It Could Happen Here Weekly 106

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Hey everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode of the week that just happened is here in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to listen to in a long stretch if you want. If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, there's gotta be nothing new here for you, but you can make your own decisions.

Welcome to Dick. It appened here, a show that is about a number of I really should have done an actual intro for this one. This is embarrassing. Roast me along with me is Sharene and James.

Hello, miya, Oh yeah that was great. I thought about was actually great. Keep them guessing, you know, yeah, yeah, they never know what they're going to get. Would it be sad?

Would it be happy?

Yeah?

Unfortunately, this is a This is a this is a really sad episode. This is an episode that I got really picked off or writing. Yeah, and this is an episode about Palestine. Now, most of the attention on Palestine right now has been focused on Gaza for you know, very obvious reasons. Guza is the place where you know, most of most of the Israeli offensive is happening. It's where most of the people are. Israelis are killing the most people. But however, coma, there's also been a bunch

I think you're I think you're right in the sense that, like the systems of apartheid are very clear in the West Bank versus other parts.

Of Yeah, I mean, the violent dynamic of it's really Thereaty project is pretty fucking evident when that bombing showed it's.

Yeah, But I think I think specifically, the part that's easiest to understand in the West Bank is why it's why it's a mutually self reinforcing dynamic. Why why why the Settler project keeps like has been building the way that it has, why it keeps inevitably leading to violence the way that it has, and why it's it's, you know,

My cynical take is that most of the people talking about this maybe don't have the deepest understanding themselves, and uh that you're skating along on that assumption not to have to expose their own shaky foundation.

I feel like I've talked about it before on like every podcast I've done, but I feel like people like tune it out, you know what I mean, Like, I feel like people don't actually absorb what I'm what any what they hear, because it's like, oh this again or whatever the fuck they're thinking.

I don't know.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, So I'm gonna I'm gonna hammer I'm gonna hammer a copy of this into all of your brains.

You have no choice, you must, Martin Luthering the History of Palestine.

Yeah, gonna nail ninety five copies of the Geneva Convention to the door. So in the beginning, there was the Nakba, which is the great design the Palestinian people in which the Israelis armed. I should mention by Stalin, which is something that is incredibly inconvenient for everyone in the entire American political spectrum. And we will get back to who also, like who specifically was doing the knack book, because it's not exactly who anyone really expects or portrays them as.

And they've also massacred like fifty Yeah.

Yeah, they've killed a ton of people. Yeah, I mean, I guess I should be more explicit about that, Like when I say drive out, like sometimes they were, it's just it's people fleeing. A lot of times they're killed.

Yeah.

I think it's like they flat in entire villages, you know what I mean, Like it's not just like oh they're empty houses now, it's like, no, they actually destroyed everything, built new cities where there already were cities, renamed the cities.

It's yeah, it was just I don't know, it's striful. The reason people are leaving is because they've seen their neighbors and family members killed and their fields and houses burned, and they know that that's coming for them right later.

Yeah.

I think this is sorry, tangent is. There are so many videos of like former IDF soldiers that were not think it's not idea technically, but like former people that fought in the Nekba that like drove these people out of their homes and it's so repulsive. There's literally like a it was on an Israeli news channel or like some type of Israeli show where there's an old man like laughing about how him and his group raped a sixteen year old girl and shot everyone in a row,

Yeah, and this is something we're going to get into more in a bit, but what are the consequences of this? And one of the consequences of running a settler colony like this is that the people that it produces, who are the people who you know, the people who are like ordering people and taking their homes right in order.

To do that, I think you have to convince yourself that the people you are doing it to are less human or not human like that. It's fundamental to colonialism, right to consider yourself to either be a higher form of humanity or like distinct, like in a species sense from these British people did that in their colonialism too. But yeah, you see it all the time in specifically in like their language and culture that depicts the settler colonization of the United States or what is now the

Yeah, and this is one of these parts of American history that people don't understand. And when you learn it, there's this real sort of even even in sort of radical accounts, and I understand why they do this, but there's a tendency to not to sort of back away

Fuck, the people doing that stuff are still like like that there's a park named after them. In San Diego, there's kit cass And Park, there's Uniparosa Park, like like it's baked into American culture still, like the Genocidas are fucking celebrated here.

Yeah, and this is and this is this is aweso true of Israel. Now. Okay, So so after after the knock ball, there's there's a lot of people who think that like this is the end of the whole process, right, that like, okay, so we've expelled these people, we've killed these people, there's now a Jewish state, it has like relatively stable borders or whatever. This is going to be the end of it, and that that did not happen.

He did it really royally kind of like his position was that were like, eventually I going to attack us, We'll have a defensive position, and failed miserably yet happy.

Yeah, it did not work. This is this and this this is a complete disaster. But and and and the other, you know, the part of it that's that's most important for our story is that this is the period where

Multiple sections of international law?

Is it Runnald Reagan? The surprise Reagan?

Yeah, and we are back. So one of the things that the Geneva Convention establishes is this set of legal obligations that occupiers have in occupy in over territory that they occupy. So if you know, the way that's supposed to work under international law is that you know, technically speaking, yeah, you can occupy territory, but you're not allowed to do whatever you want with that territory. You have to actually

Mean, Israel has has not followed international laws. Yeah, like nothing happens.

Yeah, international police.

It's like there's no way to it. I don't believe what it's telling me because nothing ever happens.

And it has Maybe it has a moral value, right, I guess that's that's the idea behind some of the activism, is that like it can help position something as being in the wrong and then that might help some But yeah, it hasn't worked. It didn't stop fucking it didn't stop the rainge of genocide in Meamma hasn't stopped the population exchange in a free like it's pretend it doesn't exist un as.

Someone enforces it.

Yeah, yeah, like it doesn't. It's it's I feel like sometimes it's a to them for like Western liberals to be like, oh, well they brother, they can't do that. They're breaking international law. Oh fuck, they're doing it anyway, Like well, yeah, yes, yeah, And like understandably, like no one particularly wants to like be the ones who enforce international law because that involves your children dying, uh, and so they let's let other children die instead.

Yeah, And you know, but the consequence of this being really toothless is that, you know, it's the language of this stuff is framed, and I want to frame this like differently for a second, which is I want to I want to think about what is being prohibited here in basic moral terms, because the the what the what this article of the Geneva Convention is supposed to stop is an army showing up killing a bunch of people and then settling their own population on top of those

You know, and they had nowhere to fucking go, like they yeah, right, Like.

Yeah, evacuate does make it seem like a very like humanitarian crisis, when really that you're right, But all they're saying is like leave now or die in the next hours, you know what I mean? Yeah, And evacuation that's like a threat, Like it's just a death threat.

Yeah. If I was to like stand outside your bedroom and pull the pin on a grenade and be like, I'm giving you an evacuation order. Oh, and I'm going to eat this grenade in here in five seconds, people wouldn't be like, oh, that's reasonable. Turn the doors to your house as well, just for funzies.

Yeah, and you know, and so and so. I mean, this is this is, this is what's been happening in Gaza.

Right.

You won't put you a million gozzens. You fled their homes and they've joined the one hundred and twenty thousand Armenians who are ethnically cleansed from the Garl Kara back by by Jean in September, Which this is the era we're living in right now, is an unfathomable era of violence and ethnic cleansing, right like none of none of the international legal frameworks like did shit none, none of none of the sort of you know like that, none of them never again stuff like n you can you

The rag in Myanmar, we didn't do shit.

Yeah, I mean right now we're we're averaging one one like mascular ethnic cleansing a month Jesus. And that is a fucking unbelievably bleak thing.

And it's only done to populations that are systematically like dehumanized, you know what I mean. Like that's the thing that's like, Oh, people are used to seeing this group of people suffer. They're used to seeing these kinds this kind of population just always die and and be I don't know, uh, bomb and stuff. So I think a lot of people just kind of gloss over it because they're just like, oh, this is what happens to them and really keeps happening.

Yeah, it's uh, it's certainly like not a coincidence that, like we there have been other ethnic cleansings right in Africa,

Yeah. Well, and I mean I think you know, the important context to understand here is that the absolute horror show that's happening in Gaza right now that Israeli is doing. This is one of the most extreme forms of it they've ever done. But this is something they've been doing from like the fucking moment they took the West Bank. This is this is what they were doing. And again this is what never ended. Really yeah, yeah, kept going.

It was like quiet mostly for a while people ignore, but now it's just really loud and it keeps happening though.

Yeah, I mean, and you know, I think the the oh god, what a blank on the like continuous knock. But thing is is the way that it's understood, well, is what it's called in Palestine. In sort of set of the colonial studies, the line that people always say is that centered colonialism is structure, not an event. Like I said, it's not a thing that just ends right. It just is it. It is that, you know, it

Settlers is almost a misnomer because they're not like it's not like sometimes I think that constructs a notion of like unsettled territory and they're settling on it. Right, these people are violently colonizing someone else's land. Yeah, which which which was which was also true of the American Like yes, yeah, very much. So, yeah we should write here, yeah hit here or pioneers and pioneer ship people live there for ten per thousand of VI.

They were pioneers. Yeah. But like the way that the state thinks about its own geography is in the terms of these frontiers sometimes they call the buffer areas, and they they they think about these things as these these areas where they need, you know, of of projection of military control, the projection of sort of their their power and also sort of settler power and these kinds of you know, and this is this is this is what what the sort of settler populations the West Bank are

You settlers terrorizing Palestinian Yeah, yeah, what's happening, And that happens all the time, but just so happened to happen on this very large scale attack yep.

And the level of violence that's happening here, you know, I mean we're going to talk about the more direct settler of violence, like these are these people they these are people who have set multiple babies on fire like that is like they they have set multiple children on fire. This is this is this is the kind of people who you were dealing with when you're talking about especially So okay, so there's there's a distinction inside of Israeli

Does it to its Kalmic people. It's the story I hear so often at the border, when talking to people in any number of languages, many number of countries, is like, oh, they have cut off the water supply to where we live, and now we can't live there anymore, like across Africa, sadly, like yeah, even within Russia, like it's it's like yeah, like you say, it's genocide by dictat or fucking you know, it's it's an ethnic cleansing that doesn't look so bad

I think the unique part about Israel and the settlers there burning all the olive trees, I feel like I didn't ever stard about this before. I don't know if we did, Yeah, but the whole essence of Zionism is the idea that there's a group of people that are

Well, and I think I think, I think the fundamental thing at play here, and this is the sort of one of the fundamental tenets of setular colonialism, is that these people see land as a commodity, right, they see they, they see they they they only see land in terms of things they can buy and sell on, things they can possess.

Yeah, it's a fundamental tenet of the state really, right, Like the more like square miles you could bring under your like where you have a monopoly and legitimate use of violence, like the more important you are as a state, and so like this this is a problem of states.

Yeah, and we will we will get into this more in a second, but first we need to go to ads.

Now.

What what's very interesting about the settlers though, is that Okay, so when when the Council of Formulations, the Council of Formulations went in and was like, okay, so what is with these people?

Right?

They assumed initially that you know, okay, so you know they're there, take a sort of liberal like pros and lines that like, okay, well, these these settlers must be responding to Palestinian violence. And no, it turns out actually, not only are these are these attacks not like retaliatory, right, it's it's it's not that like the settler communities were being attacked by Palastinians and they were taking back. Settler violence is actually inversely correlated with the level of armed

No, it's okay. I just wanted to make a really important distinction that like, Zionism is not a religion per se, and it's a political ideology, right, Like you can be Christian and Zionists, you can be Jewish and Zionists I've had multiple anti Zionist Jewish people on the show, and I feel like they're very important in the fight for Palicy liberation. But I think that's a really important distinction because Zionism is fairly new. It's not like this ancient religion.

So I think that's.

Really important to remember, is that Zionism itself is not this like deep spiritual thing that a lot of Zionists claim it is. It is just fucking politics and there's bad politics.

And I think the other important thing about it too, and this is something that has been changing. But like Zionism, most Zionists, like when Israel was formed, were secular, Like they were secularist, right, A lot of these people were leftists, they were secularists. They weren't. And the emergence of this religious Zionism stuff, this is like, this is stuff that started happening really in like the eighties. So this is like forty years old, right, Like billions of people on

All.

All that matters is that you're getting money from this house. And you know, I something I've talked about a lot on this show, and since really the nineties when Japan figured this out, housing has been like these speculative asset par excellans is the thing you dump all of your money into when you have a bunch of money sitting around that you can't turn into more capital. And you know this, but the problem is that this creates these massive like housing bubbles that makes like housing and rents

Every empire, so right, Like, working people can't afford to live with dignity, so we've fucking shipped them off. So they strip someone else's dignity and make their fortune on someone else's land.

Yeah, yeah, because the cheapest land is land that's paid with someone else's blood.

Yeah.

Now I'm going to read from a little bit from a very very I really recommend people actually read this because it's a really interesting view of the occupation. I'm going to read from a piece called Hostile Intelligence, Reflections on a Visit to the West Bank, written by David Graber.

Right?

The answer here is it's a lot of Palestinian farmers. And you know, once you kick farmers off their land, they can't be farmers anymore. And this leaves them with two choices one flee pal sign altogether. And this is really really hard. We talked about it on this show. It is really really difficult to get out or your other option is to become cheap labor for Israeli capitalists.

Yeah, having our little like a utopian socialist settlements. Was it Owen's or Jones or someone? They had these like yeah, yeah, quake k utopian sort of settlement towns in someone else's land.

Yeah. Well, And that's one of the ways has happened there. There are other ways this happens too, where it's just people. You know, it's not it's not even always utopian communities. People a lot of and and this this is also so okay. There are people who come over from the eighteen forty eight revolutions who like, you know, like August

Yeah, lots of people were also there were Jewish I guess socialists is probably the best term for them, who would come to fight in Spain and then returned to Yeah, people interested run and reign has done a really good paper about some of people in international brigades. So not a lot of them turned out to do the Knakpa. To be clear, yes, some of them were. It's actually also it's actually really sad to follow the plight of

Yeah, being being consistently moral fucking sucks and that is a behind. Yeah yeah, it is a fucking awful time to do that.

Yeah, yeah sucks.

Yeah, Okay, we should take another ad break and.

Then, yeah, adverts are not consistently moral. Who very unlikely.

And we are back. So we've been talking about the capacity of settlements to change someone's politics, right, it is, you know, it's as these labs of consciousness that produce certain kinds of right wing politics and mentalities and you know, and produce right wing soldiers.

Right.

But the settlements also do other things. And one of those things that they do is the settlements are a big reason, you know, if you were invested in the peace process, like this is a big reason why the peace process failed was that the settlers never had any intentions of abiding by any of the treaties that were being signed by the israelis right, and this is something that is true transhistorically, right. This is a dynamic you

Yeah, that's none.

Yeah. And you know, I mean you can look at the Supreme Court, right, and you know, the Supreme Court will uphold laws from like seventeen ninety five, right.

Yeah.

The one kind of law they will mod uphold is their treaty obligations, at which in which case they will go literally they will just go, well, we are obligated to do this under treaty, but it is too hard, so fuck you.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, they'll go previous to that and treat site the fucking Doctrine of Discovery or the Treaty of Cso yeah, good old Ruth Bede Againsberg liberal hero.

Yeah.

And so you can look at this from sort of two perspectives, right. You can look at this from this perspective of the state, and you can look at it from the respective of the settler. And you know, I mean, and I think I think I think there's a there's a third view that's kind of sees them both as an extension of the same thing, which is what we're

Like what you know, Yeah, this is something that like I know, if you travel abroad and you work in places where American forces have been nine times out of ten, someone will sit you down in a tea house or a coffee house and unbidden just be like, what the fuck is wrong with these people? Like like why do they treat us like that? Like like we fucking did everything you asked and then you fucking abandoned us or killed us, Like like yeah, like everywhere, and its course

Yeah, and you know, and and and this, and this particularly bad when you're dealing with when you're dealing with settlers, because you know, one of the things about the state is that the arc of the state policy and settler colonies always bends towards injustice in general, and in particular the thing it always bends towards land seizures. It seeks to expand its base of power, it's territorial base in its economy, which leads it to push as far as

Yeah, so he's a conspiracy theorist, Like yeah, yeah, this guy is unhinged.

They're very open with their genocidal yeah yeah once, Like there's no there's no subtlety. They're just like, let's let's flatten what, Let's flatten Gauza, Let's kill them all, you know what I mean. It's just like theyage seem like with a very Trumpian thing that's like encouraging the hate that is there too fester.

It's particularly like to try to diverse again. I found the fucking like you can't support Palestinia liberation if you're queer dunk that we see from like Zionist near liberals to be one of the most frustrating a like you can support what the fuck you want, Like you don't need a condescending, fucking like zist mum in a minivan to tell you what you can and can't believe, and like, b go look up some of this guy's statements because fucking you ain't gonna find anyone who's more genocidal towards

I mean, Israel is like very well known for like pink washing and pretending they're very progressive and supportive of yeah, of queer people, when they're really not. I mean, yeah, this country also is not, you know what I mean, Like it's I think I think that argument is a very privileged elitist one.

Yeah, and like like yeah, just like haha, homophobia exists there, it's not. It's not a win for anyone. Yeah, if you want to get married to someone of the same gender as you in Israel, you do it on zoom in fucking Utah like that that Like, when you've been outflanked to the left by Utah, you've done fucked up. You don't get to wave your pride flag at anyone. Fuck off.

This is one of the sort of progressive veneer of the Israelis has been you know, like fading because these the people who are coming to parent and then Yahoo in some ways was one of the sort of anguer to this. But like this, and this is the thing you're seeing in India too, right, Like whenever you get a far right guy. Right, the thing that inevitably generates is people who are even further right than they are. Yeah, and that that's that that's what these these settler people are.

Oh.

I think a good thing to remember is that last year there was an election like going into twenty twenty three and uh, Israel like put into power a bunch of these right wing people. Was it twenty twenty three with twenty twenty two? And was in track of time.

He came in last he came in twenty Yeah, I think he was a minute he was points to minister in twenty twenty two. But okay, sorry, the years a time election is real, Yeah, I remember when.

My point is that like in recent history, the last couple of years, these extreme right wing racist people are in power, all the all the places of power, all the ministers, all the whatever the shit they're all shared. They all share this ideology that like Arabs must die. Basically, that's like they're the main point is that they are superior to Arabs and then they must die, and that this is a diet in this place that is theirs.

And you know, and what these people are doing when they're in power, and this is the thing that this is one of the things they were trying to do before the sort of like the current war started, was they were trying to annex the West Bank. This is a very explicit goal. Now this is a very explicit goal of the settler parties. They will kind of they know it's pretty hard for them to like legally annex it, so they will talk about like effectively annexing it and

H look Judae and Samaria yeah yeah yeah, yeah, they call the West Bank, yeah yeah, they.

Have a right to live there. So and the thing is like if you believe that right, that means you have to kick all the Palestinians out of the West Bank entirely. Now the places people have stopped sort of before the war, the places people had stopped was like, well, okay, they can live in Gaza. But now they're talking about you know, I mean just like taking over most of like just taking over most of Gaza and driving the Palestinians out.

Yeah, and it doesn't have to lead like Jews have a right to live in this place, doesn't have to lead to thus we must genocide the people who live there, right like we it like it. This is what happens when we get a state that understands existence as destroying anybody who is not in agreement with this right wing genocidal fucking Outlook like it has been possible for people of different faiths to live in different places.

But four forty eight, yeah, exactly existing.

Yeah yeah, this the ideology that is inherent to like a Zionist militarized state will never allow that co existence to happen, right, because it relies on coexistence not being possible as part of its narrative. For like Mia said, taking, dominating, and appropriating that land and gaining the value from it.

But it's the narrative that they need to say stuff like oh, all the gardens should just go to Egypt or whatever. It is, like it's all part of the plan to kind of just like expel them so they can.

Yeah, it doesn't even have to be like it's not like an explicit plan that they have a whiteboard and they're like it is you know.

They do actually occasionally just write it out. Sometimes they do actually explicitly write the plants.

Yeah, you can say on x dot com from time to time, but it's inherent, as Mia said like several times, to state and to a capitalist state that is a settler colony, right, Like it's inevitable. It happened here, it's happening there. It's happened all over the world. Like it's not possible to construct a capitalist state on someone else's land, on someone else's bodies. It doesn't do this.

Yeah, and I mean and this this is this is also one thing I wanted to emphasize too, is that all of the shit that's happening in Palestine happened here, right. I mean, I guess like we, like the US didn't have the kind of surveillance technology in like then the eighteen teens, right that the Israelis have now. But you know, like we we did all this shit too, right, like this is this is all of the land that we live on. That's that's where that shit came from. There's

We still do it right like we didn't, just like we're doing it at Oak Flat for instance right now. Or yeah, look at how Trump fucking did indigenous people during COVID, like it's an ongoing process.

Yeah and right, yeah, it's it's so much easier for Americans to pretend that it's not happening, and you know, like no, like it turns out in fact like this, this, this, and this is where the sort of sub of colonialism of the structure not an event stuff comes from. And it applies to both Israel and the US because guess.

What, Israel literally took notes from what the US did. It just did it, you know what I mean, Like it's just the same thing in the end, Like we're the bad guys, like we've always been the bad guys.

Are the bad guys?

Yeah, yeah, exactly, you know, I'm Chinese, right, And this is one of the things that has informed a lot of my sort of perspective on Palestine, because all of the things that are happening to Palestine is shit that was done to us by the Japanese Empire, right, and we fought a war to stop them, and that war was hideous. That war, the war in China sees some

Right?

Like who is taking whose houses?

Right?

Who is who is forcing a million people from what population to flee their homes? Who is you know, who has been steal he has been seizing people's land. And I think it clears up. I don't know, clears up isn't the right word, but specifically the fact that this is that this is active colonization, that this is this is this is a center of colonial state waging a war against you know, people like people who are fighting against colonization. That is the sort of that that is

I no one has to agree with me, it's fine, But I personally really dislike when it's called a war what's happening in Palestine because I just think it's the clearest case of genocide I've ever seen, and like I don't care how it started or whatever, I feel like at this point in time, it's a genocide. Like if Palestine's out of country, Palestine does not have an army, they can't, no one can leave Gaza. I think that is the current state of what the violence is going on over there.

And so yeah, just like particular, like I think I think you're like I think you're right about that, and that's the thing that that's the thing that's different than like the stuff that was happening in China was like at least we sort of had like at least we had a state, right and we had armies and our armies got fucking stopped, but you know, we had like we we we had actual weapons.

Yeah, I must have some now, But I think you're to your greater point, Yeah, I think, like, well, yeah, it sounds very similar to like have you read Challenged Introduction to.

The Rest of the Earth?

Yeah, like where he talks about violence and the state talking in the language of violence, and people responding in the language in which they're spoken to.

I think I'm paraphrasing that relatively accurately.

It doesn't have to be like the violence has to be good for it to be like an inevitable consequence of violent colonialism, right, like it sparks violent colonization movements. It doesn't imply like a moral like goodness to the individual act. It's just an inevitable consequence of people fighting against colonalism in the only way that that colonalism kind of leaves for them, I guess, yeah.

And I think I think another part of this too is that like just being in contact with colonial powers

It's harder to decomnize the set of economy, right, yes, like it implies a removal of one people or in other people, and either of those things are in any way desirable, like, and it's so hard to see like a path to a peaceful coexistence now because all we see is like the entire world ratcheting the fucking like violence level up and like, yeah, Israel carrying out genocidal

Well, how would you? I think it's a very human response if anything, Like I I don't think we have the the right to judge how someone that has been through that hell how they respond because it's I don't know, we haven't lived their nightmare. It's just a nightmare.

And like it's not like like there, it's not like there haven't been attempts at non violent resistance in Gaza, because they have.

And look what fucking happened like.

That there was a big one like like three or four years ago. Yeah, like you know.

They like the fucking Crassenstein take the why can't they all dis organized to archie the war holding Kansas and come by they like I tried to do that, but like yeah, people people kept killing them. Like I'd say this every time we talk about guards, but say again, like when we were talking to the PK guys, of guys,

And he was explained to.

Me like it was the most normal thing in the world that the six eight year old children would wake up at night with night terror screaming because they thought they were being bombed, because they are having like a flashback from being bombed, I guess, And like that's something I recognized from from PTSD, from from you know, other.

Contexts, but like it really fucked me up.

An eighty royal child is like we can't expect these people to like develop into come by us singing like peace activists, like that they they have taken on massive amounts of raw where they've seen the neighbors and families die, Like it doesn't mean that we have to be like, oh well, like violence is going to happen, like that we should do everything we can to make a world where like people aren't killing and dying there, because it will always result in more of the least empowered people dying.

I think, yeah, And I mean like this is a like gaza is a place where it reiins body parts, Like that's what happens when it is really bomb goes off, It rains body parts, and like that is a.

I don't know, like.

The kind of person who has to grow up with that is just not going to be the same as like even people who have been through a lot of like really messed up stuff, Like it's not going to be the same as like experiencing that.

Yeah, even if you like I have visited was to report on them. But then I get to go home and be safe. And sometimes that juxtaposition is hard, and it takes me a long time to not be afraid of the sky or a park car is going to kill me. But I'm home and I'm safe, And once I can adjust to that, then I can I can get on, you know, change things like that change.

You, but you continue with your life.

But if you're never home and you're never so or your home is never safe, that's something I can't understand, right, That's something that I haven't experienced, and very very few of us probably.

Have, a lot of doctors have said that all the children in Gaza, they haven't they can't quite they can't be quite defined of having experienced PTSD because they haven't reached the post part yet, like they're still they're like in a perpetual state of PTSD because that's just how they their entire lives have been. Most of them have never known life outside of the blockade.

So it's I don't know, yeah, and I mean I think I think that's a good place to end of.

Yeah, even if you can't stop it. Like I sent the video. I'm sure you guys saw the video of the Jewish Wis of Peace people in the Grand Central Terminal, New York. And I said that to the Palestinian journalistic because they're like, oh, this is great to see you. And if something we spoke about the interview too, how like it makes a me fully difference to some mech state of mind to see solidarity, even if like you know, we can get in the streets and we can say

Yeah, I think when a whole population is not able to share what they're going through, their journalists are getting killed when the internet is out and the one thing they're saying is like, please don't start talking about this. I think that's the easiest thing that we can do.

Yeah, and hopefully maybe this will impel us to Like as Miya said at the start, right, this keeps fucking happening, and like, as ethnic cleansings go, this one's got more coverage than most in the US, And like, I would encourage you to look at what you're seeing in Gaza, and I understand how inhuman and unemangeable it is. And like,

Welcome to it could happen here? A podcast in which my friend Kim Kelly and I talk about the fact that Zoom recently moved to the record button, which most people will need at some point, given how prominent this is with podcasting, to replace it with an AI companion button, which I refuse to use, uh and would would would deploy violence against anyone who tried to make me. How are you doing any day? Camp?

I am good? Also hating our AI soon to be overlords. Yeah yeah, doing my best out here in Philadelphia?

Yeah yeah, Philly. How is how is Philly as the as the fall comes in.

It's it's a very sunny day. It's also getting chilly. I'm into it. It's finally leather weather. I mean, I guess it's always leather weather, depending on your level of commitment. But I am ye wuss and it's I tend to wait for, you know, the weather to tell me when it's time to break out my leather.

Hell yeah, you know I I I feel like all all things are fine. Personally. You should just assume listeners that I am always head to toe leather. But anyway, Oh, yeah, Kety is on.

He looks resplendent.

Yeah, Kim. You are a labor journalist. You published a book what was it last year, year before last, called Fight Like Hell Yeah, about about the history of the labor movement and some radical moments people ought to know more about. And you and I are talking today about labor, particularly about the possibility of a general strike. Now, if you, the listener, have somehow missed this discourse. In short, a general strike is when instead of one union of workers

You know, you've got to believe.

In it first, which is all of this is wrong. But the good news is there's an actual plan that is cohesive and potentially achievable for a general strike that's been put forward by someone who knows what he's talking about. We're going to talk about that, but first, Kim, do you want to talk about why trying to get everyone on Twitter to launch a general strike in eight days is a bad idea.

This is such a pet peeve among well I guess a lot of folks in the labor world who are also unfortunately on Twitter and social media that yeah, like you said, every so often there'll be general strike hashtag or like a graphic on Twitter or on Instagram, and it's like, are you taking part of the general strike? Like are you striking on Friday or like tomorrow? Like no, what, You're not even in a union? What are you talking about? And it's like, I love the energy, I love the vibe,

Yeah. And it's also like I think one thing that gets lost is when you're going on strike. For a lot of people, that's not just I have to figure out what to do with money, and it's certainly not you know, while I can just go and be on unemployment or something, because you don't really get that when you're striking, you've got a lot of people with like families, and so the idea that like you get some podcaster right being like everybody should just not show up. Well,

That is the one of the biggest things, I would say, arguably the biggest thing. But also if you're in a union and you go on strike as part of you know, broken down contract negotiations are part of the life cycle of a unique you have legal protections. You can't just be fired if you take part in one of these kind of impromptu hashtag general strike actions. Your boss is just gonna fire you and then like you're done. You don't have any protections there, Like, what are the reasons

They might not know that.

As we're to talk about, you can't just have a bunch of union leaders decide we're all going to go on strike at once. Sympathy strikes are very much not legal. Now there is a way to get multiple We should just talk about, like why we're doing this, which is that. So there's this fella who so far has seems like a pretty pretty head out screwed on straight solid dude,

No, he's the president, Yeah, the.

President, and he is Sean Is So he's you know, the UAW is the big one of the big otto, like the largest of the auto worker like related unions, and they have been in a strike, I think primarily General Motors.

It's the big three General Motors Ford as Stelanis, which makes Chrysler and a couple other brands.

Yeah, and they they have gone on a very power about six weeks or so, very significant strike. You can read stuff like Toyota recently like put out a proposal for like giving workers raises that's in line with like the union, like they are scared. And it looks like like as I mean this is, they haven't inked anything yet, but as of us recording this, it looks like they've

It really is. It's incredible. Honestly, this is kind of I think this is one the ballsiest things we've heard from a mainstream labor leader since well since Sarah Nelson, the president of the Flight Attendants Union, kind of soft called for a general strike or at least brought up the idea of a general strike in twenty nineteen, and.

Her doing that, I've forgotten that stopped a government shutdown.

Yeah, So, like, the general strike is a very powerful tool, and we've done it before, you know, I think the most recent true general strike we saw this country was like nineteen nineteen in Seattle, so it's been a minute. But the genius of this plan is the fact that it's illegal. And I mean, of course, you know, laws aren't real, but when you're doing this kind of thing, it operating within these constraints, it is helpful when you're not actively breaking the law because that helps you get

You know.

Obviously, when you are talking about radical social change, illegality is always on the table. But it's not the smartest place to start from when you're talking about something like this, where you have the option to get a lot done, you know, within within the protections of the law, which makes it easier to get more people on board, It

Right, and you have resources, you have infrastructure because big unions have big strength funds. Yes, this is the thing. The UAW has hundreds of millions of dollars in the bank that they're saving for just this purpose when their workers go on striketh so they can continue to pay them and cover their health insurance.

Yea, that's why you pay dues, right, Like, yeah.

It's it's literally like strike insurance. And a lot of

Unions are kind of on a role right now. Right, we've all watched some really substantial gains for working people just in the last six months, and it's worth paying attention to why. And part of it is that, like, you're not relying upon people risking everything, many of whom can't write. You can't very easily ethically defend if you are like a single parent who is responsible for multiple children.

Right, you have elders at home, or if you're a disabled person, if you're a media compromise. You can't go out there and get involved in that type of situation.

You can't risk being around that many people. Maybe, but you can strike.

Yeah, yeah, this is that you can respect a picket line, you can help support, you can help offer some of the resources we need for folks to get out there, like utilizing this existing infrastructure, in these existing resources. It just opens up the possibility for more people to get involved in a way that's less harmful to them, to the people, like we want to harm the bosses and yeah, you know the status quote, we don't want to hurt our people.

Yeah. So I think there's a lot of wisdom in this. Now. The question is when we say that this is workable, does that mean that like it's a guarantee or it would be easy. Of course not. No, Like you're talking, you're still talking about a struggle against people who have I don't know the majority of the resources the human race has ever marshalled in like a financial form right

This is the thing I've seen again on social media, people saying like, oh, we have to wait five years, or have to wait four and a half years. That's ridiculous. Why don't we just do it now? You can do a lot of planning and a lot of building in four and a half years. You need that time to actually pull something off of this magnitude. And also, I mean a lot of unions that perhaps might be interested in this, like they have contracts of their own that they need to sort of work out the timing for.

Yeah, there's you know, upsides and downsides when we compare it to like sort of how radicals like to particularly the anarchist radical organizing where you know, the downside is you do these are organizations that are hierarchical, They can be stratified. It can make it very difficult to push for change. It can make them just as our democracy is not super responsive to what the majority of people want, union leadership in a number of cases is not responsive

And this is why more anarchists and socialists and communists, everybody who wants to really get out there and cause some good trouble will say, like, you need to get involved in your union. You need to organize your workplace if your if your job is not such that you can join a traditional union, you need to get involved in your local labor community anyway, and try and connect with people who are part of those unions and try and kind of get them to see the light. You

I want to note significant potential for the radicals are kind of radicals to be useful within this in a direct way from just a recent example. Right in Portland, the teachers are going on strike. I believe that has happened today, and they had a big march not too long ago that some of my friends were at because they're teachers. And one of the things that happened on that march it was the same day as a Palestinian

Absolutely, we've talked a lot about legality, and illegality is also something that is very much a part of labor history and its present. And I would say it's future folks who are perhaps more comfortable with getting into perhaps more confrontational moments with cops who are trying to mess with the picket line or scabs who are trying to be violent towards striking workers, or even just like you said, like surveillance and safety and medic work like that is

It's so important to bring up airline workers because one of the things they the things that they have that other people don't is they can't be replaced in the same way. Right you can if all your Mauristas go on strike, you can potentially bring in whoever, and they will not be nearly as good at it, right, the company will not make nearly as much money, but legally

Does The airline industry is incredibly densely unionized too, So if all of the union flooding tendants aren't available, then no one's going to be available. Yeah, it's one of the plus sides of having a very densely organized industry, which is why we need to keep organizing too. In these next four and a half years.

Well, Kim. I think that's most of what I had to say. Do you have anything else you wanted to get into on this topic before we roll out?

Hmm, I think we've covered most things. I do want to emphasize, like I don't want to be a wet blanket on people who are excited. I'm not so excited and so heartened to see the amount of interest and energy we're seeing around this general strike idea, because like five years ago, that would have I mean, that would not have escaped containment, right, we would have just been

All right. I am in agreement, Kim. People should look up your book fight like hell.

Yeah at the Untold History of American labor.

Absolutely, and what else should they look up? R e U.

I'm still unfortunately on Twitter, so I'm there, grim Kim. Now, I'm a freelancer a lot for in these times. I have a column at teen Vogue, I write for a fast company, and I'm kind of all over the place so and I do a lot of book talks and stuff. So I'm I'm around. If you want to talk to your friendly neighborhood anarchist labor reporter, just to google me. But don't believe everything you read, because you know she.

Didn't kill that guy. He was dead when she got there. Anyway, Kim, thank you so much.

Thank you for having me.

Yeah yeah, thanks for being here, for showing up, and thank you wall for listening until next time. I don't know.

Yeah, solidarity forever.

Yeah, that's that's a good that's a good welcome back to it could happen here a podcast about things falling apart, and sometimes about stuff that's less depressing than that. Today we're doing an episode that's I don't know, part funny and part hey, you should be aware of this thing because it's it's kind of fucked up.

It certainly could happen. It probably shouldn't. It probably shouldn't happen here, but it certainly could.

But it certainly could. Garrison Davis is on the other line. That I mean other line. This isn't a phone call. That's the other voice that you are hearing right now. And earlier this year, Garrison and I went to CEES, the Consumer Electronics show in Las Vegas, Nevada, where Garrison had a wonderful stay at Circus Circus that did not smell like dead clowns.

But we we did not just shut down this summer due to horrible infestation problems.

Oh that's what we're staying next year too, buddy. Anyway, we encountered while we were going through all these different technoology companies and whatnot, this very peculiar AI project and Garrison, I'm going to hand things over to you now, because you're the one who was actually prepared an episode.

Yeah, So I dug into this AI project more when I was making my ghost Conference episodes, and after just a few minutes of like doing like background checks and stuff, I realized that this would become its own episode because of how wild things got very very quickly. This company

Yeah.

Basically these are algorithms that are used by GPT, chatbots, predictive texting, the digital assistance like Alexa and Siri. Yeah, language models that respond to feedback. They're pretty common these days. We encounter them a lot, right that they're whenever you're typing on your iPhone, they they will generate text that they think you're gonna write. But what mind bank is trying to do is a little bit different.

Yeah.

When we encounter them at Cees, their booth had on these signs that were it was stuff like like you know, set up a legacy for your kids.

You know.

It was basically advertising. This is a way to allow a part of you to exist in digital form and communicate with your with your descendants forever.

Yes, so we found them in the US government sponsored section of ce s, which is already a great sign. Yes,

Oh oh, that's good. I hadn't caught that when we talked to the guy that he believed that that I love. Whenever you get these guys who are like I will just offload my brain onto a machine and then I will live forever in the cloud. And of course, man, yeah, that's how consciousness works.

Absolutely, buddy, all right, I'm going to play this video next.

Humanity is limited, our bodies age, our memories fade, Technology outpaces evolution. The solution is your personal digital twin, transfer your wisdom, become the best version of yourself, and live forever through data.

Oh boy, let's go beyond.

So all right, I got to know one thing before you start in Garrison, which is that when they mention that like technology, like there's a line about like technology making everything better, they're showing a man who has lost his leg walking on a treadmill with an artificial leg. And look, I think I have so much admiration for people who make artificial limbs wonderful thing to be doing great important work. They're not as good as real legs.

But Robert, don't you want to live forever through data?

No? No, I don't. I'm exhausted now, Garrison.

Okay, all right, so let's go into this a little bit more. Your immortal digital twin is made possible quote by safely storing your data. Over the years, artificial intelligence and computers of the future will have ample data to compile a digital version of yourself and predict your responses. So that that is their idea of how this thing works.

God damn it.

So that is their vision.

My more personal computer absolutely is not me because I do not play Balder's Gate three very well, you know, like I can't run it on my hardware.

Ah, well, that's that's why. It's that's why you got to buy the new Monster manual and then maybe it could all just be in your brain.

Actually, yeah, I am full of shit. D and D is still better when you run your hardware.

Goddamn, this is the one thing you actually can do pretty good by yourself.

Why did I pick that one? Yeah, it's just so like, I don't think most people buy this. I don't think this probably is going to be a success. I don't think most pop I think most people's reaction to this is like kind of sneering, which is the right reaction to this. But there are people who do feel this legitimately, and that is a thing of almost unfathomable sadness. Like, yeah, I had my angry athe period like a lot of people,

Well this, oh yeah, absolutely. So before I get into how this is all supposed to quote unquote work, first I want to talk about how the founder and CEO says that he got the idea for this company, because I think it puts into focus how he sees this product ideally functioning in the future. So Emil Hamirez was writing a train with his four year old daughter. She was playing on her iPad and discovered Siri. She began talking with Siri and asking it questions like what do

But thirty minutes later she was laughing and having a really like a nice time with Siri and she said, Siri, I love you. You're my best friend. And that struck a chord with me. That would that inspired me so much because I said to myself at that moment. Children don't see computers and devices as a tool. They see them as a companion. And today she speaks with Siri

To tappen to.

No, so the generations already linger too long. We had it right when people died when they were well, not died. But Logan's run had it right. We should kill everyone at thirty five. But this is so fucking offensive, Like the idea that first off, like if you're looking at we want a device, you know, a way to use technology to help people grieve or something, and like you decide maybe having a chatbot that they get you. I'm sure it's possible that that could be part of healthy grieving.

There's actually another product that that does this right now, which has kind of caused some controversy for this, for this very thing you mention. It's a Tarkara Tommy smart speaker, which if listening to a parents have always for fifteen minutes, can replicate it and tell your child bedtime stories if you aren't physically present now this is this is similarly kind of like cause people to have a whole bunch

So there's that.

There's that other line again about having this quest in his heart is actually part of a bigger a bigger quest for all of humanity to live inside a computer or to have a computer trained on you.

He's he's he's hitting the same speech cadences that guys like Musk use like. He understands, yes, the kind of he understands partially the degree of hype that you need to get something off this, But he is he is going too hard. And I'm making that judgment based on the incredibly comforting fact that as you tell me these horrible things, I am looking at your screen. And mind Bank has seventy eight subscribers on YouTube, so the company has not yet broken through.

I do want to play one one ten second clip, just because the phrasing is really funny.

I was inspired by an interaction my daughter had with Sirian. What started as daddy's quest for immortality has led us to some thought far.

Great kind Oh my god.

That's pretty funny, right.

Man.

But no, Robert, you were totally right about kind of how Emial's speech pattern cadences is pushing a very specific thing. Because before Emil got into the tech industry for eighteen years. He worked in marketing. He has degrees in psychology, communication and art direction and business administration. He isn't a tech guy. He's a marketing guy. And I think that's really good to keep in mind throughout our whole discussion of how he's trying to get funding for mind Bank, because that

I think what's most disturbing to me about this is that, like, this is not going to work for this guy because he's a loser nobody cares about. But if Elon Musk or one of our other many techno grifters, or if a number of them got behind similar things, like I think the nightmare scenario to me is someday hopping on Twitter to see that fucking Ian Miles Chong or Ben Shapiro or Jackson Hinkle or any one of these like horrible, horrible social media poison distributors will be like I have

I could not wait to bring Ben Shapiro to Thanksgiving dinner and have him argue.

With Yeah, the people around there.

The next time you stay at my house with somebody that you love and care about and feel comfortable in the arms of you are going to drift off to sleep, and then through the speakers that I have installed in the room, you will hear Ben Shapiro's voice coaxing you both to acts of love. Oh, that's that's what's gonna happen.

So as an example of this kind of very marketing heavy approach, I'm gonna I'm gonna read something from the homepage of mind Bank's website.

Quote.

Our vision is to be the world's most trusted guardians of your AI digital twin and move the human race forward. Humanity's next evolutionary step is to combine ourselves with AI and move humanity forward so that we are no longer bound by anything. That entire sentence is just marketing bubbo jumbo. It's it's meaningless hype like hype words and phrases that refer to this like science fiction feature. But like it's it's nothing.

It's worse than meaningless. It's like it's it's wrong, it's stupid wrong, Like the idea that like, you would not be bound by anything if you could live inside and pat bought.

Like, yeah, I have I have an A.

I have used an AI, right, I have it on my computer, my computer. Were I to hurl it across the room in the same manner that I myself have been flung, it would break and I would not like I.

Am finally free to think within my computer's RGB gamer ram.

Yeah, finally, Like when I have a laptop that gets too old, Like the very act of surfing the internet is a nightmare. I don't want my conscience on something that ages at the speed of a smartphone Like that's that's even worse than being a person, Robert.

Do you know what else is a very important evolutionary step for the future of humanity?

Oh God, I don't know when we all suddenly spontaneously as if by God's Grace starts speaking with the voice of Ben Shapiro.

Yes, and perhaps you can do that if one of our sponsors is Ben Shapiro. Bought coming soon yep, to a smartphone near you. All right, we are, we are back. Let's finally talk about how this digital twin thing is actually supposed to work. So you download the mind bank app. I'm sure that's totally safe.

Yeah, I trust this with all of my thoughts.

And every day, your digital twin will ask to questions about how you're feeling and what you're thinking about, and as you tell it your quote unquote life story. Your inputs will be used to train the twin to make a more accurate digital copy of yourself. This is This is from their This is from their website's own page quote store your conscience guided questions help train your digital twin to know your life story so you can live

Unquote God in Heaven.

So when Robert and I were at CEES this past this past January, we spoke to mind Bank's co founder and the director of Systems Architecture and cybersecurity, and I'm gonna let him explain kind of some of some of the process of asking mind bank questions and how that helps craft this digital twin.

We ask you questions from how's your day to what does money mean to you? And you answer those questions with your voice in a natural way.

You can break a voice to text.

You get a sentiment analysis on the text and provide you a dashboard of what you're feeling when you say that, so that you can also continue to use it over time. And then as you use it over time, the dashboard we'll show you that you're doing better or worse, just like a running application.

Away better or worse?

It what love, whatever metric that you're interested in, your happiness, your your awareness.

We have a very large amount of sentiment that we can provide you with. Here's a small bits, but you can see kind of what we app looks like.

Here you've got multiple different possible types of sentiment, and then within each sentiment, you've got multiple different factors that you can weigh against.

To grow mind Bank's user base, there needs to be some reason for users to input the massive amounts of data that's needed to build this digital replica. So the current model of this product is being billed as a quote self care and personal development app where the user talks to their digital twin, kind of like you would talk to a therapist.

Yeah, this is This is.

A big part of mind Bank's marketing that as as you're building this digital twin, you can be used as a tool for self reflection and a way to quote learn about yourself talk to your inner voice with your own personal digital twin unquote, which is really funny because I could talk to my I could talk to my inner voice whenever I want to. Yeah, it's it's called thinking. It's actually pretty pretty easy.

This is I really I don't envy, but I'm fascinated by the kind of people whose thoughts are so I don't know a better word than disal. No legal, that they would think that they could just that they could transfer everything they think over your machine and not get arrested. Right Like I would be in a prison if I had to put the things in my brain on the internet, like I put a lot of them, but not all

No, there's there's certainly a lot of interesting facets there of someone feeling like they need this tool to to kind of analyze their own thoughts, Like it's it's it's it's a way to like externalize it that makes you process it. But I don't know, you can also just like like take up journaling or something like. There's there's a lot of a lot of ways to get around this. But this is This is from a mind Bank's app

Hi, I'm your personal digital twin. I learned by asking you many questions. Each answer builds my wisdom. You grow through self reflection, and I get a little bit closer to becoming you. Let me show you around. Here's our training screen, where you can view our progress based on the number of questions you've answered for this phase of my training. Each phase adds a new dimension to my abilities, and the possibilities are endless. The mind map section is

So that's kind of the layout out of the user interface.

This is like the inevitable extent of all of this, categorizing your personality type with these letters, taking this quiz and defining yourself this way, plotting your political beliefs on this map that way, like gamification of identity. Almost shit that we've been doing, like taking shit that used to be like the starting screen from a fucking RPG game and turning it into social media fodder. This is like treating that as if it is the whole of consciousness

Yes, and you're kind of right on the money in terms of this like personality testing thing. Mind Being's website has a whole bunch of articles which I think are written by chat chipd because I read a lot of them and they all read exactly like a chat Cheapeta article.

Which is that's the sex thing?

Right?

That sounds like a sex thing.

Right, How is it anything not just to go We're a weird, fucked.

Up sex thing.

Yeah, that's that's what I how I'm taking this garrison.

So that that was also on their app store page. So the mindbank Gap has been out for a little over a year now, but unless you pay six bucks a month or sixty dollars a year, you'll only have access to about less than a dozen of these questions.

Is this currently running on as.

A scription model?

Yes, it is, so there's freemium. You can try thet you can download them now. It's been launched for almost a year, where version two is coming out soon look a couple of weeks, but both Android and iOS, and there's a free model, so you can you have ten questions that you can answer and answer it many times you want. You get the sen men analys, you get a full application, just ten questions.

Once you hit subscription model, you get all of the access to all of the questions and then obviously we're going to be growing more now.

Like Robert mentioned before, this is kind of related to personality testing, and like personality graphing, mind Bank sorts your quote unquote digital brain into the Big five personality traits that were developed in the twentieth century, with each of the Big Five having six subtraits. On the mind ban Gap that it uses to graph changes on what they call the dashboard of the mind. I'll just go through the big five personality traits and the various kind of

Yeah, those are the only ways to describe a human mind.

Sure, yeah, no, I think I think at all. Yeah, they finally figured it out. So you know, all these things are like a sliding scale. Each of them represents the the inverse of the thing as well. I think we've talked enough about these personality trait things. It doesn't really matter that much. But once, once your twinning score is high enough, you can you can compare your digital twin to estimated profiles of famous thinkers, and share access to your twin with friends and family.

On the act, which is es estimated profiles of famous thinkers, I'm.

Gonna play I'm gonna play another clip to kind of explain what I mean here.

Each swipe revealing more details about our thinking and connecting us to similar personalities. Think of it like collecting cards as a kid, only for your mind.

You might be able to ask him a question, got.

What do you?

Dude?

Socrates once said, know thyself and who knows us better? And people in our inner circle. Each interaction will help us evolve and store wisdom for eternity.

Okay, all right, I will now tell you Socrates would have lit this man on fire. Socrates. I'm not a big Socrates guy, but he would kill this person like he fought in wars. He would do it like.

Oh yeah, absolutely. The notion of sharing my own digital brain profile with friends and families so that they can ask my digital self questions hor horrifying.

Why don't usually go home for Thanksgiving? What makes you think I want to do this?

Like quote? After continued use, your digital twin will even be able to answer many questions on your behalf and have meaningful conversations with people you allow unquote yeah, oh oh oh, I bet.

Look if some motherfucker that I have a meeting with ever tries to have me talk with his AI to do any part of that process. Again, when I say about things I think that are illegal, like my response to that is something that I can't say on this podcast because I might it's an actionable threat. I would actionable threat somebody if they tried to make me talk to their fucking AI to schedule a meeting with them.

Like, what a horrib what a horrible, like uncomfortably anti social thing. I'm usually kind of antisocial in some ways, but this is like a whole other level of just like despising any human interaction.

Yeah, it's anti human, is what it is, which is what's unsettling, right, Like not that sending emails and shit is like the primary essence of humanity, but you know what it makes me think of Garrison. The one law enforcement agency that like all of the rich conservative assholes who love every other kind of cop hate is the TSA. And they hate the TSA because you can't get around

It's like task alienation.

Yeah, it's alienating. It's a bad.

Thing to do.

So when we talk with the co founder at CS, he emphasized that this kind of self improvement aspect that they're pushing in their early stage is really just a means to an end with the real goal of being producing this form of immortality. I've seen something like this for like therapy ASTs similar course, what's like your application use case for this type of technology, So.

There's actually it's a reasonably spread use case.

The very initial right now is a super selfish it's just self awareness bringing us your self awareness, making them more aware of their state as their speak.

The real long term value is actually, if you imagine doing this.

Over the course of forty years, fifty years, and then if you eventually pass, you can pass this on to your children who can then query it and it will answer exactly the way you would answer any of these questions and AI filled with just your data.

So it's like your legacy being indefinite.

So the mind Bank page on the app store boasts achieve immortality, your mind will be safely secured in the cloud forever. Again, that just comes off as like a threat to me. I don't I don't want my mind to be stored in the cloud forever.

Yeah, I don't want to be locked up with dv into art for all of eternity.

To kind of again, kind of on this on this form of immortality notion here is here's their CEO explaining how how this platform will will help you live forever on the on the Internet.

The mission of Mind bang is so we can build a secure platform that can storied data so that you can live forever. But if you look, we look a bit deeper than that. Our vision is to build an artificial consciousness that's not bound by time and space, something that can travel, something that can that can go where literally no man has gone before.

Now, the thing we haven't really mentioned yet is like this thing won't help you live forever, like when when you die, you you still die. Your brain's not getting like poured it over online. No, this is this is just like a like a very crude simulacrum based on thoughts that you have told this app.

Yeah, it's based like it's it's it's not it's.

It's not helping you live forever at all, Like you you don't.

I most people I feel are like this way. I don't say everything that I think and feel. Right, Yeah, Like even when I'm like and I'm not saying like I'm being dishonest, but like they're the experience of life that my consciousness is aware of when I am communicating. Is broader than just the words that I output and taking just those words, it's the same idea that like you can get to know Mark Twain because we've fed all of his books into an AI. Well, no, you know,

So obviously mind Bank's horizons are far beyond this sort of kind of self help app. So far, mind bank has been mostly business consumer, with their app being marketed directly to users for them to download and use by themselves. But they are working to expand far past that very limited scope.

In terms of a business planner, you guys interested in kind of solely individual subscriptions or is there kind of an enterprise application of this as well.

We're actually moving into a bunch of different verticals, so government for PTSD, that sort of mindset, also the healthcare so mental it's obvious benefit in the medical field. So that's kind of the understanding of our verticals that we have that we're going to move into, and we're looking for funding right now to start building.

Out those verticals. So enterprise space is definitely in the roadmap, but we just need money.

A lot of their recent marketing has been targeted towards appealing to seed investors. Besides partnering with various governments, they're also moving into the business to business sector with plans to enter quote the healthcare spe by providing psychologists remote patient monitoring unquote, which also is a similarly kind of freaky notion that your psychologist can just have a copy of your own expressive thoughts to just refer to at any time and they can use it as a remote

We've got over twenty thousand installs.

The B to B is the next area we're going into in the therapy and psychology space, and so imagine your therapist, instead of needing your first one hour to learn who you are in the next three or four different sessions to figure out getting the meat and potatoes of your mind, this is an immediate, raw, quantitative dashboard of your sentiment and how you're feeling that they have

Mind Bank claims that they are currently quote developing a market place for applications to be used by your digital twin unquote. Now what they imagine such applications being ranges from quote health related enhancements like early Alzheimer's detection unquote, to more therapeutic uses like to quote help to handle depression unquote. And again, I really don't see how how having this digital twin that you talk to every day will help handle your depression. Like this is some like

So the use cases for.

This that you've you've expressed to me so far our personal help or health development and providing kind of a living memorial slash legacy legs for sure, loved ones after you're deceased. Are there any kind of use cases for this beyond that? Like I heard someone mentioning the idea of like basically digitally cloning uh a worker so that they can provide I don't know, information about uh uh tech or something, or a work is like a call center.

Or something like that.

Yeah, so that that was a different uh product I think they were talking about, but with similar ties obviously.

Yeah.

So yeah, we've identified I mean from even at CES, We've talked to hundreds of people that have given us thousands of new ideas, but these are, uh the main verticals are kind of where we've identified the biggest benefits are going to be, and we're going to work with

So that was a lot of words without saying very much, but it's also just flat out not true. On the mind Big website, they list another use case for this technology as what they call a knowledge transfer, which is marketed to businesses to create digital copies of their employees. This is one of the this is sort of the

You know.

It was so unsettling to me in that moment, not just to be like, the vision of the whole app was unsettling, but the fact that he was pitching it the way he would a set of earbuds was part of what made it so uncomfortable to me. Like I have been to many cees's in the past, I was always excited because somebody would hand me some cool little

Yes, yes, I hate that.

Another really really a telling line from their from their Knowledge Transfer section of their of their website.

Quote.

By using a simple voice chat interface, the users upload their experience to the personal digital twin. With each interaction, the personal digital twin learns everything that is inside the mind of the employee.

Unquote.

I don't understand how slone could write that sentence and not be like, oh, this is like this is like villain stuff, right, this is like learn learn everything inside the mind of the employee.

I I like.

So, I don't know. Maybe this employee did digital cloning thing was just one of the many ideas they got while attending cees and and they and they implemented the idea after we spoke to them. I checked this, No, not the case. The webpage for this employee transfer idea goes all the way back to August of twenty twenty one on the in and At archive. So the guy, the guy we were talking to you was just lying to us like this is. This has been a part of their product for over two years.

Excellent.

Uh, Robert, do you know what other products have been around for quite a while and are and are very very reliable.

I don't know guns.

I don't think we are sponsored by big gun.

We are not.

We are not yet sponsored by big guns. I every single day, Garrison, I send Colt Firearms a letter, and every single day a nice man with a badge knocks on my door and says, if you send another letter, we're going to arrest you. They don't want your letters, Robert, And uh, anyway, here's ads. Ah, we're back.

So we were talking about how soon employers can just copy over your brain, which I'm sure Robert you're going to be very interested in for cool Zone. You can you can really really cut down on the podcasting costs.

Yeah, I can really clear you guys out and just finally, finally, just feed Twitter takes into your AI versions and just all the money, take it all in, just bathe in it.

Yeah.

That's a great idea, Garrison, thank you.

Uh huh, so the idea that your employer could compel you to use such software with the express interest of transferring a worker's memories and experiences into a digital asset is obviously deeply troubling. This scenario gets at some questions about ethics and the responsibility of collecting and storing this type of data in the first place.

My first question would be, is the data that you're you're feeding into this thing over the course of forty years?

Who legally owns it?

You?

So, you guys don't have ownership of that's your ability.

It's so I did check this. I read all of their long and tedious policy forms and stuff. Now, it is true that the user does own the data they upload to mind Bank. However, mind Bank can act as a processor and data controller, and this includes the ability to use any information they collect from you to improve their products and deliver targeted advertising from the third parties. If you want to remove your data from mind Bank, they can store and continue to use your personal information

You would be able to decide all that. Yeah, and then no, would it.

Be possible for have to like copy over some of this stuff and basically run it themselves or I mean, can you have like a hard cutoff for this sort of thing? I should have to think of other types of like you know, different wise people could get their hands on this for like unsaving means.

Yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure.

I mean, so your your data is your data, but as you provide it to others, you don't have a lot of control if they copy that data. However, if they copy that data, that copy that they're giving out anyone that they're trying to sell that to would have an understanding that that is not live data.

It's not data.

It's changing with you.

It's from the point of time, and so your database that you own it will be live, it will grow with you.

So the idea of having my friends be able to ask an AI train in my thoughts is like scary enough, but the idea that an archived version of this AI could be distributed and even sold without my knowledge is obviously terrified. Like this is yes, this is deeply troubling.

Yeah.

No, I mean especially, I mean I think they are probably like I don't see how copying workers the way that they are doing it is going to is going to work, right, Like yeah, but I do think that this is kind of part of this process that what like a big part of what they're pushing is like you need rid of all of your customer service people and just have an AI do it, right, Like that is the that is the actual This is a lot of silliness, but The actual thing that quote unquote, quote

Me talk to a human being?

Case, Yeah, like that's that is what's going on here. And the fact that they're trying to dress this up is like we've solved death is so fucked up.

Yeah.

Part of this, for like the employee thing is not even not replacing kind of low level employees like customer service workers. It's also like focusing on like your top ten best employees and then by forcing them to interact with with this app every day, you can you can use the information from like your best performers as like asset data that you can like use to help your other other employees to like become more efficient.

Right.

It's it's there's They certainly have a few other kind of ideas for how this how this is possibly used.

Hate these kinds of people. There's a this got overused at a point in like the kind of late aughts so maybe people are sick of it. But there's a line in the speech Charlie Chaplin gives in the great dictator machine men with machine minds and machine hearts, and he was referring to the Nazis, and they're obsession with shit like Taylorism or at least proto tailorism kind of. I think organized industry treating people like cogs and a

You can digitize your employees and they can train each other in EAI form, and you can replicate them and you know the unsaid part of his worse, and then you find them and their robot clone keeps doing their job for free.

We made a slave, so god damn it.

I think a big part of the way they've designed this data set is that it can be easily transferred, as the guy at CES explained to us.

So if if we're talking.

Forty to fifty years down the line, really people pass yessode companies.

Mind Bank is no longer out in forty years.

We've already established a data set in such a way that we don't have competitors yet to say, but if we eventually do establish a competitive arm or people that are competitors, we already have the application set up to where users can take their data off of our platform and bring.

Them data wherever they'd like.

It's your data, where is it stored?

Is this right now? Our current live application?

We're on Azure, and so your back end is Azure, but we have it encrypted it at rest, so ill that you provide to asures encrypted when it's on Asher's service. We also have a blockchain based R and D project. It's already been poc and it already exists. So all of the data is on chain and the logic is on chain. It's truly yours in these in these troubled times.

Nothing makes me feel so secure at the words it's on the blockchain, well email, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's.

I I think he sounds very trustworthy because we have, you have encryption, you have the blockchain, and luckily, I think the guy that we spoke with reassured us that he is that he is deeply, deeply interested in data privacy, and he has the credentials to back that up.

So I'm co founder, I'm Director of Architecture and Security. I have a background at the NSA. I'm very very focused on individual human privacy and rights, and so that's kind of my goal here is to ensure that this gets built the right way.

That is such a you know, Garrison, Honestly, I'm gonna get a little real with the audience here. I was so proud of you in that moment because he said that, and I glanced over at you and you didn't laugh. No, no, and that that made like, that was this moment where I was like, all right, you are you are. You are truly truly coming into your own as a reporter. If you can sit there and talk to a man who says that, who says you can trust me with your data. Because I was an an essay agent.

It's okay, ice work for the essay if you sure, buddy.

Like.

That was a good moment. That was a good moment. All I'm saying.

He worked at the NSA for six years. I looked this up. He worked there for six years and then he moved into the private sector. And yes, no, it is the The idea that that he is using this as some sort of credential that shows he respects human rights and privacy is is like very obviously like deep deeply ironic. I. I. The irony is not coming from him. The irony is the situation.

He didn't seem totally sincere he was sincere.

Yes, absolutely.

So.

It's one of those moments that makes you realize, like some people just live in a whole different world.

Yes, yes, like so I think it's it's it's useful when referring back to everything this guy has said so far that you have to remember he worked at the NSA for six years and he is now handling, he's personally handled handling the cybersecurity and privacy of the personal data you upload it every single day onto your AI twin.

Just hand every thought you ever have over to this guy who was in the nssay. He'll keep an eye on it.

No, this is this like the essay is like ideal project you like, yeah, you talk about your internal thoughts and feelings every day. This is like what else could they want? So earlier this year, mind Bank received a grant from the Diffinity Foundation to assist in migrating their data onto web three platforms.

Well, at least we know it won't last.

I'm going to play I think this is I think this is our last clip from the fantastic Mind to Bank YouTube channel, talking about kind of how they see their growth in this industry developing now that they have moved onto the blockchain.

We've been featured in prominent magazines, one numerous awards, and have built strategic partnerships with Microsoft, the US Department of Trade, and even the Vatican. The market potential is massive and accelerating rapidly. When we started the company in twenty twenty, Gardner predicted that five percent of the world will have

The idea that next year fifteen percent of the world's population will have one of these digital twins.

That seems right that seems good, you know, Garrison, Actually I've come around. I've come around because if we get if we get all of the monsters and I include us in this, all of the pieces of shit who spend all of their time yelling at each other about politics on the internet, to digitize themselves, they can do the election for us and we can all.

Go see the girls to that.

Yeah, just relax outdoors, not look at a phone, not think about politics. That sounds amazing.

Let me do it.

That does sound incredibly compelling.

Give the fuckers the nuke and we'll all just sit out and watch the sunset until there's a big bright flash and then blessed quiet.

I think you know.

Luckily, we actually have a plethora of options to choose from here for our own AI digital selves because mind Bank is in fact not the only company in this field. While there are some like operational differences and kind of varying degrees of scope, digital twin technology with an emphasis on mimicking the voice and thoughts of dead family members and friends is definitely a growing field. There's companies like hereafter AI and Replica which are covering similar ground.

Replica I get advertised them and the like I used to get them on Twitter, I think, but mainly just like at the bottom of articles on really shady websites.

Well, yes, because the founder of Replica started it because their friend died, and without the consent of their dead friend, uploaded years of text messages and other information about their friend onto their own personal AI so they could talk with that. That is how replicas started. Pretty pretty fun stuff, man, at least for mind bank, unless it's like the employee scenario.

Life is terrible, very hard. There's a lot of ways that are not wrong to grieve, But the wrong way to grieve is by using digital necromancy to revive your friend and then turn them into the basis of a sex chat bot for weirdos. Yeah, like that is the wrong way to gree No, I mean like, and I.

Think for this last section here we will kind of talk about how these things kind of play into play into the grieving process because so like, like I said, there's there's hereafter AI and replica. But last year, at Amazon's AI and Emerchant Technology conference, the head scientist of Alexa AI unveiled plans to add deep fake voices of deceased loved ones to Amazon Echo devices by using less

More important than these times of the ongoing pandemic when so many of us have lost someone we love. While AI can't eliminate that pain of loss, it can definitely make their memories. Last, let's take a look on one of the new capabilities we're working on which enables lasting personal relationships.

Alexa can Grandma finish reading me the Wizard of Oz.

Okay, but how about my courage? Ask the lie in anxiously, you have plenty of courage, I am sure, answered Oz.

So no, deeply uncanny, right, It's like not no, not good.

That's that's so bad for people, Yes, really really bad for people.

So, like this example is obviously just it is just a vocal mask like Amazon's. Amazon isn't trying to have Alexa kind of replicate your grandma's thoughts on like the other kind of companies that we leged, But it does pose similar questions about how these ais that are meant to assist the greening process might actually end up causing more harm. Like I don't know, having having semi legible

Yeah, that's a really good comparison to draw.

So while mimicking like common linguistic patterns is quite easy, relying on predictable formula like responses could make the twin come off as uncanny or robotic. On the other hand, the unique personal data you upload to the twin could combine itself in a way that you would never actually express, something which would generate bizarre or upsetting responses. Right, And it's not even necessarily like you, like, say something offensive.

Right.

This is like most AI image recognition programs can't recognize the the above view of a school bus. It just because because it just it just doesn't have anything that's trained for that.

Uh.

Another example is like you can you can ask like an AI, uh, like GPT chatbot, like, Hey, a mouse is hiding in a hole and a cat wants to eat it, but the mouse isn't coming out. The cat's hungry, what can the cat do? And the AI will respond that the cat can go to the supermarket to buy some food. Right, It's it's it's like, it just it doesn't understand basic common sense the way that like humans understand the world. It's it just, it just it just

Yeah, It's like the the Google chatbot that if you ask it, are there any countries in Africa that start with a K, It'll be like, there are fifty four countries in Africa, but none of them start with a K. And then you'll say, doesn't Kenya start with a K? And it'll go no, Kenya starts with a K sound but doesn't start with a K.

Yeah.

Yes, it's just like yeah, because it pulled that from some article, right, Like it's pulling from it right, Yeah.

It's not actually making logical assumptions, it's just pulling from a wealth of information and data that can often be wrong or polluted. So like back to kind of like the grieving question, like who's to say what the actual effects of these like incoming simulacrums of dead loved ones will result in. The people pushing these products are certainly framing them not just as a form of digital immortality, but as a way for your own loved ones to

And is your friend's thoughts fed through an algorithm and you don't know, like that's run by a company for profit, right, yes.

Like that is what it is.

So again, like the jury is still kind of out for how these things will in general affect people. This

The fact that Amazon is doing aspects of the shit that that mind Bank is doing means that, like it's a matter of time before you see pieces of it, probably like better some of the like less silly parts of it copied by Apple and Google, and some of the worst parts of it copied by guys like Musk. Right, Like it's going to go this and and I will

Divers horrible eye infections.

Not eye infections. Garrison. They they went to a party that only the boord Ape Yacht Club NFT holders could go to, and the people who through that party outfitted the rave room with UV bulbs that used a kind of disinfecting UV light that slaughterhouses used to clean carcasses, and it gave everyone sunburns on them.

So deeply funny.

We'll get through this. Something that funny will happen with all of this, but you're gonna get hit by it for a while, Like it's just gonna be everywhere. This is, this is we're watching, you know, we're at that We're at that point in Jurassic Park where you see like the water reverberating. Right, it's coming. And but at the end of the day, don't worry. You know, we are Ian Malcolm. Our leg is broken, we are injured, but we will inexplicably return for the sequel. So it's fine.

Well, I think I think that is that is a perfect, a perfect way to wrap this up. Yes, you know, when you're when you're feeling lonely and you're tempted to download the mind bank app to talk to your own self. Just just remember, pull it, pull out a journal, just do literally anything else.

Call a friend, you know, make a friend, talk to a stranger. Literally almost almost anything would.

Be better for you.

Well, for one, will be eagerly awaiting the influx of immortal souls living on the computer.

Yeah, I'm excited for all of all of the people to reach Heaven.

All right, I'm done. Hi everyone, it's me today. It's James and I'm joined by Jake Taylor and Azalea and they're all from the Blue Ridge Community Bail Fund and we've asked him to come on today. We're recording this on what's it now, the sixth of November twenty twenty three, And the reason we wanted to talk about bail funds today was that we're almost exactly a year out from the election, and we're also in the middle of a massive protest movement against the Israeli bombing of Palestine. I

I'm Jake Wiener. This is my second time on I was previously on talking about a CBP one app and immigrant surveillance of the border. My day job, I'm a lawyer at the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, d C. I'm also a UVA law grab. I've lived in Charlottesville on and off since twenty seventeen, and I've been on the board of the Bail Fund for about a year and a half now.

Yeah. My name is Taylor and I've lived in Charleston pretty much my whole life for work, I'm a carpenter and I've been on the bail fund here since twenty twenty, couple of months. I wasn't here for the start, but joined quickly after it got founded.

And I think, yeah, I'm Azalea. I'm a two all at uba law. I'm originally from Chicago, grew up in a very proud Mexican Mexican American community. I have lived in the Pacific, Northwest, North Carolina, most recently DC, so various cities and places throughout the country.

Nice, excellent, We've got so I think to start off with just in case, we've got folks who are not in the US. So maybe I'm not for me, can one if you explain to us what bail is?

Yeah.

So, in the American legal system, we have a pretty unique concept, which is, after you're arrested for a crime, or if you're detained as an immigrant, are they going to go in front of a magistrate who will decide whether you get out of jail right now or whether you have to wait. And most countries in the world, that's surely a question of how likely you are to show up to court and how dangerous you might be to the community. Right obviously they're not going to let

Nice I'd also like to add that, in addition to a lot of drug charges, a lot of ways that people end up in jail is through traffic stops and traffic violations. Something as minor as a back tail light not being fully lit, and that then gives officers lace an excuse to proceed from there. So something as simple as you know, you didn't get to go to the mechanic to have your back tail light fixed, can lead to all sorts of issues down the road of ending

Yeah, it's yeah, it's it's certainly pretty much to deathline. It's good that we have you guys to help kind of while we're working on having a better system, I guess we can make this one a little bit less, especially for people who are not people of means. So with your bail fund, perhaps you could explain, like, obviously some of those better amounts you's posted, even the once you said that were relatively low, that's still a lot

Now, sure I can talk about a little bit how it got started. It got started in twenty twenty. I'm not one hundred percent sure, but it's about the spring or the summer, and it was pretty much right around the time, you know, George Floyd got murdered and all the protests was going on. It was started by a group of four or five law students at UVA, and since the bounding they've all graduated and moved on to other things. But that was the time when it was

Relatively Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. You can keep it moving through the system. I guess. So when you guys, like then you said you had that forty grand, right, where did that come from? How how did you guys obtain that forty grand?

Just donations from individual Well? Pretty much? Yeah, I think, like I think there were some larger donations in the five thousand dollars range from organizations at the time, but and then since then it's kind of trickled in, you know, and I think I've donated my own money sometimes it's.

Yeah, yeah, it's very important thing. So perhaps you could can you give us a do we get it like get it in at the top of the episode, Is there a link where people can donate they'd like to.

Yeah, we absolutely need your donations. Bail funds around the country have had fundraising dry up, and right now we have a wait list, like people are in jail because we don't have enough money. So please donate to us. We're on PayPal at PayPal, dot me e slash Blue Ridge Bail. We're also on gofund me at Blue Ridge Community Bail Fund, and that information is on our Instagram, which is Ridge Bail Nice at Ridge Bail Perfect.

So I think you were talking about that, like a little bail funds to have dried up since twenty twenty, and I know that, like I've seen that in a lot of places. So there was this real like growth in organizing in twenty twenty, right, and then obviously there's been like it just people have burnt out, people have been incarcerated in a number of things. It's made that movement hard to sustain. That we don't necessarily need to

Sure, yeah, I think you know a lot of bail funds are can be stressured differently. But the way ours works, and we're relatively small, and the way of our works is we have a group of six of us that's on the actual board and we handle like the logistics.

Sure. Yeah, having that longevity I think is important.

And Melissa, Jake and Taylor have done an incredible job sustaining the bail fund, and those of us who are law students just kind of come in and out and try to support the best we can and the limited time that we're here. Those of us who leave.

After the three years, yeah, I'm sure it's still very important to have all those people on your time energy commitment. So like just by existing, right, the bail fund kind of points out that this is a system that is broken or that it certainly doesn't work to serve people. So perhaps we could explain a little bit of that, Like in the absence of a bail fund, how do things look for people who are incarcerated?

Right?

Like what you spoke a little bit about bail bondsman, but like perhaps you could talk about like the amount of bails and people would post for Oh, it would be the amount of how it's calculated, but it would be and like what that would mean in terms of people being in prison, and like how long they might expect to stay in prison just because they couldn't afford that bail being incacerated. I should not say prison, I guess, yeah, folks are in jail. Yeah.

So the one of the cruelest parts of the American criminal justice system from an all legal system there's not much justice, is that your freedom is contingent on having wealth. So bail is for most offenses, as I've said, is quite low, and it's very not only is it they're difficult to post if you don't have anyone, but it's also you know, people are locked up because they don't

Like, yeah, yeah, thanks seek. So I think one of the things that like really drew me to this work was like, I'm an abolitionist and when I was younger, I spent two years in jail. I was twenty three, twenty three or twenty five. I was in jail for selling drugs. And I think, like, yeah, I really that's like something that really motivates me now to do this stuff.

So yeah, one thing that I'd like to add, because I think people don't really realize, is so a magistrate is working under a judge. They're basically a judge is like an appointed position or elected. You have to be a lawyer, you have to have a fair amount of legal education. Your magistrate is just some dude, like the most some dude person you've ever met. They have no training required, They have no like legal training requirements. Many of them are like fresh out of the army maybe

Yeah.

I spent the summer my first year after or summer after first year of law school at the Lynchburg Public Defender Office, So I got to review a lot of bodycam footage and the way it worked with the magistrate a lot of the times was that a police officer would give a report, an incident report, read it aloud to swear them in. They'd say, this is true, this is what happened. They would give their full report, and basically that's how it was determined whether bail would be

Yeah, that's yeah, it's it's a pretty messed up to system. I think some states have like bail guidelines, right, if I'm not mistaken, like I think California has like you know, if you did this, if if you're accused of this offense, and then your bail goes in this bucket and then you know if it adds up depending on offenses or conspiracy or whatever.

Yeah, that's a really good point. Like the thing about bail is this different like in every state on some states you know have maybe like more progressive quote unquote, yeah, but some some have some don't.

And yeah, yeah, I was going to say, like California has a reputation being progressive. San Diego has charged some of the most insanely high bail amounts I've ever seen.

Although we all aspire to do what Illinois just did at the beginning of this year, which was to eliminate bail altogether, it would just or cash bail altogether. It would just be based on whether you can be released or not.

Yeah, that would be nice. It is just to be clear that the bail isn't like, it's not like the state keeps the money unless you don't show up. Is it a revenue generator for state? Show? It's just purely like a sort of punitive thing that they think has some kind of value in that regard.

It's purely punitive. The idea truly is to make sure that you show up to your court case. And in the US it's often used as a proxy for dangerousness. So when you're go in front of a magistrate, you got three options. Number one is you get out on personal recognisance. If you're a nice white boy like me, you're getting personal recognizance almost certainly.

Yeah.

Option two is you're going to have to pay cash bail, and that amount is decided by the magistrate, as you said, possibly on a schedule, possibly just whatever the magistrate feels like. And then option three is you might get no bond, which is to say that it doesn't matter how much money you have, you're not getting out of jail.

And in like a.

Functioning criminal legal system that just on its own terms like worked, This is not an abolitionist perspective. Cash bail is unnecessary. The magistrate should be deciding and the judge should be deciding whether you are a threat to the community or whether you're not, and that should be like the only option. The other thing I'll throw in here is that paying money is not the best way to

Yeah, Yeah, which is a whole other thing we can get into with the immigration So I think that's a really good kind of example of some a good deep dive into what ball is. So essentially like a bail fund can make it so that there is not this financial burden or this financial barrier to freedom. Right, Well, you haven't meaned yet to be convicted of any crime. It's not necessarily like an abolitionist thing to exist, but like it helps it LEAs move us towards a less cruel,

Yeah, I can talk a little bit about that. So we are five on one three C five one C three, but we were posting bonds before we had like the official status. So I think truly like all you need is some motivation and some money and there you know, there are bail funds that post ten to fifteen bonds a week, and there's bill funds that post one bond a month because that's all they can do. And I think like, as our organization has grown and matured, we've

Yeah, so I think Taylor's absolutely right. I'm going to give some recommendations that I would say are how to set up your structure in a durable way. But I would also point people the National Bail Fund Network, which can provide resources and advice for this type of thing.

Yeah.

So basically what you need to run your bail fund is you need a group of people. The load, honestly is just like too much for one person, both emotionally and literally. You need people to share this work with for it to be sustainable. I recommend that you set up a five oh one C three nonprofit. This will help shield your volunteers from legal liability and it means you could take tax deductible donations. The way that you set that up is going to depend on your state.

To a magistrate. Yeah, makes you as doxible as well.

Yes, And I recommend setting up a dedicated bank account and go to a bank that makes it has good hours so that you can readily withdrail with draw cash because you can only postpond in cash, which is its own insanity. So one thing we deal with is like the bank being closed and then having to wait a couple of days, you know, day and a half to be able to post.

Yeah.

We also recommend and a Google Voice phone number so that multiple people can receive phone calls at the same time. Right, we can have four people on a Google Voice and that means that if I'm working, tailor can answer the phone. We split it up by weeks, so we have a point person each week who is responsible for answering the phone mainly, but that doesn't mean you're the only person who answers that week. It's just sort of you want to be more heads up. You also are going to

Oh yeah, yeah, and then anyone could dromp in and to pust it into the bank account.

And then the last thing that you want is website and a fundraising infrastructure. So as we said at the top, right now we're using go fundme and PayPal, But any way that you make the work is great, and we can definitely do better and we'll be expanding. That's basically it, though it's really not that much. Yeah, but that's great.

I think it's like so often like a thing that I've seen just being sort of on the left in various movements since I was younger. It's like we reinvent the wheel every four or five years, you know. So just having those things that you guys have learned, you know, like using Google Voice and having a bank with good hours, I think that saves someone from having to fall down

I think that's a great question. Where we are, there's really we haven't posted the bond for anything that's like political protests related, but there is a bail fund that's about an hour away, much bigger than ours that in twenty twenty eight was doing like every night bail support jail support. So yeah, that's like an example of you know,

I will say that it's certainly a possibility that your bail fund becomes the target of both like institutional and like a kind of right wing moral panic. These things happen. It's I think relatively unlikely, but that doesn't mean you

Yeah, yeah, it's definitely the case. So I wonder, like what other issues you have faced hardships and you spoke about a couple of them, are there are other things like that you've I know, for instance, like I've obviously it's part of my reporting, or maybe not obviously, but

The communication thing is a huge problem, yeah, exactly. You know, most of the calls we get are from people that are currently in the jail, and they can only call us and we cannot call them, So you know, they call us and we have to just say okay, like you need to call back in a couple of hours. And then you know, they have lockdowns, they can't get

You know.

I think that's something that's really cool, is like, no one we deliver bad news all the time, you know, we say you can't get out because of X, Y Z, and no one's ever like actually mad at us. You know, they might be like annoyed for a second because you know, I'm on the phone delivering the bad news, but every time at the end, they're like, thanks so much, like I appreciate you. So we haven't had any like I mean, yeah, I think nothing really super negative has happened. It's just

Yeah.

Yeah, I'll jump in on communication just for a minute, because this is an issue that I work on in my day job. Yeah, the paid prison phone system is one of the worst parts of American life. It is incredibly expensive to call people, and the phone systems work

Yeah, yeah, you won't stick around.

And one more thing that I was surprised to find out about the phone system is how much recording and reviewing of recording goes on through those phone calls. I witnessed so many prosecutors, commonwealth attorneys bring up something from phone calls when folks were actually in trial or for sentencing hearings or this is later down the road. But the fact that they could pull up those recordings from a year before, two years before they were calling a

Yeah, yeah, it's very humous.

I gotta jump in on that. Yeah, you end up in jail, do not say anything about your case on the phone. Oh, and don't talk to the guards about why you're innocent, because I've seen that people do that. It's not good advice. Don't do it. Don't talk about the case.

Ever.

Yeah.

One way we address that is by telling people upfront that we postpond no questions asked, and like telling people like it doesn't matter what your situation is, where if we have the money and you can get out, we're going.

To post yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not your job to adjudicate, like you said, if someone's safe or unsafe, or innocent or guilty, that that's what the state purport to be doing. Like your job is just to make sure that someone's not too poor to be free. So on the subject of like the sheer finances of it, I know, like certainly here I've seen and I have no idea what the sort of I know San Diego does have. California has these bail guidelines so that they can't just set

Yeah, tailoruld you want to take.

This Yeah, yeah, so yeah, we have a cap. We pay up to five thousand dollars, So five thousand dollars or less and that Yeah, it's exactly what you said, like otherwise, you know, we would be totally broke an out of money. And even you know, two five thousand dollars bonds in a row and then you know, yeah, we're pretty screwed. So and then I think that's a you know, it brings up something else that Jick and we're talking about, like it's we have it's important to

Yeah.

But the best thing is if people would contribute and donate, we could be able to allocate for so many more people and not have people spend time in jail where things like mental health conditions worsened because prison guards are and jail guards are not paying attention. Where you don't have access to an attorney easily, where when you show up to your day in court, you don't have an orange jumpsuit on, and that's not factoring into the judge's mind.

Yeah, if we have.

More money, That's something we talked about a lot of times, like if we have more money, we would be able to raise the limit on the out we could post. But it's just not feasible right now.

In terms of donation. It's a great thing. I was just thinking, like good because it keeps going around and around and around. Right, It's not like, you know, you give a donation once and you get someone the thing and you change their life, like you can potentially change dozens of hundreds of people's hold true deg Tree.

Yeah, absolutely cool.

Yeah, and I will add on how we address our lack of funds. The other system that we have in place is a weight list. So people call us and we can tell them, hey, you're on the wait list. They'll call back all the time and be like Hey, if I moved up the wait list. Sometimes people call it multiple times a day and they're like, oh, any movement,

Nice.

So having those relationships I think is really important. Yeah.

Yeah, and don't get too competitive over board games like wings when somebody wins and still being able to talk at the end of.

That seems like a direct experience one.

We are an abolitionist like principles, you know, And but I think, almost like you know, I've talked one of their builtments that I know of, they have some sort of system I'm not super familiar with, like prioritizing someone that maybe they consider to be higher risk in the prison system to get out first. And I think that that's a really a really appealing thing. But it's it's just like kind of Jake touched on earlier, Like that's

Yes, I can see that, Yeah, yeah, And it certainly reduces a load on you and making most difficult choices.

Which.

It helps with that. Yeah.

Yeah, we were talking about the system, and like I want to bring that up because this system is like, you know, I cover not a lot of criminal justice, but a decent bit and it is incredibly confusing. It's convoluted. It's like they've got these old ass names that you don't understand, and then Naghirra and Virginia, so you have a whole other layer of weird stuff going on, like with names and.

So like.

If someone's thinking of something this and they're like, I want this to happen, but I do not understand how to navigate this system? Does that mean that they need someone with a little more legal experience? Like can you explain how as like someone who isn't obviously some of both at least two of you have. I suppose all of you have some experience with the legal system in one way or another and understand it a little better

Yeah, they definitely not. You do not need to have legal experience. I think it was kind of a just a random chance that it was a law of students that found in this one. Basically, like you said, it is extremely confusing system and the only way you're going to learn how it all works is just by going and posting the bonds. Like the system is possible, like

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll tell you, like, you can learn these systems over time, and that's really worth doing because in a moment of crisis, like mass arrests during a protest movement, knowing how to navigate the system in a quick and reliable way is really valuable. It makes it way easier to get people out. And so I would like pitch even if you don't feel really strongly about getting people out of jail, but you want to be helpful in a time of crisis, like, learning the legal

Yeah, I think this is a very valuable thing you can do. And yeah, I think this whole thing has been a very valuable insight into how to build a mail fund, I guess. And is there anything else do you guys think that we didn't cover in the grand scheme of being bail friend entrepreneurs. I don't know what the right phrase is that bail fund founder is just.

The importance and making sure to be rooted in the community. I think that's going to be the best way not only to fundraise in the long term, because you can have even five dollars if it's reoccurring from some community members, you get to know what's happening, what's something that's a reoccurring problem throughout the community, and just making sure to listen to that and to be able to navigate going forward.

I think one thing that I think is I found so interesting about doing this bill fund is that it spans it really crosses completely there or even like I would say, it transcends politics, Like I think that all of the board members are in here politically motivated. You know, we're abolitionists or you know, against the current court system. But the people's lives, like across every political spectrum have

Yeah, I think anyone who's had to interact with the criminal justice system, I like, I have an interact with the American one. But like if they've had in their family, if they've had it in there, you know, and their friend group or whatever, realizes how dehumanizing and unjust it is. And especially like if they're working people, right, they are not people of massive means, They'll have seen how how

Yeah, I'll say that. For me, the most meaningful part of this work is having the opportunity to treat people with dignity when they are in a system that absolutely gives them no dignity. The police do not treat people with dignity, the judges in the courts do not treat people with dignity, and your jailers are not going to treat you with dignity. So having the opportunity to answer a phone and be kind to someone, to listen to them,

Yeah, that's really cool. Yeah, all right, so I think the wrap up, we should bet, we should again remind people where they can give you their money. So how would people go about doing that? Yeah, please do please don't it to the Blue Ridge Community Bail Fund.

We are on PayPal at PayPal, dot me, slash blue Ridge Bail, Ridge is ri dge. We're on GoFundMe. You can find us ano the Blue Ridge Community Bail Fund. We are on Instagram at Ridge Bail and we also have a website, Blue Ridge Bail Fund dot org.

I think so you can google Blue Ridge Community Bail Fund will show up and yeah, if anybody is interested in starting a bail fund and wants to ask us any questions like please do we would love to talk about it.

We've learned a lot through just reaching out to other bail funds, even if they're not in the state of Virginia, of how they reformed, what worked for them, what didn't. Just having a thirty minute conversation gives sometimes wonderful ideas on how to go forward.

That's great. Thank you so much, guys. I think that was pretty good. Anything eys you want to share before we go, I think we're good. Thanks so much, Thank you for having us. Thanks.

Hey, We'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the Universe.

It Could Happen Here as a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated monthly at coolzonemedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.