It Could Happen Here Weekly 167

Cool Zone Media.

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

Welcome to tack it Up and hear a podcast about things falling apart and putting them back together again. I'm your host, Bio. Long so long ago, in a galaxy far far away, we talked about the collapse of the US Postal Service and the absolute horror show that's been inflicted on postal workers. When we last left our intrepid heroes, things were not great. They have continued to be not great. And with us to talk about this entire shit show is bad Mouth.

Yeah, it's great to be back.

Yeah, thanks for having us.

Yeah. So all right, let's start in a place where many things start, which is to say, the nineteen seventies, the full crow upon which history pivoted. So one of the things that we talked about the listeners sort of the last episode is that post office workers are not legally allowed to go on strike. This is sort of nonsense, but it also doesn't mean that it's never happened. Oh, by the way, is this we're abut to talk about wildcat strike disclaimers? No one here represents a union there

Yeah, tell me you want to take that one.

Yeah, So, going back to the nineteen seventies, the working conditions for letter carriers were so bad that most of them couldn't afford the cost of living. They found themselves in a position where they are working for a quasi federal position and are finding themselves on welfare, struggling just to find the means to get to work, oftentimes having to work a second job, if they even have time for a second job. Because the Post Office has and still is very good at skipping around a lot of

There was a long history of abuse.

You're dangling people's livelihood over their head, care like holding a carrot over them, you know, and it really pushed people to an edge. You saw a lot of violence on the workroom floor, not only from supervisors but from carriers that just snapped.

Yeah, it was a time of great disparity.

Yeah, the thing with the Post Office is Tom was mentioned and they dangled a carrot, but there's never any goddamn carrot. It's all stick. It's supposed to be a carrot and stick, it's all stick. There's no carrot there. Management in the post office is just trying to get you to move as fast as possible and cut corners, and that erodes safety, it erodes service, and it just a toxic, horrible,

Yeah, time is a flat circle.

But Vince Sobrado, who was an organizer out of New York City, the ANOC didn't strike all over the country.

It was New York and Chicago and San Francisco.

It was some major hubs, right, and Vince Sobrado came out of that and we won in that strike one collective bargaining rights. Now, the thing we gave up, and it was a trade off, so we have a no layoff clause, so they can't lay us off.

But we gave up the right to strike.

Making sure that there wouldn't be another wildcat strike.

Right.

So that's kind of why our hands are tied in that sense. Now, if we have an impasse our with our negotiation, and like we get a tentative agreement and we during the ratification process vote that down, now we can either try and go back to the bargaining table or it gets brought in front of an arbiter basically an impartial judge, and they'll have a panel. The post Office will pick two, and they then ELC will pick two, and then I think there's one impartial that's supposed to

Yeah, and so, as we sort of mentioned before, one of the things about the post office, it's it's similar if people remember the rail like the rail strike that didn't happen, where there's all of these hoops you have to jump, you'd be able to go on strike. And that's because again, like rail workers, postal workers don't operate under the normal sort of National Labor Relations Board like framework.

So a tentative agreement is effectively the first draft. When you are going through and negotiating, you will reach a contract where management and the union kind of agree and they put it before their union members. And the idea is that your union members are able to vote whether or not this tentative agreement passes. And again, like that nof was saying, if it gets rejected or if it gets turned down, then it goes back to the drawing board, or we get an arbitrator, and it goes through a

Was in the Post Office.

The amount of back pay that they're going to have to pay on some of these races is kind of insane, and I imagine that a lot of people won't see it for a long time.

But yeah, that's what a tentative agreement is.

A lot of people think that it's a bad thing to go back to the drawing board, or a bad thing to be negotiate or be put before an arbitrator. I largely think that is a myth. If you think about any sort of negotiation, the first the first offer is never the best one. I think a lot of people are just afraid that somehow you would end up

Yeah, a lot of them are still dealing with I like most of us are the hangover from the Reagan years. Yeah, right, so they're all terrified of union stuff. Even though they love the union and they're in the union, they're very distrustful of it. And they don't think that we can ask for what we deserve. They think we need to ask for what they think we can get based on the ship that management is saying, because they're again still shell shocked from the Reagan years and all the anti labor stuff.

And that's that's how a profound impact on most of the unions that survived that period and a lot of them didn't, right, which is which is you know, part of why you get people who behave like this. But on the downside is it means that you get handed a lot of deals that absolutely suck. But do you know what else absolutely sucks? It's the products and services that's for this podcast, the probably don't I don't know.

Yeah, yeah, so it's been I think we're coming up on six hundred days since our last contract expired.

Jeez. Yeah.

Yeah, there's people that just want their back pay. So even if the back pay is dog shit, they're desperate because inflation is eight percent across the country in some places, right, and like people are just desperate for that chunk of money. That delaying process feels very very intentional.

Yeah.

So the tenetive agreement comes out around five hundred days after negotiations we're supposed to have started, and there's all sorts of nonsense going on during then, but we're getting promises like it's going to be a historic agreement, We're going to get significant raises. We're going to go to an all career workforce, which, by the way, we don't have right now.

Hey, can you saw what that is with the way? Yeah?

Uh okay.

So in every other trade you have an apprenticeship program, right, so when you get on the job, you wet behind the ears, you're brand new. You are automatically career, you are automatically paying into your retirement. You're automatically getting the regular benefits everyone else is. In most trades, you're paying half the dues that the journeymen are paying, and you are considered a full employee.

You're the new jack.

You're getting all the shit jobs, but you are a full employee. The Post Office has a position called the City Carrier Assistant, which, on paper and how they'll tell you sounds like an apprenticeship program, but it's really more like they took an apprenticeship program and an unpaid internship and jammed them together. Because these kids are coming in and I'm not even kids. I'm forty years old. I started as a CCIA of forty years old. They're coming

So that was a big thing.

And it creates a whole third tier because we already have two different, two different tiered wage system which sucks enough, and anyone that pays attention to labor that drives a huge wedge between workers and it crushes solidarity at kneecaps a union, and now with the CCA position in this non career workforce, it's created a whole third tier.

This is one of the things that the UAW is fighting for. It's like, is eliminating teering systems all together, because if you're actually trying to get a functional union and make people's jobs better, that's the thing that you do. And having a having a third tier yeah not good, extremely bad.

Yeah exactly, And it's it's it's because they've adopted sort of this Amazon model of doing things where they just have this burning churn situation where like Amazon Bezos said that he doesn't want anyone working for Amazon for more than like.

Two years, Yeah, if they have these.

People constantly and they're constantly burning through them, and they never have to pay full benefits, they never have to pay into their retirement, they never have to pay them more than twenty dollars an hour, and they can just get you to work your ass off and burn out and quit within two years.

As people retire, their labor costs go down. It's evil. It's absolutely it's some Jack Welch hateful bullshit.

So touching on that, if people are really quitting before they reach a point in their career where they're educated and can stand up for themselves or stand up for each other on the workroom floor, that's one of the major reasons that our union is failing. And like you said, you use the exact example that I would have. The

Insurance or your retirement or.

Anything, that you're effectively making less than the minimum wage. You're almost paying to go to work as a CCA. Then just to be Yoda and told that you're not going fast enough, even though there's no street standard. But that's that's getting into a little bit of nipicky key contract and stuff that language.

Yeah, so yeah, that's one thing that they're promising was to get rid of that non career workforce. So this ta comes out and after hearing that we're getting rid of the non career significant raises, it's going to be historic for us. What they offered us was one point three percent Jesus Christy.

Yeah, I mean, and this is something for if you were in a union and you hear your leadership say the words historic contract, you are screwed. That agreement is

Yeah, you'd think if you're making six figures a year, you could understand how to buy a used car and know that you promise low and deliver high. Like I don't understand how making six figures a year. They haven't figured that out. But yeah, so in this contract, one point three percent, and that's enough to piss anyone off because that drops about the same time that we all see the longshoremen getting going back to the table because

You have twelve six the hour rule.

You don't have to work more than twelve hours in a day or sixty hours in a week. You can say I can't do this, I'm going home, and the union could protect you. Now if you are a CCA, or if you have signed up to do overtime and they tell you to stay sixteen hours you have you have no choice.

Jesus Christ. So so so you you gave up things for a one point that's that's a one point three percent raise. Is like like that that's the kind of thing that you get if like I don't know, say, like you got like some unbelievable concession package somewhere else, maybe conceivably you would take that, or maybe maybe it's a thing where like you're you're you're like a nurse and your problem isn't pay. Your problem is you're working

Yeah, I mean it makes it makes you think about, like what was there?

What was their first offer?

Like it's been over five hundred days of negotiations, what was the first offer? We got to put the fuel in the mail trucks ourselves?

Like you know what I mean, Tom.

Do you want do you want to talk about what the tenet of agreement doesn't address?

So the tenetive Agreement, we spoke about the Post Office's strategy for dealing with our grievances or how to combat the union last episode, and so for the people that didn't listen to it or just need a refresher, the Post Office has found this extremely effective strategy that if they just don't agree at any point in our in our grievance procedure, which is if they violate the contract and we want to be made whole, whatever that may look like, they can just keep on saying no and

The other thing that the contract doesn't really touch on is.

Our uniform situation, where the companies that make and manufacture the uniforms for our letter carriers and actually for all the positions in the post office are effectively trying to sell you a shirt for like eighty dollars, or the most egregious one is like your win your Parka is close to four hundred dollars and your balance that you're you're giving is I think three eighty FM.

I don't know, it's been one.

Oh, it's up to four ninety nine.

But the rain trench coat, just the raincoat is four hundred and sixty five dollars and you have to get it through a vendor, so you can't even pay them money to do that. Like a pair of polyester pants that's going to fall apart in two months, ninety five dollars.

Oh my god.

Oh yeah, no, it's it's wild. It's wild price gouging.

And they they were going to address that, and what they did was they increased are they increased our uniform allowance by thirty five dollars, which is like three pairs of socks from those magazines.

Great incredible stuff.

Yeah, it's it's it's wild.

Someone should dig into who's running that company and like who they're working with to get those contracts, because probably a fun story there.

I think it's like four out of five of the approved manufacturers or the distributed are owned by the same people.

So oh great, okay, Yeah, I'm bequeathing this as a gift to it. I know there's a bunch of journalists. You listen to this, go go do that story. I guarantee you'll find some unbelievably unhinged stuff.

And a quick shout out to any letter carriers that are listening to this. If you don't use your entire allowance, look out for the ccas, look out for the PTFs, the non career and the fresh faces on there. If you don't use the entirety of your uniform allowance, to the way that they view it is that they can give us less money, So use all of it. Don't protest by not spending that money. It's not even yours, so spend it. Give it to someone, do something, you.

Know, Yeah, get the new jack in your office a fucking raincoat, because like I tried, to do the math on it. For winter gear for a place like Minnesota, to get all the winter gear and your summer gear, it's going to take you four years of uniform allowances to get.

All that gear. Jesus right, it's ridiculous. Yeah.

And like it's Minnesota, right, Like I'm from Chicago, so like it is, it is slightly warmer in Chicago and you get wincheles in negative forty here, Yeah, and like Minnesota is much worse. So like that is that that is not like optional stuff. That is the difference between you having hypothermia and you not.

Have Yeah, no, exactly.

And and god forbid you want to buy a pair of shorts as well, because Minnesota, Minnesota summers get over one hundred index.

Yeah. Yeah, speaking speaking of ways to not die in Minnesota summers, here are some product and services that will probably not help you with that, but maybe they will. And we are back.

One of the other things that Tom touched on that this agreement doesn't address is he talked about the non compliance and the grievance backlog, but also just the toxic work environment, which we've talked about.

And it's so bad.

The whole reason we have The trope of someone going postal is usually because someone's bullied to a point where violence occurs. They either take it out on management or my own manager in my first year got in a fistfight with one of the clerks.

Jesus correct.

The post office has lost grievances because management was threatening to shoot an employee. Any letter carrier would have been fired for that immediately that manager got a letter of warning.

Yeah, we have a joint statement on violence in the workplace, which I think you were about to get into the leg. Yeah, they're just not complying. It's a very one sided thing. Effectively, management has qualified immunity.

Great, great, your managers are also cops. It could attack you. Incredible, incredible stuff from the post office.

Yeah, and then there's a bunch of wage theft too. I mean personally, I caught my own manager putting in all the ccas for two hour lunches because the ccas are new and don't know what they're doing and they don't know check their time all the time, putting us all in for two hour lunches and then told me, tried to pretend to me, oh, that was just an automatic computer error. Whereas if we take a thirty one minute lunch. I have my phone blowing up being asked

Come on, don't lie.

You don't gotta lie.

You don't gotta lie to be my friend, Like, come on, and then and then there's other places around the country where we the NLCS one grievances where management was making CCA's work in the dark, delivering mail till like seven thirty pm and clocking them out at four o'clock in the after business. All right, so they got people out there working for free. It's it's and we have to catch we have to catch them doing that. Yeah, they're never going to own up to it that they all

So there's even more convoluted ways that the management finds to effectively steal from the employees, and one of them huge problem is changing the metrics on what a route looks like. And so they can alter the times of hey, how long you were in the office packing your truck when you got back to the office and started unloading and cleaning, And so what they do is they make it look like the street time took you, let's call it five hours, and you were in the office for

This is a really big problem for the rural carriers. Their contract is a little bit different.

Effectively, they get paid by the job, not necessarily hourly, or that's the case for a lot of them, and so if you're adjusting their times, they're going to be paid out for an eight hour day. But you know, the route has just been stretched out through this method of just dishonest scanning and disalamant entries, and they get

Yeah, and in every single one of these contracts, they're inventing new, different and unique ways to do wage theft just steal people's money, which, and it's worth noting again, like if a post carrier like broke into an office and stole the amount of money that is being stolen

Yeah, yeah, and yeah, you do not fuck with the mail cops. But the mail cops the postal inspectors work for management. So yeah, and management does nothing but sit in their chair all day, sniffing their own farts, watching tiktoks, and trying to figure out how to screw people through the virtue of spreadsheets while we are all out working our asses off. It's a very demoralizing and abusive, abusive situation. So we were hoping that shit would get addressed in

I am out of Fort Worth, but like it's started.

In Minneapolis, and you've got people in Chicago and New York and Naples, Florida, and San Antonio, Hawaii, all over the country who are basically, we are tired of we are tired of our leadership being in bed with management or at least doing things where they look like they're in bed with management. We've been putting on vote no rallies all over the country. You've probably seen some on the news.

And this this is vote no for the tight devisse. Yes, this is this is this is a vote to send your bargaining reps back to the table with the demand that we can't take a deal that sucks this much. That's what a vote no thing is. Yeah.

So yeah, we've been trying to get letter carriers to vote no on it. That's so we've been doing the vote no campaigns so we can vote this shit down and get it in front of a judge. Because once it goes into arbitration, there's a lot of fear mongering things, Oh we could lose this, Oh we could lose that. Oh we could lose this. But like Mia, you you said it yourself. These are all concessions. We're not getting anything for giving up all these things. One point three percent is what we're getting.

Like, yeah, like one point three percent is the kind of raise that like in a normal functioning union is like that. That's like a company's opening agreements that both you and the company knows you're not going to take. Yeah, like it's a joke.

Like that in and of itself would be a major concession to get something else.

But we're doing all these concessions to get that.

Yeah, that's the win quote unquote.

Yeah.

So the thing is the Postal Reform Act says that we are supposed to get paid comparatively to a comparable

Or eight years to reach top scale. Ours tops out.

With this tentative agreement at ninety three thousand a year, and it still takes us thirteen years to get to top steps. Christ, that's not comparable, right, yeah, yeah, no, not at all. So I'm not afraid of arbitration. I'm hoping we get this in front of an arbiter, because unless that arbiter is completely crooked, I can't see him saying, well, you guys deserve one point three percent.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So when I first saw badmouth talking and what his posts were on Reddit and stuff like that, I got really excited because I remember when I was speaking to my local president and talking to the stewards in my area across like a couple of different stations, the kind of big question was what do you do when the union breaks your heart? And I guess the answer is everything that badmouth has just talked about. You build a better one. You remind people that there is an alternative.

You know, I try to sneak in as many anarchist shit without saying I'm an anarchist. I try and sneak as much of that shit in as I can. I get old heads who have a Trump hat on talking about anarchist talking points.

It's it's funny as fuck to me.

You know who won't break your heart?

Frogs support this podcast if you don't fight them with therefore canoffee. Is there anything else you want to talk about with arbitration or should we move on to the impending doom of the postal Service? Yeah?

I think I think the arbitration there's a whole lot of fear mongoring and shit. I think anyone paying attention to things we can't get a worse deal is the main point there, and that's that's the whole point of the vote no campaign is to just tell people, hey, dude, we might as well go down swinging, like we're not going to get a worse deal than this.

But that's that's pretty much it for arbitration.

Yeah, so let's let let's let's move on to the future of the post office, which I want to take a second to mention that, like, Okay, look like I am not someone who has any respect for the people who built the US government. However, if you want the US government to like exist, right, the postal service is something that was deemed so important that it is like establishing the postal service is in the main body of

Right.

They thought that shit was more important than like you're right to have freedom of assembly, like you're right to not literally be grabbed off the street and tortured, which is like the Fourth Amendment right. So like, you know, in the scale of priorities of like how important is the postal service, Like that's how important people who set it up thought it was. And those people were not very smart and like a bunch of racist slave voters.

But like I am not a founding father, stand but the post office was actually invented by Benjamin Franklin, who I don't believe owned any slaves, and.

Yeah he was really racist, but yeah, oh yeah, I mean like I know, I know that, I know that part.

I'm I just I don't think he actually owned anybody, but like that's it's a yeah yeah, and it was started I think fifteen years before the Constitution was even written.

Oh no, he did, he he he he did own a slave as a young man, and I think freed him.

You know, I was trying to get the racist bastard a little bit of a win.

But like we're finding this out live on this So yeah, he did for his early life and then became an abolitionist later, which is still bad.

Yeah, yeah, that's uh. You know, I'm glad you came around eventually, I guess.

I don't know.

Look, we're finding this out live on the show. Oh my god, that was a lot of time of him owning slaves. That absolutely I.

Take that was why I take back my critical support.

Critical uncritical opposition.

To hell with Brent frank in school, the hell with b Franklin too. But yeah, we're coming in a Trump administration and stuff. And let me tell you that the situation wasn't really great under Biden either, because we have a postmaster, Lewis.

Dickhead to Joy.

He was put into place by Donald Trump, and you've seen they wanted to slow walk the post office into privatization since the Reagan years, right, and they're just slowly chipping away at service and quality. D Joy was connected to XPO, the giant logistics company. He had stock and I can't remember what position he held. He apparently detangled himself from that when he became postmaster. But you know, they all say that I don't know for sure. I am not an accountant, so I can't do that well.

And like like, also I want to point out the president of the United States is issuing a cryptocurrency like that shit that sit is that shit is so fake now, like oh god yeah.

So like Joy's also got a reputations of just being a massive job killer besides looking like a low rent spider man villain. So under his tenure, we've seen service take quality take a nosedive. And I want to talk about this stuff, and this might get my ass in trouble, but I am tired as a letter carrier who loves my job, loves saying hi to people in the neighborhood, loves walking three yards and knowing the names of all the dogs on my route, and being the face of

The packages because the packages.

Have a tracking number and their boss can get in They can get in trouble for that, but they can lie and hide the mail for another day.

Like that shit happens all the time.

Yeah, So it's like can just be like they can just be like hiding like your bills yep, or life social Security check yeah yeah, also your junk mail.

Have you ever have you ever ordered something and it says it was delivered but you didn't get it, and then it shows up the next day, or it says that, oh there's a vacation hold, I didn't put this on hold, and then it shows up the next day, or you got to go down to the post office.

To get it, or recently severe weather delay.

Yeah, well, I mean the severe the severe weather delay can happen, but I'm talking. What I'm talking about is ones where the package didn't make it to the letter carrier who's out there delivering. Because this has happened to me multiple times, and it didn't make it to me before I left the station. But because they want to make their numbers look good for their boss, they will scan it at the station as if it was delivered or as if it's a Jesus.

Yeah.

So because they want.

Their numbers to look good, because their entire job is life on a spreadsheet. And so then I have to I have to talk to my customers the following day. But like it said, it is delivered.

I didn't. I saw you, and you didn't drop it off. I was worried someone stole it. What happened. I was like, I know exactly what happened. I know what their name is.

That's some of the service degradation. We've had people in other areas catch management.

Throwing away mail Jesus Christ.

Yeah, oh yeah.

Management reprimanding carriers who follow the manual and provide good customer service, like I've been on the phone where I've had my manager call me because I was standing in one place for five minutes. And it's because I was helping an elderly woman move her garbage cans and helped her get some groceries out of her car to bring in. You know, all the stuff that you see the good mail man, the reason why people love the post office.

Shit like that. I got told no, you're not doing that.

And I had another customer come up to say hi to me while I was on the phone, and I just stopped to just say hi as I'm walking by, and my manager chewed me out for even talking to the person. They don't care about us, and they throw us under the bus all the time. Because if I don't deliver a package because they never made it to me and it says delivered, the customer will come and complain at the post office. Management will tell them, oh,

Yeah, sorry.

This is one of these areas where like delivering the mail is a social thing, but the thing is like sociality is the enemy of capital, and that's that's the people who are running the post office that they don't give a shit about, you know, like the actual social bonds and ties that you know that that are the thing that society is supposed to be composed of. Like they care about their metrics and them being able to make more money in them, you know, being able to

Yeah, so you have to joy he's doing that, and we have all of these they're starting to some of the stuff they're building these I think they're called sdnc's. It's basically they take a bunch of post offices from a metro area and then they make one big distribution hub like Amazon. Well that is adding an hour commute onto some of these letter carriers. They come in, they get to their mail truck and then they have to drive their mail truck for an hour to even start delivering. Right.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

He's the one who's negotiated this whole contract.

He used his position as president, He iced out everyone from the union. He's the only one who talked to the Post Office. So this this tenet of agreement is his Babe, Wait, what yep, the executive council. What yeah, he didn't tell the executive council.

Wait, you didn't even have like a bargaining team.

No, he had a.

Bargaining team that were all outside contractors. He had no one from the union with him. What yeah, because he wanted.

It to be his baby.

That's so unhidea. That's like, I need to stop here for a second, because that's like, if your union is doing that to you, you need to understand, Like, dear listener, that is not how any of this shit is supposed to work. Yep. Like, even even a normal corrupt union will have a bargaining team that is composed of like it will have a bargaining team that isn't outside contractors, so there'll be people from inside the union who are like the stooges of like whatever sort of management click

You need to.

Cutting out. That's so wild, Oh my god.

Oh yeah No.

And the thing is we're coming up on six hundred days without an without a ratified contract, like he has been the only one doing it this whole time, and there's a bunch of shady shit. Okay, so he's struggled with alcoholism. I have dealt with addiction. I have lost friends to addiction. I have family members to struggle with addiction. I respect anybody who is going to take care themselves. But he disappeared for something like fifty days or something,

And it doesn't matter.

Which one it is to me, whether he's corrupt or just an idiot, it's all the same to me because I can't make my fucking rent. So expect de Joy and the Post Office to do us dirty. That's their job as management. But to have the president of our own union doing this to us is unacceptable, and like it's yeah, yeah, yeah.

So on that note, that's one of the big pushes for the union recently has been to reach open bargaining where the membership is actually a part of it. And that's what to my knowledge, it is one of the major issues that the building and fighting and IOC or the building better union talks are going towards.

Yeah, can you can you talk about what open bargaining is. It's a thing that should be the standards for all unions.

But yeah, I mean open bargaining is effectively the bottom up structure of having your members were even the representatives put forward motions that are open to the public and open to the membership so that you can effect tofllly ask for more or get a different variety of opinions and strategies, you know, the duality of power kind of structure. But what the post office currently has it's not open bargaining, or what postal union has, it's not open bargaining. They

Know?

And it's like, what are you talking about? He doesn't know that there's a vote going on.

Is out there?

Yeah yeah, but yeah, yeah, I guess. I mean, like the main objective we want to do, I'm sure we're running at a time.

Yeah yeah, sorry.

I could talk about this shit for days.

I mean I do.

That's pretty much all I do anymore. Like Tom was saying, the building of fighting ALC and pushing for the vote, no thing.

The main thing that we're wanting is coming onto shows like this and getting the public perception of what the letter carrier deals.

With what's going on.

Because this Trump's coming in, they're going to be trying to privatize it like they always do.

That's already been in the works.

It's important that the public knows this degradation of service is the point of it, and how how can the public sort of support our fight so we can keep the post office.

So I wanted to just share a couple of links.

If you're a letter carrier and you want to get involved with reforming things from an electoral end, there's the Concern Letter Carriers and you can go to Concern Lettercarriers dot com. They're going to be running in twenty twenty six to get rid of Renfro. If you are impatient like me and you can't fucking wait that long, and if even if you're not a letter carrier, you can see how we're fighting with the building of Fighting NLC, which is more of a radical, bottom up reform caucus.

Yeah, so we touched briefly on last episode. The NLC actually can't really use a lot of the money and funds from the union itself to lobby or to push Congress or anything like that, so there are separate organizations. There are facets of our organization that do that. You can find that at NLC dot org. Specifically, they do have a link where you put in new zip code and it gives you the appropriate Congress member to write a letter to and really push them on what to do.

There.

You can also donate to their fund if you see so fit and are able to do so.

Yeah, at that legislative action thing is actually pretty cool because you don't even have to call. They'll have pre filled out things that you can just click, enter your email and it'll do it for you.

So it's a real quick snap.

It's the easiest way to harass or your congress person, aside from drunk dialing Ted Cruz, which is my favorite.

Yeah, we'll have links to all that. We'll have links to all that in the Discover.

There's one more plug I wanted to make because all the fires out in LA right now, because you have letter carriers where the post office burned down and so did their house, and now they're reporting to duty at another post office twenty minutes away to go and deliver deliver mail to a devastated neighborhood.

Because the thing is, when shit happens.

Whether it's a hurricane or a fire or you know, the first people who show up are your neighbors or the punks or the punks and mutual aid in your neighbors show up. The first person you see from the government, we're federal employees, were not federally is. But the first hint of normalcy that a lot of people get is trying to just hide out and be safe and then they see their mail man walking through their fucking lawn trying to deliver it to their shit, you know what

Okay.

So the NLCS an NLC Disaster Relief Fund.

The public can donate to it. It's usually letter carriers. We all donate to it.

And what happens is if your house burns down like in La right now, or if like you were devastating the fires in in in Hawaii or whatever. When that happens, a letter carrier can apply and as soon as they're approved, which can happen within a day or two, they automatically get sent like a thousand dollars from the fund to just pay for their pay for their hotel or pay for their rent a car. And then they get approved.

No, no, Yeah, I mean it's emotional, it's yeah.

That shit sucks, bro, Yeah, it really does.

Yeah. Is is there anything else that you want to make sure people know before we head off?

If I have one thing, it's just help your co workers. You don't have to be a steward. You don't have to be anything. Just find somebody who don't think deserves it.

Help them too. I guarantee you that they do.

I'm Michael Phillips, an historian, the author of a book about racism in Dallas called White Metropolis, and the co author of an upcoming book about the eugenics move in Texas called The Purifying Knife.

And I'm Stephen Monchelli, an investigative reporter and columnist in Texas who covers political extremism and beyond.

Since the late nineteen nineties, Alex Jones built an extensive media empire, spreading out landish conspiracy theories from his home base in Austin, Texas. A native of the Dallas suburb of Rockwall, over the years, Jones has claimed that the Apollo eleven moon landing was fake, so too, he said was the Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shooting, he claimed

Now to a Texas sized conspiracy theory, sparking headlines across the country, including this week in the New York Times the theory that an upcoming Pentagon training exercise is actually part of a plan to impose martial law.

To many, it's far fetched, but not.

To some of the top politicians in the Lone Star State.

The conspiracy theory Jones described on his Info War show spun in even wilder directions. The Army troops participating in the jade Helm military exercise, panicked right wingers said, would turn on the local population. Guns would be seized from private citizens, and local walmarts would be converted into vast holding cells where those opposing Obama's plan to seize dictatorial

The crazier the conspiracy theory got, the more Texas's far right political leaders were willing to pander to Jones and his elk. Texas Governor Greg Abbott ordered the Texas National Guard to monitor US Army troops near Austin.

We're playing a pivotal role of government, and that is to provide information until people have questions.

Texas Senator Ted Cruz pledged that he would demand answers from the Pentagon about the military's intentions, and said he completely understood the widespread paranoia.

You know, I understand the.

Concern that's been raised by a lot of citizens about Jade Hell.

We have seen for six.

Years a federal government disrespecting the liberty of the citizens, and that produces fever.

Suffice it to say, the Obama administration did not overthrow the state government. The intense outrage and fear generated over army combat preparations might have seen perplexing to those outside of Texas, a state that prides itself on being patriotic and pro military. However, seething distrust of liberal elites is

After Texas violently separated from Mexico in eighteen thirty six, white Texans spent the next decade fearing their southern neighbor, a nation that saw the Texas Revolution as illegitimate and wanted to regain control of the breakaway province. Meanwhile, those same white Texans viewed the African Americans they enslaved with suspicion bordering on dread, knowing that their black captives desperately

A decade later, the tide shifted and Texas was hurriedly annexed in eighteen forty five after widespread rumors gripped Washington d c of a British plot to an next Texas and converted to a haven for African Americans escaping slavery.

Eighteen sixty, construction workers carelessly tossed matches into a pile of wood in Dallas during a hot, drought ridden summer. The blaze that resulted destroyed much of what was then only a village. Immediately, suspecting that enslaved arsonists had set the fire as part of a planned revolution, whites in Dallas tortured and whipped almost every enslaved person in the county in search of scapegoats. Eventually, they hanged three African Americans and set off what would become known as the

A wave of labor unrest, including the Great Southwest Railroad Strike of eighteen eighty six and the rise of the Populace movement, which called for the government seizure railroads and telegraph lines, in addition to a global panic amongst the well to do about anarchism. After a series of bombings in Europe and even the United States from the eighteen eighties to just after World War One convinced economic elites

Of the KKK.

At its peak, the KKK charged that both Jews and Catholics were conspired hiring to control the world. Texas politicians like Representative John Box of Texas, in a column in Henry Ford's anti Semitic newspaper The Dearborn Independent, charged that

As oil millionaires and billionaires built their wealth over the twentieth century, they became a force in conspiratorial faw right politics in Texas. Starting in the nineteen thirties, they mobilized against Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, which they insisted was a part of an international communist plan to overthrow capitalism around

John Owen Beatty, the longtime chairman of the English Department's Southern Methodist University in Dallas, in nineteen fifty one, authored one of the first and perhaps the best selling of all time, book promoting Holocaust denial Iron Curtain over America. Beatty claimed that the Jews of today were not the

Rather than earning him scorn. Bed's virulently hateful anti Jewish rants won him a large following his book, Iron Curtain Over America went through nine printings. By nineteen fifty three, the Public Affairs Luncheon Club, a women's organization, adopted a unanimous resolution backing BAT and requesting that SMU investigate alleged

World War Two in the establishment of communist regimes in Eastern Europe and in China. The uber wealthy giants of the Texas oil industry, to a large degree, funded what came to be known as McCarthyism. Clinton murchison, whose son in nineteen sixty became owner of the Dallas Cowboys National Football League team, became one of the largest financial contributors

But before we get into that quick ad break.

One Dallas oil magnate who built a mansion intentionally designed to be a bigger duplicate of George Washington's Mount Vernon estate. He used his wealth to broadcast extremist fever dreams in the nineteen fifties and nineteen sixties. His name was hl Hunt, and he was profiled by the BBC in the nineteen sixties.

But as well as being perhaps the most approval. The most stingy plutocrat of Texas, HL Hunt is probably the most controversial, for he is a fervent advocate of right wing some would say reactionary causes. He is against the UN, against the War on Party, against Medicare, against central government aid of any sort. He would rather Washington didn't rule the United States at all, and in his ideal land, votes would be distributed according to the amount of taxes

He brooks no halfway position.

A health baddist who avoided whitebread and sugar, Hunt believed his diet of largely raw vegetables might actually allow him to achieve immortality. He also thought he had psychic abilities, lived as a secret bigamist, and published pamphlets such as Hitler was a Liberal, an early prototype of Rupert Murdoch

Didn't time for last time.

Let the tective class is around the world.

Every leftist praise and cliche of the past half cent three now has the hollow ring of mythology.

This is freedom Talk number fifty three Brendy.

Cup is all available at the rate of three for twenty five cents from Lifeline, Dallas, Texas seven five two o six.

I'll be back after this message.

From our sponsor.

The Lifeline show was hosted by a former FBI agent named Dan Smoot and broadcasts on more than eighty television one hundred and fifty radio stations. Hunt believed that democracy was the instrument through which wealth would be seized from billionaires such mself and redistributed to the lazy and the worthless.

The last two years, hl Hunt has added another emotive missile to his armory, his league of so called youth freedom speakers, engaging young teenagers drilled to deliver three minute bursts of his propaganda to rotary clubs and Bible classes.

Many people in the United States really don't believe that communism is a serious threat. Well, these people are in for a big shock because the communists have every intention of doing exactly what they've said they'll do, and they do not hesitate to use force and violence anytime they think that it.

Will further their cause. Now, I don't pretend to know all the answers, but I do know that it is our duty to get out and warn others of the serious threat that we are facing. We have got to get out and tell others of the subversive movements that are going on right here under our very own noses.

It's time to do away with this attitude. Oh, it can't happen here. Will communists bury us? Will we face fine squad as in Cuba? And will our little bitty children become slaves? Ladies and gentlemen. The answer rests in the hands of you and others like you.

Thank you.

For much of the twentieth century, Dallas had built up a reputation as a clean, dull, modern, and efficiently run city. By the nineteen fifties, however, it had also acquired a reputation as the capital of crackpots and conspiracy theorists, a development that historian Edward H. Miller would describe in his book Not to Country. In nineteen fifty four, Dallas elected

I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist in doctor nation, communist subversion, and the International Commune conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.

Before filmmaker Stanley Kubrick turned Walker into an unforgettable caricature, the real life Walker achieved infamy commanding an infantry division in what was then Western Germany. President Kennedy pressured Walker to resign because he repeatedly lectured soldiers under his command to vote for far right wing political candidates. He also distributed among the troops literature from the conspiracy theory promoting far right John Birch Society, and he encouraged them to join.

The John Birch Society also saw the African American Civil rights movement as part of a Bolshevik conspiracy to divide the country, and argued that efforts of towns and cities after World War II to add fluoride to public water supplies was part of a sinister scheme to weaken men physically and make them less able to resist the radical takeover the United States. That particular Bircher conspiracy theory made a long lasting impact on the American psyche. Cities across

Edwin Walker's devotion to the John Birch movement cost him his military career. Under pressure from Defense Secretary Robert mcmara, Walker retired and moved to Dallas, where he found a friendly political environment. The national far right saw him as a martyr to Kennedy's supposedly out of control leftism, and he received financial support from fellow devotee of the John

To all victims of communist tyranny throughout the world, I send this word the hour of your deliverance is approaching. To patriots in every land Korea, China, the Ukraine, the Baltic Nations, Poland, Hungary, East Germany, the Congo, Cuba, and every other land strickened by the monster of communism. I say, for the time, lie low, preparing your hearts for liberation. Do not expose yourselves to the brutal requital of a hunster.

Temporarily in power, Walker was a painfully dull public speaker. In the end, he couldn't bring his version of deliverance to his own state, finishing a distant sixth in the nineteen sixty two coubinatorial race. That would not prevent him and his allies from creating mayhem over the following months. He got arrested and was ordered to be psychiatrically evaluated by Attorney General Robert Kennedy after he incited racial violence

Shall we get on with the business of the meeting?

Surely, surely, my dear friend, I don't have to come here from Illinois to teach Texas.

Mantors, do I.

Outside Memorial Auditorium theater, where Stevenson delivered his speech, Walker had gathered a furious gang of middle and upper class men and women who rocked his limousine back and forth while it waited to whisk him away to safety, and

On the morning in November twenty second, nineteen sixty three, Kennedy and his entourage felt foreboding as they prepared for a short airplane draft from Fort Worth to Dallas. The president just examined a full page ad in the far right Dallas Morning News that featured a bold face headline welcome mister Kennedy to Dallas. The advertisement, paid for in part by H. L. Hunt's son Nelson bunker Hunt and

Soon.

The Kennedys would make their faithful flight to Dallas, and the President would die from an assassin's bullet shortly after noon.

The President's murder spawned a cottage industry of conspiracy theorists. Some said the president had been murdered by the mafia, angered because they had been investigated by the president's brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy. Others blamed Teamster's president Jimmy Hoffa, who also had been the subject of criminal probes by

Asserted sometimes conspiracy theories have deadly consequences.

William L.

Pierre spent his teen years attending a military academy in Dallas. As a city student, anti communist dread and any Semitic hatred. As a young adult, he had joined the John Birch Society, but grew frustrated because there wasn't racist enough. He became a leading figure in the American Nazi Party at the age of forty one, formed the Neo Nazi National Alliance.

In the novel, racist revolutionaries then take over Vandenberg Air Force Base in southern California and sees its nuclear missiles, which they later use on cities across the nation while ethnically cleansing California of non whites. They hang sixty thousand so called race traders during the day of the Rope, a phrase you may find familiar if you've ever looked

White nationalists have since seen the Turner Diaries as both an accurate description of the modern world and as a manual on how to win a race war. From nineteen eighty three to nineteen eighty four, The Order a white supremacist terrorist group that took its name from the Secret Circle. The fictional Earl Turner joins robbed a pornography shop, banks, and armored cars, hoisting more than eight million dollars. They later distributed to several white supremacist groups with the intent

McVay had spent years selling copies of The Turner Diaries at gun shows. He retaliated against what he saw as his government oppressors by blowing up the Alfred Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on the second anniversary of the Waco configuration. He used a truck bomb facing his attack in part on the fictitious bombings of the FBI headquarters. In William Pierce's novel The Turner Diaries also depicted a

Kennedy was a classic Cold War liberal in support of an aggressive military intervention to stop Communist expansion abroad, and with varying degrees, a commitment economic and civil rights reforms at home. But because of his assassination by the twenty first century, many on the far right saw as a

Q or QAnon developed a huge following that interpreted these confusing and often contradictory posts as actually revealing a secret global capal that included top Democrats like Hillary Clinton and

Q and On believers were a heavy presence during the Capital Insurrection in January sixth and q Andon banners competed with Trump and Confederate battleflags for attention, and November that first year we saw the first of the series rallies that Steve just referred to. They went to Deey Plaza, where President Kennedy had been murdered fifty eight years earlier.

Word on the street is that Junior JFK Junior will show up and introduce his parents.

You're expecting JFK Junior absolutely, Okay, how is that going to happen and never die?

Are we going to see him today? JFKG. Yeah, that's whatever. We're helping. We're hoping to hope and pray, and then after that he'll probably be the vice president with Trump.

Conspiracy theorists often pay a high personal price for beliefs that marginalize them from family, friends, and mainstream society.

There was one real truth several of these people agreed to talk about. But you got to understand that most of the world is going to think that's just crazy.

That's why half my family won't talk to me. Anymore, then will my girlfriend thinks I've.

Lost my mind.

With the return of Donald Trump to the White House on January twentieth, conspiracy theories will move from the fringe to the seat of power. JFK Junior won't emerge and grab the reins, but a different Kennedy will. Bobby Kennedy Junior. Bobby Kennedy Junior has insisted that Wi fi causes cancer and that AIDS might not be caused by HIV vaccines. He claims against overwhelming evidence cause autism, anti depressed since caused school shootings, and chemicals and water lead to gender dysphoria.

I think fluoride is a poison becauses loss IQ in our developmental injuries, and think florid is on the way up.

RFK Junior mind You is the nominee for the head of the Department of Health and Human Services, and in a recent interview claimed that he was aided in his schoolwork through the recreational self medication of heroin. Trump has himself obsessively promoted his own sinister tales of the deep state that supposedly stole the twenty twenty election from him, and, as we have said, has co opted some of the

These enemies of freedom somehow pull all the strings in sight unseen, manipulate every aspect of the world's politics, culture and finance, manipulate elections, engineer depressions, urban riots, and even hurricanes. Yet for all their cleverness, they leave just enough clues so that amateur sleuths, if they are just smart enough, can crack the code. Conspiracy theories make history and understandable contests between ruthless bad guys and intrepid heroes, who then

And while figures like hl hunt and their operations like Lifeline maybe in the past, we have our own contemporary versions of this with roots in Texas. We now have Elon Musk who controls x formerly known as Twitter, in which he has used his platform with millions of followers to promote dangerous conspiracy theory like the Great Replacement theory,

This is Michael Phillips and this is Stephen Monticelli.

Thanks for listening, Hello, and welcome to It could happen here a podcast about things falling apart and how to put them back together. I'm your guest host, Margaret Kiljoy, and this is an episode about both of those things. Not Margaret and Killjoy, but about things falling apart and putting them back together. If you live in the US, you might have noticed the things are falling apart. In the onslaught of new federal changes over the past few weeks.

It should.

It's terrifying. It's worse than what you might imagine. One trans woman prisoner who's using a pseudonym for her lawsuit going by Maria Moe, has already filed a lawsuit in federal court to stop this new regulation. She is challenging it on both procedural and constitutional grounds. The government didn't go about this in the legal manner, and to house trans women with men goes against the Eighth Amendment, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment, as well as the Fifth

On the issue.

But you know who doesn't know how to effortlessly transition to ads after saying something as serious as that, it's me, I don't know how to effortlessly transitions ads after giving you a statistic like that. When we come back, we're going to talk about how serious the situation is, but also provide just an absolute, incredible number of things that you can do at various levels of risk to support the people whose lives are about to be ruined by

How are you.

I'm doing really well, glad to be back, Thank you so much. Yeah, so you reached out to me about this what would you call it, like a policy change? Yeahcus to order, I guess, yeah, you know, And basically we talked about like how do we try and make

Not that easier than others.

I guess, yeah, you were not among the people who had it easier. And as I would follow your journey through the federal prison system, it seems like you had to defend yourself against both other prisoners and also prison staff.

Is that a fair way to put it mildly? Yeah, yes, that was what was going on. Can you tell me a.

Bit about the experience of trans people in prison, because when you look at this executive order, it sort of implies like all trans women are in women's prison and all trans men. Actually, I literally have no idea where transmit are held. I would rather if I was a transmit I'd probably rather be in women's prison. I just I don't know what was the situation like before this executive order.

So I want to start with saying, like, the reason I hit you up is because there's so much like horror happening this first week of like Trump's new presidency, and I didn't want this issue to get swept under the rug. A lot of times, the bigger, more mainstream issues will get the most attention. And I still remember our trans family inside, and so that's what scared me enough to be like, dude, I need.

To talk to you about this.

Yeah.

So when I was inside, there was not very many trans people, and they're like, correct prison, Like a trans woman should be in a women's prison, yea, a trans man should be in a man's prison.

And that wasn't happening on the level that it should have.

And there was a rare case like Marius Mason who had enough support, enough publicity where they were able to but most people we were stuck at their gender at birth. And so over the last couple of years, people started getting a lot more access to safe prisons. That's why I'll call them my prisons where they feel safest. Okay, so I trans women were starting to go to women's prisons, and it wasn't very many. It's not like there's tens of thousands, but handfuls. Because it is it's very hard

You got to say, like, I am this person, this is who I am.

And if you're even more lucky, you got to be transferred to a prison that would make you feel the safest and the most whole is a human And that's the goal, Like, that's the safety goal. Basically, that's where we wanted things to be pushed. That people would be recognized for who they are, they would get treated for who they were, and they would be sent to a prison that was congruent with who they were.

And that's what's all being taken away.

Yeah, and when you talk about the safety, I don't want to like necessarily go on at great length about how trans women suffer invents prisons, but it's probably worth talking about, like because you've described it as there's like literal sexual slavery happening in the prisons.

Is that a fair way to put it?

Yeah, one hundred and ten percent yes, yes, And I only speak for federal prisons. I know in some states it's different. Like in some states people are able to use like their femininity as like a power play, as a tool to keep themselves safe. And so if that, if that's an option, then great, But what I witnessed in the federal prison was the exactly opposite of that.

Within an hour.

You won't survive that, or you'll get by some group and you will be a site like you will be property and at the lower custody levels, it's a lot safer.

If you're at a low security like FCI.

Englewood, you're not in danger, though you're a danger of humiliation and being degraded by staff, but you're not going to get stabbed there.

But God forbid you go to Victorville.

Medium, Florence Medium, or any penitentiary, Like that's a death sentence for real.

Yeah, do you want to talk about the worst things that ever happened to you? Do you want to talk about you? And I We did another episode on my other podcast Live like the World is Dying and talking about how to survive prison, and in it, you talked a little bit about what was necessary to kind of stand up for trans prisoners. Do you want to talk about that a little bit?

Yeah, So, like everyone needs to have like consequence awareness and they need to work on the lines that make them feel most comfortable, of course, but for me, I was not comfortable at all watching trans or gay prisoners get brutalized. And so there were times where we'd have to raise money to buy a prisoner out of sex slavery. Yeah, we just have to buy them and then basically free them or pay off whatever debt they owed so that they no longer have to be in that situation.

And there was other times that you you have to knife up or you have to show up physically.

And I'm not a big I of course, like I don't tolerate like anti trams bullshit in my life anywhere, and that includes in prison, and so like there are times you have to step to people and say like I am not gonna let this person have this happen to them. And if you want to continue doing this, then like we're going to take it to the next level. And I wish to god there was more prison allies that would be willing to do that inside, because once someone is shown to have like support, it makes them

Is not happening.

I don't care what race you are, I don't care what gang you in you're in, You're not going to hurt this person, And that's stuff that we had to do. Sometimes it's scary as shit because you don't know what's going to happen.

But you have to, like you have to live your ethics.

One of the reasons that I wanted to talk to you about it and have you on this show is because, unfortunately, I mean, prison is kind of a concentration of the worst parts of society. I do not want to say the worst people in society. I believe it has much more to do with the incarceration and the way that people are forced to be right when they're incarcerated. There's a tangent. But have you heard the whole thing where there's no such thing as an alpha male.

Wolf in the wild. I've only heard from you, and I loved it.

Okay, I probably said this exact same thing last time we time think activity.

Yeah, And so it's like it obviously is going to bring out the worst in people.

That one of the reasons I want to have you want to talk about this is because I think that the experiences that you're talking about, they're much more real and intense than most people on the outside are like really thinking. You know, they're like, oh, that sounds bad, but then their brain kind of turns off and they

I think that's really well said too.

I think the way, like I used to wear inside is like we can't take steps backwards. We can't relinquish any progress we've made, not a single pinch of it.

Like everything has to move forward.

And whatever you're capable of doing, Like not everyone's capable of like physically stepping to someone and saying like no, right, But everyone's capable of something, whether that's doing calling campaigns, organizing protests outside of prison, whether it's contacting region, contacting this person, raising money, doing whatever it takes. Everyone can do something to keep people safe. And it's the same in the free world, Like it's not different. Everyone has

Yeah.

I really like that way of phrasing it. Yeah, we can't forfeit the future. How can people support transprisoners with what's going on right now? I don't know how in touch you are with people on the inside and things like that. How are people feeling, like what's the vibe?

What can be done?

So I assume, like when you're asking what can people do to support transprisoners? I assume you're asking what can free world people do to support those inside?

Yeah?

I mean you actually kind of have said what people on the inside can do, all right, which is necessary and important.

But people on the outside, what can people do?

Visibility is safety, Like I saw that in my bid, and I've seen that in other people's bids. And if you look at someone like Marius Mason, if you look at people like Jennifer Rose, keeping people visible and letting the prison know that, like we're not turning a blind eye to this person, like you're not going to get a free one on them that cups people alive, Okay.

And so the more the staff knows.

And the administration knows that like this per is looked after, the more they are likely to look after them because they don't want to be held accountable. Okay, So things like getting books into people, things like getting pin pals of people, raising money so that they don't have to go into debt, Like that's real, Like this debt stuff is serious. So making sure they have money on their books, Like I don't care what they spend it on. I don't care if they spend on drugs. I don't care

Keep them alive. Like that's what abolition is. So visibility.

Yeah, that makes sense. I sort of know the answer to this, but I'm gonna pretend like I don't know it at all. What's Black and Pink. Black and Pink is an organization. I know it used to be an anarchist organization.

It might be something else now, but it's an organization that's focused strictly on supporting trans and queer prisoners. That's all they do, social prisoners, political prisoners, it doesn't matter. We're gonna find you a pinpal and we're gonna get people to write you and they do a really amazing job. Like I honor them for putting in that work because it's hard.

And so someone who's listening, who's never considered being pen pals of the prisoner could get in touch with Black and Pink and be hooked up with someone to write to.

Yeah, if you like.

Even just like right now, someone googled black and Pink pin palm, black and Pink prison Pinpal, like it'll pop up the website. You just click on flying a pin Pal and you can find someone in your city, find someone in your state, find someone back to relate to, like to have a little biography, and you can find someone like to connect with and potentially save their life or save your life.

Yeah, it can make you better too.

Yeah, okay, so writing helps when you talk about putting money on people's books, like who does that? Is that something you also could go through black and pink? Should people be doing their own fundraisers? And then like working with prisoners that they've already made connections with, like how should people either plug in or start things?

So each prison is different, like state and federal, But to put money on someone's books, you can do that yourself. You go you find out wherever prison that person's at, and you can just go to the BOP website or

Well, the way that I fund raised is that I have advertisers that interrupt me talking about anti capitalist things.

And here's one of those interruptions.

And I'm gonna go ahead and donate my pay for this episode to exactly what we're talking about. And here's ads they are not donating. You can think of whatever you want about these ads, and we're back okay with this new executive order, Like how are people feeling either inside or people who are doing prison abolition work, or like how crisis does this feel?

Like?

What's going on? I can't like speak for ever. It should quel like a ten out of ten.

Yeah, like this is a carceral genocidee real, this isn't a rasure of an entire people. So like, if you're not at a ten for this, like you either do not care or you're not understanding how serious the prison system is.

I've talked to a couple homies inside.

I have to be really delicate because I'm still on probation, but those people understand that, like the mood is turning dark. Okay, they see inside that like when fascists come into power, it empowers everyone else below them to be brutal because they can get away with it now. And so these people that were already monsters under the most liberal of prison director are now getting told by the president that they do not have to respect this person's entire life.

Yeah, that makes sense. What kind of support felt the most useful to you in other prisoners. He talked about this a little bit, but I'm I'm like curious about like you talked about, like visibility, are protests outside of jails? Do they do they make people feel like good and welcome or does it make the guards cracked down on everyone?

Yeah, the noise demos are cool, but they're performative.

M M.

It's more for the people that are doing them than the people inside.

M hm.

But like, let's say you're a trans person out of jail and there's thirty five people outside waving your banner. That will get you respect inside, get people to say, oh, what the hell.

Is going on with them? Okay?

Yeah, like that is that's serious to where you can build up a rep if someone's already in prison, that's you'll probably get them fucked up and put in the shoe.

That's what happened to me.

If there's a noise demonstration with your name, yeah, yeah, be delicate how you do it?

Yeah, because that's what put me in ad X. Oh shit, so that's a real that's a real double edged sword, right.

Yeah.

They use that as the as the thing saying I was the leader of Antifa because I got people to come out and protest for me.

So I got pulleyt. Bel Chapo.

We shouldn't tell everyone that you're we have to keep it on the DL that you're the leader of Antifa.

For real. We dropped the ball. I know. Wait, I've been told I'm the leader of Antifa. You're my leader? Oh okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, totally yeah, I'm more reagional leader.

The things that help the most, like in a real life situation, are the things that provide mental safety and something to do. Okay, so books, magazines that gives you something to do, like empower yourself and pass the time and stay out of the way. Money helps because then you can do crafts, you can paint, you can do art, you can sell things, you can do crochet. That stuff helps, and then letters obviously like that gives you someone to

A legal call.

That way, the prison sees this person has a lawyer protecting them. They don't need to know that. It's just a one time call. Yeah, but that legal call, just the wellness check is what they call it. Let's that person get word out about what dangerous stuff is happening. But it also forces the prison to recognize that they might be protected by legal system.

Okay, so these things help.

Yeah, what's the master plan here for how we're going to respond to this executive order? Because obviously we're not necessarily in a position to immediately reverse this order and get women put into women's prison, which is a crazy thing to have to say, we're not going to be able to get women put into women's prisons, but is

Is that that's a soft version of what we should do, Yeah.

Fair enough.

There's other versions that are yeah, okay, there's the other version that like I wish people would do. Yeah, there's a version where we do BDS but for every single company that's benefiting from prison labor, yeah, and say, as long as you let this transgender hate go on, we're not going to support your business. There's boycotting, there's putting people on the road so that the cops can't show up to their jobs.

Uh huh.

There's protesting outside warden's houses, there's protesting outside governor's houses. If it's for state prison there is tangibly putting your body on the line. There is sabotaging cop cars that go into the prison, there is barricading the entrances. There's a thousand things we can do to say, if you heard our people were hurting you, yea, whether it's in your pocket, whether it's in your car, whether it's in your daily life, whether it's annoying you. We can find

No, No, but you're right, and it's like it's funny because it's like, in my mind, it's so hard to ring the alarm bells when all of the alarm bells are ringing, and everyone's kind of ignoring alarm bells right now. I mean, I guess the answer is that we talk about it like this, but like, how do we make sure that people actually listen to the alarm bells that

I mean, I don't think people understand it all.

And yeah, there's all this misinformation too, Like you'll hear these like fascist talking points coming out of liberals' mouths to where like well, I don't want my tax dollars going to like pay for their surgery, or I don't want some man just sneaking into a woman's prison saying these transgenders we can rape everyone. And these are like the same scare tactics and like misinformation that's used for

We can't let this entire group.

Of people be destroyed, because like, if you're going to turn your blind eye to transgender people, you're going to do it to gay people, You're going to do it to women, You're going to do it to black people, and then it's just you, and then no one's going to protect your stupid ass. We have to as or as I have to as assist man. We have to keep bringing this bell. We have to make people listen.

I mean as a as a not currently in prison and trans women. Like one of the reasons I think this almost happens. I mean it happens because the cruelty is the point, but like it's terrifying. You've actually experienced the thing that's terrifying. It is terrifying the idea of going into prison in the United States, especially maximum security prison, potentially especially men's prison, both as a man or a trans woman. I wouldn't want to be in men's prison, and I don't.

Even want to compare it, by the way, Okay, it's not comparable. Okay, Like if I didn't have antique attachment on my face, I could walk into any prison in the country and be like, Oh, there's just a white guy. There's just a white roll. Yeah, have no problems. Yeah, a transgender person. There's a single place except for a protective custody yard, where they can walk in and immediately feel safe. Yeah, it's the exact opposite. Everywhere they go

Every day.

Yeah, picture someone breaking into your home in the middle of the night, in that terror you get. They have to walk into a new prison every single time and face that terror every single day. Yeah, it's not comparable at all. It's scary as shit.

No, that's fair.

Like to be honest, like I think about and this is like maybe more honest than I'm usually am on this podcast. Like, you know, I don't do as much frontline activism as I did. And part of that's like, oh, I'm like aging and I have other work that I do, And part of it is like I came out as trans, you know, part of it is like I never liked the idea of like because I always was trans and the idea of like being surrounded by only men was

That's my rant, Yeah, well, I mean, you're absolutely right, like that is the entire goal is to make sure that the community walks the government line, because if you don't, this is what will happen to you. And when people pull like the nonsense of like well, if you're not committing crimes, you shouldn't worry about it, Like they are

Yeah, and it's hard because you also want to like while also not wanting to like lead that struggle. Right, Like, I think that like white people putting themselves on the line for black liberation is like super important.

But then obviously you can get into there's the hero shit and trying to take a leadership.

Yeah, do the David Gilbert role, be a soldier how they need you, and help and fight how people actually.

Need you, not how you think it should be done. Yeah, totally.

Well, any last words for our audience around this particular issue.

Yeah, Here in Denver, Brenn Rose's Legal Center, that's who I work for. It's a transgender ran civil rights law firm. We're about to put forward the trans Bill rights here in Colorado to guarantee safety. And I bring that up to say that not only is there direct action and protest we can do, we can also try to weasel into the legal system.

Yeah.

There's a thousand ways we can fight these motherfuckers, and we've got to use every single one of them.

Yeah.

And I have nothing but love and solidarity for every transgender person alive anywhere and I'm with you, and we're going to get through this.

I hope we are going to get through it, because even as individuals we might not, right, But that's as it's true about being alive, right, Literally, none of us are going to get through being alive alive right. At some point that's going to stop working for us, and

Going to get out of life alive anyway. That's what I hold on to.

I don't know about everyone who's listening, but the thing that I hold onto is that just literally I was like, well, I wasn't.

I'm not immortal. You know, it's got a time limit.

Yeah, And all we can do is to say, go back to one of the first things that you said, we just kind of can't compromise our ethics, you know, like there's like balancing acts right where you have to think, like, well, I probably shouldn't do something where I like while out and get myself killed and accomplish nothing. Fight to win, yeah, exactly, and some of fighting to win is knowing when not

So rather than the cages out right now?

It's with ak Press and it is a oral history of the political prisoner movement hold from the mouths of those prisoners. It covers like fifty or so prisoners from every movement, Black trans Our Elders are more recent anti fascists. And it was a beautiful way not just to hear about like oh I fought for this, but what was my life like inside?

What did I experience?

What gave me joy? What gave me hope, what gave me sadness? And it's a way to see the vulnerability and humanity of those inside. And I think that's really valuable right now and here soon my ADX book is coming out on them press. Oh cool, so I'll be I'll be hounding you for that here soon, for that coverage.

Yeah yeah, Wait, well what's that book callor about.

It's gonna be called a clean hell, and it's gonna be about how I want it trial, because no one does that in the Feds. Zero point zero eight percent of people win in federal trial. And then how I got sent to the federal supermax and there's no books out about the supermax, there's none. Well, and so one of your homies has the inside scoop.

Yeah I got Yeah, you were just an undercover journalist, just a real undercover solitary confinement.

So had Josh Davidson is helping me edit it.

Josh Davidson from rather than the Cages, who did also certain days.

So it's seemed been a really great project, Carlso awesome.

All right, Well, people should check out both of those things and take care of people inside. And I hope that we'll have you one again soon.

Yay, thank you so much.

It could happen here. I'm Garrison Davis, and yeah, it's happening. The past few years I've been writing about how the religious right has been trying to roll back trans rights, take away gender affirming health care, and essentially remove trans

And specifically, the topic of this episode is how.

To use union organizing as a way to fight for trans rights and secure access to gender affirming healthcare, which is unfortunately an increasingly critical issue. We've already had conservative states like Tennessee pressuring private insurance companies to drop covering gender affirming care by blocking insurers from contracting with the

When you fight for a collective bargaining agreement, a contract between union workers and their employer. You can fight for gender affirming care to be included in the healthcare that's provided, and make sure that that healthcare is afforded and actually usable by the people working there, and that their wages are adequate to cover out of pocket expenses, including travel expenses if you live in a state that's coming under threat.

But it is not just healthcare that is under threat right now. Just days into office, Trump already started to roll back Biden era federal discrimination protections. Last Monday, the Trump Badman sent a memo ordering a freeze to all federal grants, loans, and aid, requiring a sort of audit to ensure the recipients of those funds use the money in a way that quote conforms to the administration priorities unquote, and not to promote quote dei and woke gender ideology unquote.

Having non discrimination language in a contract that covers gender identity is a really critical way to improve not just for yourself, but then also we talk about these things like hiring discrimination. If you get that kind of language in a contract at a union job, that's going to help everyone who comes after you. Because additionally, as a union you have the mechanism of enforcement of a grievance

Right.

A grievance procedure at a union job is way more accessible to the average working person than hiring a lawyer and going through a legal system that is totally stacked against you and in favor of the wealthy. Having a union to defend you, you know, with the collective resources of your union that you're part of, and having your shop steward or you be a shop steward and filing those grievances yourself. It's so much more accessible for regular

Now, if you don't have union organizing experience, this could all seem a little intimidating, even if you already have a pre existing union at your workplace. MIA has done a whole bunch of episodes on unions and labor organizing on this podcast you could certainly look to for more

Started focusing on trans healthcare as one of the core issues isite we weren't organizing around. And all started with a conversation with like a regional staffer here in Oklahoma. I have like a regular check and call with my staffer, and this was like two two and a half years ago, and he was just like asking, you know, what's going on? What are you concerned about? And I was like, well, I'm having some issues with like accessing health care, and he not heard like how difficult it was for like

It's been a focus for us for a long time. Also in part because the initial you know, our public bargaining proposals that were released early on when we first formulated our demands in included improvements to gender affirming care at Starbucks.

And part of that's because there.

Were trans people involved in writing those initial demands right, and you know, Neihaw was involved nationally in the campaign and had the opportunity and the encouragement to start track.

You know, we have to be part of it.

I think is on some level, you know, the most basic prerequisite for everything that came after is because trans people have been involved with this campaign from the beginning. We do have so much support and solidarity from our coworkers and from our fellow union comrades, regardless of whether they're SIS or trans, and I think part of that is because we've really showed up and done the work.

Track's logo says trans rights are labor rights, a phrase one of Nahe's co workers came up with to express the idea that even if your state becomes an unsafe place for queer and trans people, trans people will still fight to ensure that their workplace, their store, is a

Lots of different struggles have been highlighted in our campaign. You know, we have really made racial justice a major priority as well. I mean, obviously economic justice is at the core of any union struggle, but you know, we're really invested in making sure all workers are included in this movement and their specific concerns are represented as well

Our ability to build power in this way is a way that we maintain hope so that we can keep organizing for a better future. I think one of the best tools like these fucking fascist freaks have is making us feel like there's no hope. It's beating us down, it's making us feel like we have no power, it's making us feel completely disconnected from the government, our workplace, all of these different things that like exert power over us.

Yeah, Morales a terran a struggle, and this is a way that you can fight there that does other things too at the same time, critically important and.

Do you know what else is important? Being subservient to the capitalist impulse of pivoting to ads.

Okay, we are back.

Here is more of our interview with Starbucks workers.

You needed.

Yeah, I'm excited to talk to you because things have been very bad. And one of the specific ways that they've been very bad is that there's become this framing and this has been around for a while, but it's getting sort of increasingly adopted in mainstream circles that trans rights are opposed to workers' rights, and that's just nonsense. So I wanted to sort of start there with a bit of a discussion about, well, the ways in which the trans struggle is a worker struggle.

The trans community is like disproportionately like impoverished, like a lot of us are struggling to just pay for rent, are basic like needs, right, Yeah, I think that's firmly assumes that like all trans people are like, I don't know, rich, working, attack or some shit like that, which just is not true.

Yeah. The actual stats, by the way, these are running from the US Trans Survey, which is the largest survey of trans people in the US. Thirty four percent poverty rate than the national number for assist people is eleven percent. The unemployment rate is eighteen percent. The US uneployment rate assists people is four percent, eighteen percent is nineteen thirty six great depression levels of unemployment. Thirty percent of trans

Yeah, and I think you see that in our union. We have a lot of worker leaders who are trans. It's a noticeable obvious fact about our unions that trans people have really been deeply involved since day one at all levels of this union. And I think part of that is because Starbucks has been associated as a place of economic stability and opportunity for trans healthcare for a community that has relatively few opportunities. I mean, if you're

That was a community tip.

And then it turned out that I made so little money that I qualified for Medicaid, And in California, where I'm lucky enough to live for now, Medicaid covers those things and is more affordable and accessible than the Starbucks healthcare actually was, So I ended up relying on Medicaid instead.

And I mean, I can also attest to the fact that I started at Starbucks five years ago because I needed to have access and gender firming care. I was coming from a situation where I came out as a teenager. I was disowned and kicked out by my family. I didn't have access to college. I was like basically on my own right, and I had no idea how I'm going to matter transision, and like older trans women in

That's something I also want to highlight because I don't think people understand this at all. If there's cysts is that the level of employment discrimination is staggering. It is, however, hard if you are a sis person you think it is to find a job, it is like thirty times

Right, And I think that's how Starbucks kind of like advertises itself too queer and trans workers, right. And I think this is reflected in the demographic of my store. Ninety nine percent of my coworkers are clear a lot of us or trans. There's like a lot of trans women who work at my store. I actually don't even know if we have a single straight coworker. Actually, we have liked one token like diversity higher, but he literally

Something that Mia pointed out is that one of the few places trans people are actually overrepresented is in union organizing. Because trans people don't really have a safety net. Fewer of us can turn to or rely on family support. So union organizing is one of the ways we can directly fight for a better life.

But the current political climate as it is, it's even scarier. I mean, Cassie was talking about not being able to actually access the Starbucks healthcare and having defined other ways to pay for gender firm and care. But I mean, we're looking at like a Trump administration that could possibly be trying to make it impossible for anyone to use Medicare and Medicaid to cover gender firming care. We're looking

The Starbucks union is also fighting for guaranteed scheduling and better staffing in stores, and this relates directly to a worker's ability to access health care and gender affirming healthcare. Part of Starbucks healthcare being somewhat inaccessible is that employees have to work a certain threshold of hours to qualify

I can speak to this. I've heard this from many other workers. It is such a struggle just to get the minimum amount of hours to keep your benefits. I was talking to another worker who was telling me about how she had to like literally cry and beg her manager to schedule her enough so she didn't lose access

And obviously this benefits all workers because everyone benefits from having enough hours to actually get the money you need to live. The Starbucks union started the official bargaining process with the company last April, and they were supposed to have their final bargaining session last December, based on a shared expectation that the contract would be closed and ratified by the end of twenty twenty four.

So after nine months of bargaining, it's December or expecting to finish up contract bargaining. And after like a few months of like delaying and not really giving us a counter on wages or benefits, Starbucks like finally gave us a counter proposal, I mean like counter proposal.

It was literally like a page.

And their counter proposal was basically no changes to benefits whatsoever, and a one point five percent raise if non union stores received a raise that was less than that, And for context, one point five percent for most of us is thirty cents. So yeah, after nine months, that was the best they could do. So it wasn't really a serious like counter proposal. I mean, frankly, it was a fucking insult.

So with less than a week's notice, they organized the biggest ULP strike in the union's history, resulting in five thousand baristas at over three hundred stores across the country going on strike on Christmas Eve. Now, this is not the kind of open ended, ongoing strike that you're probably

These sites are directly connected to the broader political situation in America right. I think that a big issue that trans organizing has right now is that there's not a lot of on the ground reaching out, connecting to mobilizing people who are impacted by these policies that are like

We're going to go on another ad break and return to finish up our interview with Starbucks Workers United. Okay, we're back. I'm now gonna throw to MIA or a discussion on how union organizing can help strengthen trends. Advocacy in general.

We're in this kind of crisis period of I don't know what you call the national trans movements, just the extent that it exists, where the advocacy orgs and the legal strategies they've been pursuing are not working. We're losing in the courts all the time. Their electoral strategy of kind of bearrying themselves to the Biden administration has failed, and I think this is a moment where we need a new plan. And this is as good of a

I think.

That's something we're still building our capacity for that in this union, but we definitely do have relationships with other trans union activists and organizers. We're affiliated to Workers United, which is affiliated to SCIU, So obviously that's kind of the most direct and easiest way for us to get in touch with other trans folks that are in the labor movement, get support, get feedback, get ideas, and share

Then we have to, like we have to be the ones to do it. We just we have to do it.

And getting involved in your union is one of the only accessible ways that trans people are going to be able to build that kind of political capacity and find allies. We have an opportunity here because you know, to do a version of Jijik's mistranslation of Antonio Gramsci is like, you know, the old trans movement is dying in the New World's like struggles to be born. Now is a

Right.

And I think we're at a moment where we actually have to like fight for ourselves, right. Yeah, Again, we're at a point where no one else is going to fight for us. We have to be willing to take that step and fight for ourselves advocate for ourselves. At this moment, it's up to trans people to get involved acially with the labor movement, and there's so much opportunity to advocate for trans rights, to like build up the transliberation movement in a way that hasn't been done before.

Not not saying that, you know, trans people are getting that opportunity to actually drive our own liberation, and there's just so few places in society where we get that. That's been one of the most exciting things about being part of this union for me.

And yes, you should.

Consider going to work at Starbucks and unionizing it. And certainly, you know, to directly plug a little bit. If there are Buristas in your audience, they absolutely should go to our website. I think there will be a link like in the description of the episode or something. Go visit our union's website, get in touch with an organizer, and start organizing. I know it can like sound daunting in theory, like what does it mean to start organizing my workplace?

You know. We've done this a bunch.

We've done it at over five hundred stores, at least five hundred and twelve at this point nationwide, which is pretty incredible, especially to have done all that without yet having even secured our contract. So we have a good template for how to win, and if you just get in touch, then people will reach out to help you.

It's never been more needed than now. So this is the time.

And if you're not a barista, or you can't become a barista, then we still really need people to sign a solidarity pledge with our union and get involved that way as allies, as supporters. You know, community support is

So yeah, we could really use your support.

Earlier this episode, we talked about hope, and as important and as useful as that can be, it is also super crucial that people know how they're actually able to organize and actually try to get things done. After this last election, I'm sure many of you, like myself, were flooded with posts and performative calls to action. Now is the time to organize your community, but never with any real information on what that actually means or how to

I think I have to emphasize how achievable that is, Like it is possible five hundred plus stores across the nation have done it in this political environment. Right, I'm going to shout out one of my coworkers. She transferred to another store in Oklahoma, and I was chokingly telling her. I was like, well, you're allowed to transfer as long as, like you, you unionize your store immediately, and she was like okay, And she did it, like within like a

Every single union that has ever been formed was maybe by people exactly like you. You the listener listening to this right now, Right, you are exactly the person who has organized every union that anyone has ever done. Right, It's it's not something that's like the domain of pure professional organizers. You can do this too, Yeah, you really can.

And I mean, you know, at my store, I was the only transperson at my store, and despite being a transsexual communist, I was able to organize a successful election at a store that includes you know, half of people being Trump voters like the idea that you have to hide or diminish yourself, or that because you know your trans or otherwise marginalized, that it's impossible for you to build that solidarity with your coworkers and come together for your common issues.

It's just not true.

People understand their own economic liberation, even if they don't fully just yet. There's always an intuitive level you understand you're getting screwed over. You can tell that the system is not set up fairly and it's not set up

So, Okay, we're like such a scary point for trans people, and I know that that's terrifying that that's also an opportunity to pivot and to like actually make meaningful change. Right again, I cannot emphasize enough we create our own hope for a better future. It has to be on us, right, We can't just I don't know, depend on other people to do this work for us. We have to show up and do this work. And I don't know. Personally speaking, I am fucking tired of liberals who want to just

So yeah, and I think that's a good place to close on. Is in some sense a cold world that has left us with no one to fight for ourselves but ourselves. But if we fucking do it, we can win, and we can drag everyone else along with us.

On that note, I'm going to close out the show here with a few plugs for Starbucks Workers United. You can find their website at Sbworkersunited dot org and SB Workers United on social media. I'll have a link to their website and their solidarity pledge in the description below. See you on the other side.

Welcome to it could happen here.

We decided every week you were going to do in episode called Executive Disorders, White House Weekly, where we report the news, and today we are going to start that episode. We have the entire full time team here. We have Mio Wong, Garrison Davis, Robert Evans, James Stout, and I am the voice in your ear Sophie Lichterman.

Yeah, and you should know we'll be making a number of references to a show you haven't watched, called The news Rooms. So many we didn't just pretend we didn't.

Yeah, anyways, let's do the episode now go.

Yeah.

So this episode is also going to be a little bit different because the idea is to cover each week of stuff that's happening visa via the White House. And it's been two weeks since since Inauguration Day, and we are recording usually on Wednesdays, so there'll be, you know, a day or two there that we will record the week after. But we have a whole bunch of stuff today because we are covering essentially two weeks. I'll start with some of the transgender executive orders that happened last week.

Now, uh great, I am going to agitate to replace the Oregon State capital with just a statue of a Roman orgy. You know, we don't even need place for the legislators. Just look at the statue and you'll know what to do.

This actually is like bad, you know, very very nineteen thirties, you know.

Yeah, yeah, famously no other regimes have hawken back to Claus Caalle era.

Well, and specifically is like calling like you know, modern architecture, brutalist architecture, as you know, is like weak or bad or things that get restricted.

Yeah.

On a more somber note, part of this two sex that conception thing also means that a whole bunch of trans women are now being sent to men's prisons. And like a lot of this stuff is stuff that we knew was going to happen, and it did happen quite immediately.

Yeah, and this is this is just the start.

I guess we'll throw over to MIA for some more executive action done on the wellcual gender ideology angle.

Yeah, but by the time we're finished recording this, there might be another anti trans executive order. We'll get to that end. But the big ones for right now is that Trump is trying to do a and this is not something we talked about in our in our last episode about what's gonna look like with trans people, but a federal funding ban for trans healthcare, which means for for youth trans healthcare, which means any provider that like

Or under the age of nineteen.

Yeah, under the age of nineteen. Yeah.

Obviously, like that gives you know, worries for stuff that we've been talking about for years for how they might try to start bumping up the age for these for these HRT bands.

Yep.

This also could be them not really realizing what they're doing to some extent, because this could also just be copying I believe in Alabama or an Arkansas ban and that was like the highest age used in any of these like state healthcare bands. They could just be copying that over because it is the highest one. And like, I'm not sure how much they've thought about, you know, their capacity to start, like, you know, arbitrarily raising that number.

I mean, part of what I think is happening. And I think this because this was definitely at play in the Alabama ban is this is, in addition to being an attack on trans people, part of a broader set of messaging towards the Parents' Rants movement, which very much does not consider eighteen year olds to be adults.

Totally, totally.

Yeah, And on that note, one of the things they're trying to do is target states that have like trans sanctuary laws by trying to like get parents who take their kids to save states, like charged on kidnapping charges and so forth, noting supposedly later today there's going to be one about using the Attorney General's office to work with attorney generals in states who prosecute teachers to use

Well, and it's just signaling to the base even if it gets stopped, like he's I think, I don't think he cares if decent chunks of it gets stopped.

He tried to do the thing. Yeah, I agree with Robert. He can now shift the blame to someone else.

Look, man, I did the executive order, which honestly is what Biden should have done on some stuff. Right, fuck it, make the statement, you know.

Yeah?

Yeah, So speaking of fuck it, let's get into this whole this whole freezing the entire federal government thing. We're we're gonna do a more detailed episode about this next week. But maybe the most unhanged thing that he's sound so far than the birthright stuff. He did an executive order

Hey, critical support. He got one thing, right, The.

Way that you can tell that none of these people, and the thing is a sign of is that none of these people have any idea what's going on inside of the state. They don't understand what it is, they don't understand what it does. And I can prove this for a fact because one of the programs that they froze was a program that gives money to police to do patrols outside of a nuclear weapons assembly plan.

Joey, they defunded the nuke police, like check the Segmal loop gang. I think I got a plan based on that we're gonna become the first nuclear armed podcasting network.

So like, I think I think people have this conception that, like, you know, they're operating according to a plan. These are all sort of strategic like strokes and masters strokes, and like no, they're just they're just lashing out right. They're driven by peer anger, and they're trying to do this purge of the government if anything woke or whatever, like anything that's like vaguely involves non white people or just like anyone who's not assists white dude, they're trying to

They're probably going to try to rewrite it. They might make it more targeted against you know, woke whatever that means. Yeah, it may not be as like broad as this as this official memo, but they're certainly going to try again.

But the problem that they have is that there's there are literally so many of these grants and the read the reason they did it this way in the first place was because they just they just they found a list of grants. I copied all of them and they were like, Okay, departments, you have to go figure this out, and we're freezing your stuff until you do that. Even Medicaid was frozen for a few hours yesterday. Yeah, right, Like the effectively nuked most of the capacity of the

Right.

Yeah, critical support to abolishing the nuclear security.

Yeah, they did what Biden couldn't do.

Yeah, let's go on a quick ad break, and then we will return to report more of the news.

All right, we are back.

I guess I will turn over to our Immigration and Border correspondent, James Stout.

That's me, Yes, please report the news.

I'm ready to report the news. I have never been more ready. Okay, this is gonna be a long run because that was a raw of executive orders about the border in the flurry flurry Yeah, a sounder the word we're allowed to use. Okay, a flurry Okay, A murder like crows, you know, the collective nown for crows.

I mean this is going to result in a murder.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, so let's start with a couple of the big ones, right. The first one was essentially revoking the right to asylum to anyone quote engaged in the invasion across the southern border end quote. I want to highlight this invasion language because obviously like I adventure to say, I've spent more time at the southern border of the United States sent anyone in the executive branch, and most people reporting on it too. The idea of an invasion is laughable. I've

Might well see that again.

They have attempted to rescind birthright citizenship for children of undocumented families.

Right.

This is one if people go back to our like what can Trump do for mass deportations podcasts that Robert Sophie and I did sometime in November. I think you'll get more information there on like what is and what is not possible than we have time to go into today. But you're seeing a lot of the things that we

The fourteenth Amendment is phrased.

Generally, it is understood that people who are not considered to be under the jurisdiction of the United States and therefore don't get citizenship when they're born here are the children of diplomats, because they have some diplomatic community right, so they're not necessarily governed by United States laws in all areas, and that is why children of diplomats don't

There is a lot of misinformation about what CBP one is.

CBP one is an application that allowed migrants to make an appointment and they had to be either in southern border states of Mexico or north of Mexico City. They could then make an appointment to approach a United States port of entry, those that are places where you can enter across the land border and make their case for their asylum right, do their first asylum interview.

Like this is like following the law, Like this is like the process.

Yeah, making a CBP one appointment is quote unquote the right way exactly.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

You have a legal right to enter between ports of entry and still make an asylum claim, which is what we saw in their outdoor attention situation, right. But doing it via CBP one is like the belt embraces correct way to do it. People who had appointments at noon Pacific on the day Trump was inaugurated saw those appointments canceled. They can't make appointments anymore. CBP one is gone. Those people who have waited an average of nine months in

Right.

Those people are now stuck in Mexico without really any legal means.

To enter the United States and claim asylum.

Trumps directed ICE to increase detention capacity. We spoke about this in our previous podcast. Don't the amount of detention beds they would need to hit the thirteen million deportations they talked about it is immense. But one of the things they are doing is starting to house it's people whose countries won't accept them for deportation, right, which is a thing that has happened. The United States has begun using military aircraft for deportations in the last two weeks.

Briefly entering a trade war with Columbia. Yeah, Yes, which lasted about two hours.

The one hour trade war about the same length as the Civil war in Western Yugoslavia.

Yeah.

The trade war with Columbia was averted when Columbia sent its own military plane to get these deportees.

Yeah.

Columbia caved immediately.

Yeah, then they will continue to accept US deportees as they have done for a long time. Right again, if you listen to my Darien series, you'll hear of some Colombian people being deported. We're now getting into things that are like more. These are orders that we haven't seen realized yet. One of them is he is He has talked about having the Attorney General remove as far as

In those places.

Those are actually places that, like the Sensitive Places doctrine, have been in place for a long time. This wasn't like a Biden thing that this was. This had been a long term thing. So ICE is now and we've seen immigration actions conducted at like a church in Atlanta, for instance. We've seen I think they were actually Secret Service agents who identified themselves as an ICE agent, sort of school in Chicago because a child had posted an anti Trump video.

And then I guess the.

Last thing that we are seeing is this designation of organized crime groups as foreign terrorist organizations. This is an interesting one. We haven't really seen any action on this yet, but it's one of his executive orders. In day one in his first administration, he designated irand Kuld Force as a foreign terrorist organization and then needed to kill their leader. Right, So this FDO designation opens up the possibility of a lot of like covert activity I'm talking like the CIA

Well, and it's something that heg Seth has previously been in favor of and he has now been confirmed.

Yes, yeah, Hegseth has talked to about using special forces in Mexico.

Oh yes, and this this was a Gender forty seven stuff. They've been talking about this for a while.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's also in our Agenda forty seven episodes if people want to go back there a direct action rate in Mexico, drone warfare in Mexico. Obviously, doing this without the permission of the Mexican government would be an act of war, right, like killing foreign nationals without the permission of their government, conducting direct action raids bombing another country

We will see how that plays out.

Also with reference to a military Trump immediately canceled the refugee resettlement program. With this left people all over the world stranded, including Afghanist many of whom worked for the United States or family members of US service people. Their refugee resettlement program, people don't come to the southern border. They go do all their background things and then fly into the United States. It's a different status to entering

They're now stranded.

Lots of them were stranded in Pakistan and facing immigration enforcement there in the case of the Afghans. So yeah, that is a speed run of all the terrible Trump immigration executive orders. We'll be reporting on this pretty extensively, so you can keep coming back for more. But another thing that we have more of right now is advertisements.

Okay, we are back. I have a few other notes I want to add for the woke front that I'm reporting on right now. I think it's been a lot of conflation between you know, like DEI and like what we would consider like affirmative action DEI refers to like these specific like corporate training policies and diversity initiatives, which is, you know, separate from long standing affirmative action policies, which has been used both in the corporate world and in

Right.

If there's anything that is about you know, trying to trying to increase the diversity in your workforce or any quote unquote woke topics including you know, gender ideology, anything anything that seems vaguely woke, you're supposed to now report to make sure that gets removed because that's not part of the new federal government. I believe someone from the NSA did leave a tip on that email line reporting

I did wonder that, like, at some point, you're gonna, like you're gonna lose people when you take away their days off work.

I get like that, right, right, So like I think they might leave those like actual federal holidays in but you're not allowed to observe any of these any of these other awareness months or or you know, Pride Month, Black History months, like you're not allowed to acknowledge that at all in these federal agencies now, at least for the Defense Intelligence Agency, support for most of Trump's executive

Look, the one thing people hate most is changing names.

Having the names been Lang.

Yeah, nobody likes that.

Yeah.

Yeah, he did Denali as well, Right.

Yeah, I guess that was changed more recently. But the Gulf of Mexico has been the Gulf of Mexico for longer than its America has existed as a country, the United States, right.

I mean, Denali has been Denali for longer than America has existed. It's just right, right, right, But there was a period where we called it McKinley. No one's ever called it the Gulf of America. Yeah, yeah, I'm not saying the Denali thing's right, I'm just saying like that's a much harder.

So yes, yeah, yeah, you're not going to get much buying on that.

Yeah.

Pardening J six protesters, new tariffs or taxes on Canadian goods, and ending birthright citizenship are all around sixty to thirty sixty oppose thirty percent in favor. Trump during his first week did see a record high approval rating that has slowly, I think gone down, but I don't know. It's hard to gauge the level of like general enthusiasm for his

Let me tell you, Panamanians not stoked. I've been receiving communications from Panama where it was his step down, but they are burning American flags.

The quote from the inaugural address is quote the United States will once again consider itself a growing nation. When that increases our wealth and carries our flag into new beautiful horizons, and we will pursue our manifest destiny into the stars.

Wow.

Yeah, I don't know, what do you have to do?

That's not a good thing. I think that's bad.

Like obviously, that's you know, not great, not ideal. You know, invading Panama not ideal. Going to war with Greenland slightly more funny because it's cold. I think specifically is focused on, like why that he believes the US has a vested interest in Greenland, isn't just picking out a spot on the map. I think this also could be like related to trying to prepare for climate change. Having territory in the Arctic is going to become an increasingly valuable commodity

Well, he did deregulate drilling in Alaska, Drill baby drill. I will be up there later this year talking to people in Alaska about drill baby drill.

Very excited for that, But I don't know I think it's also generally not super useful to make huge generalizing statements about what this type of stuff Trump is doing right now and how it will reflect on his entire presidency. People have been been doing this kind of about Trump's flip flopping opinions on TikTok, you know, being very into like, you know, saving TikTok and then then calling it worthless, but then going back to actually making sure that Microsoft

Yep.

And I think these sorts of things do not necessarily mean that he's going to like plummet to being the most unpopular president ever because he refuses to use the right messaging around TikTok or something. The other economic situations he might walk us into would be you know, much much more affecting to his general popularity.

Yeah, yeah, he's he is doing again. I talk about this a lot. Why fascists succeed is that they try, like they're constantly reaching for stuff, and oftentimes like they overreach, but nobody pushes back so they get the thing. Right, That's what he's doing here. Do I think that he's willing at this point to commit to a full scale military invasion and armed occupation of Panama, a thing that

He's always testing his limits.

Because that's what they do.

Yeah, I mean, look at Columbia, right, he immediately went to like eleven on the retaliation scale and effectively receive concessions.

Yeah.

So, I think, you know, similar to how you know it was annoying in the first like resistlib era to take every single crazy statement Trump says seriously, or like you know, do this performative outrage over every single thing he does. I think it's also useless to do fast mimetic reactions that form generalizing statements about you know, how something that Trump is doing is emblematic for the rest of his term and now he's like doomed to failure.

Yeah, so Trump has signed an executive order saying that they're going to create a facility capable of storing thirty thousand migrants in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. First, we should probably just talk about how realistic this is. If you ever looked at a topographical map of Guantanamo Bay, it's quite a large like the US concession in Cuba is a

So this is not the start.

If you want to call this, and I think it's fair to call this a plan to start a concentration camp system. That system began early, and in fact it started before Trump took office. A decent chunk of it was anticipating him coming into office.

But this is not the first camp, right, Yeah.

And like Biden did significant legwork for tension that is cool and unusual. Yes, with his legal defense and his establishment of outdoor attention for migrants since the end of Title forty two in May of twenty three, And I think like we have to acknowledge that, I know people are very much into that, Like, don't criticize the Dems right now, Like if they don't change, if taking a fat l in what should have been one of the easiest elections of the century doesn't change them, then nothing will.

Let's cool the.

Outdoor detention sites in Hakumba concentration camps right, because they sure as hell look like one and they are.

This is a big personal frustration to me. I'm seeing a ton of people going online and comparing this to the Nazi concentration camp here after referred to as the KZ system.

Right.

There's one post I came across on Twitter where a person who'm I'm not going to name just to not cause a bunch of bullshit for them. Time from taking office to opening a mass attention camp Mussolini eight years, ll Gala and others, Libya Hitler fifty one days, Docau Germany Trump nine days. That's fucking horseshit. Yes, Docou took longer to establish. Docou was not the first concentration camp.

Yeah, like we have it.

You can trace online from like Bosquier Rodondo right where they sent the Navajo people.

Right bass Rodando is a great thing to bring.

Yeah, yes, And you can trace a direct line from that to the outdoor detention camps we saw in twenty twenty three where people were forced to remain in one place without food, water, or shelter, and people died as a result of that last year two years ago, and like that, from there to Guantanamo Bay, it is not a massive leap. And yeah, just being like we don't

Yep, all right, is that this episode for this week?

Everyone?

I think that's the episode. I think we're done.

We reported the news.

Yes, 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 from More podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website Coolzonmedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources for it could Happen Here listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.