June 12, 2025 • 35 mins
James talks to Robert about the LA protests after spending Monday night on the ground in DTLA covering the protests and police response.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Alzon Media.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
I ain't coming that a big one. Are welcome back
to it could happen here. A podcast that was originally
about the theoretical possibility of mass civil conflict and coming
militarized authoritarian regime and is now about the reality of
(00:27):
that happening to different communities at different speeds all around
the country, and right now Los Angeles is where we're
focused on. Yeah, as you've probably heard from the news
or from the episode we did earlier this week, Los Angeles,
California has been in a state of what the President
declared insurrection, what most people would declare fairly small protests
(00:50):
based on the overall size of the city, topping out
at maybe four to six thousand people on Sunday, and
the President is called a National Guard, He's called in
the Marines, and we called in James Stout to head
up to Los Angeles and look at the scene. James,
that's right, Yeah, me the alternative to the United States
Marine Corps. Yeah, So I've just got back from LA
(01:12):
I was there on Monday night, obviously covering the protests.
Speaker 3 (01:16):
I got there mid morning, I guess, but at that
point the SEIU were having a rally. Yeah, the rally
was for the release of David Huerta, who was released
on bail. I believe after that, like not while the
rally was going on, and from there, like I basically
sort of started walking around downtown La. I guess there
(01:37):
was this really weird kind of phenomenon where you'd like
go down to a place and you'd see one hundred
people shouting cops, fed troops, or some combination of the three.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
Right.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
Pretty often around the Federal building, it's weird. At the
front entrance, like where the entrance was, you had like
a initial presence of like the front line were National
Guard with maybe it looked like it was maybe like
NCOs or something. You had loaded service weapons, and then
other soldiers had shields in it and like old school
(02:14):
wooden button sticks, right, just just a long long ass stick.
Basically around the other side you had LAPD at the
front and National Guard behind them, and then across the
street from that you had California Highway Patrol and their
riot squad. And then in another location, I think it
was at City Hall, you had La Sheriff's so literally
(02:35):
every agency that can claim any jurisdiction.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
Right.
Speaker 3 (02:38):
There was also a DHSRPF FPS, Like literally literally every
every federal and local agency that could send cops sent cops.
It wouldn't surprise me to hear that there were more
than a thousand cops, Like maybe it was hundreds, But
it was hard to get a handle on because every
street you went down, every corner you turned, you ran
into another wall of cops right of ten or fifteen
(03:01):
cars behind them. They were constantly driving around until you know,
I stayed until about two in the morning, and it's
protest obviously, like as I'll explain later, kind of escalated,
I guess, and there's police violence escalated. In the evening,
you'd see these convoys of cop cars just hauling ass
through downtown periodically every hour or so, like running lights
and sirens, like a dozen or so cop cars just
(03:25):
booking it through downtown. Yeah, so it's very hard to
get a sense of like who they are, what they
were doing. They closed all the freeway entrances and exits,
which like I took the I took a train up
trying to be a mass transit enjoyer, and it made
it a fucking nightmare to get anywhere, right, Yeah, that
makes sense, Like anyone who lives or works in downtown
(03:46):
LA will have experienced this already, but like it's and
then throughout the fuck in the evening, right, you've got
people coming up to you being like, Hey, I live
in little Tokyo. I can't get back because there's a
wall of cops and they keep throwing tea, gescalades, any suggestions.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
Yeah, I can't get home.
Speaker 3 (04:02):
Yeah, like an unfortunately, like you know, not much we
can suggest. And then on top of that, because it's
southern California, you know the United States, really people who
can't afford a place to live asleeping on the street
and they're getting TS two and they're getting flashbag too.
I remember like we were up by LAPDHQ at one
(04:22):
point and I seen this guy sleeping on a bench
and the cops were pushing up the street and I
was just trying to sort of take a position where
I could take a photograph, you know, and I saw
him sleeping and I was like, oh, should I wait,
wake this guy? You know, I don't want him to
get a nasty surprise and wake up to a wall
of robocops. And at that point the cops opened up
with whatever they were shooting at that time, forty milimeter,
(04:43):
thirty seven millimeter.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
Yeah, most of what I've heard is a mix of
pepper balls and yeah forty milimeter yeah, yeah, grenades and
rubber rounds, some foam, Yeah, some foam.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
I found some Safari Land thirty seven milimeter foam casings
on the ground.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
Oh nice. Yeah, and yeah, mostly what it was.
Speaker 3 (05:02):
You know, LAPD have those green forty milimeters launchers with
the eotex on top, and that was what.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
Yeah, it looks down the barrel of a few times.
Speaker 3 (05:09):
And so if the evening went on right, you'd get
larger groups and they'd become like, you know, more vocal,
I guess in their protesting. At one point, people having
like a street dance party. Occasionally people would would throw
a firework or set off a firework, and then sporadically
and like without really any clear kind of signal, at
(05:30):
some point clearly the whole area was declared an lawful assembly.
I'm guessing it's very hard to actually hear when they're
saying stuff on the l RAD unless it's directly like
pointed at you. But I heard some signed kind of
olt rad an awful assembly announcement at some point, and yeah,
periodically you'd come around a three corner and be like
one hundred, one hundred and fifty two hundred people protesting
(05:51):
right and then the cops would toss a flashbang or
a tear gas, loose off a few rounds, push thirty
yards and then stop and then do that again ten, fifteen,
twenty thirty minutes later, and they keep doing that, and
then they push people back past these various buildings which
had cops like stationed in place like on the parapet
(06:13):
of the building or on the courtyard outside, who would
then also fire at them. So the protest never really
got a chance to centralize. People didn't really get a
chance to centralize in one place. And you know, like
to have a sense of how many numbers of protesters
there were was hard because every torny you turned, there were.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
More people and there were more cops. So like it
was a bit broken apart.
Speaker 3 (06:36):
And I think that was the goal of the policing
operation right to flood the city, was cops to shut
it all down, to make it hard to get there, yep,
and make it hard to gather there.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
I still don't get the sense, and this is what
it sounds like from what You've said that most of
what is being done effectively is not the National Guard
and certainly not the Marines. It's the federal and local
police and their game plan here is they assuming things
calmed out in Los Angeles, which is probably the safe
bet right now. Every time they get over a certain
(07:08):
threshold of protesters a couple of hundred one thousand or
so in a city, you know, do the same thing, right,
like deploy the military national or federalized the National Guard,
get him out there, right, Like that's that's where they're headed.
Speaker 3 (07:20):
Yeah, I think so, Like I don't know if LA
will back down, to be clear, Like La is a
city of what like like four million people.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
And eighteen nineteen million in the greater Los Angeles metro area.
Speaker 3 (07:32):
Yeah, Like it's uh, I know right, Like I had
these I had good conversations with a lot of people
who are out there protesting. I want to go to
to ad like it is that we were really well
received by everyone, which was nice. Like it wasn't the
same crowd as folks I've seen in twenty twenty, Like
no one was in black block, right of course, and
then it was very young people and like a number
(07:52):
of the approached. I was for a time. I was
with Charles McBride and like some other oh yeah yeah
colleagues and friends, like people have known fet years, right,
we cover the same kind of shit. And people would
come up to us and just be like, hey, it's
good that you guys are here. Thank you for staying
here after we got fucking tear guests, like people should
understand that what's happening, Like the unprompted people would would
(08:13):
come and say thank you, which was nice, you know,
and like we didn't really face any any hostility for
being there. But people when I spoke to them, like
there was a lot of a lot of people I
spoke to were very young, and they would say that
they were the citizen kid of parents who either were
you know, like permanent residents or visa holders or you know,
(08:34):
they're veryous. I'm sure if some of them had undocumented parents.
I can't remember speaking to anyone who said that, but
I'm sure that given the numbers of people and the
number of times I heard like, I'm the citizen child,
so I should be here showing up for my family
and my community.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
Right, yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker 3 (08:48):
Yeah, And like it's gonna be hard to back those
people down because they were fucking angry. Yeah, a real
palpable sense of like fuck you was like very present throughout.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
People were also afraid.
Speaker 3 (09:02):
It's not people who are necessarily used to this, right,
and like you said, the police response is an overwhelming.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
Use of violence, right, indiscriminately shooting it people from what
what's the what's the furthest distance you were seeing them
fire at people from.
Speaker 3 (09:15):
I mean I probably saw them taking one hundred meter shots,
I'm guessing, like.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
Which is very long range for this sort of stuff.
Speaker 3 (09:23):
Yeah, I mean so at one point, when we've got
pushed back past the LAPDHQ there, they had the whole
sort of front face of it, and they led off
a bunch of shots towards myself and some others. I
just sort of got down behind some cover there and
started filming. And then there was a group of young
people who were in one of those kind of classic
LA three corner open quad more things.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
So they're basically in a in a U shaped container,
right with only one way in and one way out,
and right there's glass stores around it like that, you know,
there's all the shopping bits people go shopping and there's
pill in the middle, and the cops are just unloading
from a distance of maybe one hundred meters from labd HQ.
(10:07):
I think into these people who are effectively like in
a like fish in a barrel. Right, they're in a
container where they is the only way I was the
direction the cops shooting from. There was a small outlet
on the other side, which eventually they were able to take.
That meant they had to cross across like a four
lane road while being shot at by the cops. And
the cops just kept shooting at them there like it
(10:28):
wasn't like they shot a couple of times. They clearly shot, reloaded, shot, reloaded,
and I was filming from the other side, but you
could see these projectiles whacking out like reinforced glass in
the front of these businesses at head height, not breaking
the glass and falling on the ground, punching a hole
straight through. You know, they get coming with serious force
(10:50):
even at that distance. And like those people weren't presenting
a threat twenty one right, they had retreated into that
building after the cops shot their first volley, and the
cubs just kept shooting at them.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
I saw a lot of that throughout the.
Speaker 3 (11:02):
Night, Like it didn't seem like, you know, anyone was
like okay, now it's a time for you guys to fire,
you know, like they just just sporadic shots throughout the evening.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
Yeah. Well, we're gonna continue talking about what's going on
in Los Angeles and what we think is going to
happen next. But first, here's some ads fuck and we're back. So,
(11:48):
if you read like the manuals these people are supposed
to follow, how they're supposed to utilize the riot control
weapons that they use, there's a couple of things that
you see. One of them is that they're supposed to
be like a bladder of escalation before which they start
utilizing force a range. And the other is that there's
certain ways they're supposed to use these munitions, like, for example,
(12:09):
you're not supposed to shoot people with rubber bullets. You're
supposed to bounce them off of the ground and into
people because otherwise they're not really less than lethal. Yeah. Yeah,
we're seeing a lot of cases of people who've had
at least several that I can count, I think three
of people having surgically removed different like rubber and foam rounds,
and it doesn't look like they're abiding by kind of
(12:30):
any of the rules by which, per their own documentation,
they're supposed to practice, right, I mean, yeah, that's what
I saw.
Speaker 3 (12:38):
Some of them even have eotechs like on their launches,
which I don't know why you'd want an eotech if
you were skipping it off the ground. I don't know,
maybe there's a different rounds they're using, but like, yeah, yeah,
the overwhelming what I saw was just like zero to
one hundred, right, Like they push, they'd throw a ta
gass or a flash bang, and then you just hear
like pop pop pop pop pop pop pop. Yeahs, a
(13:00):
bunch of them unloaded and like raising the forty milimeters
launcher to his shoulder and pointing it to someone two
feet away.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
Like I saw a lot of that.
Speaker 3 (13:09):
Yeah, you know, we'd be going down these streets trying
to find a different angle, trying to find where we
could stand and do our jobs as press right and
come around the corner and just just get a forty
milimeters pointed at you. I didn't see any skipping shit
off the ground. Yeah, I did see businesses getting their
windows punched out by things that the police were shooting
at people like.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
Yeah, which I'm sure we're one getting blamed on protesters. Yeah, yeah,
exactly right.
Speaker 3 (13:32):
I mean I saw CNN last night was picking up
fucking phone button rounds and being like these are what
they're throwing at the cops, Like yeah, it just remarkable.
I mean I did see LASD and National Guard with
rifles with magazines in the maguel and you know they
had a round chamber doesn't matter, does it.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
No, you're a second away from chambering around, right, exactly.
Speaker 3 (13:55):
Yeah, the IDF carries with an empty chamber and it
hasn't stopped them a whole lot of people, has it.
The presence of lethal force was closer than I've seen before. Yeah,
Like I'm familiar with seeing overwatch at these things, Right,
someone would what you would colloquially referred to as a
sniper on a rooftop. But it's not overwatching if you're
(14:16):
just in the back of a pickup truck with an
M four right, look at an unmagnified optic, like you're
not You're not over watching shit, you just have lethal
force right there. And I saw that a number of times,
right from the National Guard and then la SD. They
did the whole l rad like go home. It's been
declared an awful assembly thing. But then there wasn't that
kind of scaled use of force that like you say,
(14:39):
is supposed.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
To be there.
Speaker 3 (14:41):
There wasn't really much in the way of like we're
going to start shooting now, and like, of course that
means that if you're an unhused person, if you've arrived,
if you're if you're a local person just trying to
get home, it's very possible you can just walk past
and get tear gas. Like at one point, right they
were opening up, and like I'd been looking for a
excuse of bathroom for a while because fucking southern California, right,
(15:03):
like there are no public bathrooms, yes.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
Which is you know, increasingly every major city. He was
an issue. People got, people get arrested by the fence
for like being on federal property in Portland. Great when
like there was really nowhere else to go.
Speaker 3 (15:16):
Yeah, yeah, exactly, and like some some kindly local guy
invited us into his building and asked that, you know,
let us use the bathroom. But yeah, then we stepped
out and suddenly we're like confronted by cops again, Like
you know, I could have been someone who was there
just going to have to get a slice of pizza. Yeah,
the force was like sporadic and unpredictable throughout the evening.
(15:38):
And then as were these convoys of vehicles that would
just come hauling ass through downtown right obviously not you know,
stopping at red lights, et cetera.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
It was weird.
Speaker 3 (15:47):
Sometimes a green light would happen, so the cars would
start going like and then this cop convoy would come
and some of them would turn right, and some of
them would assume the cars would stop and go straight on.
And so you had the situation where the cops were
nearly hitting each other and it just like it seemed
utterly chaotic, and I don't know what they were doing
other than driving around a high speed for fun. Once
they did manage to kettle some groups of people right
(16:09):
like they again folks maybe who haven't been at these
events before will not be familiar with the way these
things work. But like the police would move in from
both sides and then suddenly you're like, oh shit, there's
nowhere to go. And then I did and put up
in a school bus to take presuably to detain those
people and take them to process them. But yeah, the
(16:29):
tactics were like, I mean, it's their cops. Is what
you expect that you know, we've both been doing this
for a while. You expect them to use those weapons
in the way they can inflict the most damage and
harm to people, And unfortunately, like that does seem to
be happening again.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
Yeah, well, in terms of where things are right now, yeah,
you know, Gavin Newsom is trying to thread the needle.
It looks like between letting the LAPD do whatever they
and he, to be fair, I don't think he has
any issue with people getting fucked up with right nations
what to do well, also not seeding responsibility for security
(17:04):
of his state to the federal government, which has been
an interesting line for him to walk.
Speaker 3 (17:09):
Yeah, I mean his stance seems to be like the
LAPD can fuck up these kids, just fine, we don't
need your help, yes.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
Which I mean they literally can. Like I will say, yeah,
that's not incorrect, right, I'm not talking at a moral level.
I'm just saying like, yes, the LAPD has sufficient force
for the protests that have been that have existed.
Speaker 3 (17:28):
Yeah, I mean the LAPD then the first Nights who
were caught off guard.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
I think right, and so was ICE, And there was
a lot of debate about because like you know, LAPD
not coming in initially to support ICE when they got surrounded,
like and that's those are the kind of things you
get when the authorities are taken off balance. But if
the numbers don't keep increasing, you know, and they have
to increase pretty exponentially as they move in, you know,
(17:54):
federal agents in the National Guard and mobilize the whole
police force in a city like LA, then this situation
becomes basically impossible for protesters to regain the initiative. And
I don't know if i'd say it's impossible right now,
but unless there's some sort of like massive sea changes,
what's happening that does seem kind of like where things
are going to go. And to be clear, here we're
(18:16):
talking about primarily Compton Paramount some protests, and then downtown
Los Angeles some protests. There's a handful of city blocks
and one of the largest metro areas in the entire country. Yeah,
this is not Los Angeles all collapsed.
Speaker 3 (18:31):
You know. Yeah, it's not like the rights to occurred
after Rudney.
Speaker 2 (18:36):
King, right, right, right, not even a little bit.
Speaker 3 (18:39):
Yeah, no yet right like, yeah, I mean people are
pissed off obviously, like and maybe that you know, you'll
get that sort of thing you had important right where
more people came as the protest continued, and there's more
and more FEDS turned up, Like there were people who
might not have showed up at first just being like
upset at the presence of FEDS in this. I don't know,
(19:01):
but yeah, it seems like right now that their move
is to flood the city. I mean, crazy volumes of
cops shouting all the exits on the one ten today. Yeah,
National Guard, like the National Guide folks were mostly around
the Federal building from what I saw, but like just
a huge volume of cobs and no particular plan other
(19:22):
than a vast number of police and I guess you know,
massive detentions, massive use of right at munitions, massive use
of violence to dissuade protest. But then I've seen like
obviously it's interesting, right like, and I'm sure you've experienced this, Robert,
Like you can be like nose to the grindstone in
(19:43):
a conflict zone or at a protest and other clue
what's happening, and I have to go on a Twitter
or a Blue sky to work out what the fuck's
going on, right, you.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
Can tell kind of what's happening in front of you,
and even then you sometimes see something or you're looking
left and the thing happens on the right, and you
get three different stories about what happened totally.
Speaker 3 (20:00):
And so like, you know, you know, we found out
David Twist had been released when me I sent a
message saying that, like right, and then likewise, folks for
finding out that they're protests in other areas of the country,
which you know is always I think gives a little
morale boost. And yeah, so like there's a chance I'm
seeing more and more I sort of big protest in
(20:21):
New York tonight. They can't deploy the Marines everywhere. I mean,
right there there are a lot of marines, but not
that many.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
I know.
Speaker 3 (20:27):
It's in one sense, like and I know that this
is maybe a strange opinion or stance or what have you,
but like, in a sense, it gives me hope to
see these things like at a protest or you know,
like a big action like that, Like I always feel
(20:48):
kind of very cared for and in a strange way
because like the only thing that matters is taking care
of each other, right, and trying trying not to get hurt,
and then for folks who are in the street to
try and remain there, right, And like it's quite a
like you have this kind of disaster community, right, the
same thing that you sometimes find in conflict zones or
(21:08):
after natural disasters, and like, right, it's always beautiful to
see that, right, Like you know, I'm vegan and I
could not find any fucking vegan food for a while,
and like people were bringing me snacks and I thought
that was really sweet, and like, you know, I saw
people taking care of strangers when they got tear gass,
or taking care of strangers when they get shot, or
(21:29):
like just folks who have bought snacks and like wanted
to give them to one house people who were there, right.
So all that stuff is just a reminder that like
you know, like actually, you know, if you were consuming
this thorugh of fucking New York Times, right, you'd think
that people were looting and burning the city. And like,
I didn't see anyone to steal shit. I did see
people take care of one another. Yeah, and that's a
(21:50):
beautiful thing. And you know, maybe people need to be
in the streets to find one another right now, because
you know, every every year, people it gets harder to
go outside and easier to stay on the internet.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
Right, people get more adomized.
Speaker 3 (22:06):
Yeah, and like it was cool to see like young
Mexican folks, young Salvadorean folks, uateateml and you know, people
have different extractions who are now Americans and in addition
obviously to their i think identities and backgrounds showing up
and then like young black folks showing up with them
and being like yeah, you know, like fuck the police,
(22:26):
and like it was cool to see maybe folks who
are a little bit more liberal, like I definitely had
folks who are like, oh, we're not here for the riot.
We're just here for the peaceful protest in so much
as you know, and no one wants to get shot
in the face with a forty millimeter, right, no one.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
No one's there to it, No, absolutely not.
Speaker 3 (22:41):
And so it's cool to see those people making those connections.
And we need to make those connections now, right, We
need to talk to people and talk to each other.
I didn't see people beefing with each other. I didn't
really see the like optics police, right, if you were
again if you were consuming this on the fucking Blue Guy,
which can be intolerably libs sometimes, like seeing people being like,
(23:05):
you know, because I personally disagree with the optics of
this one person's decision, the whole protest is therefore flawed. Yeah,
the whole protest as fun and let's just let I
steal their fucking children. Like, yeah, people will let people
be and and deal with the consequences their own actions
instead of being condescending.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
Now, and I mean, I'm looking at Twitter right now
where half of the comments are about someone who drove
through a crowd in LA and people either this is
what happens when America gets fed up? Or what other
option did he have? You know, you're getting a mix
of that sort of thing. Yeah, shit, are people okay?
Like I'm not aware of any like serious injuries or fatalities, certainly,
(23:44):
but yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (23:45):
That was the other weird thing, Like vehicles throughout the
means LA everyone's driving all the time, but there were
vehicles like constantly just moving through.
Speaker 2 (23:56):
Yep.
Speaker 3 (23:57):
Yeah, it's LA raising people coming out to do their
donuts stuff. But like it is a risk, like if
someone we've shared a cob bomb, bro, But yeah, oh yeah,
we sure did. I've seen a few car bombs. It
always freaks me out. We need a big crowd like that.
And then you've got these cars around like the potential
for vehicular violence.
Speaker 2 (24:16):
Yeah, it's not great.
Speaker 3 (24:17):
Yeah again, Right, we have the quote unquote public safety
forces deployed in massive numbers, and no one's no one's
stopping that.
Speaker 2 (24:23):
No. And you know, also just a note to people,
the only realistic way to stop cars in this situation
is with a barrier made of other cars. Right, is
you block off the route of march with vehicles. There's
no other realistic tool at your disposal as somebody who's
a part of a protest to stop a full ass vehicle.
(24:43):
We're going to talk a little bit more with a
couple of updates from the ground and then close out.
But first here's our last but ads.
Speaker 1 (25:03):
Oh not forgot.
Speaker 2 (25:05):
Yes it's gonna be no not not not say no,
baby's gonna been taken away like not no. That's so
(25:29):
we're back in James. While you were leaving, the Mayor
of Los Angeles declared a curfew in place from eight
pm to six a m. For the one ten to
the west I five to the east. Uh yeah, one
ten to south, I five and one ten to north.
This is from the public safety alert texted out to
people in Los Angeles. So people are allowed to travel
(25:52):
to and from work, to seek or to give emergency care.
EMS people are exempt. No one else is exempt as
far as i'm a but yeah, that's that's the situation.
So part of why Mayor Karen bass Is issued a
curfew is that it gives the police extra kind of
freedom to take people into custody. Right yeah, Oh, credential
(26:13):
media are exempt. Yeah, that's what I was told. Yeah,
people to and from work, credential media, emergency and medical personnel,
law enforcement are the limited exemptions. So that's that's what
we've got going on right now. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (26:24):
And if you are at there working as a journalists,
like it's important to carry your press pass right oh yeah, yeah,
we'll stop you from getting shot with impact munitions because
they've done that to a lot of people.
Speaker 2 (26:33):
Yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (26:34):
Yeah, And like you know, I had a large blue
press badge on my plate carrier like I always do,
and like, yeah, it's not doesn't.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
Make you bulletproof.
Speaker 3 (26:42):
Now, yeah, there's a curfew tonight, which, like you say,
just gives them the means to use more coercive force
and to charge people more harshly. They'll continue doing that
helicopter shit, right, They had probably four or five helicopters.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
They really love putting them out in LA and especially
now that they got the military.
Speaker 3 (26:59):
Yeah, and then it had a real kind of blade
run a vibe to be in this like dark city
at night with these helicopter circling spotlighting people from above,
and like little fires happening across the city and then
occasional clouds of like spicy air floating towards you. I
have seen some speculation that they were using some kind
(27:20):
of other chemical irritant instead of tear gas. I think
that the most likely explanation is just they were using
tear gas that was older.
Speaker 2 (27:29):
Yeah, it tastes different when it's older. The shit the
FEDS US is often different from the shit state or
local police use, Like yeah, you know, you get different
sort of mixes. But I'm not aware, like it's I'm
certain it's just tear gas, right, Yeah, Yeah, I think
it's just a bit different.
Speaker 3 (27:45):
Different variants in ages of tear gas, and sometimes they
take on different appearances too, and they weren't really fogging
the tear gas, not that I saw. They were just tossing,
tossing out the grenades. You didn't get that like wall
of tear gas that you guys are familiar with in Portland. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
but it took on like the protest effectic, Like I
didn't see as many people with half masks or hard
(28:07):
hats or goggles any event stuff. So like, yeah, and
in one sense, people it's it's great to see people
coming out and like engating their right to protest. Yeah,
and coming from where they are, as they are showing
up to show out for something.
Speaker 2 (28:24):
Leaving work or whatever. Yeah, yeah, it makes me worried
for them.
Speaker 3 (28:28):
Yeah, Like you know, I'm there around the block a
few times, and I'm worried if people are going to
get fucked up.
Speaker 2 (28:35):
So, yeah, it's curfew tonight. It's curfew tonight. There's still
marine numbers are still at around seven hundred. There's about
four thousand National Guard troops, so the number of military
deployed significantly outnumbers demonstrators at this point. Mayer care and
Bass has stated that or or sorry. The Pentagon has
stated that it's costing about one hundred and thirty four
million dollars this deployment, so esus man, Yeah, it's it's
(28:58):
it's like i'd say, it's it's not a pointless escalation.
The point of the escalation is that they want to
keep using the military, right, Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 3 (29:06):
Yeah, and to sort of establish a precedent that domestic
unrest can be dealt with by the military, which, to
be clear, like by my reading, it's completely in contradiction
of the constitution. Yeah, but a lot of things that
are in constitution of the constitution happen, especially with policing
all the fucking time, right, Like, yeah, Like it is
(29:27):
important not to normalize this again, Like you don't have
to be like a blue head ANTIFA to be like
this is fucked up. And I think I definitely spoke
to a few people, like folks who have come out
of church and stuff and just like, yeah, we had
they had sent the Marines here, so we just came
on down because that's not okay, and that's good to see. Yeah,
(29:50):
And like those are conversations that people who are invested
in not living in a country where your first memorizes
don't matter anymore because you can get shot by an
eighteen year old marine who hasn't had the time to
really morally and ethically consider that decision. Yeah, like it's
important to have those talks with people now because like
it is very concerning. Yeah, you know, you and I
(30:14):
have attended a few civil wars. I don't want to
be like this country spinning towards civil wars that you know,
I think we have a long way from that.
Speaker 2 (30:21):
I mean, when the President stands in front of a
bunch of enlisted men at Fort Bragg and talks about
how they're using the military to restore order to an
American city that's been invaded, there's no longer an argument
that those comparisons are an escalation or exaggeration, right, like yeah, hyperbolic,
like yeah, like we're in the ship right now, folks.
Speaker 3 (30:42):
Yeah, man, Like, show me a thing that Asad wouldn't
have said today, right, right, right? And what you don't
have is an actual insurrection going on. What you don't
have is anyone actually fighting the government. You have people
who are like angry and yelling and some folks who
throw through rocks. You do not have a militant uprising
against federal power. They're just kind of acting like it. Yeah,
(31:03):
like if you have an insurrection in this country. This
country has a shit ton of guns. You all know
if there's an insurrection, because people will be using them.
Speaker 2 (31:10):
Like that's not happening.
Speaker 3 (31:12):
Yeah, it's young people in the street waving flags and
shouting and like saying fuck the police. Is a constitutionally
protected right in this country, Like, yes it is. You
should not get hurt for exercising your first amendment right right, Yeah, man,
Like I'm I'm proud of all those people who showed up.
I'm proud of them for taking care of each other. Yeah,
And I hope that they they stay there, and I
(31:34):
hope that they you know, as they stay there, they
become more more astute.
Speaker 2 (31:37):
Yeah, they learned some stuff.
Speaker 3 (31:38):
I saw a lot of running two hundred yards away
from the cops in a very straight line, straight down
a straight street.
Speaker 2 (31:43):
Yeah, Like, which is not not the move right, Like
you want to be? You want to be. I'm up,
he sees me, I'm down. Yeah. Serpentine, serpentine, you do
the worm, That's that's how you get him. Yeah. There
is some polling out early polling. This is from g
Elliot Morris, formerly of five point thirty eight but conducted
June tenth by you Gov of four thy three hundred
(32:06):
and nine adults. Do you approve a disapprove of deploying
National Guard soldiers to the Los Angeles area to respond
to protests over the federal government's immigration enforcement Thirty eight
percent of food approved, forty five percent disapprove, and nineteen
percent are not sure. Do you approve or disapprove of
deploying marines to the Los Angeles area? Thirty four percent approve,
forty seven percent disapprove, nineteen percent not sure. So you know,
(32:31):
these aren't popular measures, although they're also not as unpopular
as you would hope.
Speaker 3 (32:35):
Yeah, that's that's not great. I'd like to see you more.
I mean, yeah, you got Tom Cotton doing is for
getting to Wall Street. You're on the Washington postped right,
sent in the troops for real?
Speaker 2 (32:45):
This time? Was that? I thought that was the times
time I think I forget exactly.
Speaker 3 (32:51):
Yeah, somewhat indistinguishable these days quickly in net OpEd pages,
you're right, robate was at times No, No, that's a
twenty twenty OpEd twenty five op edwards in the Wall
Streets Choir, he.
Speaker 2 (33:02):
Got a new one.
Speaker 3 (33:02):
Okay, yeah, he wrote in twenty twenty rubber he wrote
send in the Troops. In twenty twenty five, he wrote
send in the troops Comma for.
Speaker 2 (33:10):
Real, for real? Okay, Well he got it, yep, Yeah,
I mean he got what he wanted. Well done.
Speaker 3 (33:18):
Ranger Tom, guy who lied about being an army ranger.
Speaker 2 (33:21):
Yes, not a ranger, Tom, Yeah, not a ranger Tom. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (33:26):
I mean you see this in the UK a lot.
I'm very familiar with this kind of also the powers. Yeah,
maybe that's a good place for us to end. If
you were in the US military or the National Guard,
if you were someone you love is in the military
of the National Guard. Now it's a good time to
read up about Bloody Sunday, Yeah, happened in Ireland. And
now is a good time to look at what's currently happening,
(33:48):
what has been happening to those soldiers, because it took
a long time for those people to stand trial. And
it's not officers who were standing trial, right, it's soldiers.
It's paratroopers in this case, because those are always going
to be the fingers on the trigger, right. Yeah, And
so you know, no one, no one knows which direction
(34:10):
history is moving in. But like things don't feel morally right.
You know, there are things that the DII writes hotline,
but I think people should be aware what happens when
countries use their militaries to oppress protest and what has
happened to some of the soldiers who have been ordered
to do that.
Speaker 2 (34:27):
Yeah, well look up Bloody Sunday, folks. Maybe we'll cover
that in the not too distant future, because yeah, that's
just going to get more relevant. Don't listen to you
two if you can avoid it, but just look it up. Yeah,
avoid you two, not the song Sunday or Bloody Sunday.
But yeah, all right, everybody, Well this has been It
Could Happen here. We will be back tomorrow. We'll see
(34:50):
if Gavin Newsom has been arrested yet. All right, thanks James, Yeah,
thanks for that's an episode by.
Speaker 1 (35:01):
It Could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
Coolzonmedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can
now find sources for It Could Happen Here listed directly
in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening,
Alzon Media.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
I ain't coming that a big one. Are welcome back
to it could happen here. A podcast that was originally
about the theoretical possibility of mass civil conflict and coming
militarized authoritarian regime and is now about the reality of
(00:27):
that happening to different communities at different speeds all around
the country, and right now Los Angeles is where we're
focused on. Yeah, as you've probably heard from the news
or from the episode we did earlier this week, Los Angeles,
California has been in a state of what the President
declared insurrection, what most people would declare fairly small protests
(00:50):
based on the overall size of the city, topping out
at maybe four to six thousand people on Sunday, and
the President is called a National Guard, He's called in
the Marines, and we called in James Stout to head
up to Los Angeles and look at the scene. James,
that's right, Yeah, me the alternative to the United States
Marine Corps. Yeah, So I've just got back from LA
(01:12):
I was there on Monday night, obviously covering the protests.
Speaker 3 (01:16):
I got there mid morning, I guess, but at that
point the SEIU were having a rally. Yeah, the rally
was for the release of David Huerta, who was released
on bail. I believe after that, like not while the
rally was going on, and from there, like I basically
sort of started walking around downtown La. I guess there
(01:37):
was this really weird kind of phenomenon where you'd like
go down to a place and you'd see one hundred
people shouting cops, fed troops, or some combination of the three.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
Right.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
Pretty often around the Federal building, it's weird. At the
front entrance, like where the entrance was, you had like
a initial presence of like the front line were National
Guard with maybe it looked like it was maybe like
NCOs or something. You had loaded service weapons, and then
other soldiers had shields in it and like old school
(02:14):
wooden button sticks, right, just just a long long ass stick.
Basically around the other side you had LAPD at the
front and National Guard behind them, and then across the
street from that you had California Highway Patrol and their
riot squad. And then in another location, I think it
was at City Hall, you had La Sheriff's so literally
(02:35):
every agency that can claim any jurisdiction.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
Right.
Speaker 3 (02:38):
There was also a DHSRPF FPS, Like literally literally every
every federal and local agency that could send cops sent cops.
It wouldn't surprise me to hear that there were more
than a thousand cops, Like maybe it was hundreds, But
it was hard to get a handle on because every
street you went down, every corner you turned, you ran
into another wall of cops right of ten or fifteen
(03:01):
cars behind them. They were constantly driving around until you know,
I stayed until about two in the morning, and it's
protest obviously, like as I'll explain later, kind of escalated,
I guess, and there's police violence escalated. In the evening,
you'd see these convoys of cop cars just hauling ass
through downtown periodically every hour or so, like running lights
and sirens, like a dozen or so cop cars just
(03:25):
booking it through downtown. Yeah, so it's very hard to
get a sense of like who they are, what they
were doing. They closed all the freeway entrances and exits,
which like I took the I took a train up
trying to be a mass transit enjoyer, and it made
it a fucking nightmare to get anywhere, right, Yeah, that
makes sense, Like anyone who lives or works in downtown
(03:46):
LA will have experienced this already, but like it's and
then throughout the fuck in the evening, right, you've got
people coming up to you being like, Hey, I live
in little Tokyo. I can't get back because there's a
wall of cops and they keep throwing tea, gescalades, any suggestions.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
Yeah, I can't get home.
Speaker 3 (04:02):
Yeah, like an unfortunately, like you know, not much we
can suggest. And then on top of that, because it's
southern California, you know the United States, really people who
can't afford a place to live asleeping on the street
and they're getting TS two and they're getting flashbag too.
I remember like we were up by LAPDHQ at one
(04:22):
point and I seen this guy sleeping on a bench
and the cops were pushing up the street and I
was just trying to sort of take a position where
I could take a photograph, you know, and I saw
him sleeping and I was like, oh, should I wait,
wake this guy? You know, I don't want him to
get a nasty surprise and wake up to a wall
of robocops. And at that point the cops opened up
with whatever they were shooting at that time, forty milimeter,
(04:43):
thirty seven millimeter.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
Yeah, most of what I've heard is a mix of
pepper balls and yeah forty milimeter yeah, yeah, grenades and
rubber rounds, some foam, Yeah, some foam.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
I found some Safari Land thirty seven milimeter foam casings
on the ground.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
Oh nice. Yeah, and yeah, mostly what it was.
Speaker 3 (05:02):
You know, LAPD have those green forty milimeters launchers with
the eotex on top, and that was what.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
Yeah, it looks down the barrel of a few times.
Speaker 3 (05:09):
And so if the evening went on right, you'd get
larger groups and they'd become like, you know, more vocal,
I guess in their protesting. At one point, people having
like a street dance party. Occasionally people would would throw
a firework or set off a firework, and then sporadically
and like without really any clear kind of signal, at
(05:30):
some point clearly the whole area was declared an lawful assembly.
I'm guessing it's very hard to actually hear when they're
saying stuff on the l RAD unless it's directly like
pointed at you. But I heard some signed kind of
olt rad an awful assembly announcement at some point, and yeah,
periodically you'd come around a three corner and be like
one hundred, one hundred and fifty two hundred people protesting
(05:51):
right and then the cops would toss a flashbang or
a tear gas, loose off a few rounds, push thirty
yards and then stop and then do that again ten, fifteen,
twenty thirty minutes later, and they keep doing that, and
then they push people back past these various buildings which
had cops like stationed in place like on the parapet
(06:13):
of the building or on the courtyard outside, who would
then also fire at them. So the protest never really
got a chance to centralize. People didn't really get a
chance to centralize in one place. And you know, like
to have a sense of how many numbers of protesters
there were was hard because every torny you turned, there were.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
More people and there were more cops. So like it
was a bit broken apart.
Speaker 3 (06:36):
And I think that was the goal of the policing
operation right to flood the city, was cops to shut
it all down, to make it hard to get there, yep,
and make it hard to gather there.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
I still don't get the sense, and this is what
it sounds like from what You've said that most of
what is being done effectively is not the National Guard
and certainly not the Marines. It's the federal and local
police and their game plan here is they assuming things
calmed out in Los Angeles, which is probably the safe
bet right now. Every time they get over a certain
(07:08):
threshold of protesters a couple of hundred one thousand or
so in a city, you know, do the same thing, right,
like deploy the military national or federalized the National Guard,
get him out there, right, Like that's that's where they're headed.
Speaker 3 (07:20):
Yeah, I think so, Like I don't know if LA
will back down, to be clear, Like La is a
city of what like like four million people.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
And eighteen nineteen million in the greater Los Angeles metro area.
Speaker 3 (07:32):
Yeah, Like it's uh, I know right, Like I had
these I had good conversations with a lot of people
who are out there protesting. I want to go to
to ad like it is that we were really well
received by everyone, which was nice. Like it wasn't the
same crowd as folks I've seen in twenty twenty, Like
no one was in black block, right of course, and
then it was very young people and like a number
(07:52):
of the approached. I was for a time. I was
with Charles McBride and like some other oh yeah yeah
colleagues and friends, like people have known fet years, right,
we cover the same kind of shit. And people would
come up to us and just be like, hey, it's
good that you guys are here. Thank you for staying
here after we got fucking tear guests, like people should
understand that what's happening, Like the unprompted people would would
(08:13):
come and say thank you, which was nice, you know,
and like we didn't really face any any hostility for
being there. But people when I spoke to them, like
there was a lot of a lot of people I
spoke to were very young, and they would say that
they were the citizen kid of parents who either were
you know, like permanent residents or visa holders or you know,
(08:34):
they're veryous. I'm sure if some of them had undocumented parents.
I can't remember speaking to anyone who said that, but
I'm sure that given the numbers of people and the
number of times I heard like, I'm the citizen child,
so I should be here showing up for my family
and my community.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
Right, yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker 3 (08:48):
Yeah, And like it's gonna be hard to back those
people down because they were fucking angry. Yeah, a real
palpable sense of like fuck you was like very present throughout.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
People were also afraid.
Speaker 3 (09:02):
It's not people who are necessarily used to this, right,
and like you said, the police response is an overwhelming.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
Use of violence, right, indiscriminately shooting it people from what
what's the what's the furthest distance you were seeing them
fire at people from.
Speaker 3 (09:15):
I mean I probably saw them taking one hundred meter shots,
I'm guessing, like.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
Which is very long range for this sort of stuff.
Speaker 3 (09:23):
Yeah, I mean so at one point, when we've got
pushed back past the LAPDHQ there, they had the whole
sort of front face of it, and they led off
a bunch of shots towards myself and some others. I
just sort of got down behind some cover there and
started filming. And then there was a group of young
people who were in one of those kind of classic
LA three corner open quad more things.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
So they're basically in a in a U shaped container,
right with only one way in and one way out,
and right there's glass stores around it like that, you know,
there's all the shopping bits people go shopping and there's
pill in the middle, and the cops are just unloading
from a distance of maybe one hundred meters from labd HQ.
(10:07):
I think into these people who are effectively like in
a like fish in a barrel. Right, they're in a
container where they is the only way I was the
direction the cops shooting from. There was a small outlet
on the other side, which eventually they were able to take.
That meant they had to cross across like a four
lane road while being shot at by the cops. And
the cops just kept shooting at them there like it
(10:28):
wasn't like they shot a couple of times. They clearly shot, reloaded, shot, reloaded,
and I was filming from the other side, but you
could see these projectiles whacking out like reinforced glass in
the front of these businesses at head height, not breaking
the glass and falling on the ground, punching a hole
straight through. You know, they get coming with serious force
(10:50):
even at that distance. And like those people weren't presenting
a threat twenty one right, they had retreated into that
building after the cops shot their first volley, and the
cubs just kept shooting at them.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
I saw a lot of that throughout the.
Speaker 3 (11:02):
Night, Like it didn't seem like, you know, anyone was
like okay, now it's a time for you guys to fire,
you know, like they just just sporadic shots throughout the evening.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
Yeah. Well, we're gonna continue talking about what's going on
in Los Angeles and what we think is going to
happen next. But first, here's some ads fuck and we're back. So,
(11:48):
if you read like the manuals these people are supposed
to follow, how they're supposed to utilize the riot control
weapons that they use, there's a couple of things that
you see. One of them is that they're supposed to
be like a bladder of escalation before which they start
utilizing force a range. And the other is that there's
certain ways they're supposed to use these munitions, like, for example,
(12:09):
you're not supposed to shoot people with rubber bullets. You're
supposed to bounce them off of the ground and into
people because otherwise they're not really less than lethal. Yeah. Yeah,
we're seeing a lot of cases of people who've had
at least several that I can count, I think three
of people having surgically removed different like rubber and foam rounds,
and it doesn't look like they're abiding by kind of
(12:30):
any of the rules by which, per their own documentation,
they're supposed to practice, right, I mean, yeah, that's what
I saw.
Speaker 3 (12:38):
Some of them even have eotechs like on their launches,
which I don't know why you'd want an eotech if
you were skipping it off the ground. I don't know,
maybe there's a different rounds they're using, but like, yeah, yeah,
the overwhelming what I saw was just like zero to
one hundred, right, Like they push, they'd throw a ta
gass or a flash bang, and then you just hear
like pop pop pop pop pop pop pop. Yeahs, a
(13:00):
bunch of them unloaded and like raising the forty milimeters
launcher to his shoulder and pointing it to someone two
feet away.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
Like I saw a lot of that.
Speaker 3 (13:09):
Yeah, you know, we'd be going down these streets trying
to find a different angle, trying to find where we
could stand and do our jobs as press right and
come around the corner and just just get a forty
milimeters pointed at you. I didn't see any skipping shit
off the ground. Yeah, I did see businesses getting their
windows punched out by things that the police were shooting
at people like.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
Yeah, which I'm sure we're one getting blamed on protesters. Yeah, yeah,
exactly right.
Speaker 3 (13:32):
I mean I saw CNN last night was picking up
fucking phone button rounds and being like these are what
they're throwing at the cops, Like yeah, it just remarkable.
I mean I did see LASD and National Guard with
rifles with magazines in the maguel and you know they
had a round chamber doesn't matter, does it.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
No, you're a second away from chambering around, right, exactly.
Speaker 3 (13:55):
Yeah, the IDF carries with an empty chamber and it
hasn't stopped them a whole lot of people, has it.
The presence of lethal force was closer than I've seen before. Yeah,
Like I'm familiar with seeing overwatch at these things, Right,
someone would what you would colloquially referred to as a
sniper on a rooftop. But it's not overwatching if you're
(14:16):
just in the back of a pickup truck with an
M four right, look at an unmagnified optic, like you're
not You're not over watching shit, you just have lethal
force right there. And I saw that a number of times,
right from the National Guard and then la SD. They
did the whole l rad like go home. It's been
declared an awful assembly thing. But then there wasn't that
kind of scaled use of force that like you say,
(14:39):
is supposed.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
To be there.
Speaker 3 (14:41):
There wasn't really much in the way of like we're
going to start shooting now, and like, of course that
means that if you're an unhused person, if you've arrived,
if you're if you're a local person just trying to
get home, it's very possible you can just walk past
and get tear gas. Like at one point, right they
were opening up, and like I'd been looking for a
excuse of bathroom for a while because fucking southern California, right,
(15:03):
like there are no public bathrooms, yes.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
Which is you know, increasingly every major city. He was
an issue. People got, people get arrested by the fence
for like being on federal property in Portland. Great when
like there was really nowhere else to go.
Speaker 3 (15:16):
Yeah, yeah, exactly, and like some some kindly local guy
invited us into his building and asked that, you know,
let us use the bathroom. But yeah, then we stepped
out and suddenly we're like confronted by cops again, Like
you know, I could have been someone who was there
just going to have to get a slice of pizza. Yeah,
the force was like sporadic and unpredictable throughout the evening.
(15:38):
And then as were these convoys of vehicles that would
just come hauling ass through downtown right obviously not you know,
stopping at red lights, et cetera.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
It was weird.
Speaker 3 (15:47):
Sometimes a green light would happen, so the cars would
start going like and then this cop convoy would come
and some of them would turn right, and some of
them would assume the cars would stop and go straight on.
And so you had the situation where the cops were
nearly hitting each other and it just like it seemed
utterly chaotic, and I don't know what they were doing
other than driving around a high speed for fun. Once
they did manage to kettle some groups of people right
(16:09):
like they again folks maybe who haven't been at these
events before will not be familiar with the way these
things work. But like the police would move in from
both sides and then suddenly you're like, oh shit, there's
nowhere to go. And then I did and put up
in a school bus to take presuably to detain those
people and take them to process them. But yeah, the
(16:29):
tactics were like, I mean, it's their cops. Is what
you expect that you know, we've both been doing this
for a while. You expect them to use those weapons
in the way they can inflict the most damage and
harm to people, And unfortunately, like that does seem to
be happening again.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
Yeah, well, in terms of where things are right now, yeah,
you know, Gavin Newsom is trying to thread the needle.
It looks like between letting the LAPD do whatever they
and he, to be fair, I don't think he has
any issue with people getting fucked up with right nations
what to do well, also not seeding responsibility for security
(17:04):
of his state to the federal government, which has been
an interesting line for him to walk.
Speaker 3 (17:09):
Yeah, I mean his stance seems to be like the
LAPD can fuck up these kids, just fine, we don't
need your help, yes.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
Which I mean they literally can. Like I will say, yeah,
that's not incorrect, right, I'm not talking at a moral level.
I'm just saying like, yes, the LAPD has sufficient force
for the protests that have been that have existed.
Speaker 3 (17:28):
Yeah, I mean the LAPD then the first Nights who
were caught off guard.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
I think right, and so was ICE, And there was
a lot of debate about because like you know, LAPD
not coming in initially to support ICE when they got surrounded,
like and that's those are the kind of things you
get when the authorities are taken off balance. But if
the numbers don't keep increasing, you know, and they have
to increase pretty exponentially as they move in, you know,
(17:54):
federal agents in the National Guard and mobilize the whole
police force in a city like LA, then this situation
becomes basically impossible for protesters to regain the initiative. And
I don't know if i'd say it's impossible right now,
but unless there's some sort of like massive sea changes,
what's happening that does seem kind of like where things
are going to go. And to be clear, here we're
(18:16):
talking about primarily Compton Paramount some protests, and then downtown
Los Angeles some protests. There's a handful of city blocks
and one of the largest metro areas in the entire country. Yeah,
this is not Los Angeles all collapsed.
Speaker 3 (18:31):
You know. Yeah, it's not like the rights to occurred
after Rudney.
Speaker 2 (18:36):
King, right, right, right, not even a little bit.
Speaker 3 (18:39):
Yeah, no yet right like, yeah, I mean people are
pissed off obviously, like and maybe that you know, you'll
get that sort of thing you had important right where
more people came as the protest continued, and there's more
and more FEDS turned up, Like there were people who
might not have showed up at first just being like
upset at the presence of FEDS in this. I don't know,
(19:01):
but yeah, it seems like right now that their move
is to flood the city. I mean, crazy volumes of
cops shouting all the exits on the one ten today. Yeah,
National Guard, like the National Guide folks were mostly around
the Federal building from what I saw, but like just
a huge volume of cobs and no particular plan other
(19:22):
than a vast number of police and I guess you know,
massive detentions, massive use of right at munitions, massive use
of violence to dissuade protest. But then I've seen like
obviously it's interesting, right like, and I'm sure you've experienced this, Robert,
Like you can be like nose to the grindstone in
(19:43):
a conflict zone or at a protest and other clue
what's happening, and I have to go on a Twitter
or a Blue sky to work out what the fuck's
going on, right, you.
Speaker 2 (19:50):
Can tell kind of what's happening in front of you,
and even then you sometimes see something or you're looking
left and the thing happens on the right, and you
get three different stories about what happened totally.
Speaker 3 (20:00):
And so like, you know, you know, we found out
David Twist had been released when me I sent a
message saying that, like right, and then likewise, folks for
finding out that they're protests in other areas of the country,
which you know is always I think gives a little
morale boost. And yeah, so like there's a chance I'm
seeing more and more I sort of big protest in
(20:21):
New York tonight. They can't deploy the Marines everywhere. I mean,
right there there are a lot of marines, but not
that many.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
I know.
Speaker 3 (20:27):
It's in one sense, like and I know that this
is maybe a strange opinion or stance or what have you,
but like, in a sense, it gives me hope to
see these things like at a protest or you know,
like a big action like that, Like I always feel
(20:48):
kind of very cared for and in a strange way
because like the only thing that matters is taking care
of each other, right, and trying trying not to get hurt,
and then for folks who are in the street to
try and remain there, right, And like it's quite a
like you have this kind of disaster community, right, the
same thing that you sometimes find in conflict zones or
(21:08):
after natural disasters, and like, right, it's always beautiful to
see that, right, Like you know, I'm vegan and I
could not find any fucking vegan food for a while,
and like people were bringing me snacks and I thought
that was really sweet, and like, you know, I saw
people taking care of strangers when they got tear gass,
or taking care of strangers when they get shot, or
(21:29):
like just folks who have bought snacks and like wanted
to give them to one house people who were there, right.
So all that stuff is just a reminder that like
you know, like actually, you know, if you were consuming
this thorugh of fucking New York Times, right, you'd think
that people were looting and burning the city. And like,
I didn't see anyone to steal shit. I did see
people take care of one another. Yeah, and that's a
(21:50):
beautiful thing. And you know, maybe people need to be
in the streets to find one another right now, because
you know, every every year, people it gets harder to
go outside and easier to stay on the internet.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
Right, people get more adomized.
Speaker 3 (22:06):
Yeah, and like it was cool to see like young
Mexican folks, young Salvadorean folks, uateateml and you know, people
have different extractions who are now Americans and in addition
obviously to their i think identities and backgrounds showing up
and then like young black folks showing up with them
and being like yeah, you know, like fuck the police,
(22:26):
and like it was cool to see maybe folks who
are a little bit more liberal, like I definitely had
folks who are like, oh, we're not here for the riot.
We're just here for the peaceful protest in so much
as you know, and no one wants to get shot
in the face with a forty millimeter, right, no one.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
No one's there to it, No, absolutely not.
Speaker 3 (22:41):
And so it's cool to see those people making those connections.
And we need to make those connections now, right, We
need to talk to people and talk to each other.
I didn't see people beefing with each other. I didn't
really see the like optics police, right, if you were
again if you were consuming this on the fucking Blue Guy,
which can be intolerably libs sometimes, like seeing people being like,
(23:05):
you know, because I personally disagree with the optics of
this one person's decision, the whole protest is therefore flawed. Yeah,
the whole protest as fun and let's just let I
steal their fucking children. Like, yeah, people will let people
be and and deal with the consequences their own actions
instead of being condescending.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
Now, and I mean, I'm looking at Twitter right now
where half of the comments are about someone who drove
through a crowd in LA and people either this is
what happens when America gets fed up? Or what other
option did he have? You know, you're getting a mix
of that sort of thing. Yeah, shit, are people okay?
Like I'm not aware of any like serious injuries or fatalities, certainly,
(23:44):
but yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (23:45):
That was the other weird thing, Like vehicles throughout the
means LA everyone's driving all the time, but there were
vehicles like constantly just moving through.
Speaker 2 (23:56):
Yep.
Speaker 3 (23:57):
Yeah, it's LA raising people coming out to do their
donuts stuff. But like it is a risk, like if
someone we've shared a cob bomb, bro, But yeah, oh yeah,
we sure did. I've seen a few car bombs. It
always freaks me out. We need a big crowd like that.
And then you've got these cars around like the potential
for vehicular violence.
Speaker 2 (24:16):
Yeah, it's not great.
Speaker 3 (24:17):
Yeah again, Right, we have the quote unquote public safety
forces deployed in massive numbers, and no one's no one's
stopping that.
Speaker 2 (24:23):
No. And you know, also just a note to people,
the only realistic way to stop cars in this situation
is with a barrier made of other cars. Right, is
you block off the route of march with vehicles. There's
no other realistic tool at your disposal as somebody who's
a part of a protest to stop a full ass vehicle.
(24:43):
We're going to talk a little bit more with a
couple of updates from the ground and then close out.
But first here's our last but ads.
Speaker 1 (25:03):
Oh not forgot.
Speaker 2 (25:05):
Yes it's gonna be no not not not say no,
baby's gonna been taken away like not no. That's so
(25:29):
we're back in James. While you were leaving, the Mayor
of Los Angeles declared a curfew in place from eight
pm to six a m. For the one ten to
the west I five to the east. Uh yeah, one
ten to south, I five and one ten to north.
This is from the public safety alert texted out to
people in Los Angeles. So people are allowed to travel
(25:52):
to and from work, to seek or to give emergency care.
EMS people are exempt. No one else is exempt as
far as i'm a but yeah, that's that's the situation.
So part of why Mayor Karen bass Is issued a
curfew is that it gives the police extra kind of
freedom to take people into custody. Right yeah, Oh, credential
(26:13):
media are exempt. Yeah, that's what I was told. Yeah,
people to and from work, credential media, emergency and medical personnel,
law enforcement are the limited exemptions. So that's that's what
we've got going on right now. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (26:24):
And if you are at there working as a journalists,
like it's important to carry your press pass right oh yeah, yeah,
we'll stop you from getting shot with impact munitions because
they've done that to a lot of people.
Speaker 2 (26:33):
Yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (26:34):
Yeah, And like you know, I had a large blue
press badge on my plate carrier like I always do,
and like, yeah, it's not doesn't.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
Make you bulletproof.
Speaker 3 (26:42):
Now, yeah, there's a curfew tonight, which, like you say,
just gives them the means to use more coercive force
and to charge people more harshly. They'll continue doing that
helicopter shit, right, They had probably four or five helicopters.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
They really love putting them out in LA and especially
now that they got the military.
Speaker 3 (26:59):
Yeah, and then it had a real kind of blade
run a vibe to be in this like dark city
at night with these helicopter circling spotlighting people from above,
and like little fires happening across the city and then
occasional clouds of like spicy air floating towards you. I
have seen some speculation that they were using some kind
(27:20):
of other chemical irritant instead of tear gas. I think
that the most likely explanation is just they were using
tear gas that was older.
Speaker 2 (27:29):
Yeah, it tastes different when it's older. The shit the
FEDS US is often different from the shit state or
local police use, Like yeah, you know, you get different
sort of mixes. But I'm not aware, like it's I'm
certain it's just tear gas, right, Yeah, Yeah, I think
it's just a bit different.
Speaker 3 (27:45):
Different variants in ages of tear gas, and sometimes they
take on different appearances too, and they weren't really fogging
the tear gas, not that I saw. They were just tossing,
tossing out the grenades. You didn't get that like wall
of tear gas that you guys are familiar with in Portland. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
but it took on like the protest effectic, Like I
didn't see as many people with half masks or hard
(28:07):
hats or goggles any event stuff. So like, yeah, and
in one sense, people it's it's great to see people
coming out and like engating their right to protest. Yeah,
and coming from where they are, as they are showing
up to show out for something.
Speaker 2 (28:24):
Leaving work or whatever. Yeah, yeah, it makes me worried
for them.
Speaker 3 (28:28):
Yeah, Like you know, I'm there around the block a
few times, and I'm worried if people are going to
get fucked up.
Speaker 2 (28:35):
So, yeah, it's curfew tonight. It's curfew tonight. There's still
marine numbers are still at around seven hundred. There's about
four thousand National Guard troops, so the number of military
deployed significantly outnumbers demonstrators at this point. Mayer care and
Bass has stated that or or sorry. The Pentagon has
stated that it's costing about one hundred and thirty four
million dollars this deployment, so esus man, Yeah, it's it's
(28:58):
it's like i'd say, it's it's not a pointless escalation.
The point of the escalation is that they want to
keep using the military, right, Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 3 (29:06):
Yeah, and to sort of establish a precedent that domestic
unrest can be dealt with by the military, which, to
be clear, like by my reading, it's completely in contradiction
of the constitution. Yeah, but a lot of things that
are in constitution of the constitution happen, especially with policing
all the fucking time, right, Like, yeah, Like it is
(29:27):
important not to normalize this again, Like you don't have
to be like a blue head ANTIFA to be like
this is fucked up. And I think I definitely spoke
to a few people, like folks who have come out
of church and stuff and just like, yeah, we had
they had sent the Marines here, so we just came
on down because that's not okay, and that's good to see. Yeah,
(29:50):
And like those are conversations that people who are invested
in not living in a country where your first memorizes
don't matter anymore because you can get shot by an
eighteen year old marine who hasn't had the time to
really morally and ethically consider that decision. Yeah, like it's
important to have those talks with people now because like
it is very concerning. Yeah, you know, you and I
(30:14):
have attended a few civil wars. I don't want to
be like this country spinning towards civil wars that you know,
I think we have a long way from that.
Speaker 2 (30:21):
I mean, when the President stands in front of a
bunch of enlisted men at Fort Bragg and talks about
how they're using the military to restore order to an
American city that's been invaded, there's no longer an argument
that those comparisons are an escalation or exaggeration, right, like yeah, hyperbolic,
like yeah, like we're in the ship right now, folks.
Speaker 3 (30:42):
Yeah, man, Like, show me a thing that Asad wouldn't
have said today, right, right, right? And what you don't
have is an actual insurrection going on. What you don't
have is anyone actually fighting the government. You have people
who are like angry and yelling and some folks who
throw through rocks. You do not have a militant uprising
against federal power. They're just kind of acting like it. Yeah,
(31:03):
like if you have an insurrection in this country. This
country has a shit ton of guns. You all know
if there's an insurrection, because people will be using them.
Speaker 2 (31:10):
Like that's not happening.
Speaker 3 (31:12):
Yeah, it's young people in the street waving flags and
shouting and like saying fuck the police. Is a constitutionally
protected right in this country, Like, yes it is. You
should not get hurt for exercising your first amendment right right, Yeah, man,
Like I'm I'm proud of all those people who showed up.
I'm proud of them for taking care of each other. Yeah,
And I hope that they they stay there, and I
(31:34):
hope that they you know, as they stay there, they
become more more astute.
Speaker 2 (31:37):
Yeah, they learned some stuff.
Speaker 3 (31:38):
I saw a lot of running two hundred yards away
from the cops in a very straight line, straight down
a straight street.
Speaker 2 (31:43):
Yeah, Like, which is not not the move right, Like
you want to be? You want to be. I'm up,
he sees me, I'm down. Yeah. Serpentine, serpentine, you do
the worm, That's that's how you get him. Yeah. There
is some polling out early polling. This is from g
Elliot Morris, formerly of five point thirty eight but conducted
June tenth by you Gov of four thy three hundred
(32:06):
and nine adults. Do you approve a disapprove of deploying
National Guard soldiers to the Los Angeles area to respond
to protests over the federal government's immigration enforcement Thirty eight
percent of food approved, forty five percent disapprove, and nineteen
percent are not sure. Do you approve or disapprove of
deploying marines to the Los Angeles area? Thirty four percent approve,
forty seven percent disapprove, nineteen percent not sure. So you know,
(32:31):
these aren't popular measures, although they're also not as unpopular
as you would hope.
Speaker 3 (32:35):
Yeah, that's that's not great. I'd like to see you more.
I mean, yeah, you got Tom Cotton doing is for
getting to Wall Street. You're on the Washington postped right,
sent in the troops for real?
Speaker 2 (32:45):
This time? Was that? I thought that was the times
time I think I forget exactly.
Speaker 3 (32:51):
Yeah, somewhat indistinguishable these days quickly in net OpEd pages,
you're right, robate was at times No, No, that's a
twenty twenty OpEd twenty five op edwards in the Wall
Streets Choir, he.
Speaker 2 (33:02):
Got a new one.
Speaker 3 (33:02):
Okay, yeah, he wrote in twenty twenty rubber he wrote
send in the Troops. In twenty twenty five, he wrote
send in the troops Comma for.
Speaker 2 (33:10):
Real, for real? Okay, Well he got it, yep, Yeah,
I mean he got what he wanted. Well done.
Speaker 3 (33:18):
Ranger Tom, guy who lied about being an army ranger.
Speaker 2 (33:21):
Yes, not a ranger, Tom, Yeah, not a ranger Tom. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (33:26):
I mean you see this in the UK a lot.
I'm very familiar with this kind of also the powers. Yeah,
maybe that's a good place for us to end. If
you were in the US military or the National Guard,
if you were someone you love is in the military
of the National Guard. Now it's a good time to
read up about Bloody Sunday, Yeah, happened in Ireland. And
now is a good time to look at what's currently happening,
(33:48):
what has been happening to those soldiers, because it took
a long time for those people to stand trial. And
it's not officers who were standing trial, right, it's soldiers.
It's paratroopers in this case, because those are always going
to be the fingers on the trigger, right. Yeah, And
so you know, no one, no one knows which direction
(34:10):
history is moving in. But like things don't feel morally right.
You know, there are things that the DII writes hotline,
but I think people should be aware what happens when
countries use their militaries to oppress protest and what has
happened to some of the soldiers who have been ordered
to do that.
Speaker 2 (34:27):
Yeah, well look up Bloody Sunday, folks. Maybe we'll cover
that in the not too distant future, because yeah, that's
just going to get more relevant. Don't listen to you
two if you can avoid it, but just look it up. Yeah,
avoid you two, not the song Sunday or Bloody Sunday.
But yeah, all right, everybody, Well this has been It
Could Happen here. We will be back tomorrow. We'll see
(34:50):
if Gavin Newsom has been arrested yet. All right, thanks James, Yeah,
thanks for that's an episode by.
Speaker 1 (35:01):
It Could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
Coolzonmedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can
now find sources for It Could Happen Here listed directly
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It Could Happen Here News
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Robert Evans
Garrison Davis
James Stout
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