Roundtable on Roe v Wade & the Future of Political Action

The team is joined by Shereen and Kieryn to discuss the leaked Supreme Court ruling on Roe v. Wade.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
It happened here to work. Yes, nice, nice and great
at this nice introducing you got it? Yeah, this is
this is it could happen here at the podcast where
it has happened. If your host Christopher Wong with me.

(00:26):
We have like seventeen thousand people. We've got Garrison, yep,
got We've got We've got Sophie, I've got Robert allegedly,
We've got we've got Sharine, have the first time friend
of the pod, Sharene, Hello, teammate. And we have returning

(00:49):
I think, yes, yeah, returning. Well I'm trying, I'm trying
to think, but yeah, yeah, yes, and creator of our
website that I love. I'm so glad. I'm so glad
you like it. Love. Yeah, And we we are gathered
here today to talk about something that sucks, which is, uh,

(01:13):
the Lake draft of Samuel Alito's decision to overturned Rope Wade.
It's now we're all mostly angry that somebody dared to
leak a draft and upset the sanctity of the Supreme
Courts deliberation process. Right right, That's definitely the thing that's
been keeping k mee awake at night. Yeah. Yeah, A

(01:34):
bunch of elderly ghouls who refused to give up their
grip on power can't deliberate in privacy. What does this
world come to you? Hm? Yes, it's been me all along.
How can I trust the Supreme Corps if not everything
happens in secret all of the time, always my in.

(01:58):
On a serious note, I would like to dart this
by stating my primary attitude towards the Supreme Court is
that more stairways should be greased. Nation. We have been
big proponents of horse loop for years, years, years, and

(02:19):
this stands continues. Um. I think horse loop could solve
a lot of problems, so many so I do think
it is especially cross that like there's the whole side
of media people who are making the story out that
oh no, look at this leak. That is the worst
thing to happen in human history. I can't believe this

(02:39):
got leaked, and that is like a pretty dominant narrative
going on for like over half the country, even even
like even on like CNN. That was like the first thing.
It's pretty funny too, because like the original road decision
also got leaked. I had the text, but like the
way it was, the ruin of it was gonna go

(03:00):
also got leaked. It's like okay, it's like this is
actually consistent angry about this. It's clearly like I I
get why the Republicans are doing it right, because it's
a way number one that they can pretend to be victims.
There's a lot of people comparing it to like the
January six and ship. Um yeah, sorry, it's the comparison

(03:23):
to be made. There is not that the leak happened. No,
that's and like should it's like it leaked, Yeah, okay,
how about the fact that the information instide leak is
dangerous and it's going to cause a bunch of people today. Also,
there should be more leaks of government things all the time.
That's actually yeah, yeah, yeah, the government should not be

(03:46):
allowed to keep secrets. Like I'm sorry, no, you don't
see they're really they're called civil servants and they're doing
everything in secret, like we're supposed to know, I mean
in the perfect world where spying on us, we have
no privacy. Yeah, yeah, exactly, Like it's only fair. There's
also I mean, I guess maybe we'll eventually find out

(04:10):
who did it, but like it's also we don't have
to assume that it was a progressive that did it,
for example, Like I think the conservatives have even more
of a motive to release it because they're like mobilizing.
There are people to agree and be like, yes, do
we do we want to do that the weird Screme
Court inside baseball ship Like okay, so the weird inside

(04:31):
baseball ship is so this is a draft decision, right,
this decision hasn't that this is this is not the
law of the land yet. And the thing with draft
decisions that they change, and the thing that's happening here
is there's this weird split. There's a there's like a
three to to split on like what actually, yeah, that
that makes up seven? Right, I'm like what actually? Because

(04:53):
like the five conservative justices like don't like Row. There's
a mean, particularly with like Roberts, there's a there's kind
of a split on like how far they want to
take it. And so part of what could be going
on here is like so this the version of the
decision that got leaked is like this is basically the

(05:14):
most extreme thing they could possibly do. I Arranging impacts
on how we view personal rights. Uh, I mean, it's
it's they can talk about it later. Yeah, and like
this is you know, this is the thing. Like like
the nerd like Supreme Court watchers like didn't think that
like this would be the thing, right, They didn't think

(05:35):
they would just straight up over turned Row. They thought
they would ship at it a little bit first, or
like go after Casey. But like no, no, no, that
they're just they're just straight up going after Row. And
part of what could be the strategy here is like
a lot of Okay, so the liberals on the Supreme
Court like have been effectless and powerless for an enormous
amount of time, and a lot of what they spend

(05:56):
their time doing is trying to like get one or
two sentences changed be slightly less bad. And this could
be an attempt to get the other conservative justice is
to like force them to rally around. Aldo's like unbelievably
hard and there were there were A thing that's worth
noting about this is that like Aldo, Aldo is like
I don't know, I mean Cava Cavanaugh. Okay. So for

(06:19):
for a very long time, Aldo was like broadly considered
by the legal community to be the worst legal mind
in the Supreme Court. Like he's a clown, He's like
he's he's legal reasoning is is really bad, like even
even by this, like you know, and this this has
changed with and become a Barrett and cavanall to it
to some extent, but like this is not this is
not a guy. This is not like a subtle like

(06:39):
a subtle legal mind. This is like this is like
a bull in a china shop who you throw out
when you need to just like hit something with a hammer, right,
and so you know, like yeah, part part of what
the strategy seems to be is to try to try
to coerce the other justices who are like like like Roberts,
who was like slightly less fanatic radical than Aldo, is

(07:02):
to try to get them to rally round this like
incredibly maximalist, hardlined not only going after Row, but going
after like a whole bunch of other stuff that we
will get you in a second. Yeah. So that that's
that's the that's the sort of sitution court inside baseball ship.
That is possibly part of what's going on with the league.
But yeah, I mean, to be honest, I think that's

(07:24):
whatever is going on in the league. The primary topics
of interest to most people are going to be Number one,
the degree to which the rights trying to use this
to distract from what they're actually doing. Uh. And more
to the point, the concerted the fact like this is
what we're actually dealing with here is like the culmination
of forty is years of pretty relentless um. I mixed

(07:46):
it pretty relentless electoralism um married to a very effective
direct action terrorism campaign that has netted the right a
tremendous uh win here. Yeah, I mean like and I
feel like this it's a crisis, but it hasn't been
treated as a crisis. And like when fucking Democrats campaign,

(08:08):
this is like such an urgent matter, and as soon
as they're elected, it's suddenly like not as urgent. Like
look at fucking Biden. He ran on literally caught like
codifying it. He ran with that promise and obviously that
didn't happen. Um. And then there's also, like to Robert's
point from earlier, these justices are just like ancient and

(08:28):
don't give up their power. And I mean, there's no
use in pointing fingers, even though I'd like to do it.
So like RBG, for example, like if she had just
retired at her fucking time, maybe there would be like
one more justice that could fucking help us out. But
there's a lot. I mean, she's got her share of
the blame. There's also the fact that we've had I
think six justices appointed by Republicans in the last thirty years,

(08:51):
and only one of those Republicans actually won the popular vote,
um right, which was the goal. This is not just
One of the most important things unders And about the
anti abortion movement is that it's not center like it
didn't start and it's not centered around abortion. It is
centered around reversing all social progress of the last century.
And the inciting incident was the integration of schools, right.

(09:15):
This all started over Brown versus the Board of Education.
Abortion was just the thing they realized it was easier
to rally people around than segregation. Um and. And that's
what we're dealing with right now. So that the fundamentally
this has always been an anti democratic movement. This has
always been about codifying into law and locking into place
for essentially forever, a minority rule in which Christian extremists

(09:38):
would get to govern the much larger chunk of the
country that does not believe in those sort of things. Yeah,
and I think that's also worth mentioning. Anytime someone talks
about this because the media does, like the media just
runs pr for the anti abortion movement, which is that
this is unbelievably popular, like staggering lee unpopular. Nobody wants this.
This is like, this is this is less like you
can pick it, like this is less pond puler than

(10:00):
invading fantasy countries that don't exist. Like if if you
like this, this is this is significantly less popular, then
then the burning police stations down. We have the polling
data on that. It's like less popular than the lightning
police stations on fire, Like it is unbelievably staggering lye
unpopular people. No one wants this except for a very

(10:22):
very very well organized, very politically connected, very wealthy, and
very powerful clique of Christian fascists. Yeah, well, the laws
never reflect what the most of the population wants though, right,
like look exactly like the popular vote for example, as
you mentioned earlier. So it's like, I think there's a
poll I was reading about this yesterday in June of
last year. Percent of people thought abortions should be legal

(10:46):
for for for any reason, like there's no doesn't have
to be like any kind of thing. So it's like
it's and there's so many polls that also just like
prove that most people don't want this hard and fast rule.
But yeah, both parties, I think utilize it to rally
together people to vote, but obviously for different causes. Yeah,
and like the first reaction from from from Democrats was, hey,

(11:11):
donate to our campaign. It's like, oh my god, honey,
read the room. You have all the power in quotes
right now, and you've done nothing like vote dare dare
saying that, and you get attacked by other Democrats by
being like a radical leftist routing movement because like it's

(11:33):
not their faults And I'm like, you, You've had power
multiple times in my thirty years of life where you
could have done it easily. Yeah, like like and this
is this is one of the things that like, okay,
like this stuff doesn't work on me because I remember
when Obama had a two thirds majority in the street,
a filibuster proof majority in the Senate, had the House,

(11:53):
and not only did he not do this, Obama by
by two ten, Obama is codifying antio, is cootifying anti abortion,
stuft of qodifying the High Amendment. So yeah, it's like no,
like and and this is the this is the thing
with the Democrat rate, Like this is the best thing
that's happened to the Democrats since Trump left office. Like
the Democratic Party they love this. This is the best.
This is the best thing they could possibly happen to them,

(12:14):
because now what they can do is they can run on,
we're going to bring abortion back every single election cycle,
and they never do it right because every single they'll
they'll never like the stuff that they run on, Like yeah, they'll, they'll,
they'll they like, they will even even if they got
another somehow by like magic, if they somehow got another
sixteed vote majority, they find a way to not do
it because this, this is this is a permanent fundraising
thing for them. Yea, And they're they're desperately in need

(12:35):
of money all the time always. So if you take
that away, like during my brief stint in the California
Democratic Party, fundraising was always a big deal. And they
didn't want to divest from fossil fuel in cups because
then where would the money come from. You can't take
campaigning on row away from them because then like they
don't fucking know how to activate grassroots organizers. It scares

(12:59):
the ship out of them, so they will be fucked
if they lose this, which is why nothing has happened.
Speaking speaking of money, do you know who else wants
your money? That's that's right. The products and services that
support this podcast, that's right. Uh. You know certain may
make you infertile, So that's that's not doing this today.

(13:36):
We are back, um. I think it's what we'll be.
We'll be talking about Supreme Court abortion stuff for a
lot in the coming months. UM. We'll be talking about
very different facets of it. Um, different like mutual aid,
like in ways of going about kind of filling in
the gaps which are going to become larger, um, but

(13:56):
a whole bunch of other stuff relating to like right
wing terrorism against abortion clinics and all that kind of stuff. UM.
The other interesting aspect about this that I want to
kind of briefly talk about is that with the specific
phrasing of the document is it it it threatens a
whole like sect of personal rights, not just abortion rights, um,

(14:18):
and could have faraging impacts uh, in terms of like
privacy rights, in terms of possibly even backtracking on stuff
like gay marriage, and a whole bunch of other things.
It's like it's obviously the abortion angle itself is pretty
massive and it affects you know, half half the population. Uh,

(14:38):
But there's a whole lot of other stuff that is
in that that indicates this, like this trajectory towards this
type of like right wing fundamentalist of Christian like Christian
fascist effort to hack away at all the things that
they deem degenerate or things that they deem is undesirable. Well,

(15:01):
I mean, the goal is to make America a Christian
nations so Jesus can come back and rule it. And
you can't do that if you know, people are gay,
or people are allowed to be on birth control, or
people are allowed to marry outside of their race, or
go to school with people who don't look like that,
Like I did read Jesus to say all of those things. Yeah,
it's it's definitely in the Bible somewhere, if you if

(15:25):
you do like that poetry style where you blot out
some of the words to make other words, which is now, Yes,
the thing we gotta get into that, I think is
the primary question people have right is like beyond sort
of the doom scrolling of of all of this and
all of the fear about like what's going to happen

(15:47):
to oh berge Vell and Lawrence ve Kansas and all
this stuff. What are they going to go for next?
Is like, what actually will work to oppose this ship? Right? Um,
we at the moment, I have not seen and I
don't believe they're any objective signs that the the Democratic Party
is going to be particularly useful in stymying any of
this bullshit. Um, Cinema and Mansion have already come out

(16:08):
against removing the filibuster. Mansion has come out against voting
at all in order to codify abortion access into into
law in any kind of federal way. Um. And yeah,
I get the sense that for most of them it's
a big fundraising opportunity. Now we do have. That's not
to say it's all bad news, because it is kind

(16:29):
of there's a possibility that this will have a significant
impact on the mid terms. Um. We got one kind
of sign that where the race in Michigan that just
ended the special district or the special election where um,
for the first time in quite a while, a district
that Trump carried by like sixteen points went to a Democrat. Uh. Now,

(16:51):
the Republican that they were running against was the guy
who said that women should lie back and enjoy it
if they were getting raped. Uh. So this is one
of those like, I don't know how much we should
see that as uh, particularly emblematic of how things are
going to more broadly go. But this does have there's
an activation potential, right because outside of the fact that

(17:11):
the Democratic Party, you know, and as a whole is
feckless and primarily a method of fundraising for rich people. Um,
actual Democratic voters are rightfully horrified about what's going on,
and this has there's a potential here to activate a
lot of people and get them organized in a productive way.
So I think that has to be on our minds.

(17:32):
And so there's a mix of I don't want to
discount electoralism, but I think that in the immediate term
one of the things that people are going to have
to do is provide actual material ways for folks to
get access to the healthcare that's going to be increasingly
denied to them. Now. Um, we get a couple of
episodes earlier in the year with Michael Lawfer of the
Vour Thieves Vinegar collective He's just gone viral, and a

(17:54):
Vice article about the hacked abortion pills that that they've
been guiding people in how to make. UM. I think
stuff like that is really useful. When I started posting
about this online, someone pointed out that UM pro abortion
activists in Germany recently flew drones across the border to
Poland to drop off MIFA prostaal like abortion pills which

(18:16):
were picked up by people in Poland. UM, and there's
there's some there's going to be increasing kind of organizing
around that stuff, like the Jain Collective. UM people are
already organizing and from like national organizations to increase access
and states where it's going to remain legal for people
out of state. So I think that's going to be
hugely important. UM. Does anyone else have sort of ideas

(18:39):
on kind of what what things people can do when
are going to be doing to push back against this,
because I do think it's gotta be twofold. It's got
to be both, you know, pushing back in sort of
a legal sense and also pushing back by direct action
in order to ensure that people still have access to
this stuff. I don't know, I don't have faith in

(19:01):
electoral electoral anything. Uh So I really think like if
there's if it's possible to find your own community and
like just almost like with I don't know, just mobilizing
your actual peers versus like trying to trust anyone with
power to get anything done. Because maybe I'm a pestimist.

(19:22):
Maybe I'm just a pessimist. But what you said earlier
about the person she was running against, what I heard
is that that person was still running and people like
he was still the number two, you know, And I
think on the other side there, their side is also
going to rally against stuff like didn't Oklahoma just pass
like the most restricted fans ever where, like yesterday at

(19:43):
time of recording. Yeah, so in this law, women can
be punished up to ten years in prison for getting
an abortion and like in pair, like just for some perspective,
rapists in Oklahoma get five years. So it's like stuff
like that is happening in all these states. And because
these states people with with less resources maybe don't have

(20:05):
their ability to travel so far, I think really mobilizing
communities a little bit more uh maybe just more effective
in my opinion. Yeah, I mean, we have to mobilize communities,
but you also can't it can't just end at we're
going to try to like provide these people with an
option to get out of the state or get access

(20:26):
where they are, like clandestinely. If it's limited to that,
they're going to push to make all this more illegal federally,
and they're just going to keep throwing people in in
prison and using the police as the enforcement arm of
this stuff. There does have to be there has to
be a broader counter you know, I'm thinking back to like,
and I'm not talking about like picking a dude to
vote for. I'm talking about like, in Mexico, right when

(20:47):
they were talking about, um making abortion illegal, activists attempted
to light the Capitol building on fire. Um and uh
like that that that kind of like there has to
be there has to be a broader two thirds of
the country thinks this is bullshit. There has to be
a way of getting those people organized in a way

(21:09):
beyond dealing with the acute problems caused by this. Like yeah,
and I don't entirely know what that looks like, but no,
that makes sense that you're right and makes sense. Well,
and I think I think that there have been signs
that it's started, Like so, I mean there there's obviously,
like there were protests like they've been protests, like literally
since the thing came out. They were especially Yeah. Also,

(21:31):
I mean I think I think part of like see
this sort of like yeah, what did you see one?
You can see this sort of like I don't know,
you can see the way that people haven't I guess
fully internalized the fact that the stage is just trying
to do this to them, and that like you know,
if you look at the barricades that were put up right,
like you could just push those over, like and then

(21:52):
there you had a bunch of people who are extremely
angry and they sort of just sat there and did
nothing right and like this is this is the kind
of thing that like, you know, if you look at
what happened in LA there there is a lot of
protest in l A. And like the department like Homeland
Security was on the street beating people, and I think
if if if there's like okay, So, one thing it's
important to keep in mind is that this still again

(22:13):
this this the ruling, the draft of the ruling is
not the actual ruling. Right there is still time right
now in between when this in between this leak and
when this is actually decided, there is still time to
literally force the court to not do this, so start
greasing those stairwells people. Yes, well, I think here's a

(22:34):
few notes. Um. So one, I think that's it's going
to be used to encourage action on all sides. Uh,
there's it's gonna this is going to be seen as
a victory for the right, and they're going to use
this momentum to mobilize further, uh, to to put more
further antibus and stuff into law, and to encourage people
to take vigilante justice out on healthcare providers. Um. The

(22:56):
second thing is direct action for of trying to alter
the ruling before it happens. Like there is a chance
to do mass mobilization. Uh, there's a chance if we
frames if things are framed correctly, you can bring a
lot of liberals out and convince them and suggest to
them that they can that they could do things that

(23:16):
they ordinarily maybe wouldn't do. Uh. There's that is that
is an entirely uh, entirely possible scenario. Just in my
in my episodes about the Atlanta Forest from a few
days ago, I discussed the shack method of protest. Now,
this this isn't this isn't this doesn't carry over one
to one because that is pretty focused on doing economic targeting.

(23:40):
But the whole idea of targeting people outside of like
the political space is a key to that. Like people
people don't just do work in the Supreme Court. They
have actual everyday lives and if you can uh surround
them in their everyday lives, that type of personal pressure
is way more affecting than just yelling at a government

(24:02):
buildings sometimes. Um, because if we can dissolve this like
safe political like space that people think that they think
they operated in, right, they assume that, oh, I'm I'm
a court justice, I'm a judge. Everything that I do
happens in the courtroom. Right, I'm safe, I'm contained. Everything
is just in the contents of the courtroom. I don't
get to experience consequences for my actions outside the courtroom,

(24:24):
which isn't true because obviously the people, all of us,
do experience those consequences in the real world all the time,
just the people in power don't have to. So instead,
if we can put pressure on people when they're going
about their everyday lives in their hanging banners in their backyard,
doing other things, horse loop again very useful. Um. That

(24:45):
is a that is a way to do types of
protests that we have not seen as much, but I
think is now is probably the time to start doing that, right, Um,
I mean we we saw we saw stuff after the
morder of George Floyd with people surrounding the house of
Derek Chauvin, which police were very angry about. Like that,

(25:05):
there is an indication that hey, this the state doesn't
like it when this happens. Um, it's not. It's not
specifically more legal to stand in the street of a
residential neighborhood. So no, and it's you know, a lot
of protests so far has focused on court buildings, many
of which you're federal, and those provide a lot of
benefits to shall we say, the defender, including the fact

(25:27):
that they're already well set up for surveillance. They're generally fortified. Uh,
they have a pretty short logistic tail to where the
state is keeping its weaponry and its troops as opposed
to just kind of fucking with people in their lives,
which is a lot harder for those kind of militarized
responses that lead to large groups of your friends getting
arrested or beat up by Feds. I think also like yeah,

(25:49):
the tendency to go after like legal buildings is missing
the point of where the actual power is. Like this
is the thing which Nanuary sixth too is like yeah,
even if like yeah, they took over the capital and
nothing happens. And the reason that like nothing could happen
is because it's just a building, right, Like the the
the the actual political system exists dependently of it, and
you have to hit the things that the system actually

(26:11):
cares about, and so like that supports that's roads, that's
border crossings, that's things like I why am I now
suddenly vacation? Yeah, but like well like but also I
mean like okay, like you know, if if if if
there was actually like a way to stop this, one
of the few things that could actually do it would
be a large would be something like a large sale,

(26:31):
teacher strike, or a thing I've talked about before that
is happening this summer is for example, the long Showman
contract in uh Oakland is coming up, right, and like
those are the kinds of things like if you can
actually start shutting down large sections of the U. S economy,
the Supreme Court of Political Actors, they will have to
respond to this, and you can essentially like like you

(26:55):
can you can blackmail them into into into doing the
thing that they should be you wing, you can apply
targeted pressure economically and personally, and that's the type of
protest that I think it would be interesting to see
where that leaves us. They need to not they like
the consequence for both the political actors who are carrying

(27:18):
this out and the people who support them needs to
be that they don't get to live a normal life
um that they are, that they suffer consequences for hurting people.
And that means a lot of things, but among other things,
that means that certain people shouldn't be going to the
fucking grocery store without feeling the hatred, you know. And
I think I think I should be able to order
delivery and feel secure that what they're going to eat

(27:40):
isn't going to hurt them. Yeah, And I think also
like one of the things that I remembering from that
was actually really effective initially from the beginning of the
trum administration was the airport protests. And that's a place
that like you wouldn't think you'd be able to really
occupy because again, the amount of security there was enormous,
But like if you have a lot of libs, you can.

(28:03):
I I remember, like I was, I was like standing
in a in an airport terminal and there was a
line of riot cops attacking. Like everyone is like, oh,
we're gonna get attacked, but like there was just enough
like everyone just sat down and there was enough libs
with like their kids that the cops didn't attack. And
that's that. That's a kind of thing that like potentially
could be replicated and also could be useful given the

(28:23):
fact that like sometimes cops have like an aversion to
a like stuff that looks really really bad on TV.
Not not always, but like, yeah, this is this is
the thing that can happen. Is a thing that like
has happened in her like pretty recently. Yeah, we can
do again. I don't really trust footage of police brutality

(28:44):
to change things anymore. UM, I feel like we reached
the peak of that in and at this point I
think moving on to targeted pressure towards individuals that whole
positions of power and targeted pressure to the economy. Um.
Eating of targeted pressure of the economy. A large protest
at an airport that the police break up with tear

(29:04):
gas does damage to the economy that the police are
the ones causing um and like it's it's uh, it's
one of those things. As we've stated, courthouse or whatever
is just a building. People can not go into work
and do all of the fund up ship that they're
doing on zoom um. An airport is not just a building,

(29:26):
you know, And so a protest at an airport has
some teeth that a protest at a courthouse doesn't. Necessarily,
I do have one, like quick other thing that I

(29:46):
want to throw out as sort of a means of
uh resistancer action is something that I was trained to
do growing up. Part of the forest birth movent m
is co opting the language that the left uses, and
I think something that we should do and something that
we can all be doing right now is co opting

(30:09):
the language back. So when force birth advocates say their
pro life, come back with how can you be pro
life if you want someone to die by having a pregnancy,
and like just sort of taking words and rhetoric that
has traditionally been used to oppress us two reframe it

(30:33):
and be like, no, actually, you're the one who's telling
on yourself here, and you're the one who is forcing
people literally to die in multiple ways. You cannot be
pro life if you support people who already exist dying
and just sort of thinking about that a little bit.
If you don't necessarily have the energy to go stage

(30:54):
protest at an airport, yep, that is a great line
to end on end on um. Everybody, go out, and again,
you know our sponsors are the Klein and stubil Hip
Surgery Center in Washington, d C. So please do keep
greasing those stairways, everybody. It could Happen here as a

(31:19):
production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool
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find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated monthly at
cool zone Media dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.