It Could Happen Here Weekly 38

All of this week's episodes of It Could Happen Here put together in one large file.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everybody. Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let
you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode
of the week that just happened is here in one
convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to
listen to in a long stretch if you want. If
you've been listening to the episodes every day this week,
there's gotta be nothing new here for you, but you
can make your own decisions. Greetings, this is it could

(00:28):
happen here. I'm Garrison Davis, and this episode I will
once again be talking about the Defend the Atlanta Force project.
Last month I released two episodes totally like three hours
in content, uh, discussing the movement from its inception up
until the current state of affairs at time of recording,

(00:48):
which was like early May. If you want background on
this uh, really interesting and vital piece of resistance that's
happening in Atlanta, Georgia, then I would recommend you at
least attempts to check out the Juggernaut of Audio, which
is that too part a long story short. There's this

(01:11):
police training facility that the Atlanta Police Foundation and other
corporate interests in the city are trying to build on
one of the city's last remaining like massive swaths of
of a continuous forested land. On an adjacent piece of
forest at Land, a movie studio called Black Hall is
trying to expand their sound stage onto a whole other

(01:32):
section of the woods. The joint projects of the police
training Facility dubbed Cops City and the Black Hall Studios
sound stage expansion threatened hundreds of acres of the largest
continuous piece of the Atlantic Forest, located in southwest in
Decab County. The area is often referred to as the
Lungs of Atlanta and produces a massive amount of tree

(01:54):
canopy in the city and is a wonderful little ecological spot.
I was lucky enough to visit in late April to
help in putting together those those two episodes, and a
lot of a lot a lot has happened since then.
Coming off the success of getting Reeves Young to cease
work on the Cops City project, I felt like there

(02:15):
was this sense of renewed optimism regarding the potential of
actually winning. On the other hand, in just during the
week before the Week of Action, attempts by cops to
enter the forest increased and there was talk of increasing
crackdowns against the forest offenders by local law enforcement, who
also announced that they called in the FBI to assist them,

(02:39):
which leads us to the Week of Action. On the
morning of May nine, which was a Monday, barely a
day into the Week of Action, a bulldozer was brought
into the Atlanta Forest. This is based on reporting by
the Great Folks at the Atlanta Community Press and other
on the ground reports from forced offenders hosted by the

(03:01):
Defend the Atlanta Forest account and scenes dot no blogs.
So around nine thirty a m Monday morning, people inhabiting
the Wilani Forest woke up to the sounds of trees
going down and metal machinery. A bulldozer marked with Dodd
Drilling LLC, accompanied by to Decab County cops, had bulldozed

(03:24):
a path through the forested Entrenchment Creek Park, directly adjacent
to the old Atlanta Prison Farm. The park land is
currently under threat by the Black Hall Studios sound stage development.
The Dodd Drilling bulldozer destroyed a significant swath of forests,
injuring plants and animals in its path. When people learned

(03:44):
about this, around forty folks quickly mobilized and gathered around
the bulldozer, confronting the project managers and the police officers
on the scene. Those gathered showed it at the workers
and cops to go home and declared that this is
a public park. When the two Decab County police who
were protecting the bulldozers were confronted, it was revealed that

(04:07):
they were actually working as off duty uniformed private security,
seemingly taking orders from the construction management. The management, who
wore vests labeled Contour Engineering and Dot Phillips, claimed that
they were not working for Black Hall Studios. Who who
knows if that's true or who they might be working
for that Georgia state law does permit off duty police

(04:28):
officers to be hired, along with their uniforms, service weapons,
and vehicles, by private companies for their own purposes. The
police expressed that they were not aware that they were
in a public park along with the bulldozer they were protecting,
and faced with a confident group of responders intent on
defending the forest from further destruction, police and the construction

(04:50):
management quickly made the decision to retreat from the woods.
The off duty cops had called in reinforcements from Decab County.
Seven more Decab County Leah calls showed up, but by
the time the extra police survived, workers were driving the
bulldozers back into the parking lot. The police were persuaded
to leave by the actions of intelligent people acting quickly

(05:12):
and collectively in defense of the land. The force defenders
then escorted the cops and the workers out of the
park and made sure the destruction of the woods had
truly ceased. Police scanners reported that vehicles transporting the bulldozer
faced a brage of rocks and had their windshield smashed.
Entrenchment Creek Park is still a public park and property

(05:35):
of Decab County under a civil court injunction. The pending
case prevents construction or clearing by Black Hall Studios. Later
that same day, a group of around forty people marched
to the home of Shepherd Long, the principle of Long Engineering,
an engineering firm subcontracted to do surveying and other preconstruction

(05:56):
work on the Atlanta Police Foundations Public Safety Training Center,
which we called Cops City. The group rallied for about
ten minutes outside Shepherd Lungs home and was demanding that
Long Engineering sever its contract with the Coup City Project.
One of the group members read aloud a statement directed

(06:16):
to Shephard Lung, which I will play the audio of here.
Atlanta is a city of forests with the most tree
coverage of any urban city in America. If you continue
to work with Brassfield and Gory, the entire city will
experience worse floods, higher temperatures at small Field afternoons. You
have the power to stop that. This proposed military training

(06:37):
compound is in the nucleus of a culturally rich Black
community full of churches, preschools, and community centers. Dozens of
children and grandparents have lived there for years. If you
continue to work with Brassfield and Gory, our streets and
backyards when we filled of shootings, explosions, and here gas,
where we want our children and neighbors to be able
to breathe clean air and experience the vastness of the

(06:59):
Atlanta for wris not to be victims of a domestic
war zone. You have the power to stop that. We
are here to fight for the future of our city,
our children, our neighbors, and our planet. We all no
ill will towards you personally. We just want you to
make this one right decision. We no long Engineering has
many other contracts with many other companies. We are only

(07:22):
here to ask you to drop this one company, brass
Field and Glory, until they dropped their contracts with the
Atlanta Police Foundation. The group distributed flyers alerting neighbors to
the work of Shepherd Long and what his company was
doing in De capp County. After about ten minutes, the
group quickly dispersed without incident. The next day, there's a

(07:45):
lot of other events related to the Week of Action.
There was a security culture workshop and activist primer about
building a collective understanding of ways to keep us all
safe from imprisonment the government repression. There was a night
of hip hop and punk at a local radical venue
that served as a benefit show for the Forest Defense,

(08:05):
and other random events throughout the Week of Action included
stuff like clothing swaps, bike rides through the forest, yoga
in the park, plus daily breakfast and dinners, history talks,
art parties, wood walks, skill shares, and a sick night
rave along with you know, forest tours and much more. So.
That's just two days of the Week of Action. Um

(08:26):
the Monday and the Tuesday, when we get back from
this ad break, I will get into what happened on
Wednesday and then and then Thursday. You know, we're going
to go through it linearly. Um, despite my criticisms of
linear time, we will go through this in a linear
fashion because that's how formatting this episode was easiest. Anyway,

(08:47):
here's some ads and we are back talking about the
Defending Atlanta Forest Week of Action. So, just after ten
am on Wednesday, May eleven, to de Cab County Park
Police entered the forest to inspect the path created by
the bulldozer that previous Monday. As they were exiting the forest,
forest offenders ambushed them by throwing rocks and bottles at

(09:09):
their vehicles and smashing the cars windows. At noons like
two hours later, a van marked law enforcement Department of
Juvenile Justice pulled up into the parking lot of Entrenchmant
Creek Park. It's worth noting that the area of Entrenchment
Creek Park and the forested area on the Atlanta Prison
Farm has like two child prisons on it. We talked

(09:34):
more about those in the in the two part series
from last month. But anyway, so this van marked Department
of Juvenal Justice pulled up into the parking lot inside
in Trenchmant Creek Park, But an hour later, the van
was attacked suddenly by a brage of rocks and multiple
tires were slashed. The van attempted to escape, but was

(09:55):
left stranded in the parking lot until the cab police
were able to escort it out. Police were nervously walking
backwards in order to keep their eyes on the tree line,
where they knew forced defenders would be watching them at
every moment. Multiple police vehicles were damaged. Nobody was detained
or arrested. Portions of that report came from scenes dot

(10:15):
no blogs dot org. Earlier that same day, like early
in the morning, around forty people visited the home of
Keith Lanier Johnson Jr. In Kensaw, Georgia. Keith is the
Eastern Regional president of Brassfield and Gory. Brassfield and Gory
are the current general contractor on the Atlanta Police Foundations

(10:37):
Cops City Project. Flyers were posted around the neighborhood, past
the low barrier fencing around the gated community. An anonymous
statement released online at scenes dot no blogs read quote
now that Keith is no longer busy on the board
of the Mount Perrin Christian School. It seems he is
now managing the one hundred and forty two thou dollars

(10:58):
of fines levied against his employer for safety and wage
theft violations. He's also overseeing the destruction of grave sites,
leveling of a vital tree canopy, and the militarization of
the American Police Force. It is for those reasons that
community members went to his home at six am. We
hope that Keith is able to convince the two owners

(11:19):
currently sitting comfortably back at home in Birmingham, that the
current Atlanta Police Foundation contract is untenable and there is
an urgent need to cancel it. It could turn out
that Keith personally is carrying to brunt the pressure for
his boss's decisions. Brassfield and Gory will eventually drop the
Cop City project. Anonymous groups are developing new methods for

(11:40):
disincentivizing the project. The next day, on May twelve, a
tightly packed crowd around eight mask protesters converged on the
Brassfield and Gory Atlanta office in broad daylight. People holding
banners and launching fireworks arrived at the building, and force
defenders covered the side of the office with stop Cops

(12:02):
City graffiti and chanting will be back as they left.
Unicorn Riot reported that five people were arrested following the
action and booked on several charges, including some felonies. Charges
were including riot and criminal damage to property and quote
terroristic threats and acts. I know that some but possibly
not all, people's charges got dropped, and the listed bond

(12:26):
amount for some individuals was extremely high, getting up to
around fifty dollars just for an individual. Nearing the end
of the week of action, on Saturday May eleven, a
march to Defend the Forest took the streets in East
Atlanta Village, led by local preschoolers. There were some really
nice signs and artwork done by kids. The Defend the

(12:47):
Forest twitter account posted some beautiful photos of kids protests.
Signs that says forest is life and love you trees stop,
never cut down the trees aloged with very very good art.
It was very very pleasant to see. A Few hours later,

(13:07):
another march to Atlanta at the top Cops City drew
around two hundred protesters. After about an hour of marching,
the crowd returned to Freedom Park, where they were then
attacked by police without warning. Dozens of cop cars pulled
up and police helicopters loomed overhead. Armored cops were arresting
people on the sidewalks for marching on the streets, for

(13:29):
playing drums, or for just standing in the wrong place.
Atlanta police and Georgia State Patrol officers assaulted, shoved, and
tackled multiple people, deployed tasers, and threatened neighbors who filmed
the arrests. One person violently arrested was taken to the
hospital for treatment. To defend the forest twitter account posted

(13:50):
quote at least seventeen arrests to night by Atlanta Police Department.
Spirits high as the forest raves and the encampment grows
outside the forest, men stand vigil at the jail, welcoming
arrestees as they are released. We are strong together. The
forest unites us. The cops cannot divide us. Atlanta police

(14:10):
say that the march was in violation of pedestrian laws,
which is why they charged and start of assaulting people
on the sidewalk. And that wraps up some of the
week of action stuff. I know there was a lot
more things that happened, but trying to crime it all
into a tight package was challenging. So that that was
the general general week week of action vibes. But there

(14:34):
is there's more. We still we still have like half
the episode to go because a lot, a lot else
has happened in in the days since then. In the
early morning on Monday May sixteen, a week after the
bulldozer descended on the forest, accompanied by off duty cops
acting as security, a home associated with Dodd Drilling LLC.

(14:57):
Was painted with slogans including Dodd Rilling, stay out, stop cops, city,
and drop a p D. A message for the homeowner
associated with Drilling was released, which you can read the
full version of online at scenes dot no blog dot org.
I'll read some portions of it here. Quote. Last Monday,
a bulldozer with your logo forced its way into the

(15:19):
Wolani Forest and left one hundred foot trail of destruction
in its wake. Forced defenders responded quickly with rocks and rage,
but some damage was already done. Despite having no permit,
you allowed Atlanta Police to use your equipment to intimidate
and injure the forest and its residents. Today, you know
what it's like to have your space invaded. You came

(15:40):
into our home, so we came to yours. Your private
property is not as private as you may think. We
demand that you stay out of the Wolani Forest and
stop working with Atlanta Police and Cops City contractors. To
all others who would support Cops City, it might have
more costs than you anticipate, financial and other wise. Many

(16:01):
creatures care deeply about this forest and are prepared to
defend it. Any partner of the A p D or
contractor for Cops City is our enemy and a potential target.
The Wulani Forest is not dying, it is being killed,
and those who are killing it have names and addresses.
A list of local Atlanta evil doers is available at
stop reeves young dot com. The next day, on Tuesday,

(16:25):
May seventeenth, Atlanta police, backed by other state and federal
law enforcement, including the CAB Police, Georgia State Patrol, the
Georgia Bureau of Investigation, and the FBI, raided the South
Atlanta Forest. The raid came just days after the Week
of Action, which brought hundreds to the Atlanta Forest to
participate in workshops, plant gardens, watch films, and protest at

(16:49):
the homes of developers plotting the forests destruction. Shortly after
the scheduled events ended, police gathered their forces to raid
the forest encampment. Police started staging at around nine am
on Tuesday and started coming in at around ten am.
Force defenders started mobilizing and calling for support. Cops blocked

(17:11):
off the roads leading to the forest access points and
told drivers stuck at the blockade that quote were opening
up the site for construction. Soon, cops started arresting protesters
that gathered in Entrenchment Creek Park and towed any car
on the streets outside of the park. Helicopter circled the forest,
trying to track the movement of forest offenders under the

(17:34):
cover of the tree canopy. Police near occupied trees were
heard talking about quote flushing out people inside tree houses
in the face of militant resistance. Police did manage to
cut down trees and destroyed multiple treehouses, destroyed force defenders,
personal belongings, and other protest infrastructure set up by the

(17:54):
land defenders, all in an effort to allow contractors to
begin development of the ninety million in dollar Cops City project.
On Twitter, they defend the Atlanta Forest account posted quote
reports that the Atlanta Police and Georgia State Patrol are
chainsawing in an area of the old Atlanta prison farm
where people have occupied trees to defend the forest. Dozens

(18:15):
of forest defenders moving in groups all over the woods
throughout the raid. No arrests inside the forest reported so far,
only from the perimeter at the public park. Police seem
unwilling to pursue people through the forest. Swat rifles trained
on forest defenders occupying a treehouse to stop Cops City.

(18:36):
The Defend the Forest twitter account also posted a video
of a semitruck packed full of building supplies headed into
the north boundary of the proposed Cops City site where
police were raiding the forest defense occupation. I'm gonna do
a little quote from Unicorn and Riot, who reported on
the police raid. Quote. According to police, those committed to

(18:56):
defending the forest put up a fight, pelting the officers
with rocks, and what appeared to be a Molotov cocktail
was deployed along a fence line. In the wake of
the raid, a truck barricade constructed months ago to protect
those occupying the forest from police incursions showed signs of
having being set on fire. Flaming barricades are a common
tactic used by protesters around the world. To push back

(19:19):
against police unquote. Eventually, police let media enter a small
contained area on the other side of the blockade. Police
wanted to talk with the multiple press outlets that had
gathered near the site in an attempt to gain control
of the media narrative. Atlanta Police Deputy Chief sheer Bomb, Yes,
that's how I'm pronouncing it. I've no idea has actually said,

(19:39):
but I think it's sheer Bomb held an interview staged
by the Public Affairs Office. Overall, the goal seemed to
be to control the media narrative by painting police as
the heroes and the protesters as a very small group
of outside agitators. After getting the statement from police, most
media left the scene. While the blockades were still up
on both sides of the forest access road. Deputy Chief

(20:02):
sheer Bomb said that police escorted contractors into the forest
and preliminary work was being done. Police later specified that
they were at this site to a company contractors tasked
with removing some temporary illegal structures that were set up
by protesters, and that quote no one was hurt. Media
framed the raid and subsequent arrests as the police cracking

(20:25):
down on a group of violent outside agitators cops giving
statements like quote, we will not be deterred by the
acts of a few that do not represent our community,
and with local news covering the incident like quote several
protesters who are arrested after they threw a molotov cocktail
at police as officers raided a camp on the grounds

(20:47):
of the planned Atlanta Police Departments training facility unquote, even
though the arrests took place in a completely different section
of the woods, where protesters were gathered openly in a
public park and actually happened before the cocktail was thrown.
Yet there was a lot of attempts to link the
arrests to them altof cocktail. But you know, media media

(21:10):
just do that, and they gobbled up the story of
of the of the cocktail and of the outside agitators
attacking Atlanta police and it's not representing our community. Eight
people were arrested and faced charges ranging from criminal trespassing
to police obstruction. Despite attempts by police to paint the
movement as the work of quote outside agitators, while also

(21:34):
working alongside of growing list of out of town law
enforcement organizations, the movement to Oppose Cops City has been
directly rooted within a broad localized opposition, whether that be
with Atlanta based organizations fighting against gentrification, local chapters of
climate change protest organizations, or just anonymous individuals that reside

(21:55):
across Atlanta, or the indigenous people who have incestral connections
to the land. And hours after the raid, there was
a Atlanta community press conference put on at Entrenchment Creek Park,
and I'm going to read a statement that somebody gave
at the press conference. Quote, this is an attempt to
demoralize a vibrant and diverse movement led by local community

(22:17):
members against the replacement of the largest urban tree canopy
in the United States with the largest police training compound
in the United States. The police will attempt to depict
this movement as a small group of hard line activists.
We are all neighbors of the forest. We are intelligent
people who know that the future of the world is
on fire, and who are determined to act and to

(22:39):
defend what remains to sustain life in this city and
on this planet. The city is only going to get hotter,
wrench is only going to get more expensive. Food and
gas prices are only rising. The city has no answers
for this, except for a more militarized police force. You
can't prop up a free society with violence alone. The

(22:59):
next day, protesters from Saturday's Stop Cop City march had
court and all of their charges were dropped. Atlanta police
is just desperate to get a good boogeyman to blame
any potential uprising on, and they're not being super successful
and letting any of these charges stick. There was this

(23:19):
really great point made by this person named Audi Khali
and was going to quote from a thread they posted quote.
Thirty seven arrests were made in relation to the decentralized
Defend the Atlanta Force movement over the past weeks, mostly
for made up jaywalking charges, but only twelve had their
legal identities revealed to corporate media and right wing doctors.

(23:40):
Why all twelve protesters who were docked these past couple
of weeks were said to be from out of state.
When journalists asked if other protesters had Georgia residences, answers
were denied. The answer to why is simple. These twelve
currently possessed out of state I das and appeared white passing.

(24:01):
The other twenty four arrestees might not necessarily fit these categories.
Noticed that right wing troll and you know, amitted the
ages of the arrestees who are not in their twenties
as well. This is yet another iteration of the outside
educator and narrative and an attempt to delegitimize resistance while
denying local agency unquote. Police are continuing to target stop

(24:22):
copsy of protesters with extremely high bales. Just getting nine
protesters released during one week cost over a hundred thousand dollars.
So please if you're able to consider donating to the
Atlanta Solidarity Fund, there will will be links in the description.
So that was the raid that took place a few
weeks ago. Six tree houses were destroyed. And those tree

(24:46):
houses weren't just like tree sets to defend the forest,
as were also like people's homes like that that that's
where people were living. Uh so six six of those
were destroyed, multiple force defenders, personal belongings were stolen or
are just dismantled and decimated by the cops. And overall
the raid was pretty bad. I mean, it's it kind

(25:07):
of it kind of sucked. We will talk about what
has happened since the raid when we come back from
a little at break all right, we are back after
the raid. Officers from Atlanta Police Departments Zone three Field
Investigations Team discussed using deadly force against protesters if they

(25:27):
used molotov cocktails to defend themselves from a raid. According
to scanner audio publicized by activists, listen closely for like
thirty seconds to hear their conversation discussing deadly force. The
good thing we didn't get out the damnal today. I
don't do well with fire. Oh yeah, right, howld you
deadly force encounter? Wait? Whatever doing with fire? That's why

(25:50):
I brought it up. I was saying, as long as
we're all that they paid the deadly fourth encounter, you liar,
ro cop bails them at the road pure the treehouse
they had up, they had cars like on it, people

(26:13):
coming in a protest against copy. Sure, So I'm just
gonna reread one little section in case it was hard
to hear. Quote, I told you deadly force encounter. That's
why I brought it up. As long as we're on
the same page, I'm atop cocktail is the deadly force
encounter unquote. So a deadly force encounter is a situation

(26:37):
where officers are legally allowed to shoot to kill. Basically,
what this scanner audio ins anuates is that police are
preparing or thinking about just killing people when multov cocktails
are deployed. So that's a thing. Also, it's a little
interesting that police themselves referred to the project as cops City.
But yeah, keeping track of scanner audio has been a

(26:58):
big part of the not on the ground portion of
the movement is being all to track police communications, police
locations all using open source information, and tops are really
scared and paranoid when it comes to stuff around the
forest and just don't seem to be able to grasp
the idea of a decentralized resistance movement that is capable

(27:20):
of a diversity of tactics, including militant ones. There's this
other scanner audio that was released displaying Atlanta police's ignorance, cowardice,
and paranoia related to what they believe is a group
dubbed Black Flag Atlanta. You guys gotta be carefully had
a um to the cab jobs are sitting in the

(27:41):
van and they they attacked the van or you know,
knocking windows out with flatting attires and stuff. But they're
supposed to be a group called a Black Flag Atlanta
that are targeting police and they have an app and
stuff back can monitor our vehicles and shows about patrol
cars are sitting at with lab updates. You know, you know,

(28:02):
you know, they could be dropping the fans pointing something
or you know, sort of trap or damaged property and
shout in the range you said, they gotta what's the
name of that? I just pulled back around find it.
But the group is called black Flag Atlanta, So the
so called group that police refer to as black Flag
Atlanta is likely just referring to a hobbyist website that

(28:26):
simply collects on the ground reports and open source police
scanner information. The website is an open resource for anyone
to use. It's not a group of people. It's just
a random online tool that lets you listen to scanner audio.
The cops mentioned that they're afraid because of the actions

(28:47):
of some anonymous individuals who surrounded a law enforcement vehicle
and damaged it while officers were inside just sitting terrified,
and then did the same to a juvenile detention facility.
Van I discussed the details of that direct action earlier
in this episode, when anonymous people through rocks and slash
tires of those law enforcement vehicles. Quoting from an anonymous

(29:08):
statement on scenes dot no blogs, quote, the cops believe
that Black Flag Atlanta is a group that tracks and
monitors cops and their locations around the forest and works
to attack them. This is laughably wrong. Rather than understanding
that our power comes from open source intelligence, horizontal organizing,
and transparency, they have conjured up a shadowy organization that

(29:29):
organizes hits on police officers and publishes their targets right beforehand. Unquote.
Cops really just don't seem to have a clue on
what's what's actually going on um or how any types
of decentralized infrastructure works, or how movements are really operated.

(29:50):
It is an interesting thing to see. But scared cops
are also dangerous cops. As we just mentioned about them
planning to use lethal force if there's a multip cocktail
in the area right when cops are scared. That's not
necessarily always a good thing. Um. It just you know,
a lot of police training is based on being afraid

(30:11):
and then using deadly force if you are afraid. So
it's just a thing to think about. I'm not I'm
not I'm not making any like commentary here, I'm just saying, yeah,
cops seem really scared, and that can be good. It
also can be dangerous. I'm now going to talk a
bit about solidarity actions, because you know, not everyone's able
to go to Atlanta, even if even if they would

(30:33):
like to go to Land and help help participate, some
people just aren't able to. But that doesn't mean people
are unable to assist in the movement. I'm gonna do
a little quote from Unicorn riot quote. In recent weeks,
autonomous attacks in solidarity with efforts to defend the Atlanta
Forest have occurred throughout the country, according to a website
that tracks such actions, One repeated target has been at

(30:56):
Las Technical Consultants, the apparent company of Long and Airing,
a subcontractor of the cop City project, which had its
windows of its office smashed in Albany, New York, in Minneapolis, Minnesota,
and it's building tag with the graffiti in Highland, Indiana.
The website also received reports of attacks on Bank of America,

(31:16):
which donates money to the police foundations across the country,
including the Atlanta Police Foundation. Attacks were reported in Pittsburgh, Philadelphia,
Portland's Enemy Appolis unquote, and I'm going to just go
through a list of solidarity actions that have happened in
May and now up into June. Most of these were
posted on scenes dot no blogs that seems to be

(31:38):
the main site for anonymously posting communication or report backs.
You can find guides to how to do so with
more Internet security on websites like scenes and websites like
Warrior up. So anyway, here's just a list of little
communications that have been released related to solidarity actions that
have taken place in the past month. Quote. On the
evening of May to I smashed seven windows at the

(32:01):
office building where the northeast offices of Atlas are located
in Albany, New York. I also tagged Atlas stopped destroying
the Atlanta Forest, destroying concience of acres of forest during
the sixth greatest mass extinction of species. To build a
police training facility following one of the largest anti police
uprisings in decades is fucking disgusting with his vandalism. I

(32:25):
urge Atlas to do the right thing and to drop
any contracts with Brassfield and Gory and the Cops City Project.
During the week of Action, the brass Field and Gory
Corporate HQ in Birmingham, Alabama was targeted. According to a
strongly worded anonymous statement published on scenes. The report back
reads quote. On the morning of the thirteenth, the windows

(32:46):
and glass doors to the brass Field and Gory Corporate
HQ were smashed. The words drop cops city or else
were spray painted on the windows. Paint was applied to
the front sign. Let it serve as a warning to
the executives at brass Field and Gory. We know where
you work and we know where you sleep. Your houses
could be next Keith Johnson Miller, George James Gory. You

(33:07):
will drop this contract eventually. Why wait to see how
far will go? In solidarity with a struggle in Atlanta unquote.
And then just a few days ago, construction offices in
Pennsylvania were hit. The community was short and sweet, just
reads quote. Door windows smashed and building tagged at the

(33:28):
northeast office of Atlas Technical Consultants at two one to
six Fillmore Avenue in Erie, Pennsylvania. Stop cops City, defend
the Atlanta Forest and forests everywhere. A few days ago,
on May thirty one, there was a massive police mobilization
involving helicopters and a road checkpoint around the Atlanta Forest

(33:49):
at the proposed Cops City site. According to reports, Atlanta
Police Department accompanied Long Engineering, who seemingly were surveying for
a perimeter fence. No arrests were reported. Long Engineering, as
we've stated, is owned by Atlas Technical Consultants, and it's
currently being contracted by Brassfield and Gory, the Atlanta Police
Foundation's general contractor. The stoft Reeves Young Campaign least a

(34:11):
statement discussing the events of the past few days quote.
On May thirty one and June one, Brassfield and Gory
subcontractor Long Engineering entered the old Atlanta prison farm with
chainsaws and heavy machinery. They are cutting down trees in
order to build a fence around the zone. This is
where the Police Foundation believes they will build the Cops
City training compound. They hope to prevent the community from

(34:34):
seeing what they are doing. Long Engineering, owned by a
man named Shephard Long of ken Saw, Georgia, has already
participated in destructive acts in the South River Forest. For this,
they have become the object of a nationwide pressure campaign
by activists and communities organizing to oppose police militarization and
climate change. Long is a subsidy of Atlas Technical Consultants.

(34:58):
If activists in community bers can convince brass Field and
Gory to drop their contract with the Atlanta Police Foundation,
the project could lose funding and fall apart. Brass Field
and Gory uses many subcontractors to do their projects, including
Atlas Technical Consultants subsidy Long Engineering. By encouraging Long Engineering
to drop the contract with Brassfield and Gory, we encourage

(35:20):
Brassfield and Gory to drop their contract with cops city.
Climate collapse and police militarization are not abstract processes so
that nobody can stop. They happen because of observable and
preventable reasons. If you care about police brutality, if you
want to stop climate change, this is your chance to
do something unquote, and I do think there are a

(35:41):
lot of signs that people actually can make actual impacts.
At the last Community Stakeholder Advisory meeting, Atlanta Assistant Police
Chief Darien schnear Bomb said that construction plans could be
quote delayed or deferred because of the actions of a
very few unquote, and said that this is why police

(36:01):
agencies are working to quote addressed criminal protests very quickly
so it doesn't get into that realm unquote. And on
the day I record this, which is June second. Earlier
this morning, to police chased Force defenders into the woods
near a work site and found a camp. Ten Force

(36:21):
defenders confronted and surrounded a bulldozer that was in the woods,
resulting in a work stoppage. On a communicate released online
at scenes read quote work stopped today Thursday, June second,
as a group of ten Force defenders confronted a bulldozer
in the forest just west of the Duvy today forcet.
Defenders launched rocks and fireworks, yelling get the funk out

(36:44):
of the woods. As the machine was attacked. Four to
five workers, likely with long engineering, hid behind the bulldozer
while one Atlanta Police officer stood idly with his hands
on his hips. Force defenders retreated into the woods. How polling,
no arrests were made. We call upon anyone who wants
to defend the forest and stop cops city to support

(37:06):
the struggle by sewing chaos along the perimeter. Plan a
slow moving car caravan on Constitution Road, or a rally
at the juvie workers and pigs. We repeat, stay the
funk out of the woods unquote. And also today a
new timeline was released detailing the construction plans for a
cops City. The Atlanta Police Foundation plans to begin cutting

(37:29):
down massive swaths of trees in about two weeks. The
clearing is planned for nearly of the four hundred acre property,
so defour stations seems to be just two weeks away
now based on the full site plans that are viewable online.
I will link the plans in the show notes along

(37:49):
with the Stop Reeves Young campaign, which details ways to assist,
like calling campaigns and random stuff that is maybe more
possible from afar. But the sty Copsdy project is going
to continue all throughout the summer and seems to have
no sign of cooling down. It is only it is
only heating up as the summer gets hotter, so well

(38:10):
the stuff in the forest in more ways than one,
But anyway, that doesn't for us. Today. You can check
out stop Reeves Young dot com for the calling campaign
and for the list of quote evildoers that are working
to DeForest sections of the Atlanta South River Forest. You
can go to scenes dot no blogs dot org to

(38:32):
read communicates and report backs, and I'll put links for
the Atlanta Solidarity Fund in the description as well. See
you on the other side. Welcome to it could happen here.

(38:56):
It's the show with things fall apart and we put
them back together again and there may may not be
enormously allowed lawnmowers in the background. Yeah, this is this
is This is a podcast also about abolishing lawns, although
I guess I guess not to today. It's only about
abolishing lawns because I'm extume we know it about neighbors.
But we can we can do an anti lne episode

(39:17):
in the near future. Yeah, one day, one day, but
but it is on on. On a more serious note,
is I have Garrison with me, and I have Tanya
with me, who is an abortion clinic escort and has
been doing this for a very very long time. Tanya,
thank you for joining us, Thank you for having me. Yeah,
I'm I'm really excited to talk with you about this because, um,

(39:37):
this is well, this is something we've been wanting to
do for a while because I think not enough people
know what this is. So I guess I guess the
first thing is is, Yeah, can you explain to people
who aren't familiar with this what clinic escorting is. Absolutely so.
There are a number of volunteer clinic escorts across the

(39:58):
country and many are they're they're not necessarily organized nationwide,
but many metro areas do have organizations where you can
volunteer to be a clinical score. And what that means
is that you are essentially someone who goes to a
clinic that performs abortion services and you stand outside that

(40:22):
clinic and you help the patients get into the clinic,
uh hopefully free of harassment from protesters outside, and just
ensure that protesters don't block access to the clinic and
that the patients are able to get inside you know,

(40:44):
know where they're going and get insanely Yeah, and that
seems like that it seems like a really hard job
in a couple of ways. But both of the sense
that like there's a bunch of extremely angry and very
weird people with really signs and very sincerely held beliefs

(41:06):
on in a different uh side where they they do
want to stop people from going and convince them not
to go in um, you know, and it is interesting
as as a clinic escort, you know, you're you're really
you don't have an opinion, Like I don't have an

(41:27):
opinion on whether someone goes in, someone can go in,
someone cannot go in. It's not you know, where the
people who do the clinic escorting are there because we
believe that women and their partners should have a choice
about what to do. And so if a woman chooses
that she doesn't want to go into the clinic, you know,
that's fine by me. I'm just there to ensure that

(41:49):
she has the choice to go into the clinic um
and and get whatever services she needs, whether it's uh,
whether it's crenatal care or contraception or abortion services. So um,
it's it's fascinating because yeah, there are a lot of people.
You know, the protesters on the other side can really

(42:13):
run the gamuts. Some of them, um, are very angry
and have very interesting signs, but some of them, you know,
you they also range to those who are just standing
there saying the Rosary, walking up and down, and the
carrying crucifixes. And you know, if it was just people

(42:34):
saying the Rosary and then going coming saying the Rosary
and going, I probably wouldn't do what I do because
that's neither here nor there from me. It's the people
who are you know, they will try to get in
the window of a car when a car pulls up
if if they happen to have the windows down and uh,

(42:55):
you know, get in the like put their heads in
the car to try to talk to the people or
hand them literature. Um And I've seen some of the
literature that you know, people have shared with us after
it's been given to them, you know, and it's a
lot of it is full of misinformation, um and and
kind of also you know, as someone who was raised Catholic.

(43:20):
Uh and and it's coming from people many many of
the people who are protesting are Catholic. It's very emotionally
manipulative and not actual information on some of them. I
remember seeing one once around Christmas time that was like
a whole cartoon about how excited Mary was to be

(43:40):
Jesus mom and uh and and how therefore that means
that you should not have your pregnancy terminated because you
should be more like Mary and be excited too. Yeah, yeah,
pretty fascinated. Yeah, And I guess that's another thing that
that I was wondering about to what extent, like so

(44:03):
Obviously there's a physical component of this, right is okay,
trying to make sure that people aren't physically interfering. Um,
how much of it also is sort of like providing
emotional support to the to the people you're with, sure,
because it's really stressful it can be. I mean, the
clinic where I'm an escort is has a little bit

(44:26):
of a perimeter where uh, there's there's a parking lot
and between the people where they can actually protest out
on the sidewalk which is public property obviously and the
actual entrance to the clinic. Um. But there are people
who come in off a public transport to and not

(44:47):
necessarily aren't necessarily coming in a car where they can
get sort of beyond where the protesters are um to
the clinic. And so I actually have a vivid memory.
I've been doing this for sixteen years, and I have
a vivid memory of a woman who came off the bus.
She got down off the bus at the bus stop, like,

(45:08):
and the protesters really got up in her face. And
one of them in particular was a guy who is
I'm not a small person, I'm about five ten and
and and pretty decent size, but he's definitely over six
ft tall, and he was just like looming over her,
and I had to physically insert myself in between her

(45:29):
and him and say, Hey, you want to go to
the clinic, this is how you get there. You don't
have to listen to these people. If you want to
talk to them, you can, but you know you don't
have to, and you know, and and really, you know,
they're in such a fragile moment, most of them. Interestingly,
that that particular individual had come to find out wasn't

(45:52):
even coming for termination services. She was coming to get
an ultrasound. She was having twins, and it was the
lowest cost place that she could go to actually find
an ultrasound to make sure that her twins were okay,
um and so. And she even came out afterwards with
the ultrasound and like shoved it in the guy's face
and was like, you know, you know, go take a

(46:16):
flying leap, but um so, But yeah, I mean, part
of it is just showing that there are people who
believe that you have the right to make the choice
you're making, and that we're not judging you. We're not here,
you know. I think a lot of women in the
position of who feel that the need to terminate a pregnancy,

(46:39):
they feel very judged. It's it's it's society is very
judgment Bault And I think you know, being there, we
have so many people who come up to us UM
and just say, hey, thanks for being just thanks for
being right. It's it's just helpful to know that someone
is here, uh, and and and and believes that I

(47:00):
have the right to make this decision and that I'm
the best person to make this decision about me and
my body and my family. UM is really it's it
makes it that much, it makes it better. And and
people will come up and tell the most personal stories
as well. We've had someone who came up to me

(47:20):
once and said, hey, no, ten years ago, my wife
was pregnant UM and we had been trying for so
long to have a baby, and we found out that
there was this massive, you know, genetic defect that was
not really compatible with life, and we had we had

(47:42):
we faced the tough decision about do we go ahead
and terminate this pregnancy and and try to start again
and have it and and and get pregnant again, or
do we carry this to term knowing that this child
isn't going to live um for very long and that individual, uh,
you know, and his wife and decided to to terminate

(48:04):
the existing pregnancy, knowing that the baby wasn't going to live.
And he said, and uh, when we went to actually
have the abortion, we had to run the gauntlet of
all of those people outside, all those people like this
telling us how we were killing our baby. Um, I
wanted baby. You know that we were killing our child

(48:26):
and we were murderers and all of that. And so
he was just like, just thank you for being here,
thank you for being here and showing because you don't
know what what's going on in the lives of all
of these people who are coming in here and they
don't know all what's going on. And so and he said,
I really wish we had had someone like you know,

(48:47):
you standing here to let us know that it was okay,
you know, at the end that moment of time to
to to do this. So, yeah, it's it's interesting people
will tell very very personal stories. The next thing I
was wondering is about how how this has changed over time.
I mean, yeah, you've you've been in this for like

(49:10):
longer than I've been, like very seriously a conscious person.
So yeah, so so I'm wondering what has it been like,
how how has this changed over the past sort of
like a decade and a half, And has there been
a change like very very recently as in in in

(49:35):
the sort of like as as Row looks like it's
dying and what do you think that's going to mean
going forward for this? Yeah? Um, so yes it has
changed over time. Um, and and yes it has changed
very recently as well. Um, what I what I can say.
You know, when I first started doing this, it was

(49:58):
really just kind of you know, the same hand and
and it still is the same handful of usual suspects
who show up at least at the clinic I escort
at um. But it was really it was it was
a small handful. And uh, it was the same people
every week, week week, week after week after week. And um,

(50:21):
you know on the clinic sport side, you know, we're volunteers,
so you know, we need people to come and be
sort of energized, and so you know, we have a
cadre of people who have been doing it. Yes, I've
been doing it for sixteen years. But there's a woman
that I I a sport with. There are several women
that I sport with who've been doing it decades longer
than I, right, and yeah, I mean really amazing, really

(50:44):
amazing women and who probably have even more interesting stories
than I do. But you know, in the you know,
we and we would see after after something happened, like
when George Tiller was murdered, we had an influx of
volunteers who came, people who were angry and said, you know,

(51:05):
I was so upset and I realized I needed to
do something about it. Um. So periodically there have been
you know, obviously, you know, the murder of George Schiller
was a tragedy, but we've had things like that that
have energized people and brought them in two actually doing

(51:26):
clinic escorting. UM. And there's been a little bit of
a pickup recently in the number of escorts, but it's
nothing like the pickup that I think I've seen in
terms of antis anders. And it's you know, and it's
important because you know, if you really believe that people

(51:49):
should have the right to bodily autonomy and the right
to make this choice, UM, that that requires people to
actually make it happen for them, and there are a
lot of people trying to make it not happen. And
I actually I was actually esporting, um because the clinic esports,
uh they you know, we actually change off, we have

(52:11):
a schedule. We don't all go every week at least
at the clinic where I am, because you know, we
also want to have our own lives and not just
be standing at this clinic every every weekend. Um. But
I was esporting the weekend after Ruth bader Ginsberg died
and I was standing by myself kind of it went

(52:33):
end well, another person went and just I think picked
up a sign or took a bathroom right or something,
and one of the newer anties um stood across from
me and yelled at me that Ruth bader Ginsburg was
was burning in hell now and that if I didn't repent,

(52:56):
you know, that the same thing would happen to me,
and that that's just how plan that, you know, people
who believe in in killing babies, uh just are going
to rotten hell for eternity. And and so that was
an interesting you know, and it was the first time.
Most of the time they don't really try to engage

(53:16):
us in conversation, but it was the first time someone
was really just saying super super like sort of inflammatory
stuff to me as an personally, as an escort, we
certainly had heard, you know, they'll they'll say things to
patients where they say, you know, don't go in there,
it's not safe, you're good mom to your baby, and

(53:39):
that kind of stuff, which is also you know, obviously
incredibly emotional views to women going through uh, you know
what they're going through when they feel that they have
no better choice than determinate pregnancy. UM. But uh, yeah,
the actual sort of the vitriol towards towards the escorts

(54:01):
is a little is increasing UM. And I would say
around the time Ruth Bader Ginsburg died, we also have
seen an enormous uptick in the number of protesters outside
the clinic um each each week, as well as the
length of time that they will stay. UM. They actually

(54:21):
about doubled the length of time that they should stay UM.
And so you know, it's it's been a challenge. It's
been a challenge for us on the escorting side to
actually cover the ships because you know, we are again
we're all volunteers who have lives and want to live

(54:41):
our lives. You know, we're women who are mothers, grandmothers,
Uh men, who are you know, father's grandfathers who just
you know, want want to do something good and help out. Um.
And you know, more and more of the time, Uh,
we were having to stay later, come earlier, stay later,

(55:02):
to ensure that there's someone there, that there's a there's
there's a friendly or at least protective president. Uh. For
the women coming into the have they gotten like have
they gotten more violent? Um? You know, like I said,
there's actually so for us. It's where we are in

(55:23):
kind of the clinic where I work, are in kind
of a privileged position, so to speak. And that where
they are stationed, you know, out on the sidewalk is
uh is far enough away. Um, you know, across a
parking lot from from the clinic that you know that

(55:44):
the physical altered you know, interactions are are relatively rare. Um.
I'm sure you know that that wouldn't really be better
A question? Better place to a clinic escort? Who's on
a clinic at a clinic where you know, the entrance
to the clinic is right on a public I'd walk
right where I think you know, they definitely do have
significantly more physical interactions. UM. I guess it's hard to say,

(56:13):
it depends on how you define that is it there
For a long time. The one of the signs outside
the clinic was a photo of of the doctor who
provided the termination services, um, a photo of him and
his name, and it said retire this person you know

(56:37):
his name and the retire abortionist and then his name um.
And that that showed up, I think, as I vaguely
recall around the time George Schiller was was murdered. UM,
So what does that mean? Right? So that's that's violent

(56:58):
in and of itself. It's it's it's an a suggestion
there of UM. You know, I won't pretend that it's not.
You know, it doesn't sometimes go through my head like
you know, because there are clinic esports who have been murdered. Um.
And and so it doesn't. It sometimes does go through
my head, especially like you know, certain times of year

(57:20):
when we're bundled up and it's cold. Um, you know,
someone could come up behind me and I you know,
wouldn't necessarily always hear them or see them. Um. And
so it is, it's you know, there's definitely always an
undercurrent in a feeling of you know, something could escalate.

(57:42):
We're fortunate at my clinic that it It hasn't too
much recently, but we you know, I would say, you know, again,
as Roe is dying, you know, they're getting more bold. Um.
They're not supposed to trespass, they're not supposed to come
on into the parking lot. Um. And yet there are
some who are really trying to test that boundary now

(58:04):
who will go to their car not in the clinic
parking lot, and then as they leave, drive into the
parking lot and around the by the clinic just to
sort of um, intimidate people and and and to can
make the escorts concerned because obviously, you know, when we're

(58:25):
on foot, it's very hard to get physically between them
and something when they're when they're driving, um. And so yeah,
it's it's there's definitely an escalation in that front, and
and an escalation in in the rhetoric. Um. You know,
there are more I would say, kind of pointed signs,

(58:49):
uh that that are used to try to intimidate the
women into not going into the clinic. There was actually
there's a sign that had been used for for that
actually has been used for a little bit longer, but
it basically it had the names of two women who,
according to the antis uh had died under the care

(59:12):
of the services of the doctor at our clinic, which
in the end, when I actually did my own research,
wasn't true. One one just very unfortunately had an allergic
reaction to the anesthetic, which is not something you know
unless you've been under anesthesia, and uh the other and
and it wasn't and neither of them wasn't actually the

(59:35):
provider at at our clinic who was performing the service
at the time. Uh, those individuals died, but it said,
you know, dead, and it had these two women's names,
um and a hundred and fifty thousand babies and um,
which is a little bit inflammatory. And then it and

(59:55):
also misleading when you think about it, because you know,
the maternal more totality rate in the United States is
like over twenty three women for a hundred thousands. So
I was like, well, even if this is accurate, even
if this sign was accurate, which is not, you know,
two women out of a hundred and fifty that's way
safer than actually for pregnancy UM. And you know, so

(01:00:21):
it's those kinds of things. It's it's the mind games.
And you know, as someone who uh, you know has
seen this for a while, Like you know, to me,
the mind game is part of the violence, even though
it's not physical. It's it's really you know, trying to
to make people feel ashamed and feel that they shouldn't

(01:00:44):
come out. And I think that you know, as as
we're looking at Robe possibly being overturned, you know, you're
suddenly seeing all of these people coming out of the woodwork.
Because you know, so many women in this country actually
do abort a pregnancy at some point in time, do
terminate a pregnancy, and yet it's not something anyone talks

(01:01:10):
about because it's it's still because of the dialogue in
this country, and because of the way it is portrayed.
It is something that most people, you know, I don't
want to be public about, not just because of the
politics of it, but because you know, there are people

(01:01:31):
who are made to feel ashamed and as opposed to
you know this, This was the right choice for me
at this point in time. Um, And maybe under different
circumstances it might have been a different choice. UM. But yeah,
So I think it's hard to say whether violence has increased, um,

(01:01:55):
because it's always had that undercurrent. I mean ever since
I've started, ever since I started doing. One of the
things that we've talked to a few other people, we
talked to someone who was doing security for sort of
security plans for clinics, and one of the things they
were talking about was like a shift in the kinds

(01:02:15):
of people who were getting involved in these clinics. And
I'm wondering, in these clinic protests, like I wonder, have
have you have you seen like I don't know, they
were talking about, like there's been some specifically fascist groups
getting involved, and I was wondering if like the kinds
of people who've you've seen have been like that, or like,
you know, in terms of the new people who are
getting involved, are they closer to like the kinds of

(01:02:38):
people you usually see see outside these clinics. So that's
actually an interesting point that I hadn't I hadn't thought
too much about. But I think, you know, the previously,
you know, when I first started doing this, it tended
to be kind of your older Catholic uh folks who

(01:03:00):
are you know, coming and saying the rosary, you know, uh,
standing there with the statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary,
like in front of the clinic and um and and
you know, some could be pushy. Um, but I think
it is accurate to say there is actually a younger

(01:03:23):
element of anti abortion protester or anti choice really because
in the end it's really about the choice, not and
and so I think, yes, I'm seeing younger and younger people.
And it's interesting that you mentioned that because a lot
of them are men. Uh, they're young, almost almost entirely white.

(01:03:49):
There is a few a handful of people of color,
but um, they they tend to come very very rarely. Um.
And you know, the it's interesting, So it was largely
older white men and women previously, and now I would

(01:04:10):
say there are many more younger men getting involved, a
few women. But when for most of the young and
when I say young, I would say, you know, well,
while for the for the clinic I'm at, I would
say anyone under probably the age of forty. But you know, also, um,

(01:04:31):
you know, really when when you know, even under the
age of thirty or twenty five, it's with the exception
of one, it's met it is it is white men. Um.
And uh, yeah, so that's that's interesting. I hadn't It's
quite possible. Um, certainly there are some that but you know,

(01:04:53):
we as clinic escorts are not actually engaging these individuals
and conversation. That's not something that you know, we have
to sign pledges that were you know, at least for
the for the organization that we volunteer with, that we're
not going to engage in conversation with them. That we're not,
you know, because no one you know, and I guess
this is sort of the whole point of your podcast.

(01:05:15):
No one is going to change each other's minds on
this issue, right um, and you know over over the
parking lot, uh and and one uh, you know sort
of interaction. So we actually we we don't and we
actively don't because we we just you know, it's it's

(01:05:35):
not worth it. We're there. The point of being there
is not to try to get to know the other
the the anti choice demonstrators, it's not to try to
you know, change their minds. It's just to ensure that
the women who have made their decision are able to
freely access the health care services that they have made

(01:05:56):
the decision access. Yeah, that makes a lot of that.
That's definitely seems like the like, it definitely seems like
the best strategy for this. It seems like something that
like other people could learn from as like a tactic
to deal with this kind of stuff, because yeah, and
engaging with those people. It doesn't I have limited experience

(01:06:21):
with this, but they showed up to my well, okay,
show up to my high school, but then they also
show up to my college, and we just like that
they were trying to like get in use footage, and
so we wound up just like sitting down in front
of the like just sitting down in front of their
signs so people couldn't see them, and then just like
refusing to talk to them, And that I think worked
a lot better than like, I don't know a lot

(01:06:43):
of the other stuff that I've seen, because yeah, like
definitely right, like yeah, like you're not gonna those people,
Like yeah, like just there's no way you're gonna change
the mind of like someone if you's holding a sign there.
And I guess that's also another thing that that that
it's interesting about this, which is yeah, like it's like

(01:07:03):
your your emphasis on it's not about the audiological debate
as much as it is, like it's not about like
you going to confront these people. It's about making sure
that the people who need these services are safe and
are able to do it, and that that seems like
a very powerful way to sort of like bypass this,
Like I don't know, bypass is weird like discourse circuit

(01:07:28):
that everyone gets in. Yeah, I mean I think you
know what I what I can tell you. I mean, listen,
I would love to sleep in on my Saturday mornings.
I don't. I don't like to to get up and
give up, you know, you know, two to four hours
of my Saturday um, you know, in the freezing rain
or the you know wind and cold auran a really

(01:07:50):
hot some more day and and get up out of
bed to do that. But you know, on you know,
there are cold winter mornings and I'm like, oh gosh,
it's it's early. I'm that that alarms awfully early and
it's really cold outside. But I always just in my mind,
the thing that I tell myself is you never know

(01:08:11):
who's coming in today, who just needs to see you
and just needs to see someone there too. You know,
whether it's to give her the directions because she's so
distraught after having to drive or walk by a number
of protesters telling her how she's you know, going to

(01:08:31):
regret her decision and how she's a terrible human being
and she's a killer, and she's at this, she's a slut,
she's a whole earld whatever, you know, whatever the message
that someone in that um situation gets by walking past
those protesters, um, you know, I never know who needs
to just see me there, and whether it's that she

(01:08:52):
just needs directions because she's so distraught after going through,
you know, running that gauntlet, that she's kind of lost
her bearings and she's Okay, which door do I need
to go in? How do I do this? Or actually
just needs to see you know, a friendly face or
you know, have someone tell her that it's okay to
not listen to what they have to say to her. Um,

(01:09:15):
and it's okay to not internalize that, which you know, UM,
I think it is probably very very hard when you're
already in a somewhat emotionally frauds because how could how
could people who want to start escorting what what would
be the best way that they could go about doing that?

(01:09:36):
Or learning more information about how to do it and
the different places that that allow it and well not
not allowed, but like the different places where different groups
that help facilitate uh this type of work. Yeah, so
I mean, I think there there isn't necessarily that I'm
aware of one sort of national site, but I think, UM,

(01:09:57):
a lot of individual sort of local providers have clinic escorts. UM.
I know that if you most like most, if not many,
Planned parenthoods will have um, you know, a clinic escort program.
And so I think you know, sometimes your best that

(01:10:18):
maybe just to google you know, clinic escort in my
area or contact a provider in your area to say, hey,
how do I get involved? Um, because you know, at
least in my area where I where I live, there
is one that sort of covers the area, but it
is by no means nationwide, and there definitely are sort

(01:10:40):
of localized groups that do it. So I think it
may be just a matter of reaching, you know, googling
the clinic escorts or reaching out to your local Planned
parenthood or if there's another abortion provider in your community
that isn't planned PARENTO, because there are still many that
are not in parented uh that you know they may

(01:11:02):
And I guess my other thing is so for people
who for whatever reason can't to escorting but want to
help support, I mean it basically people who want to
support the providers and the people who need these services,
UM is like, yeah, what what would you recommend that
they do? So there are also similarly to to those

(01:11:23):
those groups, there's UM there's abortion funds throughout the country
UM that whether you know, many of them are you know,
sort of dedicated to individual areas, like local areas, but
you can look up the abortion fund in your area
and that is a you know, an organization that will

(01:11:43):
actually take donations from from individuals who want to help
UM and provide sir, you know, provide financial support to
women who are seeking abortion, whether they it's because they
have to travel out of state, uh or to somewhere
even within their state but not where they live in
order to to actually obtain an abortion UM. And you know,

(01:12:06):
because many women who are are seeking seeking termination services,
they can't always pay for them, you know, especially if
they're publicly insured. You know, a lot of public insurance,
you know, federal dollars cannot be spent on abortion services,
and so they can also help pay for the abortion
for those individuals, if you It's it's a little bit

(01:12:29):
um tougher now that we're in you know, sort of
in the midst of coronavirus pandemic. There are some organizations
that also if you live in an area that where
there are providers and there are people potentially traveling from
out of state, especially if you're in an area where
there is a provider who provides um, you know what
they call, you know, later term services for people who

(01:12:54):
you know, find out that there's a major genetic abnormality
along far into the pregnancy or whatever and they need
to term their pregnancy. UM, you know, there are organizations
that will actually help you volunteer to house them or
provide even transportation services to and from appointments if if
you so choose. But then you know, there's also all

(01:13:17):
of the sort of national if if you're looking to
kind of get more you know, involved at the sort
of overarching national legal level. UM. Certainly there are a
number of organizations, whether it's you know, the Planned Parenthood
Federation or may Rail or any of those organizations that
you could certainly don't to as well. Yeah, we will,

(01:13:38):
we will will put some of the links in in
theset description. And I'm sure that there are many things
I forgot, but those are the ones that jump to
mind right now. People listening to this, please like go
help in whatever way you can, because like, if like

(01:13:59):
if a wition services continue to be a thing where
them existing is a small number of volunteers, they're not
going to So yeah, please please do that. Yeah, Tanya, Tanya,
thank you, thank you so much for joining us, Thank
you for having me. Yeah. Yeah, this has been Make
it happen here. Uh yeah, it's happening here. Do the

(01:14:22):
things that you can do to make sure it doesn't.
Oh yeah, it could happen here. It being a podcast

(01:14:47):
hosted by myself, Christopher Wong and the minute It's inimitable, Amena,
but blah blah blah blah blah, and Andrew, Andrew High,
you're in charge. Thank you. Thank I almost stuck that landing.
I was so still not sucking it up. Are you
guys proud the way there being consistent and I consisted,

(01:15:08):
I mean that you funked it up again, I'm proud. Yeah.
I shouldn't have tried to say inimitable. That was that
that was always going to be a disaster. Yeah, it was,
it was. It was. It was like one of those
gymnastics landings where it's like they landed and then both
your feet go in the ground and they jump and
they fall. Yeah, it's very impressive stuff like that. When yeah,
well all right, Andrew, what do you? What do you?

(01:15:28):
What do you? What do you? What do you? What
do you? What do you got for us today? Right?
So for this UM, this this episode's topic. UM. The
story begins with reddittun god, that's not a great sign. Well,
reddits and Twitter? Yeah, the the two horsemen UM and

(01:15:54):
the discourse that occurred on those sites. Uh a while
ago UM, particularly related to like infrastructure and infrastructure under
anarchis right. I mean, we all know the basic principles
a society UM related to autonomy allow people to define

(01:16:18):
themselves and organize themselves on their own terms. UM horizontalism.
You know, people able to organize so that no one
dominates anyone else and no one exercises power UM move others.
Mutual aid, so the people able to help one another voluntarily,
their bonds of solidarity and networks of generosity that keep

(01:16:40):
the social fabric together. You know. Free association allows people
to cooperate with who they want to and how they
see fit and also converously you know, refuse and disassociate
when needs to be. Yeah, that's a key one that
people don't emphasize it. Yeah, the free disassociation to not
be associated it with certain people. Yeah yeah, I mean,

(01:17:03):
because you can't freely associate. If you don't have the
option to freely disassociate, it's like running into a cage
and then you can't exit. Everyone should be able to
move freely as well. Can emphasize which is I think
one of the things that radicalized me most was, um,
the existence of borders, because to me, at least, like

(01:17:25):
when you're born, you know, you have this spawn point,
and it seems absurd to me that your spawn point
should have so much control over you know, the outcome
of your life, you know, what rights and stuff you enjoy,
and where you can and can't go freely because none
of us have a choice in that matter. You know,

(01:17:46):
we can't exactly choose our parents or choose or you know,
neighborhood or where we grew up whatever. And of course,
borders of the national kind of the only ones. And
I guess suppose you know, um you also put as
bort as related to gender and race and citizenship, and
well that's relates to borders. But yeah, and so how

(01:18:08):
anarchists proposed we get to this society is first and
foremost the people liberating themselves. The concept of self liberation.
So people and not even speaking just in terms of workers,
you know, speaking in terms of gender and sexual minorities,
speaking to terms of racial groups, um, speaking in terms

(01:18:31):
of disabled people. You know, they must be at the
forefront of their own liberation. Freedom cannot be given, it
has to be taken. And so through direct action, which
is when we directly act, without the middle channels of

(01:18:51):
authorities representatives, we make those changes for ourselves, and through
other methods we pursue the world that we wish to
live in, which is the whole prefigurative process of building
a new in the shell of the old. And so
I think part of the issue when it comes to

(01:19:12):
discussions of anarchism and infrastructure and supply lines and all
these different things, is that, um, I think people have
this misconception. There's this real strange idea of what an
anarchist revolution looks like. Um, where you know, we flip
a switch just overnight and boom anarchist society. We have

(01:19:33):
nothing in place, We have no organizations or systems or
networks in places, just boom, staff of fingers and all
of a sudden we are all living under anarchy. But
in reality, um, you know, as Kirpotkin expressed, there's no
fallacy as harmful as the fallacy the One day revolution.

(01:19:54):
Obviously there's going to be a transition. UM. In fact,
a lot of people like to define anarchism as an
ongoing process moving food and food towards the ideal of anarchy. UM.
The whole idea is not whether or not there will
be a transitional society or kind of transition that will be.
And so in this period of transition is when we
would be engaging in the different forms of social experimentation

(01:20:17):
to UM manifest you know, anarchist principles in every facet
of life. And of course this is a process will
involved engaging with local conditions and UM local people and
allowing those communities, those individuals to the two in for themselves,

(01:20:42):
what structures and systems are put in place. Part of
the struggle is going to involve mirroring the society that
we wish to create. So for our final goal is
you know, communistic and archistic society. That our methods must
be communistic kind as an artistic as possible, basic you know,

(01:21:03):
duality of means and ends. So when we speak of
supply lines, when we speak of infrastructure, the reality is
that existing infrastructure is not going to disippay overnight. Were
are starting from complete scratch. This isn't a new you know,
minecraft world that we have to go and punch some
trees and start society all over again. Revolution is destructive,

(01:21:25):
but it's also constructive and transformative. So I mean, we're
not going to get rid of all experts and all expertise.
We're not going to be floundering to figure out how
to make penicillin. You know, people in all fields and
all industries and all layers and all um you know
backgrounds are going to be involved in the process, you know,

(01:21:46):
adapting their work places, adapting the industries towards sustainable and
anarchic ends. And it's a process that is going on
now and will continue because if you know, we look
at at revolution as a combination of I think Eric
Ollen right, he had in his book Envisioning Real Real

(01:22:07):
Utopias three basic concepts of transformation. You had ruptural transformation,
interstitial transformation, and symbiotic transformation. And so interstitial revolution is
basically the idea. Um It's basically a mirror of you know,
prefigurative politics as a theoretical means of societal transformation through

(01:22:27):
progressively and strategically enlarging spaces of social empowerment and ruptural
transformation is of course, I guess, the dichotomy between the
insurrectionists and everybody else, you know, where you have these
moments of social outposts, these moments of rupture, where social

(01:22:50):
forms and social developments you know, undertaken and we sort
of figure out how we are, or rather we directly
fight back against you know, the systems are in place.
I think rupture is one of the more exciting forms.
It's a kind of form of revolution that people tend

(01:23:12):
to think of when they think of the tomb revolution,
this idea of you know, all these this is this
massive people that's crowd of people storming the bastille or whatever. Um.
But the real work of transformission is the stuff that occurs,
you know, prior to and post those moments of rupture. Well,

(01:23:33):
I I one of the terms I tend to like
that I've been thinking and reading about a lot is
is shatter zones. And these are this is like the
post rupture, right, These are the areas where state power
kind of collapses, or at least pieces of state power collapse,
and it's you know, the the shatter zones were kind
of you you see, the state retreat in the wake

(01:23:54):
of a rupture are where very terrible things tend to happen,
but they are also these zones of possibility. You know.
It's the places. It's the kind of place where you
you can get an ethnic cleansing, and it's the kind
of place where you can get um rojava, you know,
like it's it's there. They're these kind of zones of
possibility in the wake of of rupture, and I think

(01:24:14):
that's you know, a lot of the a lot of
the revolutionary kind of um imagery focuses on on the rupture,
but the future is decided in the shatter zones, you know. Yeah.
And I think what people miss as well is the
stuff that builds up to those you know, shatter zoons,

(01:24:35):
which is that their organizations, their affinity groups, their networks
and structures in place that are able to support those zoons,
that are able to you know, when those ruptures are
could support the people taking part in those fights and
expand you know, those zoons of possibilities. Yeah, I mean

(01:24:57):
This is the kind of thing where like if you're
looking at what what causes the difference between you know,
these disastrous, uh like disasters that happened kind of in
the wake of a rupture, horrible crimes against humanity, and
situations where something better gets built. Like again to use
the example of Rajava. The reason why that happened there

(01:25:18):
and why isis didn't win in that terrain is that
groups of activists had been organizing in a variety of
ways for years in that area, and so when the
state collapsed, there were armed groups, and those armed groups
were supported by farming cooperatives and groups of people who
had been organizing to provide supplies to each other and

(01:25:38):
um like community organizations like focused on social like development
and aid like there was. It's it's yeah, there's an
exactly exactly and that's that's what when you know, things
fall down and you could catch Yeah. And I think
that's also because there's another way this can go to

(01:26:00):
where it's like you get a lot of moments where
you know, like like May sixty eight in France looks
like this right where like like the like the prime
minister at the present, I forget what deal was at
that time. But that's like you like literally like the
country's leaders are flying out of the country on helicopters

(01:26:21):
because I think everything is going to collapse and then
it just sort of doesn't. And I think one of
one of the ways you get you get this period
that looks like rupture but then everything sort of closes
back up in on itself is if those networks aren't
strong enough and you don't have some kind of sufficient
level of organization, like there there isn't there isn't anything.

(01:26:42):
It's like it's like you have these moments where the
state is discredited but there's nothing to replace it, and
then the and the sort of void, the void isn't
strong enough to just sort of like have the state
collapsed entirely. And so what you guys at this moment
where it looks like everything is going to change and
then nothing happens. And I think that's also a product

(01:27:05):
of essentially the same thing. It's just depending on the
strength of the state, you can get very different sort
of outcomes from these moments where sometimes it's able to
restabilize it self, sometimes it isn't. Right, Yeah, And I
think we kind of saw that in a way with
protests where you had this massive, massive rupture, probably the

(01:27:26):
largest one of the largest American history. Um yeah, people
in the streets and cities all over the country. Um
it's what's the vast majority of them were just peaceful marches,
but you also did have some like serious movements of rupture,
like in Minneapolis and stuff. And I mean look at us,

(01:27:46):
you know, two years later, and while they are you know,
more community organizations, I think they're more people who are
a bit more conscious, with more whale who are you know,
radicalized and expanded their knowledge through that rupture, things basically
went back to the way they were in a lot

(01:28:07):
of ways and other ways, you know, police budgets were
just increased. I think there was a current with the
analogy but I'll just go to the analogy of like
a hydro, where you know, the state, whatever it's attacked
and stuff, it's able to just restore itself, just able
to recover itself and able to like adapt to those

(01:28:28):
sorts of attacks. I remember reading in Tone of Everything
where the David's were talking about how the state they're
using the example the American state. They were saying, you know,
the American state of right is completely different in a
lot of ways from the American state of the two
thous you know, because the the state and statecraft is

(01:28:52):
constantly evolving, constantly expanding, constantly responding to you know, the
conditions that they face. We saw what happened in the
twentieth century, you know, the different movements that I could
in that time, the state was able to respond to
those movements and adjust itself accordingly. And so obviously when

(01:29:17):
we have these ruptures, we have these you know, moments
of struggle, and obviously the times in between where we
are prefiguring um robust systems and alternative institutions that can
support people those moments of rupture. Um. Part of that

(01:29:38):
isn't going to involve you know, defense, and the sue
is not, oh, well, how you defend revolution? Christ to
want to defend revolution, They don't know how to defend revolution.
But rather part of defending it is defending it from
people's attempts to seize power from the masses, from the

(01:30:02):
working class. Two you know, cipher and that energy and
use it for the ends of smaller group, smaller class
of you know, whether it being partties or whatever the
case may be. Yeah, there's something there I think you're
going back to like thinking about borders and freedom of movement,

(01:30:25):
because if you look at like both the USSR and
China do this very quickly, which is that, okay, so
you you you you have the communist revolution, okay, and
theoretically class and power, and then like the first thing
they do is set up in turn of border controls
and these like like I mean in China that they're
technically like the the prohibition on movement is like technically over,

(01:30:51):
but the like the household registration system still exists, and
it's still determines whether you where you can get benefits
and how you get benefits and whether you can live
in a say and like what like how what's so
security you can access? Can you buy houses? Things like that,
like that kind of stuff. If if you're not if
if what you're doing is just putting a group of

(01:31:15):
people in power and not actually putting you know, like
if you want to talk about it in class terms, right,
it's like, okay, either the actual working class governs itself,
like the class in the entirety collectively makes decisions, or
you've just created to do like buacrat class. And if
you wind up with a new baruracract classes like yeah,
immediately look at what happens. It's like, oh, hey, a

(01:31:36):
bunch of people have now decided that, like you can't
leave your home province because you don't have the right registration.
And it's like okay. It's like that kind of reminds
me what you were saying about, you know, if all
the looking classes was met with the steam reminds you
of the video I was watching last night actually from
this Youtuba Anak Daniel Brian Um and he was talking

(01:31:58):
about I believe how the state is necessarily um exclusive.
If everybody holds power, then the state necessarily um must
be wiped out, must be wipe to it. If not,
it's going to try to reclaim its monopoly on power,
it's monopoly on violence. UM. It cannot exist without people

(01:32:23):
under it, you know. And so as you know, we
are engaging in this as we are you know, organizing strikes,
creating networks of activists, creating assemblies UM, creating you know,
self financed schools and social centers and co operatives and

(01:32:46):
all these different forms of infrastructure that can weather and
exists under capitalism, but serve as prefigurations of all potential
beyond capitalism. And so I guess the pivot um back
to the topic I was speaking of in the beginning

(01:33:07):
with regard to infrastructure. You know, all of history books
and stuff, general history books tend to speak of the government,
centralized government, states and souff arising all do they need
to build and maintain like these big infrastructure projects. They
tend to use example of irrigation. It's taken for granted,
you know, staken as a given that bureaucracies and such

(01:33:28):
were necessary for organizing these large populations, and that while
you know, the Galter and principles may thrive in a
small scale, they just cannot scale up when populations get
any bigger than like a small band of people. But
what we do know is that complex rural irrigation systems
and the Galter and urban decision making systems have occuld

(01:33:49):
in you know, human history, that our answers were able
to organize those those institutions without the state, without a
centralized body, with a h with with cosive you know, authority.
There's also like this implicit assumption, you know, when people
make these assolutions, that societies must necessarily grow and endlessly grew,

(01:34:14):
and that we cannot choose to limit our scale in
any way to avoid centralization, to enhance eqalitarianism. You know,
we can't skeeal ourselves down to more manageable levels a
d growth um. And as we've see, that's just not true.
You know, we are capable of making those shifts. You know,

(01:34:36):
large scale projects like irrigation or or you know, supply
lines and stuff. They do require coordination, but coordination is
not synonymous with the state. Coordination is not synonymous with hierarchy. Yeah,
and that's something that's interest It's interesting to me the
way people, like how badly people think about that because

(01:34:56):
like even even even in terms of sort of like
im berking tal is trade right, like that kind of
like long range coordination, long range like moving goods across
the world has like it's but mostly not been states
doing that. Like it's you know, and you can talk
about like, okay, whatever, it's like it's however, you sort

(01:35:19):
of want to think about the market mechanisms here, but like, yeah,
like people have been people, people have been moving stuff
from one side of the world to the other, like
essentially without the state having anything to do with it
for like as long as there have been people exactly.
I think that's one of the things that frustrates me
most about the discourse about like any kind of post capitalism,

(01:35:41):
is this um this purposefully. I think in a lot
of cases like malignant ly um inaccurate um attitude that
like the idea of people like exchanging goods and services
is fundamentally capitalist. That the idea of people like organizing
that the that like a factory right is something that

(01:36:03):
has to be has to be either organized under capitalist
models or under state socialist models exactly as if people
haven't done it in other ways. Right, this is not theoretical.
We're not like trying to pose it like, well maybe
it could work this way. It's like, no, motherfucker's have
done this. Yeah, we have practical examples even, Yeah, because

(01:36:26):
stuff like the mon Dragon Corporation and whatnot, Like it's
not um, it's like it's this is not like theoretical
stuff that we're talking about. I was thinking more long
lines of what happened in Argentina. Yeah, yeah, you don't
something going back as you know, like the CNT get
into Yeah yeah, yeah, like that's something. Well, I mean,

(01:36:49):
I think I think part of what's happening there is.
It's like, yeah, like people have run factories in other ways,
and every single time they try to do it, every
other political faction on Earth sets out, set aside all
their political which just goes and tries to kill them,
and it's like this is not that's that's true. That's true.
I'm also reminded of the fact that you know part
of what happened and probably assue that you know, it

(01:37:11):
could in Argentina and as I could elsewhere. Um is
this concept that I think Michael albert Um talks about
a lot, this idea how they coordinates a class and
the issues that arise out of that sort of coordinates
a class, And so I think part of that sort
of organization is going to involve confronting that, you know,
we tend to think of it in terms of, you know,

(01:37:34):
the capitalist ownership and getting rid of the capitalist but
there's you know, a lot more play than than just
just the capitalist kind of the firm is the firm.
I think it's also like this sort of assumption that
people aren't capable of like taking any kind of you know,

(01:37:56):
I think there's this kind of way to submition that
people aren't capable of taking initiative that people aren't capable
of of, you know, um, seeing the needs around them
and organizing to fulfill them. So when people end up,
you know, trying to do these scultures and stuff with
archists like oh well, how are you going to do
with garbage? It's like people don't like garbage around them,

(01:38:19):
you know, which is why we have a sanitation system,
which is why we have corbage disposal systems in place.
But you know, under this system, because everything is all
the costs of you know, our consumption and stuff are
externalized and hidden, people don't have to think about the
ways that you know, our actions are affecting our local

(01:38:44):
um you know ecosystem. You know, we see that we
pay other countries to or at least one like I
say a week um, the US, the USPS, other countries.
I mean, we have a problem and in turned out
as well, where all of our waste um just gets
dumped like right next amount groove and there's a community
right opposite the highway where the dump is located, and

(01:39:09):
you know they burnt garbage day and it's like the
bunt garbage is like a constant smell of boont garbage
around that community and it's of course the most impoverished
community in the country, and it's it's a whole thing. Um,
But I digress. You know, when we aren't able to
just you know, externalize the costs of you know, how

(01:39:31):
we live, communities are able to you know, notice how
to you know, who notice the problem and figure out
who used to handle it, you know, whether it be
um small rewards people who volunteer to you know, deal
with trash um or you know, just there's people who
enjoy doing that as well, you know, UM and the

(01:39:55):
same goes for other undesirable jobs or you know, people
have decided to go on like a routating basis. And
the reality is, you know, we don't have to like
define our lives around a career, so you know, a
person doesn't have to be entirely like a garbage collector.

(01:40:15):
On top of that, you know, as we scale down
the mount of garbage we produce, that task would become
you know, less and less necessary. Yeah, so you know
what waste infrastructure people are able to take care of that.
You know, we can't externalize those sorts of issues. UM
with food infrastructure, you know, we're able to like for example,
in in the title Hills region of what is now Kenya.

(01:40:38):
You know, people were able to create these complex irrigation
systems that you know, lasted hundreds of years before you know,
colonial states moved in and ended these agricultural practices. You know,
the back then, you know, the households would share the
day to day means and the uns of that irrigation infrastructure.
You know, everyone will take care of the part of
the infrastructure that was closest where they lived. And you know,

(01:40:59):
as it was commons, people enjoyed it in common, people
maintained it in common, people benefited in common. People will
also come together um periodically for like major repairs. And
it was a form of collective, socially motivated rule work

(01:41:22):
that we see in many other you know, essentialized societies.
And often he had um conversations where I often read about,
you know, these different societies and even on the capitalism
you have communities that you know, when someone needs somewhere
to live, the whole community gets together and helps them

(01:41:43):
build their house. And when someone else needs somewhere to live,
you know, everyone gets together and builds their houps and
so on and so forth. You know, people already doing
this in parts of the world. These systems already in
place in parts of the world, these sort of reciprocal
networks of of of support UM. And I mean whether
you're talking transportation or power, or communications, or housing or

(01:42:07):
food or healthcare, there's a precedent set. You know. These
presidents may have certain flows, but we could study them,
we can learn from them, and we could establish something better.
You know. For example, like as we mentioned earlier in
Anarchists Spain, Right and Felt. During the Spanish Civil War,
Barcelona's Medical Syndicate, which is organized largely by anarchists, managed

(01:42:31):
eighteen hospitals, six of which they had created, seventeen sanatoriums,
twenty two clinics, six psychiatric established ones, three nurseries, and
one motility hospital. Whenever they had a request, the syndicate
would send doctors to places in need, because medicine was
considered to be in suis of the community, not the

(01:42:51):
other way around. You know. Funds these clinics would come
from the contributions of like local municipalities, and this syndicate
UM had a health workers union that included eight thousand
health workers dying, operated three six health centers and distributed

(01:43:11):
through Catalonia and fried Health get to everyone in the region.
And these syndicates would send delegates you know, um to
Barcelona and they would be able to deal with common
problems and implement common plans. But every department was both
autonomous but also not isolated, so they supported one another

(01:43:34):
where needs to be and under the CNT. You know,
we also see like lands being taken by peasants syndicates um,
who would organized properties and allow equal community to take
care of you know, their land and their animals and

(01:43:56):
you know, their crops as needs be. Yeah, there were
something I've been the more I've read about it, the
more impressed I've been with the way that I guess
you would call it like the like the anarchists in
Spain like did basically did a universal healthcare program in
one year in the middle of the civil war, and

(01:44:16):
like you know, and like the I think the other
thing about it that that was important is it like
they were able to, like they had this whole program
that was about like sending like sending doctors into the
countryside to get to like into committees that have never
actually had regular access to medical care before. And they're
able to do this extremely quickly and had a system

(01:44:38):
the benefits of which are like enormously better than like
basically like if you can go find I'm forgetting the exactly,
but like you can go find like their their their
policy for like how much time off you can get
for like an injury and stuff, and it's like, yeah,

(01:44:59):
you can take you can get like six months, eight
months off at like full pay, like people family will
be provided for. Like they had. They had all of
this just like incredible, like health care infrastructure. They they're
able to set up like really really fast. Yeah, yeah,
because they also had you know, these regional federations of

(01:45:21):
different collectives and they were able to basically you know,
distributes surplus goods and distribute as you said, healthcare, and
you know, basically pool infrastructure so that everybody are the
pool resources so that everybody was able to benefit. You know,

(01:45:43):
they often pool resources for things where you know areas
well unevenly developed, you know, so that you know, more
um developed regions able to help other regions improve their infrastructure,
you know, build roads and canals and hospitals as this.
When I read about you know, what happened Cantonia, I'm

(01:46:04):
not seeing they were perfect they definitely had a lot
of issues when I read what what happened there, you know,
in the midst of a civil war, Um, the possibilities
that room present and what could have potentially happened further along, Um,
you know, it's it's it's very inspiring. Yeah, And I

(01:46:31):
think it goes back to the sort of the the
point we've been we've been talking about, which is that
like the capacity to provide care for people, the capacity
to do stuff like this exists in our society, right.
It's not something that has to be just sort of
just like completely manufactured from the ground up. It's just
that the capacity is not being used to actually like

(01:46:54):
give to the benefits of people what they need. Is like, well, okay,
it's not a it's it's it's it's less like a
process of just completely reconstructing the society and more a
process of like, hey, why don't we use the resources
we already have to do the things that are like
actually useful. And people for some reason think that likes

(01:47:16):
being true if you don't have a state, and it's
like no, like the state disappearing to every single doctor
suddenly vanishes from the face of the earth, Like yeah,
it doesn't mean every single salentation we suddenly disappears every
single construction we because suddenly disappears every single like every
every teach us and disappears every Yeah. Yeah, like I said,

(01:47:38):
we're not starts and from like a new Minecraft food
you know, you not to go and kill the end
of dragon and all that. But um, I mean, I
guess that's a that's a good place to wrap up. Basically,
we have these possibilities we always have, UM and in
a lot of ways, the state and you know, capitalism

(01:47:59):
and all these other um manifestations of hierarchy holding us back.
They're preventing us from reaching all full creative the full
unleashing of our creative potential as people. Yeah, we should
do that instead of this. Yeah, we should do this

(01:48:19):
instead of that, you know, rather, we should do that
instead of this. Yeah. Well, Andrew, thank you so much.
Where can where can people follow you? I believe I
believe you just put out a new a new video
this week if I'm remembering correctly. Yes, I don't know
if they will hear this episode before my next video

(01:48:42):
is out, um, but um you can find me on
YouTube dot com slash Andrewism and you can find me
on Twitter at under school saying true. Awesome. Alright, well
go start a hospital. Lookt hi everybody, Wow, you served

(01:49:19):
Jesus Sharne. Oh, I thought that's what Sophie said I
should do. I should I know you did that. You
did the right thing. I'm the one being an asshole here. Okay,
well this is Sharine. This is also what can happen here.
It's a podcast that happens every day that I am
now on. Um, what is it about again? It's about

(01:49:39):
everything happening here. Yes, it's about everything happening here. And
this week's episode is about my neighbor Dave, who appears
to be gardening. No, that's not what this show is about.
I'm sorry. No, society is crumbling and how maybe we
could put it back to here? There it is? That's what. Yeah,
that's what. That's what is Wantinginess is going to take

(01:50:03):
lead today. But we also have Christopher Long, Robert Evans,
and it is me Sophie. Yes, that's good to see that.
This is what I'm going to keep in mind next
time if I ever have to do this again. Like
what in trowing this show means? But it is a
daily show so I have a lot of opportunities to
get this right. Um yeah. I wanted to do something
a little different today. So hopefully the listeners are okay

(01:50:25):
with it, be easy on me well, and if they're not,
we will simply club them into submission. Um yeah, Well
I appreciate that. Um. I live for violence. That is
why we've spent half of our years podcasting budget on
she ailes Um. But I wanted to take a couple

(01:50:48):
episodes to talk about something very important that I don't
think it's not a lot like enough news coverage, and
I want to talk about Palestine, and this first episode
I wanted to focus on how bias these coverages as
far as depicting what's happening in Palestine in Israel. So
that's what we're gonna talk about today. So are you ready?

(01:51:09):
Are you all strapped in? I'm gonna start talking at
you guys for a long time. Oh yeah, okay. At
the height of the war between the Israeli military and
Palestinian factions in the Gaza Strip, New York Times ran
an article headlined Israel says that Hamas uses children's shields,
reviving debate. It was a reference to the hundreds of

(01:51:30):
Palestinian civilians who have been killed in the Israeli attacks
by that point in the war, and there was no
question about who had killed them, yet the language shifted
the subject to a debate about who was really responsible.
A few weeks earlier, after an Israeli air strike had
killed several Palestinian soccer fans, the Times ran another absurd
title titled Missile at beachside Gaza Cafe finds patrons poised

(01:51:54):
for the World Cup, and they later found the poise
just sitting there. It's amazing people talk about the exonerative
case in like journalism, and it it appears to apply
to the Israeli military and American cops. Yes, exactly, um
And they did later ament this title because they had

(01:52:15):
like a widespread like backlash and discussed that was expressed
on social media. It only changed after that. But the
whole point is that headlines matter, and it's the first
and sometimes only exposure the general public has two world events,
and especially like now, I believe that in our current time,
the words at the top of that page or like
sometimes the only words that show up in a hyperlink

(01:52:37):
are more important the articles themselves, because sometimes it's all
people see before they keep on scrolling UM, and in
the case of Israel and Palestine, UH, inappropriate, misleading and
biased headlines like those that appeared in The New York
Times that I just mentioned have been all too common,
accepted and treated as accurate reporting and quote unquote journalism. UH.

(01:52:58):
In twenty and nineteen, there was a study titled fifty
Years of Occupation that was published by four one six Labs,
which is a research and data data analytics firm based
in Canada. This firm analyzed nearly a hundred thousand news
headlines about the conflict and the American press over the
past five decades and found that the Israeli point of
view surprise surprise, was featured much more prominently than the

(01:53:19):
Palestinian one, and that references to Palestinians experiences of being
refugees or living under occupation that word especially, that has
steadily declined over time. So one of the studies authors,
Ohi sahre He, told The Intercept that the findings demonstrate
a persistent bias and coverage of the Israeli Palestinian issue,
one where Israeli narratives are privileged and where despite the

(01:53:42):
continued entrenchment of the occupation. The very topics remain to
the Palestinians day today, reality have disappeared. It calls to
attention the need to more critically evaluate the scope of
coverage of the Israeli occupation and recognize that readers are getting,
at best, a heavily filtered rendering of the issue. So
this study analyzed fifty years of news headlines on the

(01:54:04):
Israeli Palestine conflict. I put that in quotes, I feel
like conflict is suggested equal. Uh, also like understating it. Yes, come, yeah,
it's very Uh, it's understating what's that. Actually it's happening,
and it just depicts a a somehow neutral playing field.
But it's not. But the study analyzed fifty years of

(01:54:26):
headlines from five major American publications, The Chicago Tribune, the
l A Times, the New York Times, the Washington Post,
and the Wall Street Journal. It employed this thing called
natural language processing or n lp UM, and these techniques
are used to analyze massive databases of headlines published over
this period. NLP is a big data analysis approach used

(01:54:47):
to identify statistical trends and patterns and large caches of text.
In this case, researchers analyzed nearly a hundred thousand headlines
and identified dozens of frequently recurring terms and word sequences
and stories about Israel and Palestine. While studies of media
coverage Israel and Palestine have been conducted before, this one
by the four one six Labs analysis is the largest

(01:55:09):
and most comprehensive look at headline coverage since the occupation
began in and they're finding show a clear slant towards
the Israeli perspective. Headlines like the one that I mentioned
earlier from New York Times about civilian deaths in Gaza
that used the term Israel says where two and a
half times more likely to appear than headlines citing Palestinian equivalents.

(01:55:31):
Headlines centering Israel were published four times more than those
centering Palestinians, and words connoting violence such as terror appeared
three times more than the word occupation. And since nineteen
sixty seven, that's the year that the Israeli military took
control of the West Bank, there has been an eighty
five percent overall decrease in the mention of the term
occupation and headlines about Israel, despite the fact that the

(01:55:54):
Israeli militaries occupation of the Palestine territory has in fact
intensified over this time, and the mention of the term
Palestinian refugees, meanwhile has declined a massive And while this
is maybe subtle from the outside, it's just a consistent
disproportion of article headlines which by default gives a greater
airtime to one side and avoid certain key issues, and

(01:56:17):
this obviously can impact public perception. Yeah, I mean it's
very noticeable ones you realize what the biases looking, especially
on like social media and stuff. When you see just
just the headline of an article, it's it's it's obvious. Yeah,
it's it's just I don't know, Like what you have

(01:56:37):
is a a conflict where one side is treated like
a military force and the other side is treated like um,
almost like weather like. That's that's almost how they write
about when the Israeli military does something, it's like like
like a thunderstorm came in right, like it's nobody's fault.
This is just what happened, you know, like the palaceine

(01:56:57):
that you know, the Hamas or whatever, that's like a
military force, and so we talk about them the way
that we talk about you know, a military force carrying
out a strike or something. But but the Israeli military
is like it's like with a weather right, like there's
nothing to be there's no blame to go around. It
just rained, you know. Yeah, and also like legitimizes Israel
and like the legitimizes any kind of force that Palestine

(01:57:18):
exerts because it's like shown in this like yeah, like
a militant terrorist lens um when I was just acting
in self defense. It's interesting because the US media actually
does a better job of discussing the US military as
if it actually can be like guilty of crimes, Like
the New York Times in particular has done some like
not that there's not still problems with it, but they

(01:57:40):
it's like there's there's something unique about the way they
write about Israel that I guess not quite unique, because
they do often write about police in a similar way,
but it's it's very peculiar that it's like, I don't know, Yeah,
there's definitely a lot of crossover with US police and
Israel and more ways than one. Yes, they trained them
first of all, but also just like the way and

(01:58:02):
I'll talk more about this later, but the fact that
there are so many videos like blatantly showing like brutal
acts against like humanity or like just brutalism in Britain
in general, and like they still get away with it.
It just shows that they know there's no punishment, they
know that there's a certain amount of immunity because they
have big brother America to always fucking get their back.
But yeah, despite this ongoing American involvement, the total volume

(01:58:26):
of US media coverage about the conflict has been in
an overall decline since the Oslo Peace Accords. This was
a negotiate agreement between the then Palestine leader Yasser Arafat
and then Israeli Prime Minister yet Daike Raban, and it
was intended to establish conditions for peace in the region.
The decline and use coverage says little about the conditions

(01:58:47):
on the ground because they didn't get better. But the
hopes that were briefly raised by this Oslo piece accord
effectively died. After an Israeli extremists assassin, they had Rabine
and a new hardline Israeli leader, Benjamin and Yahoo. He
took power and since then, the Israeli military their occupation

(01:59:09):
of the West Bank, has only expanded, with new settlements
eating away at the remaining areas of Palestinian control, even
while global media attention has declined. And it's not just
American media that shows a clear bias that favors Israel.
British media coverage on the violence and Palestine is also
very biased against Palestinians, which in turn skews public perception internationally.

(01:59:31):
The Muslim Council of Britain's Center for Media Marketing, the CFMM,
published a forty four page report that was titled media
Reporting on Palestine one. And this report came after two
weeks of violence in which Israeli police cracked down on
protests against the eminent evictions of Palestinians and the occupied
East Jerusalem neighborhood of Schecha. This report came after two

(01:59:54):
weeks of violence in which Israeli police cracked down on
protests against the eminent eviction of Palestinians and the Occupi
hid East Jerusalem neighborhood of schechtered off and the subsequently
attacked Palestine you worshippers and at the Luxe Mosque, and
that wounded hundreds. I don't know if you guys remember,
but in one last year there was a lot of
violence occurring in Palestine. There was more coverage than usual,

(02:00:16):
especially covering Schechtera, and obviously news headlines didn't always come
out in an even handed way. But the brutal escalation
of violence that followed as rockets were fired from Gaza
and Israeli air strikes on the besieged enclave, it killed
at least two hundred and forty eight Palestinians, including sixty
six children. The occupied West Bank in East Jerusalem, twenty

(02:00:40):
nine Palestinians were killed, and the rockets fired from Gaza
killed twelve people in Israel. The CFMM stated that between
May seven and um that's twenty when a ceasefire was announced,
there were sixty two thousand, four hundred online print articles
in nearly eight thousand television broadcast reporting on the events,

(02:01:02):
and this report found that the narrative was extremely unbalanced
due to quote skewed language, misleading headlines, and problematic framing.
Razwanna Hamid, the director of CFMM and the co author
of this report, told The Middle East I that the
overwhelming amount of complaints that was received by the maunchoring
organization about the biased media coverage in Britain um covering

(02:01:23):
the events in Palestine. It aligned with the analysis and
evidence that this is all skewed and it makes sense
to get defensive when being rightfully called out, um just
to kind of talk a little bit about sex really quick.
This report cited several examples of media referring to the
situation and sea which the situation was Palestinians being forcibly

(02:01:44):
removed from their homes. Um. They called this an eviction
or a real estate dispute, which implies a legal basis
for these forced displacements, when in reality it was a viola,
a violation of international law. So that's minimizing it to
an extreme. UM. It also found that fifty of broadcast
media clips between May seven and May t referred to

(02:02:06):
quote unquote evictions or similar terms to describe illegal sentiment
plans in Schechterra, And that also kind of just conflates
that this is there's nothing you can do. This is
like a legal dispute, not your problem, you know, like
let them let the mess be over there, and we're
just sitting here all pretty In America, they make it
seem like it's like, oh, landlord, thing, this is like yeah, yeah,

(02:02:31):
there's there's also this this way in which the actual
thing that is happening is a bunch of people are
showing up with guns and stealing people's houses, and this
is getting treated as like, oh, this is like this
is you know this, this is some kind of sort
of like it's like a rental dispute. It's like it
shurts into this this like completely bloodless legal thing, and
then you know, you look at what's actually happening and

(02:02:52):
it's like, yeah, they're stealing people's houses at gunpoints. They
are like blowing up children with high explosives. It's just like, yeah,
it's definitely not presented an accurate way. And especially if
you don't know what's actually happening, like you do, and
you just see these like random headlines and whatever, you
don't think it's anything but what it is what they're

(02:03:12):
telling you, Like, why would you deep dive any further
if you're not affected by it? You know. Um. And
one of the one of the things I noticed, like
when I was reading some of the coverage that this
is like the the reporters would like go try to
find some kind of legal basis for this, and they'd
start like they these like like five paragraph long things
about like weird legal stuff from like nineteen three, like

(02:03:35):
this has nothing to do with what's happening, Like this
is you've taken you've taken the Yeah, yeah, it's it's
like they've they've they've taken the exonerative case from from
the title and then gone and just done exonerative journalism. Yeah.
I do have to say that is we are. We
keep using the term exonerative case. Somebody came up with that,

(02:03:56):
and I keep forgetting who it was. But it's a
one of the better, one of the better developments and
discussing the way the media talks about Palestine. Yeah, yeah,
it's uh yeah, I I just hate the word. I
hate that even the word journalism has like it's not
I don't even like calling this journalism, you know what
I mean. I don't like that New York Times doesn't

(02:04:17):
use anything anything, but it is what it is. That's
what we got well and it's you know, as is
always the frustration with the New York Times. They have
also done some really good journalism on fucked up ship
done by like on them. I think it was the
New York Times. We did one of the articles on
Sharene's murder, but that I know that was seen in
I think this Time did a really good article. Ye

(02:04:40):
a really good And it's like all of these, like
these problems are systemic. All of these news agencies have
people who do care and who have been over there
and know how fucked up things are. So it's not
like there aren't people within the system trying to wrench it.
It's just like a sign of kind of how powerful,
um the fucking how much a ner ship there is

(02:05:00):
built up in Israel's favor here, I guess, but maybe
that's maybe that's too exonerative for what's actually happening. I
think it's also like I'll get into this a little
bit later, but New York Times, for example, it's like
there are some writers that are clearly had to clearly
have a bias in favor of Israel, whether it's like
they've described themselves as being like right wing or whatever. Obviously,

(02:05:23):
so it's like it's there's no, there's not even an
option for balanced journalism if you're giving someone that kind
of voice, and there I mean even if you are, uh,
if you have an opinion, you would think as a journalist,
you would understand what journalism means when it comes to
like reporting accurate and fair information. But I think bias
always wins. Yeah, well because not like if you're even

(02:05:46):
if you're like because I think, honestly, if you know
what's going on there, if you've actually spent time in
the area and not just like hung out with the
Israeli military, Uh, the honest take is a tremendous amount
of sympathy for the Palestinian cause and Palestinian people. Um.
But even so, if you're an honest journalist, you're going
to try to be carefully like you do have to

(02:06:08):
report on stuff like you know, missile strikes. But because
you've got that side, and then you've got the people
who are overwhelmingly in Israel's corner and refused to report
on the other side of things, the coverage de facto
is always going to tilt towards Israel because the side
that would be kind of reflexively and purely on kind

(02:06:31):
of the Palestinian side just has no visibility here. You know. Um,
I I don't know like what you do with that,
because this is again a broader as with all these things,
is your broader problems in media. Um. But yeah, you
know what else is a broader problem in media. It
is the fact. It is the fact that me that
that news and journalism is heavily advertising supported, which leads

(02:06:54):
to deep amounts of bias UH in journalism and and
also problematic graphic seeking behaviors in a wide variety of
things that are careening us all towards an unsurvivable outcome.
And we're back. Hopefully that was um and if not,
well it is what you get. But I want to
bring up something about ahead. No, I just was apologizing

(02:07:17):
for calling the audience motherfucker's never alze for that. Never
apologize for go to hell, you sons of bitches. Thank
you for listening. Yeah, thank you so much. Also be
nice to me. But I want to bring up something
that I hear all the time as far as like
people that have been to Israel UM on birthright. I

(02:07:37):
want to say that birthright does not count unless you
have like critical thinking and you understand how biased that
trip even is and the fact that like you don't
even have to be from that land to go back there. Meanwhile,
Palestinians are not allowed to even step foot in that land.
So that's another episode entirely. I won't get into it,
but it does really make me mad. And I'll stop

(02:08:00):
there before I rage talk any further. But um, let's
go back to Israeli violence and police. So with regards
to the violence at the ax A Mosque, it resulted
in hundreds of Palestinians being wounded. And the report, uh,
the British report that we're talking about, documented widespread instances

(02:08:22):
of media outlets using terms like clashes, conflict, scuffles and skirmishes,
which kind of applies equal blame, which is obviously not
true because one side is armed in swat gear um.
And it also cited several news reports speaking of an
into fada, which it said played into fearmongering and framing

(02:08:43):
Palestinians as violent aggressors. I want to point out that
the word into fathera is just an Arabic word that
means rebellion or uprising and or a resistance, a resistance movement.
It's a key concept in contemporary Arabic usage. It refers
to a legitimate uprising against a pre usion. And I
feel like, like so many Arabic words, it's been skewed

(02:09:04):
into something to fear, like even the words allaho akbud,
which literally just means like thank you God or like
dear God. You know what I mean, Like, I think
the fact that those words are invoked in fear like
it's really breaks my heart to hear like my native
language being used to incite fear. Like trust me, I've
been on airports in my parents who have gotten really

(02:09:26):
strange looks just for speaking in Arabic. So again another episode.
I keep getting distracted. There are so many things that
make me bad. But um, I just wanted to bring
up that if you're free afraid of the word and defaulta,
don't be because that's also public media skewing your brain.
Don't believe it. And um I mean the director of

(02:09:49):
this organization and the co author of this report. She
said that as far as language is concerned, terms like
evictions max they mask the illegal force removals and expulsion
of Palace Indians from their homes, references to conflict and clashes.
They try to equalize what's what's in effect a battle
between David and Goliath. And it also, as I said earlier,

(02:10:10):
masking ethnic cleansing as rental disagreements is absurd, but it's uh.
It also like implies that there's like a legal basis
for everything. Um, but it's all surprising at this point,
Like I feel like clashes also, isn't. It's just anytime
you see a writer using the word clashes, it like
clashes is just like is it's it's just a coward tense.

(02:10:33):
It's clashes. Yeah, Clashes is what you say when you
are incredibly desperate not to at any point talk about
who started the violence as happening and why, because clashes,
let's just righte it off. Okay, there's two people, Funny,
I mean a clashes fight, like if you're just if
you're discussing like Ukrainian and Russian troops like fighting in

(02:10:54):
a village, Like, yeah, you can call that a clash.
Both sides showed up with tanks and and weaponry to
like fight a war. And if you're talking about the
band the clash, you can talk about the clash. But
otherwise maybe don't use the term clash. Yeah, if you're
talking unless you're talking about someone who's not dressed well
or who's dressed really well, one of the two, I
forget what. No, but you're right, I think, especially if

(02:11:17):
you're talking about literal an army coming to an unarmed
family's home and kicking them out. That's not a fucking
clash that is, yeah, yeah, Or like you're tear gassing
someone in a mosque and it's like, this is not
not a clash, No, this is a chemical weapons attack.
Like what, Yeah, it's a chemical weapons attack on a

(02:11:40):
house of warship, which is what what we in the
biz call not cool. What's really ironic, too, is that
that mosque and that region, like that point in particular,
is sacred to Muslims, Jewish people, and Christians alike. So
the fact that they're desecrating it at all in any
way is really ironic to me because it's they don't

(02:12:01):
care about anything. Um. But another area of concerns surrounding
this reporting on Jerusalem was an over emphasis on religion.
That's a good segue. Look at that, an accidental segue.
I'll take it. It's pronounced s okay. The report found
that nearly two thirds of nine nearly two thirds of
ninety clips in this timeframe referred to Palestinians religion, in

(02:12:24):
some cases explicitly just saying that they're Muslim. One I
TV report from a tent reference sirens, which prompted quote
Jewish worshippers at the Western Wall to flee and run
for cover, and Palestinians using the quote third holies Sitan
Islam as a base to throw stones at Israeli police.
And while religious significance may be important to know at times,

(02:12:46):
journalists I believe should avoid implying this religious motivation unless
it's necessary, because it portrays the history of Israel versus
Palestine as anything other than settler colonialism. If it's a
religious dispute, then it's just like a far away, a
decades centuries long fight that there's nothing we can do about.
Our hands are in the air. But really it's really simple,

(02:13:07):
it's just settler colonialism. And skewing as anything kind of
any kind of religious conflict is very purposeful to get
people not to care and get people not to think
that there's a solution. And as I said, not only
that's this false religious narrative, it ignores the existence of
persecution also of Palestinian Christians, because not not all Palestinians

(02:13:30):
are Muslim, There are Palestinian Christians UM and Palestinian Jews,
but it ignores their existence and of their in their
persecution by Israel. And it further is a narrative that
there is a centuries long religious war that is too complex.
That word is always used in this conflict. Conflict Again,
I hate that word, but it's always used to describe

(02:13:50):
what's happening is too complex to talk about or understand,
when instead it's opposite. It's the opposite. It's simple. It's
an oppressor, and there's an oppressed. Israel is an apartheid
state that had has been ethnic cleansing Palestinians and stealing
their land ever since it was established. Uh. And i'd
even say that war and conflict, it's not a fair fight.
It's not an even word. And we've been witnessing a

(02:14:12):
genocide that has been occurring in Israel since it was established.
And it's like there's a clearer pressor and a clearer pressed.
Any kind of wording that implies otherwise is a lie.
Let's go on to Gaza for a moment, and the
headlines that describe what's happening in Gaza. There are multiple
examples of problematic language and framing regarding violence in Gaza.

(02:14:34):
An article in the Sun on May twelve one was
titled fifteen kids mass occurred in Israel Hamas conflict as
an and Yahoo warns we will inflict blows you couldn't
dream of. This headline failed to mention that fourteen and
the fifteen children were that were killed or Palestinians, because
reading it, it implies that those children, all Israeli and

(02:14:56):
Palestinians are monsters. That's not the case. Um. And then
on the seventeenth of May, i Knews reported that forty
two Palestinians died over the weekend. They died over the
weeks from heart failure, Like fuck you, um it failed

(02:15:16):
to mention is that all of those deaths were Palestinians
in Gaza that were killed. Because died does not give
the same impression as murder. If you swap out the
truthful word at any of these headlines, it makes a
huge difference for people that only see these headlines, like
forty two Palestinians died is not the same as forty
two Palestinians were murdered. There's a huge into like connotation

(02:15:38):
difference for the people that just read something and move on,
and popular headlines tell us time and time again, just
like this, that Palestinians have died, while stating that Israeli's
on the other hand were killed. Israelis don't die, they're
always killed. Palestinians they always died, though they're never killed.
There's a huge misproportion of those two words being used

(02:16:00):
for those sides. Christopher brought up earlier about like passive
voice in journalism and saying Palestinians died. It's another example
of that. And biased media outlets use this passive voice
and they avoid specifying in its headlines who was killed
and who was responsible if it portrays Israel as the aggressor.
The use of passive voice that d emphasizes or hides

(02:16:22):
those perpetrating such negative action on Palestinians, and this has
the rhetorical effect of minimizing the responsibility of Israeli aggressors
and and causing Palestinians suffering. A lot of headlines also
refer to the Israeli military while referring to Palestinian groups
as militants or Slamists, which implies differences in legitimacy. Like

(02:16:44):
we mentioned earlier, there are also headlines describing Israeli air
strikes of having come quote after Hamas rocket attacks, but
this ignores that the violence from Israeli settlers and police
in Jerusalem preceded those rocket attacks. It's like starting in
the middle of a fight where you punched themselves to fence,
and that's where the argo starts. Like you punch someone,
not the person that punched you first. Maybe that's a

(02:17:06):
bad example, but it's just think of it that way.
You're starting in the middle of a timeline versus the beginning.
And Hamide told the Middle East Ie that the media
narrative a racist history, context and legitimacy of the Palestinian
cause by presenting Palestinians as the aggressors and Israel as
acting in self defense when it is quite the opposite.

(02:17:28):
And I can't talk about Palestine or Israel without mentioning
the anti semitism claims that a lot of people bring
up every time you mentioned Palestine. Other instances of skewed
media coverage, they included articles that conflated pro Palestinian activism
with anti Semitism. There was an article in the Telegraph
that said that demonstrators in London that were in support

(02:17:49):
of ha Mass were therefore anti Semitic because the group
was committed to the ilimination of Jews, which is not correct.
I don't agree obviously with everything that Hamas does is
but you have to keep in mind that no one
else is fighting for Palestinians, and desperate times desperate measures,
and there's no there's never a reason to excuse any

(02:18:11):
kind of murder if any anyone that's unarmed or innocent,
but against David and Goliath, which what choices Palestine have
if no one in the international community is coming to
the rescue and h and every everyone who anyone who
supports any military action anywhere supports the kind of collateral
damage that Hamas does. They just supported under different circumstances

(02:18:34):
and with different weapons systems. Doesn't make it okay to
fire rockets blindly into a city, but the United States
Air Force fires way more rockets just as blindly into
way more cities. Um, It's like, yeah, war is horrible,
it's fucked up in bad. It doesn't say anything about
the broader cause, Like sure, certainly you can have you know,
whatever the moral there's moral condemnation to be had for

(02:18:56):
military leaders with Hamas as there is for the military
leaders with any militant force, and for you know, some
of the soldiers doing some of those things. But at
the end of the day, it says nothing about the
overall righteousness of the cause, because there's not a discrepancy
in the willingness to accept civilian casualties between Hamas and Israel. Um,
they're both very willing to accept civilian casualties in pursuit

(02:19:19):
of their goals. So you have to set that aside
when you're trying to determine what is what is happening
here and where is righteousness? And I think righteousness overall
lies on the side being ethnically cleansed. M hmm, yeah,
very well said. I think it's a good place to
take an ad break. And you know who also condones
heavy civilian casualties in pursuit of their goals, the good people.

(02:19:47):
But that works too. That does also work. Honestly, has
gotten a lot more people killed than Hamas right to
be to be fair, they may have gotten more people
killed than the Israeli military has cost a lot of
blood shed over the years. Nikes. Anyway, here's our sponsors it. Okay,

(02:20:07):
we're back, Um before the break, we're talking about pro
Palestinian activism being complated with anti Semitism, and I want
to bring up this um quote from a Daily Mail
column commentator Richard little John stated that anti Semitism like
COVID comes in waves. This is the Palestinian variant. Excuse me, Wow,

(02:20:33):
Sometimes I just have to like read that and really
just remember what planet I'm on. But this research also
mentions examples of insufficient challenge to views and broadcast interviews.
This included a Sky News interview with to Zippi Hotel
Levy Hotel Velli, the Israeli Ambassador to the UK, failing
to sufficiently answer or be challenged on questions about ethnic

(02:20:55):
cleansing and check. She has previously described herself as a
religious right winger and has referred to the displacement of
seven and fifty tho Palestinians No listen. She describes it
as a quote strong and popular Arab Live. This is

(02:21:15):
the Israeli Ambassador to the UK. And it's like there's
a lot that's frustrating here. One is that, like you
do have to take some care when you particularly when
you talk about the media complicity and like pushing the
Israeli narrative and all of the different things like a
pack that like fund us politicians and whatnot, because like

(02:21:35):
it is, you do have to be careful to not
like vierendos conspiracy territory, and I have to be careful
with the sources that you pick, because since a lot
of mainstream news doesn't cover it, you find some of
this written about by people who are definitely not the
folks you want to have on your side. But that
doesn't make talking about this anti semitic. It just means

(02:21:56):
that the entire discourse is poisoned because of the way
the Internet functions. Yeah and yeah, no, good point. I'm
not going to expand because I will restated in a
worse way. But um, that quote just really baffles my mind,
especially because this person has a lot of power as
an ambassador, but she has also been accused of holding
racist and Islamophobic views and has expressed support for the

(02:22:19):
annexation of the entire illegally occupied West Bank. Yeah. Really
great stuff there something No, it seems like nobody's calling
that racist though you don't, like, like like you think about
the reaction to like to like, hey, yeah, we're like
we want to literally take over all of this landing,
Like you can compare that to the reaction to like
someone saying from the river to the sea, which like

(02:22:40):
everyone immediately loses their minds and it's just like ya,
this is the ambassador saying this stuff and nothing happens. Yeah,
it's really unsettling. And having someone like that in power,
as I will mention later with than Yahoo. Uh, someone
that is so right wing or uh can extremist. It's

(02:23:02):
just like um, it encourages people like that, that that
in the in the population, encourages that kind of leases
them to like expand just like Donald Trump did, Just
like Donald Trump did with his fan base or fan base,
his base. But here. Yeah. The British report that I'm
mentioning are also reported that Palestinians were regularly asked to

(02:23:25):
answer for the actions of Hamas and recommended that spokespeople
for the group should instead be given a platform to
respond to allegations. Meanwhile, you don't see like random Israeli's
being asked to answer for murders committed by the ideas.
It's always very one sided. There was also another study
that was conducted by M I T titled The New

(02:23:45):
York Times Distores the Palestinian Struggle. It was written by
Holly M. Jackson and it was tracking changes in news
coverage bias UH, showing how anti Palestinian bias has persisted
in The Times coverage by analyzing its articles during the
Fur and Second Palestinian into Father's, both periods in which
Israeli violence far exceeded that committed by Palestinians. Deploying machine

(02:24:08):
learning methods to analyze over thirty three thousand articles, Jackson
focused on bias and the language of The Times reporting
through two linguistic features. First was to identify with their
actions by Israeli and Palestinian groups were being described in
the active and passive voice, and the second was to
classify the objectivity and tone of the language used. And
this content analysis conducted across sixteen thousand articles during the

(02:24:32):
first and fifather, which was from nine to sepend nine,
it revealed some revealing results. Nearly of these articles reference
Israeli's while only forty percent reference Palestinians, and about twelve
percent all references to Palestinians used violent language, as opposed
to only five point nine percent for Israeli's Palestinians. Meanwhile,

(02:24:54):
We're referred to in the passive voice nearly sixteen percent
of the time, while the passive voice was used only
about six percent of the time to describe Asraeli's and
like I know this is just like all numbers and percentages,
because we obviously know how bias it is. But I
think it's helpful to like scientifically mathematically see that this
is like actually accurate and there's not just like us

(02:25:15):
talking about it. This is actually true. So I do
believe these studies are very important in showing people that
might be uh, I don't know, um, skeptical, that this
is actually the reality. And then Jackson also highlighted that
during this period, the Times stable of reporters were filled
with those, know, those with those with no prejudices, like

(02:25:38):
Thomas L. Freedman and Joel who framed their articles by
elevating Israeli perspectives alongside blatant anti Palestinian sentiment. So, like
we said, they're giving platforms of people with really clear biases. Um. Yeah. Oh.
Also Tom Tomas Friedman uh famously super fucking ish on

(02:26:00):
the Iraq War. Uh and also very famously said when
he was trying to rally support for the Iraq War
that the Iraq War was about telling Muslims to quote
suck on this good guy Tom Friedman, real cool, dude, unbiased.
They gave this man a pulitzer. I think they gave

(02:26:21):
him multiple I I would give him a pulitzer very
quickly and thrown overhand. Yeah. Uh, that makes me sick.
Thank you for sharing that. I'm glad I know that.
Now it's cool. He doesn't talk about that anymore. Shut
the absolute funk up. I mean, realizing that was the

(02:26:42):
Iraq War and now he's he's still obviously given a
platform talking about Palestine. There's no there's no repercussion or
even like red flags about this kind of language because
it's accepted and it's very really normalized. Um it sucks, Yes,
Um headlines served aid for bias, drudge up editorials like

(02:27:03):
quote Israel and Arab neighbors must bend a little no
more Palestine and quote and Israel has controlled little of Palestine.
So they're really clearly trying Jesus to frame this an
incorrect way as if is if Israel's Arab neighbors haven't
basically just abandoned Palestine by this point, right, like it

(02:27:23):
has been pretty much like even the like fucking idiot
tankies talk about how like Assad supports them, but he
put them into fucking camps. He's like arrested and tortured
and killed Palestinian activist it like it like you know.
One of the thing none of these people ever want
you to do is google Google what have al Asad
was sucking doing? And uh, why why why he didn't

(02:27:44):
bring in the air force at a a certain very
critical moment that al Asad famed buddy of Henry Kay
my friend. Yeah, everyone's friends. Everybody's friends. That's what makes
politics fun. Yeah. Additionally, there are a systematic attempt to

(02:28:05):
highlight petty disputes between Palestinian groups or contradictions in their
leader strategy to frame Palestinians as a rational or disorganized um.
And I will say that there has been significant changes
in US media coverage of a conflict, especially in the
last couple of years, and this is driven in part
by popular pressure coming from social media. UM. There are

(02:28:27):
also signs that Israel is becoming a part as an
issue that divides liberals and conservatives in the US, with
polls showing that growing numbers of Americans would like their
government to take a more even handed stance on the conflict. However,
hardline supporters of the Israeli government have seemingly shifted their
approach from winning quote hearts and minds to punishing opponents.

(02:28:48):
They've published blacklists of Palestinian activists, they've censored public figures
that are vocal about the conflict, they've speared them as
anti Semitics, and they've advocated for laws to restrict boycotts
of his really goods. I want to just take a
really quick sidebar to mention that boycotting works. I'll lose
another episode probably one day about the BDS movement. But

(02:29:08):
BDS stands for boycott investment in sanctions and it works
to end international support for Israel's oppression of Palestinians UM
and pressure Israel to comply with international law UM just
by boycotting products and companies that are either based in
Israel or have products from Israel. And it works because

(02:29:29):
Israel doesn't like it, and I think that's fair, Like
that's telling enough that if Israel's has a problem with
boycotting ship, you should keep doing it. And it's now
a vibrant global movement made up it's made up of unions,
academic associations, churches, and grassroots movements across the world. B
d S launch in two thousand and five, and it
has a major impact and effectively challenging international support for

(02:29:51):
Israeli apartheid and settler colonialism. So that's my sidebar about
b DS. But nonetheless, people that have followed the US
debate on the quote quote conflict for decades say that
there are serious tectonic changes occurring at the level of
the American public, both in media and in popular sentiment.
Phyllis Bennie, the director of the New Internationalism Project at

(02:30:13):
the Institute for Policy Studies, a DC based progressive think tank, said,
although news coverage is not even handed and is still
generally skewed towards the Israeli perspective, there has been a
massive shift over the past five years and how this
issue is both reported and discussed in the United States.
We are seeing a shift in the types of stories
that are being covered by major outlets, as well as

(02:30:35):
the stances that public figures are willing to take. There
are still huge problems, but things are changing. The discourse
on Israel Palestine is nothing like it was in decades past,
which is very true and for me personally, seeing the
public discords change firsthand has been very surreal, uh and amazing,
but really surreal because I think a lot of Palestinians

(02:30:58):
and Palestinian supporters never thought it would happen um seeing
public figures talk so actively about being pro Palestine, and
even though this occupation, this problem seems insurmountable, outing these
quote unquote journalists and news outlets is extremely important. Because

(02:31:18):
of public opinion and pressure is strong enough, things have
to change. And the proof of this is seeing the
headline that I mentioned at the very top, where The
Times changed their headline because of widespread discussed express on
social media and speaking up and sharing the truth on
social media is extremely important, especially if you aren't Palestinian,
and especially if you live somewhere that is skewing all

(02:31:40):
these news headlines against Palestinians. There's nothing else but your
voice left and Palestinian voices have been and are continuing
to be silenced. And this is not simply Palestinian issue.
It's a human issue that calls for humans to stand
up when they are witnessing extreme injustice take place and
boycotting works or else Israel wouldn't be so afraid of it.

(02:32:01):
Choosing to remain silent is choosing the side of the oppressor.
You've heard it before, It's true, uh, and I am
hopeful with the chains that we've seen the last few
years with public figures using their platforms to speak out
and depend Palestine. I think it's honestly the best use
of their platform and I respect them for that. Uh
And I know that, like the concept of celebrity is
ridiculous and stupid, but I think if you have the

(02:32:25):
platform and you have millions of people watching you, using
your voice in a way to support people that are
in danger and like stand up for the oppressed is
the one of the only things you should do. And
people that I respect this includes Bella Hadid, Susan Sarandon,
Nightie Portman, Selena Gomez, Dualipa The Weekend, just to name
a few. These people are huge names, they have millions

(02:32:46):
of people watching them, and they're not afraid to speak up,
especially Bella Hadid recently, like every other story she posts
on Instagram is about these really occupation um which I
really respect. I really respect that she has take in
such a clear stance and utilizing their platform. It does
make a difference in public perception because fans that follow

(02:33:08):
her might not follow news or anything else. It's there's
just a lot of crossover that I think is really valuable,
and ultimately, I think using your voice is the only
right thing to do and any alternative or silence is
simply cowardice. And that's my time. That's what I got today.

(02:33:30):
All right, Well, thank you Sharne. Um. This was pretty
bleak but important, and um I tried to uplift at
the very end, all of you go go okay, oh oh,

(02:34:01):
don't ever do it again. Nope, it could be How
are we opening a show? We're going to distance? Sharine
going the distance? Hello for speed. Hello, this is Sharene
and I'm talking to you from It can happen here? Oh,

(02:34:24):
it could happen here. Isn't that a podcast? Yeah? Robert,
you're correct. Do you want to tell everybody what that is? Okay,
jortya today is Robert Evans, Sophie and Chris and Garrison. Um,
I'm going to be running the show today for those
of you but didn't like yesterday. Too bad. Yeah, motherfucker's

(02:34:47):
die and go to hell. I'm sorry at much that
was a little much death threats. It was more of
a promise. Okay, Okay, I do want to take over today. Uh.
I wanted I wanted to focus an episode on Sharin
a blue acklet who was a Palestinate American journalist who
worked as a reporter for Aldo Zeerra for twenty five years. UH.

(02:35:10):
She was one of the most prominent names across the
Middle East for her decades of reporting on the Israeli
occupied Palestinian territories. And she was killed last month. And
you might have heard of it, you might have not.
But I think her death deserves some more attention. And
I also think it reflects a bigger issue. Um, let's

(02:35:31):
just jump right in. She was killed by Israeli soldiers
on May eleven. UM. And although Israel commits these kinds
of like vile crimes against humanity and against Palestinians virtually
every day, including but not limited to murder, torture, imprisonment, harassment,
force displacement aka ethnic cleansing, um, Israel gets away with
its crimes every time. And last episode we talked about

(02:35:54):
how the media enforces a blameless view of Israel and
how that's an element to all the passes it was eaves.
And even though I'm going to focus mostly on one
woman's death in this episode, like I said, she represents
something so much more. And while I wish I can
give every victim of Israel an entire episode. I would
take a million episodes. Um. So here we are Palestinians

(02:36:15):
live in a constant state of trauma, and there's no
time to grieve. They're dead, and even when they do grieve,
it becomes a target for the I d F, which
I'll get into later, but I want to tell you
for now how Sharne was killed. For a while, there
was only one video, which should be more than enough,
but I digress. There's only one video in the beginning
that seemed to prove that Sharne was targeted and assassinated

(02:36:36):
despite wearing a press vest. She had been standing with
a group of journalists near the entrance of the Agenda
refugee camp, where the journalists were there to cover uh
in Israeli raid. While the footage does not show of
being killed, eye witnesses told CNN that they believe Israeli
forces on the same street deliberately fired on the reporters
in a targeted attack. All of the journalists were wearing

(02:36:59):
protective blue vest and um they identified themselves as a
member of the news media to the Israelis that were
across the street. So this video This first video was
filmed by al Jazi or a cameraman Meschi Banura, and
it shows that round six thirty am on May eleventh
and Genin, multiple shots are fired. The cameraman filming the
scene scrambles backwards to take cover behind a low concrete wall.

(02:37:22):
The man cries out in Arabic Sharine injured, Sharine, ambulance.
When the camera finally pans around the corner, you see
Sharine lying motionless on the ground, face down, and another
Palestine reporter shaped the Handsha She She crouches down beside
her and uses a tree chunk for cover. She reaches

(02:37:43):
out and tries to get her colleague. The gunshots continue
and there's no response. Both women are wearing helmets and
blue protective vests. Mark Press and in the moments that followed,
there's a man in a white shirt that makes several
attempts to move a Buckle's body Uh and is forced
to repeatedly back away by gunfire, and after a few

(02:38:04):
very long minutes, he manages to drag her body from
the street. One of the reporters, Hanaisia. She told CNN
that we stood in front of the Israeli military vehicles
for about five to ten minutes before we made moves
to ensure that they saw us. This is a habit
of ours as journalists. We move as a group and
we stay in front of them so they know we
are journalists, and then we start moving. So this is

(02:38:28):
like they do this cautious approach every time towards when
they're in the midst of the Israeli military so they
can be safe. And she says that I didn't think
they were trying to kill us. On the day of
the shooting, is really military spokesperson Ran Katchov told Army
Radio that Abu Akla had been filming and working for

(02:38:48):
a media outlet amidst armed Palestinians. He said, they're armed
with cameras, if you'll permit me to say so. According
to the Times of Israel, the Israeli military says it
is not clear who fired the fatal shot, and in
a preliminary inquiry, the army said that there was a
possibility that she was either hit by an indiscriminate Palestinian

(02:39:09):
gunfire or by Israeli sniper positioned about two ds away
that was in an exchange with a Palestinian gunmen, So
no blame to the Israelis at all. The i d
F said that on May nineteenth had not yet decided
whether to pursue a criminal investigation into her death. On
May three, the Israeli military's top lawyer, Major General Yafat

(02:39:31):
tomd you you're a shelm me. I'm sorry, I probably
saying that wrong, but he said in a speech that
under the military's policy, a criminal investigation is not automatically
launched if a person is killed in quote the midst
of an active combat zone, unless there is credible and
immediate suspicion of a criminal offense. A lot of US
lawmakers and UH, the U N and international community have

(02:39:53):
called for an independent probe, which hasn't really met anything
because it's not happening. An investigation by CNN. Uh, it
offers a lot of new evidence and UH, it's an
investigation that really respect. The article is really well done.
It will be in the sources whenever that comes out whatever.
But this report, this investigation included two videos of the
scene of the shooting. Uh. There was no active combat

(02:40:17):
nor any Palestinian militants near Abo the moment that led
up to her death, and the videos are Crow crob
raided by testimony from eight eyewitnesses, an audio forensic analysts,
and an explosive weapons expert that suggests that she was
shot dead in a targeted attack by Israeli forces. A
lot of the footage shows a calm scene before the

(02:40:38):
reporters came under fire in the outskirts of the jen
And refugee camp. The other journalists and three local residents
said that it had been a normal morning in Jenin.
It's home to about three forty five thousand people, eleven
thousand and four hundred of whom live in the refugee camp.
Many this morning were on their way to work or school,
and the street was relatively quiet it. Sharienabu Klea was

(02:41:02):
a veteran journalist. She's a household name across the Arab
world for her coverage of Israel and Palestine and Israel's
occupation of the Palestinian territories. She arrived in Jenna to
report on the raid uh. She was an icon. She's
really loved, or was really loved and admired by the
entire Arab world. It's weird to use past tense. It's
really sad for me. But when she arrived there but

(02:41:23):
a dozen or so men, some dressed in sweats or
flip flops, They had gathered to watch Abu Klea and
her colleagues at work. They were milling around, chatting, some
smoking cigarettes, and others were filming the scene on their phones.
In one sixteen minute cell phone video, the man filming
walks towards the spot where journalists had gathered, zooming in
on the Israeli armored vehicles that were parked in the

(02:41:44):
distance that they could see, and he says, look at
the snipers. This is before anything had happened. And a
teenager in this video that he peers tentatively over the
street and he shouts, don't kid around. Do you think
it's a joke. We don't want to die, We want
to live. The person that recorded the sixteen minute video
Salim Awad. He's a twenty seven year old jedd And

(02:42:06):
Camp refugee resident who filmed the video and told CNN
that there were no armed Palestinians or any clashes of
any kind in the area and he hadn't expected there
to be gunfire at all given the presence of journalists nearby.
He said that there was no conflict or confrontations at all.
We were about ten guys give or take, walking around,
laughing and joking with journalists. We were not afraid of anything.

(02:42:28):
We didn't expect anything would happen because when we saw
journalists around, we thought it would be a safe area. Obviously,
the situation changed rapidly, and he said that the shooting
broke out about seven minutes after he arrived at the scene,
and his video captures this, and he also captures the
moments that the shots were fired at the four journalists.
And the four journalists by the way uh Abuka that

(02:42:51):
I mentioned earlier, another Palestinian journalist Jahil Sadi, and then
the L Jazeera producer Ali Elsa Maudi, who was injured
in the gunfire. But these four journalists, they walked towards
the Israeli vehicles. They showed them that their pressed in
the footage, as the gunfire starts, can be seen turning
away from the barrage, and then the footage shows a

(02:43:12):
direct line of sight towards the Israeli convoy. He said,
we saw around four or five military vehicles on that
street with rifles sticking out of them, and one of
them shot Sharine. We were standing right there. We saw it.
When we tried to approach her, they shot at us.
I tried to cross the street to help, but I couldn't.
He added that he saw a bullet strike a lackland

(02:43:34):
then gap between her helmet and her protectivest right by
her ear. Another sixteen year old he was among the
group of men and boys on the street, told CNN
that they were no shots fired, no stone throwing, nothing
when she was shot. And he said that journalists had
told them to not follow them as they walked towards
these really forces to identify themselves, so they so he

(02:43:55):
stayed back, and then when gunfire broke out, he ducked
behind a car in the road and he watched the
moment that Shrine was killed, and he shared his video
with CNN that was filmed at six thirty six am,
just after the journalist left the scene too for the hospital,
and it showed the five Israeli army vehicles driving slowly
past the spot where Sharne was killed before leaving the camp.

(02:44:18):
CNN reviewed a total of eleven videos showing the scene
and the Israeli military convoy from different angles, before, during,
and after a was killed. Eyewitnesses who were filming when
the journalist was shot, were also in the line of fire,
and they pulled back when the gunfire started, so it
doesn't capture the exact moment that she was hit with
the bullet, which I think is the little amount of

(02:44:40):
sliver of space that Israel needs to be like. It
wasn't us, but obviously it was our multiple witnesses. There
multiple videos that show it. Um. But regardless, there wasn't
a clash, there wasn't any Palestinian gunfire. The idea for
shooting directly at the journalists and they assassinated Sharine. A. Buachl,

(02:45:01):
a senior is really security official, flatly denied to CNN
on May eighth that has really troops killed her intentionally.
The officials spoke under the condition of anonymity to discuss
details about an investigation that remains formally open. UH. The
officials said, in no way would the I d F
ever target a civilian, especially a member of the press.

(02:45:23):
An I d F soldier would never fire at M
sixteen on automatic. They shoot bullet by bullet. Uh. This
is in contrast with israel assertion that Palestinian militants were
firing recklessly and indiscriminately while its soldiers conducted the raid.
In Genin, there's a security consultant and British Army veteran

(02:45:44):
Cobb Smith uh. He told CNN that he believed Doubly
was killed in discrete shots, not by a burst of
automatic gunfire, and to reach the conclusion, he looked at
imagery obtained by CNN that showed markings that the bullets
left behind on the tree where she had fallen and
her other colleague was taken cover. He told CNN that

(02:46:05):
the number of strike marks on the tree where Sharine
was standing proves this wasn't a random shot. She was
targeted at two. He said that there was no chance
that the random firing would result in the three or
four shots hitting such a light or such a tight configuration.
From the strike marks on the tree, it appears that
the shots, one of which hit Sharine, came from down

(02:46:26):
the street from the direction of the I d F troops.
The relatively tight grouping of the rounds indicate Sharine was
intentionally targeted with aim shots and not the victim of
a random or stray fire. This tree is now referred
to in Jenin as the Journalist Tree and has become
a makeshift shrine to ebo Auklet with photographs of the
beloved reporter taped to the trunk and Palestinian hafia scarves

(02:46:50):
the checkered, not checkered, but like the black and white
scarves that you probably see Palestine and protests UH draped
on the branches. She was lugged by very many and
the entirety of Palestine, everyone who supports its liberation, have
been grieving for this like insurmountable loss. Uh. And to
look this discussion back into yesterday's extreme media bias episode

(02:47:14):
where the media favors Israel. Here are a few headlines
that describe her murder. The New York Times said, Sharine
abu akly, trailblazing Palestinian journalists dies at fifty one. She
dies from what heart failure disease? Like and I will

(02:47:36):
I will, I will bet you. And this is not
to let the the the New the New York Times
off the hook, but I will bet you the fact
that the title even acknowledged her death that much was
the result of a tremendous battle behind the scenes, for sure,
Like yeah, yeah, it's which they wouldn't do for anybody else, right,

(02:47:59):
Like they would, they would fucking immediately call out, like
the Russian military or even the U. S Military if
it had killed an American journalist, which I'm not saying that.
I don't think it's you know, I'm going to bring
that up right now than if she was Palestinian. No,
I'm going to bring that up right now. Brent Renaud,
he's an American journalist that was killed in Ukraine. There
were two headlines that were that for articles. His headline

(02:48:19):
read an American journalist killed in Ukraine. Hers said a
Palestinian journalist dies at fifty one. Keep in mind, Sharine
is a it's a Palestinian American. Not that it fucking matters,
but these are both American journalists and they were killed
working on their assignment. It matters to highlight the hypocrisy,
not because one nationality of journalist is less worthy of

(02:48:41):
being killed than another. I mean even it's even frustrating
that their their value of life is even greater because
they're a quote unquote journalist. Yes, there's a lot that's
frustrating about it. They can killed dozens of like Palestinian
people and it doesn't matter, But one quote unquote American
journalist eyes, and now it's a big story, which like

(02:49:03):
it's horrible, it would be. They're not not downplay how
bad it is. But I am really uncomfortable with how
much emphasis we put on like Americans. And then of
course just like someone being a journalist as opposed to
just like people who are like worshiping or killing people
in the street, right, who are just regular Palestinians. And
that's that's a whole other aspect. You know, war zone,

(02:49:24):
the only like ethically, really the only division should be
between soldiers, people under arms and civilians who are not
right um, and it should always be seen as like
a tragedy and a mistake worthy of like some sort
of restitution or vengeance when civilians are killed by soldiers
in a war zone like that would be ideal. But

(02:49:45):
also you know the world, that's what it is. But no,
I second everything you guys said. And I'm looking at
tweet from Amon Martin Dean. He's an Egyptian board journalist
that's based in New York and he works for NBC MSNBC.
But he tweeted this contrast these headlines of right Renaud,
an American journalist killed in Ukraine, and Sharina Buccoli, a

(02:50:08):
Palestinian journalists dying at fifty one. Like, first of all, everything,
you guys, just it's it's repetitive at this point to
keep talking about it. But they've stripped her of her
American identity. Her Palestinian identity erases um the importance that
her death has for some reason, because she's not seen
that as an American journalist, even though she is. And again,

(02:50:30):
the concept of that being important is ludicrous to begin with.
But that's the world. It's still a way to do
it's still in their minds. It's still a way to
dehumanize them, which is like gross on a whole other level.
But it's it's it's yeah, there's there's so many ways
that it's horrible that it's hard to even like cover head. Yeah, totally,

(02:50:51):
I agree. And now it's time for a break. And
I don't have a great segue, like this is a
hard one to you know, who will X the break?

(02:51:11):
We're back. I want to talk about her funeral now,
Sharne's funeral. Just to bring up one last headline, I'll
get into a half at the funeral. But the BBC
News said that Sharine abu Akle violence at Al Jazeera
reporter's funeral in Jerusalem. Side note, Even saying that she's
an El Jazeera reporter versus just like an American journalist
is another way to dehumanize her because Al Jazeera is

(02:51:34):
seen as like this scary Arabic organization. It's like, oh,
they're brown people, is what they're trying to say exactly.
And the real headline that should have been shared is
that Israeli forces were attacking and beating Palestinian mortars at
her funeral. Let's talk about that. The Friday following her death, May,

(02:51:55):
a funeral procession was held for Sharine in Jerusalem, but
her funeral role was marred by another burst of violence
early that afternoon, as thousands of people masked East Jerusalem
for one of the largest Palestinian funerals in recent memory.
A mob of Israeli riot police assaulted a group of
mourners that were carrying the casket containing her body, uh

(02:52:15):
and they almost dropped the casket because of the attack.
There are videos of this and it was streamed live
at one point, and it shows Idea soldiers clearly attacking
people holding up a coffin, a coffin holding the body
of someone Palestine loved, um, and they're just attempting to mourn.
And even this is deemed punishable by Israel. I want

(02:52:36):
to bring up that it was live and then all
these videos are shown because there's just so many videos
of a blatant blame like blatant attacks by Israeli's and uh,
the Israeli military, and that that's not enough to condemn anything. Um.
And there were no weapon, there was no provoking on

(02:52:58):
any of any kind on the side of Palestinians. And again,
like we have thousands of videos like this and the
idea of clearly beating and at times killing Palestinians and
nothing happens. Um. It's like similar to me of videos
of police brutality in the US. Uh. They both keep
doing it because they know they can't keep they won't
be punished. Um. If this is what they duan camera,

(02:53:19):
you can only imagine what they do off camera and
when it's not being captured. Uh. In a separate episode,
I'm sure I can bring up the crossover of Israel
and US police because Israel trains US police um, and
so there's a lot of connection there, But I digress. Um.
It's just really horrifying if they know that this is

(02:53:40):
all being captured, it doesn't stop them. It doesn't matter.
And this assault occurred outside a hospital in East Jerusalem,
where her body had been kept since another memorial happened
the day before on Thursday, where hundreds had gathered to
witness the start of her funeral cortage. Tensions arose between
Palestinians and these really police officers after Palestinians began waving

(02:54:01):
Palestinian flags. Things escalated after the police refused to allow
mourners to take the coffin on their shoulders to the church,
and then they began beating anyone in sight. The Israeli
police later said that they had intervened because the mourners
who wanted to carry the coffin by foot to the
funeral had refused to put it in a hearse, which
is an arrangement the police said had previously been agreed

(02:54:23):
upon by her family. This obviously is address cause for
starting to beat people um, which is absurd. It's so
absurd because it's just like a traditional mourning. It's they're
they're carrying this loved one on their backs, and the
fact that she was almost dropped is like horrifying to me, Um,

(02:54:45):
But regardless, there was this standoff between mourners and the
police who refused to let them leave with the coffin
from the hospital or like in the in the direction
from the hospital to the church. And keep in mind
again this is the standoff is really unbalanced. One side
of it is as heavily armed and wearing helmets and
swat gear, and the other side is holding a fucking coffin.

(02:55:07):
And mourning officers swung their batons and they kicked and
beat the men carrying the coffin, forcing them backward. They
knocked over one man who had backed into the group
that was carrying the coffin, and then they proceeded to
kick him as he was lying on the ground. This
is caught on video. Uh and I don't understand how
anyone could possibly defend or gloss over why this happened.

(02:55:28):
And as they were being hit, the coffin carriers briefly
lost control, as I said, of one end of the coffin,
which sagged suddenly to the ground. Um and mourners through
projectiles in response, included what appeared to be a stick
it officers through what appeared to be a stun a
stunt in smoke grenades in response, so super warranted on

(02:55:49):
their on their side. Um, but this occasion that was
intended to be a moment of Catharsis had instead descended
into chaos, and it just compounds the indignity the pain
that too many Palestinians Abu Akli's death had embodied. And
let's quickly fast forward to Sunday May twenty nine, where
about seventy thousand Israelis marched through the Old City occupied

(02:56:12):
East Jerusalem, waving Israeli flags, emphasizing that they, in their eyes,
were the true rulers of Jerusalem. They were celebrating Jerusalem Day,
which is an Israeli holiday that marks the capture of
the Old City in nine seven seven also marks the
occupation and the subsequent annexation of East Jerusalem, and Palestinians
see this event, which passes through the heart of the

(02:56:34):
Muslim center, as a provocation. Last year, the parade helped
trigger an eleven day war with Goza militants. This doesn't
stop the Paradian papping again, and this year it attracted
one of the largest crowds on record. Palestinians old and
young were attacked while Israeli forces watched on. Some marchers

(02:56:54):
sprayed pepper spray at Palestinians and journalists. In one video
shared on social media, a young Jewish man kicked and
sprayed an older Palestinian woman in the face, sending her
crumbling to the ground. Police fired rubber bullets, um and
use clubs and pepper spray to disperse Palestinian protesters from
the area, and all this time Palestinians were forced to
listen as ultra nationalist Jews chanted anti Palestinian and Islamophobic

(02:57:19):
chants such as death to Arabs and Muhammad is dead. Um.
Groups of Orthodox Jewish youths gathered outside Damascus Gate, waving flags,
singing religious and nationalistic songs. The crowds, who were overwhelmingly
young Orthodox Jewish men, were shouting the Jewish nation lives
before entering the Muslim quarter, one large group chanted death

(02:57:43):
to Arabs and mayor village bird, which is a reference
of the ethnic cleansing and the start of the occupation
that occurred in and it's one of their very common chants.
A lot of Zionists that parade through. These are the
two most popular chance, if you want to call them that.
Another chance, accompanied by boisterous dancing and the sound of drums.

(02:58:07):
Included a Jew is a soul, an Arab is the
son of a whore, and Shofayatte is on fire. And
this is a disgusting chant. I mean, they're all disgusting,
but this one, Shiffayatta is on fire. It celebrates the
murder of fifteen year old Palestinian teenager in Muhammad Abuhadir
by Israeli settlers in Jerusalem. And this child was kidnapped

(02:58:30):
by Israeli settlers, tortured, forced to drink gasoline, and burned alive.
So that's what they're celebrating when they're saying Shayata is
on fire, and there's this tragedy is the focus of
a miniseries that HBO did in twenty nineteen, which is
pretty good and I recommend watching. It's called Our Boys, Um,
and it was created by collaboration of both Israeli filmmakers

(02:58:51):
and Palestinian filmmakers, so I respected their approach to this
and I highly recommend watching it if you have the
stemach for it. I cried a lot, but it's really good, um. Regardless,
settlers were also chanting Sharin is a whore and Sharine
is dead. So not only was her funeral this huge,
like this huge portrayal of disrespect and in humanity, but

(02:59:13):
this is the sentiment of these ultra nationalist Jewish protesters.
They are happy she's dead. That's why she was targeted
by the idea of probably they recognized her as a
threat and this icon in the eyes of the Palestinians.
Prime Minister and of Tally Bennett issued a statement instructing
police to show quote no tolerance towards the racist groups.

(02:59:35):
He described them as a minority that came to set
the area on fire and vowed to prosecute violent extremists,
which never happens and hasn't happened. An article in the
Israeli daily Jerusalem Post that interviewed some of the Israelis
participating in the march reflected a fervent nationalist mentality that
interchanged the words Arabs and terrorists without a second thought.

(02:59:59):
According to this article, most of the marchers are quote
not driven by hate for Palestinians, but rather a love
for Israel and the constant fear that it might not
exist forever. Yeah, it would suck to feel like your
home is not going to be around forever. Yeah, exactly. Yes, Uh,
the irony is definitely lost on them. It's definitely the

(03:00:23):
yes um. But the director of the Palestinian Forum for
Israeli Studies, j Does Anim, she said that the political
views of Israelis who attended the march are absolutely not
a fringe element of Israeli society. She says, demographically speaking,
they are from the religious settler class. They transformed from
being a marginal group to an essential part within Israeli

(03:00:45):
society and the Jewish body as a whole. And I
mentioned this briefly. I don't know if it was this
episode of going before, but former Prime Minister Benjamin and
Yah who's twelve year rule bolstered the presence of this
class into the mainstream, this very right wing mental be
where their figureheads held top positions in state institutions and
in various governments. Regardless the current Prime Minister Tally Bennett,

(03:01:10):
he used to be the Minister of the Settlement Council,
and that should speak volumes about the change and in
the heart of Israeli society. This mentality is really encouraged.
And Klanem went on to say the Israeli government is
getting more religious and giving more powers to the ultra
orthodox factions and to the ultra religious and ultra nationalists,

(03:01:31):
the extreme settlers. It is a continuous shift for the
whole society to be on the right of the political spectrum,
the fanatical religious and the settler right. And before I
continue you further, let's take a second break, because I
can rage for a long time. I don't have a
segue again, Robert, it's not this is the break, I know,

(03:01:52):
but Sophie still has to believe it because you said it.
So my goal has been a conflience. We did it
to get or we did it. Okay, we're back. Wow,
that wasn't that a fun ad? Okay, let's go back
to we were talking about right extremism being like bolstered
in Israeli society. Ole Renoi is an Israeli political activist

(03:02:14):
and journalist, and they agreed and described this annual event
as a congratuatory, mainstream is Israeli event, and she said
the marchers are not the minority, not in numbers, not
in ideology, and not in their political status. So regardless
of what the Prime Minister says, it's not a fringe
element at all. She goes on to say that maybe
many Israelis do not like to see photos of an

(03:02:36):
old Palestinian woman being beaten up by a kid, but
the march itself is a huge Israeli celebration. It's not
something on the political periphery anymore. I also want to
quickly mention that as I was writing this, another Palestinian
journalist was killed by the IDEA F last week. Thirty
one year old lefran I made uh what Esna was
shot in the chest. Um at the autub refugee camp

(03:03:00):
and the occupied West Bank, Israel said that she tried
to attack a soldier with a knife. In a statement,
these really armies, said, an assailant armed with a knife
advanced toward an I d F soldier who was conducting
routine security activity. However, witnesses told Al Jazira that in
their view, she posed little threat to the soldiers. She

(03:03:20):
had just started a new job at a radio station
three days prior to being killed. She was leaving her
home on the way to work, according to eyewitnesses, and
doctors at the hospital said the bullet she was shot
with pierced her heart. Um and local and international rights
groups have condemned what they call Israel's excessive use of

(03:03:41):
force and their shoot to kill policy against Palestinians, including
suspected assailants and the occupied West Bank and got the strip. Um.
Senior Israeli politicians, including Prime Minister Bennett, have encouraged the
use of legal force and given orders to shoot Palestinians
who did not post an eminent threat. These other orders

(03:04:01):
to shoot Palestinians even if they don't pose a eminent threat.
The United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human
Rights noted that in the reports, Israeli forces quote often
use firearms against Palestinians on mere suspicion or as a
precautionary measure in violation of international standards. Um. And yeah, surprise, surprise.

(03:04:23):
Her funeral was also attacked by these really occupation, just
like Sharnes was. Um. They beat the mourners and uh,
nothing nothing changed in the the several days that followed
that funeral. It happened again because they knew they could
happen again. There was no punishment for the first round. Um.

(03:04:44):
And that's all I got for today. Um, I do,
I mean, there's so much more to talk about, but
just they'll take a lifetime and maybe I'll chip out
it away over time. I do want to plug a
film that I really love called Gaza Fights for Freedom.
It's a twenty nineteen documentary. It's on YouTube for free,

(03:05:07):
and it's by Abby Martin and it's filmed by Caraman
on the ground and Gaza, and it really shows the
imbalance that takes place, especially in that region. I know
we didn't cover Gaza that much in this episode, but
just like Shrine's death, that reflects the larger issue and
the just blatant genocide and ethic cleansing that's happening. So

(03:05:30):
I would really recommend that if you want to learn more. Again,
just like our boys the mini series, it's really hard
to watch um, at least for me, UM and another.
I mean, the reason I mentioned I wanted to describe
the video Shreen's death earlier is because I haven't seen
it and I don't want to see it. Like I
it really triggers me when I see like a photo

(03:05:52):
of and I mean anybody like I don't want to
sensationalize their death. UM, but I do want you guys
to know about it and to understand that it's important. UM.
That's my shoe. I have. I have seen it, and
just as a general rule of someone who's worked in
those conditions, she's very obviously not in a situation which

(03:06:15):
it makes sense that she would have gotten on a
cross fire between a gunfight like obviously this has been documented,
but it was pretty obvious from the beginning that this
was not like two sides shooting at each other and
someone getting caught up in the middle. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
it's depressing. I guess I didn't end this one with
any kind of uplifting anything, But I just encourage everyone

(03:06:39):
who's interested or who doesn't know uh and who wants
to know more to just get your information from Palestinians.
Um spread awareness of social media because Palestinian voices are
usually silenced, and it really makes a difference when people
speak up, because that's the only way things change, just

(03:07:00):
the only way articles change their headlines. That's the only
way anything even pivots in the right direction. But this
is the end. Should I say goodbye now? Goodbye? Now? Okay,
thank you, but no, I appreciate the listeners of today
and yesterday's episodes. It means a lot to me. You know,

(03:07:20):
I'll see you when I see you. Bye bye. Bye,
now Hey, We'll be back Monday with more episodes every
week from now until the heat death of the universe.
It Could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
cool zone media dot com, or check us out on

(03:07:42):
the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could
Happen Here, updated monthly at cool zone media dot com
slash sources. Thanks for listening.