It Could Happen Here - It Could Happen Here Weekly 24

Episode Date: March 5, 2022

All of this week's episodes of It Could Happen Here put together in one large file. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadowbride. Join me, Danny Trejo, and step into the flames of fright. An anthology podcast of modern-day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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. All right, I will find some clever way to introduce us. Identical. Huh. You know what? I might just go with that. I will find some clever way to introduce us. And that is the introduction now. Because I said it.

Hello! Welcome to It Could Happen Here. Today we are going to be talking about internet privacy and some new bills that will possibly undermine it um today i have with me uh christopher hello christopher hello i am here i am i don't know if excited is the right word but no no one should ever be people are rarely excited to come on the show. Yeah, no, this is a mild dread of the future of the internet. I try, because we definitely can. Things don't need to be always horrible and grim, even when you're talking about things that aren't great. But yeah, today we'll be talking about some interesting things.

As per the title of this episode will probably be related to, we are talking about the proposed EARN IT Act. And I'll explain what it is and the different kind of implications it could have on how, like, everyone uses the internet, but also affects a few specific types of people in particular. So, but kind of part of this whole thing, we're going to start off by talking about something a little bit different and then to kind of segue to the Internet Act. So last year, Apple, the company, announced a controversial plan to install photo scanning software into every device. Apple's kind of long been seen as a pro-privacy company. In the past, they have refused FBI demands to help investigators bypass locked phones. So this idea and this plan to create a backdoor into the iPhone storage system to scan

for photos was kind of a big deal coming for Apple, because they were definitely, at least in the past, known as a generally, like, out of all of the companies, the ones that, if you're dealing with sensitive matters, Apple is generally the better one. Now, that has become less of a case in the past few years, but that definitely was the case. So when this kind of idea was announced, there was a decently sized global coalition also formed to push back on this thing. And the company did pause the plan. Now, this came at a time that a lot of different kind of companies were also pushing back against not safe for work materials, specifically for like, like, like relating to like the transaction of money and banks. This was, you know, around the time that

OnlyFans was flip-flopping on whether they would actually have not safe for work kind of materials as a part of this kind of growing trend of like worrying about um the the term now is like child sexual abuse materials more traditionally it was it's called child pornography or you know it's so it's part of this kind of overall kind of extra focus that tech companies have about being worried that if they if someone is doing that who is underage, or if someone's being exploited who's underage, they could unfinancially hurt the company. So lots of companies have been trying to do this thing to prevent that legal and financial issue from happening.

Now, of course, all this really actually ends up doing is just negatively affecting sex workers. But that's kind of a topic for a different episode, because we're talking about the Earn It Act more specifically and not specifically talking about OnlyFans. But this was Apple's plan to kind of scan all these photos to make sure that there were not, you know, naked photos of children.

Now, there's a whole bunch of other privacy issues around that because, I mean, obviously, teens do take nudes and send them to each other and there is really no stopping that um so the idea that all these photos are getting scanned and then seen and then like it would be the idea was that parents would be like alerted if something was found on the phone automatically which means that for me i have a whole bunch of other issues with that like that is yeah a whole nother kind of level it's like fucked up um especially for queer kids like that is like that is a whole that again but that is mostly a whole whole other discussion that i'm not going to talk about right now because

we are i do want to focus this focus this more on the more on the urn it act um but so this this plan was paused um but now that may not necessarily matter, actually, because Congress kind of wants to force Apple's hand, along with essentially every other company that allows users to store or share messages or kind of really any content. And Congress is, some senators, and there's a bill that will try to essentially mandate photo scanning and specific photo scanning technology approved by the government. So yeah. So while Apple's plan would have put privacy and the security at risk for all of its users, the EARN IT Act compromises the security and free speech for basically everyone who uses the internet.

The bill would create serious legal risks for businesses that host content such as messages or photos stored in the cloud, online backups, and potentially even any kind of cloud hosting sites such as Amazon Web Services, which means basically most of the internet.

So all of these services and companies would be in serious legal risk unless they use this government approved scanning tools. A version of this bill was first introduced two years ago, sponsored by Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina and Senator Richard Lumenthal, a Democrat from Connecticut. And now like a lot of these other things, it is allegedly aimed at tackling so-called child sexual abuse material online, which is a problem. The kids definitely do get exploited. Kids do get groomed, exploited. Photos of children do get shared online. That actually is a real issue.

now a lot of the ways that these tools get implemented don't actually address that issue and of course it doesn't actually deal with the people that do this like the bad people that do exploit kids it doesn't necessarily deal with them either that is what they wrap this idea as the original bill that was introduced two years ago

threatened encryption and privacy features that would have actually put Americans' privacy particularly the privacy of children, at risk. It also gutted Section 230 in ways that caused over 50 civil rights groups to pen a letter describing the potential consequences of such things like censorship, you know, cramming down on free speech, and the basically destruction of encryption. So when the legislation failed to advance two years ago, digital liberty advocates, you know, sex workers, civil rights organizations, all breathed

a sigh of relief. But this past month, as I record this, in February 2022, a group of lawmakers, again, led by Senator Richard Blumenthal and Senator Lindsey Graham reintroduced the Earned Act, a slightly modified version of it. And on the 10th of February, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to advance the dangerous Earned Act bill. So yeah, it is chugging along a bit further than what it did last time. The Earned Act aims to tackle the horrific criminal activity related to child sexual abuse material by making Section 230 protections contingent on the prevention and response to such material online. So Section 230 shields online services, like, you know, commonly used social media, from liability from most user-generated content. Under EARN IT, Section 230

would be amended to enable civil claims and state criminal prosecution related to child abuse materials online against platforms. Now, already this can kind of happen federally a little bit, but it depends on how the company responds to it. But this would introduce a whole new wave for civil claims and state claims to be filed against companies like this. If if if if material like this is to be found hosted on their site, you know, including. You know, that would even include if like someone who's underage operates a not safe for Twitter account that they probably should not be operating.

But this this, you know, this this could also this could basically make the company in trouble. They could fall under state claims or civil claims. So as a result, online services could be subject to endless litigation under 50 different legal law systems for all the states regarding finding child sexual abuse material online. So the bill's proponents claim that this isn't necessarily a problem for any service as long as it is scanning the files and reporting child sexual abuse material to law enforcement. Internet companies are already required to report suspected material if they come across it. And they do report material on a massive scale that often comes with a lot of mistakes. Facebook is often held as a positive example by lawmakers and law enforcement for how much they do report such material but while their new scanning techniques have produced many millions of reports most of them are inaccurate like most of them actually aren't of minors it's it's it's

not it's not actually none of the scanning material is good because a lot of cases many people up into their 30s can get often flagged. And often even non-humans can get flagged. Pictures of fruit. It's not like none of these scanning tools are actually very good. Yeah, and this is, I think, a thing that if you've never had to work with a machine learning algorithm before, I think it's difficult to understand how unbelievably bad these things are yeah like it's just it is oh god like the the incomprehensible horror of trying to get a machine learning algorithm to do the thing that you wanted to do and not do the other things

that you're not that you don't want it to do to like you know be able to tell the difference between like a particularly smooth and round peach and like child sex abuse like you know be able to tell the difference between like a particularly smooth and round peach and like child sex abuse material you know you human being can do this right the machine cannot and it is they it is horrifically inaccurate you have to do all kinds of like hacking stuff together in order to get the stuff to work and yeah it's it's it's a fiasco a fiasco. A good example of this that I've, that I've heard before that I'm probably, I'm probably going to butcher this explanation, but you know, that you can take, you know, a photo of a wolf, um, maybe even three photos of a wolf and say, here, this is the, these, these are photos of wolves. Um, here's the, here's other, here's the, here's these other photos, find which ones are

wolves and it'll, you know, it'll, it'll sort through other ones. So some of them have of them have wolves some of them don't um and it only finds one picture that says this one's based on the three photos you've given me this photo is a wolf and instead the photo is not the photo is of a tree and you're like why did it tell me this is a wolf and the computer will answer well look at all the all of the backgrounds are the same yeah it's trying it's trying to match like it doesn't have the same thing that humans do. When all these computer algorithms that are trying to learn to replicate and find these patterns, it is never perfect.

So the big thing that people often overlook is that, yeah, specifically with Facebook's scanning tool and the millions of reports that it does make, federal law enforcement will frequently use the massive millions of reports that it does make, federal law enforcement will frequently use the massive number of reports to suggest there is this giant recent uptick in child sexual abuse materials. But that's not because there actually is.

That's because the scanning that some companies are doing is just so bad. Like it's just so inaccurate that it flags so many things. So like in action, the new EARN IT Act would just pave a massive new surveillance system run by private companies that would roll back some of the most important privacy and security features and technology used by people around the globe, right? The idea is to compel private companies to scan every message that's sent online

and report violations to law enforcement. And it may not stop there. The EARN IT Act could ensure anything hosted online, including backups, websites, cloud photos, and more, is all scanned. Now, of course, you can say, I mean, there is no actual true privacy online, right? The NSA does see everything, which is basically true. But stuff like local police departments and the FBI do not have constant access to what the NSA has. It does actually, like legally, it does actually take some time for that to happen. The fact that all these private companies would be doing it for them

and the fact that this would actually break encryption makes people like the FBI, makes the local law enforcement have a much easier time accessing what we do on the internet. Because yes, the NSA kind of does always see everything, but this actually is quite different in terms of the accessibility of that information. And I think, I think it's also, you know, to, to,

to go back into one of the sort of like encryption arguments too, right? So, okay. Once you put a backdoor into encryption, right? Once, once you have, you know, you have your system, you have your encryption system, but you know, now there's, now there's a way to access it, right? Because, oh, well, we need to access these, you know, we need to be able to decrypt this in order to see if there's, like, child pornography materials on it, right? Once that backdoor exists, anyone who

finds it can use it for anything they want. And it's not even just that. Like, we'll get into some other things around encryption, but, yeah, continue. Yeah, and, you know, I think this is something that i think people don't like the the people who are just thinking about this in terms of child pornography don't think about which is that like i don't know a lot like there these these kinds of backdoors right like other people can find them yes and you know okay now now you've just put it back to an all of encryption.

Like, Oh, Hey, here's, you know, like here you, you, you are,

you are going to get people killed and you're going to get people killed because you're going to have people who are doing things under governments that, you know, will, will, will like, you know,

you're going to have people in Myanmar. You're going to have people in, you're going to have people in Egypt. You're going to have people in Syria who like these, these regimes and like these you know private private companies right are going are going to sell the back doors to these regimes and they are going to use it to hunt down torture and kill people and so yeah there is there is a lot of problems with it especially especially how it how it kind of addresses encryption because the bill does try to actually have some encryption protections, but the way they go about it is not adequate,

and it even kind of fosters its own negation in some ways, if you read the entire bill. But I'll get more into encryption in a sec, because there are other technical issues with the way this bill is designed and how it would be enacted. There is this sort of benefit to having a legal material that is that is actually exploding miners being primarily hosted on big tech platforms um because these platforms are used so much and are mostly non-restricted so it makes catching this stuff and reporting it actually much easier like it is if they're hosted on these mainstream things it does catching this stuff and reporting it actually much easier. Like it is, if they're hosted on these mainstream things, it does make seeing it and reporting

less difficult. So not only will this bill make tech companies be more likely just to ban all not safe work material in general, right? Because if companies are forced to scan and they're going to be filing so many reports, this will result in a lot more companies just saying no nude photos at all, like just completely gone. Not only will this bill just make tech companies more likely to ban all not safe for work content in general, which would be horrible for sex workers and just a bad precedent. But yeah,

they would be more likely just to do that because of how much overscanning there would be and just a whole bunch of things. It would create too many fears of legal repercussions. Thus, you know, that would force people who distribute child porn onto more sketchy sites and sites that might just refuse to scan content in general because they're temporary hosting. But the bill could also just scare these bad people off of mainstream platforms and make them voluntarily migrate to more niche and hard to find corners of the Internet, making illegal content harder to catch and take down. Because there will always be weird temporary sites to host this type of thing like they're always they're like these bad people will find a way it's always like that's is it is gonna always be a problem um and so in a way it's it is better to have these things on mainstream platforms because reporting them and taking them down can be much easier um it's like when people really advocate platforms like Telegram,

shut down all fascist channels, right? The thing is, is that there's a lot of benefits to having these chat rooms on Telegram because it makes them really easy to monitor and really easy to infiltrate. So there's a lot worse places for fascists to organize. If you're doing it on Telegram, it's actually really easy to watch. So it's this weird give and take in terms of in terms of where where these things happen, because they are going to happen somewhere. So I now want to talk about how specifically this bill threatens threatens online encryption services. All right. The bill would strip critical legal protection for websites, apps, and specifically Section 230.

If passed, it would empower many different levels of government to make sweeping new Internet regulations. Individual states will be able to pass laws to hold private companies liable as long as they somehow relate their new rules to child abuse materials. It's like they will be able to have a whole bunch of new rules on internet regulations if they can sift it through this lens. The goal is to get states to pass these laws that will punish companies when they deploy end-to-end encryption or offer other encryption services. This includes messaging systems like WhatsApp, Signal, iMessage, and as well as web hosting like Amazon Web Services. EarnIt aims to spread the use of tools to scan all online content against law enforcement databases directly. In a myths and facts document

distributed by the bill's proponents, it even names a government-approved software program that they could mandate called a PhotoDNA, which is a program that Microsoft made that reports directly to law enforcement databases. So, EARNET doesn't specifically attack encryption per se, but that's because it doesn't need to. It doesn't have to because of the way the bill is designed. How it approaches encryption is actually a little more insidious. of the way the bill is designed, how it approaches encryption is actually a little more insidious. It allows the fact that encryption exists on the platform

itself to be used as evidence against a company in order to find it liable for hosting child sexual abuse materials. They can use the fact that encryption exists as evidence, which is wild. Like, what?

This is the thing that CCP does a lot. Like with, you know, like they'll use, they'll use the fact that like someone is using a VPN, for example, as evidence that they're a terrorist. Yes.

This happens constantly. And it's, it makes a lot of, a lot of encryption stuff incredibly unsafe because like, you know, you show up with your phone, you have signal on it and the CCP is like, well,

you're this, this, this is proof. We're just going to, we're going to lock it up and throw away the key. And yeah, it's extremely bad. So the result is that laws will make companies liable if they don't scan and report user content for child sexual abuse materials, which they can't do unless they break encryption. You know, big companies like Apple are going to fold to protect themselves. So, EarnIt is like it coerces these sites and platforms and services to do this sort of scanning,

and not just on messages, but all online content, encrypted or not. Companies that handle online content would have to weigh the benefit of their users securely encrypting their data content against the legal risk of doing so. And encryption becomes much harder when it puts the company's bottom line at risk. And end-to-end encryption isn't just for messages. It's not just on signal. It secures most of the internet, or at least a lot of it,

keeping what you do allegedly private and safe online. You can't have a secure internet where all of the content is also screened because you can't have internet encryption alongside mass scanning requirements. So this isn't just an attack on encryption, it's an attack on any

fundamental security that the internet has. Yeah, and there's lots of like god there are lots of extremely technical reasons why this is an extremely bad thing like it's like okay yeah like you you you think malware is bad now like oh god like look at like the the things the things that will happen like you you think people are stealing apes now like the things that will happen if you have to if you have to deal with an internet that's unencrypted or you know like yeah no it's an absolute horror show like yeah like i i yeah it's this this is a thing bad enough that like, I do not have the words to express

how catastrophic this would be because yeah, it's just a fundamental structure of the internet. It really is not just for messages like the urn it, uh, myths and fast document also like specifically attacks Amazon for not scanning enough of its content. Um, and since Amazon is the home of Amazon web services, which hosts a huge number of websites, that implies that the bill's aim is to ensure that anything hosted online also gets scanned. Like everything. The online service providers, even the smallest ones, will be compelled to scan user content with government-approved software like PhotoDNA.

And if EarnIt supporters succeed in getting large platforms like CloudFare and Amazon Web Services to scan, they may not even need to compel smaller websites because the government will already have access to the data through the cloud platforms. So like, as long as they get, you know, these big hosting platforms, they don't even like they won't even need to bother with a lot of with a lot of smaller sites. I think there's another thing I think that's probably worth mentioning here, which is – so we don't really have the time to fully go into this in this episode. But there's a lot of this sort of stuff is being pushed by these incredibly right-wing evangelical anti-porn groups. Yes. evangelical anti-porn groups yes and their goal is just to eliminate anything that is not like part of their sort of fundamentalist christianity yes from the internet and those people and this

is this is particularly relevant to this because those people are going to find a way to to to to like to bring lawsuits against these companies specifically so that they can do this. What you've done is you've just handed them a gun. Porn sites will all be taken down because they'll be facing so many endless lawsuits. Only fans will no longer host ethical porn. All of it will be taken down.

This will attack sex workers to such an absurd degree. It'll make a lot of, if not most, online sex work just impossible because there will be so many lawsuits always happening that companies will just always ban it just because they can't risk dealing with all those legal fees. And the fact that state prosecutors and private attorneys will be able to drag an online service provider into court over accusation that their users committed crimes and then use the fact that the service chose to encrypt, like, chose to use encryption at all as evidence against them is the fact that that's a strategy specifically allowed under EARNIT makes the possibilities of this type of thing just endless. Imagine, they'll be able to take down Signal so easily because it's

wild. If they can find one instance of an abuser using Signal or has used Signal, then basically all of Signal's encryption will be severely threatened because of the way that legal fines will be forced onto this company. It is specifically for stuff based, like, for any kind of, any service allowed in the States.

And yeah, it's really frustrating because, you know, people, including senators, who are pro-EARNIT, say that the new tools are necessary to tackle the issue of online child abuse and the distribution of illegal materials online. But, you know, obviously, like possessing, viewing, or distributing child porn or child sexual abuse materials is already written into law as a serious,

like it's an extremely serious crime. It's like the most illegal thing you can do. Yes, and it has a broad framework of existing laws seeking to eradicate it right people cannot like companies can already get in federal trouble if they're fined if if they're found to continue uh if like you know if stuff is found and they continue to host it or if their goal if like their stated purpose is to host it like like some of the most trouble you can get into, um, at least, at least like on the books. Um, because you know,

you can, you can look at, you know, how many cops are involved with this type of thing as like evidence being like, Oh, like, like as evidence that like, it doesn't like, it may not get enacted upon always.

There was, there was a horrible story recently of a teacher who, sorry, this is, this is, this is, this is going to be quite graphic. but of,

of a like skip ahead, like a minute or two, if you don't want to. Of a teacher who fed students food containing her husband's semen. Her husband was a cop. And her and her husband, again, who was a cop? The leader of a SWAT team had raped multiple children. And had pictures multiple children. And had pictures of children

and both of them were doing this together. That's the leader of a SWAT team. The fact that if you look at the people often doing this type of stuff, it's cops a lot of the time. Cops rape so many kids that

they arrest and detain. It is a shock. Like, you can Google this every week and you'll find, like, new reports of it. It is horrific. And, you know, online service providers that have actual knowledge of an apparent or imminent violation of current laws around child sexual abuse materials are required to report it or they will face legal trouble um yeah like you you could you can kill people and get in less trouble with the law then then you will get if if you intentionally do this stuff like there are scenarios where you can kill people where you won't get in trouble with law there is no scenario where you do you you like you you intentionally do like you intentionally do

this stuff where you will like unless you're a cop with like a with with legal protection of your other cops won't rat you out like yeah or you're like very very rich yeah like you know unless unless you have extra legal protection yeah like you are fucking going to vanish so yeah like we already have a lot of stuff to deal with this and the methods proposed by earn it would not only chip at the last semblance of of privacy online but it would all but it would arguably make actually combating real instances of online check of online child abuse a lot more difficult it would pressure distributors and abusers um a harder to find corners of the internet that don't fall under big tech companies.

Plus the massive increase in content scanning would produce so many false flags. It would clog up any efforts to find actual materials because so much stuff is going to get flagged, right? It's going to, you're going to get a wave of so many images that you have, that you have to sort,

sort through and figure out if the people in it actually are underage. Because a lot of people who look 30, sorry, a lot of people that are 30 can also look underage sometimes. Like with lighting, with effect, it's going to be such a task. And we can already see this in effect with new scanning techniques used by Facebook that have produced millions of reports to law enforcement, most of them inaccurate. And of course, federal law enforcement uses this massive number of reports produced by low-quality scanning software to suggest there's a huge uptick in these images. Thus, armed with misleading statistics, the same law enforcement groups make new demands to break encryption or with earn it to hold companies liable if they don't scan user content.

The scanning algorithms, right? Like, you know, OK, this is an oversimplification, but like to conceptualize why this is a bad idea. Like these these are these like this is that this is the same stuff that like, you know how, you know how there's, there's those, there's those like trending topics on Twitter. Yeah. And they'll, they'll, they'll show you a tweet and the tweet will be like, I don't know, there'll be, there'll be someone talking about a subway sandwich and it'll get like, it'll, it'll, it'll, it'll show up under trains, right?

Because it's the subway. Like this, this, those are the algorithms that they want to fucking run the entire internet through. I have seen some very erotic bell peppers. And these things aren't going to be good. And independent child protection experts are not asking for systems to read everyone's private messages. Rather, they recognize that children, particularly children that might be abused or exploited, actually need encrypted and private messaging just as much, if not more, than the rest of us.

Like, no one, including the most vulnerable among us, can have privacy or security online without strong encryption. And the EARN IT Act doesn't really just target big tech. What it does is it targets every individual internet user treating all of us as potential criminals who deserve to have every single message photograph or document scanned and you know compare it against a government database like directly directly to law enforcement um and since direct government surveillance would be you know blatantly unconstitutional and provoke public outrage, earn it to use these tech companies, from the largest ones to the smallest ones, as its tools to kind of bypass that constitutional barrier. Because, yeah, if you hit the tech companies where it hurts, they will not allow this type of stuff at all.

And this is also – you can, you know, you cannot deny that this is also just part of a larger effect to ban porn and just to ban any kind of sex work online as well. Like you, you cannot deny that this is, this is, this is definitely an ingrained part of this, particularly with a lot, a lot of its supporters. And of course, you know, Senator Lindsey Graham appealing to that side of the Republicans. This is a big part of just trying to remove porn and remove any not safe work material from being hosted online. So the strategy is to get private companies to do the dirty work of mass surveillance. It's the same tactic that governments tried to use this year, trying to convince Apple to subvert its own encryption and scan all of its users' photos. And it's the same strategy that the UK law enforcement is using to convince the British public to give up their privacy, having spent

public money on a laughable publicity campaign that demonizes companies that use encryption. that use encryption. So that's really how it's operating. I do want to shout out the EFF for providing a lot of the research that I used for compiling stuff on this episode. Thank you, EFF. You often do good work. That's the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

They focus a lot on like internet privacy issues um and i do want to point people to a uh a link tree it is a uh you know l-i-n-k-t-r dot e-e slash stop earn it um so yeah you can find different ways to um you know if you're the type of person that enjoys calling representatives or something, it has, it has links for that kind of thing. It has links to send, you know, automated messages to your representative to vote no on the earn it act. It has stuff, you know, if you're the type of person that enjoys signing petitions, um, it has, it has more info on what earn it is and what it does. It has more info on what EarnIt is and what it does. And a whole bunch of other stuff around, you know, organizing to help stop this bill. There's like Discord channels that have people organizing to stop this bill. Links for it on that.

It has info on like actions you can take. So yeah, I would, if you're interested in like looking for the different ways that can maybe, you know, contribute, you know, no, no single person can make an impact, but you know, enough people, enough people can. So yeah, that's link tree slash stop, earn it. And then also again, another shout out to the EFF. Yeah. I wanted to make, I want to say two closing things before we close this out. One, if, if you think that, if you think that once you're handing the entire contents

of the internet over to the government to run through scanning algorithms, that the only thing they're ever going to scan for is child pornography, I have an NFT to sell you. It is a picture of a bridge. Once you buy this NFT of the bridge, you will own the Brooklyn Bridge. Contact me for more details. The second thing is that

when we talk about like when we talk about anti-porn stuff when we talk about how you know the the the the way you get around this is by banning all non-suited not suited for work content right the other thing that almost immediately gets banned inevitably when when when when when companies for for whatever reason and this is true just of of companies that are trying to comply with you know like the app store or stuff like that like whenever you get target things that target not to for content they they inevitably inevitably without fail target queer content yes queer content that has literally nothing at all

through sexuality because that's you know this is this is this is this has always been like accusing queer people of being child predators has been the attack line on queer people queer people are always on the front line of all of this stuff yeah yeah they will always be the first people impacted they'll be the first people demonized even if even even if it's not even not safe for material if it even if it's not even not safe material if it has if it has nothing to do with it it will still always always be impacted more than basically any anyone else yeah and we've been seeing this on youtube like constantly yes lots of lots of people who just you know make trans content channels are always being banned

or demonetized yeah yep marked as adult content like yeah it's it's horrifying and if if you want an internet not even just if you want an internet that has like sex on it if you want an internet that has queer people on it right expressing themselves in in in in any way that's not like literally just it's straight person but you say queer right if that's a thing that you think is valuable and if you think that you know it is important for queer people to be able to express themselves for their own health and safety like you have to oppose this yes you absolutely um i guess one final thing i'll add because i know someone will probably message me about it. There is a slate opinion piece by somebody saying that this bill would actually let child abusers walk free

because they could use the fact that this bill essentially compels companies to do scanning software via government mandate because of this bill. Because in their mind, this could possibly violate the Fourth Amendment. This would allow abusers – the evidence that is collected to prosecute abusers to become invalid in court. So this would actually also make the – this would just make the bill actually make people walk free. I do not agree with this take.

I don't think that's how it would work out at all because especially for – you can use this for political organizing. You can use this for a lot of – you can use this same argument for a lot of cases and it never works out that way because the government does not care about that sort of thing um it's it's it's not that's not how it works um yeah i mean like again like things that get violated like in theory that does not know that's no way. They illegally seized, you know, Ted Kaczynski's, you know, like evidence. And yeah, no, it doesn't matter. Like, that's not going to matter because then this bill would be seen as a good thing because it would prevent people from, you know, then encryption wouldn't be necessary because then none of the evidence that people would, you know, would have gathered

would ever be admissible in court. And that is that they would never design a bill like that. That's not that's not the case. I disagree with this take. So do not send me this article saying, actually, it's going to have this happen, because I do not believe it. Because this assumes that the government operates like like coherently and operates like you know like no the government just does does not care no like again like the the the first amendment is superseded by traffic law yeah like no you you know that you're not going to be able to use no this isn't no this just

secretly let abusers go free this is not secretly a good thing because it'll make all evidence inadmissible in court. Bullshit. Yeah. Anyway, anyway, I'll give a final shout out to the link tree, link tree slash stop. Earn it.

Um, that's L I N K T dot E R slash stop. Earn it. Um, if you're the type of person that likes doing those types of things. And also it has like links, like discord channels for other types of organizing beyond, you know,

petitions and calling and senators and sending messages and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Anyway, that's the episode. Thank you for listening.

I just thought, I just thought this is, this is, this is an important thing enough that I haven't seen enough. I have not seen enough people talking about the earn it Act and the way it does seriously threaten digital privacy. And because it was approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee to be pushed forward, it is actually chugging along on the slow legal process. So it's gotten further than what it got in 2020. 2020 so i thought it was actually worth talking about um you know for privacy issues how it affects queer people how it affects sex workers um and all all that general thing so yeah and i

also i want to you know the it's very easy to feel hopeless with this kind of stuff but like we've beaten legislation we have before like i like one of my one of my formative childhood experiences was when we beat when we beat sopa and PIPA like we can beat them it takes it takes a lot takes a lot of mobilization but yeah like we we I know we can I know we can beat this because we've beaten things like it before agreed

all right that does it for us today if you want to find us on a currently more secure than what it could be internet you can follow us on Twitter at cool zone media and happen currently more secure than what it could be internet you can follow us on twitter at uh cool zone media um and happen here pod i think apparently instagram too so that's cool if you're an instagram person good good for you because twitter twitter is bad um you can find me on twitter at hungry bowtie um yeah find me at it me chr3 you can you can indeed that that does it for us um encryption

welcome i'm daniel thrill 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 iheart radio app apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast

Hey, everybody. Robert Evans here. Obviously, as I'm sure everyone is being bombarded with, the war in Ukraine is in its fifth day right now, something like that. We just passed 96 hours. By some accounts, more than 300,000 people have been made refugees. Those are going to be very inexact numbers, but it's likely to be somewhere between like 50 and 100,000 people per day being made refugees. And it's possible that's going to last for the foreseeable future. Much of the coverage that you will have seen at this point is going to focus on heroic pieces of resistance, you know, things that Ukrainian civilians picking up arms, throwing Molotov cocktails, Ukrainian soldiers, destroying Russian armored columns, some of that's going to be the propaganda, some of that a decent amount of that's actually happening. Obviously, we have a fair amount of documentation. But what I think has not gotten nearly as much play is the situation at the border of Ukraine and Poland, because this refugee crisis is enormous, but it's also not sexy.

And it points to a number of things that are ugly about some of the stuff that people like to celebrate in this conflict, including the conduct of President Zelensky, who has, I think, handled himself objectively well as a wartime leader and who has also, as you'll hear in the interview that's about to follow, made some decisions that have had a catastrophic impact on people's lives. with a person, an individual, an American who was, well, has a couple of different passports, but with a person who was in Ukraine when the invasion began and left and eventually wound up leaving on foot with tens of thousands of other people for the Polish border. So this is a story of what it is like to flee a country at the beginning of a war. And the reality is that increasing numbers of Ukrainians are going to be facing every single day. So please listen. Hi there. Hey, Manny. How are you? I'm doing well. How are you?

Good, good. Sorry to keep you up late. I'm sure you're exhausted. No, no, it's okay. It's okay. I actually just arrived at a new hostel in a new city. And I'm going to be up for a couple more hours anyway, so it's a good time to talk. Nice, great. Do you mind if I record this? Go ahead. the refugee situation that's emerging. And then I'm also helping to make a podcast for iHeartRadio about a similar thing. So if it's okay with you, we'll use the audio for one and then some of your words for another. Absolutely. How is my audio coming through? It's great, actually. It's really, really good. Are you on a telephone

or are you on a computer? I'm on a telephone right now. I don't have a computer with me. Cool. No, you're doing really well. If you're on a computer? I'm on a telephone right now. I don't have a computer with me. Cool. No, you're doing really well. If you're on a computer, I'd ask you to record a backup, but this is just fine. I'm recording. So yeah, it seems like you've had a pretty exhausting 48 hours now. So if we go back to when you were in Kyiv, right? So I was in Kyiv a few days ago. I was in Kyiv eight days ago. And then I went to Lviv four days ago. Okay.

And how long have you been in Ukraine? I've been in Ukraine, or I had been in Ukraine in total for one week okay so yeah not that long in there and you so you're riding Kiev you went to Lviv can you remember like where you were when you found out that the invasion was happening and that it was going to go past Donbass and into Ukraine yeah of course uh so I woke up on the morning of 24 February to the sound of air raid sirens outside. And it was a very confusing sound. I had never heard air raid sirens in real life. I just heard them in movies and television shows and such. And I knew immediately what had happened. I didn't even have to check the news. And I did check the news soon afterward. And there were

bombings all over the country. There were reports of bombings in Ivano-Frankivsk, which is a city 100 kilometers south of Lviv, where I was. And there were so many rumors flying around. There were rumors that the Russians were coming to Lviv at that moment, which was not the case, but can still be the case very soon. Anyway, so I heard these air raid sirens as I woke up. And I shook awake my roommate, who's a British journalist, and I told him we might be bombed any minute. So we went outside to try and find a shelter. Pretty much still in our nightclothes, we went outside to try and find a shelter. And there were loudspeakers saying, everybody remain calm, find shelter, help the elderly, stockpile water.

And it was repeating this on repeat. And people were shuffling along. There was a sense of muted panic. So it wasn't outright panic, but it was a sense of urgency, I guess you could call it. And we were at war. And that was when I realized that Ukraine was being invaded at that very moment. Wow, yeah, it sounds dramatic. And at that point you went to the shelter, I'm guessing,

so did you spend some time there before making the decision to head to Poland? So after about 15 minutes the air raid cyward stopped, the news generally came around the city that Lviv was not about to be bombed, but nevertheless a massive exodus of people began from Lviv at that moment because, OK, we're safe for now. But for how long are we safe was the general sentiment that was around. So everybody just started making for the train station, the bus station. They got in their cars. People were just leaving. There were huge lines at the ATMs. There were huge lines at the bus station. They got in their cars. People were just leaving. There were huge lines at

the ATMs. There were huge lines at the grocery stores. People were buying non-perishables. It was just not a panic pullout, I would call it, but it was an urgent departure. It was an urgent exodus that was happening. And so me and my roommate, we went to the train station, waited in line for two hours to see if there were tickets. There were no tickets. We went to the train station uh waited in line for two hours to see if there were tickets there were no tickets we went to the bus station we waited in line for one hour to see if there were tickets there were no tickets um and so then we started to get a little worried because it was noon on the day of the invasion russian forces were everywhere in the country there were bombings everywhere in the country and we had to leave And there was no viable means to leave. The airport was closed, of course. The airport was being bombed a few

hours later. And so we tried to look into car hire. We tried to see if we could rent a car. We tried to see if we could take an Uber or a Lyft or a blah blah car, which is the Ukrainian version of Uber. And none of those options were available, because everybody was thinking the same thing. And in a sense of almost resigned despair, we decided that it would be best to just start walking west and see what happened. And it was around noon when we began to walk west. Wow. So when you set off to walk, did you just sort of take what you could carry?

And was that sort of what most people were doing? Or did you get the sense that at least the people were like preparing for a long period of time away when they left? The people certainly were not preparing for a long period of time away. The people were not preparing for war. For the longest time, President Zelensky and the Ukrainian government maintained that there would be no war. They called indications of war alarmist. They called them ludicrous. And it was only in the final 24 hours that everybody sort of woke up and said there's going to be a war. So I remember the last day before the invasion, people were getting ready. People were waiting at the ATMs. People were buying groceries, people were packing. But it was not before before that time, nobody was getting

ready for the war. And so when the war struck, everybody, everybody just sort of left hastily. And it was a terrifying departure, a sudden and terrifying departure, because people didn't know what to do. And they just sort of grabbed what they had and they ran luckily for me and my roommate we were traveling with you know just one pack or so uh because we were we were not living in ukraine um and so we were able to just carry what we had on our backs yeah so talk me through that walk then it's uh i think i saw it's like 43 miles is that right that's that's right so we did take a municipal bus a little bit of the way. We took a municipal bus, I believe it was five kilometers down the road. Five kilometers being like three miles down the road.

And the total distance from Lviv to the border is 80 kilometers. So that really did not make a dent at all in the distance. And it was noon when we started. And we knew for a fact that we would not make it before nightfall. And we knew that and we were terrified of that. So at first we walked along. The countryside was picturesque. It was beautiful. It was indistinguishable from holiday during springtime.

It was a fair weather. It was sunny. And no one could even tell that the nation during springtime. It was a fair weather, sunny, and no one could even tell that the nation was at war. There was really nobody else walking on the road besides us in the beginning, in the first 20 kilometers, I would say. And then we started seeing long lines at the petrol stations. Everywhere was out of gas. Nobody had gas. There was just no ability to fuel cars. And as a consequence of that, cars were running out of gas and they were being abandoned on the side of the road, which caused further traffic pileups. And soon the road was impenetrable to vehicles.

And so because of this, everybody started getting out of their cars and walking and so these families who had planned to escape ukraine to poland in their cars and carry their lives with them were suddenly faced with the hard decision of taking what they could carry with them yeah that just sounds terrible that sounds really difficult and i'm sure you saw like older folks and younger people as well with people sort of um to, because that's a long walk, right? That's not a walk that everyone can do. So that must have been very difficult. It's a difficult walk for a young man and many old women

and little children under the age of five were forced on this march because there really was no other option for them. It was either go back to Ukraineraine and risk being bombed risk being under uh russian occupation or it was get out of your car and walk in the winter time with no food or water no toilet 450 miles um and it was just this nightmare scenario because all these people were on the road there were people in wheelchairs who couldn't negotiate the mud. There were mothers with strollers who couldn't get the children out, and the children were crying. The children were asking, why are we here?

What are we doing? Why did we have to leave home and walk 50 miles in the middle of winter? And the old people were sort of resigned to it. There was one old woman I passed who was using a cane, and the old people were sort of resigned to it. There was one old woman I passed who was using a cane and she was hobbling along, she had a backpack and I asked her, where are you going? Because we were a long, long way from the border and she said, I'm going to Poland, very simply.

It was a very matter-of-fact statement. And so these people walked with a sense of duty and a sense of urgency and um it was just a very tragic humanitarian scene yeah i can imagine and that was a major that was a major route that you're on right like a major road that just become impassable it wasn't one of the bigger highways but it was i believe the m11 the ukrainian m11 and uh it runs east to west throughout the country, and yeah, it's one of the major roads. And it had become completely clogged, yeah.

Jesus. So on arrival in Poland or at the border, I understand that there's some men, like broadly defined as like military age, right, 18 to 60, I think, aren't allowed to leave because they they have they have to stay in it and enlist is that right did you see yes the border was absolutely the worst part for that reason about five kilometers from the border at the end of our walk we were feeling relieved we were feeling like finally we've made it ukrainian military patrols started walking by and driving by and announcing through loudspeakers

and announcing with their own voices, all men must stay. All men between the ages of 18 and 60 have to stay, get out of line now. And so the fathers naturally asked, because there were a lot of fathers who were there to protect their families, to safeguard their families and to provide for their families. These fathers asked, how about us? We have little children. We have children under the age of five. How are we supposed to provide for them if you conscript us right here? The Ukrainian army did not care. They pulled them away physically from their families. There were a lot of tears. There was a lot of crying. There were a lot of hurried goodbyes. There was a lot of crying that point were people sort of

resisting that like just were they like sort of sad but resigned to it was it a mixture that was that well that was when the panic began um because everybody was sad but resigned to their fate of walking to poland but nobody was prepared for losing all the men yeah um so when all the men were lost when all the men were taken forcibly and this was public everybody could see these men being yanked from their families uh people first started yelling at the soldiers that didn't do anything obviously um and they they were they were so angry at the soldiers and the soldiers were didn't care um and then panic began because people realized oh my god this this person who was here with us, who was a travel

companion, who's a relative, now we have to leave without him. And even more, he's going to the front now and he is in great danger at the front. So people began pushing, they began shoving, they began being rude to one another. There was no sense of empathy among the people at all, because it was a panic to get across the border at that point. So there were people fainting and that was really just overlooked. The people who fainted were sort of dragged to the side and left there. And I think they made it. I don't know if they made it out OK.

They certainly didn't die. But there were people who were fainting. There were people who were fainting there were people who were sobbing there were people who were hyperventilating there was vomiting going on it was just this sense of absolute human panic as people just tried to escape in the last uh in the last five kilometers and especially in the last 500 meters was the very worst so yeah terrible thing to see have you i understand you've stayed in touch with one of the lads who was conscripted, right? Have you heard any more from him? Yes, that was a development from tonight.

Yeah, tell me about that. So while we were walking, this was about 15 kilometers out from the border, we met a young Ukrainian man. And we just got to talking to him because, I mean, we could relate to him. We were about, I'm, I'm about the same age as him. Um, and so I, uh, we were just like sort of talking about our lives and it was almost as if the war wasn't going on. And then we got to these army checkpoints, um, and they started calling all the men, you have to, you have to leave. Um, and so my friend said, Oh, I'm not, I'm not leaving. I don't want to fight in this war. And he tried to, you know, sort of, um, stay with us because we were foreigners. We were not,

we were not eligible to be conscripted. So he sort of tried to stay with us. He was, um, he was a student. He was trying not to fight in this war because he had a life elsewhere. He had a girlfriend, uh, who he, who he who he was traveling with um and so we we were walking with him and i said hey do you want to do an interview he said sure um and i started talking to him on camera and then a soldier came by and yelled in his direction hey you get out of line and um he said i'm sorry i have to go and he just gave me this look like this despairing look and he went with the soldier. Um, uh, two days later today, tonight, uh, he messaged me on Instagram and he said, uh, cause we, by the way, we had exchanged contact information while we were talking. Um, he messaged me on Instagram and he said, Hey, I saw that you mentioned me in, uh,

in your Twitter. Cause I told him about the Twitter as well. Um, and he said, hey, I saw that you mentioned me in your Twitter, because I told him about the Twitter as well. And he said, just letting you know, I'm safe in Lviv. I'm not in the East fighting the Russians. I am in Lviv, and I am safe. And it is my knowledge that he may have escaped conscription, because he would otherwise be in the East. But I'm not sure.

I just know that he is safe right now and he confirmed that he was safe. Okay. So, yeah, you're not sure whether he's doing training or whether he's in some rear echelon role or if he's managed to get out of it somehow. I know that he has managed to escape the brunt of the fighting with the Russians.

That's right. Yeah, okay. Yeah, good for him. But still a terrible thing to have to deal with. So it's my understanding. It's that there's visa free entry into Poland right now. Is that right? That people can walk across. Yes. The entry into Poland was an absolute breeze compared to the exit from Ukraine. I don't know why, but you have to wait in a long line in Ukraine for an exit visa just for permission to leave the country and so as I mentioned that was the worst part because they were only letting ten people out every 20 minutes ten people get an exit visa every 20 minutes and there were at least

2,000 people at the border with us and so that's that's where this panic happened is because every time they open that gate 20 every 20 minutes and by the way this is like 2 in the morning in the cold weather. And people are, as I mentioned, crying, vomiting, fainting. Um, and so every time they opened that gate, there was a human crush to get to that gate and it closed it and they forced the people back. And then it was another 20 minutes before it happened again. And this happened all night long. Um, and this was literally just to get permission to exit the country. It was ludicrous. It was insane. So, yeah, I'm sorry to divert from your question, but... No, it's very interesting.

Poland was extremely easy to enter. There was no visa process. They understood. They let us through. I think they just barely looked at our passports. So, yeah, it was easy. Were you, at that point, point like obviously you had no plans or places to go so like did they house you was there some kind of refugee housing that they put you in uh not when i was there um they did do that they did implement that about 12 hours after i

arrived um but when i arrived uh we were greeted immediately pretty much right out of the border facility, with donuts and tea. And so they gave us donuts, they gave us tea. And then they said, hey, there's a bus to Premishil, which is the city about 15 kilometers west of the border, where all the refugees are gathering. And they said, there's a bus to Premishil, leaves every 15 minutes. And we got on that bus. And then we arrived in Premishil. And at that time, refugees were responsible for their own accommodation uh we managed to book a room in a hotel with eight other refugees um in the room uh and so i was sleeping in this this room with eight other

refugees they didn't want to talk to me they were kind of despondent they'd lost everything and so they were just very sad the entire time uh that i was there yeah but to answer your question about housing real quick uh about 12 hours after we arrived they began setting up tents for the refugees and that is where many of the refugees are living now are in tents okay it's like do you know that's a polish government or the red cross or is that citizens of poland i have no idea which organization did that, but I can tell you that I did not see a single Red Cross or United Nations representative while I was in Poland. Okay, interesting. Yeah, they can be sometimes a little slow to react. Correct.

Yeah, yeah. Okay, so you then stayed in that hostel. You weren't able to really talk to the people there, which is understandable. They probably had a very, very difficult 24 hours. We all have had, yeah. I mean, no talking was being had, pretty much. Did you get a sense when, as you met the people walking there, crossing the border, et cetera,

were people, did they have plans to be gone from Ukraine? Were they thinking, where can I stay for a long period of time? Were they thinking, I'm going to wait this out in Poland and see? Right. I was pleasantly surprised that a good half of the people that I spoke to in that convoy, in that refugee caravan, had relatives either in Poland or elsewhere in Europe. And so they had all called their

relatives and they had arranged them to go to Western Europe and meet their relatives. Okay, yeah, so they've got a place they're planning to at least stay for a while. Yes, however, another half of them have no plans whatsoever and they're terrified. And those are the refugees that I stayed with in that hotel last night. They're terrified and they have no place to go. Yeah, right. And no one's really provided them with one yet. No. Yeah, that's difficult.

And it seems like it'll be interesting to see how the United States reacts because it hasn't really done very much so far. It's amazing. I heard that the reason I crossed at that place rather than any other place is that I heard that the U.S. Army was there and I did not see the U.S. Army. I searched for them and I did not find them. So I don't know where the U.S. is. Okay. Yeah. You haven't seen any evidence of like any, seems like no sort of NGOs or government aid for refugees yet then? aid for refugees yet then? It's kind of surprising. As I mentioned, I haven't seen any UN representative,

any Red Cross representative, any WHO representative. I haven't seen any NGO or governmental representatives. I did see, of course, Polish government representatives at the border, but that was about it. From Polish people, do you get a sense of solidarity?

Yes. Okay, good. Talk about how you received it. So it was actually amazing to see. It was heartwarming to see the citizens of Kresmendil are now swamped. Their population has been doubled or tripled by the incoming Ukrainian refugees. And yet they are showing great amounts of solidarity. I actually attended a solidarity

rally today where the citizens of Presbyterian got together and they said, Ukraine is our brothers and Putin is clearly in the wrong and we will stand with them. We will show solidarity with them. And that was heartwarming to see. I talked with a few of those polls at that rally and they said, yeah, we knew this was coming and we prepared for it and we are ready to take in as many as is necessary yeah that's really nice to hear actually that these people are sort of showing solidarity with each other and support with each other and yes yeah so when you were on your way west i presume that like the uh the conflict didn't catch up with you right you weren't sort of subjected like indirect fire or you didn't see any of that no however there was um about 50 kilometers behind us a bombing as i mentioned

uh we did not hear it uh but there were reports of the fighting going on all the time but it did not catch up to us while we were in that uh while we were in that caravan and um it would have been absolutely terrifying if it had but i'm glad that it didn't right yeah and then so you've been there for about a week had you previously been doing some reporting in ukraine uh i have never done reporting in ukraine before but when i came to ukraine and the war had not yet started uh i was mostly just doing interviews with civilians about what they thought about the possibility of war about what they thought about the war in Donbass Most a lot of cultural stuff. It was kind of boring

I mean not that not that war is interesting or fun, but it was not really much of a story So I was just doing interviews with people about Basic Ukrainian things and then the war found us so right and it seemed to come as much of a shock to them as it did to to the rest of us as i mentioned nobody was prepared for war until about 24 hours before it hit and that's when the ukrainian government said yes there will be a war and everybody began sort of to have a sense of urgency about them right did you see any of the like citizen militias and citizens preparing for defense, the people who decided to stay?

Yes. I didn't see any of the militias, but I went into a Ukrainian gun shop in Kyiv, and there was a line almost out the door. People were buying guns. And I asked one of the people in the line why are you buying a gun and he said if the Russians come I want to be prepared so a lot of people are buying guns privately in Kiev at least as of last week okay so that they won't wait for the government to supply them they were supplying themselves with guns I

believe I believe the government supply was a rather sudden decision I don't think the Ukrainian people were counting on it. And so they were supplying themselves. And they're buying like Kalashnikov rifles? We talked about hunting rifles. Yeah, you can't buy Kalashnikovs in the gun store. They were buying sort of hunting rifles and shotguns. Jesus. Okay. Yeah, yeah. Fairly under equipped. All right. So they were just prepared to try to get anything they could get their hands on to look after themselves and their families.

That's right. Yeah. I bought pepper spray. Better than nothing. Yeah. Okay. So yeah, there was, did you see, like, of the people you walked with, was it, did families tend to leave as a whole? Or did some folks sort of say, right, I'm going to stay behind and fight, or I'm going to stay behind to stay and look after a house and you should leave? Did you get a sense of that? The vast majority of people traveling were families as a whole. There were very few single travelers or partial families traveling.

I think that people wanted to stick together. And so it was the vast majority of people traveling were families. OK. Yeah. So they all stayed or or left do you get a sense of how many people you said about 2 000 people there at the border like of what proportion of the city decided to leave for poland not all the people at uh the border were from levive um a lot of them have been traveling since that morning from kiev uh and other cities in central western Ukraine. So, yeah, I was talking to people at the border and a lot of them were from Kyiv. A lot of them were from Zaporizhzhia.

I'm pronouncing that wrong. A lot of them were from Ternopil or Ivano-Frankivsk or Odessa. And so I would not have any sort of conjecture on what percentage of the city. Also, it was still pretty early in the crisis because it was still the first day and it was fewer than 24 hours after the invasion began. So I imagine the numbers are a lot higher now. When you were getting news, right, as you were traveling, etc., were you like on WhatsApp or were people on Twitter? Like, how were they getting news of what was happening? Everybody and absolutely everybody was completely dark during the walk

because I don't know why, but there was no sense of cell reception. There was no sense of data reception. There was no sense of internet connection at all during the walk. And so everybody I met, we asked we asked everybody we met do you have any news and they said no do you have any news um so nobody had any news until we got to the border some people had news but for about uh about 16 hours we were completely in the dark about what was going on and that was terrifying because when we left the invasion had just begun and we didn't get to be updated on the first half day of it so right yeah it's crazy yeah and then on arrival you're faced with this news of

this like sort of blitzkrieg almost right of bombing and armor right yes um i mean we we saw a little bit of it in the morning that day uh we started out, but it had really accelerated and amplified by the time that we arrived. And the Ukrainians were absolutely terrified of this because they did not realize what happened on such a large scale. Yeah, I think very few people did. I can imagine if it's in your own country, it's petrifying. Were you there when the fighting began in the Chernobyl exclusion zone, or were you in Poland by then? When did the fighting begin in Chernobyl? I believe about 24 hours after the fighting began, like, period.

I was crossing into Poland 24 hours after the fighting began, period. So I was probably crossing into Poland when that fighting began. Okay. I was interested to know know especially how sort of the older people or people who have been alive you know the the nuclear accidents you know but i was wondering how right i mean i've been talking to plenty of plenty of older people and as i mentioned the older people especially were resigned to this because during the soviet times during the cold war this sort of thing was common um and so the older people knew what was going on, and the younger people were the ones who were more panicking. That's interesting. Yeah, they'd been raised with a fear of that, I suppose.

Right. And this happened in 1989, too. Like, this is the biggest refugee crisis since 1989 because in 1989, when all the republics fell in the Warsaw Pact, so many people took to the roads. And so the older people were used to that kind of thing. But as I mentioned, the younger people were not. Right. Yeah, yeah. And so, yeah, different reactions, I guess. And then some very young people obviously aren't able to understand what's going on beyond that they're leaving their homes, which is sad. Right. And especially the little children had no idea what was going on.

And it was impossible to explain to them. So nobody did. And so I can't imagine how terrifying this must have been as a child, not knowing why you had to walk dozens of hours in the cold carrying everything you had. Yeah. It's always the saddest thing to see children in those refugee situations when they obviously don't know what's going on and didn't do anything wrong and right yeah hopefully they're all safe hopefully they're in poland hopefully they can go to safe places i made several contacts during this trip and as i mentioned only one of one of them has gotten back to me so i hope the others get back to me soon yeah that's tough but you've got the sense of almost they won't

turn back per se they just uh might be sort of uh not in touch because their phones aren't charged or something like that it's either their phones aren't charged or if in the men's case they were sent to the east yeah or they're too busy trying to arrange accommodations or food for themselves or something. I mean, everybody was just very busy trying to survive. So I don't blame them if they don't hop on social media and get away. Yeah, yeah, of course. Of course, yeah, it's a very, very stressful time for everyone. Did you hear of anyone who has been sent to the east either second hand or like through people you met people who are at the front already um i do not have any contacts

of anybody who was sent to the east from what i understand uh the ukrainian army has a strict uh communication social media sort of policy and so none of the soldiers that i met one wanted to talk to me i did not talk to any ukrain any Ukrainian army soldiers in uniform because they had a very strict policy. They could not talk to me. And two, I could not get their contacts for much of the same reason. OK, so they didn't want to talk to journalists, didn't want to talk to anyone. They were just looking for. Yeah, no, they were just they were very stern and they did not want to talk to anybody. So I talked to zero soldiers in uniform during this experience. OK, yeah. So where are you now? You've you've gone further west west is that right that's right i took

a long bus ride to uh krakow today um so i'm now in krakow poland okay how are folks dealing is it different there being a little bit more distant i've already talked to a few people and uh well it's a saturday night they're going out to drink and they uh they're saying well yeah it's it's terrible that this war is happening 250 miles east of us but what are we supposed to do about it so they're going out and drinking so it's this very um detached sense here in krak, not the same as it was in Fresnoville. Yeah, interesting. So people are living their normal lives and it's just a news item for them. They're not worried about any potential spillover or fallout. Right.

Okay. Yeah, they're not worried. Nice. And do you plan to stay there? What's next for you? So I actually just booked a flight an hour ago. I'm going to be flying back to the States on March 1st. Okay, great. Yeah, so you can come back. And presumably you're a U.S. passport

holder, so you could just get that's how you go through not being conscripted, etc. I'm not carrying a U.S. passport right now. I'm carrying an Italian passport because I'm also a citizen of Italy. And I was told before I left by some friends in the intelligence community that it would look significantly less suspicious to carry an EU passport

than a U.S. passport. So I bought the EU passport. Nice, yeah. And then you can travel freely through the EU. Yes, through Schengen, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Do you know if Ukrainian people can travel once? Because once they're in Poland, can they then move through the Scheng through schengen yeah yeah yeah do you know if ukrainian people can travel once because once they're in poland can they then move through the schengen zone

freely ukraine is not a member of the eu they're not a member of schengen i do not believe they can move freely right i'm just wondering like i could yeah they would be i don't know how their passports would be checked if they're going across some of those land borders but i think i do know that this was it was an emergency situation uh yesterday and so that's why they were just very cursory checked but i'm sure it's stricter usually yeah i wonder what that would be like if they they tried to exit poland or if they'll right yeah i don't know what's going to happen to them no i don't think i'm guessing there's been no communication of that that you've seen either right like of what they should do or how to apply for asylum or anything like that. I have talked to a few people.

They say that they're banking on these countries being empathetic to refugees. And I understand. I think that countries will be empathetic to refugees. Yeah, yeah. You certainly hope they will. So they're just going to hope that those countries, the ones who don't have a country to go to, you get the sense that they'll apply for asylum wherever they can find a safe place. That's right. And I believe that countries, Western European countries that

have been very vocally pro-Ukraine recently, will take them in. So I think that they'll be safe. Yeah, that's good to hear i know i've seen estimates of up to five million refugees if which yeah would be uh i mean germany absorbed a million people from syria right it's not yeah it's not impossible for western european countries to do that at all uh but it will but it would still be a catastrophic crisis the worst since 1989 yeah and we have to hope it doesn't get to that do you get the sense people are still flying across the border i know you're a bit yes i think from it i mean it it's weird because you want to believe that what you experienced and what the people

around you experienced was a one-time thing that it was a one-time incident that it was one caravan but this is happening constantly and it will continue to happen constantly for weeks yeah and that trains and the crossing border things like that that people can take or is it solely yes so when I when I said that I went to the train station of the even there were no trains what was really happening is yes there were trains but all the trains until March March were booked so oh wow okay so yeah people can't take those trains across that kind of thing if they try to book right now they won't be able to find a booking for a while okay they were already booked up and by

the way here in Krakow the first two hostels that I went to the first two places to say that I went to we're all booked up and I asked why and he said Ukrainian refugees so there are Ukrainian refugees here in krakow okay yeah people are moving but i'm sure a lot of people want to get as far away as they can yeah so people are just constantly moving west right now yeah or they have friends or family that they're trying to get to whatever yeah and i've been hearing the ukrainian language just constantly on my trip so that's interesting too yeah yeah um. Um, yeah, thanks for that. It's a really, really interesting insight. Is there anything else you think from your experience that people ought to hear about? Um, no, I believe I've told you everything. I've, I've retold the

story, uh, dozens of times since it happened. And, um, I really hope that I hit all the, all the right, uh, notes here. Um, right uh notes here um if you if you had to tell anything to the people who were reading or listening to this um ukraine really needs weapons yes but they also need humanitarian aid when i was walking all that distance with all those people there was not a single sense of food being provided to anyone water being provided to anyone there was no chance to go to the toilet. There was often no chance to sit down. If we could give even a chance for these people to eat something, to drink something, to have a minute of solace, that would mean the

world to them. And so I think that we need to provide humanitarian aid to the refugees as soon as possible. Yeah. And you said you didn't see any organizations you'd suggest people donate to. You didn't see any of that. Is there anyone you can remember? No. And I don't know. I haven't actually done the research into that. I probably should.

But I know that the Welcome Committee in Poland were private citizens. They were not part of any NGO or anything. They were private citizens who were welcoming us in. Yeah. I've seen some of them organizing on Facebook. So I'll try and maybe link to some of those or something like that so people can support. Right. Yeah, we'll see. And all right. And then is there anything like you'd like to plug? Like, do you have a Twitter, right? Is there anything else you could tell us what your Twitter is? I mean, so the Twitter that I'm using for this, which you've probably seen is a temporary one. It was meant only to cover this crisis.

I guess my private Twitter, plug that, which is, you've seen that as well, probably. Yeah. It's just my name. Yeah, I guess just plug that. And I mean, thank you for everything. No, of course. It's Manny Marotta with two Ts, right? Yes, M-A-R-O-T-T-A.

Great. Okay, we got that. Yeah, thank you very much. Thanks for taking the time to talk. I appreciate you trying a pretty difficult couple of days,

so get some rest. And if there's anything else of any developments, please do let me know. Give me a shout. Feller, thank you. All right, cheers, mate. You have a good evening.

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 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. 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. That's the thing. Just take photos of his children walking into the door of their public school.

Yeah. Send them to him with a proton mail account. Don't let him know what he did to provoke this. Just frighten him. I do like it all since it's being recorded. Yeah, that's how you do it. The episode's begun. We're including all of that, Sophie.

All of that. Welcome to It Could Happen Here, the podcast where we will take pictures of your children entering a public school and send them to you as a threat. But we won't tell you what we're threatening you over. Because that's... I don't know what that is. Probably terrorism, technically. Sophie!

Speaking of child abuse... Yeah! Oh, great. Garr! Speaking of child abuse. Yeah! Oh, great. Garrison, very proud. Nailed it. Yeah. Yeah, so we're doing an episode to talk about the recent kind of letter and opinion piece that the governor of Texas and the attorney general wrote relating to trans kids in Texas.

We're also planning like a more like a week long worth of stuff kind of going into this issue across not just the states, but also like like internationally as well in terms of like the growing kind of war on trans people. But because this thing happened, we do want to kind of talk about it now as well. Because this thing happened, we do want to kind of I think it was Monday the 21st, declaring gender-affirming medical care for transgender children to be child abuse. In response, the next day, the governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, directed the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services to investigate these practices. And then kind of on that following Wednesday, the letter that Greg Abbott wrote went viral, detailing both the attorney general's kind of opinion that a number of the so-called, quote, sex change procedures constitute child abuse under existing Texas law, family and protective services to protect these to quote unquote protect these kids from abuse and i hereby direct your agency to conduct a prompt and thorough investigation to any reported

instances of these abusive procedures um and what's really insidious is that like it's not even it's like of course like there is not gender affirming surgery done on minors anyway. That does not happen. But this letter actually does go into it says according to the Attorney General opinion, it is already against the law to subject Texas children to a wide variety of elective procedures for gender transitioning

including reassignment surgeries that can cause sterilization, removals of otherwise healthy body parts, and administration of puberty blocking drugs or doses of testosterone or estrogen. So it is also including HRT, including puberty blockers, which again, we already give to cisgender children all the time. Puberty blockers are given to kids who have early onset puberty who are cis, but it's now including puberty blockers inside, like constituting that in and of itself as child abuse,

which is kind of an escalation of things that we've seen before. Yeah, and then it's also talking about how Texas law imposes reporting requirements upon all licensed professionals, including doctors, nurses, teachers, therapists, and provides criminal penalties for failure to report things. So that was the main part of the letter that went viral, detailing the different ways that they're trying to harass, intimidate, and introduce possible legal repercussions to parents and um you know caregivers who support transgender

youth inside the state of texas yeah um it is it is like the perfect example of the thing these people always do when they make laws based on their bigotry which is like reflexively make a law based on whatever is like the fucking Twitter talking point that they've been yelling about. And then don't consider all of the different things that it's going to do that have nothing to do with the group of people they're trying to hurt. Yeah. Because in lots of cases,

this is just gonna, it's, it's not even gonna, it's, it's going to impact a lot of like queer people in general. Right. Cause it's, it's in terms of like reporting things that seem outside the mainstream so not even necessarily transgender not even necessarily

transgender people not even necessarily queer people as well like there's a lot of like you know i i and if definitely when i was growing up there was a lot of like cis girls who enjoy dressing more like butch or tomboy um you know there's there's a and there's a whole bunch of stuff that will just affect like kids kids in general with all of this reporting and all of this making these procedures and hormone treatments trying to make

them seem like they're illegal. Because again, the actual Texas law has not changed. This is an opinion piece directing the Child Protective Services to investigate these things. So the actual law in the books hasn't changed. What it has done is caused a whole bunch of possible legal danger and a massive headache

and just a whole bunch of legal harassment against parents and kids. And that's what it's going to result in. Because it's unclear what the governor's directive is going to actually practically look like. going to result in because it's it's unclear what this what the governor's directive is going to actually practically look like um because in the in the in a tweet on on last tuesday he said that he's directing uh the child protective services to enforce this ruling and investigate and refer for prosecution for instances of minors receiving affirming care um and then the texas protective services told time magazine on wednesday that it was going to comply with the governor's directive. But in terms of like directing them for prosecution, there has been

like five Texas district attorneys, including the DAs of Dallas County and Houston's Travis County. They issued a statement the day after condemning the directive and saying that they plan to enforce the Constitution. They're quote unquote, that's what they said, and that they are, quote, deeply disturbed by Governor Abbott's and Attorney General Paxton's cruel directives treating transgender children's access to life-saving gender-affirming care as child abuse.

We will not irrationally and unjustifiably interfere with medical decisions made between children, their parents, and their medical physicians to ensure the safety of transgender youth, adding that we will not allow the governor or attorney general to disregard Texas children's lives in order to score political points. So in terms of, you know, there's going to be certain parts of the state where even if protective services does investigate reports of this,

they're not going to get prosecuted. But there will be other parts of the state where they probably will. Because it is just an interpretation of the law, you can still get lots of legal trouble. And it's going to be up to juries and other people to decide on what interpretation of the law is going to be enforced and enacted upon. So you're seeing a lot of people being like, oh, no, it's actually okay because the law is not changing. It's just the interpretation. And we're like, oh, no, it's actually okay because the law is not changing. It's just the interpretation. And we're like, well, no, it actually is a big problem. Like, and it's not even, it's just the overall, like, it's saying the things that have been gone unsaid for a long time.

Like, it's making the things that everyone kind of assumed or was kind of the unsaid bigotry, putting it into writing and making it concrete. And it's like the overall escalation of this thing, which is deeply concerning. I mean, it's the thing that happened with like COVID restrictions, like masks and stuff, where you've got the cities and stuff where you have kind of more rational leadership are saying like, we're not paying attention to this directive from the governor. We're going to keep letting people mask, or we're not paying attention to this directive from the governor. We're gonna keep letting people mask or we're not gonna let you go after businesses that require masks.

But with the added dimension of like, rather than it being sort of targeting businesses and schools, it's targeting individuals and it's allowing individuals to target other individuals like the Texas abortion law. Exactly. And the primary purpose of this is going to be to basically gradually erode the areas in which trans kids can live in Texas. Like, yep, they'll be able to live in some of the cities for a while at least.

Well, and even in the cities, right? It's like, yeah, okay, so maybe the DA doesn't prosecute. But that doesn't mean that CPS can't investigate you. And that's really traumatic. A lot of legal harassment. Because, yeah, I mean, like, DFPS cannot remove any child from their parents or guardians without a court order. And no court in Texas or anywhere in the country has yet found gender-affirming care to be considered child abuse. So it has not happened yet, but they sure

want it to happen, and these are the next steps that can make it happen. They are trying to get there with this incremental, these incremental things, starting off with legal interpretations of the law. Eventually, they would want to change the law just to reflect

this opinion. They want this to happen. They're trying to reflect this opinion, right? Like they want this to happen. They're just, they're trying to slowly, slowly, slowly get at it. And it needs to be pushed back upon because yeah, any slow incremental thing that they're going to try to do to make it basically be impossible to live as trans in Texas and lots of other states as well. It's not just, it's not just Texas. There's things like this happening across all of the United States, basically, especially

portions of the South. And it's... Yeah, it does play into this kind of overall in the past five years. Once they lost the gay marriage issue, they're like, okay, the next line of defense for these people is making

it be impossible to be trans so it is that it's like the new that's the new thing they're going to be really focusing on and we've seen so many so many new bills against uh against like being trans over the course of the past five years again it's it is more so putting into writing the things that have been always kind of unconscious bigotry or even conscious bigotry, but it's putting that into actual stone and making it like cemented. Just at the start of this year, there was new restrictions

put in place for Texas' transgender student-athletes playing on K-12 school sports teams. That went into effect on January 18th. It was House Bill 25 authored by Representative representative valerie swanson um requires student athletes to complete an interslastic competition to play on sports

teams that correspond with the sex listed on their birth certificate at or near their time of birth which means that the legislation went further than the previous rules from the university of slastic league um which governs the school sports in Texas, in which the student's gender is determined by their birth certificate, but that can also be legally modified. You can change the sex assigned at birth on your birth certificate.

The new ruling is that it needs to be, it needs to match the one that it was at or near your time of birth. So again, they're finding all these little, these little small like things to like pry um that just makes things overall be harder to live in um and at this point like 10 other states have put in very similar laws relating to like relating just to school sports and like bathroom bills and yeah yeah i mean it mean, it's the same thing that authoritarians always do, which is they're just kind of edging further and further and continuing to proceed as they do not meet resistance. And the goal is to make it illegal and impossible to exist as a transgender person in society. Part of what they're doing with the wording of how this change in Texas

has been announced is they're trying to frame being trans as a contagion that threatens children. And step one of that is proceeding under the aegis of we are protecting children by making these kinds of surgeries and stuff illegal. But the steps beyond that are eventually banning and restricting the ability of trans people to be around children and eventually be in civil society at all because they're a threat to children. That's the logical procession of the arguments that they're making. And I think they're proceeding in a fairly logical way in terms of achieving that as a goal. way in terms of achieving that as a goal. And they're not going to stop until they are stopped by probably force.

If anything stops it at this point, that's what it's going to have to be because the local government has realized that that's how you get elected because you can't fix the power grid in Texas. You can't provide people with anything that makes their lives easier, but you can't fix the power grid in Texas. You can't provide people with anything that makes their lives easier. But you can hurt trans people. And Republicans are always down with that. It's the thing fascists do where they introduce a false crisis that they can actually take steps to make changes about. But all that ends up doing is hurting more of the population. It doesn't actually solve any issue that actually hurts people.

It's one of the core things in the fascist playbook. Even in the states where there aren't just blanket bans on kids being able to participate in sports teams, there's other horrifying things happening. In the beginning of February, it came out that the Utah Republicans proposed a commission to analyze trans kids' bodies. Utah Republicans introduced a first-of-its-kind anti-trans sports bill that would form a commission to determine a student athlete's eligibility on a case-by-case basis.

The commission would have authority to establish a baseline range for various attributes, including height, weight, body mass, wingspan, hip-to-knee ratio, and other physical characteristics affected by puberty, bearing trans athletes who do not fall within the established limits from participating in gendered sports. And yeah, asking a government-appointed panel to analyze the bodies of trans minors does sound like a giant recipe for disaster.

And there is some even more horrifying details. The bill would render the commission, quote, immune from suit, like lawsuits, with respect to all acts done and actions taken in good faith in carrying out their purposes. So yeah, you can't sue anybody for what happens under the guise of this commission. So yeah, they're just going to be investigating trans youths' and yep you can't there's no lawsuits allowed and that's great it's let's let's

let's get let's give the let's give the trans child abuse uh phrenology panel just immunity from lawsuits like uh-huh yeah qualified extend qualified immunity to citizens hurting the group of people that we don't think are human. Like this isn't the only place we're going to see that logic extended towards. You're already seeing it in places like Louisiana with these bills to make it legal to kill protesters if you feel threatened. Yeah. Like it's the same playbook and it's going to be the same playbook because there's no way to fight it without some sort of force you can't vote these people away nope uh the courts are packed for the time being there's there's only there's not a solution that isn't some kind

of force now we can discuss is it like the force of getting the feds to intervene or whatever? But like there's no there's no solution that is just like democratic. I mean, and like Biden's office made a statement on this recent Texas law, like a law opinion interpretation thing. And they're like, yeah, this seems bad anyway. Good luck. And you're like, yeah. Oh, cool. Yeah. It's that that meme of like the person

drowning with their hand out of the water and they high-five you as you're thinking yeah that's exactly what's happening and i think a situation's like on is worse than that too because you know in the past couple of weeks when something we started seeing is we started seeing democratic journals and democratic strategists openly talking about how we need to make concessions to the right in the culture war it's like okay well what does that mean it's like yeah throw trans kids under the bus right yeah because they can't vote they're already freaks so yeah they're the easiest person to pick away at the rights for yeah um and because overall just in the past year alone more than 100 bills designed to restrict the rights of transgender people have been introduced in at least 33 states.

It's a record-breaking year for anti-trans legislation that has been introduced. In Arkansas, the state legislator recently banned gender-affirming treatment for minors, including hormone therapy, like puberty blockers, and similar treatments. Again, this is the thing that

could not happen for a long time anyway, just because, like, culturally and medically, doctors would never do that. But now, at the point where that is starting to change, it is this, like, reactive effect that people are doing. Now that these cogs are turning, people are putting the massive brakes on it and putting the thing that used to be just unsaid now into actual legal writing. So now this actually is like just not allowed as opposed to it just not happening because doctors were assholes. So yeah, in Arkansas, you can't even receive hormone treatment or purity blockers. The bill was called the Save Adolescents from Experimentation Act. Yeah. So referring to medical treatment of affirming one's gender identity as experimentation. Which is not great. I mean,

that is how I view it for myself, because I like being a freak, but as an overall trend, that is horrible. That is a horrible way to phrase this type of thing for a lot of people, especially the people who know specifically what gender they want to be

and are. that affects them so differently. I mean, I'm lucky enough just to be more genderqueerish. But yeah, all of these bills are going to affect so many people in different ways, and it's real bad. Shortly after the Arkansas bill prohibiting trans-reforming medical practices was signed into law last April, reports of suicide attempts among trans youth in the state were going up. And the – Dr. Michelle Hutchinson, who runs the largest provider of hormone therapy in the state, called the AP that just in her office alone during April, she saw an uptick in suicide attempts from trans youth. And this is, it's going to keep happening. And like there is, you can't trust a lot to stop it. Like the Arkansas governor, Issa Hutchinson, a Republican, did veto this bill citing potentially dangerous consequences for trans youth and telling it that,

telling reporters that it was a vast government overreach and a byproduct of the culture war in america and her veto was vetoed by the state legislator so like it's going to be a looping endless problem of legal issues so it's there's there's needs to be other things like i've been i've been on twitter the past week just watch watch, looking at all the GoFundMes by parents of trans kids in Texas who are trying to move out of state so that their kid can receive like hormone treatment and just like be allowed to be a person without being harassed by child protective services and teachers and the school system. And it's,

it's, it's, it's horrifying. Like watching all these people like asking for help so that they can move out of state so that they can let their kid be just a kid. Um, and it's, it is,

it is really rough. Um, and a big part of why, part of why it's so horrifying is that like, obviously if you're in that situation, you can get your kid out there, of course, but it also means the,

the more people who move out of places like that, the less resources there will be in the future for kids whose parents can't get them out. And the less support there will be, the less – And there is no real escape from it. You cannot get fully away. escape that type of fascist um thought and creep in within the state legislator and specifically around you know how it's going to affect different different classes of minorities um i i will direct people if you want to kind of learn more about this sort of thing and if you you know can you can find some some stuff around uh there's an organization in Texas called Tent, which is, uh, the, uh, I just want to make sure I say it right. Oh no, it's the Texas Educational Network, the Trans Educational Network of Texas. Um, it's one of those, but it is, it is, uh, it is,

it has a whole bunch of like mental health resources, guides for trans youth in Texas for how to make things slightly less shitty. Um, and yeah, they yeah, they do some advocacy work in Texas. There's also Equality Texas, which is another organization that does assistance for transgender people in schools and just, you know, again, trying to make life slightly less shitty. Yeah, I kind of...

The last thing I wrote is the is uh just uh fix your hearts or die which is the kind of overall overall message that you can really only give to people who want to do this type of thing is that yeah there's really no arguing with them um you have to either they need to fix their hearts or not be around anymore like they're just like whether that be like they're just secluded to your part of society but it's like it needs to be actually like resisted upon because these people are never going to back down on their own the other part of the problem here again is just with how you know like this this is sort of kind of this is an inherent problem that you have with democracies right with with democracies and civil rights where it's yeah you have a group people who are an extremely small

minority and you know and you know and and this gets compounded by the fact that you're dealing with extremely small minority of people and you know you're already dealing with like the you know the the thing that is called democracy right is only participated in by an extremely small number of people especially when you get you know especially when you get down to like the state level the local level right like very few people are actually voting in these things the people who are voting in these things like want trans people to die and so you know you you you need some kind of other solution to actually secure to secure civil rights because there's just there's there literally are not enough trans people and there are not enough

people who support them and care enough to do it and also are in these areas to prevent this through just the normal like vote blue I mean like I keep seeing this with Texas everyone keeps saying it's like well okay we just gotta vote blue and it's like people have been like people have been saying this

about stuff in Texas for as long as I've been alive it has never happened ever like it hasn't my entire life like they keep saying is it keeps not happening and kids keep dying and yeah there has there has to be something else because yeah texas is gonna come back here texas has been laboriously constructed as a political entity to stymie all of your liberal dreams of of uh it going purple um and and it will continue to be for the foreseeable future like you cannot this is not a voting issue this is uh i mean like i said some kind of force is going to have to be used to oppose these people.

They're not – they wouldn't listen if you voted them out. And they do force. They themselves do force. You can look at all the stuff they've been doing. That's what this is, is force. Yeah, and even like regular people, like this whole thing of like, yes, you should report to your neighbors. If you see a kid who doesn't look like a regular normal boring cis child then yeah you should report them you should go harass everyone who works in your school board so that they ban all books referencing anything related to being queer it's like they they do take steps to

actually hurt other individuals um and they they can do it through these means that you know they don't necessarily have to always punch you in the face but they can sure direct the state to send agents to your house to to like to intimidate harass you and threaten to threaten to take away your children um or they can you know if you're a therapist or a teacher you can be fired or put in jail for failing to report you know kids who don't subscribe to their their Christian supremacist ideas of like traditional gender roles. Um,

cause again, it's, it's, it's not even all, it's like, again, there's not tons of trans people in general, usually.

So like, this is just going to affect a lot of CIS kids as well, who maybe don't want to, who don't, who don't, who don't, who, who just want to dress cool.

Like it's like, it's, it's, it doesn't even just like, it is, it is, it does affect everybody. So it is, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a horrible, it's a horrible thing that is not even like, there's no escape from it and it will affect you whether or not you're trans or not. Yeah. And I, and I, I think it's important also to talk about the mandatory reporting stuff because even mandatory reporting in general, like even like I've, I've had things where I was in a school and my school essentially turned into a police state because there are people who I couldn't talk to about things because of things that happened to me that if, if, if, if any of them heard it and one time someone did, and I had to literally beg them like on my knees not to report me right not not to report the thing that happened to me because if you know because because if if if that had been heard like and if that had actually been reported it would have you know it would have started an enormous process and i would have had to you know like the the i i i would have had to you know deal with this like this is an institutionalized thing and that like the absolute terror that this kind of stuff creates where you have to you know you have to watch every single word that you say around all of the adults in your life

because if you don't do it they are going to report you it is like the the level of psychological terror you are inflicting on people is horrific and that in and of itself just is is a cost like and it is something that is is going to contribute to trans kids killing themselves and it's it's just that simple and that bleak it is such a life and death issue so you have to really be forced to go yeah it goes into like it's like a very like ontological issue as well um and it deals with so many things around the nature of like being and what you're allowed to be inside as the societal construct um and they're just trying to make that impossible for so many people

and make everything so limited in their very narrow version of what they want the world to be that makes them feel comfortable yeah and you know because because it's not it's not what the world is they have to use violence to do it yeah so because it's not because that is the rule that that is that is the rules that we're playing by that is the game we're playing yeah my my only the the the the default response to be for those people is yeah they need to they need to fix their hearts or die and just get out of the way. And because they already have that for us, except they don't want us to fix their hearts. They just want us to die.

So we are way more empathetic than they are because they can just not be transphobic. They can just not do these things. just not be transphobic. They can just not do these things. But if they're going to keep doubling down, then yeah, well, if you want to play by their rules, then we need to start playing by their rules, because if they're

not going to change the rules, then that is the game that they want us to do. And again, actual, like, I always, for episodes like this, I always want to kind always i always for episodes like this i always want to kind of end with like here are some steps that you can like take that are relatively easy and it's it's it's challenging for these types of sorts of things like like there yes there is

things you can do around you know getting like making sure you're aware of what bills are being talked about in your local in like your local area, contacting representatives to do stuff, going to you know, whether they're school board meetings or stuff, but like a lot of the electoralist type of ideas around this feels always so inadequate that it feels always so fake that

you know, it is so much it feels a lot easier to figure out different ways to actually help actual trans people in your area and give trans people money. Because that often can actually have way more positive effects, at least effects that are observable. But there are also ways to stop this type of legislation.

There is ways to do that. I'll try to get into more of that kind of stuff as well once we get our week long of stuff about the war on trans people that will be upcoming probably sometime in this next month. folks, if anybody ever suggests doing something for children that isn't providing them with food or shelter, you should probably hit that person because they're probably trying to fuck something up for somebody. It's nearly always.

Don't trust anyone who says they need to do something to protect children. They're lying to you. As a rule, they're lying to you. Um... They're lying to you. As a rule, they're lying to you. Anyway. You guys, how's the... Boy, that's Star Wars.

Oh, yeah. I love when there's spaceships. There's the Obi-Wans coming out. That'll be good. I am excited for the Obi-Wans's the Obi-Wans coming out. That'll be good. I am excited for the Obi-Wans. The Obi-Wans will be good. Speaking of Ewan McGregor, a few months ago, I saw the film Velvet Goldmine starring Ewan McGregor, which is a wonderful pseudo-fictional film, but about kind of the glam rock era

inside Britain. It's very, very gay. That makes sense. A whole bunch of very good twink action. And there was one scene where Ewan McGregor's character, he's kind of based off one of those types of music people.

I forget which one it is. One of those types of music people? Oh, okay. I think he's a kind of a version of that but there's one scene where he's doing a performance where he takes all of his clothes off on stage and you get to see ewan mcgregor's dick um and yeah you do so if people if people want to see a kind of david bowie-esque film starring ewan mregor. It has like a weird gay emo Christian Bale as a twink and a whole bunch of other

really solid twink stuff. I would recommend watching Velvet Goldmine. It has a lot of great stuff. And you do, very early in the film, get to see Ewan McGregor's penis just flapping around on stage. And it's pretty good. Speaking of movies where you see a famous person's dick, if you want to see another famous penis, just flapping around on stage. And it is, it's pretty good. It's scary.

Speaking of movies where you see a famous person's dick, if you want to see another famous penis, the movie Galaxy Quest contains several shots of Tim Allen dong. If you want to see Tim Allen's hang and wang. As someone who's seen both Galaxy Quest and Velvet Goldmine and who appreciates both films dearly, Ewan McGregor is miles hotter than Tim Allen.

Tim Allen's dong shot is not hot. It is not pleasing. It is not supposed to be. He is hung over in his like bathrobe, leaning over. But if you want to, if you, if you want to see,

if we see Rainer Fassbender's dick, Germany in autumn. Okay. That's, that's, I could, I could, I could do that.

Very weird movie. However, come on. All right. All right. All right. All right. In terms of actionable things to make you feel better,

everyone go watch Vela Goldmine because it has some very good gender play. It has wonderful stuff around gender, wonderful stuff around gayness. And yeah,

the film from the 90s where there was lots of gay fucking and you're like, wow, how was this film made in the nineties? Because it is a whole bunch of like big name actors now who were like unknown at the time, all being gay and fucking each other.

And you're like, holy shit. All right. Well, folks, that is the, uh, that's what we got. There's your action items. There's your action items. Go, go watch, go watch velvet goldmine make everyone you know watch velvet goldmine it'll make you feel good about gender take screen grabs of elon mcgregor's dick make burner twitter accounts and just start posting just just get

it out there get it out there the world needs to know throw some of tim allen's dick out there too don't be don't be choosy stick it all all the dicks all right that's gonna be the that's the show welcome i'm danny thrill won't you join me at the fire and dare enter nocturnal tales from the, 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, a podcast that is, you know, this is a podcast about the world falling apart. The world is, in fact, falling apart extremely quickly right now.

And I'm your host, Christopher, and I am here today to talk about an immense occupying army with an extensive record of torture and extrajudicial killings. and extrajudicial killings. I am referring, of course, to the Chicago Police Department and with me to talk about yet more just absolute horrors that this department has committed here and worldwide, I have Raven, who is a journalist from Chicago Free Media. Raven, welcome to the show and thank you for joining us. Hi, thank you for having me yeah how have you been holding up in these uh oh boy things are going bad times yeah you know we uh we had discussed doing this interview earlier this week and i don't think either of us expected uh russia to invade ukraine last night yep that was yeah and that wasn't even the yeah it was the convoy's you know this is this is a this is a a time of of chaos and death um

but i i think it it's important to understand that it has all it has always been a time of chaos and death and right yeah and i think especially where the chicago police department is concerned um It has always been a time of chaos and death. Right. Yeah, and I think especially where the Chicago Police Department is concerned. We've talked about some of their more famous crimes on the show, but I wanted to have Raven on to talk about a police killing that I don't think got that much attention. I mean, it got a lot of attention in Chicago, but even inside of Chicago, I don't think it's as well known I mean, even if he got a lot of attention in Chicago, but even inside of Chicago, I don't think it's as well known as some of the other police killings.

And that's the killing of Rekia Boyd. Yeah. Raven, do you want to walk us through how, basically what, what happened the night that Dante Servin killed Rekia Boyd and yeah, we can start from there. Sure. Sure.

I mean, there's some context here for sure about sort of the, the way we ignore the murders of black women specifically. Yeah. And you know, Rekia Boyd was, was murdered after sort of like the first wave of of national Black Lives Matter protests. So it wasn't like it wasn't on the radar. Right. That people weren't talking about police killing black people.

But there you know, there is this long standing issue, of course, with like. The killings of black women specifically not getting as much attention. Right. the killings of black women specifically not getting as much attention right and this was just such a horrible horrible incident that like i mean looking at the details even even though i live here and i was like around when it happened and some of our other you know the other journalists in our collective covered the protests and and and the the court drama and everything it still just blows blows my mind the way this happened. And, you know, ultimately, the most important thing to take away from it

is that her family never saw justice. He walked away. He walked away from the incident and then went on to start training police in Latin America, which we can talk about also. Yeah. So not only did this Chicago police officer who was off duty with an unregistered gun murder an innocent 22-year-old Black woman, hang out with her friends in a park, he then got a job with a tactical training institute to travel to honduras and train police there

yeah and i think yeah we can i think we yeah we definitely will be getting to the sort of international right angle of this but yeah yeah the export of american policing essentially yeah but i guess for people who aren't familiar with what happened, can we walk through that? Yeah, so Servin showed up at a park with an unregistered gun. He, you know, witnesses reported that he smelled like alcohol that night. He may have been drinking. I don't know that that was ever verified but certainly wouldn't be surprising um showed up at this park to complain about a group of people making noise and one of rukia boyd's friends approached the car with his cell phone in his hand

which servant then would go on to say thought was a gun and started firing shots and shot rukia void in the head um he wasn't on duty he wasn't actively policing this was totally totally outside of the realm of duty incident right yeah um and no weapon was ever recovered from the scene nothing like that i mean it was there was no in no universe was there any justification for this right yeah it just defy it defies logic like that that it could even happen this way um and after it happened you know so not only did he kill rickie boyd in this park um but after it happened there was there was just a lot of like there were a lot of missteps in in the justice system um and it had been i think i want to say like 17 years at that

point since a chicago cop had actually been charged with, with murder. Right. Um, so it had been a long time since there had been even any accountability and, um, basically the prosecutor, there was something called a directed verdict where the prosecutor essentially undercharged him intentionally, or we think it was intentionally, with reckless conduct and manslaughter. And the judge tossed the case because the judge was saying it didn't even meet the criteria for reckless conduct because it was clearly first-degree murder. And then he couldn't be tried again because of rules surrounding double jeopardy. Which is, like, just a... What? Like, it's such, like, I was reading this, it's baffling.

Like, it's, like, this whole thing is, like, it's very, like like very, very, seems very clearly set up to fail. It's like, yeah, like we're going to, we're going to intentionally have a case where we try this guy with things that you, that you just, you cannot convict him of because it like, again, it's, it's not, it's not like manslaughter. He just, he, he drove up and shot her. Like he, he, he very, very clearly with intention shot ricky aboid and it very much seems like they planned this out that they were like and you know this is we've talked about this on on the last uh cpd episode like prosecutors collaborate with judges and the police constantly because that's just how the thing called the justice system works um but like yeah this is like a precariously egregious example of them just setting up a case that they know that they just knew would fail

exactly and this is the same prosecutor who was ousted in the aftermath of the uh the laquan mcdonald murder um you know there were there were very large protests then there was a hashtag going on social media her name's anita alvarez so the hashtag was by anita yeah and and the thing was anita alvarez like i think people outside the city probably didn't don't know about much about this but like this anita alvarez was like so hated that like like every like like everyone in the city basically worked together to run her out like you had like you had like liberals and anarchist groups like working together like ever like everyone in this like all like the the electoralists the anti-electoralists like the people who just like have no politics basically whatsoever.

Like it was, it was just sort of, it was just really incredible like coalition because she like just the stuff Anita Alvarez is doing is just so egregious that everyone was able to find a way to put aside their differences on just the logic of get her out. Right. Right. But you you know to note again that was in the aftermath of the laquan mcdonald's shooting and you know it wasn't it didn't what happened with rakia boyd wasn't enough to spur those large protests and and this is not to like denigrate or demean the people who did come out in protest because it's still like like there were still protests don't get me wrong like people

showed up for rakia but the difference in people showing up for rakia and people showing up for black men being shot you know like that that's something that black women have drawn attention to you know they're like why don't you care when we get murdered um and it's just it's become this sort of um you know ongoing chant like if you go to any chicago racial justice protest you will hear people say we do this for laquan we do this for Rekia because it's just one of those names that for whatever reason based on what was going on in the media at the time just like didn't make its way outside of Chicago very much yeah um and and we're seeing a similar sort of situation right now with what happened with Amir Locke in Minneapolis right like that was something where i think a lot of us thought okay wow this this is gonna this is gonna explode you know this is such just a horrible miscarriage of justice

like how could this happen um surely there will be massive protests again you know something like that and of course you know minneapolis was out there we had like some small actions here in chicago but didn't really catch fire so to say i mean i think that there's always sort of cycles of this where you know there's cycles where you get these massive protesting cycles you don't but you know i think this is one of the things with that you can look at with rakia boy too where it's it's like regardless of whether people are in the streets or not the killing continues and right yeah and i think that's just sort of that's an extremely grim thing to live with but that that just you know that that that's just what the police is right and until you know and until they are actually stopped you're just going to keep getting this cycle of,

I don't even know if select, like selective outrage is the right word, but you get these cycles of people who get murdered and there's these protests and people who get murdered and get forgotten. And yeah, yeah. Yeah. And, and it, it really does seem to be kind of, Yeah. And, and it, it really does seem to be kind of, you know, there's a lot of layers to it. Like, like obviously the, the misogyny against black women is part of it. And I think the media just, you know, is, is a part of it too. Like, I mean, I'm a part of the media in a sense, but we're alternative media. So it's a little bit different, but you know, like there are,

there are choices made behind closed doors about what stories to follow and and amplify and um i will say you know what i will say is i think because of what happened in 2020 i think there's a lot more scrutiny on chicago police now at least more mainstream scrutiny of them than there was back in 2012 when Rekia was murdered. Yeah. Um, and that's not to say that we're doing enough cause we absolutely, because we absolutely are not.

But I, I think 2020 did in some way, you know, push things just like a little bit further, if that makes sense that way you know push things just like a little bit further if that makes sense that you know there are some more liberal mainstream types of people talking about the horrors of chicago policing and and all of that but you know when it comes to chicago police like i i just their their apparatus is so massive like not just from like the funding they get, but like their media and PR, you know, the prosecutors and the judges, like you mentioned, are absolutely part of the policing apparatus.

Like they're not separate. Right. It's prosecutors are cops and we have a prosecutor for a mayor and she is a cop. she is a cop like and and you know it was black youth who tried so hard to speak up about this before she was elected and and said like lori light but is a cop and people didn't listen to them and that's where we're at now where we have this this prosecutor for a mayor who's because of her background like she can only view things through a punitive lens like her answer to everything is just punishment how can we how can we punish people yeah like one of the things she was trying to do recently was she wanted to do these like basically this measure where they called it like an anti-gang funding thing but it was basically just like if there's a group of people you can just take the cops to just take money from them.

And it was like, it was this incredible thing. Like it was, it was, you know, part of what's going on here is that I've talked about this before, but like Lori Lightfoot is, you know, at the time, I think people voted for her partially because they just didn't listen. And the Northsiders were just like, oh, hey, look, it's Lori Lightfoot. But then, you know, like part of it was like she she she ran as like the anti-machine candidate. And it was like, no, she's just a cop. But like what I think is interesting is, you know, like she she's like incredibly widely hated, like to the point where like, you know, chicago city council is like not notably a a anti-police body but like even the city council was like you can't do this like and then they they you know they actually blocked i think if if i'm if i'm getting my my my facts right on this like

i'm pretty i'm pretty sure they they they blocked life with proposal because it was just like fact right on this like i'm pretty i'm pretty sure they they they blocked life with proposal because it was just like they did yeah yeah and that that's been one of the things that was like we've had a couple of like weird kind of like attempts to reign the cpd in but they're not really happening because of like anti-police sentiment they're basically happening because the city council's feuding with the mayor right which is right weird yeah and and you know i've seen it like i it's it's she's such an god i could the the figure of mayor laurie laurie lightfoot i mean it just makes no sense right because she's hated by people on the left you know who obviously are anti-policing she's also hated by the police yeah the police hater i mean it's incredible like she she does like

yeah she i mean if you go through any of the conservative like cop blogs and and twitter accounts you know chicago police are very active on on social media right which is you know it's whole a whole thing in of itself because these people you know they shouldn't be broadcasting the things on social media that they do but she's universally hated by everyone at this point um so you know it's just been a really it's been a really tough couple years for chicago since the riots especially because chicago just the word has become so loaded in the national media right like it's become this this this racist boogeyman essentially for like what what

could happen to your city if if the woke mobs successfully defund the police or you know whatever which is completely at odds with reality because at no point have we defunded the police like their budget just keeps increasing yeah like what what's what's their budget it's like like is it i want to say it's 40 of of the total budget, but I think that's low. It's something like that. I mean, it's billions of dollars. Yeah. We're pumping billions of dollars into this standing army

that is basically occupying... 40% of Chicago's budget goes to the police department. Right. Right. And, you know know all of that money could obviously be spent on other things and and we know like we know what reduces crime i mean obviously we could get into like the category of what even is a crime right like there are certainly lots of things that shouldn't be labeled crimes that are but we know that communities with resources don't have significant violent crime problems like we know that lifting people out of poverty and giving them opportunities

and homes and all of these things like we know that that reduces interpersonal harm and instead we just keep looking at everything through this lens of punishment yeah and how punitive we can be yeah yeah and it's been i don't know i the chicago police department is just it's just an absolute horror show um and it's a horror show and and they're also like it's a horror show not just because of how evil they are but also because they're incompetent right yeah like you've got them doing all of these really bad things and then they they also just, like, struggle to cover up their crimes.

And they're just, they're messing up, like, along the way at every step. Yeah, and it's, I don't know. They have, the CPD's, like, it's, they have this kind of, I mean, I don't know. Like, it's, they have this kind of, I mean, I don't know. I don't know how exactly unique it is, but I think going back to our sort of theory of, like, every police department has one thing that they're really good at. It's the CBD has this unique combination of, like, incompetence, torture, and crime that they do. That's, like, I think, I think sets it apart from a lot of other police departments. um yeah police departments yeah i think that's a good place to sort of jump off into the second i guess part of the rakia boyd story or really as this is it seems to be the rakia boyd story it's the story of uh dante servant which is his role in essentially exporting

american policing and the horrors of um the horrors of the american police system the horrors of sort of american imperialism to other countries because it is not enough that the cpd murders people here they've also got to do it other places right right and and so there was a there was a chicago reader piece written about this back in February 2020. Servants not mentioned in it, but it was a really good story. I recommend people look it up because, you know, some of this research is not like my original research, right? It stems from the research that people with the Invisible Institute did. people with the invisible Institute did, but essentially, you know,

there are Chicago police officers and there's one in particular, his name is Aaron Cunningham. He's the man who founded this tactical training Institute that go, you know, they go abroad, like they go to different countries and and it's private privately funded though they claim to be working with with the feds and there's a lot of like weird gray area there where there's not a lot of oversight and nobody really knows like are you getting federal money to do this are you just saying you are like like what's the deal right but but cunningham was essentially like a crooked cop who funded this tactical training Institute so that they go overseas

to under-resourced countries with under-resourced police departments and train them in how to be police. They train them in crowd control. They train them in, like, narcotics and drug investigations. They train them in, like, gang warfare, you know, all of these things, right? And these are countries that have tremendous issues with, like, you know, outright warfare going on between gangs and the existing police forces, right? So they're in desperate need of of aid of assistance and and of course like some of these conflicts that are going on stem from american imperialism to begin with right so it's like we cause the problems then we're going to come in and like send a bunch of cops over who like you know have extensive misconduct records in their in

their home cities and some of them have even just like murdered innocent women in the park yeah and we're gonna have them train your guys into how to be cops yeah and and yeah you know that that goes about as well as you would expect it to, which is one of the things that the reader piece talks about. These guys get brought in to train a bunch of cops in El Salvador after the El Salvadorian police do a bunch of horrible massacres. And then they train these cops, and then the cops immediately turn around and also, again, do a bunch of horrible massacres. again do a bunch of horrible massacres and yeah it's it's this it's this you know i mean i i i i i i don't want to de-emphasize the fact that like the like el salvador for example like is a place that has its own like native right wing like it has like it has its own el salvador like right wing death squads, right? And they've been backed by the CIA. And I don't want to underplay just how violent the local reactionaries are.

Because it's not like they wouldn't also be death squads if the U.S. wasn't there. also be death squads if the u.s wasn't there but like the u.s you know and the chaco police department sending people to train them is making them even worse and it's yeah yeah and and every place has their own right-wing reactionaries right like we're seeing right now to bring to loop everything together and just bring us back to like what's going on with ukraine and russia um it's related you know like both sides of this conflict have their own reactionary right-wing forces right yeah and anywhere you go around the world that's going to be a sting and empires like the American Empire or the Russian Empire or the El Salvador Empire, you know, whatever empire,

they're going to be looking for ways to take advantage of those forces to achieve their own ends. I think that, what I think is important, like one of the things I think is important about this politically is to understand

that there is a like there there is an incredible amount of international solidarity between cops right they have yeah you know like that you know i've seen i think there's a book called the thin blue line international but it's yeah i mean that that's that's a thing like you see this basically where the cops like the the cops know which side they're on and it's the side of the other cops and i think that's something that that confuses a lot of people because you get things like like for example like like the chinese police right like the chinese police like go like we're trained by i think i mean well you know okay so the the like the chinese police in hong kong for example like that that police force like is still literally just a colonial british police force they just

they didn't even like they didn't even bring in new people they just like promoted a new person who was a british colonial police officer and then made them the new head of the police and then you know and those those and those cops are also trained by American cops they're trained by British cops they're trained a lot by Israeli cops this is the same thing you know this is the same thing with the you know like this is sort of the same effect that gets

you like Eric Prince like you know being hired by the CCP to run stuff in Xinjiang like it's there's, there's an incredible right wing sort of militarist cop alliance that go, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's a kind of international police solidarity that scrambles a lot of the

sort of perceptions of what people think, like what what how people try to think about the world because right yeah and you know and like it like fundamentally like the the the the basis they have is the defensive property and the defense of sort of the the the like the the i usually call it like the the the global white supremacist regime and they all know you know when when an american cop goes to el salvador like they they know which side they're on they're on the cop side and it's right and you know and and they they share they they share information they share weapons they share tactics they share i mean just literally people. They share training. Right. And yeah. And of course, because again, it's the CPD, they share Dante Servin.

Yeah. And so he, he, I, you know, apparently at some point, very shortly after the murder of Rekia Boyd, it looks like based on what I've seen on his social media and what I've pieced together from his employment history, it looks like he had begun working with one of these tactical training institutes right before the murder. And then he murdered Rekia Boyd. And I mean, I guess technically I'm not supposed to use the word murder, but you know. No, I didn't murder. Fuck him. Yeah, no, fuck him. him he murdered rakia boyd and so so he murdered rakia boyd and then everything happened with like the going through court and he walked away

without being charged or imprisoned i mean he was, but without being convicted or imprisoned. Then the police board, you know, recommended his firing, but he resigned two days before, like, he was supposed to have his hearing. So he still gets a pension? I'm pretty sure that's how that works. Oh, God. Yeah. I'm pretty sure that's how that works. Oh, God. Yeah.

And so he gets, yeah, I don't, I'd have to confirm that, but I'm pretty sure he gets the pension. So he resigns. And then at some point after he resigns, he starts posting to social media about his trips to Honduras. And, you know, is posting photos of like hanging out in the bar with with the cops down there and and kind of just all of that and this is not like public information like it's he has like a linkedin page where he's like the things he's been doing like like this is completely public i don't know like why nobody knows about it or has talked about it um but you know that also i think just comes back to this murder kind of flying under the national radar a lot um and so you know we don't know what company or organization he's there with um it doesn't say he's with international tactical training association

which is the the chicago-based group led by aaron cunningham and his wife my guess would be it's that group because that's the big one out of space out of chicago but you know like we can't i can't prove it yeah it could be another it could be another right-wing tactical training group that's uh training death squads now, and that's the thing, right? Is that this is not just happening here in Chicago. So, like, there are these tactical training groups all over. And there are a number of U.S.-based ones started by different police officers from different departments because it's kind of like a career path for them in a sense because it's a thing they can do once they retire

you get and it's a money maker you hold these these tactical training seminars and so a number of them are domestically based right like they're not necessarily going overseas but what they're doing is they're they're having these seminars and they're training other police officers in like certain things like some of them might be like an afternoon session where you go and you learn about like you know firearm safety or something then there might be like larger ones where you go and you like stay and camp out for like three days and you practice like ambushing guerrilla gangs in the jungle or something like that. Um,

and then a lot of them are, are based around gun safety and firearms training. And some of those are open to the general public. It depends. Some of these are like only for other cops or law enforcement and you have to like show ID or military and you have to like prove that you're affiliated with police or military. Some of them are open to the public and you just have to have like a firearms card. Oh, boy. So that's problematic for one reason, because we found out in the aftermath of the January 6th Capitol riot that a number of the Capitol rioters did attend firearms training classes, tactical training classes in just various sort of locations yep so this is a way for officers who have left the force for whatever reason to then have a captive audience and yeah they're

teaching them how to shoot guns and follow the more specific sort of things like that, but what kind of conversations are they having? Yeah. What kind of ideology is being espoused? What kind of other people are showing up to these meetings, and what are they talking about? What groups are they recruiting for?

What are their affiliations yeah and and i think and i think that that's something that's important to think about and also to you know have have more generations of journalists look into because you know when when you look at these i mean like we we we've had stories like this before right right? I mean, this is a lot of how, for example, like the Taiwanese Special Forces, for example, spent an enormous amount of time, partially the Special Forces, partially just the Taiwanese Army, spent an enormous amount of time

doing stuff very similar to this. And, you know, the product of that was, and this is the Cold War era. They're doing this in the 70s, they're doing this in the 80s, some extent in the 60s um you know and and i mean the product of this is like arena the product of this is you know the the like the like one of the people they trained did the el mazote massacre like and that that kind of stuff you can trace these these influence networks and you can trace

these sort of some i mean a lot of this is i mean literally just funded by weird cults um but you can you know you can trace these different sort of paramilitary intelligence influence networks and what you see at the end of them is like a lot of the time it's just a bunch of fascists and it's a bunch it's a bunch of fascists doing coups and you know like in in some sense like yeah this is this is a kind of like you know like liberal democracy has this sort of problem right which is that in order for liberal democracy to you know function as a liberal democracy you have to have cops and that means that you're you know you you are producing domestically and internationally a group of just ferocious bloodthirsty right-wing murderers and you're giving them state authority

you're giving them all these training and weapons and you know the the product of that is they they do what they're trying to do which is they kill people they torture people they train other people how to do this and yeah you you get these these cascading series of effects that lead you know a bunch of people taking these classes january 6th they lead them to coups all over the world they lead them to death squads all over the world this has been it could happen here join us tomorrow for part two of our interview with raven you can find us at instagram and on twitter at happen here pod check out the cool zone for more of our podcast, and thank you for listening. 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 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, a podcast about how much I, Christopher Wong, hate the police, and specifically the Chicago Police Department. And we are bringing you part two of my interview with Chicago journalist Raven

about more crimes of the Chicago Police Department, their international impact, and how the police weaponize race and class lines in order to preserve their power. Enjoy. You know, I've spent a lot of time just like in like cop social media spaces, right? And of course, it's rotting my brain.

And it's honestly just really tough to deal with sometimes. But one thing that we see over and over again, if you look at the memes that they share and the posts that they write on Facebook and all of these things, memes that they share and the the posts that they write on facebook and all of these things is it they see the people as their enemy right like they're they're trained the military the militarization of the police isn't just about the equipment that they have and the money that they have it's also about their psychology and how they, they view themselves as like warriors fighting the bad guys. But because of the nature of policing, the bad guys are literally anyone who isn't complying with what they say.

And usually this is like black people, you know, marginalized people, poor people. Um, and then there's sort of this, like, you see a lot of these like memes where they, they talk about themselves as like sheep dogs protecting the sheep from the wolves. And yeah. And like the sheep are supposed to be like the innocence, which typically, if you really go deep into it, it's like in their minds, that's like women and children who are like mostly white, right? Yeah. Like they think they're protecting like white innocence from like bad guys. And there are layers to it, right?

Because like, obviously, it doesn't always work out that way and you know there are like poor white people in rural areas who deal with police repression you know there are like wealthy black people who get pulled over by the cops just because they're driving while black like there are certainly like layers upon layers here depending on like class and just everything but at the end of the day like they're training themselves up to be a military

fighting the people invading their spaces taking over and the psychology of it is just really really dark too because you have these people who because because we're sending them into under-resourced communities sort of after the fact after traumas occurred after there have been there's been violence there's been shootings everyone's poor

you know whatever we're sending them into these places where there's just like the most horrible things about poverty and about violence are happening and that's all they're exposed to so then they end up with ptsd or all of these problems you know like the alcoholism rape the domestic violence or all of these problems, you know, like the alcoholism rate, the domestic violence rate, all of these things within the Chicago police force are extremely high. And all of this comes back to, because we're treating everything as punishment and we're coming in after the fact, we're not actually treating these problems at the source.

We're just sending people in to to to manage the chaos after the fact and then they end up traumatized they end up enacting more crime and more violence these communities and it just becomes a cycle that no one can get out of and then it and it comes back to just like defunding the police and and state priorities like where are we putting our resources because if we were putting them in the right place so many of these things wouldn't be happening in the first place yeah and i think one other thing i think it's important to note that we talked about this on our uh you know the episodes about the cartels we talked about this on our episodes about the other episodes about chicago police which is that the the other thing that happens is that

chicago police just they you know they they they see the drug trade and they go okay we're just gonna get in on it and you know and the the sort of the combination of these people these just incredibly violent armed people with like total impunity and an enormous amount of money is that you know they they they they they become themselves in just you know they they they become exactly the same thing that they're that they were you know nominally supposed to be fighting and that has all of these these downstream effects if you talked about the the the way that the way this militarizes basically everything, right? This militarizes the police.

This has, you know, the violence of it has the effect of militarizing, like, militarizing everyone else. It militarizes the non-state actors. And it just sort of, it just keeps rationing up the level of violence. And as long as you keep throwing the state at it, and as long as the state just keeps essentially like going okay i just i well okay we have a drug trade i'll just get a cut of it and as long as that keeps happening like all all of the stuff that the cops are you know nominally there to to deal with it's just going to keep escalating because the state that like because because state violence is intensifying and making it worse. Right.

Right. And it's just so like, they're so fucking racist. Yeah. Like, I just can't, I mean, like, I don't,

we have to, we have to keep talking about that because it's just like so much of just like where, like where they get their information and how they exchange like if you look at these cop social networks and where they're getting their information and the kinds of things they're saying to each other about black people in chicago are all so ridiculously wrong because they're just parroting these like cop blogs that they read full of all kinds of just batshit fucking conspiracy theories about like our black DA or prosecutor, excuse me, Kim Fox being like a puppet of George Soros. They literally believe this.

Yeah. this yeah and and it's echoed by people like tucker carlson you know in national media like anytime chicago comes up you will hear these kinds of just completely off the wall conspiracy theories about like communist blm antifa soros funded kim foxx like ruining chicago and and i'm not like defending kim foxx i get me wrong she's still a prosecutor she's still like putting people in jail yeah but she you know she was elected because she was to be she was supposed to be this like big reformist and and all of that and so she's become a target and then she's also become a target for them because she's a black woman. So it's easy for them to, to make her into a lightning rod of hate basically.

Yeah. And you know, like they just, the dehumanization of, of black Chicagoans that you see in these, in these Facebook posts that these people are writing and the things that they're tweeting, like it is violently, disturbingly racist.

And all of that comes back to just how they view themselves as like an occupying army in these communities. Like they don't view themselves as like cooperative partners in helping these communities like it's no we're there to occupy we're there to extract resources we're there to like you know benefit off of this gang warfare if we can you know and and like you mentioned like if you look at like the corruption and and the things that that have gone on with that i mean like i mean that goes back to city council right i mean we have we have aldermen we have we have alder people who are essentially in bed with the cops looking for looking out for them yep and you know like they're dedicated cop

aldermen i mean like all of our chicago aldermen are older people excuse me are democrats by name but it's like no we have five or six older people who are republicans yeah like they call themselves democrats because they wouldn't be able to be elected in chicago if they didn't but they are absolutely like cop loving republicans you know they just call themselves democrats because they like support gay marriage or whatever yeah well just because it's chicago and you like you can't run it so yeah like the like the the the only time a democrat has ever lost one of these elections was uh the time a uh i want blanking on the name of the cult uh the the time a larouchite accidentally won the primary and lost like that that's basically it like yeah i mean it's it's it's you know this this is a

democratic city but you know a democratic city just means incredibly right-wing and police. Right, right. Yeah. too at like where a lot of these cops came from in the aftermath of like the dissolution of like the official like mafia and like al capone and all that stuff yeah you had a lot of working class immigrants from like european communities like the polish community the irish community the italian community and all of these communities have their own like police associations here like the italian american police association the polish american police association all of these things and and so like it becomes this being a cop to go back to sort of like the international ties here being a cop becomes this

like identity for them and their families like a lot of people are cops because their dad was a cop their grandpa was a cop their cousins are cops their brothers are cops there's like a family honor sort of in like being a cop and, and a lot of them show, you know, and that goes back to why they show so much solidarity too with like cops from other countries is it's like the profession in and of itself is lionized. And then on top of that,

you have right now in Chicago, like because of gentrification, because of just like immigration patterns and the way communities have changed. We have these like traditionally Polish, Italian communities that feel like they're being encroached upon by mostly, like, Latinx communities. So we had, for example, like, you know, this shooting, the murder of Anthony Alvarez up on the northwest side, the far northwest side of Chicago last year. And in the aftermath of that, we saw a lot of like tension between the traditional like polish polish american community up there and then the new wave of like latinx immigrants and the problem is a lot of the people in the Polish community up there have family and relatives who are cops. So we had like cops trashing the Memorial,

you know, to the Anthony Alvarez, we had like Polish biker gangs, like riding by the rallies, trying to like intimidate people. And it all comes back to like white supremacy and, and just straight up racism. Right. Like there's another example of that

with like the the the the the columbus statue that was sent here by mussolini that eventually yeah so one of the like one of the i guess you call it the second wave of the uprising in chicago was a bunch of people like enormous numbers of people throwing things at cops who were attempting to defend this statue and this was like a huge like the italian like american like the right wing of it got like extremely mad about this and there was all of this sort of i don't know there's all this sort of tension between like between these these different communities yeah and some of that comes back to like also um the construction of the interstate right so like in the I don't know when they started building the highways down by UIC is like

in the 50s or the 60s right you had this like traditional Italian American community down there by University of Illinois at Chicago and like on Taylor Street and then people built the highway and it like fucked up a bunch of shit you know some people had to sell their homes you know some their traditional neighborhood was like destroyed all of these things and then this university is built and that coincides with that and so you end up getting a lot of like old school racist italians getting pissed at the students and at the school and everything in the aftermath and it's a really really multicultural school i don't know if you're familiar with uic yeah but it's like there yeah so uic has like

one of the largest immigrant student population student bodies like in like the country um it's just a very very diverse school i'm pretty sure white people are actually a minority if you look at like the demographics of just like how people identify in student surveys uic is the university of illinois in chicago uh yeah it's a one of the big universities in in the city yeah just for the non-chicagoans yeah not yeah different there's a different one university of chicago that's like yeah that's the one i went to which is cursed in many ways they've got their whole thing going on because their campus police force is one of the largest private police forces in the world yeah and you

know i guess we can talk about that a little bit too because that's this sort of like it's kind of horrible binds where it's like yeah so it's that that police force is one of the largest police forces in the world it has shot students it has shot people who are not students it does a bunch of horrible things but then you know sometimes you're there's there's this kind of trap right because like one of one of the things that happens is like well okay so you you get rid of the ucpd right and then you know okay so they're going to bring the chicago police department in and it's like the chicago police department are like one of the few institutions in the world that's worse than like the regular ucpd and it's you know and that was one of the things that was that was really inspiring um in in 2020 was just

yeah the the way that they abolished the chicago police department like movement was sort of like enfolded in this broader just in this broader attention just abolished chicago police in general but it's this weird thing where it's like you have these you have these occupation zones and it's like the the that that part of the south side and the other thing i think that people don't understand about the Chicago Police Department is that they have an absolutely enormous range that they patrol, right? That doesn't include – it goes way off campus. Like, they have an absolutely enormous range of things they can include. And they do things like – they'll just, like, lock down the entire campus, and they'll just – this will just happen because they'll be like chasing someone who like i like one of the one of the times i was there someone like

they'd like stolen something from like a video game store and the whole campus got locked down like the cops were screaming at everyone to stay in the buildings like and they just like you know they had this like enormous numbers of cops just sort of like swarmed through the entire the entire campus for like an hour. And this just like happens. I mean, there's cops everywhere. They just they do stuff like that. And there's this whole, you know, and but this is one of the other things where you get these tensions because so you Chicago, the University of Chicago also has like it's not as large, but it also has, like, a pretty large international student immigrant, like, population. And there was this, there was a Chinese international student who got shot in a robbery last year.

And that was a huge, I think that was last year. Yeah, that was, yeah, it wasn't January. It was, like, at the end of a huge... I think that was last year. Yeah, that was... Yeah, it wasn't January. It was last year. Yeah, and that turned into a huge thing where you had these... because we had these anti-police protests, but then suddenly there was this huge wing of basically the right-wing faculty, a bunch of

just absolutely reactionary, extremely rich CCP scions, and this sort of like nucleus of of the the the like like people like people in the right-wing law faculty like the econ people who suddenly had this like giant thing that was like it was it was it was this sort of microcosm of of the broader sort of like turn against the anti-police movements by using crime they had this whole thing like we need

to keep the campus safe and they were like oh we need to give you the ucpd the ability to lead to go off of campus which you know they already have they're like we need to give them more money we need to have more cops everywhere we and it was just and it's just this sort of like you you get this horrible horrible sort of pendulum effect where like you get this violence and then you know people like the the like the the the rights response to that violence is just to create is you know just to send in more cops to create more violence and it just keeps escalating it keeps escalating and it's it's you know and there's there's a sort of dynamic of this right where rich students at the university of chicago and this is so some extent this is it's mostly a class and race thing but it's not entirely but like people who go there just like have this like

incredible fear of literally everyone around them it's like they turn to mini cops like yeah there are people who are screaming about how like just the red line is not safe at night and i was like i i have literally like i i have walked like 30 blocks back home at two in the morning and been completely fine. Like you guys are just cowards, but, and you know, you're, you're cowards and extremely racist, but like, yeah, like all of these sort of factors blend together and you, you get these, you get these coalitions of, of these, these right-wing pro police people who want to just not, not just like,

you know, not, not just support the police, but want to continue to expand just like you know not not just support the police but want to continue to expand it so they can feel safe and it's like you're not you're not even in danger but they have they have they have the same sort of like this whole town is trying to kill us like racist cop brain mentality and yeah sorry this is this is this has been me being upset about this because yeah no no i feel you and it's like it's and but it relates back to kind of like campus policing in general and kind of why it exists which is that a lot of colleges i mean not all of them it depends on where you are but like some colleges especially in like large urban areas you know are were built in the middle of like largely black communities yeah and that's

the university of chicago to a t yeah and because the land was cheaper to buy and you know there are reasons why necessarily like they're built in these places and so the campus police departments function as just a way to like keep the students isolated from the community like it's making a community within a community it's making this little enclave and then of course people are are then going to view anyone outside of that enclave with like racist suspicion right and if you have immigrant students who may or may not be wealthy it depends on where they come from but you you will see has like a lot of as far as i'm aware like wealthy international students and they might be coming from countries where like there aren't any

black people or there aren't very many and just just because they're coming from this country doesn't necessarily mean that they are left-wing. So they're coming into these communities with not a lot of experience just sort of around people who look different from them. And so they're going to be, of course, looking to these police figures than to, quote, like these police figures than to quote protect them but but to go back to it it's like okay well if if you are feeling unsafe on the train at night for example why why isn't the train safe like why are people using it as you know? Why are people doing drugs on the train? Like, why is there violence happening? And that just comes back to, again,

like, we're not actually addressing the root problems by just adding more police. And I will say, like, I think, again, like, the other thing that's happening here is really just the University of Chicago, like, is a place to which the world's elite is transplanted. And you can see this very clearly along. The wealth gap between poor international students and rich international students is the largest single wealth gap in like in this

in the entire university it's it's unbelievable um and you know and you could you could just you can watch it playing down on class lines and it plays on other lines right where you have like like you know even like yeah you have like you have both we have students from i don't know you have students from china you have students from vietnam and like one of them will be trans and you know it turned yeah it's like oh hey look like yeah like when you have like when you have a chinese trans student right it's like yeah they're they the the the people who back home had have experienced oppression in various ways are consistently like consistently um are consistently anti-police are consistently like consistently um are like consistently anti-police and consistently like significantly less bad about this stuff it's it's in my

experience it's very much is just you have this sort of transplanted like you have this sort of transplanted elite from other countries that come to the university of chicago so they can you know study economics and go back to their own countries and like continue to like rob their own populations and those people are the ones who are doing this stuff and it's I don't know it's you you see a lot of kind of like this like I think really misguided like anti-racism that's like well okay we have to take the security concerns of of these these of asian people seriously it's like these are this is this is the chinese ruling class this is this like you don't need to take these people's concerns seriously they are fanatic they are ferocious

right-wingers who've just read hayek for the first time like you guys these these are these are not the same people as the people who are suffering under the like right right and and we saw that we saw that too with like the big wave of of stop asian hate protests here last year yeah where we had like this big rally down in chinatown um with like a huge huge number like hundreds of people from the community came out and and you had a lot of younger people who very much had like you know defund the police kind of sentiments but then you had we had like police representatives speaking at the rally yeah about how they were going to to make like chicago safer for asian people yeah it's like i just like this stuff like it makes me so angry like cpd honestly uh yeah no it was regular cpd like i i'm chinese they almost fucking killed

me on campus like these people like they're not these these these like they they're like the police don't keep us safe but like you know there's been this there's been this incredible weaponization of of the asian american community like you see this you see this in chinatown there's been this like there's like chinatown is like and this is different even in the last like like three or four years has turned into this just like like incredibly right wing let me it's not everyone but like you see like there there are like i like there there's there's a there's there's a bench in in uh in chicago in front of the library right that has they have these tables and the tables have an engraved plaque on them that says no loitering and that says we will call the police on you if you loiter

this is outside of the library like it's yeah they have this sort of like this is incredibly right-wing like anti anti like anti uh like homeless people campaign that's happening and it's it's i don't know it's one of just the most depressing things i've seen here because you have you know you you have the chamber of commerce as the sort of like you know as the most powerful political force in a lot of these communities and like those peoples are right-wingers and they just they they don't have the same interests as the rest of the Asian American community. And you get this horrible, horrible thing, which is what was happening on the Chicago campus, which is essentially the right-wing pitting Asians againstitting the like basically basically like pitting asians against black people and it's right horrible and it right and it just comes back to like who

who is benefiting from this like who when we when we have immigrant communities or non-immigrant communities you know like being upset with other communities what are the greater forces here that are like benefiting from that sort of like infighting and it's always like the fascist cops who who ultimately come out on top there because if they can keep the people fighting amongst themselves or they can stoke prejudice and racism between the people you know they can then come in and scoop up resources and when you look at like a school like university of chicago they just have a massive massive amount of money right like the resources there are just unbelievable unbelievable and so of course you're going to have people in the community who are resentful of that who are upset about that because like they don't have affordable housing. They don't have good jobs. Like they're trying to make a living and keep their kids safe.

And here's this like university in the middle of their neighborhood with all of this money. And wow, I'm so amazed. I'm just so happy that like somebody's doing construction right now outside my apartment thank you for this timing i'm so glad about this um but but essentially like you know you they the students the students end up being a scapegoat for all of their like all the communities like justified fears about what's going on right yeah justified they're

justified in being upset that they don't have these resources but it's not necessarily like the individual student yeah and and there's there's been a lot of really good so like right right before one of the things that was happening in in uh hyde park like right before i got there was there was this huge campaign basically there wasn't a level one trauma center like on the south side and so you know if you get shot right they have to like take you in a helicopter to the north side to a hospital there and you know in that time like there's a good chance you're gonna die and there had there had been one but it got shut down because it wasn't making any money and so you know there was this huge uh uh community student campaign to

like to force the university to open one of these trauma centers. And so I think and I think it's important that like we don't have to fight each other like that. That's not a thing that, you know, like, yeah, like I think I think like that university, I don't think it should continue to exist. I think at the very least it should be like taken under community control but who but like yeah like you know for the people who are there and you know i think like for for the asian americans listening to this and for for people who are students like you you do not have to be the weapon to the cops you don't you can you can work together and and and when you do that you can win and you you can, you can work together and, and, and when you do that, you can win and you can win, you can win like really incredibly tangible gains for the community and you can save people's lives.

we don't need to have the Eastern European communities fighting the Latino communities, fighting the black communities. Like we don't need to have these, like all of these communities, just like fighting each other instead of like the actual oppressive forces at the top. Um, but you know, right now we're at like this kind of, I don't know, I guess tipping point, I think where either people start to show solidarity or we're fucked. existential with you but like there are massive massive forces right now right-wing forces trying to benefit off of all of this factionalization and as we see tanks rolling into ukraine like that's this is a global phenomenon yeah it's not just happening at home it's happening everywhere and like we don't have a lot of time left to stop this and to bring it back to this

like far right trucker faux trucker convoy shit show that's about to happen. And roll into our capital. Like, I'm just struck by the timing of it all. And I'm certainly not going to be like a conspiracy theorist about it and be like, well, Putin has planned this all. So it's happening at the same time. Yeah. has planned this all.

So it happened at the same time. Yeah. Um, but I do think that whether or not it's like planned to happen at the same time, it's absolutely going to benefit these people that, you know, this is happening right now. Yeah.

And, and yeah, it's, it's, it's the same thing with, with the just horrific anti-trans bills that the anti-trans well it's not bills but anti-trans uh government action i guess is the correct term in in yeah that's happening in texas right now

yeah it's uh you know like people people draw comparisons to, to the third Reich and to Nazi Germany and them banning like, you know, homosexual dance parties and things like that. You know, like they didn't start out saying we want to kill all the Jews. Like, that's not like, it doesn't, you don't start that way yeah you make you would do the smaller attacks first you build up to it you take power inch by inch until like nobody can stop you yeah but i i think i think you know there's there's an important note here though which is that like it it's it's very easy to sort of especially in times like this, to sort of just be in a place where it looks like history is just washing over you, right? That we're bound by these sort of irresistible powers and forces. And that's not true. These kinds of fascist movements can be defeated.

These kinds of militarist movements can be defeated. These kinds of militarist movements can be defeated. But they can only be defeated when we actually take our place as the subjects of history, right? Like we are the people who through our actions create history. And, you know, when we also are the people

who create the world we see around us. But, you know, as David Graeber was incredibly fond of saying, right? It's like, we are the people who create the world we see around us, but, you know, and as David was incredibly fond of saying, right, it's like, we are the people who create the world around us. And that means that we can, it can be otherwise. And, you know, when, when we essentially like, when, when, when, when, when, when we reclaim our, you know, our, our status as subjects, our status as human beings, our status as the people of which history is composed of and we move we can stop these things like there there do not have to be

another like there don't have to be more nazis it don't have to be more genocides it don't have to be more wars we can stop them we just have to fight right i don't disagree with that i think i think it's a completely true i guess i'm just i don't know maybe i'm like a doomer i don't know like it's it's really hard right now to kind of see i guess sort of mass resistance forming in the u.. specifically just because of the way the pandemic has wrecked us. And I feel like people are, I mean, people are just checked out, right? Like they're exhausted, they're broke. I, you know, a million people have died because of because of the government's just complete lack of adequate handling of COVID. And so I completely agree that like this isn't inevitable, like we can stop this.

I don't know what it's going to take for Americans like as an entity to actually stand up and fight this. And I'm not blaming individual people because it's like all the reasons for people being exhausted and checked out are like also by design. Right. Because of course, like if we keep people exhausted and checked out then the oligarchs at the top like can continue to like loot society yeah i mean i think i i i think i'm sort of less sanguine on that just because like you know because i remember this is the same thing that like everyone said right before the uprising

like everyone was checked out everyone was was sort of like, you know, like the, the, the pandemic had just started. Everyone, there was this like general consensus that like mass action was impossible. And then, you know,

like two days later, they burned down a, they burned down a police station and like diluting the miracle mile. And, you know, it's like, it's like, it's the,

these, these, these things, these things like, you know, like every, like every like the the the the the people who are in some sense the most in tune with like what is happening it'll like often tend to be the people who are most shocked by when when these kinds of things just emerge seemingly out of nowhere. And so, I don't know.

I think, I think, I, I, I, I think we can't know what exactly will set off the next wave, but I, but I,

I think it's a safe bet. There will be another one because there always is oh yeah for sure we've never you know we we have yet to hit a point so bad that people stop fighting like ever in history so oh for sure yeah and and that's the long arc of history too is it's like people have always been fighting for their liberation in some way. And if you look at the longer story, you know, there might be very long periods of darkness and repression and collapse. And then people emerge from that and new societies emerge, new ways of thinking, all of that. And I think where we're at now,

like at this moment, there are certainly small ways that people can resist and ways that we, like, we have to focus on like our immediate communities to, you know, it's so easy to get to feel helpless when you like you look at things on such a grand scale. Because, of course, like we can't all just like run into Ukraine right now and like stop Putin. There's really not a lot we can do when it comes to like things like that. But we can like take care of our friends we can like make sure that the people immediately around us like have what they need we can like check in on like you know our unhoused neighbors we can like

take you know some people here in chicago are prepping to like take in ukrainian refugees for example right now and and that's like the sort of action that like is definitely going to be needed um and you know like when you look at the story of like something as horrible and just like. Awful as the Holocaust, like, of course, there are all all these like small stories of like people who like sheltered. People who are who are being sought out and, you know. There were there were all these different kinds of resistance movements in Germany and in Poland. And it's not just about, like, all the people that Hitler killed. It is also about all the people that, like, people managed to save. You know?

And it is also, like, I don't know. In America, especially, it's like's like we gotta get away from the hitler comparisons which i know i just like just made yeah like it's it's you know like don't get me wrong like there's obviously like plenty of parallels and it's important to be like students of history and like understand what's going on and everything but like we don't what we're seeing is like we're going to see a kind of fascism that is unique to our era right like i don't know that trump is going to come out and call for like outright genocide and like you know build build death or like ron desantis is going to get elected and like build death camps like or, like, Ron DeSantis is going to get elected and, like, build death camps. Like, it's going to look different than it has in the past, even if, like, some of the phenomenon

are similar. So, what we're looking at instead is, like, especially with climate change, we're looking at a lot of controls over borders. And obviously, some of that is, like, what's happening in Europe right now too but you know people are going to be looking to control resources like water oil land as we know that they're like running out and so this this sentiment against like immigrants especially you know that's something that is going to just keep getting worse yeah and so i think it makes it harder for people to to i guess recognize that things are as bad as they were if that makes sense yeah um and ultimately like it's just yeah mass resistance is the only way out, right?

Yep. Like, the people have to resist, and we can't keep waiting for, like, Joe Biden or anyone to be our political savior. Yeah. I think that's a pretty good note to end on. Yeah, thank you for joining us. Do you have stuff that you want to plug? Um, not at the moment, no. I mean, I think, uh,

I guess our Twitter account, but that's about it. Okay, yeah, well, this has been another episode of It Could Happen Here. You can find us on Twitter and Instagram at HappenHerePod. You can find stuff at CoolZ Instagram at Happen Here Pod. You can find stuff at Cool Zone. We have a website.

Go there. Stop asking me for sources. They're on the website. They get uploaded. Yeah. So yeah, thank you once again for joining us. 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, Danny Trails, and step into the flames of right. An anthology podcast of modern day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends

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