It Could Happen Here - It Could Happen Here Weekly 117

Episode Date: February 10, 2024

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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. Welcome to It Could Happen Here, the podcast that we're starting as if it was a normal podcast instead of doing some terrible thing like we normally do. I'm your host, Mia Wong. This is a podcast about things falling apart, and this is a Putting It Back Together Again episode. Yeah, and I'm here with two workers from Donut Workers United, specifically at Blue Star Donuts, Lydia and Ben, to talk about unionization efforts and some really terrible union busting stuff.

So, Lydia, Ben, welcome to the show. Thank you. Thank you for having us. Super excited. Yeah, I'm really excited to have you two here. Welcome to the show. Thank you. Thank you for having us. Super excited. Yeah, I'm really excited to have you two here. So. All right, so Blue Star Donuts is a donut place in Portland for people who are not in Portland, question mark, which is probably a lot of you. I don't know. I don't know where you are right now.

So I guess the place I wanted to start with talking about this is how did you two get involved with this campaign? You know, it's actually for me, it was right before Halloween. I went to a coworker's house and, you know, we had some drinks and hung out and she just sort of, you know, the conversation just sort of organically led to work and talking about work. And this is messed up at work. This is frustrating us. And then she was like, hey, what's your opinion on union stuff? And when I worked at Starbucks in Texas,

I had tried to unionize my location and no one was interested. But she asked us if we wanted to sign a union card or a union authorization card. And I was all for it. You know, I'm very into it. So that's how it started for me. Yeah, so bouncing off of that,

it was, I would say a couple of days before that Halloween party. For me, I'm pretty close friends with the woman who started all of this. And so I was visiting her and she just kind of briefly mentioned, she's like, Hey, do you know what's going on with blue star and kind of open-ended question. And,

you know, this company almost every day, something happens. So I was like, I mean, maybe, maybe not. What's going on? And she's like, well, like, are you good with unions? And I'm like, oh, girl, of course I am. I was actually involved with a union and a previous job that was more higher end, with a union and a previous job that was more higher end like government board specific instead of an individual and i was like yeah it hit me what's going on and she's like okay cool we have a couple of people interested trying to unionize blue star and i was like oh sign me up like let's

do this and then at that halloween party when we were all kind of gathered there we briefly talked about it and how messed up things were swapped stories and it just kind of clicked that leads in my brain of like okay yeah let's do this so that was that was my end yeah it seems like it was a really a pretty quick campaign i know you all had an election um oh god how many weeks ago was that like two we're gonna have two weeks ago yeah yeah i guess it'll be like three when this goes out yeah so that that's that's a very very quick campaign um how many people like ish are are at the shop uh depends on if you're adding like all the satellites and versus like the

regular flagship store yeah i think we have 30 something at flagship uh which is the location on jefferson and then i think there's maybe 51 employees total yeah we're pretty scattered around all of portland with uh one shop in lake oswego um but majority of us are in headquarters at flagship yeah and that's something i think is is pretty interesting about this campaign and about a lot of the the independent campaigns is that yeah it's shops that are it's shops that are pretty small it's shops that are spread around and it shops that like you know it's shops with high turnover and i was wondering well actually i don't know i don't know i'm assuming it's high turnover there is a lot of turnover in the satellite shops for sure i I mean, I would even say that there was a fair amount of turnover at Flagship.

You know, we had a time where in our kitchen, which is the wholesale kitchen, which makes the donut bites, we refer to it as Red Kitchen. We had four people quit in four days. Jesus. Of course, they didn't. Yeah, they didn't replace those people.

They expected us to continue working and producing the same amount with four less people yeah but uh there were you know a lot of like poached worker like temporary workers that were coming and going while i was there and uh yeah some some pretty serious turnover that kind of happened with me last year i was working at blue star for like about eight months um oh it's the new year i guess two years ago and then i quit i left and then unfortunately last year i hit a little unemployment zone and i'm like i need a job so i came back to blue star for about three months. And this is when everything was going on. But long story short, sorry.

Last time I was there, we kind of had a little bit of turnover as well. A lot of people were not great. And we had a lot of meetings and got some people fired. Granted, like Ben was saying saying is that no one replaced them and so it's very much of like we have to cover them and a lot more uh quantity yeah so has the sort of speed ups from that was it was that one of the main things that was driving the unionization or like what, what other kinds of things were like driving people into this? There were a few things, a few main things, pay and inconsistency of pay was a real big issue. For instance,

there was a person in our kitchen who me and her started around the same time. We had very similar previous experience. None, neither of us were cross-trained. We did the same exact job. She was making $3 an hour more than I was. And so that kind of thing happens a lot at Blue Star. And one of the biggest things for me, honestly, was the point system, what they call the point system, the disciplinary system at

Blue Star. Basically you get a certain amount of points that you're allowed to hit. If you go over that amount of points, you're done, you're fired. And you can get, I don't remember the numbers exactly, but it's like one point for calling out of a shift, half a point for being 10 minutes late. There's all these things that you can earn. Yeah late there's all these things that you can earn yeah there's all these things that you can earn points for and it you know if you reach that number eight it doesn't really matter how good of an employee you are you're fired yeah and on top of that with the point system and it's incredibly unfair because you get points due to things you can't control, like the weather. It's very ableist.

Yeah. And the main issue is traffic and crashes. If like a car crash happens and you're stuck in that, you and you're like late to work because of it. Even when you like let your managers know and let your team know, you still get punished for it and you get points. And that counts to the eight point total. So that was a main part of the point system that really, really had us upset and very unfair, honestly. Well, and it's a very ableist system. I mean, there were multiple people in our kitchen alone

that had chronic illness issues, myself included. And there were two nights in the three-ish months that I was working there, two days where I had not slept at all the night before. And I was literally not seeing straight. Like I was seeing double. I couldn't walk in a straight line. I was not okay. And you know, there's some heavy machinery and like some really hot oil in the

kitchen. And I was like, I really don't think I'm safe to come to work. And they're like, that's fine. You know, stay home, get some rest, but you are getting a point. What the fuck? And yeah. So you know, a very ableist system. Yeah. And going off of that as well, the whole sick time and PTO was a mess. And when we get like paid time off, it won't even cover a whole shift. We'll be lucky to get four hours. Yeah. Jeez. No, it's insane, really.

yeah geez no it's it's insane really and um so i'll never forget like just recently our special christmas prize thing our grand prize on the 12th day was two hours pto two hours, that was their big, like, congratulations. Oh, my God. And sick time, too. And they were proud of that. Yeah, they were super proud of that. They were like, we worked so hard for this. You deserve this, blah, blah, blah. And with sick time, it, like, will barely cover a day. And on top of that, if you're, like, sincerely sick,

I got bronchitis on my birthday and oh no i had to leave work for like a week and around the like second or third day my manager is like okay well for you to be excused properly you have to go back and get a doctor's note from them and to prove that you are not able to come into work and you know i could ramble on like they they don't handle covid well they're like if you can stand up you can slap on a mask and come into work and covid specifically spread so quickly there because people were so scared of not coming to work that they would get punished and get points, this, that, and the other, that sick people will come into work and get other people sick. It happened all the time. I mean, I can think of specifically we had a coworker who, you know, kind of young.

This was, you you know she was kind of getting her feet wet in the working world and she had had some issues with illness and she came to work with strep throat because she was so afraid of getting i mean she literally was like in tears like having a breakdown to the managers because she was like, I, I can't get fired. Like I, I need to keep this job. And I'm afraid that if I don't come in, I'm going to get fired. And it's, that's, that's the kind of culture they create there with that disciplinary system. Yeah. It's, it's really rough because majority of these workers rely on this job like this job is their income and they can't really do anything else and it's so incredibly toxic there where they're just so afraid

to not come into work because they will be punished over it. I kind of goes without saying, which means you should say it, which is like, it is unbelievably disgusting to literally put people's lives in danger because you don't want to let someone take like a few days off because they're have fucking strep. Like that's unbelievable. Yeah.

Over like peace and love to blue star, but over donuts, like donut bites. Yeah. Like, yeah like yeah you can we're not saying that like like i i don't i don't i don't think i don't think it's okay to make like nurses go in when they're sick but like donuts like this is oh my god like oh you know as you know who cares if we're suffering as long as they make their bottom line you know yeah it's really one of those things it's like yes like they will survive if slightly less donuts are produced like they will be fine however comma all of you are getting terribly sick because of all the shit that is that is terrible

yeah no like i laugh all the time about it and i you know my roommate and i are like best friends i come home almost every day from those shifts being like you'll never guess what happened over like the most craziest hilarious things i'm like i can't believe this is real like i'm experiencing this yeah and we are we are going to talk more about the absolutely wild stuff that happened here uh unfortunately after we come back from this ad break that pays some of the bills question mark we are back so yeah I wanted to ask about some of the other stuff that's been happening

at this shop because everything that I've ever heard about it is just like I don't know just deeply weird and it's well i i guess i guess one place we can sort of start is like it seems like it's one of these places where they i don't know it has this very sort of like progressive veneer around it and then when it comes time to like you know like like even sort of live up to those ideals you just get this everyone's forced to come home with covid yeah and it's it's so funny because

you walk in and you know there's there's pride flags there you know all of the workers are you know queer and cool and progressive and you they're supporting the Portland Teachers Union. And yet, and this story is just disgusting. We had a worker in our kitchen, actually, in Lydia and I's kitchen, who sexually assaulted two of our coworkers. Jesus Christ. Yes, these women brought it forward to management.

Management victim blamed. They thanked these women brought it forward to management, management, victim blamed. They thanked them for keeping it quiet and not letting it interfere with their work. Yeah. Um, it was not handled well. That was, uh, specifically the, the manager of red kitchen, Brittany Bergner, a lot of just really like callous and inappropriate mishandling of that situation yeah and it was really disgusting yeah it was disgusting and i was so so grateful that i wasn't there when this happened because i would literally tore this man apart but the thing with that manager is that him and her got along really well. And what I've heard, I wasn't there. I heard that there was some favoritism towards him. And so when these allegations came up, that's when she got, she mishandled it a lot.

And it was not dealt with properly at all and it seemed very much swept under rug kind of very much so yeah he did nobody talked about it yeah he did get fired eventually but eventually that's the main thing yeah it wasn't handled right away and the you know the effect it had on these women that came forward that this happened to But eventually that's the main thing. Yeah. It wasn't handled right away. And the, you know, the effect it had on these women that came forward that this happened to, I mean, I, I hung out with them outside of work where they would talk about, you know, what happened and how it was handled. And like, you know, they were sobbing. They were, you know, their lives were torn apart over this.

It's a very serious thing as, know, all we all know to be sexually assaulted and then, you know, to have it treated this way by someone who's in a position of authority over you. It's, you know, I, I can't help, but keep using that word disgusting. It's just, it's inhumane. And honestly, like that's blue star. Yeah. Especially by a company that reaches how open and awesome and close family we are and then behind the scenes they're actually mistreating their workers literally every single day so it's it is it is disgusting i have no other word to describe it yeah i mean that's like someone sexually assaulting you and then them not being fired means you can fucking run into them at your job which is like the fucking

just absolute nightmare shit that is like the worst fucking shit that can happen we all worked in the same kitchen we all work in the same kitchen so we were guaranteed to see each other for most of the day every day and it's like yeah you know you expect these women to go to work and stare at this guy and and you know talk and laugh with this guy who assaulted them like that's crazy yeah yeah that's absolutely fucking terrible and i hope i hope like i hope fucking like some shit happens to these people because like god oh yeah don't worry we got him banned from some bars because his classic thing is drugging drinks oh jesus christ so we've read the word and got flyers and i'm pretty sure he's banned i know for sure two bars but i think others as well i'm not sure yeah yeah don't get me wrong i will

definitely go out of my way to destroy a man's life yeah and so i i guess like you know with with just like the absolute fucking horrifying shit going on and also with youtube like you know people doing organizing outside of the workplace to go after these people uh it makes it makes a lot of sense that you know the unionization campaign has been going um and i wanted to ask i wanted well i guess i wanted to talk about sort of the vote and the stuff leading up to the vote and the things that happened to youtube because oh my god yep yeah um you know we we had our vote on january 17th there were seven votes that were left unopened that were challenged by blue star management three of them because the employees were no longer active employees and four of them for, honestly, just completely bullshit reasons. They had to get a new envelope. They were there before the vote, but seven minutes after the cutoff

that Blue Star wanted, one person had to get a new ballot. These are technicalities that really should not prevent someone from having their vote counted. And so we, as DWU Blue blue star objected to six of those challenges um the four that were very ticky tacky for obvious reasons and obviously that was the weekend that was the week of the big snow uh snowstorm as well we should talk for people who weren't in portland for this okay so the city of portland this is the thing i have heard i am a chicagoan so like i grew up in snowstorms right but the city of portland this is the thing i have heard i am a chicagoan so like i grew up in snow storms right but the city of portland like this is i get this this is this

is this is the this is the the mia rants about the city of portland for about five minutes thing because oh my fucking god the city of portland does not actually substantively do any kind of like street clearing they don't do salt they don't really i think they might have like two snow plows and this means that you know when it for example snows and then the temperature goes back up go freezing then it goes back down below freezing the entire city is covered in a sheet of ice and this lasts for days and days and days and days it is terrible i i came into portland's like in the middle of this like you you walk three steps and you're just going flying on this ice. It is terrible. It is dangerous to drive.

It is dangerous to walk. It is, it is dangerous to scoot on your butt. Like terrible. I don't know. Like if you did this in Chicago, if the city of Chicago failed to clear the streets sufficiently that this was happening, the government would be fucking collapse in a week all right portlanders you deserve better i personally would have preferred snow like six feet of snow over yeah a half inch of ice the ice is insane the whole entire city shuts down and it's it is incredibly dangerous for sure and the city does not prepare for it the city like landscape itself is not prepared for it and yeah it's awful i tripped and fell like three

times within a week and my roommate and i were literally locked into our house for days like four maybe five days we could not leave and on top of that we had to turn our water off like it was a whole nightmare so many so many people lost power um so many people's like yeah and the nlrb building itself was shut down for i don't remember how long but it was shut down and so it was it was shut down for, I don't remember how long, but it was shut down. And so it was, it was shut down for most of that week leading up to the vote. Our vote was on a Thursday. And I think Thursday was the first day that the actual office was open. There might've been some people there on Wednesday, but the office itself was closed. The, you know, Monday was Martin Luther King Jr. Day. So that it was closed, closed. But, you know, I tried to take, you know, Monday was Martin Luther King Jr. Day. So that it was closed, closed. But,

you know, I tried to take, you know, I, in my little hatchback with two, two wheel drive hatchback tried to, to drive across Portland to take people to the office to turn in their, their ballots. And, uh, cause we were doing a mail-in ballot, but some people had left it at the last minute, you know, as human beings do. And, um, we, we get, human beings do. And we drive across this ice and snow. We get to the NLRB office. There are security guards in the lobby, and they say, well, you can't go up there, it's closed. I'm like, okay, what about tomorrow?

They're like, we don't know. We'll be here, but we can't guarantee that the NLRB office will be here. And so I call up our rep at the NLRB, Michael Moles, and I say, hey, what's the deal? When can we drop these off? And he goes, well, actually, you can drop them off when we're not there. You can slide them under the door. As long as the person whose ballot is being turned in is turning in the ballot, like you can't send someone else to do it for you. So we go back up on Wednesday and get

some turned in. And, you know, at this point, the people who wanted to turn in on Tuesday, they've got, you know, they've got work, they've got other things going on. They have to find a time to get in. So we're going like Thursday morning, Thursdayursday afternoon right before the vote and that's why all of these votes were you know missing things or you know a little bit late is because the whole city was shut down for half a week almost a week and things got you know mess up yeah like the the fact that the city of Portland doesn't, does not, like, refuses to buy snowplows and doesn't know that you can use beet juice as an anti-ice thing. Like, the fact that the city leadership is utterly incompetent, like, should not be a reason why your union vote doesn't, your votes don't get counted. That is absolutely absurd. It's also, like, you know, I like okay like i i get like it the responsible

thing to do during this storm was to close and a lot of places were fucking open and that is a disaster but the fact that the lrb is closed and and all the freaking workers are still having to go to work is like just oh god oh well and i i emailed or i called um michael moles again our rep at the nlrb and i was like hey like this is kind of unprecedented like can we push the vote out like a week um just to make sure that everyone can safely get their ballots in and he told me in no uncertain terms that we would not be doing that. He gave me this, you know, long speech about how hard it is, how difficult it is, how, you know, we have to get all these permissions. And, you know, I'm fairly new to all the legal avenues and legal parts of union stuff.

And so I didn't really have a counter argument. So I was just like, you know, throw my hands up. OK, whatever. We'll do our best. Well, at at the time people are literally risking their lives yeah and people drive cars they're risking their cars they're risking their lives trying to get these votes in so that's why this appeal to these challenges are so important that it's not fair if we don't count in a full ice storm and the actual you have to account for it yeah so like all these things matter and should count and that's why we're really pushing that these votes be counted well in two two of the votes were people who had quit and one of those

was was lydia and she was straight up intimidated into quitting and go you can lydia if you want to talk about it oh my gosh okay so they i use this word pretty loosely but the more i talk about the more it's true um they forced me to quit point blank period yeah um they pulled me into this meeting where um at blue star they have these every 30 day check-ins and meetings to promised a raise after working here for 90 days. But first, we have to go through a whole meeting and this whole spectrum one through five, they rate you on different topics. So I come in and not only is my manager there, but HR and our head chef is there. And last time I did a 90 day, that didn't happen.

It was just my manager. So immediately I'm like, what is going on? This is weird. And we went through the normal stuff until chef interrupted and brought up my schedule. So at the time I was working two jobs, blue star and another bakery. And before any of this, I checked in with my managers and chef to make sure that this was possible and okay to put me from full time to part time at Blue Star. And they were thrilled. They're like, oh, that's so great for

you. Congratulations. Yes, we can totally work with you. This is not a problem at all. I'm like, okay, great. Awesome. And so they brought up my schedule and they're like, so we're going to change some things with red kitchen and we're going to change production times and we're going to bump everything up a couple hours. Totally fine. Okay. I get it. And I said, I'm like, okay, well, you know, I work until 1pm. So, you know, I'm not available to be here until like, two. And apparently, that was an issue. Because my schedule, my availability is no longer working for them, which doesn't make sense because a closing shift still exists and I'm I told them like you can use me I am part-time you can use me for like four hours closing like I am okay with that and they

shut me down chef kind of clicked her teeth and was like you know that's not really worth it for us and uh what are you doing over the holidays because this is right before our christmas break and i was i was kind of confused i was like oh nothing i'm just at home and she's like okay well you should really take this time to think about your future here with us and like kind of like stared at me and i'm like what like i what do you mean and she's like you know we're changing some things around here and we don't want to get rid of you we don't want to fire you, but you should really think about your future here and really leaned in and emphasized that. And kind of like everyone was kind of like looking at me as if like, hey, we want you to quit, but we're not allowed to like say anything like that. anything like that and I asked my manager I was like it kind of sounds like you're not giving me any options here what am I supposed to just leave and they looked at each other and they

looked back at me like you know we can't really say one thing or the other so you know we need your decision by the first and I'm like what I? I, it was very, it was very tense. It was very weird and awkward. And I was very confused because I never thought my job was on the line. I never thought it was going to be jeopardized. And I kept offering them different options. I was like, put me in front of house. You know, last year I was trained.

I was actually supposed to be a manager in our other kitchen, but they kind of screwed me over on that. That's a whole different story. Like, I know how to handle purple kitchen. Put me there. Like, I'm OK going from one job immediately into here to save time. I'm okay going from one job immediately into here to save time. And with every single option I was giving them, they shut me down and would not work with me at all.

And so, and then on top of that, they extended my 90 day period. And from doing that, I was no longer allowed to get a raise. And yeah, like you have to finish 90 days and you get a raise and I'm like period that's the policy everybody knows that but because my 90 days was extended like probation period I was no longer allowed to get a raise and what's funny is they extended my 90 days as well i can talk

about that more later but this is it's just it's just odd because red kitchen our kitchen which at that point was made up of i think six people all local union supporters wore buttons every day yep we were the most vocal people about it we wore our union buttons every day we like everybody knows that like we were firm believers standing up for this union and and that kind of segues into the furlough situation where they all shut down our kitchen they our whole entire team our six people of vocal union supporters suddenly suddenly no job. It's incredibly messed up. And we're going to come back for more unbelievably messed up stuff after this ad break.

And we're back. Going back to the votes that were challenged, the other person who quit was one of the main organizers. She was the, her and one other person were the people who kicked off all of the organizing at Blue Star. And basically she, they changed around her schedule so much to kind of force her into quitting. Um, she was very stressed with school and like the, just the way that they kept messing with her made her quit. Basically she was afraid that she was going to be fired. So she went ahead and quit. And, uh, so that, that was that other challenged vote. But yeah, the furlough situation is wild.

And I also got my probation extended. I actually filed a unfair labor practice because of that. Because the reason they gave me for extending my probation was that I was bringing their words on paper, bringing the vibe down by complaining about working conditions. Bringing the vibe down by complaining about working conditions. Jesus Christ. Let me explain to you. This is how ridiculous this company is. Like, I give the most absurd reasons where I'm like, this must be the Truman Show.

Like, this is not real. Where are the cameras? Well, and first of all, complaining about working conditions is a federally protected act. Yeah, I can do that and I cannot be punished for that. It is against the law, which is why I filed the ULP. Second of all, the reason I was complaining is because they had taken us down from three to four people opening shifts to two. And the way people work. Yeah.

The way two people operates for opening shift in red kitchen is one person is mixing the dough and loading it into the fryer. And that is a constant thing. Like you, you mix batches for like four hours, like on, back to back to back to back to back. And the other person has to stand at the end of the conveyor belt and take the glazed bites off of the conveyor belt and put them onto trays. This is a nonstop job. You cannot even walk away for a few seconds. And typically, the best practice that was done the entire time I was

there up to this was that you did not do that position for more than an hour because it was physically difficult to stand in one place like that and do that and do those repetitive motions. And two, it's like fucking psychological torture because you're in the corner of this room. You're not speaking to anybody. You're literally just staring at your own hands. I mean, it's, it's not like nobody likes to, they call it catching. Nobody likes to catch. And I was doing this for up to three hours a day, uninterrupted. And I have sciatic nerve issues with my leg. And I, you know, I made them aware of this multiple, multiple times. I cannot catch for more than an hour at a time.

And you know what I was doing? Catching for three hours every day. So they're just trying to injure you. That's what I was. Yes. And that's what I was complaining about. I was saying I'm in pain. I'm literally having to go on muscle relaxers every single day because of the effect

that this is having on me physically. Like I, I can't sleep at night because my leg is so tense and it's in so much pain from fucking catching these donuts and putting them on trays. It's insane. And so, you know, they're yet they're panel panel penalizing me for having the gall to voice the fact that what they're doing is literally ruining my quality of life really and going off that every single issue we bring up to management they have the tone of like well that sucks that's a bummer deal with it and literally yeah just, yeah, just like, okay. And we're like, okay, fix it because we are human beings with nerves and bones and we cannot stand on our feet for this long. Like it's, it's wild. It is. And you know, that, that kind of also segues into

the furlough thing that we were all very vocal on union support. I had filed, at this point, two ULPs because of the extended probation and because they suspended me for three days for something that was absurd. And I had filed two ULPs and this came like right on the heels of that second ULP. They, you know, we had Christmas day off and I had taken the next day, the Tuesday off. So I was visiting family in Dallas and I believe everyone else had that Tuesday off as well. And we come back on that Wednesday and, you know, we're working a regular shift. About halfway through the shift, they say, okay, we're having a red kitchen meeting. Everyone come into the office, which that had never happened before. We'd never had an all kitchen meeting like that.

They pull us in and we're all looking at each other on the way in like, oh fuck, what are they going to do? Are they going to reduce our hours? Are they going to fire one of us? What's happening? And we get in there and head chef Stephanie Thornton says, okay, so we've had an issue happen. What's happened is our distributors have told us that they are returning a bunch of our product. Some of it's expired, but most of it is just fine, but it's nearing its expiration date. So they're returning it. I'm saying that, okay, sounds fake, but okay. And then they say, unfortunately, because of this, because we don't have space in our freezer to continue to put product in the freezer, to continue to make product and put it in the freezer,

we are having to put you guys on indefinite furlough. We don't have a return to work date. We don't have a plan for bringing you back. We asked, can we get, those of us who are cross-trained, can we work in other areas? Can you cross-train those of us who aren't so that we can work up front or work at a satellite store? You know, they're they are literally hiring for satellite stores, but they furloughed us and we were we were asking, can we do these other things?

And they said no. Point blank, no. So all of a sudden, you know, six people who had jobs, you know, a minute or two ago, all of a sudden we're facing, for me personally, I'm facing homelessness. That's the reality. And we have our two shift leads, they are a couple and they live together and that is their entire income. And it's just, on a kind of more personal note, it's wild. And maybe this is me being a little bit naive, but it's wild to have spent months in company with these people and have them pretend to care about me. And then have them do something that quite literally puts my life in danger, especially because I had just signed up for healthcare with them. And I have multiple chronic illnesses. I, I have to go to doctors regularly. And all of a sudden I'm like, holy shit, my life has completely changed in 30 seconds. You know,

this is the day after Christmas. What the day after Christmas, we were getting two days notice. what the day after Christmas, we were given two days notice in two days, starting on January 1st, you don't have a job and we don't know how long, but you know, we'll let you know if we ever are going to do production again, and we can bring you back even just for a little bit, which they didn't, they started up production again and we were not told or called in or anything. production again and we were not told or called in or anything so i want to touch a little more on our shift leads for a second yes they are a couple they live together but much like them they are basically they're facing houselessness as well and luckily they do have another roommate who can somewhat cover them but that can't last forever yeah and just the other day i had to run them groceries they can't afford anything and it's it's a huge fuck over for them

because they love they are so passionate about this job and like they rely heavily on it and they got their pay raises and their higher positions and more responsibilities and to be so betrayed like that from a company white literally destroyed them our uh shift lead he had a full breakdown and stormed out and walked out and it affected them so heavily and so emotionally and still mentally and they keep trying to you know find other jobs and you know still in contact just yesterday they sent me a screenshot of them talking to chef and being like hey is there any updates is there you know any way we can come get our job back because you know we're still waiting for you to tell us literally anything and chef said, we don't know.

We can't give you an answer right now. And just kind of brushed it off. And one thing that's particularly insulting is that they ended this meeting with us where they were telling us we were losing our jobs by giving us a sheet of paper on how to file for unemployment in Oregon. And the thing with an indefinite furlough, if you don't have a return to work date, then you have to jump through the hoops of applying for jobs in order to get unemployment. So if you have a return to work date and it's within four weeks of the day that you got

furloughed, you can get unemployment for that time and you can just hang out and get unemployment. If you don't have a return to work day, you have to treat it as a layoff and you have to be making conscious efforts to job hunt every single week. You have to record those efforts. If you get an interview, you have to take it. If you get a position offered to you, you have to take it. And it has to be in the field that you got furloughed from. And there's all these very specific rules and it just makes it incredibly difficult. All these hoops you have to jump through. It's dehumanizing, it's fucked up,

and it's insulting. There was support other than that if you call that support there's no severance package there was no like short in the meeting they're like yeah sorry guys this sucks but like it just didn't feel real like this whole situation was not empathetic at all and and like obviously you know you can tell their excuse is bullshit because like okay like let let's say what they were saying was real that like okay they got a bunch of stuff for turn they don't have room in their freezers it's been a month they should now there's no way that they now still do not have room in their freezers like what well and here's the here's the kicker is that we were for maybe them a month maybe over a month really since we filed the union petition since we handed them the petition

we had ramped up production even though we were in the slow season and we were not actually like the the bites that we were making were not ordered by anyone we were just putting we were making extra to put in the freezer not only the freezer but they rented a whole entire warehouse we have a this is their strategy yeah so they they did this you know i don't want to say they did this on purpose but it it is suspicious to me that they're building up these bites in the freezer when they didn't need them, when they didn't

have orders for them. And now all of a sudden, oh, we don't have room in the freezer. We have to let you go, you know? Oddly convenient. It is. And that really ramped up when we gave them the union petition november 17th yeah which is just really very blatant retaliation which yeah yeah

and i have filed an unfair labor practice for it's called a what they call a lockout for the you know us being furloughed. Like you said, it really is blatant, especially given that even walking into that meeting, all of us were wearing our union buttons. Why would you lay off an entire department, especially when that department is what is keeping your business afloat? That is the moneymaker for Blue Star is those wholesale bites. And we've been told that all the time.

It's like these donut bites make the money. So make that make sense then. Why are you shutting down that moneymaker? And the other kitchen and front of house are still there, still doing production, not touched by this at all yeah and that's one of these things you get with employers all the time where it's like well okay so employers very very clearly and obviously know where the money is made they know

exactly where the money is made literally up until the moments that you start asking for more of the money you're making them at which point suddenly oh, who knows where money comes from? Suddenly we're in financial trouble, yeah. Yeah, it's like, oh no! Some have no money, even though the CEO has at least three Teslas. Totally. Oh my god. Yeah, like Katie Pope can't take a little bit of a pay cut

so that we can all keep our jobs and survive. It's wild. Yeah, and this is one of the other things too, is that businesses, the way capitalism works is that businesses would rather fucking lose money

than have their employees have slightly, like, not be in debilitating pain, not be sick, and get slightly more money yep it is crazy to me because it this whole you know they're they're hiring all these lawyers to to you know you know handle the the union stuff i'm like you shut down red kitchen you hire these lawyers you're doing all these efforts and i'm like you would have saved so much money if you just recognized our fucking union like that's how easy it is you know and not only that we have what five shops in portland we have a shop in la as well

los angeles where prices are extravagant like they have money we know they have money and we are honestly at the point i'm at the point of show me your books show me prove to me that you do not have this money because then that will be a different discussion like it's just it's frustrating it's typical corporate business and i i'm over it and the i'm over it for how they treat me i'm over how they treat my friends my team it's it's ridiculous and they should know better honestly yeah yeah so is there anything else that uh you two want to make sure you get in? Maybe just the GoFundMe. Yeah, yeah. How can people support you and support the union?

Yeah, so we have a GoFundMe set up for the six furloughed workers to provide a month's worth of income, two weeks for the employees who quit early. And that is, it's called Help Blue Star Employees Fight Union Busting. And right now we're at just under a thousand dollars. Our goal for all six of those people's incomes for a month is 15,000, just under 16,000. I don't know if we'll ever reach that goal, but as much as we can get is great because right now, I'm surviving on cereal. I know that the shift leads we were talking about earlier, they're getting groceries from Lydia.

People are struggling. Yeah. Yeah. I was definitely in my survivor era on rice and beans. It's really tough. And it is a big goal. Realistically, it is. But not to sound desperate or anything, but truly every little bit helps.

If you can really only afford five or ten bucks, we'll take it. That is, we're so grateful for anything. And it's people's lives. It's literally people's lives. Multiple people are facing not being able to have a roof over their head because of this company so truly any little bit helps yeah so please go help them out i i i don't know this it it's just really really brutal too and especially like again like this is also a fucking terrible time like there's there's never a good time to like be at risk of losing your home uh winter is especially fucking

bad for that there yeah so there there's so much there are so many sort of terrible compounding things that these union that these union busting companies are sort of relying on to screw over and intimidate and hurt the people who make them all their fucking money. Well, and that's what it did. It scared a lot of people into unfortunately voting no. It scared a lot of people who were really involved in the organizing process to step back and not respond to our text messages and not continue to advocate for the union. Us getting furloughed really fucked with our whole union campaign. respond to our text messages and not continue to advocate for the union um it you know that

us getting furloughed really fucked with our whole union campaign so yeah go go go give go go give these workers your support they really need it and yeah go you know and and one thing again like that we need to sort of we need to sort of emphasize is that this is illegal they cannot fucking they legally cannot do this um but you know this is this is one of the things that is fucking hard about union organizing is that the law if assuming the law does like ever fucking catch up to these people it takes time and yeah there is one little thing i do want to make sure people know about because we just found this out pretty recently while we were doing shop visits they have jars uh for tips that say tips

are shared with the kitchen they're not what yeah that's not true that's not true we saw no tips and there was an instance where we accidentally got tips and one by one, we were sent to the back to sign a form saying this was an accident. You are not getting tips. Sign this. And they took our tips away. Like, my God,

it's not, it's not fair. And on top of that, they're lying to the public. They're lying to their customers. That kitchen is getting tips when we're not. Yeah. And I will say, in addition to the

GoFundMe, we do have if you're not able to support monetarily, we do have a Twitter and an Instagram where we post updates if you want to follow along with our progress and see how our election goes and everything. It's just on both Twitter and, or excuse me x and

instagram it is at dwu underscore blue star so yeah we'll have we'll have links to all of that in the description awesome word of mouth is really the biggest thing even going off again like if you can't support us financially you can just share the gofundme your friends family whoever and just spread it out there yeah and so go go go do that um yeah go help any way you can and yeah go go go fight your own bosses because they're screwing you like they're screwing you in very similar ways to what's happening here too yeah and this is this has been naked up in here you can find us at twitter and instagram at happen here pod and you can find more close-up media shows at close-up media yeah go go go into the world and make life worse for people who do Hey guys, I'm Kate Max.

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a podcast about how things are falling apart and people trying to put them back together. Today, more in the how things are falling apart category. We are talking about the border again, and I'm by jen budd who you've heard from before but just to remind you jen is a former senior patrol agent with the border patrol and now an immigrant rights activist welcome to the show jen thanks for having me again yeah you're welcome so we're gathered here today i guess to talk about this ridiculous spectacle of the texas national guard occupying some border adjacent land the border as i understand right down the middle of the river there so like they're not actually occupying that physical border right they're occupying the nearest land spot to it is that right correct the border in that area is in the middle of the river yeah and preventing border patrol

from accessing the river and i think like we were just talking before we recorded but the reporting on this has been a bit kind of slap shot a lot of it has just been social media posting so i was hoping that you could help us understand like a this isn't like like a standoff between Texas and the border patrol right like but it's not like Texas kind of swept in and and suddenly they were there and they weren't there before it border patrol had to allow this to happen to a degree is that fair to say I think it's fair to say I mean at the moment I think the administration is trying to portray that you know the Border Patrol tried to come out there and rescue. I think the latest I've heard is that reportedly there were six people in the river that were drowning. go rescue them and the texas military the i guess texas national guard yeah ended up locking them and saying they can't go now this park is a very well-known park that during the trump administration

they were trying to build a wall they've been wanting a wall there but the people in in that city uh i believe it's eagle pass is that they you know they don't want a wall there that's a city park and and they just don't want a wall right there and so greg abbott has sent in texas national guard to put up all the razor wire all the you know plocation devices with call it a saw blade on the middle of it that they claim saves lives. All this stuff apparently is rescue technique stuff. And they claim it,

it saves more lives than it hurts. And, and so the people that put out this stuff to injure people are claiming that they didn't allow people to drown. So I find that hard to believe. But at the same time, the border patrol is, the border patrol is always silent. You know, they're always silent about this. They'll let CBP talk for them. They'll let the administration talk for them. The union is claiming that Greg Abbott is the best thing in the world. They think it's great that he stopped their own agents from rescuing a woman and two children. So apparently three of the people got

back to shore on the Mexican side and then the woman and two children ended up drowning and their bodies were found on the Mexican side. Texas military is claiming that when they were notified that people were in the river, they went and they shined lights and they looked, but they didn't see anything. We did have the, I don't know if it was Texas military, it was in the area of the state of Texas on the same Rio Grande, where some either National Guard or Texas National Guard or military or somebody just was sitting in a boat in front of a woman with a child and she was starting to sink into the sand because it's like quicksand over there and they wouldn't rescue her and border patrol drove by really fast and put waves so it's not surprising that they wouldn't go rescue them

this is the first time that they've publicly said that they've had a confrontation with a border patrol, but I don't think the border patrol. Tried very hard to rescue them. I mean, they do have boats and stuff. So yeah, they have, yeah, they, yeah, they, there are many ways. Yeah. They, they have lots of equipment to rescue people sometimes just less desire shall we say yeah and i mean it's to me the interesting thing is watching

democratic politicians point their fingers at greg abbott and rightly so for this for this scene but yet at the same time what the border Border Patrol does every day, their deterrence policies every day, kill people every day. So the Border Patrol is not doing anything different. So to act like, oh, my God, we didn't get out to save these migrants and we really wanted to is kind of like, well, I mean, people die probably every hour crossing that river and you haven't cared before. And we've been doing this since 1994. cared before and we've been doing this since 1994 so it's kind of it's kind of hard to get really upset at Greg Abbott he's doing nothing but what the National Border Patrol has done for you know 30 something years and at the same time the victims are always the migrants that you know that that's what we should be upset about is that

our policies whether federal or state are killing people who are seeking asylum and seeking safety that's what it is yeah exactly i think like this attempt to make it a like republican governor is killing migrants thing it is an attempt to like distract us from the fact that democratic president is killing migrants in much greater numbers just by virtue of of the amount of land covered by uh you know biden's jurisdiction compared to abbott's but yeah i think it's very hypocritical and it's it's funny to you in that or i'm not funny but ironic and that the border patrol union is putting out the numbers of when trump's last year as president of deaths on the southern border and these are just the ones that they find

not yeah the actual number which is usually three to four times as many and then they're saying oh look in biden's year this has been 2023 was the most deadly year but it's like you know you guys never cared about how many people were dying before and now all of a sudden you're like you're killing more migrants than anybody else are you jealous what's the deal yeah like the idea that these people are concerned that they're like in jacumba they keep people in open air detention for up to a week and in the freezing cold you know in in san diego san ysidro people are you know two people have died san ysidro one person has died in a combo probably dozens more people have died crossing in other

routes that we haven't seen this year it's been not as wet as previous winters but just in my pre just in this week i've seen people in extremely dire medical distress and i've seen border patrol scream scream at those people and scream at people trying to help those people and not do anything to help. So I'm finding it hard to buy that this is all Greg Abbott's fault. Not that Greg Abbott isn't a piece of shit. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I think we're in agreement on that. But like, yeah, the attempt to lay all the blame at Greg Abbott's feet suggests and suggest that there is incomplete bipartisan agreement it seems on killing migrants even right like we don't see in the trump era we saw you know aoc turn up and cry at the the uh you know unaccompanied children

or the separation of family separation detention we don't even see that anymore like we don't have any of that this and that's reflected in the press right we don't even see that anymore like we don't have any of that this and that's reflected in the press right we don't see anywhere near as much coverage of the brutality at the border as we used to and one thing that you've mentioned before we started with that you had there's some like there's pretty clear case law or supreme court decisions at least about like what bp could have done or what their rights are vis-a-vis the National Guard could you explain some of that well it's clear immigration precedent so in 1875 so prior to the Civil War a little bit after the Civil War states had always done their own immigration so

if you showed up in a boat on New Orleans in New Orleans Harbor, they would have their own immigration. You would have to pay. A lot of times in the California area, California was charging, especially Chinese migrants who were coming over for the railroad and the gold rush and things like that. When they brought groups of Chinese women over, then California would label them all as prostitutes and no good people. And then they would put them in jail and then fine the captain of the ship, like $500 a person, which is by today's standards, it's like over $14,000. So it's a lot of money. Yeah. a lot of money yeah yeah and so one of the one of the female migrants in 1875 said you had no right to hold us in jail you don't have this right there's nothing that says that you have this

right according according to uh u.s law back then and so the case is called chai c-h-y lung l-u-n-g versus freeman and in 1875 the supreme court decision was that immigration is solely uh the federal government's right to enforce and not the states simply because of diplomatic relations also that we have treaties with other countries and we have relationships with other countries and they believe that allowing states to do their own immigration would then hurt the United States in diplomacy with these other countries. And then the other thing that they mentioned was that there had been no due process given to the migrants during the time. And that's afforded to migrants, whether they're undocumented or not, based on the Constitution. And then recently, in 2000, the most recent time that it was brought up was in 2012

when Arizona sued the United States. The Supreme Court upheld in that case that law enforcement can question citizenship during a legal stop, but denied other parts of the Arizona law SB 1070, which allowed their peace officers to act like immigration officers. And they said the reason why they can't do that, which is what Greg Abbott is doing. The reason why the Supreme Court said they can't do that in 2012 was because of Article 6, Clause 2, which states that the Constitution, federal laws, treaties made under federal authority take priority over state laws. So it's, you know, the supremacy clause, basically, is what it is. And so it's kind of like what Trump did when he was in office, where he starts separating

children and he starts putting everybody who crosses the border, whether it's for asylum or for nefarious reasons in between the ports, he would take away their children. And I mean, that is was in violation of the 1980 refugee act. And yet nobody really fought it on that basis. I'm not sure why they didn't fight it on that basis. I'm not an attorney, so I can't tell you but at least you know this this decision chai lung versus freeman it's been around since 1875 it was brought up in 2012 and the supreme court also used chai lung to make its argument of why

arizona couldn't have certain parts of sb 1070 out so what g Greg Abbott is doing is the same thing Trump is doing is like I'm gonna break the law and you can take me to court and we'll see if this court agrees with what the last court said so they're just breaking the law and then daring people to take them to court is simply what they're doing and in the middle of this obviously the migrants are caught the humanitarian organizations and everybody's caught it causes chaos basically is what it's doing yeah it's causing an absolute mess at the border and i think understandably what you hear from migrants is like the people who are better informed who have access to information resources finances are telling me that they don't want to go to texas right because right it's a mess and it's a mess that kills people and that's exactly what it's supposed to be it's

supposed to be uncertain and it's supposed to be cruel and so people who have the chance to will come here people who can't afford to right they're coming north directly and it's sort of texas is there you know if they head directly north that that's where they end up texas has a huge amount of border of course then they're the people who tend to be the ones who are forced across there and unfortunately that's really on a much higher as you said a much higher death rate right nick it's do you have a sense of like i suppose it will be hard to tell because we have very little in the way of proper statistics but like what is the most fatal kind of part of

the border it's difficult to tell if it's the sonoran desert or if it's the rio grande river and i say that because we don't see half the bodies or we probably don't see 90% of the bodies. Yeah. I know a lot of reported deaths are on the Tio reservation, the Horned Hound reservation in Arizona. There's the bombing, uh, very Goldwater bombing area that nobody's allowed in, but when they are occasionally allowed in, they find like groups of 13,

15 skeletons and stuff like that. So I think it's a toss-up between the Sonoran Desert and the Rio Grande River. The other problem with Texas' border is that primarily the majority of the property on the border in Texas is private property. And they tend to be very large ranches, which maybe no ranch hand or anybody goes out, you know, through the acres to see this and they might never ever find the bodies.

It's kind of like the Sonoran desert and the P.O. Nation and then the bombing range. And then just the fact that the desert will just destroy the bones pretty quickly, especially once the winds cover things up. We have a fair amount in Campo, as you know, in the Hacamba Campo wilderness area and the mountains and the Laguna Mountains. But I don't think it's near as bad because you can look at those mountains and see how bad they are. And most people don't want to dare cross those mountains. But many still do

obviously i worked out there you you're familiar with that area and so um we have more than our fair share for for certain yeah but i would say i would say probably it's between texas the rio grande and then the sonoran desert for sure. Okay. Yeah, I think that makes sense. It's probably a good time for us to break. The border is killing people. These adverts probably aren't, but they're still not great. So enjoy these products and services. All right, we are back and and jen i wanted to ask like with regard to these i think there's a couple of things that people might not be clear on we've tried to explain them on the podcast before

the first is like border patrol will always say that all the bp agents are first responders right it's this line that they have and like do they like in terms of rescues are they sort of like technically obliged to make rescues i mean i've seen people in very great stress and i've seen border patrol do nothing more times than i can count and so like i'm wondering like is there some kind of uh like technical obligation that they have that they're just ignoring? Or is it sort of at the discretion of the agent whether they think it's safe? What's their like official policy there? Well, if you're an agent in the field and you come upon a migrant drowning in the water, you know, has slipped and broken their leg and you're trying to decide if you should go down into this area or jump in the water and stuff.

It is up to the individual agent to decide if you should go down into this area or jump in the water and stuff, it is up to the individual agent to decide if they can handle that. So what you find most often, the agents who are in the boats and working on either the oceans in Florida, they work on the ocean in California, they work on the ocean. And then obviously along the Rio Grande, all those agents have specific training obviously in swimming all agents have training in swimming but not at the level that the agents who are working on the water deck so you have to go through extra training when you take that position it's like being on the horse patrol you have to go through horse training and so forth but all agents are trained

in just basic cpr just basic splinting, that kind of first aid stuff. But not all agents are what they call, not Bortech, but BORSTAR, the rescue organization that they have now. And that didn't start until like the late 90s. And I didn't even see him when I was an agent, even though I was there until 2001. I didn't see him out in Campo. Whenever we had a call about a rescue in Campo, at least the old Campo station that was on Forest Gate Road before they changed it all around. Yeah.

We had to go out in teams. And that's the only time we worked in teams. Otherwise, we hiked alone as if we were doing a rescue, especially in the wintertime, because it was even more dangerous. And we hiked all night until we found them. So us regular agents just on the line would just move our positions and keep going. And we didn't necessarily have any specific training. We didn't rappel out of helicopters back then and do all that stuff. What I think that they started for was because we had a lot of attrition in the 90s. And it was more about getting us regular agents that patrol the border away from the border because we were having, that's when our massive suicide started

because of all the deaths that we were seeing. And I think it was an effort to keep the average agent from seeing the brutality of what they were doing, quite honestly. And so like I, as an agent, had lots of experience with dead bodies and so forth. But agents today who are on the line, they don't. They sit in their trucks, they watch the cameras. And then when a dire thing comes out that somebody needs to be rescued, four star handles it. They might go do perimeter things and help out a little bit, but they're not involved in the actual rescues. You know, in my day, I didn't know. I didn't know that many agents who had never seen who had never experienced that. who had never experienced that. And I kind of think in a weird way that that's what makes today's agents so non-caring, so non-sympathetic to the migrants. We didn't call them invaders. And it's

not to say that we weren't racist and we're brutal. It's just, it's gotten even more brutal and more racist since I was an agent. And certainly I would say that the brutality that may have happened, that would have happened maybe on an individual basis or with certain groups of agents, it's now policy throughout the whole agency. And you're expected to be that brutal. And if you can't be that brutal,

then you can't hack it. So, but the idea that they're all first responders, that just means they wear a badge and have a gun and have a car with red and blue lights on it. But they're not all necessarily trained in the type of rescue that we're talking about in the Hakamba area in the mountains. It takes very physically.

I could do it when I was younger, but obviously I can't do it now. Yeah. Yeah, we would have to get our best best agents in some especially if we went north of the checkpoint north of i-8 up into the lagunas we would have to get our best fit agents up there to do that yeah yeah and it seems like but i don't see them as much certainly like when there's a search and rescue now just like everything else at the border it very often falls on volunteers and community groups and uh people who are willing to give their time and take their non-negotiable personal risk to rescue people because hey i think we might have rescued more people back then even with half the amount of agents simply because when we got the call we went

and we looked and sometimes we'd meet the federal rallies right at the border and they'd show us this is the group and so we'd look for the sign and then we could you know follow the trail frog it and get ahead of it whereas today if you call boar star well all the boar star agents have to get their gear on and then they have to get in the helicopter and then they have to fly out you know yeah and i mean that's even if they're willing so like i know uh was with a group that made a call this weekend for a gentleman who was in distress and had been suffering very greatly from exposure and uh the agent in the office said it would be hours maybe days before they arrived right so like

that's if you can get through if you can get them to come out like um you know that this and that that's very common that's something that that that is not unusual at all this the disdain for coming to right the disdain for people's lives right for coming to rescue them um it is extremely obvious really and like that's again that's not someone who has to be located like i can give you a a gps reading down to you know like i think it's 20 figures you know an extremely accurate location it's just oh yeah we didn't have that in our day i mean we had there was gps but we didn't have gps capability i never worked with gps so i worked with a compass that was pretty much it

yeah it's uh it's yeah i mean they have they have more technology than you know i know the agents today tell me they can see each other in the field so they have something or their gps system allows them to track each other and so they can see where each other is we never had yeah they uh it's a military technology it's just like everything else that's trickled down to the border patrol and sometimes trickles from the border patrol down to the military actually with a lot of the surveillance technology and like i think another thing that people might not be aware of and this is something that i think has happened uh, but it's been going for several years now. It's the deployment of the National Guard to the border.

I think people know that that is happening in Texas, but I think people probably aren't aware that there's also a federal mission to the border, right? That encompasses much more than Texas. What are the National Guard... I mean, I know they sit outside detention camps in Hukumba shouting at me, but what is their mission in theory at the border? What are they doing there?

Well, in theory, their mission at the border is now they have these giant processing tents, you know, in San Diego and in Tucson and other things. So in general, what they're supposed to be doing is not actively arresting or apprehending people because that according to the law would would violate it what they're supposed to be doing is is maybe sitting in a stationary spot operating the scope where they can tell border patrol at night you know there's a group over here, dah, dah, dah. And then the rest of the time, they're mostly supposed to be working in the processing centers, assisting people if they need to go to medical or if they need this or that. And so they're just supposed to help so that the agents don't have to sit around and babysit so much so that they can be back in

the field. That's what they're supposed to be doing. And I mean, lots of presidents have done it. Barack Obama did it, you know, so it's not unusual. What is unusual is that in Texas, you have Texas DPS and the military, Texas National Guard, actually pretending like they are border patrol agents and running around and apprehending people, even though they do not have that legal authority the u.s government has not given it to them and then the other thing i think which is legally the most dangerous is where they push the migrants back into the water number one the law is that if you set foot on u.s soil then you're entitled to an immigration hearing if you so choose. And you cannot turn somebody back.

A Border Patrol agent cannot legally turn somebody back once they've crossed. So once they're across that middle part of the river, they're in the United States and they're your problem now. So you have to deal with that and you have to process them. You have to figure out who they are. You have to run the records checks and all this other stuff it'll be interesting you know the the biden administration hasn't pressed abbott on this and i've always wondered why are they allowing him to do this and take over immigration as a state authority yeah i think they just don't want to fight it yeah they don't want to be attacked on like this like this idea that

biden's like there's this myth of biden's opens borders which is a actually ridiculous and be like as erica reminded us last week like we all as u.s passport holders have open borders to us all over the world it's very problematic we think other people shouldn't um but yeah i think the idea of like looking weak or like you know he wants to butt dress himself against an attack from the right it's the same reason why he won't get rid of the um border patrol union because you know the border patrol union now that donald trump before he left uh died but he um gave them what's called security designation. So they are a security organization now, which means they're like the FBI, they're like the DA and all this other stuff. And so they can't have a bargaining unit.

So the Border Patrol Union is actually illegal under 5 U.S.C. 7-1-1-2, little b, little 6. But Biden is weak and he doesn't want to look like he hates unions he always wants to look like he's strong on unions because he's the union politician and he refuses to get rid of them but the fear and the reason why that law exists is exactly what we see them doing now where the union representatives who are border patrol agents they have national security information and they're actively working against this current administration yeah so that's why we have it but he's just weak and he won't do anything about it right and and certainly i think whoever wins next time they're not going to do anything aboutp union and i think it's one of the worst accounts on twitter.com

but i also like i'm in the event of a republican victory, which at the moment, it's looking like Trump might be the nominee, right? Certainly it seems to be a lot of support for Trump. Kind of these people seem to have his ear on immigration and they seem to want the same things, right? So I'm wondering, Biden has been bad. His border policy has been objectively bad and it's very hard for me not to see it as racist. Like it's very hard for me not to see it as racist like it's very hard

for me not to see his immigration policy is specifically favoring white people and specifically disadvantaging black people and i don't think i could be persuaded that's not the case what do you think like it seems that immigration policy only moves one way and it just gets worse and worse and border policy does the same what are they like demanding and what do you think is sort of at stake uh in in the in the upcoming election like this year's election regarding the border so i was paying attention to what speaker johnson was saying before we logged on to to talk and he was saying that there was going to be no deal for the border unless donald trump was the one doing the deal so he doesn't want to even fund

the border patrol right now so i mean my impression of what the border patrol and what the union is trying to do at this moment is that they are trying to make the border as chaotic as absolutely possible and that is their goal they want bodies black and brown bodies coming over that fence and they want the optics of it that's what i think is going on and that's why i think that they're picking specific cities to have a lot of the migrants come through i think that that's the reason why they have like specific cities because you saw like a couple of weeks ago they're like oh my god the border's being overrun and oh my god what are we going to do and this and that and then you realize it's just like three or four sectors and even within

those sectors it's just one or two areas it's not the entire border is it problematic is it chaotic is it a human rights disaster for the migrants yes is it that for the border patrol no i think the border patrol is adding to it and in fact when i do the numbers and you compare like the staff that we had back when i was an agent and the staff that they have today they're not even apprehending half the amount that each agent apprehended when we were in the patrol back in the day and so you know for them to apprehend a group now when i see them apprehend a group of like even 10 people 12 people yeah they will take five agents to apprehend 12 people i have apprehended 100 people by myself and that's safe. I shouldn't suggest that people do that. But I

have apprehended it as normal for a Border Patrol agent to apprehend 20 to 30 people by themselves, including a female agent, who's at the time was super skinny and super small. And the reason why is because the vast majority of migrants aren't criminals, and they're not trying to hurt you so that's why a single agent can apprehend so many people but today they use like six or seven agents to apprehend groups and so i'm not sure why they're overwhelmed quite frankly they they should be able to handle 300 400 000 people a month in the border patrol yeah if they have to yeah and look like even though a world without the border patrol would be better in a world without this bloated and violent and overfunded and uh and really terribly just a just a mess of cruelty and violence that we have now would be a lot better but things could get a lot worse for those people like even the the time it takes for them to be processed and that the time it takes for

them to have their hearing immigration law could change for the worse very quickly if either person wins a presidency and indeed like it seems that biden has floated like a return to title 42 as as a as a compromise to get funding for ukraine so like yeah this inefficiency doesn't just like even when people apprehended their failure to do their jobs hurts people right like it it puts them at greater risk it does and and i, a lot of the things that the Border Patrol has done has created and made these things worse. A lot of the areas out near Sasebe, a lot of people never even crossed until Trump put that wall out there because they didn't have road access to a lot of that area. And if you did have road access, you had to have a very serious four by four to get out there. If you did have road access, you had to have a very serious 4x4 to get out there. You can't do it in a regular car, and you can't do it in a kind of city type of 4x4.

You need a serious 4x4 to get it into some of those areas. And then just our policies, our deterrence policies. You know, when I was an agent in the 90s, it cost, you know, probably somebody from Central America cost about $1,800 to get here. Now it's $10,000 or more. So we've made it profitable for people to smuggle people in and cross them illegally. We've created this entire situation ourselves. any doubt that other countries that maybe don't like us that you know all the migrants coming across the destabilization that will cause with people who are racist or who don't know anything about the border they all see that as a bonus but the fact of the matter is is that people who are crossing they still need asylum they still have serious needs just because, you know, I've seen some people floating around that that people are pushing migrants across our southern border to destabilize us.

I don't know if that's necessarily true. We don't have any proof of that. But even if they are, isn't the better attitude to have because asylum is legal? asylum is legal isn't the better attitude to have well how can we better you know help these people and not let this destabilize who we are and make them part of our communities and so forth i think that's a better choice than sending them out to the desert or to drown in the rivers yeah absolutely like and i think it bears i mean people listening to this will probably be in agreement that that yeah these people should be treated with dignity and respect regardless and i i generally don't buy that they're being shipped en masse to destabilize this country but i think even if you don't care about their

rights every single advance advance is your own word right but uh increase in surveillance every single increase in state violence every single incursion into individual rights starts at the border but it doesn't stop there right like if you protested in 2020 you were surveilled by technology that came from the border you were sometimes targeted by less lethal weapons that were first issued to border patrol like you're the intelligence that police now gather began with border patrol like so much of the even the stuff that we see used at the border today or the stuff that we see used in surveillance today overwhelmingly comes from either border patrol or the israel gaza border and often most of these things are the same companies right companies that that do

one also do the other and so like i guess if people are talking to people who don't seem to care about the rights of migrants which is a worryingly large amount of our society like this will come and bite someone else in it like to include the people who decided to storm the capital on january the 6th 2021 right like lots of the surveillance technology that bit them in the ass came from the border and the people they hated um that's absolutely true and i mean you know it's the border patrol says this but they mean it in a different way they say what happens at the border doesn't stay at the border and they mean that because they try and

portray migrants as all criminals so they're trying to tell people, oh, see, these criminals are going to come to Iowa or Illinois or this or that. But I say it in the fact that surveillance is coming to you. Because, you know, I mean, you know, in San Diego, we got street lamps out here that can listen to us and video us and track wherever we're going down the street from block to block. And it's ridiculous. You can't even walk your dog without being surveilled around here and yet we're far from them 20 miles from the border north of the border and it's still surveilled around here and so all of that surveillance yes that's being used on American citizens and when you go to places like McAllen so the Rio Grande Valley sector right now it's really slow you

get about a little over a thousand maybe two thousand apprehensions a week which is really well it's very simple sector and they're like you know they have so much surveillance like you can see there's a tower there's a tower there's a tower there and it is all thisi technology and they can listen to cell phone and you and and that usually needs a warrant but apparently down here on the border and i've had current border patrol agents tell me the fourth amendment doesn't exist down here it's like what is that what they're teaching here in the academy now it doesn't exist down here and apparently that's what border patrol agents think um and they think they have to id anybody that they see and all this other stuff and it just it's it's interesting

how much this is spreading how much the checkpoints are spreading and you know like in my day we didn't do um invasive searches if it wasn't obvious we didn't stop them and nowadays they'll they'll do on full body cavity searches at a checkpoint i'm like what i've never heard of that and so all this stuff is just gonna it's just getting further and further into the interior of the united states like we saw in the Trump administration, like you said. Yeah. It's going to be brought back out for sure. Yeah.

So I wonder like, how do we, um, I mean, it does seem very bleak, like I, which is why I like to devote so much of my time to like mutual aid work on the border, because it is a meaningful way to help but how do we move the needle to a more humane place this is one of the places where like i think like we should do whatever we can to make this like even if it's uh something that would normally be distasteful to us but like i yeah what is it that we can do to either like maybe change people's minds like i'm sure you yourself have changed your mind on what we need to do on the border and like and to to because the conversation around the border is not only toxic but it's also so deeply rooted in ignorance and a lack of understanding and like i don't think we were talking about this before we started but like i encountered a three-year-old girl the other day who was extremely cold she had her feet have been

wet and cold for hours days and and she was the cold beyond shivering and we were trying to warm her up and it was very distressing i don't think many people have seen that and i don't think even your like sort of hardest border bigot facebook uncles would want to look that in the face and be like yeah that's what we should do damn i'm really proud of this country but so how do we move this to a better place do you think i think one of the biggest mistakes that the biden administration did was that they didn't you know in the beginning they hired a lot of really, really good people. Like I think Andrea Flores was one of the administration people and she knows her stuff.

And I think that they had this idea from what she had said that the people that support immigration and immigrant rights and this and that, she was saying that they were viewed as soft-hearted individuals on immigration, and they were too soft, and they didn't understand border security. One of the things that Biden should have done was start educating Americans about why the asylum system is so important and what the benefits are that it brings to us, and they have never done that. There's no PSAs about it. There's nothing.

And I don't know if NGOs do it on that large environment on cable news or whatever, because I don't really watch mainstream news and stuff. But Americans are just astonished at like when i started doing the tiktok videos and explaining you know border patrol are the people in green cbp the blue people didn't know just the basic things the majority of americans who feel that they have a very um a very uh specific view on immigration whether they hate it or they love it. They don't know much about immigration. They don't know how it works. They literally think people just get off their couch and go, well, let's just go to America.

And they just hop over the fence and they all have money and they're all getting free stuff and this and that. So this administration, the government has done nothing to explain what is happening and why it happens. And I always say that the asylum system is essential to national security. What we saw in the Biden administration when he first opened up the ports of entry to allow specifically Haitians to apply at the ports of entry, we saw the amount of Haitians go from crossing in between the ports irregularly. We saw it going from, you know, thousands down to like a hundred and something.

So the idea is that you have to have a robust and humane asylum system where you're processing people, where they don't have to wait so long that they're going to give up and cross irregularly. Because the vast majority of people who believe that they have a legitimate asylum claim and i do think that what constitutes asylum needs to be revisited because it's outdated especially now that we have climate change but is is that you want those people to come and be inspected we want people to come and stand outside the port of entry and wait and be inspected by cbp if we're going to have a border and we're going to have all this we would want that so that then we could say okay we've checked them they appear to be okay they're going to this place now they have an immigration hearing before a judge we're going to make sure that they get the system and you know and and

then see it more as a system that's a benefit to us instead of creating enemies, which is what we're doing now. Every time a migrant turns around, even if they are able to get into the United States, the quote-unquote legal way at a port of entry, they're still met with you can't work for 150 days, and then you can't do this, and you can't do that, and you have to show up. And so we're constant. Everything is punishment. Everything is punitive in our immigration system. And we can't do that. We want these people to become citizens. We want these people to become part of our society. We need it. And so we have to have somebody bold enough to explain this to

the American people. If you close the asylum system, everybody's going to cross irregularly, just like they did in Title 42. And you're going to get tons and tons of bodies coming across the wall. We need to be bold enough to say we want a humane and robust asylum system where families can wait together and be processed. can wait together and be processed. And then, you know, I mean, the decision between should we fund detention centers and home people who are crossing just waiting for their immigration hearing in detention? Or should we fund, you know, humane services like let's get you into whatever city you're going to, let's help you find a school for your kids, let's help you learn English, let's help you find a job. And you can hire and pay people to do that instead of putting people in detention it doesn't have to be a punitive system we've just made it that way because the people in the for-profit prisons

before trump was supposedly elected they were lobbying jeff sessions and stephen miller when he was working for Jeff Sessions. And so GEO Group and all them, they're the ones that decided this is how we're going to go. And the fact of the matter is, I think we're on a disagreement with open border versus, you know, or having border patrol at all. But I always say an open border is just as dangerous as a closed border. I always say an open border is just as dangerous as a closed border. And when you close off the asylum system, that forces everybody to then cross in between the ports of entry. And that is what does overwhelm Border Patrol.

So if you don't want to overwhelm your Border Patrol, then you have to pull back and you have to start processing people like they're supposed to be processed at the port of entry the other thing people forget about is we've had four years literally four years of the asylum system being shut down because of mpp and title 42 there's trump policies it took biden a while to get through all those but what do you think all those people that were sitting around for four years are doing they're waiting their turn to get over here so So we have a backlog, not just the people in the United States waiting for the immigration hearing. We have a backlog of people in Mexico waiting to come across. So they created this whole thing themselves. I find it very interesting that the press never mentions that basically what Trump did was close the whole immigration system down and kick the can down the road. Yeah.

I mean, consciously or unconsciously, it's like shaking up a can of beer. Trump did was close the whole immigration system down and kick the can down the road yeah yeah I mean consciously or unconsciously it's like uh yeah shaking up a can of beer and then someone's gonna take a little off at some point you know and it's gonna blow up yeah and Biden has been willing to and so it's still gonna get kicked down the road I mean people have come in since the end of title 42 but as you say there's a huge backlog and people aren't as you say going to stop coming right because like it's dangerous getting here i've walked those trails and they're not easy and they're certainly not easy when you're carrying your kid and it's raining and it's dark um but it's i've also been in syria and in iraq and in other places where these people are coming

from and i understand why they're doing it and I would do it too if I had a family, and I wanted to escape that. So I think we're laughing if we think that we're going to... I mean, we've tried to make our border as unpleasant as those places and as deadly as those places, right? And fortunately, we failed. And so that doesn't mean people will stop coming, whatever we do. We've had 30 years of

walls and border patrols concept of deterrence policies that they claim will prevent people from crossing irregularly or illegally and they've all failed and i think it's time to try something new i think it's time to stop listening to the people who get all the money and get all the guns and get all the militarization saying it has to be this way. It does not have to be that way. And I think it's very important to point out that we live in the United States of America, even though we have a lot of problems and we're possibly losing our democracy in our country right now. It is still far better than the places that these people are coming from and we should be thankful for that and then just figure out a way to protect ourselves as best as we can you know yeah yeah i think i think that's yeah this is a good place to end like we should be grateful that for now we

live in a much more stable place and and we're able to we have the resources to welcome people and we do their benefit to our communities when we we have we don't turn them away from us yeah we we need people right now so yeah people forever bitching about not being able to find people to work and also at the same time turning away people who would love you know i've every migrant i meet in a cumber message me on whatsapp saying hey struggling to find work because they don't get work authorization right like there are a lot of jobs that need doing and a lot of people who want to do them and but we're so wrapped up in our bigotry and xenophobia that we won't let

them do it right we've made it as difficult for them as we absolutely positively can yeah jen thank you for joining us. Is there any way that people can follow you online? You've done a really good job at sort of cracking some of the board patrols nonsense recently. So where can people find that? They can find it on jen, J-E-N-N-B-U-D-D dot com. Great. That's a good resource.

And well, thank you so much, Jen. We really appreciate your time. I appreciate you too. Cheers. Bye. Hey guys, I'm Kate Max. You might know me from my popular online series, The Running Interview Show, where I run with celebrities, athletes, entrepreneurs, and more. After those runs, the conversations keep going. That's what my podcast, Post Run High, is all about. It's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories, their journeys, and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement

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Welcome to It Could Happen Here here this is shereen today i am joined by you know you know him you love him it's robert hi robert ah someone knows me and loves me that's nice robert's here today to talk with me to charles mcbride but i met charles fairly fairly recently doing just pro-palestine stuff online, and I really liked his work. He's here to talk about some things that I think are very important, like Ukraine, and why helping Ukraine is not the same thing as aid to Israel, and all that good stuff. And yeah, let's just get right into it. I want to know your experience with Ukraine.

Can you just tell us a little bit about that first? Sure. First of all, thank you, Shireen, so much for having me on. This has been one of my favorite podcasts for a while. So this is kind of a slightly surreal moment. Going into my experience with Ukraine, I double majored in history and comparative religion in college. And I was kind of interested in sort of the post-Soviet sphere and I worked on some kind of post-Soviet issues when I lived in Washington D.C. after school and also was deeply interested in Eastern Orthodox Christianity which is kind of why I took an interest in that region. So I remember in like 2015, I watched this Vice video called Russian Roulette that popped up on my YouTube feed.

And it just completely, it just put Ukraine on the map for me in a way that I'd never really thought about before. I thought of it as the Ukraine. Yeah. My, yeah, my, my Muscovite Russian history professor had always talked about it as a part of Russia. Yeah. And she had denied, you know, I was during the Maidan, the revolution of dignity. I was in college and she denied that Ukraine had any autonomy. She echoed all the Putin-esque sort of talking points about CIA intervention and neo-Nazis and stuff.

And I didn't really know what I didn't know at that point. neo-Nazis and stuff and I didn't really know what what I didn't know at that point um so then I yeah I got I got interested in in sort of what was happening in the lead-up to the Russian invasion and I had been following this this guy who went over to Syria a couple years ago named Aidan Aslan and um in my conversations with with Aidan he'd sort of told me a little bit about kind of what stuff was like going on in Ukraine. And I got very interested and I was following him and all of his friends

and what they were doing. And at that point, I had about four or five years of nonprofit humanitarian experience under my belt, as well as sort of a historical, political understanding of the region and um so when the when the war happened when the full-scale invasion happened i immediately

started trying to fundraise trying to help out trying to educate and mostly to try and cut through russian propaganda because there were a lot of people in my sphere who were just retweeting straight up Russian propaganda. They were elevating, you know, what you and I know who are basically Kremlin adjacent individuals in the United States who have sway in leftist circles, some of whom have re-emerged in the Palestine discussion, much to my chagrin. Yeah. Yeah, i'm sure we'll talk about that more later i would love to get into that yeah and so yeah and my my hope was to kind of to do that and as i was sort of working with ukrainians one of the things they said is hey man everything happens here you have to be in ukraine for to get anything off the ground so you need to to come here. And I'm like, are you insane? It's, there's a war going on in your country. So I said, yes. And, um, are you insane? Yes. Yes,

I am. I, in retrospect, so like second week of the war, I booked a plane ticket, flew over there, crossed the train to Poland, scared out of my mind, got in touch with the Ukrainians I'd been talking to previously. And after a mad hustle from the train station, was very comfortably drinking tea in a cute little apartment in Lviv with somebody's grandmother. And was like, this is a crazy experience. So I spent two months in Ukraine at the beginning. My intention was to sort of identify gaps

in the medical supply chain, particularly things that were going to be initially overlooked in the mad dash of refugees and resettlement and all that sort of stuff. And one of the things we identified was like prescription medication for people coming from the East to the West. And I think it's important that not a lot of realize that people coming from Eastern Ukraine, a lot of them had never visited cities like Lviv until the start of full scale invasion. Predominantly Russian speakers.

And, you know, for them, Lviv was almost like going to Poland. And it was a very new thing for them. But, you know, your medical issues don't stop just because someone invades your country. In fact, oftentimes they get worse. And so what I was trying to do initially was find a way to address that. And that led me into contact with Rostislav Filipenko, who's one of my dear friends and the co-founder of the organization that we started together called Mission Harkiv. So that organization worked initially on prescription medications and then started distributing high-end oncology drugs, which are very difficult to transport, very lucrative to steal, and very difficult to store because they have to be kept

at a constant temperature. So we focused on those things while everybody else was focusing on tents and, you know, and clothes for refugees and that sort of stuff. And as a result, we carved out a very interesting niche in terms of the humanitarian response and are still, you know, going strong with that today. And so that was initially kind of why I went over there for that first two months. And since then, I've been back over to film a documentary, sort of an artistic short documentary called Note of Defiance. And then I was involved with another documentary project, which is hopefully forthcoming in the next year. Nice. Yeah, I don't think I've talked about this on the show, but kind of my relationship with Ukraine and eventually going over there and starting to report on what was happening started, weirdly enough, as a result of the fact that I had friends who went to the big Burning Man event in Nevada. Ukrainian woman who lived in the bay. And when stuff started in late 2013, which is when the Revolution of Dignity is kind of the common Ukrainian name for it. You'll also hear it

referred to as like the 2014 revolution or the Maidan revolution. They're all talking about the same thing, which is when the guy who was the president of Ukraine trying to make himself into a dictator, this dude, Viktor Yanukovych, who is this incredibly wealthy oligarch who literally built a golden palace for himself with like a fake lake that had a boat on it that was a restaurant for just him for like the level of rich oligarch asshole we're talking about here, cracked down really brutally on a student protest, which it kind of culminated in this kind of escalating occupation of the center square in the capital that basically got built into an ice fortress. And like the middle of the Ukrainian winter, this very, very like pretty epic story of successful resistance,

because this guy is eventually forced out. The police riot unit, the Berkut, who had done had been like literally killing people by dropping them naked in in ice drifts and stuff are disbanded. It's a really remarkable story. And I just kind of fell into it because my friend connected me with a couple of people who were on the ground there who were friends of hers who were Ukrainians in the tech industry who traveled to the US every year or so for Burning Man. And so when this occupation of the Maidan started, they were like, well, we know how to like, we're used to making soup and food for large numbers

of people and like running little chunks of a camp. So we'll just start, we'll just do the thing that we do at our camp out over in Maidan. And they were part of, the thing they were part of was the auto Maidan, which was this like, mobile unit of resupply where people would like basically drive supplies to and from different areas of occupation in the city it was a pretty dangerous job as things escalated but that was my in and i wound up talking to like i don't know 20 or 30 people like actively the entire time the occupation was going on there's like two folks i never was able to get back in touch with who just kind of like dropped off at a certain point.

Like it was a really sketchy time for a lot of people, but I wound up traveling there the year after, right after the, the early part of the invasion started to report from Abdi Fka, which is, you know, was, had been under siege for a year at that point and is still under siege today

for an idea of like, that's a decade now, basically that, that this, this little town has been shelled yeah anyway yeah i didn't know that about burning man that's oh it was a weird way to get connected to it yeah i just got a message from this friend of mine who's like hey somebody some buddies from my camp are like trying to overthrow their government do you want to talk to them i was like well, that sounds pretty dope.

That's your MO. That's wild. You know, Burning Man really does, the playa provides, it really connects all, doesn't it? I have some weird like tangential Burning Man. I've never been, but I have like- Neither have I actually, yeah. I have like Burning Man devotees who play a large role in my life

and it's just very interesting. Yeah, yeah, the weird little connections you get. And it's just very interesting. Yeah. Yeah. The weird little connections you get. And I was kind of disappointed, you know, to me, this was because the whole time, especially like the late 2013, early 2014, as this was going on, I was like, well, they're probably all going to get killed. Right. Like just, you know, we were several years in the Syrian civil war at this point. Like I was not optimistic. And that's not what happened. we were several years in the Syrian civil war at this point. Like I was not optimistic. Um, and that's not what happened.

And then the, there was like this counterpoint of realizing a few years later that, Oh, a shocking number of people on the left think it was a bad thing that they overthrew their government. Yeah. Which, yeah,

I guess gets us into like the, the kind of thing you wanted to talk about, which is the difference in providing military aid to ukraine versus israel yeah which i don't know i mean from my standpoint it's pretty obvious right like one country is fighting a military that has a massive industrial base much more powerful than it uh and is killing large numbers of civilians. And they have proven their ability with military aid to react effectively to this invasion. And the other case, I don't think I need to explain which one, but it's Israel, is a country with a massive arms industry that is fighting people who have no arms industry of any kind and primarily killing civilians. So I can very

easily justify one of those groups of people getting U.S. weapons and one of them not needing any additional weapons. That's where I am. Well, you see, Robert, none of that is justified because of the existence of the Azov Battalion. There is no right for any Ukrainian grandmother to get access to her insulin because there's a couple of neo-Nazis that were stationed in Mariupol. But truly, that is about how sophisticated a lot of the leftist critiques of supporting Ukraine are. Yeah. I think a lot of it comes in.

talk about and i talked with shireen about this when when we went on instagram live together is that a lot of leftists seem to live in kind of a weird little cinematic universe where only the us and israel can be the bad guys and by extension france and the uk you know and yada yada um but as a result of that they have this just really strange view of global affairs that literally no one in the countries they're talking about share. Somehow Russia and Iran and China and Cuba are all aligned in a sort of anti-imperial axis because they oppose the interests of NATO and the United States. And I think that's just so, that's patently ridiculous, but it plays a big role in conversations like what's going on in palestine yes people will invoke well why are you giving all this money to ukraine uh instead of giving money to people the relief for the maui fires or you know doing why aren't we doing

medical medicare for all so it's like it's a convenient because it's the military industrial complex it's the iraq war it's all, it's a convenient, because it's the military industrial complex. It's the Iraq war. It's all these things that we as leftists were taught to hate, but it's, they're being used for good. It's like America's actually being the arsenal of democracy and doing the thing that we did in World War II that helped the Soviet Union march into Berlin. Well, and it's also, I think an important thing to note is when we talk about the, it's

always framed as the US is giving this amount of money to Ukraine. What's happening is we are taking stockpiles of arms we already have worth that much money and we are sending them there. Like, they're not, like, that is overwhelmingly like the, what kind of aid we are sending over. So, these are extant weapons that are sitting in the u.s doing nothing and being like the bradley's we didn't just build a bunch of new bradley's we had a shitload of them we weren't using them anymore because they were not very useful in

the conflicts that we were fighting right that bradley is high mars yeah exactly same with the united states is like really itching to like need high mars right now no like all of this stuff we're sending to them has been mothballed for basically since the gulf war and people don't understand that it is funny to me to imagine like yeah let's send that stuff to to maui for the fires that's what they need is they need long-range artillery that's really gonna that's really gonna help them heal i'm in favor of sending lethal aid to to the indigenous residents of maui but i think that's it that's a separate conversation you know you talk to me and do it and i think we have enough mothballed tanks for

both of these causes yeah i think for me the comparisons for ukraine and palestine it started with how it was presented in the media. It just, it rubbed people the wrong way when the Ukrainian struggle was presented in a certain way and the Palestinian struggle was not. And people can draw comparisons. Sure. Like whiteness and all this stuff. Absolutely. And I just, it got me really, it really irritates me because it's not like the oppression Olympics.

Like we're not trying to compare or demonize Ukrainians. We should demonize the media for not representing Palestinians in the right way. But I think that is kind of the origin of the comparison that I saw anyway. Yeah. And I think that that's really worth digging into because there's a couple of first off, it is absolutely an injustice that Ukrainian resistance and that light is seen as inherently just and not just Palestinian resistance is demonized or often ignored, but like all sorts of resistance by people who are being harmed

around the world, it partially is, or in large part, as a result of like us and other Western countries policies are not seen in the same light as Ukrainian resistance. I certainly agree with that stance. That's not the fault of anybody in Ukraine, right? This is not, we are not talking about a country that exercises power on the global stage. We are talking about a cash poor nation that is, has been struggling with Russian imperialism for most of the time that most of the people listening this, actually all of the time that everybody listening to this has been alive in one form or another,

right? Yes. And so I think it's perfectly fair to point out the ways in which the media reports unequally on these conflicts and what's happening in Palestine, what's happening on stuff like Buka and on the mass slaughter of civilians in Gaza, right? I think that that is worth pointing out, but it's also not worth blaming Ukrainians over. They are not participating in that just by saying, hey, it's bad that our civilians are being massacred by rockets, right? And other forms of weaponry, by the way, like that, right? That's not on them.

Yeah, I think to also kind of flip that on its head, I mean, part of it is the media narrative. You know, it's easier. Ukrainians are mostly hot white people in the eye of the Western media, and it's easier to cheer for the hot white people who have, you know, everyone, a lot of people have been to a Ukrainian restaurant. They're familiar with some Ukrainian maybe songs, or they have friends. If they live in a place like L.A. or New York, you know Ukrainians. You're familiar maybe even with some ukrainian media and it's it's kind of like this accessible

thing you know and also like there's other aspects of it to which are even stranger which is that ukraine produces like a huge amount of the world's fashion models like that's a very accessible thing for people to get behind in the nice liberal media and you can see these in these initial broadcasts being like i've never seen anything like this with seeing all these european looking refugees and it's like all right there are multiple newscasts like that where they're like these are not arabs like they say it with their chest you know like these are these are people like us but for the the flip side of that is that that leftists are reluctant to be charitable to ukrainians because they also see them as hot white people who don't need any help yeah and i and they're they're

unwilling to admit that ukrainian ukrainians like gossans also suffer from a settler colonial state as their neighbor with a history of ethnically cleansing and genociding them yeah i mean I mean, part of the reason for that is that the neighbor that ethnically cleansed and genocided, well, one of them, because actually they had several neighbors ethnically cleanse and genocide them. But the Soviet Union, like did a significant amount of that during the whole of Dolmur. Now, the Germans also carried out a massive genocide in Ukraine. Like, and by the way, a huge number of the Red Army soldiers who successfully helped defeat the Nazis were Ukrainians. As a note, this is, you often see this thing where people will point out, you know, there were a significant number of Ukrainians that fought with the Nazis,

and they tend to ignore that, like, yeah, and there were even more Ukrainians who fought with the Red Army. Like, both of those things happened. It was a world war and Ukraine was right in the middle of it. It's a very ugly situation. And it kind of comes down to this inability of a lot of people to not even nuance, to care about accuracy when that accuracy is not like ideologically convenient, when it points to some of the ugliness and messiness of war. I find that very frustrating. Like I sympathize with,

because I was reporting on the Syrian refugee crisis from the refugee trail right after actually I was in Ukraine. And it is unfair that like Ukrainian refugees were treated differently, but the people to blame for that is the news media, not refugees who have lost their homes. In fact, I suspect that a lot of Ukrainians have a different attitude themselves towards the suffering that they witnessed during that period of time, because they've now been through it. It's just like a human thing. Now you know what that's like. yeah i mean as a syrian person who oh for the past like over a decade i really the media really fucking got on my nerves every time i would see them not talk about syria or when they did it was not a good way and then when they started really embracing ukrainian refugees

or talking about them in a different way i'm not gonna lie it made me mad but not at ukrainians like i think even now we should have criticized the media back then but like they're doing the same thing now with their fucking headlines about israel and palestine it's always how it's presented versus the people it's presenting like when someone when some dumb newscaster is standing in front of a group of ukrainian refugees behind him and he's like these are not arabs these are white people they didn't say that he did so yeah i don't know yeah and also like i i encourage everyone to ask ukrainian particularly eastern ukrainians opinions on the western media and like westerners in general because two years into this war they have a lot of them and i imagine that they would you would find a lot of the sentiments shared by the Ukrainians. They don't always appreciate how they're portrayed in the Western media as either brave defenders of their country or soot-covered refugees coming off of a rail car.

They have a lot of opinions on these sorts of things. They feel patronized. They feel babied in some senses. And they feel like they will be ultimately abandoned by us which is already coming to pass yeah yeah and as the attention shifts to things like gaza you know it's difficult for them to feel like they have any friends yeah no i want to get into that uh but let's take our first break and yes we will jump back in in and we're back okay we had just been talking about how the support for ukraine has kind of changed recently can you uh get into that a little bit i'm not even necessarily sure that it changed so

recently i remember being over there and it was wall-to-wall coverage from from the moment i set foot you know from the moment it started to really up until the oscars and the chris rock slap is what we all talked about like last oscars like this is yeah the last oscars and the chris rock slap and all the attention that that got was the the moment that a lot of the volunteers talked about is the moment where people started to want to forget about ukraine there was still a lot of coverage but suddenly it was like you don't have to be obsessed with with ukraine you know your ukraine's now a second page story instead of a first page story that was around the same time that the Russians withdrew from Kiev. So suddenly there wasn't this expectation that

Kiev was going to fall and the capital would be taken and Zelensky would be captured. And it started to slow up even then. the donations dried up, the attention dried up. And by the time I went there in the winter of 2023 last year, it was like people already wanted to forget. I mean, I live in Los Angeles and a lot of people here were saying things like, Oh, wow. Is that, is that still going on? Really nice. Well-meaning people who knew I'd been over there. They were just like, is that, you know, is that still a war going on? Here we are in in

in 20 days it's going to be two years of this yeah my friends over there are are exhausted and they don't they're now a page eight story yeah and and it's this comes back to like how americans like to think about conflict we have an enormous appetite for for and for, you know, particularly what we consider a just struggle for up to a couple of months, right? And then people were very excited when, yeah, the Russians invade. Everyone, the expectation, both from, like, military experts in the West and from certainly civilians, is that, like, Russia's going to crush them immediately. And then they don't. There's this real upset come- from behind, underdog victory, and Americans love that.

But then, like, it's not a total immediate victory. And in fact, it turns into, at this point, a really, really brutal, ugly, slow war of attrition and maneuver, which is like what war is, right? Like that's how any sort of near-peer conflict is going to boil out. And it's not a kind of thing that is resolved quickly, and it's not a kind of thing that is resolved without cost. And as soon as that became clear, Americans, it doesn't fit into that, like, 90-minute Hollywood vision of how a conflict is supposed to go, right? There was no, the Ukrainians

didn't blow up a Death star and end it right like it i mean actually that's not what happens in the movies either but like it's it's still it was not the quick clean end that a lot of people were expecting and hoping for and as a result people are like well now it's a quagmire and now it's like we have to start looking for some way out of this thing which by the, has cost us very little. Like my stance on like, when is this over is like, well, I guess when Ukraine says it's over, right? Like if the Ukrainians want to come to the negotiating table and negotiate an end to

hostilities, then like that's their business. But up until that point, I think the business of the united states is to continue to meet our treaty obligations which we should we should note like the united states and nato are obligated to support ukraine in a war over its sovereignty because they gave up their nukes with that understanding right this is what happened when we told the country yeah yeah we said you give up your nukes and we got your back like this Like this was the promise we made. And as far as I'm concerned, that's the only interest I have. And like my answer is like, how long should we support them?

Well, as long as they're fighting. And we've been keeping that promise for the cost of 5% of our defense budget. And like you mentioned earlier, it's already stuff that's mothballed since the Gulf War, sitting around waiting to be used you know i mean the idea of giving them f-16s every every country in the world practically see at least in the nato alliance it seems like everyone has an f-16 i think yeah we're giving them to turkey now too like it's not a big deal to give a couple of f-16s to the ukrainians or a couple of bradleys or abrams or what have you and i think that people especially on the right but but also on the left who get obsessed over

the amount of money that we're sending or the amount of equipment and personnel especially when they see these stories about corruption they don't they don't understand the scale of how small this actually is relative to the united states other commitments like to israel and yes they get um they get sort of myopically focused on this uh and they use it as a reason to to dislike ukraine the right will never like ukraine because zelinsky was the guy who made trump look bad and got him impeached i think it's that simple yeah it's wild that like well also i mean the russian interference and stuff you know the republican party now resembles russia more but it's wild that republicans you know also, I mean, the Russian interference and stuff, you know, the Republican Party now resembles Russia more, but it's wild that Republicans 30 years ago were super anti Russia. And now they're Russia's best friend. And they think Ukraine or sort of Satanist, whatever. Yeah, to and on corrupt people. 5% of the Defense Department budget is. The Pentagon, this is from like a 2022 story,

the Pentagon can't account for several trillion dollars in assets, which doesn't mean we don't fully know where they are. But it means that like, Pentagon record keeping has sort of like, lost huge amounts of assets over the years. At the moment right now the pentagon like as of november 2016 had failed six audits in a row and as far as i can tell i don't think they've actually ever passed an audit of like all of their resources like there's huge amounts trillions of dollars in assets that like we can't fully document it's it's when you think about like the amount of money that we've actually sent over there as a defense, or as a percentage of just like the stuff that we can't fully account for in our militaries, like arsenal, it's it's a tiny fraction of that, let alone a fraction of like our

Defense Department's total assets. And it also this gets back to when people talk about like corruption in Ukraine, and by God, Ukraine has a history of government corruption, which is part of what the revolution in 2014 was about, right? But it's particularly silly to complain about that as a reason not to send them weaponry when we know the US Defense Department is massively corrupt, a huge amount of corruption involving not just like not specifically even like military officials, but involving civilian contractors involving like the agencies we contract to involving the money that we've sent over the course of like the $8 trillion or so that we've spent

on the war on terror, a huge chunk of that hundreds of billions of dollars of the money that we spent on the war on terror is just gone. Billions of it disappeared in the form of cash pallets that we just lost. Right? Like this is the amount of money that it has cost us to support Ukraine in this war is a rounding error of the shit we lost just as a matter of business. Like just, just as like a normal thing.

It's like a rounding error of like what we gave to Halliburton. Yes. Yes. To build hospitals that didn't work in Afghanistan. Yeah, exactly. And speaking of Afghanistan, I think a lot of people look at you, they look at the Afghanistan withdrawal and they think, oh, this is what Ukraine is going to be like. But I think that brings up the point of sort of what are we getting for that 5% of the

defense budget? You know, we gave a bunch to afghan and and we ended up getting the same situation that we had when we went in there in 2001 the taliban in control but now they have billions of dollars worth of american state-of-the-art american military equipment and hundreds of thousands of afghan people died in the interim exactly and then you contrast that with like well what is our five% of military budget get us in Ukraine? And you look at what this is doing to Russia. Russia gained about 0.1% of Ukrainian territory in the year 2023, second year of war. And to do that, they lost about 100,000 soldiers.

Now, there's a lot of people in Russia. And that's always been the thing about Russia is that have this this depth of recruiting that they can pull on but they're taking out recruiting ads in like saint petersburg and in moscow and in like the wealthy but they're going hard on like recruiting from wealthy urban centers instead of sort of the traditional rural areas where they bring in all their recruits which which is evidence to me that that they're suffering from a manpower shortage in the same way that ukrainians are yeah and that's one of the things that particularly frustrates me when people say that we're not what are we getting for our money because like that's that's it like russia is on the ropes people just

don't want to admit it people see a slight incremental russian gain or they feel like there's a standstill on the ukrainian counter-offensive and they think oh well let's just throw in the towel it's like no you can't you can't stop the pressure now and putin is finally kind of ready to come to the negotiating table it seems and the ukrainians you know need our help more than ever and that's kind of the frustrating aspect i went on i went on the hill tv the other day to talk with with someone who said basically she said is there any hope for ukraine like very already fatalistic about the whole thing like are they already on the ropes i was like no they're not on the ropes and this is a narrative that we need to change we need to understand that

there's a very there's a huge difference between what military aid gets us in ukraine versus what it gets us in israel and afghanistan and there's it's also like a a significant change in like who is being killed by those weapons right because even when we talk about the use of like the u.s use of weapons uh in in foreign countries we are often talking about these kind of these brush fire conflicts these insurgencies in which a great deal of the fighting takes place in and around civilian populaces. And obviously, there are Ukrainian cities that have been under siege for quite a while. But when we're talking about like the Ukrainians firing, or giving them HIMAR systems or giving them Bradleys, we are talking about weaponry that is being used to break fortifications on along a line of contact

which isn't a zero never is a zero civilian casualty endeavor because those don't exist in war but is a significantly less like involves significantly fewer civilian losses than the kind of wars that we have fought for most of the time that i've been alive right because we're simply not using the weapons are not being used in the same way. Bombarding a trench line is not the same as firing a cruise missile at what you're pretty sure is a terrorist hideout in a city, you know? Right. And we have been reluctant to give them any weapons that could do that. I mean, some notable exceptions would be like the strike on the Naval Command Center in Sevastopol. Yes. Some other drone, limited, but honestly, most of those are drone strikes

from drone factories where the Ukrainians create their own stuff. And there have been some limited civilian casualties in their incursions into Russian territory because we won't give them any weapons that go into Russian territory. Yeah, they've had to build their own. But we give Israel anything they want.

Yeah. Well, shit. Anything else we wanted to get into? You know who else gives Israel everything they want they want i mean we can't say that's not the case for for whoever comes up next because a number of our advertisements are random but hopefully not and we're back all right one of the things you have to keep in mind when you think about like is what are what is the u.s capable of doing that is positive and what is the u.s capable

of doing that's negative is that the united States is fucking massive, right? Our budget is fucking massive. And we talk on this show on my other show about a lot of horrible things our government has been involved in, which doesn't just which does not detract from the fact that USAID and particularly food aid is like a survival matter for 10s of millions of people around the globe, right? Like this is one of those things when the Republicans are talking about wanting to, like, cut all foreign aid that the U.S. gives to basically everyone but Israel. What that means when you talk about that, you are talking about, like, starving populations of people

larger than most major American cities. Because the U.S. is massive, and the aid that we give is, you know, usually not, it's not really that significant a chunk of our budget. But for the countries, for a lot of countries that receive it, it's like critical to survival, food aid and medical aid that we've given over the years. And I think that also gets into like, one of the things that's important about understanding like how, what impact you might have on what's going on in ukraine you don't have to if you if you have too much of a bad taste in your mouth over the idea of supporting u.s military aid to anywhere there's a lot of aid that's not military that's necessary right as you do charles people need medicine right like you are you are having a positive in outcome on like the people in ukraine if you are helping to increase their access to food and medicine and that's not morally complicated it's always there's always some moral complexity in handing out weapons around the world handing

out medication is incredibly simple from an ethical standpoint at least from where i'm you're never a bad guy for giving medicine it doesn't even matter who it's to like well you never a bad guy for giving medicine. It doesn't even matter who it's to like. Well, you're a bad guy to Israel. Apparently. Yes. Yes. They will.

They will drone strike you, but I don't know. I think that you like one of the nice things as an American, you don't have to realistically the, the, the fight over Ukrainian aid right now is primarily something that is happening in Congress. And at this exact moment in that fight, there is very little that is happening in Congress. And at this exact moment in that fight, there is very little that you or I can do. But there is a lot as you prove,

Charles, there is a lot that individual people can do to help other individual people. You may not have access to a HIMARS system or any more Bradley tanks to give the Ukrainians, although if you do, please, please give them over. They'll appreciate them. But there are a number of ways in which you can help like the actual people suffering on the ground. And I think that that's like that is right now what regular people can actually do. Yeah, I totally agree.

I would push back a little bit in saying that there's not a lot that we can do in terms of the congressional font, because I think that people do. I mean, I remember from back in my time working adjacent to politics, I remember someone told me a statistic where it said it took five phone calls to an office of a congressman for them to rethink their stance on an issue. Oh, interesting. issue oh interesting i have received texts from aides to congressmen republican and democrat who sit on like house armed services committee or you know defense and that sort of stuff saying like hey what's with this ukraine thing like what's your take on the ukraine stuff should we be giving them all this money i don't really support it but you went over there do you think they're using it well and i'm like holy holy crap am i actually getting this text like yes absolutely like yeah you need you need to do that you need to

green light whatever you need a green light to send that over there and i think if if more people you know were especially now when a lot of congress people don't want to engage with the gaza issue but are looking for like good wins with their constituencies like get to know your local ukrainian constituency in your area start a start a campaign to go to the regional office of your congressman find out which committees they sit on and and pressure them for for sending aid to ukraine i mean that is something you can do but on the individual level yeah you you you can still raise awareness you can you can connect the decolonial struggle of Ukrainians to that of Palestinians and other peoples. Someone who does this extraordinarily well is Yulia Tymoshenko, not the Ukrainian politician. and advocate who went to NYU Abu Dhabi and sort of got kind of got pilled on the whole Palestine

thing and has really eloquently tied the Palestinian and Ukrainian struggles together. So you can point people towards resources like that and let them know that there are at least some people in Ukraine who see that connection. And then you can also of course you can support humanitarian initiatives in ukraine very carefully please just do so very carefully i would say there's a lot of there's a lot of people who went over there and started initiatives that were more or less good but mostly kind of ineffective because they did not actually engage and include ukrainians in that process my rule with everything involving ukraine is just like and include ukrainians in that process my rule with everything involving ukraine is just like just ask ukrainians about it ask ukrainians what they need figure out

what it is their priorities are and make sure that you're including them on your philanthropy and your charity they will understand what is most impactful yeah my organization has experienced a lot of success by being entirely run by ukrainians and being based in harkiv and as everyone else's funding and resources have dried up mission harkiv is being handed projects from larger ngos who are leaving the region because we we focus on a local response it also means that you that donations to organizations like that go farther because they're going to hire Ukrainians rather than paying for the flights of some Westerner to go back and forth and do a fundraising,

come in from New York and do a fundraising pitch and go back. It's actually going towards... This was a commitment I made to myself and my partner when I went over there. My partner at Mission Harkiv was that I was never going to expense a flight or a meal or anything to Mission Harkiv. So all that's come out of my own pocket. And that means that every donation that we have gets to go pretty much directly into our programs. So you can still do that as an individual, you can help in that way. And the awareness thing is a huge part people are

forgetting Ukrainians feel abandoned, like making even just the act of putting a Ukrainian flag on your notes, or like tweeting about Ukraine occasionally is seen as such a huge act of solidarity at this stage in the game that the Ukrainians will love you for it. such a huge act of solidarity at this stage in the game that the ukrainians will love you for it and i really love that you bring up the the kind of pitfalls of and this is not this is ukraine right now in particular because it was such a huge international story at the start of the expanded invasion and that always brings out not just grifters but also well-meaning people who are going to raise money and try to start initiatives in that country that may not be doing it in the most cost-effective way possible.

And I really like what you said about the importance of verifying that where you are supporting is not just doing the work, but is doing the work in the best way possible. And one of the really important things to look out for is like well how much money are they spending on sending westerners to and from this place right it's one thing if like it's an area that lacks access to medical professionals and they're flying out medical professionals to do like trauma work or whatever like there's really like that's obviously important but this is something that like a lot of my friends in iraq and syria also experienced like the frustration of like ngo workers staying in nice hotels and driving you know fancy vehicles where there were local organizations doing things like maintaining refugee camps that needed the

support and I think that's always really important to try to do your research so that the the support you give the array the awareness you raise and the money that you donate actually goes where it needs to get. I think, I mean, that opens a whole broad category of maybe this is a subsec essay waiting to happen. But I've been playing with this idea of like the idea of conflict vultures. These people who sort of descend on a conflict or a disaster zone for a variety of reasons. You know, maybe it's fundraising. Maybe they work for a big NGO and this helps get them in the news. So they fly themselves out there.

Maybe it's a war and they want to be a hero or they want to present themselves as a hero. And they end up raising a bunch of money for their equipment and stuff. And then stay far away from the fighting line, living in nice hotels, like you said. Or maybe it is, like you said, well-meaning people who just take up air from the people who need it and take up they're like sponges that just absorb all this

western energy because they're a they're a relatable face and i've encountered all of those people in ukraine hell i the reason i went to ukraine is because i was like if i'm going to fundraise for this initiative people are going to give more. They're going to be more invested if they see an English-speaking American talking to them about this stuff. But I came in with the perspective that I can't be centering myself on this. The idea is to deflect onto what the Ukrainians are doing and elevate their stories rather than saying,

I'm here, I'm posing with the bakhmut entrance sign i just delivered seven muffins and a generator to like a place that was cleared out by the ukrainians you know six months previously it's more like okay how how do you take americans are very generous people how do you take american philanthropy american dollars american wallets and direct it towards the people who are actually going to change who usually are not americans these large ngos they they serve a purpose the un serves a purpose doctors without borders direct relief you know world central kitchen they do it they do a great job in like a specific thing but a lot of times times, if you're giving to the United Nations, or you're giving to one of these big

NGOs that sets up a fundraiser in the immediate aftermath of something, your money is going to remodel an office in Rome, or New York, or Washington, DC. And you're not really reaching the people that you're trying to help. And I think if more Americans understood that they'd be more responsible with sort of how they spend their money in a philanthropic sense. Yeah. Charles, you have been awesome. Thank you so much for coming on and telling us your experience and yeah.

Where can people find you on the internet if you want to be found? Some, I go back and forth. Sometimes I don't want to be found and sometimes I do, but you can find me pretty much everywhere with at Charles McBride. That's McBride with a Y, except on Twitter randomly, I don't have that handle. And then I just launched a sub stack, which is, I guess, charlesmcbride.substack.com. that's where I'll be I'm kind of shifting towards more long form content to write

about my experiences with these things and sort of a more digestible long form way of people engaging with important issues like this oh and if you're interested in the organization I helped set up in Ukraine it is

mission.harkiv on Instagram or missionharkiv.com. I could put all the info in the description for listeners and everything. But yeah. Sweet. Excellent. Thanks, Charles. Yeah, thank you, Charles. You're the best.

Thank you, guys. I appreciate it. Hey guys, I'm Kate Max. You might know me from my popular online series, The Running Interview Show, where I run with celebrities, athletes, entrepreneurs, and more. After those runs, the conversations keep going. That's what my podcast Post Run High is all about. It's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories, their journeys, and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together. You know that rush of endorphins you feel after a great workout? Well, that's when the real magic happens. So if you love hearing real inspiring stories from the people, you know, follow and admire join me every

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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 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. Hey, everybody, and welcome back to It Could Happen Here, a show about the ways things are falling apart. Well, welcome back to you, the listener.

Welcome to me, your guest host. I'm Molly Conger, filling in for James for a few weeks. If you're happy to be hearing my voice, feel free to share that feedback anywhere you post online. If you're upset about the state of affairs, I suggest writing your congressional representative or mailing a cryptic postcard to your local ATF field office. As your guest host, I'll try to bring you the It Could Happen Here content you know and love, dispatches from the front lines of our dystopia, updates on the people trying to unravel society as we know it, and what's being done to stop the rising tide that threatens to swallow us all. Today, I'm joined by Garrison, and I'm going to tell them a little bit about what's been going on with Patriot Front.

Hello, Patriot Front. Fantastic. One of the gayer groups of Nazis operating in the United States. It's just guys being dudes, Garrison. You wouldn't understand. I certainly wouldn't, no. You may remember Patriot Front from such iconic moments as getting arrested en masse at a gay pride event in Idaho in 2022, having their internal comms leaked repeatedly, including some videos of questionably sensual pat-downs, or accidentally giving several members mild carbon monoxide poisoning by forcing them to

ride in the back of a U-Haul truck. You've probably seen their stickers on a trash can in your local downtown, or maybe you've driven by a racist banner drop. But when all is said and done, hopefully you'll only remember them as having been sued into the center of the earth, which is what I want to talk to you about today. All right. I am unbelievably excited. We won't be getting into the sensual pat-downs, unfortunately. This is just court records. Okay, well, I can always find that on Telegram. That's fine. But before we get into who is suing Patriot Front, let's get a quick refresher on who they are and how they came to be scurrying around and matching windbreakers promoting a white ethnostate, because I think their origin story really informs the way they've backed themselves into this corner.

Patriot Front came into existence in late 2017 when it splintered off the now-defunct neo-Nazi group Vanguard America. The split was months in the making, with a power struggle brewing between Vanguard America leader Dylan Hopper and a young up-and-coming fascist named Thomas Rousseau, who was, at that time, barely out of high school. In the months leading up to the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville in August 2017, Rousseau edged Hopper out of his own organization in what Hopper called a literal coup. By the time Vanguard America was marching in the streets of Charlottesville, Rousseau was not only in control of the group's internal communications, he was calling the shots on the ground. Hopper didn't even attend. And it was that event, the Unite the Right rally, that birthed Patriot Front.

In those chaotic morning hours of August 12, 2017 2017 a young man named james alex fields jr joined the men under russo's command he didn't ride with the core group from texas in their rented van which they called the hate bus oh my wait did they really call it the hate bus russo was back then he was sort of um asodeus' protege. I don't know that they'll claim that now, but back then, this adult alcoholic Nazi was mentoring this fascist teen. He had just graduated high school. Many such cases. Yeah, so they came up in the hate bus.

All right. But Fields drove here alone. He drove overnight from Ohio. But he was wearing the group's uniform, a white polo, khaki pants, and carrying a shield bearing Vanguard's logo. He joined in with the members of Vanguard America as they loitered around a public park chanting Nazi slogans. Fields stood shoulder to shoulder in a line of Vanguard members guarding the entrance to the park where the rally was to be held,

preventing counter-protesters from entering. A few hours later, after the rally had been called off by the state police declaring an unlawful assembly, Fields drove his Dodge Challenger into a crowd of counter-protesters, killing Heather Heyer and injuring dozens of others. In later litigation, Dylan Hopper, responding for Vanguard America, was asked about his immediate reaction to hearing about the attack. That afternoon, in the group's Discord, Hopper posted, Commies died. That's good enough for me. This was, of course, before he'd seen the photos of the murderer mingling with his hate group. In a deposition three years later, he didn't disavow that initial reaction. He said Heather Heyer's death was a tragedy the same way it would be

tragic if a surfer who knowingly entered shark-infested waters was killed by a shark, saying, it was that woman's choice to be there. But he maintained that Fields was never a member of the group, that anyone could have put on a white polo and stood near them in the park, that anyone could have handed Fields that shield. His testimony was that Vanguard America didn't actually have membership lists. There was no official record of who was a member, but he somehow also knew that Fields was not a member. In that 2020 deposition, he claimed that he spoke to Rousseau in the days after the rally, and Rousseau admitted that he had been the one to make the choice to allow Fields to march with them in an attempt to make the group

appear larger than it really was. And Fields himself never claimed to be a member of the organization. In his federal sentencing memo, his defense attorney wrote that he'd never been a member of any organized group. But the damage to Vanguard America was done. In almost every photo of Fields taken that morning, just hours before he committed a hate crime murder that would send him to prison for the rest of his life, he certainly looks like he's with them. The night after the rally, as Rousseau was still trying to make his way home to Texas, he posted in the Vanguard Discord about the issue with the man who ran into protesters with his car. He was certainly not a member and none of us know him. Our shields were given widely to anyone at the rally and we had many extras. There is no criminal conspiracy about handing a

person a piece of wood and agreeing on fashion. Legally, we have been in contact with folks with legal experience and we're fine. As far as PR, yes, it's bad. But last week they called us evil white supremacist Nazi killers and today they're calling us the same thing. Shrug it off. When members complained that they shouldn't be disavowing the actions of the murderer, Rousseau clarified that, quote, the statement never said that what he did was wrong, just clarified that he wasn't a member. People aren't buying it anyway. wrong, just clarified that he wasn't a member. People aren't buying it anyway. So neither Rousseau nor Hopper were willing to say what Fields did should not have happened. They didn't disavow the murder. Hopper's comments seemed genuinely supportive of the murder. They were willing to

cheer on the bloodshed, but the way the blood looked on their own hands was going to be a PR problem. Now, for me, the whole Nazi thing is kind of a deal breaker from the start, branding wise, like just from the jump, there's a branding issue, there's an eagle, there's a fascist, there's the blood and soil thing. It's just, it's not a good look. Could you briefly explain what a fascist is? Right. So it is a bundle of sticks, right? It's, um. It's an old Roman symbol, right? Right. It's got, it comes from, you comes from the Roman Empire. So it's this very

return to tradition. Mussolini brought it back. Yeah. And you can break one stick pretty easily, but if they're all bundled together, then it's harder to break. Apes together strong. Yeah. Sorry, just saw the preview for the new Planet of the Apes. strong. Yeah. Sorry, just saw the preview for the new Planet of the Apes. But that's not the issue for them in this 2017 rebrand, right? It's the Nazi thing, not the deal breaker. But it's hard to shake the association with a hate crime murder. You can deny he was a member, but the pictures of the murderer holding your logo and standing right next to you are going to follow you. So just three weeks after the rally,

Thomas Rousseau announced in the Vanguard America Discord that he was launching a full rebrand, calling the new group Patriots Front. That S gets dropped later, but Patriots Front. Yeah, that is a way worse name. Yeah. Patriots Front, that is really hard to say. But not possessive either.

There's no apostrophe. It's just like Patriots Front. Oh yeah, that's weird. They made a good call dropping that S, so. that it's really hard to say. But not possessive either. There's no apostrophe. It's just like Patriots front. Oh yeah, that's weird. They made a good call dropping that S, so. They really fine-tuned it there in the end. That was clutch. The only good thing they've done, besides just keep getting arrested, but yeah.

So the message wasn't changing. The ideology is not changing. The manifesto got a little fresh polish, but the real change was optics. Rousseau recognized the need for broader appeal for new recruits and for plausible deniability on the group's surface. You can get away with saying a lot more Nazi shit if you put an American flag on the hats and a founding father on the homepage than you can if you're sporting a son and rad and posting Hitler memes.

Yeah, all of their kind of outwards visual style is all very like american it is it is it is it is american there's a bit of like a military kind of kind of a cleanliness to it but it's very much like they're going full americana oh yeah it's it's it's americana it's like patriot kitsch right like it's a few tin signs away from being a fudruckers yeah yeah yeah but it's it's it's very much not like german nazi it's like right it's like usa with some like u.s army signifiers that kind of stuff but the you know the sentiment behind it is the same you can take away the black eagle and the fashy like actually they kept the fashies it's just red white and blue now they're usa all the way baby i mean to be fair to be fair the united states of america also uses a fascist right i'm not like you know crying for the sullying of the of the branding of the united states of america but it's clear what the intention

was here yes it's just sort of hide behind that Americana. But in the six and a half years since that rebrand, Thomas Rousseau has maintained tight personal control over the entire group, now called Patriot Front. You can almost read that as a reaction to his first major setback as a white supremacist organizer. He'd led some smaller rallies in Texas before Unite the Right, but that was his first big day out commanding the nazi group right and as a result of that day the entire group was tarnished by the association of you know in their telling some random guy who was just near them we just happened to hang out with people who like doing murders you know right you know like it goes like what hopper was saying in his deposition right like well she was in shark

infested waters like by your own admission you're the sharks you are the sharks yeah you're saying you're a flesh-eating shark but that's not possible anymore now right so you can't just be some guy who's marching with patriot front because their events are never announced ahead of time you have to get the official group merch from the group after being interviewed and vetted you can't just show up and march with them unless you're a member because only members know when the events are going to be. There's no chance that some unvetted hanger-on is going to be standing near them. And that does solve the problem posed by someone like James Fields, but it creates a new problem. Real legal liability.

Establishing so clearly and so firmly that anybody who's marching with you, wearing your hat and your jacket, following your orders through the megaphone, you have established that all of those people answer to you and you know them and you approve that they were there. Now you're responsible. Yeah, you make the classic mistake of having an actual official like members list. Right. So now you now you no longer have the option of saying well that guy wasn't with us we don't know him and that's where the lawsuits enter the picture so right now there are three active federal lawsuits against patriot front one in virginia one in massachusetts and one in north dakota and the underlying actions and some of the claims vary but all three lawsuits are making the same

central claim a section 1985 complaint alleging a conspiracy by Patriot Front and its members to deprive the plaintiffs of their civil rights. And I think it's really interesting. This is dry as hell. Maybe it's only interesting to me. I think it's really interesting to look at the original context of that statute, right? That code section. It comes out of the Enforcement Act of 1871. You familiar with the Enforcement Acts? Going into deep civil war lore. You know, uh... Going back to Reconstruction. I'm Canadian.

I don't... The American legal system is something I've been learning the past 10 years. It is by no means the specialty of my research or knowledge. Yeah, I'm not like a big civil war guy. You know, I've accidentally and against my will learned a lot about the Civil War because we've been arguing about these statues for a few years. Sure. But reconstruction, I think, is really overlooked. You know, my own education in public school, there was like two paragraphs about reconstruction, and then we just sort of like moved on. I had like a semester on it. It is certainly

one of the more tragic periods of american history how we we seem to almost have figured something out and then it all went down the drain pretty quick we really whiffed it um but the enforcement act of 1871 is also called the ku klux klan act oh oh oh yeah these guys we're getting somewhere so when president grant signed the kkk act into law in 1871 support for reconstruction was starting to falter. And there was genuine fear that the 1872 presidential election would bring on a new wave of Klan violence in the South. And that's starting to sound a little familiar, isn't it? People are getting tired of being asked to address deep-rooted systemic inequalities.

There's an upcoming and uncertain presidential election. There's growing fear of vigilante violence by roving bands of masked racists you know like everything old is new again that that sounds like kind of like right now yeah that's wild so you know there have been other enforcement acts this wasn't the first one but the ku klux klan act was specifically tailored to address the question of freelance violence right so normally if you are suing over a civil rights violation there are only remedies available to you when your rights have been violated by a state actor a cop a government body the law itself the irs you can really only seek legal remedy when your rights

are violated by the state this one's a little different because during reconstruction a lot of that violence the intimidation the actions being taken to deprive Black Americans of their newly granted rights was being undertaken by private actors organizing together. Again, it's starting to feel familiar. Yeah, it's not like there could be groups of armed extremists monitoring voting sites trying to scare people away from voting in an election. That could never happen now. We've learned no lessons, right? So groups of white men organizing themselves, wearing matching outfits,

conspiring to undertake actions to intimidate, harass, and harm the people they believe that are standing between them and the white America they were born to run, right? Yeah. So this statute originally provided for both civil and criminal liability for these conspiracies.

Interesting. And that first year, Grant went hard in the paint with it. Oh, like he went full hog. Like as soon as he signed this into law, he was ready. So in that first year or two after he signed the act, he broke the back of the Klan. Hundreds of Klansmen were prosecuted in South Carolina alone. They were arresting so many Klansmen so quickly that hundreds of them just went to their local courthouse and turned

themselves in because they knew it was coming. Oh my God. It killed the Klan. Wow. But even before the Supreme Court decided 12 years later that, I mean, when it comes to the crime part of this, maybe we should let the states handle it, right? Uh-huh. So it no longer has a criminal liability component. So there's just the civil liability left under that law but even before the supreme court made that ruling in 1883 the clan act prosecutions pretty much ended when reconstruction died right it was this brief moment in time when there was any appetite to do anything about this yeah and it faded out pretty quickly so today it's up to the victim to seek their own civil remedy when they're terrorized by the sons of the clansmen we couldn't reconstruct

well do you know what we should construct molly oh god yeah robert told me that if i don't come up with a cool way to throw to ads he's gonna put me in a dog kennel and airdrop me onto an island where successful podcasters hunt people like me for sport. That does sound like something he would say, but we could construct a compelling ad transition. Let's take you to the ads. All right, and we are back. Garrison, and i'm going to tell you what's in these lawsuits i am i'm so excited to hear about patriot front having to read a niche law well the problem is they're pretending they don't have to oh well i mean that that that is also what i would do i would be like no way. I am not reading that.

Fuck you. Well, we'll get to that in a second. So the first case filed was in Richmond, Virginia. So right here in my backyard. All right. So thanks to repeated leaks of Patriot Front's internal communications and documents, we actually have video of them doing what's being alleged in this lawsuit. Which is inconvenient for them.

It's not great. So the suit alleges, and the video literally shows, that in October 2021, a couple of Patriot Front members vandalized a mural in a public park in Richmond. The mural celebrated American tennis legend Arthur Ashe. Ashe was born and raised in Richmond and started playing tennis as a child at Brookfield Park, which in the 50s, when Ash was a child, was one of the few public parks open to Black residents. It was also the park that his father was the caretaker of, right? So Arthur Ash, Richmond Public Parks, this is a relationship from his childhood, right? Yeah, it's like a very important place. He's one of the best tennis players in American history, and he grew up,

his father worked for the park, he learned to play tennis at that park. That park, Brookfield Park, actually no longer exists. But the park where the mural was installed is in a predominantly black neighborhood. Okay. In the video they filmed of the vandalism, one Patriot Front member supportively tells two others to, quote, get the fucking N-word. They say it. I'm not. Yeah.

Get the N-word's face as they're covering it up with spray paint and then play. Sorry? So they filmed this themselves, right? They filmed this themselves and used it in later promotional videos. Videotaping this crime spree was the best idea we ever had. This is so funny that they just can't stop filming them doing crimes. Like they're not just taking notes on the conspiracy. They're filming

themselves enthusiastically participating in it right so funny you know in the promotional videos there's no sound but in the leaked documents it's the original uncut video once you have like once you have like discovery or something also all all all that audio exists that is uh it is the privilege of the court to be able to listen to that well we have so you know in when they cut their promos you, they're playing like cool music over it. Sure. But in the leaked version that we got from, I think it was the Rocket Chat leaks, it was

in the second big leak. Okay. You can hear them saying like, you know, get the fucking N-word's face as they're spray painting over Arthur Ashe's face and then stenciling over that with their logo. Sure. that with their logo sure they're just like hey it was us they're just like leaving it fair and just just so we're super clear about this this is racially motivated put that on the tape like uh yeah yeah and so this is probably the weaker of the three cases right um the plaintiffs in this suit are basing their 1985 claim that this is a racially motivated conspiracy to interfere with the right of black residents to enjoy a place of public accommodation, right?

That a place of public accommodation is sort of the legal structure for places where you're not allowed to fuck with my rights. In this case, it's a public park. The suit makes a similar and separate claim under Virginia's civil conspiracy law for racial, religious and ethnic harassment. And unlike the other two suits, this complaint is pretty specific about who the defendants are because they recorded the planning meeting and the act of vandalism. And because anti-fascist researchers have identified many of the real names behind the pseudonyms. So these plaintiffs name not just the organization itself and thomas rousseau but seven individual members who were involved and they hope to identify 19 john doe defendants in discovery and so the most recent suit the third one to be filed get back to the second one in a second

is similar to the richmond suit because it also arises out of an instance of vandalism but this one looks a little stronger i think i should be, I'm not a lawyer. I'm just an enthusiastic consumer of the law. Yes. You spend a lot of time reading what I would call extremely boring documents. Oh, I love my documents. I pay thousands of dollars a year to look at these documents. Oh, it's that drill post. Someone please help me. Someone who's good at budgeting. We will do our best to give you as many documents as you want molly these documents cost 10 cents a page i'm a single issue voter on free access to federal court documents yeah all my homies hate pacer so in the richmond case we have black residents in a black neighborhood alleging a racial intimidation at a place of public accommodation a public park but in north dak North Dakota, the suit is brought by the North Dakota Human Rights Coalition,

the Immigrant Development Center, and an unnamed plaintiff who works at the Immigrant Development Center. I mean, it arises out of two acts of vandalism at the International Market Plaza in Fargo, North Dakota. The International Market Plaza is run by the Immigrant Development Center. It's a large indoor market space that supports immigrant-run small businesses and has community spaces for the immigrant community. Sounds cool. Yeah, there's shops and restaurants and after-school programs for kids and business development classes. I'm sure there's great food. Yeah, it seems nice. They seem like good people. In September of 2022, Patriot Front trespassed onto the nonprofit's property and spray-p painted the windows with their

logo. And so this was not an isolated incident, right? Patriot Front had targeted other businesses in the Fargo area in the months leading up to this, including a queer worker-owned coffee shop. So the tenants at the marketplace knew who Patriot Front was and what the messages on the windows meant. And they were understandably frightened to have been targeted and fearful that this could escalate. And it did. Two days later, Patriot Front came back to the marketplace and destroyed a mural celebrating multiculturalism, including placing Patriot Front logos over the faces of women in hijabs

in one panel of the mural. Yeah, I've had to like call up shops or businesses after they've been targeted, or I've like seen on Telegram, like, oh, this thing's happening in this area and be like explain to this poor employee who this is and why it's happening

and what to do because they're often very confused, they don't know what's going on yeah it sucks how much they try to involve just regular people trying to make, just like live out their day but also like specifically targeting people of color,

targeting the LGBTQ community. And yeah, it is, it is, it is a fortunately very common occurrence because a lot of Patriot Front's activity when they're not marching around getting beat up in Philadelphia are just putting up like stickers and doing graffiti. Like that,

that is kind of most of what they do. Sometimes they'll do like a banner drop or something. Well, the thing about the stickers is, I don't know if everyone is deep in the lore, but it's required. That's what they call their activism, right? In order to be a member,

you have to post pictures of you putting up stickers. Like there are like spreadsheets and documents and your network director is keeping tabs and you have to report in every week about what activism

you've engaged in and you have to provide video and photo proof of you doing these acts of vandalism which is also pretty smart on patriot front's part because they also sell their stickers so it's it's a it's a great pyramid scheme yeah it's it's got mlm energy yeah i i know uh uh robert rundo and the patriot front guy were like working together on a sticker manufacturing business for a while. I don't think that's working out super well for Rundo, but. Yeah, he's currently awaiting trial in prison, right? I believe so. Yeah.

After fleeing to, what is it, like Romania for like two years? Like Belgrade. He was extradited from Serbia. Yes, Serbia. That's where itited from Serbia. Yes, Serbia. That's where it was. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Rough. But so in this case, you know, this is not just stickers, right?

The stickers that you could peel off. You know, you're uncomfortable, you're scared, but you could peel those stickers off and move on with your day. They spray painted over a mural that cost $45,000. Oh, so, well, this is interesting because i'm not a law expert but they may be financially liable for that extremely high cost right so unlike in the arthur ash mural which was property of the city of richmond you know so the plaintiffs in that suit don't own that mural they just feel that they've been infringed upon by because now they're afraid

to go to the public park in this, the plaintiff has been financially damaged to a significant degree. This mural was, they got a grant. They had community input. It was made by a local artist. And now it is destroyed. It is a thing of value. It is their property.

And the law really cares about property. So now we have quantifiable damage to property belonging to the plaintiff. And after these two incidents, individual shopkeepers had to buy their own security cameras. They shortened their hours because they were scared to be there after dark. And the marketplace as a whole actually still operates on reduced hours due to safety concerns. The executive director of the nonprofit had to buy a security system for her home and

doesn't like to go to work unaccompanied. I mean, there's genuine fear in this place now. Well, that's the other thing is that these sorts of acts of vandalism come with like an implicit threat of violence that we can get together a crew of five guys wearing masks and show up at this place of work or we could already be there when when you like arrive well there was there's actually in the lawsuit and one of the paragraphs in the suit says you know that the day after this happened i guess the day in between the two separate acts, a couple of white guys acting sketchy were wandering around the marketplace taking pictures of people. Yeah, I bet.

People are scared. The marketplace's immigrant shopkeepers and customers absolutely understood the intent of this vandalism. And it was the same message that they chanted here in Charlottesville. You will not replace us, right? Loud and clear in that spray paint. And so their ability to transact business, to use a place of public accommodation, to feel safe in public was taken from them in an organized pre-planned act arising out of discriminatory animus.

And again, that sort of discriminatory animus clause is important in application of this statute, right? So in the North Dakota suit, they're suing Patriot Front, the organization, Thomas Rousseau as its leader, and the regional network director for that area, Trevor Valescu. And they're also seeking to identify 10 John Does in discovery. So they don't know who all of these guys are that are getting sued, but they're going to find out. And the third suit, boston lawsuit is really the most straightforward a black man got assaulted there's video the video was actually taken by a member of patriot front from

once again once again it gets worse it gets worse so the video was taken by the member from inside the ranks of the march and it shows members making physical contact with charles morel on a public sidewalk in Boston. So they were up there. It was just before 4th of July. They were marching on Boston's Freedom Trail. I think I remember this one. Yeah.

And Charles Morrell was outside the public library. He was a busker. He was playing music outside the library on the sidewalk. And this video didn't get leaked. This video, they posted themselves. They posted it proudly on their Telegram channel. Yep. And they posted it on their Telegram channel the day the lawsuit was filed.

Genius. Genius move. Once again, the galaxy brain folks over at Patriot Front just cannot stop putting pretty dog shit electronic music over videos of them doing crimes and so even though i would say if 13 months after this incident occurred i'm just randomly posting a video of this happening that's so weird i would say it's probably because you you know that you're being sued but they are a few they have not acknowledged this lawsuit they don't acknowledge that this suit exists which Which the government loves when

people don't acknowledge lawsuits that are happening to them. You can't just like la la la la la your way out of a lawsuit. I mean, you can try to go into hiding like forever and yeah, we'll see how that goes. And so just a few weeks ago when Patriot Front was like wandering around in the snow

at the March for Life in D.C., a reporter asked Rousseau about the incident in Boston. He didn't bring up the lawsuit i wish he had i would love to get him on tape on that one but he asked him about the incident in boston and russo continues to claim that like look we've posted the video and it exonerates us i'm sure oh i'm sure it does buddy when i watch the video i mostly just see a masked gang of fascists using their custom made and branded metal shields to beat a black man who's using a public sidewalk forcing him into the street and slamming his head into the pole and he had to get stitches but i guess it's like it's up for the courts to decide if him being in their way was the real

crime here yeah yeah they was i mean it's funny because like, it's not funny, but I have seen cops before use the exact same justification. Well, it's different when the cops do it. Yes, it is different because cops are special little boys. Because you can't sue them. Yeah, but no, it is funny how much Patriot Front are just trying to act like wannabe cops who do graffiti. Right, like if you wanted to be a riot cop like most cities are hiring just be a riot cop that's not that hard i've seen a lot of guys doing it that i don't think are capable of much else yeah so in this in the boston lawsuit the named defendants are just thomas rousseau and patriot

front but they are hoping to identify John Doe's one through 99. Well, I only wish them good luck. So Garrison, you were saying, you know, you can't just hide forever, right? Usually not. Well, you could try. You can certainly, look, you can always try.

There are certain people, Heidig, who I wish only the best. There are certain people, Heidig, who I wish only the best. There are many others, Heidig, who I think are probably bad people. And it's not like I enjoy the violence of the state. But if someone happens to stumble into experiencing the violence of the state while also wanting to wish violence upon me and my friends, I'm not going to stop that from happening. So these lawsuits, right? They got filed, but filing a lawsuit just means you paid a fee to give it to the court clerk. When you're suing someone, you have to serve them with papers.

You have to serve them with papers. You have to find them. You have to track them down. And normally that's pretty straightforward, right? People have homes, they have jobs, they have routines, they have friends and family. There's places places they go there's places they shop you you can you can find most people because most people aren't hiding and most people aren't good at hiding but thomas russo does not seem to want to be found now the first suit filed um the virginia suit they did manage to serve russo at that house in grapevine texas that his father was had owned no longer owns yeah but he and some other patriot

front members were living in that house yep but not long after those papers were served to him there that house was sold in a foreclosure sale god i'm sure that house smelled awful oh imagine the oh it's like you never gotta feel bad for the foreclosure sale guy it's like a gym locker in there imagine staffing to stage that house for sale the only only worst smell is inside the patriot front u-hauls because oh wow driving six hours in the idaho the idaho summer with like 30 other guys in the back of that truck it must be awful do you remember i think it was in the first leak some of the guys were complaining about how when they had to ride in the back of the u-haul they were getting sick

and like passing out and i bet like oh my god you're locked in there throwing up having to smell everyone else's vomit but also like there's carbon monoxide and it's hot like you're not supposed to be back there it's so funny but the advice that the advice that russo gave them when they were saying like hey like we were getting sick back there like it's it's not safe like we were barfing and passing out he recommended that they practice overheating yes just get better just yeah yeah you're like you're like endurance tested just start hanging out in the back of you halls for fun that's actually not how heat stroke works, but... No, I'm pretty sure you could just think your way through heat stroke.

Just practice. I think a Chad alpha male should be able to sit in a packed truck for 17 hours, be totally fine. So the house, the stinky house, sold, foreclosed. So by the time the Boston lawsuit process server came to find him there he's already for sale yeah there's nobody nobody to serve so they hired a legal

research firm they sent process servers to addresses all over texas and they came up empty so what do you do when a guy who knows process servers are looking for him can't be found should have served him at that march in washington dc honestly why were they not mobilized for that i could have told you they were going to be there i mean i think that would require some collaboration with like anti-fascist researchers who like know when these things are happening so like that i think that's probably why is that that's just a little bit tricky but if if there were more willingness for collaboration i think that probably could be successful you could find him right but so if I were to, for example,

file a lawsuit against you today. Why? What if I don't? I'm so innocent. If I just never, if I just filed my lawsuit, pay the fee to file it, but I just never served you,

that's on me. That's my fault. I didn't take the necessary steps. My suit's going to get dismissed. Yeah. But if I'm really trying, I'm hiring investigators, I'm knocking on neighbors' doors to ask if they've

seen you, I'm looking under every rock for any sign of where you might be. That's different. That's not on me anymore. That's on you. And there's ample precedent for this, right? And the law is pretty clear. You can't escape being sued by playing cat and mouse. The old Tom and Jerry

method. And I feel like once they start saying things like the federal rules of civil procedure, people are going to turn the podcast off. All right, well, that does it for us today, folks, and it could happen here. Thank you for listening. But in federal court, the rules allow alternative service

by means that are allowable in that state, right? So even though they're in federal court in North Dakota, they can use methods available in North Dakota courts to serve their defendants. And so in North Dakota, they can use methods available in North Dakota courts to serve their defendants. And so in North Dakota, if you've tried your best, you've exhausted the normal means, conducted a diligent search, you can do what's called service by publication, which means you just publish a notice in the newspaper. Really?

Yeah. Oh, that's, I didn't know that. That's interesting. And you have to, you have to try really hard first, right? They really did try. They hired investigators. They hired servers. They did their due diligence. Yeah.

And so the judge said, okay, you tried your best. Put it in the paper that they got mad. Put it in the paper that they got sued. And so they did. They published the notification in a Cass County, North Dakota newspaper for a few weeks in a row. And so now as far as that court is concerned they've been served all right and it worked a few weeks later

they got a lawyer oh oh okay this is this is this is a news to me yeah things are moving things are moving so the north dakota lawsuit the two named individual defendants thomas rousseau and network director trevor valescu they got a lawyer and his name it's gonna sound familiar to you because it is jason lee van dyke oh oh well i yeah you gotta love dykes i mean like what's not to love not not the good kind not the good kind oh wait wait i'm receiving some special intel this is this is not not what i was thinking no unfortunately um if his name does sound familiar to you it might be because for 36 hours at towards the end of 2018 he was the national chairman of the proud boys but then actually he quit instead honestly what are this what are the smarter moves

so he had represented Proud Boys in various legal actions over the years. He was a member for several years. But as his LinkedIn currently and rather aggressively notes, he is not a Proud Boy anymore. A lot of people are asking questions about my shirt already saying

I am not a Proud Boy. Interesting. I actually am familiar with this guy. He was involved in a suit with a group I was looking into a few years back. Yeah, he's done a little bit of movement lawyering. So this isn't his first rodeo. And he denies that he is a member of Patriot Front, though he has spoken to the press on numerous occasions claiming to represent various members of Patriot Front. Sure.

He's not a member. Yeah, I mean, i mean sure i like um he has specifically denied allegations that he is patriot front user john texas in the leaked chats although oh okay well he says that he is not john texas has a lot in common with jason lee vandyke but okay Lee Van Dyke denies that he is John Texas okay well I'm sure I look I have no reason to not trust a dyke so yeah I'm sure that's fine yeah and it's interesting so he lives in North Texas right where you know oh he does huh home home base for these patriot front boys yeah he's never practiced in North Dakota before he's not barred in North Dakota wait what inexplicably so you know you have to take the bar exam to be in a state bar He's never practiced in North Dakota before. He's not barred in North Dakota. Wait, what?

Inexplicably. So, you know, you have to take the bar exam to be in a state bar. Yeah. Normally, normally to get admitted to a federal court, you have to be barred in that state. North Dakota doesn't require that. You just have to pay a fee. Okay. But it's a little strange.

He applied to be admitted to the federal court in North Dakota right around the time this lawsuit got filed. Huh. But then he didn't actually enter an appearance until the judge said, yeah, they've been served. You can't hide. So he did know about it. Yeah, he was just. I would guess. I would guess that he did know. It seems like he knew and he was just working with Patriot Front

to make it harder to be served. Again, that's not a legal claim I'm making. I'm just making a guess. I'm just saying he has never practiced in North Dakota before, but he did apply to be admitted to the court around the time the lawsuit was filed. That's all.

Interesting. The Boston case is a little wilder, right? So it's 2024. We're all online. And it's not actually unheard of to get permission from the court to serve someone electronically if you've tried everything else.

Yeah. I've heard of cases where someone got served by a Facebook messenger, which just feels demeaning. Wow, that's so depressing. Imagine. Like you can send a Minions sticker with it. Oh, God.

Horrible vibes. But I need to do a little more research to figure out if this is the first time a federal judge has had to decide whether a gab dm is legally sufficient notice that you know you know you're joking there's no way no absolutely not yeah yeah okay well we will we will learn what gab is after I take a break. I need to like walk around for a few minutes and just process that for a second. Well, yeah, here's, here's, here's some ads. I'm just, I'm just going to process that for, for, for a while. All right. We are back get again molly i hope that a lot of a lot of our listeners don't know what gab is they shouldn't be on there but that means that you have to explain what gab is which isn't that hard it's just kind of annoying.

It's just sort of like a less functional Facebook for Nazis. Well, I think originally it was Twitter for Nazis, but now Twitter is Twitter for Nazis. But it has more of a sort of Facebook interface to me. Oh, I always thought of it as having a way more of like an older Twitter user. Because it has like groups and a marketplace. It does have groups and a marketplace. I think it started as a Twitter clone that started to add more

Facebook features. That's sort of like the evolutionary thing where everything turns into crabs. Boomers turn everything into Facebook. Yes, yes, exactly. It is the Facebookification of all social media i i think those changes were made to like to support more like a collaboration between users because they wanted it to be like a place where nazis could like also organize but yeah it very much started and like what what year was like 2018 ish i want to say 2016 oh i could pull the incorporation documents but

i think i think it's a little older than that but it wasn't popular until i didn't get a gab account until 2018 it was in the news a lot in 2018 yeah yeah mass shooters were using it and then their accounts were in the court documents yes but it was already you know popular among certain sets it was it was certainly around for a while um it their logo is a frog i'm sure there's nothing i'm sure that's completely normal but yeah it's it's it started off as just a social media app for nazis uh almost exclusively used by white supremacists it's a free speech platform it is a free speech platform it was kind of it was i like parlor came a few years later which

was more like a mega ish version get like gab was for like actual nazis right whereas parlor you could find like you know like like anyone from like mega people conservative politicians you could you found a lot of like proud boy chapters but gab was like no you were like explicitly white supremacists there's not a lot of plausible deniability in a gab account the way there was maybe with parlor a little bit now gab is still a thing i i think uh i mostly use it to watch the gdl who posts posts a lot on gab um but i think a lot of unfortunately a whole bunch of people who were on gab are just now back on actual twitter or in prison and and you know some would say that those two things have a lot in common which is not actually true because prison is way worse the same the same posts kind of got them to both places

just different yes yes uh anyway so okay but that's yeah i that's i i did not know that a feature of gab could be serving some could be serving some lawsuit papers that is something i did not know well it turns out you can't attach a pdf to a gab dm so we did run into some trouble oh my god this is so dumb so charles morel's lawyers were given permission to serve patriot front and thomas rousseau via several online means right so in this motion for for this permission for alternate service, they identified two email addresses and social media accounts regularly used by the group

on Telegram, Odyssey, BitChute, and Gab. I mean, I certainly would have gone for Telegram. Odyssey and BitChute are like YouTube and Twitch clones for Nazis, in case the listener is curious. Don't go there. It's not worth it. Do not go there. My god i have been i've i've been on there way too much this week and i have seen some of the worst shit it's not good on there

no it is it's not a process server right this this person who normally just like waits outside your work to serve you with papers is like now on gab right so the process server contacted all of the identified accounts and so when i was researching this you know i was trying to get an idea of how common this is what the usual means are and so i was looking through the cited case law in the motion and one of the cases they cited kind of caught my eye it's havlish v bin laden oh you know him i that name sounds familiar was was he the one that did that thing like around like 20 23 ish years ago were you even born then how old i was i was not oh no i was kidding jesus i thought i was just ribbing you oh my god unfortunately yeah well it is that bin laden right it is it is the guy it is the guy okay it. It's the one, the one you're thinking of. So that's a lawsuit that was brought by families of people who died in 9-11. So last

year, a federal judge in New York gave those plaintiffs permission to serve legal notice to the Taliban via Twitter DM. The Taliban? What a time to be alive. What a time to be alive. I mean, yes. The Taliban twitter account is certainly fascinating they're really they're trying to hold the taliban response symbol for 9-11 huh i don't want to get like deep into the weeds about this particular case but there's some sure there's some seized so like judgments have been awarded there are seized funds sitting somewhere in the middle east yeah yeah yeah they want they want this money right and so they need to deserve notice to the taliban that they want this money and so as wild as that sounds there's actually a lot of similarities in the underlying legal logic here. So in both of these

cases, the court is pretty specific that they're not just saying like, yeah, just like DM whoever, and it's good enough, right? So in both of these cases, the account identified as being appropriate for service is pretty clear that it belongs to the person who's supposed to be served. Yeah. And that that particular account has been used to make statements that indicate the individual already knows about the lawsuit. So this DMs, the service by a DM isn't going to be a surprise, right? This isn't going to be the first time you're hearing about this. Like the court knows that you know, which I just need to see the red receipt that you know. So in the case of the Taliban, the court notes that the accounts had previously published press

releases related to the funds at issue in the underlying litigation so it's like they they're posting about it they know they're they're certainly posting the taliban is posting about the funds okay so in this case it's russo's bravado biting him in the ass right and he loves and he loves posting my god and the judge specifically refers to the fact that they posted the video of the incident the day the suit was filed which indicates actual knowledge yes which is also a very interesting legal move on the part of russo like the judge is reading your posts and he doesn't think they're good oh my god uh nothing more scary than having

to read out your posts to a federal judge jesus christ post every day like a judge is gonna read him over your shoulder right yes right so they're just like randomly and for totally unrelated reasons posting this 13 month old video the day the lawsuit gets filed the judge doesn't buy that fast again a fascinating legal move and so so back to the Richmond case, right? We're still talking about service. So the Richmond case, because it was filed first, maybe they weren't expecting to get sued. And because more of those plaintiffs were actually identified by anti-fascist researchers, they actually did manage to serve most of their defendants. They found Thomas Dale, Nathan Noyce, Aidan Trudinick, and Daniel Turecci at their homes.

A private investigator tracked Jacob Brown down hiding at a home owned by his mother in like upstate new york william ring was actually sorry mom god what a bunch of losers uh but william ring was actually the easiest defendant to find um his papers were actually handed to someone to give to him but this person was authorized to receive those papers because they were a corrections officer at the fayette county prison in pennsylvania ah ring was a guest up there serving a sentence for beating a man over the head with a baseball bat wrapped in barbed wire hmm curious it was an altercation over a refrigerator it's very unclear oh that's so sad i i thought i thought it was gonna be like some like horrible racist assault and there could be an element of racism in this i'm not familiar with the case no don't don't worry garrison he was there for a second defense that occurred around

the same time but separately separate counties even um where he punched a child in the face after telling her to go back to mexico okay there there. There we see that. That is what I, that's what I was expecting. All right. Yeah, that sounds about right. Oh man, it does suck that sending Nazis to prison also has so many negative consequences. It's definitely not going to fix anything.

The furthering of the White Supremacist Project is really reliant on there being Nazis in prison. And it sucks that that is such an organizational hub of them. Because these people should not be around other people. Oh man. Ah, man.

Yeah, just as an interesting aside, in both of those criminal cases, he hired a guy I've seen before. Very interesting. His name is Josh Smith. He was the lawyer that Matt Heimbach hired to represent him in the Sines v. Kessler case a few years ago.

Always interesting to see an old friend again. Man with the most real name, Josh Smith. Oh, it's because it's not his real name. That's, well, there we go. Yeah, he was born Daniel Nussbaum. Of course he was. I clocked that immediately. Wow, good for me.

Yeah, no, he was raised Jewish, but now he's a Holocaust denier. Oh, this is so sad. Oh my God. He joined a Nazi gang gang yeah what the fuck oh god he's like i have to pick a whiter name josh smith wow what a loser he's not a very good lawyer either um his performance his performance in the science case was some of the strangest courtroom behavior I've ever seen. Like the judge had to keep reminding him of like, you can't, like, that's not the law. Like you can't just say stuff.

I love courtroom behavior being described as strange. Like when the judge has to repeatedly remind you like how the law works, like how making motions works, like you can't just yell stuff it was a rough trial for him oh he um his client does owe millions of dollars he's the reverse saul goodman oh my god jesus christ but yeah so delivering hired him for his criminal cases and is in prison oh he didn't hire him to represent him in this lawsuit because he didn't get a lawyer and he defaulted well so if you default on a case it means you're not allowed to participate anymore and so the case is going to keep going and maybe you get found liable but like you don't get to participate anymore so when it's over if you're liable like that's kind of you fuck you huh um

and so thomas rousseau jacob brown and patriot front are also defaulted in that lawsuit but the other guys great the other guys got a lawyer they hired another guy we've seen before uh his name is glenn allen he's a maryland-based attorney who lost his job as counsel for the baltimore police department after the splc identified him as a longtime member of the old school neo-nazi group national alliance wow huh curious that that the police would have a nazi lawyer that's weird surely there's nothing to interrogate there no there's nothing weird going on in baltimore at the police department at all it is certainly funny that they just hired the old police nazi lawyer for their nazi club

they're like we need a lawyer who. Who's someone who's been fired from the police for being a Nazi? So he's been keeping pretty busy the last few years. He spent a couple years trying to sue the SPLC

for saying true stuff about him being a member of National Alliance. It didn't work out. It didn't work out. And he currently represents Warren Bailong in a doomed appeal

of a previously dismissed lawsuit against the city of Charlottesville for failing to protect his right to have a good time at unite the right well it's it's sort of um i don't know it's like feels a little slapstick right like we're just like throwing characters in here we've got we've got the the formerly jewish holocaust denier nazi we've got the guy in prison for punching a little girl um oh the girl he told to go back to mexico is puerto rican i don't know that that matters to him but she she can't she can't go back to mexico nazi's tale had being racist challenge level impossible um but we're just like throwing characters in here. We got all these guys. It is very cartoonish.

Yeah. But here we are at the end, right? I've taken up a lot of your time to take care of us and telling you my little story. But what happens now, right? There's three live cases. They're starting. They're starting to crawl forward now that the judges agreed that you can serve them. I'm so excited for discovery.

My God. It's going to be a treat. It's for me anyway. I'm getting excited for Discovery. My God. It's going to be a treat. It's for me anyway. I'm getting the documents. Now, obviously, the plaintiff's goal here is recovery of damages. That's what the law allows for. They can they sue because they want to recover damages. And I wish them well in that.

I'm not like holding my breath. I think we can get some idea of what to expect here by looking back at the Sines v. Kessler lawsuit against the United Right organizers organizers it took four years to get to trial discovery was stymied by guys dropping their phones in toilets or just not showing up i'm sure a lot of what these lawyers are doing are collaborating with uh defendants to make as little come out in discovery as possible because that is beyond beyond the actual court case the thing that could actually be most damaging to them is is discovery like that that that is the actual thing so i'm sure they're using all this extra time when they're avoiding recognizing the lawsuit to uh try to tidy up any dirty laundry they may have in a semi-legal fashion well they can't do

that and so i'm not going to accuse anyone of a crime right destruction of evidence is is not allowed that's called spoliation right so once you have actual knowledge that you're being sued you are no longer allowed to destroy anything that might be discoverable do people still do it sure do they always absolutely no am i implying that anyone is committing a crime at this juncture? Legally? No. But we'll see. But, you know, looking back at science, I don't think anybody's going to squeeze a few million out of any of those guys, right?

Like they were found liable, but they're not going to pay. Right. And Thomas Rousseau started running his fascist club for friendless boys right out of high school. He doesn't have a job. He doesn't have assets. He's not going to pay anybody any money. But what it can do is slow them down. They have to get lawyers.

They have to show up in court. They have to participate in discovery. We've already seen plenty of leaked comms and internal planning documents. But now those documents and more will be entered into the court record, right? So, you know, researchers like you and I, we put out information all the time and people see it and it makes a difference um but when something comes in with sort of the imprimatur of the the court's legitimacy like once you put a bates number on that bad boy yeah they could put it on the news the real news where normal people see it right yeah not not your like niche not your niche like no blogs the site that like 12 people check it on right so like your mom

watching mad out is going to see this where like she's not reading unicorn riot yeah so this will put this information in front of more people you will have more legitimacy um but i think the biggest impact this is going to have is on the willingness of potential members and current members to participate, right? Yeah, it makes things way more risky for people wanting to do this sort of stuff. Like maybe you're going to think twice about your group mandated racial intimidation now that you know you might have to pay for that. Yeah. You know, maybe joining looks a little less appealing. It's hard to be optimistic about relying on the courts to meaningfully undermine white supremacist organizing.

Sure. But it's worth a shot to gum up the works with whatever tools you have. Absolutely. I may not believe in the law system TM as this universally good thing or even like a valid thing, but I'm certainly willing to have it severely inconvenience my ontological enemies. Like, is it the best solution? No. Is it a solution? Maybe not at all.

But it's worth a shot. It'll be, you know, I'm going to enjoy reading the documents either way. Absolutely. No, that is, I am extremely intrigued to see what will come out in Discovery. And I wish these people only the worst. Well, Molly, that was fantastic. That was extremely informative. I always think it's impossible to find new ways to laugh at Patriot Front, yet here we are. Imagine opening that DM. I wish they'd record everything.

I wish they'd been recording that. God, that'd be funny. Yeah. Imagine getting served via Gab. I would just get, you know, I shouldn't say that. Anyway, well, where can people find you online, Molly?

Besides on our show now? I know. I'm very excited to be here. You can find me on Twitter at Socialist Dogma, a name I chose as a little joke before I realized it was going to be my job. That is the same thing with my Twitter presence. So we are in the same boat there. Yeah, you mostly just find me on Twitter. You can find me on my ghost newsletter. It's like Substack, but there's less Nazis there. It's called The Devil's Advocates.

There's a link to it on my Twitter. I post about what happens when you take white supremacy to court. Fantastic. Well, thank you so much, Molly. We will talk again soon to learn about, I'm sure, even new and more ridiculous things that you have stumbled across by reading those documents. I am too ADHD to look at. It only ever gets worse, Garrison.

Hey, guys. I'm Kate Max. You might know me from my popular online series, The Running Interview Show, where I run with celebrities, athletes, entrepreneurs, and more. After those runs, the conversations keep going. That's what my podcast, Post Run Run High is all about. It's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories, their journeys, and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together. You know that rush of endorphins you feel after a great workout? Well, that's when the real magic happens. So if you love hearing real, inspiring stories from the people you know, follow, and admire, join me every week for Post Run High. It's where we take the conversation beyond the run and get into the heart of it all. It's lighthearted, pretty crazy, and very fun.

Listen to Post Run High on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. on the iHeartRadio app, Apple's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. Hola mi gente, it's Honey German and I'm bringing you Gracias, Come Again, the podcast where we dive deep into the world of Latin culture, musica, peliculas, and entertainment with some of the biggest names in the game.

If you love hearing real conversations with your favorite Latin celebrities, artists, and culture shifters, this is the podcast for you. We're talking real conversations with our Latin stars, from actors and artists to musicians and creators, sharing their stories, struggles, and successes. You know it's going to be filled with chisme laughs and all the vibes that you love. Each week, we'll explore everything from music and pop culture to deeper topics like identity, community, and breaking down barriers in all sorts of industries.

Don't miss out on the fun, el té caliente, and life stories. Join me for Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get into todo lo actual y viral. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to the very special Lunar New Year's episode of It Could Happen Here. I'm your host, Mia Wong, and today we're talking about China. And more specifically, we are talking about the Chinese state and the persistent question that haunts American national security experts and leftists on social media like,

is China Maoist? Now, if you, gentle listener, are not embroiled in a kind of running turf war with American China watchers like I am, you may rightly be asking, wait, what? People actually believe this? And the answer, unfortunately, is yes. Yes, they do. And those people get to write in major media outlets. Here's the New York Times. How Xi returned China to one-man rule. For decades, China has built guardrails to prevent another Mao. Here's how Xi Jinping has dismantled them and created his own machinery of power. Here's also the New York Times. This one, I guess, technically is from the opinion section,

but Xi Jinping is the second coming of Mao Zedong. Here's the Wall Street Journal. China wants to move ahead, but Xi Jinping is looking to the past. As China's leader embraces more elements of Mao Zedong's rule, its people are confronting a more uncertain future. Lest you think this is purely an American phenomenon, here's Al Jazeera, which was funded by the government of Qatar. Is Xi Jinping China's new Mao Zedong? Was Xi casting himself as a 21st century Mao? China risks arbitrary rule. Here's foreign policy the maoist roots of xi's economic dilemma in contrast with ding xi has embraced a distinctly maoist socialism that emphasizes personal sacrifice for the collective good harking back to the cultural revolution of the 1960s and 70s the british of course are also not immune to this mao derangement syndrome i guess i would

call it xi jinping's pilgrimage to red mecca brings back the mao factor so you know this is this is a very very common sentiment it's been a very common sentiment for most of the last decade um i have i haven't even done some of the most common ones like if you if you expand a little bit out from just xi jinping is the new mao ones you get a lot of like xi jinping is the most powerful leader since mao which is kind of true and i think this is part of why this sort of strategy works, because people do not want to actually differentiate between different kinds of authoritarian systems. There are many, many different kinds of dictatorships, and people are just loathe to actually look at the differences. And you see this, this is not just a sort of American

media class thing. You see this in political science literature all the differences. And you see this, this is not just a sort of American media class thing. You see this in political science literature all the time. Political science literature, especially in the US, has this tendency to divide the entire world into this sort of neat classification of dictatorships and democracies. And as a product of this, I have had to read some truly, truly appalling articles that were published in peer-reviewed journals on my my absolute i don't know if favorite is the right term or the most cursed

one that i ever saw was it's it was an article about like the quote-unquote resource curse and this argument about whether like having a bunch of oil means that you are inherently going to have an authoritarian government or whatever so they have this chart that's supposed to be tracking like the quote-unquote time to a democratic transition of a bunch of non-democratic societies by like just how much how much natural resources they have now Now, this chart has in the same category Saudi Arabia, a theocratic monarchy, and also hoaxist Albania, a country whose political line was that Mao didn't Mao hard enough. And these are just being treated neutrally as the same type of government because it's not a representative democracy. North Korea is another good example of

this. You see people in the U.S. calling North Korea a hereditary monarchy like all the time, and it just isn't. Leadership of the party state passes between members of a family, but that's not actually enough to make something a monarchy unless you're prepared to argue that like the U.S. is a monarchy because we had two bushes as president now on the grounds that that's extremely funny i'm not wholly unsympathetic to that argument but it's not calling the u.s a monarchy because of the two bushes is not a very serious academic argument it is just a joke and that's i think how we should be treating people like people calling north kore a monarchy, because it's not. A monarchy is not just there's a guy who's in charge and it passes to another person who's related to them.

It's not just that there's someone who you could call a king. There is a whole political system beneath it, right? There's a whole network of like princes and courts and land titles and inheritances and who and who doesn't have royal blood. and land titles and inheritances and who and who doesn't have royal blood and there's there's you know there's a whole you know and the the economic system of of of a monarchy has like has changed over time right monarchies are very old you know we now have like capitalist monarchies like the saudis you know we've had feudal monarchies we've had sort of pre-feudal monarchies but you can't simply reduce monarchy to one guy in charge that is absolutely absurd but people just do this all the time now north korea is organized along the lines of a party state where this is you know a sort of shortening of one party state technically

speaking there are actually other parties in north korea and this is true of China as well, but they don't really do anything. And this is not the episode where I'm going to have to try to explain the difference between the United Front and the United Front Works Department. That's another time. But they are functionally one-party states. There is one party that actually does the ruling, and then there's a couple of other parties that keep around for appearances who might do consultative stuff. But even in terms, even knowing that something is a party state doesn't actually tell you a huge amount about how that system actually functions. And this is where we come to the core elements of today's episode. How does the modern Chinese state operate and how is it different from previous iterations of the Chinese state?

So to answer this question, we need to start with the origins of the party state itself. And the party state really, in the sense that we're dealing with, is born with the Soviet Union. Well, I mean, I guess it technically predates the Soviet Union a little bit, but it's born of the October Revolution and the Bolshevik taking consolidation of power. On the other hand, party states are not built in the image of Lenin. They're built in the image of Stalin. And the thing that makes – the party states that come after it, what makes them function is the way that sort of Stalin consolidates power. And Stalin consolidates power by using the rules of the Bolshevik party to maintain control over members of the state apparatus, even though technically speaking, he doesn't have like, you know, he'd be doing these doesn't technically have the formal authority to do as a member of the government, but he has the authority to do as a member of the party. And this is how Stalin consolidates his power. Instead of walls out Trotsky. Etc. However.

Comma. This is where people make mistakes. When they're trying to sort of understand. What Stalinism was. Which is that they make this mistake. Of looking. You know of kind of projecting back. The later Soviet Union. Onto you know onto sort of like projecting back the later Soviet Union onto, you know, onto sort of like

1930s Stalinism. And the mistake that they make is the assumption that Stalinism is purely a bureaucratic doctrine, right? It's purely about seizing control of the bureaucracy and using a bureaucracy to consolidate power. And that is just not true. Part of Stalin's success, and as bleak as that success is, part of what Stalin does is mobilize masses of people against parts of the party and parts of the state bureaucracy that oppose him to do things like denunciations and to weaken their bureaucratic power. And this means that Stalinism is not a pure politics of state bureaucracy the way that sort of later Soviet governments are. It's a combination of bureaucratic power and also the direction of mass mobilization of the mobilization of large numbers of people to go do a thing towards the end of consolidating power. This interplay, the control of bureaucratic power checked by mass popular mobilizations, is the characteristic element of Stalinism. Both of these tools, both the bureaucratic apparatus and mass mobilization, are used to

maintain Stalin's personal power. Now, Maoism, for all of its claims to be the direct ideological heir of Stalinism, Maoism and Stalinism are not the same thing. In sort of like Mao era China, you can trace this from sort of like Mao's insurgency era through the time he was in power to the end of the 70s. During that period, China is, if anything, even more prone to mass popular mobilization as a strategy some of this is ideological maoism is to a large extent a kind of internal critique of stalinism that you know i mean like so people in like you you could argue about you know how good were the intentions of the people who are in charge of the chinese communist party in like the 20s and 30s right but they're not they're not stupid right these people are smart these

people understand that there are a lot of problems with the soviet system these are people who watched a bunch of their comrades get murdered because the soviets fucked up so these are people who understand the threat of bureaucratization to a revolutionary movement and the potential formation of a new ruling class composed of sort of like management and bureaucratic cadres. is utterly unwilling to try to solve these problems by actually giving like workers or peasants like any kind of autonomy or democratic control over anything except for like the most trivial minutiae of like shop floor bullshit and the result of this is that you know you you can't defeat the bureaucracy with democracy so what do So how do you actually deal with it? And the result is what's called campaign-style mobilization. These are mass mobilizations of extraordinarily large numbers of people

to do a task, right? There's a lot of different sort of things they try to do with this. Sometimes they're used for economic ends. This is like the Great Leap Forward, which is this mass mobilization of people to increase productive capacity it is a fiasco now part of this also is political right partly this is mao trying to use mass mobilization against the bureaucracy in a way reminiscent of stalin but at a much much larger scale and the other you know part part of what's going on here is that the bureaucracy of the Soviet Union is much stronger than the bureaucracy of China, right?

Because, you know, the Bolsheviks kind of have a state, like, bureaucracy sort of intact that they're able to sort of graft themselves onto. China, like, doesn't have, like, a functioning government at all. Like, there's no functioning central state in China when the maoists eventually like knock off the nationalists so you know this this this always means that the level of bureaucratization is lower in china but you know it's still it's still that's still like the state building process is still one of the things the maoists are trying to do and this is you know this is sort of what mao is trying to check but this doesn't work the culture revolution ultimately fails and part of its failure is that you know okay so in order in order to like stop the dread specter of like democratic election of factory councils and shit

mao like cobbles together this coalition of soldiers like loyalist red Guard factions, and some of the pre-existing bureaucracy. And these are the people who end up running the country through the 70s. And that is just another bureaucracy. And through this whole period, China continues to get more and more bureaucratic. Now, this is the most cliche thing that you can possibly say, but unfortunately, I do have to say it. The Cultural Revolution had a massive impact on subsequent Chinese policy. Every Chinese leader from Deng Xiaoping on, including Xi Jinping, and this is something that is not very well covered in the American press, but every single one of these people agrees that the Cultural Revolution was a mistake. And you can see the

results of this analysis in how the modern chinese state mobilizes resources now do you know how you can mobilize resources it's by uh buying the products and services contained in these ads we are back i don't know why i'm saying we it is kind of just me and you the listener but i guess i guess i guess that's technically plural so let's get into how the modern chinese state is very very different from the previous from the previous kind of chinese state right because you know like the mao era for everything that goes? Because, you know, like the Mao era, for everything that goes wrong with it, right? For all of the reality that it's an absolute disaster

is based on, in a lot of ways, what we would call grassroots style organizing, right? It's based on getting a bunch of people to go out and do a thing. Now, the modern Chinese state doesn't do this in the same way of the closest thing that they have to sort of like maoist mobilizations are you know there is still a thing that's called a campaign style mobilization but it's not the same thing at all as the maoist system so let's ask the

question what the fuck is campaign-style mobilization? So I'm going to go to the academic literature on this. A group of professors writing for the journal Public Administration Review in a very colorfully named article called Campaign-Style Enforcement and Regulatory Compliance describe it thus.

Following the literature, we define campaign-style enforcement as a type of policy implementation involving extraordinary mobilization of administrative resources under political sponsorship. Now, this definition is very interesting because if you look at what is being mobilized here, right, it is not masses of people. You're not trying to do mass popular mobilizations. You're mobilizing administrative resources. And this is something that becomes very clear the more you look into the sort of literature here. I'm going to quote from a piece called Revised Blue Sky Fabrication in China by Yongdong Shen and Anna L. Ehlers.

During the Mao era, the, they, this is campaign style mobilizations, aimed at nothing less than mobilizing society as a whole. While when they occur today, political campaigns are usually foremostly addressed at the state apparatus, i.e., especially party and government

organizations at all levels of the political hierarchy, and ultimately at cadres, in other words, the implementers of the policy goals at stake. Accordingly, Elizabeth Perry has called this transformation, quote, from mass campaigns to managed campaigns. Moreover, contemporary campaigns, or better, campaign-style politics, mainly the form of a. disciplinary, supervisory, and sanctioning campaigns, such as anti-crime campaigns, or the recently reinforced corruption campaign, or b. regulatory, enforcement, or policy goal

attainment acceleration campaigns. So, okay, that's kind of a lot, but I think it's worth actually taking this in a little bit of detail uh that same article defines about like the characteristics of what campaign style a campaign style mobilization is so they have a defined goal they have political sponsorship there's a high degree of urgency there's a defined period of time tightly coordinated operation the pooling of extraordinary resources and public involvement so that article the one about blue sky fabrication is studying the 2016 g20 meeting in hong zhou

where the government sets out to make sure that there is actually like a blue sky for the event now this is a massive undertaking because chinese air pollution is fucking atrocious um this is something that i might do another fall episode about this at some point chinese air pollution is unbelievably bad it kills unfathomable numbers of people every year it's gotten a little bit better since i was last there but like when i was last in beijing like i didn't fucking i only saw the sky one time in the time i was there because and that was only because it rained and so after it rained the sky was blue for like a few hours and the smog just like consumed it again so in order to make sure that there was like a blue sky for pr purposes for this g20 meeting because china wanted to sort of

show off there was a massive, massive deployment of resources. And this becomes one of the sort of campaign-style mobilizations. And these mobilizations, they may not be sort of Maoist-style mass mobilizations of getting people to go do the thing, but they are massively intrusive they include things like shuttering factories moving millions of people restricting like who can drive on what days like restricting whether or not you can like use like cooking stuff in your house but comma we need to look at how these things actually happen so the the way that these campaigns start basically is for, for the large scale ones, you have mobilization that flows basically down the lines of the state,

right? They start from the federal governments and then they go to local governments and regional governments implementation, you know, for, for sort of scientific stuff, right? So if you, if you look at, for, you know, going back to the sort of example of the G20 for, you know for for sort of scientific stuff right so if you if you look if we're you know going back to the sort of example of the g20 for you know in order to do the scientific coordination for it you get a very very broad sort of broad reaching court like coalition of coordination between scientists at universities as well as at research institutes and government

agencies and you're pooling them all together in order to produce like, I don't know, you're like air quality measures, right? And these efforts also can very rapidly fold in the governments of other provinces. So what does it actually mean in terms of how these mobilizations work? What it means is that mobilization is a way of moving around different state and sometimes just kind of pseudo non-state actors like universities or research institutes. It's a way of moving those resources around in such a way that you can accomplish a thing. Now, one of the kind of defining characteristics of a lot of these campaigns, and not all of them, like the anti-corruption campaigns obviously are sort of different. like the anti-corruption campaigns obviously are sort of different but a lot of these campaigns rely on scientific and technical mobilization both in the sense of what resources they're moving

right you're moving you're moving scientists around but also in terms of public justification and this is also something that's very different like there is ideological justification going on but like in in like a maoist sort of like like a high culture revolution like period or even greatly forward period you're mostly using sort of ideological like direct ideological motivation to get people to go do a thing here it's very technical it's very scientific it's very technocratic and one of the products of this one of the products of sort of how technocratic everything is is that and this is something shannon aylers are very clear about there is like there's no public comments here right like the way these campaign mobilizations work is the state tells you what you are doing

and you are not telling them back like anything like you are not negotiating with them you are not in a dialogue you are not submitting comments uh they are just telling you what to do and this goes from regular people all the way up to corporations. Even large corporations, a lot of times with these campaign style things, don't get a negotiated deal or whatever the fuck. It just

sort of happens. Now, you may have noticed in one of the original descriptions I was talking about, one of the things they have as part of the definition is public mobile is mobilization of like the public but we need to be clear about what that means so that it doesn't get confused with like maoism so when when we say there's mobilization of the public it's stuff like so during the g20 campaign there were like they would the the ccp would like have have old people volunteer to walk around their neighborhoods and snatch on anyone who was using their cooking stove.

That's the kind of mobilization we're talking about. These are not Red Guard tribunals dragging people out of their houses. This is an incredibly nosy 70 year old going like ha this person's using their cooking stove do you know how you can get a cooking stove that you can actually use uh maybe these products and services i don't know if we're sponsored by cooking stoves but you know we could be there could there could be a cooking stove product and service out there waiting for you. And we're back.

Now, we should also look more at some of the methods of how this stuff happens, right? So one of the things that's happening as part of this campaign is part of the plan to reduce pollution is the Chinese government wants to move a bunch of people out of the things that's happening as part of this campaign is part of the part of the plan to reduce pollution is they need the chinese government wants to move a bunch of people out of out of the city right now a maoist style thing would just tell the people to fucking leave uh the way that the way that uh the modern chinese government does this is to send people like basically free travel vouchers shannon aylers report the value of these vouchers is more than 1.5 billion dollars so like that's dollars right that's that's like so you know this is this is these are very expensive

campaigns but but you know this is the way that the chinese state moves in in in a lot of these cases right when they're trying to move when they need to move a bunch of people they deploy vouchers so some of these campaigns are using even more like technocratic means to get things done so looking back at the article uh campaign style enforcement and regulatory compliance we find examples of what is technically campaign style mobilization okay quote instance, the central government either waived the loan interest for corporate spending on basically these like desulfurization things to make industrial like exhaust not have sulfur in it or cover these expenses using central environmental funds in addition an innovative green electricity policy offered a that 0.0023 cents price premium per kilowatt hour to power like plants that installed one of these systems so this is like exactly the opposite of how a maoist campaign would do this, right? Like they are, these factory people are getting like price subsidies and like they're waiving the interest on loans.

Now we've been focusing on campaign style mobilization because those are the most sort of extraordinary kinds of mobilization, but most policy isn't even implemented by campaign. It's implemented by normal bureaucratic processes. And this is even less Maoist than the sort of campaign-style mobilizations. Now, most people, a lot of people who describe China as Maoist are describing their oppressive apparatus, but here they have things exactly backwards, right? Contrary to the government of the socialist period which was sort of governed by mass mobilization the modern chinese government is almost pathologically

adverse to anything that even smells like mass popular mobilization and this isn't to say that china doesn't have protests like it does there are protests in china um but comma like a lot of these you know they're they're they're protests like there are like ecological like NIMBY protests. There are like real estate. There's a lot of real estate protests. And some of those, some of these are allowed. There are protests. One of the very common forms of protest is against not getting paid by your boss.

But even attempting like, and most of these protests aren't like, these protests aren't really anti-government, right? They're not calling for the downfall of the regime or whatever. They're pissed off about a corrupt local government. But even attempting to document all of the protests that happened in China in a given year can and has landed people in prison. So the state is not super happy about this. And if we look at what happened to mass protests in 2022 they were brutally suppressed and you know the the sort of anti the like the even even things that weren't even really that big but were kind of antecedents

of this that attempted to use sort of maoist politics were also unbelievably quickly like stamped out right there was the repression of the student workers movement in late 2010s um the student sort of worker like maoist movements the chinese state does some sort of like limited mobilization online you know in terms of sort of like they have this like pr strategy thing overseas of like wolf warrior diplomacy or whatever it's unbelievably cringe but even then these are not even close to the kinds of mobilization the state and the party could like nationalist mobilizations they could unleash if they wanted to and this is because instead of working through mass popular mobilization the state isn't maoist and because it's not maoist it works through the

bureaucracy policy implementation works by going from the top and then they go down to local governments local governments respond it goes back up to the top again it comes back down the policy gets implemented right like you know when when there are masks like you know mass campaign style things they're not they're not mass mobilizing people they're mobilizing research institutes they're mobilizing like government bureaus they're they're they're shifting like government bureaus they're they're they're shifting bureaucrats and technocrats around now i think i think there's a lot of reasons for why the chinese government is sort of like pathologically adverse to anything that even sort of smell like kind of smells like maoist style politics right one of them is that you these are, we talked about this before, but like, these are people who, a lot of these people lived through parts of the cultural revolution.

Like they saw really fiascos emerge out of this stuff. that these people are afraid of is that so you know when i say these people were around for the cultural revolution like these people saw the chinese working class take the city of shanghai 1967 right this is on this is part of the reason why tiananmen rattles them so much because they you know they nearly watched the working class take another chinese city and these people these are people who have a you know and i i think understand this on a more visceral level than most other political leaders understand that if they if they don't correctly manage situations and like stamp up popular mobilization like they could you know the there there are worlds where they fucking wake up they're dragged out of their

houses and the chinese working class hangs them from lampposts, right? That's a real threat. And this is part of why they're using something that's called neoliberalism, right? The disenchantment of politics. This is why the state, even when it's doing repression, operates through sort of technocratic and bureaucratic means now journalists resort to calling this maoism because they're lazy hacks who are also racist but you know we we can see pretty clearly by actually looking at how the state functions that this is not maoism maoism is built on mass popular mobilization the modern ccp is built on stamping out mass popular mobilization. This has been Nick. It happened here. Yeah. Happy linear new year's everyone.

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