It Could Happen Here Weekly 117

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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 got to be nothing new here for you, but you can make your own decisions.

Welcome, Dick. It appen here at the podcast that we're starting as if it was a NOL podcast instead of doing some terrible thing like we normally do. I'm your host, Bia Wong. This is a podcast about things falling apart, and this is a putting it back together again episode. Yeah, and I'm I'm here with two workers from Donut Workers United, specifically at Loostar Donuts, Lydia and Ben, to talk about

Thank you, thank you for having us. Super excited.

Yeah yeah, I'm really excited to have you two here. So all right, So Blue Star Donuts is a donut place in Portland's for people who are not in Portland's question work, which is probably a lot of you. I don't know, I don't know where you are right now. So I guess the place I wanted to start with talking about this is how how did you two get involved with this campaign?

You know, it's actually for me, it was right before Halloween. I went to a coworker's house and you know, we had some drinks and hung out and she just sort of, you know, the conversation just sort of organically led to work and talking about work and you know, this is messed up at work, this is frustrating us. And then she was like, hey, like, what's your opinion on you know, union stuff? And I actually had when I worked at Starbucks in Texas, I had tried to unionize my location and it didn't.

No one was interested, but I you know, they she.

Asked us if we wanted to sign a union card or union authorization card, and I was all for it. You know, I'm very into it. So that's that's how it started for me.

Yeah, So bouncing off of that, it was I would say a couple of days before that Halloween party. For me, I'm pretty close friends with the woman who started all of this, and so I was visiting her and she just kind of briefly mentioned She's like, hey, do you know what's going on with Blue Star? And kind of open ended question, and you know this company almost every day something happens, so I was like, I mean, maybe maybe not what's going on? And she's like, well, like

Yeah, it seems like it was a really a pretty quick campaign. I know you all had an election. Oh how many weeks ago?

Was that?

Likes ago? Yeah?

I guess it'll be like three when this goes out. Yeah, so that that's that's a very very quick campaign. How many people like ish are are at the shop.

It depends on if you're adding like all the satellites and versus like the regular Flagship store. I think we have thirty something at Flagship, which is the location on Jefferson, and then I think there's maybe fifty one employees total.

Yeah, we're pretty scapared around all of Portland with one shop in Lake Oswego, but majority of us are in headquarters at Flagship.

Yeah.

That's something I think is pretty interesting about this campaign and about a lot of the independent campaigns, is that, yeah, it's shops are it's shops that are pretty small shops that are split around, and it shops that, like you know it shops with high turnover. Now I was wondering, well, actually, I don't know. I'm assuming you get SiGe turned over because.

There is a lot of turnover in the satellite shops for sure.

I mean I would even say that there was a fair amount of turnover at Flagship. You know, we had a time where in our kitchen, which is the wholesale kitchen, which makes the donut bites. We referred to it as Red Kitchen. We had four people quit in four days.

Jesus ghost.

They didn't Yeah, they didn't replace those people. They expected us to continue working the producing the same amount with four less people. Yeah, but there were you know, a lot of like poached wororker like temporary workers that were coming and going while I was there.

And yeah, some pretty serious turnover.

That kind of happened with me last year. I was working at Blue Star for like about eight months. Oh it's the new year, I guess two years ago.

And then I quit.

I left, and then unfortunately last year I hit a little unemployment zone and I'm like I need a job. So I came back to Blue Star for about three months and this is when everything was going on. But long story short, Sorry, last time I was there, we kind of had a little bit of turnover as well. A lot of people were not great, and we had

Yeah, so has the sort of speed ups from that was that one of the main things that was driving the unionization or like what other kinds of things were like driving people into this.

There were a few things, a few main things.

Pay and inconsistency of pay was a real big issue. For instance, there was a person in our kitchen who me and her started around the same time. We had very similar previous experience. Neither of us were cross trained. We did the same exact job. She was making three dollars an hour more.

Than I was.

And so that kind of thing happens a lot at Blue Star. And there's one of the biggest things for me, honestly, was the point system, what they call the point system the disciplinary system at Blue Star. Basically, you get a certain amount of points that you're allowed to hit.

If you go over that.

Amount of points, you're done, you're fired, and you can get you know, I don't remember the numbers exactly, but it's like one point for calling out of a shift, half a point for being ten minutes late. See, there's all these things that you can earn. Yeah, there's all these things that you can earn points for. And it you know, if you reach that number eight, it doesn't really matter how good of an employee you are you're fired.

Yeah. And on top of that, with the point system, it's incredibly unfair because you get points due to things you can't like the thing.

It's very able.

Yeah, And the main issue was traffic and crashes. If like a car crash happens and you're stuck in that you and you're like late to work because of it, even when you like let your managers know and let your team know, you still get punished for it and you get points and that counts to the eight point total. So that was a main part of the point system that really really had us upset and very unfair, honestly.

Well, and it's it's very it's a very abless system.

I mean there were multiple people in our kitchen alone that had chronic illness issues, myself included. And I there were two nights when in the three ish months that I was working there, two days where I had not slept it all the night before and I was literally not seeing straight, like I was seeing double. I couldn't walk in a straight line like, I was not okay.

Yeah, and going off of that as well, the whole thick time and PTO was a mess. And when we get like paid time off, it won't even cover a whole shift. We'll be lucky to get four hours.

Yeah.

No, it's it's insane really and so I'll never forget. Like just recently, our special Christmas prize thing, our grand prize on the twelfth day was two hours PTO.

Two hours ye, congratulations ye.

And sick time too, yeah, they were super problems. Are like we were so hard for this, you deserve this, blah blah blah. And with sick time, it like will

I mean I can think of specifically. We had a coworker who, you know, kind of young. This was you know, she was kind of getting her feet wet in the working world, and she had had some issues with illness and she came to work with strep throat. Yeah, because she was so afraid of getting I mean she literally was like in tears, like having a breakdown to the managers because she was like, I can't get fired, Like I need to keep this job and I'm afraid that if I don't come in, I'm going to get fired.

Yeah, it's it's really rough because majority of these workers rely on this job, like this job is their income and they can't really do anything else, and it's so incredibly toxic there where they're just so afraid to not come into work because they will be punished over it.

It kind of goes without saying, which means you should say it, which is like it is unbelievably discussing to literally put people's lives in danger because you don't want to let someone take like a few days off because they have fucking stripped. Like that's unbelievable.

Yeah, over like peace and love to Blue Star, but over donuts like donut bite.

Yeah, like yeah, well.

Like like I don't, I don't, I don't think.

I don't think it's okay to make like nurses go in when they're sick, but like donuts, like this is oh my god.

Like you know, as you know, who cares if we're suffering as long as they make their bottom line?

You know.

Yeah, it's really one of those things. It's like, yes, like they will survive if slightly less donuts are produced, Like they will be fine. However, Comma all over here are getting terribly sick because of all the shit that is that is terrible.

Yeah, no, like I laugh all the time about it, and I you know, my roommate and I are like best friends. I come home almost every day from those shifts being like you'll never guess what happened over like the most craziest, hilarious things, and like I can't believe this is real, Like I'm experiencing this.

Yeah, and we're we're going to talk more about the absolutely wild stuff that happened here. Unfortunately, after we come back from this ad break that pays some of the bills question.

Mark, we are back.

So yeah, I wanted to ask about some of the other stuff that's been happening at this shop because everything that I've ever heard about is just like, I don't know, just deeply weird. And it's well, I guess, I guess one place we can sort of start. It's like it seems like it's one of these places where they, I don't know, it has this very sort of like progressive eveneer around it, and then when it comes time to like you know, like like even sort of live up

Yeah, and it's it's so funny because you walk in and you know there's there's pride flags there, you know, all all of the workers are you know, queer and cool and progressive, and you know they're supporting the Shortland Teachers' Union.

And yet you know, and this story is just disgusting.

We had a worker in our kitchen, actually in Lydia, in an I's kitchen, who sexually assaulted two of our coworkers.

Jesus Christ.

Yes, these women brought it forward to management. Management victim blamed. They thanked them for keeping it quiet and not letting it interfere with their work. Yeah, it was not handled well. That was specifically the manager of Red Kitchen, Brittany Bergner. A lot of just really like callous and inappropriate mishandling of that situation. Yeah, and it was really disgusting.

Yeah, it was disgusting. And I was so so grateful that I wasn't there when this happened, because I would literally tour this man apart. But the thing with that manager is that him and her got all really well. And what I've heard I wasn't there. I heard that there was some favoritism towards him, and so when these allegations came up, that's when she got She mishandled it a lot, and it was not dealt with properly at all, and it seemed very much swept under rug kind of

Nobody talked about it.

Yeah, he did get fired eventually, but eventually that's the main thing. Yeah, it was handled right away.

And the you know, the effect it had on these women that came forward that this happened to. I mean I I hung out with them outside of work where they would talk about, you know, what happened and how it was handled, and like, you know, they were sobbing. They were you know, their lives were torn apart over this.

Yeah, especially by a company that reaches how open and awesome and close family we are, and then behind the scenes they're actually mistreating their workers literally every single day. So it's it is, it is disgusting. I have no other word to describe it.

Yeah, I mean, that's like someone's sexually assaulting you, and then them not being fired means you can fucking run into them at your job, which is like the fucking just absolute nightmare shit. That is like the worst fucking shit that can happen.

And we all worked in the same kitchen.

We all worked in the same kitchen, so we were guaranteed to see each other for most of the day every day. And it's like, you know, you expect these women to go to work and stare at this guy and and you know, talk and laugh with this guy who assaulted them, Like that's crazy.

Yeah, that's absolutely fucking terrible. And I hope, I hope, like I hope fucking like some shit happens to these people, because like God.

Oh yeah, don't worry. We got him banned from some bars because classic thing is drugging drinks.

Christ.

So we've spread the word and got flyers, and I'm pretty sure he's banned I know for sure too bars, but I think others as well, I'm not sure.

Yeah.

Yeah, don't get me wrong. I will definitely go out of my way to destroy a man's life.

Yeah, And so I guess, like you know, with with just like the absolute fucking horrifying shake going on, and also with YouTube, like you know, people doing organizing outside of the workplace to go after these people. It may it makes it makes a lot of sense that, you know, the unionization campaign has been going, and I wanted to ask, I want to well, I guess I wanted to talk about sort of the vote and the stuff leading up to the vote and the things that happened to YouTube, because oh my god.

Yep, yeah, you know, we we had our vote on January seventeenth. There were seven votes that were left unopened that were challenged by Blue Star management. Three of them because the employees were no longer active employees, and four of them for honestly just like completely bullshit reasons, like they had to get a new envelope.

You know, they they were there before the vote, but.

Like seven minutes after the cutoff that you know that Blue Star wanted one person had to get a new ballot, and you know, it's like, these are these are technicalities that really should not prevent someone from having their vote counted. And so we as DW Star, objected to six of those challenges. The four that were very ticky tacky for obvious reasons, and that was the week end.

That was the week of the big snow snowstorm as well.

We should talk for people who weren't in Portland for this. Okay, so the city of Portland, this is the thing I have heard. I am a Chicagoan, so like I grew up in snowstorms, right, but the city of Portland, like this is I get, this is this is this is this is the this is the the Mia rants about the city of Portland for about five minutes thing because oh my fucking god, the city of Portland does not actually substantively do any kind of like street clearing. They

I personally would have preferred snow, like six feet of snow over a half in ice, the ice over nane. The whole entire city shuts down, and it's it is incredibly dangerous, for sure, and the city does not prepare for it. The city, like landscape itself is not prepared for it. And yeah, it's awful. I tripped and fell like three times within a week, and my room and I were literally locked into our house for days, like

There so many, so many people lost power, so many people's.

Like yeah, growth and the NLRB building itself was shut down for I don't remember how long, but it was shut down, and.

So it was.

It was shut down for most of that week leading up to the vote. Our vote was on a Thursday, and I think Thursday was the first day that the actual office was open. There might have been some people there on Wednesday, but the office itself was closed the you know, Monday was Martin Luther King Junior Day, so

Yeah, And so I.

Call up our rep at the NLRB, Michael Moles, and I say, hey, like, what's the deal. When can we drop these off? And he goes, well, actually, you know you can drop them off. When we're not there. You can slide them under the door, you know, as long as it's the person, you know, as long as the person whose ballot is being turned in is turning in the ballot, like, you can't send someone else to do it for you. So we go back up on Wednesday

Yeah, Like the fact that the City of Portland doesn't does not like refuses to buy snowplows and doesn't know that you can use beat juice as an anti ice thing. Like the fact that the fact the fact that the fact that the city leadership is utterly incompetent, like should not should not be a reason why your union vote doesn't your votes don't get counted. That is absolutely absurd. It's also like, you know, I mean, like okay, like

Well.

And I I emailed or I called Michael Moles again, our rep at the NLRB, and I was like, hey, like, this is kind of unprecedented, like can we push the vote out like a week just to make sure that everyone can safely get their ballots in? And he told me, in no uncertain terms that we would not be doing that. He gave me this, you know, long speech about how hard it is, how difficult it is, how you know,

Well.

At the time, people are literally risking their lives. Yeah, and to drive cars, they're risking their cars. They're risking their lives trying to get these votes in. So that's why this appeal to these challenges are so important that it's not fair if we don't count in ice storm and the actual you have to.

Account for that.

Yeah, So like all these things matter and should count, and that's why we're really pushing that these votes be counted well.

In two of the votes where people who had quit, and one of those was was Lydia, and she was straight up intimidated into quitting.

And you can Lydia if you want to talk about it.

Oh my gosh. Okay, So they I use this word pretty loosely, but the more I talk about the more it's true. They forced me to quit, point blank. Period. They pulled me into this meeting where at Blue Store they have these every thirty day check ins and meetings to talk about like how you're doing and how's the work, et cetera. So on our ninety day check in, we are promised a raise after working here for ninety days, but first we have to go through a whole meeting,

And what's funny is they extended my ninety days as well. I can talk about that more later, but this is it's just it's just odd because Red Kitchen, our kitchen, which at that point was made up of I think six people, all vocal union supporters, wore buttons every day.

Yep, we were the most vocal people about it. We wore our union buttons every day. We like everybody knows that we were firm believers standing up for this union. And that kind of segues into the furlough situation where they all shut down our kitchen. They our whole entire team are six people of vocal union supporters suddenly no job.

It's incredibly messed up. And we're going to come back from more unbelievably messed up stuff after this ad break, and we're back going.

Back to the votes that were challenged.

The other person who quit was one of the main organized She was her and one other person. Where the people who kicked off all of the organizing at Blue Star and basically she they changed around her schedule so much to kind of force her into quitting. She was very stressed with school and like just the way that they kept messing with her made her quit. Basically, she was afraid that she was going to be fired, so she went ahead and quit. And so that that was

This is how ridiculous this company is. Third reasons where I'm like, this must be the Truman Show, Like this is not real. Where are the cameras well?

And first of all, complaining about working conditions is a federally protected act. I can do that and I cannot be punished for that. It is against the law, which is why I filed the ULP. Second of all, the reason I was complaining is because they had taken us down from three to four people opening shifts to two and the way two people work, Yeah, the way two people operates for opening shift in Red Kitchen is one person is mixing the dough and loading it into the fryer,

And when you know.

Typically, like the best practice that was done the entire time I was there up to this was that you did not do that position for more than an hour because it was physically difficult to stand in one place like that and do that and do those repetitive motions.

And two, it's like fucking.

Psychological torture because you're in the corner of this room. You're not speaking to anybody. You're literally just staring at your own hands. I mean, it's it's not like nobody likes to they call it catching. Nobody likes to catch. And I was doing this for up to three hours a day, uninterrupted and I have sciatic nerve issues with my leg and I you know, I made them aware of this multiple multiple times. I cannot catch for more than an hour at a time, and you know what I was doing catching.

For three hours every day.

So they're just trying to injury.

So that's what I was, yes, and that's what I was complaining about. I was saying, I'm in pain.

I'm literally having to go on muscle relaxers every single day because of the effect that this is having on me physically, Like I I can't sleep at night because my leg is so tense and it's in so much pain from fucking catching these donuts and putting them on trays.

It's insane.

And so you know, they're yet they're penalizing me for having the gall to voice the fact that what they're doing is literally ruining my quality of life.

Really and going off that every single issue we bring up to management, they have the tone of like, well, that sucks, that's a bummer, deal with it, and literally, yeah, literally just like okay, and we're like, okay, fix it, because we are human beings with nerves and bones and we cannot stand on our feet for this long, like it's it's wild, it is.

And you know that that kind of also segues into the furlough thing that we were all very vocal on union support. You know, I had filed at this point two ulps because of the extended probation and because they suspended me for three days for something that was absurd, and I had filed two ulps, and this came like

About halfway through.

The shift, they say, okay, you know, we're having a red kitchen meeting. Everyone come into the office, which that had never happened before. We never had an all kitchen meeting like that. They pull us in and you know, we're all looking at each other on the way in, like, oh fuck, what are they going to do? Like are they going to reduce our hours? Are they going to fire one of us? You know what's happening? And we get in there and head chef Stephanie Thornton says, okay,

You know, this is the day after Christmas? What?

Yeah, the day after Christmas.

We were given two days notice, gez in two days starting on January first. You don't have a job, and we don't know how long, but you know, we'll let you know if we ever are going to do production again, and we can bring you back even just for a little bit, which they didn't. They started up production again and we were not told or called in or anything.

I touch a little more on our shift leads for a second.

Yes, there are a couple.

They live together, but much like them, they are basically they're facing houselessness as well. And luckily they do have another roommate who can someone cover them, but that can't last forever. Yeah, and just the other day I had

Are lead.

He had a full breakdown and stormed out and walked out, and it affected them so heavily and so emotionally and still mentally, and they keep trying to, you know, find other jobs, and you know, still in contact. Just yesterday they sent me a screenshot of them talking to chef and being like, hey, is there any updates? Is there you know, any way we can come get our job back because you know, we're still waiting for you to tell us literally anything. And Chef said, oh, we don't know.

And one thing that's particularly insulting is that they ended this meeting with us where they were telling us we were losing our jobs by giving us a sheet of paper on how to file for unemployment in Oregon. And the thing with an indefinite furlough, if you don't have a return to work date, then you have to go. You have to jump through the hoops of applying for

And you don't. You can just hang out and get unemployment.

If you don't have a return to work date, you have to treat it as a layoff and you have to be making at like conscious efforts to job hunt every single week. You have to record those efforts. If you get an interview, you have to take it. If you get a position offered, to you. You have to take it, and it has to be in the field that you got that you got furloughed from, and there's all these very specific rules and it just makes it incredibly difficult, you know, all these hoops you have to

There is no support other than that. If you support, there's no severance package. There was no like short in the meeting, they're like, yeah, sorry, guys, this sucks, but like it just didn't feel real, like this full situation was not empathetic at all.

And like obvious, and you know, you could tell their excuses bullshit because like okay, like let let let's say what they were saying was real that like, okay, they got a bunch of stuff return and they don't have room in their freezers. It's been a month. They should now, there's no way that they now still do not have room in their freezers.

Like what Well, and here's the here's the kicker is that we were for maybe them a month, maybe over a month really since we filed the union petition, since we handed them the petition, we had ramped up production even though we were in the slow season, and we were not actually like the bites that we were making were not ordered by anyone. We were just putting. We were making extra to put in the freezer.

Not only the freezer, but they rented a whole entire warehouse.

We have a strategy.

Yeah, So they they did this, you know, I don't want to say they did this on purpose, but it is mighty suspicious to me that they're that they're building up these these you know, bites in the freezer when they didn't need them, when they didn't have orders for them, and now all of a sudden, oh, we don't have room.

In the freezer, we have to let you go, you know.

Yeah, yeah, oddly convenient.

It is. It is.

And that really ramped up when they when we gave them the union petition November seventeenth.

Yeah, which is just really very blatant retaliation.

Yeah.

Yeah, And I have filed an unfair labor practice for it's called what they call a lockout for the you know, us being furloughed, and it, like you said, it really is blatant, especially given that you know, even walking.

Into that meeting, all of us were wearing our union buttons.

I just why would you lay off an entire department, especially when that department is what is keeping your business afloat, Like that is the money maker for Blue Star is those wholesale bites, and we've.

Been told that all the time. It's like these donut bytes make the money. So make that makes sense? Then why are you shutting down that money maker? And the other kitchen and front of house are like are still there still during production, like not touched by this at all.

Yeah, And that's one of these things you get with employers all the time where it's like, well, okay, so employers very very clearly and obviously know where the money is made. They know exactly where the money is made, literally up until the moments that you start asking for more of the money you're making them, at which point suddenly like, oh who knows money comes from? Yeah, yeah, you have.

No money, even though the CEO has like at least three Tesla's totally oh.

My god, yeah, like Katie Pope can't take a little bit of a pay cut so that you know, we can all keep our jobs and you know, survive.

It's wild.

Yeah, and like, and I mean this is one of the other things too, is that like businesses, you know, this is this is the the way capitalism works, is that business businesses would rather fucking lose money than have their employees have slightly like not be intobilitating pain, not be sick, and get slightly more money.

Yeah, it is crazy to me because this whole you know, they're they're hiring all these lawyers to to you know, you know, handle the union stuff, and I'm like, you shut down Red Kitchen, you hire these lawyers, You're doing all these efforts, and I'm like, you would have saved so much money if you just recognize our fucking union, Like that's how easy it is, you know.

And not only that, we have what five shops in Portland, we have a shop in la as well, Los Angeles where prices are extravagant, like they have money. We know they have money, and we're honestly at the point, I'm at the point of show me your books, show me, prove to me that you do not have this money, because then that would be a different discussion. Like it's just it's frustrating. It's typical corporate business, and I'm over it. And the I'm over it for how they treat me.

Yeah.

Yeah, So is there anything else that you two want to make sure you get in?

Maybe just the gofund me?

Yeah, yeah, how.

Can people support you support the union?

Yeah, so we have a go fund me set up for the six furload workers to provide a month's worth of income two weeks for the employees who quit early, and that is it's called Help Loose our Employees Fight Union Investing. And right now we're at just under one thousand dollars. Our goal for all six of those people's incomes for a month is fifteen thousand, just under sixteen thousand.

Groceries from lydia. People are struggling.

Yeah, yeah, I was definitely in my Survivor era on rice and beans. It was it's really tough, and you know, it is a big goal realistically, it is, but yeah, you know not to sound desperate, I think, but truly every little bit helps. If you can really only afford five or ten bucks, we'll take it. That is, we're so grateful for anything. And it's it's people's lives. It's literally people's lives. Multiple people are facing not being able to have a roof over their head because of this company.

Yeah, so please go help them out. I I don't know this it it's just really really brutal too and especially like again, like this is also a fucking terrible time, Like there's there's never a good time to like be at risk of losing your home. Winter is especially fucking bad for that. There are yeah, so there there's so many.

So well, and that's what it did.

It scared a lot of people into unfortunately voting no. It scared a lot of people who were really involved, you know, in the organizing process to step back and you know, not respond to our text messages and not continue to advocate for the union. It you know that us getting furloughed really fucked with our whole union campaign.

So yeah, go go, go, give, go, go, give these workers your supports. They really need it, and yeah, go you know, and one thing again like that needs to sort of we need to sort of emphasize, is that this is illegal. They cannot fucking they legally cannot do this, but you know this is this is one of the things that is fucking hard about union organizing is that the law, assuming the law does like ever fucking catch up to these people. It takes time.

And yeah, there is one little thing I do want to make sure people know about because we just found this out pretty recently. While we were doing shop visits. They have jars for tips that say tips are shared with the kitchen. They're not.

Yeah, that's not true.

That's not true.

We saw no tips, and there was an instance where we accidentally got tips, and one by one we were sent to the back to sign a form saying this was an accident, you are not gaining tips. Sign this, and they took our tips away. It's not fair. And on top of that, they're lying to the public. They're lying to their customers that kitchen is gaining tips when we're not.

Yeah, and I will say, in addition to the GoFundMe, we do have you know, if you're not able to support monetarily, we do have a Twitter and an Instagram where we post updates if you want to follow along with our progress and see you know, how our election goes and everything. It's just on both Twitter and or excuse me and Instagram. It is at DWU Underscore Blue Star.

So yeah, well we'll have we'll have links to all this out of the description.

Awesome. Word of mouth is really the biggest thing, even going off again, like, if you can't support us financially, you can just share the go fundme through friends, family, whoever, and just spread it out there.

Yeah, and so go go go do that. Yeah, go help any way you can. And yeah, go go go fight your own bosses because they're screwing you, like screwing you in very similar ways. What's happening here two? Yeah, and this is the spy nicket up in here. You can find us at Twitter and Instagram at happen here pod and you can find more clos Obdia shows at closeid Media. Yeah, go go go into the world and make life worse for people who do terrible stuff.

Hi, everyone, and welcome to it could Happen here podcast about how things are falling apart and people trying to put them back together. Today, more in the how things are Falling apart category. We are talking about the border again and I'm joined by Gen Budd, who you've heard from before, but just a reminder. Jen is a former senior patrol agent with the Border Patrol and now an immigrant rights activist.

Welcome to the show, Jo, Thanks for having me again.

Yeah, you're welcome. So we're gathered here today, I guess to talk about this ridiculous spectacle of the Texas National Guard occupying some border adjacent land. The border as right down the middle of the river there, so they're not actually occupying that the physical border, right, they're occupying that the nearest land spot to it is that right.

Correct, The border in that area is in the middle of the river.

Yeah, and preventing Border patrol from accessing the river. And I think, like we were just talking before we recorded, but the reporting on this has been a bit kind of slap shot. A lot of it have just been social media posting so I was hoping that you could help us understand, like a this isn't like like a standoff between Texas and the Border patrol, right, but it's not like Texas kind of swept in and suddenly they were there and they weren't there before it. Border patrol

I think it's fair to say. I mean, at the moment, I think the administration is trying to portray that, you know, the Border Patrol tried to come out there and rescue. I think the latest I've heard is that reportedly there were six people in the river that were surrounding and they went to go rescue them, and the Texas Military the I guess Texas National Are ended up blocking them and saying they can't go. Now, this park is a very well known park that during the Trump administration they

Yeah they have yeah, yeah, they're there are many way helicopters. Yeah, they have lots of equipment to rescue people sometimes just let's desire, shall we say?

Yeah, And I mean it's to me the interesting thing is watching democratic politicians point their fingers at Greg Abbott, and rightly so for this, for this scene, but yet at the same time, what the Border Patrol does every day, their deterrence pulse these every day kill people every day,

Yeah, exactly. I think like this attempt to make it like Republican governor is killing migrants thing is an attempt to like distract us from the fact that democratic president is killing migrants in much greater numbers just by virtue of the amount of land covered by you know, Biden's jurisdiction compared to Abbots. But yeah, I think it's very hypocritical.

And it's it's funny to you in that or I'm not funny but ironic, and that the Border Patrolley Union is putting out the numbers of when Trump's last year as president of death on the southern border, and these are just the ones that they find, not yeah, the actual number, which is usually three to four times as many. And then they're saying, oh, look in Biden's year, this has been twenty twenty three was the most deadly year.

Are you jealous? What's the deal?

Yeah, like the idea that these people that can send that they're like in a cumba. They keep people in open air attention for up to a week and in the freezing cold. You know, in San Diego Santasedro, people are two people have died Santa Sedro, one person has died. In the number probably dozens more people have died crossing in other routes that we haven't seen this year. It's it's been not as wet as previous winters. But just in my just in this week, I've seen people in

Clear immigration precedent. So in eighteen seventy five, so prior to the Civil War, a little bit after the Civil War, states had always done their own immigration. So if you showed up in a boat on New Orleans in New Orleans Harbor, they would have their own immigration. You would have to pay a lot of times. In the California area, California was charging, especially Chinese migrants who were coming over for the railroad and the gold Rush and things like that.

Yeah, it's causing an absolute mess at the border. And I think understandably what you hear from migrants is like, the people who are better informed, who have access to information, resources, finances, are telling me that they don't want to go to Texas, right because right, it's a mess, and it's a mess that kills people. And that's exactly what it's supposed to be. It's supposed to be uncertain, and it's supposed to be cruel, and so people who have the chance to you will

It's difficult to tell if it's the Sonoran Desert or if it's the Rio Grande River. And I say that because we don't see half the bodies, or we probably don't see ninety percent of the bodies.

Yeah, I know a lot of deaths are on the t reservation to reservation in there's.

The bombing very goldwater bombing area that nobody's allowed in, but when they are occasionally allowed in, they find like groups of thirteen fifteen skeletons.

And stuff like that.

So I think it's a tassa between the Sonoran Desert and the Rio Grande River. The other problem with Texas's border is that primarily the majority of the property on the border in Texas is private property, and they tend to be very large ranches which may be no ranch hand or anybody goes out, you know, through the acres to see this, and they might never ever find the bodies.

For sure, Okay, yeah, yeah, I think I think that makes sense. It's probably a good time for us to break the border. Is getting people. These adverts probably aren't, but they're still not great. So you enjoy these products and services. All Right, we are back, and Jen, I wanted to ask, like, with regard to these I think there's a couple of things that people might not be clear on. We've tried to explain them on the podcast before.

Well, if you're an agent in the field and you come upon a migrant drowning in the water or you know, has slipped and broken their leg and you're trying to decide if you should go down into this area or jump in the water and stuff, it is up to the individual agent to decide if they can handle that. So what you find most often the agents who are in the boats and working on either the oceans and border. They work on the ocean in California and they work

Yeah, and it seems like that I don't see them as much, certainly, like when there's a search and rescue now, just like everything else at the border very often falls on volunteers and community groups and people who are willing to give their time and take the nonnegtible personal risk to rescue people.

Because he I think we might have rescued more people back then, even with half the amount of agents, simply because when we got the call, we went and we looked, and sometimes we'd meet the federal allies right at the border and they show us this is a group, and so we looked for the sign and then we could you know, frog it and get ahead of it. Whereas today if you call a bors Star, will all the Boord store agents have to get their gear on and then they have to get in the helicopter and then out.

Yeah, and I mean that's even if they're willing. So like I know with a group that made a call this weekend for a gentleman who was in distress and had been suffering very greatly from exposure, and the agent in the office said it would be hours, maybe days before they arrived, right, So like if you can get through, if you can get them to come out, like you know that this and that that's very common. That's something

It's just oh, yeah, we didn't have that in our day. I mean there was GPS, but we didn't have GPS capability. I never worked with GPS, so I worked with a compass that was pretty much.

Yet, Yeah, it's yeah, I mean they have more technology than you know.

I know, the agents today tell me they can see each other in the field. So they have something or their GPS system to tracked each other and so they can see where each other is. We never had.

Yeah, they did to military technology, just like everything else that trickle down to the border patrol and sometimes trickles from the border patrol down to the military actually with a lot of the surveillance technology. Like, I think another thing that people might not be aware of, and this is something that I think has happened recently but being young for several years now, is the deployment of the

Well, in theory their mission at the border is now they have these giant processing tints, you know in San Diego and in Cheese on ane of the things. So in general, what they're supposed to be doing is not actively arresting or apprehending people, because that, according to the law, would violate it. What they're supposed to be doing is is maybe sitting in a stationary spot operating the scope

Yeah, they don't want to be attacked on like this, like this idea that Biden's like, there's this myth of Biden's opens borders, which is actually ridiculous, and be like, as Erica reminded us last week, like we all as US passport holders, have open borders to us all over the world. It's very problematic. We think other people shouldn't. But yeah, I think the idea of like looking weak or like, you know, he wants to himself against an attack from the right.

So's the same reason why he won't get rid of the Border Patrol Union, because you know, the Border Patrol Union. Now that Donald Trump, before he left Diet, he gave them what's called security designation, So there are they are a security organization now, which means they're like the FBI, they're like the DA and all this other stuff, and so they can't have a bargaining unit. So the Border Patrol Union is actually illegal under five USC seven one

Yeah, so that's why we have it.

But he's just weak and he won't do anything about.

It, right and it certainly I think whoever wins next time, they're not going to do anything about it now. Yeah, I think either way. You like also pattention to the VP union and I think it's one of the worst accounts on Twitter dot com. But I also like, I'm in the event of a Republican victory which at the moment it's looking like Trump might be then nominee. Right, Certainly, it seems for support for Trump kind of these people seem to have his ear on immigration and they seem

So I was paying attention to what Speaker Johnson was saying before we logged on to talk, and he was saying that there was going to be no deal for the border unless Donald Trump was the one doing the deal. So he doesn't want to even fund the border patrol right now. So, I mean, my impression of what the border patrol, and what the Union is trying to do at this moment is that they are trying to make the border as chaotic as absolutely possible, and that is

Yeah, even though a world without the border patrol would be better, in a world without this bloated and violent and overfunded and really terribly just just a mess of quality and violence that we have now would be a lot better, but things could get a lot worse for those people, like even the time it takes for them to be processed, and that the time it takes for them to have their hearing. Immigration law could change for

It does. And I mean a lot of the things that the Border Patrol has done has created it and made these things worse. A lot of the areas out near Sasabe, a lot of people never even crossed until Trump put that wall out there because they didn't have road access to a lot of that area. And if you did have road access, you had to have a very serious four by four to get out there. You can't do it in a regular car, and you can't do it in a kind of city type of four

Yeah. Absolutely, And I think it bears. I mean, people listening to this will probably be in agreement that, yeah, these people should be treated preticunanty and respect adless. And I generally don't buy that they're being shipped on mass

And that's absolutely true. And I mean, you know it's the Border patrol says this, but they mean it in a different way. They say, what happens at the border doesn't stay at the border, and they mean that because they try and portray migrants as all criminals. So they're trying to tell people, oh, see, these criminals are going

Yeah. So I wonder, like how do we I mean, it does seem very bleak, like I which is why I like to devote so much of my time to like mutual aid work on the border, because it's a meaningful way to help. But how do we move the

Do you think?

I think one of the biggest mistakes that the Biden administration did was that they didn't, you know, in the beginning, they hired a lot of really really good people, like I think Andrea Flores was one of the administration people, and she knows her stuff, and I think that they had this idea from what she had said that the people that support immigration and immigrant rights in this and that she was saying that they were viewed as soft

Yeah yeah, I mean consciously or unconsciously. It's like shaken up a can of beer and then someone's going to take a little off at some point, you know, and it's going to blow out. Oh yeah, and it's been willing to and so it's still going to get kicked down the road. I mean, people have come in since the end of title forty two, but as you say, there's a huge backlog, and people aren't, as you say, going to stop coming, right because like it's dangerous getting here.

We've had thirty years of walls and border patrols, concept of deterrence policies that they claim will prevent people from crossing irregularly or illegally, and they've all failed. And I think it's time to try something new. I think it's time to stop listening to the people who get all the money and get all the guns and get all the militarizations saying it has to be this way. It does not have to be that way. And I think it's very important to point out that we live in

You know, yeah, yeah, I think I think that's yeah, it's a good place to end. Like, we should be grateful that for now we live in a much more stable place and that we were able to we have the resources to welcome people, and we do the benefit to our communities when we.

Have from us.

Yeah, we need people right now.

So yeah, people forever bitching about not being able to find people to work and also at the same time turning away people who would love. You know, every migrant I meet in the cumber message me on WhatsApps saying, Hey, struggling to find work because they don't get work authorization. Right there are a lot of jobs that you're doing, and a lot of people who want to do them, and but we're so wrapped up in our bigger trendenophobia that we won't let them do it right.

We've made it as difficult for them as we absolutely positively can.

Yeah, Jen, thank you for joining us. Is there any way that people can like follow you on line? You've done a really good job at sort of cracking some of the board patrols nonsense recently. So where can people find that?

They can find it on jin the j E N Nthudd dot com.

Great mesair, it's a good resource. And well, thank you so much, jenf. We really appreciate your time.

I appreciate you.

Jeerz bye, Okay, hello, welcome to It could happen here.

This is Sharene today. I am joined by you know you know him.

You love him.

It's Robert.

Hi, Robert Ah.

Someone knows me and loves me.

That's nice.

Robert is here today to talk with me to Charles McBride. But I met Charles fairly recently doing just pro Palestine stuff online, and I really liked his work. He's here to talk about some things that I think are very important to like Ukraine, and why helping Ukraine is not the same thing as aid to Israel and all that good stuff. And yeah, let's just get right into it. I want to know your experience with Ukraine. Can you just tell us a little bit about that first?

Sure.

First of all, thank you sharing so much for having me on. This has been one of my favorite podcasts for a while. So this is kind of a slightly surreal moment going into my experience with Ukraine. I double majored in history in comparative religion in college, and I was kind of interested in sort of the post Soviet sphere, and I worked on some kind of post Soviet issues when I lived.

In Washington, d C.

After school, and also was deeply interested in Eastern Orthodox Christianity, which is kind of why I took an interest in that region. So I remember in like twenty fifteen, I watched this Vice video called Russian Roulette that popped up on my YouTube feed, and it just completely it just put Ukraine on the map for me in a way that I'd never really thought about before. I thought of it as the Ukraine. Yeah, Yeah, my Muscovite Russian history

Yeah, yeah, I'm sure we'll talk about that more later.

I would love to.

Get into that.

Yeah, And so, yeah, in my hope was to kind of to do that, and as I was sort of working with Ukrainian It's one of the things they said is, hey, man, everything happens here. You have to be in Ukraine to get anything off the ground, So you need to come here. And I'm like, are you insane's there's a war going on in your country. So I said yes, and yes, yes,

Nice. Yeah, I don't think I've talked about this on the show, but kind of my relationship with Ukraine and eventually going over there and starting to report on what was happening started weirdly enough as a result of the fact that I had friends who went to the big burning Man event in Nevada, and I wound up traveling with one of them in India, this Ukrainian woman who lived in the Bay and when stuff started in late twenty thirteen, which is when the Revolution of Dignity is

For just him.

For like the level of rich oligarch asshole we're talking about here, cracked down really brutally on a student protest, which it kind of culminated in this kind of escalating occupation of the Center Square in the capitol that basically got built into an ice fortress and like the middle

Yeah, anyway, Yeah, I didn't know that about burning Man. That's well, it was a weird.

Way to get connected to it. Yeah. I just got a message from this friend of mine who was like, hey, somebodies from my camp are like trying to overthrow their government.

Do you want to talk to them.

I was like, well, yeah, that sounds pretty dope.

Yes, that's your remo. That's wild.

You know what burning Man really does apply It provides, It really connects all, doesn't it. I have some weird like tangential burning I've never been.

But I have like neither of I actually yeah.

I'd like Burning Man devotees who play a large role in my life and it's just very interesting.

Yeah, yeah, the weird little connections you get. And I was kind of disappointed, you know. To me, this was because the whole time, especially like the late twenty thirteen early twenty fourteen, as this was going on, I was like, well, they're probably all going to get killed, right, like just you know, we were several years in the Syrian Civil War at this point, Like I was not optimistic, and

That's right, ye.

See, Robert. None of that is justified because of the existence of the Ashok Battalion. There is no right for any Ukrainian grandmother to get access to her insulin because there's a couple of Nea Nazis that were stationed in Mariople. But truly, that is that is about how sophisticated. A lot of the leftist critiques of the Ukraine of supporting Ukraine are I think a lot of it comes in one of the things that I talk about, and I talked with Sharin about this when we went on Instagram

Well, and it's also, I think an important thing to notice when we talk about the it's always framed as the US is giving this amount of money to Ukraine. What's what's happening is we are taking stockpiles of arms we already have worth that much money, and we are sending them there like they're not right like that that is overwhelmingly like the the what kind of aid we are sending over So these are extant weapons that are sitting in the US doing nothing and being like the Bradley's.

Right that Bradley is Mrs Yeah.

The United States is like really itching to like need high Mars right now. No, Like, all of this stuff we're sending to them has been mothballed for basically since the Goal War, and people don't understand that.

It is funny to me to imagine, like, yeah, let's send that stuff to Maui for the fires. That's what they need, is they need long range artillery. That's really gonna that's really gonna help them heal.

I'm in favor of sending lethal aid to the indigenous residents of Maui, but I think that's it, that's.

It.

You talked me into it. And I think we have enough mothballed tanks for both of these causes.

Yeah, I think.

For me, the comparisons for Ukraine and Palestine, it started with how it was presented in the media. It just it rought people the wrong way when the Ukraine Median struggle was presented in a certain way and the Palestinian struggle was not, and people can draw some draw a comparison like whiteness and all this stuff. Absolutely, yeah, and I just it got me, really, it really irritates me because it's not like the Oppression Olympics, Like we're not

Anyway, Yeah, and I think that's that's really worth digging into, because there's a couple of First off, it is absolutely an injustice that Ukrainian resistance and that light is seen as inherently just and not just. Palestinian resistance is demonized or often ignored, But like all sorts of resistance by people who are being harmed around the world, it partially is or in large part as a result of like US and other Western countries policies are not seen in

I think so also kind of flip that on its head. I mean, this part of it is the media narrative. You know, it's easier. Ukrainians are mostly hot white people in the eye of the Western media, and it's easy to cheer for the hot white people who have you know, everyone everyone. A lot of people have been to Ukrainian restaurant, they're familiar with some Ukrainian maybe songs, so they have friends if they live in a place like la or New York, you know Ukrainians, you're familiar maybe even with

Like that where they're these are not Arabs like they say it with their chests, you know, like these these are people like us.

But for the flip side of that is that that leftists are reluctant to be charitable to Ukrainians because they also see them as hot white people who don't need any help. Yeah, and they're unwilling to admit that Ukrainian Ukrainians, like Gosans, also suffer from a settler colonial state as their neighbor with a history of ethnically cleansing and genociding them.

Yeah, I mean part of the reason for that is that the neighbor that ethnically cleansed in gen well one of them, because actually they had several neighbors ethnically cleansing genocide them. But the Soviet Union like did a significant amount of that during the Holy Dulmar. Now Germans also carried out a massive genocide in Ukraine like and by the way, a huge number of the Red Army soldiers

Yeah, I mean as a Syrian person who oh, for the past like over a decade, I really really fucking got on my nerves every time I would see them not talk about Syria, or when they did it was not a good way. And then when they started really embracing Ukrainian refugees or talking about them in a different way, I'm not gonna lie, it made me mad, but not

Yeah, And also like I encourage everyone to ask Ukrainian, particularly Eastern Ukrainians' opinions on the Western media and like Westerners in general, because two years into this war, they have a lot of them, and I imagine that they would you would find a lot of the sentiments shared by the Ukrainians. They don't always appreciate how they're portrayed in the Western media, as you know, brave defenders of their country or sook covered refugees coming off of a railcar.

Yeah, no, I want to get into that. But let's take our first break, and yes, we will jump back in and we're back. Okay. We had just been talking about how the support for Ukraine has kind of changed recently. Can you get into that little bit.

I'm not even necessarily sure that it changed so recently. I remembering over there and it was wall to wall coverage from the moment I set foot from the moment it started to really up until the Oscars and the Chris Rock slap is what we all talked about as last oxers, like this is yeah, the last Oscars and the Chris Rock slap and all the attention that that got. Was the moment that a lot of the volunteers talked about, is the moment where people started to want to forget

Yeah?

Here we are in twenty days. It's going to be two years of this. Yeah, my friends over there are exhausted, and they don't They're now a page eight story.

Yeah.

And it's this comes back to like how Americans like to think about conflict. We have an enormous appetite for war and for you know, a particularly what we consider a just struggle for up to a couple of months, right, and then people were very excited when, yeah, the Russians invade everyone. The expectation, both from like military experts in the West and from certainly civilians is that like Russia's

What happened when Retail the country.

Yeah, yeah, we said you give up your nukes and we got your back, like this is this was the promise we made And as far as I'm concerned, that's the only interest I haven't like. My answer is like, how long should we support them? Well, as long as they're fighting, and.

We've been keeping that promise for the cost of five percent of our defense budget. And like you mentioned earlier, it's it's already stuff that's mothballed since the Gulf War, sitting around waiting to be used.

You know.

I mean the idea of giving them F sixteen.

Every country in the world, practically, at least in the NATO Alliance, it seems like everyone has an F sixteen. I think we're giving them a turkey now too, Like it's not a big deal to give a couple of F sixteens to the Ukrainians or a couple of Bradleys or Abrams or what have you. And I think that people, especially on the right, but also on the left, who get obsessed over the amount of money that we're sending

And it's to kind of emphasize how small five percent of the Defense Department budget is the Pentagon. This is from like a twenty twenty two story. The Pentagon can't account for several trillion dollars in assets, which doesn't mean we don't fully know where they are, but it means that like Pentagon record keeping has sort of like lost

A rounding earrow of like what we gave to Halliburton.

Yes, you know, yes, to build hospitals that didn't work in Afghanistan.

Yeah, exactly.

In speaking of Afghanistan, I think a lot of people look at you, they look at the Afghanistan withdrawal and they think, oh, this is what Ukraine's going to be like. But I think that brings up the point of story, what are we getting for that five percent of defense budget? You know, we gave a bunch to afghan and we ended up getting the same situation that we had when we went in there in two thousand and one, the

And hundreds of thousands of Afghan people died in the interim exactly.

And then you contrast that with like, well, what is our five percent of military budget? Get us in Ukraine and you look at what this is doing to Russia. Russia gained abou zero point one percent of Ukrainian territory in the year twenty twenty three, second year of war, and to do that they lost about one hundred thousand soldiers.

Like, no, can't.

You can't stop the pressure now, and Pudin is finally kind of ready to come to the negotiating table, it seems, and the Ukrainians, you know, need our help more than ever. And that's kind of the frustrating ourspact. I went on I went on the Hill TV the other day to talk with someone who said, basically, she said, is there any hope for Ukraine? Like very already fatalistic about the whole thing, like are they already on the ropes? And I was like, no, they're not on the ropes. And

And there's it's also like a significant change in like who is being killed by those weapons, right because even when we talk about the use of like the US use of weapons in foreign countries, we are often talking about these kind of these brush fire conflicts, these insurgencies in which a great deal of the fighting takes place in and around civilian populus. Is And obviously there are Ukrainian cities that have been under siege for quite a while.

Right, And we have been reluctant to give them any weapons that could do that. I mean, some notable exceptions would be like the strike on the naval command center in Sevestopol. Yes, some other drone limited but but ansoly. Most of those are drone strikes from drone factories where the Ukrainians create their own stuff, And there have been some limited civilian casualties in their incursions into Russian territory because we won't we won't give them any weapons that go into Russian territory.

Yeah, they give anything they want, yeah, well shit, anything else to.

Get everything they want.

I mean, we can't say that's not the case for whoever comes up next, because a number of our advertisements are random, but hopefully not and we're back, all right. One of the things you have to keep in mind when you think about like is what what is the US capable of doing that is positive and what is the US capable of doing that's negative? Is that the United States is fucking massive, right, Our budget is fucking massive.

Well, your bad gut Israel apparently.

Yes, yes they will drone strike you, but I don't know. I think that like one of the nice things as an American you don't have to. Realistically, the fight over Ukrainian aid right now is primarily something that is happening in Congress, and at this exact moment in that fight, there is very little URI can do. But there is a lot, as you prove, Charles, there is a lot that individual people can do to help other individual people.

Yeah, I totally agree. I would push back a little bit and saying that there's not a lot that we can do in terms of the congressional fund because I think that people do. I mean, I remember, from back in my time working adjacent to politics, I remember someone told me a statistic where it said it took five phone calls to an office of a congressman for them to rethink their stance on an issue.

I'm interesting.

I have received.

Texts from AIDS to congressmen Republican and Democrat who sit on like House Armed Services Committee or you know, Defense and that sort of stuff, saying like, hey, what's with this Ukraine? Like what's your take on the Ukraine stuff? Should we be giving them all this money? I don't really support it, but you went over there? Do you think they're using it?

Well?

And I'm like, holy, holy crap, am I actually getting this text? But yes, absolutely, Like yeah, you need you need to do that, you need to green light whatever, you need a green light to send that over there.

I really love that you bring up the kind of pitfalls of and this is not this is Ukraine right now, in particular because it was such a huge international story at the start of the expanded invasion and that always brings out not just grifters but also well meaning people who are going to raise money and try to start initiatives in that country, it may not be doing it

Right?

It's one thing if like it's an area that lacks access to medical professionals and they're flying out medical professionals to do like trauma work or whatever, like there's really like that's obviously important, but this is something that like a lot of my friends in Iraq and Syria also experienced, like the frustration of like in GEO workers staying in nice hotels and driving you know, fancy vehicles, where there were local organizations doing things like maintaining refugee camps that

I think I mean that opens a whole broad category of maybe this is a subset essay waiting to happen. But I've been playing with this idea of like the idea of conflict vultures, these people who sort of descend on a conflict or a disaster zone for a variety of reasons. You know, maybe it's fundraising. Maybe they work for a big NGO and this helps get them in

Yeah, Charles, you have been awesome. Thank you so much for coming on and telling us your experience. And yeah, where can people find you on the internet if you want to be found?

Some I go back and forth. Sometimes I don't want to be found and sometimes I do. But you can find me pretty much everywhere with at Charles McBride. That's McBride with a why, except on Twitter at random. I don't have that handle. And then I just launched a substack, which is I guess Charles McBride dot substack dot com,

I can put all the info in the description for yes, listeners and everything, but yeah.

Sweet excellent Charles. Yeah, thank you, Charles, Thank you, guys.

I appreciate it.

Hey everybody, and welcome back to you. It could happen here show about the ways things are falling apart. Well, welcome back to you the listener. Welcome to me, your guest host. I'm Molly Conger, filling in for James for a few weeks. If you're happy to be hearing my voice, feel free to share that feedback anywhere you post online. If you're upset about the state of affairs, I suggest writing your congressional representative or mailing a cryptic postcard to

Hello, Patriot Front, fantastic one of the gayer groups of Nazis operating in the United States.

It's just guys being dudes, Garrison, You wouldn't understand.

I certainly wouldn't know.

You may remember Patriot Front from such iconic moments as getting arrested and mass at a gay Pride event in Idaho in twenty twenty two, having their internal calms leaked repeatedly, nearly constantly, constantly, including some videos of questionably sensual path downs, or accidentally giving several members mild carbon monoxide poisoning by forcing them to ride in the back of the U haul truck. You've probably seen their stickers on a trash can in your local downtown, or maybe you've driven by

Oh all right, that's I I'm unbelievably excited.

We won't be getting into the sensual pat downs. Unfortunately, this is just court records.

Okay, Well, I can always I can always find that on telegram.

That's fine.

But before we get into who is suing Patriot Front, let's get a quick refresher on who they are and how they came to be scurrying around and matching windbreakers promoting a white ethno state, because I think their origin story really informs the way they've backed themselves into this corner. Patriot Front came into existence in late twenty seventeen when it's splintered off the now defunct neo Nazi group Vanguard America.

Oh my wait, did they really call it the hate bus?

Rousseau was back then he was sort of Asthmador's protege. I don't know that they'll claim that now, but back then at like this adult alcoholic nazi was mentoring this fascist team like he was. He had just GRADUATEDIZ.

Many such cases.

Yeah, so they came up in the hate bus space all right. Mcfields drove here alone. He drove overnight from Ohio, but he was wearing the group's uniform, a white polo khaki pants and carrying a shield bearing Vanguard's logo. He joined in with the members of Vanguard America as they loitered around a public park, chanting Nazi slogans. Field stood shoulder to shoulder and a line of Vanguard members guarding the entrance to the park where the rally was to

Shrug it off.

When members complained that they shouldn't be disavowing the actions of the murderer, Rousseau clarified that quote. The statement never said that what he did was wrong, just clarified that he wasn't a member. People aren't buying it anyway, So neither Rousseau nor Hopper were willing to say what Fields did should not have happened. They didn't disavow the murder.

Could you briefly explain what a fascianes is. So it is a bundle of sticks, right.

It's it's an old Roman symbol, right.

Right, it comes from you know, the Roman Empire. So it's this very you know, return to tradition. Mussolini brought it back.

Yeah, and like you can break one stick pretty easily, but if they're all bundled together, then it's then then it's then it's harder to break.

Apes together strong. Yeah, sorry, just so that the prevy for the new planet of the Apes. But that's not the issue for them in this twenty seventeen rebrand, Right, it's the Nazi thing, not the deal breaker. But it's hard to shake the association with a hate crime. Murder was a member, But the pictures of the murderer holding your logo and standing right next to you are going

Front, Yeah, that is a way worse name. Yeah, Patriots Front. To say that is that it's really hard to say. They've not possessive either. There's no apostrophe. It's just like Patriots Front. Oh yeah, that's weird. They made a good call, dropped in that.

S so they really fine tuned it there in the end.

That was the only the only good thing they've done besides just keep getting arrested.

But yeah, so the message wasn't changing, The ideology is not changing. The manifesto got a little fresh polish, but the real change was optics. Rousseau recognized the need for broader appeal, for new recruits and for plausible deniability on the group's surface. You can get away with saying a lot more Nazi shit if you put an American flag on the hats and a founding father on the homepage than you can if you're sporting a son and rat and posting Hitler memes.

Yeah, all of their their kind of outwards visual style is all very like American.

It is it is, it is. It is American.

There's a bit of like a military kind of kind of a cleanness to it, but it's very much like they're going full Americana.

Oh yeah, it's it's it's Americana. It's like Patriot Kitch, right, Like it's a few ten signs away from being a fud rockers.

Yeah yeah, yeah, but it's it's it's very much not like German Nazi. It's like, right, it's like USA with some like US army signifiers that kind of stuff.

But the you know, the sentiment behind it is the same. You can take away the black eagle and the fascie like actually they kept the fascies.

It's just red, white and blue. Now us say all the way, baby, I mean to be fair, money to be fair.

The United States of America also uses a fascie.

Right, I'm not like, you know, crying for the sullying of the of the branding of the Night in America. But it's clear what the intention was here. Yes, it's to sort of hide behind that Americana. But in the six and a half years since that rebrand, Thomas Rousseau has maintained tight personal control over the entire group, now called Patriot Front. You can almost read that as a reaction to his first major setback as a white supremacist organizer.

Just happened to hang out with people who like doing murders, you know.

Right, you know, like it goes like what Hopper was saying in his deposition, right, like, well, she was in shark infested waters. Like, by your own admission, you are the sharks. Yeah, you're saying you are a flesh eating shark. But that's not possible anymore now, right, So you can't just be some guy who's marching with Patriot Front because their events are never announced ahead of time. You have to get the official group merch from the group, after

Yeah, you make the classical mistake of having an actual official members list.

Right, so now you no longer have the option of saying, well, that guy wasn't with us, We don't know him. And that's where the lawsuits enter the picture. So right now there are three active federal lawsuits against Patriot Front, one in Virginia, one in Massachusetts, and one in North Dakota.

I don't.

The American legal system is but something I've been learning the past ten years. It is by no means the specialty of my research or knowledge.

Yeah, I'm not like a big Civil War guy.

You know.

I have, accidentally and against my will, learned a lot about the Civil War because we've been arguing about these statues for a few years. Sure, but reconstruction I think is really overlooked.

You.

In my own education in public school, there was like two paragraphs about reconstruction and then we just sort of like moved on.

I had like a semester on it. It is certainly one of the more tragic periods of American history, how we seem to almost have figured something out and then it all went down the drain pretty.

Quick, like we really whiffed it. But the Enforcement Act of eighteen seventy one is also called the ku Klux Klan Act.

Oh oh oh, yeah, these guys, we're a getting somewhere.

So when President Grant signed the KKK Act into law in eighteen seventy one, support for reconstruction was starting to falter, and there was genuine fear that the eighteen seventy two presidential election would bring on a new wave of clan violence in the South. And that's starting to sound a little familiar, isn't it. You know, people are getting tired, People are getting tired of being asked to address deep rooted systemic inequalities. There's an upcoming and uncertain presidential election.

That sounds like kind of like right now, Yeah, that's wild.

So you know, there have been other enforcement acts. This wasn't the first one, but the ku Klux Plan Act was specifically tailored to address the question of freelance violence. Right, So, normally, if you are suing over a civil rights violation, there are only remedies available to you when your rights have been violated by a state actor, a cop, a government body, the law itself. The irsu can can really only seek legal remedy when your rights are violated by the state.

Yeah, it's not like there could be groups of armed extremists monitoring voting sites trying to scare people away from from voting in an election. That could never happen.

Now we've learned no lessons.

Right, So, groups of white men organizing themselves, wearing matching outfits, conspiring to undertake actions to intimidate, harass, and harm the people they believe that are standing between them and the white America they were born to, right. Yeah, So the statute originally provided for both civil and criminal liability for these conspiracies. Interesting, and that first year Grant went hard in the paint with it. Oh like, he he went

Oh my god, it killed the Klan. Wow.

But even before the Supreme Court decided twelve years later that I mean, when it comes to the crime part of this, maybe we should let the States handle it, right, so it no longer has a criminal liability component.

So this just the civil liability left under that law.

But even before the Supreme Court made that ruling in eighteen eighty three, the Klan Act prosecutions pretty much ended when reconstruction died, right, it was this brief moment in time when there was any appetite to do anything about this, Yeah, and it.

Faded out pretty quickly.

So today it's up to the victim to seek their own civil remedy when they're terrorized by the sons of the clansmen.

We couldn't reconstruct well, do you know what we should construct?

Molly?

Oh god, Yeah.

Robert told me that if I don't come up with a cool way to throw to ads, he's gonna put me in a dog kennel and air drop me onto an island where successful podcasters hunt people like me for sports.

So that does sound like something he would say. But we could construct a compelling ad transition.

Let's take you to the ads, all right, and we are back Garrison, and I'm going to tell you what's in these lawsuits.

I'm so excited to hear about Patriot Front having to read a niche law.

Well, the problem is they're pretending they don't have to.

Oh well, that is also what I would do. I would be like, no, no way, I am not reading that.

Fuck you. Well, we'll get to that in a second.

So the first case filed was in Richmond, Virginia, so right here in my backyard.

All right.

So, thanks to repeated leaks of Patriot Front's internal communications and documents, we actually have video of them doing what's being alleged in this lawsuit.

Which is inconvenient for them. It's not great.

So the suit alleges and the video literally shows that. In October twenty twenty one, a couple of Patriot Front members vandalized a mural in a public park in Richmond. The mural celebrated American tennis legend Arthur Ash. Ash was born and raised in Richmond and started playing tennis as a child in Brookfield Park, which in the fifties when Ash was a child, was one of the few public parks opened to black residents. It was also the park

R Yeah, it's like a very important place.

You know, one of the best tennis players in American history, and he grew up his father worked for the park. He learned to play tennis at that park. That park, Brookfield Park, actually no longer exists, but the park where the mural was installed is in a predominantly black neighborhood.

Okay.

In the video they filmed of the vandalism, one Patriot Front member supportively tells two others to quote, get the fucking N word.

They say it, I'm not, yeah.

But the N words face as they're covering it up with spray paint and then play. So they filmed this themselves, right, They filmed this themselves and used it in later promotional videos.

Videotaping this crime spree was the best idea we ever had.

This is so funny that they just can't stop filming them doing crimes.

Like they're not just taking notes on the conspiracy, they're filming themselves enthusiastically participating in it.

Right.

Funny.

You know in the promotional videos there's no sound, but in the leaked documents. It's the original uncut video like.

Once you have like discovery or something. Also, all all all that audio exists, that is, it is the privilege of the court to be able to listen to that.

Well we have so you know when they cut their promos, you know, they're playing like cool music over it. But in the leaked version that we got from I think it was in the Rocket Chat leaks.

It was in the second big leak.

Okay, you can hear them saying, like, you know, get the fucking N words face as they're spray painting over Arthur Ash's face and then stenciling over that with their logo.

Sure, they're just like, hey, it was us. They're just like leaving it fair.

And just so we're super clear about this, this is racially motivated. Put that on the tape, like.

Uh yeah yeah.

And so this is probably the weaker of the three cases. Right, the plaintiffs in this suit are basing their nineteen eighty five claim that you know, this is a racially motivated conspiracy to interfere with the right of black residents to enjoy a place of public accommodation, right that a place of public accommodation is sort of the legal structure for places where you're not a to fuck with my rights.

Yes, you spent a lot of time reading what I would call extremely boring documents.

Oh, I love my document. I pay thousands of dollars a year to look at these documents. Oh, it's that drill post like, please, someone please help me, someone who's good at budgeting.

We will do our best to give you as many documents as you want, Molly.

These documents cost ten cents a page. I'm a single issue voter on free access to federal court documents.

Yeah, all my homies hate Pacer.

So in the Richmond case, we have black residents and a black neighborhood alleging a racial intimidation at a place of public accommodation, a public park. But in North Dakota, the suit is brought by the North Dakota Human Rights Coalition, the Immigrant Development Center, and an unnamed plaintiff who works at the Immigrant Development Center. I mean it arises out of two acts of vandalism at the International Market Plaza and Fargo, North Dakota. The International Market Plaza is run

Sounds cool.

Yeah, there's shops and restaurants and after school programs for kids and business development classes.

I'm sure there's great food.

Yeah.

It seems nice, they seem like people. In September of twenty twenty two, Patriot Front trustpassed onto the nonprofits property and spray painted the windows with their logo. And so this was not an isolated incident, right, Patriot funt had targeted other businesses in the Fargo area and the months leading up to this, including a queer worker owned coffee shop.

Of the mural.

Yeah, I've had to like call up shops or businesses after they've been targeted or I've like seen I've like seen on telegram like oh, this thing's happening in this area and be like explained to like this poor this like poor employee, like who who this is and why it's happening, and like what to do? Because they're often

Yeah, it is.

It is.

It is a fortunately very common occurrence because a lot of Patriot Front's activity, when they're not marching around getting beat up in Philadelphia, are just putting up like stickers and doing graffiti like that. That is kind of most of what they do. Sometimes they'll do like a banner drop or something.

Well they think about the stickers is I don't know if everyone is deep in lore, but it's required.

So it's that's what they call their activism.

Right.

In order to be a member, you have to post pictures of you putting up stickers.

Like there are like spreadsheets and documents, and your network director is keeping tabs, and you have to report in every week about what activism you've engaged in, and you have to provide video and photo proof of you doing these acts of vandalism, which.

Is a pretty smart on Patriot Front's part, because they also sell their stickers so it's it's a great pyramid scheme.

Yeah, it's got MLM energy. Yeah, I know.

Uh, Robert Rundo and the Patriot Front guy were like working together on a sticker manufacturing business for a while. I don't think that's working out super well for Rundo, but.

Uh, yeah, he's some currently awaiting trial in prison, right I believe.

So, yeah, after fleeing to what is it like Romania for like Belgrade expert, Yes, yes, Serbia, that that's that's where it was.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, rough.

But so in this case, you know, it's this is not just stickers, right, the stickers that you can peel off it. You know, you're uncomfortable, you're scared, but you can peel tho stickers off and move on with your day. They spray painted over a mural that cost forty five thousand dollars.

Oh so well this is this is interesting because I'm not a law expert, but they may be financially liable for that extremely high cost.

Right, So unlike in the Arthur Ash murral, which was property of the City of Richmond. You know, so the plaintiffs in that suit don't own that mural. They just feel that they've been infringed upon because now they're afraid to go to the public park. In this case, the plaintiff has been financially damaged to a significant degree.

This mural was.

They got a grant, they had community input, it was made by local artists, and now it is destroyed. It is a thing of value, it is their property, and the law really cares about property. Oh yeah, now we

Now.

That's the other thing is that these sorts of acts of vandalism come with like an implicit threat of violence that we can get together a crew of five guys wearing masks and show up at this place of work, or we could already be there when you arrive.

Well, there was the Actually in the lawsuit, one of the paragress in the suit says, you know that the day after this happened, because the day in between the two separate acts, a couple of white guys acting sketchy were wandering around the marketplace taking pictures of people.

Yeah, I bet yeah, people are scared.

The marketplace's immigrant shopkeepers and customers absolutely understood the intent of this vandalism, and it was the same message that they chanted here in Charlottesville. You will not replace us, right loud and clear, those in that spray paint. And so their ability to transact business, to use a place of public accommodation, to feel safe in public was taken from them in an organized, pre planned act, arising out

Right.

So, in the North Dakota suit, they're suing Patriot Front, the organization Thomas Rousseau as its leader, and the regional network director for that area, Trevor Vellescu. And they're also seeking to identify ten John Does in discovery, so they don't know who all of these guys are that are getting sued, but they're gonna find out. And the third suit, Boston lawsuit, is really the most straightforward. A black man got assaulted.

There's video.

The video is actually taken by a member of Patriot Front from the Again, it.

Gets worse, it gets worse.

So the video was taken by the member from inside the ranks of the march, and it shows members making physical contact with Charles Morrel on a public sidewalk in Boston. So they were up there. It was just before fourth of July. They were marching on Boston's Freedom Trail.

I think I remember this one, yeah.

And Charles Morrell was outside the public library. He was a busker, he was playing music outside the library on the sidewalk. And this video didn't get leaked. This video they posted themselves, they proudly on their telegram channel, yep, and they posted it on their telegram channel the day the lawsuit was filed.

Genius genius move. Once again, the galaxy of brain folks over at Patriot Front just cannot stop putting pretty dog shit electronic music over videos of them doing crimes.

And so even though I would say if thirteen months after this incident occurred, I'm just randomly posting a video of this happening.

That's so weird.

I would say it's probably because you know that you're being sued. But there are a few They have not acknowledged this lawsuit. They don't acknowledge that the suit exists.

Which which the government loves. When people don't acknowledge lawsuits that are happening to them.

You can't just like la la la la la your way out of a lawsuit. Red.

You can try to go into hiding like forever and yeah, we'll see how that goes.

And so, just a few weeks ago, when Patriot Front was like wandering around in the snow at the March for Life in DC, a reporter asked Rousseau about the incident in Boston. He didn't bring up the lawsuit.

I wish he had. I would love to get him on tape on that one.

But you asked him about the incident in Boston, and Rousseau continues to claim that, like, look, we've posted the video and it exonerates us.

I'm sure, oh, I'm sure it does, buddy. When I watched the.

Video, I mostly just see a masked gang of fascist using their custom made and branded metal shields to beat a black man who's using a public sidewalk, forcing him into the street and slamming his head into the pole and he had to get stitches. But I guess it's like it's up for the courts to decide if him being in their way was the real crime here.

Yeah, yeah, they was.

I mean it's funny because like it's it's it's not funny, But I have I have, I have seen cops before used the exact same justification. Yes, it is different because cops are special little boys because you can't sue them. Yeah, but no, it is funny how much Patriot Front are just trying to act like want to be cops who do graffiti.

Right, Like if you wanted to be a riot cop, like most cities are hiring.

Be a riot cop. That's not that hard.

I've seen a lot of guys doing it that I don't think are capable of much else. Yeah, So in this in the bus in lawsuit, the name defendants are just Thomas Russo and Patriot Front, but they are hoping to identify John doe'es one through ninety nine.

Well, I only wish them good luck.

So Garrison, you were saying you know, you can't just hide forever, right, I.

Usually not, Well, you could try, You can certainly that. Look, you can always try. There are certain people Hidig who I wish only the best. There are many others Hidig who I think are probably bad people. And it's not like I enjoy the violence of the state. But if someone happens to stumble into experience the experiencing the violence of the state will also wanting to wish violence upon me and my friends. I'm not gonna stop that from happening.

So these lawsuits, right, they got filed, But filing a lawsuit just means you paid a fee to give it to the court clerk. When you're suing someone, you have to serve them with papers. To serve them with papers.

You have to find them. You have to track them down. And normally that's pretty straightforward.

Right.

People have homes, they have jobs, they have routines, they have friends and family. There's places they go, there's places they shop. You can you can find most people because most people aren't hiding, and most people aren't good at hiding. But Thomas Rousseau does not seem to want to be found.

Now.

The first suit filed the Virginia suit. They did manage to serve Rousseau at that house in Grapevine, Texas that his father was had owned no longer owns, but he and some other Patriot Front members were living in that house.

Yep.

But not long after those papers were served to him there, that house was sold in a foreclosure sale.

God, I'm sure that house smelled awful. Imagine Oh, it's.

Like you've never got to feel bad for the foreclosure sale guy. It's like a gym locker in there. Imagine stafving to stage that house for sale.

The only only worse at smell is inside the Patriot in front U hauls because oh wow, driving six hours in the Idaho the Idaho summer, with like thirty other guys in the back of that truck, it must be awful.

Do you remember. I think he was in the first leak. Some of the guys were complaining about how when they had to ride in the back of the U haul they were getting sick and like passing out and be like.

Oh, you're walked in there throwing up ivan just smell everyone else's vomits, but.

Also like there's carbon monoxide and it's hot.

Like you're not to be back there. It's so funny.

But the advice that the advice that Russo gave them, when they were saying like, hey, like we were getting sick back there, like it's it's not safe, like we were barfing and passing out, he recommended that they practice overheating.

Yeah, gett just get better.

Get Yeah, like you like endurance tested, just start hanging out in the back of you hauls for fun.

That's actually not how heatstroke works.

But no, I'm pretty sure you could just think your way through heatstroke. I look, I guess I think a chat alpha male should be able to sit in a packed truck for seventeen hours be totally fine.

So the house, the stinky house, sold foreclosed. So by the time the Boston lawsuit process server came to find him there, it was already for sale. Yeah, there's nobody, nobody to serve. So they hired a legal research firm. They sent process servers to addresses all over Texas and they came up empty. So what do you do when a guy who knows process servers are looking for him can't be found?

Should have served him at that march in Washington, d C.

Honestly, why were they not mobilized for that, I could have told you they were going to be there.

I mean, I think that would require some collaboration with like anti fascists, researchers who like know when these things are happening, so like that, I think that's probably why is that that's just a little bit tricky. But if there were more willingness for collaboration, I think that probably could be successful.

You can find him.

Right, So, if I were two, for example, file a lawsuit against you today.

Well, and I what if I did, I'm so innocent if I just never if I just filed my lawsuit, pay the fee to file it, but I just never served you.

Oh, that's on me. That's my fault. I can't take the necessary steps. My suit's going to get dismissed. But if I'm really trying, I'm hiring investigators, I'm knocking on neighbors doors to ask if they've seen you. I'm looking under every rock for any sign of where you might be. That's different. That's not on me anymore, that's on you. And there's ample precedent for this right and the law is pretty clear. You can't escape being sued by playing cat and mouse.

The old Tom and Jerry method.

And I feel like once I start saying things like the federal rules of civil procedure, people are going to turn the podcast turn off.

That doesn't for us today, folks, that it could happen here, Thank you for listening.

But so in federal court, the rules allow alternative service by means that are allowable in that state. Right, so even though they're in federal court in North Dakota, they can use methods available in North Dakota courts to serve their defendants. And so in North Dakota, if you've tried your best, you've exhausted the normal means, conducted a diligent search, you can do what's called service by publication, which means you just publish a notice in the newspaper.

Really, yeah, oh that's I didn't know that. That's interesting.

And you have to you have to try really hard first, right, they really did try. They hired investigators, their hard servers, like they did, they did their due diligence. Yeah, and so the judge said, okay, you tried your best. Put it in the paper that they got mad. Put it in the paper.

That they got sued. And so they did.

They published the notification in a Cass County, North Dakota newspaper for a few months in a row. And so now, as far as that court is concerned, they've been served all right.

And it worked.

A few weeks later, they got a lawyer.

Oh oh, okay, this is this is this is a news to me.

Yeah, things are moving, things are making. For the North Dakota lawsuit, the two named individual defendants, Thomas Russeau and network director Trevor Bileescu.

They got a lawyer.

And his name's gonna sound familiar to you because it is Jason Lee Van Dyke.

Oh oh well, I yeah, you gotta love Dyke.

Cus.

I'm like, what's not to love? What a good kind? Not a good kind?

Oh wait wait, I'm receiving some special intel. This is not not what I was thinking.

No.

Unfortunately, if his name does sound familiar to it might be because for thirty six hours towards the end of twenty eighteen, he was the national chairman of the Proud Boys. But then actually he quit instead.

Honestly, what are this? What are the smarter moves?

So he'd represented Proud Boys in various legal actions over the years. He was a member for several years, but as his LinkedIn currently and rather aggressively notes, he is not a proud boy anymore.

A lot of a lot of people are asking questions about my shirt already, saying I'm not a proud boy.

Huh.

Interesting, Yeah, I feel like I actually, I actually, I am familiar with this guy. He was involved in a suit with the group I was looking into a few years back.

Yeah, he's done a little bit of movement lawyering, so this isn't his first rodeo. And he denies that he is a member of Patriot Front, though he has spoken to the press on numerous occasions claiming to represent various members of.

Patriot He's non member. Yeah, I mean, I mean sure, I like.

He has specifically denied allegations that he is Patriot Front user John Texas in the leaked.

Chats, although oh, okay, well, he.

Says that he is not John Texas has a lot in common with Jason Leevenda But okay, Jason le Vandyke denies that he is John Texas.

Okay, well, I'm sure.

I look, I have no reason to not trust a dyke, so yeah, I'm sure that's fine.

Yeah, And it's interesting. So he lives in North Texas right where you know. Oh oh, he does home home base for these Patriot Front boys. Yeah, he's never practiced in North Dakota before. He's not barred in North Dakota. Wait what inexplicably? So you know, you have to take the bar exam to be in a state bar normally. Normally to get admitted to a federal court, you have to be barred in that state. North Dakota doesn't require that. Just have to pay a fee. Okay, So it's a

Huh.

But then he didn't actually enter an appearance until the judge said, yeah, they've been served. You can't hide.

So he didn't know about it, Yeah, he was just yes, I guess.

It seems like it seems like he knew he was just working with Patriot Front to make it harder to be served. Is Again, that's not a legal claim I'm making. I'm just just making a guess.

I'm just saying he has never practiced in North Dakota before, but he did apply to be admitted to the court around the time the lawsuit was filed. That's ah interesting, the boss and case is a little wilder. Right, So it's twenty twenty four, we're all online, and it's not actually unheard of to get permission from the court to serve someone electronically if you've tried everything else. Yeah, I've heard of cases where someone got served by a Facebook messenger, which just feels demeaning.

Wow, that's that's so depressing. Imagine you can send.

A Minion sticker with it. Oh god, horrible vibes.

But I need to do a little more research to figure out if this is the first time a federal judge has had to decide whether a gab d M.

Is legally So you know your joke, there's no way, no, absolutely not. Yeah, okay, well we will we will learn what gab is after I take a break.

I need to like walk around for a few minutes and just process that for a second.

You guys, yea, here's here's some ads. I'm just I'm just going to process that for for for a while. All Right, we are back, Molly. I hope that a lot of a lot of our listeners don't know what gap is they should on there, but that means that you have to explain what gab is, which isn't that hard.

It's just kind of annoying.

It's just sort of like a less functional Facebook for Nazis.

Well, I think originally it was Twitter for Nazis, but now Twitter is Twitter for Nazis, but it.

Has more of a sort of Facebook interface.

To me, oh, I always I always thought of it as having a way more of like an of like an older Twitter uter face.

Yet because it has it has like groups and a marketplace, like it.

Does have groups of market But I think it started as a Twitter clone that started to a Facebook features that's mostly to like.

Sort of like the evolutionary thing where everything turns into crabs boomers turn everything into Facebook.

Yes, yes, exactly. It is the Facebook evocation of all social media. I think those changes were made to like to support more like a collaboration between users, because they wanted it to be like a place for Nazis could like also organize. But yeah, it very much started in like what year it was, like twenty eighteen ish, I want.

To say twenty sixteen.

Oh, I could pull the incorporation documents, but I think I think it's a little older than that.

But it wasn't popular until I didn't get a gab account until twenty eighteen.

It was in the news a lot on twenty eighteen. Yeah, yeah, yeah, mass shooters were using it and then their accounts were in the court documents. But it was already, you know, popular among certain sets.

It was.

It was certainly around for a while. Their logo is a frog.

I'm sure there's nothing I'm sure that's completely normal, but yeah, it started off as just a social media app for Nazis, almost exclusively used by white supremacists.

It's a free speech platform. It is a free speech platform.

It was kind of it was, I like Parlor came a few years later, which was more like a maga ish version, like Gab was for like actual Nazis, right, Whereas Parlor you could.

Find like you know, like like anyone.

From like mega people, conservative politicians, you could you found a lot of like Proud Boy chapters. But Gab was like, no, you were like explicitly white supremacists.

There's not a lot of plausible deniability in a GAB account the way there was maybe with Parlor a little bit.

Now, a Gab is still a thing, I think.

Uh, I mostly use it to watch the GDL, who posts a lot on GAB. But I think a lot of unfortunately, a whole bunch of people who were on gab are just now back on actual Twitter.

Or in prison.

And you know, some would say that those two things and a lot of gob which is not actually true because prison is way worth the same.

The same posts kind of got them to both places, just different.

Yes, yes, anyway, so okay, but that's gap.

I did not know that a future of GAB could be serving some could be serving someone lawsuit papers. That is something I did not know.

Well, it turns out you can't attach a PDF to a gab DM, so we could run into some trouble.

Oh my god, this is so dumb.

So Charles Morrell's lawyers were given permission to serve Patriot Front and Thomas Rousseau via several online means. Right, so in this motion for this this permission for alternate service, they identified two email addresses and social media accounts regularly used by the group on Telegram, Odyssey, Bitshoot and GAB.

I mean, I certainly would have gone for Telegram Odyssey and bit shoot are like YouTube and twitch clones for nazis. In case the listener is curious, don't go there. Don't not worry, do not go there.

My god, I I have been on there way too much this week, and I have seen some of the worst.

Yet it's not good on there. No, it's a process server, right. This This person who normally just like waits outside your work to serve you with papers is like now on gab.

Right.

So the process server contacted all of the identified accounts. And so when I was researching this, you know, I was trying to get an idea of how common this is, what the usual means are, And so I was looking through the cited case law and the motion, and one of the cases they cited kind of caught my eye. It's havelish v bin Laden.

Oh him, I that name sounds familiar. Was was he the one that did that thing around like twenty twenty.

Three ish years ago? Was it born then? How old I was? I was not? Oh no, I was kidding Jesus. I thought I was just ribbing you. Oh my god.

Unfortunately, Yeah, Well, it is that bin Laden, right, it is. It is the It is the guy, Okay.

It's the one, the one you're thinking of. So that's a lawsuit that was brought by families of people who died in nine to eleven. So last year a federal judge in New York gave those plaintiffs permission to serve legal notice to the Taliban via Twitter DM like the Taliban.

What a time to be alive? What a time to be alive?

Yeah?

I mean yes, I the Taliban Twitter account is certainly fascinating. They're they're trying, they're trying to hold the Taliban responsible for nine to eleven.

Huh.

I don want to get like deep into the weeds about this particular case, but there's something seized. So like judgments have been awarded, there are seized funds sitting somewhere in the released they want they want this money, right, and so they needed to serve notice to the Taliban that they want this money.

And so as wild as that sounds.

There's actually a lot of similarities in the underlying legal logic here. So in both of these cases, the court is pretty specific that they're not just saying like, yeah, just like DM whoever, and it's good enough.

Right.

So in both of these cases, the account identified as being appropriate for service is pretty clear that it belongs to the person who's supposed to be served, and that that particular account has been used to make statements that indicate the individual already knows about the lawsuit. So this

Uha, got it.

So in the case of the Taliban, the court notes that the accounts had previously published press releases related to the funds at issue in the underlying litigation. So it's like they they're posting about it. They know they're certainly posting the talent. The Taliban is posting about the funds, okay. So in this case it's Russeau's bravado biting him in the ass, right, and he.

Loves and he loves posting my God.

And the judge specifically refers to the fact that they posted the video of the incident the day the suit was filed, which indicates actual knowledge.

Yes, which is also a very interesting legal move on the part of Russo.

Like the judge is reading your posts and he doesn't think they're good.

Oh my god.

Uh, nothing more scary than having to read out your posts to a federal judge.

Jesus Christ post every day like a judge is going to read them over your shoulder, right, Yes, So they're just like randomly and for totally unrelated reasons, posting this thirteen month old video the day of the lawsuit gets filed.

The judgeesn't buy that fast. Again, a fascinating legal move.

And so back to the Richmond case, right, we're still talking about service. And so the Richmond Keys, because it was filed first, maybe they weren't expecting to get sued. And because more of those plaintiffs were actually identified by anti fascist researchers, they actually had managed to serve most of their defendants. They found Thomas Dale, Nathan Noyce, aident Tradinnick, and Daniel Cherecci at their homes. A private investigator tracks Jacob Brown down hiding at a home owned by his

Actually sorry, god, what a bunch of losers.

But William Ring was actually the easiest defendant to find. His papers were actually handed to someone to give to him. But this person was authorized to receive those papers because they were a corrections officer at the Fayette County Prison in Pennsylvania. Ah Ring was a guest up there serving a sentence for beating a man over the head with a baseball bat wrapped.

In barbed wire.

Hmm, curious.

It was an altercation over refrigerator. It's very unclear.

Oh, that's so sad.

I thought it was gonna be like some horrible racist assault, and there could be an element of racism in this.

I'm not familiar with the case.

No, don't worry, Garrison. He was there for a second defense that occurred around the same time, but separately separate counties, even where he punched a child in the face after telling her to go back to Mexico.

Okay, there, we see that. That is what I That's what I was expecting.

All right, Yeah, that sounds about right.

Man.

It does suck that sending Nazis to prison also has so many negative consequences.

To fix the.

Furthering of the White Premaces project is really reliant on there being Nazis in prison, and it sucks that that is such an organizational hub of them, because these people should not be around other people.

Ah man, Yeah, just.

As an interesting assidne In both of those criminal cases. He hired a guy I've seen before. Very interesting. His name is Josh Smith. He was the lawyer that Matt Heinbach hired to represent him in the sins vy Kesler case a few years ago. Man, he's interesting to see an old friend again.

Man with the most real name, Josh Smith. Oh, it's because it's not his real name. That's well, there we go.

He was he was born Daniel Nussbaum.

Of course, of course he was. I I clocked that immediately. Wow. Good, good for me.

Yea, he was raised Jewish. But now he's a Holocaust and I are, Oh what.

This is so sad? Oh my god, he joined to not see gay. Yeah, what the fuck? Oh god, he's like, I have to pick a wider name. Josh Smith. Wow, what a loser.

He's not a very good lawyer either. His perform his performance in the science case with some of the strangest courtroom behavior I've ever seen. Like the judge had to keep reminding him of like you can't like that's not the law, Like you can't just say stuff.

I love a courtroom behavior being described as strange.

Like when the judge has to repeatedly remind you, like how the law works, like how making motions works, like you can't just yell stuff. It was a rough trial for him. His client does oh millions of dollars.

He's the reverse Saul Goodman.

Oh my gosh, Jesus Christ.

Having hired him for his criminal cases and is in prison. But he didn't hire him to represent him in this lawsuit because he didn't get a lawyer and he defaulted. Wow, And so he if you default on a case, it means you're not allowed to participate anymore. And so the case is going to keep going and maybe you get found liable, but like you don't get to participate anymore. So when it's over, if you're liable, like that's kind of fun.

Fuck you, huh.

And so Thomas Rousseau, Jacob Brown, and Patriot Front are also defaulted in that lawsuit. But the other guys, the other guys got a lawyer. They hired another guy we've seen before. His name is Glenn Allen. He's a Maryland based attorney who lost his job as counsel for the Baltimore Police Department after the SPLC identified him as a longtime member of the old school neo Nazi group National Alliance.

Wow huh. Curious said that the police would have an Uzi lawyer.

That's weird. Surely there's nothing to interrogate there.

No, there's nothing weird going on in Baltimore at the police department at all.

It is certainly funny that they just hired the old police Nazi lawyer for their Nazi club.

Lawyer.

Who's Who's someone who's been fighting from the police from being a Nazi.

So he's been keeping pretty busy the last few years.

He's spent a couple of years trying to sue the SPLC for saying true stuff about him being a member.

Of National Alliance.

It didn't work out, didn't work out, and he currently represents Warren Baylong in a doomed appeal of a previously dismiss lawsuit against the City of Charlottesville, who're failing to protect his right to have a good time at Unite the Right.

Uh.

Well, it's so.

It's sort of I don't know, it's like feels a little slapstick, right, Like we're just like throwing characters in there we've got We've got the formerly Jewish Holocaust deny your Nazi. We've got the guy in prison for punching a little girl. Oh, the girl he told to go back to Mexico is Puerto Rican. I don't know that that matters to him. But she, she can't, she can't go back to Mexico.

Not being racist. Challenge level impossible.

We're just like throwing characters in here. We gotta know it is. It is very curtoonish. Yeah, but here we are at the end.

Right, I've taken up a lot of your time to take care of us and telling you my little story. But what happens now? Right, there's three live cases. They're starting, they're starting to crawl forward now that the judges agreed that you can serve them. I'm so excited for discovery. My god, it's gonna be a treat. It's for me anyway, I'm getting the documents now. Obviously, the plaintiff's goal here is recovery of damages. That's what the law allows for.

Just showing up.

I'm sure a lot of what these lawyers are doing are collaborating with defendants to make as a little come out and discovery as possible, because that is beyond the actual court case. The thing that could actually be most damaging to them is discovery like that, that is the actual thing. So I'm sure they're using all this extra time when they're avoiding recognizing the lawsuit to try to tidy up any dirty laundry they may have in a semi legal fashion.

Well, they can't do that, and so I'm not going to accuse anyone of a crime. Right, destruction of evidence is not allowed. It's called spoliation. Right, So once you have actual knowledge that you're being sued, you are no longer allowed to destroy anything that might be discoverable.

Do people still do it? Sure? They always?

No?

Am I implying that anyone is committing a crime at this juncture. Legally, no, we'll see. But you know, looking back at scigns, I don't think anybody's going to squeeze a few million out of any of those guys, right, Like they were found liable, but they're not going to pay right, And Thomas Rousseau started running his club for friendless boys right out of high school. He doesn't have a job, he doesn't have assets. He's not going to pay anybody any money. But what it can do is

Right.

So you know, researchers like you and I, we put out information all the time and people see it and it makes a difference. But when something comes in with sort of the impromatuur of the court's legitimacy, like once you put a bait's number on that bad boy, they could put it on the news, the real news where normal people see it.

Right, yesh, your like niche, not your niche like no blogs the site that like twelve people check it.

On right, So like your mom watching Matt Out is going to see this, where like she's not reading Unicorn Riot. So this will put this information in front of more people, will have more legitimacy. But I think the biggest impact this is going to have is on the willingness of potential members and current members to participate.

Right. Yeah, it makes things way more risky for people wanting to do this sort of stuff.

Like, maybe you're gonna think twice about your group mandated racial intimidation now that you know you.

Might have to pay for that.

Yeah, you know, maybe joining looks a little less appealing. You know, it's hard to be optimistic about relying on the courts to meaningfully undermine white supremacist organizing.

Sure, but it's worth a shot to gum up the works with whatever tools you have.

Absolutely, I may not believe in like the law system TM as this as this like universally good thing, or even like a like a like a valid thing, but I'm certainly willing to have it severely inconvenience my ontological enemies.

Like is it the best solution?

No?

Is it a solution? Maybe not at all, But it's worth a shot.

It'll be you know, I'm gonna enjoy reading the documents either way.

Absolutely, No, that is. I am extremely intrigued to see what will come out uh in discovery, and I wish these people only the worst. So well, Mollie, that was that was fantastic. That was extremely informative. You know, I always think it's impossible to find new ways to laugh at Patriot Front, Yet here here we are.

Imagine opening that DM. I wish they had record, they record everything. I wish they'd been recording that.

God, that'd be funny. Yeah, imagine getting served via GAB. I would just get you know, I I shouldn't say that anyway. Well, where can people find you online, Molly? Besides on our show?

Now, I know, I'm very excited to be here.

You can find me on Twitter at Socialist dog mom my name I chose as a little joke before I realized it was going to be my job.

That is. That is the same That is the same thing with my Twitter presence. So we are we are in the same boat there.

Yeah, you mostly just find me on Twitter. You can find me on my my ghost newsletter. It's like substack, but there's less nazis there. It's called the Devil's advocates. There's a link to it on my Twitter I post about what happens when you take white supremacy to court.

Fantastic. Well, thank you so much, Molly. We will we will talk again soon to learn about I'm sure even even new and more more ridiculous things that you have stumbled across by reading these documents. I am too adhd to look.

At it only ever gets worse, Garrison, Welcome to the very special lunar New Year's episode of vikadap Here. I'm your host, Mia Wong, and today we're talking about China, and more specifically, we are talking about the Chinese state and the persistent question that haunts American national security experts

Et cetera.

However, Comma, this is where people make mistakes when when they're trying to sort of understand what Stalinism was, which is that they make this mistake of looking you know, of kind of projecting back the later Soviet Union on you know, onto sort of like nineteen thirty's Stalinism, and the mistake that they make is the assumption that Stalinism is purely a bureaucratic doctrine, right, It's purely about season control the bureaucracy and using a bureaucracy to consolidate power.

Right.

So if you look if for you know, going back to the sort of example of the G twenty for you know, in order to do the scientific coordination for it, you get a very very broad, sort of broad reaching like coalition or coordination between scientists at universities as well as at research institutes and government agencies, and you're pulling them all together in order to produce like, like I don't know, you're like air quality measures, right, And these

Right.

There was the oppression of the student workers movement in late twenty tens. On the student sort of worker like maoist movements. The Chinese state does some sort of like limited mobilization online, you know, in terms of sort of like they have this like pr strategy thing overseas of like wolf warrior diplomacy or whatever. It's unbelievably cringe. But even then, these are not even close to the kinds of mobilization the state and the party could, like nationalists

Right.

One of them is that, you know, these are we talked about this before, but like these are people who a lot of these people lived through parts of the Cultural Revolution, like they saw really fiascos emerge out of this stuff. But you know, the other thing that they're that these people are afraid of is that so you know, when I say these people were around for the Culture Revolution, like these people saw the Chinese working class take the

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