It Could Happen Here Weekly 24

know what, I might just go with that. I will find some clever way to introduce us. And that is that is the introduction now because because I said it, Hello, welcome to it could happen here today we are going to be talking about um Internet privacy and some new bills that will possibly undermine it. UM. Today I have with me Stopher. Hello, Christopher, Hello, I am here. I am. I don't know if excited is the right word, but no,

people are really excited to come about the show. This is a this is a mild dread of the Internet. I try because we definitely, we definitely can. Things don't need to be always horrible and grim, even when you're talking about things that aren't great. But yeah, today today

we'll be talking about some some interesting things. As per the title of this episode will probably be related to we are talking about the proposed earn It Act, and we'll just I'll explain what it is in the different kind of implications that could have on how like everyone uses the internet, um, but also affects a few specific types of people in particular. So but kind of part of this whole thing, We're gonna start off by talking about something a little bit different and then to kind

of segue to the inn An Act. UM. So, last year, Apple Company announced like a controversial plan to install photo scanning software into every kind of every every device. UM. Apple's kind of long been seen as a pro privacy company. UM. In the past, they have like refused FBI demands to

help investigators by pass locked phones. So this this idea on this plan to create a backdoor into the iPhone storage system to scan for photos was kind of a big deal coming for Apple because they were definitely, at least in the past, known as a generally like out of all of the companies, the ones that if you're dealing with sensitive matters, Apple is generally generally the better one. Now that that has become less of a case in the past few years, but that was that that definitely

was the case. So when when this kind of idea was announced, there was a decently sized global coalition also formed to push back on this thing UM, and the company did pause the plan. Now, this came at a time that a lot of different kind of companies were also pushing back against not safe for work materials UM's cimically for like like like relating to the transactional money

and banks. This was you know, around the time that only fans was flip flopping on whether they would actually have not safe for work kind of materials as a part of this kind of growing trend of like worrying

about UM. The term now is like child sexual abuse materials more traditionally was it's called child pornography or you know, so it's part of this kind of overall kind of extra focus that tech companies have about being worried that if they if someone who is doing that who is underage, or if someone's being exploited who's underage, UM, you know, they could unfinancially hurt the company. So they're trying to a lot lots of companies have been trying to do

this thing to prevent that legal and financial issue for happening. Now, of course, all this really actually ends up doing is just negatively affecting sex workers. Um. But that's that's kind of a topic for a different episode because we're talking about the inn Act more specifically and not not specifically talking about only fans. But this was Apple's plan to kind of scan all these photos to make sure that that they were not you know, naked photos of and

of children. Um. Now there's a whole buch of other privacy issues around that, because I mean, obviously teens do take news and send them to each other and there

is really no stopping that. Um. So the idea that all these photos are getting scanned and then seen and then like it would be the idea was that parents would be like alerted if something was found on the phone automatically, which means that for me, I have a whole bunch of other issues with that, Like that is a whole another kind of level, especially for queer kids, like that is like that is a whole again, but that that is mostly the whole whole other discussion that

I'm not going to talk about right now because we are I do want to focus is focus this more on the more on the earn at act. Um. But so this this plan was paused, UM. But now that may not necessarily matter actually, um, because Congress kind of wants to force Apple's hand, along with a lot with essentially every other company that allows users to store or

share messages or kind of really any content. Um. And Congress is some senators and there's a bill that will try to essentially mandate photo scanning and specific photo scanning technology approved by the government. So yeah, So while Apple's plan would have put privacy and it's the security at risk for all of us users, the Earned Act of compromises the security and free speech for basically everyone who

uses the Internet. Um. The bill would create serious legal risks for businesses that host content such as messages or photos of stored in the cloud, online backups, and potentially even any kind of cloud hosting sites such as Amazon Web Services, which means basically most of the Internet um and based so have the all these company all of these services and companies would be in serious legal risk

unless they use this government approved scanning tools. A version of this bill was first introduced two years ago, sponsored by Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican from South Carolina, and Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat from Connecticut. And now, like a lot of these other things, it is allegedly aimed at tackling so called child sexual abuse material online. UM. Which is which is a problem there is the kids definitely do get exploited. UM, kids do get groomed, exploited, photos

of children do get shared online. Uh. That like that that that actually is a real issue. UM. Now, a lot of the ways that these tools get implemented don't actually address that issue. And of course it doesn't actually deal with the people that do this, like you know, like the bad the bad people that do exploit kids.

It doesn't necessarily deal with them either. That is that is what they wrapped this idea as the original bills that was introduced two years ago threatened encryption and privacy features that would have actually, you know, put Americans privacy,

particularly particularly the privacy of children, um, at risk. It also got in section to thirty in ways that caused over fifty civil rights groups to pennel letter describing the potential consequences um of such things like censorship um, you know, cramming down on free speech and the basically destruction of encryption. So when the legislation failed to advance two years ago, digital Um, liberty advocates, you know, sex workers, civil rights

organizations all breathed a sigh of relief. But this past month, as I record this um in twenty in February, a group of lawmakers, again led by Senator Richard Bluementhal and Senator Lindsay Graham reintroduced the earnet ACTUM, a slightly modified version of it UM, and on the on the tenth of February, the Senate to Judiciary Committee voted to advance the dangerous earn It Act bill. So yeah, it is. It is. It is chugging along a bit further than

what it did than what it did last time. The earn An Act aims to tackle the horrific criminal activity related to child sexual abuse material by making Section to thirty protections contingent on the prevention and response to such material online. So Section to thirty shields online services like you know commonly used social media from liability from most user generated content. Under earn it, a Section to thirty would be amended to enable civil claims and state criminal

prosecution related to child abuse materials online against platforms. Now already this can kind of happen federally a little bit, um but it depends on how the company like responds to it. So, but this would introduce a whole new wave for civil claims and state claims to be filed

against companies like this. Um if if if if, if material like this is to be found hosted on their site, you know, including you know that that that would even include if like someone who's underage operates and not safe for work Twitter account that they probably should not be operating. Um but this this, you know this, this could also this could basically make the company in trouble. They can

fall under state claims or civil claims. So as as a result, online services could be subject to endless litigation under fifty different you know legal law systems you know for all the states regarding you know, finding child sexual abust material online. So the bill's proponents claim that this isn't necessarily a problem for any service as long as it is scanning the files then reporting child sexual beast

material to law enforcement. Internet companies are already required to report suspected material if they come across it, and they do report material on a massive scale that often comes comes with a lot of mistakes. Facebook is often held as a positive example by what lawmakers and law enforcement for how much they do report such such material. But while their new scanning techniques have produced many millions of reports, most of them are inaccurate. Like most of them actually

aren't of miners. It's it's it's not it's not. Actually none none of the s getting material is good because a lot of cases, many people up into their thirties can get often flagged and often like even non humans can get flagged, like pictures of fruit, like like it's not like it's not like, yeah, none of these scanning

tools are actually very good. Yeah, and like this is I think, I think a thing that like, if you've never liked had to work with a machine learning algorithm before, I think it's difficult to understand how unbelievably bad these

things are. Like it's just these oh, god, like the the the incomprehensible horror of trying to get a machine learning algorithm to do the thing that you wanted to do and not do the other things that you're not that you don't wanted to do to like, you know, be able to tell a difference between like a particularly smooth and round peach and like child's exhibuse material. You know, you human being can do this, right. The machine cannot

and it is they it is horrifically inaccurate. You have to do all kinds of like hacking stuff together in order to get this stuff to work. And yeah, it's it's it's a fiasco. A good example of this that I've that I've heard before that I'm probably probably gonna butcher this explanation, but you know that you can take, you know, a photo of a wolf, um, maybe even three photos of a wolf, and say here this is these these are photos of wolves. Um, here's it, here's

other here's here's these these other photos. Find which ones are wolves, and it'll, you know, it'll it'll sort throw the ones. So some of them have wolves, some of them don't. Um, and it only finds one picture that says this one, based on the three photos even given me this photos is a wolf, and instead the photo is not. The photo is of a tree. And you're like,

why did it tell me this is a wolf? And the computer will answer, well, look at all, the all of the backgrounds are the same because it's trying, it's trying to match, like he doesn't have the same thing that humans do. And when when all these computer algorithms that are trying to learn to replicate and trying to find these patterns, it is never perfect. So the big thing that is people often overlook is that, yeah, specifically with this, like with with Facebook scanning tool and the

millions of reports that that it does make. You know, federal law enforcement will frequently use the massive number of reports to suggest there is this giant recent up to in child sexual abuse materials. But that's not because there actually is. That's because the scanning that some companies are doing is just so bad, Like it's just it's just

so accurate that it flags so many things. So like in action, the new earn It Act would just pave a massive new surveillance system run by private companies that would roll back some of the most important privacy and security features and technology used by people around the globe. Right.

The idea is to compel private companies to scan every message that sent online and report violations to law enforcement, and it may not stop their earn An Act could ensure anything hosted online commular like backups, websites, cloud photos, and more, is all scanned. Now, of course, you can say, I mean there is no actual true privacy online, right.

The n s A does see everything, which is basically true, but stuff like local police departments in the FBI do not have constant access to what the n s A has. It does actually like legally it does actually take some

time for that to happen. The fact that all these private companies would be doing it for them, um, and the fact that this would actually break encryption makes people like the FBI, makes the local law enforcement have a much easier time accessing what we do on the internet, because yes, the n s A kind of does always to see everything, but that that this actually this actually is this actually is quite different in terms of the

accessibility of that information. And I think I think it's also you know, to to to go back into one of the sort of like encryption arguments to right, So, okay, what once you put a backdoor into encryption? Right? Once, once once you have you know, you have your system, you have the encryption system, but you know now there's now there's a way to access it, right because oh, well, we need to access these you know, we need to be able to decrypt this in order to see if

there's like child pornography materials on it. Right, Once that backdoor exists, any anyone who finds it can use it for anything they want. And it's it's it's it's not even just that, like well we'll get into some other things around encryption, but but yeah, you can continue. Yeah, and you know, and I think I think this is

something that I think people don't like. The people who are just to keep about this in terms of child pornography don't think about which is that like I don't know a lot like there these these kinds of backdoors, right, like other people can find them, yes, and you know, Okay, now now you've just put it back to it, all of the encryption, like oh hey, here's you know, like here,

you're you you are. You are going to get people killed, and you're gonna get people killed because you're going to have people who are doing things under governments that you know will will will Like you know, you're gonna have people in mil Mart, You're gonna have people in You're

gonna have people in Egypt. You're gonna have people in Syria who like these these regimes and like these you know, private private companies right are are going are going to sell the back doors to these regimes and they're going to use it to hunt down, torture and kill people.

And so yeah, there is there's a lot of problems with it, especially especially how it how it kind of addresses encryption, because the bill does try to actually have some encryption protections, but the way they go about it, of course is not is not adequate, and it even kind of fosters it's its own negation in some ways if you read the entire bill. So but I'll get more into encryption in a sec because there are other like technical issues with the way this bill is designed

and how it would be enacted. There is this sort of benefit to having a legal material that is that is actually exploding miners being primarily hosted on big tech platforms because these platforms are used so much and are mostly non restricted, so it makes catching this stuff and reporting it actually much easier, Like it is if they're hosted on these mainstream things, it does make seeing it

and reporting less difficult. So not only will this bill make tech companies be more likely just to ban all not safe work material in general, right, because if companies are forced to scan and they're gonna be filing swimming reports that this will this will result in a lot a lot more companies just saying no new photos at all,

like just completely gone. Not only will this bill just make tech companies more likely to ban all not safe work content in general, which would be horrible for sex workers and just a bad precedent, but yeah, they would be more likely just to do that because of how much overscanning there would be, and just a whole bunch of things, so we'd create it would create too many

fears of legal repercussions. Thus, you know, that would force people who distribute child porn onto more sketchy sites and sites that might just refuse to scan content in general

because they're temporary hosting. But the bill could also just to scare these bad people off of mainstream platforms and make them voluntarily migrate to more niche and hard to finde the corners of the Internet, making illegal content harder to catch and take down because there will always be weird temporary sites to host this type of thing, like they're always there, Like these bad people will find a way it's always like that is it is gonna always

be a problem. Um. And so in a way, it's it is better to have these things on mainstream platforms because reporting them and taking them down can be much easier. Um. It's it's like it's like when people really advocate platforms like Telegram shut down all fascist channels. Right. The thing is is that there's a lot of benefits to having these chat rooms on Telegram because that makes them really easy to monitor and really easy to infiltrate. UM. So

there's a lot worse places for fascists to organize. UM. If you're doing it on Telegram, it's actually really easy to watch. So it's this weird given take in terms of in terms of where where these things happen, because they are going to happen somewhere. So I now want to talk about how specifically this bill threatens threatens online encryption services, all right, Um, The bill would strip critical legal protection for websites, apps, and specifically Section to thirty.

If past, it would empower many different levels of government to make sweeping new Internet regulations. Right in, individual states will be able to pass laws um to hold private companies like libel um as long as they somehow relate their new rules to child abuse materials, like they wible to have a whole bunch of new rules on Internet regulations if they can sift it through this lens. The goal is to get states to pass these laws that will punish that will punish companies when they deploy end

and encryption or offer other encryption services. This includes messaging systems like What's Apps, Signal I Message, and as well as web hosting like Amazon Web Services um EARN it aims to spread the use of tools to scan all

online content against law enforcement databases like directly UM. In a myths and Facts document distributed by the bill's proponents, it even names a government approved software program that they could mandate called a photo d NA, which is a program that Microsoft made that reports directly to law enforcement databases. So earn it doesn't specifically attack encryption per se UM, but that's because it doesn't need to. Like it doesn't have to because of the way the bill is designed.

How it approaches encryption is actually a little more insidious. UM. It allows the fact that encryption exists on the platform itself to be used as evidence against a company in order to find it liable for hosting child sexual abust materials, so they can use the fact that encryption exists as evidence, which is wild, like this is this is the thing.

This is the thing that CCP does a lot like with you know, like they'll they'll use they'll use the fact that, like somebody is using a VPN for example, as evidence that they're this happens constantly and and it's It makes a lot of a lot of encryption stuff incredibly unsafe because like you know, you show up with your phone, you have signal on it, and the CCP is like, well, you're this is this is this is proof. We're just gonna we're gonna lock it up and throw

away the key. Yeah, and yeah. It's extremely bad. So the result is that laws will make companies liable, um if they don't scan and report user content for child sexual abust materials, which they can't do unless they make break encryption. You know, big companies like Apple um are going to full to to protect themselves. Um, so earn it would is like it coerces these sites and plat forms and services to do this sort of scanning and not just some messages but all online content encrypted or not.

Um Companies that handle online content would have to weigh the benefit of their users securely encrypting their data content against the legal risk of doing so. Um and encryption becomes much harder when it, you know, puts the company's bottom line at risk. And and and and like and and and and. Encryption isn't just her messages, right, It's it's not just on signal. It secures most of the Internet, or at least at least a lot of it, keeping

what you do allegedly you know, private unsafe online. You can't have a secure internet where all the content is also screened because you can't haven't encryption alongside mass scanning requirements. It's just so, this isn't just an attack on encryption. It's attack on any fund of fundamental security that the

Internet you know has. Yeah, and you know there's lots of like god, there are lots of extremely technical reasons why this isn't extremely bad things like it's like okay, yeah, like you you you think you think malware is bad, now like God, Like, look like the things the things

that will happen, Like you you think people are stealing apes? Now, like the things that will happen if you have to if you have to deal with an Internet that's unencrypted or you know, like yeah, it's an absolute horror show, like if yeah, like I yeah, it's this. This is a thing bad enough that like I do not have the words to express how catastrophic this would be, because

it's just a fundamental structure of the Internet. It really is not just for messages like the earned uh miss and fast document also like specifically attacks Amazon for not scanning enough of its content um and since Amazon is the home of Amazon Web Services, which hosts a huge number of websites, that implies that like the bill's aim is to ensure that anything hosted online also gets scanned.

Like like like everything the online service providers, even the smallest ones, will be compelled to scan user content with government approve software like photo dona um And if earnest supporters succeed in getting large platforms like cloud fair and that some web services to scan, they may not even need to compel smaller websites because the government will already

have access to the data through the cloud platforms. So like, as long as they get you know, these big hosting platforms, they don't even like, they won't even need need to bather with a lot of with a lot of smaller sites.

I think there's another thing I think that's probably worth mentioning here, which is so we don't really have like the time to fully go into this in this episode, but like there's a lot of this sort of stuff is being pushed by these incredibly right wing evangelical anti porn groups and their goal is just to eliminate anything that is not like part of their sort of fundamentalist Christianity, yes,

from the internet and those people. And this is this is particularly relevant to this because those people are going to find a way to to to like to to bring lawsuits against these companies specifically so that they specifically so they can do because this is you know, what what you've done is say you've just handed them a gun.

Poor insides will all be taken down because they'll be because they'll be facing so many endless lawsuits um like only like only fans will no longer host ethical poor like like none of this will have like all of it will be taken down. No one like this will this will attack sex workers to such an absurd degree.

Um it'll make base. It will make a lot of if not most online sex work just impossible because there will be so many lawsuits always happening that companies will just always ban it just because they can't they can't risk dealing with all those legal fees. Um it's it's yeah.

And and and in the fact that state prosecutors and private attorneys will be able to drag an online service provider into court over accusation that their users committed crimes and then use the fact that the service chose to encrypt like like chose to use encryption um at all, as evidence against them. Is the fact that the strategy specifically allowed under earn it like makes the possibilities of

this type of thing just endless. Like like imagine imagine like they'll be aild to take down signal so easily because like it's it's it's it's wild all if they can, if they can find one instance of you know, as like as like a of of an abuser using signal or has you signal, then basically all of signal decryption will be severely threatened um because of the way that legal finds will be forced onto this company. It's is like specifically for stuff based like for any kind of

in any any service allowed in the States. And yeah, it's really frustrating because you know, people including senators UM who are pro earn it, say that the new tools are necessary to tackle the issue of online child abuse and the and the distribution of illegal materials online. But you know, obviously, like possessing, viewing, or distributing child poorn or child sexual abust materials is already written into laws.

Is a serious like, it's an extremely serious crimes can do, yes, and it has a broad framework of existing laws seeking

to eradicate it. Right, people could like companies can already get in federal trouble if they're find if they're found to continue if like you know, if stuff is found and they continue to host it, or if they're going if like their stated purposes to host it, like like some of the most trouble you can get into, UM at least at least like on the books, UM, because you know you can you can look at you know, how many cops are involved with this type of thing

as like other than being like like like as evidence said, like it doesn't like it may not get enacted upon. Always there was there was a horrible story recently of a teacher who sorry, this is this is this is this is going to be quite graphic. UM, but of a like skip ahead like a minute or two if you don't want to. UM of a teacher who fed

students um food containing her husband's seamen um. Her husband was a cop and her and her husband again who was a cop, and the also the leader of a swatch team UM had raped multiple children um as like it had and had had pictures of children UM and like like both of them were doing this together. So like yeah, that's like the leader of swat teams like police. Like the fact that like if you if you look at the people often doing this type of stuff, it's

cops a lot of the time. Like the cops raped so many um kids that that they that they arrest and detain. It is shocked. Like you you can google this every week and you'll find you'll find like new reports of it. It is, it is. It is horrific. UM. And you know, online service providers that have actual knowledge of an apparent or imminent violation of current laws around child sexual best materials are required to report it or

they will face legal trouble. UM. Yeah, like you you could you can kill people and get in less trouble with the law, then then you will get if if if you intentionally do this stuff, like there are scenarios where you can kill people where you won't get in

trouble with law. There is no scenario where you do you you like you you intentionally do like you intentionally do this stuff where you will like unless you're a cop with like with with the legal protection of your other cops won't rat you out, like yeah, or you're like very very rich, yeah, like you know, unless unless you have extra legal protection. Yeah, like you are fucking

going to vanish. So yeah, Like we already have a lot of stuff to deal with this and the methods proposed by Earnest would not only chip at the last semblance of privacy online, but it would all but it would arguably make actually combating real instances of online check of online child abuse a lot more difficult. It would pressure distributors and abusers um into harder to find corners

of the Internet that don't fall under big tech companies UM. Plus, the massive increase in content scanning would produce so many false flags it would clog up any effort to find

action materials because so much stuff is gonna get flagged. Right, it's gonna you're gonna get a wave of so many images that you have that you have sort sort through and figure out if the people in it actually are under age because a lot of people who look thirty and sorry, a lot of people that are thirty can also look under age sometimes, like like with lighting with ef fect like it it's it is, it will be.

It's gonna it's gonna like be such a task. Um And we can only see this in effect with new scanning techniques used by Facebook. They that have produced millions of reports to law enforcement, most of them are accurate um And of course federal law enforcement use uses this massive number of reports produced by low quality scanning software

to you know, suggest there's a huge uptick in these images. Thus, you know, armed with misleading statistics, the same law enforcement groups make new demands to break encryption um or with earn it hold companies liable if they don't scan user contact those kind of algorithms, right, Like you know, okay, this this is an oversimplification, but like to to to conceptualize why this is a bad idea, like these these are these like this is the this is the same

stuff that like you know how, you know how, there's there's those there's those like trending topics on Twitter, and they'll they'll they'll show you a tweet and the tweet will be like I don't know, they'll they'll they'll be someone talking about a subway sandwich and it'll get like it'll show up under trains because it's the subway like this. Those are the algorithms that they want to fucking run the entire Internet through. I have seen I have seen

some very I've seen some very erotic bell peppers. Um and like it's it's gonna like that. These things aren't aren't going to be good um and like independent child protection experts are not asking for systems to read everyone's private messages. Rather, they recognize that children, particularly children that might be abused or exploited, actually need encrypted in private messaging just as much, if not more, than the rest of us. Like no one, including the most vulnerable among us,

can have privacy or security online without strong encryption. Um And the Earner Act doesn't really just target big tech. What it does is it targets every individual Internet user, treating all of us as potential criminals who deserve to have every single message, photographer, document scanned and you know,

compared against a government database like directly directly to law enforcement. Um. And since direct government surveillance would be you know, blatantly unconstitutional and promote public outrage, U earn it to use as tech companies, you know, from the largest smalls the smallest ones as its tools to kind of bypass that constitutional like barrier um because yeah, if you, if you, if you, if you, if you hit the touch companies where it hurts, they will not allow this type of

stuff at all. Like and this is also the thing you can you know, you cannot deny that this is also just part of a larger effect to ban porn um and just to ban any kind of sex work online as well. Like you you cannot deny that this is this is this is definitely an ingrained part of this, particularly with a lot a lot of its supporters and of course you know Senator Lindsay Graham appealing to that

side of the Republicans. This is this is a big part of just trying to you know, remove porn and remove um, you know, any not safe work material from being hosted online. So the strategy is to get private companies to do the dirty work of mass surveillance. UM. You know it's the same. It's the same tactic that government's try to use this year, trying to you know, convince Apple to subvert its own encryption and scan all

of its users photos. Um. It's the same strategy that the that the UK law enforcement is using to convince the British public to give up their privacy, having spent public money on a laughable public publicity campaign that demon as his companies that use encryption. UM. So that that's really how it's operating. UM. I do want to shout out, um, uh the e f F for provide a lot of the kind of research that I used for compiling stuff

on on this episode. UM, thank you, thank you, thank you e f F. UM you often often do good work. That's the Electronic Frontier Foundation. They focus a lot on like Internet privacy issues. UM. And I do want to point people to a a link tree. It is uh you know l I N K t R dot E slash stop earn it. UM. So yeah, you can find different ways to UM. You know, if you're the type of person that enjoys calling representatives or something, it has

it has links for that kind of thing. It has links to send you know, automated messages onto your representative to vote no on the Internet Act. That has too you know if if you're a type of person that enjoys the signing petitions UM, it has it has more info on what earn it is and what it does UM, and a whole bunch of other stuff around, you know, organizing to help stop this bill. There's like discord channel

that have people organizing to to stop this bill. UM links links forward on that has info on like actions you can take. UM. So yeah, I would uh if if you're interested in like looking for the different ways that can maybe you know contribute. You know, not no single person that can make an impact, but you know enough people, enough people can UM. So yeah that's link

tree slash stop earn It UM. And then also again another shout out to the e f F. Yeah, I wanted to make say two closing things before we close this out. One if if you think that if you think that once you're handing the entire context of the Internet over to the government who run through scanning all groups, that the only thing they're ever going to scan for is child pornography, I have no n f D to

sell you. It is a picture of a bridge. Once once you buy this n f T of the bridge, you will own the Brooklyn Bridge Contact contact me for more details. The second thing is that, um, you know, when when we talk about like when we we talk about anti porn stuff, when we talk about how you know, the way you get around this is by banning all different work content. Right. The other thing that almost immediately

gets banned. It's inevitably when when when when when companies for for whatever reason, And this is true just of of of companies that are trying to comply with you know, like the app store or stuff like that, like when when when whenever you get target things that target not for work content, they inevitably, inevitably without failed, target queer

content content, literally nothing at all through sexuality. Because that's you know, this is this is this is this has always been like accusing queer people of of being child predators has been the attack line on queer people. Queer people are always on the front line of all of this stuff. Yeah, they will always be the first people impacted.

They will be the first people demonized, even if even if even if it's not even not sayek material if if it has if it has nothing to do with it, it will still always always be impacted more than basically anyone else. Yeah, I mean we've we've been seeing this on YouTube but constantly lots of lots of people who just you know, make trans content channels are always being banned or demonetized, yep marked as a belt content like yeah,

it's it's horrifying. And if if if you want an Internet, not even just if you want to Internet that has like sex on it, if you want to Internet that has queer people on it, right expressing themselves in in in in in any way that's not like literally just it's straight person but you say queer right, if if that's a thing that you think is valuable and if you and if you think that you know it is important for core people to be able to express themselves

for their own health and safety, Like you have to op post this, Yes you absolutely, Um, I guess what one final thing I'll add because they know someone will probably message me about it. Um. There is a slight opinion piece by somebody saying that this bill would actually let child abusers walk free because they could use the fact that this bill essentially, um, you know, compels companies to do scanning software via via government like mandate because

of this bill. They would that because because in their mind, this could possibly violate the Fourth Amendment to this would allow abusers, um, the evidence that they was collected to prosecute abusers to become invalid in court. So this would actually also make the This would just make this would make the bill um uh you know, actually make people walk free. I do not agree with this take. I don't think that's how it would work out at all, because especially for you know, you can use this for

like political organizing. You can use this for a lot of like you can use the same argument for a lot of cases, and it never works out that way because the government does not care about that sort of thing. Um, it's it's it's not that's not how it works. Um. I mean, like these things that get violated like in theory that does not know that's the way, like they illegally seized you know, ten Kazinski's you know, uh, you know, like evidence and yeah, it doesn't it doesn't matter, like

that's that's that's that's that's not gonna matter. Because then this bill would be seen as a good thing because it would prevent people from you know, then encryption wouldn't be necessary because then none of the evidence that people would you know, would have gathered would ever be admissible in court. And that is that they would never design the bill like that that. That's not that's not the case.

I disagree with this take. So do not send me this article saying actually it's going to have this happen, because I do not believe it, because this assumes that the government operates like like coherently and operates like you know, like no, the government does does does not care no, like again, like the First Amendment is superseded by traffic law, like you know that you're not going to be able to use this. This isn't like this will secretly let

abusers go free. This is not secretly a good thing because it will make all evidence inadmissible in court. Bullshit anyway, Anyway, I'll give a final shout out to the link tree link tree slash stop earn it um. That's l I n k T dot e er slash stop earn it um if you're the type of person that likes doing those types of things. And also it has like links like discord channels for other types of organizing beyond you know, petitions and calling and senators and setting messages and blah

blah blah blah blah. Anyway, that's the episode. UM, thank you for listening. I just thought, I just thought, this is this is this is an important thing enough that I haven't seen it. I have not seen enough people talking about the earn It Act and the way it does seriously threatened digital privacy. And because it was approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee to be pushed forward, um, it is actually chugging along on the slow legal process,

so it's gotten further than what it got in. So I thought it was actually worth talking about, um, you know, for privacy issues, how it affects queer people, how it affects sex workers, um, and all all that general thing. So yeah, and also I wanted you know that it's very easy to feel hopefuls with this kind of stuff, but like we've beaten legislation. Like one of my one of my formative childhood experiences was when when we beat when we beat SOPA and people like we can beat them.

It takes it takes a lot, takes a lot of mobilization, but yeah, like we we we we we I know we can. I know we can beat this because we've beaten things like it before. Agreed, all right, that nothing for us today. If you want to find us on a currently more secure than what it could be Internet, you can follow us on Twitter at cool Zone Media, um and happened here pod. I think apparently Instagram too, So that's cool. If you're an Instagram person, good for you,

because Twitter Twitter is bad. Um. You can find me on Twitter at Hungry about Tie. Um, yeah, find me at at h R three You can't, you can't. Indeed that that do? Is it for us? Um? Encrypture? Hey everybody, Robert Evans here? Um obviously, as I'm sure everyone is being bombarded with. The war in Ukraine is in its fifth day right now, something like that. Um, we just passed ninety six hours. By some accounts, more than three

hundred thousand people have been made refugees. Those are going to be very in exact numbers, but it's it's likely to be somewhere between like fifty and a hundred thousand people per day being made refugees, and it's possible that's gonna last for the foreseeable future. Much of the coverage that you will have seen at this point UM is going to focus on heroic pieces of of of resistance, you know, things that Ukrainian civilians picking up arms, throwing

Molotov cocktails, Ukrainian soldiers destroying Russian armored columns. Some of that's going to be a propaganda, some of that A

decent amount of that's actually happening. Obviously, we have a fair amount of documentation, but what I think has not gotten nearly as much plays the situation at the border of Ukraine in Poland UM because this refugee crisis is enormous, but it's also not sexy, and it points to a number of things that are ugly about some of the stuff that people like to celebrate this conflict, including the conduct of President Zelinsky, who is I think handled himself

objectively well as a wartime leader, and who is also, as you'll hear in the interview that's about to follow, made some decisions that have had a catastrophic impact on people's lives. So this is an interview conducted by a journalist, uh James Stout, who is working with us on this project and with another project that will be launching soon.

With a person, an individual an American who was well has a couple of different passports, but with a person who was in Ukraine when the invasion began and left and eventually wound up leaving on foot with tens of thousands of other people for the Polish border. So this is a story of what it is like to flee a country at the beginning of a war, um and and the realities that increasing numbers of Ukrainians are going to be facing every single day. So please listen. Hey, manny,

how are you. I'm doing well, How are you good? Good? It's ready to keep you up late and period exhausted. No, no, it's okay, it's okay. UM. I actually just arrived at a new hostel in New City. UM, and I'm going to be up for a couple more hours anyway, So it's a good time to talk. Nice. Great, Do you mind if I record this? Go ahead? Cool? Excellent, and

let me explain what we're gonna do. So I'm I'm bringing a piece for NBC on the the refugee situation that's emerging, and I'm also helping to make a podcast for I Heart Radio about a similar thing. It's okay, with you. We'll use the audio for one and then some of your words for another. Absolutely, how is my audio coming through? It's great, Actually, it's really really good that you wanted to set a phone or you on a computer. I'm on a telephone right now. I don't

have a computer with me. Now, you're doing really well. If you're on a computer, i'd ask you to record it back up, but this is just fine. I'm recording. So yeah, like, um, it seems like you've had a pretty exhausting forty eight hours now. So if we go back to when you were in Kiev, right, Yeah, So I was in Kiev a few days ago. I was in Kiev, um eight days ago? Um, and then I went to Leviv four days ago. Okay, And had you

been how long have you been in Ukraine? I had been I've been in Ukraine or I had been in Ukraine in total for one week? Okay, so you know that long? And you so you ride Kieth, you went to Lviv. Can you remember, like where you were when you found out that the invasion was happening and that it was going to go posting bass and into the Ukraine. Yeah, of course. So I woke up on the morning of twenty four February to the sound of air raid sirens outside,

and it was a very confusing sound. I had never heard it right, sirens in real life. I just heard them in movies and television shows and such, and I knew immediately what had happened. I didn't even have to check the news. Um and I did check the news soon afterward, and there were bombings all over the country. There were reports of bombings in Ivana front Kiss, which is a city on KOs south of Leviv where I was,

and there were so many rumors flying around. There were rumors that the Russians were coming to Leviv at that moment, which was not the case but can still be the case very soon anyway. So we heard I heard these these air raids sirens as I woke up, and I shook away my roommate, who was a British journalist, UM and I told him we might be bombed any minute. So we went outside to try and find a shelter.

UM pretty much still in our nightclothes. We went outside to try and find a shelter, and they were loudspeakers saying uh, everybody remained calm, fine, shelter helped the elderly stockpile water, and it was repeating this on repeat, and people were shuffling along. There was a sense of muted panic. So it was an outright panic, but it was a sense of urgency, I guess you could call it. And um, we were at war and that was when I realized

that Ukraine was being invaded at that very moment. Wow, yeah, it sounds dramatic. And at that point you went to the shelter. I'm guessing, so did you spend some time then before making the decision to head to polent So after about fifteen minutes, the air rates I would stopped. The news generally came around the city that Lviv was not about to be bombed, but nevertheless, massive exodus of people began from Leviv at that moment. Because okay, we're safe for now, but for how long are we safe?

Was the general sentiment that was around. So, Um, everybody just started making for the train station, the bus station, They got into their cars. People were just leaving. There were huge lines at the A T. M s. There were huge lines at the grocery stores. People were buying no perishables. Um, it was just not a panic pull out I would call it, but it was an urgent departure.

It was an urgent exodus that was happening. And so me and my roommate we went to the train station, waited in the line for two hours to see if there were tickets. There were no tickets. We went to the bus station. We waited in the line for one hour to see if there were tickets. There were no tickets, um And so then we started to get a little worried because it was noon on the day of the invasion.

Russian forces were everywhere in the country. Of our bombings everywhere in the country, and we had to leave, and there was no viable means to leave. The airport was closed. Of course, the airport was being bombed a few hours later there um And so we tried to look into a car higher. We tried to see if we could rent a car. We tried to see if we could take an Uber or a lift or a blah black car, which is the Ukrainian version of Uber, and none of

those options were available. Because everybody was thinking the same thing, and in a sense of almost resigned despair, we decided that it would be best to just start walking west and see what happened, And there was around noon when we began to walk west. Wow. Um, So when you set off to walk, did you just sort of take what you could carry and that's sort of what the most people were doing. Or did you get the sense that at least the people were like preparing for a

long period of time away when they left. The people certainly were not preparing for a long period of time away. The people were not preparing for war. Um. For the longest time, President z of Lynsky in the Ukrainian government maintained that there would be no war. They called indications of war alarmists that called them ludicrous. And uh, it was only in the final twenty four hours that everybody sort of woke up and said there's going to be

a war. So I remember the last day before the invasion, people were getting ready, people were waiting at the A T. M s. People were buying groceries, people were packing. But it was not before before that time nobody was getting ready for the war. And so when the war struck, everybody, uh, everybody just sort of left hastily, and it was terrifying departure of a sudden and terrifying departure because people didn't know what to do and they just sort of grabbed

what they had and they ran. Luckily for me, in my roommate, we were traveling with, you know, just one pack or so because we were not living in Ukraine, um, and so we were able to just carry what we had on our backs. Yeah. So he told me through that walk then it's I think that's sort of like forty three miles, is that right? That's that's right. So we did take a municipal buss a little bit of the way, which are from municipal bus. I believe it

was five kilometers down the roadroad, um. Five kilometers being like three miles down the road um. And the total distance from Leviv to the borders eight eighty kilometers sorry eighty kilometers. Uh. So that really did not make a dent at all in the distance. And it was noon when we started, and we knew for a fact that um, that we would not make it before nightfall. And we knew that and we were terrified at that. So at first we walked along the countryside was picturesque, it was beautiful,

It was indistinguishable from holiday during springtime. There was a fair fair weather was sunny, um, and no one could even tell that the nation was at war. There was really nobody else walking on the road besides us in the beginning, and the first uh twenty kilometers, I would say, um. And then we started seeing long lines of the petrol stations. Every everywhere was out of gas. There nobody had gas. Um.

There was just no ability to fuel cars. And as a consequence of that, UM, cars were running out of gas and they were being abandoned on the side of the road, which caused further traffic pile ups, and soon the road was impenetrable to vehicles. UM. And so because of this, everybody started getting out of their cars and walking. And so these families who had planned to escape Mukraine to Poland in their cars and carry their lives with them were suddenly faced with the hard decision of taking

what they could carry with them. Yeah, that just sounds terrible. That sounds really difficult. And I'm sure you saw like older folks and younger people as well, with people sort of and struggling to that's a long walk, right, It's gon a walk, and everyone could do it, must be very dear. It's a difficult walk for a young man, and many old women and little children under the age of five or forced on this march because there really

wasn't no other option for them. It was either go back to Ukraine and risk being bombed, risk being under Russian occupation, or it was get out of your car and walk in the wintertime with no food or water, no toilet, four fifty miles. And it was just this nightmare scenario because all these people were on the road. There were people in wheelchairs who couldn't negotiate the mud.

There were mothers with strollers who couldn't get get the children um out, and the children were crying, and the children were asking why are we here, what it will be doing? Why did we have to leave home and stand and walk fifty miles in the middle of winter um And the old people were sort of resigned to it.

They There was one old woman I passed who was using a cane and she was hobbling along jade to backpack, and I asked her where are you going, because we were a part we were a long long way from the border, and she said, I'm going to Poland, very simply, it was a very matter of fact um statement. And so these people walked with a sense of duty and a sense of urgency, and um, it was just a

very tragic hymn terran scene. Yeah, I can imagine. And that was a major that was a major route that you're run like a major road that just become impossible. It wasn't one of the bigger highways, but it was I believe the M eleven, the Ukrainian M eleven, and it runs east west throughout the country and uh, yeah, it's one of the major roads and it had become

completely clogged. Yeah, Jesus so on arrival in in Poland or the border, and I understand that there's some men like broadly defined as like military age or eighteen to sixty, I think aren't allowed us and leave because they they have they have to stay in it and enlist. Is that right? Did you see? Yes? The border was absolutely the worst part for that reason. About five kilometers from the border. At the end of our walk, we were feeling relieved, we were feeling like finally we've made it.

Ukrainian military patrols started walking by and driving by and announcing through loud speakers and announcing with their own voices, Um, all men must stay, All men between the ages of eighteen and sixty have to stay get out of line now. And so the fathers naturally asked, because there were a lot of fathers who were there to protect their families,

to safeguard their families, and to provide for their families. Uh, these fathers asked, how about us, we have to we have little children, We have children under the age of five. How are we supposed to provide for them if you conscript us right here? The Ukrainian Army did not care. They pulled them away physically from their families. There were a lot of tears. There was a lot of crying. There were a lot of hurried goodbyes. Brothers left, sisters,

mothers left, husbands, um, lovers left each other. People people just left. It was terrifying to watch. Um. Yeah, all these men were conscripted immediately into the army. Yeah, I can imagine. And what people at that point like, it seems like that we're ready to be stoic. Up to that point, were people sort of resisting that, like just what they like, sort of sad but resigned to it. Was that was that well, that was when the panic began because everybody was sad, but resigned to their faith

of walking to Poland. But nobody was prepared for losing all the men. Um. So when all the men were lost, when all the men were taken forcibly, and this was public, everybody could see these men being yanked from their families. People first started yelling at the soldiers that didn't do anything obviously, um and they were they were so angry at the soldiers, and the soldiers were genet care um.

And then panic began because people realized, oh my god, this this person who was here with us, who was a travel companion, who's a relative, now we have to leave without him. And even more, he's going to the front now and he is in great danger at the front. So people began pushing, they began shoving, they began being rude to one another. Um. There there was no sense of empathy among the people at all, because it was

a panic to get across the border at that point. Um. So there were people fainting, uh, and that was really just overlooked. The people who fainted were sort of dragged to the side and left there. And I think they they made it. I don't know if they made it out okay, They certainly didn't die, but there were people who were fainting. There are people who were sobbing there, or people who were hyperventilating. That was vomiting going on.

It was just this sense of absolute human panic as people just tried to escape in the last in the last five kilometers and especially in the last five was the very worst. So, yeah, terrible thing to see if you hadn't stand you stay in touch. Want of the lads who was conscripted, right, Yes, that that was a

development from tonight. So while we were walking about this was about fifteen kilometers out from the border, we met a young Ukrainian man UM and we just got to talking to him because I mean we could relate to him. We were about I'm about the same age as him, um, and so I we were just like we're talking about our lives and it was almost as if the war wasn't going on. And then we got to these army checkpoints, um, and they started calling all the men you have to

you have to leave, um. And so my friend said, oh, I'm not I'm not leaving. I don't want to fight in this war. And he tried to you know, sort of, um, stay with us, because we were foreigners. We were not We were not eligible to be conscripted, so he sort of tried to stay with us. He was he was a student, He was trying not to fight in this war because he had a life elsewhere. He had a girlfriend who who was traveling with U. And so we we were walking with him and I said, hey, do

you want to do an interview? He said sure, UM, and I started talking to him on camera and then the soldier came by and yelled in his direction, hey, you get out of line. And UM he said, I'm sorry, I have to go, and he just gave me this look, like this despairing look, and he went with the soldier. UM. The two days later today, I Uh, he messaged me on Instagram and he said, because we by the way,

we had exchange contact information where we were talking. Um. He messaged me on Instagram and he said, hey, I saw that you mentioned me in uh in your Twitter because I told him about the Twitter as well. UM, and he said, just letting you know I'm safe. Uh, I'm not in the East fighting the Russians. UM. I am in Leviv and I am safe. And it is my knowledge that he may have escaped conscription because he would otherwise be in the east. But um, I'm not sure.

I just know that he was safe right now, and he confirmed that he was safe. Okay, So so yeah, you're not sure whether he's doing training or whether he's in some rearrestu on roll, or if he's managed to get out of it. To him, how I know that he has managed to escape the brunt of the fighting with the Russians, that's right, Yeah, okay, yeah, good for him, but it's still a terrible thing to have to do with.

So it's my understanding. It said visa, there's visa free entry into Podent right now, exactly right, that people can walk aggressive. Yes, the entry into Poland was an absolute breeze compared to the exit from Ukraine. I don't know why, but you have to wait in a long line in Ukraine for an exit piece, just for permission to leave the country. And so, as I mentioned, that was the worst part because they were only letting ten people out

every twenty minutes. That ten people get an ICET visa every twenty minutes, and there were at least two thousand people at the border with US, and so that's that's where this panic happened is because every time they opened that gate, every twenty minutes, and by the way, this is like two in the morning in the cold weather, and people are as I mentioned crying, vomiting, fainting, um.

And so every time they opened that gate, there was a human crush to get to that gate, and it closed it and they forced the people back, and then it was another twenty minutes before it happened again. And this happened all night long. Um. And this was literally just to get permission to exit the country. It was ludicrous, it was insane. UM. So yeah, I'm sorry to divert from your question, but very interesting. Poland was extremely easy to enter. There was no visa process. They understood, they

led us through. I think they just barely looked at our passports. Um. So yeah, it was it was easy. Were you at that point, like obviously had no plans or places to go? So the cold day house you with some kind of refugee housing that they put you in. Uh not when I was there, Um, they did do that.

They did implement that about twelve hours after I arrived. Um. But when I arrived, we were greeted immediately pretty much right out of the border facility with donuts and tea UM, and so they gave us tonus, they gave us tea UM. And then they said, hey, there's a bus to Premisshill, which is the city about fifteen kilometers west of the border, um where all the refugees are gathering. And they said there's a bus the Premiership at least every fifteen minutes.

And we got on that bus um and then we end up. We arrived in Premiershill and at that time refugees were responsible for their own accommodation. We managed to book a room in a hotel with eight other refugees UM in the room. Uh. And so I was sleeping in this this room with eight other refugees. They didn't want to talk to me. They were kind of despondent. They lost everything and so they were just very sad

the entire time that I was there. Yeah. But to answer your question about housing real quick, uh, about twelve hours after we arrived, they began setting up tents for the refugees and that is where many of the refugees are living now. Are intense. Okay, you know that's a Polish government or the Red Cross or is that citizens to Poland? I have no idea which organization did that, but I can tell you that I did not see a single Red Cross or United Nations representative while I

was in Poland. Okay, interesting, Yeah, they can be sometimes a little slow to react. Yeah, yeah, okay. So you then stayed in that hostel, you weren't able to really talk to the people there. It's understandable they probably had a very very difficult twenty four hours and we all have had yeah, I mean no talking being had pretty much. Did you get a sense when as you met the people walking there, crossing the border, et cetera, where people

did they have plans to be gone from Ukraine? Were they thinking where can I stay for a long period of time? Were they thinking I'm going to wait this out in Poland? And see? Um. I was pleasantly surprised that a good half of the people that I spoke to in that in that convoy, in the refugee caravan had relatives either in Poland or elsewhere in Europe. Um and so they were all they had all called their relatives and they had arranged them to go to Western

Europe and meet the relatives. Okay, yes, and they've got a place and they're planning to at least. However, another half of them have no plans whatsoever, and they're terrified. And those are the refugees that I stayed with the hotel last night. Um, is that they're terrified and they have no place to go. Yeah, right, and no one's really provided them with one yet and no. Yeah, that's difficult. And it seems like I don't be able to be interesting to see how the United States three acts because

it hasn't really done very much so far. Um, it's amazing. I heard that the reason I crossed at that place rather than any other places that I heard that the U. S. Army was there, and I did not see the U. S. Army and I searched for them and I did not find them. So I don't know where the US is. Okay, Yeah, you haven't seen any any evidence of like any seeing no sort of n POS or government sort of aid

for refugees yet. Then it's kind of surprising. As I mentioned that, I haven't seen any U N representative, any Red Cross representative, any WHO representative. I haven't seen any NGO or governmental representatives. I did see, of course Polish government representatives at the border, but that was about it, right, it said from Polish people, do you get a sense of sort of solidarity? How I think it talking about?

So it was actually amazing to say. It was heartwarming to see the citizens of Freshman Dell are now swamped. Their population has been doubled or tripled by the incoming Ukrainian refugees, and yet they are showing great amounts of solidarity. I actually attended a solidarity rally today, um where the citizens of Freshman Dill got together and they said ukraine Is are our brothers and putin us clearly in the wrong, and we will stand with them, We will show solidarity

with them. And that was hard warming to say. I talked with a few of those Poles at that rally and they said, yeah, we knew this was coming and we prepared for it and we're ready to take in as many as is necessary. Yeah, that's really nice to herrity. At least people are that sort of showing sortidarity with

each other, in support with each other. And yes, yeah, so when you were on your way west, I presume that like the conflict didn't catch up with you, right you were to the saibected like in direct fire, or you see any of that. No. However, there was about fifty kilometers behind us a bombing. As I mentioned, we did not hear it, but there were reports of the fighting going on all the time. But it's not catch up to us while we were in that while we were in that caravan, and um it would have been

absolutely terrifying if it had. But I'm glad that it did that, right. Yeah. And then, so you've been there for about a week. Had you previously been doing some reporting in Ukraine. I've never done reporting in Ukraine before. But when I came to Ukraine and the war had not even started, I was mostly just doing interviews with civilians about what they thought about the possibility of war, about what they thought about the war and don Bass um most a lot of cultural stuff. It was kind

of boring. I mean not that not that war is interesting or fund but it was not really much of a story. Um. So. I was just doing interviews with people about basic Ukrainian things. And then the war found us so and it seemed to have come as much a shock to them as it did to the rest of us. As I mentioned, nobody was prepared for war until about twenty four hours before a hit and that's when the Ukrainian government said, yes, there will be a war, and everybody began sort of to have a sense of

urgency about them. Right. Did you see any of the citizen militias and citizens preparing for defense the people who decided to stay. Yes, I didn't see any of the militias. But I was went into a Ukrainian gun shopping Kiev and there was a line almost off the door. People were buying guns, um and I asked one of the people on the line, why are you buying a gun? And he said, if the Russians come, I want to

be prepared. So a lot of people are buying guns privately in Kiev, at least as of last week, okay, so that they weren't wait for the government to supply. Then they were supplying themselves with guns. I believe. I believe the government's supply was a rather um, a sudden decision. I don't think the ukraining people were counting on it, and so they were supplying themselves and then buying like

like ashing cough to the rifles. We talked about hunter rifles and yeah, you can't buy the flashing cobs in a gun store. They were buying sort of hunting rifles and shotguns Jesus. Okay, yeah, yeah, really under equipped, all right. So they were just prepared to trying to get anything they could get their hands on to look after themselves and their families. Yeah, I bought that spray. Yeah that it than nothing. H yeah, okay, so yeah there was there was. Did you see like the people you walked

with with it? Did families tend to leave as a whole or did did some folks so say I'm going to stay behind and fight, or I'm going to stay behind to stay and look after a house and you should leave. Did you get sent to that the vast majority of people traveling were families as a whole. There were very few single travelers or partial families traveling. It was I think that people have wanted to stick together and so it was the vast majority of people traveling

were families. Okay, yeah, yeah, So stayed or left? Do you get a sense of how many people you said about two thousand put out the border, like of what proportion of the city decided to leave for Poland not all the people that the border were from leviv Um. A lot of them have been traveling since that morning from Kiev, uh and other cities in UH central western Ukraine. Um So, yeah, I was talking to people at the border and a lot of them were from Kiev, A

lot of them were from zephyr Zisa. I'm pronouncing that wrong. A lot of them were from turnal Pill or Ivana, frankisk Um or Odessa and Uh. So I would not have any sort of conjecture on what percentage of the city. Also, still pretty early in the crisis, h because it was still the first day and it was fewer than twenty four hours after the invasion began. So I imagine the numbers are a lot higher now. When you were getting news right, if you were traveling, etcetera. Were you like

on Whatsapple? What people on Twitter? Like? How are they getting news of what was happening? Everybody, and absolutely everybody was completely dark during the walk, um because I don't know why, but there was no sense of cell reception, there was no sense of data reception, there was no sense of Internet connection at all during the walk. And so everybody I met, we we asked, we asked everybody we met, do you have any news? And they said no, do you have any news? Um? So nobody had any

news until we got to the border. Some people had news, but for about about sixteen hours we were completely in the dark about what was going on. And that was terrifying because when we left the invasion had just begun and we didn't get to be updated on the first a half day of it. So yeah, it's crazy. Yeah, and then on arrival you're faced with this news of this like sort of glitz cre egl lied right, bombing

and right yes. Um. I mean we we saw a little bit of it in the morning that day, well when we when we started out, um, but it had really accelerated and amplified by the time that we ved Um and the Ukrainians were absolutely terrified at this because they did not realize what happened on such a large scale. Yeah, I think very few people did. Okay, imagine if it's in your own country, it's petrifying. Were you there when the fighting began in the Chernobyl exclusions or were you

in Poland by then? When did the fighting began in Churnal? I believe about twenty four hours after the fighting began, big period. I was crossing into Poland twenty four hours after the fighting began period, So I was probably crossing into Poland when that fighting began. Okay, it's interesting to know, especially how sort of the older people or people who

have been alive the nuclear accidents, you know. But I's wondering how they I mean, I've been talking to plenty of plenty of older people, and as I mentioned, the older people especially were resigned to this because during the Soviet times, during the Cold War, the sort of thing was common, um, And so the older people knew what was going on, and the younger people were the ones who were more panicking. That's in testing. Yeah, they said

they've been raised with the fear of that. I suppose, right, And this happened in to like this is the biggest refugee crisis since nineteen eight nine, because in nineteen eight and nine, when all the republics fell in the Warsaw Pact, so many people turched to the roads, and so the older people were used to that kind of thing, um, But as I mentioned, the younger people were not so right. Yeah, yeah, and so yeah, different reactions, I guess. And it's very

young people obviously unable to understand what's going on. And beyond the there leaving their homes, which is said right, and especially the little children had no idea what was going on, and it was impossible to explain to them, so nobody did um And so I can't imagine how terrifying this must have been as a child, not knowing why you had to walk dozens of hours in the

cold carrying everything you had. Yeah, it's always the saddest thing to see children in those refugee situations when they you know, if you don't know what's going on and doing, think Rome right. Yeah, hopefully they're all safe. Hopefully they're in Poland, hopefully they can go to safe places. I made several contacts during this trip, and as I mentioned, only one of one of them has gone back to me,

So I hope the others get back to me soon. Yeah, that's tough, but you've got the sense of everyone since they weren't turned back. Per say, they just might be sort of not in touch because their phones don't charged or something like that. It's either their phones aren't aren't charged, or in the men men's case, they were sent to the East, or they're too busy trying to arrange accommodations or food for themselves or something I mean, everybody was

just very busy trying to survive. Yeah, so I don't blame them if they don't, if they don't hop on social media. Yeah, yeah, of course. And of course yeah, I did very very stressful time for everyone. Did you did you hear of anyone who has been sent to the east, either second hand or like three people you met people who are at the front already. Um, I do not have any contacts of anybody who was sent

to the East. From what I understand, the Ukrainian Army has a strict uh communication social media sort of policy, and so none of these soldiers that I met one wanted to talk to me. I did not talk to any Ukrainian Army soldiers in uniform because they had a very strict policy. They could not talk to me, and too I could not get their contacts for much of the same reason. Okay, so they didn't want to talk to you, and I didn't want to talk to anyone.

They were just looking for you know, they were just they were very stern and they did not want to talk to anybody. So I talked to zero soldiers in uniform during this experience. Okay, yeah, so where are you now? You've you've gone further west west desem Right, that's right. I took a long bus ride to crack Off today. Um, and so I'm now I'm crack Off Poland. Okay, how folks? Is it different there being about a little bit more distant. I've already talked to a few people and uh, well

it's a Saturday night. They're going out to drink, and they they're saying, well, yeah, it's it's terrible that this war is happening two fifty miles east of us, but what are we supposed to do about it? So they're going out and drinking. So it's this very detached sense here and crack out. Not the same as it was in Freshmanville. Yeah, interesting to people are living their normal life and it's just it's a news item for them.

It's they're not worried about any potentials spill over a fallout, right, Okay, yeah, they're not worried. Nice and well you do you plan to stay there? What's what's next to you? So I actually just booked a flight uh an hour ago. I'm going to be flying back to the States on Marshall first. Okay, great, yeah, so you can you can come back, and presumably you're like your US passible holders, so you could just get that's how you got through being conscripted, etcetera. I am not.

I'm not carrying US passport right now. I'm carrying an Italian passport um because I'm also a citizen of Italy. And I was told before I left by some friends in the intelligence community that it would look significantly less suspicious to carry an U passport than the US passport. So I bought the EU passport. Nice. Yeah, and then you can travel free lyre y, Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you know if Yukrainian people can creble once? Because once they're in Poland, can they then move through the Shangan's

own freely? Ukraine is not a member of the EU, they're not a member of Shangan. I do not believe they can move really, right, I just wondering, like, yeah, they would be. I don't know how their passports would be checked if they're going across some of those land borders that I think. I do know that this was it was an emergency situation yesterday and so that's why they were just very personally checked. But I'm sure it's

director usually. Yeah, I wonder what they would be like if they tried to exit Poland or if they'll right, I don't know what's going to happen to them, No, I don't think. I'm guessing there's been no communication of that that you've seen, either right, leg of what they should do or how to apply for asylum or anything like that. I have talked to a few people. They say that they're banking on those countries being empathetic to refugees, and I understand. I think that countries will be empathetic

to refugees. Yeah, yeah, said, do you certainly hope they will. So they're just gonna hope that those countries, the ones who don't have a country to go to, you get the senser, Yeah, that they'll they'll apply for asylum wherever they can find a safe place. That's right, um. And I believe that countries Western European countries that have been very vocally pro Ukraine recently, UM, will take them in. So I think that they'll they'll be safe. Yeah, that's

good to hear. I know. I've seen estimates of up to five million refugees, which would be I mean, Germany absorbed a million people from Syria, right, it's not. Yeah, it's not impossible for Western European countries do that at all, but it will, but it would still be a catastrophic crisis, the worse than magine. And yeah, I have to hope it doesn't get to that. Do you get the sense

of people are still flowing across the border? I know you're a bit yes, you think for me, I mean it's weird because you want to believe that what you experienced and what the people around you've experienced was a one time thing, that it was a one time incident, that it was one caravan. But this is happening constantly and it will continue to happen constantly for weeks. Yeah, the trains and the across the border, things like that

that people can take or is it solely yes? So when when I said that, I went to the train station and the leave and there were no trains, what was really happening is, yes there were trains, but all the trains until March March were booked, So okay, so yeah, people can't take their trains across that kind of thing. Uh, if they tried to book right now, they won't be able to find a booking for a while. Okay, so

they were already booked up. And by the way, here in crack Out, Um, the first two hostels that I went to, the first two places to stay that I went to, we're all booked up. And I asked why and he said, Ukrainian refugees. So there are Ukrainian refugees here and crack Out Okay. Yeah, people are moving for it. I'm sure a lot of people want to get far aways hand. Yeah. So people are just constantly moving lest

right now. Yeah, but they have friends of a family that they don't get to it because Yeah, and I've been hearing the Ukrainian language just constantly on my trip, so that's interesting too. Yeah. Yeah, thanks for that's a really really interesting inside. Is there anything else you think from your experience that people ought to hear about? Um? No,

I believe I've told you everything. I've I've really told the story dozens of times since it happened, and UM, I really hope that I hit all the all the right notes here. UM, if you if you had to tell anything to the people who were reading or listening to this, Um, Ukraine really needs weapons, yes, but they also need humanitarian aid. When I was walking all that distance, with all those people, there was not a single sense of food being provided to anyone, water being provided to anyone.

There was no chance to go to the toilet, there was often no chance to sit down. If we could give even a chance for these people to eat something, to drink something, to have a minute of solace, um, that would mean the world to them. And so I think that we need to provide humanitarian aid to the refugees as soon as possible. And you you said you didn't see any organizations you'd suggest people donate to that you you didn't see any of that? Is there anyone

you can know? And I don't know. I haven't actually done the research and that I probably should, um, but I I know that the Welcome Committee in Poland were private citizens. They were not part of any energy or anything. They were private citizens were welcoming awesome. Yeah, I've seen some of them organizing on Facebook. So try maybe linked to some of those or something like that that people going to support, right and all right? And then is there anything like you'd like to to plug like do

you have a you have a Twitter? Right? Is there anything else you could tell us what your Twitter is? Um? I mean? So the Twitter that I'm using for this, which you've probably seen as a temporary one. It was meant only to cover this crisis. I guess my private twitter uh plugged that, which has you've seen that as well? Probably, Um it's just my name. Um yeah, I guess just plugged that. And uh, I mean thank you for everything, No, of course. Um it's a Mannie mutta with two teas, right, Yes,

M A R O T T A great. Okay, we got that, and yeah, thank you very much. Thanks for taking the time to talk. I appreciate a pretty difficult couple of days to get some rest. And if there's anything else in any developments, please do let me know. Give me a shout tella. Thank you. All right, cheers, mate, you have a body of me. That's that's that's the thing. Just take photos of his children walking into the door of their public school. Yeah, send him to him with

the pro pro protatto Hill account. Don't let him know what he did to provoke this. Just just frighten him. I do like it els is being recorded. Yeah, that's

that's how you do it. But the episode's begun. We're including all of that, Sofie, all of that welcome to it could happen here the podcast where we will take pictures of your children entering a public school and send them to you as a threat, but we won't tell you what you're we're threatening you over because that's I don't know what that is, probably terrorism technically speaking, speaking

of child abuse. Great Garrison very proud nailed it. Yeah, yeah, So we're gonna be We're gonna we're doing an episode to talk about the recent kind of letter and opinion piece that the Governor of Texas and the Attorney general wrote relating to trans kids in Texas. We're we're also planning like like a more like a week long worth stuff kind of going into this issue across not not just the States, but also like like internationally as well in terms of like the growing kind of war on

trans people. But because this thing happened, we we do want to kind of talk about it now as well before we you know, spend a lot of time making a week long is the worth of of of scripted pieces on it. So anyway, we're gonna be talking about what happened last last weekend or last week at time of recording, um when the Texas Attorney General kN Paxton released an opinion piece UM on I think it was it was Monday, they one declaring gender affirming medical care

for transgender children to be a child abuse UM. In response, the next day, UH, the Governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, directed the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services UM

to investigate these practices UM. And then kind of on that following Wednesday, the letter that Grey Gabbott wrote went viral, detailing both Attorney General's kind of opinion that a number of the so called quote sex change procedures constitute child abuse under existing Texas law UM and directing the Family and Protective Services to protect these to quote unquote protect these kids from abuse. And I hear by director agency to conduct a prompt in their own investigation to any

reported instances of these abusive procedures. UM. And what's really insidious is that like it's not even it's like, of course, like there is not gender affirming surgery done on minors anyway, that does not happen. UM. But the but this letter actually does UM go into UM says uh. It's it

says uh. According according to the general Attorney General opinion, it has already against the law to subject Texas children to a wide variety of elective procedures for gender transitioning, including reassignment surgeries that can cause sterilization, removals of otherwise healthy body parts, and administration of puberty blocking drugs or doses of testosterone or estrogen. So it's not it is also including HRT, including puberty blockers, which again we already

give to sis gender children all the time. UM. Puberty blockers are given to kids who have early onset pre perty who assists UM. But it's now including puberty blockers inside like constituting that in its in and of itself as child abuse, which is an escalation of things that we've seen before. UM. Yeah. And then it's also talking about how Texas law impostes reporting requirements upon all licensed professionals UM, including doctors and nurses, teachers, therapists, and provides

you know, criminal penalties for failure to report things. So like it is that that was that was that was the That was the main part of the of the letter that went viral, detailing the different different ways that they're trying to harass, intimidate, and um introduce possible legal legal repercussions to parents and um, you know caregivers who support transgender youth inside the state of Texas. Oh yeah,

um it is. It is like the perfect example of the thing these people always do when they make laws based on their bigotry, which is like reflexively make a law based on whatever is like the fucking Twitter talking point that they've been yelling about, and then don't consider all of the different things that it's going to do that have nothing to do with the group of people

they're trying to hurt. And lots of cases, this is just gonna it's it's not even gonna it's it's gonna impact a lot of like queer people in general, right because it's it's in terms of like reporting things that seem outside the mainstream, so not even necessarily trans not even necessarily transgender people, not even necessarily queer people as well. Like there's a lot of like you know, I I and if definitely when I was growing up, there's a lot of like cis girls who enjoyed dressing more like

Butcher tomboy. Um, you know, there's a there's a and there's a whole bunch of stuff that will just affect like kids in general. Um, with all of this reporting and all of this like and making making these like procedures and like hormone treatments like you know, to trying to make them seem like they're legal. Because that because again, like the actual Texas law has has not changed. It

is it is the it is. This is an opinion piece investing directing the Child Protective Services to investigate these things. So the actual law in the book doesn't change. What it has done is caused a whole bunch of like a possible legal danger um and a massive headache and just a whole bunch of like legal harassment against parents

and kids. And that that's what it's gonna that's what's gonna result in, because it's it's unclear what this what the governor's directive is going to actually practically look like, um because in the in the in a tweet on last Tuesday, he said that he's directing the Child Protective Services to enforce this ruling and investigate and refer for

prosecution for instances of miners receiving affirming care UM. And then the Texas Protective Services told Time magazine on Wednesday that it was going to comply with the Governor's directive UM. But in terms of like directing them for prosecution, there has in like five Texas District Attorneys UM, including the

d as of Dallas County and Houston's Travis County. They issued a statement to the day after condemning the Directive UM and saying that they plan to enforce the Constitution to their quote unquote that's what they said, and that they are quote deeply disturbed by Governor Abbots and Attorney General Paxton's cruel directives treating transgender children's access to life

saving gender firm and care as child abuse. We will not irrationally and judifiably interfere with medical decisions made between children, their parents, and their medical physicians to ensure the safety of transgender youth, adding that we will not allow the governor or turn in general to disregard Texas children's lives in order to score political points. So in terms of you know, there's many certain parts of the certain parts of the state where even even if protective Services does

investigate reports of this, they're not gonna get prosecuted. But there will be other parts of the state where these they probably will like and because it's because because it is just because it is just an interpretation of the law. You can still you can still get lots of legal trouble, and it's going to be up to juries and other people to decide on what interpretation of the law is

going to be enforced and enacted upon. Um. So you're seeing a lot of people being like, oh, no, it's actually okay because the law is not changing, it's just the interpretation. And we're like, well, no, it actually is a big problem. Like it's like and it's not even it's just the overall like it's saying the things that have been gone unseid for a long time, like it it's it's it's making the things that everyone kind of assumed or was kind of the unseaid bigotry, putting it

into writing and making it concrete. And it's like the overall escalation of this thing which is which is is

deep deep, deeply concerning. I mean, it's it's the thing that happened with like COVID restrictions, with like masks and stuff, where you've got the cities and stuff where you have kind of more rational leadership or saying like we're not we're not paying attention to this directed from the governor, we're gonna keep having letting people mask or we're not going to let you, you know, go after businesses that

require masks. But with the added dimension of like the rather than it being sort of targeting businesses and schools, it's it's targeting individuals, and it's allowing individuals to target other individuals, like the Texas abortion law exactly. And the primary purpose of this is going to be too basically gradually erode the areas in which which trans kids can can live in Texas. Like, yep, they'll be able to live in some of the cities for a while at least,

well and even even in the cities. Right, it's like, yeah, okay, so maybe the the A doesn't prosecute, but that doesn't mean that CPS can't just can't investigate you, And like that's that's gonna be really traumatic, a lot of legal harassment because like DFPS cannot remove any child from their parents or guardians without a court order, and no court in Texas or anywhere in the country has yet found

gender affirming care to be considered child abuse. So it has not happened yet, but they sure wanted to happen. And this is these are the next these are the next steps that can make it happen. Right, They are trying to get there um with this like incremental like these incremental things, you know, starting off with like legal interpretations and the law. Eventually they would want to change the law just to reflect this opinion, right, Like they

want this to happen. They're just they're trying to slowly, slowly, slowly get at it um and it needs to be pushed back upon because yeah, any any slow incremental thing that they're going to try to do to make it basically be impossible to live as trans in Texas, the UH and lots of other states as well. It's not just it's not just Texas. There's things like this happening across all of the United States basically, especially especially you know,

portion portions, portions of the South. Um. And it's yeah, it does play into this kind of overall in the past five years, you know, once they lost the gay marriage issue, they're like, Okay, the next line of defense for these people is making it be impossible to be trans. So it is that it's like the new that's the new thing they're gonna be really focusing on. And we've seen so many, so many new bills against against like

being trans over the course of the past five years. Again, it's it is more so putting into writing the things that have been always kind of unconscious bigotry or even concis bigotry, but it's putting that into actual stone and making it like cemented. Um. You know, just at just at the start of this year, there was new restrictions put in place pro tectas is transgender student athletes playing on K through twelve school sports teams UM that that

went into effect on January eighteenth. It was it was a house built twenty five authored by Representative Valerie Swanson. UM requires student athletes to complete in interslastic competition to play on sports teams that correspond with the sex listed on their birth certificate at or near their time of birth, which means that the legislation went further than the previous rules from the University of Slastic League UM, which governs the school sports in Texas, in which the students gender

is determined by their birth certificate. It but that that can also be legally modified, like you can change these texts assigned at birth on on on your birth certificate. The new ruling is that it needs to be it needs to match the one that it was at or near your time of birth. So again, like they're finding all these little, these little small like things to like pry um that just makes things overall be harder to

live in um. And at this point, like ten ten other states have put in very similar laws relating to like relating to to school sports and like bathroom bills, and yeah, yeah, I mean it's it's the it's the same thing that authoritarians always do, which is they're just kind of edging further and further and and continuing to proceed as they do not meet resistance, and the goal is to make it illegal and impossible to exist as

a transgender person in society. You know. Part of what they're doing with it with the wording of how this change in Texas has been announced as they're trying to frame being trans is a contagion that threatens children. And step one of that under the is going proceeding under the ages if we are protecting children by making these

kind of surgeries and stuff illegal. But the steps beyond that are eventually banning and restricting the ability of trans people to be around children and eventually be in civil society at all because they're a threat to children. That that that's the logical procession of the arguments that they're making. And I think they're proceeding in a fairly um um logical way in terms of achieving that as a goal, and they're not going to stop until they are stopped

by probably force, if anything stops it. At this point, that's that's what it's going to have to be, because the local government has realized that that's how you get elected because you can't you can fix the power grid in Texas, you can't provide people with anything that makes their lives easier, but you can hurt trans people. UM. And Republicans are are are always down with that. It's it's it's it's it's this thing fascists to where they

introduce a false crisis. They introduce a false crisis that they can actually take steps to to, you know, um, make changes about. But all that ends up doing is hurting more of the population. It doesn't actually solve any issue that actually hurts people. UM. It's it's one of the core things in the fascist playbook. And I it's even in the States where there aren't just like blanket bands on kids being able to participate in sports teams. Um,

there's other horrifying things happening. Um Like. In the beginning of February, it came out that the Utah Republicans propose as commission to analyze trans kids bodies. Um, you're talking aboulicans, the first of its kind anti transit sports bill that would form a commission to determine a student athletes eligibility

on a case by case basis. The commission would have authority to establish a baseline range for various attributes including height, weight, body mass, wingspan, hiptoony ratio another physical characteristics affected by puberty bearing trans athletes um who do not fall within the established limits to from from participating engendered sports. Um. And yeah, asking like a government appointed panel to analyze the bodies of transminers. It does sound like a giant

recipe for disaster. Um. And there is some even more like horrifying details. The bill would render the commission quote immune from suit like lawsuits with respect to all acts done and actions taken in good faith in carrying out their purposes. Uh. So, yeah, you can't sue anybody for what happens under the guise of this commission. So yeah, they're just gonna be investigating trans youth bodies and yep,

you can't. There's no lawsuits allowed. Let's let's let's let's let's give the let's give the trans child abuse uh phrenology panel, just immunity from lawsuits, Like, yeah, qualified extend qualified immunity to citizens hurting the group of people that, uh, we don't think are human, Like, this isn't the only way place we're going to see that logic extended towards You're already seeing it in places like Louisiana with these bills to make it legal to kill protesters if you

feel threatened. Um, like, it's it's the same playbook, and it's going to be the same playbook because there's no way to fight it without some sort of force. You can't vote these people away. The courts are packed for the time being. There's there's only there's not a solution

that isn't some kind of force. Now we can discuss, is it like the force of of getting the Feds to intervene or whatever, But like, there's no there's no solution that is just like democratic, I mean, and like Biden's office made a statement on this recent Texas like a law opinion interpretation thing, and they're like, yeah, this seem was bad anyway, good luck? Could you like yeah, oh cool, Yeah, it's that that meme of like the person drowning with their hand out and they high five years. Yeah,

that's what's happening. And I think the situation is like is it's worse than that too, because you know, in the past couple of weeks, what's something we started seeing as we started seeing democratic journals and democratic strategists openly talking about how we need to make assessions to the right and the culture wars Like okay, well what does that mean is like, yeah, throw pro trans concert to

the bus right. Yeah, because they can't vote, they're already freaks, So yeah, they're the easiest person to pick away at the rights for UM And because overall, just in the past year alone, more than a hundred bills designed to restrict the rights of transgender people have been introduced at least three three states. Um, it's a it's a it's a record breaking year for anti trans legislation that's been

that has been introduced. UM. In Arkansas, the state legislator recently banned gender affirming treatment for minors um, including hormotherapy like like puberty blockers and similar treatments. Again, this is the thing that like that could not happen for a long time anyway, just because like culturally and medically doctors would never do that. But now at the point where that started starting to change, it is this. It is this like a reactive, reactive effect that people are doing.

And like now now that now that these cogs are turning, people are putting the massive brakes on it and putting the thing that used to be just unsaid now into actual legal writing. So now this actually is like just not allowed as opposed to it just not happening because doctors were assholes. So yeah, in Arkansas you can't even receive hormone treatment or beauty blockers. The bill was called

the Save Adolescence from Experimentation Act. Yeah, so referring to medical treatment of one of affirming one's gender identity as experimentation, um, which is not great. I mean that is that is how I view it for myself because I like being a freak. But as an overall trend, that is that is horrible, Like that is a horrible way to to phrase, this type of thing for a lot of people, especially the people who who know specifically what gender they want to be and and are like that is that affects

them so differently. I mean, I'm I'm lucky enough just to be more are gender queer ish um And but yeah, it's all of these bills are gonna affect so many people in different ways, and it's it's real bad. Like shortly after the Arkansas bill prohibiting transforming medical practices was signed into law last April, reports of suicide attempts among

trans youth in the state. Uh, we're going up. Um. And the doctor Michelle Hutchinson, who runs the largest provider of Homer therapy in the state, called the ap that just just into her office alone during April she saw an uptick in suicide attempts from from from trans youth and this is this is it's gonna keep happening, and like there is you can't trust a lot to stop it.

Like the Arkansas Governor um uh Asa Hutchinson, a Republican, did veto this bill, citing potentially dangerous consequences for trans youth and telling it that telling reporters that it was a vast government overreach and a byproduct of the culture war in America, and her veto was vetoed by the state legislator, so like it's going to be a looping, endless problem of legal issues. So it's there's there's needs

to be other things. Like I've been on Twitter the past week just watch looking at all the go fund means by parents of trends kids in Texas who are trying to move out of state so that their kid can receive like hormone treatment and just like be allowed to be a person without being harassed by protective services and teachers and the school system. And it's it's it's it's horrifying, like watching all these people like asking for help so they can move out of state so that

they can let their kid be just a kid. Um, And it's it is, it is really rough, um. And a big part of why, part of why it's so horrifying is that like, obviously, if you're in that situation, you can get your kid out there, of course, but it also means the more people who move out of places like that, the less resources there will be in the future for kids whose parents can't get them out, you know, support there will be the less and like there is just there is no real escape from it,

like you cannot get fully away. It is that you cannot ever fully escape that type of fascist um thought and creep within the state legislator and specifically around you know how it's going to affect different different classes of minorities. UM, I will direct people if you want to kind of learn more about this sort of thing and if you you know, can you can find some some stuff around that. There's an organization Texas called TENT which is the UH. I just want to make sure I say it right.

Oh no, it's it's the Texas Educational Network, the trans Educational Network of Texas. UM. It's one one of those, but it is. It is a. It is a It has a whole bunch of like mental health resources, guides for trans youth in Texas for how to make things slightly less shitty. Um and yeah, they do, they do some advocacy work in Texas. There's also a Quality Texas which is another organization that does that does assistance for trance under people look in schools, um and just you know,

try again trying to make life slightly less, slightly less shitty. UM. Yeah, I kind of the last the last thing I wrote is the is just fix your hearts or die, which is the kind of overall overall message that you can really only give to people who want to do this type of thing, is that, yeah, there's really no arguing with them. Um, you have to either they need to

fix their hearts or not be around anymore. Like they're they're just like whether that be like just secluded to your part of society, but it's like it it needs to be actually like resisted upon because these people are

never going to back down on their own. The other part of the problem here again is just with how you know, like this this is sort of kind of this is an inherent problem that you have with democracies, right, with with democracies and in civil rights words, Yeah, you have a group people who aren't extremely well minority, and you know, and you and and and this gets compounded by the fact that you're dealing with extremely small minority of people and you know, you're already dealing with like

the you know, the thing that is called democracy, right is only participated in by an extremely small number of people, especially when you get you know, especially when you get down to the state level. Of the local level, right, like very few people are actually voting in these things. That people who are voting in these things like want

trans people to die. And so you know, you you you you need, you need some kind of other solution to actually secure to secure civil rights, because there's just there's there literally are not enough trans people and there are not enough people who support them and care enough to do it and also are in these areas to prevent this through just the normal like vote blue. I mean, like I keep seeing this with with Texas. Everyone keeps saying it's like, wow, Okay, we just gotta vote blue.

And it's like people have been like people have been saying this about stuff in Texas for as long as I've been alive. It has never happened. Ever, like it hasn't my entire life. They keep saying, is it keeps not happening and kids keep dying, and yeah, there has there has to be something else, because yeah, Texas, Texas has been labor laboriously constructed as a political entity to sty me all of your liberal dreams of of uh it going purple um and and it will continue to

be for the foreseeable future. Like you cannot this is not a voting issue. This is a I mean, like I said, some kind of force is going to have to be used to oppose these people. They're not they're

not there. They wouldn't listen if you voted them out, you know, and like and they do for like they themselves do for is you look at all the stuff, Yeah, and and and even like regular people like this whole thing of like, yes, you should like report your neighbors that you see if you if you see a kid who doesn't look like a regular normal borings this child that, yeah, you should report them. But you should go harass everyone who works in your school board so that they ban

all books referencing anything related to being queer. It's like they do take steps to actually hurt other individuals. Um and they they can do it through these means that you know, they don't necessarily have to always punch you in the face, but they can sure direct the state to send agents to your house to to like to intimidate, harass you and threaten to threaten to take away your children.

Um Or they can you know, if you're a therapist or a teacher, you can be fired or put in jail for failing to report, you know, kids who don't subscribe to their Christian supremacist ideas of like traditional general rules. Um, because again it's it's it's not even all it's like, again there's not tons of trans people in general. Usually it's like, this is just gonna affect a lot of CIS kids as well, who maybe don't want to who don't, who don't, who don't, who who just want to dress cool.

Like it's like it's it's, it's it doesn't even just it is is it does affect everybody. Um, So it is it's a it's a it's a it's a horrible it's a horrible thing that is not even like there's no escape from it, and it will affect you, whether

or not your trends or not. And I think it's important also to talk about the mandatory reporting stuff because even with managery reporting in general, like even like I've I've had things where I was in a school and my school essentially turned into a police state because there are people who I couldn't talk to about things because of things that happened to me that if if if if any of them heard it, and one time someone did and had to literally beg them, like on my knees,

not to report me, right, not not to report the thing that happened to me, because if you know, because because if if if that had been heard, like and if that had actually been reported, it would have you know, it would have started a enormous process and I would have had to you know, like the I I would have had to you know, deal with this like this is an institutionalized thing, and that like the absolute terror that this kind of stuff creates where you have to

you know, you have to watch every single word that you say around all of the adults in your life because if you don't do it, they are going to report you. It is like the level of psychological terror you are inflicting on people is horrific. And then that in and of itself just is a cost like and and it is something that is going to contribute to trans kids killing themselves. And it's it's just that simple. In that place, it is such a life and death issue,

so you have to really be forced to go. Yeah, it goes into like it's very like ontological issue as well, um, and it deals with so many things around the nature of like being and what you're allowed to be inside as this societal construct. Um, and they're just trying to make that impossible for so many people and make everything so limited in their very narrow version of what they want the world to be that makes them feel comfortable. Yeah.

And then and you know, because because it's not it's not what the world is, they have to use violence to do it. Yeah. So because it's stuck, because that is the rule that that is, that is the rules that we're playing by. That is the game we're playing. Yeah, my, my, only the the the default response to be for those people is yeah, they need to they need to fix their hearts or die and just get out of the way. And because it's that's they already have that for us,

except they don't want us to fix their hearts. They just want us to die. So like we are way more empathetic than they are, um, because they can just not be transphobic. They cannot, they can they can just not do these things. Um. But if they're gonna keep doubling down, then yeah, well that's if if you want to play by their rules, then we need to start playing by their rules because they're not going to have

if they're not going to change the rules. Then that is the that is the game that they want us to do. Um And again like actual like I want to I always I always every episoce like this, I always want to kind of end with like here are some steps that you can like take that are relatively easy.

Seen it's it's it's challenging for these types of some sorts of things like like there yes, there is things you can do around you know, getting like making sure you're aware of what bills are being talked about in your local like your local area, contacting representatives to to do stuff, going to going to you know, either whether their school board meetings or stuff. But like a lot of the electoralist type of ideas around this feels always

so inadequate, um and it feels always so fake. Um that you know, it's it's it is so much it feels a lot easier to that to like, you know, figure out different ways to actually help actual trans people in your area, um and give trans people money um and like because like that is often can be actually have a way more positive effects at least effects that

are like observable. But like, but there are also ways to stop this type of legislation, Like there is that there is there, there is ways to do that, and I will I'll try to get into more of that kind of stuff as well once we get you know, our our week long of stuff about the war on transpol Um that will be upcoming probably sometime in this

in this next month. Yeah. Um. Remember, folks, if anybody ever suggests doing something for children that isn't providing them with food or shelter, you should probably hit that person because they're probably trying to fund something up for somebody. It's nearly always. Don't trust anyone who says there we need to do something to protect children that they're lying to you. As a rule, they're lying to you. Um anyway you guys, Um, how's the boy that's Star Wars?

Oh yeah, I love there's the There's the there's the the Obi WANs coming out. That'll be good. I am excited for the Obi WANs because it Speaking of speaking speaking of you and McGregor, a few months ago, I saw the film Velvet gold Mine starring you and McGregor, which is a wonderful like pseudo fictional film but about kind of the glam Rock era inside Britain's very very gay, very a whole bunch of a whole bunch of very

good twink action. And there was one scene where, um, you McGregor's character, he's he's like, he's kind of based off one of the one of those types of music. People. I forget, I forget which one it is. Um, I think, people, I think, I think, I think. I think he's playing like a kind of a version of that. But there's one scene where he's doing a performance where he takes all of his clothes off on stage and you get to see you and McGregor's dick. Um, and yeah, you do.

So if if people, if people want to see a kind of David Bowie esque film starring you and McGregor, it has. It has like a weird gay email, Christian bale as as a twink, and a whole bunch of other really really solved stuff. I would recommend watching Vella Guild Mine. It has, it has a lot of great stuff. Um, and you do very early in the film get to see you and McGregor's penis just flapping around on stage,

and it is. It's pretty good. It's speaking of movies where you see a famous person's dick, if you want to see another famous Penis. The movie Galaxy Quest contains several shots of Tim Allen dong. I don't want to see Tim Allen's hanging wang. As someone who's seen both Galaxy Quest and Vellla gould Mine and who appreciates both films, Dearly You and You and McGregor is miles hotter than Tim Allen's dong. Shot is not hot. It's not pleasing. It is not supposed to be. He has hungover in

his like bathrobe leaning over. But if you want, if you if you want to see if Rain or Fastbenders, Dick Germany and Autumn, Okay, that that's w I could,

I could, I could do that very weird movie. However, alright, alright, if you were in terms of in terms of actionable things make you feel better, everyone go watch fell a gold Mine because it has some day It has some very good gender play, has wonderful yeah, wonderful off around gender, wonderfu stuff around gayness, and yeah film from like the nineties where there was like lots of gay fucking and you're like, wow, how is this filmmate in the nineties,

Because it is a whole bunch of like big name actors now who were like unknown at the time, all being gay and sucking each other and you're like, holy sh it. Alright, so yo, that is the uh, that's what we got that. There's your action items. Action items. Go watch, Go watch Velvet gold Mine. Make everyone you know watch Velvet gold Mine and I'll thank you. Feel good about gender. Take screen grabs of Ellan McGregor's dick, make Berner Twitter accounts and just start posting. Just just

get it out there, get it out there. The world needs to know. Throw some of Tim Allen's dick out there too. Don't be don't be choosy. Stick it all all the dicks, all right, that's gonna be the day. That's that's the show. Yeah, welcome to it could happen here a podcast that is uh you know this this this, This is the podcast about the world falling apart. The world is in fact falling apart extremely quickly right now.

And I'm I'm your host, Christopher, and I am here today to talk about an immense occupying army with an extensive record of torture and extradicial killings. I am referring, of course, to the Chicago Police Department and with with me to talk about yet more just absolute horrors that this department has committed here and worldwide. I have Raven, who is a journalist of Chicago Free Media. Raven, welcome to the show and thank you for joining us. Hi,

thank you for having me. Yeah, how how how have you been holding up in these uh oh boy things are go and bad? Yeah, you know we uh we have discussed doing this interview earlier this week. And I don't think either of us expected uh Russia to invade Ukraine last night. Yea was yeah and that wasn't even the yeah, it was the convoys about you know, this is this is a this is a time of chaos

and death. Um. But I think it's important to understand that he has always has always been a time of chaos and death and yeah, and I think especially where the Chicago Police Department is concerned. Um, we've talked about we've we've talked about some of their more famous crimes on the show. But I wanted to have ravenon to talk about a police killing that I don't think got that much attention. I mean not even he gus I

got a lot of in Chicago. But even as said of Chicago, I don't think it's as well known as some of the other police killings, and that's the killing of Rickiya Boyd. Um. Yeah, do you want to walk us through how basically what happened the night that uh don't I servant killed Rickuet Boyd? And yeah, we can start from there. Sure, sure, I mean there's some context here for sure about sort of the the way we

ignore the murders of black women specifically. Um. And you know, Rickia Boyd was was murdered after sort of like the first wave of of national Black Lives Matter protests. So it wasn't like it wasn't on the radar, right that

people weren't talking about police killing black people. Um, but there, you know, there is this long standing issue of course, was like the killings of black women specifically not getting as much attention, right, And this was just such a horrible, horrible incident that, like, I mean, looking at the details, even even though I live here and I was like around when it happened, and some of our other you know, the other journalists and are collective covered the protests and

and and the the court drama and everything, it still just blows my mind. Um, the way this happened, and um, you know. Ultimately, the most important thing to take away from it is that her family never saw a justice.

He walked away. He walked away from the incident and then went on to start training police in Latin America, which we can talk about also, so so, not only did this, did the Chicago police officer who was off duty with an unregistered gun murder and innocent twenty two year old black women hang out with her friends in a park. He then got a job with like a tactical training institute to travel to Honduras and train police there. Yeah,

I think we can. We I think yeah we We definitely will be getting to the sort of international ankle of this. But yeah, the explorer of American policing essentially. Yeah, but I guess for people who aren't familiar with what happened, UM can can cantu walk through that? Yeah? So so serving showed up UM at a park with an unregistered gun. Um he you know, witnesses reported that he smelled like

alcohol that night. He may have been drinking. I don't know if that that was ever verified, but certainly wouldn't be surprising. Um showed up at this park to complain about a group of people making noise, and oneever key Avoids friends approached the car with a cell phone in his hand, which servant then would go on to say, I thought was a gun and started firing shots and shot Rocky avoiding the Um. He wasn't on duty, he wasn't actively policing. This was totally totally outside of the

realm of duty incident, right, yeah. Um. And no weapon was ever recovered from the scene, nothing like that. I mean, it was there was no in no universe was there any justification for this. Right, It just defies, it defies logic like that that it could even happen this way. Um. And after it happened, you know, so not only did he kill Rickie avoid in this park, um, but after it happened, there was there was just a lot of like there were a lot of misteps in in the

justice system. Um. And it has been I think, I want to say, like seventeen years at that point since a Chicago cop had actually been charged with with murder. Right, Um, so it has been a long time since there had

been even any accountability. And um, basically the prosecutor there was something called a directed verdict, where the prosecutor essentially under charged him intentionally or we think it was intentionally um with with like reckless conduct and manslaughter, and the judge tossed the case because the judge was saying, you know, it didn't even meet the criteria for for reckless conduct because it was clearly first degree murder, and then he

couldn't be tried again because of rules surrounding double jeopardy, which is like just a it's just like what like it's it's such like I was reading this like it's paffling, Like it's like this whole thing is like it's it's very like very very seemed very clearly have to fail.

It's like, yeah, like we're we're gonna we're gonna intentionally have a case will reach right this guy with things that you that you just you cannot convictim of because like again it's it's it's not it's not like manslaughter. He just he drove up and shot her, right, He

very very clearly with intention shot Ricky Boyd. And it very much seems like they planned this out that they were like and you know this is we talked about this on on their last CPD episode, Like prosecutors collaborate with judges and the police constantly because that's just how the thing called the justice system works. Um. But like yeah, like this is like a parcripulally egregious example of them just setting up the case that they know that they

just knew would fail exactly. And this is the same prosecutor who was ousted in the aftermath of the Laca McDonald murder. Um. You know, there were there were very large protests. Then there was a hashtag going on social media. Her name is in need to Alvarez. So the hashtag was by Anita Yeah, and and it was Anita Alphres.

Like I think people outside the city probably didn't I don't know about much about this, but like this Anita Alvarez was like so hated that like like every like like everyone in the city basically worked together a runner out like you had, like you had like liberals and anarchist groups like working together like like like everyone in this say like all like the the the electoralists, nanci electoralists, like the people who just like have no politics basically whatsoever.

Like it was it was just sort of it was just really incredible like coalition because she like just the stuff Anita Alfarez is doing is just so egregious that everyone was able to find a way to put aside their differences on just the logic of get her out right right. But you know, to know again, that was in the aftermath of the Lakoha McDonald's shooting, and you know, it wasn't it didn't what happened with Rickia Boyd wasn't

enough for those large protests. And and this is not to like Denni grade or demean the people who did come out in protests, because it's still like, like there were still protests, don't get me wrong, Like people showed up for Rakiya. But the difference in people showing up for Rakia and people showing up for black men being shot, you know, like that that's something that black women have drawn attention to you. You know, they're like, why don't

you care when we get murdered? Um? And it's just it's become this sort of um, you know, ongoing chance, Like if you go to any Chicago racial justice protests, you will hear people say, we do this for Lakwan, we do this for Rakiya, because it's just one of those names that, for whatever reason, based on what was going on in the media at the time, just like didn't make its way outside of Chicago very much. Um, and we're seeing a similar sort of situation right now.

Is what happened with the mirrorlock in Minneapolis. Right Like, that was something where I think a lot of us thought, Okay, wow, this this is gonna this is going to explode. You know, this is such just a horrible miscarriage of justice, Like how could this happen? Um, surely there will be massive protests again, you know, something like that. And of course, you know, Minneapolis was out there. We had like some small actions here in Chicago but didn't really catch fire,

so to say. I mean, I think that there's always sort of cycles of this where you know that there's cycles where you get these massive protesting cycles that you don't but you know, And I think this is one of the things with that you can look at with the Cube Boy too, where it's it's like, regardless of whether people are in the streets or not, the killing continues.

And yeah, and I think that's just just sort of that's an extremely grim thing to live with, but that that just you know that that that's just what the police is, right and until you know, until they are actually stopped, You're just going to keep getting this cycle of I don't even know if select selective outrage is the right word, but you get these cycles of people who get murdered and there's this protests and people who get murdered and get forgotten and yeah, yeah, yeah, and

and it really does seem to be kind of you know, there's a lot of layers to it, Like like obviously the misogyny against black women is part of it, and I think the media just you know, is a part of it too. Like I mean, I'm a part of the media in a sense, but we're alternative media, so it's a little bit different. But you know, like there are there are choices made behind closed doors about what

stories to follow and and amplify. And um, I will say, you know what I will say is I think because of what happened in I think there's a lot more scrutiny on Chicago police now, at least more mainstream scrutiny of them than there was back in when Rikiya was murdered. Um. And that's not to say that we're doing enough because

we have, because we absolutely are not. But I I think did in some way, you know, push things just like a little bit further if that makes sense that you know, there are some more liberal mainstream types of people talking about the horrors of Chicago policing and and

all of that. But you know, when it comes to Chicago police, like I just they're they're apparatus is so massive, like not just from like the funding they get, but like their media and pr you know, the prosecutors and the judges like you mentioned are absolutely part of the policing apparatus. Like they're not separate, right, It's prosecutors are cops.

And we have a prosecutor for a mayor and she is a cop like like and and you know it was black youth who tried so hard to speak up about this before she was elected and and said like Lori Lightfoot is a cop, and people didn't listen to them. And that's where we're at now, where we have this this prosecutor for a mayor who's because of her background, like she can only view things through a punitive lens, Like her answer to everything is just punishment. How can

we how can we punish people? Yeah? The only things she was trying to do recently what she wanted to do these like basically this measure where they called it like an anti gang funding thing, but it was basically just like if there's a group of people, you can just take the cops and just take money from them.

And it was like it was just an incredible things like it was it was you know, part of what's going on here is that I've talked about this before, but like Lori Lightfoot is you know, at the time, I think people voted for her partially because they just didn't listen and the North Siders were just like, oh hey, look it's Loria Lightfoot. But then you know, like part part of it was she she she ran as like the anti machine candidate, and it was like, no, she's

just a cop. But like I think the just thing is, you know, like she she's like incredibly widely hated, like to the point where like you know, the Chicago City Council is like not notably a a anti police body, but like even the city council was like, you can't do this, Like then they you know, they actually blocked I think if if if, if I'm if I'm getting my my my facts right on this, Like I'm pretty I'm pretty sure they blocked life with reposal because it

was just like, yeah, and that that's been one of the things that was like we've had a cop pool of like weird kind of like attempts to reign the CPD in, but they're not really happening because of like anti police sentiment. They're basically happening because the city council's feuding with a mayor. Weird. Yeah, and and you know, I've seen it, like it's it's she's such an god. I could the figure of Mayor lor lor lifebook. I mean, it just makes no sense, right because she's hated by

people on the left, you know, who obviously are anti police. Thing, she's also hated by the police, ye, just like yeah, she I mean, if you go through any of the conservative like cop blogs and Twitter accounts, you know, Chicago police are very active on social media, right, which is you know, it's whole a whole thing in of itself. These people, you know, they shouldn't be pope broad asking the things on social media that they do. But she's

universally hated by everyone at this point. Um, So you know, it's just been a really it's been a really tough couple of years for Chicago since the riots, especially because Chicago just the word has become so loaded in the national media, right, like it's become this this this racist boogeyman essentially for like, what what could happen to your city if if the woke mobs successfully defund police or you know whatever, which is completely at odds with reality

because at no point have we defunded the police, Like they just keeps increasing. Yeah, like what what's what? What's their budget is? Like, like is it I want to say it's the total budget, but I think that's low.

It's something like that. I mean it's billions of dollars, Like it's we're pumping billions of dollars into this standing army that is that is basically occupying of Trigo's budget goes to the police department, right, right, And you know all of that money could obviously be spent on other things, and and we know, like we know what reduces crime. I mean, obviously we could get into like the category

of what even is a crime? Right, Like there are certainly lots of things that shouldn't be labeled crimes that are but we know that communities with resources don't have significant violent crime problems, Like we know that lifting people out of poverty and giving them opportunities and homes and all of these things, like we know that that reduces in our personal harm, and instead we just keep looking and everything through this lens of punishment and how punitive

we can be. Yeah. Yeah, and it's been I don't know. The Chicago Police Department is just it's just an absolute horror show. Um. And it's a horror show. And and they're also like it's a horror show not just because of how evil they are, but also because they're incompetent, right, Yeah, Like you've got them doing all of these really bad things and then they also just like struggle to to cover up their crime, and then they're messing up like

along the way at every step. Yeah, and it's yeah, I don't know, they have the CPDS Like it's they have this kind of you know, I mean, I don't know, I don't know how you exactly unique it is. But but I think going back to our sort of theory of like every police department has one thing that they're really good at it the CBD has this unique combination of like incompetence, torture, and crime that they do. That's like I think so, I think sets it apart from

a lot of other UM police departments. I think that's a good place to sort of jump off into the second I guess part of the rickyed Boyd story, or

really it seems to be the Ricked Boyd story. It's the story of Dante Servant, which is his role in essentially exporting American policing and the horrors of UM, the horrors of the American police system, the horrors of sort of American imperialism to other countries, because it is not enough that the CPD murders people here, They've also got to do it other places, right, right, And and so there was a there was a Chicago Reader piece written

about this UM back in February. Servants not mentioned in it, but it was a really good story. I recommend people look it up because, you know, some of this research is not like my original research, right, it's it stems from the research that people with the Invisible Institute did. But essentially, you know, there are Chicago police officers, and

there's one in particular. His name is Aaron Cunningham. He's the man who UM founded this Tactical Training Institute UM that go you know, they go abroad, like they go to different countries and and it's private, privately funded, so they claim to be working with with the says, and there's a lot of like weird gray area there where there's not a lot of oversight and nobody really knows, like are you getting federal money to do this? Are you just saying you are? Like, like what's the deal? Right?

But the Cunningham was essentially like a crooked cop who funded this tactical training institute so that they go oversee to underresourced countries with underresourced police departments and train them and how to be police. They train them in crowd control, they train them in like narcotics and drug investigations, they train them in like gang warfare, you know, all of these things, right, And these are countries that have tremendous issues with like you know, outright warfare going on between

gangs and the existing police forces. Right, So they're in desperate need of of of aid, of assistance, and and of course, like some of these conflicts that are going on stem from American imperialism to begin with, right, So it's like we caused the problems, then we're gonna come in and like send a bunch of cops over who, like you know, have extensive misconduct records in their in their home cities, and some of them have even just

like murdered innocent women in the park. Yeah, and we're going to have them train your guys into how to be cops. Yeah, and and yeah, you know that that goes about as well as you would expect it to, which is one of one of the things that the reader piece talks about is so one of they these guys keep brought in to train a bunch of cops.

Now Salvador after the Al SALVADORI police do a bunch of horrible massacres, and then they trained these cops, and then the cops immediately turned around and also again do a bunch of horrible massacres. And it's it's this, it's this, you know. I mean, I I don't want to de emphasize the fact that like the like Al Salvador for example, like is a place that has its own like native right wing like it had there, like it has his own SALVADORI like right wing death squads, right and they

they you know, in the back by the CIA. But like you and I don't want to like under my underplay, just how violent, just like the local reactionaries are because it's it's not it's like it's it's it's it's not like they wouldn't also be death squads if the US wasn't there, but like the US, you know, and the chocol Police Apartment sending people to train them is making them even worse. And it's yeah, yeah, And and every place has their own right wing reactionaries, right like we're

seeing right now. To bring to loop everything together and just bring us back to like what's going on with Ukraine and Russia, Um, it's related, you know, like both sides of this conflict of their own reactionary right wing forces, right yeah, And anywhere you go around the world, that's going to be a sting and empires like the American Empire or the Russian Empire are or the Al Salvador Empire, you know, whatever empire, they're going to be looking for

ways to take advantage of those forces. And I think that what I think is important, Like one of the things I think is important about this politically is to understand that there is a like there there there is an incredible amount of international solidarity between cops right, they have you know, like that you know, I've seen I think there's a book called The Thin Blue Line International, but it's it's yeah, I mean, that's that's that's a thing like you see this basically where the cops, like

the comps know which side they're on and it's the side of the other cops. And I think that's something that that confuses a lot of people because you can thinks like for example, like like that's the Chinese police, right, like the Chinese police like go like we're trained by I think, I mean what you know, because the like the Chinese place in Hong Kong for example, like that that police force like is still literally just colonial British police force. They just they didn't even like they didn't

even bring in new people. They just like promoted a new person who was a British colonial police officer and then made them the new head of the police. And then you know, and those those and those cops are also trained by the trained by American comps trainer British cops. Uh, they're trained a lot by Israeli cops. Um this and

this is this is this is the same thing. You know, it is the same thing with with with with the like the you know, like this this is the sort of the same effect that gets you like Erik Prince, like you know, being being like hired by the CCP to run stuff and change on like it's it's there's there's an incredible right wing sort of militarist comp alliance that go just you know, it's it's, it's, it's, it's, it's.

It's a kind of international police solidarity that scrambles a lot of the sort of perceptions of what people think, like like what what how how people try to think about the world because yeah, and you know, and like fundamentally, like the basis they have is the defensive property and the defensive sort of the like the I usually call like the the global white supremacist regime. And they all know, you know, when when when an American cop Costa Salvador,

like they know which side they're on. They're on the cops side, and it's and you know, and and they share, they share information, they share weapons, they share tactics, they share are you just literally people, they share training and yeah, and and of course because again it's the cpd uh, they shared Dante servant Yeah and so he he I you know, apparently at some point very shortly after the

murder of Rakia Boyd. It looks like, based on what I've seen on his social media and what I pieced together from from his employment history, it looks like he had begun working with one of these tactical training institutes

right before the murder. And then he murdered Rickie Avoid And I mean, I guess technically I'm not supposed to use the word murder, but you know, yeah, no fucking I mean murdered, and so, so he murdered Rickie Avoid, and then everything happened with like going through courts, and he walked away without being charged or imprisoned. I mean,

he was charged, but without being convicted or imprisoned. Then, um, the police board, you know, recommended his firing, but he resigned two days before, like he was supposed to have his hearing, so he still gets a pension. I'm pretty sure that's how that word um yeah, and so he gets yeah. I don't I thought to confirm that, but

I'm pretty sure he gets the punch. So he resigns, and then at some point after he resigned, he starts posting to social media about his trips to Honduras, and you know it's posting photos of of like hanging out in the bar with with the cops down there and and kind of just all of that. And this is not like public information, like it's he has like a LinkedIn page where he's like lived the things he's been doing. Like like this is completely public. I don't know like

why nobody knows about it or has talked about it. Um. But you know that also I think just comes back to this murder kind of flying under the national radar a lot um. And so you know, we don't know what company or organization he's there with. Um. It doesn't say he's with International Tactical Training Association, which is the the Chicago based group led by Aaron Uningham and his wife. My guest would be it's that group, because that's the

big one out of face out of Chicago. But you know, like we can't I can't prove it could be another It could be another right wing tactical training group that's trained de squads. Yeah. And that's the thing, right, is that this is not just happening here in Chicago. So like there are these tactical training groups all over and there are a number of US based ones started by different police officers from different departments because it's kind of like a career path for them in a sense, because

it's a thing they can do once they retire. You get and it's a moneymaker. You hold these these tactical training seminars, and so a number of them are domestically based, right, Like they're not necessarily going overseas, but what they're doing is there. They're having these seminars and their training other police officers in like certain things. Like some of them might be like an afternoon session where you go and you learn about like you know, firearms safety or something.

Then there might be like larger ones where you go and you like stay and camp out for like three days and you practice like ambushing guerrilla gangs in the jungle or something like that. Um And then a lot of them are are based around guns safety and firearms training, and so many of those are open as of the general public. It depends. Some of these are like only for other cops or law enforcement, and you have to like show I D Or military and you have to

prove um that you're affiliated with police and military. Some of them are open to the public and you just have to have like a firearms cart. So that's problematic for one reason because we found that in the aftermath of the January six Capital riot that a number of a number of the Capital rioters did attend like firearms training classes, tactical training classes in just various sort of locations.

So this is a way for officers who have left the force for whatever reason to then have a captive audience. And Yeah, they're teaching them how to like shoot guns and you know, follow them more like specific sort of things like that, But what kind of conversations are they having, Like what kind of ideology is being espoused, what kind of other people are showing up to these meetings, and what are they talking about? What groups are they recruiting for,

what are their affiliations. Yeah, and I think and I think that that's something that's important to think about and also to you know, have have more generation of journalists look into because you know, when when you look at these I mean like we know, we we we've had stories like this before, right, Like I mean, this is a lot of how for example, like the Taiwanese Special Forces, for example, UH spent an enormous amount of PARST Special

Force apecially just the Taiwanese armies spent an enormous amount of time doing stuff very similar to this, and you know, the the product of that was and this is a this is cold warrior um. They're doing this the seventies and during this in the eighties, some excet the sixties, um, you know, and and I mean the product of this is like arena. The product of this is you know, the like the like one of the people they trained did the Almozete massacre, like and that that that kind

of stuff. You can trace these these influence networks, and you can trace these sort of I mean a lot of this is i mean literally just funded by weird cults, um.

But you can you know, you can trace these different sort of paramilitary and intelligence inflence networks, and what you see at the end of them is like a lot of the time, it's just a bunch of fascists, and it's a bunch it's a bunch of fascists doing coups and you know, like in some sense like yeah, this is this is a kind of like you know, like liberal democracy has this sort of problem, right, which is in order for liberal democracy too, you know, function as

a liberal democracy, you have to have cops. And that means that you're you know, you are producing domestically and internationally a group of just ferocious, bloodthirsty right wing murderers, and you're you're giving them, sayuthority, and you're giving them

all these training and weapons. And you know the product of that is they do what they're training to do, which is they kill people, they torture people, They train other people how to do this, and yeah, you get these these cascading series of effects that lead you know, a bunch of people taking these classes January six, They lead them to coups all over the world. They lead in the desk all to love the world. This has been It Could Happen Here Join us tomorrow for part

two of our interview with Raven. You can find us on Instagram and on Twitter. It Happened Here pod check out the Cool Zone from More of a podcast, and thank you for listening. Welcome to It Could Happen Here, a podcast about how much I Christopher Wong hate the

police and specifically the Chicago Police Department. UM and we are bringing you part two of my interview with Chicago journalist Raven about more crimes of the Chicago Police Department, the international in fact, and how the police weaponize race and class lines in order to preserve their power enjoy You know, I spent a lot of time just like in like cops social media spaces, right, and of course it's like rotting my brain, and you know, it's it's

honestly just really tough to deal with sometimes. But you know one thing that we see like over and over again if you look at the memes that they share and the the posts that they write on spacebook and all of these things, is it's they the people as their enemy, right, like they're they're trained the military. The militarization of the police isn't just about the equipment that they have and the money that they have. It's also about their psychology and how they they view themselves as

like warriors fighting the bad guys. But because of the nature of policing, the bad guys are literally anyone who isn't complying with what they say. And usually this is like black people, you know, marginalized people, poor people, um. And then there's sort of this like you see a lot of these like memes where they they talk about themselves as like sheep dogs protecting the sheep from the wolves.

And yeah, and like the sheep are supposed to be like the innocence, which typically if you if you really go deep into it, it's like in their minds, that's like women and children who are like mostly white, right, Like they think they're protecting like white innocence from like bad guys. And and there are layers to it, right because like obviously it doesn't always work out that way. And you know, there are like poor white people in

rural areas who deal with police repression. You know, there are like wealthy black people who get pulled over by the cops just because they're driving well black. Like, there are certainly like layers upon layers here, depending on like class and and just everything. But at the end of the day, like they're training themselves up to be a military fighting the people in invading their spaces, taking over.

And the psychology of it is just really really dark too, because you have these people who because because we're sending them into underresourced communities sort of after the fact, after traumas occurred, after there have been there's been violence, there's been shootings, everyone's poor, you know, whatever, we're sending them into these places where there's just like the most horrible things about poverty and about violence are happening and that's

all they're exposed to. So then they end up with PTSD or all of these problems, you know, like the alcoholism rate, domestic violence, right, all of these things within the Troublablie force are extremely high. And all of this comes back to because we're treating everything as punishment. We're coming in after the fact. We're not actually treating these problems at the source. We're just sending people in to to manage the chaos after the fact, and then they

end up traumatized. They end up enacting more crime and more violence for these communities, and it just becomes the cycle but no one can get out of. And then it and it comes back to just like defunding the police and and state priorities, like where are we putting our resources, because if we were putting them in the right place, so many of these things wouldn't be happening in the first place. Yeah, and I think one everything, I think it's it's important that we talked about this

on our you know, the episodes about the cartels. We talked about this on our episodes about the other episodes about chocol Police, which is that the the other thing that happens is that the Chicago police just they you know, they they see the drug trade and they go, Okay, we're just gonna get in on it, and you know, and the the sort of the combination of these people, these just incredibly violent, armed people with total impunity and an enormous amount of money is that you know, they

they they they they become themselves just you know, they they become exactly the same thing that they that they were you know, nominally supposed to be fighting. And that

has all of these these downstream effects. If you talked about the way that the way that this militarizes basically everything, right, this this militarizes the police just has that, you know, the violence of it has the effect of militarizing like militarizing everyone else, militarizes the non ste actors, and it just sort of it just keep rashing up the level

of violence. And as long as you keep throwing the state at it, and as long as the state just keeps essentially like going okay, I just okay, we have a drug trade and I'll just got a cut of it, and as long as that keeps happening, like all of the stuff that the cops are you know, nominally there to to deal with, it's just going to keep escalating because the state that like because just because state violence is intensifying and making it worse, right, right, and it's

just so like they're still fucking racist, Like I just can't, I mean, like I don't. We have to we have to keep talking about that because it's just like so much of just like where like where they get their

information and how they exchange. Like if you look at these cops social networks and where they're getting their information, and the kinds of things they're saying to each other about black people in Chicago are all so ridiculously wrong because they're just parroting these like cop blogs that they read full of all kinds of just that shit fucking conspiracy there is about like our our black d a, our prosecutor excuse me, Kim Fox being like a puppet

of George Soros. They literally believe this, and and it's echoed by people like Tucker Carlson, you know, in national media, like anytime Chicago comes up, you will hear these kinds of just completely off the wall conspiracy theories about like communist BLM and Tifa, Soros funded Kim Fox like ruining Chicago. And and I'm not like defending Kim Fox. Don't getting wrong. She's still a prosecutor. She's still like putting people in jail.

But she you know, she was elected because she was to do she was supposed to be this big reformist and and all of that, and so she's become a target. And then she's also become a target for them because she's a black woman, so it's easy for them to to make her to a lightning rod of hate basically. Yeah, and you know, like they just the dehumanization of of black Chicagoans that you see in these in these Facebook posts that these people are writing and the things that

they're tweeting, like it is violently disturbingly racist. And all of that comes back to just how they view themselves as like an occupying army in these communities, Like they don't view themselves as like cooperative partners in helping these communities. Like it's no words there to occupy, We're there to

extract resources. We're there to like, you know, benefit off of this gain warfare if we can you know and and like you mentioned, like if you look at like the corruption and and the things that that have gone on with that, I mean, like I mean that goes back to city council, right. I mean we have we have alder men. We have we have older people who are essentially in bed with the cops, looking for looking out for them and you know, like their dedicated cop alderman.

I mean, like all of our Chicago aldermen are older people excuse me, are Democrats by name. But it's like no, we have five or six older people who are Republicans. Like they called themselves democrats because they wouldn't be able to be elected in Chicago if they didn't. But they are absolutely like cop loving Republicans. You know, they just called themselves Democrats because they like support gay marriage or whatever.

Well it's because it's Chicago and you can't run it like the like the the the only time a Democrat has ever lost one of these elections was the time a I want blanking on the name of the cult I the time of Larushite accidentally won the primary and lots of the like that. That's basically it, Like yeah, I mean, it's it's it's you know this this is a democratic city, but you know, the democratic city just

means incredibly right wing and police, which right, right. And when you look at the history of policing in Chicago, you have to go back decades and decades and kind of look also to it like where a lot of

these cops came from. In the aftermath of like the dissolution of like the official like mafia and like al Capone and all that stuff, you had a lot of working class immigrants from like European communities, like the Polish community, the Irish community, the Italian community, and all of these communities have their own like police associations here, like the Italian American Police Association, the Polish American Police Association, all of these things, and and so like it becomes this

being a cop to go back to sort of like the international ties here, being a cop becomes this like identity for them and their family is like a lot of people are cops because their dad was a cop, their grandpa was a cop, their cousins are cops, their brothers are cops. There's like a family honor sort of in like being a cop, and and a lot of them show, you know, and that that that goes back to why they show so much solidarity too with like cops from other countries is it's like the profession in

and of itself is lionized. And then on top of that, you have right now in Chicago, like because of gentrification, because of just like immigration patterns and the way communities have changed. We have these like traditionally Polish Italian communities that feel like they're being encroached upon by mostly like

Latin X communities. So we had for example, like you know, this shooting, um the murder of Anthony Alvarez up on up on the northwest side, the far northwest side of Chicago last year, and in the aftermath of that, we saw a lot of like pension between the traditional like Polish Polish American community up there and then the new wave of like Latin X immigrants UM. And the problem is a lot of the people in the Polish community

up there have family and relatives who are cops. So we had like cops trashing the memorial you know, to the s Anthony Alvarez. We had like Polish biker gangs like riding by the rallies trying to like intimidate people and it all comes back to like white supremacy and

and just straight up racism, right. Like there's another example of that with like the the Columbus statue that was sent here by Bussolini that eventually yeah, one of the like one of the I guess you'd call it the second wave of the upraising in Chicago was a bunch of people, like the enormous numbers of people throwing things

at cops who were attempting to defend the statue. And this was like a like the Italian like American like the right wing of it got like extremely mad about this, and there was all this sort of you know, there's all the sort of tension between between these these different Yeah, and some of that comes back to like also um,

the construction of of the Inner States. Right, So like in the I don't know when they started building the highways down by u C. Is like in the fifties or the sixties, right, you had this like traditional Italian American community down there by University of Illinois Chicago and like on Taylor Street, and then people built the highway

and it like funked up a bunch of ships. You know, some people had to sell their homes, you know, some their traditional neighborhood was like destroyed all of these things, and then this university is built and that coincides with that, and so you end up getting a lot of like old school racist Italian getting piste at the students and at the school and everything in the aftermath. And it's

a really really multicultural school. I don't know if you're familiar with you I see, but it's like, yeah, so do I see, has like one of the largest immigrant student population student bodies like in the country. Um, it's just a very very diverse school. I'm pretty sure white people are actually a minority if you look at like the demographics of just like how people identify in student surveys. U i S is the University of Illinois and Chicago. Yeah,

it's a one of the big universities in the city. Yeah, just for the non Chicago wins. Yeah not yeah, different, there's a different one, University of Chicago that's like I went to. They've got their whole thing going on because their campus police force is one of the largest private

police forces in the world. Yeah, and you know, I guess we can talking about that a little bit because that's this sort of like it's kind of horrible bind where it's like, yeah, so it's that that police force is one of the largest police forces in the world. It has shot students, it has shot people who are

not students. It does a bunch of horrible things. But then you know, some you're there's there's this kind of trap, right because like one of one of the things that happens is like, well, okay, so you get rid of the u cp D, right, and then then you know, okay, so they're gonna bring the Chicago Police Apartment in and it's like the Chico Police Department are like one of the few institutions in the world that's worse than like the regular UCPD, and it's you know, and and that

was that was one of the things that that was really inspiring. Um was just yeah, the way that the abolished the Chicago Police Department like movement was sort of like unfolded in this broader just this broader potential just

abolished chiccoo, the Chicago police in general. But it's this weird thing where it's like you have these you have these occupation zones and it's like that that that part of the South Side and then the other the other thing I think that people don't understand about Chicago Police Department is that they have an absolutely enormous range that they patrol. Right that that doesn't include it's way it

goes way off campus like they have. They have an absolutely enormous range of things they conclude and they do things like, uh, you know, they'll they'll just like like like locked down the entire campus and they'll just do this just happen because there they'll be like chasing someone who like like one of one of the one of the times while I was there, someone like they like stolen something from like a video game store, and the whole campus got locked down, like the cops are screaming

and everyone to stay in the buildings, like and they just like, you know, they had this like enormous numbers of cops just sort of like swarmed through the entire the entire campus for like an hour. And this is

just like happens. I mean, there's cops everywhere. They just they do stuff like that, and there's this whole you know, and and but this is one of the other things where you get these tensions because so you Chicago, the University of Chicago also has like it's not as large, but also has like a like it also has like

a pretty large international student immigrant like population. And there was this uh there was there was there was a Chinese national student who got shot, who got shot a robbery last year, and that was a huge I think

that was last year. Yeah that was yeah, it wasn't yeah, yeah, And that turned into a huge thing where you had these sudden you know, because we had the anti police protests, but then suddenly there was this huge wing of like basically the right wing faculty, a bunch of just like absolutely reactionary, like extremely rich CCP scions and like this this sort of like Ducleus of of the like like people like people in the right wing law faculty, like

the ECON people, who suddenly had this like giant thing that was like it was, it was. It was a sort of microcosm of of of the broader sort of like turn against the anti police movements by using crime.

And they had this whole thing that we need to keep the campus safe and they're like, oh, we need to give you the ucp D the ability to lead to to go off of campus, which you know they already have there, Like we need to get the more money, we need to have more cops everywhere, and it was just and it's it's just this sort of like you get this horrible, horrible sort of pendulum effect where like you get this violence and then you know, people like

the like the the rights response to that violence is just to create is you know, just descending more cops to create more violence, and it just keeps escalating and keep escalating, and it's it's and then you know, and then there's there's a sort of dynamic of this right where rich students at the University of Chicago. And this is so some extent this is it's mostly a class embraced thing, but it's not entirely. But like people who go there just like have this like incredible fear of

literally everyone around them. It's like they turned to many cops. Like there are people who are screaming about how like just the red line is not safe at night. And I was like I have literally like I have walked like thirty blocks back home at two in the morning

and been completely fine. Like you guys are just cowards, but and you know your your cowards and extreme basis, but like yeah, like all all of these sort of factors blend together and you get these you get these coalitions of of these these right wing pro police people who want to just not not just like you know, not not just support the police, but want to continue

to expand it so they can feel safe. And it's like you're not, you're not even in danger, but they have they have they have the same sort of like this whole town is trying to kill us, like racist cop rand mentality, and yeah, sorry, this is this is this is this has been being upset about this because I feel you and it's like it's and but it relates back to kind of like campus policing in general and kind of why it exists, which is that a lot of colleges, I mean not all of them, It

depends on where you are, but like some colleges, especially in like large urban areas, you know, are we're built in the middle of like largely black communities Chicago to a t. Yeah, and because the land wish cheaper to buy, you know, there are reasons why necessarily, like they're built in these spaces, and so the campus police departments function as just a way to like keep the students isolated from the community. Like it's making a community within a community.

It's making this little enclave, and then of course people are are then going to view anyone outside of that enclave with like racist suspicion. Right, And if you have immigrant students who may or may not be wealthy, it's a punk on where they come from. But you UFC has like a lot of as far as I am aware, like wealthy international students. And they might be coming from countries where like there aren't any black people or there

aren't very many. And just because they're they're coming from like this country doesn't necessarily mean that they like our left wing. So they they're coming into these communities, you know, with not a lot of experience, just sort of around people who look different from them, and so they're going to be of course looking to like these police figures than to quote protect them. But but to go back to it, it's like, Okay, well, if you are feeling unsafe on the train at night, for example, why why

isn't the train safe? Like why are people using it as you know shelter? Why are people doing drugs on the train? Like why is there violence happening? And that just comes back to again, like we're not actually addressing the route problems by just adding more police. And I will say, like I think, I think again, Like the everything that's happening here is really just the University of Chicago, like is a place to which the world's leadish is transplanted.

And you can see this like very clearly along because yeah, like there is the wealth gap between like between poor international students of rich international students is like it's it's the largest single wealth gap in like in this in

the entire university. It's it's unbelievable. Um and you know, and you could you could just you can watch it playing down on class lines in a place down other lines right where you have like like you know even like yeah you have like you have both we have students from I don't know, you have students for China, students from Vietnam, and like one of them will be trans and you know it turns yeah, it's like oh hey, look like yeah, like when when when you have like

when you have a Chinese trans student, right's like yeah, they're there. They the people who back home had have experienced depression in various ways, are consistently like consistently um or like consistently anti police and consistently like significantly. It's bad about this stuff. It's it's in my experience, it's

it's very much. Is just you have this sort of transplanted like you have the short of transplanted eLife and by the countries to come to the Unversity of Chicago so they can you know, study economics and go back to their own countries and like continue to like rob their own populations. And those people are the ones who are doing this stuff. And it's I don't know, it's you see a lot of kind of like this like

I think really misguided like anti racism. That's like, well, okay, we have to take the security concerns of of of these these of of Asian people seriously. It's like these are this is this is the Chinese ruling class, this is the this like you don't need to take these people's concerns seriously. They are finatally they're ferocious right wingers

who have just read highatt for the first time. Like you guys, these these are these are not the same people as the people who are suffering under the like

right right. And we saw that. We saw that too with like the big wave of stop Asian hate protests here last year where we had like this big rally down in Chinatown, UM with like a huge, huge number, like hundreds of people from the community came out and and you had a lot of younger people who very much had like you know, defund the police kind of sentiments. But then you had we had like police representatives speaking at the rally, yeah, about how they were going to

to make like Chicago safer for Asian people. It's like this stuff like it makes me so angry, like CPT yeah, no, it was. It was regular CPD Like I I'm Chinese. They almost killed me on campus. Like these people like they're not these these these they they're like the police don't keep us safe. But like you know, there's been this, there's been this incredible weaponization of of the Asian American community. Like you see this, you see this in Chinatown. There's

there's been this like that. There's like China Town is like this is different. Even in the last like like three or four years, has turned into this just like

like incredibly right wing. I mean it's it's not everyone, but like you see like they're they're like I like there there's there's a there's there's there's a bench in in uh in Chicago in front of the library right that had they have these tables and the tables have an engraved plaque on them that says no loiter ring, and that says we will call the police on you if you loiter. That this is outside of the library.

Like it's yeah, there's they have this sort of like in criticis incredibly right wing like anti anti like anti like homeless people campaign that's happening, and it's it's I don't know, it's it's one of just the most depressing things I've seen here because you have, you know, you have the Chamber of Commerce is to sort of like you know as the most powerful political force in a lot of these communities, and like those people's are right wingers and they just they they don't have the same

interests as like the rest of the Asia, of of the Asian American community, and you know, and it gets you get this horrible, horrible thing, which is what was happening on these car campus, which is like essentially the right wing like pitting the right wing like just just pitting the like basically basically like pitting Asians against black people. And it's horrible and it and it just comes back

to like who who is benefiting from this? Like who when we when we have immigrant communities or non immigrant communities, you know, like being upset with other communities, What are the greater forces here that are like benefiting from that

sort of like infighting. And it's always like the fascist coops who who ultimately come out of the top there, because if they can keep the people fighting amongst themselves, or they can stoke prejudice and racism between the people, you know, they can then come in and scoop up resources. And when you look at like a school like University of Chicago, they just have a massive, massive amount of money, right,

Like the resources there are just unbelievable. And so of course you're going to have people in the community who are resentful of that, who are upset about that because like they don't have affordable housing, they don't have good jobs, like they're trying to make a living and keep their kids safe. And here's this like university in the middle of their neighborhood with all of this money. And wow, I'm so amazed. I'm just so happy that like somebody's

doing construction right now outside my apartment. Thank you for this timing. I'm so glad about him. Um. But but essentially, like you know, you they the students, the students end up being a scapegoat for all of their like all the communities like justified fears about what's going on, Right, they're justified in being upset that they don't have these resources.

But it's not necessarily like the individual students. Yeah, and and there there have been a lot of really good Like right right before one of the things that was happening in high part right before I got there, was there is this huge campaign basically there wasn't a level one trauma center like on this outside, and so you know, if you get shot, right, they have to like take you in a helicopter to the north side to a hospital there, and you know in that time, like there's

a good chance you're gonna die. And there had there had been one, but it got shut down because it wasn't making any money. And so you know, there was this huge, uh community student campaign to like to force the university to open one of these trauma centers. And so I think and I think it's important that like we don't have to fight each other like that that's not a thing that you know, Like yeah, like I think I think like that university, I I don't think

it should continue to exist. I think at the very least it should be like taking out of the community control. But who but like yeah, like for the people who are there, and you know, I think like for for the Asian Americans listening to this, and for for for people who are students like you, you do not have to be the weapon of the cops. You don't. You can you can work together and and and when you

do that, you can win and you can win. You can win like really incredibly tangible games for the community, and you can save people's lives, you know it also outside of campus, same deal with Chicago police, right, Like, we don't need to have the Eastern European communities fighting the Latino communities fighting the Black communities. Like we don't need to have these like all of these communities just like fighting each other instead of like the actual oppressive

forces at the top. Um. But you know, right now we're at like this kind of I don't know, I guess tipping point. I think where either people start to show solidarity or we're fucked. Like there are massive not to get like super existential with you, but like there are massive, massive forces right now, right wing forces trying to benefit off of all of this factionalization, and as we see tanks rolling into Ukraine, like that's this is

a global phenomenon. It's not just happening at home. It's happening everywhere, and like we don't have a lot of time left to stop this and to bring it back to this like far right trucker foe trucker convoy show that's about to happen and then roll into roll into our capital. Like I'm just struck by the timing of it all. And I'm certainly not going to be like a conspiracy theorist about it and be like, well putin

Is has planned this all happened at the same time. Um, but I do think that whether or not it's like plans happen at the same time, it's absolutely going to benefit these people that you know this is happening right now, and yeah, it's it's It's the same thing with with just horrific anti trans bill said the anti transport I not buil but in anti transide government action, I guess is the correct term in in that's happening in Texas

right now. Yeah, it's uh, you know, like people people draw comparisons to to the Third Roich In to Nazi Germany and them banning like you know, homosexual dance parties and things like that. You know, like they didn't start out saying we want to kill all the Jews. Like that's not like it doesn't you don't start that way, you make you would do the smaller attacks first, you build up to it, You take power inch by inch

until like nobody can stop you. Yeah, but I think I think you know, there's there there's an important note here, though, which is that, like it's it's very easy to sort of especially in times like this, to sort of just like be be in a place where it just it looks like history is just want sing go over you, right that you know, we're we're we're bound by these sort of irresistible powers and forces, and that's not true.

Like these these these these kinds of fascist movements can be defeated, these kinds of militarist movements can be defeated, but they they they they they can only be defeated when we actually take our place as the subjects of history, right, Like we we we are that we are the people who, through our actions, create history. And you know when we also are the people who create the world we see

around us. But you know, as David Graby was incredibly fond of saying, rights like we we are the people who create the world around us, and that means that we can it can be otherwise. And you know, when when we essentially like when we when we reclaim our you know, our our status is subjects or status is human beings are status as the people of which history

is composed of. And we move we can stop these things like they're they're there, do not have to be another like there don't have to be more Nazis, they don't have to be more genocience. You don't have to be more worse. We can stop them. We just have to fight, right. I don't disagree with that. I think I think it's completely true. I guess I'm just I don't know, maybe I'm like a dumer. I don't know.

It's really hard right now to kind of see I guess sort of mass resistance forming in the US specifically just because of the way the pandemic has wrecked us, and I feel like people are I mean, people are just checked out, right, Like they're exhausted, they're broke. I you know, a million people have died because of because of the government's just complete lack of adequate handling of COVID, and so I completely agree that like this isn't inevitable,

like we can stop this. At the same time, I just I don't know what it's going to take for Americans like as an entity to actually stand up and fight this. And I'm not blaming individual people because it's like all the reasons for people being exhausted and checked out are like also by design, right, because of course, like if we keep people exhausted and checked out, then the oligarchs at the top like can continue to like

loot society. Yeah, I mean I think I'm sort of less sang when on that, just because, like you know, because I remember, this is the same thing that like everyone said right before the uprising, like everyone was checked out. Everyone was sort of like you know, like the pandemic

had just started. Everyone there's this like general consensus that like mass action was in visible, and then you know, like two days later, they burned down they burned down a police station and like deluding the American Mile, and you know, it's like it's like it's these these these things, these things like you know, every like the the people who are in some sense the most in tune with like what is happening, it'll often tend to be the people who are most shocked by when when these kinds

of things just emerge seemingly out of nowhere. And so I don't know, I think, I think, I think we can't know what exactly will set off the next wave, but I but I think it's a safe bet there will be another one because there always is. Right, We've never you know, we we have yet to hit a point so bad that people stop fighting like ever in history, so oh for sure. Yeah. And and that's the long arc of history too, is it's like people have always

been fighting for their liberations in some way. And if you look at the longer story, you know, there might be very long periods of darkness and repression and collapse, and then people emerge from that and new societies emerge, new ways of thinking all of that. And I think where we're at now, like at this moment, there are certainly small ways that people can resist and ways that we like we have to focus on like our immediate

communities too. You know, it's so easy to get to feel helpless when you like you look at things on such a grand scale. Because of course, like we can't all just like run into Ukraine right now and like stop putin like there's there's really not a lot we can do when it comes to like things like that. But we can like take care of our friends. We can like make sure that the people immediately around us like have what they need. We can like check in on,

like you know, our on house neighbors. We can like take you know, some people here in Chicago are are prepping to like take in Ukrainian refugees, for example, right now. And and that's like the sort of action that like

is definitely going to be needed. Um. And you know, like when you look at the story of like something as as horrible and just like awful as a holocaust, like of course, are all all these like small stories of like people who like sheltered, people who were who are being sought out, And you know, there were there were all these different kinds of resistance movements in Germany and in Poland. Um. And it's not just about like

all the people that that Hitler killed. It is also about all the people that like we're that people managed to save, you know, And it is also like I don't know we we in America especially, it's like we gotta get away from the Hitler comparisons, which I know I just like just made, but like it's it's you know, like don't get me wrong, Like there's obviously like plenty of parallels and and it's important to be like students of history and like understand what's going on and everything,

but like we don't. What we're seeing is like we're going to see a kind of fascism that is uni to our era, right, Like I don't know that Trump is going to come out and call for like outright genocide and like you know, build build death came or like Rhonda Santis is going to get elected and like build death camps. Like it's going to look different than it has in the past, even if like some of

the phenomenon are similar. So what we're looking at instead is like, especially with climate change, we're looking at a lot of controls over borders. And obviously some of that is like what's happening in Europe right now too, but you know, people are going to be looking to control resources like water, oil, land as we know that they're like running out. And so this this sentiment against like immigrants especially, you know, that's something that is going to

just keep getting worse. And so I think it makes it harder for people to I guess recognize that things are as bad as they were, if that makes sense. Yeah. Um, And ultimately, like it's just yeah, mass resistance is the only way out, right, Like, the people have to resist and we can't keep waiting for like Joe Biden or or anyone to be our political savior. Yeah. I think I think that's a that's that's a pretty good note to end on. Yeah, thank you, thank you for joining us.

Do you have stuff that you want to plug? Um, not at the moment. No, I mean I think, uh, I guess our Twitter account, But that's about it. Okay. Yeah, Well, this this has been this has been another episode if we could happen here. You can find us on Twitter and Instagram at happen here. Pot. Uh, you can find stuff at the Cool Zone with a website. Go there. Stop asking me for horses. They're they're on the website. They get out again uploaded. Uh. Yeah, So Yeah, thank

thank you once again for twining us. Hey, We'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe. It Could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zone media dot com, or check us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated monthly at cool zone media dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.