It Could Happen Here Weekly 34

but the week we recorded it. It did it being the end of Roe v. Wade via Supreme Court fiat, and also the coming end of a hundred years of social progress and less people get real organized and aggressive, real fucking quick. I'm Robert Evans? Who else? Who else? Do I got on with me? Today? Is there a? Is there a? Is there a Christopher Wong on the line? Yes, there there is one. There are many others, but but I am me, yeah, the others do not count. Um?

Is there a Garrison Davis on the line? The only one that I know of? That's right, that's right. We exterminated the others in a in a brutal set of purges Allah, Stalin Um, and then of course Sharene, Lonnie and a Sharne. I'm here too. Would you like to introduce Sophie of I mean, the one and only Sophie. Okay,

well that's us. And now today I am intensely excited to introduce our guest, Um, who is a cool person doing cool stuff to steal another one of our podcasters, Cat Green of the Abortion Access Front Kat, Welcome to the show. Thank you for coming on. I know this has been a hell week for you. Oh yeah, thanks for having me on. I really appreciate it. Now, Um, you and I have a friend in common, and you guys were actually at a national conference for abortion access

when the news dropped a little early. Do you want to talk to us a little bit about what happened there? Yeah? I mean, now that the conference is over, I can say that we were in one of the worst cities in the world to be in when all of this happened, Orlando, Florida, which is basically made of paper sets. Right. Honestly, you could have stopped that sentence. At one of the worst

cities to be in. Yeah, we had actually been out to dinner at the oldest restaurant in Florida earlier that night, and it was a lovely evening, um, even though like some angry driver tried to kill our mutual friend over a parking space Florida, over that part, you know, I

mean Florida. Yeah, you know. Also, the day had started with their already being a bomb threat at a clinic in Knoxville, so I was trying to help people find information about that earlier in the day, and then um, we went out to dinner thinking that we got to relax x and then came back to the news as it was breaking and into the lobby of our hotel where um, the remaining providers and advocates that were there were, um,

just trying to make do Yeah. So cat At first of all, I guess we should talk about what the Abortion Access Front does and your job there, because this is something I don't think a lot of people think about it. One of the things that's become clear to me from some of the reaction of some folks this week on the more liberal side of things, is there is a general unawareness of how violent and intense the threats against abortion access providers have been for like forty years. Yeah, well.

So Abortion Access Front was founded by Liz Winstead, my partner who was the co creator of The Daily Show, and started as a progressive advocacy and messaging hub. And so we were making funny videos about abortion and then

Trump got elected. Were like, Wow, our job's got way more serious all of a sudden, And so we had like volunteers in the week after election, and so we started becoming matchmakers for volunteers to UM different clinics around the country, and we were doing comedy tours where we were trying to build community around the clinics um in

different states. And so we would do a comedy show, have a have a provider on at the end to talk about what was at stake locally, and then get people to sign up to help because people didn't have access to contractors in many of the places we were going, you know, like we would go out and do landscaping work when we were on tour because we were just

trying to help out wherever we could. And in the course of that, the nice folks at the National Abortion Federation reached out to us and we're like, we're a little concerned about you putting providers on stage. Maybe we should talk about your security plan. So they they were out with us the first two years, and UM, and we're giving me information about people we needed to watch

out for. So I got way more involved in creating these security plans around our shows and our tours, and UM started doing a lot of my own research on anti abortion extremists because as we started talking to more people that clinic escorts in front of the clinics, we were getting information about not just leadership, but the people on the ground where they were the most afraid of.

So then I was like, I wish I could just put all this into something where I could look something up via ZIP code and be able to tell who I need to watch out for in a particular area that didn't really exist, so UM, there was just a whisper network of escorts. And then the leadership research that NAP was doing, and so I started consoliding all my research into a database for all of us to be able to use and track incidents and organizations and bad

actors all over the country. I mean, that's that's extremely important, but also extremely cool. UM. It is that you brought up right at the start of your what you were saying that there was a shooting at the Knoxville clinic. There was a scare at the at the Knoxville Clinic UM on Monday, and there was a there was an arson at the Plan Parenthood in Knoxville this past New

Year's Eve. UM, and that same clinic, that same Plan Parenthood that was burned down on New Year's Eve actually had its front door shot out about a year earlier. And uh, because this this is one of the more frustrating cases. If you look this up, you can see that like the fire department has said it was an arson. UM, the a t F is investigating, the FBI is investigating. They both get given the kind of boilerplate statements they've given those instances, you don't see a lot from the

local police. I'm curious if you have anything to say about like the degree to which the local police have been you full in responding to this. Well, I don't work with the local police at all. Um. I you know, I'm a TV person that got into uh doing extremists research. I'm an editor and that I sort information right, So like that made sense to me, but law enforcement doesn't really take me too seriously. Um. But the people on the ground have a lot of thoughts about who it

could be. Right, there are known people in the Knoxville area who have caused all sorts of problems. There was another arson at a different community center there too, UM, and several white supremacists were arrested after protesting a Black Lives Matter UH event maybe two years ago. And so there's here's the thing. There's information about the Knoxville fire that went out on telegram with an order of nine angles Nazi claiming credit for it. And how hard can

it be to find a pagan Naxi in Knoxville? You go to a goth club and be like, who's hit you in the face here? You know? So, Yeah, I feel like there are hindrances to the investigation. UM, and a lot of the a lot of the activists on the ground have good leads that are not being followed. Yeah. I guess that's probably the most direct thing that can be said about it. What so to the extent that like, there's seemingly not a lot in a lot of these

states that is going to be done preemptively by law enforcement. UM. When it comes to like actually tracing out the threats. Uh, how much do you feel like you have a chance to actually stop them from carrying out an action, and how much of it do you feel is just like we need to be documenting this for for when it happens.

You know, we're already getting early warning about events. Um, we're already because we tracked the people who there are a number of groups that create the same kind of actions that are either invasions or blockades at various clinics, and people who have been organizing around this for decades, right so in tracking them and starting to put the pieces together, we're already getting early warning about where they're

headed about who needs to be alerted. You know, there have been at this point three incidents just like I'm

working with a group of volunteers. These are all people who either escort at clinics or part of a part of advocacy orgs that you know, are not getting paid to do intel, but they they're invested in the cause, and so they just follow this stuff on the regular and we're all in touch with each other, and all of a sudden it's like, oh, you know, this person who's been a part of twelve other blockades in the last three years, has been seeing going on a tour

and said, the next three stops, he's going to let's tell all the clinics in the neighborhood what's happening, and they can be a little bit better prepared. And that's you know, I mean, honestly, because the abortion movement is not super supported by law enforcement largely, um, it seemed like a necessary thing for everybody to start keeping their own records for their own safety. And that's really how

all this came together. Now, it's interesting to me that you you brought up one of kind of the leads suspects I guess you might say for the attack on the Knoxville clinic was an O nine A dude, I'm wondering what kind of the threats you're seeing. Obviously there's decades of attacks on abortion access providers, including a lot of fatal attacks, assassinations, acid attacks, numerous bombings and attempted bombings.

How has the character of who is making the threats and who you see as threats started to change over the recent years. I mean, the only and a thing is a big yeah. That's that's weird. You know, we've been following the same Christian nationalists for years and largely they have the same playbook, they make a few changes to it. A lot of them are older. You know, it's lock in blocks or invasions. There's a few Catholics who get really aggressive and like shove their way into stuff.

But it's not. Um, it hasn't been big surprises until recently, and and a lot of the time in the past, even when there was extreme violence happening amongst these people, it was still sort of tied back to Christian identity stuff. And now we're really starting to see it branching out.

And honestly, I blame I blame a few things. One, just the Internet in general, but also the pandemic kind of galvanized extremists across a lot of spheres, and um, you started seeing a lot of Christian identity people that weren't neces sarily militia people starting to mangle with militia people.

And then you know, militia people starting to mingle with white suprise like over white supremacists, and um, so now there's this cross breeding that's happening where like I mean, the Gropers are a great example of just like this weird amaulgam of things that didn't exist in the same sphere before and now they're their own movement. Yeah. I can't tell you how much I hate that. Like other people who who aren't weirdos who spend all of their time on Nazi telegram know what gropers are now. Yeah,

it's extremely frustrating. It's the worst thing in the world. Yeah. One of the weird things about doing this type of research for years is seeing like on YouTube like thumbnails by like Stephen Colbert talking about like wacky like nonsense that I've known about for years and him talking about

it like like it's this big new thing. They're always like, oh wow, the the little tiny corner of the Internet I was just watching and staring at now is like it's something that isn't like a regular lives political lexicon, and that's like horrible. Yeah, brogan posting about the Kali you guy, you know, Yeah that was That was a hard drinking night for me. That was a hard drinking night for me. And it's so hard to explain to

people why it's so bad. You're like, it's just so once back in the twenties, there was this lady named Savitri Devy. Now, yeah, it's it's it's really troubling because um, it's making its way into traditional Christian identity stuff, you know, um, evangelical stuff, quiverful stuff is now starting to cross over way more aggressively with militias stuff, and and with like

over white supremacist you know now see stuff. It's such a problem because and this is something in Berto Echo, you know, noted a long time ago, but like fascism is deeply syncretic, right, and we're that's what we're talking about right now, is its ability. It's like a Catamari. I refer back to that game a lot because it does just keep picking things up, and um, we don't really do that as much on like everyone from like the center left to like weirdo anarchists and and and whatnot.

Like everyone's got their own little box, right, and there's some interplay, but for the most part, people on the left really like making boxes and people on the right. It's just one big ball pit where everybody's smearing their diseases and snot around And it's not great now. And I mean, we need to figure out some sort of solidarity because like even with the abortion protests that are happening this week, we're already seeing people co opting things

and turning it in really destructive directions. Um, I mean, you know, the entire cult of Boba back and you know, I mean I'm actually worried about that as at this point it feels like a legit astroturp. It doesn't feel like they're fighting with the actual abortion providers and saying that, you know that, like abortion funds are a problem. It's like those are the people actually walking to walk and

doing anything about this. What are you doing besides showing up in bloody pants and picking fights with cops, Like yeah, it's this. You know. One of the more uplifting stories that's come out recently is that in France, um, the left is doing a popular front again in order to kind of rest control of the government from mcrown. Will see how it works, right, This is just something that's kind of been announced, and but this is something like that.

This has happened a few times in the past in different formulations, and I do kind of it would be nice to see a broad popular front in favor of abortion access on a very blunt level, but that would involve people not just getting on board with trying to wrest control from the right back electorally, but people supporting a legalism, a lot of people are going to have to do things that are not legal in order to

maintain access to reproductive health care. You know, there's the other side of it is like hardline anarchists will have to realize that working with libs is occasionally useful um and using them as body shields sometimes can can let you do more illegalist type practice. So there's there's both in terms of like people who are really dogmatic on

the left being like, okay, there's types. There's certain times where this type of this this intersectionalism can be really useful, and then people who are less radical having to be okay with more radical tactics happening. I mean, my biggest fear right now is the mass criminalization event that's about to happen. Right you know, no matter what, people's pregnancies are going to be criminalized in various forms. If you

have a miscarriage, it's going to be criminalized. You're going to have to be more cautious about how you use your phone and what you say in the emergency room, and you know, what you say to people in your own family. And I don't think that most people on our side are prepared to have that level of caution or divorce themselves from technology and the way that kind

of needs to happen for people to stay safe. I'm also worried that like, as a movement, um, we're not really identifying the fact that it's all about bodily autonomy, and so that means everybody trying to access trance health care is as much or more so at risk. And um, you know, and we have so much to learn from the sex work industry about all of this, right, Like, so much of what is happening now was built on

like the permissiveness of what people accepted under FOSTA and SESTA. Absolutely, and um, you know that's how all of us got de prioritized and stupid algorithms in the first place. And and then all of a sudden weren't allowed to put ads out for like legitimate healthcare services. And keeping ourselves in boxes is really doing everybody a disservice. Everybody that's been criminalized, everybody who just trying to exist is at risk right now. Is in this together? Yeah, it's um.

You know, there's that famous quote from who was a minister of some sort during you know, the Weimar years about first they came for you know, YadA YadA, YadA, um, And it is like it's always true with fascists, But that doesn't mean that people ever spot it while it's happening, right, because there's there's very few groups that mainstream America has less inherent sympathy for than sex workers. And the reality is that they were testing a lot of this out

on those people because they are marginalized. And I guess one of the things I hope we'll see and that might have some positive developments is that there are a lot of sex workers out there with a lot of opset tips that they can give other people. Now, um, it would be dope if you know there were folks like setting up clinics and stuff in that, because I think there's a lot of information that does need to get shared with folks who are not used to thinking

about any of the stuff they're doing is illegal. I've been seeing stuff on you know, Facebook, among kind of friends of mine who are more middle of the road and family members who are pretty much centrist politically, where they're talking about like, Hey, if you need to go on a camping trip in another state, I'll take you one year camping trip, and it's like I get it, Like it's great to express solidarity, but will you feel that way when it's actually a felony and people are

getting twenty years sentences for doing it, right, Like, because that's where we're headed, you know. Yeah, yeah, I mean people need to get more serious about moving their data out of the country altogether, you know, like thinking about what can be subpoena. Yeah. The folks at Hacking and Hustling are doing really amazing work to spread sort of uh sex work and sex work adjacent upset knowledge to other communities too, Like they're amazing. Um, that's great. I

was not aware of what they were doing. Um, would you mind giving like a little brief overview of what that is? Try to reach out to them, But I've only been in a couple of sessions with them, but they're they're generally just sharing information about like tightening up your digital footprint and also being conscious about how having multiple like if you have to have a clandistine identity online, how you can keep that from leaking over into any

of your other digital identities. Right. It's it's and I mean it's a really important distinction because even if you have something like a SOCC account on something like Facebook. Based on how you set it up and what other accounts that's connected to and who your friend. In that process, it can very easily find its way back to you and the people connected to you. So how do streams separate? Yeah, I mean whenever somebody angers this podcast, we have Garrison

tracked them down. It's very easy. Yeah, that is that is that is true. I have a whole whole folder of people dropping their kids off at school. That's right, So you know, keep your eye out, Hello Fresh, don't screw with us again. Or that one reviewer that said that there was the woman on the podcast who was annoying. I know who you are. I was able to I was able to track back via your Apple account. Just one.

Just somebody tried to request access to one of my folders that's connected to We had a tenure sixth document where we had identified a bunch of people, and so I just linked it to you know, Google Drive things so that press people could get to stuff. Somebody just out of nowhere trying to access one of them the other day and requested permission. I'm just like, all I had to do is look up your name in the

word abortion, like, come on and try a little harder. Um, So cat, I'm wondering number one for people who are like pissed and feeling helpless, there are things that folks can do to help, assuming you live in a state that there's anything at all around, because like a lot of people who are hundreds of files away from any kind of clinic. But if you're not, I know there are ways people going to help. Do you have any kind of pieces of advice for folks interested in being

of use? There are so many things, right, I mean, right now, I think the biggest thing that the movement needs more than anything is abortion funds and practical support funds really need financial help because they are paying to move people around as night as needed to get them care, right,

So the money thing is always the obvious. But um, We're actually having an event on July sev that is sort of an orientation day for new people coming to the movement who want to volunteer and don't know where.

So we're going to cover things like, I you become a clinic escort, what it means to volunteer on like an abortion fund or practical support hotline, um, how you can get involved in lobbying groups, how you can get involved in direct action groups and sort of pre vetting people and then getting them out to the organizations that actually have capacity to take on volunteers right now, because a lot of what's happening, like we already saw it in Texas where people really wanted to volunteer to help

in Texas after SPA came down, but they were doing things like calling the Abortion Fund hotline to try and get to people and it's like, no, you can't clog up the hotline. That doesn't help anybody. So we're trying to take some of the lift off of the organs that are already overtaxed that their people, give them some background information, give them a better idea of what the landscape is in the movement, and then make the connections to organizations that have the capacity to take them on.

So it's called Operations Save Abortion UM and we're gonna do a live dream and house parties all over the country. Awesome people are either watching the streams we're doing or having their own local people to talk about how people can get active locally in more direct ways. Yeah, and there's stuff like being an escort, which is is something I've been learning a little bit more about recently. UM. I guess one of the things I'm interested in is like,

uh from a perspective of actually like keeping folks safe. Um, is that something that you feel has like a lot of value or is that something that yeah, Um, and is that like people would want to like look at. Are there kind of resources for for getting involved with that? There are? Clinic escorting is a little tricky right now because there's a whole lot of clinics that don't know if they're going to be open in eight weeks. So

right now, well that's all shaking out. I mean, if you already have an established relationship with your local clinic, definitely check in with them. UM. Clinics in states that are going to see a surge, um, Pennsylvania, Illinois, New York, I mean really anywhere that's still going to have abortion after the twenty states fall, the entire West coast, uh, New Mexico, right, Uh, Minnesota, they are all going to need escorts. UM. Which clinic escorting is walking a person

from their car to the clinic door past protesters. Um. It's generally I would say clinics are non engagement clinics. So doing this means that you're there for the patient.

You're not there to get in a protesters sphace. Some clinics have enough of a protest presence, like UM Clinics in Charlotte Clinics in Jackson, Mississippi, where they have they split it up and they have people that are there for the patients and people that are there to distract protesters and sort of pull them away from the door, you know, just get them a little bit removed so

that they can get patients past them. This is a little bit less pleasant to a question, but you know, I've done for a different cause a lot of the same research where you're like spending time in these dark corners of the Internet making notes of people and threats being made, and um, I remember the horrible feeling of like having a specific kind of thing that hadn't quite happened before that I was sure was going to happen,

and then the fucking thing happens. Um, are there particular things you are worried about in especially like once this comes through like that, that are kind of on your horizon, Like is there stuff that that people need to be kind of preparing for in terms of like an escalation in direct action against clinics. Absolutely, I mean we're already

seeing increased threats against clinics UM. This this bomb threat the other day was a test balloon, right, But there are organizations like POW who are actively aggressively invading clinics on the regular and doing things like stealing product of conception Fetle remains right and parading them out to the public and naming doctors UM in an effort to get them hurt. Right, it's it's stochastic terrorism. They're not they are not going to be the ones to pull the trigger.

They are just putting it out there so that somebody else does the dirty work for them. And so many people are guilty of that. Right. The church at Plant Parenthood is another good example. And they've had you know,

they've had a long presence and spoken um. They moved to Knoxville, Tennessee, they've set up church plants in Birmingham, and they've they've been throughout um Oregon and and in Oregon they were hiring the Crow Boys as their security, which eventually, unsurprisingly turned into a big fight when counter protesters showed up, the police showed up, tear guessed everybody, it's like, how is what? How is this church to? You know, like, what is anybody trying to get out

of this? And and so there's a lot of people who have been putting it out there for a long time that there's all this other ring language of calling people demons because it makes them easier to kill. There's going to be clinic violence. I mean, there's going to be more clinic violence. I should say. All of this

is violent. It's violent to have people out there screaming at you and calling you a horror with a giant sign of fetus, you know parts and then but I mean they're really waiting for somebody to like more buildings on fire or shoot somebody, and it's going to happen. Yeah, Well does anyone else have anything to get into here?

On that happy note that happy think. It's just it's not going to be like actual Nazi extremists that do a lot of these attacks either, I think, especially with it of being especially if if like if rov Wood does get fully taken away, that will justify pretty violent action in the minds of like most regular Christians. Even when I grew up in like a pretty evangelical uh,

type of community. Those types of attacks against planned parenthood were almost that like there was the there was the overall feeling that they were like celebrated, and people who would do it would be lauded it as like biblical heroes, um for for like for like just our sending a building like that. That was very much the sense that I got when I was a kid, Like I I remember thinking thinking those thoughts, like, oh, that's what like a good people do. Like that's like people who are

brave will go and burn down an abortion clinic. They were openly celebrated. You know, the Army of God would have the White Rose banquet to raise money by auctioning off the personal effects of people who had bombed clinics and shot doctors. And you see a lot of that mirrored now in things like the Saints Calendar, right, and and so you see you see neo Nazis and other white supremacists promoting the Saints Calendar and then directing people

to the Army of God website. And then you see Christian nationalists finding accelerationist handbooks and having that knowledge now, right, and so they can have the knowledge and loosely collaborate without ever having to say, oh, I'm a part of you know Front or the Prowboys or whatever. Like, they won't see themselves as extremists. They'll see themselves as like regular Christians. They'll see them as regular Conservatives. And what they're doing is like is like sanctioned by God and

it's like good, righteous, holy work. Um. So I think that is definitely something to keep your eye on because it's not all going to be like skull mask wearing people doing bomb threats. It's going to be like regular, like regular conservative Christians who are who are like been on this words tracked the past the past few decades. Most of the people that we track are are not part openly part of extremist group well not openly part of like known militant extremists, right, but um, a lot

of them are hold office. You know, there is Derek Evans was in West Virginia. You've got um John Jacob in Indiana, like the whole Oklahoma contingent, like Abolish Human Abortion has really just become a lobbying group that's trying to get people in office wherever they can. There's I mean, they've gotten really strategic about getting people into smaller um legislative roles so that they have more power to push

things and and so that they look more respectable. Yeah, and it's that leads kind of to another point, which is that when you get right down to it, once the ruling comes through finally, as it looks like it will, the vast majority of violence that's going to be done to abortion providers and too people seeking abortions into people supporting them, is going to be done by police. Like

that's the that's the eventual end game here. Yeah, And that's that's the thing I'm the most afraid of, right because it's so much easier to turn somebody in than it is to actually attack a person physically or a building even, And so that's what it's going to be. It's going to be people calling in their neighbors, calling in something from the hospital, turning in their grandkids. You know, well,

is there anything right now that's making you optimistic? Cat, Not to put you on the spot, No, No, it's okay. I thought about that a lot. I mean, honestly, the people working in this are so dedicated to helping people that that always gives me hope. And I genuinely feel

like there's enough of us that have plans. Um. You know, even if even if not everybody's on board with the same stuff, there are enough people really doing the hard work and being pragmatic about what's happening and not just cowing under the pressure of it that are energized by helping people that I think there will always be people helping. They might not always be visible, but they're there and it's just going to be harder to find them. So yeah, Um, well,

thank you so much. UM. Do you have anything else you'd like to plug before we kind of roll out here? Any place people could donations are volunteer if they're into that. Oh, I mean, you can always donate to Abortion Access Front where a front dot org and um, there's a volunteer form there. But also if you want to participate in our event on July sevent you can go to Operations Save Abortion dot com. Uh, and there's a registration form there to get involved in the event. Awesome. UM, well,

thank you so much, Kat Green. You are amazing and what you do is incredibly important. Um. And to everybody else, UM, go find some way to help or you know, at least uh, it's easy to pee in a water balloon and sorry. Okay, well, let's that it happened here work, Yes, nice, nice introducing you got it? Yeah, this is this is it could happen here at the podcast where it has happened. Your host Christopher Wong with me. We have like seve

and teen thousand people. We've got Garrison, yep, got We've got We've got Sophie, I've got Robert allegedly, We've got we've got Sharine, the first time friend of the pod, Sharene Hello, teammate. And we have returning I think, yes, yeah, returning. Well I'm trying, I'm trying to think, but yeah, yeah, yes, and creator of our website that I love. I'm so glad.

I'm so glad you like it. Love. Yeah, And we we are gathered here today to talk about something that sucks, which is, uh, the elite draft of Samuel Alito's decision to overturn Rope Wade. It's now we're all mostly angry that somebody dared to leak a draft and upset the sanctity of the Supreme Courts deliberation in process. Right right, That's definitely the thing that's been keeping me awake at night. Yeah. Yeah, A bunch of elderly ghouls who refused to give up

their grip on power can't deliberate in privacy. What does this world come to? M Yes, it's been me all along. How can I trust the Supreme Corps if not? Everything happens in secret all of the time, always my in. On a serious note, I would like to start this by stating my primary attitude towards the Supreme Court is that more stairways should be greased. Um anyway, that's my contrabation. We have been big proponents of horse loop for years, years, years,

and this stands continues. I think horse loop could solve a lot of problems, could so many. So I do think it is especially cross that like there's the whole side of media people who are making the story out that oh no, look at this leak. That is the worst thing to happen in human history. I can't believe this got leaked, and that is like a pretty dominant narrative going on for like over half the country, even like even on like CNN. That was like the first thing.

It's pretty funny too because like the original road decision also got leaked. I had the text, but like the way it was the ruined verdict was gonna go also got leaked. It's like, okay, it's like this is actually consistent about this. It's clearly, like I I get why the Republicans who are doing it right, because it's a way number one that they can pretend to be victims. There's a lot of people comparing it to like the January sixth and ship. Um, yeah, sorry, it's the comparison

to be made. There is not that the leak happened, no, and like should it's like it leaked, Yeah, okay, how about the fact that the information instide leak is dangerous and it's going to cause a bunch of people today. Also, there should be more leaks of government things all the time. That's actually yeah, yeah, yeah. The government should not be allowed to keep secrets Like I'm sorry, we don't. They're really they're called civil servants and they're doing everything in secret,

like we're supposed to know. I mean, in the perfect world, they're spying on us. We have no privacy. Yeah, yeah, exactly, Like it's only fair. It's also like you, I mean, I guess maybe we'll eventually find out who did it, but like it's also we don't have to assume that it was a progressive that did it. For example, Like I think the conservatives have even more of a motive

to release it because they're like mobilizing. There are people to agree and be like, yes, do we do we want to do the weird Screme Court inside baseball ship? Like okay, so the weird inside baseball ship is So this is a draft decision, right, this decision Like hasn't that this is this is not the law of the land yet. And the thing with draft decisions that they change, and the thing that's happening here is there's this weird split. There's there's like a three to to split on like

what actually, yeah, that that makes up seven? Right, I'm like what actually? Because like the five conservative justices like don't like row, but there's a mean, particularly with like Roberts, there's a there's kind of a split on like how far they want to take it. And so part of what could be going on here is like so this the version of decision that got leaked is like this is basically the most extreme thing they could possibly do.

I Arranging impacts on how we view personal rights. Uh, I mean, it's it's they can talk about it later and like this is you know, this is the thing. Like like the nerd like Supreme Court watchers like didn't think that like this would be the thing, right, They didn't think they would just straight up overturned Row. They thought they would ship at it a little bit first, like go after Casey. But like no, no, no, that

they're just they're just straight up going after Row. And part of what could be the strategy here is like a lot of Okay, so the liberals on the Supreme Court like have been effectless and powerless for an enormous amount of time, and a lot of what they spend their time doing is trying to like get one or two sentences changed to be slightly less bad. And this could be an attempt to get the other conservative justice

is to like force them to rally around. Aldo's like unbelievably hard and there were there were thing that that's worth noting about this is that like Aldo, Aldo is like I don't know, I mean cavn Cavanaugh. Okay. So for for a very long time, Aldo was like broadly considered by the legal community to be the worst legal mind in the Supreme Court. Like he's a clown. He's

like he's he's legal reasoning is is really bad. Like even even by this, like you know, and this this has changed with and become a Barrett and cav It all to it to some extent, but like this is not this is not a guy. This is not like

a subtle like a subtle legal mind. This is like this is like a bull in a china shop who you throw out when you need to just like hit something with a hammer, right, and so you know, like yeah, part part of what the strategy seems to be is to try to try to coerce the other justices who are like like like Roberts, who was like slightly less fanatical than Aldo, is to try to get them to rally around this like incredibly maximalist, hardlined not only going

after Row, but going after like a whole bunch of other stuff that we will get to in a second. Yeah. So that that's that's the that's the sort of Supreme Court insight baseball ship. That is possibly part of what's going on with the league. But yeah, I mean, to be honest, I think that's whatever is going on in the league. The primary topics of interest to most people are going to be number one, the degree to which the rights trying to use this to distract from what

they're actually doing. Uh. And more to the point, the concerted the fact like this is what we're actually dealing with here is like the culmination of forty is years of pretty relentless um. I mixed it pretty relentless electoralism um married to a very effective direct action terrorism campaign that has netted the right a tremendous uh win here. Yeah, I mean like and I feel like this it's a crisis,

but it hasn't been treated as a crisis. And like when fucking Democrats campaign, this is like such an urgent matter, and as soon as they're elected, it's suddenly like not as urgent. Like look at fucking Biden. He ran on literally caught like codifying it. He ran with that promise and obviously that didn't happen. Um. And then there's also, like to Robert's point from earlier, these justices are just

like ancient and don't give up their power. And I mean, there's no use in pointing fingers, even though I like to do it. So like RBG, for example, like if she had just retired at her fucking time, maybe there would be like one more justice that could fucking help us out. But there's a lot. I mean, she's got

her share of the blame. There's also the fact that we've had I think six justices appointed by Republicans in the last thirty years, and only one of those Republicans actually won the popular vote, um, which was the goal. This is not just One of the most important things to understand about the anti abortion movement is that it's not center like it didn't start and it's not centered around abortion. It is centered around reversing all social progress

of the last century. And the inciting incident was the integration of schools. Right. This all started over Brown versus the Board of Education. Abortion was just the thing they realized it was easier to rally people around than segregation. Um. And that's what we're dealing with right now. So that

the fundamentally this has always been an democratic movement. This has always been about codifying into law and locking into place for essentially forever, a minority rule in which Christian extremists would get to govern the much larger chunk of the country that does not believe in those sort of things. Yeah, and I think that's also worth mentioning anytime someone talks about this, because the media does, like the media just runs pr for the anti abortion movement, which is that

this is unbelievably unpopular, like staggering lee unpopular. Nobody wants this. This is like, this is this is less like you can pick it like this is less popular than invading fantasy countries that don't exist. Like if if if you like this, this is this is significantly less popular, then uh, then the burning police stations down. We have the pulling data on that. It's like less popular than the lightning police stations on fire, Like it is unbelievably staggering lye

unpopular people. No one wants this except for a a very very very well organized, very politically connected, very wealthy, and very powerful clique of Christian fascists. Yeah, well, the laws never reflect what the most of the population wants though, right, like exactly like the popular vote for example, as you mentioned earlier. So it's like I think there was a poll I was reading about this yesterday in June of

last year. Percent of people thought abortions should be legal for for for any reason, like there's no doesn't have to be like any kind of thing. So it's like it's and there's so many polls that also just like prove that most people don't want this hard and fast rule. But yeah, the both parties i think utilize it to rally together people to vote, but obviously for different causes. Yeah, And like the first reaction from from from Democrats was, hey,

donate to our campaign. It's like, oh my god, honey, read the room. You have all the power and quotes right now and you've done nothing. It's like vote blue. Dare dare saying that, and you get attacked by other Democrats by being like a radical leftist ruining movement because like it's not their faults. And I'm like, you, you've had power multiple times in my thirty years of life

where you could have done it easily. Yeah, like like and this is this is one of the things that like, okay, like this stuff doesn't work on me because I remember when Obama had a two thirds majority in the sty Yeah, they had a filibusterproof majority in the Senate, had the House, and not only did he not do this, Obama by by two ten, Obama is codifying anti is codifying anti

abortion stuff of codifying the High Amendment. So yeah, it's like no, like, and this is the this is the thing with the Democrats rates like, this is the best thing that's happened to the Democrats since Trump left office. Like the Democratic Party they love this. This is the best.

This is the best thing they could possibly happen to them, because now what they can do is they can run on, we're going to bring abortion back every single election cycle, and they never do it right because everything because they they'll they'll never like the stuff that they run on, Like yeah, they'll, they'll they'll like they will even even if they got another somehow by like magic, if they somehow got their six vote majority, they find a way to not do it because this, this is this is

a permanent fundraising thing for them, and they're they're desperately in need of money all the time always. So if you take that away, like during my brief stint in the California Democratic Party, fundraising was always a big deal. And they didn't want to divest from fossil fueling cops because then where would the money come from. You can't take campaigning on row away from them because then like

they don't fucking know how to activate grassroots organizers. It scares the ship out of them, so they will be fucked if they lose this, which is why nothing has happened. Speaking speaking of money, do you know who else wants your money? That's that's right. The products and services that support this podcast, that's right. Uh. You know certain may make you infertile. So that's not doing this today. We

are back, um. I think it's so we'll be We'll be talking about Supreme Court abortion stuff for a lot in the coming months. Um. We'll be talking about very different facets of it. Um. Different like mutual aid, like in ways of going about kind of filling in the gaps which are going to become larger, um, and a whole bunch of other stuff relating to like right wing

terrorism against abortion clinics and all that kind of stuff. Um. The other interesting aspect about this that I want to kind of briefly talk about is that with the specific phrasing of the le talcument is it it threatens a whole like sect of personal rights, not just abortion rights, um, and could have far raging impacts, uh, in terms of like privacy rights, in terms of possibly even backtracking on stuff like gay marriage, and a whole bunch of other things.

It's like it's obviously the abortion angle itself is pretty massive and it affects you know, half half the population should uh, But there's a whole lot of other stuff that isn't that that indicates this, like this trajectory towards this type of like right wing fundamentalist of Christian like Christian fascist effort to hack away at all the things that they deem degenerate or things that they deem is undesirable. Well, I mean, the goal is to make America Christian nations

so Jesus can come back and rule it. And you can't do that if you know, people are gay, or people are allowed to be on birth control, or people are allowed to marry outside of their race, or go to school with people who don't look like that, Like I did read Jesus to say all of those things. Yeah, it's it's definitely in the Bible somewhere, if you if you do like that poetry style where you blot out

some of the words to make other words, which is mary. Yes, the thing we gotta get into that, I think is the primary question people have right is like beyond sort of the doom scrolling of of all of this and all of the fear about like what's going to happen to oh berge Vell and Lawrence v. Kansas and all this stuff. What are they going to go for next?

Is like what actually will work to oppose this ship? Right? Um, we at the moment, I have not seen and I don't believe there's any objective signs that Democratic Party is going to be particularly useful in stymying any of this bullshit. Um, Cinema and Mansion have already come out against removing the filibuster. Mansion has come out against voting at all in order to codify abortion access into into law in any kind

of federal way. Um. And yeah, I get the sense that for most of them it's a big fundraising opportunity. Now we do have. That's not to say it's all bad news, because it is kind of there's a possibility that this will have a significant impact on the mid terms. Um. We got one kind signed that where the race in Michigan that just ended, the special district or the special election where um, for the first time in quite a while, a district that Trump carried by like sixteen points went

to a Democrat. Uh. Now, the Republican that they were running against was the guy who said that women should lie back and enjoy it if they were getting raped. Uh, So this is one of those like, I don't know how much we should see that as particularly emblematic of how things are going to more broadly go, but this does have there's an activation potential, right because outside of the fact that the Democratic Party, you know, and as a whole is feckless and primarily method of fundraising for

rich people. Um, actual Democratic voters are rightfully horrified about what's going on, and this has there's a potential here to activate a lot of people and get them organized in a productive way. So I think that has to be on our minds. And so there's a mix of I don't want to discount electoralism, but I think that in the immediate term one of the things that people are going to have to do is provide actual material ways for folks to get access to the healthcare that's

going to be increasingly denied to them. Now. Um, we get a couple of episodes earlier in the year with Michael Lawfer of the voor Thieves Vinegar collective He's just gone viral, and a Vice article about the hacked abortion pills that that they've been guiding people in how to make UM. I think stuff like that is really useful.

When I started posting about this online, someone pointed out that UM pro abortion activists in Germany recently flew drones across the border to Poland to drop off MIFA prostall like abortion pills which were picked up by people in Poland. UM, and there's there's some there's going to be increasing kind of organizing around that stuff, like the Jain Collective. UM people are already organizing and from like national organizations to increase access and states where it's going to remain legal

for people out of state. So I think that's going to be hugely importan UM. Does anyone else have sort of ideas on kind of what what things people can do when are going to be doing to push back against this, because I do think it's got to be twofold. It's got to be both, you know, pushing back in sort of a legal sense and also pushing back by direct action in order to ensure that people still have access to this stuff. I don't know, I don't have

faith in electoral electoral anything. Uh So I really think like if there's if it's possible to find your own community and like just almost like with I don't know, just mobilizing your actual peers versus like trying to trust anyone with power to get anything done. Because maybe I'm

a pestimist. Maybe I'm just a pessimist. But what you said earlier about the person she was running against, what I heard is that that person was still running and people like he was still the number two, you know, And I think on the other side there, their side is also going to rally against stuff like didn't Oklahoma just passed like the most restricted and ever and just

yesterday at time of recording. Yeah, so in this law, women can be punished up to ten years in prison for gonna get abortion and like in pair, like just for some perspective, rapists in Oklahoma get five years. So it's like stuff like that is happening in all these states, and because these states people with with less resources maybe don't have their ability to travel so far, I think really mobilizing communities a little bit more uh maybe just

more effective in my opinion. Yeah, I mean, we have to mobilize communities, but you also can't. It can't just end at we're going to try to like provide these people with an option to get out of the state or get access where they are, like clandestinely. If it's limited to that, they're going to push to make all this more illegal federally, and they're just going to keep throwing people in prison and using the police as the

enforcement arm of this stuff. There does have to be there has to be a broader counter you know, I'm thinking back to like, and I'm not talking about like picking a dude to vote for. I'm talking about like in Mexico, right when they were talking about UM making abortion illegal, activists attempted to light the Capitol building on fire UM and like that that that kind of like there has to be there has to be a broader

two thirds of the country thinks this is bullshit. There has to be a way of getting those people organized in a way beyond dealing with the acute problems caused by this. Like yeah, and I don't entirely know what that looks like, but no, that makes sense that you're right and makes sense. Well, and I think I think that there have been signs that it's started, Like so, I mean, there there's obviously, like there were protests like they've been protests, like literally since the thing came out.

They were especially Yeah. Also, I mean I think I think part of like this sort of like yeah, what did you see when you can see this sort of like I don't know, you can see the way that people haven't I guess fully internalized the fact that the stage is just trying to do this to them, and that like you know, if you look at the barricades that were put up, right, like you could just push those over, like and then there you have you had a bunch of people who are extremely angry and they

sort of just sat there and did nothing right and like this is this is the kind of thing that like, you know, if you look at what happened in l A. There there is a lot of protest in l A. And like the department, like Homeland Security was on the street beating people, and I think if if if there's like okay, So, one thing it's important to keep in mind is that this still again this this the ruling, the draft of the ruling is not the actual ruling.

Right there is still time right now in between when this in between this leak and when this is actually decided, there is still time to literally force the court to not do this, so start greasing those stairwells people. Yes, well, I think here's a few notes. Um. So one, I think it's it's going to be used to encourage action

on all sides. Uh, there's what it's gonna This is going to be seen as a victory for the right, and they're going to use this momentum to mobilize further, uh, to to put more further antibortion stuff into law, and to encourage people to take vigilante justice out on healthcare providers. Um. The second thing is direct action for of trying to alter the ruling before it happens. Like there is a

chance to do mass mobilization. Uh, there's a chance if we frames if things are framed correctly, you can bring a lot of liberals out and convince them and suggest to them that they can that they could do things that they ordinarily maybe wouldn't do. Uh. There's that is that is an entirely uh, entirely possible scenario. Just in my in my episodes about the Atlanta Forest from a

few days ago, I discussed the shack method of protest. Now, this this isn't this isn't this doesn't carry over one to one because that is pretty focused on doing economic targeting. But the whole idea of targeting people outside of like the political space is a key to that. Like people

people don't just do work in the Supreme Court. They have actual everyday lives, and if you can uh surround them in their everyday lives, that type of personal pressure is way more affecting than just yelling at a government buildings sometimes, um because if we can dissolve this like safe political like space that people think that they think they operated in, right, they assume that, oh, I'm I'm I'm a court justice, I'm a judge. Everything that I

do happens in the courtroom. Right, I'm safe, I'm contained. Everything is just in the contents of the courtroom. I don't get to experience consequences for my actions outside the courtroom, which isn't true because obviously the people, all of us, do experience those consequences in the real world all the time, just the people in power don't have to. So instead, if we can put pressure on people when they're going about their every day lives in their hanging banners in

their backyard, doing other things. Horse but again, very useful. Um, that is a that is a way to do types of protests that we have not seen as much, but I think is now is probably the time to start doing that, right. I mean we we saw we saw stuff after the murder of George Floyd with people surrounding the house of Derek Chauvin, which police were very angry about that. There is an indication that hey, this the state doesn't like it when this happens. Um, it's not.

It's not specifically more legal to stand in the street of a residential neighborhood. So no, and it's you know, a lot of protests so far has focused on court buildings, many of which are federal, and those provide a lot of benefits to shall we say, the defender, including the fact that they're already well set up for surveillance. They're

generally fortified. Uh, they have a pretty short logistic tail to where the state is keeping its weaponry and its troops as opposed to just kind of fucking with people in their lives, which is a lot harder for those kind of militarized responses that lead to large groups of your friends getting arrested or beat up by Feds. I think also like, yeah, the tendency to go after like legal buildings is missing the point of where the actual

power is. Like this is the thing which January sixth too is like yeah, even if like yeah, they took over the capital and nothing happens. And the reason that like nothing could happen is because it's just a building, right, like the the the the actual political system existed dependently of it, and you have to hit the things that the system actually cares about, and so like that supports that's roads, that's border crossings, that's things like I why

am I now suddenly vacation homes? Yeah, but like like but also I mean like okay, like you know, if if if if there was actually like a way to stop this, one of the few things that could actually do it would be a large would be something like a large skale teacher strike or a thing I've talked about before that is happening this summer is for example, all the the long Showman contract in uh Oakland is coming up, right, and like those are the kinds of

things like if you can actually start shutting down large sections of the U. S economy, the Supreme Court of Political Actors, they will have to respond to this, and you can essentially, like like you can you can blackmail them into into into doing the thing that they should be doing. You can apply targeted pressure economically and personally. And that's the type of protest that I think it

would be interesting to see where that leads us. They need to not they like the consequence for both the political actors who are carrying this out and the people who support them needs to be that they don't get to live a normal life um that they are, that

they suffer consequences for hurting people. And that means a lot of things, but among other things, that means that certain people shouldn't be going to the fucking grocery store without feeling the hatred, you know, And I think, I think be able to order delivery and feel secure that what they're gonna eat isn't going to hurt them. Yeah, And I think also like one of the things that I remembering from that was actually really effective initially from

the beginning of TRUP administration was the airport protests. And that's a place that like you wouldn't think you'd be able to really occupy because again, the amount of security there was enormous, but like if you have a lot of libs, you can. I remember, like I was, I was like standing in an airport terminal and there was a lot of riot cops attacking. Like everyone is like, oh, we're gonna get attacked, but like there was just enough like everyone just sat down and there was enough libs

with like their kids that the cops didn't attack. And that's that. That's a kind of thing that like potentially could be replicated and also could be useful given the fact that like sometimes cops have like an aversion to a like stuff that looks really really bad on TV. Not not always, but like, yeah, this is this is the thing that can happen. Is the thing that has happened inner like pretty recently. Yeah we can do again. I don't really trust footage of police brutality to change

things anymore. UM. I feel like we reached the peak of that, and at this point I think moving on to targeted pressure towards individuals that whole positions of power and targeted pressure to the economy. Um. But speaking of speaking of targeted pressure the economy, a large protest at an airport that the police break up with tear gas does damage to the economy that the police are the ones causing um and like it's it's uh, it's one of those things. As we've stated, courthouse or whatever is

just a building. People can not go into work and do all of the fund up ship that they're doing on zoom um. An airport is not just a building, you know, And so a protest at an airport has some teeth that a protest at a courthouse doesn't. Necessarily, I do have one, like quick other thing it that I want to throw out as sort of a means of uh resistance or action. Is something that I was

trained to do growing up. Part of the forest birth movement is co opting the language that the left uses, and I think something that we should do and something that we can all be doing right now is co

opting the language back. So when force birth advocates say their pro life, come back with how can you be pro life if you want someone to die by having a pregnancy, and like just sort of taking words and rhetoric that has traditionally been used to oppress us two reframe it and be like, no, actually, you're the one who's telling on yourself here, and you're the one who

is forcing people literally to die in multiple ways. You cannot be pro life if support people who already exist dying and just sort of thinking about that a little bit. If you don't necessarily have the energy to go stage protest at the airport, yep, that is a great line to end on end on um. Everybody go out, and again, you know, our sponsors are the Klein and Stupil Hip Surgery Center in Washington, d C. So please do keep

greasing those stairways. Everybody welcome to It could happen here, the podcast that's happening here right now, in your ears, it could happen here. I'm Robert evans Um. I'm I'm not with any of my normal UH co hosts today because as fuck them now, because I'm elsewhere in the world right now, hanging out with someone you might remember from a special episode we recently did on Molotov Cocktails,

journalist James Stout. Hi. Everyone, Yeah, I'm here with Robert in a tiny hotel room and we've just worken up we had to do some podcasting. Yeah, we're not We're not here for any specific purpose. We just decided let's run a hotel room cast some pods, you know, hang out. Um, James, how do you feel about the border? Negatively? Broadly speaking, I think the border is a tool that we used to harm and kill the most marginalized people in the world. I think that's kind of borne out by stats as well.

So not a big not a big border guy. Yeah. And you and I recently spent a decent amount of time on the Texas Mexico chunk of the border, specifically near McAllen, Texas, hanging out at a butterfly sanctuary that people can learn some things about if they Google will be coming out that those episodes will be dropping in the not too distant future. Um. But you live on the San Diego side of the order, UM, which, if

people don't know, San Diego, California is basically in Mexico. Um, you can you can hop over across for like lunch and stuff if you really want to and don't mind dealing with CBP. UM. And Yeah, so I you've done a lot of reporting around the border and about kind of the system of violence that it represents. UM. I wanted to chat a little bit like about that, and I wanted to chat about some of the organizations that you've run into that are doing good work out there

because there's a lot that needs to be done. Yeah, definitely, I think, Um, I think it's really important to like conceptualize what's happening at the border in terms of like the border is a tool for state violence, right, state violence against marginalized people, and like what the good group groups helping people on the boarder represent is like ways of us helping each other which are outside the networks

of us having power over each other. Right, So in the broader spectrum of like neutral aid of mutual support, like, I think they're really important to focus on rather than kind of so many people construct the border in their minds, Like you can if you go back on my Twitter, some guy just being like that is not the border. The border does not look like that. The border is barren and it's desert and it's full of people with

guns and it's really not right. Like, so the border exists, is like this mental construct a place where we can do like political theater, especially on the right. So people who are actually down there on the ground and understand it, I think it's it's vital to support them. Yeah. One of the more striking moments to me when we were in McAllen was hanging out near this trunk of border

fence that had been constructed on like by volunteers effectively. Um, and it's this, it's it's it's what you would expect, like the stereotype of the border. It's this huge military industrial looking thing. The wildlife has been cleared from around it so that you can have this towering steel edifice.

But then a hundred yards away across the rio is the Mexican side of the border, and there's like a couple of goat farms and like a little restaurant with a little dock so people can like you know, take their little boats out and people are drinking and there's party music laying and like it's it's nice. It's pastoral and green. It was. It looked like a lovely place. It looked much nicer than hanging out by the giant

steel tower. Yeah. I found that all along the border actually, like we are side of the border looks like something

from a Blade Runner or something like. It's this giant dystopian steel construct with with people with guns, with watch towers, and it's horrific, right, Like it cuts through some of the most beautiful and important landscapes we have right through the high desert, through this very fragile places, and like it's important I think people understand as well what the border wall looks like, right because you've probably seen a photograph of giant ass wallum and that is part of it.

But they got it the border wall ecosystem, and what that involves is the wall itself, sometimes a ditch, sometimes not a ditch, and then a road that's wide enough for two of the f one fifty raptors Border Patrol like to drive to pass each other, and then access road to that, and then generally there's also an access road cut that allows construct vehicles to get to build all of that. So it's not just some spikes in the desert. It's fucking destroying this beautiful part of both

of Mexico and the United States. Right now, before we get into some of these organizations, I'm wondering, first off, when did you start reporting on the US Mexico border and is there any kind of specific events that that you can recall that really kind of ignited your your interest in this particular like part of the United States, in this particular part of like our ongoing social conflict. Yeah, like, I've always been interested in borderlands, like academically and as

part of my PhD UM. But I guess I've probably about eight or nine years i've been reporting on the border. The thing that really sort of took it from being like a the border is sometimes I think I write about I did a lot of outdoor writing about the border to right. It was very interesting in getting more people to go outside in Baha, California. It's amazing and you should do it. But what really sort of I guess made me be like Gulf funk, this is fucking horrible.

U is quote unquote migrant caravan. Right. So I've been down just just enjoying a weekend in Fettle further south and but little further south of Tijuana and having a really good wine country there. So we've been checking out these wine places and just enjoying ourselves. And we come back and then these people are in um what's called the Benito Kuaida's Sports Complex. It's just a baseball field and it's raining and it's November, and it looks like

a fucking Battle of the Somme in there. You know, it's mud. They're little children, And I've been in these situations before. I've I've seen situations with displaced people before, but there was something that just broke my heart about like, so obviously we're gonna go in, right, We're gonna see what's going on. We're going to see what we can do to help. And they're little kids. I remember there was this little girl and it's one still makes me

really sad. But she would find me. There were thousands of people there. Every single time I came, she would find me. It found me the first day and she would like we talked for a little bit about what she was doing, and then she was standing like halfway up her little shins in mud and she didn't have any works like shower or be clean. You know. She was living in a sort of tarp shelter. And it

just fucking broke my heart. So he said she used to plack my hair a lot so and carry her around, And that was just like this realization for me, like of how cruel this thing is. Shortly thereafter, of course, the police stood in the parking lot of the Tommy Hill Figure discount store in order to fire tear gas.

It's some of the most marginalized and desperate people certainly in that part of the world, right, and just that it's it's a scene that like, yeah, that would if you put that in a movie, you would be like it was a little bit heavy handed, right, having them shoot from the tummy hill finger at the desperate migrants. That's a little bit heavy Yeah, yeah, it's it's just dis advanced fucking parody of where we are at a society.

But yeah, the the DHS helicopter is taking off from the Tommy Hill Figure store to fire tear grass grenades at the children who just want a safe place to sleep. I had a moment like that in a protest where the Portland Police. We were in um uh North Portland, um, which is like in a neighborhood that was like one of the fairly few like black neighborhoods in Portland, and the cops, you know, when apeship and started firing impact

munitions down Martin Luther King Boulevard. And I didn't catch myself at first, and I was like, the cops are now shooting down Martin Luther. Yeah, you've been in and around like you you live there obviously, so who are like, who are some of the folks that you've come across that are doing the most to actually help there, and what kind of help, like it is necessary because I feel like one of the one of the things I think is the primary shortcoming of it could happen. Here

is a show so far? Is that the way Garrison and I phrase it is like a lot of our episodes are here's a problem them goodbye. Right, We're like, here's the thing that's bad. Off we go. So what I guess the two chief questions I think they need to be answered because I'm hoping pretty much everyone here is on board with the border is a nightmare. Uh, something's got to be done. What are the kind of things that can actually materially improve people's lives who are

being affected by this border ecosystem? And then who are the motherfucker's who are actually out there trying to unfunck things that to the extent that unfucking is doable here. Yeah, So I think like just to further like make people sad. First, like, if you look up de Colonial Atlas Southern Border, you can find this map of where migrants die when they're coming to the United States, right, and were often it's constructed in the news media, is like it's dangerous crossing Mexico.

It is. It's it's dangerous coming across the Darien Gap, sure it is. But the vast bulk of people die within a few miles of our southern border, right. And that's because, especially now with the way we've constructed the border wall. Right before the action, Donald Trump in a debate made claims about how much border wall he'd built. Like everything else, he was full of shit. So they just tried to build as much as they could between

them and the election. So they just skip the hard parts, skip them out in to skip the valleys, and that often forces people to cross in the most arduous terrain, right, So that that's increased the amount of people dying. So we can look broadly at like two categories of support, right, which are like, um, I guess like direct aid and then legal aid. So um, on the legal aid side, the guys who guys and girls and other people who who have been really really helpful to the other side

right there there, Legal aid group. They were very very cool during the during the microt care event, like they and I realized that something about a loaded phrase, right, I'm just trying to use a word that people will understand they were there constantly helping people with good course letters. They were there filing legal briefs on their behalf. As a result of that, many of them were illegally surveiled

by the Department of Homeland Security. We had the phones taken, the communications trace, their movements traced, their network trace, etcetera. They are wonderful people, right like, they do amazing things with helping people get legal aid um. And then you've got the people who are helping people while they cross right, and there are a number of these mutual a groups. If you're in a certain region there at the border,

there is probably someone near you. I'm no expert on all of them, but you can look at like no Massa Weds in Arizona Armadio's believe. I think they, I don't know. They operate also in Texas, but certainly in that California Arizona area. You can look at border angels.

A border angels are probably the biggest, most public facing one, and they are fantastic right They're out there making sure that there are cashes of water for people who are crossing, making sure that when it's cold at night there are warm clothes, and when it's hot there are clothes suitable for that weather, right, maybe in a new backpack, canned food.

They're like doing the active stuff that stops people or dying. Um, And that's invaluable, right, And it's also important in terms of showing that like they'll often right things I've seen like like you're welcome, right, welcome to this country or whatever. It's showing that most of us don't agree with this dehumanizing brutalization of migrants that state is doing on our behalf, and so showing that welcome it's very important. There are

lots of indigenous groups. Um. I did ask if I could name them, but that they didn't get back to me, so I don't want to. But like there are groups within the toronaud M nation and their groups within the Kumi nation. I'm sure there are groups within other tribes whom the border crossed, right, who lived in this area long before it was a border, who are also out there helping people. There are also individuals helping people out

on their property. Right. If you if you can't find how to donate to one of those groups, you can reach out to me. That's fine. But yeah, I think the work they're doing is invaluable both in terms of like showing people that they are welcome and in terms of saving lives. Right, more and more people die at the border every year, especially Lee with things like Title forty two, which we can get into with MPP sure. So Title forty two, it's a public it's part of

a public health law. It's very antiquated. I think it was last used in the nineteen thirties. The idea behind it was to stop people with tuberculosis coming into the United States and if they have and um um, if they have an infectious to transmissible disease I think it's called, then they can be immediately sent back without processing. Right. This was part of a whole suite of things that

they used to do to laborers coming north. Right. They would also spray them with all kinds of insecticides, which obviously is not good for the health. So Title fully two, the idea being, you know, you get if you present to me at the border and I'm a border patrol guy and you're like coughing up a lung and obviously tuberculous, cuberculous, I don't know, you have to tubercule, yeah, tuberculastic, then I will send you back and just be like, no,

Robert off until you're healthy. You're going to infect everyone else here, especially if I detain you. Now, what it's being used to do with COVID nineteen is to not process migrants right, to do what's called catch and release, just bump them south and let them go. What that means is that these so normally you could cross surrender

to a CBP AG and that's another miss miss understanding. Right, a lot of people will want to surrender right there that they they have no intention of not being processed. For certain countries is something called a TPS, which I'll explain in the second, which which there will be no reason for them not to be processed. So these people will cross, and now they could just get dumped on the other side, right, it doesn't matter if they are a person who is pregnant, doesn't matter, if the elderly,

doesn't matter, if there medically compromised. A week, they can't just get dumped. What this has meant is that people who are helping them cross, right, people who maybe charge your fee for helping them cross, are offering like crossings without limits. You we'll just try again, try again, and it means, like I said before, because of the combination this and then this, this hostile infrastructure that we're building, right, this border wall system, that people will try crossing in

more and more remote places. Right. That is when people die crossing, is when they cry and cross in in places that are hotter, that are more arduous. Right, it requires days of walking sometimes and like, and I've been in that terrain. I spend a lot of my time out there, and like for a long time it's been more or less my job to be outside out there, and it is hard. So if I imagine crossing with everything I need to start my new life and carrying

my child, it's very difficult for me. And I'm more accustomed to it than most, so it's it's very difficult and forcing people to just kind of bounce back. Because when we drop someone in Mexico, right, if they are Guatemalan, Honduran, they don't have any network there, Right, it doesn't exactly help. Like, uh, like sometimes we like this construct that like the border fuels crime, right, Like crime is like they talk about like like sometimes cartels is far too broadly used. Nearly

always it's far too broadly used. But this idea that the board of funds like drug running an organization such as that, Well, you don't help by dumping someone where they have no other means of making a living, right, where they're going to be very poor and now they don't have any mate and I have anyone to go to to ask for help, write like, I don't blame people for trying to find a way to do something so understandably, like if I don't think I think it's

largely a lie that that any significant number of people sort of running drugs across the border are migrants or um. You know, I think that's that's largely a racist lie. But leaving people dislocated there is a recipe for poverty, and I can't things like crime do happen more. I guess when people are poor and don't have any other options, that makes sense if we go back to TPS really quickly, because I think that's important to temporary protected status. Right,

You'll see people on Twitter talking about TPS. Whether bids only means is that they can't deport you back to a country. So it took Biden an obscenely long time

to grant a TPS for the people from Ukraine. Right, Five something people went into the deportation system between the time in like November December, when Biden's administration started being like there is going to be war in Ukraine and Russians are going to invade Ukraine, they were still actively in the process of sending people back to Ukraine at that time, and it wasn't until about a week into the shooting war that they said, Okay, Temporary protected DATUS,

we won't send you back. It exists for other countries, exists for Haiti, it exists for me and mar Burma. Right. Um. I don't know if it exists for Syria or I think it does, but these countries where basically like, we won't send you back there. And TPS is very important, right because it stops people being deported to places where they will die. And it's important to understand that, like you could have everything right into am, you're a sign an application, and still be sent back. It's a cruel

and very impersonal system. So a TPS is important and if you're into sort of advocating for laws, then it's an important thing to advocate for. I think yeah, Um, in terms of more, I think that's important because we we kind of the electoral side of things is not does not tend to be our focus here, but it's

also not useless. Like the border is one of the areas most clearly where you can see both how advocating in that realm can immediately improve people's lives and also how both sides of the political spectrum use the border as a weapon to hurt. Yeah, exactly. The board is definitely a stage for both sides political theater. Like look at Joe Biden, right, he's coming in, he's signing this declaration.

On the first day, Remember the day he was inaugurated, I went out to the border wall just sat there by myself and like wept because it's just this horrible, ugly thing that's such a scar on the place that I love. And uh, he's done fun all right, and he's deporting more people than Trump and he's building his own by and barrier, which is the same thing with

that an anti client plate. But yeah, like, even if you don't agree with the existence of laws and lawmakers, right, this this concept that I like a lot, called normative anarchism. I think it's Wolf, the guy who wrote it. But like we can move towards the state doing less cruelty and being a little more free, and that is a move in the right direction, even if it's not the

end goal. And I think the border is a place where you can really make a difference like that, right, Like some small changes in how things are done would reduce the cruelty to people who have done nothing wrong massively.

So I think it is an area where even those of us who might not be generally inclined to like electoral staff like you can I think I don't know if you can make a distance because like so many people in Milwaukee are watching Fox News and a fucking completely convinced that the border is just I don't know,

people with guns trying to smuggle children or whatever. But yeah, it's an area where small changes in policy make a huge Title forty two right, not even a law, it's an executive or it's not even executive, or it's an interpret tation. Uh the war, right, most of that ship wasn't built by Congress. It was built by executive orders. So like that stuff, I think is a place where you can you can affect positive change for people now unfortunate. We've got to drive fucking wall. And I don't think

it's coming down anytime soon. But it doesn't mean we shouldn't actively try to make things kind of for people coming here now. On the direct action side of things, which I think more of our audience tends to support. One of the most obvious things is just like setting out as you said, like drops of water, food equipment. Now, that's kind of depending on where you are, can be shall always say complex from a legal standpoint. Can you

talk to that a little bit, Yes, certainly. So. Like the obvious cases are one in Arizona, right, which eventually ended up the person was vindicated, but vindicated to around word but not didn't go to prison exactly. Yeah, yeah, what he was doing was right from the start. But yeah, it can be complex, I think, especially if you're in some of these states which are like doing culture war, right like Arizona in Texas. Yeah, the cruelty is kind

of the point. So if you are doing something to alleviate that cruelty, making an example if you was very much in the interest of those cultural war politicians and judges and other people, which is why it's important to do it with a mutual aid group, right, Like these groups are not just like randos, They are extremely organized. I would also just caution that, like going out into the desert on your own is extremely fucking dangerous. The

desert can kill you with heat and day. It can kill you with the cold nights, sometimes on the same day and night. Right, this is a hard place. I'm not saying you shouldn't go out there. You should. It's it's an amazing place, but you should be careful. You should go with the group. So if you're living somewhere along the border, there is a group of people who

are doing this, they will understand what is legal and correct. Like, for instance, if you are not a citizen, if you're a Green card holder, you should probably not go down to the border with jugs of water. You should maybe do some fundraising, you should you should maybe do something else. And that's fine, right, You're still part of a system which is helping people. But yes, there have been some prosecutions. I think in California there haven't been any to my

knowledge for a while. Um. There is also some interesting tech developments. One a few a long time ago, now called the trans Border Migrant Tool, which was mapping out like what at the time, we didn't have the border wall them, right, but like water cashier's locations of CDP checkpoints, and then I guess it was using Google Maps to make roots, which it was created by a faculty member who at time was at the University of California, who

faced pretty terrible career repercussions for doing it. But there are things like that that people can do too, right, which you can do from your bedroom if that's your preference, if that's how you prefer to help. But yeah, I would caution about just going out there. Always looked for groups, right, there are people for whom this is their entire life of activism. You can also I'm sure, I hope I'm not putting a bunch of like work on their plate.

But talked lad see what they suggest. Right Altro Lado the other side, that's this legal a group you can just call them. I'm sure that they they think They've been very helpful to me when I've been when I've needed help for people I'm working with. Talk to them about what is what is legal and sensible and what's not. Whether it's better to give your money or give your time or what you can do. Give them the resources available to you, I guess. And you can also just

show kindness to refugees in your community too. That they're probably there, whether or not they're visible is a different question, but that's you know, there are places where you can help people. Another one I should mention, actually just for folks who are inclined to help in a different way I guess is people just feeding people. Like I really don't think you can ever blame someone for feeding hungry persons,

So food not bombs. Food not bombs are always cool, right if if you want to do kindness without state food not bombs, there is one in your area. Look, come up, um and World Central Kitchen, which is Jose Andres the chef. Yeahs in Ukraine and his guys just got Sheldon Ukraine. That's right. Yeah, yeah, a number of them got shelved in Khaki. But I think those people like I do understand that he has some labor issues. Yeah, although I think he's he recently like came out and

said that he had been wrong on that. I'd have to double check, but yeah, that's impressive. Like I've said this before, this dude pivoted his whole life after seeing what happened in Haiti to feeding people who are hungry all over the world. So I do believe he's capable of change, and hopefully he can change and treat his

workers with decency in respect as well. But anywhere I am right where there is a humanitarian crisis inside the US, outside the US, those people are there first, They're there before the Red Cross and if they don't seem to get tied up in the bureaucratic ship that most large global NGOs do. Like I've been in refugee camps where MSF and Red Cross outside not doing anything. Yeah, if you anywhere I have been where there are large groups

of refugees, refugee camps, people dealing with violence. The the most commonly cursed groups are often in g os, yes, yeah, yeah, there are you know, people in white Land was people in fancy hotel lobbies, you know, Like that makes me very angry and very sad. But I don't see that with w c K, like I have consistently seen them in there's pretty dire situations, you know, like times that give me bad sleeps, you know, and that they're always

there helping people. So then there are also church groups in lots of communities. Like I'm not a religious person, but like I really can't fault any of these church groups that I've seen coming down from San Diego to Tijuana to feed and help people, But I would probably stay clear of those giant NGOs with your giving. I've just seen them be considered bureaucratic and less effective. Yeah,

I mean one of the rules. This is harder when it's a conflict far from home and you know, you see some news that makes you want to help, but

you don't have any connections. But if you can never talk to people on the ground there, it's always best to ask them, like, who's actually doing anything, um, because sometimes it is MSF you know, sometimes uh it is one of these larger organizations, but oftentimes they'll tell you, like, you know, the the group when I was in Mosle that got the most consistent praise from people who are like living there was the Free Barmer Rangers, right, Like

there were all these massive international organizations, but when it came right down to it, the people who were like running under gunfire to pull wounded civilians out where you know those folks. Yeah, yeah, those those guys do some do some very brave stuff. Definitely, And yeah, it is normally you can find people on Facebook, like I've never been in a sort of situation with a lot of

displaced people. What people were not actively on Facebook and you can find people there they just just like you just want to have a chat. And again, it's nice

to have a chat. That's such an important point too, because I think that number one, people are often and it's easier, right, Like everyone has limited time, but you kind of leave it to whatever media you trust to connect you to people in these desperate circumstances, and like people tend to want to connect who are dealing with something like that, who are fleeing violence, who are and they also are connected, like they're not separate from the

rest of the world just because they've had to leave their home behind and they're they're generally not excluded from the information networks that we all existed. Yeah, yeah, I think, And sometimes the portrayed is like we talk about them, not to them far too often the media, and that makes me mad, right, Like I see that all the time. I see that happening when I'm doing reporting, right, I'll see people hanging out on the peripheries in these camps.

I understand some people are worried about COVID or whatever, but some of those people, right, like, uh, to be safe and be sensible, and yeah, that these people want to talk. I remember one thing that always sticks out, Well, they want the same things that we want, remembered. So in migrant caravan, they were moved from they need to Quid a sports complex to this old nightclub a bit further south, further away from the border. Right. It was

a very weird scene. It was this big nightclub with like the mirrors and the dancing poles and the disco balls, but it had been like moth balls for like ten years. It was all dusty. They had a special room for people who were pregnant, people can people who had had children, and and the young children themselves, right, they were sort of just to keep them safe. And we were going there and it was weird because they were still like

mirrors on the floor. But then I remember these kids, you talk to them, right, you know what do you want? And like, first of all, one kid asked me for a Teddy Bear and it just broke my heart, Like I don't know why, it just level me. Uh. And then they wanted to like you know that they had enjoyed the same Disney films that kids here had, right,

so my buddy managed to acquire a projector. We went into the ceiling, rigged up this projector and just set up like Beverly Hills Chihuahua playing on one water this nightclub. And these kids are like, it's Beverly Hills Chihuahua. Like let's go like the you know, they were just kids watching a film, like like like they can be anywhere else, and it's really easy to see them ast like different

or week or you know. The way they're portraying the media is like people without agency and they're not like they've taken huge amounts of agency to try and improve their lives. And it's also so much focus is on these things that aren't you know, medicine, food that are necessary, but like having a normal moment where you're like a kid watching a cartoon or playing with a toy, it's

also necessary. Yeah, Like, these children will be scarred by their experiences, right by whatever is causing to flee, by the flight itself, and by the process of coming to the into the country, but yeah, we should do everything we can to protect them from those traumatic experiences and just play Like I cannot count the amount of times I have been like ship housed in a game of football by six year olds trying to come to the United States, right like, so things like that, Remember someone

donated a couple of football goals, I too, come down and set them up. And then yeah, just having those moments of normalcy, those moments of fun like little little plastic ukuleles and stuff like. We're very important because it let kids be kids. And then that's you know, they have every right to do that. Well, James, I think that's going to make a suda for us. You want

to throw your plug doubles in before we roll out? Yeah, uh, I want to plug, like like I said before, doing things to help people outside of networks that let people have power over people. To do that first, and then yeah, you can put my name James Stout into Twitter and find me. I have a Patreon by the same thing right about the border a lot. You can see it in um if I just plug one popular p O p U l A about migrant caravan so you can read my writing there. Feel free to message me if

you want to find any of these groups and you can't. Yeah, it's all right, Well that's going to do it for us. Go do something good. Yeah, the podcast has started. Start this is this is it could happen here, this is it could happen here. That's right, and you're Robert Evans. We also have Shrine, Lanny Nis, and Christopher Wong with us. Christopher, Hi, Yeah, I guess I'm sort of running this show today, even to Robert has You're right done? The intro question mark? Um,

always with a question mark. That's how the pros do it? Can you can tell professionals? Yeah? But speak Speaking of professionals, we have we have Karina Dominga's with us, who is in fact actually a professional and has spent eight years working in reproductive health issues of Karina. Welcome to the show and thank you for joining us. Thank you, thank you for having me. It's lovely to have you Onina. What's the what's going on? How are thanks? I think

things are okay. I think I can say that doesn't seem true. Yeah, but they're okay. Um, yeah, okay. I pulled them out of crash truck once and as I was trying to like staunch the bleeding from a cut in his hand, I asked how he was and he said, okay, So I'm guessing it's that kind of Okay, you nailed it. Yeah, Karina, do you wanna tell us a little bit about your background and the work that you do? And you know why why why? We We just really wanted to have

you on the show. Yeah, I would love too. So again, my name is Karina Dominguez. I am from Chicago born and raised. UM. I've worked in Reproductive Health forum about eight years, but really what I consider about fifteen years or so. UM. I have experience and working in the community and different capacities. UM. I love reproductive health. I'd consider myself a reproductive health nerd UM. And it all started when I was a teenager growing up in Chicago, where just in the city life, you see a lot

of things that don't really sit well with you. UM. I knew a lot of young girls who were getting pregnant at young ages, experiencing trauma and specifically sexual trauma UM, and not knowing who to go to or where to go. So these were mostly young girls of color who I cared for a lot. And I immediately knew that I wanted to do more activism and that I needed to do more activism. And the way my activism looks is

through my education. So today. I have a master's in Public Health UM and I also have a bachelor's in public health, and with that education, I've been able to provide sexual and reproductive health counseling. I practiced as a full spectrum do LA where I have provided abortion care for people and also UM provided birthing care for people

as well. I led a pregnant parenting program at a nonprofit for youth experiencing homelessness, and right now I currently manage a sexual and Reproductive health grant where we provide resources to treatment centers in the l A area to integrate sexual and reproductive health for patients in substance use disorder treatment. Cool, so we are slacking. That was an impressive Yeah, I think the thank you that made us

want to chat with you. We were having a conversation show when the news first dropped that the Supreme Court was yeating Roe v. Wade into the sun UM. There were a couple of different news agencies that did like intern you know, while talking about what options we're going to remain for people, that would bring up crisis pregnancy centers, which are UM shady as hell as I'm sure we're about to talk about. But yeah, so that's that's kind of why we brought you and what we brought you

on initially to talk about. I wonder do you want to kind of introduce folks to what those are, because the gist of it is, if you like Google, how do I like find out if I'm pregnant or like you know, I'm pregnant and I need help, There's a good chance old Google will take you to one of these places, and they are, shall we say, not what they seem to be? Yes, I think we can exactly say that, um. And I am just going to say

in the most direct way I possibly could. A crisis pregnancy center is essentially a fake medical facility that prays on vulnerable people, specifically people who can become pregnant. So yeah, you know, we can use the term fake medical clinic, um I for the purpose just of using the most common term crisis pregnancy center, I'm going to stick to using that term. UM. But yes, there are a lot of concerns about this, and I'm sure our friend Google

will pop them up for us really quick. UM. So, crisis pregnancy centers usually have names like women's pregnancy center or women's health center, something health center. Um and it's a very misleading advertisement. So they are anti abortion facilities that manipulate people into having a full term pregnancy. So these places are usually religious oriented, They have a religious

agenda and it's not patient lad. So some of these larger religious based organizations that fund these what we think are smaller tiny clinics are agencies or organizations like care Net, Heartbeat International, National Institute of Family and Life, Birthright International,

and RAMA International. So a lot of times you might think you're going to the small, little tiny clinic or maybe it's even like a community medical mobile unit, and it turns out there backed by big money and bigger agencies. So they typically will implant themselves in communities of color, um near college campuses, and low income neighborhoods. So what

is that saying. That's saying that this is a woman's issue, this is a trans issue, this is an l g B t q I A issue, this is a bipoc issue, Black Indigenous people of color, and it's simply just an issue for everyone. Yeah, And it's so one of the things that's kind of messy about these places is that if you look at like investigations into how they work, you'll run into a number of stories of women who are like, Hey, I actually like always intended to go

through with my pregnancy. I just needed to like know that number one, know that I was pregnant. I needed to test or something. And these people advertised they would provide that for free, or the advertise that they were providing stuff like diapers, you know, basic kind of supplies,

formula for free, um. And some of them do, most of them due to some extent, but nearly all of them have some sort of like and this is outside of kind of the abortion aspect, access of it, have some sort of funked up hoops you have to jump through in order to actually get access to any of that stuff. Absolutely, yeah, I'm really glad that you brought up, like the diaper point. I think that is a really essential thing, because they don't not give out stuff, right,

but it's it's messier than they want to portray it as. Yeah, yeah, totally, and and it's a form of manipulation, right, And I think too, it's a form of manipulation too to deem yourself a full functioning medical facility where they actually don't provide those comprehensive services and sometimes you know, they might even say the outside like HIV testing, s I v M, STI testing, HIV testing, um, and they're simply not evidence based practices. So what I mean by an evidence evidence

based practice is something like condom use. We know very well at this day and age that condoms are essential to prevent s t I S and HIV transmission. So a lot of these clinics they might even say like, condoms don't decrease your chances of s t I S.

They don't really matter. They're not really doing anything. And that is a really big piece of information that we need to know as the average person, because that means we have a lot of young people going to these clinics and having even their foundational sexual health education at these facilities. So this is a really really important thing to take note of. UM And I would say that you know a lot of people even in my life,

that have gone to crisis pregnancy centers by accident. Um are you know, being told that they can do STI testing, HIV testing, and even birth control and then as soon as you go there, you realize that's not what's happening. Usually it's going to be a lot of pregnancy related services like ultrasounds and pregnancy tests, which we know if you're an actual clinic that's those aren't the only things

that someone would need for essential health care. But I would say even more like going into the manipulation and um, the gas lighting that they do within these facilities, which in my eyes is medical violence. UM. They provide even mandatory ultrasounds, make someone sit there to look at the ultrasound.

They make fearful videos of misleading information about what abortions are, and sometimes even have someone who's not a medical provider showing what an abortion is in their eyes, and the video maybe of a baby that's whose limbs are being ripped apart um. Even giving information like abortions can lead to breast cancer or if you have abortion, you'll never be able to have a child, and this is your

one and only opportunity um. And sometimes even going further, you know they are sneaky and what they do, because they might even have programs that will say parent program UM or youth sexual health program and even with that they're giving religious based agendas um. And they are telling people misinformation about sexual health and even so might even talk about very heterosexual sex marriage. All of the above so there is a very specific agenda that is going

on here. Um. And we know too that a lot of these agencies can be really sneaky with what they're doing because they may even deny that they are a crisis pregnancy center, and even further, if you go onto their website, they might not even have any language that they're religious based or that they are um, not providing comprehensive services. So there are a lot of diff written tactics that are you know, within the manipulate manipulative strategies

that they use. Yeah. One of the things I've heard a lot about is like basically like not not literally physically forcing but like terrorizing people into signing like fake legal documents saying they won't get an abortion, which like really like every description I've heard about that, it is just like this is just terrorism. That's absolutely um. Yeah, And I find that to be really interesting. I have never heard of that happening. But just because I haven't

specifically heard about, does it not mean it's not happening. Um. And I think that you know, there, they're not all made the same, um, they all functioned differently. And I think that's also what is really confusing about them because they're not consistently all doing the same thing. There are still other facility is that they might do STI testing, they might do HIV testing, and so to hear that

is not shocking to me. Um. And the manipulative tactics that they are using for people and yeah, I mean hip book goes out the door. You know, any legal backing goes out the door with these facilities because they are not based on providing patient led services in the

first place. Maybe this is an ignorant, ignorant train of thought, but if they're providing all of these like free ish services or like whatever to these people that are desperate, and um, it sounds like a lot of them are like privately funded by these organizations, and the shadows like what how do they benefit? Like where like what is there other than like imposing religion and other people? But like like financially and like I'm confused, where how they're

still able to function? Yes, they function very well and without a problem. Um. And as I mentioned, there's you know, five larger organizations that are funding a lot of these CPCs, but they are also um this is to be noted there on the CDC website, they are on the CDC directory as places that provide essential services. So I think that also goes to speak to the confusion around CPCs.

And I'm just gonna go out in the limb and say I'm going to give the CDC benefit of the doubt although they do not deserve that, and say that, um, they themselves may not recognize what what these agencies are doing. And so I think that's where the awareness around the actual function of the ccs and how they even exist in the first place needs to be shut down. And

awareness needs to be brought about these places. And and we know that third of them are funded by their states, so they are getting direct government money to be able to function and then on top of that also functioning with the backing of their larger organizations. Wow, are they getting federal funding too? Like I have some vague memories of like Bush administration programs that we're funding just right, I mean, if I'm not mistaken, Trump pushed a bunch

of federal funds towards these facilities. Yes, yeah, I wonder, Sorry ahead, I don't go ahead. I was just I was wondering, like I wonder if there's a um like one or two things you need to qualify as like a what's what how did you put it on the website? CBC uh um, like they offer like services, like maybe it's like, oh, this place has an ultrasound. These are like this is why this is on you know what

I mean? Like, I wonder if they just like pick and choose the bare minimum of things to like qualify to be UM considered among like people that offer like full fledged care. But I don't know what it's all scam Yeah, And I mean I think that also is just a really UM. I like that you bring that up because I think that would be a really ignorant perspective from the CDC to think that a place that gives a pregnancy test or an ultrasound right away is

not necessarily your average healthcare setting. UM. When someone is going into an appointment, typically you know they're not getting an ultrasound right away. Typically you're average person who might think they're pregnant and is going into a medical facility, is going to do a pregnancy test. Sure, but they're not just gonna immediately the first twenty minutes you're there do an ultrasound. UM. And especially knowing our health care

system and the United states. You know that might require referrals and another facility to get that done, and you know that depends on what your insurances and what you can pay for and etcetera, etcetera. But I think it's a really big red flag to just have a facility that has pregnancy tests and ultrasounds. That to me is, you know, if I see on a website that those are the only two services that healthcare clinic is claiming to provide, I'm running away and I'm not going there

because that's very odd. Well, it's it's very manipulative, because it's it's one of those things. One of the ways in which you can tell is something healthcare related shady as fuck is does it take advantage of the fact that very basic things that you need are extremely expensive um, and like ultrasounds, pregnancy tests, this can all be like STD tests, you know, can all be really really pricey um.

And it's just so like it's fucked up that this is kind of how they're funning religious dollars towards taking advantage of the fact that a lot of people, like legitimately some people who use these facilities. I don't know what else to tell them, because it's like, well, we don't provide people with a lot of options in this country everywhere, you know, for for some of these services. Yeah, totally. And I do want to go into some of the people doing the work and I want to really highlight

what they're doing. UM. So I want to give the utmost credit to two people, UM who I do not know personally but would definitely love to UM Dr Andreas Warton Rubber and Dr Danielle Lambert. They're both associate professors at the School of Public Health at University of Georgia, and they're both co founders of the CPC Maps, which originated in two thousand and eighteen. So yes, there's a brilliant map where you can search these CPCs that are

close to you. UM. And in my eye is this map is truly a piece of gold because I myself have found ones that are in my area UM and was very beneficial when I was working with clients myself directly and would refer people to different services. So this is a really great tool for healthcare professionals and social

service workers, et cetera to refer to UM. And I can't even explain how grateful I am to know that there's ongoing research about the distraught impact of these clinics and the distraught impact they have on our health care system and the ability to find an abortion provider. UM. So again I hope that every service provider can find these this map, UM and use this map and really

spread awareness around this. So. UM. What I want to highlight and what these two doctors have found is that just to give some more context, every single state has multiple SPCs, multiple not just one to multiple there are CPCs and throughout the United States, and that is obviously a much larger number than the health departments in the United States. And you know, as I mentioned, we know the CBC directory utilizes CPCs on their website and again

thirteen states are funded or are funding CPCs UM. So their advertisements are going far and wide. Um. And to even go further, in the state of California, the California Women's Law Center says that there are twenty more CPCs then there are abortion clinics. So I think in this time, yeah, yeah,

we should be scared. That is really that's a really concerning statistic, and especially looking at how we are going to be and already are a haven state, we are going to be a haven state for all the states around US and for people throughout the United States. So what is that saying when we are a haven state, yet we are still competing with our local anti abortion strategies ourselves, we are still putting up a fight as

a haven state, and I think that is so concerning. UM. And even further, just to give some more statistics, we know that of the clinics that CPCs that did not offer SCI testing also will not refer out. We know that only eight offer HIV testing and that did not

offer HIV testing also did not refer out. So just to summarize those numbers for you, what that data is telling me is that these clinics are not accounting for the health of the pregnant person, nor are the accounting for the health of the fetus if that pregnancy goes full term. And yeah, I mean I have even you know, more stats as you know your reproductive health nerd um of one of my favorite research institutes called the gut Mocker Institute, and they are phenomenal and have really great

data UM. And if you haven't checked out their website, you definitely should. UM. But since we're on the bandwagon of talking about religious based affiliations, we know that seventeen percent of abortion patients are oh sorry, um okay um. Seventeen percent of abortion patients identified themselves as mainline Protestant, as evangelical Protestant, and percent is Catholic. Thirty eight percent have no religious affiliation, and the remaining eight percent reported

a different religious affiliation. So let's summarize that religiously affiliated people are still seeking abortions too. Would you look at that ignorance is so bliss. We know that abortions are affecting people who are living in poverty and who are low income. So we know se of people that are seeking abortions are either living in poverty or our low

income UM. And fortunately, you know, throughout the past, we know that Medicaid has been a really big funder of abortion care UM, and especially we can say that in California too, UM, that about of abortion patients are using Medicaid, and that's throughout fifteen different states. So I imagine in this time, right now too, that number is probably going to decrease. UM. So again, talking about a haven state that has these resources, we are probably going to be

mixing up how that looks UM. And knowing that fifty three percent of abortion patients pay out of pocket for their procedures is already a very concerning statistics. And so we are seeing how in our time right now, we have to be looking at different resources for people. We have to put on our activist hats, we have to be supporting our community, and we have to be supporting abortion funds because already fifty three percent of abortions are

paid out of pocket. Um. And just to to summarize one, more point eight percent of people who are using abortion services are going to be using those within the first twelve weeks. So um, we are needing to see a lot of activism around abortion pill distribution and abortion pill education and what that looks like. No, the to like piggyback off of what Robert was mentioning earlier about how it just feels like they're taking advantage of the fact that,

like things cost so much money. And I feel like, if you this work is so important because I don't think a lot of people know what they're getting into. If they're like, because we don't have a great education system in general, let alone about like reproductive health or

like what happens when you get pregnant. So if you're a young person or mean any age and you are desperate or you're feeling shame, you don't have support from your community or something, and you see an institution that's like free ultrasound or like whatever, it's like they're praying

on this desperation. And I think one of the only things you can do to combat that is like try to educate people as much as possible that like, I don't know, people are as um they don't have the good will and good faith that they present to be to have and I guess it just like ultimately you have to be distrusting of people. And maybe that's sad, but it's the truth. Yeah, definitely, And I will say I feel like I saw that as a service provider.

Um So, as I mentioned, I worked in homeless services, specifically with youth homeless services, and you see that so much. You see how there is you know, medical oppression for people of color. There is medical manipulation and violence for

so many people in vulnerable situations. And as someone that has accompanied many people to abortions and births, I have observed that myself and I have seen how so more people than not are going to experience some type of medical manipulation, and especially if you are living in poverty, especially if you're a person of color, especially if you're lgbt q i A. This this issue does not just stop,

you know, with CPCs. If we take out all the CPCs, we also have to address so much of the institutional institutionalized racism and all the things that exist around reproductive health UM, you know, starting at how to get contraceptives too, when can you have children and how can you be a parent, and that never ends throughout the cycle, you know, and that parents even after they have babies, even if they are a person of color, even if they are l g B t q A, you know, they are

still told how, when, where they're going to parent UM. And there's so much control over that rhetoric for people. So you know, I mean that even goes back to me thinking about the sterilization trials that happened against USC and the seventies and how women were forcibly sterilized, and you know that has nothing to do with CPCs. But instead we're seeing that institutions are finding this control and having these agendas, and it is not serving our society.

It is not serving our health and instead it is creating more trauma in our communities and it's it's crisis. Pregnancy centers are just one of many layers of medical oppression that we are witnessing in today's world. As a person who was working in homeless services, I was program planning for a lot of the resources that we were

able to provide access to for my clients. So all of my clients at that time when I was running the Pregnant Parenting program at a nonprofit, they were either pregnant and or parenting while also experiencing their housing insecurities UM, so I strived to find what the proper resources were for them to support them in every trauma informed way

I possibly could, and that were youth friendly. So there was a local agency that was very very close to where I worked UM and their services always kind of felt like limited to me. So I met with them specifically to enquire because they were always trying to find some type of partnership with us and would knock on

our door or call me. So I finally was able to get of them some of my time UM and so their services always felt limited and non comprehensive, and I think that is the biggest kind of like takeaway UM. They always gave me really weird reasoning why they didn't provide birth control or STI testing, and based on their answer, as I mentioned, I just did not allow the partnership

to thrive. So when I did more research, I actually confirmed from another service provider that there from another agency that they were indeed a CPC before I could spread the word. They also already had several partnerships with other homeless service providers, so they wiggled their way in UM. And these other homeless service providers were also working with young vulnerable clients. So one day I was actually invited by another agency to come to this presentation where I

didn't realize happened to be the CPC. UM. The CPC was presenting at this organization and it was one of their outreach workers explaining what their services were. So I took it upon myself to make sure that I sat in that meeting and I asked questions in the room with the other service providers. I think they're about thirty other service providers that were present, and I asked out loud,

why doesn't your clinic provide birth control? And the woman from the CPC who was the outreach worker said, we can't give paps mirrors, so we're unable to provide birth control. If you know anything side note if you know, yeah, I already see the questioning, which I'm glad I received that reaction, because that is the exact reaction audience, those of us with yours, all of our heads tilted, squinting. U exactly explain how that math doesn't work? Yeah, exactly.

Side note for all the listeners, if you know anything about health care, you know that a PAPS is not associated with being able to be prescribed birth control. So as someone that has background in healthcare, has a master's in public health, worked as a due lah. I continue to push back during the presentation, and it was very very clear that I was onto something. Um. So this woman again, she would always try to come around, give me pamphlets, try to have us partner and say she

really want to work with us in our youth. Um. She stopped after that presentation. I can tell you that. But anyway, so I keep going. I reach out to a the person who organized that presentation for the CPC outreach person to attend and speak at. So I was like, I need to get to the bottom of this, and I need to spread this word UM and tell people, Hey, you're getting people from CPCs to come and speak to

you to advertise your services is UM. So I see a seed a lot of the other service providers, and I expressed my genuine concerns the lack of evidence based comprehensive care they provided. But unfortunately, the person who I emailed said, clients need to make sure those decisions are their own, so they can decide if they want to go or if they don't want to go. We can't force them to say yes or no to go to

a health care facility. So I responded by asking, but what if you thought you were seeing a doctor for your health care needs and then it turns out the health care provider is providing misinformation and might not even be a healthcare provider. UM. I never got a response from them, but I still continue to make sure that I was reaching out to everyone at that meeting and just raising awareness behind it UM. And then I wanted to take it to UM. I wanted to take it

a notch up, so I called both of this. Both of the locations of the CPC. One is located in Westwood, side note next to u c l A. The other one was in South l A side note, community of color. Both of my calls led me to the person on the phone telling me that they don't know where to send me for an abortion and that they didn't know what what planned parenthood was, what they did, or where

they relocated when I specifically asked. So they were obviously circumventing the ability to even talk about abortions and what it was um and that was all the concern that I genuinely needed. So in my present day, I'm still concerned with these clinics, this specific clinic that is local to me. I recently found out that in my present day work, there are currently three treatment centers that are

using this crisis pregnancy center as a resource. So hopefully that means more to come because I will be working on this and in this scenario, what I am doing as an activist and as a person who cares for my community is I will be educating these treatment centers about what crisis pregnancy centers are and how they can

avoid them and what comprehensive services actually look like. Have there been more sort of widespread like organizations who are working too like a let people know what they are and then be also trying to get them like not to be funded. Absolutely, there are and we need to shout them out. UM. There are. There is an abortion fund UM in California called Access. They are wonderful UM.

They provide abortion advocacy and awareness and education and they also provide direct services UM and fund different They have fund abortions in different capacities, so they might be funding the abortion services, the lodging, the transportation, and even a doula. And they partner with a lot of other agencies that are doing the work. The agency is called Reproductive Transparency

Now and they are a ship cargo based nonprofit. They provide a lot of information, data, awareness research UM to raise awareness around what CPCs are and why we should be avoiding them. And I think I can say that I have the same goal as them in my personal life, but to ensure that they do not exist and are all shut down. UM. So they are wonderful. I would highly suggest looking into Reproductive Transparency Now and also Active Sorry Access Reproductive Justice UM who are doing a lot

of really great work. And then I also do want to squeeze in other resources for people as well. Yeah, UM. And you know, as I mentioned first and foremost, I think the number one thing we need to know is that crisis pregnancy center should not exist in any capacity. UM. But if you are a person who's providing resource, is who is working with clients, who works in healthcare treatment centers,

wouldever it be, please utilize Crisis Pregnancy Center map dot com. Again, this is the the website that was created by two associate professors at University of Georgia, and I want to make sure that this spreads far and wide, UM, because it will be the matter of providing referrals and circumventing CPCs UM. And I want to acknowledge that a lot of my data from this, from the information that I've been speaking on, is from the Crisis Pregnancy Center Map

dot com UM, and from Reproductive Transparency as well. UM. So first and foremost that map is a necessity. UM. Another resource that I would like to share to be able to find your state's abortion fund is abortion Funds dot org and you can search state by state, so you know, I'm in California, so that's going to be access. Again, an organization that is an abortion fund, but they do

more than than fund abortions. UM. I also really encourage people to find their local evidence based du lahs midwives women's health practitioners near them. And I know that there's a lot of fear existing right now due to the inappropriate politicians that are making disgusting decisions, but know that abortion pills can be access and there are people that can help guide you through. UM. So I would say making sure that we are accessing the resources on a

website called plan c pill dot com. It's a great resource where you can find where to purchase abortion pills and where to seek medical and legal support as well. So if you have a question about how to take medical abortion pills, or you need to understand the legality of your state and the area near you, you can you can look on this website UM as a resource. UM. I just also want to emphasize like what community care

looks like right now. UM. If you're a person who can get pregnant, this is truly a time to seek preventative care. And I know that that's a loaded can of worms for a lot of people. So I just I really want to plug this in. If you would like to learn about pregnancy prevention, you can take a

look at bedsider dot org to assess your needs. I would highly recommend pairing that with talking to a provider who understands your lifestyle and can support you with finding one that works best for you, because every single contraceptive is going to look a little different. If you're a person who does not like birth control, I want you to know to please still seek preventative methods UM, whether that's a barrier method or whether that's more so of

a holistic good like fertility awareness method. I encourage you to still speak to someone you can trust to ensure you're using that method correctly. And again there are duelas and midwives that can help guide you in the right direction for holistic practices UM. And to continue on to

my community UH, my community kind of recognition. I hope that this is also time where if it's feasible for you too, if you can't yourself, find UM friends and family that you trust and people around you UM to either receive yourself or to get it from other people.

Have pregnancy tests around you, and make sure that if you feel like you might be pregnant UM, whether you are using an actual method or if you're not using a method, currently, make sure you very least have pregnancy tests around you, UM, so that you know you can detect early on if you are pregnant. UM. Normalize buying

your friends pregnancy tests for their birthdays. I have. We just have to normalize that as a community, and normalize buying abortion pills in case someone you know might need them in the future, or it might be someone that you don't know who could use them. UM. And to

have that accessible if that is feasible for you financially. Um. And then yeah, I think just to summarize, like, this is truly a time for community support and when the government doesn't support us, we we need to figure out unfortunately how and um, if you got the ability, go get uh, go get go get snipped. Uh. You know there's there's options out there. UM options. Yeah. I provide vasectomies. By the way, if you can just find me in my house. UM, I'm not good at it yet, but people,

I'm gonna not I'm gonna figure it out. I'm gonna figure it out. That room is for well. I got one of those. I got one of those sharp penning wheels, and my butter knives are pretty fucking they got a good edge. They got edge these days. It's genuinely incredibly disappointment. Disappointed you're not using the machete for this. This is this feels like a portrayal. Well, there's other reproductive healthcare I used the machete for, but that that that does

have to do with crisis pregnancy centers action. Well, I'll have a bunch of referrals for you then, I know, or to send them. That that kind of leans into another topic I'm covering today. Unfortunately. Um well, thank you so much for coming on and for talking to us. This has been very enlightening. Um I wish uh it wasn't such a bleak subject. But people need to know the fox going on. People needed to know this a

lot earlier. But you know, I mean broadly speaking, the thing I keep coming back to in this whole fight is the frustration of like the rest of us, like life is hard enough. There's so much going on. People are like busy trying to trying to get by, trying to do their lives, trying to like find pieces of

happiness in the world. And there's this fucking group of the worst people in the country that have just made this made fucking access to reproductive healthcare up for everyone the focus of their entire life for thirty years, and unfortunately now we have to like do that make the opposite the focus of our lives because we kind of just not all of us obviously, like you've been in this fight for a while, but most of us kind of we're not paying as much attention as needed to

be paid. Um, like most people in the I'm not trying to throw blame on folks, but like, clearly the majority of people in the country who support access to reproductive healthcare weren't paying enough attention, you know, Like that's the that's the only way to frame it totally. And it's almost as if we are picking up the mess that others are are creating. Um yeah. And you know, after experiencing COVID as a society, everyone's a public health

professional now and a doctor. Um, so it's it's clearly, yeah, I'm sending referrals to you. Um yeah. And people have a lot of things to say. And with that being said, I'm really glad that that these are conversations being had.

I'm glad that friends around me now who I have never known to talk about reproductive health are going there and talking about it and also opening the door up for you know, people like me to talk about evidence based practices and what the reality is and and who's doing the work, and um, everything that that focuses around reproductive health. So I I appreciate this conversation. I appreciate

that there are podcasts discussing this information. It's necessary and these issues are not going anywhere, and you know, we're going a little backwards. So I really appreciate your time on this. Yeah, thank you for coming on the show. And um, all right, everybody, that's the fucking episode, So do something else. Oh all right, well go started. I like it. These intros are getting shorter free every time. You know, we've bended onto one syllable, so there's not

much we can go fee there. You know what, an honest and honest man only needs one syllable, sometimes less, sometimes half a syllable. We'll eventually get this down to just grunts. That's really what I'm moving towards is an entirely shouldn't we be moving towards? Like telepathy? Yeah, telepathy? We don't even record a podcast where we just like put up trans with the information constantaneously, just a blank

audio file that says, now think about farming. And I'm gonna say that that sounds very um, that sounds very sci fi. And that's my way of doing a slick segue here, because today we will be talking and I'm very excited to talk about this Um. She's one of my favorite authors. Um. You know, I really enjoyed discussing the idea is present in Huxley's work, but this one has a special place in my heart. Today we'll be taking a look at Octavia Butler's parable of the sewer

and parable of the talents, and the idea is present within. Yes, back at you again with another podcast banger. But first of all, UM, Hi, I'm Andrew Um sometimes known as St Andrew. I'm kind of trying to rebrand as something else, still figuring that out, um, and you can find me on YouTube at st Andrewism. But this episode is not about me and my branding. This episode has about Octavia Butler,

born and growing up in segregationary America. She became an award winning sci fi wathor um with a lot of influences and a lot of themes and ideas being covered in her work. Considering the very white male dominated scene that is sci fi. The fact that she was able to not only break into it, but also presents some things that I haven't been explored before, with angles that haven't really been explored before. UM really has touched a lot of people. She was somewhat after a futurist, but

she was also very much UM. A lot of her stories really did UM. A lot of people have a lot of different backgrounds and and and histories, and she always managed to work aspects of herself into her main characters. UM. She was a big critic of hierarchies, which really draws me to her and UM. She also relatively has at

times struggled with writer's block and depression. She wrote over two dozen essays, speeches, short stories, and novels and her time on this earth, but unfortunately she had a stroke and died in two thousand six. One of the or other two of the books that have had the most of whos that have had the most impact on me, And of course I haven't read her entire bibliography yet, but I hope to get to it. UM is part of the sewer right and you know, I think a lot of people have heard about it A gained a

lot more relevance. Um after you know, as kind of patashi, we continue to accelerate as you know, we drew closer to the year that the book is setting, and regard to the second book, as we had you know, Trump come into office. Um. And I'll get into why that's relevant in a bit. In the first book, just to give a brief synopsis, global climate change and economic crisis has let a whole set of social crisis and chaos

in the early twenties. Um. The book is set in California, and they are struggling with pervasive water shortages and masses of poor people will do basically anything to live to see another day. Everybody is struggling. So basically today in this setting, fifteen year old Lauren Lamina lives inside a gated community with her preacher father, family and neighbors, sheltered

somewhat from the surrounding chios. However, when we get gates the community, now we think of you know, like really rich people, but in this case, gated community is just like a regular community that had to put up a

bunch of walls to prevent like pyramede acts from like real. Yeah, it's like it's a suburb that used to be like a well off suburb, but as things got worse, it just turned into people hiding behind their walls because they were scared of poor folks, right Like it's there's an element of it that almost reads like a slasher movie in the opening of the book, which is one of the things that's really compelling about it. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah,

they really Um. She really gets you invested in the setting, in the character early on. And part of what really gets you invested in Lauren as a protagonist is the fact that she suffers from a unique vulnerability or strength depending on how you look at it, um oftentimes vulnerability, and that is hyper empathy syndrome, which is basically that she's able to feel others emotions, others pains. So when others are very very sad, she feels very very sad.

When others are in pain, she feels that same excruciating pain um and so on and so forth, And so she has to find sort of navigate this chaosk Wood while dealing with this um, with this um disorder that

she's struggling with. At the same time, though, she's also navigating faith and the ideal of faith and philosophy because her father is like a preacher, and he's the preacher of their little gated community, and so she has grown up in the church, but she also has found issues in um, the religion that she grew up in places where she thinks it is sort of lead people a street. And that's kind of also what is drawn me to Lauren as a character, because I too, you know, have

had to negotiate and navigate that whole religious realm. And so that's basically the setting she's in this community. Um, it's chaos on the outside. She's navigating her higher empathy syndrome, and she's also dealing with the ideas of religion and change and so and so forth. So as she's there, UM sort of thinking internally, she's keeping this juno and she's developing this new system of thought which he calls

earth Seed, and we're gonna get into eoth Seed. But it basically shapes uh the decisions that she makes and the outcome of both books and as well as how they progress throughout. The second book places her in I'm really trying not to spoil, which is difficult to do because the second book, Lea is directly after the first book, and so and so forth. But I'll try to speak in broad brushes because I really think people should go

and read it as blind as possible, um Lauren. Of course, eventually we will get into spoilers, by the way, so I'll try to let folks know when we get into that. But in the second book, UM Lauren is working on a community UM founded on her faith earth Seed, and they begin to face persecution. I'll see, after the election of this ultra conservative president who vows to quote make America great again, being you know, a young black woman

in a minority religious faction in the United States of America. UM, her colony becomes a target of President Jarrett's reign of terror. UM. And at the same time, Laurence future daughter is navigating the discovery of the mother that she didn't knew, that she didn't know through the journals that her mother kept through the years. And I think I'll leave it at that.

There are a lot of themes that you know, Butler covers in these texts, UM, and in fact, I've seen them described as but Lerian, which I would agree with, because she covers them in other books of Who's as well in different ways. UM. She talks about poverty and slavery and freedom, just what perseverance. She navigates the this

idea of community and what community means. What how community is both a balance of inclusion and exclusion at the same time, and also the whole cycle of creation, destruction, and rebirth that really defines human history right now, well, in that books, in the setting of that book, Um, slavery has made a comeback more than it already has. You know, you have these extreme forms of death slavery

and marital slavery and probably even plantation slavery. UM. I believe plantation slavery is mentioned in the second book, UM. And of course the slavery is inflicted upon the poor, particular a lot of company town style slavery right where people are like bonded, bound to a specific location because of their employer who protects them in this increasingly dangerous, banded filled world exactly. And in this world, you know,

race remains a factor. Even though these books are written in the eighties and nineties, I believe parabolos over ise and right again, like He's got or Butler has a character using the same phrase Trump would when the President say, on um, what is it twenty four years before the start of his campaign. Um hard to overstate the degree to which she was ahead of the curve on a lot of things, because I mean, to be fair, she knew America. Oh yeah, you know, she grew up in segregation.

You're America. She had to deal with her mother was a domestic liberal, and so she had to go in with her mother in these rich white families places through the back door. Um. And you know, obviously that would have shaped how she saw herself and herself in relation to the wider world through to America as an idea. And so I think that as she's writing of this you know, sort of horrific future, she's drawing a lot from the horrific past, or rather America's horrific past, of

which her history is apart. So Lauren, who is in some ways Octavia but herself inside Um, spends a lot of time in the book, in both books, allying with people who are also minorities, who come from mixed backgrounds, people who tend to be overlooked by the dominant Christian religious right white UM order. Because I believe she finds some sense of safety and strength in people who have been so line. Slavery also ends up affecting Lawrence community too um in many ways that I don't want to spoil.

But despite it all, the theme of perseverance is really what carries the story alone. Lauren ultimately is the archetype of the persevera. You know, she preaches a sermon and the importance of perseverance. She tries to get others to see the importance of hard work, and she sticks to her coals no matter what happens, and a lot happens that would quite honestly discourage a lot of people, to put it lightly, and yet she perseveres. And so let's

tie that in as well to American history. Particularly in the first book, she ends up having to make a journey north um to northern California, and throughout that journey, you know, she meets with other people and interacts with the people, She makes allies and avoids enemies, and you can honestly draw some parallels to the underground real road.

Of course, it's not an exact one to one, but in the sense of having to work with people along the way to progress out of a terrible situation, a hellish situation for the Hoop, not the guarantee, but the hope of some form of salvation when you get to the end of the journey. She doesn't do it alone. She does it with others Um, and that's kind of what keeps her hope alive. But it's not just externals. She has a lot of intrinsic motivation to persevere, which

is driven by her philosophy. I mean, I think one of the things, because there's there's a lot of meaning and why she picks the parable of the sower in the parable of the talents for and it's it's pretty obvious and necessary xt of the books. It's she's not

like hiding it under layers or anything. But one of the things that in particular the second book deals with Um, I mean, in the first book to do a degree is kind of the the pointlessness of responding to dystopian change in society by just like hunkering down in a bunker and trying to hide from it and protect your family. Like one of the reoccurring themes is the degree to which that doesn't work. And one of the things that's

really interesting about this is a dystopian novel. Um. This is a novel that is both of these novels are kind of imagining the collapse of a lot of aspects of American society, but it is not. At no point does the United States really collapse in these books, and and even like as much as authoritarianism is present, at no point is the government completely taken over and completely under the control of like a unified fascist regime or anything.

Elections are still happen in company. Elections exist, but you said have to pay them to you know, to you and and the the like Christian death squad type things that are roaming around are distinctly non state actors. They have backing to as an extent from the state. They're not really opposed by it. But it's it's it's again.

It's this thing that we we are actually dealing with where collapse doesn't look like okay, everything's fallen apart, and now it's whoever's got the strongest group of buddies, who can who can you know, do their best in the waste land. It's like no, no, no. It is about groups of people trying to navigate in an increasingly dysfunctional state. And the only way to actually survive that is um survivals complicated, and it's never as simple as just like

picking a good farm to hide on. You know that that's that's not going to work out for exactly. I just want to point out as well, that's as just functional as things. People are still going to work, not just the people who you know in company talents or in debt bondage, but even Lawrence fathers. You know, he takes his bike every day and rides out into the chaos to go and work for a weege to come back and to try to support his family. And of course in this kid community we see that they attempts

to stay gated. You know, it's also in a futile like the rich have their high security communities and be able to escape in helicopters when anything happens, but they have no security even in this illusion of security, and that hundering down strategy they were taken wasn't working. In

the first half of the book really shows why. Yeah, it's um, it's it's a It's a book about collapse by somebody who's uh who, who grew up in a situation where her her childhood had a lot of elements of the collapse that many particularly like many folks are concerned about now, Like that's what she grew up in was there's no there's no protection. Violence can come from all sides and it's random, um, and you have no there are no guarantees in this like world that you've

come into. Which is this thing that like people are freaking out about now as we encounter kind of aspects of the world order that we had grown up with that we feel like are falling apart. And I think the thing that's so compelling about Butler is her books kind of are coming from the perspective of someone for

whom that order and that world were never real. Yeah. Yeah, And that's why her contributions to sci fi is so valuable, you know, because all of these sci fi writes us it's just like regular privileged white Kays and you know, and and they just come with that experience. And it isn't often um repeated critique of sci fi. Um you see didn't tweets themself sometimes, where like a lot of it is just like because they are like alien really

did sci Fi? It's like, whoa, what if the things that white people did other people happen to white people? You know, Like this whole idea that these alien invasion. UM fears and alienvasion stories are just like what if clualism but too white people to rich countries, you know, mm hm. Another part of the reason that the attempt to hunker down and stuff and basically exclude others from their community failed is because, and Lauren rights this in

her diary, exclusion breeds resentment among the excluded. So even though Lawrence neighborhood, while you know, gated and wall and stuff, was not particularly rich, just the mare fact that they had those walls up basically signaled to the outside world that they had something to hid, some sort of resources they wanted to safeguard, you know, the only thing they

had to safeguard with themselves. Because a lot of the members the community were you know, unemployed and extremely poor, that alone sort of symbolized, uh, sort of sort of a beacon UM drawing people to eventually UM attack. And that's a slight spoiler, but yeah, and you know, despite the problems that exclusion and are causing UM, Lauren as she realizes that her community could not handle that approach.

Even then as she's progressing your author and stuff, and she's to beating with herself, you know, who to bring into her fold exclusion and inclusion. They play a role. You know, Um, she has to find form bonds and you know, stay safe. But at the same time, the bonds that she forms could put her in danjil if she's betrayed, or if the people that she invests in end up being harmed in some way, because the harm

that they experience will ultimately affect her as well. So, as Lauren is making her way up north, she is continuing to wrestle with this idea of inclusion and exclusion because as she's progressing north in hopes of you know, building a community of some kind, creating, joining, forming community or some kind, she's also forming and establishing her religion.

Like I mentioned before, it played a major role in the community she came from, and in fact, novel points so that one of the reasons people are attracted you know, religion to Christianity in this chaotic time and in general, really it's because it provides hope and hope in the form of an afterlife, and hope is what people really really need in these hellish twenties that they are dealing with.

The Lauren comes to realize that the hope and hope and the afterlife ultimately isn't enough for the people that have invested so much into it. Um, one of the people in the community, UM ends up despite being a staunch believer that UM trigger warning by the way for suicide. UM, despite being a strong believer that you know, suicide is a sin and I was sending straight to hell. She is so lost hope and could no longer trust in her has been doing with so much pain that she

ends up taking her own life. And she takes her own life, And as Lauren remarks, she takes her own life knowing Um, or at least believing the pain hereafter, and yet she finds it more of a reprieve than the pain she was experiencing here now. And so as Lauren is witnessing these things happening around her, Um is dealing with you know, loss and her baptism and her

father's commitment to the church. She is continuing to develop the idea of earth Seed, and she begins to contrast earth Seed from christian with Christianity UM, and particularly in the sense of how the two religions address hope and change. In Christianity, you know, they have the hope UM of the afterlife against this brutal life, life now a life, whereas earth Seed simply presents the central principle, God is changed. That's the first principle of earth Seed. Second is that

shape God. So first you have to recognize and accept that change is inevitable, often destructive, but you could also recognize your other poet to shape it um. And so from that comes the third principle, which is to to um pursue the destiny, the destiny being the establishment of

humanity and other worlds. And to be quite honest, I am as this is one aspect of the philosophy would see that I think I diverge from Um Laura and of course has a lot of focus on the heavens as in the cosmic heavens and scattering seed, which is, you know, humanity across you know, all these different planets, establishing ourselves in different worlds. But I feel as though the destiny is in a way once the destruction. I think it's it's a misplaced um, a misplaced who I guess.

I mean, there's that's kind of one of the points of the book, right, because there's especially in the second book, there's a lot from the perspective of her daughter. That kind of shows how as as much her philosophy is a really understandable and in some ways admirable adaptation to the completely fucked up time she would is born into. It's also in the same way that a lot of other people's philosophies become, you know, and that her parents

and stuff are earlier. In the first book, it's a way for her to kind of justify not paying attention to the people in her life and not not taking proper care of them because she's got this thing that's bigger than them. She works, and you really by the by the end of the second book, you really have to sort of contend with the fact that you know, you sort after grapple with how things with her daughter would handle India. I guess I'll leave it at that. Um. Yeah,

that's part of it. I mean, she's so dedicated to this cause, so this new religion of whose um and you know she's recruiting people into it. You know, she's selling people least this whoop. You know that following its believe in a destiny. Eventually, you know, space is going to become the real life heaven. We could actually get out there. Can you start for ourselves for ourselves, and

that's part of it as well. Part of the idea of the Destiny is, you know, a fresh start for humanity, a sort of a maturation of humanity, this idea that you know, once humanity establishes itself in other woods, that

it would have grown up as a species. Yeah, and it's it's one of the things that I really respect about these books that I think a lesser writer wouldn't have been able to pull off, is that the degree, without beating you in the head with it, you see her as first failed by the philosophies and ideologies of her parents generation and by the systems that people had

gotten stuck in. She's very much a character who grows up in a world where all the adults are stuck um and since like a system that has become a death cult, and she has to figure out a way out of it. What she comes to believe in so much that in her own way, she becomes stuck in that new thing, and it renders her unable to see certain things that are important. And the book never portrays her as completely right or completely wrong, because that's just

not how civilization works. Things just change over time, and you know, the the ideology that her parents and the adults are all stuck in in the beginning of the book is an ideology that worked to a degree at

some point in the past. Um, which is just it it's it's It does a really good job of showing a number of things, which is kind of what it's like to be a kid realizing that the adults have fucked you, what it's like to become radicalized, um, and realize that the world doesn't have to be the way that it is, and what it's like to let that radicalization lead you somewhere to where you miss important things, Like there's so much going on in the evolution of

what the characters believe in this book that is is just masterful from a storytelling standpoint. Yeah, I mean, the second book really does a good job showing her sort of blindness as well when it comes to things going on, because what ends up happening one of the worst incidents in that second book is something that's of course not a victim blame, but it is something they could have prepared for a bit more, a lot more. Actually, Yeah,

it's it's They're good books. There are books that you will if you're like me, you will start reading them and you will get really into the first book, and then you'll take a ten minute break to like check the news, and something will send you into a panic spiral, and you'll read the new two books getting increasingly depressed. It's good next book because the third book never released. Yeah,

she never quite got to make it. Yeah, And I'll get into that as well in a bit in how it ties into the destiny right, but just a real three You know, who is principle? God has changed. God is not a person. It doesn't love or hate or watch over us or no us. It just is second principle shape God. God is maalable. God is power, infinite, irresistible, inexorable, indifferent, and yet God is pliable. Tricks to teacher chiosk Clay and truly emphasizes the change is neither good nor bad,

but it is potential. And we could and we have a choice to either be a victim of change, the victim of God, or we can become a partner of God, or we can become a shape of God, or we could just stay as God's plaything as changes prey. It's unavoidable, but our actions can shape its direction. And speed, and the end change prevails. And there's a comfort in that because once we can understand that you can return that efforts, the inevitability of change can be what thrust us forward.

And I think, um, I think people who are invested in in activism, in organizing and just revolutionary work, I think their aspects of the see that I think would be very motivating, very impactful, very energizing because despite you know, how circumstances play out, Um, there's a recognition that we are never entirely disempowered, you know. And so like just the last point I want to get into about the destiny, I think that's what it would make me if I

were to be in this world. I think that's where I would diverge from the earthtied orthodoxy, because I mean, Lauren talks about how, you know, history is just this repetitive thing. We have all these wars and kill a bunch of people and impoverish others and spread disease and hunger, and the whole thing is just because that's how it's

always been, just being. We have to accept that we can choose to do more, make something more of ourselves, and to who making something more of ourselves is establishing ourselves another planet. So if she is earteed Orthodoxy, I suppose I'm an earth Seed Protestant. I think you see Martin Luther nailing your thesis to I don't know the

door of her house in Seattle exactly. I would be a reform of the of the destiny in the sense that I see the destiny could be creating a heaven here on Earth, like rather than pursuing it cosmic heaven. I don't think it's even something that Lauren, at least I don't recall Lauran ever grappling with the possibility, because she really is fixated on this cosmic um idea. I do think she grabbed the possibility that humanity can mature

quote quote here on Earth. You know. Um. She doesn't really draw munch attention or has ent much time thinking about things like ecosystem restoration or you know, changing the pushing back against the government or the economic system that is impoverishing and inflicting violence upon people. She's just really fixated on the destiny. And so that's when I get into the Food Book and things I learned about the

Third Book when I was researching for this episode. But actually planned on exploring the fulfillment the destiny in the third book, um Parable of the trick Still. In fact, she intended to have a seven part series, so the third book would have been near the middle, as the story would have focused on another woman named Imara, who is living on he called me in the future, on a planet called Boom, far away from Earth. Cold. It is not the heaven that was hoped for, but gray,

dank and utterly miserable. Everybody is homesick. Um homesick, not just in like, oh, I haven't been home in a while kind of thing, homesick in the sense of, like you know when someone is like an amputee and they have this sort of phantom limb sensation. Yeah, this homesickness is like a phantom limb pain, a neurological debilitation. It's like trying to graft humanity answer new planet, and it's it's it's like if humanity were a branch and this new plant was a tree, and like both the tree

and the branch are kind of rejecting each other. Um. And so she never really got very far into writing Parable of the Tricksters. In fact, she had a lot of different um ways of approaching it a lot of different manuscripts that she got, you know, a couple of pages into and then discarded. You know, so in some versions the call instead of having like creeping blindness. In others, they get this telepathy um. In other versions, she has to solve a murder. Another version, she becomes a ghost.

Sometimes she's an earth an earth Seed skeptics. Sometimes she's a true believer. Sometimes she's a hyper rampath. Sometimes she's cured of it um. Sometimes the planet itself is filled with giant dinosaurs, other times small animals, other times intel gent aliens um. And there's also this idea, this I would say, very Twilight Zone esque idea that the aliens that they do encounter tokens of their escalating collective madness.

And so the whole idea of power of the tricks to and would have been the subsequent books was you know, the continuation of the concept of choice choosing to either you know, live together, we're together, struggle together, or you know, fight and scheme and lose their minds, break down, die and murder alone. In a speech to the u N in two thousand one, that would be like five years

before she passed away. I think she did, like I said two thousand and six, she speaks about how before she even like started working on the first Parable novel, she wanted to write a novel about a utopian civilization

where everybody had a kind of hyper empathy. But then actually figured it would be a utopian society because everyone would be inclined to, you know, behave in a more pro social way, because any anti social activity they would have, you know, inflict upon others would be inflixed upon themselves immediately. But then she realized it wouldn't work because sharing pain, the threat of shared pain, doesn't necessarily make people behave

better towards another. She points to be the popular pain full supports of you know, like boxing and American football, you know. And so she recognizes that this idea of everyone being a hypergram path bec cause a lot of trouble. I mean, if everyone feels each other's pain, who wants to be a dentist? You know, who wants to be

a newse um. And so she discards that idea and she basically created Lauren, who was a lone hyper and path in the would that is empathy deficient ultimately, I think, But I guess the heart of you know a lot of the issues that we're dealing with, um, she grapp us, a lot of questions that should still be explored, the idea of inclusion and exclusion, that balance when you know, developing community, concept of perseverance, UM, concept of hope, the

creation and destruction and re birth of really life, and just what makes life life? I guess I'll wrap things up with the code. Does tolerance have a chance only if we wanted to tolerance, Like any aspect of peace, it's forever a week in progress, never completed. And if we are as an intelligent as we'd like to think, we are never abandoned. That's it. What has change? Chep Guarded Peace? Well, I think that's about as good a line as any to end on. Go read Octavia Butler.

If you haven't check her out, go to the library. Her ships all over the library. Libraries are filthy with Octavia Butler books. You'll find it or steal it off the internet. She's not gonna mind. Hey, We'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe. It could happen years. 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.