It Could Happen Here Weekly 84

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.

Speaker 2 (00:26):
It's another mass shooting. There's no I don't, I don't.
I don't have a good way to start this episode. Yeah,
but welcome jac it appen here a podcast that is
also just about mass shootings now because yeah, great great
world we live in with me is Gare and Robert Hello.

Speaker 3 (00:50):
Hello, Yeah, so a Nazi killed a whole bunch of
people again.

Speaker 1 (00:54):
Yeah, in case there's been another one, we are we
are talking about the specific as shooting in Allen, Texas
with the guy who was covered in swastika tattoos that
certain people are claiming as a fed. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:09):
That happened on Sunday, May seventh. So I think I
think MIA has some details about what actually happened to
kind of put together, but for the majority that we're
actually going to be talking about people's reaction to this,
including some of the most influential people on the planet.
And the level of reality denial that is, it has

(01:30):
been bad before, it's just extra visible right now, and
it's visible to a degree that is that is pretty worrying,
and we felt it was it was worth talking about
just because of you know, whenever a reality fracture is
big enough to be like this this noticeable, that is
always always an interesting sign of where we are at

(01:53):
as a culture.

Speaker 2 (01:55):
Yeah, I think so before we fully dive into that,
there's something that I do want to talk about like
briefly with this, which is that so like this is
you know, in the sort of mold of like white
premises killings, is like, this is very very targeted and
non white people. So he shot one white guy who
was a security guard, and then he shot like three

(02:16):
Latino people and then four Asian people. And I don't know,
I wanted to just sort of like remind people that
anti Asian violence is still like a thing because everyone
seems to have forgotten about it, and you know, this
is like I mean, I think if you exclude the
if you exclude the three in California that were like

(02:40):
also committed by Asian people, says like the fourth mass
shooting in two years that's been at least half the
victims of an Asian It fucking sucks, I you know.
I mean, we've talked about antias violence a decent amount
on this show. None of the things we've ever talked
about have gotten any better. The only sort of actual
instrument the results of any of this is that like

(03:04):
violence against Asian people get used as a rhetorical cudgel
to justify killing black people, which is fucking abhorrent. And yeah,
I just wanted to get this in because the media
has collectively forgotten that that was the whole thing, and
no one really talks about the shooting in that framing,
and I think it's important to do so at least
for a little bit.

Speaker 3 (03:26):
I think the other thing to kind of just talk
about it at the top here. Latino white supremacists and
Latino Nazis are not They are not an uncommon thing.
This is actually quite common. Two of the most famous
fascists in the world right now, Nick Fuentes and Enrique Tario,
are not white.

Speaker 4 (03:46):
No.

Speaker 1 (03:46):
I mean, just like, think about think about where I mean,
think about the fact that prior to World War Two,
Argentina spent a significant chunk of their defense budget bringing
over Nazis to train their military, which is a big
part of why so many Nazis escaped there via rat lines.
You know, we just did a series of episodes on
Alfredo Stressner, the fascist dictator of Paraguay who put up

(04:08):
and hid Joseph Mengola along with a bunch of other
Nazis for a while. Mangola had citizenship in both Argentina
and in Paraguay. Like, this is it's not uncommon. This
is not like a new thing. We're not It's not
like some sudden shift in the way that fascism works.

Speaker 3 (04:26):
Even the shooter himself like posted memes about being a
Latino white supremacist, Like it is a subculture big enough
that it has its own like meme of vortex. So
and this shooter was actively engaged in in said like
a me medic culture.

Speaker 1 (04:44):
No, And it's also worth noting that a lot of
the same things that we talk about when we talk
about Nazi mass shooter culture in the United States, the
fact that a lot of shootings are kind of incited
on eight Chan and four chan and similar boards. This
happens in Latin America. Brazil in particular has a website
called degola chan that has spawned at least a couple
of shootings. In the last year, They've had several more

(05:06):
mass shootings that are political in nature, that are kind
of driven by online fascists. Like this is not the
only place that this happened. Serbia just had a couple
as well. But like, what what what? What this guy's
doing is very much just as the christ shooting was
very much something that occurred within the broader envelope of
a transnational accelerationist fascist movement, you know, the Allen shooting,

(05:31):
as far as we can tell what the information we
have available, seems to fit very well into that schema.

Speaker 5 (05:37):
Okay, we should talk about the shooter a bit.

Speaker 2 (05:40):
So there's there's a sort of I don't know, there's
like a after every mass shooting, there's this sort of
like identification cycle thing that happens, where like a bunch
of musations us AN organizations still trying to figure out
who the shooter was.

Speaker 5 (05:55):
So I think like the day after, very very very
like pretty.

Speaker 2 (06:02):
Soon after the shooting, there's the new York Times runs
an article that reveals that the shooter has this like
has an account on like a kind of weird Russian
social media site. And from from that information, uh Eric Toler,
who's a bell researcher, a belling cat like, tracks down
the site and he finds a bunch of wild stuff.

(06:26):
He finds like, I mean, obviously the shooter is like
he finds it the shooter is a Nazi. He has
like a swastika tattoo. He has also has an SS
tattoo from the shooting. He's wearing like a right wing
desk squad patches. Like it's just like a whole thing
that the Proud Boys also do. It's like a patch
that says like rw.

Speaker 1 (06:42):
D, Yeah, they sell our WDS patches. I mean, I
think a lot of it kind of comes out of
some of the discourse around Pinochet that goes back a
few decades, but at this point it's a much broader
thing than that. I've got a bunch of photos of
Jeremy Brederimo I think is his now who is one
of the Proud Boys. I believe he's the guy who

(07:03):
got stabbed prior to January sixth during one of the
big riots in DC after the twenty twenty election, but
with the big RWDS patch on his chest. And you
can find like Tasitala Tozy, who is an inveterate rioter
with a Patriot prayer up in Portland, would wear them
all the time. They're a common piece of fascism merch.

Speaker 2 (07:24):
Yeah, and you know, and this and also you know
the other thing that's kind of important that gets found
on this like social media site, which okay, I wish
you it's a kind of weird thing, like he doesn't
I don't know the social media site. Seems like he
was basically using as like a journal, Like he doesn't
like follow people or like have followers, so he's just

(07:47):
sort of posting this stuff. He also finds a bunch
of clips of like Timpoole videos, and so this immediately
sends the entire right into like you know, full on
defense mode, right. You know, it turns out it's it's
not great for your brand with like the sort of

(08:07):
general array of people if it's being associated with a
guy who just did a mass shooting. So Tim Poole
responds to the other thing is there's there's like a
manifesto on it, and Tim Poole responds to this by
I think I think what actually, like legitimately what happened
is he read the manifesto and there's a thing in
the manifesto like talking about the Nashville shooter being trans

(08:30):
or like specifically about the Nashville shooter. And I think
I think specifically he read that and was like, oh shit,
this is my out. I can go back and talking
about the Nashville shooter. Sure, And so he starts, he
starts this. There's this whole sort of train of like
right wing stuff about how all of this is fake.

(08:51):
So he starts arguing that, like this isn't the guy's
social media account. This this sort of very very rapidly
morphs into i mean, just like full on like Sandy
hook shit, what if his employees like tweets? Why is
the corporate press so threatened by people questioning the authenticity

(09:12):
of a Mexican neo nazi's Russian social media account uncovered
by state funded media? And this because this immediately becomes
the mainline right state funded media things. They're talking about
Belling Cat, which.

Speaker 3 (09:22):
They're they're hopping on all of the Tanky conspiracies.

Speaker 6 (09:25):
Yeah, yeah, running with it.

Speaker 3 (09:27):
Because Twitter is a is a cultic milieu of conspiracy,
and you can latch onto one talking point to make
you feel okay about denying an entire like facet of
reality and then it becomes an easy out.

Speaker 2 (09:41):
Yeah, and we're gonna we're gonna circle back to like
specifically the tanking people getting involved in this because they do.

Speaker 1 (09:48):
What they're doing is a little bit of like and
uh an evolution from what what's what? Folks kind of
in the debating Christians about evolution and shit called the
Gish gallop, where the the the original idea of the
Gish gallop was when you're arguing from a creationist perspective
about stuff like, you know, the age of the world,
you bring up so many different kind of topics, you know,

(10:09):
from different very niche issues you have a carbon dating to,
you know, specific problems you have with like the way
scientists are interpreting specific fossils, and it's just too much
detail for somebody in like an ad hoc public argument
to really like counter at once. And kind of the
evolution of it is when you're dealing with something like
this rather than deal with the broader picture, which is

(10:30):
there's just a tremendous amount of evidence that this guy
was a Nazi, that this guy was motivated and kind
of brought into the community by a lot of content
that guys like Tim Poole make. Instead you focus on,
you pull up one single thing that you can kind
of like try to get people to latch onto, and
if you can get them arguing about that thing, you
can get them to ignore the bigger picture, like at

(10:53):
least you can distract attention from it.

Speaker 7 (10:54):
And it works.

Speaker 1 (10:55):
It works for a lot of people. It's especially effective
on social media.

Speaker 2 (10:59):
Yeah, and unfortunately the social media platform that this is
mainly happening on his Twitter, which Elon Musk owns, and
Elon Musk immediately like decides that he's just fully in
on this shit, and he is, I mean she is, like,
like Elon Musk is is just actively promoting the sort

(11:19):
of weird conspiracy that basically what the sort of right
wing story about this becomes is that like, okay, Belling
Cat is is the CIA, and they're being paid to
create a like a false flag thing that okay, they're

(11:39):
they're they're being paid to create a false flag to
to make this guy look like a Nazi and a
timpoole fan to distract people from the Nashville shooting, which
is just like.

Speaker 5 (11:50):
The absolute nonsense.

Speaker 2 (11:52):
But you know, you you immediately get into like that
that Tim Pool employee again, like it like starts doing
this whole like we are enshrined with liberty to freely
scrutinize every claim, just as the sanctity of like every
human being in America like has the right to question stuff.
It's like this is like literally like literally word for

(12:13):
word stuff Alex Jones was saying in the Sandy Hook trial.
But we've gotten to the point where you just you know,
like the sort of mainstream of the right just does
this about every time it's a writing mass shooting, and
this this particular time, it's been just everywhere.

Speaker 1 (12:31):
Yeah, we're we're, we're gonna there's no no, no smooth
way to break to ads in an episode about a
mass shooting, but that's what we're doing.

Speaker 7 (12:40):
We are back.

Speaker 3 (12:41):
I want to talk now a little bit more about
the actual exchanges that Musk was involved in and how
this narrative of like a syop and this whole narrative
around the shooting being a syeop, how that viewpoint got
inflated on Twitter because must controls where all of the
interactions go for tweets and actually like specifically get into

(13:01):
how this specific conspiracy is is a demonstration of how
much of just a separation from reality that people like
Musk are like actively actively working towards. One of the
main accounts that Musk was kind of like riffing off
of in this and who was like trying to like
feed Musk this type of stuff was the redheaded libertarian

(13:23):
who works for Timpoole. She created a bunch of memes
about this shooting talking about how how this the guy
can't can't be a Nazi and he because he's Latino.
You know, why would someone use a Russian social media site?
Even tho it's actually very common for American notaptries to
use Russian social media.

Speaker 1 (13:44):
We used to do an exercise at a trainings that
I did for Bellancat where people would go through and
use v Contacta, which is a Russian like kind of
Facebook clone, and you would kind of use geographical search
to find of like KKK members and shit in the
American South, because it was really common with them because

(14:04):
it didn't have any kind of content moderation.

Speaker 3 (14:08):
So yeah, so the types of like right wing content
creators who are within Musk's Twitter orbit start pumping out
all of this stuff, right, and this is where Musk
gets all of his information from. So he starts he
starts like just questioning the validity of this story, but
then also specifically targeting belling Cat, saying that didn't didn't

(14:28):
didn't this story come from Bellingat, which literally specializes in
psychological operations, which, first of all, is just a wild
thing to say when you're talking about is specifically like
an open source journalism website, Like it's the most the
most honest way you could do journalism because it's given
people the tools to literally check all of the work themselves.

Speaker 5 (14:49):
Like it's yeah, I mean this is.

Speaker 2 (14:51):
Kind of like a minor aside, but one of the
things that happens here constantly with all these people is
they're like absolutely astounded, like like how how how did
belling get possibly find this? It's like, well, it's not
that hard, it's really easy. The thing is the thing
is right if if so, Like, I am not a journalist, right,
I learned everything I know about this from gare in
like one night, and like I have tracked down like

(15:11):
mass you too social media accounts and like before the
police got them, Like it's not that hard.

Speaker 6 (15:16):
But the thing is it requires you to even like just.

Speaker 5 (15:18):
A tiny tiny bit be a journalist.

Speaker 2 (15:21):
And not a single one of these writing people has
ever like done journalism ever, and so like just like
the tiniest bit of journalism just like destroys their brains
and they're like they are physically incapable of comprehending how
someone could have done a journalism and then they use
this to sort of feed their base because their base
also just doesn't understand how someone could do a journalism
and this this, this, this lets you do this like
cycle of like how could they possibly have found this?

(15:42):
They must have been given it by the government.

Speaker 3 (15:43):
It's just like No, all that really comes down to
is is who has who is on their computer at
the right time when this thing happens. Yeah, whenever I
find out or whenever I can id people, it's always
just like coincidence that the thing happens as I'm already
at my computer, so now I can look into this thing, right,
it is It is just who has access to the

(16:03):
internet at the right time is the way that we
figure out like, who's gonna end up iding somebody?

Speaker 1 (16:09):
Yeah, it's it's a mix of that, and it's a
mix of just who has the patience and the motivation
to sit and comb through shit for hours and days,
which is the same thing that like, it's the same
thing at anti fascist activists have been doing for years,
you know, especially since Charlottesville, where you're just like, I'm
going to watch the same videos of the same event
and find new ones and I'm going to spend three

(16:29):
years doing that, and eventually I will catch a tattoo
or a shirt with a logo and that will let
me id somebody, because you know, of the of the
different social media shit that I've been pulling up, like
it's it's it's not it doesn't take like spice satellites.
It just takes motivation, being in the right place at
the right time and having nothing else to do.

Speaker 7 (16:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (16:52):
So eventually they started just kind of harping on this
term syop, so sich obviously means psychological operation. But what
what they mean when they say syop is that they
mean this was like a government, This is a false
like a manufactured government planned operation. That's what they actually mean, right,
Like in in the conspiracy space, syop is is more

(17:16):
like a loaded term they don't actually refer to like
actual syops that get doning like against like you know,
you can look at like co Intel pro right, you
can look at you can look at various ways that
the FBI of the army has done syops. But what
they mean when they say syop is this is like
this is a government conspiracy theory and it's a false
narrative that's been crafted to like change public opinions. So

(17:38):
I guess, I guess these people mea you mentioned how
they're making it sound like this was this was created
to distract from the Nashville shooting or just just they
have various like motivations for why they want to but
it the important part is that they could use this
word to just easily deny reality, and that is that
it is kind of beyond like whatever motivations they have.

(17:59):
It's just easy for them and their ideology to just
block off this section of reality so that they don't
have to Like people who are like actually libertarians don't
need to like confront what the extent of their ideology
actually means. Right, you know, there's certainly people who are
like okay with mass shootings happening, or you know, are
totally fine with with with with like non white people

(18:20):
getting killed in mass shootings. But there probably are certain
libertarians who don't actually like mass shootings. They don't actually
like when fascists go kill tons of people, and it's
easier for them sometimes just to block off this section
and ignore it than actually confront what their ideology means.
So some must kept saying this is either the weirdest
story ever or a very bad syop. The answer is neither.

(18:40):
This story is not super weird. It's actually very very
explainable if you understand the mechanisms at play here, and
even just not a bad SI Yeah.

Speaker 1 (18:48):
I mean it's not even like it's not on it's
like on the whole. It's not a particularly complicated story
like there are. It is not an uncommon thing. I mean,
the biggest, most recent one before this was that that
shooting in New York at the grocery store that was
like a directly inspired Nazi attack. Like this kind of

(19:09):
shit happens constantly in the United States. It doesn't require
nobody has to be secretly armed by the Feds. There's
an AR fifteen behind every bush in this country. It's
not hard for this kind of this kind of shit,
It's not hard to see where this like originates from.

Speaker 3 (19:24):
Yeah, so it's I mean, Muska just kept kept replying
to both Timpoole employee tweets tweets from the very blatantly
fascist account to end Wokeness, which Musk has been replying
to quite a quite often recently. So this and I
think the reason why we wanted to just talk about

(19:45):
this specifically is just because of you. Like, all of
these Musk tweets are getting like millions and millions of views,
if the view counter is any is anything to go by.
At the very least, he's in the top three accounts
with the highest engagement on Twitter. So these these types
of conspiracy theories are getting inflated to extremely high degrees
at least online, and the separation of reality online is

(20:08):
inflated for these mass shootings in a way that I
have not seen in quite a while. I have not
seen this much just denial of like information regarding mass
shootings in quite a long time. And the combination of
the stuff like the stuff with Belling Cat coming from
the tankies and how those conspiracies have now mashed with

(20:28):
all of these like neo fascist shit. It's a combination
of reality denial that is absolutely worrying for like future
mass shootings as well.

Speaker 1 (20:39):
It's a pivot in the kind of reality that's being denied.
You know, not we have nothing to do with these
Nazis who are parroting some of the things that we
say about immigration. It's this is fundamentally not the attack
that you think it is. This is our enemies creating
an attack to try to make us look bad. Like
the fact that that you've always seen and pieces of that.

(21:01):
The fact that it's being parroted by the wealthiest man
on the planet using one of the biggest information fire
hoses that exists is completely novel.

Speaker 3 (21:10):
Yeah, because I mean a lot of these same conspiracy
theories that specifically about like Eric Toler, we saw we
saw leftists and tankies bringing up the same stuff during
the UH, during the stuff with the Nazi National guardsmen
a month ago. So we have a lot of this
stuff has kind of been writing on the back of
that and just continued and accelerating UH since then. It

(21:32):
appears there's a few outlets like Business Insider and Blank
at themselves reporting that they are they are receiving basically
shadow bands on Twitter right now, with their with their
with their account and their posts having a very limited reach.

Speaker 1 (21:48):
An interesting shadow band too, because it's not like it.
It appears, at least from what I've seen, that what
they're doing is they're making it so that when people
type belling Cat into the search bar, nothing comes up,
as opposed to like throttling the reach of the actual
posts themselves, trying to make it deliberately difficult for people
to actually look up information, which is interesting to me.

Speaker 3 (22:09):
Yeah, and I guess I guess it's worth saying that
the police and Texas have confirmed everything about about the
shooters political beliefs and his new Nazi ties, and he
has a neo Nazi shit in his apartment. Obviously his
body is covered with neuo Nazi tattoos. One of the
things that some of the kind of right wing content

(22:31):
creators were trying to do is that they were trying
to say that the specific pictures of the individual that
belling Cat found online, that that these pictures were not
this person. They in fact that they were saying, they
were saying that the shooter is just somebody else, which
was also proven rob but yeah, they also.

Speaker 2 (22:48):
They also they did another classic right wing thing, which
is that they misidentified the shooter. Yes, I thought it
was another guy with the same name, because.

Speaker 1 (22:57):
Like and they misidentify the shooter, and they misidentified the
non Nazi tattoo that he had, yes, because he had
he had weirdly enough, like the city of Dallas's seal
tattooed on his hands.

Speaker 3 (23:11):
Yeah, the Texas tattoo on his shoulder.

Speaker 1 (23:13):
Yeah. They they like definitely, like there were a lot
of conspiracy theories about that, and a lot of them
related to the fact that, like the first photos we
got of the guy were like the kind of photos
you get of a dead man at a mass shooting
that someone takes through a window while sheltering, So it
wasn't clear. So they would take a picture of like
a social media picture of the tattoo on his hand,
and then a picture of him dead, and like the

(23:35):
tattoo on his hand in the picture of him dead
was like blurrier, and they were like, look, the lines
aren't straight. They're straight in the picture on his social
media and it's like, well, yeah, because those were taken
by very different cameras in very different situations. Like you
know how cameras work, you know how this this is
of what.

Speaker 3 (23:51):
Of the funnier ones that one of these content creators
was doing was they were they were posting the the
photos of of the Nazi tattoos that the shooter himself
posted online, being like, look how fresh these tattoos are.

Speaker 6 (24:04):
How can.

Speaker 3 (24:07):
If he had these tattoos for years, why do they
look so fresh at these photos?

Speaker 6 (24:11):
Because the photos were from right after.

Speaker 1 (24:13):
Him, like you do when you get a tattoo. Yeah,
there's like I have tattoos pictures of me getting tattoos
from like fifteen years ago somewhere on my Facebook. Like
you could do the same thing, suspicious Robert.

Speaker 3 (24:29):
One of the interesting things is that like we see
the same thing with all of like all of the
worries around like deep faking stuff, like all of all
of the like weaponized on reality stuff. It doesn't need
to actually be convincing. It it doesn't need to be
good like like deep fakes don't need to be good quality.
You can you can post a meme of like a
picture of Biden's face and some text on it with

(24:51):
a quotation mark post on Facebook and millions of people
will believe that's just true. Like it doesn't need to
be real or convincing in order for it to have
it like an effect.

Speaker 1 (25:01):
And it's also it's not just about I think it's
it's thinking, Like, it's not just about convincing people. It's
not about making them believe it. This is like, this
is the thing that I tried to talk about years
ago during the Eight Chance shooting. It's shit posting. Part
of the goal is just to disrupt conversation. It's to
make people engage with the fake stuff. It's to make
people break kind of the lines of reasoning that they

(25:23):
are going in with, Like it's to make people distract
people from the stuff that is really clear and obvious
and just kind of fracture the conversation. Because the more
that you do that kind of the weaker you make
the response to what's happened, and the more kind of
that you can distract people from the degree of complicity
that the people in kind of the media sphere on

(25:45):
the right have for all of this shit.

Speaker 2 (25:48):
Yeah, And I think that's why it's like specifically going
after the Billin Cat stuff has been really effective with
UP because like like there are like people who I
am friends with in real life who like are convinced
that billing cares as a CIA si op, Like this
is like a like they like really not insignificant portions
of the left believe this, yep. And that means that
it's you know, unbelievably difficult to form any kind of

(26:10):
coherent response when like half of the people who would
normally be doing this stuff are like, oh, well they
are actually CIA, So.

Speaker 3 (26:15):
Like, yes, the the Netherlands based CIA unit.

Speaker 1 (26:21):
Yeah, it's like yeah there. I mean like at least
in the time I was there, the primary people funding
us was the Dutch post code lottery, Like it's it's
it's I don't know, like.

Speaker 3 (26:33):
Like almost every news organization they take grants where yeah,
where they can get them.

Speaker 2 (26:37):
Yeah, And like I want to specifically talk about the
NYDA a tiny bit because people like, so the main
conspiracy is about like they like at one point they
took they took a grant for the National Talent for
Democracy and like, yeah, those people do weird shit sometimes,
but they also for example, like if okay, so if
you're gonna have the line that every single person who's
taking money for the n D is a CIA thing,

(27:00):
Like you have to accept that. For example, like the
pro Beijing Electoral Party in Hong Kong is a CIA
op because they also got a shit ton of any
D money, right, Like, like any just gives money to
a shit ton of people.

Speaker 3 (27:13):
It's definitely worth emphasizing that, like the initial groups that
are pushing the Bellingkt conspiracies were all gray zone people
that are specifically specifically paid by the Russian government, like
because Russia was mad at Bellinkat for exposing their war crimes. Yeah,
and like that's where all of this stuff starts.

Speaker 1 (27:31):
There's I don't know how much point there is in
like laying into this specific thing too much. Would I
would remind you at all times when you are like
dealing with breaking news like this and there's a bunch
of different and there's a bunch of different kind of
like conflicting arguments about what's actually happening. Okham's raiser isn't

(27:53):
one hundred percent of the time the way to go.
But in a situation like this, you have two possibilities.
One is that a Nazi went on a killing spree,
as happens constantly, as has been happening since the Nazis
became a thing. The other possibility is that the federal government,
for unclear reasons, convinced a man to cover his body

(28:15):
in swastika tattoos and shoot random people at a mall
for gun control. That's not going to get passed in
the state of Texas. I don't know, like which of
those seems likely to you.

Speaker 2 (28:29):
I did this thing like very deliberately to myself, like
about a year ago, where I was like, I was
very deliberate, like I'm going to like un conspiracy theory
my brain, because you know, like there is a lot
of like like the kind of reasoning you get in
this stuff, which is like, hey, here's a thing that like,
quote unquote looks weird, so this whole thing must be suspect,

(28:52):
so it must be an op is like a really
really kind of like it's a really common kind of
reasoning now that just like a lot of people across
the entire poetic conpectionum have and it's not actually a
good way to understand the worlds like it's it simply
is not.

Speaker 3 (29:08):
We live in an increasingly absurd world where every single
weird thing is more and more visible because of the Internet,
so we're more aware of how much weird shit happens
all the time, and stuff that and stuff that may
not not necessarily be weird, because like everything, there is
an expert in every field who can explain to you
why this thing actually makes perfect sense. And it's just
people being exposed to things that they're not usually that

(29:29):
they're not used to. I think one of the interesting
one of the last things I think we should like
mention about this is just the influx of how militant
like neo Nazism or like visible ne Nazism has just
been People have just been saying it's Feds in an
increasingly concerning way, like like I think, like a last month,
there was this viral video of a whole bunch of

(29:52):
Nazis stressed in red and black, I think, protesting something.
I forget the exact circumstances at the moment.

Speaker 6 (30:00):
I think it was.

Speaker 3 (30:01):
I think it was some drag related protests, but yeah,
there was this group of Nazis dressed in red and
black doing Nazi shit, And when you looked at any
of the videos on Twitter, you saw hundreds of replies
from people with blue check marks just calling them Feds,
saying oh, Wow, look at all these Feds. Well, oh,
I can't believe the FEDS are so busy today. Blah
blah blah blah blah. You know, it's it's like the
one hundred person NPC meme with them all wearing the

(30:24):
blue check mark on the forehead saying it's the FEDS
just because it's it's once we get to the point
where we have more Nazis doing mass shootings again, the
same way like there was an influx between like twenty
seventeen to twenty nineteen than twenty twenty, there was kind
of a dip because all all crime kind of had
a dip. As we're gonna go into the next next
election cycle, as things are gonna start looping again, when

(30:47):
more and more Nazis start doing shit, just how there's
gonna be a bigger swath of the population who just
denies that's what's happening, and that is gonna make make
the problem of Nazis probably a bit harder to deal with.
I mean, there's there will still be anti fascists doing
their work to like docs and I D people and
and and and all that stuff, but the amount of
like visibility and the amount of traction that that this

(31:09):
level of reality denial is getting around, like militant in
neo Nazism and around Nazi killings, will be a kind
of a new thing to navigate, or not a new thing,
but like it's a the problem will be bigger than
what it used to be.

Speaker 1 (31:22):
I wanted to kind of note one thing on a
on the other side of the ideological spectrum and uh
and and not to equate the two. But there has
been something kind of concerning that I've been seeing crop
up in liberal circles. You may have noticed, kind of
as a response to all of the mass shootings and
the generally consistent Republican line that there's nothing to do

(31:44):
except for be shittier to marginalize people. That that there's
been kind of this like focus in a lot of
mainstream liberal media on articles and the idea that you
should spread pictures of victims of shootings, and a focus
on the amount of damage that like a weapon like
an AR fifteen does to a human body. People can

(32:06):
have their own opinion on like whether or not this
is a helpful idea, but I have noticed in sort
of arguments I've been having with people a troubling trend,
which is when I talk about the importance of doing
stuff like taking stop the bleed training, carrying things like tourniquets.
I've gotten responses from a couple of people that are
like AR fifteens are so powerful the wounds are not survivable,

(32:27):
there's no point in doing this. That is not the case.
I have known dozens of people who have been shot
by AR fifteens, in some cases in AR style weapons,
in some cases multiple times, and larger weapons, and lived.
It is always worthwhile to have stopped the bleed training
and to carry equipment. If you hear anyone saying that,
please please correct them, Because whatever you think about gun control,

(32:50):
it is very important for people to know how to
deal with those kind of injuries, and it is important
in the immediate wake of an attack. One of the
things that was really unsettling is in the immediate way
of the Allen attack, after the shooter was down, there
was a couple of people who ran in to try
to provide life saving aid, and a bunch more who
took photos of the people who had been wounded and killed.

(33:11):
And it's possible that if more of the people taking
photos had gotten in an attempted to provide aid. Some
of the people who were injured might have survived, no
way to know, but always worth having that training. That's
just something I've noticed. Not to put it in the
same moral universe as trying to pretend your calls for
violence aren't calls for violence, but it is something that
concerned me and that people should maybe keep an eye on.

Speaker 3 (33:33):
Yeah, I mean, I that was the case with the
Rittenhouse shootings. There was someone who basically had most of
their arm, yeah, blown off, but they did not die. Yeah,
So yeah, that is that is not true. And I've
watched a lot of the Rittenhouse footage and yeah, it is.

Speaker 7 (33:50):
It is.

Speaker 3 (33:51):
It is nasty. Yeah, but no, that is that is
a good thing to note.

Speaker 5 (33:55):
Yeah, and also like.

Speaker 2 (33:59):
On just a fundamental human level, like do do not
let yourself be consumed by the algorithm so much that
your first reaction to seeing someone get shot is you
try to film them, Like, yeah, we need to be
better than this, Like we have watched people die because
of this, Like like this, this is not a thing
as society that we can continue to be doing. Like

(34:20):
we simply cannot. We simply have to act and not
like become part of a sort of like mass media
spectacle instead of doing something.

Speaker 3 (34:31):
Yeah, the footage of things is not going to change it,
especially with mass shootings. Footage and mass shootings usually actually
make the problem worse, and it's mostly used by people
who want to be mass shooters.

Speaker 1 (34:43):
Yeah, I'm I that may be a conversation we should, uh,
we should expand on it a later date. But you know,
don't don't let the bastards grind you down. Take a
stop the bleed course, you know, bring a tourniquet with
you out in the world. These are these are action
items that that that you can do that might in
fact help. So that's going to be it for us today.

(35:06):
It could happen here until next time, you know, keep
your head on this wivel.

Speaker 8 (35:26):
Hello and welcome to another episode of It Could Happen
Here with me Andrew of the YouTube channel Andrewism. Today,
I'm joined by Mia and today we're going to be
discussing another leading figure in the black radical tradition. If
you've heard the episodes on Quasi Ba Lagoon, you know
exactly what's up today. I've got the first part in

(35:46):
a two parter about Lorenzo kembo Iven and his vision
for revolution. Even's life has been one of resistance, resilience,
and radicalism. These contributions the anarchist movement, especially his work
on black anarchism, even to this day with his ongoing podcast,

(36:07):
continues to inspire activists around the world, myself included. So, Mia,
what are your what has your experience been with the
Rinzo Combo Irvin and his work.

Speaker 2 (36:20):
Yeah, so I've read Anarchist in the Black Revolution, which
I really enjoy. I've listened to not all of but
like a pretty good amount of the Black Autonomy podcasts
that he runs, which is great, and so yeah, I'm
excited to talk about him.

Speaker 8 (36:36):
Awesome. Yeah, he really is a fantastic and necessary figure
in this you know, broader movement, especially now for those
who don't know, the Rnzo Combo Irven was one of
the earliest founders of the black anarchist movement, which was
a distinct tradition born out of the history of black

(36:57):
radical politics in nineteen seventies. Black anarchism is not just
h we are thrown on an adjective onto anarchism. There's
a history behind it and there's a distinct tradition that
accompanies it. There were anarchists historically who were black, who
were not part of this black anarchist tradition, and well,

(37:22):
of course black anarchists who weren't part of those earlier movements.
I think one of the most notable sort of go
to examples is Lucy Parsons was a very important anarchist
figure in the sort of the peak of the movement,
at least in the US in the twentieth century. But

(37:47):
although she was Black, her contributions don't necessarily contribute to
that sort of black anarchist lineage. So let's get into
earthIn right. Nineteen forty seven. By the time he was twelve,
Lorenzo Kobertuvin had joined the NAACP youth group and participated

(38:08):
in sit in protests that helped to end racial segregation
in Chattanooga, Tennessee. He was later drafted during the Vietnam
War and served in the army for two years, where
he eventually became an anti war activist. And in nineteen
twenty seven, when he was twenty years old, after his
involvement with the Student Non Violent Coordinating Committee, Lorentzo kumbo

(38:30):
Uven joined the Black Panther Party as a rank and
file member. Two years later, he hijacked a plane and
fled to Cuba. While he was on the run for
attempting to kill a Ku Klux Klan member, But instead
of receiving support as some black radicals had received when
fleeing to Cuba, Cune authorities had jailed him, deported him,

(38:53):
deported him to Czechoslovakia, and eventually he escaped from Czechoslovakia
to each before eventually being caught, tortured, and brought back
to the United States, and then after being drugged during
his trial, he was handled two life sentences by an
all white jury in a redneck town. Tough prick as

(39:16):
you can imagine, Irvin had very quickly become disillusioned with
the dictatorship he had experienced in Cuba and the socialist
countries he visited, and during his time in prison, he
reflected on his life and found an alternative method for
black revolution, distinct from the form he found the Panther Party.

(39:37):
Now even wasn't the first person to criticize the Black
Panther Party's style of organization. One of the splits between
the East Coast and West Coast Panthers was on what
form of organization they would take. I discussed that a
bit in the Quasi Battagoon episodes, and then of course
there were other figures who came out to the Black
Panther Party with their own criticisms, including if I remember correctly,

(40:02):
Asata Shakur and also Don Cox. While in prison, Iuven,
had you gone receiving anarchist literature? And he also signed
to pick up what another Black anarchist who he was
briefly imprisoned with at the time, Martin Sostra, was putting down.
Martin Sostra is what I believe one of the first

(40:24):
major black anarchist figures in that sort of nineteen sixties
nineteen seventies period, and so him being in prison with
Sostra at the same time sort of really helped even
to understand exactly what anarchism meant and how it would
applied to a specifically black experience in black context. Ivin

(40:45):
was also inspired by Peter Kropotkin, Everyone's favorite Russian and
former prince, and ultimately even adopted the ideology of anarchist.
His case was soon taken up by the anarchist Black
Cross and the Helper Prisoner Oppose Torture Organizing Committee, which
led to an international campaign the petition for his release.

(41:08):
Evan's writings on Anarchism of the Black Revolution, which was
written in prison, gained immense popularity, and so he was
released in nineteen eighty three after serving nearly fifteen years.
In his book, he emphasized that anarchism is the most democratic,
effective and radical way to obtain freedom for the black community,

(41:30):
but the black people must be free to design their
movements without the approval of North American anarchists. Do you
believe that black people and other people of color would
be the backbone of the American anarchist movement of the future.
The first edition of Anarchism the Black Revolution was published
quite a while ago. It's still the addition that is
available on the Anarchist Library you can check out, but

(41:54):
it is I would consider it to be a sort
of a rough early edition. There are certainly some typos
and editorial mistakes and stuff that were addressed in the
most recent edition that was published and I believe twenty
twenty one and edited with some help from William C. Anderson,

(42:18):
who also is another leading figure in the modern black
anarchist movement, having written works like Nation or nomap Irvin
took and still takes a principal stance against capitalism, white supremacy, imperialism,
colonial oppression, patriarchy, queerphobia, and the state, recognizing the government

(42:39):
is one of the worst forms of modern oppression. His
emphasis on intersectionality has played a crucial role in the
shift away from class exclusive analysis in the American anarchist movement,
and today he remains active, as I said recording a
podcast called Black Autonomy with his wife and fellow forma
panther Jonina. So today we drawn from Even's book Actism

(43:04):
of the Black Revolution to delve into his picture of
revolution in North America and beyond. I think one of
the strongest strategies for the development of the Black Revolution
would be a Black labor federation. As Even discusseds in
his book, black labor has been a critical economic fact

(43:25):
in America since the country's inception, and it was through
the toil of black labor, beginning with slave labor in
the Old South and extending to share cropping, farm labor
and migration to the North for factory jobs, that the
foundations of the American nation were built. However, as is obvious,
black workers have been routinely excluded from that share of

(43:47):
the wealth of the American nation and routinely excluded from
the trade unions that struggled to regain some of that wealth, like,
for example, the American Federation of Labor, the Dash Colored
Labor Union, the National Colored Farmers Alliance, and the Brotherhood
of Sleeping Car Porters, as well as the League of
Black Revolutionary Workers, and other unions and associations of black

(44:09):
workers were then formed to represent these interests that were
being left out and not at all brought to the table.
Black workers were very much instrumental in the Congress of
Industrial Organizations, campaign of strikes and sit downs and other
protests to organize unskilled industrial workers, but they didn't get

(44:32):
to enjoy the benefits of their pivotal role. Most of
the Black population is working class, and black industrial and
clerical workers still hold significant potential power and the struggle
for black liberation. A lot of these workers have already
been organized and to defend their righted work and advocate

(44:53):
for their interests, even if union leadership is conservative, even
if they weren't challenge management, even if they're not even unionized.
We see as well in modern times a lot of
black figures stepping up to organize these unions. The first
union to be organized in Amazon was spearheaded by a
black worker, Chris Smaws, and workers black workers across history

(45:19):
have already been creating union caucuses and creating independently of
unions were necessary to push for their specific interests because,
I mean, the unity of black workers and the rest
of the working class is essential to combat and overthrow capitalism.
But there needs to be a recognition within that unity

(45:41):
of distinctly black interests and a distinctly black history, which
is why black caucuses within unions are able to take
up demand to the struggles that unions have turned the
blind eye to, such as discriminatory hiring, firing, and promotion practices,
and you know, lack of equal treatment. I think these

(46:01):
caucuses could even go further as even also argues to
democratize their unions, to eliminate some of these discriminatory practices,
and to really push for the radical fighting spirit that
has been lost in some of these sort of reformist
union structures. The black aucuss and also the workers more

(46:21):
generally should be stepping up to demand democratic control the union,
to demand equal treatments, demand of firmative action, demand full
employment demand, shorter work weeks, to demand, the right to strike,
the demand to social security, and an employment compensation demand
for liverable minimum wages. Of course, all of these accomplishments

(46:45):
or demands already sort of short term benefits that would
still retain a COPITALSS structure, but they're necessary nonetheless, especially
when unionize the is are an all time low historically.
One of the things that even also advocates for, which

(47:05):
I'll get into more in the future, is this idea
of unions advocating for companies to put aside funds specifically
for programs to rebuild in a city communities and provide
work for black workers and your stocks, about worker self

(47:26):
management of industry by factory committees and workers councils, and
elections by workers themselves. But the main idea that he's
pushing for, at least in terms of the black working
class and black labor, is, as I mentioned, a Black
labor federation, both in a national level and on an

(47:48):
international level, a national workers association with serves both a
revolutionary union movement for a place organizing and a mass
social movement for community organizing, combining tactics from both the
labor and the black liberation movements to multiply their numbers

(48:08):
and build their strength and tilling the unions into these
militant class struggle instruments. An example that we can see
in history during the late nineteen sixties was the League
of Revolutionary Black Workers, which is organizing black auto workers
out of the out of the Dodge Revolutionary Movement. Sorry

(48:32):
to me, let me rephrase that. One example of that
type of organization could be found in the League of
Revolutionary Black Workers, which organized black auto workers during the
late nineteen sixties. The League had grown out of a
major affiliate of it out of a major affiliate, the
Dodge Revolutionary Movement, and it was a black labor federation

(48:53):
that existed as an organized alternative to the United Auto Workers,
which have been excluding black workers. League was also a
very major force on the streets, as it was in
addition to organizing its workplaces organized in college campuses and
black inner city areas. But its potential was stifled, unfortunately

(49:14):
by political faction fights among leadership. There was a division
between those who wanted to take a more Marxist Leninist
approach to the organization compared to those who want to
take more democratic approach the organization. There was a lack
of a solid enough organized based in the factories, there

(49:35):
was significant company and United Auto Workers, and state repression.
Of course, organized racism, a lack of cooperation among white workers,
and other reasons that eventually led to the league splitting
into mutually hostile factions that would die after less than
five years of existence. Classic organized and history story. I

(49:59):
don't think that you should look at these failures and
use them as an opportunity to give up. I think
we look at these failures and we use them as
learning opportunities, use them as opportunities to recognize, oh, we
can do something like this, but not exactly like this.

Speaker 2 (50:15):
Yeah, and make sure that Bob Avankian is never involved
at any point in the process.

Speaker 8 (50:21):
Exactly exactly. I mean, we still need these sorts of
labor organizations and associations and unions. We still need black
workers pay aheading these sort of organizations to organize other
black workers in their communities to support the strike. Sim
workplace organized. It will be necessary for significant changes, and

(50:41):
of course we need the groups we established to avoid
the pitfalls and ideological scruples of Marxism. Len this up.
But you're just the sort of American approach, because in
case those of you who don't know, I'm not living
in America, I'm not an American, which is why, and also
addresses and advocates for an international Black Labor Federation to

(51:05):
wield the collective power of black workers globally that have
been universally oppressed and exploited around the world as a
racial group, Black workers have been oppressed as workers and
as people, and this dual form for pressure is really

(51:28):
what emphasizes that need to organize for old rights and
our own liberation. In African and Caribbean countries, including trant Tobigo,
there are labor federations and labor unions, but a lot
of them are reformists, a lot of them are government control,
and there's a lack of militancy. There's a lot of
collaboration with the government and with companies they're supposed to

(51:51):
be organizing against. As it's necessary to have an organization
with an internationalist scope that is pushing for solidarity, that
is pushing for radical change. And so I think that's
that's the real strength of an international Black Labor Federation.
You know, that idea of increased solidarity across several countries,

(52:12):
uh the idea of strengthening our collective bargaining power and
ability to organize this better work and conditions. Of course,
we'd also have the benefit of shared resources and the
benefit of greater visibility to these issues that we are
facing in the workplace and in society. And then of
course there will also be the ability to exert using
that visibility and resources and solidarity to exert greater political influence. However,

(52:39):
you know, an international Black federation, we still struggle with
political barriers, particularly in countries that are actively hostile to
that sort of organizing. Of course, the power would be
will do everything in their power to keep such a
struggle from being able to attain and maintain any kind
of momentum or power. The construs rains of time and

(53:02):
energy and resources and engagement also prevent such a federation
from gaining crown. But I still think of all those
are issues that we should keep in mind. If well developed,
I think that national, regional and international caucuses can do
a lot to implement significant changes. In fact, one strategy

(53:27):
that even advocates for is something that I believe an
international Black Labor federation or any kind of International Labor
Federation will be necessary to help to organize, and that
would be a general strike because the vast majority of
the Black community consists of working class people in the US,

(53:49):
because many of them are engaged in manufacturing and medical
service and communications and food production and retail, h a
lot of blue collar work that really makes the country
go around. It really makes them an essential component to
the Capital's economy and of the American economy. I think

(54:14):
it positions them as really really key players in any
sort of protest campaign that would involve first racism and
class oppression, and it could go even further into beyond
just stepping up and striking for demands in the workplace,

(54:35):
control over the workplace. It could also go step further
and accomplish it and accomplish in even more revolutionary goals.
And I would of course involve using tactics like industrial
sabotage and factory occupations and sit ins and slowdowns and
wildcat strikes and other work stoppages that would help to

(54:56):
reassuit our collective power. Of course, as I'm always really
careful to emphasize when I bring up general strikes, they're
not easy to organize. A friend of mine Alkie. He
has a video on his YouTube channel about general strikes
and how they work, and some of the history is

(55:16):
some past general strikes. So that's I think that's required
reading code good reading to definitely check out. But yeah,
general strikes are not easy to organize. They're not something
that you could just call for on Reddit or Twitter
or Facebook or whatever.

Speaker 5 (55:32):
You know.

Speaker 8 (55:33):
It takes serious community and workplace mobilization. It takes significant planning.
It takes strike committees and support committees because and even
defense committees when employers maybe trying to retaliate against strike
cod workers or blacklist or fire workers.

Speaker 4 (55:53):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (55:53):
And I would also say like something that I think people, okay,
there's not a delegate way to say this, Like, look,
if you're gonna be engaged in like a long term,
serious general strike, you're gonna have to do things like
you're gonna have to start seizing stuff, Like you're going
to have to start committing theft in order to make
sure that people can like eat, Yeah, exactly, Like you're

(56:16):
gonna have to start appropriating stuff.

Speaker 8 (56:20):
Yeah, exactly. It's not just standing around in a picket line,
you know, Like the general strike is an extra extremely
involved and invested. You don't get usually you don't get
two chances to do a general strike, you know, like

(56:41):
you have that chance, and after that they're usually if
you feel you usually introduce legislation or put things in
place to ensure that something like that never happens again.

Speaker 2 (56:54):
Yeah, or you get like there was a thing that
used to happen back when, you know, back in like
the early nineteen hundreds of these, and a lot was
you would get these general strikes, but you know they
would kind of they would be like like two days long.
And there's this great Melo testa quote from Oheen nineteen

(57:15):
twenty four, I think where he's talking about how he's
talking about the factory occupations that started in Italy in
the like during the two Red Years, and he has
this line that goes, general strikes a protests no longer
upset anyone, neither those who take part in them, nor
those against whom they are directed. If only the police

(57:36):
had the intelligence to avoid being provocative, they would pass
off as a public as any public holiday. One must
seek something else. We put forward an idea, the takeover of.

Speaker 8 (57:46):
Factories exactly exactly like you have to step beyond or
is this legal? It is this legal and looking too
Oh what can we make possible? You know, yeah, I
mean I don't mean to be flippant, you know, like
it's difficult. It takes so much organization of a lot

(58:07):
and coordination of a large group of people. There's always
put the sea of scabs.

Speaker 5 (58:12):
You know.

Speaker 8 (58:13):
It could have significant consequences for workers who depend on
their wages to survive and to support their families. It
can have a lot of ripple effects, and it could
also involve you know, workers end up going to jail
or just losing their jobs. But still it's it's a

(58:34):
powerful tool that if we can recognize, if we could
start working towards if when people were calling for strikes
back in twenty sixteen and twenty seventeen and twenty eighteen,
twenty nineteen and twenty twenty one and two, if all
those years so we spent calling for general strikes actually
more effort was being put in to actually put the

(58:56):
foundation in place for general strike to occur, then twenty
twenty three we would be prepared to support a general
strike in a long term way, in a way that
would actually signify, you know, revolutionary change in our lifetimes
I mean they'll be discertened. Dear listener, They're still potential

(59:22):
for such a thing to occur. It just takes preparation
and organization. Speaking of things that take preparation organization, and
one of Irven's tactics is a mass tax boycott. You know,
people should refuse to pay any form of taxes to
the government, be it federal, income, estate, or state taxes
while they continue to be exploited. Because, as he would argue,

(59:44):
you know, wealthy and their corporations paying next to no taxes,
while the poor and workers be a brunch of taxation
and do not receive any benefits in return. You know,
all these taxes on income and goods and services, but
communities are still suffering, and that money ends up going
to fund the Pentagon and defense contractors and consultants who

(01:00:05):
get to you know, loot the government for their own game.
So part of a black radical movement or the Black revolutions,
if an arguseful, is a mass tax resistance movement to
boycott taxes, similar to the peace movements, war tax resistance,
taking people all the taxes that would have gone into

(01:00:27):
personal property, all the taxes that wo have been reaped
from personal property and income tax and stocks and bonds,
and funneling that towards community development, find that towards going
to projects and organizations. As with any evolution reaction, significant
legal consequences would be involved in that. Of course, you know,

(01:00:50):
I think such a tactic needs some serious mass support
and backend behind it to succeed. And even then, I
don't believe it should be the backboone of any movement.
I think it's more so like an accessory and event
of media rupture, a single tool in a broader arsenal,
Like I don't think the entire movement should be built
off of tax avoidance. They're just going to get a

(01:01:12):
bunch of people throw into prison. They ask a lot
more to it than that. I look at the sort
of cost benefit analysis, like, yeah, it'll get a lot
of federal attention, but if it's not properly implemented, I
don't really see any immediate benefits for the long term
goals of the movement. I mean, I could be wrong,
but it's not a tactic that I would personally feelful

(01:01:33):
unless such a struggle is already in existence and in
its later stages another type of boycott that's even references is,
of course the irregular, conventional, unconventional sort of boycotts used
during the Civil Rights movement. A lot of black consumers

(01:01:53):
with boycott, particular moochents public services refusing to treat with
moochents who would allow for reach of discrimination and use
that loss of revenue to force them to make concessions. Today,
black consumers in the US spend hundreds of billions a
year in the campus economy. Of course, not all of
those consumers are workers, and all those workers are able

(01:02:19):
to boycott. But I think boycotts are still a potential
to the arsenal again to wage you know, warfare, economic
warfare against the corporate structures. I mean it could be
expanded from anything. It can be expanded to cover everything

(01:02:40):
from specific products to entire industries. Right. Dr Martin Luther
King Junior himself recognized the potential of a national black boycott.
Doctor Martin Luther King Junior himself recognized the potential of
a national black boycott for America's major corporations. Shortly after

(01:03:01):
he was assassinated, he established such an initiative called Operation
bread Basket, which aimed, among other things, to force corporations
to pour money into national black community development projects for
poor communities. I think, you know, podcasts have a way
to put economic pressure, but they I also believe a

(01:03:30):
little bit less effective in our modern globalized world due
to the fact that you know, a lot of these
companies are owned by the same like three corporations. They
usually have ways to mitigate economic losses in one market
by targeting other alternative markets. Or even if they experienced

(01:03:54):
a dip in demand in one sector, they may still
enjoy demand in another sector and another part of the world.
And on top of that, company is can of also
use that it as an opportunity to sort of get
people off the movement. For example, boycott is taking place,
they could say, oh, you're trying to boycott, well, we

(01:04:16):
just put a sale out fifty sixty percent of wild
stocks last and then you have people sort of, you know,
breaking off of the movement. And I mean, of course,
not everybody will do that, some people are principled, but
that is still a tactic that you see some companies
using when they're starting to experience that sort of economic pressure,
they try to fragment the movement quote unquote votes in

(01:04:40):
with your wallet, even mass coordinated in my opinion, is
limited in its ability to challenge the courses.

Speaker 6 (01:04:46):
Of oppression in equality.

Speaker 8 (01:04:48):
I would think it brings us any closer to anarchist
I think it only weakens the current world. So I
think it's another tactic that really cannot act alone. And
then we got another tool in Yos. Now we could
call it a rent boycott. We can call it a
rent strike. It's a way to achieve certain legislative changes,

(01:05:13):
or so we to achieve certain more radical changes if
you get into sort of occupation and squatn and that
kind of thing. In Harlem, in New York City, rent
boycotts were so successful the decreation of rent control legislation,
which prevented evictions, unjustified price increases, and required reasonable upkeep

(01:05:34):
by property owners and management companies. There is a track
record of Rench strikes providing some benefits, you know, allowing
tenants to negotiate with landlords and to bring some issues
to light. And I could also bring about, of course,
certain policy changes and push for or highlight further the

(01:05:55):
need for affordable and accessible houses. But again, Rench strikes
legally risky. They can also be difficult to coordinate, especially
for those who are really kind of risk eviction. I mean,
nobody can really risk eviction, right, But that's where the
risk sort of comes in. And then if there's a

(01:06:17):
lack of support, if the land world has significant resources
behind them, there are also you know, ways that it
could go wrong. I don't want to mislead like I
want people to be aware of the reality of how
difficult this sort of organized effort is. All these organizing
efforts are. It's not a walk in the park. It's
not you know, like acts the end of Act three

(01:06:45):
and some revolution story movie where the good guys are
able to win with the power of friendship, with that
kind of thing. It's tough work and we have to
be aware of the risks even as we engage in
such actions. Even also advocates for you know, squatting in
tandem with rent strikes. So, in addition to withholding rent

(01:07:05):
payments from exploitsive landlords and banks, also movements to engage
in urban squating, to seize housen to seize empty plots
of land, to seize unoccupied and abandoned buildings, and to
redirect payments that would have gone towards rent towards necessary
repairs to improve living conditions and to claim our cities

(01:07:29):
for ourselves. But again, while squating does provided immediate housing
solution for those in need, while draws attentions the issue
of hosting inequality, while creates a sense of collective ownership,
and while it can help to improve all these neglected
areas and urban environments, it's also legal cross involved in

(01:07:52):
effection and arrest. A lot of squatting conditions can be
fairly unsafe, while unsanitary, particularly if a property is not
up to a particular standard. And then of course squating
is also sort of temporary as a solution. It doesn't
really address the root courses of housing. It is really

(01:08:13):
a precurious position to keep people in. And it's another
case where without mass defense and support we got a
mass movement backing it up, it's going to be very
easy to dislodge any games that might be made in
the short term. Family even also argues for the establishment

(01:08:33):
of the commune as a staging ground for Black revolutionary struggle.
The concept of the community is basically like a dual
power structure, an institution meant to compete with government power,
to preserve as a comment to government power in order

(01:08:53):
to assert collective community power foreman and unify and various
organizations as struggle taking control of existing communities and institutions
and work at a fight against economic and political and
cultural discrimination, expertiation and servitude in this capitalist society. And

(01:09:18):
he goes in to talk about inner city communes as
centers of black counterpower and social revolertionary culture to say,
as sort of a living example of what revolution could
look like. I think this is a case where at
the time he didn't have the word for it, but
we do now, and that would be prefigurative politics, the

(01:09:41):
idea of you know, establishing these sort of institutions and
the here and now that would be able to prefigure
the world that we want to see in the future.
Another component of these sort of communes is to provide
a count narrative to sort of black capitalism and responsibility politics.

(01:10:03):
It gets pushed out as a dominant narrative within black
communities in the US. The commune and the Black communey specifically,
you can say as a place for a new society
and a new culture to emerge that rejects the internalization
of oppression under this system. And so when you want

(01:10:25):
to get into sort of how the sort of community
be established, even talks about establishing community councils the world
govern and even talks about establishing community councils to allow
for collective governance and be composed of workers from various

(01:10:47):
industries and neighborhoods and delegates to organized communities on a
block by block basis. He also emphasizes they need to
reject black politicians, bureaucrats, and mayors from sort of co

(01:11:08):
opting these efforts and ensuring that the community on the
ground actually retains control over the institutions that they establish
and develop and take control over to ensure that the
community's needs and desires are met. One example that he

(01:11:32):
uses is in the case of schools right where the
community would organize parents, students, teachers, and community like to
cooperatively administer the schools. I think we see a lot

(01:11:52):
of efforts by right wing parents right now organize and
sort of run things in a lot of public schools,
But that does mean it's similar efforts can't be taken
by radicals to push for the same. Of course, it
wouldn't be as easy because they aim to see the

(01:12:12):
status school, whereas we aim to change things.

Speaker 2 (01:12:15):
I think it is sort of important to note too
that it's like, it's not like this sort of like
right wing school stuff came out of nowhere. Like part
of the reason this was happening was that like there
had been movements inside the like inside.

Speaker 5 (01:12:30):
Sorry, let me if I say.

Speaker 2 (01:12:32):
There have been movements from teachers and from like inside
the education system trying to sort of like, you know,
we do things I teach black history, right, and you know,
like part like these are these are things that like,
these are kinds of movements that people really tend to
ignore and really tend to sort of not think about

(01:12:53):
the significance of. But yeah, I mean it's it's it's
not like these sort of like right wing versions of this.

Speaker 5 (01:12:59):
Came out of know where.

Speaker 2 (01:13:00):
They were reaction to people, you know, doing a sort
of more moderate version of the strategy.

Speaker 8 (01:13:06):
Yeah, that's true. That is true, And so now we
have to push even harder to counter their counter efforts
and really assuite that sort of transformation in the education
space and beyond just the education space. What Even talks

(01:13:29):
about is ensuring that these councils encompass a variety of organizations,
not just blocking neighborhood communities, but also labor union, student groups,
social activist groups and even specialists you or single issue
campaigns and issues. The idea is, of course, to continuously

(01:13:51):
promote self rule, to continuously develop people's powers and drives
and consciousness towards liberation, and to continuously offer an alternative
to this pervasive sense that all this is is all
they can ever be. It's necessary to sort of incubate

(01:14:14):
this sort of embryo of a revolutionary society, this micro
cause of a new lifestyle, and to highlight the necessity
of struggle against you know, these systems. And when I
speak of consciousness, I'm also speaking of specifically Black consciousness.

(01:14:37):
Speaking of consciousness rais and sessions to ensure that black history,
black culture is accessible and available and understood by the
black community. To ensure that newly liberates and like social
ideas and values are distributed within the community, to ensure
that counselinine therapy are available, rooted, and of course a

(01:15:01):
black revolutionary perspective tell people to realize that this disunity
and distrust and violence and oppression, that because due to
this legacy end of this system does not have to

(01:15:22):
continue to be so. But that's it for me and
for Irvin. For now you can join us for part
two where we can dive into the day to day aspects.
So there's viable programs that Irvin describes to build black
resilience in the air. And now if you're looking for

(01:15:43):
me on the internet, you can find me on YouTube
dot com slash andeurism and you can support on patuon
dot com slash saying Peace. And welcome back to another

(01:16:12):
episode of It Could Happen here with myself Andrew of
the YouTube channel Andewism if you're joining us. From the
previous episode, we touched on the life of Lorenzo Cambo
Irvin who he was as a leading figure in the
black anarchist movement, how he ended up in that position,

(01:16:36):
sort of his life story and how he ended up
writing Anarchism the Black Revolution and sort of breaking down
that vision of a Black revolution, including tactics like communes, squats,
French strikes, tax strikes, boycotts, general strikes, and of course
a Black labor federation. But that's not all that Uven

(01:16:57):
has explored in his work, and today we're going to
dive into his vision for survival programs, things to agitate
for and actions the black community can take to survive
under the current system now. Historically, black communities have been
subjected to economic exploitation, with businesses and financial institutions often

(01:17:17):
taken profits out of the community without investing in its
growth and development, and this of course has led to disinvestment, poverty,
lack of resources of community members, and of course persistent
relative deprivation. So the demand for community control of businesses
and financial institutions that even outlines, is something that seeks

(01:17:39):
to shift power and resources back into the hands of
the community. By place and control in the hands community
members provides an opportunity to build economic power and to
ensure that businesses and financial institutions work for communities rather
than vice versa, because such institution and businesses would be

(01:18:01):
under the control of the workers themselves. So in a
cooperative model, members work together to achieve common goals and
share the benefits and risks of a business equally. The
covenant structure for cooperative typically involves board of directors who
might elected by members to make strategic decisions on behalf
of the cooperative, but there of course other ways of

(01:18:24):
organizer and including horizontal consensus. All members of a cooperative
have an equal say in these decisions, with each member
typically having one food and the board of directors is
meant to just be accountable to members and act in
the best interest of the cooperative. Now cooperatives already exist,
they operate in various industries, and they can operate in

(01:18:46):
various industries including agriculture, retail, finance, housing, healthcare, and more.
For example, in a cooperative agriculture model, farmers can prove
resources to purchas seeds, fertilizers, and equipment lower cost, and
then sell their crops collectively to increase bargaining power and
reduce costs. In a retail cooperative, members can buy products

(01:19:08):
at a discount and how a saying the type of
products offered, while in a financial cooperative, members can access
banking services and share in the profits they're generated by
the cooperative. Cooperatives also often provide mutual aid and support
to their members, with surplus profits from the businesses reinvested
either in the businesses or distributed as dividends to members,

(01:19:30):
which ensures that the benefit to the business are shared
equatively and members have a stake in the success of
a cooperative. Like I mentioned, corporators already exist, which means
they are capable of operating within capitalism, but within a
broader program of social revolution. They're meant to build our
alternative power in a dual power struggle to eventually enable

(01:19:56):
us to assert our independent from this system as it will.
But even here now, it is necessary to survive under
this system, and I think cooperatives offer a more humane
and more empowering model. Another example of that sort of
cooperative structure could be found in mutual lead banking societies,

(01:20:20):
again owned and controlled by the members, and are created
specifically to provide access to financial services and support to
individuals and communities that have been traditionally excluded or marginalized
from a lot of traditional banking systems. So they function

(01:20:40):
to provide low interest loans to members for various purposes
including you know, starts and businesses, purchasing homes, covering unexpected expenses,
and members are required to you know, put in a
certain amount each month to fund these sorts of loans,
and in addition to providing financial services sort of societies

(01:21:02):
can also provide education and support, help with financial planning,
help with budgeting, help with financial literacy to enable members
to better survive within their current financial situation under capitalism.
And so that's one aspect of the survival program, right,

(01:21:24):
and emphasis on survival it existed now in this system.
So that's one aspect of pushing for community controller businesses
and financial institutions and creating community cooperatives and mutual aid
banking societies. Another aspect of that survival program that open
outlines is achieving community controlled housing to help address is

(01:21:47):
to use of gentrification, displacement, and lack of affordable housing
through legal and legal means such as then strikes and demonstrations,
arn't actions, open squad in, drive landlords out and take
over the property. Those are more precarious approaches, right, and
then they're also be above the board methods. I spoke

(01:22:07):
about those approaches. Some of those approaches in the first
part the quote unquote above the board methods would be
establishing things like community land trusts or colts. A CLT
is essentially a nonprofit organization that owns and manages land
for the benefit of a community. The CLT can acquire

(01:22:29):
land and then lease it to developers or residents who
agree to use the land for affordable house which allows
them to retain control of the land and ensure there's
been used for their good rather than being solo off
the private developers for the sake of profit. In a
situation under a CLT where a homeowner wants to sell

(01:22:51):
wants to move, they can only sell the building that
they occupy. They can't sell the land itself because the
community land Trust retains control of the land. The Community
land Trust also retains the right of first refusal to
purchase the buildings, which basically means before you can try
and sell the building to anyone else, you have to
give the Community land Trust, the community itself an opportunity

(01:23:13):
to buy the building back, and that would enable them
to also make sure that people aren't coming into just
profit off of such affordable holes in and they're also
doing it so that the house in stay is affordable,
so they can ensure that they can resell the building
to somebody who's also seeking that, you know, affordable housing.

(01:23:38):
And by providing that sort of house in, community land
trusts can stabilize communities and prevent displacement in the long term.
They can help to revitalize distress neighborhoods, and they can
also invest into things like community facilities like pools, and
laundromats and gyms and that sort of thing. In terms

(01:24:05):
of how you actually create a colt, laws of course
vary from place to place, but essentially you form a
nonprofit organization, obtain tax exam status, acquire the land either
through purchase or donation, and then begin developing affordable house

(01:24:26):
or community facilities on the land. In addition to that,
a community an trust would need to guidelines in place
for leasing the land home owners and to maintain the
affordability of the land over time. And of course, community
an trust requires a system of governance and decision making
to engage in that sort of ongoing effort of involving

(01:24:49):
the residents themselves and ensuring that they are educated, and
how comuntland trusts work, and how this model could be
expanded to other communities. For the start, abolition such a
thing requires significant resources. Another approach to community controlled housing
that also takes some resources is through limited equity housing cooperatives.

(01:25:12):
So in this model, residents own and manage the house development.
Each have a same decision making process to run democratically.
They each have a share in the cooperative, which gives
them the right to occupy a unit in development. The
share price, however, is set at a fixed rate, which
means the unit can only be sold back to the

(01:25:32):
cooperative at the same price, which again helps to make
sure that the housing remains affordable in the long term. So,
unlike with the community land trust where you own the
building but you don't own the land, in an LHC

(01:25:55):
or limited equity housing cooperative, you don't own the building
or the land, You own a share and the cooperative
owns the property itself. You're also required, of course, to
contribute a down payment and to pay monthly fees, which
helps to maintain and manage the property. You know, it's
difficult to organize things, as anyone with some experience organizing

(01:26:21):
can tell you, and something as high investment as housing
is no different, right. It's a challenge. It's a challenge
in fundraising, it's a challenge in organizing people. It's a
challenge and insurance that such efforts are defended and able
to establish themselves in the long term. But it's still

(01:26:43):
a promising model I believe for survival because of its
priority on community ownership and control. It really relieves that
one major stress in a lot of people's lives in
terms of affordable housing. Of course, the long term ors
and should be decommodified entirely, but that is the future.

(01:27:04):
The survival program is for the heir now. Another aspect
of this fiber program that even talks about is food autonomy,
the establishments of black community controlled food systems to establish
self sufficiency, to control the production, distribution of foods, and
should basic needs to met to ensure that Black communities

(01:27:25):
are no longer at the mouseea of food deserts and
other systemic barriers to accessing healthy, affordable food. By creating
trucking networks and warehouses and community farms, farmers cooperatives, food cooperatives,
agricultural unions, and other collective associations, black communities can ensure
that healthy and essential foods are readily available. Rather than

(01:27:48):
just treating the symptom, such institutions would treat the root
cause of food and security, which is a lack of
control over our food chains and food networks. So, for example,
a trucking network would be used to transport food from
communal farms to warehouses which could serve as clecterly owned

(01:28:12):
distribution centers for the food in a sort of a
library economy set in the waite houses can also save
us storage facilities for other non perishable food items, to
bank seeds to distribute those seeds and other items and
tools to community gardens and food cooperatives, and such community

(01:28:35):
gardens could be established on vacant lots, on rooftops and
unused spaces within the city, particularly in areas where access
to fresh produce is limited, and all these efforts would
involve members of the community who would be responsible for
each step in the process and ensuring that such things
are accessible equatively. Food cooperatives within communities could for example,

(01:29:00):
be organized through sort of a share structure where each
household or each individual has a share in the cooperative
that entitles them to sit down to food each week.
Or you could have in a sort of a library
structure that a lot of different ways that you can organize it.
You could even have as well. Agricultural unions provide support

(01:29:21):
and training and education unsustainable farming practices, access to tools
and equipment, financial systems for farmers in need. All these
efforts would establish the foundation necessary for food or autonomy
under this sort of survival program that Eve has developed,

(01:29:47):
and as I mentioned in the previous episode, even also
talks about under the survival programs, developing autonomous education, ensuring
the community has control over every aspect of the educational system,
from the curriculum, textbooks, to the hiring and training of teachers, administrators,

(01:30:08):
And as I spoke about in the previous episode, you know,
the same way the reactionary is fighting advocate for control
of educations, the same way that we can do the same.
It won't be as easy, but we have to counter
their efforts because they've already been countering hours the minimal
gains we've made, and for example, ensuring that an accurate
account of history is told in schools is already being

(01:30:30):
fought against, so we need to go even further. Community
controlled schools would not only reflect community values, culture and history.
Not only would they be designed to meet the specific
needs of the children within them. Not only do they

(01:30:52):
provide us safe and a nutrient environment, encourage creativity, critical thinking,
and problem solving skills, but they would also provide a space,
an additional space for the development of people's powers and
drives and consciousness towards liberation at any age. I mean,

(01:31:16):
in addition to primary and secondary education, Woven also talks
about free higher education programs, remedial training programs, reading programs,
trade programs, all these things to help develop people's skills
and education knowledge that would helped equip them to address social, political,

(01:31:38):
and economic issues. If it also calls for a system
of community based self defense to defend ourselves against various
forms of violence, including police brutality, heat crimes, and vigilanty attacks,
without relying on government or law enforcement agencies to defend

(01:31:59):
or set else, they had several components to this. Of course,
you'll involved organizing and mobilizing community members to participate in
self defense training programs. It would involve weapons training, It
would involve tactics for de escalation. It would involve a
network that can coordate responses to incidents of violence, establishing

(01:32:23):
community channels to quickly disseminate information, enabling restorative and transformative
justice practices to be included to keep the state out
of resolving the conflicts between people in communities. And then,
of course, unlike a lot of these law enforcement systems

(01:32:44):
and structures, a community based self defense program or system
would also be involved in the prevention of such incidents
of violence and harm and conflict from recurrent. It will
be involved in continuously evaluating interchange in circumstances, to analyze
in the patterns of violence and gaps that are taking

(01:33:06):
place in training or in resources, and to continuously refine
tactics and strategies and approaches to see to the long
term healing of the communities and the interruption of cycles
of violence and generational trauma in the long term. Another

(01:33:31):
component of these survival programs would involve medical training, large
scale medical training programs in black communities providing individuals with
the knowledge and skills needed to understand and address health issues.
Black communities, especially those from low income backgrounds in the US,
often face significant barriers to access in quality healthcare. It's

(01:33:54):
due to systemic racism and oppression. So it's due to
inaccessibility and an affordability of healthcare just generally, and also
the quality and resources af felable within certain communities specifically,
and also the ways that health outcomes are worse if

(01:34:19):
you are black. Black mothers are, or rather the black
maternal death rate is one particularly heavy example of these
sorts of disparities. And so that's why we need community
based medical clinics and training programs and workshops and seminars

(01:34:39):
led by black medical professionals, public health experts, public health experts,
and community organizers who are versed in the social sernants
of health and impacts of systemic racism and health outcomes,
and invested in seeing that changed. Such a program would
involve medical including dental training, empower individuals to provide basic

(01:35:05):
health care services and support their communities. You would involve
trading in first aid. You involve healthcare screenings, health education,
because underrepresentation in health matters, lack of education in one's
own personal health matters, and two people losing their lives
as a result of that racial blind spot and as
a result of that inequality, and so survival program in

(01:35:27):
the here and now needs to account for that. Even
also calls for the release of black political prisoners as
part of a broader abolitionist struggle rooted in the recognition
that the criminal justice system in the US has been
used as a tool for political repression against black people
and the martialized communities. You're speaking here from experience, of course,

(01:35:51):
he wrote this when he was in prison. Mass and
conceration of black people has been deliberate and systemic effort
to silence and dissent, to silence dissent and maintain the
statusco of white supremacy and white supremacist capitalism. Here and now,
survival programs should be involved in the release of black

(01:36:12):
political prisoners, especially to investigate and review the cases of
those who have been unjustly imprisoned, to address the use
of cost confessions, falsified evidence, and other forms of prosecutorial
misconduct there has led to wrongful convictions that has led
to people rotten away in jail cells for decades with
no sort of justice. I mean, these people are often

(01:36:35):
so of the most committed and dedicated revolutionaries and their
continued imprisonment has been a craving justice. Some of them
unfortunately passed before they're even released if they have released
a tool and by demanding their release, by fighting for
their freedom, by writing to them and supporting them even now,
by showing our solidarity with those who have sacrificed so

(01:36:55):
much in the struggle for liberation and ensuring that their
voices are heard, not only can we aid in their survival,
but we can also aid in our own. Lastly, even
calls for the ever contentious big payback reparations. You have

(01:37:18):
then challenges us to build a mass movement in our
communities to compel the government and the rich to provide
the means for our community is redevelopment at the centuries
of slavery and of abuse, and of robbery and of discrimination,
demanding those reparations in the form of community development funds
to be placed in credit unions, cooperatives and not the

(01:37:39):
mutual aid institutions in the black community, so we can
start to obtaining some measure of economic self sufficiency. But
of course from the question of who pays, to how
we force them to pay, to how we determine how
much they pay, how that pay is distributed or implemented,
if the pay is even in cash. You know, there's
a lot of tensions surrounding that topic and pro reparation.

(01:38:00):
It's not just for Black America, with the entire diaspora.
I mean, I've seen the US made sure to get
reparations for itself and its allies after World War Two.
The victims of various atrustees have received reparations for the injustices.
But as soon as Black people demand their do demand
their do everybody, you know, they want us to forget

(01:38:20):
about it. But yeah, everybody knows, and I think part
of that is because everybody knows that they can't actually
afford it. You know, if we were paid exactly what
we would do, they would not have the wealth that
they have. And so my stance has always been I

(01:38:41):
don't think reparations will come by ballot. I don't want
it to come by ballot. I don't want to receive
some check in the mail it says, okay, now be happy,
get over it, but let me not get myself in
any more trouble. Even at that, I don't think it
will come by a ballot.

Speaker 5 (01:39:04):
There's a lot of things that's reasonable.

Speaker 8 (01:39:07):
Yeah, I've already said so much in these past two episodes.
I mean, there are a lot of arms to this
survival program. Then bring things to a close a bit.
There as a lot of areas of struggle that we
can pick up, a lot of things that can be applied.
Of course, most of these things I think could be
applied beyond the black community. But there's a reason that
the black community specifically was Urban's focus, because of his

(01:39:32):
life experience, because of the need to address black communities
specifically in uh in an anarchist text, something that was
really lacking prior to the resurgence of you know, the
black radical tradition, the black anarchist specific tradition in the seventies.
So it's necessary. But I just hope, you know, people

(01:39:57):
who are listening who on that black didn't just you know,
click off, that I still hear that these ideas and stuff,
these programs are applicable more broadly. I hope that I
can see and contribute to these changes in my lifetime,
and as I consistently borrow from Ashanti Alston, another black

(01:40:23):
anarchist figure who I actually hope at some point we
could bring on or power to all the people.

Speaker 5 (01:40:31):
Peace.

Speaker 7 (01:40:47):
Hello podcast fans, and welcome to it could happen here
A podcast Today is hosted by me James Down and
Mia Wong Hi May. Hello, Hi, So what we're going
to talk about today is situation on the border. We're
working on a scripted episode which will take away because
they always do, and you know, if we want that

(01:41:07):
to be nice and sort of polished for youse. But
I did want to update everyone because I think that
what's happening it has a sense of urgency to it,
and certainly like some of the mutual aid requests have
a real sense of urgency to them, and folks who
follow me on Twitter dot com and ll have noticed that,
like in between the ship posts, I've been down at

(01:41:30):
the US Mexico border for most of the tail end
of last week and the start of this week, sort
of depicting what's going on there, along with my friend
Joe Joe Ariyama's who's a freelancer who we're going to
be working with on the scripted series. And people can
find Joe at Joe or Ori e photo on Twitter.
Joe's got some really good photos if you want to

(01:41:52):
see kind of what's going on. But the longer than
the short of it is that title forty two ended
on well to begin with, exactly the moment that it
ended was a subject of some contention, right, we knew
it was going to end on the eleventh of May.
Title thirty two, if folks don't remember, is a emergency

(01:42:13):
public health measure. It's part of the United States Public
Health Law, the United States Code Public Health something something
then allows border patrol to expel people from the United
States without giving them their due process, their asylum here. Basically,
they bounce them straight back to Mexico, right, And this

(01:42:37):
has been in place since March of twenty twenty. We
now know that the Trump administration pressured the CDC, So
in theory it was it came through the CDC, right
the Center for Disease Control under pressure from Drug administration,
direct pressure from Pence, and Stephen Miller was yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:42:56):
Probably this was a Stephen Miller like, yeah, supremacy special.

Speaker 7 (01:43:01):
Yeah, bubblehead looking racist motherfucker has once again done something terrible.
Not that some of his policies. As we'll get onto
this in descripted episode, the Biden administration has like copy
pasted some steep, some straight up Stephen Miller stuff in
its transit bounds and is absolutely liable for I don't

(01:43:22):
want to use the word chaos at our border because
that plays into this Fox use narrative. There is a
very concerted plan to make people suffer more than is
necessary at our border, and it would have been very
easy to avoid this. So title forty two basically, there
are no consequences for crossing, but it's also very hard

(01:43:44):
to get asylum. The CBP officer can like spontaneously decide
to give you your rights. Basically, if you're like, come on, bro,
I'm going to get killed if I go home, then
that person can decide to allow you to be processed
for asylum, which is what a lot of the Ukrainian
folks got surprise, surprise.

Speaker 2 (01:44:04):
And I feel like we should we should also mention
that under like multiple legal frameworks, you have the right
to request asylum. This is this is something that supposedly
is inviolable, Like you have the right as a human
being to request asylum in a country.

Speaker 7 (01:44:21):
Yes, and it doesn't matter where you've been before, and
it doesn't matter how you got there, and you don't
have to do it at a port of entry. It
doesn't matter how you enter the country or where you
entered the country. Yes, yeah, and yeah, under multiple different
international frameworks you have the right to do this. But
the USA has been denying that to people for three
and a eight years now, right, three years and stuff

(01:44:43):
like that, and you know what I mean.

Speaker 2 (01:44:44):
I also could just want to briefly mention this because
I feel like there's this way in which people people
people will talk about like one border regime and then
never connect the dots between this one and the other ones.
But like, for example, like this is something that happens
all over the world world. Yes, I mean like part
part of like part of the sort of like crisis

(01:45:05):
that is going on into Dan right now is about
like a ship ton of money. But the end this
is actually happened in Libya too. It's the Italian government
paying the Libyan and sort of Sudanese parabilitaries a ship
ton of money to like keep refugees like basically like
trap to something, to enslave them in camps, to cute
them from like getting to Italy to try to request asylum.

(01:45:25):
So yeah, so this is a yeah, like Fredecks does
this like this, This is sort of like a global.

Speaker 5 (01:45:31):
Yeah, terrible regime.

Speaker 7 (01:45:33):
The border like industrial complex is every bit as bad,
if not worse than the defense industrial complex. So we're
more familiar with, like border policing is something that really
came post nine to eleven, right with the creation of
DHS and the United States, but we have exported that
shit everywhere. And like our Border Patrol Agents r CBP

(01:45:55):
has an office in lots of embassies or like they
train Dominican border agents the border with Haiti, for instance,
and are trained by our CBP people. CBP agents were
deployed in Iraq, Afghanistan. Yeah, this is a global thing. Yeah,
And like where I guess where I am now, where
I've been for a while, is the place where that

(01:46:15):
all began, right, and where we continue to see CBP
innovating new and exciting ways to fucking take some of
the most desperate people in the world and make them
suffer and spend a shit ton of money and preventing
them from accessing their legal right to asylum or detaining
them while they do it. And so what has happened

(01:46:37):
is so Title forty two was supposed to end on
the eleventh of May, right, that was when the federal
COVID emergency ended, So there was no reason for it
to exist anymore. There wasn't a reason for it to
exist to begin with.

Speaker 2 (01:46:46):
But yeah, any like, don't don't don't think too hard
about the fact that like that was the last that
was basically the last COVID policy that was still in place.

Speaker 7 (01:46:55):
Yeah, Like there were not vaccine mandates for the people
meeting the migrants at the fucking border, Yeah, right, Like.

Speaker 2 (01:47:01):
This was this was this was never about public health,
Like no, you know, I mean, and in so far
as you can extricate sort of like the sort of
imperial estates public health measures from social cleansing stuff, which
has been happening for generations and generations. But yeah, like
this was this was not about that, like this, Yeah,
this was just an immigration ban.

Speaker 7 (01:47:23):
Yeah, and it became a sort of albatross by an
administration who didn't want to be hit on border stuff.

Speaker 5 (01:47:29):
Right.

Speaker 7 (01:47:29):
They didn't want to They didn't want to drop it
before the midterms. They initially band to drop it in
December twenty twenty two, which is obviously right after the
mid terms. They didn't we here we are in May.
There was a complicated legal challenge, which there always is,
and it doesn't matter because here we are right and
it's supposed to drop in the to me, so we're
all thinking, right, midnight on the tenth of May, we'll

(01:47:50):
be out there. We'll see what goes down. They announced
the day before that it is dropping on midnight on
the eleventh, So they're going to ring every minute knit
out of it. And so in the days before, a
number of migrants have told me that they understood that
they basically had to get across before the end of

(01:48:11):
Title forty two, because it was their understanding that if
they crossed under Title eight they would be ejected, and
they wouldn't be allowed to return for five years and
they would face felony charges. So they did this. I
don't quite know often these this information spreads about like
WhatsApp in camps, right, or sort of like like a
game of Telephone in camps. So I don't quite know

(01:48:33):
where this information came from, but it closely parallels something
that majorcus Is, a Secretary of Home lanun Security, said
in press conference where he mischaracterized international immigration law. And
he's done this multiple times. Right, He himself, someone who
is a migrant to this country who apparently family left
Cuba when he was one year old, has just some
of the most dogshit statements on the record, and I've

(01:48:56):
depicted some of those in the scripted episode. Folks up
my piece I wrote for NBC a couple of years
ago about the Biden administration's policy towards Haiti if they
they want to see more of the dogshit stuff that
he and Biden have said. And so in the days
before the end of Title forty two, a lot of
folks started to try to cross right because of this

(01:49:18):
information that they had. They ended up at least where
I am, which is in southern California, right, the sort
of extreme southwestern border in the United States, literally the
end of the wall. Folks were crossing like around the
end of the wall right at low tide and turning
themselves into border patrol asking to make their case for

(01:49:41):
their right to asylum. And I think sometimes when we
think about migrants, you know, we made me think about
people from South America or Central America, every single continent,
maybe not any like Australasians, but like just in it.
In a day at one camp, I spoke to someone

(01:50:01):
from Angola. I spoke to someone from Congo. I spoke
to someone from Sudan. I spoke to a Kurdish guy.
I spoke to people certainly from all over South America, Russians,
Tagik people, Jamaican people, and like. For instance, just to
give you a sense of like how global it is,
I spoke to a Jamaican lady who was caring for

(01:50:24):
a sixteen or seventeen year old pair of Tagiq siblings
who didn't speak any of the relevant languages for communication
with border patroller with other people in the camp, so
she would use her phone to call their mother, who
spoke some English, give information to the mother who would
translate it. Back to these two young children, and all
of these people had presented like there were a lot

(01:50:44):
of Afghan people too. Probably should have mentioned that up top,
But these are the people who we fucking abandoned once
and now we're trapping, trapping them in between little fences.
And it's hot in the day, right like I slept
out in the desert last night and it was above
one Hundred's not that hot in San Diego, but in
her Cumber where they're also holding people, it's absolutely getting
into triple digits every day, and it's cold at night,

(01:51:06):
and it's a really inhospitable environment for people. So folks
were held there, you know, up to a week in
some cases, and are now I think being processed by
a border patrol. There was a ruling by a Florida judge.

(01:51:26):
I'm not exactly clear on when because I was down
at the border and my phone didn't work very well,
but at some point right before Title forty two drop
that they could have been released on humanitarian parole, which
means in theory they have to be released with a
court date, right with a court date to appear for
their asylum hearing, which will slow down the process of
releasing them, right, And so I've heard of court dates.

(01:51:51):
I've heard of folks being released already kind of with
court dates in twenty twenty seven, which this whole thing
has just been like a disaster in terms of the
federal response, right like, and in just the cruelest possible way.

Speaker 3 (01:52:10):
It was.

Speaker 7 (01:52:11):
Everyone could see this coming, right that there will be
more people trying to cross. There are sixteen thousand people
give or take in Tijuana alone, So it's just across
from where I live, waiting to come to the United
States because they've been denied that right for three years,
because they need somewhere safe to go, and because they're
not safe there. And the best estimate we got for

(01:52:33):
how many they could process from border patrol was two
hundred a day at the Tijuana porta Ventry or Sunny
Cedro port of entry, really, but we don't know. There's
no clear I don't know how many people they're processing
every day, right, But these people who do come in
now have to have a hearing date before they can
be released. When if they get through, So I spoke

(01:52:53):
to a young man and his son who I'd spoken
to at the border, and he had been released into
the United States where a charity in San Diego will
provide him with two nights, what like two nights of accommodation, right,
and then it can't quite work out what then, like

(01:53:14):
he's out on his own, you know, Like I guess
we'll find out tonight. But he has to find a sponsor.
I don't quite understand how he was released without a sponsor,
but it seems like the system is kind of bungling
things up, and these folks have to fund their own
flights to wherever it is. A sponsor is right, so

(01:53:35):
they have family or community, they're having to work out
how to get to that family and community, so be
there the greyhound or a plane or a train. So
it all in all a giant classifuck with very human consequences.
Like I can't stress enough how like every possible demographic

(01:53:58):
is represented, old people, little tiny children, right, Like I
was talking to a little Afga and girl, not really
talking to we don't share any languages, but I was
more just like making funny faces for a while and
sort of pointing at things.

Speaker 4 (01:54:12):
And.

Speaker 7 (01:54:14):
Like it just breaks my heart that there are little
children who like especially you know, she's a little girl,
she's from Afghanistan. We told her shit ton of lies
about Afghan women to justify twenty years of killing people,
of certain people making money from killing people, and like
this was supposedly they're like canard was that this was

(01:54:35):
for Afghan girls and women, Right, And here's an Afghan
girl sleeping in the fucking dirt, like twenty twenty minutes
from where I live. And I can't even give this
kid like hot meal because I can't fit it through
the bars of the fence. Like everything that goes across

(01:54:56):
to these people has to go through the bars of
the fence. Right, someone worked out that pizza, pizza could
fit through because flat right, people have been getting pizza.
But other than that, they're getting you know, bottles of water,
granola bars, you know things that fit through a fence,
beef jerky. And they've been there for days in some cases.

(01:55:17):
And that's a camp that's relatively accessible, right, I can
pull off the interstate, drive down a dirt road and
be there in like I say, twenty minutes. The camps
are less accessible. We've heard the conditions are much worse.
A couple of Jamaican guys told me that there was
another camp that we we tried to get access to it,
weren't able to get access to that was further west

(01:55:39):
from where we were, where people were hungry. They're getting
this is all just from that source. I have reached
out a border patrol, but as of today, they haven't
got back to me, saying that they were getting a
bottle of water and a granola bar every day, and
that like some of these other folks had taken it
upon themselves to like walk over there to try and
get them food, right, people who already not in the

(01:56:00):
great situation themselves, and they kept asking why couldn't we
go there, Why couldn't we help them? Like it was
very admirable right to see folks who are in a
pretty bad way be like, hey, these people need help
more than we do. So, yeah, that's a situation. I
think we should take a break for advertising then sorry,
I ye, yeah, hopefully not for a drone or some shit.

(01:56:24):
All right, we're back, and this is another happy and
exciting episode in which I tell you things that will
brighten your day. So something I wanted to talk about
because I think it's important is the mutual aid response
to this, and it's been really really impressive, you know,

(01:56:45):
I live in a place where the Democrats are absolute
dog shit. Well we'll do It's America, right, but like
just the particularly cringe like cast real liberalism of San
Diego Democrats is like as always on display.

Speaker 3 (01:56:58):
Right.

Speaker 7 (01:56:58):
I saw one of them tweeting today how CBS, DHS
and CBP are doing a great job and keeping us safe,
and like my like it makes me want to say
things I shouldn't say on the podcast, I guess. But
what that means is that, like, our government isn't going

(01:57:20):
to do shit, right, Like, it is entirely on us
to look after each other. And people have done that.
The groups like American Friends Service Committee, which is a
great organization which has really good stuff on the boarder,
have been down there every single day, right, Like there
have been days when I've left at one am there's
still someone there. They've been giving people water, giving people food.

(01:57:43):
A huge need that people have is to charge their phones.
And the way that migrants interact with CBP, at least
in theory, the way you get an asylum appointment is
booking it through an app called CBP one. We've talked
about this on the podcast before, but CBP one is terrible.
It is a terrible app that doesn't work. And that's

(01:58:04):
for people who have phones and Wi Fi. Right, if
you are stuck in between two fences and a dusty
piece of ground, how the hell are you supposed to
charge your phone? You don't have Wi Fi, right, you
may not have a data plan that works in that area.
So a huge unmet need was charging charging phone. So

(01:58:25):
we were able to get some donations from the team
and buy a big charger. Other folks turned up with charges.
Even all the news orgs I see to include, like
like Fox National weren't there, which is a good thing,
but like we could talk about that actually as well.
My goods will specifically ask which news network you're with,
which I think is that. I think that's good. I

(01:58:46):
think it's good they tell Fox News to fuck off, because, yeah,
someone who participates in your dehumanization doesn't also deserve to
make money from your trauma. And so every news network
that was there, right or the called folks from San
Diego were just constantly shuttling back and forth to their bands,
charging phones constantly, constantly, constantly, and it became a bit

(01:59:07):
of a cluster because obviously there's literally just hundreds of
people in this small area, dozens of hands reaching to
a defense, Charge my phone? Can I have my phone back?
Charge my phone? And in the English and Spanish and
French and command Gye and Vietnamese and all these other languages, right,
So it was very hard to organize that. So folks

(01:59:31):
came down, Folks from San Diego, from different sort of
mutual aid groups came down and they organized the system. Right.
They got Painter's tape, the names of the people on
the back of the phone. We had this huge ash
battery that we were able to get and that they
were able to charge people's phones, get them their phones
back to them. And that is a crucial thing, right

(01:59:53):
in that scenario. Not only is it your only way
to communicate with border patrol, it's your only way to
communicate with your family.

Speaker 5 (01:59:59):
Right.

Speaker 7 (01:59:59):
Like one guy had lost his phone, and so I
just bought him a burner phone or you know, one
of those warm artphones so that he could call his
family because the family didn't know where he was. Right
last they'd heard he was in Mexico or maybe even
further south. And so the phones are super important. Other
mutual ad groups have been getting blankets, right, And I

(02:00:21):
saw an Afghan family turn up and had they had
crayons for the Afghan kids who were there, right, and
like coloring books and things for children to do, because
it's probably boring being a kid, and it's probably scary
being a kid, where like every day men with guns
and camouflage gear turn up and they speak a language
you don't understand, and then you don't know what they say,
and then you stay there.

Speaker 2 (02:00:42):
Yeah, and I want to kind of just there are
lots of things that could get called camps that are
like not camps, right, Like this is like this this
is not a camp in the sense of like there
are buildings that you go into or even like there
are ten it's just like, oh yeah, no, yeah, I

(02:01:04):
think that's.

Speaker 7 (02:01:04):
A very good I think that I haven't mentioned, thank you.

Speaker 5 (02:01:07):
Yes.

Speaker 7 (02:01:07):
This is people lying on the dirt. Occasionally, they have
a my last space blanket. Occasionally they have a top.
If they want to make any form of shelter they
have to use the only thing they have to use
is the wall itself. Right, So up against the wall,
people have made like a lean to kind of situation
with the top, right, But no, this is by no

(02:01:28):
means suitable shelter. Literally, people are lying on the dirt.

Speaker 5 (02:01:32):
Like it's just a fucking cage like in a desert.

Speaker 2 (02:01:36):
Like it's yeah, it's it's, it's, it's, it's it's it's
the kind of thing that like, like you it's the
kind of thing you would put it in a Poclyst movement.

Speaker 5 (02:01:43):
People will be like, oh, no, one would ever do that. Shit.

Speaker 2 (02:01:45):
It's like no, no, Like this is just sort of yeah,
this is what US border policy is.

Speaker 5 (02:01:50):
It's these like just these open air cages.

Speaker 7 (02:01:56):
Yeah, it's you wouldn't like, you know, I go to
the zoo in San Diego and the animals much better
conditions than that. There's no running water. There was one
porterloo toilet for five hundred people. Yeah, it's terrible. It
is awful. It's little. It's people wrapping their babies in
my love blankets and trying to get them to sleep

(02:02:16):
at night, you know. And that's the same as several
places up and down the border. Right they're starting to
clear them out now, So sort of Tuesday Monday, So
some people got there a week ago, I think, and
so they've been staying there for a long time. And yeah,

(02:02:36):
like it's no point does there seem to have been
any consideration for even giving people shade or shelter or like, Yeah,
the very basics, and like I should reinforce it. In
twenty eighteen, when Trump blocked a large group of migrants
from entering the United States, the government of Mexico did
considerably better than this. It was by no means a

(02:02:59):
good situation for those children at all, but they did
better than this. Which it's aventally extremely low bar to clear,
but we have failed to clear it completely as a country.
And that's kind of to our eternal shame, I think.

Speaker 2 (02:03:14):
Yeah, and I think and everything worth emphasizing about this
is that it hasn't always been like this. There's there's
this sort of image that's been constructed that this is
always what the US border has been. No, I mean
it's not like it's not it's not like American border
policy has always been like good.

Speaker 5 (02:03:30):
But I mean, like in my lifetime, it wasn't likely.

Speaker 7 (02:03:33):
Yes, in the mid nineties there were four thousand border
patrol agents. Yeah, it's increased by a factor of ten,
and its budget probably by more than that.

Speaker 2 (02:03:42):
Yeah, And you know the consequences of this is just
basically in order to appease a bunch of just sort
of like fucking like turbo racist baked dipshits like who
live in the suburbs and you know, have no have
like never experienced a single hardship and their entire lives

(02:04:03):
like fucking like untold numbers of people are put through
just in human suffering and for fucking nothing, just just
like for for nothing, for like just dog shit electoral pandering.

Speaker 7 (02:04:17):
Yeah, by people who have never seen what goes on
at the border. They've never experienced where these people come from.
And yeah, it's they're just numbers to people in DC, right,
And I would really urge people to not read immigration coverage,
or watch immigration coverage, or listen to immigration coverage that
isn't written by people at the border, because this isn't

(02:04:39):
a fucking issue about numbers. Like every single one of
those numbers is a person who has people they love
and things that they've done and choices that they've made
that got them there, and every single one of them
is someone who deserves compassion and empathy. And it's not
just another you know, like a number in an Excel chart,
which is how it's treated. And yeah, it has always

(02:05:00):
been this way This is a very recent innovation, and
it's I mean we've talked about this before as well,
but right, this is the proving ground for state surveillance,
state violence, fascism, all these things. Right, the reason that
you got surveilled by a drone if you went to
a George Floyd protest in Minneapolis is because the Border
Patrol already had one. The reason that cops listened into

(02:05:22):
your phone if you went to some protest in twenty
twenty is because of border patrol technology. Right, they have
these sting ray towers all up and down the border.
Robert and I have seen him in Mexico, sorry, in
Texas even.

Speaker 2 (02:05:35):
Yeah, and I mean, you know, even even stuff like this,
this is the sort of recent laws in places like
Florida and Texas that are you know, led the state
steel trans kids, right like that. That's also stuff that
was sort of like, yeah, like the prototype of that
came from the I mean like it came from the border.
There's it's also something that came from sort of like
like anti black bullshit that like is sort of deeply

(02:05:57):
rooted in like American family planning bullshit. But like, yeah,
like that that's also another one of the places where
like that stuff was tested.

Speaker 7 (02:06:04):
And with indigenous folks, like we've ripped Indigenous children for
their families for decades. But yeah, we it's a deeply
baked white supremacist system that always does its experimenting on
marginized people are very often at the border. But yeah,
if you if you're worried about the government intercepting your

(02:06:26):
communications with an abortion care provider, that has happened because
at some point they've been allowed to do stuff to
migrants that was equally bad, if not worse, And and
like this will hurt you even if you are like
Kathy the liberal in Minnesota, like when we let the
state have these powers, they don't just use them benevolently,

(02:06:47):
and that they weren't using them benevolently in the first place.
Read like they say innocent people who've done nothing wrong.

Speaker 2 (02:06:54):
Yeah, I mean that's that's the thing about state power
is and any any power the state has, inevitably they
will wonder you it on you. And so you can't
let them take shit like this because you know they will.
They will turn your entire society into a sort of
hell Garrison state.

Speaker 7 (02:07:11):
Yeah, and it's just I don't know that the inhumanity
that your taxes pay for for listening to this in
America is abhorrent. It's disgusting, and yeah, you should do
everything you can to stop it. And like, this probably
is one of the instances where like you may be
able to do something of some value by writing to
a politician. It's certainly one of the instances where if

(02:07:34):
you live near the border, you can show up and
make a very meaningful difference to someone's whole experience. Right,
Like myself and Joe were down there when this this
guy had lost his phone, and like, you know, it
wasn't that expensive to buy this guy a phone. Other
like people will remember Mandy and people will remember Alex,

(02:07:55):
who are two guests I've had on different San Diego
episodes that they've both been down there. I know Alex
gave his EpiPen to someone who needed an epipenn, like
we acutely needed an EpiPen. Like things like that, you
can maybe save someone's life, maybe just make someone's day
a little bit less shit. You know, maybe you can
let a kid kick a football and you'd have to
deflate the football to get it through the defense early,

(02:08:16):
but like, you know, you can give a doll to
a little kid so they can play with it or something.
Do somethink that will for a moment take them out
of the utterly miserable place that we force them into.
And if folks want to support that, I know I'd
posted Mandy's cash app and Venmo and I think some
people very generously did contribute, which is great. If you're

(02:08:38):
not at the border, look at Border Kindness, which is
a group out of San Diego who I know are
doing aid runs to Cucumber. I think the Houcumber Hotel
Hukumba for those not familiar, Jacu Mba the Hookumber Hotel
was housing folks and providing it there a huge amount
of water and shelter to people this morning. People can

(02:09:03):
look at the American French Service Committee that I wrote about,
and I know that Joe and myself have shared some
Amazon wish lists that people have and that kind of thing.
But it's it's a massive task, but it's not one
that's like insurmountable. The amount of people I've seen show
up to include like and you know, I'm not a
religious person and I'm not a person who particularly cares

(02:09:24):
for organized religion either, but it does make me happy
when I see like old church ladies in high heels
with perms coming out and like giving water to children,
charging phones and seeing I think it's like, certainly I've
lived on the border for fifteen years. It's been a
fundamentally radicalizing experience for me. Like I think you're supposed

(02:09:45):
to grow old and grow out of your anarchist politics
or whatever. But I don't know how anyone could live
here and think that like police state good it's and
I think anybody who can get down here should it's
good for you too, Like and I always think about
how oscoor why child has this thing about like how
seeing people living on the streets like not only undermind
stare humanity, but also his humanity, because like seeing someone

(02:10:08):
else suffering should make us feel bad, and so like
he benefits when he helps someone, and like you know,
we're all lifted up, right, Like I I guess one
of the things I struggle with most of the journalist
is that like that like feeling of living in comfort
while other people can't, especially when it's such like it's
one thing if I if I go somewhere, right, if

(02:10:30):
I'm in Myanmar and I'm aware that things are difficult
and scary, and then I get on a plane and
it takes two days when I come back. But just
from like a personal like mental health perspective, seeing a
little child sleep in the dirt, right, or someone asking
me for fucking bin back so they can keep their
baby out of the rain like a trash back, or

(02:10:52):
a kid without shoes, you know, and then going home
to my relatively comfortable existence is really hard. And I
think we should all have to face up to that
because it's what it's what our government is responsible for.
And supposed we've got the best sucking option in twenty twenty, right,
this is the this is this is the good choice
of the two. But it doesn't make any meaningful difference

(02:11:15):
whether you choose Trump or Biden to these people, right,
because the best treat them like ship.

Speaker 2 (02:11:21):
Yeah, it's like the kids are still in cages. And yes,
you know, until until until the entire system that enables
the ship is destroyed and it can be right like,
and this isn't even this, this isn't even on the
on the level of sort of like you know of
sort of anarchist politics, right like this, none of this
ship existed twenty years ago, right, like this is this

(02:11:41):
is like wow, okay, I guess it's twenty FOI three
twenty five years ago.

Speaker 5 (02:11:44):
None of this ship existed even.

Speaker 2 (02:11:46):
Within like the framework of the nation state, right, Like,
this is not a thing that you that we have
to do, which we simply do.

Speaker 5 (02:11:54):
Not have to you.

Speaker 7 (02:11:55):
You could share politics with Bill Clinton and still.

Speaker 2 (02:11:59):
Ronald read was better on the fucking border than any
than any president who has been alive in my fucking lifetime.

Speaker 5 (02:12:06):
Right, Yeah, fucking Reagan.

Speaker 7 (02:12:09):
Dwight Eisenhower would have had serious concerns about the industrial
complex we're building at the border.

Speaker 2 (02:12:14):
Yeah, Like this is not like this, this, this isn't
this isn't like a particularly radical political thing, right, It's
just that we've we've become sort of a nerd to
this death state that's built up around us, and you know,
doesn't it doesn't keep anyone safe. It just fucking inflicts
untold human misery. So fucking Greg Abbott can win an election.

Speaker 7 (02:12:37):
Yeah yeah, and it costs us a lot of money. Right, Like,
your universal healthcare is an unmandrone flying over some children
run across a desert in Arizona. Right now, Your free
university education is a border patrol smart camera in the
desert that goes off every time a fucking deer walks past.
How it rains like it. This stuff is expensive and like,

(02:13:02):
if you're in the US, you are paying for it. Yeah.
I think the most sort of soft of liberals can
see that this is right. And they did see that
this ship was wrong in the Trump administration, and they
do see this is wrong when they come right, Like
I've some of the best mutual aid groups I've worked
with are like middle aged folks from churches who have

(02:13:26):
time and the means to help and just didn't realize
that it was like no one was coming and we
had to do it ourselves. And when they did that,
they were very effective. And so I would encourage folks
who are in border communities near the border. Near the
border means a different thing of your border patrol because
their jurisdiction applies one hundred miles.

Speaker 5 (02:13:44):
From the border.

Speaker 7 (02:13:45):
That's the other thing, right, the border will come to you.

Speaker 4 (02:13:48):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:13:50):
Statistically, odds are that you are the border already has
come to you.

Speaker 1 (02:13:54):
Yes, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 7 (02:13:56):
Two thirds of people in the United States are in
the border patrol in for Smith Zone.

Speaker 5 (02:14:00):
Yeah, I'm in it, and I'm in like fucking Chicago, right.

Speaker 7 (02:14:03):
Oh yeah, like yeah, I think yes, people who would
not think of themselves as bored as well as the
border affects you. If you go to other communities in
your city, you might realize border patroller around there, Ice
are around there. So yeah, it's it's pretty bleak. We're
working on some scripted stuff, but I want to get
into a bit of the history of border patrol and

(02:14:24):
rereading Border Patrol Nation, which is a great book if
people haven't read it, and I want The other thing
I should say about border reporting is if people don't
center migrants and they're reporting about migration, then you shouldn't
be reading that reporting. Like sometimes it can be hard.
One other thing I guess I do want to say
is you're seeing my photos and you're seeing Joe's photos,

(02:14:46):
You're not going to see many faces. And that's because
people have legitimate fears for their wellbeing. That's why they
are fucking here. Yeah, and not obtaining consent before taking
photographs is making a terrible situation worse, And like that's
something that we can work on as a media, right,
like something I will continue to call out when I
see it. But if you don't speak the language, find

(02:15:09):
someone who does it. Don't take the goddamn photo. You'll
see some face in the mind. Like I like to
pass my camera through the fence and give it to
like teenage kids so they can run around and take
photos and have fun. And like so when they take
like goofy selfies, I'll post those. They get concerned from
them or their parents, and the parents are around it,
and that's fine. But yeah, when you're looking at border coverage,

(02:15:31):
always understand that these are people and if we don't
center those people and their stories, then we're doing it wrong.

Speaker 2 (02:15:39):
If you can physically get to these places, like you should,
like the the the this is this is one of
the like the situations where like the amount of good
that like a very small number of people could do
is enormous and the cost is not that high.

Speaker 7 (02:15:56):
No, but for instance, I some of my friends had
just gone to Costco right and just loaded up one
of those big Costco trolleys and like that that makes
a meaningful difference to hundreds of people, And so you should.
There will probably be mutual aid networks on the ground
at almost every border area. By now, reach out to them,

(02:16:18):
see if they need the money. If you can get
there and help organize, that's better. If you have skills, right,
if you have language skills yours, like there are people
I met a guy who spoke Commanji, like the Kurdish
dialect of North and East Syria, right, people who speak
Vietnamese almost every language you can conceive of.

Speaker 6 (02:16:42):
Right.

Speaker 7 (02:16:43):
Those people really struggle to get information and they just
can't talk to anyone because there's no one else to
talk to and their phone, you know, the phone charges
is a precious commodity and it's cost a lot of
money to dial into Nashley. So those people could just
be lonely. So if you have those language skills, go.
Someone broke their finger in San Diegore getting crushed up
against the fence. If you know there was a medic

(02:17:05):
there to help them. If they hadn't been, that could
have been worse for them. And you know, sometimes the
ambulance can come in and take people out. But there
are valuable, meaningful things that you could do if you
have the time, if not, if you have the money,
there are really important places to donate, and there's just
a couple of them. Will highlight a couple more as
we go forward. And one more thing I did want

(02:17:25):
to plug is miles for migrants where if you have
if you don't have money, but you do have airline miles.
Like I was speaking to this guy today who got across.
He has two days and he has to get himself
in New York where he has family. I don't have
the means to buy four airline tickets or it would,
but if you have air miles and you want to
donate them, you can.

Speaker 2 (02:17:46):
Yeah, And then this is the thing, like you know,
like I have family who, for example, like work at
Hong Kong, right, and they have like you know, and
they're like there are people like that who could are like,
you know, not radicals, but are sort of you know,
like you.

Speaker 5 (02:17:56):
Could like like there are people in.

Speaker 2 (02:17:58):
This world who have a shit of miles like built
up because you know, for like work or some shit,
right that's just sitting there, and that that's something that
you know, like you can you can like like you you.

Speaker 5 (02:18:11):
May not have it. You might know people who do.

Speaker 7 (02:18:14):
Yeah, yeah, you might know someone who does a weird
credit card flipping thing, you know, where they like get
air miles in and make it their whole personality to
to get air miles. But like whatever, if those people
can help, yeah, you don't need to turn them into
like Macnavists overnight. Like like, nobody wants to see a
little baby sleep in the dirt, and anybody who could

(02:18:36):
be there physically would be appalled by it. And I
think if you can convey to those folks that now
at the time when something that costs them nothing materially, Yeah, right,
Like I know tons of people have more miles that
they can use because they fly at the time for work.
You don't want to fly. When you're done flying, you
want to stay at home. So that's another way that
people can help. And yeah, just I guess it's a

(02:19:00):
crisis that will continue unabated because the cruelty is the
point and it's for once. Like you know, we can't
stop all the climate change and all this bad shit,
but this is something that it is within our power
to a bet, can't We can't make it go away yet.
But like we spoke to the people who are doing

(02:19:22):
border drops on the border, there are meaningful things that
every single one of us can do to help.

Speaker 2 (02:19:27):
Yeah, go into the world. Do not let the violence
done in our name be who we are.

Speaker 7 (02:19:36):
Yeah, sure, people, you're better than this.

Speaker 1 (02:19:38):
I guess, hey everyone, Robert here. Before we get into it,
I want to note my internet was terrible during this call.
We tried to have the guest record locally, but there

(02:20:00):
is kind of a technical glitch there, and Zoom glitched
a little on the audio. In order to make it listenable.
There are going to be like three or four points
here where I pop in and just say what he
was trying to say or what he said, and the
Internet then garbled up so that you can understand what's
actually being said in the conversation. So when my voice
pops in and I read a line, it's me reading

(02:20:22):
something that he said that got kind of distorted. I
do apologize. Ah, welcome to it could happen here. A
podcast about things falling apart and occasionally about the quest
to build a better world. Today, we've got an episode
that is in the latter category about the struggle to

(02:20:45):
make the United Kingdom less I don't know, in the
thrall of a monarchy and an aristocratic class, and to
build a more equitable society. And our guest today is
somebody who is attempting to through that cause and did
so last year by attempting to huck several eggs at

(02:21:06):
the current King of England, Charles the I forget the number, Patrick, Well,
how are you doing today? Hi?

Speaker 6 (02:21:14):
Yeah, I'm good. Thanks.

Speaker 4 (02:21:15):
Yeah. It was five eggs. Five eggs and he's the
third king, the third k far more than three unfortunately.

Speaker 1 (02:21:24):
Yeah, you guys have had a few. Was one of
the one she'll killed to Charles?

Speaker 6 (02:21:30):
Yeah, yeah, that was the last one.

Speaker 1 (02:21:32):
That was the last one. Well, I would say, yeah.
So let's start by talking about this is in a
twenty about a year ago at a he was doing
a They called it a walkabout, which I guess is
when the king shows up in a city in the video.
I watched the video of this and like, there's a

(02:21:53):
bunch of people dressed in all sorts of fun costumes,
and some ladies got a massive sword, like a sword,
a sword of the size that I know for a
fact that man cannot lift above his head.

Speaker 6 (02:22:05):
Yeah, it's funny.

Speaker 4 (02:22:06):
He comes out of his little car and I know,
all the little trumpets go and everyone starts, you know,
waving their flags on queue and.

Speaker 6 (02:22:15):
Going like, look there he is. There.

Speaker 4 (02:22:17):
He is pretty unhinged, to be honest. It's it's it's
quite embarrassing.

Speaker 1 (02:22:22):
But yeah, there's like the the American chauvinist in me
that like wants to wants to laugh more about the monarchy.
But I'm just finished reading an article about Diane Feinstein
where the journalist interviewing her was like, so, you've missed
a bunch of votes over the last three months, and

(02:22:42):
she's like, no, I haven't. I've been working the whole time.
So I guess we're all kind of enthrall to the
corpses of of of our past.

Speaker 6 (02:22:51):
It's hierarchy. Hierarchy everywhere is the problem.

Speaker 1 (02:22:55):
So you decide to show up when you kind of
find out that the king is going to be showing
up here, and what kind of leads you to decide,
I'm gonna I'm gonna throw some eggs in my pocket
and take my shot.

Speaker 4 (02:23:09):
So I actually found out that he was coming to
York about three days with a megaphone and you know,
shout some cause obviously.

Speaker 6 (02:23:16):
The queen had died.

Speaker 4 (02:23:20):
About a month or so before, and during the funeral
processions there was you know, several people were arrested for
someone shouted at you know, Prince Andrew, you know, in
Scotland's they were like, oh, you're a sick old man,
and they did, and that was probably my inspiration. But
then on the morning when he came to York, my

(02:23:42):
megaphone was just like busted. So I was just like, oh, okay,
I'm gonna gonna go get some eggs then.

Speaker 1 (02:23:48):
And white eggs. What what kind of led to that decision?

Speaker 6 (02:23:53):
Man? Everyone asked that.

Speaker 4 (02:23:54):
Yeah, I guess like I was into the assumption that
we all just knew that you throw eggs at people,
you don't like maybe it's a British thing.

Speaker 1 (02:24:01):
But I think it may just be that in the
US because of the gun stuff, people are like a
lot more hesitant to huck stuff just for fun, right,
if you're throwing stuff and somebody it's serious.

Speaker 6 (02:24:12):
Although someone someone threw a beer at.

Speaker 5 (02:24:16):
Ted Cruz.

Speaker 1 (02:24:17):
Yeah, they sure did. That was good. That was good.

Speaker 6 (02:24:20):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (02:24:22):
I think, you know, I actually had a lot of
time to think about before my trial about why eggs
and stuff, and I think they're just funny, you know,
like there's a lot of egg puns that came out
of it that that that you know, not to get
too philosophical about it, but they're kind of you know
they're they're really harmless, you know, but inherently humiliating as well.

Speaker 1 (02:24:43):
Yeah. Yeah, it's hard to argue attempted murder from an egg,
but at the same time getting it.

Speaker 5 (02:24:49):
Yeah, well exactly.

Speaker 4 (02:24:51):
And I think there's there's something to be said for
contrasting the violence of the state yea, with what's obviously
like very low level violence. And yeah, I'm the one
standing trial for it.

Speaker 1 (02:25:05):
Yeah, I mean it. It is like the language that
got used by the state kind of in the proceedings
against you was was amusing. Like I know that it
was a pain in the ash you had to go through,
but like the kind of the framing that they they
put with it to make it seem like this was
this was such a like serious offense against public order

(02:25:28):
was was was quite funny. And I think it's beyond
me to know what was going on in the now
King's head at the time, but you got quite close.
You can see right after it hit there's goop on
the ground directly in front of his foot, and his
shoulders slump a little and he looks down, and I
wonder if it made him feel bad. I hope it did,

(02:25:49):
you know. I can't get inside the man's head. Maybe
he's not capable of that, but I wonder.

Speaker 4 (02:25:54):
So, Yeah, I mean through five, and I will say
it for the record that one of them did bounce
off his arm, but he does have a force field,
so it's not my fault that it didn't didn't get
the full impact. But yeah, I honestly think he didn't
have a clue what's going on. He's pretty pretty seen,
how to be honest. Yeah, but you know, monarchists were like,

(02:26:16):
so like, wow, look at how stoic he is.

Speaker 6 (02:26:18):
He just doesn't even care. He just shrugged it off.

Speaker 4 (02:26:20):
He's such a badass, and it's like he's just been
guided through this series of bizarre public opinions where he's
got to pretend that he you know, smiles and waves
at normal people and he doesn't think that we're all plebs.

Speaker 1 (02:26:34):
But yeah, yeah, And it was the crowd reaction around
you was pretty intense from what I understand. I mean,
like people came after you when they realized what had happened.

Speaker 4 (02:26:48):
Yeah, and I think in some ways that spoke more
more itself than like anything that I could have done.
You know, the reaction to the video, you know, people
immediately just start like pulling my hair out in chunks
and just like screaming, like you know, like.

Speaker 6 (02:27:02):
Just killing him, like stick his head on a spike,
kick him to death, you know.

Speaker 4 (02:27:06):
And it really I think maybe that kind of rhetoric
is perhaps more like, you know that the overt violence
is more prevalent in American politics. But yeah, you know,
it exposed that you know, these people are essentially fascists,
you know.

Speaker 6 (02:27:18):
And that they yeah, they're very, very violent people.

Speaker 1 (02:27:24):
And I think this is something people have are starting
to recognize a little bit more about kind of politics
in the UK. I mean, we're looking right now. The
Public Order Act of twenty twenty three is kind of
the most recent law that's gone through Parliament that effectively

(02:27:45):
like expands the ability of the police to crack down
on protests. Some people will argue, and I think this seems,
based on what I've read, pretty credible that it basically
makes it possible for the police to arrest anyone for
almost any kind of activism. And that kind of was
was exhibited during the coronation when a group of kind

(02:28:08):
of of anti monarchist protesters who are more on the
liberal side of things, and you're kind of approaching this
as an anarchist, but a fairly large group of protesters
with signs that were saying stuff like not my king,
attempted to rally doing so. I believe their their goal,
from what I can tell, was to comply with the

(02:28:28):
law as they understood it, and that did not protect
them from the police.

Speaker 4 (02:28:34):
No. So you know, the context is in the wake
of the police there was a police officer, you know,
last year who murdered a woman, Sarah Everard. Yeah, and
in the wake of that, they passed the Police, Courts,
Sentencing and Crime Bill, and that that bill was really like,
you know, the most over crackdown on protest.

Speaker 6 (02:28:56):
It banned.

Speaker 4 (02:28:59):
It allowed the police to arrest, the discretion of an officer,
any protest that was deemed potentially annoying, like that's the
specific language, is any any any action that could be
loud or annoying. So, you know, there was a there
was a lot of protests against that at the time.
That obviously came to nothing, and they passed the bill anyway,
and then and then so the Public Order Bill just

(02:29:20):
goes that step further by allowing them to preemptively arrest
anyone who might be about to do something that's loud
or annoying, and including this new thing called a serious
Disruption Prevention Order, which is something that they can apply
to someone who's considered an aggravated activist.

Speaker 1 (02:29:38):
He's saying, which is someone who has been arrested more
than twice for protest related offenses.

Speaker 4 (02:29:43):
Essentially, it bans, you know, use of the internet to
communicate about your ideas, basically stop you from attending protests
in the first place.

Speaker 6 (02:29:49):
And a rest the train station.

Speaker 4 (02:29:52):
And yeah, we saw that in play with with the Republic,
that this organization that had been extensively liaising with the police,
and you know, it just seemed quite like Pikachu face
when suddenly they were all just rounded up and yeah,
but for literally, you know, no pretext. It was they
had they had like twelve thousand pounds worth of signs
in a van and they were they were all wrapped

(02:30:15):
up in yeah, just like rope rope, and the pretext
for the arrest was that the rope was a lock
on device that could be used to you know, I
don't know, like jump in front of the procession and
tie yourself with rope to the road.

Speaker 6 (02:30:29):
I really don't know.

Speaker 1 (02:30:30):
Like, yeah, from what I could tell just from the
coverage I've read, if their protest had gone the way
they planned it, it would have been like a show,
a visible show that there were people who didn't like
the monarchy, but it would not have caused it like
they would not have this. These people were not planning
to like burn down any public buildings or you know,

(02:30:51):
smash car windows or stop a road. Not that I'm
specifically condemning that behavior, but I'm just stating this. This
was not the state cracking down on people because they
were afraid of a riot. This was the state cracking
down on people because they didn't want the display of
any kind of descent to exist.

Speaker 6 (02:31:10):
Yeah, and you know, that's where we're at in this country.

Speaker 4 (02:31:13):
And to be honest, the arrest of those organizers was
the best thing that could have happened for the movement,
because you know, what it really did was just shine
a light that it was impossible to ignore and in
some ways kind of over shadowed the coronation. Really was
far more than any speech that Graham Smith you know,
was planning to give, you know, just so overtly that

(02:31:36):
that there is no acceptable form of descent. Now, the
very concept is so distasteful to Yeah, our aristocracy that
it's banned.

Speaker 1 (02:31:47):
And I really appreciate your ability to kind of see
the upside, the tactical upside in that, because I think
it is true. I doubt I would have heard about
that protest if it had gone as the organizer's plan, right,
because it would have just been Yeah, there's some people
who don't like the monarchy in the UK. That doesn't
surprise me at all, but seeing it was like everywhere

(02:32:08):
all over my social media. I got sent it by
multiple friends, by a family member because the state decided
to go after these people, And I do think I
think it's also from just a standpoint when you're talking
about a struggle with as long odds as kind of
struggling against the monarchy in the United Kingdom, which is

(02:32:31):
you are talking about like the most entrenched power structure
outside of the Vatican, right, Basically, Yeah, when you're talking
about that, it is so important to be able to
look at moments like this and see the upside on
them rather than just rather than just kind of feel
the boot all the time. Otherwise you're not going to

(02:32:52):
have the endurance to keep fighting.

Speaker 6 (02:32:55):
You know, for me with specifically with the eggs.

Speaker 4 (02:33:00):
I was I've been conscious the whole time that the
backlash and the you know, disproportionate state reaction would speak
more than my own actions. So, for example, one of
the reasons why I think, you know, it went pretty
viral when I when I threw the eggs in the
first place, I was a bit surprised by by how
it went kind of quite internationally. But but but you know,

(02:33:23):
so the fact, so my bail conditions were between between
my arrest and my trial were that I wasn't allowed
to carry eggs in public. Yeah, I know. And so
that is in itself like so absurd that it's like, right.

Speaker 1 (02:33:39):
I gotta know, is there like a provision for if
you're going home from the store or are you just
are you just.

Speaker 4 (02:33:46):
So so So the copper who was literally just like
making this up at the station says like, okay, so
your bail condition is you're not allowed within five hundred
meters of the king, you're not allowed to carry eggs
in public. And then he goes like, oh, actually, like
what was if he wants to buy some eggs And
they're like okay, So they changed it so it's you're
allowed to carry eggs as long as you're going home
from the shops and you've got the receipt. And I

(02:34:09):
think that was a more viral than me actually doing it,
you know what I mean, Like people were like, you know,
that's that's that's Britain for you.

Speaker 6 (02:34:16):
Have you got a license for those eggs?

Speaker 1 (02:34:18):
You know, I'm imagining you like sliding down an alleyway
with like a like a like a nineteen forty style
shoulder holster, but with just like eggs under each year.

Speaker 4 (02:34:28):
Yeah and so and so you know when I so, so,
I had my trial, you know, which was for yeah,
threatening behavior that made someone fear imminent violence. In the
wake of that, like I was convicted, I narrowly avoided
six months in prison, which is the sentence that I

(02:34:49):
thought I was gone, yeah, yeah, and so, so you know,
in my trial, you know, I had the option to
either downplay what I as being like, oh, it's not.

Speaker 6 (02:35:01):
Really violence, it's just an egg.

Speaker 4 (02:35:03):
But then of course, you know, legally it was you know,
that could just councel as a soul. But then I
chose it instead to say, okay, yeah, it was violence,
but it was legitimate violence because it was necessary to
resist the far greater violence of the British state, you know,
citing the historic impact of colonialism.

Speaker 1 (02:35:23):
He's saying current foreign policy like the King personally negotiating
weapons deals with Saudi Arabia.

Speaker 4 (02:35:28):
And then also you know, climate breakdown and the way
in which by continuing to invest in fossil fuels global
South like intentionally, and so therefore, you know, I was
basically defending the right of you know, acting in defense
of others with violence. I'm glad I did it, and
I don't done much worse. So in the end, actually
I got one hundred hours. I got one hundred hours
of community service, which was extreme, you know, getting away

(02:35:51):
with it essentially.

Speaker 1 (02:35:52):
So, yeah, did you get us? I wondered, was it
just a situation? Did you just get lucky with a
judge or like, because that's surprising. I'm surprised that like
that that worked as well as it did in a
positive way.

Speaker 6 (02:36:08):
I think, yeah, yeah, me too.

Speaker 2 (02:36:10):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (02:36:10):
I mean I had a big bag.

Speaker 4 (02:36:12):
With me with all my light undies in because I
thought I was going down, you know, And I think
there was partly, yes, getting lucky with the judge. Partly
I think they were in a really difficult position and
this is what I wanted to put them in essentially,
which is that following all of that the money, you know,
in the lead up to the coronation, there was a
lot of negative press around around the king and the monarchy,

(02:36:34):
and they had a choice between either sending me to
prison and looking extremely authoritarian and blowing out proportion, or
letting me get away with it. And you know, I
think they chose to minimize the negative press. You know,
I mean, obviously, supposedly there's an independent judiciary and there
would have been no conversations with the palace and the

(02:36:54):
police about the charging procedures.

Speaker 6 (02:36:57):
But that's that's a lot of rubbish.

Speaker 4 (02:36:58):
But you know, yeah, and so but I think I
wanted to put them in that difficult position because I
knew that, like I said, their backlash would look worse
than what I did. And so so when I chose
to go to the coronation following following my conviction, you know,
I had to tell my probation officer, look, I'm going
to the coronation. I am going I'm going to peacefully protest.
I'm just going to be there. Deal with it, you know,

(02:37:20):
And basically he told me that the counter Terrorism Department
had was seeking an injunction from the courts to stop
me attending, but then the court had ruled that no,
I was allowed to attend. I'd already been given my
punishment and he wasn't going to put any further conditions
on me, not be allowing allowed to go.

Speaker 6 (02:37:40):
So so but I knew that if I.

Speaker 4 (02:37:42):
Went to the coronation they would arrest me anyway and
it would make them look bad, you know. And then
they they did. You know, I was as well as
well as all of the organizers. I was there, you know,
just not my king blah blah blah. And then and
then and then I look up and there's a little
watchtower that they had erected in the center of Trafalgarscoo,
and I just saw that there was about seven police

(02:38:03):
officers just all like staring at me and filming me
from you know, like two hundred meters away. And I
was like, oh, okay, they're gonna arrest me now. So yeah,
I gave my phone and well it's to my brother
and then smile. And then within seconds, within seconds, they
were just dragging me out, like you know, in handcuffs
from the center of a of a crowd of about,
you know, twenty thousand people, and I honestly couldn't have

(02:38:25):
looked like more like overtly fascist if they tried, and
and that was kind of the point, really is.

Speaker 1 (02:38:34):
Man? I uh, such a wild story, but I'm glad
you did what you did. I'm impressed by the amount
of thought that kind of went into the optics of it,
because it's it's really the only way to turn an
egg into an effective weapon, right is by very careful planning.

(02:38:56):
I'm kind of curious where do you see what do
you see the route forward for both not just kind
of opposing the monarchy in your country, but sort of
opposing the overreach by the police. This is a problem
in more places than the United Kingdom, but y'all are
kind of on one of the cutting edges of sort

(02:39:18):
of global attempts by law enforcement and its supporters in
the state to effectively make dissent impossible ahead of what
everyone knows is going to be kind of a heightening
period of climate based activism.

Speaker 4 (02:39:35):
Yeah, and so with the climate activist movement in the UK,
you know, we've seen extinction rebellion active since like twenty eighteen,
and I've been you know, arrested multiple times with them
at different actions.

Speaker 5 (02:39:49):
You know, the.

Speaker 4 (02:39:50):
Part of their strategy was that mass arrests, you know,
blocking roads, nonviolent direct action and civil disobedience would force
the government to take action. And I think really we're
seeing that strategy like having run its course. And and
and I think for a while now that's been evident
that it wasn't working because they've just banned the types

(02:40:13):
of protests that we were doing. And also it was
essentially quite naive to believe that, yeah, oh, you know,
if we cause enough disruption, they're just going to put
aside all of the you know, lobbying interests and their
literal role in upholding capitalism to just go, oh, no, okay,
fair enough that they're blocked and roads, we are going

(02:40:34):
to like radically transform society to deal with climate breakdown.

Speaker 6 (02:40:38):
That was never going to work, you know, realistically. And
so so.

Speaker 4 (02:40:42):
Even though you know, we've seen every time they passed
these these new legislation, there are there's a there's a backlash,
there's some marches, there's some protests that fizzle out, and
the state just keep consolidating more and more power, and
people keep getting more and more dis illusioned with.

Speaker 1 (02:41:01):
He says, with what an effective strategy of resistance looks like.
And so for me personally, it's something I've been thinking
about for a while.

Speaker 4 (02:41:07):
Now but recently have is that, you know, we have
to stop asking politicians through direct democracy at the local
level and essentially you know, using like democratic confederalism, you know,
as they're doing Rajava, to to look.

Speaker 6 (02:41:21):
At creating a national.

Speaker 4 (02:41:26):
Network of people's assemblies that builds dual power outside of
the state.

Speaker 6 (02:41:30):
Because because, because I think a lot of the problem with.

Speaker 4 (02:41:34):
These direct action movements is that they don't have the
legitimacy of a democratic mandate, so that even whilst the
tactics might be like in some way effective, you know,
Extinction Rebellion has always said our message is to say
that climate change is a serious threat, but we cannot
propose the solutions because we don't have a democratic mandate.
But the way to you know, work around that is

(02:41:56):
to build a democratic mandate through holding people's assemblies, creating
forums where people can create their own vision, and then
direct action can then be used in service of those
aims rather than putting the cart before the horse, if
that makes sense.

Speaker 1 (02:42:11):
No, yeah, I think that that's certainly like one of
the more pragmatic ways forward that I think I've seen.
You know, we're we're we're always talking about an uphill
battle here, and I think kind of the inherent difficulty
of fixing any of these bigger problems, particularly fixing the

(02:42:34):
and what we mean is dismantling the systems that are
causing climate destruction, like that is such a lopsided battle
that I think whenever, whenever you have you present an
option to people, because it sounds hard, there's this there's
this tendency to just be like, well, you know, we
have to go by the thing that we know, which

(02:42:56):
is just kind of like trying to vote in better people.
If we can take a lesson out of the last
thirty years, it's that the standard electoral methods cannot provide
the solution to climate change, like they simply aren't going
to do it. And I think the police in a
lot of kind I mean in the United States right

(02:43:16):
here in one of my old hometown's, Austin, Texas, they
just voted on a police accountability bill that the police
have basically said we're not going to abide by. Like
this is and you can find stories like that all
over the United States and other parts of the world,
Like the kind of the hope that you can just
sort of like put in your however long it takes

(02:43:37):
you to do voting in your country or city or whatever,
and that that's the method forward. It's it seems more
realistic because it's more familiar. But I think the vision
you're putting forward, not to say that it's as simple
that simple, but like it's effortful. And I think that

(02:43:59):
whenever someone's positing something like that that requires that kind
of like effort from a large enough segment of the population,
I see that as inherently more realistic than hoping that
we can just all kind of keep putting our twenty
minutes of voting a year towards solving the problem and
expect it to get better.

Speaker 4 (02:44:18):
Yeah, And it's like one of those things with you know,
like the idea that imagining prison abolition, you have to
imagine a world where that's possible, and that requires changing everything, right,
And I think that applies to tackling climate change and
implementing direct democracy. So you know, if you're talking about
a system where people can turn it to a forum

(02:44:40):
in a local community center, or you know, church or
whatever once a week. Then people say, well that's not
going to be accessible, you know, because so it's like, well,
you're right, we'll probably have to set up a system
of mutual aid that supports you know, working class people
to be able to attend those kind of events.

Speaker 6 (02:44:57):
And you know, yeah, it's like, how are you going
to pay for it?

Speaker 4 (02:45:01):
And it's like, well, you're right, we're probably going to
have to, you know, set up a solidarity economy where
you know, if we decide, for example, that we want
free public transport then and and bus drivers to be
paid paid a fair wage, you know, then you're going
to have to look at a whole system whereby people
are potentially getting free housing in return for being a

(02:45:21):
bus driver, free food that comes from the local food cooperative.
And you're like, I say, building dual power rather than
attacking the system head on, because in a battle, in
a pitch street battle in this country, at least between
us and the police, we're going to lose. And I
think that, you know, we need to think smarter because

(02:45:43):
at this point they haven't yet made organizing public meetings illegal,
but you know they probably will at some point.

Speaker 6 (02:45:49):
And then it's.

Speaker 4 (02:45:52):
The only way we'll be able to resist that is
if we've had some public meetings to decide how we're
going to do it, because at the moment, we haven't
even had the meeting to decide what our collective strategies
because there is so much atomization between between these different
like you know, left wing social movements and civil society
organizations and so much. Sometimes at heart just depresses me

(02:46:14):
to think about how many people are working for environmental
charities or whatever, where all of their work and their
research is going towards creating policy proposals for politicians to ignore.
It's like if you were putting that amount of energy
and your enthusiasm in service of the vision that's been

(02:46:34):
created democratically by the people, then we don't need to
petition anyone to make the changes we need because we'll
have organized effectively enough to do the things that will
really challenge state power, for example, like a mass rent
strike and a general strike.

Speaker 1 (02:46:55):
Or if those efforts that are currently going towards putting
policy papers on desks where there'll be ignored or neutered,
was going towards putting forth policy that is then being
backed by a movement that is carrying out rent strikes,
that is putting out together work stoppages, that is blocking roads,
that's able to actually throttle some of the life support

(02:47:17):
system of the state. Well, then suddenly you're not looking
at a recommendation a white paper that's going to wind
up on some bloodless bureaucrats desk, or that that's going
to wind up getting cut to pieces in Parliament. You
have something that has teeth behind it, right, the kind
of force that might be able to make change. I

(02:47:39):
don't know. Again, when you talk about this kind of stuff,
you have to contrast it with what we've been trying
so far, which is nothing.

Speaker 4 (02:47:49):
Yeah, and you know, diversity of tactics is huge, and
so you know a lot of these dark action groups
in the UK, like just Stop Oil that have been
blocking motorways and stuff, have received like you know, huge criticism,
especially from people who you know, really ought to be
allies and at least recognize the the that this action

(02:48:09):
is coming out of a place of desperation because people
cannot see a better way. Yeah, and you know there
was a there's someone from just Stop Oil who just
got three years in prison for blocking a motorway and
and that's that's insane, you know, and you know on
some level that person is it is a martyr, and
you've got to hold your take your hat off, and

(02:48:31):
say what that has done is shine a spotlight again
on state authority in a way that you know, if
they have these laws on the books, but they never
have to use them, then it's easy to forget that
they exist and have that power.

Speaker 1 (02:48:45):
Do you want to talk a little bit about cooperation?

Speaker 8 (02:48:47):
U K.

Speaker 4 (02:48:49):
Yeah, yeah, So so you know, for me, I'm I'm
a democratic confederalist, you know, I mean or like you know,
the Rajarvant project using direct markcracy, but also confederating that
up to sort of replace the state with a form
of governance that's democratic. And you know, I also I'm

(02:49:11):
a big believer in cosmocracy, right, which is the proper
name for global democracy.

Speaker 1 (02:49:16):
He says, essentially, you know, I wrote about this while
I was doing my masters.

Speaker 4 (02:49:20):
And that is how potentially, if we were implementing this
system world, we can use the internet to confederate to
a global level, you know, and really start to tackle
the issues that we collectively face as humanity, which is
like the fact that our separation from nature and the
rise of fascism, is is threatening angers with extinction, and

(02:49:42):
so yeah, I'm a citizen of Earth and.

Speaker 6 (02:49:46):
You know that's what motivates a lot of my actions.

Speaker 4 (02:49:49):
But you know, in some ways I've been kind of
stewing on these ideas alone, and so recently I met
a group called Cooperation UK, who are you know, connecting.
I can often get bogged down in abstract theory about
like how you know, changing the whole world and never
actually doing anything practical.

Speaker 6 (02:50:07):
That's my downfall.

Speaker 4 (02:50:08):
But you know, you need to start a movement like
that locally, and and so they're copying Cooperation Jackson, you know,
who have been incredibly effective, you know, setting up people's assemblies,
mutual aid economy in Jackson and also like a community

(02:50:28):
land trust.

Speaker 6 (02:50:29):
You know, they own.

Speaker 4 (02:50:29):
Like like fifty different buildings, you know, that are used
collectively by the community. And this group are planning to
set that up in Hull, which is just a city
in the Northeast that's incredibly deprived. It's got like the
lowest voter turnout in the UK, but it also has
a thriving network of food banks and you know cooperatives

(02:50:51):
and mutual aid groups.

Speaker 6 (02:50:52):
And I think the next step for me is when
those those groups send delegates to me, eat together and
decide on collective strategy, right, like, because there are so
many people doing so much good work, but there's almost
like no faith in our own vision, which is that
if we're the people you know who are say a

(02:51:15):
union for nurses, then you know, we should be deciding
the conditions that exist in healthcare, you know, because who
better besides patients and like staff is that to decide
the conditions that they that they operate in.

Speaker 4 (02:51:33):
And and so yeah, cooperation UK there there are there's
a group of us that are moving to Whull.

Speaker 6 (02:51:38):
I'm moving.

Speaker 4 (02:51:38):
I'm moving next week. I'm really excited about it. And yeah,
we're planning to set up lots of local neighborhood assemblies
with the intention of within a year holding a citywide
people's assembly that can create a shared vision and then
and then potentially you know, standing candidates for local council
but whose only policy is we will enact.

Speaker 6 (02:52:01):
We will give.

Speaker 4 (02:52:02):
Power to the people's assemblies and then they can use
the you know, financial power of existing institutions to support
the transition to a new model.

Speaker 6 (02:52:12):
And whilst they're doing that in Hull, you know.

Speaker 4 (02:52:15):
The work that I hope to be doing is document
in that process the learning, you know, so people can
learn from the mistakes and that, you know, and hopefully
we can set them up in every city well across
the UK, because there are already people who think very
similarly and that we're at a time now where that's
coalescing into the you know, people are recognizing the need

(02:52:37):
for this new movement with a new strategy that's based
around democracy rather than just activism.

Speaker 6 (02:52:44):
And yeah, it's really exciting.

Speaker 1 (02:52:47):
Yeah, I mean, that's I think that's a worthwhile idea.
I think it's it's it's bold and something that I'm
I'm glad to see being attempted. Well, it's been really
great talking with you today. Did you have anywhere you
wanted to direct listeners in order to help if they're
interested in what Cooperation UK is doing.

Speaker 6 (02:53:09):
Yeah, definitely.

Speaker 4 (02:53:10):
So there's there's a crowdfunder that I think there'll be.

Speaker 6 (02:53:15):
I believe there'll be a link that you guys can act.

Speaker 1 (02:53:18):
He says, and we'll be using that money to set
up the People's Assembly and mutual aid networks, but also
to create resources that anyone anywhere can use in their
local community.

Speaker 4 (02:53:27):
And I hope is that, you know, as these groups proliferate,
you know, we're going to start reaching out to each other,
forming an international solidarity network that is capable of providing
like the mutual aid that we that we need to
support each other, you know, for example, you know, if
we're talking about Palestine or Iran, to provide real, meaningful solidarities,

(02:53:49):
you know, liberation groups will require more organization than just
like thoughts and prayers.

Speaker 1 (02:53:54):
Really and yeah, yeah, well, thank you so much, Patrick,
It has been great talking with you. Good luck as
you continue moving forward.

Speaker 7 (02:54:07):
And yeah, yeah, thanks very much.

Speaker 4 (02:54:09):
Yeah, I guess I should also say I'm on I'm bizarrely,
I'm on TikTok.

Speaker 6 (02:54:14):
That's the medium I'm using at the moment. I wish
it wasn't.

Speaker 4 (02:54:17):
I'll probably want to start making more YouTube videos discussing
these ideas, so maybe I'll send you a link that
you can put in them.

Speaker 6 (02:54:23):
This isn't a both show. It's my YouTube channel.

Speaker 1 (02:54:25):
Excellent well Patrick tellwell Citizen of Earth YouTube channel and
we'll have your TikTok and the description. Thanks again for
coming on the show. Everybody go out and you know,
acquire eggs. Hey, We'll be back Monday, with more episodes
every week from now until the heat death of the Universe.

Speaker 5 (02:54:47):
It Could Happen Here as a production of cool Zone Media.

Speaker 4 (02:54:50):
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
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You can find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated
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Speaker 5 (02:55:04):
Thanks for listening.