It Could Happen Here - SEIU 1000 Union Rep of the IE Reports Live from the Frontline

Episode Date: September 29, 2025

Prop's friend, Tanjint Wiggy aka Tristian is the the elected Union negotiator for the health workers in the Inland Empire of California. We talk to him about the highs and lows of negotiating with the state, ICE raids, the jailing of David Huerta and how we can stand in solidarity with them. @tanjint Itsonlyempire.com  @famlikleySee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Hi there, this is Josh Clark from the Stuff You Should Know podcast. If you've been thinking, man alive, I could go for some good true crime podcast episodes, then have we got good news for you. Stuff You Should Know just released a playlist of 12 of our best true crime episodes of all time. There's a shootout in broad daylight, people using axes in really terrible ways, disappearances, legendary heists, the whole nine yards. So check out the Stuff You Should Know true crime playlist.

Hi Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The murder of an 18-year-old girl in Graves County, Kentucky, went unsolved for years, until a local housewife, a journalist, and a handful of girls came forward with a story. America, y'all better work the hell up. Bad things happens to good people in small towns. Listen to Graves County on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And to binge the entire season ad-free, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Jorge Ramos.

And I'm Paola Ramos. Together we're launching The Moment, a new podcast about what it means to live through a time as uncertain as this one. We sit down with politicians, artists, and activists, to bring you. death and analysis from a unique Latino perspective. The moment is a space for the conversations we've been having as father and daughter for years. Listen to The Moment with Jorge Ramos and Paola Ramos on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. People called them murderers.

Ten years later, they were gods. Today, no one knows their names. A group of maverick surgeons who took on the medical establishment who risked everything to invent Open Heart Surgery. Welcome to the Wild West of American Medicine. I'm Chris Pine and this is Cardiac Cowboys. If you like medical dramas, if you like heart pounding thrillers, you will love cardiac cowboys. Listen on the IHeart Radio app or wherever you listen to podcasts. Sponsored by Jasper, AI Build for Marketers. Cool Zone Media.

Recording in progress. Okay, check this out. Now, I have always been amazed by when I take a second to actually tap into, like, my actual network of just friends. You know, you have friends in categories, you know what I'm saying? Yeah, it's just like this friend. You can call me, work homie. Yeah, you know what I'm saying? Like, you just don't really picture those things colliding or when like your friends,

like, meet each other. It turns out they know each other's the weirdest thing. Anyway, for me and my like podcast, activist, you know, activism. world, you know, a lot of times overlaps with the hip-hop world, because, you know, we believe in a lot of the same stuff. But, like, this one, like, really happened. Yeah. Where I was just, like, in my own network, somebody I've known for a while, who I'm just now learning your name is Tristan. Yeah. Yeah, I didn't know your name was Jason. Yeah, exactly. You know what said? That's how rap works. So, um, introduce yourself however you want to be introduced. Yeah,

you know, and then let's get into it. Hey, everybody. I'm a tangent wiggie, a.k.a. Tristan Hacker. I got a lot of other names, too, but I'll keep it to those for now. And I'm from San Bernardino. I'm an artist in the community with propaganda, as well as a state employee. I paid disability claims for the state of California. And in my role as a state employee, I am a union rep. And I'm an elected member of my union's executive board. So I represent state employees from Ontario region to San Bernardino region and in between. And I'm on the bargaining team. So I go up to Sacramento and help prepare for bargaining against Governor Newsom of his team as well. Word. So this is like with this is front line energy. Okay.

Yeah. Which I love about it because it's like like you said like your your day job is in some ways it's it's so crazy because it's like as far away as that is from the actual like worker per se like you have just this parisocial like intimate relationship with everybody that works for. the state because like you seeing you know what they're going through yep and how great it is to think inside of such a here be a bureaucracy there's somebody there that's like no i'm actually like fighting for y'all yeah i appreciate that words so first of all tell them what the union is which union we're talking about yeah s isn't sam e as in everybody i is an incredible uh you as in union um service employees international union uh but 1 000 right so s s s e i u is one of the biggest

international unions in the world. And everyone out there has probably seen the purple purple SCIU stuff on all kinds of stuff, from nurses to state workers, to in-home support services workers and home care nurses. And there's a lot of different people that are under SCIU more broadly. State employees in California are SEIU 1000. So we're local 1,000 and that's the broader union that I'm a part of. All at Cali, okay. All 100,000 state employees that are represented. Damn, okay. And, but I am elected to the executive board of DLC 704, which is the Inland Empire, well, the Ontario San Bernardino, part of the Inland Empire's chapter. Word. Ontario San Bernardino, okay, this is going to be very Kelly specific. Like,

obviously, this, sure, everybody here who listens ain't from here. So, like, I've, I've cracked many L.A. and I.E. jokes and just, like, you know, throughout our time, you know what I'm saying? I like to say that I have an IE passport stamped. Like I have my, um. I worked in Pomona guy. See, I didn't, I never lived there. Okay, but you see what I'm saying? You have a strong connection to Pomona as far as I've seen.

I've seen you, you, absolutely. That's what I mean. Like, I'm a naturalized citizen. I got a green card. I got a I. I got an IE. green card. Because like, I worked in Pomona. You know, foundation was in Pomona.

Mike and Dim Lights was in Pomona. For y'all listeners, these are like the hip hop and poetry spots that I kind of grew up in. Because since I'm, you know, born in South Central, but I'm from six to six, so, so you come, me coming from La Puente, Valinda, Pomona was just so much more closer than Lamert Park. You know what I'm saying? So I ended up just kind of like spending a lot of time there. And then for high school, I got, I got busted in the Inland Empire. So I got bust. I went to school out of district because my parents split up. It's a long story. But anyway. Sure. It happens a lot. Yeah. So that being said, like, I have a lot of love for the Inland Empire and spent a lot of time there. you know what I'm saying so that's why I was like I got I got a visa I got an IE visa yeah absolutely yeah but that being said what would you say I mean it's kind of like I'm kind of springing this one on you but like what would you say would be something that's like unique a unique thing that someone from where you guys are at like a service worker where you guys are at might be a unique issue that's specific to

them that wouldn't be somewhere else I'll do too because I I feel like I need two to kind of to answer it well. One is that the Inland Empire in Highland, which is a city, kind of a little connected city to San Bernardino, Highland has Patton State Hospital, which is basically Arkham Asylum. You know, it's basically Arkham Asylum from the Batman comics, which is it's a hospital for the criminally insane. Okay.

You know, it's like, in other words, like you've committed crimes, but you have mental health issues. Yeah. So you're not in the regular prison, but you're not in the regular mental hospital. you are in the prison for the mental patients. And it's a massive 24-hour facility. And I feel like even though I work for EDD doing disability claims,

because I'm in a regional chapter with the Patton State Hospital folks, they get a lot of the attention of what the union organization does because 24-hour facilities are very, very taxing and they're very right for abuse and for people to go through really difficult things. And then the second thing I would say would be the fact that where we are, we have a lot of, we service a lot, maybe more in my job, right, we service a lot of undocumented people. Like a lot of the disability claims I pay for the state, I pay to undocumented folks, which is one reason that the eye stuff has been hitting so close to home. And also, people

may not realize that California doesn't regulate about documented status the way that the federal government does, right? So as long as you could prove your wages to the state of California in a legit, straight paperwork kind of way, we don't care that you're undocumented. We're going to pay you because you're a worker and you need our services. Facts. And, Like, I love that you said that because when they talk about, like, how the undocumented don't pay taxes, I'm like, yes, they do. Yes, they do. Yes, they do. They pay a lot.

Yeah. If you can think of just off the head, like, obviously, over the years, the negotiations and different things that have come up and varied over time. We'll get to the ice raids because that's obviously where everything got super ratcheted up. But, like, what was some of the most, like, I don't know. How would I phrase this? where you were like, this is the most reasonable request we can ask for. Like, this is just like, I don't, this is so, I don't understand why this is so hard for y'all. Like, this is incredibly, I just want to, like, calibrate because a lot of times people

hear, they hear to wear a union, they got all these pictures about what the things are and what this, you know what I'm saying, they got all these pictures, but I'm just like, fam, you ever heard of a five-day week? Yeah. Like, work week, that's unions, my G. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? So, like, that seems very reasonable. You know what I mean?

So if you could think of like some of the things you've had to negotiate, what was some of the most like this is, I don't understand why this is so hard for y'all. So have you ever, you probably heard the phrase, every crisis is an opportunity, right? Yes. You've heard people say that, right?

So my union and other unions have been pushing for telework, you know, being my entire 20 years with the state. I'll be 17 years veteran with the state as of December, right? Wow. The entire time we wanted telework, it took the quarantine crisis of 2020, 2021 to actually get the state to agree to mass implement telework. And so that was like, that's a

crisis that we made an opportunity that's like, hey, we needed, we needed telework. So many people are also caring for their kids or also caring for their elderly people in the home, caring for a new baby or, you know, take, you know, just at the house so the contractors could come fix their plumbing. You know, it's like, like telework has been something that we thought was very reasonable for a long time that it took, it took until the COVID crisis for us to get telework. And we feel like we're pioneers in that in a workforce way because now there's lots of places that have telework partly because I think the work that unions like us have done that's dope man you know obviously coming out of the pandemic and recently like a lot of companies are like hey you guys can

come back to the office and people are like absolutely not why like why would i take it away once you got it yeah yeah why would we do that i know my own like my wife you know she pre-pandemic at the spot she was working as she was working at nonprofit, you know, she was like, okay, I was touring so much that she was just like, dude, like, you want me in this office at a certain time. It's stress on the whole family. I had to get my daughter to school. It's, you know, just breaking her neck to figure stuff out. She's like, I'm done with the stuff that can be done at a desk within an hour. She's like, I'm just, I'm just scrolling the internet. Yeah. Like, I'm just like, like, I'm trying

to tell you. You're paying for AC. You're paying for lights. You're paying for the desk space. there's no reason like I don't have to be here you know right and so she pushed she was just like you know looked up her own rights you know figured it out and you know without telling her business she uh she actually helped the staff unionize there you know what I'm saying she was like look man it's ridiculous you know what I'm saying you got a real one yeah don't don't don't Google it anyway All I know is what I've been told, and that's a half-truth is a whole lie. For almost a decade, the murder of an 18-year-old girl from a small town in Graves County, Kentucky, went unsolved, until a local homemaker, a journalist, and a handful of girls came forward with a story.

I'm telling you, we know Quincy killed her. We know. A story that law enforcement used to convict six people and that got the citizen investigator on national TV. Through sheer persistence and nerve, this Kentucky housewife helped give justice to Jessica Curran. My name is Maggie Freeling. I'm a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, producer, and I wouldn't be here if the truth were that easy to find.

I did not know her and I did not kill her, or rape or burn or any of that other stuff, that you all said it. They literally made me say that I took a match and struck and threw it on her. They made me say that I poured gas on her. From Lava for Good, this is Graves County, a show about just how far

our legal system will go in order to find someone to blame. America, y'all better work the hell up. Bad things happens to good people in small towns. Listen to Graves County in the Bone Valley feed on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to binge the entire season ad-free, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.

Hi there, this is Josh Clark from the Stuff You Should Know podcast. If you've been thinking, man alive, I could go for some good true crime podcast episodes, then have we got good news for you? Stuff You Should Know just released a playlist of 12 of our best true crime episodes of all time. There's a shootout in broad daylight, people using axes in really terrible ways, disappearances, legendary heists, the whole nine yards. So check out the Stuff You Should Know True Crime playlist on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Jorge Ramos. And I'm Paola Ramos. Together we're launching The Moment, a new podcast about what it means to live through a time, as uncertain as this one. We sit down with politicians. I would be the first immigrant mayor in generations, but 40% of New Yorkers were born outside of this country. Artists and activists, I mean, do you ever feel demoralized?

I might personally lose hope. This individual might lose the faith, but there's an institution that doesn't lose faith. And that's what I believe in. To bring you depth and analysis from a unique Latino perspective. There's not a single day that Paola and I, don't call or text each other, sharing news and thoughts about what's happening in the country. This new podcast will be a way to make that ongoing intergenerational conversation, public.

Listen to The Moment with Jorge Ramos and Paula Ramos as part of the MyCultura podcast network on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. People called them murderers. Ten years later, they were gods. Today, no one knows their names. A group of maverick surgeons who took on the medical establishment who risked everything to invent open heart surgery. Welcome to the Wild West of American Medicine. I'm Chris Pine, and this is Cardiac Cowboys.

If you like medical dramas, if you like heart-pounding thrillers, you will love Cardiac Cowboys. Listen on the IHeart Radio app or wherever you listen to podcasts. Sponsored by Jasper, AI Built for Marketers. So, yeah, so something that you had to, you know, you said, you actually go to the state, you, you interact with Gavin Newsom, you know, which is the whole thing. Sure. We have our opinions on Mr. Newsom. Sure.

You know, and like, how allied are you as an ally? Like, you know what I'm saying? And, you know, if you were complicated, we can't always agree on the same things, you know what I'm saying? Like, but like, there's been, there have been times where it's been like, hey, you know what? Salute. He's doing something dope. And then other times when he's not, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The other side's just like, bro, who are you?

Yeah. Right? Like, what is happening right now? So, so obviously, you know, when you go up there, you're not interacting with him. You're interacting with his team, right? Yeah. The one time I actually met him, I went to the California Democratic Party Convention in 2012 in San Diego. And I just went with a friend, just showed up.

I was not a delegate. I was a union rep already, but I had no official role. I just showed up and walked around the San Diego Hilton, which is also where they found in San Diego, Comic-Con. And I got to meet a lot of officials, including some inland ones, including some really famous people like Nancy Pelosi's daughter. But I went up to, I went up to at the time Lieutenant Governor Newsom and basically thanked him because he had just voted against a tuition hype for the Cal States and UCs. And I went to Cal State Semmer. You know, I have my master's

in poetry, my MFA in poetry from Cal State Semmerdino. And so I was still a student at the time. And he had just voted against a tuition increase. So there's a picture of me meeting him from that, from that time. Oh, that's great. Yeah. Yeah. And he had just done something good, and he said humble things about it when I thanked him for it. So my one personal interaction with him was good.

But since then, in the capacity of the union, I deal with his bargaining team. Like our bargaining team deals with his bargaining team in Sacramento. Where. Okay. So give me one, something that's been like. The opposite. Where what they were asking for. Yeah, it was like, this is completely unreasonable, guys.

Like, what are you talking about? So every three years, every three years, our state employee contract goes up. Uh-huh. Right? And so around the two-year mark, we start gearing up negotiations, you know, and the state, Newsom has the power to summon us for negotiation, and we have the power to summon his team for negotiation. Right.

So at that two-year mark, we start negotiating. So in 2022, we started negotiating about the 20-23 expiring, you know, so that by the end of 23, we could have a new contract. When your state employee, it's difficult, it's hard to strike, right? Like, you have to have an extremely high threshold to strike. Like, if you're a private company in your union, it's a lot easier to strike. You guys, I want to strike, you strike. Like that episode of The Simpsons,

when Homer became the union. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're just like, dental plan, you know, and they started striking. Right, right. With the state, because we provide essential services to Californians in need,

it is an extremely high threshold in terms of what it would take for us to legally be allowed to strike. Right? And Newsom and his team know that. So they could kind of like really slow walk negotiations and stop negotiating in good faith. But as long as there's like,

you know, what is it? There signs of life on the hospital ticker of the negotiations. then we're still obligated to not strike. Damn. Right? So in 2023, our contract expired. Newsom was offering us one or two percent raise for the next three years.

And meanwhile, he was going on TV saying, I'll debate Ron DeSantis. Oh, it was during that time. I want to help the Screen Actors Guild finish their contract and the Screenwriters Guild. And I want to, so it's like, whoa, bro, where are your kids? Why are you trying to go help their kids? Yeah. You know, it was like, why, you're not negotiating with us, but you're on TV talking about, I want to help Harrison Ford, and I want to help, you know, I want to help the actors get their contract.

And it's like, so I had, I made a TikTok recently about how I think my, uh, my lefty friends and I'm lefty at hell, of course, but like artist friends, anti-establishment friends, you know, electist friends, I think hate Democrats in stupid ways. Whereas there are smart ways to hate Democrats. Okay. Right. Like, to me, the stupid, the stupid way to hate Democrats is to be like, oh, both parties are the same. I'm going to sit out and let Republicans win and hurt us worse. Yeah. Right.

To me, the smart way to hate on Democrats is to realize when they're doing a good thing here, they're distracting you from a bad thing here. And then they're doing a bad thing here. They're distracting, you know, it's like. From a good thing, yeah, okay. Right. So, like, Newsom at times might be capitulating to Trump on something federally, but then he does something good state domestically in the state to kind of keep his rep up or the reverse. Maybe he's fighting with Trump on something and that's good, but he's doing some whack shit like slow walking our contract negotiations.

We're not Hollywood actors, right? So when our contract goes up, you didn't get the news about it. Like with the Screen Actors Guild, because that's sloping your Hulu, that's stopping your Disney Plus. You know, you hear all about that. when our contract expires, you don't hear about it unless you're on disability, unless you're on one of our programs and then you can't go to the office because we're under staff or because something's going wrong with us, right? So, 20203 was a pissed off time for us because he's offering us peanuts. He was offering to help everybody else. Let me help the actors. Let me help the

screenwriters. Let me fight Ron DeSantis. Let me go to Washington and have federal fights. Meanwhile, we're our contract expired. And when our contract expired, there's things we lose. There's stipends we lose. There's benefits we lose. Yeah. And he just, so he had us had us in a bind. So I organized a work site picket at my office in San Bernardino in 102 degree weather. We can't strike, but we can pick it. Wow. Okay. See, I didn't know that.

Right. You know, so that's part of being a union rep is like, what are my tools? Yeah. You know, like, what are my tools? Like, know your arsenal, know your weaponry, right? And so I organized the picket. We had signs. And I'm just, I tear up and I think about this because I had coworkers that I didn't

think we're going to march in the heat with me. I thought it might have been me by myself. You know, I was one of only one or two union reps in my office at the time. Now we have four because I've been recruiting, you know, and I have good people in my office, you know. But at the time, I was one of the only union reps. There was people who I knew had legit skepticism about the union. I didn't expect it. But every single lunch, not just my lunch, at every lunch, we had people picketing in front of my office with signs.

People were honking in support of us. Within a month or two, we got an 8% raise on that next negotiation. Let's go. You know? And so, you know, when we fight, we win. When we unite, we win, you know, like, you don't, we're not fighting for nothing. And that was a do or die moment for me. a union organizer because I hadn't had many real fights yet and I had I couldn't really point to

my coworkers and say hey we did this and got this we did this and got this so the fact that I got my co-workers to march in a 102 degree weather with me instead of just sitting in the air condition having lunch and that we won that a few weeks later they said you're going to get an 8% raised that's hard you know like I was like yes like proof of concept I have proof of concept I'm not just wasting my co-workers time I could tell you there's a tangible result to when we organized together see that's these are the type of like wins we need to hear because we've been taking some ills like yes sir speaking to else so y'all's y'all's sce iu 1000 you know david wertha is from one of the california sciu branches he's tightly connected to our union

but he's not one thousand okay words but he is scei i you know so he is part of us yeah so when ice you know invaded our streets yes he was outside you know doing what he had to do i know s s s i you set up the uh the thing at alvara street yeah they set up a uh uh location there for like to educate because it was just such a beautiful thing but yep the first thing that got me out the house was the rally for when he was detained so like yeah man tell me what was going on and as much as you can behind closed doors yes so yes most of the listeners here know this story because this show is like pretty tapped in but yeah right so what what i would say is this to me an opportunity to talk about like the cultural differences with with inland in

LA, right? Because the union is very progressive, right? But the inland is a much more conservative area, right? And compared to Los Angeles, compared to San Francisco, compared to, you know, it's not as big of a city. It's more impoverished. Yeah. You know, there's a lot of, you know, even just the geography of it, right? People may grow up in the city. Like my, my mom grew up around where you're talking about, La Puente and Monti. I was born in La Monte, right? But there was a suburban exodus in the late 80s of like people who wanted to go from that East LA 626 area to raise their kids in the inland because that was the more conservative suburb, right? So for me, every time something like that happens with something like a David Werthe or something in one of the bigger cities

happens and we're fighting with the right wing about things, it's a matter of me educating my inland people about why we care and how we're all connected. You know, and then there's always some people and I got to respect this as a union organizer, I really have to be able to talk with my more conservative members because there are people in the union that are not super progressive warriors like me. They're just workers who want to be represented, right? I was going to say that's actually a good point to hammer down because, like, last year, one of the shows on our network covered a union strike at a, I want to say it was like a metal plant in Alabama. Like in the sticks of Alabama, these are good old boys from the South. But one thing we can agree on me is like,

pay me what I'm worth. Like, you're saying, like, it just seemed pretty simple to me. I don't understand how you've got to be a progressive to want to be paid what you worth. You know, so. Yes, sir. So I think that that's a good point to say that, like, even in a rather conservative place, all of us want to go home and eat, you know, and earn the wages that I should be, pay me what I'm worth. It just seemed that simple. Exactly. And so that's a tension that happens, right?

And this is probably a discussion that happens among a lot of progressive groups in general that, like, there's people who want you to focus on your issue, but there's also people who recognize that we're part of an interconnected society where it's like, if the immigrants are being harmed, then the laborers are being harmed. If the artists are being harmed, then the nurses are being harmed, if the teachers are being, you know, so, so there's always that divide, but in the inland, which is a more conservative area, there's especially that divide between people who are like, I don't want my union fighting about immigration and ICE. I don't want the union fighting about LGBT. I just want the union to fight for my race. I want the union to fight for my telework. And that's all I want them to do, right? So that's a big thing for me is to kind of explain to people how, no, David Wertha, fighting for immigrant rights is him fighting for you as a worker. Okay. You know, because if they came for them, they to come for you, you know. So that's kind of how I see that. Yeah. Did you feel like it landed well? It always does with some and it does it with some. You know, I'll be honest with you, there are people who just left the union after the Charlie Kirk killing. Oh, wow. In my opinion, they're going to really weird logic jumps when they're like, well, the union endorsed Kamala and Kamala has supporters that are happy about Charlie Kirk dying.

Therefore. I'm like, uh, and so you don't want that raise? You really red string in that joint. You know? That is definitely. Definitely, the Always Sunny and Philadelphia meme of just you, like, tie these strings together. Like, bro, I don't know what you're talking about. Yeah. Right. And so, to be honest, there's been some of that. You know, I'll say this, that Charlie Kirk gave us more of that than the immigration stuff. But there's always those few whispers from a few people who are like, they're just not down with the broader cause.

Those of us who are in the leadership of the union, I think we have solidarity. You know, we have solidarity, not just with other state workers, but with anyone who's in any SCIU, but with teamsters, with anyone who's in any union. And with Californians, anyone who is. is somebody who is in a vulnerable group. Yeah. You know, and so there's just always that difference of the opinion. I would say over, let's say it's 60% hits in a good way. And in my area, because it's so conservative, let's say 40% it doesn't.

You know, it's something we work on. That's interesting. All I know is what I've been told. And that's a half-truth is a whole lie. For almost a decade, the murder. of an 18-year-old girl from a small town in Graves County, Kentucky

went unsolved until a local homemaker, a journalist, and a handful of girls came forward with a story. I'm telling you, we know Quincy Kilder, we know.

A story that law enforcement used to convict six people and that got the citizen investigator on national TV. Through sheer persistence and nerve, this Kentucky housewife helped give justice to Jessica Curran.

My name is Maggie Freeling. I'm a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, producer, and I wouldn't be here if the truth were that easy to find. I did not know her and I did not kill her, or rape or burn or any of that other stuff that y'all said. They literally made me say that I took a match and struck and threw it on her.

They made me say that I poured gas on her. From Lava for Good, this is Graves County, a show about just how far our legal system will go in order to find someone to blame. America, y'all better work the hell up. Bad things happens to good people in small towns. Listen to Graves County in the Bone Valley feed on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. And to binge the entire season ad-free, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Hi there, this is Josh Clark from the Stuff You Should Know podcast. If you've been thinking, man alive, I could go for some good true crime podcast episodes, then have we got good news for you. Stuff You Should Know just released a playlist of 12 of our best true crime episodes of all time. There's a shootout in broad daylight.

People using axes in really terrible ways, disappearances, legendary heists, the whole nine yards. check out the stuff you should know true crime playlist on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Jorge Ramos. And I'm Paola Ramos. Together we're launching The Moment, a new podcast about what it means to live through a time, as uncertain as this one. We sit down with politicians.

I would be the first immigrant mayor in generations, but 40% of New Yorkers were born outside of this country. Artists and activists, I mean, do you ever feel demoralized? I might personally lose hope. This individual might lose the faith. But there's an institution that doesn't lose faith. And that's what I believe in. To bring you depth and analysis from a unique Latino perspective.

There's not a single day that Paola and I don't call or text each other, sharing news and thoughts about what's happening in the country. This new podcast will be a way to make that ongoing intergenerational conversation public. Listen to The Moment with Jorge Ramos and Paola Ramos. as part of the My Cultura Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. People called them murderers. Ten years later, they were gods.

Today, no one knows their names. A group of maverick surgeons who took on the medical establishment who risked everything to invent open-heart surgery. Welcome to the Wild West of American Medicine. I'm Chris Pine, and this is cardiac cowboys. If you like medical dramas, if you like heart, pounding thrillers, you will love Cardiac Cowboys. Listen

on the IHeart Radio app or wherever you listen to podcasts. Sponsored by Jasper, AI, Build for marketers. Okay, my last two questions would be this. Sure. I'll give them both. Like, so what are y'all currently kind of like pushing for? I'm assuming it has a

lot to do with immigration and ice raids and stuff, but also in what ways can we as just a broader community help. Well, how do I put this? So I work in downtown San Bernardino. Okay. And my disability office is next to the Mexican consulate. Let's go. First of all, we need to paint a picture of San Bernardino. I really feel like for those that don't know California, the nature of what San Bernardino is, is a part of this story that you might be missing. First of all, like, okay, all that you picture, everything that everybody else pictures around what you thought Compton was in the 90s.

All the pictures that you think, you know what I'm saying, that you go, oh, it's really San Bernardino. Like, you know what I'm saying? Yeah. So, I mean, I'm trying to say this in a way that's descriptive and not derogatory because obviously, like, it's always Callie Love for me and I, you know, of course. Yeah. But there is a certain, there's a certain part of San Bernardino that feels like, like, just a spirit of like, we just gave up. The Walking Dead. The Walking Dead.

That's exactly it. It feels like a zombie land, like just this dark. I remember the carousel mall. Like, you walk by that mall. It's eerie. It just feels like when people talk about the forgotten man, the forgotten America. I'm like San Bernardino. Yeah.

Like, we didn't gave up on that city. Yeah. It recently gone from 230,000 people to only 200,000 people. But also probably because a lot of people that left were the most impoverished people, our poverty rate went from, let's say, in the post-Bush two recession, like 2010, And we had a 30% poverty, we were, we were the most impoverished city in the state. We've gotten down to like 17% poverty, which is still bad. Yeah.

You know, that's still almost one out of five people. What was it? It's very diverse. I mean, and someone who pays attention to politics, it has all the problems, exactly like you said, all the problems that people talk about when they see the important problems. It's post-industrial. There's gun violence. It's diverse. There's poverty.

You know, there's environmental issues because it's such a warehouse empire. Yeah. Because it's such an area of freight and warehouses. It's like the air quality is some of the worst in the state. Yeah. You know, we, we have real problems. You know, we got real problems. And in downtown, downtown San Bernardino is a lot of where the problems are.

We want to get it like downtown Redlands and downtown Riverside and some of the other nicer downtowns, but it's just not there yet. And there are people absolutely working on that. And, like, there are a couple alleyways in the city. It sounds so, it sounds so humble, but we have a couple alleyways in the city that got $500,000 grants recently to kind of make them an arcs alleyway to kind of look like something more like the Claremont Village. Let's go. You know? And so, yeah, you know, and so we are always working on it. And I will always, you know, as somebody who founded,

co-founded the Inland Empire Music Award show and other platforms that I put on, not just my art, but I help put on other artists in the inland. I will always tell you about the amazing tacos you could get in my city, the amazing small businesses you could support my city. The amazing art community put on by my, by my OGs like Judah 1 of Pomona, like Noah James of the Inland and Lisa Jay and many others, you know, who helped build a really beautiful ecosystem. Like there's, please come to Samaradina and hit me up and I'll take you to save beautiful parts of it, you know.

But yes, it's rough. To your point, I know I want you to get to the next thing, but to your point, that was the same as that picture of content to where it's like, in the sense that like we know it's dangerous, we know there's poverty, we know there's that, but there's beauty here. There's dope stuff. You know, and let me come like, and again, like just the hood rules

where it's like, well, you and me. Like, so you're good. You know what I'm saying? Like, you would me, you know? And some of the, yeah, like we can definitely shine lights. Like I said, like, you know, I've talked about Noah James on this show, You know what I'm saying? I've talked about Judea 1.

You know, I talked about sincere, C4, like the people that, like, I came, I came up with, you know what I'm saying? Yeah, the Inland Empire, a lot of the stuff that the nation attributes to L.A. is really I.E., you know what I'm saying? Yes, sir. And we know, like, we know, because they're not lying about it. We know. That matter of fact, nobody has pride about, IE. got pride, boy. They're like, no, no, no, no, we are to inland.

And I love that about y'all. Anyway. I'm wearing my Jaden Daniels. See, check it out. Yep, yep, yep, yep. You know? Yeah. Because the I.E. got a Heiseman.

The I.E. got a Heism. So yeah. Okay. So anyway, so your office is next to the Mexican consulate. Mexican consulate, right? And so I've actually spent my, you know, I've been at this office in San Maradino since 2014. And for five years before that, I worked in the Riverside office.

But I've been in my office in Chamerino 2014. And I have gone to so many, I've infiltrated so many right wing protests that are in front of the Mexican consulate. Yes. And like, and like, so I'll go hang out with them. They're like, oh, what are you guys doing? And then I'll, like, take their markers. I'll take their posters.

And I'll just kind of be like, oh, yeah, maybe you have a point there. And then I'm like, I'm in my office. And then my secretary is, you know, the secretary of my office is like, oh, where can get these markers? Like, I got you some markers. Because it's like, you know, and so I'll infiltrate rightly protest. But on the flip side, lately, you know, ICE knows they could come to my corner. And my corner in downtown has the Chase Bank, the Wells Fargo Bank, the Mexican consulate,

the disability office, the old city hall building. Like, it's like the hub. It's one of the downtown hubs of the city. and ICE has been coming and snatching people up in front of my office. It's happened twice at least in the last month. And one of the days that it happened, I was in the office. I called my congressman. I called the mayor.

I got all the local authorities involved. By the end of the day, the horse-mounted unit of my city's police was like patrolling to make sure ICE wasn't messing with us. And I tell you, homie, what a weird place this is. I've never been so happy to see the regular cops. Right, right, right. What is this timeline? What are you doing to me?

Yeah. What are you doing to me? We're like, I'm in 7-11 at 6 in the morning, getting my coffee, and I see regular cops. I'm like, thank you, sir, for at least showing a warrant. Yeah, yeah, exactly. You know, because ICE is doing none of that. None of it. None of it.

None of it. They're not doing warrants. They took, I don't want to cry. They pushed a wife out of the way. She's like, what are you doing? They took the husband, tossed him in a van and drove off. It all happened so fast that no one was able to film it. Damn.

In this era, no one was able to film it. And they know that how they're doing it that fast. No, that's the trick, yeah. That's the trick. That's what we've been telling, like, a lot of people have asked me, just friends from out of town, like, dude, has it toned down? And I was like, no, it just went underground. It's like, they just, they're a lot more sneaky now.

Like, it's not this big display of power. It's more the sniper guerrilla warfare to where, like, you said, you just getting your gas. Like, you just out of your pumping gas. And then somebody just, and it's so fast I can't film it. You know what I'm saying? Yes. And the hard part for me is like, is to your point to where it's,

Like, since you're not identifying yourself, like, you might not even be an ICE agent. And that's a thing that happened. That's the thing that there are people who impersonate law enforcement officers and go harass people just on a racist basis. Yeah. You know, and it's arguable that the Trump administration is empowering people like that. Mm-hmm. Man. Yeah.

So, so, yeah, it absolutely is happening. To be honest, my union, we're going to always support the actions that are fighting back against it. But the only things that we really have jurisdiction to actually fight. is the labor-related stuff. And so, you know, we actually just got telework extended in exchange for delaying our raise, you know, because the state's really broke right now for a lot of reasons. Yeah. We delayed for two years a raise that we were about to get in July.

So we're already a couple months past, not having that raise. But in exchange, we got our telework agreement extended for two years. So what I would tell people who want to get involved is, like, if you are in a workplace that has a union, get involved, you know? Or if you have someone in your life like me who, does union stuff outside of work, next time they invite you to a phone bank or next time they invite you to an event, go support because we're absolutely, we were at the No Kings protest, we're at the anti-ice protest. Like we're in the unofficial capacity, we're going to do

all those kind of things to support the broader community. And even though it's my union, for example, on Wednesdays we have a lot of our meetings, we're doing phone banking for Prop 50, right, which is the whole redistricting thing, which gives us the power to take some seats away from the Republicans. I know there's a lot of, there's a debate to be had there, but ultimately it's us trying to keep some power away from the right wing. And you don't have to be in my union to go to those phone banks. If you want a phone bank to help Prop 50 Pass so we could take some Republican seats away from the Federal House of Representatives, hit me up, hit up anybody in, you know, in the Inland Empire chapter of SCIU, and we can bring you to a phone bank in Ontario and we'll get pizza or barbecue or whatever, and we could phone bank against these dang Republicans. Yeah, man.

Man, tangent. I appreciate this, man. I appreciate you, man. I've been wanted to have one of you to have me on. I love your show. And I love you, man. I think you're such a cool dude. I think you're wise.

I think that you're engaged in the community in a cool way. You're an artist. I respect a lot. And not just me. I mean, friends, like sincere. Yeah. Explain to me why you're significant to them and why you're an influence and stuff like that. So I appreciate even being on your radar, brother.

Man, stop it. Stop it some more. I'm just kidding. My wife says that. Okay, so perfect. Well, then tell us how people need to hear your music, how they can get in touch with you, how they can follow you. Give me all the links.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So, T-A-N-J-I-N-T is tangent. You know, you could find me on everything at Twitter, Instagram, you know, Facebook. What was it? The Inland Empire Music Award Show that I'm a co-director and co-founder of is at It's Only Empire.com. That's a ITS-onlyempire.com.

And also, I want to encourage Inland Empire artists, you know, you still have from now to the end of September to submit to the award show. And we've been doing it for three years. We partnered with nonprofits and businesses. We throw a dope-ass. It's pretty dope. Gala, you know, award show at a little art center

in downtown Samerdane at the Garcia Center for the arts or we give away real trophies and real awards and we have red carpet media and performances. It's like the Grammys for the Inland Empire. So, you know, please get involved in It's Only Empire.com. That's only Empire now. Fam likely is my group with Diesel. We got a new album out.

That's like scam likely on your phone, but fam likely because it's likely that your fam is hitting you up. Fan likely. West Coast Avengers is my first group, the more nerdcore inland empire stuff. and we got an album that came out just under a year ago now, The Harvest, so I'm everywhere.

You can catch everything. All over the place. Yeah. Tangit Wiggle. Thank you so much, my brother. Hey, thank you, man. Much love. It Could Happen here is a production of Cool Zone Media.

For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, Coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources for It Could Happen here listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening. Hi there, this is Josh Clark from the Stuff You Should Know podcast. If you've been thinking,

man alive, I could go for some good true crime podcast episodes, then if we got good news for you, Stuff You Should Know just released a playlist of 12 of our best true crime episodes of all time. There's a shootout in broad daylight, people using axes in really terrible ways, disappearances, legendary heists, the whole nine yards. So check out the Stuff You Should Know true crime playlist on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The murder of an 18-year-old girl in Graves County, Kentucky went unsolved for years, until a local housewife, a journalist, and a handful of girls came forward with a story. America, y'all better work the hell up. Bad things happens to good people in small town.

Listen to Graves County on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And to binge the entire season ad free, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Jorge Ramos. And I'm Paola Ramos. Together we're launching The Moment, a new podcast about what it means to live through a time as uncertain as this one. We sit down with politicians. artists and activists to bring you death and analysis from a unique Latino perspective. The moment is a space for the conversations we've been having us father and daughter for years.

Listen to The Moment with Jorge Ramos and Paola Ramos on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. People called them murderers. Ten years later, they were gods. Today, no one knows their names. A group of maverick surgeons who took on the medical establishment who risked. to everything to invent open heart surgery. Welcome to the Wild West of American Medicine. I'm Chris Pine, and this is Cardiac Cowboys.

If you like medical dramas, if you like heart-pounding thrillers, you will love Cardiac Cowboys. Listen on the I-Heart Radio app or wherever you listen to podcasts. Sponsored by Jasper, AI Build for Marketers. This is an I-Heart podcast.