It Could Happen Here - Jane's Revenge

Episode Date: May 16, 2022

We discuss the new pro-choice direct action group who carried out a Molotov attack on a Wisconsin anti abortion group headquarters.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadowbride. Join me, Danny Trejo, and step into the flames of fright. An anthology podcast of modern-day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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

brought to you by an industry veteran with nothing to lose. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts from. On Thanksgiving Day 1999, five-year-old Cuban boy Elian Gonzalez was found off the coast of Florida. And the question was, should the boy go back to his father in Cuba? Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or stay with his relatives in Miami? Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts 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 audio books 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, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. AT&T. Connecting changes everything. If I know one thing about diseases, it's that they're homebodies. No, it's fine. They just want to Netflix and chill.

We just line up the entire population of the U.S. in a line across the U.S. and we shoot any deer that tries to cross the line. I think we should do the reverse and have deer shoot people who try to cross the line. It's the only thing that can protect us from the dangerous East. No, no, no. Look, look.

Well, I guess it works in east in the west we have to maintain the right to arm bears yep i'm i'm of the opinion given how dry it is in new mexico that we need to sink every part of the country east of new mexico to give it a coast that can that can keep it moist i wonder how much of this is going to get in the final cut well if you live east of new Mexico, welcome to the ocean. That's my suggestion. Speaking of people east of New Mexico, this is It Could Happen Here, a podcast where some of the listeners are east of New Mexico,

even though I don't recommend that. I'm Robert Evans. On the call with me is Christopher Wong, Garrison Davis, Shereen Lonnie Yunus, and then our producer Sophie. Today we're talking about terrorism. We can do it in a little NPR voice. So recently, the same week as the Supreme Court leaked a document stating that they would be taking out Roe v. Wade and ushering in an era of theocratic fascism in a number of states.

An individual or individuals unknown in Wisconsin attacked an anti-choice headquarters building with a Molotov cocktail and spray-painted graffiti on the side saying, if abortion isn't safe, then you aren't either. That same group or individuals claiming to be from them later reached out to me through an intermediary and sent a manifesto of sorts about the attack, promising follow-up attacks within 30 days. But they wrote in cursive. So who can say? Who can say if this actually happened? So we'll talk first.

I'm going to just go over first what happened in factual terms, and then we'll talk first let i'm going to just go over first what what happened in like factual terms and then we'll talk about the discourse around it so basically there's this attack on this um anti-choice like advocacy organizations headquarters in fucking wisconsin um it was a seemed to be a pretty good molotov in that uh like garrison you and i have watched a number of people fail to properly utilize Molotov cocktails. I've watched a few people get ignited by Molotovs. It is easy to fuck up. I've watched one not-cop get ignited by a Molotov.

I've seen a couple not-cops get ignited by Molotovs. Yeah. They're not, like, people can fuck them up easily. Whoever did this did not fuck them up. It was, seemed to be, at the moment, no one has been arrested. Now, it's possible by the time this drops, Wisconsin police will be like, oh no, there was totally surveillance footage and they fucked up and we just caught them. But at the moment, it doesn't look like that's the case. So it looks like this is somebody who carried out,

or some buddies, because it's entirely possible it was multiple people, but carried out a very effective action that did material damage to part of kind of the physical infrastructure of the anti-choice movement and ended without anyone getting caught. So that's the fact of the actual attack itself. fact of the actual attack itself. A person who claiming to be affiliated with the individuals or group who did this reached out to a source of mine who I'm keeping anonymous, but somebody who I've known for a while with a very good track record of being accurate and said, hey, these individual slash individuals have a communique they would like put out. And I was sent an, an on files link, which is a link.

If you view it in a normal browser, you'll get some fucked up shit. Don't put it in a normal browser. I specified it's like you're supposed to, if you put it in tour, it will download a text file. Right. And the text file is the communique.

Okay. So using the tour browser for that link, you can get a text file in which they lay out. Number one, they name themselves and the name they've chosen for their group is Jane's Revenge, which is a reference to the Jane Collective, which was a pro-choice group in the late 60s, early 70s that provided women with access to contraception and abortion illegally. A bunch of them went to jail. They were pardoned after Roe v. Wade, if I'm not mistaken, or at least otherwise. If you want to know more about it, listen to Margaret Kiljoy's Cool People Do Cool Stuff two-parter on the Jink Look. Yeah, yeah, very well-timed. So they're calling themselves Jane's Revenge, and they basically said, hey, if you are an organization in the anti-choice movement, you have 30 days to close down your operations. Otherwise, there will be follow-up attacks.

They specifically noted the long, and it's at this point like a 40 years long history of terrorist attacks from the anti-choice movement, many of which have assassinated doctors, something like 16 people have been killed, dozens of bombs and bombing attempts, something like 100 acid attacks. So they made a note of all that and said that basically we will be responding in kind, and attacks after this initial attack will be correspondingly more severe. They also claimed to have a pretty wide geographic reach, said they had folks in a number of cities, and that, yeah, there's going to be follow-up attacks, and they're prepared to defend their bodily autonomy with violence. So that's the gist of what was claimed in the communique. In terms of what I think about its legitimacy, I don't have any reason to believe they're not representing the individual or individuals who carried out that

attack in Wisconsin, based on the timing of when the communique was made and based on the fact that the communique is pretty consistent with what we saw from the actual action, right? So among other things, what you can tell from the physical action that was taken is that the individual or individuals who did this were pretty well organized. They carried out a competent action and they thought there was a value in very clear messaging because there's clear messaging surrounding the attack. The communique is very clear messaging. It does not sound like a right-winger writing up a fake communique. It's very, it takes great pains to both connect itself to history, to frame its violence within the context of the violence perpetuated by the anti-choice movement for decades.

And just in general not it's legitimate. One helpful thing they did is state that there would be more attacks in 30 days. So we're kind of waiting. If 30 days pass and there's never any kind of follow-up attacks by this group, then we can probably assume that this was either somebody bullshitting or that the heat got too much for them and they decided not to carry out follow-up attacks. But we're all kind of in this holding pattern now to see what happens. My personal speculation is that they were exaggerating a number of things. I think that their claims about having members in a number of states and a capacity to strike in a number of states was more aspirational than literal um in that i suspect the people behind this attack and this communique are hoping that by

um carrying out attacks they can inspire other people to carry out attacks and credit it to the same organization right yes which is not an uncommon tactic in the history of terrorism and again this is terrorism like that doesn't mean I don't think they have a point or that it's fundamentally unjust. Terrorism is just like a set of tactics that different groups can use, and it can be ethical or unethical depending on how you choose to do that. You can attack purely infrastructure in a terrorist manner, and I don't think that's necessarily unethical.

And you can also attack civilians in a terrorist manner manner and i think that is unethical at this moment these people have not done anything i view as inherently unethical they burned a building um which i think is often justified and is in this case justified so that's that's my opinion on the matter let's open it up on the point you kind of closed with i mean yeah they showed effective direct action they did a physical thing molotovs are not the best way to do like to like arson a building, but they are good for a very quick attack. It caused this whole media thing, right? There's a lot of people talking about it, then releasing the communique through someone who can give it a lot of visibility. And then by doing it with this name, Jane's Revenge, and saying in 30 days there will be more attacks of this larger thing. If you spread it around, then it can become this thing that anyone can glom onto. You don't need to be a part of a member of a specific group.

You can just do stuff and release communiques safely and add on to the specter. Yeah, it's not hard to set up like a text drop in the same manner that they did it is relatively secure like there's no perfect if you are committing terrorism there is no perfect manner to issue a statement um but of the different things they could have chosen this is relatively secure especially doing it through an intermediary i haven't had direct contact with these people but um we should probably note that there's a huge discourse that started before the communique came out arguing that this is like a false flag attack yeah that's yes the in in a long line of calling pretty well-planned out direct action,

when it actually happens, people will default to calling it an op or calling it a false flag from a variety of people. Like there's like libs who say, oh, this is a staged thing to make our movement look bad. There's tankies who think

it's like the CIA planning something. There's random other folks who are like, eh, I don't know if it's legit. I think maybe it's like the CIA planning something. There's random other folks who are like, eh, I don't know if it's legit. I think maybe it's like some... A lot of people get various justifications for calling pretty effective acts of direct action

and questioning their legitimacy. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters

to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of my Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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. 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 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 stars, from actors and artists to musicians and creators, sharing their stories, struggles, and successes. 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, 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.

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 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. your podcasts. I think some of this comes from, because there's obviously there's the bad faith elements of this, but I think the good faith folks who question it, there's a lot of learned helplessness there. This idea that because somebody did carry out a pretty successful direct action attack that kind of did what its intention was, then it has to have been the FBI or whoever, right? Because obviously the left could never have pulled off something as cunning as throwing a single Molotov at a building and spray painting

the side of it, you know? And I do think that that's a problem, whether or not you think the solution to issues like the right-wing attack on reproductive health care come from direct action. The fact that folks almost can't conceive of effective action being taken by the left without the feds being involved is really an issue. Yeah, and this was a huge thing during 2020. Like one of the things that we saw – there were so many just weird conspiracy theories. 2020 like one of the things that we saw there were so many just weird conspiracy theories and then the other thing that happened very quickly was

people became convinced almost immediately that anyone doing anything was it was a federal infiltrator and you got people you got crowds turning people over to police you got people on Twitter like trying to track down um like who was throwing molotovs and videos and like one of the

people they caught they turned turned over to the police it turned out had been the girlfriend of someone who got killed by the cops. This stuff has real world consequences. It has already sent people to jail. It has this enormous

demobilizing effect. Do people remember the two big 2020... Okay. The two big Twitter conspiracies were... Bricks! Bricks! Who's dropping off the bricks in the protest?

Yeah, yeah. There's this whole thing where people would see a pallet of bricks and they were like, oh my god. Famous thing never seen in a major American city. Bricks. Right next to a construction site. They'll be like, how are all these pallets of bricks showing up? Right next to a construction site. They'll be like, how are all these pallets of bricks showing up?

There's like a construction site a block away. You're like, okay. Who's distributing the fireworks? How do these fireworks get here? Never mind, it's June 29th. If you look at the history of like the FBI, some people will mistakenly like throw the CIA in there. The CIA doesn't really tend to do like the domestic fuckery. will mistakenly like throw the cia in there the cia doesn't really

tend to do like the domestic fuckery um their international fuckery but like if you look at the history of the fbi fucking with left-wing social movements it's not by handing out brick pallets yeah like that's not what they do we have a lot of documentation about what they do and it's not bricks and if there is some secret group who's maliciously giving out bricks so people attack, throw them through windows or throw them at cop cars, like, who cares? Like, bricks are getting thrown at cop cars.

It doesn't matter where they come from. Like, people are still choosing to do action. Yeah, the best example of this is the Russian Revolution in 1905. The Russian Revolution of 1905 was started by a guy who was a police agent like his whole thing is he was he was working to create like police like unions that could be controlled by the state and he marched a bunch of people into a square and the police

shot them and that's how and that's that's literally how the russian revolution started like it doesn't it doesn't it like there's a there's a point okay there's two layers of this one is that like there there almost is never a conspiracy going on. And two, if the conspiracy is we want to push people towards doing things. The less involved parties, the more likely it is. So if there's a choice between rad people fucking up an anti-choice headquarters versus a government conspiracy to do false flag operations to make the anti-choice, to make the abortion movement look bad, like one of those is much more simple and much more likely, and it's people just deciding to do stuff. Because guess what? You can actually do that.

You don't need to rely on these weird narratives to justify your uncomfortableness at forms of radical direct action. Because people use that false flag idea so they don't need to actually engage with what direct action will mean and if it is someone's moral imperative to physically attack physical manifestations of these sources of oppression. Yeah, I think you're themselves on the left are like focusing their time not on doing anything and not on taking any action to materially change the conditions they're angry at. But are instead looking for reasons to disavow other folks on the left and that that's like the primary. left and that that's like the primary, which is if you, again, if you like, look, look at what we know Herbert Hoover was saying about the FBI's COINTELPRO program was the goal of COINTELPRO, right?

Yeah, that's exactly what I was thinking. I'm just like, I feel like this promotes, I don't know, a morality like race or like just like competition where the only thing it does is just promote infighting when you have this, like, you're on your morality horse. But I think if you actually support real change, you have to come to terms with, like, you have to do illegal things. And, like, holding on to, like, these made-up laws that someone made up about like how to achieve change is useless and there's i mean like dividing up a side that's supposed to be going for the same thing like that's exactly yeah it's just it's missing the whole point and people don't really yeah if you look at the right you've got all these folks who were like legal and and whatnot uh

who were like legal and whatnot proponents of ending reproductive healthcare access. And then you have the folks who were doing repeated acts of terrorism. And the folks who were on the legal side of things didn't disavow those people. They were often affiliated with churches that did shit like auction off the possessions of like extremists who had murdered doctors and shit.

Like they were like, even the most they would do is just not directly talk about those people. They didn't disavow them. They didn't like attack it because they understood that a diversity of tactics was going to be how they achieved their goals. That it was a mix of pushing for these legal changes

and carrying out so many terroristic attacks that it frightened people away from supporting um abortion service providers and other kind of reproductive health care service providers i think that's the biggest difference between the right and the left though like republicans are really good at uniting on this big picture and i feel like democrats are not i feel like they just uh i don't know's too, there's too much fighting and that's why it's always fractured. Part of it is that on the Republican side, you have Republicans and you have the far right who are also Republicans. And even though a lot of folks on the far right bitch

about the centrists in their, like the folks who are closer to the center, they all get in line for really radical stuff. Like the center of the Republican Party always yields to the radicals, whereas Democrats do not acknowledge leftists as having anything to do with the Democratic Party or Democratic politics, other than to yell at them when they don't vote. And on the other hand of things,

there's a lot of folks on the left who hate liberals more than they hate fascists. And it's – I think one of those is a bigger problem than the other. I think the failure of the democratic establishment to like deal with the left at all or make any kind of progress that could be seen as actually left-wing is much more of the problem. Yeah, but I think there are structural reasons for that too, which is, okay, if you look at what is the basis of conservative alliance, right? If you're a conservative, you know, okay, if you're from the sort of like moderate business wing of the party,

if you're from the fascist wing of the party, right, you can have one judge who gives both of you the things that you want, right? you're if you're like the coke brothers the thing that you want is deregulation right you want to be able to just like dump poison into the environment if you're on if you're on if you're an evangelical the thing that you want is uh you know to no one can ever have an abortion again and you know if you if you're like a fascist i don know, maybe you want like we don't give food to immigrant children anymore. So they starve to death. And one judge can give you all of those same things because the sort of the class and social issues of the Republican base can all be fused together without harboring each other but the problem with with with this with the democratic party is that like the democratic party's basis is like what's left of the union movement but then also like a bunch of corporations and banks and like weapons manufacturers and stuff but then also like a bunch of angry

students and also like a bunch of people from different minority groups and all of these people like have different interests and you know and the democratic party ultimately like the thing the thing that they care about is keeping capitalism going and you know if they have to like if if that means that yeah i mean well okay if if your thing is you want to keep capitalism going like of course you're just going to throw your left wing out to the wolves right like it it it makes sense for them to do this because the part of their base that actually matters isn't like the labor movement. It's like it's Goldman Sachs.

I think one of the other things that causes people to have this like immediately, anytime someone does graffiti, people remember like when Nancy Pelosi's driveway got graffitied. Oh yeah, yeah. Now see, that was like, that's never, never, that's horrible don't

graffiti nancy pelosi's driveway that's evil yeah like that's an isis you did an isis there yeah everyone lost their mind and was like oh this is obviously a false flag and it's like what you know but the reason they do this is because they have they have like democrat optics brain where like instead of anything being about politics. Everything is just about optics. And optics. How does it look? How does it look?

How does it look? And the only people who care about this. Are weird pundits. But because everyone is so absorbed. In the Twitter media sphere. They think that the actual general public. Cares about the things that pundits care about. Because the only thing they're seeing.

Is pundits writing angry articles. But nobody cared. Zero people about because the only thing they're seeing is pundits writing angry articles but like nobody cared like zero people especially the graffiti thing because man yeah people like dissect how someone sprayed an anarchist a yeah yeah if you're not aware like a big chunk of the discourse re it being a false flag or whatever was that the spray painted yeah and that they they did they did like they did like um the anarchy a inside the inside the circle um and it's wild because i mean spray painting uh what they said like if abortions aren't safe then you aren't either in cursive is a genius move it's great because if you spray paint it in some like random punk font, that's easy to be ignored.

Like, oh, it's just people doing like whatever, yeah, people spray painting stuff. But doing it like methodically in cursive is actually a really good choice because you're like, oh, it's like we're dealing with adults. It's like the type of things

that people will go through their minds when they look at it is great. And it's just a weird denial to assume that no one who takes radical direct action would ever write in cursive it's just it's like the most brain worms thing and it's also like it's also very clear like like okay so i i am very bad at spray painting right but like i have i have used a spray paint can and because i have used a spray paint well this isn't like i was i was i was i was making i was making banners for stuff so this wasn't even like this wasn't even crying but this is just like

regular spray painting it's like that is hard like writing that in cursive and having it look that nice with the spray paint can is like difficult which you know if if you think about this about five seconds this makes it more likely that it's actually leftist doing this because it's like what okay hold on so the anti-abortion people have one person who's really really good at graffiti and this is the person that they've assigned yeah they sent him to the anarchist school in secret to like learn it's like it's nonsense but it's like people people just people want everything to sort of like like and i think this is the other angle of this is that people think that like have this wild over assessment of the capacity of the state yeah and they think that anytime something looks slightly weird it's like oh it must be the state like like one of the

one of the things that happened with with the brooklyn shooting too was like you had all these people there was a tweet going around that was like oh what the the cameras just happened all all the cameras all the cameras in new york were working except the exact one that would have caught the shooter and this is like everyone circled around this and everyone was like oh my god this is a false flag and then no it turned out that like the guy had literally called the police but the police were so incompetent that like other people like saw him on the street and got to him before like the cops did and the camera it turned out wasn't even like the camera that was out wasn't even the camera that like like they had

him on camera it was a different camera but it was like everyone everyone just immediately has this like conspiracy brain thing where they see like one thing out of context that looks slightly weird and they go oh my god this whole thing is a state, like CIA, like false flag cover-up. It's so depressing because it's so depowering. You're specific. It ties into the learn helplessness thing that Robert mentioned. Like you're convincing yourself

that we don't have power to change things, that we cannot take any physical action to change things. And that's a not great mentality to have if you want to improve the world if or if you want to if you want to destroy the things that harm you um you do you don't want to fall into that to that specific like i don't have any power mindset because you turns out you can do stuff it things happen you can people threw a malt off and broke windows and did graffiti shall we say cool people sometimes do cool things yes just like the name of the podcast do people stuff yes i'm gonna plug the show plug the show sophie sophie sophie sophie that's my name

sophie That's my name. Sophie. Sophie. Welcome. I'm Danny Trejo. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora, an anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you.

Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of my Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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 the 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. 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. 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, 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. 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 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 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 Piece, 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. app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. One of the things that's interesting to me, and it might hold some lessons for folks thinking about radical direct action and what gets attention and what doesn't. So obviously, this attack has garnered a lot of national attention, right? The fact that, and I think

it's because there was both an attack and a message. There was another attack, and it's not 100 percent that this had anything to do with the pro-choice movement, but I suspect it does. The attorney general of Virginia, Jason Miyares, on the 10th of May, there was a – someone was shot into his office, like a bullet was found in the office. It was probably fired when no one was there. We don't really know more than that. It is unclear as to whether or not this is involved with things. But three days before the shot was fired into his office, he had basically Catholic groups had been planning big masses to celebrate the leaked draft opinion, and protesters had been organizing to protest the Catholic masses, and he had threatened to charge people who protested masses

because he believes the right to freedom of religion trumps the right to free speech. So it was kind of like a fucked up situation. People got angry at Miyares. And it seems kind of noteworthy that someone shot into his office three days after this. Also, I mean, there's been a lot of stuff. I mean, like on May 8th, there was an attack on the Oregon Right to Life building. Yes, yes, yes. Which was certainly a pro-choice action.

Yeah, there was at least two Molotov cocktails thrown, and there was a break-in inside. So it's, like, you can do things. You don't have no power. Like, you can interact with politics in a physical way. Yeah, people do interact with politics in a physical way. Yeah, and people have this assumption that, like, this is going to be incredibly unpopular.

And again, I want to point out, burning the third precinct had a higher approval rating than both presidential candidates. Like which I mean, I again tend to advocate in 2024. We should elect the burning of the third precinct in Minneapolis as president. Look, look, the way that works is the burning of the precinct takes office and then then every day you burn another precinct so that you can actually have a president. Well, that is how you fill the cabinet. Yeah. There needs to— That too. Yeah, yeah. You have to—well, yeah.

All the staff positions filled with different— Yes, all the staff positions. The Health and Human Services Secretary will be the West Los Angeles Police Station and so forth. Yes. I'm real excited to see which one gets picked for the housing secretary i am just on my on my toes just yeah it's exciting it's exciting democracy can be really quite fun electoralism has some has some really cool really cool points um yeah hey you you too could go in front of the national labor

relations board and the national labor relations Board is just seven on-fire police stations. You will win. So, yeah, we wanted to at least talk about this because whenever a cool thing happens and a large swath of people who are ostensibly leftists or even

anarchists default to calling anything cool a false flag or an op, it's like, well, what do you want? Do you want people just to stay at home all the time and not do anything? What's the end goal here if you're calling everything that happens an op? Yeah, and also just like if you're going to,

if you're worried about ops and thinking of suggesting that something might be, what is your line? Is it just that people broke a law? Are you saying that if people do illegal things, that's always like a government op? Because that doesn't seem like if you call yourself an anarchist, that doesn't seem like a good strategy. Yeah. I mean, especially when it comes to reproductive rights, like you're going to have to do illegal things. People are going to have to break a shit.

Exactly. Shireen. Yeah. Pick and choose. Yeah. Yeah. I'm a hundred percent convinced that like all of these people, if they'd seen John Brown would have been completely convinced that John

Brown. Oh, John Brown was for sure. The FBI. He founded it. The original op, John Brown. he founded it the original op john brown i think there's an aspect there of also like okay if if you're on twitter right mostly you're not doing politics and the the the thing that

you're actually doing on twitter is trying to feel smarter than everyone else and if you're the person that's like oh hey look all these sheeple believe that this thing wasn't an op or like oh i i all these people believe yeah it's like it's like yeah okay you very quickly like spiral into just like every all all the sheeple who are i a smart person who finds this suspicious you're like yeah yeah and it's like it's just a bad like looking at an element of events and going, oh, this is weird. But in a way that is, oh, isn't this weird? It must be the government. Like that's that's just a bad way of thinking. Like in in the mere hours, in the mere minutes after anonymous people broke into the Portland Police Association headquarters back in, I think, was July of 2020.

Just in mere hours, people were calling it a false flag, that the police were dressed up as black bloc, breaking into their own buildings. They credited it as the feds. The feds. Because they said people had started protesting the feds, yes. They alleged that this was like, I guess, the FBI or Homeland Security trying to get protesters angry at the cops again, which is, I mean, for one thing, if that ever would actually happen,

if there were to be a point where the left wing had the FBI fighting, or the FBI or Homeland Security, whatever, fighting with local police over who was getting protested, that's a win. That's a big, solid capital dub for the team. But no, people thinking like the FBI is in block breaking into the police union building and trying to light it on fire.

You're like, well... Doing less physical, let's be honest, doing less damage to that police union building that I have seen my friends do when attempting to deep fry French fries. I have watched people do more damage to their living rooms than that protest did to the PBA building.

But it's just astonishing, because there was so many people at that action and so many people using the moment to actually gain physical political power for a brief moment. And to take that away from them is just a bizarre impulse and i i would like to see it end especially as we're gonna see hopefully see that people will realize that that that direct action is going to become more and more important for securing your personal rights and securing your personal freedom yeah and also i would say these people okay if you want to be completely sure that something is happening it's not an op do it yourself stop yelling about it on twitter look do it yourself then you'll know it's not an op as a general rule as a general rule look at france what do the french do whenever something they consider a right gets taken away from them they burn downtown paris town they light banks

on fire they like paris everyone who has gets elected to a position of power in france knows that if they cross certain lines the capital will be ungovernable um and there's a reason why french people have such quality health care well with with with that no i mean i can't believe we're ending on the note be be like the french i just is that is uh the french have made a lot of good calls a lot of good calls. A lot of bad ones, too. Not trying to whitewash France, but there's a number of things they got spot on.

So, anyway, we will be counting down the days until that 30-day marker. And who knows? Maybe other attacks will happen with people also calling themselves Jane's Revenge. And obviously, this is something that we as journalists have no opinion on one way or the other. We're just reporting, just pure reporting. Anyway, listen to cool people who did cool stuff to hear about the Jane Collective.

Yeah, and maybe also recreationally read about what different civilian groups are doing in Ukraine and the degree to which a wide variety of incredibly available tools can be repurposed in neat ways. All right. I think that's the sode. That's a good sode. That's the sode. 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. Thanks for listening.

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