Behind the Bastards - It Could Happen Here Weekly 34

Episode Date: May 14, 2022

All of this week's episodes of It Could Happen Here put together in one large file.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Alphabet Boys is a new podcast series that goes inside undercover investigations. In the first season, we're diving into an FBI investigation of the 2020 protests. It involves a cigar-smoking mystery man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse look like a lot of guns. But are federal agents catching bad guys or creating them? He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to happen. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeartRadio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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 here for you, but you can make your own decisions. Oh, it could happen here and earlier this week, not the week you're hearing this, but the week we recorded it. It did. It being the end of Roe v. Wade via Supreme Court fiat and also the coming end of 100 years of social progress and less people get real organized and aggressive real fucking quick. I'm Robert Evans. Who else? Who else do I got on with me today?

Is there a Christopher Wong on the line? Yes, there is one. There are many others, but I am me. Yeah, the others do not count. Is there a Garrison Davis on the line? The only one that I know of. That's right. We exterminated the others in a brutal set of purges, a la Stalin. And then, of course, Shireen Laniyuna. Shireen. I'm here too.

To introduce Sophie. I mean, the one and only Sophie. Okay. Well, that's us. Wow. And now today I am intensely excited to introduce our guest who is a cool person doing cool stuff to steal from another one of our podcasters. Kat Green of the Abortion Access Front. Kat, welcome to the show. Thank you for coming on. I know this has been a hell week for you. Oh, yeah. Thanks for having me on. I really appreciate it.

Now, you and I have a friend in common and you guys were actually at a national conference for abortion access when the news dropped a little early. Do you want to talk to us a little bit about what happened there? Yeah, I mean, now that the conference is over, I can say that we were in one of the worst cities in the world to be in when all of this happened. Orlando, Florida. Oh, nice. Which is basically made of paper sets, right? Honestly, you could have stopped that sentence at one of the worst cities to be in. Yeah, we had actually been out to dinner at the oldest restaurant in Florida earlier that night and it was a lovely evening, even though like some angry driver tried to kill our mutual friend over a parking space. Oh, Florida.

This is gloss over that part. Florida, yeah. You know, also the day had started with there already being a bomb threat at a clinic in Knoxville. So I was trying to help people find information about that earlier in the day. And then we went out to dinner thinking that we got to relax. We came back to the news as it was breaking and into the lobby of our hotel where the remaining providers and advocates that were there were just trying to make do. Yeah. So, Kat, at first of all, I guess we should talk about what the abortion access front does and your job there because this is something I don't think a lot of people think about it. It's become clear to me from some of the reaction of some folks this week on the more liberal side of things is there's a general unawareness of how violent and intense the threats against abortion access providers have been for like 40 years. Yeah. Well, so abortion access front was founded by Liz Winstead, my partner who was the co creator of the Daily Show, and started as a progressive at this advocacy and messaging hub. And so we were making funny videos about abortion.

And then Trump got elected. Oh, wow, our jobs got way more serious all of a sudden. And so we had like 700 volunteers in the week after the 2016 election. And so we started becoming matchmakers for volunteers to different clinics around the country and we were doing comedy tours where we were trying to build community around the clinics in different states. And so we would do a comedy show have a, have a provider on at the end to talk about what was at stake locally and then get people to sign up to help because people didn't have access to contractors in many of the places who are going you know like we would go out and do landscaping work when we were on tour because we were just trying to help out wherever we could. And in the course of that, the nice folks at the National Abortion Federation reached out to us and we're like we're a little concerned about you putting providers on stage. Maybe we should talk about your security plan so they, they were out with us the first two years. And then we're giving me information about people we needed to watch out for so I got way more involved in creating these security plans around our shows and our tours and started doing a lot of my own research on anti abortion extremists because as we started talking to more people that clinic escorts in front of the clinics. We were getting information about not just leadership but the people on the ground where they were the most afraid of so then I was like I wish I could just put all this into something where I could look something up by a zip code, and be able to

see who I need to watch out for in a particular area. That didn't really exist. So, there was just a whisper network of escorts and then the leadership research that nap was doing and so I started consolidating all my research into a database for all of us to be able to use and track incidents and organizations and bad actors all over the country. That's, that's extremely important but also extremely cool. It is you brought up right at the start of your, what you were saying the that there was a shooting at the Knoxville clinic. Oh, not a shooting. There was a bomb scare at the, at the Knoxville clinic on Monday, and there was a there was an arson. Yeah, Planned Parenthood in Knoxville, this past New Year's Eve. That same clinic that same Planned Parenthood that was burned down on New Year's Eve actually had its front door shot out about a year earlier. And because this this is one of the more frustrating cases if you look this up you can see that like the fire department has said it was an arson.

The ATF is investigating the FBI is investigating they both get given the kind of boilerplate statements. In those instances, you don't see a lot from the local police I'm curious if you have anything to say about like the degree to which the local police have been useful in responding to this. Well, I don't work with the local police at all. I, you know, I'm a TV person that got into doing extremist research. I'm an editor, and that I sort of information right so like that made sense to me but I law enforcement doesn't really take me too seriously. But the people on the ground have a lot of thoughts about who it could be right there are known people in the Knoxville area who have caused all sorts of problems there was another arson in a different community center there too. And several white supremacists were arrested after protesting at Black Lives Matter event, maybe two years ago. And so there's, here's the thing, there's information about the Knoxville fire that went out on telegram with an order of nine angles Nazi claiming credit for it.

And how hard can it be to find a pagan Nazi in Knoxville. You go to a golf club and be like who's hit you in the face here. I feel like there are hindrances to the investigation. And a lot of the a lot of the activists on the ground have good leads that are not being followed. Yeah, yeah, I guess that's probably the most direct thing that can be said about it what. So to the extent that like, there's seemingly not a lot and a lot of these states that is going to be done preemptively by law enforcement. When it comes to like actually tracing out the threats. How much do you feel like you have a chance to actually stop them from carrying out an action and how much of it do you feel is just like, we need to be documenting this for for when it happens, you know, we're already getting early warning about events.

We're already because we track the people who there are a number of groups that create the same kind of actions that are either invasions or blockades at various clinics, and people who have been organizing around this for decades right. So, but in tracking them and starting to put the pieces together we're already getting early warning about where they're headed about who needs to be alerted. You know, there have been, at this point, three incidents just like I'm working with a group of volunteers. These are all people who either escorted clinics or part of advocacy part of advocacy orgs that, you know, are not getting paid to do intel, but they they're invested in the cause and so they just follow this stuff on the regular and we're all in touch with each other and all of a sudden it's like, Oh, you know, this person who's been a part of 12 other blockades in the last three years. Has been seen going on a tour and said the next three stops he's going to let's tell all the clinics in the neighborhood what's happening and they can be a little bit better prepared. And that's, you know, I mean, honestly, because the abortion movement is not super supported by law enforcement largely. It seemed like a necessary thing for everybody to start keeping their own records for their own safety and that's really how all this came together. Now, it's interesting to me that you brought up one of kind of the lead suspects, I guess you might say for the attack on the Knoxville Clinic was an O9A dude.

I'm wondering, with kind of the threats you're seeing, obviously, there's decades of attacks on abortion access providers, including a lot of fatal attacks, assassinations, acid attacks, numerous bombings and attempted bombings. How has the character of who is making the threats and who you see as threats started to change over the last recent years? I mean, the O9A thing is a big shift. Yeah, that's that's weird. You know, we've been following the same Christian nationalists for years and largely they have the same playbook. They make a few changes to it. A lot of them are older. You know, it's lock and blocks or invasions. There's a few Catholics who get really aggressive and like shove their way into stuff. But it's not, it hasn't been big surprises until recently.

And a lot of the time in the past, even when there was extreme violence happening amongst these people, it was still sort of tied back to Christian identity stuff. And now we're really starting to see it branching out. Honestly, I blame, I blame a few things. One, just the internet in general, but also the pandemic kind of galvanized extremists across a lot of spheres. Yeah. And you started seeing a lot of Christian identity people that weren't necessarily militia people starting to make with militia people. And, you know, militia people starting to mingle with white, like over white supremacists. And so now there's this crossbreeding that's happening where like, I mean, the grippers are a great example of just like this weird amalgam of things that didn't exist in the same sphere before and now they're their own movement. I can't tell you how much I hate that like other people who who aren't weirdos who spend all of their time on Nazi Telegram know what grippers are now.

Yeah, it's extremely frustrating. It's the worst thing in the world. Yeah, one of the weird things about doing this type of research for years is seeing like on YouTube, like thumbnails by like Stephen Colbert talking about like wacky, like nonsense that I've known about for years. And on him talking about it, I like like it's this big new thing. And you're always like, oh, wow, the little tiny corner of the Internet I was just watching and staring at now is like, it's something that isn't like a regular Libs political lexicon. And that's like, horrible. Yeah. Brogan posting about the Kali Yuga, you know.

Oh, yeah. Oh, God. That was that was a hard drinking night for me. And it's so hard to explain to people why it's so bad. You're like, oh, it's just. So once back in the 20s, there was this lady named Savitri Devi now. Yeah, it's it's it's really troubling because it's making its way into traditional Christian identity stuff. Now, evangelical stuff, quiverful stuff is now starting to cross over.

Yeah, more aggressively with militia stuff and and with like over white supremacist neo Nazi stuff. It's such a problem because and this is something and Birdo Echo, you know, noted a long time ago, but like fascism is deeply syncretic, right. And we're that's what we're talking about right now is its ability. It's like a catamari. I refer back to that game a lot because it does just keep picking things up. And we don't really do that as much on like everyone from like the center left to like weirdo anarchists and what not. Like everyone's got their own little box, right. And there's some interplay.

But for the most part, people on the left really like making boxes and people on the right. It's just one big ball pit where everybody's smearing their diseases and snot around. And it's not great. No. And I mean, we need to figure out some sort of solidarity because like even with the abortion protests that are happening this week, we're already seeing people co-opting things and turning it in really destructive directions. Yeah. I mean, you know, the entire cult of Baba back in. Oh, boy, yeah.

I mean, I'm actually worried about that as at this point, it feels like a legit astroturf. It doesn't feel like they're fighting with actual abortion providers and saying that, you know, that like abortion funds are a problem. It's like those are the people actually walking the walk and doing anything about this. What are you doing besides showing up in bloody pants and picking fights with cops? Like, yeah, it's this, you know, one of the more uplifting stories that's come out recently is that in France, the left is doing a popular front again in order to kind of rest control of the government from. We'll see how it works, right? This is just something that's kind of been announced. And but this is like this has happened a few times in the past in different formulations.

And I do kind of, it would be nice to see a broad popular front in favor of abortion access and a very blunt level. But that would involve people not just getting on board with trying to rest control from the right back electorally, but people supporting a legalism. A lot of people are going to have to do things that are not legal in order to maintain access to reproductive health care, you know. There's the other side of it is like hardline anarchists will have to realize that working with libs is occasionally useful and using them as body shields sometimes can can let you do more illegalist type praxis. So there's this both in terms of like people who are really dogmatic on the left being like, OK, there's types. There's certain times where this type this this intersectionalism can be really useful. And then people who are less radical having to be OK with more radical tactics happening. I mean, my biggest fear right now is the mass criminalization event that's about to happen. You know, no matter what people's pregnancies are going to be criminalized in various forms, if you have a miscarriage, it's going to be criminalized.

You're going to have to be more cautious about how you use your phone and what you say in the emergency room and, you know, what you say to people in your own family. And I don't think that most people on our side are prepared to have that level of caution or divorce themselves from technology in the way that kind of needs to happen for people to stay safe. I'm also worried that like, as a movement, we're not really identifying the fact that it's all about bodily autonomy. And so that means everybody trying to access trans health care is is as much or more so a risk. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, and and we have so much to learn from the sex work industry about all of this, right? Like so much of what is happening now was built on like the permissiveness of what people accepted under foster ancestor. Absolutely.

And, you know, that's how all of us got de prioritized and stupid algorithms in the first place. And and then all of a sudden we're not allowed to put ads out for like legitimate health care services. And keeping ourselves in boxes is really doing everybody a disservice. Yeah, everybody that's been criminalized, everybody who just trying to exist is at risk right now is in this together. Yeah, it's, you know, there's that famous quote from who's a minister of some sort during, you know, the Weimar years about first they came for, you know, yada, yada, yada. And it is like it's always true with fascists, but that doesn't mean that people ever spot it while it's happening, right? Because there's there's very few groups that mainstream America has less inherent sympathy for than sex workers. And the reality is that they were testing a lot of this out on those people because they are marginalized.

And I guess one of the things I hope we'll see and that might have some positive developments is that there are a lot of sex workers out there with a lot of upset tips that they can give other people now. It would be dope if, you know, there were folks like setting up clinics and stuff in that because I think there's a lot of information that does need to get shared with folks who are not used to thinking about any of the stuff they're doing is illegal. I've been seeing stuff on, you know, Facebook among kind of friends of mine who are more middle of the road and family members who are pretty much centrist politically where they're talking about like, hey, if you need to go on a camping trip in another state, I'll take you on your camping trip. And it's like, I get it, like it's great to express solidarity. But will you feel that way when it's actually a felony and people are getting 20 year sentences for doing it, right? Like, because that's where we're headed, you know. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, people need to get more serious about moving their data out of the country altogether. You know, like thinking about what can be subpoenaed. Yeah. The folks at hacking and hustling are doing really amazing work to spread sort of sex work and sex work adjacent upset knowledge to other communities to like they're amazing. Oh, that's great. I was not aware of what they were doing. I mean, would you mind giving like a little brief overview of what that is? I've only been in a couple sessions with them, but they're generally just sharing information about like tightening up your digital footprint and also being conscious about how having multiple, like if you have to have a clandestine identity online, how you can keep that from leaking over into any of your other digital identities, right?

And I mean, it's a really important distinction because even if you have something like a SOC account on something like Facebook, based on how you set it up and what other accounts it's connected to and who you friend in that process, it can very easily find its way back to you and the people connected to you. Yeah. And so how do you see those streams separate? Yeah. I mean, whenever somebody angers this podcast, we have garrison track them down. It's very easy. Yeah. And that is true.

I have a whole folder of people dropping their kids off at school. That's right. That's right. So, you know, keep your eye out. Hello, Fresh. Don't screw with us again. Or that one reviewer that said that there was the woman on the podcast who was annoying. I know who you are.

I was able to track back via your Apple account. Just one reviewer? Somebody tried to request access to one of my folders that's connected to it. We had a January 6 document where we had identified a bunch of people. And so I just linked it to, you know, Google Drive things so that press people could get to stuff. And somebody just out of nowhere tried to access one of them the other day and requested permission.

I was just like, all I had to do was look up your name in the word of portion and try a little harder. So, Kat, I'm wondering, number one, for people who are like pissed and feeling helpless, there are things that folks can do to help. Assuming you live in a state that there's anything at all around, because like a lot of people who are hundreds of miles away from any kind of clinic. But if you're not, I know there are ways people can help. Do you have any kind of pieces of advice for folks interested in being of use?

There are so many things, right? I mean, right now, I think the biggest thing that the movement needs more than anything is abortion funds and practical support funds really need financial help because they are paying to move people around as needed to get them care, right? So the money thing is always the obvious. But we're actually having an event on July 17th that is sort of an orientation day for new people coming to the movement who want to volunteer and don't know where. So we're going to cover things like how you become a clinic escort, what it means to

volunteer on like an abortion fund or practical support hotline. How you can get involved in lobbying groups, how you can get involved in direct action groups, and sort of pre-vetting people and then getting them out to the organizations that actually have capacity to take on volunteers right now. Because a lot of what's happening, like we already saw in Texas, where people really wanted to volunteer to help in Texas after SB8 came down, but they were doing things like calling the abortion fund hotline to try and get to people. And it's like, no, you can't clog up the hotline.

That doesn't help anybody. So we're trying to take some of the lift off of the orgs that are already overtaxed, that their people give them some background information, give them a better idea of what the landscape is in the movement, and then make the connections to organizations that have the capacity to take them on. So it's called Operation Save Abortion. And we're going to do a live stream and house parties all over the country. Awesome.

People are either watching the streams we're doing or having their own local people to talk about how people can get active locally in more direct ways. Yeah. And there's stuff like being an escort, which is something I've been learning a little bit more about recently. I guess one of the things I'm interested in is from a perspective of actually keeping folks safe, is that something that you feel has a lot of value or is that something? Absolutely.

Yeah. And is that like people would want to look at, are there kind of resources for getting involved with that? There are. Clinic escorting is a little tricky right now because there's a whole lot of clinics that don't know if they're going to be open in eight weeks. Right. But right now, well, that's all shaking out.

I mean, if you already have an established relationship with your local clinic, definitely check in with them. Clinics in states that are going to see a surge, Pennsylvania, Illinois, New York, I mean, really anywhere that's still going to have abortion after the 26 States fall, the entire West Coast, New Mexico, right, Minnesota, they are all going to need escorts, which clinic escorting is walking a person from their car to the clinic door past protesters. It's generally, I would say 99% of clinics are non-engagement clinics. So doing this means that you're there for the patient.

You're not there to get in a protesters' space. Some clinics have enough of a protester presence, like clinics in Charlotte, clinics in Jackson, Mississippi, where they have, they split it up and they have people that are there for the patients and people that are there to distract protesters and sort of pull them away from the door, just get them a little bit removed so that they can get patients past them. This is a little bit less pleasant of a question, but I've done, for a different cause, a lot of the same research where you're spending time in these dark corners of the internet making notes of people and threats being made.

I remember the horrible feeling of having a specific kind of thing that hadn't quite happened before, that I was sure was going to happen, and then the fucking thing happens. Are there particular things you are worried about, especially once this comes through that are kind of on your horizon? Is there stuff that people need to be kind of preparing for in terms of an escalation in direct action against clinics? Absolutely. I mean, we're already seeing increased threats against clinics.

This bomb threat the other day was a test balloon, right? But there are organizations like POW who are actively, aggressively invading clinics on the regular and doing things like stealing products of conception, fetal remains, right? And parading them out to the public and naming doctors in an effort to get them hurt, right? It's stochastic terrorism. They are not going to be the ones to pull the trigger. They are just putting it out there so that somebody else does the dirty work for them. And so many people are guilty of that, right?

The church at Planned Parenthood is another good example. And they've had, you know, they've had a long presence in Spokane. They moved to Knoxville, Tennessee. They've set up church plants in Birmingham and they've been throughout Oregon. And in Oregon, they were hiring the Proud Boys as their security, which eventually, unsurprisingly, turned into a big fight when counter protesters showed up. The police showed up, tear-gassed everybody. And it's like, how is, one, how is this church to, you know, like, what is anybody trying to get out of this?

And so there's a lot of people who have been putting it out there for a long time that there's all this othering language of calling people demons because it makes them easier to kill. There's going to be clinic violence. I mean, there's going to be more clinic violence. I should say all of this is violent. It's violent to have people out there screaming at you and calling you a whore with a giant sign of fetus, you know, parts and then. But I mean, they're really waiting for somebody to like, we're buildings on fire or shoot somebody and it's going to happen. Yeah.

Well, does anyone else have anything to get into here? On that happy note. I think it's just, it's not going to be like actual Nazi extremists that do a lot of these attacks either. I think, especially with it being, especially if like, if Roe v. Wade does get fully taken away, that will justify pretty violent action in the minds of like most regular Christians. Even when I grew up in like a pretty evangelical type of community, those types of like attacks against Planned Parenthood were almost like there was the overall feeling that they were like celebrated and people who would do it would be lauded as like biblical heroes for like just arson a building. Like that was very much the sense that I got when I was a kid, like I remember thinking, thinking those thoughts like, oh, that's what like a good people do. Like that's like people who are brave will go and burn down an abortion clinic. They were openly celebrated, you know, the army of God would have the white rose banquet to raise money to by auctioning off the personal effects of people who had bomb clinics and shot doctors.

And you see a lot of that mirrored now in things like the Saints calendar, right. And so you see, you see neo Nazis and other white supremacists promoting the Saints calendar and then directing people to the army of God website. And then you see Christian nationalists finding accelerationist handbooks and having that knowledge now, right. And so they can have the knowledge and loosely collaborate without ever having to say, oh, I'm a part of, you know, an apron or the proud boys or whatever. Yeah, like they won't see themselves as extremists they'll see themselves as like regular Christians they'll see the regular conservatives. And what they're doing is like, is like sanctioned by God and it's like good, righteous holy work. And so I think that is definitely something to keep your eye on because it's not all going to be like skull mask wearing people doing bomb threats. It's going to be like regular like regular conservative Christians who are who are like been on this right words track the past the past few decades.

Most of the people that we track are not part openly part of extremist group. Not openly part of, like, no militant extremist. Yeah, but a lot of them are a whole office, you know, sure. There is Derek Evans was in West Virginia, you've got John Jacob in Indiana, like the whole Oklahoma contingent it like a bottle short human abortion is really just become a lobbying group that's trying to get people in office wherever they can. There's I mean they've gotten really strategic about getting people into smaller legislative roles so that they have more power to push things and and so that they look more respectable. Yeah, and it's that leads kind of to another point which is that when you get right down to it. Once the ruling comes through finally as it looks like it will, the vast majority of violence that's going to be done to abortion providers and to people seeking abortions and to people supporting them is going to be done by police like that's that's the eventual end game here. Yeah, and that's that's the thing I'm the most afraid of right because it's so much easier to turn somebody in than it is to actually attack a person physically or a building even.

So that's what it's going to be it's going to be people calling in their neighbors calling in something from the hospital, turning in their grandkids, you know. Well, is there anything right now that's making you optimistic cat not to put you on the spot. Oh no it's okay I thought about that a lot I mean honestly the people working in this are so dedicated to helping people that that always gives me hope. And I genuinely feel like there's enough of us that have plans. So even if even if not everybody's on board with the same stuff there are enough people really doing the hard work and being pragmatic about what's happening and not just cowing under the pressure of it that are energized by helping people that I think there will always be people helping, they might not always be visible but they're there, and it's just going to be harder to find them. Yeah. Well thank you so much. Do you have anything else you'd like to plug before we kind of roll out here any place people could send donations or volunteer if they're into that. Oh, I mean you can always donate to abortion access front where a front.org. And there's a volunteer form there but also if you want to participate in our event on July 17th you can go to operations save abortion.com. And there's a registration form there to get involved in the event. Awesome. Well thank you so much Cat Green you are amazing and what you do is incredibly important. And to everybody else. Go find some way to help or, you know, at least it's easy to pee in a water balloon and sorry.

Okay well let's get into that. It happened here. Nice, nice, nice introducing you got it. Yeah this is this is it could happen here at the podcast where it has happened. I'm your host Christopher Wong and with me we have like 17,000 people we've got Garrison. Yeah, we've got we got Sophie. Hey, got Robert allegedly. We've got we've got Shereen. We have a new friend of the pod Shereen. Hello new teammate. And we have returning I think. Yes, yeah return well I'm trying to I'm trying to think how many returning guests we have but yeah. And creator of our website that I love. I'm so glad I'm so glad you like it. Love. Yeah and we are gathered here today to talk about something that sucks which is the leaked draft of Samuel Alito's decision to overturn Roevee Wade. Now we're all mostly angry that somebody dared to leak a draft and upset the sanctity of the Supreme Court's deliberation process right. Right that's definitely the thing that's been keeping me awake at night. Yeah, yeah. A bunch of elderly ghouls who refuse to give up their grip on power can't deliberate in privacy. What does this world come to?

Megan Kelly is that you? Yes, it's been me all along. How can I trust the Supreme Court if not everything happens in secret all of the time always. And on a serious note I would like to start this by stating my primary attitude towards the Supreme Court is that more stairways should be greased. We have been big proponents of horse lube for years. Years. Years and this stands continues. I think horse lube could solve a lot of problems. It could. So many.

So I do think it is especially across that like the whole side of media people who are making the story out that. Oh no, look at this leak that is the worst thing to happen in human history. I can't believe this got leaked. And that is like a pretty dominant narrative going on for like over half the country. Even like even on like CNN that was like the first thing. It's pretty funny too because like the original road decision also got leaked. Like I don't even have the text but like the way the verdict was going to go also got leaked is like okay. It's like this is actually consistent. So why are we angry about this? It's clearly like I get why the Republicans are doing it right because it's a way number one that they can pretend to be victims.

There's a lot of people comparing it to like the January 6th and shit. Yeah. Sorry. The comparison to be made there is not that the leak happened. No. And like it leaked. Yeah. Okay. How about the fact that the information in said leak is dangerous and is going to cause a bunch of people to die? Also, there should be more leaks in government things all the time.

That's actually. Yeah, I co-sign that. Yeah. Yeah. The government should not be allowed to keep secrets. Like I'm sorry. No, not only. Are they civil servants? They're called civil servants and they're doing everything in secret. Like we're supposed to know. I mean in the perfect world. They're spying on us. We have no privacy.

Yeah, exactly. It's only fair. There's also like, I mean, I guess maybe we'll eventually find out who did it. But like it's also, we don't have to assume that it was a progressive that did it, for example. Like I think the conservatives have even more of a motive to release it because they're like mobilizing their people to like agree and be like, yes. Yeah. Do we want to do the weird Supreme Court inside baseball shit? Like, okay. So the weird inside baseball shit is so this is a draft decision, right?

This decision like hasn't, this is not the law of the land yet. And the thing with draft decisions that they change. And the thing that's happening here is there's this weird split. There's like a 3-2-2 split on like what actually, is it 3-2-2? Yeah, that makes up seven, right? And like what actually, because like the five conservatives justices like don't like row, but there's, I mean, particularly with like Roberts, there's kind of a split on like how far they want to take it. And so part of what could be going on here is like, so this, the version of decision that got leaked is like, this is basically the most extreme thing they could possibly do.

With a lot of wide-ranging impacts on how we view personal rights in 2022. Which I can talk about later. Yeah, and like this is the thing like the nerd like Supreme Court watchers like didn't think that like this would be the thing, right? They didn't think that they would just straight up overturn row. They thought they would chip at it a little bit first or like go after Casey, but like no, no, no, they're just straight up going after row. And part of what could be the strategy here is like a lot of... Okay, so the liberals on the Supreme Court like have been faceless and powerless for an enormous amount of time. And a lot of what they spend their time doing is trying to like get one or two sentences changed to be slightly less bad.

And this could be an attempt to get the other conservative justices to like force them to rally around Alito's like unbelievably hard. And the other thing that's worth noting about this is that like Alito is like, I don't know, I mean, Kavanaugh. Okay, so for a very long time, Alito was like broadly considered by the legal community to be the worst legal mind in the Supreme Court. Like he's a clown. He's like he's legal reasoning is really bad. Like even by this, like, you know, and this this has changed with and become a bear and Kavanaugh to some extent. But like this is not this is not a guy. This is not like a subtle like a subtle legal mind.

This is like this is like a bull in a china shop who you throw out when you need to just like hit something with a hammer, right? And so, you know, like, yeah, part part of what the strategy seems to be is to try to try to coerce the other justices who are like like, like, like Roberts, who is like slightly less fanatical than Alito is and try to get them to rally around this like incredibly maximalist hard lined, not only going after row, but going after like a whole bunch of other stuff that we will get to in a second. Yeah, so that that's the that's the sort of Supreme Court inside baseball shit that is possibly part of what's going on with the leak. But yeah, I mean, to be honest, I think that's whatever is going on in the leak, the primary topics of interest to most people are going to be number one, the degree to which the rights trying to use this to distract from what they're actually doing. Yeah.

And more to the point the concerted the fact like this is what we're actually dealing with here is like the culmination of 40 years of pretty relentless, a mix of pretty relentless electoralism, married to a very effective direct action terrorism campaign that has netted the right a tremendous win here. Yeah. I mean, like, and I feel like this, it's a crisis, but it hasn't been treated as a crisis and like when fucking Democrats campaign, this is like such an urgent matter. And as soon as they're elected, it's suddenly like not as urgent like look at fucking Biden, he ran on literally caught like codifying it. He ran with that promise. And obviously that didn't happen. And then there's also like to Robert's point from earlier, these justices are just like ancient and don't give up their power. And I mean, there's no use in pointing fingers, even though I like to do it. So like RBG, for example, like if she had just retired at her fucking time,

maybe there would be like one more justice that could fucking help us out. But there's a lot. I mean, she's got her share of the blame. There's also the fact that we've had, I think, six justices appointed by Republicans in the last 30 years, and only one of those Republicans actually won the popular vote, which was the goal. This is not just one of the most important things to understand about the anti-abortion movement is that it's not centered, like it didn't start and is not centered around abortion. It is centered around reversing all social progress of the last century and the inciting incident was the integration of schools, right? This all started over Brown versus the Board of Education. Abortion was just the thing they realized it was easier to rally people around than segregation. And that's what we're dealing with right now. So fundamentally, this has always been an anti-democratic movement. This has always been about codifying into law and locking into place for essentially forever a minority rule in which Christian extremists would get to govern the much larger chunk of the country that does not believe in those sort of things.

Yeah, and I think that's also worth mentioning anytime someone talks about this, because the media just runs PR for the anti-abortion movement, which is that this is unbelievably unpopular, like staggeringly unpopular. Nobody wants this. This is less popular than invading fantasy countries that don't exist. This is significantly less popular than burning police stations down. We have the polling data on that. It's like 20% less popular than lining police stations on fire. It is unbelievably staggeringly unpopular. No one wants this except for a very, very, very well-organized, very politically connected, very wealthy and very powerful clique of Christian fascists. Well, the laws never reflect what most of the population wants, though, right? The popular vote, for example, as you mentioned earlier. I think there was a poll I was reading about this yesterday in June of last year, 2021. 68% of people thought abortions should be legal for any reason. It doesn't have to be any kind of thing.

There are so many polls that also prove that most people don't want this hard and fast rule, but both parties, I think, utilize it to rally together people to vote, but obviously for different causes. Yeah, and the first reaction from Democrats was, hey, donate to our campaign. Yeah, exactly. It's like, honey, read the room. You have all the power in quotes right now and you've done nothing. It's like vote blue. But they're saying that and you get attacked by other Democrats by being like a radical leftist-rooting movement because it's not their fault. And I'm like, you've had power multiple times in my 30 years of life where you could have done it easily. Yeah, and this is one of the things that, okay, this stuff doesn't work on me because I remember when Obama had a two-thirds majority in the state, he had a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, had the House. And not only did he not do this, Obama, by 2010, Obama is codifying anti-abortion stuff and codifying the Hyde Amendment.

So, yeah, it's like, no. And this is the thing with the Democrats. This is the best thing that's happened to the Democrats since Trump left office. Like the Democratic Party, they love this. This is the best. This is the best thing that could possibly happen to them because now what they can do is they can run on, we're going to bring abortion back every single election cycle. And they never do it, right? Because they'll never, like, the stuff that they run on, like, yeah, they'll, like, they will, even if they got it somehow by like magic, if they somehow got another 60-year-old majority, they'd find a way to not do it. Because this is a permanent fundraising thing for them. Yep. And they're desperately in need of money all the time, always. So if you take that away, like, during my brief stint in the California Democratic Party, fundraising was always a big deal. And they didn't want to divest from fossil fuel and cops because then where would the money come from? You can't take campaigning on row away from them because then, like, they don't fucking know how to activate grassroots organizers.

It scares the shit out of them, so they will be fucked if they lose this, which is why nothing has happened. Speaking of money, do you know who else wants their money? That's right, the products and services that support this podcast. Wow, there. That's right. Wow. And you know, certain shit may make you infertile, so that's a benefit. Absolutely not. We are not doing this today. We are back. I think we'll be talking about Supreme Court abortion stuff for a lot in the coming months.

Oh boy. We'll be talking about various different facets of it, different mutual aid and ways of going about kind of filling in the gaps, which are going to become larger. And a whole bunch of other stuff relating to right wing terrorism against abortion clinics and all that kind of stuff. And the other interesting aspect about this that I want to kind of briefly talk about is that with the specific phrasing of the document, is it threatens a whole, like, sect of personal rights, not just abortion rights, and could have far-reaching impacts in terms of, like, privacy rights, in terms of possibly even backtracking on stuff like gay marriage and a whole bunch of other things. And it's obviously the abortion angle itself is pretty massive and it affects, you know, half the population. But there's a whole lot of other stuff that indicates this, like, this trajectory towards this type of, like, right wing fundamentalist,

of Christian, like, Christian fascist effort to hack away at all the things that they deem degenerate or things that they deem as undesirable. Well, I mean, the goal is to make America a Christian nation so Jesus can come back and rule it. And you can't do that if, you know, people are gay or people are allowed to be on birth control or people are allowed to marry outside of their race or go to school with people who don't look like them. I did read Jesus say all of those things. Yeah, it's definitely in the Bible somewhere. Yep. If you do, like, that poetry style where you blot out some of the words to make other words, which is most defyful.

Yes. The thing we got to get into that I think is the primary question people have, right, is, like, beyond sort of the doom scrolling of all of this and all of the fear about, like, what's going to happen to Obergefell and Lawrence v. Kansas and all this stuff, what are they going to go for next is, like, what actually will work to oppose this shit, right? We, at the moment, I have not seen and I don't believe there's any objective signs that the Democratic Party is going to be particularly useful in stymying any of this bullshit. Cinema and Manchin have already come out against removing the filibuster. Manchin has come out against voting at all in order to codify abortion access into law in any kind of federal way. And yeah, I get the sense that for most of them, it's a big fundraising opportunity. Now, we do have, that's not to say it's all bad news because it is kind of, there's a possibility that this will have a significant impact on the midterms.

We got one kind of sign that way, the race in Michigan that just ended, the special district or the special election where, for the first time in quite a while, a district that Trump carried by, like, 16 points went to a Democrat. Now, the Republican that they were running against was the guy who said that women should lie back and enjoy it if they were getting raped. So this is one of those, like, I don't know how much we should see that as particularly emblematic of how things are going to more broadly go. But this does have, there's an activation potential, right? Because outside of the fact that the Democratic Party as a whole is feckless and primarily a method of fundraising for rich people, actual Democratic voters are rightfully horrified about what's going on. And this has, there's a potential here to activate a lot of people and get them organized in a productive way. So I think that has to be on our minds.

And so there's a mix of, I don't want to discount electoralism, but I think that in the immediate term, one of the things that people are going to have to do is provide actual material ways for folks to get access to the healthcare that's going to be increasingly denied to them. Now, we had a couple of episodes earlier in the year with Michael Loffer of the Vorthieves Vinegar Collective. He's just gone viral in a vice article about the hacked abortion pills that they've been guiding people in how to make. I think stuff like that is really useful. When I started posting about this online, someone pointed out that pro-abortion activists in Germany recently flew drones across the border to Poland to drop off Miproprostol like abortion pills, which were picked up by people in Poland. And there's some, there's going to be increasing kind of organizing around that stuff like the Jane Collective. People are already organizing from like national organizations to increase access in states where it's going to remain legal for people out of state.

So I think that's going to be hugely important. Does anyone else have sort of ideas on kind of what things people can do and are going to be doing to push back against this? Because I do think it's got to be twofold. It's got to be both, you know, pushing back and sort of a legal sense and also pushing back by direct action in order to ensure that people still have access to this stuff. I don't know. I don't have faith in electoral anything. So I really think like if there's, if it's possible to find your own community and like just almost like with, I don't know, just mobilizing your actual peers versus like trying to trust anyone with power to get anything done. Because maybe I'm a pessimist, maybe I'm just a pessimist. But what you said earlier about the person she was running against, what I heard is that that person was still running and people like he was still the number two, you know. And I think on the other side, their side is also going to rally against stuff.

Like, didn't Oklahoma just pass like the most strict ban ever? A six-week ban just yesterday at time of recording. Yeah. So in this law, women can be punished up to 10 years in prison for getting an abortion. And like in pair, like just for some perspective, rapists in Oklahoma get five years. So it's like stuff like that is happening in all these states. And because these states, people with less resources maybe don't have the ability to travel so far, I think really mobilizing communities a little bit more, maybe just more effective, in my opinion. Yeah.

I mean, we have to mobilize communities, but you also can't, like it can't just end at we're going to try to like provide these people with an option to get out of the state or get access where they are like clandestinely. If it's limited to that, they're going to push to make all this more illegal federally. And they're just going to keep throwing people in prison and using the police as the enforcement arm of this stuff. There does have to be, there has to be a broader counter. You know, I'm thinking back to like, and I'm not talking about like picking a dude to vote for, I'm talking about like in Mexico, right? When they were talking about making abortion illegal, activists attempted to light the Capitol building on fire. Yep. And like that kind of, like there has to be a broader, two thirds of the country thinks this is bullshit.

There has to be a way of getting those people organized in a way beyond dealing with the acute problems caused by this. Yeah. And I don't entirely know what that looks like. No, that makes sense. No, that you're right. It makes sense. I think that there have been signs that it's like, so, I mean, there was obviously like there were protests, like, there've been protests like literally since the thing came out. Especially in DC, there's been.

Yeah. Also, I mean, I think part of like, you can see this sort of like, yeah, with the DC one, you can see this sort of like, I don't know, you can see the way that people haven't, I guess, fully internalized the fact that the state is just trying to do this to them and that like, you know, if you look at the barricades that were put up, right? Like, you could just push those over. Like, you had a bunch of people who were extremely angry and they sort of just sat there and did nothing, right? And like, this is the kind of thing that like, you know, if you look at what happened in LA, there was a lot of protests in LA and like the Department, like Homeland Security was on the street beating people. And I think if there's like, okay, so one thing that's important to keep in mind is that this still, again, the ruling, the draft of the ruling is not the actual ruling, right? There is still time right now in between when this, in between this leak and when this is actually decided. There is still time to literally force the court to not do this.

So start greasing those stairwells, people. Yes. Well, I think here's a few notes. So one, I think it's going to be used to encourage action on all sides. This is going to be seen as a victory for the right and they're going to use this momentum to mobilize further, to put more further anti-abortion stuff into law and to encourage people to take vigilante justice out on healthcare providers. The second thing is direct action for trying to alter the ruling before it happens. Like, there is a chance to do mass mobilization. There is a chance if things are framed correctly, you can bring a lot of liberals out and convince them and suggest to them that they can do things that they ordinarily maybe wouldn't do. That is an entirely possible scenario.

Just in my episodes about the Atlanta Forest from a few days ago, I discussed the Shack Method of protest. Now, this doesn't carry over one-to-one because that is pretty focused on doing economic targeting. But the whole idea of targeting people outside of the political space is a key to that. People don't just do work in the Supreme Court, they have actual everyday lives. And if you can surround them in their everyday lives, that type of personal pressure is way more affecting than just yelling at government buildings sometimes. Because if we can dissolve this safe political space that people think they operated in, they assume that, oh, I'm a court justice, I'm a judge, everything that I do happens in the courtroom. I'm safe, I'm contained, everything is just in the confines of the courtroom. I don't get to experience consequences for my actions outside the courtroom, which isn't true.

Because obviously the people, all of us, do experience those consequences in the real world all the time. Just the people in power don't have to. So instead, if we can put pressure on people when they're going about their everyday lives, in their hanging banners in their backyard, doing other things, horse lube, again, very useful, that is a way to do types of protests that we have not seen as much. But I think is now is probably the time to start doing that, right? We saw stuff after the murder of George Floyd with people surrounding the House of Derek Chauvin, which police were very angry about. They did not like that, no. There is an indication that, hey, the state doesn't like it when this happens.

It's not specifically more illegal to stand in the street of a residential neighborhood. No, and it's, you know, a lot of protests so far has focused on court buildings, many of which are federal. And those provide a lot of benefits to, shall we say, the defender, including the fact that they are already well set up for surveillance. They're generally fortified. They have a pretty short logistic tail to where the state is keeping its weaponry and its troops, as opposed to just kind of fucking with people in their lives, which is a lot harder for those kind of militarized responses that lead to large groups of your friends getting arrested or beat up by feds. I think also, like, yeah, the tendency to go after, like, legal buildings is missing the point of where the actual power is.

This is the thing which January 6th, too, is like, yeah, even if, like, yeah, they took over the Capitol and nothing happens. And the reason that, like, nothing could happen is because it's just a building, right? Like, the actual political system exists independently of it. And you have to hit the things that the system actually cares about. And so, like, that's ports, that's roads, that's border crossings, that's things like... Why am I now suddenly... Vacation homes. Yeah, but, like, also, I mean, like, okay, like, you know, if there was actually, like, a way to stop this,

one of the few things that could actually do it would be something like a large-scale teacher strike, or a thing I've talked about before that is happening this summer is, for example, the Longshoreman contract in Oakland is coming up, right? And, like, those are the kinds of things, like, if you can actually start shutting down large sections of the U.S. economy, the Supreme Court or political actors, they will have to respond to this. And you can essentially, like, you can blackmail them into doing the thing that they should be doing. You can apply targeted pressure economically and personally. And that's the type of protest that I think it would be interesting to see where that leads us.

They need to not... Like, the consequence for both the political actors who are carrying this out and the people who support them needs to be that they don't get to live a normal life, that they suffer consequences for hurting people. That means a lot of things, but among other things, it means that certain people shouldn't be going to the fucking grocery store without feeling the hatred, you know? They shouldn't be able to order delivery and feel secure that what they're going to eat isn't going to hurt them. And I think also, like, one of the things that I'm remembering from... That was actually really effective initially from the beginning of the Trump administration was the airport protests.

And that's a place that, like, you wouldn't think you'd be able to really occupy, the amount of security there was enormous. But, like, if you have a lot of libs, you can... I remember, like, I was standing in an airport terminal and there was a line of riot cops attacking. Everyone was like, oh, we're going to get attacked. But, like, everyone just sat down and there was enough libs with their kids that the cops didn't attack. And that's a kind of thing that, like, potentially could be replicated and also could be useful given the fact that, like, sometimes cops have, like, an aversion to stuff that looks really, really bad on TV.

Not always, but, like... Yeah, this is the thing that can happen. It's a thing that, like, has happened in our, like, pretty recently that we can do again. I don't really trust footage of police brutality to change things anymore. I feel like we reached the peak of that in 2020. And at this point, I think, moving on to targeted pressure towards individuals that hold positions of power and targeted pressure to the economy is going to be where it's at. Speaking of targeted pressure to the economy, a large protest at an airport

that the police break up with tear gas does damage to the economy that the police are the ones causing. And, like, it's one of those things, as we've stated, a courthouse or whatever is just a building. People can not go into work and do all of the fucked-up shit that they're doing on Zoom. An airport is not just a building, you know? And so a protest at an airport has some teeth that a protest at a courthouse doesn't necessarily. I do have one, like, quick other thing that I want to throw out as sort of a means of resistance or action is something that I was trained to do growing up part of the forced birth movement

is co-opting the language that the left uses. And I think something that we should do and something that we can all be doing right now is co-opting the language back. So when forced birth advocates say they're pro-life, come back with how can you be pro-life if you want someone to die by having a pregnancy and, like, just sort of taking words and rhetoric that has traditionally been used to oppress us to reframe it and be like, no, actually, you're the one who's telling on yourself here and you're the one who is forcing people literally to die in multiple ways. You cannot be pro-life if you support people who already exist dying.

And just sort of thinking about that a little bit if you don't necessarily have the energy to go stage protest at an airport. Yep, that is a great line to end on. Everybody go out and, again, our sponsors are the Klein and Stubble Hip Surgery Center in Washington, D.C. Please do keep greasing those stairways, everybody. Welcome to It Could Happen Here, the podcast that's happening here right now in your ears. It Could Happen Ear. I'm Robert Evans. I'm not with any of my normal co-hosts today because fuck them. No, because I'm elsewhere in the world right now.

Hanging out with someone you might remember from a special episode we recently did on Molotov. Cocktails journalist James Stout. Hi, everyone. Yeah, I'm here with Robert in a tiny hotel room and we've just woken up. We need to do some podcasting. We're not here for any specific purpose. We just decided let's run a hotel room, cast some pods, you know, hang out. James, how do you feel about the border? Negatively. Broadly speaking, I think the border is a tool that we use to harm and kill the most marginalized people in the world. I think that's kind of borne out by stats as well. So yeah, not a big border guy.

And you and I recently spent a decent amount of time on the Texas-Mexico chunk of the border, specifically near McAllen, Texas, hanging out at a butterfly sanctuary that people can learn some things about if they Google will be coming out. Those episodes will be dropping in the not too distant future. But you live on the San Diego side of the border, which if people don't know, San Diego, California is basically in Mexico. You can hop over across for lunch and stuff if you really want to and don't mind dealing with CBP. And yeah, so you've done a lot of reporting around the border and about kind of the system of violence that it represents. I wanted to chat a little bit about that and I wanted to chat about some of the organizations that you've run into that are doing good work out there, because there's a lot that needs to be done.

Yeah, definitely. I think it's really important to conceptualize what's happening at the border in terms of the border is a tool for state violence, right? State violence against marginalized people and the good groups helping people on the border represent is ways of us helping each other, which are outside the networks of us having power over each other. So in the broader spectrum of neutral aid, of mutual support, I think they're really important to focus on. Rather than kind of, so many people construct the border in their minds. You can see, if you go back on my Twitter, some guy just being like, that is not the border. The border does not look like that. The border is barren and it's desert and it's full of people with guns and it's really not, right?

So the border exists as like this mental construct, a place where we can do political theater, especially on the right. So people who are actually down there on the ground and understand it, I think it's vital to support them. Yeah, one of the more striking moments to me when we were in McAllen was hanging out near this chunk of border fence that had been constructed by volunteers effectively. And it's what you would expect, like the stereotype of the border. It's this huge military industrial looking thing. The wildlife has been cleared from around it so that you can have this towering steel edifice. But then 100 yards away across the Rio is the Mexican side of the border. And there's like a couple of goat farms and like a little restaurant with a little dock so people can like, you know, take their little boats out and people are drinking and there's party music playing.

And like it's nice, it's pastoral and green. It looked like a lovely place. It looked much nicer than hanging out by the giant steel tower. Yeah, I found that all along the border actually. Like our side of the border looks like something from Blade Runner or something. Like it's this giant dystopian steel construct with people with guns, with watchtowers. And it's horrific, right? Like it cuts through some of the most beautiful and important landscapes we have, right?

Through the high desert, through these very fragile places. And like it's important. I think people understand as well what the border wall looks like, right? Because you've probably seen a photograph of a giant ass wall. And that is part of it. But they call it the border wall ecosystem. And what that involves is the wall itself, sometimes a ditch, sometimes not a ditch. And then a road that's wide enough for two of the F-150 Raptors that Border Patrol like to drive to pass each other.

And then an access road to that. And then Germany is also an access road cut that allows construction vehicles to get to build all of that. So it's not just some spikes in the desert. It's fucking destroying this beautiful part of both of Mexico and the United States, right? Now, before we get into some of these organizations, I'm wondering, first off, when did you start reporting on the US-Mexico border? And is there any kind of specific events that you can recall that really kind of ignited your interest in this particular part of the United States? And this particular part of our ongoing social conflict?

Yeah. I've always been interested in borderlands academically as part of my PhD. But I guess probably about eight or nine years I've been reporting on the border. The thing that really sort of took it from being like the border is sometimes the thing I write about. I did a lot of outdoor writing about the border too, right? I was very interested in getting more people to go outside in Baja California. It's amazing. And you should do it.

But what really sort of, I guess, made me be like, oh fuck, this is fucking horrible, is the 2018 quote unquote migrant caravan, right? And so I'd been down just enjoying a weekend in a little further south, a little further south of Tijuana, and having this really good wine country there. So we'd been checking out these wine places and just enjoying ourselves. And we come back and then these people are in what's called the Benito Juarez Sports Complex. It's just a baseball field and it's raining and it's November. And it looks like the fucking like Battle of the Somme in there.

It's mud, they're little children. And I've been in these situations before. I've seen situations with displaced people before. But there was something that just broke my heart about like, so obviously we're going to go in, we're going to see what's going on, we're going to see what we can do to help. And there were little kids. I remember there was this little girl and this one still makes me really sad, right? But she would find me, there were thousands of people there every single time I came, she would find me.

It found me the first day. And she would like, we'd talk for a little bit about what she was doing. And then she was standing like halfway up her little shins in mud. And she didn't have any words like shower or be clean. You know, she was living in a sort of tarp shelter and it just fucking broke my heart. So she used to like, clap my hair a lot. So I carry her around. And that was just like this realisation for me, like of how cruel this thing is.

Shortly thereafter, of course, the police stood in the parking lot of the Tommy Hilfiger discount store in order to fire tear gas at some of the most marginalised and desperate people, certainly in that part of the world, right? And just that. It's a scene that like, yeah, that would, if you put that in a movie, you would be like, who's a little bit heavy-handed, right? Having them shoot from the Tommy Hilfiger at the desperate migrants, that's a little bit heavy. Yeah, it's just advanced fucking parody of where we are as a society.

But yeah, the DHS helicopter is taking off from the Tommy Hilfiger store to fire tear gas grenades at the children who just want a safe place to sleep. I had a moment like that in a protest where the Portland police, we were in North Portland, which is in a neighbourhood that was like one of the fairly few like black neighbourhoods in Portland. And the cops, you know, went apeshit and started firing impact munitions down Martin Luther King Boulevard. And I didn't catch myself at first and I was like, the cops are now shooting down Martin Luther King. Yeah. You've been in and around like you live there, obviously.

So who are like, who are some of the folks that you've come across that are doing the most to actually help there? And what kind of help is necessary? Because I feel like one of the one of the things I think is the primary shortcoming of it could happen here is a show so far is that the way Garrison and I phrase it is like, a lot of our episodes are here's a problem. Goodbye. Right. We're like, here's the thing that's bad off we go. So what I guess the two chief questions, I think they need to be answered because I'm hoping pretty much everyone here is on board with the border as a nightmare. Something's got to be done. What are the kind of things that can actually materially improve people's lives who are being affected by this border ecosystem? And then who are the motherfuckers who are actually out there trying to unfuck things that to the extent that unfucking is doable here.

Yeah. So I think like just to further like make people sad first, like if you look up decolonial Atlas Southern border, you can find this map of where migrants die when they're coming to the United States, right? And we often it's constructed in the news media is like, it's dangerous crossing Mexico. It is. It's dangerous coming across the Darien gap. Sure, it is. But the vast bulk of people die within a few miles of our southern border, right? And that's because especially now with the way we've constructed the border wall right before the 2020 election, Donald Trump in a debate made claims about how much border wall he built, like everything else he was full of shit. So they just tried to build as much as they could between then the election. So they just skip the hard parts, they skip the mountains, they skip the valleys. And that often forces people to cross in the most arduous terrain, right?

So that that's increased the amount of people dying. So we can look broadly at like two categories of support, right? Which are like, I guess like direct aid and then legal aid. So on the legal aid side, the guys who guys and girls and other people who who have been really, really helpful are at otro lado to the other side, right? They're their legal aid group. They were very, very cool during the during the migrant caravan. Like they and I realize that's something of a loaded phrase, right? I'm just trying to use the word that people understand. They were there constantly helping people with good cause letters. They were there filing legal briefs on their behalf.

As a result of that, many of them were illegally surveilled by the Department of Homeland Security. We've had the phones taken, the communications traced, the movements traced, their network traced, etc. They are wonderful people, right? Like they do amazing things with helping people get legal aid. And then you've got the people who are helping people while they cross, right? And there are a number of these mutual aid groups. If you're in a certain region, they're at the border. There is probably someone near you. I'm no expert on all of them. But you can look at like nomas muertes in Arizona, Armadillos, I believe.

I think they, I don't know if they operate also in Texas, but certainly in that California, Arizona area. You can look at border angels. Border angels are probably the biggest, most public facing one and they are fantastic, right? But they're making sure that there are caches of water for people who are crossing. Making sure that when it's cold at night, there are warm clothes. And when it's hot, there are clothes suitable for that weather, right? Maybe a new backpack, canned food. They're like doing the active stuff that stops people dying.

And that's invaluable, right? And it's also important in terms of showing that like, they'll often write things I've seen. Like you're welcome, right? Welcome to this country or whatever. And showing that most of us don't agree with this dehumanizing brutalization of migrants that the state is doing on our behalf. And so showing that welcome is very important. There are lots of indigenous groups.

I did ask if I could name them, but they didn't get back to me, so I don't want to. But like, there were groups within the Tohono O'odham Nation. There are groups within the Kumiai Nation. I'm sure there were groups within other tribes whom the border crossed, right? Who lived in this area long before it was a border. Who are also out there helping people. There are also individuals helping people out on their property, right? If you can't find how to donate to one of those groups, you can reach out to me.

That's fine. But yeah, I think the work they're doing is invaluable, both in terms of like showing people that they are welcome and in terms of saving lives, right? More and more people die at the border every year, especially with things like Title 42, which we can get into with MPP. Let's talk about what Title 42 is. Sure. Title 42, it's part of a public health law.

It's very antiquated. I think it was last used in the 1930s. The idea behind it was to stop people with tuberculosis coming into the United States. And if they have an infectious or transmissible disease, I think it's called, then they can be immediately sent back without processing, right? This was part of a whole suite of things that they used to do to laborers coming north, right? They would also spray them with all kinds of insecticides, which obviously is not good for the health. So Title 42, the idea being, you know, like, if you present to me at the border,

and I'm a border patrol guy, and you're like coughing up a lung and obviously tuberculosis, I don't know, you have tuberculosis. Yeah, tubercule. Yeah, tuberculosis. Then I will send you back and just be like, no, Robert, fuck off until you're healthy. You're going to infect everyone else here, especially if I detain you. Now, what it's been used to do with COVID-19 is to not process migrants, right? To do what's called catch and release, just bump them south and let them go.

What that means is that these, so normally you could cross surrender to a CBPA, and that's another misunderstanding, right? A lot of people will want to surrender, right? That they have no intention of not being processed. For certain countries, there's something called a TPS, which I'll explain in a second, which there will be no reason for them not to be processed. So these people will cross, and now they could just get dumped on the other side, right? It doesn't matter if they are a person who is pregnant.

It doesn't matter if they're elderly. It doesn't matter if they're medically compromised or weak. They can't just get dumped. What this has meant is that people who are helping them cross, right? People who maybe charge a fee for helping them cross are offering like crossings without limits. We'll just try again. We'll just try again. And it means, like I said before, because of the combination of this and then this hostile infrastructure that we're building, right?

This border wall system, that people will try crossing in more and more remote places, right? And that is when people die crossing. It's when they cry and cross in places that are hotter, that are more arduous, right? It requires days of walking sometimes. And I've been in that terrain. I spend a lot of my time out there, and for a long time, it's been more or less my job to be outside out there. And it is hard. So if I imagine crossing with everything, I need to start my new life and carrying my child.

It's very difficult for me. And I'm more accustomed to it than most. So it's very difficult and forcing people to just kind of bounce back because when we drop someone in Mexico, right? If they are Guatemala and Honduran, they don't have any network there, right? It doesn't exactly help. Sometimes we like this construct that the border fuels crime, right? Or crime, is it? They talk about sometimes cartels is far too broadly used.

Nearly always it's far too broadly used. But this idea that the border funds drug running an organization such as that, you don't fucking help by dumping someone where they have no other means of making a living, right? Where they're going to be very poor. And now they don't have any mates and have anyone to go to to ask for help, right? Like, I don't blame people for trying to find a way to do something. So like, understandably, like if I don't think, I think it's largely a lie that any significant number of people sort of running drugs across the border are migrants or, you know, I think that's largely a racist lie. But leaving people dislocated there is a recipe for poverty.

And I can't, you know, things like crime do happen more, I guess, when people are poor and don't have any other options. That makes sense. If we go back to TPS really quickly, because I think that's important to temporary protected status, right? You'll see people on Twitter talking about TPS. What that basically means is that they can't deport you back to a country. So it took Biden an obscenely long time to grant a TPS for the people from Ukraine, right? 500 and something people went into the deportation system between the time in, like, November, December, when Biden's administration started being like, there is going to be war in Ukraine, the Russians are going to invade Ukraine. They were still actively in the process of sending people back to Ukraine at that time.

It wasn't until about a week into the shooting war that they said, OK, temporary protected status, we won't send you back. It exists for other countries. It exists for Haiti. It exists for Myanmar, Burma, right? I don't know if it exists for Syria. I think it does. But these countries were basically like, we won't send you back there. And TPS is very important, right?

Because it stops people being deported to places where they will die. And it's important to understand that, like, you could have everything right in terms of your asylum application and still be sent back. It's a cruel and very impersonal system. TPS is important, and if you're into sort of advocating for laws, then it's an important thing to advocate for, I think. Yeah. In terms of more, I think that's important because we kind of the electoral side of things does not tend to be our focus here, but it's also not useless. Like, the border is one of the areas most clearly where you can see both how advocating in that realm can immediately improve people's lives and also how both sides of the political spectrum use the border as a weapon to hurt people. Yeah, exactly.

The border is definitely a stage for both sides of political theater. Like, look at Joe Biden, right? He's coming in, he's signing his declaration on the first day. I remember the day he was inaugurated, I went out to the border wall, sat there by myself and, like, wept because it's just this horrible, ugly thing. There's such a scar on a place that I love. And he's done fuck all, right? He's deported more people than Trump, and he's building his own Biden barrier, which is the same thing without an anti-climb plate. But yeah, like, even if you don't agree with the existence of laws and law makers, right, there's this concept that I like a lot called normative anarchism.

I think it's Wolf, the guy who wrote it, but, like, we can move towards a state doing less cruelty and being a little more free. And that is a move in the right direction, even if it's not the end goal. And I think the border is a place where you can really make a difference like that, right? Like, some small changes in how things are done would reduce the cruelty to people who have done nothing wrong, massively. So I think it is an area where even those of us who might not be generally inclined to, like, electoral stuff, like, you can, I think. I don't know if you can make a difference because, like, so many people in Milwaukee are watching Fox News and are fucking completely convinced that the border is just, I don't know, people with guns trying to smuggle children or whatever. But yeah, it's an area where small changes in policy make a huge, like, Title 42, right? Not even a law. It's an executive or it's not even executive order. It's an interpretation.

The war, right? Most of that shit wasn't built by Congress. It was built by executive order. So, like, that stuff, I think, is a place where you can affect positive change for people. Now, unfortunately, we've got this giant fucking war and I don't think it's coming down anytime soon, but it doesn't mean we shouldn't actively try to make things kinder for people coming here. Now, on the direct action side of things, which I think more of our audience tends to support, one of the most obvious things is just, like, setting out, as you said, like, drops of water, food, equipment. Now, that's kind of, depending on where you are, can be, shall we say, complex from a legal standpoint. Can you talk to that a little bit? Yeah, certainly. So, like, the obvious cases are one in Arizona, right, which eventually ended up, the person was vindicated. But, because vindicated is your own word. Not, didn't go to prison. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. What he was doing was right from the start. But, yeah, it can be complex, I think, especially if you're in some of these states which are, like, doing culture war, right, like, Arizona and Texas.

Yeah, the cruelty is kind of the point. So, if you are doing something to alleviate that cruelty, making an example of you is very much in the interest of those culture war politicians and judges and other people. Which is why it's important to do it with a mutual aid group, right, like, these groups are not just, like, randos, they are extremely organized. I would also just caution that, like, going out into the desert on your own is extremely fucking dangerous. The desert can kill you with heat and day, it can kill you with the cold night, sometimes on the same day and night, right? This is a hard place. I'm not saying you shouldn't go out there, you should. It's an amazing place. But you should be careful. You should go with the group. So, if you're living somewhere along the border, there is a group of people who are doing this. They will understand what is legal and correct. Like, for instance, if you are not a citizen, if you're a green card holder, you should probably not go down to the border with jugs of water. You should maybe do some fundraising. You should maybe do something else. And that's fine, right? You're still part of a system which is helping people.

But yes, there have been some prosecutions. I think in California, there haven't been any, to my knowledge, for a while. There was also some interesting tech developments. One, a long time ago now, called the Trans Border Migrant Tool, which was mapping out, like, what, at a time, we didn't have the border wall then, right? They're like water caches, locations of CVP checkpoints. And then I guess it was using Google Maps to make routes, which it was created by a faculty member who at the time was at the University of California, who faced pretty terrible career repercussions for doing it. But there are things like that that people can do too, right? Which you can do from your bedroom, if that's your preference, if that's how you prefer to help. But yeah, I would caution about just going out there. Always look for groups, right? There are people for whom this is their entire life of activism. You can also, I'm sure, I hope I'm not putting a bunch of, like, work on their plate, but talk to Alotrolado, see what they suggest, right? Talk to who? Alotrolado, the other side, that's this Legal Aid group. You can just call them, I'm sure, they've been very helpful to me when I've needed help for people I'm working with.

Talk to them about what is legal and sensible and what's not, whether it's better to give your money or give your time or what you can do, given the resources available to you, I guess. And you can also just show kindness to refugees in your community too, like they're probably there, whether or not they're visible is a different question. But that's, you know, there are places where you can help people. Another one I should mention, actually, just for folks who are inclined to help in a different way, I guess, is people just feeding people. Like, I really don't think you can ever blame someone for feeding 100 persons. Food not bombs, food not bombs are always cool, right? If you want to do kindness without a state, food not bombs, there is one in your area, look them up. And World Central Kitchen, which is Jose Andres, the chef. Yeah, he's in Ukraine, right? His guys just got shelled in Ukraine.

That's right, yeah, yeah. A number of them got shelled in Kharkiv, I think. Those people, like, I do understand that he has some labor issues. Although I think he's he recently, like, came out and said that he had been wrong on that. I'd have to double check. Yeah, that's impressive. Like, I've said this before, this dude pivoted his whole life after seeing what happened in Haiti to feeding people who are hungry all over the world. So I do believe he's capable of change and hopefully he can change and treat his workers with decency and respect as well. But anywhere I am, right, where there is a humanitarian crisis inside the US, outside the US, those people are there first. They're there before the Red Cross and MSF. They don't seem to get tied up in the bureaucratic shit that most large global NGOs do. Like, I've been in refugee camps where MSF and Red Cross are outside, not doing anything. Yeah.

Anywhere I have been where there are large groups of refugees, refugee camps, people dealing with violence, the most commonly cursed groups are often NGOs. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. There are, you know, people in in white land or people in fancy hotel lobbies, you know, like that makes me very angry and very sad. But I don't see that with WCK. Like, I have consistently seen them in just pretty dire situations, you know, like times that give me bad sleeps, you know, and they're always there helping people. Then there are also church groups in lots of communities, like I'm not a religious person, but like I really can't fault any of these church groups that I've seen coming down from San Diego to Tijuana to feed and help people. But I would probably stay clear of those giant NGOs with your giving. I've just seen them be sort of bureaucratic and less effective. Yeah. I mean, one of the rules, this is harder when it's a conflict far from home and you know, you see some news that makes you want to help, but you don't have any connections. But if you can ever talk to people on the ground there, it's always best to ask them like, who's actually doing anything? Because sometimes it is MSF, you know, sometimes it is one of these larger organizations, but oftentimes they'll tell you like, you know, the group when I was in Mosul that got the most consistent praise from people who were like living there was the Free Burma Rangers, right?

Like there were all these massive international organizations, but when it came right down to it, the people who were like running under gunfire to pull wounded civilians out were, you know, those folks. Yeah. Yeah, those guys do some do some very brave stuff. Definitely. And yeah, it is normally you can find people on Facebook. Like I've never been in a sort of situation with a lot of displaced people where people were not actively on Facebook. And you can find people there that just just like you just want to have a chat. And again, it's nice to have a chat. And that's such an important point too, because I think that number one people are often in it, it's easier, right? Like everyone has limited time, but you kind of leave it to whatever media you trust to connect you to people in these desperate circumstances. And like, people tend to want to connect who are dealing with something like that who are fleeing violence who are and they also are connected like they're not separate from the rest of the world just because they've had to leave their home behind and they're generally not excluded from the information networks that we all existed. Yeah. And yeah, I think sometimes that portrayed as like, we talk about them not to them far too often the media and that makes me mad, right? Like I see that all the time.

I see that happening when I'm doing reporting, right? I'll see people hanging out on the peripheries in these camps. I understand some people are worried about COVID or whatever, but some of those people, right? Like to be safe and be sensible. And yeah, these people want to talk. I remember one thing that always sticks out, or they want the same things that we want. I remember, so in this 2018 migrant caravan, they were moved from Benito Juarez Sports Complex to this old nightclub, a bit further south, a bit further away from the border, right? It was a very weird scene. It was this big nightclub with like the mirrors and the dancing poles and the disco balls, but it had been like mothballs for like 10 years. It was all dusty. And they had a special room for people who were pregnant and people who had had children and the young children themselves, right? They were sort of just to keep them safe. And we were going there and it was weird because there were still like mirrors on the floor. But then I remember these kids, you talk to them, right? You know, what do you want?

And like, first of all, one kid asked me for a teddy bear and it just broke my heart. Like, I don't know why it just leveled me. And then they wanted to like, you know, that they'd enjoyed the same Disney films that kids here had, right? So my buddy managed to acquire a projector and we went into the ceiling, rigged up this projector and just set up like Beverly Hills Chihuahua playing on one wall of this nightclub. And these kids were like, fuck yeah, it's Beverly Hills Chihuahua. Like, let's go. Like, they were just kids watching a film, like they can be anywhere else. And it's really easy to see them as like different or weak or, you know, the way they're portrayed in the media is like people without agency. And they're not. They've taken huge amounts of agency to try and improve their lives. And it's also so much focus is on these things that aren't, you know, medicine, food that are necessary. But like having a normal moment where you're like a kid watching a cartoon or playing with a toy is also necessary. Yeah, like these children will be scarred by their experiences, right, by whatever's causing to flee by the flight itself and by the process of coming to the into the country.

But yeah, we should do everything we can to protect them from those traumatic experiences and just play like I cannot count the amount of times I have been like shit housed in a game of football by six year olds trying to come to the United States, right? Like, so things like that. I remember someone donated a couple of football goals and I took them down and set them up. And then yeah, just having those moments of normalcy, those moments of fun, like little plastic ukuleles and stuff like we're very important because it let kids be kids. And then that's, you know, they have every right to do that. Well, James, I think that's going to make a soad for us. You want to throw your plugables in before we roll out? Yeah. I want to plug like, like I said before, doing things to help people outside of networks and let people have power over people to do that first. And then yeah, you can put my name James Stout into Twitter and find me. I have a Patreon by the same thing. I write about the border a lot. You can see it in, if I just plug one, popular POP ULA. I wrote about the 2018 migrant caravan. You can read my writing there. Feel free to message me if you want to find any of these groups and you can't. Yeah, that's about all.

All right. Well, that's going to do it for us. Go do something good. Oh, yes. The podcast has started. This is the start. This is, this is it could happen here. This is it could happen here. That's right. And you're Robert Evans. We also have Shereen Laniunis and Christopher Wong with us. Christopher. Hi. Yeah, I guess I'm sort of running the show today, even though Robert has done the intro question mark. Always with a question mark. That's how the pros do it. You can tell. But speaking of professionals, we have Karina Dominguez with us, who is in fact actually a professional and has spent eight years working in reproductive health issues. Karina, welcome to the show and thank you for joining us.

Thank you. Thank you for having me. It's lovely to have you on. Karina, what's going on? How are things? Things are okay, I think I can say. They're not great. That doesn't seem true. Yeah. But they're okay. Yeah. Okay. Cool. I pulled a guy out of a crash truck once and as I was trying to like staunch the bleeding from a cut in his hand, I asked how he was and he said okay. So I'm guessing it's that kind of okay. You nailed it. Yeah. Karina, do you want to tell us a little bit about your background and the work that you do and, you know, why, why, why we, we desperately wanted to have you on the show?

Yeah, I would love to. So again, my name is Karina Dominguez. I am from Chicago, born and raised. I've worked in reproductive health for about eight years, but really what I consider about 15 years or so. I have experience in working in the community in different capacities. I love reproductive health. I consider myself a reproductive health nerd. And it all started when I was a teenager growing up in Chicago where just in the city life you see a lot of things that don't really sit well with you. I knew a lot of young girls who were getting pregnant at young ages experiencing trauma and specifically sexual trauma and not knowing who to go to or where to go. So these were mostly young girls of color who I cared for a lot. And I immediately knew that I wanted to do more activism and that I needed to do more activism. And the way my activism looks is through my education. So today I have a master's in public health and I also have a bachelor's in public health.

And with that education, I've been able to provide sexual and reproductive health counseling. I practiced as a full spectrum doula where I've provided abortion care for people and also provided birthing care for people as well. I led a pregnant parenting program at a nonprofit for youth experiencing homelessness. And right now I currently manage a sexual and reproductive health grant where we provide resources to treatment centers in the LA area to integrate sexual and reproductive health for patients and substance use disorder treatment. Wow. Cool. So we are slacking. That was impressive. Yeah.

Yeah. I think the thing that made us want to chat with you, we were having a conversation show when the news first dropped that the Supreme Court was yeeting Roe v. Wade into the sun. There were a couple of different news agencies that did like, you know, while talking about what options were going to remain for people that would bring up crisis pregnancy centers, which are shady as hell, as I'm sure we're about to talk about. But yeah, so that's kind of why we brought you into what we brought you on initially to talk about. I wonder, do you want to kind of introduce folks to what those are because the gist of it is if you like Google, how do I like find out if I'm pregnant or like, you know, I'm pregnant and I need help. There's a good chance old Google will take you to one of these places. And they are, shall we say, not what they seem to be.

Yes. I think we can exactly say that. And I am just going to say it in the most direct way I possibly could a crisis pregnancy center is essentially a fake medical facility that preys on vulnerable people specifically people who can become pregnant. So yeah, you know, we can use the term fake medical clinic. I for the purpose just of using the most common term crisis pregnancy center I'm going to stick to using that term. But yes, there are a lot of concerns about this and I'm sure our friend Google will pop some up for us really quick. So crisis pregnancy centers usually have names like women's pregnancy center or women's health center, something health center. And it's very misleading advertisement.

So they are anti abortion facilities that manipulate people into having a full term pregnancy. So these places are usually religious oriented, they have a religious agenda, and it's not patient led. So some of these larger religious based organizations that fund these what we think are smaller tiny clinics are agencies or organizations like Karen at heartbeat international National Institute of Family and Life, for right international and Rama International. So a lot of times you might think you're going to the small little tiny clinic, or maybe it's even like a community medical mobile unit. And it turns out they're backed by big money and bigger agencies. So they typically will implant themselves and communities of color near college campuses and low income neighborhoods. So what is that saying that's saying that this is a woman's issue, this is a trans issue. This is an LGBTQIA issue.

This is a BIPOC issue, black indigenous people of color. And it's simply just an issue for everyone. Yeah. And it's so one of the things that's kind of messy about these places is that if you look at like investigations into how they work, you'll run into a number of stories of women who are like, Hey, I actually like always intended to go through with my pregnancy. I just needed to like know that number one know that I was pregnant. I needed to test or something and these people advertised that they would provide that for free or the advertised that they were providing stuff like diapers, you know, basic kind of supplies formula for free. And some of them do most of them do to some extent but nearly all of them have some sort of like and this is outside of kind of the abortion aspect access of it, have some sort of fucked up hoops you have to jump through in order to actually get access to any of that stuff. Absolutely. Yeah, I'm really glad that you brought up like the diaper point. I think that is a really essential thing because they don't not give out stuff right but it's it's messier than they want to portray it as yeah.

Yeah, totally. And and it's a form of manipulation right and I think to it's a form of manipulation to to deem yourself a full functioning medical facility where they actually don't provide those comprehensive services and sometimes you know they have to be on the outside like HIV testing SIV SCI testing HIV testing. And they're simply not evidence based practices. So what I mean by an evidence evidence based practice is something like condoms use. We know very well at this day and age that condoms are essential to prevent STIs and HIV So a lot of these clinics they might even say like condoms don't decrease your chances of STIs they don't really matter they're not really doing anything and that is a really big piece of information that we need to know as the average person because that means we have a lot of young people going to these clinics and having even their foundational sexual health education at these facilities so this is a really really important thing to take note of. And I would say that, you know, a lot of people even in my life that have gone to crisis pregnancy centers by accident are, you know, being told that they can do STI testing HIV testing, and even birth control and then as soon as you go there you realize that's happening. Usually it's going to be a lot of pregnancy related services like ultrasounds and pregnancy tests which we know if you're an actual clinic that's those aren't the only things that someone would need for essential health care but I would say even more like going into the manipulation and the gaslighting that they do within these facilities which in my eyes is medical violence. They provide even mandatory ultrasounds make someone sit there to look at the ultrasound.

They make fearful videos of misleading information about what abortions are and sometimes even have someone who's not a medical provider, showing what an abortion is in their eyes and the video may be of a baby that's whose limbs are being ripped apart. Even giving information like abortions can lead to breast cancer or if you have abortion you'll never be able to have a child and this is your one and only opportunity. And sometimes even going further, you know, they are sneaky and what they do because they might even have programs that'll say parent program or youth sexual health program and even with that they're giving religious based agendas and they are telling people misinformation about sexual health and even so might even talk about very heterosexual sex marriage, all of the above so there is a very specific agenda that is going on here. And we know too that a lot of these agencies can be really sneaky with what they're doing, because they may even deny that they are a crisis pregnancy center. And even further, if you go on to their website, they might not even have any language that they're religious based or that they are not providing comprehensive services. So there are a lot of different tactics that are, you know, within the manipulative manipulative strategies that they use. Yeah, one of the things I've heard a lot about is like, basically like, not, not literally physically forcing but like, terrorizing people into signing like fake legal documents saying they won't get an abortion, which like, really like every description I've heard about that is like this is just terrorism.

Absolutely. Yeah, and I find that to be really interesting. I've never heard of that happening but just because I haven't specifically heard about it does not mean it's not happening. And I think that, you know, they're, they're not all made the same. They all function differently. And I think that's also what is really confusing about them because they're not consistently all doing the same thing. There are still other facilities that they might do STI testing, they might do HIV testing. And so to hear that is not shocking to me. In the manipulative tactics that they are using for people and yeah, I mean, HIPAA goes out the door, you know, any legal backing goes out the door with these facilities because they are not based on providing patient-led services in the first place. Maybe this is an ignorant, ignorant train of thought, but if they're providing all of these like free-ish services or like whatever to these people that are desperate and it sounds like a lot of them are like privately funded by these organizations in the shadows. Like what, how do they benefit? Like where, like what is there other than like imposing religion on other people but like financially and like I'm confused where, how they're still like able to function. Yes, they function very well and without a problem. And as I mentioned, there's, you know, five larger organizations that are funding a lot of these CPCs, but they are also, this is to be noted, they are on the CDC website.

They are on the CDC directory as places that provide essential services. So I think that also goes to speak to the confusion around CPCs. And I'm just going to go out in the limb and say, I'm going to give the CDC benefit of the doubt, although they do not deserve that, and say that they themselves may not recognize what these agencies are doing. And so I think that's where the awareness around the actual function of the CPCs and how they even exist in the first place needs to be shut down and awareness needs to be brought about these places. And we know that 13 of them are funded by their states. So they are getting direct government money to be able to function. And then on top of that also functioning with the backing of those larger organizations. Wow. Are they getting federal funding too? Like, I have some vague memories of like Bush administration programs that were funding just Trump, right? I mean, if I'm not mistaken, Trump pushed a bunch of federal funds towards these facilities. Yes.

I wonder, oh, sorry, go ahead. Oh, no, go ahead. I was just, I was wondering, like, I wonder if there's a, like, one or two things you need to qualify as like a, what's what, how did you put it on the website? CDC, like, they offer like services. Like, maybe it's like, oh, this place has an ultrasound. These are like, this is why this is on, you know what I mean? Like, I wonder if they just like pick and choose the bare minimum of things to like qualify to be considered among like people to offer like full fledged care. But I don't know. It's all scam. I don't. Yeah. And I mean, I think that also is just a really, I like that you bring that up because I think that would be a really ignorant perspective from the CDC to think that a place that gives a pregnancy test or an ultrasound right away is not necessarily your average healthcare setting. When someone is going into an appointment, typically, you know, they're not getting an ultrasound right away. Typically, your average person who might think they're pregnant and is going into a medical facility is going to do a pregnancy test. Sure. But they're not just going to immediately the first 20 minutes you're there do an ultrasound. And especially knowing our healthcare system and the United States, you know, that might require referrals and another facility to get that done. And you know, that depends on what your insurance is and what you can pay for and etc.

But I think it's a really big red flag to just have a facility that has pregnancy tests and ultrasounds. That to me is, you know, if I see on a website that those are the only two services that a healthcare clinic is claiming to provide, I'm running away and I'm not going there because that's very odd. Well, and it's very manipulative because it's one of those things one of the ways in which you can tell is something healthcare related shady as fuck is does it take advantage of the fact that very basic things that you need are extremely expensive. And like ultrasounds pregnancy test this can all be like STD tests, you know, can all be really, really pricey. And it's just so like it's fucked up that this is kind of how they're funneling religious dollars towards taking advantage of the fact that a lot of people like legitimately some people who use these facilities. I don't know what else to tell them because it's like, well, we don't provide people with a lot of options in this country everywhere, you know, for some of these services. Yeah. Totally. And I do want to go into some of the people doing the work and I want to really highlight what they're doing. So I want to give the utmost credit to two people who I do not know personally but would definitely love to.

Dr. Andreas, working rubber and Dr. Danielle Lambert they're both associate professors at the School of Public Health at University of Georgia and they're both co founders of the CPC maps which originated in 2018. So yes, there's a brilliant map where you can search the CPCs that are close to you. And in my eyes this map is truly a piece of gold because I myself have found ones that are in my area and was very beneficial when I was working with clients myself directly and would refer people to different services. So this is a really great tool for healthcare professionals and social service workers, etc. to refer to. And I can't even explain how grateful I am to know that there's ongoing research about the distraught impact of these clinics and the distraught impact they have on our healthcare system and the ability to find an abortion provider. So again, I hope that every service provider can find these this map and use this map and really spread awareness around this. So what I want to highlight and what these two doctors have found is that just to give some more context, every single state has multiple CPCs, multiple, not just one, not two, multiple. There are 2,500 CPCs throughout the United States and that is obviously a much larger number than the health departments in the United States.

And as I mentioned, we know the CDC directory utilizes CPCs on their website. And again, 13 states are funded or are funding CPCs. So their advertisements are going far and wide. And to even go further in the state of California, the California Women's Law Center says that there are 20% more CPCs than there are abortion clinics. So I think in this time, yeah, yeah, we should be scared. That's a really concerning statistic and especially looking at how we are going to be and already are a haven state. We are going to be a haven state for all the states around us and for people throughout the United States. So what is that saying when we are a haven state, yet we are still competing with our local anti-abortion strategies ourselves? We are still putting up a fight as a haven state and I think that is so concerning. And even further just to give some more statistics, we know that 58% of the clinics that CPCs that did not offer SCI testing also will not refer out.

So we know that only 8% offer HIV testing and 92% that did not offer HIV testing also did not refer out. So just to summarize those numbers for you, what that data is telling me is that these clinics are not accounting for the health of the pregnant person, nor are they accounting for the health of the fetus if that pregnancy goes full term. And yeah, I have even more stats as your reproductive health nerd of one of my favorite research institutes called the Gutmacher Institute and they are phenomenal and have really great data. And if you haven't checked out their website, you definitely should. But since we're on the bandwagon of talking about religious based affiliations, we know that 17% of abortion patients are 17% of abortion patients identified themselves as mainline Protestant, 13% as evangelical Protestant and 24% as Catholic, 38% have no religious affiliation and the remaining 8% reported a different religious affiliation. So let's summarize that religiously affiliated people are still seeking abortions to would you look at that ignorance is so bliss.

We know that abortions are affecting people who are living in poverty and who are low income so we know 75% of people that are seeking abortions are either living in poverty or are low income. And fortunately, you know throughout the past we know that Medicaid has been a really big funder of abortion care, and especially we can say that in California to that about 24% of abortion patients are using Medicaid and that's throughout 15 different states. So, I imagine in this time right now to that number is probably going to decrease. Again, talking about a haven state that has these resources, we are probably going to be mixing up how that looks. And knowing that 53% of abortion patients pay out of pocket for their procedures is already a very concerning statistic. And so we are seeing how in our time right now, we have to be looking at different resources for people we have to put on our activist hats. We have to be supporting our community, and we have to be supporting abortion funds because already 53% of abortions are paid out of pocket. And just to summarize, 1.88% of people who are using abortion services are going to be using those within the first 12 weeks.

So we are needing to see a lot of activism around abortion pill distribution and abortion pill education and what that looks like. To piggyback off of what Robert was mentioning earlier about how it just feels like they are taking advantage of the fact that things cost so much money. And I feel like this work is so important because I don't think a lot of people know what they are getting into. Because we don't have a great education system in general, let alone about reproductive health or what happens when you get pregnant. So if you're a young person or any age and you are desperate or you're feeling shame and you don't have support from your community or something, and you see an institution that's free ultrasound or whatever, it's like they're preying on this desperation. And I think one of the only things you can do to combat that is try to educate people as much as possible. Like, I don't know, people are as, they don't have the good will and good faith that they present to be to have.

And I guess it just like ultimately you have to be distrusting of people and maybe that's sad, but it's the truth. Yeah, definitely. And I will say I feel like I saw that as a service provider. So as I mentioned, I worked in homeless services, specifically with youth homeless services, and you see that so much, you see how there is, you know, medical oppression for people of color. There is medical manipulation and violence for so many people in vulnerable situations. And as someone that has accompanied many people to abortions and births, I have observed that myself and I have seen how more people than not are going to experience some type of medical manipulation. And especially if you are living in poverty, especially if you're a person of color, especially if you're LGBTQIA. This issue does not just stop, you know, with CPCs. If we take out all the CPCs, we also have to address so much of the institutionalized racism and all the things that exist around reproductive health, you know, starting at how to get contraceptives to when can you have children and how can you be a parent, and that never ends throughout the cycle, you know, and that parents, even after they have babies, even if they are a person of color,

even if they are LGBTQIA, you know, they are still told how, when, where they're going to parent, and there's so much control over that rhetoric for people. So, you know, I mean, that even goes back to me thinking about the sterilization trials that happened against USC in the 70s and how women were forcibly sterilized. And, you know, that has nothing to do with CPCs, but instead we're seeing that institutions are finding this control and having these agendas. And it is not serving our society, it is not serving our health, and instead it is creating more trauma in our communities. And it's, it's crisis pregnancy centers are just one of many layers of medical oppression that we are witnessing in today's world. As a person who was working in homeless services, I was program planning for a lot of the resources that we were able to provide access to for my clients. So all of my clients at that time when I was running the pregnant parenting program at a nonprofit, they were either pregnant and or parenting while also experiencing their housing insecurities. So I strive to find what the proper resources were for them to support them in every trauma informed way I possibly could and that were youth friendly.

So there was a local agency that was very, very close to where I works. And their services always kind of felt like limited to me. So I met with them specifically to inquire because they were always trying to find some type of partnership with us and would knock on our door or call me so I finally was able to give them some of my time. And so their services always felt limited and non comprehensive and I think that is the the biggest kind of like takeaway. They always gave me really weird reasoning why they didn't provide birth control or STI testing. And based on their answer, as I mentioned, I just did not allow the partnership to thrive. So when I did more research, I actually confirmed from another service provider that they're from another agency that they were indeed a CPC. Before I could spread the word they also already had several partnerships with other homeless service providers so they wiggled their way in. And these other homeless service providers were also working with young vulnerable clients. So one day I was actually invited by another agency to come to this presentation where I didn't realize happened to be the CPC. The CPC was presenting at this organization and it was one of their outreach workers explaining what their services were. I took it upon myself to make sure that I sat in that meeting and I asked questions in the room with the other service providers I think there are about 30 other service providers that were present, and I asked out loud why doesn't your clinic provide birth control.

And the woman from the CPC who was the outreach worker said, we can't give pap smears so we're unable to provide birth control. If you know anything, side note, if you know, yeah, I already see the questioning, which I'm glad I received that reaction because that is the exact reaction you should be getting. Audience, those of us with uterus is what? Yeah, all of our heads tilted and our eyes were squinting. Exactly. Please explain how that math doesn't work. Yeah, exactly. Side note for all the listeners, if you know anything about healthcare, you know that a pap smear is not associated with being able to be prescribed birth control. So as someone that has background in healthcare, has a master's in public health, worked as a doula, I continued to push back during the presentation and it was very, very clear that I was onto something.

So this woman, again, she would always try to come around, give me pamphlets, try to have us partner and say she really want to work with us and our youth. She stopped after that presentation, I can tell you that. But anyway, so I keep going, I reach out to the person who organized that presentation for the CPC outreach person to attend and speak at. So it was like, I need to get to the bottom of this and I need to spread this word and tell people, hey, you're getting people from CPCs to come and speak to you to advertise your services. So, I CC a lot of the other service providers, and I express my genuine concerns, the lack of evidence based comprehensive care they provided, but unfortunately, the person who I emailed said clients need to make sure those decisions are their own. So they can decide if they want to go or if they don't want to go, we can't force them to say yes or no to go to a health care facility. So I responded by asking, but what if you thought you're seeing a doctor for your health care needs and then it turns out the health care provider is providing misinformation and might not even be a health care provider. I never got a response from them, but I still continue to make sure that I was reaching out to everyone at that meeting and just raising awareness behind it.

And then I wanted to take it to, I wanted to take it a notch up. So I called both of this, both of the locations of the CPC one is located in Westwood side note next to UCLA. The other one was in South LA side note community of color. Both of my calls led me to the person on the phone telling me that they don't know where to send me for an abortion and that they didn't know where what planned parenthood was what they did or where they were located when I specifically asked. So they were obviously circumventing the ability to even talk about abortions and what it was. And that was all the concern that I genuinely needed. So in my present day, I'm still concerned with these clinics, this specific clinic that is local to me. I recently found out that in my present day work, there are currently three treatment centers that are using this crisis pregnancy center as a resource.

So hopefully that means more to come because I will be working on this. And in this scenario what I am doing as an activist and as a person who cares for my community is I will be educating these treatment centers about what crisis pregnancy centers are and how they can avoid them and what comprehensive services actually look like. Have there been more sort of widespread organizations who are working to let people know what they are and then be also trying to get them not to be funded? Absolutely, there are and we need to shout them out. There is an abortion fund in California called Axis. They are wonderful. They provide abortion advocacy and awareness and education. And they also provide direct services and fund different, they fund abortions in different capacities. So they might be funding the abortion services, the lodging, the transportation, and even a doula. And they partner with a lot of other agencies that are doing the work.

The agency is called Reproductive Transparency Now and they are a Chicago based nonprofit. They provide a lot of information, data, awareness, research to raise awareness around what CPCs are and why we should be avoiding them. And I think I can say that I have the same goal as them in my personal life but to ensure that they do not exist and are all shut down. So they are wonderful. I would highly suggest looking into Reproductive Transparency Now and also access Reproductive Justice who are doing a lot of really great work. And then I also do want to squeeze in other resources for people as well. Yeah. And, you know, as I mentioned, first and foremost, I think the number one thing we need to know is that crisis pregnancy centers should not exist in any capacity. But if you are a person who's providing resources, who is working with clients who works in healthcare, treatment centers, whatever it be, please utilize crisispregnancycentermap.com. Again, this is the website that was created by two associate professors at University of Georgia.

And I want to make sure that this spreads far and wide because it will be the matter of providing referrals and circumventing CPCs. And I want to acknowledge that a lot of my data from this, from the information that I've been speaking on is from the crisispregnancycentermap.com and from Reproductive Transparency as well. So first and foremost, that map is a necessity. Another resource that I would like to share to be able to find your state's abortion fund is abortionfunds.org. And you can search state by state. So, you know, I'm in California. So that's going to be access, again, an organization that is an abortion fund, but they do more than fund abortions. And I also really encourage people to find their local evidence-based doulas, midwives, women's health practitioners near them. And I know that there's a lot of fear existing right now due to the inappropriate politicians that are making disgusting decisions.

But know that abortion pills can be accessed and there are people that can help guide you through. So I would say making sure that we are accessing the resources on a website called plancpill.com. It's a great resource where you can find where to purchase abortion pills and where to seek medical and legal support as well. So if you have a question about how to take medical abortion pills or you need to understand the legality of your state and the area near you, you can look on this website as a resource. I just also want to emphasize what community care looks like right now. If you are a person who can get pregnant, this is truly a time to seek preventative care. And I know that that's a loaded can of worms for a lot of people. So I really want to plug this in.

If you would like to learn about pregnancy prevention, you can take a look at bedsider.org to assess your needs. I would highly recommend pairing that with talking to a provider who understands your lifestyle and can support you with finding one that works best for you because every single contraceptive is going to look a little different. If you're a person who does not like birth control, I want you to know to please still seek preventative methods, whether that's a barrier method or whether that's more so of a holistic method like fertility awareness method. I encourage you to still speak to someone you can trust to ensure you're using that method correctly. And again, there are dualism midwives that can help guide you in the right direction for holistic practices. And to continue on to my community recognition, I hope that this is also time where if it's feasible for you to, if you can't yourself, find friends and family that you trust and people around you to either receive yourself or to get it from other people. Have pregnancy tests around you and make sure that if you feel like you might be pregnant, whether you are using an actual method or if you're not using a method currently, make sure you at the very least have pregnancy tests around you so that you can detect early on if you are pregnant. Normalize buying your friends pregnancy test for their birthdays. I have we just have to normalize that as a community and normalize buying abortion pills in case someone you know might need them in the future, or it might be someone that you don't know who could use them and to have that accessible if that is feasible for you financially. And then yeah, I think just to summarize like this is truly time for community support and when the government doesn't support us we we need to figure out unfortunately how

And if you got the ability go get a go get go get snipped. You know, there's there's options out there. Yeah, I provide vasectomies by the way if you can just find me in my house. I'm not good at it yet, but 15 20 more people. I'm going to not I'm going to figure it out. I'm going to figure it out. That room is for that makes well, I got one of those I got one of those sharpening wheels and my butter knives are pretty fucking. They got a good edge. They got a good edge these days. Genuinely incredibly disappointed. Disappointed you're not using the machete for this. This is this feels like a betrayal.

Well, there's other reproductive health care I use the machete for, but that that that does have to do with crisis pregnancy centers. Well, I'll have a bunch of referrals for you that I know where to send them. That kind of leans into another topic I'm covering today, unfortunately. Well, thank you so much for coming on and for talking to us. This has been very enlightening. I wish it wasn't such a bleak subject, but people need to know the fuck's going on. People needed to know this a lot earlier. But you know, I mean, broadly speaking, the thing I keep coming back to in this whole fight is the frustration of like the rest of us. Like we have lives hard enough. There's like so much going on. People are like busy trying to trying to get by trying to do their lives trying to like find pieces of happiness in the world.

And there's this fucking group of the worst people in the country that have just made this made fucking access to reproductive health care up for everyone, the focus of their entire life for 30 years. And unfortunately, now we have to like do that make the opposite of the focus of our lives because we kind of just not all of us, obviously, like you've been in this fight for a while. But most of us kind of were not paying as much attention as needed to be paid. Like most people in the I'm not trying to throw blame on folks, but like clearly the majority of people in the country who support access to reproductive health care weren't paying enough attention. You know, like that's the that's the only way to frame it. Totally. And it's almost as if we are picking up the mess that others are are creating. Yeah. And, you know, after experiencing COVID as a society, everyone's a public health professional now and a doctor. So it's clearly sending referrals to you.

Yeah, and people have a lot of things to say. And with that being said, I'm really glad that that these are conversations being had. I'm glad that friends around me now who I've never known to talk about reproductive health are going there and talking about it. And also opening the door up for, you know, people like me to talk about evidence based practices and what the reality is and who's doing the work and everything that that focuses around reproductive health. So I appreciate this conversation. I appreciate that there are podcasts discussing this information. It's necessary and these issues are not going anywhere. And, you know, we're going a little backwards. So I really appreciate your time on this.

Yeah, thank you for coming on the show. And all right, everybody, that's the fucking episode. Go do something else. Oh, all right. Well, Joe started. I like that these intros are getting shorter every, every time. We've rounded onto one syllable, so there's not much room we can go from there. Look, you know what?

An honest, an honest man only needs one syllable, sometimes less, sometimes half a syllable. We'll eventually get this down to just grunts. That's really what I'm moving towards as an entirely shouldn't we be moving towards like telepathy. Yeah, telepathy. We don't even record a podcast where we just put up trance with the information instantaneously. Just a blank audio file that says now think about farming. And I must say that that sounds very, that sounds very sci-fi. And that's my way of doing a slick segue here.

Because today we will be talking and I'm very excited to talk about this. She's one of my favorite authors. You know, I really enjoyed discussing ideas present in all Huxley's work. But this one has a special place in my heart. Today we'll be taking a look at Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sewer and Parable of the Talents. And the themes and ideas present within. Yes, back at you again with another podcast banger. But first of all, hi, I'm Andrew, sometimes known as St. Andrew.

I'm kind of trying to rebrand as something else, still figuring that out. And you can find me on YouTube at St. Andrewism. But this episode is not about me and my branding. This episode is about Octavia Butler. Born in 1947 and growing up in segregation era America. She became an award-winning sci-fi author with a lot of influences and a lot of themes and ideas being covered in her work. Considering the very white male-dominated scene that is sci-fi, the fact that she was able to not only break into it, but also present some things that haven't been explored before

with angles that haven't really been explored before, really has touched a lot of people. She was somewhat Afrofuturist, but she was also very much, a lot of her stories really blended. A lot of people have a lot of different backgrounds and histories. And she always managed to work aspects of herself into her main characters. She was a big critic of hierarchies, which really draws me to her. And she also, very relatively, has at times struggled with writer's block and depression. She wrote over two dozen essays, speeches, short stories and novels in her time on this earth, but unfortunately she had a stroke and died in 2006.

One of the, or rather, two of the books that I've had the most, of whose, that I've had the most impact on me and, of course, I haven't read her entire bibliography yet, but hope to get to it, is Parallel of the Sewer. And I think a lot of people have heard about it, again, a lot more relevance after, as Clime Catash, we continued to accelerate as, you know, we drew closer to the year that the book is set in and, regarding the second book, as we had, you know, Trump come into office. And I'll get into why that's relevant in a bit. In the first book, just to give a brief synopsis, global climate change and economic crisis has led to a whole set of social crisis and chaos in the early 2020s.

The book is set in California and they are struggling with pervasive water shortages and masses of poor people will do basically anything to live to see another day. Everybody is struggling. So basically today, in this setting, 15-year-old Lauren Olamina lives inside a gated community with her preacher father, family and neighbors, sheltered somewhat from the surrounding chaos. However, when we hear gated community, now we think of, you know, like really rich people. But in this case, gated community is just like a regular community that had to put up a bunch of walls to prevent, like, pyromaniacs from, like, really. Yeah, it's like a, it's a suburb that used to be like a well-off suburb,

but as things got worse, it just turned into people hiding behind their walls because they were scared of poor folks, right? Like, it's, there's an element of it that almost reads like a slasher movie in the opening of the book, which is one of the things that's really compelling about it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. They really, she really gets you invested in the setting and in the character early on. And part of what really gets you invested in Lauren as a protagonist is the fact that she suffers from a unique vulnerability or strength, depending on how you look at it, oftentimes vulnerability. And that is hyper empathy syndrome, which is basically that she's able to feel others emotions, others pains.

So when others are very, very sad, she feels very, very sad when others are in pain, she feels that same excruciating pain and so on and so forth. And so she has to sort of navigate this chaos world while dealing with this, with this disorder that she's struggling with. At the same time, though, she's also navigating faith and the idea of faith and philosophy because her father is like a preacher, and he is the preacher of their little gated community. And so she has grown up in the church, but she also has found issues in the religion that she grew up in places where she thinks it is sort of led people astray and that's kind of also what has drawn me to Lauren as a character because I too, you know, have had to negotiate and navigate that whole religious realm. And so that's basically the setting she's in this community.

It's chaos on the outside. She's navigating her hyper empathy syndrome and she's also dealing with the ideas of religion and change and so on and so forth. So as she's there, sort of thinking internally, she's keeping this journal and she's developing this new system of thought, which she calls Earthseed. And we're going to get into Earthseed, but it basically shapes the decisions that she makes and the outcome of both books and as well as how they progress throughout. The second book places her in, I'm really trying not to spoil, which is difficult to do because the second book leaves directly after the first book and so on and so forth. But I'll try to speak in broad brushes because I really think people should go and read it as blind as possible. Lauren, of course, eventually we will get into spoilers, by the way, so I'll try to let folks know when we get into that. And in the second book, Lauren is working on a community founded on her faith, Earthseed.

And they begin to face persecution, I'll say, after the election of this ultra conservative president, who vows to quote, make America great again. Being, you know, a young black woman in a minority religious faction in the United States of America, her colony becomes a target of President Jared's reign of terror. And at the same time, Lauren's future daughter is navigating the discovery of the mother that she didn't knew, that she didn't know through the journals that her mother kept through the years. I think I'll leave it at that. There are other themes that, you know, Butler covers in these texts. And in fact, I've seen them described as Butlerian, which I would agree with, because she covers them in other books of hers as well, in different ways. She talks about poverty and slavery and freedom. She talks about perseverance, which navigates this idea of community and what community means, what, how community is both a balance of inclusion and exclusion at the same time.

And also the whole cycle of creation, destruction and rebirth that really defines human history. Well, in that books, in the setting of that book, slavery has made a comeback more than it already has. You know, you have these extreme forms of debt slavery and marital slavery and probably even plantation slavery. I believe plantation slavery is mentioned in the second book. And of course, the slavery is inflicted upon the poor. We should accompany town-style slavery, right, where people are like bonded, bound to a specific location because of their employer who protects them in this increasingly dangerous, bandit-filled world. Yeah. Exactly.

And in this world, you know, race remains a factor, even though these books are written in the 80s and 90s, I believe. Parable of the Sowers, 93, and Parable of the Talents is 98. So again, Butler has a character using the same phrase Trump would win the presidency on, what is it, 24 years before the start of his campaign? A hard to overstate the degree to which she was ahead of the curve on a lot of things. Because, I mean, to be fair, she knew America. Oh, yeah. You know, she grew up in segregation here in America. Yeah.

She had to deal with, her mother was a domestic laborer. And so she had to go in with her mother in these rich white families places through the back door. And, you know, obviously that would have shaped how she saw herself and herself in relation to the wider world, to America as an idea. And so I think that as she's writing of this, you know, sort of horrific future, she's drawing a lot from her horrific past, or rather America's horrific past, of which her history is apart. So Lauren, who is in some ways Octavia Butler's self insert, spends a lot of time in the book, in both books, allying with people who are also minorities who come from mixed backgrounds, who tend to be overlooked by the dominant Christian religious right, white order. Because I believe she finds some sense of safety and strength in people who have been so maligned.

Slavery also ends up affecting Lauren's community too, in many ways that I don't want to spoil. But despite it all, the theme of perseverance is really what carries the story along. Lauren ultimately is the archetype of the perseverance, you know, she preaches a sermon on the importance of perseverance, she tries to get others to see the importance of hard work. And she sticks to her goals, no matter what happens. And a lot happens that would quite honestly discourage a lot of people to put it lightly. And yet she perseveres. And so to tie that in as well to American history, particularly in the first book, she ends up having to make a journey north to northern California. And throughout that journey, you know, she meets with other people and interacts with other people. She makes allies and avoids enemies. And you could honestly draw some parallels to the Underground Railroad. Of course, it's not an exact one to one. But in the sense of having to work with people along the way to progress out of a terrible situation, a hellish situation, for the hope, not the guarantee, but the hope of some form of salvation when you get to the end of the journey. She doesn't do it alone. She does it with others. And that's kind of what keeps her hope alive.

But it's not just external. She has a lot of intrinsic motivation to persevere, which is driven by her philosophy. I mean, I think one of the things, because there's there's a lot of meaning in why she picks the parable of the sower and the parable of the talents for. And it's pretty obvious in the context of the books, she's not like hiding it under layers or anything. But one of the things that in particular the second book deals with, I mean, in the first book to do a degree is kind of the the pointlessness of responding to dystopian change in society by just like hunkering down in a bunker and trying to hide from it and protect your family. Like one of the reoccurring themes is the degree to which that doesn't work. And one of the things that's really interesting about this is a dystopian novel. This is a novel that is both of these novels are kind of imagining the collapse of a lot of aspects of American society, but it is not at no point does the United States really collapse in these books. And even like as much as authoritarianism is present at no point is the government completely taken over and completely under the control of like a unified fascist regime or anything. Like elections are still happening, campaigns are still going on. The police still exist, but you have to pay them to pay any attention to you.

And the Christian death squad type things that are roaming around are distinctly non-state actors. They have backing to as an extent from the state. They're not really opposed by it. But it's, again, it's this thing that we are actually dealing with where collapse doesn't look like, okay, everything's fallen apart. And now it's whoever's got the strongest group of buddies who can do their best in the wasteland. It's like, no, no, no, it is about groups of people trying to navigate in an increasingly dysfunctional state. And the only way to actually survive that is survival is complicated and it's never as simple as just like picking a good farm to hide on. That's not going to work out for you. Exactly. I just wanted to point out as well that as dysfunctional things, people are still going to work. Not just the people who are in company towns or in debt bondage, but even Lauren's father, he takes his bike every day and rides out into that chaos to go and work for a wage to come back and to try to support his family. And of course, in this community, we see that their attempts to stay gated is ultimately futile.

Like the rich have their high security communities and they were to escape in helicopters when anything happens. But they have no security even in this illusion of security and that hungering down strategy they were taking wasn't working. And the first half of the book really shows why. Yeah, it's it's it's a it's a book about collapse by somebody who's who grew up in a situation where her her childhood had a lot of elements of the collapse that many particularly like many folks are concerned about now like that's what she grew up in was there's no there's no protection. Violence can come from all sides and is random. And you have no there are no guarantees in this like world that you've come into which is this thing that like people are freaking out about now. As we encounter kind of aspects of the the world order that we had grown up with that we feel like are falling apart. And I think the thing that's so compelling about Butler is her books kind of are coming from the perspective of someone for whom that order and that world were never real. Yeah. Yeah. And that's why her contributions to sci-fi is so valuable. You know, because a lot of these sci-fi writers are just like regular privileged white guys and you know and and they just come with that experience and it's an often repeated critique of sci-fi is he didn't tweet turns out sometimes where like a lot of it is just like particularly like alien related sci-fi is like whoa what if white the things that white people did other people happen to white people.

You know, like this whole idea that these alien invasion fairs and invasion stories are just like what if colonialism but to white people to rich countries. You know, another part of the reason that the attempt to hunker down and stuff and basically exclude others from their community failed is because and Lauren writes this in her diary exclusion preeds resentment among the excluded. So even though Lawrence neighborhood while you know gated and wall and stuff was not particularly rich, just the mere fact that they had those walls up basically signal to the outside world that they had something to hide some sort of resources. They wanted to safeguard even if the only thing they had to safeguard with themselves because a lot of the members of the community were, you know, unemployed and extremely poor. That alone sort of symbolized sort of sort of a beacon drawing people to eventually attack and that's a slight spoiler but yeah. And you know, despite the problems that exclusion ends up causing Lauren as she realizes that her community could not handle that approach. Even then as she's progressing north and stuff and she's debating with herself, you know, who to bring into her fold exclusion and inclusion. They play a role, you know, she has to find form bonds and you know stay safe. But at the same time, the bonds that she forms could put her in danger if she's betrayed, or if the people that she invest in end up being harmed in some way because the harm that they experience will ultimately affect to as well.

So as Lauren is making her way up north, she is continuing to wrestle with this idea of inclusion and exclusion, because as she's progressing north in hopes of, you know, building a community of some kind, creating joining forming community of some kind. She's also forming and establishing her religion. Like I mentioned before, it played a major role in the community that she came from. And in fact, novel points out that one of the reasons people are attracted to, you know, religion to Christianity in this chaotic time and in general really is because it provides hope and hope in the form of an afterlife. And hope is what people really, really need in these hellish 2020s that they are dealing with. The Lauren comes to realize that the hope and the hope in the afterlife ultimately isn't enough for the people that have invested so much into it. One of the people in the community ends up, despite being a staunch believer that trigger warning, by the way, for suicide. Despite being a strong believer that, you know, suicide is a sin and a sentence rate to hell, she is so lost hope and can no longer trust in, has been dealing with so much pain that she ends up taking her own life.

And she takes her own life and as Lauren remarks, she takes her own life knowing, or at least believing, the pain hereafter. And yet, she finds it more of a reprieve than the pain she was experiencing here now. And so, as Lauren is witnessing these things happening around her, is dealing with, you know, loss and her baptism and her father's commitment to the church. She is continuing to develop the idea of Earthseed and she begins to contrast Earthseed with Christianity and particularly in the sense of how the two religions address hope and change. In Christianity, you know, they have the hope of the afterlife against this brutal life life, now a life, whereas Earthseed simply presents the central principle, God is change. That's the first principle of Earthseed. Second is that shape God. So first you have to recognize and accept that change is inevitable, often destructive, but you can also recognize the power to shape it. And so from that comes the third principle, which is to pursue the destiny, the destiny being the establishment of humanity and other worlds. And to be quite honest, this is one aspect of the philosophy of Earthseed that I think I diverged from.

Lauren, of course, has a lot of focus on the heavens as in the cosmic heavens and scattering Earthseed, which is, you know, humanity across, you know, all these different planets establishing ourselves in different worlds. But I feel as though the destiny is, in a way, once a destruction. I think it's a misplaced hoop, I guess. I mean, that's kind of one of the points of the book, right? Because there's, especially in the second book, there's a lot from the perspective of her daughter that kind of shows how as much her philosophy is a really understandable and in some ways admirable adaptation to the completely fucked up time she was born into. It's also in the same way that a lot of other people's philosophies become, you know, and that her parents and stuff are earlier in the first book. It's a way for her to kind of justify not paying attention to the people in her life and not not taking proper care of them because she's got this thing that's bigger than them. And by the end of the second book, you really have to sort of contend with the fact that, you know, you sort of have to grapple with how things with her daughter will handle in the end. I guess I'll leave it at that. Yeah. And yeah, that's part of it. I mean, she's so dedicated to this course, to this new religion of hers. And, you know, she's recruiting people into it.

You know, she's telling people at least this hope, you know, that follow Etsy, believe in a destiny, eventually, you know, space is going to become the real life heaven. We could actually get out there and make a new start for ourselves. And that's part of it as well. Part of the whole idea of the destiny is, you know, a fresh start for humanity, a sort of a maturation of humanity. This idea that, you know, once humanity establishes itself in other worlds, that it would have grown up as a species. Yeah. And it's one of the things that I really respect about these books that I think a lesser writer wouldn't have been able to pull off is that the degree to which that beating you in the head with it. You see her as first failed by the philosophies and ideologies of her parents generation, and by the systems that people had gotten stuck in. She's very much a character who grows up in a world where all the adults are stuck essentially like a system that has become a death cult. And she has to figure out a way out of it, which she comes to believe in so much that in her own way, she becomes stuck in that new thing.

And it renders her unable to see certain things that are important. And the book never portrays her as completely right or completely wrong because that's just not how civilization works. Things just change over time. And, you know, the the ideology that her parents and the adults are all stuck in in the beginning of the book is an ideology that worked to a degree at some point in the past. Which is just it's it's it does a really good job of showing a number of things, which is kind of what it's like to be a kid realizing that the adults have fucked you. What it's like to become radicalized and realize that the world doesn't have to be the way that it is. And what it's like to let that radicalization lead you somewhere to where you miss important things. Like there's so much going on in the evolution of what the characters believe in this book that is is just masterful from a storytelling standpoint.

Yeah. And I mean, the second book really does a good job showing her sort of blindness as well when it comes to things going on. Because what ends up happening one of the worst incidents in that second book is something that's of course not to victim blame, but it is something they could have prepared for a bit more. Yeah. A lot more, actually. Yeah, it's it's they're good books. They are books that you will if you're like me, you will start reading them and you will get really into the first book. And then you'll take a 10 minute break to like check the news and something will send you into a panic spiral and you'll read the next two books getting increasingly depressed.

It's good. Well, the next book because I mean the third book never released. Yeah, she never quite got to make it. Yeah, I'll get into that as well in a bit and how it ties into the destiny. Right. Yeah. So, you know, first principle, God has changed. God is not a person.

It doesn't love or hate or watch over us or know us. It just is second principle, shape God. God is malleable. God is power, infinite, irresistible, inexorable, indifferent, and yet God is pliable trickster, teacher, chaos, clay, and truly emphasizes the changes neither good or bad, but it is potential. And we could and we have a choice to either be a victim of change, a victim of God, or we can become a partner of God, or we can become a shaper of God, or we could just stay as God's plaything as changes, pray. It's unavoidable, but our actions can shape its direction and speed. And in the end, change prevails. And there's a comfort in that.

Because once we understand that, we can return that effort. The inevitability of change can be what thrusts us forward. And I think people who are invested in activism, in organizing and just revolutionary work, I think there are aspects of advocacy that I think will be very motivating, very impactful, very energizing. Because despite how circumstances play out, there's a recognition that we are never entirely disempowered. And so just the last point I want to get into about the destiny. I think that's what would make me, if I were to be in this world, I think that's where I would diverge from the earth seed orthodoxy. Because, I mean, Lauren talks about how, you know, history is just this repetitive thing. We have all these wars and kill a bunch of people and impoverish others and spread disease and hunger.

And her whole thing is just because that's how it's always been, that's being we have to accept that we can choose to do more, make something more of ourselves. And to who making something more of ourselves is establishing ourselves another planet. So if she is earth seed orthodoxy, I suppose I'm an earth seed Protestant. You're reform. You're earth seed Martin Luther nailing your theses to, I don't know, the door of her house in Seattle. Exactly. I would be a reformer of the destiny in the sense that actually the destiny could be creating a heaven here on earth, like rather than pursuing a cosmic heaven. I don't think it's even something that Lauren, at least I don't recall Lauren ever grappling with the possibility because she really is fixated on this cosmic idea.

I don't think she grapples with the possibility that humanity can mature, quote unquote here on earth, you know, she doesn't really draw much attention or spend much time thinking about things like ecosystem restoration or, you know, changing the pushing back against the government or the economic system that is impoverishing and inflicting violence upon people. She's just really fixated on the destiny. And so that's when I get into the third book and things I learned about the third book when I was researching for this episode. Butler actually planned on exploring the fulfillment of the destiny in the third book, parable of the trickster. In fact, she intended to have a seven part series. So the third book would have been near the middle. As the story would have focused on another woman named Imara, who is living on an earth seed colony in the future on a planet called Bow, far away from earth.

It is not the heaven that was hoped for, but gray, dark and utterly miserable. Everybody is homesick homesick, not just in like, oh, I haven't been home in a while kind of thing homesick in the sense of like, you know, when someone is like an amputee, and they have this sort of phantom limb sensation. Yeah, this homesickness is like a phantom limb pain, a neurological debilitation. It's like trying to graft humanity onto a new planet. And it's, it's, it's like, if humanity were a branch and this new plant was a tree, and like both the tree and the branch are kind of rejecting each other. And so she never really got very far into writing part of the tricksters. In fact, she had a lot of different ways of approaching it, a lot of different manuscripts that she got, you know, a couple pages into and then discarded. You know, so in some versions, the colonists ended up having like creeping blindness.

They get this telepathy in other versions, she has to solve a murder in other versions yet, but she becomes a ghost. Sometimes she's an earth seed skeptic. Sometimes she's a true believer. Sometimes she's a hyper empath. Sometimes she's cured of it. Sometimes the planet itself is filled with giant dinosaurs, other times small animals, other times intelligent aliens. And there's also this idea, this, I would say, very Twilight Zone-esque idea that the aliens that they do encounter are tokens of their escalating collective madness. And so the whole idea of Power of the Trickster and what have been the subsequent books was, you know, the continuation of the concept of choice, choosing to either, you know, live together, work together, struggle together,

or, you know, fight and scheme and lose their minds, break down, die and murder alone. In her speech to the UN in 2001, that would be like five years before she passed away. I think she died in, like I said, 2006. She speaks about how, before she even like started working on the first parable novel, she wanted to write a novel about a utopian civilization where everybody had a kind of hyper empathy. But then I just figured it'll be a utopian society because everyone would be inclined to, you know, behave in a more pro-social way because any antisocial activity they would have inflicted upon others would be inflicted upon themselves immediately. But then she realized it wouldn't work because sharing pain, the threat of shared pain, doesn't necessarily make people behave better towards another. She points to the popular, painful sports of, you know, like boxing and American football, you know. And so she recognizes that this idea of everyone being a hymn program path could cause a lot of trouble.

I mean, if everyone feels each other's pain, who wants to be a dentist? You know, who wants to be a noose? And so she discards that idea and she basically creates it. Lauren, who is a lone hyper empath in a world that is empathy deficient. Ultimately, I think Butler gets to the heart of, you know, a lot of the issues that we are dealing with. She grapples with all the questions that should still be explored. The idea of inclusion and exclusion that balance when, you know, developing community, concept of perseverance, concept of hope, the creation and destruction and rebirth of, you know, really life and just what makes life life. I guess I'll wrap things up with a quote. There's tolerance, have a chance only if we wanted to.

Tolerance, like any aspect of peace, is forever a work in progress, never completed. And if we are as intelligent as we'd like to think we are, never abandoned. That's it. Heart is changed, shape God, peace. Well, I think that's about as good a line as any to end on. Go read Octavia Butler if you haven't. Check her out. Go to the library. Her shit's all over the library. Libraries are filthy with Octavia Butler books. You'll find it.

Or steal it off the internet. She's not going to mind. Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe. It Could Happen Here is a production of CoolZone Media. For more podcasts from CoolZone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash sources. Thanks for listening.