It Could Happen Here Weekly 74

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. Garrison started talking about crimes,

(00:27):
and so I was like, Okay, I'm gonna I'm gonna
hold off on president crime at all. That's true. That's true.
James said the word crimes, and James is the one
that brought up doing crimes. I would never talk about
doing crimes. Oh, welcome to don't it happened here? Yeah,
if we never talk about anything illegal. Um with us
today is myself, Garrison, James Stout, and Mia Wong. It's right,

(00:50):
we are talking about crimes today. Actually, but we're not
doing any crimes, Crisley, because we never would. Yeah, like
for for for example, well, actually I don't I don't
know if it's technically illegal to to talk about jury
nullification on air. I don't I know. I don't think
they can stop you from saying the words. I think
they can. I think I think you You don't have

(01:11):
the rights to do it, but you have the ability.
I think is a way a lawyer explained it to me.
But they also said I'm not your lawyer before that.
So take that with a great assault. Yeah. Yeah, you
probably say you shouldn't be describing how to do jury
notification or googling it. If that's in your future, stay
tuned for our upcoming episode, how to yeah your Jury. Yeah,

(01:36):
how to Nullify your jury. That will be our final episode. Okay,
so now we're not talking about jury today. We are
talking about crime. The people doing the crime in this episode,
shockingly are the cops. So I want to start on
October twenty eight, twenty sixteen. Some of you can probably
cast your mind back then, the last week of the

(01:58):
pre Trump era. Yeah yeah, So inside the Captain's office
at the sheriff station of Rancho, San Diego, one of
the most expensive ZIP codes in the country, Captain Marco
Garmo was making a deal. Garmo, along with Giovanni Tilotta,
who's a licensed San Diego gun dealer, sold a glockhandgun
an a R fifteen Star rifle and a Smith and

(02:19):
Western handgun to local defense attorney. Because Baje inside Garmo's office,
Garmo coordinated backdated paperwork to avoid the ten day waiting
period required by California law for handgun purchases and supplied
Bajaj with misappropriated San Diego Sheriff's Department issued ammunition. Oh fun, yeah, yeah,

(02:42):
so's he's really thriving in his side hustle here, Marco Garmo.
I've used the word misappropriated because that's what the DOJ used.
I'm guessing the more vernacular term would be stolen. Here.
I think I think he's so what do you say issued?
Is this MO that like like was supposed to be
given to a coup or is the stuff they had

(03:03):
an impound? Uh No, I think it's supposed to be
given to a cop. I think hell yeah, I think
he's good. I think he's gone into the armory and
just grabbed a few box set of AMMO and stole them.
Cops have just turned into the Afghan Army. It's amazing.
Yeah yeah, yeah, the Ana they've got the what's that
guy who had the like help? He had their like

(03:23):
night vision on backwards or something that was that was
a Taliban guy. Yeah, interestingly, what they have in the
compound me, it's another story that maybe we should do
another day. I also prate that, like the weapons that
are impounded, Jesus Christ, they have some shit like they
have like a full auto shotgun, like a bunch of

(03:45):
NFA items and they keep them all for like lab
testing in theory, like so they can so they can
be like, oh, this person was shot, what does that
wound look like? Well, let's get our armory out from
the fucking end shoots and ballistics gel and see if
that helps us. And it's like that scene from two
thousand and eight The Dark Night where Christian Bale is
Batman fires a ridiculously loud gun in a sealed bugger,

(04:10):
absolutely destroying both his and Alfred's hearing for the entire
rest of the movie. That's why they make so many
bad choices. Fascinating. Yeah, I didn't know that was a
character called Alfred and Batman. Yeah, they really welshed him
on the names, because like, Batman is a cool name,
the joker cool name. Do you don't know who Alfred? No,

(04:33):
the one British character in Badman. He is your culture.
When people think of British people, they think of Alfred J. Pennyworths,
not a costume Garrison. Well, so I have a bad
bad news yea. They disgusted that this is the point
of reference, not one of our many wonderful modern British

(04:53):
role models. Alfred's great. I don't know what you're talking about. Okay, yeah, no, okay.
He is a working class zero, he was a he
was a wait our butlers are working class right, oh god,
discourse off very quickly. I would say petty bourgeoi. But yeah,

(05:14):
it's kind of complicated because you're like working directly for
a billionaire and you're living in the billionaire's house and
you're living a very upper class life, but you still
are working. It's kind of what is your relationship to
the meta production? Though? Oh that this? Wow? Well, but
it's all service, Like I don't know. I feel like
we have to do a divide here between because I
think I think the gender division of labor between made

(05:34):
and butler is very important. I love Howard debating how
if Alfred is based. Yeah, yeah, so you can find
Garrison on Twitter. I right, Okay, so we made to
paragraph too everywhere. In February twenty nineteen, federal agents executed

(05:54):
a search horrn at the Rancho San Diego chaff station.
Later that year, they arrested Captain Marco Garmo. In twenty
twenty one, Garmo pleaded guilty to trafficking over one hundred
guns which were deemed unsafe for civilians. His sentence, I
shouldn't say civilians because cops are also civilians, right, but
non cops. His sentencing, the judge said Garmo was almost

(06:16):
becoming a mob boss of sorts. What you want to
strive for as a cherish captain. Garmo admitted to engaging
in straw purchases, which is buying guns with the intent
of transferring them to someone else. He also acknowledged tipping
off an illegal marijuana dispensary that was about to be
searched in order based Nothing this guy did is inherently wrong.

(06:41):
It's the fact that he only did it to certain people,
and so that was his cousin who earned a marijuana's fensury.
He was also engaged in illegal consulting with other dispensaries,
which I don't bulliant. Yeah, I'm getting his consulting emerged
to being like, Hey, the cops are on their way tomorrow,
maybe stop being a dispensary by the time they arrive. Yeah,

(07:03):
that seems like a that that that that that that
that seems like a very classic the cop to take
a cut kind of Yeah, I guess, yeah, yeah, yeah.
A lot of the things in this DJ thing are like,
really fantastically phrased. So Garmo and his Code A friend
and wail Will Anton also helped paying clients skip the

(07:24):
waiting list for a difficult to tain concealed carry permit.
As part of this scheme, Anton took a legal cash
payment to accounty clerk who ensured favorable treatment for his clients.
Garmo might have flown a little too close to the
sun with this one, but it's not actually that unusual
for gun laws to have carve outs for rich people,
and often those carve outs don't involve cops stealing AMMO.

(07:46):
But it's pretty easy if you're wealthy enough to work
your way around firearms legislation, which is kind of what
I want to get into today. So while Garmo did
go to jail for gun trafficking and multiple other crime,
he was doing the sale of so called off rous
to firearms by law infolvement officers. In California, it's relatively
common and there's not much that's been done to prevent

(08:08):
it since Gamo was arrested. So to understand this, I
think you have to understand California is incredibly complicated firearms laws,
which probably requires like an undergraduate degree. But to give
a brief summary, California introduced its gun roster in two
thousand and one, and like many of our laws, it
has its roots in entrenching systemic inequalities. In this case,

(08:32):
legislators were trying to ban something called a Saturday Night
Special and people know what people know what that is. No,
it's it's a small, concealable, affordable hanggun. It's like there
were there were this, there was this, these guns that
came out in like the eighties and nineties that were
like super small, very cheap, very simple, very concealable and ship.

(08:56):
Well that's the thing, right, So this is really fascinating.
So in practice, right, these were at least culturally associated
with like black communities, right that that's you see them
in sometimes like certainly like there was a stigmatic reference
to like a disease guns that is causing violence, and
we're not going to fucking look at inequality at all, right,
We're just going to ban the guns. Are they shit?

(09:17):
As an interesting question, because California introduces legislation which said
that handguns had to be dropped safe, so that means
you can drop them and they can't go off. That
is generally a desirable feature. And a handgun able to
fire six hundred rounds without more than six malfunctions and
have a manual safety device. And later on they added
another thing that would make the gun only fire when

(09:39):
it had a magazine inserted. And they put all these
rules in place, and has said manufacturers had to submit
guns for testing. All the guns they were going after
pass the testing, So I guess they're not as shit
as one the one had suspected, which is kind of
like that that is the intent and they are laboring

(10:00):
under that misapprehension. But it seems like these guns, which
are very cheap, actually pass a testing just fine. So
if you look at the California roster, so once those
guns have passed that testing, right, they go on a roster,
and that roster like it's done by skew so like
by the individual code that's given to the gun, and

(10:21):
you could look up the California roster. It it's online
still and like there are hundreds of cheap small hand
guns that are on it. So they've failed in that regard.
But they created this kind of bizarre system where most
manufacturers had to make a California compliant model if they
wanted to sell in California, right, because it had to
have a magazine disconnect, which means that the gun won't

(10:45):
fire without the magazine in, which is not a usual
thing for semi automatic handguns to have. Like if you
are outside of California and you have like a normal
like a glock for instance, it doesn't have that, but
you would need one that did in California. So that
means that these guns are going to have a much
much smaller economy of scale, right, They're going to be
more expensive. Manufacturers also have to pay for the testing

(11:06):
and submit three models, So what de facto means is
that fewer guns are available in California. It doesn't really
become a big issue until twenty thirteen when the DOJ
in California add a micro stamping requirement. But they added
it earlier actually, but in twenty thirteen they certified it
was possible for missing. But so is the roster the

(11:27):
list of guns are allowed to buy, yes, okay, And
if it doesn't appear on the roster, we're going to
get into that. You can actually buy it, but you
can't buy it new from a store, so you can
buy it used. And there are two ways that these
used handguns can enter the state, right. One of them
is if you move to the state. So let's say

(11:49):
Garrison moves to LA right, and they bring with horrifying yeah,
just enjoy just just like a Vulcan mini gun. Yeah yeah.
They bring with them an M one Abrams tank. It's
a balloon shooting gun. Yeah. Every one of the West

(12:10):
Coast has to have one now, and so it's actually
different from rifles, SEDDI. But they bring with them pistols,
and those pistols are not on the California roster. They
can keep them and they can sell them right to
a California resident. The other way that these guns can
enter and be sold is cops are exempt from the roster, right,
so yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. And when I say cops,

(12:36):
I am speaking in the broadest possible terms because a
variety of peace officers are exempt, to include employees of
the California State Horse Racing Board. Sometimes park rangers can
do this, right. I think it depends what you are
within the park ranger, within the park, and it seems

(12:57):
to be there is actually a list, right that's in
the legislation, but it seems to be largely like at
the discretion of the gun shop. Like in practice they
could get in trouble. But like I've heard of like
firefighters and EMTs being able to purchase off roster guns,
which is fucking not in the legislation, Like it is
also kind of funny, but like U, in theory, it

(13:20):
would depend on what unit you're in, or they could
contact your like park ranger office and be like, hey,
this this girl is trying to buy a gun, like
she used us at work, because the idea is that
they would they would have the most up to date
weapons to carry at work, right, or that they could
buy themselves even though they get issued guns. So like
if you need a gun as a cop, you get
issued a gun, right. So what it means in practice

(13:44):
is that there's a thriving market and offer us to
firearms but there's also massive price premium. Right, they often
sell off for two or three times there MSRP, even
though they're used. And I did a little digging into this,
and I looked at one particular item, which was a
P three sixty five, a sig P three sixty five,
which is a fairly like a popular pistol. Right. But

(14:07):
after twenty thirteen, California doesn't didn't allow any new guns
to be added to the roster unless they micro stamp
their bullets. Micro Stamping is a little feature where the
firing pin of the gun stamps the casing, not the bullet,
with a little, kind little tiny stamp which is unique
to the gun, right, or it stamps it with the
serial number of the gun. So in theory, this would

(14:30):
allow you to pick up the casings at a murder
scene and be like, huh, well they were fired from
this gun and this gun is read to this person.
Therefore we got someone to talk to you, right, pick
up the casings. Yeah right, yeah, absolutely, no ways around this. Well,
I mean emmittively immediately that the one thing I've learned

(14:52):
over the years is that people are really lazy when
they're doing crimes, and so true, So true to be
slightly less lazy and get caughts and you're really that
is that is Yeah, that is my biggest my biggest
advice to the illegalists literally think five minutes before ye
yeah yeah yeah. Also, don't tweet your crimes. Yeah, every

(15:13):
green statements. Yeah yeah, it's one of our mottoes here.
You could also just use a revolver, I guess and
it would inject the casings. But um, the because there
are no guns in twenty thirteen, right, the DOJ says
you are not allowed to add a gun to the
roster unless it micro stamps, and we we've de signed

(15:35):
that micro stamping as possible. No firearms manufacturer will make
a gun that micro stamps because other states will require
all guns to micro stamp once set technology is available.
So they just don't built it, so they just don't
do it. Yeah, it is, And it's very funny. It's
like the car companies just being like, fucking, you know
what if we put airbags in that bad boy, They're

(15:58):
going to make us put airbags in all the cars.
You know. This is the thing that I've run into
a lot. I think it's really interesting, which is like, okay,
the specific combination of regulatory state and corporations being required
to do a thing gives you a bunch of really
really weird like outcomes that are like not what you
would expect when you're writing the legislation, which makes them ineffective,

(16:18):
Like I mean, I like the most famous one is
like the Clean Air Act actually worse into air quality
for a huge amount of time because they put in
this exception for like existing coal facilities under the assumption
that people would just like you know, build new coal
facilities and thus be like and thus like have better
to like create that cleaner technology, and no one, no
one ever did. They just left these old coal facilities
running or the other one, Like everyone always talks about

(16:39):
those like those fucking like why why the giant SUVs
keep getting bigger? And the reason for that is actually,
I mean, it kind of is sort of fascist psychosis,
but like the actual reason for that is Obama era
pollution controls on cars, right, had to have these fuel
emission standards. But the larger your car is, like the
worst fuel emission standards are, so they keep so okay
in order to get around the fuel emission things, they

(17:00):
keep making cars make it bigger amazing. Yeah, and this
ship just like I don't know this is this is
I think a pretty good argument against like against a
sort of regulatory state being able to contain like capitalism
doing horriborifying shit. Is like every single time someone tries
to make it air pollution thing, it just makes it worse. Yeah,
they just create perverse incentives to do something which is

(17:20):
like just stupid and polluting as opposed to Yeah, or
they just don't comply. It was with the microsynything. You're
just like no, like, yeah, simply romote. The specific interaction
of like people who elevate themselves who make it to
the California legislature on one hand, and gun companies on
the other hand, just leads to this complete intransigence where

(17:43):
like anytime a Laura is written, it is like someone
has found an end run or a loophole before it
comes into practice. Do you know what won't illegally smuggle
illegally smuggle guns into California install them for two to
three times a retail price? Mare? Is it? All the
firms that are doing child trafficking? And that's right, the

(18:04):
Washington State Highway Patrol we're back and we're talking about
cops selling guns for a lot of money in southern California.
So big Marco Garma wasn't the only cop who shares
a life of crime. As it turns out, yeah, yeah,

(18:27):
shockingly enough, this practice is pretty common. So a Guardina
police officer in twenty twenty one was also convicted of
making forty one illegal offer us to sales in a year,
and at least six LA officers have been found to
be engaged in legal firearms transfers, according to twenty twenty
one LA Times investigation, So that that's eight in a

(18:49):
single year if you're keeping track. And it's pretty common
to see people like posting about this, like like if
you go on to like the California Guns forum, where
people will be like where they sell guns right where
they don't. You don't actually sell the guns on the internet,
so that's illegal. But people will post it and then
say meet me at this gun dealer and we'll do
the background check. And you'll see people being like, oh,

(19:10):
like m l O, I have a friend to LEO
and like happen to be selling this gun new in package.
I bought it to carry it on patrol, but I
decided I didn't like it, you know, like that's the
theoretical connad here, right, Oh god, Okay. The thing this
reminds me of specifically is a very very weird use
case of like people will magice the gathering tournaments where

(19:31):
you're not legally allowed to both draw and split the
prize money. So you have to say this incredibly complicated
series of sentences where you're like, I want to draw,
and then new conversation, can we split the prize money?
It's like I have to I have to like say
this exact series of words in order to make it's
clear that I'm not doing exactly what I'm doing and
breaking the law. Yeah, this is how the law works, right,

(19:53):
Like it always ends up being some kind of like
totalistic magic incantation that you can say, and then the
thing that they trying to fucking stop obviously no longer
applies to union can do what you want. Like it's
incredibly assinine. So in mid twenty twenty one, I tried
to I wanted to get a sense, right and when
I was doing this of how many of these offer

(20:14):
uster guns there are in California, to get a sense
of like exactly how much of a fass. The attempt
to create this roster has been so I've been going
after this for a while. But in the middle of
twenty twenty one, there was an Assembly bill pass called
Assembly Bill two six nine nine, if you're interested, and
the bill required the Department of Justice to send a

(20:35):
letter to owners off off roster weapons, which California officially
calls unsafe handguns, to remind the people who own the
mother laws surrounding them and to whom they could transfer them. Right.
I first became aware of this letter because someone dectarted
to post it online and that kind of gave me
an opening where because I can't pira the names of

(20:56):
the people who owned the guns right or even where
they live, because obviously protect information and it probably should
be and I don't think that inforation is even actually
stored by the state. But I can pira the letters
say sent out. So pira is a public records at request, right,
it's what people might know as of foyer. And so
I did that, and it took me more than a

(21:17):
year and it cost me more than a hundred bucks,
But eventually I managed to get the DOJ to to
send me the information which showed that at least at
the time I got it, which is the middle of
twenty twenty one, four thousand and five hundred and ten
firearms have been obtained by the subsection of the law
that allows exemptions for police officers. There are some other

(21:39):
exemptions for like antique collectible firearms as well, so it's
not clear that all of those were cops. They also
noted that it had sent two hundred and thirteen thousand,
eight hundred and four notices to the owners of off
roster weapons, which, yeah, it suggests that if we think
of that, the roster became a serious issue in twenty thirteen, right,

(22:01):
so that suggested about ten thousand, ten thousand weapons a
year since the roster began in two thousand and one
have entered the state that are off ruster, which kind
of kind of makes the point that it's it's a
rather fasticle attempt at gun control, right, But it still
is that the roster, which I don't think like, you're fine, right,

(22:25):
you can you can buy a very effective gun in California,
as we have seen, they're very effective of killing people.
But it does kind of make it a joke that
if you have enough money or a friend who's a cop,
then this doesn't apply to you. Right, then you're over
two hundred thousand of these guns which are supposed to
be like banned in circulation, as long as you're wealthy

(22:47):
enough to buy them. I tried also to pra a
if any of these guns have been involved in crime
or murder, and they would tell me that. And what
it's always worth pointing out that like the cops themselves
are issued guns which are illegal for civilians to purchase,
right or it's not possible for them to purchase them.
New I should say that offer us to guns are

(23:08):
issued to the cops, right, So, by definition, some of
these guns have been used in the accidental shooting of bystanders,
shooting of officers by themselves, and shooting of officers by
other officers that have occurred in California since the Rousta began.
So the sort of by definition of us to guns
to kill some people. So this isn't actually the only
way that being wealthy can get you around gun laws.

(23:30):
And I want to go a little further east for
my next example. Then I want to go, in fact
to a little town called Lake Arthur in New Mexico.
Then if you are you guys familiar with this part
of the world. Not well, not that I lived in
New Mexico very very briefly when I was a small child,
but not there. So so I've been using Google street View.

(23:54):
That's my my dive. It appears to be the back
arshile of nowhere, and in let Garthur, they have one
cop who it turns out was a volunteer and was
being paid a dollar a year. Aha. Yeah, so this
is this is where the problem starts. This guy is
called William Norwood. And I'll issue a spoiler here that

(24:16):
William Norwood is no longer a cop in orders the
department exist. And that's because Norwood was running a scam
that took advantage of something called LIOSA. LIOSA is a
Law Enforcement Officers Safety Act and what the Law Enforcement
Officers Safety Act does is allow cops from any state
in the Union to conceal carry a gun in every

(24:38):
state in the Union. So this was a big deal. Yeah,
I think you might be abotuely what this is going.
This was a big deal before the Supreme Court Brewined decision. Right.
The Brewer decision was the one that significantly reduced the
impediments in between you and getting a concealed carry weapons permit.
I didn't totally remove them, and it did make it

(25:00):
any less expensive, and California needs to be going about
trying to make it even more expensive, which is bullshit,
Like everyone should have the same right, regardless of how
wealthy they are. But if you were covered by LEOSA, right,
if you're a law enforcement officer, you could conceal Carrie anywhere.
So this is very desirable for certain people. One of

(25:20):
those people is Robert Mercer. Do you guys remember Robert Mercer? No?
I do not, Okay, So Murcer is a big time
Donald Trump appreciated. Oh yeah, he's that like super rich guy. Yeah,
the bright Bart guy, the Cambridge Analytica guy. Yeah. Okay, yeah.

(25:41):
So this guy is rolling in it, and he he was.
He actually hosted like a a like success party soon
after twenty sixteen election. This this guy is definitely pivotal
to the whole Trump scene, right, like like his bank
rolling a bright Bart, Cambrinallytica. He As it turns out,
it's also a cop in this little New Mexico town,

(26:03):
which is kind of weird, right, especially when you consider
that one hundred and fifty other people are also cops
in this me. Yeah, that's that's one cop for every
two point nine residents. Jesus. Yeah. And turns out they're
probably not doing much copying, but they are doing at

(26:26):
least a certain amount of volunteering. It's actually unclear how much.
So the Lake Arthur Treasurer with Bloomberg did some prays
around this, and it turns out that Mercer was what's
called an honorary member of the police department, but there
are no records to indicate they actually did any policing.

(26:48):
But nonetheless he took advantage of LEOSA, right, and that's
carried in all fifty states, so these jurisdictions, there are
several of them. Another famous and who's taken advantage of
this is a friend of the podcast, Stephen Seagal. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Stephen Seagar, who apparently has been a volunteer cop for

(27:09):
a very long time and like actually was doing some
copping according to a reality TV show he made called
Steven Seagal Lawman. You know the thing about that show,
right is it's like, are you gonna come out and
defend the show? Are you pro the show? Really? Here,

(27:30):
here's why they on this show, right, Like, obviously Seagal's
doing stuff that's really messed up, but it's also unclear
how much ye what he was doing is than the
average cop. Liket Like, probably what he's doing is worst
than the average cop, But I don't think it's like
like I don't I don't think it's as bad as
like like a Chicago Special Operations unit. It's like, I

(27:52):
can't believe this came out in defense of Steven Seagal. Specifically,
he has work to do to reach like the true
upper echelon of like I don't know, shitty cops, Like
this is a man who gave his time freely to
volunteer for Joe Apio. This level of apologism coming from

(28:13):
you right now is simply shocking. I don't know how
to deal with this, this cigol apology, sigologismogism. Yeah, that
is that is what I was working my way towards,
but I couldn't finish it. Yeah, thank you for delivering

(28:35):
the kuda grass. Yeah, me are coming out with the
some cops to Bastard to take scab. Okay, So what
what is Carrison's Carrisons deceased? They've've died Okay, So these
badge factories, like the ones in Lake Arthur and Geermany

(28:56):
trade influenced cash your connections for a badge and the
right to carry a gun nation why Mercer and his
son in lawd. George Wells have supported the town generously
and so the most kind of the best investigated example
of this right because Bloomberg went after him and Bloomberger publication,
not Bloomberg the dude. He went down there personally Bloomberg

(29:22):
he formed an alliance with apparently at one point this
with this police department did to a raid on a methhouse.
And I would love to see like Bloomberg forming alliance
with the methilers of Lake Arth to fucking take on Murcer.
So if Bloomberg can take on nine to eleven single handedly,
surely he can bust up whatever whatever operations going down

(29:44):
in New Mexico. One hundred and fifty Stephen Seagals, would
you rather fight one Bloomberg size Stephen Seagal? And yet
don't don't do not bother messaging me. I know he
wasn't the mayor during nine to eleven. That was the joke.
Don't bother messaging me, I already know than no, no, no,
I wrote, Okay Garrison's Twitter again, I write a case.

(30:08):
He also famously dropped Staten Island Phil Bloomberg. You guys
don't know about State nine. Staten Island Phil is a groundhog.
This This will be in a Bastards episode as well,
So it's a second mentor of Staaten isl and Phil
for some people. Staten Island Phil is a groundhog similar
to Puck's attorney Phil. Yeah, but he lives in Staten

(30:29):
Island and that's fortunately. Yeah, we would we say that
a second second. Pretty pretty disgusting take from me anti
Staten Island this way, this is why MEA gets canceled episode. Yeah,
going back the time and getting rid of the Yankees
hings of the state. Sure yeah yeah. Unfortunately, build a

(30:50):
Blasio dropped the groundhog on its head and it died. Yeah,
build really build a Blazio the groundhog. It's reduced popularity.
Everyone who's been the mayor of New York is a
piece of shape, unhinged. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's true. Yeah,
like fucking the current mayor just what lked TV to

(31:14):
Tay and talked about how he has this magic smudge
that yes, so that he could absorb despair and ring
the despair. What the I'm so sick? The only thing
isolated New York was does the whole like there shouldn't
be any separation of church and say that is so

(31:35):
much funnier. He's doing a sham wow for sad. Oh
what a place, what a town? All right. So, if
you're wondering how much it costs for Mercer and his
son in law to carry downs everywhere, they paid at
least ninety three thousand to set up this thing called

(31:59):
the South East New Mexico Police Reserve Foundation, which you
know is doing the valuable work of supporting reserve cops
in Southeast New Mexico because they are the thin blue
line between us and people not being able to buy
concealed carry permits in all fifty states. I guess under
its bylaws of its half the foundation's net jews were

(32:21):
required to be paid to police departments whose reservists were
members of the foundation the time of its founding. All
of the members were Like Arthur reservists, So just a
good public public benefit. Probably just money going around in circles.
He also paid for Lake Arthur officers to get SWAT
training in Vegas again, there is only one full time

(32:42):
cop and he's a volunteer. So some of the lads
went to Vegas, I guess, and this was a donation
that was probably tax deductible. The way that this came
out is when a quote unquote firearms expert from North
Carolina got drunk and shot his b they're in law
in the leg and why were you carrying bro like

(33:05):
you're a cop? And yeah, from their things began to unwind.
A lot of the other clients for this place are
people like bodyguards, and they were a client's cops, volunteer officers,
I should say. They're people who do close protection for
wealthy folks, right, and carry guns as part of that work.

(33:28):
And I'm guessing it's their employers who are making these
significant donations to like Arthur that probably allowed these people
to reserve officers, which allowed them to carry in all
fifty states, which in turn allowed them to protect these
wealthy people. Right. So it's another and like it's important
to understand that like New York, for instance, declined before

(33:49):
this was before the bruined decision, I can still carry
permit applicant from like an FBI informant who had taken
down a biker gang. They were like, no, you don't
need to carry a gun. Like it was almost impossible
for people, even if they were like helping the cops,
to get concealed carry permits in some parts of the
United States and in California was very hard. Lots of

(34:09):
places before Bruin, Like, I think, what's it, Nancy Pelosi
had a concealed carry permit of Finstein, this is the
whole thing, Okay, so this was this was Finestein that
One of the other scamps for this is you can
get deputized as a federal marshal. There's like a bunch
like I like Finestein's rumored who have done there's like
a bunch of like every like a bunch of sort
of like California like Congress people have done this that

(34:31):
like they get they get deputizes marshals and so they
can do this shit. Yeah, incredible stuff. Yeah, it's so
I guess what I want to come back to is
like all of these laws, right, all of these gun
control laws and are circumventable if you have enough money. Right,
So if you want a nice brand new gun that

(34:53):
doesn't mic Ris damp, it doesn't have the it doesn't
have the magazine disconnect. And like modern the modern Harry
guns especially, you're a lot nicer than they were in
twenty thirteen. Right, They're smaller, they have a higher capacity.
You can put a little red dot site on them
if you want to. And if you want one of
those things, you can have it in California as long
as you're rich and if you're If you're not, then

(35:15):
you can't. The same applies with this fifty state carry
right if you want to carry a gun all around
the country, and even now with Bruin, states are not
required to recognize each other's concealed carry permits. Right, So
I have a concealed Harry permit in California. It's not
recognized by any other states because California doesn't recognize any

(35:35):
other states carry permits. So I can apply for one Arizona.
That costs me more money. But if you want to
carry in all fifty states, you can just make this
donation to the corps. Right, And you can almost all
of these things, right. These are the only examples Mere
cited the federal marshal thing. Another one is the NFA right,

(35:56):
the National Firearms Act YEAH Act, which like, essentially, it's
not illegal to have a suppress there. It's not illegal
to have a short barreled rifle. It's not illegal to
have a machine gun. Actually, you just have to spend
a shit ton of money to get one, which a
mercer has a collection of machine guns. I guess, so
all of these things. Yeah, it's great, it's fine. It's

(36:19):
it's great that we live in a country with with
two tiers of rights for people. Those are those those
machine guns are totally going to be used for normal,
completely normal things in twenty years. Yeah. Yeah, a totally
normal guy who were using for normal stuff and just
I'm sure like to make holes in paper with his friends.
And it's not problematic at all that to be as

(36:39):
rich as this guy is, you have to be a
problematic dude. And it maybe those are the people who
shouldn't be having guns, yeah, but instead it's it's it's
going to be poor people who can't be having guns.
And I think, regardless of what you think, and it's
perfectly reasonable to think that there should be fewer guns
in this country. It's it's perfectly reasonable to leave that.

(37:01):
And I think, like it's perfectly reasonable to think what
the fuck should we do about the fact that kids
get shot in schools. That's not an unreasonable starts at all.
But if the way around it is saying, well, only
rich people get to shoot people, then that that's not
really a solution. It's just kind of the appearance of one.
And I don't think any of us suddenly, if we
were on the left, should should really support that. Yeah,

(37:24):
that's where we are in California, which is great. Yeah.
So that's about all we've got on this. If people
are interested in seeing more about either the Mercer case
or the public records I have, we'll put them all
up on our sources page. You can find our sources
page on there could Happen Here website, and we put

(37:45):
all our sorts out there for all our episodes. So yeah,
go check that out. Anything else to finish off with, guys?
The cops having guns, bad cops being cops, bad cops? Yeah?
Oh well, what about Stephen Cigar I made. This is
a dramatic change of form from your earlier start. I only,

(38:06):
I only ever argued that he was slightly more violent
than a normal cup. That was the extent of my argument.
He is only slightly more violent than a regular cup.
She is flip flopping on the some some cops issue. Again,
you can send me your opinions on the police. She's
on Twitter at I write Okay, hello and welcome to

(38:44):
it could happen here once again? Who sit by myself
Andrew as we talk about whatever. So we have two
special guests, Sprout and Sherry Anne from the Black Flow Collective,
and they has talked to us about the dicought me
between Uban and rural plats organizing. I mean, as we
can all recognize, in this day and age, being plicitly

(39:04):
active is incredibly important. There are a lot of vulnerabilities
that we are all facing on the intersection of systems,
and we are looking for weez to get out, but
it could be difficult to naviate, especially when you don't
know exactly where to begin. That's part of the focus
of my channel and it's also something that these folks

(39:27):
are here to talk to us about. But before we
delve too deeply into the meat to that discussion, let's
begin with a quick introduction. You know, who is Black
Flow Collective, How did you all begin and what are
some of your goals as a group. Hey, this is
Sprout and We got started organizing with the Black Flower

(39:48):
Collective through previous organizing projects here in Aberdeen, Washington, such
as the Chehala Server Mutual Aid network. That collective got
started after the Black Lives a matter of rebellion in
so called Seattle and was started by feeding the movement
out there in Capitol Hill and Chaz and then brought

(40:09):
that organizing effort back to the community to start a
food and out bombs here in town. Through those meetings
and relationships that we formed, we got to know the
local homeless in town and started getting to know their
needs as we tried to fill them with our mutual
aid efforts. And out of those conversations over meals, we

(40:32):
learned that one of the biggest needs was some sort
of home base where people like us trying to support
the community could come together and cook meals together and
serve them in a collective area. Yeah, having a safe
place to be able to just cook food and plan
other types of organizations or collectives is imperative because we

(40:56):
faced a lot of backlash from the reactionary politics around
our town being in the kind of the heart of
trump Land, and the type of people that show up
in the big city protest to mow people down with
their trucks and whatnot right and how has that affected
your old reach efforts. What'd you see? Thankfully not too harshly,

(41:20):
but we've definitely had some scary situations. There was one
time at the homeless camp we were told about by
the campers there where somebody had tried to like run
down a tent that somebody was sleeping sleeping in. They
may just like jump out at the like like you know,
before they got hit, and they jumped out of the

(41:41):
truck and was like waving of a like a police
baton or some sort of like stick or something or
something around threatening people. Somebody got like a bigger stick,
which prompted them to get in their car and start
waving a pull out a pistol and start waving that
around before they ended up driving off. Yeah, sometimes when
we get new volunteers, there can be a bit of

(42:01):
hesitance from people to like you know, take food or
supplies because there's a bit of a relationship that needs
forming there of trust because of those actions of right
wing actors in town. So it's kind of like, you know,
what is why you're out, you're feeding, So there's a
bit of hesitance there, but once they realize they're with
our group, we've established enough of a reputation that you know,

(42:24):
that name drop is usually enough to to re establish
that trust, right, but it's good that you'll love somewhat
established yourselves, you know, locally and builds up a reputation.
Would you see that that has been one of your
media goals as a group, to build that trust in
the community and where you'll see that trust go in
from where it is now. I've always seen that personally

(42:47):
as our only asset. We don't have a lot of money. Obviously,
we're not funded by anyone, so all we really have
is our reputation in the in the community and in
the wider community. Our reputation has led to some of
that backlash that Sharia was talking about, but within the
actual on housed community, you know, we have a reputation

(43:10):
of doing whatever we can to help people and always
showing up consistently and you know, always being willing to
go the extra mile when someone needs something in crisis.
That's fantastic. That's fantastic. So having had some experience with

(43:31):
like you mentioned, working in the various movements that were
happening in twenty twenty. What would you see some of
the media differences that you've noticed between organizing in media
cities and in uban areas compared to rural posical organizing. Well,
I'd say the majority of the issues we've noticed depend

(43:55):
on the material conditions of the town that we're in.
Being a small and rural area, there's a lot more
property here, and so those material conditions lead to a
lot of differences between urban and rural areas. I found
before come into the area, I was involved with Occupy

(44:18):
Oakland back in the day, so I had a bit
more of a running with the larger city, larger cities
way of doing things. And what would you share in Well,
I've grown up here in this town my whole life
and have a really left outside of it all too much.
This type of organizing is always uff that I heard about,

(44:41):
more so through rumors than anything else. Soursus actually seeing
people on the ground and doing things. Once we got
our food not bombs chapters started during twenty twenty, it
opened kind of just a new a new world for
not just myself, a lot of people around here. Right. So,

(45:03):
one major difference that we've noticed that is the dichotomy
of electoral politics in the town. Most of the opposition
that we've faced has not been from the city but
from grassroots initiatives, and so some of those people over

(45:23):
the course of the last two years have taken positions
on city council, but the police that they control are
still demonstrate an unwillingness to attack their own community in
the way that far right politicians would want them to. Yeah,
so take like the police that show up and the

(45:46):
like big city protests and whatnot. They'll bring in all
police stations from all surrounding areas, people who aren't familiar
with the community, who you know, it's just a job
to them, which helps sever that they're connectioned that that area,
while here it's the same people dealing with the same
people every day. And in the minds of police, it

(46:10):
does create create like a sense of community in their
mind that makes them a little more reluctant to use
the type of violent force that we see in in
the bigger cities. And it's not to say that force
isn't present and doesn't happen here, but it definitely doesn't
happen on the frequency. If I could run back a

(46:33):
second by way this is me. I'm also on this episode.
Um yeah, if I could, if I could walk back
a second, ask or something. When when when you say
that most of the resistance to what you've been doing
is from grassroots movements, is that like, like, are you
talking about like sort of grassroots like right wing political movements.
Are you talking about sort of NGOs opposing you or no? Like,

(46:54):
we have a local grassroots right wing initiative in town
that's been the main breadth of our our little groups
opposition and they have, like I said, they have run
and won a few city council seats since then. But
it started as a grassroots you know, clean up the
trash sort of campaign. Yeah. Yeah, you could still find

(47:15):
their page on Facebook. It's a save our Aberdeen, Oh God,
save our Aberdeen please soap and they got like little
soap bubbles and whatnot, and they're here to clean up
the city streets. Said, Oh boy, I don't think they're
talking about the trash, not trash as we would define it. Yeah,
so sort of right, So this is a place where

(47:37):
sort of like right wing like anti homeless stuff has
been has been their sort of main way to build organization. Yeah,
it's a. It's a huge I mean, I don't really
even know Sherry, And like, what other talking points do
they have other than the homeless. Everything centers around the homeless,
Even stuff that has to do with like businesses in

(47:58):
town and local economic that gets blamed on the homeless.
You know, everything gets blamed on the homeless. So it
really all goes back to that. Yeah, they are the
scapegoat for every problem that the city council faces, or
not just the city council, but businesses. You run a
shitty business, it's it's the homeless's fault. I don't have

(48:20):
customers say it has nothing to do with the fact
that I haven't sold anything in years and this is
just a hobby shop for me because I got a
fat inheritance. But yeah, I'm talking about you all that glitters.
Oh we call the names no, so you speak. You
spoke about how this um, this grassers right wing movement

(48:44):
has picked up some steam and wanted some seats into
city cone. Soum. But one thing I recognize about grassroots
movements is that they tend to have to sort of
balance their goals with the trust they need to build

(49:04):
with the broader public, with the perception that the public
has of them, and how are they trying to shape
that perception. So how would you see that the public
of Aberdeen views the right wing initiatives the Soup movement

(49:24):
as your reference in And how do you think that
the of tentative view Black fol collective. Well, I think
a lot of people feel scared to voice their opinions
if they're on the left in town. But we do
get a lot of support for the mutual aid that

(49:46):
we do the the base of the other The right
wing movement in town is pretty strong, and you know,
I don't see them drawing in a whole lot of
new people because of their extreme nature and their tendency

(50:06):
towards conspiracies, but they do have quite a substantial base
that whatever they say, they're gonna they're gonna agree with
and they're gonna go along with. Take for example, like
here about a year or two ago, um, I think
it was November twenty twenty one or augustum, there was

(50:26):
a big anti tran trans rally outside of a Star
Wars shop here in town that yeah, they had to
bring in a bunch of proud boys from you know,
out of town and the like filled their numbers from outside,
you know, with outside help and whatnot, while chanting about

(50:47):
how Antifa was coming from Seattle to burn the shop
down and kill the shop owner and all this and
all the stuff that they had the guy during the
whole protest. They gave them like a bulletproof vest that
he's like walking around. Did they brought Matt Walsh the
fucking town? It was a mess? Wow. Yeah. It's really

(51:11):
a classic example of pot meat cattle with a lot
of their metric. In my experience, I think the majority
of the public though, does care about the issues that
the homeless are facing and the fallout issues from that,
but they kind of it's kind of this tug back

(51:32):
and forth between us telling them what's really going on
on the streets and the stories of people down at
camp and this other more right wing tendency to just
blame things on the homeless and take the simple route
of saying if we just get rid of these homeless people,
then our problems will be solved, and local efforts to

(51:54):
gentrify the area with the influx of Terry, a right
wing capitalist who's brought up like sixty properties in town recently,
and as well as just the local media landscape in
town has a right wing tinge to it. I mean

(52:15):
where we're at, everything has a right wing tinge to it.
But so it's hard because there's not a lot of voices.
Even though there is a lot of sentiment of caring
about the homeless, there's not a lot of voices that
are actually telling the truth of what's going on on
the streets. And so when you get all of the
lies and bullshit coming from the police and city hall

(52:36):
and just being reported verbatim by the papers in town,
it leads to a lot of people forming conclusions based
on faulty facts, and so they might think, oh, the
homeless did this, the homeless did that, And we go
into the comment sections every time and push back and say,

(52:56):
you know, actually this is what happened. And it's actually
a lot of times that we get people, you know,
opening their eyes and saying, oh, I didn't know that.
You know, it's not always just the standard dig your
heels and sort of thing that you see on social media.
Because it is a sort of smaller town, right, everyone
kind of knows everybody. Yeah, there's a bit more accountability

(53:21):
in that sense. If you're going to spout off online
it's you know, it's likely and the grocery line after stuff.
Not only that, but it makes like for organizing a
general um and nonimidity a lot different of a um
of a tactic in how in how you use it,

(53:41):
because like say in the big city, you're constantly surrounded
by UM security cameras everywhere you go. You're constantly being monitored,
watched or whatnot. But it's a lot easier just disappear
in the crowd, just another face the you know the other.
Like you can go out spray paint ditch got a
big deal in place like here in Aberdeen for example,

(54:05):
But like I could mask up and do everything, um,
you know I can. But if I get known in
any kind of sense of way by go out and
you know, spray paint a wall, it's like, oh, there
goes Sherry and you know, spray painted walls again. And
once once you are docks are identified, it's really hard

(54:27):
to undo that and just sort of renonymize yourself. So
we've taken an anonymity and our security in that aspect
very seriously from the get go. A couple of people
in our organization who didn't have faced, you know, public
harassment and stocking. So yeah, it is a big deal.

(54:47):
So you've managed to maintain a level of anonymity despite
elder jefflets in a small town. Yes, well, to a
large degree. To a large degree. Okay, there's different people
in our group. You know, it's not like our group
has rules about it. So some people use their real names,
some people don't. But those who are concerned about it

(55:08):
have been able to although it's it's difficult, and you
know once that, once that identification comes, you know, it's
pretty much games up. It also kind of has affected
our recruitment in the sense that people on the outside

(55:30):
looking in may see what we're doing as more dangerous
than it actually is because of those security concerns, and
they might be scared of retaliation and not want to
participate because of that. So we have taken to kind
of reducing the fire in our online social media's for

(55:55):
some of that mutual aid stuff, so that we don't
get as much of the backbash on those accounts. And
we found that it's helpful to have ancillary groups that
can go and do more autonomous stuff if we need
stuff done that it or said that as a're gonna
create more backlash, right, So have sort of different layers

(56:16):
of the organization. I remember the after futurist abolitioncy America's
one of the statements they had puts out they were
they had used it to move like my courizy in
the sense of having sort of different levels of network
in place. You have like the above ground level of

(56:37):
you know, more visible public face and action, whereas you
have that sort of underground, fungal network of anonymous and
probably more risky action taken place. Yeah, because we have
to sort of maintain a certain level of good will
in town for the mutual for certain sides of our organizing.

(56:59):
Organizing like the police, for example, they're always down at
camp and so having an amicable relationship with them is
advantageous in certain scenarios. So, yeah, splitting apart roles, I
would say, you know, one role being the public facing

(57:20):
side of things and one role being the more private,
autonomous group. And how would you see you're talking about
you some semi am a couple of relationship with the police.
How has that been sort of sort of set up?
You know, what was the basis of that. Well, as

(57:40):
we were mentioning the the the structure of policing is
a little bit different, since the police in an area
small like this is going to hire locally as opposed
to in large metropolis areas you generally see police department
in big cities hiring from the suburbs surrounding the area

(58:04):
leads to sort of like a foreign occupation feel. That's
definitely the feeling that I got when I was doing
stuff in Oakland was that the Oakland Police Department was
not made up of anyone who lived in Oakland. You know,
they were coming from the surrounding suburbs that were much
more affluent and removed from the problems of Oakland, and

(58:29):
they were just there to occupy by force. And so
we get more like the Andy Griffith feel out here,
where it's like the cops are, you know, the good guys,
who's trying, who's helping Grahama across the road, and you know,
will you know, carry your groceries up the stairs for
you and that kind of stuff. At least that's more

(58:51):
at least that's more the public perception. Anyway. They also
have a small tank and conduct all sorts of drug rates.
Rights to me, like, yeah, we're helping you, you know,
we're walking you down the road and carrying your groceries
in your house for you within all the shoe But
because of the small town aspects of it though, um

(59:13):
being able to like play on their um wanting you know,
for the ones who do want to help but are
misguided because they're cops acab um. But for the ones
who are trying to help, who aren't like specifically going
out trying to fuck over homeless people besides their jobs,
you know, once who occasionally like go out and buy

(59:34):
stuff of their own money or whatever to like help
so or whatever, they'll kind of like rely on us
to deal with that side of the population so they
don't have to waste their time dealing with the homeless,
is how and which is allows us to deal with
more of the problems in the homeless community in house
versus having to get the police involved, right because you know,

(59:56):
the police aren't really treated or capable of resolving the
it's kind of issues. For example, like my father, for
for example, UM, he was in and out of prison
his whole life, and after I was born and he
got out of prison that last time, Um, he had
a moment where he's gonna get ready to have a relapse. Right.
He went to his dealer's house. You know, he's there,

(01:00:18):
he bought his eight ball. He's sitting there and you know,
getting ready to do his thing and there's a knock
at the door and they opened it up and it's
police there. They got a warrant for the dealer. They're
raiding the house. And this one cop you know, pulls
my dad aside because he knows if the other cops season,
he's gonna send him straight to prison. And he's like,
you know, hey, you know, what are you doing here? Man?

(01:00:40):
And whatever possessed my dad to do it, he's like,
I just want to go home. He put the eight
ball in that dude's hand and cops kind of looked
at him, was like, just just get the fuck out
of here, just go because he knew if the other
cop you know, saw him, he would have sent him
to prison right then, and the like again a cab,
the like, this is, you know, the best story you're

(01:01:01):
ever going to hear, our best story if a cop
is a cop not being a cop pretty much? Yeah, exactly, yeah,
every time. But you definitely get more of that here though.
That their advantage to take over. Yeah, and we have
a certain people in our group that can liaison better

(01:01:22):
than others with the police, and so we've used that
to our advantage as well. They've largely ignored, I want
to say, the police, not the city. The city wants
to stop us, it's like their undying wish apparently, But
the police have largely ignored or shown tacit support for
our efforts because they're members of the community and they,

(01:01:45):
at least the older crop of officers, have been working
these streets and seeing the same homeless individuals for in
some cases longer than I've been allowed, So you know,
there are relationships there, even it's even if it's one
mediated by that position that being a police officer. Um,

(01:02:08):
when you see someone struggling for that long, you know,
it's it's hard not to be empathetic as a human.
And so we've been seeing a bit of a shift
now that they are all those officers are starting to
retire and we're getting a new crop of younger, more
gung ho police because who would who would vaun who

(01:02:30):
would sign up to be a police officer in twenty
twenty three, you know, other than people who have something
going on with it. So yeah, but for a while
there it was this, you know, that sort of old
crop of police officers who had build relationships in the
community and had that public image of being the helpful

(01:02:52):
peace officer, as it were, which makes it hard to
push back when you're when you're a group that's trying
to advance, you know, abolitionists thinking and anti cop sentiments.
When they are beating people with batons, it's easy for
your community to look at that and be like, Okay,
these guys are clearly the enemy. But when they're just

(01:03:15):
you know, helping grandma across the street, it's a lot
harder to make those arguments. So that's been one aspect
that has made things difficult for us, and another dichotomy
in the just the list of these in the mere
differences between the conditions around organizing in a small town

(01:03:35):
rural area versus bigger in cities such as say Seattle. Yeah,
but despite all of their helpful nature there, they are
enforcing local ordinances that criminalize then housed, despite the ruling
out of the Ninth Circuit Court of Martin G. Boise
that says it's unconstitutional to do so so, even with

(01:03:59):
no alternative alternative shelter available. This year we have zero
cold weather shelters in Aberdeen. They're still out there sweeping
people and telling them, hey, you've got to move along.
When the maps handed out by the city say specifically
you can sleep here and you can camp here as
long as you leave enough space for pedestrians to get by,

(01:04:19):
you can set up on the sidebox, and yet they
move them along every day. Yeah, as you're talking about,
you know, the different Ey caught to me is that
you feace between urban and rurale political organizing. I would
imagine that population is certainly an issue about that you
might have to feace as you know, an organization trying

(01:04:41):
to make a change in a small space, have your phone.
It challenging to build your base and you know, get
connections and stuff going. Yeah, for certain like, as we said,
there's already the issues with the US having a more
reactionary based politics in a lot of our population, and

(01:05:06):
that's scaring what allies that we do have here. So
it's definitely resulted in us having to do the best
we can to network outside as much as possible. Yeah,
there's not a really wide base of radicals to pull from,
so we have to work with a bit wider ranging
group of folks out here, although it has always shocked
me how many people are willing to get involved in

(01:05:27):
radical organizing here in town. You know, I think the
smaller group size has led to a need for more
connection and more listening in our decision making processes, which
has been nice. I think we've gotten really good at
operating as a small technique group, which may be organizers

(01:05:51):
in larger areas where groups are larger, I have to
deal with a little bit differently. You know. There's also
the difference in terms of where we socialize. In places
like Aberdeen, there's nothing to do in terms of social gatherings.
There's no center of socialization in town. The only thing

(01:06:18):
that we did have was the mall, which has been
closed for a couple of years now. So there's not
a lot to do in terms of activities, and there's
also just not a lot of space, like physical space
in which to gather as a community. That's why we
are currently serving our through not bomb meals under a

(01:06:38):
bridge because the city has removed all covered areas in
one of the most rainy areas in the country. Yeah,
Like when I go to like Seattle, for for example,
I could walk into any business, any doorway, just about
any street pole and see flyer after flyer after flyer

(01:06:58):
for this event, this oncertaty, this group is doing this, this, this,
these classes are taking place, etc. They straight up have
a law against putting anything on the poles in town
versus let alone. They're actually being any events happening worth
using the poles in the first place, right right. So

(01:07:21):
I would imagine that parts of your aims as a
collective would be to find ways to bring the immunity
together through those sorts of social events, in formal and
formal for sure. And that's definitely a big part of
our goal with the Black Flower Project is to create
a sort of social center, a place for the community

(01:07:44):
to come for various reasons and you know, experience whatever
they might discover. So it sounds like you'll have a
good lay of the land in terms of what is
happening in the town and what sort of movements you
want to be making. In the next part of this episode,

(01:08:04):
you can join myself and Miya and Ryan and Sprout
as we discuss the actions that Black Fowl Collective plans
on taken in their community and what sort of material
conditions they've continued to have to navigate in this space
until then. I'm Andrew of the YouTube channel andrews Um.

(01:08:28):
You can call me on Twitter at underscore sat Drew
and support on Patreon dot com, slash Seeing Drew. And
you could also check out Blackflower Collective and support their work. Yeah.
You can find us at link tree, backslash, black Flower LLC,
or Blackflower Collective dot no blogs dot org. You can

(01:08:49):
also find our content at at link tree Backslash al
thirteen twelve, where you can find our podcasts maltav Now
and a bunch of our other projects by Saber Media.
Thanks loot guys, Hello, and welcome to it could Happen here.

(01:09:24):
Joining me again for this second part of two parts,
shari An and sprout from the Black Flower Collective in Aberdeen, Washington,
as they've joined us to discuss the dichotomy between urban
and rural political organizing. Last week spoke. They gave us
some background on exactly how the Black Flower Collective began

(01:09:48):
and what sort of motivating factors they have been in
their developments as an organization, as well as some of
the dichotomies that they've experience between urban and rural political organizing.
Now we're going to take a moment to explore some
of the materials, some of the other material conditions that
they have feast in their city or rather in this

(01:10:13):
small hotel. Sure an, As we were talking about in
the last episode, there's a huge difference between the modes
of socialization um in big cities and then versus small
towns like our own, you know, Pere, we socialize more
like in our houses. You meet friends at at the
homes of other friends houses, where in the bigger cities

(01:10:35):
it's more so that you know, you went to a club,
you went to an event, concert, class, what I have
you um, And these are definitely things that have like
evolved and developed based on the you know, just different
material conditions. Like you know, there's not as many classes

(01:10:58):
around here and you know, events and stuff like that
because a people just don't have the money to go
to them and be there. Nobody has the money that
really put them on or you know, any of that's
a startup capital. There's not enough money coming through the town.
That's why the far right are always trying to push
this homeless narrative, because they're trying to make like turn
this town into like a tourist town or something which

(01:11:21):
makes no goddamn sense to me. There's nothing in this
town to come here for us, But like, the only
reason you're coming to this town is because you're driving
through here to go to the ocean. That's it. Like
the highway dumps out here and then it's old highways
back to the rest of the ocean. Sounds pretty isolated.
It can be pretty isolating out here, but it doesn't

(01:11:42):
disconnect us from the overall struggle. Throughout our organizing, we've
discovered that there's a lot of things that we can
do for urban comrades through our mutual aid. For example,
rural people can do anything that is virtual, such as

(01:12:03):
graphic design or web support. We can also offer up
rural spaces for rest and recuperation for front light activists
in urban areas. While we might not be present in
the heat of battle, we can make our isolation of strength,
as often people abused directly by the system require peace
and solitude to recover from such trauma. We can also

(01:12:27):
use our local networks to identify enemies and report this
to the wider radical community out here. There is a
huge number of out here and in the Pacific Northwest
in general, there's a huge number of white supremacists and
neo Nazi militias and organizations, and so they generally organize

(01:12:49):
in small towns like Aberdeen. You see a lot of
that here, and so people living in those towns bear
the responsibility, we think of reporting on the activities of
those groups to the wider community, because a lot of
times what you see is, you know, it's kind of

(01:13:09):
like the police coming in from the suburbs. The extremist
often come in from the outlying rural areas, either in
protest scenarios or you know, usually in protest scenarios. We
saw a couple instances in which our local right wing

(01:13:30):
neo Nazi group went out to Chaz and was filming
videos out there and collecting information for their organizing back here.
So we can also be doing the same throughout the
interim and collecting information on those groups for our comrades
and urban areas, right right, That sounds like some really

(01:13:53):
viable and pout and weeze to to build that sense
of Uban rural solidarity. Yeah, yeah, because there's definitely a
lot of people out here that need UM some notes
taken on them. UM for example, during the height of
the twenty twenty protests, Um, there is a small solidarity

(01:14:13):
protest um that was essentially just five women that you know,
holding a couple signs, and which resulted in a line
of reactionaries and their assault rifles. The you know, the
harass I get threatening this very small group of women
of you know, if it says saying how Antifa was

(01:14:33):
coming to the town and they were going to burn
the town down and all this stuff. Um, you got
people like in uh in Walla, Walla, for example, you
have Henry Contrera who utilizes what connections and whatnot that
he has out there to like call other white supremacists
around the nation and would essentially be like, hey, you know,

(01:14:55):
move here, We'll get you a job, we'll get you
a house, we'll get you all set up. Just come
here and organiz as with us. And we kind of
have our own version of that here in Aberdeen with
Cash McCollum, a leader of the Pacific Northwest wolf Pack,
our local neo Nazi group and people like that. I
think it's only just them, that's a whole group that

(01:15:21):
there are a whole social setting that follows them and
us being in rural communities are going to have the
best opportunity to keep tabs on that kind of stuff
and warn the wider community. Right, Yeah, that's that's absolutely vital.
And you know, one of my questions i'd prepared incoming
to meet with your I was going to ask, actually,

(01:15:42):
you know, how can we avoid this sort of idea
that a lot of people have in their heads, A
radicals have in their heads? Did sort of the distant
commune trap? You know, this idea that you know, radicals
they move out to the country, they set up the
happy the commune. It either follows up pot into a
cult or just like pulls away from the broader struggle.

(01:16:05):
But it seems like in some ways you'll have been
able to utilize that distance as a sort of a strength.
And you've spoken quite a bit about how the real
communities different ways they've been able to help Uban communities
in the broader struggle. But now I guess I want
to tune the tune the tables a bit and ask
what sort of we as Uban radicals can support the

(01:16:30):
struggles within rural communities. Well, one way that we've seen
a lot of solidarity from urban comrades has been in
the topic of harm reduction. It's really hard to access
services out here where we're at. There's really only one
player in town, and they are highly bureaucratic, and the

(01:16:54):
line to get any sort of social service from them
is a mile long. Also, fun notes that Cash McCollum,
person I talked about earlier, is on the board for
that social service as well as long as as well
as other people who are part of the Soap group. Yeah,
so we've seen a large show solidarity from urban comrades

(01:17:16):
sending us harm reduction supplies such as Narcan, which has
literally saved dozens of lives since we started that program.
Healthcare in general is a tough issue for rural areas.
Transportation distances, lack of providers, lack of services, all of
those things compound to make it really difficult to get

(01:17:40):
appropriate healthcare. And so anytime anyone has any actual injury
in town there, they just send them to Seattle and
right our hospitals out here are really terrible, and so training,
I think would be a really vital need that we
could benefit from a lot out here if we could
get the medical collectives and the harm reduction collectives that

(01:18:04):
exist in these more urban areas to conduct rural training workshops.
I think that that would be a huge benefit to
not only just Aberdeen, any rural area that that was
to take place in, because that would allow those communities
to start employing harm reduction and general first aid in

(01:18:28):
their communities and prevent transportation out to these more metro areas. Yeah,
the more we could do skill shares, the more we
could do workshops, the more we could do radical classes
or anything under the idea of kind of unschooling that
we could do for rural communities is imperative because the

(01:18:51):
outside of high school, unless you're going to college for
something specific, there's just not much for learning out here.
What about the next general what about that site of
struggle in education? Well, I believe sprout could probably delve
into this a bit more, but it definitely would say
that our ideas for you know, educations in the next

(01:19:15):
generation as much as everything kind of goes under this
I forget the name of it, but it's this idea
of the like seven years generation in our planning and
the like, what what would this look like for the
next seven generations? Right? Seven generations? Sustainability all seven generations

(01:19:36):
stewardship is another twom used, I think education is central
to a community. It's really the same sort of you know,
you're going to get the same answer with all of
these healthcare, addiction, poverty, they're all interrelated out here. And
because education is so crucial, we have focused the Black

(01:20:00):
Our Collectives initiatives on a lot of educational programs. So
we're trying to get this space set up so that
we can start having some revolutionary course works that we
can offer there. We would really like to develop it
into a real campus for learning, both for youth programs

(01:20:21):
and for like continuing education GD and college level kind
of stuff. We think that the unschooling method is pretty
cool where people can kind of just pace their own
learning and decide what it is they want to learn.
So that's the method that we would go with, and
we think that that allows for a lot more diversity

(01:20:44):
in the styles of learning that are employed, and through
that you can kind of learn, you can kind of
learn new ways of learning, I guess, which helps add
resilience to any community. And I think that a lot
of those skills offered at a place like that, Like

(01:21:06):
like Sherry I was saying, skill shares, I think a
lot of that could come from We'll need to come
from urban communities because we don't have a lot of
that out here of our right, so hopefully right get
our When we get our space set up, we can
host all manner of gatherings and start bridging that divide
between the rural and the urban. Yeah, and I mean

(01:21:27):
I've been looting more about your space, did a bit
of research on it um, you know, prior to the episode,
and we stood food started token very inspiring stuff, very
much in the being of something that I plan on
doing locally here and turn on to be ago. Let's
pretend that this is uh, lets pretend this is a

(01:21:48):
revolutionary vosion of shock tac. All right, Like, let's just
pretend this is an anarchist shock tac. Give me your
elevate a pitch for this space, Like, what is the
plan there? Our plan is twofold. The property would be
divided into two separate sections. The public facing section would
be dedicated to the social center we've been speaking of,

(01:22:10):
and the rest of the property would be what we're
calling an eco village where residents would live. The social
center will be where we centralize community resources, and the
self governed eco village would have immediate access to those
shared resources. The plan is to run the Social Center

(01:22:30):
as a bit of a small business incubator for various
community initiatives that we've been talking about, and as well
for the residents of the Eco village to start their
own small person of businesses, because in our discussions with
people on the streets, you know, everyone has an idea
of how to make money, and it's just always some

(01:22:50):
small barrier like paperwork or permits that gets in the
way of them starting to have their own income and
that sense of independence. So we want to be able
to help with that. It would also obviously be a
central hub for preparing and serving food, which has been
the basis of all of our organizing so far is

(01:23:13):
the coming together and sharing of meals. We want to
have an Internet cafeteria and a community kitchen there. We
would also host hold space for the Mutual Aid Network
to store supplies and conduct its work both on and offsite.
We want to have enough space to have a meeting

(01:23:35):
hall for potential unions and start pushing on the unionization
locally with the IWW. All of these spaces would be
rentable to the public, so the union hall, for example,
would be a great venue for an event that someone
wanted to throw, or perhaps the wedding even and so

(01:23:59):
that be one source of revenue for the Social center,
as well as the bookkeeping, the back end bookkeeping services
that we're going to have as part of the business incubator,
and the permaculture design services that we're going to have
as part of the eco village. The release sounds like

(01:24:20):
a lot of the different ideas that I've had conversion
on my channel for some time now. You know, this
idea of a sort of a library economy, in this
idea of the eco villages, the sort of public culture
spieces and moods and centers of clunity, outreach and education.
I'd be lying if I didn't say say that that

(01:24:42):
we're a huge fan of your channel. Actually appreciate that,
appreciate that, and I'm honestly in tune. This project is
something that really inspires me as well. Yeah, I'd like
to say that none of this is from us. We've
taken so much inspire from other projects to cobble together
this plan that, Yeah, it's been a real joy to

(01:25:09):
just go through all of everyone else's different content and
kind of see like, oh, this could fit with that,
and this could fit with that, and come up with
a plan that we really think could start to solve
some of these issues that we're seeing in town. Right.
I think that's the real one of the few beauties
of the Internet these days, you know, the fact that
it's still able to connect people and ideas from all

(01:25:30):
over the police. Yeah, for sure. I wanted to ask
as you mentioned these sort of equal villages and that
that whole idea having spaces for housing and benefitting the
people in that community, developing that sort of sense of interdependence.
I wanted to you know, you can't really talk about

(01:25:53):
urban and road rule and urban without bringing up the
fact that Urbanizasha, you know, seems to ever crawl into
the rural space. You know, like there's always this sense
of the encroachment of the city on the surrounding rural regions.
What do you what is your teak on that? Yeah,

(01:26:16):
it does seem to be a one way street. I
think the model that we're trying to push is one
of the growth where you would see sort of a
reversal of that trend of gentrification or urbanization and you
would see more of like a ruralizing of urban spaces
to start having more green spaces, more growing of their

(01:26:41):
own food, and more production of agricultural products right there
in the urban centers, right, you know, which is kind
of what we want to do with the eco village
is provide a bit of a model for how community organizing,

(01:27:02):
of how a community could organize itself around the ecological
principles prefigurative politics and action exactly. Another note that I
guess I want to bring up before we start to
come to the clues is, you know, again we've been
speaking a lot about the urban and the rule, but
one element, except in a you know, sort of a

(01:27:25):
passing sense of our discussion of the police, one element
that's kind of been lost in that and that I
know people might be asking about, is what about the suburbs?
You know, like, do you see a space for organizing there?
Way does that fit into that urban rule? That caught
to me what sort of focus is do you think
suburban organized says might want to tackle? Well, I think

(01:27:49):
suburban comrades are probably gonna have a bit of both worlds,
as it were, because they're not in the downtown core
of a city where most protests or sites of struggle happen,
but they're also not out in the boonies in a
rural environment, so you know, they might have police that

(01:28:13):
are a bit more preoccupied with the actual community and
actually from the community, and so they might need to
take some lessons from the rural center or from the
rural areas in that regard and try to diversify their
group into multiple different roles, multiple different channels, so that

(01:28:37):
they are having continuous backlash against a group that's just
trying to feed the homeless. But at the same time,
you know, they have a lot of resources that rural
people don't have access to, and so they could be
coming into rural areas and providing those same sort of
trainings and workshops that urban comrades could. And they could

(01:29:00):
also be going into urban centers and learning and providing
workshops and skill shares. In those scenarios, I think they're
kind of a maybe play a bit of a buffer
zone between the two. So what does the future look
like the Black Folk Collective? You know what projects you're
planning on tacklin in the end now, a couple of

(01:29:22):
months from now, a few years down the line, and
how can folk support Well, right now, we are definitely
focused on securing funding. The housing market is horrible. Property
prices are going up, and when there is a good
deal on something, it's gone usually within a day, within hours.

(01:29:42):
So we are definitely full focused on fundraising right now.
We need to have the money on hand to be
able to jump on a piece of property when it
comes up, because we need a good deal and we
need a good amount of land to make sure that
we have the room to grow and build various projects
in the future. Yeah, So the projects that we're focusing

(01:30:03):
on right now immediately is the Perma Culture Design Services,
and so if anyone wants to have us design their
farm or garden or house or balcony, they can go
to Blackflower Perma Culture dot no, blogs dot org and

(01:30:25):
get started through that process there. Hopefully, once we get land,
as you were saying, in the next five years, the
Perma Culture Design Services can grow into a permaculture design
course that we could actually start offering people to come
and do like a two week intensive study on the

(01:30:47):
building techniques that we're using on site in the eco
village and on how to apply those back at home.
Another project that we're currently working on is the bookkeeping
This is sort of the bedrock of the business admin
side of things that we're going to be folding into

(01:31:08):
the business incubator once we get that going, and we
are looking into a couple of different grants for that.
But as Sherry and said, you know, right now we're
focused on fundraising, so we are. We do have a
couple of different platforms that we're collecting donations from and
we are starting to plan a few benefit shows here

(01:31:30):
locally in Aberdeen. So if anyone is in a band
and wants to roll through and play a show for us,
you know that would be much appreciated and then they
can just get a hold of us through our website.
So our role in black Flower is trying to spread
awareness help with this fundraising. Gave them kind of free

(01:31:53):
advertisement in order to help their growth. Mean Sprout and
our podcast moltop Now are from the Sabo Media Collective,
which once things are going with good with black Flower,
we're hoping to be housed by them to help grow
our media efforts. But if another good way to help

(01:32:14):
in supporting black Flower is to go to our website
at Sabo Sabot Media dot Noblogs dot org and share
our podcast Maltov. Now check us out on social media,
on whatever social media you are on. From Collectiva masted

(01:32:36):
onto Facebook at Aberdeen Local thirteen twelve. We have articles
that we write on the Harbor Rat Report and a
whole host of other content for people to check out
and share with donation links that all go to Black
Flowers efforts. That's fantastic and I would encourage folks to
check out what they're doing and all these different platforms

(01:33:00):
and well, that's been it for it could happen here.
It's been great to have you both from Black Flower Collective.
I've been your host for today. Andrew of the YouTube
channel Andrewism, which you can follow YouTube dot com slash Andrewism,
on Twitter at underscore Saint Drew and on Peter dot

(01:33:22):
com slash Saint True. All power to all the people
that's have your Thanks for having us, thanks for being on.
Thank you guys, great recording with you. My that's my

(01:33:52):
getting absolutely screwed over by the Medical Establishment Voice. People
thought it was another Sheet podcasts. They were briefly extremely excited. Nope,
the Sheep, the Sheep podcast. Will I make no promises
about the Sheep podcast. What we're going to tell them
about the Lost Sheep episode. No, yeah, okay, well T

(01:34:15):
will just leave that one. Yeah, this is this, this
is it could happen here the podcast where you would
think that the medical issue is a trans thing and
it's absolutely not. And it's amazing and I love it.
Uh yeah, it's it's a podcast for I complain about
medical issues and talk about other stuff with me as James. Yeah,
I'm a person who complains about medical issues and sometimes

(01:34:37):
goes to Mexico to buy drugs yeay, legal drugs, medical
drugs while we're while we're being recorded. This The thing
that is making me think of is I was in
Oh god, I don't remember where Mexico I was. Um,

(01:34:58):
I was no very old, but so we took up,
we took a ferry and it was I got like
so c sick. It was like the most ceasic we've
ever been. So we had to like go back and
um we so I this My Spanish is not great
at this time. My Spanish was much worse than it
is now. Um, and we have to we go to

(01:35:18):
this drug store and we're trying to find something that's
like an antic sickness drug and we buy this drug
called vomits in and we're looking same. When we're looking
through the the thing, we find the part where it's
say side effects, and I remember and I look at
this and I and I read it and it says
lucas and I'm like, oh no, it's like, oh god,

(01:35:40):
it wound up. Actually it was completely fine. Yeah, yeah,
I did not vomit over the rails again, hydrate on
the ferry ride back. I have a good I have
a good inadvertent medicine hallucinogen story, and then we can
we can actually do the podcast. And I was when
I was a bit younger. I was climbing a mountain
in Morocco and became extremely altitude sick, like my fucking

(01:36:03):
nose was just like unleashing my blood. Like it was
a real momentum. Yeah, I look great, and so I
tried to get some medicine. We went somewhere and like
you know, I speak French, but most of people spoke
Berber and it wasn't a language that I speak at all. Anyway,
I received some medicine which I took in the form

(01:36:25):
of I think like a powder that I'm mixed with honey,
and I was like, okay, this is unique and different. Whatever,
fuck me, did I have some incredible dreams. I just
kept taking it. I zone, well, it was definitely opium
was the thing I was taking. Was like, I bought
it down and was like, I this stuff just really
helped out my altitude sickness. One of the adults I
was with was like, ah, yeah, don't do drugs. Kids

(01:36:54):
speaking of not doing drugs. Okay, So what we are
here today talk about democracy, the opm of the masses. Yeah.
So this this script was originally written in a period
where High had spent an enormous amount of time being
forced to watch documentaries about what democracy was. And my
conclusion from all of this is that the history of

(01:37:16):
democracy begins with a mistranslation. Okay, so okay, what does
that mean? The answer is that, Okay, the whatever someone
starts talking about democracy, the first thing they do is
they go, like, I'm gonna start, I'm gonna I'm gonna
start by translating the word democracy. Now, the most common
translation that you'll see this like like everywhere, from like

(01:37:39):
Astra Taylor's like documentary what is Democracy? To just like
the thing that's on Wikipedia holds that democracy is derived
from two Greek words. Right, you have demos meaning the people,
and cradouse meaning rule. So you put these two together,
you get demos cradous, you get democracy. My Greek, my
camp announce greatly. Well, it's fine whatever, it is ancient Greek. Um. Yeah,

(01:38:02):
but you know that this means rule by the people.
So okay. This translation has several advantages right Foremost among them,
it is simple enough to be taught to a school
to school children, and catchy enough. That's a non zero
chance that, like the most pedantic of them will remember
it after the day after the test, which presumably is
the explanation for why this is. This is the translation

(01:38:22):
of democracy. It opens every single fucking thing people write
about democracy. Unfortunately appreciately for beleaguered grade school teachers and
and sort of those are of the broader populace as
a whole. This translation is so blatantly wrong that I
have been forced to start a thing about democracy and
also about rioting yelling about ancient Greek. So great, okay,

(01:38:47):
so what what? What? What? What is the actual issue here?
The actual problem is the mistranslation of Credos in particular
is incredibly important both conceptual and ideologically, and the actual
sort of proper translation, and the implications of this are
worth examining in some detail. So the other problem just

(01:39:10):
David Greybirds to way have mentioned a lot on this
show wrote in his regrettably very poorly read essay There
Never Was a West, He describes Kratos thus quote in
this This, in turn, might help explain the term democracy itself,
which appears to have been coined as something of a
slur by its elitist opponents. It literally means the force

(01:39:34):
or even violence of the people Kratos, not arcos, the
ancient Greek word for ruler, also the root of anarchism
or without arcos. So, yeah, so what he's saying there
wasn't Cretos a dude? Like he's dude, day I found
dissolved him an immortal dude. Yeah he's Also he's the

(01:39:57):
main character of the God of war Games. Okay, that
is the thing I did not know, And hilariously that
that is like him him being the main character of
the God of war Games. That is actually a better
way to understand what Credos is than the rule by
thing that everyone usually translates. This app because like, like
ancient Greek has a perfectly good word for like rule

(01:40:19):
by right, it's arcos. It's the word of anarchisms, like
an an archos, it's but it's the word. It's like
the normal thing where you have a Greek derived word
where you want to say rule by is that is arcos? Right? Yeah?
But is not that right? Yeah, like all Gk is
like that. But like democracy is specifically credos. And this

(01:40:39):
is because what democracy literally means is rule by the
violence of the people. Heat. Yeah, well and this, you know, okay,
so like this, this, this, this, like this sounds like
I am essentially per clutching about translations, but the context
you is actually important, right, as as Grammar points out,
the sort of you know, Athens, which the example or society,

(01:41:01):
society against which the original antidemocratic philosopher is rail By
the way, this is like Plato hates democracy. Most of
the people who you read from sort of classical Greek
like yeah, philosophy despised democracy, even so they live in
them a huge you know, not not not not to
like whitewash Athenian society. But like these people are like

(01:41:22):
sparta apologists, And it's like, yes, we haven't already. It's
funny that people have definitely I don't know if they've
actually recovered Plato or red Plato or they just get
mad when Donald Trump doesn't win elections. But like this whole,
like this whole like benevolent philosopher king ship has definitely
definitely made a comeback in recent years. And it's troubling. Yeah,

(01:41:43):
And I think I think part of this this is
this is another complaint that I've had about sort of
like the way that like the sort of like great
authors thing is taught in in universities, is they deliberately
like there is like an in in what in what
specific reading as they assigned there was like an incredible
intellectual effort that goes into making sure you never see

(01:42:04):
the absolutely drained shit that these people believe. Like Plato.
Plato literally worships angular momentum. Yeah, like that is his
god is angular momentum um. Like he he's he hates democracy,
he loves like spurred in like oligarchy. Basically like all
of this stuff is like that's like something like you

(01:42:25):
don't read you know, as you get assigned Plato. It's like, yeah,
there's a huge like um as someone who's taught like
a ton of universities. That's that's this huge fucking impediment
to you assigning that stuff. Like I've specifically tried to
assign different stuff in these like writing courses, which which
ended up being like great white dudes of history. Right, Like, um,

(01:42:46):
like if you kind of signed different things, but like
the cost of of assigning those and that that cost
isn't born by you or the university, right, it's born
by your students. It's massive. Like even if for while
there like we would just like a lot of texts,
you know, if you take the time as a professor
to label out of text, you can take it to
a print shop, get them to photocopy it, and it

(01:43:08):
almost evers be you need to find someone who's willing
to kind of play fast and news with copyright. But
still it will end up costing your students so much
more than the texts which are in the book that
you can fucking autogenerate the quizzes because the book also
has a website, and you still get paid, like you're
doing a job when you're not so yeah yeah and

(01:43:29):
bad yeah, and and this stuff has had you know,
like this has had sort of profound ideological influences, has had,
you know, it's it's has sort of profound has profound
influences on like the I mean just sort of the
way that like ancient Greece and Rome or like conceptualized
and and and I think this also really has you know,

(01:43:50):
it hasn't It makes it very hard to see what
was sort of actually going on in a place like Athens.
And you know, a great graper sort of points this
out right, like this is a sort of like exemplar
I like, you know, sort of it's as a sort
of an examplar, like it is literally like the place
for which like, like most descriptions of sort of democracy

(01:44:12):
are are are sort of originally about and Athens. You know,
we are trained to think of Athens as like, oh,
it's like well Athens, this is like the first democracy
or whatever. This is like actually this is actually like
a very normal sort of society and it's not this
is a this is an extremely weird society. And what
what grammar sort of points out about this, right is

(01:44:33):
you know the thing that that is you know, Okay,
so like there have been lots of societies over sort
of the course of human like the you know, hundreds
of thousands of years in the sort of like course
of human history, right that I've had collaborative decision making systems.
What is very, very weird and almost unique about Athens
is it has two things put together. It has a

(01:44:54):
decision making apparatus where people have equal say, and it
also has a violent enforcement mechanism to impose the will
of the people on other people and as you know,
as we'll get to you in a second, also impose
the will of those people on other people. Most society, Yeah,
that that that that turns out to be a very
important part of sort of the evening empire, et cetera.

(01:45:15):
Exactly like who the people are? Yeah, this is people. Yeah,
well we'll get to that in a second too. But
so so most societies, grape or argues either have one
or the other of you know, having a having like
a decision making apparential people of equals say, and a
violent enforcement mechanism. Right, you have a lot of societies

(01:45:36):
with collective decision making apparatus is that involve the entire community.
But the thing is, these these processes invariably sort of
like develop some kind of consensus process as a sort
of expedient to keep the community from just tearing itself
apart through costs of conflict, right, because like, okay, like
if if you can't actually without the threat of force, right,

(01:45:58):
you can't actually have society where you constantly have really
really controversial decisions being made by like fifty one forty
nine splits where both sides absolutely hate each other and
one side as imposed over the other. Right, And in
order to sort of like keep your like, you know,
your like city or your state together, right, you have
to actually create political solutions that you know, people people

(01:46:21):
not not that they necessarily like fully agree with, but
that they're willing to live with. And then you know,
this generates sort of like various so increasingly elaborate, sometimes
not very elivable, but you know, various sort of forms
of consensus processes. On the other hand, you have societies
with extremely violent enforcement mechanisms. But these societies are almost
always incredibly hierarchical, and they're ruled either by sort of

(01:46:43):
monarchs or oligarchs who just simply do not care about
the notion that like people should rule themselves, or that
you know, other like other people who are not like
the king or the body of oligarchs should have like
anything even remotely to do with me decisions. And that
that's what makes Athens really weird, right is Athens has

(01:47:04):
both of these things. It has a sort of it
has like a violent it has a way of like
imposing decisions on people through violence. And also it has
this principle that like people should be able to make
decisions for themselves collectively by you know, like through through
through a sort of process that doesn't involve them all
being ruled by just like some guy. And you know

(01:47:28):
what makes Athens and the other and the other sort
of Greek democracies, because there there are other democracies in
Greece over the sort of period that this goes on.
What makes them unique is that, like the people quote
unquote is composed largely of soldiers, as Gravery puts it.
In other words, if a man is armed, then one
pretty much has to take his opinion into account. One

(01:47:50):
can see how this works, and it's starkists and Xenophon's analysis.
I've been I have now been told by several dictionary
sites that this is in fact how you pronounce it.
I don't know. Anabassis sounds terrible to me, But a
degree such as the will of and I Don't Know Dictionaries,
which tells the story of a Greek army of mercenaries
who suddenly find themselves leaderless and lost in the middle

(01:48:13):
of Persia. They elect new officers and then hold a
collective vote to decide what to do next. In a
case like this, even if the vote was actually sixty forty,
everyone could see the balance of forces in what would
happen if things actually came to blow. Every vote was
in a real sense a conquest. So what we're dealing

(01:48:33):
with here right in this is this is sort of
what democracy is. It's very rawest form. Is you are
dealing with a group of very heavily armed men who
need to find a way to convince slightly more than
half of the group to agree to help them impose
their rule on everyone else. Do you know what I
will get you? Do you do? You know who will

(01:48:54):
fail to pay your mercenary contract, leaving you stranded in
the middle of a Persian civil war which you have
backed the wrong side, Vladimir Putin. Yeah, don't take mercenary
contracts on Vladimir Putin. And we're back. So, you know,
as I was sort of saying, well, what we're dealing
with here. Right, we have a group of a very
heavily armed men, and they need they need to find

(01:49:14):
a way to make you know, they need to find
a way to make like half of like slightly more
than half of the group agree with them to impose
their sort of rule on everyone else. So it's slightly
more technical terms, right, Athenian, you know, Athenian democracy or
democracy in the Athenian sense is composed of two code
determining elements fused together. There is a decision making apparatus

(01:49:38):
and an enforcement mechanism that you are code determining because
the structure of the enforcement mechanism, which is fifty one
blokes with sticks beating forty nine blokes with sticks over
the head, also determines the structure of the decision making apparatus,
which no longer needs to concern itself with the opinion
of everyone in the group, as they would in a

(01:49:58):
society without the ability to sort of employee violence to
enforce decisions, as long as they have enough people to
sort of militarily defeat a minority of the group. Right,
you know, you could you could see how the structure,
how how the enforcement mechanism is is the thing that
is structuring what the decision making process has to look like. Right,
It's the thing that sort of sets its limits. And

(01:50:19):
this is something that it turns out, is very very
sort of important in what a democracy is. The enforcement mechanism, too,
is also determined by by the sort of decision making apparatus.
Because the people here are armed soldiers. So the fifty
one percent that becomes the sort of like basis of
of of the of democratic majority rule. You know, it

(01:50:41):
literally composes the enforcement mechanism itself. And this sort of
double code determination is the origin of majority rule democracy. Right,
The institution that you know, in various forms, and we
will get into this, like this has gotten increasingly less
and less quote unquote democratic over time, but this, this

(01:51:03):
specific form is the thing that has come to sort
of define what democracy is. If we look at what
democracy is as a political project, though, right, what we
see is that the essence of democracy itself is to
transform the majority from a simple count of military strength
into into a signal of morality. Right, The citizens of democracies,

(01:51:24):
and even even a lot of people who are either
not citizens of a democracy and live in it, or
who don't live in a democracy simply believe that is
the moral right for a majority of people to be
able to impose the will in a minority. This is
this is just this you know this this this is
what This is what forms a kind of democratic common sense. Right.
It is the thing that everyone believes that is sort

(01:51:45):
of the basis of everything about how it democracy functions. Right,
And you know, democracy is almost never framed this way
explicitly except by you know, every once in a while
you'll get someone who makes his argument who is like,
I don't know, they're a billion they're or they're like,
you know what's his name? I yeah, high E will
like like if you press him, or like Milton Freeman

(01:52:07):
to also well, like if you pressed him, will make
this argument, right, which is like no one actually wants
to live in a democracy because you know, like if
you you know, if if we actually live in a democracy,
everyone will just like increase our tax rate or like
virginalized groups will like these are critiques made of the
United States as well. And yeah, the earliest inception, right, yeah,

(01:52:28):
you know, I know what's his name? I think it
was I think was John Adams. So some of the
early founders like very explicitly this is their argument against
like maybe maybe various was the anti democratic arguments against
giving anyone who didn't have property in the vote, which was, like,
I think the exact line was, if you give people
the vote, the first thing they will do is erase
the debts and redistribute the land. Yeah, which was a
whole asked rebellion about this, right, Yeah, yeah, I wish

(01:52:50):
would have been based good program usually kind of kind
of messed up in the US where you have to
ask where that land comes from. But you know, yeah,
but like, well, this is an argument you really only
ever hear from people who have like the only minority
that makes this argument are people who have a ship
ton of property who are like, oh god, and you know,

(01:53:11):
and their their thing here is, well, okay, we need
to make the system blessed democratic so that people can't
take our property away, yeah, or give property rights. Yeah. Yeah.
But on the other hand, the reason for sort of
pointing out that this is what democracy is in theory
is really sort of cynical and like reactionary. But the
thing that the reason this argument works a quote unquote

(01:53:33):
works with sort of like you know, with with sort
of libertarians, is that this equation of sort of numerical
superiority with the more right to exercise power is like
the key underlying assumption of democracy. It is the idea
without which democracy simply sees it the function. Right. But
but this is something that you know, people don't talk
about democracy like this, right, The sort of trick of

(01:53:57):
the democratic system is to make is to push the
enforcement mechanism into the background. Right when when when you
talk about democracy with like regular people, the thing that
they walk and they normally they think about voting, right,
but you know, and any any kind of thing that
is like a collective like decision making process, right, a
regular person is going to call democracy. And you know,

(01:54:17):
there if that's kind of true. But but you know,
but if if if you want to sort of get
like technical about it, it's not. And there's an there's
an incredibly large ideological apparatus that specifically built up around
making sure that people don't look at the way that
the that the enforcement mechanism is as much, if not

(01:54:38):
more so a sort of key element of what of
what democracy is than the part where you know, where
everyone comes together and make it makes a decision that
everyone talks about all the time. I was watching an
interview with Gray but the other day the such things
I do in my free time, and he was talking
about like democratic confederalism in Northeast Aria, right, and he

(01:54:59):
talked about it like democracy without the state, which I
think is interesting, Like it's him using that vernacular definition.
So okay, so I'm I'm taking a lot of the
arguments from self, Graaber wrote, but he he backs away
from the implications of his own argument, right yeah, and
goes back to albeit like caveating there were and I

(01:55:22):
guess it's worth noting that there are a ton of
like hugely divergent like we're not like prisoners of etymology, right,
like like yeah them meaning like I think it's Rosa
Luxemburg who said government is uh politics in the people's
interest or something. It's kind of bullshit tanky interpretation of
like most people would see it as there are these

(01:55:44):
broad definitions, you know, and I think this is something
that like like Asher Taylor's documentary, right, like you know,
part about that's good, Right, It's like there's I forget
who says that there's this like kind of famous political
line that's like I if if if if if there
if there is a thing that everyone agrees is good.
No one will agree on what it is, right, like
you know, and this is something that like, you know,

(01:56:06):
like I think I think it's it speaks to the
power I think it's specifically to the power of the
sort of like like the idea that more people being
like agreeing with something like gives gives legitimate gives legitimacy
to that thing, which is that like every like like
even societies that are like not even like really remotely democratic, right,

(01:56:26):
We'll pretend that there's still democracies, right, like the Baptists
have elections every sort of like psych right, yeah, I mean,
like like you know, this is this is the thing
I think isn't very well understood, but like like this
this was also a thing like for example, China has
this Like Okay, sorry I I I as as as

(01:56:47):
I'm preparing to explain this, I'm realizing that the China
wa like the like Chinese government experts are going to
get mad at me because I'm I think I think
I'm about to confuse the United the United Front with
the United Front Works Department. But so chin China, like
technically speaking, is there are like other parties technically that
are kind of remnants from like you know, for exact example,

(01:57:10):
like the left faction of the KMT, which is like
the Chinese Nationalist Party. Right, there's there's like technically a
faction of them that's part of this thing called like
the United Fronts. There's like technically other parties and they
have like this like consultative role. It's it's it's an
incredibly convoluted in the elaborate system, but you know, like
that whole thing and you you you can find you know,
like the Chinese system is like not it's not democratic

(01:57:32):
in the sense of like you can like vote for
someone or like like okay, like it's not democratic in
the sense of you can make a vote that will
make a thing happen, right, you know. And to be fair,
the US is also not democratic in the sense of
you can cast a vote and make a thing happen. Right,
But this is sort of like you know, okay, like
it is it is a in a society that is

(01:57:53):
less democratic than the US, which is sort of astounding
considering the US like doesn't even have one person one vote. Right. Well,
we'll get into like republics a bit in a second,
but like you know, like Chinese like quote unquote, democracy
is like not it has very little to do with
like the principle of like the mote like fifty one

(01:58:14):
percent of the population votes for a thing and it happens. Right.
But but you know, like if if if you if
you look, if you look at the sort of rhetoric
that you that you see from or in the internal
justification of like like you know, you sort of like
read chinesecratic documents, so you read sort of like that
their pr stuff, Like they constantly talk about like, yeah,
we're gonna make a more democratic society because like that legitimacy,
like the idea of democracy is really incredibly powerful and enduring,

(01:58:38):
and it's something that like even like you know, like
I mean, like I don't know, like the Saudis don't
pretend to be a democracy really, but like most of
the other like golf monarchies have like election ee things right,
Like it's it's it's an idea that is that is
enduring and powerful enough that even people who don't agree
with it are forced to sort of like do this

(01:58:59):
pageantry of it. And I think that's really interesting and
I think it explains a lot of the kind of
I mean, especially around to occupy. But I think it
explains a lot of the kind of political movements that
we've been seeing over the last about fifteen years, which

(01:59:22):
is I think this is also an explanation for why
why we see so many riots as as a former
sorts as a form of politics, and why you get
these demands that are sort of like, I don't know,
you you like in the two thousand eleven revolutions, and
so you sort of also see this now. You get
a lot of sort of very abstract calls for democracy
while also doing things that like are quote unquote not

(01:59:44):
legitimate in a democratic society, like like rioting is not
supposed to be sort of like a legitimate political action
in a society because you know, like this is whole
like the AA, because there's a system under which violence
is supposed to be administered, administered right, like you have
a state. The state is the thing that's supposed to
do violence. If anyone else does it outside of that,
they're like, you know, they're an illegitimate extremist. But okay,

(02:00:07):
if if we go back to a sort of base
definition of what democracy is, right, democracy is a collective
decision making apparatus anti enforcement mechanism. It's like, well, what
is a riot? Right? A riot is both of those
things happening at the same time. There are a bunch
of people collectively making a decision and then imposing that

(02:00:28):
decision immediately. Yeah, it's ap Thompson who called the Leadites
collective bargaining by riot. Quite possibly, Yeah, yeah, it's it's
often like reference now and other stuff like like people
talk about like you know, like your you're here that
used all the time. I think they're the origin of
it is um what is it? Eric Hobsborn could be

(02:00:50):
Hobbsborn anyway. Yeah, Famously the Laddites were called collective bargaining
by riot. Yeah. I think, well, I think there is
something sort of interesting there about collective bargaining by sort
of physical force. You know, it's like the decision making
apparatus is happening outside of the sort of normal bounds
in which decision making apparatus is supposed to happen. And

(02:01:14):
I think I think there's there's a sort of this
isn't there's another I forget exactly which graver thing this
is from, but that you know, there's graver this might
actually this might actually be from Essive about Batman, which
is pretty funny. Um, what's he said? What's his take
on Alfred's class status? I don't think he unfortunately, I
think that's I think that's the one thing he doesn't mention.
Pretty I'm pretty sure there's no Alfred discourse in it.

(02:01:36):
There's lots of other discourse. He calls how is it
banging it? No, he calls joker. He calls one of
the Batman villains as Zurza Nite, which I think is
very funny. Um. Yeah, but you know, okay, he has
this argument about sort of like okay, how do you
you know? So? So the the other part of democracy

(02:01:59):
is it's is it's the part about the people right,
And this is always a thing that's that's very much
in contention, like how do you determine what the people
quote unquote are? And you know the structure of Athenians
to society is very much determined by who isn't isn't
included in the people right, Like you know, women can't vote.
If you're a slave, you also can't vote. There are
lots of people who are directly under Athenian rule who

(02:02:21):
can't vote, And are you know, not part of the
people and therefore sort of like and and this this
is in some sense the origin of like the trajectory
democracy goes on, right, which is that the trajectory it
goes through his republicanism because you know, like the founders
of the US, right, if you look at this of
that style of fifty fifty plus one style majority democracy, right,

(02:02:44):
those guys you know, as we talked about, like they
didn't want a democracy because they thought into democracy people
would vote against their sort of like aristocratic interests. Yeah,
and so yeah, like like yeah, it's like, well, all
these people own slaves, all these people owned a bunch
of land, all these people like I don't know, or
like bankers and shit, and they're like, okay, so it's

(02:03:06):
gonna be a bad idea if we let people like
decide what to do with our stuff. So instead, you know,
they go to this republican in structure. And the republican
structure is I think very interesting because it takes the
fifty plus one structure, right, but you know, it abstracts
it to the point where like the like you like,
your vote for the most part basically simply does not matter.

(02:03:27):
Like every once in a while, like a local election,
it can do something. But you know, like what what's
actually happening, right is is you're like you are selecting
who is going to rule you. And you know, the
other part of this is that the enforcement mechanism becomes
autonomous from the people itself, because you know, unlike unlike

(02:03:48):
an Athenian thing, where like everyone's either like on a
ship because they're like are you know, they're part of
the navy, or they like you know, they can go
strap on their fucking shield and like plates and grab
their big ass spear, right and you know, it's like, well,
this is this is the state, right, the state is
like fucking Jerry and his friend like Patrickliss or whatever

(02:04:09):
the fuck, you know, like form forming a shield wall
with the like the shields they have at home. You know.
But but you know, and then that's the thing like
in in in in sort of like warrior democracies of
that style, like they're there are short third like the
Cassatra Republic. I think that's same of it. Um they're
they're these sort of like they're like you know, they're
like they're they're they're there. There are republics like this
or quote unquote republic like this that that that exists

(02:04:31):
in in various places in the world where you have
these sort of like military classes that you know, like
D fifty plus one, but those people, right, the unfortunate
mechan mechanism is very is very very direct. In a republic,
the unfortunate mechanism becomes autonomous, and also the decision making
apparatus becomes both both of them become autonomous from like

(02:04:51):
the people quote unquote who are supposed to be making
the decisions, and suddenly you have the situation where you know, okay,
if you live in the US, right, it is very
very clear that there are lots of things that everyone
supports that simply like are not is not like like's
not happening right, Like you know, I mean you can

(02:05:13):
look at sort of like universal healthcare, like I mean,
for exact another example that we could take that's I
think for poignant right now is like there was a
pretty recent study on like what percentage of the population
in the US supports trans people getting like frands affirming healthcare,
and it was like seventy percent. And then you know
what I mean, But you know, you look at a
state by state basis, right, and it's like what we'll
be talking about this more sort of later, but you know,

(02:05:36):
basis like, well that's not fucking happening, right, people are
just making it illegal. And it's very easy to look
at this and go like, well, okay, so the principle
of fifty plus one is being violated, right, Like, this
is not a democracy. Something else has happens. One sort
of solution to this is to go back to you know,
is to very literally go back and ask the question

(02:05:57):
who is the people? And and this is this is
you know a lot of ways what occupy is doing, right,
Like occupies to answer this is like we are the
ninety nine percent, right, It's okay, So like there there
there is a thing that is claiming to be the
like the demos in in democracy, which is you know, Congress, right,
but like, okay, Congress trivially is not the people, right

(02:06:20):
and at the best a section of them, it is
definitionally not in any any yeah right, you know, And okay,
so you have you have lots of versions of this,
like the American one tends to be a lot of
people sitting in square, you know, but like like like
can can actually convening a a something that's kind of
like a democracy. But even but you know that's the
everything was like is occupy democracy, right, Like they don't

(02:06:42):
have violence as like a political tool. Really, I mean
this isn't to say that like there wasn't some weird
shady shit that happens, but like, you know, like they
don't have the ability to sort of like coerce people
into accepting like a fifty one percent decision that people
like genuine they can't lifts, right, So they don't they
don't really like they in some sense, in challenging democracy,

(02:07:04):
they create something that isn't really a democracy, right, They
create a sort of like elaborate consensus process. And this
is you know, like if if the Kratos part is
I'm trying to think of a way of being I
think for like ten minutes about a way to phrase this,
but like if the if the strength and power is
like is the people, and it's even distributed among the
people as opposed to it's the state, and like if

(02:07:26):
some of this theoretical abstraction of the will of the
majority of the people, then that that leads to a
consensus almost by definition, right like like if yeah, well,
I mean I think I think the sort of breaking
principle here is if you think that it is legitimate
to use for a group of people to use violence
to enforce something, and at that point everyone is still armed,

(02:07:51):
then then you you you get a fifty plus one structure, right, right.
But if if you don't think it's legitimate to use
violence to coerce people into sort of like doing whatever
the thing is you want to enforce, then by definition
you get some kind of consensus process. But you know,
we we have a system that every everyone like thinks
that what's happening, like you know, in some sense, like

(02:08:12):
the ideological principle is that like you know, everyone thinks
that what's happening is is you have a fifty plus
one system. And that's where like the legitimacy of the
system comes from, because like you know, we voted for
these people, but also it's so clearly not and also
like the police are so clearly just this sort of
like roaming like bandit force that is like not even

(02:08:33):
like remotely like it like they technically drawlogy missy from
the people. But like you know, okay, like what what
what what? What what happens if you try to convene
an assembly of the people in the US. The answer
is they beat the shit out of you with sticks
and then tear gas you and then like start shooting you. Yeah.
So you know, I mean this is this is sort
of what you know, like like this, this is what

(02:08:54):
occupy prove, right, which is like if if you challenge
the sort of the claim of the government to represent
the people, right, because like, who, who the fuck are
these assholes to like to be like a hey, la, no,
like we we we are the people. We are sort
of like the legitimate manifestation of people. If you want
to do anything, like you have to go through us. Well,
it's like okay, so like how how how did they

(02:09:15):
get that? How did they get that authority? Right? And
the answer is they did it. They did it by
staging an armed revolution and that that that's what their religion,
That's what their actual legitimacy derives from, right, is they
they want they want the armed revolution, yeah, and violently
dispossessed people of that before they did that, like pig
backing off colonialism to do an armed revolution. Yeah, and

(02:09:35):
so like okay, but like you know, their their legitimacy
is incredibly tenuous, right, Like this gives you this question
of how do you determine like what you know, how
does a democracy determine what the people are? And one
one way that you can make a sort of counterclaim
again against a democracy is by a like physically assembling
a ship ton of people in a place and going

(02:09:56):
like we are like physically we are the people and
we are going to make decisions. You know that that
can that can look like occupy with like a seven
hour meeting about whether where we want to put plants right,
or it can look then this is you know, you
get this a bit and occupy but like or it
can look like you know, here are one hundred thousand
people like they are going to fight there once you
just like throw shit at the police until the police

(02:10:17):
run away. And you know that that is that that
that is a that is a thing that like we
have seen in this country. This this will be like
another episode, but this this this was a thing that
happens in Mexico on two thousand and six in Wahaka,
where people basically ran out the police by literally hundreds
of thousands of people like wa waking up to a
bunch of police, like a bunch of police just beating

(02:10:39):
the ship out of like a bunch of striking teachers
and then like picking up a brick and throwing it.
You see it a little bit, not really but like
in like pon deemos in Spain if you're familiar with that. Yeah,
like they kind of their attempt to have people determined
their policy platform, not lastly a successful one, but like yeah, well,

(02:11:00):
I mean interesting, Obama did that too already. Yeah, this
was the thing Obama had this job. Like one of
Obama's initial pitches was like he was gonna have there's
gonna be this like online thing where people could vote
and like decide in policy things. And he immediately managed it.
And but damost also immediately like this this is this
is one of the things that like this is this
is like one of the ways you try to like
capture this kind of like yeah, because what what what

(02:11:22):
what you're what you're really see like when when riot
police are like fighting like a bunch of people in
the street, right, Like what what you're watching is is
two kinds of democracy fighting with each other. Right You're
you're you're you're watching a sort of like like you're
you're you're watching the crowd, which is and you know,
a very very immediate like for like you know, literal

(02:11:43):
form of democracy, right where you know, the crowd makes
a decision and people do things fighting the police, who
are like a very you know, the like the police
are technically like a part of a democratic system, right,
but the police are just purely the sort of like
like they're they're they're you know, they they they are
the violence by which the people rule. And you you

(02:12:04):
are watching, but you're watching these two things sort of
like clash with each other. And you know, I mean,
I I think I think one of the sort of
like products of of of the way that republicanism like
specifically developed or like a publicanism in the sense of
like this is a republic not a democracy like yeah

(02:12:26):
small like yeah small r but also in the sense
of like, okay, so instead of you voting on things
directly like you know, you vote for some asshole who
yeah the police funding yeah whatever, right, like that that
sort of like unmooring of of of the means of
violence from the people, which was you know, which was

(02:12:49):
is the essence of democracy good or bad? Right? And
and and I would also say, like you know that
can go like that that sort of like having having
violence and democracy, like you know, violence and decision making
being paired together, Like that's not always a good thing.
That can go really really badly, right, Like you know,
because like like for example, like a race riot, right,
like like a clan march right is technical, like is

(02:13:09):
technically an expression of democracy, right it is you know,
it is a group of people convening themselves as the
people and then doing an action. And you know, and
like I this has been something I've been sort of
been forced to think about a lot with the anti
trans laws, which is that like trans people are, like
you know, the most optimistic estimate you could like have

(02:13:32):
is like maybe two and a half percent of the
population if you assume based a bunch of people who
are trans and don't know that they're trans, right, Like
you know, And and if if you were two and
a half percent of the population in a in a
fifty plus one system, it is very easy for fifty
one p there is no physical way that you can
have like if fifty plus one percent of the population

(02:13:53):
decides to kill you, while there's nothing you can do, right,
Like there's no there's no amount of like voting that
you can do that would make you not die because
that that's the sort of like the terinad of the
majority or whatever like or like that. Yeah, yeah, have
you familiar with like the argument against utilitarianism that like
the greatest good for the greatest number, or the greatest
happiness for the greatest number, if you're looking to serve

(02:14:15):
the greatest happiness the greatest number. If like ten people
get two units of happiness from beating one person to
death with sticks, yeah, yeah, Like she can't experience as
much sadness as the experienced happiness, like democratic impulse in action. Yeah,
and you know, like this is the thing that is
again what we're talking about, like is normally brought up
by like incredibly corrupt, corrupt and sort of vital the

(02:14:37):
leads who want to protect their status. But like it
is also you know, and like this is part of
the reason why, for example, the US just fucking puts
like immigrants to camps, right because they can't fucking vote, right, Like,
they're they're not part of like quote unquote the people, right,
Like there are large sections of the populations who are
just you know, like booted from this entire process. Right. Um,

(02:14:59):
this is an argument that William C. Anderson and Zoe
sa Moods you make in the book as blackness resistance,
which is that like yeah, like black people like fucking
are not part of the ship, right, Like they're not
like a constituentive like part of the people TM right yeah.
And you know this they they they call this, they
call this the anarchism of blackness um, which is this
sort of like it's it's a position of being like

(02:15:22):
removed as like a legitimate sort of like subject in
the state. Who can you know, exercise you're like democratic
rights or whatever the fuck it is, like yeah, okay,
like lots of people have never had this, and you
know this, even even even in this sort of like
you know, relatively egalitari like you know, like there there
have been like parts of the US, like especially the

(02:15:43):
early US. Right. You have your like sort of like
New England town council Ryan, It's like, well, what is
what is your New England Town Council vote to do.
It's like, well, the votes to send out the fucking
militia to kill indigenous people, right, Like, you know, even
you can even even even when the US has functioned
as something that is closer to like a like democracy TM,
where like the means of violence and the means of

(02:16:03):
sort of decision making are actually placed in direct directly
in people's hands, right, Like that doesn't always go well,
but yeah, you know, but like you know, we we
we we we have now developed a like we we
we we developed a system that has like the worst
of every single parts of every single aspect of this.
Right we're like, okay, so we we we have fifty

(02:16:25):
plus one as the sort of like legitimating factor, but
also fifty beside of the population plus one does not
actually vote for a thing. It is possible for like
more than half of the popular It's possible for a
majority of the population to vote for a businessio candidate
you get a different one, right, like, yeah, it's possible.
Like we've seen this, like so many fucking elections have

(02:16:45):
had this now like two in my lifetime, like like
and and also also we have we we we have
the other part of it, which is that we also
have like the the we have the other democratic principle
of like you should be able to worse a political
opinion by violence. Yeah, we got that in space. Yeah,
and you know again, guess guess gets like guess guess

(02:17:08):
who fucking guests to make that decision. It's not fifty
plus one of you, Like, it's a bunch of assholes
and suits and like six cops. Yeah, I think a
good way to view the US. It's like a bunch
of landowners made a system where land votes and people don't. Yeah, well,
and then and then you know, and then and then
they went about making sure that like even if the

(02:17:28):
land does vote for a thing, if it's not for yourself,
it doesn't happen or seventy Yeah, there's seventy five weird
dudes in between your vote and anything actually happening. Yeah,
which is how you get like this kind of constitutional
magic the trumpets are always trying to do because like
it's not actually like that far from reality right there,
there are like seventeen magic incantations I have to get

(02:17:50):
said after you put your ballot in the box, and
then an old white dude's in charge again. Yeah, but
you know, I think, like, you know, the US system
is like it's stunningly bad, like it's it's one of
it's like a it's a really dogshit like tooroughly written
democratic system like it is it is designed not to
function like that that that was actually the point. Yeah, yeah,

(02:18:13):
there's like a there's a king, a thing that like
you shouldn't have, like the fur the president is supposed
to it's supposed to be a king, right, Like I
think like if if, if, if you go back and
read like what the balance of powers was supposed to
be was like there they're doing the Roman thing of
like you need like you need to combine to king
in oligarchy and a democracy. And it's like, well, okay,
so we have like a fucking king who could just

(02:18:33):
like kill people. It's great, it's great, it's great, but
you know, you know, okay, So the I think, I
think the the the broad total argument that that I
want to make here is that what we have been
seeing over the last about fifteen years, right with the
certain movement of the squares, with the series of uprisings
that we saw I mean, you know in twenty twenty

(02:18:55):
the US, but also like all over the world from
about twenty eighteen to I mean, some of they're still
some only them are still going like now right, you know,
it's it's it's it's it's been a reaction to sort
of this, right, it's it's it's been a reaction to
democracy as a legitimating principle not matching like democray, like

(02:19:17):
you know, even even even what the principle is supposed
to be, and then people going out into the streets
and doing democracy, and the sort of clash between like
democracy and theory and democracy and action mostly has resulted
in democracy in action winning because it's it turns out
the thing about Republicans is that they're really really really
good at creating like military apparatuses that are very hard

(02:19:40):
to defeat by just purely fighting them. Yeah, sadly. Yeah,
But however, Comma, sometimes they lose, and you know, and
as as as as the as the old Ira thing goes,
they have to get lucky every time. We only have
to get lucky one, so you know, keep collectively bargaining

(02:20:04):
by riot. Yeah, what the fuck else are you gonna do?
You know, like vote like yeah, yea yeah, yeah, like
your life depends on it. Kids, You can vote if
you want to write like they're there are instances in
which it might meaningfully reduce the cruelty of the state
a little bit in some places sometimes, but yeah, it's

(02:20:25):
not gonna it's not gonna like take away the central
fucking connade of the whole thing. Yeah, yeah, so I
do do do do do due democracy by rioting. That
is our official legal position. This is legally I'm legally
non actionable, but also legally actionable at the same time.

(02:20:46):
This is called dialectrics. And yeah, this, this is what
they could happen here. Find us in the places. I
don't find us in the places. David Graber, I do that.
Read The Never Was a West. It's great. Nobody reads it.
It's it's really good. People have been asking for grade

(02:21:06):
book because we keep talking about him. So you have
read I never read The Never Was a West. Read
Towards an Anarchist anthropology bullshit jobs. It's good to start.
If you read, if you, if you, if you, if you,
if you want to be the real grave head and
read something that fucking no one has read, go read
towards an anthropological Theory of value. I read into one
of my cudages It's super Market the other day and

(02:21:28):
we were talking about that good book. No one has
ever read it. Uh yeah, reads more gray, but yeah,

(02:21:51):
it could happen here. If that's the podcast that you're
listening to, it's a news podcast. About ship falling apart.
That's the only intro you're going to yet, because Garrison
is right now in the city of Atlanta, Georgia, reporting
on the continuing Stop Cop City protests. Garrison's done a
number of scripted episodes covering these in detail over the

(02:22:14):
last year and change. They're in the thick of it
right now, so I'm just going to bring them and
a friend on to talk about what has been happening
this week. Yes, that's your que this week. This week
is a special week because this is the fifth week
of action that has happened here in Atlanta as a
part of these Top Cop City and if in the
Atlanta Force movement. This episode is going to be like

(02:22:37):
a midweek update because this this week of action is
still very much ongoing. There's still many many days that
that thinks can't happened, but a lot of a lot
has already happened in these in these first few days anyway.
So we're going to kind of do a quick a
quick little update and then a more comprehensive piece will
be later down the line, but with me here to

(02:22:59):
help to talk about what's what's what's gone down so far?
Is someone from the Atlantic Community Press Collective Clark, Hello,
welcome to the show. Hey, thanks for having me on,
So for being on. Yeah, we've we've been kind of
we we've been. We've been kind of teamed up the
past few days here as as many many, many things

(02:23:21):
both silly and serious, have have taken place across Atlanta
of safety US. Yeah, that it's always nice to have
friends when you're watching jack booted thugs go fucking ape
shit with all of their new toys. And I mean,
I think that is part of the Week of Action idea,
is getting as many people here as possible and hopefully

(02:23:42):
some of that makes makes some people uh more safe. Um,
that's something that we'll probably talk more more in detail
later when we have kind of hindsight. H But I
guess today let's let's just start on what's kind of
happened so far chronologically, I guess starting on Saturday. We
I met you Saturday for a rally at Gresham Park.

(02:24:04):
I think it's where we first met up this week. Yes,
we met at the rally at Gresham Park, which had
about I would say an hour's worth of speeches before
they kicked off a march down the bike path from
Gresham Park to what the activists called Welanni People's Park,
which is the side of the protest beforehand. So the

(02:24:27):
forest around it had been unoccupied since the raid in
January that saw the killing of Torture Guita. So this
was the first sort of permanent return to the forest.
So we took a I don't know forty minute march

(02:24:47):
down the path and then landed in Weelani People's Park
that had one more little round of chants with a
promise to defend the forest, and then they broke off
and everything was a It was a nice, really relaxing day. Yeah,
it was. It was a pretty positive start to the
week of action. People essentially retook Kulani People's Park and

(02:25:12):
started to go into the forest once again. Camp got
set up in the forest. Um. Lots of people from
both in town and folks from out of town started
started to camp in the woods again. Um. And then
in the hours after this small march, people started to
prepare for the music festival, which was planned like a

(02:25:35):
like a few hundred feet away from a Bulhani People's Park,
I guess inside inside like a more like open field area,
and music festival went off without a hitch. The first
day it was pretty pretty rad. Yeah. I think there
was about five hundred people for five hundred people that
first night of the music festival. Yeah, and the vibes
were great. Everyone was having a fun time. I think

(02:25:56):
it went on until about one am, and I don't
think the first day could have gone better. I think
I went on till about four am. Okay, well I
went to bed at one am. I did not go
to bed at one am. I was at the music
festival quite quite a bit longer. I'm quite a bit older,

(02:26:17):
and I think that was the reason I had to
leave so yearson doesn't understand things like needing sleep yet
for another year or two before they hit that sweet
sweet wall. So so true. Then then I'll have to
find another teenager to go to journalism every like four

(02:26:38):
or five years. You justn't find a new one. Yeah,
just just keep re upping like Leo DiCaprio. Perfect. So
So the first the first day was was pretty good.
There was no no substantial police response that I saw.
Police kind of left people alone in the forest. The

(02:26:58):
march from Gresham Park was fine, um, and people got
to spend a night in the woods again, which you
know had had not had that many people in the
woods in like months. Um, I mean this is this
is it should be said, like camping in a music festival,
but it's like relatively high risk because people have gotten

(02:27:19):
significant charges just for camping in the woods in the past. Yes,
and the very recent past part part some some of
the warrants that that have been issued that justify the
charges like domestic terrorism have included things such as sleeping
in a hammock with someone else in the forest, and
that's the reason why they're getting charged as a domestic terrorist. So, yeah,

(02:27:42):
it is a music festival, people are camping. It's kind
of chill, but also there's absolutely this kind of this
just like this like a ever present kind of fear
that despite what is being done being pretty pretty kind
of like normal and not not not not in of
itself militant radical, still the consequences from the state are

(02:28:03):
kind of always always looming, which kind of leads us
to Sunday, Yeah, which picks up exactly where we left on. Yeah.
So I got there around noon on Sunday, I think,
and the first thing we see is a bouncy castle, large,
large bouncy castle in front of the music festival. It

(02:28:24):
has a big stop Coop City banner, um, massive multi
colored bouncy castle. People are having a pretty pretty good time. Yeah.
As soon as they finished setting up the bouncy castle,
it was it was filled and everyone. I think there
were about seventy five one hundred people just set up
on blankets around the stage. Initially, I think in the

(02:28:46):
next few hours that definitely grew to be there being
hundreds and hundred, hundreds of people returning to the music
festival for the second day. Um, I mean, I think
the march on Saturday was anywhere between like I saw
estimates of anywhere between five hundred two thousand people. Music
festival seems to be like over five hundred people. And
then on the second day at the music festival, it

(02:29:08):
slowly grew in size to again being hundreds and hundreds
of people and it's Yeah's it started off just kind
of continuing on with the music, continuing on with the people,
people having having nice times in the woods. I walked
around the campsites, got had conversations with people talking about
all sorts of anarchy related things, and then they're slowly

(02:29:31):
throughout the day. I think that this was posted on
social media as well. There was a plan for a
rally at five pm to meet on part of part
of the field that the music festival was also happening on.
By the time that happened, people people met up. The
group that that kind of converged was in a mix

(02:29:52):
of black block camo blocks, so like people like covered
head to toe and various various camo print And they
set off from from the RC Field where the music
festival was at. So they left they what they went
down Bouldercrest Road to the section of the woods called
the power Line Cut. So to understand what is going

(02:30:14):
on here, you kind of have to understand some of
the geography of the Wilani Forest. So we have like
the the Wilani People's Park parking lot and that immediate
kind of kind of camp site. This is this is
like the the easternmost part, and then there's the RC
Field which is just like right right next to that
to the west, and then even west of that is

(02:30:36):
Entrenchment Creek, and Entrenchment Creek kind of divides up this
this uh, this dissection of the forest and then everything
everything west of Entrenchment Creek is generally referred to as
like the as the old Atlanta prison Farm area and
the power line cut is is pretty close to to
to the creek and to that that is kind of

(02:30:58):
where this this prison farm section is, and this is
this is an area of the woods that cops have
been more rigorous about policing, more rigorous about surveilling, more
rigorous about having kind of constant surveillance and people on
the ground. It's it's estimated that they're spending over forty
thousand dollars a day running security on this part on
on this part of the woods. So yeah, yeah, so

(02:31:23):
see people for that amount of money, they could hire
like more people than are on the police force if
they just used fiber. That's really that's really the tactic
they ought to be embracing. And I think if they
had used fiber, they might have had enough people to
counter the protesters, but to catch the baby overbloated police salaries,

(02:31:44):
they only had like twenty people. Yeah, they did not
have any. So this group set down Bouldercrest, They they
marched up the power line cut. They laid out like
tire tire barricades in the street um and then upon
them marching marching on the power line cut. Uh after
after they arrived near the near near the police surveillance

(02:32:08):
set up that we that we that we just mentioned
some of some of the equipment somehow burst into flames. Um.
People have blamed like shoddy construction. People have said that,
you know, sometimes equipment just does that. Uh but yes,
no so people people set set a whole bunch of
police infrastructure on fire, set some construction equipment on fire

(02:32:29):
that's being used to destroy sections of the forest where
they wanted to build a cop city. Um. Police were
repelled with stuff like rocks and fireworks. The cops that
were stationed there very quickly retreated. I think, Uh, lots
lots of stuff was set on fire. There was the
surveillance tower was set on fire. A bulldozer was set
on fire. Well, I mean it's it's winter. People need

(02:32:51):
fires to camp come from I understand. Have a UTV
was some kind of like like a like big like
big like trailer like storage unit thing was set on fire. Yes,
and the cops were very worried about that. They didn't
know if there was flammable material inside that you you
wouldn't store flammable materials and an easily accessible area. Oh,

(02:33:11):
we shut down an entire interstate because we did that
a few years ago. So we would in Atlanta, Atlanta,
would all of Atlanta collectively, um so so so this happened.
A thermal chopper from a thermal police helicopter was was
watching all of this. Um. Honestly, the footage is pretty interesting.

(02:33:34):
It is it is worth it is worth discussing how
this type of how how this type of surveillance works. Um.
Almost the same thermal cameras that are on the Bay
ractire drones that Turkey makes. By the way, it's it's
it's it's pretty. It's pretty boomerang. Yeah, oh absolutely no,
it's it's it's it's pretty. It's pretty frightening with their

(02:33:56):
ability to track into into track individual people. UM. I
also think it's worth because there's video of the cops
being pelted with stuff, including fireworks. I think it's worth
noting that, like, while it is unpleasant to be pelted
with the kind of stuff the cops were pelted with,
you and I have both been pelted with numerous fireworks
of similar size and it is not a serious threat

(02:34:17):
to life and limb. No, no, there, we survived, but
it's modestly unpleasant, but the cops that were there were
not very happy about it. They put out calls for
officer in need of support and for all available units
in the greater Atlanta area to converge on the forest.
People who were who who marched to this to the

(02:34:39):
section of the power line cut started to disperse throughout
the woods, and I was backed by the road watching
this from hundreds and hundreds of feet away because I
did not need to go up there. That would not
have been helpful in any way. But as this was happening,
a whole bunch of police cars zoomed by, so I

(02:34:59):
started fall those cars. I went back to the music festival.
Um I met up with with some with some other
other media people that I was that I was communicating with,
and then I got a text message saying that a
cop showed up in the parking lot of the Wallani
People's Park with an air fifteen. I start making my
way over, and then as as I'm running across the

(02:35:22):
music festival, I see a whole bunch of police at
the parking lot for the music festival itself at the
at the RC Field, So I don't I don't make
my way over to the Wallannie People's park parking lot
where there's the air fifteen, because instead I see way
way more police closer closer to where I am, so
I staged there. Minutes later police start running into into

(02:35:45):
the music festival. They start tackling seemingly anyone who's like
by themselves and that they could like get their hands on.
It didn't it didn't seem incredibly targeted. Um, it's this
is something that will kind of ill Pope. I'll probably
like discuss in more detail once we have slightly more hindsight.
But a lot of the arrests did not seem specifically targeted.

(02:36:07):
In the bail hearings from just yesterday as a time
of recording, they said they were going after people who
had mud on their clothing and like it it rains
a day before the music festival. Incredible detective work. Only
only a true terrorist would have mud. I think a
month and a half ago Ryan Millsap tore up the

(02:36:27):
parking lot, so it rained the day before, and anyone
who would walk through that parking lot or the trail
system had to walk through mud. You're walking through what also?
People are just sitting on the dirt at the music
festival like, so yes, I mean this might also include
like useful advice for people in the future, because if
the movie Predator was telling me the truth and it's

(02:36:48):
never lied to me yet, coding yourself entirely in mud
makes thermal vision no longer function uh huh uh huh. Yeah,
so please please start to tack with people. It was
definitely they were going after people who were like by
themselves and yeah, people with mud. The police alleged in

(02:37:09):
their in their warrants that were read out at the
bail hearing that they were going after people who had
metal shields, and they said that almost everyone they arrested
was arrested carrying a metal shield. Now here's a few
funny notes about that. There was not a single metal
shield present at all. There were a few small plastic shields,
not a single metal one. And in and looking through

(02:37:32):
all of the footage of arrests, the footage that I
have that's been sent to NLG, footage to other people
have had no one was arrested carrying a shield, let
alone a metal one. So a whole bunch of the
reasoning for these arrests is incredibly suspect. Police so rated
once tackled, arrested, like five people carried them out. They

(02:37:53):
rated again, and this is where they started launching tear
gas into the forest. I got gassed decently bad. It
was not It was not very fun. The first time
I've gotten tear gased in years, old, old old memories.
Um and during this time kiss from a dear friend.
So that was exactly what I was thinking, and I

(02:38:15):
did not. I brought gas masks to Atlanta, but I
didn't bring them on the Sunday because because usually you
don't bring gas masks to a music festival. Yeah, I mean,
the thing about gas, the thing about tear gas and
gas masks is that, like when you're used to getting
tear gassed, it's really easy to have them handy and
get them on. When like you're not used to being

(02:38:37):
tear gas, you're probably not going to bring it with you. Yeah.
So people got people. Some people in the forest got
gassed pretty bad. I mean. The whole point was to
sew confusion, make it so that people could not hide
out in the woods. It was it. It's to make
people scatter, runaway so that they can be tackled and arrested.
M One person that was a National Lawyer's Guild, a
legal observer was arrested. Um, they're also at the Southern

(02:39:00):
Poverty Law Center. This whole boy, this person was the
only person arrested that I'm aware of that was released
on bail. Everybody else, everyone else is being held indefinitely.
That actually includes there was a second legal observer who
was not wearing the hat. So during the bail hearings
yesterday there Laura said that they were a legal observer,

(02:39:23):
but because they weren't wearing the hat and because they
were not local, they were not given bail. It was
reported there was like around like thirty five arrests the
night of yes Initially, APD released a press release that
said there were thirty five detainees, which at the time
they released it was a very interesting term because we
thought thirty five people had just been arrested and were

(02:39:44):
on their way to jail. Yeah, but just about forty
five minutes after that, twelve of those thirty five were released.
So this was very curious. There is a lot of
theories going on for what has happened. I'm I'm just
going to relay what I heard when I was listening

(02:40:05):
to the bail hearings yesterday. So a defense lawyer for
some of the people arrested said yesterday during the bail
hearing that, to his understanding, the twelve people that were
detained but not arrested were people from Atlanta, and the
twenty three people who got arrested and charged or were
not from Atlanta. And part of so what police could

(02:40:28):
be doing here is basically, if you're from Atlanta, will
we will id you, but we're not going to actually
arrest and charge you, but we will arrest and charge
you if you're from out of state, so they can
continue this outside agitator narrative, so they can say every
single person arrested after this protest was from out of state.
The cops in the media have done a lot of

(02:40:50):
weird collusion regarding the events of Sunday night. They've conflated
the location of the arrests a lot. Police want to
make this seem like they arrested people at a crime scene,
that like they arrested people as they were like torching
construction equipment, which just is. It's true. They arrested people
almost seemingly at random at a music festival that was

(02:41:12):
like hundreds and hundreds of feet away like it was.
It is. It is not an it is not an
easy walk from from the power line cut to the
music festival, because not only do you have to go
through some like pretty pretty harsh brush some woods, um
and like jump over a pretty large creek of the alternatively,
you have to like walk down a road, which nobody did.

(02:41:34):
So the police have done a police and and and
like local media like large like large corporate local media
have have tried to make it seem like that this
that this music festival thing is just like a red herring,
that it's it's not it's not important. But a lot
of the people that that were that were that were
arrested seem seemed to be people that were just enjoying

(02:41:54):
this music festival. So twenty three of them um have
been charged with domestic terrorism. Most of those people are
being held indefinitely for now. There the the bail hearing
is going to get appealed to the to the Superior Court,
where we'll see if that changes anything. The judge said
that they were not presented with any evidence that these

(02:42:14):
people did anything wrong, but they still decided to not
give them bail. Um that the judge the reasoning for
that was that the judge thought that people who did
not have any local ties to the community could be
a flight risk, and some people who did have local
ties to the community, they said, still were a threat
to the community somehow, despite many of them not having

(02:42:37):
any prior convictions, not not having any prior arrests. It's
it seemed it seemed pretty suspect during during during the
during the bail hearing, but that was that was most
of Sunday night. UM Eventually police kind of surrounded and
kettled the group of people that that was still still
at the music festival hours after these arrests happened. They

(02:42:57):
gave like a five minute dispersal warning, and then they
gave a ten minute dispersal warning. Eventually, cops let most
of the people who like gathered who were gathered right
in front of the stage leave. That was probably like
fifty people at that point because people throughout the night,
we're trying to leave um as as police were, you know,
like rating the forest. Some people were able to some
people were just like let go and like we're able

(02:43:19):
to leave. Others were detained almost arbitrarily. It's it's it's
it's hard to say so that that was the first
two days of the Week of Action, and it felt
like a week. What happened the next day? So yeah,
the non violent direct actions and then the Monday the events.
Oh no Monday, yeah, because that was only that was

(02:43:42):
only the second Monday. Is the city council meeting that
we were in for eight hours? Yes? Yes, So Monday
there was there was an interfaith coalition of clergy that
uh that held a press conference outside of city hall.
UM basically like endorsing the Stop Cops City movement or
like Clark how how would you describe what happened? So

(02:44:04):
there were a couple of elements to the clergym we'll
just call it in action. The first thing was they
presented a letter with over two hundred other clergy members
who had signed that denouncing cop City, calling for an
independent investigation into the killing of Tortuguita, and calling for
an independent investigation into the use of domestic terrorism charges

(02:44:28):
to chill free speech. And then during that press conference,
uh Miko Shabon called for land back and called for
landback of in the Wilannie Forest to the Muskogee people
who stored in um coordination with the Legacy black residents

(02:44:51):
of the area. Yeah, so they were both like talking
about the need to stop cop city, but also providing
a plan on how this land could be used. This
land that is that is leased by the city. It
is on decap County. After this press conference, some of
these people from the coalition gave public comment during the
city council. That was most of the events on Monday

(02:45:15):
that I can recall. Oh, there was the there was
the poem in the forest that night and that was
that was very enjoyable. That was kind of the first
time people like tried to go back into the forest
since since the Sunday night raid. Um. And I think
that started to slowly boost morale again. Yeah, and I
think we should talk about also after the raid, there

(02:45:36):
are a few, um, really unique things that happened. There
were a lot of people who didn't have housing and
they were housed by local activists. Um. There was the
bus network was set up to transport people from the
site where everyone was getting arrested to somewhere safe. They
moved breakfast offsite to a different location. So there was

(02:45:57):
a lot of work done in continuing the Week of
action and providing some sort of infrastructure for all of
these people who had come into town and didn't have
anywhere else to go. Yeah. Once again, the resiliency on
display was impressive, and people's ability to adapt to the
ever evolving situation was was tested and people adapted pretty well. Tuesday,

(02:46:23):
there was there was starting to be like typical non
violent direct actions happening throughout to downtown. A whole bunch
of banner drops happened around highways and interstates around Atlanta.
People were detained for yes, US three people were briefly
detained at the site of of of a banner drop,

(02:46:45):
but throughout throughout the day there was people handing out
letters to people, to folks like the CEO of Norfolk
Southern Norfolk Southern Alan Shaw, and then similar similar type
of like non violent direct action were happening. A small
a small march was led from Woodruff Park to At

(02:47:06):
and T and Georgia pacific Um. There was like maybe
maybe fifty I think fifty is an accurate number. Fifty
people gathered to march. Well, there were fifty marchers gathered
and then like one hundred and twenty police officers in
the in the in the surrounding area, massive, massive police
presence police caused a huge, a huge disruption to downtown.

(02:47:31):
Um that's something we've seen kind of ever since the
Sunday raid. The police have been incredibly heavy handed in
their response to every single thing, whether that be people
handing out flyers or whether that be you know, uh,
you know, people at people at at at a music festival. Um,
whole a whole bunch of police were mobilized to stay

(02:47:52):
night near the forest, like a hundred again, like one
hundred and twenty cops at least three or four different agencies, bearcats, helicopters.
I think there's it's it's unclear what they were doing. Um,
this is something that we might we might speculate further
on once we have hindsight. When I when I put
together my my kind of my kind of a more

(02:48:15):
more intense deep dive. And then uh, then today the
thing that me and Clark just got back from. How
do you want to explain today's today's events? So today
was a lot of leaflet handing out and marching. It
was a smaller group than the march yesterday. I would
say there was like twenty twenty five people. Yeah, like

(02:48:36):
it started off being like only only but like a dozen. Um,
and it's it's it's slowly grew to like maybe like
two or three dozen. But yeah, small, small, small group
of people. Yeah, small group of people. And when they
met at noon, they met and they broke into three
different groups. Yeah. And so the group that we followed
was just, uh, they walked a little northward and started

(02:48:56):
passing out flyers at the Petrie Center Marta station. They
would to all three entrances, and each group warranted its
own police surveillance unit, massive police surveillance units. It was
following everybody around. There was there was a SWAT vehicle
parked right right outside where these people were handing out flyers. Um,

(02:49:20):
it was. There was there was like fifty to one
hundred cops flanking people on like from from like, from
like different sides. Eventually all the all of the smaller
groups that kind of branched off converged again and police
then gave a dispersal warning to people who were on
the sidewalk, on a sidewalk outside of a hard rock

(02:49:41):
cafe who were handing out flyers. Okay, well they mean
they were in that case, they may have been protecting
people because you want to you want to get folks
as far away from the hard Rock Cafe as possible garrison.
And that's a real dangerous I was, I was campaigning
for all of the press gathered to meet afterwards. That's

(02:50:02):
a hard rock cafe between the hard that one so scarce.
And I watched you at the Rainforest Cafe. You barely
made it through that dessert. That was different. That was different.
I did. I did get food poisoning from that Rainforest Cafe.
I will, I will continue to claim. And I woke

(02:50:25):
up with a headache for an under an inexplicable reason,
not because you were carrying around a bottle of bourbon
throat bourbon and or a milkshake or whatever. Yeah. Yeah, So,
so cops gave a dispersal warning to people who were
not not in fact blocking a sidewalk. We're simply handing

(02:50:46):
out flyers. People were still walking everywhere. Um, so they
basically moved to a different section of the of the
sidewalk and cops kind of left him alone. Um. Near by,
a group of indigenous activists from the Indian Collective. I
believe it's what it's it's actually a Muscoge Nation, the
Muscogee Nation. Uh went went to a meeting that the

(02:51:07):
Mayor of Atlanta, Andre Dickens, was having nearby. H Clark,
I think you know slightly more about what happened here
than I do. Yes, So several of the indigenous activists entered.
So where he was having this meeting is a mall
in true Atlanta fashion. Um. So they entered the mall

(02:51:28):
and they they found where he was in the building,
and uh so, Miko Colonel Chabon delivered a letter essentially
evicting the city of Atlanta from the Wielannie Forest. Uh
So they got in without the police noticing. Um and
then the moment they got out, a large squad of

(02:51:53):
police mobilized. They were they were not happy how close
people got to the mayor. So at this point we
don't know what the full reaction of that's going to be.
We do know that the mayor ran away from accepting
the letter and then one of I believe they handed
it to one. There are a few few more beautiful

(02:52:15):
sites than a mayor running away. Now more mayors need
to spend time fleeing from their peoples. So I think
this this episode comes out. I think like like late
Thursday night, Friday morning, UM, Thursday afternoon there. So, like
we are, we are recording this Wednesday, there's plans for Thursday,
there's gonna be there's gonna be a large march at
six pm. I believe, there's gonna be a youth rally

(02:52:37):
at Saturday, and then on Sunday morning, um Manuel torn
Tortoquita's family is holding a memorial for tort in the
Wilani forest. Um where I've been told that they're going
to spread towards ashes inside the woods and that is
kind of the last thing that's going to happen. Um

(02:52:59):
And so those are the things that have not not
not yet took place. Um So, but we've we've explained
in pretty in pretty spruciating detail some of some of
what's happened so far. So yeah, that that's kind of
the current current state of on the ground at the
week of action. UM I guess, Robert, do you have
any questions for Clerk as someone who's kind of been

(02:53:20):
on the ground in Atlanta for years covering top pop city. Yeah,
I mean, I'm curious what over the last few weeks,
like you've you've had some direct clashes with the police
that have ended in a variety of ways, broadly speaking,
Is there anything that you're you're kind of leaning towards

(02:53:41):
this doesn't work? And is there anything you're kind of
leaning towards? This seems to work really well. So there
is something to be said for the more aggressive actions,
and I think they serve their purpose. And there's definitely
something to be said for the forest occupation UM it
continued the movement until there was a ground swell of support.

(02:54:05):
So at this point, I think the actions have sort
of switched gear into more non violent direct actions as
we're seeing this week, and I think that those actions
will will continue. I'm sure the anarchistic contingent will continue
to do some other more aggressive, shall we say, direct actions? Yeah,

(02:54:26):
and and and all of these work. We have a
large swath of different avenues of engagement that the movement
is has developed, and each of them has their place,
and if they're used in the proper place, they're used
to great effect. I think one kind of change that

(02:54:46):
has happened we've seen we've seen a bit of a
decrease in the types of like nighttime sabotage, like the
sort of like attack and disappear tactics that was was
really popular in the the early days of the occupation
of like of of like the force occupation of people
living and living and camping out in the woods. Um.

(02:55:10):
And you know the because like the last two much
more like militant actions were done during the daytime, during
like large rallies. There was there was the protest on
Saturday after Tortuguita was killed where a cop car was torched.
Then there was this, then there was this protest on
on Sunday night UM that people that people marched, people
marched to the to the power line cut and then

(02:55:32):
the police started doing repression at the music festival. UM.
But like those things were happening like during like before
the sun was setting. UM. So I think that that
that's one interesting change. I feel like some people are
definitely thinking about this, especially because there's been twenty three
people arrested during this week of action and they're being

(02:55:53):
held in jail uh and we have no idea when
they're going, when they're going to be able to have
the option of getting out. So I think this is
something this is something that people are thinking about in
terms of how they are how they are doing direct action,
and how how their involvement in direct action will affect
people who did not participate, like with people at the

(02:56:14):
people at the music festival, who who were not who
were not present at the power line cut direct action,
and how some of those people are undoubtedly now facing
like punishment from from the state. UM. So I feel
like that there is definitely going to be some discussion
about that. I've i've i've i've seen discussion about this

(02:56:36):
sort in the city. Um. But I mean the Week
of Action is still is still ongoing. It is it
is only Wednesday. It feels like it's been a month, um,
but it's only been like three or four days. Uh.
But I mean it's people. People are in this for
the long haul. Um. We're we're starting to see more
solidarity from from groups that are less militant, like with

(02:56:58):
the interfaith relition right, like you're not. I don't think
any of like the priests, the priests or the clergy
were there throwing molotov cocktails um at the at the
surveillance tower. Yet the very next day they're standing out
outside of city Hall and demanding the same things that
the people throwing maltovs are are demanding. It should be

(02:57:19):
noted that they didn't denounce no that is it is
solidarity across the movement. Absolutely. They talked about how them
as clergy you know, and uh, the in the history
of Abrahamic religions, how many how many people associated and
are the figureheads of such religions have been killed by

(02:57:40):
the state, and how often often these religions have been
in opposition to the state during during their formative years. Um,
and they don't know. I just I just can't think
of any prominent uh Christian figures or Jewish figures who
were who were murdered by the state. That's just not
nothing's coming up, right none. Yeah, no, I grew up

(02:58:00):
and I can't really remember anyone. So um, yeah, that
is that is. That is the week of action so far.
There will there will certainly be be be a more
a more detailed deep dive with like analysis and like,
you know, a narrative through line in the coming weeks
as we're actually able to like look back on what

(02:58:22):
has happened. Um interviews with more people who are who
are like actually involved, interviews with like organizers, protesters, force defenders, um,
but people. Despite the ignassive amount of repression that we've
seen on Sunday, the increasingly like heavy handed response. Police
have had to both direct action that includes property destruction

(02:58:43):
and non violent direct action. Uh. Despite all that, people
are still continuing to be in the woods. They are
not letting it scare them away. The woods are still
a place that the people are able to like exist in. Uh,
They're still able to live, live together in the woods,
stay in the woods. The cops don't like being in

(02:59:04):
the woods. No, there's a real fear that's you're trying
to tear them down. Yes, the cops are. The cops
are still very much scared of the woods. Um. And
and uh people have have have not have not let
the violence shown by police scare them away from from
wanting to stay in the forest. So that is that
is something that continued every day. There's been like guided

(02:59:28):
tours throughout the forest showing off the different different types
of plants, the different sections of the woods, different different
old campsites that people have slept at. Um. Yeah, it's uh,
it's been. It's been pretty nice to see with the
with just the incredible level of resilience. Well I know

(02:59:49):
that that I am, and I'm sure many people are
kind of watching this from a distance, and uh, very
very happy to see that folks are continuing to adapt
and endure UH and and take punches. It's unfortunate that
the punches keep coming, but the ability of the community

(03:00:10):
to take those hits and continue iterating and adapting UM,
remains tremendously impressive. UM. I think kind of the note
that makes most sense to end on as to say
that this is still a winnable fight. Absolutely, And that
is a sentiment that literally everyone on the ground shares.

(03:00:30):
Like we are at a point where like people keep
saying like at this point they have to win, like
like there there is no other option than winning, UM,
And people have the ability to win this. This is
a winnable fight, UM. And that is that is something
that people continue continue to talk about, and that that

(03:00:50):
is why people are fighting so hard. That's why people
are are risking getting these ridiculous charges because they know
that this fight is both worth it and they know
this fight is winnable. Like these are these the actions
and the risks that people are The actions and the
risks that people are taking are not for nothing, Like
they know that it is impactful and there is a

(03:01:10):
very good chance that this this will lead to victory
and will lead to the forest being preserved, to being
protected and being able to continue continue to grow. It
does have a feeling of inevitability that they will win,
that we're we will win. I don't know which appropriate

(03:01:31):
way to say that is as a journalist, but the
feeling is that that Cops City will not be built
and that is something that shared, I think by all
of the activists in this city. And I guess the
last thing I'll say is, uh, Atlanta Solidarity Fund. You
if you if you've been listening to any of our coverage,
you should already know what it is. You can find

(03:01:53):
the Solidarity Fund at atl solidarity dot org. You can
donate there to help the forest defenders and you know,
anyone who who was arrested in relation to this with
legal expenses, lawyers, that sort of thing. Um yeah, well, um,
that's gonna do it for this episode. Uh. And we'll

(03:02:15):
have more from you, Garrison, and more from Atlanta soon
until next time, everybody, Uh, keep an eye on shit. Hey,
We'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from
now until the heat Death of the Universe. It could
happen here as a production of cool Zone Media. For

(03:02:36):
more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool
zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
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