It Could Happen Here - It Could Happen Here Weekly 22

Episode Date: February 19, 2022

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You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadowbride. Join me, Danny Trejo, and step into the flames of fright. An anthology podcast of modern-day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let you know this is a compilation episode, so every episode of the week that just happened is here in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to listen to in a long stretch if you want. If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week,

there's going to be nothing new here for you, but you can make your own decisions. It's Oregon. You don't get to consent. And that's how you open up the podcast. That's right, baby. Look up one-party consent laws for recording. For recording. For recording phone calls. Yeah. This is It Could Happen Here, a podcast about when you can legally record people without their consent.

Hint, always in the state of Oregon. I'm Robert Evans. We're talking about bad things, good things, things that are good and bad all that stuff yay what do we you know what you know what we should talk about you know what no one has talked about ever on the internet lately josephine robinette rogan oh i've never heard of him what does he do well he has a podcast. Have you heard of podcasts, Garrison? I'm unfamiliar, but I'll just go with it.

Yeah, well, it's like the radio, but easier to spread disinformation. And also sexier for reasons that are hard to explain. And Joe Rogan gets on his podcast, and he says a lot of stuff that people think is bad and then everybody gets angry at him and then he makes more money and today we're going to talk about how maybe we could handle this problem differently maybe we could not do the same thing over and over and respect a different result yeah um yeah and up front obviously we're talking about him we're trying to talk less about specifically what he said and more about kind of the problem he represents and the ways in which the responses people have aren't having the results they desire. We're going to avoid using his name in the title of the episode or the description because that doesn't feed into the algorithm kind of in the same way. But yeah, Garrison, you want to kick us off here? way but yeah garrison you want to kick us off here yeah i i've been watching the rogan thing online i've been getting kind of frustrated because of the way the discourse is going and

it's just repeating the same loops that we see every few months and nothing really changes and just gets more popular so earlier this month or like a middle of i guess it was closer to like january um there was like a group of, like, 270 doctors, healthcare workers, and scientists who were campaigning for Spotify to adopt a misinformation policy. This was prompted by a few episodes of the Joe Rogan podcast

that we've already actually talked about, about Dr. Robert Malone and someone else who said some stupid things about the pandemic. So when we talked about these episodes this last time, I tried to actually talk about what these doctors were doing and not focus on Rogan himself,

but specifically what these doctors were doing and their ideology. Because I didn't want to add to the whole Rogan side of the discourse. And for this letter that these doctors sent to Spotify, if they were not really advocating for Rogan to be removed from the platform or even for episodes to be removed, just to have Spotify clarify their guidelines regarding medical misinformation. Because it's important to note that joe rogan has a exclusivity contract with spotify he does not work for them but rogan gets paid a lot of money to get his podcast only published on spotify's feed so it's it's not it's it's it's like a it's a it's a weird kind of setup and it can give a lot of like gray area for like does spotify count as his publisher or not you're like

well not really because they could he could also just end that contract and post his podcast everywhere um i mean i think it would take there there's probably some sort of exclude time limit on the exclusivity agreement etc um because it is it is mixed because they did recently when it came out that he said the n-word a whole bunch of times, Spotify removed those episodes. So there's a degree to which they have acted as a publisher. Yeah. There's a whole lot of stuff to kind of talk about this on this. So the letter went kind of viral, and it prompted this whole kind of thing in the middle of January.

But like deleting your Spotify subscription. deleting your Spotify subscription. And then we had musicians, most popularly Neil Young, decided to remove all their music from the Spotify platform as a performative thing, being like, okay, if Spotify is going to host

all this medical misinformation, we're going to remove this as protest. Now, of course, Neil Young then just signed an exclusivity deal with Amazon. Yeah. Oh, great. Cool.

We, yes, Amazon, the bastion of moral purity yeah and they're not i mean i think they are probably pay a better rate because spotify is pretty much at the bottom to musicians but i don't think it's good um no i think napster actually has the best rate that's the best rate which is also like if you want to be actually immoral just just just use bandcamp but i mean i use spotify because it's really easy and that's why spotify works it's because it's super it is it is it is a well-made product that does not mean it's an ethical product but it does it does the thing that it's supposed to do quite well so so yeah it basically we've had endless discourse since then about joe rogan about Spotify as a platform, talking about how bad

Spotify is, which, yes, it is bad, and talking about how, you know, how bad Joe Rogan is. And, you know, the thing is, Joe Rogan already had the most popular podcast in the world pre his exclusivity deal with Spotify. And he's currently estimated to bring in 11 million listeners per episode of his podcast. Yeah. For some reference, Behind the Bastards is one of the largest podcasts out there, and he's on average something like 10 times our traffic. And it's not just the most popular podcast. He helped invent what podcasting is.

He was one of the first, and he had a foundational role in how the entire industry works. had a foundational role in how the entire industry works. Since this letter and since these episodes, there's been a whole lot of discourse around if Spotify should remove Joe Rogan from the platform, if they should cancel his deal. You know, a lot of people calling on Spotify to do that. A lot of people calling on Spotify to remove certain episodes. And Spotify has not been keen to.

So, like, but let's, and I know Joe Rogan himself did actually authorize the removal of a certain amount of episodes, which, for reasons we'll talk about later. But what's all this discourse and outrage and articles and tweets actually doing to Spotify and Joe Rogan? In my opinion, the end result is actually very similar to all of the free advertising that companies get whenever they make a woke statement that infuriates the reactionary right. Resulting in throwing your keleg out your window, flushing your Gillette blade down the toilet, and burning your Nikes. And it's even widely speculated, and kind of like a known fact, that companies will

use progressive statements and policies to drum up this outrage, to give their company and product tons of free advertising, and just to get the brand name itself inside consumers' heads. tons of free advertising and just to get the brand name itself inside consumers heads and this is definitely happening with rokin and spotify in terms of outrage being used as advertising it may not be intentional but that is what the result is yeah and it's i mean it it's very uh it's it's both sides like to make fun of the other for doing this like folks on the left like to make fun of the right when they're when they're breaking their Keurigs or whatever. But, you know, it happens. It's equally profitable for both sides.

You just do the opposite. You know, you have someone come on and talk about how they're a truth teller being canceled and they get a bunch of attention money and it works equally well both ways pretty much. And it works equally well both ways, pretty much. Yeah. So with Spotify and Rogan in the news every day for the past like three weeks, the the end is that like the fact that it's just that people are hearing these names in their head more often and they're probably subconsciously going to use Spotify more often because, you know, despite a few people that might cancel their subscriptions, the net effect will be listeners who seem to spotify because they're because the name is in my subconscious it's it's it's in there and all the effect it's going to have on rogan is giving him way more publicity to attract new listeners and it's listeners who themselves are like attracted to unconventional ideas outside the mainstream and his more passive listeners are going to like double down on him because there's going to be like the backfire effect. So they will feel defensive and then become more of a fan of his because he's seen as a cultural outsider. Even though he's not an outsider, he is the mainstream.

He's the biggest podcaster in the world, but he's seen as a cultural outsider. So he brings on guests who say things that they're not supposed to say. So who's actually going to be convinced by all this outrage to not listen to Rogan via pointing out all the wrong things he's said and all the slurs he's used? Like, is that really going to stop fans from listening to Joe Rogan? No, it's the same thing as like pointing out that Donald Trump illegally took classified documents. It's like, yeah, I mean, that's fucked up and shit,

but like he's never going to get charged with crimes and none of his supporters care. You're the only people who are angry about this and it doesn't matter because the people you vote for aren't gonna punish him so like just yeah you know chill out a little bit it's like all of the outrage is simply inflating the importance of joe rogan on like an entire cultural level it's that he's becoming he's becoming more important to his fans more important to his haters and more important to himself and spotify as an asset because he generates a lot of exclusive listeners and news coverage and buzz around the spotify brand and it's important to talk about

like so you have broadly speaking within the the field of entertainment like digital entertainment in particular you have like two ways that you can grow your audience. One of them is organic growth, which is, you know, I listen to Garrison's podcast. I like it. I tell a friend about Garrison's podcast. They like it. They tell a friend about – that's like organic. You know, it's very natural.

That's purely the kind of quality of the content reaching people. the kind of quality of the content reaching people. And then there is inorganic growth, which can be the result of ad campaigns, can be the result of an algorithm. Often in today, we're talking about like, oh, Twitter or Facebook prioritizes this kind of content. So like something, article on Breitbart about black on white crime that would have been read 10,000 times 10 years ago gets read a million times because it spreads well on this platform for reasons that aren't organic. And with Joe Rogan, one of the reasons why, because we can

talk about like deplatforming, if you want to talk about like Alex Jones, for example, or Milo Yiannopoulos, good case that deplatforming really reduced both of their reaches. Now, Milo pretty much wiped out as a person who mattered in terms of the discourse. Thank Christ. Alex Jones, less so. It definitely hurt his business and it reduced his reach. But by the time Facebook and Twitter and whatnot started throttling him, he had already inorganically increased his reach enough that he had a large enough audience to stay somewhat relevant and keep going. The thing about joe rogan

is he did not get famous and popular inorganically i'm sure there was some degree of that on like social media but most of his growth was organic before that like people like him like whatever you think of him he's a good broadcaster that's that's the thing even though like you know for all this research i don't like him he says says horrible things. But I watched all of Rogan's Instagram videos. He made a few 10-minute things talking about the outrage. And it sucks because when you listen to him, he's a really good talker. He's very good at what he does. He's very good at generating sympathy and generating good comments.

It sucks because I want to hate this person, but I'm listening to him talk about this issue. I it sucks because yeah, I want to like hate this person, but I'm like listening to him talking about this issue. Like, oh wow. Yeah, like you actually have a decent grasp on what's going on here. And that's horrible. He is not. He gets some of his money

from playing like a dumb, chill stoner dude, but he's not dumb. He's definitely a stoner. He's not a dumb man. He's very intelligent. He's very good at what he does. One of the things we don't kind of talk about enough when we talk about media that I think is important to note is that being likable in a professional sense is a skill. And it's a skill like any technical skill.

It's like knowing how to farm or weld. It is a thing that you build on over time. It is a thing that takes a lot of trial and error and a lot of education to get right. It is a thing that Joe Rogan has been doing for longer than a significant chunk of the people on this show, including Garrison, have been alive. Like I've been, like this has more or less been my job

for like 13 or 14 years. And it is like a skill that you build. And the thing that he is really good at is making people want to listen to him. And so if you were to say, kick him out of Spotify tomorrow, it's, it's entirely possible that his, that that would increase the number of people who, um, who listen to his podcast. There's a, there's a case to be made that spotify has limited his maximum audience by limiting him to spotify as opposed to if he was just any app he wanted to be on maybe it'd be 20 million you know listening to every exactly yeah so like even if did even

if spotify did drop him because of all these you know outrage you know and all the tweets and all of the petitions even if they did drop him he would probably not only gain more listeners due to like the outrage porn and free speech advocates but also with his exclusivity ending he'll his podcast will just be available on more platforms and more people will to listen to him like really easily so yeah he's only going to grow if people get what they want and like that makes you think like this this outrage isn't actually meant to get the Joe Rogan, Joe Rogan problem taken care of. Like it's this, this actually isn't about stopping misinformation. It's this, this isn't actually about having there being less fans of Joe Rogan. All of this outrage is about making you feel better because you feel like you're doing something right.

you're doing something right yeah because a bad thing is happening in the world and it's easier to pretend like your actions are hurting it than it is to accept that like maybe there's nothing i can do about this right now yeah it would be a really nice world if the jorogun problem could be solved so easily by spotify dropping his exclusivity deal right that would that would be great but that's not the world we live in and tricking yourself into thinking that is just kind of delusional um and like yeah it makes you feel better but but that's not the world we live in. And tricking yourself into thinking that is just kind of delusional. And like, yeah, it makes you feel better, but like, that's not actually helping. Because like, yeah, we can obviously compare this to other like de-platforming campaigns with people for like Alex Jones. But you know, Jones was way more niche and way more extreme around the time of his like de-platforming campaign. And his campaign wasn't about ending

exclusivity deals. It was about getting him off of popular platforms altogether and that's not happening with joe rogan because joe rogan isn't saying the things that are going to get him booted from platforms he's smart he knows what he can and cannot say yeah he's not he's not dumb enough to get banned from these platforms right and also you know he's a giant financial asset so they wouldn't ban anyway. But like he's he's what he's doing is bringing on people who say horrible things to continue a cultural conversation, which gets him in the headlines and gives a platform like Spotify a whole bunch of room to cry free speech and get away with it. Yep. Removing Alex Jones could be seen as like a monetary decision in and of itself because it is actually removing liability. But this isn't really the case for Rogan. because it is actually removing liability, but this isn't really the case for Rogan.

Yeah, and he's, it's just not, and one of the problems is that this kind of does fly in the face of a lot of what people want to think. And I don't want to be making the case that it's as black and white as it is, because, for example, I'm not saying that it was bad for someone to go through the effort of finding and pointing out, there's like 70 episodes where joe rogan drops the n-word and getting those pulled i i don't think that i think that that was broadly speaking um a productive thing yes but keeping joe rogan at the forefront of the outrage cycle is doing nothing but printing money for the guy and that's that's not an easy thing to deal with because it's like, do you want me to just like stay quiet in the face of injustice? And it's like, no, that's not what I want you to do. But I do want you to recognize that

there are times and ways of speaking up that are just putting gasoline on an injustice fire. It's important to remember that deplatforming is just a tactic. And single tactics aren't always effective in every situation. That's what makes them a tactic, right? In order for a tactic to work, you need to understand the scenario that you're applying the tactic to and seeing if that tactic achieves the goal. And if it does, then great.

But if it doesn't, you need to choose another tactic and stop doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a new result. tactic and stop doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a new result and this is one of those situations where like when you bring up hey maybe nothing might be the best thing at least for for most people specifically to do like the thing that gets brought up is like well do you not want me to uh or like well what do you suggest i do like you know you're saying i shouldn't do this but you're not telling me what to do and it's like well it's like if somebody gets shot in the leg and one person has a tourniquet and the other person has a bunch of razor blades that they want to throw in their eyes.

And it's like, well, what do you want me to do? All I have is these razor blades. This is the only other thing I can do than just stand by and do nothing. And it's like, well, in this case, doing nothing is the best thing to do because it's not that's not going to help the problem. Yeah, because boycotts of this scale kind of only tend to benefit brands and businesses right like because like if if if the brand or business is a person is smaller in more niche like say like alex jones or richard spencer right then yes

these tactics and boycotts can really work to push things out of the cultural like market and also in some cases in terms of businesses like the literal market but when you're dealing with things like target nike and joe rogan that's not the case because those brands are way too big any any you know any conservative boycott against target isn't gonna have that effect it'll probably make weird liberals be like oh i'm gonna go to target now because the conservatives don't want me to it's so like it's it's yeah i don't it's not it's it's like it's the problem is like joe rogan himself isn't really the problem either you know a lot of the problem can be seen more as like content algorithms that boost and reward misinformation and disinformation and conspiracism and that's more of like an actual issue at hand

here joe rogan is just a visible because that's how he hears about a lot of these people yeah you know they go viral somewhere else and in a lot of these people. Yeah, exactly. They go viral somewhere else. And in a lot of cases, it's an inorganic thing that brings them in front of them. It's some fucking algorithm. And that is a case where you can target and work on deplatforming and it can be more productive. That was what I was getting at.

It's like, Joe Rogan himself is just a visible outgrowth of the core problem. And the core problem is these things getting onto his show in the first place so yeah we can't stop his show but maybe we should do more work to prevent to like figure out ways to do you know start using these tactics to prevent algorithms from boosting these things so that joe rogan sees them and then and then in invites them on and yeah that's a lot more work than just being angry at Spotify. But maybe it'll actually do something. And one thing that can do something is with Spotify, it won't work if it's just Spotify.

But I am one of those people who thinks that maybe it's not the worst thing if things like Spotify are seen as publishers. And thus, when they spread misinformation that leads to disastrous health consequences, they can be held liable, right? That's not the worst possible change, although it is a problematic one. I don't want to like boil that down to a simple question, but I think that's an avenue that should be explored because I don't see that there's a lot of difference in Spotify choosing to let something go to air

or the New York Times printing misinformation. And in fact, Spotify is going to reach more people because nobody cares what the New York times printing misinformation. Um, and in fact, Spotify is going to reach more people because nobody cares what the New York times says anymore. Yeah. So Spotify, the Spotify CEO did kind of address the ongoing controversy around the, you know,

internal publishing stuff and how they view medical misinformation. Um, they did adopt a clarified policy that prohibits content that promotes dangerous false or dangerous deceptive medical information which may cause offline harm or pose a direct threat to public health um and then the post also announced that spotify would add content advisories to any content related to covid on the platform um the same way like twitter and instagram have nothing um no it's not it's not actually it's not it's not actually but but if you have the opera if you can again if there is like an actual

dollar consequence to companies that aired massive disinformation um then you're not without sort of making joe rogan the focus you can make it so that the people that he actually is accountable to, which is the people who make him, give him the money that he gets, have a vested interest in tamping down on the worst excesses that he's responsible for. Like, that might have an impact. I don't know. Like, part of the problem is that, and one thing we should acknowledge here when we're talking about, like, what would work better than what's being done this is a pretty new problem versions of it have existed before but without the internet and without podcasts being what they are this is a pretty new thing to be dealing with

and i'm not i don't i'm not saying like this is here's the obvious solution to this but i think we are trying to point out like what folks are doing doesn't work the tactics being applied are not effective and we should be exploring other opportunities to mitigate this harm that are not well i guess it's time to delete another app and post about it on twitter yeah i think i think this is especially a thing with like it's like one of the other things that that's been popping up is rogan's like weapons grade transphobia. Yes. Oh yeah Jesus Christ. Yeah and that stuff is horrifying like the racism is also like really bad he's extremely sexist but it's like

I think misogynist racist he sucks yeah there's a lot of money in being that dude yeah well and I think this is sort of you know this is you know this is an inherent problem for the left because it fighting it like this this kind of sort of like shock jock information stuff works

better like that range economy works better for the right that does for the left and i think in some ways that means like you have to fight them in other spaces you like you you know you you can't just like keep throwing yourself it's the same thing with like so why why why you don't have just like one line where you just run into a bunch of cops over and over again in one spot yeah like but but we have to we certainly try yeah yeah obviously some folks gave that one the old college the old college yeah it's like you know it like it's in some sense yeah like it's it's it's it's hard to be too hard on these on people who are doing this and it's like yeah like i think they're doing the right thing but it's like you have to you you you have to pick your battles

and you know if if you're taking a fight that's fair like that's a that's a bad fight that is a bad fight for you you you you need you need to be fighting them in different spheres you need to be you know i mean working for example on stuff them in different spheres you need to be you know i mean working for example on stuff like tech regulation like you like work working on you know unionizing these places right like fighting like purely finding them in information space we will lose every time the advantage that we have is that we also do other things and it's it's you know we're going to keep losing hearing if you know if we keep fighting them in exactly the same way here we're going to keep losing so we have to you know like

we we we have to fight in other places and that's hard and it sucks because you know this is such an enormous part of just what reality is now is you know yelling at people online but like you have to stop doing that i mean yeah the problem is that we've all gotten fucking caught for quite some time in this escalating culture war and it's a not it's not a battleground that can be entirely ignored because when you kind of seed ground to them they create conspiracy theories about trans people attacking kids that lead to them murdering people in the streets or they spread conspiracy theories about masks that lead to them occupying ottawa um so it can't the culture war battleground cannot be ignored but at the end of the day what we should rather than just like seeking new ways

to engage with it because the more you engage with it and it is sometime necessary to engage with but the more you engage with it the stronger you make this whole thing and the heavier it lies on all of us like a cloud and in the only real way to actually win in the long run is to find a way to get off of that to get out of this like this fucking treadmill of bullshit that has become everything all consuming and it's it's in a lot of people's best interest for it to stay all consuming um and i i i there's a there's a lot that's going on on here because it's not i think sometimes when you criticize people for the actions they take in situations like this. They kind of interpret it as you saying, well, like, you're stupid and you fucked up

and you never should have, like, done this. And the way I think of it is more like, this is a, we have found ourselves trapped in a really messy situation and no one has figured out how to get out. So it's not a situation of, like, people are dumb for having done something that's not effective.

It's a situation of, we are all for having done something that's not effective. It's a situation of we are all trying to figure out what works in this new world we have kind of somewhat accidentally, somewhat purposefully built for ourselves. And it is important to have humility and be willing to accept it like, you know what, that's not working and we have to stop doing the thing that's not working rather than, you you know treat it as if it's sort of a moral failing that something we we we tried was not effective the last thing is is like really it's not just the non-effectiveness but also the the idea that the fact that this outrage is just a constant is just a constant free banner ad for Spotify everywhere online is also not great.

So it's not even just not effective, but you're just giving a corporation tons of free press. And maybe we can reframe the way we approach these things so that we don't do that. Because in the end, that's just kind of adding to promoting the misinformation. That's all that's kind of really doing. And it's not nearly as impactful know impactful as you know just rogan doing it himself but it still is it still is a contributing factor and it does contribute to the backfire effect of people who listen to his podcast maybe people who like don't even but they're still going to get defensive over him because they're seeing this attack on him and even though he's even though he is a huge figure he's seen as an outsider so that that really does contribute to that backfire effect thing of

getting people more and more vested in him as a content creator which yeah is really dumb but and it's the thing we need to deal with it's it's a version of the lesson people still didn't learn with trump which is that like you can't you can't beat these people by dunking on them it doesn't matter that joe rogan said something dumb it doesn't matter that joe rogan's inconsistent it doesn't matter that like joe rogan has tells lies or whatever that's not going to change anybody's mind about the dude because it's not about joe rogan they don't support him because they love they support him as much as anything the people who are at least engaging primarily online about it

most of his fans are just don't think about any of this because they're not as online as the rest of us but the people who are kind of engaging with this and helping to fuel the culture war side of this thing they don't care they're this this isn't about his inherent characteristics this is about it's a chance to dunk on the enemy um so like you you're not going to convince them of anything ever that's all i had to say on this yeah i don't know yep because i again i really i really resisted writing this episode for a long time because i didn't want to add to the rogan discourse but after a while the rogan discourse itself became worth talking about yeah how we talk is so because it is more of a meta angle like okay that is actually worth talking about but yeah i am so

tired of hearing watching and seeing the words joe rogan yeah Yeah, I'm exhausted by it. I hate that it's a bigger story in the United States than the gigantic war that might break out in Eastern Europe. It's just a very frustrating time, and the only way to win this particular game is not to play. So that's why we're doing this. We're not going to stick his name in the description or the episode title. Yeah, it is, you know, the title we were working with this under

that we're not going to use so as to not feed into the algorithm was Joe Rogan the Egregore, and that is really how I think about it. If you haven't listened to our episode on the book about, the Flat Earth book on Behind the Bastards that talks about egregores. And egregores, it's basically a god that is made up by the kind of directed thoughts of a population of people.

It's like a gestalt deity that exists. If people put energy into it, it almost gains its own independence from the people that birthed it, even though it is just a thought form. And it was just an idea or a presence, and now it basically is its own god that's self-sustaining and it can impact the world. egregore and yeah and the more that people kind of feed into the discourse around joe rogan the more he turns into one kind of outside of his own actions he he this idea of him has an influence on everything around us and boy we don't need that do we certainly do not just set we just put that one down right try something else yeah let's uh uh throw a brick at your sheriff instead this will go better for you it i mean sure sure chris yeah okay chris chris said it not me yeah i mean obviously in minecraft he he said bricks it's fine no robert robert robert robert it's not minecraft anymore it's a roblox the feds

cracked in minecraft yeah you're right it's gonna take weeks for them to for them to their computers to realize what roblox is there legit was a story i think i saw on twitter about like yes like some yeah so some some kids who actually legitimately got arrested in russia for like blowing up a building in minecraft so like like literally in the so excellent awesome uh yeah and instead again again it's roblox where nothing bad happens nothing bad happens all right everybody get on roblox um and don't talk about joe rogan and don't talk about joe rogan about Joe Rogan. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire

and dare enter Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the Heart and Sonora. An anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America.

From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America I know you. network available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hundreds of truckers continue to roll east, and with more joining the movement with each passing city, feelings towards vaccine mandates have heightened. I advocate civil war. If people don't want to stand up, we've got guns. We'll stand up and we'll bring them out.

Fuck it, hey guys, let's get pumped for this. Let's go to fucking Ottawa. I want to see one of those truckers. I wouldn't, not none of our guys, obviously, but I would like to see our own January 6th event. See some of those truckers plow right through that 16-foot wall. Welcome to It Could Happen Here, or in this case, It Did Happen Here, slash Is Still Happening Here, and the here in this case being Canada in recent weeks. The idea of only a few thousand people totally choking a major city, holding it hostage to bargain for political demands,

while overwhelming and getting a foot up on law enforcement, taking over and shutting down a sizable portion of a popular metropolitan area, and simultaneously blocking off supply lines, trade routes, and multiple international off supply lines, trade routes, and multiple international border crossings, is exactly the kind of thing this podcast has been talking about for years as a potential anti-government resistance tactic that could become more common as political tensions rise in North America specifically. A few weeks ago, when the so-called trucker convoy was still in its planning stages, I wasn't super eager to cover it on the pod, actually.

I assumed it would be a flop and just another dumb anti-COVID protest in a long line of anti-COVID protests happening in Canada. Flash forward to me at the end of January, and it became apparent that I was sorely mistaken, and this thing was shaping up to be a significant factor in Canada's political ecosystem going forward. In my haste to catch up to the moment, I recorded two episodes with the wonderful journalist Dan Cullen, explaining the situation as it was at the prospective times of recording. tensions in Ottawa and all across Canada arose, and the situation gained more and more complexity, I decided that the convoy and subsequent blockades required a more researched and scripted deep dive. The more I dug into the situation, the more it seemed to embody the exact thing I was warning about in my two previous scripted episodes about Canada and the far right, titled Canadian Fascism,

eh? Apologies for the title, but you can find those if you scroll through the It Could Happen Here feed. I think they came out around, like, November-ish of 2021. What I wanted to get across in those episodes is that Canada is often seen as an escape from the more divisive, violent, and fascist elements of US politics and culture. But just like climate change, capitalism, or any other enveloping force, cough-cough hyper-objects, cough-cough, fascism and the slide towards it can never be truly escaped, right? There is no other, there is no away,

and it's especially hard to see it when it's growing on the back of your own head. Primarily through Islamophobia, far-right ethno-nationalist tendencies have been bubbling under the surface of Canada for a long while. And since Trudeau has taken office in 2015, there has been a perfect politically-allowed boogeyman to blame every problem onto. blame every problem onto. That can include everything from, Trudeau is taking away our oil and gas jobs, or Trudeau is bringing in Muslim terrorists to Canada, or Trudeau is starving your children through health mandates. Canadian right-wing protest has been steadily growing the past five years. There's been multiple flare-ups of far-right rhetoric with the Canadian Yellow Vests, the Western Separatist Wegxit or Western Exit Movement, and the pseudo-fascist People's Party of Canada. The incorporation of pandemic conspiracies and anti-vaccine sentiments into the already

disaffected rural Canadian right-wingers, starting in 2020 and continuing to the present, has accelerated not only the conspiratorial far-right rhetoric among conservative voters, but also what is seen as valid political action in those people's eyes. But before we get into how the convoy started, with anger concerning COVID-19 health mandates and misinformation concerning empty store shelves, we have to first go back in time to even before the COVID-19 virus was a blip on anyone's radar. In February 2019, the Canadian Yellow Vests organized something called the United We Roll Convoy. The result was around 170 trucks driving cross-country through the more liberal east to Ottawa. The result was around 170 trucks driving from the west, cross-country,

to the more liberal east, and eventually to Ottawa. The goal was to represent the concerns of disenfranchised oil and gas workers in the western provinces, and their opposition to proposed environmental and new energy policies. Yellow Vests Canada was largely founded by individuals already associated with Canada's far right, which at the time was primarily united through anti-Muslim racism and Islamophobia. Inspired by the French Yellow Vest movement, they copied their aesthetics and adopted new grievances and reactionary rhetoric that would get them a much larger audience. By the time United We Roll arrived in Ottawa, the media started to catch on to the more problematic elements about their organization. Neo-Nazi Faith Goley spoke on a stage. Many

members of hate groups responded in attendance, and with numbers so low, it made their more extreme participants stick out. Instead of focusing the message on oil and gas, as they claimed to represent Western alienation from a distant liberal Ottawa, some of its participants seemed more interested in protesting Ottawa's immigration policies than arguing for specific fixes for Alberta's oil patch. Plus, if you peeked inside any Canadian Yellow Vest Facebook group, you would be flooded with hundreds of examples of explicit anti-Muslim racism and calls for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's arrest and execution,

a theme that remains common among COVID conspiracy demonstrations today. But at the end of it, United We Roll was widely considered a bust, with only a few hundred participants in Ottawa, and despite raising almost $150,000, the organizers failed to disclose how much of that money was actually spent on convoy expenses like gas and food. Afterwards, the Yellow Vests Canada movement started to kinda die out, though some holdouts kept smaller demonstrations going for months, particularly in the conservative oil province of Alberta. But to us now,

United We Rule can be seen as a small test run for the current situation in 2022. In fact, it shares many of the same organizers and even the same promotional materials. Except this time, they have the added weight of many more people radicalized into conspiracism throughout the pandemic and much more funding. So with that in mind, let's dive into the components of the initial organizing effort. On January 14th, 2022, a GoFundMe account was set up for a so-called trucker convoy, ahead of the January 15th adoption of the mandate requiring all cross-border transportation drivers to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19. Vaccine mandates in Canada

have been in effect since October 30th for ship crews, railways, and airline workers. But effective January 15th, the federal government expanded the requirement to truck drivers returning from the States, and those who remain unvaccinated will not be able to enter Canada without quarantine. One week later, a reciprocal policy went into effect in the United States for Canadian truckers crossing into their border, which means going forward, you cannot really cross the border at all while remaining unvaccinated. At this point in mid-January, a majority of Canadians still broadly supported health mandates aimed at limiting the spread of COVID. But a big part of the early propaganda push for the convoy was photos alleged to have been from current Canadian grocery stores,

which they were not, with barren, empty shelves. The idea was that COVID restrictions were already severely impacting the supply line, and any additional mandates would begin to starve the population and effectively shut down international trade. Put a note in this idea, by the way. It will come up later. Ideas for another truck convoy like United We Roll have been tossed around for a while online, and with this new mandate on truckers and vaccines, a time presented itself to give the convoy idea another go. In the early truck convoy organizing, there were primarily four familiar far-right faces working together to set things up, none of whom are truck drivers, by the way. The originally listed organizers on the GoFundMe page were Tamara Litch and B.J. Ditcher. Both

have notable experience with far-right organizing. Tamara Litch was born in my home province of Saskatchewan, but now hails from the town of Medicine Hat, Alberta, where she served as an organizer for Yellow Vests Canada, a regional coordinator for the Separatist Western Exit, or Wexit, movement in Alberta, and now the secretary for the Maverick Party, another far-right extremist separatist movement and fringe political party. Litsch started attending and boosting Yellow Vests events starting in 2018, and her social media posts from around the time show in one moment calling out some hateful rhetoric from within the movement, while also posting Islamophobic

articles of her own and conspiracies about the Muslim Brotherhood operating in Canada. A few days after the GoFundMe was created, Benjamin B.J. Ditcher, one-time Conservative Party of Canada candidate, People's Party of Canada booster, and co-founder of a Canadian far-right podcast network, appeared as a cool organizer on the GoFundMe page. In 2019, he claimed that Islamist entryism is rotting away our society like syphilis. Benjamin Ditcher was also one of the first people to give a speech at the first proto-fascist People's Party of Canada conference in Quebec, saying that the Conservative Party of Canada is suffering from the stench of cultural relativism and political Islam,

and a whole bunch of stuff, you know, in that general vein. James Botter was another one of the four key organizers of the trucker convoy to Ottawa. Botter is an admitted conspiracy theorist who has endorsed QAnon and called COVID the biggest political scam in history. He's also a former activist with the Yellow Vests Canada and United We Roll. Botter's main project, however, is running the Canada Unity website, which is one of the original nexus points for organizing and spreading word about this convoy. The group contends that vaccine mandates and passports are illegal under Canada's constitution, the Nuremberg Code, and a host of other international conventions.

Botter has long been a fringe figure, but his movements started picking up steam and support as announcements and continuations of restrictions aimed at curbing COVID-19 spread have continued. The supposed plight of the truckers proved to be a sympathetic cause on Facebook and attracted an array of fellow travelers. The last big major player is Patrick King, another former Yellow Vestor, one-time major figure in the Wexit movement, as well as United We Roll. On January 18th, 2022, Pat King hosted a live stream for James Botter to promote the Canada Unity website and to announce it as the official page for the Freedom Trucker Convoy, or as they called it, Operation Bear Hug. King is a conspiracy theorist and popular streamer that attracts the audience farther right than Canada's

usual conservatives. King's made headlines for drumming up fear and then following through with his supporters with violence at rallies put on by BLM and Antifa. King's also known for spreading what are basically neo-Nazi talking points, and I'm just going to quote from an article by the Canadian Anti-Hate Network here, because they did a great job tracking his past extremism. Quote, In the past, King has gone on record about his feelings on the Anglo-Saxon replacement that plans to, quote, flood Canada with refugees and subvert the education system, which is a thin rebranding of the great replacement theory touted by ethno-nationalists. of the Great Replacement Theory touted by ethno-nationalists.

At other points, King has expressed overtly racist and anti-Semitic statements. In a 2019 stream about the then-upcoming federal election, King complained that he had to leave the movement due to their lack of success, saying, quote, the election won't matter unless you want to change your national language to Chinese or Mandarin or Hebrew. He then went on to compare Chinese names to the sound of change falling downstairs. He has publicly distorted facts about the Holocaust, a form of Holocaust denial, saying, I do know that the Holocaust was reduced to 1.5 million and not the 6 million that it was said to

be. He then invoked the anti-Semitic conspiracy theory that Jewish people are secretly in control of world governance, media, and finances, saying, quote, the questions that have been asked several times to the ADL and to the Jewish government and communities, we have Jewish world bankers who are dictating our government policies and controlling our politicians, unquote. So, yeah, considering King's history of saying blatantly fascist things, some organizers and convoy supporters tried to distance King from the Freedom Convoy movement to not damage the initial fundraising effort. The controversy around King resulted in a statement being released onto the fundraising page, saying, King is not and has never been affiliated with our movement, nor has he been a part of our great team of volunteers. The update was

afterwards deleted, and then King claimed in a video that the statement was a public relations move because he was being attacked online. For a while, King was still listed as the Northern Alberta contact for the western portion of the convoy. So those are the four

people that laid the organizing groundwork that spawned this entire thing, and put it into motion. But what made this convoy different from United We Roll 1.0 is the almost two years of COVID isolation, which has given ample time for groups like the Yellow Vests and extreme far right groups to completely fold into the rapidly growing anti-vax and COVID conspiracy movement in Canada, and along with that, using people's seething hatred of Justin Trudeau to radicalize thousands of thousands of people online to getting them more comfortable with the idea of participating in political protest. It's really important to mention that the protests are not organized by

Canadian trucking unions or really Canadian truckers. The largest trucking unions have come out against the protests, and they do not appear to reflect the values of most Canadians or most Canadian truckers. More than 80% of the Canadian public is vaccinated, including almost 90% of truckers, according to Canada's Minister of Transport. The Canadian Trucking Alliance issued a statement saying it does not support and strongly disapproves of any protests on public roads, highways, or bridges. The Canadian Trucking Alliance president said in a joint statement with the ministers of labor and transport that the government of Canada and the Canadian Trucking Alliance both agree that vaccination, used in combination with preventative health measures, is the most effective tool to reduce the risk of COVID-19 for Canadians and to protect public health. According to the Canadian Trucking Alliance, the mandate could impact around 12,000

to 16,000 Canadian commercial drivers, which is just about 10 to 15 percent of the industry's cross-border drivers. During the pandemic, repeated polls have shown that a majority of Canadians support public health measures to contain the pandemic. But the number of Canadians who would like to see restrictions end has risen in recent weeks. With Omicron cases on the decline, some provinces are starting to remove restrictions and requirements. The public sentiment appears to be moving in the direction of opening up communities. in the direction of opening up communities. Throughout the last two weeks of January, the number of Canadians saying that they would like to see restrictions end has risen by 15 percentage points, to a majority of 54%. Demonstrations have found a way to tap into

pandemic fatigue among conservatives across the country after months of lockdown. More than two thirds of Canadians have said they have very little in common with how the Ottawa protesters see things, but 32% say that they have a lot in common, according to a recent survey conducted by a Canadian research firm. Though the idea of vaccine mandates for Canadian truckers kind of prompted what turned into this convoy, very quickly it became a general battle cry against pandemic restrictions as a whole and the leadership of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Unlike 2019's United We Roll, the Freedom Convoy Against Health Mandates was able to successfully capitalize on Western feelings of neglect and isolation from the ruling liberal elite in the East and in the capital of Ottawa. The right ingredients at

the right time flung the Trucker Freedom Convoy into the conservative zeitgeist. The original GoFundMe page, set up on January 14th to financially support convoy participants, was able to raise $10 million in just under three weeks. As the truck convoy idea picked up steam, the first expected wave of attendees were planned to arrive in Ottawa on Saturday, January 29th. Vehicles started rolling in a few days prior, throughout Thursday and the Friday night before the big day on the 29th. And as Saturday the 29th came, the numbers of trucks and protest participants greatly exceeded the initial expected numbers that I and many other people had figured, while obviously falling

short of the heavily mocked 50,000 truckers prediction made by some convoy supporters. While writing these episodes, I talked with Paul, a citizen of Ottawa who's been living inside the occupied zone since the 29th of January, and this is what he had to say about expectations leading up to the convoy's arrival. There was at least a week of lead-up where it was about all we heard about. So from when they sort of declared their intention to come down to when they started rallying in BC and, you know, in the West and coming across, um, there was an anticipation that something was

going to happen. And, you know, people around here, cause like where I'm sitting right now is less than a kilometer from Parliament Hill and directly in between two of the streets that they've blocked off sort of on the way into town. You know, we were nervous, but we kind of were just sort of assuming it was going to be a one day affair. It was going to be small at first. But then you heard, I mean, nobody believed the 50,000 trucks. I mean, to put it in perspective, the numbers that they were claiming were on their way here. Nobody believed the 50,000 trucks. To put it in perspective, the numbers that they were claiming were on their way here are larger than the entire population of the city by a couple hundred thousand people.

That didn't seem likely, but when we were hearing the 30,000 to 40,000, when we heard about multiple convoys with 100 to 200 trucks. That was when it was like, okay, this isn't going to be great. So people started arriving on what, Friday, Saturday? The first group started rolling to town on Thursday night. They were small in numbers. They didn't really start blocking anything off because there just weren't enough of them. But you could hear the horns starting on Thursday night. And I think some of them were going into hotels. They were smaller groups too, mostly from sort of local groups. And then around 10 or 11 in the morning on Friday, we started hearing reports at a Kingston,

which is about an hour-ish away, an hour and a half, that there was a group moving out of there. So around one o'clock in the afternoon, Friday, the first group started to arrive and started to congregate downtown. And one of the things about Ottawa is it's a lot like a lot of big downtowns. It's a lot of one way streets. So the moment you get the trucks starting to get into intersections or near intersections you're blocking off all passage in certain directions so they started blocking off the northbound really quickly just because that's how they were coming in and there's only like three gas stations downtown as well which is it kind of plays a big factor in the routes that they took so they all pass by especially the passenger cars that were running low pass by and through that way and yeah by about two or three o'clock in the afternoon,

everything south of Somerset, which is about a kilometer and a half from Parliament, was pretty much jammed at that point. As Saturday night came, much of the group, supporters and truckers alike, spent that time partying late into the night as heavily backed-up traffic continued to effectively shut down roads and large areas of the city around Parliament. Throughout the weekend, businesses in the surrounding areas that did not close ahead of the protest were swarmed by customers, many refusing to wear masks. A local homeless shelter and soup kitchen was harassed by convoy participants who were turned away from restaurants after refusing to wear a mask. A large number of the convoy attendees surrounded the shelter, demanding to be fed by the facility staff.

According to the shelter's president, convoy participants assaulted a client of the shelter and hurled racial slurs at a security guard who attempted to intervene. who attempted to intervene. Workers and volunteers at the shelter noted that parked vehicles blocked the shelter, making it difficult for ambulances to reach the facility and for staff to assist community members in need. A home in the downtown area was pelted with rocks and snow, as well as vandalized with human feces, all for showing a pride flag in their window. The operations commander for the Ottawa Paramedic Service said that an ambulance was pelted with rocks, and paramedics checking the damage were called racial slurs by convoy participants. Ottawa paramedics have since requested police escorts, citing safety concerns. More public backlash was prompted after reports surfaced of a monument dedicated to commemorating Terry Fox

being covered in protest signs and being staged to hold an upside-down Canadian flag. No arrests remained Saturday night related to the convoy, but as the convoy stuck around, even past the weekend, there was this growing feeling of downtown residents that they had been abandoned by the city and law enforcement, with the whole situation and response to the situation making them afraid to leave their homes. I asked Paul what his experience on the first weekend of the occupation was, and the general feeling in the area of downtown Ottawa. And you're living right in the middle of this. How much has this affected your day-to-day life

and all your neighbors and stuff? What are you able to do and not do at this point? Well, the weekend was especially bad, and we're all kind of bracing for what this weekend's going to be, because that's when you had just, you know, there were somewhere between 10,000 and 15,000 to 18,000 people, is the estimates I've heard, all crowding downtown in the streets. So at that point, I mean, that was when the police were telling people not to wear a mask out, because, you know, you're kind of putting yourself at risk. Because you'll be targeted for violence. Yeah. So I mean, I was like, basically, anytime I've left the house, so we have a mask mandate still in effect in Ottawa. So you have to wear them indoors pretty much everywhere. So I have to wear it in my building. I have to wear it at the convenience store. If I'm going to go buy, say, a pack of cigarettes, I'm not going to take it off it's a 30 second walk and so that was that the harassment around that started on Friday um and then it just became anyone who was out and about that didn't look like they were part of it um

started getting uh hassled um other people I know who live in the area especially women um have been targeted a great deal. Anyone who's part of, you know, the LGBTQ community has been, it's not really just, it's just not safe to be out on the streets, and it's not really safe to show that you don't support what they're doing at points. Since the convoy started arriving in Ottawa, the extreme elements of the protest have been pretty visible. Among the thousands of attendees were recognizable members of white nationalist hate groups, neo-Nazi and Confederate flags were seen flying, QAnon logos were emblazoned on trucks, and signs and stickers were pasted on telephone poles around the occupied area, bearing Trudeau's face reading, Wanted for Crimes Against Humanity.

The official line from original convoy organizers, minus Pat King of course, however, has tried to remain focused. In a Facebook live broadcast, James Botter of Canada Unity instructed his supporters to stop talking about the vaccine and instead stick to messages of freedom. is to hopefully drum up more widespread support and validity. And it initially worked in some ways and not in others. Numerous members of the Conservative Party have come out to meet protesters, especially throughout the first few days. Now former Conservative Party leader Aaron O'Toole met with convoy participants, albeit away from the main protest site. Both People's Party of Canada leader Maxine Bernier and Ontario member of Provincial Parliament and leader of the de facto Ontario arm of the PPC, Randy Healer, who has made many recent anti-Semitic comments, both gave speeches on Saturday the 29th in front of the Parliament building.

People like Elon Musk and Donald Trump have both endorsed the convoy, and Fox News has been endlessly broadcasting glowing updates of the convoy since its arrival in Ottawa. According to the convoy participants and organizers, they are vowing to camp out in front of the parliament until their demands of dropping all COVID-19 health measures are met. While stated grievances can be broader and more vast on the ground, the current Memorandum of Understanding, posted on the Canada Unity website, which collected over 30,000 signatures, served as a sort of bargaining pitch between the convoy and the Canadian government. The Memorandum of Understanding, or the MOU, calls on Canada's appointed senators and Canada's Governor General, the representative of Queen Elizabeth II in Canada's constitutional monarchy,

to abolish all COVID-19-related restrictions and to allow all unvaccinated workers whose employment was terminated because of vaccine mandates to get their jobs back. James Botter, the guy who runs Canada Unity, insisted to his followers that the MOU would force the government's hand and possibly even trigger fresh elections, if enough people signed. the government's hand and possibly even trigger fresh elections, if enough people signed. Another Canada Unity organizer went further, saying it would require the Senate to go after the Prime Minister for corruption and fascism. Which, of course, there's no legal basis for any of these claims around the MOU, but, you know, that doesn't really matter in the end, because people still believe it, so it's going to have an impact on what they do. The more controversial Pat King laid out an alternative, however,

a more direct plan of action to the occupiers. In a January Facebook livestream, King said that what we want to focus on is our politicians, their houses, their locations. If political pressure doesn't work, blocking major supply chains will be later on. So, more on that idea later. After the first weekend of protests turned occupations, GoFundMe released a reported $1 million of the total $10 million raised for the convoy. As the end of the weekend approached, many convoy participants who rolled into the nation's capital began heading home,

and the highways on Sunday night saw no shortage of vehicles heading away from Ottawa, with their protest signs and flags still in tow. But plenty of people stuck around to continue the fight. Thousands and thousands of people, and hundreds of vehicles, including a fleet of semi-trucks, commercial vehicles, RV campers, and regular cars, were more than enough to keep the roads in a large portion of Ottawa around Parliament effectively shut down. I can't help but draw comparisons to the fear-mongering narrative of busfuls of Antifa, you know, protesters coming from out of town into places they don't live, terrorizing locals, shutting down cities. You know, the other comparison is to, like, the CHOP or the CHAZ in Seattle was taking over a large portion of the city, and how that was so the local, national, and international capitalist

trade, the Freedom Convoy has done everything and more its proponents warned that Antifa was going to do to Canada. Obviously, part of the reason the convoy protest was able to get to this point is not just because of its large size, but also the initial hands-off approach by police that allowed the convoy participants the opportunity to get a strong foothold within the city. The difference in initial law enforcement reaction to the protest convoy, made up of largely conservative, middle-class white Canadians, compared to other protests like the Black Lives Matter protests, or say, the RCMP's typical response to First Nations protests and blockades defending their land, comparisons cannot be overanalyzed. You know, the latter two forms of protest I mentioned actually do challenge societal power structures that prop up white Canada,

while as this convoy protest does not, and instead plays into those very power structures. That dynamic played a major role in how the police handled, or didn't handle, the first few days of the protest, in which, during those early days, the convoy attendees were free to build infrastructure that resulted in the protest escalating into a full-scale occupation. The Monday after the first initial weekend, the city's mayor, Jim Watson, declared a state of emergency, but at that point, Ottawa police thought it was already too late for the protest to be ended by sheer force, without vastly increasing the likelihood of severe damage and life-threatening outcomes to the convoy participants, police officers, and regular citizens of Ottawa. On February 2nd, Ottawa Police Chief Peter Soley explicitly said that there may not be a police solution to ending the convoy and occupation.

There are similar demonstrations taking place in many other parts of this country, indeed many other parts around this continent and the world. What happens here affects there. What happens there affects here. We have seen in the last 24 hours attempts by other police and other jurisdictions to do just what you have suggested. They were not effective and they created additional safety issues, potential life-threatening safety issues. I have great compassion for those that have been significantly affected, if not traumatized, and we know, criminally victimized. We'll do everything

we can to hold those who've done that to account. We'll continue arresting and charging people as we have been. But any action taken without understanding the totality of the context, the totality of the risk, would be irresponsible. We're trying to be responsible, lawful, ethical, and measured. My last comment when I wrapped up, I'll share again now. The longer this goes on, the more I'm convinced there may not be a police solution to this demonstration. solution to this demonstration. There are police chiefs, commissioners across this country that are dealing with demonstrations that are starting, underway, and significantly advanced. This is a national issue, not an Ottawa issue. From the start, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has been playing down the notion of a military response to the ongoing Ottawa protest.

During the first week, he said that sending in troops is not in the cards right now. On February 2nd, the Ottawa police chief said that all options are on the table, including eventually calling in the military, but one must be very, very cautious about deploying troops in Canadian soil in such cases. Trudeau said at a news conference in early February that it's not something that anyone should enter into lightly. With police basically leaving the Ottawa residents who live near and within the convoy occupation to fend for themselves, I was curious what sorts of things the local community might be doing to live around this massive conspiracy-filled group of reactionary out-of-town campers.

factionary out-of-town campers. What sort of things has the community been doing to kind of help survive this? Has there been mutual aid projects in the neighborhood to help support other neighbors? That sort of thing. There have. It's actually been kind of wonderful the way the community has been coming together, especially after two years of pandemic where we've all been kind of like Ottawa and Ontario have been one of the more restricted jurisdictions in North America. I mean, and I say this as a restaurant manager, like in my opinion, rightly so, like it's about keeping people safe. We've done a fairly good job of that by and large. But the thing is that, you know, our community hasn't felt a lot like a community in a while. And this week, I mean, one of the few positives has been both individuals and organizations so I

mean Rose and some of the other organizations that were mentioned on Friday have done a great job there's also been some really really great organic organizing coming out of some activists as well as just people in the community so there's a a few discord servers set up right now so there's been a huge issue with people with disabilities and the elderly getting groceries because deliveries aren't possible downtown. So it started on Twitter, but there's been an organization set up to help people get those groceries, whether it's a cost issue or just a physical delivery issue. People are ensuring that that's happening. As of today, there's going to be a Safe Walks program. Well, there's two. There's one on Discord where it's people offering to make sure you can get through the space safe.

Today, though, in a positive and more passive sense, we kind of started taking the streets back. So we had about four or five groups of people ranging from 10 to 50 just walking the streets and not confronting anybody, not getting into any direct engagement, just going out to show that we can still walk on our streets and letting our neighbors know that we can actually be together and stand up just to be together, which is something that I think a lot of people have lost over the last week. I mean, the fact that that's even a big step is showing how tired the situation is the fact that just getting to that point we're walking around in a group where you feel safe is like a big thing that yeah that's like a really interesting and horrible indicator of what the mood has been like there for people like living in this area. That is, yeah, that is a big part of it.

And it's something that was actually talked about a lot today, which was how refreshing it was to be able to do it, but also that it shouldn't feel radical to take a safe walk in your community, but it somehow did. Yeah. And it speaks a lot to the feelings, the lack of safety or the loss of, you know, safety in this community and

has been pretty immense. I should mention that another community-led effort to deal with the occupation is the Ram Ranch Resistance, a loosely organized counter-movement to the trucker convoy that started with people joining the convoy's online communications channels and blasting the homoerotic country song, Ram Ranch. communications channels and blasting the homoerotic country song Ram Ranch. The song is by a Canadian artist and features some flawless lyrics like, 18 naked cowboys wanting to be fucked, cowboys in the showers at Ram Ranch, on their knees wanting to suck cowboy cocks, Ram Ranch really rocks. The result is not only making the convoy folks uncomfortable because gay, but also it is hijacking and making their online communications channels kind of useless for any non-cowboy, cocksucking political organizing efforts.

Disruptive resistance to the convoy's online communications is not just limited to the Ram Ranch song, however. Other vulgar songs have also been introduced into the chats as well. I'm gonna just kind of give you a brief look at what it's like inside these chats, right? I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna roleplay it. The Ram Ranch guys are finally gone. It's about freaking time. I've had to shut that stuff off, one person has heard saying in a clip from a chat, immediately followed by a robotic voice saying, welcome to the cum zone. Only cum inside anime girls. Quivering clit. Double-jointed pussy. Fresh balls. Since then, the movement has taken on something of a life of its own. The Ram Ranch Resistance hashtag has been used as a way for people to share information regarding the convoy, and Welcome to the Ram Ranch signs have been popping up at convoy

counter-protests around the country. Another Ram Rancher created been popping up at convoy counter protests around the country. Another Ram Rancher created the website ramranch.ca, linking to downtown organizations that have been impacted by the trucker convoy, as well as charities aiding indigenous peoples. As the convoy settled in, it appeared that the demonstrators and the government had reached a sort of stalemate. Currently, there are more than 400 trucks parked downtown, and Ottawa police say that they can't move them because the tow operators with city contracts are refusing to help. Making matters only more difficult, police say that

families with children are sleeping in approximately a quarter of those trucks. To get an idea of what some Ottawa residents who live within the occupied zone see in terms of a potential end in sight, I posed Paul this question. How do you even see the situation resolving at this point? Do you think the truckers and the people who are in the city are going to back down and leave eventually? Or do you think they're going to have to be forced out? Do you see an end to this at this point? Well, at this point, probably one of the hardest things to admit is that I don't. The hardest core that are here are committed, and they have a significant amount of funding behind them.

And the thing is that with an occupation protest, if you don't nip it in the bud, it snowballs and gathers momentum for a while. Um, and I mean, eventually they either Peter out or they have to be removed. And this one is still snowballing. Um, we've seen some more extreme elements come into the city this week. Um, yesterday, uh, Romana, uh, did do low, uh, the, uh, QAnon queen of Canada arrived and burnt the Canadian flag on Parliament Hill, which whatever you think about the Canadian flag and its symbol as a symbol of oppression, you know, that's not a great look for them. But the other side of it is, is that this is a woman

with 70,000 followers who, you know, has called for the mass execution of her enemies and, you know, is currently parked in her Winnebago two and a half blocks from my house right now um so and with a bunch of her followers down with her and so they're committed they know they don't know that i did occupy a lot of years ago and the question that people asked us and sometimes it was the police, was what gets you out of the park? And in a weird way, there's a parallel here, which is that the hardest answer with Occupy

was always kind of like, everything is kind of fucked. So how do we fix everything? That's the discussion we should be having. So in this case, to these people, in their worldview, everything is kind of fucked. And there's no answer that you can give those kind of people in negotiations the police right now are not looking at removal as a serious option i don't think or if they are they haven't figured out how to get to that place yet and one of the weird things about ottawa is is that technically in various spaces because the way it's designated

there's a whole mishmash of jurisdictions between the various police agencies so like again with occupy that we picked the park like the park that was occupied was partially picked because it was on like this weird jurisdictional black hole where it was hard to figure out who the cops were who should police it were um so and they've ended up in the same park where they now have like 55 cylinders of propane sitting about 500 yards from the department of national defense so it's uh it's tricky to figure out how you how you get get out of that because all it's going to take is one of them with something in their cab and it's done yep yep well do you have any hope for anything do you have any like indicators for how it can turn out well i mean in terms of the occupation i mean we'll see how it goes um maybe there can become some

kind of modus vivendi between them and the rest of the city i don't know how that happens but maybe there can be but i don't know it's happens, but maybe there can be. But I don't know. The only silver lining I see right now is the walk that I was on earlier today and the chats that I was having with other people in the community and the Discord server and everywhere else. This is a really strong community that cares a great deal about itself

and sometimes needs to be reminded of that. And I think this is an opportunity for that to happen. And I think that that's the positive that can come out is that we will take care of ourselves and we'll take care of each other. And that's, you know, what more can you ask for, I guess, out of this. Reports of assaults perpetrated by members of the convoy protest have been steadily rolling in the past few weeks. Not to mention the seemingly constant presence of honking in the downtown area that's been affecting residents every day and even into the night.

I will offer you this short sample to help complete the picture of what it's like both indoors and outdoors in downtown Ottawa. So, apologies about that. Yeah, that was pretty bad. And as annoying and frustrating as it may be, before I close out part one, I'm going to play some audio from one of the truckers, or, you know, just convoy participants, as he addresses fellow convoyers on why it's good and, in fact, revolutionary to honk horns late into the night. I think it gives you some valuable insight into how these people frame their actions in their own heads, and, you know, it'll give you an opportunity to hear some of these convoy people directly.

So, here we go. Yo, what's going on? opportunity to hear some of these convoy people directly, man, I get it. We've done everything. Every piece of garbage has been picked up. Statistically, there is no crime. And when I mean statistically, if you have some drunk guy acting, you know, silly on one street, quickly gets, you know, talked to and then the Patriots take him back to his car, maybe there was some incident of mischief. I've heard reports of Antifa throwing rocks at trucks, tagging stuff. They're the ones committing the crime.

But other than that, this has been the most well-behaved revolution on Earth. And now the big complaint is, can you get them to only blow their horns between 9 and 5? I'm sorry, what has complying got you guys so far? What is just little by little, oh, just do this. Yeah, just don't beep your horns between 9 and 5. That's all we're going to ask. Then wear two masks. Then just go right back to square one.

How about you put your blame right where it belongs, right in the eye of Sauron, and that's who we handle this with. End every mandate. We're not allowed to exist in society. I'm not allowed to go to a movie. I'm not allowed to go to a restaurant. I'm not allowed to leave the country. You can't even leave.

You can't even leave. You can't travel on planes. You can't do anything that Trudeau can get his fingers on to discriminate against us in society. Meanwhile, he'll blame us for side effects of his guinea pigs. It's an insane world, and you've complied long enough, guys. End the madness and the horn stop. But I am in no place to go tell these guys, oh, excuse me, can you turn your horn off? Can you get used to complying again?

We want freedom. We're not asking for anything unreasonable, and we're doing it on your behalf. The least you can do is turn off your televisions and stop letting their horrible objections to this revolution and their horrible false flags and whatever else they bring. I'm sorry about the noise complaints. Now, are you sorry about banishing me from society and treating me. I'm sorry about the noise complaints.

Now, are you sorry about banishing me from society and treating me like I'm some sort of leper because I want to keep my immune system intact? Sorry, guys. The horns are staying. Stuff it up your ass, anyone that has a problem with loud noises. We have a problem being banished from society. Apologies for that, but now I hope you have a better understanding of the type of conspiratorial thinking among the people in this convoy and the importance this whole thing means to them. So with this, that wraps up my part one of my deep dive into the Canadian Freedom Convoy. In the next episode, we'll get into the border blockades both in Alberta and the next episode, we'll get into the border blockades, both in Alberta and the Ambassador Bridge,

which is preventing some international trade. We'll get into some of the smaller protests and attempted occupations in other cities across Canada, and how the situation is evolving in Ottawa, and what types of long-term political ramifications this protest, and any attempt to suppress it, will have.

So, with that, see you on the other side. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter? Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America

since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to It Could Happen Here, and the second part of my little mini-series going into the occupation and blockade protests all across Canada that's been happening the past three weeks. For part two, we'll be starting off with a change of scenery. Instead of the loud, cramped streets of downtown Ottawa and the Castle Lake Parliament building, we'll be taking a detour to the snow-covered prairies and oil fields of rural Alberta. As the convoy officially arrived in Ottawa on January 29th,

smaller protests against health mandates were also happening across the entire country. One of these many protests was happening in the small city. One of these mini-protests was happening in the small city of Lethbridge in southern Alberta. But unlike the majority of other non-Ottawa protests, the one based around Lethbridge didn't turn out to be a simple weekend affair. With hundreds of vehicles, including some semi-trucks, RVs, and farm tractors all gathered together, it was decided to take part in a little mini-convoy of their own. But instead of going to a Capitol building,

they rolled towards the international border crossing used by truckers in the area. I was able to interview Jen, a Lethbridge local who also happens to work near the area of the Alberta border blockade. They kind of gathered in Lethbridge here and took off about 4.30 in the morning. And so they made it down to the village of Cootes, which is essentially right on the border. It's the last stop before you hit the border at Cootes, Alberta, Sweetgrass, Montana, and they blocked off the highway completely, heading both northbound and southbound, and they've been camped out since. So it's my understanding that at that point in time, throughout, you know, day one, two, and three of their protest, there was no getting in or out out of the village of coots

which is it is a small village about 250 residents um and it was so bad that not even emergency services could get through um again blocking both lanes of the highway in either direction in the ditches um and just weren't letting up and so are they even driving anywhere or is it are they just like camped there just camped out there parked um and of course you know there's people that will drive down to the border and participate for a couple hours and you know turn around and go home kind of thing, but there is that core group, the majority of which are actually farmers bringing down their tractors. And of course, there is some semi-truck drivers who are all a part of it and just not allowing anyone to get through on either side.

So, you know, holding up a lot of our supplies, a lot of our food and things like that. At first, local police and RCMP just waited out the blockade, I guess hoping to see if the people would just get tired of camping out in the cold and then go home. But after a few days, that possibility seemed less and less likely. Then when the RCMP did start to get more actively involved with kind of managing the blockade, albeit, you know, with a very gentle hand, an extremely stark

contrast to how RCMP handles blockades, you know, defending indigenous land. But at that point, it was already kind of too late, and the pacified police action only spread the protest's efforts efforts on day four of the blockade at the border um the rcmp had kind of moved in a little bit tried to break it up so some of the the protesters had kind of broken off and decided to blockade some other areas so

there was a blockade that happened on highway 3, just outside of the town of Fort McLeod, on the way to the town of Brockett, which would be on the blood reserve here in Alberta. They blockaded the highway and wouldn't let anyone through. And then they set up another blockade on Highway 23, which of course would be the next north-south route, given that Highway 3 was now blocked off, Highway 3 going to Highway 2. So they blocked off Highway 23. There's a traffic circle or a roundabout kind of in the middle of nowhere in the highway at the village of Noblesford, sorry, town of Noblesford. And they set up a blockade at the roundabout as well

wouldn't let anyone come in north south east west didn't matter um so that was tuesday uh tuesday so they were blocking off like highways 2 uh 4 23 and 3 yeah so effectively shutting down any kind of like travel for like food and supplies for like all four directions pretty much exactly yeah like there was a lot of uh chatter on social media um we have a local facebook group for road conditions there was a lot of chatter you know where do we go how do we get around this what back road should i take secondary highways that sort of thing and thankfully you know there was still i suppose some ways to get around it. The RCMP were kind of setting up detours and things like that. But those main routes were blockaded on Tuesday,

which would have been, I guess, what day is that? February 1st. The static highway blockades preventing traffic in all four directions were mostly a one-day affair. The next Wednesday morning, more effort was put back into the main blockade at the border near Coutts, with some folks still participating in the rolling blockades of sorts, you know, on the surrounding highways. So instead of just blocking the roads by staying parked, people in vehicles kept a slow loop of traffic moving through the highway system to clog up travel. And then like the contingent at closer to the border has been

more consistent, you would say? Yeah, definitely. The contingent at the border on Highway 4, like I said, at Cootes, Alberta, they've been set up all the way through since the 29th. They've been set up all the way through since the 29th. There has been days where the tensions are definitely very high, where those protesters are saying we will not leave until or we won't even come to the negotiating table until these restrictions are gone. We won't even attempt. And so the RCMP have been kind of in negotiations with them over the last few days. There's been a couple of times where they thought they had resolution to open up lanes of travel to get some of these trucks with goods through.

And of course there's been people stuck in their cars as well for quite a few days without food at that point. The protesters originally had come to an agreement with the RCMP to let people through and then turned around and decided, well, we don't really want to. So that was kind of ongoing from, I'm going to suggest the 30th up until about the second. On the second, the RCMP had set up a roadblock at the town of Milk River to, I guess, dissuade the locals from coming out and adding to the congestion and adding to the problems. on TikTok, they're on Facebook, they're on Twitter, where people are blasting through the barricades, going through the ditch, going through the median, just bypassing it completely to get down to the convoy protest. As I record this, the border crossing port of entry near the

town of Coutts has been largely impassable for over two weeks. It's a major trade hub where millions of dollars worth of agricultural products like meat and feed trade hands each day. The first day had hundreds of vehicles participating in blocking access to the trade route along Highway 4, but after a week of blockading the Alberta-Montana border crossing, around 80 big rigs continued to remain along the highway. For a majority of the time since the 29th of January, vehicle access has been either completely stopped to and from the border, or at least substantially slowed down. The occasional day where vehicles are being let through on one lane of traffic

has an estimated seven hours of stall time in order to get through just that tiny area of road. The blockade of that international port of entry at Cootes, and the only 24-7 commercial land crossing in Alberta, is a direct threat to the economic well-being of growers, producers, manufacturers, and many other businesses that rely on the movement of both raw materials and finished goods in and out along the Can-Am-X corridor, end quote. Lewington has warned that manufacturing plants in the region will be forced to either reduce or cancel production as their supplies run out and they're unable to get their goods to international markets. This is something farmers and food producers are dealing with as well, as agricultural exports are one of the region's main economic

drivers. In 2020, the Lethbridge metropolitan area exported nearly $1.8 billion worth of goods, around 80% of which went to the United States. A vast majority of these exports went through this Cootes border crossing. That means for the city of Lethbridge alone, they're facing a roughly $3 million a day impact on the economic damage based on the road and rail travel that must move through that port of entry. The impact is, of course, four or five times larger than if you consider the movement of other Alberta goods in and out of that same north-south corridor.

It's only more ironic and frustrating, considering that the idea of shutting down international capitalist trade, you know, costing millions of dollars in losses each and every day, is exactly the sort of thing that these same conservatives would complain that BLM or Antifa would do, you know, like, in terms of anti-capitalist action. This is actually more successful in causing damage to capital than really anything I've seen the Canadian left do in recent memory. these blockades are the same types of people that talk about their desire to run down protesters in trucks, you know, whenever there's marching in the street or an indigenous road blockade to a new oil pipeline. Nevertheless, on top of the police inability, whether by choice or imagination, to handle the situation, and considering both the conspiracy-fueled political issues around

masks, vaccines, and health mandates, and the growing economic problems the blockade is causing. It's not super surprising that the conservative government of Alberta began the process of removing health mandates as the protests striked on. And unfortunately, it seems like the province is listening and they're taking it seriously. I know last night, our premier had gone on Facebook Live and had announced that come Monday the caucus will vote as to whether or not to scrap it. Which would mean that, like I said, now there's no longer that requirement to access some of these services from private businesses. And then ultimately that would lead us back into our letter rip model that we had last summer. The Monday vote came in the next day, February 8th. Alberta Premier, and premiers are like the equivalent of governors for the states, but Alberta Premier Jason Kenney announced that the province's so-called COVID-19 vaccine passport program would end immediately,

vaccine passport program would end immediately, explaining that the restriction program had served its purpose but is no longer needed since Alberta has passed the peak of Omicron infections about three weeks ago. Capacity limits were also nixed Tuesday night for venues with capacity limits under 500, including libraries and places of worship, and effective this past Sunday, February 13th, the province will also no longer require masking for children and youth in schools and for any Albertans aged 12 and under in any setting. There is a second phase for Alberta's COVID restriction removal plan. On March 1st, the province is set to remove any remaining restrictions, including the indoor mask mandate, work from home requirements, any remaining capacity limits and limits on social gatherings

and screenings for youth activities. Jason Kenney did deny that the move has anything to do with the protests from those, you know, demanding the repeal of vaccine mandates of all types across the country, including the blockade that the government had condemned as illegal at the Coutts border crossing, saying, quote, none of that has anything to do with a few trucks participating at the Coutts border crossing, who added quote, none of that has anything to do with a few trucks participating at the Coutts border crossing, who added that keeping previous rules in place would invite widespread non-compliance for no purpose, saying, why keep this going on for a few days when we know that in many areas we're already having non-compliance problems? So yeah, of course the demonstrations

have continued despite Alberta dropping multiple health measures and agreeing to a demand made by a lot of the anti-mandate protesters, which implies that this protest is about much more than simple COVID health measures, right? It points to the movement being more about taking political power and forcing everyone to comply with their own conspiratorial and alienated understanding of the world. As someone who's like living in Alberta, which is, you know, one of the more conservative provinces of Canada, how much do you see this kind of, this kind of, you know, spontaneous revolt and resistance to be actually tied to the health mandates? And how much do you see it as more like a revolt around like Trudeau and Canada's like, Canada's like veneer of liberalism?

Like, like, like how, like how much do you, did you see it as more of like a urban rule divide thing that's now just getting pushed into the spotlight because of COVID? Or do you think it really is way more about COVID itself? I think that the pandemic has definitely had a role to play

in sparking a lot of this furor and this disconnect. But the seeds have been sown for many years through many successive provincial governments and much rhetoric that the West has always been ignored by the East, by our political institutions in the East, namely Ottawa, our federal government, the seat of our federal government, in favor of Ontario and Quebec and what they want. Albertans have always seen themselves with a bit of a martyr complex where we are the economic powerhouse of the country, but we are the ugly stepchild and we are ignored in favor of the

wonderful children in the East. And so that disconnect and that divide has always been there and the pandemic has been the catalyst. And of course, you know, whenever there is a federal liberal party that's in power, the conservatives feel, the conservatives in Alberta and in the West, they feel even more disenfranchised. They feel that this government doesn't hear them. They don't listen to them. They don't follow the whims of the dyed-in-the-wool conservatives. And so that rhetoric has built and built and built over the years. and the policies of the Liberal government in regards to climate change and carbon tax and how that's been hitting Albertans. You know, our province is very heavily dependent upon the oil and gas sector.

And it always has been for the last, I'm going to suggest 50, 60 years. And so when they see things like in Ottawa, where they're talking about climate change, and they're talking about, you know, green energy, it makes these conservatives angry, because this has been our bread and butter for years. This is what's fed our families. They don't recognize that, you know, this is the path forward. All they hear is, we don't want you.

We don't want your jobs. We don't want your products. And they're angry. And this has been the catalyst now where they're just fed up. They're fed up with not being heard. Unfortunately, all that built up anger and resentment towards the government and its leadership is ending up being taken out against just any symbol of liberalism, not really the government directly.

You know, within this worldview, homophobic attacks can be then thought up as this weird form of punching up because gayness is associated with liberalism. So it's seen as almost this system of power, even though that's obviously backwards. It's this kind of weird backwards thing where you can view attacking progressive things as an attack on the system. So that means being racist or being homophobic

is this rebellion against the system itself, even though it just ties into all those same systemic issues. Just the other day in Edmonton, there was a business owner, a hair salon owner, who's been very outspoken about this Freedom Convoy and about how she doesn't agree with their messaging and their ideas. And she was actually hunted down on social media, hunted down in person.

They found her, someone found her business, went to her business and confronted her and assaulted her at her business, all because she does not support the convoy. And apparently this individual did. You know, we definitely see here that the feeling is that if you are a liberal in Alberta, this is not the place for you. You know, if you believe in, you know, equal rights for everyone,

this is not the place for you. If you believe in the rights of marginalized and minority communities, this is not the place for you. And we, I've seen that, you know, in taking part in various protests, I suppose that could be branded as liberal protests, like the Black Lives Matter protests and the protests and rallies that were held in support of the Indigenous communities last summer upon, you know, the news that kind of shook the world regarding graves at residential schools. And, you know, you see it with the Indigenous communities that

protest pipelines on their traditional lands, and they block, you know, railways. And these same people that are screaming for jail time and for violence and police intervention on these various protests are the same people that are taking part in this convoy. Protesters at the Cootes border crossing will now be charged or fined, according to the province and the RCMP. RCMP Deputy Chief Curtis Zablocki said in a news conference during the start of the second week of the Alberta border blockade that police are actively working to diffuse the situation at the most important border crossing in Alberta, but are trying to do so peacefully, saying, make no mistake, there are

criminal activities taking place at these protest sites that violate both criminal code and provincial laws. We've seen activities that are both dangerous and reckless and are having a very negative effect on Albertans who live in the area. He then pointed to, you know, dwindling numbers involving the blockade, from a high of around 250 vehicles to begin with, to around 50 vehicles last Tuesday afternoon, as a success of their efforts to this point. But, you know, this isn't convinced everyone since the blockade is still happening. So, Acting Justice Minister and Solicitor General Sonia Savage called the blockade intolerable and said that those taking part in the demonstration can be charged under

several different federal and provincial laws, including the Federal Criminal Code, the Provincial Traffic Safety Act, and the new Critical Infrastructure Defense Act, which was enacted right in the middle of 2020 during the international George Floyd uprising and the set in rail blockades in Canada. Now, I'm going to go on a mini tangent here just because of how terrible this bill is. The bill gives law enforcement and the judicial system extra power to dish out significant monetary fines and extra jail time for actions deemed to interfere with so-called essential infrastructure, quote-unquote. The stated goal of the bill is harsher penalties and charges for, quote, damage or interference caused by blockades,

protests, or similar activities that can cause significant public safety, social, economic, and environmental consequences. The act builds on existing trespassing laws to create offenses for trespassing on, destroying, damaging, and obstructing the use or operation of any essential infrastructure. Also under the banner of essential infrastructure, that includes public and private property, by the way. The bill was obviously aimed at left-wing protest, and specifically eco-defense and environmental protest and or sabotage, So yeah, there's also been pressure from government officials to include forfeiture property in the Commission of Crime through the Civil Forfeiture Act. RCMP Deputy Chief Zablocki said that charges will be coming for those taking part in the protest and could be as simple as the way they are illegally parked on the highway. He did note that the RCMP has attempted to hire local towing companies to move the trucks and other equipment off the road, but have been unable to do so, with the companies

citing concerns over damage to their business long term or just safety issues in general. This has also been a huge factor in attempts to deal with the Ottawa occupation. Zablocki said that there are concerns over safety and violence in response to the more aggressive approaches to breaking up the blockade. So far, the main action law enforcement has taken to dissuade people from blocking the border is just giving out tickets and fines for illegal parking. Premier Jason Kenney said that he is supportive of RCMP handling this as they see

fit through the means that they already have, and has been supportive of using the, you know, pretty horribly authoritarian Critical Infrastructure Defense Act, saying, quote, last year we passed the Defense of Critical Infrastructure Act, which gives police enormous powers and very stiff fines and penalties, including the power of imprisonment. We have made it clear to the RCMP, who is our provincial policing service, that they can and should use all of these powers. They're dealing with a very fluid situation, and I have respect for their judgment. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau addressed the ongoing blockades

and protests across the country this past Friday, encouraging demonstrators to leave while also passing the buck on any blame, saying, quote, I want to remind everybody that politicians don't direct police departments to enforce the law. Instead, Trudeau made vague threats around revoking licenses and criminal records for those continuing to protest, saying, everything is on the table because this unlawful blockade has to end and will end. The blockade at the Cootes border crossing is not the only convoy-aligned protest in Alberta.

There have been many demonstrations in basically every major city. In Calgary, the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees says that frontline healthcare workers, patients, and people living around the Sheldon-Kamir Health Centre have dealt with protests for weeks. But things have only gotten worse since the truck convoy hit the news. The vice president of the Alberta Union for Provincial Employees said that protesters have blocked the Ambulance Bay, they have harassed workers and patients as they come to and from the center,

they've banged on the windows of the facility and upset people inside, and they have blocked the roads around the center. Moving on to the province of British Columbia, as the second weekend of protest was set to descend on Vancouver the weekend of February 5th. In preparation, fearing attacks would be carried out against healthcare workers like they have in the past, Vancouver's two health authorities issued internal M.O.s telling health workers to hide indoors as the convoy passed through the city, and to, quote, refrain from wearing scrubs and or your ID badge outside the hospital during the demonstration. If you do encounter any protesters,

please do not engage with them or respond to their questions, and please do not ask protesters to put on a face mask. Similarly, ahead of a protest in Toronto, the Toronto Police sent letters to hospitals advising their workers to not wear any clothing or markings that identify them as working in healthcare, fearing attacks by protesters. As the second wave of the convoy arrived during the second weekend of the occupation in Ottawa, some of the on-the-ground organizational structure started to morph and evolve. The police estimated around this time that 5,000 people were still protesting in Ottawa, and around 1,000 vehicles were clogging the streets. During the second week of protests, in an effort to improve optics considering the four original organizers'

explicit connections to the far right, a new lead organizational, public relations, and bargaining team was assembled for the group calling themselves the Freedom Convoy. The new pseudo-leadership team consists of Daniel Bulford, a former RCMP officer who was on the Prime Minister's security detail. He quit last year after refusing to get the vaccine and is now the convoy's head of security. Tom Quiggan, a former military intelligence officer who also worked with the RCMP and was considered one of the country's top counterterrorism experts. CMP and was considered one of the country's top counterterrorism experts, and Tom Marizzo, an ex-military officer who, according to his LinkedIn profile, served in the Canadian Armed Forces for 25 years and now works as a freelance software developer. And just a side note, in terms

of, you know, police and former military participating in the protests, there was an organization full of retired police that endorsed the convoy a few weeks ago and said that they have people on the ground there. And it just got announced, as I'm recording this, that two members of Canada's military counterterrorism unit is under investigation for allegedly taking part in the Ottawa convoy protests.

So yeah, that's fun. The occupation has been getting more and more organized on the ground the past two weeks, and has been able to keep one step ahead of any action taken against police against the occupation. Even just what the convoy participants have physically built is impressive. In less than a week after the convoy arrived, you started to see wooden structures being built around the roads, and a growing stockpile of propane and diesel fuel. There is an impressive amount of tents and wooden structures used for kitchens that local organizers have set up, and a whole supply chain has sprung up across the city to keep these people fed, working, and protesting.

I'm now going to quote a good article in the CBC by Judy Trenn. Quote, The group is set up not only near the parliament in Ottawa, but they have also built two encampment areas where they carry out logistical and supply work. Recent reporting has painted a picture that these areas are far more organized than widely thought. The group is also trying out new tactics, such as attempting to clog up traffic at the Ottawa airport. Other tactics like swatting have been reported as well. Ottawa police say they're aware of a concerted

effort to flood our 911 and non-emergency police reporting lines, tweeting that this endangers lives and is completely unacceptable. Determined to not be outdone by their fellow protesters in the West, after the second wave arrived, the members of the Ottawa Convoy organized a way for the convoy occupation to stay, but also put up a border crossing blockade of their own. Starting Sunday, February 6th, scores of truckers blocked the Ambassador Bridge connecting Windsor, Ontario to Detroit, Michigan, disrupting the flow of auto parts and other products between the two countries. While this protest has been conducted more by pickup trucks than big border crossing and a key cog in both the U.S. and Canadian economies, as it carries around 25% of trade between the two countries. The effects of the blockade there were felt rapidly. The bridge regularly carries around $360 million a day in two-way cargos,

but traffic is limited by its 1929 physical footprint. There's just two lanes each way, with no shoulders and antiquated customs booths, with the northern side just emptying out into the city streets. The bumper-to-bumper demonstration forced auto plants on both sides of the border to shut down or scale back production. The halting of trade has bottlenecked automaker Ford's ability to get parts from the U.S. to its Canadian plants in Windsor and Oaksville. Ford has shut down the doors of its Windsor plant and reduced the work schedule in Oakville. Ford said in a statement, The interruption on the Detroit-Windsor bridge hurts customers, autoworkers, suppliers, communities, and companies on both sides of the border. We hope the situation is resolved quickly because it could have widespread impact on all automakers in the U.S. and Canada.

Automaker Toyota said that its three plants in Ontario closed for the rest of the week because of parts shortages, and production has also been curtailed in Georgetown, Kentucky. also been curtailed in Georgetown, Kentucky. More on the U.S. side of things, GM, Jeep, and Honda all had hours cut and assembly lines shut down at their factories across Michigan and Ohio. Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmore urged Canadian authorities to quickly resolve the standoff, saying it's hitting paychecks and production lines and that is unacceptable. The federal public safety minister has said that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police reinforcements are being sent to Windsor, Ottawa, and to Cootes, Alberta, where the other border blockade is happening. With political and economic pressure mounting,

Windsor Mayor Drew Dilkens announced that the city would seek a court injunction to end the occupation, saying that the economic harm is just not sustainable and it must come to an end. On Thursday, February 10th, the Biden administration urged Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's government on Thursday to use its federal powers to end the truck blockade at the other side of the Detroit border. Hundreds of millions of dollars worth of products have been held back for days as 50 to 60 vehicles and around 100 anti-mandate protesters camp out on the main road that leads on and off the bridge. And yes, it is ironic that the same people who are trying to sell Canadians fake stories about failing

supply lines and empty shelves are now causing those supply lines to fail and causing those shelves to go empty. The irony is not lost on me, but it may be lost on the convoy participants. Throughout writing these episodes, I was fortunate enough to get to talk to multiple people who have been on the ground in downtown Ottawa. One such of these peoples is Peter Smith, an investigative journalist for the Canadian Anti-Hate Network. We recorded our conversation, and I'm going to include some audio clips throughout the rest of the episode. We started off by discussing what made this protest movement pop off in this specific time and place. I do think it was maybe capitalizing on a moment, but also a fair amount of luck. You know, since 2019, the same organizers have attempted to put together other convoys, you know, generally never rising to the amount of attention that they had in 2019.

You know, this convoy was also planned long before they specifically started focusing on truckers. And then it was, it was a galvanizing issue. It resonated with people who were frustrated with the Trudeau government and just their, issue it resonated with people who were frustrated with the trudeau government um and just their their handling of of health measures as well as just became a like a vehicle

for expressing their general dissatisfaction with their own promises like most of our health mandates are provincial like the the alberta government is handing down what's happening in Alberta. So it's not just a federal issue, but coming down here and occupying the streets of Ottawa, and then now we're seeing occupying most of our major cities. Ones like Winnipeg get significantly less attention but are incredibly disruptive locally and in some cases more kind of incendiary than the one that we have out here where you know participants and organizers are desperately trying to clamp down on on any individuals who's engaging in harassment or or is more common blaming it on liberal plants. Yeah, it just became this kind of expression

of all of the frustration and very quickly drew attention, even from people who'd been dismissive of it very early on because of some of the organizers. Once it really started to galvanize attention and of course money, people couldn't stay away. I mean, to the point that we even have mainstream

conservative politicians now getting on board with it, including the man who's very likely to be the future leader of the Conservative Party here. I mean, we're in a very unique moment. You know, our far right and kind of conspiracy culture in Canada has also been getting better at organizing over the course of the pandemic. Once again, like all major cities have,

and many small towns continue to have anti-mandate, anti-lockdown protests. We usually refer to them as the COVID conspiracy movement just because of how and heavily, heavily informed it is by conspiratorial thinking. So it's, it's like you had a large amount of people kind of spending the past two years in like a on the ground boot camp of how to organize within these cities and how to get people's attention and of course like like a lot of the far right here it fragmented there was a lot of infighting uh and then you know once there

became a central point that was was galvanizing a lot of attention, it started receiving international attention. There's been some questions about the source of some of the money, but certainly the initial totals seem to be organically Canadian. It just became too big to fall apart, essentially, at least at this point. too big to fall apart essentially, at least at this point. There has been some spats of infighting, but mostly the most polarizing

figures are either just keeping their head down or in some cases even choosing to stay away from the main events so as not to be a distraction. One of the lines I see a lot is like, this is the moment. This is for all the marvels. So there's a huge amount of importance being placed on that.

What actually happens, whether they're able to paint the actual rolling back of Band-Aids that we were already starting to see before the convoy began as some type of victory for them. before the convoy began as some type of victory for them or if this leads to further disillusionment we don't really know at this point but I think this moment is going to be a propaganda tool and kind of a point of I think it's going to be a propaganda tool and a point of motivation for a long time

From your both on the ground stuff and just from monitoring stuff online what do you think like the actual actionable intention was once they arrived in ottawa like do you think they had a clear plan of what to do or was it more like let's go here and then we'll figure things out. Well, initially there, there was a man. Initially there was a memorandum of understanding, which laid out kind of the,

the points of what the initial organizers were hoping to accomplish. Something they call the operation bear hug, which includes having the governor general and our Senate, both of whom are unelected, dissolve parliament and reform the government immediately after we had a federal election um since then the message has evolved like they're trying to stay very very like on script with this just being about freedom this just being about mandates you this just being about mandates.

You know, initially there was a lot of attempts to even get people to stop mentioning the vaccine, though those seem to kind of fallen by the wayside, especially when you start looking at the speakers. It is interesting to kind of wonder what the actual goal is there. They've started meeting with public officials. You know, there is some type of negotiation going on. Ostensibly, the goal is just to have these border restrictions lifted on people, on truckers who are unvaccinated returning from the US. The obvious thing is to point out

that the US still has a very similar policy and reversing it here would have no impact on their ability to avoid this quarantine. But it seems like the goals are fairly murky and that's almost deliberate because then they can declare victory kind of when it suits them. Ambiguity around protest goals, demands, and purpose itself can be a useful tactic. The Crimethink zine slash article titled Why We Don't Make Demands makes such a case. I don't have time to summarize it here, but I recommend you give the article a look if you're interested in this train of thought as an intentional tactic. But on the flip side, you know, vague and directionless protests without much of a focus on a specific goal can also cause protests to peter out without having any lasting impact on the world.

A discussion worth having is how the individual people that make up the Convoy participants have been convinced to take part in an occupation protest, and how what is considered valid political action has broadened in their own heads if they are the ones doing the action of course because from their point of view since they are doing it the cause must be valid and therefore the action is justified in 2020 we had the the wet suin rail blockades um that was put on by various members of our first Nations and then people who supported them. You know, the same politicians that are meeting with the truckers, embracing them, saying that our current prime minister is demonizing them by kind of casting them as undesirables. We're, you know, we're actively calling people sitting on train tracks as terrorists who

are disrupting our economy. people sitting on train tracks as terrorists who are disrupting our economy. Obviously, in the context of the pandemic, that's very different because there has been kind of mass disruption to our economy. But this kind of picking and choosing of suiting the narrative to court far-right voters seems to be popular. You know how conservatives typically aren't seen as the protesting type, right? Conservatives are supposed to be the type of people who drive by the protest and yell, get a job. They're not the ones who are out in the streets picketing. But first of all, that's not really true. Historically, in just the past 100 years, there's always been conservative

protests for, you know, regressive and reactionary goals. Also, conservatives have been much better at organizing off the street for their political policies, specifically around, like, abortion or Christian dominionism, anti-queer legislation, or recent stuff around anti-CRT and just the mainstream racism denial that's been propagated through media. But even if there is historical precedent for conservative protest, bridging the gap of what is seen as valid political action in the minds of these convoy attendees did still take place over just the past few years. Just the past two years specifically, there's been so much conservative protests around COVID. A whole bunch of the people at the Ottawa protest,

probably five years ago, would have never seen themselves going to protest in the Canadian capital, right? Like, if you told them a few years ago that in 2022, you're going to drive all these kilometers to the parliament to camp out in the cold for weeks to protest against the government and its rules for helping not spread the deadliest pandemic in a century, they would have probably laughed you out of the room. So what is the logical progression of conservative people who generally, you know, look down on any type of protest, especially

Occupy-style protests, to the point where they are driving all the way to the Capitol to camp outside the building to honk horns day and night? A lot of that political change the past few years correlates to the pandemic, to the social isolation, and the great opportunity for the fast spread of conspiratorial politics that it offered. Over the course of the pandemic, there's been this huge blending of rhetoric online, and especially in Canada, this kind of villainization of the other side. Increasingly, less and less criticism against the current government is less based on its policy and more based on its figurehead and the image of Trudeau as a globalist. Politics as opposition to whatever Trudeau and the liberals are doing.

The result of that is just a whole bunch of escalation, because you have to keep always being antagonistic and always being contrarian, no matter what the opposition actually does. The thing is, a lot of people who used to just be kind of more general conservatives, as they get radicalized online and get caught up with far-the-right extremist elements, most of them still view themselves as, like, the norm. They don't think they've politically changed the past five years, but if you look at their rhetoric and actions, they definitely have, kind of substantially. But they still view themselves the same way they would when they were voting for Stephen Harper. Unless you're a self-described extremist, you typically view everything that you do and say as normal and reasonable. Like you, you are the actual normal.

Everyone else is shifted either way relative to you. During our talk, I asked investigative journalist Peter Smith on his opinions about what sorts of political and social factors have allowed the occupation and blockades to have enough numbers to last and continue on so long. Kind of having spent a lot of time on the ground at the Ottawa Convoy, just talking to people as a normal guy without my press hat on, it does seem like, one, there's a lot of owner-operators there. When it comes to the trucks themselves, these people are the business owners. Or very close. They're kind of independent contractors. Exactly. these people are the business owners or like

very close like they're kind of independent contractors I think there was a report that came out showing a survey that done that like roughly half of the people there were unemployed so like the financial promise of all the money

raised may have been a big draw like not to say that these people don't legitimately believe the reasons. No, absolutely. But it created an incentive. But then having roughly half of them, you know, still having jobs, you know, it comes down to a little bit more than just money. Like it's about actual belief, actual ideology. But it is interesting for a large amount of people who are extremely worried

about supply lines, about people having enough food initially, to kind of creating this self-fulfilling prophecy where that seems to be the main tactic, is just to grind as much to a halt as they can, using as many people as they can muster. And then just the kind of general hands-off approach that law enforcement is taking with them has allowed them to organize better, to evolve their tactics, to be more effective. I certainly don't think a policing solution is what's going to solve this.

And there's a lot of calls for that, which is, I think, just going to result in a lot of people getting hurt in the street um but but yeah like it is interesting that how it kind of it came from the west mostly and then landed in ottawa and then kind of spread out from there once people realized it was effective once people realized, you know, there was safety in these numbers. It's drawn so many people to it. It's honestly shocking. It has been shocking, like truly how quickly it has spread and how effective it has been.

It's not January 6th in the sense that like people are around Parliament trying to find every liberal politician, but in the sense that it's a large amount of people motivated by conspiracy. That's where I view the parallel. And honestly, the actual sincerity of it poses more of a political threat than the

animosity of January 6th. In terms of long-term actual social change and using this type of like occupation as a tactic the more sincere you are the more of an actual political threat you can be in the long term because yeah if they start if they storm parliament then it'll get shut down in a day and then they'll be demonized then then the problem is over right at least at least in the short term right um but But if you actually do this sincerely and actually get people to buckle under pressure, then that's actual successful politics. You're actually doing politics objectively well, and that's more interesting to point out.

The problem isn't protesting. Protesting as a concept isn't the issue. The problem isn't even blockades. No, the problem's not blockades either. All all these things are just tactics and tactics are value neutral um usually you know until you get to the genocide when it's usually that's a kind of kind of a kind of a downer generally um but in general i kind prototactics as more value neutral. It's about kind of what the underlying cultural motivation is and what they want the results to be. And even still, you know, some of the points they have are not completely invalid. But once it gets caught up in a culture war kind of mindset, it's like you have to oppose it just because they're on the other side.

kind of mindset it's like you have to oppose it just because they're on the other side um so i kind of want to talk about like the reasons why they are actually kind of bad like like for like on like a very sincere way but then also kind of point out some things that are like yeah maybe in the scene these are things we should consider and it shouldn't take this type of occupation to have us reconsider some of these rules and regulations? Yeah, completely. I think there's no issue with being uncomfortable with mandates. Even if you feel they're necessary, being uncomfortable with the amount of state power that is being accumulated. In Canada, there have been sweeping changes to the way that we live our life like i i know that that's been universal um but there there is not a province that hasn't really suffered like hasn't really impacted people's lives dealing with covid um and you

know this is this is one of the the biggest issues when trying to point out disparate responses in policing um well it's like oh it's like so we should treat the convoy participants like they treated everybody else and it's it's like no like like you know the the police chief of ottawa got a lot of shit for saying he doesn't think there's a policing solution and it's like i do agree with the criticism of him because he has attempted to kick responsibility to just about every other level of government available um but dragging people out like towing their vehicles and taking away their livelihood and dragging a lot of people out into the street and then into jail is is not gonna resolve these issues no um and if anything it could could bring more support

like again there was another report today that uh i think it's 25 percent of people who have camped out have children with them like you know this is going to be an incredibly traumatic experience it's going to help radicalize more people and it's going to lend credence to their cause if they just go in and bust heads and it's like if the main focus of this convoy had been in toronto where we have a incredibly aggressive police force when it comes to like homeless encampments for instance um you know i think the result could have been very different yeah and then because a lot of stuff around the question of governments and stuff

the type of things I can agree with with right wing libertarians is yeah you do have a lot of points I can sympathize with around the state and around control but the way you address them don't actually address the underlying power structures

which give the state legitimacy in the first place yeah absolutely and the world that you kind of want in the end is still a world full of hierarchies just hierarchies that make your life easier right skew in your favor

just like asking for two unelected bodies to replace your democratically elected government. It's like, we had 10 years of Stephen Harper. People were unhappy and extremely critical of that government from the center and from the left, but there wasn't this kind of broad support for the idea that that government was illegitimate, which is, I think, what we see mostly today, which is the most disturbing and kind of anti-democratic part of the whole pie. Yeah, and that's the kind of one of the last things I want to talk about is like,

what do you see? Like, eventually people will go home either out of exhaustion, it'll maybe fizzle away like the protests in Portland did. Maybe they'll eventually, police will kind of clear out small sections. Like, who knows? But like, this is not going... Knock you out here, but this isn't going to last like a year, right? It's not going to like,

I don't think they're going to have thousands of people camped out in front of the government forever. So what, but what are the actual long-term political ramifications of this? Because we already saw the leader of the Conservative Party step down. So, like, I want to talk about, like, specifically with the guy who's probably most likely to take his place, how this just does kind of play into the more negative aspects of the convoy, is, like, how they're going to use this as a political symbol and a political tool to push for policies and forms of government and actions that will end up hurting a lot of people in terms of how it's going to be used in propaganda and rhetoric? Yeah, well, certainly if we have strong legal ramifications put in place that make it easier for provinces, the federal government,

whatever, to crack down on protests in general, which I think is something that might be very attractive to our current government, you know, that's going to have obviously very far-reaching effects. You know, one of our opposition parties, which is, you know, generally further to the left than the liberals, the NDP, their leader was proposing ways to stop foreign funding from coming in to supply to the protests. You know, once again, we had protests a couple years ago by Indigenous people and people who support Indigenous movements, you know, that raised money using the same platforms and the same methods you know so i worry about like one the legal ramifications like

two just this this idea like if the government does crack down very hard this idea of real grievance and alienation that the west has already been struggling with like we've had a real renewed separatist movement, not from Quebec, where it's generally been the most successful, but from the Western provinces. You know, not, not really getting close to obtaining any real political power, but, you know, kind of steadily gaining support. Polling has shown that, you know, there is a real feeling of western alienation they don't feel represented and you know a lot of the ways our government are set up actually makes that true

um yeah ultimately as people i think become more and more disenfranchised um when government action begins to kind of justify imagined ideas of oppression um you're gonna have a real hardening and since the government in power is a progressive one is or at least one that espouses you know tries tries to reach for progressive values you know there's a good chance that those issues are going to get caught up with what is just like a quote-unquote leftist agenda. Whereas up until probably a decade ago, those things were very much seen as kind of inherent Canadian values that were embraced by both sides. The current candidate for leadership, he hasn't won the seat in the Conservative Party yet, He hasn't won the seat in the conservative party yet, but Pierre Polliver has kind of always flirted to some degree with far-right talking points. I specialize in hate groups. I don't want to make too many pronouncements about mainstream conservatism.

But even by kind of members of the very far right, who often have turned against the conservative party over the course of the pandemic he's often referred to as the adult in the room um and while still a politician kind of their best bet for getting someone in office that they would actually like to see in power um which could i mean could be interesting to see how they if there will be continued support for the ppc in two to four years um but yeah i just think there there is a real hardening of the right and it's not like the overton window is shifting it's just like it's getting wider like more and more is being incorporated as opposed to it just going one direction or another that disenfranchisement is is a driving factor like they view this populist kind of uprising or upswelling um that they're seeing now as a function of democracy or like part of how democracy is supposed to function

so again like if if you talk to them they will quite earnestly say many of them anyway would quite earnestly say like this is about anyway, will quite earnestly say, this is about freedom, this is about having my voice heard. But without a lot of thought about how that will actually function on a broader scale. That just plays into alienation as a general concept, right? We're so disconnected from everything about our lives, disconnected from the way we work, disconnected from, you know, the way we

work, disconnected from our interactions with other people, disconnected from, like, you know, money or food, you know, it's all this stuff. And, like, disconnected from, like, politics is that the only way that you can actually, something that feels real, the only thing that actually feels like reality is going to do this thing

in person because everything else is so disjointed. There is so much of that space in between the phenomenon and the actual thing that is it leaves you wanting something which you don't know quite what so yeah you're gonna drive to ottawa because that feels so much more real that feels like actual politics and it kind of is like that's this like that's that's that's always when it feels like when you're when you're like when you're when you're protesting it's like yeah i'm actually doing politics now because that's how everything gets set up is by that type of like you know getting people on the ground yeah and it's such a more personal way to engage than you know putting

a note into a box every two to four years. Like, yeah, I imagine it does feel substantive. And then, I mean, voting power is centered in our urban centers as well. So there is a real disconnect with the representation that rural people, again, the Western provinces receive. I now want to specifically talk about police response and the ways this occupation and blockades being handled will affect the political organizing in the future. I think initially, the majority of police concerns and what they were actually focused on responding to was fears around the convoy storming parliament, or if the convoys were going to do something exceedingly violent. Which I don't think was necessarily the

convoy's actionable objective from the beginning. If you listen to what they were actually saying, it was more about choking out the city and applying pressure on government officials. But the initial non-violence, coupled with the shield of being conservative white and middle class, whom, you know, the police are less likely to react as brutally to, allowed time for the infrastructure to rise that let the protest turn into a full-scale occupation of a North American city. The first real action police took against the occupation was on the evening of Sunday, February 6th. Demonstrators were gathering for dinner, then dozens of officers in riot gear carrying munitions launchers raided a camp after footage of stockpiles and gas cans went viral days previous. In an attempt to cut the supply route,

police say they seized around 3,700 liters of fuel and two vehicles, including a diesel tank. But within hours of the raid, protesters from the camp broadcast reassurance to their supporters and continued to organize, just utilizing smarter tactics. The day after the police raid, protesters continued to deliver fuel to downtown truckers as they executed a coordinated effort to exhaust police resources. Hundreds of demonstrators carried fuel cans, some empty, some not, just right past officers who mostly stood and watched as hundreds of people trolled them with decoy cans, some empty, some not, just right past officers who mostly stood and watched as hundreds of people trolled them with decoy cans, while others smuggled in more fuel within

the safety of the large crowd right in the middle of the day. Ottawa Police Deputy Chief Steve Bell said the demonstrators were filling cast cans with water to distract officers, attempting to subvert their efforts, and that one officer was swarmed by the crowd while trying to confiscate fuel. To date, police have made around 30 arrests and issued thousands of tickets, launched more than 80 criminal investigations, and 400-plus hate incidents are also being investigated. Earlier this week, Peter Soley said that the force would turn up the heat as police started to crack down on anyone bringing material aid, such as fuel, to protesters. Police dismantled a protest camp near the Redew Canal downtown and a fuel operation on the Coventry Road

east of the Corps, but some trucks and demonstrators continue to occupy downtown streets and the staging area on Coventry. Police say that they need an additional 1,800 more reinforcements from federal and provincial governments to help end the crisis. The entire Ottawa police force numbers only 1,200, but has been supplemented with several hundred officers from the Ontario Provisional Police and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, as well as local police forces elsewhere in Ontario over the past few weeks. Near the end of the second week of occupation, Doug Ford, the Premier of Ontario, declared a state of emergency for the entire province, warning protesters demanding an end to pandemic restrictions, that if they do not disband, there will be consequences and they will be severe. He said that those who continue to impede the movement of people and goods could face fines of up to $100,000 Canadian dollars,

up to a year in prison, and the revocation of their driver's license. During the cold morning of Sunday, February 13th, police largely cleared the portion of the self-styled Freedom Convoy blocking the Ambassador Bridge-US-Canada border crossing on the road between Windsor, Ontario and Detroit. The clearing marked a week since the border blockade had begun. Police made several arrests and towed vehicles in connection to the demonstration that had disrupted traffic and the flow of goods. After law enforcement enforced the injunction enacted two days prior, ordering truckers and their supporters to leave and ticketed and towed

vehicles, a defined core of some two dozen protesters had remained on foot as temperatures dropped below freezing. But around 9.30 local time, police had mostly cleared the streets to the bridge and were deployed around the area. It was unclear, however, how large police presence would remain to prevent vehicles and demonstrators from returning there. Meanwhile, in the capital of Ottawa, police grappled with an influx of anti-government and anti-vaccine mandate demonstrators for a third straight weekend, despite both local and provincial officials declaring states of emergency. Law enforcement appeared to be unsuccessful in attempts to get the Freedom Convoy protesters to leave by threatening them with fines, prison time, and the loss of their licenses. Police have not made any large effort to disrupt the convoys in Ottawa, similar to what they did on Sunday in Windsor, Ontario. Ottawa police say that over

4,000 demonstrators were in the city throughout the day. However, on Monday, February 14th, police action was taken against the blockade at the Coutts border crossing that had shut down cross-border travel for almost three weeks. The RCMP said in a press release early Monday morning that they became aware of a small organized group within the larger protest at Kootz, which led to 11 arrests. They say that they had information that the group had access to a cache of firearms and ammunition in three trailers. During the raid, officers seized long guns, handguns, multiple sets of body armor, a machete, and a large quantity of ammunition, and some high-capacity magazines. Later that day, two other arrests were made in connection to the

blockade. Following the police raid and the 13 arrests, some other organizers of the protest said a decision was reached voluntarily to leave the Coutts area around Tuesday morning. The organizers made a statement saying, quote, We were infiltrated by an extreme element. Our objective was to be here peacefully. To keep that message going, we want to peacefully leave Coutts and return to our families. As of Tuesday the 15th, both the border crossing at the Ambassador Bridge to Detroit and the Coutts port of entry to Montana are open once again. As the border opened back and the Coutts Port of Entry to Montana are open once again. As the border opened back up in Coutts, the previous blockade protesters and police

embraced each other with hugs and handshakes. Meanwhile, on Monday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act for the first time in Canadian history to give the federal government and police extra powers to handle the ongoing blockades and protests against pandemic restrictions. Here's how the measures we're taking today will help get the situation under control. The police will be given more tools to restore order in places where public assemblies can constitute illegal and dangerous activities, such as blockades and occupations as seen in Ottawa, the Ambassador Bridge, and elsewhere. These tools include strengthening their ability to impose fines or imprisonment.

The government will designate, secure and protect places and infrastructure that are critical to our economy and people's jobs, including border crossings and airports. We cannot and will not allow illegal and dangerous activities to continue. to continue. The Emergencies Act will also allow the government to make sure essential services are rendered, for example, in order to tow vehicles blocking roads. In addition, financial institutions will be authorized or directed to render essential services to help address the situation, including by regulating and prohibiting the use of property to fund or support illegal blockades. Finally, it will enable the RCMP to enforce municipal bylaws and provincial offenses where required. This is what the Emergencies Act does. This is what the Emergencies Act does. and is of such proportions or nature as to extend the capacity of authority of a province to deal with it.

The unprecedented deployment of the Emergencies Act gives police, quote, more tools to restore order in places where public assemblies constitute illegal and dangerous activities, such as blockades and occupations, according to Trudeau. But the thing is, police already had all the tools they needed. The illegal occupations and blockades were already illegal. They just didn't want to enforce it. You can look at how the Coutts protesters and the police are hugging, right? This isn't a matter of having not enough tools. All this does is set a terrible precedent for using this type of extra power in the future to respond to protests,

because the cops are still going to take a very gentle approach if they ever are forced to take physical action against the Ottawa occupation. While using the extra powers of the Emergencies Act, the Finance Minister of Canada also announced on Monday a broadening of the laws regarding financing of crime and terrorism to now include crowdfunding, and also extra surveillance measures against people who donate and use crowdfunds for criminal acts, including illegal protests. As part of invoking the Emergencies Act, we are announcing the following immediate actions.

First, we are broadening the scope of Canada's anti-money laundering and terrorist financing rules so that they cover crowdfunding platforms and the payment service providers they use. These changes cover all forms of transactions including digital assets such as cryptocurrencies. The illegal blockades have highlighted the fact that crowdfunding platforms and some of the payment service providers they use are not fully captured under the Proceeds of Crime and Terrorist Financing Act. Our banks and financial institutions are already obligated to report to the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada, or FINTRAC. As of today, all crowdfunding

platforms and the payment service providers they use must register with FINTRAC and they must report large and suspicious transactions to FINTRAC. This will help mitigate the risk that these platforms receive illicit funds, increase the quality and quantity of intelligence received by Fintrack and make more information available to support investigations by law enforcement into these illegal blockades. That's kind of all the information I have at the time of recording. So now I'm going to talk more about the potential political effects that this protest could have, not just on Canada, but also in how we view protest in general. So, the actual result of liberal media framing this type of protest as scary terrorism is laying the groundwork for brutal police actions against massive, mostly non-violent and tactically smart protests

to be more normalized across Canada. An extremely brutal police response and harsh charges are unlikely to be leveled against a protest made up of these conservatives, but will absolutely happen to any future progressive social justice cause, especially if they use Occupy-style tactics. The more powers police obtain and the legal precedents that are set will have long-lasting implications, with legal consequences that will always come down harder on the left police obtain and the legal precedents that are set will have long-lasting implications, with legal consequences that will always come down harder on the left than they do on the right.

Police will do a bare minimum to resolve this conservative so-called freedom protest, but then will use it as a justification to grab greater resources and power and use this movement to justify severe preventative protest suppression in the future. If liberals can wildly celebrate and thirst for harsh crackdowns of a protest made up of white conservatives and their families calling the entire movement a criminal enterprise and cheering on as police steal property of the protesters, despite what the majority of these protesters are doing, just being kind of camping on the side of a street, think of all of the ways that consent can be manufactured to clamp down on any future large-scale protest, especially when the movement isn't made up of a

bunch of regular white people and their kids, and instead actually challenges the underlying power structures that prop up white Canada instead of just reinforcing it, like the convoy does. I have a similar issue around all of the hubbub around the fundraisers, right? Restricting where crowdfunded resources can come from will only result in future political social justice causes to be negatively impacted, whether that be bail funds or supporting indigenous blockades from out of country. On February 10th, the Canadian federal government effectively shut down the Freedom Convoy's Give Send Go fundraiser, making it illegal for the funds to be used in any way. Governments setting the precedent for shutting down protest crowdfunding is not a good thing. Now any future protest bail funds and crowdfunding for the Wasetan blockade will always

be in jeopardy. I'm by no means saying that action against a generally hateful, anti-democratic, and dangerously conspiratorial protest isn't justified, but just when governments start using it as reasons for more power and creating new precedents for years in jail and hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines for an occupation protest, like, that shouldn't be cheered on, because those things will only come back to bite progressive causes a lot harder than they will be used against the conservative convoyers. There has increasingly been attempts at counter-protesting the Ottawa convoy and the various convoy-inspired protests around the country, many of which faced harsher police response than any of the convoy protests have

up until this point. But those community-led counter-protesting efforts are vital. The Ram Ranch resistance actions are still ongoing. On Sunday night, the URL for the Give Send Go fundraiser was hacked by activists who redirected the page to a video of the Frozen song Let It Go, accompanying a manifesto condemning the fundraiser and the convoy. And that's great. That is wonderful counter-protesting. That is very, in terms of effective ways to shut down fundraising efforts for a basically pseudo-fascist, you know, anti-democratic conspiracy-led movement, that's great, right? And this was hours after it was officially confirmed via data leaks that around 56% of GiveSendGo donations for the convoy came from the United States.

Around 30% came from Canada, and then 2% came from the UK. Although I think it's worth mentioning that for the initial $10 million GoFundMe, we only have confirmation that around $33,000 came from the United States. To understand how the convoy slash blockade is working, it's useful to get away from painting all of the participants themselves as extremists, because the fact that regular Canadian right wingers are what's making this possible has a whole bunch of other implications that people aren't really talking about. I'm seeing a lot of Canadians who are just really upset about how this convoy is affecting cities

and the country as a whole, which, you know, reasonable. It is a thing to be upset about. But then just jumping to insist that it must be inorganic, I think is kind of faulty. Focusing instead on theories around foreign influences and astroturf organizing, elements of which have been present, sure, but also the impact of which has, I think, kind of been overblown. But even if those things are completely true and major factors, that still overlooks the fact that there are thousands of

real Canadians from around the country camped up in Ottawa. And the majority of those Canadians sitting in the streets are not Nazis, right? Or really even extremists. And most of those people are not receiving personal funding from dark money billionaires. They consider themselves regular working class, freedom freedom-loving Canadians. It's much harder to reconcile a homegrown movement full of participants that have slid further to the right over the past two years due to rampant online misinformation, coupled with ineffectual government support during the pandemic. It's easy to point to so-called organizers who are definitely more fashy, large-scale sketchy donations, and far-right media figures who are trying to drum up support for the convoy. But those things alone don't get

many of thousands and thousands of people and their kids to drive cross-country for a cause that they earnestly believe in. The years of political alienation and disenfranchisement that caused that to happen is a lot harder to solve than just cracking down on organizers and donations. Watching homegrown reactionary street politics that one day can grow into an actual far-right populist and fascist movement is a lot more frightening than the idea of overseas astroturf organizing. Not that those things are mutually exclusive always, but I'm just trying to make a good point here. Despite cries to make this Canada's January 6th, in a way, the convoy's more effective than January 6th in terms of the evolution of valid political action.

It's pushed the boundary on what is deemed as acceptable, and even possible for large-scale occupations and supply line blockades in a major North American urban setting. People who would never consider themselves militant are now involved in multiple border crossing blockades that's cost hundreds of millions of dollars. And to get to this point, so many things need to happen. COVID isolation offered fertile ground for people's politics to unknowingly slide more to the extreme. The many in-person connections that help prevent people from falling prey to conspiratorial thinking ceased to exist. General frustration at Trudeau and the perceived notion of liberalism and elitism has been steadily growing since 2015, and all that mounted-up frustration is now being released, and as a result, the invisible Overton window

of acceptable political action has shifted right in regular conservatives' minds. And a movement like this is hard to dissolve. Police actions have the chance of escalating the situation and elongating people's willingness to protest. And even if more mandates get removed, that doesn't mean the protest will stop either. Removing the Alberta mandates didn't stop the Coutts border blockade, for instance. Because, you know, even if all the mandates in Canada get rescinded, which they won't and which they shouldn't, but even if they did, that would still leave the US's vaccine border requirements, which are preventing unvaccinated truckers from entering the States anyway. which are preventing unvaccinated truckers from entering the States anyway. Similar tactics and protests inspired by the Canadian convoy have broken out overseas in recent weeks. The convoy and blockade-inspired protests in New Zealand have led to frequent clashes with police outside New Zealand's Parliament building for the past two weeks. French protesters formed their own freedom convoy against the government's vaccine mandates.

The convoy converged government's vaccine mandates. The convoy converged on the Champs-Élysées in Paris on February 2nd, where protesters were met by 7,000 police members and tear gas. Unlike Canada, where the government failed to stop a blockade at the US border, French authorities got way ahead of this protest by stopping at least 500 vehicles before they even got to Paris. Only a few dozen cars made it to the Champs-Élysées, and the police ticketed 300 protesters who were present at the demonstration. Protests against government coronavirus restrictions have caught on in Europe and other parts of the world in recent days,

but they remained more subdued than the Canadian demonstrations. A convoy of about 500 vehicles, mostly from France, were barred from entering Brussels just a few days ago, leaving several hundred protesters to gather on foot at a city square instead. Another convoy of several hundred vehicles blocked access to the seat of the Netherlands government in The Hague on February 12th. And of course, many political figures in the US are really trying to get a convoy-esque protest kicked off here in the United States. Tucker Carlson and Fox News in general has covered the convoy non-stop, giving it tons and tons of support. Tucker has said that the

Canadian trucker convoy is the single most successful human rights protest in a generation. convoy is the single most successful human rights protest in a generation. Senator Rand Paul said that he hopes the truckers come to America, and specifically to clog up cities. At least nine members of Congress, all Republicans, have all publicized their support for the convoy participants on Twitter. Self-appointed organizers for a U.S.-based convoy have found quick support from conservative outlets. U.S. convoy organizer Brian Brace has been making the rounds on Fox News, sitting down with Carlson, as well as the network's Fox & Friends morning show. Brace says that he hopes to organize a cross-country convoy from California to Washington, D.C., starting around March 4th.

Routes to converge on D.C DC from across the country are being planned, while the group's Telegram channel is actively soliciting volunteers and donations of items like tents, generators, and PA systems. I kind of hope people on the left can look at the tactics being used in Canada, some that have worked and some that have faltered, but in terms of, like, anti-capitalist action, you can't do much better than causing hundreds of millions of dollars in losses to international trade between two of the biggest countries in the world, right? Now, no protest movement can be replicated, but any movement can be analyzed, and that can inform how folks approach future movements as they spontaneously arise. And I, at the very least, hope you have a better idea now

of how only a few thousand people can totally choke out a major city. Because we've talked about this possibility before, you know, a group of people overwhelming local law enforcement and taking over and shutting down a sizable portion of a popular metropolitan area, not to mention simultaneously blocking off supply lines, trade routes, and international border crossings. The evolution of these medium-scale anti-government resistance tactics is something we all should be paying attention to

as the political tensions continue to rise right outside our doorstep. Because it's always too late when you realize the call is coming from inside the house. Welcome, I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me as the fire and dare enter? Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows. Presented by iheart and sonora an anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of latin america

from ghastly encounters with shape-shifters to boneilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part part of Michael Duda Podcast Network. Available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What's incapable of being racist? Canadians. My people joking about Canadians.

Yep, can't do it to Canada. Can't do it to Canada. Or the French. This could happen here. Yeah. The French? We can be racist against the French. It's true.

Yeah. Speaking of racism. That makes Quebec angrier. But speaking of racism, Chris, what's our topic today? Yeah, today's episode is about why I hate the cops. Hell like speaking of racism, Chris, what's our topic today? Yeah. Today's episode is about why I hate the cops. Hell yeah. Specifically, it is about is about the Chicago Police Department and the many, many, many, many, many crimes they have committed.

We're going to talk about. Well, OK, to lead us in to explain what we're doing here today, I'm going to read a quote from the late anthropologist David Graeber from his book The Democracy Project. For my own part, I find what I call the rape, torture, and murder test very useful. It's quite simple. When presented with a political entity of some kind or another, whether a government, a social movement, a guerrilla army, or really any other organized group, and trying to decide whether they deserve condemnation or support first ask, do they commit or do they order others to commit acts of rape, torture, or murder? It seems a self-evident question, but again, it's surprising how rarely, or better, how selectively it is applied. Or perhaps it might seem surprising until one starts applying it and discovers

conventional wisdom on many world political issues instantly turned upside down. In 2006, for example, most people in the United States read about the Mexican government's sending federal troops to quell a popular revolt initiated by a teacher's union against a notoriously corrupt governor in the southern state of Oaxaca. In the U.S. media, this was universally presented as a good thing, a restoration of order. The rebels, after all, were violent, having thrown rocks and Molotov cocktails, even if they only threw them at heavily armed police, causing no serious injuries. No one to my knowledge has ever suggested that the rebels raped, tortured, or murdered anyone. Neither has anyone who knows anything about the events in question seriously contested the fact that forces loyal to the Mexican government had raped,

tortured, and murdered quite a number of people in suppressing the rebellion. Yet somehow such acts, unlike the rebels' stone-throwing, cannot be described as violent at all, let alone as rape, torture, or murder, but only appear, if at all, as accusations of human rights violations, or in some similarly bloodless legalistic language. Yeah, and that's the framework that I want to take the Chicago Police Department so people can understand why and how. And just just sort of get it. People can get a taste of the sheer horror that anti-police organizers and just like regular people in Chicago are fighting every day because Chicago Police Department fails to rape, torture, murder test again and again and again and again and so we are going to tell four stories of uh torture rape and murder by the chicago police department oh good

that seems fun it's gonna be great happy pants on kids yay go for a cruise you know take the top down um it's it's time for a good old fun fest so our first story of torture rape and murder by the cpd is the story of chicago's infamous torture ring uh led by a man named john burge yeah now john burge had been a military police sergeant working at a pow camp in vietnam so So immediately you have a guy who's not only a troop cop, but he's a troop cop while he was a troop, and then he becomes a cop. And, you know, nothing good can possibly come from that. And the other thing that nothing good can possibly come from is the fact that while Birch was in Vietnam, the U.S. was some just really sick shit to vietnamese prisoners including rape gang rape rape with hard objects and rape followed by murder uh the electric shock called the bell telephone hour rendered by attaching wires to the genitals and uh keep your uh keep that one in mind we have not seen the last of that uh and rape using

eels and snakes as we have talked about on Bastards a bit before. They're also huge waterboarding fans. So this is the environment that Burge is sort of being trained as a cop in, right? He's in one of these POW camps. And he gets a Purple Heart for his service. Now, when he comes back to the U.S. in 1969, he becomes a cop. And within about three years, Burge and his white cop buddies start just absolutely beating the crap out of black suspects um one of these prisoners a man named anthony holmes was repeatedly tortured with electric shocks and almost suffocated to death of a bag

put over his head holmes was tortured so badly he literally thought he was going to die so he confessed to a crime he didn't commit and spent 30 years in prison. Yeah, I actually interviewed one of the people tortured by Burge, who had his testicles electrocuted. Yeah, yeah, we're going to get into that in a bit. Yeah, it's horrible. Yeah, it's pretty bad stuff. It's one of the worst things I've ever read. Yeah, and Holmes' case is particularly grim because so he tells his lawyers

that he's been tortured and his lawyers don't believe him and so you know he yeah he he went to spending 30 years in prison for something he didn't do um those shocks yeah yeah so okay so they have this box right it's a box as a hand crate generator uh burge calls it the n-word box uh and he just attaches people's like it just attaches to people oh i wonder why he calls it that oh yeah no it's he's all of these people are so indescribably racist it's like yeah um he he just like he keeps this box like on his desk at the chicago police department like it's just on his desk at work um now the other thing that's notable about this is that he and people around him would call just electrocuting people by attaching alligator clamps to them and putting 9200 volts into them uh they called it the

vietnamese treatment because uh guess what he learned this in vietnam um now burge's so-called midnight crew had had an incredibly high rate of solving crimes and he has an incredibly high rate of quote-unquote solving crimes because he's just torturing random black people until they confess um and you know it's it's not like people don't know he's doing this. There's a detective in the 70s who walks in on Burge torturing a guy, and he goes to his superiors and is like, Burge is torturing these people. And that detective gets reprimanded for reporting the torture and transfer it to another area. So Burge gets promoted to sergeant in 1977 and then again to lieutenant in 1980, and he gets put in charge of the newly formed Violent Crimes Unit. And from this position, his rate of terror intensifies and so so in 1982 someone shoots two white cops and you know this is one of one of the sort of classic police things is

anytime a cop dies the the the police department just goes fucking ballistic they kind of lose it yeah yeah yeah and and in this case with with with burge in charge uh he basically turns the entire south side into what can only be described as a fascist police state um here's this is this is from the chicago police torture scandal illegal and uh political history in in cooney's law review police kick down doors and terrorized scores of african-americans and what jesse jackson of operation push uh push and reynold robinson of the afro-american police league condemned as quote martial law that smacked of nazi germany 13 witnesses were smothered with bags and threatened with bolt cutters and virginia's

detectives took several young men who they werely suspected to be the killers, to police headquarters and tortured them. And, I mean, they're just like, you know, they're busting down people's doors or dragging people out in the middle of the night. They do this for about five days before they arrest two brothers and who, again, had nothing to do with this. They just decided that these two were the guys and tortured just the absolute shit out of them. One of the brothers,ie wilson before birdie even gets there because this is the other thing about bird is it's not just birds right it's like everyone he's like around him is also a torturer it's just bird sort of you know bird is the guy like directing a lot of it so like even before he gets there yeah like wilson gets like he's

burned with a cigarette lighter he gets strangled with the bag over his head again and they just like beat him a bunch of times and then it gets even worse um burge like you know but burge does the thing where he like he straps him to the electric box right but he also straps him against a radiator and you know these are like old chicago steam radiators right if you touch if you them, even briefly, you get burned. Yeah. And so, yeah, he straps into a radiator, and every time he, like, gets shocked, he jerks back into the radiator and gets burned. Yeah, I have a friend who got a second-degree burn just from, like, briefly touching one of those things. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, it's basically tying someone to an oven that's turned. Yeah. I mean, it's, it is breathtaking inhumanity on a scale that is. Yeah. Um, cop esque. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's,

it's, it's real. It's real cop shit. Um, it's for sure. Real cop shit. Yeah. Uh,

so here, here, here's an interview, uh, with Wilson. Just, there's an excerpt of one from the book, Writings from the World of Policing. kept cranking it and cranking it and i was hollering and screaming i was calling for help my teeth was grinding flickering in my head pain it hurts wilson continued but it stays in your head okay it stays in your head and it grinds your teeth it grinds constantly grinds constantly the pain just stays in your head and your teeth constantly grinds and grinds and grinds and grinds and grinds and grinds now wilson they do this to

wilson for like a day and he doesn't confess like he he refuses to confess because he didn't do it and so he he goes to uh like they bring him in front of a felony prosecutor and wilson tells the prosecutor that he's being tortured and you know it's incredibly obvious he's being tortured like there's just there's marks all over his body like his his face is destroyed and the prosecutor that is being tortured and you know it's incredibly obvious he's being tortured like there's just there's marks all over his body like his his face is destroyed and the prosecutor sends him back to burge who tortures him more and but by the time burge is done with him wilson is so visibly fucked up that the police lockup keeper like takes a look at it like takes one look at him and goes i'm not going to be a part of this and refuses to put him in lockup. Cook County Jail's like director of medical services sends a letter going like this man was tortured to the police.

Hey, we found a human being. Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, it's like every once once every like, I don't know, maybe like 100 pages of reading about this. You find one person who is a normal human being uh unfortunately the state's attorney instead of prosecuting burge for again attaching attaching a man's balls to a hand crate generator and then electrocuting him uh the the state prosecutor and the police superintendent both publicly congratulate burge for his work uh yeah andrew wilson meanwhile died in prison in 2007 because this world is just the worst oh it is that too yeah now you might be asking yourself uh how does he get away

with this and the answer is that uh the cpd is complicit in burgess torture at literally every level uh every attempt to stop burge is derailed directly by the departments and not only is he not stopped he's repeatedly praised and promoted for his actions and yeah no i mean that's the that's how it goes yep it's it's great it's it's it's an institutionalized system of torture rape and murder that yeah in chicago it's like we have us a little abu grabe uh yeah oh right in home but yeah well don't worry we will i guess we won't actually get to abu grabe specifically but i can i can do i can do an abu grabe tie-in at the end of this part yeah so the the cpd has something they call the code of silence and we'll talk

about this more later but basically the core of the Code of Silence is that just no matter what crimes, what atrocities, what just inhuman pig horrors you see cops committing, you stay silent. Now, this code, you know, it's a code that everyone sort of knows, right, in the police, but it's also directly enforced. And it's enforced by the stuff Burge would do that like just to other cops like he he would do things like if there was a cop who was like unhappy with him he would like walk up behind them when they're opening a file cabinet and point a gun at their head and then go like bang and then do this like a thing that i can really only describe as a super villain monologue about how like the projects are a dangerous place uh maybe you're gonna turn up dead it's he also he has these street files that he keeps on like other cops families so that uh if if another cop like goes

after him he can have their family arrested and then plant evidence on them yeah yeah that makes sense yeah yeah it's it's like you know like at certain point, like he's doing this to other cops. And it's like, well, okay. Like, you know, what, like what, what possible like system of, of, of accountability quote on court or police reform is like ever going to do anything to a guy who will just do this to cops. Like, and you know, with the CPD actively backing up, there's, there's nothing that can stop Burge. And I should mention here that there's persistent rumors that Burge is a Klansman.

I couldn't find firm confirmation of it. He's certainly racist enough, but I think – Yeah, but why would he spend – that feels like almost – he would be like, why would I waste my time doing that? Like, he's talking about being racist when I can go out and torture people because I'm a racist every day. Like, fuck the Klan. I've already got shit going on. Yeah, and I think it's sometimes like, yeah, the question is immaterial. He is a member of the Chicago Police Department, an organization of systematic racial terror the likes of which the modern Klan can only dream of.

Yeah. Whatever. Yeah. Yeah, it's like, who cares? He's John Birch. Honestly, if he were spending time at Klan meetings, at least he wouldn't be torturing people during that time. Yeah, it's like, who cares? He's John Birch. Honestly, if he were spending time at Klan meetings, at least he wouldn't be torturing people during that time. Yeah, it's... yeah. Love your police when, if he was a Klansman, that might have been slightly better.

I mean, that's the big thing with this type of liberal response to this type of extremism. liberal response to this type of extremism. It's like, they only view it as a problem if you're, like, explicitly part of this, you know, like, it's, like, very obvious to everyone, white nationalist group, right? They can watch a cop do all these horrible things, and it's fine, because that's just a cop. But if he's a Klan member, then that's a problem, right? Like, they can excuse all this horrible torture and not really be concerned about it but if but if he had a robe in his closet then it's suddenly this big issue it's like no like the issue is that he was doing all this torture anyway and he doesn't like this you don't need to focus on like just the like just that identity like that weird identity aspect of it yeah the Klan is old enough and wears a uniform

that is distinct enough that everybody recognizes it as racist, even though the Chicago Police Department is actually much more of a threat in terms of racism than the Klan today

and was at that point in time. But, you know, they're the cops. And if you're a suburban white liberal, they're there to, you know, help help keep your lawn safe or whatever. So you don't you don't see them as the same inherently racial organization. Exactly. Even though they are.

Yeah. Even though, I mean, they're dragging people out of their homes and like just electrocuting them like this is, you know, this is something also that i was very annoyed about when i was reading this was like a lot you you read a lot of this stuff and then and you'll get descriptions of it that are like uh this is something that like only happens in repressive regimes like kazakhstan it's like have you read anything about the history of the u.s like yeah this is like yeah like we have officers over to other countries that often teach their police how to do shit like this that happens but like yeah when you were describing a whole bunch of stuff in the past like you know 20 minutes i was thinking in my head i'm like oh yeah this is just like stormtrooper shit but the thing is it isn't like

this just is cop shit and like like the thing like the fact of like elevating it in my brain to it being like something other than cops is incorrect. No, like, this just is police stuff. It's not necessarily Stormtrooper shit. It just is police shit. And the fact that those things are so synonymous, that should be the part that's actually, like, upsetting. Is that, yeah, it's actually, there is really no difference. And you shouldn't necessarily resort to calling it Stormtrooper stuff because it is just what the police do all the time there's this whole model you see people talking about it where they talk

about like like oh the police are using unnecessary force and like there's like a certain threshold where if you go past it like you know the sort of like like even you know like i'm gonna read like the birch has a lot of like when he winds up in court like the judges look at this and are like, oh my god, this is unacceptable, how could this have happened? And, you know, you get some good descriptions of it. This is a district judge court describing what Burge was doing in the early 80s. There existed in 1982 in the city of Chicago a de facto policy practice and or custom of Chicago police officers exacting unconstitutional revenge and punishment against persons who they alleged had killed or injured a fellow officer this revenge and punishment included beating kicking torturing shooting and or executing such a person for the purpose of inflicting pain injury and punishment on that person and also for the purpose of forcing that

person to make an inculpatory statement exculpatory yeah exculpatory yeah or at this or inculpatory it's inculpatory yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah cool you know and and you you get stuff like like there's there's there's an fbi report then from the chicago tribune i'm going to read because it's he left one bullet in the sentence in the cylinder and spun it a report quoted the inmate saying about burge and the 1985 incident he He then said, you talk or I'll blow your black, uh, expletive, presumably the N word, brains out. Uh, Burge then got up from his desk, walked over to the inmate, put the muzzle of the revolver against the center of the inmate's forehead and pulled the trigger. He spun the cylinder and placed it back against his forehead and pulled the trigger again. So, yeah, he's just russian roulette with people like he's playing it i don't i don't yeah yeah no he's playing yeah i well he's uh pulling a one in six chance of murdering them they are

in terror uh there's also a lot of like he does like he sexually abuses people he like he loves going after testicles yeah he he like he electrocuted like well i mean he's also like is like like basically like raping people um he like electrocutes a 13 year old child and you know this is like it's it's it's just so bleak that like i mean there's so there's a very famous article about this by chicago journalist it's called the house of screams but you know like like burge isn't the only guy doing this like he one of his loyalists is his lieutenant like is a guy named byron who's like in charge of uh the midnight shift at the area two violent crimes and they become known internally as in charge of the midnight shift at the area to violent crimes. They become known internally as Burge's ass kickers of the A-team because

this is just who these people are culturally. Yeah. Sure, sure, buddy. These guys start putting guns in prisoners' mouths. They have one thing where they stick a shotgun in a guy's mouth

and they pull the trigger and it's not loaded, but they keep doing this mock execution thing. That is, by the way, illegal in international law. Internationally, that is a war crime. If you're military, specifically fake executions are a type of torture and a war crime under international law based on treaties the united states has signed yeah and and byron also so he does that a lot and then that same guy

the same guy the shotgun thing too uh he apparently didn't have the box so he stripped the dude and shocked his balls with a cattle prod and this is the guy who lori lightfoot sent her number two lawyer to defend in court in 2020 by arguing the torture never happened yeah that's that's that's accountability yep that's the mayor of my city uh now life life foot blue life what he's on the record as saying that burge tortured over 100 people but once it came to you know actually putting up or shutting up uh she just goes to bat for the cops and and this happens in chic happens in Chicago so many times with people who used to be like, you know, who in the moment are like, oh, Burge did torture. We need to reform the police. And it's, you know, the moment they get into power, they do this stuff.

I mean, there's there's much of like incredibly weird stuff that happens here like so the seventh circuit court of appeals at one point saw a saw a like they they they saw a case over whether a one thousand dollar settlement with a torture victim was fair and jesus christ yeah in court it's like you you read the transcript of it and it's like it's it's the most brutal demolishing of like a a state's argument i've ever seen like they're they're just like in court asking them like okay like we're we're this person's judge is supposed to have like known in court that he was also torturing other people like it's you know the the court's just like yeah you know they're tearing them apart and then when it comes time to decide the case

uh the court tosses the case out in size with the state wow yeah yeah i mean i don't know what's going on there it's awful that's the judicial system yep uh this this happens this happens just all the time i mean that that is the thing about the way the whole system works which is that you know the police do horrific things in chicago they torture in los angeles they have nazi gangs you know there the police do horrific things in Chicago. They torture in Los Angeles. They have Nazi gangs. You know, there's a bunch of different horrible shit the police do. And then at some point, the FBI and the Justice Department come in and they provide incredibly they send in very talented investigators who produce incredibly detailed lists of all of

the things that are being done. And then a court says, well, but nobody's going to get punished. Or maybe this one guy will get punished and then we court says well but nobody's going to get punished or maybe this one guy will get punished and then we'll go on back to doing things and that's the way the system is supposed to work although we're going to read a story about the fbi not doing that in in the next episode so yeah yeah i mean they don't we don't always get a report um yeah no i just i i have become increased like it's very frustrating because having these FBI reports on police abuses is useful again for talking to liberals because they tend to trust the FBI. But it's also like, boy, I've read a lot of detailed FBI reports about how bad police departments are and it seems like nothing ever gets done.

No. Like it seems like they just write a thing saying, yeah, it's bad and then everything continues forever. Yeah. and then everything continues forever yeah and it's you know in this case like the reason we even know any of this is through what i like what i will say like the a genuinely heroic decades-long campaign run by the people's law office on behalf of burge victims and these people like they save people's lives like there are people who burge tortured who ended up on death row for it. And, you know, like, this stuff is so bad that when it comes out, the Supreme Court does a ruling on it and it, like, establishes new precedents for, like, how people can prove they've been tortured.

Like, you know, it's so bad that, like, Illinois stops running the death penalty. Like, we had the death penalty. And, like, we still technically, I think, have it. But, like, we just stopped doing it. like we had the death penalty and like we still technically i think have it but like we just stopped doing it like we stopped we stopped executing people because like a republican governor like on air gave a giant thing about how the justice system is broken and like this is this is john ryan right like this is a man who like he he is like this is a man who was corrupt by the standards of of an illinois politician and even he like on the air is like yeah this is like you know this is this is broken he he

pardons some burge victims and in 1993 faced with just irrefutable evidence of torture and rulings multiple higher port uh higher courts the police board finally released a report although the report also doesn't call it torture and is a disaster, that they finally have Burge fired. And some of his colleagues who were also torturing people get suspended for 15 months. But Burge isn't prosecuted for the crimes that we have multiple reports of him doing until 2010, after the victims literally go to the United Nations with a campaign and go in front of the United Nations and talk about how they were being systemically tortured by the Chicago Police Department. But of course, by 2010, the statute of limitations on his crimes had run out. So he winds up going to jail for three years. Yeah, it makes sense that there's a statute

of limitations on torture. Yeah, that's definitely one of the ones we should have a cap on. Yeah, definitely. It's great. It's a great system um i'm gonna read something from the troggler tribune that was a description of of this uh quote while the jury was out burge still unrepentant allegedly asked a courtroom observer whether he thought the jury would quote believe a bunch of n words wow awesome dude yeah this is 2010 it's great amazing burge burge tortured at least 125 people that's almost certainly an undercount 125 is the number of people who we have who have come forward a lot of those people probably have like the people he tortured have probably died by now um yeah sure i mean yeah you'll never we'll never get an

accurate count of all the people who were yeah yeah and and uh burge died a free man and has never served a day for his actual crimes. Now, Burge and his crew are the most famous of the 70s and 80s torturers, but they're by no means the only one. And we're going to talk about one more in this torture section. Did you know Richard Zooli? Mm-mm. Okay, so yeah, Zooli's the one that people tend not to know. Zooli was also a Vietnam War vet, and he becomes a detective in 1977.

What's interesting about him is Zuli is never part of Burge's cadre, right? Burge's cadre is working out of Area 2. They're on the south side. They're in an overwhelmingly black part of the south side. Zuli works in Areas 3 and 6 on the north side. You know, what I need to mention off the bat is that zuli is no less racist than burge is uh he wants arrested a black dude for just like having a car and wearing a watch and like like those are both felonies in the city of chicago right well if you famously never know what time it is because you're a law-abiding citizen yeah well it law-abiding citizen and also i don't be

black while doing this because well Well, sure. Yeah. He throws him in a cell and charges. Yeah. Why? It gets, it gets you Zuli screaming. No N word is supposed to live like this. Oh boy.

Oh boy. It's, you know, we, we people like talk about cops doing stuff for that reason, but it's, it's, you know,

they're so racist just get a direct quote yeah yeah like i can't emphasize it like they're just they're so racist it's like ingrained into the d like the cop dna yeah they're just saying the loud part loud yeah like they're just screaming like that we're gonna do one of the things the next episode is the cops will just drive around like blasting the n word out ofword out of their, like, cop stereos. Jesus Christ, Jack. Yeah. Now, Zooli, in a lot of ways, is a more modern torturer than Burge is.

You know, Burge is very big on your, like, overt physical violence, right? Your beatings, your electrocution, your suffocation. Sure. The problem with these techniques from a torturer perspective is that they leave incredibly obvious marks. And, you know, this is how Burge goes down, right? It's too obvious what he's doing. There are people who can just like show up to a court and be like, hey, look at my neck. Like, here are all these burns.

Zulia is much smarter about it. I mean, she does some beatings because cops are literally animals and are incapable of resisting the urge to beat the living shit out of anyone who falls into their grasp. But, you know, mostly what he does is he does things like he'll just shackle someone to a wall for 24 hours and you know and he'll be like okay like i'm gonna shackle you to this wall and until you sign this confession i won't let you leave and also you can't talk to anyone you can't talk to your lawyer you can't talk to uh like you can't talk to your family and in the next episode we're gonna see this this is how modern cpd torture works except zuli is doing this in like the 80s now zuli is is a naval intelligence officer who's he's still so he's still technically in the reserves when he joins the cops and that meant

when uh the cia's torturers like otanobu bay stalled out they they needed a hero and that hero was zuli um zuli is was the most active like the thing is the most active in is is the torture of muhammadu old sali who is famously known as the most tortured man at guantanamo um he well that's yeah at least he got into guinness yeah he yeah they they do sleep deprivation i mean they so some of it's like the standard sort of like git which is, like, they don't let you sleep. They blast loud, like, sounds into your cell all the time. They, like, beat you. There's molestations.

But there's also stuff that's, like, you know, the threat of attack by dogs. But, like, he'll do things like, like, he'll, like, soak people, like, get soaked in ice water. he'll like soak he'll like get soaked in ice water or like they they stuffed him in this like straitjacket thing that didn't let him breathe properly and then stuffed it full of ice oh cool and then zuli also yeah yeah it's it's it's bad and he also like threatens to kidnap uh his mother and have her sent to guantanamo to be raped because these people are again just monsters and yeah zuli is still alive today and uh roams the streets as a free man having received literally no consequences whatsoever for being a torturer so good in the cpd that the cia was like we're gonna bring this guy

into due torture that's great it's great it's yep yep and and that that that brings us to our first interlude which is every year chicago police officers go to the grave of the deputy chairman of the black panther party fred hampton who they assassinated in a police raid after drugging him in 1969 um they go to his grave to shoot his fucking tombstone they do this literally every year every year families every year they keep getting new tombstones they shoot them every they shoot them every year it just doesn't matter uh the cpd just keeps shooting it and there's a quote from the great trinidadian marxist historian clr james and i think about a lot that goes when history is written as it ought to be written it is the moderation and long patience of the masses at which people will will wonder not their ferocity. Yep. I really hope there's a moment of people doing things to cops

that makes generations in the future marvel at their ferocity. Yeah. I think I can say that without it legally being incitement. Yes. I'll make one other fun note, which is that five Chicago police officers died last year from COVID, so that's good. Yeah.

Only five, huh? Let's make it 50. Officer, dad, look, they're working on it. They won't wear masks. They won't get vaccinated. Fingers crossed. Critical support to the Chicago police who don't wear masks. Yeah, they're having their police academy exams in person now.

Oh, that's good. That's fine. You know what? Comrades, COVID. Critical support. Yeah. Spend more time indoors together without masks guys avoid those vaxes yeah yeah i'll be great no mandate will happen

okay so story two which is a shorter one but no less bleak i think on october 20th 2014 officer jason van dyke fired 16 shots at laquan mcdonald who had turned around and was walking away from him uh here's from the people of the state of illinois walking away aggressively chris yeah uh oh boy violently exiting yeah i i walking away while black which i guess in in the minds of like half of the United States is the same thing. I mean, they do have a court-defended legal right to shoot people in the back who are trying to get away. Yeah. Yeah, great country. We're nailing it. An analysis of the video. This is from the court case, but in the Chicago Tribune. An analysis of the video establishes that 14 to 15 seconds passed from the time the defendant, Van Dyke, fired his first shot to clear visual confirmation of the final shot.

For approximately 13 of those seconds, McDonald is lying on the ground. So he fires literally every bullet in his gun at a man who is, by the second shot, lying dead. Well, he's not quite dead yet, but lying on the ground. Yeah. It's just, yeah. From the cop's perspective, why not? They have the ability to do that. If they get the chance, oh, I get to kill a black person and it doesn't matter, then why?

I get to kill a black person and it doesn't matter, then why – like, that's like – you have to think through, like, what they're actually processing this as. And they don't see them as, like, an equivalent human life. like apply the same rules of civility that like we should all kind of agree upon because cops have such a higher hierarchical viewpoint that with them at the top that you they can never actually exist within any kind of humane society no that's why again unspeakable ferocity of the masses fingers crossed one day yeah yeah well you know i think the thing you know okay so look if this is the price of a liberal democracy right if if you're going to if you're going to live in a society that has like you know that that where laws are enforced by the police the police are going to murder people like that's that that's what you're signing on for yeah and i think that i think that's an absolutely unacceptable price and but we shouldn't do this um now the other

aspect of this is because you have to keep all of these just absolutely like just bloodthirsty murderers on the leash and because also all the people who are actually in the government are just genuine the despicable human beings. Uh, immediately after, I mean, like really before the shots have stopped firing, like there's a coverup that stretches from F like it includes everyone

from the officers on the scene all the way up to mayor Rahm Emanuel. So for example, mysteriously, none of the multiple dashboard cameras on the scene were recording audio for reasons only the discerning listener can guess at. Uh, yep. Like everyone across the entire chain of command of command again going right up to the mayor's office immediately goes we we cannot let this video get out because it's it's so bad that

even the cpd is like this is gonna look bad for us yeah because if it gets out then people will want to do bad things to cops and they can't have that and you know so this this this this tape is concealed for over a year until the journalist brandon smith like literally gets a like sues sues them and literally gets the judge to like order the state to release it and while this is going on that the cops are doing this massive pr blitz featuring this just like incredible pack of racist lies including that mcdonald had lunch for a jet van dyke with a knife no he didn't he was literally walking away from them that mcdonald had a gun which is an interesting one because not only like they didn't even have time to like plant it like they killed him so fast they didn't have time to plant a gun on him like there's no gun but the multiple officers will are like you can you can find news things of them talking about how this guy oh he

had a gun it's like there's no gun um yeah i the the classic one is that like van dyke feared for his life and uh no he didn't he probably should now but he does not yeah he should never he should never live a waking or sleeping moment where he's not in constant fear of someone cutting his head off. No. Just as like in terms of the horror that should be imbued inside people who do these things, they should never be able to like sit down and be comfortable. Yeah. The closest we've ever gotten to justice for one of these guys is when that mob surrounded Derek Chauvin's house. Yeah.

And it would have been actual justice if they had gotten through the door yep yep it's yeah so yeah you know all and you're like so there's a there's there's this huge coterie of cops who are all just lying about this they're lying in the press they're lying just they're lying they like they start they lie like on the stand um and you know this strategy works for a while because this country is just a racist hellhole until the court forces him to release the video and when it becomes clear if the video is going to come out the state immediately charges him like they they charge him and then later that day they released a video now now keep this in mind they had this video for a fucking year yeah they knew exactly what he'd done it's

all it's all fake and you know yeah and they only charged him with the alternative was literally being run into the sea by an entire mob of the sea literally the entire population of chicago um so van dyke is suspended without pay right but he immediately gets hired by the police union yeah yep yeah that makes sense yeah okay cool and and van dyke van dyke eventually i mean he goes down eventually he gets convicted of you know second degree murder and 16 counts of aggravated battery but you know there's a later report that describes the involvement of 16 other officers in the cover-up uh four officers were eventually fired for lying about the case three were tried for the cover-up and acquitted and

four officers were given a one-week suspension for the mysterious lack of camera audio honestly that is more that is more than what usually happens expected yeah well i mean this is like this video is so bad that like this video is so i mean rahm emanuel stuff doesn't really i mean he the consequence he suffers is that he decides not to run again because it will be bad for him but uh rahm emanuel is uh currently now his consequence is that he's the American ambassador to Japan. Okay, well, that is a fate worse than death. You know, I will also say this. The people of Japan do not deserve Rahm Emanuel.

The Liberal Democratic Party, on the other hand, are maybe the only people on Earth who actually deserve him. Like, if you didn't want us to palm Rahm Emanuel off on you, you shouldn't have taken all that CIA money in the 50s and 60s and let them run your political campaigns. So, Liberal Democratic Party, lie down with dogs, get fleas. But, yeah, Jason Van Dyke was released from prison two weeks ago after serving less than half his sentence. Laquan McDonald remains dead. Yeah, I mean, the really depressing part is that that is more consequences than usually ever happens yep yep and that that only happened because of you know like an incredible amount of organization yeah and like think think of all of the times where there is no video think of all

the times where there's nothing and things just happen no one watches it and then dead bodies get kicked into a ditch um and that's way more common than anything where there's type of like recordings or even where there needs to be cover-ups you know you you both are probably too young for this movie but in one of the transformers movies after they beat all the bad transformers i've watched all of the transformers okay you know the old animated ones where the navy lifts them all up and drops them into the sea okay you know the old animated ones where the navy lifts them all up and drops them into the sea yes what if we did that with the chicago police department i just drop them in the sea big old big old sink or swim scoop them up drop them in the sea yeah no we put them in a bag there's no

swimming okay that's fair look look they they one one they they get one bag individual each individual gets one bag for each bag they put over someone's head and strangled them with i think that's fair and then right into the sea and solves all problems the last thing like i i do i do genuinely want to say is that like if if you read this story over and over and over and over again you get people who are you know like you get the governor going like the system is fundamentally broken we must reform it you get the court saying the system is fundamentally broken and must reform it and it never changes they just keep killing people they keep enslaving people they keep doing like they keep torturing people they keep murdering people

they keep raping people and this will not end until you abolish the police. There is no alternative. If your car is broken on a fundamental level, you can't reform your car to make it better. There's a certain point where it's totaled and you're like, well, I guess that car doesn't go away. Yeah, it's like your engine block is shattered and you're like, well, I fixed the tires, so it ought to go now. No. No. It's like if it's broken on a fundamental level you can't reform it those words like those words don't go together yeah you have like you throw out throw out your car and build a train that's what you have to do walk use your feet to get a bicycle, honestly. Yeah, I stuck a bottle

onto the rail of my AR-15 so it's not a gun anymore. No, it's still a gun. Yeah, this is really, really sad. It's good stuff. Pretty depressing. Anyway, I'm going to go watch

2008's The Dark Knight knight and feel uh feel great about myself yeah all right well that's gonna do it for us that it could happen here today um until next time uh hope that more chicago police officers get covid there there is that there is that fun scene in The Dark Knight where the Joker goes into the Chicago police building and blows up the prison block with all those cops inside. That is a fun scene, yeah.

Anyway, bye. Welcome. I'm Danny Trejo. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter? Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors

that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Oh my goodness. It's could happen here. All right. Well, that's the introduction.

I'm Robert Evans and my work's done for today. Chris. Yeah, it's me. It's Christopher. We are back with two more stories of rape, torture, and murder from the Chicago Police Department. Hell yeah. What a fun show we have.

Yeah, it's great. Well, you know, okay, this one will be more fun than last time because, okay, so basically since I started showing up on this show, I have been dropping references to the fact that the Chicago Police Department is literally a cartel. And today I am finally telling the story of how the Chicago Police Department is literally a cartel and today I am finally telling the story of how the Chicago Police Department is a cartel. Yeah, also I didn't mention this before we go in. There's also a bonus cartel because while I was doing research on

one of the cartels, I realized that I couldn't actually talk about it without talking about the other cartel. So there's two completely unrelated CPD cartels that will show up in this story uh yeah it's great so all right this is the story of ronald watts now ronald watts joined the cpd in 1994 after serving in the army making him yet another example of the fabled troop cop combination that produces the worst people on earth um what watts was

assigned to patrol chicago's old public housing like uh projects now watts is from housing himself um there's the okay so some of the people who knew him before he went into the police claimed that like he was just always like a drug dealer and that he went into the police to like drug deal more i don't know if that's true because i mean he's also in the army for a while so i i don't know it's sort of unclear but you know he he's for other projects he knows the terrain well and that's why he was an extremely effective agent of terror in a place where officers would regularly drive by blasting the n- word and other racial slurs out of their cop car speakers.

Yeah. Here, here, here's the intercept describing what like Chicago cops are just doing at the projects. They were officers. You found it amusing to toy with those under their power, arranging a foot race of heroin addicts to determine who would go to jail,

for example, or forcing a woman they had searched on the street to walk home naked from the waist down. It's yeah. People who find joy in exerting their power over other people and they think it's funny yeah that's why they become cops yep well and you know and the the other reason you become a cop is the is the the the second thing that they do constantly which is they just walk into the lobbies of these buildings just start taking everyone's money and like they they they literally call the lobbies of these public housing buildings, quote, their ATM machine. So they're just doing this constantly.

There's also cops. This is not every cop. There are specific cops who do this who would show up on the 1st and the 15th of the month, wait for everyone to cash their paychecks, and then rob them. And the thing I think is important about this is that okay so like watts and like the specific cartels do this but this isn't just watts this is like this is everyone who's working at these projects is just walking up like to like the poorest people in chicago and just robbing them constantly um yeah like this is this is you know this this is just how regular policing works and the elite units are even worse so uh cartel number one, or I guess cartel number two since we've introduced Watts.

So there used to be an elite unit in the Chicago Police Force called the Special Operations Section or SOS. And these guys are different because they're not attached to an area or a specific unit. They're just completely their own thing. They're the special response team. like, an area or a specific, you know, they're just completely their own thing, they're just, like, they're the special response team, and SOS would just go into projects and just ransack the entire building, like, they would go room by room, like, taking people's stuff and just looting it, and then just, like, walking out, and, you know, it's not even, like, it's not just that they're taking cash, like, they're taking TVs, and, I mean, the thing that, the thing you, if, when you,

when you re-interview some people who lived through this, like, they're not just taking, like, stuff that's, like, you know, TVs that are expensive. They'll take people's, like, lamps. Like, they'll just walk out with anything. Like, literally anything they can sell. And, you know, again, like, these are, these are, the people living in these projects are, like, huge,

like, a lot of these projects are literally like segregation era, right? So, they're almost entirely black, and they're just taking just take like they're just getting robbed but constantly by both the regular cops the special operations section and and there's not even like you know like cops nowadays have like they have like civil asset forfeiture where there's this like pseudo-legal framework no no this like they're not even this is the 90s they're not even doing that they're just literally walking in and robbing these people at gunpoint um sos like they eventually get shut down in 2007 after so there's a series of scandals about them they

they steal like hundreds of thousands of dollars from people they do shakedowns of drug dealers they start kidnapping people um at one point an sos dude like tried to hire his co-worker to do a hit on someone who was like gonna report them to the feds and yeah but sos isn't the main story today because uh watts is writing is running an even larger version of this operation um and you know while i was researching this i had the realization that like so i've talked to people in chicago about like the cpd cartels right and i had the realization that there were conversations that i had people where we've been we've both been talking about different ones and we both we both thought we were talking about this like i've had people looking back and was like oh they were talking about sos i was like

no no i bet the watts one it's it's great it's oh love love our institutionalized just robbery system. Yeah. So the other thing I want to mention, because so the intercepted did a like really good, like for a huge four part series on, on the Watts, uh, like cartel. But I think it's worth mentioning that like even the you know there's like two quote-unquote good cops who like go after watts and for years and eventually bring him down but like even those cops are doing things that are objectively horrifying like most of the actual cop work in this story is done by is literally just the good cops like they they know a homeless

guy they call chewbacca who they they paid to be an informant in, like, blankets, sleeping bags, and food. And, like, it's... Like, to be fair, Chewbacca, like, genuinely, like, likes the two of them. But Chewbacca is the guy who does all of the work here. Like, Waskis, like, he's the guy who's, like, wearing the wire. He's the guy who knows everything.

The cops don't know anything. And, like, Che chewbacca has known this everything that was going on from the beginning they just don't ask him for years but like and chewbacca like goes to prison at one point because watts okay so what watts is just like a drug dealer right um so watts and uh so so chewbacca would like you know he was like he was like a sort of low level like runner right he'd get a bag he'd like move it sometimes and one time uh and watts also used information so one time like watts was like trying to get information on where a drug stash was so we could rob it and then like well 10 times so he could do a police raid on it and then take the drugs and sell them and chewbacca just like didn't know so watts could do a police raid on it and then take the drugs and sell them. And Chewbacca just, like, didn't know.

So Watts just, like, threw him in prison for two years. And it's just, like, you know, this stuff happens constantly. There are so many people who are just, you know, like, people trying to survive in the city, and then, oh, hey, you don't have the exact specific information that this cop wants on this drug thing, so we're just gonna send you to prison for two years. And Chewbacca, who, like, risks don't have the exact specific information that this cop wants on this drug thing, so we're just going to send you to prison for two years.

And Chewbacca, who, like, risks his life wearing a wire and brings down one of the biggest cartels in the CPD, as best I can tell, is still living on the street because the society is just broken in ways that, like, are difficult to comprehend and incredibly bleak. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

So, okay, back to Watts' operation. Watts has this thing called the Watts Tax. The Watts Tax is if you run drugs, you pay the tax to Watts. And this tax gives you protection from the police. If you don't pay the Watts Tax, the cops show up, they put you in prison, they take all your cash, they raid your drugs,

and then Watts resells your drugs at a profit. I mean, that is, like, objectively, that is a decent grift. Yeah, it's a pretty good grift. Oh, it's incredible. Logistical planning. Yeah, okay, I can see how this would actually be very profitable. Yeah, it's genius.

And the other thing about these taxes, these taxes are enormous amounts of money. So if you're running a drug that's like, okay, so you have a drug that you move, and the drug is i know i've i've ran drugs for 30 years i know yeah so the the tax for the for that single drug can be as high as fifty thousand dollars a week so he is he is making a lot of money so much money like just an incomprehensible amount of money off of this we could do that

i guess i guess we would have to become cops i have an idea for a pivot we're doing the cartel pivot this is this is how we give this is how we get funded by the sinaloa cartel i mean we've always been a cartel but i that's true we move from podcasting into drugs we can partner with our friends at the sinaloa cartel yeah we great eventually there's a guy named big shorty who's another like sort of player in the scene and solid name yeah all the people in this name in this story great names yeah it's great so big shorty is like i'm not paying like 50k a week per drug to do this anymore i'm gonna go to the feds and uh so so a big shorty like he threatens to go

to the feds and he goes to the da and then like a couple days later she's gunned down the street by yeah you never someone the feds yeah no like yeah well if you do you have to make sure they like disappear you because uh well you never threaten it like that's the oh yeah yeah yeah you don't yeah you don't these worlds you mention like cops and going to in any combination, and everyone around you is just like, all right, well, this person's got to be dead. That's just how that's got to go. Yeah, it's not the best strategic move I've ever seen. Yeah, so, you know, and this is when the cops, the two cops who are going to bring Watts down, like, actually start to take notice. Because literally for years, I mean, there's,

they tell a story about this. Like people, they'd be locking people up and people would say things like, why are you going after me for two bags? And Watts is running the dope. And just no one believes them. Like the cops are being told constantly for years. Like the,

the cops who aren't in on the, on the, in the hotel are being told literally for years that, that this whole thing is, you know, that, that, oh yeah.

Well, why, why are you bothering me? Watts is running this operation. They don't believe them and they they they don't they don't believe them basically until big shorty gets shot because when when big shorty goes down like another they they they they get another guy who's like pretty big in the scene that guy's like oh yeah uh no he got shot by watts and they're like wait hold on now the the cops go to the fbi and the fbi it turns out has been trying and failing to put again put together a case against watts for so long that like they're on their like second like agent who they've had in

charge of the case because the first guy like just couldn't do it and left and so they had another guy and almost immediately after this uh there's there's another guy there's another dealer named fears who uh he has this fears has this great grift which is like all of his people wear obama shirts this is like this is like 2008 but she doesn't know she doesn't seven or something but yeah so like that all the people doing this thing they wear obama shirts and they they call the drugs like obama and so when everyone they had their lines called hope and so and like this this this actually works on the fbi like the fbi doesn't understand that they're running drugs because they think that they're that like all the metro references of obama are just like they're talking about like obama it's like oh there's so many there's so many

great like fbi weird incompetence things in the story like that there's one point where the cops are going through the documents and they see the word they see lou and it's so lou's just short for lieutenant right but the fbi thinks that lou is like a name and so they're kind of tracked down this guy named lou which is just it's it's oh it's just baffling incredible incredible incompetence. FBI's never thrilled when they have to investigate cops. Yeah, yeah. Even though it is literally their job. Yep.

But hey, I hate doing my job too, so please continue, Chris. So that Fierce guy who's doing the Obama thing, like, takes 17 rounds to the chest. And so the FBI are like... That's a good number of rounds to take to the chest. Yeah, that's a lot. It's doing the Obama thing, like, takes 17 rounds to the chest. And so the FBI are like— That's a good number of rounds to take to the chest. Yeah, that's a lot. It's an interesting number, too, right? Because, like— It does have a cult significance, yes.

Yeah, but also, like, did they, like, reload? Like, do they have a gun that has exactly 17 bullets in it? No, no, no, there's 17 round magazines. Okay. Yeah, no, no, no. There's—yeah, there's, that's not, that's not. Well, is it,

is it like a handgun or is it a rifle? I think it's a handgun. Yeah. Or like, multiple people with handguns. Yeah, Glock 17s have 17 round magazines.

That makes sense. Yeah. Yeah, so, so after this, the FBI investigation intensifies and so the FBI goes to the Internal Affairs Division, or IAD, who are like the most hated cops of all cops by other cops because they're people who are supposed to investigate the police. And, you know, so they tell the two guys who are going after Watson they're going to be protected. And this works for like a year. And then the head of AID changes.

And it's like like, a cop-cop guy. So they had this, like, they brought an FBI guy who had been the head of AID, and then he gets kicked out, and they bring in, like, a cop. And that cop just immediately tells literally everyone that those two cops are running an investigation against Watts. And so, uh... Do they die within the next few months, or...? Stunningly, no. Do they die within the next few months? Stunningly, no.

As best I can tell, Watts seemed to have thought that they wouldn't be able to get him because he had too much protection, which worked for a while. I mean, yeah, he has a lot of power. Yeah, well, and also, the other thing that's interesting about this is his stuff starts getting wilder. So he goes after this guy.

He tries to go after the drugs of this guy named Monk. And Mon is carrying a bunch of drugs he's trying to he's trying to rob bunk um from the intercept a wild car chase ensued on the dan ryan expressway lakeshore drive and ultimately into the hyde park neighborhood where monk lost control of the car and crashed in a park he fled on foot watts and his team seized the dope and cash they didn't even check on the condition of the woman and infant who remained in the car which is great and also that's that's standard that that's that's like standard cpd procedure i i have literally seen this happen like in hyde park like i i have i there when i was in college i almost got run over in a seat and like the cpd almost ran me over this like car chase that went bad ends this giant multi-car crash and like there's like 16 cops

right they all just run past the car crash after the two guys are chasing and like i have to go make sure no one died and i was like i this is great you have just almost murdered me and then also you're not checking on all these people in this car because you've been in a wreck i i hate the cpt i hate them a lot they sound they sound they sound nice yeah it's great they're they're yeah this just happens like all the time like often enough that like literally in the same place yeah i saw this thing happen in which like all of these big because you've got like a few really big shitty big city police departments you've got your lapd your nyp cause you've got like a few really big, shitty, big city police departments. You've got your LAPD, your NYPD.

Yeah. You've got your Chicago police department, but by God, you've got St. Louis cops and they're all, they're all shitty in simultaneously the same and different ways. Like they're there. It's the same basic idea.

It's brutality. It's violence. It's robbery. But they, they, they find unique ways to do those shitty things which is fascinating yeah like if i was like like the nypd's like their big thing is if you get a large number of people together the nypd is just going to annihilate you like lapd has like the nazi gangs cpd thing cpd's

thing just seems to be crime yeah cpd is just do crime torture it's torture and yeah yeah st louis police department will attack you with dogs if you're not a white person like yeah they've all got they've they've they've they've chosen their cop subclass yeah now okay so back in the investigation the two cops in investigating watts are like even so basically in the investigation, the two cops investigating Watts are like, even so, basically all the researchers get cut off. It's literally just them to watch note, like basically knows that he's there coming for them. And they almost get him anyways, because cops are just not very smart. a sting for drug running and then uh right before like look i think it's like the day of that they're running the sting they suddenly get like transferred to the police academy and they basically just like get detained in this police academy for like weeks and it's it's extremely weird and eventually like the and you know this is when like everything just completely comes apart like the liaison between the cpd and the fbi literally tells them they can't move on the case because if they move on the case it's going to reveal that watts murdered a dude because well so they don't

have good evidence i'm pretty shorty but they have they have evidence that they have good evidence that he killed fears and i and the head of internal affairs basically tells them like yeah like i won't do anything about watts because it comes out that another cpd unit had gone rogue after sos i'll be done for so i'm just gonna cover for them the second cartel is too much yeah it's ignited only one cartel it's great um i can excuse one cartel but i draw the line and two but once you hit four cartels we're back to good which is why i am such a big fan of the los angeles police department it's great look you you got it you got it you got you just you just got to get over the cartel hump and once you're over yeah you got it's like it's like growing out your

uh your hair right there's going to be that period where it looks really awkward that's when you that's when you've got two cartels and then you get hot at four cartels then you're fuckable again yeah it's great so there's an interesting description from one of the two cops that i want to read because it gets at how the code of silence works um from the intercept he had she said this is about the aid guy uh he had she said made too many deals thereby neutralizing his ability to act attributing her understanding of this dynamic largely to conversations with Rivera himself, conversations he denied ever occurred, she described him as ensnared in a web of mutual blackmail in which bosses have leverage over one another by virtue of their shared knowledge

of the deals they have made. She gave an example. I'll make the CR against your guy go away if you promote my guy within your unit. The code of silence and clout are thus entwined. you promote my guy within your unit the code of silence and clout are thus entwined rivera she recalled once remarked to her that the bosses quote trade crs for favors like baseball cards so yeah this is this is what the code of silence is it's it's an informal code sort of that's also called the thin blue line which is great uh yeah that basically it says that cops you know it's that cops will protect

the road but but it's more than that if if you if you cross the thin blue line and you break the code of silence uh you will be formally retaliated against by your commanders and but when i say breaking the code of silence what that means literally is if you take any action against another cop like it literally doesn't like they they can be torturing people they can be literally running a cartel it doesn't matter if if you say anything about them you will be like formally retaliated against by every other cop and so the two cops who are investigating watts like they get arrested by internal affairs and internal affairs like tries to like basically make a fake case against them and they eventually get out but they're pretty you know their careers are over right because they you know attempted to like do the thing sort of that cops are normally supposed

to do and uh they just immediately get arrested um and you know and they have a lot of other stuff happen to them like uh one of the two cops comes home to a mailbox literally full of shit with a note that says since you like shit so much thought you'd enjoy this amazing yeah you know what i mean like that's fun that's fun that's fun that should happen more often just that should happen a lot more often other other scenarios yeah yeah it's it it sucks that these are the cops that this is happening like of all of the this is like the only time i i like do not approve of like sending cops the this is like the only time I like do not approve of like sending cops shit this is the wrong reason this is the wrong reason to send cops shit

you're gonna get cancelled that's true they have probably done stuff they have done stuff I will say make sure it's better it can be safer if dog shit is used then DNA is harder to track.

Mm-hmm. You know what the safest shit of all to use? No, I don't. Should you fight on the streets? Panther shit. Panther shit. Panther shit. See, I could, yeah.

FBI's never going to figure that one out. Yeah, I get it. They're not the technology. Get right on, I'll get right on that. Yeah, we're going to go that one out yeah i get the technology get right on i'll get right on that yeah we're gonna go collect panther shit it'll be gone for a month you could be their unabomber for like 15 years they're trying to track down what kind of shit is getting put in people's mailboxes until your brother sends them a letter saying i know someone who has access to a lot of Panther shit and grudge. Tragic tale.

Tale as old as time. And then you can get an HBO miniseries where they make you look slightly like you're in a boy band. Only slightly. It's like you were in a boy band but aged out. Yeah, yeah. You were in a boy bed but aged out yeah yeah you were in a boy so the code of silence also extends to friendly politicians uh here's from the intercept report soon after he came to the confidential section he was given the assignment of investigating a deputy superintendent the allegation was that the officer the official lived outside the city

mills worked on the case for months and concluded the allegation was that the officer the official lived outside the city mills worked on the case for months and concluded the allegation was true he produced a thick file how does that take months i'm sorry how do you have to take months to figure that out they're cops like you gotta you gotta make allowances for cop the caper of where does this guy who works here live yeah uh very funny the next day the file came back to him it was mart there was a yellow post-it note with the handwritten message make it unfounded so that's fun awesome amazing yeah yeah make it cops are cops are a breed of their own poetry

yeah so actually there's a long history of like yeah politicians do this stuff with cops all the time like remember the story right like Rahm Emanuel's like nephew or something killed a guy in a car

crash and the CPD Emanuel got emmanuel got the cpd to just like never investigated it they just were like oh someone died in a car crash and it just went away it's it's real fun um yeah so so eventually shortly after this sort of the the those two cops get like detained at like the police academy the fbi and the cpt move on watts and his partner muhammad and no one else interestingly because again if we think about this for about five seconds there are an enormous number of people who either know about this operation or are actively involved in running a fucking drug cartel that is one of the biggest players on the south side who are still just cops and like the cpd goes after

exactly two people there are like dozens of people who were actively involved in this who are still cops um and and you know the only real interpretation of this is that the fbi and the cpd are complicit which is that you know i mean so parts of the cpd want to keep doing keep keep running the cartel the fbi is like both the f and the CPD also have an interest in keeping this covered up because they don't want like, you know, oh, hey, look at the, look at the loss of trust in, in, in law enforcement. It comes out that there were actually two cartels running in the same place at the same time, parallel to each other. And then we didn't catch them. Like, yeah, but it's great because literally nothing happens to these people. They're still out there.

They're still doing cop shit. Yeah, only two people went down for that. And yeah, so the cartel is just still there. That's good. It's still operating. Well, it proves that if you put in the work, you can really build something that lasts. And I think that's a lesson we all should be inspired by. And I think that's a lesson we all should be inspired by.

Hold yourself up by your jack bootstraps. Wow. Yeah. That's good stuff. Okay, so interlude number two. On May 4th, 1886, someone threw a stick of dynamite at some cops in Haymarket Square in Chicago to lead a general strike for the eight-hour workday. They sure did the cops fired wildly into the crowd and the state rounded up a bunch of completely random anarchists who by their own admission had nothing to do with it and had them executed now the cops for their part built a statue uh for the cops at haymarket now the first of these statues was destroyed on may 4th

1927 by a guy good job guys this was job, guys. This was great. So he had the, he was like, he was a streetcar driver, right? And he had to like, every single day, he had to go past the statue of the Haymarket Cop. And one day, he was just like, no. And he ran his streetcar off of the, the streetcars are like on rails, right? He ran them off of

the rails and rammed it into the statue. This guy rules. Dope. Dope. so the cops built another statue and that second statue was blown up by the weather underground on october 6th 1969 uh the cops make another statue the third statue is also blown up by the weather underground on october 5th 1970 good work guys that was like that was less than a year later yep yep and so the country they originally they rebuilt it again right and originally they have it under like a 24-hour armed guard jesus christ and then and then but you know even then they were like okay we can't protect it so they moved it into an

enclosed courtyard in the middle of the chicago police academy because they're too cowardly to show it in public awesome see that's good that's a win that's a win they realize everyone hates them so much that they have to hide the statue to the assholes who got killed yeah that's great one day one day that fourth statue will follow the first three one day one day by the mere cosmic forces of the universe one by entropy but the force of entropy will one day destroy this statue yes okay so on to story number four uh story number four is the chicago police department's black site so the chicago police department has a black site called home and square um so so normally you know you go to a police station and you get booked right

they they book you they put you into the system and you know because you're in the system like you know where um like people people can find you right because you can just look someone up you can look someone up in the system uh at home and square they don't book people if you just if you go there you just disappear there's no record of you uh there's no there's no way to contact a lawyer if you're in there uh your lawyer doesn't know where you are because again there's no records of where you are you've just been grabbed off the street and taken to a building um yeah and and this is a so storage people there tends to be pretty short they don't tend to hold people longer than a couple of days. But what it's there for is this is a confession machine. This is a way to force confessions out of people by just literally disappearing them and denying them access to lawyers or literally anyone knowing where they are.

And they're just holding them until they confess. And also, yeah, so at home and square uh prisoners are routinely shackled for for hours like like tens of hours sometimes 24 hours uh beaten denied phone calls and uh robbed constantly this is this is another fun cpd tradition is yeah they'll just take you to this black site and then rob you and then maybe they'll release you but you know they've still robbed you and yes and you know they do these beatings and these beatings are incredibly intense like you know they're punching people they're doing like knee strikes you're doing elbow strikes you're hitting people with batons sometimes you're tasering people uh we have a report that

the cops filed of of listed listed as a cop being assaulted and the thing that they're listening as a a non it was like like non like fist assault was the guy spat blood. Yeah, well, yeah. They listed that as an assault on the cop. He bled his blood on them. Yeah, it's great. They also do things like they put flex cuffs around people's necks.

Oh, why? Torture! Yeah, that is... That's a way for someone to die it's almost like that's maybe part of the intention is that maybe someone will quote accidentally die oh we'll get to that uh okay well so not great yeah yeah yeah it's it's not it's it's bad uh there's another guy who okay so the cops are completely convinced this guy who was completely innocent uh well okay i do want to say like i'm gonna say a lot of people are innocent because they are but also like even if you're

guilty you no one deserves this like maybe the cops doing it deserve it but even then it's i don't even think they do it's not yeah you don't yeah no it's not a thing you do people yeah like so this guy you might knock down a statue or three but yeah like you know like it's yeah it's it's really grim like yeah so they hold this guy's mouth open with a pen right and then they keep elbowing him in the stomach until he throws up um and so he tries to get medical attention because he keeps throwing up because he has asthma i mean also because he just got elbowed in the stomach yeah mouth yeah um and instead of uh giving him medical treatment even though he like easily could have died the cops just uh beat him up for asking yeah there's another guy who

gets uh sexually abused with the barrel of a gun and when he starts screaming the guard the gun goes on a rant about how he needs to be careful or he might accidentally pull the trigger oh boy it's it's bad um this is all within that specific yeah this is this is this is all just in homeless square um he claims that like the the cell he's being held in he doesn't get any food doesn't get any water they keep him there for hours and the like the cell just smells like blood and uh like feces because yeah yeah they don't let people go to the bathroom two other individuals Stephanie Martinez and Calvin Kofi described relieving themselves while shackled in a

home and square interrogation room Martinez locked up in 2006 was told by a guard that she did not have the key to Martinez's handcuffs and could not take her to the bathroom Kofi to take into home and square on the 6th of February 2015 on suspicion of narcotic activity defecated on the floor after two hours fruitlessly requesting for the bathroom

a police officer made calvin clean it up with his skull cap the lawsuit alleges it's these people are sick they're yeah well yeah it's it's yeah yeah yeah they i hate that it's like yeah it's cop shit huh yep and you know that's how they do it they're holding children in here like they have people as young as 15 who are being sure just literally everything about this is that when so sometimes sometimes you get sort of like arrested normally although again i should mention that uh the the constitution does not exist like it's it's fake it's a lie no one ever gets fucking read the miranda rights it doesn't matter because uh the constitution doesn't exist if you're poor

yeah it sort of exists if you're not but i will guarantee you they're reading their miranda rights to people who look like they got oh yeah yeah yeah no these people there's actually a story of these two puerto rican guys who got brought in and they like the cops are like trying to get them to confess something and they just like they start name dropping like civil rights lawyers and the cops are like oh okay okay uh uh we're good uh we'll we'll drive you back if you don't talk we'll we'll drive you back to like where you came from yeah and it's yeah it's it's extremely grim uh yeah they just want to fuck with people who can't defend themselves yeah yeah and you know and the way they do this right like they they they do these raids where like everyone's they're not wearing badges everyone's just like wearing mat like type

like black armor and like black masks and so people describe getting like dragged out of their house and like they don't know if they're getting robbed or like if they're being kidnapped and then they are being kidnapped but just being kidnapped like by the cops and they get dragged then again they're dragging like 15 year olds into the into this thing uh there there's one guy who gets found unresponsive in an interrogation room um now the police say they died from heroin overdose but this makes literally no sense uh and so the the first reason why it doesn't make any sense is that the cops initially lie about where he about where he like had the overdose and died because they don't want to reveal that he uh you know was in their

secret black site so they like lied and said he was another he was at another site now the other thing you know that that contradicts their claim that this guy was uh had a heroin overdose is that the hospital when he when when the hospital saw him they wrote that he was sober so i mean he could have he could have had a heroin overdose in terms of the cops injecting him full of heroin. Yeah. Like, yeah, that's the most likely thing.

Like, and there's, there's another part of this. So, so this guy was selling cocaine, right? But again, he's selling cocaine,

not heroin. And the other, and you know, his, his partner, like there was another guy who was, he was selling cocaine with like his partner and everyone who knew him was completely insistent that you know he does he doesn't do drugs right

he sells them because you know you sell drugs but yeah and and the the cops and the other things the cops do the cop thing where they change their story twice so originally they said that he like committed suicide by heroin overdosing and then they changed their story to he died by accident um the the other thing that that indicates that uh he probably did not in fact die from heroin overdose is that there's bruises all over his face he has a busted lip his neck is super red and none of that shows up in the in the police autopsy and oh yeah yeah and this all reads just like a standard burge error interrogation so like they beat him they put a bag over his head to suffocate him and then you plant heroin on him and you know you you call him yeah dead by suicide that's a that's a day's work yeah yeah and you know and there's

another thing that that i should mention here about the story which is that okay so this guy is in a chicago police department black site right how did he get heroin in like everyone in this black site is literally shackled to a wall like there's no the old the only place the heroin could possibly have come from is the cops so it's like you know and and yeah independent autopsy says he dies of asphyxiation uh so yeah i'm gonna read something from the guardian about the guy who, the guy's partner who was in the next sellover. The other partner, who requested to be cited as John Doe while he rebuilds his life post-conviction, was in a home and square interrogation room near Galvin's. While Doe was unable to see inside, he told the Guardian he heard a lot of commotion, then booming and banging, and then a gagging sound coming from his friend's cell his partner yeah so this this guy uh like his partner like he's that guy's also like

chained to a wall for like 12 hours um here's he has a more thing to say i heard a holler i heard officers talking to him after that i just heard a lot of commotion like boom boom boom boom and banging boom boom boom boom boom and then i didn't hear nothing after that my door was kind of cracked and then they shut it after that they shut my door all the way before the police shut the door doe said i heard a gagging sound like makes a choking noise like choking like somebody was choking after the commotion like choking uh yeah oh yeah it's very it's very obvious what happened from the get-go yeah yeah like they they tortured this guy to death and yeah it's yeah and the other fun part about homeless square is that

homeless square is also used to torture political prisoners uh so brian uh brian jacob church is a member of the nato 3 which is a group of anti-nato protesters in 2012 who got set up by an incredibly elaborate government entrapment scheme and arrested for it um and he was taken immediately to homewood square uh he's never read his miranda rights he's cuffed to a bench for 17 hours um and he he asked to call his lawyer because like a good leftist he has a national lawyers guild number written on his arm and you know this is something that's important so the guardian talked to like dozens of people who were held here right um exactly two of them were able to contact a lawyer and they were both white and church church is one of them and this is actually how uh part of how home and square goes public because brian jacob church like talks to the press about it and uh spencer ackerman is a great journalist

does a bunch of incredible reporting and like brings the black site to light and so there's there's 7185 people we can prove were taken to home and square uh six thousand of those people are black less than one percent of those people had their arrests logged which means the cops just vanished them uh it's almost certainly more people now i'm gonna read something about this from uh from the book uh writingsings from the World of Policing. This Homescar revelation seems to me to be an institutionalization of practices that date back more than 40 years, said Flint Taylor, the civil rights lawyer most associated with pursuing Area 2 Commander John Burge. So, yeah, that's our fucking police reform. Instead of taking them from police station to police station, the police have now beened so that they have uh one institutionalized black site instead of multiple ones uh home and square is still open to this day like this came out in 2015 there have been like over half a decade of protest against it um so supposedly the rules have

changed and if you get arrested they have to put you in the system but home and square is still open there's probably another one like somewhere that they've just they've they've they've switched which side they're doing their black sites on and yeah well yeah i have i have a closing statement okay sure it is it is an inhuman crime that a single one of these fucking demons is allowed to roam our streets with a badge and the authority to rape torture and murder us and the certainty the system will beat us into a pulp if we attempt even in the smallest way most symbolic way possible to resist them the police must be abolished there is no alternative for the sake of our survival for the survival of our children and for the sake of every generation that has borne its horrors before

us we could only abolish the police salt the earth upon which it stands and drive the very concept of policing into a space of such infamy and terror that even the worst among us would not dare to even propose bringing it back also get rid of that last statue yeah that one destroyed let's knock that one out of there too yeah i mean i feel like everyone who's ever been to that site has should have the the the like universal right to take a uh hammer and maybe you know maybe an rpg and just like do whatever they want to that building yeah i i think the men who continued to like and women uh who continued to work in cpd like anyone who was ever arrested by them or otherwise brutalized them

should just forever have the right to just give them a solid shot to the balls. They get to wear a little sign around their neck, and it's like, oh, that guy was one of Burge's dudes. So anybody who sees him can just give him a little haymaker right in the right in the bread basket yeah that is a proposal that uh is i'm running for mayor of chicago i mean i i'd look our mayors all suck so you know move move over here and we we can propose a solution to

this problem that is so unbelievably not proportionally violence to what the police have been doing that it boggles belief and i'm pretty sure i can still manage to be corrupt yeah yeah i mean it's chicago you can't not i mean i guess i mean life was sort of corrupt life what's less corrupt than normal she's just bad but yeah it's chicago you'll find... Corruption will be foisted upon you. I'm actually fine with that. Well... How are we doing? Another uplifting, inspirational episode

of It Could Happen Here. Yeah, I will say this. Or as Garrison named it earlier today, Hi, Here's a problem, bye. I will say this. Anytime someone tells you that, no, it's fine, we're going to reform the police, just remind them that reforming the Chicago Police Department

was that the reform was that we now have black sites. We now have consolidated the black sites. Yeah, yeah. We went from multiple black sites to one black site. And also they probably moved it again. It's just, you just have to get rid of them.

That is, that is the essence of police report. You just, you just have to. Anyway, yep, there's a problem.

Okay, bye. Yep. Bye. Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash sources. Thanks for listening. You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadow. Join me, shadow join me danny trail and step into the flames of right an anthology podcast of modern

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