Behind the Bastards - It Could Happen Here Weekly 234

Starting point is 00:00:00 This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Hey guys, it's us. The Jonas Brothers. I'm Joe. I'm Kevin. And I'm Nick. And guess what? We created our own podcast called, Hey Jonas.

Starting point is 00:00:12 We invented a podcast? Well, we didn't invent it. We just contributed to it. We're the first people to do podcasts. We get to ask other people questions because we're sick and tired of being asked questions. Well, sick and tired is a strong way to put it. But, you know, tired and sick. Tired and sick.

Starting point is 00:00:28 Listen to Hey Jonas on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you. you get your podcast. Just listen. We don't care where you hear it. On Humor Me with Robert Smygel and Friends, we help make you funnier on this episode. My guest's Bob, Odin Kirk, and Kids in the Halls, Bruce McCullough, try and help the Kazoo Kid and Tayson Day be famous again. What if there's an alternate universe show where you guys are incredibly popular? Well, and they could travel up the land doing meet and greets. They're constantly needed at malls. Listen to Humor Me with Robert Smigel and Friends on the I-Hard Radio. app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Starting point is 00:01:03 I am the Therapy Gecko. I am an unlicensed lizard therapist who takes phone calls from real anonymous humans about their problems, such as this. Sometimes I'll have my girlfriend pre-chew it spicy food and kind of baby bird it into my mouth. Is that weird? This week on Therapy Gecko, we're hearing all real, authentic human stories about anything from relationships to family drama to serendipitous encounters with unexpected people and things.

Starting point is 00:01:34 If real people peak your interest, this is the podcast for you. Listen to Therapy Gecko on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Imagine an Olympics where doping is not only legal but encouraged. It's the enhanced games. Some call it grotesque. Others say it's unleashing human potential. Either way, the podcast Superhuman documented it all, embedded in the games and with the athletes for a full year. Within probably 10 days, I'd put on 10 pounds.

Starting point is 00:02:07 I was having trouble stopping the muscle growth. Listen to Superhuman on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. AllZone Media. 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 going to be nothing new

Starting point is 00:02:38 here for you, but you can make your own decisions. Hello and welcome to It Could Happen here. My name is Dana El-Kurd. I'm a researcher and analyst of Arab and Palestinian politics. I'm recording this on May 19th, 2026, and this past weekend, May 15th, was Neckba Day. Nekba is the Arabic word for catastrophe, and Nekba Day commemorates when close to a million Palestinians were expelled in 1948 with the founding of the Israeli state, so the Palestinian catastrophe. Hundreds of villages and towns were destroyed, and many Palestinians were made refugees in camps around the new state, in Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and farther afield. within Israel, Palestinians who somehow managed to remain were put under a military rule.

Starting point is 00:03:33 As the past few years have demonstrated, and as many Palestinians will tell you, this Nekba never ended. Usually I use this podcast to discuss current events or to interview someone who is an expert on a dynamic I'm interested in, and I think is useful for people to hear. But today I'm going to be doing something a little different and outside my comfort zone. I'm going to share my personal family history and our Nakhapah story. I'm a Palestinian from Jerusalem. Both sides, my mom and my dad are from Jerusalem, and I was born there. Usually when people ask me where I'm from, and I say that, they just assume East Jerusalem

Starting point is 00:04:10 because that's where Palestinians have been sequestered today. They were driven out of West Jerusalem in 1948. But actually, some of my family were from the western side of the city. My paternal grandmother and her family lost their home in West Jerusalem in 1948. My grandmother ended up spending three years in Aukhibir refugee camp outside of Jericho because my great-grandfather had been wounded trying to defend the city and they were waiting to see if they could return. My grandmother has told me details about this time. She talked about the makeshift school in the camp that only went up to the eighth grade.

Starting point is 00:04:47 So my grandmother repeated the year a couple of times and then eventually dropped. out of school because she couldn't continue past the eighth grade. Now, the rest of her siblings, especially upon their return to Jerusalem, were all fully educated. As adults, many of them held advanced degrees. My grandmother was the only one as the eldest who had paid the price of displacement in this way. She was trained as a seamstress later on, but always lamented that she had to leave school early. She also told me about her house in Ba'a, which is in West Jerusalem, a neighborhood in West Jerusalem before it was taken during the Nakhba. This was a newer neighborhood with nice views of the city where middle-class Palestinian families

Starting point is 00:05:26 were expanding their homes as their families expanded. My grandmother's family had only moved into this house two months prior to the Nakhba. And she used to tell me how the house had been newly painted and it was made of beautiful stones. Before she passed away, she would often cry over this house as if it had just been taken. That house, by the way, still stands in West Jerusalem. The last time I visited Palestine, my grandmother's younger siblings showed me pictures of themselves posing in front of their house, now occupied by Israelis.

Starting point is 00:05:56 Now, my grandmother's story is very typical, but also very lucky, because her and her family, they did become refugees, yes, but they found their way back to the city. Most Palestinians were never able to return back to their hometowns. They were lucky in that sense that they had property and family in other parts of the city on the eastern side, and they were able to continue. We were able to continue. That's how I was born in Jerusalem myself because of that luck. Now, on my maternal side, I don't know as much about them and their neck of a story. I left Palestine when I was a child. I don't have a close relationship with my mother's side of the family.

Starting point is 00:06:33 And they harbor a lot of secrets. I never knew much about their histories and their dramas. My maternal grandmother is divorced and the family had fractured in particular ways. So there's a lot of touchiness. Many parts of the family were estranged from each other. One thing I did eventually find out when I was a teenager was that my mother's grandmother, so my great-grandmother, was actually Israeli. This was my mother's paternal grandmother, her dad that she no longer had a relationship with because of her parents' divorce. And I didn't have much information beyond that. I knew her name, Rachel, but nobody really wanted to talk about this Israeli great-grandmother. It was also an uncomfortable finding for me at the time because I'm a Palestinian from Jerusalem.

Starting point is 00:07:21 The only Israelis I had ever engaged with at that point were soldiers. So I didn't press the subject. It was just another family secret we didn't talk about. When I got older, I got more curious about this and I asked for more information. And I asked my dad to confirm whether this was true that my mother did in fact have an Israeli grandmother. Like this wasn't just a rumor. And he said he had met her himself. In fact, he had met her while I was a toddler, apparently, and I had met her.

Starting point is 00:07:49 So, of course, I had no recollection. My dad says that during her visit to my mother's family, so this would be Rachel's grandchildren and then her daughter-in-law, there had been some argument, and they had harangued her over the actions of her state and her state's military. And according to my dad, she replied that it had nothing to do with her because she came during the British Mandate era. She was classified as a Palestinian Jew. And he told me as much of the story as he had been told. Rachel was a Polish-Jewish woman. She came to Palestine. She married my great-grandfather, who by my father's description was kind of a wealthy Palestinian playboy type. They had two children,

Starting point is 00:08:31 and in 1948, when Israel was founded, and Palestinians were ethnically cleansed, my great-grandmother and great-grandfather split up. What my dad understood to have happened was Rachel left her children, joined her new countrymen, and that was that. So as I said, Jerusalem was split up. The western side was cleared of its Palestinians. There was an armistice line where actually the newfound Israeli state housed recent Arab Jewish migrants, sort of as cannon fodder. One of those neighborhoods where Arab Jews were placed later birthed the Israeli Black Panthers. And then the Western side was under Israeli rule, and Palestinians on the eastern side of the city fell under Jordanian rule. So the story goes that my great-grandmother left and my great-grandfather

Starting point is 00:09:19 put his children in an orphanage. My dad says he heard they were often mistreated, possibly because their mother was Israeli. And later when Israel occupied the rest of Jerusalem and the city was unified, my great-grandmother did go looking for her children, but my grandfather didn't connect with her, so her son and moved to Jordan. Now, from my mother, I also pressed for more information. She had never told me any of this story. But this year, literally a few weeks ago, she finally gave me Rachel's last name. I dug around to see what I could find out about her. I asked online, I got the help of people who had expertise in Jewish genealogy. And what I found was a much more complicated picture. First, I found an academic article about a,

Starting point is 00:10:03 quote, non-partisan Zionist youth group in Belgium in the 1920s and 1930s. I don't speak Hebrew, so I'm going to pronounce this, I think it's called Zeer Ha'am, getting their members ready to make the journey to Palestine. That's what this article was about. They were nonpartisan in the sense that they included a lot of different strains of Zionism, so right-wing Zionism, left-wing Zionism, among the members. But the Zionism itself, of course, was taken as a given. Now, the article included quotes from former members of this group and kind of grainy black and white photos, of which the name Rachel appeared in the captions with her last name. And when I first saw the woman identified as Rachel in this group photo,

Starting point is 00:10:48 I knew instinctively that I had found her because she looked like a blonde version of my mother. My intuition was very quickly confirmed because Rachel was identified by her married Palestinian name in the footnotes where she was quoted. So I found her. Here she was. I wanted to know more about what had happened to her after these pictures in Belgium were taken.

Starting point is 00:11:17 The article states that she immigrated to Palestine in the early 1930s at the encouragement of her, quote, Zionist mother. But what had led her between 1933 and 1948 to marry and then leave a Palestinian? And then why was she visiting her grandchildren and apparently me in the 1990s? The second big piece of information I got was because of a blue sky account, P-Y-M-U-N-D, genealogy. This is a person who works on Jewish genealogy, has an interest in it. And he helped find an article that had been written about my great-grandmother in the Israeli magazine Ma'arov. So shout out to this guy.

Starting point is 00:11:55 Now, this article was dated June 12, 1987. It's a three-page spread. And in this interview that Rachel gives, she talks about her childhood in Antwerp, her immigration to Palestine as a young woman, and her marriage. So apparently after her civil ceremony with my great-grandfather in 1935, they had traveled across Europe for a whole year, even meeting the extended family in Poland, where Rachel's family was originally from.

Starting point is 00:12:23 Her new husband was honored by her uncle, who was an important rabbi. Now, for reasons she does not outline, Rachel discusses leaving her husband, maybe assuming the separation would be temporary in 1948. But unlike the story that my father had heard and I had been told, she had not left her children. And in fact, there had been four of them.

Starting point is 00:12:43 She left two of them with their father and took the eldest and the baby that she was pregnant with to West Jerusalem. She kept her married name and she never officially divorced. I can only assume that she didn't guess the city would be divided or maybe didn't understand for how long. Now when Israel took the rest of the city in 1967, she not only reconnected with her, I guess, Palestinian children, but it seems from this article had warm relationships with them until the end. Rachel had assisted my grandfather her son in marrying my grandmother, compiling the dowry. The children who had been raised Israeli had reconnected with their family to varying degrees. Some of the Palestinian children visited the Israeli children in Tel Aviv, according to this interview.

Starting point is 00:13:31 Rachel even reconnected with her husband, my great-grandfather, living with him until he passed in 1983. Rachel had also maintained a relationship with her daughter-in-law, my maternal grandmother, even after her son's divorce. In this article, I recognized the descriptions of my mother and my aunts. Rachel had kept visiting them until she died in the mid-1990s. So that explains the visit that my father had witnessed. I quickly realized that, of course, it had been easier for many members of my family to pretend this had never happened, try to keep the truth of these relationships,

Starting point is 00:14:07 from their children. I suppose they preferred a needer story of clean breaks and solid national divisions. It's also not lost on me that much of this obfuscation relies on the common misogynistic trope of the negligent mother, which was apparently easy for everyone to believe. Now, I won't say that Israeli-Palestinian marriages are common, or that intimate relationships between the two groups are easy to find, but they aren't unheard of. Israeli political parties are certainly scared enough of this prospect. They often voice condemnations of inter-ethnic relationships of this kind. So this phenomenon must exist at some level.

Starting point is 00:14:46 And I guess I shouldn't be surprised either because Palestine's most well-known poet, Mahmoud Darwish, was famous for his poetry. Among many of them, a poem he wrote to his Jewish girlfriend titled Rita. This was the same man that joined the PLO, lived through the Israeli siege of Beirut, and wrote the Palestinian Declaration of Independence. Now, Rachel's story really boggled my mind in its contradictions because she had been part of a Zionist youth group.

Starting point is 00:15:13 She had actively joined an effort to facilitate the migration of Europe's Jewish population to Palestine, eventually leading to the displacement of Palestinians. But she had married a Palestinian. And in the interview for Marif, she describes running to the eastern part of the city when Israel occupied it in 1967 to see, quote, her friends. and she says she would marry my great-grandfather all over again if she could. You see, dear, it was a great love, she told her interviewer. Ironically, my parents and my maternal grandparents, all of which share national and religious identities,

Starting point is 00:15:46 both ended up divorced, but Rachel and her Palestinian Muslim husband somehow stayed together. At the same time, Rachel turned a blind eye to many things, and she herself hid many things. For example, she doesn't reveal the details of her children raising, is Israeli. The interviewer in the Ma'ar of magazine interview emphasizes that they wouldn't want their information known, especially about their lineage. It seems that neither ever reconnected with their Palestinian father. And most tellingly for me in that interview, when my maternal grandmother,

Starting point is 00:16:20 Rachel's daughter-in-law, complains of the Israeli soldiers in the neighborhood that she lived in, the interviewer reports that Rachel feigns deafness and returns the conversation to a discussion of the children. Now, Rachel isn't abnormal. Israeli society has turned a blind eye to many things. Many Israelis pretend that the Palestinians as a national group do not exist. They prefer to think of them, or prefer to think of us, as the reincarnation of Nazis or the modern day manifestation of anti-Semitism. Or at best, Palestinians are merely generic Arabs with easily severed ties to this particular land. The Israeli state even grows pine trees over emptied and demolished Palestinian villages to ensure return is impossible and to hide the extent of what happened.

Starting point is 00:17:08 In the latest war on Gaza, images and videos from Gaza are dismissed as AI fabrications. They call it Pollywood. It's just an effort by Palestinians to put Israel in a bad light. and governments the world over seem to have taken this position of turning a blind eye to the oppression Palestinians have faced and assuming Palestinians would live and die never having exercised their basic rights. All I can say is I'm living proof that these silences prolong the inevitable, that the truth eventually comes out, and the return is inevitable. The longer we wait to acknowledge the reality of the situation, the more people will suffer, and the more this kind of intergenerational trauma will continue.

Starting point is 00:17:49 you. I recently finished Molly Crabapple's book, Here Where We Live as Our Country, on the Jewish Bund. She quotes a Jewish bundist Lievich Hodes, saying that, quote, belief in mankind is not popular today. In these last years, we have all seen it become deeply debased, despoiled, and spat on. But if man is at heart a beast, no amount of running away will help, end quote. This really resonated with me. I firmly believe that we can't rely on silence. to disappear our problems. We can't run from each other. Let my family history be a testament to that. When we understand that, then the truth and the resolution and the return is only a matter of time. And maybe then the Nakhba will end. Thank you for listening and hope you all stay safe. Pride is like love. You feel it in your heart. IR. Radio, Canada's number one streaming app for radio and podcasts,

Starting point is 00:18:54 including IHart Pride Canada, your favorite is. hits and must have party bangers, plus personalized and curated playlists, like back in the day pride. Come together, celebrate love. Take pride with you anytime, anywhere. Just ask your smart speaker to play IHeart Pride Canada. Stream us on your phone. Listen now at iHeartRadio.ca.

Starting point is 00:19:17 Number one hits, millions of records sold. Awards, sold out tours. You think that Jonas brothers are satisfied? Nope. It's podcast time. We get to ask other people questions because we're sick and tired of being. and ask questions. Hey Jonas is available now, and their first guest is a big one. Paul Rudd. You know, Steve Carell is a great singer. Can you tell you not to audition at the office or something?

Starting point is 00:19:36 I told him. Whoa. We were filming Anchorman. Clearly, I was the idiot. Thank God he didn't listen to me, right? Listen to Hey Jonas on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. On Humor Me with Robert Smygo and Friends, we help make you funnier on this episode. My guest's Bob, Odin Kirk, and Kids in the Hall's Bruce McCullough, try and help the Zoo Kid and Tayzon Day be famous again. What if there's an alternate universe show where you guys are incredibly popular? Well, and they could travel up the land doing meet and greets. They're constantly needed at malls. Listen to humor me with Robert Smygling Friends on the IHard Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Starting point is 00:20:17 I am the Therapy Gecko. I am an unlicensed lizard therapist who takes phone calls from real anonymous humans about their problems. Such as this. Sometimes I'll have my girlfriend pre-chew, spicy food, and kind of baby bird it into my mouth. Is that weird? Or this. I had my boyfriend over, and I had dirty dishes everywhere. And I put the dirty dishes in our closet so he wouldn't see them.

Starting point is 00:20:43 If you're the kind of person that would enjoy being a fly on the wall of a stranger's therapy session, or if you pass people on the street and constantly wonder what might be going on in their heads, this is the podcast for you. This week on Therapy Gecko, we're hearing all real, authentic human stories about anything, from relationships to family drama to serendipitous encounters with unexpected people and things. If real people peak your interest, listen to Therapy Gecko on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to It Could Happen Here, a podcast about going on strike and hopefully winning. I am your host Mia Wong.

Starting point is 00:21:27 there's a concept in organizing called a hot shop, which is a shop where everything is moving really, really quickly, and people are organizing really quickly, and bad stuff is happening really quickly, and people are reacting really quickly. And today we are going to talk to maybe the hottest shop I have ever encountered. So, and to discuss this shop, I am talking to Jackie May and Deja Indigo,

Starting point is 00:21:53 who are members and organizers of Real You Electrolysis Workers United, both of you two, welcome to the show. Hi. Thank you. Thank you for having us. Thank you for having us on such short notice. You said hot shop and yeah, it's been a week. Very hot week, indeed.

Starting point is 00:22:11 I had heard this was going on and it was, there's an attempt to go public. The next thing I heard was like the next day and there was a strike and I was like, oh my God, this is wild. So, yeah, not even a week ago. Yeah, it will be. I think by the time you're listening to this, it will be one week. Yeah, yeah, okay, that's fair. Yeah, I want to mention this is being recorded on Monday and May 25th. This situation is moving very quickly.

Starting point is 00:22:38 There is a chance that things have changed by then. We will try to get an update in if something really major has happened. But let's roll this back to the beginning. And I think the place I want to start is. So you all are, it's really, real you electrolysis workers united. So you are electrolysis workers. I know this audience, specifically, of it could happen here, has a significantly higher chance of the general population to know what electrolysis is. But can you explain for people who don't know or only kind of familiar

Starting point is 00:23:16 what electrolysis is? Of course. Electrolysis is the only FDA recognized method of permanent hair removal. It is a technique that dates back a surprisingly long time where we insert a filament about the size of a hair into individual hair follicles. And with the use of electricity to generate either heat or lie, we basically kill each hair follicle at its root. And that hair, if all goes according to plan, will not come back. It is commonly used in gender-referral. care, and that is one of the, if not the, specialty of real u. electrolysis. Yeah, can you talk a bit about this in a gender affirming care context? Of course. You know, if you are a transgender person and you are undergoing medical transition,

Starting point is 00:24:11 there is a variety of reasons you might want to have hair permanently removed, either in preparation for surgery, both in terms of a trans-feminine or trans-masculine surgical context, you will need hair permanently removed from some parts of your body that will be involved in that. You also may want to have facial hair or body hair permanently removed. Again, this applies to both trans feminine, transmasculine, and people anywhere else on the transgender spectrum, because, you know, not everybody wants to have body hair. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:24:46 Or facial hair. Yeah, and this is something that, I mean, I can personally say, you can get a lot of dysphoria from body hair. It can be real bad. Oh, yeah, I can't. And not having it is such a huge difference. Yes. And I guess a thing that I should say, so my understanding of electrolysis, I have not done electrolysis. I have a lot of friends you have. But the thing about electrolysis versus like, you know, shaving or something is that once you hit a hair follicle, it's gone. And theoretically, after you're done with, you know, like a bunch of the sessions, you just don't have hair growing there any.

Starting point is 00:25:22 Yes. Correct. And also I should note that it is also covered by most health insurance that does coverage under affirming care. I know we all have kind of mixed feelings about the W-path standards, but it is considered the standard of care for hair removal under the W-path. So, you know, a significant proportion of the patients at the Real E electrolysis Clinic are using insurance to pay for them.

Starting point is 00:25:50 their care. Uh-huh. Yeah, which is really cool. Not all trans-health care is that expensive, but electrolytosis is not the most cheap thing if you are paying out of pocket. And it's really not. Yeah, it's usually out of pocket is somewhere

Starting point is 00:26:10 between $120 to $240 an hour, depending on your provider. Yeah. And these are weekly sessions, usually at least an hour. sometimes they can be less for those who have difficulty tolerating it. Some people go for even more, like some patients may elect to get like six hours of it done. But again, this is a lot of out-of-pocket costs, especially when it generally takes anywhere from a year and a half to three years to fully clear an area. So this is why it's so important to have this covered by insurance because it really adds up quickly.

Starting point is 00:26:50 Yeah, and I think this is also gets into what's important about this shop, which is that this is one of the few electrolysis places I've ever encountered where huge portions of the staff are trans. Yes. And yeah, can you talk a bit about what that's been like doing, you know, like doing this kind of gender affirming care on other trans people who normally? I could say this in a medical setting. I can count on one finger the number of trans health care providers. I mean, I guess if you count pharmacists, I can add like a second finger. Like in my entire life, and I'm extremely lucky that I've even gotten one trans health care provider who is trans. Well, it's an honor and a privilege to be able to work with other trans people.

Starting point is 00:27:50 for gender affirming care for our community. Yeah. Because we don't just serve the Vancouver area. We also serve the PDX area. And further, we have patients that commute from hours and hours away. That is true. Yeah. For people who don't know, a little bit of geography stuff that will become important later.

Starting point is 00:28:10 So this is Vancouver, Washington, which is just like right across a river from Portland. This amazingly, the fact that technically speaking, this river, is like the state border will become important in a little bit. Yes. Yes, indeed. Yes, it will. Oh, boy. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:28:30 So, all right, I'm going to ask all of you to put a little pin in a city that is technically across a state border from another city, but is like you just drive over a bridge and you're there. Okay. Let's go talk about some strike shit. Mm-hmm. Okay. So, I guess to start, can we talk about how organizing kind of first started at, at Real Yula

Starting point is 00:28:50 Charleses. Yes. It first started because they hired me, Mia. They hired me. Ever since I was a little girl, I have been enchanted with the idea of a workers' union and people working together to make their conditions better. It is something that I have had to learn and practice on my own because I didn't know about the IWW. you. It's a thing that I was trying to do before I moved out here. And then this opportunity just drops into my lap. And it's queer people. And they're working on queer people. I've got goosebumps. It's not because I'm cold. And how could I, in good conscience, just like, let that opportunity go. Yeah. Yeah. Jackie May is very much.

Starting point is 00:29:45 much the motive force behind us getting our shit together and unionizing. I remember from the time that I started, Jackie May was talking about having a goal to unionize the shop. We weren't expecting it to be on such a quick timeline, but I was really excited to have somebody else who was into doing this because I've always been a hardcore leftist and an extreme socialist. communist, I don't know, whatever label you want to put on me, workers' rights, like, we should own the means of production, and we should be the ones receiving all of the benefits from it. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:30:29 But Jackie May has just been, like, ready to go. But we can also talk about, like, the actual start to, like, okay, when did we actually start doing things to this direction, right? Do you want to take that, Jackie May? Yeah, so light talks have been going on since I got there back in, actually, June of last year. It's always just been real light, real surface level isn't, hey, do you support a union? Would you like to consider being in one one day? And then I go about my day.

Starting point is 00:31:03 Like, that's as far as the conversation goes, because that's all the information I need at that point. Yeah. So I knew who in the building was yes. and last month, one of our members, someone who was already in talks with us, was fired. And the circumstances around that person being fired, the vibes were off, right? Like, the previous week there was a dirty cart that just happened to appear in her room. that would be worth the write-up to get her fired. Huh.

Starting point is 00:31:46 That cart couldn't have been hers because before she started school, she moved that cart to her substitute clinician's room. Like, could not be what management said it was. So it looks like something that was fabricated. To clarify, this union member, this coworker was going on a leave of absence

Starting point is 00:32:11 to attend a certification training program. So that is why she had a substitute clinician taking over her equipment. I should also add that this was the first time they have ever done room inspections on site. Yeah. In fact, they've only done room inspections twice and both times resulted in a termination.

Starting point is 00:32:39 Well, that's not suspicious at all. Anyway, sorry, Jackie May, please continue. No worries. It's okay. Listen, we're allowed to rabbit trail, but we come back to, so our friend was fired, right? It's super duper suspicious. Yeah. And I saw an opportunity, and I took that opportunity to talk to people about it. And for like a few days after this, it happened. Nobody knew where she was at. Nobody knew what happened. Yeah. So the narrative was entirely up to me and just going,

Starting point is 00:33:19 this is what they did. And we all know this, we all know this person. We've worked alongside this person. We all recognize her skill and how intelligent she is. She's going to go on to teach this stuff. It's true. And it made all of us scared that one of our best

Starting point is 00:33:38 could just be removed. like that. Bingo. This is my understanding, this is a pretty small shop, right? Like, you know, everyone knows everyone else. Oh, yeah. Yes.

Starting point is 00:33:50 Yeah. Like maybe 15 or 16 practicing clinicians at a given time. Yeah. Thereabouts. Which, yeah, I guess makes it more scary when it's someone you know when you're close to just,

Starting point is 00:34:03 is just suddenly fired. And I should note that most of us who have worked there are also patients there. So like a lot of these, a lot of our coworkers are not just coworkers. They're also practitioners that provide gender affirming care to us. So we don't just have like a superficial sense of the clinical skill of these people. We have direct experience. And that makes it just that much more devastating when it's somebody you know is extremely good at that. their job is just suddenly gone under very suspicious circumstances.

Starting point is 00:34:46 Yeah, it's devastating. So this gets into one of the truly wildest and most distressing parts of this entire story, which is, can you talk about the, I guess I would just call it, the most neutral thing I can call it is the loan? Yes, absolutely. So remember when we kind of put a pin in the fact that Vancouver, Washington is right across the river from Portland, Oregon. So there is a big difference between how the state of Washington and how the state of Oregon regulates the practice of electrolysis. In the state of Oregon, you cannot practice electrolysis without first going through a certification program and passing a a certification exam to become certified. In the state of Washington, as long as you are practicing under the authority of somebody who has been certified in another state, you can practice electrolysis without certification. In fact, the state of Washington does not currently have

Starting point is 00:36:00 their own certification framework for electrolysis. So those of us who work at real you electrolysis, were all hired without prior certification. I think there may be one or two exceptions over the years, but by and large, the overwhelming majority are people who have no prior experience performing electrolysis. So, Real EU Electrolysis does have certified electrolysis on staff who are responsible for the training of new hires. One of the conditions of employment at Real U Electrolysis is to agree to sign a promissory note, wherein Real U Electrolysis will basically provide a stipend and pay for all expenses related to receiving certification from a certification program in exchange for four years of work at Real U electrolysis.

Starting point is 00:37:03 those who sign this note are not required to directly pay back any money unless they either fail to complete their schooling, fail to pass their certification, resign their position within four years, or are terminated. And at that point, they are immediately liable to repay the full amount of the promissory note. So essentially, as soon as you enter, schooling. And again, this is a condition of employment. Every single person who has been hired by real e-electrolysis could not start working without signing a contract, agreeing to sign this

Starting point is 00:37:47 promissory note when it comes time to be sent to school. Yeah. Can you talk about like how much money is it that you have to pay back if you either get fired or leave? At least $21,000 in this case. Jesus Christ. Like, Oh my God. Yeah. It's cartoonishly evil. Yeah. I should clarify as well that most of us who are hired are not coming into this job from a place of financial privilege.

Starting point is 00:38:18 Most of us had some manner of skepticism over this contract, but because the opportunity just seemed so great and because we had not heard any history of, you know, any sort of bad faith actions from management. I think we all just kind of decided, well, I get to work with a bunch of cool trans people, on a bunch of cool trans people for decent pay and benefits. And they probably won't just fire me once I sign this loan. Like, that wouldn't be cool. And so where this really comes into play is that the union member, the coworker, who was fired, as I mentioned before, was on a leave of absence to be. in school. And basically, she was fired and immediately they demanded repayment in full of this loan.

Starting point is 00:39:12 So not only did she lose her job over extremely spurious circumstances. She now was on the hook for $21,000 like immediately. Like I think the deadline they gave her is in like two days. So I want to add something to all of that. Yeah. They had her sign that loan knowing that she had two write-ups on the books and that her next write-up

Starting point is 00:39:42 within those four years would lead to termination. They knew that. They have that on file. They admitted that to our faces. We had a group of witnesses who can attest to this because we did all confront them.

Starting point is 00:39:59 That's jumping a little bit further ahead in the story. We'll get there. Yeah, I just, I want to stay here for a second to just sort of, just walk through how unbelievably unhinged this is, which is that, yeah, so the, the condition of working here is that you have to sign, like, what is effectively an indentured servitude contract. Like, it's like, okay, you have to work here for, like, four years, and if we ever decide to fire you, you can't leave.

Starting point is 00:40:33 And if you ever decide to fire you, you just owe $21,000. Which just on the face of it is such an unbelievably exploitative situation. Because yeah, this is a bunch of queer and trans people. Like, no fucking trans person has $21,000. Like, that's just not a thing. Like, yeah. Certainly, I don't have $21,000. Like, what are we doing here?

Starting point is 00:40:56 Like, taking advantage of the, trans community. Yeah. And then you have the just as the baseline condition of just everyone has just the doom of Damocles hanging over their head.

Starting point is 00:41:12 And then also, you know, like, what you were describing were, okay, you get someone to sign the contract knowing that you can get rid of them after one more infraction, that's such an incredible incentive to like mistreat and fire

Starting point is 00:41:26 people because if you fire someone, you can just collect like try to collect like $21,000 from them. Financially ruin somebody, financially destroy somebody, render them homeless even. Yeah. It's what we call a perverse incentive. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:41:44 You can just reduce someone effectively into a debt peon. And usually that kind of threat is abstract. This is how you're incentivized to work and to stay in line. If you lose your job, then you're going to like drown in all of the things you need to do. to survive. But no, here it's just, yeah, you're now $21,000

Starting point is 00:42:06 in debt to this company that just fired you. Yep. And again, that is due and payable immediately. Yep. That the way the contract is worded does not stipulate any sort of repayment period. Now, we have attestations from previous employees

Starting point is 00:42:25 who have been fired under this contract and been released from it. So we do know that the owners of real U electrolysis will selectively choose to release terminated employees from their contract. However, they have elected not to do that in the case of this union member, this coworker who was fired last month. Correct. Yeah. So that also looks like retaliation. Your words.

Starting point is 00:42:50 Like sort of deliberately. Your words. Yeah. You know, it doesn't look good. There aren't good answers as to why you would. that in this situation and not in others. The story gets more fun, too. Oh, yeah.

Starting point is 00:43:06 Yeah, we're just getting started. Before all of this gets even more unhinged, we need to go to, I don't know, maybe a source of hingedness and security. I mean, if that's true, I hope better things happen in your lives. But we're throwing to the products and services that support this podcast. We are back.

Starting point is 00:43:38 Let's continue with this story. here and get to, I guess, the next set of firings? Because this just keeps escalating. So, before we actually get to the next set of firings, we would have our first and, Deja, correct me if I'm wrong, our second meeting. You are correct. Yeah, we would have our first and second meeting before the next firing. May 2nd and May 14th.

Starting point is 00:44:09 Yes. So that next firing would take place on Monday. May 18th. That was Monday. May 18th. Yeah. So like one week ago from when this is getting recorded, which bear that in mind as the rest of the story plays out,

Starting point is 00:44:25 because the timeline here is so condensed that like it's like all of the shit that happens with like a bad union busting campaign condensed into the span of like three days. Yes. We are speed running. bad boss versus union worker's story. This is like one of the fastest escalations I've ever seen. Before we get to this Monday, let's talk about what happened at those two meetings, because this is genuinely such an impressive pace of like how fast all of this got organized.

Starting point is 00:45:00 Yeah, so the first meeting, May 2nd, we basically gathered every clinician who we believed we could trust, who was not either a manager in training or did not have direct ties to management, and also who was on site because there were some people that we would have loved to have talked to who were off-site attending a certification program at another location. So we gathered up everyone we could that started with about eight of us and grew to 10 as the night we're on. We talked about the circumstances around the firing of that coworker who was in school. We, We all talked about our options for how do we proceed. We voted unanimously to form a union and to do so under the auspices of the industrial workers of the world, thanks in part to Jackie May having contact with them and having gotten a bit of a lowdown on what our options looked like.

Starting point is 00:45:59 So that was the TLDR of the first meeting. That's like two-thirds of the shop, like of the total people. Yes. Of the people who were active practicing clinicians there, I think we were only missing a couple. Yep, which is really impressive. I wish we could have got them. Yeah, we definitely wish we could have gotten to everybody or had been clearer on who was actually not management. Yeah, that's also a thing that, like, management will play a lot of games with who is and isn't union eligible. I just want to, like, stop for a second and be like, Getting like two-thirds or more of a shop to show up to the first meeting and vote to form a union is like, that might be the fastest I've ever seen this happen.

Starting point is 00:46:47 It's like, you did this in one meeting? Yeah. Speed ran the entire organizing process. Like one meeting. It's like unbelievable. We put this on Gamestone quick too. Yeah, like I maybe. I don't know.

Starting point is 00:47:04 We could submit it for a world record. world record category. Any percent, unanimous. As they say, nobody organizes quite as well as a bad boss. That's true.

Starting point is 00:47:18 You have, yeah, you have the double benefit of bad boss firing people and also like, it's a bunch of queer and trans people, which is like, ideal conditions for organizing. Yes.

Starting point is 00:47:34 So that meeting, that was May 6. second, the next meeting took place on May 14th. Now, Jackie May, do you want to talk a little bit before we talk about this meeting about some of the things that happened in between the two meetings, like certain actions by management and people who are manager adjacent? Oh, right, right. Yeah. So our tools in laundry sterilization

Starting point is 00:48:05 tech, maybe specialist. I'm not quite sure on the word for it. Salem is married to our director of operations, Zerick Lee. That's, that's, that's, that's, that's, no boy. But wait, there's more. Oh, no. Salem actually approached at least one of our, one of our union members to ask directly if we were forming a union. Yeah, which, by the way, you're not allowed to do,

Starting point is 00:48:39 you're not supposed to do that. But, you know, that's, yeah, great, incredible stuff. It's a lovely gray area because Salem isn't management, but technically isn't management is simply married to management. It's the one. Technically, technically illegal, but like, Is management really, really not supposed to be doing that? Yeah.

Starting point is 00:49:06 I think it also bears clarifying at this point that Zerick Lee, Director of Operations, and effectively the HR Department of Realty Electrolysis, has absolutely heard Jackie May express positive union sentiment. Mm-hmm. I forgot about that. This goes back to summer of 2025. Like, there have been multiple instances. where people in management have directly heard Jackie May talking about being pro-union.

Starting point is 00:49:38 Granted, Jackie May has always been properly elliptical about it in the presence of management. God, it's hard. But the suspicion was clearly established long ago. Yeah. That is true. That is true. This will be important. Oh, boy.

Starting point is 00:49:57 Foreshadowing is a literary technique. So to continue, during these two weeks in between meetings, thereabouts, yes, we did have Salem, spouse of the director of operations, poking around, asking questions. Oh, boy. Yeah, and I will say this is also a very common management tactic. Of course. And as part of why when you're organizing, you need to do the basic power mapping of figuring out who is close to the bosses and who is close to management and what ties they have, because that dramatically affects, yeah. you two absolutely both know this, but for the listeners, yeah, it is very important to figure out who the person who's married to management and will report to them is.

Starting point is 00:50:41 Yes. So I treated as game theory. I have treated all of this like it has been a game. Yeah. Because that's how I process it. That's, that's all I needed to say about that. Go ahead, Deja. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:50:58 So to the credit of every union member, not a single person violated obsec on this. Nobody confessed to any union organizing activity. Yeah. That doesn't change that they continue to be suspicious. In any case, we had our second meeting on May 14th. At that meeting present were representatives from the IWW, as well as a representative from ILWU Local 5, because at that point we had not been formally endorsed by a union and we wanted to get some perspectives from whoever was available to speak to us, and those were the two shops that

Starting point is 00:51:42 were available to come talk to us. At that meeting, we again voted unanimously to continue with organizing, unionizing. We were initially going to do it under the auspices of ILWU. local five. However, their onboarding protocols are a little bit more time-consuming and involved than the IWWs. And the following Monday, which Jackie May will be talking about in just a second, there were some circumstances that sort of forced us to go with the union who could get us on board

Starting point is 00:52:20 Lickety Split. Yeah. So that Monday, I want to say it was like midday. I had just finished with like my, I want to say my first two people and was, I was on my way to the break room to grab a drink. And on my way out, I see my coworker, fellow union member and even my housemate come out of her office flanked by Real U Electrolysis Management. and the last time I saw her that day was she had tears streaming down her face and she just goes, Jackie May they fired me. And I responded immediately. I got, I want to say five or six of us to gather outside of Director of Operation Zariklis office.

Starting point is 00:53:15 And we voiced our displeasure. We voiced that our co-workers, should have their jobs back. We voiced that none of us feel safe because of the working conditions. None of us feel safe because of the way management goes about handing out disciplinary actions,

Starting point is 00:53:34 the inconsistency with the different things that they will or will not punish. I just see his eyes peeking up over his monitor, and he's like, well, I can't discuss what's in somebody's personnel file, and also I can't hire them back. My hands are tied.

Starting point is 00:53:54 You don't know all of the documentation on our side. So I go, okay, who else do we got to talk to? And Zarikli points us to president of real you electrolysis. Yeah. On a landry. And we go down to her office and we say the same things. And she says, I'm not, what is, I'm paraphrasing. I cannot make unilateral decisions.

Starting point is 00:54:19 Yes. And I asked who else we would have to talk to about this. And she said that would be co-president Leah LaFavor and director of operations, Eric Lee. I turned around and right across the hallway from Anna's office is Leah in reception. So we give them the exact same spiel of we're not happy with this. This needs to be corrected. None of us feel safe about this. And this was not simply Jackie May speaking either.

Starting point is 00:54:54 Those of us present, all voiced concerns, myself included, you know, it was very clearly not the actions of a single individual, but of a concerted group. Yes. They may trust me to speak for them, but I also know when to be quiet so that they can voice their opinions. At that point, Deja had finished with all of their appointments and said, hey, I'm done for the day, I'm going home,

Starting point is 00:55:24 this isn't me giving you an official resignation, I need to go home and consider my options. And I followed suit with, I'm not giving you a resignation, you have essentially created a family emergency for me. Yeah. And now I have to go see to that family emergency. That is important. we will come back to that interaction. Oh, boy.

Starting point is 00:55:50 Later. Yes. I will say, being one of the two presidents of the company and someone goes, don't fire our coworkers, and you go, sorry, that's not, like, I can't make unilateral decisions, is the most absolutely chicken shit response I've ever seen in my entire life. Like, it's like, it's fucking, like, verter von Braun, like, when the rockets go up, who cares where they come down? That's not my department.

Starting point is 00:56:15 It's like, you are the president of the company. Like, what are we doing here? Like, why would you? Like, I can't make unilateral decisions. Like, you are the president. Like, there's like, three people in management. What are we doing here? I mean, the thing you're doing here is everyone in succession is trying to be like,

Starting point is 00:56:39 ah, I actually can't do anything. It's like, yes, you can. You do run. the business, but... I would also like to note that this conversation held between the group of us with

Starting point is 00:56:54 Annalantry and Leah Lafavor very early on in that conversation. Annalantry said this conversation is over and walked away. However, Leah did continue to have a conversation with us and was the person that we informed that we are not

Starting point is 00:57:11 resigning. Anybody who leaves today is doing so, because their schedule is clear or they are having a family emergency. Both of these things are acceptable reasons for leaving your shift, and that has been established through ample precedent. Yeah. So that was Monday. That was Monday, May 18. Jesus Christ. That's not even all of Monday. Right. I want to point out or include that straight from the job site, I went home.

Starting point is 00:57:45 I grabbed my other roommate who is, at the time, wasn't a part of the union because wasn't an employee of real you electrolysis, but is on the real you electrolysis hiring list. Oh, so it's like a contractor situation? Not quite. They will work with us in the future. Oh. It just like hasn't been fully hired. Yeah, that's kind of the way they do things.

Starting point is 00:58:10 Like they hire people well in advance of having them actually start work. Like most of us were hired like months and months and months before we started actually taking shifts. So Monday, I go home. I pick up my housemate who is incredible and has a special interest in documentation and bureaucracy. She and Deja are my two documenters and shout out, shout out to Vey because we will. wouldn't have been able to get here without you. And we went to the IWW over in Portland, and we had a meeting with them. And we just walked in there with the intention of asking for help from like their solidarity network of like, hey, we have just been put into like a hardship status at this

Starting point is 00:59:06 point because of what has happened. Can you help us like with rent? And I want to say that meeting was like two or three hours long. We talked about a lot of plans moving forward. And instead of just having support with rent, we came away with a plan of what we would be doing next. And Tuesday came. We had all 11 people of this union meet in the parking lot

Starting point is 00:59:36 and sign our petition together. We got it photocopied. We made digital copies. We made sure it was all safe. our person got that stuff filed away for us, got us some very nice red folders to be able to keep all of these documentation in. And we were given,

Starting point is 00:59:57 I was given a red folder labeled management. And we planned to deliver this on Wednesday. Tuesday was quiet. Tuesday was like quiet before the storm, quiet. Yeah. We were all braced. that I was going to be fired. Because while I wasn't swearing or rude to management,

Starting point is 01:00:21 I wasn't as even-toned or level-headed as I am right now. I was also bracing to be fired because I did also do a lot of that speaking and I was extremely emotional at the time as well. Yeah, absolutely. Oh, I do think there is one little tidbit that is important to mention about the employee who was fired on Mondays. Not only was this person, a union member and one of the organizers, this person also had a fully, like, workplace-sanctioned and endorsed romantic relationship with the first person who was fired. So, like, again, this is not like they were illicitly dating.

Starting point is 01:01:03 It's like management had a protocol, had forms and all that for when co-workers are dating. It's in the employee handbook that they're okay with that. Yes. And so it looks. It looks at, So they're like moving through the... Yeah. That's interesting. I... That's... Oh, boy.

Starting point is 01:01:22 I... Yes. There's a thing that an FAA guy said about... There's a story of that guy who was like flying around in a lawn chair with like balloons attached to it. Oh, my God. I know that story. Yeah. And the thing about the news calls the FAA guy.

Starting point is 01:01:39 And the FAA guy goes, we don't know. know what section of the federal aviation code is violated, but when we figure it out, we're prosecuted with it. And like, that has to be some kind of violation of like, like specifically targeting people in a relationship. Like, there's got to be something there. But I don't know. And I mean, admittedly American workplace law is a complete nightmare. But that is extremely sketchy and shitty. And yes, oh, we're going to get it sorted out. Yeah. Oh, yes.

Starting point is 01:02:15 Yeah. I just, oh, boy. Jesus Christ. That feels not good. And good Lord. Okay, so Jackie May, please continue. I slept real good Tuesday night into Wednesday morning. Let me just say that.

Starting point is 01:02:30 I slept real good. Wednesday morning, we coordinated. And we went a little early, admittedly. I got a little, there was a little bit of adrenaline, and I kind of jumped the gun. Just a hair. We were supposed to wait until 1155 to deliver our signed petition. It's okay.

Starting point is 01:02:49 Yeah. We all had noon appointments, and we are all so committed to our patients that none of this process interrupted patients in treatment. All of this had been coordinated around our schedules so that people got to continue getting treatment. Yeah. That is correct. There has never been a point where a patient's treatment session has been interrupted or a patient has been abandoned.

Starting point is 01:03:20 I'm saying this because there are some accusations from management to that effect, and I would like it on public record, that that is absolutely false and that we can all attest to this. Foreshadowing. Yeah. More foreshadowing. Yes. Sorry. Oh, boy. So Wednesday morning, I have the privilege.

Starting point is 01:03:39 I have the backing of the crew to go. serve this paperwork. We had somebody from the union kind of send out a feeler text to find out when the president and co-president would be in the building. It wouldn't be until after 1230.

Starting point is 01:03:58 We serve that paperwork to director of operations, Eric Lee. He took that at 1148. He doesn't really give us a response besides there's a lot here I'm going to have. to read it all thoroughly and get back to you. But we go about our days. I have to leave site after two of my appointments because I left my phone at a gas station, so I had to leave and come back. Oh no. It's okay. We got it. It's all good. Yay.

Starting point is 01:04:30 251. I'm back on site. I am in my own office. I have co-president Leila Favor and one other member of management present and they are firing me. They are handing me three write-ups. Jesus Christ. Now, the earliest of those write-ups, or I should say, I guess the oldest of those write-ups are from May 4th, 2026. And it essentially is a write-up that says, Jackie, you were rude to management. Now, let's talk about why. Let's talk about why that write-up happened. You see, By that point in time, we were on the third pay period where we were all being given paper checks. After years, yeah, years of direct deposit, like long history of direct deposit only. Switch to paper checks.

Starting point is 01:05:26 We were given paper checks. Those checks had been bouncing. Paychecks are bouncing? Yes. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:05:38 Not just Jackie Mays either. Yeah. Jesus Christ. That is true. What I will say is on average per pay period, like a handful of us had their checks bounce. That will come into play later. That's foreshadowing.

Starting point is 01:05:56 Oh, boy. Yeah. So my check bounced once. My bank account went, okay, that's kind of suss. My check bounced a second time. I currently don't have access to a bank. account because my bank has labeled what has happened fraudulent activity and my bank is investigating not me because they've now figured out that it's not me that's doing it. I can prove the

Starting point is 01:06:20 checks are bouncing. Jesus Christ! But yeah, but they still locked your bank account? Yes. Because the other people's checks bounce. Jesus Christ. Yeah. So we should we should note here that we all were aware that Jackie May was locked out of Fair Bank account and experiencing financial hardship to the point where we actually did have some of our union members like donating food to Jackie May. Solidarity Network came through for me because that kept us fed. That kept us like we were able to have gas for that, for the next, like to get us to the next payday. Essentially this this whole thing would set me back

Starting point is 01:07:07 like a full pay period like I wouldn't get the last check cashed until we got to the next pay period on Friday because we get paid every two weeks yeah and this is something we've talked about on this show a lot is that like you know and I mean I think most people listening to this show

Starting point is 01:07:28 understand this on an intuitive level but it's like if your paycheck fucking bounces that's really fucking bad. Like, holy shit. And it's like, yeah, like, obviously that's going to cause, like, unbelievable, like, financial distress. And it fucking sucks. And I'm really sorry you've been having a deal with that on top of fucking everything else because that's just, yeah, that that's something that can just, like, completely fuck your entire life. That's through no fault of your own.

Starting point is 01:07:59 Yeah. It's literally your boss is fucking up. Mm-hmm. Yep. God. I want to note that still to this day, I do not have access to my bank account as far as I know. Jesus Christ. The last week has been really crazy and like I haven't been able to get out to like a credit or anything to get something new set up. So that's just in the in the background like you're not even getting paid because the checks are bound. Yes. And Jackie May was understandably distressed over this and expressed that frustration. And that was the cause of a write up that was used.

Starting point is 01:08:34 To justify termination, right? Is that, do I have that, right, Jackie May? That is correct. That is the first- To- Jesus Christ! That write-up is from May 4th. That write-up is from May 4th. I have heard of a lot of bullshit write-ups in my time doing this job.

Starting point is 01:08:54 Write-up for being rude to management because you were talking to them about the fact that your paycheck bounced. That is the worst write-up I have ever heard. that is like even including ones because obviously like people they'll just like make up shit

Starting point is 01:09:09 to do a write-up for but like that's like a special level of like oh no this did kind of happen but it's because they fucked up

Starting point is 01:09:17 and bounced your paycheck like Jesus Christ so Jackie me I believe you were recounting the write-ups that Leila favor

Starting point is 01:09:30 presented to you about that I'm just I'm just losing my mind. That's so awful. So the second one is because they did a room inspection. It's really weird. They like doing room inspections when they want to remove somebody.

Starting point is 01:09:44 Yeah. So there was a room inspection and they were like, your room's not clean enough. Okay. That's your statement. The third write-up. Do you remember when I had a family emergency that they caused and I left sight because they caused a family emergency?

Starting point is 01:10:02 Yeah. Uh-huh. My third and final write-up was because I left early, and they tried to say, well, Jackie, you didn't ask for our permission. Excuse me, Jackie May. You didn't ask for our permission to leave for the day. You just told me it was happening. Oh. And that was my full write-up.

Starting point is 01:10:25 I would like to add to this, that I myself have multiple documented instances of, you know, having to leave work because of a health or mental health emergent situation. And there has never been a situation where I said, may I leave? It has always been, I need to leave. And I have noted and observed this with other employees as well. None of these incidences ever culminated any write-up or any sort of disciplinary action. So this is clearly inconsistent with ample precedent for the application of disciplinary standards. Yeah, they're just trying to find reasons to get three write-ups, which is also like just a sign of how well y'all are, like, doing your jobs that, like,

Starting point is 01:11:16 because, like, normally employers have, like, random code infractions that are always just sort of laying around that they can pick up and be like, hey, but it's like they couldn't even, like, find anything. They had to just, like, basically, fabricate complete, just like absolute nonsense? Yes. Like, Jesus Christ. Am I recalling correctly, Jackie May, that these are the first instances of any documented

Starting point is 01:11:44 disciplinary action against you in your tenure at really electrolysis? Yeah, I'm a good girl. I follow the rules. And I do so very, very well. And then suddenly it's like, oh, here's, here's three write-ups. like again, like the post facto write-up for the high, I am upset that my paycheck bounced. Jesus.

Starting point is 01:12:13 And so I will note that even that very first write-up did take place after we were engaged in organizing activity, after management had demonstrated suspicion. Yeah. And all of these write-ups were delivered, within a few hours of the delivery of our petition for voluntary recognition. Uh-huh. Which I will say looks not even just suspiciously.

Starting point is 01:12:39 Like, it looks like they have just like a giant polar bear sitting there and the polar bear is union retaliation and they've like painted a little clown face on it and gone, this is a clown not retaliation for forming a union. It's like, no, that is a polar bear. Like, what are we doing here? Oh, God. So what happened next, Jacque Mae? Oh, gosh, what happened next?

Starting point is 01:13:14 Well, you know, I had to clean out my office, so I grabbed the stuff that was important to me. I took my time. I wasn't angry. I didn't, I really didn't speak throughout much of it, because at that point, the best thing I could do is just take my recording, not say anything. And as soon as I was out of the office, I was. I sent a message to the union members that said, hey, I was just fired. They walked me out of the building.

Starting point is 01:13:47 If we're going to do something about this, we need to do something about this now. And that was at 251. By 401 p.m. Wednesday afternoon, we had the rest of the union organize a, organize and stage a walkout in solidarity. That's really quick. I'm going to let Dacia take over because I was outside.

Starting point is 01:14:13 Yeah. Yeah. So at the point that we found out Jackie May had been terminated, we called an emergency vote in our secure messaging platform that we used to coordinate things. And we voted in favor of doing a walkout once we had each finished with our obligations to patients. In fact, I actually had. an appointment scheduled from 315 to 345, that at that point, I elected to continue that appointment, and I did so. I provided treatment as usual, cleanup as usual, chart noting as

Starting point is 01:14:51 usual. Not a single person who engaged in this walkout did so without completing their scheduled treatment in that time slot. Once that appointment was finished and everything was in compliance within my room and the rooms of those who were not stuck in appointments because we did have a couple of union members who were in longer appointments, who were not able to join the walkout immediately. Those of us who were free did walk out. And when we did this, we spoke directly to Leah Lafavor, who was sitting at the reception desk, and said that we are staging a formal walkout in protest of the wrongful termination of Jackie May. And this is not a resignation.

Starting point is 01:15:38 This is a legally protected action under the National Labor Relations Act. Leah then said that anyone who walked out that door must immediately surrender their keys and was no longer welcome on the premises. Now, Jesus Christ. Sorry, I was just, like, in terms of, like, open retaliation for union activity. Like, oh, boy. Yeah, we were. Oh, boy.

Starting point is 01:16:08 we were so gobsmacked at the just absurdity that she would take such a blatant action of retaliation, that our response was, are you sure you want to do that? And the answer was yes. So initially, we did not return our keys because we wanted to confer with somebody from the IWW. So we spoke with an IWW representative who advised. us that their demand for the return of the keys was a lawful demand for the return of company property and that we should comply with that. So we did. We gathered up our keys. We sent a representative back in to return them. And at that point, we were officially on strike. We reunited with

Starting point is 01:16:57 Jackie May in the parking lot. We started strategizing about how we were going to do this. IWW sent some folks our way to provide support. I took off to pick up some art supplies so that we could make signs and just general things like water and snacks. Our other union members who were currently inside treating patients finished their appointments as scheduled and emerged when they were no longer responsible for any patient care, also turned in their keys. At that point, we did have an IWW representative on scene who accompanied those employees back inside to return the keys and to confirm to, Leah Lafavor directly that this is not a resignation. It cannot be construed as a resignation,

Starting point is 01:17:44 that this is a protected organizing action, and that all we were doing was complying with a lawful demand for the return of company property. We have plenty of witnesses to this, regardless of any statement that they may choose to make, to the contrary. Which also, I just want to know, this is the first time I've ever gotten timestamps on, like, a walkout. This is the best documented one piece I've ever seen. Like, y'all are very organized. Oh, yeah. Oh, my God. No, no, we're not, we're not playing around.

Starting point is 01:18:16 Yeah. So, at that point, Jackie May, I think you can take it from here. Yeah, so, real quick, I got to go back. We got, I, I forgot a very important detail about Monday after, after my co-worker union member and housemate was fired. In talking to Zerick Lee, I, looked him in the eyes and I told him, don't do this. I said, please don't do this. Please don't call my bluff on this. Please don't make me do this. And we're here now.

Starting point is 01:18:50 I, jumping back to Wednesday, I had to go off site. I was meeting with some IWW members who were, we were mainly discussing what we were going to do next in or what options we had. in response to a mass firing. Yeah. We spent a couple hours at that. I came away, understanding a whole bunch more as to what we're doing.

Starting point is 01:19:18 I returned to the shop, and I think I don't remember it very well because I was all emotion and adrenaline at that point in time. Yeah. What I will say is that when Anna Landtree and Leila Favor were getting in their cars to leave sight,

Starting point is 01:19:40 I made sure that they heard me, that the block heard me, that a good chunk of downtown Washington could hear, could hear my anger and my passion. I don't know if you can tell in my voice right now, but I kind of went a little too hard on it, and it's why I sound like I do now. A little bit scratchy.

Starting point is 01:20:03 It happens. I'm honestly surprised I can speak as well, because there's been lots of chanting and singing and yelling and because we have been on the picket line pretty much since then every single day that the business is open. That is correct. Yeah, which I want to roll back for a second and just point out that like going from, yeah, we all signed our union petitions and then we delivered it the next day and then that same day everyone is on strike is astonishing. the pace of it is absolutely incredible and then also just it says a lot about

Starting point is 01:20:38 the solidarity that you all have and all of your your like y'all's character that a yeah there's just everyone doesn't walk out goes on strike and then B also I think it speaks to like who you're fighting for here both each other and also the fact that

Starting point is 01:20:58 like all of you were so careful to make sure that your patients got their care is, yeah, it's something that I think speaks, it says a lot about the kind of people all of you are, and it says a lot about the kind of people that management is that this is what they're doing to people who both fight for each other

Starting point is 01:21:23 and also care deeply about the patients and the people that they're taking care of. Yeah. Yeah. I really do, I know Jackie May and I are the ones who are kind of operating as the mouthpiece, but I absolutely need to express the deepest, most sincere appreciation for all of the other union members. Because, you know, not everybody involved in this has been as just like, gung-ho, angry, like, screw it, let's do this.

Starting point is 01:21:55 Like, this has been really difficult and nerve-wracking for a lot of them. But you know what? They have followed through and persevered, and not a single person who started this with us has switched sides or dropped out. Everybody has been so brave and so committed and showing up so fiercely. And, yeah, we are also, like, our patients are still the most important thing. Like, yes, we've been picketing, but we have not been turning anybody away from crossing the picket line. And we, every patient that shows up to be treated by one of the very few people who is still on-site providing care at really electrolysis crosses the line with our complete blessing. And we are absolutely vocal and unequivocal about that, that we are not trying to deny anybody care.

Starting point is 01:22:48 And in fact, like, we are reaching out to other electrology providers out there to, you know, try to offer some options to our patients who have chosen. to forego their care out of solidarity. You know, we really, we want to get back to work and go back to giving care to our people. But management has made that impossible. Yeah, I think one of the things that comes through really clearly here is like, yeah, how willing management is to just hurt people and how dedicated all of you are to making sure that people you're caring for,

Starting point is 01:23:28 forget their care. And also, the just astonishing amount of bravery that it takes to not only go on strike and continue to be on strike, but also to do that in a situation where getting fired potentially means that you have to fight off paying the company that was employing you, that you're striking against $21,000. That is some of the worst conditions imaginable. and all of you did it anyways and it's one of the most incredible things I've ever seen. Thank you. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:24:02 It's almost pride. It's 2026. We're making history here. This union is for trans people, buy trans people to provide care. To buy in large other trans and queer people. And weirdly, I have to say thank you to our two bosses because if they hadn't have made the decisions that they made,

Starting point is 01:24:27 things could have been so different. It didn't have to be this way, is what I have to say. It didn't have to be this way, but they chose this. They chose this. And we have chosen at every time, every opportunity to choose each other and to choose our community and go, no, you're not going to bully one of us. We're not allowing this anymore. We are sticking together.

Starting point is 01:24:49 Yeah. And it's been really incredible seeing the way that, all of you have taken this opportunity and taken all of these risks to fight for each other. There's a quote that I heard about you from management about why they hired a bunch of trans people that. I was wondering if you could tell the audience what that quote is because Jesus Christ. It's a super majority of trans people. Yeah, which is super rare for almost almost the entire workforce. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:25:17 Yes. So this quote comes from president, on a landry from the 4th of July company barbecue held at their house in 2025

Starting point is 01:25:33 Oh no with this shit-eaten grin she says Yeah if you pay a trans woman $30 an hour and you give her health insurance

Starting point is 01:25:47 and a little bit of respect She will march through a brick wall for you Jesus Christ. Like, there's two immediate obvious angles. One, it's like, oh, so you like knew what you, like, you knew what you were doing here, right? You were deliberately hiring, you were deliberately hiring trans people because you thought, because you thought they were, they would be easier to exploit. And that's hideous.

Starting point is 01:26:11 Those are your words. Yeah. I, like, that's, that's, yeah. This is my, this is my analysis of this is like, that's Jesus Christ. And then B, also, this is, this is. This is really some like your chickens are coming home to roost. Like you have sown the wind and you are now reaping the whirlwind because it is true that trans people get treated like absolute shit. And it's very nice to get a job where you're not being treated like shit.

Starting point is 01:26:39 But it's also true that if you decide to fuck over a bunch of trans women, like we will fight for each other. Like trans people and people will fight for each other. And I think that's one of the sort of beautiful things about, you know, as much as all of this absolutely fucking sucks, but like the fact that you were able to pull this many people off the line immediately and get a strike going, you know, that has like almost all of the clinicians are on strike. It's this real refutation of what management believed about trans people, you know, which is like, no, actually, you can't just fucking sit there and exploit us because we will organize and fight. Yeah. We'll fight for each other. And I do want to stress, too, like, the diversity of our workforce. Like, we are not all trans women.

Starting point is 01:27:26 We come, like, a variety of backgrounds, a variety of ages. You know, like, I don't know how old the oldest among us is, but I know I'm 43, and we have somebody as young as 18 on the workforce. And they're all all in the picket line together. It's beautiful. It's incredible. What is the state of things sort of right now? and what are you fighting for in the strike? And I guess how can people help?

Starting point is 01:27:55 Big questions. Well, we are officially endorsed by the IWW. We are now IWW Industrial Union 610. The picket is ongoing. Our fellow union members are on the picket line right now as we are recording this. Yep. At this point, management has elected not to bargain with us. They have sent a copy and paste letter to all of us who were present for the walkout on May 20th. Basically requesting a response and making some demonstrably materially false allegations about the nature of the walkout and the conversations that were had with management.

Starting point is 01:28:38 So we have a letter from the union that we are going to send from the union email address and will be endorsed by all the individual members. But other than that, that's the only. contact we've had with management, so they do not seem interested in bargaining or in resolving the strike. They have not asked for demands. Our demands are fairly simple. Having management go no contact drew to strike is not normal.

Starting point is 01:29:06 Like completely literally no contacts after one email. That's like weird by management through to strike standards. Like usually they're at least communicating. Like sometimes they do this, but like that's fucked by management. So I can explain why that is. Yeah. Do you remember earlier when Deja said that Anna Lantry had declared that this conversation was over?

Starting point is 01:29:30 It's still over. It's still over. Oh my God. This conversation is still over. Because that's what she tells herself when she needs to feel in control. So we would assume. So I would assume. That is true.

Starting point is 01:29:49 I've been treating lists like game. theory and that opinion is purely speculative. What's not speculative is our demands. Reinstatement of employment of all union members, including those terminated prior to May 20, 20, 26. The expungement of all disciplinary records for all reinstated employees. Back pay for all reinstated employees. The immediate cessation to any and all collections act related to the outstanding debts owed to real U electrolysis by any and all union members. Voluntary recognition of Real U. Electrolysis Workers United, IWW, IU 610, and the immediate commencement of bargaining for a new labor contract wherein our right to strike shall not be curtailed.

Starting point is 01:30:45 Yeah. This is like one of the things that I think about a lot in terms of just how unbelievably unreasonable unreasonable management is being, which is that those are such unbelievably reasonable and moderate demands. Like, I don't know. Like, when you reach the point where like paychecks are bouncing because your bosses are fucking you, like, just just the amount of reasonableness and maturity that all of you are showing and the just mix of staggering and. The just mix of staggering incompetence and evil that management is showing is, it's really staggering. And yeah, and I guess that leads me to the other part of that, which is, yeah, how can people support y'all? Yeah, that's sort of like an ongoing thing. We're working on putting together. We don't really

Starting point is 01:31:34 have like a web presence at the time of this recording. We do have an email address for the union that we've been directing people towards. And that is all lowercase, all one word, real union electrolysis at gmail.com, and that's electrolysis is E-L-E-C-R-O-L-Y-S-I-S-I-S. Yeah, we will put the email in the description and when media stuff and like social media stuff

Starting point is 01:32:05 gets online, we'll put that in the description too. Yeah, right now that is the best way to reach us. I believe you could also reach out to the IWW in Portland And since that's who we're working with, they do coordinate things like strike funds and financial assistance and all that. And so we do have their resources available to us. And that might be the most expedient way. But, yeah, we are working as fast as we can to get other things going, like internet presence. This has all happened so quickly.

Starting point is 01:32:37 It's astonishing. Also, do you want people to show up to your pickets? And if so, where is that? Oh, please. We would love that. The address for that is 907 Harney Street in Vancouver, Washington, downtown Vancouver, Washington. I'll say that again, it's 907 Harney Street. Awesome. Come out, show your support. Thank you. Yeah, and the picket does take place at the mouth of the parking lot. I know there has been some

Starting point is 01:33:07 confusion from some folks who wanted to come out as to where they meet us. You know, it's on, on Harney Street, like just listen for the music and the cheers and you'll find us. Yeah, and I've been out to visit the picket line and it's a really sweet time. Everyone there is great. And as always, are bringing picket lines like just being on a picket line just in support is like an incredible experience. And also like you if you can like bring food and water and stuff, it's always something that helps a lot.

Starting point is 01:33:42 Oh, yes. Yeah. Thank you, by the way. Yes. I would like to also add as far as support is it's not just us who needs support, it's also our patients. Yeah. So anybody who is practicing electrolysis in the like greater Portland, Vancouver area, who is willing to provide care to our displaced patients, please reach out to that email address as well so that we can direct them to you. Awesome. Well, Deja and Jackie May, thank you so much for coming on the show. And yeah, I hope we can talk to you fairly soon after you win. Thank you. Thank you for having us. Thank you for letting us tell our story. Yeah, of course. This is incredible. This is such a big help and you also are such an inspiration and such a treasure to this community. Like, I've been doing so good at not fan-girling over being on your show, but like, I am a long-time listener. And so this is just like, Oh my God, oh my God, I'm talking to me a mom right now.

Starting point is 01:34:47 Well, I think, you know, A, I want to say I think what you're doing is significantly more inspiring than me going on and doing a podcast. Like, the fact that you're running this strike is just fucking incredible. And the fact that you're fighting for your people and fighting for your patience is a just unbelievable credit to all of you as people and to you know, like just like two, two trans people in general. You were a credit to us all. Thank you. Also, I want to say, this is, you know, there's more evidence of something I've been saying on this show for a long time,

Starting point is 01:35:23 but like the people who form unions, it's not some kind of just like special class of people. It's just literally, it's ordinary everyday people like you, the listener, who are the people who join these things and build these movements and fight for them. and you know like you too can be the person who builds builds a union in your workplace

Starting point is 01:35:47 and fights forward and wins preach and when we work together when we organize together when we fight we can fucking win we can yeah if we're done I need to get out to the front line so I can get back

Starting point is 01:36:02 to hollering at these people because they need hollered up yeah I'm all fired up now so Pride is like love You feel it in your heart. IR. Radio, Canada's number one streaming app for radio and podcasts, including IHart Pride Canada, your favorite hits and must have party bangers, plus personalized and curated playlists.

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Starting point is 01:36:54 We get to ask other people questions because we're sick and tired of being asked questions. Hey Jonas is available now, and their first guest is a big one. Paul Rudd. You know, Steve Carell is a great singer. Can you tell you not to audition at the office or something? I told him. Whoa. We were filming Anchorman.

Starting point is 01:37:08 Clearly, I was the idiot. Thank God he didn't listen to me, right? Listen to Hey Jonas on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever. you get your podcasts. On Humor Me with Robert Smygel and Friends, we help make you funnier on this episode. My guest's Bob, Odin Kirk, and Kids in the Halls, Bruce McCullough,

Starting point is 01:37:25 try and help the Kazoo Kid and Tazan Day be famous again. What if there's an alternate universe show where you guys are incredibly popular? Well, and they could travel up the land, doing meet and greets. They're constantly needed at malls. Listen to Humor Me with Robert Smygling and Friends on the I-Hard Radio app,

Starting point is 01:37:44 Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. I am the Therapy Gecko. I am an unlicensed lizard therapist who takes phone calls from real anonymous humans about their problems, such as this. Sometimes I'll have my girlfriend pre-chew spicy food and kind of baby birded into my mouth. Is that weird? Or this. I had my boyfriend over and I had dirty dishes everywhere and I put the dirty dishes in our closet so he wouldn't see them. If you're the kind of person that would enjoy being a fly on the wall of a stranger's therapy session,

Starting point is 01:38:18 or if you pass people on the street and constantly wonder what might be going on in their heads, this is the podcast for you. This week on Therapy Gecko, we're hearing all real, authentic human stories about anything, from relationships to family drama to serendipitous encounters with unexpected people and things. If real people peak your interest, listen to Therapy Gecko on the I-Heart Reckon. radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, and welcome to Outlaw, a podcast about how the law is used to crush dissent in the U.S. I'm your host, Olive.

Starting point is 01:39:12 On the previous episode of Outlaw on It Could Happen here, we zoomed in on legal repression of rapid responders in ICE-occupied Minneapolis. On this episode, I'm joined by Bina, Joey, and Moe. movement attorneys based in New York, Illinois, and California. In this conversation, we zoom out to talk about the larger trend and repression of resistance to ice activity across the country and how to prepare for the long road ahead. Welcome to Outlaw to start. Could you all introduce yourselves the work you do and how it connects to the repression of anti-ice protest activity? Okay, I guess we're going to start with the oldest here. My name's Joey Mogul. I am based in Chicago. I am the director of movement partnerships at Movement Law Lab, which is a national organization that is very much in the anti-authoritarian fight in the nation. Prior to joining Movement Law Lab, I was at the People's Law Office for over 26 years, where I did mostly civil rights litigations. against law enforcement officials and criminal defense of police violence survivors, as well as protesters and organizers.

Starting point is 01:40:33 And at different points have been proud to represent several organizers and many movements seeking justice and liberation. I'm also part of Chicago Torture Justice Memorials and a board member of the Chicago Torture Justice Center and very much involved in the movement for justice redress. and particularly reparations for Chicago police torture survivors. During the surge here in Chicago, I was proud to work with a group known as the Black Community Care Collective, serving as a coordinator of their legal committee. And that was a group that was very much involved in the resistance and care work

Starting point is 01:41:13 that was happening during Operation Midway Blitz. Joey, I don't know if you're the oldest person here, but I was referred to today as a Gen X loser, if that makes you feel any better. My name is Maura Milzer-Cohen. Everybody calls me Moe. I am an attorney in private practice

Starting point is 01:41:33 in New York and I work in particular to defend people against the politically motivated abuse of the legal system. I also teach federal Indian law, professional responsibility and lawering at CUNY School of Law

Starting point is 01:41:52 to the world's best and most brilliant law students. Hi, everybody. Bina Ahmed, she, her pronouns. I also had been referred to as an elder, and I don't know when that happened, but here we are. I am currently an associate at a law firm in L.A. called Hatzel Stormer, Reneg and Dye, where I practice civil rights, impact litigation,

Starting point is 01:42:15 and also where we are external general counsel for several movement groups, including Muslims for Just Futures and Jewish War II. for peace. Before going to Hadsel Stormberg, switching to civil rights, I was a state and federal public defender for nearly a decade, a state defender in New York, and a federal defender here in L.A., prior to that, I practiced international law and animal rights law. And a lot of my motivation as well has been to support movements and organizers fighting back against the state repression. But that's been a big part of my work, giving know-your-rights trainings, advising people,

Starting point is 01:42:52 organizers and organizations on their rights and what the law says you can and can't do from a radical lens. Well, thank you all for being here. Over the past few years, from the movement for Palestinian liberation to the many ways people are organizing against ICE and authoritarianism today, I'm curious to start by just hearing a little bit about what broad shifts you're tracking right now in the state's playbook for crushing dissent. Well, I mean, I think that we've seen and you're talking to people who've represented organizers and activists who have been prosecuted by state actors for decades. I think that what we're seeing, particularly with this administration, is the weaponization of federal charges. And we're seeing the weaponization of federal charges en masse.

Starting point is 01:43:41 And I think this is by design. We are seeing that with the National Security Presidential Memorandum Number 7 issued by President Trump and his administration. where they are wanting to enlist the use of joint terrorism task force to go after people they deem to be, quote, domestic terrorists, unquote. And that means they are going after individuals who they claim have extreme viewpoints on immigration, radical gender ideology, anti-American sentiment. I don't believe we agree with these determinations. And in fact, we absolutely oppose and object to these determinations. But these are individuals who do not agree with this administration's views or takes on immigration, on gender, on anti-black violence, and the rest. And we see, though,

Starting point is 01:44:30 that this administration is actually working hand and glove with one another. So after the issuance of the National Security Presidential Memorandum No. 7, we now have Pambiani and the U.S. Attorney's Office issuing this memorandum, December 4th, 25, where they are basically calling on the Joint Terrorism Task Force. They're calling on federal agents, and they're calling on the Department of Justice. to go after organizers and activists throughout the nation. They list 27 enumerated crimes in those memos, things like rioting, looting, so-called doxing, swatting, conspiracies to impede or assault law enforcement officers, destruction of property, and the rest, as well as trying to enlist the use of the IRS and other tax crimes to go after organizers and organizations in several ways.

Starting point is 01:45:18 essentially anyone who opposes this administration is somewhat in the target sites. Can you tell me more about what these federal charges are and what is new about what we're seeing right now? So now what we've seen since the onset of this administration, so for over a year now, we have seen the exponential rise and federal charges being lodged against organizers. I think that is very much a different landscape than we have seen. in decades. And I don't want to say there hasn't been the use by the Department of Justice to bring federal charges in the past, but not in this massive scale that we are currently seeing it right now. And so what we are seeing is, I would say, in particular, we're seeing these

Starting point is 01:46:07 like assault, impeding, harassing officer charges, which is 18 U.S.C. Section 111 being brought in scores across the nation. That is not something we take. typically have seen before. We are also seeing charges of conspiracy to impede officers, 18 U.S.C. Section 241. Again, that's not something we generally have seen before. Generally, I can say, for example, as someone who is in Chicago, who was part of representing protesters who were protesting the Democratic National Convention, generally the federal government and federal agencies don't get involved in protest-related activity, but for arson cases. prior to the Trump administration, that playbook is out and this new playbook is in. So we are

Starting point is 01:46:54 absolutely seeing the federal government stepping in and engaging in this policing and persecution of protesters and organizers in a way that we have not seen before. That said, there's a silver lining here is the federal government is overreaching in so many of these cases. And many of these charges are being dismissed. Many of these charges are being declined by U.S. attorneys. And there have been several not guilty verdicts in L.A. as well as in Chicago, as well as Miami. And further, what I think is striking, and I think that this is really unheard of for criminal defense attorneys in particular, is we're actually seeing grand juries refusing to indict in these cases. And given how biased grand jury investigations go, how one-sided they are,

Starting point is 01:47:42 to have the grand juries come back and not return an indictment really is showing that people are resisting and they are not buying the government's slogan and lines and playbook on this. And they are saying, no, we're not going to put up with this. So while on the one hand, it's a whole new landscape, we're also seeing the counterpart of people resisting, and that includes in the federal courts. If the term grand jury is new to you, it's basically a special jury in federal criminal cases that is appointed to decide if there's enough evidence to bring the official criminal charge, the indictment against a defendant.

Starting point is 01:48:20 But they're super rigged against the defendant. Basically, they always indict. And often, the grand jury process is just an information gathering tool for the government, especially in movement cases. People get subpoenaed to testify before grand juries in a way that often seems just like a fishing expedition because whatever they say can be used against them. And only the prosecution gets to present evidence to the grand jury. There's a lot more to say there.

Starting point is 01:48:47 but check out the show notes and I'll link some really important conversations and resources about grand juries. I think that's all exactly right, Joey. But it isn't 100% new, right? What the Trump administration is doing is that they are able to police First Amendment protected identities, beliefs, and associations by trying to define those beliefs, identities and associations as terrorism. And so there's a whole apparatus for fighting terrorism that they then can pull in, draw upon resources they can use, and legal authorities that they can exercise

Starting point is 01:49:34 as long as the thing that they're policing is something that can be called terrorism. Well, by defining all of these things as terrorism, that lets them sort of trigger all of these resources and authorities. Those resources and authorities were not put in place by this administration. They were put in place post-9-11. They were put in place by Barack Obama. They were put in place by Joe Biden, right? And so this is not a problem with the Trump administration. This is a problem with the surveillance state. This is a problem with consolidating federal police authority and making it easier and easier for the federal law enforcement apparatus to assert jurisdiction over what we would normally understand to be state-level matters, such as garden variety

Starting point is 01:50:39 protest. And so the shift is not one of kind as much as it is a shift in scope, where we're seeing the federal government treating, as I said, garden variety protest conduct as though it is militant revolutionary action. No, I totally agree with that. And to underscore your point, not a single law has needed to be passed. There's been no legislation that's needed to be changed. in order to effectuate these prosecutions whatsoever, let alone this immigration enforcement. This all preexisted the Trump administration. His administration hasn't passed a single law. So I absolutely agree with you. I'm just saying, you're right, the garden variety level of prosecutions we haven't seen, and it's the scale of this. But again, we absolutely know,

Starting point is 01:51:29 for example, the Biden administration pursued the FACE Act against individuals in Florida regarding, you know, one of these false clinics. You know, it's not that these tools weren't used before, I just think the scope and scale is not what we've seen. Yeah. And I totally agree. And I think it's important to note that the fact that the law hasn't changed is important, not simply because the law has already existed to bring these prosecutions, but because the law actually hasn't changed, which means the First Amendment remains in effect, which means that a lot of these prosecutions, as you pointed out, Joey, are going nowhere because they actually can't really be sustained under the current regime.

Starting point is 01:52:17 Yeah. The scale and the aggressiveness and the scope, I think, is something we haven't really dealt with before. You know, in terms of it being not new, I mean, we know the founding of this country and it's not a just system. And I think if we just also start from that, that is the system that is the system that protects property and white nationalism and violence and power and capitalism, then I think we can sort of like see where these powers originated from and where the structure originated from. And we've also seen that used against, you know, radical black activists against the American Indian movement. You know, so like a lot of these things that we're seeing now were tested on communities of color, you know, prior to seeing, okay, what works, what doesn't work, and then bringing this surge, I think, to our communities. You know, I think in addition to, you know, I think what Joy was saying about the FACE Act, that is something we haven't really seen prosecutions under.

Starting point is 01:53:09 or the FACE Act before, right? Because the FACE Act is actually technically to protect access to abortion clinics. And I think that one thing that this administration is doing is finding creative different ways to manipulate the laws that are already terrible to go after folks in a way that we haven't seen before. Like Mo was saying, like so much of the work that we've done defending protesters and movements, a lot of it is state. Of course, you know, some has always been federal, but a lot is usually state. And to then see these federal, not only, prosecutions for the FACE Act where I know we'll get into, you know, material support prosecutions, but also like civil litigation, which I think is something we've never, not never, but really

Starting point is 01:53:48 we're not prepared for or dealt with as a movement before, these massive civil pieces of litigation that while on the one hand are brought mostly by private actors like Zionist actors, we know that they're really coordinated by and with the administration, because then the administration has mimicked bringing these same lawsuits against these very same activists for the same causes. when we know that they're in coordination. And so I think that's also really important to know is that the civil component, you know, the movement, of course, like criminals where we've always been the most concerned, is someone's liberty is on the line, someone's life is on the line.

Starting point is 01:54:21 But civil is also like this slow death, right, of like time and money and just draining organizations that I think is something that we've now had to really grasp. Can you a follow-up question, Bina, can you break down for people who are listening and really not in the legal world, why a civil case impacts someone's life, why civil cases against activists are really disruptive to movements? Sure. There are many ways. So when a civil case lands, I mean, first, you don't have the right to free counsel like you do with a criminal case. It's not, you know, guaranteed in the Constitution. You're not facing prison time and incarceration. So you're not guaranteed that. So one, you have to find either free counsel or you can pay for someone to

Starting point is 01:55:05 defend you. And when the lawsuit lands, there's so many things that happen. There's an affirmative obligation for you as the one who's being sued to preserve any evidence that could be relevant to the case. That is completely antithetical to what a lot of movements do. We don't like save documents and then turn them over to the other side. We're going to, you know, keep our work internal and our organizing and who we work with. And civil lawsuits really make that really difficult because you have to turn over discovery if it gets that far in the case. and you can't, you know, delete things and you can't let things get deleted, like on signal. And if, you know, you can be sanctioned and there's all these things that could happen if they

Starting point is 01:55:41 find out that that happened. And then you're subject to, you know, other things like being deposed, being questioned by the other side about about things you don't want to talk about and that are really antithetical to what we, what we do. And these cases can go on for years and years. And even if you win, there can be appeals. There's, you know, there's just so much that doesn't feel like it ever ends with civil litigation. And so much where people, you know, even just have moved on in their lives, like I've moved to a different city, you have a different job now, but you're still always tied back to this civil case. And there's no sort of like right to a speedy trial in a civil case, right? That's for a criminal case. So all of this stuff, and I'm sure there's

Starting point is 01:56:19 many other things I'm not mentioning that you have to go through or that impact your life once you're being civilly sued. But a lot of that, you know, it's not, again, like things that we have really dealt with as a movement before. And, you know, really importantly, people don't have the money to pay for lawyers for years and years and years. And it's really expensive to do civil litigation and civil defense. It goes on forever. You have to do so many different pieces of discovery and, you know, motions and like all of that is so much more involved. And it really, I think, part of the tactic is to bankrupt organizations. That's a big part of why these actors are bringing these civil suits. I just want to intervene. Strati.

Starting point is 01:57:10 strategically at this moment to say that everything that Joey and Bina are talking about is true and critical and important. And we need to be so alert to the way that these federal apparatuses are being deployed against our communities. But I also want to say that one of the things we have seen over the last couple of years that I think is so important and we have to, to hang on to for dear life is that when we fight, we win. And so what we're starting to see now, you know, we just saw some of my impressive and beloved colleagues at CUNY School of Law are litigating a case right now in the federal courts about Columbia University's repression of student activists. And what we're seeing is the court coming back with these rulings that say anti-Zionism is not hate speech.

Starting point is 01:58:14 Columbia University acting at the behest of the executive makes them subject to the constraints of the First Amendment. It's potentially violative of the First Amendment to discipline students for engaging in speech, right? We're seeing people fight these federal cases, both criminal and civil and winning, as Joey mentioned, we're seeing grand juries declining to issue indictments or to authorize prosecutors to issue indictments. So I do want to say, you know, we really do see the power of communities taking on that legal battle, fighting with, you know, our community movement, legal people, and meeting that challenge head on. And I think as devastating and exhausting as it is. And as terrible as the consequences and the risks really are, I do want to say we do see people

Starting point is 01:59:13 having a lot of courage, marshalling a lot of resources and energy, and winning reliably. Thank you. And I know, Joey, you started talking a little bit about what we've been seeing broadly across the country and how the state has been repressing specifically anti-ice activity. I know you've been based in Chicago and particularly. particularly tune into what's happening there. And it's been similar in Minneapolis where it's been a lot of 18 U.S.C. 111 cases, federal charges, and part of what is coming up is just unpreparedness for movements to meet and defend against these kinds of charges. And also similar vein to the question I just asked why it matters for people's lives and for movements that it's federal

Starting point is 02:00:00 charges coming down instead of state charges. Bina. When I transitioned from state to federal defense, my reaction was like state, it's always horrible, just being in the criminal system and fighting. It's very like David and Goliath. But I felt like I had more of a fighting chance in state court. When I got to federal, it was shocking how much worse it felt for my clients, how restricted you are. In a state, it really feels like when you're doing a trial, you have the power to kind of run the show, right? Of course a judge can like shoot down many motions for experts, for like for, you know, doing certain defenses. But federal is so much more constrained in my experience where federal judges want to have just so much more power. And I think I

Starting point is 02:00:45 also just didn't appreciate how much more power federal judges had and how much more they were willing to wield it. But also I think in terms of the charges are heavier, plea bargaining and sentencing is so much harder and heavier. You're very restricted. Even though the sentencing guidelines, for instance, are no longer mandatory. That's what everyone, judges and prosecutors still mostly go by. There's so many more mandatory minimums. It's so easy to catch a federal charge, too, you know, things like even just gun possession, right? Because a gun might have been manufactured in Texas and then bought in California, which most people wouldn't think is a federal offense. But it can be charged federally. Just all of those factors, I think, just I've realized how much

Starting point is 02:01:24 harder it was in federal court for my clients to have a fighting chance. But, you know, that being said, I don't mean to make states sound like it's this like sort of gold, like, oh, great, we're going to or whatever we want in state. Not at all. But I felt like I could fight more. I had more leeway to fight in state. You know, federal, I think, is a whole other animal. That was a great answer. And if either of you don't have anything more pressing to add, I would turn us back to just the question of if there's anything else we wanted to talk about trends in charging across the country of anti-ice protest. Well, I know I just don't, I think I want to echo something that Mo has talked about, and I'm not trying to leave it out, but I do think the resistance is so amazing. And I think that,

Starting point is 02:02:08 you know, essentially people are being arrested for First Amendment activity, whether it's video recording ICE and CBP agents' actions, whether it's following officers, whether it's announcing their presence with whistles. We've seen people arrested. We've seen people detain. We've seen people interrogated. Sometimes they're charged. Sometimes they're not. But I think what's, what's striking is we've seen so many of these cases fall apart. And to be honest, but for Prairieland, Texas, which is devastating loss, the federal government has lost in many of these cases. They've been able to charge or the cases have been dismissed, but even the ones that have gone to trial, they have lost. And that is not something that I think we're used to seeing in federal

Starting point is 02:02:54 criminal cases. Generally, when someone's charged in federal criminal court as Bena was explaining, you know, so few of the cases go to trial because so many people need to take a plea bargain. And the idea that you're going to get to go to trial and win seems very slim. That landscape seems to be changing as well. And so I think what we are seeing in this moment is the people are resisting. They are continuing to do this important First Amendment work. And they are not being intimidated. They are not being deterred.

Starting point is 02:03:28 And I think, you know, all of you and you, your neighbors and your friends and folks in Minnesota have proven that to us. And so I think we're going to continue to see this type of work go on. I'm not seeing this level of surges at this point ongoing post-Mnesota. I don't know if we're going to see a return to this prior to the election. I don't know if we're going to see this if the Insurrection Act is invoked. But right now, I don't see this ongoing surge activity in terms of immigration enforcement. It's an interesting point. The thing you hear about federal criminal cases is like the federal government can be investigating somebody for years. So by the time that they bring the charges, they have such a strong case against them. It makes it impossible to win versus what, at least we've seen in Minnesota, where it felt like some of these cases were being brought like pretty quickly and kind of sloppily, which is just a little bit of a different, maybe a little bit more hopeful for people in movements, even though there still are federal judges and,

Starting point is 02:04:30 procedural limitations and that make federal cases scarier and worse to go through oftentimes. Now, for a depressing thing that is happening, let's talk about Prairieland, the recent trial and guilty verdict that recently came down. I'd love to hear how you all are thinking about this case and what it means for movements going forward. I think right now the defense just filed post-trial briefing. I've looked at some of it, and I think there are a lot of really strong arguments, you know, for setting aside the verdict. And, you know, whether or not the judge agrees with me is, of course, not a foregone conclusion. But there are a lot of really strong legal arguments. And this really isn't over. There's so much post-trial and post-conviction

Starting point is 02:05:24 relief, so many appeals that remain to be done, and so much support that can be offered and so much solidarity that can be offered. I think that this case was unusual. It was a departure from what we would typically see in that so many people got pulled into this prosecution under sort of a conspiracy theory, right? A theory that all of the people at what was a really quotidian sort of noise demo in front of an iced detention facility somehow spontaneously became a conspiracy to do serious violence. I think this is a little bit like the federal government trying to take a second bite at the apple that they took a run at after Trump's first inauguration when they tried to prosecute like almost 300 people for conspiracy on the basis.

Starting point is 02:06:24 that they were all dressed in black block. And in this environment politically and in that jurisdiction in Texas, it seems like that theory had legs in a way that it didn't in D.C. So one of the things that happened in the J20 case was that the prosecution withheld a bunch of exculpatory evidence. and based on some FOIA disclosures that a journalist obtained, it looks like actually a very similar thing may have happened here with Prairieland, where the prosecution may have withheld evidence that would be favorable to the defense. And that's called Brady material based on a Supreme

Starting point is 02:07:14 Court case about having to turn over information and evidence that would tend to underwerex. mind the prosecution or that would be favorable to someone facing criminal charges. All of that kind of information, if it's in the custody or control of law enforcement, has to be disclosed to the defendants and to defense counsel. And it appears that there is some material that would fit that bill that was not turned over to the prairie land defendants or their attorneys. And so, you know, that as well as an extremely important argument against, you know, letting this conviction stand. And the trial itself, there were just a lot of irregularities. Not only was this an unusual prosecution, but it was characterized by irregularities very early on. The judge declared a mistrial on the basis of a t-shirt that one of

Starting point is 02:08:10 the defense attorneys was wearing, right? There seemed to be a lot of conflict among the jurors. there were all kinds of inconsistent statements among the witnesses for the prosecution, right? So there's all kinds of things that happened during this trial that do give me a certain amount of hope that Prairieland is the exception and not the rule. You know, I think the government is boundary testing, but I'm not convinced that they're going to find that this is an effective approach to, to, to, prosecuting protest. Although, of course, I want to be very clear it's been devastating for this community. I hear that there's some uncertainty about the long-term impacts of this. And with that in mind, is there anything any of you just want to add what you think movements should be paying attention to here going forward? Also, its connection to the expansion of the fundamentally racist war on terror legal regime and its turn towards activist communities in new ways? I can jump in and start. I'm really glad you brought up the war on terror as part of the history of

Starting point is 02:09:29 this. I think I mentioned previously a lot of these tactics that we see, like we've all said, are not new and much of it has been tested on communities of color, the way that war weapons are tested on the battlefield and brought to our domestic police forces here. Same thing with tactics, right? And so the war and terror, like, primarily against the Muslim community and the Muslim world, a lot of non-Arab countries like Afghanistan and Pakistan, you know, of course, is a racist endeavor, but it does sort of like give us a picture of a larger sort of like colonial project of what, you know, what we're facing. But I think there's also just a lot than that we can take from history and take to our movements and learn from. I think while it's devastating,

Starting point is 02:10:10 and I agree with Moe, I think the prairie line conviction, there's a lot of bases for a people, including being prohibited from putting on a self-defense argument or defense of others argument, I think we can learn a lot from the way that our movements were targeted in this way, right? We're like, you know, a lot of it was from text messages and signal. And I think it's just like it's also a really important thing to note while Signal is a very important app to communicate. It's not bulletproof, right? And it's only as secure as you make it.

Starting point is 02:10:38 And it is still something that's in writing. And so I think I always try to remind folks, like if you can open your phone right, now and you can see your signal messages, someone else can too, right? So I think a lot of people are under the impression that is completely bulletproof. And I think it's also caused the question of like how we, you know, how we organize and also like does everything we do need to go in text or writing? You know, is there more value to like actually talking with people? Because a lot of things that were said casually, I think in writing look much worse and much more serious than if you would just have a conversation talking ideas through, which again is an elder I did in the

Starting point is 02:11:13 90s and we didn't have cell phones. I want to kind of piggyback on something you started to say, which is you said these tactics, these strategies have been tested on communities of color. And I think the significance of that statement, like, we can't overestimate how important it is to understand that. And, you know, you can watch it happening in real time. I mean, obviously, we've seen this kind of state repression, right, since the days of, like, abolitionists, right? But we saw it really becoming very salient during the Nixon administration

Starting point is 02:11:52 and thereafter. And, you know, the Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army were subjected to this. Black communities were then subjected to this. And Puerto Rican independence communities were subjected to this. And you can see it all the way through the 80s, even with like the so-called gang legislation, right, targeting of, quote, gang activity. When you say these communities have been subjected to this, what do you mean? What's the this? Sorry, have been subjected to have been targeted and surveilled and criminalized by the state for what we would understand to be First Amendment protected identities, beliefs, associations, and activities. right? And so people have been targeted for surveillance and criminalization on the basis of their political beliefs, on the basis of their associations and activities in a way that we now see

Starting point is 02:12:56 being recuperated against more explicitly political, like protest movements. And we saw this during the no-daple movement at Standing Rock, we saw the revival of a federal charge called Civil Disorder. I think the last time it had been used had been during the standoff at Wounded Knee in 1974, right? It was like a federal charge that seems like it was only used against people struggling for indigenous sovereignty. And then we saw it being used again during the Floyd uprisings in 2020. And that was the first time we saw it really being used against people who were not explicitly involved in struggles for indigenous sovereignty. To give like an example, you know, in terms of like what strategies are tested on the Muslim community or communities of color,

Starting point is 02:13:52 the case that a lot of us within the movement at least are still haunted by is against the Holy Land Foundation and the Holy Land Five, right? And it's shocking now to realize how many people outside of our circles don't actually really know about that case or even like what material support is. I think only when it became now much bigger and being weaponized in more creative ways are people sort of realizing, but, you know, back in the day when the Holy Land Foundation founders were targeted and then convicted and their convictions were upheld for just raising money for families in Gaza, it was so devastating and crushing to communities into organizing. but it really didn't get the, I think, the broad attention that it should have, right?

Starting point is 02:14:35 Or this other targeting of like using informants in the Muslim community, just going back through history. And I think we can learn from them now. But I think, you know, if we had had more attention on those cases and what, you know, communities of color were going through, I think there was a lot we can learn from or could have organized stronger against having now seen, you know, what, what is doing to communities of color. I think if there's a lesson for us to learn from this is that, you know, post 9-11, there was this massive persecution of Muslim communities. And we really saw this apparatus of the material support for terrorism being used against individuals. And as you say, being often in isolation without support. And part of that's because

Starting point is 02:15:16 when you get charged with material support of terrorism, you know, not only are you facing massive criminal, like, sentencing, but, you know, your organization is being taken down. You're getting debanked. you cannot, you know, be able to hold financial funds. And what happens is people don't want to get ensnared in that criminal prosecution that often people don't come out and make those solidarity statements. You become essentially radioactive. And I think, you know, what I'm hopeful is that we can find new ways to resist this, this material support for terrorism apparatus, which is being wielded in ways that I think are unjust and unfair and illegal and wrong. And I hope there's ways that we can think about how we're going to counter that, whether it's in the Prairreeland, Texas case, or in other cases as well, I think we need to get back to the roots of that law. And we need to think about really who's it serving, who's it protecting, and who is it destroying so that we can really rectify the harms that have come from it. Material support for terrorism charges are not the only uncommon charges for seeing being

Starting point is 02:16:33 brought against anti-ice protesters. Here in Minneapolis, we've also seen the use of the FACE Act and federal threat and cyber-stalking charges. Just to note, the use of the Face Act is specifically against Black Lives Matter protesters here who staged a protest in a church. And I don't think expected to have this random act that nobody knew existed come out and now they're facing super serious charges. I'd love just for listeners to understand a little bit what these charges are, if there's other unusual charges you've seen around the country, what do people actually need to understand about them, people who are going out to protest,

Starting point is 02:17:14 how much is it important to know about these different things that can pop up? So the FACE Act is a piece of legislation that initially was being pushed for by reproductive justice groups. And it was supposed to criminalize people interfering with folks who were attempting to access reproductive health care. Because at the time that it was being lobbied for, there was a pretty active pro-life, you know, anti-choice movement that was physically making it difficult for people

Starting point is 02:17:56 who were seeking reproductive health care to gain access to clinics. and at the time people who work in criminal defense and who work with criminalized populations were like, hey, this legislation is going to be mobilized against other kinds of protesters and is probably going to be primarily dangerous to people who are perceived as antagonistic to state interests. And what do you know? That is what has happened. because one of the things, one of the concessions that was made in order to get that piece of legislation passed was that in addition to criminalizing obstructing access to reproductive health clinics, it also criminalized obstructing access to so-called places of worship for specifically people who are attempting to access those places in order to engage in First Amendment protection.

Starting point is 02:19:02 religious expression. So now one of the things we're seeing is people using their churches or their synagogues to do things like have political meetings that are not particularly religious meetings, or to do things like sell real estate in Palestine to which they do not have title and cannot lawfully sell. And then when people show up to protest those activities, the federal government tries to charge them with violations of the FACE Act. In like the simplest way, what do people need to know? Like, there's one outcome here that everyone's like, oh my God, I didn't know that protesting in a church could get me federal charges for like handing out some flyers and using a megaphone. What else don't I know about other risks and random acts that can come up?

Starting point is 02:20:00 How do you talk to people about that who are thinking about taking action? Yeah, I think that that's, again, the changing landscape here in seeing the exponential rise of federal charges. I think that when organizers are thinking about the actions they're pursuing, I think they need to talk to attorneys and legal workers and others who have both an understanding of what their local laws and state laws are, but what the federal laws are as well. And again, And I think that's just a different changing of the landscape. I do want to say, you know, there's a lot of important organizing that. It has happened in churches and synagogues and temples.

Starting point is 02:20:35 And I don't want to discount that. But I do also want to say, I think, again, we're seeing a misuse of this law, particularly the FACE Act. And it's very, very scary. But, you know, I think that there are some really incredible lawyers and organizers in Minnesota, who I think are fierce and who are going to fight this to the end. And I have hope that they will come out unscathed. Yeah.

Starting point is 02:21:02 And I do want to clarify, it isn't just protesting at a church. They have to be able to allege that people were by force or threat of force or by physical obstruction, intentionally injuring, intimidating, and are fear with people who are trying to get health care or people who are trying to worship. So it isn't simply having a protest at a place of worship that remains First Amendment protected behavior. I think in addition with the FACE Act, it has a civil component. So again, like material support, it also has a civil component and many people are getting civilly sued. And so a lot of these Zionist groups have also brought suits based on the FACE Act for people protesting the illegal sale of Palestinian land inside a synagogue.

Starting point is 02:21:51 on. And that's a breach of international law and so many other crimes. And just also to think of, it's just a disgusting use of this law. And you think of sort of the historical targeting of black churches and like still to this day, like it's, it's just such a slap in the face. But regardless. But I think also, olive to your question about, yeah, like a lot of this can catch people off card. And like, I didn't, what? You know, I didn't know. And even, you know, even if they know they really can't prove that you block, you know, access, they might still try, either sue you or prosecute you. I think that the thing is like, none of us are ever going to know all the laws that are on the books and the way that they might creatively try to use them. So, you know, I don't want people to get paralyzed into not doing anything

Starting point is 02:22:33 because it's, it is, you know, scary. There's just like you don't know, you know, what, what laws are out there that can be used, you know, in some way now, you know, new way against you. But I think what Joey and Mo both have said is right about connecting to lawyers and legal workers, just being tight on our organizing, knowing what our rights are and knowing what to do when you encounter law enforcement, which is nothing and say nothing, you know, like all of that, I think, is like, hopefully, like, universally at least, like, minimizes the harm that can happen to you. It's not bulletproof, right? As we know, it's not meant to be. But I think, like, you know, I don't want folks to, like, be like, I now I don't know X. Like, this other random thing, you know,

Starting point is 02:23:11 could be brought against me. And that may happen and continue to happen, but that's what we all do, right? Like sort of like with this message of hope is that what we do is we fight. And like we have fought like state repression. Like our answers are thought state repression. We're not going to stop. They're going to keep adapting and so are we. This resistance is not going to stop, even if we have to figure out a new way to resist based on what comes next. To ask you all as a final question with your repression forecasting hats on anything you want to add about how movements can prepare to meet this repression that is our. happening and that which is to come. I can't see the future. As I tell my clients every day, I can't see the future. I am but a lawyer, not a wizard. What I can tell you is we know a lot about what the state has done in the past, and we have a lot of good models to look to. We have a rich ancestry of resistance and of movement lawyering and of movement lawyers who know how to work in community with people who are doing the heavy lifting. We have made it this far. As Beena said, we're just going to continue to fight. And I do hold out a lot of hope,

Starting point is 02:24:38 not because I have any faith in the law itself or believe that justice is on the table in our courts, but because we are actually really good at solidarity. And because we have over a century of evidence that solidarity is not just good for our communities, it's legally effective. That's it. Don't talk to cops. I might go with the cheesy answer route. that I think what communities and movements can do to prepare is a lot of this, right, is like coming together and strategizing, especially amongst the lawyers.

Starting point is 02:25:17 So uplifting what Mo said is like showing solidarity with communities and lawyers showing up. But I think also, and like Joey and Mo really modeled this for me as well as lawyers showing up with each other and like working together because it is a lonely fight a lot of times. Being a lawyer when you're not in a circle of solidarity or folks of radical politics, or who like also believe in including each other in fighting, you know, and doing this work. And that is always going to be a losing fight, right? If you're doing it by yourself, you're not doing it with each other and with the communities and with other radical lawyers. That's not what we do, right? That's also like not the point of this work. It's for like one sole

Starting point is 02:25:56 lawyer to fight it and win. It's about like us doing it collectively. And that's the way that we win. And, you know, just uplifting like you three, like just even having this conversation and Joey and Mo for all the work that you do and the work that you do inclusively, you know, that like gives me hope, because I know I've had like many, every day, you know, like, I just sit and I feel like alone. I'm like, oh, my God. Like, I have to first end with the message of hope. I have to find some way to keep going. It's really hard.

Starting point is 02:26:23 And sometimes I'm just like, I don't know. And then we have these conversations and like, oh, right. Yeah. Like, we have those moments. We get, you know, like, we feel defeated. But like, we have each other, you know? And like, our movements didn't come this far, you know, or our ancestors didn't come as far for us to give up now. Yeah, I think I would just echo what both Bina and Mo have said.

Starting point is 02:26:44 I mean, obviously, black, indigenous and other communities of color have faced fascism and authoritarianism before and have resisted and survived. This is not the first time in this country. We've seen this, and it's likely not going to be the last. But I think, again, I, you know, I would say that, you know, as Mariam Kama says, you know, hope is a discipline. and we have to keep pouring into hope and we have to keep resisting. So I do have a lot of hope, and I feel like, again, like, I want to look at what the organizers have done and how far we've come even in terms of this latest administration. You know, I would say last year after the onset of this administration, I don't think we were seeing

Starting point is 02:27:31 a lot of resistance, not a lot of public resistance. And instead, we were seeing law firms cave and deciding to create agreements with the administration. We are seeing educational institutions come, you know, cave and come up with a lot of agreements. But what we did see is we saw the people resisting. And that happened in L.A. and that happened in Chicago. And that certainly happened in Minneapolis and St. Paul and Minnesota. So I take heart. And I think what we need to continue to think about doing is how people are going to do the mutual aid work and the care work.

Starting point is 02:28:03 I think we need to continue to do the know your rights. know your risks work, that's essential. I think a big thing we need to continue to think about is the Insurrection Act and getting information out about the Insurrection Act, which maybe invokes prior to this election. You know, I think that the ongoing work that people have been doing, again, it's about the people and the power of the people that have gotten us this far. But even if we look at what happened, you know, this past week and eight million people coming out to protest and resist. Those numbers didn't exist over a year ago. And so I feel like the resistance is happening. People are coming together. And despite institutional failures, I think the movement has grown

Starting point is 02:28:48 significantly. And I think we have to even look at the last year and a half to see how far we've come. And so I've hoped that we'll go even further. And I hope that we're not returning to the status quo. and in fact we are actually dreaming the world we want to live in, and that we are going to fight for the world we want to live in, and that this is an opportunity for us to let things go and for us to create anew. Well, thank you all for those hopeful forecasting advice answers. You don't always get that twist, which is really lovely, and I feel like it's been something that's on my mind a lot here. in Minnesota, that sometimes when things are the worst and you're of the closest to violence and terror,

Starting point is 02:29:37 it's also when you see how powerful people are and how powerful resistance can be. I mean, these are long fights and these are long halls. Yeah. I think that's kind of the lesson is, you know, not to get all peer K a vote, but you are not obligated to finish the work, but neither are you free to abandon it. Like these are long fights. They are fights that we don't win alone. It's not possible or desirable to win these fights alone, right? They're generational.

Starting point is 02:30:12 I mean, they last multiple generations. So, you know, this like the ever-receding horizon of real democracy, right? There's no forecast that could even be adequate because it's going to go. on for so long. But I think the advice is always the same, right? Just don't talk to cops. Yeah. What she said is generational and you're not free to just abandon the work, Mo, is like, I want to like write that on a wall somewhere because I think things, people jump in, right? It's like, okay, this is hot. Let's do it. But it's like once it's not a hot new thing, you know, people kind of move on to the next day. It's like, no, that's when we need folks to stick

Starting point is 02:30:52 in it and you can't. And I think that's just a really important, like, lesson. Send me your mailing address. I'm going to send you a poster. Or can you crochet it? I know you can crochet. You can do it together with flowers and everything. Yeah. Thank you all so much. You guys are awesome. I love you guys. It's been so great. I feel like at a therapy session, like, oh, I feel so much better about what we're doing and like where we are and like, I have hope. I dedicate this one of you, fam.

Starting point is 02:31:19 Thank you for listening to Outlaw on It Could Happen here. If you like the episode, check out the show Outlaw, wherever you get your podcast. and rate, review, and follow OutlawPod on Instagram and Blue Sky for anti-repression, updates, news, and stories that you might want to know. From the north, from the south, from everywhere. Canadian women are looking for more. More to themselves, their businesses, their elected leaders, and the world are at them. And that's why we're thrilled to introduce the Honest Talk podcast. I'm Jennifer Stewart.

Starting point is 02:32:00 And I'm Catherine Clark. And in this podcast, we interview Canada's most inspiring women. entrepreneurs, artists, athletes, politicians, and newsmakers, all at different stages of their journey. So if you're looking to connect, then we hope you'll join us. Listen to the Honest Talk podcast on IHeartRadio or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Number one hits, millions of records sold, awards, sold out tours. You think that Jonas Brothers are satisfied? Nope, it's podcast time.

Starting point is 02:32:28 We get to ask other people questions because we're sick and tired of being asked questions. Hey, Jonas is available now, and their first guest is a big one, Paul Rudd. You know, Steve Carell is a great singer. Can you tell you not to audition at the office or something? I told him. Whoa. We were filming Anchor Man. Clearly, I was the idiot.

Starting point is 02:32:43 Thank God he didn't listen to him, right? Listen to Hey Jonas on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. On Humor Me with Robert Smygel and Friends, we help make you funnier on this episode. My guest's Bob Odenkirk and Kids in the Hall's Bruce McCullough, try and help the Kazoo Kid and Tayon Day be famous again. What if there's an alternate universe show? where you guys are incredibly popular. Well, and they could travel up the land, doing meat and greets. They're constantly needed at malls.

Starting point is 02:33:15 Listen to humor me with Robert Smygling Friends on the I-Hard Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I am the therapy gecko. I am an unlicensed lizard therapist who takes phone calls from real anonymous humans about their problems, such as this. Sometimes I'll have my girlfriend preach to with spicy food. and kind of baby birded it into my mouth. Is that weird?

Starting point is 02:33:39 Or this. I had my boyfriend over and I had dirty dishes everywhere. And I put the dirty dishes in our closet so he wouldn't see them. If you're the kind of person that would enjoy being a fly on the wall of a stranger's therapy session, or if you pass people on the street and constantly wonder what might be going on in their heads, this is the podcast for you. This week on Therapy Gecko, we're hearing all real, authentic human stories about anything from relationships to family drama to serendipitous encounters with unexpected people and things.

Starting point is 02:34:11 If real people peak your interest, listen to Therapy Gecko on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is It Could Happen Here, Executive Disorder, our weekly newscast covering what's happening in the White House, the crumbling world, and what it means for you. I'm Garrison Davis. I'm joined by James Stout, Mia Wong, and Robert Evans. This episode, we're covering the week of May 20th to May 27th. James, some small whittle, iddy-bitty news items to start? Yeah. Let's talk about the little things.

Starting point is 02:34:52 Then we'll talk about some things in more detail. The Trump administration has lifted a cap on refugee admissions by 10,000. This sounds like good news until you realize it is to allow more white South Africans to seek refuge in the United States of America. Great stuff. Hey, this country. I found the federal register thing. It's still the document still ended up there, but I will link to the place where the document will probably be.

Starting point is 02:35:19 The Dutch will never be forgiven. The United States has also continued its campaign of strikes in the Pacific. Yeah. The most recent one left two survivors, along with one man who was killed. So there's Guardian published a piece a while ago about what happened to some survivors. who were taken by a U.S. military boat, the U.S. military boarded their vessel, stole their food and beer,

Starting point is 02:35:46 and then transported them to El Salvador, where they were questioned and then released to immigration authorities and eventually sent home, basically. I guess, effectively deported for illegally entering El Salvador. After they were brought there by the U.S. By the United States, yeah, after the U.S. bomb. Incredible. Yeah.

Starting point is 02:36:03 So we don't know what happened to these two people. I guess Coast Guard activated search and rescue after the strike, so hopefully they've found them. It's better than them drowning out there. Their Department of Homeland Security is auto-extending the temporary protected status for Lebanon, not because they affirmatively chose to do so, but because they failed to renew or terminate it in time. So it auto-extended.

Starting point is 02:36:26 Mark Wayne Mullen, the DHS Secretary, has claimed that the Department of Homeland Security is drawing up plans to not process incoming international flights in sanctuary cities. What? Yeah. This is ahead of the World Cup, right? Yes. So let's play a little clip.

Starting point is 02:36:45 We are currently, which we're not initiate yet, but we're currently drawn up plans to say, listen, in these sanctuary cities where the local radical left Democrats aren't allowing us to do our job and enforce federal laws, then we shouldn't be processing international flights into their cities either because they don't want us to enforce immigration, but they want us to process immigration at their facilities. Nothing about that makes sense to me. The line he's drawing, I guess, what I want to guess at is that he's claiming that in places where police won't support ice by removing protesters from the streets outside ice facilities,

Starting point is 02:37:29 the United States is not going to allow international travelers to enter at airports in those. cities. There's a lot to break down there. Like, I'm not really going to because it's suffice to say that this would cause absolute chaos. That's not going to happen because that's going heavily disrupt capital. That's just, that's just, that's just, that's just, that's just, that's just not happening. Yeah, it's not, it's not, it's not really possible for this to work. Like, it's not that they can divert to non-woke airports, right? That's not how, how air travel works. Is this silly? But it's interesting. Like, like, Mullen has been a bit less. kind of crazy in his posting as policy, but maybe he was just getting warmed up.

Starting point is 02:38:13 I mean, he obviously does not understand who is true masters. If he actually thinks this is something that can happen. Yeah, I don't know if he does or he was just talking to Fox News and said what he thought Fox News wanted to hear. Mullen was talking about this in response to a large and growing protest at Delaney Hall, which is a private detention facility in Newark, New Jersey, where 300 detainees have been on hunger strikes since last Friday. Friday, Marlin has verously claimed that they chose to do this on Memorial Day, Friday, of course, not Memorial Day, and that they want their ethnic food. People in detention are entitled to religiously appropriate food, but that's not what's happening here, right? People are on Hunglestrake because of the conditions in the facility. New Jersey Senator Andy Kim, who's been there for a while with protesters, he got pepper-balled and tear gassed. He entered the facility to inspect it, and he, he entered the facility to inspect it, and he,

Starting point is 02:39:07 He made a thread on X.com, the everything website where he detailed horrible abuses inside, including a woman who had been denied OBGYN care and a pregnant woman who had miscarried inside the facility. DHS has claimed in response that, quote, in fact, ICE has higher detention standards than most U.S. prisons that hold actual U.S. citizens. That's an incredible thing to say. When someone has just detailed the fact that people are having unaccompanied miscarriages in your facility and being like, well, we do worth things to Americans here. Jesus. There are really a lot of layers there. On Monday, one of the leaders of the hunger strike was transferred out of the facility in Newark to another facility, right?

Starting point is 02:39:50 It's not uncommon for people to be moved around in immigration detention for various reasons, right, to include, in this case, they're organizing. Finally, the OPCW has published documents detailing a large hall of undeclared chemical. weapons that it found in Syria. What is the OCPW for those who may not be acronym aware? It's the organization for the prohibition of chemical weapons. Why this is interesting, firstly, there has been open source reporting, detailing the use by Assad of chemical weapons against his own population for years, and this confirms that. Secondly, there is a particularly disgusting faction of the left in the United States and elsewhere,

Starting point is 02:40:36 which has spent years denying that this is the case, spent years effectively running cover for Assad, murdering little children with chemical weapons. We had very good evidence that this was happening before. We now have incontrovertible proof that Assad had the ability to do this and did do this. We already know that he did it. But it should really make you question the legitimacy of any media source

Starting point is 02:41:01 that continues or ever has denied that Assad used chemical weapons or indeed any politician or political actor. There's no instance in which it's okay to use chemical weapons against civilians, period. And anyone apologizing for that, in my opinion, is pretty despicable. In other news, about two weeks ago, ABC News, nuked the 538 archive,

Starting point is 02:41:27 scrubbing all the articles, with links now redirecting to the ABC politics homepage. As annoying as some of the 538 type, people can be. This is a bad removal of documented information going all the way back to 2008. It is unfortunate that ABC has done this. There still

Starting point is 02:41:45 is third party archives of these articles that you can find, but it will make actually referencing information held, or previously held on 538, much more difficult going forward. Yeah, and I also just want to say this is a continuous problem with storing information on the

Starting point is 02:42:01 internet, which is that, yeah, information on the internet is incredibly ephemeral. it is very easy for entire people's lives work to simply be deleted because the parent company decided to make a move. And yeah, there's a bunch of people who do good work on digital preservation, but all of the work that we produce online is significantly more ephemeral than we tend to think about. Yeah. Yeah, as Jamie Loftus said in her last regular podcast that she did for us, this is a future piece of lost media, right? Which is true of almost everything anyone puts up on the internet. And there are groups of people who have worked over the years to try and mitigate that, including the Internet Archive and the Wayback Machine. And they are currently under attack, as is from within the Wikipedia Foundation, as we'll talk about later.

Starting point is 02:42:47 But, like, yeah, it's the only way to make this stuff not be ephemeral and to actually, like, keep a permanent archive of culture is to support the people doing that. and the people doing that are never going to be entirely cool with, for example, the people who make movies. The people who put out newspapers. And there's an extent to which they just need the backing of us and of our government to say, you can't stop them from doing that because it's in the best needs of the human race. And that's not going to happen right now. Anyway. Last weekend, Fox News reported that socialist live streamer Hassan Piker

Starting point is 02:43:29 and the leader of the activist organization Code Pink had been subpoenaed by the federal government as a part of an investigation into a humanitarian aid trip to Cuba with a bunch of left-wing activists and influencers last March. Fox claimed this investigation as part of a, quote, broader drag net involving as many as 40 American citizens

Starting point is 02:43:48 who joined the Marxist convoy to Havana, unquote. After returning from Cuba two months ago, 20 U.S. citizens were briefly detained and interrogated at the border, and 18 of them had their phones and other devices seized by CBP agents at the Miami International Airport. Yep. Fox reported that these new subpoenas show that Piker is now caught in a, quote, federal inquiry into whether activists who travel to Cuba in March violated U.S. sanctions laws through financing, coordination, or delivery of goods to Cuba, including potential contacts with Cuban guns. government personnel or entities on the island, unquote. Also claiming that this investigation is part of a, quote, broader effort by officials

Starting point is 02:44:36 at Treasury, State, and Justice Departments to curb malign foreign influence operations inside the United States, unquote. Now, Hassan Piker has said that he learned about the subpoena through Fox's media reporting and he has not yet been contacted by the government. Fox referred to these subpoenas as quote-unquote administrative subpoenas. And it turns out neither Hassan Piker nor Codepinck have actually been subpoenaed by the government. They've not actually been served by the federal government. Oh, boy.

Starting point is 02:45:12 On Tuesday, the leader of Codepank told Ryan Grimm that she received an email from the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control, requesting information. about the trip to Cuba, suggesting that there is some probe here, but it's not technically a subpoena. And there's still no indication yet if Hassan Piker has received a similar request for information. And like, this is bad. It's not unusual if you go to a place like Cuba than American citizens. They're certainly not supposed to have transit to directly to be stopped in question on the way into the country. And it's now not unusual for devices to be taken. None of this is good. Like the fact that they could just take your shit at the

Starting point is 02:45:58 border remains bad. But yeah, as Garrison has said right now, this is not what a lot of initial reporting made it look like quite. Yeah. No, if anything, it seems Fox is trying to encourage this broader dragnet and manufacture consent for there being subpoenas

Starting point is 02:46:18 for people on this humanitarian age and influencer trip. Yeah. James is. speaking of Cuba. Yeah. So let's talk a little bit about people seeking to become permanent residence of the United States. And we'll get to the Cuba tie in a minute here.

Starting point is 02:46:36 So a USCIS policy memorandum has advised USCIF's officers that most non-U.S. citizens seeking to adjust their status will now have to leave the USA to do so. What is adjusting? Adjusting is generally when somebody who is here on a non-U. an immigrant visa or here on another immigration status adjusts to become a permanent resident, right? And previously, they could do that inside the United States, or they could go to a consulate and they could apply for a green card of a consulate outside the United States. Now they're saying that aside from cases of what they are calling extraordinary discretion,

Starting point is 02:47:19 they're going to make people leave and apply from outside the United States. That is bad. What is worse is the way that this overlaps with their existing policies, right? People already are facing huge delays. I've reported on that before. And now new applicants and possibly people who are halfway through their process will have to leave. That will often mean spouses leaving their spouse and their citizen children if they have them for an unknown amount of time, right? This could take years. It's very realistic to expect this to take years. this dovetails with existing visa bans on 75 countries. What that means is that people from many of these countries cannot obtain any immigrant visas.

Starting point is 02:48:08 There are some very small exceptions to these visa bans. In the case of the 20 countries which want a complete ban, there are exceptions for athletes attending the World Cup or the Olympics, for example. So like Iran is one of those countries. The Iranian team can attend the world. World Cup, they're actually staying in Tijuana, but crossing the border to come and do their matches. For everyone else, though, if you leave and then you have to come back to collect a green card, you re-enter on an immigrant visa, then you get your green card, right? If you are prohibited

Starting point is 02:48:40 from having an immigrant visa because you are a citizen of these countries, then you cannot re-enter, and thus you cannot get your green card, and thus this is a de facto bar to people from those travel ban countries getting a green card in the United States now, which is very bad. I also noticed that there is not an exemption that I can see for the Cuban Adjustment Act here. The Cuban Adjustment Act is a special expedited pathway for Cubans that allows them to adjust to legal permanent resident status. It used to be two years now. It's a year. This is particularly interesting, given the USA is talking so much about how terrible things are in Cuba, but also saying if you've made it here and you're safe and you feel safer and you want to stay,

Starting point is 02:49:24 you can't. You have to go back to Cuba and apply, I guess, to adjust. It seems very hypocritical, but that's nothing new. Yeah. So I spoke to a couple of folks who would have expertise in this and I don't have their permission to cite their name. So there isn't a consular option for Cuban seeking to adjust. They can't do it outside of the country under the Cuba adjustment.

Starting point is 02:49:50 They have to do it inside the country, so they think that this would entirely not include them. But like everything else, it's a little bit unclear, and we will find out, I guess. Last month, USCIS also removed categorical deferred action for SIJS individuals. SIGAS is special immigrant juvenile status. It's granted to people in the US who are inside the United States without status who have been subject to abuse, abandonment or neglect, as found by a court. The Trump administration has already deported many of these young people. But this policy memo formally removed categorical deferred enforcement,

Starting point is 02:50:28 which the Biden admin began doing in 2022. Essentially, some people will be told on receiving S.I.J.S. They would be safe from deportation and they could receive a work permit. Deferred enforcement is the same thing that people under DACA have, right? Commonly referred to as dreamers. That has now been removed. the people with SOJS can adjust to being the SSJS offers a pathway to permanent residency

Starting point is 02:50:53 but now these people will evidently have to live in fear right up until they are able to become citizens if they're able to become citizens Jesus. Yeah like these are some of the most unfortunate people on the planet like people who get SIJS use of it has increased for like unaccompanied minors right but or children I should say

Starting point is 02:51:16 people who have come across in their last, maybe since 2018-ish, but still, it's people who have often gone through really terrible things. The justification cited, and I'm quoting from the memo here, is that, quote, the criminality, gangs, and program integrity concerns in special immigrant juvenile petitions report reviewed over 300,000 aliens, SOJ petitions, filed from the beginning of fiscal year 2013 through February 2025. Key findings included 853 known or suspected gang members. who filed SIGA petitions with most receiving approval. Over 600 MS-13 gang members filed S-IJ petitions and more than 500 were approved.

Starting point is 02:51:57 Among them at least 70 had been charged with gang-related federal racketeering conspiracy offenses and many others charged with violent crimes in the United States, including murder or sex offenses. Additional SIGA petition approvals included more than 100 known or suspected members of the 18th grade gang, at least three Tren de Aragua gang members and dozens of Srodenios Nortenios gang. Members, if you go back and look at those numbers, 300,000 petitions, I see 70 charges. Yeah, that's absurd. That is a fraction of a single percent. Yeah.

Starting point is 02:52:31 If they reviewed 300,000, even if this like 850 number is correct, is completely correct, which is not. But that's like less than one third of a percent. Yeah, exactly. It is a minuscule fraction if every single person who they suspect, and given what we've seen about suspicion, that could be as much as having. having a tattoo, right? Yeah.

Starting point is 02:52:50 Yeah. It's ludicrous to join one up with the other and say, therefore, all of these young people, many of whom have gone through horrific things, now will have to live in fear again. That policy memo came on April. I found it when I was looking through the policy memos on the USCIS website. And I haven't seen any other reporting on it. Maybe I've just missed it, but it certainly is something people should be aware of. I want to do a scripted series on SIJS people for understandable reasons.

Starting point is 02:53:16 not all of them want to get up in the media right now. Yeah. In terms of all the like immigration changes that have happened, this collection of stuff is like some of the worst that I've heard you talk about. Yeah, it's really bad. Like they started deporting S.I.J.S. people. And even even immigration lawyers who have been like the fifth second Trump administration is going to be really bad. The second Trump administration is really bad.

Starting point is 02:53:39 People did not expect them to begin going after these people. And they did when they were detaining. Another thing they've claimed is, is that like some of them are over 21, over 18, because they can still apply up to 21 in certain jurisdictions, right? Again, that doesn't mean that they haven't been through terrible things. Like many, many 21-year-olds in America rely on their parents for things. Yeah.

Starting point is 02:54:00 These people often don't have their parents or have in some cases been abused by or abandoned by their parents. And then sending them back to a place where they may be in danger, where they may not be safe, right? There is no moral, ethical justification for this, really. It's really bad. It's really horrible. Yeah. It's pure undeluded violence.

Starting point is 02:54:23 Yeah. And likewise, we can very clearly see if we look at the list of travel bar countries is going to be a bar on people from a large number of countries where the majority of the population is not white getting citizenship and legal permanent resident status in the United States, right? It's something that has very clearly been a motivating factor of policy for a long time. So yeah, more shit news from me about immigration. Talking of shit news, we have to pivot to advertisements.

Starting point is 02:54:52 Wee. And we're back. Oh, boy. Well, that's all been very depressing. You know what's not depressing? Catholicism. Oh, and that. That too.

Starting point is 02:55:15 Two great tastes. It tastes great together. Two things that make us all happy. Oh, man. This week, the same work that we're recording this, Pope Leo the 14th issued an encyclical, Magnifica, Humanitas, that warned against equating machine intelligence

Starting point is 02:55:32 with human intelligence, he declared, we must avoid the misconception of equating this type of intelligence with that of human beings. These systems merely imitate certain functions of human intelligence. This has been seen, I think, by most critics of artificial intelligence

Starting point is 02:55:48 as a pretty good encyclical, It is very long. It's well over 100 pages. So this is not like a quick read. You should think about this. It's like going in and reading a book. It's a really interesting document, among other things. The Pope quotes J.R. Tolkien at one point, which is a nice little bit.

Starting point is 02:56:08 He also makes a lot of references to mathematics and specifically like kind of comparing the way Catholicism thinks about divinity and the Holy Spirit and all that to certain kind of like geometric shakes. because apparently he was a math major. I did not know this, but it comes through in the writing of this. I would say my overall impression is like, oh, the Pope has a lot more understanding

Starting point is 02:56:30 of, like, technical stuff that I thought he was going to have. This isn't, this is not like a bad thing from a, like, a basic understanding of how the technology works standpoint. Obviously, a lot of this is based around the Pope's beliefs about the, like, what humanity is and the divinity,

Starting point is 02:56:49 within humanity, which is not something that everybody believes. But I also have found an awful lot of atheists and just kind of like non-religious people who have been sharing this because while they don't agree that like, you know, human beings are sacred because of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ necessarily or whatever or that we were made by God, they agree with the fact that there's something special about humanity that is not being recreated by these LLLLLLNs. And so I've seen a lot of like praise as a result of that. However, I've also seen what I thought were pretty salient critiques.

Starting point is 02:57:23 And the number one critique here is that this encyclical was released at an event that was kind of co-launched with people from Anthropic. And the Vatican worked with Anthropic for this release and are in general kind of partnering maybe the wrong term, but working alongside them to try and have a dialogue about the future of AI and what it shouldn't, shouldn't do. And specifically, one thing that Pope Leo talked a lot about was the need to demolition. or disarm artificial intelligence, as in remove it from use in, like, defense industries, and certainly make sure that it's not making the call to actually kill people. And that's something that Anthropic has also took a stand on in so much as that now the U.S. government is trying to remove any partnership it has with Anthropic. Yes, yes.

Starting point is 02:58:12 They at least were openly against that. Now, that doesn't mean Anthropics a company I like or a company that everybody should like they still plagiarized, huge millions of people, basically anyone who's ever written a book. There's a lot of illegal things, objectively illegal things. Anthropic did, and that's why there are numerous lawsuits against them now. And I think it is, in fact, a problem that one of Anthropics co-founders, Chris Ola, was invited to speak at this event in the Vatican. Because one of the first things he did after, you know, thanking the Vatican and the Catholic Church and the Pope for having him there is kind of disagree with what the Pope had said that these systems merely imitate certain functions. human intelligence.

Starting point is 02:58:51 Yeah. Because Ola said that these systems, I'm going to quote from an article in the registry here by Thomas Claiborne, quote, AI systems, he said, are not the cold calculating robots we were promised. They are made from us from our words. And as the Holy Father observes,

Starting point is 02:59:03 they remain in important ways mysterious to those of us who train them. This is what I have an issue with. Yeah. No, they're not. They're mysterious me in the same sense that, like, if you make a car that had always just been a simple ice engine,

Starting point is 02:59:17 if you make that a hybrid and you throw like a computer, screen and a bunch of shit in it, you're going to have a bunch of problems with your car as like a manufacturer that you didn't expect to have because you'd added complexity. We can't predict every single outcome of machine learning, right? Yeah. But the way that, but the way this Anthropa guy is using, you know, basic, basic facts about like machine learning and neural networks, but framing them in a way to.

Starting point is 02:59:42 These are mysterious. Like the human brain is mysterious. Yes. And no. Yes. Yeah, but it's also like, course, you can't predict what the other. output is your entire process is you're just multiplying matrices against each other over and over again and then checking to see if the output of the random matrixe multiplication you've done is what you want. Like, yeah, no shit.

Starting point is 03:00:01 A good dumb person comparison might be. If I were to buy an empty house and I were to fill that house with random shit for 30 years for so long that I've forgotten what I've put in the house and then I sent you into the house to grab something at random from it, I might be totally surprised by what you bring out. That doesn't mean anything mysterious or sacred has occurred. It just means that. I'd forgotten all the shit I put in that house, you know? Yeah.

Starting point is 03:00:25 Yeah, or it's like, it's like, if you make a machine that just like spits out a random output, yes, you don't know what it's going to be. Like, this is what you have done. Exactly. It's a random output when it was been trained on the corpus of like human knowledge, right? Yeah. And one of the things that I find very frustrating is that Ola made the statement that AI systems are made from us and from our words, right? And he says that in a way as to like,

Starting point is 03:00:52 and that's good. It means that like we all are a part of this and it's a part of us. And so there's humanity in it. No, no, no. AI isn't like made from our words. They stole our words that are consent in order to monetize them for themselves. That's different. That's real different. Yeah. In the same way that back in the day, when I began teaching, people would plagiarize by copying and pasting things from books. Those are also made by people's words. It doesn't make them sacred. It makes them stolen.

Starting point is 03:01:20 Now, Ola lists in here three questions for discernment. And he phrases this, like, and I hope the Catholic Church can, like, help us figure out how we should move forward with these things. These are the big questions behind AI. I want to quote again from that piece in the register, because the author of that Clapperet has a funny bit here. Ola, how can we ensure the gains of AI are shared globally? We do not have a mechanism for this.

Starting point is 03:01:40 We have many. what is called taxes. I know there is litigation already ongoing. We also have the French Revolution and the Russian Revolution, among others, as wealth-sharing models when the thing else works. It's a good piece. I recommend reading it. That's good.

Starting point is 03:01:55 That's what I've got to say on this. Obviously, the Synthrapa guy is going to frame certain things as marketing for the company, right? That's going to determine the way that he uses certain words and the way that he discusses machine learning and neural networks, right? When he's saying that this is like based on the huge. human brain roughly. It's because, yeah, it's because it's a machine learning neural network. Yeah. So that's going to frame the way that he's doing it. I think it makes sense for the Catholic

Starting point is 03:02:20 Church to try to enter into dialogue with a company like Anthropic. Sure. Especially if they can, you know, unite against Teal's efforts and even maybe some of some of the efforts of Open AI. But obviously Anthropic has their own motivations for doing this, which is to enrich themselves. Yes. Yes. But I don't think it's surprising that the Catholic Church will also try to enter into dialogue to influence the outcome of these things. I think in general, the Pope's statement is fine. I think the Pope's statement is fine. I do think this might be a data point in terms of in the future, church may need to recognize that you can't actually work with these guys. Perhaps that will be the outcome. We'll see. Well, but I mean, I think, I think that's part of what's

Starting point is 03:02:59 happening here, though, right? Is it, like, the reason the church is taking anti-AI positions while working with them is that they're, like, they're trying to have it both ways in terms of co-opting both the anti-AI movement and also work with these companies to sort of build like build their influence base? I don't see it fully that. I think for the Pope's, because he's been very consistent about being horrified by the growth of the arms industry and the idea of AI weapons and war, I kind of suspect from the Vatican standpoint when that all erupted with Anthropic pulling out and saying they weren't willing

Starting point is 03:03:32 to work with the Department of Defense on the things the DoD wanted them to do, that that's probably when the Vatican made the call, but I don't actually know. I'm not going to, I'm not going to say that the more sinister outcome is definitely not what's occurring, but I think there's a number of ways to kind of look at what the decision that was made and why it was made. I mean, the Catholic Church is one of the most globally influential bodies on the planet. They do have like their theological reasons for opposing AI as well as sort of ethical reasons that it's illuminated by the Pope in terms of like worker protections, in terms of the anti-war stuff. And I do believe he has like actual, you know, legitimate spiritual beliefs about like what

Starting point is 03:04:12 humanity is. And it was something I appreciate is that he doesn't just take this like AI skeptic point of view and just to deny that like AI will, you know, significantly transform our world, right? Because I think AI is is transforming production and, uh, in some pretty significant ways. The Pope's not just hoping that AI will go away. He's affirming that we actually need to do something about this to protect our own humanity. And even though AI is not human, humans do determine how it will be developed, and therefore we should act.

Starting point is 03:04:45 And I think that makes sense for his position. Yeah, I'm not surprised as to the fact that he's doing it. I guess my long-term doubt is, I don't think any of these companies have the ability on their own to make responsible choices. No, certainly not. of these, and I don't think they have the ability to contribute to responsible decisions.

Starting point is 03:05:10 Sure. I think they need to be manhandled. Yeah, totally. By armed agents of the state, otherwise armed us are going to have to do it. You know, that's the reality. No, 100%. And that's the reality not just with AI. That's the reality with every mega corporation, right?

Starting point is 03:05:27 If the government does not stop them from destroying life for large numbers of people, then large numbers of people are going to do crazy things to them. You know, and if you want crazy things to stop happening to, for example, the CEO of OpenAI, maybe he should stop saying his technology might kill everyone. Yeah. On a related note, Wired has recently obtained thousands of documents from the DHS, FBI, and state-level info-sharing, anti-terrorism. They're called Fusion Centers, where information is shared between the feds,

Starting point is 03:06:00 the state and local law enforcement. Yeah. And a report from the New York Intelligence and Counterterrorism Bureau has warned of widespread upheaval in response to the adoption of AI and has coined a new term, quote, anti-tech violent extremism, unquote. This is a quote, this is a quote, the chaotic atmosphere that may result from the emergent AI technology in the next five years may fuel law. large-scale protests that devolve into civil unrest and anti-tech violent extremist activity, especially in large urban areas such as New York City, unquote. This is interesting. Also, according to Wired, the Intelligence Bureau report referenced the Zizians and warned that,

Starting point is 03:06:51 quote, paranoid views regarding AI may proliferate in the aftermath of the Zizs trial, thanks to their, quote, attempt to reason the belief that a godlike incarnation of AI, is imminent and belief that humans must best use their time in the present to devote themselves to ensuring its compliance with human morality or face existential consequences for failing to do so, unquote. This is really interesting. This stuff that Robert's been talking about for quite a while. Yeah.

Starting point is 03:07:25 And like, I think this report was actually written before the Sam Altman-Maltoff cocktail attack, or at least was written around the same time. But I think probably a little bit before. But considering the Molotov cocktail attack on Sam Altman's property and the gunshots fired into the home of a pro-datacenter city council person, like it makes sense that law enforcement is considering anti-AI violence as an emerging threat vector. But it also makes sense to be concerned that non-violent opposition

Starting point is 03:07:54 may get caught in a federal or state-level drag net. Yeah. And that's what fusion centers too, right? they'd think Ragnet a whole bunch of shit. And that's exactly what fusion centers do. And most of this Wired report is talking about documents from fusion centers. And like, as we have already seen, law enforcement's surveillance capacity and scope has been empowered and extended by the National Security Presidential Memorandum Number 7.

Starting point is 03:08:18 And public organizers and protesters are much easier to target than the small minority of people that actually end up committing violent crimes. Wired reported that federal, state, and local agencies are gathering and circulars, intelligence about alleged threats to data centers. The intelligence documents that wired quotes from outline a variety of threat actors and models, not simply data center protests. Quote, adversarial actors, including state-sponsored entities, criminal groups, and extremists, such as homegrown violent extremists or environmental extremists, may target U.S. data centers. These actors could also exploit the strategic importance of data centers to the U.S.

Starting point is 03:08:59 economy, using them for activities like cryptocurrency mining, or leveraging third-party entities such as front companies to gain access to U.S. data and infrastructure, unquote. So that outlines not just like environmental or like the general anti-data center beliefs held by the American public. Like this shows like actual, you know, like threats to national security by hostile state actors or criminal groups, as well as people with their own environment. or ethical reasons for opposing AI domestically. Though Wired also reported that a fusion center in Northern Virginia

Starting point is 03:09:36 created a report on Tesla takedown protests and in-person assemblies like demonstrations at an Arlington County budget meeting and a Fairfax County School Board meeting where people voiced opposition to AI. Yeah, and this is again also like historically what these fusion centers have been used for, as James was talking about, I mean, like all the way back to like,

Starting point is 03:09:57 God, I mean, like, I mean, like, I probably should have worked out in what order I wanted to talk about these. But like, yeah, fusion centers have been used to target everything from like anti-aroc War protest stuff in like the mid-2000s through like, yeah, like fusion centers were like one of the big coordinating agents for like all of the repression in 2020. They've been used in like anti-Palestine protests in like 24, during the campus occupations. So like, yeah, like these sort of like intelligence reports are talking about like different threat factors. But going after protesters is like what these fusion centers is.

Starting point is 03:10:28 in a lot of cases, are designed to do. So, yeah, yeah, it's definitely a thing to be concerned about given what

Starting point is 03:10:35 these things are and what they do. Yeah. Speaking of cryptocurrency mining. Ah, oh boy. So, yeah,

Starting point is 03:10:43 yeah, speaking of using large entities for crypto bullshit, so last week we talked a bit about Kevin Warsh, the new Federal Reserve

Starting point is 03:10:52 Board Chairman's like ties to the tech, right, right, ties to Thiel, ties to Andreson, ties to this whole sort of world of like tech venture capital money. And today I want to talk about there's an executive

Starting point is 03:11:04 order from May 19th from the Trump administration that orders the Federal Reserve to consider allowing crypto companies and other non-FDIC insured entities to use Fedwire. Okay, so what is Fedwire? On a macro level, Fedwire is the reason the entire American economy functions. It is the payment service that banks in the U.S. used to both send money to each other and to the Fed. If you wanted to do an analogy, right, you could say that FedWire is PayPal for banks, but like the reality is not that. Like PayPal is like FedWire for people, right? FedWire is maybe the single most important infrastructure piece of the entire American economy. I was going to talk about this a bit later, but the surface on an average, the Fed estimates that

Starting point is 03:11:56 it moves $1.1.1 quadrillion dollars per year. Whoa. Where does a quadrillion fit in the number bigness scale? That's a million million dollars. A lot. Per year. Right. Like, the entire American financial system moves through this service.

Starting point is 03:12:13 And you can also, like, move money to the government through this. So you can do exchanges with the Federal Reserve itself or the different Federal Reserve banks. Now, in order to get access to Fedwire, you have to be an actual bank. right? You have to be like an FDIC insured bank. And crypto has not had access to this system. Like crypto, I really don't want to call them crypto banks because they're not banks. And that's why they haven't had access to the system because they're not banks. Crypto is not money. And it's not, none of this stuff is subject, I mean, it's subject to, I guess, to a little bit of like securities

Starting point is 03:12:47 regulation, but it's not subject to actual like FDIC regulation or importantly, deposit insurance. Because again, these are not banks. Now, crypto has been trying to get access to the Fed wire system for years because in order for crypto companies to sort of interface with the rest of the banking system, they have to basically get a bank to act as a partner for them instead of being able to directly move the stuff around because they can't access the system. And so Trump has at least given executive order for the Fed to consider doing this. Now, Trump cannot actually force directly.

Starting point is 03:13:25 Like, you can't just sign an executive order that says you have to let crypto do this because of Fed independence. But the Fed had already sort of like opened a period of public comment on this. And this is something that I think Warsh is, this is why it's important that this is happening after like the appointment of like Kevin Warsh or like after he'd been technically speaking before he'd been confirmed. But like after like before he'd been sworn in but after like they knew he was going to he's going to get through because he is extremely friendly. to these groups. This is also a thing that's sort of important for the crypto industry, because one of the issues that crypto has is that actually trying to, like, move cryptocurrency around is just a nightmare. That's like one of the reasons why no one actually like uses it to purchase things, because it's, it's such a disaster. And getting access to the Fed's payment

Starting point is 03:14:13 system suddenly kind of, it gives you a sort of like, you can use the Fed's payment platform, which actually works unlike theirs, which do not. Now, the other reason I'm bringing this up. So it's worth mentioning that even if the Fed were to allow them to create accounts with the Federal Reserve, they wouldn't for now have access to a lot of the services that the Federal Reserve provides. Like, they wouldn't be able to do, like, take advantage of, like, repo injections and, like, stuff like that.

Starting point is 03:14:41 Like, a lot of the stuff that the Fed uses to stabilize the economy through, like, injecting money into the banking system and injecting bonds and stuff. like that into the system, they wouldn't have access to. But it's pretty clear that these crypto groups wants that eventually because that gives them access to like the actual sort of banking capacity of the federal government, which allows them access to things like very low interest short-term loans and liquidity, et cetera, et cetera. And what I want to close on is that this is what Warsh's thing is, right? He wants there to be more integration between this sort of like, I call like FinTech, right,

Starting point is 03:15:17 like the financial tech things. but, you know, between these very fascist right-wing tech companies, they want them to be more and more directly integrated into the payment services and into the banking capacity of the U.S. government. I mentioned earlier that Fedwire moves, again, $1.1 quadrillion a year. Now, this is also what's very dangerous about Trump's people being in control of the Federal Reserve because there is so much infrastructure inside of the Federal Reserve that if it breaks even a little bit, things that we don't think of at all.

Starting point is 03:15:47 Like, no one, like, literally no one thinks about, like, even if you do banking stuff, you tend not to think about Fedwire because it just works. And this is less of a risk now that, like, Doge Gropers aren't running around. But one of the dangers of Trump attempting to pay control of Federal Reserve is that his people will break something like this while doing something like attempting to integrate crypto companies into it. And so that's just going to be a continuing risk that we all sort of have to deal with because tech companies and Trump administration and now the president of the Federal Reserve,

Starting point is 03:16:17 serve want to fuck with these systems on which everything in all of our lives depends on in ways that we never see. Cool. All right. Speaking of the things that all of our lives depend on, here are the products and services that support this podcast. Products and services, that's right. Leslie. Yeah. All right. And we're back. So I have to unfortunately talk about Wikipedia or at least the Wikimedia Foundation. Obviously, I think everyone here is pretty fans of Wikipedia, which is, at this point, has gone from the thing my teachers used to tell me I couldn't use in projects to, like, by any objective measure, one of the most significant projects in the history of human knowledge and, like, storage of things that human beings know

Starting point is 03:17:13 and have learned. It's one of the last, like, gasps of the promise of the old internet. And it's also the thing that underpins all of the AI chatbots alongside Reddit in one way or another. And the answers that they give people, like Wikipedia's. incredibly important for AI, which is why the Wikimedia Foundation has made deals, like, with the AI industry

Starting point is 03:17:35 in order to get money for letting them scrape, like, Wikipedia, which is kind of part of why the Wikimedia Foundation is currently doing really fucking well monetarily. They've got a little under $300 million in reserves, which is about a year and a half worth of money for them. So first off... Wait, so you're saying those little banners that fill half of the screen every time I use Wikipedia,

Starting point is 03:17:57 lying. I don't want to actually right now I do want to discourage people from donating to Wikipedia. Historically, I have not. But yes, you should first off know if you've been feeling bad about not donating. They don't currently need it. They're okay right now. And they shouldn't get more of your money until they stop doing the shit than I'm about to tell you about. Because over the course of 10 days in May, the Wikimedia Foundation has engaged in what you could call major union busting, firing employees who are trying to organize their fellows and trying to like represent those values within the Wikimedia Foundation. And my main source for this is a pretty good article that Jake Orlowitz put out on Medium recently, Big Tech's anti-Labor playbook has come for Wikipedia. And it starts with the firing in mid-May of Brooke Vibber.

Starting point is 03:18:47 She was the very first full-time employee of the Wikimedia Foundation. and its first CTO, the chief technical officer. And for more than 20 years, she's like one of the main engineers that has made Wikipedia work, right? And she's also a union organizer. So she's a very important person. She's the lead developer for MediaWiki, which is the platform that runs Wikipedia. It had been since 2003. And it's just a very big person, both in terms of how Wikipedia works and in terms of like the way in which their unionizing efforts have gone.

Starting point is 03:19:18 She was laid off without any, like, real cost given. And then a week later on May 21st, the foundation disbanded the community tech team, which consisted of five engineers and a manager. The community tech team had the job of listening to Wikipedia editors, which are number one, the reason Wikipedia has content and number two, volunteers, right? So these are regular employees whose job has been to hear what Wikipedia editors want and then help make sure that the salary employees on the team, fulfill those desires in as much as that as possible, right?

Starting point is 03:19:51 And so when you fire these people, you are saying, we don't really give a shit about the volunteer community. And it's also noted in this, in Jake's article, that most of those engineers were union organizers. Now, there is currently a solidarity petition for Wikipedia editors. So if you are an editor of Wikipedia, I think it would be great if you signed that solidarity petition. This is the first time that editors have had to do an organized solidarity action with

Starting point is 03:20:17 paid foundation staff. And yeah, it's a whole thing. The salaried staff there are not on one side about this. This is extremely controversial. It has a lot to do with the fact that a number of the old guard, including, you know, the folks who are like a number of like some of the oldest people at Wikipedia have a kind of libertarian bit to them, you might say. And in January 20th of 26, Bernadette Bion was recruited as CEO of the foundation.

Starting point is 03:20:47 And her prior career included work at J.P. Morgan and Lehman Brothers, as well as a spokesperson role for the NSC, the National Security Council. She was on the Obama Foundation. She was the U.S. ambassador in Chile. Oh, great. So this is someone who comes from a background in which fucking with union attempts are very, like, normal and accepted. The union's demands are not extreme. They would not have any meaningful impact whatsoever on the pile of cash that Wikipedia has. There's no excuse for the Wikimedia Foundation.

Starting point is 03:21:17 this, you should be pissed at them and not give them more money until they make things right. Anyway, that's my opinion. I'm done. Nice. All right, so we need to update once again the situation with the United States war in Iran. The USA this week again bombed Iran in violation of ceasefire, calling it a self-defense strike. I mean, still a violation of ceasefire. The negotiations are ongoing. Both sides remain a long way apart. There have been various leaks and reports of where negotiations were at. One suggested that Iran would exchange freeing up its assets and other sanctions relief for removing highly rich uranium. Iranian State TV leaked details of a supposed memorandum of understanding,

Starting point is 03:22:06 which would be like the memorandum that they would sign in order to say like, hey, let's get back at the table until then. these are our rules kind of. This is the rules we're operating under while we negotiate. The MOU said the blockade would end and the trade would be reopened, but the USA has denied that MOU. I don't want to go into the blow by the blow of like leaked and denied things because it's just a waste of time. None of that's real.

Starting point is 03:22:28 It's all stock market manipulation. Like it's all just trying. Yeah. Sorry. That's literally my next sentence. Yeah. Yeah. It doesn't stop people killing.

Starting point is 03:22:36 It doesn't stop people dying. It does change the oil price and it does change the stock market. And I think if we report on this too credibly, we miss the fact that that, like, that is the real impact. And that is how we should frame this in our reporting, not do the barakravied thing of rushing up eight bullet points of something that someone told you and never consider why. Well, James, you will never have a career at Axios with that attitude. Yes. I think that that bridge has been burned, Garrison, but my path in life has been lit by the bridges I burn. one thing I do want to note is that Trump has attempted to, he appears to want to tie a peace deal to having other countries in the region signed the Abraham Accords.

Starting point is 03:23:18 Abraham Accords, you're not familiar at 2020 agreement in which the UAE, Bahrain, later Sudan and Morocco normalized relations with Israel. Interesting. That is unlikely to happen. You killed the Ayatollah, now you think they're going to sign the Abraham Accord? Like, what are we doing here? Yeah, I mean, it's just going through a wish list of shit, I guess, that he or people close to him won. Yeah. Meanwhile, Iran is continuing to attack southern Kurdistan, right?

Starting point is 03:23:47 I think this offers a very clear vision of what Kurdish groups could expect if they decide to ally with the U.S. and Serb as a ground force. And, of course, there are very many reasonable reasons that they would want to do that, right, to include liberating themselves from an oppressive regime. but the United States, as it has done every other time, would probably abandon them and they would be subject to this. They are already subject to this just because of rumors that they were associating with the United States. This week, one strike injured nine, P.A.K. Peshmerga, several of them very critically injured. Talking of strikes, let's pivot to Nigeria, where

Starting point is 03:24:26 Africom is claiming its strikes have killed 175 or more ISIS members. I know that I am like the lonely voice on this. The second I and the second S in ISIS stand for Iraq and al-Sham or Iraq and Syria. Yep. Yes, yes, yes. It's constantly frustrating. ISIS-Khorasan province. That's not what it means. ISIS, West Africa, no what it means. So it's the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Shab in Africa. What are we doing here? Yeah, incredible. It's now made it into you. Like, it would be like if there was, like, Christian fundamentalist, like the Georgia Baptist School of London or something like that. Yeah. Or it's like the United States of America.

Starting point is 03:25:11 Yeah, the United States of America, Japan. Yeah. Come on. Not what the word means. Yeah. I mean, yeah, in the new counterterrorism doc, I think they almost exclusively refer to it as ISIS-K. Yeah, so that's Khorasan province, right? Which again, not in Iraq or al-Sham in what we would call Afghanistan today.

Starting point is 03:25:31 It's fine. Yeah, this is where we're out with her. The fucking acronym is not an acronym. It's just a word, I guess, no. I remain angry. Meanwhile, fighting between Boko Haram and Iswap, which is what I'm going to be using, Elect Chad continues to threaten even worse famine in the region. And Hexeth is claiming that these strikes were part of a campaign to defend Christians.

Starting point is 03:25:55 And I just want to note one more thing to give you a sense of how committed this president is. maybe a year ago, he heard the call of Nigerian Christians who were being targeted and killed by ISIS in Nigeria. And he said, Pete, I want the War Department to focus on ensuring that we do everything we can to protect those Christians. Partnerships like that can take time behind the scenes, but he never wavered on it. And we got the assets there, and over the last month, and there hasn't been much coverage of this, we killed ISIS number two in Nigeria, who's most responsible for killing Christians and trying to target the U.S. homeland. and have since, because of the intel we gather, killed hundreds of ISIS members who were targeting and killing Christians in Nigeria, creating a whole new opportunity there. So there's a lot of things we do that the media pays attention to, and a lot of things the president empowers the department to do on behalf of the American people that he deserves great credit for.

Starting point is 03:26:49 So here we are paying attention, as he asked. You will notice that the Africom claim of 175 is not hundreds. However, Hexeth in that statement claimed hundreds. Maybe we are missing something. Or maybe he's referring to December 2025 strikes and including all of those who rolling them up together. It's of course worth pointing out that Nigerian government has pushed back on this narrative that these strikes are to defend Christians. There are Christian bishops in Nigeria who have pushed back on this narrative. Because as with many Islamist terror groups, the majority of people, these people have killed, are not Christians, right? Many of them are Muslims. Many of them are Muslims. many of them, people of various other faiths. Like Boko Haram, right, the name roughly translates to, like, Western-style education is forbidden, it's Haram, right? Like, they're going after people who are in that community who have sought out Western education.

Starting point is 03:27:42 Like, there are many, many, many instances I could say, of these people killing Muslim people. Hexas wants to make this a crusade, and that's just not how things are on the crown. It's a very simplistic understanding of a much more complicated reality. But yeah, that is what I have on Nigeria this week. He is right that the US media covers Africa less, much less than it should. But I'm trying to do our best here.

Starting point is 03:28:06 We have one more story, big story before we close. But first, we should mention the Republican primary in Texas on Tuesday. After gaining Trump's endorsement last week, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton won the runoff election in the Republican Senate primary race. Paxton won by almost 400,000 votes, beating the fourth term incumbent Republican settler John Cornyn at 64% to 36% of the vote. This is the second week in a row

Starting point is 03:28:38 where Trump has successfully intervened to steer congressional primary win away from incumbents and toward staunch mega loyalists. Paxton will now go up against Tala Rico in the general election this November. Should we mention Paxton calling Ta-Riko transgender. Yeah.

Starting point is 03:28:57 Yeah. I mean, it's not just Paxton. Miller. Miller. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Starting point is 03:29:04 There seems to be a whole GOP move to brand him as trans potentially as part of their, which I kind of see is some degree of desperation. Although I can't really imagine Paxton losing this election. So maybe it's just that they're completely out of other ideas. And Paxton does seem to have more allowed. than Cornon would.

Starting point is 03:29:26 Sure, but he's, he's Paxton and this is Texas. You have to keep that in buying. They're not going to take Texas. This guy has been charged with crimes, and the GOP tried to get rid of him. Texas refuses. Yeah. Like, Texas is like, absolutely not. I mean, I never am putting my faith in Texas, as we all know.

Starting point is 03:29:47 Yeah. But if, if I were to set up a pairing, the Tala Rico v. Paxton pairing is, the one I would pick, as opposed to Talarico v. Cornyn or, you know, Crockett v. Paxton. Sure.

Starting point is 03:30:03 I'm not going to say there's no way that Tala Rico wins. It would be an astonishing like a minute. It would be really. Yeah. I'll come on here and admit I was wrong and I'll be thrilled.

Starting point is 03:30:16 I just spent too long living in Texas. I'll see this as like the person who's been the most consistent, like assuming there's an election. that even sort of functions normally. This is going to be like a 2008-style wave. They're not, like, they're not going to win Texas. And until I'm proven wrong, I've been saying this the entire time I've been doing this show

Starting point is 03:30:35 and I've been right every single time. So, like, prove me wrong, Texas. You know, when I see a flip for Texas coming, I'll call it out. But I don't right now. Nope. Yeah. I'm not saying it'll never happen because demographically probably will at some point. Yeah.

Starting point is 03:30:53 Like unless they really succeed in their genocide dreams. But that ain't happening now. Yeah. Now this cycle. Finally, let's talk about another one of these redistricting cases and one related to the Supreme Court ruling on the Voting Rights Act. On Tuesday, a federal court blocked an Alabama congressional house map drawn by Republicans in 2023. A three-judge panel found that the drawn map was intentionally discriminated. based on race.

Starting point is 03:31:25 Just two weeks ago, the Supreme Court cleared the way for this same map to be used in the 2026 midterm elections. Alabama Republicans have since labeled the district court panel activist judges. It's worth taking a look at who these judges are, I think. The 11th Circuit judge was first appointed to a district court by one Ronald Reagan. The other two district judges were appointed by Trump. Yeah. And this exact same three-judge panel had already found this exact same map to be intentionally racially discriminatory years ago.

Starting point is 03:32:03 This new district court order also rejects the state's claims that the 2020-map was just drawn with partisan, not racial intent. Right, and quote, the purpose of the 2023 plan was to distribute black voters across districts to dilute their votes, at least in part because they are black, unquote. This latest ruling is part of a specific redistricting battle that has stretched on for five years, with Republican maps being repeatedly struck down, appealed, redrawn, and struck down again. I've seen some confusion on the exact series of events here,

Starting point is 03:32:39 like what the Supreme Court has ruled on, which maps are being used. So I want to just briefly go over the sequence of events as I understand it. In 2021, a district court, ruled that a new map drawn after the 2020 census likely violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. The Supreme Court upheld this decision in 2023, barring the use of this 2021 map. After the Supreme Court decision, the Alabama legislature adopted a new map in 2023, but a federal court again found that this newer 2023 map also likely violated Section 2.

Starting point is 03:33:17 and the Supreme Court let a ban on the use of this map go through by declining to block the order, but they did not rule on the map itself. So the court appointed a special master to draw a new Alabama house map to use going forward. In 2025, following a trial, the district court officially ruled that Alabama's 23 congressional map did in fact violate Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, finding the map was, quote, an intentional effort to dilute black Alabama's voting strength and evade the unambiguous requirements of court orders standing in the way, unquote. Importantly, the Supreme Court had yet to rule on the actual 2023 map itself. After the district court's ruling in 2025, Alabama did appeal to the Supreme Court,

Starting point is 03:34:07 but they delayed consideration until after the Louisiana case. As we know, that ruling effectively nullified. much of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, establishing that intent of racial discrimination must be shown, not just discrimination as an effect in the drawing of voting districts. But after that ruling, Alabama asked the Supreme Court again for a quick appeals decision before the state's scheduled primary and to put the lower court's order barring the use of the 2023 map on hold,

Starting point is 03:34:37 considering their recent ruling in the Louisiana case. And on May 11th, the Supreme Court granted Alabama's emergency. shadow docket appeal, vacated the order blocking the use of the 2020-3 district map and sent the case back to the lower court for further review in light of the Louisiana ruling. So, that's a lot. But remember that the district court already ruled that the 2023 map intentionally discriminated based on race, the very requirement set by the Supreme Court's Louisiana ruling. So when the district court reconsidered the case this past week, they found that the Louisiana decision only strengthened their original ruling that the Alabama GOP map was intentionally discriminatory and diluted black

Starting point is 03:35:26 voters. This is pretty much what Sordomer wrote in her dissent when she argued that there was quote unquote no reason to send the case back to the district court because that court had already concluded that Alabama, quote, violated the 14th Amendment by intentionally diluting the votes of black voters in Alabama, that constitutional finding of intentional discrimination is independent of and unaffected by any of the legal issues discussed in the Louisiana case, unquote. So that's essentially what happened. That's essentially what the district court found. The three-judge panel also rebuffed opposition to the court-ordered map in Alabama on the basis that it bears a similarity to the map at the center of the Louisiana case, writing that it's

Starting point is 03:36:10 their understanding of the Supreme Court's recent ruling that race as a districting criterion cannot be used when drawing maps, but that quote-unquote relevant racial data may be considered for a lawful purpose like checking that the drawn maps comply with Voting Rights Act precedent. It's not that racial data is used in the drawing of maps, but after the maps are drawn, they can be checked against racial data to make sure they comply with Voting Rights Act. The district court wrote that Louisiana's black population is not as concentrated as in Alabama, requiring a black majority district to slice through multiple metropolitan areas to scoop up black voters, whereas in Alabama, it's quote unquote relatively easy to draw a reasonably configured majority black district.

Starting point is 03:37:02 Quote, we are unsurprised that race blind relief is available here but was unavailable there. Here, it has been consistently obvious to us from our visual assessment of the geographic dispersion of Alabama's black population and statistics about black population centers in the state that black voters in Alabama are relatively geographically compact, unquote. So essentially, it's actually pretty difficult to draw a map that separates out the black population to be a minority force in all voting districts. As for demonstrating intent, the district court found that the Alabama legislature only enacted the discriminatory map after knowing it would dilute

Starting point is 03:37:46 the impact of black voters. And by having prior knowledge of the disparate racial impact, including from federal court findings, and then passing the map anyway, that itself shows intent. Furthermore, the judges wrote that the case's, quote, enormous record contains no evidence of a partisan motive, unquote, in the drawing of. of the 2023 map. I'll quote again from the recent order. Quote, in the simplest terms, the sequence and substance of extraordinary legislative events

Starting point is 03:38:18 against the backdrop of the legislature's knowledge compels us to conclude that the legislature doubled down on racially discriminatory vote dilution after we and the Supreme Court found that it was racially discriminatory vote dilution. The same evidence leaves us no room to conclude that when the legislature did all this, it had party politics in mind. The only available intent evidence tells us that consideration of race were the key reason,

Starting point is 03:38:46 unquote. So the court ordered Alabama to use the alternative court-ordered map already used in the 2024 election for the rest of Alabama's 26 congressional elections, after which the legislature can then create a new congressional district plan. And of course, the state of Alabama has already appealed this to the Supreme. Supreme Court, and we will wait and see if they decide to hear this case. Yeah, this will continue to be a thing we're going to have to report on. We should say for some time, right?

Starting point is 03:39:16 Yes. This is going to result in massive changes. Yeah, we will continue to cover them, I guess. It is interesting that this is the first time I've seen a court really like interpret the Louisiana ruling for like another case to a, like, this is like an over 70 page, like, ruling. Yeah. And they discuss like where the Louisiana ruling.

Starting point is 03:39:37 Louisiana case does apply and where it doesn't and what it means to, quote, unquote, consider race in the evaluation of these districts. And it would be interesting, you know, if the Supreme Court decides to hear this, if they're going to affirm this court's interpretation of their ruling, or if they're going to say, no, you got it wrong and strike down their interpretation. But, you know, right now they did really outline, like what it means to use race in reference to these districts and how it cannot be used in the drawing of the district, but that it can be considered to make sure that it complies with the Voting Rights Act, and that does not mean that it was used as an instrument in the actual drawing of the district.

Starting point is 03:40:19 And I think that that specificity is an interesting part of the new ruling. Definitely. I think like it's just like any other Supreme Court decision, right, things tend to sort of bounce around before they're entirely clarified. Yeah. Like I said, this is like a five-year-old. long case, all stemming from the 2020 census and the maps that the Republicans have tried to try to draw after that, which as multiple courts, Supreme Court and the district court have

Starting point is 03:40:47 already concluded, the GOP tried to intentionally dilute the votes of black Alabama's, right? And because of the way that the black population is concentrated in Alabama, there needs to be an intentional effort to do that, right? Whereas in this Louisiana case, the drawing of districts had, you know, had to like look to more gerrymandered to create these black majority districts, whereas in Alabama's case, that's not really necessary. And in fact, a lot of the maps that were referenced in testimony were like algorithmically generated. Huh, that's interesting that it wasn't like, uh, they didn't get the crayons out and like, draw lines like how Lerbridge Jerry did back in the day.

Starting point is 03:41:26 No. Great, great. I love that. I'm sure we can expect much more wonderful algorithmically generated election. Well. Yeah. content. What a time to be alive. If you want to email us, Coolzone Tips at proton.me. Hold off for now if you're with the ferrets. I've heard from the

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Behind the Bastards - It Could Happen Here Weekly 234

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