It Could Happen Here Weekly 177

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Media.

Speaker 2 (00:03):
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.

Speaker 3 (00:27):
Welcome to It could happen here, It is continuing to
happen stonks, but we will discuss the stonks probably late
later this week. This episode's going to be much more
fun because I am I am pleased to have returning
to the show Elle Yeerman, writer, comedian, end creator and
host of Going Down with Elle Yeerman, a trends political

(00:47):
comedy news show. As well as joining us here is
teen Vogue's news and politics editor Lex mcminnimon. Welcome both
of you. Hi, Hi, Thanks, So we're going to be
talking about the recent Teen Vogue special issue cover story
on Vivian Wilson, the estranged daughter of Elon musk Ella.

(01:08):
You put together a fantastic piece last month, and this
is what we're gonna discuss how this article came together.
That viral photo shoot in Japan, which is fantastic. All
the styling in that shoot was lovely. But I think this,
this particular piece was really relevant for like trans people,

(01:29):
and also relevant because of the way like global politics
has been shaken up by a few specific people, and
focusing in on Vivian I think was really special. So
I guess I would first like to hear about, like, yeah,
like the broad strokes of how this first came together.

Speaker 4 (01:47):
From our perspective.

Speaker 5 (01:49):
You know, I don't know that like everyone is aware
of this, and certainly I don't know that all of
my friends in our various trans subcultures know this. But
at Team Vague, we've been covering like transpolitics and trans
writes for a long time, like far before I got here,
But I've been here for almost four years, and it's
been a pretty big part of my beat, in part
because of it being like a very unavoidable thing within

(02:10):
following like US state legislatures and then obviously like at
the federal level, which has only intensified more and more
in the last year. And so that's like one aspect
of it. But at the same time, we love young
people that shit post, and so Vivian had been on
our radar for a while totally. I also think people
are maybe more aware of this whole, like Comrade teen
Vogue vibe of like, we're really interested in talking to

(02:33):
people that have a clear political leaning, that have like
a sense of how they see themselves in the world
in a political context, and Vivian sort of came right
out the gate as someone who was really eager to
share her thoughts on these things. So from last summer,
like within like a month of when Vivian was kind
of introduced to the world through her father talking about

(02:55):
her on Jordan Peterson's podcast, we were trying to get
in touch with her and with something I was talking
a lot about within the office, and we didn't really
know what to do because she was just kind of
she just kind of emerged from from nowhere onto the Internet.
And so I had been talking about it a lot,
including with Ella because we talk a lot. And so
Ella find eventually revealed like, oh that's Umphy, I am.

Speaker 1 (03:18):
Utuls with Indian, not Umfi.

Speaker 4 (03:21):
You you did kind of I mean, are you.

Speaker 3 (03:23):
Threads Umfi's what what are you? Instagram Instagram nice.

Speaker 1 (03:28):
I would never use threads.

Speaker 4 (03:29):
My god, so over to you.

Speaker 5 (03:31):
That's my that's my teen Vogue intro. But Ella, if
you want to yeah, no.

Speaker 3 (03:35):
Because yeah, I am interested in contacting Vivian because she
was certainly getting like an unhinged number of media requests
starting last summer.

Speaker 6 (03:43):
Yeah, that's that's true, right, So she did that one
NBC interview after after Elon went on, Peterson and I
do not work at teen Vogue, but Lex and I
know each other because you're contractually obligated to know everyone
else who's part of the you know, deep State illuminati
doing trans Politics online club.

Speaker 1 (04:02):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (04:02):
I was just gonna say trans people Club then deep State.

Speaker 1 (04:05):
Yeah, the council exactly. We're all established members, right, we
swear allegiance once a year. There's a whole ritual. Don't
worry about it.

Speaker 6 (04:14):
So when I got in touch with Vivian last fall,
which I got in touch with her initially to see
if she would come on Going Down, and I reached
out to her and I said, do you want to
come on my live comedy show? And she said no,
I'm actually not sure live comedy is for me. I'm
a little worried. I'm not funny enough. And since then
she has changed her mind. She's told me repeatedly that

(04:35):
she regrets saying that to me, that she has decided
she actually is funnier than everyone else alive, all of
the things that a prolific twenty year old poster might say.

Speaker 3 (04:47):
Absolutely.

Speaker 6 (04:48):
But so I got in touch with her and then
she said no, and I was like, okay, well, at
least I have this mutual now. And then a few
months later I mentioned Alex that I gotten in touch
with her, and Lex said, okay, so she doesn't want
to do a live comedy show that nobody that nobody knows.

Speaker 4 (05:05):
About does not want to do a live comedy show.

Speaker 6 (05:08):
What if instead we did a really fancy photo shoot
and put her in teen Vogue, a legacy journalism magazine.
And I said, honestly, I think that's a better sales pitch,
and it was.

Speaker 3 (05:19):
Yeah, no, it is. It is really compelling. I mean
that the photo shoot pulls a whole bunch of people in.
It's certainly if I was in Vivian's position, that would
be interesting to me. And it does help spread around,
like like so much of the piece is talking about,
like the struggles of living as a young trans person
in America, and the fact that you can use a
teen Vogue photo shoot to like spread writing about that

(05:42):
around the internet is like super super useful.

Speaker 6 (05:44):
Yeah, I mean I just want to like second what
lexis to say, I think the work teen Vogue has
been doing is really important. Like so many I mean Garrison,
you know, like so much trans media is like independently
distributed and like dy and I love us for that,
but it is always really heartening to see like mainstream
media institutions uplift trans voices the way teen Vogue has

(06:06):
been doing.

Speaker 5 (06:06):
And it's also like Conde Nast as an institution, which
is like teen Vogue's parent company is only one of
multiple media conglomerates that will very proudly like use trans
people in a representative way, like and like sell magazine
covers with trans people on it. Like you could think
of Hunter Shaffer, for example, she'd been on the cover
of several vogues, but at the same time, Hunter Shaffer
also received a misgendering passport after the Trump admins. So like,

(06:30):
I think that if legacy media is unwilling to connect
the dots between like profiting off of like the aesthetics
of trans people, but not actually like talking about the
political underpinnings of like why trans people are even able
to be visible at this time and like what the
you know trapdoors Termaligne calls it of trans visibility means
then it's like why even do this work in the
first place. So Vivian was like a really great opportunity

(06:52):
for us to like build on, Like we've done several photoshoots,
particularly with trans women because I trans girls at teen Vogue,
because we like feel very strong. Only a Allen makes
this point in the piece that like the way that
transfem people are like objectified and commodified, and also like
the target of such extreme bittrial is something it feels
really important to take a stand against. It just felt

(07:13):
like doing this with Vivian, who's so high profile but
also hadn't had the opportunity yet to take control of
her own narrative in the public eye, and with this
being her second ever interview for a sever photo shoot,
like it just felt like a really big opportunity that was.

Speaker 4 (07:25):
Worth using as a big swing, you know.

Speaker 3 (07:28):
No, like she is at like this center of this
like matrix of trans commodification in so many ways like
like this this special issue was the first time Vivian
was really like framed as the subject matter of like
any piece and like framed as her own person. For
the entirety of her adult life, she's been used as
this rhetorical object, like both by her dad, but as

(07:50):
well as like by people on the left who's like
objectified Vivian to use her as a bludgeon against her father.
And Yeah, like people are very willing to like commodify
or or use trans people in certain ways, but to
have like trans people writing about other trans people in
a way that frames them as a subject matter is
so important.

Speaker 1 (08:10):
Yeah, I mean, I think Vivian.

Speaker 6 (08:12):
One of the things that drew me to the story
in the first place is that Vivian's sort of case
is such an interesting microcosm of the transform experience as
a whole. Yeah, She's incredibly talked about for something that
is not her fault and not under her control at all,
in the same way that right now on the national stage,
like transfemininity and transit is at large, but specifically transfemininity

(08:32):
is the like problem to be spoken about, especially conservatives,
like Butler calls it a phantasm like gender nonsense.

Speaker 1 (08:42):
I read that book.

Speaker 4 (08:45):
You have my copy.

Speaker 1 (08:46):
I think I'm almost certain I do that.

Speaker 3 (08:49):
That makes sense.

Speaker 6 (08:50):
Yeah, that makes almost certainly. That's the trouble with gender, right,
gender trouble. Yeah, no, no, that's the original book.

Speaker 4 (08:56):
It's she was afraid of gender. Thank you very much.

Speaker 6 (09:00):
I have your book, but I haven't looked at it
in a long time except for to remember the word phantasm.
And so, yeah, I totally agree with what Lex said
of it's really exciting to sort of like take her
out of being used as a prop and give her
own voice back. I think one of the most exciting
moments in the piece to me is the moment where
I ask her about sort of the allegations that Elan

(09:22):
like shifted right word because of her, and she pushes
back against sort of that narrative very strongly. And I
think that is the way we've seen her being used
both on the left and the right as sort of
a this is why he's doing this. It's clearly the
fact that he has this twenty year old trans girl,
and she's like, actually, that's a crazy thing to say
about it about a twenty year old well.

Speaker 3 (09:43):
And especially to counter the narrative of her life. That's
been driven by Walter Isaacson's twenty twenty three biography, which
is like so hostile and to have like a prominent,
like a prominent biography like that, like trying to make
a narrative out of out of your existence with something
you have like no like input in no control, and
it's like so demeaning. It's also like a very like

(10:06):
you know, trans misogyny moment as well, Like, yeah, it
is interesting how how much of like Vivian is so relatable,
Like like a lot of trans people have, shall I say,
challenging relationships with their parents, maybe not to this extreme,
but but sometimes frankly right, like there's a lot of
people are forced to cut off contact with their family.

Speaker 1 (10:28):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (10:28):
No, I've just been thinking a lot about this because
you know, Trump released yet another executive order. I think
that this one was today basically trying to codify allowing
trans youth to access gender affirming care as abuse quote unquote,
which is like something that the Republican Party has been
flagging for months that they were going to do at
the federal level as well. It has already shown up
in the rhetoric around transit healthcare, which obviously is going

(10:50):
to be used as justification for targeting trans adults access
to health care and something that you know, I'm the
only transperson on my team. Something that kept coming up
in Vivian's story was that it was almost like anyone
could relate to this, because anyone can relate to having
like a shitty parent, an abusive parent, like a bad dad, whatever.
And so I think there's an extent to which this

(11:11):
story has like a lot of value in like forcing
CIS people to really be confronted with the fact that
like how trans youth are treated like objectively is like abusive.
And it's not the access to healthcare that is the abuse.
It's like the way that they're dismissed. It's the way
they're belittled, It's the way they can't even be like
trusting their own parents to be looking out for them,
and to the extent that they have to push themselves

(11:31):
out into the world to clarify that point. So like
that's one aspect of it. I totally agree with what
you were both saying that it is like a microcosm
of the trans experience. But I do think there's like
this other valance for like allowing her to like control
how this is being perceived or received sort of by
CIS media and like sis like the CIS political spirit,

(11:51):
which is like how trans people are just getting shoved
into that over and over and over again with very
little context. Felt like a really valuable thing to be
able to do give and how like, frankly, so much
of my coverage right now just feels like it's like
trying to raise attention to the fact that, like, these
are kids, these are young people, Like everyone should be
able to relate to a young person saying like I
have a bad parent and that sucks and is a

(12:13):
formative thing for me, Like that is something that like
other children are afforded the ability to do, and like
we just don't let trans kids like have that as
something that's part of their truth when it's such a
key part of like growing up trans in a hostile household.

Speaker 3 (12:36):
And something like Vivian talked about at length, is like,
as someone who did transition as a minor, there's all
this like villainization around, whether that's whether that's puberty suppressing hormones,
whether that's having HRT, and how like the landscape that
like me, like her Ella and like a lot of
people that our age like came out of is not

(12:57):
going to exist for the next generation of like trans kids,
or at least it's going to be very different, and
we need to do everything we can to stop it
from being as bad as what it looks like it's
going to be. And Vivian like talked about this at
length of the piece, with the restriction of puberty blockers,
all this stuff in schools and this complete demonization of
not just the healthcare but also like the people they

(13:20):
like trans kids as this own demon of America that's
that's like invading or is like threatening. So I think
it is really cool a Vivian do talk about that
at length in this special teen Vogue Cool photo Shoot article.

Speaker 6 (13:35):
I will say, I think, yeah, I think it's so
important that that's talked about, and I'm glad she did.
I'm also really glad as someone who covers like trans
politics and news all the time, it was such a
breath of fresh air to be able to frame this
piece as like a look into what like the joy
of transition looks like and looking at like yea, how
transition has brought her closer to the life she wants

(13:58):
to be living. And I'm not that old, but like
talking to someone who's a few years younger than me
and who transitioned at an earlier stage in life gave
me like such a beautiful vision of what the future
could look like if we if we fix some of
the bullshit that's going on these days. All Right, I'm
being clowned on in the chat. I'm not that much
older than Vivian, is what I meant. And now I'm

(14:19):
peaking my microphone and the podcast is going to sound terrible.
Look what you said. I'm not that much older than Vivian,
but she started transitioning at a much younger stage of
life than me, and to see like what that has
done for her, and like the way, I don't know,
it was just really beautiful to talk to like a
twenty year old girl and be like, oh, you're like
trans but it's like it's like not actually that big

(14:42):
of a deal, and it.

Speaker 5 (14:43):
Like it also like confirms a thing that like, I mean,
I made a joke about this earlier with like we
love young people that ship post, but like I think
so much of liberal and right wing talking points about
like young people in general like sees them as so
humorless like they are like cancel culture, like are nonsense,
whereas Vivian is so funny, Like we actually struggled to
cut jokes out of the piece, like Ellen and Ellen

(15:04):
could tell you we went back and forth for hours
about so many jokes that did not and just one
liner is like she's so quickie and so like so funny.
She's extremely funny.

Speaker 3 (15:13):
A very dense style of humor, as in like there's
a lot of there's a lot packed in like almost
every other sentence.

Speaker 6 (15:19):
Alex and I are both some of the fastest talking
people I know, and I would put Vivian in that
same group of people who can keep up with us
or out talk me.

Speaker 7 (15:26):
Uh huh.

Speaker 3 (15:27):
That comes across in the writing too, like the way
that the interview is transcribed, you can you can read
that pace into the piece.

Speaker 1 (15:36):
She's awesome.

Speaker 6 (15:37):
So much of our editing was just like sort of
taking out yeah, like little jokes or like she's twenty
so she is swearing all the time, or dude.

Speaker 5 (15:46):
The amount of cursing I much love. But also that
was the editing process for this was much less like
stress and we're just like how many.

Speaker 4 (15:54):
F bombs are we keeping today? Hearthand emojis.

Speaker 6 (15:58):
The way Edits goes is you send in a piece
and the editors give you like change some stuff, and
then I get to look at a new draft and
I get be like, hey, uh, why do you change that?
And then we go back and forth over and over
again until eventually it's not up to me anymore. But
at one point I did have to I did have
to say, actually, femboy is one word correct. It's different
from feme space boy and space something specific.

Speaker 1 (16:19):
And I felt really like I was bringing.

Speaker 5 (16:21):
I'd like to clarify I was not involved in the
grammatical edit of that.

Speaker 4 (16:25):
There were multiple editors who was hands.

Speaker 3 (16:27):
Ut as a subject matter expert.

Speaker 4 (16:29):
What can I say?

Speaker 6 (16:30):
And then excuse me? Kande nasked, theemboy means something.

Speaker 8 (16:35):
No.

Speaker 3 (16:35):
I am so happy that you have someone like Vivian
who's able to appreciate drag way more than what I'm
ever like able to even though I can like appreciate
it like on like a conceptual level. Having this like
complete sincere like engrossment in it is so is so
thrilling because a significant portion of this piece is talking
about how much Vivian loves trag.

Speaker 1 (16:57):
Oh my God and he.

Speaker 5 (17:00):
Much Ellen knows nothing about drag also, so that was
like a really good combo for all of us.

Speaker 7 (17:05):
That was I. I. Yeah.

Speaker 6 (17:07):
I sat down with her and we started talking very
very quickly. She brought up RuPaul's drag Race, and I
would just like she kept calling it RPDR, which I'm pretty.

Speaker 1 (17:15):
Sure I've I've told you even get into this my.

Speaker 6 (17:17):
Sources, Garrison, is that something you call drag race? Have
you heard RPDR? Said out loud, I've never heard this.

Speaker 4 (17:23):
No, Okay, okay, whatever. What I'm want.

Speaker 5 (17:25):
What I'm here to say is as someone who actually
watches drag Race, Ella, that is actually not that uncommon
to refer to it that way.

Speaker 4 (17:32):
But you know, we had.

Speaker 5 (17:33):
Two different roles as the two trans people whose brains
were wiped by the story. Ella's job was to actually
write the Peace of Mind was to interface with Viviana.

Speaker 1 (17:43):
About drag Race.

Speaker 5 (17:44):
So clearly it all came together the way it was
supposed to do.

Speaker 6 (17:47):
I get at the very end of our first call,
I said, you, is there anything else you want to say?
And she talked to me for another fifteen minutes about
about drag Race, specifically classic rules.

Speaker 1 (17:56):
Classic rules yeah.

Speaker 6 (17:58):
Like I know, I'm I like sort of about your
dad or about like any of the important things. We
talked about this as you're like, no, so in season
fifteen of Drag Race that rules.

Speaker 1 (18:09):
That's so cool, she's the best.

Speaker 3 (18:13):
But no, I it's it's so funny that you you
talk about how like there's this there's this caricature of
like humorless trans people, which is very funny because like
all of like the biggest shit posters online right now
are mostly trans women. The trans comedy scene is huge,
and like this is something that Ivian talks about, like

(18:33):
spending the COVID lockdown and like online queer communities and
how how like the the like drama and like conflict
in those spaces trains you for how to be like
relief like funny and snappy. How fighting with with like
like fellow queer teenagers like like prepared you for for that,
which has like certainly been like my experience.

Speaker 6 (18:54):
I mean there's a reason you can sort of tell,
and I'm sure this applies to beyond trans people, but
you can sort of how which social media you grew
up on, like were if you were a totally tumbler
teen or a Reddit teen or a four chanteen you
can tell because of your style of fighting and making
jokes changes because it's it's it's such a deeply.

Speaker 1 (19:12):
Formative part of it.

Speaker 6 (19:13):
And I I don't know what online forums the right
were on growing up, but they were the wrong ones.

Speaker 3 (19:21):
Well a lot of four chan as well.

Speaker 1 (19:24):
Sure, just the not funny parts not funny.

Speaker 7 (19:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (19:28):
No, I'm still trying to untrain my like defensive way
of writing that I learned on Twitter, because it's a
horrible style.

Speaker 6 (19:34):
Where right you have to like have like twelve prefaces exactly. Yeah, yeah,
your article one. I am not a racist.

Speaker 3 (19:42):
Waffle pancaking the entire time, which is it's weird because
like it's like Twitter does have its own style of
humor which I also like also like picked up on,
but it also has that defensive style of writing which
which needs to get untrained. But it is, you know,
a work, a work in progress.

Speaker 6 (19:56):
I think it's downstream of Tumblr. I I read to
remain wrong on my stance that the Tumblr porn band
ruined the Internet.

Speaker 3 (20:03):
No, absolutely absolutely, I guess I'd like to talk a
little bit more about like the structure of the piece
and how it succeeded so much in putting Vivian as
a subject right because the first half is written in

(20:26):
more of like a traditional like article format to give
context and frame Vivian as like a person. But then
halfway through it switches to like a back and forth interview,
which allows Vivian to just speak for herself. And I
think having both of those and not just one or
the other strengthens the piece entirely, and strengthens like being
able to see Vivian as a complete person because like,

(20:47):
as I'm as, I'm getting the context like for her
life and the political situation in the first half. Then
I get to see how much she reminds me of
like regular twenty something trans girls, and you know, like
half of the friends I have. Though I do disagree
on team Peta. Pete's a bitch boy. It's team Gale
all the way.

Speaker 1 (21:07):
Thank you contrary.

Speaker 3 (21:09):
All right, all right, all right, I've excited that we
we agree on this, But those those sorts of like
offhand comments and likes, there's other things that like give
you like a you know, a view into into this person.
It's so useful to have, like, you know, like at
least fIF fifty percent of the piece be this like
just straight interview.

Speaker 5 (21:29):
We unsurprisingly talked a lot about how we were going
to structure this piece and partially landed on Q and
A format for like we knew this was going to
be a behemoth, like no matter how we tackled it,
given the subject matter, and then ultimately how long the
transcript was, and you know, just like it. There were
many aspects of this that like we were like, okay,

(21:52):
how do we how do we do this in a
way that's going to read well to people, because something
we also think about a lot is like accessibility, Like
young people famously hate reading. Now we but we wanted
this to actually be something that like a young person
could sit down, dash through, still get some like you know,
historical political context out of and still come away being
like haha, team PETA, team Gail or whatever the hell

(22:12):
right and so.

Speaker 3 (22:13):
And maybe have like subway surfers on like another phone
at the same time.

Speaker 5 (22:16):
Exactly, yes, exactly exactly, And then I would say the
I want ella to talk about the transcript and like
interview stuff, but like the intro I think is probably
where I spent the most of my time editing this piece,
and like adding stuff and a lot of adding stuff.
It ballooned like we wanted this to be lauch shorter

(22:37):
than it was, and then it just kept feeling like
there were more pieces to really tie it together. But
I would say, like the reason that was the case
is because it was a really hard line to walk
to acknowledge that, like people would be clicking on this
in part because of Elon, but that we wanted to
like trick them into coming for Elon but staying for
Vivie and.

Speaker 3 (22:55):
Yeah, like it's it's not about Elon, nor like should
it be.

Speaker 5 (22:58):
Yeah, right, and so so like like Ellen and I
had a zoom with Vivian and what November was the
first one or was that?

Speaker 9 (23:05):
I think?

Speaker 5 (23:05):
So yeah, November December to just like so she could
kind of get our vibe and just kind of suss
out if she was willing to consider this at all.
And one of the earliest things she said was like,
I don't really want to talk about him. I don't
want this to be about him, And we were really
down for that, like we don't think that her story
is about him. Ultimately, it felt really important, and it
was also challenging to make sure that we felt like

(23:28):
people were coming away with it from this without like
a garbled interpretation of what the stakes were for her
to be coming forward like we wanted it to be,
especially right now while so much of mainstream media is
really fumbling their coverage of like politics at this moment,
it felt really important to be like.

Speaker 3 (23:45):
Super trans politics, especially.

Speaker 5 (23:47):
Especially and then also just like all of it. So
like all of it and then especially trans politics.

Speaker 4 (23:52):
We just really wanted the intro to be.

Speaker 5 (23:54):
Like as strong and also like informative and also like
kind of funny and also like just all the things
because and I would say that probably took the most time.

Speaker 6 (24:03):
Correct me if I'm wrong, but yeah, I mean I
think the intro started off as probably an eighth of
the piece, and yeah, now is closer to a half
of the piece.

Speaker 1 (24:13):
And there were so many hands on it. I wrote like.

Speaker 6 (24:15):
Sort of a very loose like skeleton of what that
intro ended up being.

Speaker 5 (24:21):
And I would say the most like it wasn't that
many people adding text.

Speaker 1 (24:25):
It was mostly means, it was mostly legs.

Speaker 6 (24:27):
But part of that is because I mean everything like said,
but also that Musk is currently a high level government
official and is in the news all the time. I mean,
when we started writing, the intro said that Musk had
thirteen children, and then we had to update that twice.

Speaker 3 (24:44):
New kid just dropped.

Speaker 9 (24:45):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (24:45):
Over the edit.

Speaker 6 (24:46):
Process, things wouldn't stop happening, and then also Vivian wouldn't
stop posting, which was a little bit frustrating.

Speaker 1 (24:53):
At one point I.

Speaker 6 (24:54):
Had to DM or I said, Hey, if you get
any more information, can you please just tell me and
not post it on threads And she said, oh, totally.

Speaker 4 (25:07):
That girl as a poster post hard hard for sure, But.

Speaker 6 (25:10):
Yeah, I mean, I think I really love the balance
the piece found it in the end. Early on, when
we were talking about structure, I think I pushed for
more of a standard profile, mostly because you know, then
I get to show off my writing skills more and
I liked to write. But after talking to Vivian, even
after our early pre interview, but certainly after the full
interview where I sat with her for a very long
time over zoom in a fourteen hour time difference, I

(25:33):
immediate it was like, no, if I write this out,
it's going to be mostly dialogue anyway, because her voice
she has, she's so voicy, and it's so fun to
keep it in that voice.

Speaker 3 (25:43):
She's a very very distinctive voice.

Speaker 5 (25:45):
Yeah yeah, and so do you, Ella, and so like
it's like that's really the strength of the piece in
so many ways, is that like people come away with it.
It doesn't feel like you're in the background or like
hiding behind something when you're writing this piece, Like it
very much feels like the success of it is because you.

Speaker 1 (25:59):
Are a part of it.

Speaker 5 (26:00):
And The New York Times reported that this was Ella's
first che lance article. So I just wanted to add that,
you know, Ella kinda did her did her big one
with her first article.

Speaker 6 (26:11):
Thanks all, this is now everything that big one. The
next fifteen years will be underwhelming.

Speaker 3 (26:16):
It's all downstream from here.

Speaker 6 (26:18):
Woo, it's not true. Baron Trump, I'm coming for you.

Speaker 3 (26:22):
You're gonna re enroll at NYU exactly.

Speaker 1 (26:26):
They'll never see me coming.

Speaker 3 (26:28):
I am waiting for him to get fixed by like
a bisexual she They it's gotta happen, right, No, I
don't think so.

Speaker 6 (26:35):
I don't know Obama was like into a bisexual she
they And he's still yeah, bombed the Middle East or whatever.

Speaker 3 (26:42):
But no, like like mainstream coverage is just completely failure
and trans people right now. I got so mad at
a Washington Post article yesterday that I that I skeedd
about it something I never do.

Speaker 4 (26:52):
Was it the sports one yes, role playing.

Speaker 3 (26:55):
After President Donald Trump band transgender our girls from competing
in girls' sports, Virginia high schooler joins the boys team.
She wasn't going to let the president's executive order stop her.
Framed is like a feel good story, fucking infuriating.

Speaker 5 (27:09):
And it's so like transparent like and I again, I
feel like I keep.

Speaker 4 (27:13):
Bringing the system into the space. I'm really sorry.

Speaker 5 (27:15):
One of my like CIS colleagues was like, this is disgusting.
Why did they write this like a feel good story?
And it's like, my thing is is if, like, if
anyone with some amount of criticals thinking skills can see
exactly through what you're doing, why even do it? Like
it's so transparent like the way that that story was written,
because it gets clicked. I mean, I guess we you
know what got clicks was Vivian So I actually don't

(27:36):
know about.

Speaker 1 (27:37):
That, that's true and say that and say that I
did and I will.

Speaker 3 (27:40):
Do you want to talk about the length of the transcript,
because I am curious how long Vivian talked for.

Speaker 1 (27:45):
Am I am I allowed to say that?

Speaker 6 (27:47):
Yeah, I think I'm legally Yeah, say, can we explain why?

Speaker 5 (27:51):
Uh, when we're not recording, I can explain why.

Speaker 6 (27:53):
Okay, I think I got to say most of what
I want to say. I mean, I think Vivian's just
like a delightful person, and I'm really excited for her
that she gets her moment in the spotlight and that
hopefully this like helps her build herself as a public
figure outside of and away from Elon Musk, And she
has all of these aspirations to perform and model, and
I hope she gets to do Her and a Winter

(28:15):
Drag one day soon.

Speaker 3 (28:18):
I love that movie.

Speaker 1 (28:19):
It's a great movie.

Speaker 3 (28:24):
Hi Anna wind tour Lex, do you want to plug
your little outlet? Was this teen Vogue?

Speaker 10 (28:30):
Oh?

Speaker 5 (28:30):
Yeah, I don't know if anyone's heard. Actually so frequently
people haven't heard of it, So it's actually fine. Yes,
you can find us at teen vague dot com. We
have no paywall, we have a fact checking department. Most
of mainstream media is not doing it like us, if
you consider those two points.

Speaker 3 (28:45):
So yeah, labor politics, especially teen Vogue's been phenomenal the
past like eight years.

Speaker 1 (28:51):
Yep, so true.

Speaker 4 (28:52):
If you love Kim Kelly, she is our labor columnist,
so comes through.

Speaker 5 (28:56):
I also do some of our labor coverage, but like
definitely not to day than Kim does. Yeah, I'm on
the things. I'm on the socials. Yeah, that's it. That's
all I had, Little Ella.

Speaker 3 (29:06):
Where can people find you on the worldwide Web?

Speaker 6 (29:08):
I'm on on Instagram and actually everything app as Ella
Yurman or Ella dot Yerman on Instagram.

Speaker 3 (29:14):
We're gonna get you on Blue Sky one of these days. Sky,
we can fix the vibes. I'm on Blue Sky. I
just forget about how to do it?

Speaker 1 (29:20):
Can we?

Speaker 6 (29:21):
I suffered through twenty twelve tumbler once. I don't need
to do it again.

Speaker 4 (29:26):
That is so not the vibe. I wish it were.
But it's not on Blue Sky.

Speaker 3 (29:29):
No, it's it's more twenty nineteen Twitter.

Speaker 1 (29:32):
Yeah, I agree.

Speaker 6 (29:34):
You can also find my show at Going Down TV
on Instagram, Going Down the Show on YouTube, Going Down
Show on Patreon.

Speaker 7 (29:42):
I don't know.

Speaker 6 (29:43):
I make a transgender daily show. You guys know about it.
New studio looks great, it's so fun. We got to
get you on there. We got to get you to
come hang out.

Speaker 3 (29:49):
Okay, well I will. I will be in town shortly
so hell yeah.

Speaker 9 (29:53):
Oh fun.

Speaker 4 (29:54):
I go to the taping so I can crash.

Speaker 1 (29:56):
That'll be fun. You should do it? Hell yeah?

Speaker 4 (29:59):
Are we did we do it?

Speaker 6 (30:00):
Yeah?

Speaker 10 (30:01):
We're done.

Speaker 2 (30:22):
Hello everybody. It could happen here or here. And this
is Robert Evans. We're a show about things falling apart,
and boy howdy, they sure seem to be doing just that,
as they always are and have been four years.

Speaker 11 (30:36):
You know.

Speaker 2 (30:37):
In fact, anticipation of the end times I think is
probably close to the number one hobby in the United
States at this point. I suspect if you counted up
the dollar value of all the collapse themed movies, books,
prepping gear, monetize social media content, and of course religious
sects in the country, the apocalypse would be one of
our big industries. Doomsday prepping alone was an almost one

(30:59):
point two billion dollar business last year, and it's expected
to more than double by twenty thirty. Our popular fiction
can't even imagine a better future right now. Ninety percent
of modern future media takes place during or shortly after
an apocalypse. The odd exception today like Bong Juno's recent
Mickey seventeen is so rooted in trump'st politics that we

(31:21):
only catch occasional glimpses of anything beyond it. In other words,
in our fiction, there's no respite from the news. We
watch a slow motion, self inflicted global economic collapse and
then relax with shows about mushroom zombies or literal wage
slaves created by mind control surgery. In other words, it's
bleak out there. Tomorrow could be the day Trump invokes

(31:42):
the Insurrection Act or uses the military to occupy Greenland,
or like one of a dozen equivalent horrors. We all
just know our coming in some form or another, even
if no one can say win. And I'm not here
today to tell you how we're gonna get past all
of that or fix it, because I don't know. So
today I'm just here as a merchant of hope. My

(32:03):
job is to convince you that our species will someday
get past our bullshit and perhaps even lay claim to
the stars. And no Elon Musk isn't going to have
anything to do with that. But in order to convince
you of all this, I'm going to have to talk
about a movie. It's called Roar, and it is technically
a nineteen eighty one comedy adventure film about an American naturalist.

(32:27):
This guy lives on a nature preserve in Tanzania filled
with big cats. His family comes to visit at the
same time as a grant committee shows up to evaluate
his project, which has an unclear goal. He's apparently just
trying to prove people and giant cats from all over
the world can live together, which the movie shows they can't.
It's really immaterial what happens in the plot. All I

(32:48):
can tell you is how Wikipedia describes it. I've watched
this movie dozens of times, and I have very little
idea what it's supposed to be about. This is because
in any given scene, the script is only ever a
vague suggestion, as each scene starts with actors trying to
read lines and evolves into those same actors trying to
survive while being mauled by dozens of lions, tigers, and panthers.

(33:10):
I should probably step back a minute to explain some things.
Roar is largely the brainchild of Tippy Hedron and her
husband Noel Marshall. If you're on the younger side, Tippy
Hedron was the female lead in a little movie called
The Birds It is a horror film and also an
early apocalypse flick by Alfred Hitchcock. It's often credited with
inventing modern horror cinema. Hitchcock himself sexually and psychologically harassed Hedron,

(33:35):
but his worst actions came during a crucial scene where
Hedron was attacked by a flock of birds. Up to
the day of filming, Hitchcock had assured Tippy the birds
used in this scene would be animatronic, but when the
time came to shoot it, she spent five days having
hundreds of live birds hurled at her in huge numbers
by the crew. Hedron later described it as brutal, ugly,

(33:57):
and relentless. Carrie Grant, her host star, told her she
was the bravest woman he'd ever seen. Now, whatever other
impacts this had on Tippy, she has no discernible fear
of animals after this point in her life, though she
really should. Her husband, Noel is a bit more of
a mystery to me. He was an agent, a producer,
a film investor, and a serial entrepreneur whose best financial

(34:19):
decision was putting money mind what became The Exorcist. In
nineteen sixty nine, he and Hedron were in mosam Beaque
while she starred in the film Satan's Harvest, about which
less is said the better. This is only relevant because
during their time in Africa, they observed a pride of
lions lounging about an abandoned home, and this gave them
an idea. They wanted to make a movie about poaching

(34:40):
and conservation, something that could use the power of film
to save these majestic creatures being threatened by humanity. All
four of their children agreed to star in it and
to help with production, but there were immediate snags. They
wanted the film to be set in a big cat sanctuary,
but actual lion tamers warned them that it was flat
out impossible to keep so many large fee lines together safely.

(35:01):
This would eventually prove to have been very accurate advice.
After a while, one tamer introduced them to their first
tame lion, and, for reasons known only to God, he
suggested to this traumatized movie star and her family of
charmingly deranged Californians that they could just get their own
big cats and train them by adopting animals confiscated from
their previous owners, generally sketchy zoos and circuses. So a

(35:25):
lot of these cats had never known the wild, and
they'd often been badly mistreated given them. This was the
nineteen seventies. We must assume that some had been confiscated
property of coke dealers. Tippy and Noll had no professional
or legal qualifications to care for dozens of big cats
when the authorities eventually found out there was trouble, although
since Hedrid and Marshall were rich, they bought their way

(35:46):
out of said trouble by purchasing a rural compound and
having a house built specifically for they and their dozens
of apex predators to live. While lions had inspired the
initial vision, the compound in California soon filmed with big
adopted cats of every kind. Tippy and her husband took
them in and raised them among and around their own children,
who came to see the animals as something between pets

(36:09):
and family. When they actually started filming the movie that
became Roar. Making any kind of movie had become secondary
to the act of caring for these many, many giant,
traumatized kiddies. As I noted earlier, the plot to Roar
is kind of immaterial. I've never watched it with the
sound on. I can tell you, though, that none of
these cats were trained in any really meaningful way, which

(36:31):
meant that every scene devolved into the same spectacle. The casts,
surrounded by dozens of giant cats, stumbled through a few
lines before one or all of the cats began to
bite and claw them, at which point each scene becomes
about surviving from one moment to the next. Roar took
more than five years to film in more than a
decade to actually make. No cats were harmed during the
production of this movie, but more humans were injured than

(36:54):
in any other film production on record. Of the one
hundred and twenty or so cast and crew on Roar,
more than one hundred suffer significant injury, often more than once.
Jan Debaut, the cinematographer, had his scalp ripped off by
a lion, requiring one hundred and twenty stitches. He went
on to make Speed and Twister. Melanie Griffith, Tippy's daughter
and a future star herself, left production at one point

(37:16):
because she was worried a big cat might rip her
face off. She ultimately returned and immediately had a large
chuntic of her face ripped off. Requiring extensive surgery. This
all sounds horrifying and impossible to justify. But before you
make a final judgment, I want to remind you of
two things. One, for all its horrors and severe injuries,
fewer people were killed on the set of War than

(37:38):
in Alec Baldwin's recent film Rust. The second thing that
you must remember is that Roar is a work of
art on the level of Moby Dick. If you watch
it enough, among the right people and in the right headspace,
you can come to a deeper understanding of every facet
of human existence. I've taken a lot out of it
over the years. Recently it has convinced me that we
will one day get over our bullshit and escape the

(38:00):
present hell that our species seems mired in. I know
that doesn't make much sense now, but give me some time.
I'll explain why. But first it's probably time for some ats.
We're back, and the first thing I need you to

(38:22):
understand about all of these fucking cats is that in
every mauling caught on tape, and there are dozens of them,
I see no anger or malice in the actions of
these cats. I don't even see hunger. It's clear to me,
as a cat owner, that the cats didn't see these people,
Tippy and her family and the cast and crew, as
prey or as a threat. If anything, they saw them

(38:42):
as fellow big cats, cousins and close kin who they
extend to kind of familiarity and perhaps even a kind
of love that, since they are cats, is expressed primarily
by batting at them with claws that hit like bowie
knives embedded in the hood of a speeding camri. If
you have cats of your own, you understand now. Given
that nearly every person on this film was badly injured,

(39:03):
including Tippy who got gang green from infected cat wounds,
and all of her children, you might feel inclined to
judge who are a knol or both of them for
risking their kids lives to make this insane movie. I
understand the impulse, but I believe it to be an error.
The first thing you need to see to understand the
deeper dynamics going on with War is a picture from
a Playboy magazine photoshoot of Tippy's husband and co star,

(39:26):
Noel Marshall. He's in his office on his typewriter and
this fully grown male lion gets up on his desk
because it wants attention again normal cat behavior, And despite
the best efforts of this animal, who has to weigh
five hundred pounds, Noel Marshall won't stop focusing on his work,
and so the cat inches away from his face roars.

(39:47):
The sound of a male lion's roar is deeply imprinted
on all of us, an epigenetic memory passed down by
the handful of our ancestors who heard the sound up
close and lived to tell the tale. It has such
a foundational impact on our mind that Metro Goldwyn Meyer
the film studio, used it to open every movie they
made from nineteen twenty eight on. I believe they did

(40:07):
this because the sound is a sort of hack to
compel our attention. It pulls an audience out of whatever
state of mind dominates their outside lives and makes them
more attentive to the film that is to come. And
so the first thing you need to understand about the
people who made Roar is that Marshall, upon having a
living adult lion inches from his face roar, gives the

(40:27):
creature a look that says, hey, man, can you give
me a second. I'm like, I'm in the middle of something.
I bring this up so that you will understand that
these were not people operating on anything close to the
same wavelength as you and I. Their lives and their
choices are to outsiders inconceivable. There's another great photo from
the set of that Playboy shoot. While the camera people

(40:48):
roamed the Heddroom compound, one of them caught a shot
of Tippy's adolescent daughter, Melanie, jumping into a pool. An
adult male lion, which he must have considered to be
in some way a member of the family, as this
girl passing by in the corner of its eye, and
that motion ignites an instinct inside it, so like any
cat of that size in the same situation, it reaches
out to bite her. Afterwards, the Hedron family and the

(41:11):
cast and crew had complicated feelings about what happened that
extended to the present day. Tippy divorced Marshall almost as
soon as the filming finally wrapped. She is alleged that
while Roar was being made, he utterly ignored her well being.
She also does not seem to have ever seriously considered leaving.
She later wrote that she quote was into it every
bit as much as he was, and that production was

(41:33):
an obsessive, addictive drama. John Mitchell, Nol's son, who acted
in the movie and like everyone else, was mauled repeatedly,
came to own the rights to Roar when his dad
died in twenty ten. Dad was a fucking asshole to
do that to his family, he said recently. He also
said this, it was amazing to live through that. I
should have died many times, but I kind of want

(41:54):
to do it again. If you have any friends or
family who have survived extended periods of every combat, there's
a good chance they may have expressed a variation of
the same feeling. This is because trauma is sometimes a
drug taking. It can be more than just hell. It's
often also a high, which is one thing that drives
a lot of people crazy. I need to take a

(42:14):
moment away from Rohar to talk about some people that
I met in twenty seventeen in Iraq during the desperate
and ferocious urban combat against Isis. The closer I drew
to the front, the more guys I met who were
elite veterans of the Iraqi Special Forces. They did the
bulk of the fighting. These were mostly young men ranging
from the tail end of their teens to their twenties.

(42:34):
Many had grown up in places like Fallujah fighting from
the time they were seven or eight, sometimes younger, they'd
been born into the US occupation. In many cases, their
earliest memories were as runners, ferrying supplies and information to
the older men and teenage boys who did most of
the fighting. When the opportunity presented itself, they sometimes dropped
grenades or improvised explosive devices on US troops, most of

(42:57):
whom were teenagers themselves.

Speaker 5 (42:59):
Now.

Speaker 2 (42:59):
They fought against ISIS in close quarters, building to building
a few weeks at a time. Periodically, they'd rotate off
the front and would go to Urbil an hour or
two away. Many of them were gangsters in their spare time,
running drugs and guns and brothels. They spent their days
off in a drunken haze of Turkish amphetamines. Then they
would drive back to the front in new, brightly colored
Mustangs and dodged chargers. The trunks fold to bursting with

(43:21):
so many machine guns and rocket launchers they could only
be closed with bungee cords. The guns and rockets were
useful at a distance to soften up enemy positions, and
the impossibly dense warrenlike urban environment of Mosl's old city.
In every building, on every block, the fighting terminated with
door to door, room to room battles, where the most
useful weapons were hand grenades, combat knives, and pistols in

(43:43):
that order. I don't know if any of these guys were,
at that point that I met them, capable of feeling
what Uuri would recognize as fear. These were the men
and boys whose bodies formed the cutting edge of the
fighting against Isis and Mosl on occasion when they kidnapped Ice.
As fighters, some of them committed war crimes with the
ease and with as much thought as you and I
give to breathing. This is bad, of course, unforgivable, but

(44:05):
I've never really given much thought to judging them for it.
Where would I even start. A thing I've come to
understand in my travels is that human beings are capable
of contorting themselves into the most incredible shapes in order
to fit into the times they're forced to live in.
This has been the story of our entire long journey
on this earth, and if there is one reason our
species has survived above all the others, it is our

(44:27):
capacity for infinite variety and infinite contexts. We can make
ourselves into anything if we're given the right incentives, and
to an extent, you can't judge individual humans without judging
the incentives the world we collectively create presents for them.
We evolved, and we still live in a world where
trauma and pain are inevitable, and those of us who

(44:47):
survive the worst things that life can throw at us
tend to become addicted, sometimes to the cause of the trauma,
but nearly always to the people we experience it with.
This is why the cast and crew of Roar often
reported feeling almost addicted to spending time among these gigantic predators,
and it's why many kept coming back despite being repeatedly maimed.

(45:08):
Roar happened because the core cast and crew exhibited radical
empathy for roughly one hundred and forty large cats and
for each other, and almost exercised zero critical judgment beyond
that point. Now, I will understand if you still feel
that nothing could justify the decision of two parents to
risk their children's lives in such folly. And I know

(45:28):
this essay is supposed to be my ultimate enduring optimism
about mankind's potential, and I'm going to get to that,
but you know, we still live in twenty twenty five.
So first, here's ads. So here's my best step at

(45:50):
explaining why I find RAR inspirational. There's a scene about
three quarters of the way through this movie. After roughly
an hour straight of watching the Hedron, Marshall family and
their friends get repeatedly mulled for real by giant cats.
And in this scene, John Marshall finds a dirt bike
and engineers a scenario that I am certain has never
happened before or since in the history of this planet.

(46:11):
He rides away from the home where his family is
trapped and draw several dozen lions, panthers, and tigers away
by making them chase him. The cats assume this is
a game and repeatedly try to murder or maim him,
but he continues building up speed in an ever greater
tale of the most lethal killing machines to evolve on
this planet. You can see from the look in John's

(46:32):
eyes in this scene that he has no idea. If
he seconds away from death, it would have been physically
impossible to stop or control this number of giant cats.
The only reason this number and variety of lions, panthers,
and tigers would ever have existed together at any previous
point in world history, would have been across a distance
of thousands of miles of rugged wilderness. But thanks to

(46:54):
Tippean Knowles's insane dream, and thanks to the deranged and
utterly unjustifiable commit of many of the crew and their family,
a moment of utter novelty occurs where the singular assortment
of big cats watches as a man fleeing in terror
from them on a dirt bike does one of the
sickest jumps in film history and lands directly into a river,

(47:16):
and then keeps riding until he is charged by a
juvenile African elephant, which the Adrons also kept on their property.
In its uniqueness, this moment has to rival, if not exceed,
the Moon landing. After all, considerably more men have stepped
foot on the Moon than have achieved what John Marshall
does in this scene, although some of that may be
due to the fact that it is extremely illegal for

(47:39):
anyone today to even try. And this is why I
encourage you to watch Roar My Dear Friends during the
Dark Times, not because it's a good movie, but because
it reveals what is best about humanity, What piece of
art could better illustrate the infinite possibilities within us. If
a group of human beings can learn to live among
lions and tigers, I fight the constant guarantee of severe

(48:02):
injury without really understanding why is it's so mad to
think that perhaps we two can transcend the barbarities of
our age and become something better, or at least something
far stranger than money grubbing fascists. I don't know how
we escape the darkness that seems to encroach a bit
further with each passing day, but I do know this,
If we can make war, we can do anything.

Speaker 7 (48:44):
Welcome to ikodapa Here Podcasts, where here is the rapidly
encroaching rise of fascism. My name is mir Wong, and
one of the major vectors of fascism that we have
been covering on this show has been the increase in
just effectively straight up black baggings by ICE and immigration's
enforcement in general. We have spent a good amount of

(49:09):
time covering a bunch of different angles of this, but
there is another incredibly distressing angle that we have not
covered as much yet, which is their targeting of labor
organizers and with me to talk about that is Mark
Medina from Portland Jobs with Justice and the Coalition of
Independent Unions And yeah, Mark, welcome to the show.

Speaker 8 (49:28):
Hi, thanks for having me.

Speaker 7 (49:30):
Yeah, I'm glad to have you on. So one of
the most pressing sort of black baggings that's happened fairly
recently is ICE's kidnapping of Alfredo Juareze Ferino, otherwise known
as Lelo. Can you tell us about sort of his
work and the projects he's been doing and familius you
need us pro Justicia.

Speaker 8 (49:49):
Yeah. So it's been a very disheartening and scary couple
of weeks since it's happened, because this opens up a
new power for the state to go after organizers, to
go after workers and the most underprivileged in our society
in a way that I suppose we all expected. But

(50:10):
now that we see it, now that we see it happening,
now that we see it happening to people that we
know in our community, it's becoming apparent there is no
turning back from the idea that we have to be
able to take this on head first. We as activists,
as organizers, have to look at this and see it
as an actual thing in our day to day that
we have to combat and incorporate into our organizing. So

(50:32):
maybe it might be a little helpful to start off
with a little bit of a backstory on if I
mean this need us by Lassay. So the union has
its origins going back to twenty thirteen. The area in
which they organize, the Bellingham or the Washington walkingscadget areas,
has a very particular type of immigrant community there. Lelo
himself is of Mextco background. There's a lot of indigenous

(50:57):
Mexican populations in the region. It also want to have
long routes. A lot of these people go back generations,
have been here for quite some time. This area also
happens to be very particularly with the non Hispanic population,
particularly the white population, a very conservative, particularly conservative for
the area. It's one of the very few areas of

(51:19):
Northwest that Donald Trump came to visit. It's an area
that has had repeated attacks on then imbric community. And
so it's in this context that workers are organizing in
twenty thirteen for this first independent union. And two it's
important to mention the independent part of it. A lot
of the organizers from the start of this of the

(51:39):
union came from a tradition of the United farm Workers
in California. They some of them worked with such jabas
in the heyday of the United farm Workers. And in
the years and decades since then, since the Dolana boycotts
and other things, there's been a growing rift of what
the next steps should be. And I think that for

(52:01):
a lot of farm workers, because they don't organize under
the general labor law that we have for most workers,
there is a sort of patchwork system for how farm
working organizing happens in the United States that's dependent upon
different states and legislatures, and for the most part, with
the exception of only two states, farm workers don't have
the same kind of protections that regular workers generally in

(52:25):
the society have for union recognition for collective bargaining. Only
Washington and New York at the moment, I believe, have
laws that allow for elections for farm worker unions, and
there's a very particular reason for that being the case.
Farm workers were excluded from the Wagner Act for having
general labor rights in the nineteen thirties because precisely it

(52:48):
was seen as immigrant labor and immigrants were not seen
as meriting the same rights as white Americans in the
same way that domestic workers were removed because I was
seen at the time as black labor. So it has
its roots and racism.

Speaker 7 (53:01):
Yeah, and that's something that you know, like you can
tie that exclusion, like there's a straight line between that
and Japanese and tournaments, which also to a large extent,
is about land seizure and this sort of like fusion
of racism, specifically racism in the farming sector with the
tax and labor rights and with this desire to just
sort of seize literally the lands and labor from non

(53:23):
white people.

Speaker 6 (53:24):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (53:24):
Yeah, So it's a long and bleak history.

Speaker 8 (53:27):
No, absolutely, and I'm sure your audience is well aware
of a lot of these subject matter. It is a
bleak history. And it wasn't until groups like the United
farm Workers in the sixties and the seventies. I they
began to create the possibility for something new for the
Hispanic community. It was United farm Workers that built not

(53:47):
just a lot of solidarity with other immigrant groups in
the California area, but they also built a sense of
pride and identity and belonging for a lot of communities.
I grew up in Bluid High It's East Los Angeles. Says
that Travis and Knight farm worker murals are everywhere. You know,
me and my friends would often joke, as said Javis
is like the patron Saints. It is Los Angeles, even

(54:08):
though it's nowhere near Delano. And there's a reason for that.
I think that a lot of us looked up to
the United farm Workers. We looked up to the farm
worker Union movement, and we saw in them our heroes,
our modern day heroes. We saw them. We saw people
who said, be proud to be brown. You know, there's
a courage that comes from that history. The union movement

(54:29):
that then sprung up in twenty thirteen in the Bellingham
Northern Washington area was coming out of that milieu. They
understood that background, they understood that history, but they also
understood that there was very little organizing in the region.
There was a lot of fear in the region. It's
very difficult to organize farm workers. To have access to
a lot of these areas. You have to cross just

(54:49):
private property for quite some time before you reach the
first farm workers, and it becomes very very difficult to
have organizing happen and it's intentional that way. The rise
and farmers unions that happened in the sixties and seventies
had a massive plummet by the time they begin into
the nineteen two thousands, and so these workers had heard
these stories, had heard by this legacy, but had been

(55:12):
essentially deliver with increasing frustration, racist behavior by bosses, lower
and lower pay, and the use of certain types of
immigrants to try to scab their jobs. It be the
capitalist class using one type of worker against another type
of worker, picking them against each other. It's in this

(55:33):
context in twenty thirteen that this union starts to form.
They go public at that time period, they call for recognition,
and they started taking action directly, and they organized this
years and years long boycott campaign to gain recognition, to
get the employer to start bargaining. And after years and
years of this and coourt battles and the employer trying

(55:56):
to lay everyone off and hire certain types of newer
immigrants coming in to replace all of them, putting one
worker against another, all these types of maneuvers, by twenty seventeen,
these workers win a contract, and the philosophy of the
union since then has been not just to grow this union,
but also for them to be able to stand on
their own two feet. Their idea is that they are

(56:17):
very proud of their independent nature of that union. They're
not part of the afl CIO, they're not part of
the Nice farm Workers, They're not part of any other organization.
You know, when I spoke to some of their leaders
last year, one of the things that came to mind
was they brought up a quote from Eugene Debts, the
notion of like, if we were to lead you into
the promised Land, someone else would just lead out. And

(56:37):
the notion of their union is we have to be
able to stand on our two feet. We can't rely
on anyone else, because if they promise us things today tomorrow,
they'll hold something over us. And so the notion that
farm workers lead this movement and leave this union is
an incredibly powerful statement of what working class people can do.
The kinds of workers that everyone else kinds of looks at.

(56:58):
They could never do it. These you know, these workers
could never handle this kind of level of struggle and
couldn't do this kind of organization have built one of
the most powerful independent farm worker unions in the West Coast,
Lelo Alfredo Lelo was a founding member of this union.
He was a farm worker studying at the age of twelve,
and since then devoted his entire life organizing to helping workers,

(57:23):
to being the kind of person who commits himself to
the work of making the world a better place than
you found it. You know, at twenty five, he is
significantly younger than me. And when I think of people
who I look up to, who I think as Wow,
when I grew up, I want to be someone like that,
I think of Lelo.

Speaker 9 (57:38):
Yeah.

Speaker 8 (57:39):
I have met little many of times over the years.
He's a very soft spoken, very thoughtful type of person.
And yeah, I think that the labor movement owes him
a bit of a debt. Now it is time that
we as a whole stand up for him.

Speaker 11 (57:52):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (57:53):
Yeah, we are going to go to ads regrettably, and
then when we come back we are going to start
talking I think a bit more about the repression we
are back. So obviously then this is this is a

(58:15):
part of the story that you've been telling, the sort
of the sort of capitalist class out in Bellingham, and
you know, the sort of I mean, this has been
true of the broader capitalist class since it's kind of
organizing starting like has been trying to break these unions
this entire time. You know, that has been a major
focus of everything that they've been doing. And you know,
what we're seeing right now seems like a massive sort

(58:37):
of escalation in the degree of repression. So, yeah, can
we talk about the recent black bagging Alilo and yeah,
and sort of what happens and where we go from there.

Speaker 8 (58:49):
Yeah. The weaponization of the state to go after immigrants
and go after activists is I'm sure to your audist
is well known. Is nothing yet and it no knows
parties affiliation. The Democratic administrations have been doing this to
immigrant communities, and I've been using it to silence political activists.
The Trump administration, however, is now doing this on a

(59:10):
level that is, at least to a lot of us
unheard of in the modern day, which is to go
after specific union leaders in the labor movement, to go
after civil rights leaders. You've seen this happen also when
it comes to Palistinian rights activists around the country. The
idea is pretty simple to silence the loudest voices, to

(59:32):
cut to leadership from the movement. On March twenty fifth,
Alfredo Lelo Barres was dropping off his girlfriend at a
nearby farm for work and was accosted by ICE agents
as he was exercising his rights or what he thought
his rights were at the time because of the regime,

(59:53):
who knows what your rights are. They broke his window,
they dragged him out of his car. You know, this
was obviously very traumatic incident, but also is a real
shock to the union to see to see the community
group that works with the union, and to the local
Hispanic community in the area. Within hours of that, workers

(01:00:14):
organizers community went to move to try to carry a response,
knowing that time was of the essence. It was then
taken to a local life facility. He's now since been
moved to a detention center in Tacoma, Washington. A large
rally of hundreds took place calling for his immediate release.
What we know now seemingly is that at the very

(01:00:38):
last minute apologies I forget the exact day, but it
was within a couple of days of the kidnapping, Lelo
was pulled off. He has an automatic stay of deportation
in place at this point, no longer has any legal
authority to remove Lelo. If this came at the last minute.
He was in line for deportation and was moved at

(01:01:01):
the very last minute. However, while this is good news,
this is not good for someone's personal health and well being.
These are massively cramped facilities, underfunded facilities. You know, there's
horror stories around the country of the conditions in some
of these places. Every day that Lelo is stuck behind

(01:01:22):
these prison walls is an injustice to our movement.

Speaker 7 (01:01:26):
Yeah, yeah, I think the thing it immediately reminds me
of is the story of Thomas Paine, who was like
slated to be executed in the French Revolution and they didn't.
They didn't execute him because his door was opened, so
they didn't see the slash line on the cell that
was supposed to execute him. And then like the next
day the reign of terror ended with the coup against
the Jacobins. There rits me a lot of that, but

(01:01:48):
you know, but on the other hand, here's the thing.
We have gotten the stay of the deportation, but we
have not we have not brought down.

Speaker 12 (01:01:55):
The rate of terror yet.

Speaker 8 (01:01:56):
So yeah, and I would hope does it have to
way four more years for that one?

Speaker 7 (01:02:01):
Yeah? Good lord, good lord? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, so
let's let's talk a bit about So. I mean, obviously,
you know what we're seeing here and this this is
you know, the connection that you made is we're seeing
just on a sort of broad scale, the use of
the state and of the sort of black bagging and
of these deportations as a way to target organizers from
Palestine to label organizers. That's only going to expand as

(01:02:25):
this goes on. And I think something critical about you know,
one of the first things you were saying here about
the fact that they're targeting sort of the loudest voices
in the community. And I think a big part of
this is that they know that their position isn't as
strong as they're making it out to be. Right, Like
they have just detonated a nuke across the entire economy.

(01:02:46):
They are systemically going through and individually fucking over every
single group of people who are supposed to be their base.
And I think part of what they're doing is they're
trying to spread sort of raw terror and spread fear
and you know, and and attack the critical infrastructure of
organizing because they want to make it look like resisting

(01:03:06):
them as impossible and that's just not true. They can be.

Speaker 4 (01:03:11):
Yeah.

Speaker 8 (01:03:11):
Absolutely. I think that oftentimes, particularly fascistic power wants and
needs to present itself as inevitable, as overwhelming, and impossible
to defeat, in part because it's meant to hide the
ultimate weakness of some of these powers. The actual power
that these farm workers showed against the Sukuma farms when

(01:03:32):
they went on strike and boycotted for years and years
and years out in the fields, talking to workers for
years and years and years. It showed that no matter
how powerful some of these companies are, some of the
CEOs are that the power of workers overwhelmed and the
power solidarity overwhelms. And they know that going after leadership,
going after some of the most some of the bravest

(01:03:53):
people in our movement is a way of trying to
hit the movement at the knees and trying to convince
folks that struggle is impossible. But I think it is
important to remember that what we're doing, the struggle now,
the response. This is how we show the population the world,
you know, our communities, that they are not inevitable, it
is not insurmountable and so and by taking action responding

(01:04:17):
to the kinds of fascistic behaviors of the state. We
show how people the state can be at times, even
when it seems it's most treacherous and awful.

Speaker 7 (01:04:26):
Yeah, And I think a lot of times when we
win fights, it can be very very hard to actually
see our victory because we don't see the world that
could have been if we didn't fight. And that's the
thing I think about with the First Ship administration. We're
in the First Hump administration. They absolutely wanted to be
doing this kind of shit, and they were able to
do a lot of terrible stuff, but they weren't able

(01:04:48):
to sort of go this far because of the kind
of mass mobilizations that shut down a lot of the
kinds of things that they wanted to do. And I
think that's a kind of victory that is hard to
kind of like process because all we see is, you know,
the suffering that did happen, and we can never see
an image of like all of the people you know,

(01:05:11):
who got to continue living their lives because we stop them,
And that I think is another sort of powerful tool here.
But also we do have an opportunity to make sure
that we can beat them right here, right now in
a way that's very very public, and.

Speaker 8 (01:05:28):
That's a question mark about that in my mind, because
you know, my entire adult life, I've heard stories of
the state repression against union organizers in the twenties and
the thirties and the forties. You hear the stories if
you're an organizer, about all the violent eras and how
hard it was in the past, and we forget that
a lot of that does continue on. It's just not

(01:05:49):
where you would imagine it where a lot of American
workers imagine it, and so they don't see it in
their shops and their factories and their unions. But this
right here is an attack on the labor movement. Had
this been the head of you know, the Electricians Union,
the head of the SCIU, Had this been an attack

(01:06:09):
on what a lot of America would view as the
mainstream labor movement, this would be headlines. Yeah. The fact
that it isn't shows, and that it has been so
much work to try to get attention to a union
leader being picked up and kidnapped by the state should
be you know, a blaring red light on the labor
movement to take action immediately.

Speaker 7 (01:06:29):
Yeah.

Speaker 8 (01:06:29):
I hope that what we're doing is the first steps
to that, because you know, this is one of those moments.
If you know, they went after the trade unions unionists
and I was not a trade unionist. Well, going after
the farm workers, I am not a farm worker. It
isn't comment upon us morally to stand up for one
another at this point in time.

Speaker 7 (01:06:46):
Yeah, And I think there's been a real kind of
real cowardice and a real sort of appeasement of power,
and a real demonstration of where a lot of these
union's politics are. I mean, we saw the way that
the Teamsters like leadership just I mean just you know,
openly went to speak at the R and C.

Speaker 6 (01:07:04):
Right.

Speaker 7 (01:07:04):
We've been seeing the UAW, which traditionally has had better
like immigration politics in the last few years than a
lot of these other sort of mainstream unions, but has
also been sort of going to bat for Trump's tariff,
Like I've been calling you the turf tariffs tariffs because
of the wages of transphobia. But you know, they've been
going to bat for like the turf tariffs, right, And

(01:07:25):
that I think is part of why they've been sort
of unable to like respond to this moment, and why
they've been unable to respond to the past fucking fifty
years of moments, which is that like, if you're sort
of like labor politics is rooted in this sort of
like American nationalist, like American jobs for American workers stuff, right,
and it's not actually based in the power of workers

(01:07:46):
and the power of workers everywhere, then you're going to lose.
It's it's not just sort of reactionary politics also it
is it's also bad politics, and we're seeing it right now.

Speaker 8 (01:07:55):
Yeah, And I think that the history of labor movement
has been an interesting one in my adult life because
you know, I'm as pro liber as they come. However,
the history of labor movement in the modern day has
been a fascinating one. It is one that when it
came to large strikes, was that its natier at the
mid and late two thousands. I think at one point
it was just over a dozen strikes over two thousand workers.

(01:08:17):
And you compare that to the high of the labor
movement in the forties and the fifties when it was
in the hundreds, and you've had strike actions all the time,
and that is what builds so much at what we
call the middle class for some And it was this
really historic moment at the time, and we're in a
historic moment now where I think the labor movement for
so long from that point, has been trying. Workers from
the rank and file have been trying to kind of

(01:08:40):
reshape the labor movement in the thoughts and the ideas
of the new But it comes with its own regressive setbacks,
and it comes with its own shortcomings of leadership. You know,
the teams tours making statements around immigration rights was a
very unfortunate thing to be said in the modern day.
In the modern context, I think that you know, other

(01:09:02):
unions seemingly looking to you know, circle the wagons rather
than take the risks that need to happen in this
current time has really shown a lack of imagination from
some of the mainstream unions. And the thing is, I
hope for the best for them. I want them to
succeed and I want them to get better because the

(01:09:22):
world is a better place we're having these larger unions. However,
if the independent movements, the independent unions like Familias who
need this Quo Thesia, like these other unions in the region,
that can be the kind of canary in the coal mine,
the kind of labs of experimentation that can be the
first people out to do some of the most radical

(01:09:42):
and interesting and worker centric type of movement building and messaging. Like,
I think there is the reason why it was the
coalition of independent unions here in the Pacific Northwest that
came up with the notion of having transity of solidarity,
this idea of patterning contracts together to have inclusive and
pre for trans workers and having that be a thing

(01:10:03):
that unions take up together. I think that it's incredibly
notable that it's group's life, I mean us who need
as Yeah, they carry out this long years long boycott
and created a model by which other workers in the
region can not just organize themselves, but organize themselves on
a low cost, member led democratic model. I think it's

(01:10:25):
important to see that sometimes the large unions have to
start looking at some of the radical pragmatism that comes
from the necessities of these smaller independent campaigns.

Speaker 7 (01:10:35):
Yeah, and I mean before we go to ads. I
think the last thing I want to say there is, like,
you know, the other option they have is to do
the option of what the unions didn't during the rise
of the Nazis, which is like dream the rise of
the Nazis the unions fell in line, right, They fell
in line because they were scared and they thought that
they could fucking win benefits from it. And you know,
it saved some of them, like they were a few
of those people like just became Nazis, but the rest

(01:10:58):
of them got fucking liquidated anyways. So those are your options, right,
You either stand and fight now with the independent unions,
or you become part of the regime and eventually get liquidated.
When you know, Trump in like fucking two and a
half years science executive order that says unions are illegal
or whatever.

Speaker 8 (01:11:15):
Yeah, and what does that do at the end of
the day, even if it staves, even if you're the
head of some of these larger unions. And by working
with the administrative the administration today, by selling your soul,
by selling the movement out, you give up the moral
high ground of our movement, of our working class democratic movement. Yeah,
you give it up for another generation. Then when workers,

(01:11:38):
when people look myself growing up, looking at images of
the United farm Workers, there are similar I presume there
are similar people in the United States growing up who
look that way up to the Unitedado Workers, look that
way up to the Teachers' Union. What happens to those children,
to those kids, those young people who want to be
the next leadership, the next era of the labor movement,
they will not look at us as having the moral

(01:12:00):
high ground. We give that up. We give our role
in history, our moral role in history to fight with
a working class when we do things like this.

Speaker 7 (01:12:07):
Yeah, and what you become and set is just another
extension of the state. You become like one of like
the national syndicates and like Franco of Spain. And and
what that does to you is people people don't look
at you in a generation as a labor movement. They
look at you as just another arm of a fascist regime.
And it doesn't have to be like that, It really doesn't.

Speaker 8 (01:12:27):
But yeah, no, it does not, Yea. I take no
pleasure in saying this, you know, I take no pleasure
in saying this. But it's an unfortunate reality. And hopefully
the turnaround can come from anywhere, it can come from
from unexpected places. And I hope that there is one,
and things like solidarity for Lelo, I hope it'd be
a small link in the chain that moves the pensulum
right back into the direction of an ethical and moral

(01:12:49):
superiority that comes with fighting for working class folks.

Speaker 7 (01:12:52):
Yeah, we're going to take an ad break and when
we come back, we're going to talk about what we
can do for lelo. Right now as listening to this,
we are back, So let's talk about both the operation

(01:13:15):
I mean, just immediately, the plans to sort of put
pressure to Freelillo, and also what then I guess we'll
get into sort of more broadly the kinds of fighting
that we need to be doing in order to resist this.

Speaker 8 (01:13:26):
Sounds good. So, like I mentioned earlier, and you need
an aftermath of lelo is kidnapping by ice, workers in
the region began organizing and unions came together and support
a Lelo and help a rally in front of attention
center in Tacoma. Now, what we're trying to do is
trying to spread the word further. There are other communities,

(01:13:48):
particularly here on the West Coast, that can't stand solidarity,
that should stand in solidarity. And when we heard this
needs to go down, activists within the CiU asked themselves,
we can't stand idly by while a leader in our
movement is kidnapped by the state. We need to take action,
and so we did. And the point was to move
as quickly as possible to try to build a larger

(01:14:11):
voice for Lelo while he is in detention. So there
is a good number of activists here in the Portland area.
We can be of service to the farm Workers Union.
You know, we have a strong core of independent unions
here in the Pacific Northwest, particularly in the Portland area.
We can do what other unions are hesitant to do,
which is take action immediately. It stands firmly with our

(01:14:33):
brothers and sisters are monosynas up in northern Washington. So
what's happening is the call from the union is workers individually,
for people individually to call into the Attorney General in
Washington State and call to the release of Lelo, also
calling the new governor up in Washington State to call
for the release. Bring a wider attention, making me known

(01:14:54):
that this person is someone who is important to the community,
cannot be expirited away to another country where they are
not from, where that is not their home, and taking
away from their family, the community, from the good work
that they do. And the other thing that we're trying
to do is we're trying to get local officials to
also use their voice to maximize the pressure to give

(01:15:18):
more attention to this issue. So that's the call so far.
This rally that we're having in front of city Hall
on Saturday, April twelfth at two pm is the beginning
of what we hope is a larger campaign that will
not end until Lelo is free and until these raids
stop attacking the labor movement in the Pacific Northwest. You know,

(01:15:41):
just because we in Portland, you know, are not farm workers,
because we don't work with farm workers, because a lot
of the workers who work here had maybe never met
a farm worker, it does not mean that we should
not stand shoulders shoulder and arm and arm and support
the farm workers Union up in northern Washington to the hilt.
And this begins this fight building that kind of level
of solidarity. It begins by showing up for them doing

(01:16:04):
what they can do right now. They don't have the
resources to go stay by day in city by city
to bring its tension and awareness to one of their
leaders being attacked. But we can do it, and if
we can do it, we should do it. It's a
moral imperative that little be free.

Speaker 7 (01:16:17):
Yeah, And so I mean statistically there are a lot
of you in Portland listening to the show, but statistically
most of you are not in Portland. Are are there
things that people in the rest of the country, and
I guess the rest of the world. I know, I
know there's so Sally statistically don't live in the US.

Speaker 11 (01:16:31):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (01:16:32):
Are are there things that people in other places can
do to put pressure specifically for Alala, but also just
can do in their own communities to you know, I
mean put pressure to stop these raids?

Speaker 1 (01:16:42):
Yes?

Speaker 8 (01:16:42):
Absolutely, So this is very similar I think to the CiU.
The Coalition of Independent Unions is Coalition of Independent Unions
here in the Pascopical Northwest. It was trying to do
and it's trying to do with TRANSI of solidarity. The
idea is we are trying to make this work here
in the Pacific Northwest and if it's useful, if it's good,
if people are paying attention to it, then we can
export this to other cities in other areas to bring

(01:17:05):
more attention to these causes. And so with that one
paving earning contracts together, particularly on this one issue of
tresender health care and trans incluencive language and contracts and
codifying that between unions and having that a demand of
labor movement that they not walk away from this. We
want to also do the same thing with this fight
for freedom for the farm Workers Union and their leaders

(01:17:26):
and workers everywhere. And the tax will come soon enough,
I suppose, I would imagine from this regime in Washington,
if this works, we want workers in other cities to
start assisting the farm worker Union take them up the
call of action and fighting for so not just let up,
but whoever comes afterwards, because there will be lettles in
the future, unfortunate as they may be. So if this

(01:17:49):
works here, if workers here, as they hear more updates,
we would hope and we would love if workers elsewhere,
if organizing groups elsewhere would want to take up this
fight and bring attention to the cause.

Speaker 7 (01:18:02):
Hell yeah, yeah. And I think there is a lot
of you know, potential and sort of mobilizations. There's a
lot of potential in getting people to understand that this
stuff's happening, And there's a lot of potential in cross
uniting organizing. And also, and I will say this too,
because like you know, obviously statistically, like there are a
large number of people listening to this who are like
union staffers, but also like most of you are not.

(01:18:25):
That also doesn't mean that whatever kind of organizing that
you're doing doesn't overlap with this and doesn't have capacity
that they can bring to bear to stop the entire
deportation regime that we're facing right now. And that's something
that you have to do both on the level of solidarity,
on a moral level, and also on a strategic level,
because again is going to come for you too.

Speaker 8 (01:18:45):
So yeah, yeah, you know, without making it too personal,
like I know level personally, I have met a little
many times over the years. He's a fantastic person. The
reason why a lot of us as organized is why
we do this kind of work to begin with, is
because we believe, as bizarrely as it may be, that

(01:19:05):
we could be a link in the chain that makes
the world a better place, that we can leave the
world better off than we found it. And we also
believe in what we're doing because when we look at
people who have been attacked by corporations and attacked by
the state, we feel in moral compulsion to help. And
what I would say to folks who are outside of

(01:19:26):
Portland who are hearing this story who hear the calls
to call the Attorney General in Washington State and demand
that they'll be released. To follow up with the union
by media Plicia further direction on how they can assist
and potentially holding their own rallies and support and solidarity
and bring attention to the issue. I would hope that
they do this. Imagine if Letlo were your brother, Imagine

(01:19:50):
if Leto were your cousin, your father, your friend, Act
as if they were they were them, because it require
that level of to have the kind of solidarity that
we need in order to fight this fastest regime and
everything that it does. It is easy to say I
will wait for someone else to do the work. I will,

(01:20:11):
someone else will come along and it'll get resolved that way. No,
if you don't do the work, it just will not
get done. And so we have to go in every
day as part of civic engagement and assisting the working class,
as part of our daily routines and using the kind
of the kind of sense of moral necessity and of

(01:20:31):
immediate action it requires that you would do for someone
that was close to you, because this person is you
just by another name, This person is your family. Even
if you've never met them. We are all in this
together as working class people, and if we start coming
up with boundaries and reasons for why we shouldn't stand
up for one another, those reasons then become excuses for
everyone else. So I would hope that when people hear this,

(01:20:54):
they look and see the struggle of this person, and
they can imagine what would happen to them in the future,
and they say, I would want someone there for me
in my corner, in my time of me, So I
will be there for them and theirs.

Speaker 7 (01:21:05):
Yeah, it reminds me a lot of this line from
Peggy Seeger, who wrote and wrote an anti fascist song
called Song of Choice, and one of the verses that's
always stuck with me is today the soldiers took away one.
Tomorrow they may take away two. One April, they took
away Greece, but surely they will never take you. And

(01:21:27):
you know, I mean, that's the thing that people in
the thirties woke up to, right is you know, if
you're in this country and this is the thing that
you're waking up to now, is that, Yeah, the soldiers
are taking people away, and every day they're taking away
more and more people and one day you wake up
and they've taken entire countries. And the only way that
you can stop this is by making sure that the
action that you're taking is not just waking up and

(01:21:48):
going back to sleep. Right, Yep, you have to take
a stand. You have to fight because no one is coming.
The only person who was coming for these people, the
only person who was coming for the people coming next
to them, and inevitably the only people who is coming
to save you when they come for you is going
to be you. And you know there there are enough
of us to stop them, right there always have been.

(01:22:09):
That's that's always been a thing about fascism is that
it relies on us not fighting them, but relies on
us on our passivity. It relies on us not caring
enough about the people that they take first, you know,
to sit back and do nothing and think that we
can wait, and you can't have You have to start
right now, and you have to stop them before they
advance any further. And you have to roll back what

(01:22:32):
they've already done. And this is our opportunity to do that.

Speaker 8 (01:22:35):
Yeah, absolutely absolutely. I think that says that they encapsulates
the sentiment perfectly.

Speaker 7 (01:22:40):
Well, yeah, do you have anything else that you want
to add before we head out, and we will put
links to a whole bunch of things in the description
to this.

Speaker 8 (01:22:51):
Yeah, yeah, I suppose to those that would want to
know more about not just the struggle of the farm
workers doing, but also the general experiments in independent unionism
here in the Pacific Northwest, I'd highly encourage that folks
take a deep dive and see that to organize your
workplace to have the kind of solidarity with your coworkers,

(01:23:14):
you need not be dependent upon someone else and other
organizations that come in and sort of rescue you from
the mystery and drudgery of non union workplaces. You can
do it too. You can create. You have it in
your head, in your own mind and your own ends,
the ability to organize, the ability to fight with your coworkers,

(01:23:35):
you have the kind of clever problem solving skills that
every worker has in order to come back the boss
and create a better world than the one that currently exists.
And also that when it comes to issues like standing
up for this struggle now and struggles in the future,
I would say you have it now, the creative capacity

(01:23:57):
to in whatever city you're in, to make connections to
build inroads with the labor movement, to build inroads with
working class people, and to try to create those bonds
that happen. We here are trying to build closer bonds
with city workers and farm workers out out in the country. Yeah,
it's an important struggle because one it's going to be
more and more important in the future. You don't have

(01:24:19):
to wait for anyone else to tell you how to
do that. You yourselves can show solidarity and work together
to build those kinds of bonds now so that in
the future you can create working class movements that whether
that takes the form of collective bargaining or something else.
Organizing for the common good is useful no matter in
what legal capacity it happens.

Speaker 7 (01:24:39):
Yeah, and I mean, you know, one of the last
point I want to add about that in terms of
looking at like you not needing help to do things,
like you know, I know a lot of the people
who you know, like are the organizers who are hired
by places like the UAW, like AFLCIO unions. Right, they're
good people. Like, they're good people, they're good organizers. They
don't know anything that you can learn, Like, a lot

(01:25:01):
of these people are just literally college students right, who
are recruited like from college campuses and are thrown with
no training into organizing these things, right, And you know,
and again these are people who are just like stepping
out of classrooms into like into these organizing scenarios with
very minimal training, and they've been able to do it.
And if those people can do it, so can you, Like,

(01:25:24):
I know you, I know, I know these organizers and
the only difference between them and you is that they
spent some time learning some things and then they apply
the same tools like they apply in some ways worse
versions of the same tools that the independent union organizers use.
And they're all tools that you can learn.

Speaker 8 (01:25:43):
Yeah, And if any of the people listening want to
learn sim of those tools, yeah, or you help with
education and training, or just want to make connections at
in roads with workers elsewhere, contact the coalition and independent
husdents and seeing how we can build these bonds together,
because I think that we will problem solve how to
defeat this regime one way or another. But I think

(01:26:04):
that we, particularly in the independent union space, provide a
unique possibility for how this can happen because since we
are not tied to larger established contracts. We're not tied
to jurisdictional disputes, We're not tied to a lot of
the legacies of some of the larger unions, God bless them.
We can create and fashion a labor movement that doesn't

(01:26:24):
have to live by those rules. You know, if you
imagine the idea of what it would look like to
refound the CIO in the nineteen thirties, if you could
imagine the worst aspects of the labor movement and excising them,
and what is the best aspects of labor movement that
you would want to see, we can create that together today.
And today it takes the form of standing up in
solidarity with LELO and farm Workers Union up northern Washington,

(01:26:46):
not because we get anything from it, not because it's easy,
but precisely because it is difficult, and precisely because it
is a moral compulsion on us to take action today
for it. We don't have to wait for anyone to
tell us what to do. As part of an independent
labor movement, we get to decide our future and our faith,
and we get to decide our struggles.

Speaker 7 (01:27:03):
Yeah, and if and when we beat them here, we
can beat them today. We can beat them tomorrow. We
can beat the next day, and one day you know
we will. We will have one, one victory too many
for them to hold onto power. And that's the only
way forward.

Speaker 8 (01:27:16):
Absolutely, fascism wants you to believe in a nihilistic perspective
of the world. They want you to believe in which
it is hopeless to fight back. They want you to
believe just doom scroll forever and don't take any action
and focus on yourselves and navel gaze indefinitely. No. No. The
way that you find out the kind of person that
you are, and the way that you build the kind
of future that you want for yourselves or families, for

(01:27:37):
your communities, for the people that you don't even know
and never will meet, what you want a good life
for them. The way that you do that is you
take action. Now, you start organizing, You do what you can,
you build what you can. That's how we do this.
Like we said earlier, they want you to believe that
the fighter is already over, the history has already been written.
They only say that because they know it's not true. Yep,

(01:27:57):
and me and other people who talk like this, who
are as optimistic and as hopeful and is fight. Ready.
We don't believe this out of nowhere. We believe this
because we truly do see that the better world is
possible if we fight.

Speaker 7 (01:28:10):
Yeah, and I think that's a spectacular place to end. Mark,
thank you so much for coming on the show. Yeah,
thank you, and everyone else who's listening to this, go
out and fight.

Speaker 11 (01:28:40):
Hello, and welcome to It could happen here. I want
you to imagine a world where everyone shared a second language,
not because of imperial conquest, but out of a shared
desire for unity and understanding. That was the duram behind Esperanto,
a constructed language designed to be the basis for global bilingualism.

(01:29:01):
Long before I learned anything about anarchism, I spent some
time trying to learn Esperanto. It has shown up on
my due lingo one day, and it seems like such
a fascinating and simple project to pick up. I was
enamored with the philosophy behind it, so I generally spent
a few months on and off trying to learn it.
I was probably a decade ago at this point, so

(01:29:22):
I don't remember too much about it, but the connection
was there. And it's really because I've been exploring this
topic for this episode that I ended up going back
and dabbling in some of it again. I've learned recently
this is actually somewhat of a connection between Esperanto and anarchism,
so I stayed the time to explore the origins of Esperanto.

(01:29:43):
It's anarchist connections, it's flaws and its future. My name
is Andrew Sage, and I'm here once again.

Speaker 9 (01:29:50):
With its face James. Again, very excited for this one.

Speaker 11 (01:29:54):
Yes, you're familiar with Esperanto, right.

Speaker 9 (01:29:56):
Yeah, very familiar. I am.

Speaker 13 (01:29:58):
I wrote about it a little bit in my my
first book and my PhD dissertation. Also, the last living
person to participate in the Popular Olympics, which is what
I wrote my book about, was an Esperantist like. Part
of the project of the Popular Front in Catalonia was
to bring people to diverstory sport, and then Esperanto was
going to be this thing that would, as you mentioned,

(01:30:20):
like bridge the gaps between people.

Speaker 3 (01:30:21):
Right.

Speaker 11 (01:30:22):
Yes, it's a really inspiring project, and so I know
you're probably gonna know all this information, but I do
have to share it with the audience.

Speaker 13 (01:30:30):
Yeah, I'm excited. I never really did full run down Esperanto.
It disappeared, and I was like, holy shit, that's cool.
So I'm going to learn a lot.

Speaker 11 (01:30:38):
Sure.

Speaker 5 (01:30:38):
So.

Speaker 11 (01:30:39):
Esperanto was first constructed in a little booklet in eighteen
eighty seven by Polish Jewish ophthalmologist el El Salmonoff. According
to the Encyclopedia Britannica, the name itself comes from the
pseudonym he took on to publish the booklet. He called
himself doctorro Esperanto, Esperanto meaning one who hopes and hope

(01:31:00):
really analyzed the whole project. According to a BBC article
written by Jose Luis Benarredonde, he lived as a Polish
Jew in the multicultural Russian Empire in a time rife
with racial and national conflict. He was trying to promote
peace and understanding, and he saw an international language as
a ways to do that, with a flag of green

(01:31:20):
and white, the colors of hope and peace. For his efforts,
Zamenhoff himself was nominated fourteen times for the Nobel Peace Prize.
He genuine believed that if we all shared a common
second language, quote, education, ideals, convictions, aims would be the
same too, and all nations would be united in a

(01:31:40):
common brotherhood. End quote. Esperanto was created in a time
when modernism was on the rise and the idea of
rationality and science was being used to quote un quote
optimize the world. When it was featured in Paris's Exposition
Universal in nineteen hundred, the language caught on amongst the
French intelligensia, who saw it as more optimal than the

(01:32:03):
messy and the logical realm of natural languages. Because it
was so easy, all words and sentences being built from
sixteen basic rules that could fit on a paper, and
the language lacks the confusing exceptions and special rules of
other languages, it was once seen as the language of
the future. Esperanto made its full fledged public debut in

(01:32:25):
nineteen oh five when seven Hoff published The Fundamental Esperanto,
which laid down the basic principles of languages structure and formation.
Esperanto was designed to be simple, logical, and accessible, drawn
from the influence of Romance, Germanic and Slavic languages and
its construction. The orthography is phonetic, so all the words

(01:32:46):
are spelled as pronounced, and the grammar is so straightforward.
There's a consistent word ending for nouns. Pluralization adjectives and verbs.
But although simple, it can couldvey complexity. A lot of
suffixes you can add to give degrees of meaning, and
there's room for compound words too. It's European focus to

(01:33:07):
be the target of criticism later on, but it actually
ended up being picked up in some unusual places. Anyway,
Zamenhoff translated literature and wrote original verse, and after years
of effort, there were speakers to be found across Europe,
the Americas, China, and Japan.

Speaker 9 (01:33:26):
Interesting.

Speaker 11 (01:33:27):
By nineteen oh eight, the Universala Esperanto Associo was founded,
and it can now find members in eighty three countries worldwide.
Today there's also fifty national Esperanto associations and twenty two
international professional associations that use Esperanto. There's an annual World
Esperanto Congress and more than one hundred periodicals published in Esperanto.

(01:33:48):
Estimates range widely in terms of how many people speak
Esperanto today. They are apparently a handful of native speakers,
folks who were raised speaking Esperanto. Oh wow, yeah, it's
really really really cool. Yeah, but L two speakers are
somewhere between thirty eight thousand l to being you know,
second language speakers are somewhere between thirty eight thousand to

(01:34:10):
two million. According to Wilfith's article on Esperanto and anarchism.
There are tens of thousands of books in Esperanto and
several hundred, mostly swam periodicals that appear regularly. Yeah Party
a day passes about international meetings such as those of
specialized organizations, conferences, youth get togethers, seminars, group holidays, and

(01:34:31):
regional meetings. There are several radio stations that broadcast programs
in Esperanto, and Esperanto has even been used by couples
of different origins as a family language.

Speaker 9 (01:34:42):
It's cool, funny enough.

Speaker 11 (01:34:44):
As with every language, even an aspiring universal language, it
has since had its offshoots. I saw on Wikipedia that
nearly a year after Samonoff's creation of Esperanto, in eighteen
eighty eight, Dutch author J. Brachmann proposed a few changes
to language, like combining the end in for the adjective
and adverb, change in conjugations, introduce in more Latin roots,

(01:35:06):
getting rid of the diacritics, and so on. This language
would be called Mundolinko, and it was the first of
many offshoots from Esperanto proper. Even Zamenhoff would try to
reform the language at one point in eighteen ninety four,
but it was rejected by the Esperanto community and eventually
even himself. These reforms would later be used to develop Edo,

(01:35:26):
another attempt at universal language, with far less success. I
also learned theo Wikipedia there was an attempt to make
Esperanto more complex by introducing Cherokee components called Policepo, created
by a Native American activist named Billy ray Walden. Esperanto
speakers continue to play the language in all sorts of ways.

(01:35:47):
To this day. Esperanto is an evolved in language, and
Samonhoff himself is honored as part of this global Esperanto culture.
They celebrate his birthday the fifteenth of December, statues and
streets and plaques remembering him worldwide, and even an asteroid
there's his name. At one point, according to the BBC article,

(01:36:08):
there was an effort to establish an Esperanto speaking land
called ami Kejo, which would have been a three point
five square kilometer territory between the Netlands, Germany and France. Yeah. Nice,
three point five square kilometers.

Speaker 13 (01:36:23):
Yeah, not huge, Yeah, it's like how big? Well, I know,
we've got a few of those, like little ones in Europe,
you know.

Speaker 11 (01:36:30):
Yeah, a couple of micro estates. It could have been
another micro state, but the idea was very quickly squashed
following World War One.

Speaker 9 (01:36:36):
Yeah, I know. This senatee.

Speaker 13 (01:36:39):
The Spanish Anarchosynthicalist Union was like in its first congress,
like its foundational Congress. I supposed they were like, and
everyone has to everyone should try and learn Esperanto, like
that was one of their like the things that at
the foundation of what became probably the most powerful anarchist
movement the world's ever seen.

Speaker 9 (01:36:57):
They were like, also, this is a big thing.

Speaker 11 (01:36:59):
Yeah, yeah, Esperanto is really huge in the anarchist movement
at a certain point.

Speaker 9 (01:37:04):
Yeah.

Speaker 11 (01:37:05):
But we're going to get to those connections soon enough.
I want to bring up this other interesting story. There
was actually an effort by esperantists, including a delegate from Iran,

(01:37:26):
to get the language to become the official language of
the League of Nations. But take one guess as to
which country block that effort.

Speaker 9 (01:37:36):
Was it one of the anglophone countries? No, oh, wow,
the French.

Speaker 11 (01:37:41):
It was the French.

Speaker 13 (01:37:42):
Yeah, there is not a state more invested in its
language than France. Indeed, they have laws I think about,
like broadcasting music and dubbing films and things.

Speaker 11 (01:37:54):
Yeah, the French government seemingly hated Esperanto. At least according
to the article on imp of the Diverse blog site,
they blocked its study in universities and public schools, and
as the article quotes the opponents directly quote. On September tenth,
nineteen twenty two, the New York Tribune ran a translation

(01:38:15):
of a piece by the editor in chief of Limatin,
Stefan Lausanne. Miss Lasan spent half his editorial writing about Esperanto.
And I'm not going to do a French accent for
this section, but just imagine, like the most French Frenchman
reading this, that Finns or Albanians have fevered such a
proper ganda is comprehensible. Their dialect has no chance of

(01:38:40):
imposing itself on the universe. They need a second language
just as well Esperanto as any other. But that French
people or English or Germans could have let themselves be
allured by this linguistic bolsheviser that is far more extraordinary.
It is nevertheless a fact that Esperando, which was born

(01:39:01):
twenty five years ago and ought to have died through ridicule,
continues to have disciples in Europe. Every year in a
different capital they hold a congress at which they are
not very numerous, but where they make a great noise.
They get so excited that quite recently the Minister of
Public Instruction had to address a circular to all the
French educational resorts to warn them against the danger of Esperanto.

(01:39:27):
An article in the Washington Herald on that same day
explained the danger, at least according to the Ministry of
Public Instruction. The reason for this order, according to Sittin
school teachers, is that teaching of a language as easy
as Esperanto endangers the existence of the French language and
thus the national solidarity of the country. They contend that

(01:39:47):
children will nationally take to an easy language as Esperanto,
and in that time French and English would perish, and
that the literary standard of the world would be debased. Furthermore,
they argue that a national language plays a predominant part
in maintaining national unity, and points to Poland and the
Rain as examples. Esperanto is an artificial language of no

(01:40:08):
real merit right to one professor, it has no very
definite origin and what it aims to draw the scattered
people of the world together, does it doth rather tend
to de nationalization? End quote?

Speaker 13 (01:40:20):
They're not wrong, Like France is the language if you
read like a peasants into Frenchman is kind of the
classic work on like French nationalization. But like, in order
to make people French, they did have to suppress like
Basque and Breton and Catalan and other languages, right, and
make people go to schools where they learned French and
conceived of themselves as French.

Speaker 9 (01:40:41):
As a result of that.

Speaker 11 (01:40:42):
Yeah, their imposition of DaShan identity was perhaps among the
most successful in the world. Yeah, in terms of its
earliness and its consistent enforcement.

Speaker 13 (01:40:54):
It shows like nations are always projects of the bourgeoisie, right, Like,
at least I would argue that, and so a lot
of other people. But like the French example is one
where we can see it more clearly than others. Like
it's a state and specifically like a certain class within
the state project to enforce and continue to perpetuate this

(01:41:15):
narrative of nation.

Speaker 11 (01:41:17):
And you know, they weren't the only enemies of Esperanto
and do you know that's saying judged me by my enemies?

Speaker 9 (01:41:26):
Yeah? Who else?

Speaker 11 (01:41:26):
We got Nazi Germany, Francoist Spain, and the Soviet Union
also heated.

Speaker 9 (01:41:33):
Esperanto gets cooler with everyone.

Speaker 11 (01:41:35):
The Nazis they were nationalists, and the Zavenhoff was Jewish.
So his family was actually targeted and the language was banned,
and Esperantis were targeted and put in camps during the Holocaust,
which is really tragic.

Speaker 9 (01:41:49):
Yeah, pretty fucked.

Speaker 11 (01:41:50):
Yeah, his whole family was heavily targeted by Nati Germany.
Franco associated Esperanto with anti nationalism and anarchism, which true.

Speaker 9 (01:42:01):
Yeah, he wasn't wrong, So it.

Speaker 11 (01:42:03):
Was targeted for a while. Yeah, and the Soviets, while
originally recognizing Esperantists, eventually reversed that policy under Stalin during
the Great Purge and executed exiled or gulagd Esperantists. And
as you can imagine, all that repression all at once
kind of killed Esperanto's momentum. Today, despite its goal of

(01:42:27):
being a truly international language, Esperanto's global reach remains une fun.
While it has made some strides in recent years, it's
still underrepresented in many parts of Africa and Asia. The
majority of Esperanto speakers today are in Europe. Those development
outside of Europe deserves some attention, as Esperanto managed to
levermark in China, Iran, Togo and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

(01:42:51):
But the response to Esperanto historically you should give you
an indication as to how anarchists must have felt about Esperanto.
As an internationalist or anti nationalist movement. Anarchism was very
supportive of the Esperanto project won. Running through the timeline
could to see Wilfirth's Esperanto and Anarchism. One of the
earliest anarchist Esperanto groups was founded in Stockholm in nineteen

(01:43:12):
oh five. The same year, the anarchist Paul up with
a Lot founded the monthly magazine Esperanto. Similar groups soon
emerged in Bulgaria, China and other countries. In nineteen oh six,
anarchists anarchist Sinicolis founded an international association Paco Libreco Peace Freedom,
which published the Internacia Socia Review. By nineteen ten, Paco

(01:43:35):
Libreco merged with Esperantista Labarri Staro to form Liberiga Stillo
star Liberation, strengthening anarchist Esperanto networks. The nineteen oh seven
International Anarchist Congress in Amsterdam formally addressed the role of
Esperanto in international communication. Subsequent anarchist congresses continue to pass
resolutions advocating for Esperanto's use within the movement. By nineteen fourteen,

(01:43:58):
these anarchist esperantist organizations had published extensive revolutionary literature, including
anarchist texts in Esperanto. Around this time, correspondence between European
and Japanese anarchists became more active, facilitated by Esperanto. In Prague,
Eugene Adam proposed the formation of Senassa Associo Tutmunda the

(01:44:19):
SAT or the World in National Association. Unlike other Esperanto associations,
SAT rejected nationalism wholesale and sought to create a transnational
class conscious workers movement. To quote why is there an
Esperanto Workers Movement by Gary Michel, SAT was not meant
to usurp the role of political parties by engaging in

(01:44:41):
political struggles directly, but was to be a cultural association
engaged in workers education, one that would help to break
down national and ethnic barriers between workers by involving them
in practical collective activity, bringing workers into contact, freeing them
from the shackles of nationalism. SAT's idea, and especially the
ideas of its a nationalist faction, were an early statement

(01:45:04):
of an idea that has more recently come to be
known as globalization from below. So in August nineteen twenty one,
seventy nine workers from fifteen countries gathered in Prague to
formally established SAT. By nineteen twenty nine to nineteen thirty
SAT had grown to six five hundred and twenty four
members across forty two countries, reaching its peak influence. The

(01:45:27):
use of Esperanto flourished in German workers' movements between nineteen
twenty and nineteen thirty three. By nineteen thirty two, the
German Workers Esperanto League had four thousand members, leading to
Esperanto being called the Workers Latin. But as you can imagine,
this was not to last. By the time Hitler came
into power. The Scientific Anarchist Library of the International Language

(01:45:49):
or ISAB, was founded in the USSR in nineteen twenty three,
published in anarchist works by Kropotkin and Ann Borivoi in Esperanto.
This also would not last. The Great Purge The Berlin
group of anarchist cyniclist esperantists created the Second Congress of
the International Workers Association in Amsterdam in nineteen twenty five
and reported that Esperanto had become so integrated into their

(01:46:10):
movement that an international libertarian Esperantist organization had formed. This
likely referred to the TLEs the World League of Steepless Esperantists,
which later merged with SAT. Esperanto was also popping off
amongst anarchists and socialists in Korea, China, and Japan. Liushifu,
a key figure in Chinese anarchism, began publishing La Voucho

(01:46:33):
de la Popolo, The Voice of the People in nineteen thirteen,
the first anarchist periodical in China. His work relied heavily
on information from Internacia Socia Review and helped popularize esperanto
in China. Japanese anarchists and socialists, as I mentioned, were
among the earliest esperantists in the country, but faced heavy
persecution and sadly between imperial Japan, Francoist Spain, Nazi Germany,

(01:46:58):
and Stalinist Russia. The rise of tatalitarian regimes lead into
World War II, largely suppressed the anarchist esperanto movement. After
the war, the Paris Anarchist Esperanto group was the first
to resume organized work, launching the publication sen Santano in
nineteen forty six. Most anarchist Esperantists have since been organized

(01:47:18):
within SAT, with an anarchist faction maintaining its autonomy. In
nineteen sixty nine, this faction began publishing the Liberal Sana Bultano,
later a day in the Liberate Sana Liguillo. By nineteen
ninety seven, SAT membership had dwindled to fewer than fifteen
hundred members. The initial radical vision of SAT was weakened

(01:47:39):
by political shifts and the growing dominance of English as
a global lingua franca. Daily separation between SAT and mainstream
Esperanto organizations was a response to bourgeois political neutrality, but
it also contributed to its marginalization, and today the anarchist
esperanto movement exists largely as a niche within SAT. So

(01:48:08):
what can we say about the role of Esperanto today. Well.
One of the more interesting currents I found in the
esperanto community mentioned by Firth is Raumismo, a philosophy named
after the Finnish city of Rauma, where a youth congress
in nineteen eighty helped define this approach. Braumismo views Esperanto

(01:48:28):
speakers as a kind of linguistic diaspora, a cultural group
bound together by a shared language rather than a national identity.
Instead of focusing on making Esperanto a universal second language,
raumistoge embraced it as just one language among many, valuing
its use in literature, culture and everyday communication without any

(01:48:48):
grand ideological ambitions. But it's possible Esperanto who can still
play a role in facilities in exchange and collaboration between
people of different linguistic backgrounds. A German anarchist once lamented
the barrier international understanding quoted in food article. More or
less in isolation from one another, we work and fight
without engaging in exchange about our victories and defeats, and

(01:49:10):
with thoughts supporting and encouraging one another. Intensifying contact above
the regional level with people having similar ideas and aims
should be an important component of our work in order
to make effective active solidarity possible quote. And that's the trouble.
Even today. Linguistic barriers hinder international cooperation groups struggle to
maintain foreign language correspondence, organize multilingual meetings, or find interpreters. Instead,

(01:49:36):
communication tends to rely on chance. You know, someone in
a group happens to speak a certain language that determines
who they can connect with. But when those key individuals
move on, those connections can have falling apart. So I
get the appeal, I mean, wouldn't it be beneficial for
these movements and for any interest group working across language barriers,
to have a relatively easy to learn, politically neutral means

(01:49:58):
of communication. Major languages like English, Spanish or French don't
fully solve the problem, as they come with historical baggage
and imbalances influency levels. Esperanto, on the other hand, provides
a more equitable solution because everybody is from this starts
and from the same point. Since it isn't tied to
any one nation, it avoids the poodynamics that arise when

(01:50:20):
non native speakers must conformed to the linguistic norms of
dominant cultures. Unlike English, which often privileges native speakers and
places others as perpetual learners, Esperanto fosters a more level
playin field. English is treated like a global lingua franca
right now, But a lot of people leave school without
ever developing an affluency to navigate an English dominated world,

(01:50:43):
and English is not the easiest language to learn. Esperanto,
regardless of weather ever, becomes a global standard, offers an
alternative path. It can help people overcome language learning anxieties,
as particularly those who feel disempowered by educational systems, and
it can inspire an interest in language itself. If you've

(01:51:05):
ever met an Esperanto speaker, you know that they are
very passionate about linguistics. More often than not, many of
the speakers go on to study linguistics, language politics, or
even lesser known languages. It's also a great way to
develop translation skills in a friendly, cooperative environment. For monolingual
English speakers, using Esperanto can be an eye open and experience.

(01:51:29):
It puts them the shoes of those who never got
to rely on their native language in international settings. Rather
than view an Esperanto as a competitor to other languages,
perhaps a more productive approach is to see it as
a tool for promoting multi lingualism, cultural exchange, and a
more cosmopolitan mindset within the Esperanto speaking in the community.
Opinions on its future vary widely, but one thing is clear.

(01:51:53):
The question of how we communicate across linguistic divides is
still very much alive, and Esperanto offers but possible answer. However,
as I alluded to Ilia, Esperanto is not without its critiques.
As covered by Firth, Let's start with one of the
most frequent critiques. Esperanto is an artificial language. Unlike the

(01:52:14):
so called natural languages, which evolved organically over time, Esperanto
was deliberately constructed. But here's the thing. Since the rise
of the nation state, the line between natural and artificial
languages has become increasingly blurry. Many national languages, like standard
German or Standard French, have been shaped by deliberate standardization,

(01:52:35):
legal regulations, and media influence. In that sense, every language
is to some degree engineered. Authors, storytellers, and ordinary speakers
continuously influenced language development, meaning that Esperanto is not as different.
After all, it does continue to evolve. And here's where
I think James Scott had a rather negative characterization of

(01:52:57):
Esperanto as a purely high modess endeavor, as though all
esperandos sought to make Esperanto, the official international language in
se Meca State. He claims that Esperanto was created to
replace the dialects and vernaculars of Europe, but such was
never the case. It was always meant to be a
language used to facilitate communication. There was more than one

(01:53:18):
motivation of Esperando's use, and boil in such an exercise
and human creativity, and attempted a connection down to just
that status focus to me seems needlessly reductive. He also
calls it quote an exceptionally thin language without any of
the resonances, connotations, ready metaphors, literatures, oral histories, idioms, and
traditions of practical use that any social embedded language already

(01:53:40):
had end quote, which may be true when it began,
but it's certainly not true now with over a century
of use and evolution.

Speaker 6 (01:53:49):
Yeah.

Speaker 11 (01:53:51):
His analogies between Esperanto and plant cities also missed the
mark for me, as Esperanto has clearly operated as a
self organized and grassroots move on for most of its
history and has never really received the back end of
states or their enforcement.

Speaker 13 (01:54:06):
It's a weird angle from Scott because normally he'd advocate
for like what he calls like the anarchist squint right like,
and seeing history through a perspective of anarchistm I guess,
like an anarchist lens. And I feel like, exactly this
is very applicable with Esperanto, the only language which isn't
inherently tied to any state or nation or ethnicity.

Speaker 11 (01:54:28):
Exactly when I saw that, I remember reading seeing like
the State some years ago, and I've already the lost
st to for that. But in doing the research for this,
I ended up, you know, stumbling upon it again and
I was like, hm, after reading the history, it's like
this wasn't quite accurate.

Speaker 13 (01:54:44):
Yeah, yeah, that's a bum it. Yeah, generally like Scott
me as well. Yeah, recently some listeners very kindly, James's
got passed away out of this knit as I'm sure
you know, I do, yes, But his library was donated
to a local second hand bookshop and some folks that
I asked online and they went and got me some
books and sent them, which was really kind. So I

(01:55:05):
have some of his books now.

Speaker 11 (01:55:07):
Oh that's nice.

Speaker 4 (01:55:08):
Yeah.

Speaker 11 (01:55:09):
There's another common claim about Esperanto, which is that it's eurocentric,
right and linguistically. There's some truth to this Esperanto originated
in Eastern Europe, and it still carries structural elements to example,
Indo European languages. The majority of Esperanto speakers today are
European and its vocabulary is largely drawn from European languages. However,

(01:55:31):
critics who make this argument often suggest alternatives like English
or Spanish languages that are just as if not more,
Eurocentric in the historical and political reach. Esperanto, in contrast,
has evolved through influence from non European languages as well,
particularly through its development in China and Japan. It's a
glassenative word formation, a feature more common in languages like

(01:55:53):
Twokish or Japanese and what some call the Hungarian period
of Esperanto's history. So while Esperanto soo has European roots,
it's global evolution challenges the idea that it is exclusively
European in character. Another critique is that Esperanto is sexist.
The argument goes that because feminine forms are typically created

(01:56:14):
by adding in to a base form like Laboristo worker
become a Labristino female worker, the language assumes masculinity as
a default, and while this is a valid concern, Esperanto
differs from any European languages in a key way. It
is not assigned grammatical gender to inanimate objects. A chair
isn't arbitrarily feminine like in French, or masculine like in German. However,

(01:56:38):
in practice, gender bias can still creep in the basic
form of noun is often assumed to be masculine, even
though Esperanto allows for explicitly male forms as well. Like
in any language, reducing linguistic sexism in Esperanto requires conscious
effort in how people actually use it.

Speaker 9 (01:56:56):
Yeah, that's an interesting one.

Speaker 13 (01:56:58):
Like we see this in Spanish too, right, like with
attempts to create like gender neutral forms the presumptive mask
then or if you're addressing a mixed gender group then
you would use the masculine. But like people who are
first language Spanish speakers can correct me. I'm sure you
will on the subreddit if you want to. So, like
when I hear in English language media it's referred to

(01:57:19):
as latin x but like that's kind of a word
that I struggle to say in Spanish, like it Latin
ekie or like is it latiniques?

Speaker 9 (01:57:27):
And so there's this very kind of.

Speaker 13 (01:57:29):
Clumsy gender neutral form, which seems to be easier to
say in English and Spanish.

Speaker 11 (01:57:35):
Yeah, I've seen Latin used in some circles.

Speaker 9 (01:57:39):
Yeah, Latine, Latine.

Speaker 14 (01:57:41):
Yeah.

Speaker 13 (01:57:42):
When I speak to non binary people in Spanish, that's
what they prefer to use. Of this relatively small sample size,
given that there are probably millions of non binary Spanish
speaking people, I haven't obviously spoken to all or most
of them, but like, it's very interesting to see this.
Like outside critique of the language seems to also ignore
an inside movement within people who are Spanish first language

(01:58:04):
speakers to create a organic, like gender neutral form, yeah,
which could also happen in any language, right, Like, just
because Esperanto has a certain form doesn't mean that people
within that language who don't feel represented by them couldn't
create forms within that language better represent them exactly. And
it's easier because you don't have like a government telling

(01:58:25):
you you can't use it or whatever exactly exactly.

Speaker 11 (01:58:28):
Esperanto is and continues to be a grassroots movement, and
that has actually been a subject of critique for some.
You know, perhaps one of the biggest critiques for Esperando
is that it never achieved its original goal of becoming
a universal second language. Zamenhoffit's created envisioned the world with
Esperanto would bridge linguistic divides, but for many learner language

(01:58:49):
that relatively few people spoke simply wasn't practical. But the
rise of the Internet changed the game for Esperanto. What
was once difficult to learn and use daily has become
far more accessible. For example, Esperanto is actually one of
the most overrepresented languages on the Internet. The Esperanto Wikipedia
has around two hundred and forty thousand articles, putting it

(01:59:11):
in the same league as languages spoken by tens of
millions of people, like Turkish and Korean. Google and Facebook
have offered Esperanto versions of their platforms for years, and
language learning services like due Lingo have helped introduce it
to a new generation of learners like myself. In fact,
the people who developed Esperanto courses for due Lingo did
so voluntarily, simply because they believed in the languages potential.

(01:59:35):
Esperanto has fostered a unique online community, and there's even
a free hospitality network called Pasporta Servo where Esperanto speakers
can stay with each other around the world, no money required,
just a shared language and a common philosophy of global connection.
Not everyone learns Esperanto for the same reasons. Some people

(01:59:55):
seek intellectual challenge, some want a sense of unique community,
and others are drawn to its political neutrality. As communications
lecturer Sara Marino points out in the BBC article, people
engage in Esperanto for many different motivations, whether it's personal fulfillment,
social inclusion, civic engagement, or just the simple joy of
learning a new language. It's important and not to reduce

(02:00:19):
Esperanto learners to a stereotype. Their reasons for participating are
as diverse as the language itself. So where does Esperanto
stand today? It may never replace English as the global
lingui franca, but perhaps there was never the point. Instead,
it serves as a tool for promoting bilingualism, foster and

(02:00:39):
cross cultural connections, and encouraging people to think differently about
language itself. And I think that is worthy of its
own reward. That's what I have for today, or power
to all the people. Peace.

Speaker 3 (02:01:16):
This is it could happen here. Executive Disorder our weekly
newscast covering what's happening in the White House, the crumbling world,
and what it means for you. I'm Garrison Davis. Today
I'm joined by Mia Wong, James Stout, and Robert Evans.
This week we're covering the week of April third to
April ninth. We have recovered from the liberation day, fully liberated,

(02:01:39):
and now the economy is back to normal.

Speaker 2 (02:01:42):
Right, Yes, everything's really good. Everyone's four oh one k's
have been normal and stable and stable and stable. That's
what's important.

Speaker 9 (02:01:54):
Just line go up.

Speaker 2 (02:01:55):
The economy runs from stability. I mean one of the
things the line did was go up. So, yeah, the
line's gone. Why should anyone complain? Yeah, line's going in
a few different directions this week. Among the different directions
the line went up, was you know a portion of
that time.

Speaker 9 (02:02:13):
Yes, yeah.

Speaker 13 (02:02:14):
A direction that hasn't gone is left. I guess which
you know we're waiting for that one.

Speaker 2 (02:02:18):
And related news, a dead cat can bounce. I don't
know why they picked the cat for the dead animal
to bounce to refer to that stock market there.

Speaker 13 (02:02:27):
But I think this is a term that's new to Garrison,
just judging by the facial expression.

Speaker 9 (02:02:31):
Yeah, you don't know what that is.

Speaker 2 (02:02:34):
So basically, when when a stock price for a company
or whatever collapses right, there will generally be it will
straight a line down and then it will bump back
up and it will look like it's rallying. But this
isn't generally a rally. What it is is that when
people like short a stock, there's a point at which
they have to like buy back the share like shares,

(02:02:57):
and that artificially inflates it briefly, but for it then
begins to decline again. So it's not a real it's
the result of how short selling works that there has
to be this thing that makes it temporarily look like
it's rallying, but that that's really not what's happening.

Speaker 3 (02:03:10):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm familiar with this concept.

Speaker 9 (02:03:13):
And they call it a dead cat. It's referred to
as a dead cat bounce.

Speaker 11 (02:03:16):
Yeh.

Speaker 2 (02:03:16):
I don't know why it's referred to as a dead
cat bounce, but it is.

Speaker 3 (02:03:20):
Brocas and not normal people. Then why these these are
Wall Street guys.

Speaker 7 (02:03:25):
One of them has probably done it, like that's that's
probably why it's called that.

Speaker 2 (02:03:29):
Like, Yeah, I've thrown a lot of corpses at a
lot of things and they don't really bounce.

Speaker 3 (02:03:34):
Speaking of corpses, Robert, you have some exciting news on
the army.

Speaker 9 (02:03:39):
Pronounce Col Garrison.

Speaker 2 (02:03:41):
Yes, Yes, the good news is the army is going
to be more lethal and efficient than ever before, which
President Trump announced while sitting in the White House next
to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin net and Yahoo, who had
to take roughly at twice the length of trip he
normally has to take to go here because so many
countries that he would normally fly over or stop in

(02:04:03):
have arrest warrants out for him for all of the
war crimes. We love to see it, but you know,
it's not about the journey. It's about you know, the
people you journey too. And Netanyahoo met with Trump, you know,
someone whom he clearly feels very safe, and you know,
I dare I say loving with and the two of

(02:04:23):
them shared the most intimate bond that two elderly men
who have committed war crimes can share, which is announcing
a record budget for the United States military of one
trillion dollars. Well, I should say, Trump stated it would
be in the vicinity of one trillion dollars. Now, does
that mean possibly that very little is changing about the
military budget? Yes, it does, and we'll get to that

(02:04:46):
in a second, hag Seth, our secretary of Defense, made
a post on Twitter right after saying Trump is rebuilding
our military and fast. He also really bragged about that
trillion dollar amount and said, ps, we intend to spend
every tax pay dollar wisely on lethality and readiness.

Speaker 9 (02:05:03):
Now here's the thing. Trillion dollars shitload of money.

Speaker 2 (02:05:06):
Current amount of funding allocated to national defense programs eight
hundred and ninety two billion dollars, so trillion dollars about
a ten percent bump right for you know, the national
defense programs. But it's actually unclear the way in which
he phrased things and the way in which we like
talk about the funding for national security, this could mean

(02:05:27):
that basically the military will have pretty much the same,
you know, something of an increase but not a mass,
not really a significant difference from what it has now,
and there will be more money into other defense related programs.
So this is not like as massive a thing as
it might necessarily sound like. I think one thing that's
sort of significant here is like how this comports with

(02:05:50):
the way a lot of the folks and what we'll
call the shit had left had talked about where there
was this discussion that Trump's actually going to be you know,
bad for imperialism and the world machine. And you know,
there was even talk as of a couple of months
ago that they were going to like half the Pentagon budget,
like you know, you know all these whatever else happens,
you know, it's worth it if the military budget comes

(02:06:10):
down in this you know, imperial juggernaut of hell gets
finally neutered. And just all of those people are always wrong.
They were always going to just make the army bigger.
They were always going to put more money in defense.
They were always going to put more money into the
hands of defense contractors. Like anyone who knows anything about
these people or about how Republicans have worked, knew that

(02:06:32):
was going to happen. There was never any chance that
they were going to cut the actual amount of money.
Now they're probably going to cut the number of people
in the military because despite what heck Seth said, there's
a lot of evidence that a shitload of this is
going to go towards modernization, and in fact, armed services,
each branch is being our arm services are all being
asked to cut about eight percent of their individual budgets

(02:06:53):
in order to put money into modernization. Efforts, which obviously
any military needs to regularly modernize different systems. But this
is also a thing where if your country is run
entirely by grifters and conman trying to shotgun money to
their political supporters who have a lot of money in
different defense companies, what this means to me is you

(02:07:13):
are probably going to see them continue to trim numbers
of actual troops and put more money into bullshit that
gets a lot of money to contractors. Yeah, that is
my expectation. That is what I see happening. More than
anything here, we'll see, but I think a lot of
this additional money is going to go towards buying shit

(02:07:34):
that may or may not be useful. But the primary
purpose of putting the money into that shit is because
somebody who is somebody gets a veig.

Speaker 6 (02:07:41):
Yeah.

Speaker 13 (02:07:41):
I mean, if we look at fascism as a concept too,
it kind of it has troubled relationship with modernity, but
one of the things it likes to do is flex
its new little weapon systems and toys. And we're going
to see some guys posing with some weapon systems that
probably never get used, right, like probably some AI targeting
shit stuff like that.

Speaker 9 (02:07:59):
Yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah, it's does said.

Speaker 3 (02:08:02):
Yeah, well, we got to find some way to reallocate
the alleged one and fifty billion dollars in DOGE cuts,
which is certainly a fake number, absolutely a fake. We
might as well send over two hundred billion more to
the Defense Department.

Speaker 2 (02:08:18):
Based on early IRS filings, there's something like half a
trillion dollars that we might be losing in tax income
this year. So you know that I don't think we're
doing great. I should also know to hear a big
part of the money that they're going to get for
modernizations coming from cutting fifty to sixty thousand civilian jobs,

(02:08:40):
many of whom are veterans, but also just in terms
of like military readiness, guys like hag Seth, who's primarily
a push up dude, and people who don't know anything
about the military see it as like, well, you know,
the military, you just want as many door kickers as
you possibly can, and you actually need very few of
those guys. Would need a lot of is guys that
can move things to different places and fix things when

(02:09:03):
they break, and do a lot of the paperwork that's
necessary to make both of those things possible, which is
why you need those jobs, and cutting a shitload of
them is not likely to increase readiness. It's also worth
noting that the US Army is looking at a force
reduction of up to ninety thousand active duty soldiers. This
is based on an article from April fourth, which is

(02:09:24):
a significant reduction, and again like, we're not.

Speaker 3 (02:09:27):
Is that real?

Speaker 9 (02:09:28):
Yes?

Speaker 3 (02:09:29):
Why why are they doing a ninety percent reduction?

Speaker 2 (02:09:31):
In part because it's very hard for them to find
new active duty soldiers. It is not easy to get
people to do this, and it is not the priority
of anybody in charge of anything to actually get more soldiers.
The priority is to put more money into systems AI
and all this shit. Like, I don't think they have
a vested interest in actually helping with that.

Speaker 3 (02:09:52):
How are we going to take Greenland with drones?

Speaker 12 (02:09:55):
When do we do it?

Speaker 8 (02:09:56):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (02:09:56):
Probably?

Speaker 9 (02:09:57):
I mean there's not a lot of peace.

Speaker 3 (02:09:58):
Probably, how we're going to do it?

Speaker 2 (02:10:00):
A lot of people in Greenland Garrison.

Speaker 3 (02:10:03):
Excited for the naval blockade of Greenland. Yeah, kick off
in about two months.

Speaker 2 (02:10:09):
Yeah, it's it's gonna be great. Anyway, they're gonna make
part of why I think they feel confident trying to
make you know they're calling this making the army smaller
and more agile, is because Trump is doing his best
to make friends with Russia and we're certainly not going
to whatever happens with Taiwan, the US military is not
going to be involved.

Speaker 9 (02:10:30):
Yeah. Yeah, we ain't gonna go back for them.

Speaker 2 (02:10:32):
You know, his attitude is like, what do we need
this for? We need an agile military that we can
use to fuck with Greenland and Panama. Like that's that's
what we're going to be doing.

Speaker 13 (02:10:41):
Two very similar biomes where like everything is very similar.

Speaker 2 (02:10:45):
Yeah, and there's a lot of people like you know,
the folks running Palanteer who have an increasing amount of
say in what happens to the military, and you know
what Trump does, who are basically advocating for, Like we're
going to have this whole kill chain automated soon. We
barely need people. You can't trust people, you know how
untrustworthy your generals have proved. Donald Cool.

Speaker 3 (02:11:05):
Well, I'm excited for some more Arctic camo surplus to
hit the market once yeah, Greenland situation is resolved.

Speaker 13 (02:11:14):
I'm excited to be fucking around wondering who a drone's
going to kill next. That has been a really life
affirming experience for me, and I'm excited to have it
again soon.

Speaker 9 (02:11:24):
It's going to be great.

Speaker 13 (02:11:26):
Robbie, you mentioned the IRS and IRS maybe maybe get
less money, So I'm going to talk a little bit
about the IRS.

Speaker 9 (02:11:32):
I guess let's let's start with like a little summary
of this week immigration news. This week child Rachik, who
is the person who runs libs of TikTok Yeah, joined
Ice on a raid.

Speaker 2 (02:11:42):
She is, shall we say, the uh Julius striker of
our modern fashions.

Speaker 13 (02:11:48):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I guess you're right.

Speaker 2 (02:11:53):
Damn, sorry, I'm just no. I mean, like, I wasn't
joking about that. That's the most direct comparison that.

Speaker 9 (02:11:59):
Yeah.

Speaker 13 (02:11:59):
Sorry, I just took a moment to reflect on that,
and it's not a great thing to reflect on.

Speaker 2 (02:12:03):
It's really not.

Speaker 5 (02:12:04):
Now.

Speaker 2 (02:12:04):
It doesn't make me feel good.

Speaker 7 (02:12:06):
Yeah, No.

Speaker 13 (02:12:06):
Other things that don't make me feel good are the
sixteen Minutes report is seventy five percent of people since
SECO had no criminal conviction, which seems to leave open
the possibility of there being a crime for which it
will be okay to be sent to a foreign goo
lag with no hope of return. Which I don't believe
is the case. Like, yeah, I'm very disappointed at any
reporting which focuses on guilt, as if one could ever

(02:12:27):
be guilty of anything which would make this justifiable, you can't.
The government is also soliciting for proposals this week to
massively increase migrant detention, which again is not surprising, right,
we talked about this last November, but it's also not great.
But where I want to focus today is on the
IRS and the Abbudegorgatia case we spoke about last week.

(02:12:48):
So well, it's see inter reporting that the IRS has
said it will hand over information of people who are
subject to criminal investigation to DHS or ICE, right, ICE
being under DHS. They so, they say they What happened
here is that if part of court filings, a memorandum
of understanding between ICE and the IRS was released in
the MoU or in the court filing. Actually they cite

(02:13:10):
an offense of failure to depart the United States after
being ordered removed. So essentially anyone who they're saying like,
you have to go right, you know that they could
they could then ask for their tax return information. Exactly
what the IRS will disclose to ICE is covered by
a big black reaction in the court documents, so we

(02:13:32):
don't know that the entiremus submitted, but like there's significant
reactions in it, ICE has to hand One thing that's
not redacted is that ICE has to hand over the
person's name, address, and the crime of which they're for
which they're investigating, and it has to be a non
tax crime.

Speaker 9 (02:13:47):
Not that that matter is Huguely.

Speaker 13 (02:13:49):
This is more limited than a lot of people have feared,
and it's more limited than a lot of the reporting
I've seen. It's possible that there's something else going on.
I saw the acting director in ICE was going to
quit over this that this morning. But the fact that
they have to have their address suggests that they couldn't
locate them using the tax return form, right, which is
a good thing, Like it is one last step towards

(02:14:11):
vacues from I guess. I'm also aware of ICE having
memorandums of understanding with other agencies to include hud housing
and urban development. All of this is going to reduce
the amount that migrant communities engage with the federal government
to any degree. Right, contrary to what you might have heard,
undocupateed to people do tend to pay their taxes. It's

(02:14:32):
actually relatively rare for them not to do that, and
this might change if the RS starts handing over people's
tax return and information to ICE. Right, Obviously, if HUD
starts handing over people's information, that's going to lead to
people not being as willing to take housing benefits, more
people landing up living on the street.

Speaker 11 (02:14:47):
Right.

Speaker 13 (02:14:48):
On the other hand, Houston City and Texas for those
you who aren't familiar, Have I pronounced that right, Robert Tehouse, Yeah,
I thought it was. I wasn't sure if it was Houston.
Houston House, so understood it.

Speaker 2 (02:15:01):
It's a place we just don't go. That's that's that's
how I refer to Houston.

Speaker 9 (02:15:05):
Okay, beautiful.

Speaker 13 (02:15:06):
So this Texas No Men's Land town has turned over
information including addresses and license paids for people charged with
driving without a license, even though some of this under
Texas law is supposed to remain confidential.

Speaker 9 (02:15:18):
So that's great.

Speaker 13 (02:15:19):
They are also now making immigration detentions at regular traffic stops.
Some aware of one incident where a man was arrested
after being stopped for a cracked windscreen and he's now
an ICE detention so that there was I presumably an
ICE warrant for this person that the Houston police then
acted upon.

Speaker 3 (02:15:36):
I mean, and this is this can just be racial profiling, right,
Like if they're going to just pull someone over and
then send them to ICE, like they're just going to
start pulling over as many people that they don't want
to be in Houston.

Speaker 13 (02:15:47):
Yeah, Like we already know that police departments have a
tendency to pull over people who aren't white more often, right,
and then like if you give them this, that's just
going to exacerbate that further. Again, it's also going to
stop my communities interacting with the police in any way.

Speaker 9 (02:16:03):
Right.

Speaker 13 (02:16:03):
This obviously has look not a big police fan, but
like in cases like domestic violence, right, sometimes people need
to go to the police to be safe, and they're
not going to do so. They think that means they
or people they love will be deported and this will
have negative consequences, and specifically in cases like domestic violence.
And we know this, there is plenty of evidence for this. Nonetheless,

(02:16:24):
this is continuing anyway. What's also continuing is our obligation
to pivot to acts, which we should do.

Speaker 12 (02:16:30):
Now, Okay, we are back we're.

Speaker 13 (02:16:43):
Back and it's time to talk about the Supreme Court.
We have to, Yes, yes, we do, Garython, because it's
the biggest court. It's the big one, and they're big
crushing it all week, just just sending down decisions. The
two big ones I guess I want to talk about
are a five to four ruling that it was vacating

(02:17:05):
Bosberg's Troro. Bosberg being the judge who had initially told
the United States government that had to stop sending people
to set court right, and then the US had ignored
Boseburg and done it anyway, and then they had this
whole court case about how they hadn't ignored him and
anyway it was a secret. Even though we're tweeting it,
you can go back a couple of eds and hear
about that. In this decision, the Court was unanimous in

(02:17:27):
asserting that people removed under the Alien Enemies Act do
have a right to due process, but that they have
to bring a habeas petition. So like the reason they
vacated to tro was that the case shouldn't have gone
to Bosburg right, that they should have bought this habeas petition.
In practice, that's going to be very hard given the
fact that many migrants, even under the current system, even

(02:17:47):
under Biden, most migrantsh didn't speak English didn't have access
to legal representation, so this ruling is still pretty bad.
The only thing that people in the court case wanted
to stop was their rendition to El Salvador, right. It
wasn't even like opposed to other forms of removal. It
was specific to this El Salbador situation. The court also

(02:18:08):
sort of cited criminal cases as precedent, which is a
very different thing, and it gives us very narrow ruling
of the due process available to migrants rate and it
relies on my having access to a legal team, which
could be expensive and complicated for them.

Speaker 3 (02:18:22):
So this ruling allows Troup administration to send people to
El Salvador as as long as they have the quote
unquote right to do process, which is narrowly defined as
something that not many people will have access to anyway.

Speaker 13 (02:18:39):
Yes, yeah, well summarized, yeah, you would need to have
like a lawyer on retainer to file your habas right
leg straight away.

Speaker 3 (02:18:46):
So if that just doesn't get filed, then you are
basically in their view forfeiting your due process and they
can deport you anywhere.

Speaker 9 (02:18:53):
Well, they can deport you anyway.

Speaker 13 (02:18:55):
Yeah, I guess you have the right to appeal it,
like by saying like I want to file this habeas petition,
but most people aren't going to do that, so in
practice that they haven't explicitly ruled on the zecoric thing.
Right the Aberigo Garcia case, which is the other case,
a Fourth Circuit judge required the US to return Abergogarcia

(02:19:15):
to the US, and then Chief Justice Roberts on his
own issued in an administrative stay, so he is effectively
telling them that Fourth Circuit judge, you can't order them
to have him return right now. We need to take
a time out. We need everybody to get their evidence
in order and then bring that to us, so that

(02:19:36):
case like remains ongoing.

Speaker 9 (02:19:39):
Right in the brief for that case, the government.

Speaker 13 (02:19:43):
Referred to Abligo Garcia as an enemy alien. But I
don't think MS thirteen is covered by the evocation of
the Alien Enemies Act. I think it was specific to
trend deer Ragua. And then they also claim that they
removed him under the Immigration Nationality Act, not the Alien
Enemies Act. So like, none of this, I guess is
hugely surprising we're seeing this like sort of post hoc

(02:20:05):
justification of what they did, right, which is kind of
how they operate. But that case still remains ongoing, so
we're still we're still going to hear that one, which
presumably will reflect on the constitutionality of sending people to
said cod But like the fact that, yeah, they ruled
the other case, right, the one that was five to four,
It wasn't about whether said cock was legal. It was

(02:20:26):
about where the Bosberg had the right to make a
decision on this particular case.

Speaker 9 (02:20:31):
But it's still not great.

Speaker 13 (02:20:33):
Like it looks like the Supreme Court is doing everything
it can to avoid a face to face showdown with
the executive branch. Yeah, because they don't want to deal
with the consequences of be ignoring them.

Speaker 3 (02:20:43):
Nope.

Speaker 13 (02:20:44):
And like we said before, like maybe the only court
that they will listen to is a Supreme Court. Whether
the Supreme Court doesn't make them, then they won't.

Speaker 3 (02:20:50):
So that's where we're at with that. Not great, not
exactly great at all. Well, do you know what is
doing great? The economy? And for more on that, I
think I think it's time for tariff talk with me
a wong.

Speaker 2 (02:21:02):
Wait wait, wait, tariff talk.

Speaker 3 (02:21:09):
Jazz rock, jazz, bar.

Speaker 9 (02:21:13):
Locking jazzy jazz.

Speaker 2 (02:21:19):
B ah yeah, every day, every time we do it.

Speaker 15 (02:21:25):
The only band that matters is the only band that matters.
The Narcissist Cookbook doing a very brief refrain from Rocks,
the worst clash song.

Speaker 13 (02:21:37):
By a white margin, the only clash song from the
plagiar in Operation Desert Storm, which summer cry.

Speaker 9 (02:21:44):
A real catastrophe?

Speaker 3 (02:21:46):
Do you know what is in't a catastrophe? The economy?

Speaker 7 (02:21:50):
How's it going?

Speaker 8 (02:21:52):
So?

Speaker 7 (02:21:52):
I just I just saw a wonderful chart where someone
was like, ah, this is this is one of the
eight best days the SMP has ever had in every
single other one of those days is like nineteen twenty nine,
nineteen thirty one, thousand age.

Speaker 13 (02:22:05):
Yeah, it's one of the best days. From Mount Saint
Helen's Equality. Yeah yeah, so good.

Speaker 9 (02:22:16):
So all right.

Speaker 7 (02:22:18):
The terriff situation as of two forty three pm Pacific
time on April ninth.

Speaker 2 (02:22:24):
Is that there is mine going good.

Speaker 9 (02:22:29):
It's gotta be cool, guys, don't worry about it.

Speaker 7 (02:22:32):
Okay, So there isn't one hundred and twenty five percent
tariff on all goods from China?

Speaker 3 (02:22:37):
Is that bad?

Speaker 7 (02:22:39):
I Uh, you know, there's a bit that I cut
here where I was gonna say about how like at
fifty four percent, I was like, we've entered the part
of the map where it just says here there would
be dragons. At one hundred and twenty five percent, there's
not even dragons there that they didn't even think to
put that on the map as an unknown region. Hi,

(02:23:00):
this is Mia from the future. It is now Thursday.
One of the problems with attempting to do this episode
is that we are learning the teriff rate from Twitter
in real time. So it turns out that the actual
tariff rate on China, as as clarified by by Donald
Trump today, is one hundred and forty five percent. And

(02:23:23):
also it has become clear that the twenty five percent
turf tariffs on both Mexico and Canada are also still
in effect. So yay.

Speaker 2 (02:23:34):
In medical terms, it means what happened to the global
economy is equivalent to you getting hit directly in the
spine by an F two fifty going forty five miles
an hour. That's that's that's what's happened to the base
of the global economy.

Speaker 7 (02:23:49):
Yes, and I mean it's it is very funny that
like a lot of people have been focusing on the
bond stuff because you can just look at the tariff
numbers and it's like like, yeah, okay, seeing a one
hundred and twenty five sent tariff on all goods from
China and then looking at the bond markets to figure
out if that's bad or not is like is like
walking outside into a blizzard and being like, whoa, I
need the weather rather tell me if it's knowing, like,

(02:24:10):
what are we doing here? What are we doing here?

Speaker 2 (02:24:13):
The reason I'll explain, like briefly, treasury bonds are the
underpinning of every country, the entire global economy. Every single
country has a shitload of money in US treasury bonds
because they are the most reliable thing. And what a
treasury bond is is you give money to the US
government and they say, in a period of time you
can take this out and it will have grown by
a set percentage. Because treasury bonds have been for the

(02:24:37):
last basically a century, so incredibly stable. This is where
you put your money that you don't want to gamble.
So you have money that is in stocks and stuff
that can go up and down, but you also head
your bets by having a bunch of this. And you know,
generally treasury bonds are hopefully enough to about keep pace
with inflation or beat it by a little bit, but

(02:24:57):
usually the rate is not all that high because there's
a shitload of demand. People are always buying treasury bonds.
When the treasury bond rate, which is the percentage you
get back, raises, that may look good, right, they're like, wow,
you get five percent now on if you put money
into a into a thirty year T bond. But what
that means is that everyone is selling their treasury bonds.

(02:25:20):
So demand is down and the rate is higher, and
everyone is selling them because entire countries at a time
are pulling their money out. Nations are pulling their money
out of the US economy.

Speaker 7 (02:25:30):
It's great, yeah, And we are going to get more
into how through administration wants to fuck with that later.
But first off, programming note, programming note, I am going
to be from this episode forward referring to all of
these as the turf tariffs, because fuck them, and because
these tariffs are in a large part also about a
bunch of really weird fucking masculinity bullshit.

Speaker 3 (02:25:51):
So God excited for that yeah, and when you make
most of your election ads being about yeah, trans people,
and then and then the economy goes to the toilet.
This is this is what was voted for.

Speaker 7 (02:26:02):
Like, if if you wanted transphobia, this is what you wanted.
You want you wanted to lose your job, you wanted
everyone to lose their fucking home.

Speaker 2 (02:26:07):
Speaking at Tea Bonds, am I right, let's keep over
that immediately.

Speaker 12 (02:26:12):
No, no, no.

Speaker 7 (02:26:14):
One law for him, go away, okay, okay. So, so
the most the most chaotic thing happening here, other than
Robert randomly saying things, is that nobody knows what the
tariff situation is going to be, just even just on
Friday when you're listening to this, right, like you, by

(02:26:34):
the time you were listening to this, there could be
two hundred percent teriffs on Indonesia. There could be four
thousand percent terroriffs on Vietnam. We don't know.

Speaker 4 (02:26:42):
No.

Speaker 2 (02:26:42):
Trump could have dissolved the US dollar and we're all
using the fucking d or whatever, like I know, I
don't know.

Speaker 7 (02:26:50):
Yeah, and like you know, so so it's all really unstable.
We can talk about the other things that are still
in effect, so that there's a general ten percent tariff
on all countries except for China are just supposed to
have a general ten percent tariff. There's also the per
Megan Cassellos, a CNBC reporter, there are twenty five percent
tariffs on steel, aluminum, and cars. There's probably going to

(02:27:14):
be more. He keeps talking about more tariffs, and it's like,
who knows where they're gonna happen, like maybe pharmaceuticals, semiconductors.
But the Liberation Day tariffs turff tariffs are currently on
hold for.

Speaker 3 (02:27:27):
Ninety days at least as of right now.

Speaker 15 (02:27:30):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (02:27:30):
Yeah, and the and the quote unquote reciprocal tariffs have
been lowered to ten percent for me at least, it's
unclear as of recording. On Wednesday, Trump said that this
is a fact, this is in effect immediately. It's unclear
if those ten percent tariffs are also on hold for
ninety days.

Speaker 7 (02:27:45):
No, I think the tempercent ones are in effect right now.
But it's really hard to tell because he's just saying shit.

Speaker 3 (02:27:50):
And yes, it's very hard to tell, which I ain't
saying it, he's truthing it.

Speaker 12 (02:27:54):
Yes, sorry, he is.

Speaker 3 (02:27:55):
He is true social ing that this information.

Speaker 13 (02:27:58):
That is how we have to work out the global
economic future. It's based on posts. I'm true social yeah, so.

Speaker 7 (02:28:04):
So okay, And one of the things that's been happening
with with the turf tariffs is that, like the media
is just is reporting things as true that are just
clearly obviously a lie. So one of the ones that's
been going around and that the media is reporting that
Trump has said is that he's he said he's going
to pause tariffs on countries that don't retaliate, except we
know that's a lie because the EU already imposed retaliatory tariffs.

(02:28:28):
But the EU's turf tariff rate is like already down
to ten percent, just like everyone else. So we know
that Trump is lying about his rationale for the rollback
of the turf tariffs, right, and every single fucking media
outlet is still just reporting it because nobody fucking knows
how to do freaking reporting anymore. We should move to

(02:28:48):
what this is going to do the supply chain, and
to put this in perspective. When I learned about the
one hundred and four percent tariff on China, that was
before it was one hundred and twenty five percent where
it's at now, I was writing an episode called The
Old economy is dead, which will probably be still be
coming out on Monday. Again, that was the fifty four
percent rate. I was writing a thing called the old

(02:29:09):
Economy is dead at one hundred and four percent, Like
things are going to break in the supply chain that
only seven people on Earth have ever heard of before,
Like entire sectors of the economy are going to be annihilated.
We're going to see right now, we're probably going to
see everyone attempt to route like all shipping from China.
There's going to be a massive effort to try to
reroot it through like literally any other country. But again

(02:29:30):
that's only a solution for like you know, ninety days,
and and again it's not even clear that can work.
I mean, I'm already seeing a bunch of reports swamp
business as being like, yeah, we're fucked because and that
was the four percent tariffs, and at one hundred and
twenty five percent, entire industries are non viable. Now it's

(02:29:50):
maybe possible that if it was just these tariffs and
such an all Chinese shipping was able to be routed
through some other country, maybe we would only have a
regular economic collapse like a like you know, like an
early two thousands tech bubble collapse and not like a
two thousand and eight one. But again that's the same

(02:30:11):
thing that note moti war tariffs go into effect. Now,
the problem is that we went through this with the
ninety day pauses on the Mexican tariffs and the Canadian tariffs,
and then after ninety days everyone assumed they weren't going
to go to efect again. Then they just went to effect.
So the odds are of that the absolutely catastrophic turf
tariffs from like Liberation Day are going to go into
effect in about ninety days, right, that that's probably what's

(02:30:34):
going to happen. There's probably going to be some attempts
to negotiate them down, but like again, those absolutely catastrophic
tariffs which are going to just fucking annihilate the entire
world economy, are probably going to go into effect. And
you know, part of what's happening here, right is that
so the markets are doing this, they're like dead cat bounce, right,
And a lot of this is because they haven't actually

(02:30:55):
stopped to think about like how much American manufacturing and
con sure, every argument everyone is making about this, there
is actually a lot of manufacturing still in the US,
but all of it relies on Chinese imports and various
stages of in vadio stage of production, and they're fucked.
And I haven't even mentioned yet, by the way, the
sort of caps to all of this is that China

(02:31:17):
is doing an eighty four percent retaliatory tariff on all
American goods, which is going to just fuck massive portions
of American agriculture. We've talked a lot on the show
about soybean exports. It's going to be absolutely catastrophic. We're
going to go more into this on Monday. But you know,
the thing that's clear from this is that these people
don't see the economy as real in the way that

(02:31:37):
you and I do, right, They simply don't. You know,
we look at the economy as something where we have
to have a fucking job so we can go to work,
so we can come home and fucking buy food for
our families and pay our rent. And they think it's
a fucking joke, right. They think it's a fucking masculinity signifier,
and they think it's like they look at tariff rates
and they go, this is just a number on a
fucking page. And that's why the tariff rate is now

(02:31:58):
one hundred and twenty five percent China because it doesn't
none of this ship is real for them at all.
Now do you know what is real? No, the products
and services that support this. Yeah, yeah, yep, we are

(02:32:25):
back now. Okay. One of the things that I've been
seeing a lot of is there are a lot of
arguments about whether there was some kind of plan here.
Trump has claimed that he was going to roll back
the terrorists all along, and no, he wasn't. Just no,
he's just lying. He's just going by the seat of
his pants. And I can prove that there is no
plan here by moving on to the second thing that
I want to talk about here, which is a speech

(02:32:46):
given by Council of Economic Advisors Chairman Steve Myhren at
the Hudson Institute. So this is this is again the
the the Council of Economic Advisors is is a federal
agency that is like their their job is to provide
economic advice to the president, right, and their chair gave
a speech where he argues and this is something that

(02:33:08):
like I I Jesus fucking Christ, we were talking about, Okay,
the fact that every fucking country on earth has us
Treasury bonds. We were talking about this earlier, right, the
status of the US dollar as the global reserve currency.
This guy is arguing that that is actually a public
good that other countries should pay US for. He wants

(02:33:28):
to force countries to fucking pay taxes to the United
States for holding US Treasury bonds.

Speaker 2 (02:33:36):
And again, if any nation on Earth could pay to
have their currency be the global reserve currency, there's no
amount they wouldn't pay. Like, the degree to which this
benefits you is ridiculous, Like the fact that you wantn't
to charge other people for it.

Speaker 9 (02:33:51):
It's nice.

Speaker 8 (02:33:52):
It is like.

Speaker 7 (02:33:53):
Look how this like actually works, right, is that every
single other country on Earth is forced to buy American debt,
which is what a bond is, right, Yeah, And this
allows the US to carry out even more spending without
inflationary effects every single other country.

Speaker 2 (02:34:10):
Everything is based on this, Yes, it's just.

Speaker 7 (02:34:13):
It's all forced on on like other countries happen to
stockpowle US dollars like the literally the entire global economy.
The US is advantage in the entire global econy is
that every single other fucking country on Earth needs US dollars.
Part of this is to buy oil. And part of
this is again because the dollar is the fucking reserve currency.
It's the currency the fucking trade is done in. And
the asset that you hold is is like, is the

(02:34:34):
fucking US bond. The anthropologist David Graeber called this in
his book Debt the First five thousand Years, a tribute
system that again, every country in the world is forced
to buy US bonds. The US government has just like
fairly explicitly, like they did this in the Reagan administration,
does this other times, like has just fairly explicitly leaned
on countries and been like, you're buying a fucking a
fucking bunch of US bonds now, right, Like this is

(02:34:57):
this system. The status of the dollar of the world
reserve currency, is the entire lattice that supports and spreads
the American Empire. And these fucking clowns want people to
pay taxes on the tribute that they are paying to us.
This is not by Trump and Elon Musk, right, this

(02:35:18):
is the guy these people brought in to be their
economist to do economic policy. Yeah, there there is no
limit to their stupidity. There is no rock of sanity
upon which the tide of madness will crash everything we
have seen. We have seen so far is just a
prelude to an infinite abyss of stupidity, so mind numbingly incomprehensible,

(02:35:40):
it will shatter our minds like a snowflake and a hurricane.
You can no longer think to yourself. They cannot possibly
be this stupid. They are thinking thoughts even gods cannot comprehend.
They are attempting to drain the sea by shouting at
the moon. They are trying to wipe their ass with
pine cones. There is no five dimensional pl here. There

(02:36:00):
was not even a man behind the fucking curtain. There
was only an infinite sea of cruelty, malicone, stupidity trying
to drown us, all for the crime of attempting to
exist in the world we were born in. The reality
of the man who ruled the American Empire is this.
It is so terrifying that everyone from the most powerful
CEOs on the planet to the fucking day traders running

(02:36:20):
the stock markets to broke left the ship posters recoil
in horror and try to construct meaning and some kind
of like anything, any kind of strategy, any kind of
strategic reason why anyone could possibly be doing this because
the existence of a plant, literally, any plan, no matter
how evil it is, is preferable to this, which is
that the largest economy in the world, the most powerful

(02:36:42):
empire the world has ever seen, is being run by
the dumbest people who have ever fucking lift and they
are doing this because they are evil and they're stupid.

Speaker 2 (02:36:52):
Yes, yes, there's absolutely like yeah, yeah, no, nothing else
to say.

Speaker 8 (02:36:57):
Really.

Speaker 3 (02:36:59):
I think one of the things that is underpinning this,
which you can pick up on if you are cursed
enough to listen to enough of these speeches and enough
of their of their talking heads and podcasts, is like
this reoccurring trend in which these people really need to
be victims in order to in order to politically succeed,
which is an acuation that's usually thrown against you know,
woke sgw's. But like before the election, right, it was

(02:37:22):
this idea that that because because of the dem corrupt
elite establishment, you know, everyday Americans are are are victims
of this, of this hidden cabal of Democrats that that
are ruining everything. But but now that these people are
in charge of of of the United States, the people
who are victimizing US is just the entire world, right,
the entire world is ripping off the United States by

(02:37:45):
using our dollar, by by doing trade with us. They
are somehow ripping us off, like we are the victims
of this global scheme, and it's hurting you at the
average blue collar worker, and it's making women adopt manager
surial positions and and this is this is what's actually
is the core of of your oppression. And even even

(02:38:08):
even when they win, even when they control the country,
they can't let go of this victim status. They have
to have someone ripping them off in order to justify
them doing just incomprehensible stupid power grabs. And it is
very much linked to like this like masculine signifier. It's
very odd, like like the way that people are trying
to trying to justify losing so much money in the

(02:38:31):
stock market. It's by re posting a clip of some
like Australian women from dancing dancing on TikTok in like
an office building, and they're like, well, you know, tariffs
are are are much better than having to deal with
women in the office.

Speaker 7 (02:38:47):
Am I?

Speaker 12 (02:38:47):
Right now?

Speaker 9 (02:38:47):
Women having a joke?

Speaker 3 (02:38:49):
This is this is this is how they this is
how they justify it.

Speaker 2 (02:38:51):
At least we don't have woke. It's worth it to
not be able to afford food. If the is the
global loghouse, that's a deep cut. The long House is
burnt down. Sure, because the Long House is burnt down,
We're now exposed to the elements and all of our
food stores are gone, and it's about to snow eighteen feet.

(02:39:12):
But at least the Long House.

Speaker 13 (02:39:13):
The Long House with the nephew in it that you
hate and owned you at Thanksgiving, it's gone.

Speaker 3 (02:39:20):
Shout out to your nephew.

Speaker 9 (02:39:21):
Yeah, I guess what's what's the nibbling? Nibbling? It's a
correct non binary appollition.

Speaker 3 (02:39:26):
In other news, last week, President Trump said that he
would be quote unquote honored for the president of l
Salvador to take US citizens, which he calls American grown
and born criminals, and put them into Seacott, the Terrorism
Confinement Center, which is essentially a prison work camp.

Speaker 2 (02:39:46):
Yep, that no one gets released from.

Speaker 3 (02:39:47):
Yeah, Trump said, quote why should it stop just at
people that crossed the border illegally on quotes.

Speaker 9 (02:39:55):
But it shouldn't stop that.

Speaker 3 (02:39:57):
She shouldn't be there at all. And his dams already mentioned,
seventy five percent of the immigrants sent to see Caught
don't have a criminal conviction. These people are not criminals. Now,
a few days later, the White House presecretary reiterated that
this is something that Trump is seriously discussing, both publicly
and privately.

Speaker 14 (02:40:13):
So the President has discussed this idea quite a few
times publicly. He's also discussed it privately. You're referring to
the President's idea for American citizens to potentially be deported.
These would be heinous, violent criminals who have broken our
nation's laws repeatedly, and these are violent repeat offenders in

(02:40:33):
American streets. The President has said if it's legal right,
if there is a legal pathway to do that, he's
not sure. We are not sure if there is. It's
an idea that he has simply floated and has discussed
very publicly, as in the effort of transparency.

Speaker 3 (02:40:46):
Now, one of the last things we're going to discuss
is an update on DHS and ICE efforts to deport
students across the country. Me and James did an episode
last week which is still pretty relevant, but all of
the numbers have increased dramatically since that episode. As of
Tuesday night, April eighth, ninety two student visas have been

(02:41:07):
revoked at California universities, fifty at uc campuses and thirty
six at California State University campuses, with six more at Stanford. Also,
as of April eighth, fifty student visas have been revoked
at Arizona State University, with multiple students now in iced attention.
Lawyers for these students believe that upwards of one thousand
visas have been revoked across the country. A map on

(02:41:31):
inside higher ed dot com shows four hundred and nineteen
confirmed instances of student visas or in some cases, green cards,
being revoked by Secretary of State Mark Rubio across thirty
four states, and as of Wednesday, April ninth, visas for
eighteen international students have been revoked at the University of Utah,
with these students and recent graduates received letters from the

(02:41:52):
Trump administration instructing them to quote unquote self deport immediately.
At Utah State University, more than thirty students have been
in pacted, according to the university administration.

Speaker 13 (02:42:02):
Yeah, I'm aware of at least one UCSD student who
was detained at the border and immediately deported. I'm also
where that UCOP uc officer, the president right had a
statement about the impact of service terminations across its campuses.
But the UCSD Guardian, in a dub for student Journalism,
reported that UCSD convened an emergency meeting before this of

(02:42:25):
faculty and it knew about the revocations or that the
service changes, right, they were a vocation of their student status,
and it was reluctant to act because it hadn't received
guidance from UCOP yet. So we're seeing this from a
lot of university administrations, right, they don't know how to respond.
I did see that the University of Arizona was helping

(02:42:46):
fund some of the legal fees of their students, which
is more than many universities are doing as of now.
There seems to be no pattern of prior rest for
the people who have had their status has changed, but
in some cases it seems that in so university systems,
all of the people who have lost their status are
either Chinese, Indian, or from majority Muslim countries.

Speaker 7 (02:43:07):
One other thing I wanted to close out this episode on,
so we have an episode out about this already, but
one of the things that ICE has been doing has
been targeting migrant farm work at labor organizers. They have
basically just kidnapped, like just straight up broke this guy's
window in his car and dragged him out. A guy
named Alfredo Quarez is known as Lalo. He is an

(02:43:30):
organizer for Familias You need Uslegisticia in Washington, and there
is going to be a protest. This will be Saturday,
the twelfth. That'll be tomorrow as you're listening to this,
on Friday at Portland City Hall at two pm. Organizers
are also asking that you call the Washington Attorney General
to demand pressure be put on everyone to release him. Yeah,

(02:43:55):
if you want to hear more about that, there is
I have an interview with an organizer works with them,
and yeah, it's real fucking bad. The scale of the
repression has been increasing. It's not undefeatable. And this is,
you know, is a this is a tangible thing that
you can do to try to stop them. But yeah,

(02:44:17):
it requires movement now, and yeah, do this now before
it gets worse.

Speaker 3 (02:44:24):
To update another topic of the episode me and James
did last week, we mentioned that DHS was seeking input
for installing a new program to screen the social media
activity of people applying for immigration benefits for what they
label as anti semitism, and this policy is now in effect.

(02:44:44):
This applies to quote unquote, aliens applying for lawful permanent
resident status, foreign students, and aliens affiliated with educational institutions,
possibly also people applying for citizenship. To quote the DHS
Assistant Secretary of Public Affairs, Trisha McLaughlin, quote, there's no
room in the United States so for the rest of

(02:45:04):
the world's terrorist sympathizers, and we are under an obligation
to admit them or let them stay here. Secretary Nome
has made it clear that anyone who thinks they can
come to America and hide behind the First Amendment to
advocate for anti Semitic violence and terrorism, think again. You
are not welcome here. Unquote. The web page for this
new policy states, under this guidance, USCIS will consider social

(02:45:27):
media content that indicates an alien endorsing, espousing, promoting, or
supporting anti Semitic terrorism, anti Semitic terrorist organizations, or other
antisemitic activity as a negative factor in any discretionary analysis
when adjudicating immigration benefit requests. So essentially, this means that
if you've posted anything that is in support of Palestine

(02:45:48):
or criticizes the Israeli government. This will be now used
against you if you are applying for visa, if you
are applying for a green card, if you're applying for
citizenship and already live in this country as a permanent
read lawfully, So just a wider net of social media surveillance.
Four h four Media put out a good article on

(02:46:09):
Wednesday about a palanteer system that ICE is using to
look for immigrants and people in this country, which allows
them to select for specific attributes with a pretty intense
filtering system. So yeah, this is ongoing and we will
continue to report as such.

Speaker 2 (02:46:25):
Yeah, all right, everybody, Well until next week, Please don't
go to an El Salvador in prison camp if you
can avoid it.

Speaker 10 (02:46:34):
We reported the news.

Speaker 8 (02:46:35):
It is great, We reported the news.

Speaker 2 (02:46:45):
Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week
from now until the heat death of the universe.

Speaker 9 (02:46:51):
It could happen.

Speaker 16 (02:46:51):
Here is a production of cool Zone Media. For more
podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website coolzonmedia dot com,
or check us out on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find
sources for it could happen here, listed directly in episode descriptions.
Thanks for listening,

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