November 30, 2021 • 45 mins
We're joined by Brendan Maslauskas Dunn and Julianna Neuhouser to discuss Port Militarization Resistance, a little known chapter in the anti-war movement, and how a relatively small number of people drew down the wrath of the American security state
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
All right, welcome to it could happen here a podcast
about things falling apart and also sometimes about how things
have been falling apart for a while now. And today
we're gonna talk about how things were also bad in
falling apart in the two thousands, which a profoundly cursed
time period. And specifically we're going to talk about I
(00:27):
think a part of the anti war movement that does
not get much attention, um, which is the port militarization
resistance that happened sort of two seven And with us
today to talk about this is two people who were
part of this movement if Juliana Newhouser, hello, and Brendan
(00:48):
Maslaska's done, Yeah, both of whom were organizers and activists
while this was going on. Yeah, and I thank thank you,
thank you both for being here. Yeah, thanks for having
us so. Yeah. As I was saying a bit in
the intro, I think that this is a part of
the anti war movement that is not very well known.
I think I think a lot of people know about
the initial stuff happened in twos three, and people might
(01:10):
know about some of the stuff that was happening against
the war in Afghanistan, but right when it started. But
I don't think most people know that it, like you know,
even after jails and three sort of doesn't work, that
it continues and it continues sort of informs that are
that are very interesting. And so I guess I want
(01:31):
you to to start out. I want to ask how
we sort of got from the early part of the
anti war movement into this and how you got involved.
I would say that there's this narrative about the women
against the word Iraq, that there is the largest protests
in human history, at least at that point. I don't
(01:52):
know if it's still true against the invasion, and then
it didn't work and everyone kind of went home and
ended there, and to a certain extent that's true, but
like you said, the people that didn't go home went
an interesting direction. And UM, so at the time there
(02:14):
were direct action was not as acceptable as it is now.
The protest this movement was largely dominated either by UM
big liberal coalitions or PSL front groups that were basically
indistinguishable and what they actually did, which was basically nothing
(02:36):
and in the best of cases and then the worst
of cases, counterinsurgency. UM. But then there were small groups
of people that at when we saw that it didn't work,
and we saw that these giant, peaceful marches from one
part of town to another, um or voting for John
(03:00):
Carry or whatever, it didn't work, that we started to
look for other options. Yeah, and uh, you know, I
got involved. Um you know, I'd say, what the anti
war movement, That idea of how how war is unjust
was really talked to me from a very young age.
(03:20):
I mean my parents were you know, children of the sixties,
and they had family members fighting in Vietnam and um,
you know, friends dying in Vietnam and we're against the
protests back then. So I grew up hearing these stories
and of course stories from family members, particularly one of
my grandfather's, both of them who were veterans in World
(03:41):
War Two. One of them was a marine and the
you know, in the Pacific Theater and still into his seventies,
eighties and nineties until his final days, was just dealing
with horrific PTSD and had always taught me from a
young age never to get involved. So I, you know,
and I remember when when the very clearly, um you know,
(04:02):
I'm sure it's on everyone's minds now, and when the
invasion of Afghanistan started, when the invasion of a Rock started.
I was at that that massive demonstration in Washington, d C.
That Julianna just mentioned, and you know I ended up.
I'm from Utica, New York. I went to a rural
high school, uh just outside of of Utica, you know,
(04:25):
russ Bell generally speaking, impoverished and also very conservative area
of New York. And you know, I had the recruiters
bothering me, military recruiters in high school, recruiting my friends,
and they were just everywhere in the hallways. Uh So
it was very present um with me. When I was younger,
(04:47):
I moved out to Olympia, Washington, two thousand six, and
that's one a new student activist group, Students for a
Democratic Society, was launched. That's how Julianna and I first met.
We were both in separate chapters of that new organization
in the Pacific Northwest. And the port protests started just
(05:10):
just a few months after I moved out there in
in Olympia in two thousand six. So wait to declare
for this for a second, because I've never quite been
clear on this history. So there was a second st
like Students for Democratic idea that was like unrelated to
the first one. Yeah, they're born briefly um at the
end of the bushop Manastery. That that explains a lot
(05:33):
of things that it's very baffling. We're not that old. Yeah,
we're definitely in the in the second uh, you know,
the rebirth of it um. So you know, I think
it it took on some things in spirit um you know,
but also was i'd say different in many ways, and
it was very active to me at least, it was
very exciting to be a member of the new STS
(05:56):
because they're over a dozen chapters in the Pacific Northwest
and was a great way to connect with young activists
all over the US. So STS is emerging in this
time period. One of the other things I was interested
about is something someone you were talking about in in
in the early part of this, which has to do
with the way that these giants both the sort of
(06:17):
Answer Coalition PSL Frank Group and I guess the I
s O was still around back then coalitions work versus
how like anything else worked. So so what was was
STS sort of like consciously set up and in opposition
to those groups. I don't think it was conscious, but
there was just like I mean, these days, I mean
like there's a lot of controversy around PSL with like
(06:39):
anarchist versus tanky politics. None of that mattered at that time, Like,
none of that mattered. The only thing that mattered was
the answer, which is the PSO Front group was completely
fucking useless. Like they completely indistinguishable from any peace police
um liberal democratic front group. There was literally no difference,
(07:02):
just in terms of their aesthetics maybe like is there
a donkey or a hammer and sickle on something. That's
the only difference we saw. So I don't I don't
think there was. It wasn't There wasn't like a conscious
like political opposite attention to it. It's just like they're
not doing anything, and and so we had to look
(07:23):
in another direction. Actually, you know, it's hard to keep
track of the alphabet soup of authilitarian communist groups at times,
but this was actually answer for those who don't recall
it was a front group for the Workers World Party,
the WWT, which yeah, I mean, it's it's hard to
keep track, right, Yeah, that's the same thing, like I think,
(07:43):
so so okay, So for people who are sort of
unaware of this, there's a network of connected but sometimes
feuding like weird stalonist cults that kind of kind of
like they hold on through the eighties and nineties and
they start sort of rebuilding again around the anti one
movements in that period. That that's the PSLs of the
DUP's answer, like, and I think that's like most like
(08:06):
modern anti war groups are also still these people, which
is incredibly depressing something they want to talk a bit
about it towards the end of this, but yet just
for people who have not spent the last half decade
in the in the trenches of extremely weird anti war politics. So, yeah,
(08:27):
so I think we should get into how the sort
of the first action starts in Olympia. Yeah so, and
there were actually a couple of actions that happened um
in the year proceeding that, you know, before I moved
out to Olympia in two thousand and six, it was
(08:48):
not yet under the banner of PMR port Militarization Resistance.
That was a name that was officially coined in uh,
you know, and in May and June of two thousand six. So,
just to give you an idea, Olympia, it's it's a
college town or at the Evergreen State Colleges there. It's
(09:10):
also the capital of Washington State, so you have that
going on. It's also a military town. It's a little
over twenty miles south of what we called Fort Lewis.
It's now called j B l M. J BLOM or
Joint Base Lewis McCord. It's an Army and Air Force
base now it's one base. Um So, yet all these
you know, different kind of elements, uh in you know,
(09:31):
in tandem in in that town and the public port.
The Port of Olympia is one of about seventy years
so public ports in the state of Washington, some of
which are I mean, they're used for all kinds of things,
you know, for commercial, private industry, but also the military
and the US government. Uh So, uh you know, I
(09:54):
heard from someone I don't even remember who that the
military was sending a ship to the Port of Olympia
in late May of two thousand six. And this happened
for ten or so days, and it was just kind
of a natural instinct for a whole bunch of us
to go down to the Port of Olympia. It was
(10:18):
it was the war machine in our backyard. And the
idea was to just block the vehicles. It started out
with just like less than ten people number folks getting arrested,
and that very rapidly culminated into larger protests. Every single
day um AN active blockades people, those of us like
(10:38):
Julian and myself and other folks using civil disobedience or
what we prefer to call civil resistance to try and
stop or at the very least slow down these striker
vehicles and to give folks an idea of what a
striker vehicle is. You can look it up online, but
it's kind of halfway between um, you know, a tank
(10:58):
and humby. It doesn't have the slats you know that
a tank would have. It's you know. And they were
being used in both Iraq and Afghanistan for for raids
of residential areas. They were really on the front lines
of the war in in both those countries, and that's
what we were trying to stop. I only got involved
later um because I wasn't living in Olympia at the time.
(11:21):
UM I was in another STS chapter, but my roommate
was from Olympia and he had been involved in that
first round of protests in Olympia before moving up to Ballingham.
And so like hearing his story, it's got me very
excited because just like finally someone's someone's doing something like
(11:42):
someone's they're not just like you know, it's like everything
else was just so liberal. Take whether it's marching from
one place to another or writing to your congress people
or occupying their office. It was like asking someone else
to do something which you knew from the beginning they
were never going to do. And finally this was finally
(12:07):
someone was like actually getting into it. UM. I think
the first one of the things that happened here was
that um they started to avoid UM. There's it was
kind of a geographical thing. I think, UM for people
who either don't know Washington Washington, or because they're normal
(12:31):
people don't know like the port areas of these cities
very well because it's like like unless you're a long sherman, like,
why you would you go down to like the port
of Tacoma. There's nothing there. UM. But they kept moving
it around because um Olympia is also not very big
(12:54):
and UM, so it's there's really only two roads into
the port, which is very small, and so it was
it's very easy to block it. UM. And so then
I think The first time that I got involved UM
was in two thousands seven when they had moved it
(13:15):
because they kept moving it around to try and switch
things up. And wait, before they're moving the ship around, No,
it's like they had to make a military ship met.
They would UM. It's like like once the ship it
was in the port, they would just have to go
through with it. But then UM, you know, it's like
(13:37):
everything every six months or so they had to make
another military ship met and they would change the port
usually each time, UM, to try and let basically to
avoid us. It doesn't seem like this is like normal crap. Um.
The first time I had gone down was in um Tacoma,
which is a much much, much more industrialized port than Olympia.
(13:58):
It's you know, it's like a big port, more normal part,
I guess, And that one was honestly pretty crazy, UM,
because you're just trapped in this giant industrial maze basically
at the mercy of the riot cops. The best success
we had was definitely at the port of Olympia. UM.
(14:19):
I think the in two thousand seven in Olympia was
definitely as the glory moment, which was when people were
able to on and off like actually hold the port
and control it in the exits. Yeah, and I wanna,
(14:41):
you know, just emphasize that, like the the one the
military changing their approach right to avoid us so jumping
from port to port with these different shipments. They actually
went so far because we were so successful as a
movement in the Pacific Northwest to ship striker vehicles by
rail out of the Pacific Northwest and even going so
(15:04):
far as to ports in Texas. Um. But you know
when one thing that we did is that we built
up contacts with other activists with long shore workers all
up and down the West coast in California. There are
other activists were connected with in Texas, Hawaii, New Jersey,
and New York. There is a desire in the anti
war movement. Uh. And and you know, in some extent
(15:27):
maybe it's like it was small, but some folks in
the labor movement, especially in Oakland where the I LW
the you know, long shore workers Union, it's a lot
more militant than say in a place like Olympia. UM.
But yeah, I mean people wanted to replicate this model because,
as Juliana said, we wore successful in two thousand and seven.
(15:48):
We shut down the port of Olympia for a total
of it was essentially two days. They were not they're
not shipping anything in or out. We set up blockades,
were willing to throw down with the police in the street.
And one of the things that was cool about that
blockade is that one of the there's two entrances, like
I said, and one was completely blockaded, and then the
(16:10):
other one, UM, we had like a moving I don't
really even know what it was, but something with wheels
that we could move in and out, um to open
it up, and so then we could allow like civilian
cargo to move in and out, but then like we
feel it back in place, um to block military shipments.
So we were able to actually like stopped him from
(16:32):
like what while in in in that oneted to come.
We able to actually like stopped him from moving the
self all together. Would you when sheally cleared up on
the police and they moved it, we would eventually get
cleared out by the police. It's like we were never
able to It's like we're we we held it for
two days. That those protests took place over a series
of two weeks or more or less. Um, we were
(16:54):
only able to fully hold it for two days before
eventually they would clear us out. But one of the
things is that it this does it did create problems
for the army because when you work with a port,
you know, it's like you've got like a certain time
(17:14):
frame that you've contracted with the port to do whatever
it is because you're going to do and it's not
too happy if you take longer every thing you said
you would or yeah, yeah. And the other thing I
want to add is, you know, I think the other
really important element with this whole movement going on is
(17:35):
the Pacific Northwest was um it is specifically western Washington,
where the two of us were living. It was it was,
you know, the center and in a sense it was
the heart of the anti war movement in the country
at that time. One because of this militant direct action
that we were, you know, we were building up in
(17:58):
the streets and trying to throw wrench and the gears
of the war machine to to at the verily slowed down,
which in some ways we did, but we're up against
so much. But the other added element, of course is
the g I resistance and the soldiers who are resisting
I've all also known as the Rock Veterans against the
War was very active there. They set up a g
(18:21):
I coffeehouse across you know, literally across the street, uh,
you know, the gates for one of the entrances for
Fort Louis. Um, there are a whole bunch of soldiers
that were going a wall. We had friends who were
active duty soldiers who had fought in you know, Iraq
and Afghanistan that were a wall and they were hiding,
(18:43):
you know, refusing to go back into the striker brigades
that joined us in port militarization Resistance. Uh. There are
a whole you know, long list of soldiers that were
very publicly saying, you know, I'm refusing to fight in
Iraq or Afghanistan for you know, various reasons. And so
we are very much connected with this movement too. And
(19:07):
I think the higher ups in the military they're they're
hyper aware of that. They studied us very well, um,
you know, to the point of actually spying on us.
So that's like a whole other element of this story too.
(19:29):
One of the things that I've heard from talking to
other people were involved this was that like wow, like
during these protests, like the level of police militarization just
like skyrocketed. And like I remember I was talking frend
about this. It was like, you know, if you go
back and look at like old system of a down videos,
you know, they'll they'll have these things. Yeah, and you'll
see these you see these riot police, and like you
(19:51):
look at them and it's like these people they look
so much less armored than like the people that we
have now. And one of the things that I thought
was interesting about this was that like this is I
think one of the points where you start getting the
modern riot police showing up that are just like, you know,
completely encased in like armor. And yeah, I want to
(20:12):
talk about just like the police response to this, because
I think that's that's another thing I think. I think
there's never there's a kind of a tendency to sort
of project back what the police look like just onto
the whole history of police, and I think it's like
it's it's it's gotten worse even in the last twenty years. Yeah,
I mean, so I lived downtown in Olympia and probably
(20:36):
just like a six minute walk away from the Port
of Olympia and and also very conveniently just a few
blocks away from the police station, so so lucky. So
we actually saw you know, we could see from the
front of down on the road, down the sidewalk from
the front of our house. Uh, some of the military
shipments going by. And we we we did see that absolutely,
(20:59):
and at at times it was it was terrifying. I
mean I lived in an activist house we jokingly called
h Q because that's just you know where because of
its proximity to the port, that's where a number of
us were having meetings, uh, you know, around these protests
early on in two thousand six, and um, yeah, I
(21:20):
mean we like they look like RoboCop and it's something
I had I you know, I hadn't like I had
been to like mass marches and demonstrations like the r
n C protests and d NC protests in Boston, New
York and like in Washington d C uh and so
I would see these like riot cops. But they were
(21:42):
I mean ubiquitous in the support protests. It was like
a whole army of them that was sent out. I
mean when Juliana said that things got kind of crazy
at the Port of Tacoma protests, I mean there was
like a police riot, you know, like the cops went
absolutely nuts there, shooting people with tear gas and pepper
balls and and brutalizing people. I had never before witnessed
(22:05):
anything like that. And it got to the point in
you know, in Olympia where we we kind of knew
early on that we were being traced by the police
to the extent where, you know, one friend of ours
was followed from our house to the bus station to
take a bus to school by the police and then
was stopped and essentially assaulted by them on the street.
(22:27):
And we had another fellow activists and you know, a
roommate of mine who is going out to driving out
with a few friends, uh few fellow activists from Olympia
to Aberdeen, about an hour's drive. So Aberdeen, there's a
port of Gray's Harbor there, pretty conservative small town. It's
where Kurt Cobain is from, home of the famous Kurt
(22:49):
Cobain teams. McDonald's. They served billions and and billions served
and that one McDonald's and Kurt Cobain's McDonalds. But yeah,
I mean, the you know, they they were they were following.
They had orders the Washington State Patrol two, um, you know,
(23:09):
pull over a car full full of known anarchists. There
was alert gone out to all the police departments. They
pulled them, They pulled him over, they made him walk
the line. He was had you know, wasn't drinking and
no drugs, like nothing in his system, but they he
was driving under like one mile per hour under the
speed limit. They arrested him for d d W I
(23:32):
you know, eventually fought the chargers, sued um uh and
you know when a big settlement out of all that.
But that's just one example of many of the lengths
that the police would go to h It was pretty severe.
Even there's a house of a bunch of anarchists, younger
anarchists called a pitch Pipe info shop in Tacoma, and
(23:52):
that was also a big target. The police were swarming
around them all the time. They had like camera set
up like specifically just a side the infishop, Like there
weren't Surrens cameras there before, but then it was like,
oh well, just conveniently put them on this one specific
street corner. Yeah. I think like that was one of
the things I was reading about this is you have
that stuff. And then also I think one of the
(24:14):
steers parts of this is that like Army intelligence gets involved,
and yeah, do you want to talk about the man
named quote unquote John Jacob, who was in fact not
that Yeah, so, uh, you know, I'm curious what what
memories you have of our our good dear friend John
Jacob Julian. I don't think I ever actually knew him
(24:34):
in person, but he was the moderator of the list Serve,
wasn't he. Yes, she's one of the moderators of our
list serves. Now that I look back on it, I'm
like the port Militarization Resistance the SERUB was always just
like this dramatic ship show, and it's like, looking back
on it, I was like, oh, a cop that did nothing,
(24:59):
that absolutely nothing to like established order or uh if
that was on purpose. Yeah, so I think there's definitely
something that happened, Like, you know, looking back from our
vantage point today, it's like, Okay, things make a little
more sense at the time though. And we're in this movement, right,
and so that means like meeting people where they're at.
(25:22):
We find all kinds of people that would like want
to join the movement, like I, like I said earlier,
like active duty soldiers that were joining. So I met
this guy named John Jacob, and he sent an email
out to me. I was one of the contacts for
the Olympia STS group, and it's like, hey, you know,
there's kind of like a parent organization that's some old
like elder activists or in uh to kind of mentor
(25:45):
us called Movement for a Democratic Society, very small, never
really took off, but like, I'm interested in getting involved.
We met up in public and he seemed like an
alright guy. I mean he was, um, you know, forty
is early forties. He had told me, like, you know,
been in the military for years, and he actually still
worked at Fort Lewis, so he was always open about that,
(26:08):
but it only went that far. He didn't ever tell
us what he actually did there, and it wasn't abnormal
for you know, we have many folks that worked active duty,
you know, on base and civilian civilian roles or soldiers.
As I mentioned that, we're in port militarization resistance. So
he gets involved, and he gets really involved with Port
(26:30):
Militarization resistance. He goes to protests, He gets pretty close
with this group of anarchists I mentioned who lived in Tacoma,
UM and he seemed like a really solid guy to
to most of us. UM. And you know, things happen
as as we progress and you know, as the military
responded to our uh, you know how effective we wore
(26:52):
in the anti war movement and the g I resistance
movement by changing their tactics. We noticed that a when
we first started the protests, UM, we we had the
ability to catch the police by surprise by setting up
you know, blockade here, we're having a surprise action there
at this time, or this port, etcetera, etcetera. And as
(27:15):
time progressed, we found out that you know, we were
having these making these decisions for tactics in our strategy.
We thought that we're in private and then for whatever reason,
the police kind of knew about where we were going
to be before we even showed up. And that I
remember that Paly happening in two thousand seven the Port
of Olympia. Yeah, and the COMMA. There are a lot
(27:38):
of things like that. Like there is one time when
there are like some people who had a meeting in
a closed room, like all there they had taken the
batteries out of their cell phones. They had simply written
on the whiteboard the time and place they're going to
have their next meeting, which is going to be in
a diner near the port, and so that way if
(27:58):
like if for any reason the room with bugs, it
wouldn't be caught up because it was just written on aboard.
And then it was like a small meeting too, so
it's like there weren't and then when they got to
that dinner, there was like full of cops like clearly
waiting for them. Like at that point, it's like it
(28:20):
was very clear there was some some level of infiltration involved. Yeah,
and I think we are from early on, like you know,
we we knew our history. I mean, you know, one
of our our fellow activists and p Mars and a
friend of ours, Peter Boehmer's professor at the Evergreen State College.
He was in the original Sts back in the sixties,
(28:40):
and you know, he was essentially a political prisoner for
a couple of years in both Massachusetts and California. Um,
I mean the FEDS essentially tried to assassinate him. Um
back in in the seventies when he was active in
the anti war movement in San Diego. Like we knew,
you know, former Black Panthers, and we read our history,
(29:00):
so we knew about the history of cointelpro the counterintelligence
program of the six season seventies and the war on
the anti war and civil rights and black power, American
Indian movements, etcetera. Um, so we knew, you know, just
intuitively early on. Uh. But there's one thing that happened
in particular which prompted some of us to file for
(29:20):
a public records request with the City of Olympia and
another activists walking down the street in Olympia. I'm a
member of the Wobblies Industrial Workers of the World Union,
and we had like a one of those metal newspaper
boxes downtown and it was locked to a poll um,
you know, with a bike lock. And there are some
city workers there with a pickup truck and they're cutting
(29:42):
the lock to the newspaper box and they threw it
in their pickup truck and so are you know, this
friend of ours was there. It was like, what the hell,
what are you doing? What's going on? And one of
the workers just kind of strugged and was like, I
don't know, the police told us to do this, and
they drove off like they stole you know, are essentially
like union property or whatever. Um. So we had you know,
(30:03):
our our lawyer friend Larry Hilda's and the National Lawyer's
Guild you know, call and kind of threatened the city
and and then a number of us got together like, hey,
you know, let's do like a public records requests UM
with the City of of Olympia freedom of information law right,
and so we did. And the request was, you know,
(30:24):
just requesting any all information the city had UM, any
exchanges communications by email, etcetera, UM between the police and
like other agencies about anarchists, I WW, students for a
Democratic Society UM. And their initial search that the city
clerk did yielded something like thirty thousand responses. So she's like, okay,
(30:48):
I gotta narrow this down. And I don't know, I
was working on the request at the time and for
some reason, like I don't know where sport protests are
near a military based communications between the army, not thinking anything.
And so the initial responses who actually got um you know,
maybe a hundred hundred thirty years so different documents, just
(31:10):
copies of emails, etcetera. That UM, we're little puzzle pieces
for this massive puzzle. And it was just a few
of them. Uh, and it was you know, there was
an email talking about our guy in the Navy going
to a PMR meeting to get some intel. Uh, there's
you know, all kinds of things like that. There are
(31:31):
a few emails in particular, UM and the email address
was something like John John J. Towry at you know,
Army dot us whatever the email address was. So there's
a crew of activists that got together, put their heads together,
did some research quietly for a few months, and eventually
found out by publicly accessible information like voter registration records
(31:55):
and also finding out something about like a motorcycle club
called like that I don't know, like the Brown Beauque
Club or the Brown Butt Club or something, and and
the like. Found out that this John Towery guy that
was in this motorcycle club and had his you know,
was registered to vote outside of Tacoma, in this town there.
It was actually John Jacob. It was this guy that
(32:18):
we thought was a fellow activist, an anarchist UM and
and a friend, you know, I thought he was a
personal friend of mine. Turns out he was actually essentially
an Army intelligence officer working for something called the Force
Protection Unit at uh AT Joint Face Joint based Lewis
McCord and also working with a whole list of different
(32:41):
agencies and what turned out to be like a massive
surveillance network that was national in scope. This guy was
sent by the Army along with many others to infiltrate us,
to aspire on us, and to disrupt us. It was huge. Yeah,
(33:06):
and that there's one of the things that have always
so much really steak. So like I learned about from
militarization resistance basically because I was like poking around the
history of like informists and I ran into this and
I was like what because and then that was what
I thought. One of the things I thought was really
interesting about this is that like, like I think that
this chapter of the anti war movement is even on
the left, is like not very well known, but like
(33:28):
the seriousness is which the Army seems to have taken
itsily is really remarkable. Yeah, I'm wondering what you to
think about that. One thing we have to emphasize is
is that we were not a large group of people. Yeah, Like, um,
the number of people who are actively involved in portmoloitaris agast.
My assistance at its peak was how many people do
(33:49):
you think it was Brandon. Well, it depends. I mean
I'd say they're probably like at its peak, maybe probably
four year to fifty people that would like consistently show
up to things, you know, maybe a slightly smaller, very
core group. But we would have demonstrations with like and
then like four people you know, yeah, and like that
would be like the max like there is it's like
(34:13):
there are like the peaceful like kind of like support actions.
You know, you would get like a couple hundred people
and then like for the stuff like where it's like
the first night that that the part of the entrance
to the part of Olympia was occupied, it would be like, Um,
(34:35):
these were not These were not very large groups of people. Um,
I feel like and like I said, it's like one
thing that we need to keep in mind was that, um,
the peace police were much stronger back then than they
are now nowadays. Lating like as we saw last year,
it's like people in the US of Blurn to throw down,
(34:57):
but that was not the case at the time. And
so this is a very very small group of people. Um.
I think we accomplished a lot from with how small
it was. Um, if it had been larger, it would
have accomplished way more. Um, but even that small core
(35:19):
of like people with maybe expanding out to like a
larger group of a couple of hundred, had them that
scared that they went that far. They're trying to disrupt it. Yeah,
And and this is one of the things I've been
thinking about a lot recently of this seems to be
(35:41):
a very consistent thing, which is it like the two
things that are guaranteed to like just have a hammer
drop on you if you touch them is pipelines and ports.
And that that was that was something you know, we
we've talked a lot on here about pipeline protests, um.
But I was interested in what you too think about
(36:06):
because this this is like a very particular moment right
now in what you're dealing with all these logistics chain failures.
And I was wondering if, if you do, you think
there's anything that we can learn from how your versions
of the sort of of port demonstrations worked for potentially
trying to leverage that in the future, especially with like
(36:29):
contract negotiations for port workers in Oakland coming up next year. Yeah,
that's a great question. You know, that is this old
saying and the I w W direct action gets goods, right,
and I think it really boils down to that it's
building up uh you know, mass movements and social movements
from below that rely on direct action, that rely on
(36:53):
civil resistance, civil disobedience. Um yeah, and the pipeline protests
that have been ongoing where Indigenous people have been on
the front lines of that for many, many years now.
I mean, the kind of repression and surveillance that we
face really pales in comparison to the kinds of you know,
(37:13):
surveillance of repression that folks were facing at Standing Rock
for example. Um. You know, I think, of course, one
of the well one of the main differences is that
it was primarily the military you know, with us, right
that was surveilling us, because this is very specifically, you know,
(37:35):
a war issue and a military issue. Um. But yeah,
I mean I think, um, you know, like I think
there's a big questions like what what do we have
to do? That's that's new And to me, I say,
you know, for both that kind of militant action, but
also for the labor movements, like it's not you know,
we don't have to reinvent the wheel. There are things
(37:57):
that have tried and true track record of getting the
goods and that is you know, these more disruptive kind
of actions and movements. Um, and so one of them
would be you know, I guess my suggestion would be
to like go back to the basics. And even like
I would say, now, you know this, remember this at
(38:18):
a time when like Facebook was around, right, like, but
we weren't really using that for our organizing. We really
relied on like face to face meetings, you know, phone
calls and building up trust with people and building up
our capacity to like take actions and make change. You know,
I think I'm not saying throw out everything that you know,
(38:39):
that at least some of the good that social media
has to offer, but like I think going beyond that
and going back to these older tactics. And then for
the labor movement, like the big thing is you know,
and it's just like a bigger question for for mainstream
unions in particular, I mean, they're that the whole idea
of like union contracts is that workers also lose a lot. Yeah,
(39:02):
they get some things, but uh, business owners and bosses
have rights carved out in in those contracts. And with
the longshore workers, I mean, the difficult thing with that
of course, is like there would be some symbolic strikes that,
of course, like longshore workers have done and continue to do,
you know, around like the war Iraq historically supporting movie
(39:24):
a bou Jamal mayde a, etcetera, like in Oakland, Um,
but they have some things for that written into their contracts,
and you know, for all these other like unions, it's like, well,
you know, we can't strike at all for for the
next two years, the next three years, whatever the life
of the contract is. Like, I think it's a bigger
question and challenge for the labor movement to move beyond
(39:47):
that and not be putting this strait jacket of contracts
like that. Yeah, I think that that, particularly, like the
the no strike clause part of contracts, I think an
interesting thing because it I don't know, there's not I mean,
there are some unions that will actually do stuff around
(40:08):
fighting it, but mostly people just sort of don't care.
And I think you wind up in a situation where
it seems like you you kind of have to plan
your tactics around when contract negotiations are happening, because otherwise
you can't actually get people to do anything more in
like a one day symbolic strike. Yeah, and or you
know the challenges, like, you know, we have this great
(40:29):
American tradition that's not unique to the US. It's universal really,
and it's one that resonates with me breaking the law
right and like we're you know, we're like civil disobedience.
That is that what we were doing in the streets
and blocking the ports. We were breaking the law and
we knew it. And that's what the civil rights movement,
the Black freedom movement did in in the nineties sixties.
(40:50):
But like we have recent examples of workers breaking the
law and mass like the West Virginia teacher strikes that
have been a few years ago, like teachers in every
single county in that state went on strike. They broke
the law and and they want something out of that.
And I think that's what we really need to encourage people,
(41:12):
is this idea of breaking out of like the norm
and and breaking the laws which you know, the laws
that are in place, which are not there to you know,
expand our freedom. There there too, contract it. Yeah. One
of one of my friends kind of joke about what
was the exact line. It was, it's it's only illegal
(41:33):
if you get caught, and it only matters if you lose,
which I think is a good way of thinking about
both breaking. Yeah, and you know, yeah, I think it's
also like it's worth mentioning that like the other sides,
the law doesn't matter to them at all, Like they
just tear it up and like light it on fire constantly.
(41:54):
So don't don't bind yourself if if you can, if
you can, not get caught and not like good a
prison for the rest of your life. Don't bind yourself
by a bunch of like paper that the other side
just doesn't care about. Yeah, And that's an excellent point,
because that's the big thing, you know, with the army
and law enforcement in general, like surveillance of us. They
(42:16):
were in the police just their actions, their brazen actions
on the street, like the riot police. Um, they were
just breaking the law all the time. They absolutely have
a deep visceral hatred of the Bill of Rights, of
civil rights and civil liberties. And so there were a
number of, you know, court cases that sprung out of um,
(42:39):
you know, this movement. There was a case called Panagocus Vitari.
Another Juliana Panagoucus was another PMR member co plaintiff in
that case, and you know, is it a case against
the army that you know, we we waged and brought
up to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and you know,
eventually lost and it could have brought it to the
(43:00):
Supreme Court but didn't. But you know, like the the
other thing is like the violation of the posse Commentatus Act.
It was a whole other thing. You know, we don't
have to get like so tied up into like the
legalistic thing. But like the point your point is valid,
Like they don't care about the laws that are already there.
They'll they'll just intentionally break them, break their own laws
(43:21):
that they have set up, and you know, they'll just
get a slap on the wrist because that's really all
that's all that happens to them. I think, I think
I think that's a good note to end on break
the law. It's fake. It's also bad. Um. Do you
do have anything you want to plug other than that,
other than you know, encouraging people to break the cage
(43:44):
your local port? Yeah, yeah, I mean I think it's
you know, I guess just encourage people to do is
you know, it sounds like what were you're doing by
having us on the show, and like there are some
in our very recent history, um, you know, movements and
(44:05):
winds that we all as activists today can still learn from.
And I think part of that, um you know, I
don't want to call us elders because we're not that old,
but like one part of that is like making sure
like our movements are still like a multi generational and
like we we learned from each other and also as
(44:25):
as Juliana and I did, like I mentioned earlier, like
we learned from the movements of the past, sts, the
Black Panthers, the Black Freedom Movement, etcetera. Um, but there's
a lot that you know, these these struggles I think
have to offer us today. All right, thank thank you,
Thank you both for talking coming down and talking with us.
(44:46):
You're for having us. Thank you. Well, this is this
has when it could happen here find us at happened
here pod on Twitter, Instagram, and the rest of our
stuff is at closon media at the same somewhat accursed
social media places. I don't know why I'm saying somewhat,
they're just a cursed yeah see you next time whenever
(45:10):
that is it could happen. Here is a production of
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Visit our website cool zone media dot com, or check
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for It could happen here, updated monthly at cool zone
(45:31):
media dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.
All right, welcome to it could happen here a podcast
about things falling apart and also sometimes about how things
have been falling apart for a while now. And today
we're gonna talk about how things were also bad in
falling apart in the two thousands, which a profoundly cursed
time period. And specifically we're going to talk about I
(00:27):
think a part of the anti war movement that does
not get much attention, um, which is the port militarization
resistance that happened sort of two seven And with us
today to talk about this is two people who were
part of this movement if Juliana Newhouser, hello, and Brendan
(00:48):
Maslaska's done, Yeah, both of whom were organizers and activists
while this was going on. Yeah, and I thank thank you,
thank you both for being here. Yeah, thanks for having
us so. Yeah. As I was saying a bit in
the intro, I think that this is a part of
the anti war movement that is not very well known.
I think I think a lot of people know about
the initial stuff happened in twos three, and people might
(01:10):
know about some of the stuff that was happening against
the war in Afghanistan, but right when it started. But
I don't think most people know that it, like you know,
even after jails and three sort of doesn't work, that
it continues and it continues sort of informs that are
that are very interesting. And so I guess I want
(01:31):
you to to start out. I want to ask how
we sort of got from the early part of the
anti war movement into this and how you got involved.
I would say that there's this narrative about the women
against the word Iraq, that there is the largest protests
in human history, at least at that point. I don't
(01:52):
know if it's still true against the invasion, and then
it didn't work and everyone kind of went home and
ended there, and to a certain extent that's true, but
like you said, the people that didn't go home went
an interesting direction. And UM, so at the time there
(02:14):
were direct action was not as acceptable as it is now.
The protest this movement was largely dominated either by UM
big liberal coalitions or PSL front groups that were basically
indistinguishable and what they actually did, which was basically nothing
(02:36):
and in the best of cases and then the worst
of cases, counterinsurgency. UM. But then there were small groups
of people that at when we saw that it didn't work,
and we saw that these giant, peaceful marches from one
part of town to another, um or voting for John
(03:00):
Carry or whatever, it didn't work, that we started to
look for other options. Yeah, and uh, you know, I
got involved. Um you know, I'd say, what the anti
war movement, That idea of how how war is unjust
was really talked to me from a very young age.
(03:20):
I mean my parents were you know, children of the sixties,
and they had family members fighting in Vietnam and um,
you know, friends dying in Vietnam and we're against the
protests back then. So I grew up hearing these stories
and of course stories from family members, particularly one of
my grandfather's, both of them who were veterans in World
(03:41):
War Two. One of them was a marine and the
you know, in the Pacific Theater and still into his seventies,
eighties and nineties until his final days, was just dealing
with horrific PTSD and had always taught me from a
young age never to get involved. So I, you know,
and I remember when when the very clearly, um you know,
(04:02):
I'm sure it's on everyone's minds now, and when the
invasion of Afghanistan started, when the invasion of a Rock started.
I was at that that massive demonstration in Washington, d C.
That Julianna just mentioned, and you know I ended up.
I'm from Utica, New York. I went to a rural
high school, uh just outside of of Utica, you know,
(04:25):
russ Bell generally speaking, impoverished and also very conservative area
of New York. And you know, I had the recruiters
bothering me, military recruiters in high school, recruiting my friends,
and they were just everywhere in the hallways. Uh So
it was very present um with me. When I was younger,
(04:47):
I moved out to Olympia, Washington, two thousand six, and
that's one a new student activist group, Students for a
Democratic Society, was launched. That's how Julianna and I first met.
We were both in separate chapters of that new organization
in the Pacific Northwest. And the port protests started just
(05:10):
just a few months after I moved out there in
in Olympia in two thousand six. So wait to declare
for this for a second, because I've never quite been
clear on this history. So there was a second st
like Students for Democratic idea that was like unrelated to
the first one. Yeah, they're born briefly um at the
end of the bushop Manastery. That that explains a lot
(05:33):
of things that it's very baffling. We're not that old. Yeah,
we're definitely in the in the second uh, you know,
the rebirth of it um. So you know, I think
it it took on some things in spirit um you know,
but also was i'd say different in many ways, and
it was very active to me at least, it was
very exciting to be a member of the new STS
(05:56):
because they're over a dozen chapters in the Pacific Northwest
and was a great way to connect with young activists
all over the US. So STS is emerging in this
time period. One of the other things I was interested
about is something someone you were talking about in in
in the early part of this, which has to do
with the way that these giants both the sort of
(06:17):
Answer Coalition PSL Frank Group and I guess the I
s O was still around back then coalitions work versus
how like anything else worked. So so what was was
STS sort of like consciously set up and in opposition
to those groups. I don't think it was conscious, but
there was just like I mean, these days, I mean
like there's a lot of controversy around PSL with like
(06:39):
anarchist versus tanky politics. None of that mattered at that time, Like,
none of that mattered. The only thing that mattered was
the answer, which is the PSO Front group was completely
fucking useless. Like they completely indistinguishable from any peace police
um liberal democratic front group. There was literally no difference,
(07:02):
just in terms of their aesthetics maybe like is there
a donkey or a hammer and sickle on something. That's
the only difference we saw. So I don't I don't
think there was. It wasn't There wasn't like a conscious
like political opposite attention to it. It's just like they're
not doing anything, and and so we had to look
(07:23):
in another direction. Actually, you know, it's hard to keep
track of the alphabet soup of authilitarian communist groups at times,
but this was actually answer for those who don't recall
it was a front group for the Workers World Party,
the WWT, which yeah, I mean, it's it's hard to
keep track, right, Yeah, that's the same thing, like I think,
(07:43):
so so okay, So for people who are sort of
unaware of this, there's a network of connected but sometimes
feuding like weird stalonist cults that kind of kind of
like they hold on through the eighties and nineties and
they start sort of rebuilding again around the anti one
movements in that period. That that's the PSLs of the
DUP's answer, like, and I think that's like most like
(08:06):
modern anti war groups are also still these people, which
is incredibly depressing something they want to talk a bit
about it towards the end of this, but yet just
for people who have not spent the last half decade
in the in the trenches of extremely weird anti war politics. So, yeah,
(08:27):
so I think we should get into how the sort
of the first action starts in Olympia. Yeah so, and
there were actually a couple of actions that happened um
in the year proceeding that, you know, before I moved
out to Olympia in two thousand and six, it was
(08:48):
not yet under the banner of PMR port Militarization Resistance.
That was a name that was officially coined in uh,
you know, and in May and June of two thousand six. So,
just to give you an idea, Olympia, it's it's a
college town or at the Evergreen State Colleges there. It's
(09:10):
also the capital of Washington State, so you have that
going on. It's also a military town. It's a little
over twenty miles south of what we called Fort Lewis.
It's now called j B l M. J BLOM or
Joint Base Lewis McCord. It's an Army and Air Force
base now it's one base. Um So, yet all these
you know, different kind of elements, uh in you know,
(09:31):
in tandem in in that town and the public port.
The Port of Olympia is one of about seventy years
so public ports in the state of Washington, some of
which are I mean, they're used for all kinds of things,
you know, for commercial, private industry, but also the military
and the US government. Uh So, uh you know, I
(09:54):
heard from someone I don't even remember who that the
military was sending a ship to the Port of Olympia
in late May of two thousand six. And this happened
for ten or so days, and it was just kind
of a natural instinct for a whole bunch of us
to go down to the Port of Olympia. It was
(10:18):
it was the war machine in our backyard. And the
idea was to just block the vehicles. It started out
with just like less than ten people number folks getting arrested,
and that very rapidly culminated into larger protests. Every single
day um AN active blockades people, those of us like
(10:38):
Julian and myself and other folks using civil disobedience or
what we prefer to call civil resistance to try and
stop or at the very least slow down these striker
vehicles and to give folks an idea of what a
striker vehicle is. You can look it up online, but
it's kind of halfway between um, you know, a tank
(10:58):
and humby. It doesn't have the slats you know that
a tank would have. It's you know. And they were
being used in both Iraq and Afghanistan for for raids
of residential areas. They were really on the front lines
of the war in in both those countries, and that's
what we were trying to stop. I only got involved
later um because I wasn't living in Olympia at the time.
(11:21):
UM I was in another STS chapter, but my roommate
was from Olympia and he had been involved in that
first round of protests in Olympia before moving up to Ballingham.
And so like hearing his story, it's got me very
excited because just like finally someone's someone's doing something like
(11:42):
someone's they're not just like you know, it's like everything
else was just so liberal. Take whether it's marching from
one place to another or writing to your congress people
or occupying their office. It was like asking someone else
to do something which you knew from the beginning they
were never going to do. And finally this was finally
(12:07):
someone was like actually getting into it. UM. I think
the first one of the things that happened here was
that um they started to avoid UM. There's it was
kind of a geographical thing. I think, UM for people
who either don't know Washington Washington, or because they're normal
(12:31):
people don't know like the port areas of these cities
very well because it's like like unless you're a long sherman, like,
why you would you go down to like the port
of Tacoma. There's nothing there. UM. But they kept moving
it around because um Olympia is also not very big
(12:54):
and UM, so it's there's really only two roads into
the port, which is very small, and so it was
it's very easy to block it. UM. And so then
I think The first time that I got involved UM
was in two thousands seven when they had moved it
(13:15):
because they kept moving it around to try and switch
things up. And wait, before they're moving the ship around, No,
it's like they had to make a military ship met.
They would UM. It's like like once the ship it
was in the port, they would just have to go
through with it. But then UM, you know, it's like
(13:37):
everything every six months or so they had to make
another military ship met and they would change the port
usually each time, UM, to try and let basically to
avoid us. It doesn't seem like this is like normal crap. Um.
The first time I had gone down was in um Tacoma,
which is a much much, much more industrialized port than Olympia.
(13:58):
It's you know, it's like a big port, more normal part,
I guess, And that one was honestly pretty crazy, UM,
because you're just trapped in this giant industrial maze basically
at the mercy of the riot cops. The best success
we had was definitely at the port of Olympia. UM.
(14:19):
I think the in two thousand seven in Olympia was
definitely as the glory moment, which was when people were
able to on and off like actually hold the port
and control it in the exits. Yeah, and I wanna,
(14:41):
you know, just emphasize that, like the the one the
military changing their approach right to avoid us so jumping
from port to port with these different shipments. They actually
went so far because we were so successful as a
movement in the Pacific Northwest to ship striker vehicles by
rail out of the Pacific Northwest and even going so
(15:04):
far as to ports in Texas. Um. But you know
when one thing that we did is that we built
up contacts with other activists with long shore workers all
up and down the West coast in California. There are
other activists were connected with in Texas, Hawaii, New Jersey,
and New York. There is a desire in the anti
war movement. Uh. And and you know, in some extent
(15:27):
maybe it's like it was small, but some folks in
the labor movement, especially in Oakland where the I LW
the you know, long shore workers Union, it's a lot
more militant than say in a place like Olympia. UM.
But yeah, I mean people wanted to replicate this model because,
as Juliana said, we wore successful in two thousand and seven.
(15:48):
We shut down the port of Olympia for a total
of it was essentially two days. They were not they're
not shipping anything in or out. We set up blockades,
were willing to throw down with the police in the street.
And one of the things that was cool about that
blockade is that one of the there's two entrances, like
I said, and one was completely blockaded, and then the
(16:10):
other one, UM, we had like a moving I don't
really even know what it was, but something with wheels
that we could move in and out, um to open
it up, and so then we could allow like civilian
cargo to move in and out, but then like we
feel it back in place, um to block military shipments.
So we were able to actually like stopped him from
(16:32):
like what while in in in that oneted to come.
We able to actually like stopped him from moving the
self all together. Would you when sheally cleared up on
the police and they moved it, we would eventually get
cleared out by the police. It's like we were never
able to It's like we're we we held it for
two days. That those protests took place over a series
of two weeks or more or less. Um, we were
(16:54):
only able to fully hold it for two days before
eventually they would clear us out. But one of the
things is that it this does it did create problems
for the army because when you work with a port,
you know, it's like you've got like a certain time
(17:14):
frame that you've contracted with the port to do whatever
it is because you're going to do and it's not
too happy if you take longer every thing you said
you would or yeah, yeah. And the other thing I
want to add is, you know, I think the other
really important element with this whole movement going on is
(17:35):
the Pacific Northwest was um it is specifically western Washington,
where the two of us were living. It was it was,
you know, the center and in a sense it was
the heart of the anti war movement in the country
at that time. One because of this militant direct action
that we were, you know, we were building up in
(17:58):
the streets and trying to throw wrench and the gears
of the war machine to to at the verily slowed down,
which in some ways we did, but we're up against
so much. But the other added element, of course is
the g I resistance and the soldiers who are resisting
I've all also known as the Rock Veterans against the
War was very active there. They set up a g
(18:21):
I coffeehouse across you know, literally across the street, uh,
you know, the gates for one of the entrances for
Fort Louis. Um, there are a whole bunch of soldiers
that were going a wall. We had friends who were
active duty soldiers who had fought in you know, Iraq
and Afghanistan that were a wall and they were hiding,
(18:43):
you know, refusing to go back into the striker brigades
that joined us in port militarization Resistance. Uh. There are
a whole you know, long list of soldiers that were
very publicly saying, you know, I'm refusing to fight in
Iraq or Afghanistan for you know, various reasons. And so
we are very much connected with this movement too. And
(19:07):
I think the higher ups in the military they're they're
hyper aware of that. They studied us very well, um,
you know, to the point of actually spying on us.
So that's like a whole other element of this story too.
(19:29):
One of the things that I've heard from talking to
other people were involved this was that like wow, like
during these protests, like the level of police militarization just
like skyrocketed. And like I remember I was talking frend
about this. It was like, you know, if you go
back and look at like old system of a down videos,
you know, they'll they'll have these things. Yeah, and you'll
see these you see these riot police, and like you
(19:51):
look at them and it's like these people they look
so much less armored than like the people that we
have now. And one of the things that I thought
was interesting about this was that like this is I
think one of the points where you start getting the
modern riot police showing up that are just like, you know,
completely encased in like armor. And yeah, I want to
(20:12):
talk about just like the police response to this, because
I think that's that's another thing I think. I think
there's never there's a kind of a tendency to sort
of project back what the police look like just onto
the whole history of police, and I think it's like
it's it's it's gotten worse even in the last twenty years. Yeah,
I mean, so I lived downtown in Olympia and probably
(20:36):
just like a six minute walk away from the Port
of Olympia and and also very conveniently just a few
blocks away from the police station, so so lucky. So
we actually saw you know, we could see from the
front of down on the road, down the sidewalk from
the front of our house. Uh, some of the military
shipments going by. And we we we did see that absolutely,
(20:59):
and at at times it was it was terrifying. I
mean I lived in an activist house we jokingly called
h Q because that's just you know where because of
its proximity to the port, that's where a number of
us were having meetings, uh, you know, around these protests
early on in two thousand six, and um, yeah, I
(21:20):
mean we like they look like RoboCop and it's something
I had I you know, I hadn't like I had
been to like mass marches and demonstrations like the r
n C protests and d NC protests in Boston, New
York and like in Washington d C uh and so
I would see these like riot cops. But they were
(21:42):
I mean ubiquitous in the support protests. It was like
a whole army of them that was sent out. I
mean when Juliana said that things got kind of crazy
at the Port of Tacoma protests, I mean there was
like a police riot, you know, like the cops went
absolutely nuts there, shooting people with tear gas and pepper
balls and and brutalizing people. I had never before witnessed
(22:05):
anything like that. And it got to the point in
you know, in Olympia where we we kind of knew
early on that we were being traced by the police
to the extent where, you know, one friend of ours
was followed from our house to the bus station to
take a bus to school by the police and then
was stopped and essentially assaulted by them on the street.
(22:27):
And we had another fellow activists and you know, a
roommate of mine who is going out to driving out
with a few friends, uh few fellow activists from Olympia
to Aberdeen, about an hour's drive. So Aberdeen, there's a
port of Gray's Harbor there, pretty conservative small town. It's
where Kurt Cobain is from, home of the famous Kurt
(22:49):
Cobain teams. McDonald's. They served billions and and billions served
and that one McDonald's and Kurt Cobain's McDonalds. But yeah,
I mean, the you know, they they were they were following.
They had orders the Washington State Patrol two, um, you know,
(23:09):
pull over a car full full of known anarchists. There
was alert gone out to all the police departments. They
pulled them, They pulled him over, they made him walk
the line. He was had you know, wasn't drinking and
no drugs, like nothing in his system, but they he
was driving under like one mile per hour under the
speed limit. They arrested him for d d W I
(23:32):
you know, eventually fought the chargers, sued um uh and
you know when a big settlement out of all that.
But that's just one example of many of the lengths
that the police would go to h It was pretty severe.
Even there's a house of a bunch of anarchists, younger
anarchists called a pitch Pipe info shop in Tacoma, and
(23:52):
that was also a big target. The police were swarming
around them all the time. They had like camera set
up like specifically just a side the infishop, Like there
weren't Surrens cameras there before, but then it was like,
oh well, just conveniently put them on this one specific
street corner. Yeah. I think like that was one of
the things I was reading about this is you have
that stuff. And then also I think one of the
(24:14):
steers parts of this is that like Army intelligence gets involved,
and yeah, do you want to talk about the man
named quote unquote John Jacob, who was in fact not
that Yeah, so, uh, you know, I'm curious what what
memories you have of our our good dear friend John
Jacob Julian. I don't think I ever actually knew him
(24:34):
in person, but he was the moderator of the list Serve,
wasn't he. Yes, she's one of the moderators of our
list serves. Now that I look back on it, I'm
like the port Militarization Resistance the SERUB was always just
like this dramatic ship show, and it's like, looking back
on it, I was like, oh, a cop that did nothing,
(24:59):
that absolutely nothing to like established order or uh if
that was on purpose. Yeah, so I think there's definitely
something that happened, Like, you know, looking back from our
vantage point today, it's like, Okay, things make a little
more sense at the time though. And we're in this movement, right,
and so that means like meeting people where they're at.
(25:22):
We find all kinds of people that would like want
to join the movement, like I, like I said earlier,
like active duty soldiers that were joining. So I met
this guy named John Jacob, and he sent an email
out to me. I was one of the contacts for
the Olympia STS group, and it's like, hey, you know,
there's kind of like a parent organization that's some old
like elder activists or in uh to kind of mentor
(25:45):
us called Movement for a Democratic Society, very small, never
really took off, but like, I'm interested in getting involved.
We met up in public and he seemed like an
alright guy. I mean he was, um, you know, forty
is early forties. He had told me, like, you know,
been in the military for years, and he actually still
worked at Fort Lewis, so he was always open about that,
(26:08):
but it only went that far. He didn't ever tell
us what he actually did there, and it wasn't abnormal
for you know, we have many folks that worked active duty,
you know, on base and civilian civilian roles or soldiers.
As I mentioned that, we're in port militarization resistance. So
he gets involved, and he gets really involved with Port
(26:30):
Militarization resistance. He goes to protests, He gets pretty close
with this group of anarchists I mentioned who lived in Tacoma,
UM and he seemed like a really solid guy to
to most of us. UM. And you know, things happen
as as we progress and you know, as the military
responded to our uh, you know how effective we wore
(26:52):
in the anti war movement and the g I resistance
movement by changing their tactics. We noticed that a when
we first started the protests, UM, we we had the
ability to catch the police by surprise by setting up
you know, blockade here, we're having a surprise action there
at this time, or this port, etcetera, etcetera. And as
(27:15):
time progressed, we found out that you know, we were
having these making these decisions for tactics in our strategy.
We thought that we're in private and then for whatever reason,
the police kind of knew about where we were going
to be before we even showed up. And that I
remember that Paly happening in two thousand seven the Port
of Olympia. Yeah, and the COMMA. There are a lot
(27:38):
of things like that. Like there is one time when
there are like some people who had a meeting in
a closed room, like all there they had taken the
batteries out of their cell phones. They had simply written
on the whiteboard the time and place they're going to
have their next meeting, which is going to be in
a diner near the port, and so that way if
(27:58):
like if for any reason the room with bugs, it
wouldn't be caught up because it was just written on aboard.
And then it was like a small meeting too, so
it's like there weren't and then when they got to
that dinner, there was like full of cops like clearly
waiting for them. Like at that point, it's like it
(28:20):
was very clear there was some some level of infiltration involved. Yeah,
and I think we are from early on, like you know,
we we knew our history. I mean, you know, one
of our our fellow activists and p Mars and a
friend of ours, Peter Boehmer's professor at the Evergreen State College.
He was in the original Sts back in the sixties,
(28:40):
and you know, he was essentially a political prisoner for
a couple of years in both Massachusetts and California. Um,
I mean the FEDS essentially tried to assassinate him. Um
back in in the seventies when he was active in
the anti war movement in San Diego. Like we knew,
you know, former Black Panthers, and we read our history,
(29:00):
so we knew about the history of cointelpro the counterintelligence
program of the six season seventies and the war on
the anti war and civil rights and black power, American
Indian movements, etcetera. Um, so we knew, you know, just
intuitively early on. Uh. But there's one thing that happened
in particular which prompted some of us to file for
(29:20):
a public records request with the City of Olympia and
another activists walking down the street in Olympia. I'm a
member of the Wobblies Industrial Workers of the World Union,
and we had like a one of those metal newspaper
boxes downtown and it was locked to a poll um,
you know, with a bike lock. And there are some
city workers there with a pickup truck and they're cutting
(29:42):
the lock to the newspaper box and they threw it
in their pickup truck and so are you know, this
friend of ours was there. It was like, what the hell,
what are you doing? What's going on? And one of
the workers just kind of strugged and was like, I
don't know, the police told us to do this, and
they drove off like they stole you know, are essentially
like union property or whatever. Um. So we had you know,
(30:03):
our our lawyer friend Larry Hilda's and the National Lawyer's
Guild you know, call and kind of threatened the city
and and then a number of us got together like, hey,
you know, let's do like a public records requests UM
with the City of of Olympia freedom of information law right,
and so we did. And the request was, you know,
(30:24):
just requesting any all information the city had UM, any
exchanges communications by email, etcetera, UM between the police and
like other agencies about anarchists, I WW, students for a
Democratic Society UM. And their initial search that the city
clerk did yielded something like thirty thousand responses. So she's like, okay,
(30:48):
I gotta narrow this down. And I don't know, I
was working on the request at the time and for
some reason, like I don't know where sport protests are
near a military based communications between the army, not thinking anything.
And so the initial responses who actually got um you know,
maybe a hundred hundred thirty years so different documents, just
(31:10):
copies of emails, etcetera. That UM, we're little puzzle pieces
for this massive puzzle. And it was just a few
of them. Uh, and it was you know, there was
an email talking about our guy in the Navy going
to a PMR meeting to get some intel. Uh, there's
you know, all kinds of things like that. There are
(31:31):
a few emails in particular, UM and the email address
was something like John John J. Towry at you know,
Army dot us whatever the email address was. So there's
a crew of activists that got together, put their heads together,
did some research quietly for a few months, and eventually
found out by publicly accessible information like voter registration records
(31:55):
and also finding out something about like a motorcycle club
called like that I don't know, like the Brown Beauque
Club or the Brown Butt Club or something, and and
the like. Found out that this John Towery guy that
was in this motorcycle club and had his you know,
was registered to vote outside of Tacoma, in this town there.
It was actually John Jacob. It was this guy that
(32:18):
we thought was a fellow activist, an anarchist UM and
and a friend, you know, I thought he was a
personal friend of mine. Turns out he was actually essentially
an Army intelligence officer working for something called the Force
Protection Unit at uh AT Joint Face Joint based Lewis
McCord and also working with a whole list of different
(32:41):
agencies and what turned out to be like a massive
surveillance network that was national in scope. This guy was
sent by the Army along with many others to infiltrate us,
to aspire on us, and to disrupt us. It was huge. Yeah,
(33:06):
and that there's one of the things that have always
so much really steak. So like I learned about from
militarization resistance basically because I was like poking around the
history of like informists and I ran into this and
I was like what because and then that was what
I thought. One of the things I thought was really
interesting about this is that like, like I think that
this chapter of the anti war movement is even on
the left, is like not very well known, but like
(33:28):
the seriousness is which the Army seems to have taken
itsily is really remarkable. Yeah, I'm wondering what you to
think about that. One thing we have to emphasize is
is that we were not a large group of people. Yeah, Like, um,
the number of people who are actively involved in portmoloitaris agast.
My assistance at its peak was how many people do
(33:49):
you think it was Brandon. Well, it depends. I mean
I'd say they're probably like at its peak, maybe probably
four year to fifty people that would like consistently show
up to things, you know, maybe a slightly smaller, very
core group. But we would have demonstrations with like and
then like four people you know, yeah, and like that
would be like the max like there is it's like
(34:13):
there are like the peaceful like kind of like support actions.
You know, you would get like a couple hundred people
and then like for the stuff like where it's like
the first night that that the part of the entrance
to the part of Olympia was occupied, it would be like, Um,
(34:35):
these were not These were not very large groups of people. Um,
I feel like and like I said, it's like one
thing that we need to keep in mind was that, um,
the peace police were much stronger back then than they
are now nowadays. Lating like as we saw last year,
it's like people in the US of Blurn to throw down,
(34:57):
but that was not the case at the time. And
so this is a very very small group of people. Um.
I think we accomplished a lot from with how small
it was. Um, if it had been larger, it would
have accomplished way more. Um, but even that small core
(35:19):
of like people with maybe expanding out to like a
larger group of a couple of hundred, had them that
scared that they went that far. They're trying to disrupt it. Yeah,
And and this is one of the things I've been
thinking about a lot recently of this seems to be
(35:41):
a very consistent thing, which is it like the two
things that are guaranteed to like just have a hammer
drop on you if you touch them is pipelines and ports.
And that that was that was something you know, we
we've talked a lot on here about pipeline protests, um.
But I was interested in what you too think about
(36:06):
because this this is like a very particular moment right
now in what you're dealing with all these logistics chain failures.
And I was wondering if, if you do, you think
there's anything that we can learn from how your versions
of the sort of of port demonstrations worked for potentially
trying to leverage that in the future, especially with like
(36:29):
contract negotiations for port workers in Oakland coming up next year. Yeah,
that's a great question. You know, that is this old
saying and the I w W direct action gets goods, right,
and I think it really boils down to that it's
building up uh you know, mass movements and social movements
from below that rely on direct action, that rely on
(36:53):
civil resistance, civil disobedience. Um yeah, and the pipeline protests
that have been ongoing where Indigenous people have been on
the front lines of that for many, many years now.
I mean, the kind of repression and surveillance that we
face really pales in comparison to the kinds of you know,
(37:13):
surveillance of repression that folks were facing at Standing Rock
for example. Um. You know, I think, of course, one
of the well one of the main differences is that
it was primarily the military you know, with us, right
that was surveilling us, because this is very specifically, you know,
(37:35):
a war issue and a military issue. Um. But yeah,
I mean I think, um, you know, like I think
there's a big questions like what what do we have
to do? That's that's new And to me, I say,
you know, for both that kind of militant action, but
also for the labor movements, like it's not you know,
we don't have to reinvent the wheel. There are things
(37:57):
that have tried and true track record of getting the
goods and that is you know, these more disruptive kind
of actions and movements. Um, and so one of them
would be you know, I guess my suggestion would be
to like go back to the basics. And even like
I would say, now, you know this, remember this at
(38:18):
a time when like Facebook was around, right, like, but
we weren't really using that for our organizing. We really
relied on like face to face meetings, you know, phone
calls and building up trust with people and building up
our capacity to like take actions and make change. You know,
I think I'm not saying throw out everything that you know,
(38:39):
that at least some of the good that social media
has to offer, but like I think going beyond that
and going back to these older tactics. And then for
the labor movement, like the big thing is you know,
and it's just like a bigger question for for mainstream
unions in particular, I mean, they're that the whole idea
of like union contracts is that workers also lose a lot. Yeah,
(39:02):
they get some things, but uh, business owners and bosses
have rights carved out in in those contracts. And with
the longshore workers, I mean, the difficult thing with that
of course, is like there would be some symbolic strikes that,
of course, like longshore workers have done and continue to do,
you know, around like the war Iraq historically supporting movie
(39:24):
a bou Jamal mayde a, etcetera, like in Oakland, Um,
but they have some things for that written into their contracts,
and you know, for all these other like unions, it's like, well,
you know, we can't strike at all for for the
next two years, the next three years, whatever the life
of the contract is. Like, I think it's a bigger
question and challenge for the labor movement to move beyond
(39:47):
that and not be putting this strait jacket of contracts
like that. Yeah, I think that that, particularly, like the
the no strike clause part of contracts, I think an
interesting thing because it I don't know, there's not I mean,
there are some unions that will actually do stuff around
(40:08):
fighting it, but mostly people just sort of don't care.
And I think you wind up in a situation where
it seems like you you kind of have to plan
your tactics around when contract negotiations are happening, because otherwise
you can't actually get people to do anything more in
like a one day symbolic strike. Yeah, and or you
know the challenges, like, you know, we have this great
(40:29):
American tradition that's not unique to the US. It's universal really,
and it's one that resonates with me breaking the law
right and like we're you know, we're like civil disobedience.
That is that what we were doing in the streets
and blocking the ports. We were breaking the law and
we knew it. And that's what the civil rights movement,
the Black freedom movement did in in the nineties sixties.
(40:50):
But like we have recent examples of workers breaking the
law and mass like the West Virginia teacher strikes that
have been a few years ago, like teachers in every
single county in that state went on strike. They broke
the law and and they want something out of that.
And I think that's what we really need to encourage people,
(41:12):
is this idea of breaking out of like the norm
and and breaking the laws which you know, the laws
that are in place, which are not there to you know,
expand our freedom. There there too, contract it. Yeah. One
of one of my friends kind of joke about what
was the exact line. It was, it's it's only illegal
(41:33):
if you get caught, and it only matters if you lose,
which I think is a good way of thinking about
both breaking. Yeah, and you know, yeah, I think it's
also like it's worth mentioning that like the other sides,
the law doesn't matter to them at all, Like they
just tear it up and like light it on fire constantly.
(41:54):
So don't don't bind yourself if if you can, if
you can, not get caught and not like good a
prison for the rest of your life. Don't bind yourself
by a bunch of like paper that the other side
just doesn't care about. Yeah, And that's an excellent point,
because that's the big thing, you know, with the army
and law enforcement in general, like surveillance of us. They
(42:16):
were in the police just their actions, their brazen actions
on the street, like the riot police. Um, they were
just breaking the law all the time. They absolutely have
a deep visceral hatred of the Bill of Rights, of
civil rights and civil liberties. And so there were a
number of, you know, court cases that sprung out of um,
(42:39):
you know, this movement. There was a case called Panagocus Vitari.
Another Juliana Panagoucus was another PMR member co plaintiff in
that case, and you know, is it a case against
the army that you know, we we waged and brought
up to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and you know,
eventually lost and it could have brought it to the
(43:00):
Supreme Court but didn't. But you know, like the the
other thing is like the violation of the posse Commentatus Act.
It was a whole other thing. You know, we don't
have to get like so tied up into like the
legalistic thing. But like the point your point is valid,
Like they don't care about the laws that are already there.
They'll they'll just intentionally break them, break their own laws
(43:21):
that they have set up, and you know, they'll just
get a slap on the wrist because that's really all
that's all that happens to them. I think, I think
I think that's a good note to end on break
the law. It's fake. It's also bad. Um. Do you
do have anything you want to plug other than that,
other than you know, encouraging people to break the cage
(43:44):
your local port? Yeah, yeah, I mean I think it's
you know, I guess just encourage people to do is
you know, it sounds like what were you're doing by
having us on the show, and like there are some
in our very recent history, um, you know, movements and
(44:05):
winds that we all as activists today can still learn from.
And I think part of that, um you know, I
don't want to call us elders because we're not that old,
but like one part of that is like making sure
like our movements are still like a multi generational and
like we we learned from each other and also as
(44:25):
as Juliana and I did, like I mentioned earlier, like
we learned from the movements of the past, sts, the
Black Panthers, the Black Freedom Movement, etcetera. Um, but there's
a lot that you know, these these struggles I think
have to offer us today. All right, thank thank you,
Thank you both for talking coming down and talking with us.
(44:46):
You're for having us. Thank you. Well, this is this
has when it could happen here find us at happened
here pod on Twitter, Instagram, and the rest of our
stuff is at closon media at the same somewhat accursed
social media places. I don't know why I'm saying somewhat,
they're just a cursed yeah see you next time whenever
(45:10):
that is it could happen. Here is a production of
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Visit our website cool zone media dot com, or check
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(45:31):
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