It Could Happen Here - The Dutch Government’s Neglect of Asylum Seekers at Ter Apel

Episode Date: June 11, 2024

James is joined again by Mick and Roos to discuss the terrible conditions endured by asylum seekers at Ter Apel and how the community has organized to help.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey guys, I'm Kate Max. You might know me from my popular online series, The Running Interview Show, where I run with celebrities, athletes, entrepreneurs, and more. After those runs, the conversations keep going. That's what my podcast, Post Run High, is all about. It's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories, their journeys, and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together. Listen to Post Run High on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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 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. call zone media hi everyone and welcome to the podcast it could happen here it's a podcast about the world falling apart and people putting it back together today we've got a little bit of both i'm joined again by mick and rose this time we'll be discussing the treatment of migrants inside the european union and specifically the treatment of migrants by the European Union and specifically the treatment of migrants by the government of the Netherlands at a place called Terraple. Welcome to the show guys thanks for thanks for joining us. Thanks good to be back. Thanks for having us yeah. Thank you it's

good to have you. I wonder if you could begin we were talking about this before you recorded and I think it's very obviously the migration laws in Europe are very different, but so are the situations with like regard to shelter and just like facilities with the US being so big, we have them dotted all over the place. So you were just explaining that this is a place where anyone who wants to register for asylum in the Netherlands has to go. Is that right? has to go is that right yeah so that's almost entirely right so everyone who arrives in the Netherlands and wants to ask for asylum has to go to this village all the way on the north eastern border with Germany and that's where the only registration center is for most asylum seekers I believe only people who do family reunification can go somewhere else but yeah we have like one registration center for the entire country and yeah yeah i mean we have a tiny country but it still uh became a huge bottleneck because it was the only one so it didn't work out that well apparently and that's that's why we're

talking about it right so just so people understand where these people are in their asylum journey like they've entered the eu right and then they've traveled to the netherlands which is a country where they want to claim asylum is that right yeah exactly so basically they arrived at their final destination so most people that i met inter apple had already been traveling for weeks, months, sometimes years, depending on how much money and luck they had usually. So, yeah, they would have either crossed the Mediterranean Sea or gotten into Europe through Turkey or Belarus. And then they would have crossed many, many borders and many, many border guards and fences. And they would have gotten stuck in places for weeks or months before they could move on again yeah and people who would yeah actually

go to the uh registration center in the netherlands that means they wanted to ask for asylum there and probably stay there right that would be their country of residence going forward so can you explain i mean i'm looking at pictures of it right now it's not hard if you if you want to look up pictures you can spell it t-e-r-a-p-e-l but can you explain the conditions there because looking at it it's atrocious like from the pictures i can see yeah i mean i saw many pictures before I went there myself. It's basically just a tent camp. So, I mean, it's a shelter, right? So it's like it used to be an army base.

It can hold 2,000 people. It has loads of like small housing units where people live. It has like a lot of offices for all the registration steps and like the immigration service, the the police the shelter organization like blah blah blah but so like one and a half year ago there was a lack of shelter in the whole country but specifically also in tarapal and yeah somehow the authorities decided that the solution would be to just leave people on the field that was in front of the registration center. And so there was just an informal camp. Like people were sleeping outside for weeks or months, not even in tents,

but they would have like huge kind of banners or tarps that would kind of provide some shade. So it was like midsummer. It was a very dry summer summer which for us was crazy lucky um the climate activists were not happy but we were happy yeah so yeah people were just like laying on the ground and that was yeah there were some that water there were like dixies for toilets that were obviously gross and so yeah what you would see if you google it you just see people lying on the field and and just being there for extended periods of time but when I personally went there the first time it was kind of worse than what I

expected it to be because I think the level of neglect was not visible on photo or on video so people would come to us and tell us that they had like show us really big wounds that were infected or people would come and tell us like hey i had a heart attack a few weeks ago i need this medication or i have diabetes or whatever so there was just this dystopian situation of this enormous facility that can hold thousands of people and then a big fence around it and then people with clearly like very serious medical conditions just standing in front of the gate and the security guards just being like no maybe like a staff member will show up today maybe not but like we don't care how dangerous the situation is or something yeah

just the fact that there was like no proper place to wash there were no toilets the food was like yeah i worked in camps across the borders uh across european borders and i've seen a lot of like horrible food but like in their apple they just decided to rent uh yeah like if you have like um a party or something you just rent this place that will just sell fries so they were just giving fries to people like every single day jesus yeah just i mean just just three three packed food from the supermarket would be more healthy than just fries every day for a month right so yeah so just a level of like yeah neglect lack of care um it was just even even more than what you can like see on the pictures yeah and like a complete like lack of like failure of the government to address their basic rights and needs. How long can people expect

to spend in that situation then? Like they have to go there, right? Like if they want the asylum, they have to go there. Yeah, so like the irony was that the only way to get shelter was to be there and then be without shelter for you wouldn't know how long. Like, yeah, I mean sometimes it was hours, especially for the women and children. They would usually be let in in the evening. But yeah, men, definitely days, sometimes if they were not lucky, weeks. And it was just also so unclear.

So people would just not get any information. They would be there and then all of a sudden hear someone shout and all start running towards where the shout came from information. They would be there. And then all of a sudden you hear someone shout and all start running towards where the shout came from because maybe they would be let in or, yeah, I don't know. Like guards would just shout at them in Dutch and then be like, why don't you understand me? Or like, it was all just like consciously,

like it's so unnecessarily chaotic. And therefore also like people pushing around, police getting like intimidating and violent and yeah just this very chaotic and and disrespectful approach to to people yeah it's worryingly similar to what we see in open-air detention sites here like um they'll do that people are outside there too they have next to no shelter there too. We volunteers make the food, so it's better than that. Yeah.

They'll turn up in a bus. Like I've seen them turn up in a bus and just shout run. And like, if you understand English, you run, if you don't understand English, you see everyone else running. So you run and then they can only take 30 people and you've now had more than a hundred people come stampeding across, like just like just you know they've got to grab their bags and everything and it's yeah completely unnecessarily chaotic and cruel and then once they're let in what can they expect from that they're staying in like a barracks or something while they're while they're processed uh yeah so

it was very very chaotic i think it took them like almost a year to actually process everyone because they would just if a municipality would say like oh i have space for 100 people they would just randomly put 100 people in a bus and drop them there um and then a year later it would turn out that they were never properly registered for something so but yeah i think like there was a night shelter not so far away from to apple so that was always like late in the evening there would still be a few buses going to that night shelter that was just a big sports hall i think full of beds bunk beds or yeah like stretchers and yeah no privacy just like hundreds of people in one room the lights would stay on all night for safety reasons but of course that's also very cruel too yeah yeah and then if people would

get registered they would be usually sent to like a temporary or like emergency shelter because there was such a huge shortage of regular shelters so some people were living in sports halls without much privacy for like half a year or a year or some people are still there to be honest wow yeah that's crazy it's uh atrocious talking of atrocious unfortunately we have to break for ads we'll do that Hey guys, I'm Kate Max. You might know me from my popular online series, The Running Interview Show, where I run with celebrities, athletes, entrepreneurs, and more. After those runs, the conversations keep going.

That's what my podcast, Post Run High, is all about. It's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories, their journeys, and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together. You know that rush of endorphins you feel after a great workout? Well, that's when the real magic happens. So if you love hearing real, inspiring stories from the people you know, hearing real inspiring stories from the people you know, follow and admire? Join me every week for Post Run High. It's where we take the conversation beyond the run and get into the heart of it all.

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

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

Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez. 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. 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. Okay, we're back. I hope you enjoyed this advert. And we're talking about Terraple, this, I guess, migrant reception registration center in the Netherlands. One thing I saw when I was sort of doing some reading about this recently was that babies born to mothers or people in the terrapple asylum center are seven times more likely to die in or around perfect that that is shocking yeah so does that is there just no access to medical care are people like delivering babies in in this? Well, I think the excuse of the government

is that they didn't have proper care during the pregnancy because they were still traveling. Of course, that is often the case. But still, it's insanely high. Seven times more people dying and um especially when this super chaotic situation occurred like yeah we would have people in the field that we like were suspecting they were getting like hypothermia or you know some sort of yeah strong physical reaction to the tough conditions they were facing but they could be dropped in the night shelter, kicked out again in the morning, being back on the field, staying on the field for a few nights,

again, going for one night to a night shelter, being transferred to an emergency camp for two days, being transferred to another emergency camp for three days. And during this time, there is no coherent medical care, right? Yeah. And of course, it would usually be a little bit better for women and especially pregnant women so they would try to put them in a more stable place and like not

move them around that much but trying is yeah they would not always actually manage to do that so uh there have definitely also been complaints of yeah of people and especially like pregnant pregnant women still being forced to move to a different camp like really close to the date that the baby was expected to come and yeah that definitely doesn't help so I mean the care on the field was absolutely horrendous I think women were usually not exposed to it that much because we do yeah there's also this weird sexism in migration that men can always suffer more which is not always true especially if you're not filtering out the really thick man either because yeah all of them i was definitely a lot

more healthy than a lot of the men walking around there but yeah at least in the case of like pregnant women i think they would be moved out pretty quickly. But yeah, it was chaotic. And then also you have like, of course, you have a lot of people who speak Arabic or Farsi or Tigrinya. But you also have people who speak a language that is only spoken in a province of a country. You know, like it's very hard to get proper translation for like all the possible languages of people that apply for asylum. to get proper translation for like all the possible languages of people that apply for asylum yeah but yeah i mean i definitely think the conditions uh especially when when there were so many people living in really bad emergency shelters or even on the streets did not help babies that's all yeah or anyone i guess you explain then, like, this situation arose about a year ago, I think, right?

So you were part of a group of people that were able to respond to help, at least, I guess, make it a little bit less terrible. Can you explain a little bit about the group, about what you were able to do? Yeah, so I mean, mean we just so i was already a part of migrate which is an organization that uh like i personally worked on the borders like providing food and clothes and stuff like that to people on the move and migrates is more like also more an activist organization so organizing protests or campaigns and stuff like that um so we just like went to see what was going on.

And then we very quickly realized that it was worse than it looked. But also that there were so many basic things that were not being done by the government that we were actually able to do. So yeah, we just asked around a lot for hours and hours. Like, what do you need? What's going on? What is missing? Like, what is your primary issue at this moment and one of

the main things people were saying was like the food is fucking driving them insane like yeah um yeah just the lack of flavor but also just the lack of health and and yeah people would just get like diarrhea and stuff and then it turned out of course that there were already some people around that wanted to do stuff so we just had a big call and then it turned out of course that there were already some people around that wanted to do stuff so we just had a big call and then it turned out that there was like this squat where they had a big kitchen and they were like yeah of course you can cook here and then there was another like former squat where they also had a big soup kitchen and then I was like okay this is like it was a big like media storm it was a big thing for the netherlands that it was this was happening because we have

this like yeah idea that we are perfectly organized and blah blah and that's like all the bad things happen on the border still like at the end like with the very clear role of our politicians but like somehow yeah there's not much talk about that so it was it was like on the front page every single day for weeks so i thought yeah like because the people that were already trying to do something they were like how can we get enough money for the groceries and how can we get volunteers and then yeah i was like we'll manage like if there's one thing i learned from the borders like if you start doing something people will will come and and join um

yeah and we first said like okay let's just cook two times a week you know one time in the squat and another time in the other squad and then it's like super doable blah and then basically we started and it's yeah there was just no way back so uh yeah we said like okay let's hand out food twice and then yeah i just went like day and night being on the field and quite quickly we moved to food distribution every day because there were so many people in the area that wanted to cook um there was like an islamic group there were churches they were like yeah from all over the country people were coming into action and yeah so first we did food kind of because people really wanted it but also kind of because we just knew how to do it because we had some people who had a big kitchen and some experience cooking in in large quantities

and then quickly it became like colder and and rainy as well so we started to move towards sleeping bags and ponchos and just yeah big distributions and then we also started to hand out tents and then we got into a whole fight with the municipality and the police because they were constantly like confiscating the tents yeah but yeah we just started with what we like thought would be feasible to do i guess and then it kind of escalated really quickly to yeah us being kind of responsible for a lot of basic needs of everyone on the field and also us monitoring like informing journalists because like the the government would be like oh no there's nobody there on the field right now and then we would just like five minutes and be like no one uh yeah so we also quite quickly like became a big like part of

the whole political debate where like the government was saying one thing and we were saying another and like they were all all the time trying to pretend that nothing was wrong and everything was fine and yeah yeah but i think it's it's such a common and sadly a common experience right just being like a the government is lying to you like you can see this with your eyes so that you're being lied to and be like they're just going to leave these people if we don't do something no one will um something that we've had here we see as you say every border in europe more or less right like it's just a consequence of the way that like neoliberal capitalism has decided to deal with migration which is to make to be as cruel as possible and to make it as hard as possible for people i wonder like you've been

organizing there at least in this place for like a year i think i want this to be instructive for people because like we've been organizing here too and we've learned a lot are there things that you've learned that you think other people could take from the organizing or or like i don't make you you're also a part of like organizing in in your like area if either of you have things that you've learned about specifically organizing to help migrants i'd love to hear them oh so many things i'm probably gonna forget some of the things i've learned well i think one thing that i've learned and that i've learned over and over and over again is that if you start doing something you will find people who will join and i think that's one of the scary things when you see a gigantic problem and even if you know a concrete thing that you can do about it, it's still, yeah, there's a lot of things that

you cannot do as a single human being. But I found this true in many countries across the world, that if you just start, and you say that you're doing it, people will actually join. And I found that especially like, painful in Ter Apple that we were on this field and there had been so much media attention and there was nobody there like everyone was speaking about it and no one was doing anything and it was kind of depressing to to witness that and to feel that nobody it felt like nobody cared right um but as soon as we just started with the small thing like okay you can donate the groceries you can come help cook you can come help do the dishes like concrete things that you can do yeah we were like i think we got like a thousand people who wanted to

volunteer with us which was like way too much we never got back to all of them because it was just insane yeah we did not need thousand people to cook food for 200 people so like yeah yeah but we just started and i think yeah i think that was really helpful or i think that can be very helpful if you're thinking about doing something like start small but but don't be afraid that it will not kind of grow because people will join and people will make it into something bigger yeah also a great lesson that i learned well it's very basic and understandable actually but like try to make yeah my experience is usually with like a mass distribution so you have hundreds of people you have food or blankets or whatever something that

people really need and it's like so important to to really plan the distribution well and to really inform and discuss with people because that's one thing that also happened in their apple that at some point people were just dumping shit on the field and they were actually causing fights and causing tensions between people because you cannot you cannot show up with five sleeping bags when when hundreds of people are in desperate need of a sleeping bag you know like that's kind of inhumane in in i get that people have good intentions and i get that it could potentially mean that five people are less cold but like yeah some sort of shelter is is a basic. So you cannot give that to a few and not to others. So yeah, I think like the first time we did the distribution into Apple,

I was kind of scared because people were spreading, like there was a lot of rumor about like, oh, it's so violent. And these people are like, blah, blah, blah. And of course, I kind of didn't believe it because I worked with migrants for a long time and I know that they're human beings you know and they're not so like shockingly different than but I've also learned that you need to be they did not learn at all to trust anyone there because like people were lying to them people were telling them they would get

shelter in the night but they would not people would say that they would see a doctor and they would not get to see a doctor so like the i think it's really important if you want to help people that you take them seriously and that you build up some trust so for example we we went we the first time we cooked so much food we were like it's we cannot make it run out you know like we want everyone to get as much as they want and more even if we have to trash because like these people for once have to get the feeling that it's like that we're there for everyone so like if you make if you do a mass distribution you usually make like lines and people have to like wait for their turn but we spend hours just telling people like hey we're gonna give out food there's so much food you know don't worry like it's chill and then also actually live up to that of course right make sure that

there is enough food yeah and and like try to make it like fun and this is like it's kind of awkward because you like I kind of feel awkward about putting people in a line and telling them to wait and you know like not because you're kind of being bossing them around but yeah if it goes well once and everyone just feels like hey here I don't have to fight to get to the front and here I can just chill out and we can make a chat with each other and we can just you know smile and like wish each other a good day then yeah I think it's also really important to try to make distributions kind of fun, or at least as chill as possible. And to like, try to not make it another survival of the fittest moment, because that is exactly what the state is pushing people into. And that is what I don't want people to get into. Yeah, I think that's very true. Like we've

definitely learned a lot of those similar things. i can't uh like put enough emphasis on planning before you just show up and do a distribution like we had so many fucking chaotic um it is no yeah like so people are fucking hungry and they've had to fight to get fed for the duration of the journey be that days weeks months or years and like it's there's no uh they're doing what what like they understand to be the necessary thing yeah and there's it's absolutely not like humane to just recreate that that mode you know like it's amazing to be able to to create a nice atmosphere where people can relax and feel safe and feel finally treated like equally and somehow like fairly again even if it's just for a very simple meal but it's yeah i mean you you can already get moody if someone

jumps in front of you at the supermarket you know like i can i can get moody with that but it's like that but then like way more extreme and for actual yeah things that you need to survive all the time like it's it's yeah it's hard to imagine I guess if if you've never really been in a survival situation but yeah it can be so much fun also maybe that's another good one because I remember people were feeling sorry for me a lot when I was working there like oh my god this must be so hard and I mean it was fucking hard sometimes like I have literally been standing there like pushing away tears and being like no I'm fine but I'm not fine at all but also it's fun like you're just joking around and you're making each other happy and you feel like you're part of something bigger and and you feel

I think it's very empowering to be like the state is fucking it up and we can actually do it better yeah very much so like i think it it's very like affirming right like to be like we don't need uh like anyone telling us what to do we don't need anyone like trying to control us like we can we can take care of these people ourselves without creating mechanisms of control and like i think for me that was i like one of the reasons i really enjoy doing it is that that like me and my friends can care for these people and it's like i don't know from my perspective like i've had conversations with hundreds of people from all around the world like we would do things like play music while people waited for food if we had a friend who was able to play music you know we had enough enough people we'd always recruit people from among the the migrants to help us with food

distribution which turned out to be great because like they taught us different words in different languages and like uh you know i can say hot sauce and like 25 languages now and like it was the important parts yeah yeah right there real stuff but yeah it was very and then like i remember one night it was like in september it was so cold one of the colder nights it was in september and it was just about freezing and like there were very few of us back then and we uh my friend had some guitars and like drums and uh we like parked the van to block the wind and everyone sat around and played the guitar and they played their different songs and like we had all these really happy moments yeah it's not like we sit around crying all the time like it's uh no not at all it's very empowering i think no i think it's

important what you just said that also a lot of work can be done by people themselves so i remember a volunteer being like i want to give out the food whereas these guys were giving out the food every day and they had this whole routine and they were much faster and you know like and also it's not about you feeling good about you know like yeah yeah not there to help you yeah you know like listen to people like really spend a lot of time understanding what people need and what they want and because it's really often not what you expect and yeah make sure that people can also do stuff themselves and and also like for example if we would have tents but not for everyone or blankets but not for everyone instead of making like a very rigid decision of like you

get it and you don't it's so useful to just talk to people and just be like hey sorry this is the situation or yeah like there were a lot of fights because families were always allowed to go first, but it was not really clearly communicated by the government's like hand facility and stuff. But when we were just discussing with them, like, hey, how can we make the distribution more chill? They were like, well, can women and children and elderly people just go first? And I was like, yeah, sure. You know, I mean, it's not really any of my business how this is like yeah and then if everyone just understands it and it's kind of clear and understandable and

explained it's like so much more chill whereas if you're just shouting at people and assuming that they will not understand or assume that they will be selfish you are also forcing people into that role yes and I think it's really beautiful if you can snap out of that and you be selfish you are also forcing people into that role yes and i think it's really beautiful if you can snap out of that and you can yeah you can just be somewhat equal even though like legally you are in a completely different situation yeah totally so so what you're telling me is that if you talk to people and treat them as human beings, that has positive results for bad situations. Yeah. This is a hot take, a very hot take.

Yeah. Breaking news. I don't have nearly the amount of field experience that Rose has. But another thing that I think is really important to highlight is that it's not just the necessities. I did first aid at the No Border Camp near Terrapol last summer. And some of the activists there did a really admirable job they i think they did not go to terrapple because it was too politically hot at the time so they went to different centers where migrants were living and they handed out toys and they hired a bouncy castle for the kids to play on i don't know it was really it was really basic in the sense that it didn't

need like massive massive funds or incredible amounts of organization that you need bureaucracies to handle it was just people thinking of ways like hey how can we make these people happier or more comfortable or at least forget for like a few hours about like the situation they're in because uh our media likes to you know dive onto every time there's a fight in a migrant center right but it's rarely discussed that if you put a lot of people in a stressful situation on top of each other people will there will be tensions and there will be fights, which is I think we don't cover that enough. Right. No. And also nobody really cares because I think it's it's one of the most beautiful things for me as well.

I said the solidarity that people show each other. for me as well is that the solidarity that people show each other and like yeah you don't even see it half the time but people give each other like their waterproof jackets or uh i remember one night it was a horrible night in fair apple and and we didn't expect people to be there and all of a sudden there were hundreds of people and they hadn't had food since the morning and then people in the camp they all get microwave meals and they kind of hate them. But they all have kind of a stash. So they all like started to heat up microwave meals and bring them outside. And they were actually way more able to provide food on such a short notice than we were. And it was not the best food, but like everyone had food and they were even sharing it with us.

And we were all just like so glad to be eating after 10 hours in the rain and in the cold and yeah people yeah I don't know carrying luggage for someone who has like it's all the time you see people standing up for each other and I think that is honestly an amazing thing and maybe more tough situations bring that out somehow more as well like it's easy for most people in western societies to be very individualist and live very isolated and yeah non-fulfilling lives but then if you are in this kind of situation in some ways it can also bring out the best in people yeah i think so like we were just talking about before we started how like uh yesterday i was out helping down by the border and uh i ran into two mauritanian guys who had carried a chinese man with a leg injury for two days like and they couldn't even share the same language and like

that walk is no that hike is no joke like i do that with a big backpack full of water that's hard and and i do a lot of hiking, but I wasn't carrying another human, you know. But it can actually, yeah, really bring out some incredible acts of kindness. Hey guys, I'm Kate Max. You might know me from my popular online series, The Running Interview Show, where I run with

celebrities, athletes, entrepreneurs, and more. After those runs, the conversations keep going. That's what my podcast, Post Run High, is all about. It's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories, their journeys, and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together. You know that rush of endorphins you feel after a great workout? Well, that's when the real magic happens. So if you love hearing real, inspiring stories

from the people you know, follow, and admire, join me every week for Post Run High. It's where we take the conversation beyond the run and get into the heart of it all. It's lighthearted, pretty crazy, and very fun. Listen to Post Run High on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast,

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

I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God, things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or 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. 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. I wonder, guys, we're running close to the end of our like uh signed time if people want to help either to say they're in the netherlands and they want to come and help or um if they want to you know help in a financial way or maybe they can do some remote sort of help maybe they can respond

to the thousand volunteers by email for you yeah how can they do that uh yeah donations are always welcome we're currently not working in their apple but it doesn't look good so usually the influx is highest in in summer and and like early autumn and we have like a far right majority in parliament since a few months. So we wouldn't be surprised if we have people out on the streets again. Also, I think there's a very big chance that the shelters for undocumented people might close. So we would have a lot of people on the streets then. So we need a lot of solidarity networks and a lot of things, like a lot. Yeah. So like, yeah yeah financial support is always welcome but i think it's also really important that people think about what they can do in their lives and that it is also something that they can manage inside of

their lives so like not everyone can drop everything and yeah uh move to the other side of the country or whatever but if you can host one person or if you can uh support someone else who's hosting like there are ways i think i think migrates does not have like all the options to volunteer but like we we really hope that there will be a lot of networks of solidarity that yeah we just need them across the country i think and i do think there's like a serious risk of like more criminalization of aid workers we were also criminalized for handing out tents i got a letter that said that i risked like three months of imprisonment for handing out tents yeah jesus um but democracy moments yeah we need that european social democracy model everyone's talking

yeah we are just doing great yeah yeah and so like tents were constantly confiscated and stuff and it was intense there because people had to be there to get shelter which they legally were entitled to but it is a bigger trend so regular homeless people will also see their tents confiscated or smashed without them getting an offer to get into a shelter right so regular homeless people will also see their tents confiscated or smashed without them getting an offer to get into a shelter right so i think the criminalization in our case was a bit extreme because most of the criminalization had to do with at least a very fake relationship with like smuggling or people crossing borders whereas like handing out fences like the most humanitarian basic thing that you can possibly do.

And somehow they still thought it was a good idea to criminalize that. Yeah, I think we need to prepare for the fact that our borders and our migration policies are going to get more cruel. And that the only thing that we can do to help is really strong networks of solidarity and resistance. help is like really strong networks of solidarity and resistance and that we might sometimes risk prison time but that we still probably need to do it because the option the alternative is that we're just letting people be destroyed in this system i think that's very very good uh mick do you have anything to add where can people follow you find more ways to support ways to show solidarity i think what i plugged last time like the abolish frontex campaign find your local activist group or start it because we yeah exactly exactly even if you're just one person that's like

yeah like through social media you can find a lot of people uh find your local squad uh they will be they will want to help yeah oh and maybe what you just said like uh there's every year a no border camp somewhere in the netherlands so that's also a good place to start yeah yeah yes uh uh you can find them on instagram i think i'm not on instagram i don't know yeah it's there that that that's that's definitely an option uh atmosphere is great there i don't i'm not on the social so you you can't find me if you want to i'm sorry and um well i'm also like rose what you said uh i do some stuff with like a first aid collective so if you guys are if you are doing something and you you're like hey we could use some people with some degree of medical training reach out to me you have my contacts because that is the

kind of thing i will most definitely get. Well, excited is the wrong word. If shit hits the van and it's our Apple, we could really use some first aid as well then. Yeah, yeah. Reach out. I will gladly come over there with all the medical supplies that are scattered around my room. Yeah, I think that's a good illustration there, right?

To finish up, like, everybody has a skill that we can use. Like, you might not think you do, but you probably do. Like, someone knitted hats for us. You know, if you're a person who likes to knit, we had people who didn't think they had much to offer and then came and just made sandwiches. And they created a method for making sandwiches in bulk that allowed us to make more sandwiches more quickly. Everybody has, even if you want to be the person who washes the blankets, that's a massive task.

That means somebody's warm at night. Yeah, that's an insane task. somebody's warm at night. Yeah, that's an insane task. And also like maybe the more intimidating tasks, like I think it could be intimidating to be like, oh, we're going to, I don't know, hundreds of men and everyone says they're scary and blah, blah, blah. But indeed, there's also so much things happening

in the background, like collecting blankets, getting clothes, getting groceries. Like there's so many layers to it. And it can also be that you collect 10 blankets, getting clothes, getting groceries. There's so many layers to it. And it can also be that you collect 10 blankets, but hundreds of people collect 10 blankets, right? So you're always part of something bigger. I think that it's always very good to think that if you're faced with a big problem, it's very hard to get to the solution of it.

But at the same time, it's very hard to get to the solution of it. But at the same time, it's very easy to do a tiny thing about it. And I think it's much more useful to do that tiny thing than to be like, oh, I can never get to the real solution of this problem. And in the end,

you will kind of get to it by doing that with more and more people and actually building up collective power and resistance. Yeah. About the collecting thing like yeah for example i know my parents still have like old toys from when we and my brother were younger if you're in an area with a refugee center you could always just give those toys to the people there if you have old children's books or, people can use that to get a grasp on the gibberish that is the Dutch language.

These little things also matter a lot. And it's something very impactful that you can do that doesn't take much of your own effort. It's very low threshold. Right, and it makes a huge difference. It makes someone feel cared for and welcome. That can make all the difference in the world um what is can you just spell out the migrate website for us m-i-g-r-e-a-t dot org dot org perfect it's like migration is great migrate migrate yeah

that's what you did there all right thank you so of you. Thanks. wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash sources. Thanks for listening. and more. After those runs, the conversations keep going. That's what my podcast Post Run High is all about. It's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories, their journeys, and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together. Listen to Post Run High on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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.