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This is it could happen here, the show that asks what's and also other questions more, more, more meaningful questions than that about, you know, things falling apart. Fixing them. All that good stuff with me today, as usual, Garrison and Chris and as is currently unusual. But we'll be more usual every proceeding. Month after this one, our good friend Saint Andrews St. Andrew take a bath there this afternoon. About, quite about, but that's fine. How are you doing today, Andrew? I'm good, I'm good. You know, it's rainy, it's chill. It's better than the kind of hot weather we've been getting lately. So I'm good, yeah, it's raining and chill here, but that's seven months of the year. They're slightly different. The climates in Portland, OR and Trinidad. Probably, I've been told. So we have had you on a couple of weeks back to talk about solar punk and we're going to be bringing you back on about twice a month to talk about whatever the hell you want to talk about. And so I'm going to now hand the episode over to you and and trust like a little lamb that you'll lead me somewhere beautiful and filled with good forage. Ah, yes. Sunshine, rainbows. The promised land, you know? OK, so. I think we've all noticed that. The environment of this movement kind of sucks. Like, I mean, yeah, jumping into it kind of roses and has not done the things that need, has not accomplished, has been around for like over half a century of actually really more than that and you know. Well, we know, yeah. You know, of course we do have to confront and acknowledge that. Like, there's the issue where oil companies literally suppressed a whole bunch of information and, you know, Co opted like a lot of the earlier movements and stuff, but we've kind of known for a while now and we are still here. So it's like what gives, you know, I think there's a kind of an interesting phenomenon that I wanted to talk about today. Known as soft climate change denial. So are you all familiar with that or what you think it is based on first impressions? I mean, yeah, I've heard the term, I would think it's sort of. I mean, a number of different things, including the idea that like, uh, well, there's nothing we can do, so nothing should be done, you know? Hmm. Yeah, yeah. What about what about you, Garrison? Yeah, most, most of my understanding of the term is like. Someone like saying they like know that climate change is a thing, like they they recognize that, but they are kind of more in denial of what solutions can be done to really change anything. That's generally my understanding of the term when I see it, like online or something. Yeah, it was you, Chris. Yeah, I usually see it with it's like it's usually in the context of people you know it can in the US, just the whole, there's whole political factions whose entire thing is saying, like, we believe in science. And then they'll go talk about like how much they believe in climate change and then two seconds later, yeah. And around they're like signing the loan signed liberalizations, yeah. So that that that's my understanding of it. Right. Yeah, yeah. So. According to everyone's favorites sauce Wikipedia, soft climate change denial is a seat of mind, acknowledging the existence of global warming in the abstract while remaining, to some extent, impartial psychological or intellectual denialism. But it's reality or impact, and something I've spoken about in my channel in my most recent video where I was talking with the different facets of solarpunk. You know what Solarpunk is, what it needs things like. Really potentially dragged down the sort of punk movement I think that people have been using to try to drag it down because. So the punk is kind of building in popularity and with anything that builds in popularity, there are attempts from all sorts of angles to Co opt it and to repackage it and commodify it and all those things. So I've kind of noticed with this sort of phenomenon that. There's this effort by people who profess to care about the climate and stuff to try to push it away from more radical directions towards something more. Appealing and appeasing to the status quo and to the system. And I mean, according to the Wikipedia definition, you know, it's, they call it a state of mind, but I think it's also like an implicit philosophy that undercuts like entire groups and entire movements, you know, so like for example, obviously you know, it affects individuals where you know, people will miscalculate it's risks and think that climate change is just extra storms or something, but then they also like people are really the movements that would neglect its urgency. With just these. Platitudes and these. Directionless actions that just soothe, like this kind of middling reformism. Like, they underestimate the extent of social change required to, like, mitigate climate change. So they basically. Don't seek to change this out of school, but just to sort of tweak it ever so slightly. So, like capitalism with a carbon tax or something. Yeah. And then of course there are people who kind of straddle that. That fence, or maybe it's more of a spectrum between soft climate change Nile and hard climate change Nile, where they might overestimate the extent of scientific uncertainty. So they might think that, Oh well, you know. Global warming is happening, but we don't exactly know how much it's it's going to change the climate or how much it's impacting our lives and that kind of thing. So they basically tune it into something that's. It's still up for the beat, you know, and that's why I say kind of straddles that line between Softline and Hardline, because obviously the hard climate change nihilists, they're just like, Oh well, you know, it doesn't exist. Or if it does exist, humans don't cause it. If humans do, course there's nothing we can do. That kind of thing. Have you all had, like, experiences with soft climate change denial, like in your own personal organizing? Oh yeah, yeah, I I would say so. I've encountered, I mean, it's kind of a thing you encounter constantly in American politics because it's it's really like often times your best option in terms of like, it's that or the people who say that talking about climate change is socialism. Yeah, you know, I so I I, I was an environmental studies major for most of college and then I. Decided not to do it and then I got like a minor instead because it was like one class off and long story. But you know, it was interesting seeing it there because like. You know, there were basically like 2 possible reactions to learning that one was like. People who, you know what one would you get incredibly depressed and that's what I did. Or. And then the second one was people would, you know, these people who like actually, you know, you know, these are studies just right. Like these people had spent a lot of time studying this stuff and they kind of like. I don't know. This is almost like, like this kind of intellectual retreat where you you could see people basically just like, convincing themselves that, like, somehow this would be OK and they're like, I don't know if people would just they get, like, completely obsessed with, like, electoral maps and you're like, no, no, OK, OK. If if if we win exactly this number of seats in this year, then like we can, we can start doing carbon credits or like, I don't know, it was. It was. It was really interesting to watch because it was like it was. It was. I mean because like, I think, I think that there's, there's like there's very, there's bad faith versions of it. And then I think there's also versions of it that are just sort of like, people do not want to accept, yeah, like the the what's necessary to stop this. And so they sort of like. That they go, they can't even really, like, think about what's necessary. Yeah, because, yeah, because of how the education system works. And trust me, I could go on like long runs for the education system. Yeah, it really it really, really. It really limits people's ability to think outside of, like, this very, very strict box of possibilities because, you know, so much is left out of, for example, history classes and someone just left out of. Really, all the subjects, there's this very clear ideology that you're expected to come out of the education system with. And so even when you reach, you know, academia and higher education and stuff, you're still stuck with that mode of thinking and even as you're presented with all this new information. Because you're reading can't really like handle, like the great extent of what climate change is, you know, kind of retreats into this sort of simple kind of all we just need to vote because voting is all I know. Voting is all being told to do. Voting is politics and politics is voting. That's the extent of it, right? Yeah, it's like this weird form of self preservation that people need to do in order to kind of like. Keep their keep them from in in their mind, you know, like spiraling out of control. This is the only thing that you know they have they need to focus on their own life right now and their own current problems and if they think about this this like large looming threat too much, it just freaks you out, right. And you you have in order to in order to just keep going on with your life. A lot of people like segment off this type of thing in their own brain so that you know, manifests in a lot of cases in this kind of soft denial so that you can just keep on going. Yeah, yeah. I received with the with friends I see with family. You know, obviously there are the handful of people who still, at least in my experience, who still deny climate change. But then there's like a bigger portion of people whose whole understanding of climate change is justice. Or will we just need to recycle and we just need to like, switch to electric vehicles? And, yeah, once we do that, you know, we'll be OK we just tweak a couple of things, get some solar panels and yeah, you know, they understanding of it has been completely limited to like this very restricted conversation. Yeah. That is like. Basically cultivated by certain interest groups and certain lobbying groups and kind of thing. You know, yeah, there's only a certain amount of change is allowed and that's what we're allowed to think. So that's what we're like shown for examples of in like media and pop culture or whatever, right. So this is, you know, this is kind of what? You know, like all of like the Youtubers who got money from Bill Gates when Bill Gates wrote his climate book, right? All of the things that they were talking about is like, it's like this kind of stuff because yeah, the only way for Bill Gates to keep his money. Well, you know, talking about climate change is to have these kind of **** ***** like solutions that are actually deny the impending reality and deny that. No, the only way to actually fix it is by taking all of his money, which he's not as big a fan of. Yeah, I mean, have you all seen the video on climate change and Connie coming? So what video on climate change cause cassocks in a nutshell. It's like this YouTube channel looks like that so people can find it. But people will. I think people people know. I think a lot of people know what it is. Or you can just search in a nutshell on YouTube. It's OK. UR talking. I'm gonna try. I'm gonna try. KUR. No. It's KURG. Was it qarz? Yeah, I think it's KURZGES. A AGT. Right. It is. It is a. It is a weird one, but what, what, what are you talking about? The can you fix climate change? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Where the whole thesis is basically votes with your ballot and vote with your wallet. Yeah. That's the only thing that you're really allowed, allowed to do. Right. Yeah. And I believe this is one of the videos sponsored by they put this. Yeah, they did. Yeah, it was. And then they had this whole line about some people think we need to change, like our system from climate change, from from. Happening something. But we're not so sure about that. We don't know the answer. So just be like shrugged towards all maybe this problem with the system, but they basically gave it no attention, you know? But their channel is literally about, like, going deep into research about things. So it's very obvious that if they spent no time, like, doing any kind of research into like, why people have the system and critique that, obviously Bill Gates hand is very deep in their pockets. Yeah, you know, because I believe that. I believe the researchers actually kind of know that. But they're not. They just can't say they're not allowed to. Yeah. And they mean like, yeah, I think they're making the, the, the, the bargain a lot of people make where they're like, OK, well, if we can push for, you know, the immediate necessary changes we can worry about, you know, stuff like that later on, it's it's just important to get something done. And so we'll compromise and we're not. Will not call for what we know is actually necessary to to deal with the problem. We'll just, we'll just go with a half measure because at least it's something we got to do something now, right. Let's see, the thing that's always been very grim about that to me is like you look about how how that plays out, right and it's always like, well OK, so our our half measure is going to be, we're going to, we're going to just like put put put a monetary value on just for us so that governments can like steal them and get paid for taking the land and it's never stuff. Like, why don't we like? Make more marshes. Which is, you know, if you're going to talk about stuff that, like, could actually be done right, it's like, OK, well, but we'll do remarketing. Do we want, like, that's that's stuff like is easy and doesn't need, you know, you don't literally have to overthrow capitalism to get people to, like, restore marshes, but it never happens because this that's, you know, the whole basis of this sort of soft denialism stuff is not actually, you know, it's not actually an attempt to solve climate change. They just want to make money. And it's extremely grim. Yeah. Yeah. There's this video that's the storyteller is this YouTuber he did recently on coopting movements. And he was explaining that. With the March in Washington, right, during the civil rights movement, that was an organic movement that you know the people had come up with, right, but obviously a mass move funds. The FBI isn't going to just sit back and let that happen, right? So they brought in these leaders. They're called the big six. And the storyteller was explaining that basically they were paid. To Co opt the March to basically become its figureheads and its leaders. They hadn't organized it themselves, but they came on afterwards and became the leaders of the March and read the speeches that they were supposed to read and that kind of thing. And so that sort of mass movement was basically defund like that. I mean obviously reforms were made and you know, Civil Rights Act was passed, but then, you know, after all that happened and MLK got. Disillusioned by the system as a whole and wanted to start pushing even harder against capitalism and and whatnot, that's when, Oh well, coincidentally he got a bullet. You know. So I think it's. Interesting that. These movements, they're able, they're, they're, they're comfortable with these movements up to a certain point. And comfortable these leaders going in the sitting directions after a certain point. But then when you actually start posing a threat to this out of school, that's when you know you become a problem in like a major way. Not to say that MLK wasn't a threat to the side of school, but just to say that, you know, there was. They have certain limits that they don't want people to cross. Yeah, capitalism. One of the things that's that makes it such a robust system in terms of its ability to to not get overthrown or destroyed is that up to a certain point it loves dissent. It loves anti capitalism because you can market that very easily. Like there's a lot of money in in, in anti capitalism there's a lot of money and being critical of the system, it's just when you hit. At a certain point. And it then it becomes, you know, the CIA or the FBI or some person who's been convinced to shoot use problem like it it there's a there's a point at which that's no longer accepted, but quite a bit of criticism and even like agitation to change or into the system can be accepted because it's monetizable. And Speaking of that, you know what time it is. Time for now. Serious? Absolutely is. Oh, boy. Time for an ad or or that's the CIA at the door. We won't know until we come back from break. Ah, we're back. It wasn't the CIA this time. Good news, guys. Thankfully. I mean, the fact that they flew all the way down just to meet me. I'm honored, honestly. Oh, I mean that they've gone to Trinidad for less. Oh, that's true. Yeah, yeah. But like we were seeing, right, there's this whole issue of these movements being able to go in and sit in direction, but only up to a certain point. I think it's something that Peter got loose. Also talks about in how nonviolence protects the state. In the sense of you know. These people are able to. Once they get a certain level of attention, all of a sudden you know you're invited to speak at these events and you're invited to go this place and that, and you basically get. Consumed into the. Workshop machine, the NGO machine, the climate conference machine kind of thing. So you end up with all these figures, these organizers, these activists who go from, like, genuinely trying to organize their communities in their spaces. And then before you know it, they're like. At such and such conference because, well, they think it's an opportunity to like actually make like a bigger change. But in reality, you know, they just there to. BD found you know, so like for example, who immediately comes to mind is like Greta Thunberg. I mean, I haven't looked that deeply into her past or anything. I know they're sitting right wingers who are very obsessed with her, but. I know that she recently said that she's kind of done with politicians. Because when you think of Greta, how she basically came up, you know, right, exactly. You think about how she basically came up. It was like. She is. Talking at these events and, you know, people are inviting out of things because, you know, look at, look at this cute little girl yelling or climate change, right? And she basically becomes this spectacle, you know? And that spectacle is entertained up to certain point and people make big event out of food, you know, like breaking down in front of these positions and stuff. And you know what? They just go right back to normal. I think it was COP 26 was like last week or the week before. Yeah, and. Representatives from. It represents the, I think the Prime Minister of Barbados was there and she had this, you know, big great speech about how the global nothing to do more for, you know, these countries in global S because, you know, they have a responsibility, that kind of thing. Cool. But. At the same time, you know, there's like developments going on Barbados to, you know, basically bring in more tourists and to bring in more and like, you know, resorts building and that kind of thing that basically add to the. Emissions and add to the. Negative impact in the environment, you know, same thing with like grenades, government, you know, like certain representation that we went to COP 26, including the Prime Minister. I know they're all about things changing and, you know, the climate movement and climate change being real and the actions need to be taken and then like. This didn't make it in like. Like mention news, of course, but in local news, basically right after Prime Minister Trans Vigo doctor Keith Rowley, he went and met up with like, Shell. Like representatives on show to like basically bring the country and the company. Closer together. You know, because, you know, Trinidad is reliant on oil and that kind of thing. So obviously these sort of leaders and. These sorts of movements, they were equal to a certain point. And even then, so much of it is just. This performance, yeah, and this. Act basically, I'll, I'll be I'm putting together a thing on COP 26 right now. Because I think it actually it does demonstrate a lot of the soft denial stuff that you're talking about like the the biggest thing to come out of cop 26 in terms of like actual deals is just a progress on carbon markets and carbon offset credits. That's where it's really the only thing we actually got and I say we but not not like us but like you know the people in charge they they got this and and the the the quote they gave was that the the the being able to. High carbon offset credits, meaning that, like, you don't actually make emissions differences, so instead you you buy pretend emissions differences from other countries that actually did make changes so that you don't get penalized. So that's the credits for. But they said they they said buying the credits can potentially unlock trillions of dollars for protecting trees, expanding renewable energy and other projects to combat climate change. And it's just the thing, right? Tax the *******. Like, don't climate credits. It's like it's the same as saying, like, Hail Marys because you you sinned and you went to your priest and confessed. It's like, ah, I've, I've, I've done bad things to the environment. Tell me, like, how many times I need to go through this ritual in order to in order to cleanse myself of having into the atmosphere. It's, you know what, exactly? I think it's bleaker than that in a lot of ways. Like, it's it's it's it's it's it's it's really it's the climate version of like, the World Wildlife Fund having death squads. OK, now, Chris. You are very anti death squad and I think we need to deal with that at some point because hashtag not all death squads. Yes, my mother. I will need to be able to account for my strong anti deathsquad stance. This is a. Yeah, you say that now, but you're gonna get a death squad to fight the death squads and then where are really beginning to be? See another another. It's like Death squad scaption. They got a death squad to fake your death squad and then it's like they cancel each other out so then you have to get another death squad and then so you're going. Ah, Marxist leninism. Basically. Yeah, it's a number of other things too, to be fair to Marxism. And another thing that might make you kind of question the integrity of cut 26 is that there were more delegates at Cup 26 from fossil fuel companies then there were from any individual nation. That makes sense, yeah. Yeah. But then, right, that's like another thing, right, because you're talking about top 26 and we have soft climate change denial gets into that, but I don't think, I think so. Flange denial can only be applied so far when it comes to those sorts of big spectacles and those big major events because. Even if they themselves really, truly understand the depths of climate change and trust and belief, like these oil barons and stuff, they know, like they have all the info, yeah, right. Present in front of them. They've done, they've already done their like cost benefit analysis and like risk assessments and kind of thing. So they know exactly like what the impact is going to be. They have the money to have access to the scientists, right? But it's not soft climate change denial for them, it's. I'm a capitalist. I'm going to do it. A capitalist does, you know, it's ultimately a function we they operating within our system, you know, so soft, congenial. It is like sort of a psychological phenomenon. But we also keep in mind that there's also like a structural component to it so that even if the person does not face of climate change now is an experiencing self climate change denial. Balloon, even if they like fully confront the issue. That's just an individual, you know, and there's still like a whole structure around that individual that will still incentivize certain behavior. And then of course, with the incentives of certain behavior comes like the psychological justifications for that behavior. So it kind of almost becomes. That they end up justifying themselves into self climate change denial. You know, I mean, so it's kind of like, yeah, it's like a it's like flu with that. It's like a feedback loop that reinforces its own existence. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think that honestly, like the feedback loop model is where we have a lot of our problems with climate change are all, they're all very much linked to the feedback loop model of things trying to justify their own existence. And then, you know, certain. And then on the reverse side of things, you know when certain changes in the climate happen, those create their own feedback loops which create more changes to happen. It's like everything, everything is just one, one massive loop. Yeah. Michelle gets me to like. There's the discourse around climate change, and stuff is like halted and diverted and immobilised. You know, buy soft climate change denial, you know, discussions with the very real, very current, very near future and very violent impacts of climate change. I just basically. Softened like like, you know, you try to throw a punch in a dream. Yeah, like you're trying to like push and then it's like, you know, it's like this kind of soft. Well, like he threw something in space. I guess it's just you put all this effort into it and then you go in another direction, that kind of thing. I don't know. I'm going with this analogy, so I'll just keep on going. Basically, that there's an issue with the conversation, with the discourse. It's just been. You know. Harmed by the psychological phenomenon. But then, of course, there's the other side of psychological phenomenon of self climate change denial. Not the hard, congenial side, but rather the. I'm still on the opposite end of self clinching chanial that I'm like. An inconsolable and like illogical and. Can't even imagine the possibility of anything happening. Kind of Duma, yeah, yeah. The kind of the kind of extreme doom merism where you you recognize how you organize, that clutch is bad, but then you you see it as such a massive, overwhelming thing that basically shuts you down from able to do anything else. And you just learn. Exactly. There's really no point to do anything if it's going to be this bad. There's really no one, you know, it's such a hard capitalism and the systems that are working to keep it going or such a hard thing to overcome. That it seems like the best thing to do is just sit down and do nothing. Yeah. And that's the thing, right? Like, these are slash collapse people, right? I mean, I appreciate that they don't shy away from like, the really difficult stuff. Yeah. But then they also stumble into this kind of like, whoop, that's tumors like this dramatic kind of. We are screwed. We're all gonna be fighting this Mad Max style arena. Like that's not how you know climate change is going to play out. You know, it's not a movie. You know, like if things are going to break down and sitting places and other places are gonna lock down in certain ways, but it's not going to be like this. Sudden global devolution into madness like that. You know that's not really how. Social change, that's already how collapses. How, yeah, you know, function in history. You know, of course we live in a like a global civilization, and previous collapses have been fairly localized. But still, you know, climate change is both global and local, so there are certain changes that will only affect certain localities. This is something that actually the book desert addresses fairly well, and they find frustrating what I'm trying from. Yeah, yeah, because but I I find really frustrating because especially on the online left, there's people who treat desert like the gospel. Or at least they say they do, but they're actually extreme doomers who fetishize collapse and they're like, oh, everything's hopeless re desert, but then you but then you deserve desert. Desert is like explicitly anti collapsed. Pink collapse isn't gonna happen. Collapse is a fantasy. You tell yourself, yeah, to keep you going. And for this kind of like the second, you know, haven't heard of desert. Desert is a a book that's available for free online about what's coming. It's titled desert because of an old quote about how empires leave nothing but deserts in their wake. Basically. Like, that's it's it's just like a thing that that I think the exact quote is like empires make a desert and call it peace and it's it's. Easily discussing the fact, like not just literal desertification, but like that that's more of a more of a better picture of like our future under climate change than kind of these, these Mad Max dreams, this like slow dissolution of of resources and environments and that that's kind of the yeah, it's a, it's a good book, you can read it yourself and it's, it's quite influential online. But yeah, as as Garrison pointed out, there are people who kind of take it in. In a direction that I don't believe the authors. I mean. Clearly the authors didn't mean because they directly called out that kind of thinking. Yeah, yeah. It's kind of like some people treat like collapse and stuff as basically the secular version of. Like revelation in the Bible. Yeah, yeah. Or it's or it's like the non Marxist version of like the revolution. It's like, it's like this, this kind of mythical event to like prepare for and almost be excited for. But like it's it's fake, it's a fantasy. It's something we tell ourselves to keep ourselves going as things are bad, but it's not. It's it's not real. Yeah, like any do, you know, the trumpets will sound in the heavens and the screws will be broken. And yeah, the great, the great beast will arise from the sea and, you know, all that fight. Yeah. And I, I I don't know what the solution is for that. I I don't know how both on, like, the soft climate denial side of like, how do you go about, how do you go about? It's like the one thing we can really do is the people, you know, we know how how do we go about and tell them that, hey, things are probably going to be a bit worse than what you're preparing for. But how do we tell the people who are doomers, hey, it's not going to be like this. Weird dystopian thing that you're thinking of, either. It's like it's it's it's interesting. It's like they're both veering off into opposite directions, but. It it both kind of leads to the same point of kind of doing nothing, but one version 1 version of nothing is basically, you know, voting for stuff that's not that's never gonna happen. The other version is not just not doing anything in general. And I I don't know how to. Had a. Reach those types of people very easily. Yeah, which kind of brings me to, like, my thoughts on like, how we move past soft climate change. Nile? Umm. I don't think it's just a matter of. Like trying to like push like. Campaigns on people. I think it's gonna be like a very personal sort of, yeah, journey that each person has to go through, right, because each person is different. Each person is like has different worries and dealing things in a different way, you know? So like you want to keep in mind like people's mental health and sort of. Fortifying your mental health and helping people fortify ideas because. When it comes to mental health with regard to like climate change. Doing an isolation. In my experience has not really worked out. I think what has worked best for me is when I am with, I am connected with a group of people or even just one other person. And when I'm feeling down about climate change because despite all, my, you know, messages about solarpunk and you know, we can do this like that, that's basically the message of my YouTube channel. You know, I still experience like those sort of thoughts and feelings, all the public about it. Yeah, but what I try to do is. When I'm feeling those things. I try to be with people who are not currently feeling that, you know, so we're not feeding off of each other's necks of energies. Yeah. So like when I'm in a bad spot, you know, people around who could lift me up and when they're back, then about spot vice versa because it kind of comes in waves, you know? Yeah, absolutely. No, yeah, it's it's it's silly to deny those thoughts exist because they do like they're, they're very, they're a very easy neutral state, at least for me to slip into. And the way to get around that is by doing chores at a farm and shoveling poop and taking care of animals and cooking for people. That's like the way that I can get out of that kind of mindset. And, you know, not not to be too hard on all of the kind of doomer nihilists, because they're there is there, there is a, there is a, there is like a a sect of, like, doomer nihilists who use, like, the actual definition of nihilism, which is like, if if things don't really matter. We should probably **** some stuff up, and that's very useful, right? Like if, if, if you're, if, if if you're on that train, you're like, yeah, you should be tree spiking. If if if, if you're OK with, if you think nothing matters, and you are, you want to be an actual nihilist, then yeah, you should make, you should make destroy. Just make sure it's focused on the people with actual power. Uh. Because if you're willing to do that, then great. We need we need as many as many people like that as possible. But it's certainly easier to do that once you have friends and once you're not stuck in this super depressed state all the time. Yeah. And I I think there's a again we we we do take a look at like some of the criticisms people have of the show online. And I know one that's come up a bunch of people will listen to like our when when we'll talk about, you know. The severity of the problems, and then we'll talk about things like, you know, mutual aid collectives and small guard seed bombings and all that stuff. They'll be like, well, that's not. A solution. And no, of course that's not going to solve the global problem of carbon emissions from a a civilization of 7 billion humans. What it does do, focusing on stuff like that, focusing on building soil, focusing on building community resistance, in addition to like having an immediate impact on the number of people you know in in in your community. It it builds a sense of, a sense of. Power for the individual it it it gives you something to do that isn't just thinking about how bad things are, and that puts you in a mindstate that's more useful to actually potentially dealing with the the bigger problems. At some point you have to have a sense of your own agency that feels real if you're going to actually change anything. And you can, you can build. It's a muscle, right? You can build it up by by doing things that are not. Bigger but are are part of the solution and yeah, exactly valuable to do that for your own, for your own mental health. Because then maybe you, if you're, maybe if, if, if your friend group, if you're you're finity group, whatever you want to call it. The people you are hanging out with. If some of them are always engaged in something productive, then when you're in a doom spiral you can find someone who's working on something, and vice versa. And it doesn't just help your mental health, but it also contributes to the prefigurative activities that we need to actually make a switch to a different system. Like revolution is something that happens overnight or in the far future, something supposed to be happening all now, because as we build those systems, you know we are. Building up power, you know, it's kind of like how the black switches in America describe dual power. You know, it should be building these systems and putting these things in place so that we can push towards like. Fundamental transmission of the system. It's iterative, but it's more people build on top of that. You know, that's how the transformation happens. We also need to contribute. I mean, I think it's it's it's important to talk about this. Both to acknowledge like it's a thing that happens and we all deal with. We all have our moments of like overwhelming despair over what's happening and some some moments of unrealistic optimism, too. Yeah, every once in a while. And the unrealistic optimism needs to be encouraged as long as it's not the kind of, well, we don't need to do anything because someone, I guess there's toxic optimism and there's helpful a toxic mint mobile offers premium wireless starting at just 15 bucks a month. And now for the plot twist. Nope, there isn't one. Mint Mobile just has premium wireless from 15 bucks a month. There's no trapping you into a two year contract. You're opening the bill to find all these nuts fees. There's no luring you in with free subscriptions or streaming services that you'll forget to cancel and then be charged full price for none of that. For anyone who hates their phone Bill, Mint Mobile offers premium wireless for just $15.00 a month. 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A therapist can help you become a better problem solver, which can make it easier to accomplish your goals, no matter how big or small they happen to be. So if you're thinking of giving therapy a try, better help is a great option. It's convenient, accessible, affordable. And it is entirely online. You can get matched with a therapist after filling out a brief survey. And if the therapist that you get matched with doesn't wind up working out, you can switch therapists at anytime when you want to be a better problem solver therapy can get you there. Visit betterhelp.com behind today to get 10% off your first month. That's better helpp.com/behind betterhelp.com/behind. So by now we imagine that you've seen the theories on Tik T.O.K. You maybe even heard the rumors, your friends and loved ones. But are any of the stories about government conspiracies and cover ups actually true? The answer is surprisingly or unsurprisingly, yes. For more than a decade, we hear at stuff they don't want you to know have been seeking answers to these questions, sometimes their answers that people would rather us not explore. Now we're sharing this research. With you for the first time ever in a book format, you can pre-order stuff they don't want you to know now. It's the new book from us, the creators of the podcast and video series. You can turn back now or read the stuff they don't want you to know. Available for pre-order now, it's stuff you should read books.com or wherever you find your favorite books. Optimism would be like reading an article about some new carbon capture technology and being like, oh cool, well, I don't need to worry. But but most optimism I think is is positive and it I think it's good to build the capacity for optimism by by building your your personal sense of of agency and power by by doing **** that helps. And I I think that accepting that you can do things that are meaningful and that there are things to be done that can help the situation is a critical way of fighting against you know this. A soft climate change denial, which, which is a a a major threat because there's I think honestly at this point more people who are subscribing to some form of soft climate change denial, then there are people who are just denying climate change in its entirety. And that's, I think, where a lot of the effort has to go. So I yeah, I think this is a really important thing for people to understand and to be vigilant against. Absolutely. Yeah. All right. Well, Andrew, where can the audience find you outside of here right now? Yeah, so you could find me on my YouTube channel Saint Andrew some and you could find me on Twitter at under score centre. Excellent. Well, you can find us here where you just found us. We'll be here tomorrow, unless this is a Friday, in which case we'll be here on Monday. Have a have a good you know life. Have a good life. Take care. This is Roxanne gay, host of the Roxanne gay agenda, the Bad Feminist podcast of Your Dreams. Now, what is the Roxanne gay agenda, you might ask? Well, it's a podcast where I'm going to speak my mind about what's on my mind, and that could be anything. Every week I will be in conversation with an interesting person who has something to say we're going to talk about. Feminism, race, writing in books and arts, food, pop culture, and yes, politics. I started show with a recommendation. Really, I'm just going to share with you a movie or a book or maybe some music or a comedy set. Something that I really want you to be aware of and maybe engage with as well. Listen to the Luminary original podcast, the Roxanne gay agenda, the Bad Feminist podcast of Your Dreams, Every Tuesday on the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. From cavalry audio comes the new True crime podcast, The Shadow Girls. Wanted to know what it felt like to kill somebody, and he started laughing. Prosecutors described him as a serial killer servant, picking up these girls, getting him in a position of vulnerability. When he got ahold of their neck. That was it. I'm Carolyn Ossorio, a journalist and lifelong resident of the Pacific Northwest. I grew up near the banks of the Green River and in the shadow of the killer that bears its name. One time, just one time, he started fantasizing about having sex with his mother and he fantasized about killing her. But this podcast isn't only about tracking down the killer. It's about the victims. We stayed in the woods. He always liked to go into the woods. Kind of strange. You know how he feels about prostitutes. Listen to the shadow girls on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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Here, a podcast about things falling apart, and also sometimes about how things have been falling apart for a while now. And. Today we're going to talk about. How things were also bad in falling apart in the 2000s, which are profoundly cursed time period. And specifically we're going to talk about. I think a part of the antiwar movement that does not get much attention, which is the port, militarization, resistance that happens sort of 2006, 2007. And with us today to talk about this is two people who were part of this movement we've Juliana Newhouser hello, Hello, and Brendan Maslowski's Don. Yeah, both of whom were organizers and activists while this was going on. Yeah. And I think thank you. Thank you both for being here. Yeah, thanks for having us. So yeah, as I was saying a bit in the intro, I think that this is a part of the anti war movement that is not very well known. I think. I think a lot of people know about the initial stuff happened in 2003 and people might know about some of the stuff that was happening against the war in Afghanistan, but right when it started. But I don't think most people know that it like, you know, even after 2003 server doesn't work. That it continues and it continues sort of informs that are that are very interesting and so like I guess I want you to to start out. I want to ask how we sort of got from? The early part of the anti war movement into this and how you got involved, I would say that there's this narrative about the movement against the word Iraq that there is the largest protests in human history. At least at that point I don't know if it's still true. Against the invasion, and then it didn't work and everyone kind of went home. And ended there and to a certain extent that's true, but like you said. The people that didn't go home went an interesting direction. And so at the time there were. Direct action was not as acceptable as it is now. The. This movement was largely dominated either by big liberal coalitions or PSL front groups that were basically indistinguishable in what they actually did, which was basically nothing. And in the best of cases, and in the worst of cases, counterinsurgency. But then. There were small groups of people that at. When we saw that, it didn't work and we saw that. These giant, peaceful marches from one part of town to another. Or voting for John Kerry, or whatever. It didn't work that we started to look for other options. Yeah. And, you know, I, I got involved, you know, I'd say with the anti war movement, that idea of how how war is unjust was really taught to me from a very young age. I mean my parents were, you know, children of the 60s and they had family members fighting in Vietnam and Umm, you know, friends dying in Vietnam and we're against the protest back then. So I grew up hearing these stories and of course stories from. Family members, particularly when my grandfathers, both of them were veterans in World War Two. One of them was a marine in the, you know, in the Pacific theater and still into his seventies, 80s and 90s until his final days was just dealing with horrific PTSD and had always taught me from a young age never to get involved. So I, you know and and I remember when when the very clearly you know, I'm sure it's on everyone's minds now and when the invasion of Afghanistan started, when the invasion of Iraq started, I was at that. That massive demonstration in Washington DC that Juliana just mentioned and you know, I, I ended up, I'm from Utica, NY and went to a rural high school just outside of of Utica, you know, Rust Belt, generally speaking, impoverished and also very conservative area of New York. And you know, I had the recruiters bothering me, military recruiters in high school, you know, recruiting my friends and. They were just everywhere in the hallways, so I it was very present with me when I was younger. I moved out to Olympia, WA in 2006. And that's one new student activist group, students for Democratic society, was launched. That's how Giuliani and I first met. We were both in separate chapters of that new organization in the Pacific Northwest. And the port protests started just just a few months after I moved out there and in Olympia in 2006. So wait, just to clarify this for a second, because I've never quite been clear on this history, so. There was a second SD, uh, like students for democratic society that was like unrelated to the first one. Yeah, that that, born briefly at the end of the Bush administration. That that explains a lot of things that are otherwise very baffling. We're not that old. Yeah. We're definitely in the in the second you know the rebirth of it. So you know, I think it it took on some things and spirit, you know, but also was I'd say different in many ways and and it was very active to me at least. It was very exciting to be a member of that the new STS because they're over a dozen chapters in the Pacific Northwest and it was a great way to connect with. Young activists all over the US, so SDS is emerging in this time period. One of the other things I was interested about is something some of you were talking about in the in the in the early part of this which has to do with the the the way that these giant. Both the sort of answer coalition, PSL, Frank Group and I guess the ISO was still around back then, coalition's work versus how like anything else worked on it. So, So what was was sort of like consciously set up and and and in opposition to those groups, don't think it was conscious, but there was just like, I mean these days, I mean like there's a lot of controversy around PSL with like anarchist versus tanky politics. None of that mattered at that time. Like none of that mattered. The only thing that mattered was that. Answer, which is the PSL front group was completely ******* useless. Like they completely indistinguishable from any peace police Liberal Democratic front group. There was literally no difference just in terms of their aesthetics. Maybe like, is there a donkey or a hammer and sickle on something? That's the only difference we saw. So I don't, I don't think there was. It wasn't. There wasn't like a conscious, like political. Opposite. Session to it. It's just like they're not doing anything. And and so we had to look in another direction actually. You know, it's hard to keep track of the alphabet soup of authoritarian communist groups at times. But this was actually answer for those who don't recall, it was a front group for the workers World Party, the WWP, which. Yeah, I mean it's it's hard to keep track, right? Yeah, it's the same thing like I think so. So OK. So for people who are sort of unaware of this, there's a network of connected. Sometimes feuding like Weird Stalinist cults that kind of that kind of like they they hold on through like the set the 80s and 90s and they start sort of rebuilding again around the anti war movements in that. That that's the PSL WWP that's answer like and and I think like. Most, like modern antiwar groups, are also still these people. Which is incredibly depressing. Something I want to talk a bit about at at towards the end of this, but yeah, just for people who have not spent. Like the last half decade in the in the trenches of extremely weird. Antiwar politics. So yeah, so so, I think. We should get into how this sort of the the 1st. Action starts in Olympia. Yeah. So and there were actually a couple actions that happened in the year preceding that. I, you know before I moved out to Olympia in 2006, it was not yet under the banner of PMR port militarization resistance. That was a name that was officially coined and you know in in May and June of 2006. And so just to give you an idea of Olympia, it's it's a college town or at the Evergreen. The college is there. It's also the capital of Washington state. So you have that going on. It's also a military town. It's a little over 20 miles South of what we called Fort Lewis. It's now called JBLM J Blum or joint base Lewis Mcchord. It's army and Air Force Base now it's one base. So you had all these you know different kind of elements and you know in tandem and in that town and the public port, the port of Olympia is one of about. 70 or so public ports in the state of Washington, some of which are, I mean, they're used for all kinds of things, you know, for our commercial private industry, but also the military and the US government. So, you know, I, I heard from someone, I don't even remember who, that the military was sending a ship to the port of Olympia in late May of 2006 and this happened for 10:00 or so days and it was just. Kind of a natural instinct for a whole bunch of us to go down to the port of Olympia. It was it was the war machine in our backyard and the idea was to just block the vehicles. It started out with just like less than 10 people, number of folks getting arrested, and that very rapidly culminated into larger protests every single day. And active blockades people, those of us like Giuliana, myself. And other folks using civil disobedience or what we prefer to call civil resistance, to try and stop or at the very least slow down these striker vehicles. And to give folks an idea of what a striker vehicle is, you can look it up online, but it's kind of halfway between, Umm, you know, a tank and a Humvee. It doesn't have the slats, you know, that a tank would have. It's, you know, and they're being used in both Iraq and Afghanistan for, for raids of residential areas. They were really on the front. Lines of of the war and in both those countries, and that's what we were trying to stop. I only got involved later because I wasn't living in Olympia at the time. I was in another SDS chapter, but my roommate was from Olympia and he had been involved in that first round of protests in Olympia before moving up to Bellingham. Yeah, it's like hearing his story. It's got me. Barry? Excited because this is like, finally someone's someone's doing something like someone they're not just like. It's like everything else was just so liberal. Like whether it's marching from one place to another or writing to your Congress people or occupying their office, it was like asking someone else to do something which you knew from the beginning they were never going to do. And finally, this was. Finally, someone was like actually getting into it. I think the first one of the things that happened here was that. They started to avoid. There's. It's kind of a geographical thing that I think for people who. Either don't know Washington or because they're normal people don't know like the port areas of these cities very well because it's like. Like, unless you're a longshoreman. Like, why are you would you go down to like, the port of Tacoma? Yeah, there's nothing there. But. They kept moving it around because Olympia is also not very big. And so it's. There's really only two roads into the port, which is very small, and so it was. It's very easy to block it. And. So then I think the first time that I got involved was in 2000. Seven, when they had moved it because they kept moving it around to try and switch things up and wait before that. They're they're, they're, they're, they're moving the ship around is is that. No, it's like they had to make a military shipment. They would. It's like like once the ship. Wasn't that part they would just have to go through with it. But then, you know, it's like every every six months or so they had to make another military shipment and they would change the port. Usually each time to try and let to basically to avoid us. It doesn't seem like this is like normal practice. The first time I had gone down was in Tacoma, which is a much, much, much more industrialized port than Olympia. It's, you know, it's a big port, a more normal port, I guess. And that one was honestly pretty crazy, because you're just trapped in this giant industrial maze, basically at the mercy of the riot cops. The best success we had was definitely at the port of Olympia, I think in the. In 2007 and Olympia was definitely like the glory moment, which was when. People were able to. On and off, like actually hold the port and control its entrances and exits. Yeah. And I want to, you know, just emphasize that like the the one that the military changing their approach, right, to avoid us. So jumping from port to port with these different shipments, they actually went so far because we were so successful as a movement in the Pacific Northwest to ship striker vehicles by rail out of the Pacific Northwest and even going so far as to. Courts in Texas, but you know one one thing that we did is that we built up contacts with other activists with longshore workers all up and down the West Coast in California. There are other activists we are connected with in Texas, Hawaii, New Jersey and New York. There is a desire in the anti war movement and and you know in some extent maybe it's like it was small, but some folks in the labor movement, especially in Oakland where the ILWU the. You know, longshore Workers Union, it's a lot more militant than, say, in a place like Olympia. Yeah, but yeah, I mean people wanted to replicate this model because as Juliana said, we were successful in 2007, we shut down the port of Olympia for a total of it was essentially 2 dates. They were not, they're not shipping anything in or out. We set up blockades we're willing to throw down with the police in the street. And one of the things that was cool about that blockade is that. One of the there's two entrances, like I said, and one was completely blockaded and then the other one we had like a moving. I don't really know what it was, but something with wheels that we could move in and out to open it up and so then we could allow like civilian cargo to move in and out, but then like we feel it back in place to block military shipments. So we we were you able to actually. Like stop them from like what while in, in, in that one incomparable. Actually like stop them from moving the stuff all together, would you? Eventually cleared up the police and they moved it. It would eventually get cleared out by the police. It's like we were never able to. It's like we're we we held it for two days. The those protests took place over a series of two weeks or more or less. We were only able to fully hold it for two days before. Eventually they would clear us out, but one of the things is that it this does, it did create problems for the army because when you work with a port you know it's like you've got like a certain time frame that you've contracted with the port. To do whatever it is. Is you're going to do and it's not too happy if you take longer than you said you would or yeah. The other thing I wanted to add is, you know, I think the other really important element with this whole movement going on is the Pacific Northwest was. It is specifically Western Washington where the two of us were living. It was, it was. You know, the center and in a sense it was the heart of the anti war movement in the country at that time. One, because of this militant direct action that we were, you know, we were building up in the streets and trying to throw a wrench in the Gears of the war machine to to at the very least slow it down, which in some ways we did, but you know, we were up against so much. But the other added element of course is the GI resistance and the soldiers who are resisting. I've also known as Iraq veterans against the war was very active there. They set up a GI coffee house across, you know, literally across the the street, you know, the the gates for one of the entrances for Fort Lewis. Umm, there are a whole bunch of soldiers that were going AWOL. We had friends who were active duty soldiers who had fought in, you know, Iraq and Afghanistan that were a wall and they were hiding, you know, refusing to go back into the striker. Brigades that joined us in port, militarization, resistance, uh, there are a whole you know, long list of soldiers that were very publicly saying, you know, I'm refusing to fight in Iraq or Afghanistan for you know, various reasons. And so we are very much connected with this movement too. And and I think the higher ups in the military, they're they're hyper aware of that. They studied us very well, you know, to the point of actually spying on us. So that's like a whole. Other element of the story too. So one of the things that I've heard from talking to other people who were involved in this was that like? Wow. Like during these protests, like the level of police militarization just, like, skyrocketed. And like, I remember I was talking about this, like, you know, if you go back and look at like old system of a down videos, you know, they'll have these things. Yeah, you'll see these, you see these riot police and like you look at them and it's like these people, they look so much less armored than like the people that we have now. And one of the things that I thought was interesting about this was that, like, this is I think one of the points where you start getting the modern riot police showing up that are just like, you know, completely incased and like armor and. Yeah, I want to talk about just like the police response to this because. I think that's that's another thing I think, I think there's there's kind of a tendency to sort of project back. What the police looked like in 2021, just onto the whole history of police. And I think it's like it's it's it's gotten worse even in the last 20 years. Yeah, I mean so I live downtown in Olympia and probably just like a 6 minute walk away from the port of Olympia and and also very conveniently just a few blocks away from the police station. So, so lucky us. So we actually saw you know we could see from the front of down on the road, down the sidewalk from the front of our house some of the military shipments going by and we we did see that absolutely and at at times it was. It was terrifying. I mean, I lived in an activist. House, we jokingly called HQ because that's just, you know, where because of its proximity to the port. That's where a number of us were having meetings, you know, around these protests early on in 2006. And yeah, I mean, we like, they look like RoboCop and it's something I had. I, you know, I hadn't, like, I had been to like mass marches and demonstrations, like the RNC protests and DNC protests in Boston, NY and like in Washington DC and so I would see these like riot cops, but they were, I mean, ubiquitous in these support protests. It was like a whole army of them that was sent out. I mean, when Juliana said that, things got kind of crazy at the port of Tacoma protests. I mean, there was like a police riot. You know, like the cops went absolutely nuts, are shooting people with tear gas and pepper balls and and brutalizing people. I'd never before witnessed anything like that. And it got to the point in, you know, in Olympia where we, we kind of knew early on that we were being traced by the police to the extent where, you know, one friend of ours was followed from our house to the bus station to take a bus to school by the police and then was stopped and essentially assaulted by them. On the street and we had another fellow activist. And you know, roommate of mine who is going out to driving out with a few friends, few fellow activists from Olympia to Aberdeen about an hours drive. So Aberdeen. There's a port of Grays Harbor there. Pretty conservative small town. It's where Kurt Cobain is from, home of the famous Kurt Cobain themed McDonald's. They served billions and billions served in that one McDonald's and Kirk Cobains McDonald's. But yeah, I mean, they, you know, they they were they were following. They had orders, you know, the Washington State Patrol to, you know, pull over a car full, full of known anarchists. There was alert, gone out to all the police departments. They pulled them. They pulled them over. They made them walk. The line he was heading, you know, wasn't drinking at no drugs, like nothing in his system. But they he was driving under like one mile per hour under the speed limit. They arrested him for DUI, DWI, you know, eventually fought the charges, sued them, and, you know, one of the big settlement out of all that. But that's just one example of many of the lengths that the police would go to. It was pretty severe, even. There's a House of a bunch of anarchists, younger anarchists, called pitch Pipe Info Shop in Tacoma, and that was also a big target. The police were swarming around them all the time. They had, like, cameras set up, like, specifically just outside the infoshop like there weren't surveillance cameras there before, but then it's like, oh, we'll just conveniently put them on this one specific street corner. Yeah, I think, like. That was one of things I was reading about this is you have that stuff. And then also, I think one of the scariest parts of this is that, like, Army intelligence gets involved and. Yeah, do you want to talk about the man named, quote, UN quote, John Jacob, who was in fact not that. Yeah. So, you know, I'm curious what, what memories you have of our our good dear friend John Jacob. Juliana, I don't think I ever actually knew him in person, but he was the the moderator of the Lister, wasn't he? Yeah, she's one of the moderators of our listserv. Now that I look back on it, I'm like the the port, militarization, resistance, the serve was always just like this dramatic shift show. And it's like, looking back on it, I was like, oh. Moderated by a cop. That did nothing. Did absolutely nothing to. Like establish order or. That was on purpose. Yeah. So I think there's definitely some things that happen. Like, you know, looking back from our vantage point today, it's like, OK, things make a little more sense at the time, though, and we're in this movement, right? And so. That means, like, meeting people where they're at. We would find all kinds of people that would like want to join the movement. Like I, like I said earlier, like active duty soldiers that were joining. So I met this guy named John Jacob, and he sent an e-mail out to me. I was one of the contacts for the Olympia SDS Group. And it's like, hey, you know, there's kind of like a parent organization that some old, like, elder activists are in to kind of mentor us, called movement for a democratic society. Very small, never really took off. But it's like, I'm interested in getting involved. We met up in public and he seemed like an alright guy. I mean, he was. You know, fortyish early 40s, he told me, like, you know, been in the military for years and he actually still worked at Fort Lewis. So he was always open about that, but it only went that far. He didn't ever tell us what he actually did there. And it wasn't abnormal for, you know, we had many folks that worked active duty, you know, on base and civilian, civilian roles or soldiers, as I mentioned, that we're in port militarization resistance. So he gets involved and he gets really involved with port militarization, resistance, he goes to protests. He gets pretty close with this group of anarchists I mentioned who lived in Tacoma. And he seemed like you're really solid guy to to most of us. And you know things happen as as we progress and you know as the military responded to our, you know how effective we were in the anti war movement and the GI resistance movement by changing their tactics. We noticed that OK, when we first started the protest we we had the ability to catch the police by surprise by setting up you know, blockade here or having a surprise action there at this time. This port, et cetera, et cetera. And as time progressed, we found out that, you know, we were having these, making these decisions for tactics and our strategy we thought that we're in private and then for whatever reason the police kind of knew about where we were going to be before we even showed up. And that I remember that clearly happening in 2007, the port of Olympia. Yeah, in Tacoma there there's a lot of things like that. Like, there is one time when they're like some people who had a meeting in a closed room, like all their they've taken like the batteries out of their cell phones they had simply written on the whiteboard the time and place they're going to have their next meeting, which is going to be in a diner near the port. It's that way. It's like if for any reason the room is bugged, it wouldn't be caught up. Because it was just written on a board. And then it was like a small meeting too, so it's like there were. And then when they got to that diner, there was like full of cops. Yeah, like clearly waiting for them, like at that point it's like it was very clear there was. Some some level of infiltration involved. Yeah and I think we are from early on like you know we we knew our history. I mean you know one of our fellow activists and PMR and and a friend of ours Peter Bohmer is a professor at the Evergreen State College. He was in the original SDS back in the 60s and you know he was essentially a a political prisoner for a couple years in both Massachusetts and California. I mean the Feds essentially tried to assassinate him back in, in the 70s when he was active in the anti war movement in. San Diego, like we knew, you know, former Black Panthers and we read our history, so we knew about the history of COINTELPRO, the counterintelligence program of the 60s and 70s and the war on the anti war and civil rights and black power, American Indian movements, etcetera. So we knew, you know, just intuitively early on. But there was one thing that happened in particular which prompted some of us to file for a public records request with the city of Olympia. And another activist walking down the street in Olympia. I'm a member of the Wobblies, Industrial Workers of the World Union. And we had like, one of those metal newspaper boxes downtown, and it was locked to a pole, you know, with a bike lock. And there are some city workers there with a pickup truck, and they're cutting the lock to the newspaper box and they threw it in their pickup truck. And so are, you know, this friend of ours was there, was like, what? What the hell? What are you doing? What's going on? And one of the workers just kind of shrugged and was like, I don't know, the police told us to do this and they drove off like they stole. You know are are essentially like our Union property or whatever. So we had a, you know, our our lawyer friend Larry Hilders and the National Lawyers Guild and, you know, call and kind of threaten the city and and then a number of us got together like, hey, you know, let's do like a public records request with the city of of Olympia, Freedom of Information Law. Right. And so we did and the request was, you know, just requesting any all information the city had. Any exchanges, communications by e-mail, etcetera, between the police and like other agencies about anarchists, the IWW, students for Democratic society. And their initial search that the city clerk did yielded something like 30,000 responses. So she was like, OK, I got to narrow this down and I, I don't know why I was working on the request at the time. And for some reason, like, I don't know, we're poor, protests are near a military base, communications between the army not thinking anything. And so the initial responses we actually got, you know, maybe 100, a 130 or so different documents, just copies of emails. Etcetera. That we're little puzzle pieces for this massive puzzle. And it was just a few of them and it was, you know, there was an e-mail talking about our guy in the Navy going to a PMR meeting to get some Intel. There is, you know, all kinds of things like that. There are a few emails in particular and the e-mail address was something like John John Jay Towery at, you know, Army dot US, whatever, the e-mail address. Alright, so there's a crew of activists that got together, put their heads together, did some research quietly for a few months and eventually found out by publicly accessible information like voter registration records and also finding out something about like a motorcycle club called like the, I don't know, like the Brown Butte Club or the Brown **** Club or something. And and like found out that this John Towery guy that was in this motorcycle club and had his, you know. Was registered to vote outside of Tacoma and in this town there it was actually John Jacob. It was this guy that we thought was a fellow activist, an anarchist. And a friend, you know, I thought he was a personal friend of mine. Turns out he was actually essentially an Army intelligence officer working for something called a force protection unit at at Joint Face Joint Base Lewis Mcchord and also working with a whole list of different agencies and what turned out to be like a massive surveillance network that was national in scope. This guy was sent by the army, along with many others to infiltrate us, to spy on us and to disrupt. This was huge. Yeah. And that that's one of the things that have always really interesting about this is, like, so like I I I learned about polarization resistance basically because I was, like, poking around the history of, like informants. And I ran into this and I was like, what? Because. And that was what I thought. One of the things I thought was really interesting about this is that like, like, I think this chapter, the anti war movement is even on the left is like not very well known, but like the seriousness with which the army seems to have taken it is like is really remarkable. Yeah. I'm wondering what you think about that. One thing we have to emphasize is, is that we were not a large group of people. Yeah, like the number of people who are actively involved. In port militarization assistance at its peak was at how many people do you think it was, Brandon? Well, it depends. I mean, I'd say there are probably like at its peak maybe, probably 40 to 50 people that would like consistently show up to things, you know, maybe a slightly smaller, very core group. But we would have demonstrations with like 400 people, you know? Yeah. And like that would be like the Max. Like there is. It's like there are like the peaceful. Like, kind of like support actions, you know, you'd get like a couple 100 people and then like for the stuff. Like where it's like the the first night that that the part of the entrance to the part of Olympia was occupied, it would be like like 40 to 50 people. These were not. These were not very large groups of people. I feel like, and like I said, it's like one thing that we need to keep in mind was that the peace police were much stronger back then than they are now. Nowadays, like, like as we saw last year, it's like people in the US have learned. To throw it out, but that was not the case at the time. And so this is a very, very small group of people and I think we accomplished a lot from with how small it was. If it had been larger, it would have accomplished way more, but even. That small core of like. 40 to 50 people with maybe expanding out to like a larger group of a couple hundred had them that scared. That they went. That far to try and disrupt it, yeah, and and this is one of the things I've been thinking about a lot recently of this seems to be a very consistent thing, which is that like the the the the the the two things that are guaranteed to like. Just have a hammer drop on you if you touch them is pipelines and ports. And that that was that was something, you know we we talked a lot on here about pipeline protests. But I was interested in. What you two think about because you know this this is like of. Very particular moment right now in which you're dealing with all these logistics chain failures. And I was wondering if if you think there's anything that we can learn from how your versions of the sort of, of of port demonstrations? Worked for potentially trying to leverage that in the future, especially with like contract negotiations for the like port workers in Oakland coming up next year. Yeah, that's a great question. You know, there's this old saying and in the IWW, direct action gets goods, right? And I think it really boils down to that. It's building up. Uh, you know, mass movements and and social movements from below that rely on direct action, that rely on silver resistance, civil disobedience. Yeah. And and the pipeline protests that have been ongoing where indigenous people have been on the front lines of that for many, many years now. I mean, the kind of repression and surveillance that we face really pales in comparison to the kinds of, you know, surveillance of repression. Folks who are facing at Standing Rock, for example, you know, I think of course one of the one of the main differences is is that it was primarily the the military, you know, with us, right, that was surveilling us because this, this was very specifically, you know, a war issue, a military issue. But yeah, I mean I think. You know, like I think there's a big questions like what, what do we have to do that's that's new. And to me I say, you know, for both that kind of militant action but also for the labor movement, it's like what's not, you know, we don't have to reinvent the wheel. There are things that have a tried and true track record of getting the goods and that is, you know, these more disruptive kind of actions and and and movements. And so one of them would be, you know, I guess my suggestion would be to like, go back to the basics and even like I would say now, you know this, remember this is at a time when, like, Facebook was around, right. Like, but we weren't really using that for our organizing. We really relied on like face to face meetings, you know, phone calls and building up trust with people and building up our capacity to like, take actions and make change. You know, I think I'm not saying throw out everything that you know that. At least some of the good that social media has to offer. But like, I think going beyond that and and going back to these older tactics and then for the labor movement, like the big thing is, you know, and it's just like a bigger question for for mainstream unions in particular. I mean they're the, the whole idea of like union contracts is that workers also lose a lot. Yeah, they get some things, but business owners and bosses have rights carved out and and those contracts and. The longshore workers, I mean, the difficult thing with that, of course, is like there would be some symbolic strikes that of course, like longshore workers have done and continue to do, you know, around like the war in Iraq, historically supporting Mumia, Abu, Jamal, Mayday, etcetera, like in Oakland. But they have something for that written into their contracts. And you know, for all these other like unions, it's like, well, you know, we can't strike at all for, for the next two years or next three years, whatever the life of the contract is like. I think it's a bigger question and challenge for the labor movement to move beyond that and not be putting this straightjacket of of contracts like that. Yeah I think that that particular like the the the no strike clause part of contracts I think is interesting because it. I don't know. There, there there's not. I mean there there are some unions that will actually do. Stuff around fighting it. But mostly people just sort of don't care. And and I think you wind up in a situation where it seems like you you kind of have to plan your tactics around when contract negotiations are happening because otherwise you can't actually get people to do anything more than like a one day symbolic strike. Yeah. And or, you know, the challenge is like, you know, we have this Great American tradition that's not Mint Mobile offers premium wireless starting at just 15 bucks a month. And now for the plot twist. Nope, there isn't one. That mobile just has premium wireless from 15 bucks a month. 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And it's one that resonates with me, breaking the law, right. And and like we are, you know, we are like civil disobedience. That is that what we are doing in the streets and blocking the ports. We were breaking the law and we knew it. And that's what the civil rights movement, the black Freedom movement, did in in the 1960s. But like we have recent examples of workers. Breaking the law in mass, like the West Virginia teacher strikes that happened a few years ago, like teachers in every single county in that state went on strike. They broke the law and and they want something out of that. And I think that's what we really need to encourage people is this idea of breaking out of like the norm and and breaking the laws, which, you know, the laws that are in place, which are not there to, you know, expand our freedom. They're there to. Contract it? Yeah, one of my friends had a joke about what was the exact line it was. It's only illegal if you get caught, and it only matters if you lose, which I think is a good way of thinking about. Both drinking and yeah, and you know, yeah. I think it's also like, it's worth mentioning that like the other sides, the law doesn't matter to them at all. Like they just tear it up and like light it on fire constantly. So don't, don't bind yourself if if you can. If you can not get caught and not like go to prison for the rest of your life. Don't bind yourself by a bunch of like paper that the other side just doesn't care about. Yeah, and that's an excellent point because that's the big thing, you know, with the army and law enforcement general like surveillance of us, they were. And the police, just their actions are brazen actions on the street, like the riot police. They were just breaking the law all the time. They absolutely have a deep, visceral hatred of. The Bill of Rights, of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. And so there were a number of, you know, court cases that sprung out of, you know, this movement. There was a case called Panagakis Vitari. Another Juliana Panagakis was another PMR member Co plaintiff in that case. And, you know, is it a case against the army that, you know, we we waged and brought up to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals and, you know, eventually lost and and it could have brought it to the Supreme Court. It didn't. But, you know, like the the other thing is like the violation of the Posse Comitatus Act. It was a whole other thing. You know? We don't have to get like so tied up until, like, the legalistic thing, but like the point, your point is valid. Like they don't care about. The laws that are already there, they'll they'll just intentionally break them, break their own laws that they have set up, and you know, they'll just get a slap on the wrist because that's really all. That's all that happens to them. And I think, I think, I think that's a good note to end on break the law, it's fake. It's also bad. Do you 2 have anything you want to plug other than that, other than, you know, encouraging people to break the law? Locate your local port. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I I think it's, you know, I I guess just encourage people to do as, you know, it sounds like what you're doing by having us on the show. And like there are some in our very recent history, you know, movements and wins that we all as activists today can still learn from. And I think part of that, Umm, you know, I don't want to call us elders because we're not that old, but like one part of that is like making sure like. Movements are still like a multi generational and like we we learn from each other and also as as Juliana and I did, like I mentioned earlier, like we learned from the movements of the past SDS, the Black Panthers, so the Black Freedom movement etcetera. But there's a lot that you know these, these struggles I think have to offer us today. Alright, well, thank. Thank you. Thank you both for talking, coming on and talking with us. Thank you for having us. Thank you. Well this this has been it could happen here. I find us at happened here pod on Twitter Instagram and the rest of our stuff is at Colton Media at. The same somewhat accursed social media places. I don't know why I'm saying somewhat. They're just a cursed. Yeah, see you next time, whenever that is. What's up guys? I'm Rochelle Bilal and I am Troy Millings and we are the host of the earn your Leisure podcast where we break down business models and examine the latest trends in finance. We hold court and have exclusive interviews with some of the biggest names in business, sports and entertainment, from DJ Khaled to Mark Cuban, Rick Ross and Shaquille O'Neal. I mean, our alumni list is expansive listening as our guests reveal their business models, hardships and triumphs in their respective fields. The knowledge is in death and the questions are always delivered from your standpoint. We want to know what you want to know. We talked to the legends of business, sports and entertainment about how they got their start and most importantly how they make their money earning. Alicia is a college business class mixed with pop culture. Want to learn about the real estate game? Unclear is how the stock market works. We got you interested in starting a trucking company or vending machine business. Not really sure about how taxes or credit work? We got it all covered. The earning Leisure podcast is available now. Listen to earn your leisure on the Black Affect Podcast network, iHeartRadio App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Jake Halpern's, host of deep cover. Our new season is about a lawyer who helped the mob run Chicago. We controlled the courts. We controlled absolutely everything. He bribed judges and even helped a hit man walk free until one day when he started talking with the FBI and promised that he could take the mob down. I've spent the past year trying to figure out why he flipped and what he was really after. From my perspective, Bob was too good to be true. There's got to be something wrong with this. I wouldn't trust that guy. He looks like a little scumbag liar, stool pigeon. He looked like what? He was a rat. I can say with all certainty I think he's a hero because he didn't have to do what he did, and he did it anyway. The moment I put the wire around the first time my life was over. If it ever got out, they would kill me in a heartbeat. Listen to deep cover on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. After 30 years, it's time to return to the halls of W Beverly High and hang out at the Peach Pit on the podcast 9021 OMG. Join Jennie Garth and Tori Spelling for a rewatch of the hit series Beverly Hills, 9021 O. From the very beginning we get to tell the fans all of the behind the scenes stories to actually happen so they know what happened on camera, obviously, but we can tell them all the good stuff that happened off camera. Get all the juicy details of every episode that you've been wondering about for decades. As 90210 Super fan and radio host, Cincinnati sits in with Jenny and Tori to reminisce, reflect, and relive each moment. From Brandon and Kelly's first kiss to shouting Donna Martin graduates, you have an amazing memory. You remember everything about the entire 10 years that we filmed that show, and you remember absolutely nothing of the 10 years that we filmed that show. Listen to 9021 OMG on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back to it could happen here, the show about things not being great and maybe trying to make them better. I'm Robert Evans. This week we got we have a special little little little episode for you. I'm going to sit down and talk with Lucas Herndon. Lucas, you are from new or you live in New Mexico at least and you wanted to talk to me a bit about some stuff that's going on in your school boards? We just did. A2 parter on. Fascist attempts to kind of take over and dominate school boards around the country, and you've got some personal experience with that, so I wanted to kind of just turn this over to you to start us off. Thanks, Robert. Thanks for having me on the show. Yeah, my name is Lucas and I live in Las Cruces, NM, which is in the southern part of the state. We're close to the border for people that are interested. And yeah, I like, you know, the my experience that happened last week is sort of the quintessential. It could happen here. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Las Cruces, politically speaking, is actually a very progressive little toy. Yeah. I mean, in general, New Mexico has been for what, you know, however you consider the progressive or not is, it's been blue for quite a while as in terms of like voting like, it's not. It's not like Texas politically at least. Right. That's yeah, exactly. Yeah. We voted for, we voted for Bush the first time, but have voted Blue every election since 2004. Federally so in my little stretch of the of the state our Congressional District has been read. But the city of Las Cruces, which is the like where the biggest city in the southern part of the state, where the second biggest city in the state, our City Council, has not only been democratic but like progressively democratic. We have as of this recent election you know from the beginning of November we now have an all female City Council there is. At least we have. 11 If not two trying to think sorry. Currently, there are two folks on the City Council who have immigrated from Mexico in their life. One will still be on. One is now running for Congress. We have the school board that currently is sitting is generally progressive and the one we just elected, we just elected our first openly queer person onto that school board. Our little group of of legislators that go up to Santa Fe every year is very progressive. So again, just to kind of reiterate like Las Cruces, NM, pretty progressive little place and yet at the school board meeting last week totally dominated by a public attendance of. Very far right. Extremists spouting all kinds of nonsense about all kinds of things. So, yeah, it was pretty wild. Yeah. And this, I mean, this has happened. This happened in Portland, OR, too, which is also famously, I don't know, I wouldn't call Portland politics progressive, but solidly Democratic. And the school board meeting gets taken over by by far right activists. This is a yeah. So when did you kind of first become aware of this? Well, so it was it was a weird convergence of my personal and my and my private or I'm sorry my personal, my professional life where I. I work for an organization called Progress now, New Mexico, so it's like I do progressive politics for a living. But. And and a colleague who works for the ACLU here had asked if I would go and help lend support to this gender inclusion policy that the school board was going to be commenting on. They weren't voting on it that day. It was what's called a first reading. And she asked if I could go and if I could, you know, just speak. And I was like, yeah, absolutely be happy to. So I was going to go and and talk about this in a, I'm sorry, professional capacity and then that day, as like before I went to that. My daughter, who's in middle school, texted me a picture a bunch of kids had. On Monday of of last week, which was like Trans Awareness Week or Trans Visibility Week, some kids had shown up wearing trans flags and pride flags on that Monday. The following day that Tuesday, some kids showed up wearing thin blue line flags in in response, like indirect response. And and my daughter, and, you know, my daughter is aware enough to know what that means. So she texted me and was like, I can't believe this ****. And I was like, I know. So then I'm like, right, so then I'm like, OK, well now I want to go speak about this gender inclusion bill or policy. Personally, right like now, it like has impacted me. So I show up at, you know, about an hour before the meeting supposed to start. Because the third thing that kind of happened was that I I am, I'm on like a bunch of mailing lists because of my job and sure enough, the local GOP. So it's not very active because, again, they kind of lose all the time. They sent out a, like, come show up at this thing, you know, e-mail. So I showed up early thinking, OK, well, I want to see if there's going to be something. And at first I was like, oh, like, I don't think they showed up. I don't think that they turned out that's good. But it turns out they were all, like, hiding in their cars so that they could, like, swarm the building at once. And so then, like about half an hour before the meeting, they all walked in at once. And like, I, I was already sitting inside the room and they all came in at once and they took over all the chairs. There was standing room only. Umm. To the point where, like the there was a bunch of FFA kids that were there was supposed to be recognized for, you know, FFA something or other. And like they had to kick some people out so that they weren't violating the fire code. That's how many. Yeah. So anyway, that's kind of how it all, that's the setting for where this all happened. It turns out that at the same meeting there was going to be a policy discussion on a different policy that had to do with New Mexico's revision of social studies. Standards and of course that got everybody hot and bothered about so-called CRT, which isn't a thing, but Umm, so like they were there, but I mean, but the folks that showed up to speak, I mean they were all over the place. They were talking about critical race theory, they were talking about the gender inclusion bill and like transviolet, the myth of trans violence and but then of course, like like COVID protocols and all kinds of, I mean just again, like way out there stuff. And actually kind of funny, I was listening to knowledge fight this morning and and Jordan and Dan really hit on it that like. They have just figured out that these are places they can go and yell and like no one you know, like school board. People aren't gonna like they're all just these are all just like teachers, like retired teachers who are on these school boards and they're like, they're not there to just, you know, have these, like, whatever discussions. So they're not, you know, they just like let these people yell and they did. So anyways, it got it got heated pretty quickly because I mean, again, these people just like go off and they get they were all themselves up and there's lots of applause. And anyway, that's kind of how it all started, I guess, or that's what it was. And I mean has there, have you noticed kind of any sort of mobilization? In the community now that this is happened because it seems like the first ones of these at least always take everybody by surprise. People are not used to, still not really used to school board meetings, being shall I say interesting, certainly important, but like not a thing that you have to really be concerned about for the most part and that's that's changing. Have you seen the community kind of start to adapt to that? Yeah you know since so you know I I put some content out on my you know local Twitter and and and got some traction there. Things to sort of your retweet I think but Umm but then the biggest thing was that. Kind of going back to what had happened at my daughter's school that progressed, that got worse, if you will. The following day, the Wednesday of last week, some kids showed up in an actual Confederate stars and bars flag, which is, yeah, that's nuts. It's famed Confederate state New Mexico. You know, messy in New Mexico, which is right down the road was it was the capital of the Confederate territory. But. Yeah. But it wasn't a state at that point. It was not a state. Could you do? Yeah. And I'm not aware of. Were there battles in New Mexico? And I know we had some in, like further South Texas than you would think, but I was not aware of any. There's a couple. There was one famously up north called the Battle of Glorieta. And then and then there was one here where I live wasn't a battle. It was a bunch of Confederates got. Stranded and super drunk and then couldn't cross the desert fast enough. So they got stranded up in the mountains at a place called Baylor Canyon and the and they they get to the top and like the north was just sitting there like waiting for them and was like, well, you're captured now. Well, see, that's clearly that's some history. Worth celebrating right there. Oh yeah, 100%, yeah. Yeah. I think that the biggest, like one of the scariest but biggest things is like, and this goes towards the this is slight tangent, but like the social studies revision, for instance, in the state of New Mexico, there are two paragraphs in our history book about the Gadsden Purchase. Like I live in the chunk that is the guest and purchase and like the guests and purchase is at. Like James Gaston was a notorious racist who left the South and took all of his railroad money. Went to California and Mexico lobbying hard, using his influence and money to try to create a slave state in Baja Mexico. Like that's what he was trying to do. And like that part of the that part of the context of why the guests and purchase even happened. Is like totally left out of history books and it's like if anywhere it should be taught, it should be taught in the place that is called the guest and purchase when it comes to the United States. So anyway, just a little tangent there, why it's important to have context in history. So sorry, going back to my daughter's school and these kids wearing the stupid stars and bars so that. I so like I went and spoke to the assistant principal and was like, so I understand that your answer to this was to ban all flags. Yeah. He was like and he was like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because they're causing a disruption to education. And I was like, yeah. But I, you know, I feel like you're giving a false equivalency to like, you know, gender and and pride acknowledgement to add versus actual flag. Yeah. It's it's, I mean it's this constant. This has happened in a couple of places, including a town in Oregon where it's like, this is sort of the the centrist and kind of the right wing solution to this. It's just that like, well, if if kids can't wear racist hate flags, then. Gay kids can't wear a flag that says that their existence is valid. You know, because those are the same thing. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. It's frustrating. It is frustrating. So that was not my favorite thing. And so then the culmination of that this week was that my daughter's social studies teacher, who had allowed the kids in her class to make little paper flags after the real flags were banned, was fired. Jesus Christ. And. Because it's a personnel matter. No one is willing to tell me more. I've, I've called the President of the School school board, who actually, in all fairness, he doesn't actually probably have that much sway over these kinds of things. I would imagine that happened at a level, A level that was not his. But yeah, yeah, but I mean, but I but I have anyway. So I did call him. I also called the school and got very little information from them, obviously. So, you know, who knows? But again, like that's how it was perceived from the kids in her class. And that's so, like, what we know happened is that we know that after the flags got banned, she let kids make flags out of paper and hang them up. And by Friday, she was gone. So, like, not a great response. No, not not ideal. Not ideal. Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, that's kind of where we left that. But I guess maybe what maybe what I should say to get back to your original question, which is to say, like, have we seen a mobilization that. Yeah. Like, so I learned the the newspaper, the reporter. Who that teacher like a couple of weeks ago had actually been in the newspaper because she had also like. She she spearheaded this like response like a poor like a girl who wore a hijab to school had been bullied. And like when news got around in the school like the like the majority of the student body and this teacher like went up and above out of their way to make her feel welcome and like walk her to her class and like if it got kind of viral on local Tik T.O.K so like this teacher got quoted in the newspaper. So I like called I called the reporter, tweeted the newspaper and I was like like you guys know that the teacher who. Was in like, Starlight in your article is fired for allowing kids to voice their thoughts about these flags things. Right. And they were like, no, we didn't know. And I was like, you should probably find more out. So, so I, you know, I don't know where we're going to be at now. The next reading for the gender inclusion policy is. The 14th of December. So we've got a couple of weeks before that next school board meeting. I think that on my end, like there's going to be some local organizing to try to get some better, more inclusive voices to be a part of things. I don't, you know, I don't know what the interim will holds because it's like, you know, it's the holidays and there's a lot going on. And Kyle Rittenhouse and build back better. I mean there's like, you know, there's always a million things happening, so it'll, you know, there will have to be some drum beating. I like get people to show up to that, but on the other hand I think with some of the momentum we have and I think people will show up in mass for the 14th in support at least. This is the kind of community that in general we have shown up and shown out to support, you know, these kinds of issues in the past. But I do think that up until now people felt pretty asleep about it. Yeah. And I mean, and hopefully you do see the kind of response you're expecting. Can you walk me through sort of how the, the, the kind of attempts like you talked about getting the local media aware of what had happened to that teacher. How are people like, what is the actual organizing effort look like on the ground? Like how are you, how are you and and others trying to get the word out so that you know if there's a response to this? Yeah, so I think that Umm. The first thing is is that there was there was a problem with the. Way that the school board handled public comment that first time in an attempt to. Help limit their own sort of exposure to some of the toxic stuff they knew was coming their way they had they had instituted a a limit on. Public comment. You had to show up by a certain time and fill out these little pieces of paper saying that you were there to comment about something. And if you weren't there, then you couldn't sign up. And the problem was, was that all these, like old white male retirees, who are you sitting around listening to Alex Jones all day? They had nothing better to do than show up to this meeting at 3:00 o'clock in the afternoon. Whereas a bunch of, for instance, teachers, students, parents, they were busy because they were in school or like picking their kids up from school. Yeah. So I think one of the things that we're going to try to do is get public comment ahead of time and we're going to try to like bombard the not bombard that's that's a violent word. But we're going to try to like just make sure that voices from the community that hadn't been represented are represented and sent to the school board ahead of time. I think we're going to try to go and save physical space ahead of time for those of us that can, right. For those of us that can will go and we'll try to save physical space. And we did learn that even if they. Keep that policy for the little forms we can, we can actually give that time. We can fill out other people's names, right. So we're going to try to, like, make sure that we have better voices. That was one of the things. If you listen to the recording of what I said at that meeting, I asked the school board president if it's possible for me to yield my time because it had literally been like a dozen white men out there spouting nonsense. And then I get up there and I'm like, yeah, hey, we've heard from enough white men. Can we have like. A member of the trans community or one of the women of color who are here to talk about this but couldn't get here in time. And their legal team was like, Oh no, like you didn't sign up in time or whatever. So, but it turns out we could have put their names down ahead of time. So we're going to try to organize that thing so that people can show up and save, you know, physical space. And then I think the other thing, too, is to try to involve some other local elected officials from the county and city level because again, we have these really amazing. Progressive candidates who have come from all walks of life, including immigrants and members of the LGBTQA community, so having them come and speak in their official capacity, I think will carry a lot of weight. Or that both for the school board, but also just for the public to hear from those voices. Where are these? Like, have you, have you gotten any kind of research on where the people showing up are coming from? Are these like folks within your community or are these people coming from kind of outlying areas to swarm these meetings like is there, is there kind of an active research contingent? I mean, that's part of what I do. It's part of part of my job with progress now New Mexico, my my title is energy policy director. I usually spend most of my day talking about oil and gas stuff. However, I've been doing this job long enough that before I became that person, I was actively researching and tracking a lot of white supremacy activity in the in the state, especially along the border, some of the border militia stuff a couple years back. So in that regard, I knew and I knew a number of these folks. A lot of them do live in the city, but so our, our county is considered rural by the census, even though we're a city of 100,000 people, but we're a big county, so there's, there's 200,000 people here. So, so there was, you know, it's it's hard to tell how many people may or may not have lived in, for instance, the public school district. But what I can tell you like hands down is that of those dozen folks that spoke before I did, like, there's no way that at least, I mean maybe one or two of them had kids that could have gone through the Las Cruces. Public school system, but like the majority of them far and away, like either aren't from here at all or you know, they've lived here for a long time, but they are. They are not active parents or even grandparents of kids that live and will go to school in this, in this district. They're just, they're just agitated right wingers. Yeah, and it's how does this all tie in? Because New Mexico's had, I think it's kind of been on the back burner in terms of like national attention. But y'all have had some really significant dust UPS, not just with, you know, the border militias. For years there have been violent acts and and even murders as the result of that stuff going on. But like during last year's the protest over George Floyd's murder, y'all had some really ugly, shall we say, dueling rallies where like, right wingers shot at people and and some really. Some nasty situations I'm wondering are like those folks, like, are you seeing that kind of organization being brought into the the school board meeting or is this just kind of bubbling up as part of the same Stew? It is, yeah. It there, it's loosely affiliated for sure. And and the crossover, the crossover is hard to tell. Depends. I mean what am I trying to say? There's there is crossover. It's hard to tell how on purpose it is or sort of the fact that this is like a small population community state, right. So what I what I mean by that is that some of the some of the physical white supremacists who showed up last year at one of our. BLM support you know George Floyd related peaceful protests who they showed up at a parking lot across the street you know armed long guns TAC vests all that kind of stuff. Who that those were the folks that when I when I went and filmed them and and put them on blast to to try and sort of out them as best we possibly could or at least identify them. They came back and doxed me as and then went after a number of my colleagues up up north in Albuquerque. That was about a week before there was the there was a shooting of a of a anti fascist protester in Albuquerque and and it was during sort of all of that stuff that I was like trying to talk about all this out loud and got tied into a few more other anti fascist voices in the state. So since then we've all been kind of working together. We found each other on Twitter. Thankfully. And so, So what it seems like is, is that like the folks that showed up to the school board meeting were what I'll call usual suspects like politically active, old, you know, right wingers. That being said. In that room there were a number of people that I've identified as showing up to anti VAX rallies, a number of the Trump train rallies that happened last year before the election. And at least one person who I recognized as being, I have never seen carry a firearm, but like has been at rallies where people were carrying firearms and and that kind of thing in response to these, you know, in response to like peaceful protests. So there is crossover for sure. Where do you see this going? Like cause you've been kind of paying attention to this? For a while, not just the school board stuff, but just kind of the general problem of right wing organizing in your area. Like where do you, where do you see this heading within kind of the context of New Mexico? Well, I mean so we haven't really talked about this, but like so while while here in Las Cruces we did really well during the November election in terms of our school board, we reelected a really good Progressive school board president and two new good progressive candidates including like I said the first, you know, queer, openly queer person. So that's amazing. However, up in Albuquerque they lost seats to some of these far right wing candidates and. So the Albuquerque School Board is not. Not looking as good politically. So I mean so on the like I guess what I'd say is on the soft end, what I expect is more continued pressure in sort of the. The the the way these things are supposed to happen, which is to say like continued presence of the right wing folks at meetings, yelling, taking up space, slowing things down, running for office when the time comes. You know, those kinds of things I see. I guess I wouldn't be surprised though if. If I if there were further escalation of things in a, you know. In in the way we've seen other places in terms of some sort of a, you know an armed response or somebody showing up to you know, New Mexico's open carry state and so people can walk around with guns all the time. Umm. And and you know, I mean that's the thing too is like, well I didn't see anybody with an open carried firearm at the school board meeting. There were guys wearing like you know, Vortex optics brand hats and blue, thin blue line shirts, a guy with like a Remington shirt, you know, and and like I don't begrudge anybody from gun culture. I'm, you know, I'm a lefty with a gun. So it's like, I I get gun culture, but like, when you show up in those things and in those spaces with that kind of, yeah, you're making a point. Exactly. Yeah. You're, you're you're not. Yeah, yeah, I get that. Have you, is there some kind of have you seen like any kind of budding left wing armed response like is there, do you guys have like an organized group of folks who have been showing up when there are armed protests in the area? I mean, I always have my gear with me. Umm, I mean, I've got, I've got a ceramic plate, I've got my, you know, rifle and pistol. I've, I I am a member of a number of different groups. I've been a member of the NRA. I've I've worked with some of the armed groups up in Albuquerque, so Mint Mobile offers premium wireless starting at just 15 bucks a month. And now for the plot twist. Nope, there isn't one. Mint Mobile just has premium wireless from 15 bucks a month. There's no trapping you into a two year contract. You're opening the bill to find all these nuts fees. There's no luring you in with free subscriptions or streaming services that you'll forget to cancel and then be charged full price for. None of that. For anyone who hates their phone Bill, Mint Mobile offers premium wireless for just $15.00 a month. Mobile will give you the best rate whether you're buying one or for a family, and it meant family start at 2 lines. All plans come with unlimited talk and text, plus high speed data delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. 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Now we're sharing this research with you for the first time ever in a book format, you can pre-order stuff they don't want you to know now. It's the new book from us, the creators of the podcast and video series. You can turn back now or read the stuff they don't want you to know. Available for pre-order now, it's stuff you should read books.com or wherever you find your favorite books. My name is Erica Kelly and I am the host and creator of Southern Freight true crime. There are so many people that just have no idea about some injustices in the world, and if you can give a voice to them, you can create change. To be able to do it within podcasting is just such a gift. I believe it was 18 months after I got on with Spreaker that I was making enough that I could quit my day job. It was incredible. I always feel like an ambassador for speaker. But that's because I'm passionate about podcasting. It's really easy to use. I always tell people I am so not tech. Took me 5 minutes to get comfortable with spreaker, and when I find a new friend that has an incredible show, I want them to make money. I want them to be able to do what I did. Follow your podcasting dreams. Let's break your handle the hosting, creation, distribution, and monetization of your podcast. Go to spreaker.com. That's spreaker.com. Get paid to talk about the things you love. Spreaker from iheart on here. There hasn't been a ton, but I've got a I've got what I'll call a loose affiliation with a number of folks that I would trust to to be armed if need be. Thankfully that hasn't happened yet. Thankfully, the the one big, big protest that happened here in Las Cruces that I was sort of nervous about and I did have my gear for remained peaceful and and we, you know, we took over some streets and blocked traffic for a couple hours and there was never any violent response from anybody other than maybe like. One car at one point trying to push through and car got banged on and that was about it. But so, so, so to answer your question like yes, there are those of us that are left wing and armed and there are those of us that have been able to show out if we needed to. Thankfully we haven't had to at this point. Well all right. I think that's everything I had to ask. Is there anything else you wanted to to get to to make sure to talk about today. Well I just I mean I I would be I would be not doing the the best of my job if I didn't mention the fact that like one of the so one of the talking points of the right wing here at our school board is that New Mexico's education system is is 51st in the country and I the the my assumption is that that has to do with DC's public schools being counted. So it's not a great. Yeah, that's not a great record. Yeah, it's not. It's not a great record. And and and I and I, you know, as a parent of a kid who's in the public schools, I, you know, I cannot ignore that, right. That's so that's a legitimate talking point. But the but the thing that they want to bring it about is that, you know, there. You know, it's because we're trying to be gender inclusive. It's because we're trying to like, you know, teach kids about, like, actual history that happened, whatever. And the reality is it's because our education system is, unlike most places, funded by the oil and gas industry and not by, like, our communities. And so, like, you know, 18 months ago oil prices crashed, right? And the state of New Mexico. Had to have an emergency special session for our legislature to figure out how we were going to like fund things like cops and schools and like whatever. And then, like now, you know, oil and gas is like gangbusters and we're, you know, record prices and like the state of Mexico has this like surplus budget. But The thing is, is that like that, that extra money that we're going to get this time doesn't make up for the, like, cyclical bad, you know, way that we fund our schools. So I just want to like tie in that like. Like, all of these things tie in together, right? Like we can't talk about education in New Mexico without talking about the oil and gas funding. And so anyway, so, like, because that's my, you know, that's part of the reason why I was going to go talk about this stuff at the on my professional level is that, like, I get to talk about education as an, as an energy expert in the state of New Mexico because energy and education are so intertwined here. And like when you have literal, like Koch brothers founded and and like monetarily supplied think tanks in the state of New Mexico who are pushing out this kind of propaganda and encouraging people so that there's a group called the Rio Grande Foundation and like another one called power of the Future. Yeah, power, the future of New Mexico, like both of those organizations are like tied to the Koch brothers because the Koch brothers are tied to oil and they're pushing these right wing talking points and it's all part and parcel of just like, you know, clouding the information space. That's what they want to do. They want to have, they want to have the new cycle dominated with things like CRT and gender inclusion studies to, you know, to tie up things like school boards so that so that the electorate is busy talking about these things. Well, meanwhile, they're just raking in money hand over fist. You know, stealing our oil. So yeah, anyway, I just that's so important to me to, like, make those connections. Especially in this state. And it's something that a lot of people don't consider and don't think about and it's just really important to me that people understand that so. Alright, well thank you so much Lucas. This has been I I'm not gonna say fun, but certainly enlightening and I think valuable a good a good dispatch from you know, a a fight that we we continue to see is important here and that everybody should be paying attention to both wherever it happens, including in Las Cruces and around the country because they ain't giving up and they can't be ignored. And that's and I and you've mentioned this many times over the years, but like that's the kind of things like we have to show up. We can't just let them have these spaces and and I think that this this past school board meeting was a great example of why and and I'm I'm really counting on a lot of my my my friends and and close you know the the the folks that I have come to love and support in this community to show up and show out for that because that's you know we've been there right. We like I said you know and if you look up Las Cruces politics over the years on the news cycle like you'll see stories about our you know Progressive City Council and passing a living wage. And, you know, banning plastic bags, I mean, like all these, like, you know, we've we've tried, we've tried to be that kind of little community and and and yet, you know, these folks are still there and they're still loud and if we give them the space, they will take those spaces over. So, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So thanks for having me on. Let me talk about this. Really means a lot. Thank you for stepping up because it is this is the thing that's a giant pain in the **** is that everybody's got a lot going on. Life is complicated. There's all sorts of **** to do. In the old World, but every time these fascists. And their their affiliates decide they're going to try to take over something. You know, as busy as people are, as exhausting as it is, you do have to like, they can't just be allowed to do it. Like, that's how they win is they have, they have unlimited energy for this ****. And if they're not like the thing that causes them to lose energy is actually being outnumbered and shown to be like, like, like being kind of pushed out by communities. You can do it. It takes. It it, but it requires people showing up. Yes, that's exactly right. So. I appreciate the signal boost means a lot to me. And this is very local orgs that people can support. So big shout out to a group called Cafe here in in Las Cruces that works on all kinds of border issues. Immigrant rights, but also like workers rights and immigrant like student rights, migrant student rights. They've been very active in this for a long time. And so, yeah, I've definitely shout out cafe here in here in, I mean, all of New Mexico, but specifically in Southern New Mexico, they're doing a lot of work and then dreams and action, which is part of a national network for dreamers. But again, here in New Mexico have done a lot of good work. OK. Yeah, thank you very much Lucas. Alright. And that is going to do it for us here at it could happen here until next time Goa, I don't know. Hang out at the school board meeting. Go take up space from fascists. Yeah, go take up space from fascists in general. The black effect presents features, honest conversations, and exclusive interviews, a space for artists, everyday people, and listeners to amplify, elevate, and empower black voices with great conversations. Make sure to listen to the black Effect Presents podcast on iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Adoption of teens from foster care is a topic not enough people know about, and we are here to change that. I'm April Dinwoodie, host of the new podcast navigating adoption presented by adopt US Kids. Each episode brings you compelling real life adoption stories told by the families that live them, with commentary from experts. Visit adoptuskids.org/podcast or subscribe to navigating adoption presented by adopt US kids, brought to you by the US Department of Health and Human Services Administration for Children and Families, and the AD Council. I call the Union hall, I said. It's a matter of life and death. I think these people are planning to kill Doctor King. On April 4th, 1968, Doctor Martin Luther King was shot and killed in Memphis. A petty criminal named James Earl Ray was arrested. He pled guilty to the crime and spent the rest of his life in prison. Case closed, right? James Earl Ray was a pawn for the official story. The authorities would parade all we found. They gone that James Earl Ray bought in Birmingham that killed Doctor King. Except it wasn't the gun that killed Doctor King. One of the problems that came out when I got the Ray case was that some of the evidence as far as I was concerned, did not match the circumstances. This is the MLK tapes. The first episodes are available now. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back to it could happen here, the podcast about, you know, the problems and stuff that are happening and how to maybe make them better. And Speaking of the problems that are happening and how to make them better, Garrison. Davis, hi. Hello. Hey, Chris. That's so, that's a weird segue. I wanted to introduce this video by telling you guys that I just watched a movie that you should watch because it's pretty rad and it's ties into all the things we talk about. It's called the Pizza Gate massacre. It is a micro budget under $100,000 film that looks great. They did a really good job with the budget they had about an Alex Jones employee type person and a mass shooter who go looking for to try to solve the pizza gate thing. Boy it is a an actually very nuanced and I think deeply knowledgeable commentary on specifically like the Texan conspiracy scene. Like, it's OK, they're Alex Jones character who's played by a woman in this they film in the original studio that he recorded. And back at the that's funny. Like the the filmmaker who did this gets like the culture in the area and kind of the relationship between the people who get radicalized and do **** and the people who just profit from it. It's a very good it's. It is, by the way, a grindhouse horror movie. Like, whatever you're expecting. It's not that it is like a it is an incredibly gory grindhouse movie, but it's. It's pretty it's pretty fun. What does that have to do with Cup 26? Nothing at all. But it has a lot to do with. It could happen here because, OK. Alright, well we'll watch it anyway. This is it could happen here, a show about how things are kind of falling apart and how we can maybe slow that down or prepare for an uncertain future. To an episode about cops, right? I mean, **** them. I mean, we are we are planning an episode in Washington state Patrol. But no, this is episode. It's been a different a different kind of cop about just as useful. Though in the first five episodes of the The The Daily Show or Season 2 which if you haven't listened to you should definitely listen to those as they kind of act as our shows manifesto of sorts. But nevertheless the first time episodes of the scripted Daily Show put forth like a more like realistic non sugar coated look at what climate change will bring if we continue on our current course. But not just looking at the obvious environmental and extreme weather effects but also like the socio political effects. So when I was helping Robert out with the research for those episodes, some of the best indicators of like the mainstream conception of the scientific, environmental and political status of climate change was at the United Nations past IPCC reports, which is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the COP conferences. So during the first few weeks of this past November of November 2021, the 26th. Then you will cop conference took place in Glasgow and yeah, the name of the conference is kind of a decent indication on how useful these things actually are. But a cop stands for a conference of the parties and for almost 3 decades they've been like the main international stage for for countries and companies to discuss climate related information and like they're alleged like goals. So yeah, they're a good indicator, not unlike sometimes they do present actual good science and like decent predictions, but they're often just like a good indication of what kind of the mainstream people think. About what climate change is. And, you know, what the people in power, how they are viewing it, and how urgent they think it's worth addressing versus how much money they want to spend on it. So the the most notable cop in recent memory was the 2015 one in a Paris COP 21. This is kind of where the Paris climate accords were born. The commitment was to aim for 1.5 degrees of warming, and it was signed on by nearly all major countries. Of course, the US signed on left. And resigned on, but anyway. Under the Paris Agreement, countries committed to bring forth like a national plans, figuring, figuring out how they would reduce their emissions. But they would do it like by themselves, and they would be called NDC's or nationally determined contributions. And the idea was for every five years, countries would gather up and present their current plans on the national stage. This was what cop 26 was going to be now. It was delayed. Year because of the pandemic. But Cop 26 was the time for countries to present their NDC's on and for like their updated versions on their plans to reduce emissions. So most of the NDC's got submitted before the conference and kind of led the discussion of the conference by like mid-october. I think about 70% of the countries or states that signed on to the Paris Agreement submitted their submitted their version. Of the NDCS and and and those countries, about 140 of them are responsible for the majority of global emissions. So. That that that was what kind of led up to to COP 26 from happening. The the overarching aim of the conference, according to a Cup 26 President. I'm gonna try to pronounce this name Allaq Sharma. He he said that the, the, the the idea for the conference was to like keep alive the 2015 Paris agreements target to keep global temperatures from rising above 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre industrial levels. So that was that was like the goal of the conference going into it was to kind of keep this idea of the Paris climate accords of still being achievable. And that's and that's not what happened at the top 20. So now it's it's it's important to kind of point out that the the commitments laid out in the Paris Accords don't come close to limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees as it is said in the accord it's like they they they acknowledge that which is what the kind of NDC's are for but even still those are just non those are those are just non binding agreements but anyway so the the court the accords and the the restrictions and goals and. Well, there's no restrictions as just goals. The goals in them don't don't come close to limiting to 1.5 degrees and we've already most likely shot way past the point of that being in any way achievable. But you know we can still limit things from being mega bad like 4 degrees. But we are, we are already on a certain path. So in in asking nations to set tougher targets by next year for cutting climate warming emissions, the new agreement at Glasgow acknowledged that the commitments that were in place. Are inadequate and if rigorously followed the the the the new national pledges so include the stuff including the Paris Accords and the new Glasgow Pact, and all of the individual like NDC's. If all of those are followed, the world is now on track for a 2.1 to 2.4 degrees Celsius of warming by the end of the century, and that is the lower estimate. As we'll see later on, higher estimates were also shown at. At the at the Glasgow Conference, so we have. The idea was to hopefully keep it to 1.5 and already we're pushing that back by almost a whole a whole degree if we're going to like 2.4. So that that's that's like. The main the the one of the main impacts there is like just totally kissing 1.5 goodbye. Like no what? No one even is going to view that as a possibility at this point. Huh. So I, I don't know how many people were still looking at that as a really a goal. Apparently some people of the planners of Cup 26 of apparently were. But I mean I know for us we've we've been aware of that and I'm not sure how you know really what mainstream liberals were thinking before this, but hopefully at the very least maybe top 26 made them realize that maybe it's there's a there's kind of it's it's maybe worse than what you were thinking. But so there are other things did happen at at at Glasgow that are that are worth looking into. The the the main quote UN quote achievements of of the Glasgow deal, besides like revisiting the emissions cutting plants to try to keep stuff down, which of course we're, you know, not, not, not met and shot way past. But there we also had the first ever inclusion of a commitment to limit coal use. Now the way phrasing is going to work here is going to be really interesting because the reason why this deal got passed is because some very specific shifts in their phrasing around coal use. The other thing that caught, that caught 26 tried to do was increase financial help for so-called developing countries and provide funds and assistance for like, climate disasters. So like wind, wind like extreme weather events happen, have a set of funds set aside to help countries in these disasters. Now those are that that is a good idea. But as we'll see later, the way cops 26 actually did it is not actually doing it. It's like they're they're they're pushing, they're they're postponing. This kind of goal, but they're just making it a prospect. But back to coal. So the Glasgow Climate Pact was the first ever climate deal to explicitly plan to reduce coal, which was a one, one of the worst. Like fossil fuels for for greenhouse gases and and and and Cole really can be phased out. Coal can be phased out by electric power really easily. It it it it it. It is the easiest one. It's way easier to phase out coal than it is natural gas or other or sorry, what's the? The the, The the other main one, there's three, there's a coal natural gas. What's? What's the last one? Regular gas. I guess so, yeah. Yeah. Petroleum based stuff, yeah, yeah. So the Cole, because Cole is mostly used for heat, electrically generated heat is way is way easier than all than those other two. So Cole, Cole really should be phased out as soon as possible. But the commitments to phase out coal that was introduced in earlier negotiations led to some fighting, specifically among India and China, who were in strong opposition to the phrasing. And the actual constraints of of the deal. And a lot of this is like the argument that, like, if these countries are still developing, it's not fair to them to remove this resource when other developed nations had it. So that's that's we see that argument a lot around, like climate change stuff is like, oh, you, you're just going to stop other countries from developing because you, you, you got to get to this certain point of being a successful, like wealthy nation and like, you know, with all this like in industrial development on the back of fossil fuels. Stuff, but so now you're going to remove that opportunity for other countries. Now there is there is a lot of stuff around like degrowth frameworks that address this issue and specifically try to try to get fossil fuel savings like a decrease in emissions, and be able to use some of those gains to assist countries in getting stuff set up to a decent standard of living. But you know that that is going to be addressed on a whole nother scale around like capitalism and and how countries intervene in other countries. That that's part of like a bigger political question, but anyway, Umm, India and China did not like that, did not like the coal deal. So in the end, the countries did agree to phase down coal rather than phase out coal, so that that that is the phrase that they ended up using is phased down. The people weren't super happy about this. The Cup 26 President Alec Sharma said that he was a deeply sorry for how these events unfolded and like, focus on Kohl's good. It's just it's responsible for about 40% of annual CO2 emissions. But also like just focusing on coal leaves of really big lack of discussion on oil and gas. Like, there's like, those are also like very bad. And arguably we should be focusing on those a lot like those are. Those are the main ones. We should we should get rid of coal, yes, but if we just focus on that then there's a lot of other stuff going on. So that is that is a lot of coal talk, you know who also uses coal. Our sponsors don't. Yeah, we're entirely sponsored by Joe Manchin. Big friend of the pod? Yeah, we're entirely sponsored by Joe Manchin. Big friend of the pod, thank you. Thank you for always having our back. Joe. Anyway, here's some ads. And we are back talking about uh COP 26 and there is there is a decent there stuff stuff did happen. So I don't know if it is gonna be more of a a science and numbers episode, but it is worth actually figuring out what what happened there because all everyone just kind of had the perception like, oh, COP 26 was a failure because yeah it was, but it's it's it is good to know what actually is going on at things like this because if we're going to get some kind of you know liberal. Change this is where it's gonna happen. So it is good to keep an eye on what these types of people are thinking so. We we left off on talking about how their plans to phase down coal and there was like a general lack of focus on oil and gas and it is interesting if you so there was a a, a group of activists led by this, I think, I think it's an NGO called Global Witness assessed the participant list published by the UN at the start of the meeting and they found that there was 503 people. With links to fossil fuel interests who were like accredited members of the climate summit. And so and they were like delegates. So COP 26 delegates associated with fossil fuels outnumbered national delegate numbers for every other country. So there were more people representing fossil fuel interests than there were representing any individual country at COP 26. So you're thinking maybe, maybe I wonder why this stuff's not going too good. Oh, it's because it's being run mostly by fossil fuel companies. Yeah, that's that's a huh. That's an interesting, interesting little thing there. Yeah, so the, the the other, the other kind of notable thing about Cup 26 is it it, it led to a quote UN quote breakthrough in the rules for a government LED carbon markets. So this is the thing that the neoliberals are really excited about is this idea of carbon markets because it's a way to make more money kind of off of removing carbon and just to create a lot of red tape and bureaucracy around this. Idea of lowering emissions. So I guess one of the ways to describe carbon markets if you're kind of unfamiliar with this idea. Is that, uh, countries that do not meet their emission reduction targets in their national climate pledges are like penalized for this. So, so countries that countries that don't meet their mission targets or or want to just pursue like less less expensive emission cuts, what, what what this deal set out to do is that instead of actually lowering emissions, they can purchase like. Emissions reduction tokens and credits from other nations that have cut their emissions more than the amount that they pledged. So like by, you know, moving to low carbon energy and various stuff. So the turn of phrase that people were using to discuss this to how you can like purchase, purchase credits to represent emissions that you didn't cut but wanted to is that this can potentially unlock trillions of dollars for protecting forests, expanding renewable energy and other projects. To combat climate change. So the idea here is that the money used to purchase these credits is going to get. Put into other things that will help fight climate change. But all of this is nonbinding and speculative, and it just furthers this whole carbon market concept. Which I'm not thrilled about. Yeah, we should, we should do like a full episode of carbon markets. But the, the, the thing, so I, I, this is, you know, this is the thing I studied academically in college. And is incredibly important for everyone to understand that carbon markets are fake and do not work at all, ever. No one has ever gotten one to work. No one ever gotten the national one to work, and no one's ever gotten an international one to work in implementation of covered markets like China had a big thing. They're implemented carbon market. It was fake. It didn't work. Their carbon emissions still increase. Very, very important, like carbon markets can be. So you get carbon credits if you're a business like Tesla that makes no emission electronic vehicles. And Tesla, for a lot of its earlier history, made a significant chunk of its profits selling carbon credits to polluting industries and basically saying, you guys keep polluting. We got your back. Like the the fact that we're putting electric cars out onto the street means you guys can keep emitting at the same level. Like, that's that's that's literally how how kind of the the business can work. It's it's not. The best way to fix the problem. Yeah. So there was a lot of a lot of talk was around carbon markets because that's of course what the neoliberal establishment, neoliberal establishment is, is, is is going to focus on because it it still is within their kind of worldview. How do we monetize the rot? Yeah, how do we, how do we make money off of the world ending which I guess we're going to see a lot more of that in the next, in the next few decades. The, the other, the other thing that they decided on is. Next year there's going to, there's going to be again. So there's there's they decided to procrastinate, which is just a general theme of cop conferences. I mean, it's what we've been doing. Everyone's been doing that climate change since forever. So yeah, the the main thing they do is decide to procrastinate. So next year there's going to be a UN committee to report on progress towards delivering a $100 billion per year in a promised climate funding. This was after rich nations failed to deliver on the 2020 deadline for said funds and then financing is going to be discussed again in 2024 and 2026 at those conferences. But this, this deal. Like kind of just they just left them with nothing. So the whole idea was that, like, yeah, we need this funding to help people in these and disasters and different losses and damages and to help, you know, start start making more renewable energy technology in lieu of doing tons of tons of coal mining. And that's where this money was going to get used for and it's not happening so. This this promise was initially made at a UN conference on climate change in 1992. And we're still, we're still pushing it back year by year. So this pledge is older than I am. Yeah, it sure is. Another pledge mean 2009 to provide $100 billion to emerging economies was supposed to be made in 2020. That also was missed. And it was it was designed to help nations adapt to climate effects and make the transition to clean energy. And the the top 26 president said that around 500 billion will be mobilized by 2025. So. Cool. Thanks for setting those numbers, which mean nothing. It's fun. It's fun how you can just talk and say things and it doesn't actually matter. It's it's one of the things that's so frustrating about this is trying to get a handle on like. How, how a lot of these solutions are supposed to work. So like one of the articles, if you're trying to actually, if you're not just taking our word for it, which you never should, and trying to research like carbon credits and and carbon markets and like how they might work or might help. Like one of the articles you're going to come across is an article in nature.org called making carbon markets work for faster climate action. And this is very much, obviously this is from 2021. So it's pretty, it's pretty recent and it's not at all a climate denial piece. It's it's just kind of laying out. A case for how carbon markets could be very effective at reducing emissions, but you have to grapple the whole time you're looking at this with the fact that like they they haven't that global global emissions are still short and they they they provide a number of like. Options for how this could work and it's one of those things. I'm not going to say it's impossible. I'm certainly not an expert on this and you can read through the article if you want, but it it it's it's certainly certainly think the thing you can say right now is that carbon markets have not led to a global decrease in emissions because we we have not had emissions decrease other than that little dip we had when a COVID. Did it's it's sweet little dance. Yeah. That one month where we could actually see the sky again. Yeah. Yeah. That was pretty rad. But yeah, there's there's, I mean, you you can check that article out for kind of the pro carbon markets case. It all seems. I mean, one of the things that's frustrating to me about it is it all it, it's all like. Yeah, here's how it might work if you know everybody got on board the Paris climate agreement and also all of this worked ideally, but there's there just doesn't seem to be a lot of. I I I just don't see any evidence that, like, they've shown that this is actually likely to be helpful. It's more just like, yeah, this, this could this could work if if we do these other things, which is frustrating. That's like all all of the kind of **** that you get at COP 26 where it's like, yeah, I guess theoretically if you were to do that or if that were to work the way you're saying or if that were to work with the assumption that like, all these other factors don't grow over this period of time, then then this might help. But. We also know what's happened with emissions and global attempts to reduce climate change, which is not to say that like. Like emissions in the United States, like there have been, there's been a lot that's been done to curb emissions from the United States. Now, the thing that's often left out of, like, the discussion of these different things and how they impacted our emissions is like, well, a lot of those emissions got pushed off to other countries that are now making the things that we were making for. I like that's the big thing when people argue against degrowth and they're like, no, you can, you can still keep growing your economy while lowering emissions. Like, yeah, one country can, but we still want the stuff, so we're just moving it. Other countries to produce. So like we're not actually lowering it on a global level. You can level, you can lower it on like an individual country level, but not totally globally because we still want to consume the thing. This is one of the single most frustrating things about talking to people about climate change. Is that, OK, you know, if you talk to the sort of neoliberal carbon market people, right, if you talk about literally anything else, right. The only thing they ever talk about is how the entire world is interconnected, how the entire economy is interconnected, how World War interconnected than ever. And then the moment you start talking about. Limit change. They go, Oh well, it's all individual country, individual country, individual country. The economy is not connected at all. It's all about the individual policymakers in the country. It's like, no, it's not. It's it's about like. All all all of the like the the the the the the emissions are foreign direct investment driven right it's about it's about it's about it's about where investment money is going and. You cannot and you know this. This is This is why cop and someone is like This is why it doesn't work. And even though it's the only frame rate that could work, right. You have to have an international response. It has to be coordinated. It has to be working across national lines because again that's how the economic system works, but it doesn't because a states, individual states cannot and will not ever solve this and then be. Cop is like, OK, so here's your international framework, but also we're just going to have, you know, the actual, the, the, the actual international framework is going to be just. Essentially hair it up bunch of fossil fuel companies. And so it's just, you know it's it's the worst of both worlds. I mean it's it and it you can see there's there's some kind of acknowledgement at the the fact that this is an international problem in in like the basic idea of of carbon markets which includes the idea that like you can companies that that emit emit less and don't use up their carbon budget can like sell carbon credits and you can do this across international lines and like if we hold, if we hold companies to different like emission standards. Internationally, based on things like the Paris climate Agreement, then that will cause the carbon credit system to work better. There's that acknowledgement that it is an international problem. But again, I just don't. I don't see, I don't see evidence that it's working and they they that like none of the evidence that I I've read. I don't see evidence that it's working. And they they they like. None of the evidence that I I've read makes it seem like there's a very good case that this is going to at the very least, that this is going to provide the kind of emissions reductions that are necessary to forestall the worst case scenarios that are coming. And if we're going to be, again, to be completely intellectually honest here, we can talk about degrowth all day long. I have a similar problem with that that I do to a lot of these the the, the different kind of targets that COP 26 introduced. Stuff like carbon markets where it's like. I don't. I don't see that solving the problem either. It's like a theoretical it's it's, yeah, if we were to get people to if, if if we've gotten people on board with deep growth, then you've already fundamentally shifted the very nature of global society and also the way in which Americans and people and other Western nations like conceive of economics at a fundamental level. And so it's it's one thing to say that like, yeah, if people accepted that and and got on board with a lifestyle that is not based on this, this kind of capitalist notion of endless growth of, of ever increasing extraction from the world in order to create value. And we could, we could actually stop emitting at the kind of levels that are going to lead to these horrible consequences. The question is, like, I I don't see, I don't see you. You can. I think you can argue that degrowth is more realistic in that yes, that would absolutely work as opposed to carbon credits and other things like, well, theoretically it might work if they do all this other stuff. Yeah, it does. It does revolve. It does revolve on the cultural notion of America and the West completely. Changing. It's a big, it's a big ask you know. Yeah. I mean like there is there is smaller steps like totally like reorganizing how cities work so we do not use cars like like like re redoing a public transportation like sector in you know making like making like a solar panels and renewable energy required part of like city infrastructure, right. There's a lot of ways to push us towards that thing, but there's not one thing we can do right because it is in large parts a cultural change stuff. Stuff will help with emissions like if we. If we redesign cities around public transportation and make it so stuff is not as as far apart and yeah that that's going to help lower emissions. If we if we require all these other types of renewable energy projects to be built into buildings and added on to our current cities. And yeah that that is going to help lower emissions. But you know there's there's not one one big step that we can all do at the same time. And I I think that that's I don't know. I'm of two minds about it. One part of me says that's absolutely the. The most intelligent way to go about it is focusing on things like reducing the use of like like, like really all ending car culture in cities, because it's not even a reduction thing. It has to be like that. That has to die. But we're a lot closer to that than ending the idea of like. And capitalism, yes. Uh, because there and #1, because there are capitalists, very capitalist countries that have that do not have a car culture that like stopped that and that actually like had one at one point and then reworked there. So that's that's and that would yeah that is a significant, that's probably go that would probably lead to larger emissions reductions than any kind of carbon credit system could ever lead to. I also. And and so yeah, I think that that's on an objective level. Yeah, that's it's smart to focus on stuff like that where you're all you are arguing for reducing growth. But you're also arguing it for like hey, your life will be more pleasant if you live in a city where you can walk everywhere and you're not at risk of getting run down by, you know, two ton trucks anytime you cross the street. And like you're not dealing with smog and pollution and horrible like hour and a half long commutes on these crowded nightmare highways. But it's also it's still. Incrementalist, you know, absolutely, absolutely, we, we are, we are talking here we are kind of like walking through here, all of the the best incremental solutions and and what is the most realistic of those? And I think that's fine. I think that's kind of where we have to be, because that is. What's most likely to actually happen to make the problem better, but it is it. We have to acknowledge it is incremental. Like we're not, we're not solving the IT would be very arrogant to say like here's how we solve this problem once and for all. You know, I just want to, I think sometimes when you talk Mint Mobile offers premium wireless starting at just 15 bucks a month. And now for the plot twist, Nope, there isn't one. Mint Mobile just has premium wireless from 15 bucks a month. There's no trapping you into a two year contract. You're opening the bill to find all these nuts fees. 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Hey, it's Rick Schwartz, one of your hosts for San Diego Zoo's Amazing Wildlife podcast. In this special episode, we sit down with Doctor Jane Goodall to hear her inspiring thoughts on how we can create a better future for humans, animals and the environment. If we don't help them find ways of making a living without destroying the environment, we can't save chimps, forests or anything else. And that becomes very clear when you look at poverty around the world. If you're living in poverty, you can't afford to ask as we can. Did this product harm the environment? Was it cruel to animals like, was it factory farmed? Is it cheap because of unfair wages paid to people and so alleviating poverty? Is tremendously important. Listen to amazing wildlife on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. So by now we imagine that you've seen the theories on Tik T.O.K. You maybe even heard the rumors from your friends and loved ones. But are any of the stories about government conspiracies and cover ups actually true? The answer is surprisingly or unsurprisingly, yes. For more than a decade, we hear at stuff they don't want you to know have been seeking answers to these questions. Sometimes there are answers that people would rather us not explore. Now we're sharing this research. With you for the first time ever in a book format, you can pre-order stuff they don't want you to know now. It's the new book from us, the creators of the podcast and video series. You can turn back now or read the stuff they don't want you to know. Available for pre-order now, it's stuff you should read books.com or wherever you find your favorite books. About stuff like degrowth. You can get into this. You can kind of. It can come across as if you're trying to like, simplify, like. And if we do this, like, it'll be perfect. Like, no, this would be like the hardest thing. No, that's that's like saying we have to fix it by all doing a revolution. It's like, yeah, it's it's not OK. OK, cool. Yeah. I mean, yeah, that would. Anyway, you have to do some ads, and then we'll be back to finish up kind of their closing expectations on COP 26 and the other kind of things happening in the periphery. Here's ads. OK. We are back and we're talking about kind of what happened towards the end of COP 26. So we already kind of discussed how the deal was made, what was in the deal, what were the things that were talked about. Now we're kind of going to talk about you know, the other kind of closing thoughts around it. In in in in the lead up to to cut 46, the United States special Presidential climate Envoy John Kerry was like he's supposed to be like our climate guy. He he also said the goal of the summit was to was to, you know, hope that we can limit stuff to 1.5 degrees. And you know he he called this the last best hope for the world to get its act together. But by the time country six came to the end, his language and attitude had kind of changed after after two weeks of debate and negotiation. His final remarks reflected the kind of the points we've been talking about. How? And and and said like like the government energy policy is currently in place around the world are projected to result in about 2.7 degrees Celsius of warming above pre industrial levels and government pledges to cut climate emissions would limit warming to 2.4 if they are met. So that's again we're just launching way past this like mythical fantasy of of 1.5 degrees and the the other scary things is that we're getting a lot. A lot. Closer to large scale feedback loops. Feedback loops are things like once we have reached a certain degree of warming, environmental effects will be triggered that will cascade and produce like exponential growth in warming. This is like a this. It's not purely theoretical, but it is mostly stuff that we still probably can't prevent and we really need to get on it like ASAP because once these things start happening they are very hard to reverse. One of the biggest ones that have that are already being affected is photosynthesis by plants. On land and how that is decreasing its ability to suck up carbon. About 30% of our annual carbon emissions are removed by the air, by photosynthesis and the rest of which are dissolved in the ocean, causing ocean acidification. Or that you just hang around in the atmosphere, which causes, you know, a bigger thermal blanket. So photosynthesis has like a thermal maximum beyond which carbon can only be taken so much of it in and then the process. Touched by plants give off carbon and water actually increases and we are already at that point in a in a lot of places and we are, we are at the we we achieve the warming required to get to that point a few times throughout the past decade. So land based carbon uptake is projected to decline by nearly 50% as early as 2040 and and these effects have not been included in any of the you know published pathways leading to lower like lower degrees of warming. And again, this isn't, this isn't just a speculative like the biggest example of this that we can like point to is like the Amazon rainforest, how that is now a net emitter because it is no longer sucking up enough carbon to offset the amount of carbon and actually shoots out. So we need to stop deforestation and keep planting more trees, essentially because that that sucks. And also just as a general kind of indicator of the cascading effects that are happening, and we are we still on the path for kind of large. Large scale disasters in a lot of places around the world. It's around 19% of the Earth's land area is in pretty, pretty dire of risk on our current emission pathway, the Marshall Islands, the Modavis, Vietnam, Southeast Asia, Middle East, parts of North Africa and Central America. Overall, around 1/3 of the land humans occupied are predicted to either drown by by sea level rise or became or become too hot for human life just by the end of this century alone. So that that will cause, you know. Migration panics and wars and all like a whole bunch of bad things that we can't, we can't limit that. Like that is something that we need to limit now. And if we don't, it's still, it's still happening. So these are the other kind of things talked about at the end. So that was kind of cut 26 as a whole. The one last thing I want to mention is just how evil Facebook is. So kind of kind of an aside, but. Facebook's vice president of global Affairs talked about Facebook's efforts to combat climate misinformation as the Glasgow somewhat began. But as this was happening, conservative media outlets like Newsmax or we're we're running ads on Facebook calling global warming a hoax, gaining hundreds of thousands of views, stuff like you know, kind of someones and daily wire. We're spreading climate misinformation. But you know, as as Facebook is bragging about its ability to. To combat misinformation around climate change, the UK based think tank influence map, which identified misleading Facebook ads from several media outlets. Around COP 26 also found that fossil fuel companies and lobbying groups spent half $1,000,000 on political and social issue Facebook ads during the summit, resulting in over 22 million impressions, including content that promoted environmental effects under what we would call like greenwashing. Stuff like, you know, the American Petroleum Institute putting up putting an ad out to over like a natural landscape as it like touts its efforts to tackle climate change. So all, all of that. Kind of stuff. So I just think it's really dumb because Facebook brags about its ability to combat kind of misinformation as it's running ads saying climate changes the hoax and then doing general like greenwashing is more common, but still, it's frustrating. This is a note like, we talked about this in the Facebook episodes of ******** that dropped recently, but like the number one spreader right now of climate disinformation on Facebook is Breitbart, which a lot of the Facebook papers have gone on to like. The extreme lengths Facebook executives went to keep Breitbart as one of their like trusted news partners and continue putting their stuff out to a huge audience because it goes very viral. It was good for engagement on the platform and that's the decision Facebook's like, whatever they say. This is like when we when we're talking about car carbon credits, when we're talking about. Like the different proposed solutions, I'll do a bit of waffling because I don't want to come across as too certain about what the right way to go forward is when it comes to how Facebook has handled climate disinformation. It's very black and white. They enabled it for direct profit, and they talked about it, and people within the company were like, hey, we're deliberately enabling climate change misinformation in order to make more money. It's a it's a, it's a very easy case to make. Yeah. So that wraps up my, my report back on COP 26. I know a lot of a lot of stuff was like, there's there's a lot of headlines like before the summit even ended, before the deal was even finalized, it was like, 26 is a failure, which is like, yes. But I think I think it is worth actually relearning what happens at these things because I think we have this idea that they're like some like mythic secret gathering of people to discuss plans. And it's like, no, like you can actually like see everything they're talking about. Like it's it's all out in the open. Like you can actually see what? What the plans are, it doesn't need to be all shrouded in, it doesn't need to be like shrouded in mystery. So I just wanted to give people, like a rundown on what the actual people in power, how they're discussing climate change and what their expectations are and how, you know, expectations have, you know, the past five years have risen by basically a degree, right? Because like in in in 2015, we're like, we can do 1.5 and now we're like we can do 2.5. So that is what we've done in five years. That's what's happened and I think that's what. Justifies the kind of. Blanket pessimism about anything coming from top 26, about anything being suggested by like a state actor, an international organization, which is that, like we've all watched the last 20 years, like they've said a lot of great stuff about what could work. It's like that nature article about like, OK, well, like you've got a bunch of math here arguing about how it might work, but we've got the last 20 years of policies to say, but it probably won't, right? But it's almost certainly not going to work, right. So we we could say like, yeah, theoretically this might be helpful. Like, realistically, nothing. Everything you guys have argued about in the same way has been a miserable failure, pretty much. Well, that that wraps it up for us. You can follow the show on Twitter and apparently Instagram at half in here. Pod and Coulson media. We got a new cooler media show dropping soon. Mega Corp. That's pretty exciting. Yeah, checking out, it's about how we love Amazon and you should pay the money. I don't think that's what it's about. But anyway, yeah, so some carbon offsets from Amazon and with that and with that, we're closing the show. Give us the option. We need everything you got fast waiting on reparations. 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Welcome back to it could happen here, a show about how things are falling apart, or at least generally a show about how things are falling apart and how to, you know, maybe, maybe not falling apart that much. But we have a we have a little bit of a different episode for you today. A friend of a friend of mine reached out to me recently in the wake of a pair of episodes. Dated from behind the ******** on sexual abuse within the Boy Scouts of America, which was, if you're not aware and endemic problem with more than 100,000 victims having come forward in the last year alone. And this is a case that kind of ties into that. It's it's the case of a young man who committed murder and a young man who was also a victim of a a terrible series of crimes. So I wanted to kind of shine a little bit of light on the case of heath stocks today and to help me do that is Mr Michael. Kaiser, Michael. Welcome to the show. Good afternoon. Thanks for having me. Michael, would you like to introduce kind of your affiliation with this case before we go over the broad strokes of it? Sure. Again, my name is Michael Kaiser. I'm a criminal defense attorney with the laser and cassinelli firm in Little Rock, AR. This case started in the 90s, and I was I'm 32, so I was not practicing. Then I came into this case in the last two years after Heath has already been sentenced to three life sentences, and I assisted him in filing a petition for a commutation asking for the Governor of Arkansas to reduce. Those sentences to a term of years and giving him a chance of parole while he is still alive and and can we let's go over kind of what happened in this case the basics because this is, this is a really sad story and it's one of those things where there's there's not a lot of I think easy answers. But yeah, let let's talk about sort of the broad strokes of what happened then we can drill into what what you're trying to achieve here. Sure. So the broad strokes are back in 1997. When Heath was a young man. Just 20 years old, he was arrested and charged with killing his entire immediate family, both his mother, father and his younger sister. He. He was quickly identified as the primary suspect, questioned, confessed, arrested, charged, and within, I believe six months, had pleaded guilty to all three capital murders and received a sentence of life without parole for each each one of those for a total of three life. Sentences shortly after he was convicted. And it came to light that his longtime Boy Scout Scout Master Jack Walls had been molesting heat since he was around age 9 or 10. That it was a serial sort of abuse. That he that Heath was not the only one, that it was particularly brutal and that his abuse didn't just involve, you know, sexual acts. It was kind of a long term, I hate to use the term brainwashing, but a lot of people have about what he did to those boys. Heats is not the only life that was ruined. He's family is not the only family's lives who were ruined, but heats is unfortunately the most extreme case where where he he ultimately committed a crime against against his family. We'll get into the the circumstances in a second. I just wanted to add a little bit of clarification that the Scout master we're looking at between 100 and 150. Victims kind of conservatively based on what I've been reading, yes. Yeah. And it's it's some of, I mean it's so this guy, some of it's the stuff that you heard in a lot of these other cases. Some of it is, is very unique to this guy, but he would basically, he would have people over kids over camping on his land, he would take them shooting, he worked for an ammunition company, he would molest them. He would also like purchase prostitutes for them. And it was this, I mean a lot of of really some of the worst abuse that I've read about in connection to any of these. These Boy Scout sexual abuse cases, it's it's pretty harrowing stuff when you read the stories of other kids who were kind of in the same position that Heath was. Yeah, unfortunately, you're you're correct. It's, you know, every time you think this can't get worse or this case is so extreme that you find some other element that's more offensive, more appalling, more victims, more, more families ruined down the line even today, 30-40 years, 50 years later. Yeah. So how does the the because I mean one of the things about this is this is a pretty the initial crime here is pretty horrific. And I think it's it's one of those things where it is hard to have a lot of sympathy for Heath until you kind of learn about what this guy like his the his his role in the crime. Because it was not just a case of, you know, a kid committing murder. It was a case of a kid being very deliberately. Pushed into committing murder and potentially I think that there's the allegations being made or that he was he directly helped with it as well. Yes. So, you know, at first glance, yeah, it looks, it looks really bad for Heath. But over the years, what we have learned is that what what really happened is that Heath had been serially abused, sexually, physically, emotionally and otherwise by Jack for a period of 10 plus years. His mother discovers the abuse and discusses it with her, her pastor, and other religious counselor. Informs Jack that you know his mother is aware and and Jack instructs Heath to do as he's been taught and and and to kill the problem. Jack was never convicted with anything associated with the death of of the stocks family. However, his first set of life sentences for the many assaults that he was convicted of. When they were reversed, it was because the judge in that in that sentencing hearing said, you know the. The death of the stock's family is also on your hands. And because he hadn't been formally convicted of that, he actually had his original life sentences reversed at resentencing. He got essentially the same sentence, multiple life sentences and additional years. But yes, there's is a connection. It wasn't known at the time, or at least it wasn't publicized. And if it had been, I think the results of his case would be very different. I don't think you and I would be speaking right now. Yeah. And it's, I mean, obviously, like. This is this is this is a thoroughly horrible situation, and when somebody commits 3 murders, I think even people who are very critical of the criminal justice system should agree that, like, something needs to be done, but I it just seems. So unfair to lock this kid up for his entire life without kind of and and and acting as if this was just a thing he did on his own rather than kind of the result of a pretty horrific. I mean one of the most, one of the most horrific patterns of of abuse and exploitation of a child that I can imagine and I I don't know. I don't know what would actually like help other than getting him into a situation where he's not spending the rest of his life in a prison cell. Like, I don't know what the long term for him looks like in terms of rebuilding this guy's potential to have a life, but it it certainly starts with him not spending the rest of that life in a jail cell. The problem we've encountered with Heath's case is the parole board, and many just even just people that encounter the case. Wonder why. Would he attack and kill, you know, his immediate family rather than his abuser and in the 25 plus years or in the 25 years or so since this happened? I mean juvenile, that our understanding of the juvenile brain, neuropsychology, psychology in general has has come leaps and bounds. And so we know that a serially abused child has brain damage from really about the time that that starts happening and so in Heath's crazy. World. And we do have this in our clemency application we've had. Abuse specialist evaluate heath and and see how he you know, his actions conform to our current understanding within the crazy world that he lived in. He actually was making, dare I say, the reasonable decision. So Jack had demonstrated numerous times over the years he has physical, sexual and and even control over Heat's life. He can end it at anytime. He explicitly and implicitly threatens the boys all the time. He's got weapons. Everywhere he's a Vietnam veteran. He brings him out to his property. He shows them how to shoot, shows them what he will do to those who you know go against him. So within he's world, he actually made a somewhat reasonable decision. He the bigger threat was was Jack. He can't kill Jack, so he has to do the thing to appease Jack to avoid the more severe abuse. That's oversimplifying it, but that's something that I don't think we would have been able to conceptualize. Mail on mail. And we're talking about a very small rural community in Central Arkansas, and that element cannot be overlooked at all as well. That was a huge thing that Jack was counting on to keep these boys silent. He explicitly told them if you tell what happened to you, they're going to think that you are homosexual and a liar. So there's just, there's, there's just so many horrible things. In this case, Jack had decades of experience. Doing this, and unfortunately because of his position in the Community, the son of a prominent judge, the longtime scout master, the communities man of the year, multiple times he had access to dozens and dozens of boys. In fact, entire generations of these of these boys in Lonoke County, Heath's case, is just one of many. Unfortunately, it's the most extreme case, and it's kind of tests the bounds of our mercy. But the kid that discovered Jack while he's a hero? Ultimately, he killed himself and he's not the only one. So unfortunately the stocks family are not the only people who lost their lives and not the only people whose lives just like he's were completely destroyed by Jack Wallace. Yeah and this is an important thing to understand because when we're talking about kind of the the lingering impacts of childhood sexual abuse, you can take a wide variety of forms. And when we like but but it but it is important to understand that the the damage it can do goes so much further. Beyond like the physical damage done by the abuse, like these are your your brain is still forming and growing when you're that young and he. This is 1 manifestation of kind of what can happen at the more extreme and admittedly as as the result. Like This is why it's such a heinous crime to abuse a child in this way, and it's just. I don't know, like, you're right, it is it, it it it tests the limit of people's capacity for, I don't know, forgiveness seems like the wrong word. But like clemency, you know, this again is is a is a pretty heinous crime. But at the same time, I I can't bring myself to think that. What he endured leading up to this shouldn't have an impact on what happens to him afterwards, right? Like it it does. It does reduce his his complicity in this and I I just feel it feels so wrong to say that like. Well, he should spend the rest of his life, uh? Behind bars, like, that's just not. I can't imagine anything could help. Like I can't imagine that could help in any way. Just writing this, this person off forever. I don't know. It just is. It's it's ******. What are the next steps for you all for your for the defense team? So at this point, we've already filed a petition with the Arkansas governor requesting a commutation. That's not a pardon. That's not something saying, say, that Heath is innocent. We're asking the governor to modify his sentences to a term of years, 40 years in each case to be served concurrently. So in effect, one single sentence of 40 years in are another 15. Yeah, well, in Arkansas, you're actually at the time he was convicted, he'd be pro eligible. 70%, so that's 28 years. That's not a guarantee of parole. That is just what it means. Parole eligibility. So that's what we've asked for we think is institutional record speaks for itself and if and when he is a candidate for parole he he hopefully will make parole. He he's, he's done everything within his power to do so if this fails, it's right now we in Arkansas it first goes to the parole board who makes a nonbinding recommendation to the governor they have. Recommended that the governor deny it, which is unfortunate, but again, it's not binding on. The governor now has a believe until February or March of 2022 to issue his decision. He has not yet. We have requested a sit down with the governor. I don't know if we'll actually sit down with Governor ASA Hutchinson. We will sit down with his criminal justice coordinator. We're thankful and lucky to have the support of all of the remaining. Victims, family members. So both sides of Heath's family, you know, we have, we have extensive support. It wasn't. They they, a lot of them had to work to to get to this point. A lot of them had to understand the true impact of the abuse, but at this point we have extensive support from both sides of his family. As far as we know. There are no objections to his commutation application from from victims family members, the only ones that there have been, or from the sentencing judge, or from the sentencing court. It's actually not the same judge and the sentencing or or the prosecutor from that, from that county, again, a different person, but they they felt the need to object it should this fail, we will seek additional post conviction remedies. In Arkansas we have something called a petition for writ of error Coram nobis. You can file it. You have to ask the Supreme Court, hey, is it OK if I file a petition back in the trial court asking them to consider something that if we had known back in 1997 and 98, would have affected the outcome of the litigation? In this case, we would point to the we we've had heath evaluated and it will point to that neuropsychological evaluation as as new evidence we couldn't fully make. A A connection at the time between his abuse and and the offense to answer that question why he he killed his family rather than his abuser. We we now can. And so that's what we're going to allege is that is that new evidence. Whether the court will will find that it is remains to be seen. When Heath tried this on his own about five years ago the court denied it. He alleged the new evidence was. The fact of the long term sexual abuse of him by Jack Walls and the court in a in an opinion that really does not. You know shows shows the lack of understanding of long term juvenile sexual abuse found that. Well no you personally were aware of all of that in your own mind because it had happened to you. So that was not new evidence and I mean we know that the average male who makes this sort of disclosure, it occurs deep into adulthood. So it's it's just at every level of the system even today we're still feeling the effects of kind of that old school mentality about. About this and it's unfortunate we could talk about kind of the the carceral state and this idea that like. Penalty is the way to respond to any kind of crime. But even if you believe that, even if you believe that, like, you have to punish people with incarceration when they commit crimes, he's done 25 years like, that's no, no one is discussing the possibility of heath not being punished for the murder, you know, because it's he has been. Not just with time behind bars, but with the fact that his family's gone, the idea that the state could do anything that's worse to him. Than than the scout master did. To be honest is kind of absurd in my head, but. Where is there anything that like? I don't know. I'm trying to determine like what can be done to help in this situation. Is there any way people can actually help outside of like you and the team that's that's working to try and sit down with the governor? Yeah, I mean, public support is is wonderful. The more people that are pointing out the problems in Heath's case and with his sentences and that are reaching out to the governor, the better we think our chances are. I apologize, I don't have the e-mail address on me, but the governor has several publicly accessible accounts, as does his criminal justice coordinator. Even just getting on Facebook and and bringing it up there's. Facebook account managed by one of Heath's friends. I'm in Florida called at hope for headstocks. It's there's also a website, I think it's hope for heatstocks.info. It's probably the most extensive trove of resources in this case. It has almost all original documents. It's where I still go to access things when I need them, even though, you know, I am his attorney. So there's a lot out there. There's a lot of ways to support the cause, even just telling other people about it. We do have a documentary in the works. I I actually don't think it has a producer at this point, but we're hopeful to have something out in early 2022 to make Heath, to make Jack, to make this case more of a household name in the hopes that, you know, if any sort of. You know, if there's more support out there, more pressure on the governor, it'll increase the odds that that he'll do the right thing here. Yeah, I mean, there shouldn't be a political issue. There shouldn't be a left or a right thing like everyone should be able to see. This is a this is the result of of abuse, and that should have an impact on the what we actually what's actually what our society actually does to this kid in the wake of the crime. Perhaps it's like foolish to hope for some sort of rationality in 2021 as regards a case like this, but I would hope that we could be rational about this and everyone agree. Yes, this kid deserves something more than what he's gotten. I don't know. It's it's it's a bleak one, though. That's putting it lightly. New York recent recently passed a law that kind of acknowledged kind of where you're at with it for victims of domestic or sexual abuse, who then committed crimes that weren't necessarily during the course of that specific abuse. And it allowed people like Heath to apply for resentencing if they met certain statutory qualifications for things that mitigated their crime, didn't justify it, but that didn't come out. Originally, unfortunately in Arkansas we don't have a similar process. The only thing we have available is this clemency commutation process. And unfortunately, as you said, it should be apolitical, but it's not. It's explicitly political. The parole board are all appointees by our governor. The governor is an elected official. There's a reason we filed it in the last year of his last term in Arkansas. He is term limited, so we're trying to get him at a point where he's. As free from the politics to do what he actually thinks is is correct. But to think that politics will be removed is, I mean yeah, it never is. No, this is this is the United States in the twenty 20s. You know politics is is a factor here. Deeply divisive case in the state, and especially in Lono County. Well, it's hard. I can imagine it being hard to talk with people about just because again the nature of the crime is is horrific. And so if you talk about like well we we think this guy should have another chance at life and you're like well, but he killed three people. He killed his sister and yes that is the case but that's not the only thing going down here and you just have to, I think if you're, if you're at all even if you're not coming at this from kind of politically where I am in regarding, you know the the the carceral state. You have to acknowledge that like this does not erase Heath's crimes. But Heath's crimes were also the result of not just the scoutmasters abuse, but of a number of failures on a on a wide level in our society that allowed that abuse to occur. And so, I don't know, I, I I feel like there's a lot of reasons why it behooves us to to give this kid another chance. I don't know. That doesn't make it easier to convince anyone else, but yeah. But how would this case play out if it happened today versus in 1997, even in a more rural part of Arkansas? I think our understanding of several of the issues here it is so. Has come so far that my hope is Heath would have received a term of years rather than being charged with capital murder, they originally were seeking the death penalty and he made a deal for multiple life sentences, both as someone under 21 and as a victim of long term sexual abuse. I would like to think that if this happened today, even in that county, what we're asking for is something close to what what would what would happen? You would hope? Yeah, I would hope so. That's why, again, we didn't ask for a pardon. We didn't ask. Let him out today. We said let him earn it. Let him still feel the weight of of what he has done, but give him that light at the end of the tunnel because you know, there is no one in the Arkansas Department of Correction even with the there. There's just not a victim like him there. And there's not someone who could be an advocate for victims like him were he to be released. So yeah. Well, all right, Michael, is there anything else you wanted to get into with this or any other ways people might be able to help? Check out the website again. Yeah, post on social media. The one thing I think we didn't focus on here is Heath himself. Heath is a deeply spiritual individual. He's someone who lives with this on his conscious almost every moment of the day. This is not not someone who you know, feels. He's skated by by avoiding the death penalty. This is someone who has had to learn about trauma mostly on his own, because with those life sentences, he is ineligible for so many of the programs, that of the scant programs and resources that we have. In the Department of Correction, because they don't give it to people who don't have parole dates, so he's had to do a lot of this on his own. He's come a remarkable way. He's still someone that needs probably extensive treatment and therapy to deal with his own trauma, as well as to deal with the effects of what he did on himself. But he's a remarkable individual. He's a great self advocate. I wish you could speak with him as well. He's someone I'm proud to represent, not just that. I do because I I get paid. This is why I got into the practice of law is this type of case. He is not innocent, but he is not. You should not be bearing the full weight of what occurred while, you know, Jack is serving a life sentence. I I think he should have one or two or three more for his role in this. I mean, he's youth and he's brain damage because of that. Sexual abuse should have and now should be considered, and we just hope the governor will. Yeah. Yeah, hopefully. So. And again, if you want to learn more, there's headstocks.info. There's a lot of good about Jack Walls on there as well, and you can there's a link to make a donation to Heath's defense. Alright, well Michael, thank you so much for coming on today and I hope you have a good rest of your week now as well. Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe. 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/sources. Thanks for listening. I'm Tanya Sam, host of the Money Moves podcast. Powered by Greenwood, This Daily Podcast will help give you the keys to the Kingdom of financial stability, wealth and abundance with celebrity guests like Rick Ross, Amanda. Seals Angela Yee, Roland Martin, JB smooth and Terrell Owens, TuneIn to learn how to turn liabilities into assets and make your money move. 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