Chapo Trap House - Bonus: Chris Discusses U.S. Navy Bombing of the Mariana Islands

Episode Date: November 16, 2018

U.S. Pacific territories: What are they? Why do we have them? And why is the U.S. Navy trying to drop bombs on a tiny, inhabited, volcanic island? Producer Chris discusses territorial activism on the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, and resisting the Navy running amok there, with journalist Sophia Perez. Go Fund Me for Super Typhoon Yutu Relief: https://www.gofundme.com/super-typhoon-yutu-relief-campaign More info about the Navy's plans to increase militarization in the Pacific (and where to donate to the resistance): http://chamorro.com Sophia's podcast, The Alternative Zero Project: https://m.soundcloud.com/alternativezeroproject or wherever you get your podcasts

Hi everybody, producer Chris here back with another little dispatch from activists around the country. This one comes to us courtesy of Sophia Perez. She is a writer who approached me after our recent Brooklyn live shows to tell me about issues regarding the US Navy and their bombing of the Northern Mariana Islands, a US territory in the Pacific Ocean. I hadn't heard anything of this story before and I didn't really know much about our Pacific Islands territories and it turns out it kind of reveals a lot about our territorial governance,

treatment of indigenous peoples and the continual slow grind of American empire on our territories all over the world. So I thought I would try to bring this story from her to you. Plus Sophia brought me a really tasty flan pudding-ish kind of treat which went a long way into piquing my interest about the Marianas. As always I'm interested in hearing more stories of local issues and activism, potentially covering them so if there's something you think I should know about feel free to get in touch with me, I'm at Say What Again on Twitter and my DMs are open.

I'll try to at least read everything sent as I'm looking for new material but also bringing me tasty treats is apparently a big decider. Alright on to island time baby. Hey Sophia, how are you doing today? I'm doing good, how are you doing? I'm doing great. Can you start by just introducing yourself to our listeners? Okay.

My name is Sophia Perez. I work for Marianas Variety which is a Saipan-based newspaper in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands and I have been covering the activists who are resisting the Navy's plans to convert a bunch of islands in the Northern Marianas into bombing ranges. Great. So we'll start with the number one question on everyone's mind. What are the Northern Mariana Islands? Yeah, most people haven't heard of them.

The Northern Mariana Islands are like the 14 islands in the Mariana archipelago that are north of Guam. Most people have heard of Guam. Guam is basically a modern colony. The inhabitants of Guam, the Chamorros or indigenous people never voted to become part of the U.S. They're basically just like a spoil of the Spanish-American War. The Northern Mariana Islands actually voted to join the U.S. through a commonwealth or

become a commonwealth through a covenant that came into action in 1978. So of all our territories, the two commonwealths that voted for some kind of official association with the U.S. are the Northern Marianas and Puerto Rico. Right. And then everything else is like a colony, like American Samoa colony, Guam colony. We got a couple of covenants. So could you talk about how that commonwealth is structured and what exactly its relationship to the U.S. is?

Just in terms of its local government, it's modeled after the United States. So it has a governor, it has a bicameral legislature, and then it has a district court. But just as far as how it relates to the United States, they created a covenant in 1978 that lays out what land the Navy can use, and the covenant basically says how the Northern Mariana Islanders will be represented in the United States federal government, and it's pretty minimal. Like they have a non-voting delegate in the House of Representatives, and he can vote, or she can vote on committee, but they can't vote on laws.

The district court judge is appointed by Donald Trump, and the Senate has to approve. There's different things involved that kind of loosely tie the Northern Mariana Islanders into the U.S. federal government, but unfortunately what happened is once the covenant was actually signed, when it became time to interpret the covenant, a lot of U.S. federal judges who are the people who are ultimately determining these laws have just decided to say, well, the covenant says that the U.S. is sovereign, so the U.S. has the right to make whatever law they want. So it's sort of like this commonwealth thing is kind of an illusion, at least in my opinion.

The CNMI is basically a modern colony too. Right. And as you say, the judges that end up resolving issues in the Marianas end up being mainland judges in federal districts, right? Yeah. It's like most people, even if you're like a judge or a senator or whatever, if you live on the mainland, you don't know about the Marianas for the most part. And issues resolving or revolving around the Marianas are very complicated and specific

to this super weird circumstance of being in the middle of the Pacific between all these different superpowers and a commonwealth. So these judges, they jump in and they have these issues put on their table, and they have no actual reason to learn about the Marianas, and they have no reason not to side with the federal government. Yes. And just for context, could you talk about how many people live on the Marianas and what their national origin is?

Yeah. So there's about 55,000 people across the 14 islands of the Northern Mariana Islands. In Guam, there's like 160,000 people. And the indigenous people of the Marianas are called the Chamorros. I am part of Chamorro. And it's like one of the oldest continuous civilizations still in the Pacific. They've been in those islands for like 4,000 years. And they've been colonized by like so many different countries at this point.

Yeah. The Spanish were there, the Germans were there, the Japanese were there. And now they're American. Right. So you have this population of about, you know, 55,000 people out in the middle of the Pacific who, you know, over the course of the 20th century, changed possession hands, you know, three or four times and have ended up in this unique relationship with America, where, you know, they're theoretically sovereign to themselves, but are de facto kind of administrated

by the US government. And I would hazard a guess that, you know, Donald Trump could not point out the Marianas on a map, you know. Yeah. No, I seriously doubt it. I'm sure there's plenty of places he couldn't point out on the same map. Okay. Let's talk now about what the military is doing out on the islands and why it's shitty.

Yeah. So basically, they want a place to practice like bombing and like make sure their bombs work. And it kind of doesn't even really make sense, but like what they want to do is they, so about like 3,000 people live on Tinian, which is like, you know, where like the plane with the atomic bomb like took off in World War II, it's been part of the US or like part of the Pacific theater for a long time. But the northern two thirds of the island were leased to them like the military in 1978.

Like it's like all part of the Covenant, but the Navy had said that they were going to build a military base that was going to be like a recoup base, like for families to come and live and it would be a hospital and that would be schools and a movie theater, a bowling alley. Because of people on like like 3,000 people on an island in the middle of the ocean would have never had. Right. So they were like, all right, fine, we'll have this base because it's a place where

we can work and we can have all of these resources. So they sign the Covenant and the US is like, yeah, we're going to build that base eventually. And so now it's like 40 years later, there's been no base. And now they're like that two thirds of land that we've been leasing, we actually want to just start bombing the shit out of it. Like they want to like shoot mortars, they want to like stage amphibious landings. They want to do all this stuff that's going to like leave behind unexploded ordinance that will like contaminate the soil and the groundwater and like end crops that the people of Tinian

grow. Right. They want to like, yeah, and like the people of Tinian would be like hearing the bombs, like smelling the bombs and like kids are trying to go to school. Like it's Tinian's 10 miles long. Right. And this is like literally in people's backyard. Yeah.

So that's what they want to do there. And then there's an island called Poggan, which is like one I've been there. It's like the most beautiful place I've ever been. Black sand beaches, green sword grass, it's full of like, like ancient Chamorro burial grounds and like crazy archaeological findings from forever ago. Like they got a volcano there. Yeah. Okay.

Yeah. They have an active volcano. So there used to be a small village there. They were like a hundred people. They had a copra plantation and they were making it work. But then in the 80s, the volcano erupted and everyone got evacuated. And since then, people are slowly starting to go back. It's kind of like hard to restart a civilization and an island that's 200 miles away.

Yeah. Currently like 10 people live there and are like starting to farm. They're like, awesome. But anyway, the Navy has deemed the island like uninhabitable. So like there's no worries if they just like blow up the whole thing, which is completely wrong. It's like teaming with food and life and like mango trees and like feral cows and stuff like you could easily exist there of all places to start a colony or something.

Right. It's a pretty good one. And my understanding of the whole Pacific Island culture is this kind of thing is basically traditional of, you know, you'll live on an island and then the volcano blow up and you move away for a little bit and then you come back like it's all part of these cycles. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I know it probably sounds outlandish to a lot of people like, why would you want

to live on a tiny island with a volcano on it? I mean, I don't know. That sounds pretty dope to me. I think it sounds cool too. I mean, but also like people live where there's earthquakes, people live where there's hurricanes. Yeah. It's just, it's the local natural disaster, you know, like, I don't know. People live all over the place in stupid areas.

Exactly. And the thing is, like, people have lived on that island for thousands of years, like to tomorrow people, when you come to that island, like you ask the ancestors for permission to land and it's like surrounded by dolphin pods, like, like tomorrow people believe that like dolphins have the, the souls of their ancestors in them. It's like, it is a spiritual place. It's like the crown jewel of the Marianas. It's a place that people go to heal.

They call it their mother. It's like, it's more than just an island to the tomorrows, even if there's not many people living there. So, and like the military wants to drop literally like a thousand pound bombs on it, like daily. As of the Commonwealth Covenant, the idea was that there would be kind of a mutual relationship between the U.S. military and the people of the Marianas in which the U.S., the military would provide this kind of infrastructure there and, and, you know, live in a somewhat normal way on the islands and then the Islanders would permit this to happen and become part

of America. And instead, no infrastructure has been built and they're just deeming various places that people are currently living uninhabited and want to, you know, bomb to hell anyway. And one other thing that I thought was particularly ridiculous about this that you mentioned when we were talking before was that people were worried about their fishing grounds and the military said that they would move the fish. Oh, yeah. I love this story.

Rosamund Santos told me she's like an activist, like the head of Guardians of Gunny or one of the founding members. So when the Navy decided to tell everyone about these plans, they had public hearings. And like you said, the people of Tinian were like, one of our fishing grounds is going to be inaccessible and that's like a super important part of our life. And the Navy, the Navy guy, and apparently they always show up wearing like Hawaiian shirts and like throwing out hang loses. Yeah, they got the Navyators on, big cigars hanging out of their mouth, you know, it's

the cool island Navy. Yeah, they get it. Yeah. And so they said something like, well, don't worry, we'll relocate the natural resources to a place that's accessible. Yeah. Like, and like everyone, I mean. Yeah, that just reminds me of like Alexander, the great type shit or, you know, you'd hear

ancient emperors be like, I will move the fish to new waters to make room for my empire. Yeah. I mean, and you would only say that to someone if you thought they were the stupidest person in the world, you know, and like, that's part of what's so annoying is like, okay, so the people of the Marianas have been like American citizens for like 40 years. They have access to American colleges. They have like the internet and like all this, I mean, they're like, it's like the Navy thinks that they still like live in huts and walk around naked or something.

And they're like looking at these people. These people are like Americans and there's nothing wrong with people that live in huts. Those people are smart too. But I'm just saying like the fact that they thought these people were so gullible and so out of it, I mean, they must have just looked at their brown faces and been like, these people are stupid, you know, like it's, it's infuriating. Well, can we talk then about what the people in the Marianas are doing to resist this and try to prevent the Navy from just, you know, doing whatever it wants on it's in on the

islands? Yeah. So the thing that the Islanders had in their court was exactly what I was talking about. Like if someone's really racist and things you're an idiot and you're not, then you have like the element of surprise. Right. It's still like what they did is they educated themselves on the law that required the Navy to tell them about this stuff, which is the National Environmental Policy Act or NEPA.

And the way it works is if a federal agency wants to take an executive action that's going to affect like local people, they need to tell those people about it so that those people can then, if they don't want to have that happen, they can like petition or like stage whatever, protest or whatever. So what they learned is that the process is the Navy in this case makes a draft environmental impact statement that lists all the things that are going to happen as a result of their plan. So they're going to say, we're going to destroy the coral reefs because of our amphibious

landings. We're going to, I don't know, we're going to poison the soil, whatever, just so you know. And then the people come to the public hearings, like they release this thing, which is like 3,000 pages, super technical language and the people have like 30 days to go through this stuff. And then they come back to the public hearings and they have the opportunity to ask questions. They can be like, in Poggan, if you're going to blow up this volcanic soil, this flow of pozzolon, like pozzolonic dust, which is a carcinogen, isn't that going to poison the

soldiers? You know, something like that. And then the Navy, after collecting all these questions, if they haven't addressed that in their draft EIS, they have to then address it in their final EIS. So what the Islanders did is through like petitions and letter writing campaigns and stuff. They came to the public hearings and submitted 30,000 questions. That's great.

I love that kind of, you know, using the bureaucratic red tape against them. Yeah. Well, because, you know, at the end of the day, if the Navy wants to do this, who's going to stop them? Right. You know? So all they can do is just make it as difficult as possible. Right.

So that's what they're doing is they're just, they're using the system against the Navy, if anything. So the Navy just ended up having to like completely retract their draft EIS and start over. So that was one way they managed to stall them. The other way they managed to stall them is that they've reached out to this, this like non-profit legal representation agency or whatever it's called, Earth Justice. And they found this lawyer called David Henkin and they got him on the case and he started looking at all of this stuff.

So what David Henkin did was he sued the Navy and said, you haven't been adequately transparent about this plan, which forced the Navy to then reveal its administrative record going back years and years and years. And what it turns out is there are literally like PowerPoint slides that are sent to like Navy higher ups being like, we need to move the Marines, like a bunch of Marines from Okinawa to Guam because the Okinawans hate the Marines and it's messing up our relationship with Japan. And when we move the Marines from Guam and from Okinawa to Guam, those Marines need

to be trained nearby and that's why we need training ranges in the Marianas. But the way that the NEPA process works is that if you have a plan, you have to reveal the whole plan. You can't, you know, cut it up into little chunks that like people aren't going to get mad about until it's too late, you know, which is what the Navy did. It doesn't make sense to move Marines to Guam and not have anywhere for them to train. It should have been, we're going to move the Marines to Guam, which was that plan was released in 2008.

So we're going to move the Marines to Guam and they're going to train in the Northern Mariana Islands and instead they cut a big fissure between the two plans. And it says in these PowerPoint slides, cut the plans into two or like reduce the scope so that we can avoid litigation. It literally says that so, so then that lawsuit is ongoing. And until that is resolved, they're not going to be able to, to move forward with their plan. Unfortunately, Hengen just lost in Northern Mariana Islands District Court, which is

like a head scratcher, but he's a feeling to the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco. And so we're going to find out if they're going to hear the case later in December. Yeah, we'll see how much sympathy San Francisco has for the middle of the Pacific. Just to add a little darker tone to this, could you explain why the Marines had to leave Okinawa? Oh, it's so bad. Yeah. I mean, actually just Okinawa hates the presence, like the Navy presence, the US Navy presence

on their islands. Like they've been protesting for a while, but their most recent protests in August, like tens of thousands of people came out and they were protesting in the pouring rain as the typhoon was approaching, like they are pissed. And it's because the Marines are horribly behaved. And most recently, like the biggest uproar was that there was like a gang rape of a 12 year old Okinawan girl that was in the nineties. But I mean, it's even if like the Marines were well behaved, these bases are just like

horrible for the local environment. And there's really, there's like the Okinawans that don't benefit in any way. They only lose. Yeah. So they're pissed that they're there. Yeah. And so this kind of gets into, you know, as you were pitching me this story when we met last month, what I think both of us find particularly interesting about it is just kind of how it's

exemplary of the kind of slow, continual grind of American empire in ways that are, you know, like very 19th century almost, like the whole thing around creating this arrangement with through a promising treaty with the, you know, between the military and the local population and then just immediately going back on the treaty itself, you know, that's like 19th century Indian territory shit, or that's at least what comes to mind for me. And it's, you know, going on, you know, right now and in courts that are, you know, being tried soon in San Francisco, you know. Yeah.

It never ended. But it's like manifest destiny just like kept pushing west, you know, like now we're in the Pacific. Right. And then there was also something you were telling me about that basically the administration of the island is sometimes just totally taken over by the United States for, you know, whatever reason. And the example that you were giving me was the immigration system.

Yeah. It was just like federalized in 2009. And so it's like the development of the CNMI since the covenant was signed is like crazy. It was like explosive exponential. And part of that was because they brought in all these foreign workers so that suddenly they could have this big economic bubble. And there were definitely issues involved. Like basically there were some Chinese companies that were like creating like labor camps for

like their own Chinese people, pushing out like huge amounts of clothing and being like made in America, you know, like there were problems. Yeah. But at the same time, like the U.S. then decided, okay, we're just going to federalize your immigration system. The covenant gave the islanders control of their own federal, like their own immigration system. And what the federal judges said was like, like what I said earlier, pretty sure the

covenant means we're so we're sovereign here. So we're just going to make laws for you, you know. So they, the covenant was like supposed to be this new monster give and take like bridge between two sovereign people. And basically the second it was signed, federal courts were like, I think we make all the rules now. Yeah. So we're going to just trash the covenant.

Yeah. And you know, that's the immigration system, you know, reminds me of kind of like the same kind of moves that involve that were involved with like the financial takeover of Puerto Rico and during the stack prices and stuff like that, it just, we sign these covenants and create these commonwealths, some kind of give and take. And then it's just, well, that kind of means whatever we want it to mean. Yeah. And that's what happens when you create like a contract between unequal powers, right?

It's like, like, what are you going to do when they don't follow what they said they would do or when they have a ridiculous interpretation of their original deal? Like for example, the whole Northern Tuthurinthotinian thing and like leasing, leasing land in the Marianas or the rule has always been, if the Navy leases and uses land in the Marianas, they need to be able to return it the way they found it. And they've been telling all the Islanders, like, don't worry, Poggan will look exactly the same in 10 years, you know, you're going to bomb it. Yeah.

What did a few thousand pound bombs ever do to the neighborhood? Exactly. Like, so that's what sucks about like these little recently decolonized nations after World War II or like, you know, maybe a few decades went by, it's like, they so did not have like even a chance, you know, because they had nothing, they had the opportunity to get some of the resources of these superpowers. And so they were like, as long as we sign like a deal, the UN will have our back, we'll do all this.

Right, right, right. The UN can't do anything for anyone, I personally think. So these people are just, they're in fake agreements that like rely on a superpower keeping its word. Yeah. So I'd like to finish up here by talking about, you know, something that you brought up that was interesting to me was the, you know, maintaining of culture and communities there.

And one of the things that you were talking about was how displacement happens, whether intentional or not, or not just by the fact of the Navy being there, right? Yeah. So the Marianas are kind of like Hawaii for Asian nations, you know, like there's a lot of like Chinese and Korean and Japanese tourists there. So they have a tourism based economy, right? And Tinian is like even more like that, like they only have tourism. So if the Navy is going to come in and just start bombing the place, like obviously no

one's going to go on their honeymoon next to a bombing range, you know, the economy's going to suffer. First of all, the people in Tinian, there's no way they would even stay if they started bombing. Like they wouldn't technically be kicked out, but like, who would stay in those situations? Right. And again, it's 10 miles long. So it's just, I'm just imagining like a massive bombing range in like Harlem in Manhattan.

If you were like trying to live in, you know, Soho or something, you know, it's not that big of a place. No. And it's like, and you're raising your kids there and you just know they're getting poisoned. Like why would you say, yeah, so they move, right? And like right next to Saipan, which is like I said, that's the one with 50,000 people on it. It's one of the more populated islands.

So you're going to be able to see the bombing and stuff in Saipan because Tinian and Saipan are like two, three miles away from each other. So we got people already leaving Tinian. Are they going to move to Saipan? That's going to have the same issue because of like the bombing, like their tourism industry is going to suffer. Or they're going to move to like one of the Chamorro diaspora spots, which is to say like Boise, Idaho or like San Diego in California, you know, like they're going to move to the

states, you know? And so that means like the diaspora spreads out. That means the loss of language, the loss of community, of shared culture, shared experience. It's because of these expected outcomes that people are saying that this whole Navy bombing thing is an existential threat to the Chamorro people as a culture. And to put like a fine point example on that, you were telling me about a person that you knew there who was active in trying to maintain the traditional navigation skills. So there's another indigenous people that like lives in the Marianas.

It's like from like a migration that happened 200 years ago, the Carolinians. And they live on a bunch of atolls and like they weren't colonized in the same way the Marianas were. So a lot of their like ancient knowledge is still intact. One of which is really amazing navigation skills where they can go to like islands that are like 10 square miles in the middle of the Pacific without GPS like from anywhere. And so like very few people hold this knowledge and he has this school he's trying to train the next generation.

And I was interviewing him and I was like, I don't mean to be disrespectful, but like can I just ask you what is going to be on everyone's mind? Like now that there's GPS, why would someone spend their entire life learning all this stuff? You know? He had such a good answer. He was like, look at Puerto Rico, right, hurricane hit and like all of like the technology and infrastructure that came from the West goes down.

And then like those same people that made you reliant on that stuff don't have your back. Right? There's like little to no aid or like not nearly enough living in the federated states of Micronesia, which is like I said, they're atolls. So like as the ocean comes up, the guy that I know, like he's lost like 20 feet off every area of the coast of his tiny island saddle wall, like those islands are slowly disappearing, the typhoons are getting bigger.

When a natural disaster hits and wipes out everything, they have no reason to think the US is going to come save them. You know? Yeah. So they have to keep their traditional knowledge intact to survive in that situation. Right. Yeah. I thought that that was such an interesting answer for that and it does seem immediately

applicable because the islands were just hit by two massive typhoons that caused significant amount of damage just a week or two ago. Right. Yeah. Last week, typhoon YouTube devastated Tinian and Saipan and the power is still out in Saipan in a lot of places. Some people say it's going to be out for months. And you're trying to get back there right now, right?

I am. Yeah. I mean, I'm waiting for like the airport to receive my flight. You know, it's like a lot of stuff is broken down there right now. I'm trying to go back and like help out. Yeah. So it does really make, I mean, that person's argument is a really powerful thing to talk about the way that the displacement of people and the destruction of traditional cultures

is more than just like, oh, we need to keep a museum open or something. It's like, no, when America lets us down, this is all we'll have, which was particularly powerful to me. So what do you, I guess to end here, what do you see as the future here and do you see anything in the future of the work that the locals are doing to try to resist the military? Do you have any things to watch out for there? Well, I'm definitely going to keep my eye on this appeal. Because if David Henkin and the Tinian base attorney, Kimberly and King Heinz can prove

that the Navy where it wasn't like adequately transparent and didn't like look into other options for how to do their ranges, then the Guam relocation might not even happen. I think. Right. Moving all the Marines to Guam was another process that involved paving over old growth forests and like just basically destroying like Chamorro heritage places. So in terms of this conflict, the lawsuit may actually save the day. We'll see.

But the bigger problem is the territorial status question. Right. Right. What's best for these people? You know, like, and there's, there's good arguments for being a part of the US as well. I mean, unfortunately, like the Pacific theater is a place where there are many superpowers, there are many predators. Maybe it's like living in a country where there's gangs everywhere.

You just kind of have to pick one, you know, what I would like to see personally and what I think would like change a lot of these issues is like either for these islands to become like independent or for them to become a state of the US. Right. And we've been hearing increasingly, you know, murmurs, especially after, you know, the hurricane of Puerto Rican statehood and just the idea of new states in general, which, you know, not so long ago might have seemed very farfetched, but, you know, hopefully coming up. And I think that, you know, a lot of people of certain persuasions on the left might be

very gung-ho to find as many places as possible to add as states right now. Yeah. I mean, and it's funny, so many of these things bring us back to like the times of conquests and manifest destiny. And this is another, another one, right? But like, just to be fair, like when Hawaii became a state, when Alaska became a state, they did have populations comparable to the current population of the Marianas as a whole, at least.

Yeah. I'm pretty sure Alaska had like 200,000 people or something, you know? Yeah. So it wouldn't be that crazy. But if people want the Marianas to join as a state because they want, they're hoping for like, you know, I don't know, more like liberal senators and stuff, like they should know it's actually super Republican there. Well, it's kind of ironic.

Well, maybe it'll end up being a weird GOP push to like add, you know, Puerto Rico and add the Marianas. I don't know. But you know, as long as, I guess if the goal is to increase self-sovereignty in any way, you know, that has to be a bedrock principle, no matter, I guess, how people vote. The one last thing I wanted to mention is that before you talk to me, my last association with the Marianas is that I remember during the Democratic primary in 2016, for some reason, for something I was working on, I was scrolling through Hillary Clinton's website and in her

merch section, she had like these Hillary 2016 or maybe I'm with her t-shirts and then you could choose them with a in the state design of any state in the union, you know, you could get one shaped like whatever Texas I'm with her. And one of the options was for the Northern Mariana Islands and it had the outline of the islands on it, which, you know, on a t-shirt just look like six dots. But I want that. I know. I was just looking to see if it was still available and it just struck me as like such

a funny thing of like data driven statistical, like we just have to make sure that every state and territory is be able to be represented with t-shirts for this thing. And I'm like, I can't imagine that, yeah, and I can't imagine that, that there would be any responsiveness to any of these issues to seek out the votes and I did some follow up and there is a Times, a time article from I believe March 2016 that does cite Hillary Clinton's primary victory in the Marianas as part of her keen, you know, America wide strategy to hoover up as many delegates as possible and how her ploy to get the two delegates or whatever from the Marianas is, you know, why her team is so much smarter than Bernie

Sanders' team, you know. God, it pisses me off so much. It's like the people of the CNMI don't even vote for president. Yeah, exactly. Apparently, they get primary delegates. So as long as they can convince you enough to vote in the primaries, I guess as far as the care goes. Yeah, nobody cares.

Nobody cares about these islands, but I really appreciate you having me on so that people can hear about them because I do think one thing I was going to say, so the Navy was doing the same thing in Vieques, you know, an island off of Puerto Rico, blowing up Pupils Island and then like, and no one cared for a while. And then finally like baseball players and like a couple like actors, I forget who started talking about it. And eventually the Navy backed off and like, and that's kind of the as like one of the only unused tools that's still involved in this issue is like, it is such a black and

white like the Navy is being a dick type issue, you know, and like, if people would just find out about it, like whoever's in charge of making these decisions, they're not going to want their name on it because it's evil, they're just blowing up the indigenous people's islands. Right, and again, this is a, I think an interesting, you know, microcosm of so many of these issues that affect indigenous people all over the country and this and you know, reflects in a smaller, more specific way, the things that we're hearing about in Puerto Rico and all those things.

So other than everybody who listens to this tweeting at US Navy, hey, stop bombing the Marianas. Is there any way that our listeners can, you know, keep following this story if they're interested in it or, you know, hear more about this or get involved if they're so inclined? Yeah, so there's a website called Tomorrow.com that is basically like, has like a library of like newspaper articles that's been following this for like years, you know, so David Henkin, the Earth Justice lawyer that's been like representing the islanders in the lawsuit, like he represents, his representation is free, but the activists who are like championing

this cause have to pay all of his legal fees. So like for if he flies somewhere, they have to pay for his tickets and stuff. So Tomorrow.com has like a PayPal thing that you can donate to that. I mean, other than that, honestly, like if people can like write articles about it or just share it and talk about it, like that would be great because it's so undercovered, you know, like people should hear about this. Yeah. If they have any curiosity about it, they can like shout to me, I'll hook them up with

interviews and everything. Are you on Twitter or anything? I'm not on Twitter. I have a podcast like basically once I started getting into this, it was like, whoa, this is important, but I didn't have like any like equipment or anything. Like I teamed up with this dude that had like a sound board that was older than both of us. So, so like the audio is horrible in these podcasts.

I'm going to be straight up. It's called the alternative zero project and it sounds like crap, but you can make out the interview enough to learn more about it if you're interested. And I'm like, I'm bringing some microphones home. So that's one thing you can do. Nice. Well, yeah, it was great to learn about all this from you. And you know, again, this, this is, you know, 55,000 people in the middle of the Pacific

Ocean, but it is America and thus the continual injustices of America also apply there. So, Sophia, thank you so much for coming on and talking to us about this. Thanks so much for having me.