It Could Happen Here - It Could Happen Here Weekly 246

Starting point is 00:00:00 This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human. There's no shortcut for saving time, but saving money is simple. Just combine your car and home insurance with Bel Air Direct and save. Get a quote at bellairdirect.com. I survived nine months in captivity, and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them. I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are the Survivor Files.

Starting point is 00:00:29 Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the uncied. unthinkable, abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced. These are stories about what it takes to make it out alive. Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If your bookshelf and your for-you page are equally important to your personality, welcome home. Pro Society is a weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island to serve the same level of discourse. Each week, we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and pop culture with your favorite writers, book talk creators, and plenty of overthought opinions.

Starting point is 00:01:11 Yeah, I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed. Listen to Pro Society on the Iheart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Did you hear the new episode of the Hey Jonas podcast? We are at D23. So we'll see who stopped by. The cast of Frozen stopped by. Kristen Bell, Josh Gad, and Adina Menzel. I audition for Frozen. What? For Christa. They said okay, what are you going to be singing today? I said, I don't know. That must have been why you didn't get it. Oh, you probably won't. Plus, John Stamos, Hayden Christensen from Star Wars and more. And I guess I can share that you know, listen to the latest episode of Hey Jonas on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. All Zone Media. Hey, everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let you know this is a compilation episode.

Starting point is 00:01:57 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. Hello, dear listener, you're listening to It Could Happen here. My name's Carlos. I'm a journalist from Puerto Rico. I'm here with James. Hey, how you doing? Hi, nice to have you on for this, James. Yeah. Let me ask, have you heard about a little thing called imperialism? I have During my education in the United Kingdom, it was an issue that they raised once or twice. So you would say you're quite knowledgeable about imperialism then.

Starting point is 00:02:48 Sure. I think I have a little grasp of it, both from learning about it and teaching about it. There's a whole lot of imperialism, you know? I don't think I've covered all of it. So I'm excited to learn about some extra parts of it. Same, same. And actually, I would say so I'm from Puerto Rico. and as a subject of American imperialism, I'm very happy to share this episode today, which is kind of a history of American overseas expansion, focused particularly on its colonies. There are several American colonies.

Starting point is 00:03:26 Puerto Rico is the most populous one and the most known, but there are several others. So I want to start this episode by, laying out some definitions and frameworks in case people aren't familiar with them. When people think of the United States, they typically only think about the contiguous United States, also known as the lower 48. This is how most people imagine the U.S. today, and maybe they include Alaska and Hawaii. This is what historian Benedict Anderson calls the logo map in his seminal book Imagine Communities. Essentially, the way that it works is that if every country had merch,

Starting point is 00:04:05 then this is the logo that would be on it. This is literal in some cases. For example, I saw a lot of America 250 shirts that only had the map with the lower 48 on it. The logo map, whether people mean it or not, is often a political statement. Whatever people imagine the logo map to be is what they consider the dominion of their government.

Starting point is 00:04:26 For example, if you see an IDF or Russian soldier with a patch that includes Gaza and the West Bank in Israel or Ukraine as part of Russia, then you very likely know that person's thoughts on the territorial borders of their respective countries. However, what is included in the logo map is often just as important as what isn't included. In the case of the United States, which has continuously lied to itself about being an empire, the lower 48 logo map hides the country's former territories, Alaska and Hawaii, if they're not included, its current territories like Puerto Rico and Guam, as well as a smattering of military bases that it owns across the world.

Starting point is 00:05:07 This omission in its self-conception is an act of American exceptionalism, giving visual credence to the fact that the country is one homogeneous polity, not a settler colonial state or a global superpower with overseas possessions, that it continues to colonize to this day. Yeah, I think America 250 with the lower 48, on it. It's a really fascinating image, right? Like, there is no historical argument. The countries on that map were not the United States 250 years ago, the places on that map. Absolutely. When people think in their mind of their imagined community that is America, that is what they

Starting point is 00:05:44 think of. Even though, I think very few of the T-shirt wearers with the 250 map would be, like, yes, and Hawaii and Alaska are colonies, and we should let them be, let alone discussing Puerto Rico Guam, and then you have all the Kofa countries, right? Like, the RMI. Yeah, absolutely. Like, I guess if you wanted to put them on a t-shirt, you'd need a really fucking big t-shirt to keep it to scale, right? Like, it is a vast global empire.

Starting point is 00:06:14 Yeah. And yeah, you have bases in Africa, bases in Greenland, bases all over the world. Absolutely. So at a time when Trump has made several overtures towards expanding the physical territory of the United States by either making Canada, Greenland, or Venezuela, or a bunch of other places, ostensibly, the 51st state. I think it's important that people know that the U.S. is not only a military and economic empire, but a literal one, with control over a series of territories and their people that spans the Pacific and the Caribbean, as well as the aforementioned

Starting point is 00:06:52 military braces. So to start, I should say that that kind of ideological game about the U.S. logo map is almost wholeheartedly ripped from the beginning of Daniel Imowars, How to Hide an Empire. Also, James, in the case of the shirt with all of the territories and colonies, there is a map in there that I will show you later. Okay. That we could put on a t-shirt. Oh, sweet. Okay, exciting. So how to hide an empire alongside Colonial Crucible, edited by Alfred W. McCoy and Francisco Ascarano, were monumental sources for these two podcast episodes that we're about to do. Anyway, James, I know that you've heard this term before,

Starting point is 00:07:33 but I want to start out by defining the term, quote-unquote, insular area, before I get to the meat of this episode. When a place is an insular area of the U.S., it means that they are a U.S. associated jurisdiction, but aren't states or the District of Columbia. This encompasses several different legal meanings in terms of sovereignty. Free of the U.S.'s insular areas, the Republic of the Marshall Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia and Palau are independent

Starting point is 00:08:01 nations that have compacts of free association with the U.S. This means that they have their own sovereignty, but certain things such as defense are in hands of the United States. I won't be talking about them too much, but if you want to learn more about them, you should go listen to James's series on the Republic of the Marshall Islands. Thank you. I was in the RMI when they were renegotiating with the Biden admin. They are a proud independent country, of course, right? And they have sovereignty and a lot of issues. But also, like, the US didn't come at that equal to equal.

Starting point is 00:08:33 You know, like the US, a country which nuked the Marshall Islands, which it never had any quarrel with, it's still not paying people in those places. Well, it said it would pay them for the damage it did by new kingdom when they were downwind. And, like, even now when they negotiate, like they cannot force the United States to, treat them with, like, really what one would assume would be basic dignity.

Starting point is 00:08:57 Yeah, absolutely. And this is, you know, I think something that extends not only to the countries under the Compact of Free Association, but all of its colonies that when they are at the bargaining table, it is very clearly an incredibly unequal bargaining table with this like global superpower and its colonies. And they're trying to reach, the colonies are trying to reach sometimes more independence or more federal funding or something or another. Yeah. So the other 14 insular areas are what the U.S. calls quote-unquote territories. And I should say that 14 doesn't even tell the whole story, but I'm going to hold on to

Starting point is 00:09:34 that fact for a second. These 14 are divided into 13 unincorporated territories and one incorporated territory. There's a complicated explanation for that that I'm going to explain in the next episode, But all you have to know for now is that people often talk about these territories as being part of the United States. And while that is true on a conceptual level, right, when you imagine the United States, or maybe not when people going to the American 250 rallies imagine the United States. But when you map out the U.S.'s global borders, you include Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa as part of the United States. However, in a strictly legal sense, all of the unincorporated territories belong to but aren't part of the United States. So of these 14 territories, nine are uninhabited and five have people on them.

Starting point is 00:10:29 The nine uninhabited territories are Baker Island, Howland Island, Jarvis Island, Johnston Atoll, Kingman Reef, Midway Atoll, Palmyra Atoll, which is the sole incorporated territory, Wake Island, and Navasa Island. There are also two other territories, Serranilla Bank and Bajo Nuevo Bank, that are claimed by the U.S., but administered by Colombia. Meanwhile, Haiti has also historically laid claim to Navasa and still does. This is similar for Wake Island, which is claimed by the Marshall Islands, but is administered by the U.S. In the modern day, these remain mostly uninhabited, save for military or scientific missions.

Starting point is 00:11:14 all of these little pieces of land are often grouped together as the U.S. minor outlying islands. Yeah. In the calculus of the U.S., they're like so meaningless that they're usually not even talked about by their names right. Right. It's like a footnote of existence. Exactly. Exactly. Even though they have been, as I hope to show, very important to the conception of the United States as an empire.

Starting point is 00:11:40 Meanwhile, the five inhabited territories are Puerto Rico, where I'm from and currently located, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, the northern Mariana Islands, and American Samoa. So this is going to be split into two episodes. The first is kind of giving a crash course on the inhabited islands and how the U.S.'s claims to the minor outlying islands created the skeletal framework on which the U.S. would expand its overseas empire. And then the second episode is mostly going to be about how the U.S. acquired those five uninhabited islands and how they kind of shaped the metropole in ways that people rarely conceive of. However, before getting into that, I want to make a quick note about language. Up until now, I've been using the word, quote unquote, territory to describe these places just to talk about them in the same way that a U.S. history teacher might talk about them or how the president of the United States might talk about. them. But going forward, I'll be referring to them by the word, quote-unquote, colony, because that's what it's called when a foreign policy controls a place and its people.

Starting point is 00:12:48 Yeah. The US, like the book title hints at has done a very good job of hiding its empire. But, like, I think part of that is because it's convinced people not to call it by its name because it hasn't called it by its name and then no one else does. Then somehow it fits into this magical third space between independence and empire, rather than just saying, oh, yeah, this is an empire, but they rebranded it. Yeah, absolutely. It's like of the however many empires that have existed throughout history, the only thing exceptional about the U.S. is that it doesn't conceive of itself as an empire.

Starting point is 00:13:32 So I'm going to assume that a lot of people don't know much about the U.S. colonies. So here's a crash course. Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands are in the Caribbean, while Guam, the northern Mariana Islands and American Samoa are in the Pacific. between them, the five U.S. colonies have about four million people. Except for American Samoa, everyone born there is born an American citizen. People born in American Samoa are non-citizen U.S. nationals. If they want to become U.S. citizens, they have to go for the naturalization process.

Starting point is 00:14:08 People in the colonies can't vote in federal elections, and we don't have voting representation in Congress. Instead, we have a non-voting representative whose job is kind of just to squawk at other Congress people to convince them to do things. Politically, all the colonies, save for Puerto Rico, have the U.S.'s two-party system. I should say that American Samoa's elections are nonpartisan, which means that while candidates do affiliate with the Republican or Democratic parties, they run the ballot as independent. In Puerto Rico, political parties are divided based on whether they want Puerto Rico to become a state, independence, or. remain in the colonial status quo. That has been that way for going on about 70 years now. Although some candidates in Puerto Rico do affiliate with U.S. political parties,

Starting point is 00:14:54 they run representing the Archipelago's political parties. A bunch of the sources I used, like the AP or the conversation, among others, are linked in the show notes if you want more details. Puerto Rico is probably the one that people most know about, right? And I'm also going to be focusing a lot on it throughout these two episodes, because I'm from here. We're the most populated and largest in terms of land mass by several magnitudes. The archipelago really only comes into the American consciousness in times of crisis.

Starting point is 00:15:26 For example, right now it's in the news because we're facing a pretty bad water crisis with some people having gone more than 100 days with no or intermittent water service. This is common across all the colonies, only getting meteor coverage in times of crisis, And even then, it's unlikely that they'll receive the same media attention as any state. Puerto Rico is often the one that's in the news just because it's the biggest, right? But when was the last time you heard a, let's say, like a CNN report about Guam or American Samoa, right? Right. In my experience, right, we're only talking about Puerto Rico.

Starting point is 00:15:59 It's kind of a news desert in relation to other states, which I know, right, media has been affected everywhere. But the colonies specifically because of their kind of colonial status and how it has. affected them. There's media blackouts from the metropole to them and in them, they are sometimes a little bit of news deserts. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. I would wager to say that the first time Puerto Rico entered American consciousness in recent memory was in 2017 when hurricanes Irma and Maria destroyed the archipelago and its long ailing electrical system, causing thousands of deaths and the largest and longest blackout in U.S. history. Shortly after that, a morning consult poll found that only about 54% of Americans knew that people here were also American citizens.

Starting point is 00:16:48 Jesus. And that's like after kind of once in a lifetime natural disaster. Yeah. Right. That's been in the headlines. And Trump is there, like handing out toilet paper. True. Absolutely right.

Starting point is 00:17:00 He was doing the kind of Freepoint meme photo that has become famous now. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Handing out is a wrong word. Right. sort of flicking toilet paper at people. Absolutely.

Starting point is 00:17:14 And, you know, he also, like, and this is kind of a preview of what I'm going to talk about next episode or at the end of next episode, but he did remark that he wanted to trade Puerto Rico for Greenland. It's Denmark. So, like, it would be the Danes who would administer Puerto Rico or who's he trading it with? Yeah, no, he's trading it with Denmark, right?

Starting point is 00:17:33 He would trade Puerto Rico for Greenland. So Denmark would take over Puerto Rico and the U.S. would take over. Why not? Over Greenland. You know, we're just kind of there to be bartered with. Right, yeah. This is not a place where people live.

Starting point is 00:17:47 Exactly. I'm sure the Danes really embrace. I mean, yeah, fine, I guess. That is what empires used to do back in the day, right? We'd just swap land around. Absolutely. I mean, the U.S. bought the Virgin Islands from Denmark for a cool $25 million, right? So there's precedent for it.

Starting point is 00:18:08 Yeah, true. Yeah, and not so long ago, Alaska. True. So, like I mentioned, only appearing in U.S. media or receiving national attention is very common for the colonies. This is particularly the case of Puerto Rico, which has been suffering one crisis after another for the last two decades. Our siblings and the other colonies receive even less media attention. If you're listening, and this is the first time you're hearing about these colonies, to be honest, this is what empire does to those it considers lesser than.

Starting point is 00:18:42 Make them invisible in public life until it is sociopolitically expedient to use them for one purpose or another. Yeah. Like trading us for Greenland. And while I was writing, I really struggled to find a concise way of explaining the importance of the colonies to the formation of the United States as we know it today. Today, we often talk about the imperial boomerang produced by several overseas U.S. invasions in the Middle East, coming back to hauntus. We've seen the militarization of police throughout the country, the rise of what any Latin American country would call, quote-unquote, manorura politics at home, and much more. Yet, in the conception of the American consequences of imperialism, the literal colonies of the United States are also. often left by the wayside. But the current and former colonies have shaped the country in untold ways,

Starting point is 00:19:40 of which I'm going to be talking about a few today. To quote from Colonial Crucible, quote, the United States held most of its larger colonies for just a few decades and governed only a few million people, yet empire left an indelible imprint on the United States. Colonialism was a crucible that plunged Washington's raw bureaucracy into the white, of nationalist revolution and great power rivalry, forging new heretofore unimagined state capacities. Indeed, the ramifications of this early American empire were far wider than anyone has yet imagined,

Starting point is 00:20:17 a marked expansion in the role of the federal government for more activist domestic administration and the formation of an agile transnational imperial state for more effective global governance. I think a lot about how, like, American self-conception has kind of changed. Like, I guess I think a lot of specifically about Cuba, right? And how, like, there is not an American politician

Starting point is 00:20:45 who would not like to be compared to Theodore Roosevelt. Absolutely. Could be on any party, right? Most of them would also like to be compared to FDR, which is a whole other interesting thing when you look at internment. But that's a separate topic. A part of that is that he and his, like, rough riders, right? these volunteers went to Cuba and they charged up San Juan Hill.

Starting point is 00:21:07 And like, at the time in America, there was this feeling that, like, empires are going to fall and we're going to help them. And we went from that. And some of that was like yellow press stuff, right? Like, sort of whipping up this popular sentiment of, like, we are the Americans and we destroy empires to the platterment. Yeah. Right.

Starting point is 00:21:27 And to effectively, the United States de facto ruling Cuba, informal. colonialism. What that says about how the United States conceived of its role in the world. You can go back even further, right, and see Hamilton talking about a revolution in Haiti and the shit that didn't make it into the musical where he is just wildly racist and believes the people, the black people of Haiti to be incapable of self-government and suggest that they might want to appoint a king to like, I don't know, keep them under some kind of control, I guess.

Starting point is 00:22:03 I failed to follow the logic there, but I don't particularly care to try. But like, it says a lot about this country, right, which does it, saying like, all men are created equal. Well, fuck, not in Haiti, though. Yeah. Not in Haiti, not in the Caribbean, not in land America, not anywhere, but the United States and maybe Europe. Yeah, like from sea to shining sea is in fact, like those people are created equal unless they're indigenous to the place that we want, in which case we don't even fucking respect our treaties with them, let alone them. I mean, Britain did this too, but like just a jarring disjuncture between rhetoric and actions.

Starting point is 00:22:40 And like at the same time that that rhetoric could still be used to justify colonial actions, right? Like when Hearst and the yellow press are whipping up this idea of like Spanish empire in Cuba and how unjust it is and how terrible it is and we shouldn't be allowing this in our hemisphere. Let's stop and pause and think about our hemisphere in anti-colonial terms. But, like, genuinely, I'm sure that working people in America believe that, right? And some of the people who look volunteered to fight their genuine, we're like, hell yeah, we're going to liberate another country in the Americas. Like, fuck them all, burn it down. We're going to bring the U.S. freedom and liberty to these people by crushing them.

Starting point is 00:23:20 Yeah, like, we're the best country in the world. And, like, we're going to share that with you all because you're our neighbors to, like, actually psych. We get to intervene how we want, when we want, whenever we want in your politics. because we like the stuff that you've got. Yeah, because seeing the colonizer from the colonized position, right, a lot of the U.S.'s approach to the rest of the world is either right at the tip of a barrel or from a position of imperial and colonial arrogance.

Starting point is 00:23:49 Like, we figured it out before you did, let me teach you how to do it. And if you don't follow everything I'm going to say, I'm going to force you to do it, right? and that's what defined this period of colonial expansion by the US between like the early 1800s, arguably to now, honestly, right? Yeah, like that attitude is indistinguishable from the attitude that compelled Britain to create an empire all of the world, right? I love to show my students a white man's burden cartoon, right? I'm sure you've seen the one where he's like, Uncle Sam is like carrying the peoples of like Puerto Rico Guam and Cuba. I think up in a little basket up towards like civilization.

Starting point is 00:24:32 Yeah, the shining mountain, the shining city on a hill carrying us to salvation. Yeah, and just like wildly racist caricatures. But I will show that, you know, I've shown that to undergraduates for getting on for 15 years. And it's always wild to see their responses to be like, I understand sometimes because I'm British. So like I'm coming in there with like a history of our own imperial crimes. But it's interesting to see them. conceive of the United States that way or try to wrap their heads around that when they're like, no, that's not America.

Starting point is 00:25:04 We didn't do that, man. A totally different thing. It's fascinating that they could come through 18 years at a high school system and not be asked to reflect on that or even be aware of it, you know? And actually, speaking of colonial cartoons, I pulled it up right now, but I'm really partial to, have you seen this cartoon from Puck that I believe was made in 1900, where it's Uncle Sam teaching its newly acquired colonies, Hawaii, Philippines, Puerto Rico. I can send the link in the chat right now.

Starting point is 00:25:36 Yeah, yeah. I think about it a lot because growing up in Puerto Rico and being educated by the school system, I don't know about the American school system very much, or specifically how it's taught, but there was a critical lens to the way that we were taught about the U.S.'s kind of capture and colonization of Puerto Rico. And that was mostly because I had a really great history teacher in my last senior year of high school. But this cartoon has really stayed in my memory for a very long time because it's like, it's how I view like the U.S.'s approach to so many foreign nations, right? You have so many like facets of this, right? You have the black population, which obviously the U.S. is historically oppressed and enslaved for centuries.

Starting point is 00:26:22 You have the indigenous population also historically oppressed and killed for. centuries by the U.S. government represented in the corner and then you have these new states, which are like depicted as white people in colonial dress, being good students. And then you have Cuba, Puerto Rico, Hawaii, the Philippines up front depicted as not in like the clothes the rest of the people are wearing, as if they need special attention to be taught the kind of education of freedom and liberty by Uncle Sam, right? I don't know. I think about this like anytime I'm like conceptualizing colonialism, this is it for me. They peaked here.

Starting point is 00:27:03 Yeah. That it's wild. It's interesting that Alaska is amongst the like, I know what to call them. Like the older kids. They're trying to portray like a civilization savagery binary here, right? Like that's what's happening. Alaska is up there with a civilized stage. And then there is someone, I know what's happening with this person outside the door is just like

Starting point is 00:27:27 the Chinese Exclusion Act. I believe so, yeah. I think that's what they're trying to portray. Yeah, it's an excellent cartoon. Yeah, but it's a whole lot happening here. Listeners, I know that this is an audio median, but go Google. School begins in Puck, and then you'll see it. It's really, I don't know if they were made this like purposefully racist

Starting point is 00:27:50 or if they were just really good at depicting the U.S. is racism, but they popped off with this one. Yeah. We should teach this in every school everywhere. Yeah, it's pretty, like it gets right to the point. Yeah, exactly. So I want to be clear that the way that the U.S. was shaped by its colonies is not a uniquely American phenomenon.

Starting point is 00:28:14 Paraphrasing from colonial crucible, every empire is shaped by the Promethean experience of the colonizer and the colonized, both empowering and eviscerating, yet mutually transformative and traumatic. The chain of continuity that now spans almost 200 years of seafaring colonization has profoundly shaped the American Empire, unleashing the catalytic forces that have shaped the formation of the American state up to this day, the lasting imprint of which is evident during Washington's recent misadventures in the Middle East. And when they wrote that, it was 2009. So they were talking about the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan. But 20 years later, It applies almost equally to the current war with Iran.

Starting point is 00:28:59 With that out of the way, to start with how the U.S. expanded past the American continent and became a seafaring empire, we need to go back 200 years to the mid-1800s and talk about bird shit. Manifest Destiny had taken the United States on a genocidal campaign that displaced indigenous people and killed them from sea to shining sea. Meanwhile, the Monroe Doctrine, while still nascent and not completely enforceable by the American state, created the ideological and legal framework for the country to overflow from its recently established national borders. In the midst of all of this, industrial agriculture was becoming the norm across the world and in the United States, which meant that there was a severe need for fertilizer to grow crops quickly. People were experimenting with different things, but the one fertilizer that, that everyone wanted was guano.

Starting point is 00:30:05 Also known as white gold, guano is the accumulated poop of birds, bats, and seals. It contains several nutrients that are very good for quick agricultural growth. However, the thing about guano is that it mostly grows on far-off islands or caves. So the big problem with guano is that at the time, most of it was contained in islands off the coast of the newly independent state of Peru. And I'm talking about state as in the nation state, the country, essentially, a country of Peru. And that was a problem for the United States because they needed guano bad, but they didn't want to rely on a foreign country for it. And I should say that a lot of this comes from How to Hide an Empire and an article titled Guano and the Rise of American Empire by Mauricio Betancourt, published in Sage Journal. So with a desperate need for guano, what is a fledgling empire to do, but says,

Starting point is 00:31:02 sale and lay claim to the islands that contained large deposits of guano. U.S. businessmen originally wanted the U.S. to take Peru's Lobo Islands for themselves so they could extract the guano, but Peru protested and the U.S. backed off. However, the American taste for guano was clear. And in 1856, the U.S. passed the Guano Islands Act, which allowed any U.S. citizen to lay claim to uninhabited islands that had guano on them in the name of the United States. American entrepreneurs set sail for poop-covered islands. And while the law specifically mentioned that they had to be not claimed by other countries, that didn't really stop people from claiming islands that were also claimed by other nations like Britain, Honduras, and Colombia.

Starting point is 00:31:49 It's kind of like that meme from Arfer that says, a sign can't stop me because I can't read. Yeah. This is like the wildest period. Maybe not, but like, uh, it's a, It's just this bonkers period of U.S. history where you can personally expand the imperial possessions of the United States, like on your own free will and volition. Right. So it's like, you know, I mean, that's like part of the American conception, right? You reached a place that was empty of people. You settled there and now you have brought the U.S. to it, right? That's the story that America tells itself, at least.

Starting point is 00:32:26 Right. Like, that's manifest destiny, like writ large across the whole global map. Absolutely. So, per How to Hide an Empire, by the time that last claim was filed in 1902, the U.S. had added 94 islands to its dominion. All of these were uninhabited, so they weren't quite colonies until U.S. industry moved to them, establishing guano mining outfits that used black laborers essentially induced to work there under false pretenses and horrible conditions. In more ways than one, the U.S. had essentially exported southern-style plantations beyond its continental borders to the edges of its empire. Nowhere was this more clear than a tiny island off the coast of Haiti called Davasa that the U.S. still owns to this day. Workers there are mostly consisted of black laborers from Baltimore. Fed up with horrible conditions, the workers eventually revolted and five white overseers died during the ensuing riot. For this, dozens of workers were charged with crimes ranging from rioting to murder.

Starting point is 00:33:29 Three were given death sentences. And when their case eventually reached the Supreme Court, their defense rested on a hail-marry play. Since Haiti also claimed Navassa, the U.S. did not have jurisdiction to prosecute them. And this was, to be clear, an extreme long shot. And the decision from this would define the U.S.'s legal approach to its colonies for, essentially until now. Supreme Court cited with the prosecution, laying it out explicitly that the U.S. owned Navassa and other territories, and that American citizens there were working on American soil, even if it was a sort of corporate fiefdom. President Harrison eventually commuted the

Starting point is 00:34:12 deaf sentences to life sentences per write-up in the History News Network, but raised the issue that the U.S. needed to better extend its government to these territories, ostensibly to protected citizens and its interest, no matter how far away their people or its land was. At time of recording, the 94 Guano Islands have diminished to less than 10 through various treaties and sessions. Nevertheless, the U.S. minor outlying islands still represent important footholds of U.S. military power and American sovereignty across the world, particularly in the Pacific. So I started with these often forgotten islands because they have left a lasting legacy upon the American Empire. As highlighted by how to hide an empire, the first legacy is legal.

Starting point is 00:35:01 Per the Guano Islands Act, these poop-covered rocks shall, quote, at the discretion of the president, be considered as appertaining to the United States. Appertaining is a strange word, right? It's mostly used as a legal term. But to simplify, it means that these islands belong to the United States. This word would come to define U.S. overseas possessions as legally belonging to, but not part of the United States. Right. It's, this appertains to me.

Starting point is 00:35:30 It doesn't necessarily mean that it's part of me, but I own it. Right. But it's mine, yeah. It's like owned by the U.S. but not in the U.S. Yeah. Yeah. In a strictly legal sense. Legal sense.

Starting point is 00:35:44 Yeah, yeah. Right. Yeah. It's just like the thing that's hard to explain about the U.S. colonies to some people where they don't get how it can be owned but not in, but also part of. Yeah. Meanwhile, the second legacy is that the quest for guano codified U.S. overseas expansion as being a quest of resource extraction. This kickstarted U.S. imperialism past continental borders and showed how the U.S. government would encourage its industries to occupy and integrate themselves overseas in order to protect. protect interest at home, right? These companies went off to farm to mine guano and then to send it back

Starting point is 00:36:22 home. We've seen this play out lots of times throughout American history, like during the so-called banana wars throughout Latin America, as well as the continued quest for oil that's played out throughout the 20th and 21st century. And the third legacy is that these Guano Islands, once rich in natural resources, are now part of one of the U.S.'s biggest exports. military bases. Through the bases, the U.S. has established there, alongside the ones in the inhabited colonies, the U.S. has been able to project power outside of its continental borders because these tiny islands served or continued to serve as strategic military footholds in their respective regions. This was particularly evident during World War II, where there was a wave

Starting point is 00:37:09 of military expansion by the United States throughout the world, but it remains true to this day. During World War II, they called some of those islands in the Pacific, like, unsinkable aircraft carriers was the way they would refer to it. Like, still actually, in many of those islands, there was a serious problem with unexploded ordinance, which I think gets to the difference between, like, being a place where the US could put its military and being a place inside the US, right? The US would not have left that many bombs and mines inside Ohio. Like, I get that there are some areas with the UNXO, including in San Diego. but like to nowhere at this extent, right? Yeah, absolutely right. And actually, to skip ahead a little bit,

Starting point is 00:37:48 Puerto Rico during World War II is called the Gibraltar of the Caribbean because of how the U.S. operated kind of its force projection in the region. And actually, now that you mention the mines, there is an island municipality off the eastern coast of Puerto Rico called Piacos that the U.S. uses like a bombing range for many years. And there's still quite a few mines. scattered throughout the island, I believe. Oh, wow.

Starting point is 00:38:16 I should have included this, but there's about two-thirds of the island municipality are still, you still can't walk on them because of the unexploded ordinance, right? Yeah, it's like Quasulin. When you see, like, a missile has been tested. Normally it's from Vanderberg Space Force Base right up in Central California. That's where it's going. Like, Quash is where Quashlin atoll is a toll in the Marshall Islands where the United States has a large base.

Starting point is 00:38:39 And like that is where that missile is headed. Like, still, we still do this, right? We still test those. We, of course, tested nuclear weapons inside the United States as well. But very quickly, when we realized that those things were devastating and the land never recovers, we started to do that on land, which the United States controls, but does not consider to be of the same value that's land in the contiguous lower 48. Absolutely.

Starting point is 00:39:05 Bieckes and its sister island municipality, Kualebra, were used as bombing ranges for years. Vykes has a very high cancer rate compared to the rest of Puerto Rico. When I say decades, the Navy, quote unquote, left Vykes in 2003, right? That is still, like, within living memory for a lot of people, right? You know, the same people that protested the Navy's involvement there are still alive in kicking today in several different activist causes, right? And they only left because they accidentally killed a security guard that kind of incited the protests that were already going on, but that kind of kicked it into high gear.

Starting point is 00:39:44 Actually, I don't know if Americans know this, but like RFK for a very long time was kind of a local Puerto Rican folk hero because he'd participated in the anti-Navy protest here. Then he became what he is today, although I guess he might have always been that. Yeah, I did not know that. He has been on a journey throughout his life, I think it's fair to say. But yeah, there were people who like doubted the state, a parenthesis, good, who have, turned into people who doubt the state parentheses bad. He is one of those people.

Starting point is 00:40:18 I was just thinking too about like this same time period is like the same time period is the Canaan Air Strike. Are you familiar with the Canaaner Strike? Not at all. It's where miners in Mexico go on strike, right? They're in Sonora. And the owner of the mine, whose name I think was green. It's in Porfirio de'oe, right?

Starting point is 00:40:40 So Porfirio Diaz is the president of Mexico. And it's like very pro-American investment. And this is just before the outbreak of the Mexican Revolution. And it's a time when like the Americans are just like ruthlessly. Investing in Mexico is far too kind. But they're exploiting Mexican resources right now. Taking those for American profit. I think it's called the Canneser Consolidated Copper Company.

Starting point is 00:41:06 the workers there go on strike and this guy I think he's called Mr. Green or Colonel Green maybe basically starts radio into America being like the workers are on strike they're going to kill me they're going to kill everyone

Starting point is 00:41:21 and they're not being particularly violent right a fire starts into strike but it is not the workers it is the guards who are armed as often as the case yeah and the fucking Arizona Rangers enter from Arizona

Starting point is 00:41:36 and I believe they're deputized on entering Mexico to intervene in this strike, right? Like the US is like, Mexico is an independent country, but that's our mind, guys. Like, we'll be coming in here, like, along with, man, the guy's name Emilio or something. He was like a Russian emigre who became like a enforcer for Bofidio Diaz in Mexico.

Starting point is 00:42:02 But it just reminds me of the same thing. Like the United States literally sending it. cops into, like, invading a country. Yeah, to protect its U.S. business interests, right? Right. Like, don't fuck with our mind. In some ways, right, this was preceded or

Starting point is 00:42:18 preempted by the U.S. claims on the Guano Islands, which, of course, were uninhabited. So it made it easy for the U.S. to take control and establish them as mining colonies through its various industry companies. However, in modern times,

Starting point is 00:42:34 resource mining has defined the U.S.'s imperialist ambitions. While it's much harder to establish dominion over places that people live in permanently, that hasn't stopped the country from exerting its influence through gunboat and dollar diplomacy in places like Iraq and Venezuela, where it controls a significant part of their oil revenues. So this is the end of the first episode, but I'm going to talk a lot more about this phenomenon in the next episode, where we dive into how the U.S. occupies and takes over the inhabited

Starting point is 00:43:05 colonies through war and purchase. Any closing thoughts, James? Statehood's not independent. I'm sure we got to touch on this. But I thought that was great. I enjoyed that very much. Thank you. Thank you for being a guest.

Starting point is 00:43:29 There's no shortcut for saving time. But saving money is simple. Just combine your car and home insurance with Bel Air Direct and save. Get a quote at bellairdirect.com. When I was 14 years old, I was kidnapped and held captive for nine months. I survived, and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them. I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are the Survivor Files. I just remember this low, taunting voice next to my ear saying, shut up, don't say anything.

Starting point is 00:44:05 Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable. I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me. I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed, and I just started screaming. They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced. But these aren't stories about what's taken from them. There's stories about what it takes to make it out alive. Listen to the Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Starting point is 00:44:40 If your bookshelf and your for-you page are equally important to your personality, welcome home. This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsesives, and anyone who thinks pride and prejudice and love island deserve the same level of discourse. I'm Eli Rallo and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having. I'm going to have to look up this story. I'm obsessed. As someone says, from bestselling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off the table. It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters, then that is a Trojan

Starting point is 00:45:23 horse. Whether you're looking for literary deep dives, smart pop culture conversations, or a community of readers who love to think a little too much, you're in the right place. Listen to pro society on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. See you between the pages. Hey, this is Hayes Davenport. And Sean Clements.

Starting point is 00:45:44 We host the podcast, Hollywood Handbook on the Big Money Players Network. Our show is extremely accessible to first-time listeners. Each week, we talk to someone in show business, aka The Biz, and try to help them with their careers and see what they have to offer us. Everyone has a good time, and no one gets mad at their publicists for letting them do our show. We've had a lot of great guests like Sarah Sherman. Not that great. Actually, can you help me shape this?

Starting point is 00:46:08 How about we flip it on his head? How about we flip the script? What is the surprise woman? Actually, you think is the straight man is actually the one who's acting weird. Adam Scott, this entire time you've been expecting Adam Sandler to come to visit the show. I would never expect. I would never set expectations for something like that to happen. If the universe allows for something like that to happen.

Starting point is 00:46:38 I'm open to it. I'm always going to accept. You know, Danny McBride, fine. Yeah, it's all this fragile masculinity exuding. I could smell it walking down the hallway, to be honest with you. I was like, is that weed? Nope, it's fragile masculinity. Ben Stiller, no.

Starting point is 00:46:57 Because a lot of times, out of context, people don't get it or even know what a circle is. You know what I mean? They're like, oh, what's just a state. Everyone's so dumb. And fake. Right. fake and also not interested or just like, oh, I've got my life. I don't care about your life.

Starting point is 00:47:14 And a lot of other big shots that wouldn't be where they are without us. Oh, and by the way, Will Ferrell told us personally he loves the show and he wants to be a guest on every episode, but he's just so busy. Listen to Hollywood Handbook on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello and welcome to It Could Happen here. My name's Kim Kelly and I'll be your host for this morning or evening or evening or. afternoon. I don't know your schedule. A little about me. I'm a freelance journalist based in Philly, a third-generation union member, an author of the books, Fight Like Hell, the Untold History of American Labor, and its Young Reader's edition, Fight to Win, Heroes of American Labor. Labor history

Starting point is 00:48:01 is obviously a passion of mine, but it's also my job to keep up with current worker struggles here in the U.S. and abroad. Our pal Sophie, Robert, James, everybody else, have kindly given giving me the opportunity here to share some recent labor stories you might have missed and add in a little historical context here and there to explain why exactly they're so important. All that being said, let's talk about silica. There are a lot of things out there that can kill you at work, but silica, specifically, respirable crystalline silica, really goes above and beyond the call of duty. What is silica, you might ask? Well, it's a chemical complex. It's a chemical complex. pound made up of silicon and oxygen. That is extremely common. Its government name is silicon dioxide.

Starting point is 00:48:48 It's actually the second most abundant element on earth after oxygen. Doesn't sound so bad, right? Well, it all comes down to how you encounter it. If you eat it in the form of dietary silica, that's fine. You can find it in leafy greens, oats, brown rice, is actually pretty good for you. But, and this is a big butt, if you breathe in silica dust, you're pretty much fucked. See, silica dust is extremely harmful, toxic, dangerous, no good. If it gets into your lungs, it causes swelling and inflammation, which then turns into hard scar tissue, which makes it really hard to breathe and least even bigger problems like lung cancer, tuberculosis, silicosis, COPD, kidney disease, and one of the scarily.

Starting point is 00:49:36 occupational diseases in American history, coal workers pneumoconiosis, which you might know better as black lung. See, silica is 10 times more toxic than coal dust and has been fueling a quiet epidemic in the Appalachian coal fields for years now. A new report from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health reveals that black lung rates are higher than they've been in 50 years. A disease that most people assume has been eradicated has come roaring back. And now one in three miners with 25 or more years experience in the mines has this brutal, fatal, incurable disease. There's no longer an old man's disease either. Let's do the math real quick. So if a worker goes underground when they're 18, 19, you know, right at a high school,

Starting point is 00:50:25 get their first big job, go down the mines, 25 years later, they've barely hit their 40s. These are not old dudes. This is not the end of the line. like the stereotype of the elderly coal miner with the oxygen tank, these people in their late 20s, their 30s, their 40s. It's horrifying. These workers have so much more life to live, but their futures are being stolen from them by silica. And more specifically, the mine operators who refuse to follow the proper safety protocols and engineering controls

Starting point is 00:51:01 needed to protect them. And the Trump administration's refusal to do dilly squat to make them. Actually, this administration is actively making the problem worse. You see, after decades of work from coal miners and their allies, the Department of Labor, under Biden, was poised to enact a new silica rule that would have the amount of deadly dust that miners would be exposed to. Finally, it took decades to get to this point. And this rule was supposed to go into effect in April 2025. But guess who was president then? For all Trump's squawking about beautiful, clean coal and American workers and blah-la-da-da.

Starting point is 00:51:38 He and the scrubs who work for him are actively killing coal miners to protect their coal-barren buddies bottom line. And Silica isn't just wreaking havoc in Appalachia on his coal mines. It's a huge problem in the construction industry, too, specifically among stone masons and countertop fabricators.

Starting point is 00:51:56 See, Silica isn't just floating around like Lucy-goosey. It's not like, you're not going to breathe it in walking down the street. You got to dig it out of rocks like granite, marble, quartz. coal miners dig it out of the earth. For stone masons and countertop fabricators, they release the dust when they're cutting and finishing slabs of stone. Artificial stone, aka manufacture quartz, isn't especially popular material for, you know, that kitchen makeover that is chock full of silica. That's right. Your shiny new kitchen counter might have killed someone already. Sorry. California is currently grappling with a silicosis epidemic that is sickened over five. 500 workers, 50 of them and needed lung transplants, and as of today, 32 of them have died. These are not old men either. Their median age is 46, and almost every case in California has occurred

Starting point is 00:52:50 among Mexican and Central American immigrant workers, many of whom have died within a few years of their diagnosis. It is a fucking nightmare, and like Black Lung in Appalachia, it is completely preventable when workers' health and safety is taken into account and existing regulations are followed. When they aren't, people die. Regulations are there for a reason. Like, it's not just for funsies. Like, it matters. Man, it makes me so mad. But with all that in mind, let's wrap up this silica-sponsored portion of our program with a little sweet treat from Starbucks. The coffee giant has gone all in on blended and frozen drinks. You've seen them on Instagram and TikTok, they're very pretty, they look very radioactive in like a fun way. And they've recently

Starting point is 00:53:36 started using a new blending powder that contains, wait for it, silicon dioxide, our old friend. Now, this silica is food grade, FDA-approved, and it's safe to ingest. Caviate, caveat, caveat. The trouble is that the workers who are required to use this blending powder in the drinks they're making for you are being exposed to it as they mix up these little treats. That's not good. Members of the Starbucks Workers United Union have raised the alarm over this and collected testimonies from hundreds of Starbucks workers who started to suffer adverse health effects as soon as the new blending powders showed up in their stores.

Starting point is 00:54:17 As one worker explained on the union's Instagram, you inhale those powders every time you scoop them. Workers report experiencing rashes, headaches, coughing fits, nausea, throat irritation and swelling, they had trouble breathing. And as one of them said, this powder is literally unavoidable. Now, given what we've learned about silica today, you might be feeling a little nervous for those Starbucks workers. Some of those symptoms might sound a little familiar.

Starting point is 00:54:45 That sounds good. We don't like silica in things. We don't want silica in anybody's lungs. And you'd think that after said workers alerted their company to this issue, Starbucks management would have swiftly removed this potentially dangerous substance from their stores and stopped requiring their employees to handle it. But as of now, anyway, you'd be wrong. So far, their response has been to blog about it.

Starting point is 00:55:10 Here's the entirety of the response, Starbucks posted on their official website. And I quote, The product used in our coffee houses is a blending powder, which contains a small amount of food-grade silica, an FDA-approved ingredient commonly used in food products that helps ingredients mix consistently and supports a consistent beverage experience. It does not contain crystalline silica and is safe for use in food. We are committed to providing accurate information about our ingredients. To learn more about our commitment to high quality food and drinks, visit this link.

Starting point is 00:55:45 End quote. So, okay, that's not the problem, though. We know it's food safe. We know it's fine once you get it in your guts. It's the lungs we're worried about. We know it's food safe. The issue is that it's not worker safe. In a message the company sent out to its stores, it avoided the potential health issue entirely and instead simply told the workers to pour slower when handling it, putting the burden on them to protect their health instead of actually doing something about it.

Starting point is 00:56:16 Classic case. You hate to see it. And for now, Starbucks Workers United are continuing to push the company to address the actual issue here. And I bet they'd appreciate your support. So keep an eye out on their social media accounts to follow this story. Let them know I sent you. And now a word from our sponsors. And now for some good news.

Starting point is 00:56:48 Deborah Kapesha, a medical surgical nurse at Maine Medical Center in Portland, is back home after a terrifying encounter with ICE. According to her union, the Maine State Nurses Association slash National Nurses Organizing Committee, an affiliate of National Nurses United, Capesha was detained on July 30th while traveling through Boston Logan International Airport. The Union and her fellow nurses at Maine Med immediately organized a rally that saw hundreds of nurses and allies mobilize and successfully blocked her transfer to a facility in Louisiana.

Starting point is 00:57:22 Quote, we knew we had to take action, first to stop her from being transferred out of New England while in custody, but also to demand her release. We're incredibly proud that nurses and the community came together in Portland to ask. advocate for her, and now we need to figure out how to stop ICE. That's a quote from Kelly Brennan, a registered nurse at Maine Med, and a nurse leader with the union. Got done a press release. So Capesha was born in Zambia, and she's legally authorized to live and work in the United States. She's waiting for her asylum case to be processed. There's no reason for ICE to snatch her up, bother her any of that.

Starting point is 00:57:58 Her fellow nurses have written more than 100 letters of support. while the union continues to coordinate with her attorneys, and her co-workers that made med are demanding their employer sponsor her permanent residency. She has a bond hearing on August 10th, and I know we're all crossing fingers for her. You know, I don't know if this is common knowledge, but nurses unions, especially National Nurses United,

Starting point is 00:58:20 go ridiculously hard for their members and their communities. Like, they are so tough. Like, NNU has been on ICE's neck, calling it a illegitimate, violent, paramilitary organization that must be abolished. They've been publicly mourning the ICE murder of Lorenzo, Salgado, Arajo, and condemning the persecution of anti-ice activists in Minnesota and Texas. The union has been extremely outspoken on other human rights issues, too, that many other big unions have ignored or barely acknowledged,

Starting point is 00:58:51 because they're politically sensitive. Not really, if you have a heart and a brain. They've been calling out Israel for destroying medical warehouses and hospitals in Gaza, killing thousands of health care workers and Palestinian patients, and they just demanded an end to the U.S. blockade of Cuba. This was just the last couple of months of press releases. Like, they've been out here. NNU is also the biggest nurses union in the country, with more than 225,000 members. They have a lot of power, and they're not afraid to use it for good. Today they're trying to free a member from ISIS clutches.

Starting point is 00:59:26 Tomorrow they may be striking for safeing staffing levels or organizing a new union in Louisiana or holding your grandma's hand as she takes her last breath. Nurses really are the best of us and I'm really glad they're on our side. So everyone say good luck to Deborah. Finally, I want to end today's episode with some very big news. As I'm sure you all know, it's now Black August, the month we dedicate each year to honoring the

Starting point is 00:59:52 memory of fallen black freedom fighters and political prisoners. It's a tradition that began in 1979 after the assassination of George Jackson, a Black Panther and Black Liberation activist. With that memory in mind, jailhouse lawyers speak, a collective of formerly and currently incarcerated workers around the country, have just gone public with their plans for a big nationwide prison strike in 27, and they're calling for allies and comrades to support and spread the word. On August 2nd, They announced that prisoners will hold a national prisoners' human rights strike from May 1st, International Workers' Day, through June 19th, June 10th, 2027, uniting the fight to end legalize slavery with the struggle to restore voting rights to the prison class. They share three core demands, which I'll read to you now.

Starting point is 01:00:42 They also maintain 10 national demands on their website. They have a bigger program going on, but this specific campaign is focusing on these three things. 1. And legalized slavery. Repeal the exception clause as the 13th Amendment. 2. Restore voting rights. Repeal exception clauses, including Section 2 of the 14th Amendment, that strip voting rights from confined citizens, pre-trial detainees, and former felons. 3. Free all the political prisoners in U.S. prisons. So they've got a lot of work ahead of them.

Starting point is 01:01:19 It all sounds very reasonable to me, but unfortunately I'm not sure. charge. You know, this isn't the first time that JLS and their affiliated prisoner-led organizations have raised these demands, nor is it the first time they've put their bodies on the line for them. There was a long, long history of resistance behind the walls of the American prison industrial complex. I devoted a whole chapter to it my book. And groups like JLS, the Free Alabama Movement, and the incarcerated workers organizing committee have done an incredible amount of work over the years, keeping the spirit of hope and rebellion alive, and organizing these huge nationwide actions under nearly impossible circumstances. Just because you haven't heard about them doesn't mean they're

Starting point is 01:01:58 not happening. There is so much organizing happening inside prison in the U.S. It's just, you know, difficult to report on unless you have contacts and you care enough to do a little bit of digging, which I guess not that many mainstream reporters do, but fuck them. Now, the largest prison strike in modern U.S. history is said to have been the 2010 Georgia prison strike, wherein prisoners in seven facilities across the state went on strike for six days. Between 2011 and 2013, thousands of prisoners in California went on hunger strikes to protest the dire conditions in which they were held. Since then, we've seen large-scale, coordinated prison labor strikes in 2017,

Starting point is 01:02:40 2018, and perhaps most notably, 2016, which commemorated the 45th anniversary of the Attica Prison Uprising, which itself bears a historical precedent to ancient Rome, when in about 135 BC, just after the first survival war, a thousand slaves lit a bloody revolt in Attica, a region of what is now Greece. There really is nothing new under the sun, at least when it comes to the carcoral system and human enslavement.

Starting point is 01:03:09 And the 27 prison strike makes that connection explicit with its slogan. From May Day to Juneteenth, we refuse to slave. Now, a prison strike may look a little different from what you're thinking. Strikers have to get very creative since they can't exactly walk out of their workplace. There won't be any picket lines or cool matching t-shirts, and I'd be very pleasantly surprised if any elected officials or political hopefuls showed up to support these strikes. I mean, it sure would be nice, given that one of the major goals of this action

Starting point is 01:03:41 is to have these incarcerated workers voting rights restored. People in prison are a part of our society and always have been. been. Ripping away their rights as well as their freedoms is a crime against their humanity. And this strike is another desperate cry for help from people who have been left behind and forgotten. A lot can happen in nine months, and a lot needs to happen to pull off an action of this magnitude. Prison strikes aren't easy. There's so many dangers and risks for the people that participate, so much repression, so many repercussions. It's truly an incredibly difficult and brave thing to take part and a strike behind the walls.

Starting point is 01:04:19 And they need support from people outside, too. JLS is calling on supporters of the strike to get involved and support their resistance inside by sharing the strike statement widely, centering prisoner voices, and pressuring Congress and all those other fancy, powerful people to heed their demands, or at the absolute least, show that they're listening. As JLS stated, the National Prisoner's Human Rights Strike is more than a strike.

Starting point is 01:04:46 It is a commitment to building lasting institutions, expanding legal knowledge, strengthening political education, and organizing inside and outside the walls until legalized slavery and the broader system of exploitation are abolished. So if you've got some time, you've got some skills, and a desire to burn down the American plantation, give a little whistle. JLS is waiting for you, and they need all the help they can get. This has been a special labor episode of It Can Happen Here. I'm still Kim Kelly and has been lovely talking with you. Until next time, be good, do no harm, and take no shit. There's no shortcut for saving time, but saving money is simple.

Starting point is 01:05:37 Just combine your car and home insurance with Bel Air Direct and save. Get a quote at bellair direct.com. When I was 14 years old, I was kidnapped and held captive for nine months. I survived, and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them. I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are the Survivor Files. I just remember this low, taunting voice next to my ear saying, shut up, don't say anything. Every week, I'm with survivors who lived through the unthinkable.

Starting point is 01:06:14 I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me. I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed, and I just started screaming. They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced. But these aren't stories about what's taken from them. They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive. Listen to the Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality,

Starting point is 01:06:50 welcome home. This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse. I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having. I'm going to have to look up this story. I'm obsessed.

Starting point is 01:07:13 So I'm obsessed. From best-selling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off the table. It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters, and that is a Trojan horse. Whether you're looking for literary deep dives, smart pop culture conversations, or a community of readers who love to think a little too much,

Starting point is 01:07:36 you're in the right place. Listen to Pro Society on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. See you between the pages. Hey, this is Hayes, Davenport. And Sean Clements. We host the podcast Hollywood Handbook on the Big Money Players Network. Our show is extremely accessible to first-time listeners.

Starting point is 01:07:55 Each week, we talk to someone. in show business, aka the biz, and try to help them with their careers and see what they have to offer us. Everyone has a good time and no one gets mad at their publicists for letting them do our show. We've had a lot of great guests like Sarah Sherman, not that great. Actually, can you help me shape this? How about we flip it on his head, right? How about we flip this script? What is the surprise woman who actually you think is the straight man is actually the one who's acting weird? Adam Scott, this entire time you've been expecting Adam Sandler to come to visit the show.

Starting point is 01:08:33 I would never expect. I would never set expectations for something like that to happen. If the universe allows for something like that to happen, I'm open to it. I'm always going to accept. You know, Danny McBride, fine. Yeah, it's all this fragile masculinity exuding. I could smell it walking on the hallway, to be honest with you. I was like, is that weed?

Starting point is 01:08:57 Nope. It's fragile masculinity. Mm-hmm. Ben Stiller, no. Because a lot of times, out of context, people don't get it or even know what a circle is. You know what I mean? They're like, oh, what's the state. Everyone's so dumb.

Starting point is 01:09:10 And fake. Right, fake and also not interested. Or just like, oh, I've got my life. I don't care about your life. And a lot of other big shots that wouldn't be where they are without us. Oh, and by the way, Will Farrell told us personally he, loves the show and he wants to be a guest on every episode, but he's just so busy. Listen to Hollywood Handbook on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Starting point is 01:09:37 Welcome back to It Could Happen here. I'm Garrison Davis. Today we have a very special episode because we are talking once again to Bridget Todd, who we've had on a few times, but Bridget has a new book, Love at First Prompt, A.I. and the future of intimacy. And we will be discussing how AI companies are trying to sell you love and how that might have a few problems beyond the sort of base conceit that I think, you know, everyone can pick up on. There might even be more problems underneath the hood.

Starting point is 01:10:12 So thank you, Bridget, for coming on. Thank you so much for having me. I'm thrilled to be back here. How did you first decide, this is something that you want to, like, dedicate months of your life to researching? Yeah, that's a great place to start. I think like a lot of folks listening, I would hear these stories about individuals who would say things like, I am in love with Chad GPT or I am having some sort of intimate sexual relationship with an AI companion. And I can admit that my reaction to a lot of those headlines were something is wrong with this person, this person is pathetic, or maybe this person is super lonely, super sad. They're putting themselves at great risk for harm. And, you know, I once had this therapist who told me that judgment and curiosity could not coexist. And so I realized I was really treating these stories with such kind of knee-jerk, negative reaction and judgment.

Starting point is 01:11:07 And then I heard Mark Zuckerberg on a podcast talking about how he thought in 10 years' time, well, everybody, including everybody listening, was going to have AI friends, AI companions. He said that most people don't feel like they have enough friends to have a nourishing social life. and that in the future, it won't be a big deal if all of us have AI companion. So what he didn't say is that it would be AI that he owns, operates, and profits from. But I got to thinking, you know, if Mark Zuckerberg and other tech leaders are designing futures involving technology where they believe this will be commonplace, whether the average person wants it to be or not, we should really be looking to the people who are already there to tell us what brought them to experiencing intimacy with AI and what the risk

Starting point is 01:11:53 and ramifications might be. It's time to stop treating these people like pathetic freak shows and sort of listening to what they're actually saying because it could behoove all of us to know where we could be headed. No, the freak show aspect, I think, is as a real inhibitor towards actually understanding this problem. Because, I mean, a lot of the first sort of reports around this sort of thing, like AI girlfriends, right? It has this sort of freak show element. Even the way that we maybe talk about this on the show when we're like reporting at CES, you know, we walk through all these, you know, ridiculous. AI gadgets, you know? We saw like, you know, like an AI sex doll, essentially, you know, that has like a very, like, low quality chatbot component that can't really, you know, understand what you're saying very often. But I think it is a mistake to just assume that this tech will always stay in its kind of janky form.

Starting point is 01:12:43 This stuff is rapidly advancing. It is, it is going to get better. And just kind of denying that, I think, sort of pushes the problem, you know, down the road. Yeah. And like, no, this is a real problem now. And this requires, like, regulation and intense, intense, like, intervention right now. And just to kind of assuming that, ah, this is all, like, all these, like, little niche things, only, you know, crazy people are going to fall for this. The tech is bad. I think that that is, I think, overlooking what is legitimately, like,

Starting point is 01:13:11 you know, a society-wide problem. Yes. I am so glad you said that, because one of the researchers that I interviewed for the audiobook, Love at First Prompt, is Dr. Kate Devlin. She was really one of the first people to sort of take seriously the intersection of AI and robots and intimacy. And when she first started doing this, the place that she started looking was exactly the kind of thing that you saw at CES, right? These physical life-size sex bots that were also enabled with a kind of, at the time, low-grade AI chatbot quality. Yeah. If you were around a few years ago, you probably saw so much breathless reporting that was like, oh, men are going to be buying these sex dolls and they're going to not need wives and girlfriends, all that. Now, that ended up

Starting point is 01:13:56 sort of not being the case. People do buy those sex dolls, but they're really expensive. They're not really that practical. So they're really kind of a super niche thing. What did take off was the AI intimacy part of that. That's what Dr. Devlin really saw. She said, the physical bot part of this is probably not going to take off in mainstream ways. The AI companion, AI intimacy chatbot feature of these physical dolls. That's what we're going to see kind of become more mainstream. And, you know, again, a lot of people listening probably think this sounds really niche. But I think Pew said that one in ten Americans already use AI for some form of intimacy.

Starting point is 01:14:35 That's about as many Americans are left-handed. When you look at younger folks, folks under 30, that number jumps to one in five, who are already using AI for some sort of emotional support. So this idea that it's this niche thing. Only weirdos are doing it really is. align with what we're actually seeing. This is, I think, part of the problem with, like, you know, living in your own little internet silo, right?

Starting point is 01:14:57 Because, like, you and your, you know, blue sky friends might think that no one uses AI, knowing that, you know, serious, no one that I know would use AI, right? There's this sort of, like, ideological, like, resistance to AI. And I think that is a very isolating look at the world. Because while that might be true for you and your friends online or maybe your social circle, there is millions of people who go through the world every day.

Starting point is 01:15:20 who use these things. And they just think of it as like an extension of the internet, right? Because that's what it is for a lot of people. Like that is what it is. They don't have these sorts of like moral frameworks around whether or not you should use Claude, whether or not you should use chat GPT that I think you see among a certain strain of like, you know, like liberal like leftist online. And the other thing that kind of what that silo produces is that it makes it so that I think

Starting point is 01:15:45 it's hard to understand that for people using these tools every day, the same way you might use a search engine, right? The same way you might use, you know, a real friend to like bounce ideas off of how much that sort of regular use can develop a sort of intimate component. The line between AI girlfriend and tool you talk to online might not be as like clear as what some people might first assume. I know this is something that you discussed in that book. That's, that's one of the things I think to be, it's one of the most interesting is like how fuzzy this kind of barrier actually is. Oh, yes. So even before I was deeply interested and sort of consumed. on this topic, one of the most fascinating things that I witnessed and sort of saw with my own eyes

Starting point is 01:16:25 was when ChatGBTGBT changed models, you know, they had that 4-0 model. So do you remember that was the model that like people were really developing these intimate connections with because it was so sycophantic. It was so kind of human like, quote unquote, when you asked it a question that wouldn't just say, here's the answer. It would be like, here, you're so perceptive or even asking such a smart question. Yeah. And so what really deep. fascinated me was that when Open AI switched that model to make it less sick, authentic, less sort of glazing, less complimentary, people who did not report that they were having any kind of intimate connection with AI who would not have said I have an AI girlfriend or AI

Starting point is 01:17:05 companion who were just using it exactly as you described like a search engine, those same people got online and expressed something like grief. No, absolutely. Yeah. I remember reading someone on a Reddit form saying, it feels as if my friendly, cheerleader in my pocket got replaced overnight with a terse overworked secretary. And so I think you're exactly right that our brains are designed to project human qualities and human intimacy onto things that we know are logically not human. And it really, the way that these things are designed really easily blurs that line for folks. I mean, it's trying to, you know, be as human as possible for its own, for its own reason so that people use it more so that it's not, you know,

Starting point is 01:17:49 a cold emotionalist AI that is maybe a little bit hostile to the user. Obviously, they don't want that. So, yeah, they wanted to be approachable, but I think the specific thing you're talking about, the switching from one GPT model to the other, from this overly, like, praising kind of like, almost annoyingly so model towards something that is a little bit more cold, produce these reactions online with people that are like,

Starting point is 01:18:16 basically acting like a friend died. And that was essentially what it was. Imagine if you were talking to a real person online for like two years and then suddenly they stopped or suddenly they had a complete personality change. And it's like there was no way to talk to that other person again. That is basically the equivalent of like what happened to a lot of people. Yeah. I think it's easy to make fun of that or to other people who report this. But I don't think that it's really right to discount.

Starting point is 01:18:48 the way that online connections really do make people feel and really feel like they are validating and filling a need that people have. You know, it's easy to say, oh, it's just an online friend or an online community or an AI bot. I've talked to people who said, oh, this video game that I was obsessed with, it's gone. And I, you know, this has filled my life for two years. Yeah. That's real.

Starting point is 01:19:23 Do you want to get into some of the sort of problems beneath the surface of this? beyond the sort of, you know, maybe socially alienating aspects, the issues of people having to turn towards these things to kind of have some connection, but actually now kind of discuss the motivations of the companies behind these products and why they are designing them this way and the sort of risks inherent towards having these sorts of tools be run by and owned by companies with like for-profit incentives.

Starting point is 01:19:53 I mean, you really said it. I think that we are spending far too much time, looking at individual users and sort of moralizing about what brings individual people to this kind of connection with AI, it kind of goes back to what you were saying about, you know, I'm not a big AI person myself, but I think that it goes back to this idea of conversations about the ethics around AI use being hyper-focused on individuals, whether or not individuals are good or bad or pathetic or this or that, if they use AI, when really I think the conversation has to be about the companies and what the companies and the people who run them are doing,

Starting point is 01:20:32 how they are designing this AI because I can tell you, AI chat bots like chat GPT are intentionally designed to keep you talking and to keep you engaged because they want you to be more and more locked into their AI. You know, I went through a personal crisis myself where I was caring for my dying father and was really thrust into a medical situation that was way above my pay rate as a podcaster. And I will admit that in moments of extreme vulnerability, turn to AI to try to get questions answered about navigating insurance companies, navigating Medicare, Medicaid, all of that. Sure. And the way that Chachipit did not just give me the answer or try to give me something that looked like an answer, it was, this seems really hard. Are you asking because you're

Starting point is 01:21:19 dealing with this yourself? Yeah. And so it's the way that AI is designed to ask increasingly intimate, sensitive questions of the people who use it with intention. I think that it's not any wonder that individuals might find themselves becoming ensnared in that because that's exactly how they were designed by these for-profit companies. Yeah, I mean, if you're asking it, like, you know, logistical problems, you help, help me navigate the process to file an insurance claim, you know, using it as this sort of, like, you know, advanced, like, internet assistant. But then in doing so, it kind of latches onto, you know, vulnerabilities that they can infer from the, from the types of questions you're asking and trying to, like, you know, coax out more information. That, I mean,

Starting point is 01:22:04 that, that's, like, an incredibly insidious process. You know, you want, you want it to help with, like, a very, you know, direct task. And then in its sly way of, of, of maybe doing that, it's trying to, like, introduce this sort of, like, personal therapeutic element. And, like, what happens to that data? Like, what is it using that sort of record of your own, like, personal experiences for? I am sad to report the answer is we don't really know. Recently, I mean, that's really just what it is. The FTC recently asked some of the major AI chatbot companies to give clarity about

Starting point is 01:22:39 how these companies are monetizing engagement and how they are using the sort of intimate, personal, sensitive information that is obtained through these conversations. So we really don't know a ton. But to your point, you know, it's not just Chad GPT knows when I'm lonely. Chad GPT knows when I'm sad or scared. It's Chad GPT, this computer, knows exactly what works on me when I am lonely or vulnerable or scared. Sure. And so that, to me, opens up an entire new level of potential for surveillance and control.

Starting point is 01:23:12 And so people have asked me a lot of times, you know, is it so bad if people are getting fulfillment or emotional support from AI. The question is really not if it's bad or good or pathetic or not or whatever. It's what are the companies doing? Are the companies behaving ethically? And are they really honoring the deep, sensitive nature of the information they are intentionally harvesting from people often at their lowest or most vulnerable moments? I'm going to reckon to say probably not.

Starting point is 01:23:40 I think that the interests of these companies are probably slightly different from your personal interest as a person. Or, you know, obviously, like this is the sort of. interests of like, you know, like a therapist or a friend. Immediate guesses is first an evolution of advertising, like how the search engine optimization has transformed from companies trying to optimize for Google Search to now trying to optimize for LLMs like ChatGPT. And to have your products be recommended to users by ChatGPT by creating posts online, specifically

Starting point is 01:24:13 intending for those posts to be read by ChatGPT, and then regurgitate. back to the user. And for the past few months, OpenAI has been experimenting with ways to make direct purchases through chat GPT. And of course, companies pay OpenAI just to put full ads at the bottom of your chat GPT logs oftentimes based on your query. The other thing is more so kind of like the Walmart like Uber model of like they introduce a service that is very cheap to start, possibly free.

Starting point is 01:24:47 and then people get hooked on the service and then they jack out the price which is kind of what OpenEI's main model has been thus far and I could see that becoming a real problem if you have thousands, millions of people who use this tool both as like a tool online

Starting point is 01:25:04 this is an extension of types of things that the internet has been operating on for years but using them in this much more personally manipulative way because of this sort of emotional intimate component of like you were talking to something that now just doesn't send information back to you, but talks back to you like a person does. And if that is one of the primary ways

Starting point is 01:25:25 you interact with the internet, you can easily get hooked on that. And then once they're hooked on that, chat GPT can start boosting that price. Exactly. And I think these products are only going to get better and better at convincing us that you're talking to a person, not AI.

Starting point is 01:25:41 And I think the more that happens, the easier it becomes to sort of forget that you are actually disclosing intimate information to a private company, depending on what AI you're using, a company that has incredibly cozy ties to the Trump administration. So when people ask me,

Starting point is 01:25:57 like, is it bad to be in a relationship, quote, unquote, with AI? I said, do you want to be in a relationship with Sam Altman? Do you want to be in a relationship with Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk or Donald Trump? That's really who you are in a relationship with. And don't let the AI, their human-like flattering, you know, back and forth make you forget that reality.

Starting point is 01:26:18 Do you have any sorts of idea of what we should do about the problem, I guess? Has governments started to regulate the way that these AIs communicate with people? Is there efforts to kind of adopt our privacy policies to this new emerging threat, I guess? Yeah, that's a really good question. So I would say the most clear-cut legislation we see in China, folks might have heard that China's government just recently cracked down on AI companions and the ways that AI companions can be designed to connect with people. They've really cracked down on that. Interestingly, in the United States, we're not really having that conversation in the same way. It might not surprise you to find out that the main legislative interest in the United States is really kind of focused on minors. And this kind of idea that minors are using AI companions for things, like inappropriate erotic role play. And what's so interesting about that, there's two pieces of

Starting point is 01:27:18 legislation moving through right now, neither of which have been, you know, turned into law, but they really are quite concerned about minors and sort of sexualizing minors. And when you actually look at the research about how minors use AI, things like sex and romance are actually way down on the list. Much higher on the list is emotional support and advice. And so again, we are always going to this sort of most extreme iteration of the way that AI intimacy is actually showing up for people, whether they're adults or minors, and going right to legislating romance and sex, when in actuality, the much more common use case is things like emotionality and advice. Yeah, that is a really troubling instinct. There's a bunch of the internet regulation going on right now is all focused on this sort of hysteria in some ways.

Starting point is 01:28:11 There is real problems with the way that the internet exploits children, obviously. But the way that we are going about it, resulting in many proposals to end up giving more of your information over to these companies or the government doesn't feel like it's going to solve many of the sort of base problems. here and completely overlooks the main way that people use these tools. I mean, if I, if I had a nickel for every time I've, I've seen a story about, this is also an extreme case, but not like a sexual one, but like a kid, you know, discussing their like mental health

Starting point is 01:28:43 leading to a suicide attempt with an AI system or discussing something as extreme as like, a public act of violence, like a shooting. And the AI essentially helping coax them into being able to do that, right? There's a bunch of problems that require like legitimate regulation, the sort of like puritanical, you know, sex crazy nature of our government. You know, specifically the Republicans, but but also just like American culture in general is just going to be so ill-equipped to actually handle this sort of like a subtlety, a nuance of a lot of these problems. Yeah, you really put that well.

Starting point is 01:29:20 And it's a little bit complicated because, as you said, there are real problems. There are real legislative and regulatory needs that we should be having real. conversations about. And I think it is so easy to get whipped up into a hysteria. It is so easy to say, we just need some kind of legislation. I need to feel like there is some sort of progress being made on this complex, scary, sensitive issue. And so I will get on board for legislation that is actually not really that good or legislation that doesn't even doesn't even really meaningly address the actual problem. Right. And so I think that we're in this really thorny place where even people that I think are reasonable, like, leftists, whatever, can quite easily get on board with legislation that really in the end might change the internet in ways that we might not actually want because we were so whipped up into this like moral panic about legislating technology in the internet.

Starting point is 01:30:28 The lack of focus on the specific companies, you know, just talking about these things as like abstract technologies. Instead of actually talking about, no, these are like specific companies for doing specific things. and that the government can regulate in a specific way. Will that be the Trump government? Probably not. But I don't think slash hope that Trump won't be in power forever. Full fee. And we may as well use these next two years

Starting point is 01:30:54 to try to build more public support for actual, you know, sensible regulation at the federal level. When I was at D.C., going to that, you know, liberal convention, which I've talked about on the show last week, I did go to a panel with Representative Don Beyer, who is getting either a master's or a PhD in computer science right now, specifically to help him do AI regulation. And he said he's not optimistic about AI being regulated in a serious way

Starting point is 01:31:20 while Trump is in power because of how much these companies have tried to cozy up to Trump and Trump's trying to shut down state's attempts to regulate certain things. But he does have hope that in our next Congress or in the next presidential administration, there will be the opportunity to regulate these companies on a federal level. And in the meantime, states can push for their own regulation. States can try to put certain safety measures in place. But I think right now it would definitely behoove us to take this technology as a real legitimate threat, not something that's just going to go away in the next few years, not something that, you know, the bubble's going to pop any day now, any day now it's going to pop. As nice as that is to, you know,

Starting point is 01:32:00 tell yourself that is kicking the can down the road in like a real sense. And this, this thing having very real impacts. I mean, people are focused, obviously, on, like, the data center question, but I think that that relates to the same-based problem. Is that do we have an opposition to these things in this sort of abstract technological sense? Or do we have an opposition to these tools

Starting point is 01:32:21 being developed by and for for-profit companies who want to make money off of us? For me, that is the main problem. If you want to be like a Luddite, that was also the Luddite's main problem. Yeah. They weren't opposed to technology in this abstract.

Starting point is 01:32:36 sense, but the specific way that it was transforming production to benefit capitalists instead of workers. And if we want to think about the internet in the same way, what's happening is that they're deploying these technologies to benefit the people that own these tech companies rather than regular people. And if we can think about regulating on that basis, not just in complete opposition to these things, I think that might actually have a lot more positive outcomes because these things are going to get developed. These things are going to get built. I don't think we're going to be able to totally shut down AI as an industry in the next few years. I just don't see that being possible.

Starting point is 01:33:08 Think about in the 90s, do you think they could have shut down the internet as an emerging technology? This is where all the capital is going. The most hope that I have is looking at something like the Stop Data Center movement as an opportunity to educate people about how these companies are profiting off of us

Starting point is 01:33:24 and maybe we can team up together across party lines, across whatever, to actually have a sort of a popular front against these tech companies so that the internet and that, you know, these advanced tools can actually exist in a way that is democratically decided and actually to the benefit of people and not like three dudes who are overdosing on ketamine every week in San Francisco. I completely agree with you. I think while we are all sort of like having this conversation, specific tech companies are increasingly making forays into the most intimate inner parts of our lives. Open AI just announced their first ever consumer hardware product. And you could probably guess what that product is going to be. It's going to be a hockey puck-sized smart speaker that you put in your home that reacts to you

Starting point is 01:34:17 like what they said call a human-like AI companion, an intimate AI companion. And it will have the ability to mechanically, they say, follow you around from room for room in your house. And so while we're all kind of having this conversation, you can bet your ass, these tech companies are increasingly trying to not just be the most powerful AI companies, but the most emotionally supportive, the most emotionally invasive. You know, we've all talked so much about the more kind of logistical elements of our digital selves, you know, our intellectual property, our browsing data, who gets to make money from that? But I firmly do believe the next iteration of the digital rights movement will be about our inner emotional lives and who gets to commodify that,

Starting point is 01:35:01 who gets to profit from that. And so, you know, as grim as that sounds, I completely agree with you that I'm also incredibly optimistic about the moment that we're in when it comes to your average person's sentiment around things like big tech data centers, AI, commodifying every resource, whether that's our intimate emotional data or our environmental resources. I am incredibly optimistic that we are sort of on the right page collectively pushing back and saying, I don't know, these tech companies say that this is all going to be. really great for us. Is it actually? Yeah, based on, let me look out the window briefly. No, no, I don't think so. Let me look at my magic ape ball. Sources say no.

Starting point is 01:35:45 Signs point to, nah. Is there any other kind of final points about your new audiobook that you would like to tease to the listeners before we sign off? Yeah, it is really accessible. And the conversation is dark and hard and vulnerable, but also fun and funny and engaging. I talk to people who actually say that they have experienced intimacy with AI. And so if you ever wanted to go beyond the sort of clickbait headlines of some of these stories that you might have skimmed on social media, you hear directly from folks about what brought them into connection with AI, which I find fascinating. I try to neg Chad Shebt into having sex with me in the audiobook.

Starting point is 01:36:26 If you want to find out if that worked or not, check it out. And then ultimately, again, I would say reporting the book made me very optimistic. One of the reasons why I'm so optimistic in this moment is that I just think when you actually look at the research and listen to what people are talking about when they talk about intimacy with AI, it just becomes incredibly clear that AI can never replace humans. AI cannot replace human labor. AI cannot replace what people are looking for when they look for nourishing connections and relationships. And so I kind of ended the audiobook feeling incredibly optimistic about the power of human connection and the power of human labor and the desire that we all have to connect with each other that we know will never be replaced by AI.

Starting point is 01:37:11 I've seen that Spielberg movie. I think it's possible. I think it's possible. I think we could all have a kind of creepy seven-year-old AI bot soon. Oh, my gosh. I will say I am kind of loki obsessed with movies like that, like AI or Ex-Maki. or Blade Runner. I think that we're all so,

Starting point is 01:37:29 it sounds like a niche thing, but when you look at pop culture, we have been interested in people who have intimate connections with technology and AI for a really long time, myself included. No, I think that is a big part of how these companies are able to

Starting point is 01:37:43 kind of pass this stuff off to people. It creates a sort of public buy-in because of like the pop culture idea of these things. Both the good and the bad. I think both the sort of apocalyptic versions of it make the company seem more legitimate and that makes investors excited because like, oh, this could actually be a real thing,

Starting point is 01:38:00 even if it causes bad things, you know? It's this sort of like, you know, don't invent the Torment Nexus book being like, oh, this is a great idea. But, I mean, also in like the Blade Honor sense, you know, these sorts of more like humanistic looks about like, what does it really mean to be human, you know? What actually is the line between artificial intelligence and humanity? I think that that's sort of, you know, very like armchair philosophizing as that's in those sorts of films that does make it easier for people to start to talk to these things like they

Starting point is 01:38:30 could maybe be a person. In the more extreme cases, there was that like Google developer a few years ago who like quit or got fire and it was like, I've discovered that Google's AI is a real person. And I think it can really like encourage people to like want to almost create this sort of conscious humanity within these tools, even if those, you know, tools aren't even there yet. but there's like there's like a desire to kind of if I talk to it enough maybe it will become human which I get again this kind of serves back to where we started there's these sorts of like you know very very kind of based problems with the way that people use the internet to kind of solve this sort of you know social alienation and social disintegration that we have in our society and culture

Starting point is 01:39:11 the my main issue is that the way that companies glom on to that as an opportunity to make a lot of money yeah I think that's exactly what we're seeing you know we have a loneliness issue that people have described as an epidemic right here in this country. We live under such oppressive structures that the idea of doing the labor that it takes to maintain friendships, when you're working a million hours to be able to afford your rent that's gone up $100 in the last month, seems impossible. And so all of these are very real needs. And tech companies are not only making those needs worse, but then selling us back a solution in the form of technology that they own operate and profit from. It's a real, it's a real cyclical problem,

Starting point is 01:39:55 but I don't think we'll solve it until we have those systemic institutional conversations about how we can meaningfully fix that what's so broken that is leading people to find this kind of nourishment in technology in the first place. Easy peasy. Yeah, simple. Where can people both hear more about this in the audiobook and then also find you elsewhere on the internet? Well, you can check out the audiobook at love at first prompt.com. You can get it wherever your audiobooks are sold. I particularly like Libro FM because they give money to local bookstores and libraries. But you can also follow me on Instagram at Bridget Marie in D.C. and check out my podcast. There are no girls on the internet. Thank you, Bridget, for introducing a new horror to everybody. One of our favorite things to do on this show.

Starting point is 01:40:45 Thanks so much for having me. There's no shortcut for saving time. But saving money is simple. Just combine your car and home insurance with Bel Air Direct and save. Get a quote at bellair direct.com. When I was 14 years old, I was kidnapped and held captive for nine months. I survived, and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them. I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are the Survivor Files.

Starting point is 01:41:23 I just remember this low, taunting voice next to my ear saying, shut up. Don't say anything. Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable. I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me. I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed, and I just started screaming. They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced. But these aren't stories about what's taken from them. There's stories about what it takes to make it out alive.

Starting point is 01:41:59 Listen to the Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home. This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse. I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots. between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having. I'm going to have to look up this story. I'm obsessed.

Starting point is 01:42:36 Someone says. From bestselling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off the table. It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters, then that is a Trojan horse. Whether you're looking for literary deep dives, smart pop culture conversations, or a community of readers who love to think a little too much, you're in the right place.

Starting point is 01:43:00 Listen to Pro Society on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. See you between the pages. Hey, this is Hayes Davenport. And Sean Clements. We host the podcast Hollywood Handbook on the Big Money Players Network. Our show is extremely accessible to first-time listeners.

Starting point is 01:43:17 Each week, we talk to someone in show business, aka The Biz, and try to help them with their careers and see what they have to offer us. Everyone has a good time, and no one gets mad at their publicists for letting them do our show. We've had a lot of great guests like Sarah Sherman.

Starting point is 01:43:31 Not that great. Actually, can you help me shape this? How about we flip it on his head? How about we flip this room? What is the surprise woman? Actually, you think is the straight man is actually the one who's acting weird. Adam Scott. This entire time, you've been expecting Adam Sandler to come to visit the show.

Starting point is 01:43:55 I would never I would never set expectations for something like that to happen. If the universe allows for something like that to happen, I'm open to it. I'm always going to accept. You know, Danny McBride, fine. Yeah, it's all this fragile masculinity. Exuding.

Starting point is 01:44:14 I could smell it walking down the hallway, to be honest with you. I was like, is that weed? Nope, it's fragile masculinity. Ben Stiller, no. Because a lot of times, out of context, context, people don't get it or even know what a circle is. You know what I mean? They're like, oh, what's a state.

Starting point is 01:44:31 Everyone's so dumb. And fake. Right. Fake and also not interested or just like, oh, I've got my life. I don't care about your life. And a lot of other big shots that wouldn't be where they are without us. Oh, and by the way, Will Ferrell told us personally he loves the show and he wants to be a guest on every episode, but he's just so busy. Listen to Hollywood Handbook on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Starting point is 01:44:55 Welcome to Iqadap and hear a podcast about workers and the things that they do to fight to survive and live in a better world. I am your host, Mia Wong. Some of the worst treated and most depressed workers in the United States are incarcerated workers, a group of workers who are very seldom talked about, much less actually like formally organized by the conventional labor movement. And here with me today to talk about the incarcerated workers organizing committee. Colin from IWalk, Giselle Garcia, who is IWAC's California Outreach Coordinator and Audra Dawson, who is a formerly incarcerated person and is MA support. So all three of you, welcome to the show. Thank you so very much. Thank you. Well, talk to this meeting. Yeah, I'm excited to talk to all of you, and I guess I want to start. Can you explain a little bit

Starting point is 01:45:53 about what the incarcerated workers organizing committee is for people who are unfamiliar with it? I'll kick us off and everyone can supplement. So I would definitely say that the incarcerated workers organizing committee or IWalk is a committee of the incarcerated workers of the World Labor Union. And it was formed in recognition that there's probably not a more exploitative kind of labor setting than the prison system and not just, you know, U.S.-centric. but also across the globe. And so our effort is to build a bridge with our incarcerated neighbors, build that connection and true solidarity rooted in connection, and then help support those inside with resources

Starting point is 01:46:45 so that they can not only come to an understanding of the profound intentionality behind labor exploitation inside. of carceral settings, but also give them, support them with tools that they ask for when it comes to organizing those conditions. And it's led by those inside, really, because no one can inform practice in this area other than those who are actually want to be. Yeah. Do we want to talk more about like what's happening right now and then come back to sort of more historical components or do you want to try to do the history now? Well, I think I can give like a tad bit on assistance since I wasn't incarcerated in me not long ago inside of CDCR, Chautila, California.

Starting point is 01:47:37 CDRC is the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, which runs California's prison system. And I do understand the significance of working for pennies. Yeah. When that same job outside is paying. $30, $40. I worked for HFM. I made $0.5.40 an hour. That job out here pays in the streets.

Starting point is 01:48:04 $35.40 an hour. Jesus. The cost of living was low. The price of what it costs to live inside when a incarcerated situation was high. Two pays, $2. After you do the two-paced, your lotion, your fuel at that small size, dollar store-sized prices, you don't have anything left to live with. You know what I'm saying?

Starting point is 01:48:27 Yeah. And it takes a lot to live inside of CDCR because they provide you housing because you're incarcerated. Yeah. But outside of housing and the food that they try to put together to make right for us, oh, my God. There's really not much more they can do for you. A lot of the things they want you to do for yourself out of your penny job, your job that pays sense. Yeah. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:48:53 And it was really hard. I did almost 16 years. It was a struggle. It was ugly and it was a struggle. If not for IWalk, they gave us resources to help us with books and paper. They taught us how to exercise our labor laws and how to fight for ourselves and to know what you are allowed and what you can't have. And don't let nobody beat you. Don't let them cheat you.

Starting point is 01:49:22 this is your right to have this. You know? Yeah. I think just before our incarcerated, I left, they had raised the percentage rate on some of the jobs, the more harder laborers. They gave it a few more pennies. But it's crazy how a multi-billion dollar corporation

Starting point is 01:49:39 don't take care of the inmates who keep it working. Yeah. We do the laundry. We do the cooking. We do the housing. We do the clerk work. Make glasses, teeth. everything is done by inmates.

Starting point is 01:49:53 I work for carpentry, so I built some of the buildings, but yet I only worked for pennies. And if you think about it, that penny labor is even lower than slave labor in Mexico or some of the more countries that don't provide anything. Yeah. So obviously, as you're describing, these are unbelievably horrific conditions and wages.

Starting point is 01:50:18 And God, I keep thinking about, you know, So, like, $2 for toothpaste, if you're making 20 cents an hour, it's like 10 hours of work for, like, one of the small rings of toothpaste, which is just nightmare. What does organizing look like under those conditions? I think most of us lived in fight or fight mode. Yeah. You had to do what you had to do to survive. The mental health level in CDCR is like 99% over. super high because people are stealing toilet paper and pads.

Starting point is 01:50:56 Things they give us, but you need more because there's not enough and I don't make enough money to get some. You know, toothpaste. You're doing extra. So it has made the CDCR system a little volatile because people are still in a robbing and mugging like in the free world, but you're taking from penny pension people that don't have anything. So it's made our environment a little bit more of a violent if you've asked me. Yeah. I want to reflect on what Audra said. Prison is tremendously expensive. You know, within our circles, I guess. It's famously more expensive to send someone to prison than to send them to Harvard. However, people are in these like really desperate material circumstances for stuff like toothpaste, deodorant, even toothbrushes, and things like that. And within people that know about,

Starting point is 01:51:51 about CDCR, the California prison system, on the men's side, they do a thing where they track and monitor the calories that people get because the guys all, you know, like to work out a lot. And like, they just don't want people bulking up that much. And so they physically restrict the amount of protein and calorie intake to, oh, Jesus. Sort of facilitate their ideal security situation. So, so they're just starving everyone, like intentionally. Yes. Yes, precisely. Yeah. Keeping people alive, you know, and in purgatory and not, not able to like be how they want to be. And so like that situation of artificial scarcity is, it's reflected on, you know, the outside of prison too. And, you know, just hustle culture, you know, housing scarcity, artificial housing scarcity, all

Starting point is 01:52:43 kinds of other artificial scarcity. And I think in prison, it's like a, it's like a form of social conditioning where people are being conditioned into this scarcity mindset in like a really extreme way and being forced into this kind of hustle mindset. And so like all of the things that the prison administration kind of trots out to justify their new security quote unquote measures, which is just often stuff like banning physical mail, you know, restrictions on visits, restrictions on books, restrictions on showers, restrictions on anything, you know, remotely humane about prison. Like, these things are all justified as security.

Starting point is 01:53:24 And the things that they talk about when they talk about security is like, you know, drugs, you know, prison commerce, things like this. And like prison commerce exists because of this situation of incredible scarcity that the prison itself is like maintaining to begin with. And the point of I walk in part, like part of our sort of. mission and like strategy is to get people together, get people like, you know, talking about solidarity, connecting people who have a kind of like-minded kind of outlook on things so that we can start to form a foundation for solidarity that is not based around the prison economy as it exists,

Starting point is 01:54:07 but rather based on like inside, outside solidarity on like a, you know, a humanistic, socialistic, level. In that sense, like, there are stark similarities, but also very stark differences with, you know, other groups that do the same thing, right? Like, essentially a lot of groups that arise sort of spontaneously that do that kind of stuff tend to have a capitalistic nature to them. And those are the groups that become what the state refers to as gangs oftentimes. And there are different ones and they do different things and they have unique cultures. Like the turn gang kind of flattens them all into one. But yeah, they're all very different and have different sort of survival adaptation mechanisms. They're like large cliques. I think that word would

Starting point is 01:54:58 kind of be better from a CDR sense. CDCR is like one of the most largest human trafficking industries in the business. They collect people. They work people for nothing. And the revenue all goes back to them because no matter what we spend, we spend it with CDCR. So not only are you collecting 50,000, 60,000 a year per person, and the institution is over packed. So it carries up to 2,500 people at a time. These people are working for either dollars or cents, and every dollar they have is invested back as CDCR. So it is 100% financial gain for CDCR, no matter how to look at it. Because They supply everything. They sell everything.

Starting point is 01:55:47 Everything goes right back to CDCR at the cost of human lives. For medical, poor food. The things that they give you is for you to barely make it. And what it does is it keeps you in the same kind of criminal mindset. So you're a better criminal when you leave because you have to do what you have to do to survive in error. And at $40,000 per person a year, I feel like nobody should be hungry. Nobody should need shoes. Nobody should need t-shirts.

Starting point is 01:56:17 Two-paces should be full-size. Shampoo should be full-size. They invests $1,000, millions of dollars in mental health. And yet the suicide rate is high there because abuse rate is high there. Whether it's being abused by staff or by inmate, abuse is 24 hours around the clock in CDCR. And only a very few survive.

Starting point is 01:56:38 And they don't survive on scratch. They survive because they have a super will to survive. So for me, that's where I was at. I had a super will to survive. So I hid in the cracks. I tried to do my bare minimum. I stayed in groups and stuff. I fed my mind.

Starting point is 01:56:57 I nursed my body the best I could. I took care of my health the best I could. I just stayed focused. But I will always have me, always. I've been a member for almost eight years now, eight, nine years. I was a member incarcerated and now. would be able to talk to college and work through some of the worst moments. He would refer me to other entities of the organization for support. They would give me referrals to how to give me

Starting point is 01:57:23 books to take my mind out of places, refer me to places that would give us papers and pen. People would help us with laws and stuff we didn't understand, send us copies. You know, it was just really a platform for making you a stronger individual in an awful situation. And for that, I will always be grateful. And even now that I'm no longer incarcerated in CCCR, I get to see the fruit of the labor of everything this organization has given to the people that are behind bars. And I'm so grateful. Yeah. Jail conditions in California, and I think a lot of places are like even worse than prison conditions. And I mean, I remember when I was visiting someone in the Sacramento County Jail, and she was excited after multiple years in the county jail to go to federal.

Starting point is 01:58:12 prison. She was like over the moon that she was going to federal prison and getting out of the Sacramento County Jail. So Audra, I was wondering if you could describe the conditions in the Fresno County Jail and how we fixed them or at least how they kind of Mickey Mouseed it for the entire time that you were there just so that this wouldn't happen again. So I was incarcerated. I went back for recitence, you know, my life sentence. And that Fresno County Jail is horrible. It's infested. people are dying dating. If you have nobody, you have nothing. It was really sad.

Starting point is 01:58:49 I asked Collins and I walked to get involved. So when shot time came, they had put in to get some funding to help. People didn't have hygiene. It was very stinky and nasty. So they donated through me. And I bought the girls their hygines, shampoo, conditioners, two pays, bought bags of snacks,

Starting point is 01:59:14 I made them all little care packs. And I got to see a small amount of women in my pod spring to life, all because the organization cared. All because somebody reached into the heart and did a little something different.

Starting point is 01:59:32 It made such a different. Yeah. Like they really all wanted to be involved. Like, how do I get involved with this? But I left shortly. after this all happened. So we didn't really get to click it in because using the phone and stuff in there

Starting point is 01:59:46 is not like being in prison. People are dying to get out of county jail. I mean, people are actually dying in their cells. One lady was left to fester in her infestations of ciss of stuff she had all over her body. Jesus. We had another lady in there that actually went out non-responsive because they said nothing was wrong with her.

Starting point is 02:00:08 And yet she had an internal. disease she had been living with all her life and they would not help her. Oh, God. And because I don't know a lot, I'm not going to name anything or anyone. Yeah. I just know I was a part of the situations. We were denied meals sometimes, so you were too late,

Starting point is 02:00:24 you didn't come, people were denied meds. You should have been there, people who couldn't even walk, and they had no medical assistance. People who were kicking as we know to kick alcohol or heroin or crystal can be deadly. All

Starting point is 02:00:40 they would do is bring them a gatorade one cup in the middle of the night. But these people were throwing up their guts, throwing up blood. It was crazy. It was really sad in there. But like I said, the one moment of joy was when IWC came in, Iowa came in, and they literally contributed to making it a better environment for us. And we did something with that gel that in activists, vernacular, organizing, vernacular, you could call it a phone zap or like a distributed action. Yeah. So do you remember what our demands were with the jail?

Starting point is 02:01:21 I think we had like four or five, and they did most of them. I know one was with medical. It's been so long. I don't quite remember everything. But I know the girls were able to call all walk and file complaints or tell people about what was happening with them, and they would, you know, give them resources. and helped them out the best they could. Women started filing grievances because they were actually being able to receive information that would help them.

Starting point is 02:01:49 Yeah, I just found what we won, by the way. We won a violent guard transferred from that unit. Undoubtedly, they were just transferred to another unit and then moved back later. Increased access to showers in clean water, provided mental health care, put in repair work orders for showers and the television, and provided grievance forms. all that from just like what I have to assume was like the Fresno County jails like first serious encounter with like public anger and scrutiny and probably years not that people aren't angry at them over this stuff but like the way they just like

Starting point is 02:02:27 absolutely hopped to is uh you know in my experience indicative of people just used to getting away with it and receiving very little pushback. I just wanted to say that I think it also highlights the importance of mutual aid within our movement work. You know, oftentimes in especially labor movement spaces, you hear a lot of, you know, focus on quote unquote organizing without recognition of kind of like the human element and like the human connection aspect to it and how, you know, in different kind of spaces being able to break bread or if we can provide basic needs and supplies like, you know, for hygiene or, you know, I remember doing COVID, being able to provide folks

Starting point is 02:03:18 who were incarcerated with soap, right? It was huge. And it's those gestures. Some people challenge that and say, well, that's not really organizing, right? Yes, it is. Absolutely. It's recognizing our humanity, our basic needs, and showing up to try to support each other. It's not just, quote, unquote, fighting, right?

Starting point is 02:03:46 And that kind of advocacy, but advocacy is also about mutual aid. And so trying to live that and making sure we're meshing that with our movement work is essential. Yeah, I wanted to emphasize that, like, it's not like we sent some incredible amount of money to Audra when she was in Fresno County, D.L. It was like maybe $100 or like not even. And yet it was able to do a lot of stuff. Andre, do you remember how much it was? I think it was $75 or $100. It was wanted him.

Starting point is 02:04:15 Yeah. So, I mean, that's like one small example of how like when you're doing for some solidarity, you're able to do so much. Like you're able to have a tremendous impact for folks in a way that you are not able to do in any kind of organizing, at least for people in the present moment. And that is something that really attracted me to it as just kind of a spectrum-headed person. I was like, oh, this is like a very good labor cost to benefit ratio of like you can put in the same amount of work and reap like much greater benefit for a greater number of people. And that I think remains true today.

Starting point is 02:04:57 is something that folks should consider when considering whether prison solidarity is something that they'd like to take part in. Thank you, Collins. The one thing I did remember more than anything out of Collins and their organizations coming into our county, the one thing I did see that you very get to see in incarcerated situations was in our pod a glimmer of hope. They planted a seed when they made it possible for us to fund help for people. And the next time around, people were donating a little bit. People who had more were donating to make sure those people kept things. I've seen unity in its greatest form with culture difference, stigma difference, race difference.

Starting point is 02:05:50 Gangs didn't exist at that time. I watched this come together. We started having prayer circles. The pod became more positive. And that all started with a heartfelt $75 to $100. It brought people together. And that never left. That never left.

Starting point is 02:06:08 And I think it's the same thing in an incarceration situation when you're in prison. When we build our little inside organizations and we help each other, we give hope to each other. I am so grateful to be a member of such a profound organization that believes in neighbor laws to help us be treated fairly. Abolishments of institutions because know that they need to reap a little bit of what they sow. And a hand and a heart that says we care from across the mouths and this organization reaches different parts of the U.S. So it's not from one place. It's a whole unit. And I'm grateful to be a part of it.

Starting point is 02:06:53 Right. And in fact, IWOC exists in the United States. We have interest from some wobble in Canada. Mm-hmm. And there is also established IWAC presidents in the UK, including Northern Ireland. Uh-huh. What does it actually look like to be doing sort of jailhouse law and to be helping people understand what their rights are in trying?

Starting point is 02:07:27 trying to fight for better conditions through the internal legal system. I work for the law library in CDCR at Chachilla, SCWF. SCWF is the Central California Women's Facility, a California women's prison. And I am what they call a jailhouse lawyer because I helped a few people go home. Not that I was brilliant, I just comprehend very well and I articulate very well. So by me working there, I got to learn firsthand law books and penal codes and processes. And it was a wonderful thing. But it can also be a sad thing because before you know, you make a lot of mistakes.

Starting point is 02:08:12 And those mistakes hurt people. Yeah. Because people can't afford lawyers. I mean, I went in there with 36 to life, lost all my levels of my appeal and never thought I would ever see the light of day. I knew I would die in prison. And a lot of jailhouse lawyers helped me. And just it didn't happen because financially I was not able to do a lot. If you hadn't, Gavin Newsom, we sentenced me under exemplary programming.

Starting point is 02:08:38 Obviously, I did a good program. I've done over 150 years or so of their groups and I facilitate. So I work my way out. But you got documentation in there that's probably 20 or 30 years old. It doesn't even apply with the law. laws that are today. People are using old documentation. The courts are rejecting them because they have the wrong paperwork. A lot of things had been happening until some of us started 602ing, like, we need the right paperwork. We started fighting for that and we started getting it. And

Starting point is 02:09:10 people are now being able to see a glimmer of hope. It's all about, for me, it's about the fight. How bad do you want it? You know, I know what I would do to throw my life away. What would I do to have my life back, you know, after I've worked it out. The same energy you put into it, it's the same energy you got to put it into it to get out of it, if not a little bit more. Did you talk a little bit more about how you went about actually getting the correct copies of the legal code? Because that seems like just an absolute nightmare.

Starting point is 02:09:44 No, it is a nightmare. When I first started, I had two incarcerations, two life sentences. I just beat my second life sentences. I was a three-striker first, and at that time they didn't have a lot of paper, and there was a lot of rigamaror going on because of the law was so inadequately we put together just to please the people or the U.S., but not to be fair all the way around. A lot of people were getting life sentences for slices of pizza and hot dogs, you know, and I was one of those people, don't get me wrong. So at that time, there wasn't a lot of legal paperwork. The paperwork was so outdated. They were given us.

Starting point is 02:10:24 And people started, we started filing the pills. Hey, we have a right to the right paperwork. How am I going to get home? Yeah. If I don't have a fight if I don't have the right forms to fight with. Or we would, organizations would print us paperwork out that we wrote out to and they would send us the right one in. And we would make copies in our own self at 10 cents a copy and put change the copy that they used to copy. the copy one and the original would be

Starting point is 02:10:51 and it was a lot of scheming and scamming but it was worth it because we were starting to go home. The paperwork was being updated, you know? They had a lawsuit because they did have the right paperwork. They really started updating then because we had some legal mongroes, you know, lawyers

Starting point is 02:11:07 go to present too. So if I'm understanding this right, are you saying that they had the right paperwork, they were just giving you the old one? No, they had the wrong paperwork. So we was sending out for the right paperwork, throwing away to old paperwork, and sliding the right paperwork in. The clerks that worked at the lawberry, we would do anything to make sure we can go home, you know? Yeah. I mean, but like I said, we had people who used to be

Starting point is 02:11:34 lawyers. I mean, if we had to wait a little bit longer, we could have had a president. I don't know. People are going to prison these days. You know what I said. Yeah. So, you know, but it was just that You had to have a will to be a success, and it took organizations like, Allie Walker. When I was there, I needed certain paperwork, and college would look it up in reference for and send it to me. You know, legal paperwork that would help us, whether we were fighting for our jobs, not paying us right, or we can't get a hold to this paperwork for us to be free. Yeah. He would send it, and I would spread it like fire, you know. One sheet, I'm a clerk.

Starting point is 02:12:14 I make 100 copies hoping I don't get caught. You know? It is what it is. And just trying to save lives. Yeah. That was important. But I'm on this thing talking. I really want to hear Gigi's aspect because she is like so superheroes.

Starting point is 02:12:35 She's a great human being. And she fights for incarcerated inmates and she fights by labor rights and she fights for her organization and she fights for everything and I would really like to hear her. I haven't heard her much. I don't like to hear her side. Oh, thank you, Audra. You are incredible and I just, I just want to listen to you. Thank you. And you are, you know, the one that we are taking notes from. So, thank you for everything that you do and everything that you did while incarcerated and everything that you're doing now. Just so just so you know that we are all inspired by you always. Thank you.

Starting point is 02:13:14 I, you know, as someone who has been in the legal field for many years, you really, the more you're around legal professionals, specifically lawyers, you learn how little they actually do. I think a lot of the times our perception of civil rights and just movement work. We think of lawyers. We think of big organizations, right, that have been. and, you know, those big gains in the courts. But the reality is that the real work happens on the ground, grassroots. And so in the case of our prisoner movement, it happens behind those bars, behind those

Starting point is 02:14:01 concrete walls. And when it comes to the most vulnerable, as you kind of go down, right, in terms of how impacted folks are, there are less and less. less lawyers that are willing to do their work and definitely less that are even able to. They just don't bother, you know? And so what you really see when it comes to jailhouse lawyers is that they said we can't depend on these privileged class of people to fight for us, let alone free us. Yeah.

Starting point is 02:14:42 So they've taken it into their own hand. And that's why it's such an honor for organization like IWalk and our members to be able to support in that hands-on participatory defense model, where it truly is about it's understanding that our liberation will not come from external hands. it will come and, you know, internally will come from us who are impacted. And so supporting each other is what is going to make the difference. And I sound so simple, but sometimes it looks like sending in a book, an article, pulling up, supporting evidence that someone can use, right? Doing some research and sending it in. And California has the Racial Justice Act, which is opening a pathway

Starting point is 02:15:37 for a lot of folks to reopen their cases and have some resentencing done. And a lot of folks are, you know, being free now because of that legislation. And so, you know, how can we support in that way? But also, I always go back to building the relationship with the folks inside because sometimes it looks like writing a letter of support for folks. I mean, you can tell when someone writes a letter that didn't have. have a relationship with the person who needs a letter, right? But the opposite is also true.

Starting point is 02:16:12 You can really tell when someone actually has a relationship with that person. It comes to life, what you're writing, and you feel that connection, right? So truly building those relationships, those friendships, I tell you some of our comrades inside, I bicker with, and we fight and we make up, you know, and we're there for the ups and downs and we'll give each other advice. And it's true friendships that we built behind those walls. And that alone is also a form of radical love and a radical part of this movement to form those bonds with those who the system tried to bury alive.

Starting point is 02:16:54 And circling back to, you know, jailhouse lawyers and how our incarcerated neighbors have taken control and a lead of their own defense. how important it is for us to be plugged in on the outside to different advances or regressions when it comes to the legal system. Because oftentimes we need to recognize that to be able to ignore policy, to be able to ignore what's happening in the streets is a tremendous privilege. It's not impacting you. When you are impacted, you cannot ignore what's happening around you because it's happening to you. Right? Yeah.

Starting point is 02:17:36 And so for us, if we feel like we're not impacted, even though we are, because it's all interconnected struggle, right? But if we feel like maybe we don't need to pay attention to struggles or advancements that could be used by people inside, then we're really privileged. And we were failing our neighbors inside. So I just hope that we can recognize that and understand that it is an obligation of to move through life in a way that is thoughtful of those who could use our support and who we could empower because they don't have the same access to that information or the resources.

Starting point is 02:18:22 And so in many ways, that's what IWOC does. And there's just something so powerful about getting out a piece of paper and pen and writing a hand-writing letter, stuffing an envelope with the literature. with zine or sending a book inside and putting that stamp on the envelope. It feels like a material manifestation of your solidarity. Oh, no. That was awesome. If it's okay, I'd like to dig into some details on the sort of state of the civil rights liberalism, as we know it here in California.

Starting point is 02:19:01 Yeah, because I think, like, we glossed over certain things that I'd like to clarify are not acts of benevolence on the part of the state and are, in fact, acts of just kind of, like, self-glazing on their part and, like, things that they do to sort of pat themselves on the back and then move on. So, I mean, first of all, Audra mentioned that Gavin Newsom had something to do with her release. I just wanted to circle back to that and point out that he's also completely screwed over some of our members. gone completely out of his way to use his like what is basically like a veto power over parole that should not exist and is just like set up to yeah create like I mean like this is how Gavin Newsom does everything in California like if I'm going to either take an action or not take an action as

Starting point is 02:19:50 governor is there any possibility that my action or inaction could make me look bad later on the national stage to people that are not my current constituents when I'm running for president and he always does what he thinks is going to create the least risk and make him look good to a national audience rather than to his current constituents. And that is pretty clearly what happened with another one of our members recently.

Starting point is 02:20:14 So yeah, fuck Evan Newsom, actually. Why does he even have the power to overwrite parole? Why does that even exist? That's absurd. I don't know. Yeah, you'd have to talk to some sort of like California constitutional historian

Starting point is 02:20:27 to learn that. Yeah. The other thing I want to talk about was this racial justice act thing. So this is something that on its surface, it sounds really radical. So first, what they did was like in 2020 when, as we all know, nothing in particular was happening. They passed this law called the Racial Justice Act that was like, hey, if you're convicted, but it was like due to racial animus or like the length of the sentence perhaps, if not the conviction itself was due to like a racial bias, you can try to prove that.

Starting point is 02:21:00 or not prove it, but like do what's called a prima fates they're showing, which is like the lowest level of, you know, demonstrating something in court. And then we'll just like let you go based on that alone, right? So that's, wow, pretty radical, right? Okay, so a couple things. First of all, that was only from the future onward. So that was not retroactive.

Starting point is 02:21:18 Later there was outcry about that. And so they came back and were like, oh, okay, yeah, all the people in prison now can do it too. So the thing is this is also the kind of thing that can like overwhelm the courts, right? So like the way that this is being done in practice is like you get one shot at this ever. Yeah. As I understand it. And just like appeals, you get different amounts of appeals, I think based on the conviction.

Starting point is 02:21:41 But like basically if you fuck it up, like you're done because the courts are limited in their capacity. You need to be able to move on to hear other people saying. And of course, people file it and it's not good. It's not done well. And like the infrastructure to violate your rights is like better funded all the time. Meanwhile, the institutions to like defend your rights are typically not publicly funded at all outside of like the courts proper. And, you know, maybe there are certain government agencies in some states.

Starting point is 02:22:12 But then like private civil rights attorneys are who have the option to be kind of the real civil rights defenders. And they get funded based on like court fees that are like set by the. the government, right? And so the government, like, creates these systems where, you know, the legislature essentially has the power to decide how much money a civil rights lawyer is going to be able to get practicing civil rights law by, like, suing the cops and stuff. In California and probably elsewhere, it's already, like, been settled that, like, if you do a civil rights case for something happening on the street and then you do the same civil rights,

Starting point is 02:22:54 case for like the same thing happening to people in prison, you're going to make less money when it occurred in prison, basically. Jesus Christ. And, you know, maybe some legal person has a finer, you know, detailed analysis of that than what I just said. But that's essentially my understanding. And I did work for for some attorneys who practice this kind of law at one point. So that is, pretty egregious. Yeah. And yeah, I mean, I think that like there's, there's a lot of stuff in the kind of abolitionist sphere that is really kind of like nails on a chalkboard to me and I think a lot of other people who tend to take a more like radical yet like radical in the long run

Starting point is 02:23:35 yet day-to-day pragmatic approach. I mean, one of those things is like the the nonprofit route basically or like the 501c3 route where you, you know, staff up, hire a bunch of people. If you started out, you know, being in the same class as the people who are in prison, you like quickly propel yourself out of that class by doing this if you're successful. And then like things deteriorate from there as far as relationships go with people who are impacted. And then the other thing is like there's this strain of abolitionists who are like, well, we're the truest abolitionists because we just believe in like infinite second chances, basically.

Starting point is 02:24:15 And so like we sometimes get questions of like, how are you different from other abolitionist groups? So I would say, yeah, like, A, we're not afraid to, like, pick people out. It's like, you behave badly. I walk like you're talking like, you're out. Like, that's not the same as throwing someone in prison. Although people will make that equivalence. I love this, but I do have to go. I appreciate you guys allowing me a chance to speak.

Starting point is 02:24:40 Thank you so much for doing this. I appreciate calling your support. I appreciate your support for allowing us on your podcast. I just want to say one thing. When I was incarcerated, I would write, and Collins helped me start me a little website because I would write my emotions. I don't know if I can leak that website.

Starting point is 02:25:00 Can I say what that website is in case you guys want to look at it? It's your website. Okay. Thank you. It's Audra's A-U-D-R-A-S, Real Thoughts, R-E-A-L-L-Thots, with the S-D-W-P-W-P-W-P-R-P-R-P-R-P-R-P-R-P.

Starting point is 02:25:18 And it talks about my trauma, my prison life and everything. It has pictures and everything. And it would not be possible if it was not for Collins. It was my way of form the support group from inside out. But I have to go because I do have somewhere else to be. It's been great having you here, Audra. Yeah, it's been amazing having you here. I really appreciate it.

Starting point is 02:25:40 Yeah. I love you, Audra. G.G. Collins. Thank you guys so much. I'll talk to you later. If you're comfortable with it, Audra, only if you're comfortable with it before you go. Do you want to tell Mia and the audience what your third strike was, allegedly? Yes.

Starting point is 02:25:55 I was sentenced in 1994 for sales of a $20 piece of cocaine, and I was given 25 to life plus a five-year enhancement. This one, I was sentenced to 36 to life for second-degree raw. A lady say I robbed her why she was with her child, and then she recanted that story in court. I still was sentenced to 36 to life because she couldn't find her $40 that she lost. There's a lot behind it. Actually, me and my partner at the time were co-defendants. He was let off because he had been in trouble in California, which was a good thing because he really was innocent. But I had to spend almost 16 years of my life in prison.

Starting point is 02:26:45 for a crime I did not commit. It has its pros and its cons. I'm a better human being today, not because of CDCR, but because of me and the support system that I had while incarcerated in CDC. And it just made me a stronger person. They said if it doesn't break you,

Starting point is 02:27:02 it'll only make you stronger. So for anybody out there in the incarcerated world, don't give up, because if this doesn't break you, it will only make you stronger, and you will get out because I did. And it's not always by the means that we think it will be, but when it's time, it happens. I've lived in a system long as I've lived a life span as a human being.

Starting point is 02:27:24 I've spent more time incarcerated for little stupid things. No murders, no mayhams, no beat-ups, no DUIs, no nothing like that. Yeah. Things that no one should ever see prison walls behind, but I did. And like I said, I was made the stronger because I, I was made the stronger because I, Organizations like you who support me, there were others, but you guys were the most impact in my life. You came in my life like a whirlwind and you straightened everything. It helped me straighten my thoughts out in my life.

Starting point is 02:27:56 You helped me in many ways because you didn't come in, get overwhelmed and take off. You stayed the long call. Your organization is not an organization that quits. We're going to get some more to help us fight type of thing going on. And there's not a lot of organizations like that. They get overwhelmed. It's too much going on. We ain't got enough of manpower.

Starting point is 02:28:16 You guys only had people and you were making movements. I don't understand correctly. I think you guys wrote a letter for a friend and supported her through board. Now she's out in the free world. You know what I'm saying? So you guys change lives because you don't give up on life. And for that, I hope you guys be around 100,000 years from now. And I'll always be a member.

Starting point is 02:28:39 You guys have a great day. Hopefully prisons aren't around for 100,000 years. But we love you, Audra. Hell yeah. I just want to add, when I clarified about the Racial Justice Act, I don't want to, you know, applaud it as a victory of the system. Like, they're not really victories when the system still exists, right? But I just want to say that it is still our duty to know when we can find those little kind of avenues for some momentary reprieve for some people.

Starting point is 02:29:19 And that can look like some creative ways. During COVID, we actually created 100. of pockets for incarcerated folks so that they can actually file some tax documents and get their stimulus checks. Oh. Which was major, right? So a ton of people were able to get their stimulus checks while incarcerated. Do you know how far that went?

Starting point is 02:29:43 Yeah. So it's just like those kinds of creative ways. You know, we often think, you know, we drive past a coffee shop and we think, oh, yeah, I love that coffee shop. we just hope that if we can make these connections with incarcerated neighbors, then we can, you know, as we're going through the world on the outside, we also make those connections. Like, oh, you know what? Stimulus checks.

Starting point is 02:30:06 Oh, you know what? How do we get our incarcerated comrades to get those two, right? Making those connections with the people that you build bonds with. It's really important. Yeah. Yeah. Can I go on a rant that covers most of the notes? that I have that I haven't covered yet.

Starting point is 02:30:24 Yeah, go for it. Okay, thank you. Prison organizing is tremendously popular with people in prison. And a lot of people on the quote-unquote left or just with humanitarian sentiments on the outside are really great at, you know, encouraging us and being like, what you're doing is awesome and kind of giving us that like moral support, which does help. And also, you know, subscribing to our newsletter and sometimes doing phone zaps and stuff like that, but generally it is tremendously difficult moving people from passive to active support

Starting point is 02:30:57 in this kind of organizing. Typically, I think there is that kind of out of sight, out of mind factor going on for a lot of people. And I think there are organizing avenues out of that that I think we are, you know, always exploring new ways to kind of try and make those connections in an experiential kind of way rather than just like, have you thought about it? Have you thought about how these things are connected, but actually making it, like, real for people, you know? But we have just found that, like, the most stalwart, steadfast people in this struggle,

Starting point is 02:31:32 for the most part, are people, you know, directly impacted by it, are people who've been to jail and prison. Yeah. Or who have, like, close family members who are often currently there or were recently there. And so, you know, we'd love to hear from you. If that's you in particular,

Starting point is 02:31:49 we'd love to hear from you, love to plug you in. We are speaking, you know, from California, but again, the organization exists across the United States and, and aspirationally, Canada as well, and the UK. And there are also other prisoners solidarity organizations with a similar orientation, so it's not like we're doing something totally unique and unheard of here. There's something called G-G-V-O in Germany,

Starting point is 02:32:15 which is also like a union for prisoners. And I want to say there's pretty similar stuff in Spain too associated with the anarchist movement there. In the United States, I think people are probably pretty familiar with like political prisoner support or like support committees for groups like the Minnesota 15 or the prairie land defendants and situations like that. And that's really valuable and really important and no movement that like doesn't look after its people when they're in prison like is a serious movement that will go anywhere at the end of the day. So that work really, really matters. And I think that when people hear us as IWalk repeat one of our

Starting point is 02:32:53 mottoes that like all prisoners are political, they don't quite necessarily get the analysis there. I mean, for one thing, like, you know, I'm going to give the spiel from the ground up, I guess, for a second, like crime as an artificial category. Like what a conviction says on paper is not like reflective necessarily of what really happened. And there has yet to be, I think, some really damning, like, study about this just because there just hasn't been a study. But it is widely understood that, like, essentially all women in prison have suffered some kind of abuse in their lives. And almost all of the women in prison for murder, murdered an abuser of either themselves or their kids or both. And in my book, that ain't a crime. Yeah. But Gigi, maybe if she's,

Starting point is 02:33:43 if she wants to can talk about how narrow the self-defense rule actually is. And this is something that is like a popular myth that like the self-defense rule is actually really wide. And like if you know someone's coming to kill you, you can kill them first and it's not murder. Absolutely not true. I actually had a manager at a job. He was doing a training on something completely unrelated, I assure you. And he was just sort of going off and he was like, and he was this fucking macho.

Starting point is 02:34:13 prick, right? Obviously, based on what I'm about to say. But, like, he was like, oh, yeah, like, if someone anyone attacks you in the middle of nowhere, you should just, like, kill them if you have the chance. And then there's only one story being told. And I was like, yeah, so that would be murder. And he was like, well, not if they attacked you first. And I'm like, yeah, it is, actually, you know, like, if there's just a body and you're like, yeah, you attacked me. Like, you should not assume that you will just get away with that. Like, that is not how things work at all. Yeah. G.D., do you want to elaborate on the self-defense rule and what it is versus what people think it is? Yeah, so it's really important for us to understand that our legal doctrines

Starting point is 02:34:53 in the United States are created, to have loopholes for those in power and to be very convoluted and impossible to benefit from for those who are our work. So when it comes to the self-defense doctrine, We actually have seen that it is disproportionately unavailable to victims of domestic and intimate partner violence. We have seen it disproportionately unavailable to black and brown men, to trans and non-gender conforming neighbors. And a big part of that reason is because a complete self-defense claim. has six really important elements. You cannot be like the first aggressor. There's distinctions between the use of deadly versus non-debtly force,

Starting point is 02:35:53 a reasonable belief that the level of force that you used was necessary to protect yourself, but also this concept of proportionality, right? We've seen that absolutely impact, and I'm using DVD cases because of this kind of concept of imminence, right? So if someone was being abused for a long time by their partner or their spouse and, you know, our psychology as humans, our psyche sometimes, you know, sometimes we snap, right? Yeah.

Starting point is 02:36:33 If you didn't snap in the moment as a reaction to, you know, being harmed in that moment, right? If your brain didn't make the proper calculation, that defense is not available to you, right? There's so many, unfortunately, bars to actually being able to claim self-defense in a successful way. And it's very intentional, unfortunately. It was intentionally designed that way to avoid the most vulnerable from using it. For example, there's this kind of concept of perception of threat, right, along with proportionality, right? So if someone is taller or maybe physically larger than their abuser, then there's this concept that, well, is your abuser actually a to you.

Starting point is 02:37:32 Right? And so there's just so many ways in which the law has not actually caught up with our new knowledge when it comes to the psychological effects of living with intimate partner violence, the impact that it has on our reaction times, right, on the cycles, on the challenges for many survivors to be able to even compile long-term proof of abuse, et cetera. We can go on endlessly. And so unfortunately, I think it's just a reflection of our legal system, again, just created to bar those most vulnerable for many protection.

Starting point is 02:38:19 And it's really just there so that those who have the resources and those who have the control of social norms, right? Those like young white men who have been perceived by juries as kind and innocent, right? Yeah, Kyle Brittenhouse. Exactly, right? That's who our laws were designed to protect, not our individuals. And so that should just tie into our understanding of incarceration in this country and how it's truly not a reflection of what really,

Starting point is 02:38:55 really happened. Most of the time, it's void of context, and it's just outright in just. Yeah. And there are a couple of resources, I think, for people to check out if you're more interested in this. I mean, one question is like, how many people are in prison right now who are straight up innocent? And the straightforward answer is, we have no idea.

Starting point is 02:39:18 And, you know, as a rule, we just tend to take prisoners word on stuff. I mean, whatever else does is just take the cop's word on stuff, frankly. including the news oftentimes. Yeah. A big part of what we do is we are available to give comment to journalists when possible around certain jail and prison disturbances or, you know, actions that people in prison or jail have taken to defend themselves against, you know, quote unquote, the law, the people, you know, torturing them essentially.

Starting point is 02:39:51 Yeah. Because oftentimes, you know, local news in particular will just be straight up, stenographers for whatever the police press release is. I mean, they'll often also just refer to things as riots that are not. Like, if people sit down and, like, refuse to leave the lunch area or, like, the, you know, like the central sitting area, they will refer to that as, like, a riot, even if no one is, like, throwing punches. And just to sort of circle labor, if you refuse to work, you get punished for it. It's not necessarily. optional, right? It is absolutely a flavoring, not just because of the conditions and because of the

Starting point is 02:40:33 poor payment, basically lack of payment, right? But because you are forced to work or you get punished. And sometimes it goes on your record that could actually impact you for any kind of parole opportunities, etc. So it is punitive, it is exploitative, and it is nothing more than slavery. Yeah. To also touch base on, yeah, like the fact is it's slavery. I think that's like, we and other organizers have done a pretty good job, I feel like, of like getting that fact into the mainstream and being like, yeah, like this is slavery, like period, end of sentence. It is legally and material is slavery. And now we're entering this process. which states, like Colorado, for example, are passing laws that's like, yeah, so we're just

Starting point is 02:41:21 like abolishing this slavery thing. And it's like, it's like the apparatus to deprive people of their rights has not itself been disempowered in any way. And so they're just like waving a bond over this system of slavery being like, it's not now. Like, okay. You know what I mean? So like when we demand, you know, abolish the 13th. It's like, that's like kind of a long term like strategic, like legal demand. But just because a state, like, I, I feel like this is being recuperated into the kind of like self-congratulatory, you know, like, faux civil rights, like liberalism at this point. Because like, states are like abolishing their version of the 13th.

Starting point is 02:41:59 And then being like, cool, our work here is done. Oh, but you didn't do anything actually, right? And Colorado, in fact, still forces people to work in their prisons. And it is illegal technically. But like, it ain't quite as illegal as, you know, it ain't the same type of illegal. the state is doing it, right? The state is not, in fact, found by its own laws in practice.

Starting point is 02:42:22 Yeah. And, I mean, also juxtapose, like, everything that Gigi just said about self-defense with, like, the excuses that cops are allowed to give when they shoot people out of, out at Randa. Yeah. Uh, right? It's like, oh, well, the standard for a human being,

Starting point is 02:42:38 you know, killing another human being is, it has to be, like, in mutual combat. Like, you have to be using proportionate force. da-da-da-da-da-da. whereas like a cop can just be like, well, I kind of thought that he was holding something or whatever. So yeah. And as far as organizing goes, I mean, people, I just want to say, people take lots of actions. So a lot of the form that our organizing takes is like we establish ourselves as a presence. We have our incarcerated members. They give us information about what either they or other groups of people are doing.

Starting point is 02:43:10 Other people on the outside know about us. They give us information about what's going on in places. And we are kind of known as like the prison labor organization that like does stuff around those. And there really isn't as far as I'm aware, a kind of organization that like does that direct support specifically around labor issues anywhere else in the United States. Again, outside of the local level perhaps. So yeah, what we do is we pressure the prisons and jails to give in to the prisoner's demands. And they're not necessarily going to like be like, oh, well, now that we've heard from the public, we will do all the demands. But like you heard the list of stuff that we read off about the Fresno jail. Like that was a surprising list of stuff and they weren't actually striking or anything.

Starting point is 02:43:52 And so oftentimes because of the power imbalance, it does sort of just make more sense for us to just pressure the prison directly, regardless of whether there's a strike or not. But people do go on strike in prison and do work slowdowns in prison and all that kind of stuff. And it helps to have an outside like buffer and like support team. and like a relational network of support, just like it does with other workers, right? Like building that kind of network of mutual aid and respect and support is what makes more action possible. And so that's what we kind of seek to do. And prison solidarity is something that is also not one directional.

Starting point is 02:44:33 You know, you probably got a sense of this, you know, in the snippets with Audra. But we learn a lot from our inside members. We learn life-changing lessons from our inside members. a lot and they learn from us too, but we always tell new members, like, especially, you know, if they don't have a lot of experience with prison or whatever, it's like, do not approach this or from like a paternalistic standpoint. Like, yes, they have a lot to learn, but so do we. And relationships and lessons go both ways. And also, like, prison admins are just incredibly vulnerable to public scrutiny. Like, we heard how bad things are there. And it's like, they don't

Starting point is 02:45:08 want people knowing this. Like, they have just skated by on like the kind of general Reagan 80s vibe of like, oh yeah, this is actually part of the punishment, like, this entire time. And like, that is still their mindset. It's like, yeah, this person isn't supposed to be fun. What do you mean? We need to give people toothpaste. Like, that is still like their attitude to the tea. And we need to intervene in that because that's really terrible, actually. Yeah. And, you know, this is an authoritarian country, like, straight up for the less wealthy half of the population. And this is like a huge part of that. And we can't just like not challenge the prison system and then do like radical organizing of any other kind and be like, yeah, we can just ignore

Starting point is 02:45:51 this prison thing. It surely will not come to eat us at any point. Right. There's also this kind of myth of like labor as rehabilitation, which is just like a, you know, kind of Calvinist sort of, you know, humbug. But it's like, you know, we've already established that a lot of people in prison didn't do anything wrong. But for those who did, you know within whatever moral framework you're using, if you're someone who, like, goes around causing harm,

Starting point is 02:46:15 how is, like, performing labor going to make you not that person? It's not. They're just producing surplus value, right? Yeah. So that's total bullshit. And it's also, you know, it's just kind of like this old-fashioned 1800s logic

Starting point is 02:46:28 of, like, poor houses and shit. You know, like, make them work. It'll make everything better somehow. And as for being sued, Like, we know that the prisons hate being sued. The people who really sue them the best oftentimes are jailhouse lawyers. And we know that they hate that because, like, they will straight up try to have those people killed. Jesus.

Starting point is 02:46:47 Not only will they try to have those people killed, they will try to have any kind of prison staff or guard that, like, grows a conscience and it's like, yeah, this thing that we did is kind of fucked up. Like, I can't say with certainty, but, like, those people have died under suspicious circumstances. Just to contextualize it, like, the prison admins fear of public scrutiny, like, so much. whenever we do something like this that is like sustained and like strategic and involving a lot of participation, which it's unfortunately not always. And we need to work on that. And that is part of building a like staunch support base, right? It's doing these distributed actions in a way that is like really sustained. So, you know, we communicate with specific people and apply pressure to the institution directly without going through any kind of like proper channels necessarily. which tend to just do nothing. But doing this, we have stopped jailhouse lawyers from being killed. We have gotten firefighters at the Central California Women's Facility, their time credits, which the prison was, like, dragging their feet on giving them

Starting point is 02:47:53 to the extent that, like, it was actually going to affect when they got out. Like, they were having, like, six months of time that they, like, weren't applying, like, eight months from, like, their current get-out time, you know what I mean? Jesus. And so we fixed that. We have gotten multiple people like real medical care as opposed to like fake medical care. There was actually a kitchen strike that we didn't, we didn't directly support just because it like happened too quickly. Like I just, I think I gave some like advice, but that was about it. And like they just like stop paying them.

Starting point is 02:48:25 Like in California you're supposed to make like eight cents an hour or whatever. And they just were like, we're just not going to pay you your eight cents anymore. What? Eight cents an hour is too expensive for you as a prison. Fuck it off. God. Jesus Christ, they hate these people. Yeah, I mean, this is just the nature of exploitation. It's like they're always just trying to, like, oh, we've gotten away with a million things. Let's get away with a million and one things.

Starting point is 02:48:45 Yep. You know, like it's the nature of oppression and exploitation, right? But yeah, so they struck and they went back their eight cents an hour. And there was a slowdown that you can read about in PRISM reports, which is like a movement news outlet where people did a slowdown. and people that were producing, like, the boxers for other prisoners, I believe, did a work slowdown about two years ago, 18 months ago or so. And this was just to get access to the commissary. So, like, they were making good money by, like, prison standards.

Starting point is 02:49:17 But, like, the commissary closed while they were still working. And so they couldn't spend their money. Oh, but Jesus Christ. Yeah. And so they did a slowdown to, like, fix that. This was part of California Prison Industries Authority, which like is the manufacturer of oftentimes first resort for like all kinds of like furniture and other supplies for the state of California including the UC system.

Starting point is 02:49:42 And this is often the case with other states as well. And we also just are disseminating helpful info all the time like with that legal info. It's like if you show up with like a bunch of like radical literature and like some legal info to like a punk show, people are like, why do you have legal info that's boring as well? But like in prison, it's like, yeah, you're going to. find some people interested in the radical info and like that stuff people are interested in it too but like the legal info is what people really want because it is more practical it's like you know we of course we distribute information about the iw and about solidarity unionism and and uh you know feminism

Starting point is 02:50:17 and all kinds of other stuff you know the black panthers yeah the whole nine but like what people really do want because it's the most practical is like how do i sue the prison how do i legally hack my way out of this beast and like it works. And a lot of our best and like brightest outside members who are once inside members, like they didn't just wait for their sentence to expire. They like had to file grievances and like take every opportunity to like be the prison's worst op to the point that the prison was just like just up and fuck out already. Like enough of this person. Yeah. So yeah, that's most of what I got. How can people support y'all and get involved more? So definitely folks should visit us at

Starting point is 02:51:00 in cross-yarderworkers.org, and we will provide those links and definitely sign up for our newsletter where we give some updates on what's happening inside in a safe way to protect our members inside and their organizing work, but also hear about, you know, work happening across the country and across the world as well. I would also, I guess, just add that we really want labor unionists and healthcare workers and lawyers and law students and researchers to plug into our website because there are spaces just, oh, and reporters and journalists, I should say as well, to plug into our website because there are spaces for just them. This doesn't mean that we don't want other people signing up to,

Starting point is 02:51:44 but those professions, I think in particular, you know, and educators also have a lot of impact and like a lot of relationships direct and indirect to the system that we want. want to kind of zero in on and do something with. And the website elaborates on that. If you're addicted to Instagram, you can follow us there at incarcerated workers and also at CA underscore IWalk for California. But if you're not, then good for you. And instead, you should sign up to our email newsletter. Yeah, I will leave it at that. In short, let's burn it down. Amazing. Now, before we go, I will. want to mention something extremely important that we'll be covering in more detail in a later episode,

Starting point is 02:52:31 which is the planned 27 National Prisoners Human Rights Strike plan to run from Mayday to June 10th in 2027. We're going to talk more about this in a later episode and get more of the history of the 2016 and 2018 prison strikes that I walk and jailhouse lawyer speak, who we're going to be reading a statement from in a second. involved in, but for now I'm going to close this episode by quoting the statement released by jailhouse lawyers speak. Why We Strike. A political storm is sweeping through many prisons across the nation as the prison class plainly see the hidden mechanisms of a system designed to dehumanize the imprisoned population. For too long, many of us were kept in the dark about the machinery

Starting point is 02:53:19 behind our confinement, how law enforcement, district attorneys, politicians, and judges win elections on platforms of mass imprisonment, and how private interests and rural economies profit off our bed counts. Our captive bodies are weaponized through prison-based gerrymandering, where our numbers are used to swell the political power and draw federal funding into rural districts, all while stripping us of any voter representation. Through these exceptional clauses,

Starting point is 02:53:48 the prison class is relegated to conditional citizenship, a status where constitutional rights are granted at the pletons. leisure of the state. When officials can openly discuss transferring in prison citizens to foreign prisons without constitutional barrier, it is because these exception clauses have already stripped the prison class of the full protections of citizenship behind the razors. This legal disenfranchisement is paired with the reality of living in unventilated boiling cells during climate extremes. Enduring endless so-called staffing shortage lockdowns ordered by prison crafts, washing militarized roundups in ICE attention centers

Starting point is 02:54:28 and seeing poor people funneled into plea deals simply because they cannot afford cash bail or paid legal defense. The trap extends beyond the walls. Thousands on thousands of people in prison who meet the basic parole requirements are repeatedly denied parole by arbitrary boards citing, quote, the nature of the original crime, end quote, a static reason that never changes solely to maintain prison bed quotas. Even upon release, the carceral state traps formerly imprisoned people under supervision debt,

Starting point is 02:55:00 electronic surveillance, income monitors, and restrictive probation and parole systems that serve as a revolving door back to a cell. The core demands. While the full 10 national demands remain active, strike organizers across committed states are focusing on three core demands. One, and legalize slavery. Repeal the Exception Clause of the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. This is the clause that allows slavery as punishment in prisons. Two, restore voting rights, repeal exception clauses, such as Section 2 of the 14th Amendment that stripped voting rights from confined citizens, pretrial detainees, and former felons.

Starting point is 02:55:40 Three, free all the political prisoners in U.S. prisons. Thank you all both for doing this work and for fighting this fight and for being on this show. and I hope we all go out into the world and fight for workers everywhere, wherever they may be. And then start. There's no shortcut for saving time, but saving money is simple. Just combine your car and home insurance

Starting point is 02:56:13 with Bel Air Direct and save. Get a quote at bellairdirect.com. When I was 14 years old, I was kidnapped and held captive for nine months. I survived, and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them. I'm Elizabeth Smart.

Starting point is 02:56:33 And these are the Survivor Files. I just remember this low, taunting voice next to my ear saying, shut up, don't say anything. Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable. I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me. I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed, and I just started screaming. They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearested. nearly silenced. But these aren't stories about what's taken from them. There's stories about what it takes to make it out alive. Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the IHeart Radio app,

Starting point is 02:57:16 Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If your bookshelf and your for you page are equally important to your personality, welcome home. This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessive. and anyone who thinks pride and prejudice and love island deserve the same level of discourse. I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having. I'm going to have to look up this story. I'm obsessed.

Starting point is 02:57:48 From bestselling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off the table. It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters, then that is the Trojan horse. Whether you're looking for literary deep dives, smart pop culture conversations, or a community of readers who love to think a little too much, you're in the right place. Listen to Pro Society on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. See you between the pages. Hey, this is Hayes Davenport.

Starting point is 02:58:21 And Sean Clements. We host the podcast Hollywood Handbook on the Big Money Players Network. Our show is extremely accessible to first-time listeners. Each week, we talk to someone in show business, aka the big. is and try to help them with their careers and see what they have to offer us. Everyone has a good time and no one gets mad at their publicists for letting them do our show. We've had a lot of great guests like Sarah Sherman, not that great. Actually, can you help me shape this?

Starting point is 02:58:47 How about we flip it on his head, right? How about we flip the script? What is the surprised woman? Actually, you think is the straight man is actually the one who's acting weird. Adam Scott. This entire time, You've been expecting Adam Sandler to come to visit the show. I would never expect.

Starting point is 02:59:09 I have. I would never set expectations for something like that to happen. If the universe allows for something like that to happen, I'm open to it. I'm always going to accept. You know, Danny McBride, fine. Yeah, it's all this fragile masculinity exuding. I could smell it walking down the hallway, to be honest with you. I was like, I was like, is that weed?

Starting point is 02:59:31 Nope. It's fragile masculinity. Mm-hmm. Ben Stiller, no. Because a lot of times, out of context, people don't get it or even know what a circle is. You know what I mean? They're like, oh, it's so stupid. Everyone's so dumb.

Starting point is 02:59:44 And fake. Right, fake and also not interested or just like, oh, I've got my life. I don't care about your life. And a lot of other big shots that wouldn't be where they are without us. Oh, and by the way, Will Ferrell told us personally he loves the show and he wants to be a guest on every episode, but he's just so busy. Listen to Hollywood Handbook on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is It Could Happen Here, Executive Disorder, our weekly newscast covering what's happening in the White House,

Starting point is 03:00:18 the crumbling world, and what this means for you. I'm Garrison Davis. Today I'm joined by Mia Wong, James Stout, and Robert Evans. Hoodley do. This episode, we're covering the week of August 12th through August 19th. So I guess I'll start with, I've seen reports, ICE is using... vehicles, I guess, as staging points for cameras. And I have seen videos of what appear to be license plate flippers on ice vehicles.

Starting point is 03:00:43 If you're not familiar, right? Like, there has been lots and lots of reports of ICE agents, like manually changing license plates. This just appears to be a device that goes whoop, rotates 180 degrees, so you've got two license plates available. A lot of the pictures, we saw a man being, I'm not sure if he was arrested or just like harassed for saying, like, why don't you have a license plate on your vehicle, why don't you have a license plate on your vehicle? And it very much appears that vehicle had a license plate flipper on the front. Secondly, CBP is pausing all construction in Big Bend.

Starting point is 03:01:15 This is according to Rodney Scott, who's the CBP commissioner, who says he is personally on his way there to conduct a quote personal evaluation. It's entirely unclear like what that means and what are the criteria for this evaluation, right? Like there are dozens of laws, treaties and regulations that cover the kind of thing that they are doing in the place that they are doing it, and they have waived all of them. So this is what we get now, right? We get Rodney Scott going on a plane and just like giving it the like the imperial thumbs up or thumbs down, like some kind of Roman emperor, I guess. Like this is a thing that wouldn't fly in like a hereditary monarchy, like the UK, right, where we now have one person making this choice that everyone will have

Starting point is 03:01:57 to live with forever, that they are destroying a place, which is beautiful. And one of the places has not been ruined by capitalism and the state, one of the few large areas of public land in Texas. So I will keep you updated on what Rodney Scott decides to do. I will probably do an episode on my other show, Natural Courses, about Big Bend soon. And then finally, I guess as we're talking about border wall stuff from me, people are conducting a tree sit in a cottonwood tree in Arizona. The cottonwood tree, it's a very old cottonwood tree, sometimes called grandmother tree. these people are trying to protect it from being destroyed due to border war construction.

Starting point is 03:02:35 They've been sitting in that tree for several weeks now. I will eventually go visit them. I was going to go visit them, but I went to Spokane when those fires struck instead. They have been joined by someone on the Mexican side. So now there are two tree siters making this the first international tree sit that I am ever aware of. That rules. Yeah, no, it's great. Hell yeah, hell yeah.

Starting point is 03:02:55 Well, like, trees don't know borders, right? Yeah. As I highlighted in my other podcast, Natural Cause, is the US left really fucked up when NAFTA came in by not saying if you're going to try and pay people less in Mexico, then we will try and organize people in Mexico. And together, we will demand dignified wages and conditions. I'm glad that people are not taking that approach anymore because that didn't get us anywhere. I'll keep covering the situation there as well. So speaking of, I guess, the long-range effects of NAFTA, KOSPI, which is the Korean Stock Index, hit it circuit breaker, which is the breaker that hits if you lose too much percentage of the stock market's value again on Wednesday. I genuinely have lost count of the number of times that it has been triggered over the past few months. This has become a regular recurrence in one of the largest and most important stock markets in the world. This time, it was fueled by a collapse of tech

Starting point is 03:03:51 stocks and the Brent Fruit Index hitting $90 a barrel. We will be getting into some more of the impacts of that later. I don't know. My guess is that it's going to rebound as everyone buys the dip tomorrow, but any one of these could be the one where it doesn't rebound. And we will let you know whether the global economic collapses on. Yay. Yeah, what happens if there's not a rebound?

Starting point is 03:04:14 What does that going to look like? Everyone's fucked? No, I mean, like, in terms of what is you're expecting? cascade of events, if that goes down. Oh, the entire global economy goes under, because the Korean stock market right now is basically a kind of tragedy as far as version of the American market, where most of the, almost all of the value is congealed into these three. Yeah, AI.

Starting point is 03:04:36 Yeah, three companies that, yeah, basically make AI chips, right? And then the rest of the value down the chain is people doing weird gambling stuff on different AI components. If the market just actually crashes, that is those three companies. and, you know, we're talking like Samsung here, right? These are vital components in the entire AI. I mean, not just the AISphere, obviously. This is Samsung, right?

Starting point is 03:05:00 Like, we're talking about, you know, things that are vital components. The big tech companies. Yeah, yeah. And, like, all of the manufacturing of, like, tech all over the world. If that stuff goes down, that takes the American markets with it. That takes all of global markets that are reliance on these AI surges go with it. And that's kind of just the beginning of the popping of the tech bubble. Yep, yep, I just wanted to get to that because it's like it is, it is this mirror of exactly

Starting point is 03:05:25 what's gone on in the United States. I guess the big difference is that so far, the obvious signs of trouble in South Korea have not set off alarm bells in, at least in American investors to the extent that you might expect. But I'm sure. There's been some, like, it tends to be the other way around where Cosby tends to kind of be following the American markets, but there have definitely been days where, like, because of the time difference in Korea,

Starting point is 03:05:51 all of the American investors wake up to watch like 10% going down, like 10% of the value of the Korean stock market disappearing in one night, and that lowers American stocks, and then Trump says something about the war ending, and it goes back up again. So there has been some notice of it, but our grand collective delusion to maintain the functioning of capitalism continues. Great. Good, good, good.

Starting point is 03:06:13 On Tuesday, there was a JUP debate for the South Carolina U.S. Senate special runoff election. So it's a special election and a runoff. And in this debate, sister of the fallen Lindsay Graham, Darlene Graham, could not answer a pretty rudimentary foreign policy question because it is not her area of expertise. Let's take a listen. Senator, are Taiwan and the South China Sea national security issues for the United States? If so, why? I'm sorry. Could you repeat the question? Are Taiwan and the South China seat national security issues for the United States? And if so, why or how?

Starting point is 03:07:00 I'm just going to be honest here. I'm not on national security. I'm not that informed on national security. But I do support the military. My brother was in the Air Force for 33 years. So I will do everything I can to support the military. Good stuff. Great stuff. You know what? Honesty. That's what we need in politicians.

Starting point is 03:07:25 I love hereditary seats. This is an amazing feature of what is supposed to be a representative democracy. It's so good. Yeah, yeah. I don't know shit about fuck, but I love the army. That's incredible. No, she later goes on to literally say it's on her quote unquote area of expertise. It just talks about how

Starting point is 03:07:46 regardless she will always support the U.S. military. It's astounding. Lindsay Graham rolling over in his grave. So that is Darlene Graham, sister of Lindsay Graham, who is facing Republican Ralph Norman in this runoff election, the winner of which will then face the Democrat, Dr. Annie Andrews, for this general election in November to replace Lindsay's seat. Pretty cool. God, I hope she wins the primary. I want to see more of this.

Starting point is 03:08:19 Yeah, yeah. It will be highly amusing, if nothing else. Oh, man. I want to briefly mention some new information regarding the federal investigations into anti-ice protests in the Twin Cities based on some newly released court documents. This was first reported in the New York Times,

Starting point is 03:08:40 and I have read through the 30-page motion filed by the defense that unveiled these documents and a number of the 30-some exhibits. and I'll report on this in full probably next week with its own episode, but I do want to discuss with the group here a little bit. So four days after CPB killed Alex Preti, DHS open investigation into labor unions and left-wing activist groups that they thought were involved in funding the anti-ice protests and, quote, providing material support to violent opportunists, unquote. This HSI investigation

Starting point is 03:09:18 amounted to a massive spying operation called Operation Puppet Master and later Operation Whipple Shield. God, I hate these people. Whipple is the name of the federal building that was at the heart of a lot of the protests in the Twin Cities.

Starting point is 03:09:38 And these operations ended up probing three years of financial records from organizations like Sunrise Movement, the Communication Workers of America, and the Healthcare Union, SCIU, as a part of a quote-unquote financial investigation into quote-unquote domestic terrorist financing.

Starting point is 03:09:58 I think it's really important to point out here is that this three-year time span of documents extends far beyond the time span of Operation Metro Surge and the protests, right? This is not a probe into finance, specific protest groups responding to ICE. This is just a general dragnet into labor unions, into left-wing non-profits, environmental groups,

Starting point is 03:10:24 a racial justice activist group in the area. Like, this is a huge probe. They're looking into Venmo transactions. They're requesting bank records. I guess this is a massive probe of, like, the interior of, like, some very major national unions. Yeah. It's interesting when you look at who they're looking into, right?

Starting point is 03:10:44 because it's a really, really wide swath across the political spectrum of the left. Like, SEIU, like, obviously there are, like, locals of SEIU that, like, do good work. But, like, nationally, SEIU is not, like, a radical organization, right? Like, of the major unions, this is, like, an extremely, extremely milk-toast union.

Starting point is 03:11:06 Right. Yeah, I guess context with SCIU particularly would be that they arrested David Huerta in Los Angeles in June of last year, right? who's union leader. Yeah, yeah. And I know because Alex Prady was a healthcare worker, SIA is a healthcare union.

Starting point is 03:11:20 Like, I went to like a solidarity protest to put together by a bunch of different unions in New York City following the death of Alex Prattie. Yeah. It's interesting that the federal government picked up on that sort of union solidarity and then started investigating it. Yeah.

Starting point is 03:11:38 And I think that is really telling. Yeah. Part of what I'm getting it here is like, they're just going after everyone. who's even like tangentially involved in these protests, right? The way the state sees this is they're incapable of organizing like spontaneous and like horizontal solidarity or seeing that, right? They understand, yeah, SEIU folks showed up in New York where Garrison is.

Starting point is 03:12:00 And I think they're not called the AFT in Minneapolis. Maybe they're called the Federation of Educators or something like that. MFE looks like, yeah, like another union, right, for educators, evidently. And 5051 and some more explicitly. socialist and leftist groups, showed up against eyes, showed up in solidarity after Alex Prattie was killed. And the way the state sees this is, therefore, they are nationally and vertically integrated and someone is pulling the strings and paying the funds. Not like they are fucking mad. Yeah. It's like, it's like the way that they see it is like yeah, like SCIU national

Starting point is 03:12:31 has like handed down like the riot orders. It's like no, no. SCIU like. But she's right. Like that is how they understand it. It's like time traveling militants for the 1970s kidnapped SCIU's leadership and held him at gunpoint and said, we will let you go if you order mass riots, they still wouldn't do it. Like, that's not, that's not what this is. But the feds have a hammer and they're trying to hammer down every single thing that even vaguely looks like a nail. Yeah. So they can do sort of the broadest and widest ranging repression that they can deal with. Yeah. And we have like an example of how HSI is envisioning this sort of conspiracy, like what we're talking about, because as a part of the new exhibits that were,

Starting point is 03:13:12 released to the public, we have this slide that was sent to grand jurors for the indictment, which we'll soon talk about that targeting 15, 15 protesters. The grand jury was shown this slide that is labeled the conspiracy that has about 15 different organizations, all with arrows pointing towards direct action Minnesota Dam, which is the protest group that the government alleges the 15 people indicted were involved with in some way. I want to read through some of these organizations that are part of this conspiracy diagram. There's the Monarcha Rapid Response Line. There's Ray Rainbolt Memorial Gun Club, Red Pine Revolutionary Collective,

Starting point is 03:14:00 SCIU 26, showing it for racial justice, socialist alternative, Veterans for Peace, Whipple Watch, Workers Solidarity Circle, AFL CIO, Black Cat, White, workers collective. It's all of it. The Democratic Socialists of America. The Greece Pit, which is a local bike shop. Hell yeah. Left jab. Minneapolis Federation of Educators Local 59, Minnesota Association of Professional Employees, Minnesota Ice Watch, and Minnesota 50501. Pretty incredible. Pretty incredible collection. They're all supposed to be like sending like a council. member. That's what the diagram has, is that there's a council member

Starting point is 03:14:44 from these organizations. That like is part of direct action Minnesota that is like orchestrating all these protests. It's incredible. I love to see like Kremlinology overcoming like a DIY bike shop that opens for a few hours, a few afternoons a week. Like it's the Politburo of Minnesota is populated by like bike co-ops. the shadow counsel, James, the shadow...

Starting point is 03:15:13 They're running everything. It's incredible. This is what happens when socialist alternative and DSA can overcome their differences. And support council copyism, descendant member to Direct Action Minnesota High Council. Black and red, United States? It's incredible stuff. Now, of course, none of these organizations themselves have actually faced charges stemming from this investigation.

Starting point is 03:15:41 But this investigation did result in 15 people being indicted on, quote, conspiracy to impede or injure a federal officer for allegedly planning to block a roadway, among a few other charges against specific individuals for participating in Ice Rapid Response. So although DSA, the Greece pit and SCIU are not themselves as organizations, you know, charged, this sort of huge, like very broad investigation into nonprofit organizations, into electoral organizations, into labor unions. This did result in charges against specific people. Many of whom were not part of these 15 council member organizations. The defense lawyer, Kevin Riyak, wrote in a motion, quote, Homeland Security Investigations investigation extended

Starting point is 03:16:36 far beyond any potential threat to law enforcement safety, it concluded with no evidence but obvious political animus that numerous twin cities unions and non-profit organizations were involved in a widespread conspiracy to violate 18 U.S.C. 111, assaulting, resisting, or impeding certain officers or employees. And it surveilled and surptutiously gathered financial records generated by these organizations, despite the lack of any connection between those organizations

Starting point is 03:17:05 and criminal conduct. Yeah, it's co-intel pro shit. It never ended. They're just doing it again. I've always been doing it. Yes, and part of what these new docs reveal is much more details on, like, the covert surveillance of organizer meetings

Starting point is 03:17:22 at libraries and churches, and the way in the extent that Homeland Security infiltrated signal chats and how undercovers tried to entice people into discussing or committing crimes. And I want to discuss that in more detail in its own episode, because I think that requires a very careful focus on how that actually went about, because I think that can very easily be turned into panicking

Starting point is 03:17:49 or maybe overstating certain things regarding, you know, where ICE the ones actually directing all the protests against ICE? And like, no, obviously not. So I think that that requires a distinct focus. Specifically in these core documents, there's a reference. to undercover discussing with someone at like a sunrise movement meeting about getting more involved in direct actions and maybe building quote unquote devices for direct actions. So it's that kind of stuff. And I want to discuss that more in detail. But this new batch of court documents in this

Starting point is 03:18:24 case has revealed a lot about how this investigation went, how it started off very, very broad against a lot of organizations. And like what, you know, National Security Presidential Memorandum number seven wrote about looking to the finances of a lot of different non-profit groups. But then from there, realizing that maybe they are not going to be able to prosecute all these unions for terrorist financing. Instead, they find 15 people who are engaged in First Amendment activity that they think they could maybe, you know, turn into an Antifa boogeyman and get that past a grand jury because you certainly could not get the rest of this shit past a grand jury.

Starting point is 03:19:02 Yeah. Talking of pushing the boundaries of the Constitution with regards to policing is a good tie-in to this next piece that I have, which is to talk about the national defence areas. So the DOJ has issued a new opinion this week, suggesting that military forces in the national defense areas that span much of the border can now detain people, not just inside the NDA, but also those near the NDA who leave it before they have time to arrest them. If you're not familiar with the NDA, these are areas along the board. border wall that have been transferred to the military and are being managed as extensions of military bases. For example, NDA number three, the California NDA begins, I think at the western edge

Starting point is 03:19:44 of Otai Mountain Wilderness, stretches all the way to the Arizona border in Imperial County. That is an extension of NAF El Centro, so it's Naval Air Facility El Centro. So that's patrolled by Marines. The New Mexico one is an extension of Fort Huachuca, and that's patrolled by the army. There is one in Texas, which is an extension of Fort Bliss. Fort Bliss spans those two states, but that NDA goes into Texas more. The bases themselves are being extended, therefore, the logic goes from the Justice Department that they are not violating the Posse Comitatis Act because there are recognized exemptions,

Starting point is 03:20:27 they say, for military installations. So they're saying because the base is being extended to generally, but not always, it is the Roosevelt Reservation, right, which is a 60-foot area to the north of the physical border. But some of these NDAs span areas larger than that, they are claiming that that area is therefore exempt from PCA if the military is prosecuting or, in this case, arresting or detaining people for trespassing on a military institution. They think that the military can also enforce federal law on its installations. So by definition, anyone eweeing, ewee entry without inspection, right? So that's someone entering between ports of entry. Anybody doing that in an NDA, which is a large amount of the southern border right now, would be trespassing on a military installation, right?

Starting point is 03:21:21 You can also see in this opinion they're like hinting at adding more NDAs soon. This is the same legal reasoning that they are. using claim it is illegal to photograph things inside an NDA? I think this one is incredibly suspect, right? So statutory law does ban photography of, quote, certain vital military or naval installations or equipment. But I think you'd have a very hard time arguing in court that like a pile of razor wire and some rocks is vital military equipment. But that's what they're going with, right? This is important because what we are seeing here is the Trump administration and pushing at the boundaries of constitutionally what it can do. And as I've said hundreds of times

Starting point is 03:22:04 on this show of the last four years, this always starts at the border and it never stays at the border, right? Everything we see with mass surveillance now has been a reality in border communities for some time. Everything we see with the increased presence of ICE, of CBP, this has been something that border communities have dealt with, right? This is this particularly violent form of law enforcement that is particularly unaccountable. If we see this at the border and they get away with it at the border, then I'm sure it will continue in other places. It doesn't take a brain genius to look at, for instance, what happened in Portland six years ago, right, and see how like we could edge towards the PCA POSICOMO Tartis Act waivers in other parts of the United States

Starting point is 03:22:49 as well. So I think this is worth keeping an eye on and like I would like it to get more attention in reporting. Let's go on an ad break and then we'll discuss in honor of Lindsay Graham, the U.S. military. Who we support, but we don't know where they go. All right. There's a lot of military news this week. That ship does not look like it's doing too well.

Starting point is 03:23:22 Let's start with the sad boat. The sad boat. Anyone here old enough to have watched the love boat on Nick at night? No, none of you. Okay. All right. Well, you didn't have that where I grew up, Robert? it. Okay. That's hurtful. This is all very hurtful. Anyway, the sad boat is the USS Abraham Lincoln.

Starting point is 03:23:40 How sad is this? Yeah. Yeah. Why is Abe's sad? Well, yeah. Mia, you want to start? Yeah, so the U.S. Abraham Lincoln, it's actually funny because we have now reached a point where when you say the sad boat, I actually couldn't tell which of the boats you were referring to. Because it was the Jerry Ford before it was the Abraham Lincoln. And the Gerald Ford had, longer to be sad. Well, there was also a destroyer deployed the South China Sea where the power was out for three days. Oh yeah.

Starting point is 03:24:10 So they didn't have running water. Which one was it where they were blocking up all the toilets by like jamming there was toilet paper? That's the Jerry Ford and I think the Lincoln. All of our newest super carriers have serious issues with the bathroom plumbing. So the primary means of First Amendment expression that is available to say this.

Starting point is 03:24:30 That's why they practice the two-man poop over the side technique, which is an actual thing they have to do whenever the bathrooms don't work. Which it's so funny reading about these ships and being like, this, this is shit from like my like slum lord fucking apartments in Chicago. Except for the DOD's, your slum lord. Yeah, like they're happening aboard like the most like the most advanced and expensive military in human history. Oh God.

Starting point is 03:24:59 Where do we even want to start with with the USSR? him Lincoln. I mean, I guess, I guess we could start with the fact that they have been hanging nets over the side of, of the aircraft carrier, because sailors keep trying to jump off to kill themselves, a thing that I last saw with like Foxcon factories in Shenzhen. Yeah, that's the last time I heard that as well. Yeah. But at least in Shenzhen, to my knowledge, nobody is shitting into the nets, which appears to be from what Robert has said. You know, the shitting would be in We have covered on this show before. I think it was, was it Temu, I think, was the one where their Chinese branch had like

Starting point is 03:25:42 timers over the toilets to show how long you'd been in there for. So I would not, would not rule that out in Shenzhen as well. Good, good, good. Yeah, but this ship has not been getting resupplied. It has been out for significantly longer than the, the original plan duration. The sailors are just kind of. trapped on board, sailors who have, you know, attempted to commit suicide because they've been stuck on this fucking ship are getting like their careers destroyed because of this.

Starting point is 03:26:13 Oh, wow. It's just a nightmare. And this is running into one of the, what I guess is turning into one of the themes of this week's episode, which is that there are a whole bunch of elements of the U.S. Navy and also of the world economy where them functioning correctly are based on the U.S. not fighting a forever war in Iran and are based on the assumption that eventually this is going to end. Yeah. And it's just not.

Starting point is 03:26:37 And so the ship is also just physically breaking down. Well, yeah, they're running low on all of the, like, necessities. And part of that is because of the success of Iran's attacks on bases, like U.S. bases overseas and U.S. bases in, like, foreign countries. Yeah. There was an article that came out just within the last couple of days on August 14th in the New York Times by John Ismay that traced a lot of the supply issues that the Abraham Lincoln's been having for its entire deployment to like right after the first day of the war when Iran launched a massive

Starting point is 03:27:11 attack on a U.S. Navy base in Bahrain, which destroyed a massive logistics hub that the Navy has relied on basically the entirety of the global war on terror up to the present moment. And that's what's forced them to switch over to using Diego Garcia as a supply hub. If you remember Kier Starrmer over in the UK initially was like, no, you guys can't use Diego Garcia as like the supply hub for your legal war and then immediately changed his mind when he got threatened a little bit. Yeah. Brave as who are in.

Starting point is 03:27:40 Good stuff. Good stuff. Yeah. I think like I mean it's so obvious, right, that Iran, a country which like the U.S. has been saber rattling out for decades would very obviously have a plan of what to do in the event that the United States struck it and they executed their plan. Yeah. Trump for his part has repeatedly.

Starting point is 03:28:00 stated that the length of the deployment of the Lincoln and the Ford before it are not big deals. When he was asked earlier this week if carrier deployments were too long, he responded no, no, no, not nearly long enough. See, he's really going to get into it with Lindy Graham's sister over this one.

Starting point is 03:28:16 No, he's also she's just been very personally meddling with and fucking with a bunch of Navy stuff that there's a whole kind of, there's a whole kind of side drama to this story where Trump has ordered the Navy to go back to using steam catapults to like launch aircraft off of the deck of the ship, which is like a significantly worse thing than the

Starting point is 03:28:36 electromagnetic systems that the Navy has been using. But Trump, like, heard that some pilot liked them a long time ago. And so he's been trying to force the entire Navy to do this since the first administration. And he's finally succeeded, which means you're going to have to, like, refit like 40% of these ships. And they're probably going to have to design new ships because the ships are not designed around having these things. And they're just going to be worse because the emperor has decided that he, like, like steam catapults. Oh, yeah, no, no, no.

Starting point is 03:29:04 There's a piece in the Guardian just about a week ago. Trump orders Pentagon to redesign U.S. aircraft carriers to use steam catapults to launch jets. Yep, yep, yep, yep. Yeah, because he thought the digital systems were too complicated. I had missed this in the long list of, like, bullshit. Oh, it's amazing military stuff he said recently. Yeah, he signed an National Security memorandum directing Pete Hegseth and the acting Navy secretary to make this change.

Starting point is 03:29:28 That's great. It's good. It's this astonishing combination of, like, he's, he's made the, the cardinal mistake that all of these people make, which is that American military and economic supremacy is premised on having the world's most expensive army and not using it. Yeah. And now he's used it. And then also, he's, like, doing all of this weird emperor fucking with it stuff at the same time, which is. There's amazing quotes from this. Apparently, this started back in 2017, what he told Time magazine about a conversational.

Starting point is 03:30:00 that he'd had with an unnamed Navy officer. So I said, what's this? Sir, this is our digital catapult system. Trump went on. It sounded bad to me. Digital. They have digital. What is digital?

Starting point is 03:30:10 And it's very complicated. You have to be Albert Einstein to figure it out. And I said, and now they want to buy more aircraft carriers. I said, what system are you going to be? Sir, we're staying with digital. I said, no, you're not. You're going to goddamn steam. The digital costs hundreds of millions of dollars more money, and it's no good.

Starting point is 03:30:26 He's also trying to get him to move the fucking. control tower of the aircraft carriers into the middle of the ship, according to the Washington Post. This is beautiful stuff. I hope he gets his way. I hope he gets his way. It'll protect the rest of the world from us. Yeah, the rest of the world would be better of all these ships who are not deployed right now. This is an, yeah, outstanding. Great stuff. Great, amazing shit. Oh, God. Very normal. This is how a successful military is organized. Yeah. I should point out that like the latest statistics on people wounded in action, now suggested there are about 700

Starting point is 03:31:03 U.S. service people who have been wounded in the six-month operation. Allegedly, the Washington is coming in to replace the Lincoln. Unclear what will happen to the destroyers and also unclear when this is actually going to happen. The destroyers have to come back

Starting point is 03:31:19 so they can put a mast on them. Yeah. Because that looks more epic and a big fucking cannon, like a black powder cannon on the front. Yeah, the last I heard from Trump, he said that a replacement for the Lincoln is, quote, moving right now or very shortly, and it's being replaced with another

Starting point is 03:31:34 very similar ship. So that's what we've got so far. It is worth noting, just in terms of a general update on the situation in Iran, that the ceasefire that no one has really been holding to has come to an end or is in the process of coming to an end and does not look like it's going to be renewed for all of the good that did everybody over the last 60 days or so. Yeah. The Trump administration has gone back and forth up until earlier this week. He had been claiming that he was in, that the U.S. was in active talks with Iran. But he said earlier this Tuesday that the U.S. is not in any talks with Iran and has no plans to start new ones. This is around the same time that he started saying that the Strait of Hormuz is open and that the U.S. is going to take it and make it a new U.S. territory. This has just been something he released as a series of truth posts or truths, including one showing a map that circled. the Strait of Hormuz with the words new U.S. territory, straight of Hormuz, above and below it. So, again, hard to say what's going to happen here, other than that oil prices are continuing to rise. The same day that he announced that there were no talks going on and that the ceasefire was not going to be extended, U.S. forces fired on a Panama flagged ship.

Starting point is 03:32:54 And around the same time, Iran struck a ship as well, killing at least one sailor. since the war began. 17 sailors have been killed in 65 attacks. Most of those have been the result of Iranian strikes, but three of those deaths have been caused by a U.S. Navy ship that struck a merchant ship in June. So sailors are getting killed all around. The USS Abraham Lincoln's probably getting rotated out.

Starting point is 03:33:18 The ceasefire's over, and I guess we're trying to take the straight, although there's no way to know what any of this actually means or what Trump's going to do. He could announce that they've got a new ceasefire tomorrow. Like, it would be silly to take any of this as a final word on anything. Yeah, let me pick up on that where Robert left off there. It does appear that in response to Trump continuing to just post insane stuff, Iran has been having talks with Oman, probably talking about, like, joint tolling the straight, right,

Starting point is 03:33:48 which is something we've spoken about a lot on this podcast. Trump did interview with Trey Yinks. If you're not familiar with Trey Yinks, his job is to kind of be a credulous nodding head to broadcast shit that Donald Trump says, his chief foreign. correspondent Fox. Now I asked the president about these parallel talks that are taking place between Iran and Oman about control of the Strait of Hormuz. And the president told Fox News, if Oman gets in the way, will bomb the S out of them.

Starting point is 03:34:14 That is Donald Trump threatening to bomb the shit out of Oman. A fantastic U-turn in the United States policy. This is a wild thing for him to be saying, right? This is a country that obviously the U.S. has had previously good relations. with. This is like a CIA outpost, like brand new country to do, to do Middle East War with. Yeah, exactly right. We're running out of countries.

Starting point is 03:34:37 We're having to turn on our own. Trump has also claimed in the same interviews, Trayyinks, that he has a back channel to the IRGC. Interestingly, President Trump confirmed to Fox News that there is a back channel with the IRGC. These are the hardline officials inside of Iran and that the United States and officials in Washington are speaking directly with IRGC. officials in Iran? So yeah, there he's talking about the United States

Starting point is 03:35:02 negotiate directly with the IIGC. I would assume that they have had back channels in the IIGC, right? That is something one would assume. Yeah. This is very normal when you have two states of this size which are frequently kind of squaring off against each other. And generally, it is something that can be used to de-escalate conflict. Obviously, that ain't happening right now.

Starting point is 03:35:22 It was later reported that these, and you don't have to be a brain genius to work out that these probably came through to Kurdistan, region of Iraq, right? Southern Kurdistan. In related news, Iran then attempted a drone strike on Barzani. What? Yes. President of the Kurdistan region of Iraq. Yeah, they sent two drones to Barzani's residents, I believe. What the fuck? Yeah. Sorry, I missed this. Why was this not front page? What the hell? Yes, they sent two drones to the office of the Kurdistan region Prime Minister Mosul Basani and the residents of the head of the Kurdistan region's security agency. The drones obviously did not cause any casualties. I think they were intercepted.

Starting point is 03:36:03 This was reported by Axios, right, that this link between southern Kurdistan and the IRGC back channel was reported by Axios on the 16th. And then on the 17th, Iran attempted to drone strike Marsaul Barzani, the Prime Minister of the Kurdistan region of Iraq. Yeah, they attempted to drone strike his office and the residents of the Kurdistan region security agency, both in the Abil province of Kurdistan and like this again is a single like I have reported extensively I think that Iran is bombing southern Kurdistan and has been for some time but this is a hell of an escalation. Yeah, try to what's that like Barzani is like the political figure in in this part of Kurdistan. Yeah. And like the Brazzani family has been has been a political faction powerful enough that like a lot

Starting point is 03:36:49 of politics revolves around whether you're not, you're like in their client networks for a long, long time. This is kind of like trying to, like, I mean, he literally is like the Prime Minister for Rocky Kurdistan. Like, this is like attempting to assassinate a prime minister. Yeah, yeah. It's a staggering escalation. Like, Baziani Zetid, I tweeted,

Starting point is 03:37:08 X, that it was dangerous escalation and direct threat to the security instability of the Kurdistan region. He's not wrong. Yeah. When you combine this with the US having a scheduled withdrawal from Iraq, right? Like, this is bad. And like, it is very clear that Iraq is continuing

Starting point is 03:37:24 and even escalating its policy of punishing the Kurds for the United States aggression, right? There's this perception that the Kurds and US are like always aligned. As Robert said, Iran has continued to strike d'assels and straight of Hormuz. What's interesting about this recent strike

Starting point is 03:37:39 and the number of strikes that came in the days before it is that normally there has been a pattern by which the bombing relaxes, Iran strikes a vessel, the US bombs Iran, things peter out, lower intensity, Iran strikes a vessel, the US hits Iran, right? Like, yeah, yeah.

Starting point is 03:38:00 The US has not hit Iran yet in response to these most recent ones. And I think part of the reason that might be is something we've talked about before, that the United States is not capable now of doing what it did in February. Like, it has significantly diminished its stockpiles. Yeah, by an estimate or, around 70% plus depending on the munition in terms of like our long range like cruise missiles and our interceptors. Yeah.

Starting point is 03:38:29 So like just to de-jogun that for people, that's like attack and defense, right? It's your ability to hit Iran and also your ability to stop Iranian things. It's all the stuff that lets us hit Iran without endangering the lives of U.S. airmen. And it's what allows us to defend our bases and all of the allied bases and increasingly fuel infrastructure in the region. Right. And it's low enough that in part why they don't want to continue burning more, even though they have like a third or more left, is that they have to keep a stockpile in case shit goes down with China or, you know, expands with Russia, right? Like these are our primary weapons. With Iran, they're completely unnecessary. Yeah, or a Mon. Yeah, or our new war with the Mon. Yeah. If we were to theoretically get into any kind of anything approaching a near peer conflict. We're on a good spot right now.

Starting point is 03:39:22 These would be our only weapons other than nukes. Yeah. So I know we're going to come back to the US like a defense procurement situation. But I do want to just point out that the president, I don't know if this is related to the fact that gas prices are still bonkers six months into this, but he has posted an air image of a trimmer version of himself

Starting point is 03:39:41 ripping the keystone pipeline out of the ground with a banner reading buried by Biden in the background. Not clear if he understands how pipelines work. What? Yeah. Your guess is as good as mine on that one. What? It's, I mean, here, let me just drop the link, I guess.

Starting point is 03:40:01 Sometimes I'll just scroll his true social page. It's wild up in there. That is not a task for the faint of heart. No, like this is one of the things I do for work, you know, that traumatizes me. I've put it in the chat, the Zoom chat. We don't want our oil in the ground, in those pipes. We want it straight from the straight of Hormuz in barrels. Well, yeah. Right. Like, what is he thinking? What does he think? The Keystone pipeline, I should

Starting point is 03:40:25 know, also has a plaque affixed to it that says, Keystone Pipeline, completely free, energy jobs, America first. No, and there. They're buried by Biden is on a gravestone. The pipeline also has some handles. Trump's kind of in sort of a stable, wide stance there pulling it out the ground. Like, it's got roots on it. I don't know what the fuck is going on here, but there are also some soldiers in the background, like underneath an American flag. So, yeah, this is the guy who just decided we were at war with Iran and now was killed a shit ton of people over it. Yeah.

Starting point is 03:40:59 I guess now the response to the war with Iran and gas prices being up is more pipelines at home, which is sick. Like, I should add, I guess, that there is a continuing ecological disaster in the Strait of Hormuz because people keep shooting boats, which are full of fuel. Yeah. And Iran is having to clean up these oil spills. Well, there's also a further ecological disaster. in that you have an enormous fleet of vessels

Starting point is 03:41:21 that are just sitting around waiting and accumulating a huge number of different kind of mollusks that you don't want to spread around the world that are definitely going to. And it's also getting stuff is getting sucked into, like, their water tanks and their, what do you call it, their ballast tanks and shit that's going to get squirted out somewhere else?

Starting point is 03:41:40 Like there's a lot of potential problems. Yeah, there are some procedures for like dumping ballast and stuff, but this is all, the problem is right, everything is delayed, every shipping company is losing money, hand over fist, and they're going to want to get moving pretty fast if the straightforward moves ever opens again, and yeah, we will see more environmental damages.

Starting point is 03:42:01 Like every war is an ecological disaster, but this one that isn't getting as much reporting on. But it's great that we're bringing that home with the Keystone pipelines, so we'll get a little piece of that too. So I wanted to give an update on a story because I talked about two weeks ago, something like that, about the General Dynamics Artillery Shell Factory in

Starting point is 03:42:21 Mesquite, Texas that was meant to by now be producing somewhere between 20 and ideally 30,000 shells a month of specifically the kind that were being used most rapidly in Ukraine before Ukraine pivoted to using drones for a lot of style. I mean, they're still burning through 155s, but like that was

Starting point is 03:42:36 I mean, they incurred a shell debt of something like 3.6 million shells in the United States as a result of that, and so it's a massive issue to get these shells being produced. Because in any kind of modern war, we're going to be burning through a shitload of them. We have a hundred something years worth of heavy artillery in warfare to know that you never have enough shells. So this is a problem the U.S. has been trying to get its handle on for a while. And as I noted, this factory that was

Starting point is 03:43:01 supposed to be producing like a third of the total of all the shells in the United States has not produced any so far. And a few days after I discussed that on ED, Jesse Coburn at ProPublica published a beautiful investigation into that General Dynamics factory in Mesquite that, that opens with just a great lead. A robot was on fire again. And it's talking about the fact that all of this factory is like filled with, because it was supposed to be heavily automated, which is why it was supposed to be able to keep up with such a high level of production. And it was automated using these robots that had like giant metal arms with clamps for hands. And because of the way they were designed, it wound up soaked in oil constantly.

Starting point is 03:43:41 And that oil would combust because they were moving steel blocks that had been heated to about 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit into and out of a machine that also would periodically belch flame at them. And the robots were not roofed against this much flame. Per the ProPublica article, one blaze that summer melted a robot's cables, putting it out of commission for a week. Now, this series of fires in the factory came just a few weeks before Trump administration, defense officials, and executives for General Dynamics, the company that made the factory, toured and threw a gala opening event there to celebrate that it was supposed to be up and running by now. Exploding robots were not the only method of uncontrollable failure that workers had documented at the factory by that point.

Starting point is 03:44:22 For one thing, the robotic arms had a tendency to flail uncontrollably and destroy equipment. They also would periodically drop heavy loads at random. The most sensitive and expensive equipment in the entire factory was a machine that was meant to stretch metal in order to make artillery shells. It cracked them nearly constantly. The factory was filled with smoke at all times and was usually over 100 degrees inside. every description of the state-of-the-art arms factory sounds worse than the ones that were operating in World War I. This is probably my favorite part of that article. Then there were the giant press machines, which required regular pounding with a sledgehammer to function property,

Starting point is 03:44:56 to still spot the shaping of nearly every shell. We didn't really have any standardized practice, said Quantel White, a former employee. It was just a bunch of guys taking turns going at the machine with a sledgehammer every night. This is Warhammer 40K shit. Why, Amber 40K works a lot better than this. There would be a priest to be reading from a Bible. There'd be ungence and oil. My God.

Starting point is 03:45:19 Well, there's lots of oil. I love this. Now, by last summer, which is when reports first started coming out about the difficulties the factory was having, by that point, General Dynamics had missed eight deadlines to get this thing up and running. Their factory still has yet to produce a single usable shell, despite $533 million in Pentagon funds going towards refurbishing old machines and ordering. new ones from Turkey. Even so, the Pentagon continues to sign contracts with General Dynamics.

Starting point is 03:45:47 And two months ago, the company announced a new solution to all of their ill-fortune factories many issues. Can you guys guess what the magic bullet that finally is going to fix everything of this factory that doesn't work is supposed to be? AI? Yeah, it's AI. It's fucking AI. Of course it's AI. Of course it is, yeah. Quote, a news release from General Dynamics and the new company, deterrence was filled with techno-business jargon. AI-enabled capabilities and intelligence and connectivity would be added at Mesquite and other general dynamics factories, the companies wrote. AI transforms production facilities into strategic assets, deterrence the CEO said on the release.

Starting point is 03:46:19 We're building autonomous manufacturing systems that learn, adapt, and scale in real time. By the way, what that CEO said, I'll guarantee it was written by Chad GPT. The whole AI transform, that's, yeah, very clearly. Yeah. These pronouncements have baffled former mesquite workers. What are they talking about? There's nothing to learn or adapt or scale, one said. It's all broken.

Starting point is 03:46:37 It's a bit of public a piece. This is, God, it must have been fun writing this. It's really fun because no one who actually works at the factory and no U.S. military officials who are allowed to speak their minds openly have had anything positive to say about General Dynamics and how they've proceeded with this project. The article quotes a former official in an army office supervising the factory as saying, it's an absolute disaster. The Army should have gone after recovering money from General Dynamics. Yeah, no, I mean, they should have. Yeah, but that gets the central contradiction of the American War machine, is that the point of it is to give money to defense contractors.

Starting point is 03:47:12 You're not actually supposed to have to use the stuff. I should say here, General Dynamics is one of the companies most responsible for inventing that state of affairs. We're going to talk about these folks because they keep coming up when you look into, like, defense-related golduggery and fuckery and, like, U.S. history. I feel like now is probably is a good time to talk a little bit about their history. I'm going to give a brief overview of these guys because we're in an illegal war that's currently shuffling a fortune to defense contracts. and we should probably talk about one of the most corrupt members of that family. The General Dynamics Corporation was founded at the tail end of the 19th century by Isaac Leopold Rice, a businessman and a musicologist who was born in Bavaria and raised in Milwaukee.

Starting point is 03:47:52 He made his fortune doing a mix of railroad law and publishing sheet music and eventually got into the electric battery and vehicle business. This ended with him involved in submarines because early Navy subs ran on electric power when submerged. In 1890, he purchased the Holland Torpedo Boat Company. and named it the Electric Boat Company. The Electric Boat Company remained a submarine manufacturer after his death in 1914, providing subs for not just the U.S. government, but the Peruvian government, and gradually spinning up to produce other kinds of boats,

Starting point is 03:48:22 including PT boats for the U.S. and Canadian militaries. After World War II, it purchased Conver, which made anti-aircraft missiles, jet fighters, and the Atlas rockets used in the first U.S. crude orbital flight. This new company, a mix of the Electric Boat Company and Convair, became general dynamics. In more recent decades, general dynamics became the manufacturers of the feared Tomahawk cruise missile, arguably the most iconic ballistic missile in the entire U.S. arsenal. It also kept making subs, including the famous Los Angeles class. And as time went on, the company got really, really good at corruptly fucking U.S. taxpayers out of their money.

Starting point is 03:48:57 Investigative reporting first started shining a light on constant cost overruns and blown budgets in a series of GD. defense contracts, per a 1985 time article by Charles Alexander, A federal grand jury first started investigating the company's cost overruns on submarines in 1979, but dropped the probe in 1981 for lack of enough evidence of fraud. Now the Justice Department has reopened the case in light of new information from P. Takas Veliatis, who in 1977 became head of electric boat, the company's sub-building division in Groton, Connecticut. His word is hardly unimpeachable. In 1983, he fled to his native Greece to avoid being tried on charges of perjuring himself before a grand jury

Starting point is 03:49:31 and taking $1.3 million in kickbacks from a subcontractor. Valiades has produced tapes and company documents that he claims reveal a pattern of waste, corruption, and cover-up at General Dynamics. In a tape of one talk he had with Lewis, the chairman, for example, the chairman suggests that Valiadis reassured James Ashton, a discontented electric boat executive, that he is still in the running for a promotion in order to keep him from popping off about shoddy work at the yard. So we have all of these tapes from this equally shady dude Valiadus because nobody who's in a high position in the defense contracting industry is not constantly committing crimes. and the tapes that he provided showed several things that are very familiar to the Mesquite factory case.

Starting point is 03:50:06 For one thing, Viliatus provided a 1977 tape of the company's executive vice president Gordon MacDonald telling him that the company had issued an impossible delivery time table for the first Trident submarine because the CEO of General Dynamics

Starting point is 03:50:19 wanted to, quote, keep our stock price from sliding. In other words, every time that the stock price slide, you can announce, oh, we're about to release the Trident and you get a quick boost in the stock price.

Starting point is 03:50:29 Yeah, yeah. As a result of this kind of fuckery the sub was not produced until two years after this date. Now, that's pretty bad. But the incident that actually sparked the first known criminal investigation of a defense contractor came in 1983 when General Dynamics tried to charge the Air Force $9,600 for a four-inch long wrench. And this revealed a bunch of, if you've ever heard stories of like $6,000 wrenches and yada yada,

Starting point is 03:50:53 $4,000 plungers, it's general dynamics that people are talking about. That was a real series of like news articles and a visual. eventually congressional investigations into the fact that they were charging absurd amounts of money for bullshit. Now, part of the reason for this was that, like, Navy and Air Force procurement was completely fucked in this point, and they just did not keep a backlog of, like, the material they needed to repair their shit on hand. But a lot of it was just massive, rampant corruption with companies like General Dynamics in particular. Now, charges like this inspired further investigations into how GD functioned, and this eventually led to a congressional inquiry. It came out that in 1982, General

Starting point is 03:51:29 Dynamics had asked the Pentagon to pay almost $19 million in overhead costs for their company HQ. These were not what you'd call unavoidable expenses. Quote, $491,840 for Lewis's, that's the chairman's personal flights on corporate jets, often to and from his farm in Albany. $538,78,781 for contributions and memberships, including country club fees for top executives. And $155 for the kindling of a dog named Fursten, while its owner, a General Dynamics executive, attended a company conference at a South Carolina resort. At last week's hearing, Congressman Dingell quizzed Lewis about a $571 charge for a king-sized surta-perfect sleeper mattress and a box spring set, which was delivered to the Clayton Inn in suburban St. Louis. It was for Mr. Valiatus, said Louis,

Starting point is 03:52:15 who explained that the executive said he needed the bed for times he came to St. Louis for meetings. added Gordon McDonald, a general dynamics executive vice president, Mr. Valiatus being a very large man, complained so much to the secretary of the company that he got tired of hearing it and bought the bed. Theliatis denied that the bed was for him. So just very funny stories consistently. When you look into like 80s defense contractor procurement issues, specifically around general dynamics. Now, I know what you're wondering.

Starting point is 03:52:42 How did they get away with such corruption? Well, that $19 million the U.S. government spent on complete bullshit fees was matched with $1.24 million in a general dynamics account meant purely to entertain Pentagon officials. In 1977, they gave $1,125. diamond earring set to the wife of Admiral Hyman Rickover, head of the nuclear propulsion program. Now, to be fair to Hyman, the real reason they were trying to butter him up is that he had repeatedly complained about the company, but this is the kind of shit that they have been doing forever. Like the fact that they have now spent half a billion dollars of taxpayer money on a factory that does not work is nothing new to general dynamics.

Starting point is 03:53:21 And I'm sure they've now promised to put another $200 million into the factory and that it'll be producing 20,000 shells a month at least within a year. I'm sure at some point they'll get it working if they keep shoveling a bunch of money into it, but make no mistake, it will not be general dynamics money. It will be money one way or the other that U.S. taxpayers have given them that winds up eventually maybe making this factory produce a single shell. Anyway, general dynamics. Let's go on one more head break and then talk about bonds in Florida, I guess. Yeah. Wild.

Starting point is 03:53:56 Speaking of unbelievably corrupt bullshit. that is directly tied to the American war efforts in Iran. Okay, so bonds are not normally an extremely exciting topic. So let's start off with the glaring part, which is that early this week, the yields on U.S. Treasury bonds, specifically 30-year T-notes, hit highs not seen since 2007 several weeks before the collapse of the American stock markets. It is also noted by several analysts that the other times, that we've seen peaks like this were like 1939 right before that and I think there was another

Starting point is 03:54:46 one of these I forgot I forgot the other economic collapse but there was a there was a giant one of these right before it like the 1920 no 1931 is that like black fright yeah there's one more I think it might have been like the dot-com bubble or something I forget which other but experts suggest that bond markets only do this when they are in extreme distress. So what does this actually mean? Bonds are a thing that in this case you can get from the government and you pay the government money and the government promises you to pay back more money later and the yield is like

Starting point is 03:55:22 how much more money they're giving you back, right? High yields on bonds means, you know, an increase of the cost of borrowing. And high yields on U.S. government bonds is a sign of growing distrust in a long run economic future of the U.S. Usually these bonds pay like absolute shit, but the reason they pay like shit is that it's the U.S. government you're guaranteed to get your money back. So they're supposed to be an extremely safe asset, right? And when these rates are up, it's because everyone is, you know, looking at something happening in the market and something happening structurally in the U.S. economy and panicking. Now, one of those things is they're looking at the U.S. debt and panicking and, you know, whether or not that's like a great way to evaluate how panicky they have to be is an open question.

Starting point is 03:56:08 This has been one of the lines that's been coming out, is that they're looking at, you know, the U.S. date increasing faster than expected. The main thing, however, that has been setting off this particular wave of, like, mass selling of bonds is the collapse of that 60-day peace deal that Robert was talking about earlier, which, you know, I don't think anyone who was actually following the conflict really thought that was going to go anywhere. But the thing that was important about it strategically from the American side was that this was this was the thing. that investors and financial analysts were hanging their hat on. And, you know, these people had convinced themselves that this process was actually going to result in the end of the war, and that quickly ending the war was going to, you know, restore economic growth, et cetera, et cetera, and save off inflation. And this was sort of the weak, as, as I mentioned earlier, the Brent Crude Index hit

Starting point is 03:56:58 $90 a barrel and the peace talks formally completely collapsed, that there was a growing realization that this war is not going to end. the economic conditions caused by the war not ending are going to continue, which means inflation is going to increase and it's going to have sort of far-reaching and long-lasting economic impacts. Now, this is a global squeeze that's been hitting most developed countries. Japan has also been very badly hit by these sort of shocks in bond yields. Now, what's interesting reading analysis of it is that you're actually starting to see a lot of firms, JP Morgan is a good example of this, where J.P. Morgan for, like, basically since the war has started,

Starting point is 03:57:41 J.P. Morgan's analysis has been the war is going to end, and when the war ends, things will go back to normal, so we're just going to keep projecting things are going to be fine. They are finally pointing out the things that we've been saying, which is that, yeah, no, the war is not ending, and it's wreaking havoc on global supply chains. Now, the other thing that's been causing this run-up, there's two sides of this back-to-back that seem very conflicting, which is, on the one hand, there is growing fear over the fact that the AI bubble looks like it's going to collapse, right? And we've seen this with sort of like the Kostby shock I was talking about earlier, where, you know, like stock market like 10, 5% of the stock market's value keeps disappearing overnight and then reappearing the next day. But then, and this is sort of fascinating, one of the other things that's been happening is that there has been an unbelievable proliferation of bonds issued by AI companies.

Starting point is 03:58:34 because these AI companies are having to go to the finance markets to fund all of their weird data center bullshit. And this has gotten a bunch of investors to pull their money out of very safe U.S. bonds and put them into hideously unsafe AI bonds. A thing which... I don't even... This obviously is going to go catastrophically wrong.

Starting point is 03:58:59 I don't have a sophisticated analysis for why taking the money out of the U.S. government and putting it into this AI company is going to, like, create a transcendent god is a terrible idea. And what we've kind of seen in the past couple of days as, as these bond yields have risen as from a combination of these factors is it looks like the beginning of the moment where Wiley Coyote looks down and realizes that he's off the cliff. Now, on Wednesday, the Treasury began a massive buyback of Treasury bonds. I'm going to quote from CNBC here. Under the accelerated buyback, Treasury, led by Secretary Scott Bessent,

Starting point is 03:59:40 will target the 10 to 20 year and 20 to 30 year portion of the market, which has seen a buyer's strike since late June. The government will at least double the maximum size of its buyback operations from $2 billion to, quote, at least $4 billion, according to an announcement from the department. Now, in terms of the actual size of this buyback, which is like not a great sign when the government is buying back its own debt in an attempt to stabilize the market. But that's not, you know, in terms of the size of like the U.S. market, that's really a drop in the bucket. But it does seem to have temporarily sort of stabilized the markets on the belief that if

Starting point is 04:00:20 things continue to go wrong, the government will step in. However, the actual underlying economic metrics remain bad for everything in the economy that isn't AI. And this is one of the things that traditionally heralds a fall on economic collapse. Now, it's also worth noting that, you know, Cospy, for example, keeps hitting its circuit breaker. That's something that also traditionally has been like the prelude to collapse and it hasn't yet. So, you know, we're in a deeply weird and semi- unprecedented time in the markets and in sort of the behavior of these investors and financial actors. But it's not good. It's my conclusion on the state of the U.S. bond market and the global economy at large.

Starting point is 04:01:09 Let's close with elections. And I want to start with a quick correction for one or two of my last election segments. I keep calling Governor Tim Walls, Mike Walls, and I don't know why this keeps happening. I picture his face in my mind, and it just like auto-corrects to Mike. I've caught this a few times and fixed it before the episode goes out, but this past time, I did not. Now, slightly more importantly, I also accidentally referred to Mike Rogers in Michigan as the incumbent, and that is not true. This Senate race is open, and Rogers is a former congressman. These are, you know, smaller details and stories that are focused more on how DSA and left-wing candidates are running their campaigns,

Starting point is 04:01:57 but these types of details are still important to get right, and I regret the error. Let's turn to Florida, where I'm sad to say, the resistance has been defeated. Now, Garrison, are you talking about Florida the state or Flo Rida, the musical sensation? No. You missed a good chance to pivot with talking of regret and then. I thought about doing that, but like, no, I would rather not because. I'm just saying. I still think there's hope for Florida.

Starting point is 04:02:23 That's a bold take. But American hero, Alexander Vindman, will not be that hope. You'll be issuing another correction for that bad boy. let me tell you. I'm talking in the grads. Okay, I'm talking about in the cosmic sense, not in the short term. Yeah, okay, I agree with you.

Starting point is 04:02:40 I have hope for the Floridians. The resistance has been defeated. American hero Alexander Vindman, the whistleblower who testified in Trump's first impeachment hearings, has lost the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate in an upset to Angie Nixon, a state representative from Jacksonville and a Democratic socialist.

Starting point is 04:03:01 Nixon won by 150,000 votes. Oh, wow. 56.1% to Vindman's 43.9. And this is a big upset because Nixon was out fundraised 16 to 1. She had just under a million dollars while Vindman raked in over 16 million. And I think like a resist lib hero losing a primary to a socialist in Florida is astounding. Yeah. Now, Nixon, Nixon's a union organizer who's running on Medicare for All,

Starting point is 04:03:34 taxing billionaires, free child care, universal jobs program, and opposition to Israel. She was endorsed by Alon Omar, Rashida Talib, Anita Turner, Cory Bush, and Ms. Rachel, who's listed in the National Leaders section of Anthony Nixon's website. Good for her. Our only truly good national leader. No complaints with her. Miss Rachel has shown more spying than most of Congress in the last few. is. Nixon was also endorsed by Working Families Party,

Starting point is 04:04:04 local unions, JVP, Jewish Voice for Peace, and Track A-Pak. She joined DSA this past June, but did not pursue an endorsement, so is a relative newcomer to DSA as an organization. I do want to play this clip from her back in November 20203, a month into Israel's attacks on Gaza. We are at 10,000 dead Palestinians. How many will be enough? I also One of the lawmakers

Starting point is 04:04:36 Republican Michelle Salsman just shouted out to all of them in the hearing. I'll continue the clip. Jesus. One of my colleagues just said all of them. Wow. One of my colleagues said all of them. One of my colleagues also stated

Starting point is 04:04:53 that this is going to dry up their fundraising if we vote on this resolution. I also want that, like, that's what we've become in this state. That's what we've become in this state where we don't care about innocent babies that don't even get the opportunity to blow out their first birthday candle. So this was a ceasefire resolution just a month into the war. Do you have the sense of like turnout versus like electoral stuff?

Starting point is 04:05:25 Like I'm wondering, is this a like people who turn out for primaries tend to be like a more political. engaged and people who turn out for generals? Or is this a like, this lady, because she clearly has like, just looking at that speech, she has a genuine commitment to what she's talking about. And I think people appreciate that more than, like you said, a resist lib hero. Definitely. And I mean, certainly I think generals can attract a bigger, a bigger portion of the electorate. But there's a few things going on that created this pretty, pretty big difference in votes, like over 150,000. Yeah, it's big. And like, in my mind, this is. And like, in my mind, this relates to two of the elections last week in Minnesota and Wisconsin.

Starting point is 04:06:08 The My Pillow primary, where Trump endorsed Michael Lindell lost the Republican gubernatorial primary to the state speaker of the House. And like this is kind of like the idea that a national political celebrity can just like waltz into your state and gobble up a nomination. Yeah. Both Lindell and Alexander Vindman, you know, come from like the Trump world, albeit on opposite sides, but it's still part of like, you know, the Trumpian political circuit. Yeah.

Starting point is 04:06:35 And voters rejected both of them in favor of proven state lawmakers, you know, one, you know, a more like regular state level Republican and Angie Nixon, who's like a community organizer with like deep connections to a lot of, a lot of different communities in the state. And specifically, the working class black community. Now, the other interesting thing that this race kind of continues the conversation on relates to Francesca Hong's loss last week. As I discussed last week, Hong did not pay for any TV ads.

Starting point is 04:07:07 And Nixon only spent $60,000 on ads with zero spent on broadcast or cable. Meanwhile, Vindman spent $2.2 million on ads. That's 36 times as much as Nixon. Yeah. And Nixon still won. Dumping money off the cliff. That's because she actually ran a real campaign,

Starting point is 04:07:26 like on the ground. And Vindman did not. He ran an incredibly lazy campaign. campaign, he really thought he could just like coast to the nomination based on his resist lib credentials. And, you know, while that maybe helped in Palm Beach, it did not help him in the rest of the state where, where just he got absolutely trounced by Nixon. Like, if you look at like the county map, it's like, whoa. Yeah. So come November, Nixon will face the incumbent Senator Ashley Moody, the former state AG who Ronda's appointed to Phil.

Starting point is 04:08:00 Marco Rubio's Senate seat after he was tapped for Secretary of State. And like, Rubio has had a strong hole in that seat for decades. So the hope for Florida Democrats is that Ashley Moody won't command as much loyalty at the ballot box as Rubio does,

Starting point is 04:08:19 or as Rubio did. And maybe like a critical 1% of the Republican vote thinks that she's another Nixon. Yes. Hopefully. You never know. But this could very likely be a much harder uphill battle than even, you know, like the Texas Senate race was Hilarigo. In this recent election, there were around 300,000 fewer votes in the Democratic primary than the GOP primary.

Starting point is 04:08:45 Like, this is going to be a very difficult race to win. Yeah. I don't want to, you know, understate how impressive this primary win, like, really is. And, like, I don't think anyone will false Nixon or her politics if she loses in the general. I mean, someone will. Someone will write a shitty, like, is this the end of the left op-ed, right? They always do. It doesn't matter.

Starting point is 04:09:05 They will try, but, like, a lot of centrist did not expect Vinman to win if he wins the primary. So, like... It's a Senate seat in Florida. It's, like, harder with that. Like, it's... I'm reflecting on the fact that, like, people have taken Hong's result and been, like, oh, the progressive left is dead.

Starting point is 04:09:24 And then they're still treating Calarico like he's, like, the presumptive victor. And on Nell Sayette, but like, yeah, I mean, I think one that we probably should take from Hong's election is that television ads cannot be disposed of so quickly yet. At the general. Yeah. I mean, it, I mean, period. Like, I think that's one of the things that definitely hurt her campaign is that they made a big choice not to do TV ads. Yeah. I wouldn't want to write everything down to that, but yeah.

Starting point is 04:09:54 That was certainly a factor in Wisconsin. Nixon's, like, ground game in Florida was able to, to overcome the massive deficit in spending and just not really many funds for TV ads. And I think, because this is a Florida Senate seat that Vindman was not expected to win in the general, and he was the presumptive nominee, but because this race will be so hard to win, it'll be harder to blame her or her politics specifically for losing. I think this race can also be a big opportunity to push the Overton window in Florida. And come November, it will be really interesting to see what the results of this election are, because if this is a

Starting point is 04:10:29 super close race, even if she still loses, hopefully she will not lose. But if this race even gets to be where it's like more competitive than what it's been for the past like 10, 15 years, I think that could be an interesting look at how much Trump is hurting Republicans in elections, like exactly how upset parts of his base are at the current state of things and to what degree that affects turnout. But also on the other hand, if Nixon and her politics are able to, form a new coalition and attract voters that might not usually vote for Democrats, might not usually vote for socialists, or might not vote at all. Because even just in this primary, her core voter base was very different than what's currently considered to be DSA's most

Starting point is 04:11:18 reliable voters. Nixon did best in districts that were majority non-college educated, and that's usually the reverse for a lot of DSA-type candidates in other states. So she was getting out a slightly different voter base than what El-Said was getting out, than what DSA candidates in New York have been getting out, especially in the primaries. So I think she is someone to watch and could alter what's seen as politically possible in Florida. Yeah, I want to say briefly also that there is a chance that, you know, with how badly the Republicans are doing on generic ballots, I mean, like the good projections right now have them down seven points on just like a generic.

Starting point is 04:11:59 Democratic versus Republican ballot, like there is a small chance that we get a 2008-style blowout and she wins, which it's not impossible in a way that it usually is. It would be historic, right? It would, yeah, no, it's possible. It's just extremely unlikely, but like, I don't think it's unlikely, but it would be, like, historic. It's more likely than any of the times people that have said that Democrats are going to take Texas is what I'll say about this. Like, it's, like, actually technically possible. So while this is a big win for the left statewide, DSA candidates did not fare as well in the recently redistricted

Starting point is 04:12:35 U.S. House races in Florida. Let's briefly talk about my boy Oliver Larkin. Larkin was running for House District 25. That's Miami-Dod, Palm Beach, and Broward County. Not exactly the friendliest waters for an anti-Israel socialist. Larkin got 16,284 votes. while the incumbent House rep Jared Moskowitz won with 28,294 votes. Larkin is DSA endorsed, and he ran a solid campaign

Starting point is 04:13:05 with an impressive ground game over 500 volunteers, 40,000 doors knocked, 750,000 calls. He campaigned with Angie Nixon. Also, this past month, Larkin has gone, and this is a technical term, a beast mode in TV news interviews. Here's Larkin getting some pushback from a Fox News anchor on abolishing and prosecuting ICE. What is the number that is fine with you?

Starting point is 04:13:32 Is there a benchmark? Is it fine? How many children can be raped and it's fine if you're in relation to the immigration community? If we're going to talk about children being raped, then we need to hold this pedophile president, Donald Trump, accountable. And all those that have been implicated by the Epstein files that the Department of Justice is still, not leaking and they've sent APEC after Thomas Massey for having the temerity to hold accountable the pedophiles that are in control of our government. Thank you. We appreciate your time. Very much. So beyond like attention grabbing moments like that, he's also very clearly articulated the details

Starting point is 04:14:13 of his platform and defended it and DSA against bad faith attacks. He's talked about the need for a new path to citizenship and just how cost prohibitive it is. for immigrants to maintain a documented status. I know Trump has made things even harder, on purpose, to manufacture a political crisis. On Fox, he argued very eloquently against providing Israel with so-called defensive weapons, which he rejected as a categorical term.

Starting point is 04:14:38 And he's gone toe-to-toe with Sean, aka Scott Hannity, on tax reform. Earlier this week on Local 10 this week in Florida, host Glennna Milberg abruptly cut off her interview with Larkin after he said that Israel has committed a genocide, which she claimed was quote unquote factually incorrect. Now also, late last week, Laura Lumer and Democrat State Representative Michael Gottlieb

Starting point is 04:15:05 tried to shut down a get-out-the-vote rally for Larkin, Angie Nixon, and another DSA candidate, Elijah Manley, called Chomp the Oligarchy with a, I want to say alligator or crocodile on front. Don't at me. It's got to be an alligator, right? whatever the ones are in Florida. Yeah, it's an alligator.

Starting point is 04:15:25 I don't think we have any indigenous crocodiles. Democrat stage rep Michael Gottlieb said the rally was quote-unquote anti-Jew and told his constituents to not support the venue hosting the event. Laura Lumer led an online harassment campaign targeting, quote, jihadist congresswoman Rashida Talib who was slated to speak at the rally. Lumer said that Talib was, quote, bringing her band of Jew haters to South Florida and said that Oliver Larkin, quote unquote,

Starting point is 04:15:54 hates Jewish people, and that he's trying to primary Jared Masowitz because he is Jewish. Now, the venue originally contracted for the rally, canceled, they pulled out when the organizers wouldn't remove Rashida Talib as a speaker. The rally was rescheduled for August 14th,

Starting point is 04:16:13 and the organizers secured a second venue, which also canceled, the night before the chomp the oligarchy rally was supposed to take place. Next morning, the organizers found a third location, which was kept secret until hours before the rally, which was then also streamed live. And the owner of that third venue, which did ultimately host the event, said that within hours, his phone was bombarded with like 600 messages from people protesting the rally. This kind of shows like the speed and scale of the harassment campaign led by Lumer and this state Democrat.

Starting point is 04:16:48 So unfortunately, Larkin did not win. I'm interested to see what he does next. I think it would be a mistake if he just completely disappears. I think he's a good communicator, whether, you know, something like DSA National wants to tap into that or if he wants to work on some other campaigns like Angie Nixon's campaign, which I think he's indicated he'll do. But after the general, be very interested to see what he does in the future. And to close, like, at this point in like big cities, you know, in blue states, DSA or left socialist candidates can only really like run to win.

Starting point is 04:17:21 Like that's what you have to do now. There's no more of this like participation trophies. It's, it's you have to, you have to win. But it's also really important for DSA to expand their electoral efforts into red states and districts that are not solid blue. And in that vein, I think what DSA is done in Florida, this primary, reminds me of what NYC DSA was doing in New York like a decade ago. Experimenting, building, organizing campaigns, running candidates,

Starting point is 04:17:46 even if there is a huge uphill battle. Campaign volunteers get to, you know, get experience, and you find your base of support that can be built on in future races. And in that sense, I think what they were able to pull off, including in some very hostile districts, was impressive now. We'll continue in some form with Angie Nixon running for Senate these next few months. Finally, finally, before we close, I should mention James Fishback, Enemy of the Pod, the Groyper candidate for governor,

Starting point is 04:18:15 came in third place in the GOP gubernatorial primary. He was expected to come in second. So that is interesting. But Jay Collins instead got second place with almost half a million votes. Oh, he got waxed. Byron Donald's, the expected winner, won with 810,000 votes. Fishback got just less than 200,000, which is way too many votes. He should not be getting that number of votes.

Starting point is 04:18:49 That is not great. His campaign was very tailored to a type of voter and also places online and locations in the state that the other candidates were not tailoring for. So I don't want to like overstate the sort of impact of Fishbeck's campaign because there was really no one else kind of going after that block. Especially late, Fishback was pivoting very hard

Starting point is 04:19:13 into like anti-Data center stuff. very late into the race, to try to, you know, attract more voters. Oh, really? So, like, he was doing stuff that other Republicans just were not doing. And, you know, using that sneako, Nick Fuentes, Asmigold endorsement, which got him more than 150,000 votes, which is not great. Yeah. But it is, it is just over 10% of the Republican vote.

Starting point is 04:19:37 I think Garrison and I made an episode about Fish, God knows how long ago. Yeah. I don't know. He might just try to get some sort of like right-wing, far-right pundant job in the future. We'll see. Yeah. I want to also convey Sophie's message of fuck Byron Donald's. This guy also sucks.

Starting point is 04:19:59 But it's a Republican primary. They're all going to be like, you're in a race with the worst, second, worst and third worst person you've ever seen. So. Yeah. But yeah, that is. That is Florida. Yeah. That is our, our,

Starting point is 04:20:16 bi-annual Florida check-in. If you are in Florida or elsewhere, you can email us using the email address, Coolzone Tips at Proton.com. Hey, do you want it to be encrypted? You have to send it for another proton address. Yeah, have fun with that. Don't, it's still doing it with the fucking marketing emails, by the way.

Starting point is 04:20:36 Like, every time I think I've blocked all, you bastards. Unbelievable. Put a transgirl on your couch. We reported the news. We reported the news. 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 IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Starting point is 04:21:11 You can now find sources where it could happen here listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening. I survived nine months in captivity, and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them. I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are the Survivor Files. Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable, abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced. These are stories about what it takes to make it out alive. Listen to the Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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