Part One: Burglars vs the FBI: How the Catholic Left & Their Friends Exposed COINTELPRO

Margaret talks with journalist, activist and comedian Francesca Fiorentini about one of the greatest acts of nonviolent civil disobedience in US history.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, and welcome to cool people didical stuff, your weekly
dose of rabble rousers, revolutionaries, radicals, and alliteration. I couldn't
come up with a word for alliteration and start with our,
and then I thought about rewriting the entire thing to
be as instead. I'm your host, Margaret Kildre, and this
week I've got with me a rabble rouser herself, Francesco Fiorentini. Yes, alliteration, bitches. Francesco,

(00:26):
I didn't even think of that. Do you have a
middle name? Do you want it? I don't, yeah, but
it kind of like kind of ruins the rest. It's Kate,
so it's kind of a oh yeah, Francesca Kate Fiorentini.
But you know what else, Yeah, you can work on it.
I should Fate room. Oh god, so really middle name Fate?

(00:52):
Huh yeah, yeah it is what it is. My life's
great fate, all right. And if you're like, don't do
anything amazing with your life, you're just fucked. Yeah. This
is definitely me talking to the person at the bar
next to me at like three couple shots deep. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

(01:14):
How are you doing today? I'm all right, I'm chilling.
We got you know, my my, my six month old
baby is up hanging with her grandma, and you know,
we've got precious little time between now and when she
freaks the f out. So I'm just happy to be here.
And you know, because history shan't stop and cool people

(01:36):
who did cool things must be remembered. Yeah, and many
of the cool people were talking about today had children,
thank god. Yeah. A lot of people I don't know
whatever anyway, it seems are the abortionist because I'm also
down with that too. Yeah, no, I mean yeah, oh,
actually I don't want to ask some of these people
there anyway. Okay, So our producer is Sophie. How are

(01:57):
you doing, Sophie. I'm good. I'm excited. Francesca's here. Yeah. Yeah.
Our audio engineer is Ian. Everyone say Hi, Ian, Hi
Hi Ian, and our I didn't say yet high En.
Our theme music was written for us by a woman.
So today we're going to talk about what might be

(02:18):
the single most impactful moment of non violent resistance in
US history. Yes, for decades, no one knew who did it.
None of them were ever caught, which rules right now
in the news. As I was writing on working on
the script, You've got the government trying to get us
scare that China is spying on us through TikTok, and
I honestly don't worry about that because I know who

(02:40):
is spying on me as likely as not, and I
know who has a proven track record of spying on
dissidents and activists and kind of anyone. They want. The FBI,
the federal information. Yeah, they're kind of a big deal.
They're not so secret. They've sort of fallen off lately though,
you know, they're going yes step, it's so weird. They're

(03:01):
like targeting white people for the first time, which is
I don't know, like it's actually I feel like the
FBI has gone woke, you know what I'm saying, but
really switching it up anyway. Yes, I've heard of those mfers. Yeah.
The reason that we know about the spy and they
did was because of eight pacifists who broke into an

(03:22):
FBI office in nineteen seventy one and ransacked the place
and never got caught. Forty years later, about ten years ago,
now they came forward. So now we get to know
who did it, and it rules, and so I'm going
to tell you their story. Wait, wait what Okay, yeah
yeah wait what wait sorry this happened? Yeah yeah, the

(03:43):
way that cohent tel Oh, I'll get to it. I'll
get to it. Okay, okay, sorry, no, no beginning, the setting,
the stage. No no, no, no no no no no no no, no, twas,
I'm sorry. This is your job. No no no, You're
doing a good job of doing my job for me.
I was gonna ask, have you ever heard of the FBI?
But we've covered you have and I'm sure that they've
heard of you. Indeed, the precursor to the FBI. I

(04:06):
love doing the DNNN. I can't do the I can't
sing it as well as you, but I love the context.
That's like a big thing for me. So we're going
to go way back to nineteen o eight to start
this episode that takes place mostly in nineteen seventy one.
The precursor of the FBI is called the BOA, the
Bureau Investigation. It was launched in nineteen oh eight, and
it had had two purposes, mostly around international policing. You

(04:29):
want to get I'm just curious, what do you think
the two biggest hot topic issues that the precursor of
the FBI wants to do In nineteen oh eight. Oh god,
they definitely want Okay, so obviously former slave like formerly
enslaved people are on a rad's I feel like it's

(04:51):
like formerly enslaved people in Mexicans. It's actually that's interested
or maybe just like Irish. Where are we? I don't know, yeah, no, no, no.
There's so many things that the FBI. I kind of
set you up for failure here, and I'm sorry for that.
There's two things that the FBI cared about. One of
them was quote unquote white slavery. It only gets quotes

(05:14):
because I mean, slavery is bad, but they suddenly care
because it's about white people, right, And any other thing
is anarchists. The FBI got its start because a disgruntled
anarchist named Leon Shogosh killed President McKinley in nineteen oh
one over how McKinley's policies were affecting working class and
the US presidents were suddenly very concerned with this particular

(05:37):
threat because it, you know, could shoot them. So they
wanted a better system by which to monitor and repress
the movement, and so they needed more international policing. And
Roosevelt was really really concerned about this, and so he
made the Bureau of Investigation in nineteen oh eight, and
then so anarchists did that. So yeah, ironic that, like,

(05:58):
I mean, the anarchists and I used to call myself one.
I can't really call myself one anymore, can I? But
you know, ultimately I don't believe in states and borders
and police and all that. But like it's kind of
thank you. Yeah, they'll they will. Ha. It's ironic that
we created what we might hate most Yeah, to ourselves

(06:19):
were well, they did it to us. But whenever it
be true, it's yeah, no, and it's true. And it
wasn't even a very popular thing. When when show Gosh
killed McKinley, a lot of people are like, oh, yeah,
a little too far. Yeah, I mean it wasn't guiotine.
We didn't think anyone's going to use it. I mean
that's sort of like where we are now. We're like, oh,
I have guillotine earrings and I think they're super cute
and I'll like wear them out, but like, are we

(06:40):
doing this because I don't know if we should do this? Um,
yeah exactly. Yeah. So that's that's uh, that's oh yeah.
I actually originally pitched the show. I think as um
when it not this show. But when I first was
starting to talk about doing a history podcast, I was like,
they literally invent at international policing to stop anarchists. Why

(07:02):
is our history book? Why our history books boring? Yeah,
they shouldn't be. And and there's not this we'll get into.
This is not a specifically anarchist episode or whatever. But
in nineteen twenty four, this a young asshole named John
Edgar Hoover stepped in as director of the Boy and
then it became the do OI in nineteen thirty four,

(07:25):
and then the DUI No, I'm just kin, and then
it became the FBI in nineteen thirty five. Hoover stayed
in charge. He stayed in charge for a really long time.
He stayed in charge until his death in nineteen seventy two.
He was in charge for forty eight years of basically
the FBI, and that makes him, too date, the longest

(07:45):
serving appointed public official in US history. He's not a
really good person. I don't know if you knew this. No,
he's yeah, yeah, he's crap on a cob. Yeah. Unfortunately,
maybe you could do Francesca. There's no podcast that exists
solely just explore the lives, motivations, and horrendous acts of
bad people. Just never heard of one. No, it's only

(08:07):
this podcast about cool people. Yeah, that's a really good idea. Yeah,
that Sophie all about bad like bastard. I don't know,
you could call it like like under the bastard, Yeah,
like hide behind bastards. It's it's all about people hide
behind bastards as well. I don't know, it sounds terrible.
Let's not do that. No one would listen to it. Yeah,

(08:30):
sounds like a bummer, Like, No, sounds like it sounds
like if somebody worked on that for like I don't know,
say five years or so, that they'd have crippling my dual. Yeah,
why would you do that to anyone? It's like that's
like working in a coal mine, really bad coal mine
of podcast. Yeah. So I'm not going to go into

(08:52):
Hoover incredibly detailed, but I'm gonna tell you a little
bit about him. He was an anti communist zealot. He
absolutely believed that the rule of law did not apply
to him, nor that the rule of law should be
applied evenly or democratically in general. Honestly, he was as
fundamentally anti democratic as he was anti communist. He was
also in this parse MESSI he was almost certainly either

(09:13):
gay or bisexual who participated incredibly willingly in the Lavender Scare,
which we did an episode recently on Stonewall that talks
a little bit more about this. But basically, the US
government during the Red Scare like purged all of the
gay people from their ranks, except of course the leader
of the FBI. Wow, the projection decades later, right, it's

(09:36):
still going strong. Yeah, he rolled the Bureau as a
complete autocrat. His bosses in Congress were terrified of him.
He got one of them to resign at one point
because they were like in conflict. When he was supposed
to get put out. There was a mandatory retirement age.
It might still be I'm not sure in the United
States government where he turned seventy or you have to

(09:57):
mandatorily retire. It's still definitely still not around, Margaret, Like
Diane Feinstein is one hundred and thirteen. Dianne Feinstein died
three years ago. Yeah, dude, Dianne exactly, absolutely well. I mean,
but now they have really good animatronics, like like biden
Um is totally not dead anymore. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's true.

(10:20):
He died and then they brought him back, and then
that's just because of the Catholic thing. Yeah, well, don't say,
don't talk about my man Joe like that. Okay, we
all saw him jog out. You remember when he jogged.
I was so stunned and he did a great jog. Um.
Then lad you know, he fell off his bike and

(10:41):
he heard himself playing with a dog. We don't talk
about it. Remember that job. I mean, you know, I
hope I can jog when I'm a skeleton as well,
like just bone on bone. Never see Trump jog. Don't
want to see Trump jobs. No, I don't want. But
they had the AI photos of him running from the cops. Yeah,

(11:03):
you immediately know it's AI because you're like, Trump's not
running right right. I was like, if you're going to
tease us, make a realistic I know, I know a
man can't drag. What a disappointing week this has been anyway,
So Hoover, he turned seventy and he's like, he makes
the president. I think it's Nixon at this point sign
an executive order specifically exempting him from mandatory retirement. That's

(11:25):
the kind of power he has, he fired agents and
shifted them around on the strangest whims, Like at one point,
this fed had just gotten in a like shootout and
to stop a plane jacker, and then Nixon not Nixon, sorry,
Hoover took a photo, like saw a photo of the
shootout and circled the guy's beer belly and was like,

(11:48):
what's this And so the guy got like demoded and
sent off to a different part of the country. Yeah,
that's so fucked. Yeah, no, I know. And um I
listened to like a podcast about like somebody who worked
with him who was like pro FBI, just like talking
about working with him. And that's how I actually that

(12:09):
being said, I do kind of want to do that
to cops now, Like I think that cops now should
actually be able to run after they're so called suspects
suspects and we don't know, we should be taking photos
of them and circling their bellies and be like you're
out you because you're more likely to be a you know,
a little fancy with the with the trigger there. But
see I'm I'm I'm excited about out running the Oh okay,

(12:32):
he see what you're saying about? How then said they
shoot you all right, Well, okay, okay, yeah. So the
one good thing I found about Hoover is that he
opposed the interment of Japanese folks during World War Two.
He pushed back against Roosevelt against it. Bizarre, bizarre, weird.
I know, no, no, I know. I was he considered

(12:54):
an infringement of civil liberties? Um? I guess it was. Yeah,
he's still did it. The FBI still did the arresting,
but he did at least make some kind of like
token gesture, perhaps more than token gesture, to try and
not have it not happen. He's incredibly secretive. No one,
not even Congress to the President, is allowed to see
his files. This is going to come up as real important.

(13:16):
I guess I already spoiled that people steal his files
at one point in judicial order, and I think nineteen
forty nine, a few of the less important files get
shared to Congress. But I didn't fall too deep down
that particularly rabbit hole because it didn't make anything important happen.
And he spied on fucking everybody. But spying was not
enough for this man. They started something called co intel pro,

(13:39):
the counterintelligence program, and this whole thing. It's incredibly illegal,
autocrats don't care. And it's a series of disruptions primarily
primarily aimed at leftists, particularly the black black civil rights movement,
but also every other civil rights movement and also like
ostensibly aimed primarily at the Communist Party. It was also

(14:02):
used to disrupt the KKK early on. And before you
get too excited about that, another thing co intel Pro
did about five years after they quote unquote disrupted the
KKK is finance an arm a paramilitary right wing group
in nineteen seventy one, basically like a Proud Boys thing
and send them to go fuck with leftist So that's
something that co intel Pro did is basically created Well

(14:23):
will they stop doing I mean, like I made a
joke in the early when you started talking about this
about like targeting white people, But they are, and they're
doing it the exact same way that they targeted Muslims
after nine to eleven, which is infiltrating and setting up
all these sting operations and basically entrapping them. The differences
is that when the white folks have, like the folks
who you know, had plans to capture Gretchen Whitmer, like

(14:46):
when they get um, you know, defended in court, like
the jury actually exonerates them or you know, lets them
off with less time, Whereas if you're a Muslim or Brown,
it's like that's you know, that's a wash, that's you
know whatever. Conver many years. But it's just like these
fox never learn, Like, here's the thing. If you're gonna
be such a conniving spyy piece of shit, at least

(15:07):
get real lead, get good stuff. You know, like you know,
you're just create You're just creating the monsters yourself. You're sting,
You're just sting operationing your way into it, and you're
making everything more worse and making everything like basically creating
extremists and homegrown terorius. No totally, and I I sometimes
struggle to figure out exactly what their motivation is besides like, well,

(15:29):
this is what I do for a living. Is I
create terror plots that weren't going to happen anyway, have
them almost happen, and then catch the people doing the
thing that was my idea in the first place. Yes,
this this is forever the equivalent in the podcast world,
and this is kind of my idea. So like, don't
steal it if you want to steal this idea, but
like what, it's basically like a true crime podcast doing

(15:49):
the murders and then solving that, then being like, oh see,
you gotta get me another season because I'm so good
at solving these murders, or like you who did the murder? Anyway,
hit me up if you guys want to like do
murders for a true crime podcast. I did tell you
the FBI listens, right, yes, oh god damn it. Yeah yeah,

(16:11):
don't worry, we will totally edit that out. Yes, thank you,
I trust you. Yeah, yeah, I'm trustworthy. So Francesca, cointelpro, Neaton,
co Intel Lean, don't even try. Okay, I'm sorry, all right,
so co Intel Pro. They did all kinds of shit

(16:32):
besides fabricate terror plots, although they were doing that as well.
If you ever think of a fun prank to play
on your ideological enemy, now imagine that that prank is
financed by the government and you have total impunity. They
would do shit like write fake letters from one Black
Panther leader to another talking shit and stirring up in fighting,
which got a bunch of people killed by their own side.

(16:53):
They would spread rumors about infiltrators and they would do
what we currently would call fed jacket, which is where
you spread rumors if someone as a FED. They would
here's a fun one, you ever want to have fun
time at a party. They would fucking inject laxatives into
oranges at anti war meetings. So random, so petty, so

(17:16):
but like, but now I can trace that a bout
of diarrhea in two thousand and three. Yeah, yeah, exactly
to that fucking orange that was in the back of
the room next to the the pretzels that I definitely ate.
And no, I but no, no, but but legit, like
I've been in a lot of these meetings. I do
have an FBI file, And I'm like, are you kidding me?

(17:37):
An orange? Yeah? No, they that doesn't disrupt a movement.
It just makes people sad. They don't care, they're just
doing whatever they want. They would this one makes me
really sad. They would hire sex workers for a lot
of their crimes. They would intentionally spread STIs in the
anti war movement, and like specifically hire people because of
their STI status, not just be like we hope that

(18:00):
these people have SDI sortever, and they would also set
people up for blackmail by using sex workers on a
regular basis. What they did to Martin Luther King was
really fun, and by fun, I mean kind of awful.
They sent him a package. I knew that they sent
him a letter telling him to kill himself. What I
didn't realize is that they sent him a package with
an audio recording of him of like sexual blackmail against him,

(18:23):
and that said they would release it to the public
if he didn't kill himself rather than accept the Nobel
Peace Prize. Fuck, it's completely possible. It's generally understood that
they got Malcolm X killed by sewing the division that
led to his assassination. Yes, wait, what was the sex
stuff on MLK Junior? Because was that? Like? Was it

(18:46):
like hot? I didn't look too deep into it because
I was like, I was going back and forth. I
was like wait really like you're like wait, and I'm like,
do I want to even say? Is it made up?
Like now, I'm not actually quite sure because it was
stuff theoretically from having tapped his you know, because they
were recording him constantly and stuff, And um, I guess
they could do a thing where they could much like

(19:07):
now where they could listen to your phone even if
you're not on the phone. Sure, the COTE would also
send provocteurs to meetings to be like, hell, yeah, let's
go throw bricks at cops. But they would also send
provoct tours to meetings to be like anybody throws wants
to throw bricks at cops as a fed because it's
not that they like specifically were like, escalating is the
only way that we can like disrupt, because it's also

(19:29):
disruptive to complain about escalation, Like you just kind of
can't win, right, because their main thing was to get
people worried about infiltration. So then anything that someone does,
I even like worry as I say, this kind of
tell this kind of thing, you know, because it's it's
all to stirrup paranoia. Oh It's worked very well. I

(19:53):
mean I've seen I've seen it in action. So I
mean again back in the we've talked about this on
my podcast, Yeah about you know, the early anti war
or the anti war movement and also the global justice movement.
Just how much when things get heated when you're like
doing really well, it's like then there's the FBI or
like someone who's acting extra shady and weird about like

(20:14):
being paranoid about there being FBI, and then then there's
also just sectarian weird, you know, trotskyist, And you're like,
are you you could also be an ad? I know
you're like, no one really believes that, right, right right? Yeah? Yeah,
but do you know what we do believe in? Here
at cool people did cool stuff. We believe in. Having

(20:35):
learned that Reagan coins are one of the ads on
the AM, I allowed to complain about specific ads people
who are getting we get. Yeah, that's the important thing
to know about the ads that are coming. It's not
all of them, but that doesn't stop people for messaging
me about it. Yeah. So if you have a problem

(20:55):
with one of the ads that you're about to listen to,
you go out and I learned this from a You
got into the backyard and you dig a hole and
you whisper into the hole all of your problems and
then you close the hole up. And if that doesn't work,
you can tweet at I write okay on Twitter? Yeah, yeah, exactly.
That's how to reach me on my personal line. And

(21:18):
here's some ads, and we're back. We're talking about Cotel Bro.
I've just invested ten thousand dollars in Reagan coins, so
um fuck crypto Reagan. Yeah, you know this is going
to be worth a lot when when all this collapses, Margaret,

(21:40):
when it all comes crumbling down because you were busy talking.
Here's here's the thing. This is a bit, but you
might not be wrong. Can you imagine? You know what
it was so hard? Is like in the like the
future apocalypse or you know, in that our dystopian future.
If like the one shit, you should have invested in

(22:02):
the one like the Horde whatever. The group with food
is like, how many Reagan coins do you got? Yeah,
you're like, well I have better health and then people
really should have bought them when it was advertised to me.
I heart cool people. Yeah, fucked up. So even before

(22:27):
Reagan was on coins, co intel pro the other thing
that they did that I didn't know as much about
because it's less my era era of activism. They fucked
with every election they could and like like all the
ship that the CIA does internationally, the FBI is doing
locally whatever, the most outlandish ship you could say. That
sounds like a conspiracy theory. We now have proof the

(22:49):
FBI did thanks to today's heroes. That's why we have
the proof Oh, so we're gonna start. I want to
talk about the cat Left, which are sort of the
main heroes of today's things Left. Yeah, they're really interesting.
But for someone talk about Vietnam and with how fucked

(23:13):
up the world is in the sixties late sixties, that
people in Vietnam and the US are regularly setting themselves
on fire. And before we talk about the Catholic left
doing lots of cool stuff, we all need to understand,
of course, that there are good people and bad people
doing good things and bad things in the name of
every religion and ideology. Sure, well, okay, there's some ideologies.
No one's doing anything good in the name of But

(23:35):
the first self immolation that we're going to talk about
was done in response to some bad shit the Catholics
were doing. There's this guy, his name is no Dindiem
and he is the president of South Vietnam from nineteen
fifty five to nineteen sixty three. He's a Catholic, which
is a minority religion, and he sucked. He treated the Buddhists,
who are seventy to ninety percent of the population like shit.

(23:58):
And this guy was appointed by the US government, which
will probably not surprise anyone. Catholics are getting all kinds
of benefits. The Catholic Church is the largest landowner, and
they're immune to land reforms under his you know, ragin him.
He's a president. It's not really a rain, but whatever,
well maybe it is in this context. Buddhists gets denied jobs.
The Buddhist flag was banned. Protesting Buddhists getting murdered in

(24:22):
the streets, and there was an order that dissenters should
get thrown into concentration camps. Monks prain in public had
chemical weapons poured onto their head and not like pepper
spray and stuff, which is like not also not a
nice chemical weapon, but like putting people in the hospitals.
There's bad enough. This guy's really bad. Like, if there

(24:43):
was a podcast that focused on bad people, they could
include this guy, but there isn't. So in nineteen sixty three,
June eleventh, a monk named thick one Duck. He was like,
you know what, fuck this shit, and he set himself
on fire and he sat calmly as he burned in
front of hundreds of spectators on a public street. Yeah,

(25:05):
someone filmed this and it's heartbreaking to watch and I'm
not usually a like watch people die on film type
person that's not my my thing. Funny interesting, Yeah, but
this one, honestly, like it's moving and it's like worth
understanding from history. I think if if that's a headspace
that you want to be in and think about, I'm
not going to share it now. On the no, I've

(25:27):
seen it. I've seen it as part of like you know,
just when you start to you know, learn about Empire
and you know, start trying to stop a different American war,
You're like, well, let's go back and see what happened.
I mean he's completely still. Yeah, he's meditating as he dies. Yeah. Yeah,

(25:48):
he stays in lotus position. He at one point he
falls over and tries to push himself back up, but
he just after he died, the cops tried to take
his remains, but thousands of angry protesters took him back
and then they recre cremated him for a proper funeral.
This part I looked up a couple of different times.
His heart didn't burn in the second cremation, but it's

(26:11):
solidified in the fire and today is a sacred relic. Wow.
I have no explanation for this. That's beautiful, I know,
and that's I'm I mean, if you don't have chills,
you are not human. You're a hoover, You're a vacuum
cleaner in England exactly. That's right. Other monks in Vietnam

(26:36):
followed his example, and then by the end of that year,
the CIA led a coup to topple the Catholic guy.
Which isn't the US being good because they propped him
up in the first place, and thick sacrifice is often
credited as what brought down that regime. Two years later,
the First Americans set herself on fire and protested the
Vietnam War. And I'm I feel like I need I

(27:00):
don't normally disclaim, hey, don't do this at home, but like,
this was an incredibly meaningful and moving set of sacrifices
that people made to try and stop something. But it
has had incredibly diminishing returns and is not a good idea.
And I am not in any way. It's funny. I never, like,
I very rarely advocate well for anything, but I try

(27:22):
not to be like, do this or don't do this
or whatever. But I specifically I don't want to diminish
what these people did at the same time. But so
we have such a fucking immovable, awful, you know, oppressive
like both economic, political, and like system of empire in

(27:42):
this country. I'm thinking two people I could come to
mind who killed themselves and I actually don't know their names,
but one at when Bush was reelected in two thousand
and four, I remember someone who shot themselves outside of
the World Trade Center Ground zero, and I was like,
I feel you, and yet I don't know if that's
gonna make a mark. I don't know what was going

(28:04):
on in their personal lives. And the other person, I
was someone who shot themselves and killed themselves. He was
a you know, um a taxi driver. He was a
black car driver for many, many, many many years and
could not get out of debt. And Uber and Lyft
have like crushed the entire industry. And it's like, I
just don't you know, It's like it's a desperate it's

(28:26):
both out of desperation and also trying to, you know,
have make a political statement. And you're just like, man,
I fucking wish that we were on the precipice of
a real revolution in this country, so we could take
these deaths and they wouldn't be in vain. Yeah, totally anyway, Sorry,
more killing death, but yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll get some
good burglar doing. Okay, good, good, good, But first it's

(28:50):
a little bit more death, okay. Alice Hers was a
German Jew. She's American by the time this happened. She's
eighty two years old when this happens, and she's seen
some shit. She fought for feminism in the nineteen tents Germany.
She'd helped bring about the Weimar Republic. She fled from
Germany to France to avoid the Nazis, only to end
up in a camp when the Nazis invaded France. She survived.

(29:14):
She made it to the US. She lived in Detroit,
she became a Unitarian. And then one day I think
this is nineteen sixty five. For some weird reason, I
cut the date out of the script. I don't know why.
She wrote a letter about how fucked up the war was.
She went out on the street and she set herself
on fire. And she wasn't the last in South Vietnam.
In the US, alike, Buddhists and Quakers and Catholics set

(29:35):
themselves on fire. When a sixteen year old Catholic named
Ronald Brazzie set himself on fire. In October nineteen sixty seven,
a Catholic worker named Father Daniel Berrigan wrote a poem
called in the Land of Burning Children, and I'm gonna
read that poem. He was still living. A month later
I was able to gain access to him. I smelled
the odor of burning flesh, and I understood anew what

(29:56):
I had seen in North Vietnam. I had felt that
my senses had been and invaded in a new way.
I now understand the power of death in the modern world.
I knew I must speak an act against death because
this boy's death was being multiplied a thousandfold. And so
I feel like that's the important backdrop that helped create
the Catholic left. The people I'm gonna be talking about

(30:17):
mostly yeah, hell yeah, did um shout out to the
whole Berrigan family. I know that, Oh yeah, oh yeah,
and and love them. Yeah, there's some of the main
characters we're gonna be talking about, So please interject with stuff. Yeah,
well why why? I think I knew this at one
point in my life, but maybe the fact that I've
forgotten that this even happened. Oh, they didn't do the

(30:37):
break in oh god, damn. Okay, okay, okay, yes they
did other break INDs, but not yeah no, but yes, yeah,
so that how far along? Was a Catholic worker movement
at that point or had it? Was it just beginning?
So it's actually so he wrote that a little bit
before the Okay, the Catholic worker movement started in the
nineteen thirties with the anarchist Dorothy Day. Oh yea yeah, yeah, yes, yes,

(31:01):
thank you. The Catholic Left as a movement seems to
come about also in nineteen sixty seven, and we're going
to talk about where that comes from, I think nineteen
sixty eight and more kicks in properly. Father Daniel Berrigan
wrote that poem his brother, his father Phil Brigan, who's
usually credited as starting the movement that gets called a
bunch of different things, usually the Catholic Left. It gets

(31:24):
called like the books written by the people who are
in it call it ultra resistance, which is a hard
to google term. You love a movement name where you
just can't google it anymore because ultra resistance doesn't bring
you up anything useful to talk about. Phil. The Beragans
were a working class unionist Catholic family from German and

(31:44):
Irish backgrounds. Before he was a priest, Phil was a
semi pro baseball player and a soldier in World War Two,
and he didn't like what he saw in the army.
He was white and the segregation of the armed forces
made him really fucking unhappy. So when he got out,
he came back and he became a priest in Baltimore,
and he specifically, I think the reason he went to
Baltimore not entirely certain. He became a Josephite, who are

(32:07):
an order of priests who worked in the black communities
and had recently become really radical and cool. They kind
of started off, I think, as being like, we're some
good white Catholics who are going to teach black people
about the Catholic God. But by the sixties, when everyone's
getting really interesting, they organized a convention of black Catholic

(32:28):
clergy put together a statement calling the Catholic Church a
white racist institution. Because cool shit was in the fucking air.
Oh hell yeah. And so that's what Phil is going
to go do. He goes and joins that movement, he
gets into it. He's marching everywhere, he's sitting in everywhere.
He goes to prison a lot. He seems to like
going to prison a lot. He's always doing it. He
spends a total of about eleven years of his life

(32:49):
in prison over the just you know, less than some people,
but certainly a lot if you keep doing it on purpose.
It's the nineteen sixties. He's at a sorry, it's in
the sixties. He's at a conference in Chicago, and someone
is like, man, we should really fuck up a draft
board or something. Oh yeah, and the idea gets into
his head. The idea that gets into his head is

(33:12):
we should go fuck up draft boards or something. He
might not accursed much. I don't know, I never I
never met him. Died about ten years ago. I think
he might not occurse much, so he might have phrased
it differently in his head. But that's the basic idea.
So in October twenty seventh, nineteen sixty seven, him and
three others it doesn't yet include his brother Daniel, they
walk into a draft office in downtown Baltimore and they

(33:35):
pour blood on all the draft records. Yes, Catholics love
pouring bloods. This is the one thing I'm like, you know,
I know some folks in the Plowshares Movement, like not personally,
but I know of them, and it's like speaking of
sort of like you know, doing these huge acts, then

(33:55):
you know we'll get you in major trouble. Like Plowshares movement,
people like pour the blood on nuclear warheads and you're
like and then they get like thirty years and I'm like, yeah, girl,
I respect the game, but also like we might have
needed you on the outside. Um. That being said, Phil
is a totally different you know story, this is a

(34:16):
different thing. But back to the blood, I'm like, it's
it's also you're kind of like they're Catholic and you're like,
I'm pretty sure this is your blood? Yeah? Probably, Yeah,
I mean it would be polite to take someone else's blood. Well,
is it like on some like oh this is the
blood of Christ Catholic thing where they just just great, Yeah,
this is too much too buck chuck all over stop

(34:41):
by the Trader Joe's and that hit off to the
draft office. Absolutely. If I had a bottle of two
buck chuck and I wanted to fuck up draft office,
I would drink the two buck chuck and then I'd
have the courage to do whatever I want. Yes, Um.
The other thing that the Catholics love at this point,
besides pouring blood on thing things, is sitting down and
waiting to get arrested, part of their signature move Later

(35:07):
they learned that napalm is more effective than blood and
try not to get arrested is a way to get
more done. And I'm proud of them for making that development.
Although then the Plowshares movement goes back to the old school. Yeah,
we talk more for anyone who's listening. In the Food
Not Bombs episode, we talk more about the Plowshares movement,
and you want to hear more about the Catholics, including
the Barrigaans actually pouring blood on stuff, like the Catholic

(35:30):
lady poured her blood in the White House. And the
other signature thing about the Catholic left is that it's
not all Catholics, and it's just really interesting to me.
A lot of them are, but this group, the Baltimore Four,
it's got our Catholic priest, a United Church of Christ,
Protestant pastor, and a sort of I don't know, I

(35:50):
was raised Episcopal, but I'm kind of in a Sufism,
Buddhism and the Catholic workers. Guy didn't get the four religion.
Yeah I love that though, Yeah, no, totally. Two of
them got six years in prison, one got two, and
one of them who had passed out Bibles instead of
pouring blood, got probation and mandatory therapy. Barrigan got six years,

(36:12):
but don't worry. While he was out on bail, he
managed to do even more crime. Nice. The Baltimore action
was the first in nineteen In May nineteen sixty eight,
this is what's called the founding of the Catholic left movement.
I think nine Catholics. It's all Catholics this time, and
they get their shit together to burn a bunch of

(36:34):
draft records. First they go to this breaking bad style
high school science teacher and are like, make us some napalm.
And I'm really excited. I feel like that's what Walter
White should have done instead of make math is make
an a palm in protest war. Yes, seriously, selfish bastard,
I know, right, and you know you could still run anyway. Um.

(37:00):
They walked into the draft board in Catonsville, Maryland, which
is just outside of Baltimore, and they took all the
draft files out into the parking lot, and they burned
them with their homemade napalm. And while they waited for
the police to arrest them for the action, they talked
to journalists at the time. Daniel Berrigan, the poet from
earlier Phil's brother. This time he's with his brother. He
says this to the press, our apologies, good friends, for

(37:23):
the fracture of good order, the burning of paper instead
of children, the angrying of the orderlies in the front
parlor of this Charnel house. We could not so help us,
God do otherwise, such a poet. Once again, if you
don't have them, you're dead inside you. And you got
to remember, you know, this is at a time when
people were coming home in body bags every single day,

(37:48):
all right, every single week, that the death toll was insane,
especially I mean for American soldiers, but you know, obviously
on the Vietnam Vietnamese side as well. Yeah, so like
they were saving lives, they did not want on not
even one more draft card called up, not even one
more family getting that phone call, not even one more

(38:08):
of their you know, family, friends, neighbors, relatives to be
sent off to die. So this is a straight up
heroic act. And six years insane for what for fucking
property destruction? Shut up, it's Blood's good, it's good. Too
much chuck. Oh this time it was napalm. But oh right,

(38:30):
this they did it safely outside. Yeah. I love that detail.
And why do you think they use napalm? Yeah, because
they're napalming children and everyone in Vietnam. Yeah, Like it's
so it was purely symbolic, like all we could use
just straight fire, yeah, but no, yeah, no. They people
did some really fucking brave stuff in the sixties and seventies,

(38:54):
like like stuff that I'm just like really impressed by.
I don't know how to y like tight pants, men
in tight pants, brave boy like as a brave look
for you. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of a lot of
the white people in some of these parts of the

(39:15):
story were like they took off their dashiki and then
they put on normal clothes or whatever. Okay, Like you know,
I don't know how you know, brace relationship that I love,
like back in the sixties and seventies, like and still
a little bit today. Like I have some old activist
heads who are like, you know, white guys into highis
and it's like, you know what that's when that's when
you got politicized, and you honestly can't actually rock that

(39:36):
because it was straight given to you by like a
freedom fighter in South Africa, you know, totally like someone
who's about to go on you, Like you let a
guy from the Black Liberation Army stay at your house
and hide it hit his oozy like yeah, yeah, yeah,
you can wear that. Cannot wear a can take cloth. Yeah.

(39:58):
So Daniel Berrigan, the poet, he he takes he makes
a play out of the trial transcript which, because he's
a literal name or guy here is the Trial of
the Caytonsville nine is the name of the poem, play
and the whole thing. It works in two ways. First
of all destroys a bunch of draft records. Second, the action,
the trial and the play all drew attention to the
Catholic left's radical non violent direct action and brought in

(40:21):
a ton more activists. And I want to learn more
eventually about the dialogue between the non violent activists like
begin and then the Weather Underground and the other more
guerrilla types who are a little bit more non violent,
but they were on essentially Comrade Lee terms. As far
as I can tell, the bar Regan brothers. They went
underground briefly after Caytonsville and evaded capture. Basically, I think

(40:44):
like after their arrest, they were out on bail or something.
I'm not entirely certain, and Daniel wrote a letter to
the Weather Underground and and it was right around the
time the Weather Underground kind of will cover them one day.
But they had a kind of a turning point where
they were getting more and more radical, and then they
were thinking about targeting humans instead of property. And then
they like blew themselves up. Yeah, not those humans I

(41:05):
was from. Yeah, And so then they were like, wait,
never mind, we'd actually don't want to target people. We're
gonna keep targeting property. And so it's like around this
time he writes them and he's like, look, we're all
on the same side, but maybe you don't start killing people,
all right, And a nun in New Jersey hid Phil
Berrigan for a while. Later they would both get excommunicated

(41:25):
by the church in order to get married. Um, and
I think that's really sweet. And then they like get
un excommunicated and I think go back to their you know,
priest and nun rolls or whatever. But they took a
nice little break, you know, be romantic. This is yeah,
this is his wife? Right yeah? Yeah? Um I had

(41:46):
her name in the script. And then callister, okay, great,
thank you. This is Is it Phil's or Daniels Phil's wife? Yeah,
Elizabeth McAllister, Freda Bergan's mom. Shout out to Frieda. If
you listen to this show. She's an awesome, amazing activist
and does a bunch of like anti arms trade, you know,
writing and work and stuff. Anyway, and if you're listening

(42:08):
and I got your parents' story slightly wrong, I am
genuinely sorry. She will come on this show school you
with all of her Yes, but no, I so okay.
First of all, hot meat, cute, right a nun hides you,
right you? Then you like fall in love and are

(42:29):
excommunicated from the church because you guys want to go
like steal away and Elope and have like mad revolutionary love,
make love whatever. You know what I'm saying. Yeah, that's great.
I love that. I know It's so good. And if
you want to fall in love, if you have enough
Reagan coins, everyone's gonna fucking love you. Everyone's gonna be
like damn with Reagan. Can't just buy regular gold it's

(42:53):
got to have Ronald Reagan's head on it, otherwise it
doesn't work. So you should buy at and then whatever
else we're selling. I just want one like cliff Bar.
I just just give me a I don't have any
Reagan coins. Just give me a cliff Bar. Okay, like
there's packs of wild dogs. It's the year twenty fifty six. Please, no, no,

(43:19):
that'll be seven Reagan coins for a cliff bar. Eight
if you want to chocolate chip cliff bar. Okay, sorry, no,
that's actually a good pointing. It doesn't make me think
that cliff bars might be the better in fat. It's
almost like food is more useful than golden No, that
can't be right, otherwise you'd be advertising food. Stop. Yeah, yeah,
that's insane. Yeah, here's some ads and we are back

(43:46):
and the bargains as well as some other people. They
got caught by the FBI. I think I think they
got caught at this point. Maybe they turn themselves in
and they got sentenced to three years in prison. And
after Cayton'sville, the Catholic left which is kicking off, they
take up a new tack. Instead of these public raids,
which they also do, they take up burglary. Instead of

(44:06):
storming the draft boards in the day, they start breaking
in at night and stealing it all and trying not
to get caught. Personally, I'm I'm very pro not getting
caught on purpose as a general rule. There's another quote
from one of these activists at this time, Abby Hoffman,
and he has a rule that's something like the first rule.
The revolutionaries don't get caught nice and burglarized places they did.

(44:29):
The Catholic left more than five hundred burglars rated dozens
of draft boards, removing thousands of records, and very few
of them were ever caught. Just fucking rules. Just five
hundred people mobilizing to be like, let's just all break
into all the draft boards on the catch us all. Yeah,
they did it a bunch of really clever ways. One
crew replaced a padlock on an office in Philadelphia with

(44:52):
their own lock. I think that they just like the
office was like open during the day, so they went
and left their own padlock like open, so that when
they closed at night, they just was the pad locking. Smart. Yeah.
And then in Delaware, some burglars use the single best
method ever devised. During the day, someone went to the
door and taped a note to it. The note said, quote,

(45:12):
please don't lock this door tonight, army. Come on. It's
even better. Some dutiful rule follower didn't lock the door
that night, so they stole all the draft cards out
of the building. I love that. I feel like, where
could that work these days? And do you feel like
most public offices if you went in there and we're like, hey,

(45:36):
like taped a note if they don't see you doing it, Like,
it's the same thing as if you put on a
yellow vest like a if you put on a construction
vest and have a clipboard, people will let you go anywhere.
You got a hard hat you can get into like
any gala. Yeah, and it's the same kind of concept.
No one wants to question authority, you know, Yeah, totally.

(45:59):
And so yeah, they actually apparently those burglars spent a
while trying to consider whether they should leave a thank
you note like the next day. That's great. They decided
against it because you know, discretion better part of valor
all that. And these burglars, a lot of them are nuns,
priests ex nuns, x priests, lay people, non Catholic people too,
especially Quakers. Yeah, baby Quakers. Are back. They've been skipping

(46:22):
the spotlight on the show for way too long. And
then also secular Jews who never get very far away
from the spotlight on the show, because I don't know
if I've done a show without a secular Jew at
some point showing up been doing amazing shit. And I
like to imagine all these like priests and nuns and
collars and habits and shit picking locks and stealing shit.
I don't know, yeah, I like they're I don't know, Yeah,

(46:46):
I'm trying to think what they could be doing. I mean,
they're already kind of dressed for it. It's a little
bit like The Years was wrong, is it my mind?
When you think about like robbers who are like, you know, nuns,
you just think of what's the movie and we're real
where like people are dressed as nuns in order to
rob banks, and you're like, oh, that's stolen valor for

(47:07):
like other yeah, robbers like who robbed for moral reasons
like that. Actually, the woman who um Helen Woodson was
the person who I was saying poor blood in the
White House. One of the other things she did after
she got out of Joe for some other thing is
she robbed a bank and then burned all the money
in the middle of the lobby while reading a statement
about how capitalism is like a crime against human I

(47:29):
think again, like, yes, girl, good state, but like you
redirect the money. Yeah, yeah, totally totally we're being I
love how we're so like utilitarian now because she is
so much worse. We're just like, no, no no, no, get
the money, use it to fund the revolution. We like,
no one can pay rent. Yeah yeah, exactly, buy a

(47:51):
building and turn it into a housing cooperative place. Yes.
So the war divided the hell out of the Catholic
Church itself because you're like, Okay, where's this Catholic left
coming from, Like where's the theological whatever. You know, We've
talked a bit about here and there about the Catholic
churches relates to Vietnam, because you can hear about Vietnamese

(48:12):
Catholics in our episode on pre war Vietnamese resistance to colonialism,
and you can hear about some of the fights within
New York Cities Catholics on the episode we did about
up against the Wall, motherfuckers, And the deal was at
the Vatican, the ostensible center of power for the church
at this point, was anti war. They started working to
condemn anti Semitism, pushing for interfaith fights against the war,

(48:33):
and basically they were like, hey, American Catholics, this show.
If you're pacifist, Jesus told us to be like nice
to each other and stuff. Pope Paul the sixth, he
was straight up the first pope to ever visit the US.
If you ever want to hear more about how the
US hated Catholics back in the day, listened to our
episode about people who fought the clan from last of all,
I had no idea he was the first to visit

(48:53):
I know that part I I double checked. I like
read it in one of the books, and I was like, Nah,
that can't be right. And I like asked the internet,
who was the first pope to visit the US? That's crazy?
Six I mean that's why, Like, looking back, you're like,
who the fuck cares that? Like Kennedy and Joe Biden
are Catholic? Right answer? Some fucking people do? Yeah, no

(49:18):
it Yeah. It completely surprised me as an adult when
I found out that a lot of Protestants don't consider
Catholics to be Christian, right, And yeah, so the Pope
shows up. He shows up in nineteen sixty five, you
give speeches against US involvement in Vietnam in front of
huge crowds. Good for you. But the high ups in

(49:40):
the US Church were entirely hawkish, they were entirely pro war.
They were like stomped the communist rah rah rah. And
they actually transferred Daniel Berrigan into South America for a while,
basically exiling him. Which is one of the problems with
being embedded into a hierarchy is that people can exile
U Pike. Oh no, I have to go spend time
in South America. No, yeah, Well they didn't tell his family. Yeah,

(50:05):
don't say no, of course. Yeah. He's like, no, oh no,
you're not telling my family. They'll never be able to
find me. Looks like I have to start a new
family with this hot ladioy here. All right. Yeah, I'm
sure it was very different. That's exactly what it is,
right when you get disappeared by the FBI. Well, in

(50:25):
this case, it was the UM. It was the church
that disappears. Sorry, yes, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, right, which
is its own Yeah that thing. Yeah, the Catholic left
rises up against the war. They take a lot of
inspiration from the Catholic workers we talked about briefly, especially
the anarchist Catholic Dorothy Day. Oh. I'm sure we'll get
our own episode one day. It's a little bit funky

(50:46):
that they're called the Catholic Left because most of what
they got up to was really consciously inter faith. But
I want to talk more about draft resistance because it
was so fucking much of it. Yes, people started burning
their draft cards. Um, as far as I can tell all,
the first organized group of this, I'm not entirely certain,
was SNICK, the Student Non Violent Coordinating Committee, which at
this point I believe was primarily or entirely black. I

(51:07):
can't remember exactly when SNICK became a black letter organization,
but if you listen to our episode with the Arms
Civil Rights movement, you'll know they pushed young black men
to burn their draft cards in the South where they're organizing.
Other groups started doing the same. So then the government
was like shit, so they outlawed burning your draft cards.
It was punishable by up to five years. So the

(51:29):
first person to burn it after this it was outlawed.
It was a Catholic worker. His name is David Miller.
He went to the recruiting center and he burned his
draft card in protest of the war. He actually he
didn't smoke because he had matches, but they kept getting
blown out by the wind. But there's like this nice
story where like another guy from another movement comes up
and is like, here, brother, I got you and like
lights has a lighter. Yeah night, yeah exactly, sorry sort

(51:54):
of that not really but yeah, it's very like yeah, no,
that's anyway. I don't know why it's a beat poem,
but yeah, I get it. Very sixties. Yeah, just like
just takes his massive spliff and like him yeah, yeah, yeah,
I like that. Yeah, and that's how the war was ended. Yeah,

(52:15):
this is a very Schoolhouse Rocks where a man let
me help you burn that draft car. Now I'm imagining
the schoolhouse Rock Yeah, cartoons. Yeah, and he gets sense
to three years in prison for this. But the thing is,
if someone's like a god deal for you, you could
either go die in an unjust war halfway across the

(52:38):
world or spend three years in prison. I'll take prison, sure,
And most didn't see prison. More than half a million
people were registered as draft offenders for various methods of
evasion and This is on top of one hundred and
seventy thousand registered conscientious objectors. More than that people tried

(52:58):
to register as conscientist jectors, but like weren't believed we'll
get to Muhammad Ali in a moment. Upwards of one
hundred thousand people fled the country, especially to Canada. About
two hundred thousand people were formally charged with these draft offenses.
Nine thousand of those were convicted, and only three thousand,
two hundred and fifty people were jailed. Three thousand, two
hundred fifty people is a lot of people, but out

(53:18):
of a half a million, I will take those odds. Yeah,
the US was pretty stretched thin. You know, they were
trying to win an unwinnable war, so you know they're
not going to be chasing every single draft dodger. Yeah,
but I there is who wrote there's some really fucking
beautiful short story about someone who travels to you know,

(53:41):
I'm not gonna say this, but who a draft dodger
who escapes to Canada. And it's like, you know, not
looking back on the States and not knowing if you'll
ever go back. Yeah, And it's funny because like I
was talking to my friend about this WHI I was researching,
and we were talking about how like because right now
we have all these like pro war politicians who used
to draft dodge, and that for them, it's this shitty

(54:02):
hypocrisy that they draft dodged, right, But for someone who's
actually not trying to send other people to go die
in dumb wars, draft dodging is actually a really brave
thing that people did that materially impacted the war because like, yeah,
half a million people or more refused service. That has
a major military effect, and so these people were taking

(54:24):
incredible risks, risking never seen their family again in order
to stop this war and not die for some bullshit.
Yeah exactly, And you were physically fit, you know what
I'm saying. So you're like, oh, I could have fought,
but I didn't. I did the moral thing. That's like
the that's the hottest thing. I don't know why I'm
taught framing and but that's very hot. You know, like, oh,

(54:45):
my dad knows a doctor to fake the note about
me having what was trump bone spurs. Yeah, they were like, well,
you know, whatever the fuck the you know, rich disease,
he's got influenza. You can't fight your war. Yeah, affluenza, luenza,
excuse me. Yeah. Active duty soldiers were actively they hated

(55:05):
the fucking war too. No reasonable person is excited about
being taking part of something that killed three million Vietnamese people,
roughly twelve or so percent of the country's population. More
than half a million troops deserted over a five year period,
which is just an incredible number. In nineteen seventy two,
entire units refused to go into battle. In nineteen sixty eight,

(55:26):
soldiers refused to go do riot control at the Democratic
National Convention in Chicago because they agreed with the protesters
that they would be going and fighting against. And the
coolest maybe just the most impactful, but I think they're
also the coolest draft dodger. Draft resistor was Muhammad Ali,
the heavyweight boxing champion of the world who shows up

(55:47):
twice in this episode. Somehow he filed for CONSCIENTI conscientious
objectors status. It was denied. I suspect it was denied
because he was Muslim and they just didn't care or something,
But I'm not entirely certain other people who are listening
the answer to this. He was convicted for refusing to serve.
He told the press quote, why should they ask me

(56:07):
to put on a uniform and go ten ten thousand
miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on brown
people in Vietnam, wells called Negro people in Louisville or
treated like dogs. No, I'm not going ten thousand miles
from home to help murder and burn another poor nation
simply to continue the domination of white slave masters of
the darker people the world over. This is the day
when such evils must come to an end. He fucking rules.

(56:30):
That is not the quote that I remember, of course,
because you only you only remember like no Vietnamese or
no Vietcong ever called me the end word. Yeah, for
some reason, I didn't pick that one. Yeah, yeah, no, no,
But that one's even bender like the one that you
just got. Like, that's so like the lucidity, he's so
clear headed. I mean, obviously he's incredible in so many ways,

(56:54):
and he was a leader in and of himself, but
like it just shows you how much, you know, mainstream
culture was being permeated by anti war sentiment that that
was not even that extreme of something to say, totally totally,
and I mean he became an icon for the anti
war movement. He was one of the most popular people
in the world at the time that he did all

(57:15):
of this incredible. His conviction stripped him of the heavyweight
boxing title even though he was undefeated, and while he
didn't wind up in prison, he was suspended from the sport,
which is of course his like livelihood and shit, he'll
come back into the story when we come back. This
is not me skipping. We're not done for the day,
but he'll come back on Wednesday. Sixty different we Won't

(57:36):
Go chapters sprung up around the country to help organize
draft dodgers. More than a thousand men publicly returned to
their draft cards. And the cool thing that they did
so these people were like, I'm not going fuck you,
and they returned their draft cards and they had each
of them had hundreds of other people signed complicity statements,
which is basically like, yeah, we know this guy broke
this law, so if you come for him, you have

(57:58):
to come for me too, because I'm an accomplice. M
People started flying outside of draft centers. People offered logistical
support to prisoners refusing to serve. They drove soldiers to Canada.
People are fucking cool. People can do cool things. We
need to do this, but for abortion rights, that's all
I have to say. I don't know why. Yeah, I

(58:18):
don't know what we burn necessarily, but in terms of
just being outside of medical facility, in terms of being
a model for incredibly what it was was an incredibly
popular opinion it should not be sending more people to
die in this war. Yeah, and like in the most
grassroots way possible mass movement. Yeah, and using these recruiting

(58:41):
centers you could use, you know, I'm just like now
implotting the next you know, next, you know, our next uprising.
I mean, damn it, but we should be. And there
are people who drive people across borders into places of course,
which is illegal often for people to do or I
actually don't remember the current state of all these laws,
but like, you know, people are are risking a lot

(59:01):
to get people to where they need to get access
to medical care. And then now there's like more information
about how like people are working on getting a bortificant
drugs mailed into states where that's currently legal but about
to be illegal, and people are like, well, we'll keep
doing it after it's illegal, and yeah, we need to
be ready to do that kind of shit. So resistance.

(59:22):
The war is just ramping up. You have the Malay
massacre in March nineteen sixty eight, which shocks the world.
American soldiers murdered the ship out of five hundred four
un armed villagers in the country they were ostensibly liberating
at home. Governor Reagan said in nineteen seventy quote, if
it takes a speaking of this is Governor Regan. He's
not yet on the coins. It's not worth anything then yeah.

(59:45):
Quote if it takes a blood bath to silence these demonstrators,
let's get it over with. And that's why we hate
the Reagan coins. There we go. Nothing is funny anymore.
That guy forever burn in Hell Yeah, Punk's not dead.
Reagan is. The US was now bombing and invading Cambodia,

(01:00:06):
dropping more bombs on that one country than they dropped
in the entirety of anywhere in World War Two. This
invasion weakened the country and led pretty directly of the
take over the country by the Khmer rouge that killed
one point seven million people. As a result of Nixon
being like fuck yellis fuck up, Cambodia, protests intensified. The
National Guard murdered four protesters at Kent State University in Ohio,

(01:00:27):
Hoover because he has to come back into this, the
head of the FBI, today's main villain. He called one
of the dead women a slut. Only ten days later,
police killed two students at Jackson's State, a black campus
in Jackson, Mississippi. They killed the first student by shooting
up a dormitory, literally just fucking laying into it. Four
hundred and sixty rounds of ammunition were fired into the building.

(01:00:50):
They blew out every single window. There was zero evidence
that any of the students were armed. This is because
there had been some protests on campus. Insane, yeah, insane, Yeah,
And of course it was a black campus, of course,
you're absolutely but like insane to think that we did that,
And that was, i know, a hugely galvanizing moment that
you'll go into. But like and those photos I mean

(01:01:12):
speaking of like, um, you know one of the most
iconic photos from this era. You know, you have yes
Monk on fire and Meli massacre and the Kent State murders.
Yeah yeah, um yeah, saves those photos, yeah totally. And
the second student at Jackson State was walking home from

(01:01:34):
the store holding milk when the cops murdered him, and
some of these protests, this protests that they've been having
a lot of more in solidarity with Kent State. But
of course the preston cover it anywhere near as much
as they did when white people were killed in Ohio.
Nixon declared a commission to investigate all the unrest. His
own commission was like, oh, it's it's your fault, Nixon,

(01:01:55):
it's your own fucking fault. We we've determined you're a
massive piece of shit. I think your policies are doing
this happen. Yeah, not opening fire on peaceful student demonstrators.
Nixon was like, never mind, I don't like you guys, like,
I can't use this. Was it the Jews? No? Yeah? Uh.

(01:02:17):
And then, because it's never just the government beating people
up the same time as all this other shit, a
bunch of students got beat to ship. Seventy of them
were hospitalized in New York City by construction workers who
were building the World Trade Center. The workers use crowbars
wrapped in the American flag, and President Trump, I mean sorry.
President Nixon invited twenty two of these workers to the

(01:02:40):
White House and gave them flag lapel pins for their
bravery and hospitalizing students with crowbars. Students were demonstrating against
the war. Yeah, they're building the World Trade Center. Yeah,
oh my god, this is a closed circuit story. This
is comes full fucking circle. It's a standby whatever the

(01:03:02):
fucking yeah, whatever it is. That is so sad. Yeah,
that is so so effing sad. They're like, no, no, no,
we're protesting war. We don't want more of this shit.
We we understand blowback. We don't believe in American empire.
We don't want it to harm people around the world. Sorry,
We're going to build this massive financial institution and then

(01:03:24):
all the things you're protesting that, and he's all that
money is going to go from Vietnam. Then it's going
to go in the Middle East, and then we're going
to fund Osama bin Laden through the CIA, which is
again international FBI, and then then these things are coming down.
Don't you see what we're doing. We're time travelers of empire. God. Yeah,

(01:03:44):
so fucking sad. No, no, fars wrapped in the American flag.
Reagan was a piece. There's no and I never heard
the Wait, who who invited them lapel? Yeah that was Nixon, fucker. Yeah,
like so you have right now, you have the oppression
of the Pans, the Young Lords, the Yippies, student movements.
I don't think it's an overstatement to say that the

(01:04:04):
US was at war with itself in the year nineteen
seventy And to quote the book The Burglary by Betty Medsker,
people have been asking can there be peace in Vietnam? Now?
People also asked can there be peace at home? And
the answer is sort of And we're going to talk
about it and get into our heist movie on part

(01:04:25):
two on Wednesday. That's my very nice clanger, Magpie. Thanks
for working on them, Ranchesca. Is there anything you would
like to plug at the end here? Yeah? Hell yeah,
everybody listen to The Bituation Room Podcasts Weekly comes out
on Wednesday's streams live on Tuesday's one pm Pacific four

(01:04:45):
pm Eastern on YouTube and Twitch. Margaret was on we
go into them, It's fun. We interview representative Summarily recently
and that was really fucking cool. And yeah, follow me
on all the things that Franny Fio. Oh yeah, Margaret,
do you have anything you'd like to plug? Books? Perhaps

(01:05:06):
you mean my book Escape from Insel Island. That's available
wherever you buy books, but also from the publisher. Strangers
in the tangled wilderness? Is that what you're saying? So? Yeah?
I mean, but there's also other ones. Many. We won't
be here tomorrow, the lambles, slaughter of the lion. The
barrel will send what it may. We are many a
country of ghosts? What lies beneath the clock tower? That's

(01:05:28):
what I remember. I'll the top of my head sick. Yeah. Yeah.
Request them at your local library, or request them at
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Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of cool Zone Media.
Or more podcasts on the cool Zone Media. Visit our

(01:05:48):
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Didn't you