blood. But
it wasn't really clear until you got up close what
it was trying to be, So it was just kind
of like it was odd, odd visuals for the event,
I'll say that, but mostly pretty tame. There was maybe
thirty or forty people there, and that was about two

(02:04:33):
three blocks down from the plan side of the protest
that you and I went to, which was the Acenture Tower,
which is apparently it's like a mall on the inside
and a metro station and also several floors mini floors
of office space. So I'm guessing that the Israeli Consolate
is a couple of small offices in this big building.

Speaker 8 (02:04:53):
Yeah, so there was a purchase plan for later this evening.
As me and Sophie were going to get lunch, I saw.

Speaker 2 (02:04:58):
Like Sophie and I.

Speaker 1 (02:05:00):
I saw they both looked at me, deciding who I
was going to give a dirty look to.

Speaker 2 (02:05:05):
I know you were the United Kingdom and me correcting
Garrison's grammar, was the German army marching into Belgium.

Speaker 8 (02:05:14):
I saw a whole bunch of police vans driving through
downtown Chicago on the way to the Israeli Consulate. And
we showed up a few hours later for the for
the protest planned that evening. Like usual, we tried to
arrive early and there was a few kind of characters
bumping around the area that a lot of media was
just fascinated by.

Speaker 2 (02:05:36):
Yeah, the start of it was there was the same
There was had been a Nazi lady out at the
protest the day before as well. She has like bright
purplish hair carried and on the first day just a
cardboard sign covered in racial slurs. Loved shouting the end word.
Today she had a friend. They unveiled a sign. People
confronted them.

Speaker 8 (02:05:56):
It was like it was like a white genocide, white
like white placement, great replacement type sign with a URL
to a telegram channel, I believe.

Speaker 2 (02:06:03):
Yeah, a channel. Yeah, I think she had a friend today,
someone else.

Speaker 10 (02:06:09):
It is shocking news.

Speaker 2 (02:06:10):
Yeah, I mean they usually have at least one, right, maybe,
and then uh, I mean kind of the at one point,
sort of while we were all waiting around, because it
was initially just a shitload of press, uh, some lookie
loose from the local area, and a bunch of cops,
a bunch of a bunch of private security, a lot
of private security, mostly for the media. There's a fun
game of spot the concealed handgun, because none of these

(02:06:30):
guys are very good at concealing their fucking handguns. But
at one point I'm standing and talking to another media
and I see this like massive circle of cameras fill
up around, and so I'm wondering, Okay, maybe something's happened.
I get over there, and I didn't even think to
like stop myself from you know, using my outside voice.
I just shouted as soon as I got close, oh fuck,

(02:06:51):
it's the MyPillow guy, which is the least news anything
could possibly be.

Speaker 3 (02:06:57):
But for some reason there was like maybe like cameras.

Speaker 8 (02:07:01):
It's just like huddled around this guy trying to get
whatever picture or whatever.

Speaker 2 (02:07:06):
Let him talk. Yeah, a couple of protesters kept engaging
him about Gaza, which I just don't think that there's
anything to be gained from engaging the MyPillow guy. With
the exception of Garrison, the way you chose to engage
the MyPillow guy.

Speaker 8 (02:07:18):
I think there's really only one way to handle this,
and well there's maybe two ways. You can just completely
ignore him, which is probably probably probably the best. Ask
what I did, because there's there's no reason to engage
with this, there's no reason to give him what he wants.
The other option is just to completely baffle him, just
be really confusing. So I went up and I I
didn't even ask a question.

Speaker 2 (02:07:38):
I just I just said you said Mike first, which
I left so funny.

Speaker 1 (02:07:43):
I just let the listeners to know that after a
fourteen hour day yesterday, I get I get back to
the hotel. Garrison and Robert have had several drinks in
Garrison is like.

Speaker 10 (02:07:53):
Did you see my video?

Speaker 2 (02:07:54):
Did you see my video?

Speaker 3 (02:07:56):
And what was that video?

Speaker 2 (02:07:58):
We'll play the audio here.

Speaker 8 (02:08:01):
Skimmity Biden, skimmity Biden, skibbity Biden, givity skimmity Biden. So no,
I was able to get Mike. You know, we're pretty close.
How you guys talk now, it's around to say skimmity Biden,
because that's the only way to handle these guys is
just like just like just really, you're not even like

(02:08:23):
annoying them, You're just kind of baffling.

Speaker 2 (02:08:28):
Because all he wants.

Speaker 8 (02:08:29):
Is attention, to say, his little piece and trying to
attract whatever media attention, and you just got to kind
of fuck with them.

Speaker 2 (02:08:36):
And it's it's kind of a good sign that he
did that, because this is not if you think about
where he was in like twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen, him
showing up alone, no visible security escort to just kind
of stand around before a protest and bullshit, is like,
that's a man whose life has fallen apart, like he
has nothing.

Speaker 8 (02:08:55):
Left, no everything he was saying I'm able to hear
him say at four am on five Yeah, and that's
that was pretty much the little pre show circus, and
you know, people started to trickle into the area slowly,
you know, people in kefeas you know, protesters, medics started
to slowly, slowly enter enter this little like you know
block radius, and then very very suddenly, from like the

(02:09:17):
opposite side of where everyone else was stationed at, we
saw a group of maybe like fifty march in all
at the same time. Yeah, and this was kind of
the start of the of the main of the main protests.

Speaker 2 (02:09:28):
And I would say at that point there were maybe
fifty protesters scattered around within the clumps of media, most
of whom ran over and joined that group. So it
was probably around one hundred or so, maybe maybe as
many as one hundred and fifty.

Speaker 8 (02:09:38):
And it probably grew to about like two hundred over
the course of the next few hours, although they started
to kind of bleed numbers as well. And I was
I was taking notes on my little personal recorder during
this time, and we put together a little kind of
compilation to hear about what went down, and I'll probably
cut in with some extra narration to kind of fill
in the gaps, so to clarify. The audio you're about

(02:10:00):
to hear was recorded over the course of like two
and a half hours. We've cut this down for efficiency
and clarity. So some of the sections you're about to hear,
you know, may have happened a minute or two apart,
but they're just could be mushed together to kind of
help the action move along a little bit faster, not
including you know, the sections of the protest where there's
ten minutes of nothing happening. Here's a first time look

(02:10:21):
at what happened during the protest at the Israeli Consulate.
Moving back, all right, it's just from the it's just
past seven. The behind enemy lines Israeli Consulate protest basically
just started. A whole bunch of people in some form
of block showed up in front of the building, started
marching up the street.

Speaker 2 (02:10:37):
Very quickly.

Speaker 8 (02:10:38):
A three or four five layered line of Chicago PD
came to block Clinton Street, so the march could not
advance there now retreating back towards the building, and they
might try to march the other direction. I'm going to
be on the move here, trying to take notes as
this progresses. A central tower is kind of a tricky
spot for this sort of protest, Although it does house

(02:11:00):
the Israeli Consulate. From the outside, there's no obvious indicators
that this building is linked to the Israeli government, and
it's about two miles away from the DNC, so this
can be very little impact on DNC attendees. All the
way over here in the West Loop area of Chicago, Chicago,
ped is set up across the other street as well,

(02:11:23):
blocking both ways in essentially kettling this entire protest. There's
a loud speaker, people are talking in front of the building.
The purple haired wig lady from before has moved her
Nazi banner closer to this core of protesters right in
front of the entrance of the building housing the Israeli consulate.

(02:11:45):
All right, some of the protesters just announced that they
have a couple of speakers that are going to talk
in front of the Israeli Constant building. As people are
now sandwiched in between two streets right in front of
the entrance. Speeches discussed the genocide in Gaza and the
US arm steels sending weapons and bombs to Israel as
part of continuing US imperialism. As the speech is carried on,
more and more police began to arrive.

Speaker 2 (02:12:08):
All right, it is seven.

Speaker 8 (02:12:11):
About nine or so white vans just showed up with
tons of chicaga pad in ryagear, helmets, gas masks, now
thicker sleeves, not just the blue button ups that the
regular cops wear. All right, we're gonna run into a
line of police. People have banners, bring the war home,

(02:12:33):
shut down the DNC for Gaza.

Speaker 2 (02:12:36):
Palestine flags.

Speaker 8 (02:12:38):
As they are marching towards a massive line of riot cops.
There's too much media in the way, see and a
clash has started. Pushing up against lines. Police pulling apart
the signs and banners. Sounds familiar, I bet to anyone

(02:13:01):
who was at twenty twenty. The first clash lasted about
a minute, as protesters tried to march forwards into the
street and police pushed them back. I was off to
the side, but the sheer amount of cameras and media
in the middle of this scuffle prevented either side from
gaining or losing much ground. All right, there was kind

(02:13:22):
of a little bit of a back and forth. The
protest line got pushed back slightly, but still in the
middle of the Clinton Street, protesters telling the press to
get out of the way, as many press are in between.
As press moved slowly out of the way, police were

(02:13:42):
able to successfully push the protest back Chicago pedis from
redirecting some of their push towards the south. Now looks
like some of the protesters were trying to move onto
the sidewalk to get out of this mass, massive sandwich
of police, and there's maybe three or four cops trying

(02:14:05):
to prevent them from moving on the sidewalk. Here we'll
see if they get past. Police have tackled some people.
Police are going in for.

Speaker 2 (02:14:13):
A lot of arrests.

Speaker 3 (02:14:14):
It's very combative.

Speaker 8 (02:14:16):
Police with batons out, attacking people, hitting on the ground,
tackling them. Police preventing all forwards movement on the sidewalk
as well, not just the street. People are people are
trying to get out and police a police are really

(02:14:37):
trying to trap them.

Speaker 2 (02:14:44):
Police are squishing. We can't, we can't move dude, we
can't move back.

Speaker 3 (02:14:52):
No lassoom, we can't, we can't move back.

Speaker 2 (02:14:57):
Police are telling people to move back into nothing. Wow,
they have us trapped by this building.

Speaker 8 (02:15:04):
Eventually, police realize that they cannot push all fifty people
into a flat wall and eased off, directing people back
in front of the consulate. Police is pushing us into
a very tiny corner a small line of police is
separating two crowds, mostly on the sidewalk.

Speaker 2 (02:15:23):
All right, they're pushing us back towards the building.

Speaker 8 (02:15:27):
Action now paused for a few minutes as both sides
figured out their next move. Protesters chanted for the release
of detained comrades.

Speaker 4 (02:15:37):
Let them go, let them.

Speaker 2 (02:15:39):
Go, all right.

Speaker 8 (02:15:43):
Some of the crowd is trying to regroup, as police
today to push people off of the sidewalk and back
into the street. I guess the crowd has kind of
been split now into four sections, police keeping them separate,
not letting them reconvene. It's the section in front of
the building, There's a section on the corner, this section

(02:16:06):
behind the police line, and there's a section close to
where people tried to march that it's now been cut
off from the rest of the crowd, So we have
these kind of four groups. A smaller group is reforming
in the street in front of the building. This is
kind of the section that got trapped by the building
as the rest of the march tried to move forward,

(02:16:29):
and some of the people from the side have linked
up with them as well, but still mostly kind of
four sections separated up by police.

Speaker 3 (02:16:39):
People chanting to get back in the street.

Speaker 8 (02:16:42):
We have little squads or AG's linking up with their
mates again, linking arms, holding hands, kind of regrouping. Right now,
Chicago p D is kind of doing the same. They're
reforming their line, going back more into the middle of
the street. If they did get any detainments or arrests,
probably sorting those out right now.

Speaker 2 (02:17:00):
As they decide what to do next.

Speaker 8 (02:17:02):
During this loll period, I was able to hear a
decent amount of police comms chatter coming from their walkie
talkies as the police decided on.

Speaker 3 (02:17:10):
Their next move.

Speaker 8 (02:17:11):
All right, I just heard on police comms that they're
gonna be asking for media to leave. Interesting, they are
calling for transport vands, So if they're going to start
doing arrests, they might try to get media to leave
first then really move in. It sounds like to me

(02:17:32):
on the comms they're calling out specific people to do
targeted arrests. On the comms, they're calling out specific outfits,
specific what people are wearing, what people are holding, to
move in and do targeted arrests on the crowd.

Speaker 2 (02:17:46):
Some of the descriptions are very general.

Speaker 8 (02:17:48):
Like black hoodie, red hat, that kind of stuff. I
really did not want to get a face full of mace,
So as soon as I saw police carrying mace cans,
I perhaps a bit prematurely decided to don my full
face gas mask, which I then took off like ten
minutes later as it became clear that we weren't in
immediate danger of amazing, Well, I don't think I'm gonna

(02:18:11):
see a Barack Obama today. There's been enough of a
pause that the anticipation keeps growing. Does everyone knows what's
about to happen? We're just waiting for it to happen,
all right. The file Time protesters that are fund of
the building are not moving towards the Israeli counter protesters

(02:18:31):
on the other side. As things started to heap back up,
some folks in the crowd opted to exit the area
via a small EVAC route on the northwest corner of
the street. Considering the talk of targeted arrests on the
police scanner, police may have been eyeing up certain people
in the crowd who then got the hint about what's
about to go down next.

Speaker 2 (02:18:53):
You see that blocked the just bounce?

Speaker 8 (02:18:56):
Yeah, no, I think they can spot that they were
about to get targeted for arrests. I think so because
they were being followed up by some of some of
the sergeants, because.

Speaker 2 (02:19:07):
I honestly I can't name any law breaking other than
quote unquote shoving with the paw. Sure, but I mean,
you know they can get you on something.

Speaker 8 (02:19:15):
The protest did not stay still for too long, and
a little less than an hour since the last big confrontation,
the crowd once again attempted to march.

Speaker 3 (02:19:24):
All right, it is nearly eight twenty.

Speaker 8 (02:19:27):
The crowd that remained in front of these early constant
building is now moving up again towards Clinton Street to
re engage the confrontation that happened nearly an hour ago. Look,
there's less cameras in between the two factions, but not
no cameras. The crowd of protesters is still approaching, and

(02:19:47):
they're turning.

Speaker 2 (02:19:48):
They are turning. They turned down Clinton Street.

Speaker 8 (02:19:52):
This is the movement they tried to make before, but
police prevented them from doing so.

Speaker 2 (02:19:57):
And now they're so far able to exit.

Speaker 8 (02:20:01):
The section of the protest that was still facing down
the riot line split up into two smaller groups and
then made this same movement down the sidewalk away from
the police. The people that were traveling down the sidewalk
and Clinton have now reformed on Moreau Street.

Speaker 2 (02:20:20):
And they are now marching.

Speaker 8 (02:20:24):
The police are now caught behind the protesters in the march,
but sure enough police quickly arrived to contain the mobile protest.
All right, bike cops have beat most of the crowd
to the intersection, but they're still slowly arriving. The intersection
up here is a T shape, so only two directions
to go. Please are gonna try to get them to

(02:20:47):
take a rite?

Speaker 2 (02:20:47):
It looks like.

Speaker 8 (02:20:50):
Yep, all right, more please catch it up.

Speaker 3 (02:20:54):
I was triakon here.

Speaker 8 (02:20:55):
Bike cops coming in from both sides. Oh, this is
quite the pickle. Unfortunately, because of the T shape of
this intersection, this is now a little bit of a
tighter pinch. They can still get out and be a
one path on the sidewalk, but they might prefer a
confrontation with some of these police.

Speaker 4 (02:21:18):
We'll see.

Speaker 8 (02:21:18):
The march paused at this T shaped intersection for a
few minutes as they decided their next move. All right,
the crowd is standing in front of this very thin
lineup bike comps. The police line's not very thick because
they had to move kind of impromptu to adjust to
the movements of the crowd. Small groups of the protests

(02:21:41):
keep peeling off. They're slowly bleeding numbers. People chanting let
us through as the police yelled to move back. Police
have the remaining crowd in a pretty tight squeeze the moment.
Smaller groups keep peeling off, but now the remaining march
is moving forward as the bike cops slowly back up.

(02:22:05):
Looks like most of the crowd has been moving onto
the sidewalk to move down the street. They don't really
have many more moves to make. There's just a saturation
of police in this area that the cops can adapt
to any movement this shrinking crowd makes. Police are piling

(02:22:27):
into the sidewalk. Police are making arrests. Please are doing
target arrests. They're grabbing people on the sidewalk. Numbers of
arrests are being made. There's at least at least five
from where I'm standing. Police ordering media out of the

(02:22:47):
way on the side. On the side, protesters are now
moving back on the sidewalk, backtracking.

Speaker 3 (02:22:59):
Away from the police.

Speaker 8 (02:23:01):
The remaining crowd attempted to move away from the police
who were making arrests on the sidewalk but the only
way left to move was back where they just came from.

Speaker 3 (02:23:09):
People are linking up with their AG's.

Speaker 8 (02:23:12):
Arm in arm, trying to move through this very, very
tricky environment. Right now, there's so everywhere we go, I
see a new a new battalion of cops. People really
just have nowhere to go. There's just police everywhere. We're
just at this point moving in circles, but not like

(02:23:33):
the regular march circles, just on the sidewalk, going back
and forth, backtracking, looping around.

Speaker 2 (02:23:40):
They're trying to find somewhere just to get out of
this area.

Speaker 8 (02:23:43):
Mostly out of options on where to go. The protest
entered a small patio terrace on the corner of the street.
Protesters are now getting into the terrace of this building
at five point twenty five West Monroe.

Speaker 2 (02:23:57):
That's probably not gonna end great. At this point.

Speaker 8 (02:24:03):
Police have the remaining much smaller crowd maybe fifty, squeezed
in in this little building terrace corner. They are not
letting any protesters leave. A shoving match just started. Police
are moving in and they're tackling, pushing people on the ground.

(02:24:25):
It's almost nine pm.

Speaker 3 (02:24:28):
Police have one arrest. Now they just drig someone out by.

Speaker 8 (02:24:31):
Their hair from the crowd that is currently just completely kettled.
For the first time tonight, they're providing no evacuation ruts
for protesters. They are trapped on this street corner, completely surrounded,
not letting anyone leave. Eventually, a small hole opened up,
letting a few protesters leave this kettled patio. Robert was

(02:24:52):
able to exit with this group, but many people were
not able to make it through, and this little patio
was where a number of arrests were able to take
place as others slowly dispersed throughout the West Loop neighborhood
of Chicago. According to NBC, the police superintendent Larry Sneeling,
which is kind of a great name for a cop,

(02:25:13):
praised his officers for a quote unquote, showing restraint when
no one else did, saying that they quote did an
excellent job responding to violence and vandalism. He made a
similar comment on Wednesday, saying that the protest quote showed
up with the intention of committing acts of violence and
vandalism unquote. Now, there was no vandalism that was actually

(02:25:35):
committed during this protest.

Speaker 3 (02:25:37):
That did not happen.

Speaker 8 (02:25:38):
I'm not sure how the superintendent was able to infer
the intention of this protest exactly as no vandalism took
place and the only violence that happened was when police
started pushing people who were trying to march forwards in
the street.

Speaker 2 (02:25:53):
Wow, Garrison, that was a gripping story that we're going
to talk about.

Speaker 8 (02:25:57):
After these services, services, products, okay, products and services.

Speaker 2 (02:26:02):
Yeah, well, maybe we can't know. It's impossible to say
we're back, so I don't know. I guess we should
probably just kind of give some final thoughts on how
we felt about this protest. My overwhelming impression, and I

(02:26:24):
really am not saying this to try to be mean,
is that the crowd came with a lot of rhetoric
about this is the protest that matters, We are going
to shut down the DNC, we are going to throw
our bodies upon the machinery of empire. And then after
the first couple of hand to hand clashes with the police,
which were mostly just kind of shoving, people just wanted

(02:26:47):
to get home. They wanted to leave, and most of
the night was us following people attempting to get home
and disperse and not being allowed to buy the police
every time they would like do a big push in
where they're all shouting move in unison. They're telling you
to go back, They're telling you to do this or
you'll get arrested. And there's always you're always surrounded on
every side by cops and you know, sometimes by gaggles

(02:27:10):
of media. But like it was impossible to comply, Like I,
I can't say that I saw any law breaking really
aside from assuming the cops called an unlawful assembly, which
I did not hear. I don't know how you would
have heard in most of the product protests, but assuming
they did, as that's the law breaker.

Speaker 8 (02:27:26):
Yeah, there was no like property damage, there was no
there was no no real right activity. Yeah, you know,
people people tried to march and police prevented them with
their bodies yep, and you know there's a confrontation that ensues,
like at that point where where the two groups meet.
But besides that, it was it was people trying to
march and the cops that prevented them from doing so.

Speaker 2 (02:27:46):
And it was a lot. I