It Could Happen Here - Stories of Armed Community Defense

Episode Date: February 9, 2023

From riots against neo-Nazis in the rustbelt, to armed defense of mutual aid programs in post-Katrina New Orleans, to mass mobilizations of tens of thousands against the Alt-Right, on today's show, as the It's Going Down crew once again takes over It Could Happen Here, we look at how, far from being just confined to a small set of antifa-supersoldiers, mass community self-defense is part and parcel to the DNA of grassroots movements for liberation in the so-called US. Featuring Interviews with Spencer Sunhine (@transform6789) and Suncere Ali Shakur.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.

It seems like hardly a month goes by where we are not bombarded with horrific images of far-right violence. Mass shootings that target synagogues, black churches and queer nightclubs, death threats to hospitals spurred by posts from online trolls, and a barrage of fascist groups attempting to intimidate everyone and everything from children's events, Black Lives Matter protests, pride celebrations, and abortion clinics. When resistance is mobilized and people do push back, the media often frames these confrontations as a clash simply between two sets of extremists.

On today's show, as the It's Going Down crew once again takes over It Could Happen Here, we look at how, far from being just confined to small sets of Antifa super soldiers, Far from being just confined to small sets of anti-Fa super soldiers, mass community self-defense is part and parcel to the DNA of grassroots movements for liberation in the so-called United States. We can see this throughout the ongoing history of indigenous resistance to colonization and the fight against slavery and racial apartheid. Radical labor unions such as the IWW organized against the Ku Klux Klan, a tension that even led to running gun battles, while militant organizers like Robert F. Williams and groups

such as the Deacons for Defense, who helped inspire the Black Panthers, fought back against white racist mobs. In the book, This Nonviolent Stuff Will Get You Killed, author Charles E. Cobb documents this history, discussing the wide use of arms in defending civil rights organizers from white supremacists. Groups like Anti-Racist Action, or ARA, carried on this trajectory, working to set up chapters of organized anti-racists that confronted neo-Nazi groups, the Klan, and participated in defense of abortion clinics. Once again, I'm Mike Andrews. Let's get

into it. In 2005, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the levees surrounding New Orleans broke, flooding working-class communities and homes. Those that could evacuate fled, while many, often poor and black, were stuck behind to fend for themselves. Stepping into this setting was a group of black liberation and anarchist activists who worked to set up mutual aid hubs and free clinics, dubbed Common Ground. But as these volunteers worked to feed people, restore people's homes, and provide free medical care, they quickly found that they weren't the only organized force on the streets of New Orleans. In this following interview, Sonsir Ali Shakur discusses how the group came up against and

defended themselves from a formation of armed, racist white vigilantes who work directly with local police and are suspected of carrying out multiple murders of unarmed black men. A warning, however, this interview is graphic and details death, racist violence, and anti-black racism. My name is Sonsir Ali Shakur. I'm an organizer out of Washington, D.C. I went to New Orleans during Katrina, during the Katrina aftermath, and I helped form, co-found Common Ground Relief. And Common Ground was formed as a response to the calamity of Katrina. And Common Ground was also the brainchild of the Angola Three. So a lot of the base organizers of Common Ground were already in New Orleans organizing to help the Angola III. So a lot of the base organizers of Common Ground were already in New Orleans

organizing to help the Angola III. So the Angola III was basically the godfathers of Common Ground relief. We lost a few of the elders, Alfred Woodfox and such, and we still got King, King Woodus and such. And we still got King. King, Woodus, and everything. A note to our listeners, the Angola Three referred to here is a group of formerly incarcerated black political prisoners and members of the Black Panther Party

who in the 1970s were imprisoned in the notorious Angola facility in Louisiana. This included Robert Hillary King, Albert Woodfox, and Herman Wallace. King was released in 2001, and along with another former Black Panther, Malik Rahim, became involved in mutual aid and disaster relief efforts in New Orleans following Katrina in 2005 under the banner of Common Ground. Wallace was released from prison on October 1, 2013,

only to pass away sadly three days later, a day after being re-indicted by the state. Albert Woodfox was finally released in February of 2016 and passed on six years later due to complications from COVID-19. Tireless activists on both sides of the prison walls, together the Angola three endured a combined total of 114 years in solitary confinement yeah my job when i when i touched down the common ground was basically i was a relief scout um i wore many hats i was a mediation person

uh head of security um and i also organized about seven makeshift hurricane distribution centers from New Orleans to the Bayou. And I spent 18 months there and children's free breakfast program, anything the community needed, you know, I provided. I used to drive like 1,400 miles a week taking supplies from New Orleans into different bayous and different surrounding areas in New Orleans. That was my job. When I first got there, I ran into Malik Rahim, a former Black Panther in New Orleans. I think he was Minister of Defense. And when I touched down, he had told me that there were a group of white vigilantes, up to 18 of them, riding around and murdering Black people. As they walked through these white communities in Algiers and Algiers Point. Algiers wasn't affected by water, but it did have a great deal of wind damage. Most of the houses was intact. It just wasn't electricity.

And the water was also a problem. Well, what they would do, they would tie cans from one fence to another beginning of the neighborhood of of the street and if they were in their homes and uh you bumped it you know you you try to get up under the cans and the cans started ringing they will open up windows and and begin to uh fire at you and uh they would jump in their pickup trucks and chase you down and some uh, you know, someone murdered, you know, point blank. And those whom they wounded, they would throw in the back of the truck, take to a garage and pour gasoline over your wounds, put cigarettes out on you.

And some didn't make it out of that situation. They, like I i said they dropped about according to the information we got they dropped 19 innocent black men and the the brothers in the community got tired of of these guys and they broke into a pawn shop and stole all the guns out the pawn shop and there was about to be a major race war and um you gotta understand too how tight this situation was because their base their house that they they uh they hung out at their backyard connected with our backyard so it was extremely tense so when the brothers broke into the pawn shop and got the weapons out just so happened the next day the national guard showed up but if the National Guard didn't show up the next day,

it would have been extremely ugly out there and everything. And yeah, they used to patrol the streets and they'd pick up trucks. We would see them all the time. I would see them all the time. And they were cowards, man. You know, they were 10 to 1. It's always 10 to 1. You know, 10 vigilantes to one black man, unarmed black man. But we noticed when they would drive by, we would come out with our weapons on our hips and let them know that this ain't no place to mess with. Keep driving. You know what I'm saying? You will be fired upon. You come here with that business.

And I would have to set up patrols for our house at night. business and I would have to set up patrols for our house at night I would sleep in the hallway of Malik's home with a nine-millimeter carbine rifle strapped across my chest and a radio comm so I could keep in contact with the the others who were unarmed but doing patrols you know watching the house while the other 36 volunteers that slept in tents in the backyard, you know, were asleep. Lucky for us, they were a bunch of cowards, and they kept it moving. I would see them all the time, and they were afraid of me because they knew that I was not afraid of them and I was armed. And we had a few people back at the house

that was armed as well. You could ride down certain streets and there would be dead bodies that were bloated from being left out in the sun. And those bodies were left by the vigilantes. The rumor was that the New Orleans Police Department told the vigilantes, well, gave the vigilantes a green light to do what they needed to do. And as far as the bodies, just leave them near the gutter

and they will come and collect them later, which they didn't. The bodies stayed out there, I would say up to two months. You know, I mean, they were like, you could see them all the time. And a lot of people had left. There wasn't a lot of people there because people had evacuated. A lot of stray dogs running around in packs of 30. And what we would have to do is get up early in the morning when the curfew was over, take bed sheets from Malik's mother's room,

and go out and wrap up the bodies with these sheets. Keep the dogs from ripping them open for fluid and food. Reporting in the Nation and ProPublica, investigative journalist A.C. Thompson spent months speaking with survivors of Katrina about a racist militia that formed in the predominantly white neighborhood of Algiers Point, who carried out a series of deadly shootings and even worked directly with local law enforcement. White residents told investigators that police had given them a green light to shoot anyone, quote, breaking into their property, and to, quote, leave the bodies on the side of the road.

Others spoke of a free-for-all of white against black where whites could indulge in violence with impunity. Years later, several white vigilantes were found guilty and were sentenced to prison time for shootings and murder. And, like many modern conspiracy theories pushed by the far-right about Antifa and BLM during the George Floyd uprising, the vigilantes in Algiers Point were largely animated by widespread racist rumors that were unfounded about looters. We were harassed a lot by the NOPD. You know, a lot of times at gunpoint, they would come to our house sometimes, you know, 10 cars deep, NOPD would, looking for Malik. One night they came through looking for Malik. And what we had heard is they were out to assassinate him and anybody with him. They came out looking for Malik one night they came through looking for Malik and what we had heard that they were out to assassinate him and anybody with him they came out

looking for Malik one night about ten cars deep and they had went through the house looking for him and they couldn't find him and they pulled out this 14 year old young man that we have befriended to live on a backstreet from Malik and they started beating him saying that he had stole the cooler out of somebody's yard. And mind you, you know, no one's there. So no one's really missing that cooler. And the young man thought, you know, because we didn't have refrigeration and we had to

put everything on ice. You know, ice was very important at that time. And water was very important, you know, along with gasoline. But the young brother brought us a cooler and the police put shotguns in everybody's stomachs and they beat them in front of us and dared us to do anything. As far as like what the environment looked like, it was not, and I'll say this, it was not a rescue mission. This was, seemed like they were running a drill, a military drill, you know, like the St. Albert, I mean, like the Albert Project. You will look at the bridge and you will see continuous military cars going across the Crescent City Bridge.

At nighttime in four corners of the community, you will have Black Hawk helicopters patrolling. You know, they will follow you through the yard with spotlights. Also, we had Homeland Security, which included mercenaries. They were sometimes up to 25 cars deep. And if you were to violate the curfew, they would ride up on you. And I used to have to interact with them because we had some young people there that thought their privilege from up north would translate in New Orleans, which it did not. They seen any white person outside of New Orleans as a bunch of quote unquote nigga lovers. So I would have to negotiate with these Homeland Security people.

You had to be very calm, very still because you could see the pupils. Their pupils were dilated, were small. Anybody that's been in war, like Vietnam and such, and Desert Storm, they know when the pupils are dilated like that, that means these people have killed several times. And my uncle used to call it the 100-mile stare. And you had to be very calm with these people because if you flinched, if you did anything that they didn't like or they felt threatened in any type of way, they will open up fire on you. They had AR-15s. All of them had AR-15s and 9mm straps to their legs. So it was more, you know, it seemed more like a military takeover, like I said before,

than a rescue. And further down the line in the months, you had National Guardsmen that opened fire on people into busy traffic. You would find bodies in the 7th Ward and the 8th Ward in different houses with bullets in the back of their head, you know, execution style. And our investigating team will go out and witness this firsthand. And I was a part of that investigating team that would do a walk through the house where the body was at. It was shot in the back of the head. And the rumor was, you know, and was shot in the back of the head. And the rumor was, you know, we had some rogue National Guardsmen executing, you know, people who didn't have homes

or some homeless people, you know, that were left behind. Number one lesson I learned from Katrina was you may be a pacifist, but you might need to pass some fists. You may need to go out and get you firearms. Of course, we want you to get proper training. Of course, we don't want you to do anything illegal. Get your legal firearms and get some training. The second lesson was that human beings are incredible.

We saw a lot of destruction, but we also saw a lot of beauty and a lot of love in my experience too. We were common ground people came together in days and we fell in love with each other within days because of the pressure of the situation. If we didn't love each other, if we didn't get along with one another, we had to, you know, in order for survival. Things were so bad that

if your car had broken down on the side of the highway on the road, you had to call us and five different vehicles will be speeding to your location, you know, to see who will get there first before Homeland Security or a vigilante group will roll up on you. You can't rely on the state, 100%. You can't rely on the state. Stay with us as It Could Happen Here returns after this short break and a word from our sponsors. after this short break and a word from our sponsors.

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

to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors 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. 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. wherever else you get your podcasts.

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

At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban,

I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The same year that Sincere was facing down armed racist vigilantes in New Orleans, the stage was also set for an uprising to kick off in Toledo, Ohio.

In our next interview, Tom tells us how a largely black community and anarchists affiliated with anti-racist action hit the streets against the National Socialist Movement, or the NSM, and participated in an uprising that exploded not just against the neo-Nazis, but the police that were protecting them as well. The Toledo anti-racism protests really began when a National Socialist Movement member who was living in a Black neighborhood in Toledo pulled a gun on two Black children that were playing in the alley behind his house. Those kids then went home and told their parents. Their parents then showed up at dude's house with weapons. The guy pulled a gun on them and then called the National Socialist Movement, who then showed up.

And so they had been, this is back when Bill White was still the head of NSM, and NSM was actually starting to make some headway, like they were growing really quickly. They targeted Ohio as a recruiting ground because they thought that they could gain a lot of membership there. And so Toledo was kind of their first foray into trying to do stuff in Ohio. And so they announced a date and the organizers on the ground in Toledo did something really interesting. Then instead of organizing activists, they went and organized in the community directly. They were going around the streets talking to people. Street gangs were calling truces for the day. And so when October 15th rolled around, everybody showed up. There were anarchists there,

but there were tons of people from the neighborhood there. The whole protest didn't last very long. It was this is October 15th, 2005. They sort of NSM was there and they had their shields and people were hucking stuff at them, but they were kind of too far away to really hit. So the cops started surrounding them and allowing them to march. And as they were marching, they got within projectile range of people who then started pelting them with everything that they could think of. The cops then got them to run, got the Nazis to run

so they could kind of try and get them out of the area. A group of people sort of cut back behind a school to try and cut them off and got tear gassed. And when the tear gas flew, everything just got set off. There was rioting on and off for like three days in this neighborhood after this. A bar owned by a cop got looted and then burned to the ground. People tried to burn this Nazi's house down. They had to declare a state of emergency over this.

And so there were a number of things that were really important about that day, I think, for us. One was it really did point to the effectiveness of community anti-fascist work. People in that neighborhood were already mad, but it was this sort of like mobilization work, which was done by people in the neighborhood and also done by kind of anarchists that were down in the neighborhood working with people to really make that what it was. Right. And it really showed what a community can do when Nazis show up in their neighborhood and how much a community can reassert its ownership over their space when the police decide to protect the Nazis that are attacking their neighborhood. But the other thing that it really demonstrated, that it really kind of created, was it created a dynamic in Ohio, which had been sort of building for a little while, but you can kind of still feel the ramifications of it. So starting with the Over the Rhine riots, which I think were in 2003

or 2001, when the Cincinnati police killed Timothy riots, which I think were in 2003 or 2001, when the Cincinnati police killed Timothy Thomas, there had kind of been this escalating series of tensions with the state around this period of time. It's also the period of time that a lot of Ohio cities were sort of beginning the real acute period of their decline, that they had been sort of declining for a while, But this is really when things got bad. It was starting really like the early 2000s, mid 2000s. The financial collapse in Cleveland, for example, was in 2006. But it had already been sort of going for a couple of years before that.

And so there were these political conditions that were in place that facilitated this. But this also kind of created a dynamic of confrontation with the state and created a mentality within anarchist communities about being really realistic about what those confrontations look like that instead of being idealistic sort of like people were in the anti-war movement and sort of approaching police from a perspective of ideas and discourse, what we learned during those days is that we should probably approach the police as a logistical force and understand them as such. It was after that point that people really started researching police tactics in this area of the country. And that has had really profound impacts over the last 15 years.

It really did create an entire culture of really digging into those kinds of things very carefully and doing it in a way which wasn't bombastic, but was focused on actual research. The reason that that could happen was what went down on those days was so intense. It was the first time a lot of people had experienced like full-blown major rioting before and like major large-scale urban rioting before. And it definitely changed a lot about the way that anarchists in this area of the country approach things. And you can still feel the ramifications, the ripple effects of that today.

Stay with us. We're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back after these words from our sponsors welcome i'm danny thrill won't you join me at the fire and dare enter nocturnal tales from the shadows presented by iheart and sonora an anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters. To bone chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. I know you. Podcast Network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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

and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean.

He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian.

Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well.

Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In our last segment, we're going to speak to anti-fascist researcher and author Spencer Sunshine. But first, let's rewind the clock to when Trump first came in as president in 2017, kicking off riots, walkouts, and protests around the country. Angry protests soon spilled into airports. His people in the tens of thousands took action to defeat the Muslim ban.

On February 2nd, a massive riot kicked off at UC Berkeley against the far-right troll Milo Yiannopoulos, shutting down his scheduled talk. The far-right responded by holding a series of free speech rallies throughout the summer, and anti-fascists soon found themselves outflanked in the streets by a loose coalition of militia members, Proud Boys, neo-Nazis, and alt-right groups. Seeking to seize on this moment, the white nationalist wing of the movement called for another free speech rally in Charlottesville, Virginia,

and the scene was set for a historic and deadly showdown. It was pretty clear, especially as the run-up to it happened, about how big it was going to be, how many different kinds of groups were going to be involved, and that for the first time, although there had been increasing mobilizations throughout the year especially was the first one that was going to be led by open fascists some of the other ones fascists participated in them but they were more a pan far right they were like pan far right events like what happened in berkeley but this one was going to be led by fascists and they were all there's many different kinds of groups and they were coming out of the woodwork we had old activists who'd been around in the 80s um who

stated they were going to come and there was clearly a lot of energy behind it and it seemed like it was the big bid and there were some of the participants were openly saying this uh it was going to be the big bid for power and legitimacy of the alt-right uh i believe it was richard spencer who said or or Matthew Heimek, I forget which one, actually said that it's going to be before Charlottesville and after Charlottesville, which was true, but not in the way that they hoped for. I think it was a success for anti-fascists and other people who wanted the alt-right to, wanted that inertia to stop and eventually end. that inertia to stop and eventually end. But it was not a success, I think, in the way that people wanted it to be or think about it as a success. It could have been a failure very easily

after the event. The event itself was fairly neutral. I mean, there was all the fighting that is in people's minds that all happened before the rally was supposed to start. That was kind of a draw. It certainly was not a success that anti-fascists stopped the rally. They did not. It did not stop people from entering into the rally grounds. The police dispersed it before the rally itself actually started. So that can be seen as a success. And then the car attack, of course, was, well, in some ways, a failure for us. And I think at the very beginning, many of the fascists were excited about it. Like it really did add to their inertia.

And the whole thing could have been forgotten about very quickly, in which case I think it then would have been seen as a success for the fascists. If people remember, the first when it happened, Trump immediately was like Nazis bad. And then the next day he made his very fine people on both sides comment. And this is what energized liberals essentially to condemn him and to jump on the bandwagon against him. If he hadn't said that, this could have just sort of passed out of the public eye very easily. And it be seen, at least by fascists, that anti-fascists were unable to mobilize enough people to stop them you know and the only stopping of them only happened because the police did it so i think it could have easily been a draw or

neutral or a failure without trump's comments it did end up being success because of this backlash against them it did did, for whatever reason, did finally bring it to the consciousness of people that this huge rise in the far right that Trump had engendered, what it really meant, how violent it was really going to be, what a threat it really was. And it did motivate people to, in the aftermath in particular, unfortunately, this sort of went away fairly quickly quickly to take the streets and come out in big numbers and condemn the alt-right and the fascist wing of the alt-right did collapse fairly soon afterwards by spring of the next year charlottesville's real interesting because people had been killed by the alt-right before it but not in such a dramatic

manner not in public and not on video and it was sort of like i think for people and i, and I've said this before, kind of, you remember the first murders, you remember the first blood. And in that sense, because afterwards, a lot of people were killed during the Trump administration and car attacks. I mean, I think a few dozen people during the Black Lives Matter demonstrations, it became almost rote, where you're like, oh, someone was killed at a demonstration again. But it was the shock of this at first, because this had not been seen for a very long time in the United States that someone be murdered at a demonstration. And that really sort of stuck with people. And in that way, it became a symbol. You can even today still say Charlottesville unless people are, you know, teenagers or something.

Don't remember. People know what you're talking about. Biden invoked it when he was running for president. So it's good. It remains as a symbol of how big the really, really far right, you know, the fascists can become quite quickly and how violent and murderous they are. And so that remains as a symbol to people, I think. And frankly, that there can be resistance to it. Like people also saw there was real resistance and people were willing to fight them. And especially after 1-6, like there's no more of this idiotic discourse about if it's okay to

punch a Nazi. I really think most people do think it's okay now, you know, after they've seen what unfolded under the entire arc of Trump from Charlottesville to the Capitol takeover. If people had stayed home, if there wasn't the mobilization that did occur, oh, it would have been a total victory for them. They would have taken it as a total victory and then moved on to the next thing and tried something bigger. Absolutely. If you held a demonstration and a thousand people came,

wouldn't you be, and you did your thing, wouldn't you be like, cool, let's move on to the next thing. That was successful. Over the years, as I've done more and more activism, I've come to realize what nothing succeeds as success means. Once you start going, when something succeeds, more people come to it, and you can move on and move on as a bigger thing and be able to do things you weren't able to do before. This is why I always say we need to confront people. We have to break their movement. We can't let it jump from either success to success or just simply not a failure.

Because if you're already moving and you hit something that's not a failure, you'll just go on to the next thing. Nothing will stop you. And we need these things to stop. The night that Heather Heyer was murdered, thousands hit the streets and cities across the United States, tearing down Confederate statues and marching in solidarity. A few weeks later, when far-right activists tried to hold a rally in Boston, over 40,000 hit the streets to shut it down. A week later in San Francisco and Berkeley, tens of thousands marched to shut down more alt-right rallies.

In Berkeley, a black bloc of several hundred strong marched in formation as part of a wider anti-racist coalition, pushing both far-right activists and heavily armed riot police out of a downtown park, where only months before, far-right activists had driven out anti-fascists. The events of the first eight months of the Trump administration showed that there was mass, militant opposition on the streets of the U.S. against the far right, which destabilized the Trump regime and made it backpedal. But more importantly, it showed millions of people across the country that resistance was possible. That is going to do it for us today. Follow IGD at itsgoingdown.org and on Mastodon at IGD underscore news.

Thanks so much for tuning in and be sure to come back next time as It Could Happen Here returns. We will continue to tread where we please and to the fascists, no pasaran. 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. You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadow. Join me, Danny Trails, and step into the flames of rife.

An anthology podcast of modern day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. lord of latin america listen to nocturnal on the iheart radio app apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast hi i'm ed zitron host of the better offline podcast and we're kicking off our second season digging into 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. 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.