It Could Happen Here - Asheville's Crackdown on Mutual Aid Part 1

Episode Date: February 22, 2023

James and Mia talk to Sarah, a mutual aid organizer facing felony littering charges in Asheville, NC.   Venmo: @/AVLdefendantfund Avlsurvival on Instagram Avlsolidarity.noblogs.orgSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadowbride. Join me, Danny Trejo, and step into the flames of fright. An anthology podcast of modern-day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, five-year-old Cuban boy

Elian Gonzalez was found off the coast of Florida. And the question was, should the boy go back to his father in Cuba? Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or stay with his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Or whenever you get your podcasts. We'll explore the stories that shape our culture. Listen to Black Lit on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. AT&T, connecting changes everything. Hi, everyone. It's It Could Happen Here. And today it's me and myself. And we're doing two interviews, we're just going to split over two different episodes. What we're talking about is a case in Asheville, North Carolina, where a group of people doing mutual aid work with unhoused people have been charged with felony littering. Now, we're going to get a little bit in the episode into what felony littering is.

Unfortunately, I don't think any of us can explain why that exists as a charge for individuals and not for BP or Shell or something, but such is the state. And so in the first episode, we're going to talk to Sarah. Sarah is one of the people facing these felony littering charges. Sarah has also been banned from parks in Nashville, which we're going to talk about. So Sarah will explain a little bit of the process that led up to those felony littering charges, what the situation is like in Asheville for mutual aid and for unhoused people.

And then we're going to talk to Maniba tomorrow. Maniba is one of the lawyers at the ACLU, and she will explain a little bit of the legal background to the case and what is sort of the way that the ACLU is helping these people oppose the ban. So we'll have two separate episodes, but we actually recorded them in a different order. So you're going to hear Sarah maybe referring to some stuff Maniba said, and Maniba saying Sarah will say some stuff. Just know that we recorded Maniba first because she had a pressing time commitment but we felt that sarah's interview

gives you a better setup for listening to maniba's interview tomorrow okay hope you enjoy we're gonna start out talking to sarah who's one of the people who is a a quote-unquote problem child uh in in in asheville we can oh you've seen? Yeah. Sarah, would you like to introduce yourself and tell us where you're from, child? Yeah. My name is Sarah Norris. It's so funny to be called something like a problem child because I'm mostly like what I am as a mom of a little kid. I'm a social work student. I am a career educator.

And I am also, yeah, one of 16 local organizers who has been facing for almost the last year felony littering charges in conjunction with a December 2021 arts-based protest. Yeah, I'm sorry that this bizarre thing has happened to you. Obviously, on the face of it, felony littering is a bizarre charge. And the fact that you were banned from parks is also very weird. So let's maybe start off with the situations before this.

What were you all doing in the parks that led to you being deemed unsuitable for parks? Gosh, in a way you'd have to ask those who so deemed us. But I can talk about what I did in parks for the year prior to being banned. And I was part of a collective who, at the beginning of the pandemic, did like six times a week meals, coffee, gear distribution, and parks. By the time I came around and started participating in these food sharings in these community gatherings um we were at like two or three times a week and um really what the way I spent my time in parks was uh Saturdays and Sundays I brought my daughter um to Aston Park um and we brought food with us gear with us art supplies with us um or nothing

with us we just showed up as us and we hung out and we distributed food tents packs socks toothbrushes really whatever we could get our hands on um and towards the end of the year um we got a little bookshelf and uh we were we were in charge of bringing books um on this like little white plastic shelf and like talking to people about what they most wanted and seeing if we could match them up with whatever we randomly had um it was really like sitting in the sunshine and, uh, making sure the coffee thing was full. Um, and mostly just talking to people, people who are unhoused, people who are housed, um, people who walked by and were like, what's this, what's this picnic? Why is everybody like using glitter glue? Like, Oh, cause there's a five-year-old and that's what we do um so so that's what mostly i

did in parks um and this is this this activity um is in the context of a city who i think in 2021 um i think we know there were at least 21 sweeps of homeless encampments. And a sweep, like that name for some of us really connotes violence, but I think it's important to name how violent those are. A camp suite means that folks have to leave the place where they've been living. And very often their belongings are then considered to be trash, are bulldozed over, are at a minimum lost to them. And this had happened over and over again in the city of Asheville. And this had happened over and over again in the city of Asheville. And yeah, there's a way that in the context of which these arrests have come, happened in December. And it was an arts-based protest and was really about, was in favor of sanctuary camping in the city of Asheville with sanitation services. That was the point of it. And there were like kind of standard protest related events on or sorry, arrests on Christmas night. So that's what Asheville police did. And I think it's important just to note that there were not unhoused folks evicted that night on Christmas night. And no one who was there was

pretending to be unhoused and was arrested. That's a strange narrative that the city of Asheville police department has set in open court. Um, but there were standard sort of like misdemeanor trespass, resisting officer arrest that night, um, including of journalists. Um, and then these felony littering cases came much later and in a, in kind of a different context. Um, but that's what, that's what happened, around christmas okay yeah that's already pretty weird but uh i think it's yeah it gets weirder yeah yeah so so presumably if you were not arrested then i uh went home to see christmasy stuff um and then at some point what a letter comes to your door saying that you've been charged with like felony littering

so my own experience um was that people organizers in the mutual aid collective that i'm part of who had been showing up in the parks week after week distributing food and gear started getting arrested uh in mid-january for um what we learned was something you could be arrested for which was felony littering and or aiding and abetting felony littering um which like honestly exactly and yeah and some people had one some people had the other some people had both um people were and this is you know our understanding is that there's an unstated but generally followed policy by the city of oshawa police department that they don't go arrest people at work but they went to people's work with five cops and arrested them um and this began in mid-January. And it continued into February. And the arrest, I mean, honestly, the charges on the charge sheets would read like crazy statutes that

weren't even felony lettering. It really seemed like they were making it up as they went along. Just from what I can say is, I mean, I can't speculate about what they were doing, but there was a strangeness to even like the documentation that people who were arrested received. And then at the, in the first week of March of last year, The letter that I received was similar to others that other folks received that day, which was in an envelope from the Asheville Police Department, but was on Asheville Parks and Rec stationery that told me that I had been banned from all city parks for a period of three years based on the commission of a felony. And this was how I found out that I even had any charges was through this letter. And that's true for more than me. That's true for a few defendants.

for a few defendants. So, you know, not everybody who is now we understand to be banned from parks has even received one of those letters. But I did, and a few of us did. And there was on there a sort of like, if you would like to appeal this, you have seven days. But the letter had been dated sort of five days before that. And we were like what are we even doing and so it's hard to it's hard to really communicate the like level of um both like sort of desperation and nonsense that was involved the next day. But, you know, so a few of us found this out. We were self, we self-surrendered. And, and because we were a lot of us around the courthouse and city hall, we were trying to figure out what do these letters even mean? Like, what does it mean to appeal this? What does it mean to be banned? And so we traipsed around city hall, city offices, the courthouse, trying to get some sort of answer.

Like, here we've got these. What does this mean? And every place sent us somewhere where they were like, we don't know what that is. Parks and Rec said, we don't know what that is. Go talk to the police. We said, we don't know what that is. Go talk to the magistrate. The criminal magistrate said, oh, this seems like a civil magistrate thing.

The criminal magistrate said, oh, this seems like a civil magistrate thing. So there's like a group of five mutual aid workers, you know, sort of just traipsing around trying to find out, like, can I, do I get to go give out sandwiches and tents in the park this week or not for three years? Like, what is, and who can help me figure this out? And no one could. And what ensued, we never got an answer that day. We just had city employees looking at us often with a like, wow, we don't, we're sorry this is happening to you. This seems really dumb expression. And eventually via email, it became clear that they were like, we don't know what this

process is, but we're going to tell you soon. Like, thank you for your email, you know, saying you're going to appeal it. And over time, we kind of got a little bit more like, okay, we're going to schedule the hearings. You will have a hearing eventually. Like, okay. We asked who will be these for what, what is a hearing? And they didn't know. And then like, oh, okay, well, there will be some police officers there. And you know, the city, a representative from the city attorney's office, and you will have a chance to provide information. And, you know, at this point, like none of, I think none of us had, maybe we'd had admin appearances, but like at this point we're, we're dealing with felony littering charges that we don't understand. We're trying to figure out whether we can continue to provide community care in the way we've been doing for years.

And it seems like what the city is offering is a chance to come and maybe entrap ourselves. Like it doesn't make any sense to us. And so, you know, those of us who had representation that we could speak to said, oh, we're coming. And have you heard the recordings? No. Well, if you would like them, I'm happy to send them. Mine is particularly, I can't listen to mine. I have a huge nervous system response. But mine is my attorney attorney asking over and over again questions of

the um of the representative of the city attorney it's not it's john maddox who's um named in the aclu demand letter um just saying over and over again like what at that point we hadn't even seen any discovery like we don't know what information this is even based on like right there are two cops in uniform pointing body cams that assume i have to assume pointing body cams at me um and in this in this hearing and my lawyer is just asking over and over again like upon what evidence is this base and they just said over and over again you are here to give information we are not giving any information my lawyer asking what is the standard of review here? Like how, upon what is this based? And the parks director just saying

like my decision and the, and, and the, and then, you know, what are the, what is the remedy? If this is, if the appeal is denied, there's none, then the appeal is denied. Like, and so it really was for me one of the moments where i realized like oh the city is is pretty hell-bent on keeping a bunch of sweethearts who give out tenson sandwiches out of the park and they're gonna like they're they're up to something here um but i'm happy to share that uh recording we have all of them recorded yeah i'd like that what a bizarre performance of like pseudo legal ceremony i don't know well and yeah and and like pseudo in a dangerous and extrajudicial way like i had no protections there right yeah yeah it was like yeah there's something to respond to yeah

these are star chamber proceedings like the king of France is going to walk out this is halfway through this I was just thinking it seems like such a British thing yeah you told me this was in Britain and you'd been like shooting the queen's

swans or something I'd buy it here we are in the land of the free. Well, and I think the equivalent of shooting the queen swans here is, um, hanging out with poor folks in a park. Um, and in ways that inconvenience or that apparently inconvenience the folks who go, who pay money because you have to, to play tennis at a public tennis court, which is like right by Aston Park. And we can go in in a minute as much as you want to, to what you saw as far as like their attempts after their attempts to, to pass them, to, to, to sneak through an ordinance. Now we know quite clearly from public records directed at, at food sharing in Austin park.

Yeah, it was really, I keep thinking about that, that Helder Camara line. When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I asked why they are poor, they call me a communist. But it's like, they, they really seem to have blown all the way past. They didn't even get to part two. They were just like, wait, hold on. You're giving food to the poor? It is time for a military response? It's just

horrible. Yeah. Being banned from parks for three years has a pretty big effect on my little life. know like there there are constitutional um aspects to it that matter far beyond me and and which matter in many ways more to me but the fact right now is that, I can't legally take my young child like to the

park by her house without risking arrest for misdemeanor trespass. Um, and, and to my knowledge, I won't be able to for three years. Um, and you know, they've succeeded in getting us out of the park they caused the harm to they disrupted community care um they did it they didn't need the ordinance um you know it does happen food distribution happens um but it's in a place that really isn't the same like my daughter can't go there she has sensory stuff like being in the the loud place that it is right now like really doesn't work um so yeah there's this there's this very um like the scopes of all of this um from how Asheville as a city views and treats the folks who live on the street here, who the city has most abandoned. There's the legal mechanisms, the like very strange way they are like doubling down on criminalization of folks doing community care. And then there's just like the really day-to-day

personal bits of this that affect all of us in different ways. And a felony would affect lots of us in different ways. Like it endangers professional licensure. Like I'm trying to get a social work license. Like people, it endangers professional licensure, of course, our right to vote, housing and employment. And, you know, I'm the like middle-aged white middle-class mom, second graduate degree person in the group. I am not really representative of our group. Like folks are in a lot less, folks are in a lot more precarious material circumstances than I am. And so much so that like, you know, it feels safe for me to come on this podcast. It doesn't feel safe for me to come on this podcast it doesn't feel safe for everybody

to come on a podcast it feels safe for me to have my name out like um it doesn't for everybody and i think um yeah i think that that's something that that has to be named too about like how what a threat this is to to folks future material well-being as well as currently like folks have lost housing over this folks have lost employment over this like um jesus christ yeah like even if you're found completely innocent or whatever like this has robbed you of your time or people at the housing or people's their jobs that caused stress and and in that way you know it does feel and often to us like the, like the punishment is the process. Yeah. It's just harassment.

Welcome. I'm Danny Threl. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter. Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows presented by iHe fire and dare enter. Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonorum. An anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters

to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how Tex Elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, better offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel winning economists to leading journalists in the field and I'll be digging into why the products you

love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough, so join me every week to understand

what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez.

Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him.

Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. So I don't know if y'all are updated on like there are five of us being taken to trial is that something you know okay yeah so yeah yeah but our listeners probably aren't so explain like uh so like right after this happened or at some point after this happened so i know when we started speaking i was like oh well i'd pra this shit out of all your city council people and you were like we already have um so can because there was some stuff in there that was just weird yeah can you

explain what you got from like this is got a problem child monica comes from among other things sure yeah gosh it's so even talking about it i have such a reaction and um that i can feel reaction and um that i can feel um and i should say you know i i speak about this to my name not not about the city the text necessarily but i speak about the situation to a lot of people um because it does feel to us like you know they're also i think they would like us to be ashamed but we are not ashamed of what is happening to, I mean, that's part of the degradation of the court system. And so, you know, all of my neighbors know what is happening to me, all of the people that I work with, um, and the various like, uh, school related jobs and such that I do. And to a person, everyone in Asheville starts with disbelief. They're like, no. And then I'm like, yes. And then they're just so disappointed. Like they're just, they're so no and then I'm like yes and then they're just so disappointed like they're just

they're so appalled often people say the the number 1984 like often people are like wow I really I didn't know some people did know you know that the city was was like this um but you know that that sort of paralleled my experience in a way, just like disbelief and then, and then disappointment. Um, but yeah, we recently, it's intensified recently seeing the, the publicly available, uh, communication between council members. between council members. And I think I want to be careful and I don't have it in front of me.

And so I don't want to misquote it. But what I can say is that anybody can go find on the City of Asheville's public records request. Anybody can go get those now because they've been requested. And so they're publicly available. And we have texts between council members that, that are kind of debate that,

that are in contemplation of an ordinance that would restrict food sharing in public places to, to require permitting in contemplation of that. Like we have, we have texts from council members calling those who do, those who do food sharing in Aston Park problem children and saying that it's a shame that the problem children have ruined it for the rest of the class. We have, we have one saying like you know probably if we go ahead we city council go ahead with this with this ordinance and there'll be a lot of protests and a lot of pushback which of course there was once it came out um and we have

the other council members saying like yeah that might be um but if permitting is the only way to get them to stop, then so be it. And I mean, I read that and I have a variety of reactions, but mostly just like a kind of nauseous disappointment. And this is not true of all council, because some folks have tried to like understand the gap um being filled by folks who who give out food and gear in a park um and i think some of the council and have and have recognized it as a gap um that is being filled and i think some are are so aware of what it says about the city that folks have to show up in a park and give out food and gear and there's never enough of either um they're so aware of what that lays bare about the abandonment that the city practices of those who live here um that that they can only see that and they can only be angry with us and call us problem children like I'm 43

yeah you can see the sort of like the kind of petty dictatorship mind that they've gotten themselves into where like they can't see the people who like you know nominally they're supposed to be serving right but like okay we know how far that goes but they can't see like you as anything other than just like

a child because that's the kind of like this is the sort of dictator brain that they've that they've yeah from like holding this power it's it kind of reminds me of um uh like how uh usually with the 14th you said let us in one like the state is me and therefore attacks on my reputation are like attacks against the state like yeah that's how it feels like you're being treasonous by making them look bad and i don't know if you saw this also in in there but um on the day that the arrests happened so that so those discussions about the ordinance were i think a little earlier in january that we should actually check that um but there's a there's one that came right on the the day of the first arrests for felony

littering that um where someone asks like can those arrested be banned from certain places um and and we know now yes but it is it's a lot to see that it's a lot to see that. It's a lot to see what looks, what looks so deliberately like depriving us of the right to be in a park. Yeah. Yeah. It's a hell of a lot. And so where is, where's the, five of you are going to trial. Yeah. An unknown number of people are banned from parks in Asheville. Yes. Yes. I i my understanding is that we someone has been told um oh we don't keep records of that which also doesn't make a

lot of sense yeah how can you enforce a ban if you don't have a record of who's been like wait yeah and i shouldn't be quoted on that but um but my understanding is that like um is that that has been the it's like oh no there aren't records that we can that can be made public about that because there simply aren't the records um which that just seems like incredibly bizarre secret police shit of like yeah no we have like we have we have lists that don't exist of people who are banned from spaces and we won't tell you what they are because they don't exist yeah you'll find out when the SWAT team comes from behind the swings and uh yeah just yeah yeah what yeah terrible so yeah you're banned from the park

you're facing you're going to trial um yeah five of us um have been um have been scheduled for trial and the other folks um have been kind of what's called taken off the calendar so they don't have nothing's dismissed um but um but they're not scheduled there's no there's no next court date for them okay so when when will you if you don't mind saying when would your trial date be our trial date right now is set for february 27th um okay so coming up it's coming right up yeah that's tough uh we'll make sure we get this out before then how can people support you support the work that you uh are not doing in parks anymore how can people help you through this this what i'm sure it's a really stressful trial process yeah thank you for asking um so we post um updates uh in a

few different places um uh like we don't have our own instagram right now because we're we just don't but uh our our defendant statements get released in a few different places including Like we don't have our own Instagram right now because we're, we just don't. But our, our defendant statements get released in a few different places, including at AVL survival on Instagram. We also have a website where we always post our own statements and also all the press that comes out about us. And that is AVL solidarity.noblogs.org um we have a venmo which is used the those funds are used for attorney fees um and and frankly like you know when someone

loses housing or their car breaks down and they have had trouble finding employment because they have felony littering charges against them. It's also used for material needs in that way. And that is AVL Defendant Fund. And all that's actually on the website too. You can find those. And honestly, it matters so much that people just know this is happening. When I tell people in Asheville, more people know now than did before. When I tell people outside of Asheville, there's very much a like, Huh? I thought about coming there. I heard it was cool. They do want those who make not just like a living from tourism,

but those who make tons of money from tourism are certainly invested in you thinking that it's really cool and coming to spend your money here and it's not cool in the ways that they want you to think it's cool it is cool because neighbors show up for each other and you can come here and we'll talk to you about that um but but there's a way that like people knowing what this place is really like um does matter and there's a way that honestly people just like sending us like their their beautiful energy and hope really matters too like yeah actually that actually really does matter so they can send us their beautiful energy and hope and material contributions as they might have them

yeah i'm sure people will because they're horrifically fucked up Welcome. I'm Danny Trejo. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter? Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of my Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel winning economists to leading journalists in the field. And I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. On Thanksgiving Day 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba.

He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez. Elian, Elian. Elian Gonzalez. Elian, Elian. Elian Gonzalez.

At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation.

Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I wanted to ask what is the sentence range for felony literary guidelines? So it's the lowest class of felony. As it happens, none of us have any criminal history. We'd be facing felony probation and so that could that there's a range there um of whether that probation is supervised or unsupervised um there's a range of how long it would be there's a range um of restitution in

terms of community service um and and i actually don't have the paper in front of me that says what the range of those things are but i feel like it's eight to twelve months on for probation um and a lot of that is simply at the discretion of of in sentencing um and um and i think that that there are some um possible restrictions on just like being able to leave the state okay what yeah jesus christ yeah yeah yeah i mean yeah sorry jesus christ like this was fully fucking sent me now because a a guy a man called robert wilson in san diego was arrested for hate crimes because he assaulted his gay neighbor uh since he was arrested he's driven around san diego and la dressed as a nazi sometimes with a horrifically anti-semitic slogan has just left the country and is living in poland oh

because i because fucking like somehow i don't i'm sorry i'm just i'm all right i love it this is fully fully sent me now we need anger too yeah yeah what is wrong with this shit yeah there was something else you wanted to get to yeah i i think i wanted to name so you know people are so in a way like i wish i had a super cut of everyone i've ever said the word felony littering to just like their faces over and over again um maybe i'll come to ashville and just vox pops and people yeah yeah um so there's a way that you know of course that's just like and if you add on aiding and abetting which we've all been bumped up to felony littering um but or sort of but but but the misdemeanor is conspiracy to commit felony oh no what's next like RICO charge for giving someone a book?

Yes. So, so, so on its face, you know, it has this ring of, of absurdity. And of course, like it is, you know, a lot of the press about us, you know, they'll go talk to someone at the school of government who says like, well, this is baffling. And at the very least seems like a misapplication of the statute, which is um huge amounts of waste often being like dumped by businesses um but i think it's it's it's telling that um a couple maybe a month or two ago there was an article in the citizen times a local paper about um us in a company waste pro which had dumped um an entire dumpster's worth of trash um and i'm like out somewhere outside of um of where it should have been like in the in the landfill um and but it was all about like how actually they had followed procedure because

there was like maybe a little bit of a battery fire or something. There was something going on with it where they weren't supposed to bring it in. So they just had to dump it. But in the course of this article, they interviewed a lot of people about like, well, what's going on with like litter in general and like big amounts of litter? And our case was never mentioned, but they did talk to some folks who um who do river cleanup an organization called green works and that person said you know sometimes there are like there's huge amounts of dumping that happens and we call the city and they say yeah that's illegal but we don't actually prosecute that and like you know that's the sort of thing also that seeing in print,

I'm just like, what, what sort of strange, like dystopian novel am I living in where the city is so upfront that like, oh no, like we wouldn't prosecute felony littering. But when it comes to aiming to disrupt a kind of community care and political speech that they don't like, they're willing to expend an incredible amount of resources on it. You know,

like the number of resources that have gone into this would have funded like sanctuary camping with sanitation services like for years for years and you know i think you alluded though maybe this is in the future in the podcast like to the way that the city of ashville or um our lawyers have been clear that when you when you look at the city of ashville's like public pronouncements and and um the way that that they talk about homelessness, it does seem like, oh, wow, we're really trying to get on this.

But at a recent meeting where a consultant group often referred to as like, yeah, that consultant group from now, because it's happened over and over again, presented findings about like, what should actually be done to end unsheltered homelessness here. Presented findings to the city council and the county commissioners. No one was allowed to talk except for, it was a huge meeting. No one was allowed to talk except for council members and commissioners and those who were presenting.

But a man who actually has experience, was experienced with homelessness, got up and talked anyways, and he was interrupted by the mayor. And like, that's telling in its own right. That's telling in its own right. Also telling is that later, also not allowed to speak, a local pastor got up and said, you know, I saw that happen. You know, like what we need to be doing is actually listening to the folks who've experienced this and like data. Yes, we need data, but we also need to like actually listen to the voices of what's going on. And he used the phrase, um, which I think was echoing, um, the, the man who had spoken earlier, spiritual death and said that this, he thinks as a pastor that Asheville is in a moment of spiritual death. And in a way, that's why I say like, we need your,

we need your material contributions to us as defendants, to collective care. Like when we have extra money in that defendant fund, we just give it away so people can buy more tents. And we need like we need some hope because Asheville is in this moment um where it's as a city it's making choices that seem so misaligned not just with like the image that it would like to sell to tourists but like with the people who live here and are actually like about it day to day in a neighbors caring for neighbors way like really misaligned with what we actually want and what we actually are capable of offering each other yeah yeah it is deeply sad that like we've created this abstraction of society which is being entirely antisocial

like no one wants no one yeah no reasonable person would do that but we've got the state which in theory acts on our behalf and is doing it and yeah yeah which also is probably i don't know to editorialize for a second uh often people make this argument i see it specifically around gun laws but with other laws too where this law won't always be enforced they'll only use it if they need it if they have to get a bad person they will use it if anybody threatens their interests their shit right like it's uh it was extensively mobilized for a ghost gun law here which uh made some bizarre things illegal like the bang stick which you use for spearfishing is now a ghost gun

and a felony and like there were definitely boomers who have dozens of those in their garage right and don't keep up on local ordinances and are now in theory at risk of committing a felony and then obviously the response to that from the council is oh well we wouldn't charge them what like who who are we do we can't trust the state to be benevolent when as your experience has shown it's anything but and you know we and i i can say this personally because i've spoken i've spoken to people in city government or in state government who have just said like hey do you know this is happening um and and they're clear about how um sure it sounds nutty but the city but like but that we as a group have been painted as particularly dangerous and that part to me is like i mean don't do this to anybody you know don't do it to anybody but the part where um where what's going on is this strange justification with the idea that we are dangerous people who deserve to be taken, who need to be taken out of a park, who need to not be allowed to be in a park, is particularly easily disproved by anyone who actually like hangs out with us, knows what,

knows who we are and what we've done, but not when it's just like a weird whisper campaign in the, in the halls of city government, like, oh no, they're bad. Like they're just bad. Um, like we, we've heard the, the, the lies that they've told about us. Some of them we have in, um, in, you know, public records requests like um that we haven't even talked about but it's it's a it's a really strange thing um to be uh to be painted that way yeah yeah it's bizarre and again i'm sorry it's happening to you um so i think to wrap up if maybe again you could just give that venmo so people can support materially and uh yeah you know if

there's any other social media accounts where people can follow along where people can send their support and best wishes anything like that yeah that's great um our venmo is avl defendant fund and um yeah you can so on instagram we're easy to get to through AVL survival. Um, and there's a way to contact us through our website. We have a little, we have a little email. It'd be so cute to get some supportive emails. And that website is avlsolidarity.noblogs.org. Amazing.

Yeah. And thank you all so much. Thank you for giving us your time i'm sorry that you're yeah dealing with nefarious state bullshit all right so that wraps up our interview with sarah tomorrow we'll be talking to maniba from the aclu the american civil liberties union and she'll be giving us a legal perspective and some more insight into this case. We'll look forward to talking to you then. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media,

visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio 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. You should probably keep your lights on for nocturnal tales from the shadow join me danny trails and step into the flames of right an anthology podcast of modern day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturno on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On Thanksgiving Day 1999, five-year-old Cuban boy Elian Gonzalez was found off the coast of Florida.

And the question was, should the boy go back to his father in Cuba? Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or stay with his relatives in Miami? Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom.

Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. diving deep into the rich world of Black literature. Black Lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audiobooks while running errands or at the end of a busy day. From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture.

Listen to Black Lit on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. AT&T, connecting changes everything.