It Could Happen Here Weekly 102

of their own. We call nations that don't have their own state state less nations, the Kurds being one of the most notable examples. But it really is commonly seen that the ultimate accomplishment is for the braation of your people, is that you establish a state to rule that people for themselves. Of course, what for themselves actually means becomes quite clear, as in many cases foreign rulers and the practices of foreign rulers just take on a local face.

anywhere else in the world. The language is just one aspect the nation. A nation I mean not in the sense of a state or a country or political constitution, but in the sense of an imagined community of people. An imagined community of people. I think that imagined aspect of it is quite important as well. Student see, but an imagine the community of people formed on the basis of a common language, history, ancestry, society, or culture, who

are conscious of their autonomy. So it's not enough that a group of people merely share a language, or share history, or share ancestry, or share society or share culture. It's important that firms we defined as a nation, that they are conscious of the fact that they share those things in common, and that they use that consciousness to develop some sense of an imagine shared identity, of imagined community, whether or not each individual in that community knows all

the other individuals in that community. Nations are not necessarily geographically bound, like you know, certain conceptions of a nation maybe, but rather often diasporic, and some nations even united under a banner of nations, such as in the case of pan Africanism, which is a form of nation movement or pan nation movement that seeks to unite the thousands of ethnic groups and also the diaspora of the continents of

Africa in response to the exploitation of outsiders. In fact, the pan Afka nation is really a quintessential example of how colonism creates nations while exploiting them. And although Native America in populations retained slightly more of their heritage than the displaced African population in North America, though this is not to deny what was lost their force. Displacement also created something of a shared ethnic identity, which is where you see movements like Red Power popping up during the

height of Soviriety era. Prior to the process of colonization, they were distinct in their cultural groupings. This group would be Blackfoot, this group would be create, this group would.

a vehicle through which they can undertake their struggle. However, mere opposition between a colonized group and a colonizing force is not the only way that clonism creates new nations. Also through social stratification, through hybridization, through the imposition of new religions, through new education systems, new languages, and new administrative boundaries. All of those are ways in which cluonism

can develop u nations. For example, the case of the Metis, a cultural intermingling and intermarriage between two radically different groups ended up with the birth of the new nation of the Maties in the unique colonial history of Canada, and as we've see in nations are often the targets of subraction and of subjugation and Eurasia, African peoples were stolen from the constant and thoroughly stripped of their languages, histories, and cultures, and continues to be oppressed throughout much of

the so called New World. In the United States, African Americans faced centuries of systemic racism. In Brazil, the afric Brazilian population also faced similar historical discrimination. Similarly in Colombia and so on and so on. Indigenous nations across the world also continue to be denied their autonomy as minorities within a domineerian state. Palestinians and Israel have faced a long standing conflict due to the raisure of their self determination.

Colgin and Released, as I've mentioned, spread across several countries and do not have a country of their own, so

they have historically sought independence or at least autonomy. Aboriginal Australians have faced struggles related to land rights, cultural preservation and self governance, and although New Zealand has made progress in recognizing the rights of the diligious Maria people, Marian New Zealand have also dealt with issues related to land ownership and cultural preservation, whether be the Armenians under the Ottoman Empire in the past, or the current subjugation of

Hawaiian Puerto Rico under the US, or the Tibetan population still under the firm of the Chinese state. Really could go on and on. I really could go on and on. Across the world, struggles have been an rb and fought by nations for the liberation and much of their suffering a struggle is thanks to the process of colonization. Our present national borders and demographics were largely shaped and dictated by the colonization and conquest of a few nations from Europe.

But what is colonialism? Exactly? As one anthropologist Chris quote Right put it, colonialism is the establishment and control of a territory for an extended period of time by a sovereign power over a subordinate and other people which are

segregated and separated from the rule and power. He goes on to say that features the colonal situation and include political and legal domination over the other society, relations of economic and political dependence, and institutionalized racial and cultural inequalities to impose their dominant physical force through raids, expropriation of labor and resources, imprisonment and objective murders. Enslavement of both the indigenous people and their land is the primary objective colonization.

Through colonization, native cultures must be destroyed either strict crushed, empty, subsumed, cooperated, or dismantled. And since colonism relies on a dichotomy of superiority and inferiority, the colonialists must impose their own culture over the native population, from language to dressed to daily practice.

That culture, which by the way, becomes native through that process of colonization, and that already gets into the whole discussion of what makes something native, what makes a people native. There are two definitions that I balance try and dance between, one being indigeneity through land relationship and the other being

indignity through colonial relationship. And so I'm referring to the indignacy through colonial relationship when I say that a culture or people becomes native through that process of colonization, because prior to colonial inclusions, there was no non native to define themselves against. They just were. You'll need to define yourself as native to a place when an outsider or an invasive force is pushing you out of that place

or trying to dominate you within that place. The old forms of colonization are largely over, but the spirit of colonization still lingers. It is a specter in the spheres of culture and politics and economics. The colonial complex created the world we see today and left quite the impression psychologically on both the colonized and the colonizer. French Tunisian writer Albert Mami wrote what I guess it to be a very essential work on the relationship between the colonizer

and the colonized. That work that book is called the Colonized and the Colonized was published in nineteen fifty seven, and it was written and of course in a very important time, in a time when many national liberation movements were quite active, and so this work is often held up with other important works in that anti colonial milieu, including France Phenons, The Direction of the Earth, Black Skin,

White Masks, and IMA's discourse on clonialism. In the book The Colonized and the Colonized, now, he spent some time discussing the psychology of both, and he splits the condition psychological conditions the colonized and the colonized into four parts, the colonizer who accepts, the colonizer who refuses, the colonized who accepts, and the colonized who refuses. So first there's the colonizer who accepts. I've called that colonizer Christopher for

obvious reasons, that being Columbus. And so the Christopher accepts his role as a colonizer, he becomes a colonist. That means he has to accept the fact that his position of privilege is non legitimate. So the any way he could really enjoy his position would be to absolve himself of the conditions of the guilt of the conditions under which he was attained. That's why Christopher forcifies history, creates racist mythology, rewrites laws, and attempts to whitewash his legacy.

That's why he emphasizes his superiority while castness, persions, and the colonized. He has to do whatever it takes to justify his evils, to uplift himself to the skies while grinding those below him underground. Deep down, Christopher knows all of his master up, but he can't admit that to himself. He has to keep degrading the colonized, and so, just as the colonal situation manufactures the colonized, Christopher the colonialist

is also transformed. Now he chairs on torture, discrimination, and massacre. He becomes a reactionary, a conservative, and a fascist. But the condemnation that he carries in his heart can ever truly be raised. It pisses him off that he relies in the colonize to maintain the colony, even though he came looking for profit and already has a homeland. But he has to direct his anger somewhere. So becomes a racist, and not just any racism, a racism. So fundamentally ingrained

in his personality. Racism built on three major components. One there exists some major gulf between him and the colonized. Two that he can exploit these differences to his benefit, and three that these differences are absolute and cannot be changed. Therefore, he's able to remain separate from the community the colonized

by holding any social mobility. And he's able to continue to justify superiority because honestly, circular logic, right, these people are inferior because they aren't at my level, and they aren't at my level because I keep them in it because I keep them in their inferior position, and on and on and on. Added bonus, of course, he gets to feel good about himself. While doing so, he becomes a humanitarian. Surely the colonize needed him to bring the

light of civilization. Look at them, so stupid and sivile. All this is natural and need to know, so he has nothing to worry about. It is divine grace that has brought him to this place. It is a manifest destiny that he continues this tradition. And I mean if he enjoys a couple of perks in his quest to civilize them. Well, surely is just justice should be grateful Christopher, benevolent master of the natural order, no question. And really this is why missus there was right to say. The

colonization dehumanizes even the most civilized man. It inevitably tends to change him who undertakes it that the colonizer, who, in order to ease his conscience, gets into the habit of seeing the other man as an animal, accustoms himself to treating him like an animal, and tends objectively to transform himself into an animal. No offense to animals, of course, I'm just quotients.

from the privileges he half heartedly denounces. See, colonial relations can't be boiled down to individual feelings, so it doesn't matter much materially. If John accepts or rejects it, it doesn't matter if he feels guilty or not. His identity is fundamentally defined in relation to colonization. He's still part of the oppression group. He shares in their good fortune and would likely share their faith. It makes it clear

that the truth is between colonizer and colonized. There is only room for forced labor, intimidation, pressure, police, taxation, theft, rape, upulsory crops, contempt, mistrust, arrogance, self complacency, swinishness, brainless elites, degraded masses, no human contact, but relations of domination and submission. Was sh the colonizing man into a classroom monitor, an army sergeant, a prison guard, a slave driver, and the

indigenous man into an instrument of production. Even if John is a leftist, a progressive trying his best to assist the national liberation to colonize people's he's still in a rough situation. Of course, not many colonizers have actually been you know about it like that. But even if John was to create a world or colonization, maybe hard for him to picture his situation change in all that much He's accustomed to privilege and so equality is probably going

to feel like oppression. You can't imagine not being who he is with the comfortable domination of his culture and language, he's ever had to accommodate others before, he's had to think, oh wait, maybe I should try and learn their language, try and incorporate elements of their cultural moriors. He still holds the subtle vestiges of the racist ideology that his country was built on, and he will have to fight

his own class interests and his own fellow colonizers. Revolution would require the decimation of his current identity and the rebooth of another. And that decision, that gargantuan task, maybe too challenging for some people to undertake. So, miir, what do you think of the position of the colonizer who accepts and the colonizer who refuses.

just automatically have privilege that like other people didn't. And this has been sort of like I don't know, I like the original sort of context of what this analysis was has been sort of worn down. But I think I don't know, Like I think I think it is colonizers like this is this is a structural position, right, like you know, the the sort of you can't sort

of individualism your way out of a structural condition. Yeah, And I think that's something people sort of have this incredible capacity to sort of believe about themselves and it's just not really true. And that's something that's very difficult to sort of like actually substantively confront. But I think it's why this analysis of stuff.

way that any of it really matters. I think it was particularly politin and of course Mami is writing this, and Cesaire wrote in a time when colonization is really at or rather the confrontation against colonizations really added to Zenith. And so for those of us in the twenty first century, in twenty twenty three now who are looking back, we're saying, we might think, oh, well, surely this is a data analysis,

a dated way of looking at these relationships. But upon through the inspection, it really continues to be quite topical when you look at, for example, self proclaimed allies. Looking at how Mami discusses the colonizer who refuses really gives you a sense of I think, at least how far you need to be willing to go in your allyship

versus how far most people have reached. Even today, we can ask ourselves and those who maybe see themselves a bit in the colonizer who refuses, ask yourself, how far I mean you may recognize your privileges even while still you know in enjoying them, but how far might you be willing to go to see an end to this system? We speak about how the loss of privilege can make equality feel like oppression, but truly grappling with that. What would it mean, for example, English to no longer be

the dominant language? You know, what would it mean for us to get used to will in which we might have to learn another language? And then I've been thinking about recently, even while occupying the position of a colonized subject, I speak English, and that is a privilege. I speak English natively, and I mean I'm trying to learn another language. I'm trying to learn Spanish, which is another colonized the language.

recreate pre colonial society. Right, So everybody tries to learn the languages that they feel as though they might have spoken if not under clonal system, if not, if Clonal's history had not happened. And then we try to re implement those languages, and reimpose those languages, and dismantle certain institutions and structures and whatever the case may be, try to basically erase the impact of colonization from history. And then there's another path where we recognize, well, maybe we

cannot undo colonization, and truthfully we can't write. But going forward, how do we intend to dismantle and to rework and to create a new you know, taking from the past to build the future, but not being bound to that past. How do we, for example, let go of certain binds on language, or certain ways of communicating, or certain ways we organize systems, or certain customs and roles and obligations.

And I'm varying a bit from the intended topic of psychology of colonization, but I do want us to think about whether what role we regardless of what role we see ourselves in this discussion, how do we pursue an anti clar future. What does that look like? What paths should we be taken, and how might that path chafe against our current identity? How am that path chafe against

our current privileges, our current comforts. Yes, we are as workers, all oppressed and exploited, but at the same time as we recognize there are certain privileges that some have over others, whether it be in the realm of race or gender, or ability or language. And if we are going to be pursuing a sequean so we have to ask ourselves, how might those privileges be affected? And have we truly

confronted our comfort level with those privileges being affected. I think that's part of the broader effort of decolonizing the mind. And when I speak about it in my video and why Revolutionary's therapy, the idea of like really truly breaking down a lot of these ideas that we have about ourselves and about the world and questioning all of it, deconstructing and reconstructing all of it. But then when I get too far, of course, sincere called the colonization thingification.

So let's turn our attention now to those things. Let's discussed the situation of the colonized in this case, Candice, and that defined by the images and myths that surround them and tell them who they are. The colonized have no way out of their condition within the colonial order. They aren't free to choose between being colonized or not being colonized. They just are colonized. And so Candace understands this in her whole life, She's had to grapple with

the negative portraits of herself. They were created by the colonizer, all the images that were used to support the clonal situation that raised the colonizer and humbled the colonized. They justified the colonizer as privilege, that painted the colonized as inert and the colonizer as active. That made it seem as though the colonizer, as the colonizer, was doing the colonized a fever, that their labor was actually and the employment was actually necessary, that it was charity that the

colonizer was bringing to their otherwise lazy masters. Being exposed to that kind of message and from a young age, really does a number on people, not just in the realm of colonization, but in other spheres as well. We see that with patriarchy, of course, how messages from an early age affect how boys and girls and others perceive themselves and perceive the world around them, and perceive others

in the cloning context. This means that some who are colonized end up internalizing and accepting wholesale the messages that they're receiving. So kind of thinks to herself. Perhaps the colonizers right. Perhaps we are lazy, perhaps we are shifted, perhaps we are timid and weak, and this degrading portrait ends up being accepted. It's usually one of the final

steps of colonization, the colonization of the mind. Once the colonize begins to tolerate rather than resist colonization, all they can really look to do is attempt to assimilate, which is impossible by a design. Does mean that Candice won't try. She sheds the memories of her ancestors and the practices institutions of her culture. She embraces the colonizers' will, and

all these institutions is right and just. The colonizers selve, and the colonizers whip the colonizes God, and the colonizers' school. Her children are sent to these schools built by the colonizer to erase and replace a people's history, traditions, and language. She and her kin are imbued with double consciousness. She's trapped in the sunken place, performing for the colonizer in a home country that don't feels foreign. Double consciousness is

a particularly useful concept, first coined by WB. Du Bois in the Souls of Black Folk in nineteen oh three. He was speaking specifically about African Americans, but the concept does apply in the contexts as well. Double consciousness is the dual self perception experienced by subordinate peoples in an

oppressive society. It is looking at yourself through your own eyes and simultaneously looking at yourself through the eyes of a racist society, looking at who you are, and also looking at what the dominant society sees and thinks of who you are. Of course, the voice concept was further built upon, and you know, people speak about her things such as triple consciousness, and in some ways the idea of double consciousness is can't be tied with the conversation

of intersectionality. But they are those who experience that double consciousness, and rather than reasserting their view of themselves and their people, they accept the negative view held by the dominant society. They surround themselves the language of that dominant society kindnesses world from the street signs, the documents to the courts,

the bureaucracyeded industry, or use the colonizing language. While her mother tongue, the one used tenderly by her ancestors, the one that sustained in the most feelings, emotions and dreams, is he valued and degraded. Candice loses far more than she gains by history, a culture future. She rejects herself, self love and liberation itself. She rejects herself self, love

and liberation itself. I tending to model herself after the colonizer, or rather crush herself into conformity, she gains self hate, shame, and alienation. She sees her own people through the eyes the condonations and accusations of the colonizer. She's atomized and estranged from her people and rejected by the colonizer, utterly defeated. But when he offers another path, an alternative mindset in

the colonized who refuses. You see, like Candace, not knows that there will never be emancipation within the colonial relationship. But unlike Candace, they know that there is no liberty in a similation revolt is the only way out. An absolute condition requires an absolute solution, and there can be no compromise. Deliberation is a process of self recovery and autonomous dignity. They must shake off the force images and boldly attack the institutions of oppression. But even in their

resistance that still bears the traces of colonization. They still share some of the values, techniques, and methods of the colonizer. They still speak the language the colonizer can understand. To be truly emancipated, that must work to rebuild a new, authentic and self assured identity for themselves and their people.

That must reclaim and transform that which the colonizers consider negative, must take pride in all their wrinkles and moods, never shying away from their colonization, but accepting it as a fact of their experience, their history, and yet overcoming that colonization. However, there is the risk of continuing to define yourself in relation to protest, in relation to revolt, and in relation to colonization. At some point, maybe not now, but at some point not we'll need to move beyond that means.

The definition what that future looks like is anyone's guests and also up to everyone to help build I hope you appreciated this. Sometimes meander and dive into the minds of the colonizer and the colonized. The fight is not over. The psychological, political, and economic consequences of colonization are still fell to this day. The mentalities and conditions that discussed

still exist in very extents today. Hopefully this helps us to better understand client's impact on us, so that we can deconstruct that Leviathan together to create a freer and what diverse and more humane world. Next time, I'll be discussing the role of national liberation in the struggle for freedom and what precisely that would entail. As I didn't have time to get into it in this part. Welcome toake it happen Here. I am Andrew of theature channel

of Andrewism. Last time I spoke about clonalism's effect on the psyche of the people within it, and today I want to talk about how people under the thumb of clonalism go about deliberation and how that struggle fits within some version of anomic asnalysis. National liberation is a struggle against the relationship of exploitation and domination inflicted upon a nation.

It's a struggle against the domination of one people by another, often centered on questions of language, culture, welfare, equality, and land. It has consequences, and it's not something where you can just stand by mutually and ignore. In fact, ignoring national liberation struggles would been sided with national oppression. There's no centrist take here. There is no both sides to the

oppression of a people by another. Of course, that doesn't mean that national liberation struggles are free of critique or necessarily morally righteous. National libriation struggles are usually quite diverse. Within them, their many tendencies at play, from the most reactionary to the most revolutionary. I don't know if any immediity come to mind. Fiumia.

China is kind of unique and that we had two nominally left wing national liberation movements and like one of them, one of them is the KMT who like the the the the the end of their natlib arc is like training a bunch of desk squads in El Salvador because they've gotten so good at killing peasants that like, you know, this is what they're doing with their life. And the other one is CCP and it's like, well, okay, like great, great job, guys, like liberated, We've liberated a lot of people.

We've like you know, I don't know, it's it's I think I think there's sort of two ways of looking at that, where it's like you have on the one hand, you can look at it from the sort of like worker's perspective, where it's like, well, yeah, okay, so both you have your two national liberation movements and both of them end up machine gunning about a million workers depending on like you know, in offset from each other in about forty years. But you know, you have the Shaghai

massacre and you have the cultural revolution. And then I think the other thing that's important when you're looking at like a gnatlib movement is like whose nation is being liberated? And this is something you get with like Indonesia. Right, you know, you have the national liberation movement, but then you simultaneously have like the occupation of West Papua.

like God help you. If you're a Curred or like CD or like you know, so there's there's always these sort of I don't know, you have to be careful about who wins the national liberation.

including class struggle. While the oppressed classes might claim to national liberation struggle in an effort to defend against foreign subjugation and exploitation, the capitalist class is using that struggle for national liberation to consolidate their own power and monopolize their own exportation the working class. A lot of capitalists, their whole investment in national liberation boils down to I don't like the fact that I have to compete with

foreign capitalists. I want to compete with local capitalists so I can come out on top. And yeah, that's not cool. Yeah, And then I think. Another thing that gets conflated when you start talking about national liberation the liberation of a nation is the concept of nationalism.

And then it's also the terminology that gets modeled when you start talking about nationalism, right because, as I defined, national liberation is the struggle of an exploited people against a dominating group or against their domination, just generally necessarily against one specific group, could be multiple groups, but it's the struggle of a people against their domination. However, when you get into nationalism, there are forms of nationalism developed

by oppressive groups, developed by the oppressors. Sometimes they developed on nationalism in order to more effectively oppress the people they oppress it, and so, and you know, you can even argue that there are cases where oppressed nations adopt nationalism as strategy for their liberation and end up pursuing a form of nationalism that is quite similar to that which they were being oppressed under. There's one immediate example that comes to mind, if you know what I mean.

Is this really really this sort of like like quintupling down on patriarchy where you know, you like because one of the effects of colonization obviously is like the sort of like one of the sort of psychological things is is this sort of like you know, is this installation of inferiority into the minds of the people who being colonized.

And so one of the ways people respond to this is by being like, no, like the colonizers are wrong, Like our men are actually really strong, and like our men are actually incredibly manly, and like we have really

really like tight powerful controller of women. And you see this fucking everywhere, right, This is why all of like there's so many sort of like Chinese nationalists who are so obsessed with like these videos of like like basically indistinguishable from American right wing videos where they're just like walking around with no shirts on and being like, look

at how strong I am. It's like you see you see this thing with like hn do for people too, where's like they do like exactly the same ship, Like it's all over the fucking place. You can see you can see the Taliban doing this now too, and it's like it's it's like it's you know, it's it's they very cool.

and get to keep colonizing other people. And that's like a very I don't know, I think that that that's a very common sort of like thing that happens when it's this is a very common sort of like ideological basis for sort of the right wing of anti colonial well, I don't know, even calling the anticolonial movement is kind of like being a bit generous, but yeah, yeah, I think it's a very common form of sort of right wing nationalism that emerges as a reaction to colonization.

But what we've seen the fruit of one particular path that that movement undertook, and that path has led to another nation struggling for its liberation, and that being the Palestinians. The common example of distinction used is that of the

distinction between white nationalism and black nationalism. White nationalism having a very clear history of violent supremacy and clualism, while black nationalism was established in response to that experience of subjugation and clualism and with the desire for self determination. The program nationalism specifically among oppressed nations has generally seen the oppressed nation as a united bloc national liberation movements,

nationalist movements. Nationalists movements typically ignore class, they ignore gender, they ignore religion, and they ignore other divisions for the most part, in favor of the development of an independent state, which is usually some form of capitalist either a state

capitalist welfare capitalists, or a neoliberal capitalist. A Nationalism is often weaponized and promoted by the ruined class in orders to unite the oppressed classes with their domestic oppressors, replacing foreign capitalists local capitalists, foreign generals local generals, and foreign government officials with local officials, in a word, to conceal

the importance of class struggle. You see often in the cases of newly independent countries there's almost a brief haze of rather, let me speak not generally but from my own knowledge of my own history. Trying to Bago gain independence in nineteen sixty two from the British. This was after a very brief period where we experimented with a West Indian Federation, West Indies being a designation of the

Caribbean by the British. The federation failed and so Trinidad and Tobago struck out on their own, and so trying Tobago became an independent country in nineteen sixty two, and there was really a sense of you know, joy and jubile and celebration because of that freedom. You know, it finally broke the shackles to the British. However, it was a very recently, a very constitutional independence. You know, it wasn't an independence brought forth by violent struggle. You know,

it wasn't a situation like Algeria. It was more so the British carefully groomed a generation of politicians and political leaders that would and business leaders that would take on the role that they were fulfilling in order to continue that colonial situation in under new management essentially and the more familiar management. And that very quickly became apparent to the population, which is why we had the Black Power

Revolution in nineteen seventy. It was borne on to the frustration that new management when everything was pretty much the same. Many people who experienced the successes of independence and of nationalism that often bears out independence, they actually come to recognize that nationalism was not enough nationalism has repeatedly failed to solve poverty, to solve oppression and exploitation and suffer it.

Or many states have become formally independent from their colonial masters thanks nationalist movements, new columnalism persevers and yet in spite of the continuation of oppression and suffering post independence, you end up seeing some people's response to that being greater nationalism rather than an exploration of other options. So it is this result of nationalism that has led to its criticism and opposition by anarchists. Again, there's a difference

between nationalism and national liberation. But in that criticism of nationalism, I see some anarchists, while recognizing that they are class divisions in the nation, end up ignoring national divisions in a class in favor of some ideal and united working class. The truth is that the oppressed classes of some nations have benefited from the domination of the oppressed classes and

other nations, So let's not do class reductionism. Nations that have had constant war waged against them for centuries tend to turn to nationalism for the national liberation. That's obvious. I think you know, you cut them some slack for not thinking about the global working class when they are

literally under assault for the national identity. When you fighting clonial administrators and foreign armies, you're not studying the class war, which is why historically national liberation struggles use in nationalism have ignored class divisions among the oppressed nation, but not always. Black nationalism, for example, has always been a very diverse political movement with several currents and opposing perspectives within it.

The common threat is of course, irresistance the predominance the white supremisist system and the assolution of lacks of sovereignity, recognizing that we have to free ourselves without wheat and for permission, Recognizing we have to protect ourselves from the continued assault of the empire of the empire, recognizing that we can be proud of and love or bodies or

minds on our heritage, or rejection of your centrism. And yet some manifestations of black nationalism have been reactionary, capitalistic, morphobic, and patriarchal. Others have student stock opposition to those currents. In particular, revolutionary black nationalism, unlike other forms of black nationalism, has consistently stood in opposition to all forms of oppression,

including imperialism, white supremacy, and capitalism. In my view, and as many other black anarchists have noted, revolutionary black nationalism has a place in a struggle in conjunction with the struggle against patriarchy, capitalism, and the state, as we aim to prefigure world free of all forms of nomination. In spite of our critiques of how nationalism tends to manifest, it is not the only way to undertake national liberation.

We can incorpor rate other fights within that struggle. We can recognize the importance of national liberation whilst staying true to all principles. Anarchism is an internationalist movement. It aims for an entirely new world, not just a pocket of change here and there. But we cannot be so focused on that international struggle that we ignore the very vital local and regional struggles taking place. Internationalism and class struggle

are not in contradiction to national liberation struggle. I believe a real internationalism has to stand in solidarity with the working class and peasantry everywhere, including those of oppressed nationalities. However, at the same time, we cannot uncritically support national liberation struggles. We cannot afford to just write a blank check of support.

It is necessary to engage politically national liberation movements and engage in dialogues with all of their complexities and contradictions, engaging with and uplifting the progressive elements within those national liberation struggles while criticizing the reactionary elements within those struggles.

was fucked from the start. But you know the fact that like the US and Vietnam, like the Vietnamese like army finally defeats the American colonizers and then basically immediately or invaded by China is a sign that like something went terribly terribly wrong in the process of these struggles, and that like, I don't know, if you're we're going to do this properly, you have to make sure that like this ship doesn't happen, because you know, it's it's a just the product of this is just sort of

unfathomable human tragedy of a much of colonized people fucking murdering each other for like nothing or you know, I guess like China's obediate I don't know, geopolitical realignment with the US and exchange for like industrial capital goods or some shit. So you know, you gotta you gotta make sure that doesn't happen.

something about it. If one is so fragile that a criticism of the way that it's structured, or a criticism of an aspect of its ideology is enough to prevent it from succeeding, or prevent it from collapsing into internal divisions, whatever the case may be, then I don't think that it is robust enough to handle the struggle, uh, for a liberation.

They're going to try and fuel and empower that dissent and push it in different directions. So even further splinter the movement. You know, it's it's it's complicated, it's it's difficult. It's not something that I ever wanted to present myself as having all the answers for. But you know, I

feel like certain things should be clear. You know, maybe we should try and preventednessues from getting worse if you see, like, for example, a cult of personality develop, and maybe do something about it before that culture personality has you know, guns on their side and the full power of the state apparatus behind them. I mean that's just me though. A truly internationalist position, in my view, recognizes that human unity can only be achieved through mutual respect, solidarity, alliance,

and discourse among people. International revolution would require participation in national struggle for self determination and human dignity against imputerist domination. It will require shift, as I always say, in our powers, in our drives, in our consciousness. I think you want to have star tooth national liberation struggles. It really starts

in that realm. And then also I think there are ways that we can as allies intervene into aspect of that process, you know, in confrontation, lending you know, material support to protests or occupations, in non cooperation, supporting strike funds, in prefiguration, providing resources. You don't want these acts of solidarity to get lost in NGOs or and organizations whatever you're trying to get things. Actually, that's a whole tangent. Let me just scratch that entirely. I'm going to go off.

I'll leave off by saying that if we oppose male supremacy the patriarchy, we must support women's fight against it. That doesn't mean blandly supporting, you know, bourgeois liberal curss feminism. It means listening to, learning from and collaboratively developing the revolutionary feminist project to liberate all women from patriarchal domination

and ultimately all people. If workers aside a former union in many cases and existing union is pro capitalist and hierarchical, I had despite the structural issues with many unions, we still stand with the workers against the bosses, even as we try to convince them of the need for our transformation. Those unions of union militancy for position to bureaucracy in order to fully liberate them from class domination. Instead of merely engaged in dialogue with the oppressors, we can walk

on tewg them. At the same time as what I'm trying to say, we can act in solidarity without being subservient to what we may perceive to be something that goes against our values. Solidarity, as I like to view it, is a discourse between people's about how we determine our own freedom. We may disagree with certain things. We can critique certain things we've seen again and again, certain mistakes being made over and over again, and movements, and we can call them out. But you know, you can have

your principles. You can engage, and you should engage in the complexity and contradictions and national liberation struggles, offering critique where needs be, resistant reactionary, capitalist, patriarchal and status elements when they manifest, and providing support in any way that you are able in any way that they request that you be. People on some monoliths, think for yourself, will power to all the people, usual things. That's it for me. You can support me on patuon dot com slash saying

true and follow me on YouTube at andreism. This has been it grappen here with myself and Mia be something.

most asassinated man of twenty twenty three. And what was interesting about this assassination and we talked about I talked about this really briefly in my sort of intro thing to the last episode that we ran about the Abbe assassination.

But this has been maybe the most successful political assassination not done by the CIA in the last like seventy years, like absolutely stunningly incredibly successful political assassination because specifically of the political impact that the assassination has had on the Unification Church probably better known as the Moonies, and how it's been forcing the sort of Unification Church aligned ruling Liberal Democratic Party of Japan to like have a serious

of embarrassing scandals where they reveal their incredible intertwinement with the church apparatus and all of the culture they've been doing.

And with me to talk about this is Alisa Majub who's an ex Unification Church member who got out and who works with Deprogramming Imperialism, which is a group that tell us the sort of still untold story of how the Unification Church has worked with the CIA and the Korean CIA and enormous parts of the sort of the apparatus of the American imperial war machine to cause untold suffering on the world. Lisa, Welcome, Welcome to the show. Welcome, welcome back.

And the reason he was trying to do this is that his mom had had given they like seventy thousand yen to the church. Co'm getting the number right, and had basically like you know, like this is I yeah, I wanted to talk to you a bit about this before we go into more of the au bas stuff about how the church's financial abuse works and how you know.

be like they're there. It's like certainly, you know, like you need to do better because you're not you're not doing enough for God kind of shit. So they have like a myriad ways that they really push people into spending money on them in their organizations, as well as having a ton of very successful businesses and capital ventures and whatnot. They make guns, you name it, and so it all sort of comes together just to this like very large wheelhouse of capital.

how true that is. So I guess we should talk a little bit we should back up a little bit and talk about just what the Inifogation church is, and I guess also the importance of Japan to it, because Yeah, from everything that I've understood, Japan's like, you know, like they have a bunch of sort of businesses that they run in Korea, but Japan's kind of like their chief financial nexus. Like the last thing I saw, I think it was like like they e'rected like one hundred million dollars.

How did Japan in the last few years.

doing I Ran contrary twice wasn't enough for them. But a bunch yeah, yeah, it's like on once you once, once, you once you've once you've done a RAN contract multiple times, like you've got to there are very few places you can go other than like into polepot. But I think I think there's there's an interesting kind of game they're playing here because you know, on the one hand, so the party they're allied with in Japan, I mean there's like several parties they work with, but their biggest backer

in the government is is the Liberal Democratic Party. And you know, if you want to hear me talk about the Liberal Democratic Party for a long long time, go listen to my Kishi episodes on Behind the Bastards, because that guy did one. So No, Masuki Kishi is the founder of the Liberal Democratic Party. He is a just horrific war criminal. I did like mass enslavement stuff like that,

Like truly truly awful guy. He's like he's also the guy who just was in charge of like running the Japanese war machine dream World War two, and his grandson

is is U shinzo Abe. But there's this, I think it's this interesting dynamic where you have, on the one hand, the Moonies are allying with these right wing guys who are either just straight up like like a lot of these people they're allying with are straight up like Nanjing denialists, right, they're like you know, they're they're they're people whose lines on Japanese colonization or either that it was good or we didn't do any crimes.

it was. It was kind of a controversial thing, not because the Unification Church is a cult, but because the Unification Church is Korean, which is like a dynamic that's at play here and this whole thing, which is you have this weird okay. So there's like two kinds of

people who are anti Unification Church in Japan. It's you have like the leftists who are anti Unification Church because they're a cults and because they're you know, like a sort of Cat's Paul of American imperialism and then you have like these ultra right wingers who are like, these people are Koreans and so we hate them, which is like a I don't know, truly terrifying Japan dynamic Buthi. Kish's able to sort of overcome this and he okay. So this is the part that I don't know if you

know more about this than I do. So every the stuff that I've seen about this talks about the Unification Church and the Yakuza kind of hammering out a deal to allow the Unification Church to like do the specific kinds of scams. And I've always assumed that Kishi broke at this because No Basika Kishi also is very very well connected with the Yakuza. He's been connected with the yakuza since like the twenties and thirties, So I always assumed that he brokeer this deal. But I'm not in

talking sure, I don't know. I don't know if you've run into anything about it.

of it's sort of modern history. Many generations did this go by, and you know there's there's I think a really incredible symbiosis here where like the LDP has like consistently gotten them out of trouble of like stuff that like like they're they're you know, there's a famous example where Moon like shouldn't have been able to enter Japan because he would have been convicted of a felony in

the US. And you know the and there's also like there's been a series of investigations into the Church have just gotten squashed because the LDPOLE know.

canvassing for them. And what I think is really interesting is that like from what I what I've seen, it seems like Abbe basically replaced the CIA with the Moonies in the two thousands, where he was having the church do exactly the same thing the CIA did of like like hey, if you're ally with us, we will like you know, we will like go district by district and campaign for you and like use our influence networks.

Actually I don't think they've ever advertised on this show, but you know who probably wouldn't be that out of place given the Reagan coin people. I don't know, it's it's ads, it's we're doing them. I hope they don't suck and we're back. Okay, So this is something I wanted to ask you. How So, in the last few months, there's been a lot of developments in terms of the reaction to the Church in Japan and how the Church has been reacting to the sort of swings in public

sentiment that have been happening. So yeah, I guess I want to tesk you. So, how what's been happening inside the Japanese government since all of the stufface sort of been coming out?

of trouble due to translations. So let's see, I've got at least three hundred thirty four prefectural Assembly members in Japan have had dealings with the Unification Church or its affiliates, with over eighty percent of them belonging to the ruling LDP, according to Kyoto News, So Prime Minister of Fumiyo Kushita said that the government was in the final stage of considering whether to seek a court order to dispand the Unification Church. But also, you know his new cabinet, Well,

they've got some ties. Okay, at least four lawmakers who admitted having ties to the church. The number of LVP lawmakers was ties to the churches around one hundred and eighty.

the information trickles out about that. Hopefully they'll have some like I don't know if like what closed door means in that specific situation, I still have journalists in there, not hopefully, but yeah, a lot has been coming out and people have been calling for a lot of change, it seems, but how much is.

to a like to a man Elaine Unification Church, Evette. I think it was the same one that it might have been the same one that Trump said it too. Maybe it was it was a different event, but like yeah, like that, I don't know. I have a difficult time, I don't know, kind of like believing that they're the like this, like even if this crackdown does come that's going to be effective. I don't know what your thoughts on that.

many funds in the first place. It's hard to say how much they even have and how much this would make a dent into it were.

There have been some sort of recent developments within the church since all of this has come out, basically, and people are calling for some sort of justice and some sort of understanding of what's going on, which you know, the church continues to deny, but recently Hawk Jahan who is now the leader of the Mainline Church, has been meeting with the youth in multiple countries UH and recently at Japan, she sat down and told them that they are a Kamakazi group basically to save Japan in the world.

So I can't imagine it's ever really, it like, it never has ended well when somebody says that to an occult leader says that to their constituents, it never goes well. And you know, acts of violence against oneself like self emolation or other things murder have not been you know, out of the realm of things that people in the Unification of Church have done in the past. So it

does kind of worry me. And she's actually hot. Jahan is actually going to be meeting I believe it's the weekend of the seventh UH in Vegas with the Youth of America. So I wonder if she's going to be saying similar things at that event.

things with K pop artists and stuff. But recently there was actually an event this year is supposed to happen called twenty twenty three Korean Dream Festa for Korean United, and then the original poster it was said that it was Global Peace Foundation that was one of the groups

that was leading this. A lot of fans have soaken up, and I know at least one of the groups has pulled out, so clearly at least within that within that prong of the U see that there's there's there's some very active like trying to outreach to the youth, which I think I think I would be able to say

is pretty across the board at this point. I think they're all trying some new strategies because they see that people are leaving, and especially with the number of people that have been speaking up lately, they really want to keep those numbers.

youth engagement up. I feel like, you know, I don't know, Uh, there's only so cool you can make it sound, which is nothing like no.

it would only be the main branch. Has there been like, has the statement going after the other branches too, or.

don't know, like that's it's just maybe silly speculation. But at the same time, they have literally said that they want to behead her.

cancel like the show from happening and airing. As far as I'm aware, I think it actually did air a couple of nights ago though.

you shouldn't spand the church on religious freedom grounds. And that's something that the U see has been really really successful at sort of hiding behind you when anyone tries to go after them, like they did this in the seventies and eighties, when there were campaigns to like prosecute

them for just the crimes they were doing. Was that a bunch of sort of like like not just not just right wing groups, but sort of like like like civil libertarian groups, like like we're like, oh, you can't do this because if you if if they go after the UFI Gacia Church, they're going to be able to go after like any religious groups. And that's just like

not true, Like it's just not true. These people are not like whatever you're you know, in terms of sort of whatever, like the crimes of like a normal religious group group are like the church is not a normal religious group. They have been funding desk squads for like longer than most of the people listening to the show have been alive. And yeah, I don't know. I just want to sort of like like just make people aware

of it. They're going to try this shit again. And it was it was bullshit less and he did it.

This is how it's going to work. I'm kind of wondering also if the cult is going to sort of like roll out new providential edicts that will like potentially be like, oh no, this is going to be our new country that we get the most money out of, or this maybe or something like, you know, just something that they're going to say that God has made it this way so that like, yeah, you can change those.

to lash out, it's like doesn't work very well. I do think also the way that this assassination has like been turning just random like regular people in Japan who don't really know anything about the Church against them has been really really interesting and powerful in a way that was I mean not the I don't know, so there's I've been saying is like the top of the show kind of as a joke, but like, this really has been a very successful like political assassination in that it

hasn't like, it hasn't back it hasn't yet backfired in a way that helps the church, and it seems to have really don't know, it seems it seemed to have very powerfully achieved this objective of getting people to go, wait, hold on, who is this cult that is like not I don't know, running is maybe too strong of a word, but has like completely embedded itself in the in Japan's ruling class.

of the Japanese. Wow, Okay, I guess I expect this of both, like parts of the coverage, but there is there has been very very little, if any willingness to like talk about the church's connection to the CIA, and they're you know, people will talk about them like as an anti communist group, but right like yeah, like the don't take that extra step, yeah yeah, like you have like it's they're not just in it. Like there there

there are lots of anti communist groups. I mean, there are no anti communist groups that are good, right, but like there are lots of anti communist groups that never funded death squads in like not what was what was the actual number like sixteen I had I had I had a count at one point of the number of

countries they funded desk squads in. But like like most most most most people haven't like like funded coups in Bolivia and like you know, kept like allowed to ran Contra to happen by keeping the Contras in the war, or like sent weapons of the mousia Hadeen like yo, like they they really they they really they've I don't know, like I I mean, I like I guess, like you know, in terms of the sort of like this is the bourgeois press stuff it like it like it makes sense

ideologically why people don't want to talk about their connections to the CIA and like the operations they pulled in the US and all of the just imperials that they've been doing. But it's it's really depressing because yeah, yeah, I don't know.

and that is what happened here unsurprisingly. So I guess I just want to take this chance to a update everyone on what's been happening since we last upbated everyone what's been happening at the border, and be just address some of these myths.

that people can address. If people in your circle have been influenced by Elon Musk citizen journalism, then I think it's really important to just point out that it's all bullshit then so easily discoverably bullshit. Now, obviously not everyone spends as much time at the southern border of the United States as I do, and not everyone lives on

the border. Must doesn't live on the border either, and he clearly thinks that people who do exist in some kind of world West fantasia where people you know, wear

cowboy hats and cowboy boots. But like for most of us, for many of us, it's is our day to day reality, and so it's easy to go, I guess, and talk to some cops and like wave at some people who have been corralled up like like they like cattle or some kind of animals, right, yeah, right, like not engaging with them as people and throughout this right like, at no point in his little border screed, which I don't think you have to watch, by the way, if you haven't watched it, like I'm very now.

to the differences. I didn't have to walk across the desert carrying my child and then be detained in open air concentration camp while people around me got fucking hypothermia and then questioned about the legitimacy of my travel and right to be here, and then I'm able to work

for years. Migration experiences are different, different, and you don't have a right to condescend to people who are often among some of the least fortunate people in the world, just because your mum was a Canadian citizen and you came here to go to school, Like, it's not the fucking same. And I say this as someone who came here to go to school, right, Like, it's.

border policy. There has never been an open border policy Biden's. So I was in Tijuana at the Pedwest people know where. That is so at that point in time that on the day Biden was inaugurated, I was there, right. I was there because a large group of migrants were waiting to see if Joe Biden would change anything, and they had been stuck in Tijuana for month years in some cases. I spoke to people who had been sexually assaulted. I

spoke to people who had been robbed. I spoke to people who lived in fear for their lives right, and they were not safe in Mexico and wanted to come to the United States. And they had seen the way Biden campaigned, and they hoped that he would do something better. Did he fuck know? He did not. For years, he continued the same policies that Trump put in place in COVID Biden Title forty two more people than Trump did. Right, The Title forty two policy was in place for much

longer under Biden than it was under Trump. It's completely untrue to suggest that Biden not, at any point in his presidency opened up the border. What did happen in May. As people will be aware, is that Title forty two ended. It didn't end because Biden decided it had to end. It ended because the emergency for COVID nineteen ended. And Title forty two is not immigration law, its public health law.

And so with the end of this policy, that allowed the government to do things that would not normally be able to do because it was a quote unquote emergency, they were not able to do this extraordinary and extraordinarily cruel thing, which which was Title forty two. Right, That wasn't a Biden choice, that that was an end, that was a decision forced upon him. Indeed, the Biden administration defended Title forty two in court. What has happened since

then is that migrant numbers have dropped. They have decreased since the end of Title forty two. That's because lots of people saw the harsh anti migration rhetoric that was coming from the Biden White House, right, Mayorcus out there spouting stuff about bands you'll be banned from seeking asylum for five years if your court crossing between ports of entry, and that led to people thinking they had to cross

before the end of Title forty two. Right now, what Title forty two did do is create a massive backlog of asylum applications because we weren't processing those applications and we were bouncing people back to Mexico, where as I've hopefully already illustrated, they were not safe. They didn't feel that that was a safe third country for them, and so in the months after Title forty two, those people have tried to cross and to make their asylum applications right.

They're supposed to use app called CBP one. As we've documented in very great detail, that app is completely unfit for purpose. And people can listen to my title forty two episodes, they can listen to the interview when it did with Jake and Austin about CBP one. The issues with it are many. The facial liveness scan that it does doesn't work for people who have darker skin, It

requires Wi Fi, it requires Internet connectivity. These are things that no long migrants have, and that the migrants who do have tend to be richer and tend to be whiter, so it facilitates a certain type of migrant. At one point in I believe April of this year, forty percent of the CBP one applications that were CBP one appointments that were made for Sylum applications were made for people who spoke Russian. If we spoke Russian on not forty

percent of the migrants that was in Tijuana. And I guess what that means is that people who you know, especially in my experience, people from African countries are unable to apply for appointments using CBP one. Also, it's only available in a couple of languages, or three languages I believe, English, Spanish, and Haitian Creole. If you don't speak those languages is going to be a lot harder. There are many other issues with CBP one and other apps that DHS uses.

But what has happened since the end of title forty two in May right is people have tried. This backlog has begun to sort of people have started to try and present their applications. And what's happening now is that people are crossing in very large numbers. That's not untrue that happens at this time of year. So the last kind of quote unquote normal years we had were I suppose twenty eighteen and twenty nineteen. If people cast their

minds back to the November of twenty eighteen. You remember that was the Trump midterms, and you remember the quote unquote migrant caravan that are Identijuana at that time with thousands of people. The reason that people are always traveling at this time of year is because it is easier to travel in the months and I was hot, right, So we will see more people arriving the next few months. That's part of seasonal migrationments because of demand for work.

If you're working harvesting things right as a day laborer, that happens at the end of the summer. This is part of a normal and natural cycle. People have always traveled since human beings have existed to take advantage of different conditions, different access to resources. But the idea that at some point Biden instituted an open border policy is nonsense. Biden has closed that border, right, He's built walls through Friendship Park, He's built walls in Texas, he's built walls

in California, He's funded DHS more. That border is certainly not open. The large groups of people that you are seeing going through the asylum process under US immigration law, as they have under every other president. They come into the United States, they do an initial interview and they're released with a notice to appear in court. That's always been the case. Now are those notices to appear for dates at further in the future now, Absolutely, And that's

because our system is backlogged. Right, because we spent all our fucking money on giving border patrol, the black Hawks, giving our cops tanks, whatever it is that we spend our money on, we haven't spent it on making it easier and quicker for these people to get their asylum

claims adjudicated. One of the claims that they make in the video I'm skipping out of the order that they make them in is that the repute he speaking to representative who's a representative for the Southern border region of Texas. He's in Eagle Past, Texas, right, which is an area which I've seen a lot of migration. The guy says there's no repatriation here. Of course, there isn't any repatriation there.

That's not what happens in Eagle Pass right. People come, some of them will be immediately repatriated if they are found to be For instance, know that in May somebody who was found to be on the United States terrorism watch list tried to enter the country. That that person wasn't released with a notice to appear right, that person was immediately bounced into either return to their country or more likely in their case, incarcerated. Some people will be

detained there. Some people will be repatriated there, but that's because like Del Rio, Texas or Eagle Pass doesn't repatriate people. That's not their role. The courts are the ones who decide who is eligible for asylent right. And it's worth noting that this fiscal year, so that's through August of twenty twenty three, recording in October, but I couldn't find

September stats. Immigration judges have issued removal and voluntary departure orders for thirty nine point four percent of completed cases, totaling two hundred and twenty three thousand, five hundred and seventy deportation orders. So it's absolutely ludicrous to say that there's no repatriation. Nearly half of those cases when they come to court result in repatriation. It's and then the representative claims that he called the president of Guatemalan the

Guatemalan president said will take people back. Great, of course they will. That that's how international law works. It's not the Guatemalan president's job to decide who is decide who is allowed asylum in the United States. That's the job of the immigration courts. They are deeply flawed. But it's ludicrous to suggests that these people are not being sent back, because a deeply problematic number of them are being sent back,

often to very dangerous situations. And I think it's it's deeply misleading and it's troubling to see like elected officials making these claims. I know that elected officials just lie to, you know, to to reinforce the narrative, but it's still troubling. Another claim they were like he was really shocked that

people were playing golf next to the border. The US border is thousands of miles long, like we live, like for those of us, for whom it's not like an oddity to come and cause play at it's where we live. And of course we do stuff near the border because it's our home. Like I was camping near the border this week. I ride my bike near the border all

the time. There are other golf courses near the border, there are parks near the border, and there's a Tommy Hill figure discount store near the border in Santa Sedro, like, yeah, it's our home.

theoretical than anything else. You would cross pretty free. I have friends in southern California that go into Mexico for the week and you didn't have a pass border or anything. Like families you know, would cross to be with each other and stuff like. It was, yeah, the way it is.

But last weekend was very cold. I was in a camp near Hakumba on Friday night through late Friday night maybe into Saturday morning, and.

gave someone my gortex jacket. I was there with James and Jacqueline from Boarder Kindness and some other friends. I know some of them listen to the podcast, and it makes me really happy that people who listen to this like take the time out of their busy lives to show up and help other people. Like that's one of the coolest things that about what we do.

and you've given away all the sleeping bags you have? Like, it's fucked. It's not good for you. And I know it's taken a toll on those people, and it would be great if more people could come. As James Jaqueline said, we're vetting everyone because there are people who would like to do harm to migrants and people who don't like migrants. And so if you go back and listen to the episode or the relevant links and email addresses to volunteer there, even if you just send money, it's better to send

money then to send us stuff. We've had a ton of I spent a decent chunk of Friday afternoon going through donated stuff. Some of it's great, some of it I'm afraid. Like, if a jacket is has giant holes in it for you, it also has giant holes in it for someone who's less rich than you, and it doesn't keep them any warmer than it keeps you, so like, you know, it's better if people send money, but that's taken its toll on people. It's taking its toll on the people in the camps too, not to say that

they're not in very good spirits. Like it's so I was there at about ten o'clock at night when people What happens, right is people walk around the gaps in the wall, which again didn't come up in Elon Musk's video. Right there are giant, yawning gaps in the wall because they were trying to build as much of it as possible before the twenty twenty election, and so they skipped the hard parts. So people walk through where the wall stops, they're met by border patrol. Border patrol then drives them.

I don't mean drive somebody like put them in the back of the vehicle. I mean drive them like you would drive cattle, by going behind them in a vehicle and pushing them forward and walks them into the camp, right, and then they arrive in the camp, and it's it's they arrive and like I was going up to ascertained, you know what sort of group it was? Were they people who were in severe distress? Right, like hypothermic or

hurt or injured. I know someone came later in a week who had a very bad injury, who had fallen maybe trying to climb the wall. And so you're going to kind of trite that group, right, And some people were really start they're in America, like, and then they wanted to give me like a hug or a fist bump and be like, yeah, I'm here. Obviously some of them weren't prepared. None of them were prepared for sleeping outside.

And then generally, like there have been large kind of just shelters made out of cacti or brush or scrub or whatever's there, which tend to be based around like national groups, right, just people have their community so that it's one for Colombian people, Brazilian people, punt Jabi, Sikh people. There were Kurdish people, Turkish, a lot of Turkish people, Afghan people, and so they kind of because they can talk to each other, they'll be like, hey, come over here,

Afghan friend, like you know, we'll look after you. We've got this shelter set out, we've got a fire going, get yourself warm. And then those people can spend anywhere from one to three days there before they're taken out right, and so like, it's an extremely bad situation and it will only get worse, So weather gets worse. Talking of things which which are bad, should should we should we take this opportunity to pivot to things that people don't need to buy.

Are they the number of asylum cases? Are they the number of encounters the border patrol has had? Because as we know, right, an encounter doesn't necessarily mean individual. If one person crosses two or three times, that's two or three encounters, right, And they never talk about that because they're just pulling this shit out their asses. If you want information, these people are not people to get it from. None of them are even working in border enforcement.

believe they have a legitimate asylum claim. They are fleeing violence, right, they have one of the We've been over to five categories that you can get asylum for before on the podcast. I won't read them out again, but I have seen people. For instance, I saw one person who they were transported to the hospital. The hospital let them out on the

street in San Diego. They took a cab back to the border because they don't want to just be floating around in the US with no papers and able to work, worried that like a parking ticket or a traffic stock could send them back to wherever they'd fled from. Right, Because they've fled because they're afraid of something, and they don't want to be sent back.

dairy and gap, this is an incredibly dangerous journey. Young men are generally a little more capable physically of it. And also it's you know, especially given some realities of a lot of you know, these cultures, that's who you expect to go and make money and send it back to their families like that that's just like it's they're not invading you. You know, this is like, these are the people who are going to work jobs and send money back to their families.

they thought it wasn't safe for them there. Also, like, if you're a military aged male in some countries Russia or lots of countries in the sahell, now you could be forcibly drafted right into one of any number of conflicts that you want no part of. And I wouldn't want to do that either. I'd want to leave right And I've spoken to people who have fled that kind

of situation this week. So Yeah, of the gender balance, I don't know, it's very hard to get a sense of the actual gender balance because border patrol tends to process women and children first, and especially unaccompany children of course first, but it's very hard to get into the actual gender balance without like looking at border patrol statistics, and they take a month or two to come out generally. Yeah,

they talk about people with tear drop tattoos. I would estimate that I have seen tens, if not hundreds of thousands of people at the southern border. I've never seen anyone with the tear drop tattoo a leg. You'd have to be all to have.

It's just laughable, it's ridiculous. It's all based in myth and not in reality. And what troubles me the most I think is I don't know how many people have watched Elon Musk's live stream, right, and hopefully most of them that did saw someone completely incapable of like asking interrogated questions, or reversing the camera on his phone, or look dressing like a cowboy. But there has been, to my knowledge, no national network coverage of what's happening in

a cumber right. There has been limited local coverage of what's happening in U Cumba. What that has has already stopped because like it was a kind of one and done situation for a lot of outlets, but it's not one and done for the people who are volunteering, and it's not one and done for the people who are still arriving right like there are we're going to see more of this in between now and twenty twenty four.

The border is clearly an area that both parties, I guess, have decided that they can grandstand on and can show himself as being quote unquote tough on migration, Like, no, I don't want to live in a world where our leaders are tough on little babies who just walked across a desert like that's a fucked up thing to be tough on. It could be tough on corporate corruption if you want to like front up to someone. And I think the Republicans are going to push on by iten

being weak on the border. There will be more migration this year than we have seen a long time because we created a backlog, right because climate change is worse every single year, and like I think, as we've documented extensively on our show, parts of the world are becoming less and less survivable. I went to the Martial Landers this summer. They are disappearing, So of course people are going to want to come to somewhere where they feel safe.

There are record numbers of people crossing the Dairy and Gap right now. That is something that will result in record numbers of people showing up a border.

increasingly like monolithic. I guess Hindu nationalists. I guess you could call it. And that's fair, right, Robert, Yeah, yeah, like mod it's not getting any safer for them there, and I've seen tons more seek people than I've ever seen at the border before.

India denies that this was at their behest, but yeah, like this is and this is by the way, it's not just a thing that India does. Political assassinations from authoritarian directed by authoritarian countries in Western countries have become more and more common, right. A lot of this started with with what Russia was doing, the poisoning, the Scarpol

poisonings and stuff. But like this is growing more calm, and is this sort of like rules based international order that I think to some extent we all kind of tricked ourselves into thinking existed increasingly breaks down. But that's all to say, there's a good reason why a lot of Sikhs might be trying to come into the US right now.

One of the things that Musk was shocked about was that, like, not all of these people in Mexican. I don't know how big he thinks Mexico is and what he believes the population of Mexico to be, but at one minute he it's two million a year. Does he think Mexico is just like dwindling and there are like eight people left?

Like Mexico is a large country, but like it does not provide us with millions of migrants a year, and more of that like comically impossible narrative, right, Like whatever I mean people and people are going to believe it.

She was useless. But maybe this is an area where like the federal government has water buffalos, right, big water containers, it has MRIs. If these were American citizens and this was a hurricane or an earthquake, that shit would be there. It's not because they don't think that they matter as much. San Diego County has declared emergency and so they can't do anything. That's complete fucking nonsense. They again, they could if these were American citizens, they would if these people

were like white wealthy people living in Lahoya. They're choosing not to because they don't think it will hurt them and like it. Maybe it won't, right, But I think you can make a meaningful difference by donating your money, because the only people who are helping are the dozen or so folks right like who all convoyed out there on Friday night down a dirt road in our trucks and handed out the beans and rice and ritz crackers. But you can make a difference of your money. The

border kindness links are put in the description. Again, you can also make a difference, maybe by calling your representative and shaming them, because this is a government created problem, and the government like sticking its hands up in the air and being like, oh no, what a surprise, we'd't know how to do. Yes, they knew this was coming, right, these people, many of them have walked from Colombia. We

knew these people were arriving. We've been putting this off since COVID, for three years, since the start of the COVID pandemic. I should say COVID is very much alive. I've seen some people who like obviously weren't able to rap a test everyone, but there are a lot of sick people coughing right, There were people with scabies. There

were people who were very unwell. That again, if you detained people in congregate settings and the only masks are the ones that we bring as volunteers, and that's going to happen, right, We'll probably get some infectious disease that they'll get to share with Even if you don't care about other people, Sure it'll come by you and the arts eventually. Right when freaking chicken gun yod, that's not vectored in that fashion, but you know, cholera or something

rocks up in America. So I would urge people to do something because so few people are and the only people who are helping our mutual aid groups who are overstretched and stressed and tired and broke. And so if you can help, you should, and well, like whatever that looks like to you, if you want to volunteer, that's great. I would urge you to go through the channels that are set so you don't just show up and look at yourself or someone else.

that the labor of recently arrived for migrants. And like I think, if you look at the news, I go to places where wars are happening, right, That's part of my job, so does Robert, you know. And then I see those people at the border. The reason they're here is because they're fleeing something worse, and I think, like maybe grounding it in that, I don't think anyone would want a little baby to be sleeping in there. I know some pretty conservative people who were pretty outraged by

what happened in May, and it's worse now. And yeah, no one in their right mind wants a little baby to be shivering out in the desert. You know, no one in their right mind wants a mother to be breastfeeding and sleeping underneath a cardboard box because that's all she has you know, like the it's not even if you believe in it's very liberal construct to America as a welcoming nation and they shouldn't be who we are and shouldn't be.

feels like it's kind of getting worse. But through that there's people who respond to this crisis of neoliberalism and band together and figure out how to sort through all of this shit and all that is continuing as the City of Atlanta and State of Georgia unveil new state repression tactics to chill any resistance to the construction of this ninety million dollar police training facility that we have covered in depth in this show the past few years.

A few months ago there was another three part series about the sixth Week of Action in June, but new things have happened since then. The referendum has been submitted, so that is all in process. But the same day the construction was scheduled to begin, the State of Georgia indicted sixty one people on RICO charges. RICO is an acronym referring to the Racketeer, Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act.

This specific act is meant to legally target organizations, and organizations can relate to anything between you know, traditional incorporated organizations or something as loose as like a pickup basketball team, which is how the state is able to paint whole communities of people who are just connected by similar values as being a quote unquote organization. The RICO Act in practice,

is basically a way to criminalize a whole community. Now I'm not a lawyer, but I do know lawyers, so for this episode, I brought on Mo Cohen, a lawyer specializing in state repression. So without further ado, here is my conversation with them. Mo, Hello, thank you for joining me today.

repression of the Solidarity Fund mode. I assume you're familiar with the Solidarity Fund raid and the charges against against the Network for Strong Communities.

was anticipated. Yes, and those kinds of financial charges or allegations of financial misconduct are sort of the predicate for bringing this kind of sweeping rego indictment.

a potential like a tactic of of suppression. You know when you say that the types of like financial crime like fraud charges that that were brought against this the sole Fund people, how they seem kind of unwarranted. That is something that the judge in the bond hearing kind

of agreed with. The judge was unimpressed, Yes that I I I I I listened to the uh I listened to the hearing, and the judge is very skeptical of the prosecution's claims and basically told the prosecution like, if you like actually want this to like succeed like in actual like court, you know, once once this progresses, you're you're gonna have to have a much much stronger case

because this all seems kind of like nonsense. But you know that that didn't stop the prosecutors and the uh I believe it's the Attorney General Office as well of Georgia of using using kind of some stuff from this from this raid against the Solidarity Fund and trying to kind of tie together this grand conspiracy narrative that we.

geist sense. But do I actually like talk about like what these types of rico charges actually are because like you know, most people, even if they charged with the crime, right, most people don't ever like have to deal with like rico as like a concept.

they've been primarily used. And I think it is really significant to note that after a lot of the people of color solidarity movements like the Black Panthers, the Black Liberation Army, AIM, the Brown Berets, the Young Lords, these groups were all really weakened by Cohen Telpro and the community groups that remained were then labeled as gangs and prosecuted under RICO and so I just you know, everything that happens in this conversation, we have to sort of

hold in our minds that this particular movement is not the first movement and not the first community who has had rego leveled against it as a form of state repression.

thing that the Fulton County Office has has done before. Yes, and as like we have like Rico's this is like a criminal racketeering thing against the mob. In terms of like what RICO actually is, Like is it its own separate charge or is it like is it a way to like apply other felony charges, Like you know, can can you just be charged with RICO or is there have to be like other other crimes that you're accused of for them to actually like use this use this charge against these activists.

what anarchism is is how it is. How the document starts, and then it gets into all these like alleged alleged like offenses that are not necessarily criminal nature, but they're all in the service of pushing forward this conspiracy to stop the construction of this police training facility. So there's a lot of like kind of like a like random almost asked and I and stuff in there that that they're that they're eluding is is a quote unquote an

overt act in furtherance of the conspiracy. You know, anything from like buying glue or buying like food supplies, and they're they're including or or things like like like writing your name.

advertising that allows us to continue this show. It's all, it's all, it's all all part of the plan. So yes, every every single ad is a co conspirator. So take that, uh,

Ronald Reikan coin. Okay, we are we are back. We could talk about a bit more about the actual indictment, uh in a sec I do kind of want to first talk about who are facing these charges, right, because these are these are sixty one people, and it looks like for when I was looking through, one of the first things that you noticed is like, oh, they're mostly charging people who have already been charged before. There's not so many new people added to this case. It's mostly

people who've already been arrested and charged. Can you kind of like talk about the scope of these sixty one people who are included in this indictment.

them are things like domestic terrorism. And so I don't think it is an accident that all of those people were charged with domestic terrorism in the beginning months of this of this sort of push to overcharge the stock Cup City activists, And in fact, I think one of the things that tipped us off at that point that Rico was in the pipeline was that people were being charged with domestic terrorism, which is one of the predicate offenses for Rico, and so many of the people who

are on this indictment are the people who are already charged with domestic terrorism. They were overcharged with domestic terrorism. In my opinion, they were overcharged. I think the opinion of most attorneys. They were overcharged. They were charged in that manner, not because the allegations against them are serious.

In fact, if you look at the allegations in those domestic terrorism indictments or they're not even indictments yet, most of them in those domestic terrorism charges, in the documents that are associated with those arrests, the allegations are, you know, as I said, these absolutely unremarkable, garden variety sort of criminal trespass allegations, by and large, the allegations against people, and they include things that are absolutely lawful, like having

mud on your like having on your knees. Yes, yeah, so a lot of the allegations. One of the things that's remarkable about Rico, and frankly about the domestic terrorism stuff, is that both of those statutes allow for the sort of bootstrapping of one offense into a much more serious offense if certain conditions are met with respect to the

domestic terrorism Statute. A very large number of garden variety offens is like criminal trespassing, can be transformed into domestic terrorism if they are perceived to be essentially politically motivated. In the case of So, what we have here is a situation where a bunch of people got charged with domestic terrorism, not because they were doing something really dramatic or violent, but because whatever it was they were doing was perceived as being an effort to influence public policy.

So we transformed a very minor offense into a very serious offense. That serious offense then became the predicate offense for Rico, which is an even more serious offense.

charges yet the prosecutors just argued, because we're charging with the domestic terrorism, it's like inferred that they must have done some other crimes that we haven't yet specified. But in the way that works for the for the Rico indictments, because I think you need to have already had like like I think there's like a prerequisitive like two other

like felonious charges. What they did in the in these reco charges is go back to the music festival and break down every single thing that happened there that they're alleging these people did as separate instances like like planning to go to the place, you know, marching to the place, being at the place, Like they broke it down to have all these separate things so that they could like

shoehorn it into this Rico indictment. So there's a lot of like a you know, revisionist history going on here, very kind of different arguments than what the actual like domestic terrorism of bond hearings had in like a previous months.

where cameras were were we're located. And this is an extremely interesting case because he is he is not included in any other previous charges, but that is at least one of the people who who are kind of new additions to this indictment. One thing I didn't want to mention because you've you've said, you've you've kind of mentioned a few times that these are these are state level reco charges. Those are kind of different than federal reco charges.

Do you want to kind of get into like the difference between state and federal charges and specifically how kind of the ones in Georgia work versus the the the federal rego that you know, kind of inspired different states to kind of add their own style of rico.

you know, this criminal enterprise. The Georgia Ricos Statute is even more broad. The Georgia Ricos Statute uses a lot of the same terms, right, a pattern of racketeering activity. Right, It uses a lot of the same concepts, but it defines those concepts in ways that are even broader, even

easier to apply. So I think the thing that is significant about Rico is that, similar to like what we would see with conspiracy, where you know, not every person involved in a conspiracy needs to have been participating in every single criminal instance of criminal conduct in order to be implicated.

one person's behavior to another person. Rico offers a way around that. To use Rico in the way that the prosecutors in Georgia are doing, among other things, enables them to engage in a sort of collective punishment of people

who they perceive as holding certain ideologies. And those people can be engaged in lawful behavior and even in constitutionally protected behavior, but if they can and characterize any of that behavior as having been an overt act in furtherance of the conspiracy, the fact that this person bought glue and was reimbursed for the glue, yeah, can function to allow the prosecutor to attribute all of this other criminal conduct to the person who bought glue.

you know, it's laughable. They're making these claims that, you know, if it weren't so serious, if this weren't so serious, we'd all be rolling on the floor. The idea that mutual aid is sinister. It really to me when I read this indictment, I thought, wow, this is just fascinating, because what's happening here is that Georgia is saying the quiet part out loud. We all know state repression is real.

We all know that the American legal system functions to repressed assent, to impose prior restraints on first amend and

protected behavior, to chill speech, to frighten people into submission. Right, we understand that it is this coercive system, but there is at least a sort of set of rules that purport to prioritize fairness, that purport to value concepts of due process, and the Rico Statute, and in particular, the Reco Statute as it is being used here, really functions so explicitly to circumvent those rules that we can that

they're just they're not even trying anymore. They're not even trying to pretend that they care about individual probable cause, about the First Amendment, and I would say, most frighteningly about the sixth Amendment, which is the right to counsel, because they have gone way beyond the pale in alleging that things like accessing legal help, or accessing bail, or having legal observers or you know, providing anti repression trainings

are in some manner sinister acts in furtherance of the conspiracy. And I am really I don't know what will happen here. I really can't begin to guess, because I feel like it is no longer possible for me to be surprised by the nonsense that is coming out of this jurisdiction. I don't know what will happen, but I am very, very curious to see how the bench, how the judges in Georgia respond to these allegations that involve making it

part of a criminal conspiracy to prove legal assistance. You know, this is to me like one of the most concerning aspects of this of this indictment, because as absurd as it is, this could have very serious consequences.

with Atlanta for a while now. Is that because of how many you know, criminal cases there is around the top top city of like movement, whatever kind of the result of those cases is going to be is going to set a very influential precedent for future for future kind of eco defense campaigns, future like any anything relating to like like civil rights, you know, uh, police abolition, or even even even things it's like benign is like police reform, like any any kind of like any kind

of like grassroots activist, whatever kind of movement that's going to happen in the future is going to be affected by how these cases go. Because not only is you know, as as you mentioned, the you know, Act to Bail Fund being being in like access to to to lawyers and so and legal support is being used in these reco charges, they were also alleging that by having a you know, a bail fund number on your arm, that was like, you know, that was evidence that that that's

that this person intended to do crimes. And then you know, as as evident in support of these domestic terrorism charges, which is you know, an extremely dangerously legal claim to

to to be to be talking about. And we've been dealing with that in Atlanta for months now, and it's you know, it's created this really chilling effect on the ground that you know, you can you can be you know, doing something as simple as marching in the street and now have not only to like terrorism charges, having reco charges for stuff that is very clearly like First Amendment activity.

visible and highly legible as state repression. And then when people respond appropriately by anticipating that they may be subject to state repression by writing the jail support number on their arm, not because they believe that they intend to go out and do crimes, but because they know that unremarkable acts of First Amendment protected conduct may result in intense state repression. The law enforcement apparatus then responds by

rationalizing their repression further. I mean, it's just we can see the sort of post hoc fallacy at work in real time. It's not clear to me how much of the hypocrisy is self aware. Sure, you know who else doesn't talk to cops?

And there does seem to be one major act of violence that is alleged in this indictment, and I think we need to talk about it for a second because that one alleged act of violence involves the claim that Manuel torteguita Tehran who was murdered by police, was firing upon officers, and that is an incredibly central claim in this indictment. That really is I think the hook on which they're hanging a lot of the seriousness of the allegations, and it is an incredibly disingenuous claim and it's an

incredibly dangerous claim. The evidence that they're using to support that claim is the statement of a third party who was not present. It's a regrettable statement that they've dug up from some group balance you know, you know, thousands of miles away from the Atlanta Forest and there's no reason to credit that statement, but they are using it

to support this claim. That is, as I said, it's it's critical to their argument, and it is extremely disingenuous and it's extremely dangerous for for the office of a prosecutor which you know, for what it's worth, is supposed to pursue justice and not convictions. It is just intolerable to me that that somebody thought this was an acceptable thing to put into a legal document.

this website. But they're they're attributing the the either like co authorship of these claims to the people at the Solidary count, which they've laid out no evidence in supporting that. That's it's it's one of the more bizarre aspects of this indictment because they make every they claim that every single post on scenes is somehow the solid Different people are in part responsible for it, which is absolutely absurd that there's there's They've they've produced nothing, no piece of

evidence in support of this claim. But that is one of the core parts of their indictment because much much of what they're filling this indictment with, you know, they're talking about how there's people do you know, doing crimes in San Francisco, in in Portland, in like Minneapolis, like

all across like in New York, all across the country. Right, this is part of like the criminal conspiracy angle, which were very clearly from my perspective, this is, you know, people all across the country who care about a cause, and so they're doing something in their own city. It's there's there's no there's no conspiracy to it. It's it's people taking their own individual action. But they're they're trying, they're trying to tie this into the solidarity fund in

a very bizarre way. You know, I'll be.

used to having hierarchy in their lives. And you know, I think i've I've talked about this before, I think on this show about the fact that when the far right organizes, they organize in ways that are familiar to police and prosecutors. Right. They organize in these very martial, hierarchical ways where there's a clear chain of command. Now, often their chain of command is very still and involves people having titles like dragons and wizards. But it's legible, right,

It's legible to law enforcement. They understand there's someone in charge, and there's someone who answers to the person in charge. Having a situation where we have a website that is unmoderated, hosted by or supported by some group and totally open is something that I think, you know, police and prosecutors might have a little bit of difficulty understanding, right, because it's inconceivable to them that there is not a hierarchy,

that there's not a chain of command. It's like, you know, I've actually had to drop footnotes in federal court filings to explain to judges and to explain to opposing counsel that Antifa is like a set of practices and not

a membership organization. Yes, right, and that trying to trying to address Antifa as though it were an organization is similar to trying to address the world of Batman fans, right, Like these are all people who might self identify in some way, but you couldn't really identify them as a group, and they don't know each other and they're not so identifying in any way for each other.

So the fact that they're trying to tie this to Solidarity Fund in some ways is very is very bizarre, just because there was like a link on this website to donate to the Solidarity Fund, but any anyone could put a link there like that's like I've put links to the Solidarity Fund in the show notes of this podcast, right, I'm I'm not I'm not connected to them in any

in any other way. So just just having having that be this this kind of aspect and even even if somehow Solidarity Fund were running running running this whole website, which there's no evidence they are, this feels like would also relate to like a section two thirty case where people who host content are not responsible for the actual like like they're they're not like the I'm not a super big lob person, but this usually applies to like

social media sites and other places that host user generated content, that the actual site itself is not responsible for the user generated content that is that is that is on this site. So it's anyway, there's a whole bunch of you know, various various aspects of this claim that don't

don't make any sense to me. But it's verically that they're trying to wrap all of these no blogs posts in because that's the most that's most like the evidence they have, which is extremely weak, you know, it's it's it's in some ways a good sign that all they have are these anonymous posts on this website with no actual you know, idea of who made them or if

they're true or not. But that's the kind of that's the that's a lot of a lot of what a lot of what they are going off or are just these website posts which well, a lot of these things.

I don't know. I don't practice in that jurisdiction. I'm not familiar. You know, I've never defended a RICO case. Just to be clear, you know, my my wheelhouse is state repression. This is clearly that. But I'm not tremendously familiar with litigating rico, and I'm not you know, I would like to have some faith in the legal system, but that faith has been worn rather thin, and it has particularly been worn thin after watching you know, all

of the abuses that have taken place in this particular case. So, you know, I am really concerned. I'm really concerned about the constitutionality of this statute and of the domestic Terrorism Statute. I am concerned about what will happen in the courts if this proceeds. That said, it is entirely possible that this is like many many criminal cases that are brought

in the context of protest movements. It is entirely possible that the primary thing motivating these cases is an effort to fractionate and drain and distract and criminalize, in the popular imagination, the movement to stop cop City. They may be more interested in doing those things than they are in obtaining any convictions or proceeding to trial, and they

may well succeed. You know, Look, prosecution is a very very effective way to to undermine movement solidarity, and it's a very effective way to undermine popular support, and it's a very effective way to make it impossible for people to actually focus on their movement goals because they have to spend all of their time doing court support and hiring lawyers and talking to me.

or not we can see it. Right, even if we didn't have this indictment, there would be other things happening. And the most powerful weapon that the state has to quell social movements is fear. And so the solution to state repression is not self censorship. It is not staying home. It is courage.

not caused people to back down. It's caused them to actually like strengthen their solidarity with each other and keep on and keep on going. I think that's because all of these things have been seen from the start as

very clear tactics of state repression. It is actually like catalyze people to actually like care for each other more and and and and recognize what is going on so they can respond appropriately and and and not let all of these all of these very like chilling tactics, but consciously make sure that you recognize that so that you don't let it really like you know, affect your ability to continue continue doing the work that you feel is so important. And that's absolutely been one of the things

that's been very unique to watch in Atlanta. I think, uh, I think we've kind of covered lots of lots of what I wanted to get into. In case you have any other kind of things of note or any like any like a resources you want to you want.

One other thing is that, uh, for for a while after the Solidarity Fund was rated, they were not you know, taking in donations. They they were outsourcing it to the net, to the National Bill Fund. I believe they are they are back this. The Solidarity Fund website is now once again taking taking donations to help people who are facing this repression, for legal support, for counsel, all all these

sorts of things. And because this case just keeps on growing, you know, they're they're always kind of needing, needing, needing more resources to get people lawyers, to get people out of jail, all of these sorts of things. So you can you can once again donate at the at the at L solidarity site. So that is that is also kind of new news as of as of the past few, uh few weeks. Thank you mom for talking about this. Uh, this is very enlightening.

you can say I am represented by counsel. Please leave your name and number and my lawyer will call you.