It Could Happen Here Weekly 12

can make your own decisions. What's What's? What's? I'm Robert Evans, this is it could happen here the show that asks what's and also other questions, um more, more more meaningful questions than that about you know, things falling apart, fixing them, all that good stuff with me today as usual Garrison and Chris and as is currently unusual, but will be more usual every preceding month after this one. Our good friend st Andrew. St Andrew quite about but that's fine.

How are you doing today, Andrew? I'm good. I'm good. You know, it's rainy, it's chill. It's better than the kind of hot weather we've been getting lately, so I'm good. Yeah, it's raining and chill here, but that's seven months of the year. Uh, I think there's slightly different uh climates

in Portland, Oregon and Trinidad, probably I've been told. Um, so we have had you on a couple of weeks back to talk about solar punk, and we're gonna be bringing you back on about twice a month to talk about, um, whatever the hell you want to talk about. And so I'm going to now hand the episode over to you, um and trust like a little lamb that you'll lead me somewhere beautiful and filled with good forage. Yes, sunshine, rainbows,

the promised Latin. Yeah. Okay, So I think we've all noticed that the environmental this movement kind of sucks jumping into it, has not done the things that has not accomplished, has been around for like over half a century or actually really more than that, and you know, where are we now? You know? Um, of course we do have to confront and acknowledge that, like there's the s C where oil company has literally suppressed a whole bunch of information and you know, co opted like a lot of

the earlier movements and stuff. But we've kind of known for a while now and we are still here. So it's like what gives you know, Um, I think there's kind of an interesting phenomenon that I wanted to talk about today, um, known as soft climate change denial. So are you're familiar with that or what you're thinking is based on foot impressions? Um, I mean, yeah, I've heard

the term. I would think it's sort of Um, I mean a number of different things, including the idea that like, well there's nothing we can do, so nothing should be done, you know, m hmm, yeah, what what whatous your garrison? Yeah? Most most of my understanding of the term is like someone like saying they like, know, the climate change is the thing, Like they recognize that, but they are kind of more in denial of what solutions can be done

to really change anything. That's generally understanding of the term. When I see it like online or something, Yeah, what about your Chris, Yeah, I usually see it. It's it's like it's usually in the context of people, you know, it can in the US there's the whole um. There's whole political factions whose entire thing is saying, like, we believe in science, and then they'll go talk about like how much they believe in climate change, and then two

seconds later and around are like signings. Yeah, so that That's that's my understanding of it, right. Yeah. So, according to everyone's favorite source, um, Wikipedia, self climate change denial is a state of mind acknowledging the existence of global women in the abstract what remaining to some extent, impartial psychological or intellectuals to nihilism about its reality or impact. And something I was spoken about in my channel in my most recent video where I was talking with the

different facets of sula punk. You know what sula punk is, what it needs, um, things that probably potentially drag down the sula punk movement. I think that people have been using to try to drag it down, because so the punk is kind of building in popularity, and with anything that builds in popularity, there are attempts from all sorts of angles to co opt it and to repackage it

and com modify it and all those things. So I've kind of noticed with the sugar punk phenomenon that there's this effort by people who profess to care about the climates and stuff to try to push it away from more radical directions towards something more appealing and appeasing to the status school into the system UM And I mean, according to the wikipia definition. You know, it's they call

it a state of mind. I think it's also like an implicit philosophy that undergodes like entire groups and entire movements. You know, so like, for example, obviously you know in affects individuals, where you know, people will um miscalculated it's risks and think that climb climate change is just extra storms or something. But then they also, like people are really the movements that would neglect its urgency with just these platitudes and these um direction less actions that just

serve like this kind of middling reformism. Um, they underestimate the extent of social change required to like mitigate climate change, so basically don't seek to change it's out of school, but just to sort of tweak it ever so slightly

to like capitalism with a carbon tax or something. Yeah. Um. And then of course the people who kind of straddle that that fence, or maybe it's more of a spectrum between soft climate change Nile and hardclim change Nile, where they might overestimate the extent of scientific uncertainty, so they might think that oh well, you know, um, yeah, colob warming is happening, but we don't exactly know how much it's going to change the climate or how much it's

impacting our lives and that kind of thing. So they basically turn it into something that's still up for debate, you know. And that's why I say it kind of straddles that line between soft line and hardline, because obviously the hard climb change nihilists, they're just like, oh, well, you know it doesn't exist, or if it does exist, humans don't cause it. If you and still cool it, there's nothing we can do that kind of thing. Have you all had like experiences with soft climbs nio like,

and you wouldn't place no organizing? Oh yeah, yeah, I would say, so I've encountered. Um. I mean it's kind of a thing you encounter constantly in American politics because it's it's really like often times your best option, uh, in terms of like it's that or the people who say that talking about climate change is socialism. Yeah, you know.

So I was in verminal Studies mature for most of college and then I decided not to do it, and then I got like a minor instead because like one class often look long story, but you know, it was interesting seeing it there because like you know, there there were basically like two possible reactions to learning that one was like people who you know, one way, you get

incredibly depressed and that's what I did. Or and then that's the second one was people would you know and these people who like actually you know, you know, I mean these abio studies madeas right, like these people have spent a lot of time studying this stuff, and they

kind of like, I don't know. This is almost like like this kind of intellectual retreat where you could see people business just like convincing themselves that like somehow this would be okay, and they'd like I don't know, people would just get like completely obsessed with like electoral maps and you're like no, no no, no, no, no no, okay, okay, if if if we went exactly this number of seats in this year, then like we can we can start doing carbon credits or like, I don't know, it was

it was. It's really interesting to watch because it was like it was it was I mean, because like I think I think that there's there's like there's very there's bad faith versions of it, and then I think there's also versions of it that are just sort of like people do not want to accept yeah, like the what's necessary to stop this? And so they sort of like that I can't even really like think about what's necessary

because because of how the education system works. And trust I could go on like long runs about education system. It really it really really, um it really limits people's ability to think outside of like this very very strict box of possibilities because you know, so much just left out of UM for example, history classes and soone just left out of um really all the subjects. There's this very clear ideology that you're expected to come out of

the education system with. And so even when you reach academia and high education and stuff, you're still stuck with that mode of thinking. And even as you're presented with all this new information, because your brain currentally like handle like the great extent of what climate change is, you know, it kind of retreats into this sort of simple kind of Oh, we just need to vote, because voting is all I know, voting is all the tools to do.

Voting is politics, and politics is voting. That's the extent of it, right, Yeah, It's like this weird form of self preservation that people need to do in order to kind of like keep their keep them from in their mind, you know, like spiraling out of control, because this is the only thing that you know, they have. They need to focus on their own life right now and their own current problems. And if they think about this because this like large looming threat too much, it just freaks

you out right. And you have in order to keep or to just keep going on with your life. A lot of people like segment off this type of thing in their own brain so that you know, manifests in a lot of cases, and this kind of soft denial so that you can just keep on going. Yeah. Yeah, And I see with with friends, and I see with the family. You know, obviously they are the handful of people who still, at least in my experience, we still

deny climate change. But there's like a bigger portion of people who's whole understanding climate change is just this or what we just need to recycle and we just need to like switch to electric vehicles and once we do that,

you know we'll be okay. Um, which is tweak a couple of things, get some solar panels and yeah, you know, the understanding of it has been completely limited to like this very restricted conversation that is like um basically cultivated by certain interest groups and certain um lobbying groups and that kind of thing. You know, Yeah, the only a certain amount of change is allowed, and that's what we're allowed to think. So that's what we're like shown for

examples of in like media and pop culture or whatever. Right, So this is you know, this is kind of what you know, like all of the YouTubers who got money from Bill Gates when Bill Gates wrote his climate book, right, all of the things that they were talking about. It's like, it's like this kind of stuff because the only way for Bill Gates to keep his money well you know, talking about climate change is to have these kind of half assed like solutions that are actually deny the impending

reality and deny that. No, the only way to actually fix it is by taking all his money, um, which he's not as big a fan of. Yeah, I mean, have you all seen the Cuska sucked video on climate change and economy? Coming want climate change socks in a nutshell? It's like this like that, so people can find it, but people will I think people people know. I think a lot a lot of people know what it is. Or you can just search in a nutshell on YouTube. It's key you are. I'm gonna try. I'm gonna try.

You are. No, it's ku r g was it ku r z? I think it's ku r z g E s A A G t A Right, it is, it is. It is a weird one. But what what what are you talking about? The can you fix Climate change? Yeah? Yeah, where the whole thesis is basically vote with your ballots and vote with your wallet. Yeah, that's the only thing that you're really allowed, right, Yeah, And I believe this is one of the videos sponsored by they put this, um, yeah,

they did. It was and then they had this whole line about some people think we need to change like our system from climate ch from from capitalism, but we're not so sure about that. We don't know the answer. So it's just been like shrug towards maybe system, it's from with the system. But they basically gave it no attention.

You know. But their channel is literally about like quite deep into research about things, So it's very obvious that if they spent no time like doing any kind of research into like why people have the system and critique that obviously Bill Kate's hand is very deep in their pockets. You know, because I believe that I believe the researchers

actually kind of that, but they're not. They just can't say yeah, and I mean like, yeah, I think they're making the bargain a lot of people make where they're like, Okay, well, if we can push for you know, the immediate necessary changes, we can worry about, you know, stuff like that later on. It's it's just important to get something done, um, and so we'll compromise and will not will not call for what we know is actually necessary to deal with the problem.

We'll just we'll just go with a half measure because at least it's something we've got to do something now. Right. The thing that's always been very grim about that to me is like you look about how how that plays out, right, And it's always like, well, okay, so our our half measure is gonna be we're gonna we're gonna just like put put put a monetary value on indigenous forests so that governments can like steal them and get paid for

taking the land. And it's never stuff like why don't we like make more marshes, which is you know, if if you're gonna talk about stuff that like could actually be done, right, It's like, okay, well look but what do re marshing do we? What? Like? That's that that stuff like is easy and doesn't need you know, you don't literally have to overthrow capitalism to get people to

like restore marshes. But it never happens because this that's you know, the whole basis of the sort of soft denialism stuff is not actually you know, it's not actually the type of solve climate change. They just want to

make money and it's extremely grim. Yeah. Yeah, there's this video that the storyteller is this YouTuber Um he did recently on co opting movements, and he was explaining that, um, with the March in Washington right during the Civil rights movement, Um, that was an organic movement that you know, the people had come up with, right, but obviously a mass movement. Yeah, FI isn't gonna just sit back and let that happen, right,

So they brought in these leaders. Um they're called the Big Six, and um, the story teller was explaining that basically they were paid to co opt the march to basically become its figureheads and its leaders. They hadn't organized it themselves, but they came on afterwards and became the leaders of the march and read the speeches that they were supposed to read, that kind of thing, and so that sort of mass movement was basically defound like that.

I mean, obviously reforms were made and you know, Civil Rights Act was passed. But then, you know, after all that happened, and MLK got disillusioned by the system as a whole and wanted to start pushing even harder against capitalism and whatnot. That's when well, coincidentally, he got a bullet, you know. So I think it's interesting that these movements they're able, they're they're comfortable with these movements up to a certain point. Um, and comfortable easily is going these

sitting directions as to a certain point. But then when you actually start poising a threat to this out of school, that's when you know, you become a problem in like community. Not to see that, Okay, it wasn't a threat to this out of school, but just to say that, you know, um, there was. They have certain limits that they don't want people to cross. Yeah, Capitalism one of the things that's that makes it such a robust system in terms of its ability to to not get overthrown or destroyed? Is

that up to a certain point. It loves dissent, It loves anti capitalism because you can market that very easily. Like there's a lot of money in in in anti capitalism, there's a lot of money and being critical of the system. It's just when you hit a certain point, um, then it then it becomes you know, the CIA or the FBI or some person who's been um convinced to shoot

use problem like it. There's a there's a point at which uh, that's no longer accepted, but quite a bit of criticism and even like agitation to change or end the system can be accepted because it's monetize herbal and speaking of that, you know what time it is? Time for a serious absolutely is oh boy, time for an ad or or that's the CIA at the door. We won't know until we come back from break. Ah, we're back. It wasn't the CIA this time. Good news, guys, thankfully.

I mean the fact that they flew all the way down just to meet me. I'm on it, honestly. Oh, I mean they've come to trend a dad for less. Oh that's true. Yeah, yeah, But like we were saying, right, there's this whole issue of these movements being able to go in a certain direction, but only up to a

certain point. Um. And I think it's something that Peter Gallus also talks about in how non violence protects the state, in the sense of, you know, these people are able to once they get a certain level of attention, all of a sudden, you know, you're invited to speak of these events, and you're invited to go this place and that, and you basically get consumed into the workshop machine, the angio machine, and the climate conference machine kind of things.

So you end up with all these figures, these organizers, these activists who go from like generally trying to organize their communities and their spaces, and then before you know it, they're like at such and such a conference because well, they think it's an opportunity to actually make like a bigger change. But in reality, you know, they just there too be defound. You know. Like, for example, who mainly comes to mind is like Greta Thunberg. I mean, I

haven't looked at deeply into her past or anything. Um. I know they are certain right wingers who are very obsessed with her, but I know that she recently said that she's kind of done with politicians. UM. Because when you think of how she basically came up, you know,

right exactly, think what how she basically came up. It was like she is talking at these events and you know, people are in fighting out the things because you know, look at look at this cute little google UM yelling about climate change, right, and she basically becomes this spectacle, you know, and that spectacle is entertained up to the point people make big event out of her, you know, like breaking down in front of these positions and stuff,

and you know what, they just go right back to normal. UM. I think it was copy was like last week or the week before UM and representatives from representative I think the Prime Minister of Barbados was there and she had this, you know, a great speech about how the global nothings do more for you know, these countries and Goloble South

because you know they have responsibility. That kind of thing. Cool. Um. But at the same time, you know there's like developments going on Barbados too, you know, basically bring in more tourists and to bring in more um and like you know, resorts building and that kind of thing that basically add to the UM emissions and add to the UM negative

impact in the environment. You know, same thing with like Trn's government, you know, like representatives that would went to Copy, including the Prime Minister, and you know they're all about things changing and you know, the climate movement um and the climate change being real and the actions need to be taken. And then like this didn't make it in like like mainstream news of course, but in local news. Basically right after primester tryan to veagle dos Keith Rowley,

he went and met up with like Shell. Yeah, like representatives at Shell to like basically bring the country and the company closer together, you know, um, because you know not is reliant and oil and that kind of thing. So obviously these sort of leaders and these sorts of movements, they only go up to a certain point. And even then, so much of it is just this performance yeah, and

this um act. Basically I'll be I'm putting together a thing on copies six right now, UM because I think it actually it does demonstrate a lot of the soft denial stuff that you're talking about. Like the biggest thing to come out of COP twenty six in terms of like actual deals is just uh progress on carbon markets and carbon offset credits. That's there. That's really the only

thing we actually got. Um. And they say, but not not like us, but like you know, the people in charge, they they got this and and the the the quote they gave was that the being able to buy carbon offset credits, meaning that like you don't actually make emissions differences. So they staid, you you buy pretend emissions differences from other countries that actually did make changes, um, so that you don't get penalized. So that's it's buying the credits far.

But they said, they said, buying the credits can potentially unlock trillions of dollars for protecting trees, expanding renewable energy, and other pludgets a combat climate change. It's it's like, don't climate credits. It's like, um, it's the same as saying like, hail Mary's because you sinned and you went to your priest and confessed. It's like, I've I've I've

done bad things to the environment. Tell me like how many times I need to go through this ritual in order to in order to cleanse myself of having compen into the atmosphere. Exactly. I think it's bleaker than that in a lot of ways, like it's it's, it's, it's, it's, it's it's really it's the climate version of like the World Wildlife Fund having death squads. Okay, now, Chris, you are a very anti death squad, and I think we need to deal with that at some point because hashtag

not all death squads. Yes, my mother will need to be able to account for by strong anti death squad stance. This is a yeah, you say that now, but you're gonna get a death squad to fight the death squads, and then where are you be going to be? Sea? But you get they get a death squad to fight your death squad, and then it's just like they can't sel each other out, and then you have to get

another death squad, and then Marxist lendinis um. Yeah, it's a number of other things too, to be fair to Marxism. Another thing that might make you kind of question the integrity of CUT is that there were more delegates at Cup six from fossil field companies than there were from any individual nation. That makes sense, But then right, that's like another thing, right, because you're talking about six and we have soft climate change denil gets into that, But

I don't think. I think seft FIM change denial can only be applied so far when it comes to those sorts of big spectacles and those big major events. Because even if they themselves really truly understand the depths of climate change and trust and believe like these wild barns and stuff, they knew, like they have all the infull

right present front of them. They've done they're already done there, like cost benefit analyses and like risk assessments and kind of thing, so they know exactly like what the impact is going to be. They have the money to have access to the scientists, right, But it's not soft clime change denial for them. It's I'm a capitalist. I'm going

to do what a capitalist does. You know, it's ultimately a funct Wait, they're operating within a system, you know, so soft time changenial um it is like sort of a psychological phenomenon. But we also to keep in mind the day is also like a structural component to it. See that even if they're a person does not face

self clanis change. Now it's an experiencing self clans change denial that alone, even if they're like fully confront the sue that's just an individual, you know, and there's still like a whole structure around that individual that will still incentivize certain behavior. And then of course with the incentives of certain behavior comes like the psychological justifications for that behavior.

So it kind of almost becomes at the end of justifying themselves into selft climate change denile, you know what I mean. So it's kind of like it's like a fluid that it's like a feedback loop that reinforces its own existence. Yeah. Absolutely, I mean I think that honestly, like the feedback loop model is where we have a lot of our problems with the climate change are they're all very much linked to the feedback loop model of

things trying to justify their own existence. And then you know, certain and then on the reverse side of things, you know, when certain changes in the climate happen, those create their own feedback loops which create more changes to happen. It's like everything everything one one massive loop. Yeah. Shall I gets me to like there's the discourse around climate change and stuff is like halted and divoted and immobilized you know,

by soft climate change denial. You know, discussions are the very real, very current very near future and very violent impacts of climate change just basically softened, like like you know when you try to throw a punch in a dream. Yeah, like you're trying to like push, and then it's like, you know, it's like this kind of soft um or like you throw something in space. I guess it's just you put all this effort into it and then you

go in another direction that kind of thing. Um, I don't know what I'm going with this analogy, so I'll just keep on going. Um. Basically that there's an issue with the conversation, with the discourse has just been you know,

harmed by the psychological phenomenon. But of course there's the other side of psychological phenomenon of soft clim engine nial, not the hard climngine genial side, but rather the I'm so on the opposite end of soft clian chine nil that I'm like an inconsolable and like illogical and I

can't even imagine the possibility of anything happening kind of yeah. Yeah, the kind of the kind of extreme dumerism where you you recognize how you organize that climtage is bad, um, but then you you see it as such a massive overwhelming thing that basically shuts you down from be able to do anything else, and you just like, exactly, there's really no point to do anything if it's going to

be this bad. There's really no one's you know, it's such a hard capitalism and the systems that are working to keep it going or such a hard thing to overcome that it seems like the best thing to do is just sit down and do nothing. Yeah, and that's the thing, right, Like these are slash collapse people, right, Um.

I mean I appreciate that they don't shy away from like the really difficult stuff, and they also stumble into this kind of like coop that's dumorism, Like it's dramatic kind of we are screwed, We're all going to be fight saying this mad Max style arena. Like that's not how you know Climbine is going to play. You know,

it's not a movie. You know, like things are going to break down in certain places and other places are gonna locked down in sutain ways, but it's not going to be like this Suddain global devolution into madness like that. You know, that's not really how social change that's already how collapses have you know, functional history. You know, of course we live in a like a global civilization, and

previous collapses have been fairly localized. But still, you know, climate change is both global and local, so there are

certain changes it will only affects it in localities. This is something that actually the book Desert addresses fairly well, and I find it frustra from yeah, yeah, because I find really frustrating because, especially on the online left, there's people who treat desert like the gospel, or at least they say they do, but they're actually extreme doomers who fetishize collapse, um, and they're like, oh, everything is hopeless. Read desert but then you but then, but desert is

like explicitly anti collapse. Same collapse isn't gonna happen. Collapse is a fantasy you tell yourself to keep you going. And for this kind haven't heard of desert. Desert is a book that's available for free online about what's coming um. It's titled Desert because of an old quote about how empires um leave nothing but deserts in their wake. Basically like that's it's it's just like a thing that that empire. I think the exact quote is like empires make a

desert and call it peace. Um. And it's it's basically discussing the fact like not just literal desertification, but like, um, that that's more of a more of a better picture of like our future under climate change than kind of these these mad max dreams this like slow dissolution of resources and uh environments. Um. And that that's kind of the Yeah, it's a it's a good book. You can

read it yourself, and it's it's quite influential online. Um. But yeah, as as Garrison pointed out, there are people who kind of take it in a in a direction that I don't believe the authors. I mean clearly the authors didn't mean, because they directly called out that kind of thinking. Yeah. Yeah, it's kind of like some people treat like collapse and stuff as basically the secular version

of like revelation in the Bible. Yeah yeah, or it's or it's like the non markets version of like the revolution. It's like it's like this this kind of mythical event to like prepare for and almost be excited for, but like it's it's fake, it's a fantasy. It's it's something we tell ourselves to keep ourselves going as things are bad,

but it's not it's it's not real. Yeah, like any d you know, the trumpets will sound in the heavens and the screws will be broken, and the great, the great beast will arise from the sea and you know all that fame. Yeah, And I I don't know what the solution is for that. I I don't know how both on the soft climate denial side of like, how

do you go about? How do you go about It's like the only thing we can really do is the people, you know, we know, how how do we go about and tell them that, hey, things are probably gonna be a bit worse and which you're preparing for um, And how do we tell the people who are doomers, Hey, it's not gonna be like this weird dystopian thing that

you're thinking of. Either, it's like it's it's it's interesting because like they're both veering off in two opposite directions, but it both kind of leads to the same point of kind of doing nothing. But one version. One version of nothing is basically you know, voting for stuff that's not that's never gonna happen. The other version is not just not doing anything in general. Um, And I I don't know how to how to reach those types of

people very easily. Yeah, which kind of brings me to like my thoughts on like how we move past soft climate gene nil Um. I don't think it's just a matter of like trying to like push like campaigns on people. I think it's gonna be like a very personal sort of journey that each person has to go through, right, because each wisnes is different. Each wisnes is like has

different worries and dealing things in a different way, you know. Um, So like you want to keep in mind like people's mental health and sort of fortifying your mental health and helping people fortified days. Because when it comes to mental health with regard to like climate change, doing it an isolation in my experience has not really worked out. I think what has worked best for me is when I am with why I am connected with a group of people or even just one other person, and when I'm

feeling down about climate change. Because despite all my messages about sula punk and you know, we can do this like that that's basically the message of my YouTube channel. You know, I still experience like those sort of thoughts and feelings public about it. But what I try to do is when I'm feeling those things, I try to be with people who are not currently feeding that, you know,

so we're not feeding all of each other's next of energies. Yeah, so like when I'm in a bad spot, you know, people are on who could lift me up, and when they about d and about spot because it kind of comes and weaves, you know, yeah, absolutely, no, Yeah, it's it's it's silly to deny those thoughts exist because they do. Like they're they're very they're a very easy neutral state

at least for me to slip into um. And the way to get around that is by doing chores at a farm and shoveling poop and taking care of animals and cooking for people. That's like the way that I

get out of that kind of mindset. And you know, not not to be too hard on all of the kind of doomer nihilists, because there there is there, there is a there's this there's like a sect of like doomer nihilists who use like the actual definition of nihilism, which is like if if things don't really matter, we should probably fux some stuff up, um, And that's very useful, right like if if if you're if, if you're on that train and you're like, yeah, you should be tree

spiking if if if if you're okay with if you think nothing matters, um, and you are you want to be an actual nihilist, then yeah you should make you should make destroy um. Just make sure it's focused on the people with actual power, UM. Because if if you're willing to do that, then great, we need we need as many as many people like that as possible. But it's certainly easier to do that once you have friends and once you're not stuck in this super depressed state

all the time. Yeah, and um, I think there's a again.

We we we do take a look at like some of the criticisms people have a the show online, And I know one that's come up a bunch is people will listen to like our when when we'll talk about, you know, the severity of the problems and then we'll talk about things like you know, mutual aid collectives and small guards, seed bombings and all that stuff, they'll be like, well, that's not a solution, And no, of course that's not going to solve the global problem of carbon emissions from

a civilization of seven billion humans. What it does do focusing on stuff like that, focusing on building soil UM, focusing on building community resistance. In addition to like having an immediate impact on the number of people you know in in in your community, it builds a sense of um,

a sense of power for the individual. It. It gives you something to do that isn't just thinking about how bad things are, and that puts you in a mind state that's more useful to actually potentially dealing with the bigger problems. At some point. UM, you have to have a sense of your own agency that feels real if you're going to actually change anything UM, and you can. You can build it's a muscle, right. You can build it up by by doing things that are not bigger

but are are part of the solution. UM. And it's exactly valuable to do that for your own for your own mental health, because then maybe you if you're maybe if if if your friend group, if your your affinity group, whatever you wanna call it, the people you are hanging out with, if some of them are always engaged in something productive, then when you're in a doomed spiral. You

can find someone who's working on something um and vice versa. Yeah, and it doesn't just help your mental health, but it also contributes to the pre figurative activities that we need to actually make a switch to a different system. You know, like revolution is something that happens overnight or in a future. It's something that's supposed to be happening all now because as we build those systems, you know, we are building

up power. You know, it's kind of like how the black socialst in America described to a power you know s we have lindy systems and putting these things in place so that we can push towards like fundamental transmission. This system it's it's rative, but a small people build on top of that, you know, that's how the transmission happens.

We all also need to contribute. I mean, I think it's it's it's important to talk about this both to acknowledge, like it's a thing that happens and we all deal with. We all have our moments of like overwhelming despair over what's happening, um and and at some some moments of

unrealistic optimism too. Yeah, everyone's in a while and the unrealistic optimism needs to be encouraged UM, as long as it's not the kind of what we don't need to do anything because someone's I guess there's toxic optimism and there's helpful. A toxic optimism would be like reading an article about some new carbon capture technology and being like, oh, cool, well I don't need to worry. UM. But but most

optimism I think is positive UM. And I think it's good to build a capacity for optimism by by building your your personal sense of of agency and power, by

by doing ship that helps UM. And I think that accepting that you can do things that are meaningful UM, and that uh there are things to be done that can help the situation is a critical way of fighting against you know this uh soft climate change denial, which which is a UM, a major threat because there's I think, honestly at this point more people who are subscribing to some form of soft climate change denial than there are people who are uh just denying climate change and its

entirety UM. And that's I think where a lot of the effort has to go. So I yeah, I think this is a really important thing for people to understand and to be vigilant against absolutely. Yeah. All right, well, Andrew, where can the audience find you outside of me here right now? Yeah? So you can find me on my YouTube channel st Andrew's um, and you can find me on Twitter at und School of Sture. Excellent. Well, you

can find us here where you just found us. We'll be here tomorrow, unless this is a Friday, in which case we'll be here on Monday. UM. I have a have a good you know life, have a good life. Take care. All right, welcome to it could happen here a podcast about things falling apart and also sometimes about how things have been falling apart for a while now, and today we're gonna talk about how things were also bad in falling apart in the two thousands, which a

profoundly cursed time period. And specifically we're going to talk about I think a part of the anti war movement that does not get much attention, um, which is the port militarization resistance that happened sort of two and with us today to talk about this is two people who were part of this movement. If Juliana Newhauser hello, and Brendan Maslaska's done. Yeah, both of whom were organizers and activists while this was going on. Yeah, and I thank

thank you, thank you both for being here. Yeah, thanks for having us so. Yeah, as as I was saying a bit in the intro, I think that this is a part of the anti war movement that is not

very well known. I think I think a lot of people know about the initial stuff happened in two dozen three, and people might know about some of the stuff that was happening against the war in Afghanistan but right when it started, but I don't think most people know that it like you know, even after Chils and three sort of doesn't work, that it continues and it continues sort of informs that are that are very interesting, and so, like I guess I want you to start out, I

want to ask how we sort of got from the early part of the anti war movement into this and how usually got involved. I would say that there's this narrative about the women against the word Iraq, that there is the largest protests in human history, at least at that point. I don't know if it's still true against the invasion, and then it didn't work and everyone kind of went home and ended there and to a certain extent, that's true. But like you said, the people that didn't

go home went an interesting direction. And UM so at the time there were direct action was not as acceptable as it is now. The or this movement was largely dominated either by UM big liberal coalitions or PSL front groups that were basically indistinguishable and what they actually did, which was basically nothing and in the best of cases

and in the worst of cases, kind of insurgency. UM. But then there were small groups of people that at when we saw that it didn't work, and we saw that these giant, peaceful marches from one part of town to another UM or voting for John Kerry or whatever, it didn't work, that we started to look for other options. Yeah, and uh, you know, I got involved, you know, i'd say with the anti war movement. That idea of how Warson just was really taught to me from a very

young age. I mean, my parents were you know, children of the sixties, and they had family members fighting in Vietnam and um, you know, friends dying in Vietnam and we're against the protests back then. So I grew up hearing these stories and of course stories from family members, particularly one of my grandfather's. Both of them, we were

veterans in World War Two. One of them was a marine and the you know, in the Pacific theater and still into his seventies, eighties and nineties until his final days, was just dealing with horrific PTSD and had always taught

me from a young age never to get involved. So I you know, and I remember when when the very clearly um, you know, I'm sure it's on everyone's minds now, and when the invasion of Afghanistan started, when the invasion of a Rock started, I was at that that massive demonstration in Washington, d C. That Juliana just mentioned, and you know I ended up. I'm from Utica, New York, and went to a rural high school wool uh just outside of of Utica, you know, russ Bell generally speaking,

impoverished and also very conservative area of New York. And you know, I had the recruiters bothering me, military recruiters in high school, recruiting my friends, and they were just everywhere in the hallways. Uh So it was very present, um with me. When I was younger, I moved out to Olympia, Washington two thousand six, and that's one a new student activist group, Students for Democratic Society, was launched.

That's how Juliana and I first met. We were both in separate chapters of that new organization in the Pacific Northwest, and the port protests started just just a few months after I moved out there in in Olympia in two thousand six. So wait, just declare for this for a second, because I've never quite been clear on this history. So there was a second SD, like Students for Democratic this idea that was like unrelated to the first one. Yeah, that they're born briefly um at the end of the

bushop manaster. That that explains a lot of things that it's very baffling. We're not that old. Yeah, we're definitely in the in the second uh, you know, the rebirth of it um. So you know, I think it it took on some things in spirit um you know, but also was i'd say different in many ways, and it was very active to me at least, it was very exciting to be a member of the new STS because they're over a dozen chapters in the Pacific Northwest and it was a great way to connect with young activists

all over the US. So STS is emerging in this time period. One of the other things I was interested about is something something you were talking about in the in the in the early part of this, which has to do with the way that these giants, both the sort of Answer Coalition PSL Frank Group and I guess the I s O was still around back then co Asians work versus how like anything else worked on. So so what was was s T sort of like consciously

set up and in opposition to those groups? I don't think it was conscious, but there was just like I mean these days, I mean like there's a lot of controversy around PSL with like anarchist versus tanky politics, None of that mattered at that time, Like, none of that mattered. The only thing that mattered was the answer, which is the ps O Front group was completely fucking useless. Like they completely indistinguishable from any peace police um liberal Democratic

Front group. There was literally no difference just in terms of their aesthetics. Maybe like is there a donkey or a hammer and sickle on something. That's the only difference we saw. So I don't I don't think there was. It wasn't There wasn't like a conscious like political opposite attention to it. It was just like they're not doing anything,

and and so we had to look in another direction. Actually, you know, it's hard to keep track of the alphabet soup of athalitarian communist groups at times, but this was actually answer for those who don't recall, it was front group for the Workers World Party the W which yeah, I mean it's it's hard to keep track, right, Yeah, that's the same thing, like I think, so, so okay, So for people who are sort of unaware of this, there's a network of connected but sometimes feuding like weird

Stalinist cults that kind of kind of like they hold on through the eighties and nineties and they start sort of rebuilding again around the antiwar movements in that period. That that's the PSLs of the up. That's answer like, and I think that's like most like modern anti war groups are also still these people, which is incredibly depressing something you want to talk a bit about it towards the end of this. But yeah, just for people who have not spent the last half decade in the in

the trench is of extremely weird anti war politics. So yeah, so I think we should get into how the the first action starts in Olympia. Yeah. So, and there were actually a couple of actions that happened, um in the year proceeding that, you know, before I moved out to Olympia in two thousand and six, it was not yet under the banner of PMR Port Militarization Resistance. That was a name that was officially coined in uh, you know,

in in May and June of two thousand six. And so, just to give you an idea Olympia, it's it's a college town or at the Evergreen State College is there. It's also the capital Washington State, so you have that going on. It's also a military town. It's a little over twenty miles south of what we called Fort Lewis. It's now called j B l M j BLOM or Joint Base Lewis McCord. It's an Army and Air Force

base now it's one base. Um, so you had all these you know, different kind of elements, uh in you know, in tandem in in that town and the public port. The port of Olympia is one of about seven years so public ports in the state of Washington, some of which are I mean, they're used for all kinds of things you know, for commercial, private industry, but also the

military and the U. S. Government. Uh so, uh, you know, I heard from someone I don't even remember who that the military was sending a ship to the port of Olympia in late May of two thousand six. And this happened for ten or so days. And it was just kind of a natural instinct for a whole bunch of us to go down to the Port of Olympia. It was it was the war machine in our backyard, and

the idea was to just block the vehicles. It started out with just like less than ten people number folks getting arrested, and that very rapidly culminated into larger protests every single day um an active blockades people, uh, those of us like Juliana and myself and other folks using civil disobedience or what we prefer to call civil resistance to try and stop or at the very least slow down these striker vehicles and to give folks an idea of what a striker vehicle is. You can look it

up online, but it's kind of halfway between. Um. You know, a tank and a hum vy doesn't have the slats, you know that a tank would have it's you know, and they were being used in both Iraq and Afghanistan for for raids of residential areas. They were really on the front lines of of the war in in both those countries, and that's what we're trying to stop. I only got involved later, um, because I wasn't living in Olympia at the time. UM. I was another STS chapter.

But my roommate was from Olympia and he had been involved in that first round of protests in Olympia before moving up to Bollingham. Yeah. So, like hearing his story has got me very excited because just like finally someone's someone's doing something like someone's they're not. Just like it's like everything else was just so liberal. Take whether it's marching from one place to another or writing to your

congress people or occupying their office. It was like asking someone else to do something which you knew from the beginning they were never going to do. And finally this is finally someone was like actually getting into it. UM. I think the first one of the things that happened here was that um they started to avoid UM. There's it.

It was kind of a geographical thing, I think, UM, for people who either don't know Washington, Washington, or because they're normal people don't know like the port areas of these cities very well, because it's like like unless you're a long sherman, like why you would you go down to like the port of Tacoma. UM. But they kept moving it around because um Olympia is also not very big and UM, so it's there's really only two roads into the port, which is very small, and so it

was it's very easy to block it UM. And so then I think the first time that I got involved UM was in two thousands seven when they had moved it because they kept moving it around to try and switch things up and wait before the seeing the ship around. No, it's like they had to make a military ship met they would UM. It's like like once the ship it wasn't the port, they would just have to go through

with it. But then UM, you know, it's like everything every six months or so they had to make another military ship met and they would change the port usually each time, UM to try and let basically to avoid us. It doesn't seem like this is like normal crap. UM. The first time I had gone down was in UM Tacoma, which is a much much much more industrialized port than Olympia. It's you know, it's like a big port, a more

normal port, I guess. And that one was honestly pretty crazy, um, because you're just trapped in this giant industrial maze basically at the mercy of the riot cops. The best success we had was definitely at the port of Olympia. UM. I think the in two thousand seven in Olympia was definitely the glory moment, which was when people were able to on and off like actually hold the port and

control it. The Yeah, and I wanna you know, just emphasize that, like the the one the military changing their approach right to avoid us so jumping from port to port with these different shipments. They actually went so far because we were so successful as a movement in the Pacific Northwest to ship striker vehicles by rail out of the Pacific Northwest and even going so far as to

ports and Texas. I don't know, but you know, one one thing that we did is that we built up contacts with other activists with longshore workers all up and down the West coast in California. There are other activists were connected within Texas, Hawaii, New Jersey, in New York, there is a desire and the anti war movement. Uh and and you know, in some extent maybe it's like

it was small. But some folks in the labor movement, especially in Oakland where the I LW the you know, longshore workers Union, it's a lot more militant than say in a place like Olympia. UM. But yeah, I mean people wanted to replicate this model because, as Juliana said, we wore successful in two thousand seven, we shut down the port of Olympia for a total of it was essentially two days. They were not they're not shipping anything in or out. We set up blockades, were willing to

throw down with the police in the street. And one of the things that was cool about that blockade is that one of the there's two entrances, like I said, and one was completely blockaded and then the other one, UM, we had like a moving I don't really know what it was, but something with wheels that we can move in and out UM to open it up. And so then we could allow like civilian cargo to move then out, but then like we feel it back in place, UM

to block military shipments. So we were able to actually like stopped them from like what while in in that oneted to come, were able to actually like stopped them from moving the self all together? Would you when sheally cleared up by the police and they moved it, we would eventually get cleared out by the police. It's like we were never able to It's like we're we we held it for two days. That those protests took place

over a series of two weeks or more or less. Um, we were only able to fully hold it for two days before eventually they would clear us out. But one of the things is that this does it did create problems for the army because when you work with a port, you know, it's like you've got like a certain time frame that you've contracted with the port to do whatever it is because you're going to do and it's the not too happy if you take longer very than you

said you would or yeah, yeah. And the other thing I want to add is, you know, I think the other really important element with this whole movement going on is the Pacific Northwest was um it is specifically western Washington where the two of us were living. It was it was you know, the center and in a sense it was the heart of the anti war movement in

the country at that time. One because of this militant direct action that we were, you know, we were building up in the streets and trying to throw a wrench in the gears of the war machine to to at the veryly slowed down, which in some ways we did. But we're up against so much. But the other added element, of course is the g I resistance and the soldiers who are resisting. I've all also known as the Rock

Veterans against the War was very active there. They set up a g coffeehouse across you know, literally across the street, uh, you know, the gates for one of the entrances for Fort Louis. Um. There are a whole bunch of soldiers that were going a wall. We had friends who were active duty soldiers who had fought in you know, Iraq and Afghanistan that were a wall and they were hiding, you know, refusing to go back into the striker brigades

that joined us in port militarization resistance. Uh. There are a whole you know, long list of soldiers that were very publicly saying, you know, I'm refusing to fight in Iraq or Afghanistan for you know, various reasons, and so we are very much connected with this movement too, and I think the higher ups in the military they're they're hyper aware of that. They studied us very well, um, you know, to the point of actually spying on us. So that's like a whole other element of the story too.

One of the things that I've heard from talking to other people who were involved in this was that like, wow, like during these protests, like the level of police militarization just like skyrocketed, and like I remember I was talking trend about this. It was like, you know, if if you go back and look at like old system of

a down videos, you know, they'll they'lly'll have these things. Yeah, and you'll see these you see these riot police and like you look at them and it's like these people they look so much less armored than like the people that we have now. And one of the things that I thought was interesting about this was that like this is I think one of the points where you start getting the modern riot police showing up that are just like,

you know, completely encased in like armor. And yeah, I want to talk about just like the police response to this, because I think that's that's another thing I think. I think there's never there's a kind of a tendency to sort of project back what the police look like one just onto the whole history of police and I think it's like it's it's it's gotten worse even in the

last twenty years. Yeah, I mean, so I lived downtown in Olympia and probably just like a six minute walk away from the Port of Olympia and and also very conveniently just a few blocks away from the police station. So so lucky us. So we actually saw you know, we could see from the front of down on the road, down the sidewalk from the front of our house, Uh, some of the military shipments going by. And we we we did see that absolutely, and at at times it

was it was terrifying. I mean I lived in an Activis house we jokingly called HQ because that's just you know where because of its proximity to the port, that's where a number of us were having meetings, uh, you know, around these protests early on in two thousand six, and um, yeah, I mean we like they look like RoboCop and it's something I had I you know, I hadn't like I had been to like mass marches and demonstrations like the r n C protests and d NC protests in Boston,

New York, and like in Washington, d C. Uh and so I would see these like riot cops, but they were I mean ubiquitous in the support protests. It was like a whole army of them that was sent out. I mean when Juliana said that things got kind of crazy at the Port of Tacoma protests, I mean there was like a police riot, you know, like the cops went absolutely nuts, are shooting people with tear gas and pepper balls and and brutalizing people. I had never before

witnessed anything like that. And it got to the point in you know, in Olympia where we we kind of knew early on that we were being traced by the police to the extent where, you know, one friend of ours was followed from our house to the bus station to take a bus to school by the police and then was stopped and essentially assaulted by them on the street.

And we had another fellow activists and uh, you know, a roommate of mine who is going out to driving out with a few friends, uh, few fellow activists from Olympia to Aberdeen, about an hour's drive. So Aberdeen, there's a port of Gray's Harbor there, pretty conservative small town. It's where Kurt Cobain is from, home of the famous Kurt Cobain teams. McDonald's they served billions and and billions

served and that one McDonald's and Kurt Cobain's McDonald's. But yeah, I mean the you know, they they were they were following. They had orders the Washington State Patrol two, um, you know, pull over a car full full of known anarchists. There was alert gone out to all the police departments. They pulled them. They pulled him over, they made him walk the line. He was had you know, wasn't drinking and

no drugs like nothing in his system. But they he was driving under like one mile per hour under the speed limit. They arrested him for or d d W I you know, eventually fought the chargers sued um uh and you know when a big settlement out of all that. But that's just one example of many of the lengths that the police would go to. It was pretty severe. Even there's a house of a bunch of anarchists, younger anarchists called a pitch Pipe Info Shop in Tacoma, and

that was also a big target. The police were swarming around them all the time. They had like cameras set up like specifically just outside the Infra shop, like there weren't surrounds cameras there before, but then it was like, oh, well, just conveniently put them on this one specific street corner. Yeah, I think like that was one of the things I

was reading about this is you have that stuff. And then also I think one of the steerest parts of this is that like army intelligence gets involved and yeah, do you want to talk about the man named quote unquote John Jacob, who was in fact not that Yeah, so, uh, you know, I'm curious what what memories you have of our our good dear friend John Jacob Juliana. I don't think I ever actually knew him in person, but he

was the moderator of the List Serve, wasn't he. Yes, she's one of the moderators of our list Serves now that I look back on him, Like the Port Militarization Resistance, the sirup was always just like this dramatic ship show, and it's like, looking back on it, I was like, oh, a cop that did nothing, absolutely nothing to like established

order or uh I if it was on purpose. Yeah, so I think there's definitely something that happened, Like you know, looking back from our vantage point today, it's like, Okay, things make a little more sense at the time though, And we're in this movement, right and so that means like meeting people where they're at, we find all kinds of people that would like want to join the movement like I, like I said earlier, like active duty soldiers

that were joining. So I meant to a guy named John Jacob and he sent an email out to me. I was one of the contacts for the Olympia STS group, and it's like, hey, you know, there's kind of like a parent organization that's some old like elder activists or in uh TO kind of mentor US called Movement for a Democratic Society, very small, never really took off, but like, I'm interested in getting involved. We met up in public and he seemed like an alright guy. I mean he was, um,

you know, forty ish early forties. He had told me, like you know, been in the military for years and he actually still worked at Fort Lewis. So he was always open about that but it only went that far. He didn't ever tell us what he actually did there, and it wasn't abnormal for you know, we have many folks that worked active duty, you know, on base and civilian civilian roles or soldiers. As I mentioned that we're in port militarization resistance. So he gets involved, and he

gets really involved with port militarisation and resistance. He goes to protests, He gets pretty close with this group of anarchists I mentioned who lived in Tacoma, UM, and he seemed like a really solid guy to to most of us. UM. And you know, things happen as as we progress and you know, as a military responded to our uh you know how effective we wore in the anti war movement and the g I resistance movement by changing their tactics.

We noticed that Okay, when we first started the protests, UM, we we had the ability to catch the police by surprise by setting up you know, a blockade here, we're having a surprise action there at this time, or this support etcetera, etcetera. And as time progressed, we found out that you know, we were having these making these decisions for tactics in our strategy we thought that we're in private and then for whatever reason, the police kind of knew about where we were going to be before we

even showed. And that I remember that happening in two thousand seven the Port of Olympia. Yeah, in Tacoma. There are there was a lot of things like that. Like there was one time when they're like some people who had a meeting in a closed room, like all there, they had taken the batteries out of their cell phones. They had simply written on the whiteboard the time and place they were going to have their next meeting, which is going to be in a diner near the port.

And so that way if like if for any reason the room was bugged, it wouldn't be caught up because it was just written on a board. And then it was like a small meeting too, so it's like there weren't and then when they got to that diner, there's like full of cops like clearly waiting for them. Like at that point, it's like it was very clear there was some some level of infiltration involved. Yeah, and I think we from early on, like you know, we we

knew our history. I mean, you know, one of our our fellow activists and pmrs and a friend of ours, Peter Boehmer's professor at the Evergreen State College. He was in the original sts back in the sixties, and you know, he was essentially a political prisoner for a couple of years in both Massachusetts and California. UM. I mean the FEDS essentially tried to assassinate him. Um back in in the seventies when he was active in the anti war

movement in San Diego. Like we knew, you know, former Black Panthers, and we read our history, so we knew about the history of cointelpro the counterintelligence program of the six season and seventies and the war on the anti war and civil rights and black power, American Indian movements, etcetera. UM,

so we knew, you know, just intuitively early on. Uh. But there's one thing that happened in particular which prompted some of us to file for a public records request with the City of Olympia and another activists walking down

the street in Olympia. I'm a member of the Wobby's Industrial Workers of the World Union, and we had like a one of those metal newspaper boxes downtown and it was locked to a poll um, you know, with a bike lock and there are some city workers there with a pickup truck and they're cutting the lock to this newspaper box and they threw it in their pickup truck and so are you know this friend of ours was there. It was like, what the hell, what are you doing?

What's going on? And one of the workers just kind of strugged and was like, I don't know, the police told us to do this, and they drove off like they stole you know, are essentially like our union property

or whatever. UM. So we had you know, our our lawyer friend Larry Hilda's and the National Lawyer's Guild you know, call and kind of threatened the city and and then a number of us got together like, hey, you know, let's do like a public records requests UM with the City of of Olympia freedom of information law right and

so we did. And the request was, you know, just requesting any all information the city had, UM, any exchanges communications by email, etcetera between the police and like other agencies about anarchists i WW Students for a Democratic Society UM. And their initial search that the city clerk did yielded something like thirty thousand responses. So she's like, Okay, I

gotta narrow this down. And I don't know, I was working on the request at the time, and for some reason, like I don't know where support protests are near a military based communications between the army not thinking anything, and so the initial responses who actually got um, you know, maybe a hundred hundred thirty or so different documents, just copies of emails, etcetera. That, Um, we're little puzzle pieces for this massive puzzle. And it was just a few

of them. Uh. And it was you know, there was an email talking about our guy in the Navy going to a p MR meeting to get some intel. Uh. There's you know, kinds of things like that. There are a few emails in particular. Um, and the email address was something like John John J Towery UT you know,

Army dot us whatever the email address was. So there's a crew of activists that got together, put their heads together, did some research quietly for a few months, and eventually found out by publicly accessible information like voter registration records and also finding out something about like a motorcycle club called like the I don't know, like the Brown Beauque Club or the Brown butt club or something, and and the like found out that this John Towery guy that

was in this motorcycle club and had his you know, was registered to vote outside of Tacoma in this town there. It was actually John Jacob. It was this guy that we thought was a fellow activist, an anarchist um and and a friend, you know, I thought he was a

personal friend of mine. Turns out he was actually essentially an Army intelligence officer working for something called the Force Protection Unit at uh AT Joint Phase Joint based Lewis McCord and also working with a whole list of different agencies and what turned out to be like a massive surveillance network that was national in scope. This guy was sent by the Army along with many others to infiltrate us,

to aspire on us, and to disrupt us. It was huge, Yeah, And that That's one of the things that I've always always really interesting about this is like, so like I learned about poor militarization resistance basically because I was like poking around the history of like informists and I ran into this and I was like what because and then

that was what what I thought. One of the things I thought was really interesting about this is that, like, like I think that this chapter of the anti war movement is even on the left, is like not very well known, but like the seriousness is which the army seems to have taken it easily is really remarkable. Yeah, I'm wondering what you do think about that. One thing we have to emphasize is is that we were not

a large group of people. Like, um, the number of people who are actively involved in port militaristication assistance at its peak was how many people do you think it was, Brandon, Well, it depends. I mean I'd say they're probably like at its peak maybe probably four ye to fifty people that

would like consistently show up to things. You know, maybe a slightly smaller, very core group, but we would have demonstrations with like and then like four people, you know, yeah, and like that would be like the max like there is it's like there are like the peaceful like kind

of like support actions. You know, you would get like a couple hundred people and then like for the stuff like where it's like the first night that that the part of the entrance to the part of Olympia was occupied, it would be like Um, these were not These were not very large groups of people. UM. I feel like and like I said, it's like one thing that we need to keep in mind was that, um, the peace police were much stronger back then than they are now nowadays.

Laton like as we saw last year, it's like people in the US of learn to throw down, but that was not the case at the time. And so this is a very very small group of people. UM. I think we accomplished a lot from with how small it was. UM. If it had been larger, it would have accomplished way more. UM. But even that small core of like people with maybe expanding out to like a larger group of a couple of hundred, had them that scared that they went that

far they're trying to disrupt it. Yeah. And and this is one of the things I've been thinking about a lot of recent lee of this seems to be a very consistent thing, which is that like the two things that are guaranteed to like just have a hammer drop on you if you touch them is pipelines and ports, And that that was that was something you know, we've

we've talked a lot on here about pipeline protests. UM. But I was interested in what you too think about because you know, this this is like of very particular moment right now in which you're dealing with all these

logistics chain failures. And I was wondering if if you do think there's anything that we can learn from how your versions of the sort of of port demonstrations worked for potentially trying to leverage that in the future, especially with like contract negotiations for port workers in Oakland coming

up next year. Yeah, that's a great question. You know, it's this old saying in the I w w D action gets goods, right, And I think it really boils down to that it's building up uh, you know, mass movements and in social movements from below h that rely on direct action, that rely on civil resistance, civil disobedience. Um. Yeah, and and the pipeline protests that have been ongoing where Indigenous people have been on the front lines of that

for many many years now. I mean, the kind of repression and surveillance that we face really pales in comparison to the kinds of you know, surveillance of repression net folks were facing at Standing Rock, for example. Um. You know, I think, of course one of the well one of the main differences is that it was primarily the military, you know, with us, right that was uh, surveilling us because this is very specifically, you know, a war issue

and a military issue. Um. But yeah, I mean I think, um, you know, like I think there's a big questions like what what do we have to do that's that's new? And to me, I say, you know, for both that kind of militant action, but also for the labor movements, like, it's not you know, we don't have to reinvent the wheel. There are things that have a tried and true track record of getting the goods, and that is you know,

these more disruptive kind of actions and movements. Um. And so one of them would be you know, I guess my suggestion would be to like go back to the basics. And even like I would say, now, you know this, remember this at a time when like Facebook was around, right, Like, but we weren't really using that for our organizing. We really relied on like face to face meetings, you know, phone calls and building up trust with people and building up our capacity to like take actions and make change.

You know, I think I'm not saying throw out everything that you know, that at least some of the good that social media has to offer. But like I think going beyond that and going back to these older tactics and then for the labor movement, like the big thing is you know, and it's just like a bigger question for for mainstream unions in particular, I mean, they're that the whole idea of like union contracts is that workers

also lose a lot. Yeah, they get some things, but uh, business owners and bosses have rights carved out in in

those contracts. And with the longshore workers, I mean the difficult thing with that, of course, is like there would be some symbolic strikes that of course, like longshore workers have done and continue to do, you know, around like the war Iraq historically supporting movie a bou Jamal maydea, etcetera, like in Oakland, Um, but they have some things for that written into their contracts, and you know, for all these other like unions it's like, well, you know, we

can't strike at all for uh, for the next two years, the next three years, whatever the life of the contract is. Like, I think it's a bigger question and challenge for the labor movement to move beyond that and not be putting

this strait jacket of contracts like that. Yeah, I think that that, particularly, like the the no strike clause part of contracts, I think is an interesting thing because it I don't know, there's not I mean, there are some unions that will actually do stuff around fighting it, but

mostly people just sort of don't care. And I think you wind up in a situation where it seems like you kind of have to plan your tactics around when contract negotiations are happening, because otherwise you can't actually get people to do anything more in like a one day symbolic strike. Yeah, and or you know the challenges, Like, you know, we have this great American tradition that's not unique to the US. It's universal really, and it's one that resonates with me breaking the law right and like

we're you know, we're like civil obedience. That is that what we were doing in the streets and blocking the ports. We were breaking the law and we knew it. And that's what the civil rights movement, the Black freedom movement did in in the nineteen sixties. But like we have recent examples of workers breaking the law and mass like the West Virginia teacher strikes that happened a few years ago, Like teachers in every single county in that state went

on strike. They broke the law and and they want something out of that. And I think that's what we really need to encourage people, is this idea of breaking out of like the norm and and breaking the laws which you know, the laws that are in place, which are not there to you know, expand our freedom there there too contracted. Yeah, one of one of my friends

kind a joke about what was the exact line. It was, it's it's only illegal if you get caught and it only matters if you lose, which I think is a good way of thinking about. But King and you know, yeah, I think it's also like it's worth mentioning that like the other sides, the law doesn't matter to them at all, Like they just tear it up and like light it on fire constantly. So don't don't bind yourself if if you can, if you can, not get caught and not like go to prison for the rest of your life.

Don't bind yourself by a bunch of like paper that the other side just doesn't care about. Yeah, And that's an excellent point because that's the big thing, you know with the army and law enforcement in general, like surveillance of us. They were in the police just their actions, their brazen actions on the street, like the riot police. Um, they were just breaking the law all the time. They absolutely have a deep visceral hatred of the Bill of Rights,

of civil rights and civil liberties. And so there were a number of you know, court cases that sprung out of you know, this movement. There was a case called Panagocus Vitari. Another Juliana Panagoucus was another PMR member co plaintiff in that case. And you know, is it a case against the army that you know, we we waged and brought up to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and you know, eventually lost and it could have brought

it to the Supreme Court but didn't. But you know, like the the other thing is like the violation of the Posse Commentatus Act. It was a whole other thing. You know, we don't have to get like so tied up into like the legalistic thing. But like the point, your point is valid, Like they don't care about the laws that are already there. They'll they'll just intentionally break them,

break their own laws. That they have set up and you know, they'll just get a slap on the wrist because that's really all that's all that happens to them. I think, I think I think that's a good note to end on break the law. It's fake, it's also bad. Um. Do you two have anything you want to plug other than that, other than you know, encouraging people to break

the do any cage your local port? Yeah? Yeah, I mean I I think it's you know, I guess just encourage people to do as you know, it sounds like what we're doing by having us on the show, and like there are some in our very recent history, um, you know, movements and winds that we all as activists

today can still learn from. And I think part of that, um, you know, I don't want to call us elders because we're not that old, but like one part of that is like making sure like our movements are still like a multi generational and like we we learned from each other and also as as Juliana and I did, like I mentioned earlier, like we learned from the movements of the past, sts, the Black Panthers, the Black Freedom Movement, etcetera. Um, but there's a lot that you know, these these struggles

I think have to offer us today. All right, thank thank you, Thank you both for talking coming on and talking with us. You're for having us. Thank you. Well, this is this has when it could happen here find us at happened here pod on Twitter, Instagram, and the rest of our stuff is at closoned media at the

same somewhat accursed social media places. I don't know why I'm saying somewhat, they're just a cursed Yeah, see you next time whenever that is, Welcome back to it could happen here, the show about things not being great and maybe trying to make them better. UM, I'm Robert Evans. Uh. This week we got we have a special little little little episode for you. UM, I'm gonna sit down and

talk with Lucas Herndon. UM. Lucas, you are from New or you live in New Mexico at least, um, and you wanted to talk to me a bit about some stuff that's going on in your school boards. We just did a two parter on fascist attempts to kind of take over and dominate school boards around the country, and you've got some personal experience with that, so I wanted to kind of just turn this over to you to start us off. Yeah, thanks for Robert, thanks for having

me on the show. Um. Yeah, my name is Lucas and I live in Las Cruces, New Mexico, which is in the southern part of the state. Were close to the border for people that are interested. Um and yeah, like you know that my experience had happened last week is sort of the quintessential. It could happen here, Yeah, did exactly. Plus Las Cruces, Um, politically speaking, is actually a very progressive little time. I mean, in general, New Mexico has been for what you know, however you consider

the progressive or not. Is has been blue for quite a while. As in terms of like voting like it's not it's not like Texas politically at least right that's yeah exactly. Yeah, we voted for we voted for Bush the first time, but have voted blue every election since two thousands four. Like federally, so in my little stretch of the of the state, our congressional district has been read. But the city of Los Cruces, which is the like where the biggest city in the southern part of the state,

where the second biggest city in the state. UM. Our city council has not only been democratic, but like progressively democratic. UM we have UM as of this recent election, you know, from the beginning of November, we now have an all female city council. UM there is at least we have UM one one if not too trying to think. Sorry. Currently there are two UM folks on the city council have immigrated from Mexico in their life. UM one will still be on one is now running for Congress. UM

we have UM. The school board that currently is sitting is generally progressive, and the one we just elected, we just elected our first openly queer person onto that school board. UM. Our little group of of legislators that go up to Santa Fe every year is very progressive. So again, just to kind of reiterate, like Las Cruces, New Mexico, pretty

progressive little place. And yet at the school board meeting last week, UM totally dominated by a public attendance of very far right extremists, UM spouting all kinds of nonsense about all kinds of things. So yeah, it was pretty well yeah, and this, I mean, this has happened. This happened in Portland, Oregon, too, which is also famously. I don't know. I wouldn't call Portland politics progressive but solidly democratic. And the the school board meeting gets taken over by by

far right activists. This is a yeah, So when did you kind of first become aware of this? Well? So, um, it was it was a weird convergence of my personal end my and my private or I'm sorry, my personal and my professional life where I um, I work for an organization called progress Now in Mexico, so it's like

I do progressive politics for a living. But um and a colleague who works for the A C. L U here had asked if I would go and help lend support to this gender inclusion policy that the school board was going to be um commenting on. They weren't voting on it that day. It was what's called a first reading, and she asked if I could go and if I could, you know, just speak, and I was like, yeah, absolutely, be happy too. So I was gonna go and and

talk about this in a i'm sorry, professional capacity. And then that day, um, as like before I went to that, my daughter, who's in middle school, texted me a picture a bunch of kids had on Monday of of last week which was like trans Awareness Week or Transvisibility Week. Some kids had shown up wearing trans flags and Pride

flag eggs on that Monday. The following day, that Tuesday, some kids showed up wearing UM thin blue line flags in in response like indirect response um and in my daughter and you know, my daughter is aware enough to know what that means. So she texted me and I was like, I can't believe this ship and I was like I know. Um. So then I'm like right. So then I'm like, okay, well, now I want to go speak about this gender inclusion bill or policy personally right

like now like has impacted me. Um. So I show up at you know, about an hour before the meeting is supposed to start. Because the third thing that kind of happened was that I, um, I am, I'm on like a bunch of mailing lists because of my job. And sure enough the local gop um, who is not very active because again they kind of lose all the time, they sent out a like come show up at this thing, you know email. So I showed up early, thinking okay, well I want to see if there's gonna be something.

And at first I was like, oh, like I don't think they showed up. Don't think that they turned out. That's good. But it turns out they were all like hiding in their cars so that they could like swarm the building at once. And so then like about half an hour before the meeting, they all walked in at once, and like I was already sitting inside the room, and they all came in at once, and they took over

all the chairs. They was standing room only. Um to the point where like the there was a bunch of f f A kids that were there that was supposed to be recognized for you know, f A something or other, and like they had to kick some people out so that they weren't violating the fire code. Um that's how many. Yeah, So anyway, that's kind of how it all. That's the

setting for where this all happened. Um. It turns out that at the same meeting there was gonna be a policy discussion on a different policy that had to do with New Mexico's revision of Social Studies standards. Um, and of course that got everybody hot and bothered about so called c RT, which isn't a thing. But so like they were there, but I mean, but the folks that showed up to speak. I mean they were all over

the place. They were talking about critical race theory, they were talking about the Gender Inclusion Bill and like trans violent the myth of trans violence and um. But then of course like like COVID protocols and all kinds of I mean just again like way out their stuff, um

and actually kind of funny. I was listening to Knowledge Fight this morning, and uh, Jordan and Dan really hit on it that like they have just figured out that these are places they can go and yell and like no one, you know, like school board people aren't gonna like they're all just these are all just like teachers, like retired teachers who are on these school boards and they're like they're not there to just you know, have these like whatever discussions, so they're not gonna you know,

they just like let these people yell and they did. So anyways, it got it got heated, uh pretty quickly, because I mean again, these people just like go off and they get they riled themselves up and those lots of applause and anyway, that's kind of how it all started, I guess, or that's what it was. And I mean, has has there have you noticed kind of any sort of mobilization in the community now that this has happened, because it seems like the first ones of these, at

least always take everybody by surprise. People are not used to still not really used to school board meetings being um shall I say interesting, Um, certainly important, but like not a thing that you have to really be concerned about for the most part. And that's that's changing. Have

you seen the community kind of start to adapt to that. Yeah, you know, since so, you know, I put some content out on my you know, local Twitter, um and and and um got some traction there thanks to sort your retweet, I think. But um, but then the biggest thing was that kind of going back to what had happened at my daughter's school, that progress that got worse, if you will. The following day, the Wednesday of last week, some kids showed up in an actual Confederate stars and bars flag, um,

which is yeah, that's nuts. Has famed Confederate state New Mexico. You know, Messia, New Mexico, which is right down the road. Was it was the capital of the Confederate territory. But yeah, but it wasn't a state at that point. It was not a state, and I'm not aware of were their battles in New Mexico. And I know we had some in like further south Texas than you would think, but

I was not there of any. There's a couple there was one of famously up north called the Battle of Greetta, and then and then there was one here where I live. Wasn't a battle. It was a bunch of confederates got um stranded and super drunk, and then I couldn't cross the desert fast enough, so they got stranded up in the mountains in a place called Baylor Canyon. And then they get to the top and like the North was just sitting there like waiting for them and was like,

well you're captured now, We'll see. That's clearly that's some history worth celebrating right there. Yeah. I think that the biggest, like one of the scariest but biggest things is like and this goes towards this is a slight tangent, but like the social studies revision, for instance, in the state of New Mexico. Uh, there are two paragraphs in our history book about the Gaston purchase. Um Like I live

in the chunk. That is the guest and Purchase, and um, like the guests and Purchase is like James Gaston was a notorious racist who left the South and took all of his railroad money, went to California and Mexico, lobbying hard, using his influence and money to try to create a

slave state in Baja in Mexico. Like that's what he was trying to do, and like that part of the that part of the context of why the guests and Purchase even happened is like totally left out of history books, and its like if anywhere it should be taught, it should be taught in the place that is called the guest and Purchase when it comes to the United States. So anyway, just a little tangent there why it's important

to have context in history. Um so sorry, go back to my daughter's school and these kids wearing the stupid stars and bars so um that. So like I went and spoke to the assistant principle and was like, so I understand that your answer to this was to ban all flags and he was like and he was like yeah, yeah, yeah, because they're causing a disruption to education. And I was like yeah, but I you know, I think I feel like you're giving a false equivalency to like, you know,

gender and and pride acknowledgment to flag. Yeah, it's it's I mean, it's this constant. This has happened in a couple of places, including a town in Oregon, where it's like this is sort of the the centrist and kind of the right wing solution to this. It is just that like, well, if if kids can't wear racist hate flags, then gay kids can't wear a flag that says that their existence is valid. Uh, you know, because those are the same thing. Yeah. Yeah, it's frustrating. It is frustrating.

So that was not my favorite thing. Um. And so then the culmination of that this week was that my daughter's social studies teacher, who had allowed the kids in her class to make little paper flags after the real flags were banned, um, was fired. Jesus Christ. And because it's a personnel matter, no one was willing to tell me more. I've I've called the president of the school school board, who actually, in all fairness, he doesn't actually probably have that much sway over these kinds of things.

I would imagine that happened at a level a level that was not his. But yeah, yeah, but I mean, but I but I have anyway, so I did call him. I also called the school and got very little information from them obviously, so you know who knows. But again, like that's how it was perceived from the kids in her class. Um, and that's so like what we know happened is that we know that after the flags got banned, she let kids make flags out of paper and hang

them up, and by Friday she was gone. So like not a great response, no, not not not ideal not yeah,

so anyway, that's kind of where we left at. But I guess maybe what maybe what I should say to get back to your original question, which is to say, like, have we seen a mobilization that yeah, Like so I learned the newspaper the reporter who that teacher like a couple of weeks ago, had actually been in the newspaper because she had also like um, she she spearheaded this like response like apport, like a girl who wore her job to school had been bullied, and like when news

got around in the school, like the like the majority of the student body and this teacher like went up and above out of their way to make her feel welcome and like walk her to her class and like it got kind of viral on local TikTok, so like this teacher got quoted in the newspaper, so I like

called them. I called the report. I tweeted the newspaper and I was like, like, you guys know that the teacher who was in like startlet in your article is fired for allowing kids to waste their thoughts about these flags things, right, And they were like no, we didn't know, And I was like you should probably find more. So so you know, I don't know where we're gonna be at now. The next reading for the gender Inclusion policy is um December, so we've got a couple of weeks

before that next school board meeting. UM. I think that on my end, like there's gonna be some local organizing to try to get some better, more inclusive voices to be a part of things. UM. I don't, you know, I don't know what the interim will hold, um, because it's like, you know, it's the holidays and there's a lot going on and Kyle rittenhouse and build Black better.

I mean there's like, you know, there's always a million things happening, so it'll you know, there will have to be some drum beating to like get people to show up to that. But on the other hand, I think with some of the momentum we have and I think people will show up in mass for the fourteenth um in support at least this is the kind of community me that in general we have shown up and shown out to support you know, these kinds of issues in the past. But I do think that up until now

people felt for pretty asleep about it. Yeah, I mean, and hopefully you do see the kind of response you're expecting. Can you walk me through sort of how the kind of attempts like you talked about getting the local media aware of what had happened to that teacher, Um, how are people like what is the actual organizing effort look like on the ground, Like how are you trying? How are you and others trying to get the word out so that you know there's a response to this. Yeah.

So I think that the first thing is is that there was there was a problem with the way that the school board handled public comment that first time. In an attempt to help limit their own sort of exposure to some of the toxic stuff they knew was coming their way, they had they had instituted UH a limit

on public comment. Um, you had to show up by a certain time and fill out these little pieces of paper saying that you were there to comment about something, and if you weren't there, then you couldn't sign up.

And the problem was was that all these like old white male retirees who are sitting around listening to Alex Jones all day, they had nothing better to do than show up to this meeting at three o'clock in the afternoon, whereas a bunch of for instance, teachers, students, parents, UM, they were busy because they were in school or like

picking their kids up from school. UM. So I think one of the things that we're going to try to do is get public comment ahead of time, and we're gonna try to like bombard the not bombard that's that's a violent word. But we're gonna try to like just make sure that UM voices from the community that hadn't been represented are represented and sent to the school board

ahead of time. UM. I think we're gonna try to go and save physical space ahead of time for those of us that can write, for those us that can will go, and we'll try to save physical space. And we did learn that even if they keep that policy, for the little forms we can we can actually give that time. We can fill out other people's names, right, So we're gonna try to like make sure that we have better voices. That was one of the things if you listen to the recording of what I said at

that meeting. Um, I asked the school board president if it's possible for me to yield my time because it had literally been like a dozen white men out there spouting nonsense. And then I get up there and I'm like, yeah, hey, um, we've heard from enough white men. Can we have like a member of the trans community or one of the women of color who are here to talk about this, um, but couldn't get here in time. And there they're legal team was like, oh no, that you didn't sign up

in time or whatever. So um, but it turns out we could have put their names down ahead of time. So we're gonna try to organize that thing so that people can show up and save you know, physical space. Um. And then UM. I think the other thing too is to try to involve some other local elected office shows from the county and city level, because again, we have these really amazing progressive candidates who have come from all walks of life, including immigrants and members of the l

g B t q A community. UM So having them come and speak in their official capacity, UM I think will carry a lot of weight um for the both for the school board, but also just for the public to hear from those voices. Yeah, where are these like? Have you have you gotten any kind of research on where the people showing up are coming from? Are these like folks within your community or these people coming from kind of outlying areas? Um to swarm these meetings? Like?

Is there is there kind of an active research contingent. I mean, that's part of what I do. It's part of part of my job with Progress Now New Mexico. My my title is Energy Policy Director. I usually spend most of my day talking about oil and gas stuff. However, I've been doing this job long enough that before I became that person, I was actively researching and track a lot of white supremacy activity in the in the state, especially along the border, some of the border militia stuff

a couple of years back. So in that regard, I knew and I knew a number of these folks. A lot of them do live in the city, but so our our county is considered rural by the census, even though we're a city of a hundred thousand people. But we're a big county. So there's there's two people here, so um, so there's you know, it's it's hard to tell how many people may or may not have lived in,

for instance, the public school district. But what I can tell you, like hands down, is that of those dozen folks that spoke before I did, like, there's no way that at least I mean, maybe one or two of them had kids that could have gone through the laws cruses public school system, but like the majority of them far and away, like either aren't from here at all, or you know, they've lived here for a long time, but they are They are not active parents or even

grandparents of kids that live and will go to school in this in this district. They're just they're just agitated wingers. Yeah, And it's how does this all tie in? Because New Mexico's had I think it's kind of been on the back burner in terms of like national attention, but y'all have had some really significant dust ups, not just with you know, the border militias, for years there have been violent um acts and even murders as the result of

that stuff going on. But like during last year's the protest over George Floyd's murder, y'all had some really ugly who's should we the dueling rallies were like right wingers shot at people, um and and some really some nasty situations. I'm wondering, are like those folks like, are you seeing that kind of organization being brought into the school board meeting or is this just kind of bubbling up as

part of the same stew it is. Yeah, there, it's loosely affiliated for sure, um and and the crossover, the crossover is hard to tell depend I mean, what am

I trying to say? There's there is crossover, It's hard to tell how on purposes or sort of the fact that this is like a small population community states, right, So what I what I mean by that is that some of the some of the physical white supremacists who showed up last year at one of our um BLM support you know, George Floyd related peaceful protests, who they showed up at a parking lot across the street, you know, armed long guns, tech vests, all that kind of stuff

who that those were the folks that when I when I went and filmed them and put them on blast to to try and sort of out them as best we possibly could, or at least identify them. Um, they came back and docked me as and then went after UM a number of my colleagues up north in Albuquerque.

That was about a week before there was the there was a shooting of of a UM anti fascist protester in Albuquerque, And it was during sort of all of that stuff that I was like trying to talk about all this out loud um and got tied into a few more other anti fascist voices in the state. So since then we've all been kind of working together. Um.

We found each other on Twitter, thankfully. And so so what it seems like is is that like the folks that showed up to the school board meeting were what I'll call usual suspects, like politically active old you know,

right wingers. That being said, UM, in that room, there were a number of people that I've identified as showing up to anti vax rallies, a number of the Trump train rallies that happened last year before the election, and at least one person who I recognized as being I have never seen carry firearm, but like has been at rallies where people were carrying firearms and that kind of thing, um in response to these you know, in response to

like peaceful protests. So there is crossover for sure. Where do you see this going, like, because you've been kind of paying attention to this for a while, not just the school board stuff, but just kind of the general problem of right wing UM organizing in your area, Like where do you where do you see this heading within

kind of the context of New Mexico. Well, I mean, so we haven't really talked about this, but like, so, well, while here in Los Cruces, we did really well, um during the November election in terms of our school board to be re elected a really good progressive school board president and two new good progressive candidates, including, like I said,

the first you know, queer openly queer person. So that's amazing. However, up in Albuquerque, Uh, they lost seats to some of these far right wing UM candidates and um, so the Albuquerque school board is um not um not looking as

good politically. So, I mean, so on the like I guess what i'd say is on the soft end, what I expect is more continued pressure in sort of the um, the way these things are supposed to happen, which is to say, like continued presence of the right wing folks at meetings, yelling, taking up space, UM, slowing things down, running for office when the time comes, you know, those

kinds of things I see. UM, I guess I wouldn't be surprised though, if UM, if I if there were further escalation of things UM in a you know, in the way we've seen other places, in terms of some sort of you know, an armed response or somebody showing up. Um. You know, in New Mexico's an open carry state, and

so people can walk around with guns all the time. Um. And and you know, I mean that's the thing too, is like, while I didn't see anybody with an open carried firearm at the school board meeting, there were guys wearing like, you know, Vortex Optics brand hats, thin blue line shirts, a guy with that like Remington's shirt, you know, And like, I don't regret anybody from gun culture. I'm you know, I'm a lefty with a gun. So it's

like I get gun culture. But like when you show up in those things and then those spaces with that kind of yeah you're making a point yep, yeah, yeah, yeah, you're you're you're not Yeah, I get that. Um, have you is there some kind of have you seen like any kind of budding left wing armed response? Like, is there do you guys have like an organized group of folks who have been showing up? Um? When there are armed protests in the area. Um, I mean I always

have my gear with me. UM. I mean, I've got I've got a ceramic plate, I've got my you know, rifle and pistol. I I am a member of a number of different groups. I've been a member of the s R A, UM, I've I've worked with some of the armed groups up in Albuquerque. So down here there hasn't been a ton but UM, I've got a I've got what I'll call a luciffiliation with a number of folks, and I would trust to to be armed if need be.

Thankfully that hasn't happened yet. Thankfully, the one big, big protests that happened here in Las Cruces that I was sort of nervous about, and I did have my gear for remained peaceful and and we you know, we took over some streets since blocks traffic for a couple hours, and there was never any violent response from anybody other than maybe like one car at one point trying to push through and car got banged on, and that was

about it. But um, so so, so, to answer your question, like, yes, there are those of us that are left wing and armed, and there are those of us that have been able to show out if we needed to. Thankfully we haven't had too at this point. Yeah, well, all right, I think that's everything I had to ask. Is there anything else you wanted to to get to to make sure

to talk about today? Well, I just I mean, I would be I would be um not doing the best of my job if I didn't mention the fact that, like one of the so one of the talking points of the right wing here and our school board is that New Mexico's education system is is fifty feet in the country, and I the the my assumption is that that has to do with DC's public schools being counted. Um. So it's not a great Yeah, that's not a great record.

It's not a it's not a great record. And um and and I and I you know, as a parent of a kid who's in the public schools. I uh, you know, I cannot ignore that, right. That's so that's a legitimate talking point. But the but the thing that they want to bring it about is that you know, there, you know, it's because we're trying to be gender inclusive. It's because we're trying to like you know, teach kids

about like actual history that happened whatever. Um. And the reality is it's because our education system is, unlike most places, funded by the oil and guests industry and not by like our communities. Um. And so like you know, eighteen months ago, oil prices crashed, right and the State of New Mexico had to have an emergency special session for our legislature to figure out how we were gonna like

fund things like cops and schools and like whatever. Um. And then like now, you know, oil and gas is like gangbusters and where you know, record prices, and like the State of Mexico has this like surplus budget. But the thing is is that like that that extra money that we're gonna get this time doesn't make up for the like cyclical bad you know way that we fund

our schools. So I just want to like tie in that, like like all of these things tie in together, right, Like we can't talk about education in New Mexico without talking about the oil and gas funding and so anyway, so like because that's my you know, that's part of the reason why I was going to go talk about this stuff at the on my professional level, is that like I get to talk about education as an as an energy expert in the state of New Mexico because

energy and education so intertwined here. Um and like when you have literal like Cooke Brothers founded UM and and UM like monetarily supplied think tanks in the state of New Mexico who are pushing out this kind of propaganda and encouraging people. So that there's a group called the Rio Grand Foundation and like another one called Power of the Future uh PTA, Power the Future in New Mexico.

Like both of those organizations are like tied to the Cooke Brothers because the Kokee Brothers are tied to oil and they're pushing these right wing talking points UM and it's all part and parcel of just like you know, clouding the information space. That's what they want to do. They want to have, they want to have the new cycle dominated with things like CRT and gender inclusion studies to you know, to tie up things like school boards so that so that the electorate is busy talking about

these things. Well meanwhile, they're just raking in money, hand over fist, um, you know, stealing our oil. So anyway, I just that's so important to me to like make those connections, um, especially in this state. And it's something that a lot of people don't consider and don't think about, and it's just really important to me that people understand that. So yeah, UM, all right, well, thank you so much, Lucas. This has been I'm not gonna say fun, but certainly

enlightening and I think valuable. A good a good dispatch from you know, a fight that we we continue to see is important here and that everybody should be paying attention to both wherever it happens, including in Los Cruses and around the country. Um, because they ain't given up, um, and they can't be ignored. Um. Yeah. And that's you've mentioned this many times over the years, but like that's the kind of thing is like we have to show up. Um. Yeah,

we can't just let them have these spaces. Um. And I think that this this past school board meeting was

a great example of why. UM. And and I'm I'm really counting on a lot of my my, my friends and and close you know, the folks that I have come to love and support in this community, UM, to show up and show out for that, because that's you know, we've been there, right we Like I said, you know, and if you look up Los Cruises politics over the years on the news cycle, like you'll see stories about our you know, progressive city council and passing a living

wage and you know, beanding classic bags. I mean like all these like you know, we've we've tried, we've we've tried to be that kind of little community and and and yet you know, these folks are still there and they're still allowed and if we give them the space, they will take those spaces over. So yeah, yeah, absolutely, So thanks for having me on. Let me talk about this. Yeah,

it really means a lot. Thank you for stepping up, because it is this is the thing that's a giant pain in the butt, um, is that everybody's got a lot going on. Life is complicated. There's all sorts of shipped to do in the old world. UM. But every time these fascists and their their affiliates decide they're going to try to take over something. You know, as busy as people are, as exhausting as it is, you do have to like they can't just be able to have

to do it. Like That's how they win, is they have they have unlimited energy for this ship and um, if they're not like the thing that causes them to lose energy is actually um being outnumbered and shown to be like like like being kind of pushed out by communities. Um, you can do it. It takes it, but it requires people showing up. Yes, that's exactly right. So UM, I appreciate the signal boost means a lot to me. Uh and this, are there any local organs that people can support?

So big shout out to a group called Cafe here in Las Cruces that works on all kinds of border issues immigrant rights but also like workers rights and um immigrants, like student rights, migrant student rights. Um, they've been very active in this for a long time. UM. And so yeah, I definitely shout out Cafe uh here in here in I mean all of New Mexico, but specifically it's set in New Mexico. They're doing a lot of work. And then um, uh Dreams in Action, which is part of

a national network for dreamers. But again here in New Mexico have done a lot of good work. Okay, yeah, thank you very much, Lucas. All right, um, and that is going to do it for us here. It could happen here. Um, until next time, go, uh, I don't know, hang out at a school board meeting. Go take up space from fascists. Yeah, go take up space from fascists

in general. Welcome back to it could happen here. The podcast about you know, the problems and stuff that are happening and how to maybe make them better and speaking of the problems that are happening and how to make him better Garrison Davis, Hi, Hello, that's so that's a weird segue. I wanted to introduce this video telling you guys that I just watched a movie that you should watch because it's pretty rad and it's ties into all the things we talk about. It's all the Pizza Gate massacre.

And I didn't know it is a micro budget under a hundred thousand dollars film. It looks great. They did a really good job with the budget they had. About um an Alex Jones employee type person and a mass shooter who go looking for UH to try to solve the Pizza Gate things. Oh boy, it is a an actually very nuanced and I think deeply knowledgeable commentary on specifically like the Texan conspiracy scene. Like it's a like film. They're Alex Jones character who's played by a woman in this.

They film in the original studio that he recorded in back in then. Like the filmmaker who did this gets like the culture in the area and kind of the relationship between the people who get radicalized and do ship and the people who just profit from it. It's a very good Um it's it is, by the way, a grindhouse horror movie. Like whatever you're expecting, It's not that it is, like it is an incredibly gory grindhouse movie. Um, but it's it's pretty it's pretty fun. What does that

have to do with? Nothing at all? But it has a lot to do with it could happen here, because all right, well we'll watch it anyway. Um, this is that could happen here? A show about how things are kind of falling apart and how we can then maybe slow that down or prepare for an uncertain future. UM episode about cops, right, I mean, I mean we are we are planning an episode in Washington State patrol. Um. But no, this is episode is a different a different

kind of cop about just as useful. Um. So in the first half episodes of the The Daily Show or season two, which if you haven't listened to you should definitely listen to those as they kind of act as our show's manifesto of sorts. But nevertheless, the first time episodes of the scripted Daily Show put forth like a more like realistic, non sugarcoated look at what climate change will bring if we continue on our current course. Um. But not just looking at the obvious environmental and extreme

weather effects, but also like the socio political effects. So when I was helping Robert out with the research for those episodes, some of the best indicators of like the mainstream conception of the scientific, environmental and political status of climate change was at the United Nations past uh I I PCC reports, which is the inter Governmental Panel on Climate change and the COP conferences. So during the first few weeks of this past November, of November one, the

twenty six annual COP comp Friends took place in Glasgow. Um. And yeah, the name of the conference is kind of a decent indication on how useful these things actually are. Um. But a COPS stands for a conference of the parties, and for almost three decades they've been like the main international stage uh for for countries and companies to discuss

climate related information. And like they're alleged like goals. Um, so yeah, they're a good indicator, not onlike sometimes they do present actual good science and like decent predictions, but they're often just like a good indication of what kind of the mainstream people think about what climate change is, and you know what the people in power, how they are viewing it and how urgent they think it's worth addressing versus how much money they want to spend on it.

So the most notable cop in recent memory was in Paris cop one. This is kind of where the pair of climate accords were born. Uh. The commitment was to aim for one point five degrees of warming, and it was signed on by nearly all major countries. Of course,

the US signed on left then resigned on. But anyway, under the Paris Agreement, countries committed to bring forth like a national plans uh figuring figuring out how they would reduce their missions, but they would do it like by themselves, and they would be called n d c s or nationally determined contributions. And the idea was for every five years countries would gather up and present their current plans on the national stage. This was what COPPY was going

to be. Now it was delayed a year because of the pandemic, but COP twenty six was the time for countries to present their n d c s on for like, their updated versions on their plans to reduce some missions. So most of the NDCs got submitted before the conference and kind of led the discussion of the conference UH

by like mid October. UH, I think about uh of the countries or states that signed onto the Paris Agreement submitted their submitted their version of the NDCs and and and those countries about a hundred and forty of them are responsible for the majority of global emissions. So that that that was what kind of led up to two copy from happening UM and the the overarching aim of the conference according to President Um, when I try to

pronounce this name, um outlock sharma Um. He said that the the the idea for the conference was to like keep alive the Paris Agreements target to keep global temperatures from rising above one point five degrees celsius above pre industrial levels. So that was that was like the goal of the conference going into it was to kind of keep the idea of the Paris Climate Accords of still being achievable. UM. And that's and that's not what happened

at the top twenties. So um, now it's it's it's important to kind of point out that the commitments laid out in the Paris Accords don't come close to limiting global warming to one point five degrees, as it is said in the accords, like they they acknowledge that, um, which is what the kind of NDCs are for. But even still those are just non those are those are just non binding agreements. But anyway, so the cord the accords and the restrictions and goals and well there's no

restrictions as just goals. The goals and them don't don't come close to limiting to one point five degrees. And we have already most likely shot way past the point of that being in any way achievable. Um. But you know, we can still limit things from being megabad like four degrees but we are we are already on a certain path.

So in in asking nations to set tougher targets by next year for cutting climate warming emissions, the new agreement at Glasgow acknowledge that the commitments that were in place are inadequate, and if rigorously followed, the the new national pledges so include the stuff including the Paris Accords and the new Glasgow packed um and all of the individual like uh N d C s. If all of those are followed, the world is now on track for a two point one to two point four degrees celsius of

warming by the end of the century. And that is

the lower estimate, as we'll see later on. Higher estimates were also um um shown at at the at the Glasgow conference, So we have the the idea was to hopefully keep it to one point five, and already we're pushing that back by almost a whole a whole degree if we're going to like two point four um so that that's that's like the main one of the main impacts there is like just totally kissing one point five goodbye, Like no what, no one even is going to view

that as a possibility at this point. Huh. So I don't know how many people were still looking at that as really a goal. Apparently some people of the planners of copy apparently were. Um. But I mean, I know for us, we've we've been aware of that, and I'm not sure how, you know, really what mainstream liberals were thinking before this, but hopefully at the very least, maybe Cop twenty six made them realize that maybe it's there's a there's kind of it's it's maybe maybe worse than

what you were thinking. Um. But so there are other things did happen at at Glasgow that are that are worth looking into. Um. So the main quote unquote achievements of the Glasgow Deal besides like revisiting the emissions cutting plants to try to keep stuff down, which of course we're you know, not not not met in shot way past. Um, But there we also had the first ever inclusion of

a commitment to limit coal use. Now, the way phrasing is gonna work here, it's gonna be really interesting because the reason why this deal got passed is because some very specific shifts in their phrasing around coal use. Um. The other thing that caught that Cut twenty six tried to do was increase financial help for so called developing countries and provide funds and assistance for like climate disasters.

So like when when like extreme weather events happen, have a set of funds UH set aside to help countries in these disasters. Now those are that that is a good idea, but as we'll see later, the way copy actually did it is not actually doing it. It's like they're they're they're pushing there, they're postponing this kind of goal, but they're just making it a prospect. But back to coal.

So the Glasgow Climate Pact was the first ever climate deal to explicitly planned to reduce coal, which was a one one of the worst, like fossil fuels for four greenhouse gasses UM and and cole really can be phased out. Coal can be phased out by um electric power really easily. It's it's it is the easiest one. UM it's it's it's way easier to phase out cold than it is uh natural gas or other um or sorry, let's see the the the other main one. There's three there's a coal,

natural gas, what's what's the last one? Regular gas? I guess so yeah, yeah, petroleum based stuff. Um yeah, But so the coals because coal is you mostly used for heat um. Electrically generated heat is way is way easier than all than those other two. So coal coal really

should be phased out as soon as possible UM. But the commitments to phase out coal that was introduced in earlier negotiations UM led to some fighting, specifically among India and China who were in in strong opposition to the phrasing and the actual strengths of of the deal UM. And a lot of this is like the argument that like, if these countries are still developing, it's not fair to them to remove this resource when other developed nations had it,

so that that that's that's the thing. We see that argument a lot around, like climate change stuff is like, oh, you you're just gonna stop other countries from developing because you you you got to get to this certain point of being a successful, like wealthy nation um and like you know with all this like industrial development on the back of fossil fuels and stuff. But then now you're

going to remove that opportunity for other countries. Now there is there is UM a lot of stuff around like the growth frameworks that address this issue and specifically try to try to get um fossil fuel savings like a decrease in emissions and be able to use some of those gains to assist countries in getting stuff set up to a decent standard of living. UM. But you know that is going to be addressed on a whole another scale around like capitalism and and how countries intervened in

other countries. That that's part of a bigger political question. But anyway, UM, Indian China did not like that, did not like the coal deal. UM. So in the end, the countries did agree to phase down coal rather than phase out coal. So that that that is the phrase that they ended up using is phase down. UM. The people weren't super happy about this. Uh. The Cup six president um Alec Sharma said that he was deeply sorry

for how these events unfolded. And like, focus on coal is good, it's because it's responsible for about of annual CEO two emissions. But also like just focusing on coal leaves of really big lack of discussion on oil and gas, like there's like those are also like very bad and arguably we should be focusing on those a lot, Like those are those are the main ones we should get we should get rid of coal. Yes, but if we just focus on that, then they're so a lot of

other stuff going on. So that is that is a lot of coal talk. Uh you know who also uses coal? Our sponsors, Yeah, we're entirely sponsored by Joe Manchin. Um, big friend of the pod. Thank you, thank you for always having our back, Joe. Anyway, here's the ads and we are back talking about copy and there is there

is a decent there's stuff. Stuff did happen. So and I know it is going to be more of a sign C in numbers episode, but it is worth actually figuring out what what happened there because everyone just kind of had the perception like, oh, copy was a failure, because yeah it was, um, but it's it's it is good to know what actually is going on at things like this because if we're going to get some kind of you know, liberal change, this is where it's going to happen. So it is good to keep an eye

on what these types of people are thinking. So we we left off on talking about how their plans to phase down coal, and there was like a general lack of focus on oil and gas and it is interesting, um if you so there was uh a group of activists led by this uh I think. I think it's

like an NGO called Global Witness. UM assessed the participant list published by the u N at the start of the meeting, and they found that there was five hundred and three people with links to fossil fuel interests who were like accredited members of the Climates Summit and so, and they were like delicates. So cop twenty six delegates associated with fossil fuels outnumbered national delegate numbers for every other country. So there were more people representing fossil fuel

interests than there were representing any individual country. So you're thinking, maybe, I wonder why this stuff is not going too good. Oh, it's because it's being run mostly by fossil field companies. That's that's uh huh. That's an interesting, interesting little thing there. Um. Yeah. So the the other the other kind of notable thing about copy is uh it uh it it led to a quote unquote breakthrough in the rules for government led

carbon markets. So this is the thing that the neoliberals are really excited about, is this idea of carbon markets, because it's a way to make more money kind of off of removing carbon and just to create a lot of red tape and bureaucracy around this idea of lowering emissions. So, I guess one of the ways to describe carbon markets if you're kind of unfamiliar with this idea, is that countries that do not meet their emission reduction targets in

their national climate pledges are like penalized for this. Um so, so countries that countries that don't meet their mission targets or or want to just pursue like less less expansive emission cuts. What what what this deal set out to do is that instead of actually lowering emissions, they can purchase like emissions reduction tokens and credits from other nations that have cut their emissions more than the amount that they pledged, uh so, like by you know, moving to

low carbon energy and various stuff. So the turn of phrase that people were using to discuss this to how you can like purchase purchase credits to represent emissions that you didn't cut but wanted to, is that this can potentially unlock trillions of dollars for protecting forests, expanding renewable energy, and other projects to combat climate change. Um So, the idea here is that the money used to purchase these credits, it's going to get put into other things that will

help fight climate change. But all of this is non binding and speculative, and it just furthers this whole carbon market concept, which I'm not thrilled about. Um yeah, we should, we should do like a full episode of carbon markets. But the thing so I I this is you know, this is the thing I studied academically in college and is incredibly important for everyone to understand that carbon markets

are fake and do not work at all. Ever one has ever gotten one where no one's ever gotten the national one to work, and no one's ever gott an international one to work. Uh, implementation of carbon markets, Like China had a big thing that they're gonna implemented carbon market. Uh it was fake. It didn't work. Their carbon emission still increase, very very import Like how fuy carbon markets

can be. So you get carbon credits if you're a business like Tesla that makes no emission electronic vehicles, and Tesla, for a lot of it's earlier history, made a significant chunk of its profits selling carbon credits to polluting industries and basically saying you guys, keep polluting. We got your back, Like the fact that we're putting electric cars out onto the street means you guys can keep admitting at the same all like that's that's like literally how how kind

of the business can work. It's it's not the best way to fix the problem. Yeah. So there's a lot of a lot of talk was around carbon markets, um, because that's of course with the Neil liberal establishment, neo liberal englishment is going to focus on because it's still is within their kind of worldview. Um, how do we monetize the rot? Yeah, how do we how do we make money off of the world ending? Um? Which I guess we're going to see a lot more of that

uh in the next in the next few decades. Um. The the other the other thing that they decided on is, uh next year there's gonna there's gonna be again. So there's there's they decided to procrastinate, which is just a general theme of cop car offerences we've been with. It's what everyone's been doing about plimate change since forever. So Yeah,

the main thing they do is decide to procrastinate. Um. So next year there's gonna be a u N committee to report on progress towards delivering one billion dollar per year in a promised climate funding. Uh. This was after rich nations failed to deliver on the deadline for said funds um and then financing is gonna be discussed again in two those conferences. Um. But this this deal left a lot of more vulnerable nations who were going to rely on this promised funding. Uh kind of just they

just left them without things. So the whole idea was that like, yeah, we need this funding to help people in these disasters and different losses and damages and to help you know, start start making more um, renewable energy technology in lieu of doing tons of tons of coal mine And that's where this money was going to get used for and it's not happening. Um. So this this promise was initially made at a u WIN a conference on climate change, and we're still we're still pushing it

back year by year. So this pledge is older than I am. Yeah, it sure is. Another pledge meant as a nine to provide a hundred billion dollars to emerging economies was supposed to be made in that also was missed um. And it was it was designed to help nations adapt to climate effects and make the transition to clean energy UM and UH. The cop Spring six president said that around five hundred billion will be mobilized by so cool. Thanks for saying those numbers which mean nothing.

It's fun. It's fun how you can just talk and say things and it doesn't actually matter. It's It's one of the things that's so frustrating about this is trying to get a hand along, like how how a lot of these solutions are supposed to work. So, like one of the articles, if you're trying to actually if you're not just taking our word for it, which you never should, and trying to research like carbon credits and carbon markets

and like how they might work or might help. Like one of the articles you're going to come across is an article in Nature dot org called making Carbon Markets Work for Faster Climate Action. And this is very much obviously so it's pretty it's pretty recent, and it's not at all a climate denial piece. It's it's just kind of laying out a case for how carbon markets could

be very effective at reducing emissions. But you have to grapple the whole time you're looking at this with the fact that like they haven't that that global global emissions are still shoo and they provide a number of like options for how this could work. And it's one of

those things where I'm not gonna say it's impossible. I'm certainly not an expert on this, and you can read through the article, um if you want, but it it it's it's certainly certainly think the thing you can say right now is that carbon markets have not led to a global decrease in emissions because we we have not had emissions decrease other than that little dip we had when a covid uh did it's it's sweet little dance. Yeah, that one month where we could actually see the sky again. Yeah,

that was pretty rad um. But yeah, there's there's I mean, you you can check that article out for kind of the pro carbon markets case. It all seems i mean, one of the things that's frustrating to me about it is it all it's all like, yeah, here's how it might work if you know, everybody got on board the Paris Climate Agreement and also all of this worked ideally, But there's there just doesn't seem to be a lot of I I just don't see any evidence that like

they've shown that this is actually likely to be helpful. Um, it's more just like yeah, this this could this could work if if we do these other things. Um, we

just frustrating. That's like all all of the kind of ship that you get at at at COP twenty six, where it's like, yeah, I guess theoretically, if you were to do that, or if that were to work the way you're saying, or if that were to work with the assumption that like all these other factors don't grow over this period of time, than than this might help. But we also know what's happened with emissions and global

attempts to reduce climate change. UM. Which is not to say that like like emissions in the United States, Like there have been there's been a lot that's been done to curb emissions from the United States. Now, the thing that's often left out of like the discussion of these different things and how they impacted our emissions is like, well, a lot of those emissions got pushed off to other countries that are now making the things that we were

making for I yes, like that. That's the big thing when people argue against the growth and they're like, no, you can you can still keep growing your economy while lowering emissions, and like, yeah, one country can, but we still want the stuff, so we're just moving it to other countries to produce, so like we're not at actually lowering it on a global level. You can lower you can lower it on like an individual country level, but not totally globally because we still want to consume the thing.

This is one of the single most frustrating things about talking to people about climate change is that, Okay, you know, if you if you talk to the sort of Neiler Book Cormon market people, right, if you talk about literally anything else, right, the only thing they ever talked about is how the entire world is inter connected, how the entire economies and connected, how we're more interconnected than ever.

And then the moment you start talking about climate change, they go, oh, well, it's all the individual country, individual country, individual country, the economy is not connected at all. It's all about the individual policy makers country. It's like, no, it's not the it's it's about like all all of the like, the the the the the the emissions are foreign direct investment driven, right, it's about it's a it's about's about what it's about where investment money is going.

And you cannot and you know this, this is this is why cop and someone is like, this is why it doesn't work. And even though it's the only frame rate that could work, right, you have to have an international response, has to be coordinated, it has to be working across national lines, because again that's how the economist dim works. But it doesn't because a state's individual states can't and will not ever solve this and then be

copies like Okay, so here's here's our international framework. But also we're just going to have you know, the actual the the the actual international framework is going to be just essentially hammered up by bunch of fossil fuel companies and so it's just you know, it's it's the worst

of both worlds. I mean, it's and it you can see there's there's some kind of acknowledgement at the fact that this is an international problem in in like the basic idea of of carbon markets, which includes the idea that like, um, you can companies that that emit emit lesson don't use up their carbon budget can like sell carbon credits, and you can do this across international lines.

And like if we hold if we hold companies to different like emission standards internationally based on things like the Paris Climate Agreement, then that will cause the carbon credit system to work better. Um, there's that acknowledgement that it

is an international problem. But again I just don't I don't see I don't see evidence that it's working, and they like none of the evidence that I've read makes it seem like there's a very good case that this is going to at the very least, that this is going to provide the kind of emissions productions that are necessary to forestall the worst case scenarios that are coming. Um. And if we're gonna be again to be completely intellectually

honest here, we can talk about D growth all day long. UM. I have a similar problem with that that I do to a lot of these the different kind of targets that COP twenty six introduced, stuff like carbon markets, where it's like, I don't I don't see that solving the problem either. It's like a theoretical it's it's yeah, if we were to get people to if if we've gotten people on board with D growth, then you've already fundamentally

shifted the very nature of global society. UM. And also the way in which Americans and people in other Western nations like conceived of economics at a fundamental level. Um. And so it's it's one thing to say that, like, yeah, if people accepted that and and got on board with a lifestyle that is not based on this this kind of capitalist notion of endless growth, of ever increasing extraction from the world in order to create value, um, then we could we could actually stop emitting at the kind

of levels that are going to lead to these horrible consequences. Um. The question is like, I don't see, I don't see you you can. I think you can argue that de growth is more realistic in that Yes, that would absolutely work, as opposed to carbon credits and other things where it's like, well theoretically it might work if they do all this other stuff. Yeah, it does. It does revolve on the cultural notion of America and the West completely changing. Um.

It's a big it's a big ask, you know. Yeah, And I mean like there is there are smaller steps, like totally like reorganizing how cities work so we do not use cars, uh, like like like re redoing a public transportation um like sector uh in you know, um, making making like a cellar panels and renewable energy. I required part of like city infrastructure right there, there's a there's a lot of ways to push us towards that thing, but there's not one thing we can do right because

it is in large parts of cultural change. Stuff stuff will help with emissions. Like if we if we redesign cities around public transportation and make it so stuff is not as as far apart, and yeah, that that's gonna help lower emissions. If we if we require all these other types of renewable energy projects to be built into buildings and added on to our current cities, and yeah, that that is going to help lower emissions. But you know, there's there's not one one big step that we can

all do at the same time. And I think that that's I don't know. I'm of two minds about it. One part of me says that's absolutely the most intelligent way to go about it is focusing on things like reducing the use of like like like really all ending car culture in cities, because it's not even a reduction thing.

It has to be like that that has to die. Um. But we're a lot closer to that than ending the idea of like uh, capitalism because they're at number one one, because there are capitalists, very capitalist countries that have that do not have a car culture that like stopped that and that actually like had one at one point and

then reworked there. So that's that's and that would Yeah, that is a significant that's probably go that would probably lead to larger emissions reductions than any kind of carbon credit system could ever lead to. UM. I also, and so yeah, I think that that's on an objective level, Yeah, that's it's smart to focus on stuff like that where you're all you are arguing for reducing growth, but you're also arguing and for like, hey, your life will be more pleasant if you live in a city where you

can walk everywhere. You're not at risk of getting run down by you know, two ton trucks anytime you cross the street, and like you're not dealing with smog and pollution and horrible like hour and a half long communes on these crowded nightmare highways. Um. But it's also it's still incrementalist. You know, we we are we are talking here, we are kind of like walking through here, Um, all of the best incremental solutions and and what is the most realistic of those. UM, And I think that's fine.

I think that's kind of where we have to be because that is what's most likely to actually happen to make the problem better. UM, but it is we have to acknowledge it is incremental, like we're not we're not solving It would be very arrogant to say, like, here's how we solve this problem once and for all, you know,

I just want to. I think sometimes when you talk about stuff like deep growth you can get into this, you can kind of it can come across as if you're trying to like simplify, like and if we do this, like it will be perfectly like now, this would be like the hardest. No, that's that's like saying we have

to confix it by all doing a revolution. It's like that's it's it's not okay, okay, cool, Yeah, I mean, but anyway, we have to do some ADS and then we'll be back to finish up kind of their closing expectations on COP twenty six and the other kind of things happening in the periphery. Um, here's ads. Okay, we are back and we're talking about kind of what happened towards the end of copy. So we already kind of discussed how the deal was made, what was in the deal,

what things were talked about. Um now we're kind of going to talk about, you know, the other kind of closing thoughts around it. Um in in in. In the lead up to to cap to plenty six, the United States Special Presidential Climate Envoy John Kerry, who's like he's supposed to be like our climate guy. Um he he also said the goal this something it was to it was to you know, hope that we can limit stuff to one point five degrees and you know, he he called this the last best hope for the world to

get its act together. But by the time Capturist six came to the end, his language and attitude had kind

of changed. Um after after two weeks of debate and negotiation, his his final remarks reflected the kind of the points we've been talking about, how um and and and said, like, uh, like the government energy policy is currently in place around the world are projected to result in about two point seven degrees uh celsius of warming above pre industrial levels, and government pledges to cut climate emissions would limit warming

to two point four uh if they are met. So that's the the Again, we're just launching way past this like mythical fantasy of of one point five degrees. And the other scary things is that we're getting a lot, a lot closer to large scale feedback loops. Uh. Feedback loops are things like once we have reached a certain degree of warming, environmental effects will be triggered that will

cascade and produce like exponential growth in warming. This is like a this it's not purely theory article, but it is mostly stuff that we still probably can prevent, and we really need to get on it like a S A P. Because once these things start happening, they are very hard to reverse. One of the biggest ones that are that are already being affected is photosynthesis by plants on land and how that is decreasing its ability to

suck up carbon um. About of our annual carbon emissions are removed by the air by photosynthesis um and the rest of which are dissolved in the ocean, causing ocean acidification or that you just hang around in the atmosphere, which causes you know, a bigger thermal blanket. So uh, photosynthesis has like a thermal maximum beyond which carbon can only be taken so much of it in and then the process which by plants give off carbon and water

actually increases. And we are already at that point in a in a lot of places, and we are we are at that we we achieve the warming required to get to that point a few times throughout the past decade. So land based carbon uptake is projected to decline by nearly fift percent as early as and and these effects have not been included in any of the you know, published pathways leading to lower like lower degrees of warming. Um.

And again this isn't this isn't just as speculative. Like the biggest example of this that we can like point to is like the Amazon rainforest. How that is now a net emitter because it is no longer sucking up enough carbon to offset the amount of carbon and actually shoots out. So we need to stop deforestation and keep

planting more trees essentially because that that sucks. And also just as a general kind of indicator of the cascading effects that are happening, and we are we're still on the path for kind of large, large scale disasters in a lot of places around the world. Um, the it's around nine of the Earth's land area is in pretty pretty dire risk on our current emission pathway of the Marshall Islands. And I'll all these UM Vietnam, Southeast Asia,

Middle East, parts of North Africa, and Central America. UM. Overall, around one third of the land humans occupied are predicted to either drowned by by sea level rise or became or become too hot for human life just by the end of this century alone. So that that will cause you know, my migration, panics and wars and all, like a whole bunch of bad things that we can we can limit that, Like, that is something that we need to limit now, and if we don't, it's still it's

still happening. So these are the other kind of things talked about at the end. UM. So that was kind of copy as a whole. UM. The one last thing I want to mention is just how evil Facebook is. UM. So kind of kind of an aside, but UM, Facebook vice president of Global Affairs UH talked um and about Facebook's efforts to combat climate misinformation. UM as the Glasgow

somewhat began. But as this was happening, conservative media, let's like Newsmax or we're running ads on Facebook calling a global warming a hoax, gaining hundreds of thousands of views, stuff like you know, Canadas WinCE and Daily Wire, we're spreading climate misinformation. But and you know, as as Facebook is bragging about its ability to to combat misinformation around

climate change. Um. The UK based think tank Influence Map, which identified misleading Facebook ads UH from several media outlets UM around Copy also found that fossil field companies and lobbying groups spent half a million dollars on political and social issue Facebook ads during the summit, resulting in over twenty two million impressions, including content that promoted environmental effects

under what we would call like green washing. Stuff like you know, the American Petroleum Institute putting up putting an ad out over like a natural landscape as it liked touts its efforts to tackle climate change. UM, so all

all of that kind stuff. So I just think it's really dumb because Facebook breaks about its ability to combat misinformation as its running ads saying climate changes the hoax and then doing generally green greenwashing is more common, but still trustrating um And and yeah, just as a note, like we talked about this in the Facebook it as it's a bastards that dropped recently, but like the number one spreader right now of climate disinformation on Facebook is

bright Bart, which a lot of the Facebook papers have gone on too. Like the extreme lengths, Facebook executives went to keep bright Bart as one of their like trusted news partners and continue putting their stuff out to a huge audience because it goes very viral. It was good

for engagement on the platform, and that's the decision. Facebook's like, whatever they say, this is like when we when we're talking about car carbon credits, when we're talking about like the different proposed solutions, I'll do a bit of waffling because I don't want to come across as too certain about what the right way to go forward is. When it comes to how Facebook has handled climate disinformation, it's

very black and white. They enabled it for direct profit and they talked about it, and people within the company were like, Hey, we're deliberately enabling climate change misinformation in order to make more money. Um, it's a it's a it's a very easy case to make. Yeah. So that wraps up my uh, my report back on COP twenty six.

I know a lot of a lot of stuff was like there's there's a lot of headlines like before the somebody even ended, before the deal was even finalized, I was like, is a failure, which is like yes, But I think I think it is worth actually really learning what happens at these things, because I think we have this idea that they're like some like mythic secret gathering

of people to discuss plans. And it's like no, like you can actually like see everything they're talking about, Like it's it's all out in the open, like you can actually see what what the plans are. It doesn't need to be all shrouded in it. It doesn't need be

like shrouded in mystery. So I just wanted to give people like a rundown on what the actual people in power, how they're discussing climate change, and what their expectations are and how you know, expectations have you know, the past five years have arisen by basically a degree, right, because like we're like we can do one point five, and now we're like we can do two point five. So that is what we've done in five years. That's what's happened.

And I think that's what justifies the kind of blanket pessimism about anything coming from copy about anything being suggested by like a state actor and international organization, which is that like we've all watched the last twenty years, like they've said a lot of great stuff about what could work. It's like that Nature article about like Okay, well, like you've got a bunch of math here arguing about how it might work. But we've got the last twenty years

of policies to snave. But it probably won't right. But it's almost certainly not going to work, right, so we we can say, like, yeah, theoretically this might be helpful, but like, realistically nothing, everything you guys have argued about in the same way has been a miserable failure pretty much. Well, that that wraps it up for us. Uh. You can follow the show on Twitter and apparently Instagram. Um at happened here? Pod and Coolson of Media. We got a

new Coolson Media show dropping soon. Uh, Mega Corp. That's pretty exciting. Check it out. It's about how we love Amazon and you should pay the money. I don't think that's what it's about, but anyway, Yeah, so buy some carbon offsets from Amazon and with that, with that, we're closing the show. Welcome back to it could happen here a show about how things are following up art at least generally, a show about how things are falling apart, um and how to you know, maybe maybe not falling

apart that much. But we have a we have a little bit of a different episode for you today. A friend of a friend of mine reached out to me recently in the wake of a pair of episodes we did From Behind the Bastards on sexual abuse within the by Scouts of America, which was, if you're not aware, and endemic problem, with more than a hundred thousand victims having come forward in the last year alone. UM. And

this is a case that kind of ties into that. Uh. It's it's the case of a young man UM who committed murder in a young man who was also UM, a victim of a terrible series of crime. So I wanted to kind of shine a little bit of light on the case of Heath Stocks today, UM. And to help me do that is Mr Michael Kaiser. Michael, welcome to the show, Good afternoon, Thanks for having me. Michael. Would you like to introduce kind of your affiliation with

this case before we go over the broad strokes of it. Sure. UM. Again, my name is Michael Kaiser. I'm a criminal defense attorney with the Last and Cassinelli Firm in Little Rock, Arkansas. UM. This case started in the nineties and I was I'm

thirty two, so I was not practicing. Then I came into this case in the last two years after Heath has already I've been sentence to three life sentences, and I assisted him in filing a petition for a commutation, asking for the Governor of Arkansas to reduce those sentences to a term of years and giving him a chance

of parole while he is still alive. And and can we, uh, let's go over kind of what happened in this case the basis because this is this is a really sad story, UM, and it's one of those things where there's there's not a lot of I think, easy answers. But yeah, let's let's talk about sort of the broad strokes of what happened, and then we can drill into what what you're trying to achieve here. Sure, So the broad strokes are back in UM, when Heath was a young man, UM, just

twenty years old. UM, he was arrested and charged with killing his entire immediate family, both his mother, father, UM, and his younger sister. He was quickly identified as the primary suspect, question confessed, arrested, charged, and within I believe six months, had pleaded guilty to all three capital murders and received a sense of life without parole for each

each one of those, for a total of three life sentences. UM. Shortly after he was convicted, UM, it came to light that his longtime boy scout Scout Master Jack Walls had been molesting Heats since he was around age nine or ten. UM that it was a serial sort of abuse that Heat, that Heath was not the only one. UM, that it was particularly brutal, and that his abuse didn't just involve

you know, sexual acts. UM, it was kind of a long term I hate to use the term brainwashing, but a lot of people have about what he did to those boys. UM. Heats is not the only life that was ruined. Heath's family is not the only families lives who were ruined. UM, but Heats is unfortunately the most extreme case UM where where he he ultimately committed a crime against against his family. We'll get into the circumstances

in a second. I just want to add a little bit of clarification that the scout master, we're looking at between a hundred and a hundred and fifty victims, kind of conservatively based on what I've been reading. Yes, Yeah, and it's it's some of I mean, it's so this guy. Some of it's the stuff that you heard in a lot of these other cases. Some of it is is very unique to this guy. But he would basically he would have people over, kids over camping on his land. UM,

he would take them shooting. He worked for an ammunition company. UM, he would molest them. He would also like purchase prostitutes for them. And it was this, UM, I mean a lot of of really some of the worst abuse that I've read about in connection to any of these these boy scouts sexual abuse cases. UM, it's it's pretty harrowing stuff when you read the stories of other kids, UM, who were kind of in the same position that Heath was. Yeah, Unfortunately,

you're you're correct. It's you know, every time you think this can't get worse, or this case is so extreme, that you find some other element that's more offensive, more appalling, more victims, more more families ruined down the line. Even um today thirty forty years fifty years later. M. Yeah, so how does the because I mean, one of the things about this is this is a pretty the initial

crime here is pretty horrific. Um. And I think it's it's one of those things where it is hard to have a lot of sympathy for Heath until you kind of learn about what this guy like, his his his role in the crime, because it was not just a case of, um, you know, a kid committing murder. It was a case of a kid being um, very deliberately pushed into committing murder. And potentially I think that there's the allegations being made her that he was he directly

helped with it as well. Yes, um, so you know, at first glance, yeah, it looks it looks really bad for Heath. Um. But over the years, um, what we have learned is that what what really happened is that Heath had been serially abused sexually, physically, emotionally and otherwise by Jack for a period of ten plus years. His mother discovers the abuse and discusses it with her, her

pastor another religious counselor. Uh. Heath informs Jack that you know, his mother is aware and and Jack instructs heath to do as he's been taught. UM, and and to kill the problem. Um. Jack was never convicted with anything associated

with the death of of the Stocks family. UM. However, his first set of life sentences for the many assaults that he was convicted of, UM, when they were reversed, it was because the judge in that in that sentencing hearing said, you know that the death of the Stocks family is also on your hands. And because he hadn't been formally convicted of that, he actually had his original life sentences reversed. Every sentencing he got essentially the same sentence,

multiple life sentences in additional years. UM. But yes, there there's there is a connection. UM. It wasn't known at the time, or at least it wasn't publicized, And if if it had been, I think the results of his case would be very different. I don't think you and I would be speaking right now. Yeah. And it's I mean, obviously like this is this is this is a thoroughly

horrible situation. UM. And when somebody commits three murders, I think even people who are very critical of the criminal justice system should agree that, like something needs to be done.

But I it just seems so unfair to lock this kit up for his entire life without kind of and and and acting as if this was just a thing he did on his own, rather than kind of the result of a pretty horrific I mean, one of the most one of the most horrific patterns of abuse and exploitation of a of a child that I can imagine, um And I don't know, I don't know what would actually like help other than getting him into a situation where he's not spending the rest of his life in

a prison cell. Like I don't know what the long term for him looks like in terms of rebuilding this guy's potential to have a life, but it certainly starts with him not spending the rest of that life in a jail cell. The problem we've encountered, um with Heat's case is the parole board, and many just even just people that encounter the case wonder why would he attack and kill you know, his immediate family rather than his abuser.

And in the twenty five plus years or in the twenty five years or so since this happened, I mean juvenile that our understanding of the juvenile brain, neurocycle psychology in general um has has come leaps and bounds, and so know that a serially abused child has brain damage from really about the time that that starts happening. And so in Heats crazy world, and we do have this

in our clemency application. We've had UM abuse specialists evaluate Heath and and see how he you know, his actions conformed to our current understanding within the crazy world that he lived in. He actually was making, dare I say, the reasonable decision. So Jack had demonstrated numerous times over the years he has physical, sexual, and and even control over heats life. He can end it at any time. He explicitly and implicitly threatens the boys all the time.

He's got weapons everywhere. He's a Vietnam veteran. He brings them out to his property, shows them how to shoot, shows them what he will do to those who you know, go against him. Um, So, within Heat's world, he actually made a somewhat reasonable decision. He uh, the bigger threat was was Jack. Um. He can't kill Jack, so he has to do the thing to appease Jack to avoid

the more severe abuse. That's oversimplifying it, but that's something that I don't think we would have been able to conceptualize. Back in the nineties, you had the element of there's it's it's mail on mail, and we're talking about a very small rural community, UM in central Arkansas, and that element cannot be overlooked at all as well. That was a huge thing that Jack was counting on to keep

these boys silent. UM. He explicitly told them, if you tell what happened to you, they're going to think that you are homosexual and a liar. So there's just there's

there's just so many horrible things. UM. In this case, Jack had decades of experience doing this and unfortunately, because of his position in the community, the son of a prominent judge, UM, the long time Scout master, the communities man of the Year multiple times, UM, he had access to dozens and dozens of boys, in fact, entire generations of these of these boys in Lono County. UM. Heat's case is just one of many. Unfortunately, it's the most extreme case and it's kind of tests the bounds of

our mercy. But the kid that discovered Jack, while he's a hero, ultimately he killed himself and he's not the only one. So unfortunately, the Stocks family are not the only people who lost their lives and not the only people whose lives, just like he's, were completely destroyed by

Jack Walls. Yeah, and this is this is an important thing to understand because when we're talking about kind of the the lingering impacts of childhood sexual abuse, it can take a wide variety of forms and when we like but but it but it is important to understand that the damage it can do goes so much further beyond like the physical damage done by the abuse, like these are your your brain is still forming and growing when you're that young, and he this is one manifestation of

kind of what can happen um at the more extreme end, admittedly, um as as the result like this is why it's such a heinous crime to abuse a child in this way. And it's just I don't know, like you're right, it is it It tests the limit of um people's capacity for I don't know, forgiveness seems like the wrong word, but like clemency. You know, this again is a pretty

heinous crime. Um. But at the same time, I can't bring myself to think that what he endured leading up to this shouldn't have an impact on what happens to him afterwards, right, Like it does. It does reduce his his complicity in this, and I just feel it feels so wrong to say that, like, well, he should spend the rest of his life behind bars, Like that's just not I can't imagine anything could help, Like I can't imagine that could help in any way. Um, just writing

this this person and off forever, I don't know. It just is, it's it's fucked. What are the next steps for y'all, for your for the defense team. So at this point, we've already filed a petition UH with the Arkansas governor requesting a commutation. That's not a pardon, that's not something saying say that Heath is innocent. We're asking the governor to modify his sentences to a term of years forty years in each case, to be served concurrently.

So in effect, one single sentence of forty years. Yeah. Well, in Arkansas, you're actually at the time he was convicted, he'd be parle eligible at se. So that's twenty eight years. That's not a guarantee of pearle. That is just what it means, parole eligibility. So that's what we've asked for. Um, we think his institutional record speaks for itself, and if and when he is a candidate for pearle, he hopefully will make pearole. He's he's done everything within his power

UM to do so. UM. If this fails, it's right now. Uh. We in Arkansas at first goes to the parole Board, who makes a non binding recommendation to the governor. They have recommended that the governor deny it. UM, which is unfortunate, but again it's not binding. UM. The governor now has I believe until February or March of two to issue his decision. UM. He has not yet. UM. We have requested a sit down with the governor. I don't know if we'll actually sit down with Governor Asa Hutchinson. We

will sit down with his criminal justice coordinator. UM. We're thankful and lucky to have the support of all of the remaining victims family members. So both sides of Heat's family. UM, you know we have we have extensive support. UM. It wasn't they they A lot of them had to work to get to this point, a lot of them had to understand the true impact of the abuse. But at this point, UM, we have extensive support from both sides.

Of his family. UM. As far as we know, there are no objections to his commutation application from from victims family members. The only ones that there have been are from the sentencing judge or from the sentencing court. It's actually not the same judge and the sentencing or the prosecutor from that from that county, again a different person um, but they felt the need to object. I should this fail,

we will seek additional post conviction remedies um uh. In Arkansas, we have something called a petition for writ of ericorium nobis UM. You can file it. You have to ask the Supreme Court, Hey, is it okay if I file a petition back in the trial court asking them to consider something that, if we had known back in ninety eight, would have affected the outcome of the litigation. In this case,

we would point to the we we've had heath evaluated. UM. It will point to that neuropsychological evaluation UM as as new evidence. UM. We couldn't fully make a connection at the time between his abuse and the offense to answer that question why he killed his family rather than his abuser. We now can. And so that's what we're going to allege, is that is that new evidence. Um whether the court will will find that it is remains to be seen. When he tried this on his own about five years ago,

the court denied it. He alleged the new evidence was the fact of the long term sexual abuse of him by Jack Walls, and the court in a in an opinion that really does not um, you know, shows shows the lack of understanding of long term juvenile sexual abuse, found that well though you personally were aware of all of that in your own mind because it had happened to you, So that was not new evidence. And I mean we know that the average male who makes this

sort of disclosure, it occurs deep into adulthood. So it's just at every level of the system. Even today, we're still feeling the effects of kind of that old school mentality about about this, and it's unfortunate. We could talk about kind of the the car serile state and this idea that like penalty is the way to respond to any kind of crime. But even if you believe that, even if you believe that, like you have to punish

people with incarceration when they commit crimes. He's done twenty five years, Like that's no one, No one is discussing the possibility of Heath not being punished for the murder, you know, because it's he has been not just with time behind bars, but the fact that his family's gone. The idea that the state could do anything that's worse to him than than the scout Master did, to be honest,

is kind of absurd in my head. But UM, where is there anything that, like, I don't know, I'm trying to determine, like what can be done to help in this situation? Is there any way people can actually help outside of like you and the team that's that's working to try and sit down with the governor? Yeah? UM, I mean public support is is wonderful. The more people that are pointing out the problems in Heath's case and with his sentences and that are reaching out to the governor, UM,

the better we think our chances are. UM. I apologize, I don't have the email address on me, but the governor has several publicly accessible UM accounts, as does his criminal Justice coordinator. Even just getting on Facebook UM and and bringing it up. UM, there's a Facebook account managed by one of Heath's friends. I'm in Florida called at Hope for heat Stocks. UM. It's there's also a website.

I think it's Hope for Heat stocks dot info. It's probably the most extensive trove of resources in this case. It has almost all original documents. It's where I still go to access things when I need them, even though I am his attorney. So there's a lot out there. There's a lot of ways to support the cause, even just telling other people about it. Um. We do have

a documentary in the works. UM. I actually don't think it has a producer at this point, but we're hopeful to have something out in early to make Keith, to make Jack, to make this case more of a household name. UM. The hopes that you know, if any sort of um, you know, if there's more support out there, more pressure on the governor, it will increase the odds that that will do the right thing here. Yeah, I mean, this shouldn't be a political issue. There shouldn't be a left

or right thing. Like everyone should be able to see this is uh, this is the result of abuse, and that should have an impact on the what we actually what's actually what our society actually does to this kid in the wake of the crime. Perhaps it's like foolish to hope for some sort of rationality as regards a case like this, But I would hope that we could be rational about this and everyone agree, yes, this kid deserves something more than what he's gotten. UM. I don't know.

It's it's a bleak one though. That's putting it lightly. New York recently recently passed a law that kind of acknowledged kind of where you're at with it for victims of domestic or sexual abuse who then committed crimes um that weren't necessarily during the course of that specific abuse UM. And it allowed people like Heath to apply for resentencing if they met certain statutory qualifications um for things that mitigated their crime didn't justify it, but that didn't come

out originally. Unfortunately, in Arkansas, we don't have a similar process. The only thing we have available is this clemency commutation process. And unfortunately, as you said, it should be a political but it's not. It's it's explicitly political. The parole board are all appointees by our governor. The governor is an elected official. There's a reason we filed it in the

last year of his last term in Arkansas. He has term limited, so we're trying to get him at a point where he's as free from the politics to do what he actually thinks is correct. But to think that politics will be removed is I mean, yeah, it never is. No, this is this is the United States inies, you know, politics is is a factor here, and there's a deeply

divisive case in the state and especially in Lono County. Well, it's hard I can imagine it being hard to talk with people about just because again, the nature of the crime is is horrific. And so if you talk about like, well, we we think this guy should have another chance at life, and you're like, well, but he killed three people, he killed his sister, and yes, that is the case, but

that's not the only thing going down here. And you just have to I think, if you're if you're at all, even if you're not coming at this from kind of politically where I am in regarding you know, the car serial state, you have to acknowledge that, like, this is not a race Heath's crimes. But Heath's crimes were also the result of not just the scout master's abuse, but of a number of failures on a on a wide level in our society that allowed that abuse to occur.

Um and so I don't know. I I feel like there's a lot of reasons why it behooves us to give this kid another chance. I don't know. That doesn't make it easier to convince anyone else, But yeah, well, how would this case play out if it happened today versus in even in a more rural part of Arkansas.

I think our understanding of several of the issues here it is so has come so far that my hope is Heath would have received a term of years rather than being charged with capital are They originally were seeking the death penalty, and he made a deal for multiple life sentences, both as someone under twenty one and as a victim of long term sexual abuse. I would like to think that if this happened today, even in that county, what we're asking for is something close to what what

would what would happen? I would hope, I would hope so that that's why, again, we didn't ask for a pardon. We didn't ask let him out today. We said, let him earn it, let him still feel the weight of of what he has done. But give him that light at the end of the tunnel, because you know, there is no one in the Arkansas Department of Correction. Even with that, there's just not a victim like him there, and there's not someone who who could be an advocate

for victims like him were he to be released. So yep, well, all right, Michael, is there anything else you wanted to get into with this or any other ways people might be able to help check out the website again and post on social media. Um. Uh. The one thing I think we didn't focus on here is Heath himself. Um. Heath is a deeply spiritual individual. He's someone who lives with this on his conscious almost every moment of the day. This is not not someone who you know, feels he's

skated by by avoiding the death penalty. Um. This is someone who has had to learn about trauma, mostly on his own, because with those life sentences, he is ineligible for so many of the programs of the scant programs and resources that we have in the Department of Correction because they don't give it to people who don't have parole dates. So he's had to do a lot of

this on his own. He's come a remarkable way. He's still someone that needs um probably extensive treatment and therapy to deal with his own trauma as well as to deal with the effects of what he did on himself. Um. But he's a remarkable individual. He's a great self advocate. I wish you could speak with him as well. Um. He's someone I'm proud to represent. Not just that I do because I get paid. Um, this is why I got into the practice of law. Is this type of case. Um,

he is not innocent, but he is not. Uh, he should not be bearing the full weight of what occurred. While you know, Jack is serving a life sentence. I think he should have one or two or three more for his role in this. I mean heats youth and heats brain damage. Because of that, sexual abuse should have and now should be considered. And we just hope the governor will Yeah, yeah, hopefully so. And again, if you

want to learn more, there's Heath stocks dot info. Um, there's a lot of good about Jack Walls on there as well. UM, and you can there's a link to make a donation to Heath's defense. Um. Alright, well, Michael, thank you so much for coming on today. UM, and I hope you have a good rest of your week. Now's well, yeah, hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe. It Could Happen Here is a production of

cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool zone Media, visit our website cool zone media dot com, or check us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated monthly at cool zone media dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.