It Could Happen Here - It Could Happen Here Weekly 82

Episode Date: May 6, 2023

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That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards. Hey, everybody. Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode of the week that just happened is here in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to listen to in a long stretch if you want. If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, there's going to be nothing new here for you, but you can make your own decisions. Hello, podcast fans. Today, it's me, James, and I'm joined by Kaveh Hoda, who's a doctor in the Bay Area and also host of the House of Pod podcast, which is an excellent podcast for you to add to once you're done listening to this podcast.

You can add that to your podcast rotation. But we're talking today about medication abortions and specifically about attempts to ban medication abortions by anti-abortion activists which have included a recent case at the supreme court so kaveh would you maybe like to add anything i'd missed from your introduction no yeah that was pretty much all the good stuff uh thank you for having me this is super fun i i love all your podcasts i like your work so thank you for having me and yeah the topic is it's super duper, duper important. And it is in the headlines a lot, but at the same time, not enough. You know what I mean? It's like people are talking about it a ton, but I don't know if they're talking about it enough or if the gravity of the situation is really hitting people.

Or if it is, we're just overwhelmed by how much bullshit we've had to deal with in regards to this and people are kind of feeling a little bit beaten about it and feeling a little bit disheartened but i i am super glad that we're gonna discuss it today yeah i think maybe it is bizarre how i don't you know i think we're dealing with so much bullshit and every day something terrible happens uh like so i can understand how this kind of came and went in the news cycle. At the same time, it does seem like why the fuck were there not 10 million people out in the streets trying to burn things down?

Went like, like if you're listening to this and you don't think, you know, anyone who's used this, it's most likely because someone in your life hasn't shared that with you like i can think of more people than i can count on my fingers who i care about very dearly who have used this absolutely someone posted this once and i thought it was really actually pretty brilliant it was like if you don't know anyone that has that means they don't trust

you enough to tell you or they think you're a douche uh so like there's there's a there's a reason you know um so yeah it's very common right and so i think maybe to to start out with we should explain like what what is a medication abortion and and how does it work and why is it so common yeah i'll talk a little bit about that i think maybe we could touch a little bit on the history of it too because I think it is kind of interesting to look at it from a bigger perspective. Medication abortions, they account for more than half of all abortions nationwide. It's usually done. There are a couple of different ways of doing it, but the most common one by far is a two drug combination, mifepristone and misoprostol. drug combination, mifeprostone and misoprostol. And these are the ones that are used generally in the United States and in other countries as well. You can use misoprostol alone, but it's just not as effective as these two drugs together. Mifeprostone blocks progesterone. And what that

is, it's a hormone that you need to make the pregnancy happen. It makes the uterus a hospitable place for it to occur. And we'll talk a little bit, I think, about the misoprostol as well, because that's a prostaglandin, and they do a bunch of things in the body. But one of them is to cause contractions of the uterus. And that's these two drugs together one makes the pregnancy uh less able to progress and then the other one expels it so that's how these two medications work um what i think is really interesting about them is a little bit of the backstory uh to it so my understanding that there might be some medical anthropologists or historians who

know more about it than me, I'm sure that's the case. But you have to put this all in perspective because when I grew up, abortions were all invasive, surgical, essentially. And you had to have it done in a very specific manner. Now we have the opportunity and the option to do it in a much, I think, safer, controlled, less traumatic way. And, you know, it kind of started in Brazil because in Brazil, you know, I know because it doesn't make sense right but abortion is illegal there as you might imagine yeah and women there like women in any place are going to look for ways to have abortions if they want or need one and one of the things they would do is they'd basically go to like a drugstore or pharmacy and they would look for uh medications that said beware this could cause abortions that's that's one of the ways this all started.

One of those was misoprostol, that medication I mentioned that's a prostaglandin. Again, prostaglands do a lot of things. I'm a GI doctor by trade. And from my perspective, they're also used for treatment of ulcers. Not really something we go to that much for anymore. But there are other uses for it. And so they found that it could cause these contractions of the uterus and they would use it there for that purpose. The French were actually the ones that worked on mifeprostone or RU486. And that's the one that blocks the progesterone

and stops the pregnancy from progressing. So the background, I think, is really interesting and how far it's come during this time you know uh how how it started when our with our use here to how it changed during covid i think is is a really fascinating thing and and where we're at now with these medications i i i can't we're going to talk about i'm sorry i don't want to jump ahead but i'm just so i'm so upset and i know i should be at this point in my life much more used to like these weirdly cynical uh bs moves of a republican judge or whatever um promoting this as being a safety issue i know i shouldn't be surprised and upset by it but i am and that's the part that really bothers me right now is the argument they're using against

it is so bullshit and cynical that I, and again, I don't think enough people are talking about it. No, it is like, I'm the same way. Like I should be, a lot of my work has been border reporting and like, I should by now be like, no, I shouldn't. Cause those people are fucking terrible. should by now be like uh no i shouldn't because those people are fucking terrible like there's a group of journalists who just seem to have lost their capacity to care for other human beings and can report on human suffering without taking any toll on their uh on their personal mental health and they congregate on various facebook groups and in bars and expensive hotels all around the world and i don't like that um but like similarly a number of conservative conservatives are on word like anti-immigration states used

title 42 they sued to keep title 42 right citing the the risk of covid19 from migrants crossing our borders and these are the same fucking people who have been like we don't want to wear masks we shouldn't have vaccine mandates like it the like yeah it is infuriating that they can't just be like yeah i don't think you should have the right to bodily autonomy and i don't care how i get there so i'm just going to use this troll ass methodology it bothers me that there were doctors involved in in this case the court case and it does bother me that there were doctors involved in in this case, the court case. And it does bother me that there are doctors that are fighting this. I mean, I get it. If not, every doctor wants to do an abortion. I totally understand that. But to not stand for a woman's autonomy over her own body is the part that I can't get.

autonomy over her own body is the part that I can't get. I mean, it's like, it's, I'm not an ethicist by any means, but that's like the bare minimum is like, you're supposed to believe in someone's autonomy over themselves. And the fact that it's being removed piece by piece, it should be bothering doctors who are, who are supposed to be following ethics. You know what I mean? And I, it, so I'm also a little bit from that end i'm mad at our own i'm mad at our own people i'm mad at doctors and and i and i am on my little echo chamber in twitter where there's lots of doctors who feel the same way i do and i hear from them um but i know that's it's kind of there alone i'm not hearing it from other doctors out in the real world you know know, and not enough, at least. Yeah, we should explain a little bit that the original case, the complainants were doctors, right,

who were claiming that they were having to treat complications that arose from medication abortion. Is that right? Yeah, they're a part of it. I don't know how big a part of it or if they're just used because they're like a lot of times people for good or bad reasons will bring a doctor out in a white coat at like a press conference which is like you know like we're just wearing white coats all the time you know and uh just the sand in the background and sort of add some sort of weight to the to the argument and so i don't know how much of it was that in this situation. But I mean, the argument that that they're making that these medications are not safe, just it's a silly argument.

I mean, we know that the mortality rate for medical abortion is less dramatically than the mortality rate for childbirth. And that changes, too, depending on if you're like a white woman in a wealthy neighborhood or a black woman, there's there's different mortality rates but pretty much across the board it's going to be safer i mean the the chance of a serious complication is there it can happen any medication it can happen penicillin it can happen higher rates by the way viagra when viagra came out there was the first year it came out there was about 550 deaths from viagra i mean

granted the cardiovascular problems the patients had whatever but still there was a it's not it's not without risk you don't see any judge from texas you know coming out to talk about viagra being an issue no i think you're right to highlight that being pregnant is also a risk, and a much greater risk in many cases, especially, like you said, because of these different intersectional things, which can make it a greater risk for some people. So I would love to talk about why these became more, popular is the wrong word, but maybe more widely used

to facilitate abortions during COVID? Because that's super interesting. Yeah. So the long and the short of it is when they first started doing these tests, I'm sorry, when they first started doing these medication abortions, there was a bit of a process that had to go into it. Like doctors were worried. I mean, we're always conservative. Doctors are always conservative.

We always start with like probably more than it's absolutely necessary. And then over time, we do enough research, we get enough like evidence behind us that we can peel back parts of it. So when it first started, you know, people wanted ultrasounds, lab tests, make sure that they weren't, people weren't anemic or didn't have a risk of bleeding. They wanted to make sure the liver was, were okay. Labs are probably weren't totally necessary. The ultrasound, I think scared people a lot, or people really wanted there always be an ultrasound just to make sure there wasn't like an ectopic pregnancy or a pregnancy where it doesn't occur where it's supposed to outside of where we expect it to. And those can be dangerous. And if you do take these medications, you know,

obviously you're going to be a bit more of a risk if you don't, if you do uh take these medications you know obviously you're going to be a bit more of a risk if you don't uh if you don't know that's an ectopic pregnancy so there was a lot of a lot of things that people had to do back then then things started to peel away slowly like doctors might were starting to be like all right do i really need to get a liver test if i'm going to give this patient a medication of abortion. And those tests started to peel off slowly. And then when COVID happened, basically, people weren't able to go to the doctor as much or as easily. There weren't doctor offices that were open. It was harder for people to get to in the beginning, you know, and it only got harder with COVID.

So the ACLU actually sued the FDA and they actually won. And through that, the women didn't have to come in anymore for these. They could all be done via like teleconference or a video chat, basically. So which is a big game changer. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That makes it much easier. And so it used to be the case, at least, that you could get these things in the mail, right? Predominantly after some kind of teleconference or video chat.

Is that still the case in states where there isn't like the strictest kind of abortion ban or is it universal? No, it's my understanding it's still as of now possible. It's still available. You're supposed to be able to do it. I think we're going to find that it's becoming as of now possible it's still available you're supposed to be able to do it i think we're going to find that it's becoming more difficult we're already seeing cases um i mean they've been highlighted on social media how often they're happening now i don't know but there we see cases now of you know a pharmacist not uh fulfilling uh medical abortion pills and in the comment section when you look at why why not they're saying because it's now banned by a federal judge so I mean it's not true it was

the the Supreme Court has you know has okayed it for now I mean for now it's still okay and and allowed but there's going to be enough confusion about it there's going to be enough confusion about it. There's going to be enough worry about it that people are going to have a harder time doing it, getting it, or even finding people that are willing to do it at this point. There's probably a lot of concern from patients and medical providers. So even though it is technically still allowed, I mean, I don't know for how long. I am worried. And also, I don't know if this is really hindered, you know, people being able to to access this. I think it probably is. Yeah, it certainly hasn't made it smoother, as you said. Right. It only takes one person to have a delay of a number of weeks or whatever.

And it might not be an option or it might not be as safe. or whatever and it might not be an option or it might not be as safe and how uh do you know how how far along these these medical medication abortions are like generally advised you know the medication abortions are considered safe in the second and i think even parts of the third trimester but uh generally uh after the first trimester is when it's it's considered a little bit more dangerous and most medical professionals would want you to come in to have it done um so i mean that's my understanding i'm not an ob guy i should make that clear but i i think for for the most part within the first trim, people generally consider that something that's manageable at home. Outside of that, I think you're probably more likely

to have the medical professional want you to come in and see them. Yeah, that makes sense. And in some states, that's going to be a lot harder. It's not impossible. Or countries. I know, for instance, I've come across groups in Myanmar who are distributing these drugs. Abortion has been illegal there more or less since British colonial rule,

since it was united as a sort of state, not really a nation. It's been illegal. They've sort of made some moves towards it being less illegal. And then obviously with the coup, it's become more illegal again. And people there have been... There was a website up in 2021 about how they facilitated mutual aid distribution of it, which I found super interesting. And then at some point, obviously that must have got them some heat and they took it down.

But it's used all over the world in places where people don't have access to care right alongside being used here where people may or may not have access to care which is pretty fucked up yeah i mean it's funny that like you know uh we're we're comparing ourselves i mean it's you would think in 2023 we wouldn't be you know looking to other countries to guide us at this point. Hopefully, we would have figured this out by ourselves after everything. But yeah, I mean, it's funny. You look at the historical, you look at it from a global perspective. It is interesting.

It's really a global effort to try and get these medications out to people. One of the major companies that sends these pills and mails these pills is in Europe. And they try to get them to other countries. It is sort of a global effort at this point to try, which is kind of cool. That's one good thing about this. It shows you that most of the world

seems to be on board with this, whether or not governments are or not. I hear 80% here in the United States is for it. I mean, I think that sounds about right, you know. And the fact that there's so many people in the country and in the world trying to figure out ways to get these medications to people. That's one, I guess, sort of reaffirming thing about this. It's impressive to see people just doing grassroots mutual aid one thing that that was very popular around the time the dobbs decision a lot of people were showing these videos on uh do-it-yourself abortion pills or like homemade i think it was

misoprostol it may have been both uh it may have been myth of pristone as well obviously like this is empowering and like we we want people to be empowered to make decisions about their own body but perhaps you could explain why like it it's also suboptimal yeah you know it's it is definitely suboptimal i i mean i'm not i'm not every time i say something like that there's always some corner of the internet that's like well you're a shill for big pharma or you're like part of the medical industry or whatever. And yeah, sure, whatever. But I mean, it's, it is, it's a risk. I mean, these medications, like I said, they're safe, but they're not without risk. You know, there are things that, that can occur when you have this. There are contraindications to some of these medications.

Like there's contraindications to mifeprostone, like ectopic pregnancy, like I mentioned. And you can get that worked up to be evaluated, or you can at least have the very basic questionnaire filled out that would help at least give you the hint if it's there. Chronic adrenal failure, porphyria inherited porphyria these are things that are that doctors who do this think about and know and as part of the process uh to get these medications even if it's just a questionnaire that you fill out online so there there are risks there are bad things that can happen with these medications as there are with penicillin, like I mentioned.

I've seen people with life-threatening allergies to penicillin. I've seen people who have liver failure from basic stuff that people take all the time, like Tylenol. So it does make me very nervous. And I like do-it-yourselfers. I like that people are trying to find ways around it but um and i hope we never get to a place where this is that's absolutely necessary i hope um you know but i i understand why people are are curious about it and why i'm looking into it and and reading about it Obviously, I'm not going to ever really promote

do-it-yourself medicine to that far of a degree. Yeah, like someone, I use insulin every day, right? And people have been making their own insulin. I've seen on the internet for a long time and I find it super fascinating. Insulin also costs fuck all to produce, like a couple of cents and it costs hundreds of dollars to buy

uh i folks uh can accuse me of being a shill for big pharma but i have plenty of publications pointing in the other direction you and me both brother yeah yeah look at us two guys just raking in the pharma dough that's it yeah that's that's why I'm recording in this shed. Provided by Pfizer. No. Yeah. There is, these things are not expensive to make. They shouldn't be expensive to buy and they can be had extremely safely. And the things that are stopping you from accessing them cheaply and safely and easily are politicians and also pharmaceutical companies sometimes. You know, that's the funny thing too, is that you think for like these right-wingers are always talking about like relaxing regulations and whatever. It's like, I wonder if they recognize

that on some level, what this is doing is it's just going to impinge on, you know, quote unquote, innovation in pharma. Like if you're a pharma company and you're thinking about some medication that could be used for this, you're thinking about creating a new medication for something that could in the slightest way be deemed inappropriate by some judge somewhere. And then if they're making the decision, not the FDA, like if you're a pharma industry, you may be like, screw it. I'm not going to worry about that medication at all. Nothing else. This is going to cut back on innovation in pharmacy. Yeah, anything with a contraindication for being pregnant would be vulnerable to this, right?

We should probably explain that. The use of mifepristone as an abortion drug was approved by the FDA in an expedited process, right? And that was what was being challenged. Yeah. Can you explain why, although it's faster, that doesn't mean it's any less thorough? In my understanding, I might be wrong.

The FDA went like, yeah, fuck it, let's give it a try, see what happens. No, I mean, it's a very good question. I mean, we do have safety data behind it. So again, you're exactly right. This is not done in a vacuum. It's not done haphazardly. I mean, there still always is a pretty strict process to go through for these medications. thing that we had to deal with with uh operation warp speed uh one of the worst names for a very important um medical advancement so you know people like how can how can these things be safe it's happened so quickly and and it's not really true i mean there is years of research behind all these things there's years of research behind it there There was a study from the New England Journal of Medicine about the safety of these abortion pills. It had been studied worldwide. It had to look at for a while, you know, because abortion is so common and there

are so many of so many done that it makes it easier to see the results. It makes it easier to see the numbers. Part of the reason we were able to follow COVID so well and get information so quickly was because it was everywhere. And when it's everywhere, it does raise the numbers. It makes it easier to get people enrolled in the study. It makes it easier to make a study happen. So that's kind of what was happening here. This was something that there wasn't a lot of question about. Again, are there risks to the medication? Absolutely.

There's risks to every single medication that you get. I mean, I've heard toxicologists say that if Tylenol had to go through the same vetting process that we have medications go through today, that Tylenol wouldn't make the cut. And as a liver specialist myself, I can attest to that. I mean, Tylenol is a great medication if it's used correctly, but I've also seen it cause a lot of liver failure. It's a very common cause of it. So there's a pretty strict, and there always is a pretty strict method to the FDA when it comes to this sort of thing. It's not done haphazardly. Right, and I think most of the people attacking it

are not attacking it from a place of deep concern for the health of people who can get pregnant. It's quite the opposite. It's an attempt to control people's bodies, right? Right. Yeah, these are the same people that are not concerned about the fact that the mortality rate in African-American women who are pregnant is so much higher.

You'll never hear them talk about that. They don't give a damn. Unless, of course, they want to somehow cynically tie this into racism or something. They'll find a way to twist it in this weird way to be like, yes, you see, nifprostone is racist or something, you know? So, yeah. Sorry. No, yeah, it's cynical and asinine and pathetic but sadly like it's also the reality yeah i wonder like obviously none of us can see the future um and

we've talked about how like mr prostol can be used on its own if i'm not mistaken right yeah it's not as good it's not as good if it's used together but yeah do you foresee a world where like that is targeted next yeah i mean if they're really serious about that they're gonna try i mean i think at the end of the day we can keep zealots out of the supreme court somehow you know a while before we get another crack at that. Yeah. Then I think we should be OK, because, I mean, it's it's a bad argument. The argument doesn't really hold up. I mean, some judge interpreting the medical data with or without the help of some, you know, quasi scientific group of like pro-life doctors, it's just not going to hold up to what

the FDA has done and has to go through. So I don't, I don't know. I don't know. I want to say, I really want to say, I don't think it's going to be an issue, but I can't guarantee it because the fact that, you know, this is such a relatively safe drug and it's been called the question. I mean, it's pretty brazen. I think that they're doing this and will they do it again with other medications yeah probably will it win though i i hope not um but yeah i i think this is setting um they're setting basically a roadmap for this to be done again and again for for medications they don't like yeah and and those are all going but the medications they don't like are all going to affect a certain group of people right like that's right that's just that

seems to be the sort of target group um for like you said a very small percentage of the of the population who are just on their culture or bullshit and don't really care how this affects thousands of people's lives obviously like folks are also facing like they can't access gender affirming care in lots of places right this is the other massive area of health care that uh that republicans seem to be very willing to ignore the and some democrats ignore the evidence on it and just attack people for culture war reasons and i know that one thing folks do there is organize mutual aid networks to help people access medications that they need for their gender affirming care. With medications like this, is it like, like you said, there are lots of contraindications and it's not always safe.

Like, are these things that people like, people will be inclined to be like, like oh shit maybe i should stock up maybe i should like yeah load my medicine cabinet and maybe we could discuss that like you said that there are risks that come alongside that yeah i mean um i i certainly would understand if i was in a position where i thought i my bodily autonomy could be going away anytime soon um I think I I could see why someone would stock up on it I mean I don't know enough about the medication to tell you about its shelf life um I know that it is does require some special handling so I don't know if it's the kind of thing you can keep for long periods of time. But, you know, if that part of it was worked out, I certainly don't see, I mean, I could see why you'd want it. Again, it comes down to the do-it-yourself nature of it.

Now, the beauty of this is what we've seen with these medications is when we did the COVID, we took it, when COVID happened happened and we kind of took it out of the doctor's hands and made it more directly to the patient. Actually, the outcomes weren't much different. So that seems to be a very reaffirming thing. But, you know, I still would like for there to be medical involvement in this. I would like doctors to be involved in this, you know? Yeah. Perhaps we are progressing towards a place where like technology can help with some of that and, and take away the liability from doctors in places where they could face a long time in jail.

Yeah. I mean, that's, that's the other thing. It's going to be interesting to see how this pans out, like for, from doctors in the future. If, if there's going to be people still willing to learn these skills, you know, cause not every abortion can be done, you know, medically still going to be a need for, for the, the, the more older fashion forms of abortion that's still going to

need to be done. So, you know I'm hoping that people are still going to be willing to learn from this. And if anything, I'm actually hoping that people, young medical students are more interested to learn from it. So we'll see how it goes. Like when COVID first started, there was a huge burst of people interested in medical school and going into infectious disease. But then, you know, over time, and in the ER, for that matter, too, they saw the need for it. They saw the call to arms, you know, and it took three years of seeing what kind of bullshit ID doctors and ER doctors had to deal with before those medical school numbers dropped way off and people interested in those fields. You know, in fact, ER for people trying to go into er they have to go through this whole match process which is like a big deal like it's a stressful

thing where you try to get into the best place you can and er has always been a pretty like sought after field it's not the most competitive but you know it there is there is a good amount of competition to get into the good places and this was like the first year i remember where there was a ton of unfilled spots at good institutions too so like you know how i i do worry will this be the same sort of thing will there be an uptick of people interested in women's health care and and providing that that vital that vital need um i think there probably will be but will it be sustained i don't know will they just give up after seeing how much bullshit is thrown their way it's totally feasible yeah i mean if you're looking it has to be like an ideal like my

sister is an ob-gyn and like does my sister doesn't live in the united states who doesn't have to deal with any of this uh and so like but very much enjoys her job and is very passionate about it but i can see how doing it here it would have to be almost a political ideological commitment as well like you can't right practice your your your career in half the state you i don't even know if you can go to medical school in like states where where it's banned and like that's a really interesting question i wonder if it'll affect the medical training in medical school yeah in in places where it's really interesting and scary now that i think about it um it yeah it's gonna be it's gonna be available for people there's always going to be organizations fighting to to do this and to get it out there but um how how hard it's going to be to find a provider to help

you with this that in the future i'm hoping uh does not become a problem right yeah i did all these little sort of it's really important i guess uh like that folks do whatever they can to preserve these rights because generally like the state doesn't give back power that it's able to take from people and this could mean a lot of like this and i'm not like trying to conflate fucking having to have a vaccine to breathe on someone and and like you know like that is not really an attack on your body autonomy like you're attacking someone else's bodily autonomy if you want to give them an infectious disease right but when it takes away things like this they you know like like that has other consequences even if you're not a person who can get pregnant and you don't think you're

ever going to be getting someone pregnant like this should matter to you because your autonomy should matter to you and it seems a matter to most of the people in the country so i mean um that's the part of this i don't understand. I mean, I guess it's all ideologically driven. Because it doesn't seem like a winning proposition if you're a politician to do something this unpopular, but I don't know much about politics, I suppose. Yeah, I mean, what is popular and what wins elections in the United States can be vastly disparate things, as we've seen seen given the system which is deliberately organized to uh to like befuddle the results of a popular vote i wonder like if there's anything else you want to discuss around this issue of abortion and bodily

autonomy obviously it it's going to be one that plays out massively in 2024. I want to make it clear. I mean, this should be pretty evident, my stance on it, but I do believe abortion is essential and evidence-based healthcare. It's in that evidence-based part of it, I think is important to reiterate because we do have data on it. We do have data that it is safe. We do have data that it's safer than some of the other options. And if it's removed as an option, we are not only taking away, you know,

a woman's right to autonomy over her own body, but we're putting them at more health risks, potentially for it. And, you know, I'm not an ER doctor, I'm not an OB-GYN, but I can guarantee that they're going to have to deal with a lot more problems because of this, if that happens. They're going to be dealing with a lot more complications and difficulties because of it. Yeah. There's one thing I wanted to hit that I totally forgot about. I don't want to phrase this in terms of like people wanting to end a pregnancy have any more or less right to do so

than people needing to end a pregnancy because everyone should have the right to choose what happens to their body equally. But I believe I'm right in thinking that many of these drugs are relied upon by people who have miscarried or have a pregnancy that isn't compatible with life right and yeah yeah yeah i mean the the horror stories about women that are forced to carry you know babies to

term they're not compatible with life or you know uh a severe uh critical illness it's those are horrifying and these are medications that can be done, again, at home for some patients. It can be done at home, which is not great. It's still not going to be maybe a fun process, but it'll be a much better process for them, much less traumatic, I would hope, than having to have it done later on in a hospital, in a much more clinical cold setting. And we try to make these things as good as possible. Our nurses are amazing, and our doctors who do this are compassionate. But if someone could do something safely at home,

and it can be done safely, I don't see why not. Yeah, and the dignity and privacy of your own setting, wherever you choose, your home or whatever with your family, then, yeah, as opposed to being forced to carry a baby which isn't compatible with life, that's got to really fuck you up. And it's, I don't know. I don't think people are thinking about what they're doing to other people

when they make these, I don't know, horrible decisions. But, yeah, i hope they don't get to keep making them i guess we can all interpret that however we want are there any uh are there any organizations that you'd suggest folks follow get involved with like um are there groups that are helping to facilitate access to care either where it's where it's difficult or just trying to campaign to keep it legal you know i know there's been a lot of criticisms in the past towards this organization from all sides but you know i've known a lot of people who work for planned parenthood and i i

still think they do good work you know um they're not perfect by any means and they have valid criticisms from both from really from from a couple different angles but still uh the people I know that are working there are are doing their best and are really want to to help um and then there are uh international organizations still that are involved in the abortion uh the making the abortion pill accessible um and there's a lot of different ways to get to that i don't have one in particular that i i would recommend but um the one that i i have worked with people that i i've met and seen and and talked to and have learned so much from a lot of those people are from

planned parenthood okay yeah yeah and uh like you said they have been criticized but they've also stepped up to meet like what is a pretty terrible situation i know they're building more clinics on the borders of states where you don't have the right to terminate your pregnancy so that people can travel and uh yeah it's pretty fucked up that that's what we're doing now like we have the right to terminate your pregnancy so that people can travel and uh yeah it's pretty fucked up that that's what we're doing now like we have the underground railroad for abortion kind of thing but uh yeah i mean it takes a big organization to deal with the organization that is the state or you know the state of texas or whatever so they've done really well is there anything uh like you'd like to plug or you you like to tell people where they can find you?

So I'm available on Twitter at the house of pod. If you do Twitter and you can listen to our podcast, the house of pod, it's pretty much everywhere you find your podcast and guests range from like world expert physicians to like Garrison Davis. So like, you know, and i'm sure contrasting those two things uh they're an expert in their own way and um and i'm sure we'll get you on soon enough whether you like it or not and um so we get a lot of different uh guests the the range is

pretty wide and we talk about medical related health topics and try to do it in a relatively uh informal way um and uh so it's i think it's relatively fun it's been really educational for me i'm really enjoying doing it and i get to meet cool people like you so it's it's a good show uh i think but i'm biased because it's my show yeah i enjoy it people should listen thank you thank you very much thanks a lot mate welcome I'm Danny Threl won't you join me at the fire and

dare enter Nocturnal Tales from the Sh, presented by iHeart and Sonorum. An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters... to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time.

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

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

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

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

Mr. González wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban,

I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, everybody, this is Robert Evans. Welcome to It Could Happen Here, a podcast about things falling apart and occasionally about how to stop things from falling apart. Today, we're doing one of those latter episodes. I'm happy to say we've actually got kind of something that's overall uplifting to talk about.

about. If you are someone who pays much attention to the right wing, and particularly to the current right wing campaign against LGBT, and most particularly transgender people, you are aware of a guy named Matt Walsh. He is a, you might call him a pundit at the Daily Wire, who has taken it upon himself to become kind of the one of the central figures in the present campaign against trans people to limit their rights to transition, to push laws that criminalize their existing in public spaces. He's a real piece of shit, one of the worst people in the country presently. And like all terrible people, he has been going around in a series of speeches invited generally by local student body Republican organizations at universities. It's not the only people who invite them to speak, but that's what we're talking about today.

Oliver Weiline is a local community activist who showed up at one of these events and who recorded what was happening, the reaction to Matt Walsh being invited to speak at a college in Iowa City. And yeah, Oliver, welcome to the program first off. Yeah, thank you so much for having me on. And yeah, I just kind of wanted you to start with, how did you become aware of what was happening and decide, you know, to show up and do what you did? Because I became aware of you just reading your thread, which was a mix of, you know, Twitter posts on what was happening and some videos of what had been happening on the ground.

uh, uh, posts on what was happening and some videos, uh, of what had been happening on the ground. Yeah. So, um, I am a townie here in Iowa city. I'm not a student, but I have, you know, uh, I'm, I'm very close both physically and, you know, just personally with lots of activists on campus at Iowa city, lots of young activists um particularly organizations like the ydsa um they have a couple immigrants rights associations some um lgbtqia associations and everything so when this was made public that the yaf the young americans. That's what it stands for, right? I think. But they announced that Matt Walsh was indeed going to be speaking in April. And of course, you know, lots of people just started sending me things like, wow, I can't believe these motherfuckers are bringing Matt Walsh out of everybody even though it wasn't very surprising because um they love to have the yaf here loves to bring um people to speak that

are objectively terrible people they just recently had out alan west um oh great yeah i'm sure you know all about oh no yeah, no. Yeah. He's yeah. Yeah. Playing the hits with Alan Dubs. Yep. So, yeah, the reaction was, you know, just kind of like a general. We should do something about this, that Matt Walsh has come to campus or is going to come to campus. So, you know, there was lots of flyering campaigns, lots of calls online. There was a petition circulating trying to get the university to not allow Matt Walsh on campus. But here in Iowa, the Board of Regents is all just appointed by a Republican governor, Kim Reynolds. So, you know, there is no way that they would do that. And yeah,

so that's how everybody found out about it. And, you know, it was just a lot of the YF would put up flyers and then they would instantly get torn down and they would cry about it. Um, yeah, that was a lot of the buildup to this event. Yeah. That's how I knew. And one of the things, I mean, the thing that, because obviously there are different right-wing shitheads speaking in various places and protests against them, you know, every day that go a variety of ways. One of the reasons I was interested in what you had to say, and I think that this is a worthwhile one to talk to people about, is that I think the Young Americans Foundation kids who invited him wound up demoralized at the end of this. That was my take on this. This is not an event that seems to have gone well to them. So I want you to walk through kind of what happened that night, both in terms of what you saw from the folks showing up to see Walsh and what you saw kind of from the response to him. Yeah, I would say it's a fair assumption that the yaf people were demoralized

after this so the protest it was last wednesday the 19th and the protest was very you know there was no leader it was very decentralized you know just lots of people showing up and instantly when everybody showed up like at four o'clock when the documentary was showing before Matt Walsh was going to speak his, you know, shitty documentary, what is a woman showed beforehand? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was like a joyous occasion. Almost people just were trickling in on the park, um, right across the street from the IMU and more and more people,

just hundreds of people came, you know, not just students, but like people from Iowa city and Cedar Rapids and, you know, just eastern Iowa in general that were just like, we do not. You know, we're feeling really bad that this absolute fucking shithead is in our state right now. You know, the air smells bad. So we, you know, so it was it was very joyous and then people were like okay the documentary is about to get out and the way this event was set up was the documentary was being shown in a theater that's in the imu the memorial union um just a student hangout spot basically and then all the people that were in the documentary were going to then file into the main lounge where he was speaking.

And so when the documentary got let out, all the activists or just the people that came to protest him were just like, all right, we're going inside. You know, we're not going to, you know, just stand out here. We're going to make sure that they know every second that this is bullshit, that you came to see this guy speak. And especially in Iowa City, this isn't going to fly without some type of resistance. event and who came out of the theater after watching his documentary had to wait in line and be screamed at by protesters for like an hour at least and it was so funny just these people like they started out at first you know for a few minutes being like haha look at all these triggered libs but then after like 20 minutes they were just kind of like thousand yards staring, you know? Yeah, that's really interesting to me because obviously like one of the, particularly with the younger right, right? and physical behavior between kind of like older and maybe even less radical Republicans who are really tied to this idea of the silent majority and get a degree of emotional comfort

from the idea that most people do think like them. They just don't want to talk about it. And then there's sort of not an entirely separate, but certainly much more common attitude among the younger right-wing activists, people who were raised online in places like 4chan, about where a lot of their focus is on the joy of triggering the left, which they see as controlling the culture to a large degree. And so it's interesting to me, that's something people these people like to talk about a lot. They like to at least portray themselves as sort of above caring. But very few people are capable of like just being screamed at by a crowd of people and not feeling shitty after a while.

That makes a lot of sense to me. Yeah. I mean, it was definitely breaking through to a lot of them, I could tell. And I even heard some conversations amongst them, like very taken aback and like in shock, you know, like voice shaking when talking about it. Just like, why are they doing this? You know, like putting two and two together. Like, it was very fascinating to hear to eavesdrop on these conversations. And it was a lot of that. And it was also, well, one thing that happened is I don't know if they oversold tickets or just

didn't track like how many people were going to be there, but half of the people that showed up to see Matt Walsh, I would estimate about half, half of them were not able to go see him. They were told they were keeping track of how many people were going into the main lounge and then just randomly they were just like all right that's it you know the cops there and the staff and matt walsh's private security which i will say there was more private security or there was more security there in general than when mike pence spoke at the exact same place at least more you know obvious security with pinch you do more

obvious yeah more obvious security yeah um yeah and you know they had bomb sniffing dogs and everything oh wow that's interesting yep do you know how full the actual theater was the yaf claims 700 people uh-huh and what's capacity for them i don't exactly know okay but they said that 700 people were able to see matt walsh and then so i would say more people came to see matt walsh like maybe a thousand or something that's another number that the yaf threw out there yeah but I would say there was at least an equal amount of protesters there at its peak, too. Yeah. And I will also say that there were people keeping track of the cars leaving when they were able to leave.

And there was a considerable amount of out-of-state plates and out-of-county plates. People traveled pretty far to see matt wall speak is kind and there were people that showed up that you know the right-wing weirdos that i know that live in des moines which is like two hours away and even some in omaha that came that i recognize personally so yeah people came pretty far for this and a bunch of those people that came pretty far were not able to see Matt Wall speak, and they were extremely pissed. And so I was watching a lot of these people yell at staff and trying to bargain with police officers like, come on, we drove like let us in and everything. The cops were just not having it.

And so the mood turned pretty angry at that point, I would say. I'm interested in sort of, are you aware kind of like who was organizing the counter response and how that was people were like informed that there was going to be something because, you know, it's not usually a simple matter to get that folks, many folks to show up around 1000 for a counter protest. Yeah, I think, mainly, there were multiple student orgs, I think I named them a little bit earlier that, you know, there was the graduates union, COGS union, the graduate students union, they put out a statement, inviting, you know, not only their members to come but everybody to come they do a lot of good work around the university um the ydsa the young democratic socialists of america they have a chapter here and they were organizing they did heavy flyering campaigns around town not just campus but around iowa city itself and on top of that i would say just sharing flyers and word of mouth like on the

internet too people know that matt walsh is kind of public enemy number one when it comes to the lgbtq community specifically the trans community so i think a lot of people were just extremely pissed that he was here in this town in i City. People call Iowa City a gayer town than San Francisco. People have referred to Iowa City as that. I don't know if I believe it. It's a high bar. San Francisco is a very gay town. Yeah. Well, Iowa City, people call it Little San Francisco for that reason. That's sweet. I don't think I've actually been to Iowa city. Yeah. I mean, it is definitely the place in Iowa where it is, you know, Eastern Iowa, it's considered the lib part of Iowa, but specifically Iowa city, people call it the people's Republic of Iowa city because like the right wingers think it's so left wing here,

but in reality it's our city council is run by like Pete Buttigieg supporters. But, you know, to them, that's communism. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think just the spirit of Iowa City in general, like everybody was just pissed that this guy was coming to town and everybody found out one way or another. And yeah, people showed up and showed out for sure. When it comes to like uh kind of confrontations and stuff how would you describe sort of the uh the general uh mood towards that sort of behavior

outside like was this the kind of thing where there was their um uh uh action sort of taken beyond like the yelling or was it kind of like uh mostly focused on demoralization and providing kind of a a visual show of how much resistance there is to to walsh and his ideas well after a lot of them were denied entry i think a lot of them were extremely pissed off and at that point i saw a bunch of old like not a bunch i would say a handful of almost scuffles breaking out. The couple I saw were definitely the fault and instigated by Matt Walsh attendees because, you know,

they probably drove really far and weren't able to get in. And now you got all these people with trans flags screaming at you and calling you a Nazi and a fascist and that you're a piece of shit, you know? And so, but there was a lot of people and a lot of cops that were really, really, really wanting to make sure that that didn't happen. So after these people weren't allowed in, they were being escorted towards the back entrance where they came in. And so they all went back towards the back entrance and that is when somebody or some people i didn't see it i

only heard it dumped thousands and thousands of marbles by that exit yeah that was my favorite thing that i saw in your thread yeah so then the cops were like well shit sorry guys you can't come this way so you have to go back through the gauntlet of screaming protesters to get out i love that yeah area denial taking yeah area denial and also kind of rerouting them uh from an area that's going to force them to confront the least pleasant aspect of it yeah that's very smart exactly and then even after that lots of people were going to like the way the imu is set up there's a park by it and there's also a parking garage right across the street from it and there's a one way out of the parking garage so there's one way out if you parked in the parking garage

and towards the end of his talk and when everybody was filing out of the Matt Walsh event, protesters had completely taken over that street. So there was no way any of these people were getting out. They just kind of like came out in a giant like horde of people. And then they slowly started realizing, you know, since all these people were blocking the street and there is a band in the middle of the street playing, you know since all these people were blocking the street and there is a pet band in the middle of the street playing you know yeah they were starting to understand that oh shit we're not gonna be able to leave so a lot of them were really mad about that and they started going up to police officers and staff saying like you gotta get these people out of here i'm trying to leave you know and the cops there's only like outside i would say there was only like seven police officers and there is no way like the cops tried to get people to move out of the street they

even put their hands on some people to try to move them but then 40 more people would just get in the street and so they realized that that wasn't going to happen so after going through a gauntlet of protesters and stepping over marbles you know these people are then also not able to leave the event when they want to and i would say the road was blocked probably for like an hour hour 15 minutes until the police were finally able to kind of like wedge a way out for these people and that's when one confrontation that I know happened, where one of the Matt Walsh attendees started shining a strobe light in people's faces, and someone put a sign in front of it to stop them from doing that. And then that person grabbed the

other person and there was kind of a fight that happened. But that was the only physical confrontation that I saw the entire night, besides cops putting their hands on protesters, trying to get them out of the street at one point. So what would you say were kind of the main takeaways from this for people? You know, this is going to continue to be a thing. If folks are looking at participating in or organizing responses to events

like this in the future, what were your kind of big takeaways? My takeaways is that marbles obviously great idea marbles yes marbles are a great idea you know um but also what i think is is is kind of worth taking from that is that like it's not enough we often see this when like different tactics go viral don't like do the cargo cult version of it right the reason why the marbles were effective wasn't just that like it made an exit inaccessible. It's that because it made it was in a situation where it rerouted people back through that screaming gauntlet of counter protesters, which was demoralizing.

So strategy is also like worth taking into account when you're adopting new tactics. Yeah, certainly. And from how it seemed to me is that that was intentional that it was meant to block that exit so they had to go back through the screaming people to get out um yeah yeah definitely you know marbles are funny but it was deployed in such a way where it was even more funny yeah and effective a takeaway that i had was, you know, there's always going to be risk with this type of thing, risk of, you know, risk of anything really, you know, physical harm, emotional harm, people getting in trouble at school or something. But I think these kids and a lot of these

attendees went there expecting to own the libs and then walked away really demoralized you know and so i think it was definitely worth it to put our bodies on the line and everything and put ourselves on the line to just send that message and also make it clear that other people can do this too and matt wall speaks you know just make it miserable you know you don't even necessarily have to prevent him from speaking even though that would be pretty cool but he even though he did speak like no one's talking about that no one's and no one's talking about what he said people are talking about how all the matt walsh people got stranded and how there were marbles that blocked their exit and how the pep band came and played to a cadence of fuck matt walsh you

know yeah um yeah um all right well is there anything else you want to talk about before we roll out i'd say that about does it for me unless you have any more questions about specifics of the night no thank you for coming on oliver is there any sort of plugs you've got for anything uh you want to direct listeners towards before we end? Yeah, there's an organization around here called Iowa Trans Mutual Aid that does a lot of really, really, really good work for people in the state of Iowa that currently is experiencing, like so much of the country, really, really, really bad anti-trans legislation. So if you find it in your heart or have the means to donate to such an Iowa trans mutual aid, I really, I really can't recommend it enough. Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Oliver. Uh, and a big

thank you to everybody who showed up that night in Iowa city. Uh, that is it for us today. Uh, everybody have a great rest of your day. All right. Thank you so much. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters

to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors Supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows. As part of my Cultura podcast network. Available on the iHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season

digging into how tech's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel winning economists to leading journalists in the field and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand

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

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

or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to It Could Happen Here, a podcast about the transgenocide because it keeps happening, and so we keep having to do episodes about it because it just gets worse. Yeah, I'm Mia Wong. With me is james i'm here yeah i'm excited to hear more about uh what people are doing to trans people in uh different parts of this country yeah the answer is not good so nice things okay at about 5 a.m this morning i was watching a video from last year and you know they had this line about how there's been 100 anti-trans bills in 2022 alone, and like, oh boy, that is a quaint figure

from a more civilized age. We are three months into 2020, and there's been 500 anti-trans bills across the country. That was a Freudian slip. We are three years into 2020, my friend. Oh, God. Yeah. Three months into 2023.

That one. Which I guess it won't work out like this, but technically speaking, if this pace continues, we're on track for what? Yeah, we're on track for, I think, 2000 this year, which would be great. Ace. Yeah, it's good. We'll be rebooting Manzanar by November. Now, most of these bills, as we've talked about before, are going to fail, but a lot of them haven't.

And the other sort of aspect of this that I think has been less reported on, but is also extremely important, is that... Okay, so if you want to do anti-trans bullshit you have like three options basically you have you try to get a bill through the legislature you have the governor doing a mandate or something and then you have the attorney general doing some bullshit and our our first story from the front lines of the worst shit that's happening is from Missouri, where Missouri's Attorney General Andrew Bailey has issued a, quote, emergency rule that claims that because gender-affirming care is,

quote, experimental, it's already banned by state law. Which is nonsense. But it gets worse. I don't know if it's worth, like, addressing this shit head-on because it's so clearly bullshit, but we have more than a century of people

receiving gender-affirming care and transitioning. It's like people... Television is more experimental than gender-affirming care. Yeah, like this stuff... Aeroplanes are more experimental. This stuff predates the Nazis. It's old. Yeah, it definitely predates passenger flight yeah like so okay i mean that this is like a standard turf argument

though is that it's like oh it's experimental it's like no it's not okay so these rules are oh boy okay uh here's from so i think it was st louis yeah the city government of state lewis put out a thing about it that was basically like, this is bullshit. They said, quote, the Attorney General's Emergency Regulations Institute extreme restrictions that require, one, medically documented gender dysphoria for three years, two, at least 15 consecutive therapy sessions over 18 months,

and three, that all mental health conditions are treated and resolved prior to gaining access to gender-affirming care. 18 months and three that all mental health conditions are treated and resolved prior to gaining access to gender affirming care um there's also this section that is i i'm just gonna read it i i don't have any words i don't have any analysis for this so it's saying like you can't have care that quote fails with respect to a patient who is a minor to ensure that the patient has received a comprehensive screening at least annually for social media addiction or compulsion

and has not for at least six months prior to beginning of any intervention suffered from social media addiction or compulsion. So Wow. Yeah, so the good news is that this rule is supposed to go into effect like before this

episode was recorded uh it was there instantly there are a bunch of lawsuits it's been blocked by a judge until may 15th yay so hopefully the judge will be like this is obviously illegal uh not holding out hope for that uh this is probably the worst law on the books anywhere in the country right now maybe well i'll show you the other really bad one and what we'll see but okay so the notable thing about this law is that this is not just a ban for minors this is for everyone and you know there's lots of atrocious stuff in here right like if you have autism for example and there's a different thing about screening for autism, if you have autism, you cannot transition.

Jesus. And, you know, even if you're like a 99-year-old on your fucking deathbed, you can't transition unless you fulfill all of these bullshit requirements. There's this, like, there's a social media compulsion thing, which is this sort of bizarre like social contagion bullshit these people have been spreading for a long time yeah especially given like where the fuck do we think their trans panic comes from it's because they logged on to facebook and your racist

uncle joey had posted something about like how twitter is transing his niece's gender yeah and you know and this is like all of this stuff is very, like, we're getting into the part of this where it's just sort of like they're copying and pasting TERF rants into laws. Yeah. The mental health care thing is, like, just awful. You know, for example, if you have depression, one of the reasons you might have depression if you're trans is because you have dysphoria. Yeah. So you're caught in this loop where if you try to get care for the depression you can't get like treatment for the dysphoria but if you get treatment for the dysphoria you can't get it for

the depressions right yeah you're totally alienated from getting care and like i'm sure living in a fucking state which is trying with surgical precision to force you to to pick which way you want to be suffering it's not like great for your mental health to be like being a trans person in missouri would be pretty hard given that the state is using all its powers to stop you getting any kind of care and you know i mean everything that's about this is like the the therapy requirements the the the the 15 therapy things over 18 months is just effectively a ban because you know do you know how fucking hard it is to get an appointment with a gender therapist like it is so like there are we are talking about something where there are optimistically

dozens of these people for an entire state it is fucked it is so bad um even in states where it's legal right this is this is sort of the grim joke of like the anti-trans canard like it's too easy for kids to get gender affirming care and they're giving out hormones like candy is it like no no it's really even in states where it's legal to get gender affirming care it's hard as fuck takes forever and is expensive and you know given how few therapists there are and how hard it is to clear those requirements the missouri rule is just effectively a ban on gender affirming care for everyone now it's been stayed for now but this is really bad people are fleeing the state um we're going to talk more about trans refugees later but you know basically every state that has passed one of these

laws has refugees already i know i personally know multiple people who fled multiple states yeah um it's really fucking bad uh it's also you know i mean like it it is genuinely important to make sure these people get supported make sure people have a way out it's also not a solution because there's just going to be new trans kids born into these states so yeah yeah we can't fix it by the existing trans people leaving and like obviously those people have their friends and their family and their community there like we don't fix it by them going somewhere completely different yeah so now we're gonna move to the next state where shit's happening that this one i don't know the the stuff that's happening in kansas is also like

okay relative to the amount of media attention it's gotten this is the worst thing that's happening uh in absolute terms it's unbelievably bad okay so there's a bill in kansas that people are calling a bathroom bill and they're calling it that because bathroom bill is the terminology that they have this is not a bathroom bill uh we need to be very clear about this this is way way way way fucking worse than a bathroom bill so this is a bill that what it does is in the eyes of the state it legally assigns you a gender by defining male and female in all state in all state laws as and i'm going to let the legislature take it from here women are those who quote biologically whose biological reproductive system is developed to produce ova and men are those quote whose biological reproductive system is developed to produce ova and men are those quote

whose biological reproductive system is developed to fertilize the ova of a female which I yeah hey radfams I hope you're fucking happy now you've gotten the state to legally define your gender as based on your reproductive capacity yeah we've uh great job

speedrun of the uh fucking what's the thing where they all wear the bonnets? Yeah. Yeah. And here's a- And it just intersects people cannot exist in Kansas. Yeah, you're fucked. It's worse.

Okay, so here's KSNT, which is a news outlet in Kansas. In addition to restrooms, the legislation would define words like woman, man, mother and father in areas like athletics, prisons, or other detention facilities, domestic violence centers, rape crisis centers, locker rooms, and quote, other areas where biology, safety, or privacy are implicated that could result in separate accommodations. Jesus Christ. Yeah. So, so uh supposedly this is going to be on a case-by-case basis but you know like this is going to lead to trans women being put in ben's prisons where they will be raped and

almost certain like almost certainly will be raped quite possibly will be killed because that happens all the time uh you know this is i mean like kicking trans women out of domestic violence centers and rape crisis centers when you know and this is going to happen and you know, this is, I mean, like, kicking trans women out of domestic violence centers and rape crisis centers when, you know, and this is gonna happen, you know, similar bullshit's gonna happen to trans men and also to non-binary people who, all of whom are abused

and assaulted at rates that are fucking indescribable. I mean, there is also the bathroom bill shit, like the worst version of bathroom bill shit we've ever seen. And, you know, but also so this is not the only one of these bills that we'll talk about the other one in Montana in a little bit. But because the Kansas Republicans are somehow even more cretinous than their colleagues in Montana, they have written the bill in such a way that in the words of Pink News, quote, the bill in such a way that in the words of Pink News, quote,

definitions outlined in the bill also state that a female is a person who produces ova, in other words, eggs, meaning cis women who are infertile and are unable to produce eggs could be barred from spaces under the legislation's legal terms. Likewise.

Cis men, I guess. Yeah, it's... Yeah. Or like if you have like fucking had an accident or you know like yeah you know and it's bullshit like it pointing out the logical errors it doesn't really work because that's not really the point is it like like their point is not to be like logically sound it's to be cruel yeah but but but i i think there is something very important about this which is that this this is a very very firm example of how the struggle for trans rights and sort of you know like trans bodily autonomy is intimately connected for the struggle with abortion rights because if

you if you look at what's happened here, right, Republican lawmakers are literally defining women by their capacity to produce children for them. Yeah. So, you know, this is not like – these are two very, very interconnected struggles. And the same people have the same absolutely dogshit, like, horrific patriarchal politics in both of them. So, okay, so we're going to leave – horrific patriarchal politics in both of them. So, okay, so we're going to leave we've had two really grim stories in a row. We're going to have one that's slightly less grim which is Nebraska. So, okay, there has been a bill to ban gender-affirming care for minors, but it is being staved off basically

single-handedly by the genuinely heroic efforts of state senators Megan Hunt andelle cavanaugh who have been filibustering literally every bill that goes to the state senate to stop it from happening which fucking rips yeah and like you know and okay so basically the thing is like we will we will we will filibuster literally every single bill until they stop trying to patch this ban through and you know this is the okay so like there was there was a thing that happened in the early 2010s where in the in the u.s like the big u.s senate right they changed the rules about filibustering so you don't actually have to stand there and talk for eight hours because they're fucking cowards and enormous pieces of shit uh in that is not true in nebraska

if you want to filibuster a bill you have to fucking stand up there and talk for eight hours. And they have been doing this for months. Yeah. And it's holding that, you know, basically so the way filibuster works, right, is you can't, like in the Senate and also in the state Senate, you can't stop someone from talking unless

they, like, dream debate, you can't stop someone from talking unless you get a two-thirds vote of the body for a motion of cloture. And so they've just been forcing him to do it for every single bill. They don't have the votes in some of the bills. Yeah. You know, and the reason I think this is this is happening, you know, the reason that they've been doing this and not sort of just like. It's like doing bullshit like most of the Democrats.

Well, partially it's because there's a Senate and partially because senator hunt hunt has a 12 year old trans son yeah which yeah has has given her you know a sort of urgency that's absent from democrats in other states yeah it's not theoretical for her yeah and i mean like this is one of the things that sucks about this right it's like it it should not fall on you know like literally the trend, like the rights of the children of an entire state are falling on like one mom and the few other Democrats who decided to take a stand with her. And that's fucked. That is nonsense. Like it's. Yeah, it's great that she's doing it.

But like, yeah, yeah. But like this is yeah, this is yeah this is horrible yeah um do you know what else is horrible uh is it the products and services that support our podcast uh by ftc regulations i don't think i can legally say that but no no we do don't know it's not not that yeah and we're back okay so now we're gonna get to i think the most famous story or most most well-known story of an anti-trans fight that's been happening recently and that is montana so montana has passed a bill that bans gender affirming care from binaries and also opposes legal sanctions anyone who does it governor greg giafonte like has a non-binary son who's a he they and he like gave a speech it was

like dad fucking don't sign these bills and his dad signed them anyways yeah uh one of the co-sponsors of this bill on the floor of of of the montana house said she'd rather her children die than transition and then out of it yeah yeah and she had to give a press conference later saying she didn't actually mean that but like no that's literally what she said on the floor of the fucking house so these people are ghouls and monsters they are the dogs

of the sort of the Republican Freedom Caucus which is their like absolutely deranged, like Matt Gaetz fucking weirdos in Congress who are, if you remember that giant fight over the Speaker of the House, like that was those freaks. Like, yeah, these people are like their local sort of like dogs.

There's two other absolutely terrifying bills that are about to become law. There's Hb 359 which is a ban on kids attending drag shows which like that bill has gotten less bad than it was which is it's now a ban on kids attending adult entertainment but you know i guess you get to decide what adult entertainment is etc etc right yeah and that bill has passed both the house and senate is waiting for reconciliation uh there is the even worse SB 458, which is basically the bill from Kansas, except I'm just going to read some of it. Female means a member of the human species who, under normal development, has produced XX chromosomes and produces or would produce regular, relatively large and mobile gametes or eggs during her life cycle. large immobile gametes or eggs during her life cycle and has

a reproductive and endocrine system oriented around this production of gametes. An individual who would otherwise fall within this definition but for a biological or genetic condition is female. So this is straight TERF shit, right? This is the straight up like a woman is an adult human female thing that like these

people walk around saying, thinking is like a normal thing to say. Yeah, and thinking that it like specifically the chromosomality thing we know has been bullshit for a very long time yeah i mean there was nonsense these people don't understand biology yeah sorry yeah and we can like the example is this woman called maria jose martinez patino who was a hurdler who won a number of events and then lost her medals because she failed a chroma tonality test and fucking ruined her life right lost her fiance lost her job lost all her

competitions and was able to successfully sue with the help of like leading experts in the field to prove that like i think she had like mosaic she exhibited mosaicism like xxy and that like this was in fact a normal fucking variation in in the human species and like this was in the 80s and we're still doing this shit yep her papers are really good by the way she's a professor of philosophy now oh cool yeah yeah she's uh yeah she's great i've spoken to her a few times but yeah rare rad w yeah but like these people are doing you know like they are you know this this this this bill legally writes trans people out of existence and it is again another one of these gender pericrat things where this the state is legally

defining what gender you are but also you know but again like they have to do all this like bullshit because you know this is the thing like these guys these people are like slightly i don't know if smarter is the right word but they're slightly they're slightly more engaged in turf shit so they have a more convoluted like yeah biological misconception of what a woman is which they can't define because it's not a thing like yeah it's a social construct. Yeah, because they can't... Yeah, and put in mind of South Africa constantly chasing the fucking definition of what race was,

and trying to define multiracial kids into one box or another box. Yeah, it doesn't work. But the problem is this bill is going to be signed by the governor next week, probably. Possibly this week. In the next couple of weeks, it's going to be signed by the governor like next week, probably possibly this week, like in the next couple of weeks is going to be signed. So that's really fucking bad.

So the part of the story that I think is the most well known is Montana Republicans crusade against Montana House Rep Zoe Zephyr. Zoe Zephyr is trans. She is a rep for a part of Missoula which is a college town home home to the University of Montana uh we talked about this a bit when Zoe won her seat but I I really before we really get into what's been happening to Zoe I want to talk a bit about Missoula and a bit about the sort of the geography of transmigration because the the way the media talks about this right is that you know transmit like trans refugees and transmigration something that started with these anti-trans bills and that's not true um

this is this all of this stuff all of the sort of fleeing all the refugee stuff predates tennessee it predates missouri it's always been happening yeah you know because and the the actual process of this is that you know for for generations and generations the wretched of the earth get fed to the wolves and then the wolves spit them out of their homes and their communities and they fled they fled to places like portland and philadelphia and atlanta and chicago places where people like us had clawed out an existence in a world that wants us dead, where we continuously survive off the shit end of urban labor markets. And this is something that has happened beneath the notice or even the

contempt of bourgeois society, but it's been going on for longer than we've had the words that we use today to describe it. And, you know, Missoula is one of those places where you can go when your family kicks you out. And that's not the only way people end up here right like there's a lot of people who you know you know have better stories right they go to college they discover themselves there are people who go here because it's where they've chosen to make new lives and you know sometimes there's also just people who are from missoula who just realize they're trans and you know it's this mix of sort of trans refugees, trans migrants, and the local trans community

that, you know, all fuse together and becomes a sort of beautiful community that we've been, you know, has finally, like, stepped out of the shadows in the last, like, 10 years. And, you know, and this is why it's not enormously surprising that Missoula sent Zoe Zephyr to Haleta to represent them because this is, you know and this is why it's not enormously surprising that bazula sent zoe's effort to helena to represent them because this is you know again like this is one of these places that like collects people from all over montana and you know from all over like eastern

washington too some of these people go to seattle some of these people go to portland but yeah there are the there have always been these massive networks of migration that just you know no one ever no one researches no one talks about no one even it's it's hard to even know they exist unless you know the people who like have been moved along them the product of this now is that zoe zephyr is trans is in the you know on the floor of the house debating with republican legislatures this bill to uh like ban health care for my for like trans youth and she says quote if you vote yes on this bill and yes on these amendments i hope the next time there's an invocation when you bow your hands in prayer you see the blood on your hands which i really wish because the media

talks about the blood on your hands the constant i wish because the media talks about the blood on your hands the constant and I wish they read the whole quote because it fucking rips like it's great yeah I think you need to like you can't

there's no fucking point in bourgeois civility with this stuff is there like that doesn't work and this is one of the things that's been happening right

it's like the Republicans their backlash to this has been a sort of like oh you're not being civil thing right and like in uh uh like senator hunt in uh uh nebraska was like literally didn't actually literally say

fuck you but you know like said like yeah like no i'm not gonna i'm not gonna like show up to like your like your dinner parties or whatever like like you don't don't say hi to me in the halls like you know my fucking kid like and you know what you're doing to them that's the way to approach it right like like the person being upset with the person trying to legislate your little trans son out of existence yeah it's like fuck these people they're not gonna do this shit okay so there's a couple of theories as to why what happened next happened next um there's been a lot of speculation that it's been like oh this is like a gambit by the the freedom caucus to like turn zoe zephyr into like the face of the montana democratic party so they

can win a senate race it's like i i actually don't buy that i think very specifically the when you close your hands to pray you see the blood on your hands thing i think they got really fucking pissed off and then they just kept escalating so after that happens the montana republicans formally censor her and they prevent her from speaking on the floor until she apologizes and it's always like no fuck you i got much doesn't actually say fuck you but she's like no i'm not i'm not gonna apologize right yeah um there are there are a bunch of like pretty large protests like in helena that are like you know that are like pro-trans protests and protests to like let zoe speak and they arrest seven of the protesters i

one of the people they arrest was i think a woman on crutches who like couldn't clear the area fast enough because she was on crutches yeah yeah it's like I've seen that go down before, people in chairs and all kinds of shit. And then, so there's these protests in the gallery, right? And the Montana Republicans start doing this whole thing about how this is the Democratic January 6th.

And they were storming the capitol, the capitol was in his seat. They tried to do that in Tennessee as well. It's so pathetic. it's so asinine yeah and the other thing i want to mention about this right is like okay like the montana freedom caucus people and all like the censors and the fucking press releases are just constantly misgendering zoe it is it's really fucking ugly uh yeah and you know so after these protests the house like banishes her from the floor and kicks her out of her offices and so she shows up like to work from a bench

outside the chambers where like legally they can't kick her out of but then like this is an ongoing saga right like like this morning she showed up and there were like three really old white women sitting on the bench. The Speaker of the House's mum. Oh, the Speaker of the House's mum. Jesus Christ. Yeah, like this fucking big Montana tough guy had to call his mum to fight his battles for him.

Like just insanely puerile, asinine nonsense. But it's unfortunately has very real consequences yeah and like you know so she was like at like a lot she was like like had her like tablet like on a lunch counter taking meetings from like like standing at that counter yeah i it's it's been a whole thing also i think earlier today someone someone tried to swat her girlfriend. Yeah. Who's the journalist, Erin Reid. So that's bad. This whole thing has been getting an unbelievable amount of media attention.

And in a very, very short period of time, Zoe Zephyr goes from someone who I know about because I'm trans and all trans people are four hops away from each other. There's something I probably shouldn't say but like it's true yeah you kind of get forced into it there aren't that many of us and a lot of us are extremely online so like you know like I'm like two hops

away from this person right like from multiple angles yeah I met her like very briefly on a stream she's you know like she's a good person she I don't know she's just like this is one of the things that i think like i've met a couple of the or a few of the like very famous like trans people who sort of come under the gun and they're just normal fucking people like just normal trans people and this bullshit happens to them yeah it's so like bullshit that like i know a number of trans ladies who are bike racers right

and like they like it must be pretty clear that if you win a fucking race if you win a big race like you know what's coming for you you know fucking bright part news is gonna have you on that the next yeah it's and the same for her right she likely would have been aware that the moment she like tried to defend her right to fucking exist all the very worst people around the country would be paying for blood but she's very brave she did it anyway like as she should fuck them they shouldn't be able to silence her yeah um okay we should take an ad break yeah one more time and then yeah we'll come back say something funny this bit more ch-ch-ch-ch-chamba okay we're back okay so in the middle of all of this zoe went home to i i think there was like a recess or something because legislatures work like two days a year rich people hours yeah it's bullshit like yeah they have like a break for fucking horse racing and yeah yeah to do polo or whatever

yeah but so she she went home to missoula and there was a just like a massive march there was this rally that turned into like this basically like a 24 hour long party i people my favorite story for this there's some people who okay so they brought beer they had got from rowing a boat out to a derailed train. Ah, yes. I'm fucking sick. Uniting the two media narratives of 2023. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's great. And like, you know, I mean, I think in these sort of moments, right,

you can see the new world there, right? You can see a world where, you know, we no longer live in fear. You can see this world where we know we no longer live in fear this you can see this world where we're where we're free to create joy and meaning and art and our lives you know can be a celebration of the beauty that's in and around us but that world the world that generations and generations of trans people have fought and died to sort of claw out of the dirt the world tried to bury us in that world will die unless we fight for it and that fight cannot be left to individual state representatives there's

not enough of them eventually they will lose and and this is this is the other story of montana right as as much as you know as much as what's been going on in montana is a story about a trans woman defying like all of the sort of organized power of her state like all of those bills passed and there is not enough power to if we keep trying to fight them in legislatures and we keep trying to only fight them in in the legislatures and in court we're going to lose but okay i i probably shouldn't say this before I know we've locked in the title, but the projected title of this is the transgenocide, a siege, and a counterattack. And I promised a counterattack, so now I'm going to fucking give it to you. You didn't want, like, brief notes on the siege?

You could have gone full Maoist on the title. We did that with the other one, and I realized after the last episode we did on this and i could have just called it counter-attack and that would have been better so i've saved it for this moment i'm glad that you get to use it so okay what one of the things that's become incredibly apparent in the last in the last few years is that as as much as there is sort of passive transphobia in society transphobia is not a sort of nebulous idea that just like floats freely around the world. It is brought into this world by men. And, you know, we know the foundational story of how these men and women gain power, right? They cut a deal with capital to reconstitute the Republican Party in the 80s.

But, you know, this is both their weakness and their strength, right? It's their strength because this gives them an enormous amount of resources to pull on. It gives them the institutional backing of an entire political party. But its weakness is that it means that capital and the transphobes are bound together. And this means that when you scratch a capitalist, a transphobe bleeds. Now, the other things that we know are, A, there is power in logistics, and B, there are companies profiting from genocide. FedEx, for example. FedEx's headquarters are in Tennessee.

Tennessee is the state where this shit all fucking started, right? With the original bathroom bills, with their drag bills, with their – they also passed uh bans on minors getting gender affirming care there are other states where you know you can look at the the largest sort of companies in the states like missouri's probably like panera um montana schneider electric kentucky's probably kfc and you know those companies are weaknesses so what am i talking about here i'm not talking about a boycott because this is the u.s nobody fucking knows how to do a boycott like when when americans try to do a boycott, they buy 16 pallets of Bud Light and shoot it with a bazooka. This is a boycott.

It is not. What I'm talking about here is something a lot more serious. We've seen this sort of – sorry, let me rephrase this. We've seen the sort of echoes of what this kind of campaign could look like with the cop city protests. You have protests outside the offices of banks and outside of corporations that are backing cop city. But I'm talking – and that at the most mild is something that we should be doing, right? And that at the most mild is something that we should be doing, right? These companies that are profiting from genocide, the companies that are funded by the fucking tax exemptions that are given out by these states, the companies that are giving money to these people, political campaigns.

But I'm talking about more than that. I'm talking about blockades. Very specifically, FedEx is possibly the best example of a company that you can just target, right? Talking about blockades, we're talking about disrupting their supply chains. I'm talking about, very specifically, a campaign to put the trans sword through the arteries of capital and make the bastards bleed. I'm talking about a counterattack. Now, the advantage of this strategy of picking corporations, targeting them, and not just necessarily protesting outside of their offices, although doing that, but specifically actually making them fucking bleed, actually disrupting their ability to function as a company, right? The advantage of this strategy, which is developed in sort of broad strokes with my dear friend Vicky Osterweil, is that one of the big problems we have in this whole fight is this geographic mismatch. The majority of people in the US and also the majority of people in most of the states where this is happening don't support this shit, but it doesn't matter because the districts are gerrymandered to fuck.

But it means that there's a lot of people who, like me, for example, I live in Illinois. But it means that there's a lot of people who, like me, for example, I live in Illinois. Under normal circumstances, the best I can do is help my friends in Missouri get out and try to help do things like secure access to transport and housing for refugees, secure access to hormones for people. But if we're going after capital, if we're going after the companies, the banks, the financial institutions that are funding this shit, we can hit them everywhere. Because states have borders, but capital doesn't.

And that means that, you know, if you are specifically, you want to target the legislature of Kentucky, you can go after fucking KFC, right? You can go after their banks. You can go after anyone who funds them we can hit them on multiple fronts here right we can hit them with protests but these companies also they rely on our labor right a lot of these places are you know are either sort of fast food chains or logistics networks and that's that's a place where you know trans people are overrepresented because trans

people are overrepresented in the service sector you You know, again, because it's easier to get jobs there and institutional transphobia locks you out of better jobs. They also rely on public infrastructure. They rely on, you know, streets being open, right? They rely on an entire logistics network to make sure that not only are they extracting the labor of people, that they are like, you know, the sort of like theoretical term for this is realization, right? They have to actually be able to sell. They have to be able to assemble the product and have to be able to sell it. And you can stop those things, right? I mean,

KFC in some sense is also kind of hard because there's franchise shit going on. But that's not true with FedEx. Like, every FedEx office is FedEx. And, you know, these are companies that like, maybe we can't fucking drive them underground, right? But we can make them bleed and we can make it painful enough

to be complicit in this genocide that these people get fucking axed, right? We can make them bleed. We can go and, you know, another thing that people can do, right, is it's not that, you know if if you have like a spare afternoon on a weekend right it's not that hard to figure out the like the specific business interests of the legislatures who are voting for this stuff you can just do this all these people are unbelievably corrupt they have land deals that they're doing and so you know open records laws and let you see who donates to all those people as well.

Yeah. Yeah. And there are websites that you can just like, like you can just Google who gives donations to people. And yeah, it's like donations trackers and you can just like plug in their name and it will show you everyone who donates to them. Yeah.

And so we have learned through the, through sort of the experience of the past few years, right. That these people cannot be swayed by logic they cannot be swayed by they can't be swayed by logic they cannot be swayed by science they cannot be swayed by you know they cannot be swayed by emotional appeals they do not give a shit about trans people they would literally rather have their kids die than be trans but again the one thing they do care about is capital and if you if you if you if you if you make capital bleed these people will bleed too and that will actually fucking hurt them and that will give you the leverage you need to let to

let these people make a choice right it's either us or the world of Capital Burns. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me as the fire and dare enter? Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows. Presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you.

Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast. And we're kicking off our second season digging into how tech's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the

destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel winning economists to leading journalists in the field and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong though, I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God, things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the

iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian, Elian.

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

At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Feast, the Elian González story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's a warm spring afternoon in Atlanta, Georgia. You and some of your friends are dancing in the sunlight at a music festival in South Atlanta. It's day two of the South River Music Festival. Last night, you stayed up till 3 a.m., alternating between moshing in the pit and laying down on a blanket, looking up at the night

sky, trying to see stars through the light pollution. After you had your fill of EDM, you called it a night and hastily set up a tent in the forest near the edge of the festival. You tried to sleep as long as you could, but soon enough, the hustle and bustle around the forest beckoned you out of your tent. As you moseyed on over back to the music festival, immediately something new caught your eye. A large, multicolored, inflatable bouncy castle sitting right in the middle of the field, with a big Stop Cop City banner hung along the side. After you fully woke up, you grabbed a free breakfast burrito, and took a nice walk through the winding forest. Now that you've finished your breakfast, you're back at the far end of the open field,

in front of the stage where there's been live music playing for the past few hours. You and some friends briefly try a stint in the bouncy castle, but quickly return to the festival stage as you tire out much faster than you expected. As the sun is barely starting to set around 6pm, suddenly you notice the faint scream of police sirens piercing through the music being blasted from on stage. You stand up as the sirens get louder and closer, until a burst of police cars zoom past the music festival at high speed. A short sigh of relief is followed by confusion. Where else would a whole bunch of police cars be going? But as nothing seemed to come of it, everyone starts to relax and begin enjoying music once again,

with the apparent absence of police. There's a few brief moments of peace at the festival as things continue as scheduled, except you can't help but notice the police helicopter is flying across the forest toward the festival. As you take note of the chopper, you receive a signal message from a friend. Quote, cops have entered the parking lot with AR-15s, unquote. You lift up your mask and start running across the field to the parking lot at Wolani People's Park. But before you even make it halfway across, you notice up ahead a few dozen police officers sprinting into the open field from the festival's side entrance.

As the sun is setting, a group of cops run past the bouncy house and start chasing down seemingly random concert goers and lone stragglers. One officer points his rifle at the bouncy house as another turns off the generator. You group up with other people from the festival in hopes of working together to incentivize police to leave the area. As you get closer, the cops start getting more aggressive. Just up ahead, a bit further into the woods, close to where you set up your tent, you hear some loud bangs and see a flash of bright light. First, you assume it's just fireworks being used to hold off the cops, until you start coughing and see the faint plume of tear gas seeping in from the forest.

You are forced to fall back to the festival and regroup with people by the stage, where music is still being played. and regroup with people by the stage, where music is still being played. As you're running back, you can see dozens of people in zip-tie cuffs, many still pinned to the ground. Still coughing from the gas, you make your way back to where you were moshing the previous night. The crowd of festival-goers tightens up as riot vans and a bearcat pull into the field next to the deflated bouncy castle. Police SWAT teams surround the South River Music Festival and creep towards the stage, threatening to charge hundreds of people with

domestic terrorism. Hanging on the backdrop of the stage is a massive banner that reads, quote, In the eyes of the state, all who resist white supremacy, colonialism, environmental racism, gentrification, and police militar white supremacy, colonialism, environmental racism, gentrification, and police militarization are domestic terrorists, unquote. That was the evening of Sunday, March 5th, 2023. This is It Could Happen Here. I'm Garrison Davis. I arrived in Atlanta a few days prior in preparation for the March Week of Action to defend the Atlanta forest and stop Cop City. This is part one of a four-part series covering this week of action, featuring interviews, report backs, and analysis from both

participants and observers like myself. This four-part series will be a follow-up of sorts to the four Stop Cop City episodes we put together last January following the death of forest defender Tortuguita at the hands of the Georgia State Patrol, as well as building off my previous year of work covering the movement to defend the Atlanta forest. need a refresher. For over two years now, activists and community members have been in a fight to save the Wolani Forest from being turned into a massive $90 million police training facility stretching across 170 acres with plans to include a mock city for urban combat training to quell civil dissent. The Cop City Project is being led by the Atlanta Police Foundation, one of the most powerful police lobbying groups in the country. Following 17 hours of public comment, 70% of which was against the facility, the Atlanta City Council voted to approve the project's lease in September of 2021, despite months of protests and community organizing. and community organizing. Later that fall, people started occupying and camping out in the Wolani forest to maintain a physical presence in the woods in hopes of preventing or delaying construction. Infrastructure to support long-term encampments grew over the next year, with forest defenders

erecting tree houses, road blockades, and making the forest a place that people could actually live in, with outdoor kitchens, community gardens, and places to sleep, whether that be up in a tree or in a tent. For a while, it seemed to be working. Throughout 2022, construction continued to stall. Almost every time cops and workers came in to start cutting trees, they were met with resistance. Construction equipment left around the forest was routinely sabotaged, and last year, a tertiary targeting campaign resulted in the general contractor for Cop City, Reeves Young Construction, to drop out of the project. Police enacted multiple raids on the forest in 2022, trying to flush out any forest defenders camping out in the woods and tear down encampment

infrastructure. But the occupation was generally able to bounce back pretty quick. As the movement to stop cop city was seemingly winning, police intensified their repression. As a series of raids in December of last year decimated much of the infrastructure that was built up over the course of that year and left six people with domestic terrorism charges. But things got worse. Just a month later, in January of 2023, multiple police agencies engaged in a mass raid of the Walani forest, destroying all remaining campsites. About an hour into the January 18th raid, the Georgia State Patrol SWAT team killed a 26-year-old forest defender, Manuel Teran,

also known by their forest name Tortuguita. DeKalb County's autopsy found at least 57 gunshot wounds from multiple officers. We'll talk more about the results from various autopsies in a later episode, but just a few weeks ago, Tort would have turned 27. The other side of the Defend the Forest movement is focused on a smaller section of the Wolani Forest, just east of Entrenchment Creek. Initially in hopes of expanding his movie studios, the now-former owner of Blackhall Studios, Ryan Millsap, has been trying to gain control of 40 acres of public parkland through a shady land swap deal with DeKalb County that's currently subject to legal disputes. The slate of land in question contains the popular meeting spot in the forest known as the living room, which acts as a sort of central hub, as well as what's referred to as Wolani People's Park, where the park gazebo used to be before Ryan Millsap demolished it,

later ripping out all of the grass and sidewalks in a, once again, legally questionable move. In January, Wolani People's Park also became home to the vigil site for Tortuguita. I'll let Matt from the Atlantic Community Press Collective explain the other happenings in the woods since January. They got their land disturbance permit in late January. And the first phase of the land disturbance permit only allows for soil erosion control work. So to this point, essentially what they've done is they've clear-cut some paths into the forest, into the proposed site,

and then around the exterior of the site, they've clear-cut a line in order to install silt fencing. So there isn't a large amount of infrastructure. They're not allowed to do a large amount of disturbance right now. They're in the pre-construction phase right now. So they started in February, and they did a lot of work very quickly. They installed a privacy fence, so you can't really see what's going on. So our general understanding of it like comes from drone footage. It actually slowed down a couple weeks later. And from what I understand, they began to pull

some construction equipment out, probably not wanting to leave, you know, a target for, shall we say, any sort of spicy activities. But not all of their construction equipment was removed, as everyone would soon find out. The deadly January raid left the community in mourning and unsure of how the fight to stop Cop City would evolve with the use of lethal force and the loss of a friend. The forest defenders' semi-permanent occupation of the Wolani Forest ended after that raid, but the fight was far from over. About a month after the January raid, local Atlantans put out a call for supporters across the country

to converge in Atlanta in early March for a mass gathering known as a Week of Action. There have been four previous Weeks of Action, but this one, more than any other, would be crucial in reifying what the next stage of the movement would be. I started off this episode with the Sunday night police raid on the South River Music Festival because, for better or worse, what happened on that evening set the proverbial stage for what the majority of this week of action would look like, and how its effects would ripple out in the coming months. But before we get to the rest of the week, we first have to go back to the official start of this week of action to explain how we got here in the first place. To kick off

the week of action, a rally was planned for the morning of Saturday, March 4th at Gresham Park in Southeast Atlanta. By the time I arrived, around 11am, hundreds of people were already in the park. Music was blaring from loudspeakers. Some kids and a few brave adults were running around throwing multicolored powdered paint at each other. It was a pretty festive time. Soon enough, it was time for things to begin. Matthew Johnson, the interim executive director of Beloved Commune, formally kicked off the week. Let's get started! Alright, I just want to make sure that everybody is in the right place.

I came here to stop Cop City. What did you all come here to do? Stop Cop City! What did we come to do? Stop Cop City! What did we come to do? Stop Cop City! What did we come here to do? Stoprop City! What have we come to do? Stop Crop City! What have we come here to do?

Stop Crop City! Alright, I'm glad that everybody found the right address. Thank you everybody for joining us. It's about two years ago in what was formerly known as Entrenchment Creek Park, now known as Waulani People's Park, where a ragtag bunch of individuals gathered under a gazebo. illegally destroyed by Ryan Millsap and his henchmen in an attempt to break this movement, in an attempt to bury this movement. Yet every single time that they have tried to bury us, they have forgotten that we were seeds. Every time they thought that they backed us into a corner with their repression,

we had more of you show up and support this movement and we thank you so much for that. this movement and we thank you so much for that. They have set every hurdle in the way of everyday Atlantans to intimidate them and stop them from supporting this movement and we still show up. We appreciate every single person that has come here to support us in spite of the terror that the state has tried to instill in us. We must be very careful and understand the gravity of the situation that we are in, especially after we've lost a friend. Thank you for standing with us.

And now there are many things that we do not agree on. But what did we all come here to do? Stop the crime! So let's remember, what got us this far was a diversity of tactics. And now it's time for us to double down. The crowd gathered was a pretty diverse mix of people from a variety of backgrounds, beliefs, and preferred tactics. from a variety of backgrounds, beliefs, and preferred tactics. On this Saturday morning, everyone felt pretty united,

whether you were a kid running around with paint all over your body or an anarchist dressed head-to-toe in camo. Next up, somebody read a statement from the Muscogee elder, Miko Chabon Colonel. I'm here to read a statement from my Miko, Miko Chabon. Yeah, my name is Marty. I'm Muskogee. On my father's side, on my mother's side, I'm Otham, both Akmel and Tana. And my dad's also Filipino. Miko asked me to read this statement.

Mundo Chihayomad. At this time, I would like to express my gratitude to all who have converged onto these ancestral territories of Muscogeean ancestors and modern spiritual inhabitants of the earth that we now stand on. Today we represent a vast society of peoples whose presence in the colonized named states of Georgia, Alabama, and Florida have existed for over 13,000 years. We represent a way of life that strove to minimize the harm that humans can do to the earth, to other species, and to each other. Today we continue this movement that begun many years ago and we honor those who have taken footsteps to protect this forest and

our relative who gave the greatest of sacrifices. Just as ancestors existed on these very grounds and carried a faith and confidence in what our ancient ones passed on to us, may the hope of peaceful existence for all be achieved for many more centuries to come. This existence can only occur when we realize the sacredness of the Walani Forest, that all that is natural on this earth, mother. This type of existence can only occur when we realize that we all belong to this earth and she does not belong to us. This type of holy existence can only occur when we realize that no cop city can ever exist because more weapons only create more violence.

With these efforts that begin today, perhaps reason will prevail, and we can create a future where all people have the right to exist. Today, may our dreams for this forest and the surrounding community come true. For those who can hear, let them hear. The next speaker was from Community Movement Builders, a local Black collective that focuses on combating gentrification and police violence. I may be a little bit selfish in my reason for being here. I want to be free. I want my children to be free.

I want my mother to be free. I want my father, my brothers and sisters to be free. And I don't want to have to live a life in 10 years when my babies, my nieces and my nephews come to me and ask, Kamasi, where were were you what were you doing when they destroyed our clean water destroyed our clean air what

happened why were you not around what were you doing when my babies come in 10 years and they say Kamasi what were you doing when this country turned into a fascist dystopia what were you doing where are you when you're around? I can't sit here and sit back and say I just sat home and watched this whole world burn to hell I don't believe in the power I don't believe in the power of the imperialists. I believe in the power of the people of the imperialists. I believe in the power of the people. So I say to everyone today that during this week of action, I don't know where you will be.

I don't know what you will be doing, but we stand behind you and we stand with you. And we want to show the city of Atlanta, we want to show Mayor Dickens that he is not fit to rule and he does not rule this city. We want to show them that the 90 million dollars that they took to build this urban warfare training facility will not crush our communities. We also want to show the city of Atlanta that, again, we are ready to stop merely surviving and start living. Finally, our last person, Reverend Leo Shea, is a Baptist minister, part of the Stop Cop City Clergy Coalition, which we'll talk a bit more about in the next episode. which we'll talk a bit more about in the next episode. And I believe my faith compels me and convicts me that in this moment,

the work that has been done and the work that is to come to defend this, our beloved family, this, our siblings, the earth is a holy and righteous work. It is a holy and righteous work that is grounded in a faithful rage. A rage which has been boiling in the human family's blood for centuries. And meets us here at this moment and asks us, what will you do to defend those who have no defense? What will you do to protect those who have no shelter? What will you do when the time comes to decide on whose side you are on? the time comes to decide on whose side you are on, will you stand for oppression or will you stand for the liberation of all people? My friends, I come with some good news, if that's okay.

And the good news is that God stands on the side of the oppressed. God stands on the side of the forest defenders. God stands on the side of the most marginalized. And let us make no mistake that in our protest and in our rage we also have to cry out and lament. We cannot be silent as Tortuguita's blood cries out from the ground. We must honor a life that did not have to be lost. It did not have to be this way. Do not listen to anyone who tells you that there is not a better way.

There is always a better way. So I come with my faith and the conviction that in this work, in this moment, a prophetic imagination, a creative vision is needed for the world that we want to see. I'm not here to wait for the kingdom of God. I want the kingdom of God right now. Right now. Right now! Right now! After the speeches were finished, it was announced that the crowd, now nearing a thousand strong,

would gather up together and march to Wolani People's Park to retake the forest. As everyone was getting ready to leave, you could see the care and solidarity people had for each other on full display. Bike scouts were checking to see if the path was clear. Volunteer street medics ready to help anyone in need. Water bottles were being handed out to keep everyone hydrated, while others autonomously coordinated rides for people unable to make the walk. Looks like approximately 1,000 people marching from Gresham Park to Wolanda People's Park on the bike path. I can't even see the end of where the people stop. It's a long, long stretch of people marching.

Hundreds and hundreds of feet. There's some banners in front of the march. One of them reads, Disarm, Defund, dismantle, no cop city. There's one of the sun shining over a pink sky with a little blue turtle, and their shell is the earth. Massive, like, 10-person banner that reads, defend the forest. The energy of the march remained high as people chanted to the beat of drums. I sat down with Matt from the Atlantic Community Press Collective

towards the end of the week to talk about what we saw throughout this week of action. At one point, the entire crowd, seemingly the entire crowd, was chanting, if you build it, we will burn it, which seems...

Yeah, almost like a thousand people. If you build it, we will burn it! If you build it, we will burn it, which seems almost like a thousand people. Yeah. And, and it was being chanted, like, you know, looking around the crowd, you saw everyone for the most part partaking in that. So that was a very interesting moment where it felt like there was that sort of solidarity amongst the varied groups that make up the Defend the Atlanta Forest movement. As the march went on, the path was getting increasingly forested. About two-thirds of the way to Wilani People's Park, after turning a bend, the crowd noticed three deer frolicking alongside the march from further within the tree line. To quote the Atlanta Community Press Collective's write-up of the march, quote, the joyous mood shifted slightly as the protest closed in on the People's Park,

passing over the remains of the bike path destroyed in December by film executive Ryan Millsap. Activists were uncertain what they were walking into or whether the police would offer any resistance. Activists thought there was going to be an issue. They were concerned about the police being in Wollanee People's Park. So about halfway, we saw that stack of makeshift shields made out of plastic rain barrels. About two dozen of those five-gallon drum shields just mysteriously showed up along the bike path.

We are arriving at Wilani People's Park. No cops. But then when we got there, there was no police whatsoever. From what the scanner people told us, there were police around. They were just kind of monitoring from afar. But no police ever entered the park. And it was, I would say it was a really nice high point return to the forest. Banners and shields moving around Walani People's Park. As hundreds and hundreds of more people still pour in from the bike path.

As the back of the march finally arrived, the crowd gathered up one more time to all chant out a promise in unison. I will defend this land! I will defend this land! I will defend this land! I will defend this land! I will defend this land! I will defend this land!

We will defend this land! We will defend this land! We will defend this land! We will defend this land! One of the activists I interviewed during the Week of Action was Matthew Johnson, the person who kicked off the rally at Gresham Park. We talked about the methodology of starting off this week of action with this big inclusive march and how that may have helped achieve the goal of retaking the forest that first day.

We wanted to be sure that we would be able to re-occupy the park and what that would entail is having a wide swath of the larger public involved with any efforts to enter into the park. And so we had the rally at Gresham Park, and there was a march planned from that park to Wolani People's Park. from that part to Wolani People's Park. There is violence that people have become accustomed to when it is people on the political fringes. That's just where we're at in the political situation in Atlanta. However, when you have several people that you would consider more normal, liberal, progressive, etc., like representatives from NGOs, nonprofit organizations,

just normal people that also wanted to see the project shut down, Cop City. That's when you have the ability to move towards people that want to reoccupy, having the space to do that without seeing tons of police repression, as we have seen in the movement recently. After reaching Wolani People's Park, many of those who arrived from out of town for this week of action, myself included, stopped by the shrine for Tortuguita just off of the tree line. People added new wildflowers and packs of fruit snacks. I'm going to walk over to the Tortuguita vigil site.

Looks about the same as last time I was here. Many candles, little turtles, still a few fruit snacks. Although the vigil shrine was the same as last time I saw it, almost everything else about being in this place was different. When I was here last time in January, it was a dark place of grief. The forest was barren, with all of the trees in their bare winter state. But looking around the forest this first sunny day, you could see new life growing all around you.

To quote the Community Press Collective again, quote, small campsites begin to crop up across the landscape, some nestled in sunnier spaces, others tucked into thickets, providing shelter and cooler climate for the new residents. The trees themselves reflected this next phase. Sprigs of new growth leaves appeared on the ends of barren branches. Small white flowers bloomed along the periphery of the parking lot. After months of desolation and death, life prevailed, and spring arrives in the forest. Unquote. I'm excited to get back into the forest because it is so hot.

And get back in the forest I did. One of the events that happened almost daily throughout the week was tours of the eastern side of the Wolani Forest. The walks through the woods were led by Joe Perry, a member of the South River Forest Coalition. I was able to attend the first tour during the week of action and got consent to record some of the forest walk. All right. Hey, y'all. Welcome to the living room.

So named because it's a very inviting and comfortable place to relax. This is where a lot of the meetings happen during the previous week of action. People gather and have different events here. Oftentimes, there will be food available here campfires silverware so it's also just a very very comfortable place to relax because it's in this in this pine forest and so not really any undergrowth and just super comfortable it's a really good place to have meetings um and uh and just kind of get to know each other and

establish some calm we made our way from the living room to the grandmother tree a large oak that is estimated to be a few hundred years old on On our way to Ryan Millsap's proposed site for so-called Michelle Obama Park, which is currently a 40-acre mound of dirt about 30 feet high, we walked past some old tents that were slashed apart during the January raid. Among the destroyed remains were little pink flowers growing out of the ground. Next, we headed to Entrenchment Creek. Joe Perry explained some of the background regarding the environmental state of the watershed

and how protecting the forest is a crucial step in the process of helping the land heal itself. I got involved with a group called the South River Forest Coalition. We are trying to help further the vision of the South River Forest that Ryan Gravel and the Nature Conservancy came up with to try to interweave about 3,500 acres of forest with the other businesses and homes and lands around this area that are in the watershed of the South River Forest. And Entrenchment Creek, which we will see on this tour,

is the main tributary to the South River. The South River is the fourth most endangered river in this country. Entrenchment Creek is one of the most polluted creeks in this county. And so that is what we're trying to protect. And in order to protect a river and a creek and a watershed, you have to protect the forest that's around it. I've been exploring these woods for the last decade and leading tours and talking to people about it, trying to explain what's going on with the lawsuit, trying to explain what's going on, the difference between

Entrenchment Creek Park and, you know, the prison farm and the acreage and all these other things and all that stuff. It's just like, it's just gears turning in your head. Because when you come out here and enjoy this, I mean, this is really what it's all about. This is all we have to do to convince people that this is worth saving. It's just bringing you out here and let you appreciate it. As masses of people converged at Walani People's Park Saturday afternoon, almost immediately a whole bunch of pop-up infrastructure was set up to facilitate an encampment in the woods once again. Really for the first time in any kind of large capacity since January and even December.

The December raids decimated much of the camp infrastructure, which still had not been rebuilt since then. But upon arriving from Gresham Park on Saturday, both first-time visitors to the Wolani Forest and seasoned forest defenders worked together to rebuild a lot of that infrastructure to support camp life for the next week. One of the things that we saw on the march in was like eight cinder blocks right at the entrance to the living room. And then you and I went into the living room. We saw these huge water tanks. So later they moved those water tanks to those cinder blocks. And that has become a watering point for everyone. So like twice a day, a truck comes with a water tank on the back and then they go

through the arduous process of filling that water so that everybody, uh, in camp can have water. And they, they had this system that was seemingly self-organized. And then that first day, uh, we were sitting in the parking lot and it seemed like every time you turn around, there was like a different train of people carrying supplies into the living room. The second day, there was a woman who was shoveling gravel from the torn up concrete on the side. And she was filling all of the random holes in the ground so that carts could go up them. And I was like, you know, did somebody assign this to you? She's like, no, I saw this. It just needed to be done and I did it. And that was very much the entire vibe of those first, I would say, 24 hours was,

okay, what do we need to do to get this thing running? As encampments were being established, simultaneously infrastructure for the South River Music Festival was being erected in the adjacent radio control field. Within a short amount of time, a full stage was constructed, complete with lights and speakers. Lining the sides of the field were various tables and booths. One side featured a large variety of refreshments as well as a medic tent, and the other side was home to free hot food and freshly grilled burgers and hot dogs. Next to the food were a few tables

distributing an array of radical literature, posters, and stickers. What was your favorite stuff at the music fest that you saw? Well, there was an arepa table, and I'm very food motivated, so the arepas were delicious, and we had walked a bunch that day so i needed sustenance and then there was the burger table as well but we i don't think i don't know if you got a burger but i did not get a burger i got i got one burger but they were out of buns when i got a burger so

i had a lettuce burger and then soon soon after, they got the buns back, and I was kind of bummed. Yeah. I did not. At least you got something. But I had the arepas, so it was worth it. To be fair, hundreds of people were being fed burgers. They fed 500 people.

Yes. And at one point, they made an announcement that they needed to do another food run just to go get more food. And a bunch of people volunteered, and only, only i think two or three went down to walmart to get a bunch more burgers and hot dogs and it was just a really cool moment so i think by the the end of the night when i was there there were about 500 people just enjoying the music and looking at the sky it was just an immaculate vibe there was a little fire pick off to the side and yeah you

talked about the setting up the stage you know i didn't know what to expect walking in there as not expecting quite that much of a production i wasn't expecting a full-fledged stage with lights all around uh sort of in this really like the the lighting worked really well for it's it it backdropped the the surrounding forest nice like nice like worked really well for, it backdropped the surrounding forest. Nice like green and purple lighting. Yeah, it was great. And then they had that green room tent back there and then they had a separate tent for equipment. Like it was a very well thought out festival in the middle of nowhere.

The South River Music Festival began early Saturday evening at 530, kicking off two days of local musical artists playing shows free of charge. Before the lineup of live music began, someone on stage read out a small flyer that was being passed around, detailing the reasoning for the festival and its place within the fight to defend the forest. And I got permission to share that reading. In the limitless possibilities of the cosmos, in the mad flux of events, reactions, and anomalies of the past 12 billion years since the birth of our universe, it's a statistical impossibility that we would be here now. But here we are, alive together. Such incredible circumstances have brought us here. Among them, the incredible and innovative resistance to defend this place from becoming a police training compound. This resistance, which brings us together the most cunning and resilient techniques of the radical environmentalist movement,

with the incredible courage and ferocity of the George Floyd uprising, is not just about a small piece of land. It's not about being fought between police and their goons on one hand, and some activists and their friends on the other. We are witnessing a collision of two competing ideas of happiness, of life, of the future. In this competition, experiments with new types of free culture play a decisive role. This movement cannot be reduced to what is happening in City Hall, on social media, or in meetings. For two years, we have descended on these woods, finding refuge from the high rents and predatory bookings fees of the corporate venues and bars. We have not come here to redecorate the actions of some activists

as allies lending our service to the drab and loveless militancy of something we do not otherwise care about. As the gentrification of Atlanta intensifies, more and more DIY venues and clubs are shut down and free spaces to play shows and dance are pushed further and further from the city center. Our free time is pinched as rents increase and traffic keeps us waiting longer and longer.

That is going to change! Music is not like other forms of human culture. It is different from painting, drawing, poetry, literature or film, art, politics and symbolic culture in general represent the passions conjuring strong feelings from the shadows of reality, pulling them from the depths of the soul or the back of consciousness. Music, on the other hand, is perhaps from the depths of the soul or the back of consciousness. Music, on the other hand, is perhaps the only form of human creativity that contacts those feelings without any mediations.

Music is physics. Music is reality. The system we live in is at war with reality. The system is destroying forests, rivers, mountaintops, and oceans. It's destroying our imaginations, our bodies, and our world. To defend ourselves from certain annihilation, it will not be sufficient to strike the right notes at the right time. We will have to make recourse to other means, to more direct means, and that is why we're all here. And that is why we're all here.

The Defend the Atlanta Forest revolution will be economic, political, as well as cultural. We're building a new era of human history where music will be at the steering wheel. What is needed cannot be taught without first being discovered. We are those adventurers, plunging the depths of the cosmos for the contours and textures of a free existence, of a life without dead time. When it is necessary, we will defend ourselves by the means appropriate to the task, not with words, not with denunciations, but with actions, real and concrete actions, as real as the sound, as real as reality. I'm so lucky to be here with y'all. Thank you. Across the middle of the field, hundreds of people laid out blankets on the grass and dirt. Concert goers alternated between dancing in front of the stage and relaxing and eating food on picnic blankets. As the night

approached, over a thousand people were spread out across the RC field. A mosh pit had formed directly in front of the stage. Musicians led Stop Cop City chants. And between sets, people spoke on mic about the movement. Everybody say Stop Cop City! Stop Cop City! Stop Cop City! Stop Cop City!

That's right, that's right. Saturday Night was headlined by local Atlanta rapper Zach Fox. Zach told stories about how he and his friends used to hang out in this very forest as teenagers. All right, y'all, man. Hey, I'm gonna say this. Fuck the mayor. I'm gonna say this. Fuck the mayor and fuck all this shit.

And I love everybody for coming out to support this shit. You're really fucking... When I tell you me, Archie, everybody used to walk back in these woods and drink Red Stripes and... And walk our dogs and shoot guns and shit, so... I really don't want to see this shit happen and I really appreciate all of y'all for coming out to do this shit fuck a cop city chants erupted pretty regularly throughout the night and this all I'm gonna tell the police this all I'm gonna tell the police okay hold on

let me make sure I push the right button right button. Sing that shit. Let's go. Buckle riding. Buckle riding. Buckle riding. Buckle riding.

Buckle riding. Buckle riding. Buckle riding. Atlanta, I love y'all so much, man. Fuck around it. Atlanta. I love y'all so much, man. Hell yeah. Hey, man. Let me say something real quick. Let me say something real quick before I get the fuck off stage.

Let my homies rock this shit. I love y'all so much for supporting this shit. I have, let me tell you, let me tell you something. I'm 32. A lot of niggas start getting old and they lose faith in the youth. I got so much faith in everybody and this motherfucking bitch. Wherever y'all going, I'm going.

I truly believe that y'all gonna save this motherfucking world, so I'm with y'all. Fuck Cop City, fuck cops in general. Fuck 12, fuck authoritarianism, fuck capitalism, fuck all that bullshit, I'm with y'all to the end, till I motherfucking die. So let me hear y'all say this one more time, say fuck 12! Say fuck 12! Say fuck 12! Say bug 12! Say bug 12!

Besides the domestic terrorism banner I mentioned in the opening of this episode, another banner was hung up beside the stage featuring turtles and butterflies, along with the Assata Shakur quote, Love is our sword, truth is our compass. This kind of music is about connecting to nature, feeling the trees, feeling the ground, feeling each other. Look right up there. Look at the fucking moon.

To quote a communique from the Sonic Defense Committee, quote, At this point, it was impossible to imagine a meaningful police intervention. The crowd was made up of elderly people, university students, rappers, indigenous activists, toddlers and newborns, skaters, people of all imaginable Atlanta demographics. The night ended around 3.30 a.m. to sounds of house, techno, and drum and bass without any notable incident. Tents were set up all over the eastern side of the forest, with many people choosing to sleep under the tree canopy between the living room and the music festival for that first night. As the night went on, people carefully tended small campfires both in the festival field and in the middle of the living room. To quote the Press Collective, the movement was once again living in joyous harmony with the forest it had promised to protect. Tomorrow's episode will cover day two of the music festival,

the frankly unprecedented direct action that took place Sunday afternoon, and a more detailed look at the police raid that happened later that evening. See you on the other side. Music Festival Audio, courtesy of Unicorn Riot. Welcome, I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter? Welcome, I'm Danny Trejo. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter? Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America.

From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters, to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of my Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast,

and we're kicking off our second season digging into how Tex Elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel winning economists to leading journalists in the field, and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people.

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

Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with.

His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Welcome back to It Could Happen Here. This is part two of my miniseries detailing the March Week of Action to defend the Atlanta Forest and stop Cop City. Last episode, we covered the Week of Action kickoff rally at Gresham Park and day one of the South River Music Festival. We'll be picking up basically right where we left off, starting with my conversation with Matt from the Atlanta Community Press Collective. Saturday night, there was music going on till like 4 a.m. It was a long night, but like a really good night. What was your Sunday like?

Sunday, you know, Sunday started off really great. Like walking in, the first thing you see when you walked back onto the festival grounds was this amazing bouncy house that they had written some guidelines up there that it did seem like everyone followed. You could fit six adults, which like for a bouncy house, that's pretty large.

It was a big bouncy house. It was like six adults or 12 kids or something like that. So yeah, you should see this bouncy house. And like, when or 12 kids or something like that um so yeah you see this bouncy house and like i when you see that the first thing like i think that visually sets the entire expectation like that is a statement in and of itself of like what they were going for that first day day two of the music festival started around noon right in the middle of the rc field was this large rainbow-colored bouncy castle adorned with a Stop Cop City banner. People slowly trickled in all

over the course of the afternoon, culminating in about a thousand people scattered across the field by 4 p.m. Just like the night before, people enjoyed free food, defend-the-forest-related literature, and a bustling refreshment booth. While listening to live music, people played soccer and frisbee in the open field, while others were continuing to build camp infrastructure in the forest. So I think the Bouncing Castle set the tone and everything was really lighthearted for the first few hours. I spent most of that day walking around, hours. I spent most of that day walking around, watching this autonomous infrastructure in the forest kind of pop up on its own. It's like everywhere I went, to the parking lot, you saw

trains of people carrying water and supplies deep into the forest. Everyone seemed to just be trying to find a place to fit in and to work and to really participate in the week of action. As the day went on, rumors started to circulate about inaction happening later that afternoon. Word quickly spread that people would meet up in the RC field at 5 p.m. Eventually, a flyer was posted to social media, and sure enough, come 5 o'clock, a group of a few hundred people, made up of individuals and affinity groups, gathered behind the bouncy castle, most of whom were masked up and donning some form of black block or camo block. A communique posted later on the website scenes.noblogs.org described the feeling on the ground. on the website scenes.noblogs.org,

described the feeling on the ground. Quote, The air was tense. No visible rage, just a steeled determination. No one knew what was coming next, but we knew it was something big. That was quite the visual. Like this crowd of camo and black block

and like some people wearing normal clothes who I don't think quite knew what they were about to do next to this massive bouncy castle. And I think that the visual of it kind of represents like two aspects of the movement, right? Like the militant aspect and the joyful aspect. And I think they are both very central to what, you know, the movement is. Yeah, it's a pretty good encapsulation of the diversity present around the defend the forest

and stop cop city movement. There's a few hundred people in camo block walking down, I believe is a constitution. A lot of people dressed in black block, a mix of legal observers here, police choppers overhead. Currently people are marching west in the direction of the old Atlanta prison farm, the slate of the forest that Cobb City is planned to be built on. There has not really been a mass convergence of people like this in the forest in a long, long time. I cannot remember the last time there was anything quite like this. This is definitely the biggest group of people who's ever converged on marching on the old Atlanta prison farm area. Last year, people were occupying and living in the forest on that side.

Since the repression has intensified, more people have moved over across on the other side of Entrenchment Creek Park, on the slate of land closer to Wolani People's Park and the section that Ryan Millsap is wanting to develop. Definitely never seen this many people marching like this near the forest. In a much more militant seeming group of the crowd as opposed to Saturday's first march, which was like a thousand people of various types. Everyone here looks much more willing to throw down. As the group, around 300 strong, left the RC field, they calmly marched west down Constitution Road toward the power line cut, accompanied overhead by a police chopper equipped with a thermal camera.

Copter still overhead, I'm sure you can hear it. To get a clear picture of what actually happened that day, it's useful to understand the geography of the Wilani Forest, especially since the police have tried to make it sound like the individuals who were arrested later that night were apprehended at the scene of the crime, which is not actually the case. The entire area that the defenders are trying to defend, the entire Wilani forest,

the contiguous part of it, is surrounded in sort of a triangle by three different roads, Constitution, Quay, and Boulder Crest. All the way to the east is Wilani People's Park, and just to the west of that is the RC Field where the music festival was happening, where the Bouncy Castle is, and where our group that we're following here starts to gather. And then all the way to the west is the proposed site of Cop City along Key Road. site of cop city along key road so to get there through the forest takes a good 30 45 minutes uh to get there you know if you're you're on the road is still like a 25 30 minute walk it is it is not like anywhere close on foot uh no to get from point a to point b if you're crossing through the woods you also have to like over Entrenchment Creek, which is not the easiest creek to cross over.

It's not the easiest and it's not the cleanest. No. It's not something you want to step in. I'm at the back of the march now. Everyone's kind of tightened up into one larger group. They've paused briefly and are retrieving some tires that have been found near the ditch on the road here. Dozens and dozens of tires are blocking the road.

They're getting moved out pretty quick, and the march is moving on. Oh, and it looks like people arrived at the power line cut. This massive clearing for power lines to run north-south. People are now marching on the green grass underneath the power lines to run north-south, people are now marching on the green grass underneath the power lines. The thin clear cut for power lines has been there for years and directly leads to where Cop City pre-construction work is taking place near the North Gate. The open area makes it easy to traverse, but on the flip side, that also makes it easy to surveil. There were only a little over a dozen cops stationed at the North Gate, as well as the

police chopper circling overhead. The group of block is slowly, slowly moving north along the power line cut. I'm keeping my distance for now so that I can continue doing stuff without being extremely jeopardized. The block approached the North Gate in broad daylight with shields in hand and people behind throwing projectiles in the direction of police. A barrage of fireworks, rocks, and just the sheer size of the crowd overwhelmed police, causing officers to retreat as a swarm of hundreds of people overtook the proposed Cop City construction site and current police security outpost within the Wolani forest. All right, the group has marched a decent ways up. There's now

fireworks in the distance. Police helicopters still overhead. Looks like most of the crowd is still in the area of the power line cut. A pretty condensed large group of people up there. Lots of fireworks, like I said. Some individuals chose to focus their efforts on repelling the nearby police, giving the opportunity for others to set their sights on various targets. The large number of people in the block together allowed for individuals to feel more safe and capable of taking action. The APDs put a call out to get any available units down here by the old Atlanta Prison Farm property, and a quote from the scanner audio is, get here now, assholes. Forest defenders smashed up and set ablaze an office trailer, two UTVs, a surveillance tower, and a front-end loader

as the police ran for cover behind a fenced-off secondary smaller outpost across from Key Road. Despite the police helicopter circling overhead the gathering spot for a good 30 minutes, it seems APD was not fully prepared in their response or just did not know what was going on because they made a decent way without any visible resistance so far. A communique posted online reads, quote, when we approached the gate finally, it was not chaos, but it was something like it. Our crowd unleashed a wild burst of energy. It was incredible, and I will never forget it. It was rhythmic almost. We devastated all of their work, their vehicles, the trailer, everything. But it looks like Atlanta police is now trying to converge. Lots of fireworks still. I see smoke. Oh, a lot of smoke. Whoa.

A lot of smoke very fast is filling up the area around the little, it looks like it's by the little control tower in the middle of the power line cut. Wow. That smoke is thick. That's a fire. That is a decent fire. I can see the orange flame now. As the few police officers stationed at the North Gate were forced to fall back under pressure, force defenders leveled months of their work within a few minutes. To quote the Scenes.noBlogs communique, quote, this act of mass collective sabotage was done methodically and without anxiety. The crowd destroyed all of their equipment with ease and confidence. So the excavator, there was a utility train vehicle, which is what the police have been

using to sort of move in and around the woods and sort of motorized move in and around the office space and the storage space were all torched. I think that comprised everything that was over there. And the police surveillance tower, which has been taken down a few times. Yeah, police surveillance towers in that area, they have this tendency to fall over. The fire has gotten a lot, lot bigger. Police scanner audio is saying officer needs help, calling for all available units to converge on the spot. Wow, the fire is getting so much brighter.

Smoke is incredibly thick. It looks like some people are starting to move out of the area back into the woods. But wow, that is a huge fire. There was at least two separate things lit on fire. There were, in fact, more than two things on fire. There was at least two separate things lit on fire. There were, in fact, more than two things on fire. Looks like the crowd is going to be starting to move because a lot of police is about to show up. I'm not sure what the response will be for people at the music festival or at Wolani People's Park who are camping out for the Week of Action.

But this is a pretty big action for Week of Action Day 2. Wow, the smoke plume is massive. While the action itself was a success, the notion of an overall one-sided victory was about to come crashing down. A whole bunch of sirens just flew by, about a dozen cop cars, lots of cop cars by the music festival entrance as well, by the RC field. Looks like the cop cars are converging at the festival, not at the fire. Okay, back at the music festival. As you can hear, it is still ongoing.

There's still hundreds of people, probably like 500 people gathered here at the music festival. You can see smoke in the air from this vantage point, from the spot by the power line cut where those two fires took place. One indication that this night was far from over was that the police helicopter seemed to be moving toward the festival. The chopper has moved from being near the power line cut to the music festival and Wolani People's Park. The vibe seems to be pretty chill on the ground here. I'm not sure how many people that are present know what's going on, but the chopper is still stationed above the entrance to the festival. So I think they're looking to see if the group that marched is going to march back the same direction,

which I don't think they will. But that is what's currently going on. People still seem to be coming to and from the festival. Sure enough, within minutes, an increasingly large number of police started to stage by the entrance to the RC field. Dozens of police cars are now stationed outside the entrance to the RC field where the music festival is taking place. There's a lot of police here, some with rifles. They're getting their zip tie cuffs ready.

They've not entered the festival area yet, but I got word from somebody that they have entered the Wolani People's Park parking lot. And it looks like movement is to be expected very soon at around 6 30 p.m police began to raid the south river music festival and started what i think is accurately described as the police's own counter protest to the events that transpired the past hour so when when the police came running up uh onto the tarmac at r Field where the bouncy castle was, of course, they had to point a rifle at the bouncy castle. And if that

doesn't show that police are not here to have fun and have joy, I don't know what is. I don't know if anyone was in it at the time. I don't think so. I think they were literally just pointing a gun at an empty bouncy castle, which they destroyed. And I think we have to take a moment

to mourn that. Lots of police running into the music festival. They're running someone down, chasing down a few people. Cops approaching from multiple sides. Instead of immediately trying to confront the hundreds of music festival attendees head-on, the still-extremely-outnumbered cops ran to the opposite side of the music festival and started to indiscriminately go after isolated stragglers. People running into the woods, chased by police. Someone's tackled. No one really around to be arrested. Someone else being arrested.

One, two, three, four, five, six people currently arrested that I can see, or at least being detained. Looks like an NLG person's on the ground. or at least being detained. Looks like an NLG person's on the ground. Eventually, the concert goers realized what was happening, and a little over 100 people mobilized to pressure the cops out of the field. People from the music festival are now running behind the police that have rushed into the RC field. Cops being flanked by hundreds of people.

RC field. Cops being flanked by hundreds of people. So the first thing that happened was a few officers entered the RC field, which is where the music festival was happening, and made a few quick arrests. Yeah, like five or six, I would say. And I would assume seeing the crowd and realizing that a small force of officers is easily overwhelmed, kind of pulled back with their SDs. And then just after that, over in Wilani People's Park,

that's when DeKalb came in with their SWAT teams. There was a group that was meeting in the gazebo and they report like dozens of police officers running by. One of them stood up to record and an officer with an AR-15 yelled at them and told them to sit the fuck back down. And they did. They were allowed to finish their meeting, but they reported this very surreal experience of just officers flying by and also making arrests of individuals who were running. And then the third wave, I would say, came in on the back of an armored police vehicle with an LRAD. Good old DJ LRAD.

It brings back all the memories. And so from there, they sort of launched into the forest, launching tear gas. Again, also brings back all of the memories. Police are starting to come back into the music festival. Fireworks are happening in the woods near the living room, it looks like. The police that entered via the RC field advanced up to join another group of cops who came in from Wolani People's Park and were already in the woods.

What I first assumed were just fireworks were actually an exchange of munitions, with cops firing explosive tear gas canisters into the forest, and people trying to hold the cops off with fireworks. Tear gas is in the woods. Fuck. It's hard, I can't get any... I didn't bring my gas mask because this was a music festival it's just the woods are completely caked in gas everyone who's inside i don't know how they're

going to get out cops have the place surrounded it's so gassed up in there police raided they tear gassed a section of the woods close to the rc field kind of block kind of blocking off the rc field from from the wilani People's Park parking lot and the campsites nearby so you couldn't really get away or run through that area because your breathing would stop, as mine temporarily did as I tried to run through there. And then police just took over this entire section of Southeast Atlanta, just this entire section of the woods, all the intersections in this area. Except for the very small space that the music festival was still going on during this entire time.

The section right in front of the stage where people continued to have the music festival for the next few hours as police were. I kid you not like over 500 police officers were in this surrounding area there was the most amount of police i've ever seen respond to anything ever it was wild i am currently heading out i will try to loop back around to balani people's park there's just no way through it right now with all the tear gas but cop a cop van has pulled into the RC field. Music Festival people, some of them are standing by the stage. Others are kind of dispersing.

The night's getting pretty hectic. Cops fully surrounding Walani People's Park and the Music Festival on all sides. There was at least one individual of note who was witnessed to be at the Music Festival the entire time during the direct action. And they were one of the very first arrests. Police chased this person down, tased and violently tackled them. Were you around the festival at that time? I was around the festival at that time. I even saw the police tackle someone at the festival and tackle and tase an indigenous person at the

festival and initially the police officer georgia state patrol and these are the folks that were responsible for killing tortuguita and making up a lie about it they started running and there were three people in front of them all three of those people started running and then there were three people in front of them. All three of those people started running. And then there were two white folks that veered off to the left and one indigenous person that veered off to the right. Go figure, the Georgia State Patrol veered to the right and then tased and tackled the indigenous person. And then, and there's footage of this that may not be released, where I was trying to de-escalate the situation.

Because this police officer, with no grounds to attack this person, is choking them on the ground. And really just asking, like, literally, what are you doing? Like, why are you doing? And then the person said, i didn't do anything and then the uh georgia state patrol officer responded well you ran right as if running when somebody with a gun chasing you is an admission of guilt of something uh so the response was nonsensical and stupid. So they're tear gassing the force and again, you know, grabbing from reports. Anyone who's running, anyone who, you know, rightfully runs from a police officer running at them with an AR-15, which, you know, we've been around police all week and like the instinct to run,

you know, even now is still pretty high. No, absolutely. And if you've never been chased by police before, your first instinct isn't to like, let them get you. Like I've had police just charge at me for filming police brutality before. And yeah, you generally want to move away. It is your immediate reaction. Yeah. Anyone running at you with a gun is cause for fear and a police officer even more so. Okay, I am out of the area. Police have surrounded on basically every side of Lani People's Park. The section of the forest people are camping out of.

The music festival. All entrances and exits are staged. A whole bunch of intersections, there's police staged. They're letting some people go. Obviously, they're arresting a whole bunch of other people. No clear indication on who they're arresting or why. It's pretty chaotic right now. They put out this officer needs help call that expanded beyond just APD. But the first thing they did was call in every available

APD officer. Fulton County Sheriff's Office joined, DeKalb County started to mount up. And then of course, the Georgia State Patrol definitely had to get in on this action. So jurisdictionally wide or this multi-jurisdiction wide force of police amassed on Key Road with DeKalb kind of coming in on the other side. I passed through at least 500 individual police officers. Yeah, that would check out. Because I walked a decent ways. I passed by many an intersection with at least 50 to 100 cops stationed at each intersection.

Oh, and we can't forget the Sandy Springs Police Department also intersection with at least 50 to 100 cops was stationed at like each intersection. Oh, and we can't forget the Sandy Springs Police Department also, and it's way down from outside the perimeter. Multiple SWAT teams. There was like, I think three different Bearcats. After I evacuated the area, I was still in shock about how many police officers mobilized to raid the festival. This is the biggest police response I've seen to anything in Atlanta in the time that I've been here. This is bigger than the police responses to most of like Portland actions compared to like 2020. Massive, massive amount of cops from multiple agencies taking over a huge area of South Atlanta and DeKalb County. As the second wave of police charged in and detained several music festival

attendees, panic spread throughout the crowd. Hundreds of people rushed to the exits in an attempt to evacuate. Police blocked exits and arrested, detained, or harassed and threatened those trying to leave. One concertgoer reported that they received death threats from an intruding officer. Quote, you're going to get shot. I don't know how else to put it, but you're going to get shot with a bullet, unquote. That same person who recorded that interaction also reported that she heard an officer with his sidearm drawn in the living room say, quote, I swear to God, I will fucking kill you, unquote. Some people opted for safety in numbers and decided they'd

rather stay together as a group as opposed to the risk of trying to escape through the woods alone that night. About 150 people congregated in front of the festival stage, and musicians that stuck around continued to play music. So the music festival continues unhindered until dusk. And about then is when DJ Elrad comes up and officers get out and call over like five people from the crowd. And so at this point, I think there's like somewhere between

75 to 100 people still at the music fest watching the music and people are calling out from the stage like, we have a legal right to be here. This is public property. had we had dueling dueling loudspeakers trying to two people having a regular conversation across the field

via opposing loudspeakers very scott pilgrim versus the world right like you know as the police are trying to shut down a concert, and there's like punks screaming into the mic, and police officers using the LRAD to scream back. It's just amazing. I mean, the visuals of this whole day, I think, are kind of really easy to imagine, even if you're not there. Yeah. Roughly after two hours of hunting down and detaining stragglers from the festival, dozens of SWAT in riot gear with high-end rifles and armored vehicles slowly moved in towards the stage. Police told festival goers that they had three minutes to leave the festival under threat of arrest for domestic terrorism, to which festival goers responded by shouting no. In front of the stage, the crowd linked arms and chanted,

let us go home and we have children. Apparently unable to mass arrest 150 people for whatever reason, police called for five individuals from the festival to engage in a brief discussion. After this odd negotiation with a handful of random concertgoers, festival attendees were told they had 10 minutes to walk to their cars and go home or else be charged with domestic terrorism. About half the crowd has cars parked in the RC field. And the police allow them to go to their cars and leave.

in the RC field and the police allow them to go to their cars and leave, uh, leaving like somewhere between, you know, three dozen, uh, somewhere around three dozen people without cars still remaining at the festival. And,

um, this whole time they're also chanting, we have kids, let us go. And like the, it's this very big moment of solidarity, um, that I've been told from like people who were there that you could tell that everybody was like really interested in keeping each other safe.

Yeah, it was weird because police were definitely, they were letting some people walk away and leave. Letting some people drive away, arresting others, not really with no clear indication for why they're letting some go and not letting others go. for why they're letting some go and not letting others go. But then this crowd of people around the stage were eventually allowed to leave the music festival in big rent-a-vans. The police then ID'd the people who rented the vans and were driving the vans. But everyone was able to exit who stayed by the music festival.

Around midnight, the Atlanta Police Department posted a press release saying that 35 people have been detained, which was kind of weird language because everyone assumed that those who had been taken by police were all going to be arrested and charged. But then, less than an hour later, 12 individuals were suddenly released from police custody back to Gresham Park. Since then, witnesses and lawyers have claimed that police separated out people with Atlanta addresses on their IDs and released those individuals. And then the remaining 23 people, mostly with out-of-state IDs or a non-Atlanta

address, were arrested and charged with domestic terrorism to continue the outside agitator narrative, bringing the total number of people charged with domestic terrorism to 42. Ever since Sunday night, there's been this effort from police and their media allies to frame these arrests as if they happened at the scene of the crime, alleging that the 23 people arrested were themselves torching equipment or actively engaged in domestic terrorism. Yet all of the arrests took place almost a mile away at the music festival, and even further away in some cases, like in the parking lot, which is on the other side of the forest from the North Gate. out by Candice Byrne, quote, law enforcement failing to apprehend specific individuals at the site itself indiscriminately targeted the music festival, pouring into the field,

campgrounds, and parking lot with weapons drawn. They issued commands, chased people down, and threatened to shoot and arrest festival attendees, unquote. Still, major news outlets all but ignored the fact that all arrests occurred seemingly at random during a police raid of the nearby South River Music Festival, where people gathered to see Zach Fox live to jump in a bouncy castle and enjoy the outdoors. Many attendees had little to no idea of what had occurred at the Cop City construction site. site. Those who got lucky were forced to walk through tear gas to get to their cars, while others were assaulted by police and charged with domestic terrorism, risking 35 years in prison. Here's a clip from NBC's Today Show. We've got breaking news out of Atlanta overnight. Dozens arrested after what's being described as a coordinated criminal attack. It happened at the future site of a police training center.

NBC's Blaine Alexander's on the story for us. Blaine, good morning. Officials say protesters burned construction vehicles and a trailer and set off fireworks toward officers stationed nearby. This wasn't about a public safety training center. This was about anarchy, and this was about the attempt to destabilize. Police point to a group of what they call outside agitators, saying they left an event nearby,

changed into black clothing, and mounted a coordinated attack on construction equipment and police officers. To quote a statement from the Sonic Defense Committee, quote, the indiscriminate brutalization and arrest of festival goers suggests that law enforcement agencies will go to great lengths to paint the movement to stop cop city and defend the Atlanta forest as a criminal organization. It is in fact a broad decentralized movement with no ideological or organizational unity, only a shared goal. They believe that the movement is made up of bad actors who betray otherwise peaceful protesters, but the movement is not committed to any particular tactic, protesters. But the movement is not committed to any particular tactic, instead accepting the diversity of approaches to stop the project. The police claim that the movement is not made up of any Atlantans, while Atlanta University Center students, local clergy, faith leaders, small businesses, and dozens of locally famous artists and musicians organized themselves within the

movement. The police's false narrative and heavy-handed approach to dealing with the opposition to the Cop City project is slowly starting to enclose them in. As the movement grows and city and state officials refuse to see the reality of what they are dealing with, their own authority is being brought into question. If they are not careful, the stakes of the movement will soon exceed the bounds of the forest and Cop City. In fact, that process may already have begun. I think to talk about what happened, we kind of do have to go back to put it in context. And going back to January, that was the end of the occupation or the continuous encampments in Wilani.

And then fast forward to late January, they get the LDP. And so all of these people who have been protecting the forest for so long are now watching construction equipment roll in, and they're watching clear-cutting, and they can't do anything about it. And you had that action just after Tortuguita's death in January, which was a very targeted, you know, only to funders and other supporters of Cop City and, you know, maybe a random police vehicle. But it wasn't really like this, this letting of energy. It was a very like specific sort of purpose. And so you, you have this like buildup of energy that I think is really important to, to keep in mind, um, with, with what is about to happen in this story. And they, so they can't do anything. And then you have a Saturday where you see this massive people return to the

forest. And, and I, I think it's, it's almost unavoidable in retrospect to, to look at that and for them not to have said, what can we do now that we couldn't do before? So they gather and they do what they couldn't do before.

They head over to the construction site. There had not been an action like this in the woods for a long time. Bulldozers and equipment had not been damaged in quite a while. But on Sunday, people were able to use the safety in numbers that comes with a week of action to feel more empowered to take direct action against the actual machinery that is destroying the forest and building Cop City. Sunday's action can be seen as a demonstration of the pent-up righteous anger from watching the slow destruction of the forest. Participants view what happened as a justified strike against the active destruction of the forest. Participants view what happened as a justified strike against the active

destruction of the forest. A strike back made in anger after watching the Atlanta Police Foundation make steady progress over the course of the past few months. The day before, there was this chant that was taken up by the entire crowd. And I think we talked about this earlier. If you build it, we will burn it. And that was something that if you looked all throughout the crowd, like they were chanting. Everybody. Everybody. Like not just people wearing camo or black block. A thousand people. Everybody. Yeah. A thousand people marching from Gresham Park. And I think that this is that promise come true. Sunday's action was itself a pretty unique moment in the recent history of environmental and anti-police struggles. Watching hundreds of people go on the offensive to participate in a mass-coordinated sabotage in defense of both the forest and targets of police violence felt like an unprecedented moment in our modern paradigm of resistance in the United States.

But the raid on the music festival on March 5th was also just the start of an unparalleled wave of police repression during this week of action, which we will cover in the next episode. But throughout the whole week, the assurance that Cop City will never be built never faltered, the assurance that Cop City will never be built never faltered, as demonstrated by common chants such as, I believe that we will win. So I'm going to end this episode with the final chant from the Saturday Gresham Park rally, right before a thousand people marched to the Wolani Forest. In Atlanta, we always end with the Asala chant. We end with the words of our mother, Asada Shakur. Because we have a duty. There's been so much blood spilled here.

Repeat after me. It is our duty to fight for our freedom. It is our duty to fight for our freedom. It is our duty to win. It is our duty to fight for our freedom. It is our duty to win. It is our duty to win. We must love each other and protect each other. We must love each other and protect each other. We have nothing to lose but our chains.

We have nothing to lose but our chains. We have nothing to lose but our chains. We have nothing to lose but our chains. We have nothing to lose but our chains! We have nothing to lose but our chains! We have nothing to lose but our chains! Our chains! Our chains! Our chains!

Music, festival, audio, courtesy of Unicorn Riot. Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash sources. Thanks for listening. An anthology podcast of modern day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons? Hit play on the sex- sex positive and deeply entertaining podcast,

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