It Could Happen Here - The Mass Protests in Kenya

Episode Date: June 26, 2024

Mia talks with comedian, political satirist, and writer Justine Wanda about the movement against Kenya’s 2024 Finance Bill and how massive tax hikes on basic goods have driven Kenyans into the streets.  Instagram/TikTok @fakewokewithjustine, Twitter @officalFWWJ @justinewandaSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into tech's elite 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. to audiobooks while running errands or at the end of a busy day. From thought-provoking novels to

powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture. Listen to Black Lit on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. AT&T. Connecting changes everything. CallZone Media. Protecting changes everything. Welcome to It Could Happen Here, a show that today is very urgently about things falling apart in Kenya and how to put them back together again. I'm your host, Amiyawong. What you're about to hear is an interview about the Kenyan protests that was recorded on Sunday, July 23rd. At time of recording, it is now Tuesday the 25th, and in that two-day span, the situation in Kenya has gotten significantly worse. Kenyan police are firing live ammo into crowds of protesters. They've killed at least five people today, that number is expected to

rise as more protesters die in hospitals. The government has deployed the army and shut down much of the internet in an attempt to stop news from getting out. On Kenyan TV, political leaders called the protesters criminals and a threat to national security. Meanwhile, protesters made good on their slogan Occupy Parliament by storming and then partially burning down the parliament building as politicians continue to meet their demands with bullets. What we've seen today is terrifying. Cops shooting live ammo into churches, cops opening fire on people waiting for medical care. Meanwhile, to the fury of the protesters, Kenyan troops arrived today in Haiti to begin a US-backed occupation of the country. We spent this interview largely discussing the local Kenyan political

elite, but this is also an international crisis. Much of the impetus for the brutal tax increases on basic goods came from an international monetary fund bailout deal that required Kenya to increase its taxes to 25% of the country's GDP. Thus, Kenyans are being robbed twice. Once by the Kenyan political masters of the cops shooting them in the streets, and again by the IMF and their neoliberal wealth extraction program. As the struggle continues, let us now turn to our interview and to a more optimistic time in the movement to get a real understanding of what the protests are about. Welcome to It Could Happen Here, a podcast where the here is currently Kenya. Yeah, I'm your host, Mia Wong, and we are going to talk about a bunch of protests and

a bunch of very, very, very interesting sort of political developments in Kenya that I think have gotten very distressingly little coverage in the sort of like Anglophone mainstream media. And with me to talk about that is Justine Wanda, who's a stand-up comedian, a political satirist, and a writer who's created Fake book with justine about well basically all the stuff that we're going to be talking about today are things you will see on this show um justine welcome to the show thank you so much for having me how are you doing uh you know this is this is one of those morning recordings so i'm a little bit unhinged but it's okay we're i'm really excited to talk to you so yeah yeah yeah i'm really excited to talk to you and i yeah so i think i think the place to start here is can you talk about so so these protests are about uh an upcoming finance bill so let's talk about what actually is this bill and what's in it. Okay, so for me to be able to talk about the finance bill,

I have to talk about the finance bill that was passed last year. Yeah, go for it. So in 2023, we had a finance bill that was passed. Most of the finance bill last year had something called the housing levy, which basically requires every single Kenyan who's employed to remove a little bit of their salary to go directly to pay for an account where they'll pull the money to build Kenyan's affordable houses. houses and in kenya housing is not especially a crisis in like rural areas because most people have their own personal homes the issue is usually the urban centers where housing is actually very expensive and it's it's very poorly infrastructured like there's no water sometimes there's no electricity in certain parts like people have done a lot of illegal collection connections so last year the bill was kind of rammed through and there was so much public participation actually in the beginning

that was like a lot of people got angry about the bill forcing people to take money out of their pockets to contribute to a fund that didn't seem like they had a plan and a lot of politicians were actually on tv and everyone was watching every interview and they're like, you don't make any sense. We don't understand. Yeah. It's like, what is that money for? We're not sure, but we know we want to build you houses. How are you going to manage the money?

Who's going to be in charge of the money? How is this? Like every single aspect was met by like some form of deflection or like a lie just like a lot of there wasn't any accountability in the in what they were telling us and even the person who was in charge was like on tv he was sweating he looked like he was lying the whole time so everyone was like if this is how you're speaking about it when we aren't giving out money what will happen after the fact but the bill sailed through and one of the elements that was in that bill that wasn't even in the news was that avocado farmers in the country will start

be charging us that uh will be charged a certain amount of money on their produce and they have to produce receipts on this every single day what like if yes if you sell like an avocado one avocado or like a bag of avocados you have to do a breakdown of like your sales and like provide receipts to the government and then like you're charged for it oh my god and yes and the mps this like earlier this year were like when the bill usually like sometimes it takes a while for the the closes to come into effect it takes like maybe a couple of months so the the amount that farmers are supposed to get charged was supposed to go live on, sorry, in February or something. So in February, farmers are getting attacked

by like the Kenya Revenue Authority. They're being told, you need to provide these receipts and everything. And everyone is like, I don't understand because we weren't informed. And then the politicians

who did not read the bill but passed it were like, oh, we didn't read the document. It was too big. What? Yes. what yes baffling exactly so like that kind of information was what that was what was on the news just before they introduced now the finance bill 2024 so it's like we know you didn't see the one from last year you passed a bunch of uh um bills that you didn't understand the impact of it

in the long term. So why should Kenyans trust you with this new one? And then they were like, no, we have the best economic interests at heart. And then everyone was like, but the bill you passed last year

to increase revenue didn't work. So if it didn't work, what makes you think having a bunch of new taxes is gonna work and they couldn't answer that and now this finance bill 2024 wants to introduce a motor vehicle tax where if you own a car uh you will pay like a certain amount like i think 2.5 percent that's one of the valuation of your car and you pay it to your insurance company every single year wait to the insurer what what what wait wait hold on so what why why is the tax

why is this being paid to the insurance company what because that's that's what people are asking it's like we understand because insurance in kenya is mostly run by private entities all of us know exactly what they're doing so it's more of like a way to privatize and get money into people's pockets so we can see and then end up being stolen and there will be no accountability but they say it's easier because the insurance companies already handle this kind of stuff so So it's on top of your insurance, on top of the insurance you pay for your car, you pay the motor vehicle tax as part of that.

And I'm like, that's ridiculous. We don't trust you with our money on any given day. Why would you think we would trust you suddenly with a bunch of money being run by a private firm somewhere. Because they're not going to show us their books. Yes. It seems like a part of this too is just that the sort of tax infrastructure isn't very,

like the tax collection infrastructure isn't very good because you would think that that wouldn't be that hard for the government to just collect. But instead we have like an like an ottoman style tax farming situation so i love it you say that because like that's how that's exactly how it feels like everything is run it's very we are the smartest people in the room we can't make the wrong decision but you've made the wrong decision again and again and again and now we're like we want to see the approach we want to understand how this is going to work in the face of unemployment in the face of like the country has not been in good economic trajectory for a while

now and that those economic shocks can be felt a lot of people are closing down their businesses a lot of people are downsizing which means it's less people employed. Even the beauty industry, which is mostly like run on imports because they're charging so much import duty. The beauty industry can't even stand on its own. So people are not just buying less makeup. It's like people who are at those stores

and any of those kinds of businesses can't even have the person who comes to get the job days, it becomes a bit of a problem. So everyone is like, if you're going to charge us more, you have to have an infrastructure that works for us. Yeah. Yeah.

Another tax that they're adding on the finance bill is the import duty fee to like sanitary towels, wheelchair, tires, like all, cause kenya doesn't manufacture a lot of stuff so you find like our like the pad manufacturing industry in kenya like sanitary towels only two percent are manufactured here like a big chunk comes from outside and they want to increase the import duty on that so that means the pads in the market are going to be even more expensive yeah and and that's something that like that that's not that's

not a like that's that's that's not a luxury good you just need that like yeah and everyone was like okay i guess now we'll just have to stop having periods it like that that's what you're saying like we're gonna have to magically yeah we're gonna have to figure out magically with nature to just stop having periods because you guys want to tax us in this particular way and it's it's not just like the small things because like the problem with um the ken space, especially with sensitive issues. So our third president, his name was Mwai Kibaki, was one of the first presidents in the world

to remove VAT on sanitary towels. He was seen as someone who's setting an example for so many people. and then the fact that this is happening when this country was seen as like a chance setter to like not just afghan countries but other countries around the world when it comes to like very important goods it's it was felt like we were going backwards and not in a way it's not like we didn't have an example to follow we actually did have a set

precedent on like how an economy is supposed to work so everyone who's grown up in these particular environments where they felt safe and protected by the government and like the government taking the lead on very important issues was like you can't say building Kenya, buying Kenya is a top priority for you

when even electricity costs are expensive. Because even this bill adds a fuel levy tax. It's going up by seven shillings, which is way too expensive. So you pay for your fuel, but most of the charges on the fuel is just the levels and taxing and they're adding a little bit more yeah and it it seems like from from the way that these are being structured that you know i mean one of the thing with direct like i guess we call them sales taxes here is that they're incredibly regressive the people who get affected the most by it are the people who who don't have that much money versus something like doing you know

versus doing like an income tax on like the people who are the highest owners this is this the burden of this falls entirely on people who are poor and can't afford it yes that's i think it's very scary to think a lot of our politicians because because they get paid with taxpayer money. And what they did when they were contributing to the budget, they were like, we want this and this amount to be added for this and this thing. But the problem is, when you look deep down what they're looking for, they don't want to pay taxes off of their salaries. They want to find a way for taxpayers to pay for part of the taxes that are being added so that they don't have to lose money. And everyone is like,

we know you're budgeting for corruption. We can see you. We can see you still. And we don't want to be part of that. And now to them, it feels like we're being aggressive because we want them to be held accountable for their very punitive, for the punitive measures that they're sending

to like regular Kenyans. As you said, a lot of sales taxes affect everyday people and we don't know how else to stop it. And I think that's why the protests are so, they're catching fire and everyone wants to be out in the streets yeah and we are going to come back and talk about the

protests in a second but first here are some products and services that are I don't know probably also being taxed but hey I'm Jack peace thomas the host of a brand new black effect original series black lit the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of black literature i'm jack peace thomas and i'm inviting you to join me and a vibrant community of literary enthusiasts

dedicated to protecting and celebrating our stories. Black Lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audiobooks while commuting or running errands, for those who find themselves seeking solace, wisdom, and refuge between the chapters. From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture. Together, we'll dissect classics and contemporary works while uncovering the stories of the brilliant writers behind them. Blacklit is here to amplify the voices of Black writers and to bring their words to life. Listen to Blacklit on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hola mi gente, it's Honey German and I'm bringing you Gracias, Come Again, the podcast where we dive deep into the world of Latin culture, musica, peliculas, and entertainment with some of the biggest names in the game. If you love hearing real conversations with your favorite Latin celebrities, artists, and culture shifters, this is the podcast for you. We're talking real conversations with our Latin stars, from actors and artists to musicians and creators, sharing their stories, struggles, and successes.

You know it's going to be filled with chisme laughs and all the vibes that you love. Each week, we'll explore everything from music and pop culture to deeper topics like identity, community, and breaking down barriers in all sorts of industries. Don't miss out on the fun, el té caliente, and life stories. Join me for Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get into todo lo actual y viral. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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. 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. Hey, I'm Gianna Parente. And I'm Jimei Jackson-Gadsden.

We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline, the early career podcast from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. One of the most exciting things about having your first real job is that first real paycheck. You're probably thinking, yay, I can finally buy a new phone.

But you also have a lot of questions, like how should I be investing this money? I mean, how much do I save? And what about my 401k? Well, we're talking with finance expert Vivian Toot, aka Your Rich BFF, to break it all down. I always get roasted on the internet when I say this out loud, but I'm like, every single year you need to be asking for a raise of somewhere between 10 to 15%. I'm not saying you're going to get 15% every single year, but if you ask for 10 to 15 and you end up getting eight, that is actually a true raise.

Listen to this week's episode of Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, and we are back yeah so okay i i think i think people should have like a decent understanding of the fact that these taxes are these are taxes on basic commodities that people need and that's one of the easiest ways to start a protest movement is to suddenly make it too expensive to live so let's talk about who yeah how how these protests sort of started and how they've been being organized my issue is that we can't really say how the protests started but there was a lot of anger by kenyans online because kenyans are chronically online like

especially the younger generation a lot of people have cell phones a lot of people are not tuned into the news really but the information sharing happens where like when a clip from the news is cut put on TikTok people see it like this is happening so people get angry and then they share it so what happened with the with the finance bill people would cut very little clips from the news and then someone would help put it in context so that's where my channel comes in where i'm not just using the news clips i'd provide evidence like i'd go through the finance bill and then even consult with people who are um in like like ask lawyers on twitter like people who have resources and understand the law or like

what that would mean for everyday kenyans i would literally reach out and it got to a point where i am now in communication with the right channels like you can directly ask how this would impact people like if they tax bread more or like refuse to to make it easier for suppliers to get items for the supply chain how does this affect everyday people so that helps bridge the gap of information and now with more people critically not just looking at the news but finding the evidence for themselves really have helped us get to a point where when you share we are protesting about this issue. This is where we're going. This is what's happening. This will happen in a certain town.

So like Nairobi had its own occupied parliament, reject the finance bill demonstration. It happened in Mombasa too. It happened in Nyeri, Eldoret, all these smaller towns where people were like, but there are people from rural areas, they won't really care

and I'm like, you don't know that. Yeah. And also something that's really magical that's happened, a lot of Kenyans were like, okay, maybe there are a lot of Kenyans who live in rural areas who don't have media that doesn't cater

to traditional listeners like people who only speak certain languages. So vernacular stations. So people started using TikTok to do direct translation. Oh, that's cool. Yes, this is the script for the finance bill. These are the taxes

being added. This is the tax on bread. This is the tax on your vehicle. This is the tax that will happen on period and sanitary pads and diapers and everything so someone does the whole breakdown in their vernacular language and they share it on their family whatsapp groups because kenyans love whatsapp that's why if you want to do anything propaganda like you can easily do it on whatsapp the forward messages are crazy so because like whatsapp is mostly co-opted by

aunties and moms and people who love to share please go to chat share share this to seven friends people took that mandate where they send it to their moms and then have it shared like seven of their friends who don't understand maybe what the finance bill entails and that is really changing the landscape of like who gets to interpret the bills who gets to understand how it influences them and it's been very very effective so people who are passive are more like more understanding of like why everyone is on the streets yeah yeah and it seems it seems like it's it almost seems like there's isn't there's kind of a i don't know it's like a tikt TikTok think tank that's been sort of doing this valuation that is being spread through. That's really cool.

I'm just saying it's absolutely lovely to see because like tribalism has been a tool that's been wielded, especially during elections to make Kenyans look like they don't care about each other and they can't go beyond their differences. each other and they can't go beyond their differences and this time it's like yeah we do have language barriers but we're going not going to let that affect us negatively we're going to figure out a way through the noise before they start co-opting those spaces and start saying oh gen z kids are lying or millennials are just started getting money so why will they care about taxes and so everyone is making sure those spaces are not corrupted yeah yeah it seems like a really sort of incredible popular education thing that's been sort of powering this yeah so i i want to i guess talk about um one of the things that i i i think maybe kind of breached the i I don't know if calling it like the great firewall is exactly right,

but it's like, I think one of the, I think one of the parts of this that has gotten a little bit of play in, in the sort of media over here has been the police response, which has been terrible. Yeah. If you talk about what the cops have been doing. Okay.

In, in Kenya protests, doing okay in in kenya protests historically protests have always been extremely violent like during the moi era people used to get beaten up a lot moi was our second president he was in office for 24 years so he was a power holder i'll use those words he was a power holder. I'll use those words. He was a power holder. He didn't want to go anywhere. He wanted to stay in power for as long as he could. And to counter anyone who would go against him, people were tortured.

People were disappeared. People were killed and dropped in forest. Many families couldn't find their members, especially if they went out to protest or do anything that's why wangare matai's story was like one of the biggest uh environmental champions the world has ever seen her story was so unique because in the face of the most brutal dictator this country has ever seen she showed up and like she didn't just disagree but she fought back and she did she used the same tactics that people are using now she informed the very ignored part of the population to get the information across

that if they start taking away your land and cutting down your trees and you won't be able to farm you won't have anything this is this whole place is going to be a desert in a couple of years so everyone was panicking because like land is a very sensitive issue yeah and that's what why the movement worked so well because she was not speaking not she was not just speaking against authority but she was going to like the people who were going to be affected the most and during those protests she was beaten up her hair was like yanked off her head. It was very, yeah, it was very graphic and very painful. Like you watch those videos and you're like, who does something like this?

And now it's being replicated. Sorry, it was being, it was replicated again, like throughout his presidency. But throughout the years, a lot of civil rights movements and all the community-based organizations like came together and they would still protest about stuff. But the issue, it had moved on from like large protests

to even smaller protests being, like they would send the police to beat up people who are speaking up about any issue. And usually, because like you're in smaller communities there's no way to track so if someone dies in Kibera and it's a slum area and it's mostly disenfranchised the community organizations there know they try and find justice for the family but because our police are mostly held you can't hold them to account because they work for the state. It's very hard to get any form of justice.

But this time, was it last year when people were protesting about the cost of living? And I think it was just shortly before the finance bill 2023 passed. People were protesting, people were out and they were angry about everything and people were beaten up. Someone lost their two-year-old child because the child was beaten by the police. Jesus, yeah. There's a woman who lost her son

because usually when you're at protests, sometimes there are people who are passing by, but because you're at protest sometimes there are people who are passing by but because you're there and the police are there they end up even if you're not yeah you're not part of the process so there's a woman who ended up losing her son last year to the protest and her adopted son too and then this this year like a couple of weeks ago, she died in a flood in Madhari. So Kenyans online, yes, Kenyans online keep seeing the terrible nature of how state violence keeps continuing. So this time when the protests were being organized,

everyone was like, make sure you're peaceful. Don't carry any stones. Because Kenyans love to throw stones. They're the out of this. You carry stones. You won't even pick street. He's like, you carry stones. You won't even pick up tear gas and throw it back and everything. And this time, everyone was like, just make sure you're very peaceful. Only use your voice.

Protect each other. Like, a lot of the announcements around the protests were like, make sure it's peaceful so that they don't have an excuse to say that you are out in the streets doing something illegal. You don't attack shops. You don't try and force yourself into anyone's premises and what happened that was very beautiful this year is like the establishments like the one i'm in right now was helped protect citizens who are protesting so kids would be out of the city they start getting tear gas and like they would

open the door people would come in and they would close the door until like yeah so you find establishments are working to not just protect people but also to be to be part of showing like this is our premises it's not been looted it's not been destroyed because destruction of property apparently is a bigger problem than you losing your life. So most people felt they were safe at the protest and they also felt like they were seen by other protesters. So it was largely peaceful, very well coordinated. There's information on how to get medical help or in case you're arrested, how to get legal assistance. So every single element was like,

we're not just going to ban out of going into the streets, but making sure everyone returns home safely. A lot of the protests in the past, well, they got a little violent because maybe some of the protesters went rogue. And obviously the politicians love to use bad actors where they implant a little violent because maybe some of the protesters went rogue and obviously the politicians love to use bad actors where they implant a bunch of people who go and destroy business premises and then it looks like the protesters didn't come there to actually protest

they were there for their own selfish reasons so this time what happened is like a lot of the protesters were given the right information on how to stay peaceful. It's like these are the streets to use. These are the meeting points. These are the contact people for in case you get injured. There's this medic. In case you get arrested, these are the lawyers. In case your friend disappears, make sure they have a live location on so we can track them and everything.

a live location on so we can track them and everything so it was widely successful because that kind of peaceful and well-coordinated move navigated towards spaces that were ignored before like the safety of everyone was a priority and because our leaders can't really find who started the protest because it's mostly like a group who led the movement. They've started abducting who they feel like are community leaders. Yeah, so I guess that's something I wanted to ask about. Has the police response actually been any less bad this time than it's been with other... So this time, on Thursday, they shot. Yeah.

They shot into a crowd and one of them ended up shooting a 24 year old and he bled out he died his name is rex masai and then another kid was also shot name is ev is Evans Kiragu was also shot. And I think they were trying to get him help and everything, but he died yesterday, I believe. And there are still other protesters who are yet to be found. And then yesterday morning, there's a very popular Twitter personality who was disappeared. Like they kind of abducted him yeah yeah but then

kenyans held a space online for over six hours and they're like they were dragging government officials they're like if you people don't return this particular person we will find you like it was particularly funny because Kenyans, you would think this younger generation people don't have concentration issues. No one is going to listen to us speak. But like everyone was like online and they were paying attention to like every single speaker just to keep the space longer,

holding space for the person who'd been taken. And he was found, his the lawyer sorry the lawyers in charge found him and they went and like they went and got him and he went back safe but obviously you can see he was visibly shaken his twitter name is crazy Nairobian yeah and then now today they took one of the doctors was organizing for a blood drive in like um in a certain up market area they just picked him out and like no one has been able to find him until now so people are still advocating to like get him back and a lot of big personalities are making phone calls lawyers are showing up they're, if you see this particular car, if you see it in your location,

try to inform us, share the information. So everyone who's online is trying to get the right information to make sure that that doctor is brought back. And ironically, that doctor is actually unemployed because the government is... Hey, I'm Jack Peace Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep

into the rich world of Black literature. I'm Jack Peace Thomas, and I'm inviting you to join me in a vibrant community of literary enthusiasts dedicated to protecting and celebrating our stories. Blacklit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audiobooks while commuting or running errands, for those who find themselves seeking solace, wisdom, and refuge between the chapters. From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture. Together, we'll dissect classics and contemporary works while uncovering the stories of the

brilliant writers behind them. Blacklit is here to amplify the voices of Black writers and to bring their words to life. Listen to Blacklit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hola mi gente, it's Honey German and I'm bringing you Gracias, Come Again, the podcast where we dive deep into the world of Latin culture, música, películas, and entertainment with some of the biggest names in the game. If you love hearing real conversations with your favorite Latin celebrities,

artists, and culture shifters, this is the podcast for you. We're talking real conversations with our Latin stars, from actors and artists to musicians and creators, sharing their stories, struggles, and successes. You know it's going to be filled with chisme laughs and all the vibes that you love. Each week, we'll explore everything from music and pop culture to deeper topics like identity, community,

and breaking down barriers in all sorts of industries. Don't miss out on the fun, el té caliente and life stories. Join me for Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get into todo lo actual y viral. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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. 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. Hey, I'm Gianna Parente. And I'm Jimei Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline, the early career podcast from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. One of

the most exciting things about having your first real job is that first real paycheck. You're probably thinking, yay, I can finally buy a new phone. But you also have a lot of questions like, how should I be investing this money? I mean, how much do I save? And what about my 401k? Well, we're talking with finance expert Vivian Tu, aka Your Rich BFF, to break it all down. I always get roasted on the internet when I say this out loud, but I'm like, every single year you need to be asking for a raise of somewhere between 10 to 15 percent.

I'm not saying you're going to get 15% every single year, but if you ask for 10 to 15 and you end up getting eight, that is actually a true raise. Listen to this week's episode of Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Moving to hire new medical personnel because like it's too expensive when we see them like driving around in new cars our president even has like very expensive shoes and everyone is like your shoes could literally pay like three doctors salary like this yeah just hire hire the right people yeah but like kenyans are pushing to make sure everyone is safe

and everyone who's lost, especially big Twitter influencers and big media personalities and influencers are coming together to make sure they use their platforms to help find anyone who's been disappeared or been abducted. Yeah. adaptive yeah where do you think the movement's going from here i know actually well actually i think i think i've lost track of what reading of the bill they're at right now was i thought it was the third reading or it's a it's at the committee stage

so at the committee stage they go through the every single clause and they try to justify why they should keep it or whether they're going to disband it but everyone is just like we don't want any of this because some of the bill is there's a there's a part of the bill that i didn't mention where the kenya revenue authority is supposed to go through kenya kenyan's personal data to see if you're dodging taxes and i'm like that's ridiculous because a lot of people in kenya are supported by a family member so you you find if i have money i'll send it to my kids and then my kids might forward it to their friend who is probably in trouble so if it looks like i have money coming in it's probably maybe because of like a family contribution a personal contribution so they want to charge more taxes on that and it actually makes no sense so it looks like they're tracking how much money you

look like you have yeah yeah it looks like they're checking how much money you look like you have. Yeah. Yeah. It looks like they're tracking how much money you look like you have. And then they want to tax you on that. Or like say you're evading taxes. And it's scaring a lot of people because once that happens, it feels like there's no safety in anything you have. So I guess, so from there, so is the strategy right now based around sort of trying to get these, trying to get the committees to just like to have this bill sort of die there?

A lot of us are trying to make sure the bill doesn't go any further than it is. And everyone is tracking the MPs. So what happened, even before the protest, people started sharing their MPs' numbers. Every single person would find like a member of parliament's numbers and we're like if you if this is your relative please give it give it to us if it is your side chick or whatever like whatever way you relate to this person because it's government officials their numbers should be public anyway. Citizens should be able to reach them. Yeah. And because they wanted to hide behind their big cars and big houses,

they were like, okay, we're going to find you where you're at, and we're going to text you, and we're going to tell you to vote no. And most of the MPs were very dismissive. They were like, the party that's backing me is the one that got me into office it's like no people voted for you you should represent their views so a lot of kenyans held the line where it's like i don't care what your boss is telling you or what party this is you have to vote with us so a lot of mps who were shamed online some of them had to convert like they changed their votes incredible bullying works yes we're so happy we're like yeah we should do this more often so that's really that really gave hope to a lot of Kenyans who are feeling like maybe

their work isn't amounting too much but we lost we lost that one button a lot of Kenyans who are feeling like maybe their work isn't amounting too much but we lost we lost that one button a lot of us ended up losing the button to the second reading because many of the MPs were so there's this fund called the CDF fund it's the constituency the constituency development fund that MPs kind of use it like their personal bank account fund that MPs kind of use it like their personal bank account. So members of parliament, yeah, members of parliament will get the CDF fund

and then they'll use it to go and like, so it's supposed to actually take care of like bursaries or any county emergencies directly affecting constituents. But what MPs do is they like, they wield it as a personal bank account. So it's like, you have to like do a lot of ask-he-thing What employees do is they wield it as a personal bank account.

So it's like you have to do a lot of asking and a lot of performative nonsense for you to even get some of the money. And a lot of people don't actually end up getting the money. So what the budget makers did, they decided to top up the CDF fund so that more employees have more money and usually they just pocket that money so they were like okay i feel like we've my budgeted corruption has hit the account i don't need to do the right thing so this is just literally a bribe exactly it's like the the best way is like and they're like no i'll have more money to take care of the constituents it's like no you'll steal this money anyway you guys are not

any you're not gonna grow a conscience today just because you have more money so most people are trying to get the parts of the budget rescinded and like put into efforts that go directly to education and health care even it's even if it go directly to education and healthcare, even if it's directly to the school instead of the individual. So that will help cut down on that kind of corruption that a lot of MPs run with.

And I think that's scaring some of them, and we're hoping to get more people to push their members of parliament or any nominated representatives to recognize that all these items that they're voting for is not just going to affect us, but it will affect them and the money that they're hoping to steal.

So if you're going to steal from us, we're going to make sure you don't get any of the money that they're hoping to steal so if you're going to steal from us incredible um yeah is there is there anything else you want to add before we wrap up yeah i'll say usually when a lot of stories in like the african continent are covered it's usually like africans vote for bad leaders and well that is true most of the times people don't feel like they have an option yeah and like i you know if you you listeners statistically are probably either an american or a brit so like you you you know exactly what that's like like you have like uh someone who just you have trump and he's like a front runner right now so yeah because a little so on tiktok something happened i think yesterday or something where people were like how did kenyans vote for this person? He has such a very

dark criminal past and everyone was like have you guys seen yourselves? There are no high schools everyone makes very foolish mistakes and all of us look like we don't know what to do to make sure people like that don't ascend into power

because groupthink sometimes gets us to like very dangerous places. It happens everywhere. No one is any less affected if someone who you hoped would lose gains power. Like you're all in deep trouble. Like no one is on a higher pedestal than the other. All of you can actually lose a lot and one of the things that we are trying to remind each other is we're trying not to get to this space so what Kenyans are trying to propose like a direct manifesto where any person who's running has

to have like a clause in their manifesto that is going to even be turned into like a policy and law where if you steal any money or you go found doing anything corrupt you have to like remove yourself from office immediately like there's no bargaining to do whatsoever like you have to leave office immediately and then we're going to seize

all your property like anything yeah it's like if you're going gonna get into power make sure the salary you're getting is enough if you have any ambitions let them die now like do everything before you get into office and i think that's so encouraging to see because everyone is not just looking at the now and like all this bad taxes and the bad leadership that we have but also looking to the future of like how do we make sure we don't get here again so that's really encouraging to see

everyone is making sure that they hold people to account across the board like if you're protesters make sure you're safe make sure you know this information but also for the future this is what we want so it's not just like removing bad taxes but if we're going to pay taxes are they going to be used and how are we going to make sure that the future of the country is being protected by collective interest and not just like individual worship which has been a very very big problem uh in kenyan culture because like over here musicians are barely celebrities but a politician would walk in here and like people would like lose arms and legs to just say hi so we're trying to make sure we fix that too yeah yeah so i guess if people listening to just want to try to help support the protests

are there steps that are things they can do and places they can go to find more information and because a lot of it is group organized I have to find the the information I could send it to you

yeah yeah we can put it in the description yes I don't know from the top of my head yeah no worries because i'm trying to think and like most people would like do individual because a lot of we have a lot of mobile money transfer which i usually direct to the person so that it doesn't go through various channels and then people end up misappropriating or stealing so if community-led so i'll have to find the information and then share it cool yeah and okay if people want to find you on the internet where can they do that so on instagram and tiktok it's fake walk with justin like at people for justine like the full handle on Twitter it's

at officialfwwj so it's officialfwwj which is just fakewalkwithjustine officialfakewalkwithjustine we'll get that in the description too yeah

I do have my personal account, but I don't know if I want to give that. Yeah, no worries. Yeah. No, I can still give it. It's at Justine Wanda. J-U-S-T-I-N-E-W-A-N-D-A. Yeah.

Cool. Yeah, Justine, thank you so much. Thank you so much for coming on the show and talking about this. This has been great. Thank you so much for having me and letting me talking about this. This has been great. Thank you so much for having me and letting me just run my mouth for a couple of minutes.

Good luck to you all. Hope you stop them and bring them all down. I really hope we do. If we don't, it's going to be so sad. Thank you so much. Yeah, of course. This this has been a kid happen here and uh you too can go make your politicians lives miserable

it could happen here as 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 slash sources. Thanks for listening. Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons?

Hit play on the sex-positive and deeply entertaining podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the new iHeart podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday.

The 2025 iHeart Podcast Awards are coming. This is the chance to nominate your podcast for the industry's biggest award. Submit your podcast for nomination now at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. But hurry, submissions close on December 8th. Hey, you've been doing all that talking. It's time to get rewarded for it. Submit your podcast today at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards.

Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast. And we're kicking off our second season digging into Tech's elite and how they've turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. Thank you. 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? Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story on the i original series, Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature.

Black Lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audiobooks while running errands or at the end of a busy day. From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture. Listen to Black Lit on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. AT&T, connecting changes everything.