It Could Happen Here - James' Trip To The Darién Gap

Episode Date: October 4, 2024

James talks to Mia about a reporting trip to the Emberá community of Bajo Chiquito in the Darién Gap, and his experience interviewing migrants making the most dangerous part of their journey to the ...USA. Sources: Jesuit Shelter: https://www.feyalegria.org/panama/ https://elpitazo.net/migracion/muere-venezolana-mientras-cruzaba-la-selva-de-darien-junto-a-su-familia/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Hey guys, I'm Kate Max. You might know me from my popular online series, The Running Interview Show, where I run with celebrities, athletes, entrepreneurs, and more. After those runs, the conversations keep going. That's what my podcast, Post Run High, is all about. It's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories, their journeys, and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together. Listen to Post Run High on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The 2025 iHeart Podcast Awards are coming.
Starting point is 00:00:40 This is the chance to nominate your podcast for the industry's biggest award. Submit your podcast for nomination now at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. But hurry, submissions close on December 8th. Hey, you've been doing all that talking. It's time to get rewarded for it. Submit your podcast today at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast. And we're kicking off our second season digging into tech's elite
Starting point is 00:01:13 and how they've 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 brought to you by an industry veteran with nothing to lose. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Starting point is 00:01:33 wherever else you get your podcasts from. Welcome to Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get real and dive straight into todo lo actual y viral. We're talking musica, los premios, el chisme, and all things trending in my cultura. I'm bringing you all the latest happening in our entertainment world
Starting point is 00:01:51 and some fun and impactful interviews with your favorite Latin artists, comedians, actors, and influencers. Each week, we get deep and raw life stories, combos on the issues that matter to us, and it's all packed with gems, fun, straight-up comedia, and that's a song that only nuestra gente can sprinkle. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Hey, I'm Jacqueline Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature. Black Lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audiobooks while running errands or at the end
Starting point is 00:02:31 of a busy day. From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture. Listen to Black Lit on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. AT&T, connecting changes everything. Call Zone Media. Hello, and welcome to It Could Happen Here, the podcast where I take an entire kind bar and put it in my mouth at once and then try not to suffocate that's that's what's already happened you missed that uh maybe if you were a subscriber to cooler zone media you would have uh been you wouldn't i'm sorry i'm not doing that i'm not doing the
Starting point is 00:03:16 weird yeah fcc no cooler zone media will not provide you access to footage of james choking on a climb far yeah no that's only in a premium package. But we're not here today to talk about snacks, sadly. That will be another podcast. We are here today to talk about my recent trip to the Dalian Gap in Panama. So I guess to start off with, we should probably explain, do you think, Miro, I need to explain where it is and what? Look, I went to school with a kid who actually both there were no this this happened multiple times the more like now i'm thinking back on it like people who thought that the arabian
Starting point is 00:03:54 peninsula was in mexico so like we do in fact need to explain this yeah wow yeah okay i'm just imagining that what a culture somehow got it mixed up mixed up with the yucatan it was really sort of oh wow incredible stuff happening in in in my schools yeah fascinating yeah okay so for those of you who are not familiar the dalian gap is an area between columbia and panama that has historically like i've seen a lot of characterizations of this which i think erase the existence of indigenous people which you know shouldn't be shocking given the corporate media right but yeah uh people have lived in this area for thousands of years they have happy and fulfilled lives they thrive there
Starting point is 00:04:43 it's not a desolate place. It's just a place that hasn't made itself amenable to capitalism, really. It's a place between Colombia and Panama where there are no roads. There are not navigable rivers. It is extremely mountainous. It is one of the most humid places on earth. It is covered in incredibly dense jungle. There are fast-flowing rivers which you have to cross as you travel there and for about half a million migrants last year it was the only way that they could come from
Starting point is 00:05:12 south america to central america and they continue their journey on to north america from my understanding like this isn't just people like from south america like there's a bunch of other people who come into south america because it's easier to get in who are taking this route too yeah that's right so for most people who are coming to want to come to the united states they can't fly directly to the united states right it's quite rare to get their asylum that way very rare and there's a chnv cuba haiti nicaragua venezuela program which in theory allows that it's backed up for like two years so most people will fly to a country in south america the most regular one is brazil
Starting point is 00:05:52 because brazil doesn't impose visas on countries that don't impose visas on it and then from there they begin making their way north um geography understanders will realize that brazil is a very long way from the united states yeah that's very bad like that's that's not good that's yeah it's not good at all short of argentina you really you really couldn't get that much further away you know in the continental southern america so what people tend to do especially so i spoke to just off the top of my head people from nepal people from india people from venezuela people from colombia people from angola people from cameroon togo iran i spoke to a kurdish guy but he was from iran i'm trying to think off the top of my head that's most of them probably china
Starting point is 00:06:39 right i know i know there's i didn't speak to any chinese migrants yeah interesting interesting i went fully prepared with like a machine to translate and everything and um i didn't see any chinese migrants which is quite surprising haitian people of course i spoke to a lot of haitian people the chinese were coming through the derring gap in big numbers last year the only thing i heard about chinese migrants was that someone had seen the remains of someone who they described as chinese yeah yeah so if you're not familiar with the journey it is the most dangerous part of the migration route in the americas right it's one of the most dangerous migration routes on earth people have to walk for between two days and a week i've heard even 15 days but
Starting point is 00:07:27 the accounts i had maxed out a week there is nowhere to get water there is nowhere to get food you have to walk through mud that can come up to your waist you have to cross rivers that are higher than you are tall you have to climb boulders shimmy across cliff faces the accounts i heard and the things i saw were pretty horrible like and we've kind of had a fun introduction but i would rather go back to the uncertainty i had of like being in syria last year and knowing that there were bombs falling on people every night and have to see some of that stuff again. It's horrific. Like I can't really,
Starting point is 00:08:09 I'm obviously working on a scripted series and we'll have that out soon. But like in terms of the things that we do to each other, if humans like little children die in the Derry and gap all the time, people carry their babies across rivers on their shoulders. People carry other people's babies when people are too tired from carrying their own children. And not everyone who enters leaves, right? If you drink the water from the river, you'll probably die because there are dead bodies upstream, right? This human waste in that river. If you fall and break your leg, upstream right this human waste in that river if you fall and break your leg you'll die if you run out of water you're not really in a place where anyone has any spare water to give you it's
Starting point is 00:08:52 horrific every single account of the gap that i heard was that no one should do it that it's it's terrible that it's inhuman It's like nothing people have ever seen. But people don't have a choice, right? It's the only way for people. I spoke to probably, I have over 100 interviews recorded. I spoke to more people than that. The vast bulk of them were from Venezuela, a place where I used to live. And I understand that lots of them have children.
Starting point is 00:09:26 Some of them are bringing their children. Some of them are going ahead and trying to send money, right? Remittances back to their children. Right. And everyone said the same thing, that there's no future for them in their country, that they don't see a way of succeeding, of raising their families, of having a future for themselves there. I met a trans lady from venezuela who was saying that like there are legal things in place that won't allow her to have her gender affirmed by documents
Starting point is 00:09:51 right she wasn't able to graduate with her degree jesus christ yeah like like things that just completely deliberately torpedo your life just being who you are as yourself right people aren't doing this because they want this fictional housing assistance or whatever it is that trump and jd vance people are doing this because they don't see a future for themselves i spoke to iranian women right who had been on the road for nearly a year trying to avoid prosecution at home for having participated in in protests for like basic human rights yeah and it it just the things i heard and saw were deeply deeply uh upsetting and i think it's really important that we i guess kind of bear witness to this because it doesn't really get discussed in when the u.s media talks
Starting point is 00:10:47 about migration maybe if we're lucky they'll come to the southern border for a day right and do some impressionistic piece on it but like pretty often they talk about migrants but they don't talk to them and so like i think it's important that we talk to them and i think it's important that we face up to the fact that like this is a choice that the people who have been elected in this country have made they have decided that the the only way for instance the only place to use cbp1 right is in southern mexico or north of mexico city can you explain what cbp1 is for people who don't remember? Yeah, sorry. So CBP One is an app that allows people to apply for an interview for asylum. Just to sort of skip ahead, I guess, people understand that they have to use CBP One and they understand that they can only do it in Mexico.
Starting point is 00:11:38 And the people who I met in the Darien are now in Mexico, right? They take a series of buses north, not all of them. I'll explain why, but some of them haven't been able to leave Panama yet. They take a series of buses north and they get to the Guatemala-Mexico border and they cross in Tapachula and then they work out that CBP1 is not compatible with the vast majority of cell phones. It doesn't work with older Android, like Samsung phones. Oh my fucking God.
Starting point is 00:12:04 Yeah, yeah. it works with iphones and i didn't see a single person with an iphone if you're wealthy you can avoid the daddy end right there are ways you can go around in a boat there are ways that you can sort of take a shorter route the route that i was on is the route that people who do not have the resources to avoid this dreadful journey take and now they get to mexico and they realize that yeah they you have to get to mexico to make the application right and the way to get there is to cross to darien and then when you get there you realize that this thing requires you to have a special telephone that you don't have it's just very bleak it's a level of human evil both in the sense of it has been
Starting point is 00:12:46 actively designed like this and in the sense that they don't give a shit like the fact that that fucking app doesn't work on androids and doesn't work older androids back at the app fucking sucks shit like the entire way yeah like everything about this journey is designed to be painful to kill people to to strip away like the hope that people have yeah and it's and it's designed to do this to like attempt to satiate the fucking insane bloodlust of like seven dipshits in fucking like rural southern illinois and it's like okay there's literally nothing you can do to ever appease these people the only the only thing that will ever appease them is their own death like nothing you're ever going to do to these fucking immigrants is ever going to make these people like like you you could you could fucking you could put these people in a country that has
Starting point is 00:13:38 zero immigrants at all and they would still scream about it there's there's nothing you can fucking do and people have decided that in order to basically people have decided in order to try to get like a one percent higher margin in an election they're probably still going to lose they're going to just fucking inflict inhuman suffering on unbelievably large numbers of people yeah like i think that's the thing i want people to really like, grasp is that like, somebody has made a decision. Maybe we should take an ad break here. All right, advertising break. I'm Kate Max. You might know me from my popular online series, The Running Interview Show, where I run with celebrities, athletes, entrepreneurs, and more. After those runs, the conversations keep going. That's what my podcast, Post Run High, is all about. It's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories, their journeys,
Starting point is 00:14:43 and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together. You know that rush of endorphins you feel after a great workout? Well, that's when the real magic happens. So if you love hearing real, inspiring stories from the people you know, follow, and admire, join me every week for Post Run High. It's where we take the conversation beyond the run and get into the heart of it all. It's lighthearted, pretty crazy, and very fun. Listen to Post Run High on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Starting point is 00:15:19 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.
Starting point is 00:15:51 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. I found out I was related to the guy that I was dating. I don't feel emotions correctly.
Starting point is 00:16:21 I am talking to a felon right now and I cannot decide if I like him or not. Those were some callers from my call-in podcast, Therapy Gecko. It's a show where I take real phone calls from anonymous strangers all over the world as a fake gecko therapist and try to dig into their brains and learn a little bit about their lives. I know that's a weird concept, but I promise it's pretty interesting if you give it a shot. Matter of fact, here's a few more examples of the kinds of calls we get on this show. I live with my boyfriend and I found his piss jar in our apartment. I collect my roommate's toenails and fingernails. I have very overbearing parents. Even at the age of 29, they won't let me move out of their house. So if you want an excuse to get out of your own head and see what's going on in someone else's
Starting point is 00:17:09 head, search for Therapy Gecko on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's the one with the green guy on it. Hey, I'm Jack B. Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature. I'm Jack Peace Thomas, and I'm inviting you to join me and a vibrant community of literary enthusiasts dedicated to protecting and celebrating our stories. Black Lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audio books while commuting or running errands, for those who find themselves seeking solace, wisdom, and refuge between the chapters. From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture. Together, we'll dissect classics and contemporary works while uncovering the stories of the brilliant writers behind them. Blacklit is here to amplify the voices of Black writers
Starting point is 00:18:09 and to bring their words to life. Listen to Blacklit on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The 2025 iHeart Podcast Awards are coming. This is the chance to nominate your podcast for the industry's biggest award. Submit your podcast for nomination now at iHeart.com slash podcast awards.
Starting point is 00:18:32 But hurry, submissions close on December 8th. Hey, you've been doing all that talking. It's time to get rewarded for it. Submit your podcast today at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards. That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards. All right, we're back. So specifically, I want to talk about what the US is doing right now in Panama, what it started doing since July, right? That's why I wanted to go when I did.
Starting point is 00:19:03 Panama had a change of presidency in July. We we have Molina as president now and he's promised to close the Darien right if your source was his social media then you would think it was closed I saw about a thousand people a day crossing none of them had seen a barrier none of them had seen the razor wire that he's posted about they didn't know that it was this thing what they did know was that the u.s had an election in november and everybody wants to get here before that yeah you know i tried to explain that like we actually don't transition power immediately right that happens in january but everybody is concerned to get here before the election and what the u.s. is doing in Panama is the U.S. is currently funding deportations. And I saw that happening firsthand.
Starting point is 00:19:51 This is honestly one of those things that just really fucks me up. I tried to record stuff at a time, and it's all just me saying, this sucks, this is terrible. What it looks like is, so you bajo chiquito right which is bajo chiquito is an indigenous village uh it's a village of the embara people who were wonderful they were nothing but kind to me they i stayed in their houses for a week and slept in my hammock in their house i shared their food held their little babies like they they were incredible and kind hosts and uh i'm very grateful to them from bajiquito which is this tiny village right the population of bajiquito triples every day 500 people live there a thousand
Starting point is 00:20:39 people roll up every day and then they're transported in dugout canoes like a tiny canoe that is carved out from the trunk of a tree with a two-stroke bolted on the back i think i posted a picture on twitter if not i will do the migrants are taken upstream they pay 25 bucks each and they're taken five hours upstream if they don't have the money there's three canoes every day that are provided for free and they generally try and make sure that all the women and children get in those canoes right one of the things that ember has done has made everyone wear life jackets just because a lot of these people can't swim right they've been crossing rivers above their heads they told me that they made human chains right so everybody
Starting point is 00:21:18 sort of locks their arms together because the rivers wash people away they're transported from bajo chiquito to a place called lajas blancas which is the first migrant reception center in panama so they're now leaving like they don't have reservations in in panama but they're in the embra wunan comarca and then when they get there they're in the italian comarca so they're in sort of outside of an almost entirely indigenous like state of panama and in like what you would consider like panamanian government custody i guess when they enter in las blancas and when they get there they register right they show their passport they do all that stuff and that's where like un has shelters the red cross has a facility there the um highest has the hebrew immigrant aid
Starting point is 00:22:03 society global brigades all these big ngos that you're used to seeing in these places have facilities there but to leave las blancas they need 60 bucks per person to get on a bus right and if they don't have 60 bucks to get on the bus i was told these buses are owned by panamanian parliamentary deputies but i haven't been able to confirm that um jesus fucking christ yeah someone is putting 55 people on a bus taking 60 bucks from each of them and sending about 20 buses a day like someone is making a lot of money yeah people will remember that one of these buses crashed last year killing 42 migrants but the really bleak thing is it's not the bus it's not the 10-hour bus ride like those people are so happy to be getting on the bus because they're
Starting point is 00:22:51 continuing it's the people who don't have 60 bucks and like yeah they've made it this far with a combination of whatever savings they had and like incredible tenacity right like they pay someone in colombia obviously to bring them so to get to the start of their walk in dalian they leave from necocli in colombia come across an alancha like a speedboat and then they walk up to the colombian border where the guides and leave them now the guides are obviously like this area is controlled by the gulf cartel in colombia right so they have safe passage through that area none of them had anything bad to say about that area. It's when the guides leave them
Starting point is 00:23:27 and they're on their own into Panama, that's when they didn't have water, they didn't have food, because no one's told them they need water and food, to be fair, right? They didn't think it was going to take as long as it was, be as hard as it was. Lots of them have learned a little bit from TikToks and stuff,
Starting point is 00:23:42 so some of them bring a bit more, but four days of water is a lot of water like speaking from experience i backpack in the desert yeah yeah if you don't have the right equipment it's hard to carry so yeah it should heavy yeah right like you like that's the other part like if you want four liters a person right that's like gonna be four kilograms and and that's a day so you multiply that by four days what is it what is it in pounds 8.8 pounds it's four liters yeah you're also carrying this like through the fucking jungle which is yeah just like everything's wet all the time right you're sweating you're crossing rivers your feet are always wet like everyone's feet when they arrive in la has blanca so i took
Starting point is 00:24:23 pictures of this but they all have these crappy boots that they buy in necocli in colombia and every bin in bajo chiquito is full of these boots because they suck and people's like the blisters i saw and like people getting trench foot right like where the entire skin on their foot is just ready to slough off like a glove. Like, everyone buys these Crocs from a vendor in Bajo Chiquito there. But they can get through all that. Everyone who I met in Bajo Chiquito, everyone who I met on the trail had made, right? They did through tenacity. And a lot of people said it's a roulette.
Starting point is 00:25:01 You go in there and you hope for the best. Not everyone makes it, but most of them do. So the people who had made it get to go to Las Blancas, right? And if they can't afford the boat from Baja Chiquito to Las Blancas, they can walk. It's not fun. It's another eight hours of walking, right? I met some of those guys one day and I gave them water filters and stuff.
Starting point is 00:25:23 I wasn't allowed to walk with them, i was able to like talk with them and i spoke to them again when they arrived right and they get to las blancas and they're just if they don't have 60 bucks and they don't have it and then they stay there sometimes for months and this is not a place to stay for months like i they have little casitas which they have for like this one for unaccompanied children and then others i think are allocated to families but it's not much more than four walls and a roof and most people don't even get that right most people are looking for a flat spot to pitch the shitty tent that they bought in colombia and then they're just stuck there and this is obviously a relatively new policy they used to take five free people per bus, but they don't anymore. Like from Baja Chiquita,
Starting point is 00:26:08 they have three free boats a day, right? But leaving Las Blancas, if you don't have the money, then you don't leave. And the people I spoke to there who were stuck there are still stuck there. People have been stuck there for more than a month. Their children aren't going to school. They're sleeping on the ground it if this is not
Starting point is 00:26:26 a place that's designed to be a long-term residence it's designed to be like one night and moving through and every day new people arrive who can't afford it and so the population is growing and growing and growing and there seems to be no solution no one i spoke to could point to what they want them to do right like they're being given free food by the government some of them said the food wasn't great i'm not sure if it's halal like sometimes some of them said they'd seen food that had pork in it but i didn't see any food to have pork in it when i was there so maybe that's been changed but they're just stuck there yeah there's nothing they can do right if they want to have money transferred there they can do it through a local intermediary who charges a 25 fee so now if you don't have 60 yeah like you need 75 bucks now right to get your 60 bucks now
Starting point is 00:27:21 multiply that by a family of five you can start to see where it becomes inaccessible to people yeah and that's that's a lot of money like if you're in this position like that's yeah it costs so much more to travel on buses and by foot across the americans than it would to fly yeah like all of them would love to fly but they can't because we have this system that makes everyone money apart from the migrants yeah and it's like it didn't fucking it didn't fucking used to be like this like when my family came to the u.s like we didn't have to like you know we had a bunch of fucking harrowing shit to like flee the japanese and like get to taiwan but it was like when my parents like i'm like their parents like came to the u.s they just they fucking flew in yeah none of this fucking has to be the way any of this shit works it didn't
Starting point is 00:28:09 used to be the way any of this shit works and it's like like these are people from countries and you know it's like yeah obviously like my parents were like living from taiwan to the u.s right which makes it easier but these are also these are people from places that the u.s fucking hates yeah and so like you you would expect them to get like at least somewhat similar treatment to people who came from like taiwan which is at the time you know like u.s ally anti-china stuff but like no we've just decided to just feed these people into a fucking meat grinder yeah and it gets me to my next fucking trauma dump let's take a nap break before that. Yeah. Yeah. Hey guys, I'm Kate Max.
Starting point is 00:28:53 You might know me from my popular online series, The Running Interview Show, where I run with celebrities, athletes, entrepreneurs, and more. After those runs, the conversations keep going. That's what my podcast, Post Run High, is all about. It's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories, their journeys, and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together.
Starting point is 00:29:19 You know that rush of endorphins you feel after a great workout? Well, that's when the real magic happens. So if you love hearing real, inspiring stories from the people you know, follow, and admire, join me every week for Post Run High. It's where we take the conversation beyond the run and get into the heart of it all. It's lighthearted, pretty crazy, and very fun. Listen to Post Run High on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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
Starting point is 00:30:14 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. Apple Podcasts, or wherever else you get your podcasts.
Starting point is 00:30:44 Check out betteroffline.com. I found out I was related to the guy that I was dating. I don't feel emotions correctly. I am talking to a felon right now, and I cannot decide if I like him or not. Those were some callers from my call-in podcast, Therapy Gecko. It's a show where I take real phone calls from anonymous strangers all over the world as a fake gecko therapist and try to dig into their brains and learn a little bit about their lives. I know that's a weird concept, but I promise it's pretty interesting if you give it a shot. Matter of fact, here's a few more examples of the kinds of calls we get on this show.
Starting point is 00:31:21 I live with my boyfriend and I found his piss jar in our apartment. I collect my roommate's toenails and fingernails. I have very overbearing parents. Even at the age of 29, they won't let me move out of their house. So if you want an excuse to get out of your own head and see what's going on in someone else's head, search for Therapy Gecko on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's the one with the green guy on it. Hey, I'm Jack Peace Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature.
Starting point is 00:31:59 I'm Jack Peace Thomas, and I'm inviting you to join me and a vibrant community of literary enthusiasts dedicated to protecting and celebrating our stories. Black Lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audiobooks while commuting or running errands, for those who find themselves seeking solace, wisdom, and refuge between the chapters. From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture. Together, we'll dissect classics and contemporary works while uncovering the stories of the brilliant writers behind them.
Starting point is 00:32:35 Blacklit is here to amplify the voices of Black writers and to bring their words to life. Listen to Blacklit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hola, mi gente. It's Honey German, and I'm bringing you Gracias, Come Again, the podcast where we dive deep into the world of Latin culture, musica, peliculas, and entertainment
Starting point is 00:32:56 with some of the biggest names in the game. If you love hearing real conversations with your favorite Latin celebrities, artists, and culture shifters, this is the podcast for you. We're talking real conversations with our Latin celebrities, artists, and culture shifters, this is the podcast for you. We're talking real conversations with our Latin stars, from actors and artists to musicians and creators, sharing their stories, struggles, and successes.
Starting point is 00:33:13 You know it's going to be filled with chisme laughs and all the vibes that you love. Each week, we'll explore everything, from music and pop culture, to deeper topics like identity, community, and breaking down barriers in all sorts of industries. Don't miss out on the fun, el té caliente, and life stories. Join me for Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German,
Starting point is 00:33:32 where we get into todo lo actual y viral. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We're back. Okay. So yeah, as Mia mentioned, right, these are places that the US considers to be dictatorial or oppressive regimes, right?
Starting point is 00:33:57 Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, the three that come to mind of people that I met, right? And so a lot of these people have what's called a temporary protected status in the US. It doesn't mean that they necessarily can't be deported sometimes they can but sometimes it makes it a bit harder right to deport to those countries panama it's not governed by united states immigration law yeah we gave on the day that molino took office alejandro mayorkas himself the child of migrants from cuba I believe, went to Panama,
Starting point is 00:34:27 attended the inauguration, and then announced this $6 million aid package, right, which the US was going to give to fund deportations from Panama directly. And I got to see those deportations happening, right? Like you'll hear them in my scripted series. But like watching somebody take a dad away from his baby or a mother away from her children or one man's brother away from his brother like it's just heartbreaking these people have crossed the daddy and right they've undertaken a journey like i've done a lot of mountaineering i've done a lot of climbing i like to fuck around outside but like i've never done anything where i didn't know if i was going to come back really and like they've done that they've taken this incredibly difficult journey and then when they get to the other side you you you you and you they get picked out and
Starting point is 00:35:20 they get deported back right on flights that are paid for by your tax dollars and my tax dollars and they get deported back right on flights that are paid for by your tax dollars and my tax dollars yeah and this includes flights to cuba this includes flights to venezuela right places that the u.s considers to be like dictatorial regimes and now these people are back in cuba they're back in venezuela but their government knows that they tried to leave and they've spent all their fucking savings so they're back in square one i spoke to a few colombians they've spent all their fucking savings so they're back in square one i spoke to a few colombians they've also deported a lot of colombian people most of the colombian people i spoke to in las blancas were deported they called all the colombian nationals to jesus the office and then these i was told that they were only deporting people who had like warrants like pending cases
Starting point is 00:36:02 but when these people got back to colombia they were just free to go right like if you have a pending case and someone delivers you to the government yeah i'm not an expert in colombian law enforcement but it seems like that would be a good time to prosecute that case yeah and these people tell me that they've been let go none of them told me if they had warrants now like i'm just going off what they said but that night they were texting me pictures themselves in handcuffs by the next day they were back in medellin telling me that they'd been sent home including like i was talking to a lady just before we recorded who she doesn't know where her children's father her husband is right she's and lots of people will
Starting point is 00:36:41 have like i guess what's the english translation like free unions like a um when they're like married for legal reasons they don't go and have a wedding but they're considered to be married common law marriage i guess would be the phrase right like they've lived together for a number of years share a house etc often have children but they're not like they never had a wedding so i don't know if that document makes a difference, but I watched people have their children taken out their arms and be shoved in the back of trucks and be deported. And like that fucking sucks. That is not something that I want to see again.
Starting point is 00:37:19 And it happens every single day there. And it happens because your taxes are paying for it. It didn't used to happen. And now it does. And it's just heartbreaking. Like, I don't really, like, it's, there's nothing you can do. You know, there's no, you know, I can't do anything to stop it. You can't do anything to stop it, right?
Starting point is 00:37:41 Like, you can vote for Donald Trump, who would like to machine gun every asylum seeker at the border if he got a chance. Or you can vote to Kamala Harris, who has presided over record migrant deaths every year of her administration, who's sending your money to support people in Panama, who knows that the choices that she's made are resulting in like death in panama death here right like there
Starting point is 00:38:05 were four people who died and then the heat wave in the first week of september four people who died in otai mountain wilderness like in a tiny area 10 miles across of border in san diego and my friends had to go and search their bodies and my friends found their remains and I had to confront the fact that like this is the toll of the rhetoric like this is what the rhetoric costs the other thing I want to mention is that like even in the most desperate moments of their lives everyone looked out for one another in a way that like we don't hear like one of the things that really struck me was that like everyone's kids are just kind of out and about right no one's particularly afraid of anyone hurting their kids like all of these kids and i saw people who got split up in the gap find each other again in bajo chiquito and
Starting point is 00:38:57 like you know there were strangers who'd carried someone's children for two days because that other person was so tired or they had another child they needed to carry. And like, yeah, I'm strangely comfortable, I guess, in refugee camps. Like I'm,
Starting point is 00:39:10 I, I went to Panama city afterwards and like, I couldn't handle it. It was too much for me. And I had to stay in my hotel room. And like, I guess it was just difficult, but like,
Starting point is 00:39:20 I, I feel safe in those places. I feel comfortable. And like, in a sense, it's where you see the best of us and the worst of us, I guess. Like I can't imagine being in a place
Starting point is 00:39:32 where I know I could lose my life if I slip and fall. And then thinking, well, I've got to carry this little kid. Never met this kid before. I don't share a language. You know, there was a group from Angola and they'd
Starting point is 00:39:45 been carrying venezuelan children right they can't even talk to one another but they'd they'd potentially risk their lives to help yeah it's it's it's pretty fucking bleak i'm staying in touch with everyone i met and and they're telling me about their journeys to the border unfortunately the thing that comes next is an eight to nine month delay as they apply for a cbp1 appointment and like i wish i could offer something hopeful like i guess what i'll say is what i always say that like there isn't anyone you can vote for who will fix this like you can vote for cornell west or jill stein like i'm not going to vote for someone who fucking supports the policies that are creating refugees in syria right whatever i'm not suggesting that that's the solution either like the things that you need to do are like there is a person helping migrants in your community
Starting point is 00:40:36 i spoke to a jesuit shelter i'll put them in my scripted episode like i'm not a big religious shelter guy but these guys were fucking great uh these guys are saving people's lives and making sure that people have the basic necessity like literally turning up at the refugee camp and making sure everyone had toilet roll and uh toothbrushes and things that yeah you don't need for one night but you're going to be there for a month you don't have you know what are you going to do spend five bucks on toothbrush and toothpaste but that's five less bucks you have for your bus fare, right? So like, I'll put them out there.
Starting point is 00:41:09 I would love to do a fundraiser. Like if anyone can work out how to facilitate transfers to migrants who are in the camp for free, that would be great. That would be a service that would make things considerably easier for people. But the way that you fix this is showing up like it's showing up at the border if you live near the border it's showing up in your community it's countering this like with people in your family in your circle like there's a tacit agreement i think in in the entire corporate media that migrants are humans without rights like they're just numbers
Starting point is 00:41:45 to these people because i don't see them talking to migrants right like these are people who you know like i help them change their babies i carried their bags for them i played with their kids so they could go take a shower like that they're people just like anyone else of course they are right but like yeah i, they're important to me. And it's fucking miserable to see my tax dollars used to make these people suffer. Yeah. These people should be more important than the fucking sons of boat dealers who's fucking got the land they live on because their ancestors fucking shot a bunch of people. Yeah. bunch of people yeah like that's that's what's happening here is that these people who are you know some of the most courageous people in the entire world are being sacrificed to appease
Starting point is 00:42:28 a bunch of fucking shits it's a level of evil that is just unfathomable yeah i think like we really shouldn't i'm somewhat ranting now but like yeah the pivot that even the democrats have done in the last four years right like those people need to be held accountable for what is resulting in like babies dying like i saw dead kids i saw that because kamala harris and joe biden whichever other fucking democrat senators and representatives keep voting for this shit decided that it was okay for those babies to die because they didn't want fox news to say mean stuff about them or nbc to say mean stuff about them right like of course they're trying to move that stuff as far away from you as possible of
Starting point is 00:43:15 course they want the deportations to be done in panama not here so you don't see it in your community and of course they want people to die crossing the darien and not at our border because that's removed and you don't hear it reported on right like it's not a venezuelan woman died on thursday we're recording this on tuesday like wednesday you don't see that reported right you don't see that there are little kids bodies in the jungle reported because it's out of sight and out of mind and like i guess the thing you can do is constantly bring it back into people's minds and make them accountable for their choices. I guess this is a point where the electoralists get mad at me. I'm not voting for someone who chose that.
Starting point is 00:43:55 Yeah. I never could. I couldn't live with myself if I did. A system which reduces our political engagement to ticking a box every four years is asinine and and child like like i would much rather be out there every day helping people than voting once every four years and and like you can do both of course you can but yeah there's not a voting solution for this like it requires all of us to do a lot of work because we're so far down the path which
Starting point is 00:44:23 ends in a really terrible place, right? It's already a terrible place. So these people's lives don't matter and that their children's lives don't matter and that we shouldn't care if they're dying in the jungle. And we've got a lot of work to do to get back from that because apparently it's okay with a lot of people in this country.
Starting point is 00:44:39 Yeah. I think part of the reason why it's gotten this bad is that the social movements that had pushed the Democrats in a slightly better direction in the late 2010s stopped social movement. So the only thing that these people will respond to is like they're actually being mass mobilizations and them feeling politically threatened by it. So, you know, we've done it before. We can do it again. feeling politically threatened by it so you know we've done it before we can do it again yeah the biggest march in this country's history was a march of migrants right we can do that again so many of us myself included came here to have a chance at a better future and like even if you didn't show some solidarity with people like showing up in massive numbers yeah these movements stop social social movement and people fell out of the little things.
Starting point is 00:45:25 But this shit is important and I think we can build some bridges and we need to do something to stop this because it's horrific. And so is the genocide in Gaza.
Starting point is 00:45:36 We need to do something to stop that too. But we're not going to do it through voting. 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 now find sources for It Could Happen Here listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.
Starting point is 00:46:03 Hey guys, I'm Kate Max. You might know me from my popular online series, The Running Interview Show, episode descriptions. Thanks for listening. is all about. It's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories, their journeys, and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together. Listen to Post Run High 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 tech's elite and how they've 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
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Starting point is 00:47:23 But hurry, submissions close on December 8th. Hey, you've been doing all that talking. It's time to get rewarded for it. Submit your podcast today at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards. Welcome to Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get real and dive straight into We're talking music, and all things trending in my culture.
Starting point is 00:47:51 I'm bringing you all the latest happening in our entertainment world and some fun and impactful interviews with your favorite Latin artists, comedians, actors, and influencers. Each week, we get deep and raw life stories, combos on the issues that matter to us, and it's all packed with gems, fun, straight up comedia, and that's a song that only nuestra gente can sprinkle. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Starting point is 00:48:14 or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Jacqueline Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature. Black Lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audiobooks while running errands or at the end of a busy day. From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture. Listen to Black Lit on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app,
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