It Could Happen Here Weekly 64

it's James. It's Ernie James. We're giving you some updates on the UC strike, but we record these before some changes happened. Progress, you could call it, maybe it's not progress, depends on where you're at a position wise with that. But there are two interviews today. One's going to explain a little bit about the bargaining and the differences between rank and file on the bargaining team. The other one is going to explain the very important and radical and

progressive access needs demands that were made. And it seems like ultimately not at least, I'm not on the table in this tentative agreement. So that's a tentative agreet out for voting right now. If you have been on the internet today Saturday, and if you've been on today you will have seen it presented as if the strike was over. That's not necessarily the case, right the contractors up for ratification and it's ratified by union members who have to

vote on it. A number of people who are organizing for a no vote, especially people who are in departments or parts of the university, which would qualify follower tears of pay. The contract has tiered pay, has tiered pay, birtht geographically and depict based on what kind of work you're doing. Um So a lot of people who are left at the bottom of those tears are obviously feeling like they've they've been out of strike for five weeks

and haven't got what they wanted. A lot of people who are in those higher tears are also feeling like they should be expressing solidarity with their fellow workers at the bottom. But you will have seen like a lot of reporting. Some of it came up very very quickly after the after the attemptive agreement was made, which it's odd and perhaps is because the union appears to be

the union staff. I should say to people who are who are making these in the terms some of the people who are who are in favor of this contractor using a PR company which appears to have maybe seeded some stories and some publications, but we can't be sure. Certainly they were very quick to press. So I would urge you to listen to this as sort of a coda to some of what you might be reading. There are two things. You can listen to them separately. You

can listen one after the other. We won't have any podcasts for a while over the over the break, so I will speak to you again in the new year, and I hope you enjoyed both these interviews. Mohammed, can you just explain, first of all, tell folks at which campus you're at and maybe what you're studying and where you are in the in the giant structure that is like the U A, W U C S D. Yeah, absolutely,

so I'm at you see San Diego. I'm a fifth year in the PhD program in the Department of Ethnic Studies. And yeah, I specifically study like Muslim racialization and sectarianism in the US UM and how that yah, how that looks up to like imperialism, settler cornialism, UM gender formations, things like that, UM and I suppose my place within this, as you say, like the labyrinth of U C S D, ANU AW politics. UM. Right now, I'm just a ranking

final member UM. However, a couple of years ago I was UM the unit chair for San Diego, So I was actually on the bargaining team previously UM, and that was at the beginning of the pandemic UM, and so a lot of like COVID bargaining for example, UM, I sort of like oversaw that. And prior to that, I UM was organizer with the COLA movement and so I helped organize the wildcat strike UM GREA at San Diego. Yeah. Nice, Yeah, Yeah,

there's a long history off union ORGANA. It's good. And so can you explain to folks a little bit about because you mentioned the bargaining team there, right, and maybe people wouldn't be familiar with the distinctions in union organization. Obviously this is in Italy and in the nineties, so you don't bargain with the entire union on mass e sadly, but they do. The university meets with a certain group of union representatives. So can you explain like who they

are and how they're selected to start with? Maybe yeah, absolutely, UM. So there are essentially two levels of three levels of leadership UM within the union. So at the top, in terms of statewide leadership, you have the Executive Board UM, and that's you know, like president, vice presidents for North and South campuses, UM, trustees, treasurers, things like that UM. And then you have campus based leadership and that's split between head stewards that are apportioned to campuses based on

their population in size UM. And then you have to kind of sort of like head leadership positions, one being the unit chair and the other being the recording secretary. And so the bargaining team for the whole union is composed of the unit chair and the sec from each campus UM. And at this time around we've added someone

from you see, San Francisco. They're usually not represented, like in the past bargaining cycles they haven't been, So there are now nineteen people on UM the u W two eight six five bargaining team, whereas previously there had been a team UM. Yeah, and I guess that's sort of like final level of of leadership that combines both campus level and statewide leadership is what's called the Joint Council UM. But that's kind of the hierarchy of the structure of

the union. Okay, yeah, it's fascinating. They just went to an odd number because I want to get onto some think next, which is this division like this that I think people are calling them b T ten and b T nine, right, Yeah, which which could a bit b T nine at b T nine if you if you didn't have the the UCSF person, which would have been a whole larger sort of mess. N Yeah, yeah, that would have been great. So what is this division like there there are two distinct I guess positions as as

regards bargaining, So prectually could explain a little bit of that. Yeah, absolutely, Um, I mean I think just you know, this might be obvious, but just to preface with the fact that, um, even within these so called camps of like b T T N b T nine, there's a lot of heterrogen aggy, right.

And so we saw this voting block emerge in the first week of the strike mainly around UM the wages demand and how um you know, one of the central pieces of that original demand, the way that it was crafted was that it was aimed at bringing members out of rent burdon and so rent Burton. I'm sure folks have talked about this before, but it's defined as paying

more than of your monthly income in rent. And so that translated in terms of our demand to a minimum base wage of dollars a year, along with wage increases that are attacked on to UM, the increase in like the median rental price UM for housing and so uh, in that vote, we saw you know, the split emerge ten nine, and then we saw UM again this kind of split paralleled in the vote to have open or closed Bardening sessions and the fact that ten people voted

to have closed sessions. And again, you know, since then another big concession. I'm going to use the term concession, even though there's a lot of consternation coming from like u AW leadership, because concession is technically when you lose

something you've already had, you already have. And so when it comes to like the Disability and Access article, UM, you know, something that we proposed and which you demand, that was crafted through and by uh, you know disability just as activists and disabled workers was mandatory supervisor training

and that was dropped UM. And again we saw that along the same lines of ten and nine UM and so you know, I think ideologically speaking, if I were to kind of you know, analyze this and give my I take, it's that the nine people I think are more committed to UM, I suppose being like representative of UH their campus concerns UM. And so, for example, some of those b T nine members I was on the bargaining team with a few years ago, and you know, they and I didn't necessarily agree on a lot of

issues UM. But now because their campuses have been vocally in support of demands like a cost of living adjustment of COLA or in support of UM, you know, not dropping the amount of child care that we can get

folks reimbursed for UM. You know, actually listening to their membership has caused them to kind of quinde quote side with UM other bargaining team members which may have other ideological commitments beyond just the contract right and so commitment to progressively defunding you see p d R at the police department and sort of putting those funds elsewhere within the university system UM. And so yeah, I mean I think, you know, we see that kind of split and emerge UM,

you know now with this bargaining cycle. But this is also a split that's existed within the union for a while. And so you look historically at the contracts cycle, right, UM two thousand eleven, and there's always been this kind of division, and it's red. It's represented in American labor more broadly between kind of like socio political unionism on one end and we're like liberal or business unionism on

the other. And so it's not really at least it shouldn't be surprising to us that a lot of those BT ten members or a majority of folks on the statewide executive board are aligned with what's called like the administrative Caucus at the u a W international level, or they're vocally supportive of current UW President Ray Curry. And in the latest general elections UM, even though officially the

local didn't take a stance UM. On social media, there's photos of our union president posing with Ray Curry UM for the crease ador any team UM. And so there are those kind of like larger structural alignments as well. Yeah, and of course if people are unaware and even yeah, but like you said, within the union as a whole, like and within the whole American unionization, right, we have the a f l C I oh, which includes unions

which are of police officers. And then we have I know that the UCSD locals of you at least so you see locals I should say, of u AW have made statements about that being an issue, but it's it's

still a thing that's happening. And yeah, it doesn't necessarily and follow especially in this country, that labor organization is always progressive in its in its other politics, right, absolutely, Yeah, I thought it was really cool that a lot of the demands that were made were progressive when when the star began, right, like there was a cops of campus demand, there was access needs demand and things like that, like

access to childcare for people. And some of them some of them were economics, some of them were not economics some of them which has always been a thing with student organizing. Right, we can go back and I'm not really good at masks. We can get back to night and we can we can look at like students making political demands and that changing the demands that unions made in the nineteen sixties. And I think it's cool that that you will have those going in. Where are we

at with the bargaining now? Like it it doesn't look like cops are leaving campus from what I can see right now, yeah, I think, um, so it's kind of complicated right now because we've just recently entered voluntary pre impast mediation UM. And so a lot of the big outstanding articles wages, childcare, the remission of UH nonresident supplemental tuition, which disproportionately affects international students right makes them quota postre

more costly to the university. UM. So a lot of those open things now are being discussed through this mediator UM. And I think even within that process, UM, we see a lot of the same issues emerging that have been present for the entirety of the bargaining processes, which mainly is that UM. Again, my position on this is that our bargaining team hasn't been pushing enough UM. And you see that kind of on two levels. One at the

actual table UM, there's a lot of passivity. And so when you know the barbaining team is kind of explaining their decision to membership, it's mainly UM. You know, they're saying things like, well, we reduced the wages demand by eleven thousand dollars, like right away, because that's what would be more amenable to the university. And of course that is not true, right because the u C came back to us with like a dollar offer something like that, like pitifule low um. And so again there's a lot

of you know, concessionary I think moves UM. And there's the desire to to kind of close the gap with the university essentially, and again that kind of betrays UM. I think a fundamental misunderstanding from our bargaining team that somehow, if we are respectable enough, if we present enough rational arguments that you see will respect that right, they'll they'll sort of like give in to our demands. UM. That

will somehow goad them to come in our direction. Whereas you know, we should see that you see as like one of the largest bosses, one of the largest landlords in the country. UM. And so of course they're gonna try to scures us out of as much as they can because that's their function. UM. And so on one end, I think we've seen a lot of core demands get dropped. We've seen um uh intense like weakening of our position

as well as the really incredible black transparency UM. And so I mentioned before the fact that most bargaining meetings or most bargaining sessions have been closed doors. UM. The fact that a number of like private like sidebars have taken place, and oftentimes membership gets like very vague emails or or we're you know, told like progress was made. You know, we won certain things, but then the technicality

of those wins is completely left out of the picture. UM. Even more recently, bargaining team members voted to uh, make the votes at the table private. And so after dropping the coal to demand, you know, folks were upset and obviously reaching out to the bargaining team, showing up to caucuses and being upset, and so from there, the bargaining team framed this as quote court harassment and essentially voted

to make all the votes private. UM. And so you know, we've seen a lot of moves like that that, you know, make it clear that the union leadership is trying to preserve the union rather than preserve its membership right in prisoner of the well being of those folks. And so I think at the table again we see this kind

of passive or concessionaire UM strategy. And on the ground, when it comes to the strikes at all these campuses, we see something similar where you know, the majority of the actions that we took in the first two to three weeks of the strike was just picketing, right, And obviously, you know, the picket is a powerful tool to picket, is a very symbolic tool. But in a you know, industry like the academy, picketing doesn't serve the same purpose as it might like at a factory. Right, we're not

actually shutting down the workplace. It's a great show of force in a way because you have thousands of people out, but obviously, when we're being required to sign up for twenty hours of picketing to get our strike pay, folks get exhausted. We will have you know, like huge marches through campus, go to a rally and it will be two hours of people talking um and that exhaust people.

And even when it comes to you know, like you see Davis, they had the undergrads actually had like an amazing direct action where they blockaded the campus every single day um and that of course led to a legal

response from the university and the union leadership. You know, rather than challenge that or you know, take take measures to make sure that those folks could organize autonomously of them um started uh, like harassing and discipline folks basically UM for taking taking part in solidarity actions that may

push up against the law. UM. And so what we see as like a concessionary attitude at the table, I think is translated as a very or is translated into like respectability politics UM on the ground UM Yeah, yeah, No, I think that's an makeing way of phrasing it. And that's that's sort of what what you're definitely suggesting and what it seems that we've seen. So when is that

leave people? And I think some of the things that have been suggested to be like in in the sort of current proposals both from the union of the university, would leave people with a contract that they would find I'm guessing unsatisfactory, right, especially after for four and a half five weeks of being out of and and possible withholding of pay right which we can get onto. But

where does that leave people? Like what what sort of feeling amongst your So obviously you can't speak for the rank of file across the whole university, but what's was the sort of feeling amongst the rank and file with regards to what do we do if we get this offer which doesn't give us the things that we went out for in the first place. Yeah. UM, I think that there is a lot of just polarization around that question. UM.

I've heard from a number of folks. Unsurprisingly. I think people who UM are material at least treated a little bit better. Right, we get higher pay already UM from the university being all right with it, you know. But that's that's the most that I hear. I haven't heard anyone, even the most staunch supporter of the union establishment, say that this contractor at least what is bound to come to the table at this point, is going to be satisfactory,

is going to actually be desirable. It's just seen as like, oh, this is the best we can get, and we might as well settle in like every sense of the word UM. But that being said, there is a large contingent again, folks that are totally fine with that, or they're tired of striking, or they're seeing a lot of retaliation from their supervisors, and the union I think has failed to um not only respond to that retaliation and to like reensure and empower members, but it's also failed to you know,

the technical term and organizing would be innoculated. Right. UM, there is a huge, in my opinion, organizational failure to make clear exactly what could happen to folks when we go on strike, or to prepare us to hear the talking points from the university UM, and how to you know, collectively organize against it, to build up a kind of consciousness to resist internalizing that and to say like, oh, I don't want to strike because my jobs at risk

or something. And it's like, yeah, of course, right, that's the point, you know, it's like where we're taking that action, UM, And so on one end, right, I mean, there's a number of reasons as to why, and the kind of hinted at that, but there is a large contingent of of people who UM would just be okay and they're going to vote us. UM. But I also think, right, and as I'm sure you know you've you've seen around social media or you've talked to other folks who are

on this side of voting no UM. You know, I think a lot of the consternation there comes again from the fact that we've dropped so much UM and kind of have left our most vulnerable members out to drive UM. So whether that comes from you know, reducing the amount of childcare or dependent health care or UM you know again dropping those like really core elements of the disability

and access needs UM articles. When it comes to dropping COLA and dropping our wages down to a point where we would still be in not just rent burden, but severe rent burden. UM. It's been leading a lot of folks to, uh, you know, promote the idea that we're going to vote no UM regardless because even if the remaining articles you know, are better than we expected UM and they get tentatively agreed to, there's already too much that's been lost to make this uh an adequate contract, right,

not even great, not even satisfactory, but just adequate. UM. And so you know, of course that kind of UH division, as you might say, UM, has brought up a lot of tensions, especially in the last few days. UM. But you know, I think now we're seeing a broader gap between these two like sides UM, where there are folks that are pretty much again set on voting yes because it's good enough UM, and there are other folks who are pretty staunching in voting now and trying to build

up that movement UM. And I think the point we're at now at least speaking from that like vote no side is that, Um, we really need to outline and be transparent with membership where we can go from there, Like how do we demystify the process or the process the possibility of impasse? Um. You know, that's been a concept that's thrown around a lot by UNI leadership and is never fully unpacked. Um. And so it's like a fearmongering tool that's that's been, in my opinion at least

like used to subdue member militancy. UM. So that's one issue. Another issue is like how do we reopen certain articles? How do we build this quote unquote long haul strike to gain more than we've already you know, um given up at this point, And so I think a lot of those technicalities that are up in the air are renewed, sort of like areas of organizing focus. UM. Yeah, so you don't have to abandon some of those demands which

we're not economic. Yeah, those can still be Yeah. I mean, I guess there's my point in really speculating how many people will vote yes or no. We'll see once once we see the agreement. And yeah, but like can you give us an update then on where striking gets some progressively, how did it gets longer? Right, people don't want to stand on a picket for five weeks, six weeks. They

don't they want to go home for the holidays. They have this pressure that's been leveraged, perhaps unfairly and sometimes like erroneously that their students will face immigration or graduation consequences, which is largely untrue. So, like, can you talk about there's there's a chance that people won't be getting paid right in December? Has that happened to any one? What's

the latest with that? Um SO? A lot of what's been going around UM in terms of issues with pay, A lot of the news I've seen concerns post docs, so folks from the local fifty eight who actually just signed an approse that tenantive agreement um SO. The university has put out some language implying that they'll retroactively dock pay UM and so UM Yeah, I can't like speak to the technicalities of that UM but that's definitely a concern I've seen floating around UM, and I know that

they're actively organizing around it. UM for a s c S and UH student researchers. UM we none of us have been docked pay yet um we all got paid for December. Um, in part because I just think the university has a really hard time keeping track of who's on strike. On top of the fact that, I mean, I don't know if anyone's already complained to you about you see path, but the parallel system that got rolled out yeah a few years ago. Um, it's terrible. It's

an absolutely fucking nightmare. Yeah. Um. And so I think it would be a massive achievement for them to even be able to withhold folks pay through that system. Yeah. They struggled to pay people in the first including myself. Yeah yeah, um yeah, absolutely, and so um, you know, I think it is it is a real concern. But at this point, um, at least to my knowledge, no one in five or s r U has been affected

by by pay withholding. And then let's let's talk about the grade withholding, which is now like today, is today right that the grades should be doing. Obviously many people are not filing those grades, and which again it's another example of sue the UC just being a bureaucratic disaster. But we can skip past that. So the grades are not being being filed, can we talk about some of the suggestions that have been made by the university. I know one of them was that students on like F

one visas might face consequences. That's not true, as best having been one visa has better understand it, and that students on think on grant and scholarships might face consequences. So can you explain sort of what they've said and then perhaps prehaps offer some insight into into why you think that that might be misleading? Yeah? Absolutely, UM, so

exactly what you're saying. Um, you know, folks and vulnerable categories such as people on academic probation or whose financial aid is dependent on being in like you know, good standing um or yeah, like international students. Um. Yeah, there's been a lot of uh fairmongering and misleading information out there that these students might be you know, kicked out of school, they might be reported, they might um face

uh you know again like financial consequences. UM. But it's important also to recognize that uh having a grade remain blank, it doesn't affect folks g p A, it doesn't have folks affect folks academic standing um. And for international students, um.

You know, the best that we understand, and we've actually communicated with Universities International students offices and what they say is that, UM, it's enrollment that matters, not necessarily having the grade, and so UM even if you know, let's say like all of someone's grades are withheld, they've still enrolled in the requisite number of credits UM, and so that that standing in terms of a visa wouldn't be

affected UM. And the same goes for even something as simple as moving onto the next course in a sequence UM, because uh, you know, again, the withholding of a grade doesn't affect UM that kind of like progress or academic standard UM. And as a show like technical note, a lot of folks are again concerned that like, well, wouldn't this blank grade lead to an incomplete or wouldn't it lead to an F UM? And in terms of the incomplete, there's a reason why we're not filing everyone with an eye.

We're leaving the grades blink because an incomplete is costly, it's more work for everyone, and so we're avoiding that. And UM, blank grades don't default to an F until the following semester or following term ends. And so for us at U C S D UM since many of us are withholding grades. They those blank grades wouldn't turn to and F until the end of winter around March. And I don't think anyone expects to strike to go that one. Yeah, it will be truly historical. And yes,

So how has he had the graduate response been then? Yeah, that's um, it's difficult because I know at certain campuses, like I mentioned you see Davis earlier, there's been huge undergrad involvement there. UM. At San Diego, I think the response has been a bit mixed. UM. I know many of my students, for example, we're supportive of the strike UM. And within you know, my department Ethnic Studies, we did try to get students more involved, Like we held teachings

UM to get students to come out. And you know the class I'm teeing for right now is called Land and Labor and so we talked about you know, U, C. S. D, right and and the relationship to like colonialism, capitalism, landed labor um. And so we've tried to integrate you know, not just um, you know, student and engagement and support, but also to use this as another form of study, right, as a form of study that's not that's outside the kind of like bureaucratic mess that is the university with

its nonsense UM. I think what's difficult at San Diego is that, UM, you know, political engagement has historically come

in waves. Obviously at all universities. Folks come and go, but it's particularly acute, I think at San Diego where there's massive moments of like upheaval and like folks coming out in the thousands, like we saw back in UM around the pandemic, around the uprisings UM during the summer, around even the Cola movement, right, which was a little bit before that, we saw huge numbers of undergrads come out, in part because we were able back then at least

to connect our demands to their concerns. Right. The fact that psychological services on campus are horribly underfunded, Right, people have to wait a whole quarter to get even the intake of planet UM. The fact that again like they're getting screwed over with housing just as much as we are UM paying you know, over ten or fifteen thousand dollars a year in it for a dorm um. And so you know, that connection back then, I think, really

drew out the undergrads. And that's what's really lacking Now again, I think because of the way that the union has framed the struggle quite narrowly as not just what affects workers, but what what affects the majority of workers. UM, that's left out a lot of the broader concerns. That has

foreclosed a lot of broader critiques of the university. And so when it comes to something like the cops off campus demand, the fact that we have bargain team members at u c l A, for example, literally lie and say that it's never been on the table UM, it's really indicative of how the union is trying to frame this.

And so the fact that you know, again those broader conversations around the UC being a landlord around them, the way that you know, profit it and resources are inequitably distributed through the university infrastructure, right, those things drop out of the conversation about our strike, UM, and if we do bring it up, we're seen as dissidents or something

like that, or radical UM. And so the fact that those things have dropped out, I think has led to us seeing the situation like we see at UCSD where the undergrads are almost ambivalent, if not hostile, because we haven't done a good enough job engaging them. We haven't also organized alongside and with them. Um. Rather it's been like come support your t A s and not like we're fighting together, right, And so it's yeah, it betrayed.

It gives the impression that this is like a very one way um or you know, like an interdirectional form of support, where in reality, you know, we should be building up those ties of solidarity and that you know, we should be focusing not just on winning a contract, but then building and sustaining this movement against the university

in a much larger or broader sense. Yeah, because I'm speaking from experience, I know a lot of those undergrads feel very disempowered in their relations with the university and and some of the demands, like the access needs demand, you know, the demand for improved student counseling, psychological services, things like that. But that would benefit directly everyone on campus. And then it's a shame not to see that. It's a shame to see that sort of left to the

side when I think it could build a more effective movement. So, yeah, it does seem to go like you said, campus by campus department, your your department like has historically been a lot more engaged than others. I think it's fair to say so. And so we've reached the Christmas break now great have been withheld. I think a lot of people thought was like sort of a nuclear option or like a step up, which he doesn't seem to have been, like,

it really hasn't done anything. And and the you see it entered into the university and the union have entered into a voluntary pre impassed mediation. When do you, like, if you were just speculating, and when do you think we'll see like a resolution, because it's already slipped out of coverage, right like if I look at our local

newspaper that they've stopped reporting on it, which doesn't help absolutely. Yeah, um, I think you know, it's it's difficult to speculate in part because as we've seen with past bargaining updates, they tend to drop bombshells on us. Um, like with the whole coal of demands being you know, severely cut down. We found about we found out about that like two hours before the bargaining which is out like ten pm.

And so it's totally possible by like that by the end of this week we'll have a tentative agreement, like you know, folks have been speculating on that. It wouldn't surprise me. I would be disappointed, but I wouldn't be surprised. UM. At the same time, though, I I do think that we've been able to build up sufficient pressure on the union establishment or the leadership UM that I think there it might be a bit more hesitant right to take that sudden of a move or to kind of come

out of left field or something like that. UM. And so you know, there is a distinct possibility, especially with the holidays coming up, that this might go into the new year. UM. And obviously that would be like my hope to go as long as possible, yea. UM. But yeah, I think it's it's incredibly tough, and I think that's causing a lot of anxiety UM. And that's kind of a disorganizing energy, right to not know when something like this might happen, because there is such an utter lack

of communication or um, you know, democratic input UM. And I think in terms of you know, the the coverage or the great strike, UM, what's really unfortunate, I think is the way that I I've heard, you know, from the horse's mouth, right certain barning team members saying that withholding grades isn't an important form or isn't an impactful

form of labor withholding because the university doesn't care. And historically we've seen that they really do care and within activity strikes, withholding finals is a massive thing, right, And I think that in order to really um realized the impact that that will have on the institution, we have to go for a few more weeks into the winter quarter. Um. And you know, right now even to try to um build up some more UM. I guess, like you know,

pr around great withholding UM. There are folks doing research and trying to calculate like quantify um what like you know, each credit would mean in like real dollars. And then the fact that you know, hundreds of students grades are being withheld for a three or four hour like three or four credit UM class and what that translates to

into money? Um? And so yeah, yeah, I mean, if we live what the university does, right, it turns its capital into into into income essentially through like leveraging its credibility for credential and and charging people masses of rent for living there increasingly, and you can't take away the housing right, which is it's made just so survivingue, but

you can't take away this this this product. Yeah and and and there have been um you know, there are a number of petitions out there, for example, UM UH for undergrads to request like a reimbursement of their tuition for any classes that haven't been held or grades that have been withheld UM and I think that's a really fantastic way to engage them and to put pressure on

the university. There's also been UM attempts or at least you know, UM some strategizing on on our end on how to uh have the grade strike impact the university's accreditation UM and so we are trying to look for avenues to increase the pressure from this kind of like strategic move Yeah, that's smart. Yeah, Yeah. It must be difficult, I'm sure, Like is you develop relationships with undergraduate and especially when you're teaing in your department of class you

care about. It's a shame to to lose that opportunity to talk to people about important things like landed labor. And so I'm sure it's difficult to not have that chance to even check in at the end of the end of the term and just say like that, you know, it's been fun. What have we learned? Yeah? Absolutely, um, And I think you know, for a lot of us who are a s c S. You know, we're doing this not just for ourselves but for our students, right,

because we care about education. We recognize that the university as an institution is actually corrosive right to a quality education. And so absolutely, I think like there is a sense of loss. I think the fact that I can't, like you're saying, close out my class, the fact that I can't, um, you know, really invest in my students the way I want and not trying to blame that on the strike, but trying to blame that on the conditions that have

brought us to strike in the first police. Right. Yeah, um, I don't want to get like full marxistm on me, but like, yeah, the further alien atd you are from your labor, then the the less that the experiences for your undergraduates. And that is definitely a thing that happens at the university. You become more and more inlalienated. And yeah, the joy dies I say with a PhD in doing the work in academia and mohmmed is there anything else people should know about the strike like that we haven't

talked about mm hmm see UM. I I would say, you know, one one important thing is that both for folks within the university system and from you know, the outside,

is to kind of place this strike in historic context. UM. I think when the union leadership has spoken about this at all, it's mainly around the size of the strength, the fact that it's it's historic because we have you know, forty eight thousand possible strikers UM from throughout the u c S. And that's kind of misleading because I think the real kind of like historic potential within the struggle is UM for example, establishing a precedent of what a

researcher strike looks like. Part of the reason it's so difficult for us to not only you know, mobilize researchers, but also you know UM push back against retaliation is because there is no set structure for what that kind of strike looks like, right, UM. There is no effective way that we have to UM counter the possible impacts on these people's futures UM. And so I think that you know, really emphasizing that to folks is UM is key.

Another thing is um the cola demand. Right, the fact that we are trying to or at least we've tried to tack um our wage increases not just to um inflation or the consumer price index, but to the median increase in rental prices. UM. That would be huge. And that's not just big for us as as workers within this local but that does set the precedent for all

workers in the US. And I think that you know we really by we, I mean like the union as a whole apparatus has not stressed the importance of that or the kind of like monumental shift that I could, um kind of provoke in the landscape of American labor broadly, just so if people aren't aware, Like, like rent in California has gone up a way more than double, almost almost triple the rate of inflation, and working people people who are members of unions by a large tend to

be people who don't own property, but they tend to be people who rent property, right, And I can see by your your unfinished concrete ceiling that you're you're renting from the UC, which is the biggest landlord in California. So like you're right that this is a very historic thing is that rent increase for Cola. Is that tried to median rent in the state or is it median

rent across you see rented uh, like like apartments. So I think the actual language So this is part of the problem is that because it was dropped so quickly at the table, we weren't even even able to get

into the vicissitudes of the demand itself. UM. And so from my understanding, the increase would be based on UM the like least affordable or essentially the largest increase that will see at any of the campuses, and everyone's wage would be increased to that when we look at the base wage k UM that was tacked onto again a kind of like median income or a median rental price throughout the state as well. And so actually fifty four k would be exactly enough to get me out of

rent burden. So anything less than that would actually still keep me in rent burdon UM And so yeah, that's kind of how they Yeah, which rent bedon is it's

far too normal, I have to think, especially in California. Yeah, yeah, that and like collective bargaining is tenants as well as workers is fascinating, right, Like it's something we've seen, but not in a large scale like and and like you on on rent strike yet but yes, and as as as a side note, yeah, UM, we did have a couple of rent strikes in UH within the UC system in the past few years at Berkeley at u C l A and here UM and so I was actually part of organizing UM in the aftermath of COLA at

the beginning of the pandemic. UM, I helped organize the first rent strike UM within h D h U C S D grat House UM. And so we have we have also seen that. But that's another way that the union has kind of limited the scope of this movement. Because there's been so much focus on us as only workers and the bread and butter issues, we kind of lose sight of the way that withholding rent, as you're saying, is another way of like really getting at the heart

of the U c S profit engine. Yeah, yeah, and yes, it is a shame that these like yeah, if you want to, I think a historical perspective of course, like a Paris, it's like the monolith of student political organizing, I guess, and student political organizing changing the established structures of the left, which which is it's some of what you had demanded was very similar to that in a sense, and that it was societal and political as much as

it was an economic right. And American unions tend to phrase themselves in terms of respectable liberal politics, not that. So it's a shame to see that. Go, I guess absolutely, and I think you know. This actually came up in a in a meeting UM, which kind of astounded me, but again didn't on one hand astounded me. Another hand was completely sort of like to be expected, which is someone saying, we need to make this movement um as accessible as possible to workers without an activist bone in

their body. Um. And so again there's always that appeal to the right, always the appeal to the most conservative reactionary force, and always at the expense right of the folks who are the most vulnerable, always at the expense

of expanding this movement. And so as you're saying something that is more socio and socially and politically engaged, yeah, yeah, I think most people come activist when they have to live in their car because they can't reford to live in the EUC housing when they work at the EC. But that is not everyone, of course. And all right, Mohammed, where can people find you? Do you have social media? Do you, as I said, you want to share with you first, to share like your unions or um something

else I guess on on Twitter? Um, I am at a Islamo Marxist um and so yeah, yeah, so folks can find me there. Um. Otherwise, I mean, if there are folks within the u se Um that are organizing, um, within any of the like vote no channels, I'm sure folks could find their way to me. Um. But yeah, I think just in general, like following the rank and file and COLA associated accounts on on social media, trying to you attend as many means as possible, is is really how I think folks can get more in tune

with the struggle. Yes, that's great, Thank you so much of your time. I appreciate it. And yeah, best of luck with everything. Thanks so much. So. I'm joined today by Megan Lynch, who's the founder of and a volunteer for u SEE Access Now, which has been one of the important bodies lobbying for increased access needs for people with disabilities at the u SEE as part of this strike. Hi, Megan, how are you doing Hi, I'm doing well. How about

Thanks for having me great? Thanks, thanks for coming on. Megan. Can you explain and maybe explain a little bit about you see, access now first and then we can get into sort of what the issues were and what the demands were. Well, let me start with clarifying what access needs are. Generally, I wouldn't want to I want to I wouldn't want to have more access needs because it would mean that I need more things that I need to negotiate getting them met. So an access need is, uh,

I have something that I need somebody to to. You know, the inaccessible environment that we have often it's it's sort of default inaccessibility, and so having an access needs means that, you know, I need to work out how to be in that environment. And sometimes you can even be in a really well accessible environment, and uh, it would be hard for people to meet your access need without again

trying to come to some kind of agreement. So there's a difference between accessibility and access needs and I just wanted to clarify that. Thank you. I think that's very important. And so could you explain then what what sort of issues people were running into before the strike, like what what sort of things where they're that limited people's access to university spaces or education or work. Well, still very much going on, and in fact it's actually increased during

the pandemic. Um the only time where things got a little better for some of us is, uh, you know in March when everybody you know, and this is what often happens, is that something when suddenly people who don't identify as disabled needs something, and there's enough of that, then there's there's no problem. Nobody has to submit medical documentation,

nobody has to get special permission. It's really not a big rigmarole, right, But uh, when you identify as disabled and you say I have this as an access need, then suddenly, you know, you get you get the Spanish inquisition in terms of whether you you you deserve this thing that your tax dollars have been paying for at your institution anyway, So, um, it really runs the gamut for you know. I guess what I could best talk about is my own situation and uh what led to

the formation of UC access now. So, um, I arrived here before the start of fall as a fifty year old disabled grad student, So I'm already in a kind of unusual position ship by being fifty or four years old here and then disabled on top of it. And uh, I was set to t a my first quarter here, and I could spot even before the quarters started that the kinds of cycle recks they have here at UC Davis, which is, you know, usually lauded for being quote unquote

bike friendly. Uh, we're not accessible to me, and that they would eventually, you know, I could do it once or twice without hurting myself, but over time I was gonna be hurt and that would get in the way of me being able to do my duties as a t A. Not to mention anything I need to do for myself, because I was writing, like a lot of disabled cyclists, I don't ride the standard upright bicycle. I ride a recumbent bicycle with underseat steering, and the recks

are not usually a big deal. Places I've lived in a number of different cities in California, Berkeley, Los Angeles, see a lot of places have what are you know you acts you know, which is similar kind of to a Sheffield rack for foes folks who know those, except you know, not quite as big. So it's not like it's this special you know, you don't go to a

special adaptive store for this rack. It is a more accessible rack, and most cities are sensibly using them, but for here, because despite their bike friendly reputation, they actually want to prioritize space for cars. They have made these racks that are so close together and not supportive, etcetera, that the only part I could ever lock my bike too would be the ends, and that's what everybody else

wants to take first. Um, And it wouldn't even be easy to the ends because again, these are really very specifically they have wheel wells, and the relationship between the locker thing and the wheel well is exactly the space of part you would do if you had sort of a standard adult size upright bike. And honestly they're not

even good for people who ride those. So, for instance, if you go and you see Davis subreddit, you will see sometimes threads where people are bullying people who want to get a cruiser bike because they're like, those things take up too much room. No, it's not that they didn't take up too much room, it's that the racks

are very poorly designed. There are things, but they are SUVs. Yeah, they rather they would rather bully somebody about their choice of bike than to say, hey, these are really what a waste of taxpayer money to get these these bike racks that not only don't work for a lot of disabled people, but don't even work for people who are riding cargo bikes or using a trailer or you know

other things you would want to do. So so anyway, I went first to the Disabled Students Center here, which is, you know, the rationing and policing agency for disabled people. And you know, it's amazing to me like this, these are the people and they would literally call themselves experts on disability and accessibility. And they said to me, gosh, it never occurred us that that would need to be accessible.

This is on a campus where they're trying to encourage you to leave your car at home at least some of us, right, and uh, and it's also how you get to school and to work, right, So why wouldn't I need that to be accessible? And so they I asked for something as simple as can you sign a letter? They wouldn't do it, you know, can you said they wouldn't. They wouldn't back me up at all. So then I

go directly to the Transportation of parking services. They were like, it's not covered under a d A, which is not true, and you know, and then they were like the solution they wanted to pose with it. You know. Eventually when I finally after months, got a meeting, they were like, well, give us your schedule of classes and will install one

of these racks at each building you're at. As if my schedule isn't going to change each quarter, is that a better use of Yeah, is that a better use of tax money to send a crew around to like to to to Jackhamber Concrete at a different location for each quarter of acording to each disabled cyclist class that changes, just get the right rack. So that that's when I went to the union, and even in the union at that time, you know, it was really clear it wasn't

just with that issue. I had other issues, but this was definitely getting in the way of my work as a t A because it was hurting my hands very badly, and in fact I had fallen a couple of times and my bike had fallen on top of me and like nobody helps you that, you just sit there watching you like a turtle trying to get So there's things

like that. There's things like um even just the housing here in terms of for instance, if I had had the luck of having a romantic partner, if I'd had the wealth and the ability to choose to have children,

I would have been able to get grad housing. But as a disabled person who has an access need to be close to campus, I was I had zero priority whatsoever, and so I very nearly ended up starting that quarter how thing to live out of my car because you know, and I would think it would be pretty clear that a fifty four year old disabled grad student might actually have, uh maybe have more have fewer options in housing than

somebody who's in their twenties and isn't disabled. But but you know, and I'm not saying that parents don't need family housing or anything like that, but what I'm saying is very clearly I think some disabled people do have strong access needs to have accessible housing near campus. And that's very much not something that they bothered themselves with

here at UC Davis. So you know, there's other things in terms of online accessibility and other things, but that those are the things that that affected me that I think are worth mentioning simply because they they're both unusual things people don't tend to think of right, Yeah, yeah, I know, and it is a very uh, it's a

very difficult system to navigate. Like, like you said, I think one of the things that's already stood out is this this demand for like documenta shoan, frenny, any sort of accommodation that you might need that they can make it very hard to remember in um, I was teaching at UCSD and I shattered my pelvis, uh, and like that made moving at all extremely difficult for me, and they wouldn't give me a parking pass and like then then proceeded to offer me once their diabetes, which is

a whole like like interesting, like it's sort of calculation of which one of those things will definitely stop you walking. So yeah, and it was extremely sort of humiliating, I guess from a personal perspective, and degrading and time consuming and unnecessary. And so what were the demands then at the start of this strike, right, there was an access needs element to the demands being made by the union.

So perhaps we can go through Maybe first we can go through how you went from uh like this bike correct, which didn't accommodate but pretty pretty basic need right to trans for yourself to campus, how do we get from there to the union? Having access needs to minds as part of the strike. So as far as you see

Access Now, it's involvement with it. UM. We went on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram and published the demandifesto in July of so, uh, the months between you know, the fall when I made you know, went through these processes and when I finally decided, Okay, nobody's doing anything about this, and I don't see any other organizations, so let's you know,

jump into this um. By July, Uh, you see, Access Now was contacted by somebody who was an officer within u A W fifty ten and that's the post Doc and and Academic Researcher Union, and they had seen our work, you know, via social media and whatnot and said, you know, we're about to go into contract bargaining and we'd really like to talk about disability issues. So we had a meeting with them, and we actually had we did a presentation also to them, uh for their social justice and

in our series. But we also had a meeting with a number of people from fifty in terms of let's, you know, let's think creatively here, let's let's be ambitious about what it is, you know, because the thing is is that a lot of what people tend to do, particularly particularly when they're not disabled, but even some disabled people can do this because internalized able ism is a really hard to throw off. We're sort of you know,

and this is true of other oppressions too. You know, we're all sort of used to this system that has this policing, austerity, etcetera. You know, we all get schooled into not hoping for much anymore because we're just so used. You know, in my life time, I've lived through decades of this kind of regularite bologne. So so it takes a while to think big about these things. But that's

what we were trying to do. And so we sort of brainstormed with them as several UC Access Now members and several fifty eight ten members in terms of the sorts of things that could be uh asking for. And so if if there's time and you don't mind, I can give you a view of that because the other stuff is online. But this isn't so again, this is sort of just a spitballing document. But we were like, you know, all ads for post doc positions on all platforms,

they have to be accessible. Now some some of this and some of what we're talking about is stuff that you see is actually legally obligated to do and just has not been doing. Um. That would be one of them. UM training. You know, most emergency access plans are not made with the input of disabled people, and they don't even mention us. So you know, there are considerations for

accessibility for different types of disabilities, different people. Uh. We have several buildings on UC Davis campus here that have little placards right in the lobby that's say a they say something like, if you depend on uh, visual alarm systems in an emergency, please let somebody else know you're in this building. Blah blah blah. And it's like even the way that's phrased, because you know, quote unquote abled people, are you dependent on a sound alarm system to get

out in a fire. But they but they don't phrase it, you know, as dependence when it's for them, right, They only phrase it as dependence when it's for somebody who's death or hard of hearing. So we've got several buildings on campus where they know that it's not up, it's not up to even not even just a d A. But just like basic human decency, people will die in

that building. Deaf and hard of hearing, people will not know that there's a fire or another emergency alarm system going off because we couldn't be bothered to pony up for some lights. Um. So that that kind of thing. In terms of an emergency action plan, these things have to be done. There has to be training not only for the supervisors but really for you see itself, because the whole system is just you know, a cram full of able is um. You know, online working is key

to accessibility. So it has to be a regular option, not just something for the pandemic. It should have been the whole time, and it also shouldn't you know, be a big burst up to it. There are some and you know they're like kind of things you would think of as smaller that we put in here simply because again we're trying to think creatively, which is you know, reimbursements for instance. I mean that's a general problem with

grad students and whatnot. Is that the university, which has far more resources than we do, it's sort of you know, taking its time reimbursing us for things that we've had to get right, and so the debt is actually being heaped onto the people least able to support it. And when it comes to disabled people, that is going to be even more of a burden because most disabled people have a higher cost of living and often have a lower income to boot. So we put you know that

in there. Put in reimbursements for costs incurred working at home or or or you know, in other ways remotely for an employer. That's section to eight oh two of the California Labor Code. Um uh, you know, sick policy in terms of like commuter checks, which you know, or some other kind of thing for public transit. The child care spaces and lactation rooms are accessible because you know the union will like lobby for that right, but you need to be you need to be express about the

idea that these things need to be accessible. Like people don't think of everything needed to be accessible, but really it does. Yeah, and that sends a very sort of condescending message about like what you know, different people with different diffabilities might or might not be doing at which

obviously isn't great that the US doing that. And so like I really I thought these demands were fascinating because it's not what we often talk about when we talk about rights that we talk about strikes often purely in terms of economics, right like UH, in in the US, I can include things like non way to benefits like healthcare, but it in sort of most instances we talk about striking bread and butter terms like they have gone out

and they want this much money to come back. And I think that strikes have the potential to build much greater solidarity by doing things like this, by incorporating these I guess social justice demands is one way of phrasing it. This basic human decency to minds will be another way of saying it. And it really Yeah, it really impressed me that this was part of the package of demands from the union. How have things gone? Are you comfortable

talking about how things have gone since the strike began? Well, I certainly don't know everything backwards and forwards, because honestly, it would be hard for any one person to do it all. It's all extremely complex in terms of not in terms of like you know, things on the ground, but in terms of the language in contracts and the

process and bargaining. UH. There's a difference between like things that are tradition traditional to do as opposed to things that are actually the law, and then of course the actual enforcement and law. So anyway, this has been going on for a whole year, and as you can imagine, like penetrating it as your average person, it can be very difficult. So I will certainly give you, you know, my view of it as so far as I've seen it,

but um, we do have. Uh So, so we helped with like sort of spitballing and they took it from there. And what they started out with was not as you know, ambitious as the spitball document. Um, I think it tends. I think that got replicated a lot throughout the unions, which is, you know, my advice as somebody from the outside just thinking about negotiations in general. Okay, you know they're gonna cut you down, right, so why would you

be the one to cut you down. You know they're gonna do it right, you think big, let them cut you down. And and unfortunately there were the majority voices in the bargaining teams tended often to be at least where the access needs articles were concerned, um, tended to

be kind of let us cut ourselves down. Uh So the starting doc for ten, although you know, it's still had things in it that were very like if we have the original version of ten instead of what actually the folks you know voted on voted yes on recently, Uh, it would still be a revolutionary document in in US labor history. I think, you know, I don't. I've never heard in the news of anything any uh more ambitious

than that. But but definitely it was down from what we were starting with, which you know, um so, But I think what happened was that you know, fifty eight ten came out and they were trying to coordinate and

learn from each other to different units. Right. So then folks on s R you and U A W also uh worked on the access needs articles and and the access needs articles even in themselves was a change because the previous versions of these things were phrases reasonable accommodations, which is language that stems from the Americans with Disabilities Act.

And even that phrase is something that is really outdated because it is the idea, the ideas who is deciding what's reasonable, right the person who has no lived experience of disability or this gigantic public institution that is funded including by disabled people's tuitions and fed fees and whatnot in taxes. But you know where's my money go. It goes into building an inaccessible university, right, So why am

I supposed to let you judge what is reasonable? I think it's incredibly unreasonable that you use my money to build a university that not is not only hard for me to be at, but it is actively hostile to my health. Um and so you know, and just the word accommodations centers and codifies that inaccessibility as being the norm, and anything you do different from it is like you being accommodating. We'll get that, get the hell out over here with that stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it makes much

more sense to phrase it in those ways. And like, yeah, it seems like it was, as you said, a very ambitious goal and one that not only those things got transferred, which is I mean that that can happen in strikes.

But it's also like it's it's a non economic thing that the university could have given to you all of they wouldn't have had to have, you know, I mean, the university has a lot of money, and it would it would be very possible for it to pay grad to its students aways they asked for at the start and post grad post docs and could be paid the way to say, asked for to your and it wouldn't really have the university. They could they could, you know,

there are a million ways they could fund that. But well, I think that gets to the crux of why they don't do this, because the thing is is that if if you really think about it this way, and it takes a little doing, because again we're sort of school dot to, but it is a form of misappropriation of

public funds. If all of the public is funding this institution, and we do that through our state and our federal taxes, we do and then of course if we get in we're doing it through tuition of feeds, and then of course the grants the university gets are also federal grants

and this sort of thing. Um, then what you're doing is you're taking money that comes from all of the public and pre pandemic figures in terms of like this is before the mass disabling event that the pandemic is the of America, adult Americans had at least one disability. So you're taking money from those folks, and you're saying, but we're not going to build this public university in a way that is not only like tolerable by you, but like a place where you could thrive. It doesn't

even reach tolerable. It actually drives a lot of us out of here. It worse in health, and I have no doubt that it has killed people. So we So what happens? The reason I mentioned this is because that misappropriation to funds. You know, that's the incentive, right, what can if if if you're going off this austerity mindset that you shut off like people from things they need, right, what happens to that money? Well, we have an admin

that is completely bloated in size. We have every single chancellor getting a raise during a pandemic that they completely blew in terms of public health protections, in terms of accessibility even to people when they needed it during the pandemic. Like if they hadn't been fighting accessibility that long, we would have handled the pandemic better because we would have had better online pedagogy already available and developed. So it is that's a kind of jump that people don't make.

But that's exactly what's going on. That's why they have the interest in putting this rationing and policing bureaucracy together too, Like, not many disabled people even get here because this is of course not the only ablest institution. It's hard to even get here. But then when you get here, they want to reduce who can get their access needs met, and then the access needs being met is such a gauntlet, and only the most privileged of disabled people can get that.

And so you know, as far as disabled people at at you see who are in the system so to speak, you know, our registered or whatever that's going to not at all be representative of the public. That's going to be mostly white folks with some access to privilege. You know, yeah,

of course. And I think you've given a good sort of elucidation of why this is a struggle that obviously everyone should be part of, everyone should be getting behind, because it's like it's it's all of us who are invested in this in order of us are paying for

this university which isn't accessible right now. So I wonder, like, what's your advice, because there are unprecedented numbers of people forming unions right like Starbucks being one example that we see a lot of coverage of, but all across the country there are more people forming unions there and more people going on to strike. How should they organize around similar things like, how should they organize around getting these

access needs met? Well, I think I think you have to start by sweeping your old side of the street, which is that you have to make sure that you or union communications, your meetings, uh, everything about your union is accessible. And if you don't know how to do that, then that's where you start. You start with learning what

accessibility is and how to make things accessible. Because what we found when we started, uh, when we came out kind of UC access Now did was you know, as you can imagine, in a society where there are quite strong financial punishments for even to say, you know, even identifying as disabled. And what I mean by that is like, say, again here on UC Davis, you were talking about how hard it was for you to get parking right, you know, when you had s chatter Paul Pelvis, how it was

to go every single day here on campus. There are able to employees driving trucks and vans that they drive straight up to the door of the building on the sidewalk, blocking egress for actual disabled people and actually blocking fire

regress out of the building. Because that's what's you know, because they can't be bothered to walk twenty ft from the legal space that they have already have the privilege of being on campus compared to everybody else, right, but they but they had to have it even more convenient to that, and then they drive straight up to the door.

Right Nobody gives them. Nobody says boo about that. Nobody says you need to get a medical documentation, Nobody says you're getting fined and you'r and you you don't get to drive this campus truck again or whatever. None of that goes on. What would happen, I guarantee you if that employee identified as disabled all of a sudden, then they would come down on that person for what they're doing.

It's it's a real so because of these things, there's a lot of incentive for people to hide their disability because you get there's a lot of stigma, but there's also a real, quite real financial hit to it. And uh and so what happens once you sort of create a safer space to talk about it, people will start damning you, you know, and they will let you know that they're starting to have problems on the job or whatever.

They may not be ready to come out. For those like some people, it's obvious they're disabled, right, it's not even like they have a choice about quote unquote coming out right. But for other people it's not obvious unless they tell you, and they they have a lot of incentive to not you know, identify that way. Um. But when you make your union a safe and inclusive and accessible place, you will find that you have already been

making assumptions about what your union membership is. So you already have members who are disabled, it's just that they're not telling you about it. But furthermore, if your union starts really um becoming an accessible inclusive place, you know, not performative, really being there, like your your communications are accessible, you you're clearly um educating yourselves around able is um

educating yourselves around accessibility. So like when you have your meeting, it's not in a room that isn't wheelchair accessible, that doesn't have a working elevator on that floor. You know, all these things that people kind of don't think about

until uh, they're the one with the broken leg. Um. Then that really goes some way to helping you organize things, and you will find you already have members that you can tap, you know, because they'll start to feel more for more involved once they see you're willing to go to bad from them. And what I would say that peaks folks should learn from the U see U a

w experience right now. And this doesn't just refer to disabled workers, it's really other marginalized workers, which is, you know, if you're in a contract bargaining situation and it's clear that like you're the bargaining chip, Like why would that why would that group want to hang with you? You're you're saying, support us and what we want, but we're

gonna desert you when it's your time. You weren't gonna depend on the fact that everybody likes more pay and we're just gonna say, Okay, you're gonna stick with us and and work, you know, with the union no matter what it's like. Now a lot of people are gonna go, well, I'm sticking you know, you clearly don't support me, So I don't see why I need to go with you and put myself at risk because if you win, I'm

gonna get the raise anyway. And uh, and if you don't win, well then that's good for you because now you know how it feels like to be tossed aside, you know, so, so you have to really be there for your marginalized workers. You know, it has to be this non performative thing. But the but the thing is is that if you are non performative about it, you are you're making the workplace not only better from disabled workers you already have, but you are making it better

for yourself. Because every single one of us pretty much is going to be disabled either temport earlier permanently at some point in our lives. It is the easiest club to join. And you know, I think as we found during the pandemic. You know, people, a lot of people they make this They say, oh, online sucks, Online school sucks. Why does it suck because you never invested in it. It's like several several decades and old, you never invested in it. You never put any effort or money into it.

Like that's you know, So if you want your workplace to be a good quality workplace for you, that is not only just like a place you barely you know, feel okay going to, but like someplace you really we spend most of our lives in the workplace. You know, Students right, So it should be someplace that really makes us feel better and fulfilled, because nobody works well when they're stressed out. Nobody, you know, you're not productive when you're constantly stressed. So this really to be a win

win all around. And and you're think about it this way also, which is that you know, and this is particularly applicable when it comes to you see, and you know, the pandemic is another great example of this is this has gotten a little bit of focus on the press, but I don't think as much as it deserves, which is that you have this not only an event where millions of people died globally, right, which you have. You have quite a few people, they have long COVID, they

have other things. People who arrive at you see, and particularly who go you know, get to the point they've got their degree or whatever. You know, these are people who are trained, highly educated, trained in a certain thing. They're making contributions to their field. Do you really want it to be that we lose all the knowledge that these people have, all the the institutional memory and experience that these people have, just at a time when we're

facing an incredible crises as a planet. You know, in terms of climate change and in terms of you know, the attacks on democracies and things, or just even what the people mean to their community, right, you know, you're talking about the fabric of your community if you make it.

If you have an inaccessible workplace, if you have an inaccessible school, if you have places you know in the public square that are not accessible, you're making it so that when somebody becomes disabled, and that person could be you, you may never be able to practice the thing that you love and you've trained for your whole life, and the community loses what you could bring to this at a time when we need more than ever every all hands on deck to be like solving climate change and

other problems that face us. Yeah, yeah, that is it's very well said. Actually that yeah, certainly made a very good case. So I want to I mean obviously that the negotiations are still ongoing at least four uh the s I U and for a I think for as well, Um, so what can people do to support the demands that have been made? How can people maybe who are not part of the union, who are not part of the u C even or preps undergrad to are part of the U S but not part of the union. How

how can they show solidarity and support here? Well, I think part of this is, you know, not giving up on the idea that we can press for the original access needs article. I know there's all sorts of like you know, technical rules about regressive bargaining, but honestly, I think you see has broken a lot of the rules of bargaining. So I don't see why that doesn't you know what It's like, what's good for the goose is good for the gander as far as I'm concerned. But

there's also even outside of bargaining. You know, as I said, a lot of these things are things that you see routinely breaks. A d A you see routinely breaks There's other parts of disability law in terms of sex five oh for the Rehabilitation Act, and there's some California law as well as my understanding of it. So you know, you see, just as they have this rationing and policing agency bureaucracy, and it's two separate silos, one for students

and one for workers, and they do that. Like even the fact that they do that communicates that it's not about offering accessibility as a default, because why would you have two silos for that. Well, you have two silos for that because the law that affects students and affects workers are slightly different. So what you're coming from is this aspect of we are dedicated to only doing the barest minimum of the minimum required by law, so we don't even want to meet that minimum required by law.

It's like it's like, you know, you want to offer minimum wage, but if you can get away with it, you're not even going to meet minimum wage. And you have a lot of lawyers in a bureaucracy to make it possible for you to do that. That's what you see does um So that kind of stuff is stuff that outside even a labor contract, you should be able to write the governor, right, the lieutenant governor who's actually got a seat on the board of regents rights your

California legislators. You know, when there was a there was a nimby who sued cow. This was in the news this year. There was a nimby who sued cow to make it so the caw con make housing and and or to cow to make it so the cow was going to have to limit how many it was admitting. Because in the opinion of that group, like they weren't building enough housing to take care of their students, and

they were crowding at Berkeley and blah blah blah. The outrage about that from parents who wanted to send their kids to cow was so great that like within a couple of weeks, the governor and the legislators had passed something to address that. If you put that kind of pressure on the governor of the lieutenant governor and the you know, your state legisslators, they will make sure that the UC Office of the President feels that pressure because these are things, these are laws. You know, at the

we had more ambitious things beyond law. But some of the things that we were that are trying to do in this contract are really just things that they're already required by law to do but aren't doing. We were trying to give it and make it so there was more teeth there, because clearly the federal and state teeth weren't good enough. So we um, we have a resist spot petition out there, but you know, to make it a little easier to contact your if you're a California resident,

the resist pot petition would work that way. But if but if not. You know, like I said, if you if you if you're a parent of a student here, you can write. If you're an alumni, you know, you can write, just really hammer them about it. Okay, Yeah, yeah, definitely.

I think I think writing does make a difference. And I think especially for an institution that I don't quite know how financially dependent they are in donations, but they certainly do like to solicit them, actually if you're an alumnus, because think they solicit them for me a lot. I do not have that much money. So yeah, thank you very much for sharing all of that with us. And I thought that's really really interactive. How can people find you and how can people find you? See access now

if they want to find you online? Uh, we are on Twitter as access you see at access you see um. We are on Facebook and Instagram as well. Actually is also linked in for the more business people. Uh you see access now um. And you can also reach us at you see access now at gmail dot com if you wanted to email us. Wonderful. Yeah, thank you very much. And just to finish that briefly, we are going to

try and make a transcript. It's available at the same time the episode goes out and so folks would like to read it that way if that's easier for them, than We're going to make sure that we have that for this one. So yeah, if you're if you're listening, or if you think someone else that you know would like this and this it doesn't work for them, and we're going to do that. Thank you so much, Megan for giving us some of your afternoon. And yeah, I hope you see some support and I wish you the

best of luck with everything. Well, thank you so much. Woo and welcome to it could happen here. My name is Sharene and today you are stuck with me. Yes, what a treat for all of you beautiful people out there. I've been wanting to do an episode about the World Cup for a while, but I felt like there was just so much to cover, and it was also happening in real time, so I want to wait a bit so I could have enough stuff to pull from. I will say I am recording this on Monday, December nineteenth.

It is the day after the weekend where France lost to Argentina, and Argentina are now our World Cup champions. I'm happy about that. And then Morocco did lose last week to France, which was devastating to me and my family and the rest of the Arab world because we would have loved to see them beat their colonizers, but they got really far, and I want to talk about

the impact that that's had. They did coming forth when they lost to Croatia this weekend as well, so just in case y'all needed to know that, But I will say I am really happy for Argentina, and maybe it was because Morocco lost to France, but I wasn't mad seeing France losing, and all the celebrations I've seen from people celebrating Argentina have been so heartwarming and yeah, but anyway, I wanted to focus on something that I think has

been so unprecedented and beautiful and singular and I think deserves more coverage, and that is this show of Palestinian solidarity that has been happening during the World Cup. It is so cool, and I want to talk about why it's happening, the circumstances that could lead to this happening, and what it means, because I think it's very significant moving forward when it comes to Palestinian rights since Palestinian support,

So let's get into it. There's a great article by British Palestinian writer Hams Aisha titled Palestine is the biggest winner at this year's World Cup. And this article did such a good job compiling some key moments, so I'm going to be referencing from it a lot as we

continue this episode. Okay, here we go. Despite the Western media doing its best to ignore it, the World Cup has seen a huge tidal wave of Palestinian solidarity and it's united the Arab world in a really special way and also highlighted just how many people Arab and non Arab alike support the Palestinian cause. And so, not to be too cheesy, the biggest winners of this World Cup, in my opinion, haven't even had a team at all competing,

and that's the Palestinians. The World Cup has been characterized by unforeseeable developments and dramatic quote unquote upsets, which it's a word I don't even really like, even if it's grammatically correct when it's used in fucking sports jargon. But I don't like it because it kind of sounds like

a bad thing, because it's like upset bo who. But really, I think surprises like this are a really good thing because what these upsets usually mean is simply that the underdog one, which is a narrative I will always support. So these surprises really started with Argentina's lost to Saudi Arabia, which shocked everyone. The faces in the stadium, draws on the floor, everyone was shocked. I watched it with my mom. It was it was incredible and it was truly a

beautiful game. I highly recommend you at least watch some clips from it. It was fucking cool and I don't know, it came out of nowhere. Was really beautiful. And after this victory, Kingston, man of Saudi Arabia, ordered that day that they won a public holiday to say the least. Everyone was losing their minds and these surprises seemed to be endless in this World Cup, mostly because, as I said,

the obvious teams were losing to the underdogs. And coming out of this one of the most consistent themes has been this overarching Palestinian solidarity that has unfolded, particularly among fans of Arab Nations. World Cup was already significant on its own It's held in Gotha, making it the first World Cup to be held in the Arab world and the Muslim world, and only the second held entirely in Asia after the two thousand two tournaments in South Korea

and Japan. The Arab world is obsessed with soccer. An understatement to say obsessed, I should you not. It's a huge part of Arab culture, Middle Eastern culture, and so this was already a huge deal to start with. And I think these two things together, the fact that it's very cultural and the fact that this is the first time it's been on an Arab stage. I think these two things together created the seed for Arabs and Middle East owners to really come together in a way we've

never really seen. And this first World Cup in the Arab world has captured in this symbolic way, this reality where Western powers have receded in the face of their challengers. Morocco. They reached the semifinals and they played France, their colonizers, which was so symbolic. Saudi Arabia humiliated one of the tournament favorites, Argentina, and then Tunisia did the same to its former colonizer France Japan. They beat Germany and Spain.

This traditional power and battle in global soccer and what it means for geopolitics. I feel like it can no longer be taken for granted or ignored. As many as five million Moroccans live abroad, mostly in Europe, and they've celebrated the team's victories in huge street celebrations in France and Belgium and Spain and the Netherlands, and just internationally.

For Moroccans living outside of Morocco and for so many other migrants from the Arab world or Africa, they've been driven by decades of desperation in their home countries to risk everything to reach Europe, only to suffer abuse and contempt. So this achievement after achievement was a huge pivotal milestone. And I think this drive has been coupled with the

show of Palestinian pride and thought out as well. There was no Palestinian team at the World Cup, and yet the Palestinian flag was everywhere, not only in the hands of celebrating Moroccan players and fans, but also at every game and on the streets of Dha and it was

just overwhelming and so amazing to see. And these displays they shocked some Israeli journalists who had been assured by their own government that the US brokered Abraham Accords that had happened between Israel and Morocco and other Arab states. They thought that this signaled that the Arab world had relinquished any pretense of advocacy for Palestinian rights. But as we see with a lot of sports, soccer creates its

own form of civil society. And especially because it's a huge international game in a way that no other sport really is, and also being played in a region where civil society has largely been suppressed by authoritarians, it's made it clear in this World Cup that the Arab public is not willing to follow their unelected leaders and accepting the brutal against Palestinians and what human rights organizations have called Israel's apartheid system a k a. Israel's ethnic cleansing

of Palestinians, violence, brutality, murder. The list can go on. I'm sure you've heard me on my soapbox before, but

it always bears repeating. My point is that the Arab public and the people in these Arab nations do not represent and do not necessarily believe in these leaders that again they did not elect it's all authoritarian dictatorships and just corrupt government that I mean, we can get into history another time, but the disablement of so many of these governments have been because of the Western world, say the least, I don't know, a different episode. I'm getting distracted, sorry.

Even countries that did not qualify for the World Cup are surging with this united pride and pro Palestinian sentiment. The Palestinian cause is obviously near and dear to the hearts of many Arabs across the world. And again, not only is this the first time the World Cup has been hosted in an Arab country, it's also probably the first time there has been such a large gathering and concentration of Arabs across nationalities gathered all in one place.

And again, at almost every single game, there have been fans holding the Palestinian flag or banners that say Free Palestine in the stadium. In their matches against Australia and Belgium, respectively, Tunisia and Moroccan fans each unfurled a huge Free Palestine flag in the forty minute, which is very significant because this is in reference to the ninet Necba, which translates

to the catastrophe. The Necaba deserves millions of episodes on its own, but essentially it was the mass expulsion and ethnic cleansing of at least seven hundred and fifty thousand Palestinian refugees in ninety eight when the state of Israel was formed. A side note that I do want to mention here is that there's an incredible film on Netflix right now that you should all go watch. It's called Farha f A r h A. It's about the Neckba

and there's never been a film like this before. And the Israeli government has been doing this like smear campaign against it and has been calling it all sorts of terrible things. But the other side, Palestinian supporters and Palestinians, they've made it so successful. They've outdone the haters, I guess to say the least, and it's doing really well. And it's because of these supporters that it is doing

so well. So I mean, sorry to get a little bit tangential here, but I really encourage you to watch Farha on Netflix right now. There's never been a film about this catastrophe, the Neckba, so I highly encourage everyone to watch or even just like put it on in the background while you're doing something else, so it counts as views. Just keep supporting it. I think this is a really important time and it feels really significant that this is all happening at the same time. So anyway,

go out to that film. But Tunisia and Moroccan fans each at the forty minute in reference to this catastrophe, they unfurled this huge free Palestine flag, and by waving that Palestinian flag, Moroccan fans and players expressed a very public descent from the choices of their government and of the Western powers and as well as other Arab autocrats

to abandon the Palestinians to their fate. And as they advanced, Morocco was able to sustain the attention on these issues, and their players proved time and time again that they are more than deserving to be playing on this world stage. Morocco was also the first African team to make the semifinals of the World Cup, which is also a significant achievement and a lovely slap in the face to anyone

who doubted them. The Moroccan defense was incredible, maybe some of the best defense I've ever seen, but due to soccer's globalization. The top players in soccer have for decades all played in Europe's elite leagues, and this was the first World Cup in which all five African teams were coached by African coaches rather than by European ones, and Morocco's coach in particular appears to have made an exceptionable difference.

During Tunisia's game against France, a Gunesian fan ran onto the pitch and he waved a Palestinian flag, cartwheeling in the process. The crowd erupted into chance of Palestine as he was dragged away by security, and in a different match at the stadium, fans chanted with spirit and blood, we will redeem you Old Palestine. They chanted this in Arabic. And this occurred on the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian people November twenty nine, and it felt very poetic.

And then when Morocco knocked the former champions Spain out of the tournament, the Moroccan team posed for the standard celebratory team photo and instead of holding the Moroccan flag, they all held a Palestinian one. A winning team holding up the flag of another country has literally never happened before, and the fact that it's a Palestinian flag. I don't know, man chills, I'm obsessed, obsessed, but okay, I feel like I'm going to get more rambily and distracted. So before

I do that, let's take a break. I could not think of a witty segue to get there, but here are some ads. Okay, we're back. I also wanted to mention what, in my opinion, is the most iconic image of the World Cup, and that is when Morocco's Sophia and Buffal was dancing with his mom after his team's

brilliant upset victory over Portugal in the quarterfinals. They were dancing and happy, and she's wearing a hijab, and it was just this you're display of joy and um it just it felt really familiar to me, and it felt that way to a lot of Middle Easterners and Arabs

and Moroccans. This moment, this dancing between him and his mom, it was a statement of pride and of priorities and a reminder that as the mother of another great football player, Zenna Dean's Adan, she once said that quote some things are bigger than football. Buffall and his mother, like the majority of Morocco's players and coaches. They live in European cities and they're part of that continent's vast, marginalized and

embattled migrant underclass. Again, she wore a hijab, something that she would be barred from doing if she was a teacher or a public servant in France. Against all of that, this moment on the field was captured in a moment of unbridled joy. It was so pure and so human and just reminded everyone, I hope reminded me and my

family of who we are. And again, I think this is really significant when you think about the geopolitical implications that we've seen during these games, with countries like Morocco playing against the teams of the countries that colonized them a k a. When they played with France, it really feels like this beautiful blossoming of culture against all odds of trying to suppress it. So outside the stadiums, this theme remained the same when it came to Palestinian solidarity.

A Saudi Arabian vendor selling flags of different countries. He went viral after he was spotted giving customers an extra Palestinian flag as a free gift with any purchase, and so this uplifting message that has been repeated time and time again during this World Cup is that Palestine can never be removed from the hearts of the people. And there are so many heartwarming videos like the one I mentioned, and I urge everyone to follow Palestinian accounts to keep

up if you're curious. I know the World Cup is technically over now, but these videos are so fun and joyful to watch. I really felt so much joy watching them. This outpouring of support for Palestine is reminiscent of an earlier time in history when the Arab world was also

united in its support for Palestine. The Palestinian cause was once a driving force in the policy direction of the Arab world, and it reached its zenith in the nineteen sixties when nations like Syria, Jordan and Egypt they went to war against Israel with the anti imperial objective of

regional Arab unity in Palestinian liberation. However, those aspirations were stomped out in nineteen sixty seven when Israel quote unquote one the Six Day War or the June War, which is also known as the nineteen sixty seven Arab Israeli War or the Third Arab Israeli War. Just a very quick history lesson here. This war was fought between Israel and a coalition of Arab states, and it ended after Israeli tanks and infantry advanced on a heavily fortified region

of Syria called the Golden Heights. They successfully captured the Goal and Heights. After this, the next day, on June tenth and nineteen sixty seven, a U N brokered ceasefire took effect and the Sixth Day War came to an abrupt end. The casualties between the two opposing sides are basically incomparable. I'm gonna say some stats here, but despair with me. Between seven hundred and seventy six and nine hundred and eighty three Israelis were killed and four thousand

and five hundred and seventeen were wounded. Fifteen Israeli soldiers were captured. Arab casualties were far greater. Between nine thousand and eight hundred and fifteen thousand Egyptian soldiers were listed as killed or missing in action. An additional four thousand, three hundred and thirty eight Egyptian soldiers were captured. Jordanian losses are estimated to be seven hundred killed in action

with another two thousand and five hundred wounded. The Syrians were estimated to have sustained between a thousand and two thousand, five hundred killed in action, between three hundred and sixty seven and five Syrians were captured. It's an incomparable, an insurmountable loss, and I might go as far to say it was a massacre because it was so unbalanced. Casualties were also suffered by the u n e F, the United Nations Emergency force that was stationed on the Egyptian

side of the border. In three different episodes, Israeli forces attacked a U n e F convoy as well as camps in which UN e F personnel were concentrated, as well as the un e F headquarters in Gaza, and this resulted in one Brazilian peacekeeper and fourteen Indian officials killed by Israeli forces, with an additional seventeen peacekeepers wound. Did in both groups, that's your history lesson for today, at least for now. But as you can't imagine that this was a huge loss for the Arab world. In

addition to stealing the gold and heights. This war led Israel to seizing and occupying all remaining Palestinian territories, and as you know or should know by now, Israel has maintained its control of the land at the expense of the Palestinians, with Arab leaders not able to do much in protest over these years, especially after this nineteen sixty seven loss, a lot of Arab leaders almost seemed indifferent.

When we fast forward to something happened that seemed like a decisive death blow to the hopes of Palestinian solidarity in the Abraham Accords were signed, and these were a series of joint normalization statements between Israel and Arab countries that would theoretically pave the way for increased business and

diplomatic relations. The implication was that Israel could afford to maintain it's apartheid rule and still enjoy warm relations with the Arab world because their politicians too, We're happy to willfully neglect the Palestinians. Officials from Bahayan, the UAE, and Morocco all signed the supposed quote unquote peace treaty with Israel. However, as we've seen from this year's World Cup, the Arab

people do not agree with their politicians or their decisions. Again, most of these decision makers are not elected by their people. There's a lot of corruption at play, and I think it's very important to always separate a government from its people, as we're seeing, especially in Iran right now, which is something that makes me very emotional and deserves to be talked about more. I can't do a justice in this one sentence, but I urge you all to keep spreading

awareness about Iran. Please. What they're doing to protesters is inhumane and truly medieval. Recent polls indicate that the Arab public widely disapproves of the Abraham Accords, strongly disagreeing with the prospect of normalizing ties with Israel as long as the Palestinians remain oppressed. But if there were still any lingering doubts that these accords our bullshit had not wanted.

The experience of Israeli journalists and Clethod can be seen as this decisive confirmation that the treatment of Palestinians will actually be what dictate the trajectory of normalization. Israeli journalists broadcasting live have been interrupted by rallies of people chanting pro Palestinian slogans and waving Palestinian flags. An Egyptian man went viral after he leaned into the camera and said,

live on Israeli television, Viva Palestine. Fans refusing to speak to Israeli channels has also been a hilarious common occurrence. One particular exchange included Moroccan fans posing for the camera before swiftly walking off upon realizing it was for an Israeli media outlet. The reporter's response was one of shock, repeatedly citing that a piece agreement had been signed by Morocco, thereby assuming that the Moroccan people themselves endorsed the notion

that Israel's crimes could be whitewashed and forgotten. And again, highly recommend you watch these videos. They have brought me a joy that I haven't felt in literal years, and it's just beautiful and most importantly hilarious to see. Highly recommend. There are silver lining sometimes to life, and I feel like there are enough terrible things happening where a little joy is fine. And seeing Israeli journalists being accumulated, thank you, Thank you world. There's a thread on Twitter of World

Cup football fans refusing to speak to Israeli channels. I'll try to put that in the notes and where, but regardless, highly recommend looking up these videos. Just again beautiful, beautiful stuff. And as I mentioned, Israeli journalists often seem bewildered as to why they are being boycotted. An Israeli reporter told The New York Times, I really changed my mind here.

We are not human beings for them. They want to wipe us out from the map, which is obviously not true, and language like this is one of many Zionist talking points that are all stupid. And while Israeli journalists speculated about being wiped out, that is in fact the lived

reality for Palestinians under Israeli rule. Also, there is a video that was captured, and I'm sure there are many more instances like this where it was not captured on video, but the Israeli police were violently cracking down on Palestinians, including children, who were celebrating Morocco's previous winds and occupied East Jerusalem. They were celebrating Rocco becoming the first African or air country to reach the Semifinals, and they were

literally beaten up. There's no defense in this video That's the thing that I can't get over is the idea facts in a way that is so indefensible and so obvious. And you can say maybe the similar things about the police here. It's mind blowing that they've been able to terrorize Palestinians for basically a century now. I also want to play this video. Well, you're gonna hear the audio.

There's a Palestinian activist online that I really admire. He's always posting really great things, and he sometimes posts funny things which are very funny. But his name is Slaa and his handle is s b e I h dot jpg. And there is a video that he posted about basically what Israel has been doing just throughout even the past week when this World Cup is happening, and I feel like he'll say it better than me paraphrasing it, so

here he is. Let's go through everything Israel has been doing to Palestinians in the past week or so, during all this hype of Morocco making it to the semi finals. And these are the reasons why so many people are carrying and waving the Palestinian flag at the World Cup right now, including the Moroccan team. After their matches. First, we have Palestinians who are celebrating Morocco's winds being attacked

by Israeli occupation forces. They're out here waving the Morocco flag, trying to celebrate with them, and of course it has to be cut short with Israeli soldiers coming and hitting everyone. Then we have a sixteen year old child named Jennezekadine who was on the roof of her house when she was shot in the face by Israeli forces during another

illegal raid of the city of Genine. We have another sixteen year old Palestinian child, a boy named Yeti Maui, who was also killed by Israeli forces in west of Romola. On top of those two, we have four Palestinian men also killed by Israeli forces Jehad Hamid Ladock damage and Israeli forces demolished another Palestinian home in a town near Jericho.

Then another Palestine home in the town of Laban. Israeli occupation forces fired tear gas at journalists who were covering the Palestinian protests against the illegal Israeli settlement expansions in the town of bid Desion. You'd think that we're done, but there's more. We have an Israeli soldier brutally beating a young Palestinian man in Nabilis. The soldier sits on top of him and punches him in the head. And the east of Hebron, Israeli forces cut down fifty olive

trees belonging to Palestinian farmers. And of course Israeli settlers continue to break into a Uxam moss under the protection of Israeli occupation forces. This is why everyone's living in a Palestinian flag at the World Cup. This is why that tun Asian man randomly ran through the match with the Palestinian flag, or why Israeli reporters are being ignored and shunned. These are the reasons. Why not because anti

Semitism is because Israel is literally killing Palestinians. You'd rather just blame it all on anti Semitism instead of simply holding Israel a acountable for their actions. Everything I just listed happened in the past like ten days, putting aside everything that Israel has been doing to Palestinians for the past well almost a hundred years now. So don't be

surprised when people stand with the people of Palestine. Last week marked six months since El Jazira journalist Sharine was assassinated by Israeli forces, and while her death did attract more coverage than as usual, in part to her being an American citizen, it was unfortunately not an exception. Since the year two thousand fifty, Palestinian journalists have been murdered,

many many more civilians, including children, have been murdered. So if media representatives or journalists from an apartheid state can't seem to understand why the reception to their presence has been so cold, they just are better off examining why that is and why their government is actually the one attempting to wipe a people off the map. Even in the weeks during this World Cup, Israel has killed multiple Palestinians,

has murdered multiple Palestinians. They killed a sixteen year old girl when she was on her roof searching for her cat. She was shot four times, twice in the head. How can you justify that they're claiming it was an accident. But it's similar to what police say here when they shoot someone multiple times in the back and then blame it on the person that they murdered. In the family

that they destroyed X y Z, etcetera, etcetera. And just to put it in perspective, Israeli forces have killed over two hundred and fifteen Palestinians this year, making it the deadliest year and over a decade. Israel is the one who does not see Palestinians, as has proven time and time again by their actions as human beings. Something so significant is that the public support of Palestinians solidarity has

not been confined to only fans of Arab nations. Brazilian fans also proudly raised the Palestinian flag, and Uruguay supporters have been spotted donning the Kofeia, which is the symbolic black and white scarf that has become a symbol of Palestinian resistance, and they're also wearing pro Palestinian shirts, with

fans insisting the Palestinian people deserve freedom. One clip that also went viral on social media featured an English fan who, during an interview with an Arabic channel, confessed that as Arabic wasn't really that strong, and then he shouted free Palestine and great Arabic and then he broke into this free, free, free chant with everyone around him again joyful, beautiful stuff.

That just proves that this kind of support works, and it grows and it spreads, and so all of this really goes to show is that while Arab governments have been normalizing relations with Israel, that sentiment is not reflected in the streets, and Arabs and non Arabs alike are more passionate than ever about the Palestinian cause. Some Palestinians living in Cutold have referred to the World Cup as a quote golden opportunity to introduce our cause, and this

intent has been received enthusiastically, to say the least. And yet in the face of such an unavoidable talking point, there's been a striking, if not unsurprising, radio silence from Western media. It's a huge reason why I wanted to talk about this in an episode. I found it so strange that my family and friends who were tuned into the World Cup, we're constantly talking about something that hasn't been covered at all by Western media, at least not

in a real honest way. If anything, the World Cup has ignited a Islamophobic and orientalists tropes in some Western news coverage, which I think is so shameful. For example, I'm going to go through a little list that Al Jazeera shared. A Dutch newspaper published a cartoon of Moroccan men stealing the World Cup trophy. And this image, they're on a bike and they're grabbing this trophy from a

white man. They're depicted as not white, obviously, and it just reinforces these stereotypes of young Arab men in the Netherlands being seen as criminals. Another example is Okay, so when Muslims put up an index finger, it's what we call dak weed, which is to signify the oneness of God, because Islam there's only one God, just like all the

Big Three as far as religions go. But when these Muslim teams are winning, the gestures from the players, like sometimes you'll see a player raising an index finger, are raising two index fingers. And so this fucking German TV news anchor responded to Moroccos excess by suggesting that these players that are raising their index fingers are showing support for Isis. And some fans have responded to this with humor, but at the same time it's like you're laughing only

because it's sad and maddening. Another example is a cartoon in a French newspaper. It depicted Cathos national team as bearded caricatures that were playing soccer holding rifles and machete's. Is such an ugly cartoon and I have no idea why they insist on making these artistic depictions. I think they know because it's gone people riled up in the past. It's almost like they're like poking the bear. So it's kind of annoying. That's so childish in my opinion, but again,

terrible depiction of Arabs, what's new. And then another example is a photo caption in a British newspaper stated that Cathodies are not used to seeing women in Western clothing, when in reality about population is from other countries, including western ones, and this caption was later removed. Another example, yes there's still more, is that a French journalist joked about there being a lot of Mosques in Clethod as

if that was something like notable to be aware of. Yeah, no, ship, people are sucking Muslim And then a Danish TV channel literally compared Morocco's players who were celebrating by hugging their mothers on the field. They compared them with monkeys on live television TV two News. They showed a segment in which the anchor Sore and Lippert he held up an image of monkeys embracing while talking about Morocco's national team

players hugging their mothers. And while comparing black and brown people with monkeys is a common, unsurprising racist trope, it was still pretty upsetting to see what happened in this year of two whatever. I just think the obvious orientalist nature of Western news really um came out in full

force for some of this coverage. But yeah, I just think these kind of depictions and coverage, it reinforces stereotypes that are harmful and shameful, and it further makes immigrants and people of color in countries that they immigrant to just get terrorized. And I just wanted to bring up some examples to remind you that news sucks most of

the time. Okay, the World Cup and all the joy and pride that's come from it is all my family, and I'm sure most air families have talked about for the last month, and I feel like it barely registers here. You have no idea how happy I've seen my parents, and my mom in particular just text me updates, are

watching a game with me. We're all so united in a way that I haven't felt before, and it's just really beautiful, and it reminds you that borders are all made up and in the end, we're all the same people fighting for the same things. Notoriously, large sections of US and British media have engaged in the practice a deceptive framing and untrue coverage when it comes to covering

Israel's treatment of Palestinians. We've seen this in inaccurate headlines, the twisting of words, and the general constant anti Palestinian and pro Israel bias that is almost always present when Western media talks about Palestine, and if Palestine rises in the political agenda, western media is quick to disparage it. In the UK, when a Labor Party candidate made reference to Palestine during a campaign in one the liberal leaning New Statesman magazine referred to it as quote unhinged and

an obsession. British Palestinian writer again Hamazali sha rights in his article do people suffering from decades of cruelty deserve support? Apparently not if they're Palestinian. It's characteristic of this bias that while human rights have been a hot topic throughout the World Cup, and fans across the world are being

commanded to speak out against injustice. The outpouring of Palestinian solidarity has largely been ignored, and this, unfortunately isn't surprising, but it doesn't make it any less disappointing, he continues, as it maintains its rule. Israel has spent years, with unconditional assistance from the Western world, cracking down and suppressing

Palestinian solidarity. We are under no illusions that the outpouring of support at the World Cup will cause the occupation to grind to a halt or prevent Palestinians from being killed. As a British Palestinian, he says, I often see the misery of my family who are living under occupation gets swept under the carpet by the international community. As a result, it's hard not to exist in a perpetual state of despondency.

But seeing the Palestinian flag hoisted so proudly during the World Cup has been heartening because it provides new grounds for hope and it shows that this is by no means a solo struggle and that the commitment to palestinean liberation remains as unshakable as ever. That was the end of his article, and uh, that's a great place to end because that was fucking great and poetic. And I hope that you also go watch the movie on Netflix.

It's really important and it all goes hand in hand with supporting the Palestinian people and continuing to raise awareness because that's a huge reason why we've gotten this far, and the culmination of all of that being broadcast from the World Cup internationally. It's just been really really incredible and beautiful to watch. And uh, yeah, that's the episode until next time. I don't know, go watch. That's the only thing I can really say. And I hope you

all have nice holidays whatever you do. Um yeah, have fun, goodbye, Welcome Today could happen here. It's it's the last episode that that that we're that I'm recording this year. Um yeah, I'm your host. Be along, and today we are going to tell you a story of the Republican Party using extensive political violence and attempt to manipulate an election to install their unelected presidential Canada as dictator of the United States.

And of by this, of course, I am referring not to the election, but to the election of two thousand's okay, So for for for those of you who do not remember this story, and this is okay. I was like three when this was happening. But weirdly, I have a very very this is legitimately one of my first memories. Is just I have the words engraved into my mind hanging chads, and so we we we will get to

what exactly that is. But the two thousand election was one of the most chaotic elections in the history of the United States. Now, the US has a long history of really really weird elections. I mean, you know, from from from the serbspective of sort of like is the U s representative democracy? I think there's a pretty good argument that no election until like after the Civil Rights

Act is even sort of a legitimate election. But you know, I mean, and and so far as you like consider elections to be legitimate, which you know, okay, but you know that the US is no is no stranger to someone winning an election than not taking office. There are, in fact, there are if you if you go back into American history, there are two different elections that are

called the corrupt bargain Um. There's uh, John Quincy Adams, and I think it's makes this really really weird alliance with the original American political Slee's ball Henry Clay to get himself and solved as president. Although that that that's an election that's like truly an election where there are no heroes, where it's it's John Quincy Adams Henry Clay allying to bring down Andrew fucking Jackson. So you know,

no no heroes there. There. There's there's another election after Reconstruction, which is the end of Reconstruction, where the Republican Party literally trades and like trades ending Reconstruction for putting their president in office. After a truly genuinely wild set of voting results happens, we're like all of the votes are in a box and the two parties are fighting over like who's going to count the votes because the guy who counts the votes from like the box is the

person who's going to determine who wins the election. And so there's this whole negotiated thing where the eight d like racist Southern Democrats, are like, okay, we'll we'll give you, we'll we'll give you this election if you promised the pull troops out of the South. So okay, you know, American elections have always been sort of more fraudulent than people give them credit for. But the two thousand election, even by the standards of like an American election, is

some bullshit. So let's let's let's go back. Let's go back to the origin of the story. The year is two thousand. For the last time in human history, humanity has taken collective action to stopping in penny catastrophe, having by the heartrending labor of a bunch of siss admins, including a guy that I knew growing up who spent fucking New Year, who literally spent New Year's Eve until the bell ring, like basically in a closet with a bunch of computers at his job trying to make sure

what UK wouldn't happen. But you know, we did it, Actually we we actually did it. There was there was there was like, you know, there was human collective action

to stop a major catastrophe from happening. And Al Gore, a Democrat who claims to have invented the Internet, is running against Harvard educated Harvard and actually Yale educated oil man caused playing as a cowboy whose name is George Bush, and I, oh god, I don't know, I don't I feel like people have kind of forgotten how really genuinely

sleazy George Bush was. Like he he has this sort of public like, you know, one of the reasons he wins elections, and he has his public images like the guy who you know, like everyone like he he's the presidential candidate you'd want to have a beer with. But again, like literally everything from he's like public mannerisms down to like the minutia of his accent to like the stupid

cowboy hat that he wears. All of this this is a bullshit, right, This is a fucking Harvard guy, And all of this is you know, completely intricately manufactured by a set a set of like very very very like sleazy but incredibly ruthless and efficient Republican political operatives. Now, George Bush's father is George H. W. Bush, who was the first and only director of the CIA to become president.

So yeah, but Bush bushes running on this sort of neo conservative alliance of Texas oil men, evangelical hardliners, and weapons contractors. Um. The weapons contractors part uh winds up being incredibly relevant when nine eleven happens, and both Bush and Dick his code what's it called vice presidential I guess candidate at the time, but it is vice presidential selection.

Dick Cheney, who is like Dick Cheney like saying that he's like the physical human embodiments of the military industrial complex is under selling how closely tied um Dick Cheney is to the military dustrial complex. And you know, like this is this is part of the reason why the warn Rock happens because again, like this entire coalition is just like it is, it is the it is is the sort of height of the military petro dollar coalition, just a a coalition of pere evil like fueled by

war profits and homophobia. And but you know, part part of part of what's been happening in in this entire period is this is this is the year after the Battle of Seattle on the anti globalization movement hasn't been

smashed again. This is there's other things. This is pre nine eleven, right, This is this is a very very short period of time where like in between the Battle of Seattle and UH eleven, where American politics are very very very weird, and you get another thing that we don't really have now, but from the nineties until about nine eleven kind of existed where that which was that there was a period where third party is kind of

mattered ish like Ross Pirot like in the nineties. Arguably maybe could have won the election if vietn't just like given up. But yeah, you know. And one of the sort of products of this is that the Green Party is actually a real thing in in two thousands in a way that they're kind of not right. And then this has been this this sort of unfolding of a bunch of left wing social movements into which is absolutely

disastrous attempt to enter party politics. Um, but they pull, you know, and this is the thing that no one has ever heard the end of, but they pull a bunch of votes into Ralph Nader in Florida, which winds up being a big deal. But the product of this is that this election is on a just on a knife's edge. Both sides of this election are unbelievably close. The entire election comes down to Florida. Now, the problem with the entire election coming down to Florida is that

the American electoral system is a fucking joke. It is

a disaster. It is a a genuine embarrassment. The United States is a country that has more resources than like, it has enough resources that, like Genghis Khan would weep like, it has a genuinely unfathomable amounts of resources, and its election system is basically run by a bunch of weird dipshit like party if like local like a weird patchwork of like completely underfunded and overworked local government officials who never have real budgets and who just spends like two

months not sleeping with their like three co workers trying to make the elections work. And this is really weird because like most places on Earth that have elections, um, there's like, you know, a national thing that sort of does the elections in the US, Like no, no, it relies heavily on volunteers. It's just like this weird patchwork quilt of stuff, and Florida being Florida, a bunch of

stuff goes very wrong very quickly. Um. There There's two very famous ballot problems, the most famous of which is hanging chads. So okay, okay, what what what? What is the hanging chat For people who have forgotten? Are people who you know, weren't alive then, which I realize is I man, the fact that the fact that I have coworkers who are not alive for hanging chads is really really disturbing thought. But okay, so what is a hanging

chat um? The answer is that in Florida, the way this ballot works is that you have to physically punch holes in your ballot. And you know, you punch a hole in the place, like, okay, so today, right when you fill in a ballot, you have to like fill in a square right with a pencil in in in Florida, you have to like hole punch that square. This is maybe the worst ballot design I can possibly imagine, and it goes terribly wrong. A bunch of these whole punches

basically don't actually remove all the paper. And there's there are so many ways, so many ways that this gets sucked up. The hanging chat is the most famous one. That hanging so a chad Basically, it's the piece of paper that when you punch the thing with like the whole punch it's supposed to like, it's the paper that comes out of the hole. Right. Hanging chad is when you do the whole punch thing. But the chat is still connected to the piece of paper by like one corner.

But but but again less less. Do you think there's only one way that these ballots get sucked up? No, no, no, no, no, there's there are like, there are an unfathomable number of ways that these ballots don't punch correctly. They're they're swinging door chairs, there's tried chairs, there's did bull chairs, there's pregnant chats. It's unbelievable. And a bunch of people's votes

just don't get counted because these ballots. The reason they're doing these whole bunch ballots that these are these are you know, this is what it's supposed to be, like the fancy new like voting technology. Right then, then the new vote technology is the voting machines. And the way the voting machine works is basically, the voting machine can check if if if there's a hole there, and if there's a hole in the paper, then it counts you

as the accounts that as the vote. But if the entire chad hasn't been punched out, it won't count your vote. This is a problem. And there's another problem, uh, and and that problem is the butterfly ballot. So the butterfly ballot was original. Is this ballot they're using in Florida that was originally designed to help elderly voters? Um, it's supposed to be. The goal all of the ballot is to have larger thought sizes to make it more accessible for people. Which this is good, right, like, okay, I

I support I support accessible design. Is put accessible design for voting. The problem is this ballot is designed like ship. The way it works is there's a two page ballot with like a crease in the middle. Right. It's it's kind of like a book, right, like you unfold the book in the middle of the ballot, you know, And on both of these pages there are like the different different candidate names and parties. The problem is, in order to pick a candidate, you have to punch just like

a whole. You have to punch one of the one of these served circles. But these circles are in a line down the middle of the crease of the ballot, right, so you have you have candidates on both You should you should google what these look like because it's kind of hard to explain. But basically what's happening is that there are there are different party names on each side

of the ballot. But then in order to pick which party you're voting for, you have to pick for a specific hole that's supposed to be next you the like the candidate you supported in the in the middle of the page. Of the problem is these are all on a line, right. They're on a straight line, which means that two candidates can be like across from each other

on the same page or on on opposite pages. And then there's two holes that are like right next because because the holes are both in the middle of the ballot, right, so that you have these situations where for example, for and this is the one that's important. Inside of the there's like two lines and then there's like it says al Gore and Lieberman in it, right, and inside of those two lines in the in the in the middle of the page, there are two holes, and one of

these holes votes for Core. But the other one of those holes, I is for the candidate on the other side of the page, which is Reformed Party candidate Crimtinal Fascist Goal path Bu Canon. And the result of this, it says, people start looking through these things. Pap Bu Canon has a bunch of voters from Democratic Party strongholds and like also particularly like like a bunch of like Democratic Catholic voters vote for Buchanan, and Buchanan himself is like,

there's no way this is real. Like Buchanan's like, you know, he's he's a figure will probably like one day do a like we'll probably talk about more on this podcast. Yeah, that those behind the Baschard's episode about him, he is a he is a fucking Nazi. Uh, he sucks ass. But he's also so he's from a kind of evangelical

who like really really really fucking hates Catholics. And you know, so there's a bunch of these Catholic like Democratic voters he voted for this guy, and everyone's like, what the funk happened here? The thing that happened here is all these people got confused. And yes, so this is a disaster on a hundred million levels. And when we come back from ads, we will talk about the product of all of this, which is not good. Alright, we're back.

So on election night, the media starts to call Florida for Gore based an exit pulling, but they start getting calls for Republican political operatives saying hold no, hold on, hold on, it's actually too close to call. And the initial count from Florida has the Republican Party ahead. But when I say the Hublican Party is ahead, they were ahead by like six votes. And so this triggers a mandatory recount. But and this, and this is another problem with this, right we we we we've gone through at

length all of the problems with these ballots. Right the recall that they do is a recall using the voting machines. And those voting machines our guess what the ones that are. If if you if you rerun a funked up Chad ballot through the same voting machine, it's going to get a fucked up result. So okay, So they run this again and the difference in votes comes down to fle five hundred votes. At this point, Gore's campaign requests a

manual recount. They want people to look at the balance by hand and figure out who people actually voted for, because these machines are a fucking shit show. But in any kind of sort of like you know, and even remotely competent or saying like democratic political system, there would be a bunch of people doing this like they're there. You know, like when when an election happens, they would be just a very very large number of people mobilized

to make sure that it runs smoothly. There's not. There's like a bunch of like unbelievably overworked and underpaid. Some people are people who also people who are just sucking volunteers, like a bunch of just random like unbelievably exhausted, like local election officials who have to do this recount. And this is where the Bush campaign sees their chance to steal the election. So the election happens on November seven, and on November eleven, the Bush campaign sues to stop

the recount. Now, we talked on a previous episod known a while back about the Democrats how they have this line in the two thousand's about how they're part of the quote reality based community, and how this is a reflection of you know, if you look at the whole quote, which is from a Republican political strategist, I what's actually what they're saying here is that what's happening is that the Democrats observe reality. Well, the Republicans set out to

define reality. And this is the moment, this election is where we get to see how the dynat we we we we we get to like really first see these these principles in action. I'm gonna read from the Washington Post here. Unlike the Gore campaign, which focused on filing motions in Florida courts to keep the recount going in key counties like Miami Dodd, the Bush campaign waged a broader, costlier effort on multiple fronts. Blakeman said it was a

three pronged effort. He said, it was a court battle, it was a recount organization, and it was also a pr effort because although the voting effort ended, the campaign never did until there was a definitive winner. So what happens here is Republicans start this massive media blitz to

convince people that Bush actually won the election. And this this is a really really important moment in sort of American history because it's one of the things that solidifies, um It's one of the things that solidifies sort of like like owning the lib for example. It's like a major point, and it's like like one of like the

key focal points of America of Republican politics. And this is eventually gonna consume like all of their politics right until when we get this sort of you know, like now right where that's like owning the Libs is the only thing this is about. You know, this this had owning the Libs is kind of like it's it's been a part of Republican politics for a long time. But this is where we really start to see it sort

of consuming everything. And Okay, if you look at their like like what they're saying, by modern standards, it is incredibly weak ship. Right, this is like this is a culture that is just a bourge from the es. Nobody has invented real posted yet, but it is really on

the lip stuff. Like they have this whole campaign where they call the Goyal Libramain campaign sore loser Man, and everyone has like sore loser man hats and like they have all these like printed signs and like T shirts and they're selling merch and you know, and so you know, they're running basically an OP and they're running an OPT to convince everyone that like, no, actually we legitimately won this election and it's over and the recounts just people

being but heard they lost. And this is where things get really really weird. So in Miami, DoD where there's a manual recount going on. A bunch of protesters in fancy suits show up and starts screaming at election workers. Now, if this was the old Democratic Party machine like LBJ would have personally pushed six of these guys out a window, and the recount would have been run by like sixty

of the earliest dudes, the entire Chicago mob. But this is the the incredibly decrepit two thousand Democratic Party, who have replaced all their mob guys with consultants. And these people legitimately, like you know, they believe in the rules and the norms and the process. And the result of this is that Bush literally destroys the entire United States, and I think, like irrevocably damaged, like the entirety of the of you know, like what what whatever is left

to the American democratic system. So how how this has achieved? But back in Miami DoD this Democratic Party operative is seen walking around the recount area with a ballot. Now this is a blank ballot, right, this guy is going to see He's going with an election official to go see if he can replicate like the like how the hay h has stuff happens to prove that like this

is what's going on. But they Problicans see this guy and they immediately start screaming about how the Democrats are staling in the election, and they like beat this ship out of this guy, and just a full on riot starts in this government building and it works. The recount stops. The election workers are terrified. The recount. Yeah, like the all like everything stopped for the day. They can't do anything. And the next day the recount is fully stopped. It

never resumes, and the Republicans are sunned by this. They assumed that, like, you know, the political operatives doing the rioting, we're gonna like face some oppositions to the Democrats on the ground for you know, like literally assaulting and intimidating a bunch of election workers in order to like stop votes from being counted. But there's they they don't, there's

there's nothing, there's no resistance at all. Um. Here's a quote from Douglas Hay, who is there a Republican political operatives who is one of the organizers of the Brooks Brothers riot, who he tried to do a redemption arc in the media to sort of like be like, oh I was part of the Brooks Brothers riot. But even I think the stop the steel stuff is bad, which, like I think man doth protest too much. Um, here's

just the quote. I still don't understand how it was that we completely outmatched the Democrats, Hey says, and this is how Bush wins the election the Supreme Court, which again it should also be know the Streme Court is staffed by a bunch of George H. W. Bush appointees. Um. Eventually here's the Clayic case and decides that the constitution says that the winner the winner has to be declared by a certain times, so there's no time for a recount,

and they have the election to Bush. And this is achieved. And this is possible because of the Brooks Brothers riot and the Brooks Brothers, right, is what this whole sort of republican opertor things comes to be known because they're all wearing Brooks Brothers suits. Um. Now, okay, there are a lot of people involved in this riot who are like at the core of modern republican politics. Um. Yeah,

Neil Gorrich and Amy COLEMYN. Barritt, and I think there's actually one other like Paris and Republicans of elevated senior office. There are multiple people on the Supreme Court today who were on the Wish legal team when they were doing this. And you know, there's also the question of the extent to which roger Stone is involved. If you asked roger Stone,

he claims to have organized literally this entire thing. Um. Now, other people who were involved with they claimed that roger Stone was like fucked off at a hotel somewhere else and didn't was just sort of around and didn't actually organize it. But either way, this set up precedent for how you can rig an election, which is if you if you can seize the majority on the Supreme Court.

Was sort of like when you know, you can put your sort of loyal minions there and then you can have an initial count of an election that looked that that that looks like it's favoring you, even if that's not actually true. If you then have an initial count of an election that says that you win, and then you can stop and then you were able to stop votes from being counted, uh from November until January, you

will win the election. That that that that is the precedents that was installed by by the two thous election and if you look at the Stop the Still campaign, this is exactly what Trump is trying to do. And literally Roger Stone is also trying to do this, right, Um, this is this is this is this is what stop

is Still is. I you can you can find Trump talking about this months before the election, right this, this, this is why he was trying to do his whole thing about about the mail in ballots because he and Roger Stone and sort of all the political operators whore involved in the circles were like, okay, so we know that like a bunch of Democrats are gonna do mail in ballots because of COVID because they don't want to be there at the ballots. They know that the initial

count is going to favor them. And I think people have forgotten this, but if you remember the the night of the election in I remember like like even a bunch of my friends who were like people who were you know, like like fairly serious, like I don't know politics nowhere, people were really deeply invested in politics, like thought that Trump had won the election because what would have been counted on that night was just was just the sort of initially wasn't counting the mail in ballots,

and so yeah, the plan was just to de legitimate mail in ballots in the eyes of of sort of the well mostly the Republican based, but like sort of the American populacets the whole, and then have a bunch of people physically assault these centers to get them to stop the places with these votes are being counted, to get them to stop the count and it doesn't work.

And it doesn't work I think partially because but yeah, those feelings, Like one of the things is that you know you can't if you're gonna do a play like this, you have to run it like you you are relying on the sort of physical intimidation of the court workers. But mostly what you need to do is make sure that it's stuck in a court fight. And the problem is that like the sort of modern like trump Ace

people like they don't have any competent lawyers. The root of Giuliani is like trying to do this ship or whatever. But like that guy, I don't know that that guy may have known what a law was in like ninety three, but his brain has been just melted by like inhaling cigars smoke and truly copious about of drugs, so you know, they're not they're not really able to sort of pull

this off. But Bush is and the result of this is the American reaction about eleven is the war in the Rock is basically the the the sort of complete annihilation of like the content like this is slightly an exaggeration, but like the concept of freedom in the US, like the ability for you not to be constantly surveiled, the ability for you to like you know, live live in a society in which there's like every single thing you do isn't being monitored by a thousand different kinds of

police stations who are all sharing your tweets so they can fucking grab people out off of the road, sucking unmarked fans, right, Like, that's all stuff that is a specific product of the sort of kind of fascism at the Bush administration deploys and they're a we'll do this because they just try to stole an election, and now we all we all sort of just live in in the permanent afterlife of the Brooks Brothers riot. This is

what January sixth was. This is what stop the Steel is, and it's what the that's what the modern Republican Party is so yeah. It's happy holidays everyone. I hope you have a good new Year. And uh inslaw. We will destroy these fashion Republican bastards and make sure that none of them ever get to do this again. Hello, Ulu, welcome to another episode of It could happen here with a twist. Um, this is the holiday special answer for that. UM, So you know, buckle up, you know Santa might make

an appearance. UM. I don't want to take a moment to discuss, you know, this whole idea of Christmas. This practice is globally celebrated cultural festivity, and I guess on the not to be stereotypically leftist, but the issues I have with it alongside UM, I think some of the ah best UM and most I think UM hopeful elements

within it. I don't know about the rest of you. UM. And by the way, I'm joined by Garrison andterest for I'm very excited we get we get to finally talk about the issue that I've been wanting to talk about ever ever since we started the show. How telling your kids that Santa exists is actually child abuse? This is very exciting. I'm glad we can have this civil discussion to to to cover these these hard hitting topics that are impacting us most in Are you trying to say

this like a Santin's abolitionist or something. Yes, I think the fact that we condone lying to children in this way every Christmas is I'm sorry, but that's that's so politically unrealistic. I don't know how you have a platform. Can't take that seriously. Um, it teaches our kids not to trust us. Um. It starts. It is really an extension of the great Man theory that Santa as this man is the only one capable of delivering all these presents. I think it's I think it's quite. Are you trying

to say so it's a manifestation of patriarchy. That's right, it is. It is quite. It's it's quite problematic. Um. You know those elves are not getting paid. You know that Santa has tried to bust unions at his workshop every year. Um. I don't think this reindeer are treated very well. Um. There is a whole, a whole lot of issues here. Yeah, it's a normalization of the surveillance state.

It right on the shelf classic, Yeah, elf on the shelf came to rise after the Patriot Act was introduced to condition American children into thinking it's okay to always be watched. This is it's it's this, this, this is sick. Parents are culpable in promoting this myth. Um, I think this needs to be addressed. You know what I think, you know what I think. I think you all need to be Christmas bill. I don't know about show, but I love I love Christmas, I think, Um, I think

it's I think we need to take a Christmas bill. Um. You know, of course the actual gift getting hasn't been the best. Especially want to get past une, just like, okay, this is what it is then. But you know, the the unity and the joy and the excitement, I mean what about that? You know, the color, the food and the drink, getting people together, um, catching up. You know, celebrated in many different ways, religiously and non religiously. And of course it's not even celebrated at all, um in

some places and with some people. Um. And you know, there are other religious observances and holidays around this time. They don't like Kannaka and concer and whatever else. But you know, I think a lot of us are most familiar with Christmas, and I think we're, you know, mostly familiar with the origins of Christmas. That's not the kind of episode we're getting into here. Um. I think you know, we all known about Jesus and you and sat Anlia

and all that fun stuff. Knows it about Charles Dickens and Scrooge and of course the the diagram of Scrooge and cringe. And you know whether or not those two concepts will a lap. But I want to look more to these sort of you know, ideas of what Christmas is, what it means, you know, um, and really how a lot of our society's issues come to the forefront around this time of year. Um, the scourge of Scrooge is particularly apparent. I mean, for many, Christmas is basically capitalism

on steroids. For one, UM and Santa have to sort of promote that from an early age as a propaganda tool of the capitalists, as I'm sure would m would. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Great. Well that's the episode everybody. Again. I hope you I hope you have a good holiday season. Oh wait, I think Andrew is

more to say. Yeah, I think we're wrapping up a little bit EARLYI there, you know, but you know, we can't talk about the fact that you know, Santa really is um a big fan of this like ultimate now you know, there's GDP growth sull of inducing this this pro growth ist capitalist production for production, seek consumption for consumption sake, like the idea that Santa expects children to

write and request something from him every single year. Um, that he he, he stakes an entire holiday upon his own business and upon his own you know production, whole industrial apparatus a center around this one event, um. And I mean the sort of consumption we see around Christmas season, it's like it ramps up, you know, online stores, department stores, malls just burst in with with people um looking to

bye bye bye all around the world. In America, at least twenty nineteen so Americans spent over one trillion dollars just in the Christmas see done. I mean, it's just glorious excess, honestly. And of course there's also the excessive you know, decorating and shopping and drinking and the us and sort of arrities with those things. And that sort of over indulgence is part of what's seriously harm on

the planet. Not to you know, blame individuals and exclusively because you know, obviously the sort of thing is encouraged by you know, advertising and by the entire industries that builds around around this, this idea of consumerism. But the holiday is basically, you know, you know, it's become this thing where the focal point is to indulge, to splooge, to consume um. And you see a lot of Christmas movies too, I mean Christmas of the Crowns is when

particularly iconic example. And with all this you know consumerism, it feels like we lose sight of the purpose, you know, of the gift giving. I don't think we've lost our selves less nature. I think we've lost some of the within it. I think it's by design a natural tendency to care for the people in our lives are sort of exploited. Um, you know, we're expected by the systems, are super hyper competitively in spirital coupitlism. But now we have to be super generous and caring around this time

of year. But just in a way that just so happens to profit campus anyway. It's like, yeah, yeah, be generous, be caring and stuff by this gift for you know, you know, you loved one and I will pocket the change. And I don't think it has to be that way. But the commercialization of what we're wants wholly days is you know, it tends to do that. And of course with all these soup kitchens and can food drives and Red Cross Santa's outside groceries, building and for some donations.

Um and by the way, it don't donate the Red Cross that kind of problematic. Salvation Army do not do not donative salvation Salvation my bad, I'm back. I think that's confusing them. Red Cross just takes credit for anarchist projects in the relief of disasters and salation Harmy hates gay people, so it also has also has shot anarchists. I think they don't talk about very much. Well damn,

that should probably be an episode. Yeah, there's another way of that, but yeah, yeah, you know, it's like all this stuff is happening, and it's like this sort of performance of all of a sudden, we care about, um, what's the name of that little kid from Christmas Carol, Tiny Tim? All of a sudden, we care about Tiny Tim. In a system that literally requires an impoverished base of people, you know, poverty is certainly this virtue that we we

look to help Tom meliorate to be careful. You know, we we want to uplift the tiny him as we're gonna warm the hearts of the Scrooge McDuck's of the world the rest of the year. It's just like, oh, well, in this underclass is a patrol and the class needs to exist. I think the extension of our tendency towards mutually throughout the year and across bonds of kid and on kind of like, um, it's something that we should pursue um to prefigure a gift economy um, not just

around a particular season, but year round. I think that is both while exercise to look into and of course I think an ideal you would want to see. I guess we could call us my Christmas wish UM readjustment to this sort of consumption around this time of year, the one that is done with a sort of ad growth mindset. One of his cognizance of local condition is the one that seeks to reduce food miles, socalize the production can some shown. So that's I guess wish number

one Christmas wish number one. Let's um, let's make a gift economy rather than a capitalist gift consumption day. And of course I think our next Christmas wish on this topic would be a wish for work abolition. You know, with all that consumption happening around this time, yet it really does a number on the service and manufacturing and delivery and SOT and so forth workers around the world. You know, work sucks in general, but it's extra sucks

around this time of year. Um, you know, with sweatshop labor, with retail hell around this season, it's really opposite of peace on you for a good chunk of the working class. You could call it the season for overworking. And it's not just for um, you know, gears, token oppressed group, you know, the elves, like the other workers that the exploits it that we should probably be championing. Yeah, we we talked about this in a couple of China episodes

that I did. But one of the big reasons for the sort of huge like workers up risings in China in the last like a few weeks was that like basically a bunch of people got locked into a factory because Fox Gone and Apple were trying to hit their Christmas like production targets. And people started fighting the cops because they were like, this actually sucks. I don't want to be stuck in here being lied to by how much I'm going to get paid so that these companies

can have their Christmas sales. I mean, yeah, definitely. I think it's completely fair to say that the worker elves are very mistreated. Um. But with the exception I think of specifically the elf on the shelf elves. I don't think those count as workers. Elves are cops. They only function as niches for the surreal state. So yes, the elf workers are are mistreated um and should unionize and and should should deserve way more support and possibly even the abolition of of work. But the elf on the

shelf elves are not workers. I think that's a that's an important distinction. Yeah. Yeah, it's like the class strators more than anything, exactly. Yeah, very blatantly. So yeah, it really is, you know, the season for overworken. You know, with all this, it's very interesting that that's really what triggered the protests in China. I mean, I would love to see celebrations and festivals have given in any sort

of an archic society, but it doesn't fail. No, it's at the right these festivities UM built on the exploitation of others. I mean, what kind of celebration it's we had when people are suffering in such a capacity to produce that sort of celebration. And speaking of suffering, I think, um, there are a lot of people who suffer through family around this time of year. And I think some people actually appreciate having to work through the holidays because it

means they don't have to deal with said family. And I mean family is a big focus and the sort of culture of Christmas. But you know, unlike the greeting cards and the billboards and stuff, not everyone's family is picture perfect and holiday is often open a lot of wounds and heightened re read for a lot of people. UM. People consume to hear people um, and a lot of toxicity and intoxication is brought under one roof during TRUSTMA celebrations, bigotree abuse, that sort of thing. It's not a fun

time for some people. And I think it's important in the season and in general to let go of this sort of patriarchal and restricting designation of family in favor of something that is more subject to choice, to agency, to consent to you know, more expanded forms of kinship, bringing people together who care for and enjoy and want to share each other's company, you know, create a new traditions,

to build new bonds of solarity and care. UM. I think, you know, opportunities like these, Seasons like these enable us to demonstrate the veracity of the liberation that can be had in our projects. I think it's something that a lot of people need around this season because mental health boways seem to worsen around this time of year. They often toxic culture of Christmas could be clearly bad people's

mental health. You know, it's loneliness and depression and suicide and the struggle to care for your basic needs that alone and joy the season, and it takes some big tool on people's well being. You know, it's easy to they all just go to therapy and whatever. But with the inaccessibility of therapy and the fact that you know, therapy is not necessarily a salve for material conditions, UM. There needs to be a social safety net in place. They must be healing in community and not just an

exolution UM. And so I think the season is an opportunity for us to reflect on that and to you know, try to avail ourselves to those whom we fay might be suffering at this time. And if you yourself a suffering and it's trying to reach out and sort of engage in that sort of mutual mutual aid and mutual support, I think there's a lot that we can reframe and

reconsider surrounding Christmas. I mean, for a season of kindness and given it unfortunately hoots a lot of people, um, but that can change, you know, through solidarity, through generosity, through kinship, solidarity organized in the bottom of the extension of the principle of mutually into everyday life. Redirecting our generosity around this time from giving to the pockets of

billionaires to given to the people, um. To display our capacity for well doing, to think locally, to think d I y, to think meaningful rather than to just add another thing to the Amazon card. And of course not just physically giving gifts, but as being generous with our time and our love and our care because we do need each other, um, not just in this time, but in general. I think bred Santa had some entertaining suggestions

of the season. To bred Santa, of course, being Peter Kropotkin, he figured that we should all pose as Santa Clause perhaps there as a subversion of what he represents as a capitalist. We all pools as Santa Claus or as St. Nicholas, and to infiltrate the stores and give way the toys. Um and one postcard Krobakin route that of the night before Christmas, we'll all be about while the people are sleeping.

We will realize or cloud will expropriate goods from the stores because that's fair, and distribute them widely to those we need care. So yeah, Merry Christmas and half of your holidays to all and to all are good. Fight for freedom. You can of course find me on YouTube at androids um dot com slash and underscore seeing True, and if you want, you can support me on picture on dot com slash saying true. That's it for me for this year, for it could happen here, So you're

next year great destroist icons Center Clause. Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the Universe. It could happen here is a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zone media dot com, or check us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts, you can find sources for It could happen here, Updated

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