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Hey there, it's Ebony Monet, your co-host for the San Diego Zoo's Amazing Wildlife podcast. In this special episode, we're speaking with Doctor Jane Goodall about the fascinating journey that led to her impactful behavioral discoveries on chimpanzees. It wasn't until one of the chimpanzees began to lose his fear of me, but I began to really make discoveries that actually shook the scientific world. Life on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts I'm doctor Laurie Santos, host of the Happiness Lab podcast, the show that presents the latest science based strategies to help us live happier, more joyful lives. In the next season of the Happiness Live, we'll explore how to make friends happier parenting strategies and why drinking the world's hottest hot sauce can be fun. Oh my God. Listen to the Happiness lab on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. My name is Alex Fumero and I host the new podcast more than a movie American Me, a film directed by and starring Edward James Almos. I'll be diving into the behind the scenes controversy, including an alleged backlash from the Mexican mafia. Several people who worked on the movie have been murdered. I don't want to speak about it. Why would people be murdered for being in a movie? Listen to more than a movie American me on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Gangster Chronicles Podcast is a weekly conversation that revolves around underworld criminals and entertainers to victims of crime and law enforcement. We cover all facets of the game. Gangster Chronicles podcast doesn't glorify promote illicit activities. We just discussed the ramifications and repercussions of these activities because after all, if you play gangster games, you are ultimately rewarded with gangster prizes. Our heart radio is number one for podcast, but don't take our word for it. Find the Gangster Chronicles podcast on. By heart radio app or wherever you get your podcast. This is Roxanne gay, the host of the Roxanne gay agenda, the Bad Feminist podcast of Your Dreams. Each week I talked to an interesting person about feminism, race, writing in books and art, food, pop culture, and yes, politics. We can't escape politics. Listen to the Luminary original podcast, the Roxanne gay Agenda every Tuesday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What's up guys? I'm Rashad Bilal and I am Troy Millings and we owe the host of the Ernie 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, sport and entertainment. From DJ Khaled to Mark Cuban, Rick Ross and Shaquille O'Neal. I mean, our alumni list is expansive. 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Hey everybody, Robert Evans here and I wanted to let you know this is a compilation episode, so every episode of the week that just happened is here in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to listen to in a long stretch if you want. If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, there's going to be nothing new here for you, but you can make your own decisions. This is it could happen here a podcast that I opened perfectly as a professional, as a man who makes all of his money. No. No quests, no notes Kavi. How is syphilis doing these days? You don't hear a lot from syphilis. Is it? Is it holding up OK? Yeah, it's around. It's fine. Thank you for asking. Good. I'm glad to know that it's not the same thread it used to be. It comes back in waves every now and then, and it has it had a good run for a couple of years. Kind of like Star Trek, right? Yeah, there's no. Well, I don't think there's like new versions of it. I think it's like the same good old syphilis, pretty much. I don't think it changes drastically. So it's like Star Trek on Netflix. Yeah. Yeah. OK. Yeah. Well, good to hear from syphilis. This has been your syphilis update that's gonna do it for us this week. Until next week, I've been Robert Evans, Dr Kaba, Hoda, and of course, Garrison Davis. All right. Bye, everyone. Bye. No, that's not it would be pretty funny to just do that Sophie to just drop a 1 1/2 minute episode on syphilis, but only if we put in 15 ads. We really like every word. We have a full ad break in between. Yeah, then then people would probably complain less about the 900 ads that are in their episodes right now. I could talk about syphilis. What are we what are we doing right now? What is this episode about Kava? What's going on? I'm assuming you guys want to talk about the coronavirus or, I don't know, I could talk about whatever you want, but I think that's probably what you guys brought me on for. All right? What are we what is this coronavirus? Is this a problem? It's a little problem. OK, that's not good to hear. It's a whole, it's it's not great. So why didn't you give me a heads up on this? No. Yeah, that that's me not giving you a heads up on the plague. The thing. Yeah, I don't know about, hear anything about this is This is why all the masks. And this is the mask thing. That's why you got this. That's why you got those two jabs in your arms and that random parking lot. Oh, I thought that was heroin. Sorry. Right. First of all, can we talk about the use of the word jab? I don't love it. It's. I mean, you're not James Bond. You don't listen, not use Jack. Yeah, I I prefer fair. That's fair. I prefer what I think is the proper medical term vein. ******. Yeah, but it's not really your vein either. It's really just intramuscular ******. Oh, right, muscle ******. Yeah, yeah. I mean, what what are the cool kids calling it? Is it a poke? What do we wanna Garrison? What do the teens call? Yeah. Yeah. Is it are they calling it the tick tocks? Yeah, it's called it's called the Tik T.O.K. I don't know. I've, I've been working on been working on a all day today. Been working. To find this proud boy who's pretending to take COVID vaccines but is actually steroids, and he calls them critical support. He calls them extracurriculars, OK? So that honestly rules. That's extremely funny. I I'm hoping an article will be out by the time this podcast airs. So. Who's the article for? I'm not sure yet. I'm talking with Opossum press. OK, cool. Well, that's funny, Garrison, what is today's episode about? What? Well, we want to talk to. We wanted to talk to Kava about both what the current plague situation is, because a lot of people seem to think it's over. A lot of people seem to think it's not over. And then also, how is COVID and all the stuff still affecting our hospital and medical system? Is there supply shortages for medical supplies? What's going on in different areas? Staffing, yeah, because all of that, all that kind of stuff got you. Yes is the answer. Yes is the answer. It's the answer. Yeah, it's a it's still a problem, I don't think. Don't listen to anyone who tells you that. It's not. Don't listen to anyone who gives you 2 sunny a forecast on it, but it you know, it's different in different places, is the long, the short of it, OK. In places where the vaccinations are higher and where there's mandates and there's reasonable laws about things, the rates are going down in places. California, but also like Rhode Island, Maine, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont. These are places with high vaccination rates. The rates of cases are going down in those places. Places like Mississippi, West Virginia, Idaho, Alabama. These are places where like it's 40 to 49% vaccination rates and the cases are going way up. You guys might have heard of a couple of things happening. Like there was that 46 year old guy named Daniel Wilkinson. Is like a vet who developed something called gallstone pancreatitis, which I could talk to you guys about for hours. I won't, don't worry. But I could. I'm just like, you know, I could. I want. There's some. I mean, Idaho, they just declared it's not a total DNR, but like, anyone who has cardiac arrest is is on a DNR now in Idaho because they just don't have the resources to be. Well, that's not entirely, I mean. OK. So what did I get wrong there? Yeah. OK. So that's not your fault. You got it wrong because there were doctors that were sort of spreading that story about now they are in what's called the crisis standard of care. But and and and part of that means that hospitals could go to putting everyone on DNR, which means do not resuscitate. Yeah. Which means if you have a a cardiac arrest, they won't do anything about it. That's that's not what's actually happening. It could happen. What would when they institute this crisis standard of care, what it means is that. If a hospital gets so short on their ventilators and they just don't have anymore room, then they could implement that. I mean, I don't know. I haven't heard of anyone. I was, I was asking around to see if any doctors in Idaho could tell me of a hospital that's actually doing it. I haven't seen or heard of one that's actually doing it yet, but they could. The point is it's it's that bad. But that's a reasonable discussion where doctors have to discuss kind of like they were back in the day in New York where they have to be like, OK, does this person, do we put the. You know, the the, the young lady on the the ventilator or the old guy, you know, then we have to decide and they make those decisions. It's really awful. It's a position no doctor wants to be in. And now that's becoming a reality. It's brutal. It's brutal out there. And and that's the bleeding into other states nearby, you know. So is that what you mean by the Wilkerson situation? Because his doctor, like, couldn't find an ICU bed for him? Is that the, is that the story you're talking about? That's the story. So he was this guy. You had a problem that can be fixed. I mean it's a procedure called an ERCP that you can get done at specialty centers. And he didn't live far from Houston. In Houston has plenty of those specialty centers that can do it. They have great gastroenterologists like myself, not as good, but you know, same sort of thing and they could do it if they if they, you know, if they had the availability to get him in, but they didn't. And so he died to something that he shouldn't have is basically the the that example and I'm sure there's more examples of that and. What really worries me is the examples that you're not hearing yet, like cases there are delayed now, cancer screening, things that are being delayed now in these hospitals that we're going to be paying down the road. That's that's the **** that really scares me. Like, just people not going in for things in general too. Yeah, exactly, yeah. I have friends other than you who work in ER's and stuff. Uh, nurses and and the doctor and ********. It's up in the PNW. But the **** they're saying is like. In today's crap like like I, they are working on like building capacity and making sure they have things to like treat their friends because it's they're like, the advice is do not go to the hospital like if if if at all possible. Like because there's just not capacity for you unless it's like literally an immediate life and death thing. It's it's almost not worth like trying because there's just nothing. There's no slack. The system is and it's it's it's. Starting to turn, it looks like here in in in the Portland area, but like. It's it's frightening like these are not. People who would be ************ or or are are are prone to panic, you know their ER professionals, but it it's it's ****** ** like it's it's it. It's this thing where like the scary thing to me is not even necessarily where we are right now because it it does like there is some kind of broadly positive news in a lot of areas about like where the pandemic is going. It's just like. This situation won't be fixed when case numbers go down, it's it's it's going to be permanent. Damage has been done to the system. And I guess what I'm wondering First off like to from what you're seeing like what what is the extent of the permanent damage done to our, our emergency medical system in particular and our our ability to even like get care at the moment? Yeah. That's a really good question. I don't, I don't know. It kind of goes back to I think what Garrison wanted to talk about, which is like the collapse of the medical system. Yeah, I think we talk about it a lot in terms of. We're on the edge of collapse. We're near collapse. I think there are places in this country where it already has collapsed. I think that's pretty evident. It's really, it's not homogeneous in any way across this country. There are certainly places that are better than others and there's certainly places that have a lot more leeway and flexibility, but everywhere is strained right now. And in. In regards to your question about permanent damage, I'll answer that in regards to just the personnel. You know, because because of this show that I have, the House of POD follows Twitter at the House of God. And I talked to a lot of doctors and nurses from all over the country. Talk to them a lot, and it's bad. I mean, the stress that they're under, the PTSD that they're that they're dealing with, the burnout, the level of burnout is just intense. It's intense and and it's, I think we were talking about moral injury and burnout before. All this started and now it is to a point where I I don't know what's going to happen to the medical system just in terms of the the personnel when this is all over. I know a lot of people who are getting out of Medicine getting at clinical medicine. I mean out of like I would I would say out of just my immediate friend group, I can think of a couple offhand excellent doctors really great. ICU ER doctors who are already planning their exit, yeah, and one I don't know I mean in the next coming years. That's going to be a major issue and I don't know how we're going to address that and our nurses. In the ICU, man, the stuff they have to put up with isn't is insane. You just see it in their eyes. Eyes are broken like I was. I volunteered on the the wards a couple weeks ago. And people, they're the doctors and nurses taking care of these COVID patients day in, day out. Like they there's like a little bit of their soul that's been broken. You can just see it in their eyes like, I was there for like just a week and it's terrifying. You know, you're going into a room with a patient, with COVID. It's scary. You know, even know how much PPE protective equipment you have on. Like you're always a little scared and and I just think years of that that weighs on the person and the way I don't. I am worried about. I don't know how we're gonna address that. Yeah, that's cool. Yeah. And it's frustrating because, like, from the perspective of people listening, right, the thing you want to ask is like, well, how can I help? And it's like, well, you can't because you're already, if you're listening to the show, I assume you're masking. I assume you've gotten vaccinated. If you don't have, like, a condition that that renders you unable to get the vaccine, you're you're I I think our listeners tend to be pretty responsible people. It's just not enough because 30 to 40% of the country decided to, like Leroy Jenkins, a plague. And God. Garrison, do you know that reference? Is that we get that reference. I'm familiar with Leroy Jenkins. That's good. That's good. Were you born when Leroy Jenkins became a thing? I don't know. You would have been like three. I would have been young. Yeah. Yeah. Was it it was Deadpool that brought him to your attention, isn't it? No, no, I it it came to my attention. Just doing general Internet. Nothing. Yeah. It was one of the first. It was the 1st meme that you could show your parents pretty much. I guess there were like Badger, Badger mushroom, a couple of others in that category. But, like, it was one of the first memes that wasn't a man's gaping ******* prolapsed. But I showed my parents that all the time. I don't know. Oh yeah, no. Yeah. There was a beautiful moment back in the day when somebody goat seed a stadium. Yeah, that's what brought you into medicine. This is what I saw at work. They were so proud of me. Like, look at look at our son. Look at our boy. Look at our boy. He can tell us exactly why that man's ******* looks that way. I have a weird job. I guess one of my questions is with the assumption that people are taking the actual plague related steps they can to reduce their burden to the medical system. What can people realistically do? I mean, I think part of that is, and this is, and I'm not going to have you to like, explain how you can take care of your own medical treatments in an emergency on a podcast. That's not the time or the place. Although I do think it's probably a good idea for people to read up on first aid and basic life saving emergency. Like it's always a good idea to to to have some training there. But yeah, I mean, do you have other advice? You know, you're exactly right. The people that are listening to this podcast are totally on board. Already. And they're super supportive and we appreciate that. I mean, that is not unnoticed. I mean, you know, it's having people like outside the hospitals every now and then applauding doctors. I know it's cheesy, but it's great. I'll take that over. The Blue Angels flying overhead any day. Yeah, you know, so it's that that stuff is really important. And masking and taking care of themselves is is great, you know, the, the. The real practical things that people can do, I think, is help contribute to sites that will help get the rest of the world vaccinated. I mean we can definitely talk about that, the question of boosters here versus, you know, vaccines for the first time elsewhere, but they're that's the one thing I would recommend right now. If you want to help, let's put our money into places where we can get vaccines to other places. And I I think that every little bit of that helps in the long run. And and that's the sort of thing that that we could use other than that, I mean I just hope that people are still going into medicine and in nursing, you know, that's the only thing I can still hope is that people who have an interest in it, you know, continue to to do it. And and for those people who are just, they're training those years of their formative years or during this time, I just want to let them know, I swear it gets better. Not always gonna be like this. And if you make it through this, you're gonna be an amazing clinician, you're gonna be an amazing nurse, you're gonna be an amazing doctor. And I really want you guys to keep doing it. That's that's one thing I would say to. Yeah, I mean, and I I'll certainly add that if you're someone who's contemplating a medical career, please, please. I mean, just from a, there's a couple of things on that, like just from a perspective of. What the world needs. It's what the world needs. But also, if you're listening to this stuff we're saying about the crumbles, about the possibility of the collapse, if you're someone who foresees things getting potentially much more difficult in the future, not a lot of things, more useful in a bad situation than somebody with medical training, you know? You count on that to getting me through the apocalypse. Yeah, I'm. I'm soft. I am so sorry. I went camping and I couldn't handle it. A couple weeks ago I went camping. It was awful. There was so much dust. It was an. Awful experience but I just thought if the apocalypse comes I will hopefully get placed in a very nice tent because I'm a doctor so I I'm counting on that to get me through. There are there are so many ******* boogaloo type quote UN quote preppers who who focus on the guns and the gear and the the dried food but and they're throwing knives and the shirt throwing knives but don't even have a knife, fact, an individual first aid kit or like a tourniquet and like talk to you talk to like. Like, I mean, this is a little off topic, but like, talk to combat Marines about, like, their favorite person. It's always the corpsman. It's the guy who knows or the lady who knows that, like, patch a bullet wound and whatnot. Yeah, like, there's there's nothing more useful in any situation, pretty much that that is dangerous than somebody who can do medicine. So please, if you're if you're studying to do medicine, if you're contemplating becoming an EMT or a paramedic or a nurse or whatever, good God, we need you so badly. Yeah, I agree. Yeah. We talked a little bit about just getting the medical system in general and then we can also kind of discuss more stuff related to how covid's impacting certain areas more than others. And like let's say someone who's someone who's listening who's in one of these areas that is has only 40% vaccinated, you know, not, not a lot of people are going on with masks on. And, you know, schools starting back up, maybe they have kids or going to their school system. I know in Texas they have, you know, child deaths are rising. That sounds very frightening to be that kind of person who, like, you know, would like like to see that stuff happen in their state. But it's just not really possible. And I don't know, with so much of the rest of the world kind of slowly taking back restrictions. And I'm sure it feels very jarring to be in a situation like that and kind of like there's really nothing you can do right beside you. Right, because you could talk to your family. You talk to your friends. Like overall it's hard to hard to make, you know a big impact in a state, you know, like Texas, Alabama, like Idaho, all the ones that you that you were mentioning before from a medical kind of perspective. Is there, is there any way people can kind of start to talk about those things with their family and because the way we've been trying to get people to take the vaccine with the marketing we've been doing has not been super successful in these demographics. Do you think this other kind of conversations that can get people to slowly kind of be more? Be more able to, you know. Come, yeah. Contemplate that. Yeah, that's a, that's a tough question. It's particularly tough if you're someone who is believes in the importance of vaccines and your or the importance of masks and that sort of thing and you're in a place where you're a minority. That is tough. The first thing I'll say is definitely know that the vaccine helps. You're in a much better position because of the vaccine. When I was on the wards and I was looking at patients. The they're almost all unvaccinated. Those are the people that end up in the hospital. You can't still get into the you hospitalized if you have the vaccine. But it's it's much less likely. And you know, not that these people don't count, they count just as much. But if you don't have an underlying problem like a liver transplant or some immunosuppression, then you're less likely to have a really bad outcome with COVID if you're vaccinated. So just know that it helps. You still might get it. It'll suck. But for the most part, you're gonna stay out of the hospital and that really, I think is something. Have a little comfort in it. It really does seem to work, you know? Outside of that, the the schools thing is, is a real concern for me and I'm going to feel a lot better and we're going to be in a much better position once we are able to get kids vaccinated. And so there's there's two things you guys probably heard that there was. This, this committee that met to advise the FDA about booster shots, that's one thing. So booster shots are going to go out to people who need them, 65 and older, people at high risk, people in high risk occupations, they're like frontline workers. So there's going to be booster shots coming out and then the data is coming out now about 5:00 to 11/5 to 11. Yeah. And that's pretty promising. It looks like they're going to do OK with lower doses. So they use about 1/3 of the dose of the vaccine. That the adults get and it seems to work. We haven't seen much other than the pre press release from Pfizer. But yeah, if you really pick at it, it looks promising. So I am. That's something that makes me hopeful. That's something I'm definitely clinging to. I think there's no way we're getting out of this without vaccinating kids. That just has to happen. Yeah. Yeah. Once that starts rolling out and hopefully it will soon. I mean, I don't want to put a date on it, but I'm hoping within the next couple of months this starts happening. O you know, once once that starts happening, I'm gonna feel a lot more comfortable. I think people in those situations are gonna feel a lot more comfortable too. Yeah. Yeah, the the booster thing is an interesting question to me. I mean, yeah, there is this old standpoint particularly, you know, I I think, I think it's not a fair narrative to say it has to be one or the other. And I think people are saying that. I don't think I think we can do it. I think we can. Produce enough vaccine here for people who haven't got it yet and enough for the boosters and start supplying more to the world. I mean we can do more. Our government sharing Pfizer Moderna definitely needs to do more in that regard. They definitely need to do more in terms of production. They haven't hit their goals in a lot of these places and but it's also not like they haven't done anything yet. They gave about like a you know 200,000,000 doses are being donated just this week I think. So they are doing things that's happening. Just we need more of it. Everything needs, we need more of it. We need to ramp up production, yeah. It's weird because like. You're right, we could produce enough vaccines for the places that don't have them and enough vaccines for boosters over here. And all it would take is a couple of months of our Afghanistan mad money, but we're not going to do that. And so it it it it probably will like, I don't know, contribute to an issue of fact. There's a there's a chance that it will contribute to an issue of vaccine unavailability. But also it's not like if we don't get the boosters, those vaccines will be available because we're just not. Giving them out? Yeah. In the extent that we need. So I yeah. I don't know. I understand what you're saying. I'll get the booster if they decide to give out boosters because. I like not having permanent plague damage due to government or getting long COVID. Yeah, yeah, that that seems great. And a lot of the vaccine has been so you kind of relies tracks back to how we've been marketing it and I've I've, I've been on the team that's like we should stop using Fauci because every time Fauci goes on TV to talk about vaccines, more people are going to do like a backfire effect be like no, I'm not going to get it, I don't trust Fauci. So there is a particular like marketing thing that I think we failed on like America is very good at marketing when we can make money, but when it's not related to getting gaining more profit, I think the government's very bad at marketing these types of things. And on the kind of the marketing side of things, I know this is, this is kind of old news at this point, but the whole swollen testicles thing, which we have, you have not talked about on this show about, but I'm sure you have thoughts about how this thing has kind of ballooned, which is that can be like the testicles, like the testicles. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So how, how the marketing and misinformation relates to this cool kind kind kind of current problem? Yeah, yeah. First of all, that particular story. I mean, that's hilarious. I mean, like this. I've never, I've never seen someones excuse. For venereal disease becomes such an international issue. Yeah. Contribute to the deaths probably of hundreds of people, right? Yeah. You know, it's it's the marketing thing, is a really great question. And and and it's been driving me crazy because, like, part of me at this point just wants to be like, get the ******* vaccine. What the ****** wrong with you? Get the ******* vaccine. Part of my language and like, but then the part of me knows that that doesn't work. Like I do believe doctors should be able to express their frustration. They need to be able to do that if we can't do that. Right now, I mean it's game over. They should at least have that ability where doctors can voice their frustration with anti vaxxers but still give them the same high level of care that we're always going to give them no matter what when they show up in the hospital. But it's not working to do that, we need other approaches. I don't, I don't entirely know what they are. There are some people there are there are so far out there that would just never going to reach the people, the microchip people. There's like a level of deep programming that will need to happen to those people that we just it. It's too exhausting to do that. You really have to like it. You can't scale that in any meaningful way for the country, I think. I think, yeah, I don't know. I think calling it the Trump vaccine was the closest we got to having that be a possibility. And that ******* I'm interested in your thoughts on the ******* Breitbart article. And if you're not aware, because you're less online than us and God bless you. If you are Breitbart the which is, I don't know. CNN for Fascists came up with an article blaming the Democrats for the fact that Republicans don't want to take the vaccine and saying it's a secret liberal plot to exterminate conservatives. Because conservatives refuse to take vaccines because they're fundamentally oppositional, defiant and like it's it's the fault of people who are telling them to take the vaccine that they're not taking the vaccine. Because obviously, why would you trust the liberal on anything? But also, they're trying to kill us. We're gonna lose the election because we're all dying, because we refuse to get vaccinated for a preventable disease. Anyway, how do you feel about that copy? I don't. I don't love it. I don't love it. I'm vaguely familiar with Breitbart. I don't know that exact article because I have enough pain in my life already. But but, you know, I do wonder. It's like when they put out articles like this, or when Tucker Carlson goes out and he he does his thing questioning vaccine. Just asking questions about vaccines that lead to vaccine hesitancy. Like what calculations? Are they doing, are they doing, is this just him being callous in not giving a **** and just doing it or is there some calculation that him and some sort of right wing think tank are doing where they're like, hey look. This cells to our audience, they love it. Let's keep doing it. Yes, we are going to lose X portion of our audience because of this, but we still have plenty of audience left like I don't. I wonder how that's happening. Like it is hurting. It is true it is hurting them more than than other people. It's hurting everyone. Everyone's getting affected by this. But there it's those states that are being affected, the people not getting vaccinated who are listening to people like Tucker Carlson. So I don't, I don't understand what their end game. Here like this is their market why not protect it and that I do not have a good answer for. I was hoping one of you guys would you know it's. There's a lot going on there. I think a decent chunk of it is the assumption that whatever they lose in terms of dead followers won't be worth more than continuing the cash bonanza that is owning the libs. Right? Because that's all they that's all. That's the entirety of the right wing media. It's just owning the libs. It's just oppositional defiant. It's just hating anything Democrats do. So you you kind of can't. You're a cuck if you tell people to. Receive basic medical care if Democrats are taking that basic medical care, right. So it's a pride thing for a lot of them. Two two things I love is when you, when you use the word cuck or when you do Ben Shapiro's voice, like those are like two of my favorite things that you do. It's. We're seeing really well far beyond anything rational on the right and it's. It's difficult to. Like, I, I, I I think the calculation is just like, I think a lot of these guys is the same thing with climate change. Like, they're smart enough to know that they're contributing to an uninhabitable world, but they want to cash in first. They want to get as much as they can out before it falls apart. And I think that's all any of these people care about, because I think you there are the true believers. The radio guys are true believers, right? The radio guys who keep dying because they don't get vaccinated. Those guys did believe that it was some sort of weird conspiracy. It was the communist. Whatever. Clearly because they died. Management level, yeah, mid management level, they don't know all the stuff that they're being told from. 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 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. In the 1980s and 90s, a psychopath terrorized the country of Belgium. A serial killer and kidnapper was abducting children in the bright light of day. His unspeakable crimes and the incompetence or unwillingness of the police to stop him brought the entire country of Belgium to the brink of revolution. Get the justice. From Tenderfoot TV in iHeartRadio this is la Monstra. A story of abomination and conspiracy that led to the demise of the entire institution of Belgian federal police and rattled the foundations of its government. The story about the man who simply become known as La Monstre. Listen for free on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What's up you guys? It's your girl Betty who here? And you know this about me. It has always been very important to me to stand out and be authentically me, not only with my music, but my style and my vibe. And JBL really gets that. They know your headphones and speakers should look as original as the music you're listening to, or in my case, making. That's why I'm obsessed with my JBL headphones and speakers that help me reflect who I really am, from true wireless headphones to pulsing party boxes. Ohh yeah, party boxes guys. JBL has a wide and colourful range of products that help me feel myself when I wanna vibe my way. I literally record this entire podcast on my favorite JBL headphones. They are absolutely incredible. So JBL wants us all to listen on our terms living in the moment. Our moment unfiltered. The JBL podcast at jbl.com. Above. And they kind of believe it enough to where they kill themselves for the company. I think for Tucker, it's more a matter of, like, hey, I keep making money and I maintain my power. If I if I continue to hold this line, you you lose power, you get weaker. It's like when Trump got booed for telling people to take the ******* vaccine, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, it's crazy. You can't go back with this ****. You just can't. And you certainly can't admit to ever having been wrong. Right now, little man. It's good ****. What a what a fun note to end the episode on what a good society we've built. Yeah. Bravo. Ah, well, covet. People can find you by looking up the House of Pod. Yes, uh, slightly less depressing, but not not super uplifting either at this point. Follow us at the House of Pot at Twitter and you can listen to our podcast pretty much anywhere you listen to podcast. We'll talk about medical type things, but not so deep into the woods that it's not entertaining. I hope. The woods. Yeah, **** the woods. We have fun guests ranging from the world's best medical experts. Do you know you guys? He put, like us the not world's best medical experts. Yeah, you guys are right up there. Let me tell you, for medicine, right, there's no better medicine than. Just a big, fat pile of cocaine. And the good thing about cocaine is it's a sterilizing agent. So if you're worried about COVID getting in your nasal passages, just rail cocaine before you and after you go into the store. It's like getting a COVID test, but more fun legally. I have to tell you, that's false. Well, we all have our opinions about how cocaine works. Well, you have your facts, and I have my facts. Have my facts. Now, if you excuse me, I'm going to go pick up a single item at the grocery store. Hey, lethal listeners, tig. Here. Last season on Lethal lit, you might remember I came to Hollow falls on a mission, clearing my Aunt Beth's name and making sure justice was finally served. But I hadn't counted on a rash of new murders tearing apart the town. My mission put myself and my friends in danger. Though it wasn't all bad. I'm gonna be real with you, tig. I like you, but now all signs point to a new serial killer in Hollow Falls. If this game is just starting, you better believe I'm going to win. I'm Tig Torres and this is lethal lit. Catch up on season one of the hit Murder Mystery podcast, Lethal Lit, a tig Torres mystery out now and then TuneIn for all new thrills in Season 2, dropping weekly starting February 9. Subscribe now to never miss an episode. Listen to lethal lit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Hi, I'm Robert lamb. And I'm Joe McCormick. And we're the hosts of the Science podcast stuff to blow your mind, where every week we get to explore some of the weirdest questions in the universe. Like if sci-fi teleportation was possible, how would it square with the multitudes of organisms that inhabit our human bodies? Can we find evidence of emotions in animals like bees, ants, and crayfish? How would an interplanetary civilization function? Does free will exist? 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Find a forest near you and start exploring at discovertheforest.org, brought to you by the United States Forest Service and the Ad Council. Welcome to it could happen here, Pod, a podcast that is today, about the fact that 10 years ago it did happen. And then when I say it did happen, I mean we occupied an extremely large number of places, and we did so in interesting and incredibly bizarre ways. And with with with me to talk about this is Garrison, as always. I like that you used the Twitter handle for our podcast, not the actual name, but that's fine. Where can they go for it? But hello hi of Garrison. With me I have I have my special guest, Vicky Osterweil, who is an agitator, who is a writer who has done many, many things, probably most famously writing the book in defense of Looting. In 2020 from bold press, bold type press, bold type press. Yeah. Very good book. People got very mad. People got very angry. Yeah. Thank you. It's really, I'm really excited to be here to talk about the anniversary of Occupy from which is basically when I all got this whole train rolling. So yeah. And the other, the other thing that is probably relevant here is that Vicki was one of the first people at Occupy. And correct me if I'm wrong about this, I found it oblique reference to this in one of the things I read. You facilitated the first meeting. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I got this on the record now. Yeah, I I yeah. During during the the General New York City General Assembly, it was called in August, there was, you know, ad Busters hopefully called for a General Assembly and you know, a bunch of us sort of went down there and there was a tanky party there. Doing a General Assembly, which was just them on a on speakers doing their regular ranting hasn't changed much in 10 years. And and we yeah. So a bunch of us just went and sat down to the side of it and started an actual General Assembly. And by happenstance I facilitated that meeting and it was the first and last Occupy meeting Amber facilitated. Yeah, OK. So I, I want to roll back a little bit to just before the start of Occupy because yeah. The more I think about this, the more I've just realized that 2011 was just a profoundly weird time. In in a lot of ways I think people have forgotten like the entire American security state is at this point being terrorized by a joint anonymous LulzSec hacking campaign called Antisec, the symbol of which is a guy in a guy Fox mask wearing a monocle and a top hat. And this was just like normal. This, this was a thing that like, I was like, Oh yeah, yeah, it's, it's the, it's the anti SEC, top hat, full face guy and a monocle. Fun fact about that just before we forget. David Graeber, rest in peace who was there in the early days organizing. Claimed and that he had he had heard and talked to the some of the like overheard the police talking about the reason they didn't sweep the Occupy encampment the first day when we were pretty weak, frankly or the first week was because there were a bunch of Guy Fawkes masks and they were scared. They were scared they were going to get hacked if they were attacked. They were scared they were going to hack them and steal their. Yeah. So. So it was a weird time indeed. Yeah. Yeah. I think that the the other thing that's you know I think important about this time period if we're looking back at what Occupy was is that the. So this is three years after the financial collapse and. You know, so I think this is, you know, in the 2011 there there's been a few, there's been a few protests, there's been there was a big thing in Greece in 2008 that was kind of related, kind of unrelated. But I, I think my sense of, you know, I was like, I don't know, I was like 13. I was like, I was like an actual baby child. But my sense of it was kind of just like there is, there is this like. Since that, everyone just kind of waiting for something to happen. Yeah, and it's like hadn't and just like kept going and kept going, kept going and then. You know, and and then and then Tunisia starts and suddenly there's, you know, there's there's protests in Egypt. There's like people fighting tanks in the street in Bahrain and. You know, and this is, you know, this becomes known as the Arab Spring and it starts to spread to a lot of places. And Vicki want to talk. I want to ask you about this because you, you were in Spain when it starts, started there. I want to talk about what was going on there. And yeah, so I wasn't there when it started, but, but but yes, basically, you know, and I want to shout out like there were, there were a bunch of like movements like in 2008 right after the crash, there were a bunch of protests, like outside Wall Street. They were very small. But they were like sort of, they produce some images and then there was in 2009, there's the Oscar Grant rebellion in Oakland and you have the Madison occupation earlier in 2011 where they where the the worker, the unions took over the the State House in Wisconsin with that. Yeah. Yeah, everyone does. It was actually really important at the time, but yeah. So, so, you know, so I think I'm glad you brought up Greece because I think actually Greece really that that sort of anarchist rebellion in 2008, 2009 really kicked off the cycle in a certain way, but also didn't quite. It wasn't quite the first domino, you know, it was sort of more of a like forecast. So yeah, so Arab Spring is huge. It's this huge, huge event and the US media is loving it because obviously like these sort of old, you know, quote UN quote, Marxist dictators are falling. And so of course the US is like all about it, which of course later, later on the return of the Tankies will use to to confuse everyone on the US left and destroy all solidarity with Syria anyway. But that's neither here nor there. So then then in then in that summer, you get this, this wave of early summer like May and June. In fact, the 15th of May was when the movement started in in Spain and then it starts soon again in Greece. And it was similar to occupy and that there was these people coming together in these sort of encampments in the center of the city. I don't know if people remember or know this history economically, but Spain and Greece had recently been sort of going through these like big, big booms, economic booms, just for about five or six years. That turned out to be real estate bubbles funded by their entry into the EU. And 2008 just smashed that. And they were just like incredibly impoverished. I mean, like, Spain was facing something like 50% youth unemployment. Greece was, like, similar. Spain has recovered more than Greece has in the intervening years, but it's still bad. So. So yeah, so you had all these. It was, it was, you know, predominantly young folks who were had been pushed out of the economy, who didn't pushed out of their homes, whose families had lost their homes gathering together. And it was all over both countries. And it was huge. I happened to just be in Barcelona. I had been on a planned vacation with some friends that we had planned sort of six months earlier when it all popped off. And I had also just started my writing. I would say career, but that's very generous. I had started technically being paid for writing things, and they were like, oh, write about it. Like, like, like, cover it while you're there. And because no one in the US was talking about what was going on in Spain when my article popped up, like, and this is like, this is really strange, but it was like the early days of Twitter as well, of 2011. Like, I guess Twitter started 2009 or something. And so, like, so the, the, the one of the accounts from the camp tweets out my article. So I went there the next day. I was like, I wrote that. Critical. And then I was like embedded for a week and I was there for like kind of the height of the popular power of the movement of Barcelona, only for a week, but I was there on the day when there was a 2 1/2 million person March through Barcelona, just like still probably the biggest March I've ever been part of and probably ever will be was like lat. And so, so that goes on for a few months in Greece and Barcelona, it sort of hits similar limits that Occupy would eventually hit, which is that, like, if you can take the space away from people, that's the common ground and like you. That really have the movement without the encampment and also all the way in which the the camps sort of force a kind of internal naval gazing and people like get really obsessed with maintaining the camp rather than the struggle with the city at large. All of those, all of those contradictions sort of like came up in in Spain and Greece as well. But at the time, you know, I was there for the height of it. I come back to New York, I'm like, this is going to happen in the US like it has to. I think a lot of folks who had been watching felt that way as well. I actually took part in this thing called Bloomberg. Which was like, yeah, 50 people on a sidewalk, which might for Michael Bloomberg, right, 50 people on a sidewalk, 50 people was general. I was like, when we were doing really well and mostly 15 of us, like, 15 of us on the sidewalk in the financial district, like, getting yelled at by cops, you know, sleeping on cardboard, you know, Occupy style but without any attention or solidarity. And but because I had been in Barcelona and I still have these comrades Barcelona, I was like, Oh my God, we're doing it in New York. So we had this thing. Where Bloomberg Ville, which is like 20 people like got to talk to a General Assembly in Barcelona at the height of its power, like on a like Internet link, like a really early Internet link, you know and you know so, so, so, so there was all this energy that was happening and then I think really crucially, the London riots pop off and that doesn't get talked about very much anymore, partially because the UK left really stabbed in the back during that and repressed the memory of it largely and have suffered ever since. My opinion strategically, but you know, that was for us in the US that was huge. It was huge watching, watching those riots unfold, like, you know, again, this was like early live streaming. So like we were like watching live feeds of the riots, you know, which like was not a thing that you could really do without a TV before. There was just like there was a lot of stuff going on that felt exciting and. Really important and inevitable that it would come to the US because things were so messed up over here. I think we should talk about what a General Assembly actually is, because I think a lot of people are. You're going to have like never actually ran into what exactly is going on or have sort of forgotten in the last 10 years after this sort of fallen out of favor? Sure. Yeah. I mean it's it was never my favorite either, honestly. But it's a, it's a meeting style designed. It actually does largely actually come from from European anarchist traditions from Spain and Greece. But as many of us know, a lot of those traditions go back further and have crossed cross the water general assemblies. Actually there's a long history of them in indigenous communities in Turtle Island for example. So it's an old meeting style in which the Quaker is also the Quakers. I'm famously also sort of sort of Co opted it from indigenous folks out here on the East Coast. But it's a meeting style in which, with the exception of a facilitator, which is occasionally but not always present, everyone is able to speak together. There is, there's an agenda sometimes, but it's basically a meeting designed where everyone present in the meeting has like an equal voice and it's not really designed generally for decision. Speaking specifically or in with like really specific goals in mind, often although there will be sort of like things that are trying to get settled, but it's designed to allow a very very multi vocal approach and for everyone to sort of put in their thoughts and their ideas. And often is connected, although not necessarily, but is often connected to consensus operation where things can't get sort of decided on unless everyone sort of agrees and. And occupy that was the General Assembly was sort of was a bit controversial because it was just whoever showed up obviously participates in it. So unlike organizational meeting where you know everyone knows each other and you have to have a you have to be there with an invite or whatever whatever cranky wingnut wanted to show up could and that had pluses and minuses it was charming sometimes, but it was also very frustrating and. In New York, where I was, it was made almost impossible to function by this thing called the people's mic. I think still happens sometimes people say even mic check and and and then everyone repeats what was said. But that means that it takes four times as long to talk as normal. So when you have a wing nut, you know, like advocating for wrong Paul, and then you've got 30 people echoing him every four words. It makes. It makes discussion completely impossible and a microhistory of the people's mic. The reason that happened was because in the first week in Zuccotti Park, whenever we got on a megaphone, police would come and arrest whoever was on the megaphone because you weren't allowed to use amplified. Found in New York and one organizer was like, Oh no, no, we can like use the peoples Mic. We can like repeat back to each. And this is when they're still mostly like 30 to 40 people on the park at any one time. It's very small. That didn't feel so bad. But then when the movement really got big, the people might became completely unwieldy and also was a response to a was a cowardly response to police repression, frankly and was a way of so the people's mic is is in my opinion a reactionary form anyway, that is. You know, it's been 10 years. I haven't been able to complain about this in like, 8 years. Thank you so much. But anyway, so yes, the General Assembly is just a meeting form that often often associated with anarchy, anarchist practice or radical democratic practice in which sort of consensus is aimed for by allowing everyone to speak their mind, I would say, yeah. And so, and this, I think, gets us back to where we opened this episode, which is Adbusters calls an event with literally no plans to, like, do anything. They're just like, yeah, everyone were occupied. Wall Street. And then. Yeah, and you know, as we talked about the beginning of it, you guys basically hijack. Well, sort of. I mean, so Adbusters, Adbusters doesn't show up. Like you said, there's I've never met an ad Buster's person and it was funny like we would do jokes about it but I think it's also thinking about this in preparation for this interview. It's also interesting cuz Adbusters and their culture jamming is kind of like one of the results of the sort of alter globalization movement of the late 90s and early 2000s. The summit hopping stuff, the anarchy movement of like one generation ahead of Occupy. So I think it's sort of appropriate. Adjuster is sort of like, you know, was present in this legacy in a certain way and a lot of those organizers were as well. But yes, I'm sorry, did I just jump in for you? No, no, no. OK. The yeah. So. A bunch of people I don't actually know who calls for an August 2nd, you know, General Assembly to talk about the call for September 17th, talk you by Wall Street. And at that, at that point, that's when the thing I was describing earlier happens where a bunch of folks, and I really want to underline this, most of them were people who had been in Spain or Greece. David Graeber was also there. It was like a lot of old heads there was like there was a comrade from Japan. It was a very international crew who had had experience in these movements over the summer. Uh, came and had this General Assembly and sort of ran it that way and broke out. We had, we broke off working groups, and then there was meetings sort of once a week and then working group meetings within that, and general assemblies from August 2nd until September 17th, at which point occupy the date the date that Adbusters had called for actually happened. So my impression of this, and I was very small. I had very limited idea of what was going on the way I remember in the media. Is that like? The, the, the the media was weirdly interested in it in a way that I've never seen them. I've never seen them cover another social movement that wasn't like literally burning their offices down. And it was like, it was like in the beginning it was. I mean, you know, obviously the right wing media is losing their minds, but they were. Kind of. Kind of supportive of it and and I think. I don't know what you think about this. One of the things that that happens in both in both Greece and in Spain is that the, the, the, the, the product movement of the squares is these electoral movements, these electoral movements just fail, like catastrophically. Like Starsia takes power. Like, like they they like they they have, they have, they have. Like their. Their finance minister is a left communist. He's like, he is the most far left person ever, like the whole office since like the Spanish anarchists in 1930. Nineteen 36. And they implement austerity anyways. In Spain, you get Podemos and it's like, well, OK, you know, they had this thing called the Electoral War machine. They're going to take over the Spanish. But system, they just, it collapsed. It just doesn't work. They've never, like, they've never taken power. They've never. Really got anywhere they they they successfully evicted a bunch of squats in Catalonia. But yeah, but, and I think this is my impression of it, was that I think the US media thought they could they could do this to occupy. And and I I think they kind of it's weird because looking so you know like I I I come in and like. To to this kind of stuff around here in 1617 and I think it. It's like it. Weirdly worked but it worked because they were able to grow the anti occupy people. Yeah. So it's like yeah and so they they, they, they did finally get their like cadre of like pseudo left organizers so they could use to build Democratic Party. It's just it was like Jacobin and then all like the whole, the whole sort of anti occupy. Group. Yeah. So those folks were actually active during Occupy, critiquing the, the people who now most loudly claim the legacy of Occupy. You know, as you said, Jacobin, a lot of those sort of Social Democratic groups at the time. And those of us who were there, remember they hated Occupy. They would show up, but they were like, would critique it constantly. They would write all these articles about how it was terrible, how there were no demands. It was too disorganized. And then, I think, you know, when Black revolt got put on the table, they were like, bring back occupy. We like that better. But, but I think to be as harsh as possible, but I think like you know, yes there was there was a lot of media coverage. It didn't feel super friendly at the time. There was a lot of, there was a lot of media coverage. Like the media was very curious, it was very interested. But a lot of that coverage was like, why do they have no demands, like why are they so disorganized? Why are they so smelly? Whatever. Like there was a lot of like there was a lot of slander in the press but also a lot of attention which you know, I turned turned out was as good as you could get. But at the time didn't, didn't feel very good. Yeah, particularly I think, yeah. But yes, those those forces, those forces were already present in, you know, in Occupy itself, sort of denouncing it for its disorganization and then eventually claiming that it was the reason that Bernie Sanders happened, which isn't totally wrong. Yeah, I want to be really clear. Like I think and I think we'll get into this more, but I think like the thing about the thing that was important about Occupy and the thing that the people who in my opinion. Like, my comrades during Occupy are people I meet who were like doing occupy stuff but, like, who I didn't know. But like now we, I, you know, I roll with them. Most of us have the, have the, you know, the analysis. Like, it was really important that we were doing politics in the street. It was really important that we were back together. We were talking politics. And then there were really, really intense, extreme limits to what occupy could have done. And I think Oakland really pushed those and and, you know, and got to those. But and I think the folks who are like, no, occupy was good at the time were like Occupy. Terrible, and I think that's worth notice noting and thinking about. So I I think, yeah, before we start to go into talk a bit about what happened to Oakland to talk about. So there's a so on a daily basis, like what is occupy actually doing? Because I think that's also been sort of lost in this whole, like everyone remembers like the slogans and I remember the fact there's a thing, but, you know, like there's there's a bunch of working groups and they're doing things like what, what was that like? Like day-to-day and then sort of broader level. Yeah. So, so first of all, again, I was only in New York. I spent some time at occupied Boston as well. But, like, I don't have a sense of what other places were like, so I I really can't. I mean, other than having heard from people. So I want to be very clear that I'm, like, mostly addressing that. I think the thing that was going on was that Zuccotti Park, like, the park was like total chaos. Part of that was because there was a drum circle that basically was going 24 hours a day there, which meant that whenever you were down there and it was like a Canyon, Zuccotti Park is surrounded by skyscrapers. So it was just this incredible cacophony all the time, which I think was. Cool. It really ruined a lot of finance Bros like like 3 months ago, like orally with an A there. But I think like, but it also was pretty intense and unpleasant sometimes. You were like, please stop, Oh my God, like that's at one point a General Assembly, I think decided that drums were like only acceptable during certain hours, like near the end of the movement. Like the drum, the drum circle got reproached when in fact they were like actually the biggest agents of chaos in Zuccotti Park turned out. Which is another important lesson. But. Yeah, I think so. So, you know, also because I had been in Bloomberg, because I've been in Barcelona, I didn't invest myself very heavily in in camp management stuff, so I mostly was doing work. One of the things I think gets forgotten about is that there were snake marches, basically three or four a day, every day after. After the first week when we were really small, when it got big, there were just constant, constant marches through the city, just like always going off like you would run it and you'd be on one March, you'd run into another March like. Saturday or Sunday, when like people were really like out there, like it was, it was really like there was a lot of mayhem. There would be big planned marches that would then be bigger. So there was like a lot of like what people now would call direct action, what I would call largely like sort of. Symbolic practice for direct action, mostly. I don't mind. I like marches. I certainly got my miles in then. Like, I don't feel like I need to do that again. But but, you know, so then at the camp, people were just living there. There were a lot of, like a lot of punks, a lot of, like, you know, a lot of homeless folks, obviously, and some and some encampments had more, had a higher concentration of unhoused people, some in New York, because of all the media spectacle and all the money that came in. We had a lot of nonprofit grifters by the end in the encampment. But there's also like a library. A Free Library with all these books that, like, would be donated. There's a lot of, like, political agitation. There will be people standing around the, the, the, you know, the corners of the park with signs and yelling at people. And it's also important to remember that, like, Zuccotti Park in New York is tiny. It's tiny. We had originally wanted to do it on this big Plaza like Citibank Plaza, and the cops had heard about that in, fenced it off. So on the 17th we just like. We just, uh, what's the word? We, we did a, uh, my God, football metaphors called why you shouldn't do this. You called an audible. Thank you. There we go. So Zuccotti is this tiny little park. It's incredibly dense, and it's surrounded by, you know, like I said, by skyscrapers. It's in this really weird part of the city that no one would ever spend any time and if they didn't have to do otherwise. So that's sort of. So there's all this stuff going on and there are all these general assemblies twice a day, which, as I said, in New York, we're particularly unhelpful, but I think anarchists in a lot of cities. Talk to you like I had a comrade down in DC-1 in Denver. They sort of said that the General Assembly is either quickly like got shifted or got or became irrelevant. I think the general assemblies were not were not. In the end we're we're symbolically important but not but not really a driving force of my experience. And then there would be, there would be like I said there'd be a lot of organizing outside of the park. There be a lot of like meetings and you know talks and direct actions and marches and then there would be. You know, uh, I guess that's kind of the extent of it, right, is that there was like a lot of direct action that but there was always this park where you could go and like run into people and like, hook up with people, meet people and like do a weird thing. And I think that was really like the heart of the movement was the fact that there was this place you could go meet someone and like, link into something weird and maybe cool and maybe not, it doesn't matter. But like there was always something to do, kind of, and it was constant was like this sort of 24 hour right like experience. And I think that was really what? What separated it from from other, from other movement waves that we've had, we've had since and was, was, was probably, I think it's greatest strength in many ways. Yeah, I think that that was that was the the impression that I got and part of this also was. When I when I was in college, like every once in a while you just get assigned like some person writing about Occupy. And it was like most of them were just extremely cranky about the whole thing. But sure, you know, one of the things I think was interesting about it is that. Everyone seemed to agree, at least to some extent, that part of what was going on was that. It it's it's it's this way to do. I don't know if identity formation is quite the right word for it, but it's it's this way to sort of like. Rebuild social connections and rebuild like social sort of bonds in a way that just had, you know, as public space becomes just the cops. And, you know, like there's there's a table in Chinatown that I like called the cop Table, and I'm really mad about that. Like, like this in Chicago Chinatown. I would like go there from the library. And there's a sign, sign on the table that says if you loiter at this table, you will be arrested. It's like, this is a picnic table like the cops are you. This table is threatening that it is going to arrest you if you use it. Or what's using, you know, for what you supposed to use tables for? Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And I think. I think that's right. I think like it was, you know, there was a lot of, at the time, a lot of people were talking about, embarrassingly about heart and degrees, sort of like multitude stuff, really, really. A much better book that was important was also David Graeber's debt. But I think, like, you know, and there was like a lot of, like, people saying things about like the Agora, you know, democracy that's sort of political, the political and space of encounter. And that stuff wasn't all wrong. Like, I mean I've, I've sort of being a little sarcastic with a lot of it, but like, but I think like like there there was a lot of. You know, part of how we should, I think we should understand the over, discussed, under, under. You know, like over analyzed word, neoliberalism like has largely become meaningless. One of the things I should I think it's valuable for understanding is a process by which capitalism responded to the long 60s by disorganizing its production process such that the long 60s could never happen again. Right. So like, like the the for the, the control, the like, the concentration of workers within within production and such a way. That they could be agitated by students and then like sort of radically unionized Wildcat and sort of like almost overthrow a government, right. Like that neoliberalism is like, you know, it smashes the unions, yes. But it also, it also like distributes out the act of production, right. So that so that that's not so easily done. And I think one of the real problems of, you know, that was facing social movement in the period, you know, the long period, like, you know, you had stuff like in the US again, this is where I know the best, but like, you know, you have the LA uprising. There's huge and you have you know, the the the summit hopping movement and anti globalization which you know could attack a target. But there wasn't really a sense of like how it felt hard to do a local struggle beyond like literally like a revolutionary riot like LA which you know you can't really precipitate. I mean you can't really precipitate a movement either, obviously, but I think like, but like, but like a political, a political movement, a form of political organizing that didn't require something on the level of. George Floyd, which is what the LA Rebellion was, right. But that also didn't require like an action from capital that you were like striking against, right, like the the the, you know, the the summits or whatever. And that again and like all of these errors are very important. This is not to like, obviously, this is with respect for those movements. But yeah, we felt, I think it felt like we were in a political wilderness. And I think that that like occupy really and the movement of the squares globally, I think. Really? Like demonstrated that it was possible to practice a kind of St politics even without. You know, a shop floor where you could organize even without, you know, a capital P party to organize within. And I think that was really important. I think it also scared a lot of people who and continues to who are committed to those politics and to the 20th century workers movement or the 19th and 20 century labor movement, which they somehow fantasize will come back if they just wish hard enough and write books or whatever. And I think like. No, I think that was powerful. I also think like like. Yeah, sorry, we can move on to legacy later. But yes, I think that was like, I think that was very much like an important thing was was just like. And you know, I graduated College in 2009. So I was like part of that millennial generation that like, you know, had gone into incredibly deep debt. Like we'd have a college degree and then like the the bottom fell out of the economy, there were no jobs. And like I think there were a lot of, you know, like people who like had anticipated a middle class life of some kind, not that I really had at that point, but whatever. Like, but a lot of people like in my economic cohort like had. Suddenly facing, you know, Proletarianization right. And I think that was one of the strengths of the movement. I think that was that, you know, like I mentioned the statistics in great in Spain and Greece, like, I think that was a global aspect of this kind of movement. Arab Spring too, like there was there was a lot of like that was really a response to the economic crisis. Obviously those folks were already more proletarian than the people who the young people in in the squares movements, but they they innovate. They they they created the tactics in the Arab Spring, right. Tahrir Square, most famously in Cairo, and I think like those creating a meeting place where you didn't require a. Reconstructed like political community in order to engage was a strength and a weakness. And I think it also, you know, as a result of the dynamics of the General Assembly, the dynamics of the sort of voluntarist nature of that, what I'm describing, it led to a lot of people who were already confident, who are already feeling good, being able to like take more power, right. Like, and I think it also was a very white movement certainly in New York, but I think I think across the country it was largely, it was largely, you know, it. Was it was majority white in a way that you know, by higher percentages than any movement that we've really been part of since was. And that was obviously a limit for reasons that would be obvious to everyone, including the idea that a lot of people pushed, that the police are part of the 99%. Yeah. Right. OK. So let's talk about the police because, you know, that's, you know, that's one of the other extremely important aspects of this is this immense militarization. I mean, OK. So I think that the militarization. Of the police as a phrase, I think is somewhat. Misleading in that. Like, the cops have always like shot people. Yeah. But, you know, there's, there's, yeah, there's, there's, there's still like there's an intense sort of ramp up of of the prison sector. There's you have this intense boom in the size of prisons you have. Yeah. You have increasing parts of the economy that are just the entire towns that used to be sort of manufacturing sectors used to be sort of. It involved in sort of industrial production that are just like the the economy is now just as a prison there and right and and I think this is also looking back one of the things it looked like Occupy kind of ran up into because you know occupies this attempt to like. You know, form a democratic space, and it relies crucially on this, this thing that is nominally in the Constitution but doesn't exist, which is the like the the the right to freedom of speech and the right to freedom of assembly. And freedom of assembly like that is that is like, that is ********. It does not exist. If you like, if you actually believe that this exists, like, try getting like 70 people into a space and see how, like, just like, I don't know, like, into a street or just just like into, like, have one people in a park and just, like, see how fast the cops show up because, you know, in terms of like, yeah, yeah, yeah, that I was, I was at any kind of protest. Cops immediately wanted to take anything I was holding. You're not allowed to say the first thing. If if you if you have anything in your hands that's that, that is a that is a problem. Yeah. It's like the First Amendment is just, it's super completely superseded by traffic laws, like laws about like sidewalk maintenance. Like, no, it's all fair. Like none of it. Like you're not you're not allowed to. This, I think is is partially, this is kind of a talk. This is partially, I think, why there's so much focus on the right about the first minute because they they wanted they want to draw attention away from the fact that like the actual thing that's fake about it is that you can't gather people and meet anywhere and they want to draw it into these like, inane. Like this professor like said the N word a bunch of times in class and isn't it bad that people are mad at them? But I think also go tying this sort of back to occupy. You know, OK, so so occupy functions right in insofar as there is a a physical location where people can go and physically interact with each other. And that's a problem, because at some point the police. Are just like, no. And they start. 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. 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I literally record this entire podcast on my favorite JBL headphones. They are absolutely incredible. So JBL wants us all to listen on our terms, living in the moment. Our moment unfiltered. The JBL podcast at jbl.com. Clearing the encampments. And I think this is this is the other thing with Occupy, is that. Outside of like parts of Oakland and that that's a whole other thing that. Yeah, but it's it's it's incredibly, studiously nonviolent in a way that like. Nothing I've ever seen before since is. Yeah. So, so, so there's a lot there. I'm gonna, I want to talk about it because that's there's a lot. But yeah. So I think I think the militarization of the police thesis is is incomplete if you don't also talk about the police ification of the military, right. So like part of what happens with with the great expansion of the of the carceral state, part of that is also a response to the Vietnam War and and mass resistance within you know the troops there are like in the in the in like the last two years when ground troops are there in in Vietnam there's like. 1400 fragging incidents where where you know where where privates and and recruits killed their officers. the US Army during the during Vietnam was on the brink of a of collapse in the way that like like the Russian army was looking in 1917. It was like like like the numbers I think, I think the number one point there was like 40% of the army by the end of Vietnam was either on strike or just like not following orders. Yeah. No, it was it was complete. There was the reason that that Nixon pursued Vietnamization, which is when they just start doing air campaigns. Bombing and napalm is because they couldn't rely on ground troops anymore. They just, they were useless. They were all high. You know, the talk about the, there's a lot of talk about like heroin, but like that was kind of a form of resistance within the lines and the complicated way, whatever. OK, that's all very. So the military realizes that it can't function as a mass military in the model that nation states have done since the Napoleonic wars, right, which is like the the the mass, you know, the mass recruitment of the Citizen soldier. That's sort of how war is fought between, you know, 1810 and and 1970. And then it becomes clear that's not gonna work anymore because the because the aims of the country is and the power of nationalism have become too abstracted, fascism has done too much damage to that image. There's just like there's it doesn't really work anymore. So the military turns into a sort of what it always was also, which is like a colonial policing force. And so the police, the military drift towards one another in form and function. OK. So in Occupy one of the micro histories that I think it's forgotten is that like I mean because because it took a week and like who remembers this week? But for like weirdos like me who were there is that, like, there was no one at Zuccotti in the first first week. And one of the big things that happened was these, these, these, you know, young white girls got caught in a police net and pepper sprayed and there was this video that went around to them getting pepper sprayed and screaming, this particular, this woman on her knees, you know, screaming with, with tears and pepper sprays, yeah, going down her face. And that really outraged people because, you know, they were, you know, it was police repression and police violence. So in terms of the question of nonviolence, yes, there was a lot of non violence. It was a constant. Right. That took honestly took until the George Floyd Uprising for the right, for our side to win, frankly. But, but but but during occupy there was, you know, there was a lot of nonviolence nonsense and I think like but but another thing that happened though was that like, you know, like I said, people were marching every day. So even in New York, where I think the political height was kind of achieved October 1st when we took the Brooklyn Bridge and I think, I think New York never really like had a big moment. Again, like it was largely sort of like smaller things after that, but. Like and there was a mass arrest on the Brooklyn Bridge. We marched over the Brooklyn Bridge. The Brooklyn Bridge got shut down. They arrested 700 of us. It was the first big infrastructure shutdown that happened in the US since the LA riots. It was it was a big deal at the time. Now it happens all the time. I put a note out, though, specifically for the Brooklyn Bridge. If if you're because people I've seen every, every single time. One of these people try to take the Brooklyn Bridge and they all got arrested. Is like can can y'all like, please, I am begging you. If you're going to try to take a bridge, make sure you have a way out. Like, yeah, you have to hold one of the sides, otherwise you're going to get arrested. Yeah, yeah, exactly. A bridge is designed to not have a way out. That's how bridges work. Yeah, exactly. Please, please don't all get arrested. It's it's in fact bad and yeah, sorry. I've I have seen a few people successfully take bridges a few times, but that's because there was like 3 cop cars and like 15,000 people. Yeah, exactly. If you have like a block with 200 kids, you're not going to be able to hold the bridge. Yeah. 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 his girls, getting him in a position of vulnerability when he got ahold of their neck. That was it. 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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 to it could happen. Here, a podcast about a crumbling empire and planting seeds in the spaces between. Here's part two of our interview with Vicky Osterweil about the legacy of Occupy Wall Street. But but, you know, like, you were saying, you know, like that that, you know, don't get arrested. It's bad. So I think when occupy really started, you know, we were mostly people who had been educated by the Co optation of the civil rights movement, which is that it was all nonviolent and that the whole thing was getting arrested. And Martin Luther King was, like, the only voice that made any sense. And that was what was effective, blah, blah. We had all learned that in school, right? We had all been trained that, like, nonviolence was, like, the only thing that made sense. And that worked. And I think, like those of us who learned about it all in school, which is certainly not everyone, but like, I think like, like. The the experience of occupy of, like, every day, just getting beat up by the cops everyday, like, getting attacked, getting arrested. Some people got really, some people got really nihilistically nonviolent. Like, some people, like, really dug in and they're like, yeah, like, like, we're like, no, like there is nothing we can do except be beaten. And it turned this, like, real masochistic game. Yeah. But that happens. Yeah. That still happens all the time. Oh yeah. Yeah. That's one. That's one common response. But another thing that happened was that. People started breaking through that, that that ****. People. People started on the ground. Like, I remember a March, you know, early on, you know, the police would attack and everyone would sort of, like, try to deescalate. And people would try to like, you know, like, like, talk to the cops or whatever. And like by November, when right before the camps got cleared, I remember being on a March where we stole all of their orange netting they were using and we were just holding it over our head every March and, like, trapping cops in it. So, like, even in New York, where things never got that intense, like in some ways in terms of direct action. Like that lesson on the ground, like. You have to be, you have to be very ideologically committed to get hit with a baton three times and still think the police are on your side, you know, yeah, you have to like really, you have to really be drinking the kool-aid. And some people are like, some people really do want to believe that. But I think, I think that was one. O during occupy like those of us who hated the police were pretty lonely even though the police were beating us up. But by the end of occupied the seeds had really been sown for a lot of generational understanding of the police that didn't necessarily immediately so fruit like it wasn't immediately obvious, but I think like I think like folks who stayed in struggle from there grew more and more anti police. Yeah that was that in general that was well OK so my sisters was less with occupying, more with. Like the 2013 stuff in Turkey, but it's like that. That was because I I was brought up in that like the sort of like fog Gandhian, like, yeah, MLK, civil disobedience. And then it was like. Like, I watched Turkey happen, and it was like, hey, here's my friend. Just, like, getting his ribs broken by a cop. And then, like, there's rebar and, you know, and it rabas sort of where the Egyptian movement dies. And maybe they just, you know, they bring out the machine guns and they just shoot everyone. Yeah. And at a certain point, like, you know, this is the limit of nonviolence, right? Is that what happens if they just shoot you? And and gonji. You know, if you ever want to like go down the the Gandhi rabbit hole like Gandhi like, writes this letter to like. Like the Jews of Germany, where he's telling them to, like, throw themselves on the blades of the Nazis and it's like. This is this is like, yeah, it sucks. This is ridiculous. Like, just this is like you. It's being complacent for abuse. Any Windows Studios has a really good video on why nonviolence helps the state and how basically activists that try to force other, you know demonstrators to adhere strictly to nonviolence. That's basically that's that's them in that's them basically saying that if. Like that, that's them endorsing the police, beating somebody up like that. Like that's it's it's not actually tied to any kind of movement and it doesn't actually help. Like I. And we could actually see this last year with, like, the first few weeks of, like, you know, abuse from the state, actually making headlines and actually changing people. But after a while, it just didn't matter. Like, a cop could pin someone down and pummel their face in, like, August and, like, who gives a ****? Nobody. Like, it doesn't. It doesn't matter, you know, like, that's why. I I found it funny when you talked about like you know people getting mad because cops were like macing people when they surround them. Like if that happened, no one no one would give a **** like, yeah, like I think not not at all anymore. Yeah, totally. Well, I think I think part of it is, is the first time that you see it. It's like, what on Earth like this I think has been one of the things that's been the core of the the the whole sort of 2019 like late 2018-2019 to like 2021 sort of cycle. Solutions is that, like, if if you're just like a dude in a grocery store and some guy runs in is like running away from the cops and then like 15 riot cops and just start beating the **** out of them is the thing that happens like a lot. Like if you just see that, right, there's no way you can actually like, like if you ordinary person just witnessed the cops running up and just being the someone. Like, there's no way you can't not be sort of radicalized against the police by it. But like, yeah, but there's a certain point where you hit the decent. Realization happens. Yeah. More quickly than what it should. Yeah, and we we stopped caring. I agree. I agree with both of you that, like that, like, both. It is shocking and radicalizing, and we get desensitized because there is so much spectacular pressure. Yeah, to naturalize the police. And nonviolence ideology is part of that as part of naturalizing police violence, right? Like, there's nothing you can do about police violence, so all you can do is control yourself, and therefore you should, you know, you should be better or whatever. Yeah. Gandhi had this whole fantasy about the perfect army would March unarmed into machine gunfire. Yeah, and would just be mowed down. And he's a fascist, frankly, yeah. And and yeah, and you only need to look at his opinions about black Africans when he was, when he was in Africa to see that. Even if you even if you just read like. Like even if you just read like self-reliance, it's like this is. You know yeah everything I I wanna talk about with with the the peace police though which is that like. They're also like in in terms of like. Fighting like inflicting violence on other protesters, like they are the most violent, like of of of the factions you see in approach that does happen very well. Maybe not the most like, like does happen like, like they they beat people up. Like, yeah, I'm just gonna say like it ties into like protest security and when protest security is usually working with these more like peace police type organizers and then they use protest security to literally beat up people who are doing more radical action against the state. That happens all the time, yes. Ohh yeah, protest security. When I see protest security or Marshalls, I know exactly that. That the that we're in a bad, we're in a bad March. Yeah. The only time I've ever been physically assaulted by another protester was during Occupy, actually, during after the night after we been evicted, which is like November 15th, I think. And if people don't remember, Obama and the FBI coordinated this nationally, all the occupying comments got swept within a week of each other. On that March, we're marching around March around all night and I'm just dragging a trash can into the street because we're being followed by police cars and I'm literally attempting to like do some education at the same time. I'm like pulling the trash can in the street and I'm yelling, you know, I am doing this because I want to protect us from police violence. Like if this is in the street, then the cop cars can't catch us as much. That's why we build barricades, like literally trying to like, yell this because like, you know, because it pulling a trash can, the streets incredibly ineffective ultimately. So it's like literally it was literally just like for education. Prices at that point, basically. Anyway. So she says a lot of people would, like, pull them back out of the street. Whatever. This guy runs up on me and grabs me by the collar and lifts me up and, like, threatens me with this ******* fist. He says. If my mom can't get to work tomorrow because of you, like, I'll beat the **** out of you. And we're like, we're marching in Manhattan at like, 1:00 AM I'm like, what the hell are you talking about? Like, he would he would have hurt me, like, pretty bad if a friend of mine had, like, luckily had my back and, like, deescalated a bit. That's the only time I've ever been, like, physically, like, brought up, like, into a fight. With by by another protester, was was a guy insisting that me dragging a trash can into the street was beyond the pale. And I had no pun intended. And I want to just talk a bit more about like how systematic the violence was, like, because OK, so originally. I was going to try to get someone from Occupy Oakland to come talk about this and I talked to a lot of people and. The biggest thing that I got was that no one would talk about it on the record because they they got because Oakland had, Oakland had a blacklist. And if if you were in Occupy and like anyone else found out about it, like people like, people couldn't people spent half a decade just not being able to find jobs because they they just blacklisted everyone. And like, to this day, like the thing I was told was like, yeah, I'm. I I won't talk about this because, you know, like if I talk about this like I will be fired, all of my family, everyone around me will be fired. And there's like, I think like. This is everything. But when we talk about sort of the collapse of Occupy, the extent to which, after Obama and the FBI ordered the camps closed, the policy is that the cops are going to torture anyone who attempts to, like, gather in a place. Yep, Yep. For for two years, you couldn't have a meeting outside without the police attacking, basically. And yeah, and and yeah, I mean, it was, it was, you know, I think, like a lot of the people who now claim that that Occupy is the reason that they do politics or whatever for Bernie Sanders or whatever. At the time, they were saying that the reason it collapsed because there was no organization, there was no structure, there was no political party, there was no, you know, whatever. There was no demands. And, like, it's true that it was poorly. Recognized, like there's no doubt, but like we got beat out of the streets, like we got beat out of the streets. And like people tried for six months really intensely and for another six months after that less intensely to restart that energy. There was all this works words like a general strike on Mayday 2012, which ended up not really working. Which is actually exactly the kind of demand filled one day of action kind of politics that they were demanding actually failed, which I think is telling, but but in the meantime, like, you know. Occupy, like Zuccotti, got cleared, but for a while there was a thing. No one remembers this, I don't think, but there was a thing up in Union Square and there was an occupation for three weeks. They would like all the Union Square freaks and like a bunch of occupiers and yeah, the cops. Just like, it was just like batons out on site for a few years in New York. And I know it was like that everywhere else or most everywhere else. And that that came down from on high, that, like, the police were just like, oh, what was dangerous about this was people. Gathering in public. Yeah. So we really need to like, we really need to like enforce the Second Amendment being meaningless now. We really need to stop meetings from happening in public. And that violence was super intense and super real and a lot of people got beaten out of the movement, you know, and a lot of people got really demoralized and left. And and I understand why. It was scary and awful and there was a lot of repression and you know, and and and it has continued to sort of that that kind of repression has continued to escalate, but. What has successfully happened in our movements, I think, to our to our credit, is that we haven't actually formed the kinds of hierarchical organizations that allow for more effective police repression. All the police have right now against us, for the most part, is batons in the street. And they have a lot more trouble infiltrating, a lot more trouble. Which doesn't mean they aren't trying like crazy, but they have a lot more trouble taking down the movements in the in a sort of COINTELPRO way, right the the the modes of repression have changed. That, but that's also because we don't have, it's a combination of fact. We don't have those forms of organization, but we also don't have those forms of organization because they don't emerge spontaneously from our living conditions like they used to. So I think it's it's you can't just give credit to anyone thing. There's a lot of different factors at play. I will say one of the other things that that I've noticed and I think I'm pretty sure this happened, I've talked to talk people talk about occupies it. Like the first thing, if you have a group of people who are just there, the first thing the cops tried to do is appoint a leader. So that they have one person, they can negotiate this and this lets them sort of this sort of like access point to which they sort of break like the demands of the crowd is that they they find one person, they point in the lead and they get that person to sort of like. Be the liaison, my favorite Occupy joke. I gotta give respect to occupy Denver. This is the best joke ever happened in Occupy. They announced the beginning of one week on Friday. We are going to announce our leader, akimi. Denver has chosen a leader and the whole movement got so upset and everyone was so angry. I was like, what the ****? And I'm like, they had this, like, Big press conference and their leader was a golden retriever dog. And it was like it was as a personal kudos to occupy Denver, whoever organized that prank. I love you. I guess, yeah. So Speaking of kudos to a place, the last thing I wanted to talk about was. The giant like port occupation strike thing in Oakland. Yeah, because I mean that that wasn't the first time people had done it. Like I know during the anti war movements, even 2007, 2008, there's one people trying to occupy ports. But in in Oakland they like did it. They put like 40,000 people like in this in the port of Oakland and they shut it down. Yeah and and I think that was like that was. One of the things, one of the stories to kind of been lost from this because like, you know, like, that was the point. Like, so like, I know people in Oakland who like they got like drugged repeatedly drugged by police informants because particularly Oakland is also Oakland's also way the Occupy. Occupy is way, way less white than any other rooms and they get. Like the the the kind of police repression they get is. Like, just like. Yeah you know, again like people, people being repeatedly drugged by informants, like cop shooting people in the face like the, you know, you have the blacklist, you have all the stuff and and I think, you know, part of it is yeah, yeah and and I think part of it is because part of it is because it's a bunch of non white people and that's you know, that's just what happens. And but I think another part of it was also that there was this fear about. Yes. So, so the reason the poor strike is able to happen is because there's sort of there's a complicated game here where the other people like sort of got involved in in like longshoreman, union politics. But that's sort of like fusion of of you have all the people in the street and then they start shutting down ports and that like. But the cops like lose their minds over that like that. That I think was like extremely scary to them. In a lot of ways. Yeah. I mean, you know, I, I would, you know, I would defer to anyone from Oakland who was who was there during that. You know, I have comrades there. I've talked to you. I've read about it since. But, you know, I think I think part of the heightened police repression and the heightened power of the Oakland, Occupy Oakland folks was the Oscar Grant rebellion, like I mentioned in 2009, which had happened, which had, you know, had been a few 100 people, but it had been really rowdy. There had been like looting and smashing maybe maybe more than a few 100, maybe near 1000 people on the on the first night. And you also obviously have the legacy of the Black Panthers in Oakland. So, you know, the Black Panther. You know, forms in Oakland. It last in Oakland a decade and 1/2 longer than it does anywhere else in the country. So there's a lot of like, and you also have the really, really intense justification of the Bay of that's happening. Yeah. So there's an incredible political and economic pressure in the Bay combined with history of radicalism that really, you know. But yeah, I think also the other thing that's really interesting, I think what you said, like you, you put your, you know, you hit the nail on the head. Like it was largely like it was terrifying that it was the most effective direct action in the Occupy movement, I think, was that port shut down? I think without a doubt. The biggest mass direct action that that Occupy achieved was that November 12th was that was, that was the date of that, I don't remember 2011 near the end of the year, the end of the cycle. And I think the other thing about about that though, that was very similar to the Ultra globalization movement, right, where the unions had sort of teamed up with, you know, like in Seattle there's a lot of trade unions on the ground next to all the black blocks, right. And I think like that that image, I think really it's really interesting. It really terrified. Please. And it really, it could be, it could have been a vector for a certain kind of like, labor first politics that could have emerged. But instead, like, the labor first people have turned out to be all electoral list. Yeah. It seems that's sort of a weird blip that hasn't really returned. Yeah. And it's interesting, too because, like, because now, like, you know, like the AFL-CIO, just like, you know, AFL-CIO is like, no cop unions. Great. And it's like there's this. There's this sort of, like, split between. The street movements and organized labor, because they're. Off doing like electoral stuff in like cop **** which is this sort of. Yeah and and and and have been now for for seven decades. You know I mean I mean really like like the the the buying off of the unions and the New Deal you know with some brief you know with brief windows of like Wildcat action in the 70s and the 90s. The buying off of the unions has never really gone away. Industrial unionism in the US has has long been and and and in Europe everywhere where everywhere where those developed in the early 20th century that labor movement they've really been successfully bought off and I don't think. There is, uh, I don't think that those unions are like a big easy route to power anymore than yeah, I don't like, yeah, they're going to overthrow the government. I mean, I will say, yeah, this is, this is my, my, also my. The thing that I plug every time is that the AFL-CIO over through Monday. Like yeah like they they they're they're people on the ground were like directing like like we're we're we're we're directing a bunch of the anti Allende stuff and it's like and it was and it was the union bureaucracy is like more recently in 2001 who are in the wake of of September 11th who transformed the anti globalization rhetoric into by American. Yeah. Which it turned out was often buying prison made materials but like that was that was the Union. The Union sort of defanged defanged alter globalization into by American yeah there's I think there's a whole. Their story there about how that like how antiglobalization turned from, like, you know, the Zapatistas to like Trump. Yeah, which is incredibly depressing. And yeah, go goes goes through this line of sort of. Like the replacement of internationalism and nationalism and that kind of like by local stuff and the fact that like. These people sort of just decided that partially after Seattle Post 911, they're just like we're not doing direct action again. And in Oakland's like Oakland, like like that's that's like, that's like the one big exception to that was that moment and then it just kind of just has never happened again. And that's partially because that that Union ILWU ILWU I think out there is on the on the courts that was a particularly like radical Union that had some Wildcats like and and was like like more democratic than any of the many of the other unions in in in those those states. But yeah but that's that's also like a big story for another time obviously the competition of global anti globalization over the 20 year. Yeah. You know, this is kind of corny, but like, what? What can we actually learn from what happened there? What went wrong? And sort of. What the limits of it was? Yeah. OK. So the the legacy so I think 1 legacy that the legacy that is most widely accepted and known which we can go over quickly is that it reintroduced class discourse largely into the popular you know the 90% which is a very, very bad class politics but like you know like like the you know it reintroduced some of that sort of classwork classwork discourse and and I think more important than that but but not that dissimilar it reintroduced. Street politics into the US I think part of the legacy that gets forgotten because like the general the the global Ness of the wave gets forgotten as well. Like is that when when **** pops off in New York. Everyone in the world knows, or at least they did then. Right. Because America had been so successfully, you know, appeased politically for so long that I think that when occupy popped off in 2017, like in 2011, rather, it really like signals to the world like the rest of the world. Like, oh, like, this is real. Like, even in the, you know, even in the center of empire, like, like, people are rising up. It's hard to remember and it's weird. But, like, there was an occupy in New York, in the UK, there was one in Tel Aviv. There was actually kind of like a pro Palestinian. Occupy and Tel Aviv briefly. And you know, I think maybe the most powerful sort of immediate tactical offshoot of Occupy was occupy Nigeria in the first weeks of 2013 when President good luck Jonathan took took the fuel subsidies away. And there were like sort of two weeks of really intense revolutionary rioting in in Nigeria that that then called themselves Occupy as a way of being legible to the rest of the world. I think the other legacies though, that are that are a little more sort of subtle, I guess, is like that a lot of folks still in the struggle now, like, I will still meet people my age who, like, I've met. I have two comrades here in Philly who I didn't know at the time, but who were organizing in New York, right. Like we probably hung out in rooms together. Like we probably like, we were probably in the same spaces, but like, so like a lot of folks you know it. Each of these waves that has come has left. You know, some people leave, some people swing right. But like, there's a residue of folks that like. Becomes the base for the next movement. And I think like Occupy really did provide a lot of people in a way that the gap between alter globalization and occupy didn't produce nearly as large a contingent of people. Although of course there are those people. But I think also like really importantly, the tactics of Occupy, one of the things that was incredible about the George Floyd Uprising was that every tactic that we have tried in the last 10 years reemerged right. There was a prison strike. There were. Indigenous blockades, there were me too style call outs which of course developed out of punk and queer scene. Call outs that have been going on for a decade. But there were occupations, right? You had the Chaz in Seattle, which we can you know yeah situation where we will get to that one day in any case. In any case like I think like that that has remained in the repertoire of proletarian struggle, like as a result of of Occupy and and and if it had just been occupied maybe it wouldn't be as a result of the global movement of the squares. Which obviously goes until Tahrir Square in 2013, 2014 in Turkey I think is probably the the the God Gezi Park in Turkey which is like the last big moment of the square is really. But that five year wave like it was really really important in terms of building activists, building a class of of well I don't you know whatever building revolutionaries whatever you want to call them, the good version of the thing not the bad version of it produced a lot of them and I think like in terms of its limits and like what we can. Learn from it. Like, I think. I think taking the police more seriously, it was really important. I think taking police violence more seriously was a really important legacy of Occupy, I think. I thought. I think. I think pushing towards the limit of what total democracy meant. A lot of people in Occupy remember that like a lot of Ron Paul people and like weirdo like and the Fed cranks and like right wingers like spoke and occupy and like that. That that total open populism of Occupy I think was both probably its greatest strength and its ultimate limit right, which was that like it was never going to be able to really like sharpen itself into the into the knife and it wanted to be so like really change the face of of global capital or whatever. Because of because there were so many white. Yeah. Middle class. Yeah. Like like a bunch of the like a lot of the like the, the current far right media people came out like center Fairbanks was like an Occupy streamer. Tim Poole, yeah. You're welcome. For Tim Poole, who was filming on the last day, a bunch of us doing some things and Tim Poole did not manage to continue filming is all I'll say. And after that is when he started swinging, right. So you're welcome, everybody. Anyway, sorry, that guy's a ******* *******. He's an ******* then. Though, I think what's important to know is that a lot of these people were SUS as hell back then to occupy folks like, they were around in occupied because of the nature of Occupy. Like, but like they were. We already didn't like them, you know? Like a lot of these people were already unpopular, were already disliked in the movement. So yeah. But yeah, I think, I think so. I think, you know. There is there, there are all these different legacies from it that I think ultimately the legacy things that emerged are much more important than Occupy. I think, you know, one of the things about it was that it really was just like the reemergence of St politics and like, like, as the reemergence of St politics, like, it was pretty limited and it was not that effective at changing things. And also, it was incredibly effective at leading to the last decade of struggle in the US and I think you can't, you know, I think there's a tendency to want to judge movements by the immediate results that they produce, you know, and like, you know, I think was it is, am I about to quote Mao? I think I am. Was it like when when he gets asked, you know, what was the, what was the, you know, in, in the 20th anniversary of the Chinese revolution, he gets asked like, what was the, what was the outcome of the Chinese revolution? He says it's too early to tell. Right. Like, I think like that. Maybe that's why I don't remember who that is. I don't know. But they were right. Like, yeah, they were right. They were right. A lot more people died than what we thought. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, yeah, they they they successfully transitioned to capitalism and they transition to capitalism. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it was. Yeah. So what was the result of Occupy? It's too early to tell. But I think, like, I also think, like the things that we've talked about here, we're we're core components of what? What, why it mattered. I do think one other kind of effect that it's had and it's hard for me to gauge. Is because I've only been around post occupy, but I feel like now when people try to get stuff started, they really fall kind of into an Occupy mindset where they're like the only way to make this successful is to hold this space. And I think that is really a default way that even more experience, like both experienced organizers and new organizers really can just keep using their default. It's because like, that's just that's just really like what they go into. You saw this in a lot of different cities last year, whether they like people trying to set up. Spaces to hold. A lot of them did not work. You know, a lot of them, a lot of them were like, Oh yeah, we're trying to hold the space for like an hour because then the cops pushed us out, right. And and, you know, in a place like the Chaz, it got extended out a bit longer. Chaz had its own problems. And other cities in the Pacific Northwest, this happened. A city happened in Atlanta, too. It happened. It happened in a lot of places. And we, like, I think George Floyd Square, is maybe one of the more honestly successful ones for how they were able to. To actually kind of keep police away. And they did, they avoided turning it into this big media thing like, like with the Chaz did. And I don't know, like, I think I I grew very, I I saw a lot of people kind of grow kind of frustrated with this like kind of Occupy mentality. Because what that kind of results in is people just setting up outside of a police headquarters and trying to stay there for as long as possible, which is like, that's not doing anything. You're just kind of waiting to get beat up. Yeah. Yeah. But it's complicated, though, right? Like, in defense of that tactic, like, I think, like, like, that was also very, that was also very core to Ferguson, right. They held West Florissant for a week, and 1/2 now, they did it much. They didn't do it by setting up tents and sitting there and also, like, you know, like, like a thing that gets forgotten a lot in the, in the histories, you know, occupy ice. It was pretty spot. It was big here in Philly. Yeah, it was. It was massive here in Portland. Yeah. Yeah. So, like, there were moments when that tactic really does, like, it's important to have a space to meet in. And I think we did learn. But I also agree that it has become like any tactic that works once it becomes a fetish, right? Yeah. It's always trying to balance basics like, you know, the the two big things that have happened the past 10 years is occupying Hong Kong. So people try to balance these two kind of almost opposing things like hold this space and be water. That's kind of the two things that people yell at the street back and forth. And no one really knows what to do because we're just yelling slogans. And I was thinking about this. So they're like the. One time the people in Hong Kong got pinned down when they had, they had this whole university siege. It was a **** show, like, you know, like the the people in Hong Kong like. You know OK like even they're like they they did not have by by the time you're getting to the the the the sort of the size of the universities like. That, like, you know, like they had like, they had like, like Molotov workshops, like there were people like standing on the roof shooting bows and arrows and it like, it just wasn't enough. And I mean in part partially, partially it has to do with the fact that like. You know, Hong Kong's in a uniquely bad position insofar as it is one city and it's like the the the only possible way that a social movement in Hong Kong like. Ever just doesn't get crushed by just the fact that they're outnumbered like 1000 to one is if it spreads. But like, yeah, it became this, you know, like that, that. No mints like, yeah, the, the, this, that, that. The whole problem with with trying to hold space becomes really apparent there, because even if you have an extremely large number of people, right? Like. Like attack? 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 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. In the 1980s and 90s, a psychopath terrorized the country of Belgium. A serial killer and kidnapper was abducting children in the bright light of day. His unspeakable crimes and the incompetence or unwillingness of the police to stop him brought the entire country of Belgium to the brink of revolution. From Tenderfoot TV in iHeartRadio this is la Monstra. A story of abomination and conspiracy that led to the demise of the entire institution of Belgian federal police and rattled the foundations of its government. The story about the man who simply become known as La Monster. Listen for free on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What's up you guys? It's your girl Betty who here? And you know this about me. It has always been very important to me to stand out and be authentically me, not only with my music, but my style and my vibe. And JBL really gets that. They know your headphones and speakers should look as original as the music you're listening to, or in my case, making. That's why I'm obsessed with my JBL headphones and speakers that help me reflect who I really am, from true wireless headphones to pulsing party boxes. Ohh yeah, party boxes guys. JBL has a wide and colourful range of products that help me feel myself when I wanna vibe my way. I literally record this entire podcast on my favorite JBL headphones. They are absolutely incredible. So JBL wants us all to listen on our terms living in the moment. Our moment unfiltered. The JBL podcast at jbl.com. Picking one isolated space in mass is thing the cops are really good at, and I think the really bad at is trying to deal with like, you know, like 500 people, like 700 instances of 500 people going through places just aren't enough of them. But yeah what was it like the the head of who was it was a big big muck muck in the in the national police. In the national police, you know whatever said that like we can very easily handle one March of 10,000 people but we can't handle 10 marches of 1000 people, right. It was. And you gotta see this in Chicago like this is this is this is how the police lost control of the miracle mile was like, yeah. Just there's people everywhere. Everywhere everywhere and. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, I know. And that's and that's how that's that's what, you know, I mean, certainly in Philly where it was, where it was very, very powerful. That's what the George Floyd rebellion looked like was what people were everywhere in Philly, all the neighborhoods, you know, people didn't, you know, like we were out there, you know, whatever and like. They're like, people didn't know what was going on three blocks S you know what I mean? Like it was like, it was like that, like there was there were fights happening everywhere. And under those conditions, the police can't can't, no matter how militarized they are, they can't act effectively anyway. They can act they they they certainly will. They will act like pigs, but I think like. Yeah. So I think that that that sort of dispersion. But I think the other there's so there's I'm going to promote a really, really weirdo crank book right now, but this is sure, go for it. Funny. This 20th century, like literary weirdos guy Elias Canetti's, Italian Ohboy, wrote this book called Crowds in Power, where he attempts to he attempts to describe the entirety of human history and anthropology in terms of crowds. This is obviously impossible and ridiculous, but that book has the best descriptions. Of crowd dynamics I have ever encountered anywhere interesting I like. I like people who take big swings because they end up they miss. Yeah, yeah. Miss has lots of interesting stuff. I think that's why people like settlers by Jackie so much. Like, I think the thesis wasn't great, but there's so much incredible stuff in that book that, like, it works anyway, that having a really wild thesis allows you to, like, really, like, get into some. Yeah. So anyway, one of the things that Kineti talks about in that book is that a crowd, an open crowd. As he describes it, an open crowd is. Must constantly be growing. And the moment it stops growing, it starts shrinking, right? Yeah. Like this. I think that dynamic in terms of both movement and like a momentary protest or riot, right, is like, really real. I can totally see that. Yeah. And I think one of the things that particularly organizers are trained to do and like that that that we learn to do, especially in low periods, and we're like organizing these little, you know, these little crystallized groups of like hard cadre or whatever. Is that like you that like what? We learn as organized as something that is defendable. But once you start defending something, you start losing it because we cannot take on the state or the police in a head on confrontation. And this is this can be confusing because sometimes you can successfully defend for a few weeks, maybe even a few months. You can defend a space sometimes. But once people get really interested in the defending, then they begin forming bureaucracies, governments, internal policing, security forces, whatever it is, they start becoming the like the the they start undermining the very thing that made it powerful, which was this sudden rapid growth. The sudden like, you know, like like big explosion of power and self recognition that comes in the beginning of movement and I think. I don't think there's a way to will that problem away. Like, I don't think we can just, like, think our way out of it like it's just a problem. But I do think that, like, one thing that we could take from the experience of Occupy and the experience of the last decade is that, like, if you do, you know, consider yourself someone who wants to participate in these kind of movements, which is why you're listening to this podcast right now. Don't try and defend. Like, don't try and defend. Like some things will need to be defended sometimes, obviously. But like if your main thing is like the thing we should never defend, something we've achieved so far, we should never not be willing to destroy it in order to, like, build something bigger, right? Like we should never know movement thing that we have. Be it an Occupy park, be it, be it like a taken space defending that should never outweigh the possibility of expanding. And if that's our strategic mindset. Obviously, moment to moment, you can't just be thinking that constantly, yeah, but the strategic mindset is like what we have now is, is only good to the extent that it can turn into something more. Rather than we have to defend what we have now. If you can think that way, I think it opens up a lot of strategic possibilities and I think it it's what has worked over the last decade that that I've seen is when people attack, when people expand, when people try to do try to do new stuff. It doesn't always work and it doesn't always hold, but that's but when that stuff stops happening the movement is doomed. I think, I think I think that's a really good way to. Wrap things up. I think that's a nice, beautiful sentiment. I kind of view this type of thing in more than just protests and, you know, in in different parts of life. I think you can always learn from past experiences, from past struggles, but if you try to perfectly replicate them, you're absolutely going to fail. Yeah, you can. You should always learn and move on, but you should not be focused on any kind of replication. Is there any other your books or writings you'd want to plug before we wrap up here? Sure. Yeah. I mean, I wrote a book that came out last year. Called in defense of looting. Came out in 2020 with bold type. I am currently also writing I I'm obsessed with movies. I write a movie review column for the Al Jazeera plus I did not know those letters. Yeah the newsletter sub stack, if you want to read. I mean it's really it is really a movie review. So if you want you know cranky anarchist theory, it's not the spot for you. Otherwise, yeah I'm I'm on a pretty long social media break right now but good for you there eventually. I'll probably come back inevitably, unfortunately. Yeah. Just. Yeah. You know, I just have I, I have writing popping up every every now and then and and and if you read it, I would appreciate it. Well, is that helpful? Yeah, absolutely. Wonderful. Thank you and yeah, thank you for so much for coming on to talk about. Occupying stuff that I think a lot of people hear about, but I know at least all of my generation does not fully kind of grasp it. It is. It is literally my pleasure. Like I, you know, I wasted so much of my life thinking about this. I'm so glad to be able to share some of it with some people. I'm so glad. So glad you're able to join us too. This is. I've been looking forward to this for a while, so yeah, it's very excited. Alright, that wraps up us today. You can find us on Twitter and Instagram at cool Zone Media and happen here pod. We'll be back in for a few more episodes this week. Autio. Executive producer Paris Hilton brings back the hit podcast how men think, and that's good news for anyone that is confused by men, which is basically everyone get an inside look at what goes on in the mind of men from the men themselves. It's real talk straight from the source. How men Think podcast is exactly what we need to figure them out. It's going to be fun, informative, and probably. A bit scary at times because we're literally going inside the minds of men. As much as we like to think all men are the same, they're actually very different. Each week, a celebrity guest host provides honest advice in his area of expertise. When I agreed to do this reboot, I had a few conditions. No sugar coating, no mind games, and absolutely no mansplaining. Men are hard enough to understand without the mind games. Listen to how men think on the 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. I'm Eve Rodsky, author of the New York Times Bestseller Fair play and find your Unicorn space activists on the gender division of Labor attorney and family mediator. And I'm doctor Edina Rucar, a Harvard physician and medical correspondent with an expertise in the science of stress, resilience, mental health, and burnout. We're so excited to share our podcast, time out, a production of iheart podcasts, and Hello Sunshine, we're uncovering why society makes it so hard for women to treat their time with the. Value it deserves, so take this time out with us. Listen to time out a Fair Play podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. That was the introduction. I did it, Sophie. Sophie saying that's an acceptable introduction. You know what podcast this is? You clicked on it, so I don't need to tell you the title. I don't need to say who we are. I'm just going to dive. Right into the ******* episode. No, I'm not. This is it could happen here, a podcast about things falling apart and and what to maybe do to to arrest that and do something better in its place. And you know folks who are are regular listeners who listen to the original scripted episodes of it could happen here. The 1st 15 episodes, which I certainly recommend to everybody know that one area in which I kind of separate from a lot of particularly more liberal folks and even some folks. On the left is an embrace of the fact that firearms are sometimes necessary tools, especially in times of collapse when things get bad. Now, that said, we're also not. Kind of gun culture. People here, we try not to, for one thing, recommend that everybody necessarily pick up a gun. There's a lot of people, perfectly nice people who shouldn't have them who don't need to have them. You know, if you're dealing with suicidal ideation or whatever, we're not. The point is, we try to be very careful about how we we talk about firearms as a potentially useful or even potentially necessary tool in the times that we're in. And today, since we're a few weeks into this, we've covered producing food, we've covered some medical stuff we've talked about. Uh, community organizing and a number of other things that I think are priorities for most people before, you know, getting strapped. Today, we're going to talk a little bit about getting strapped, and my guest today is Paul. Paul, do you want to kind of introduce your background and brief so people know why, why you're on here? Sure, Robert. I was in the Marine Corps and infantry, and after that I went to security consulting and then to the Federal Protective Service and finally the ATF. Some of. Our funnest agencies, yeah, all my favorite organizations there, well, they're better than the the, what is it, the FDA, yeah, they they beat the FDA. I mean in terms of body count, they're certainly better than the FDA. Yeah. And what what do you do now, Paul, that you're you're you're out of that line of work. Well I do two things. I got a day job at Disney World and then the the side gig is we run a explosives and machine gun supply company also body armor a handful of other things, but that that's the big thing is destructive devices. Yeah. And you've you've got, I think experience that a lot of people, particularly on this side of the political aisle lack. You know one of the one of the downsides of a kind of rejecting the federal government and the military in all its forms is that there's a lot of people who may accept the validity of being armed and don't really have much in the way of practical training. And firearms are tools that to use most efficacy do require training and practice. You can't just you can pick them up and be dangerous, but not in a way that is particularly protective. You and your community. Oh yeah, yeah. So I wanted to talk about kind of recommendations and and everything. We talk about nothing. We're not talking in the context of forming a militia or in the context of, you know, showing up with guns to to yell at people at a protest if that's the thing you're choosing to do. That's a whole different ball game. We're talking about kind of responsibly arming yourself and your community in a way that is not going to get you in legal trouble. It is also not going to endanger them because one of the things you have to accept about firearms is that. There's a risk, you know, related to owning a firearm, not just the risk that like, you know, suicide risk raises if you have a gun in the house, but just if you don't use them properly, even carrying a gun, you know, it's not unheard of for people carrying guns to have those weapons taken from them and used against them. It happens to police and it happens to to armed citizens. So it's it's a matter of. You know, I think when you accept that you're going to be armed, there's something incumbent upon you to understand the risks of being armed. And I guess that's kind of where I want to start. Like, what are some of the big pitfalls you see people fall into like that I think traditionally training is supposed to help allay to some degree. Well, probably number one is grandpas gun in the closet that's been there for 40 years on fire and somebody just picks it up and throw some ammo in it to go hunt a deer and, you know, it's got a barrel obstruction or something just blows up, you know, but #2 and and the one that can be mitigated by training rather than just general. Not being stupid because it's kind of stupid to pick something up that's really old and just try to shoot it is not shooting yourself. And when you do go out to the range, not shooting other people and then not shooting people in your own home. You know you don't. As much as you might want to, say, defend your own home. Do you want to shoot your wife when she comes home at 2:30 in the morning? After work and wakes you up. And that there are ways to mitigate that and and it's really easy and it's really cheap. So yeah, let's let's let's start with some of those. Just if you're, if you're new to, if you've decided I need a gun for whatever reason, you purchase a gun. You know, I think the most basic first things are are in terms of like actually making that relatively safe is #1 knowing which which kind of firearm to purchase and #2. And these are not in order of importance, these are both very important. #2 is securing that weapon properly as opposed to just having it laying loose in the House, which is never the best place to best way to store a firearm. Yeah, I mean, I I own a number of personal firearms. You know, I'm in my office right now where I got a locked door and nobody can get in and I got a gun safe back behind the monitors. And, you know, I'm comfortable with that, but if if it was in a place where kids could get it, you don't want to just stuff it and and a sock in the closet, which is actually what my mom did when I was a kid. Yeah. I mean safe storage and I mean really being able to identify your target is probably the biggest preventer of like inter family accident because I know, you know, we do talk about safe storage kids and all that, but. Back to the wife coming home. If you just put a light on your gun, $100 light, you can look at the thing that you're shooting in the middle of the night and not shoot someone you don't want to shoot. Yeah, I would go so far as to say that. Like if you've got a a home defense weapon without a light on it, you don't fully have a home defense weapon. No you don't. It's going to be useless in roughly half of the situation statistically. Like if you're looking at when people are actually tend to be endangered in their own homes, the vast majority of the situations in which you might be in danger. When it comes to weapons selection, this is another area where like if you go on maybe one of the worst places in the world to have this discussion as Twitter because everybody has their opinions on Twitter. I, I tend to say because I think most people when they're looking for a first gun, if they're, if they're committed, just like thinking of personal defense, they're going to go for like a lock or something. And I I think unless you're planning on carrying a gun and you can correct me if you disagree here, but I I tend to think a handgun again unless you're intending on carrying a concealed weapon. Is is the last thing that you should own as a gun owner. Uh, I got a mixed opinion on that. I mean, yeah, I I think that. The handiness of a handgun can outweigh some of the issues. I I know you guys dealt with fires up there. We have hurricanes. Being able to stick a handgun into a backpack. You know it can go a long way, or being. That is a good point. Keep keep it on you in your car because I hear we're depending on state laws. Yeah. Everything we say depends on state laws. Yeah. There are states where you can. Yeah. Yeah. If you're in California and you're in one of the counties that it doesn't issue a concealed carry license like LA, it's really hard to get one from what I understand. Yeah. You got to get to San Bernardino if you want to get one of those. Yeah. I mean, First off, like I got a short list of guns and like 2/3 of the list illegal in California, they're they're not on roster. But for what's most usable against or most handy it, it's probably a handgun, but if you're expecting a threat more than like 30 feet away. Have something other than a handgun? Handguns. They suck at hurting people. They suck at killing people. Yeah, they're they're ineffective. They're hard to use. I mean, oh, you say 30 feet away. But if you're not training regularly, hitting something reliably in a stressful situation at 30 feet with a hand, it can be difficult. It's not easy. Yeah. It's not easy, and like I tend to recommend number one, there are some options, like even if you're sticking with a handgun, there are different kind of like options for that. Like I I I'm a big advocate of pistol caliber carbines, which is essentially they're cool as **** the size of a small rifle so you can fit them easily in a backpack. Every backpack I've owned you can, you can stick something like like a CZ scorpion and without much difficulty. And because they're so when you're talking about what makes a weapon easier to use, number one of the number one things is. Right. So the longer the barrel, the more accurate it is. The heavier the gun, the less recoil is a problem, the easier it is to use at range. And a pistol caliber carbine, you know, you stick a light on that. That's a really good home defense weapon. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, especially people will argue about the different types of magazines. But if you buy one that takes a Glock magazine and you have a Glock, you can build a full little loadout that's just takes all the same magazines 1. Is more accurate. One is a handgun. Hmm. And you know, all the same ammo you're not having to. Figure out and read a bunch on on what kind of ammo you need and stuff like that. You just buy one and it works for everything. Yeah. And when you're talking about ammo, I think one of the most important things, like, especially if you're worried about a survival situation, is availability, which is the nice thing about like what we call the NATO caliber. So the NATO calibers are 9 millimeter, 762 by 51, better known as 308. Your grandpa's hunting rifle is 762 by 51, or it's 30 out six, but whatever. And then 556 slash. 223 and those are the rounds. That's like 556 is the standard, that's what's in your bog standard AR15. And so almost no matter what happens, including you know, ammo crunches, you will be able to find some amounts of of those calibers, Jim, through your neighbors drawer and you're going to find a box of bullets. They might not even own a gun. And they got a box of 9 millimeter, everybody's got 9 millimeter. And so yeah, I think that the, the, the basics of like. What to get if you're looking at kind of just a basic defensive arm, you know how to store it safely. You know those kind of questions are important when it comes to training. What are some of in your opinion like the the mistakes that you see people make when it comes to kind of of of practicing training with their weapon, going to an NRA basic like 4 hour class and thinking that you are a God? There there are people who have spent five days a week going to classes. And doing training, because there there's practice and then there's training. Training is where someone teaches you something. Practice is where you you go with what you're already taught, right? So there, there are people that spend all that time and they're still not the best in the world. There are people who do a ton of practice. Jerry Miklich, you know, I don't know if you ever seen him shoot, but he's. He's like the fastest gun in the world or something like that. Yeah. His videos are crazy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, he'll, he'll outshoot a a Full Auto gun. Yeah. With with revolvers. Yeah. And it's just like, you know, it's just absolutely mind blowing. But now he's like, he's like, he's like Michael Jordan or something, you know? You just get people who have almost just natural ability. Certainly married with a practicing, but yeah, continue if if you had a fight, a gunfight, which they they really don't happen that much. But if you had a gunfight between a guy with a high point C9 who had taken the cheapest, cheapest handguns, you quote reliable handguns on the face of the Earth. If if you had a guy with that that had had paid $500.00 for a training class over a weekend and still went and went to the shooting range every week and practiced. And or not even every week. Just every month and then did dry fire drills once a month in his garage or whatever versus a guy who went out and bought a Wilson Combat 3000 dollar 1911 but had only taken the NRA class. I will bet on the guy with the C8 or the C9 all day long, even if he's only got one bullet. You know yeah don't don't care. He'll win. And often like for all of this for all the guys you see you know with in all of their tactical. Year and whatnot and and the spare mags, taking a 300 rounds out of God. If you actually look at most defensive shootings, it's very common. And I think like like three to five hours, three to five rounds. Yeah, three to five rounds. Generally closer than 30 feet, sometimes closer than like 10 or 15. This sits in my pocket. Most of the time. It's just 19. No, it's a 4343. Yeah, so tiny. It has more bullets than I'll ever need in a gunfight, probably. I think I want to pivot. From this point to Umm we started this by introducing that you you spent some time in the ATF, spent some time in the FPS. I haven't had any personal interactions with the ATF, but I have met some FPS guys on the street support. You know, I'm kind of curious, especially as because I I came in contact with you through your through your Twitter where you're you're very vocal. My personal Twitter. Yeah. And you're quite politically active now in a way that I think is surprising to people for someone with your background. Are you comfortable with kind of tracing sort of the broad strokes of your journey there? Because I think that's instructive for folks. Oh, at FPS specifically. Well, just kind of what brought you from there to here? Oh, so I got kind of. Oh, man, what what's what's the word for when you just get a I don't know. I, I just, I got to a point. I showed up for for work at 4:30 in the morning and I was. Literally shuffling through some some paperwork and was getting ready to file a warrant and just kind of realized I. Didn't think that it needed to happen. And you know, I I talked to my supervising agent about it and was kind of told too bad and. And I put in for some vacation time and ended up putting in my resignation while I was on vacation. I mean that that's the gist of how I became not a cop. Yeah. And I'm wondering kind of what? Have do you think is there anything that kind of, I don't know what looks different to you now as you've kind of left that behind. Was it like sort of a a I'm guessing there's like a period like a goldfish you know, in a new bowl of of acclamation to to life outside of being a cop. Like what it what were the first kind of things that started to shift in your perspective when you left that that thought space. I'll tell you what watching or reading whatever an article or a YouTube video especially now that body. Scams are more and more prevalent. It is watching something, reading the the press release and going, but that's that's not what happened. Like I just watched it and and and going from being able to justify it in your own mind and literally argue with people and be 100% convinced like that was a good shoot. Castillo was a philandro Castille. Yeah. Ohh God yeah. Yeah. And he was. I mean, if you've, if you've gotten lost track of this shooting in between all the others. Philando was a a black man, a legal gun owner with a legal concealed carry permit who was pulled over with his girlfriend and child in a car and hands on the wheel, told the officer he had a gun and got shot. And it did the thing you're supposed to do. Although now actually since then you will get like some states will and some training classes will recommend if it's not legally required in you're carrying a gun, don't say anything for that reason. But I mean he went, yeah the the command to not reach for the gun to being shot multiple times in the chest was like under 2 seconds. Yeah. So I mean, I mean the decision was already made as soon as as soon as he gave the command the decision was made and yeah. Here's what that brings me to in terms of a question that's relevant to the topic of of community self-defense of potential community armed self-defense. Because that's not that is a that is a cop problem, but that's not just a cop problem. And what happened everybody problem in the chop and the Chaz in Seattle, the the autonomous zone is evidence of that. You had this situation where people after nights and nights of mostly inaccurate warnings about proud boys coming to attack got amped up. They had guns, some kids drove by in a car, and they ******* shot him to death. And it is the same. It's the same mental thing happening. You don't have to have a badge for that that mindset to to infect them, especially when you're carrying a gun. How do you, in your opinion, fight back against that? Be ******* chill, you know? Like, like, honestly. If you were a teenager, which we grew up in, almost the same place. You're from Plano. I'm from Capel. So I would have argued with you about them being the same place when I was in Plano. But they're the same place. Yeah, they're. So they're absolutely the same place. Like, yeah, one one has one has woot.com and the other one has Raytheon, so, you know, and a bunch of hospitals. But. It you you and I grew up in the same time, same place, same types of schools. How many times did you see in like high school or even middle school? Just a guy hit on a girl and then the girls boyfriend comes over and just starts fighting him. Yeah like like the guy had no reason to know he he didn't know he was doing anything wrong. And and I'm not suggesting or I'm sorry. What I'm pointing out is that. It's almost ingrained in us at a societal level to to react violently, to maintain, like, our personal position. And if that means that I'm in my neighborhood and I I don't recognize someone, it may seem like violence is the right way to go. That's actually what what you're doing when, like, what's it called careening? You know, where you call somebody the the black kid yell a selling water bottles or whatever. I know that was one in in New York where the police came and harassed, you know, some like 12 year old black kids because they were selling water bottles. Yeah. It's the same thing. I mean, you know, in that case you're not personally doing the violence, you're just calling somebody else to do it for you. You know, the police are kind of violence, violence of monopoly and all that. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And that's some. One of the most I think important things about that is the idea of. Violence is like like when you when you're willing to accept violence to kind of maintain your, your your social position or something. And I think that has a huge amount to do with with the kind of violence you see at protests with, like we've had you know, protests, quote UN quote security here in Portland. People coming declaring themselves security and yeah, what the **** does that mean shooting other kids. I I know guns for graffiti, like dumb, but it is it is a matter for it's they're not doing it to protect anybody. They're doing it because they've declared themselves security somebody. Doesn't listen to what they say and their ego is hurt. It's the same thing that again, cops do. It's this, it's a human mindset. It's not just a a cop mindset. And I think you when you're talking about like, I think there's a couple of things. Number one, if you're going to be armed, if you're going to be armed in a community self-defense role, one of the things you have to accept is that like you're not as as a person who is armed and cares about the defense of your community. You're not a separate thing from them. I think that's one of the areas where in which policing goes wrong. Themselves as separate. Yeah. And I I know you guys have a big problem with that. We do here, too. I I live in a metro, and our metro police, like, 99% of them don't even live in the county. Yeah, they all go the same here. Yeah. Yeah, they they don't even not just the city. They don't live in the whole county. And that's despite they they get a living allowance if they'll live in the city. And there's a bunch of if they live in the city, they get a take home. Car there's a bunch of incentives to try and get people to live here and they still won't do it. They want to go. Live in the next sheriff over the next county where. Yeah, we have a very vocal sheriff the next county over who's who's really racist and all that ****. And I yeah, I think if you're if you're talking about like. The potential of of again of like armed community, self-defense, you almost. I almost would prefer phrasing it differently. Like Community, self-defense. You know, it should be the entire community. Yeah yeah, I mean community. And you're not the the gun isn't what you are. You're not, you're not security. You're not self-defense because you're armed. You're self-defense because you're a member of the community and if you personally choose to be armed, that is an option that is expanded to you specifically because you're armed. But it it doesn't change fund, it shouldn't change what you are. And if it does, there's a phrase that I think is really useful. The finger pulls the trigger, and if you want to avoid or the trigger pulls the finger, sorry. And it it's this idea that when you show up armed and you're showing up armed as someone like, your purpose there is to be armed, you're at at heavy risk of the weapon guiding your responses. And that's the most important thing in any circumstance to avoid if you're carrying a weapon, if if you got a hammer, everything's a nail, exactly is yeah. Well and and the last 20 years we we've had kind of a with the War on Terror you've seen a proliferation in in media around making. Navy seals and all that **** look really, really, really cool. Every, every other movie is about that. Even though, like, really, they're just drunk guys who yell at people a lot, who occasionally commit murder to protect. Or was that was that the seals? Or was that the Green Berets who killed that guy that protected drug trafficking? Right? I mean, probably both. Oh, you know that that was the green Berets at North Carolina. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it it crosses all borders, but one thing that's come out of that. Is we, we've started to call those guys operators, right? So you've gone from a gun being a tool that someone trains their to use to they are merely an operator of a weapons system? And it. It's kind of dehumanizing. Like it it it allows you to get out of the thought on that. It's exactly what you were talking about where where the trigger is really pulling the finger at that point. Yeah. And it's it's I I think there's a number of, I don't know. There's a number of tactics and more than we can get through and that we'll be talking with some other community self-defense people at some point in the near future about this because this is a big topic, right. And it's not one. I haven't seen anyone do it super well yet in the United States. Like we anytime you have kind of persistent right wingers do every once in a while. Yeah. They. Yeah. They take over BLM land. Yeah. Yeah, but then they die. I forgot about that. Yeah, they did die. Killed. And I I think that it's it's a. It's a really. Messy topic because of you know what you brought up is is a valid point all the everything that all the kind of social baggage there is around weaponry in this in this country and in our in in our culture this kind of like worship of the gun. And if you think like the left is is any more immune to that than the right you're wrong. You see the same you know toxic behavior all around you have to be extremely cognizant of it even if you know it's something the risk for there is weapons in general have a a mental impact on us. Carrying them and there is, there is a level of just like being around weaponry that is entrancing. It's it's a human thing. You know, we make weapons. It's we're 2 using apes and weapons are some of the first tools that we made that that are responsible for. Why, you know, we get to tell the dogs and the cats what to do. And you have to you have to really approach being armed from a standpoint of. Rejecting a lot of that if you're going to do it responsibly. I mean, among other things, the idea that you might have to use a gun has to be you're you're very close to your worst nightmare. Yeah, because it would be, it would be if you ever actually had to use one. At minimum. You're talking like when you actually look at like legal self-defense shoots, you're talking minimum the next. If you kill somebody at least minimum the next year of your life is is dealing with the legal consequences of that? Sure. And probably hundreds of thousands of dollars. Yeah. I mean, if you're having. If, if if if file, if charges get filed, you're talking hundreds of thousands of dollars for like a capital defense case. If not, millions. And and that's in you know, the there, there's one of the gun Youtubers that I like to push people towards for this kind of stuff is a guy named Paul Harrell who is certainly more on the conservative side, but who actually killed somebody in a self-defense and went through the whole legal process afterwards. And he has a couple of videos where he talks about it and he gives I think pretty good advice on. That, that is, that is completely without ego because it was a nightmare for him. It was the worst experience of his life, which is what it's going to be if you ever have to use a gun. And that should be like, that should be the top of your, that should be the top of your mindset. You know, I've been in this situation a couple of times that protests where like someone pulls a knife and starts lunging at people, and I have a gun and I'm 15 feet away and I I never drew in part because it never quite crossed that line for me and I I knew that. Giving people the chance to deescalate was vastly more important than introducing a second weapon to the situation immediately. Sure. And if things had gone differently, perhaps I would feel differently about my choices in that moment. But they didn't, and nobody got hurt. And that's always the best case scenario, even if it's somebody you really dislike who is who is threatening people with a weapon. I swear that happened up in Olympia like 2 weeks ago. Yeah, well, the shooting in Olympia, which was a guy. And Tiny, who got shot? And there's video of it. It's absolutely not a legally justified shoot for sure. Like the. Yeah, he was, he was like 40 feet away, you know? Yeah, but he's really tall. He is big. He is. I think that counts for something. He was tall. He was tall. He was chasing them. He was armed. I'm not making a moral case here. I know, I know. I think legally they would have had a trouble had they stayed around. Now, of course, they've got. I believe they've been arrested at this .0 have they? I I just told you, I didn't think so. Sorry, I don't mean to crash it for a second. I I think I saw our our best friend Andy Post something about it. Ohh yeah, yeah, yeah. Two days ago, three days ago, three. I must have missed this. Yeah. OK, so they did a they did arrest the guy. Yeah. And it's. You know what's another thing if you. If you feel if you, if you're involved in like, a shooting that you feel is a justified legal shooting, you don't, you don't leave the scene. And in fact, one of the better videos, you'll get on, like, what to do. And this guy's life has gone to **** because of the political nature of this shooting. But the guy in Denver who shot that dude at a protest, that the Pinkerton man, that dude. I'll tell you, you know, no matter what you want to say about whether or not it was a good shoot that he dropped that ******* guy. I mean, I mean, he dropped down on his knees. Ohh. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, it was. You know, again, the court case is not settled out, so I don't know if that guy's story is gonna end happily. But in terms of if you want to not get shot yourself and you want to have the maximum chance of defending yourself, if you have to shoot somebody in a situation that's legally justified, what that guy did after the shoot is is how to handle it. And I, I mean, the evidence for that is he did not get shot. And obviously your mileage with that's going to vary depending on your skin color. Yeah, that's a big factor. Yeah. In terms of, uh, actual training, people can like pay for if they if they want to take that step, which I think is a good idea. Who do you do? Do you have kind of like broad recommendations for how people can know if something's you know? Because there's this is certainly a space where there's a lot of grifters and whatnot. Yeah, I mean most of the. Beginner level. How to fight with a gun. Classes are two to three days long like that. That's a good starting point, is the fact that you're going to pay probably 3 to $500.00 per day. And it's going to be multiple days long. You, you you can't because you're going from a baseline. You know. They know. You already know how to point and shoot a gun, but they're going to go for everything on how to draw, how to move, how to reload. You're going to have some classroom time going over that, their specific safety instructions and stuff like that. But anything you can do in one day or 4 hours or 40 rounds or whatever, it isn't going to cut it. You need to go get something, and you need to listen because they're going to ask you to do things that might not be the way you want to do it. You might say, yeah, that's not the way my dad taught me how to reload a handgun. A good example is actually tactical response in Tennessee they a lot of people hate them, but they have a very specific way that they say everyone reloads this way in our class, you know, you put it in and you slingshot the slide and people will argue and go, well, I want to just press the button, well the Button's cool and all, but we want you to slingshot the slide. Just do it for this class. Sorry, I got a little off topic there. No, no, no. Yeah, that's a good point too, because I mean, just go in and listen. And and you don't have to take everything away. You, you, you take what you saw. 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. In the 1980s and 90s, a psychopath terrorized the country of Belgium. A serial killer and kidnapper was abducting children in the bright light of day. His unspeakable crimes and the incompetence or unwillingness of the police to stop him brought the entire country of Belgium to the brink of revolution. Yep. From Tenderfoot TV in iHeartRadio this is la Monstra. A story of abomination and conspiracy that led to the demise of the entire institution of Belgian federal police and rattled the foundations of its government. The story about the man who simply become known as La Monster. Listen for free on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What's up you guys? It's your girl Betty who here? And you know this about me. It has always been very important to me to stand out and be authentically me, not only with my music, but my style and my vibe. And JBL really gets that. They know your headphones and speakers should look as original as the music you're listening to, or in my case, making. That's why I'm obsessed with my JBL headphones and speakers that help me reflect who I really am, from true wireless headphones to pulsing party boxes. Oh yeah, party boxes guys. JBL has a wide and colorful range of products that help me feel myself when I wanna vibe my way. I literally record this entire podcast on my favorite JBL headphones. They are absolutely incredible. So JBL wants us all to listen on our terms, living in the moment. Our moment unfiltered. The JBL podcast at jbl.com. As good, usable information and merge that with what you already know. Maybe throw away some of what you already know when you got this ball of goo that you can work with for practice. Yeah, yeah. And yeah, it it is. And to that point, when you're talking about, like, training. One of the differences between handguns and rifles, like all all shooting is always there's a degree of perishable Ness to it. But shooting a handgun is a much more perishable skill than shooting a rifle. And it's it's so if you're going to be armed with a handgun, it really behooves you to take to train, you know, because you're only as good as how often you've been out there really. And having to stay a good foundation like taking some real professional classes will help a lot in that as opposed to just kind of going out to the range every now and again but. Yeah, let's talk at the the last little bit of this here about kind of the gun that's always on the tip of everybody's tongue when you start talking about being armed and armed. self-defense is, you know, the AR platform. It's a gun with a lot of baggage, a tremendous amount of cultural baggage, and it's it has become vastly more than just a firearm in our culture. OK? What a what, what do you what are kind of? Because I am a big advocate of people who who are open to being armed, getting an AR platform. I think it's a great gun to learn it goes, yeah, it goes bang really well almost every time as long as it's from a reputable manufacturer. Despite what some people say, they're very reliable. Yeah, they're easy to clean, literally. As long as you keep them lubricated, even in the field, you keep it lubricated, it will just just keep banging out rounds and it functions. And, you know, we talked about this during the episodes on, like, you know, food storage and and and whatnot. Like, where there's a, there's the, there's the cheap version. I like stuff where there's there's the cheap version that works and there's the expensive version that works. And you, you have that with an AR, you could get a very inexpensive AR and you can you can replace every part of that AR over the next five years and have a $6000 gun. I I, I did minor price checking last night because I was like, you know, I haven't checked the price, the retail prices on stuff, right. So and like your your budget tier normal price that that's out right now, you got like a, a Ruger AR556, there's 700 bucks. Yeah, that's that's dirt cheap and and it's going to go bang just the same. Yeah, yeah, I have a friend who who's who's AR is a Ruger 556 and they're very solid. Yeah, they just they go bang every time. You're not gonna break up. I mean, as long as you don't use it like a baseball bat, you're not going to break it, especially now that the Russian steel cased ammo has been banned. But then, like the the other end of the spectrum is you got a SIG, right? Yeah, I've got a couple. OK, so you know what the rattler is? Oh yeah, that's a fun one. I do not own a rattler, but they are they are cute. Do you know how much? Well, for First off. The the rattler. It's a short barreled 556. It's not really an AR15, but like, technically it kind of is. Yeah. And it it it's. Well how about this? How much do you think that the rattler costs right now? Don't don't go look it just just take a probably 2500 bucks would be my guess, 21128 hundred 2800. Yeah. Now it's now I actually put it in my category of honorable mention slash meme because it it's kind of a meme gun. It's so tiny, but I don't want to get shot with it. But that's kind of the the the spread we were talking about, which is, you know, you can get a $700.00. Done. And it'll go bang the exact same way as the rattler. It fires the same bullet. And you can build up to something not like a rattler, but you can build up to. A bunch of noveske parts. You can throw a bunch of noveske parts into that Ruger lower and upper that you bought. And build a really awesome gun that will be, you know, 99.9% reliable. Yeah. Yeah. And you can, you know, I I think generally if you're buying like a again, you're you're getting kind of a, a, a bargain basement AR. One of the first things that that it's going to behoove you to replace is the optics. You know, it'll probably start with iron sights. But **** these don't even come with anything. Yeah, usually they they come with nothing on them. And you have to stick the irons or you stick a reflex sight. There's a whole world. Of. Of optics. And I think one of the actually one of the websites I recommend people check into if you're looking at kind of reading up on this and and doing your due diligence is Pew Pew Tactical. Oh yeah, yeah, they do not written from like a super, you know, chatty or or whatever. Like you get a lot of very political gun websites that may have some good information but are frustrating to read. They're not that way they're written, you know four people who are not super aggro about guns but who are are are are interested in guns and you can find really good reviews on stuff, but as a general rule. Modern optics speed iron sights every day of the Oh yeah, like, yeah, you may prefer I and I do in some cases on my AK I I vastly prefer using irons, but that would never be the weapon I would pick if I was in a situation where I needed a weapon, you know? Yeah, I mean, I I think everyone should learn how to use iron sights, absolutely. But. If I can hand someone a $450 aimpoint pro which which is the budget version of a high end optic. If I can put a $450 optic with the mount and everything onto a rifle and just go, hey, just just put the dot on what you want to shield. You're done. Now, there's a lot that goes past that, but we got rid of the entire proper sight alignment and all that. They just got to put the dot on the box and squeeze, yeah. Yeah, I mean even even the Marine Corps famous for for fielding marksmen has gone. We're going to switch over to Optic based training. Yeah, they're just, I mean, you look at even guys in like Idlib province, which is like one of the rebel provinces in Syria that's been persistently under siege for most of the last decade, they're all using fancy optics now like that, generally alpha and Alibaba versions of like, you know, brand optics, but it does the trick, you know, I mean it's a, it's a sig Romeo that. Never got the role market for SIG on it. Yeah, exactly. And they paid 100 bucks instead of 450. Yeah. Alright, well I think that's most of what we can responsibly get through. I do want to end on the caveat we started with this with which is that deciding whether or not I we advocate. Firearms is an option both as a legal option and something that can be for your community and for you as an individual, potentially practical. I don't blanket advise people to buy guns. I think in many cases it's going to be counterproductive. I think you should not own a firearm. Again, if you're someone who struggles with suicidal ideation, they they can be a very dangerous thing to have in your home if that's something that that you battle with. I do think that they can be owned and used very responsibly in addition to, I think, shooting. To be a really enjoyable pastime, and I think more than anything, when a whole bunch of people who are talking about killing you all have guns, it it can behoove you to own a firearm as well if you're a member of one of those communities. So please don't take any of this. As Robert Evans says, everyone go buy a gun. But if you're going to buy a gun, there's there's a right way and a responsible way to go about it. And there's, you know, picking up a random 12 gauge and shoving it under your bed, which is God, no. No. No more shotguns for home defense. Yeah, they're not, they're not ideal. Yeah, I mean, we can we could talk about overpenetration and stuff, but yeah, yeah, I mean just. Being able to move lead in a direction, they're very bad at it. Yeah, yeah. Yeah they they're they're not they're not. I mean again something like a an AR or a pistol caliber carbine is in a lot of situations going to be a much more practical and and have less risk of hitting stuff you don't want to hit necessarily get get the high point yeet the the yeah the yeet cannon. Yeah we'll we'll discuss that on our whole episode of about high points. So you've shot yourself in *** **** the high point story. Uh, alright. Well do you wanna, Paul, you got any, got anything to plug before we roll out here? Give food to homeless people. Well, houseless. Houseless, I think is, yeah, and if you're in an area with a based DSA, join the DSI and then vote out the **** libs. That's what's happening here in Orlando. But yeah, embrace anarchy. Well, I'm a Robert Evans. This has been a podcast. And and remember, as we sail out, there's a reason the episode talking about guns came after the episodes talking about storing and growing food. When PT Barnum's Great American Museum burned to the ground in 1865, what rose from its ashes would change the world. Welcome to grim and mild presents an ongoing journey into the strange, the unusual, and the fascinating. For our inaugural season, we'll be giving you a backstage tour of the Always complex and often misunderstood cultural artifact that is. The American sideshow. So come along as we visit the shadowy corners of the stage and learn about the people who are at the center of it all. In a place where spectacle was king, we will soon discover there's always more to the story than meets the eye, so step right up and get in line. Listen to grim and male presents now on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Learn more over at grim and mild.com/presents. 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 Seales, Angela Yee, Roland Martin, JB Smooth and Terrell Owens TuneIn to learn how to turn liabilities into assets and make your money move. Subscribe to the Money Moves podcast powered by Greenman on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts and make sure you leave a review. Welcome back to the IT could happen here. Yeah, that's the podcast we're doing right now. It's a podcast about how things are kind of falling apart. But maybe they don't need to, or at least not as much as they have been. I'm Robert Evans. With me, as often, is my co-host Garrison Davis. Garrison, say something exciting to the audience. I'm on my second cup of coffee. Yeah, because it is. That is the early morning for you, by which I mean 211 in the afternoon. Also with us today, our guest for this episode is David Van Dusen. David, you are the President of the State Labor Council for the Vermont AFL-CIO. And there's a bunch of stuff that's interesting about your organization. We'll dig into it in more detail in a second. But first, I just want to say hello and thank you for being on the show. Pleased to be here with you, Robert. Now, David, the big thing, I mean, the the Vermont AFL-CIO has been in the news a couple of times recently. The most recent one is y'all issued a statement. Making you the coverage I've seen has said the first Labour organization in the US to like support gun rights. I mean like as is stated in a lot of the stuff you've put out, like Blair Mountain, there's a long history of Labor organizations making use of the Second Amendment, but I certainly haven't heard of a labor organization stating it the way you did, which is basically the case you've made is because. Far right fascist organizations are so heavily armed and any gut, all of the gun control policies being heavily debated, at least among liberals, are likely to ignore those people while restricting the ability of working class and particularly marginalized people to arm themselves. You do not support those regulations because you support the rights of those groups to be able to defend themselves from a fascists that more or less correct. Well, look, we believe in the right of the people to defend themselves. Yeah. But our policies, including that one, are not adopted by the elected leadership, including myself. They're adopted by members. We believe firmly in democracy, participatory democracy. So with issues like this, we're happy to bring it to our convention, which we recently did, and facilitate a full debate on the issue. So that's exactly what we did. We talked about it, our rank and file Members talked about it. They made amendments. They debated passionately different sides of the issue and are respectful. Way in a productive way. A number of amendments were made there were adopted and then ultimately the resolution was passed with over a 2/3 majority of our recompiled delegates in favor. So that's where we are right now. Yeah, I I've read a bit about this including, you know, there's been some critiques from a representative from the FT, which is the the local teachers union. But there was also a member of the Vermont AFL-CIO who who essentially stated like, hey, I didn't actually agree with this amendment, but or with this resolution, but it was made democratically and like, I. I support the the process by which it was done, which is one of the things I think is is so interesting here that this isn't like a. Kind of a group of activists at the top, making declarations, declarations. This is an organization that has really dedicated itself increasingly to, I think, it kind of progressivism that we we haven't really seen in an organized way in a lot of the American labor movement until recently. Well, when you're talking about democracy with labor, I mean, we could be just as well talking about democracy in society as such. The fact is, is that organized labor today is not particularly democratic, and we're looking to change that and our world is not particularly democratic. Now, the vision that we hold our slate, our progressive slate called United, is 1, where we increase the means for direct producer democracy both within labor and within our society. So of course, we're going to go to our Members and our rank and file and ask them to debate the issues of our day and ultimately to make a decision on these major political and social issues. This was one we again we do believe that people need to have a right, the working class needs to have a right to defend itself, and we can't bury our head in the sand. Anybody that's even followed a little bit of the news lately will know that between November 2020 up until late January 2021, we were one general shy of a coup in this country in the upside down world that we're now living in. It was because of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the head of the CIA not supporting a coup that a NEO fascist coup in it totally infold materialized in a more mature form. Let that sink in for me, in our democracy, or the vestiges of the democracy we have in the United States right now is precarious. They just because they've been there for 200 years doesn't mean they're going to be there tomorrow. The new playbook from an increasingly far right Republican Party is to limit as much as they possibly could, but people's right to vote and to participate in the political process. We see this happening in Texas. We see this happening in Georgia. We see this happening in Florida. We see this happening in red. I shouldn't say red, but I should say Republican states all throughout the US. So these are dangerous, dangerous times, right? So dangerous that our top generals were trying to decide what their position would be and make plans in case a coup, a full on coup, not just a hint of a coup, came into being within the last year of our Republic. Now given those realities and giving the rise of the far right, given that our former President Donald Trump told the Neo Fascist Proud Boys to stand, what did he say? Stand back and stand by. Yeah, that's right. And now at least they claim that 40,000 members around the United States and they are armed. You know, we can't just rest on our laurels and and pretend that the state has such is going to keep us safe. So it seems prudent and reasonable for us to have taken the action and say we defend our constitutional right. To bear arms as intended, to defend our communities, they defend our unions, to defend the working class. And one of the things that because we were just talking about the the coup that very nearly got pulled off your organization, at least in I believe it was right after the election in 2020 issued a statement that if the President illegally attempted to stay in power, the former president, you would participate in an attempt to help organize a general strike. Now that's something we talk about a lot on this show. Big believers in the potential of a general strike were also Big believers that the kind of general strike that we need to, I don't know, potentially get climate justice and a number of other major things is a an undertaking on par with the space race. You know, you're talking about an an enormous task I'm really interested in picking your brain on. When we talk about a national general strike, what is the kind of infrastructure that's actually necessary to make something like that feasible? Because there's a lot of talk on like Twitter and Facebook of like, let's just do a general strike. On this day in October, I six months doesn't go by as President AFL-CIO Vermont, where I don't I left this group of some kind, contacted me to endorse their general strike right going to shut down on data and it's yet to happen, at least in our country. So that's a great question. A couple things when we voted and again this wasn't a decision of myself, the leadership. This was a decision we went back to the rank and file with to our to one of our conventions. 87% of our delegates, after our long debate, voted to authorize the elected Executive Board to call for a general strike in the event of a coup, in the event that there wasn't a transfer of power on January 20th as the Constitution requires. It was our feeling that in that very specific space and time in that very specific political climate. Umm. We would be able to call for such a strike and with a serious amount of work and a serious amount of organizing, pull that off and make that happen. And the thought was, if we could do it in Vermont because the call was for Vermont General strike, then it could spread to other states, which would be absolutely necessary if there was, if our country descended into a fascist dictatorship of some sort. But generally speaking, when we talk about climate issues, when we talk about the fact that millions of Americans don't have healthcare. There aren't paid livable wages. All of these issues or at least these issues together certainly warrant us looking at things like a general strike. But they're a bit, it's a bit behind in the sky to think that, hey, we got ten grade issues that we want to see progress on. We're going to call for a strike and it's going to happen. The infrastructure is not there, nor is the political will within the large labor bodies that this praised present time. Without participation from organized labor, first of all, I don't think anything's going to happen. So you're going to have to achieve business certain level. But even with buy in from a key leaders or even a localized shop stewards, you still need to have infrastructure in place. So one of the things that lacks in the AFL-CIO is a national organization. We don't have an effective network of local union contacts in every shop and every shift in every factory that's represented by a Union, let alone the majority of workplaces at this point that aren't unionized. So what are top priority is. As far as the Vermont AFL-CIO goes over the next two years is to build a network of local union contacts in every single shop, in every single shift that we represent folks here in Vermont. So we see this as a way to increase communication. Without communication, you're not going to be able to pull off mass mobilizations, and with and also you're not going to be able to conduct mass education on issues XYZ. So over a period of two years, we're looking to build this network that would function not as a one way means of communication, but almost a a two or three-way. Imagine that this is a way for the rank and file to communicate up to the leaders. This is a way for the leadership to communicate down to the ranks, I mean down to the lunch room level of what it means to be in a union shop. And also ideally it's going to be a way for local union leaders to horizontally communicate with each other. With such a structure in place, on a grand scale, on a state scale, on a federal scale, then things like organized general strikes over political issues and social issues become feasible. And even when they're feasible, though, then we still have the political question of, you know, will they be supported by the internationals, will they be supported by the Executive Board of the national AFL-CIO? And that's a huge conversation, you know. So, yeah, it's interesting to me hearing your perspective on this because my experience with kind of activism has been. Much more of kind of the decentralized and kind of much more recent groups, you know, since Occupy you were dealing with these, these structures that in a lot of cases, or I mean the AFL-CIO goes back like, what, like a century, right? One one way or the other? Yeah. You know, I, I think because of kind of how, shall I say, online, a lot of the discussion about this stuff seems to be organized labor often gets left out. And one of the things that I think is most important when talking about the the the value that. Organized labor has in any kind of discussion if the general strike is what happened during the during the the budget negotiations or whatever you want to call them in 2019 where you you had airline workers threatening a general strike that effectively brought an end to a president Saber rattling over over the budget like it's it's President Sarah Nelson made headlines over that and that was the right thing to do absolutely. So her and would love to see her in a stronger position. Leadership, national level. Well I'm interested because I I see a lot of potential in obviously organized labor has had a lot of problems, particularly in the last, you know, during my lifetime. And I think part of it is what you said earlier. There's it's not as democratic as it should be at most levels. What you guys have done with United is attempting to reform that, you know within Vermont. I'm wondering first how did that kind of come about you know 2019 is when you first got got put into office when when the United State. Putting the to the office in Vermont, what was kind of the back story to that? And then my second question is kind of what do you see as necessary to like what, what, what's what's the fight as you see it to get stuff like that done on a larger scale around the country? So our story in Vermont is probably a lot like the story of organized labor in many different places. Our starting point. So in 2017, not that long ago. We had a convention with something like 20 or 25 delegates there. Imagine that 20 delegates representing 10 at the time 10,000. We've grown since December, 10,000 members and that's called a democracy. So there was a problem, an existential problem. Now I come out of asked me local 2413 in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont. So when I got together with a number of other leaders from different unions, different ask ME locals, but also. United academics as part of a FT the building trades, number of folks. There was a general recognition at the leadership level that something was very wrong. Member participation was weakest, can be, and things have to change. And we continually, as an organization, you know, with some exceptions, hitch our wagon to the shortcomings that are the Democratic Party. So all of these things together led to inactivity, apathy and and lack of democracy. So we started going around, we started talking with workers, we started talking with shops across the state. And one of the first things that was striking, people would say they would know what Union there and be a PWU or asking or whatever it was. But we'd say, listen, we're talking, we're thinking about running slate, progressive slate for office with to take the AFL-CIO in a new direction. The next thing they would say is, what's the AFL-CIO? Think about that, right? Workers involved, some of which were Union Stewarts, and their locals didn't even know what the AFL-CIO was. So that was our starting point. It was a crisis of Labor. And mind you, during these, what I would call some dark periods, we would often endorse 100 candidates for statehouse, nearly all of which being Democrats. And then we they would win. They would win their elections like largely our candidates win. And then we get nothing in the statehouse, right? There would be no labor bill. There'd be no advance in a car, check differently, support organized labor. And yet we keep repeating the same mistake year in, year out and not figure out that something was wrong. So when we formed the United slate as a coalition of a number of different unions to recognize it was time for change, we really brought the discussion to the grassroots level. We developed a 10 point program called our Little Green Book. It's now the policy and the platform of the Vermont AFL-CIO and we ran an organized campaign based on that right, a very local level. And here we did all the things that you know you should be doing, the phone calls, the emails, the shop visits. All of this and create a sense of excitement going into our 2019 convention. Our 2019 convention with over, if I recall over 105 delegates and alternates was the largest convention we had up here in, in something like 30 plus years. So that was an exciting atmosphere where something was going to be different and something was going to change, right? So we swept, we essentially swept those elections. We won all the seats except for one. We had a follow-up convention in two, I'm sorry, election in 2020 where we won every single seat. And then the last election we won all seats except for one, where one person who's good, good person from the building trades so ran but was not part of our state, so. The real question is what have we done in the interim? How are we changing that direction and how are we changing, trying to seek to change the capacity of Labor and what lessons does it have to the national movement, I would suppose. So. On that front, one of the first things we did is we took money out of our lobbying operation and put it into an organizing department whereby we would hire and we have hired on call organizers to assist our Affiliates in either new organizing or internal organizing, therefore delivering an actual benefit to our affiliate unions. Now mind you, we represent just about every sector of workers all across the state, but for ever they they very rarely got in concrete measurable. Acts of solidarity from the federation as such, right, because all of a lot of too many of the resources were put in the lobby and we also took a critical eye towards Democratic Party. And recently, we've instead endorsed the Social Democratic Vermont Progressive Party slates and their runs for State House and and statewide office in many cases. So we we've done a few things differently. We're continuing to do things differently. We've expanded the size of our Executive Board, so you we elect more leaders now. We've more than doubled the size of the delegates afforded to each local, so we could have more rank and file voices present when we're meeting at a convention. And we've taken a strong. Social justice position where we think that organized labor must work very closely in an alliance, form alliances with groups like migrant justice or black perspective or environmentalorganizationslike350.org. And we've done those things, worked on their issues where we have common interests and we've asked them to support us on our issues where where they may have some common interests. So those are things that are very different that the national AFL-CIO is not doing other state labor federations. Largely aren't doing enough. And we're hoping now to build that out. And we're engaged in conversations seeking to form a national progressive caucus within the national AFL-CIO. And I think that's so important when you talk about kind of on the national level for progressives #1 to not, not continually. Kind of reflexively support the Democratic Party when the Democratic Party is is failing. Uh, progressives, which, you know, we have a perfect case study right now in Congress with the the reconciliation bill. It often does seem like such an insurmountable task just because the inability like a bill, the $3.5 trillion infrastructure bill is so widely supported by Americans. But it it just keeps coming down to this tiny number of folks with, you know, financial interests and donors. Who are who are pushing against something that's widely supported? And I I feel optimistic when I look at state organizations like what y'all are doing and the fact that I can see something building, but I also it does. It is such a Titanic task to imagine translating that on a national scale in a way that actually gets us the things that you know, we we really can't wait for. When you're talking about some of this infrastructure stuff, when you're talking about healthcare, when you talk about climate justice, like I I do feel the clock ticking and I'm I'm wondering what you see is the hope. On the national scale for actually putting some muscle behind the progressive movement. Well, look, it's not just the the issues of the infrastructure bill and the budget bill. It's also the Pro act, right? The bill that is language in the Senate. And and let's not lose track of the fact that those efforts are all stalling and likely very likely to fail. And I hope they don't because of Democrats, because the Democratic Party is not united. They ran on a platform saying they were going to do XY and Z and now when they're in a position to carry it out, they are not going to do it. And Joe Manchin, as far as I'm concerned, I call him a class trader, but I don't think he's ever was part of that working class. But he claims to support the Pro Act, but in the same breath he he won't get rid of the filibuster. So I mean, that's absolute ******** as far as I'm concerned. So how do we change that? Well, the national AFL-CIO puts millions and millions and millions of dollars into elections. We have gotten so many of these people elected and backed them in Arizona and West Virginia, you name it. And then we get nothing back if we were to take that money instead and put it into a robust new organizing department or a recrafted organizing department and actually assign real on the ground organizers in every single state in the country. To help our affiliates, to help our state federations and their affiliates, to internally organize, to build the kind of network I talked was talking about before, and to be active in build alliances with social justice group, our power would be amplified 5,000,000 fold. This is the way we do it. Politicians aren't going to do what's right because it's right. Politicians are going to do what's right when they feel so much pressure that they have to do it now. The victories that we saw for working people during the Great Depression. Under FDR, that wasn't just because FDR thought, you know, this is the right thing to do. It's because people are going on strike because people are organized, because they were scared of revolutionary change in this country, so turned to meaningful, true major reforms as a way to blunt that perceived threat that they have. And that's what we got to get back to, not our power is never going to grow from people who are wearing ties in Washington. Our power is going to grow based on our solidarity on the shop. Or in in our communities. So that's the direction we got to go and we got to do that rapidly, very rapidly. It's been clear to me for quite a while both that the reason workers gained so much in the wake of the Great Depression, and the only kind of hope we have for doing that now is they have to be scared, you know, to an extent, they have to be scared of, of what's arrayed against them, both in its organization and in its ability to disrupt things. And I I'm wondering what you think. People listening, people who maybe are not involved in organized labor, like what, what it, what do you think people can do to further those ends? Like, this is like when we, when we start talking about national level AFL-CIO politics. That's not something I think most people listening feel like they have any kind of ability to influence. What do you think they can influence? What do you think people can be doing to build that kind of capacity? Well, you got to be active and and you got engaged in the political and social movements, but also most folks, you know, they're going to have a job of some kind. And a lot of folks aren't getting treated the way they should. And their job, I don't care if you work in a coffee shop and a restaurant or any gas station or in manufacturing. And you could start by organizing with your coworkers to form a union today. You know, you could reach out to a local union to ask for help, or you could do it on your own, frankly, but if we're not. Organizes working people and we are the 99% we are most of the world. If we're not organized amongst ourselves, we're not going to be able to become that expression of power that we need to be in order to create the change. If we're just a collection of individuals, then the ruling class, the wealthy, the powerful, the elite, they're going to have all their ducks in a row to keep us divided and to keep their foot on the pedal of the status quo. So we need to come together. We need to organize. The natural place to organize is in the workplace in my opinion. Yeah, I mean, it it it it is the natural place to organize. It's also become an increasingly difficult place to organize. We all watch what Amazon did in Bessemer this year, you know, and and that fight is still ongoing to an extent. But it is a it is a continuing challenge. To to actually effectively unionize and a lot of the industries where it matters most you know like we have some choke point industries like we talked about aircraft employees that are heavily unionized thankfully and that do have a lot of power as has been demonstrated recently when they when they go to the mat. But I I I'm interested in kind of we we've got you know Amazon employees is really. One of the areas that I'm looking at where, my God, if, if we could actually, if something significant could actually get off the ground and a significant number of those workers could get organized, it could make a real difference. But, you know, you've got effectively, what are community organizations for the most part going up against? You know, Amazon at this point has more resources than most nation states. Yeah, but so did the, the carnegies and the Rockefellers and the folks like this and and and. It's always been hard, too long ago in our country, maybe during our grandfather's day, where there was a very good chance you'd be shot, or at least beat over the head with a club from the Pinkertons if you tried to organize. Organizing has never been easy in such as Columbia today, trade unionists are killed at an unbelievable clip almost on a daily basis. And yet still, they organized. So it I'm not suggesting to any of your listeners that any of this is easy. What? That it has to happen, it has to happen. And there's different models, too. Like in some places, one of the models that's been effectively used is forming worker centers, right? So that's not a traditional union. It's a center in a city or in a community or in a town where workers can come together and strategize right at a in a location to strategize how to be effective as a group, as a whole, as a class on issues that are important to them, you know, be it. Economic, be it social, be it fighting against racism, whatever it may be. That's a model that I I suggest folks could could look into as an alternative way if for whatever reason, you don't feel that the time is ripe for a union in your shop today, although it needs to be tomorrow. Take a look at worker center and see if there's one in your community. Get involved. If not, get together a few people and see what it would take to start when where you live. But one way or another, we have to be organized. We have to come together. We cannot just be a collection of individuals. That's a great point and useful information. I think kind of the last thing I wanted to get into was one of the things I first learned about your organization that you issued a solidarity statement back. And I think it was 2019 with the the white PG and J in Rojava. And you've issued, you know, stated your solidarity with Black Lives Matter, with the Zapatistas currently what they're undergoing and in Mexico, which is massive repression from the government yet again. And, you know, your support. Of Palestinian rights and of against, sort of the US occupation or not occupation, but a blockade of Cuba. What do you see when we're talking about? This struggle, this broad struggle we've been talking about all day, what do you see as the role of internationalism in both in both organizing people and organizing resistance? Well, our starting point today is capital is international. So if we're going to have a foundational challenge to the power of capital, we also have to be internationalist in our outlook. We supported the YPG in the YPJ and the newly elected government in Rojava because they are struggling for economic equity and a direct participatory democracy in that corner of the world that we see this as the most significant revolution. In in the world in generations. I mean this in in our mind is on par with the Spanish Civil War and what we saw around Barcelona in the CNT then or the Paris Commune of 1871. If this was happening in Europe, a day wouldn't go by there, this wouldn't be front page news. But in the western world we often the corporate media turns a blind, blind eye to many of those struggles. So they're doing their part and we have to do our part in our country too. The Zapatistas are doing their part. In Chiapas and broader ways and in some regards in Mexico as such. But we need to reach our hand out and encouragement and say, hey, we're here to support you. One of the things we sought to concretely do in the Vermont labor movement is in 2019, one of our Central Labor Council has passed a resolution support. We said, look, if you are go over to fight and volunteer with the YPG&YPJ because there's thousands of volunteers right there who have volunteered to go over. If you return and you're American, we'll hook you up with a union job and we'll hook you up with three months of room and board so you could get reactivated, you could get back into the community and get back into the local fight through the labor movement. And we were proud to actually have an opportunity to do that for one returning American fighter in our latest resolution in 2021. And this one was a broader, because it was the whole Romania boscio, not just the central Labor Council. We again offered, we encourage folks to. Feel so inclined, if they're in that place in their life, to volunteer with the IPG&YPG. And if they're Americans and they come back, we're happy to hook you up. We'll do our best to get you a good union job when you return. So we felt that was a very small least we could do kind of thing, but concrete way to provide solidarity. We all have to stand together. It's really one fight, but the place we're going to be effective is where you live locally, in your town, in your city, in your state and in your country. Yeah. I think that's a great note to end on and a great thing that you all are doing and I I really do appreciate that and I appreciate you, David, coming on and talking to us today. Is there anything else you wanted to, to, to get out or anything you wanted to do like any, you know, charities or mutual aid funds or whatever you wanted to push before we kind of roll out today? I just like to push for folks to go to work tomorrow and and organize organizing your fellow workers and let's change the world. Solidarity. Thank you, David. Robert Evans here, and I wanted to ask for your help. There is a Portland area woman, Ruba Tamimi. She's an Arabic interpreter and a Palestinian liberation activist, and she is trying to save her home. At the moment. She's got a go fund me. If you go to save Rubio's house, RUBA on. Go fund me. You'll find it. Save Rubio's house on. Go fund me. If you've got a few bucks, she could really use it again. Save Rubio's house. RUBA at go fund me. Thanks. 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 coldzonemedia.com/sources. Thanks for listening. When PT Barnum's Great American Museum burned to the ground in 1865, what rose from its ashes would change the world. Welcome to grim and mild presents an ongoing journey into the strange, the unusual, and the fascinating. In our inaugural season, we'll give you a backstage tour of the complex and unusual artifact that is the American sideshow. Listen to grim and male presents now on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to 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. Visit Jennie Garth and Tori Spelling for a rewatch of the hit series Beverly Hills 9021 O. 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