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I am Daniel Ramirez, and as a Dominicana myself, I am proud to be narrating this true story that is often left out of the history books through your has blood on his hands. Listen to sisters of the underground wherever you get your podcasts. 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. Welcome back to it could happen here, the podcast about things happening that are bad and occasionally good, but all have to do with the fact that we're living in a society whose norms are crumbling as the environment. Uh also crumbles. And political violence and a bunch of other horrible things become more normalized, trying to figure out how to not die ideally and occasionally how to thrive. And to that end, I have a guest today who has been kind of working with the working lately on the how not to die in the face of things getting increasingly violent and aggressive out there. I want to welcome Jessica Keckler to the program. Jessica, how are you doing today? Doing great. So Jessica, you know, we are as listeners to the show and observers of just basic reality in the outside are aware we're kind of going under or living through a period of like panic and concerted aggressive attack on the rights and ability to exist of transgender people. That's some. Hasn't like has never not been a problem as long as there's been, you know Western civilization but has increasingly been a problem the last year or so. Yeah it's it's really it's really wild because when you take estrogen you're when I start taking estrogen it took like 10 years off of my face as far as age goes. But then then this past year I think it's put back 55 back on it, you know? Yeah, I mean, that makes sense. Like, it's it's it's stressful as hell out there. There has been a surge in violence, not just against trans people, obviously. We've talked about in other episodes, there's been a surge in violence against Asian Americans, against LGBT Americans. But transgender people are much more likely than almost any other group in the United States to be attacked. And that has been increasingly reality for a lot of people. And you are one of a number of folks in that position who have. Been increasingly talking or who have found yourselves thinking about the necessity and value of being armed in order to defend yourself from that. And I want to talk a little bit about your background there and kind of what? How how you kind of came to deciding that that was something that you wanted to not just do personally, but advocate for other people to do. Yeah, I went through well, calling it libertarian spaces. It was, it was many years, but yeah, you know, and I collected a bunch of guns and, you know, I was like, oh, you know, cool. But then after I sort of worked through my childhood trauma and stuff, I, you know, started to feel a lot less threatened about things. And I just sort of, you know, just sort of lost interest in them for a while, but then. A friend of mine, Kendall Stevens, was telling me about a time when she was attacked in her home by a group of transphobes and just beaten almost to death and. That next morning, I I reapplied for my carry permit. Yeah. And this is, I mean, this is a story I was not aware of. I was aware, broadly speaking, there been a number of attacks, including a number of fatal attacks in the last couple of years on particularly trans women. There was the murder of West Philadelphia woman Alicia Simmons in November of 2021, Chante Tucker in Hunting Park in the fall of 2018. In May of 2019, Michelle Tamika Washington was shot to death in North Philly. And this is all like local to you. Ohh. And also Dominique Ramee Fells was was murdered in June of I think 2021. And yeah, if people want to look this up, there's a couple of different articles. I'm looking at one on Billy Penn with the title after surviving a brutal attack. Kendall Stephens wants to help trans people citywide. And yeah, it's a it's a ******* harrowing story, you know, after surviving a number of different attacks. From from like people just kind of targeting her because she's trans. She was attacked in her home by six of her neighbors while her goddaughter, who was 12 years old, watched. It's a ******* horrifying story, so. You like is did you find out about what had happened, like, directly from her, like, how does this kind of information hit you? I was, I was at an there's a local trans group where we just, you know, get on zoom and talk. And it was one of my first meetings, and actually I think it was the very first. And she just told this whole story. And I was just. You know, it's like I always had this feeling of safety, but then it's just like, realized like, oh, that's, you know, like being white. I'm. A little safer, but it's just like it's. We're all, you know, it's really, we're all in danger, you know? Yeah. It's it's it's a matter of like, a small number of degrees. It's not. Yeah. So you're you're you're trying to deal with this and you're you're communicating. You've got this group where you're all sort of, like, chatting about, I'm guessing just kind of like safety stuff like, hey here. You know, we should all be kind of keeping each other informed and trying to talk about what's going on. Yeah, because this is a thing for Philly. Yeah. Right. Yeah. I mean, we mostly just shoot the **** and just, you know, talk things over and stuff like that. But she was. Yeah, something had come up and she recounted this whole story and it was just. It just really. Made me go like, Oh my God, you know? So you kind of are in this position where you own firearms, you're comfortable with them, you've been using them for a while and #1 you get your permit, right. Like that's kind of the first thing you do. And then I'm guessing you start to think like, well, there's not a lot of other people that are in this kind of group I'm in that have this experience. Is that kind of like where the. Yeah, right. Because you know. Because when I would talk to people before that, they would just sort of say like, yeah, I can see where you're coming with that and but once the attack started, I'm, I heard a lot, I have heard of a lot more people going like. Yes, I need to do that, too, you know. Yeah. So I kind of want to know because, I mean, what we're kind of building to is you've been, you've been putting together a class for trans folks in Philly to go to, to learn about how firearms function, the legality and legal concerns about being armed and, like the steps they might need to go to if they decide to do that themselves. How does that idea kind of come together for you to actually, like, put this, this class together? OK, well, I'm a member of the NRA, the Socialist. People association, and they have places they call fundamentals, and it's just sort of a broad overview. Just sort of every if you've never picked up a gun before, it's it. It will tell you. You know, it'll give you just information on, you know, everything you need to to before you use it. And I thought it would be a good idea to just have a transcript, just a a class with just my trans friends. And they were of course open to it and it went really well. And I plan to do more in the future. Yeah. So you kind of, you're going through both sort of the basics of here's and this is kind of a thing I think about a lot. I recently carried out a class for I don't want to be too specific but at risk individuals in my local area that was a mix of and and I was not the one doing the stop the bleed portion. Primarily. We have people who are medical professionals, but it was a mix of a stop the bleed class and like a firearms familiarization class and it was not from the perspective. Of like, hey, people need to be strapping up, so here's how to get a gun. But it was from the perspective of, hey, there's 400 million firearms in the United States. Whether, regardless of what you think about the legality, you should have a basic understanding of how they function and how to, since you're all adults, render a weapon safe. Right. So we did we these fake bullets, snap caps. So I would explain how an AR and a handgun works, and then we would have everyone take turns, kind of like we had with the stop the bleed portion, you know, where you teach people to use a tourniquet, we would have everyone take turns. Arriving to the weapon, putting the weapon in their hands without, like flagging everybody or putting their finger on the trigger and then dropping the magazine and clearing it and a lot of folks, the thing they expressed was like as people who didn't necessarily want to be armed themselves felt like I would, I had never got. I never knew how to like, ask to have this experience because normally when you're in the room with a firearm, it's because like maybe you're going to go shooting with somebody or something. So if you're not seeking out that experience. Actually go to a range. It's kind of hard to sit with a gun and just understand the basics of how this thing functions and how to render it safe. And so there were a lot of folks who who particularly were like seemed to be grateful for just that experience, to kind of like reduce the mystery around it and gain kind of a functional understanding of just the mechanics. Yeah, it was, yeah. The class was really good. I hadn't taken it before, but it's, you know, it shows like they went through like the anatomy of a bullet, the anatomy of a con and how it works, how to, how to do it safely, how to, you know, like the four rules of gun safety, legal things. And it was just, it was really good. Of course, now, so you take this course, you know, you're, you're in communication with these friends you're dealing with like this constant drum beat of attacks. You decide it's time to put together a course for people. How do you kind of workout what the syllabus is going to be for this? Well, if they're all they have the whole class set up already. I just sort of, yeah, I just had a version just for my trans friends. Yeah, So what like what did you kind of add to that or altered to that in order to like prepare it for this? Ohh. Not much. I just it was just, I just thought they would be more comfortable in a class with just us. Yeah, I mean that makes sense. And it it also, do you think it helped that like this isn't because, you know the Socialist Rifle Association, you're attending that class. You're kind of like attending a class put on by an organization that has being both armed and political kind of in its name, which maybe infers a little bit more commitment to something than. The class kind of you put together, unlike a political level, yeah, it's it's not as ******** as as you might think from the name. It's just it's mostly class. They have stopped courses kind of you know, those kind of things. And I think they there's theory discussions too. I haven't gone to any of them. Yeah. And and so you've you put this thing together and the thing that you mentioned earlier we were talking about this is kind of a discussion on like like the the, the the particular legal concerns that trans people seeking to arm themselves might have in your area. And I wanted to talk to you a little bit about that because obviously when we talk about gun legalities, it varies wildly from state to state. So nothing that either of us say and this should be construed as legal advice for what you should do in your own area. You're going to have to check that out yourself. But yeah, I'm interested in what you saw is kind of worth. Putting in that that section, well the I mean the the big addition to bring up is that if you are not. If you don't present as your assigned gender at birth, they could the the person who is running the check could say that, hey, this person is coming to me in a disguise, you know? And you could in future. If you're ready to go in the future, that could be on your record and people could use that to deny you. And really, I know I had never heard about that. So that's like an actual, I mean obviously like when you filed the form 4473 and one of the problems I, I know from just talking to friends that you encounter is that like if you're, if you're your gender does not match like what's on your legal documents and stuff, you have to write what's on your legal documents on the form because it's a government form, although the 4473, which is the background check. Does now allow you to put in nonbinary if that is like, but you still have to have it on your legal documents. But we're mostly used to that for everything else, but it's just the fact that they could specifically target you. Yeah, I was actually unaware of that as a specific problem like that you could be accused of, like, showing up in disguise to do what's called a straw purchase, you know, which is when you illegally buy a gun for somebody else. I didn't realize that was a yeah. So were the kind of other things to, like, keep in mind there, like, because I'm particularly, I'm sure we have a lot of folks listening who are. In this same headspace right now, because again, things aren't getting a lot less scary out there. I mean, I can say just within the last couple of years, probably around half of the people that I shoot with on a regular basis are trans. Just because, like, it's the the, you're the folks who are being kind of most directly targeted and have the least institutional support, obviously. And we have like people in Congress openly calling for executions and it's just. You know, it's like, yeah, something I've ever experienced before. But it's like, yeah, you have like nationally famous politicians just saying, like, yes, we need to kill every one of them. And it's like. Good Lord. Yeah. And that's the thing. Like, you know, I think I we talk a lot on the show when we do talk about being armed. And I I've just talked a lot in my personal life about like. Sort of where what the left should be doing in terms of like a gun culture and like the kind of pitfalls that need to be avoided. Because obviously the the solution to like the discrepancy of arms in the left and the right in this country is not to recreate what the right wing has. Because what the right wing has is like vicious and insane. Yeah, it's it's bad. We don't. We you don't want that. But uh and and and so obviously like one of the things that I tend to think of is as silly as like the the folks who are. And I don't think this is a particularly large jump but you do get people who are kind of look at being armed from like A and then we're you know this is so that we can you know be the new Red Army insurgent type thing, which I think is a less realistic use case of firearms on the left than the police are not going to protect our community. There are a **** load of people with guns who hate us. And, you know, honestly, like one of the when I think about, like, what are the threats that are realistic and what are the threats when we talk, obviously this show that we're on, yeah. The way they're the way they're doing the, you know, you have like, Tucker Carlson saying, like, oh, another weekend bymar and, you know, making all these things and they're sort of like all these trans people. It's like someone should do something. Wink, wink. Yeah, exactly. And that's. That when when we we're on a show right now that started out as me talking about hey I think people who are I think the threat of of massive civil conflict in the United States is higher than people guess and that broadly speaking is mainstream. Now there is a strong mainstream under like standing that some sort of civil conflict as possible. It's still when people talk about it primarily in the terms of like. This big civil war type thing, which I think is broadly speaking probably pretty silly. What's not silly is the breakdown of expectations of social mores and things like you can't show up in a big armed group and start killing people that you have on a list who are are folks that you have decided because they're trans, because whatever are are your enemy. And like one of the things that I'm kind of concerned we're going to see at some point in the future is a ******* mob gets spun up and go and take out some people on their list. And I'm not sure what that list is going to be. But, you know, there's a couple of people who pay attention. There's a couple of broad possibilities as to who would be targeted. And then local law enforcement say we're not going to choose to do anything about this. We're not going to. And again, this hat, I'm not coming up with this because this is like a bleak. I know you are well aware of this, but, like, we had an abortion clinic burnt down earlier this year, and I think it was Kentucky and the police refused to investigate it, right. Like this kind of **** already happens, you know? Yeah. Yeah, it was. For and for a while I was like, OK, well, they're not really going to. And then it's like, then they started coming after our kids and just like. I almost didn't survive my adolescence, so I know just how much pain these kids are in. And yeah, and then it's like, OK, then they got rid of rappers away and it's like. OK, they're not. They're not just posturing anymore. I mean the no, they're stochastic. Violence is like, you know, hey, someone should do something was bad enough, but then it's like, OK, they're really, they're on a tear hair. So you're you're put together this class for folks who I'm going to guess most of them had not #1 didn't have much experience with weapons prior firearms prior to this and probably also had not prior to you know the last year or two thought that they would ever be someone considering purchasing armaments. I mean some of them said that, you know, they grew up, you know, in rural places and grew up with guns and stuff but haven't touched them since they were kids. So you were there any kind of like specific questions that you got that you you found were interesting? They're kind of like surprising. Like I'm kind of interested in sort of what sort of things people had to ask, not in particular. I think everyone was just sort of. Just trying to learn everything and just like that. Yeah. Where there is there kind of a, has there been sort of like any further discussions about like, well, what comes next, right, like after the sort of basic class of people decide to start purchasing like firearms, Step 2 is like train in order to use them like functionally, right. Like it's not a a kind of thing you can just have. Yeah. The next step, the next step from the Group of friends that I have, I'm planning to go to arrange with them. And I mean we have to sort of find what ranges are most friendly, but yeah. So we're probably going to do that and just see how it goes with everyone. I mean, I, I know that where I am, one thing that people will do is, you know, you'll you'll have folks who will kind of go out and be. Kind of a little Guinea pigs for like, is this gun store a friendly place? Like, right. Like, is this a place we can go and buy weapons and not and and have people like respond? Well is this range of friendly place? And then kind of will spread that to the rest of the community that like, hey, this is a safe place to shoot or this is a safe place to buy. Do you, have you guys been kind of like setting stuff up like that or or what? No, not yet. But that's that is the next step, trying to figure it out. Yeah. And when it comes to like, just organizing. For the increasing hostility that that people are facing. Has it like, has it kind of pushed you to do anything more formal with like the communications groups you have in terms of like? You know I need, I might need. I'm going on a walk at night. I need somebody to be able to like call or something like that. I'm worried I'm being followed like is there has this been the kind of thing that you've been like setting up more in the way of precautions around so much because most of us just live in the city and we're we're usually pretty OK with that or have you know friends nearby. You know. Well, nothing so. Formal. Yeah, I mean, which is, yeah, I think how most people kind of do it. What do you sort of? Like? Watching out right now, what is kind of. I don't know the the thing you're you like, like do you have anything sort of on the horizon that you're sort of looking at as? You know, if this happens, then I'm going to expect this to happen and like, you know, maybe we need to do this would be time for some kind of more formal plans. It's hard to say. I'm. I've just been sort of just watching all of this. Are horrible stuff unfold. Everything happens so fast. Yeah, I mean, you know, like I said, I didn't think they're gonna get rid of RO. So it was just, I just don't know what's coming next. I'm just realizing it's like, it's so serious. It's actually getting to the point where I'm just sort of seeing myself, just trying to make amends with people in my past. And it's like you just you just take a step back and look at yourself, like. Oh wow, it really is getting bad. That it's just subconsciously I'm just thinking I should make peace with some of these people. That's pretty bleak. I mean. The. I'm struggling for like something more positive to say, which I'm not sure is. The is kind of the right impulse, but it is sort of like. We're all kind of like grappling for one of the problems is that the scale of the threat I think is or the reality of the threat is very clear to people, right? Whether you're kind of a centrist, dim and you just see like, oh **** there's actually like a lot of like militia type folks with guns talking about a civil war and they almost took over Congress. This is a real threat or whether you're, you know, a trans person or you know, an indigenous person or a migrant or something, somebody who's you know here in the country in a less than legal fashion. And your state saying like, oh, there's specific threats against groups, people like me and they're being more organized and more attacks are being carried out. The the reality of the threat is I think clear in differing degrees to everybody. What's not clear is the. The scope and the shape of it, right. So we know there's a lot of like armed right wing ******** talking about violent ****. We don't know is, are they ever going to get their **** together, right, like enough to do like and to what extent and in what areas, right. That is, I think that, you know, it's like the enemy is strong and weak at the same time, of course. But I think with us they're really, they really don't expect any resistance. And I think that if, you know, if they start meeting resistance or seeing us, what that's like, hey, we have seen rifles, you do you know? Yeah, well, and I think that might. You know, pull them off a little bit at least. I think that's generally like a. If you're kind of like, I don't know. Thinking about it from that from the perspective of like. And kind of a, a soulless like top down view of this is just a strategic thing like what are the, what are the best ways to oppose this kind of like right wing insurgent force. Well like obviously one of them is is not to like hand them ground, right. Like don't, don't, don't, don't do the thing that you see a lot of people in the left doing, which is oh they're coming for you know trans people. Well that's not, you know you. There's been a lot of, like, very ugly talk on certain chunks of liberals and left of, like, well, you know, if we defend these people, that's going to be bad for us in an electoral sense. You know? And like, this isn't something that gets you votes in small. Exactly. Hillary Clinton just ******* came out and said this, right and like. It's I I think, like I think historically is a bad strategy. You know, if you're just looking at what happened in history, obviously I think it's immoral. And I also, yeah, I I think that you are right in that the only reason that they're this scary right now is because for the better part of 20 years, a little less than that, but this really started to accelerate after Obama got elected. Every time the far right has like pushed for something and like made a stink or started making threats, people have backed off, right? And even outside of, you know, threats to specific communities, there were like the Mayak report, which is in like the mid of Obama's. From the Homeland Security put out a report warning about the growth of the domestic militia movement. And they like, made a big they flipped out about it. And we're like, look, they're saying, if you have a Gadsden flag, you're a domestic terrorist and all this stuff. And the Obama backed off and fired all of the people in, in the federal government who are like watching this **** which we can talk about the degree to which it's ever reasonable to hope that the feds are going to do anything about this. But it it it's it's an example of this. You get scared that opposing these people is going to be bad for you politically. And so you make a Craven political decision to cede ground to them, and then they get more dangerous, right? Like the Democrats have just been doing lately. I mean, just. Yeah. Several decades, really. It's such like a minefield to talk about being armed and being armed responsibly in the context of of 21st century United States, because there's so much to juggle, including the fact that we have basically nearly weekly massacres and stuff being committed by people who go and pick up a gun from, you know, a sporting goods store or whatever. But the fall fashions. Yeah, and they're almost all fascists with the history of violence towards women. But it it it it is like I think when we are talking about what it is, the actual importance on both an individual level of being on the importance on an individual level of of people who are in threatened communities being armed is that they cannot trust the police or the state to take any actions to protect them. And we see that because they get thrown under the ******* bus every time somebody comes after her attack that the police just sort of dismissed her. They just sort of like. Well, you know, it's just sort of that, you know, they, like, misgendered her just like, just complete, you know, disinterest. And I yeah. And obviously like this is this is the thing, you don't have to. There's a bunch of numerous other stories of of that and then on the other end of things you have like. Most of these people, one of the things we have in our corner is like scary as the the insurgent right is as most of them are ******* cowards. And when they get opposed, when somebody shows up and throws down, usually they *******. It's one thing if it's like a street fight, right? Because people don't tend to get killed in street fights and you can make a lot of money filming videos of it when ******* when when people start pulling straps, you know, like it gets really different really ******* quickly. And in general we've seen in Portland there have been a couple of these. Folks shot and defensive shootings, and it's part of why that's kind of stuff doesn't happen as much as it was in 2018. You saw that **** happen in Denver, and it had an effect on the intensity of of rallies there. When these people are, it would be irresponsible to say that. It's like, good when this happens, but when they suffer consequences for trying to hurt people, it it scares some of them. Really? Yeah. If you stand up to them, they'll realize, yeah. Yeah, I know. Like I, I, I this is just kind of turned into us sort of talking about the ethics of of Community self-defense. But I think it's something. I think it's important to talk about and I think it's also important to kind of reclaim from. This kind of masturbatory fantasy of becoming a minuteman or whatever, and also this masturbatory fantasy of like, this is something, this is a a thing I do as like part of my identity as opposed to like this is a thing that I do in order to defend my ability to continue to be who I am. I'm not, I'm not a radical. I just want to be alive, you know? And if I'm not, if I have to be transition, I will not want to be alive. And that's that. Yeah, yeah, and yeah. Well, did you have anything else you wanted to get into while we're talking today, Jessica? Alright, well do you have anything you wanted to plug any place you wanted to kind of direct people? Well, there's the SRAR because that's if someone wanted to at home, wanted to do their own thing, the Sr would probably be very receptive. I'm sure there's other organizations, yeah, there's John Brown gun clubs and stuff and other organizations that don't have names. And on a personal level, I. Make ******* collars and paddles. It's called ******* robot. It's a nasty star. It's a *******- robot.com. Excellent. Do, yeah. So bondagerobot.com, check that out. You're also on Twitter. Do you want to direct people? Let me see. That's where I found it. Yeah, Jessica Klashnekoff just figured out. You'll see it. All right. That is going to be our episode for the day. Everybody stay safe and. You know, think about the ethics of Community, self-defense. It's important. Football is back and better. MGM is inviting new customers to join the huddle and enjoy the action like never before. Sign up today using bonus code champion and your first wager is risk free up to $1000. 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It helped me and I hope it'll help you. Whatever you're going through. All there is with Anderson Cooper listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Your miraval matte courage already runs in your blood. He needs to be stopped. We've been silent and complacent for far too long. Sisters of the Underground is a new scripted series about fearless women exploring the life and legacy of the Mirabal sisters, Dominican women who were brave enough to challenge decades of oppression. Together, they led their country toward a revolution against Rafael Trujillo, the brutal dictator who ruled the Dominican Republic for 30 years. Please, please help us has blood on his hands from executive producers Dania Ramirez and Eva Longoria. That's me comes the powerful retelling of this all too relevant narrative. Listen to sisters of the underground as part of Michael Toura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Oh boy, it could happen here. And it seems to be happening more after the last couple of days. This is a podcast about how everything's looking pretty bad these days, and in particular, right now we're we're here, we've got the whole team. Not the whole team. We've got 70% of the team here to do a round table discussion about the thing, you know, the thing, the thing that happened this last week, that is still the main thing happening, which is the FBI raided former President Trump's house and now all of his fans are declaring war on the FBI, which is so far been, let's all be honest here, pretty funny, but everybody's also a lot. There's a lot of worry going on. There's a lot the some folks have documented. People talk about this, that, like, discussion online of the Civil war and civil conflict has like exploded to new heights over the last like 4 days or so. So yeah, we're going to talk about all of that, but but here's, here's, here's the team. We've got Garrison Davis, James Stout and we've got Christopher Wong and of course me, Sophie, how's everybody doing today? I'm doing great. Yeah, magnificently. So where's where's where's everybody's new civil war counters at who who here feels like we're we're closer, and who here feels like we've gotten further away? Well, it's definitely gone up. It's definitely gone up a little bit. Yeah, temperatures a little higher for sure. Yeah. I mean we're we're still not really around the averages around G6, but it's it is, it's it's it's the highest it's been around like the Biden administration. Yeah. I just made some ceramic armour purchases is where my where my current civil war counter is at. Yes, I did just get another set of rifle plates. Got some side plates like you know you know who had body armor is the guy who single handedly attacked the FBI field office in Ohio with a nail gun and then died in a field. OK, before we get into that Ricky, can we can we talk? What the **** is going on with that guy who, like, lit himself on fire in his car and ran into the Capitol barrier and, like, why I forgot about that? What? Oh yeah, like that might have just been a suicide because we don't seem to have any clear evidence that it was political. It's just like a really weird like, I don't know that that's that's the kind of thing that feels like if it was happening five years ago, would have been like a major news story. And when I was trying to find news stories about it. So the first thing I did was, OK, I I Googled DC car attack and I found a different DC car attack. And then I Googled DC shooting and I found a different DC shooting. And like, combining the two was like, oh, this is where we're living in a great time. This isn't even the first, not even the first person to drive their car into a capital. These barrier and then get out and start shooting right like this is this is the United States it's just something we do here is incredible approved martyrdom method. I mean it just it does kind of seem like it was just a suicide like that one was just a political suicide to the Capitol police are saying it was 29 years old didn't appear to be targeting any members of Congress fired shots into the air before taking his own life. No. Officers shot their weapons. It was very, it was very quick, yeah. OK. Yeah, it is interesting. There's a check in because he is. He is no Ricky Schaffer who. Yeah, that that. Pretty sad. The Schiffer story is incredibly much more funny having gone through. I mean so this is obviously you have Donald Trump get rated by the FBI and then less than two days later you have this guy show up outside of an FBI field office, try to force his way through or try to break through the bulletproof glass with the nail gun and then winds up in an hours long standoff before being shot to death by the FBI, which is very funny because he so. I I guess the thing about this that's unsettling that that colleague of ours, Jason Wilson, pointed out on Twitter and that I think is worth noting is that while this kind of thing is is extremely American and very common, the thought shiffer is that he's not he's he's just a he's he's straight up normal mega right like he's not from any of the there's no evidence that he was kind of like dipping into these other subcultures that are more explicitly like terroristic in their nature like this is that he may have ties to proud. Boys, but yeah, well, we'll see. He was a J6, you know, so I'm sure, but it, I mean it's what it is, is a a guy who is a normal Trump supporter getting radicalized terrorist. And the the yeah, I mean, I mean he was ultra to the extent of what he did a few days ago and he was on social and like he he was. Behind that social network that's not that irregular. Like, if you watch the most recent Jordan Klepper video, there's people doing like, like, regular *** people saying things that are way more absurd than what they were saying two years ago. Like, the reality has become so detached for a certain sect of, like, Trump lifers, and it's just impossible to pry them away to the point where they ineffectually attack an FBI office with a nail gun and die in a shootout hours later. And and shiffer, I mean one of the things that you might compare a little bit to Schiffer is, you know there have been a particularly during the Trump years there were a couple of attacks on ice facilities that were kind of like acts of desperation from people who were politically radicalized by the things happening. But also felt like there was kind of no hope of of taking any sort of useful action other than being an individual going out and attacking ice. And I think this is a lot more similar to that in terms of the headspace of the guy than it's similar to, for example, like the Nazis shooting up like an El Paso ******* Walmart because they absolutely stop white genocide. Like, this is this is a guy who was like purely radicalized by mainstream conservative media and and the president's social media network. He was directly radicalized by President Trump as opposed to like finding Trump funny and then like winding up. And some some ****** ** places online that radicalize them and that is unsettling, even though it's again pretty funny. What happened to him? Both of those things can be true, and I think we have to take joy and the the times when individual MAGA dudes use nail guns to try and attack the entire FBI. Really. He really thought that that you could use the that bulletproof glass can't be broken by bullets but you can use nail guns to just really well. He thought that this gets to what the communities that he was kind of radicalized. And he thought that because there's a lot of like normal gun YouTube videos where people will like because the thing on like, gun YouTube is people will take. Different kinds of firearms or other weapons and different kinds of materials and see how the two interact together, right? Like do what happens when you shoot a bullet at this, how hard it is it to get through bulletproof glass? What are ways and like he certainly figured that out because of because there are some specific videos people pointed out that are likely the ones he watched where like there are ways that you can kind of damage and take the you. You can gradually like make bulletproof glass fail by using a nail gun. There are ways in which you can do that. It just doesn't happen to be away. Something you can do while you are standing in front of an FBI field office without getting shot to death by the FBI before, before he before he died, he posted a few messages onto truth saying, well, I thought I had to wait. And I did it. If you don't hear from me, it's true. I I tried attacking the FBI and and it'll mean I was either taken off the Internet, the FBI got me, or they sent to the regular cops. To be fair to this guy, he did successfully manage to shoot a nail gun at the FBI office. The FBI weren't the ones who killed him. Like, he actually got away from this, which is Highway Patrol, wasn't it? Yeah. He also called for people to prepare themselves for combat in the days after the FBI search. And that we must not tolerate this one along other posts around people urging to kill FBI agents on site and be ready to take down other active enemies of the people and those who try to prevent you from doing it. All that kind of rhetoric, and there's. Sorry, yeah, I like the on site thing. Like, we all have this kind of joke about like people dressing like feds, right? But it's very funny that he thinks that maybe they're coming out like men in black or something that he's not going to be looking for like like Feds and Patagonia, which is what they actually aware of. He's. For the man, look if you see if you see a Patagonia vest, that is either a federal agent or an Amazon executive, and either way you should be frightened either way on site. Stand by. Also, just such a generous interpretation that they take him off the Internet for the crime of like, trying to shoot up an FBI office. They did James. He's not online anymore, it's true. Although although like kind of bluntly posting about the terroristic attack you carried out on the FBI in like, as you are actively dying. Look at you have to say the man had the soul of a poster. Poster. He had this poster. I think it's also like, it's interesting because this isn't like, it's like there's lots of like mass shooters who sort of who kind of have poster brain, right? But like this is like, this isn't like, like he's he's not doing it for the post. This post your brain it is like this is just sort of like it is. It is separate from someone doing a specific like memetic attack, like an attack to entice memetic violence in the future. This was just a this was just his form of communication as his in his regular life. And it was and it was the Ohio State troopers that pursued the vehicle. Well, I think that that that this point is something that's kind of bleak about this, right, which is like the extent to which. Like the, the extent to which the, the, the way this kind of politics functions is by having like, you know, social media becomes your entire. Like social sphere to the point where it's like, well, what are you doing in your last moments is you're like running away from the cops are about to shoot was like, well, we're gonna post yeah and you gotta gotta sit down a truth. It's it's that scene from Love Actually. But it's not true anymore, right? Where they're like talking about what people did in 911 when they were stuck in the towers and they like called loved ones and told them they love them. Not this guy. He proved untrue. Social. This this guy? This guy didn't have people. Ricky schaffer? No. I mean, so there is one of the things that people have been asking again is in the wake of this massive surge in right wing people talking about how it's time to have a civil war. And one of the things you did see is like as soon as Trump got raided fairly like mainstream mega figures who tend to be more careful in terms of their language than like the the the radicals talking about like it's war. You know, now we're at war, which is a cold civil war. And most of them like Steven Crowder were doing it to sell T-shirts. But that that's still that is an escalation in danger, right, because with that, the rhetoric that becomes common again, you're going to have more Ricky shippers. And I'm sure that was part of like, what was going on in this guy's head is OK, well, if we are in a cold civil war, then I'm not going to just sit back and let the FBI destroy the only hope for Western civilization. I've got to fight back. That's that's that's what happened. And and if you're if people are asking kind of like what is about to happen, what is coming next, I don't think the thing to worry about is like you know two sides taking up arms and suddenly fighting a big civil war. That is that is not I think the realistic threat model. But I also disagree with the folks who are like look it's just going to it's not going to be a problem. You're going to get a couple of like lunatics carry out attacks, but it's all going to be fine. No, what is happening is. We are normalizing the language of political violence and normalizing that violence is the only resolution to our political problems, and that has gotten normalized for roughly 30% of the voting population of this country. That's that's where they are and that is intensely dangerous. It is not, I don't I don't think and I think partly you could there's, there's it's not entirely bad stuff that's come out as a result of Trump getting rated. Some of it is is positive because we are seeing that a significant number of like the media people are. Scared of that to a degree and peeling back, there was an interesting thing that happened just today. The article came out that apparently Trump reached out to Merrick Garland and asked him how he could lower the temperature. And it's it's interesting, it's Garland is who for the listeners who doesn't do not keep up with the attorney general, the president of the FBI. Effectively, that's not how politics works, but let's just say that and make the people online who. Pay attention to the way the government works. Very angry. But so basically what it seems like Trump is doing is saying, hey, I recognize that like things are bad and scary and the the political temperature is like at a boiling point. I want to try to use that as leverage to work things out with the DOJ. So you could see this as a couple of things. You could see it one as potentially Trump being just actually concerned about the rhetoric because they shooting war would not be a good thing for him. You could see it. Has Trump being kind of manipulative and trying to use like, Oh well, this is now the fact that my supporters are scary and carrying out terrorist attacks is a way in which I can utilize leverage and like exercise power over the government and and it's it's kind of a bargaining chip that I have in my fight with the FBI. Or you could even see it as potentially evidence that he actually is scared of potential prosecution because maybe this is him, kind of that maybe this is a show of desperation. It's really unclear at the moment. What it is I can tell you I've read a couple of right wing the the New York Times is the one that broke this story and they're they're reporting on it is pretty straightforward and mostly focuses on the like claims made by Trump's legal team about like you know how they attempted to comply with their requests to bring in classified information. But the right wing media coverage of this has been really different and has shown it as like Trump is just sort of desperately you know trying to trying to be reasonable and the you know the Justice Department. Just isn't willing to talk to him and isn't willing to work with him at all. And that's kind of the way it's being spun right now. There was that pro Trump protest in DC, which got no one to show up because it was either canceled or a whole bunch of like, forums or image boards or Fortnite blogs told people not to go. They thought it could be a trap. And I think stuff like that happening in DC might still take a long time to recover after J6. But stuff that's happening in other capitals and other places and other now FBI offices is is much more concerning. And I think more localized shows of support for President Trump or support for just whatever the current thing is, is probably going to it's going to continue going with some. Image of militancy. You know, whether that's people and Hawaiian shirts showing up with guns outside the FBI office, which you've seen in Arizona just in the last couple of days. Yeah, literally yesterday as we record this. When it comes to actual like so one of the reasons people have been concerned about civil war stuff is, and this is not an unreasonable, is the fact that you have had Republican officials, including some state level elected officials, particularly in Florida, saying some pretty wild **** including like a a state congressional candidate talking about we need to basically kick the FBI out of the entire state Governor DeSantis needs to exercise. Like the basically saying that De Santis needs to use Florida State law enforcement to stop the FBI from investigating the former president. And were that to happen, that would be a big deal. That would be like, that is the kind of thing that could lead to a massive civil conflict, right? Because vaguely speaking, stuff like that is what caused is what started the actual shooting in the last civil war is state saying we are not recognizing the authority of the federal government, we're not doing anything to the federal government. We have to. And this is something like, there's a lot of support from MAGA folks for this, Ben Collins, who does, I think, for NBC, was posting the other day a lot of, like different Trump queue forums, sort of posts where people are saying, hey, Don Junior, we know you lurk on the site, you should cross the Rubicon and, you know, somehow get DeSantis to use Florida law enforcement to attack the FBI. And there's some pretty gnarly stuff in those posts. Now, I don't think that that means there's actually, I haven't seen evidence that there's much political will for that. And in fact, one of the things people are saying is that it looks like there's a decent chance disantis. Cooperated and helped. The FBI just wants to be president. Impressive that he's actually like on board with this because he wants to **** over Trump. Yeah, now that is scary. And that is, I think, a more realistic threat model than the idea that DeSantis might have the Florida State troopers start shooting at the FBI. As funny as it may be to watch Florida law enforcement shoot at the FBI, that would be pretty funny. I know, I know. I don't think this dentist will do that because DeSantis really wants to be president, which is just another scary possibility. And that would want us to be less funny to watch. It's. There, it's like, it's not great overall. It's it's it's too great. It's too not great. Sets of choices here. Yeah. And I I think if we're looking at like what the actual kind of mass civil threat is as opposed to DeSantis declaring secession or something and the Trump states trying to declare their independence, I think the actual threat is that. This could damage Trump enough that he doesn't run in DeSantis maybe is and and this is very unclear. By the way, if you look at the polling, it's extremely unclear as to whether or not to Santis would do better than Trump in a in a national election right now. But some of the polling does suggest that even as unpopular as Biden is right now, he still has a sizable lead over Trump and any headway because that people ******* hate Donald Trump, right? If you are not one of the people who was on the verge of attacking an FBI building right now? You don't like him. Even if Biden has not done anything to help you, at least in your mind, you know, then, then. And so that that is kind of the bet that DeSantis is making. And I think what scares me most about the rhetoric we're seeing right now, less than the fact the idea that, like Florida is going to declare war on the ******* DC government is the threat that the rhetoric will stay at this heightened level. And you're already seeing the thing that scares me more than talk about, like, we should secede is talk about like, well, when we're back in power. We're just going to send the FBI after everybody that is that we consider it. I mean, let's, let's, let's raid them all, you know, and that's the thing that scares me and that's the thing that I think could actually lead to the highest loss of life. There's, there's that part. And then obviously like in terms of like bringing it back to what we to stuff we talked about on the show, a DeSantis like presidency would be extremely hostile to queer people way, way, way more so than Trump. And that would be varying on some very dangerous and very on shaky ground. And and I think in the short term too, there's there's another danger there, which is that like we see this kind of militancy from the right like spreading more and more into just the other campaigns that they're doing. And so, you know, we start getting a tax gender clinics, we start seeing more tax and abortion clinics. And I think that's possible. And I think also like another thing to be thinking about is looking what what happened to 2020 where. Specifically around the anti lockdown stuff, you know, you just we just had a whole bunch of armed people like. Occupying capital buildings. And it worked. It was it was incredibly effective, right. Like, there is like the, the, the the net result of that and the sort of, like, resulting political campaign from it is that, like, the entire Democratic Party has decided that it just doesn't like, it's not even gonna talk about COVID anymore. And like, the CDC is just like, pretending it doesn't exist. Yeah. And so, like, like that that that strategy, like there's a strategy. And The thing is, again, like the actual policies, like stuff like stuff like vaccine mandates for teachers, like a 64% approval rating, right, like the the actual, like everyone. Doesn't die from COVID policies are popular. It's just that like this sort of you know, getting, getting, getting, getting a bunch of guys with guns to go into a capitol building and then yell about it is enough of a political threat that they can they can force the Democrats to back down. And yeah there's I think there's a non zero chance they start trying to do other things trying to do this with like hey if you're gonna have gender clinics in your state we're going to start occupying capitals again and and you could see the fact that and one of the things that is unclear that makes it hard to tell if. So. It is unclear as to whether or not the Biden White House knew that this raid was happening. Like and and who knew? There are definitely reports that some staffers found out about it on ******* Twitter. I have to you I I have to assume that the President was aware of it and like it was probably hit that he to some extent pushed for it. I would have trouble believing that he did not because it's the FBI rating of former president, right? The FBI has a lot of power, but I don't think that's a thing that the feds just do. Because. Right. Like, I think, yeah, you have to have Garland on your side. And if Garland is, you know, directing this to some extent, then, like, I'm sure Biden is aware, and that actually might be. And the FBI director that Trump appointed. Yeah. Yeah. Chris Wray, who sucks. I mean, obviously they all suck. Everybody involved in this sucks. There was a great post someone made right after the raid that says, look, I want to make it really clear. The FBI cannot do good things, but they can do funny things. And this is extremely funny. And I just like that. Specifically, some of the some of the crimes around keeping classified documents and this specific FBI director are both things that either Trump signed into into law or he appointed himself. Yeah, it it is very funny. I have been talking to people who have had security clearances and understand some of that and. Like the the **** that they got from his house and those 11 boxes or whatever is the kind of thing that like. Does not get ****** with in the way that Trump would like **** with and the way that Trump would like ****** with it. Like, yeah, it's it's. I mean the fact that the Espionage Act is in play is pretty shocking, as is the fact that Rand Paul is now calling for the Espionage Act to be dissolved, which is like. Wow. Incredibly based, Randall. That is, yeah, it is really. It is really. It is a thing to watch everyone go like, you know, defund FBI, abolish FBI just because power gets used against one person, one time and you're like, oh, this power only exists to hurt minorities. Why is it being used to hurt me or someone who I who I look up to? On the left, right now that is like, should we be working with the right to defund the FBI or whatever? And here's the thing, in my opinion, no, you should not work with the right on any of this stuff because they don't want to get rid of the FBI. They want to take the weaponry and power that the FBI has and they want to like, deploy it differently, but they still want that power to exist, right. So no, you can't work with them on that. However, if they start actually trying to remove the Espionage Act, then you absolutely we should vote to remove the like that's that's that's fine. Like, just like if they actually vote to reduce funding to federal law enforcement, that's fine. But that doesn't mean like you. You act as if they're legitimately fighting against any of this stuff. But. When it comes to so I I think that there's some potential evidence, just the fact that this rate happened, that shows that maybe there are folks in the Biden administration who understand the stakes of the fight and are taking it seriously. Because this is, I mean, and we'll see how it shakes out. It's all still too early to know if, like anything more serious than his house being disrupted is going to happen. But like if they really throw down legally against Trump in this way to try to stop him from being able to hold office again and and to try to actually. Punish him for his abuses of power. That's potentially a pretty smart move. If they have the stones right, that's a big question is, like, are they going to back down because the right starts threatening to shoot things up? So, like, the scary thing potential here is that the right wing starts howling about how they're going to do a bunch of murders over this. And so the DOJ backs off and the right is like, well, what if we just threaten to commit mass murder anytime something we don't like happens? Maybe that's how we win politics. Now, the positive with this is that, like, the way fascists succeed historically? Is because people who are not fascists are not really willing to fight them. And so the fascists go for it, and everybody else backs off because they're scared of having a fight, right? So if this shows that there's actually some teeth within the Democratic Party to throw down, that's potentially a sign that, like, they've started to recognize where the stakes are, that shouldn't be taken as too high of a possibility. I'm looking at a post from David Frum, famed. Centrist idiot who's talking about how he thinks that De Santis nomination in 2024 quote represented a much better outcome for the whole country than a Trump return. Maybe his manner or record, but he's a recognizably normal US politician. No peace, but if defeated, he'd go peacefully. Like, First off, great, incredible. But that's where we are right now. That you're like, well, he's a father. He would be a fine candidate for the Republicans to run because he wouldn't try to overthrow the country. Be lost. #1 not certain about that, but #2. Yikes. Again, if David Frum is saying something, he's wrong, right? That is. That is the rule. The rule of David Frum? He's he's one of those kind of like thinkers in American politics or whatever he's saying is not right. Yeah. And like in De Santis, like right now is like very openly like getting his people in position to take control of the Florida, like to take control of Florida's like election procedures like yes, this guy assaults attorney general. It's like he's like very openly trying to do. And what was the guys name Kelp who rigged the election in Georgia? A few years ago, yeah. Yeah. He's like very obviously prepping to do that and it's like, I'm sure it'll be fine. He seems like a normal enough guy. There peacefully. I do want to just read before we close out read a few things that how how the FBI and how the DHS have been talking about the threats that they've been seeing because how the kind of institutions of power talking about these same things is worth noting. Yes they they they released a memo saying that there are threats quote occurring primarily online and across multiple platforms including social media sites, web forms, video sharing platforms and image boards. The FBI and DHS have observed an increase in violent threats posted on social media. Against federal officials and facilities, including a threat to places so-called Dirty Bomb in front of the FBI headquarters and issuing general calls for civil war and armed rebellion. So yeah, they they said that they're, they're, they're looking at, they're looking at threats through like specifically and identifying proposed targets, tactics and weaponry. And you know, it goes, it goes on to talk about the targeted for people in like the judicial system, law enforcement, government officials associated with the Palm Beach search, the targeting, the federal judge who approved the search warrant. And the FBI has also observed the personal identifying information of possible targets of violence such as the home addresses and identification of family members disseminated online as additional targets. So in terms of like what like the attack surface is on these types of, you know, image boards and social media sites even. Well before before Schiffer did his attack he posted when they come for you kill them being American and not a steer and think other kind of things that could be at play and things that are worrying me as stuff develops, not because they're worrying me, not because they're convincing they're worrying me because they don't need to be convincing. Deceptively edited photos and videos have gone viral across social media over the the past week following the search while. Best hosting Tucker Carlson tonight on Fox News. Brian Kilmeade showed a fake image of the judge who signed off on this on the search warrant sitting beside. Is it glossy and Maxwell? How do you say her name? Gislaine gislaine, genuinely? It it's it's killing. Gillian Backwell so you know, showing this, you know, quote UN quote meme, while not saying it's a meme, just showing the picture on on Friday, a fake video purporting to show another Fox host, Sean Hannity arguing with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis over the definition of what an FBI raid is. But that discussion never happened. This was spliced together, footage from years apart in different interview segments. Hours after the video went viral on Twitter, the platform did place a manipulated media label. Umm. And yeah it's it's it's this kind of stuff that is going to be you know in terms of like you know trying to prospect, trying to like prospect what next few years could be depending on who the president is, what types of like media is going to be popular. How this is going to kind of impact the temperature politically and how people take in information and how people are willing to turn information into action in terms of taking out violence that how often these little small things are happening is. It's. It's this. It could be the start of a of a thing that becomes a much bigger problem very soon. Yeah, Umm. I think maybe like in terms of the temperature rising, we should discuss just really briefly these other sort of. But more or less baseless or sort of wildly off base conspiracies around law enforcement that we've seen on the right, like in the last few weeks, do we want to talk about those? Do you want to talk about those separately? I'm not sure what you're referring to. So there's, there's a couple of things that have happened that have sent like the the right pretty sort of crazy in the last few weeks. One is the in the Inflation Reduction Act, there's there's this part where they say they're going to hire 87,000 new IRS agents, right? Yes, yes. A large part of that is replacing the massive amount of virus people who are about to retire and and the the rest of it is getting them back up to sort of where they were a few years ago. It's not like they're gonna actually have pre pandemic levels. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So they're like 70,000, I think half of the most supposed to retire in the next five years. They want to hire 87,000 over the next 10 years. So that'll get them up by 2032 to where they were in 2019 or whatever. So it's not what it's portrayed as, but that combined I think with the ATF visiting a guys house, which I know Garrison and I saw memes about in, in this crazy. Little Conservative newspaper that we that we came across when we were reporting on a story and and the ATF reclassifying some think of things that are called AR pistols which you probably don't need to explain other than saying that there are workaround for federal firearms or is that fair? Yeah, there's a bunch of different. There's a bunch of kinds of guns that you're not supposed to be allowed to have without a special tax stamp, which is like a whole additional legal process in order to basically make sure that poor people can't own certain types of of specific firearms. And there's work arounds where things function the same way as those guns that are normally illegal, but they aren't technically that, and the FBI or not FBI and the ATF is about to crack down on some of that, and so yeah. Yeah, at the sort of combination of these things has LED a lot of figures on the right. You'll see it in that thread. I think Robert shared it and I shared it of like these dozens of tick tocks talking about civil war that came out the day after Trump was raided. They talk a lot about IRS raids and about people coming for their for their guns and their short barreled rifles specifically, which I think is the combination of these things leading to this sort of, again, like it. It's, if you misunderstand each of those three things. Completely. You get to the conclusion that the IRS has hired 87,000 armed shock troops and they're coming after your AR pistol, which. It's not true, but that narrative has definitely been sort of spread around. And again, it's not exactly decreasing the temperature. No, I mean, just I think today Trump was on Fox News Digital and he said people are so angry at what's taking place. Whatever we can do to help because the temperature has to be brought down in the country. If it isn't terrible, things are going to happen. People of this, the people of this country are not going to stand for another scam. So, huh, I wonder what he meant by that ohboy. Yeah, boy, yeah, I guess like. The the the other thing that I mean you kind of touched on but I think is like important to understand is the extent to which like. Trump is kind of a singular figure in his ability to actually get a bunch of people to do a thing. And like, I think that, like that that power I think is reduced since, you know, like, he's like, he's not president anymore, right? Like he's reduced since Jay six. Yeah, since day six. But like, you know, he he still has the ability to mobilize. Like ability to mobilize parts of the right that, like you're sort of like weird neo-Nazi guy like can't and he like, you know, like he, he, he seems to be aware of this and he seems to be aware that like. You know, he can use his either use this as a bargaining chip or use this to sort of like threaten people. But yeah, like that's a real thing. Like it is a real thing that there's an incredibly large part of the country who, like if Donald Trump told them to, like, go die for him, but nobody beach or something like they probably would. Yep. Yeah, the FBI and DHS and their mlso warned that the 2022 midterm elections in November could be seen as an additional flashpoint in which. We'll continue to escalate threats against perceived ideological opponents, including federal law enforcement personnel, so stay tuned. Oh, it should. If people haven't realized, by the way, it was Breitbart who named the FBI. Agents obtained the warrant. Yeah. Didn't bother to Google what their jobs were. They were like, what is what is this acronym Stand for? No one knows. It's very secret. Top journalism there, yeah. Well, good. We seem to be in a nice place, then it's going well. Yeah, yeah. Start organizing now. The, the, the, the, the best time to start. This was yesterday. The second best time is now. The third best time is tomorrow. And don't don't let them take how funny this is as well, though. Yeah, you funny. Yeah. Yeah. There is another lesson here, which is that, like, there is an enormous amount you can get away with politically as long as it's funny. And like, Frank, frankly, we we we have we have not been utilizing that to the left. And like, anarchists in general have forgotten how to do good funny **** for the past ten years and we have to bring it back. Yeah, it is. This is we've been given a precious gift. And how funny this is. And you we have a couple of responsibilities, and one of them of course, is to to organize in order to be prepared to to counter increasing like attempts to impose an authoritarian violence on us. But another thing that it is response that we have a responsibility to do is laugh at how funny this is and make sure that other people don't forget how funny this is. So go out into the world and remind somebody that a ******* Trump nerd tried to. Take on the FBI with a nail gun and an AR15 and died in a ******* field in Ohio. Because that's pretty funny. It's pretty funny. Football is back and better. MGM is inviting new customers to join the huddle and enjoy the action like never before. Sign up today using bonus code champion and your first wager is risk free up to $1000. You'll also have instant access to a variety of parlay selection features, player props, and boosted odd specials. Just download the bet MGM app today or go to bedmgm.com and enter a bonus. Vote champion and place your first wager risk free up to $1000. The bet MGM app is the perfect way to experience the excitement of wagering on live sports now in more markets than ever. Visitbetmgm.com for terms and conditions must be 21 years of age or older to wager Virginia only new customer offer. All promotions are subject to qualification and eligibility requirements. Rewards issued as non withdrawable free bets or site credit free bets expire 7 days from issuance. Please gamble responsibly. Gambling problem call 188853235. 100. I'm Anderson Cooper. Earlier this year, while packing up my late mom's apartment and her things, I felt isolated and alone. Weighed down by grief, I began recording a series of deeply personal conversations with others about their experiences with loss and helped me and I hope it'll help you. Whatever you're going through. All there is with Anderson Cooper listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Your miraval matte courage already runs in your blood. He needs to be stopped. We've been silent and complacent for far too long. Sisters of the Underground is a new scripted series about fearless women exploring the life and legacy of the Mirabal sisters, Dominican women who were brave enough to challenge decades of oppression. Together, they led their country toward a revolution against Rafael Trujillo, the brutal dictator who ruled the Dominican Republic for 30 years. 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We're we're doing we're, we're, we're, we're we're we're doing the maniacal laughs. We're doing the podcast. We're doing the podcast welcome welcome. We want to finish the story, the soldiers story that is quasi balagoon's life and legacy. Where we last left off. As part of the New York City Panther 21 trials, Kouassi was put in jail. At the same time he was also developing his political. Identity, in a way, and recognizing some of the issues he was having with the Black Panther Party, and particularly after the East Coast, West Coast split that occurred. Quasi has been as we covered last time was born Donald Reams, but took on the identity of Quasi Balagoon due to his recognition of his africanness, of himself through his experience in the army, through his experience in London connecting with the Black diaspora, and through his connections with the Yoruba temple. And so while the Gouin. Alongside that, that person recognition and political recognition of his anti authoritarian politics also comes to see himself as someone who is at war. With the state and as such. Once in jail, he sees himself as a political prisoner, as a prisoner of war. While in prison. Upon the 21 were incarcerated in a variety of jails in different boroughs of New York City. But Balagoon Lumumba, Shakur and another defendant. Quando can Kinshasa. They were all incarcerated at the Queen's House of Detention, and they organized an uprising that took seven hostages, including a Captain, 5 correctional officers and a black cook holding them from October 1st to 5th, 1970. This little gun of the multiethnic takeover, which, by the way, is pretty unheard of in prisons where black, Latino and white inmates come together. Their slogan was all power to the people, free all oppressed people, and so their primary demand was for speedier trials. And. In this process, BALAGOON again developing his anti thorian politics, surely you know, crawling towards what you would come to define himself as. Decided not to play a vanguard role in this decision making process in this. Uprising? Even before he formally declared his commitment to anti authoritarian politics, his primary concern was consensus for all inmates and decision making, including access to food being brought from the outside. And so that sort of consensus process also helped build, you know, his identity, the prisoners. They formed committees to coordinate their uprisings, and they agreed to release 2 hostages to Black Cook and one of the prison guards as a sign of good faith. Eventually, they had to release all of the hostages, and they also suffered abuse and charges from the uprising. It was sort of Ophelia. But Quasi didn't see it that way. While he was disappointed by the outcome, he believed that the power the inmates felt by holding the state to be for that, you know, limited movement was a valuable experience. It was a learning experience as an organizer, so the uprising has growing pains to those who believe that oppressed people would rise up and seek justice. So as we can see that even with losses, there are lessons to be learned. And this isn't unique to just this one moment in history. In fact, we can apply it to more recent events, such as with the George Floyd uprisings of 2020. It's easy to be. Nihilistic allistic. Probably isn't the best. You seem cynical and see that all well, the uprising was Ophelia. Millions of people caught up and protested and nothing came out of it, really. And yet that, in combination with the coronavirus pandemic, brought people together to. Establish programs of mutual aid to get involved in organizations in their local situation, to connect with people, to radicalize themselves and radicalize others. It was not a loss, you know. Yeah, I mean, I I think there's there, there's an extent to which. Even if it's extremely hard to tell in the moment, there's there's this way in which like participating something like that just sort of permanently changes you. And and I think I think also in in the sort of context of the prison uprisings, right, like this is. Like? This is by no means like the last prison uprising that's going to happen in this era. And so I think, like, I don't know, it seems like one of those moments where it's like in in the moment, it's like, oh, we failed. Things look bad. But like, when in the sort of like broader historical sweep, it's like, no, this was like an early uprising in a period that is going to be sort of like an early domino. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And and I think that's something that can be really hard to like. Like, especially in the moment, it can be really hard to sort of like see that. Because it's really easy to sort of like. Looking narrowly at what your one struggle is doing. And then you know, but yeah, if if if you have this sort of like. You know, if you have the ability to sort of like see back through history, you can watch how stuff like this just sort of like has this massive effect on consciousness in a way that the people in it even have a lot, have a hard time seeing. Yeah. And so that's why, like I'm emphasizing the first part, it's really important to. Develop this perspective and to study our history. You know, our radical history so we could learn. You could both, you know, put things into focus, into perspective, and also look at the specifics of how things played out. So after balloon's experience in the Panther Party and the repression of the New York chapter, he realized that. The party was being turned away from its grassroots organizing of the black masses and the issues that affect their most the daily survival their house and their education police abuse. You realize the state was using. It's in carceral system as a tactic. By rounding up these organizers, by infiltrating the party, by charging people these high bills and such, it turned the party focus away from liberation to fundraising for legal defense. And so he realized he could not continue the fight, could not continue on this front, that he needed to survive and contribute underground to build a black Liberation Army as a clandestine freedom fighter fighter. As a miracle from the previous episode, Balogun was severed from the case of 13 of those who have been arrested. Originally to face charges in New Jersey, and after the acquittal of most of his comrades, Balogun quit, pleaded guilty to the charge that he and an unidentified person did attempt to shoot police officers, making him the only one of the 21 original defendants to be convicted. However. On September 12th 1973 Balogun would escape from the new new jerseys Rahway Prison shortly after his conviction for armed robbery in New Jersey and then eight months after his escape on May 5th 1974 he was again captured trying to assist a fellow Panther Party member and defendant Richard Harris from escaping custody. They were both apprehended after being wounded in a gun battle with correctional and police officers. And So what I find interesting about that he risked being recaptured so he could free Harris and that's. Solidarity right there. He was so willing to sacrifice himself to help his comrades, yeah. That's admirable levels of commitment. And even though he was imprisoned. And. Was disillusioned with the Panther Party and that would discourage his involvement or commitment to revolution. While incarcerated began to explore anarchist politics. He received and studied literature from solidarity groups like the Anarchist Black Cross, which is an anti authoritarian organization that provides material and legal support to political prisoners. And I remember when I was reading this, I recognize that name anarchist Black Cross the VC. I know that because they also helped Lorenzo combo, even to be released from jail. They also provided him materials when he was incarcerated. And so kudos to them for that, you know. Helping to. Connect these people and connect these ideas. Yeah, and the innerspace cross, if I'm remembering my history right, like, has a really, really long history. Of doing this going back to like. I mean, I, I know, I know. They were negotiating like the releases of like political prisoners and the Bolsheviks. Go down. I don't know. They went about that far. Yeah, I I'm pretty sure. Yeah, if I'm if I'm remembering. And that just goes to show you might not see yourself as doing anything that meaningful or I'm just sending books to prisoners. In reality, you. Building foundations here and you know the people who you influence can go on to influence so many more. So many others. So anarchism ended up providing balagoon with a a great analytical lens to sum up his critique of his experiences in the Panther Party. When you looked at, you know, the works of, like Emma Goldman and others and applied them to the black liberation struggle, he began to ask questions about how his comrade to go in about revolution. How by allowing these hierarchies to develop in their organizations, they weakened their resolve and their fighting capacity. It's like, as he says, the card you accepted their command regardless of what their intellect had or had not made clear to them. The true democratic process which they were willing to die for, for the sake of their children, they would not clean for themselves. So what about good wanted was a democratic process that would be established from today, not that you would have a certain system now and then you would wait until after the revolution to set up a different system. It's like that whole connection of means and ends that, you know, anarchists keep going on about. Yeah. He realized that he needed his democratic process to unleash your revolutionary potential, the masses and not make them pray to new oppressors. The only way to make a dictatorship with the proletariat is to elevate everyone. To deflate all the advantages of power. And Rihanna conservation has that in its agenda. One of his inspirations was a fellow clandestine freedom fighter, that being Italian anarchist Errico Malatesta. Who exhorted that revolutionary struggle consists more of deeds than roots? He read a lot of different political figures and radical anarchists. But. Especially those involved in insurrection, especially those like Eric Maltester, who was also one of my personal favorites. When reading that. I found that to be a a fun connection. Yeah, he's so cool. Yeah, yeah. He really is. I see. Why? Why? Why Zoe Baker likes him so much. Yeah. Another influence of his was his Spanish revolutionary, whose Buenaventura Durruti Demarsh, who organized the Anakalea movement Los Justos the Avenger ones. Like their name was Jessie Serious? We thought to be involved in political assassinations against, you know, repression and gorilla reads on the military forces of the Spanish dictatorship. So people like Italian exiles, Severin Severino, di Giovanni, and. Other anarchists like Sacco and Vanzetti. So. Digiovanni was known for his campaign of bombing as armed propaganda in solidarity with executed anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti. Duty and Giovanni both engaged in expropriation of capitalist institutions as a means of supporting the revolutionary movement, and keep that point point in mind, expropriation of capitalist institutions. To quote Mickey Mouse, it's a surprise tool that will help us later, alright? Another influence was, of course, Emma Goldman, who was another advocate of revolutionary armed struggle. Who supported her comrade Alexander Bukman to assassinate a wealthy industrialist? Who believed in free love? Which really resonated with Balagoon because I'm not sure if I mentioned it in the previous part or not, but Balagoon was an openly bisexual man in the 1970s, nineteen sixties, 1970s. And so that commitment to free love that Emma Goldman had really resonated with him. Alguno also recognized and continues to recognize that black people in the United States were an internal colony of the US, and so the black liberation struggle as a National Liberation movement, so began to identify with the new African independence movement. The Provisional Government of the Republic of New Africa, the PGRE. Was founded in 1968 March 1968 at a conference of 500 black nationalists who declared their independence from the US and demanded 5 states in the Deep South, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana as reparations for the enslavement and racial oppression of black people. New Africa was designated the name of this new Free Nation. And. At this time. Probably wouldn't began to ideologically unite. The political objective of the PGRE for independence. And and took on new African as his national identity. As he says. The US has no rights to confine in new African people to red line reservations, and we have a right to live on our own tombs on our common land, and to govern ourselves free of occupational forces such as the police, National Guard, or GI's that have invaded our colonies from time to time. We have a right to control our own economy, print our own money trade, and other nation trade with other nations. We have a right to control our education institutions and systems where children will not be indoctrinated. The unions to suffer the destructive designs of the US government. His position for black self-determination was also combined with an anti capitalist perspective. The new Africans would enter workforce within our excluded by design and real wages are not controlled by the ruling class and their wealth. So I think this distinct self-expression is very important because it was a key aspect of his political journey and how he saw himself, the afrofuturist abolitionists of the Americas, which is a. Lack anarchic, radical collective peace in the US. They coined the term I believe black anarchic radical in order to group. And. Account for the different. Anarchic identity is that that that people have have identified as. So you have an Alcatraz, you have black anarchists, you have new African anarchists, and then people who just go by bus. And so at this time, I think as a new African anarchist, Balogun was definitely ideologically set apart from the black boxes, leninists and revolutionary nationalists at the time. Who wants to seize state power for the from the white power structure of the US? And he still desired, you know, a land for black people to achieve self-determination. Even as an artist you wanted a space for black people to build a society based on anti terrorism and freedom. I believe he was really unique at that time and not for God. Like other bars, you also recognize the importance of National Liberation, like Ashanti Alston. He began to recruit soldiers for the Black Liberation Army and converts of anti authority in a new African politics. While in Trenton State Prison and New Jersey. He formed a political study group with Black Liberation Army members and Black Panther Party members and senators shift their perspectives on anti thorian politics. And so. That political education behind bars became the main vehicle of recruitment into the BLA. Another. Member of the BLA. Was a jury lutalo? Another fairly. I would see someone obscure. We're still iconic black anarchist. And when he is providing his testimony concerning Balagoon's influence on his transition from Marxist Leninism to anti authoritarian thinking, he said in 1975 I became disillusioned with Marxism and became an anarchist thanks to Quasi Balagoon due to the inactiveness and ineffectiveness as Marxist Leninism in community in our communities, along with the repressive bureaucracy that came with it. He was not going to commit themselves to a life and death struggle just because of grand ideas. Someone might have flutes around their heads. A few people will commit themselves to a struggle if they can see progress being made, similar to the progress of anarchist collectives in Spain during the era of the fascists. Like his teacher and comrade, which are Lutalo identified himself as a new African anarchist prisoner of war. Paul escape again from Rahway State Prison in New Jersey on May 27th, 1978 and rejoin a clandestine network of PLA soldiers in alliance with white radicals in solidarity, the Black Liberation movement. This ideologically diverse network of insurgent militants, we don't ask the Revolutionary Armed Task force or our ATF. And there was a strategic alliance under leadership of the Black Liberation Army that consists of people of all sorts of different identities. You had Muslims and revolutionary nationalists and anti imperialists and communists and. Ballygunner was one of the few, if not the only anarchist in this whole organization, and so even though he was critical of Marxism and nationalism, he decided to join the comrades he loved and trusted in a common front against white supremacy, capitalism, and imperialism. Me personally and I have a video on my YouTube channel about it. I am not a left unity advocate. Never have been. However. Like I said in the video. You know, there's still solidarity to be had on certain topics and certain issues, and an important aspect, an important component of solidarity is trust. And to Balagoon clearly had trust in these comrades in order to work with them. You know, it can't just be this broad, sweeping thing, you see. Oh well. Unity, solidarity, unity, solidarity. And there's nothing to back it up. There's no sort of connections or bonds to show for it. And of course he did have, you know, political friction while in the RTR ATF, his comrades. He saw us come around just a bit rigid, a bit too rigid in their views, while he considered himself a free spirit, and his comrades, despite the ideological differences and sexual orientation, still respected him because of his commitment to revolutionary struggle, because of his history of sacrifices. And so the Black Liberation Army and the RTF continued to carry out the Commission work of arms, propaganda of expropriations, of resources for capitalists, financial institutions for assisting comrades and escaping from incarceration. At this time, there was an increase in white supremacist paramilitary activity, including the Guthix clan. Including the KKK. And so. The RTF as an alliance helped to the whites in that organization helped to gather intelligence on these right wing white terrorist activities and their connections with the US military while they also engaged in expropriations to obtain resources so they could build the capacity to resist the white supremacist groups because. These violent acts that DK and these other right wing groups are doing in the late 1970s and early 1980s. They were murdering black children, black youth in Atlanta, black women in Boston and in in Alabama. And so they were committed and organized and doing something about it, militant commitment to doing something about it. The RTF will sue. We're involved with the escape of Assata Shakur, one of the most iconic of the Panthers, and also the attempted brings expropriation in Nyack, NY. Shakur was wounded and paralyzed from a shootout that they had with the New Jersey State troopers. And. Had to escape the scene and as a someone considered the soul of the BLE by the FBI, her capture was seen as a very significant event. And. Even though she never fired a gun, even though she was paralyzed, she was convicted for the murder of two state troopers who were killed in the shootout. And so she was sentenced to life plus 65 years. However. Odinga, Balogun and two white allies. As he armed group facilities the escape of Shakira from Clinton Correctional Institution for women in New Jersey on November 2nd, 1979. And I believe she's still in Cuba to this day. At the same time, the Black Liberation Army was also trying to expropriate 1.6 a $1,000,000 from a Brinks armed truck in New York City. On October 20th, 1981. And in the exchange of file that resulted from that attempt, one brings security guard and two police officers were killed. And three white radicals and one black man were also captured. Eventually, although, he was laying low in New York City in a Manhattan apartment. The joint Terrorist task force did eventually apprehend Balagoon. And. So once again, he found himself in prison. But. They did manage to successfully expropriate some funds from financial institutions going back to like 1976. And those funds that they were able to take were used to support the development of underground infrastructure, to support families of political prisoners, to support political activities and institutions for the black liberation movement and general freedom struggles on the African continent. That is solidarity. After his capture as a new African anarchist prisoner of war for the third time. Guess he spoke out to the movement for the first time. Again, identify himself as a new African anarchist. He spoke to the public about his politics and wanted to make his intentions clear. He acted as his own attorney in the Rockland County trial, where he was charged with the armed robbery and the murders of the Brinks Guard and police officers. And so you weren't making an opening statement and so. It went as follows. I am a prisoner of war. I retract the crap about me being a defendant and I do not recognise legitimacy of this court. The term defendant applies to someone involved in a criminal matter. It is clear that I've been a part of the Black liberation movement all of my adult life, and I've been involved in a war against the American imperialist you know, it's a free new African people from its yoke. He wanted and acknowledged that his armed actions were politically motivated to win National Liberation to eliminate capitalism, imperialism and ultimately authoritarian forms of government. And of course, he was sentenced to life imprisonment. Yet he continued to speak to new African and Black liberation forces and to anarchist gathering through public statements. He advocated continuously for the building of an insurgent movement and building of autonomous communities. At a Harlem rally for imprison you, African freedom fighters, his statement was read that we must build a revolutionary political platform and a universal network of survival programs. You know the seat when he said where we live and work, we must organize in the ground level the landlords, once we can test it through strikes, and rather than develop strategies to pay rent, we should develop strategies to take the buildings set up communes in abandoned buildings to vacant lots into gardens. When our children grow out of clothes, we should have places we can teach them, clearly marked anarchist clothing exchanges. We must learn the construction and we take back our lives. You want to challenge people to move from a theory into practice. To define anarchy in the real world, to show the masses models. Of delivering war to the oppressors and of building a better way of life. Unfortunately, although he struggled long in prison and continuously advocated for the black liberation movement for the anarchist movement, he died in prison on December 13th, 1986. Due to complications related to AIDS. So though he's not in mainstream discourse, he's still recognized respected in some black new Africa and anarchist and queer anarchist spaces. Because of his efforts in that time, because of his self identity in that time. I spoke about him briefly in my video on black anarchism and three search for that videos how I discovered in the 1st place and I was surprised that he wasn't spoken about so much considering his influence and his efforts. And his. She was almost like. And I hate to do this to history, to do this kind of creepy man things. History. But. If I was like a mean character, yeah. Like he was there for the New York part, the 21 trials. He was like dropping rats and Congress he was. Facility in the escape of Assata Shakur, for crying out loud. He did so much in his short boost of freedom. And I can't help but respect that. He stood out most places he went. And I can't help but admire that. In 2005, the Malcolm X Grassroots movement, which is a new African activist organization, declared its annual Black Orca celebration dedicated to quasi Belgun. And then in that celebration, they also highlighted the need for awareness of the AIDS virus in Africa and among the African Aspira. Couple of radical hip hop artists such as Dead Prez and Syed Malik have also mentioned Balagoon's name, but his name is still not commonly used enough, not as much as other black revolutionaries like Huey and Shakur and. With tulou Shakira. And this collective have also recognized him, have republished his works. Have you know, put his his his writings and newsletters and his trial statements and tributes. And yet, he's still. Not well recognized. Books of Falcons, trial statement essays, poetry, and acknowledgements of comrades, titled a Soldiers story, which you can find on the anarchist library. And in fact, that soldier story is where I drew from for this script for this. Two-part podcast episode. I think that. His efforts or not even to mention. His actual identity being a vehicle to challenge homophobia within the broader Black liberation movement because he showed himself to be committed to the cause and he exposed people who may not have otherwise been exposed to it. You know the. Validity and the humanity. In OK, comrades. He will forever remain remembered. And saluted by certain revolutionary nationalists, radical anarchists and quietly reached forces will forever be seen to me as an iconic ruin. And I really hope that this podcast helps his legacy to live on. And encourages and motivates and. Strengthens the resolve of people to. Walking only suppressed people to build a revolutionary program, to challenge capitalism, to challenge racism wherever they find themselves, no matter their circumstances. And that's about it. This has been a soldiers story. The life and legacy of quasi balagoon. I'm. Your gas tools for this episode of it could happen here. Andrew of the YouTube channel Andresen. You can find me on youtube.com/andrew resume on feature.com/centre. And intercom slash under score centre yeah, this has been taken. Happened here. You can find us at happened here on Twitter, Instagram. There's other close on stuff you can find that too. And yeah, I dedicate your life to overthrowing capitalism and imperialism. All power to all the people. Peace. Football is back, and bet MGM is inviting new customers to join the huddle and enjoy the action like never before. Sign up today using bonus code champion and your first wager is risk free up to $1000. You'll also have instant access to a variety of parlay selection features, player props, and boosted odd specials. Just download the beta MGM app today or go to betmgm.com and enter a bonus. Vote champion and place your first wager risk free up to $1000. The bet MGM app is the perfect way to experience the excitement of wagering on live sports now in more markets than ever. Visitbetmgm.com for terms and conditions must be 21 years of age or older to wager Virginia only new customer offer. All promotions are subject to qualification and eligibility requirements. Rewards issued as non withdrawable free bets or site credit free bets expire 7 days from issuance. Please gamble responsibly. Gambling problem call 188853235. 100 for my small bookstore to thrive, I can't just sell books. So I created a radio ad@iheartadbuilder.com to tell everyone about our author events, our story, hours for kids, and our amazing lattes. Now we're busier than ever. I'd call that a success story. A custom radio ad from iheart AD builder is the fast, affordable way to drive customers to your business. Put the power of radio to work for you. Get started now at iheart adbuilder.com. Piece of the planet I go by the name of Charlemagne the God. And this summer I'm bringing my show back to Comedy Central with a new title and a new podcast. It's called hell of a week. But don't worry, every Friday I'll be keeping that same, calling out the BS energy. So if the news is terrorizing your timeline and causing your anxiety to rise high in gas prices, don't worry, we got you. You could chase down all the crazy stories of the week with some laughs and thought provoking conversation that the Supreme Court want to abort the Constitution. We'll talk about it this Congress. Gonna replace the bald eagle with an AR15. We'll talk about it with Johnny Depp and Amber Heard, the OJ trial for white people. We'll talk about it and I'm bringing on some of the biggest names in comedy, politics and entertainment to talk about it with me. Plus, catch all the extended interviews, bonus scenes, and filthy language that has to get bleeped out for TV because I hear that Doctor Fauci has a bit of a potty mouth. So be sure to listen to hell of a week with charlamagne the God on the iHeartRadio app, the Black Effect podcast network, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. A It's it's it's it could happen here, the podcast. The thing that's happening here is that once again, like a bunch of random American politicians are going to Taiwan. And this time they didn't announce they were going, apparently because announcing they were going last time went great. So. Yeah, this is this is this is what we're talking about today. And with with me is James. Hello, James. How you doing? All right. I'm wonderful and I'm splendid. Oh, OK, so we have to talk about Taiwan. And I think, like, people who've listened to me on this show for a while know that, like, so, like, OK, a lot of my family is from Taiwan. I don't like talking about Taiwan very much. I I I think I've talked about Taiwanese politics in detail exactly once on this show when I was forced to for the Laguna Woods shooting and like, I would really prefer not to like it's something I particularly enjoy talking about which is you know, a big part of what we haven't but. Unfortunately, I can't continue not to talk about it because the American left, and this is true of not just the American Institute of the British left, this is true of the left. Kind of writ large is being systematically lied to about Taiwan by a group of incredibly malicious nationalists who are attempting to rally support for their like. The incredibly violent and bizarre imperial delusions, and unfortunately it's working, so I'm in instead of that, I'm going to give what I'm going to call Taiwan 101 and I'm calling it Type 111. Even tell this is going to be like an hour long because this is as far as I could cut this whole thing down. Like Taiwanese, politics is genuinely complicated as part of the reason I like talking about it. And you and people who are giving you simple answers to what's happening in Taiwan are lying to you. This is as best I can do. And it this is this is like the length of a ******* episode. So. Nice. I'm excited. Yeah. So, well, welcome to one, one-on-one. The beginning of Time 1101 is that Taiwan is a series of islands off the coast of China. And yes, there are a bunch of islands. Nobody talks about this like. Because again, 90% of the people who talk about Taiwan like couldn't find their own *** on a map, so you know they're there. There's a bunch of violence. There's one big one that there's several, like a lot of smaller ones. Now one of the sort of fundamental principles of not just being on the left, but like being a decent person is self determination. And, you know, self determination on the very basic level is that people have the right to choose how they want to live. And in a more immediate political context, they have the right to choose how they want to organize their government and who they do and don't want to be ruled by. O OK, what are the actual numbers in Taiwan say well? OK, we we we have recent polling from the national Cheng Chi universities elect Election Studies Center, which says that a grand total of 6.6% of Taiwan's population wants unification with China. The overwhelming majority of people in Taiwan 81.2% want to just maintain the status quo. Which? Yeah, I guess I. So the the status quo right now is that like? Hey. China claims that it is the sole legitimate government of Taiwan. Taiwan, like technically, legally claims that they are the solicitor governor trying to. Nobody actually believes that anymore. Like you if if if if you scoured the entirety of Taiwan, you might find 6 dudes in a bunker who still believe that like they're the real government of trying to like the the actual status quo is that Taiwan is basically. De fact is is. Like, Taiwan is de facto a self governing policy that has elections and stuff. And yeah, everyone gets incredibly mad about this. Most people want to preserve the status quo. UM, inside of the 82% of people who want to maintain the status quo, you have, you know, it's like like 25% basically for for three different options I. Basically, so there's very similar numbers of people who either want to like decide the formal status of Taiwan, like is an independent country as a part of China. They either want to kick it down the road, some of them want to keep the status quo indefinitely, and some of them want to move towards full independence, like later on. But overwhelmingly, what people want in Taiwan is for nothing to happen. Now, if this were a sane and rational world, that would be the end of the episode, right. Taiwan doesn't want to be ruled by China. Like, OK, well, that's OK. That's the right. They have the right to self-determination. That's it. Case closed, end of story. It literally doesn't matter what the Chinese government thinks about whether it should control Taiwan because, again, Taiwan doesn't want to be ruled by China and it's a British person. I maybe, I maybe ought to, like, not contribute further to that discussion. Yeah. You know, I mean, and, I mean, you know, there's, there's this whole thing that exists. Right. Where? When? When? When you force your rule on another population, it is called imperialism. Yes, it is. It is generally considered to be bad. And anyway. And the other thing is, it's still bad even if everyone inside the Imperial power thinks that it's good. Like if every person in the US suddenly decided tomorrow that they wanted to invade Cuba. Like, it wouldn't make it morally right because people in Cuba don't want to be ruled by the US, which we've done before. But it's true. Yeah. This is partially why I picked you as example, because we we did this. We we really did, like, kill an enormous number of people. I did, yeah. Based on ******** that people made-up and portrayed as news that that was at best speculation. So yeah, but you know, as we can talk about the fact that the US has invaded Cuba, we do not live in a sane, irrational world. We live in hell. And this means that I have a talk about a bunch of just absolutely ******** arguments and a bunch of nationalist ******** made-up justify imperialism. So, all right, this is where we start going into Taiwanese history. So the starting point of any actual history of type one that's worth a single **** is Taiwan's indigenous population. And it is incredibly important to understand from the outset. The indigenous population of Taiwan is not Chinese. They are not ethnically Chinese. They are not linguistically Chinese. They are not culturally Chinese. They are not any of these things. By literally any definition of the word Chinese you can imagine, they are not Chinese. This, this population, this indigenous population is Austronesian. It's it's an Austronesian people are a population of stretches basically from like it's it's an enormous screw of people across specific stretches from like Madagascar all the way to like Hawaii. And that that that those are the people who who who who live in Taiwan and have lived on Taiwan for 6000 years. And you know if if if you read like CCP accounts of Taiwanese history, right you'll see them they they they won't talk about the fact that again there's been an indigenous population that has lived in in Taiwan for 6000 years. What you'll see references to you are like in like the sweet and like Sung dynasties people like sent troops to Taiwan and the C people will be like, Oh yeah no they they, they they, they, they, they govern Taiwan and they ruled it was a part of China and like ancient times like this is all ******** like basically what would happen is periodically every like. Few 100 years some Chinese leader would be like, we should send some people to that island and they went there and were like this sucks and they all left. But, you know, yeah. And and and and, you know, like, OK, so like these guys, they're like, OK, this thing, this thing sucks. They leave and the indigenous population continues going like, you know, goes back to do, like their normal thing, right. Like this is the, the, the, the actual history of who has controlled Taiwan for almost its entire history is that it was controlled by suspicious population. But in, in 1624, colonial powers start getting more involved and the Dutch sees control of Taiwan. Well, OK. So the, the, the Dutch take most of Taiwan. There's a part of Taiwan in the north that's ruled by the Spanish. And they do like a bunch of just like horrible, like unspeakable crimes to the indigenous population before they ran out by like. Basically like a fragment of the dying, like Chinese Ming dynasty. And so yeah, so in 1662, this guy whose name, OK, so he has like a name that he's known by in the West that I genuinely have no idea how to pronounce because. This, the name that is known by in the West, I think is a Dutch translation of his title and not like his name is baffling. I OK like I think the the Mandarin version of his title is something like. Quashing, yeah, the Dutch somehow turned that into what? What I'm going to interpret as coaching God like, it's baffling. It doesn't make any sense. I they're transliteration is is nonsense. But yeah, so there's this guy. You'll you'll see. You'll see his name written as, like, coaching. And he he's described alternately as sort of like, you know, you'll see subscription of him, which will be like he is a loyalist Ming general. And that's kind of true, like sort of. You will also see descriptions of him that called him a pirate warlord, which is like also true. And you, you will also see nationalists like Chinese nationalists celebrate him as like an anti colonial hero and call him like running out. The Dutch is like the liberation of Taiwan and like that's not true. Like it's exactly which this is not true. Like I've, I've, I've, I've, I've, I've, I've seen people like from Taiwan like who do stuff with the population. Like I've seen them call. I've seen them call him by Taiwan's Christopher Columbus. So this is how this is going. So we saying that changing from 1 colonial power to another is is not liberation. No. It turns out and fascinating. Yeah. You you can tell it's not let not liberation because you know like a bunch of people like actually like you know do believe that. I think it's going to be less bad for us under this guy that is going to be on for the Dutch it is kind of less bad, like there are a bunch of just people who who fight with. Show Cushing gun like, you know, and he he helps they help him defeat the Dutch. But what what he does instead of like you know, freeing the people there is, he maintains the Dutch colonial system while basically just seizing Taiwan to run his court from. And, you know, like Dutch colonial rule. OK, it's like Dutch colonial rule is over, but what is replaced by is the rule of an independent pirate warlord state. OK, this sounds fun. I mean it kind of is like, I mean there's this whole. So. OK, so the kind of background of this is that like? The in the 1600s, the Ming dynasty is falling apart. The main dynasty had ruled China since they overthrew the ******* basically, and. But like they're, they're imploding. There's a bunch of revolutions going on there they are in the process of getting, eventually getting knocked off by. The Ching dynasty, who are group of people from Manchuria who we will be getting to in a second. Yeah, and this guy's like technically a being general, but he's sort of not and he's doing this sort of pilot warlord stuff, but then he like he sets up like his own dynasty, like very short lived dynasty there. And this is the first time that there's been like actual political control of Taiwan by any kind of Chinese entity, right? Like the, the, the, the, like, the, the weird ******* armies that like China was sending in like the Song dynasty. Like, they don't actually, like, set up a government, right? Like they're just kind of there forbidden. They leave. This is the first time, like, they actually conquered the Islander, rule it as like a political. And even then it's kind of 1/2 ***** conquest. Like there's a lot of places they kind of just like, they're just like, yeah, OK, we're just not going to bother with this, but. Yeah. And you know, again, like this is the first time this has happened and it it's not like the Chinese state, right? It's a pirate warlord and this is his descendants get like knocked off for the Ching Dynasty in 1683. And this is the first time like a real Chinese government has controlled Taiwan. Because by, by by by 1683, the Chinese has finished taking over all of China or all, all of what used to be like the main dynasty in China. And this is the period that Chinese nationals will point to and say like, no, no, no, really, really, hold on, hold on. Taiwan actually is part of China because we conquered it in like 1683. Which you know, OK, yeah. Yes, this is, this is a part of Taiwan, China since ancient times. Yeah. This place we conquered in 1683, which ignores also, again, the previous 5400 years where Taiwan was ruled by indigenous people. It's it's baffling. Nationalist brand word stuff. Yep. That has worked historically for other countries, notably this one and the one I'm from. But it doesn't make it right. Yeah. Well, you'll get people arguing this is like, well, how like, yeah, like how how is this different from the US? And it's like, well, here's the thing. I am a leftist. And. And I I am. I am. Reasonable understanding that multiple things could be bad at the same time, especially when they're bad in the same way. Like, wow, hey, maybe these are all settler colonies. We should destroy them. OK, but we we we should actually talk about the King dynasty a bit, because a lot of what Chinese nationalism draws from is is the sort of imperial expansion of the Chinese, even though the Ching Ching are not like a Han Chinese dynasty, they're like ethnically from a different ethnic group. But. Yeah, I mean it's it's it's the like the the the the Ching dynasty is in Manchu dynasty ruled by the people that like the Manchus, hematuria. But I and I think like insofar as people think about the King dynasty, they tend to think about like the late Qing dynasty, like this is, you know, like the 1800 Ching dynasty is a disaster, right? Like they lose the opium wars, they could be Japan. This is the whole sort of century humiliation thing. Has a lot to do with like Ching imperial decline, but. You know. That that's like the 1800s Ching, the 1700s change, especially in the sixteen 1700s. Chang is an incredibly dynamic and, you know, incredibly militant and expansionist empire here. Here's I'm going to I'm going to read a passage from the book Taiwan's imagined geographies. Having annexed Taiwan in 1684, the Qing turned its attention to Central Asia, pacifying quote like quote UN quote, pacifying the ******* and bringing eastern Turkistan and Lhasa, the capital of Tibet under Chinese rule. The Qing further expanded its control in South and southwest China, subjugating various non Chinese peoples of this region to Ching domination. At its height in the 18th century, Ching influence extended into Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, Burma and Nepal, all of which came under the serenity of the Empire. By 1860, the Ching had achieved the incredible feat of doubling the size of the Empire's territory, bringing various non Chinese frontier people under its rule. The impact of Ching expansionism was thus was thus tremendous, as the chain not only redefined the territorial boundaries of China, but also refashioned China as a multiethnic realm as a multiethnic realm, shifting the traditional border between Chinese Hua and barbarian ye in doing so. The chin created an image of China that is vastly different from that of the Ming. And and I I think I think it's really important to understand what kind of empire this is. Which is to say that the Change Dynasty is an incredibly brutal colonial power even like by the standards of like the like, you know, OK like all of all like the the. Or the the the OK Chinese dynastic history is not pretty, right? Like this is, you know, it's an empire, right? It's an empire. It's ruled by an emperor. It kind of sucks. Like it's not it's not good per se. But like even by the standards of like Chinese scientists, the Ching are incredibly militants and incredibly expansionist. For example, like Xinjiang which, which is a province that the Qing conquered. So it used to be inhabited by a mango speaking people until the the Ching just exterminated them all and settled the entire land with with Han and weaker like ethnic groups and you know. This history points to something that's important to understand when we talk about China, Taiwan and the US, which is that what we're talking about is 3 settler colonies. And and I think people, you know, might be like, wait, what do you mean China is a settler colony? And I'm just gonna read this passage from the book Sovereignty Frontier is the possibility, which is by Julia Evans, Anna Genovese, Alexander Riley and Patrick Wolf. And and yes, that is that Patrick Wolf, who was like, who was basically the godfather of settler colonial studies and one of the most important, like, academics are trying to like in terms of, like, advancing the analysis of senator colonialism, like the Palestinian conflict. But here's here's we ask to say about China. And this is kind of a long passage, but, like, I want to include an explanation of what settler colonialism is cause. I've kind of just been tossing it around. Yeah, analytically, the case of Palestine reveals that the relationship between the external and internal dimensions of sovereignty is not a priori, but contingent. Settler colonization converts external into internal, rendering indigenous sovereignties either nonexistent or domesticated. Annexation does the same thing, only it is illegal. The difference, again, is sovereignty. To annex is to practice settler colonialism in sovereign territory. Thus, the frontier is aligned in time as well as in space. Spatially, the frontier delimits unconquered native territory. Temporally, it marks the conversion of outside into inside. It renders externality a thing of the past. Yes, in the global conquest of settler colonialism, therefore, the internal and external dimensions represent the state of play. Quote UN quote. The ultimate prize estate formation with internationally recognized territorial sovereignty. Once the settler takeover is complete, the native realm becomes a thing of the past, superseded and detoxified reduced to persisting in the settlers terms. Sense in the case of Palestine, this process remains incomplete. The situation can still go either or potentially any way at the international level. This uncertainty is reflected in the ambivalent status of Palestinian sovereignty, which remains simultaneously both acknowledged and questioned locally. The states involved in the resolution of such international uncertainties could not be higher. Tibet represents a case in point. Despite significant informal deference to Tibet's national separateness, its incorporation into the People's Republic of China is not seriously questioned. At the diplomatic level, Tibetan representation at the United Nations remains unimaginable. Yet even Tibetans might count their blessings when they compare their situation to that of Uighurs who, like them, are being officially colonized by Han settlers in the so-called autonomous region called Xinjiang, a Chinese Appalachian that could have been scripted in 16th century. Europe, it means new lands. Being so much more firmly domesticated within the Chinese state, however, weaker sovereignty remains remote from global concern. Now obviously, OK, this is written before like. Xinjiang became like a global news story and also I yeah, I I I I I I question Wolf's translation of. The word a little bit like I think, I think new Frontier is probably a slightly better translation, but yeah, like you can see what's at work here, right like wolves argument is that like, yeah like like China is running two settler colonies like the the internal status of which is like. Even more internationally ****** than like most other settler colonies, which is incredibly grim. Like, it's yeah, I think we don't. I don't know why we were. So we've been so slow to see settler colonialism and these contiguous empires and like, here as well. Go ahead. And I think part of what's happening here, like, you know, OK, like I think there's sort of a different dynamic with looking at this with Russia. But I think what China, it's like people are just like. It's really, really hard to get people to understand that colonialism and imperialism are things that like, not that like non white people can do. Yes. And especially and especially like this, you know, and I think this goes back to the sort of like Ching Dynasty discussion, right, which is that like, yeah, you know, the the, like the, the way that people on the left understand the Qing dynasty is through the sort of nationalist lens looking at like the 1800s. And so they missed the whole part where they're doing all the settler colony stuff. But like what happens to them basically is that like, you know, it's like they're there. It's kind of like the Ottomans, right. We're like their empire. Suddenly runs into like newer, better, more violence and more efficient empires. But like, doesn't mean that, like, they weren't also empires. Like, it's. Yeah. And then when people do work that out sometimes, like people, and when we talk about, like, settler colonialism in the US, sometimes, like when folks are forced to retreat from the the first position and that like, that the US is not a settler colony, they'll then fall back on, well, they're indigenous empires beforehand, as if that's somehow justifies. Yeah. It's like it does not. Right. And like, you know, like and and I think this thing with Tibet too, where it's like, yeah, the, the, the, the the pre-existing Tibetan government was not good. Like, I'm I'm not going to defend like that government. It sucks. I I I I would also point out that the whole work we're going to stop the slave trade thing is one of the things explicitly in in the in the tree that was cited, the Conference of Berlin that was the thing that they claimed that like that that was the thing that the European powers claimed they were doing when they invaded Africa. So like when they split Africa up between the colonial power. So like, you know, OK. I mean also it's, you know, this this is getting slightly off topic, but it's also worth noting that like the there, there, there wasn't there was actually a communist movement like in Tibet that wasn't the CCP. And the CP killed them all. So that's great and fun. That's never happened before with totalitarian communist powers. Yeah, it's it's never happened again. The sort of, I think the stakes of what's happening here I think become more clear when you understand that. Like you like the US and China 2 like two different extents, right? Like. I don't know. Like China has parts there. Like there were parts of China where it's like very hard to like. It's not a settler state. It's just like their states. But there are definitely are a settler state. And there's the US, which is like entirely a settler state. And then Taiwan is also 2A settler state, although it's like post independence, Taiwan is the least violent of them, which is like not like a. I don't know. You're not winning much of a price. I'm being less violent than I, China and the US. But like, you know, it is true body count between those two. Yeah. But you know, but I think this brings us back to like the ***** the Chinc occupation of Taiwan, which is that the the the Ching occupation of Taiwan is China's first, like first new settler colony. The Ching administrators, they divide the indigenous population into quote cooked and raw savages. Those are their words that literally that's what I call them like it is. Yeah. Why? Because they're really racist, like. I mean, this is like, this is like a very old thing and sort of like. Sort of Chinese imperial discourse, right? Is like you have this different between like Barbarians and like Chinese people and like savages and non savages like this. This is like, this is how these people think, right? And it's not good, like I don't know like how how many more ways I can like try to explain to people who are like who have been like people have been like telling the Chinese nationalist stuff for so long that it's like this. This also was not good like guys. And again, it's something the US has done. The UK, there's classic imperialism, right, like we talked about. Always tribes in the US or, yeah, martial races in the British Empire. Yeah, I'm going to read a passage from Taiwan's imagined geography. Indeed, as Ching writers began to construct the Taiwan indigenes AS2 distinct groups, negative traits that have been formally associated with quote, the Taiwan savages as a whole begin to be mapped on the wild or raw savages, where earlier texts claimed, for example, that the savages quote by nature like to kill or quote. Were or were quote stubborn and stupid. Now writers attributed these characteristics to the Ross averages alone. Head hunting, a notorious practice at the earlier the earliest sources had associated with the natives of Taiwan and other Pacific islands, also became also came to be seen as a raw, savage practice by the early 18th century. Travel writing travel writers increasingly emphasized the violent and murderous behavior of the raw savages. The expansion of the Han Chinese population at this time caused an escalation of conflict. Between Chinese settlers and the indigenes over land and other resources, hostile and dignities were thus becoming a real threat to the safety of Han Chinese settlers. Although some writers blamed interethnic conflict on troublemaking Han Chinese settlers, many Ching literati attributed the the belligerence of the Ross Savages to their inherent, bloodthirsty nature. Good stuff. Yeah. It's it's real. It's real. It's real. Classic empire ****. Like textbook ****. Yeah. And, you know, it's, you can see that there's this whole nationalist myth that, like, you'll read if you read modern people, like, talking about this or they'll be like, oh, the indigenous population of Chinese government got along so great, it is completely ********. This is an incredibly racist settler state and it stays an incredibly racist, racist settler state when the Japanese take over Taiwan in 1895. And the Japanese occupation is even worse than the Ching occupation of religious people. In a lot of ways, it's a real **** show. There's a huge massacre they do in the 30s. Yeah, and and OK, we also mentioned this point. So I've been focusing a lot on the indigenous population because almost everyone who tells the story from all sides doesn't talk about them ever. Because it's it's incredibly inconvenient to like everyone's narrative that there were people here for literally 6000 years. But you know while. Basically since the Dutch showed up in this in the mid 1600s. There have been like increasing numbers of Chinese settlers and as as the Ching occupation sort of wears on, the number of Chinese settlers increases and increases, increases. And it gets to the point where, you know, kind of kind of close to like what we have today where like the the, the indigenous population of Taiwan is like 2% of the population. And it's which is, you know, which is pretty close to what the digital population percent of the population of the US is, for example. Yeah, and we're sorry, I'm not going to. It's OK. Yeah, talk about Elizabeth Warren, but without God, you actually **** it. I will talk about Elizabeth Warren in the middle of this. Because ******* go yeah, because her her whole thing of like like pretending to be indigenous was also fun because, like, she has a cookbook and the cookbook. Pow. Wow. Chow. Yeah. Yeah, that claims both her and her husband are indigenous. And that in that he's like maybe the most incomprehensibly awful, like, example of Chinese cooking I've ever seen in my life, which she apparently stole from, like another cookbook. And it really like just cascading levels of racism all the way down and it's ohh God, that's fine. It's all fine. No, all the settler colonies are bad. They're politics are all also always bad because, again, like, being a settler colony inherently makes your politics awful. Because, yeah, and representing yourself as an indigenous person to gain personal advantage in a settler colony when you are not one is ongoing act of colonialism. Jenny Wiley. Perfect stuff like, yeah, don't do it. So having said that, so OK. We have to talk about the Han population. There's like different like subgroups of the Han population who are have different ethnicities, speak different rate, like, speak different languages because Han is like a very large sort of category. And like inside of Han Chinese, there's like people who are Hakka. There's a whole bunch of different groups. And I guess the one thing worth mentioning is that a lot of the like. You'll hear people talk about Taiwanese as like, its own language and like, that's like there there are a bunch of people who were humble, who don't speak Mandarin, and so, like, a lot of people in Taiwan speak. I want to use which is sort of like haka. Ish leg. Well, OK. What's? What's the most technically accurate saying this? It it it it is a language that has developed on Taiwan, like in Taiwan, by people who speak Hakka. And it's basically pretty close that yeah. And we're not gonna get into super granular detail about these ways of immigration. But basically, like one of the things that happens is that among these sort of handlers there becomes this sort of like. Taiwanese identity of like them being Taiwanese like specifically as a thing. And when when the Japanese lose World War 2, the Nationalist Party or the KMT, just like occupies Taiwan? But this is a real problem because again, most of the people don't want to be ruled by the KMT because the KMT like absolutely suck. If you want me to hear me, like go deeper into them, go listen to my ******** episode and the World Anti Communist League I the. The short version is that the KMT is a genocidal, like anti communist deathsquad party run by an organized crime outfit that's led by Chiang Kai Shek. And, you know, like they suck, like really like absolutely horrible people and as the KMT. Forced to lose civil word of mouth like more and more KMT supporters and also people just like running from the war. Start fleeing the Taiwan and this develops a massive like you get these massive tension between the Han people had already been there and the KMT and their sort of new supporters that their new sort of like settler immigrant population. And this boils over into what's called the February 28th incident or the 228 incident. Basically, what happens so a campti cop, like attacks a woman who is, like, selling cigarettes on the street illegally because the T like. I I really also kept, like, they're so unbelievably corrupt and so, like, they they have all these, like monopolies where it's like, OK, like there's a guy who has like, the opium monopoly or like a guy who has, like, the the cigarette monopoly. Right. And unless you're running through that monopoly, you can't sell, like cigarettes. And so in something that I think will be familiar to people who like, like, have followed the number of people in the US have been killed for selling secrets illegally. Yeah. So the the the cops start, like, beating this woman over the head. With his pistol and everyone around them gets incredibly ****** *** and there's these giant protests. Umm. And they came to your response to the protest by shooting into the crowd and. Wow, yeah, I mean, so there's another side of this I should mention, like, briefly, which is that, like, part of what's happening here is like there's there's a kind of ugly, like, basically race riot that's happening in the beginning of this. We're like people like the sort of like Han Taiwanese population like starts just like attacking like any random like. At any random people from like the T generation, just like they find on the street they start attacking and killing and like that sucks. It is also just unbelievably less violent than what happens next, which is at the KMT like well OK so so they're they're sort of this race where I think there's there's like there's a full scale revolution and the Taiwanese population like seizes control of base of like almost the entire island like the entirety of the main island and they start demanding like democratic rights and stuff like you know a Free Press and. Reassembly and like the protection of the digital population, although I should also mention that like. Like nobody really in Taiwan like treating just population well, like it was bad enough. Like my 7 year old mom was like, Oh my God, why is everyone treating these people so badly? Like it's. But you know, OK, so they they they do this thing, they have this revolution, and then the KMT, like, just sends the army to the island and they kill something like 20,000 people in a week. Like they are. Like they are. They are cutting people's face, like they're like cutting parts of people's faces off with like knives, like it is unbelievably brutal. And this begins 38 years of martial law. The the, the subsequent Canty police state tortures like 10s of thousands of people and rules Taiwan with like with an iron fist until like the late 80s. And this is where things get really messy, right? Because up until 1942, like, nobody in China like and and and and this included both the KMT and the CCP. Until 1942, neither of them actually claimed that Taiwan was part of China. But then in 1942, both of them start claiming that Taiwan is part of China. Great. Yeah, and so when? When? When? The KMT. Flees to Taiwan. Both the CCP and the KMT both claim to be a legitimate government of China and B to be the legitimate government of Taiwan. And it's a disaster. Like the the KMT is nuts like my again. Like they they they they they made my like 7 year old mom sing songs about how they were there. One day they were gonna reclaim the motherland. Like, wow, these people suck. Yeah, some of them still in Myanmar, or maybe perhaps not now, but like, I've heard from him, from friends who are a little older who were there, that there are a bunch of KMT, like, living in parts of Myanmar, and tourists would go pay to visit them. Yeah, like, that's the thing. Like, yeah, they're like, they, they, they most of the people flee that, flee to Taiwan. But like, they they break in a number of different directions and there's like a bunch of weird rump states they set up. They get knocked off eventually. It's a it's a whole mess. But in Taiwan, like. They have this problem, which is that like, OK, so there's like water in between China and Taiwan, and if you want to get troops over it, you have to have those troops cross the water. And this is a real problem for like an invasion. So what? What ends up happening is a a series. So like, OK, so you you have the KMT and CCP like staring each other down across these islands. And the product of this is what's called the three Taiwan straits crises. So basically in the CCP starts shelling Taiwan between in 1940 nineteen 19541955. They start selling like Taiwan, and then they do it again at 58 and like the KMT, shelves them back. And you know, there's a couple of points it looks like they're gonna invade, but then the US like, move supplies to the KMT to like, keep the CCP from invading. And, you know, the result of this is this, like, I think, incredibly psychologically revealing move after like the 1958 crisis, which 1958 crisis ends with the KMT and the CCP agreeing to shell each other on opposite days. Because, and I cannot emphasize this enough, this entire conflict is profoundly ******** and was foisted upon Taiwan by a bunch of petty, squabbling Chinese nationalists. How big is that distance? We're talking about like they're selling shells over there in the 50s, so it's probably not vast. Part part of what's happening is so it's it's 100 miles, 110 miles. But what's happening here is like they're they're they they basically like have set up on outposts and different islands in between like the Big Island and the shore. So they're like they're on these island shelling each other like they they they drafted my grandpa and like sent him to one of these places and that's and then he came back and was like, **** this, we're out. And so like, that's when my family is in the US because he was like, we're not doing this **** again. This sucks. Come and die for a sandbar? Yeah, I was like, I'm not going to, I'm not going to be cannon fodder for these, like, weird nationalist psychos. So. OK, So what? What? The sort of result of this, though, is that the KMT gets the backing of the US. And the KMT becomes in Taiwan is the like the legitimately internationally recognized government. Like of all of China from the end of the civil war until like the 70s. As the UN seat, right. Yeah. Yeah. How's the UN seat? I actually we we get we'll get into that and you know we we do it here. So one of the things that happens here is that, OK so like the US really really does not want the CP to have the UN seat and one of the things they try to do is they they offer neighbors India like the the the seat on like what's it called? Why am I blanking on the name of the thing? National Security Council. Castle. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The UN Security Council, they they they they they they offer India. See the Security Council and neighborhood is like, no, I'm not going to take this. I'm going to take this is China seat on the Council. Like, I'm not going to take this. And then I Bao repays him by invading India in 1963 in ways in 1994. I could find this is this is not in my script I am I am off. I am off script 01962. Sorry. Yeah, yeah. So like, this, this, this goes great for neighbor Mao, just like invades and the Indians lose the war very badly. To understand why eventually China gets recognized, you have to talk about like what was going on inside inside of the PRC, like inside of the people probably trying to. So the CCP fights a war with the Soviets in 1969, which in this war gets called the the Sino Soviet border conflicts. But like, this is like, oh. Pretty much a real war. Like there are like Chinese and Soviet divisions shelling each other. Like a lot of people die. Like I I don't know if I've told the story on this podcast before. My my my my favorite part of this whole thing is that the Soviets start like war gaming. Can can they defeat China in nuclear war? And they figure out that they can't because the the Chinese population is so is so dispersed that even even if they nuke all of China, they can't kill everyone they and they lose the war in human wave attacks. So the Soviets started developing developing the strategy of like having like a line of nuclear land mines across the the the the Soviet Chinese border so that the human wave attacks can't get through because they like this this this conflict is nuts. Like, both China and the US are trying to get the US to ally with them to like, do, do, do a preemptive nuclear strike on on the other side. Like, it's crazy. And and this, like completes the Sino Soviet split. And the US, like really, really wants to make sure that the Soviet split sticks. And so the US starts negotiating with China basically to bring China into the well. OK. There's two ways of looking at it. One is that they they just want to separate like, you know, the Chinese from the Soviets. The other way of looking at it is that they want to, like, bring China fully over to the American side of the Cold War. And I think the latter approach actually works, right? So in in in in in 1979, the US recognizes the CCP as the legitimate government of China. Several months later, China invades Vietnam in in defense of the Kamir Rouge which the US was also backing. So yeah, and and this is where we get into some more diplomatic ********. OK, so China maintains something called the one China principle. The one China principle holds that the CCP is the only government of China, and then it rules Taiwan. The US has something called the one China policy. The One China policy is it does not take a stance either way on who the government of Taiwan is. What it does is it acknowledges that China claims that it rules Taiwan. And you, you will see nationalists lie about this constantly. They will say things like the US recognizes Taiwan as part of China under the one child policy at blah, blah, blah action is a violation of the One China policy. And that's not true, right. What actually happened in the US, the US technical term for this is called strategic ambiguity. And so they have this thing like they don't, they don't formally recognize either side as a legitimate government. Taiwan, they recognize that this is what China says about Taiwan. They don't actually recognize, but they they they they have no formal position on whether this actually rules Taiwan. What they have is a recognition that that China believes this. And again, this is all diplomatic ********. It's partially why I hate, like, talking about this, because. Like, again, the the lives of literally 10s of millions of people are being governed by, like diplomats saying doing like that kind of **** because it sucks. Yeah, so that's that. That's that's the one child policy thing which is not one shot Jesus. The One China policy which is not the same thing as the one China principle. Yeah, and so like all the while, while this is going on, the CP and the KMT are in this massive race to see. You can kill the most communists like the CCP kills about a million combination in the Cultural Revolution and then invades Vietnam to kill even more communists. The KMT like not, not to be outdone by, by, by, by, by their former comrades across the border. The KMT. Restraining desk walls in Honduras and like helping the Guatemalan government do the Guatemalan genocide. It's really grim stuff. And you know, the the, the product of this ideology, the product of this whole thing is the ideology, the complete ideological collapse of. The Chinese Communist Party as like a party that does communism and then the political military collapse with the KMT. So the, the but but, I mean, it's kind of sort of has already stopped in the 80s. But by the 1990s, the CCP substantively has stopped being a Communist Party by any sense of the word. Like they're just capitalists and they're, you know, they're there making money. And by by the late 2000s, even, like, you know, there had been a faction of what's called sort of the Chinese New Left that had thought that, like, they could, you know, they could, you know, this is still a Communist Party. We can still change China. The inside those guys are like liquidated completely, like they're gone. And, you know, and so but you know by like now, right, like it's just, it's just, it's just capitalists. And meanwhile in Taiwan in the 80s and 90s, there's there's increasing resistance to the KMT's like one party, like Death Squad, like one party state and their whole death squad like reclaim the Motherland politics. Everyone like starts to hate them. And this is where things get really weird because on the one hand, the TMT is incredibly anti communist, but on the other hand, they are the political faction that wants to tie Taiwan to China. And this means that, like, you know, as they're sort of like ruthlessly suppressing. Communist and leftist, they're also like vehemently independents. And so like, they kill a bunch of anti independence organizers, which is like, not not not not how anyone like talks about this conflict because it's too weird. So in and there's always sort of weird political things going on in. In 1987, the KMT ends the martial law that that had been enforced since the February 28th incident. And the KMG like disarms right, they disarm, they're not as in like. OK, the KMT used to be a party that would like assassinate people for writing unauthorized, like assassinate Americans on American soil for writing unauthorized biography biographies like Shanghai Shek, and they kind of stopped being that like they disarm. They're not really in the drug trade anymore. Caveats, don't quote me on that, but like, they're they're they're not the party they were in the 80s, right? That's the important thing. Like they they they lose to one party dictatorship and you, you get the search transition to democracy that ends in the first free presidential elections in Taiwanese history in 1996. And this, like, right right before this you get the third Taiwan Straits crisis where the President of Taiwan like goes to the US and China reacts to this by having an enormous temper, temper tantrum and like starts doing military exercises like, they start like simulating an invasion of type one. They start like shooting rockets like at the coast, like these rockets that land like just off the coast. And I would. It's edging, yeah. And then this ends when the US moves like 2 carrier groups into the Pacific and the crisis ends. But like, OK, there's a few things I would say here. One is that like, OK, so on the one hand they see this is the CCP having a temper tantrum, right? On the other hand, like. It really. And this is the thing that I think most Americans have never experienced, right? Because the US is not a country that like, gets attacked. Right, but having another country firing missiles at you ******* sucks. Like this. Psychologically it is awful. Like we saw how insane the US went like the like the first time it had actually been attacked since like. World War Two when 911 happened like. You know these you saw just absolutely batshit. the US goes right? Like, yeah, OK, if you are a person in Taiwan, right? Which like a lot of my family is, and you are constantly having another country shooting rockets at you like, it sucks. Like and and I want people to like, like sort of like rockets at you. Like it sucks. Like and and I want people to like, like, sort of like, think about that for a second because like I I think a lot of what, how, how this crisis and how this whole thing is talked about. On the left is as a sort of like abstract thing that's like. You know, it's it's it's sort of abstract principles, right? And not stuff that's happening to real people who are like watching missiles ******* fall into the ocean. And, you know, like, and what? We're watching another country, like, preparing to kill them. And this sucks. One of the other things that's worth noting here is that like. But part of what's going on in terms of the hardening of China Taiwan relations is Tiananmen Square. Happened. And the reason this matters is that so one of the things that like stabilizes, I guess, relations between Taiwan and China in part, is the fact that I. They're both incredibly economic, closely economically connected to the US. And this is because all of like all China, Taiwan, and. And China are all capitalist countries and so they're ruling classes are all completely independence like people people talk a lot about Pelosi like investing in a bunch of like chip manufacturing companies in Taiwan and that's true. But she also has a bunch of investments in China because again capitalists, single ruling class, they all, they're they they they all all of your logistics lines run through each other, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I, I I will insert a note here that is not in the script that anytime you hear someone talk about like the US decoupling with their economy from China they're they are full of. It do not like everything they say. Everything they are about to say is a lie. It does not happen. It has not happened. It will not happen. Like, they're lying. Yeah, this is important. Even at the height of Trump's ********. Yeah, yeah. Like, like there was kind of an attempt to and it didn't work because like, you know, you could OK, like there there are some things you can offer to Mexico, right? But like most, like China, China has a unique combination of a like, a really good energy grid for the most part. I mean, OK, there have been times we've gotten over taxed like it compared to most other developing countries. It has a really good energy grid. It has a population in which actually doing union organizing is illegal. And it has a population that, you know, like gets forced to work incredibly long hours. Right. And the combination of those three things makes it makes it, you know, a place where if you're an American capitalist, if you're a Taiwanese capitalist. And that's actually part of this too, is that like part, part of the reason there's so much, like hatred for Taiwan instead of trying to among people who you wouldn't expect it to be? Is that, like, there's there's a lot of people in China whose only experience of Taiwan is working for, like, ******* Foxconn and like working in just in health conditions for like for a Taiwanese capitalist and, you know, and that that's very easily transformed into nationalist sentiment, and it sucks. But yeah, you know, but, you know, like, OK, so like there, there the US has an incentive just to stabilize US Chinese relations in part because it it's economically like tied to both of these countries. But when something goes really wrong in US China relations, like, for example, after Tiananmen where, you know, and I think it's also worth noting like from, from the period, like basically from when China invades Vietnam and even before that, from when China invades Vietnam in in 1979 up until Tiananmen. US China relations are really good. Like, the US is seen as like an ally against the evil Soviet evil empire like this. And, you know, but gentlemen makes things go really badly because, like, the the only thing in American ally can possibly do that will sour the American press on them is to shoot a bunch of students in front of the American Press Corps. Like, that's literally the only thing you could possibly do. Like, you can, you can do actual genocides and the US Press Corps won't care. But if you shoot a bunch of students right in front of you, they will get very mad and, you know, OK times. We've we've avoided doing that in Myanmar, yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah, it's, it's it's grim lot. Lots of, lots of yeah. But you know, the consequence of this is like, yeah, when something goes really wrong in US China relations, you get China starts doing Saber rattling at Taiwan and the effects of this on Taiwanese politics, it also sort of what's been happening inside of Taiwan. Is really weird. O the KMT, who have been again like the militantly anti Communist Party for half essentially for half a century, are suddenly the faction that wants closer ties with the CCP. And the product of this is that the KMT and the smaller like ******** Pro unification parties become known as the Pan Blues. And the Pan Blues are the people who like want close relations with China and don't want closer relations with like the West, there's like the US and etcetera and their opposition. Group is, is, is, is sort of progressive opposition groups, which are which is composed of the groups that oppose the camp's military dictatorship. And these groups form well, OK, they form a couple of parties. The big part, the first party they form, which is the biggest one by far, is called the Democratic Progressive Party or the DPP. And the GPP that's allies, which include some leftist parties, I think like the green parties in this coalition. There's also these like smaller, like radical Pro independence parties. They became known as the Pan Greens. And this is like to this day, this is like the main dividing line in Taiwanese politics. You have the conservative Pam Blues who favor closer relations with China and the Pan Green progressives who favor like closer relations with democracies and also I think importantly. The. The Pan Greens had this kind of like are the people who are in favor of like they're being a distinct Taiwanese national identity? And the Pan Blues are kind of more suspect of that because again, like, you know their bases decamp right? They want closer size with China, and closer ties with China means not having like, a distinct Taiwanese identity that's separate from China. And, OK, I'm enormously oversimplifying this, and people who are experts in this will like this. Part of it will be like, it's more complicated than it is. This is. This is the simplest explanation I could give you that people will understand. Like, I I I was like, I was debating whether I even wanted to talk about, like, the pan blue. Like. Closer ties with China versus paying green like. Closer ties with the West thing at all because it's confusing and. People probably won't remember it, but. Yeah, I mean, you know, if you want to understand Taiwanese politics at all, like, this is the lion you have to take. No, I think it's important to at least throw out the terms of people are going to hear if they're going to engage in any discussion beyond, like, what has has tweeted and I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm going to also, like, I'm going to like, lay my cards on the table so people don't understand my political position on this. And my political position is one that ****** off literally everyone, which is that, like, I'm not like a DPP supporter. Like, I'm I'm not one of the sort of like progressive, like. Groups. I'm not in the sort of like, I'm not really kind of like in the sort of like, I want independence camp. I'm not really like a DP person. I don't know, like. But I'm also not a KMT person like because the the the KMT are capitalist reactionaries. But I also like OK. Like, I'm going to do my critique of the DPP and then I'm going to sort of walk it back a little bit. I I think the Taiwanese progressives in general are way too close to the American security state for me to want anything to do with them and the ones who aren't like. OK, the Taiwanese left. Like, Jesus Christ. This is how ****** the Taiwanese left is. Like, like, like these people. God, I'm enormously frustrated by like people couldn't develop like a left to the people couldn't develop a natural class analysis. You beat them over the head with a copy of capital. And OK, like, I think like Taiwanese progressives will point out, and I think this is fair, that it's very easy to criticize, like allying with the US when it's not your *** in the firing line of Chinese rockets. Which is true. It is much easier to criticize the US when the when the rifle is being put in your face are American rifles. Then when it's, you know, Chinese soldiers pointing Chinese rifles. And this is a big part of why Tony's politics are so ******. Things get reduced to this sort of like democracy versus authoritarian US versus China, like Taiwanese identity versus Chinese identity. To lesser extent, like binary. But it's like. OK, like my family is Taiwanese, but like, I was born here, I grew up here. And, you know, I know. I know what American democracy looks like. It's the army hiring Eric Prince to slaughter rocky civilians in Baghdad. And, you know, I also know what you know. I have a bunch of family in China, too. I I know what Chinese authoritarianism looks like. It's a CCP hiring Eric Prince, the build trading basis for mass internment, camp guards and shinjin. Like, you know, OK, and the only actual, like political solution that will ever get anywhere. Is to fight both of them, a position that is extremely unpopular, literally everywhere and like. You know, I I think they're like the progressives have a good argument that that, you know this isn't this isn't a line they have the luxury of taking, right. Because they they they they have they have an immediate enemy and they they're going to do whatever they have to to not get invaded. And that means allying with people who like, I want to overthrow and see liquidated as a class. And like, I, I, I, I understand why they think that I also am not them. So, yeah, this is, this is, this is me laying my cards on the table. And I think also, like, this goes back to the whole sort of like settler state question, right, which is the sort of unresolved political question in the US, Taiwan and China. Like, no actual major political force has like committed itself to destroying the settler state and returning indigenous sovereignty. I'd like 2 indigenous people. And you can't have, like, any kind of liberatory politics in a settler state without that. But on the other hand, like, OK, the actual politics of Taiwanese dishes people is really complicated. Like it doesn't work in the same way that like it just politics in the US does, for example, like different, I mean, and this is also true in the US, like different tribes of different relations to sort of indigenous nationalism, like and another thing that that's true about. Though that that that that, that's true about Tony, just people is that a lot of them vote for the KMT. And they do this for a couple of reasons. One of which is because the KMT has this like really, really powerful and eccentric patronage network that they've been running for literally like basically since they got onto the island they been running this patriot network. And this allowed them to do like real incredibly intense and powerful base building in indigenous communities. Right like they're like the GDP are the people who like, distribute, like, OK, they have like a center and right, you go there and they get they, they, they give you like. Dude, right, like, they this, this, this is the place where you get your, like, sesame oil, right? And then also there's the second layer of the Patriot network, right is like, if you want to get a job, you join the KMT. And so they they they have these, they have these really deep sort of political roots in that sense. And then also. The camp, she does this thing where they're like, hey, look, the DPP is doing settler nationalism. Like, hey, these are the people who colonized you. Like, **** them. Like, you should ally with us instead. Which is true. Like, like it it it it is true. And like, I think. I don't know, like, Tony's progressives kind of like tap dance around this, but like, yeah, like it is true that the sort of like Han Taiwanese identity is like sort of settler nationalism, but like also this is true if the KMT is well, like, the KMT are also a sailor nationalism. Like, you know, like they conquered the island and ruled as. You know, OK, and and you'll you'll you'll try you'll also see people who will take this argument and try to argue that indigenous people voting for the KMT means that Indigenous people support China invading Taiwan, and this is just comically wrong. Like, they're just they are lying to you. Indigenous people in Taiwan, like literally everyone else in Taiwan, do not support being ruled by China. And the argument that a Chinese occupation of Taiwan is somehow less of a settler state than the current system is just like, comically propaganda ********. And China, yeah, has not been kind. Yeah. I'm going to get into like this a little bit too, right. Which is OK. So, like, I've been trying to be fair and balanced here, right. Like, I I have been giving you my critique of Taiwanese progressivism. This is going to **** *** a lot of people. But like, having said all of this, China invading Taiwan would be really, really, really bad. Like, I cannot emphasize enough how bad this would be. Like, OK, so Taiwan is like a regular, regular settler bourgeois democracy with like. Of the sort of good and bad things about push, well democracies, which we're all familiar with, right? Like we understand what is, I learned democracy is, to be fair, the modern Taiwanese government is like, infinitely less violent than the modern American government like. Like for I I looked like the, the, the, the the the prison population in like relative to the population in Taiwan is like, I think it's like an eighth of the of what the American prison population is, right. Like it's it's not like, you know, OK, it's is this like Taiwan is not like a sort of like, it's like Taiwan is not a socialist state, right. But it's also like. You know better than the US, which is an incredibly low bar that, like, you could trip and fall over, but like, you know, OK, it's better than the US. Yeah, you know, it's closer to like Sweden or something in terms of violence, which I think is also a good comparison, because Sweden also has indigenous population called the Sami and I all Swedish leftists will studiously never admit that they exist or talk about them at all. So, OK, again, this is not a stateless society, but it's also like like sense, since the KMT has been disarmed. Like this is not one of, like, the world's great purveyors of violence, right? Like it's not the US. China, on the other hand, is a ferociously reactionary. Capitalist settler dictatorship, and this is something that Americans have very little experience with. For for a long time people argue that OK, like if if, if China, like if Taiwan became a part of China. Taiwan would get some kind of relationship similar to what Hong Kong has, where like, they were free elections and union organizing and free speech is legal. But, you know, 2019 happened. Yeah, right. You know, it was even in Taiwan, like, even in Hong Kong. Right. The extent to which, like, you know, like union organizing and free association and Free Press existed were like, and again, like Hong Kong also. And I want to point this out, like, the CCP has been strengthening this the entire time they were there. Hong Kong is the only place on Earth where corporations have the right to vote. And they vote for the CCP like it's so OK, this is, this is great, but you know, 2019 happens, right? And guess what? Now Hong Kong has national security law which allows the government to rescue literally for posting on Twitter that you don't think that China should control Hong Kong secretary of Secretary for Security. And in Hong Kong Chris Tang said earlier this week that criticizing the government with the intention to provoke quote hate, potentially to provoke hatred quote between the classes was a violation of the national security. 4. A position that if actually like that, that if actually like like this. If you take this position, this would outlaw in its entirety all socialist organizing in Hong Kong, because, again, anything that attempts to provoke hatred between the classes is illegal. Yeah. And, you know, some panacea of of Liberal Democratic existence within the PRC. Yeah. And this is the model. And like, you know, I mean, again, like, people talk about this like Hong Kong is one of the world's most liberal cities and the CCP is taking it over. And, oh, hey, guess what? They're they're living out the neoliberal dream of making it illegal to try to do any, like, try to do like class war stuff. One of the things that happens immediately after national security law is that it's used to destroy China's, China's independent Trade Union Federation. And this brings us to, like, the sort of class. Perspective on this independent union organizing and China is illegal. And when I say it's illegal, I don't mean illegal in the sense of, like, jaywalking. We're like, OK, if someone, if if like a cop sees you jaywalking, they might arrest you. Like, if you try to do independent union organizing in China, men will show up to your house in the middle of the night and you will disappear for three months until a video of you with two very large men standing just out of camera range appears in which you recant your organizing and apologize for your crimes. Like to to, to, to, to get a sense of the level of repression we're dealing with here. 2 Chinese leftists named Lu and Li Ting. You recorded and published a series of protests like they they they they they. Basically they had they had on the Chinese social media. Like they they posted this like record basically of strikes and protests that were happening in the country every day. So like, literally all they're doing is they are documenting the strikes and protests that are happening and collecting data about them and posting it. In 2016, the police showed up to lose house, put a bag over his head. And dragged him away to a dragged away to a jail cell. Lou spent four years in prison. Lee got two years, and the two of them never saw each other again. So again, this this is what happens if you literally just report on the Wildcat strikes that are happening. Someone will put a bag over your head and you will go to prison for four years like it it is. It is like the, the, the, the, the situation for organized labor of any kind of anyone trying to do union organizing in China is unbelievably dire. Now, China, and this is what I'm talking about here, so independent union organizing, China has an official trade union federation, the Trade Union Federation. China has is such a ******* joke. That is literally a matter of academic debates. Like there are academic papers arguing about whether or not it even actually counts as a union. And this has been true since the late 1950s when the CCP decided that, oh hey, this trade union is that a represent the party and not workers. And its role is to mediate between the the, you know, to mediate between the party and workers, not actually to, you know, like represent them. When they like, when they have disputes with their bosses. So yeah, like they don't like they, they don't. They don't go on strike. Like ever. Like they they, they they they they they, they they exist as like another part of the party state. The goal of which is to make sure that bosses keep making money. If you try to work outside of it, they will arrest you. Now, Taiwan is not like a shining worker's paradise, right? The the sort of vaunted semiconductor industry everyone talks about is run by a bunch of workers getting the ship burned down to them by vats of acid. But conditions for the Chinese working class are even worse. Counties wages are higher, Taiwan is better. Workplace protections. Again, you can legally organize unions. Meanwhile, in China there are famously suicide Nets around Chinese factories because working for these places is so ******* awful that people would literally rather kill themselves and live in it. And, you know, you can ask why is this happening? And the reason it's happening is that a lot of the stuff that is literally the worst. Looking nightmare of the American left. Things like your boss owning your apartment is just standard practice in China. This is, this is just, this is just what it's like to be a worker in China. Your boss owns your ******* apartments. You have literally hundreds of millions of people who live in these tiny like they're called workers dormitories, which again, often literally owned by like. The owner of the factory they're in, you get like, when I say, like, we're workers dormitories, right? It's not even, like, it's not even like an American dorm building, right? We're like, you, you know, you have like your own room. It's like, it is like, yeah, like it's it's a bunch of people sleeping in cots, like, like sleeping in bunk beds with like a ******* bucket next to them to go to the bathroom. Like it is just horrible. You have like, like the, the, the. I talked about this a lot on this show, but again, like literally there are payday loans integrated into delivery apps. Like this this is the level of capitalism that that China is. And like, I I'm not gonna like, I'm not gonna like argue that it's worse in the US I think they're bad in different ways. Like they're they're there are there are there like the the US incarceration system is like, you know, like one of the great human evils in the entirety of human history right there. There are things that like the US is worse at like. The Chinese police are a lot less likely to just ******* murder you like, you know? But like, yes, but like China, it sucks to be worker in China. Like, it. It really sucks. And I can't emphasize this enough because I don't. Because people don't really understand this, like. They they like. People do not understand that again, like the normal Chinese schedule is called 996. You work 9:00 AM to 9:00 PM six days a week. This is the normal schedule. Most a lot of workers like that that that that again, that. That's like an average schedule. Most people work more than this. 996 is 70 hours a week, right? Like it is. It is, it is a **** show. And yeah, if it, if Taiwan, if China invades Taiwan, the conditions of the Taiwanese working class are going to get worse. That is just a fact. Try like imposing Chinese law on Taiwan, which strengthen the power of the capitalist class, weaken the proletariat from an indigenous perspective, which we've talked about this at length about, you know, we talked about at length how the Taiwanese system is not that good, but, you know, it's not like it's a settler colony. There's some representation, but, you know, it's not great. It is much better than the CCP. System this PC's lying on ethnic minorities is that if you're an ethnic minority in China, you're going to work in a Han factory, you're going to pick crops from Hanahan fields, you're going to dance and smile for Honduras. If you step out of line, you will be dragged out of your bed in the middle of the night, sent to a ******* camp. There are, you know, like, this is the thing that's Americans sort of have similar experiences with it's like, you know, you have immigration raids, you have raids on homeless encampments. But it's not that's and that that's like, you know that that's a kind of experience that is somewhat similar to what it's like to live in Xinjiang, but like, it's not exactly the same. Like, I, I know people whose families are just ******* gone. Like the police showed up in the middle of the night. And their families are gone. They've never seen them again. Like they're just gone. No, no one knows where they are, no one knows it's even alive. They're just vanished. And if and if you think that this isn't going to happen to Taiwan's indigenous population, the moment they start talking about in self determination, you are incredibly, bafflingly, hopelessly naive. And you know, like there's a lot of other **** that you can point to, right? Like. For example, Taiwan has gay marriage and China doesn't like the the degree of press censorship. Just like social media censorship in China that doesn't use Taiwan is like absolutely absurd. Like. You know, I I think like most, like some people talking about press censorship in the US are like almost always right wing ********* who are complaining about like they yelled a bunch of slurs. Like in China a very common thing that happens like someone will be posting about a corrupt local official and then every single post about it will get to lead. And if you try to post the guys name, your post won't go up. And then any emoji that people were using in association with the corrupt local official, like get blocked and you can't use the emojis anymore. And like, you know, and it's it's it's almost like the the level of censorship is almost comical to the extent where, like people don't believe. Yeah. Like in the US, like don't like, you know, when people talk about like, like, oh the the, the Chinese Government isn't really banning guys who look too feminine and gay guys from appearing in media. Like, no, they are like they're, they're, they're. I think, I think it was a Beyoncé concert there. There was a very famous like, very funny thing that happened like a few months ago where there was this concert, I think it was a Beyoncé concert. It was, I can't remember who it was, but like, so there was a stream of it in China and there was a guy, there was a sensor who was like putting like one of those Gray out censored bars, like over the over the singer's clothes because they were, they were considered too explicit. And she's just like moving this like dot of like censorship thing across the stage, trying to feel like this is the level of ******** that happens here. Like it it's it's not a thing that like. The US really has much reference for it because like we don't experience, like, this is not a thing that you don't you experience in the US. Like, yeah. Sometimes I like to think about these things in terms of like, like, like old people talk about Orwell and Huxley as these dystopian novels, right? And perhaps people don't read those novels, but they love to quote them. And like in all wells we have like a system which, like, keeps you quiet by pushing you down, right? And in Huxleys we have a system which keeps you quiet by keeping you happy with with drugs and such and like it didn't. It's important to recognize that, like, it both things. Could be bad, but the material conditions and the data that life of people, especially marginalized people, in one society can be markedly better. Yeah. Well, and I think also like, yeah, like I think is we're not like. The the ways in which the American like, there are similarities. But like, yeah, like there are lots of ways in which the sort of Chinese system and the American system are differently bad. And that breaks people's brains because you get a lot of, like, you get, you get a lot of Americans who are convinced become convinced that, like, China is a socialist paradise. There's a Chinese version of this where, like, you get international students who come to the US for the first time and see an election and they, like, lose their minds and are like, absolutely convinced that, like, American democracy is like the only stable political system. And they read Hayek and they, like, lose. They just like they they become the Chinese version of tankies. Which are like weird, near liberal people. And it's like, no, like, I know, actually. In fact, none of these things are good. Both these societies are just, like, not good to live in in any way. And like, you know, and I think there's nothing I should mention here. Like, why all of this sort of like. ******** posturing is happening between the US and China right now, which is that like. On on the American side, like? Biden is trying to distract from the fact that the country is falling apart and there's a bunch of fascists trying to take over and like. You know, like all of this ******** is happening. China is trying to distract from the fact that they have 19% youth unemployment right now and that like. There are there are like cops dispersing people doing runs on banks because the the IT finally looks like a Chinese housing bubble is about to crack like. It's, you know, the this sort of nationalist stuff is like for, for for China in the US it is this sort of game that they play that has a lot to do basically with pacifying their own internal populations. But. You know, for everyone in Taiwan, like it's not a game. And that's that's the thing I think I want to close on, which is like the single most important thing here is that there is no way for China to take control of Taiwan except by war. 94% of the population does not want to be ruled by China. 82% of the population of Taiwan wants the status quo. If you try to force Taiwan, Chinese rule of Taiwan, the only way to do it is by war. And seizing and controlling, seizing control of and occupying a place with 23 1/2 million people is going to be a bloodbath. There's no other way to do it, even if you are. I just want to leave this as sort of a message to people who like, who don't agree with me on this, which is that if you've gotten to the end of this and you genuinely believe that Taiwan is part of China, are you willing to watch your family get burned alive for that principle? Because that that that is what you are asking us to do. You are asking us to watch our families die for your belief about lions on a map. And if if you are not willing to accept the consequences of your belief personally, if you are not willing to see your family get obliterated by a ******* rocket, then don't push for it to happen to us. And yeah, that is that. That didn't rocket then don't push for it to happen to us. And yeah, that is that. That is Taiwan. 101. Please, for the love of God, stop doing this ********. I don't want my family to ******* die. I yeah. Yeah, I think that's very well said, mate. I think a lot of people are so detached from the on the ground consequences of their like theoretical on Twitter.com positions. That it could be very easy to be incredibly callous to people who have loved ones skin in the game. Yeah. And and I think I think this is the part of it. Like, no, like 99% of the people on Twitter are posting about this have there have no stake in this whatsoever. It doesn't matter to them if everyone on top, if everyone who lives in Taiwan died tomorrow, it would have no material affected them whatsoever, right. Like the the worst thing that would maybe happen to them, it was it would be harder for them to get graphics cards. Yeah, completely losing your entire family. Yeah, like, this is this is, this is 23 million people, an enormous number of fumaric going to die if this thing happens. So yeah, like unlike unless you are committed enough to this to kill your own family, then ******* stop posting about it. Because that, that, that. If you were not willing to materially accept the consequences of your own position on yourself, then you shouldn't have. Yeah. Especially when you're pretending to be a leftist, Yep. Yeah, that's this is this has been like it happened here. Yeah. Don't don't have a Chinese invasion of Taiwan happened here. Yeah, or overthrow your local settler colony. Yeah, settler colonialism is bad. That's the official stance. Yep, actually, I know I'm not sure if we can legally. I think I think we can legally say this, the official stance of pools of cool zone media, I'm pretty sure we can't legally say it's the official stance. We cut that down. Yeah, who say yeah, here we're cool zone media. We don't endorse settler colonialism. Yeah, don't do it. War is bad. Don't rocket cities. Football is back, and bet MGM is inviting new customers to join the huddle and enjoy the action like never before. Sign up today using bonus code champion and your first wager is risk free up to $1000. You'll also have instant access to a variety of parlay selection features, player props, and boosted odd specials. Just download the bet MGM app today or go to betmgm.com and enter a bonus code champion and place your first wager. Risk free up to $1000 the bet MGM app is the perfect way to experience the excitement of wagering on live sports now in more markets than ever. Visitbetmgm.com for terms and conditions must be 21 years of age or older to wager Virginia only new customer offer. All promotions are subject to qualification and eligibility requirements. Rewards issued as non withdrawable free bets or site credit free bets expire 7 days from issuance. Please gamble responsibly. Gambling problem call 1-888-532-3500. Anderson Cooper earlier this year, while packing up my late mom's apartment and her things, I felt isolated and alone. Weighed down by grief, I began recording a series of deeply personal conversations with others about their experiences with loss. It helped me and I hope it'll help you. Whatever you're going through. All there is with Anderson Cooper listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Your miraval mate courage already runs in your blood. He needs to be stopped. We've been silent and complacent for far too long. Sisters of the Underground is a new scripted series about fearless women exploring the life and legacy of the Mirabal sisters, Dominican women who were brave enough to challenge decades of oppression. Together, they led their country toward a revolution against Rafael Trujillo, the brutal dictator who ruled the Dominican Republic for 30 years. Oh, please, please help us has blood on his hands from executive producers Dania Ramirez and Eva Longoria. That's me comes the powerful retelling of this all too relevant narrative. Listen to sisters of the underground as part of Michael Toura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Duke and Allen here, a podcaster. We occasionally have introductions, and mostly we have this. And yeah, it's the podcast. Things fall apart, things come back together again, they fall apart again. We put them back together again. Yeah, you, you you. You know, you know the drill. Yeah. And with me is James. Hello, James. Hello? And Speaking of things falling apart, we're we're talking today about. The what? What what it looks like when this sort of the interconnectivity of the American judicial system comes apart under the weight of dueling abortion laws. And with us to talk about that is a lot of people who have written a lot of very good stuff about this. So with us is Alejandra Caraballo, who is a clinical instructor at Harvard Law School Cyber Law Clinic, where she works at the intersection of gender and technology. Hello. Hi, welcome to the show. We also have Michelle McGrath, who is a public defender in New York City for like almost a decade and specializes in bail and parole litigation. Michelle, welcome to the show. Hey, happy to be here. And finally. We have Erica Pierre, who's a senior litigation counselor, where she works at the intersection of reproductive and criminal law, and she is on cases where folks are criminalized for their pregnancy loss. So you're welcome. Welcome to the show as well. So y'all have written actually, I don't it occurs to me that it's been long enough. This is still not published yet, right. Yes, it's so, so it's basically we submitted it to CUNY law review, waiting for edits. We expect our law review article to be published in December. So but you know, we've, we've basically created a TLDR that we, we collaborated for Slate. So we you know, there's a 1200 word article on Slate. You can read that kind of condenses down our article from like 25,000 words as much as we can. Yeah. We were graciously provided the the the long one, and so we read the long one. We're going to talk about it because. Yeah, it's, it's, it's a, it's a really interesting look at. I don't know. There's a lot of sort of points of, OK, so I guess we should run and and talk about what this actually is, which is that one of the things that's been happening in the last, I mean, basically since Dobbs is a series of questions about. What OK is series of questions about what happens if? You are in a state where abortions are illegal and you go to another state and you get an abortion there. And. Yeah, there there's lots of jurisdictional questions here and. Yeah, and this article is a very, very sort of. In depth and really interesting to look at it and I guess OK, I want to jump into this at a kind of weird place. But I I wanted to start with. One of the things, one of the things that's in this article that's I haven't really seen much discussion of is about the way that the sort of Safe Harbor laws that states have been setting up are being like if well, OK, the the way that they can potentially be in the way that previous Safe Harbor laws for immigration stuff for sabotaged by the fact that like all of the cops are sending like all of their stuff to each other. So yeah, I wonder if you can talk a bit about that. I guess it's like a lead into it. Yeah. I mean I with respect to specifically like how all the law enforcement is talking to each other. I think Alejandro might know a little more with respect to that, but when it comes to. The way these laws are being written, they're they really don't have the kind of teeth that sort of the politicians are spinning to the public. They're sort of letting folks think that. Well, we would never, we in New York would never send you to Texas for anything related to the criminalization of a pregnancy loss and because of the way the law of extradition works in the United States, which is actually a constitutional law. It it it's going to be hard in a lot of ways for them to resist that. And so we have our article does talk about a little bit in, in actually great detail about how they could actually craft craft laws that would be a little bit different. Yeah, I think one of the things that, you know this just this past week there was this story that came out of Nebraska where Facebook provided the DMS of someone who is. Being charged with, you know, it wasn't even charged with like. Like, there wasn't a formal charge of, like, committing an abortion, like the person that was being charged. It was like disposing of a body like and. They said hiding a body. And so Facebook, like, released a statement, was saying, like, well, we weren't told that this had anything to do with an abortion. And like, that's the exact problem, right, is that when states are going to seek extradition, they're going to bring charges that have probably nothing to do with it in the immediate, like, on its face to do with abortion, it could just be like. You know, they can repurpose all kinds of laws like endangerment of a minor, right? Like, they can do all these things that, like, would ordinarily, like, never apply in a pregnancy, but they can just kind of do it just to bring charges. And so, you know, my colleague who's unfortunately not here, said the county cook has written about this excessively, about like, the criminalization aspect. But in terms of like, how you know these, these safe Harbor states, you know, these laws like are going to be very difficult. I think it is just really what we're dealing with the effects of. Surveillance capitalism, right? So like Facebook turned over these DMS, Facebook has been in the process of moving to end to end encryption, which basically would have made this impossible to do in the 1st place because it would have been similar to signal. But what Facebook did is because they realized that they would have lost access to data around people's messages and what they're talking about, they made it optional instead of by default. So most people who are not very tech savvy or very familiar or understanding of you know who has access to the messages and whether the government can get access, they might not know that they can set this to end an end to end encryption. And so essentially, like in pursuit of profit, Facebook doesn't enable this privacy feature, but this is the exact same kind of stuff, right? So like, Facebook has access to this data, but there's also this whole shady system of data brokers that gets access to all kinds of data. And that's exactly how I think. You alluded to it when you asked this question about ICE having access to. Basically, all this information on immigrants that states had swore they would never share with federal immigration officials like ISIS basically built this entire shadow system where they're purchasing data about drivers licenses and all this stuff, basically by purchasing it on the open market. And that bypasses all kinds of formal data, requisition requests, warrants, subpoenas, all of those things that would normally be required because it's just freely available. So, you know, so suffice to say as much as these states may want to protect things on that end in terms of data, it's going to be incredibly hard to do so. And I think they're the the previous efforts around Safe Harbor for immigrants and asylum States and things like that. It's just going to be really hard to enforce and practice. However, on the extradition side when when like criminal charges are actually brought that there there is some things that states can actually do to help protect them. Folks who are caught up with any kind of abortion related charges in their states. I just also want to jump in to say that the system works the way that it works because nobody's monitoring it. So when we're talking about law enforcement officials that are talking to one another and getting information through very informal means, right, things that probably buy the book would take a warrant to go from one place to the other just takes Marcy calling over Janice that works at the other system and getting something faxed over, even if they're not doing it out of malice. Just ohh this is out of convenience. It makes life a lot easier to get information from this place to that place. And folks have these informal systems that are set up that even when the law says that they cannot do it if we don't have safeguards that. I hate to say go after people because it seems so carceral, but like that protects what the intent of the law is. It has no teeth, right? If your law doesn't stop Marcy from calling Janice and getting information on someone that they're not supposed to have, then your law doesn't matter. It's kind of in a nothing sandwich, right? And I have plenty of thoughts and stuff to say about the criminalization when we get there later, because that's a lot of my work, but I I think that gets to what Michelle and Alejandra and what Conti? Who's not here? I found it's just. You got to have something more than nothing sandwiches, something more than something that seems good on the surface and doesn't actually help the people that we want to help. And I want to sort of help folks sort of understand how this plays out on the ground. So when the article we we give an example, right. So maybe I've got a New Yorker who gets prescribed a medication that would induce abortion and, you know, they bring it to their friend in a state where that's criminalized and they give their friend the medication, the pregnancy. Friends, maybe the person is concerned and they they go to the hospital. Quite often, nurses and doctors are part of the criminalization process. And so, you know, maybe they call law enforcement official based on this information. They get a subpoena for that person's phone. So now they're on the phone and they can find out, wow, they got this medicine from The New Yorker. Well, now, now the person who. Took the medication. Perhaps is charged with homicide rate. I think what's key here is that they're not necessarily gonna be charged with abortion. Maybe they're charged with homicide, they're charged with infanticide. And guess what? The person who came from New York is now probably going to be charged as an accomplice. So now we have a warrant for for a homicide for the person in New York. Because of all the national databases that we have, the NYPD, the any of the law enforcement in New York is gonna see, oh, that New Yorkers wanted for homicide. Let me go get that person. And so when then that person comes in front of a judge, even though New York is saying or Connecticut is saying, you know, we're not going to give any resources to extradite someone related to the termination of pregnancy, well, they're just being brought before law enforcement in front of a judge who sees that they're one of her homicide, right. And so on the ground. These laws don't have anything to stop them and and so we've sort of suggested things that involve immediate right to counsel people need to be released for extradition and we can talk about some of those more, but I think it helps to sort of give that example to see how it's happening, how it would happen in real life. There's something else I wanted to sort of talk about with this, because one of the things that that on this sort of surveillance front. Has been the way in which, like what we're seeing now is sort of the culmination of like. A bunch of the types of surveillance that have been inflicted on a bunch of different groups of people. You have the anti sex worker stuff, you have the the survey, the surveillance stuff. That's because immigrants you have. This sort of post 911 like, I mean this is where the sort of fusion centers come from. Is this sort of like post 911 security state build up and then you have the stuff that's been used to go after activists and I think. That's been really interesting to me to sort of, I mean incredibly, like depressing too to watch has been, yeah, like, I don't know like I remember like the like one of the things if you use fusion centers where like all of these sort of like law enforcement agencies like share information with each other. Like, I don't know, like I remember in 2020 like they were like sending one of my friends tweets around because that was one of the things they were doing to like, go after people during the protests. And like, I don't know, I was interested in in in this question of of these fusion centers. Because. It's it's this. I don't know. It's this real sort of like like it it it it really seems like the the sort of like the the next step of where all of this stuff goes is. You know, diffusion centers becomes, becomes this place where it's really, really easy to bypass the law because, you know, all of this stuff is just getting shared anyways, and. It brings up this other problem which I was interested in, which is about like. To to what extent can the state even control law enforcement? Because like. OK, like law enforcement. Are those like cops in general? Very reactionary? There's there's, you know, if, if, if you, you know, if, if if you go back into the history of the anti Bush movement, there's a lot of them being like aided abetted by the cops. And I was wondering. I don't know what what you think about. Like, like what? What? What do you even do if the cops just decide they don't want to follow the law at all and they're just, you know, they're just going to keep passing information on no matter what you do? I think Alejandro and I probably differ on views about where things are going next, probably just because of the nature of our our work and the things that we're dealing with the most. So this is going to be fun. So I. I actually think so. Well yesterday, two days ago, whenever this airs. However, many days ago one of our colleagues at if when how? My colleague Laura Huss, who's brilliant has been working on this research project for like the last two years tracking cases of when folks are criminalized for self managed abortion. Why self managed abortion? Because that is the abortions that were happening outside of clinical spaces, right? That were. There were always questions about who can be criminalized for self managing their care. There weren't as many protections in the law. For a lot of helpers and things like that in self managed care. So when her and her team looked at this data, what they found was that the biggest risk of criminalization didn't actually necessarily come from external forces looking at big data, right? But was actually cut like the hell is other people. Because what they were finding was that nearly the majority of cases of folks coming to the attention of law enforcement was coming from medical professionals. So I. I wanna say I have the numbers in front of me somewhere. It's. Well, so it's something like 45% of folks that were reported to the police were reported by some sort of medical professional, whether that's a doctor, a social worker, a nurse or whoever that was at a hospital when they were seeking care or they were getting prenatal care. At some point when they found out they were pregnant, that's how they came to the attention of law enforcement. Another 2526% of those folks that came to the attention of law enforcement came to people that they told information to, that they entrusted, whether that was a family member, a partner or former partner, whoever the heck. Right. So what we're finding is that the vast majority of people that came to the attention of law enforcement was because of folks like actual people that had the information and then that turned into them being individually targeted by police and then that turned into their data being mined on their actual physical devices. Not like Big Brother down, but small brother up, right, so. When I certainly think about kind of how big data can be used and manipulated and like. Absolutely messed up. To do a dragnet of folks, that's always kind of a possibility, that's swimming. But I think the immediate possibility is like, how do you protect your individual data on your individual devices? What safety plan do you have in place about how you use the Internet wholesale? Because I'm a lawyer, I can't tell people to commit crimes, but I can tell people to be very careful about how you manage your devices and how you manage information. Who do you tell your business to? . Right? Because that's how folks are coming to the attention of law enforcement. But can the laws control cops? I think what we generally see is, like, probably not. What will the courts respond to cops that work outside of the law? I think the lawyerly, awful answer is it depends on the jurisdiction that you manage to find yourself in. Yeah, I think, I think you guys just hit it right on the head. You know, it's cyber security or weakest link is always a human element. So like, that's always going to be the biggest concern, right? Like, who are you telling about any of this? Like, who knows about it? Like, you know, you know, on a tension structure, like with gender affirming? Here in Texas, like one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit against Texas like. One of the trans boys like that, that was like, you know, found out about, you know, Governor Abbott's letter to like basically equate gender affirming care as child abuse. Attempted suicide. And then one was taken to the hospital. The hospital staff then made a report to, like, the Department of Yeah. So, I mean, this was all in the ACLU's lawsuit, and it's like, it's just insane, right? So, like, that's exactly the thing. Like, the biggest risk is always going to be the human element. Like you're like the doctors, the nurses, your friends, like family members. You know it it. And it might even be people like, you deeply trust you just never know. And so that's always going to be. An aspect, but I think one of the biggest risks is, well, is. Is that the amount of data that we have now? Like, even if that can't be used like in a proactive way, to like, target people on the back end, like, once you do have that kind of friend turning you in, like, all of a sudden they have intent. They have, like, all of these things from messages. They have location data. They show exactly where you were at what time. Like, it's just like the perfect surveillance system that basically makes, like any kind of reasonable defense nearly impossible, right? Like they can show where you were or who you talked to and so. Like I I think that the best tweet that I saw about this is from from someone who works at Digital Defense fund and there are basically like they're actually might not have been them. I just remember it was just like there there is no conversation about criminal activity. There is only conspiracy. Like basically it's like anytime you you're chatting about any of this stuff like it's basically like that. That in itself can be potentially considered like criminal conduct and like that can be used like as intent and like all these things and like and prosecution. Yeah. Like there's all those aspects. And I think just to answer your question like more broadly on like what police can be done, like, like, to be honest, I guess an attorney, it's like been very, very frustrating seeing qualified immunity just being like increased, right. Like so. So basically there's been no appetite by the courts to like. Like, remove this doctrine or whittle it away. Actually, it's like being rapidly expanded, especially in the aspect around federal agents, right. And now, like there is some, can you explain, sorry, briefly just what what that is for people who don't know. So qualified immunity basically means that you can't bring a civil rights lawsuit, particularly with the call, like a 1983 lawsuit, which is like the federal statute that allows you to bring civil rights lawsuits against state and federal individuals for any kind of. Civil rights abuses and it's everything from like discrimination on basis of race to basically, you know, the cop beating someone you know within an inch of their life. So basically any kind of civil rights violation, it's called like a 1983 case, which is like the citation is the actual law that like dates back to the 19th century. Like it's part of like the the Ku Klux Klan act, which like, so this is a long running like civil rights statute that really gained prominence in the last 60 years. But you know, so basically what qualified immunity. As is, it basically says, well, if it wasn't clearly established right, when this abuse or violation of your civil rights happened, the the officer or the government official can't be held like liable for it. So basically like and the way that they do it is very strictly interpreted. So it's like clearly established, right. So it's like, well, it wasn't clearly established, right, that you weren't supposed to be able to be beaten with a baton like and it's just like what, like it's some of these cases get really crazy. I'm not an expert on this by any means, but. Like I've, I've, you know. Brett come across a few and it's it's absolutely insane like how how like narrowly the the oftentimes like define what like clearly like it's not like, you know broadly defined, right of like maybe police officers shouldn't be beating people. But you know and I I think it was even crazier. Is that this law or there's an upcoming law review article by this professor that I was just came across the other day and like apparently there is a whole provision of 1980 of the section 1983 that has been omitted. From the Federal Register for 100 and like 40 years. Basically like a clerk omitted a section and this law like this, this. Like, this article basically uncovered this omission that should have been in the Federal Register. It passed in Congress and like, but hey, if you we did. It wasn't a clearly established right, Alejandra? So does it really apply? The one that I like haunted by that I that I read about that was that was one of the qualified media cases was like there was a guy who got lit on fire by a cop with a Taser and the courts ruled that because there because there hadn't been a prior instance of someone attempting to like you don't have a clearly established right for a cop to light you on fire with a Taser. Yeah. You know you can Skype burn to death because again you got lit on fire with a Taser and like because there wasn't clearly it's like this is like this is like the worst. Like yeah this secret is it's never, it's never clearly established. Like, like, mostly folks lose these lawsuits. And I mean, this is where. You know, I I think folks need to recognize, and I say this very much as a lawyer, that the law is not at the end of the day, what's gonna save us, like, yeah, collective organizing and working together to keep each other safe is because the law is not designed to hold police accountable. It is not designed to keep people out of jail. In fact, it's designed to do the opposite. Right. And I think we're going to see a whole lot of folks start to understand how criminalization. Marks in a way that they may not have realized before and to your question like. As a public defender in New York City who spent many of those years in the Bronx like no, the police are not accountable to anyone and they continually do unlawful things all day. And this is part part of one of the solutions. And again. All of these are stopgap measures so that people have time to plan and plot and organize and and and do what they need to do. But. Is that in these states that are saying, oh, we're not, you know, we're gonna keep state resources away. No, no one shall use state resources to move someone for any of these, you know, criminalization of pregnancy. But we imagine that law enforcement is generally a rather conservative group of people will simply disagree with that law and probably at times do things anyway. Right? And sure, we can file a lawsuit later, but that's not really preventing the harm in the interim, right? Like someone's going to be incarcerated, all of these things are going to happen. And so one of our proposals is that it should be crystal clear that any, any state actor who does participate in such extradition can be sued individually. They will have none of this qualified immunity. It will not exist. Now listen, this seems very reasonable to me and to us, but do I think it's something that the legislature will actually pass? I I'm not particularly optimistic about most of our proposals on this because it will mean a lot of other folks. You will not be criminalized in addition to folks who are criminalized for abortion. But so, so I do think that that that does police. We have a problem with rampant police impunity in this country and and it will show up here just like it does in many other sectors. I think sometimes when we talk about criminalization of abortion wholesale for folks that have not been working in and about repro, it feels very new, like that this is something that we need to kind of like gird our loins and prepare for, but folks that have been working in, in the RHONJ movements, reproductive rights, health and justice movements. Kevin, talking about criminalization for a long time and the reason that we've been talking about criminalization is because it's been happening for a long time. So I was talking about my colleagues research that the preliminary info just came out. So when she was combing through all of these like different clerks offices all over the country, she unearthed like 61 cases of folks being criminalized for self managed abortion in 26 states. Now we only have 3 states that have laws criminalizing self managed abortion left. In the books. So holy crap. The fact that there have been prosecutions in 26 states when only I think at the time that some of these cases were about only like 5 or 6 states had these laws on the books tell us that prosecutors are very, very creative in the ways that they go after people. So the likelihood of always seeing abortion written at the top of the warrant is going to be low. And then in some states we are going to start seeing it because they are going to if they haven't. That he criminalized abortion wholesale. Any kind of abortion, right. All abortions are going to become self managed because their folks are not able to get clinical care. So it's it's not new and I think that's one of the things that I want to make sure that folks understand that there are. Like criminal defense attorneys can and can deal with this because it's just the same messed up ways that they charge people in a variety of other cases. But I I think the shock and awe that's hitting some folks who the criminal legal system doesn't move within their lives is I need folks to get out of shock and awe quick and get into work mode. Because some of the things that I'm seeing on the Internet while we're talking about how hell is other people and how we can protect ourselves in our communities. Umm. Some of the ways that folks are talking about this on the Internet shows that there are not people that have had the impact of the criminal legal system necessarily touched their lives right. Like folks that think they're doing OPSEC on Twitter by like, if you want to get a manicure, you can come to my state and I'll pick you up for your manicure and that's. When we talk about how cases get put together on the back end, and I think Michelle can probably speak to this too. Like as a public defender, when you're seeing how when you have a very motivated prosecutor, a cop that actually knows how to do their job and the information that they're able to gather when they investigate, yes, they will pull your tweets. Yes. Even if it's not your case, they will pull your tweets and connect that person that got their abortion to the tweets that you put online to show that they intended to go to your place to go and get an abortion and then try to use those things to prosecute them over here. So even if you're willing to take the risk with your own life, if you're trying to help people, don't put them in a position that they can be harmed by some of the things that we say out loud. Because if you're living in a state where you're not afraid of criminalization, but the person you are trying to help. Is in a state that and they have to go back to somewhere they can be criminalized. You gotta think about how you're protecting them. That's my soapbox rant. I think that's really valuable, actually. This, like we saw a lot in the Trump administration, too. This, like legal constitutional magic that like, like they, Seth Abramson, the, the the Twitter thread guy. Right. Like, it it it sometimes it, yeah. It distracts from useful organizing and mutual aid because people are just like, well, if this and this and this and this and this and then like, I understand this and no one else does and this is a special secret. And then if we do this and turn around three times and go through the wardrobe, then Donald Trump will be impeached. Or, you know, I can give you a safe, a safe of safe access to reproductive healthcare rather than just doing the work. And I think another part of what was going on here, and this has been something that like. You know, if you talk to people who've been doing this like. OK, if if this is the thing you genuinely want to do, there are people who have been doing this kind of work for decades and decades and decades and decades, and they know largely what is safe and what isn't and what stuff is a factor for not and the way that this sort of like. Like the the, the, the, the, the kind of sort of like, hey, I'm going to go do this on my own. I have. I've never done this before. I don't know what I'm doing, but here I'm going to sort of signal that I can do this thing. Like, go talk. If you want to do this, go talk to the people who have been doing it for ages and go support them because. Like, you know, again, like the reason, the reason we're here in the 1st place is because that this whole. Like, the entire right to abortion has for literally decades been supported by just a really tiny number of incredibly underfunded. And understaffed people and organizations. So, like, go help them. Don't like, strike out on your own to boldly get you and everyone you're working with arrested. Yeah. I think, you know, some of that is, you know, I think some people have some good intentions, but my God, like that energy could be spent in so much more productive ways. And it's it's kind of unfortunate. I think that the worst aspect of it, though, is like the tech Bros coming in and being like, I'm going to save this space with crypto, we're going to create a Dow and like distribute funds. And I'm like. Oh my God. Like, I'm just sitting here like, you know, because this is something like, you know, I I've looked into a students like this earlier this year, like, you know how payment transactions could be used and basically how there's basically almost no security with payment transactions, right. Like, if you're using Venmo, which which in and of itself has like a social media function. So, like, you know, you could see when you're your friend, you know, Joe is like getting brunch on Sunday and like. You know, they could, you know, if you're not setting that's a private by default like that, that's already a problem. But basically like, you know, they they can get access to those records pretty easily in a much easier way. And you know, one of the things we, we started to look at like towards the end was like, oh, you know, as you know, had some serious being like, well, can you, can you use crypto? Can you use like Bitcoin? It's like you stopped to interact at some point with a financial institution and they can tie these things back. It is not that exceptionally hard, especially like now it's been shown that like coin base is like cooperating with the feds. Basically acting like a giant honey pot. So like, I just I I fundamentally wish like people would just like realize that like technology is not going to save us here. Like it can help if used wisely and creatively. But don't think that like you're just going to like do this one little neat trick like as James was saying and then suddenly we're going to fix this because it's not right. Like this is going to take a million different solutions with a million different people doing all the little things that they can to push back and like that's one of things I think we. We tried to be very humble about our papers, like, look, none of this is a silver bullet. We're just trying to provide some concrete solutions that states can take and some steps that they can take. But we realize that nothing is ever going to be perfect to solve this kind of Pandora's box that's been opened by Alito and all these like right wing reactionaries on the court. So, like, I guess Speaking of things that are not silver bullets and will not save us. Yeah, I guess. Could we get a bit more into looking at what the sort of like it's like a lot of the article is talking about? I guess the the. The, the, the the the, the history of extradition. And how, how that sort of been understood and interpreted. And so I guess I was wondering, yeah, could we go into talking about? What the sort of legal stuff is going to look like when it like, you know, if if we start getting these large showdowns between like states with like actually sort of like, you know, if states actually start trying to have sanctuary laws that are like have teeth and are good, what, what, what is that sort of, what is that going to look like? Yeah. So this is a kind of part that I focused on in the article. And so basically a lot of people aren't aware about this because it's not really a contested area of the Constitution, but basically when the Constitution was drafted and and. Modified it contained what was called the extradition clause and basically what it said is that, you know all the states have a duty to turn over fugitives from other states that have been charged with the crime and have fled into those states is the United States is kind of weird it's a federal system. So like every state is still considered kind of its own sovereign in some ways in a very like quasi sovereign way. And so there was a question about you know, since all criminal prosecutions basically especially at the inception of. United States were done at the state level. You know what, what happens when somebody crosses and across state lines like how are we going to handle that? And so basically this was, you know, one of the the drafts and initially they tried to set it at a higher bar like to be like high crimes and misdemeanors similar to kind of the impeachment clause and you know. They whittled it down to and basically made it very applicable to said all crimes. But it really did not get much play until basically in the 1840s when obviously the tension around slavery picked up, right. So you had enslaved people escaping to the north and the South being very angry about that and wanting the north to to return the escaped enslaved folks and the north being like, no and Congress tried to. Figure out a way to like. They had some kind of, you know, but made it 10 times worse and put us on accelerating path towards civil war by passing the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. And a bunch of radical abolitionists in the Northeast were like, we don't ever want to comply with this, right. So, like, Vermont passed this bill called the Habeas Corpus Act, which basically created all kinds of legal procedures so that southern bounty hunters wouldn't just come into the state and just kidnap, you know, the first black person they saw because they assumed that they were. Been an escaped and save person rather than a free person. And, you know, and it was trying to stop that kind of issue of kidnappings and also just not to comply with this you know, the institution of slavery because there were people who had escaped slavery and were in the north. And so it was causing all kinds of tension. And while like the the Vermont law was never fully tested, it did like create a lot of incendiary back and forth between like the North and the South and and the press. And it was really interesting. Reading some of these old, like newspaper articles from the like 18, like from 1850, because it was like basically at the press enrichment and the press in Boston, like taking stabs at each other. And it was like the 1850 version of Shitposting because they were like one person was just like, this is nullification made easy and like basically with like it's just. Surreal thing, like if you know, if you get a chance when when our full article comes out in December, there'll be some some highlights from that in the footnotes. But basically what it really got tested was in 1861, the case started in 1859 though it was called Kentucky beat Dennison. And So what essentially happened is there was someone who aided and it's like person escape Kentucky and get to Ohio. And basically the Governor of Ohio is an abolitionist and was like, I don't want to comply with this, right? And I do not want, I don't believe like this is a crime because this is not a crime in our state. And the Attorney General of Ohio basically wrote a long legal memo stating that this, this, this is a crime. Not known to the laws of civilization or man. So basically, you know they find it went all the way to the Supreme Court and Chief Justice Taney also notable for Dred Scott decision. So like absolutely just terrible court like they were. This came I think about like three weeks before the Civil War. So this was like I think you should like March of 1861. So it basically like three weeks before Fort Sumter God like sacked by by the South. But basically what it did was is that it said states actually. Yeah, utilize any discretion in extradition. So like the like the Governor of Ohio can't say like I have concerns about human rights and that this isn't a crime in our state, right. There's not this dual criminality analysis and we're concerned about human rights and all these things. So the Supreme Court basically said no, states don't have that discretion, which you know, but they essentially split the baby by by then saying federal courts can't issue a writ of mandamus, which is basically an order for a government official to do something. They said that federal courts couldn't do that to a state governor in extradition. So basically it means that like states don't have discretion, but federal courts can't enforce it. So therefore it's just a non issue, right? Fast forward 120 years and we get to a case called Puerto Rico Branstad, which basically somebody committed murder in Puerto Rico, fled back to Iowa and then was sought for extradition back to Puerto Rico. And there's a huge element of racism here because, you know, they were concerned that a white man couldn't get a fair trial in Puerto Rico, which is. Just deeply offensive. And so they were. And there was also a question of like territoriality, right, because Puerto Rico is a territory. It wasn't sure if, like, they had to comply with extradition clause. And so essentially the Supreme Court said, yes, federal courts can comply with or can issue a writ of mandamus to to ensure extradition. So essentially what it did was it partially overturned the Kentucky videos in case, but upheld the central ruling and basis states have no discretion. So what does that mean? Basically that states can't really stop. The extradition of someone in their in their jurisdiction, even if they have extreme concerns. Right. So if you have like, let's say, going back to Michelle's example earlier, someone who sends their friends like abortion pills from New York to, let's say Texas, right, and Texas is seeking extradition in New York is like, well, that's not a crime here. So we don't want to extradite. You know, the states would typically be hard pressed, but there's kind of two kind of or there's one major issue with like the extradition part, right. It actually has to apply to someone who's quote UN quote an actual fugitive, meaning that they had to actually be present in the state when the crime occurred. And the Commission of the crime can't in itself create what's called constructive presence. You have to be corporeally present in the statement, you have to be physically present. You can't. Just like the the Commission of the crime doesn't constitute that, so in this instance. You know, the person who sends a pillow in New York technically, like, constitutionally does not have to be extradited, right? Like they can contest that. The problem is, as Michelle pointed out, is that you know. The extradition clauses that exist today is pretty much almost entirely just a. A formality that is waived basically almost every single time. And so the courts, the like, the state attorneys, the district attorneys, even defense attorneys might not be familiar with that and might not know that that's something that they could potentially contest or it's even something that they can. That that is a potential constitutional issue, right. And so that's one of the things that we focused on is our potential solution is to ensure that people who were not present in the state where the accident occurred are able to mount a challenge to the extradition. You know, it creates all kinds of other problems because there's still federal extradition, meaning like if you leave this the country and come back in like Border Patrol could potentially get you, we still don't have a clear. Understanding of how that necessarily would work, you know, because that's never been a question. It's like fully resolved. So, you know, basically at the end of the day, like we want to make sure that folks are aware of that. But like the folks that like leave Texas, right. So like if you commit an abortion, you were charged in Texas and you go to New York like New York is not going to have very many options to protect you from being extradited back to Texas. And so, you know one of the things that you know I fundamentally believe. Kentucky V Dennison was wrong. Was wrongly decided on the sense that state shouldn't be able to have a concern around human rights because it essentially acts as a one way ratchet where the states with the most regressive anti human rights criminal justice laws get to have like get to dictate that over all of the other states. Similar to how slavery like the the Southern states were trying to enforce the institution of slavery on northern states that had. That had a Polish slavery deck that you know the slavery and abortion should be compared directly. But because this is like, this is fundamentally the last time where you have criminal laws that are so different between states, like one states human right is another state's capital crime. Like you can't get further apart than that. Yeah and I wanted to just clarify for folks if I drove the pill to Texas then I would have committed the crime in Texas and New York could extradite me and I what I also think I I'm sort of here is the what happens on the ground right so if you to be clear while. As Alejandra correctly points, if I just mailed it to Texas, then they have the warrant. While we're sorting out this extradition warrant, I am very likely incarcerated and the sorting out of the extradition warrant will probably take 90 days. So just because I think folks get confused with this a lot, just because something is illegal doesn't mean or or your lawyers arguing it's illegal doesn't mean it just magically stops or the process ends. And so this is something where we think that. 1. Really, there should be a basis to contest your extradition on a human rights ground on 2 grounds either. There is no dual criminality. That is, this is not actually a crime and the other state. Interestingly, here, handing someone a prescription pill in New York is actually a felony, whether or not you get money for it. Most folks don't know that he's smiling because she also has a public defender in in New York City. Because it blows your mind. You're like, wait, they just handed it to them. There's no money exchanged yet. That's a felony drug sale. So we might have dual criminality. New York might actually say you did do a crime, so I will extradite you, which is why we think there also needs to be a human rights defense. And this may also extend to, well, we're not going to extradite them to Texas because they have the death penalty and we think that is a clear contravention of human rights. Maybe we can extend it to prison conditions. I don't know how that far that goes. Again, these are things, I don't know. They'd be likely to be codified. If we're actually dreaming up the world that we think where this could work, like I as your attorney should be able to come in and say there's no dual criminality, this is in contravention of human rights. And once I mount that defense, then the court is bound to release you while we sort that out. And and that is sort of our vision. Another thing that that Alejandro mentioned the, the, her, the Vermont law in the 1800s. And one of the things that it said was you could get a jury of your peers in in a situation like this. There's no jury and an extradition case. But the idea, of course is that a jury is going to say, this is morally wrong. I don't care what the law says. We're not sending this person back to enslavement. And the idea here is if you input a jury in on it and you assert. Human rights defense, perhaps the jury will say, no, we're not sending you. So these are, these are a lot of ideas that we've been coming up with. So we're doing the plan. There was Jerry nullification. It absolutely was. Your notification was part of the plan of love, love, love, love, love, love jury nullification II. Anybody with the law review that's listening to this, let me write about jury nullification for you and feel like, well, but we, we, we, I feel like I I have been wanting to explain Jerry notification on this show literally since the like, I asked if I could do an episode on it the first week. Yeah, call me back for the next one. So there's something that I don't want to be lost. And that's the idea of, like, people don't necessarily know what they're being charged with in the state. That's asking for them to go back. Because there's not really a requirement that that. So for an extradition, like thinking through what you actually need, like the bare bones of an extradition, it needs to be like a piece of paper that's signed by the governor, but not necessarily the governor of the state, but somebody with authority to ask for you to return back. And that's in essence it, right? Just like a piece of paper signed by somebody that says XYZ, birth date, XYZ did a crime in our state, give them back to us, right? Oh, they don't have to say what crime? Not really a requirement. It usually says it, but it doesn't work. It doesn't require a probable cause affidavit, which I think is really the more important part. It doesn't require you to prove that there is enough to charge them with a crime in the sending state, right? So we're saying that's a bare minimum change that we can make to laws to make the state. That's asking for you to use your resources to put somebody in a cage and then put them in a traveling. Age to bring them to our cages. And I keep saying the word cage because I don't want us to move away from what like prisons and jails actually are. It's like bars and cages and boxes, right? So. Does it really harm the system? Does it really, Terry, all apart to say, and here's what they're being charged with and the reason why? Because that would be the bare minimum for someone to be charged for a crime in New York. You would need to have probable cause for the arrest. And then a judge that's sitting on the bench gets to say, Yep, there's enough probable cause to this person to be charged next court date, you know, and but we don't have that with extradition. We just trust that. The wheels of bureaucracy are turning the way that they need to. Holy crap, that can harm so many people. So we're just saying, hey, make them write it down so maybe a judge that's sitting in Illinois can look at this warrant from Missouri that says we want XYZ back here because of a self managed abortion. And then they can see whether or not Illinois's new fancy extradition law, which they haven't written yet, but I'm sure they will applies, right? I think that's a bare minimum that we can do, and as much as I crave shaking systems and tearing them apart, I don't think that's going to be a thing that does it, but it might, you know? Have you all ever played Mario Kart? You know, when you're driving and you're able to throw, like the turtle shell or the banana, that might be the banana that might slow down the process of somebody kind of getting dragged along on this course. And I think there's like, there's another thing that that would do too, which is that that buys time for a Community response. Because like, you know, if we go back to sort of the ice stuff, it was like, well, yeah, OK, like ice raids weren't stopped by the sanctuary laws. The thing that like did slow them down was massive community response. Yeah, I think I think that's very, it's certainly I've seen that happen here, like in San Diego. It wasn't any of our performative Democrat laws. It was people getting out into the street. Yeah, I was going to say there's also, like in the UK in the last couple of months, there's been a lot of really, really impressive community defense things and like cops showing up and like just entire communities and neighborhoods showing up with the cops, just like running away. And it's been, it's been incredible to watch. And you. Q Can also do this. But performative Democrats keep giving us good laws, like, give us something, give anything, like a nub of a thing that folks can hang their hats on. I I just don't want any politician out there to think that they're absolved from the job of protecting people. Yeah, well and and and I think I think again, I think with these laws, right is like you you actually like with this extradition stuff like I don't know how like I don't know how you would even. Like try to stop it unless like because like you don't know. Like, I mean I unlike unless unless you're going to try to stop trying to stop every person who gets arrested, which I think is like a noble goal. But like there's no, we don't have the capacity for that. Like if if if we lived in a world where we could do that, like. It will be much better and the state would be running for its life. But yeah, it's like like it it seems like a thing that like it it it gives. Like it gives time for the law to act. More importantly, it's like it's time for us to act. And that that seems really important. Absolutely. One of the most important thing is it's buying time for people to organize and people to be able to push back and also creates a higher barrier, right? Like. At the end of the day, like, these systems are still made-up. People and people are incredibly lazy. And oftentimes, like the police and other folks like, don't want to have to deal with, like, engaging and going with, like, an extradition request because the actual process for dealing with that is actually very onerous. Like, they have physically go to the state to pick them up, and they have to, like, do all these things, right? And So what we're doing is, like, we're suggesting is, like, make it even harder. Like, make it absolutely hard for them to to go through this and actually have to litigate in courts and like, bring all this stuff and just basically like. Put down the process and raise that kind of barrier to entry on it. But, you know, things like, I think that's very important to say is like, you know, the the Community defense aspect, like, cannot be overstated because at the end of the day, like, laws are just words on paper, right? Like it's the people that give them the effect and the power. So really what we need is, like, people say, like, this is morally wrong, right? Like, we're not going to prosecute people for, for exercising their bodily autonomy and engaging in a fundamental human right. And so, you know, one of the things I've been heartened by is, you know? Like, I'm Fort John Brown Gun Club in Dallas. Like what they've been doing, like protecting houseless folks like under the overpasses, like, they show up and like, you know, in Texas, they can open carry. And like, the police don't want to deal with them, so they're like buying a few more days so that the the the Dallas police doesn't come in and sweep, you know, the only belongings that these people have. And like that in and of itself brought so much attention that like brought so much scrutiny to Dallas PD's action. So. Like it is that kind of Community defense, and I think it also harks back to how. These extradition issues, like, prior to like, the Civil War worked out. It wasn't necessarily like these formal systems in Vermont that like stopped, you know, escaped us like persons from being returned back to the South. It was like entire mobs of people coming and like being like, you're not taking this person out of our town. And if you try to, you're not going to leave here like as a whole person. I I guess is probably the best way to put that. The local bounty hunter. Yeah. And so, like, essentially like that. That's how it worked. Right. And like, you know, at the end of the day, like, I feel like, you know, I don't want to endorse any kind of violence, but like, like, we're really, what it means is, like when people show up and they physically put themselves in, in the way, it makes it so much harder for the, like, this kind of wheel of injustice to to continue. And so that's really what it's going to take. And like you were mentioning with, like, the with the ice braids and everything like that. Like it took people sometimes physically putting their bodies in front of ice fans. To stop them from driving away and like, chaining themselves to, to stop and like, that's the kind of like nonviolent, like, direct action that I think is like going to be, like, needed. Yeah. And I I think folks seem to have figured out that their district attorneys are elected. And the person bringing the fugitive case, which I don't think I've been crystal clear about, is the District Attorney. So then you the, the police officer is going to go to the district attorney's office and and that is the person who's going to bring the court case to help facilitate sending the person. And I know in New York recently has seen a number of successes of folks organizing around individual people would be saying you need to drop these charges, this conviction got overturned. You should not be continuing with the case. This person is a server for whatever reason folks are organizing around, right? And so. If. We can. Create some delays whereby the person is free, right? Because this is the key thing. We don't want people incarcerated. Incarceration in and of itself is extreme violence, right? So if the person is not incarcerated, then we can sort of delay this process and organize around pressuring whoever needs to be pressured, particularly the the two slit democratic politicians who say they're against all of this stuff. But then at the end of the day, are they going to ignore the homicide extradition warrant like that's where the rubber meets the road. Are you gonna do it or not? Right. And and and I think that's a much harder question when it comes down to that for them because like, well, it's a homicide warrant, right. And and so that's where they need the pressure because all the wild ideas go out the door in that moment. Yeah, I think, like, I think that's the thing with with these people is like ideologically, like, they don't care enough to do it, do it. But if you but you can force them to care, they care about having a job. Yeah, well, it's not even just so much that, like there. There are long established ways of putting pressure on people and systems that can force them to do things they don't want to do. And yeah, go do that because you're going to need it. Frankly, I think part of this is also destigmatizing work, right? Because when we have kind of these big. Divergent ideas when we find ourselves at this split of like good versus evil, right like slavery versus not slavery, bodily autonomy versus not bodily autonomy. Sometimes the good guys compromise to the point that we get ourselves to this is not bodily autonomy. Sometimes the good guys compromise to the point that we get ourselves to this position later on down the line and. What we can do is kind of galvanized community response and also civic engagement by forcing folks to take a look at the laws that we so rely on and questioning why does this thing exist this way? Why is this process moving that way? Someone that didn't know that folks facing an extradition warrant like often have to make the decision at an arraignment. Am I going to waive my right to extradition and wait for them to come get me? Because they said that takes 30 days for them to come and get you, but if you don't wave, it's going to take 90 days. For them to come and get you so you'll be sitting there longer. And that's a decision that you need to make, kind of like in that moment, if we're talking about extradition in normal conversation, we're moving forward to a place where we're destigmatizing and frankly demystifying what the criminal legal system really looks like in the nuts and bolts and might end up with better conversations and better output for folks in the future. It might end up with you being able to talk about jury nullification and having like and not having it. He kind of like a shaking the table conversation because frankly, these are all like civics, it's civics, it's rights, it's things that are written in the constitution that governs us where the cops don't need to know the law, but we're all expected to, right? So. It takes all kinds. It takes all responses for us to just get to the place that's better than the stopgap that Roe had been giving us for the last 40 some odd years. And I'll say, like, the one thing that does terrify me on this end is like, or I guess like really concerns me is like what Ron DeSantis just did in Florida in Hillsborough County. Like I grew up in Hillsborough County, so I am from there. So it's like, like the twice elected state attorney there was just suspended because he said he would refuse to. Prosecute crimes related to abortion and gender affirming care. Like also refused to like, prosecute trans people using the bathroom. Right. So like these kinds of things. And DeSantis just like sacked him, right? An elected person that like reflects the values of that county and so like that, that's the other thing to to be aware of. It's, you know, like even when you do exercise that power and like say like this is our as a community, these are our values on like who we should be prioritizing in the criminal justice system. There are still people out there that will will try to circumvent that in a very authoritarian and autocratic way. And so, you know, I think it's not just who you're voting for your local DA's, who are you running for, governor? Who are you voting for? Like, you know, these people that have broader powers over this. I wanted to briefly talk about this because I know like it was proposed at least by my representative, the and I think it's been like bandied about as a solution and it doesn't seem like it is, but this my body, my data act, which I was trying to read through it a little earlier. It seems like it allows people to like sue tech companies for selling their data that leads to their prosecution. I don't know if you're familiar with it, but maybe we could just discuss a little bit. What? No. OK, alright. I mean, so I'm, I'm not familiar, but based on what you just said, right, I think there's this. And I really think it goes back to what Evco is saying about folks just like not not fully understanding precisely how the criminal legal system just like runs over people. OK, great. So I can sue the tech company after the police have put me in a cage and and convicted me based on the date. Like like, OK, I mean great, maybe I'll have a lot of money on my commissary. My family will have enough like funds to come drive and visit me at whatever state prison they've got me locked up in. Right. Like like this is where we have to step back and think are is this is this thing actually preventing the harm? Because I I think a lot of times folks are just like we can to them or we could get back at them and and I also want folks to remember that just making something illegal does not prevent harm, right and and we could have a whole nother conversation about criminalization as a solution to anything which I think it is not. But but just on on the face of what you've said to me that doesn't sound like a solution that if I it wouldn't feel adequate to me if it if I were in that situation and also thinking. About how cases become cases. From what we know it it's not. Again, it's not coming from big data down right. For the most part, it certainly can happen. But really what's happening is violations of people's 4th Amendment rights, cops being able to access things on people's actual devices, oftentimes without warrants, oftentimes by not fully explaining that people have the right to say no. And I'm sure Michelle has had clients that were like, ohh, they just took my phone. How many times have we heard that right? They just took my phone and started going through it. A police officer that does that is not going to write in their report. And I just took his phone without any permission. It's always permission was granted. It was in Plainview. I saw it from the street. I smelled it as he was walking by. Like if the laws that are being created are not actually responsive to the harm that folks are experiencing. In a way that actually prevents it, then we need to kind of push back at our legislators and say, OK, this is great. But is it responding to the thing that you're saying it's responding to cause? Yeah, shout out to people being able to sue Big Tech for selling our data without our permission, but but is that going to prevent prosecutors from going after folks that have abortions? Probably not, because even in the Nebraska case that Alejandro mentioned at the top of the hour. That was a warrant that was signed by a judge. It was a search warrant that was provided to Facebook that didn't say the words abortion on it, that didn't say that we're going after someone for abortion had, I think the words like abuse of a corpse or something of that nature on there. And for them it was wrote what they normally do. Bureaucracy, search, warrant, stamp. Here's the data that you're looking for. A law that prevents folks from selling your data doesn't prevent that from happening. Something I think a lot about those one of my sort of like former political experiences was back in like 2000, I think was happening around 12,013 right after the the Revolution of Bahrain. So, OK, so the revolution in Bahrain, Saudi tanks rolled in, they crush it, they kill a bunch of people and the government starts doing this crackdown. The way the government does the crackdown is they go, they they go to Facebook and they they, they they take off those on people's public accounts and then they go to Facebook and they ask them for information. And Facebook turns it over and, you know, the government just goes through and finds everyone who is at a protest and starts arresting them. And, you know, Facebook was just like, yeah. And like that, if you know, if, if, if, if, if, if, if they if they will comply with a literal monarchy who has had a second monarchy, send an army across the border in order to crush a bunch of protests like they're going to comply with the US and they're going to keep doing this stuff to you. And so. Yeah, I was like. I like. Even if you can sue them, they're still gonna cooperate with the US government because. Yeah, they have a great of financial interest in doing so. Yeah, big tech doesn't give a **** about you. Yeah, I think folks, again, as Eve was saying like because saying it was just so like, this is wrote, this is what they do every day. This is not that serious or that deep to them. And I think we need to start asking bigger questions. About why do we have a system where it's so easy for the government to just like, come in and? Have a subpoena signed, like the subpoenas are easy to get, like we have. These mechanisms are all in place. And that's what I was sort of saying earlier. Is that I, I think folks who haven't been paying attention to this, who are all of a sudden like, wow, how is this happening? Oh my goodness. Well, these are the machines of mass incarceration that we have spent a few decades really building up. And so now when the person, the people you're sympathetic with start to get criminalized all of a sudden. We're very shocked and listen, however you got here, great welcome. I'm glad folks are here and saying like wow, this is a problem and I want folks to think the if if the abortion context and the self managed abortion is your entry point. I hope it is not the end point. I hope that you are thinking bigger about. How did all these systems get here? Who do they serve and and? And I hope how do we dismantle them? Because it's it's not just this select few people, group of people that we should care about. I think it's all the people who are who are exposed to this on on the daily. So yeah, that's my soapbox. I always wonder how many judges have refused to sign a search warrant. That's like a big wonder of mine. I I don't. Judges don't hang out with me, obviously for a lot of obvious reasons. But if I were to like, just whisper in my ear real quick. How many times have you ever said no to a police officer that comes to ask to swear a warrant in front of you have. How many times have you found there is no probable cause, dude? Like like this sketch. This is weird. To be fair, there, there, there, there are, there have there, there have to be a certain number of times where they're trying to go after another judge or they're trying to go after Bill Clinton or something, other judges. Why? I don't know. It's it's got to have happened once. Like there has to have been one time where a cop was like this judge ****** me off, I'm going to go rate his car or something. Never, never that I can like that I can think about never happening. But I just wonder how many times has somebody said we are going to go search? Drugs and XYZ House in this specific neighborhood that are caught that a judge that says, huh, you don't have enough here, try again. It doesn't happen. Yeah, at least told in federal court maybe, maybe. You know, they turned down one out of 25. But in state court my experience is. It it's it's it's again, it's routine. It's just how things go. I mean one of the one of the things I came across when I was, you know, it's not dealing with particularly judges issuing warrants, but one of the things I did when when I was looking into the payment app issue this past spring is, you know, I talked to a former prosecutor and was like, you know, what is it like to get documents from or or data from like Facebook and and you know, Instagram or Meta whatnot or like Twitter or any of these other places. And they were just like oh, we just sent a request like, we don't even like, it's basically an administrative subpoena. And they just like hand over everything, like it's basically just like, so routine oftentimes, especially if it's coming from a district attorney's office or law enforcement, like oftentimes these companies just like. Casually hand over stuff all the time, especially when it's like dealing with low level drug stuff or any kind of like issues like that. You know, they they like to say, oh, we're we're big on on civil rights and and stuff like that and and making sure your data is protected. But in reality, like there's so many requests around this stuff and it's just, you know, the only time they ever maybe make a stand is when a case is higher profile and it may damage their brand, right? And that's the only time they actually ever care. On the defense attorney side, it's hard as heck to get your client's records for things. Yeah, like, so hard, so, so hard. You're looking for information on a Facebook for somebody that's incarcerated that might get them out of jail and they don't remember their password. You don't know how to get into their stuff. And it needs to be not a screenshot because that you might not be able to get that authenticated and admissible in court. And it is so hard when you're working on the other side and not in law enforcement to get data and information, but on the flip side, when it comes to. Like people's medical information, which comes into play in a lot of these cases because we're at this intersection of bodily autonomy and health and the criminal legal system. I we've certainly seen in cases where folks are having a medical emergency and cops are able to just go and do a bedside interview with somebody that's coming out of surgery, still drugged up, right. They're able to just go up to a charge nurse. Mean like, so how's he doing? And they're getting information. That's wild, because I have had requests for my client's medical records with signed HIPAA authorizations returned because I signed with blue ink instead of black ink. It's not wrote it. It's not wrote when, it's not coming from law enforcement sometimes. And that's kind of the wild thing. There's this assumption that folks in law enforcement have a right to all information at all times, forever, and that's where things get rubber stamped, and that's the stuff that we're not really looking at that. Large impact on how people access their rights. I was just as we were talking about like Facebook, knowing everything about you and loving the cops. I I was like reminded of Funko's Panopticon and like this idea that you'll start to internalize discipline because you never know when you're being watched, right. And so I wondered if obviously like when fugo talks about it, the idea is that you will do you act like you think the state is watching because the state could always be watching. Therefore you have to act like it is watching and like it's it we're not there yet. Right, like they're totally there. Have you not heard the FBI in your phone joke? The FBI on my computer, like, I hope he likes my makeup today. We're totally there. Like we. I think there's an assumption that we're all being watched, but I don't know if sometimes I wish our clients. Thought they were being watched more because sometimes people put too much on Facebook. We all do. Well, yeah, you're right. Let me not keep myself from that because I am very much included. But yeah, so like, that's what I wanted to ask, right? Like, how do we not? And we, you know, we don't want people to listen to us and do crimes, but like how should people act in their interactions? Like in in a way that is like I guess. Uh, I don't know. That makes them less vulnerable to like these very obvious OPSEC fails. I guess I have some resources so perfect if one how we have this thing called the repro legal helpline. It's repro legal helpline.org. It's also a warm line with the phone number that people can call and ask questions like what are my rights when it comes to my abortion? Myself managed abortion. And on that website we have digital tips about how do you protect yourself and sanitize your digital space. Just for safety as a whole. Not to hide information from everyone, but how do you move and prevent and minimize your risk? What does harm reduction look like to you? We also have the repro Legal Defense Fund and that exists for folks when they are actually being criminalized to pay for things like bail, help out with attorneys fees, help out with expert fees. So there are folks that are working on this stuff that exists as resources and there are resources out there, but I would tell folks to really think about who are you telling your business. You when you share information, is that information that's necessary for treatment that you're being asked? Just because we're used to being in spaces where there is a power imbalance about sharing all of the information that's asked of us. And I think when it comes to spaces and times where we're more vulnerable to state actors causing harm to us, being mindful about what questions are you being asked? And is that question necessary for you to be able to receive care or services XYZ? And it sucks. You have to put. Work on the back of folks that are already being oppressed by systems. It's absolute trash and I fully recognize that's it's it's messed up. But when we're thinking, when we're thinking about what does harm reduction look like, I think that's one of those things that we have to keep in mind. And harm reduction also looks like folks knowing generally what the law is and being able to advocate for themselves in those spaces. I'll just add from my side from like kind of just, you know from from a cyber perspective, it's. You know, just in general ways. Like there's nothing that's gonna be bulletproof or a silver bullet in terms of always protecting your privacy, but like the quicker ways that you can kind of at least make yourself generally safer. Use apps like signal for for chatting. Also use like auto delete features. You know, don't don't keep like years worth of text messages and stuff like that additionally. You know, don't use biometrics because you don't have a Fifth Amendment right for yourself as crimination for for biometrics, right. So, so long, long reason why that is in the courts. Use a password. Don't use a short pin. Use a password. I know it's annoying. I know it's like, you know, a fingerprint or face unlock is like much more convenient. But you know, if you are at high risk or you worry about this stuff and you're concerned about your privacy, like use those things because they can't compel you to to to do that generally. You know the other things is the Yuki app EUKI. Which is a sexual health app that has a lot of information about, you know, reproductive issues. It also has like a menstrual tracker, but it's all encrypted client side. They get no data and it has it prompts you for a password and pin to open it and it also has resources for self managed abortion and and how to safely handle those. And yeah, you know, just generally you know, anything you put out there on social media also like be careful like what you put out there, like state to end an end to end encryption, use VPNs if you can. You know these are just kind of like general stuff, like nothing is again ever going to be foolproof, but there are some small steps you can take to at least. Increase some of your protections. And on my end, you know you have a right to remain silent. You should use it. And thanks to the Supreme Court, you have to say I want to be silent. In order to invoke your right to be silent, you cannot just be silent. So you I would advise people to say I want to be silent and I want a lawyer. Those are the magic words. I also want to hold that. Being. Captured by police officers is a violent experience and a scary experience. And sometimes asserting your rights can provoke more violence. And so people do what they need to do to stay safe in that moment from all the law perspective, saying I would, I want to be silent and I want a lawyer. Are the things that invoke all of your constitutional protections. And. The police may lie about whether or not you said that later. So, you know, say it as many times as you need to. But those are really the only things you should say. Which is a lot easier said than done, but that that is the the thing that folks should do if they do find themselves in the custody of law enforcement, and also if you're on the street. Ask if you're free to go, and if you're free to go, please walk. Do not run away. There's also a case about that. Ah, God hate the cops. Well, thank you all so much for joining us on this. This has been really great. And yeah, don't talk to cops. Would you like to plug anything before we? Leave with don't talk to cops. Yeah, I can just throw my personal side. You can follow me on all socials on Twitter and Instagram at Esquire, underscores like Portman, 2 of Esquire and Queer as Esqu, ER, under score. And also I have a podcast called querying the law or talk about a lot of these issues as well, so if you want to give that a listen. Don't follow me on social media cause all of my stuff is closed. But I would recommend that folks follow at if one how on all socials because we're always providing up-to-date information on what's actually going on with criminalization of self managed abortion and resources from you know, community partners that are on the ground local that are doing the work. So if folks are looking to get connected, I would say reach out to F1 hour and we can usually point you in the right direction. You could follow me on Twitter, but I don't really remember what my handle is. So what I would suggest that you do pretrial detention and bail litigation is really my heart. You got folks locked up and they haven't even been found guilty. Not that anyone should be locked up, so donate to your local bail fund if you don't know who that is. There's a lot of orgs. National bailout, the bail project, there's a lot of places you can find that. But growing 51015 dollars at your local bail fund will get someone free because you can purchase your freedom here in 2022 America. So do that. Yeah. Thank you so much that this has been taken. Happened here. You can find us in places I don't talk to cops. And yeah, if there weren't any cops, you couldn't make things illegal. 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 and cool Zone Media, visit our website coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts you can find sources for. It could happen here, updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com/sources. Thanks for listening, sisters of the Underground is a podcast about fearless Dominican women who stood up against the. Dictator? He needs to be stopped. We've been silent and complacent for far too long. 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