Weekly Skews - Weekly Skews 7/6/21 – The Literal Heat is On

Episode Date: July 7, 2021

Join us tonight as we discuss the increasingly hellish conditions in the western US with United Farmworkers of America strategic campaigns director Elizabeth Strater. We also get into the hilariously awful launch of MAGA app GETTR, and plenty of other fun stuff. Holler at it!Support the show

Howdy there, everybody. Welcome back today. It's Tuesday, July 6th, 2021. I'm Trey Crowder, and that's Mark Aegee. What's up, Mark? Notting, Trey, before we get started, I'm supposed to say, happy birthday to producer Matt's mom,

mom producer Matt, whose name is Marilyn, and he wants us to tell you that he'll call you after the show. So that's a lovely Maryland. Happy birthday to you. You raised a good boy. Good, sweet boy, you've raised, Marilyn.

Happy birthday to you. So as a present to us, Trey, let's talk of you. I know I told you a little about this. You heard about the Mongols versus the proud boys, right? Only from you, but please elaborate. All right. So there are a bunch of right-winning militia marches all over the country over the weekend to celebrate July 4th as you do.

We saw some footage about Patriot front tried marching through Philadelphia and about 40 of those Nazi assholes got chased up by like three dudes. I think it's pretty funny watching them run down the street from like three guys. So that was really funny. But here in California, some proud boys were walking around trying to fight some Antifa to fight. And I don't know if they succeeded or not at that, but they did find a group of people who were mad at them. And one of the guys pulled the bat on this woman. Now, his problem is she turned out to be the niece of an enforcer for the outlawed biker gang, the Mongols. So he put out basically a, it's on site.

buddy that's like that classic plot point you know and like training day and other movies where it turns out it's like well turns out this this person is a somebody you know it's connected classic classic misstep there by the proud boys so yeah they're on the they're on the hit list for the mongols i'm not normally into mongol hit list as general rule but this one i can get behind i look forward to these particular assaults yeah i mean uh to quote uh a hopeful future friend of the show rapper LP. You don't go around flipping a stranger's switch because you don't know what's behind it, right? But I do like that they've been walking around cosplaying as a gang for like the last decade. And now they ran into an actual gang. It's going to be a real fucking problem for them

because they have this in their head that they're arch enemies, Antifa, and they just accidentally leveled up like a motherfucker because the Mongols, unlike Antifa, do have weapons caches. headquarters so good luck buddy yeah oh man like i said i look forward to this playing out uh hope you'll keep us updated on this mongol uh yeah rampage that hopefully they go on against the proud boys there um so let's get into it with us as always as producer matt this is weekly

skews first i need to quickly let you all know as a reminder i'm going back on tour soon with with Corey Forrester and Drew Morgan, the well-red comedy tour. You go to well-redcomedy.com and see where we're going and get your tickets. I've already seen some comments over here saying people bought tickets. I appreciate that. Love y'all very much. And if your city's not on there now, it doesn't mean it won't be. We're adding them every day, and we're very much looking forward to it.

So please come and see us. Okay, so on tonight's show, we will discuss the increasingly hellish conditions in the western U.S. as the region faces a way, a stream of record-breaking heat waves that are ravaging the area. Could this be related to climate change at large? Republicans say, nah, probably not. For that conversation, we will be joined by our guest tonight, the Strategic Campaigns Director for the United Farm Workers of America, Elizabeth Strader, which we're looking forward to.

We've also got a couple Trump dates for you, the latest on his legal woes, his spell-binding brain prowess, and also his plans for the future, and also some other equally silly shit as well on tonight's skews. But first, as always, we begin with the Daily Dumbass, Matt, graphic, please. Tonight's D.D., the good people behind the new MAGA social media app, Gitter, for fundamentally misunderstanding the Internet and seeming every conceivable way. In case you missed it, a new pro-Trump app was launched over July 4th weekend,

and they have faced a myriad of truly comical snafus, haven't they, Mark? Yeah, so first thing, less than 24 hours, they were hacked, and then they immediately denied being hacked, but then one of the hackers reached out to a reporter and gave him his own contact, secret contact information and password back to him to prove they had hacked the site, because the reporters had signed up for it, keep track what happened on there. So they got caught in that fucking lie immediately.

But even worse than that, these sites are founded upon the idea that content moderation is inherently anti-First Amendment, right? You're supposed to be able to say all the Nazi shit you want on Twitter, right? That's what they want. So what has happened is a bunch of people have gotten on there and filled it to the brim with Sonic the Hedgehog porn. God bless the cesspool that is the internet. man oh my god here's a quote from a story but it's slogan the marketplace of ideas

suggested an inexplicably fenced sitting centrist might find it appealing as well and that's particularly true if they're into furry vore artwork and memes about science and hog getting pregnant yeah pretty early on in the process one of the primary users QAnon guy Jordan

Sather or Sather who has previously suggested people drink bleach to cure the rona said he tweeted or Gittered Whatever they do on Gitter, he put it out there, said, shills are already hitting the Q&N hashtag on Gitter hard. I won't repost what I'm finding. Titties and bad words and stuff.

So pretty upsetting, Mark. I got tetties and bad words and stuff that people are throwing at them on the internet. Where can you go to be racist, if not to, you know, the internet? Without being, without having Sonic. porn and titties and bad words and stuff foisted upon you. Yeah, all I want to do is find a nice happy place to post

World War II era anti-Semitic propaganda. Instead, I being inundated with, let's quote, let's degenerate hentai, furry porn, leftist sonic means, and stock photos of pudgy aged men in their underwear. So this is this is good, which I, like I

have a middle decipher what getter is supposed to even be short for. It's G ETTR, the last EL but let's just like get her, like it's an anti-Hillary Clinton website? Right, is that what I was going to ask you that. Is that the general consensus on that's what it? Because like, dude, I'm fucking white trash redneck who came of age in the early 2000s. I cannot help but put the word done at the end of the her getter.

And I can't help but put done after it. But apparently the theory is that it's a Hillary Clinton thing. Get her, get her is what it's supposed to be, I guess. I guess. Those are my two guesses. They haven't said what it's about. But another, they've also made themselves the main current front in Chinese right-wing versus communist party info wars. Because it turns out this website is being, basically it's being funded by this Chinese expat billionaire who hates the Communist Party.

These guys' friends with Steve Bannon. And that's what they got their money from. But apparently Gettered existed as a Chinese propaganda site that the Chinese government didn't give a shit about. But then the minute they pivoted to English language propaganda, turns out the people behind that hack are apparently the Chinese Communist Party. So I thought these people hated the Chinese Communist Party, Mark. They're like, that's like enemy number one, isn't it? For sure. But actually, it was a right-wing Chinese guy who funded it.

And then the CCP hacked it, right? So, like, they're using, they're using Steve Bannon and the Sonic meme people as, like, pawns in this Chinese propaganda war. So this is basically the place to be on the internet right now. Absolutely. Another thing that's been very popular in these early days of Gitter is people are, because it all just started. Everybody's making their accounts at the same time. People are impersonating well-known conservative figures, you know, because I don't

know what kind of blue check situation they got going on, but apparently it's not that good. So like Brett Kavanaugh has a Gitter account. And, you know, I think maybe it is just him. But apparently the Brett Kavanaugh. Kavanaugh-Gitter account is dedicated to enthusiastically sharing fetish images of a massive Sonic the Hedgehog treading on a hapless ferno. So it's like Sonnage the Hedhog sexually moose in a fox with his feet or whatever. And that's Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

So they have, I guess they forgot to block out Brett Kavanaugh. So they did try to block out major us names. Like you try to sign up as real Donald Trump. You can't do it. names claimed, even though Trump is, because Jason Miller's whole profit motive was to get Trump on this website to be what signed on for it, but Trump immediately told him to fuck off because he's going to start his own thing. So this website's already basically underwater and never going to make it. But they did try to start doing content moderation, which is, remember, is the whole point

of these websites is like, is to be a fashion of free speech. But a bunch of the leftist users are getting kicked off or following claims that furry porn is protected under the First Amendment. So everyone's fucking stupid here. Furry porn is not protected by the First Amendment. I'm on private social media network, by the way. We get around this. So, yeah. So, all right. Our first honorable mention you said, everybody's stupid here.

You know who isn't stupid guys, former president, Donald J. Trump? Not stupid at all. In case you've forgotten, he had exceptional marks on the highest brain test in the land to hear him say it. I believe we have a clip Matt played. Still doing this. Ronnie, would you mind giving Joe a cognitive test? President Sippy Cup, I don't know how well he's going to do, but I won't get you in trouble with these comments.

We aced it. I think I can say that I aced it. Did he get one, he didn't get one question wrong, did he? 30 out of 30. Wow. And they did get a little more difficult after you got by 15, I would say. I heard the first. So right after that, right there weren't cut off, right after that.

Even Sean Hannity goes, yeah, I heard the first. three questions on this test were like is this a giraffe or an elephant you know so it's like even even hannity is noting how insanely simple this test is but trump did say hey after 15 mark it got pretty complicated i guess that's when he got into the camera man journalist you know shit yeah well later in the uh later in the uh later in the test is when he would have started sundowning so i'm assuming that's what might have been the problem but uh the uh the uh Yeah, the Ronnie, he was talking to you, by the way, as Ronnie Jackson, you might remember, was the White House doctor who said he was like six, seven, and 210 pounds or whatever. And it is now he got, he got, he got, after he quit the White House to run for Congress as a Republican, and the report came out, but he was apparently drunken on pills on duty all day at the White House.

So that's, that's the guy who gave him the cognitive test. But in case you're wondering if his brain still works well enough to drag the country to hell again, this is from the same. interview. Ask, where are you in the process of, or have, let me ask you this, without giving the answer what the answer is, have you made up your mind? Yes. I think you got it right. Yeah.

I mean, not that it's surprising at all, but it certainly seems to me that, yeah, he's planning on running again. Is that your your take on that? I mean, he wants to give them hope he's running again so he can raise money for the next three years I bet is at least the mindset. You never know what I mean, the guy lies as a course of habit.

But he is laying the ground or he's doing around doing stuff like a candidate does. For example, he went to Texas last week to do appearance of the border with a bunch of Republican congressmen and it definitely had that special Trump. We're getting the band back together feel to it. Check out the soundtrack.

for this border visit. This is the vanguard of like the idea of like toxic American masculinity. And he always plays this like disc he loves, he's a child of the 70s in New York, but he loves cocaine and disco, baby. Right. Right, it was the village people was his main thing for a long time. Like, that was his band, was the village people, you know, one of the more homo erotic acts and the history of music.

I'd be like, which is fine. That's fine. But it's a funny choice for the, although I guess on the surface, they are extremely manly, the village people. Yeah. You know what I mean? They're very, very manly. Construction worker, cop, you know, Indian, right?

There's an Indian there. So, you know, you can get it. He's the manliest president. ever had, so it makes sense. Later at that visit, we don't have the clip, but I did see it earlier. Speaking of the village people, a reporter said, Mr. President, are you sorry about January 6th, to which everyone else there booed the reporter? And then they drowned out further questions by blasting YMCA.

Because our glorious leader, his favorite memory in life was catching the clap at Studio 54 in 1977, and we're just all forced to endlessly relive it. oh my god dude what a fucking hellish existence we leave yeah the former president being asked about an actual coup attempt and that's what happens it gets drowned out by ymca okay the the the america's one of america's top five anthems about anonymous blowjobs in a rec center uh yeah yeah these people have faith in him uh maybe some misplaced faith i'm not sure because our next honorable mention is

actually Donald Trump still for being every random idiot's deadbeat dad they can't count on this guy it seems like Mark every week we've got a new story about the January 6th insurrectionist and here's what we've got this week you throw up the screen grab there Matt if you have it this yeah

so after he was taken into custody Monday in Texas Gerlina one of these people posted a video online in which he called himself a political prisoner on the video which has since been taken down, Jarlina said, quote, Donald Trump, please pay for my legal fees because this all happened because of you and I did nothing wrong. There you have it.

Yeah. This is literally what they think. Like, we laugh so much at their, how much they've self-incriminated this whole time. But like, that's, this is why, I think, because in their heads, they're like, well, I did the right thing. and I did the right thing because my president told me to do that thing. So what's going on here?

I mean, they really do think that I was just following orders as like going to get them off here. But I was just watching earlier, the New York Times did it's like a 40-minute documentary they released last week called a day up for age where they combined a bunch of different radio transmissions

and all that they got a bunch of like, what do you call it, the police cameras, a blanking right now. Body cams? Yeah, they got a bunch of body cam footage and gathered all the public, you know, all the like ProPublica and Belling Cat were compiling like open source stuff off GAB and all these different social media networks. And they piece it all together into a narrative. And it's like, it's wild to watch because these guys, there's way more footage you think of people walking to the Capitol, leaving Trump's speech going, let's go storm the Capitol. There's like a hundred different guys say let's go to Storm the Capitol.

And now they're going to say they just went in there walked around. That seems like a pretty clear declared declaration of intent. Storm doesn't have not violent implications, right? It's like storming the Bastille, storming Normandy Beach. Yeah. Peaceful protesters don't tend to storm things. You don't storm things peacefully, generally speaking. No, storming to me connotates like the football game version of it's like a beast mode.

Yeah, right. It's like it's not a nonviolent imagery. But these guys just cannot help. playing innocent. Like here's a clip from last week. This guy got arrested or he's on the verge of getting arrested. And this is perfectly innocent explanation this guy on his porch and no shirt on. I'm a documentarian. And, you know, as like you guys, when you guys hear something, you guys show up as you do now and ask questions or record and see what happens. So that's what I was doing there. So there are photos of you reportedly kind of stomping on

camera equipment and stuff. Is that you in that picture the FBI is putting out? I would not like to comment on that at this time, but I'm working everything out with the courts and whatnot, and that's that. Every single week, every week. It's like we talk about just how comically over the top everything is that comes out about these people. Like, why does he have to be shirtless? Because, of course, he does. because that's just, that's the reality that we're dealing with here.

Like, it wouldn't be, it wouldn't be as cosmically hilarious if he wasn't shirtless, you know, so he's shirtless. Yeah, and it's like, it's like, is that, like, it's like, I'm just a documentarian. Was I used to stop being on a camera? Yeah, that's just a little friendly competition with my fellow documentarians. I bet, say, him use, I'm a documentarian in response to pictures of him stomping camera, like, destroy. destroying video equipment. He's like, well, yeah, I'm a documentarian, and he has no shirt on.

It just never ends with this story. It's unreal. You'll be shocked to learn that guy doesn't have a logger yet. The guy went on TV talking about the crimes. At least he was smart enough to decline to confirm whether that was him in those pictures. So that was a little bit smart.

Because I'm going to just reiterate this, guys. Get a lawyer. Don't talk to cops. Cop comes to pretend to be your friends. Law and order sort of taught us that. at least. Dude, I know it's like, it's literally just the tone of someone's voice. And also, this is a hell of thing for me to say as someone with a southern accent.

But it's like, I'm always shocked by how if you remove context and you just listen to this guy speaking, how relatively not a dip shit he sounds like. Do you know, like to me, these people are so stupid, it seems like, based on their actions, that I expect them to barely be able to string a sentence together. Do you know what I mean? like that's how dumb I would think they would be and then you hear this guy talking it's just like he just sounds like a regular guy which I think is more frightening like it's wild how dumb regular people be a lot of but a lot of these people like oh like one of them was like ran our own aerospace company and stuff yeah they took private jets to do this shit yeah like I I think they got gassed up on their own supply adrenaline was running high and being whites a hell of a drug like it just doesn't occur to you that you could go to prison for shit it just like it's like it's like well What I'm doing is okay because there's a lot of us, and we're all white, and the cops are white, and yada, yada, it's going to work itself up. Yeah, and for the record, I'm not saying that, like, oh, stupid people do this type of thing.

I'm saying in my head, it's like anyone who would do the type of shit that we've outlined that these people have done, I would think would have to be stupid. And apparently not all of them are, and that's just, that's wild to me. Well, the particular variety of stupid, getting back to the white being a white to a hell of a drug is the guy talking to reporters and making more footage that it's going to be used against them in court probably. Yeah. Like, it's like judges don't look kindly on when you don't show contrition, right? So when it comes down for his bail hearing,

as the prosecutor is going to say, not only is he not sorry, he was still lying about what he was doing there. So it's, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right.

Which one? What do you want to do now, Mark? Which one? Because I want to talk a little bit about the heat wave stuff before we get to we can go to the heat wave. Yeah, let's go to the heat wave.

you want to go there now okay yeah so uh you guys our guest tonight is going to be talking to issues related to the heat wave and climate chains and so forth um but before we get to that talk about the heat wave itself because uh you might have heard some stuff about what is happening pacific northwest this week last week but it's crazy the numbers are insane by uh portland's average high temperature of this period was 112 degrees the hottest three-day period on a record by an astonishing six degrees. Seattle had all back-to-back days

as an all-time heat records. 108 in June 28th, after reaching 104 the day prior. The previous harm 26 years, Seattle only hit 100 degrees three times, but it reached that mark from three consecutive days this June. They were, like Canada was hotter than Vegas.

Like, this shit's just fucking insane. There's no cress of it. A lot of people, like, a lot of people in this area who've lived there the whole lives, They don't have like, like, we're from the South. It's like everybody grows up with an air conditioner, hopefully, or most people do. But it's like when the South gets hit by a big snowstorm or something, and it's a catastrophe.

And it's like, well, yeah, but we don't, we don't have the infrastructure for that because we don't ever have to deal with that type of thing. It's sort of like that in reverse in the Pacific Northwest when it comes to a massive heat wave like this. Like, they're not set up to handle this type of shit. A lot of people don't even have an air conditioner or whatever because this almost never happens, you know. I mean, it's really fucking bad. Yeah, I mean, 100, like, I happened to be in Spokane this weekend for a wedding, and it was only, it was back down in the 90s, and that was still pretty brutally hot. Because I didn't know this.

I guess I'd never been that far north, but the sun doesn't set in Spokane to like 10 p.m. Yeah, right. So, uh, there's no, there's no escape from the sun, basically. Yeah. Producer Matt says, fun fact, 44% of the Seattle metro area has AC. So, I mean, yeah, there you go. I mean, the majority of people don't. And dude, fucking 110 degrees.

Like, it gets up to 110 degrees here in Burbank, in the Valley in Southern California in the summertime. And, you know, it's a dry heat, but it's hot as fuck. And dealing with that with no air conditioner or whatever, especially if you think about old people and shit like that, I literally don't know how people do it. And I mean, you know, some of them don't. people have died for me so far hundreds of people have died in the last week's heat wave and here's but here's a thing another one's about to hit like it's like they're having another wave of this rolling into the northwest is supposed to start in like a day or two um uh or our guest just uh dropped in the chat that uh the organ's governor just announced emergency heat protections for going forward

and by the these death numbers don't like the fires come later the fires come after the heat wave after all the drawing's done, right? So, like, that's going to be a lot more damage and death and destruction. And conservatives started pivoting from denying, like, some of the bigger assholes still deny climate change, but they're already pivoting to either delay. We need to make changes, but, like, let's figure out the exact changes, what's not too expensive. And then here's this, Dennis Prager runs this giant conservative propaganda site. It also funds some Charlie Kirk bullshit and stuff like that.

Here's him today saying probably one of the first one. of the dumbest things ever heard my entire life and pure nihilism if there's one one piece i'd like you to read from the year 2021 it's biorne lomborg's piece that just came out in the l a times amazingly no no u s a today amazingly and how so many fewer people are dying because of climate than ever before, because the great killer is cold, not heat. So global warming has actually been saving lives. But the left doesn't care about saving lives. All right.

First of all, after that, he then said, the left doesn't care about this because of the, like, I don't, I'm paraphrasing, but it's something like, because of the, the meaningless existence that all godless people, live essentially as we say it's like they don't give a fuck about this because they don't believe in our lord and savior jesus christ and that's why they don't care about the fact that global warming is saving lives i mean personally my existence is meaningless but you have kids right but like it's insanely like like democrats are being like first of all i think back try but why that's dumb like sure people freeze to death but we're talking about massive disruptions in global food supply chain. Like you,

you cannot just move north and start growing grapefruit. Right. It's not just that like it's a little hotter in place. Like that's not. Yeah. What climate change is. It's so much fucking more than that. Yeah.

Fish are dying. And then completely. Fish died and everything eats fish died and so on and so. It's like, it's like the giant systemic collapses that we need to figure out a way to like reverse or we're all going to be screwed in ways that are much more damaging than having to live through three days of brutal heat. in no air conditioning, even if it does kill a lot of people.

And two other big environmental things happen this week. First one was the ocean caught fire. You haven't seen this video. It's absolutely insane. Insane. Yeah, that's got a screen grab of it. That's in the middle of the ocean. It looks like fucking Ragnarock.

Yes. A gateway, a portal to hell. It is insane. Because a natural gas pipeline there ruptured or whatever. And so you have this hell. fire. The other thing that's sort of the funny version of evil that happened this week is Greenpeace pretended to be some

headhunters from like a big corporate consulting firm. We're trying to hire these lobbyists for Exxon away from their jobs. So interview them on how good they are doing evil and they gladly oblige. One guy, the guy we're going to look at, hear video clips from, is the congressional lobbyist. They also

got their White House lobbyist on video. But check out the banality of evil in these fucking clips. Oh, Matt doesn't have the clips. Oh, okay. He talks that, sorry. But the guy, he says, he basically just straight up admits we just say we want a carbon tax because it's a, quote, nice advocacy effort, but that's literally never going to happen. Yes.

He just lays it all bare like, you know, this is how we operate. Did we lie about the science? Yes. Is it illegal? No. He talks about how, like, their biggest heavyators in Congress are Joe Manchin and Kristen Sinema. And they're working them real hard, right? it talks about like it's like course he's talking himself up but like the way he says like oh

Exxon could be a pro carbon tax because it's not going to happen because we can be for it because you pay congressman to be against it basically it's like it's greenwashing it's it never you never hear them say openly we are greenwashing that was like that was a term come up with by environmentalists and you'd think that an actual opposition party could take all these things happening at the same time the heatway in the Pacific Northwest the collapsing an infrastructure they're debating infrastructure and climate change bill right now roads were buckling and elected electricity cables were popping in, uh, in, uh, in the northwest. Um, you could roll, you could bring these exon dudes into testify in front of Congress and a bunch of other exon execs. You could

embarrass the shit of these people and build public momentum to pass this bill. Are they doing any of that? No. Rokana's trying. There's a few congressmen who are trying. I'm sure like the, the squad people are trying or whatever, but like it, there's no momentum for any, for any sort of effort to confront this shit. And, uh, everyone who's under 90, meaning everyone is not in Congress is going to be as fucked by this, but the old bridge people don't care. Yeah, that's what's so infuriating if you're on the left in this country is like the leadership. They get, they seemingly, they get these great cards to play just thrown into their laps, but then just don't, they just fold. They just don't play them for whatever reason. But, all right, to continue this discussion, let's get our

guest out here. Our guest tonight grew up on a Midwestern farm and understands the realities of hard work and the complexities of rural organizing. She is now the director of strategic campaigns for United Farm Workers, after spending her career in progressive political and labor organizing, she met her wife on the picket line. Everybody, our guest tonight, Elizabeth Strader. Elizabeth, hey. How you doing? Cheers.

Thank you for joining us. Happy big hat of summer. There we are. So, all right. There's a recent piece in vice outlining a lot of these conditions being faced by agricultural workers in the midst of this heat wave. And in the middle of that, you are quoted talking about it, talking about how horrific they really are, and as opposed to just reading some of your quotes.

Could you, you know, just elaborate on what the working conditions are like for agricultural workers amidst this heat wave right now? Well, I mean, particularly in the Pacific Northwest, you know, we're talking about folks that are not. And when I say folks, I guess at first I'm going to be specific. So the bosses and the supervisors and the crew leaders and things like that are not used to these temperatures, even if the workers are. And they really don't recognize, you know, they don't understand the difference between 90 and 110. It's unheard of up there. And the timing really could not have been worse for the Pacific Northwest, particularly. In Washington, we're really watching the peak cherry season, which is one.

of the most incredible labor scrambled imaginable. So, you know, you're looking at the, at a place that's not used to 110. It's 110, 115, 120. It's all hands on deck as far as the scramble to get the labor in, and particularly with farm workers, and this isn't unique to the cherries, but, you know, farm workers, you know, as everyone probably knows, you know, they're exempt from a good portion of our federal labor laws. They were exempted in 1930s from the Fair Labor Standards Act, the National Labor Relations Act.

So, you know, this is already, you know, a category of worker that's someone in the 1930s, you know, accepted that they were less than. And that continues to be the case. So they're working for peace rate. They're not working for hourly. They're working for peace rate, which means that they've got just, you know, an incredible pressure to place the, you know, to keep working as quickly as they can, not to take. take breaks, not to take, you know, adequate hydration. And it's really hard to stay hydrated, even if you're trying at those temperatures. But, you know, if you're adequately hydrated and you have to, you know, and you're working

on ladders and you're working for peace rate, you know, it, like, if you take a bathroom big, that's money out of your pocket. Right. Yeah. So you said, you said, A, it's all hands on deck because it's peak cherry season. And also they're exempt from all these labor standards, which means specifically, that there are people up here, you have 12-year-olds, right? And literal children and elderly people out there working right now.

Yeah. So it's, it's, you know, there's also a lot of blueberry harbors going on. In the blueberries, it's legal for the 12-year-olds to be working. In the cherries, it's not, but that doesn't mean we don't see it. It doesn't mean we don't see kids younger than 12 either. Because, you know, even when we're talking about being excluded from the fair labor standards, I mean, that's everything. That's your minimum wage, your overtime, you know, and the child labor loss, too.

And we had workers say over and over this year, you know, there's just more kids in the field than usual. There's more kids out here than usual. And you get it. Like, I get it. It's not about the families. It's not about the choice. Those families are damned if they do and they're damned if they don't, especially when it's 120 degrees. Your boss is leaning on you, like, you've never been leaned on.

And all of a sudden, now they're asked. and you don't, to call in, you've got to come in to work at 2 a.m. There's no child care. Yeah, I feel like, I feel like a lot of people, I mean, me included, we talk about like child labor and sweatshops or that type of thing. You think about, like, you know, other countries. They're over there making iPhones or whatever, and people don't think about 12-year-olds picking cherries in 110 degree heat in this country.

You know, I have a son who's about to turn 10 soon, and it's insane to me thinking about him waking up at 3, 4 a.m. and going out there. and picking cherries in that level of heat. And it's really dangerous, obviously, right? And like we mentioned earlier, like people, I mean, people are literally dying. You know, like, do you have any kind of numbers on that? Or like, how bad, how bad is this? It's really tough to get your mind around the fact that people are, you know,

there have not been any reports formally, you know, formally reported to, L&I and Labor and Industries in Washington State for heat illness or for heat-related fatalities. And zero is a number that I just, I am deeply suspicious of, truly, truly. And, you know, you mentioned a little bit earlier, you know, just in the last, you know, just today this afternoon, Oregon, the Oregon governor announced, you know, she's ordering Oregon OSHA to enact to take emergency action and issue rule. enter into rulemaking, which is your worker protection rules, the health and safety rules. They're binding enforceable laws that set out what an employer has to do. But I mean, we've been screaming for this for so long.

And in Oregon, you know, at least one worker in our community was killed by the heat in a nursery. He was irrigating shade trees and died from a lack of shade. Yeah, that's her. horrific irony right there. Yeah. Well, thoughts. Yeah.

Like, there's a general, there's that old, like, a quote, you know, Markland of the King quote,

the arc of history long, but it bends towards justice. And like, we have this general idea that things are getting better, but like labor law-wise, it's kind of not. The last few decades

have been like trending consistently worse. Is that, is that, or that's just my takeaway. Is that how you guys feel in the front lines of labor organizing? I think that, I think that there's a lot of,

I think there's a lot of righteous fights being fought. I think that there are, you know, the people that are the most vulnerable, the progress is always going to be slowest for them. You know, but just thinking about, you know, it took us however many decades fighting in California to get any kind of heat protection standard for farm workers. Now we have bills introduced in both the House and the Senate for a federal heat protection, which is what we really need. because when workers especially are migrant,

you move from state to state, the rules are different. Sometimes they live in Arizona and being transported across the state line and work in California with. It's not good enough to have one state, one state, one state, one state. First of all, it's exhausting.

But secondly, you really can't educate and empower workers to stand up for the rights if it changes every time across the state line. So we need that federal standard. We've got it in California now and real bare basics. We're talking bare basics.

These rules that we set up, you know, when we we sort of have really demanded a bare minimum. And that bare minimum is based on what the military has determined is the bare minimum to keep soldiers alive in extreme situations. It's really it. Cool water breaks, shade to take the break in. And there's opposition. There obviously, there's opposition to that.

And is that all, I mean, I'm assuming, as with everything, that's all just that's profit motivated because all of that means less money for the. Yeah, we got farm bureaus saying, oh, it's nanny state. this isn't a work site issue you're just trying to make everybody like take a break when they're out in the heat it's this isn't this shouldn't be a workplace and why should that be our job they should know when they should take a break you know and yeah i i worked a construction i was in college and i remember it was like being like 98 in virginia and being because there's not shade because you're cutting down trees and moving dirt right so like i'm covered in dirt and almost dead at the end of the day and i'm 19 right and i'm only to do that for like two months i it's like

I just can't, like, imagine the misery. They just like, oh, God, it sounds rough. And we're calling for these rules for all outdoor workers. We're not trying to single out agriculture on this. Anybody who's working outside in the heat and the sun, you know, exposed to the elements should have these protections. I did talk to one kid. Actually, he's also 19.

And he, you know, I checked in with them. He used to work at the same nursery, you know, where the worker was killed in Oregon. And he now works as an excavator. And he said, I just can't believe. I mean, I'm not saying it's not really brutal hard work still, but I just don't feel, I don't feel like I'm totally treated not like a human like I am when I was working in the farm in the fields. It feels different using.

I don't know why that is, but it does. Yeah. Mark, you want to get into that Supreme Court? I don't want to put you on, like there's a big case came down a couple weeks ago that is directly sort of about related to your organization, like Cedar Point Nerosphere versus a seat. I know you're not legal affairs or whatever. So if you, I just wondered if you had any sort of takeaway.

If you guys don't know, basically what they found is like California farm worker labor organizers cannot go on to properties anymore to inform people about their rights and not organized. And they were, I guess the law said the organization, one of the co-founders was Cesar Chavez, if you, you can correct me if I'm wrong about that. But he fought for this law that basically for three hours a day, 120 days a year, your organization can go in and tell people what their rights are. and how to join the farm workers union. It was something like that, right? And the Supreme Court just said that that, I won't want to do the bullshit legal reasoning. There's an episode of 5-4 pod,

which is a good law legal podcast and broke it down, but it was totally bad shit reasoning just to get rid of the law because it's unfair to employers, I guess, for that to happen. And do you guess feel like it's going to be a big setback for you? Or is it just something, just another front to fight on? It's funny. They didn't just determine that we can't do it.

They determined that it's a taking, that it constitutes a taking, that we're actually financially taking something away from them by accessing the property. And, you know, we didn't expect, you know, once we knew that this was going to be tried and we knew what the court looked like, you know, we're pragmatic and reasonable people. We knew that it was just a matter of how bad we were going to lose. But I'll tell you, I mean, I was ready for it, but it was still got punch read in that reading. because that rule, because not only that it constitutes a taking, how are we financially harming them unless it means that, you know, it's considered a taking to have any action

that results in you having to pay your workers a higher wage or, you know, but the language in the ruling was super racist too. It was just really invasion, you know, there's people going to be invading and overrunning our properties and things like that. And it was really narrow to begin with. We didn't actually, you know, in the several years previous, to 2020, we used it very infrequently, a few times a year, maybe. In 2020, we used a little bit more because we were actually really, between the heat and the pandemic and the wildfire smoke, like, we were really, really terrified about the quality of life that these people were having and if the working conditions were going

to kill them. But, you know, it's funny because we've always, progress is always slowest for the people who are the most vulnerable. This is just one more example. We do have tools that we didn't have 20 years ago. But what people don't understand, I think, sometimes is that a lot of these workers, it's not like you're at the steel mill. It's not like they're a nursing homeworker where you can do home visits. You can wait until the shift change. You can be, you know, just off the property line. These are workers that are living on their employer's property. They are working on their employer property and they are being transported from place to place and employer vehicles. These are people that are almost entirely working in pretty significant isolation.

So it really isn't a matter of, you know, waiting for the shift change and then you're going to fall them out once they leave the parking lot. It's not like that in some of these worksites. And, you know, at the end of the day, you know, let's keep doing what we're doing. and we've never been a business model union. We've always been in that place between a movement and a union. So, um, Cici'sueira, right? Right.

So, uh, kind of on that note, I wanted to pivot a little bit because I definitely want to make, uh, take a chance to ask you about this. You, you're, you're, you're, you work in this field on the west coast, right? And Mark and I are both, uh, rural Americans or rural expats, whatever you call it from, he's from Virginia. I'm from Tennessee. And you, you know, you've spent a career in progressive political and labor organizing and whatnot. And we talk a lot on the show about the struggles with that when it comes to rural America. But it's limited in our experience to, you know, the South, basically. And I know what that's like. And I think also a lot of people, when they think about rural America,

they think about the South or the Midwest. You know what I mean? And I'm wondering if you could just talk a little bit about what that's like on the... the West Coast, like the struggles you face, how that's gone, things like that. Oh, apparently we lost Elizabeth. So we'll see if she comes back in just a second. We can feel time here. Oh, she's back. Elizabeth's back.

It doesn't happen. All right. No, it's fine. So I was just saying Mark and I are both from the rural South, basically. We have tech issues. Like this is a very simple tech issue for us. Very on brand for this show. But we are, we know about, you know,

rural progressivism in the south, basically. I'm just wondering what it's like on the West Coast, having worked in it for so long, like what that experience has been like, what the struggles are, how that goes for you. Well, I mean, I grew up in Michigan. So, you know, I really, there are differences, certainly. But even, you know, if you look at the difference, because I spent a tremendous amount of my time and energy in the Pacific Northwest. I'm based in California. And, you know, they're very, very different turf. You're, there is so much more community structure for farm workers specifically and for

undocumented, you know, folks and for folks that are, you know, monolingual Spanish speakers. In California, there's so much more resources for them and so much more just sort of a civic awareness as opposed to somewhere like the Pacific Northwest, which really does feel a little bit more like the Midwest. It's a little bit more. There's just an additional step of that isolation. Right. And there's completely, there's really similar. There's really similar issues, you know, faced by farm workers, no matter where they work, whether it's Michigan, whether it's Florida, whether it's Alabama. I do find a tremendous amount of difference in the Western United States as opposed to, you know, places like Florida, for example, or Alabama, as far as there's a

political will that you at least feel like you can get a toehold in Washington, in Oregon. You can shame those folks, and it's pretty hard to shame some of the folks in the southeast. Boy, ain't that the truth. I remember a few years back, Alabama, I mean, hell, this has probably been like 10 years ago now, Alabama passed some like really stringent new anti-immigration laws. And then that year in the harvest season that year, they had like record-breaking losses in their crops and stuff, just like catastrophic effects because they couldn't get other Alabamians, Alabamans, whatever, to do those jobs, you know?

Yeah. But yeah. I mean, all of this sort of exploitation of farm workers, like, we don't need to be coy about it. It's, I mean, first of all, this shit's intentional. As much as they can get people to turn on each other and, and, and, and, and, and, you know, fight against each other, we're going to, you know, it's just another tool to, you uphold white supremacy.

But their documentation, farm workers documentation says that's not, that is at the intersection of every single other harm that they're more vulnerable to. And, you know, we've worked really hard with United Farm Workers and a number and number of our allies. You know, we've come together.

The bill's already passed the, it's already passed the House. We're waiting for some, waiting for a little bit more courage in the Senate. But it's called the Farm Workforce Modernization Act. There's really tough compromises behind this bill, but at the end of the day, what it creates is it would immediately create an accelerated, a path to immediate legal status and a path to citizenship for farm workers that are here undocumented right now and their families. Did we have to make a lot of compromises on that bill? Yes. But not a whole lot of people passed a bill that was signed by both Devin Nunez and AOC last year.

For sure. Well, sort of on that note, before we get out of here, just anything else that you would like people to know in terms of, you know, raising awareness or also how people can help, how they could support the calls and that type of thing. If you want to know a whole lot more about what it looks like to feed this country, you can, you know, you'll find us on our social media channels. We're on Instagram or on Facebook. We're especially on Twitter. You know, our hashtag that we use with any of these sort of visual humanization show you what that labor looks like. is hashtag we feed you. Hashtag we feed you.

So if people want to donate, how do you go about that? Oh, believe me. I'm out there on that hashtag like this saying, here's where you can send an email and sign a petition, but also the money is in here. Okay, cool. I would say, one of the things I thank you, Elizabeth, like our role in this, whatever this is,

is just to sit around and complain a lot. So it's nice to hear someone who's just, who's a happy warrior and thinks the progress can be made. It's very nice. Me and Mark are a huge appreciation of people who do things because we just talk shit and run our mouths.

I do plenty of that too. There's 24 hours in the day. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Thank you, Elizabeth. Thank you very much. We appreciate it.

Take care. Thanks, look. All right. Elizabeth Strater, everybody. All right, Matt, we can get into questions and comments. Now I want to say it's kind of sort of on the subject. Mark, if you saw that Fox News is starting Fox Weather. What do you think about that? I guess they wanted to be able to literally tell people, pissing people's leg and tell them it's raining. Yeah, that's right.

Yeah. I guess we have the talk, like, my takeaway was that, like, they're trying, they're, their brand sort of suffering on the news side a little bit, especially with Trump, like, turning against them. Yeah, they got, they got villainized by their own people for a while there. They became MSNBC, basically. Yeah. So I guess they're trying to use the brand to pivot. it's the only other kind of programming that old people like. Exactly.

I wondered the same thing. Like, are there, is their viewership getting, you know, so old now that it's like, well, we got to pivot into weather. Listen. Yeah. You know, if our primary demographic is going to be this fucking old, we got to get into the weather market. Yeah.

Mary Wayland says, Fox Weather's going to need a lot of Sharpies. Yes, I like that. That's funny. Matt did want us to mention that there's a sprucing news. story tonight that a turn it looks like uh cozy bear the the russian uh ops group that hacked the dnc has also hacked the rnc recently which is extremely funny to me um they're just it's all about chaos for them isn't it discord and just like uh divisiveness like that's really what they're about the russian it's not it's not partisan it's not partisan in american terms it's

just about driving a wedge between the two sides like they'll fuck with both sides they do have more cultural affinity for Republicans because they are you know are Russia's white supremacist and has turned old school orthodox religious they legalize spousal abuse and shit and beating their kids so there is a certain section of Republican Party that loves them but by and large anybody who thinks that Russia was all about helping Republicans as a fucking sucker because it's just like it's such it's not even Sun Tzu shit it's like you hack the DNC when the Republicans are in charge. Democrats get mad at Republicans.

But you have the R&C, and then they can people, they can get mad at Biden for not doing enough to protect them. Meanwhile, there's always ransomware attacks. It's just fucking general hamburger chaos shit. Yeah. Let's see here. Katrina Taylor says it's to downplay climate change. Yeah, I also wondered that if it would be a straight-up, the climate change denial network, you know, like how propagandize is it going to be? and I'm assuming probably quite a bit.

But you were saying earlier, like, even a lot of them have started to pivot a little bit from straight up denial and trying to, like, otherwise rationalize it or justify it or whatever. Yeah, I mean, I don't know how long a weather channel is going to build it because it's like you can't tell people at 65 outside when it's 96. You know, they're going to notice. But then again, who knows? I don't know. though. You think that's true? Like, I don't know how much I believe that. Like that they, like that Fox Weather with the Fox News cohort, you know, that they could just tell them, hey, it's sunny and 72, baby, when the world's on fire. And they'll be like, yeah, it's sunny and 72. So they spent, this is the, so the U.S. women's national team for soccer was playing in Canada. And there was a viral thing that what, that their reactionaries got mad at where, so. the guy playing the national anthem was a for the american national anthem was a 90-something year old

World War II vet played the harmonica did a great job the flag was in the opposite direction so the players are confused about whether they'll look at the guy playing or the flag and so half of them did one and half them did the other so the first half of the day they're like they turn away from this veteran playing the national and then when they're like no we're looking at the flag stupid they go like uh they turned away from this veteran playing right so it's like they had it both ways and then they did a segment this afternoon, they reported that the story was false, and then they go, but one of their commentators goes,

but it just feels like it's true, doesn't it? Man, I hadn't seen that. That is such a perfect, like, snapshot of the landscape right now, especially where all that shit is concerned, like with, you know, the flag and kneeling and the thing or whatever else and supporting the troops and whatever, it's like, what do you do? I mean, if I was in those athlete's shoes in that situation, I don't know what I would do either because I would be thinking like,

I can't turn my back on this veteran. I got to support this troop. This is a trooper I need my support. I got to support this troop. And then there's the flag. What do you do? Think about how hollow it is. Did you compare like, like Elizabeth, our guest, is trying to help people survive and get water and food.

And then they're trying to make people mad about a non-existent flag scandal. Like it's like all the guys. It's really depressing that like, say, let's happen. That and critical race theory, man. which they tie together. They tie those two things together. Anna L.A. from YouTube says they're going to get their own scientist on Fox Weather

to explain how climate changes God's will and not man-caused. God wants to raise the sea level because he thinks that we all deserve yachts, which would be very sweet of him. Clever Lil Vixen, oh, ooh, clever little vixen on YouTube says, Fox Weather, quote,

blame gay marriage. We will. Yeah. gay marriage causes hurricanes everybody knows it yeah they haven't really tried that in a while they did know somebody did say COVID-19 was punishment for America turned away from God which I don't know why they would still punish the Vatican or whatever but there we go Elizabeth Strader who's still hanging out with us in the green room over here says she apparently went to the Kentucky arc that museum I've been there I've been there with Jesus on the dock you went to that the creation museum yeah I thought I'd show you the picture of me standing next to the triceratops with a saddle on it be, oh, I think you did. Please elaborate a little bit. Like, oh, it's, it's really, it's like, first of all, this is a multi, like a hundred million dollar facility paid for by, I think by the taxpayers of Kentucky. I know it was at least partially paid for by the taxpayers, because I remember

when that happened. Elizabeth says she thought it would be funny and it wasn't. What's your take, Mark? I had some laughs. It's basically a giant diorama of the Garden of Eden. And it's like, it's like Adam and Eve petting penguins and two and velociraptors and uh yeah there's a bunch of other stuff on there uh yeah I don't know it's it's it's it is exactly what you think it is and they built a giant model the arc next to it too so you can go on through the arc if you want I don't know how they decided tops with a saddle on it like it's just so just so on the nose I mean if the earth was 4,000 years old that's just basically just like your great great great granddad you don't think you'd try to race the triceratops come on

But I thought triceratite, I thought that dinosaurs were a lie that the bones were planted there by Satan to trick us all into thinking dinosaurs existed. I didn't think that actually existed at the time of Adam and Eve. Our best scientists still disagree about those two hypotheses. Oh, man. Not believing in dinosaurs. That's the fun. Justin Goldberg on YouTube says, shit, I'd ride a dinosaur. Yeah, I'm with you.

Oh, Ann Avant. from Facebook says, come on, dudes, Shikari Richardson. Shikari would be U.S. Olympian has been disqualified for smoking weed. And I tweeted about it when it happened that Robin Williams, the late great Robin Williams, literally had a bit on what I think was his last hour-long stand-up special, which came out like 20 years ago, all about making fun of how stupid it is to suggest that weed is a performance-enhancing drug because I guess this had happened with some snowboarder or something 20 years ago and he was talking about how absurd that is and I just can't believe that 20 years later

20 years of states legalizing it and all that shit and the general growing acceptance of cannabis in the you know in the zeit guys 20 years of that later this is still fucking happening it blows my mind how stupid that is I bet I mean I bet it does help a pain management to get a good night's sleep the night before race I wouldn't I wouldn't smoke it because the lung capacity, but there's probably, but like, who cares, don't you want the athletes not be in pain and to get a good night's sleep before the rest? I don't, like, I don't, I don't say that's cheating. I'm sure they have methods they can use legally to manage pain and soreness, you know what I mean? Like, I'm sure they have things that are approved they can do.

So it's not like, so that should also be fine. But nobody's like blazing up and then running faster, you know. There have people got to pop for Todd LPM before. So I don't like, I, okay. Well, I think this is all like this the international testing regimen the Olympic doping stuff is like incredibly stupid and like there were two other women that got kicked off the team for having for testing for high testosterone not that anyone thought it was unnatural but not talking about trans athletes here or anything like that they're just like women with who are having a high testosterone levels an athlete there's one of the words for that is having a god-given talent I was about to say are you like so serious so like it you're just you were you you're too naturally

gifted for this like that's what they ruled like no you're too it's unfair how good you are at this so you're out now shekeel o'neill's thyroid is too powerful he's got to be banned for the olympics right that's redid brandy ray cheffy from facebook says let's just cancel the olympics altogether you know it's fun too because like yes yes let's cancel me if i'm wrong mart but like they don't they pretty much all it's always like uh like it's a money pit for whatever city and ends up hosting it, like, it ends up being a nightmare usually for them and people still line up to do it. It's like, it just ends up being a big cluster fuck every time anyway. Go look at what, what's going on with the, with the Brazilian Olympic facilities right now.

Like, basically, it's a way to use nationalism to trick your taxpayers into giving a bunch of money to various corporations. Right. And the process, you level a bunch of poor people's housing. The Olympics are fucking shitty. Like, we got to, we have, they're coming to L.A. in like, in like, in like, eight years and there's so many organizing groups here try to stop it because it's just like a nightmare for city infrastructure and like it puts a bunch of money in the wrong people's pockets and uh there's got to be a way to do an international sports competition that isn't such a travesty and i tell you what it ain't it ain't the world cup uh because it's just as nightmarish scotty lewis from facebook says i never enter a professional knife juggling competition without

smoking a joint first i like that scotty good on you a man after my own heart Mark. All right. Well, thank you all for joining us and thank you to Elizabeth for being our guest tonight. Also, yes, thank you, Matt. Jesus Christ, Lord, thank goodness for Matt. Come see me on tour, please. The Well Red Comedy Tour, go to Well Red Comedy.com. Get your tickets and information right now. I sure would appreciate it. Were you about to say something, Mark? No, no. I was good. Yeah, sorry. We've said enough. Thank you all very much. We love you. See you next week. See you by.